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Speaker 1: Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the only podcast where

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Speaker 1: the host has spent the previous seven hours drunk and

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Speaker 1: staring at a box of five point five six tracer

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Speaker 1: ammunition and wondering if he could get away with starting

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Speaker 1: a fire in his front yard with it. Uh and

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Speaker 1: then deciding that no, he lives around too many people.

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Speaker 1: But I can't get the thought out of my Daniel,

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Speaker 1: how are you doing today? I'm great, I'm especially great

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Speaker 1: thinking about that moment, just especially in the dark, watching

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Speaker 1: those rounds fling through the air. It would be great,

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Speaker 1: It would be great, and I make everyone in my

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Speaker 1: neighborhood would enjoy it. But fucking cops man, that those

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Speaker 1: are loud rounds. So Daniel, Yes, sir Sophie, this is

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Speaker 1: an episode about Jack Edema part two. Now, when we

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Speaker 1: laughed our friend off, he had he had had a

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Speaker 1: pretty winding path And it's kind of hard for me

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Speaker 1: to summarize, just because there's so much that's weird about

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Speaker 1: this guy, like hims out the wazoo, out the wazoo

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Speaker 1: every now, and just enough credibility to some of them

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Speaker 1: to where it's like, what's going on? Is there something

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Speaker 1: I'm missing? Very hard to say that will continue, but

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Speaker 1: the scams get a lot bolder from here on out.

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Speaker 1: It's like he's snuck in the back door of so

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Speaker 1: many war scenes in there, like what the funk are

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Speaker 1: you doing here? And I was like, let yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: Like he really traded on the fact that he was

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Speaker 1: technically a Green Beret because people are like, well, I

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Speaker 1: guess he knows how to train cops. He was a

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Speaker 1: Green Beret. I guess he knows how to run a

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Speaker 1: counter terrorism school. He was a Green Beret. I guess

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Speaker 1: he can lead us into Afghanistan. He was a Green Beret,

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Speaker 1: and nobody like did the work to realize, like, oh,

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Speaker 1: all you did is a green Beret? Was like pack

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Speaker 1: parachutes anyway, it's cool. So the history of the modern

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Speaker 1: US Special Forces began on June ninety two at Fort Bragg,

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Speaker 1: North Carolina, with the establishment of the tenth Special Forces

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Speaker 1: Airborne Group. Now obviously, elite military operators had existed since

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Speaker 1: the Dawn of Time. Story the Trojan Horse is kind

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Speaker 1: of like the story of a of a special Ops raid. Basically, um, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's it's kind of yeah, more or less, and elite

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Speaker 1: German airborne units in World War two, the Falschworm Yeager

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Speaker 1: pioneered many of what we would consider like modern special

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Speaker 1: forces strategies, But it was not until the Vietnam War

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Speaker 1: that's special operators in the modern sense of the word,

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Speaker 1: really burst onto the modern stage. So suddenly in Vietnam

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Speaker 1: you have and you know, these guys are actually doing

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Speaker 1: ship but they're also like showing up in the media,

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Speaker 1: these elite, heavily armed badasses with special skills carrying out

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Speaker 1: these unbelievable death defying missions. Um So like the movies

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Speaker 1: we get on there, like Rambo and Commando and fucking Predator,

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Speaker 1: like these are all right. When America, like kind of

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Speaker 1: in the wake of Vietnam, America started to really fall

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Speaker 1: in love with the idea of special forces guys because

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Speaker 1: it seems really romantic, like it's a job that's very

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Speaker 1: fit to to to make movies about. I actually had

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Speaker 1: an uncle who was a Green Beret in Vietnam, and

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Speaker 1: his job was basically to be alone in the jungle

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Speaker 1: trying to lead groups of envy A patrols into ambushes.

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Speaker 1: And it's like fucked him up for the rest of

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Speaker 1: his life. And it's not a cool story, um but

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Speaker 1: it made for good Uh, it made for good media stuff. Um.

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Speaker 1: And so journalists, obviously, as soon as stories about green

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Speaker 1: Berets and Navy seals start like hitting uh, the world,

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Speaker 1: like journalists who embed with soldiers start wanting to try

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Speaker 1: and embed these guys, which was not an easy thing

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Speaker 1: to do. US special Forces from the beginning have had

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Speaker 1: a very adversarial relationship with the media. They build themselves

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Speaker 1: as quiet professionals who were as exceptional in their discretion

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Speaker 1: as they were in their fighting ability. And that's all

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Speaker 1: died out now because the assassination of Osamba and Lauden

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Speaker 1: meant that you can make millions of dollars uh if

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Speaker 1: you were like a Special Forces guy who wrote a

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Speaker 1: book afterwards. Yeah. But back in the day, you weren't

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Speaker 1: supposed to talk about the ship you did in Special Forces,

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Speaker 1: and so journalists really couldn't get an angle on these guys.

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Speaker 1: And back in two thousand one, special Forces dudes were

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Speaker 1: still quiet professionals, and the idea that any of them

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Speaker 1: would speak directly to the media was nearly unthinkable. There

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Speaker 1: was only one journalist who actually had a shot at

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Speaker 1: getting that kind of story. Uh. He was the only

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Speaker 1: US journalist who ever had a real in depth in

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Speaker 1: bed with US Special Forces. Robin Moore now More was

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Speaker 1: the author of the book The Green Berets, which that

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Speaker 1: John Wayne movie that Jack Adema had loved as a

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Speaker 1: kid was based on. And in order to write The

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Speaker 1: Green Berets More, it had to do something no civilian

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Speaker 1: journalists had ever done. He went through Special Forces training

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Speaker 1: and qualification and like qualified as a Green Beret, and

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Speaker 1: because of his skills, he was allowed to travel with

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Speaker 1: the Green Berets and report on what they did. And

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Speaker 1: it's kind of debatable as to what he did is

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Speaker 1: whether or not what he did was even really journalism

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Speaker 1: because he took part in firefights and killed a shipload

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Speaker 1: of people. A lot of journalists will say you shouldn't

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Speaker 1: do what Robin Moore did, but it's fair to say

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Speaker 1: that he was a legend. We're gonna talk more about

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Speaker 1: him later. What matters right now is that the important

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Speaker 1: of Special Forces ramped up hugely during the start of

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Speaker 1: the War on Terror. These guys were the bulk of

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Speaker 1: the early effort in Afghanistan, and journalists were starving for

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Speaker 1: information about what spec ops guys were doing and seeing

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Speaker 1: as ed artists of Knightsbridge International told the Columbia Journalism

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Speaker 1: Review quote, the media were in a frenzy. They were

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Speaker 1: interviewing each other about what they'd interview someone else about

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Speaker 1: if they had someone to interview. So they're just like

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Speaker 1: desperate to talk to any of these guys, and none

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Speaker 1: of them will talk. And Jack Odema sees this feeding

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Speaker 1: frenzy and knew he had found the perfect grift because,

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Speaker 1: after all, he had technically been in Special Forces and

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Speaker 1: he was currently in Afghanistan, so why shouldn't he present

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Speaker 1: himself as an expert on what U S Special Forces

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Speaker 1: were doing in Afghanistan. So within a matter of weeks

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Speaker 1: of the invasion, Adema has managed to establish himself as

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Speaker 1: the mainstream media is leading expert on special Forces and

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Speaker 1: as one of its leading experts in Afghanistan. The Columbia

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Speaker 1: Journalism Review later noted quote he was read it as

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Speaker 1: an expert on all three networks, was a terrorist hunter

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Speaker 1: on Don Imus's radio show, a Northern Alliance advisor on

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Speaker 1: Fox News, and a key source for Merely Mapes and

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Speaker 1: Dan Rather in sixty minutes to the fact that he

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Speaker 1: is calling in from Afghanistan on the phone and had

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Speaker 1: once been in Special Forces is all the backup anybody does,

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Speaker 1: and they're like, yeah, fucking listen to whatever he has

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Speaker 1: to say. He was a special He was there in

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Speaker 1: January f twos in two US Special Forces cornered Osama

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Speaker 1: bin Laden for what they were absolutely sure was the

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Speaker 1: last time, spoilers they were It took about another decade.

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Speaker 1: Jack Adiema began shopping around a set of tapes at

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Speaker 1: the same time that held seven hours worth of videotaped

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Speaker 1: Al Qaeda training sessions. You've seen pieces of these tapes.

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Speaker 1: There's like a lot of like the guys going on

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Speaker 1: jungle gyms and running around with rifles and stuff. He

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Speaker 1: first sold stills from several of these tapes to a

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Speaker 1: number of media organizations, and a lot of them were

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Speaker 1: like scary images of terrorist commandos doing armed drills. Now,

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Speaker 1: once the skills had wetted everyone's appetite, Adema contracted the

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Speaker 1: William Morris PR Agency to auction off what he claimed

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Speaker 1: was the first ever US broadcast rights of like terrorist

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Speaker 1: training videos from al Qaeda that would like reveal what

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Speaker 1: al Qaeda was planning to do in the United States.

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Speaker 1: So he delivered letters to all of the may or

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Speaker 1: his PR agency delivered letters to all the major networks,

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Speaker 1: setting a minimum price of a hundred and fifty thousand

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Speaker 1: dollars in demanding that Jackadema be credited. When the tapes

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Speaker 1: were aired. Surprisingly, Fox said no, and so did NBC.

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Speaker 1: They were put off by the Yeah, they were put

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Speaker 1: They thought it was too expensive and there was also

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Speaker 1: there was no supporting evidence that these tapes actually showed

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Speaker 1: an al Qaeda training base. There were just guys with

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Speaker 1: guns running around, running around. Yeah. An NBC producer later recalled,

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Speaker 1: there was no way to verify them. It was either

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Speaker 1: you trust Keith Adema or you don't. CNN backed out too,

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Speaker 1: after their national security analyst did a cursory amount of

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Speaker 1: googling and discovered Keith ademonst criminal record in history of

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Speaker 1: suing everyone he's ever talked to. They were the only

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Speaker 1: network to blacklist him as a source as well as

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Speaker 1: turned down his offer. Now, some of the distrust of

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Speaker 1: Adema and his tapes came from the fact that he

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Speaker 1: seemed to have a different story about where they came

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Speaker 1: from for every news agency that asked. He told the

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Speaker 1: Australian Broadcasting Corporation that he bought the tapes from an

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Speaker 1: intelligence asset. After several back alley meetings. At midnight, he

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Speaker 1: told NBC's Today Show that he got them after he

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Speaker 1: filmed a group of Northern Alliance fighters taking over a

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Speaker 1: compound where the video was filmed. Adema then claimed to

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Speaker 1: have tracked down the camp's commander at home and hunted

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Speaker 1: down other al Qaeda recruits to find more footage. These

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Speaker 1: obvious lies fooled no one, no one that is besides

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Speaker 1: Dan Rather. Yeah, yeah, Dan Rather in sixty minutes fall

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Speaker 1: immediately and hard for Jackadema's tapes, and in fact, Rather

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Speaker 1: flies immediately to Afghanistan to interview Keith Adema and visit

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Speaker 1: the compound where the videos had been filmed. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: he just is immediately on board with this ship. I

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Speaker 1: am so down. The journalism school building at the college

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Speaker 1: that I went to but didn't go to journalism school

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Speaker 1: at was the Dan Rather School of journalism. And maybe

