Speaker 1: Well, Robert Evans Podcast, I don't have any time for
Speaker 1: an introduction. I have had a thought, a critical thought
Speaker 1: that I think must be analyzed before this episode, and
Speaker 1: it relates to to Africa by Toto. Uh because in
Speaker 1: the opening strains of the song, the singer notes that
Speaker 1: it's going to take a lot to get whoever he's
Speaker 1: singing the song about away from him, and that there's
Speaker 1: nothing that a hundred men or more could do. But
Speaker 1: with social isolation ng in place, I think we have
Speaker 1: to assume that whoever is singing the song Africa by Toto,
Speaker 1: like whatever character that is, is in fact isolated from
Speaker 1: the person that they said they could never be separated from,
Speaker 1: which leads the question how many men more than a
Speaker 1: hundred is the COVID nineteen epidemic powerful? Then that that
Speaker 1: this is this is critical to analyze. Nothing else matters.
Speaker 1: We're canceling the rest of the episode until we figet
Speaker 1: this out. Sophie, it's more than men. Yeah, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: not canceling the episode. This is an episode with d J. Daniel.
Speaker 1: I'm not canceling that, Joy, I'm gonna keep running the
Speaker 1: numbers on this. But while I do that, Dan You're
Speaker 1: a fan of a lot of things, right, You're You're
Speaker 1: big into fandoms, all sorts of stuff that you're a
Speaker 1: fan of. Are you? Are you a fan dan of
Speaker 1: the war in Afghanistan? Are you in Afghanistan? Get it?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Oh my god, was so good. I'm
Speaker 1: so proud. Okay, I take it. Um Okay, Well, I
Speaker 1: mean I'm a fan of no wars, but um, you know,
Speaker 1: I have a feeling by the end of this I
Speaker 1: will be even less a fan of this one. Well,
Speaker 1: the war in Afghanistan is a real I think people,
Speaker 1: It's been going on for so long that now we
Speaker 1: all just think about it as this like endless, slightly
Speaker 1: draining and expensive but mostly are gotten disaster that we
Speaker 1: just can't seem to escape from. And I think we've
Speaker 1: forgotten what a fucking crazy time the beginning of the
Speaker 1: war in Afghanistan was, like it was. It was one
Speaker 1: of the dumbest times and places that has ever collided together.
Speaker 1: Um as a result of what I what I can
Speaker 1: only call army grifters like this was a huge part
Speaker 1: of the early warningt like it still is, but now
Speaker 1: like the grifting is done by giant corporations. But in
Speaker 1: the early days, when like U. S. Troops were first
Speaker 1: into the country, there were a ton of just random
Speaker 1: assholes who would roll into Afghanistan with whatever weapons they
Speaker 1: could manage to smuggle across international borders and just try
Speaker 1: to do some shit. Uh and it it we don't
Speaker 1: we don't talk about them anymore, but it's one of
Speaker 1: the funnest things that ever happened. And I I want
Speaker 1: to tell you about a couple of these guys before
Speaker 1: we get to the main subject of our episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the first one of these beautiful bastards I want to
Speaker 1: talk about was Gary Brooks Faulkner. Now Brooks was a
Speaker 1: Gary I should say, was a Greely, Colorado native who
Speaker 1: traveled by boat in a series of overland routes to
Speaker 1: try to make his way into Afghanistan and single handedly
Speaker 1: capture Osama bin Laden. Now he had to travel on
Speaker 1: a boat and via smuggling himself across borders because he
Speaker 1: tried was trying to get into Afghanistan with a pistol,
Speaker 1: a knife, night vision goggles, Christian evangelical literature, and a
Speaker 1: Samurai sword that he all brought from what that that's
Speaker 1: his his been laden kit was a pistol, a knife
Speaker 1: night vision goggles like, okay, so pistol, Yeah, you're gonna
Speaker 1: want you a gun, a some sword, right, A knife
Speaker 1: practical you're in the mountains, You're always gonna want a knife,
Speaker 1: night vision goggles, share Christian evangelical literature. Okay, I doesn't
Speaker 1: seem practical, but go off. And then samurai sword, which
Speaker 1: really I think keisy window what Gary imagined he'd be doing.
Speaker 1: He just wanted that slung over his shoulders, striding across
Speaker 1: the back so that when you know, the sun was
Speaker 1: beating down on him and you just saw the silhouette
Speaker 1: of a weird o costplayer coming into this town in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: he would be have that sword in the silhouette off
Speaker 1: to the side. Yeah, you know, he imagined like getting
Speaker 1: into a duel with a couple of Taliban guys, and yeah,
Speaker 1: he had such dreams. Gary did um. But unfortunately Gary
Speaker 1: never quite made it to Tora Bora to samurai fight
Speaker 1: the Taliban. Instead, he was arrested almost immediately in Pakistan.
Speaker 1: Because yeah, so the good news is that obviously, once
Speaker 1: the media heard that some guy with a samurai sword
Speaker 1: had been arrested in Afghanistan after leaving fucking Greeley, Colorado
Speaker 1: to got kidnap the world's greatest terrorist. Uh it was.
Speaker 1: It made the news. Uh So he was sent back
Speaker 1: home by Pakistan, and he got kind of famous, and
Speaker 1: he did appearances on the View and The Late Show
Speaker 1: with David Letterman. Yeah, he was described as the Rocky
Speaker 1: Mountain Rambo, even though he saw no action of any
Speaker 1: kind and was in fact on dialysis the entire time.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I feel comfortable saying if the police
Speaker 1: in Pakistan hadn't arrested him, he would have almost certainly died,
Speaker 1: even without the Taliban's help and with and with not
Speaker 1: a word to the world about his presence or actions,
Speaker 1: just disappearing off of this earth. Yeah, his kidneys would
Speaker 1: have just given out as he was trying to hike
Speaker 1: up the fucking Khyber Pass with a Samurai kana. Like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: you'll you'll love to hear about it, but he obviously
Speaker 1: like all that matters is that he got famous for
Speaker 1: trying to take on Bin Laden with a Samurai sword
Speaker 1: in a time when America was maybe the least rational
Speaker 1: we've ever been. So everyone loved fucking Gary Faulkner, they
Speaker 1: were fans, Okay, okay, yeah, at the time of will Ennium,
Speaker 1: we were okay with a guy with a samre s
Speaker 1: ord going into kick Bin. Lawton asked, yeah. Now. During
Speaker 1: the media tour he did after his arrest, Faulkner revealed
Speaker 1: that he was an ex con who had spent twelve
Speaker 1: years in jail on a number of larceny and burglary charges,
Speaker 1: and he kind of brilliantly pivoted off of this to
Speaker 1: claim that as a skilled thief, he had precisely the
Speaker 1: kind of talent necessary to track down a terrorist mastermind.
Speaker 1: You know, that is the way you sell ship to Hollywood.
Speaker 1: I mean most certainly, especially on all these interviews you're doing.
Speaker 1: It's just like there I was. But oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: the only thing that's missing is a wife who wouldn't
Speaker 1: give him custody, like an ex wife who wouldn't like you.
Speaker 1: Add that in and you've got fucking ninety minutes solid.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, fucking early two thousands. Nicolas Cage would
Speaker 1: have been the right dude to play this character. Oh
Speaker 1: my god. So to see a hand flick somewhere and
Speaker 1: they're just like dismissing somebody just yeah, Faulkner is a
Speaker 1: fun one. He even told so. During his interview with Letterman,
Speaker 1: Gary Faulkner told that he didn't need to worry about
Speaker 1: whatever bodyguards Osama bin Laden had because quote, I'm a thief, uh,
Speaker 1: which is bullet Now. The unfortunate code of the story
Speaker 1: of Gary Faulkner is that as a felon, he was
Speaker 1: not able to legally possess a firearm, which became a
Speaker 1: problem for him when he was arrested for shooting a
Speaker 1: man in self defense back home in Colorado. So that
Speaker 1: things didn't work out great in the for Gary Faulkner. Now.
