Speaker 1: Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the only podcast where
Speaker 1: the host has spent the previous seven hours drunk and
Speaker 1: staring at a box of five point five six tracer
Speaker 1: ammunition and wondering if he could get away with starting
Speaker 1: a fire in his front yard with it. Uh and
Speaker 1: then deciding that no, he lives around too many people.
Speaker 1: But I can't get the thought out of my Daniel,
Speaker 1: how are you doing today? I'm great, I'm especially great
Speaker 1: thinking about that moment, just especially in the dark, watching
Speaker 1: those rounds fling through the air. It would be great,
Speaker 1: It would be great, and I make everyone in my
Speaker 1: neighborhood would enjoy it. But fucking cops man, that those
Speaker 1: are loud rounds. So Daniel, Yes, sir Sophie, this is
Speaker 1: an episode about Jack Edema part two. Now, when we
Speaker 1: laughed our friend off, he had he had had a
Speaker 1: pretty winding path And it's kind of hard for me
Speaker 1: to summarize, just because there's so much that's weird about
Speaker 1: this guy, like hims out the wazoo, out the wazoo
Speaker 1: every now, and just enough credibility to some of them
Speaker 1: to where it's like, what's going on? Is there something
Speaker 1: I'm missing? Very hard to say that will continue, but
Speaker 1: the scams get a lot bolder from here on out.
Speaker 1: It's like he's snuck in the back door of so
Speaker 1: many war scenes in there, like what the funk are
Speaker 1: you doing here? And I was like, let yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Like he really traded on the fact that he was
Speaker 1: technically a Green Beret because people are like, well, I
Speaker 1: guess he knows how to train cops. He was a
Speaker 1: Green Beret. I guess he knows how to run a
Speaker 1: counter terrorism school. He was a Green Beret. I guess
Speaker 1: he can lead us into Afghanistan. He was a Green Beret,
Speaker 1: and nobody like did the work to realize, like, oh,
Speaker 1: all you did is a green Beret? Was like pack
Speaker 1: parachutes anyway, it's cool. So the history of the modern
Speaker 1: US Special Forces began on June ninety two at Fort Bragg,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, with the establishment of the tenth Special Forces
Speaker 1: Airborne Group. Now obviously, elite military operators had existed since
Speaker 1: the Dawn of Time. Story the Trojan Horse is kind
Speaker 1: of like the story of a of a special Ops raid. Basically, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of yeah, more or less, and elite
Speaker 1: German airborne units in World War two, the Falschworm Yeager
Speaker 1: pioneered many of what we would consider like modern special
Speaker 1: forces strategies, But it was not until the Vietnam War
Speaker 1: that's special operators in the modern sense of the word,
Speaker 1: really burst onto the modern stage. So suddenly in Vietnam
Speaker 1: you have and you know, these guys are actually doing
Speaker 1: ship but they're also like showing up in the media,
Speaker 1: these elite, heavily armed badasses with special skills carrying out
Speaker 1: these unbelievable death defying missions. Um So like the movies
Speaker 1: we get on there, like Rambo and Commando and fucking Predator,
Speaker 1: like these are all right. When America, like kind of
Speaker 1: in the wake of Vietnam, America started to really fall
Speaker 1: in love with the idea of special forces guys because
Speaker 1: it seems really romantic, like it's a job that's very
Speaker 1: fit to to to make movies about. I actually had
Speaker 1: an uncle who was a Green Beret in Vietnam, and
Speaker 1: his job was basically to be alone in the jungle
Speaker 1: trying to lead groups of envy A patrols into ambushes.
Speaker 1: And it's like fucked him up for the rest of
Speaker 1: his life. And it's not a cool story, um but
Speaker 1: it made for good Uh, it made for good media stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: And so journalists, obviously, as soon as stories about green
Speaker 1: Berets and Navy seals start like hitting uh, the world,
Speaker 1: like journalists who embed with soldiers start wanting to try
Speaker 1: and embed these guys, which was not an easy thing
Speaker 1: to do. US special Forces from the beginning have had
Speaker 1: a very adversarial relationship with the media. They build themselves
Speaker 1: as quiet professionals who were as exceptional in their discretion
Speaker 1: as they were in their fighting ability. And that's all
Speaker 1: died out now because the assassination of Osamba and Lauden
Speaker 1: meant that you can make millions of dollars uh if
Speaker 1: you were like a Special Forces guy who wrote a
Speaker 1: book afterwards. Yeah. But back in the day, you weren't
Speaker 1: supposed to talk about the ship you did in Special Forces,
Speaker 1: and so journalists really couldn't get an angle on these guys.
Speaker 1: And back in two thousand one, special Forces dudes were
Speaker 1: still quiet professionals, and the idea that any of them
Speaker 1: would speak directly to the media was nearly unthinkable. There
Speaker 1: was only one journalist who actually had a shot at
Speaker 1: getting that kind of story. Uh. He was the only
Speaker 1: US journalist who ever had a real in depth in
Speaker 1: bed with US Special Forces. Robin Moore now More was
Speaker 1: the author of the book The Green Berets, which that
Speaker 1: John Wayne movie that Jack Adema had loved as a
Speaker 1: kid was based on. And in order to write The
Speaker 1: Green Berets More, it had to do something no civilian
Speaker 1: journalists had ever done. He went through Special Forces training
Speaker 1: and qualification and like qualified as a Green Beret, and
Speaker 1: because of his skills, he was allowed to travel with
Speaker 1: the Green Berets and report on what they did. And
Speaker 1: it's kind of debatable as to what he did is
Speaker 1: whether or not what he did was even really journalism
Speaker 1: because he took part in firefights and killed a shipload
Speaker 1: of people. A lot of journalists will say you shouldn't
Speaker 1: do what Robin Moore did, but it's fair to say
Speaker 1: that he was a legend. We're gonna talk more about
Speaker 1: him later. What matters right now is that the important
Speaker 1: of Special Forces ramped up hugely during the start of
Speaker 1: the War on Terror. These guys were the bulk of
Speaker 1: the early effort in Afghanistan, and journalists were starving for
Speaker 1: information about what spec ops guys were doing and seeing
Speaker 1: as ed artists of Knightsbridge International told the Columbia Journalism
Speaker 1: Review quote, the media were in a frenzy. They were
Speaker 1: interviewing each other about what they'd interview someone else about
Speaker 1: if they had someone to interview. So they're just like
Speaker 1: desperate to talk to any of these guys, and none
Speaker 1: of them will talk. And Jack Odema sees this feeding
Speaker 1: frenzy and knew he had found the perfect grift because,
Speaker 1: after all, he had technically been in Special Forces and
Speaker 1: he was currently in Afghanistan, so why shouldn't he present
Speaker 1: himself as an expert on what U S Special Forces
Speaker 1: were doing in Afghanistan. So within a matter of weeks
Speaker 1: of the invasion, Adema has managed to establish himself as
Speaker 1: the mainstream media is leading expert on special Forces and
Speaker 1: as one of its leading experts in Afghanistan. The Columbia
Speaker 1: Journalism Review later noted quote he was read it as
Speaker 1: an expert on all three networks, was a terrorist hunter
Speaker 1: on Don Imus's radio show, a Northern Alliance advisor on
Speaker 1: Fox News, and a key source for Merely Mapes and
Speaker 1: Dan Rather in sixty minutes to the fact that he
Speaker 1: is calling in from Afghanistan on the phone and had
Speaker 1: once been in Special Forces is all the backup anybody does,
Speaker 1: and they're like, yeah, fucking listen to whatever he has
Speaker 1: to say. He was a special He was there in
Speaker 1: January f twos in two US Special Forces cornered Osama
Speaker 1: bin Laden for what they were absolutely sure was the
Speaker 1: last time, spoilers they were It took about another decade.