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Speaker 1: not the guy to take super details. I'm gonna quote

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Speaker 1: about the from the Columbia Journalism Review talking about this

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Speaker 1: particular grift at a time when workers were still sifting

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Speaker 1: through the nural wreckage of the World Trade Center, the

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Speaker 1: story reinforced the prevailing sense of Panic men in camouflage,

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Speaker 1: tunics and ski masks were shown storming buildings, staging drive

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Speaker 1: by shootings, and laying siege to golf courses. Sometimes the

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Speaker 1: men laughed as they rehearsed maneuvers, which Rather interpreted as

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Speaker 1: evidence that they approached their grim mission with glee. The

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Speaker 1: footage also contained numerous exchanges in English. A sign Rather

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Speaker 1: told viewers that they want to take scenes like this

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Speaker 1: to the West. Now. The reality is that these tapes

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Speaker 1: were absolutely a forgery made by Jack Adiemo, which is

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Speaker 1: why people were speaking in English. Yeah, gosh, good, disgracious,

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Speaker 1: Dan No, buddy, Yeah, that's that's really, that's really. That's

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Speaker 1: real bad. That's real bad, and you gotta do better. Yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: he spoilers for Dan Rather's career. He would not, he

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Speaker 1: would not, he would he would not. He would go

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Speaker 1: on to fall from more fake bullshit. Hell yeah, analysts, obviously,

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Speaker 1: I say they're obviously a forgery. It is impossible to

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Speaker 1: state that with a perfect degree of confidence one way

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Speaker 1: or the other, and you will. You can, in fact,

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Speaker 1: find a couple of different interpretations of these videos. But

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Speaker 1: it is worth noting that the tactics shown in the

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Speaker 1: tapes were not the sort actually used by Al Qaeda fighters.

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Speaker 1: The video depicted armed raids similar to the kind of

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Speaker 1: attacks ISIS would carry out years later in Europe. But

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Speaker 1: these are completely different from this sort of bombings that

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Speaker 1: all kind of actually engaged in at the time. Um put, simply,

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Speaker 1: all kinda never did anything even vaguely like what was

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Speaker 1: shown in these tapes. Like, it's just not the sort

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Speaker 1: of ship that they pulled off. And yeah, there were

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Speaker 1: other reasons to doubt the province of the tapes. The

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Speaker 1: place that Keith Adema said that he had rated to

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Speaker 1: capture them, the compound where these tapes were filmed, mere Bakt,

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Speaker 1: was under coalition control during the time that the tapes

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Speaker 1: were actually filmed, and had been thoroughly searched at the

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Speaker 1: time when Jack claims to have conducted the raid. Now again,

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Speaker 1: the reality of the situation was never conclusively determined one

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Speaker 1: way or the other, and Dan Rather's career didn't explode

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Speaker 1: for this particular funk up. But the almost certain reality

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Speaker 1: is that the videos were staged by Jack. He likely

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Speaker 1: found an old compound that had already been liberated by

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Speaker 1: the coalition and then hired a bunch of locals to

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Speaker 1: pretend to be terrorists. The Columbia Journalism Review talked to

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Speaker 1: a special retired Special operations officer with knowledge of the

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Speaker 1: CIA's investigation into the tapes, and this guy claims they

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Speaker 1: did a voice analysis us in a technical analysis. Not

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Speaker 1: only were they staged, but you could single Adema's voice

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Speaker 1: out directly. So the CIA, for its part, disputes having

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Speaker 1: done any kind of analysis. But the CIA is the CIA,

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Speaker 1: so I really don't give a ship what they say happened. Ever, uh,

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Speaker 1: they are the CIA. Now, it seems pretty safe to

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Speaker 1: conclude that these were bogus from the get go, whether

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Speaker 1: or not Jack Adema himself actually filmed them. But at

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Speaker 1: the time, this took off like gangbusters among a terrified

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Speaker 1: American public, and Dan Rather's big scoop helped to solidify

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Speaker 1: Jack Adema's reputation who was someone as someone who was

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Speaker 1: not a shameful fraud, and for a few months he

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Speaker 1: was the talk of the Cabul media set. According to

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Speaker 1: New York Magazine, he boasted a war correspondence about the

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Speaker 1: many Al Qaeda suspects he had apprehended and embroidered his

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Speaker 1: bad his banter with tales of special Forces daring in

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Speaker 1: Central America, and it was more than just his speech

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Speaker 1: that was growing too colorful for its own good. One

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Speaker 1: heated argument over war coverage at a party ended with

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Speaker 1: a Dimas firing a pistol at a Dalla Morning News

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Speaker 1: correspondent Todd Robertson and barely missing his left arm when yeah,

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Speaker 1: he gets drunken shoots shoots at the Dallas Morning news man.

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Speaker 1: Many reporters began to regard a demon as a fraud

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Speaker 1: in a menace. Still, he was quoted in many major

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Speaker 1: newspapers as a Special Forces operative or a Green Beret.

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Speaker 1: On a representation from the photo agency Polaris. A Dimas

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Speaker 1: sold the footage to sixty minutes too for an undisclosed fee,

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Speaker 1: and the rest of the press corps, including NBC's Dateline

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Speaker 1: in the Today Show scooped up the sensational footage in

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Speaker 1: the networks wake. So that's great now. In December of

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Speaker 1: two thousand two, remember that guy Robin Moore who like

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Speaker 1: literally became a Green Beret and killed people with the

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Speaker 1: Green Berets and then wrote a book about him. That journalist, Well,

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Speaker 1: he shows up in Afghanistan in December of two thousand two,

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Speaker 1: h Now he was no longer the young, fit warrior

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Speaker 1: who battled alongside US forces in Vietnam. More was in

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Speaker 1: his seventies, racked with Parkinson's disease and reliant to pon

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Speaker 1: a cane to get around. So he's not not in

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Speaker 1: great shape. Still, Clearly, whatever else you can say about him,

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Speaker 1: U a frightening badass to like, go wander on alone

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Speaker 1: in Afghanistan in your seventies and two thousand two is

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Speaker 1: a it's a tough guy. That's pretty hard. Yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: pretty hard. Now. He had a goal of publishing the

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Speaker 1: first on the ground memoir from the war in Afghanistan,

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Speaker 1: and it would be a book about the hunt for

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Speaker 1: Osama bin Laden. When Jack first heard that the author

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Speaker 1: of the book that had become his favorite movie was

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Speaker 1: in Afghanistan, he knew he had to find him, and

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Speaker 1: tracking down More was not difficult. There were not a

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Speaker 1: whole lot of old white dudes wandering around the country

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Speaker 1: in the wake of US Special Forces. Once there, Jack

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Speaker 1: plied More with the same story he'd successfully used on

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Speaker 1: many journalists, already putting himself forward as an ideal source

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Speaker 1: for Moore's next book. This line of bullshit worked because

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Speaker 1: Jack just seems to have had some sort of ability

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Speaker 1: to like not all or even most journalists, but there

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Speaker 1: were there are these guys like Skirka before him and

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Speaker 1: now Robin Moore that just like fall in love with

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Speaker 1: a line of ship that Jack is pushing. And soon

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Speaker 1: the two men were collaborating, collaborating together on a book

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Speaker 1: titled The Hunt for Bin Laden. Now, crucially, while they

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Speaker 1: were in Afghanistan, More In Adema spent almost no time together,

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Speaker 1: and this is because More was still widely respected by

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Speaker 1: US Special Forces dudes, and they gave him real access,

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Speaker 1: and for obvious reasons, Jackodema did not want to get

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Speaker 1: anywhere clear near US Special Forces in Afghanistan, not a

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Speaker 1: good idea, So they didn't really start to collaborate until

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Speaker 1: uh they got home to the United States in later

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Speaker 1: that year. Jack had to head back after his mother died,

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Speaker 1: and this is where he and Robin Moore would go

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Speaker 1: on to have the bulk of their contact. So More

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Speaker 1: was back in his States by the end of that year,

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Speaker 1: trying to bang out his notes and interviews from Afghanistan

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Speaker 1: into a book that people would want to read. Adema

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Speaker 1: offered himself up for additional background information and soon more

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Speaker 1: was listening with bated breath. Well, Jack Adiema just lied

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Speaker 1: to him. This random paragraph from the book they wrote

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Speaker 1: together gives you an idea of what sort of stuff

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Speaker 1: Jack was telling him. And again this is one paragraph.

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Speaker 1: Oh yes. In January, Jack uncovered an al Qaita plot

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Speaker 1: to kill President Clinton and march. Standing in the middle

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Speaker 1: of a Kabul street. Armed with a Russian assault rifle

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Speaker 1: and six hundred rounds of ammunition, Jack held off Islamic

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Speaker 1: fundamentalists for four hours as they tried to take eighteen

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Speaker 1: four in citizens hostage, keeping them at bay until Engineer

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Speaker 1: Ali and the Northern Alliance arrived to back him up.

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Speaker 1: By the end of March, Oh yeah, that's a character

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Speaker 1: right there. By the end of March, Jack was in

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Speaker 1: a Northern Alliance helicopter on his way to the Nachman

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Speaker 1: earthquake with the Associated Press photograph the lone American rescuing

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Speaker 1: a little girl. She wasn't the first child he would

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Speaker 1: save or the last. I'm gonna tell you right now,

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Speaker 1: Jack Ademon never saved goddamn kid. He definitely posed with

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Speaker 1: some sick and injured children, but I think he saved

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Speaker 1: them in the same way he saved his friend with

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Speaker 1: the leg injury. Yeah. Now, for his part, Robin Moore

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Speaker 1: said that Jack's stories check doubt very well when he

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Speaker 1: tried to verify them, and this is almost certainly a lie,

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Speaker 1: as Mary Anne Strong, Moore's agent at the time, claims

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Speaker 1: that Robin Moore's actual experiences in Afghanistan were just too

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Speaker 1: dull to make a good book. Basically, he was too

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Speaker 1: old to find anything cool, So he came back home

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Speaker 1: like kind of bummed out, with like a few interviews

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Speaker 1: that were not that exciting and no stories of actual

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Speaker 1: daring do because he's seventy and had Parkinson's. So Jack

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Speaker 1: comes along and it's like, I can spice up this

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Speaker 1: fucking book for you. Many Strong, He's like, let me

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Speaker 1: add some con to that ship. Also, Yeah, Moore's agent

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Speaker 1: later claimed Jack came along and rewrote the entire thing.

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Speaker 1: He came up with terribly exciting, excellent copy. Now, she

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Speaker 1: claimed that More himself only wrote a few pages of

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Speaker 1: the book in the end, and the resulting product was

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Speaker 1: one of the most ridiculous pieces of FOE journalism in

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Speaker 1: the entire history of the War on Terror, which is

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Speaker 1: a fucking achievement. The cover of the book features a

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Speaker 1: shirtless Jack Adimo wielding an a K forties Yeah Baby Now.