Speaker 1: Another beautiful Afghan war grifter was the Syrian born Matt Meeson,
Speaker 1: a naturalized US citizen who also attempted to kill Osama
Speaker 1: bin Laden in two thousand and five. He got on
Speaker 1: a plane from Detroit to Syria. Apparently there just used
Speaker 1: to be a direct like Detroit to Damaska's route the
Speaker 1: two big d's uh, and he was stopped by authorities
Speaker 1: when they realized he was traveling with thirteen thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in cash, a Taser bullets, pepper spray body armor, and
Speaker 1: three Geiger After three I love the bullets because he's like,
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm gonna be able to find with all
Speaker 1: this cash, I'll be able to buy a gun when
Speaker 1: I hit Syria. But I better bring my own AMMO,
Speaker 1: and I better bring three Geiger counters. Now he had
Speaker 1: a reason for that, I mean, okayah my gosh, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he claimed that he was. His cover was that
Speaker 1: he was a private investigator studying the illegal uranium trade
Speaker 1: and he was going to use the Geiger counters to
Speaker 1: help him lure in illegal uranium buyers or something like that.
Speaker 1: It never really made much sense. This, this is, this
Speaker 1: is truly this is I mean, you know, all these
Speaker 1: guys are heroes. Speaking of heroes, former British Special Air
Speaker 1: Service soldier Colin Barry was the smartest of all these grifters,
Speaker 1: except for the guy we're about to talk about. He
Speaker 1: traveled to Afghanistan under the cover of working on housing
Speaker 1: projects for an engineering firm, and this seems to have
Speaker 1: been as a way to hide his activities trying to
Speaker 1: ride intel for m I six, who he claims approached
Speaker 1: him for aid and may in fact have done so.
Speaker 1: Uh In any case, various time as a secret agent
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan came to an end when he shot to
Speaker 1: random Afghan citizens to death in a hotel bar in Kabul.
Speaker 1: He was jailed for murder. Now that little bit about
Speaker 1: the story where it's like this guy with no evidence
Speaker 1: claims he was working for m I six, and maybe
Speaker 1: he was. All of these guys make claims to having
Speaker 1: worked for like m I six, the CIA, the Defense
Speaker 1: Department or something like that, and almost all of them
Speaker 1: actually did to some extent um. Because here's here's the
Speaker 1: thing about the start of the war in Afghanistan. So
Speaker 1: number one, by the time like we invaded in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: the State Department had about three hundred and forty million
Speaker 1: dollars and bounties out for the top thirty terrorism suspects worldwide.
Speaker 1: So there were tens of millions of dollars out for
Speaker 1: dudes who could capture Al Qaeda motherfuckers or Taliban motherfucker's right,
Speaker 1: tens of millions of these bounties were paid off. So
Speaker 1: there's that kind of money going out. But there was
Speaker 1: also the militaries of mult couple nations were active in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: and none of them knew a goddamn thing about Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: So anyone who could come in and make a good
Speaker 1: pitch about how they could gather useful intel or do
Speaker 1: something else that was necessary had a real good chance
Speaker 1: of making tens of millions of dollars, because again, the
Speaker 1: like the the coalition was just shifting cash into the
Speaker 1: open mouths of anyone who could credibly claim to be
Speaker 1: fighting terrorism, and no one knew anything like it was
Speaker 1: even like it was a wild West at that point,
Speaker 1: right in terms of the counter terrorism industry. So you
Speaker 1: could just roll in the country and if you looked
Speaker 1: right and talked right, you could suddenly have fucking CIA
Speaker 1: dollars like flowing down your fucking mouth. Um, it was.
Speaker 1: It was a fun time. Sounds like sounds like a
Speaker 1: fun time. Yeah. So for for a few years, Afghanistan
Speaker 1: was a grifter paradise and no one exploited it more
Speaker 1: entertainingly than Jack Edema. Jonathan Keith Adema was born in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six and pau Keepsie, New York. His parents
Speaker 1: were upper middle class and doting, and Jonathan was their
Speaker 1: only son. His father was a former marine and a
Speaker 1: veteran of the Second World War. Jonathan grew up beloved
Speaker 1: and worshiped and surrounded by the sort of comfort and
Speaker 1: care that few children are fortunate enough to enjoy. When
Speaker 1: he was twelve years old, he watched the John Wayne
Speaker 1: classic The Green Berets. Have you seen that movie? Danal,
Speaker 1: I actually have not seen The Green Berets? Side note?
Speaker 1: Side note? Can I put in a request to the
Speaker 1: fans if anybody wants to remixed Gangster's Paradise by Coolio
Speaker 1: and do Grifters Paradise please? There on Twitter? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: make it happen. Also shout at the city of Poughkeepsie.
Speaker 1: I'm familiar. I've heard of pau keeps you, but keeps
Speaker 1: I don't Daniel a little more familiar with Okay, Daniel,
Speaker 1: you missed him yesterday called Beyonce. Beyonce Honestly, I'm always
Speaker 1: a fan. When the fans came after you for a
Speaker 1: gop a as well, that was really funny. I love that.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just so great. I immediately text J. B.
Speaker 1: Loftus and Little Recording and said, guess what fantastic And
Speaker 1: we've been laughing about it for two days. It's wonderful.
Speaker 1: I am so angry right now. Mostly mostly I am
Speaker 1: angry at the way the State of New York names
Speaker 1: towns that is complete. Yeah, I it's wrong, and I
Speaker 1: don't think we should lean into that anymore. Agreed, You're
Speaker 1: on You're on Blast New York more more main mainland name. So,
Speaker 1: the movie The Green Berets was kind of the first
Speaker 1: movie about special forces. Like now there's like a fucking
Speaker 1: ton of those movies. It's like in every action movie
Speaker 1: hero is gonna have some sort of Special Forces background,
Speaker 1: but like this was the first time, like special forces
Speaker 1: were kind of new in Vietnam, like the idea that
Speaker 1: you would have these dudes, and The Green Berets was
Speaker 1: a movie about them, and um, it was a very
Speaker 1: a big hit. Uh, And it became John adena Adema's
Speaker 1: very favorite movie as a little boy, and seeing this
Speaker 1: film convinced him to give up his earlier dreams of
Speaker 1: being a veterinarian and instead joined the military and become
Speaker 1: a Green Beret himself. He enlisted as soon as he
Speaker 1: was able to do so in nineteen seventy five, but
Speaker 1: tragically he was too late to fight and maybe die
Speaker 1: in Vietnam, but he did well enough on his entrance
Speaker 1: tests that he qualified for the Special Forces. He was
Speaker 1: helped in this by the fact that the post Vietnam
Speaker 1: Special Forces had endured a serious manpower shortage since new
Speaker 1: recruits had been scared off from joining for some inexplicable reason.
Speaker 1: Jonathan was accepted even though he had bad eyesight. He
Speaker 1: did a three year active duty term as a radio
Speaker 1: operator and a weapon specialist, and then spent some time
Speaker 1: in the reserves, reaching the rank of staff sergeant before
Speaker 1: being discharged in nineteen eighty four. One of the difficulties
Speaker 1: here is that even among credible sources, descriptions of Jack
Speaker 1: Adema's time in the military very widely. This paragraph from
Speaker 1: a Rolling Stone article on the man is probably as
Speaker 1: close to accurate as you're going to get in a
Speaker 1: story about this con man's military career. Though a demas
Speaker 1: military record reflects qualification as a pistol expert and badges
Speaker 1: awarded for scuba and parachute training, there are no indications
Speaker 1: that he ever heard a shot fired in anger while
Speaker 1: he was in the military. Moreover, a nineteen North Carolina
Speaker 1: probation report quotes a military evaluator describing Adema as the
Speaker 1: most unmotivated, unprofessional, immature enlisted man I have ever known,
Speaker 1: and a letter of reprimands cited Adema's gross immaturity, characterized
Speaker 1: by irrationality and a tendency towards violence. The reprimand came
Speaker 1: after Adema attempted to attack a senior commanding officer. So
Speaker 1: Jack Adema is in the Special Forces, but you would
Speaker 1: not call him like he's not he's not good at it.