Speaker 1: Jack Adiema began shopping around a set of tapes at
Speaker 1: the same time that held seven hours worth of videotaped
Speaker 1: Al Qaeda training sessions. You've seen pieces of these tapes.
Speaker 1: There's like a lot of like the guys going on
Speaker 1: jungle gyms and running around with rifles and stuff. He
Speaker 1: first sold stills from several of these tapes to a
Speaker 1: number of media organizations, and a lot of them were
Speaker 1: like scary images of terrorist commandos doing armed drills. Now,
Speaker 1: once the skills had wetted everyone's appetite, Adema contracted the
Speaker 1: William Morris PR Agency to auction off what he claimed
Speaker 1: was the first ever US broadcast rights of like terrorist
Speaker 1: training videos from al Qaeda that would like reveal what
Speaker 1: al Qaeda was planning to do in the United States.
Speaker 1: So he delivered letters to all of the may or
Speaker 1: his PR agency delivered letters to all the major networks,
Speaker 1: setting a minimum price of a hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in demanding that Jackadema be credited. When the tapes
Speaker 1: were aired. Surprisingly, Fox said no, and so did NBC.
Speaker 1: They were put off by the Yeah, they were put
Speaker 1: They thought it was too expensive and there was also
Speaker 1: there was no supporting evidence that these tapes actually showed
Speaker 1: an al Qaeda training base. There were just guys with
Speaker 1: guns running around, running around. Yeah. An NBC producer later recalled,
Speaker 1: there was no way to verify them. It was either
Speaker 1: you trust Keith Adema or you don't. CNN backed out too,
Speaker 1: after their national security analyst did a cursory amount of
Speaker 1: googling and discovered Keith ademonst criminal record in history of
Speaker 1: suing everyone he's ever talked to. They were the only
Speaker 1: network to blacklist him as a source as well as
Speaker 1: turned down his offer. Now, some of the distrust of
Speaker 1: Adema and his tapes came from the fact that he
Speaker 1: seemed to have a different story about where they came
Speaker 1: from for every news agency that asked. He told the
Speaker 1: Australian Broadcasting Corporation that he bought the tapes from an
Speaker 1: intelligence asset. After several back alley meetings. At midnight, he
Speaker 1: told NBC's Today Show that he got them after he
Speaker 1: filmed a group of Northern Alliance fighters taking over a
Speaker 1: compound where the video was filmed. Adema then claimed to
Speaker 1: have tracked down the camp's commander at home and hunted
Speaker 1: down other al Qaeda recruits to find more footage. These
Speaker 1: obvious lies fooled no one, no one that is besides
Speaker 1: Dan Rather. Yeah, yeah, Dan Rather in sixty minutes fall
Speaker 1: immediately and hard for Jackadema's tapes, and in fact, Rather
Speaker 1: flies immediately to Afghanistan to interview Keith Adema and visit
Speaker 1: the compound where the videos had been filmed. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: he just is immediately on board with this ship. I
Speaker 1: am so down. The journalism school building at the college
Speaker 1: that I went to but didn't go to journalism school
Speaker 1: at was the Dan Rather School of journalism. And maybe
Speaker 1: not the guy to take super details. I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: about the from the Columbia Journalism Review talking about this
Speaker 1: particular grift at a time when workers were still sifting
Speaker 1: through the nural wreckage of the World Trade Center, the
Speaker 1: story reinforced the prevailing sense of Panic men in camouflage,
Speaker 1: tunics and ski masks were shown storming buildings, staging drive
Speaker 1: by shootings, and laying siege to golf courses. Sometimes the
Speaker 1: men laughed as they rehearsed maneuvers, which Rather interpreted as
Speaker 1: evidence that they approached their grim mission with glee. The
Speaker 1: footage also contained numerous exchanges in English. A sign Rather
Speaker 1: told viewers that they want to take scenes like this
Speaker 1: to the West. Now. The reality is that these tapes
Speaker 1: were absolutely a forgery made by Jack Adiemo, which is
Speaker 1: why people were speaking in English. Yeah, gosh, good, disgracious,
Speaker 1: Dan No, buddy, Yeah, that's that's really, that's really. That's
Speaker 1: real bad. That's real bad, and you gotta do better. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: he spoilers for Dan Rather's career. He would not, he
Speaker 1: would not, he would he would not. He would go
Speaker 1: on to fall from more fake bullshit. Hell yeah, analysts, obviously,
Speaker 1: I say they're obviously a forgery. It is impossible to
Speaker 1: state that with a perfect degree of confidence one way
Speaker 1: or the other, and you will. You can, in fact,
Speaker 1: find a couple of different interpretations of these videos. But
Speaker 1: it is worth noting that the tactics shown in the
Speaker 1: tapes were not the sort actually used by Al Qaeda fighters.