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Speaker 1: New York Magazine goes into more detail about precisely how

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Speaker 1: bad this book was. It asserts out right that a

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Speaker 1: demon was the only Green Beret gathering intelligence on the ground,

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Speaker 1: and a dema routinely storms the center of the book's

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Speaker 1: action to perform herobic feats of bravery. It is as

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Speaker 1: though given the chance to influence a Robin Moore book,

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Speaker 1: Adema had to cast himself in the twenty one century

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Speaker 1: sequel to The Green Berets. So he basically finds the

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Speaker 1: author of the book that became his favorite movie and

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Speaker 1: turns himself into a character in that book, clearly in

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Speaker 1: the hope that a movie will get made about him,

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Speaker 1: which honestly kind of rules a little bit. I mean, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I want to see this movie. It'll be it'll undoubtedly

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Speaker 1: have like Danny McBride, or like Danny McBride would be

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Speaker 1: the right guy to play Jack Adeem a whole ship. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: completely overly confident, which is everybody looking around. It would

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Speaker 1: almost be like a Tommy Boy thing, where you know,

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Speaker 1: you have the Chris Farley character and then David's bade

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Speaker 1: trying to clean up the mess that's following him. I

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00:19:01,440 --> 00:19:03,800
Speaker 1: think actually the right way to play this is to

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Speaker 1: just have Daniel McBride do his character from Eastbound and Down.

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Speaker 1: This guy who was just has this completely divorced from reality, beliefs,

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Speaker 1: beliefs about himself, um, just rolling through Afghanistan and somehow

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Speaker 1: not dying but getting a lot of people killed. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think we should go to an ad break because

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Speaker 1: you know what won't convince an elderly ailing legend of

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Speaker 1: war reporting what the products and services in this None

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Speaker 1: of them will trick a sick old man into writing

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Speaker 1: a fake book about how you shirtlessly fought the Taliban.

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Speaker 1: That is a guarantee. We make fucking talk space not

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Speaker 1: going to do that. Not, no, sir, No sir. We're

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Speaker 1: back and we are talking about Jack Edema. So it's

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Speaker 1: a great book. U. Jack Edema cons this guy to write,

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Speaker 1: and the book was a hit among an American public

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Speaker 1: hungry for stories of military glory after September eleven. Yeah,

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00:20:08,840 --> 00:20:11,800
Speaker 1: people eat this ship up. It quickly climbed to a

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Speaker 1: respectable place on the New York Times bestseller list, and

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Speaker 1: although it never made its way up to number one.

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Speaker 1: It's sold very very well now, Since more the ostensible

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Speaker 1: author was elderly and in poor health, the responsibility for

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00:20:23,760 --> 00:20:27,280
Speaker 1: shamelessly plugging the book landed on Jack Edema. He was

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Speaker 1: only too happy to hang out in bookstores doing readings

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Speaker 1: from chapters he'd written about things he absolutely did not do.

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Speaker 1: During numerous media appearances, he even gave direct advice to

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Speaker 1: the Pentagon, making statements like we in Special Forces have

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Speaker 1: been lobbying for a lighter, faster army, but General Tommy

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Speaker 1: Frank's isn't listening. Is It's great? That's I mean, I'm

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Speaker 1: loving it. Just catch catch him at book soup. That's

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Speaker 1: where I'm trying to see him. It's kind of ironic

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00:20:53,359 --> 00:20:56,080
Speaker 1: because like there are so many Special Forces grifts around

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Speaker 1: the day, like today, like about a third of the

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Speaker 1: people who wind up becoming Special Forces operators do it

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Speaker 1: to like cash in on some book as soon as

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Speaker 1: they get out. Um. But the only kind of Special

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Speaker 1: Forces griff that wouldn't work today is like what Jack

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Speaker 1: Adema is doing, because there's now so many of these

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Speaker 1: guys in the media who would be like, now this

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Speaker 1: this dude's just lying like he was never never did anything. Yeah,

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00:21:18,520 --> 00:21:21,840
Speaker 1: has never seen goodness, I mean nothing, not a thing. Ye,

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00:21:22,000 --> 00:21:26,239
Speaker 1: well anywhere. Like any great grifter, Jackodema succeeds during the

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00:21:26,280 --> 00:21:30,879
Speaker 1: only period in history in which he could have possibly succeeded. Yes, exactly.

401
00:21:31,480 --> 00:21:34,719
Speaker 1: The Hunt Forbidden Lauden elevated Adma to a national figure,

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00:21:34,840 --> 00:21:36,480
Speaker 1: just in time for him to weigh in on the

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Speaker 1: most critical political issue of the day, the invasion of Iraq.

404
00:21:41,040 --> 00:21:43,240
Speaker 1: Since he had been the subject of the first memoir

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00:21:43,280 --> 00:21:46,280
Speaker 1: of the war in Afghanistan, TV news booking agents saw

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00:21:46,359 --> 00:21:48,760
Speaker 1: him as an ideal get as they discussed whether or

407
00:21:48,800 --> 00:21:51,240
Speaker 1: not going to war with Iraq was a good idea

408
00:21:51,720 --> 00:21:53,920
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna quote from a rolling stone right up here.

409
00:21:54,240 --> 00:21:56,640
Speaker 1: A Deema's career as a media personality reached its peak

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00:21:56,720 --> 00:21:58,600
Speaker 1: during the final breathless weeks of the run up to

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Speaker 1: the war in Iraq. Much of the information he provided

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Speaker 1: during that period echoed the Bush administration's hotly contested rationale

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Speaker 1: for a war. He told in MSNBC that the link

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Speaker 1: between Iraq and Al Qaida was common knowledge on the

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00:22:09,520 --> 00:22:12,359
Speaker 1: ground in Afghanistan, and claimed in an interview with w

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Speaker 1: n y C radio's Leonard Lopate that Iraq has been

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Speaker 1: involved in supporting al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations with money,

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Speaker 1: with equipment, with technology, and with weapons of mass destruction.

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00:22:22,680 --> 00:22:25,040
Speaker 1: He told other white eyed journalists that there was ample

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Speaker 1: evidence linking Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia to

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00:22:29,040 --> 00:22:31,919
Speaker 1: al Qaeda into the attacks on September eleven. You know

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00:22:32,320 --> 00:22:36,560
Speaker 1: famed allies Iraq and Iran for sure. If there's one

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Speaker 1: thing you can't stop Iran from doing, it is collaborating

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Speaker 1: closely with Saudi Arabia and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. There's nothing

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Speaker 1: Iran loves more than working with those specific two groups

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Speaker 1: of love it. Uh boy so Adima professed to have

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Speaker 1: firsthand knowledge of nuclear weapons being smuggled from Russia and

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00:22:56,000 --> 00:22:58,320
Speaker 1: to all to all three members of the Access of

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Speaker 1: Evil Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. Few in the media

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Speaker 1: questioned Adema's claims, much to the alarm of some of

431
00:23:04,000 --> 00:23:07,280
Speaker 1: those who know him. The media saw this outfitted, gregarious,

432
00:23:07,280 --> 00:23:10,320
Speaker 1: apparently knowing guy, and they didn't checking out, said an artist,

433
00:23:10,440 --> 00:23:14,840
Speaker 1: chairman and founder of the humanitarian organization Knightsbridge International. Uh

434
00:23:14,880 --> 00:23:17,359
Speaker 1: They ran story after story that further the cache of

435
00:23:17,400 --> 00:23:22,800
Speaker 1: a self serving self aggrandizing criminal and that's totally accurate. Yeah,

436
00:23:23,200 --> 00:23:26,400
Speaker 1: that is accurate. Yeah, But the sales of his book

437
00:23:26,440 --> 00:23:28,800
Speaker 1: were good, but reviewers did not like it. In fact,

438
00:23:28,840 --> 00:23:32,120
Speaker 1: it was pretty much universally panned, and journalists who did

439
00:23:32,119 --> 00:23:35,080
Speaker 1: look into it repeatedly questioned the veracity of claims. Like

440
00:23:35,280 --> 00:23:38,160
Speaker 1: Jack Edema fought the entire Afghan War on his own,

441
00:23:38,640 --> 00:23:40,719
Speaker 1: the sheer volume of doubt seems to have cracked through

442
00:23:40,760 --> 00:23:43,800
Speaker 1: whatever brainwashing Adema managed to carry out on Robin Moore.

443
00:23:44,160 --> 00:23:46,880
Speaker 1: Moore began to demanding from his publisher that a revised

444
00:23:47,000 --> 00:23:49,560
Speaker 1: edition of the book be published, with Special Forces officers

445
00:23:49,560 --> 00:23:53,920
Speaker 1: reviewing and correcting Adema's lies. Random House his His publisher

446
00:23:54,119 --> 00:23:57,000
Speaker 1: refused these changes, and when Jack Adema learned that Moore

447
00:23:57,119 --> 00:23:58,840
Speaker 1: was trying to write him out of the book, he

448
00:23:58,920 --> 00:24:02,359
Speaker 1: issued a press release filed yet another lawsuit. He started

449
00:24:02,400 --> 00:24:05,159
Speaker 1: claiming that a secret cabal of Special Forces soldiers has

450
00:24:05,200 --> 00:24:07,760
Speaker 1: as symboled to take him down because they were jealous

451
00:24:07,800 --> 00:24:11,480
Speaker 1: of Jack Adama. Jack also filed lawsuits against night Bridge

452
00:24:11,520 --> 00:24:14,520
Speaker 1: and Partners Internationals, the two groups providing aid in Afghanistan,

453
00:24:14,760 --> 00:24:16,639
Speaker 1: because he was certain that they were a part of

454
00:24:16,640 --> 00:24:20,120
Speaker 1: all this. His main claim to having suffered damages came

455
00:24:20,119 --> 00:24:22,159
Speaker 1: from the fact that Fox News dropped him as a

456
00:24:22,160 --> 00:24:25,960
Speaker 1: regular commenter. True to form, Jack also sued Fox News.

457
00:24:26,320 --> 00:24:29,680
Speaker 1: These suits were all tossed out of court. But yeah,

458
00:24:29,920 --> 00:24:34,439
Speaker 1: just keep suing. Just always be suing, baby. That is

459
00:24:35,400 --> 00:24:38,679
Speaker 1: a huge part of being a really good grifter is

460
00:24:38,760 --> 00:24:42,600
Speaker 1: just keeps on suing everyone you can, Sophie, who are

461
00:24:42,640 --> 00:24:48,000
Speaker 1: we suing right now? Uh? Cody Johnston. It sounds like

462
00:24:48,000 --> 00:24:51,159
Speaker 1: a good idea. Yeah, let's throw some lawsuits out to Cody.

463
00:24:50,400 --> 00:24:54,920
Speaker 1: Get on that. So the book sales were good in

464
00:24:55,000 --> 00:24:57,480
Speaker 1: spite of the controversy. So Jack decided to form a

465
00:24:57,520 --> 00:25:01,560
Speaker 1: promotional company, the Hunt Forbid law An LLC, with a

466
00:25:01,600 --> 00:25:07,240
Speaker 1: handful of business partners. I have to give him credit.