Speaker 1: I mean, if he's attacking his officer, you can't come on, man.
Speaker 1: There were very few rules right after Vietnam. There were
Speaker 1: like nobody wanted to be in the military. It was
Speaker 1: a real ship show. Well there you go. Now. While
Speaker 1: he was still in the reserves, Jonathan, which is the
Speaker 1: name he still went by at the time, spent several
Speaker 1: amous year, aimless years wandering around the small town in
Speaker 1: New York he lived in. Who pronounces the name of
Speaker 1: their town wrong because there jerks um, you know, just
Speaker 1: kind of trying to figure out what to do with
Speaker 1: his life. See, all john had ever wanted to do
Speaker 1: was fight in a foreign war, but the accursed years
Speaker 1: of relative peace after Vietnam made that almost an impossible impossibility. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Jonathan settled on a way to still do cool looking
Speaker 1: army type stuff without actually serving in the military, he
Speaker 1: founded a counter terrorism training school in the town of
Speaker 1: Red Hook. Now John had no real qualifications to do this,
Speaker 1: other than the fact that he had been very bad
Speaker 1: at being in the Special Forces UM. The exact extent
Speaker 1: of his work is unclear, but journalists eventually confirmed that
Speaker 1: he trained guards to protect the US government facilities in
Speaker 1: Haiti and did some amount of like eaguely described work
Speaker 1: for the Thai military. The president's son, Ron Reagan Jr.
Speaker 1: Used his facilities at some point, and I we don't
Speaker 1: really have a clear idea as to why UM and
Speaker 1: training people in vague counter terrorism techniques was not John's
Speaker 1: ownly activity. During this period, he was also breaking the
Speaker 1: law constantly. In nineteen eighty two, he was arrested for
Speaker 1: possession stolen property. In nineteen eight six, he was charged
Speaker 1: with resisting arrest and assault with attempt to physically harm.
Speaker 1: He received a nineteen eighty eight arrest for disorderly conduct
Speaker 1: in a nineteen ninety arrest for assault involving discharging a firearm.
Speaker 1: He was never convicted for any of these crimes, and
Speaker 1: we don't really know what happened. But you couldn't stop
Speaker 1: this dude from getting arrested. Um, so kind of go off,
Speaker 1: go off, just you know, live your truth, get arrested.
Speaker 1: This is clearly going to end in some fantastical manner.
Speaker 1: So every move is just like I'm supporting it all
Speaker 1: the way up and I mean it ends in Mexico,
Speaker 1: which I think we all know in our hearts. But great.
Speaker 1: I can't say if if Jonathan was good or not
Speaker 1: at actually training people in counter terrorism, but he was
Speaker 1: terrible at running such a business legally. His camp generated
Speaker 1: numerous noise complaints and was eventually shut down over a
Speaker 1: zoning violation. A DIMA moved next to Fayetteville, North Carolina,
Speaker 1: a location he picked for its proximity to Special Forces
Speaker 1: headquarters near Fort Bragg. Now, rather than selling terrorism training
Speaker 1: this time, he instead set up a store dedicated to
Speaker 1: selling non lethal military equipment and a side business running
Speaker 1: a series of Special Operations trade shows. It proved good
Speaker 1: at getting different manufacturers on board and filling big rooms
Speaker 1: with fancy military equipment and people who wanted to look
Speaker 1: at it. Now, some of these people were actually Special
Speaker 1: Forces veterans or members of the Defense Department, but most
Speaker 1: of the people who showed for these trade shows were
Speaker 1: Soldier of Fortune readers their guys who just wanted to
Speaker 1: look at guns and stuff. Yeah, thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: and great magazine, un fully unproblematic magazine. Yeah. So, well
Speaker 1: tell you something. When I had to battle that seal underwater,
Speaker 1: I used my knife fighting techniques that I learned in
Speaker 1: the Underwater knife Fighting Technique section of Soldier of Fortune.
Speaker 1: That seal came after me and I needed to defend myself.
Speaker 1: For the listeners, I'm absolutely kidding. I have never hermed
Speaker 1: in my life, Daniel. You we don't need to lie.
Speaker 1: Seals are a threat and the only way to deal
Speaker 1: with them is underwater knife fighting. I am. I focus
Speaker 1: always on practical prepping and so like you want to
Speaker 1: have some extra food, you want to know how to
Speaker 1: deal with like a bleeding wound, how to like staunch
Speaker 1: blood flow, and you need to know how to beat
Speaker 1: a seal in a knife fight. Those are those are
Speaker 1: basic practical steps we can all take. Love it. So
Speaker 1: speaking of practical steps, so the reality of the situation
Speaker 1: is that John Adma used his connections that he built
Speaker 1: in his counter terrorism training school to like fill up
Speaker 1: convention rooms cool military gear and people would pay to
Speaker 1: go gawk at it, and you know it was. It
Speaker 1: was a decent business. Um. That's the reality of what happened. Now.
Speaker 1: John Adema would go on, however, to speak about this
Speaker 1: UH somewhat differently. UM. He would claim in the future
Speaker 1: that after leaving the army, he worked as a US
Speaker 1: military advisor in El Salvador and Honduras. There's no evidence
Speaker 1: for this. He claimed he worked as part of a
Speaker 1: special mission mission unit and refused to ever elaborate as
Speaker 1: to what that job entailed. No records support any of this. Uh.
Speaker 1: No records support that he did anything but failed to
Speaker 1: run a training center and then lead a bunch of
Speaker 1: nerds through a fucking convention center. And when confronted with
Speaker 1: the fact that there was no evidence of him doing
Speaker 1: all this badass special ops stuff, he would tell journalists
Speaker 1: that the records of his actual military service were secret records,
Speaker 1: which he described as the ones that they don't want
Speaker 1: to give anyone, which is really, really handy. So the
Speaker 1: Trey shows that John ran generated enough interest from legitimate
Speaker 1: experts that Adema eventually met up with a subcontractor who
Speaker 1: was able to get him a real job training real
Speaker 1: cops in the former Soviet Republic of Lithuania, who we
Speaker 1: all knew. No is like the king of doing a
Speaker 1: good background check on a guy. That's what Lithuania. Yeah, what,
Speaker 1: the trade shows are great places to get products. I
Speaker 1: can't I can't tell what you're possibly trying to lead
Speaker 1: me into here, Daniel. Services if one of those services
Speaker 1: is enlisting in weird you know, armies and potential terrorist organization,
Speaker 1: I I don't know what either of you were trying
Speaker 1: to do. But on an unrelated note, it is time
Speaker 1: for an ad plug. We're back and we're on the internet,
Speaker 1: and now we're going to talk about motherfucking Jack Adema
Speaker 1: some more. So, he manages to like kind of leverage
Speaker 1: his his his various experiences into a job training cops
Speaker 1: in the former Soviet Republic of Lithuania. So he rolls
Speaker 1: there in nine right after the U s. S r
Speaker 1: ns UM, and the reality seems to be that he
Speaker 1: spent a brief period of time teaching cops in a
Speaker 1: very uh poor nation dealing with the collapse of its
Speaker 1: previous government. The reality for John Adema, though, is that
Speaker 1: he stumbled immediately upon a multimillion dollar black market and
Speaker 1: backpack nuclear weapons. Um. These devices known as special atomic
Speaker 1: Demolitians munitions did exist in government stockpiles, and there were
Speaker 1: constant rumors after the end of the Cold War that
Speaker 1: a number of them had escaped the fall of the U. S.