Speaker 1: The video depicted armed raids similar to the kind of
Speaker 1: attacks ISIS would carry out years later in Europe. But
Speaker 1: these are completely different from this sort of bombings that
Speaker 1: all kind of actually engaged in at the time. Um put, simply,
Speaker 1: all kinda never did anything even vaguely like what was
Speaker 1: shown in these tapes. Like, it's just not the sort
Speaker 1: of ship that they pulled off. And yeah, there were
Speaker 1: other reasons to doubt the province of the tapes. The
Speaker 1: place that Keith Adema said that he had rated to
Speaker 1: capture them, the compound where these tapes were filmed, mere Bakt,
Speaker 1: was under coalition control during the time that the tapes
Speaker 1: were actually filmed, and had been thoroughly searched at the
Speaker 1: time when Jack claims to have conducted the raid. Now again,
Speaker 1: the reality of the situation was never conclusively determined one
Speaker 1: way or the other, and Dan Rather's career didn't explode
Speaker 1: for this particular funk up. But the almost certain reality
Speaker 1: is that the videos were staged by Jack. He likely
Speaker 1: found an old compound that had already been liberated by
Speaker 1: the coalition and then hired a bunch of locals to
Speaker 1: pretend to be terrorists. The Columbia Journalism Review talked to
Speaker 1: a special retired Special operations officer with knowledge of the
Speaker 1: CIA's investigation into the tapes, and this guy claims they
Speaker 1: did a voice analysis us in a technical analysis. Not
Speaker 1: only were they staged, but you could single Adema's voice
Speaker 1: out directly. So the CIA, for its part, disputes having
Speaker 1: done any kind of analysis. But the CIA is the CIA,
Speaker 1: so I really don't give a ship what they say happened. Ever, uh,
Speaker 1: they are the CIA. Now, it seems pretty safe to
Speaker 1: conclude that these were bogus from the get go, whether
Speaker 1: or not Jack Adema himself actually filmed them. But at
Speaker 1: the time, this took off like gangbusters among a terrified
Speaker 1: American public, and Dan Rather's big scoop helped to solidify
Speaker 1: Jack Adema's reputation who was someone as someone who was
Speaker 1: not a shameful fraud, and for a few months he
Speaker 1: was the talk of the Cabul media set. According to
Speaker 1: New York Magazine, he boasted a war correspondence about the
Speaker 1: many Al Qaeda suspects he had apprehended and embroidered his
Speaker 1: bad his banter with tales of special Forces daring in
Speaker 1: Central America, and it was more than just his speech
Speaker 1: that was growing too colorful for its own good. One
Speaker 1: heated argument over war coverage at a party ended with
Speaker 1: a Dimas firing a pistol at a Dalla Morning News
Speaker 1: correspondent Todd Robertson and barely missing his left arm when yeah,
Speaker 1: he gets drunken shoots shoots at the Dallas Morning news man.
Speaker 1: Many reporters began to regard a demon as a fraud
Speaker 1: in a menace. Still, he was quoted in many major
Speaker 1: newspapers as a Special Forces operative or a Green Beret.
Speaker 1: On a representation from the photo agency Polaris. A Dimas
Speaker 1: sold the footage to sixty minutes too for an undisclosed fee,
Speaker 1: and the rest of the press corps, including NBC's Dateline
Speaker 1: in the Today Show scooped up the sensational footage in
Speaker 1: the networks wake. So that's great now. In December of
Speaker 1: two thousand two, remember that guy Robin Moore who like
Speaker 1: literally became a Green Beret and killed people with the
Speaker 1: Green Berets and then wrote a book about him. That journalist, Well,
Speaker 1: he shows up in Afghanistan in December of two thousand two,
Speaker 1: h Now he was no longer the young, fit warrior
Speaker 1: who battled alongside US forces in Vietnam. More was in
Speaker 1: his seventies, racked with Parkinson's disease and reliant to pon
Speaker 1: a cane to get around. So he's not not in
Speaker 1: great shape. Still, Clearly, whatever else you can say about him,
Speaker 1: U a frightening badass to like, go wander on alone
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan in your seventies and two thousand two is
Speaker 1: a it's a tough guy. That's pretty hard. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: pretty hard. Now. He had a goal of publishing the
Speaker 1: first on the ground memoir from the war in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: and it would be a book about the hunt for
Speaker 1: Osama bin Laden. When Jack first heard that the author
Speaker 1: of the book that had become his favorite movie was
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan, he knew he had to find him, and
Speaker 1: tracking down More was not difficult. There were not a
Speaker 1: whole lot of old white dudes wandering around the country
Speaker 1: in the wake of US Special Forces. Once there, Jack
Speaker 1: plied More with the same story he'd successfully used on
Speaker 1: many journalists, already putting himself forward as an ideal source
Speaker 1: for Moore's next book. This line of bullshit worked because
Speaker 1: Jack just seems to have had some sort of ability
Speaker 1: to like not all or even most journalists, but there
Speaker 1: were there are these guys like Skirka before him and
Speaker 1: now Robin Moore that just like fall in love with
Speaker 1: a line of ship that Jack is pushing. And soon
Speaker 1: the two men were collaborating, collaborating together on a book
Speaker 1: titled The Hunt for Bin Laden. Now, crucially, while they
Speaker 1: were in Afghanistan, More In Adema spent almost no time together,
Speaker 1: and this is because More was still widely respected by
Speaker 1: US Special Forces dudes, and they gave him real access,
Speaker 1: and for obvious reasons, Jackodema did not want to get
Speaker 1: anywhere clear near US Special Forces in Afghanistan, not a
Speaker 1: good idea, So they didn't really start to collaborate until
Speaker 1: uh they got home to the United States in later
Speaker 1: that year. Jack had to head back after his mother died,
Speaker 1: and this is where he and Robin Moore would go
Speaker 1: on to have the bulk of their contact. So More
Speaker 1: was back in his States by the end of that year,
Speaker 1: trying to bang out his notes and interviews from Afghanistan
Speaker 1: into a book that people would want to read. Adema
Speaker 1: offered himself up for additional background information and soon more
Speaker 1: was listening with bated breath. Well, Jack Adiema just lied
Speaker 1: to him. This random paragraph from the book they wrote
Speaker 1: together gives you an idea of what sort of stuff
Speaker 1: Jack was telling him. And again this is one paragraph.
Speaker 1: Oh yes. In January, Jack uncovered an al Qaita plot
Speaker 1: to kill President Clinton and march. Standing in the middle
Speaker 1: of a Kabul street. Armed with a Russian assault rifle
Speaker 1: and six hundred rounds of ammunition, Jack held off Islamic
Speaker 1: fundamentalists for four hours as they tried to take eighteen
Speaker 1: four in citizens hostage, keeping them at bay until Engineer
Speaker 1: Ali and the Northern Alliance arrived to back him up.
Speaker 1: By the end of March, Oh yeah, that's a character
Speaker 1: right there. By the end of March, Jack was in
Speaker 1: a Northern Alliance helicopter on his way to the Nachman
Speaker 1: earthquake with the Associated Press photograph the lone American rescuing
Speaker 1: a little girl. She wasn't the first child he would
Speaker 1: save or the last. I'm gonna tell you right now,
Speaker 1: Jack Ademon never saved goddamn kid. He definitely posed with
Speaker 1: some sick and injured children, but I think he saved
Speaker 1: them in the same way he saved his friend with
Speaker 1: the leg injury. Yeah. Now, for his part, Robin Moore
Speaker 1: said that Jack's stories check doubt very well when he
Speaker 1: tried to verify them, and this is almost certainly a lie,
Speaker 1: as Mary Anne Strong, Moore's agent at the time, claims
Speaker 1: that Robin Moore's actual experiences in Afghanistan were just too
Speaker 1: dull to make a good book. Basically, he was too
Speaker 1: old to find anything cool, So he came back home
Speaker 1: like kind of bummed out, with like a few interviews
Speaker 1: that were not that exciting and no stories of actual
Speaker 1: daring do because he's seventy and had Parkinson's. So Jack
Speaker 1: comes along and it's like, I can spice up this
Speaker 1: fucking book for you. Many Strong, He's like, let me
Speaker 1: add some con to that ship. Also, Yeah, Moore's agent
Speaker 1: later claimed Jack came along and rewrote the entire thing.