467
00:25:07,680 --> 00:25:10,640
Speaker 1: That's easily the best name for an LLC that anyone's

468
00:25:10,680 --> 00:25:15,080
Speaker 1: come up. That's I kind of want to start. If

469
00:25:15,119 --> 00:25:18,359
Speaker 1: that's defunct, now, I want to make that myle LLC

470
00:25:18,640 --> 00:25:24,200
Speaker 1: and just do something else with it. Like, clearly it's

471
00:25:24,200 --> 00:25:26,879
Speaker 1: clearly not more than the number of characters in The

472
00:25:26,960 --> 00:25:31,160
Speaker 1: Hunt Ribbon Ladon LLC, which, like, I want to start

473
00:25:31,200 --> 00:25:33,919
Speaker 1: an LLC dedicated to like feeding the homeless, but just

474
00:25:34,000 --> 00:25:36,440
Speaker 1: call it that and that we could be like when

475
00:25:36,480 --> 00:25:38,320
Speaker 1: the police shut us down. The cops are trying to

476
00:25:38,320 --> 00:25:41,800
Speaker 1: stop the hunt for Bin Laden. Man, have you forgotten

477
00:25:41,840 --> 00:25:46,080
Speaker 1: where we all were on nine eleven? There's there's potential

478
00:25:46,160 --> 00:25:49,200
Speaker 1: in this. So Jack adeemons the Hunt for Bin Lawdon

479
00:25:49,359 --> 00:25:52,480
Speaker 1: llc uh. The goal of this company was ostensibly to

480
00:25:52,560 --> 00:25:55,879
Speaker 1: raise funds for a US count for US Counter Terrorist Group,

481
00:25:56,119 --> 00:25:58,399
Speaker 1: which was a training camp that Jack had founded an

482
00:25:58,440 --> 00:26:01,320
Speaker 1: upstate New York to quote helped the Northern Alliance and

483
00:26:01,359 --> 00:26:04,480
Speaker 1: to fight al Qaeda. This was almost certainly a grift,

484
00:26:07,160 --> 00:26:09,480
Speaker 1: but as the weeks went by and Jack battled increasing

485
00:26:09,560 --> 00:26:13,280
Speaker 1: questions about his legitimacy, his colleagues watched his behavior turner

486
00:26:13,359 --> 00:26:16,320
Speaker 1: ratic and dangerous. According to New York Magazine, one of

487
00:26:16,400 --> 00:26:20,440
Speaker 1: Jack's business partners eventually testified during the inevitable lawsuit over

488
00:26:20,440 --> 00:26:24,280
Speaker 1: the Hunt forbid Lauden llc. That Jack quote destroyed the

489
00:26:24,320 --> 00:26:26,720
Speaker 1: interior of his own house with a samurai sword, that

490
00:26:26,800 --> 00:26:29,320
Speaker 1: he choked his girlfriend in a fight, that he forged

491
00:26:29,359 --> 00:26:31,840
Speaker 1: a letter on Fox News stationary for uses evidence and

492
00:26:31,880 --> 00:26:34,399
Speaker 1: his lawsuit against the network. A lawsuit from the U.

493
00:26:34,480 --> 00:26:36,840
Speaker 1: S Attorney's Office also arrived, followed by a letter from

494
00:26:36,840 --> 00:26:40,159
Speaker 1: North Carolina's postal inspector, charging a demon with mail fraud

495
00:26:40,200 --> 00:26:42,760
Speaker 1: for using a post office box registered to the company

496
00:26:42,840 --> 00:26:46,160
Speaker 1: to solicit funds for US counter terrorist Group. Thompson said

497
00:26:46,160 --> 00:26:48,480
Speaker 1: that after he noticed eighteen thousand from dollars from the

498
00:26:48,480 --> 00:26:50,840
Speaker 1: company had gone missing, he drove down to Fayetteville to

499
00:26:50,840 --> 00:26:53,320
Speaker 1: closed the company bank account. He says that Dema followed

500
00:26:53,400 --> 00:26:55,919
Speaker 1: him there and threatened to kill both him and his girlfriend.

501
00:26:56,520 --> 00:27:03,600
Speaker 1: More Jesus, he's awesome. When do the police step is

502
00:27:04,920 --> 00:27:08,880
Speaker 1: not almost never. They arrested that. He did get busted earlier,

503
00:27:09,400 --> 00:27:13,960
Speaker 1: but he goes right back to committing mail fraud. Totally murdering. No,

504
00:27:14,080 --> 00:27:16,200
Speaker 1: that was something else. He didn't murder anybody. He no,

505
00:27:16,320 --> 00:27:18,600
Speaker 1: I mean, he definitely murdered people, but no, he didn't

506
00:27:18,640 --> 00:27:20,199
Speaker 1: go to jail for that. He went to jail from

507
00:27:20,200 --> 00:27:23,280
Speaker 1: mayor fraud. Oh, that's right, it was just mail fraud.

508
00:27:23,320 --> 00:27:25,359
Speaker 1: That was the first. That was our first, our first

509
00:27:25,560 --> 00:27:29,480
Speaker 1: military exploratory fellow or whatever. Yeah, there's there's so many

510
00:27:29,520 --> 00:27:31,560
Speaker 1: grifts here it is hard to keep track of the

511
00:27:31,600 --> 00:27:37,239
Speaker 1: motherfucker's yeah and yeah. More. At the same time as

512
00:27:37,240 --> 00:27:39,639
Speaker 1: this was all going on, More learned that Edema had

513
00:27:39,720 --> 00:27:42,000
Speaker 1: ordered hundreds of copies of The Hunt for Bin Lawden

514
00:27:42,080 --> 00:27:44,480
Speaker 1: from Moore's account with Random House and then never paid

515
00:27:44,520 --> 00:27:46,200
Speaker 1: them for him. He just got the books and then

516
00:27:46,280 --> 00:27:48,479
Speaker 1: sold them by hand at full price. So just like

517
00:27:48,880 --> 00:27:52,280
Speaker 1: this mix of these incredibly bold grifts where he's like

518
00:27:52,720 --> 00:27:56,639
Speaker 1: tricking national news networks and stuff and selling thousands of

519
00:27:56,680 --> 00:28:01,480
Speaker 1: books and these petty fucking bullshit like it's incredible. Um,

520
00:28:01,480 --> 00:28:06,040
Speaker 1: he couldn't stop himself. So Jack continued to attack Robin

521
00:28:06,119 --> 00:28:09,000
Speaker 1: Moore Viya lawyer for months, throughing out lawsuits like Rice

522
00:28:09,040 --> 00:28:11,360
Speaker 1: at a wedding. He was only interrupted in his quest

523
00:28:11,400 --> 00:28:13,280
Speaker 1: to destroy the lives of the people who had been

524
00:28:13,320 --> 00:28:16,320
Speaker 1: his friends and colleagues due to his devotion to yet

525
00:28:16,359 --> 00:28:21,960
Speaker 1: another unbelievable grift in Afghanistan see. In two thousand four,

526
00:28:22,160 --> 00:28:24,760
Speaker 1: Jack returned to Kabul. He rented a house, telling the

527
00:28:24,840 --> 00:28:27,800
Speaker 1: landlord he planned to start a rug exporting business. I

528
00:28:27,840 --> 00:28:29,600
Speaker 1: shouldn't even need to tell you that this was a lie.

529
00:28:29,960 --> 00:28:33,000
Speaker 1: His real goal was to form a paramilitary unit named

530
00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:39,680
Speaker 1: Task Force Saber seven. Yeah, baby, He designed the uniforms

531
00:28:39,680 --> 00:28:42,600
Speaker 1: and patches himself. Their goal was to hunt Al Qaeda.

532
00:28:43,120 --> 00:28:45,840
Speaker 1: He brought along a former soldier, Brent Bennett and a

533
00:28:45,920 --> 00:28:49,440
Speaker 1: veteran TV cameraman named Eddie Caraballo to help him and

534
00:28:49,560 --> 00:28:53,080
Speaker 1: document his adventures. They hired several Afghan fighters and started

535
00:28:53,160 --> 00:29:00,320
Speaker 1: kidnapping and interrogating Afghan citizens at random. Um so pretty

536
00:29:00,320 --> 00:29:06,120
Speaker 1: good grift, Daniel, that I mean this this UH people

537
00:29:06,120 --> 00:29:10,200
Speaker 1: were really really gullible. You could get away with anything

538
00:29:10,280 --> 00:29:13,120
Speaker 1: at this period of time. It was amazing being confident

539
00:29:13,160 --> 00:29:16,520
Speaker 1: in speaking confidently and just doing the things you say

540
00:29:16,520 --> 00:29:19,760
Speaker 1: you're gonna do. People are just letting it happen. That's

541
00:29:19,840 --> 00:29:26,040
Speaker 1: just really wild. I'm impressed and horrified. But yeah, it's

542
00:29:25,760 --> 00:29:29,000
Speaker 1: it's pretty great. And you know what else is great, Danial?

543
00:29:29,280 --> 00:29:33,640
Speaker 1: And you know what doesn't kidnap and torture random citizens

544
00:29:33,800 --> 00:29:40,240
Speaker 1: of UH? Do products and services not do that? Sometimes

545
00:29:40,720 --> 00:29:44,800
Speaker 1: they not ours, Danial. Every product advertised on this show

546
00:29:45,080 --> 00:29:49,160
Speaker 1: carries the official behind the bastards have not kidnapped and

547
00:29:49,240 --> 00:29:53,640
Speaker 1: tortured any Afghan citizens seal of approval. That is the

548
00:29:53,720 --> 00:29:56,719
Speaker 1: only guarantee we make of our products and services, and

549
00:29:56,720 --> 00:29:59,320
Speaker 1: we do not make guarantees about other countries. But we

550
00:29:59,360 --> 00:30:02,760
Speaker 1: will prom message no one in Afghanistan tortured by the

551
00:30:02,760 --> 00:30:14,360
Speaker 1: sponsors of this show. We're back uh, So, Daniel, this

552
00:30:14,400 --> 00:30:18,040
Speaker 1: story of Task Force Saber seven is fucking difficult for

553
00:30:18,120 --> 00:30:21,320
Speaker 1: me to parse out. So I say he's kidnapping random

554
00:30:21,320 --> 00:30:23,600
Speaker 1: Afghan citizens, and that seems to have been true a

555
00:30:23,640 --> 00:30:26,600
Speaker 1: lot of the time, But it also doesn't necessarily seem

556
00:30:26,640 --> 00:30:28,840
Speaker 1: to have been true all of the time, because on

557
00:30:28,880 --> 00:30:32,560
Speaker 1: at least three occasions, NATO troops helped Edema carry out

558
00:30:32,640 --> 00:30:35,320
Speaker 1: raids and NATO went on to arrest at least one

559
00:30:35,320 --> 00:30:37,880
Speaker 1: of the suspects that Task Force Saber seven took in,

560
00:30:38,320 --> 00:30:40,719
Speaker 1: and there's also some evidence that he some he or

561
00:30:40,760 --> 00:30:43,720
Speaker 1: his men may have helped stop assassination attempts on ALFA

562
00:30:43,880 --> 00:30:50,240
Speaker 1: Afghan political leaders. But also almost all of the people

563
00:30:50,280 --> 00:30:53,120
Speaker 1: that they actually handed over to NATO were later released

564
00:30:53,120 --> 00:30:55,400
Speaker 1: for lack of evidence to convict them. And it is

565
00:30:55,640 --> 00:30:58,920
Speaker 1: entirely possible that all of the Afghan political leaders who

566
00:30:58,920 --> 00:31:02,160
Speaker 1: claimed that Edema and his men saved them or carried

567
00:31:02,200 --> 00:31:05,120
Speaker 1: out gave them intelligence that was useful. We're just bribed.