Speaker 1: S R. But there's no evidence anywhere that such a
Speaker 1: device wound up on any nations black market. The general
Speaker 1: incompetence of authorities worldwide, and the fact that no one ever,
Speaker 1: no terrorist group ever got such a weapon as is
Speaker 1: evidence that these were nothing more than rumors. But John
Speaker 1: ademon knew that the story of Russian suitcase nukes was
Speaker 1: a good one, so he started reaching out to senior
Speaker 1: Pentagon officials while he was still in Lithuania and telling
Speaker 1: them that he'd stumbled upon the secret nuke market. Now
Speaker 1: the secret nuke market. Yeah, and I don't know if
Speaker 1: you know this, Daniel, but if you start talking to
Speaker 1: Defense Department officials about the fact that you know where
Speaker 1: a bunch of nuclear weapons are being sold for cash,
Speaker 1: you will probably wind up having conversations with the FBI.
Speaker 1: That's just shocker. Yeah, that's just how that's gonna go.
Speaker 1: I feel like, yeah, I feel like the easiest way
Speaker 1: to get a conversation with the FBI is to like
Speaker 1: make them believe you might know about stolen nuclear warheads.
Speaker 1: That's a they're going to be interested in that one.
Speaker 1: So the Bureau demanded to sit down with Jack Adema
Speaker 1: and then demanded that he tell them who his sources were,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty reasonable demand given the fact that
Speaker 1: he's talking about backpack nukes. But a Deema refused to
Speaker 1: give them any concrete information because, in his words, he
Speaker 1: believed the FBI had been penetrated by Russian agents. Now
Speaker 1: here's how Rolling Stone describes would happen next. By Adema's account,
Speaker 1: the FBI then set out to destroy him, tiring him
Speaker 1: with more than fifty counts of wire fraud that put
Speaker 1: him in federal prison for four years during the mid nineties. However,
Speaker 1: U S law enforcement officials actually began investigating a Deema
Speaker 1: in May nine, more than a year before he supposedly
Speaker 1: refused to hand over his Lithuanian sources to the FBI.
Speaker 1: The A t F noted in a report filed during
Speaker 1: the course of the investigation that Adema was known to
Speaker 1: have a fictitious major's i d from the from the
Speaker 1: army and was desparred from army contracts in June eighteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety after he misrepresented his business as being owned
Speaker 1: by a minority. So this is all very winding because
Speaker 1: Jack lies about everything, and a lot of this is
Speaker 1: pre the Internet really coming around. But what happened is
Speaker 1: Jack committed mass wire fraud UM in a number of
Speaker 1: different ways, both from like stealing hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: dollars from print companies and like investments, and also running
Speaker 1: fake businesses that he just used to funnel money and
Speaker 1: loans through, and doing stuff like lying to the government
Speaker 1: to get army contracts to provide them with equipment by
Speaker 1: pretending his businesses owned by a minority UM. So he
Speaker 1: wound up getting in a lot of trouble, investigated by
Speaker 1: multiple federal agencies and convicted with fifty counts of wire
Speaker 1: fraud and going to prison for four years. And he
Speaker 1: later claimed that this is because he'd stumbled upon a
Speaker 1: nuclear weapon market in Lithuania that the FBI had uh
Speaker 1: not wanted him to shut down for some reason. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it's a dumb story, but that's what happens. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: where I found him. But they were like no, no no, no,
Speaker 1: it's not important. We swear a deema this guy's story.
Speaker 1: There's so much that's hard to understand about, like what
Speaker 1: happened here, because he's he's again, he's just lying constantly.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I was gonna say, it just sounds
Speaker 1: like everybody, everybody's hearing the lies and saying like okay,
Speaker 1: and then not doing anything about it. And he just
Speaker 1: keeps spinning more and more webs, a lot of spider webs. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He goes to jail, and in his words, it's because
Speaker 1: the FBI wanted to destroy him, And in the FBI's words,
Speaker 1: it's because he just couldn't stop committing wire fraud. Um
Speaker 1: so Adema spent yeah, in nineteen and ninety seven in
Speaker 1: a series of federal prisons. He kept up his correspondence
Speaker 1: with the outside world, though, and managed to get in
Speaker 1: contact with Jim Morris, a writer for Soldier of Fortune
Speaker 1: magazine and a former Special Forces major. Morris believed a
Speaker 1: demon stories of being hunted by the FBI and took
Speaker 1: up the cause of defending him in a series of editorials.
Speaker 1: These actually convinced some mainstream reporters to look into the story,
Speaker 1: and one of these reporters was Ted Kavanaugh, a former
Speaker 1: founding partner of CNN. He brought the story to the
Speaker 1: executive producer of Ida Eye with Connie Chung on CBS,
Speaker 1: and they sent a real journalist, Gary Skirka, to interview
Speaker 1: Adema from prison. The resulting documentary wound up focusing on
Speaker 1: arms dealing in Lithuania and had actually like almost nothing
Speaker 1: to do with John Adema, but it won Skirka and
Speaker 1: Award for Investigative Reporters in nineteen. So Skirka felt bad because,
Speaker 1: like Edema, he felt that a demon had helped him
Speaker 1: get on the trail of a real story because obviously
Speaker 1: there was a lot of fucking illegal weapons training going
Speaker 1: on in former Soviet block nations, but he had like
Speaker 1: he got cut from the documentary because there were no
Speaker 1: fucking suitcase nukes being sold. But Skirka, you know, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he had lied about that. But Skirka likes this guy,
Speaker 1: and he feels bad that he got cut from the documentary. Um,
Speaker 1: and he feels kind of angry that CBS executives ordered
Speaker 1: all footage of Adena cut a dima cut from the
Speaker 1: final product because they realized he was a grifter. But
Speaker 1: Skirka kind of falls under this guy's spell and he
Speaker 1: stays in touch with his jailhouse source throughout a demon
Speaker 1: sentence um and promises to help him out when Jonathan
Speaker 1: gets freed. Now, Adema had other non journalist pin pals
Speaker 1: during this time. He started exchanging letters with a woman
Speaker 1: named Victoria running Wolf, who was a forty ish blonde
Speaker 1: woman from Fayetteville, and the two had first met a
Speaker 1: few months after Dema got out of prison. Um, but
Speaker 1: they'd like been exchanging letters and she fell in love
Speaker 1: with him while he was jailed. So we know immediately
Speaker 1: that this is going to go well. You've got a
Speaker 1: grifter who falls in love with a woman in prison.
Speaker 1: Victoria later recalled quote, I knew right then I was
Speaker 1: going to have my hands full. I knew it from
Speaker 1: the time he said hello. Yeah. So, being the sort
Speaker 1: of fellow who's constitutionally incapable of not scheming, Adema convinced
Speaker 1: Victoria running Wolf to invest with him in the Ultimate
Speaker 1: Pet Resort, a hotel for pets. And as far as
Speaker 1: I can tell, this might have actually been a legitimate business.
Speaker 1: And I have to emphasize the as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell apart because the only only one of the
Speaker 1: sources I found talks about this in any kind of depth.
Speaker 1: And I personally suspect that this must have been some
Speaker 1: kind of a con too, but it just hasn't been unraveled.
Speaker 1: But maybe, yeah, this is a con city up in here.
Speaker 1: Maybe he had a pet resort. It's impossible to say.