Speaker 1: He came up with terribly exciting, excellent copy. Now, she
Speaker 1: claimed that More himself only wrote a few pages of
Speaker 1: the book in the end, and the resulting product was
Speaker 1: one of the most ridiculous pieces of FOE journalism in
Speaker 1: the entire history of the War on Terror, which is
Speaker 1: a fucking achievement. The cover of the book features a
Speaker 1: shirtless Jack Adimo wielding an a K forties Yeah Baby Now.
Speaker 1: New York Magazine goes into more detail about precisely how
Speaker 1: bad this book was. It asserts out right that a
Speaker 1: demon was the only Green Beret gathering intelligence on the ground,
Speaker 1: and a dema routinely storms the center of the book's
Speaker 1: action to perform herobic feats of bravery. It is as
Speaker 1: though given the chance to influence a Robin Moore book,
Speaker 1: Adema had to cast himself in the twenty one century
Speaker 1: sequel to The Green Berets. So he basically finds the
Speaker 1: author of the book that became his favorite movie and
Speaker 1: turns himself into a character in that book, clearly in
Speaker 1: the hope that a movie will get made about him,
Speaker 1: which honestly kind of rules a little bit. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to see this movie. It'll be it'll undoubtedly
Speaker 1: have like Danny McBride, or like Danny McBride would be
Speaker 1: the right guy to play Jack Adeem a whole ship. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: completely overly confident, which is everybody looking around. It would
Speaker 1: almost be like a Tommy Boy thing, where you know,
Speaker 1: you have the Chris Farley character and then David's bade
Speaker 1: trying to clean up the mess that's following him. I
Speaker 1: think actually the right way to play this is to
Speaker 1: just have Daniel McBride do his character from Eastbound and Down.
Speaker 1: This guy who was just has this completely divorced from reality, beliefs,
Speaker 1: beliefs about himself, um, just rolling through Afghanistan and somehow
Speaker 1: not dying but getting a lot of people killed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we should go to an ad break because
Speaker 1: you know what won't convince an elderly ailing legend of
Speaker 1: war reporting what the products and services in this None
Speaker 1: of them will trick a sick old man into writing
Speaker 1: a fake book about how you shirtlessly fought the Taliban.
Speaker 1: That is a guarantee. We make fucking talk space not
Speaker 1: going to do that. Not, no, sir, No sir. We're
Speaker 1: back and we are talking about Jack Edema. So it's
Speaker 1: a great book. U. Jack Edema cons this guy to write,
Speaker 1: and the book was a hit among an American public
Speaker 1: hungry for stories of military glory after September eleven. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people eat this ship up. It quickly climbed to a
Speaker 1: respectable place on the New York Times bestseller list, and
Speaker 1: although it never made its way up to number one.
Speaker 1: It's sold very very well now, Since more the ostensible
Speaker 1: author was elderly and in poor health, the responsibility for
Speaker 1: shamelessly plugging the book landed on Jack Edema. He was
Speaker 1: only too happy to hang out in bookstores doing readings
Speaker 1: from chapters he'd written about things he absolutely did not do.
Speaker 1: During numerous media appearances, he even gave direct advice to
Speaker 1: the Pentagon, making statements like we in Special Forces have
Speaker 1: been lobbying for a lighter, faster army, but General Tommy
Speaker 1: Frank's isn't listening. Is It's great? That's I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: loving it. Just catch catch him at book soup. That's
Speaker 1: where I'm trying to see him. It's kind of ironic
Speaker 1: because like there are so many Special Forces grifts around
Speaker 1: the day, like today, like about a third of the
Speaker 1: people who wind up becoming Special Forces operators do it
Speaker 1: to like cash in on some book as soon as
Speaker 1: they get out. Um. But the only kind of Special
Speaker 1: Forces griff that wouldn't work today is like what Jack
Speaker 1: Adema is doing, because there's now so many of these
Speaker 1: guys in the media who would be like, now this
Speaker 1: this dude's just lying like he was never never did anything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: has never seen goodness, I mean nothing, not a thing. Ye,
Speaker 1: well anywhere. Like any great grifter, Jackodema succeeds during the
Speaker 1: only period in history in which he could have possibly succeeded. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: The Hunt Forbidden Lauden elevated Adma to a national figure,
Speaker 1: just in time for him to weigh in on the
Speaker 1: most critical political issue of the day, the invasion of Iraq.
Speaker 1: Since he had been the subject of the first memoir
Speaker 1: of the war in Afghanistan, TV news booking agents saw
Speaker 1: him as an ideal get as they discussed whether or
Speaker 1: not going to war with Iraq was a good idea
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna quote from a rolling stone right up here.
Speaker 1: A Deema's career as a media personality reached its peak
Speaker 1: during the final breathless weeks of the run up to
Speaker 1: the war in Iraq. Much of the information he provided
Speaker 1: during that period echoed the Bush administration's hotly contested rationale
Speaker 1: for a war. He told in MSNBC that the link
Speaker 1: between Iraq and Al Qaida was common knowledge on the
Speaker 1: ground in Afghanistan, and claimed in an interview with w
Speaker 1: n y C radio's Leonard Lopate that Iraq has been
Speaker 1: involved in supporting al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations with money,
Speaker 1: with equipment, with technology, and with weapons of mass destruction.
Speaker 1: He told other white eyed journalists that there was ample
Speaker 1: evidence linking Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia to
Speaker 1: al Qaeda into the attacks on September eleven. You know
Speaker 1: famed allies Iraq and Iran for sure. If there's one
Speaker 1: thing you can't stop Iran from doing, it is collaborating
Speaker 1: closely with Saudi Arabia and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. There's nothing
Speaker 1: Iran loves more than working with those specific two groups
Speaker 1: of love it. Uh boy so Adima professed to have
Speaker 1: firsthand knowledge of nuclear weapons being smuggled from Russia and
Speaker 1: to all to all three members of the Access of
Speaker 1: Evil Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. Few in the media
Speaker 1: questioned Adema's claims, much to the alarm of some of
Speaker 1: those who know him. The media saw this outfitted, gregarious,
Speaker 1: apparently knowing guy, and they didn't checking out, said an artist,
Speaker 1: chairman and founder of the humanitarian organization Knightsbridge International. Uh
Speaker 1: They ran story after story that further the cache of
Speaker 1: a self serving self aggrandizing criminal and that's totally accurate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is accurate. Yeah, But the sales of his book
Speaker 1: were good, but reviewers did not like it. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was pretty much universally panned, and journalists who did
Speaker 1: look into it repeatedly questioned the veracity of claims. Like
Speaker 1: Jack Edema fought the entire Afghan War on his own,
Speaker 1: the sheer volume of doubt seems to have cracked through
Speaker 1: whatever brainwashing Adema managed to carry out on Robin Moore.