568
00:31:05,200 --> 00:31:08,120
Speaker 1: Because we're talking about the government of Afghanistan in two

569
00:31:08,200 --> 00:31:11,600
Speaker 1: thousand and three and four. They're trying to they're trying

570
00:31:11,600 --> 00:31:13,760
Speaker 1: to cause disturbance as much as anybody else. So it's

571
00:31:13,800 --> 00:31:15,520
Speaker 1: just like you'll take your money and say some dumb

572
00:31:15,600 --> 00:31:19,040
Speaker 1: ship to make people confused. Perfect. Yeah, it does seem

573
00:31:19,120 --> 00:31:22,160
Speaker 1: fair to say that there were people within NATO, in

574
00:31:22,240 --> 00:31:25,800
Speaker 1: people within the Department of Defense who treated Task Force

575
00:31:25,800 --> 00:31:31,320
Speaker 1: Saber seven as a legitimate, uh non governmental military contractor

576
00:31:31,360 --> 00:31:34,160
Speaker 1: in country for a pretty brief period of time. But

577
00:31:34,200 --> 00:31:37,280
Speaker 1: it did happen. And you can either say it's because

578
00:31:37,280 --> 00:31:39,600
Speaker 1: they were actually finally doing good work, or yeah, just

579
00:31:39,600 --> 00:31:42,600
Speaker 1: because it's easy to trick the fucking government in Afghanistan

580
00:31:42,600 --> 00:31:45,600
Speaker 1: of a ton of bullshit, Like there's a hundred billion

581
00:31:45,600 --> 00:31:48,480
Speaker 1: dollars worth of hospitals that got built by government contractors

582
00:31:48,520 --> 00:31:51,720
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan and aren't hospitals, so fucking it's easy to

583
00:31:51,720 --> 00:31:56,160
Speaker 1: get away with griffs in Afghanistan. Um. Now, while all

584
00:31:56,240 --> 00:32:00,160
Speaker 1: this was going on, nights Bridge and Partners International, these

585
00:32:00,200 --> 00:32:03,640
Speaker 1: two veteran own charities, continued to desperately try to warn

586
00:32:03,680 --> 00:32:06,800
Speaker 1: the CIA and the Defense Department and everyone that would

587
00:32:06,800 --> 00:32:10,840
Speaker 1: listen that Jack Edema was a dangerously incompetent con man,

588
00:32:11,120 --> 00:32:14,360
Speaker 1: but no one listened to them until April two thousand four,

589
00:32:14,520 --> 00:32:17,160
Speaker 1: when Adema made the error of emailing several of his

590
00:32:17,240 --> 00:32:19,600
Speaker 1: friends back in the United States and update on the

591
00:32:19,640 --> 00:32:23,640
Speaker 1: progress of Task Force Sabers seven. This email included pictures

592
00:32:23,640 --> 00:32:26,800
Speaker 1: of Jack Adema and his men torturing civilians. At least

593
00:32:26,800 --> 00:32:30,840
Speaker 1: one of the people Jack emailed ahead, Yeah, light torture, Daniel,

594
00:32:31,440 --> 00:32:38,160
Speaker 1: Oh God, light torture, Okay, barely even torture under most

595
00:32:38,240 --> 00:32:43,320
Speaker 1: international treaties. I'm nervous, So at least one of the

596
00:32:43,360 --> 00:32:45,680
Speaker 1: people that Jack emailed had a soul and forwarded the

597
00:32:45,720 --> 00:32:48,320
Speaker 1: emails to the Department of Defense. Warrants were issued for

598
00:32:48,400 --> 00:32:50,640
Speaker 1: Jack's arrest in Kabul, and he was eventually busted on

599
00:32:50,720 --> 00:32:54,240
Speaker 1: July five by Afghan police forces. New York Magazine notes

600
00:32:54,600 --> 00:32:57,200
Speaker 1: when Afghan police had arrested the trio on July five,

601
00:32:57,240 --> 00:32:59,280
Speaker 1: they said they had a They said they saw a

602
00:32:59,280 --> 00:33:01,760
Speaker 1: mini a small our scale version of the gruesome prisoner

603
00:33:01,800 --> 00:33:04,880
Speaker 1: abuse photos from the Bagdad interrogation cells in Abu Grabe.

604
00:33:05,200 --> 00:33:07,800
Speaker 1: Early press photos indicated that three prisoners found in a

605
00:33:07,880 --> 00:33:10,760
Speaker 1: demon's custody during the raid were blindfolded and beaten, and

606
00:33:10,800 --> 00:33:13,120
Speaker 1: then strapped to the ceiling by their feet. Five others

607
00:33:13,120 --> 00:33:14,800
Speaker 1: were tied to chairs with rope in the small dark

608
00:33:14,880 --> 00:33:16,920
Speaker 1: room down a hall that was littered with bloodied clothing.

609
00:33:17,160 --> 00:33:19,960
Speaker 1: All of the prisoners in a Demon's custody were subsequently released.

610
00:33:20,120 --> 00:33:22,600
Speaker 1: None was shown to be connected to al Qaeda. I mean,

611
00:33:22,640 --> 00:33:26,160
Speaker 1: of course, yeah, of course, yes, of course, yeah, absolutely,

612
00:33:26,600 --> 00:33:30,080
Speaker 1: And like it's frustrating because you read like reporting from

613
00:33:30,120 --> 00:33:32,680
Speaker 1: the time from like when this all happened, by good

614
00:33:32,840 --> 00:33:35,240
Speaker 1: journalists and good reporters, and a lot of them will talk,

615
00:33:35,480 --> 00:33:38,120
Speaker 1: will like quote people who were in the Department of

616
00:33:38,200 --> 00:33:40,360
Speaker 1: Defense somewhere saying like, oh no, a demon did this,

617
00:33:40,440 --> 00:33:44,600
Speaker 1: or Task FORCEAB seven did that. And I can't say

618
00:33:45,000 --> 00:33:47,480
Speaker 1: again to a point of certainty that everything they did

619
00:33:47,520 --> 00:33:50,000
Speaker 1: was bullshit. But my gut is telling me that all

620
00:33:50,040 --> 00:33:52,320
Speaker 1: of those people who thought they did anything useful were

621
00:33:52,320 --> 00:33:54,560
Speaker 1: just taken in by the con because Jack Ademo was

622
00:33:54,560 --> 00:33:57,120
Speaker 1: a fucking con man, and it's easy to get away

623
00:33:57,160 --> 00:34:00,719
Speaker 1: with cons in Afghanistan. Yeah, that's my feeling. Maybe I

624
00:34:00,760 --> 00:34:06,240
Speaker 1: am wrong, but I'm not. Everybody likes sale, Everybody like everybody,

625
00:34:06,280 --> 00:34:08,080
Speaker 1: you know, even if they don't like to be taken,

626
00:34:08,160 --> 00:34:12,000
Speaker 1: they like to be sold something. And he was selling them. God,

627
00:34:12,440 --> 00:34:16,440
Speaker 1: yeah the worst. Now, at his trial in Kabul, Adema

628
00:34:16,520 --> 00:34:18,920
Speaker 1: did say something that I don't think is untrue. He

629
00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:20,800
Speaker 1: stated that he had been operating with the U. S

630
00:34:20,880 --> 00:34:24,279
Speaker 1: military's approval and consent, and it does seem that this

631
00:34:24,360 --> 00:34:27,359
Speaker 1: was at least part partly true. Yeah, exactly, because they're

632
00:34:27,680 --> 00:34:31,399
Speaker 1: they're not good at their jobs. Like that's the fun part. Look,

633
00:34:31,520 --> 00:34:33,560
Speaker 1: they said I could do it, and they all have

634
00:34:33,640 --> 00:34:35,719
Speaker 1: to sit on their hands and be like, I mean, like, yeah,

635
00:34:35,920 --> 00:34:38,279
Speaker 1: we kind of did, we did, we did again. I

636
00:34:38,280 --> 00:34:40,520
Speaker 1: don't want to be like Slandering better reporters than me,

637
00:34:40,560 --> 00:34:42,040
Speaker 1: because a lot of the guys who wrote about him,

638
00:34:42,080 --> 00:34:44,000
Speaker 1: like back into this in four are but they're so

639
00:34:44,200 --> 00:34:48,560
Speaker 1: confused by the fact that legitimate military people aren't uniform

640
00:34:48,560 --> 00:34:50,359
Speaker 1: about whether or not this guy as a con man.

641
00:34:50,800 --> 00:34:55,600
Speaker 1: And like, guys, the army's bad at its job, Like

642
00:34:55,680 --> 00:34:58,719
Speaker 1: the Defense Department's bad at its job. Look at how

643
00:34:58,760 --> 00:35:01,239
Speaker 1: the war in Afghanistan is. God, we're not. They're not

644
00:35:01,320 --> 00:35:04,840
Speaker 1: good at this. Yeah, they're not good at winning wars.

645
00:35:06,320 --> 00:35:09,799
Speaker 1: They make all sorts of dumb mistakes. Ask us, Ask

646
00:35:09,920 --> 00:35:17,520
Speaker 1: any veteran, ask a hundred percent of veterans. They make

647
00:35:17,760 --> 00:35:20,640
Speaker 1: shitty calls all the time, and this was one of them.

648
00:35:21,080 --> 00:35:24,120
Speaker 1: One video played during the trial showed a demon talking

649
00:35:24,120 --> 00:35:27,000
Speaker 1: with officials from US General William Boykin's office about an

650
00:35:27,000 --> 00:35:30,000
Speaker 1: impending attack he planned on a terrorist cell. Yeah, they

651
00:35:30,080 --> 00:35:32,799
Speaker 1: probably thought he was legitimate at some period of time,

652
00:35:32,840 --> 00:35:34,440
Speaker 1: or at least enough of them did that he was

653
00:35:34,480 --> 00:35:36,800
Speaker 1: able to get away with it for a while. Now,

654
00:35:37,640 --> 00:35:40,279
Speaker 1: what I can easily bust is Jack Ademos claimed that

655
00:35:40,320 --> 00:35:43,680
Speaker 1: he in Task for Savers Set Saber seven, never tortured anybody,

656
00:35:43,680 --> 00:35:47,440
Speaker 1: which is what he argued in Afghan court. But unfortunately

657
00:35:47,800 --> 00:35:50,840
Speaker 1: the judge who was trying their case was somebody that

658
00:35:50,960 --> 00:35:54,640
Speaker 1: Jack had abducted, arrested, and tortured. And this judge actually

659
00:35:54,719 --> 00:35:59,160
Speaker 1: testified at Jack's trial, which is since he was the judge,

660
00:35:59,440 --> 00:36:02,520
Speaker 1: I would call it best in unorthodox legal precedent. So

661
00:36:03,520 --> 00:36:09,880
Speaker 1: and again yeah, but also the judge was almost certainly Yeah,

662
00:36:10,000 --> 00:36:12,080
Speaker 1: and it's weird because like I have no trouble believing

663
00:36:12,120 --> 00:36:14,920
Speaker 1: this judge was like maybe doing ship with the Taliban,

664
00:36:14,960 --> 00:36:18,080
Speaker 1: maybe doing just other shady ship because he's a political

665
00:36:18,120 --> 00:36:21,000
Speaker 1: official in Afghanistan in two thousand four and they were

666
00:36:21,040 --> 00:36:25,319
Speaker 1: all on the fucking take. Um. Yeah, like yeah, there's

667
00:36:25,320 --> 00:36:27,319
Speaker 1: probably he's probably a sketchy said of a bit, but

668
00:36:27,360 --> 00:36:30,239
Speaker 1: like also Jack and his guys absolutely tortured this guy

669
00:36:30,280 --> 00:36:34,160
Speaker 1: and then he winds up trying their case just like you.