Speaker 1: Speaking of schemes, Jonathan Adema and his journalist Pal Scarca
Speaker 1: got together once he was out of prison, and using
Speaker 1: Skirrka's credibility as an award winning journalist, they succeeded in
Speaker 1: getting an assignment with forty eight hours on CBS reporting
Speaker 1: on the story of retired Green Beret Colonel George Merrichik
Speaker 1: now Colonel Marrichick was and still is one of the
Speaker 1: most highly decorated Special Forces soldiers in history. And he
Speaker 1: also murdered the ship out of his wife in n Um.
Speaker 1: He was convicted. Yeah, he was convicted of this murder
Speaker 1: so many times. This guy, fucking Marricheck gets convicted of
Speaker 1: murder the way most people like going for fucking colorectal
Speaker 1: cancer screenings like it's it's yeah, So he's murdering multiple
Speaker 1: people in getting out of the same No, he just
Speaker 1: kills so he kills the ship out of his wife,
Speaker 1: and he gets tried for it, but he succeeds in
Speaker 1: because he's this decorated soldier building up particularly him, like
Speaker 1: the right wing media ecosystem like Soldier of Fortune is
Speaker 1: big on this. He gets a bunch of people to
Speaker 1: be like, no, he's innocent, he was framed, you know,
Speaker 1: he didn't do it, Like this is just like a
Speaker 1: scheme against the American hero. So he keeps getting retried,
Speaker 1: of course, and he keeps getting reconvicted too, because he
Speaker 1: obviously did it. Um it's yeah, it's so he's out
Speaker 1: of prison now and alive, but he was convicted of
Speaker 1: murder multiple times, but a lot of people think he's innocent.
Speaker 1: It's a very strange story. Maybe we'll cover it the
Speaker 1: day alive. Yeah, he's currently out of prison, although again
Speaker 1: was convicted. I know somewhere in the US if you
Speaker 1: look up fucking George Merrichick, you'll figure it out. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna leave it alone. Yeah, don't marry him, I
Speaker 1: can tell you that much. I don't think I don't
Speaker 1: think that's gonna Yeah. So John Admas sees that this
Speaker 1: Special Forces colonel has become like the center of this
Speaker 1: this like media blitz uh, and sees that there's fucking
Speaker 1: money in it, and he shoves his journalist pals Krka,
Speaker 1: onto the story and the two get to work investigating
Speaker 1: the murder. But as soon as CBS sees what they're
Speaker 1: working on, it like drops them immediately because they realized
Speaker 1: that neither of these guys have any sense of objectivity
Speaker 1: about the case, and we're not in any way going
Speaker 1: to report critically on what had happened. Uh And I'm
Speaker 1: gonna quote now from the Columbia Journalism Review. Adema and
Speaker 1: Skirka had opened a free Merritchek office in Wilmington, North Carolina,
Speaker 1: where the trial was taking place, and one witnessed alleged
Speaker 1: that Adema and another man came to his house to
Speaker 1: harass him the night before he was slated to testify.
Speaker 1: A Dima also told several associates he was detained for
Speaker 1: impersonating a police officer in an effort to get into
Speaker 1: a Detroit prison and convince a convicted serial killer to
Speaker 1: confess to the murder. So there's I want to talk
Speaker 1: as a journalist here. So many as a journalist, obviously,
Speaker 1: objectivity gets gets compromised all the time. There's really no
Speaker 1: way in being perfectly objective, especially, you wind up sympathizing
Speaker 1: with people all the time that you report on. However,
Speaker 1: if you are impersonating prison and breaking into a jail
Speaker 1: to trick a convicted serial killer into con confessing to
Speaker 1: a murder, your journalistic objectivity has been I would say,
Speaker 1: compromised beyond the point of acceptability. Amen to that. We
Speaker 1: all have a different line as reporters, but I think
Speaker 1: that crosses everyone's lot. I am. I'm not a reporter myself,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I agree with you. Yeah, So Skurca and Adema.
Speaker 1: Now that CBS has been like, no, we don't want
Speaker 1: any of this former news website of their own point
Speaker 1: blank news, and start publishing an investigation there, and it
Speaker 1: might have been good work. They want a National Press
Speaker 1: Club Award for their coverage, and I have no idea
Speaker 1: what they actually wrote about. It's impossible for me to
Speaker 1: actually analyze this coverage, but they want to fucking award
Speaker 1: for it, So maybe maybe what they did was good.
Speaker 1: I don't know. My gut is saying that Scarca was
Speaker 1: a good reporter who just got conned by this guy,
Speaker 1: and he might have actually put up some good work
Speaker 1: about the case. Um, but it's it's really fucking hard
Speaker 1: to say. Uh. And it's made harder to say because
Speaker 1: right when Skirca and Adema were working at this, Jonathan
Speaker 1: Skirka had another side hustle, which was filing hundreds of
Speaker 1: frivolous lawsuits against sixty minutes, US News and World Report
Speaker 1: and every other journalist who wrote articles about the fact
Speaker 1: that he'd like tried to con the FBI into thinking
Speaker 1: he had suitcase nukes in Lithuania. Um so he just
Speaker 1: starts suing people left and right for reporting on the
Speaker 1: fact that he had been jailed for while wire fraud
Speaker 1: and was lying that it's very, very like any of
Speaker 1: these guys. He filed so many lawsuits that trying to
Speaker 1: like track down what they were all about and what
Speaker 1: they were claiming was impossible. He also filed a plagiarism
Speaker 1: suit against dream Works, claiming that the George Clooney Nicole
Speaker 1: Kidman movie The Peacemaker had in fact been based on
Speaker 1: material they stole from a movie treatment that he had
Speaker 1: started to write but not written. Okay, yeah, I just
Speaker 1: want the behind Bassard's hands to know that there's been
Speaker 1: like a solid like thirty seconds just me shaking my
Speaker 1: head at these foolish, frivolous actions and lawsuits because this
Speaker 1: is yeah, and he's he's right now like kind of
Speaker 1: we would never have written a story about this guy
Speaker 1: if if this was all he did, because right now
Speaker 1: it's just mostly tricking this one journalist into thinking he
Speaker 1: had something to say and filing a bunch of bullshit
Speaker 1: lawsuits and go to jail for wire fraud. And this
Speaker 1: is kind of the state of affairs with Jonathan Edema
Speaker 1: as it existed on September eleventh, two thousand one. Are
Speaker 1: you aware of that date, Daniel, Yes, I am Robert,
Speaker 1: you're aware of that date. Yeah, it was. It was,
Speaker 1: you know, several days before the release of Big Trouble, um,
Speaker 1: the Tim Allen film that changed America. I think we
Speaker 1: can all say that after Big Trouble came out, nothing
Speaker 1: was ever the same. Yeah. Now there. You may not
Speaker 1: be aware of this, but there was also a terrorist
Speaker 1: attack on New York that same day, uh, and it
Speaker 1: was pretty significant to Yeah. Yeah, and John Adima was
Speaker 1: he really he really was hit hard by the towers
Speaker 1: falling and by all those planes being Yeah, as he
Speaker 1: would later say, they blew up the fucking World Trade Center,
Speaker 1: and my whole life changed. I'm a fucking New Yorker.
Speaker 1: I'm going to kill every goddamn one of them until
Speaker 1: I dropped dead. Now, them that he was talking about
Speaker 1: in that interview was al Qaeda, but also less specifically
Speaker 1: in the Afghan people he could possibly get his hands on,
Speaker 1: and his wife, Victoria Running Wolf, was totally supportive of this,
Speaker 1: later telling a journalist a lot of us put yellow
Speaker 1: ribbons on our cars or flags on our houses. My
Speaker 1: husband decided to go over to Afghanistan and hunt the
Speaker 1: bad guys, which is one way to describe what d
Speaker 1: Bless her heart. It's weird the only things you find
Speaker 1: about her or her being utterly supportive of him, and
Speaker 1: then her disappearing completely from his life. Um, and there's
Speaker 1: a story there that's not great. Yeah, isn't that. Isn't
Speaker 1: that the isn't that the dentist system? Just yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just you get really close, you connect, and you just
Speaker 1: disappear entirely. That's that's the that's the right. He disappeared
Speaker 1: to Afghanistan repeatedly. Ye so before he went to Afghanistan, though,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Adema decided to get on TV and start establishing
Speaker 1: his bonafides as a terrorism expert. Now nowadays, every fucking
Speaker 1: TV channel has countless terrorism experts. There's more terrorism experts
Speaker 1: in the world than there are fucking terrorists right now. Um.