Speaker 1: Moore began to demanding from his publisher that a revised
Speaker 1: edition of the book be published, with Special Forces officers
Speaker 1: reviewing and correcting Adema's lies. Random House his His publisher
Speaker 1: refused these changes, and when Jack Adema learned that Moore
Speaker 1: was trying to write him out of the book, he
Speaker 1: issued a press release filed yet another lawsuit. He started
Speaker 1: claiming that a secret cabal of Special Forces soldiers has
Speaker 1: as symboled to take him down because they were jealous
Speaker 1: of Jack Adama. Jack also filed lawsuits against night Bridge
Speaker 1: and Partners Internationals, the two groups providing aid in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: because he was certain that they were a part of
Speaker 1: all this. His main claim to having suffered damages came
Speaker 1: from the fact that Fox News dropped him as a
Speaker 1: regular commenter. True to form, Jack also sued Fox News.
Speaker 1: These suits were all tossed out of court. But yeah,
Speaker 1: just keep suing. Just always be suing, baby. That is
Speaker 1: a huge part of being a really good grifter is
Speaker 1: just keeps on suing everyone you can, Sophie, who are
Speaker 1: we suing right now? Uh? Cody Johnston. It sounds like
Speaker 1: a good idea. Yeah, let's throw some lawsuits out to Cody.
Speaker 1: Get on that. So the book sales were good in
Speaker 1: spite of the controversy. So Jack decided to form a
Speaker 1: promotional company, the Hunt Forbid law An LLC, with a
Speaker 1: handful of business partners. I have to give him credit.
Speaker 1: That's easily the best name for an LLC that anyone's
Speaker 1: come up. That's I kind of want to start. If
Speaker 1: that's defunct, now, I want to make that myle LLC
Speaker 1: and just do something else with it. Like, clearly it's
Speaker 1: clearly not more than the number of characters in The
Speaker 1: Hunt Ribbon Ladon LLC, which, like, I want to start
Speaker 1: an LLC dedicated to like feeding the homeless, but just
Speaker 1: call it that and that we could be like when
Speaker 1: the police shut us down. The cops are trying to
Speaker 1: stop the hunt for Bin Laden. Man, have you forgotten
Speaker 1: where we all were on nine eleven? There's there's potential
Speaker 1: in this. So Jack adeemons the Hunt for Bin Lawdon
Speaker 1: llc uh. The goal of this company was ostensibly to
Speaker 1: raise funds for a US count for US Counter Terrorist Group,
Speaker 1: which was a training camp that Jack had founded an
Speaker 1: upstate New York to quote helped the Northern Alliance and
Speaker 1: to fight al Qaeda. This was almost certainly a grift,
Speaker 1: but as the weeks went by and Jack battled increasing
Speaker 1: questions about his legitimacy, his colleagues watched his behavior turner
Speaker 1: ratic and dangerous. According to New York Magazine, one of
Speaker 1: Jack's business partners eventually testified during the inevitable lawsuit over
Speaker 1: the Hunt forbid Lauden llc. That Jack quote destroyed the
Speaker 1: interior of his own house with a samurai sword, that
Speaker 1: he choked his girlfriend in a fight, that he forged
Speaker 1: a letter on Fox News stationary for uses evidence and
Speaker 1: his lawsuit against the network. A lawsuit from the U.
Speaker 1: S Attorney's Office also arrived, followed by a letter from
Speaker 1: North Carolina's postal inspector, charging a demon with mail fraud
Speaker 1: for using a post office box registered to the company
Speaker 1: to solicit funds for US counter terrorist Group. Thompson said
Speaker 1: that after he noticed eighteen thousand from dollars from the
Speaker 1: company had gone missing, he drove down to Fayetteville to
Speaker 1: closed the company bank account. He says that Dema followed
Speaker 1: him there and threatened to kill both him and his girlfriend.
Speaker 1: More Jesus, he's awesome. When do the police step is
Speaker 1: not almost never. They arrested that. He did get busted earlier,
Speaker 1: but he goes right back to committing mail fraud. Totally murdering. No,
Speaker 1: that was something else. He didn't murder anybody. He no,
Speaker 1: I mean, he definitely murdered people, but no, he didn't
Speaker 1: go to jail for that. He went to jail from
Speaker 1: mayor fraud. Oh, that's right, it was just mail fraud.
Speaker 1: That was the first. That was our first, our first
Speaker 1: military exploratory fellow or whatever. Yeah, there's there's so many
Speaker 1: grifts here it is hard to keep track of the
Speaker 1: motherfucker's yeah and yeah. More. At the same time as
Speaker 1: this was all going on, More learned that Edema had
Speaker 1: ordered hundreds of copies of The Hunt for Bin Lawden
Speaker 1: from Moore's account with Random House and then never paid
Speaker 1: them for him. He just got the books and then
Speaker 1: sold them by hand at full price. So just like
Speaker 1: this mix of these incredibly bold grifts where he's like
Speaker 1: tricking national news networks and stuff and selling thousands of
Speaker 1: books and these petty fucking bullshit like it's incredible. Um,
Speaker 1: he couldn't stop himself. So Jack continued to attack Robin
Speaker 1: Moore Viya lawyer for months, throughing out lawsuits like Rice
Speaker 1: at a wedding. He was only interrupted in his quest
Speaker 1: to destroy the lives of the people who had been
Speaker 1: his friends and colleagues due to his devotion to yet
Speaker 1: another unbelievable grift in Afghanistan see. In two thousand four,
Speaker 1: Jack returned to Kabul. He rented a house, telling the
Speaker 1: landlord he planned to start a rug exporting business. I
Speaker 1: shouldn't even need to tell you that this was a lie.
Speaker 1: His real goal was to form a paramilitary unit named
Speaker 1: Task Force Saber seven. Yeah, baby, He designed the uniforms
Speaker 1: and patches himself. Their goal was to hunt Al Qaeda.
Speaker 1: He brought along a former soldier, Brent Bennett and a
Speaker 1: veteran TV cameraman named Eddie Caraballo to help him and
Speaker 1: document his adventures. They hired several Afghan fighters and started
Speaker 1: kidnapping and interrogating Afghan citizens at random. Um so pretty
Speaker 1: good grift, Daniel, that I mean this this UH people
Speaker 1: were really really gullible. You could get away with anything
Speaker 1: at this period of time. It was amazing being confident
Speaker 1: in speaking confidently and just doing the things you say
Speaker 1: you're gonna do. People are just letting it happen. That's
Speaker 1: just really wild. I'm impressed and horrified. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty great. And you know what else is great, Danial?