670
00:36:35,480 --> 00:36:38,600
Speaker 1: That's that's like the record scratch scenario you want. And

671
00:36:38,760 --> 00:36:41,319
Speaker 1: you're just standing at the table ready to see, and

672
00:36:41,360 --> 00:36:48,960
Speaker 1: then you see the guy's face, and one of the

673
00:36:49,040 --> 00:36:51,960
Speaker 1: dozens of guys I torture winds up being my judge.

674
00:36:52,040 --> 00:36:56,960
Speaker 1: What are the odds? Shoot? So here's a rolling Stone

675
00:36:57,000 --> 00:36:59,120
Speaker 1: quote from the trial where the judge gets up and

676
00:36:59,160 --> 00:37:01,960
Speaker 1: talks about his beerience. The judge then stood up in

677
00:37:01,960 --> 00:37:05,680
Speaker 1: mind out how somebody acting like James Bond a Dima,

678
00:37:05,760 --> 00:37:08,200
Speaker 1: of course, came into the house waving a weapon, shouting

679
00:37:08,239 --> 00:37:11,279
Speaker 1: hands up, hands up. Also taken into custody were two

680
00:37:11,320 --> 00:37:13,840
Speaker 1: of the judge's brothers, as well as four the relatives

681
00:37:13,840 --> 00:37:16,480
Speaker 1: and a family retainer. The eight prisoners would be discovered

682
00:37:16,480 --> 00:37:19,160
Speaker 1: by Afghan authorities when they later busted a Dima's jail.

683
00:37:19,480 --> 00:37:22,160
Speaker 1: The judge told me the first night, around midnight, I

684
00:37:22,200 --> 00:37:24,399
Speaker 1: heard the screams of four people. They then poured very

685
00:37:24,440 --> 00:37:26,440
Speaker 1: cold water on me. I tried to keep myself from

686
00:37:26,480 --> 00:37:29,120
Speaker 1: screaming but couldn't. Then they played loud, strange music. Then

687
00:37:29,160 --> 00:37:32,160
Speaker 1: they prevented me from going to the bathroom, a terrible situation.

688
00:37:32,320 --> 00:37:38,319
Speaker 1: I was hooded for twelve days Jesus Christ twelve. The

689
00:37:38,400 --> 00:37:41,759
Speaker 1: trial also brought up evidence that did seem somewhat exculpatory

690
00:37:41,760 --> 00:37:45,120
Speaker 1: for Jack and his men. US military authorities repeatedly admitted

691
00:37:45,200 --> 00:37:48,160
Speaker 1: under questioning that they had been aware of Jack's task force,

692
00:37:48,440 --> 00:37:50,960
Speaker 1: and some evidence emerged that Adema and his men may

693
00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:54,440
Speaker 1: have thwarted an assassination again attempt against the Afghan Education

694
00:37:54,480 --> 00:37:57,719
Speaker 1: minister Um. But again it's impossible to say what the

695
00:37:57,760 --> 00:38:00,920
Speaker 1: funk actually happened here, and this is made more complicated

696
00:38:00,920 --> 00:38:03,480
Speaker 1: by the fact that the FBI apparently took a bunch

697
00:38:03,520 --> 00:38:05,840
Speaker 1: of documents and tapes from a Dima's home after his

698
00:38:05,960 --> 00:38:08,840
Speaker 1: arrest and then withheld them from defense lawyers. This is

699
00:38:08,880 --> 00:38:12,040
Speaker 1: peculiar because the FBI should not have had any jurisdiction

700
00:38:12,080 --> 00:38:15,040
Speaker 1: in an Afghan court case. And this is all complicated

701
00:38:15,040 --> 00:38:17,719
Speaker 1: by the fact that it happened in fucking Afghanistan, a

702
00:38:17,800 --> 00:38:21,439
Speaker 1: country with an enormous amount of government corruption and huge

703
00:38:21,480 --> 00:38:23,800
Speaker 1: numbers of officials who were straight up on the take.

704
00:38:24,120 --> 00:38:26,520
Speaker 1: I have read a lot of articles about this, and

705
00:38:26,560 --> 00:38:31,120
Speaker 1: I have no idea conclusively about what went down, But

706
00:38:31,280 --> 00:38:33,439
Speaker 1: looking at the life of Jack Adiema on the whole,

707
00:38:33,480 --> 00:38:35,800
Speaker 1: I do think it is safe to say that Task

708
00:38:35,840 --> 00:38:39,640
Speaker 1: Force Saber seven was some sort of grift. The vast majority,

709
00:38:39,640 --> 00:38:42,040
Speaker 1: if not the entirety, of the people that he went after,

710
00:38:42,120 --> 00:38:46,040
Speaker 1: targeted and tortured were completely innocent, and he deserved the

711
00:38:46,120 --> 00:38:50,000
Speaker 1: sentence that he received, which was ten years in Afghan prison.

712
00:38:52,160 --> 00:39:00,200
Speaker 1: The judge that he tortured sentences him to prison. Um,

713
00:39:00,320 --> 00:39:04,520
Speaker 1: I just love that the judge whom he tortured sentences.

714
00:39:06,680 --> 00:39:10,200
Speaker 1: Now their journalists who visited him while he was in jail,

715
00:39:10,280 --> 00:39:12,759
Speaker 1: and they all note kind of bemusedly that he was

716
00:39:12,920 --> 00:39:16,040
Speaker 1: very popular with his guards and managed to get himself

717
00:39:16,080 --> 00:39:19,160
Speaker 1: and his men into a luxury cell with carpet, satellite

718
00:39:19,160 --> 00:39:22,080
Speaker 1: television in a private bathroom like a kitchen, and all

719
00:39:22,080 --> 00:39:25,400
Speaker 1: sorts of nice stuff. And they're just like, well, it's

720
00:39:25,440 --> 00:39:28,160
Speaker 1: like that's what these journalists say. And the obviously he

721
00:39:28,320 --> 00:39:31,759
Speaker 1: bribed them, he gave the money, he has money, he

722
00:39:31,920 --> 00:39:36,200
Speaker 1: paid it to them. Like I like that. I like that.

723
00:39:36,440 --> 00:39:38,520
Speaker 1: One of the things included in the subscription is it

724
00:39:38,600 --> 00:39:43,800
Speaker 1: had carpet. Yeah, ship Man prison with carpet ain't the

725
00:39:43,800 --> 00:39:48,480
Speaker 1: worst prison. So Jack was released in two thousand seven

726
00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:51,960
Speaker 1: and quite wisely decided he could never turn home to

727
00:39:52,000 --> 00:39:55,080
Speaker 1: the United States. Uh, and again he was released like

728
00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:58,520
Speaker 1: seven years early. Probably bribery, but it was through a pardon.

729
00:39:58,560 --> 00:40:00,840
Speaker 1: Who the funk knows, Maybe was something to please the

730
00:40:00,880 --> 00:40:03,919
Speaker 1: Defense Department. Um. Either way, as soon as he gets

731
00:40:03,920 --> 00:40:06,359
Speaker 1: out of Afghanistan, he knows that he absolutely cannot go

732
00:40:06,400 --> 00:40:08,840
Speaker 1: home to the United States because he still has wire

733
00:40:08,880 --> 00:40:11,680
Speaker 1: fraud warrants after his arrest in North Carolina, and they

734
00:40:11,680 --> 00:40:14,120
Speaker 1: were pinning federal charges for all of the crimes he'd

735
00:40:14,160 --> 00:40:17,440
Speaker 1: committed in Afghanistan when he was torturing people. So instead

736
00:40:17,640 --> 00:40:19,719
Speaker 1: he went to Dubai and attempted to set up a

737
00:40:19,760 --> 00:40:23,480
Speaker 1: drug in arms smuggling syndicate. This failed, and so Jack

738
00:40:23,560 --> 00:40:28,960
Speaker 1: Adima headed to the last refuge of all true grifters, Mexico.

739
00:40:29,520 --> 00:40:34,840
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, fuck. I love how often episodes of the

740
00:40:34,880 --> 00:40:38,280
Speaker 1: show end in Mexico. It is always such a treat

741
00:40:38,520 --> 00:40:43,719
Speaker 1: whenever we get to Mexico. So Jack bought a boat

742
00:40:43,920 --> 00:40:47,080
Speaker 1: and started running a charter boat service for tourists. He

743
00:40:47,160 --> 00:40:51,320
Speaker 1: called himself Captain black Jack and patterned his personality after

744
00:40:51,400 --> 00:40:57,799
Speaker 1: Captain Jack Sparrow. Yes, you might say there has been

745
00:40:57,800 --> 00:41:00,960
Speaker 1: a degradation from his his tie him as a terrorism

746
00:41:01,040 --> 00:41:04,640
Speaker 1: expert so now he's doing booze cruises and pretending to

747
00:41:04,680 --> 00:41:07,920
Speaker 1: be Jack Sparrow. He built a home and in an

748
00:41:07,920 --> 00:41:11,319
Speaker 1: imitation Middle Eastern style, and was said to relax there

749
00:41:11,320 --> 00:41:13,560
Speaker 1: in a thobe, which is like the long gown that

750
00:41:13,600 --> 00:41:15,879
Speaker 1: men in parts of the Middle East, where his ex

751
00:41:15,920 --> 00:41:18,560
Speaker 1: girlfriend claims that he would regularly go on multi day

752
00:41:18,560 --> 00:41:22,240
Speaker 1: of vodka and cocaine suit suit soaked binges while looping

753
00:41:22,280 --> 00:41:26,200
Speaker 1: either Arabic music, the Apocalypse Now soundtrack, or just playing

754
00:41:26,320 --> 00:41:33,400
Speaker 1: Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World on repeat for hours. Yeah. Yeah.

755
00:41:33,600 --> 00:41:37,640
Speaker 1: At some point, Daniel Jack Adama caught HIV, possibly due

756
00:41:37,680 --> 00:41:39,960
Speaker 1: to the fact that he had constant casual sex with

757
00:41:40,040 --> 00:41:45,040
Speaker 1: strangers and never ever used protection. Sometimes that happens. Yeah,

758
00:41:45,400 --> 00:41:47,640
Speaker 1: this is a this is a different part of the story.

759
00:41:47,800 --> 00:41:50,960
Speaker 1: Oh buddy, we are getting into a twist in the tail.