Speaker 1: But in the immediate wake at nine eleven, which was
Speaker 1: again the release of Big Trouble, the Tim Allen movie,
Speaker 1: terrorism was something that Americans suddenly cared an awful lot about,
Speaker 1: possibly because the movie Big Trouble focused on a Russian
Speaker 1: suitcase snooke getting out into the hands of some terrorists
Speaker 1: who get it on a hijacked plane. There's there's a
Speaker 1: c I a plot in the movie Big Trouble based
Speaker 1: on the Dave Barry book Big Trouble, and people need
Speaker 1: to know about it. Daniel Robert, the threat is so long,
Speaker 1: it is, and that's how you know it's truely, So
Speaker 1: just John Adema, nine eleven happens, and Adema is like,
Speaker 1: all right, I gotta get on TV. Terrorism is going
Speaker 1: to be like the big thing for the next forever,
Speaker 1: and I've got to establish myself early as a TV
Speaker 1: expert because there's gonna be some fucking money in that.
Speaker 1: And he is not wrong on this. And on September twelve,
Speaker 1: two thou one Adema showed up as a guest on
Speaker 1: a local Los Angeles Fox News affiliate, written as a
Speaker 1: described as a counter terrorism advisor. He told audiences that
Speaker 1: he'd come across evidence. Yeah, he told evidence audiences that
Speaker 1: he'd come across evidence that three Canadian airliners had also
Speaker 1: been hijacked by al Qaida, along with a total of
Speaker 1: four American planes. Now this was bullshit, but nobody was
Speaker 1: really fact checking at all on nine twelve, So it
Speaker 1: played well in the immediate wake of fear and terror
Speaker 1: after the attacks and the release of Big Trouble. Now,
Speaker 1: while he was doing media, ran says John Adima also
Speaker 1: reached out to his all his old friends Skirka. He
Speaker 1: informed him that he was headed over to Afghanistan straightaway,
Speaker 1: not to kill a bunch of people, but to perform
Speaker 1: vaguely defined humanitarian aid work. He told Skirka that he
Speaker 1: had set up a deal with an NGO called Knightsbridge International,
Speaker 1: which was run by a veteran named ed Artist and
Speaker 1: focused on like delivering aid to the most dangerous places
Speaker 1: on Earth. So this was like on its surface, a
Speaker 1: good story is like this former Green Beret wants to
Speaker 1: have his journalist friend come with him to Afghanistan to
Speaker 1: help this NGO made up of veterans deliver aid to Afghanistan. Like,
Speaker 1: as a fucking journalist, that's a great tale. So Skirka
Speaker 1: pitches this, Yeah good story. Yeah yeah. So Skirka pitches
Speaker 1: this to National Geographics TV division UM and he claims.
Speaker 1: Skurka claims that he told them that Edema was a
Speaker 1: convicted felon uh and that the two were friends, and
Speaker 1: nat GEO decided that the story was still worth doing now,
Speaker 1: so they approved this and he gets funding to do it.
Speaker 1: So they're they're going to fucking Afghanistan. Yeah it Now,
Speaker 1: it was not easy to get into Afghanistan in late
Speaker 1: two thousand one. SKRCA and Adema had to charter a
Speaker 1: plane with a group of other aid workers and reporters
Speaker 1: from Tajikistan to Kabul in late two thousand one. And
Speaker 1: I found a really fun article on Time by Kirk Spitzer,
Speaker 1: who's a veteran war correspondent and was on that flight.
Speaker 1: And here's what he has to say about John Adema's
Speaker 1: behavior during the trip over to Afghanistan. Let's get it.
Speaker 1: The plane blew attire on takeoff from the deshamb Airport
Speaker 1: and was not replaced until late in the day. It
Speaker 1: was agreed that rather than risk flying over the twenty
Speaker 1: thousand foot Hindu kush at night in midwinter with a
Speaker 1: dodgy pilot and a plane with no instruments, we should
Speaker 1: wait until the next day. But among the passengers was
Speaker 1: a group of displaced Afghans frantic to get home, who
Speaker 1: angrily demanded that we take off right away. A Dima,
Speaker 1: who was also a passenger and was dressed in his
Speaker 1: customary paramilitary gear in dark sunglasses, poured fuel on the
Speaker 1: fire by shouting that he knew the codes at the
Speaker 1: Bagram air field. He said that once we were over
Speaker 1: the runway, he could video down to the control tower
Speaker 1: to get American troops to turn on the lights. This
Speaker 1: was pure fantasy, of course, there were no codes. There
Speaker 1: was no way to communicate with American troops from a
Speaker 1: broken down Russian built cargo plane, and American ground controllers
Speaker 1: certainly would not turn on the lights for an unidentified
Speaker 1: plane that happened to show up in the middle of
Speaker 1: a war zone. If that plane took off that afternoon,
Speaker 1: everybody on board was going to die, including a Dima.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until several of us dragged a Dima aside
Speaker 1: and impressed on him the seriousness of the situation that
Speaker 1: he finally conceded that maybe he didn't really know any
Speaker 1: codes or radio frequencies. After all, we called the flight
Speaker 1: off and everyone lived for another day, as did a
Speaker 1: demon's flights a fantasy. So every now and then you
Speaker 1: get like stories about this guy from people who weren't liars, uh,
Speaker 1: and they're always like that, that's that's the best. I
Speaker 1: love that there is truly like it wouldn't happen at
Speaker 1: this point anymore because you know, everybody, everybody's too real
Speaker 1: and takes it too seriously. And I mean, or rather,
Speaker 1: when we rephrase that everybody's too real and takes too seriously,
Speaker 1: I would hope they do. But it's like you can't
Speaker 1: have any bullshit anymore in these serious situations. But I
Speaker 1: love the genre of real bad guy that was like
Speaker 1: actual nineties villains that people were just like looking at them, like,
Speaker 1: are you are you serious? Right now? Is this person?
Speaker 1: How did this person even get here? They were able
Speaker 1: to get past the one to two layers of security
Speaker 1: to get to level three when people were like, wait,
Speaker 1: a minute. What Yeah, I mean I think the actually
Speaker 1: bad guy they actually existed. Yeah. The explanation of how
Speaker 1: he gets into a place like this is the thing
Speaker 1: that I think a lot of people don't really get
Speaker 1: about war reporting. Like I get a lot of questions
Speaker 1: about like, how did you go to Iraq? How do
Speaker 1: you get to Ukraine Syria? You you buy a plane
Speaker 1: ticket and you walk. Uh. There's often remarkably little in
Speaker 1: the way of people stopping you from doing anything in
Speaker 1: places like that. And yeah, that's kind of what John
Speaker 1: Adema takes advantage. If he just gets on this plane
Speaker 1: almost gets everyone killed by being like, no, I know
Speaker 1: the codes to the airfield, and he's just lying the
Speaker 1: whole time. But now he's in Afghanistan with a National
Speaker 1: Geographic uh documentary production team. Um yeah, and he manages
Speaker 1: to link up with ed Artist and the other AID
Speaker 1: workers at nights Bridge in November of two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: And once they're all together, it immediately becomes obvious to
Speaker 1: the folks from National Geographic that Ed Artists was not
Speaker 1: as on board with this documentary as a Deema had
Speaker 1: led them to believe, and that John A. Dima himself
Speaker 1: had no actual desire to report on humanitarian aid work. Instead,
Speaker 1: he wanted to get into a gunfight as quickly as
Speaker 1: fucking possible. All right, here's these aid guys. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go fucking find some shooting. Yeah. So one of the
Speaker 1: members of the team of the documentary team, a Special
Speaker 1: Forces vet named Greg Long, recalled later that a dima's
Speaker 1: attitude changed a hundred and eighty degrees as soon as
Speaker 1: they got into the country. So, while ed Artist and
Speaker 1: his men's tried to deliver life saving aid uh in,
Speaker 1: the documentary team tried to film that, John Adema got
Speaker 1: to work attempting to hook up with the Northern Alliance,
Speaker 1: an insurgent group battling the Taliban. Adema ignored the work
Speaker 1: he'd come to Afghanistan to do and started tracking the
Speaker 1: movements of Northern Alliance troops and attempting to make contact
Speaker 1: with them and hopes that he could sell them weapons.