Speaker 1: And you know what doesn't kidnap and torture random citizens
Speaker 1: of UH? Do products and services not do that? Sometimes
Speaker 1: they not ours, Danial. Every product advertised on this show
Speaker 1: carries the official behind the bastards have not kidnapped and
Speaker 1: tortured any Afghan citizens seal of approval. That is the
Speaker 1: only guarantee we make of our products and services, and
Speaker 1: we do not make guarantees about other countries. But we
Speaker 1: will prom message no one in Afghanistan tortured by the
Speaker 1: sponsors of this show. We're back uh, So, Daniel, this
Speaker 1: story of Task Force Saber seven is fucking difficult for
Speaker 1: me to parse out. So I say he's kidnapping random
Speaker 1: Afghan citizens, and that seems to have been true a
Speaker 1: lot of the time, But it also doesn't necessarily seem
Speaker 1: to have been true all of the time, because on
Speaker 1: at least three occasions, NATO troops helped Edema carry out
Speaker 1: raids and NATO went on to arrest at least one
Speaker 1: of the suspects that Task Force Saber seven took in,
Speaker 1: and there's also some evidence that he some he or
Speaker 1: his men may have helped stop assassination attempts on ALFA
Speaker 1: Afghan political leaders. But also almost all of the people
Speaker 1: that they actually handed over to NATO were later released
Speaker 1: for lack of evidence to convict them. And it is
Speaker 1: entirely possible that all of the Afghan political leaders who
Speaker 1: claimed that Edema and his men saved them or carried
Speaker 1: out gave them intelligence that was useful. We're just bribed.
Speaker 1: Because we're talking about the government of Afghanistan in two
Speaker 1: thousand and three and four. They're trying to they're trying
Speaker 1: to cause disturbance as much as anybody else. So it's
Speaker 1: just like you'll take your money and say some dumb
Speaker 1: ship to make people confused. Perfect. Yeah, it does seem
Speaker 1: fair to say that there were people within NATO, in
Speaker 1: people within the Department of Defense who treated Task Force
Speaker 1: Saber seven as a legitimate, uh non governmental military contractor
Speaker 1: in country for a pretty brief period of time. But
Speaker 1: it did happen. And you can either say it's because
Speaker 1: they were actually finally doing good work, or yeah, just
Speaker 1: because it's easy to trick the fucking government in Afghanistan
Speaker 1: of a ton of bullshit, Like there's a hundred billion
Speaker 1: dollars worth of hospitals that got built by government contractors
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan and aren't hospitals, so fucking it's easy to
Speaker 1: get away with griffs in Afghanistan. Um. Now, while all
Speaker 1: this was going on, nights Bridge and Partners International, these
Speaker 1: two veteran own charities, continued to desperately try to warn
Speaker 1: the CIA and the Defense Department and everyone that would
Speaker 1: listen that Jack Edema was a dangerously incompetent con man,
Speaker 1: but no one listened to them until April two thousand four,
Speaker 1: when Adema made the error of emailing several of his
Speaker 1: friends back in the United States and update on the
Speaker 1: progress of Task Force Sabers seven. This email included pictures
Speaker 1: of Jack Adema and his men torturing civilians. At least
Speaker 1: one of the people Jack emailed ahead, Yeah, light torture, Daniel,
Speaker 1: Oh God, light torture, Okay, barely even torture under most
Speaker 1: international treaties. I'm nervous, So at least one of the
Speaker 1: people that Jack emailed had a soul and forwarded the
Speaker 1: emails to the Department of Defense. Warrants were issued for
Speaker 1: Jack's arrest in Kabul, and he was eventually busted on
Speaker 1: July five by Afghan police forces. New York Magazine notes
Speaker 1: when Afghan police had arrested the trio on July five,
Speaker 1: they said they had a They said they saw a
Speaker 1: mini a small our scale version of the gruesome prisoner
Speaker 1: abuse photos from the Bagdad interrogation cells in Abu Grabe.
Speaker 1: Early press photos indicated that three prisoners found in a
Speaker 1: demon's custody during the raid were blindfolded and beaten, and
Speaker 1: then strapped to the ceiling by their feet. Five others
Speaker 1: were tied to chairs with rope in the small dark
Speaker 1: room down a hall that was littered with bloodied clothing.
Speaker 1: All of the prisoners in a Demon's custody were subsequently released.
Speaker 1: None was shown to be connected to al Qaeda. I mean,
Speaker 1: of course, yeah, of course, yes, of course, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And like it's frustrating because you read like reporting from
Speaker 1: the time from like when this all happened, by good
Speaker 1: journalists and good reporters, and a lot of them will talk,
Speaker 1: will like quote people who were in the Department of
Speaker 1: Defense somewhere saying like, oh no, a demon did this,
Speaker 1: or Task FORCEAB seven did that. And I can't say
Speaker 1: again to a point of certainty that everything they did
Speaker 1: was bullshit. But my gut is telling me that all
Speaker 1: of those people who thought they did anything useful were
Speaker 1: just taken in by the con because Jack Ademo was
Speaker 1: a fucking con man, and it's easy to get away
Speaker 1: with cons in Afghanistan. Yeah, that's my feeling. Maybe I
Speaker 1: am wrong, but I'm not. Everybody likes sale, Everybody like everybody,
Speaker 1: you know, even if they don't like to be taken,
Speaker 1: they like to be sold something. And he was selling them. God,
Speaker 1: yeah the worst. Now, at his trial in Kabul, Adema
Speaker 1: did say something that I don't think is untrue. He
Speaker 1: stated that he had been operating with the U. S
Speaker 1: military's approval and consent, and it does seem that this
Speaker 1: was at least part partly true. Yeah, exactly, because they're
Speaker 1: they're not good at their jobs. Like that's the fun part. Look,
Speaker 1: they said I could do it, and they all have
Speaker 1: to sit on their hands and be like, I mean, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we kind of did, we did, we did again. I
Speaker 1: don't want to be like Slandering better reporters than me,
Speaker 1: because a lot of the guys who wrote about him,
Speaker 1: like back into this in four are but they're so
Speaker 1: confused by the fact that legitimate military people aren't uniform
Speaker 1: about whether or not this guy as a con man.
Speaker 1: And like, guys, the army's bad at its job, Like
Speaker 1: the Defense Department's bad at its job. Look at how
Speaker 1: the war in Afghanistan is. God, we're not. They're not
Speaker 1: good at this. Yeah, they're not good at winning wars.
Speaker 1: They make all sorts of dumb mistakes. Ask us, Ask
Speaker 1: any veteran, ask a hundred percent of veterans. They make
Speaker 1: shitty calls all the time, and this was one of them.