760
00:41:51,360 --> 00:41:54,800
Speaker 1: So we we we do not stand an unsafe sex

761
00:41:55,480 --> 00:41:58,680
Speaker 1: participants knows none of the unsafe sex with people you

762
00:41:58,719 --> 00:42:03,320
Speaker 1: don't know, fam. We don't know when Jack Edema got HIV,

763
00:42:03,880 --> 00:42:07,000
Speaker 1: but we absolutely know that getting it did not cause

764
00:42:07,080 --> 00:42:09,880
Speaker 1: him to start using condoms, because he gave it to

765
00:42:10,000 --> 00:42:12,319
Speaker 1: his girlfriend without telling her that he was sick in

766
00:42:12,360 --> 00:42:16,480
Speaker 1: the first place. She later recalled that he explained he

767
00:42:16,520 --> 00:42:19,959
Speaker 1: thought he was immune to the disease because, in his words,

768
00:42:20,000 --> 00:42:27,560
Speaker 1: in his words, Danial, he had super blood. What what

769
00:42:27,640 --> 00:42:31,560
Speaker 1: are one more time he had super blood? He had

770
00:42:31,560 --> 00:42:33,560
Speaker 1: super blood. I just wanted to hear you say it

771
00:42:33,600 --> 00:42:39,760
Speaker 1: again again. As we're getting into this point, Jack Edema

772
00:42:39,840 --> 00:42:44,400
Speaker 1: has seemed like he oh, definitely a con artist. The

773
00:42:44,440 --> 00:42:47,400
Speaker 1: stuff that came out about him later in his life

774
00:42:47,520 --> 00:42:52,400
Speaker 1: makes me suspect that there was also either mental illness

775
00:42:52,440 --> 00:42:55,600
Speaker 1: as a result of just like he was, he got sick,

776
00:42:56,160 --> 00:42:59,600
Speaker 1: or because of his constant drug abuse he damaged his brain.

777
00:43:00,280 --> 00:43:05,320
Speaker 1: It is unclear. But what happens next, Like, yeah, there's

778
00:43:05,360 --> 00:43:08,520
Speaker 1: a lot about Jack Adema, Like what this what his

779
00:43:08,640 --> 00:43:11,520
Speaker 1: girlfriend's reports revealed. Is this just a lot about Jackodemo?

780
00:43:11,640 --> 00:43:14,839
Speaker 1: We don't know. I up until I started reading her

781
00:43:14,880 --> 00:43:17,680
Speaker 1: accounts of him, I thought he was just a standard grifter.

782
00:43:17,840 --> 00:43:19,160
Speaker 1: And now there's a part of them that's like he

783
00:43:19,239 --> 00:43:22,440
Speaker 1: may have actually been ill outside of the HIV. It

784
00:43:22,560 --> 00:43:26,200
Speaker 1: is very hard to say. Um, but this is the

785
00:43:26,239 --> 00:43:31,120
Speaker 1: part at which things get moderately less fun because his

786
00:43:31,320 --> 00:43:35,320
Speaker 1: very last girlfriend, Penny, a lazy contracted HIV from Jack,

787
00:43:35,640 --> 00:43:38,640
Speaker 1: and given that she did, it's almost guaranteed that God

788
00:43:38,719 --> 00:43:40,920
Speaker 1: knows how many other people got HIV from this guy,

789
00:43:40,960 --> 00:43:43,920
Speaker 1: because again he would throw days long cocaine and liquor

790
00:43:44,040 --> 00:43:46,880
Speaker 1: or gy benders while he was in Mexico and before

791
00:43:46,920 --> 00:43:50,120
Speaker 1: while he was in Afghanistan, and he probably had HIV

792
00:43:50,239 --> 00:43:52,239
Speaker 1: for a large chunk at that time. So he gets

793
00:43:52,280 --> 00:43:54,799
Speaker 1: so many people sick. He's this is a guy who

794
00:43:54,800 --> 00:43:58,239
Speaker 1: does nothing but leave shattered lives in his wake. Now

795
00:43:58,719 --> 00:44:02,120
Speaker 1: that girlfriend Penny ale See wrote a blog post about

796
00:44:02,200 --> 00:44:05,000
Speaker 1: what Jack did to her, and it's honestly heartbreaking, and

797
00:44:05,040 --> 00:44:07,319
Speaker 1: I am going to read a quote from it now,

798
00:44:08,000 --> 00:44:09,879
Speaker 1: a long one, so we'll have to pause a couple

799
00:44:09,920 --> 00:44:12,759
Speaker 1: of times in this I did not get HIV via

800
00:44:12,840 --> 00:44:14,759
Speaker 1: drugs or being a hooker. I got it the way

801
00:44:14,800 --> 00:44:16,359
Speaker 1: a lot of women get it. I was in love

802
00:44:16,400 --> 00:44:19,440
Speaker 1: and stupid period, and because of love and stupidity, my

803
00:44:19,520 --> 00:44:21,600
Speaker 1: life will never be the same, whatever is left of it.

804
00:44:21,680 --> 00:44:23,440
Speaker 1: So the story is not for profit. It is for

805
00:44:23,480 --> 00:44:25,360
Speaker 1: peace of mind into that when I meet my maker,

806
00:44:25,520 --> 00:44:27,240
Speaker 1: I will know I did all I could to stop

807
00:44:27,239 --> 00:44:30,279
Speaker 1: this monster. Jack Adiema has a lot more sins than

808
00:44:30,320 --> 00:44:33,080
Speaker 1: just giving out HIV. I am as concerned about other

809
00:44:33,080 --> 00:44:35,759
Speaker 1: people being sick as I am, and about dying. The

810
00:44:35,800 --> 00:44:38,120
Speaker 1: other stuff will come out eventually, although I am sure

811
00:44:38,200 --> 00:44:39,960
Speaker 1: won't be around long enough to see it. So yes,

812
00:44:40,000 --> 00:44:43,160
Speaker 1: I am mad, very mad sad as well. Now. She

813
00:44:43,280 --> 00:44:46,600
Speaker 1: claims that Jack started their relationship by flirting with her

814
00:44:46,640 --> 00:44:49,839
Speaker 1: online while he was locked in prison in Afghanistan. Um,

815
00:44:49,840 --> 00:44:51,440
Speaker 1: which is again you'll notice the last time he was

816
00:44:51,480 --> 00:44:53,720
Speaker 1: in prison he also exited with it with a woman

817
00:44:53,760 --> 00:44:58,160
Speaker 1: he had been flirting with remotely. Uh yeah, yeah. So

818
00:44:58,560 --> 00:45:00,719
Speaker 1: he used her to take care of business he needed

819
00:45:00,760 --> 00:45:02,480
Speaker 1: done in the United States when he got out of

820
00:45:02,480 --> 00:45:04,960
Speaker 1: prison because he couldn't re enter the country, And he

821
00:45:05,000 --> 00:45:06,959
Speaker 1: also relied on her to take care of his dog

822
00:45:07,040 --> 00:45:09,600
Speaker 1: when he went off doing whatever the funk Jack Adema

823
00:45:09,640 --> 00:45:11,960
Speaker 1: did when he wasn't taking care of his dog. He

824
00:45:12,080 --> 00:45:17,480
Speaker 1: also doesn't deserve a dog, Yeah, he doesn't that one

825
00:45:17,800 --> 00:45:22,080
Speaker 1: does not deserve a dog, do Yeah. So she was

826
00:45:22,120 --> 00:45:24,719
Speaker 1: like the last person to know Jack well. And it

827
00:45:24,840 --> 00:45:26,880
Speaker 1: is from Penny that we get some of our final

828
00:45:27,000 --> 00:45:32,480
Speaker 1: big revelations about Jack Edema. Quote. Jack always told me

829
00:45:32,520 --> 00:45:34,960
Speaker 1: he was a heterosexual, and when I finally found out

830
00:45:34,960 --> 00:45:36,880
Speaker 1: the truth, it was too late. Now, I also know

831
00:45:36,960 --> 00:45:39,279
Speaker 1: that he was bisexual years ago. A Green Beret he

832
00:45:39,360 --> 00:45:41,359
Speaker 1: was stationed at Fort Bragg has come forward and told

833
00:45:41,360 --> 00:45:43,640
Speaker 1: me of his meeting Jonathan Keith Adema as he called

834
00:45:43,680 --> 00:45:46,000
Speaker 1: himself back then. He met him at a news stand

835
00:45:46,040 --> 00:45:49,200
Speaker 1: located on Bragg Boulevard in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in early

836
00:45:49,200 --> 00:45:51,560
Speaker 1: two thousand, two thousand one. They would have sex in

837
00:45:51,600 --> 00:45:53,760
Speaker 1: the back room. He also went to four fifty Robuson

838
00:45:53,800 --> 00:45:55,839
Speaker 1: Street and had sex with Jack at his apartment next

839
00:45:55,880 --> 00:45:58,080
Speaker 1: to his office in that building. Two other men have

840
00:45:58,120 --> 00:46:01,000
Speaker 1: also come forward. Jack was also went to cross dressing

841
00:46:01,040 --> 00:46:03,640
Speaker 1: secretly then too, as well as having his anus penetrated

842
00:46:03,640 --> 00:46:07,080
Speaker 1: by dildos. He never used condoms then. Now he occasionally does,

843
00:46:07,120 --> 00:46:09,560
Speaker 1: but the damage is already there. The disease has progressed.

844
00:46:09,719 --> 00:46:11,719
Speaker 1: I've also been told about his encounters with men when

845
00:46:11,760 --> 00:46:15,080
Speaker 1: he was in prison in Kabul, Afghanistan, Apparently Thursday nights

846
00:46:15,080 --> 00:46:17,040
Speaker 1: their war for man sex. I wish to God he

847
00:46:17,080 --> 00:46:19,680
Speaker 1: had told me this himself when I first met him,

848
00:46:19,719 --> 00:46:24,080
Speaker 1: so I don't know how true that is, uh, but

849
00:46:24,239 --> 00:46:27,319
Speaker 1: Jack definitely had HIV which progressed to full blown AIDES,

850
00:46:27,400 --> 00:46:30,040
Speaker 1: and it definitely seems credible that he was just fucking

851
00:46:30,080 --> 00:46:32,920
Speaker 1: a bunch of people his entire life and never taking

852
00:46:32,920 --> 00:46:35,400
Speaker 1: any care about the fact that he was spreading diseases

853
00:46:35,400 --> 00:46:38,640
Speaker 1: to them. Um. I think that it's possible Penny has

854
00:46:38,680 --> 00:46:41,359
Speaker 1: some weird homophobias stuff, although it's kind of unclear from

855
00:46:41,360 --> 00:46:45,000
Speaker 1: her writing. But it also seems really credible that this guy,

856
00:46:45,080 --> 00:46:47,960
Speaker 1: Jack Ademo was just fucking people and spreading diseases his

857
00:46:48,120 --> 00:46:51,920
Speaker 1: entire life without a goddamn care in the world. Um,

858
00:46:52,520 --> 00:46:55,920
Speaker 1: So that's cool. That's a cool story. Jack was accused

859
00:46:55,960 --> 00:46:58,120
Speaker 1: of rape at least once in two thousand ten by

860
00:46:58,160 --> 00:47:01,320
Speaker 1: a young woman who visited his home. He temporarily fled

861
00:47:01,360 --> 00:47:04,120
Speaker 1: to Belize to escape justice, but returned to Mexico and

862
00:47:04,200 --> 00:47:07,080
Speaker 1: was unmolested by the law until his death in January

863
00:47:07,120 --> 00:47:11,960
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve as a result of AIDS. So that's

864
00:47:11,960 --> 00:47:16,920
Speaker 1: how this story ends. Robert Young Pelton, somewhat legendary war correspondent,

865
00:47:17,040 --> 00:47:19,560
Speaker 1: is probably the reporter who wrote most about Jack Adiemo

866
00:47:19,600 --> 00:47:22,400
Speaker 1: without falling for his bullshit. And I found an article

867
00:47:22,440 --> 00:47:25,279
Speaker 1: written after Jack's death in McClatchy by Pelton or that

868
00:47:25,400 --> 00:47:28,799
Speaker 1: quotes both Pelton and Penny Elsie, and it provides some

869
00:47:28,920 --> 00:47:32,080
Speaker 1: final explanations for how Jack got away with his schemes

870
00:47:32,120 --> 00:47:35,360
Speaker 1: for so long. He would meet somebody that he needed

871
00:47:35,440 --> 00:47:37,680
Speaker 1: or wanted to be like, like the author Robin Moore,

872
00:47:37,719 --> 00:47:40,080
Speaker 1: and then he would absorb all their mannerisms, words, and

873
00:47:40,120 --> 00:47:42,839
Speaker 1: the way they dressed. Pelton said it worked in part

874
00:47:42,880 --> 00:47:45,799
Speaker 1: because he was highly intelligent. Few con artists could warm

875
00:47:45,840 --> 00:47:47,839
Speaker 1: their way into helping more the author of the Green

876
00:47:47,880 --> 00:47:49,920
Speaker 1: Berets write a book, and few could come up with

877
00:47:49,960 --> 00:47:54,520
Speaker 1: such strong legal arguments for so many spurious causes, he said. Indeed, Alessie,

878
00:47:54,520 --> 00:47:57,480
Speaker 1: his former girlfriend, said Adema wrote nearly all of the

879
00:47:57,560 --> 00:48:00,279
Speaker 1: legal filings he was involved with over the years. I

880
00:48:00,320 --> 00:48:02,479
Speaker 1: know because I sat there and watched him, she said.