Speaker 1: It's just now, that's that's that's the that's that's our
Speaker 1: man right there. That that's our man right there. He
Speaker 1: stopped participating. What were they selling? But what were they selling? Oh,
Speaker 1: he didn't have anything to sell. Let's let's go to ads.
Speaker 1: We're back from ADS, and in the break, Daniel had
Speaker 1: to take an important phone call, and I found that
Speaker 1: the iron bars I ordered had finally arrived. Everyone's everyone's
Speaker 1: having a good day, Anderson's happy. I'm gonna put bars
Speaker 1: on my windows like a crazy person and just go
Speaker 1: increasingly unhinged. It's gonna be nice. I think you're probably
Speaker 1: doing the right thing, to be honest with you, I
Speaker 1: am now eating a banana on video chat. We're recording. Okay, alright, alright.
Speaker 1: First of all, bana speaking of bananas. God damnit, Dan
Speaker 1: speaking of bananas. Let's talk about John Adma. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: while ed artists, who was again that veteran running nights
Speaker 1: Bridge the AID organization and his men delivered uh yeah,
Speaker 1: life saving aid, Adma attempted to sell weapons to a
Speaker 1: militant group in Afghanistan. Uh He stopped participating in any
Speaker 1: sort of discussions about the actual documentary that he'd gone
Speaker 1: here to make, and stopped doing anything at all to
Speaker 1: help with the humanitarian aid. That isn't ostensibly traveled to
Speaker 1: Afghanistan to deliver attempting to sell weapons. That's I mean,
Speaker 1: literally the opposite of of delivering at like humanitarian aid. Now,
Speaker 1: The fact that Adema had changed plans completely and was
Speaker 1: now getting involved with the actual fighting, of course, endangered
Speaker 1: all of the NGO workers he was traveling with. Artists
Speaker 1: would later tell a reporter, He's the dumbest fuck I
Speaker 1: ever met. Artists also quote. Artists also recalled that. Immediately
Speaker 1: after arriving in country, in order to film a documentary
Speaker 1: about providing humanitarian aid to the people of Afghanistan, John
Speaker 1: Adema announced his desire to quote kill every fucking Afghan.
Speaker 1: I see now, I'm not an expert at a at
Speaker 1: a at at providing humanitarian aid. Daniel, you know that's
Speaker 1: not really my bag. But I think that's poor form
Speaker 1: that Yeah, yeah, that's not how really it goes down.
Speaker 1: That's not really involved in the killing. The part is
Speaker 1: not part of the No. For for example, when I
Speaker 1: volunteer at soup kitchens to provide food for the homeless,
Speaker 1: I don't talk about the secret item where I island,
Speaker 1: where I and other millionaires hunt homeless people for sport.
Speaker 1: You know we do it, but you don't talk about
Speaker 1: it when you're trying to provide humanitarian aid. It's rude.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, now yes, yes, uh yeah now next,
Speaker 1: according from New York Magazine quote, a demon was more
Speaker 1: than simply obsessed with the Afghan War. He was, as
Speaker 1: other journalists on seen have recounted, absurdly came to capture
Speaker 1: dramatic war footage, even if it meant fudging the record
Speaker 1: of events. November eleven, A Demon and his three companions, Skirka,
Speaker 1: Long and the cameraman. We're scouting for war footage on
Speaker 1: a hill near the Taliban front lines. A Demon left
Speaker 1: the group again, hoping to find Northern Alliance troops to
Speaker 1: hang out with. In the meantime was Entourage, which had
Speaker 1: met up with reporter Tim Friend, who was then with
Speaker 1: USA Today, and a freelance TV journalist named Kevin Sites
Speaker 1: started drawing fire from the Taliban. Skirka got hit with
Speaker 1: shrapnel in his right leg. As the group helped Skirka
Speaker 1: down the hill and set about dressing his wound wound,
Speaker 1: Skirka's cameraman was capturing the scene on film, and this
Speaker 1: was when Adema returned, trailing clouds of camera ready military glory.
Speaker 1: Just when we finished dressing Skirka's leg, Keith runs up, screaming,
Speaker 1: Friend recalls, he reaps, rips off the bandages and redresses
Speaker 1: the wounds. Basically, he was acting in front of the camera,
Speaker 1: so fucking his friend gets shot in Afghanistan and like,
Speaker 1: while they're dressing the wounds, he runs up from trying
Speaker 1: to befriend the Northern Alliance and sells them guns, tears
Speaker 1: off the combat dressings and reapplies them so he can
Speaker 1: be caught on camera helping his friend. Uh, it's awesome.
Speaker 1: That's just that's just the best skirt head to head home. Note,
Speaker 1: I just want to throw this out there. The smartest
Speaker 1: person in this whole group that I've heard so far
Speaker 1: is Skurkas cameraman. Oh yeah, we do not have this
Speaker 1: person's name. No, no, this person has very cleverly omitted
Speaker 1: themselves from the recounting of all of this, only in
Speaker 1: the way that they have all of the footage and
Speaker 1: none of the notoriety. It's perfect to the camera. There
Speaker 1: has to have been a moment where he was like
Speaker 1: in that all maybe when his he watched his boss
Speaker 1: like have a wound ripped open by uh John Adma,
Speaker 1: so that he could you know what, I think, I'm
Speaker 1: pulling my name from this. I don't need I don't
Speaker 1: I don't need this one on the role. Yeah, Uh.
Speaker 1: Skarka had to head home to recover Uh, and, horrified
Speaker 1: at the fact that he'd been traveling with a con
Speaker 1: man artist, contacted him and National Geographic to withdraw his
Speaker 1: consent to have any of their footage used if John
Speaker 1: Adma were in any of it. So Skurka had to
Speaker 1: cut together a documentary that cut his friend John Adma
Speaker 1: out of it entirely, which, of course piste off John Adema.
Speaker 1: He'd gone to Afghanistan to build a name for himself
Speaker 1: as a globe trotting heroic terrorism expert, and the fact
Speaker 1: that he had been cut out of the feature entirely
Speaker 1: severely hampered his exploits. To make matters worse, now that
Speaker 1: National Geographic was out of the picture, John Adema had
Speaker 1: no one to record him, so he did what all
Speaker 1: good kan men do. He pivoted and I'm gonna read
Speaker 1: again from New York Magazine. He began calling himself Jack
Speaker 1: and telling journalists that he was working as an advisor
Speaker 1: to Northern Alliance troops. He also described himself as a
Speaker 1: Green Beret and claimed he was helping special forces round
Speaker 1: up Taliban and Al Qaeda suspects. Back in New York.