Speaker 1: One video played during the trial showed a demon talking
Speaker 1: with officials from US General William Boykin's office about an
Speaker 1: impending attack he planned on a terrorist cell. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: probably thought he was legitimate at some period of time,
Speaker 1: or at least enough of them did that he was
Speaker 1: able to get away with it for a while. Now,
Speaker 1: what I can easily bust is Jack Ademos claimed that
Speaker 1: he in Task for Savers Set Saber seven, never tortured anybody,
Speaker 1: which is what he argued in Afghan court. But unfortunately
Speaker 1: the judge who was trying their case was somebody that
Speaker 1: Jack had abducted, arrested, and tortured. And this judge actually
Speaker 1: testified at Jack's trial, which is since he was the judge,
Speaker 1: I would call it best in unorthodox legal precedent. So
Speaker 1: and again yeah, but also the judge was almost certainly Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's weird because like I have no trouble believing
Speaker 1: this judge was like maybe doing ship with the Taliban,
Speaker 1: maybe doing just other shady ship because he's a political
Speaker 1: official in Afghanistan in two thousand four and they were
Speaker 1: all on the fucking take. Um. Yeah, like yeah, there's
Speaker 1: probably he's probably a sketchy said of a bit, but
Speaker 1: like also Jack and his guys absolutely tortured this guy
Speaker 1: and then he winds up trying their case just like you.
Speaker 1: That's that's like the record scratch scenario you want. And
Speaker 1: you're just standing at the table ready to see, and
Speaker 1: then you see the guy's face, and one of the
Speaker 1: dozens of guys I torture winds up being my judge.
Speaker 1: What are the odds? Shoot? So here's a rolling Stone
Speaker 1: quote from the trial where the judge gets up and
Speaker 1: talks about his beerience. The judge then stood up in
Speaker 1: mind out how somebody acting like James Bond a Dima,
Speaker 1: of course, came into the house waving a weapon, shouting
Speaker 1: hands up, hands up. Also taken into custody were two
Speaker 1: of the judge's brothers, as well as four the relatives
Speaker 1: and a family retainer. The eight prisoners would be discovered
Speaker 1: by Afghan authorities when they later busted a Dima's jail.
Speaker 1: The judge told me the first night, around midnight, I
Speaker 1: heard the screams of four people. They then poured very
Speaker 1: cold water on me. I tried to keep myself from
Speaker 1: screaming but couldn't. Then they played loud, strange music. Then
Speaker 1: they prevented me from going to the bathroom, a terrible situation.
Speaker 1: I was hooded for twelve days Jesus Christ twelve. The
Speaker 1: trial also brought up evidence that did seem somewhat exculpatory
Speaker 1: for Jack and his men. US military authorities repeatedly admitted
Speaker 1: under questioning that they had been aware of Jack's task force,
Speaker 1: and some evidence emerged that Adema and his men may
Speaker 1: have thwarted an assassination again attempt against the Afghan Education
Speaker 1: minister Um. But again it's impossible to say what the
Speaker 1: funk actually happened here, and this is made more complicated
Speaker 1: by the fact that the FBI apparently took a bunch
Speaker 1: of documents and tapes from a Dima's home after his
Speaker 1: arrest and then withheld them from defense lawyers. This is
Speaker 1: peculiar because the FBI should not have had any jurisdiction
Speaker 1: in an Afghan court case. And this is all complicated
Speaker 1: by the fact that it happened in fucking Afghanistan, a
Speaker 1: country with an enormous amount of government corruption and huge
Speaker 1: numbers of officials who were straight up on the take.
Speaker 1: I have read a lot of articles about this, and
Speaker 1: I have no idea conclusively about what went down, But
Speaker 1: looking at the life of Jack Adiema on the whole,
Speaker 1: I do think it is safe to say that Task
Speaker 1: Force Saber seven was some sort of grift. The vast majority,
Speaker 1: if not the entirety, of the people that he went after,
Speaker 1: targeted and tortured were completely innocent, and he deserved the
Speaker 1: sentence that he received, which was ten years in Afghan prison.
Speaker 1: The judge that he tortured sentences him to prison. Um,
Speaker 1: I just love that the judge whom he tortured sentences.
Speaker 1: Now their journalists who visited him while he was in jail,
Speaker 1: and they all note kind of bemusedly that he was
Speaker 1: very popular with his guards and managed to get himself
Speaker 1: and his men into a luxury cell with carpet, satellite
Speaker 1: television in a private bathroom like a kitchen, and all
Speaker 1: sorts of nice stuff. And they're just like, well, it's
Speaker 1: like that's what these journalists say. And the obviously he
Speaker 1: bribed them, he gave the money, he has money, he
Speaker 1: paid it to them. Like I like that. I like that.
Speaker 1: One of the things included in the subscription is it
Speaker 1: had carpet. Yeah, ship Man prison with carpet ain't the
Speaker 1: worst prison. So Jack was released in two thousand seven
Speaker 1: and quite wisely decided he could never turn home to
Speaker 1: the United States. Uh, and again he was released like
Speaker 1: seven years early. Probably bribery, but it was through a pardon.
Speaker 1: Who the funk knows, Maybe was something to please the
Speaker 1: Defense Department. Um. Either way, as soon as he gets
Speaker 1: out of Afghanistan, he knows that he absolutely cannot go
Speaker 1: home to the United States because he still has wire
Speaker 1: fraud warrants after his arrest in North Carolina, and they
Speaker 1: were pinning federal charges for all of the crimes he'd
Speaker 1: committed in Afghanistan when he was torturing people. So instead
Speaker 1: he went to Dubai and attempted to set up a
Speaker 1: drug in arms smuggling syndicate. This failed, and so Jack
Speaker 1: Adima headed to the last refuge of all true grifters, Mexico.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, fuck. I love how often episodes of the
Speaker 1: show end in Mexico. It is always such a treat
Speaker 1: whenever we get to Mexico. So Jack bought a boat
Speaker 1: and started running a charter boat service for tourists. He
Speaker 1: called himself Captain black Jack and patterned his personality after
Speaker 1: Captain Jack Sparrow. Yes, you might say there has been
Speaker 1: a degradation from his his tie him as a terrorism
Speaker 1: expert so now he's doing booze cruises and pretending to
Speaker 1: be Jack Sparrow. He built a home and in an
Speaker 1: imitation Middle Eastern style, and was said to relax there
Speaker 1: in a thobe, which is like the long gown that
Speaker 1: men in parts of the Middle East, where his ex
Speaker 1: girlfriend claims that he would regularly go on multi day
Speaker 1: of vodka and cocaine suit suit soaked binges while looping
Speaker 1: either Arabic music, the Apocalypse Now soundtrack, or just playing
Speaker 1: Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World on repeat for hours. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: At some point, Daniel Jack Adama caught HIV, possibly due
Speaker 1: to the fact that he had constant casual sex with
Speaker 1: strangers and never ever used protection. Sometimes that happens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a this is a different part of the story.