881
00:48:02,640 --> 00:48:05,600
Speaker 1: Then the lawyers would just sign off on them. So

882
00:48:07,120 --> 00:48:08,799
Speaker 1: at the end of this, I don't know what to

883
00:48:08,880 --> 00:48:11,040
Speaker 1: fucking make of this dude, other than that he was

884
00:48:11,160 --> 00:48:14,839
Speaker 1: a monster and a grifter. But it is very hard

885
00:48:14,880 --> 00:48:16,759
Speaker 1: for me to tell how much of this was like

886
00:48:17,239 --> 00:48:19,960
Speaker 1: a coldly calculated piece of ship and how much of

887
00:48:20,000 --> 00:48:26,320
Speaker 1: this was like just a damaged ill man compulsively possibly

888
00:48:26,360 --> 00:48:29,160
Speaker 1: based on the fact that he actually had delusions like

889
00:48:29,320 --> 00:48:31,520
Speaker 1: fucking ship up, like I really don't know where to

890
00:48:31,600 --> 00:48:33,640
Speaker 1: land on this guy other than that he was a monster.

891
00:48:34,680 --> 00:48:37,279
Speaker 1: But that's the story of Jack Edema. Sounds like a

892
00:48:37,480 --> 00:48:42,840
Speaker 1: piece of garbage, a dying, war obsessed piece of trash

893
00:48:42,920 --> 00:48:46,200
Speaker 1: who did not participate in safe sex and has ruined

894
00:48:46,239 --> 00:48:49,600
Speaker 1: the lives of probably hundreds of people at this point.

895
00:48:49,760 --> 00:48:53,000
Speaker 1: Oh god, Yeah, there are so many like poor young

896
00:48:53,080 --> 00:48:56,000
Speaker 1: men and if we're honest, probably kids who I am

897
00:48:56,280 --> 00:49:01,160
Speaker 1: fucking certain got sick because Jack Edema, you know, contracted

898
00:49:01,200 --> 00:49:05,240
Speaker 1: their services as uh sex workers and then just rolled

899
00:49:05,239 --> 00:49:07,680
Speaker 1: on with his life. It's like, it's actually, if you

900
00:49:07,760 --> 00:49:10,239
Speaker 1: imagine that this guy is as it seems likely, he

901
00:49:10,440 --> 00:49:15,760
Speaker 1: was just spreading HIV around Afghanistan's sex worker population for

902
00:49:15,840 --> 00:49:18,439
Speaker 1: a couple of years. Like, there's no telling how many

903
00:49:18,440 --> 00:49:22,120
Speaker 1: people got sick as a result of him. Undoubtedly way

904
00:49:22,120 --> 00:49:27,160
Speaker 1: too many. Yeah, that's cool, that's a cool story. Another

905
00:49:27,239 --> 00:49:33,399
Speaker 1: bastard in the bag. Yep, another bastard in the bank. So, Dan,

906
00:49:35,760 --> 00:49:43,280
Speaker 1: how you feeling, you know, Uh, I don't know, not great,

907
00:49:43,800 --> 00:49:47,920
Speaker 1: not great? Would you feel better to know that prior

908
00:49:48,000 --> 00:49:51,000
Speaker 1: to the two thousand one invasion, Afghanistan had one of

909
00:49:51,040 --> 00:49:54,080
Speaker 1: the lowest rates of HIV infections in the world, and

910
00:49:54,080 --> 00:50:00,399
Speaker 1: that after the war they had a skyrocketing AIDS crisis. No,

911
00:50:00,600 --> 00:50:02,880
Speaker 1: that doesn't make that doesn't make you feel good. Oh

912
00:50:02,880 --> 00:50:10,520
Speaker 1: of course it doesn't, because it's it's unspeakably terrible. Cool. Uh, well, Robert,

913
00:50:10,600 --> 00:50:19,439
Speaker 1: you are an incredible, incredible person. You tell you what? Who? Well? Dan? Yes?

914
00:50:20,200 --> 00:50:22,759
Speaker 1: Where can people find you on the internet if they

915
00:50:22,800 --> 00:50:26,360
Speaker 1: want to give you the internet equivalent of a sexually

916
00:50:26,360 --> 00:50:32,359
Speaker 1: transmitted disease, which is fandom? Yes, I don't really know

917
00:50:32,360 --> 00:50:34,480
Speaker 1: where I'm going with this. Well, if you want to bother,

918
00:50:36,480 --> 00:50:39,880
Speaker 1: it's okay. I haven't had. They're all imaginary friends I have.

919
00:50:40,560 --> 00:50:43,440
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Twitter at DJ Underscore Daniel

920
00:50:43,600 --> 00:50:45,400
Speaker 1: d A n L. You can follow me on Twitch

921
00:50:45,440 --> 00:50:48,319
Speaker 1: at twitch dot tv slash dj Underscore Daniel. Come off

922
00:50:48,400 --> 00:50:51,080
Speaker 1: to play video games and we'll hang out and tell stories.

923
00:50:51,120 --> 00:50:53,080
Speaker 1: And I can tell you behind the scenes stuff about Robert,

924
00:50:53,160 --> 00:50:55,000
Speaker 1: like when he gave me a knife and I have

925
00:50:55,080 --> 00:50:57,600
Speaker 1: it right here. It sounds like that you heard it

926
00:50:57,600 --> 00:51:01,640
Speaker 1: open just now. Yeah, come look at my knife on Twitch.

927
00:51:01,760 --> 00:51:05,680
Speaker 1: That is not what I meant. Okay, come come look

928
00:51:05,960 --> 00:51:10,200
Speaker 1: Dan knife on Twitch and send him pictures of your

929
00:51:10,280 --> 00:51:14,839
Speaker 1: own knife. Whatever knife means to you personally. You know,

930
00:51:15,960 --> 00:51:19,160
Speaker 1: we all get to define the word knife for ourselves

931
00:51:20,920 --> 00:51:23,440
Speaker 1: and for and for the record, my the knife that

932
00:51:23,480 --> 00:51:28,319
Speaker 1: I'm talking about fits the Twitch standards and practices. I'm

933
00:51:28,360 --> 00:51:31,719
Speaker 1: talking about an actual flip blade by cr k t

934
00:51:31,800 --> 00:51:33,640
Speaker 1: kt R. And I'm done and to cut all this,

935
00:51:35,520 --> 00:51:40,640
Speaker 1: cut none of this, and cut nothing yourself, listeners, as

936
00:51:40,680 --> 00:51:43,200
Speaker 1: you go out into the world, and by go out

937
00:51:43,200 --> 00:51:46,239
Speaker 1: into the world, I mean stay in your homes for

938
00:51:46,280 --> 00:51:50,840
Speaker 1: the love of God. I'm Robert Evans. I have a

939
00:51:50,880 --> 00:51:53,520
Speaker 1: podcast called The Women's War and you can find it

940
00:51:54,000 --> 00:51:57,239
Speaker 1: presumably just google it. It'll it'll come up. Google it

941
00:51:57,239 --> 00:51:59,240
Speaker 1: in the word podcast if you need to, you'll fucking

942
00:51:59,280 --> 00:52:01,360
Speaker 1: find it. Like we all know to use the Internet,

943
00:52:01,400 --> 00:52:03,040
Speaker 1: like you know the title. That's all you fucking need.

944
00:52:03,520 --> 00:52:05,680
Speaker 1: What are you doing? What are you doing demanding I

945
00:52:05,760 --> 00:52:09,280
Speaker 1: give you more information I've given you if you figure

946
00:52:09,320 --> 00:52:11,960
Speaker 1: it out Twitter, and I post links to episodes because

947
00:52:12,080 --> 00:52:15,640
Speaker 1: I'm a nice person and Robert as a hack, I'm sorry,

948
00:52:15,680 --> 00:52:18,880
Speaker 1: I just I'm just abusing the audience to make them

949
00:52:18,960 --> 00:52:21,520
Speaker 1: love me more, which is the kind of thing that

950
00:52:21,520 --> 00:52:23,600
Speaker 1: I'm certain Jack Adema did a lot over the course

951
00:52:23,640 --> 00:52:26,759
Speaker 1: of his life. Compare yourself to that nightmare, Robert you're

952
00:52:26,760 --> 00:52:30,400
Speaker 1: a good boy. No, no, you don't know what I

953
00:52:30,440 --> 00:52:33,479
Speaker 1: got up to in Afghanistan, Sophie. I'll give you one hint.

954
00:52:34,040 --> 00:52:39,200
Speaker 1: There was never an Osama bin Laden. That ship's fake

955
00:52:39,280 --> 00:52:44,400
Speaker 1: news anyway. Robert Evans here taking credit for September eleven,

956
00:52:44,640 --> 00:52:48,400
Speaker 1: the movie Big Trouble and signing off. You can follow

957
00:52:48,440 --> 00:52:50,400
Speaker 1: him on Twitter and I right, okay. You can follow

958
00:52:50,480 --> 00:52:53,640
Speaker 1: us on Twitter, Instagram at Bastards Pod. You can find

959
00:52:53,640 --> 00:52:56,680
Speaker 1: the sources for our episodes under part one of this

960
00:52:56,760 --> 00:52:59,760
Speaker 1: episode under the episode description we have a tea public

961
00:52:59,760 --> 00:53:02,200
Speaker 1: still or I'm gonna look at Robert unworsh here. Ever,

962
00:53:02,920 --> 00:53:06,960
Speaker 1: that's that's the episode. Wash your hands or not. If

963
00:53:07,000 --> 00:53:08,680
Speaker 1: you're at home, it doesn't matter. It could be as

964
00:53:08,680 --> 00:53:10,919
Speaker 1: stilty as you want to wash your hands. Don't listen

965
00:53:10,920 --> 00:53:14,200
Speaker 1: to this asshole. Live like a monster, be a gorilla.

966
00:53:14,320 --> 00:53:21,120
Speaker 1: It's fine. Suck it up for society. By h