Speaker 1: Ted Kavanaugh, the TV producer who would originally put Skirka
Speaker 1: onto a demon's Lithuania story, set him up with an
Speaker 1: appearance on The Berry Farber Show, a syndicated conservative talk
Speaker 1: radio program. Before long, Adema was turning up regularly via
Speaker 1: satellite telephone on American television. He would occasionally call himself
Speaker 1: a Green Beret, clearly implying he was on active duty,
Speaker 1: and sometimes he would claim falsely to be working for
Speaker 1: Partners International, which, like Knightsbridge, severed all ties with a DEEMA.
Speaker 1: These are the two groups he went there to film mainly,
Speaker 1: though he mischaracterized himself in telling le vague terms even
Speaker 1: as he boasted about his high octane military credentials. You
Speaker 1: must be held in high regard, he told Fox News
Speaker 1: host Linda Vester via satellite phone on November two thousand one,
Speaker 1: because I think you're the only person ever to get
Speaker 1: an interview with a Special Forces qualified guy inside this country.
Speaker 1: So you see what happens there is he loses his
Speaker 1: access to the legitimate journalists he traveled there with because
Speaker 1: he fox everything up for them, and he just starts
Speaker 1: reaching out to reporters and basically saying, hey, you know
Speaker 1: how everyone who's actually doing anything is too busy to
Speaker 1: talk to journalists on the phone from the middle of Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: I got all the time in the fucking world, baby,
Speaker 1: and I will pretend that I'm still in Special Forces
Speaker 1: if you will put me on TV. And that's what
Speaker 1: he fucking does. Uh Yeah. Now, people who actually knew
Speaker 1: Jackadema and knew that he was full of ship attempted
Speaker 1: to warn the government that there was actually a scammer
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan passing himself off as a military expert and
Speaker 1: doing god knows what to further his unclear but definitely
Speaker 1: shifty goals. Uh nights. Briggs reached out to American authorities
Speaker 1: about Adema, writing Army Special Operations Command that the rogue
Speaker 1: operator was both a threat to aid workers and to
Speaker 1: the overall mission of the United States and the coalition
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan. Partners International, who's another aid group that Adema
Speaker 1: had sucked around with, did the same thing, but Afghanistan
Speaker 1: was a chaotic place in late two thousand one. The
Speaker 1: warnings went unheeded as there were too many journalists in
Speaker 1: country during the height of the war for the warnings
Speaker 1: to spread very far. Jack also repeatedly sued ed Artist
Speaker 1: and Knightsbridgs International, locking the aid worker and his charity
Speaker 1: and a series of interminable lawsuits and distracting them from
Speaker 1: actually saving lives. But Adema never got distracted. He was
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan to grift reporters and whoever else he could find,
Speaker 1: and that is exactly what he did. There are numerous
Speaker 1: stories of Adema during this period. The reporters who were
Speaker 1: savvy enough to catch onto his bullshit early started calling
Speaker 1: him by the very appropriate nickname Jack Shit Na. That's good,
Speaker 1: that's good, good now. Kim Singh put Up, Paul Lashmar
Speaker 1: and Nick Meo are journalists who were reporting in Afghanistan
Speaker 1: for The Independent during this period of time, and I
Speaker 1: want to close this first episode with one of their
Speaker 1: recollections about a particularly fine Jack Adema caper quote. Some
Speaker 1: of us first met Jack in two thousand one, when
Speaker 1: the Taliban had retreated from Kabul. Victorious Northern Alliance fighters
Speaker 1: were parading in the streets and US and British forces
Speaker 1: were pouring into Bagram Air Base. A dapper man in
Speaker 1: a black t shirt and combat trousers, a glock pistol
Speaker 1: strapped in his shoulder Holster A Dee mcgrad gave a
Speaker 1: graphic account of his supposed experiences as a former US
Speaker 1: Army green Beret who trained with the s a S
Speaker 1: as an adviser to the Tajik and Uzbek Uzbek Militia's
Speaker 1: how he helped plan the mission operation to take out
Speaker 1: the Afghan capital. The meeting took place at the Mustafa Hotel,
Speaker 1: then being built in the city's center. It was another
Speaker 1: example of the seemingly endless carpet bagging opportunities then on offer.
Speaker 1: The owners were and continue to be a family of
Speaker 1: Ganics patriots from New Jersey. The hotel named after one
Speaker 1: of three brothers sipping whiskey, then retailing it a hundred
Speaker 1: and forty dollars a bottle at the supermarket off Chicken Street.
Speaker 1: A demo offered to organize a convoy to Tora Bora,
Speaker 1: where the Taliban and al Qaeda were making It was
Speaker 1: thought to be their last stand and where the Americans
Speaker 1: were confident Osama bin Laden was trapped. After making a
Speaker 1: few checks with the British military, someone was decided to
Speaker 1: decline his offer. Those who went were robbed at gunpoint.
Speaker 1: A quarter of the way through the journey by their
Speaker 1: guards and made their way, but draggled back to Kabul.
Speaker 1: Jack professed to be outraged. He would take this matter
Speaker 1: up immediately with his good friends in the Afghan government
Speaker 1: and the bandits would be executed. None of this ever happened.
Speaker 1: He was just selling reporters to bandits. Uh. And I'm
Speaker 1: sure getting a kind of what they stole from them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he's a fun guy. I love it. He's a
Speaker 1: good guy and the people. The fun thing about John
Speaker 1: ah Dimon is that the grifts were really just starting
Speaker 1: at this point. Um like he was. He is just
Speaker 1: kind of dipping his feet into the great Afghan con game. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in part two we're going to talk about what
Speaker 1: happened after he got his feet all the way in
Speaker 1: the water. That's not a great way to phrase this,
Speaker 1: but that's what I said. So perfect the episodes over, Dan, Well, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a wonderful start. As I feel
Speaker 1: about the political system these days, when is an adult
Speaker 1: going to step in and pull the strings out and
Speaker 1: just pull this person away, take the cane from the
Speaker 1: side of the stage and just yank them out of here.
Speaker 1: So excited for that moment to eventually happen because this
Speaker 1: man is just going off as it were. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can find Daniel on the internet. Where's your twitch, Daniel?
Speaker 1: What do you do? You're doing video games? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I do the video games. I mean also, you know
Speaker 1: what I mainly do is I edit podcast for you
Speaker 1: and for the next continue listen to Behind the Bastards
Speaker 1: and the Women's War, and you listen to Worst Hear
Speaker 1: Ever and you listen to it could happen here if
Speaker 1: you haven't already, listen to all the shows in the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio Network because it's a lot of my
Speaker 1: work and I appreciate you all so much. You can
Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter at DJ Underscore Daniel. You can
Speaker 1: follow me on twitch at also twitch dot tv slash
Speaker 1: DJ Underscore Daniel. Come find me a play video and
Speaker 1: the Daniel is d A n L d J Underscore
Speaker 1: d A n L. And yeah, we play lots of games.
Speaker 1: We do stuff like jack Box and play on Rocket League.
Speaker 1: I'm really into Half Life Alex right now, the new
Speaker 1: VR game. It's mind blowing. Anyway, come check me out
Speaker 1: there and thank you, thank you. Yes, check danil out
Speaker 1: and check yourself out, but no one else because going
Speaker 1: outside is dangerous. Amen. Yes, lock yourself in your rooms,
Speaker 1: listen to more podcasts by the products advertised by those podcasts. Yes,
Speaker 1: and together we can build a new humanity, humanity based
Speaker 1: entirely around staying inside and listening to podcasts. You get
Speaker 1: this podcast at that as cod on Twitter and Instagram,
Speaker 1: you can follow Robert at irite. Okay, you can listen
Speaker 1: to him on all those shows candles listed, especially The
Speaker 1: Women's War, which is officially out, and you can buy
Speaker 1: merch on our t public store. Somebody on Twitter specifically
Speaker 1: told me that I should shout out the General Anderson shirt.
Speaker 1: It's awesome, It's so good you baby m