Speaker 1: Oh buddy, we are getting into a twist in the tail.
Speaker 1: So we we we do not stand an unsafe sex
Speaker 1: participants knows none of the unsafe sex with people you
Speaker 1: don't know, fam. We don't know when Jack Edema got HIV,
Speaker 1: but we absolutely know that getting it did not cause
Speaker 1: him to start using condoms, because he gave it to
Speaker 1: his girlfriend without telling her that he was sick in
Speaker 1: the first place. She later recalled that he explained he
Speaker 1: thought he was immune to the disease because, in his words,
Speaker 1: in his words, Danial, he had super blood. What what
Speaker 1: are one more time he had super blood? He had
Speaker 1: super blood. I just wanted to hear you say it
Speaker 1: again again. As we're getting into this point, Jack Edema
Speaker 1: has seemed like he oh, definitely a con artist. The
Speaker 1: stuff that came out about him later in his life
Speaker 1: makes me suspect that there was also either mental illness
Speaker 1: as a result of just like he was, he got sick,
Speaker 1: or because of his constant drug abuse he damaged his brain.
Speaker 1: It is unclear. But what happens next, Like, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a lot about Jack Adema, Like what this what his
Speaker 1: girlfriend's reports revealed. Is this just a lot about Jackodemo?
Speaker 1: We don't know. I up until I started reading her
Speaker 1: accounts of him, I thought he was just a standard grifter.
Speaker 1: And now there's a part of them that's like he
Speaker 1: may have actually been ill outside of the HIV. It
Speaker 1: is very hard to say. Um, but this is the
Speaker 1: part at which things get moderately less fun because his
Speaker 1: very last girlfriend, Penny, a lazy contracted HIV from Jack,
Speaker 1: and given that she did, it's almost guaranteed that God
Speaker 1: knows how many other people got HIV from this guy,
Speaker 1: because again he would throw days long cocaine and liquor
Speaker 1: or gy benders while he was in Mexico and before
Speaker 1: while he was in Afghanistan, and he probably had HIV
Speaker 1: for a large chunk at that time. So he gets
Speaker 1: so many people sick. He's this is a guy who
Speaker 1: does nothing but leave shattered lives in his wake. Now
Speaker 1: that girlfriend Penny ale See wrote a blog post about
Speaker 1: what Jack did to her, and it's honestly heartbreaking, and
Speaker 1: I am going to read a quote from it now,
Speaker 1: a long one, so we'll have to pause a couple
Speaker 1: of times in this I did not get HIV via
Speaker 1: drugs or being a hooker. I got it the way
Speaker 1: a lot of women get it. I was in love
Speaker 1: and stupid period, and because of love and stupidity, my
Speaker 1: life will never be the same, whatever is left of it.
Speaker 1: So the story is not for profit. It is for
Speaker 1: peace of mind into that when I meet my maker,
Speaker 1: I will know I did all I could to stop
Speaker 1: this monster. Jack Adiema has a lot more sins than
Speaker 1: just giving out HIV. I am as concerned about other
Speaker 1: people being sick as I am, and about dying. The
Speaker 1: other stuff will come out eventually, although I am sure
Speaker 1: won't be around long enough to see it. So yes,
Speaker 1: I am mad, very mad sad as well. Now. She
Speaker 1: claims that Jack started their relationship by flirting with her
Speaker 1: online while he was locked in prison in Afghanistan. Um,
Speaker 1: which is again you'll notice the last time he was
Speaker 1: in prison he also exited with it with a woman
Speaker 1: he had been flirting with remotely. Uh yeah, yeah. So
Speaker 1: he used her to take care of business he needed
Speaker 1: done in the United States when he got out of
Speaker 1: prison because he couldn't re enter the country, And he
Speaker 1: also relied on her to take care of his dog
Speaker 1: when he went off doing whatever the funk Jack Adema
Speaker 1: did when he wasn't taking care of his dog. He
Speaker 1: also doesn't deserve a dog, Yeah, he doesn't that one
Speaker 1: does not deserve a dog, do Yeah. So she was
Speaker 1: like the last person to know Jack well. And it
Speaker 1: is from Penny that we get some of our final
Speaker 1: big revelations about Jack Edema. Quote. Jack always told me
Speaker 1: he was a heterosexual, and when I finally found out
Speaker 1: the truth, it was too late. Now, I also know
Speaker 1: that he was bisexual years ago. A Green Beret he
Speaker 1: was stationed at Fort Bragg has come forward and told
Speaker 1: me of his meeting Jonathan Keith Adema as he called
Speaker 1: himself back then. He met him at a news stand
Speaker 1: located on Bragg Boulevard in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in early
Speaker 1: two thousand, two thousand one. They would have sex in
Speaker 1: the back room. He also went to four fifty Robuson
Speaker 1: Street and had sex with Jack at his apartment next
Speaker 1: to his office in that building. Two other men have
Speaker 1: also come forward. Jack was also went to cross dressing
Speaker 1: secretly then too, as well as having his anus penetrated
Speaker 1: by dildos. He never used condoms then. Now he occasionally does,
Speaker 1: but the damage is already there. The disease has progressed.
Speaker 1: I've also been told about his encounters with men when
Speaker 1: he was in prison in Kabul, Afghanistan, Apparently Thursday nights
Speaker 1: their war for man sex. I wish to God he
Speaker 1: had told me this himself when I first met him,
Speaker 1: so I don't know how true that is, uh, but
Speaker 1: Jack definitely had HIV which progressed to full blown AIDES,
Speaker 1: and it definitely seems credible that he was just fucking
Speaker 1: a bunch of people his entire life and never taking
Speaker 1: any care about the fact that he was spreading diseases
Speaker 1: to them. Um. I think that it's possible Penny has
Speaker 1: some weird homophobias stuff, although it's kind of unclear from
Speaker 1: her writing. But it also seems really credible that this guy,
Speaker 1: Jack Ademo was just fucking people and spreading diseases his
Speaker 1: entire life without a goddamn care in the world. Um,
Speaker 1: So that's cool. That's a cool story. Jack was accused
Speaker 1: of rape at least once in two thousand ten by
Speaker 1: a young woman who visited his home. He temporarily fled
Speaker 1: to Belize to escape justice, but returned to Mexico and
Speaker 1: was unmolested by the law until his death in January
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve as a result of AIDS. So that's
Speaker 1: how this story ends. Robert Young Pelton, somewhat legendary war correspondent,
Speaker 1: is probably the reporter who wrote most about Jack Adiemo
Speaker 1: without falling for his bullshit. And I found an article
Speaker 1: written after Jack's death in McClatchy by Pelton or that
Speaker 1: quotes both Pelton and Penny Elsie, and it provides some
Speaker 1: final explanations for how Jack got away with his schemes
Speaker 1: for so long. He would meet somebody that he needed
Speaker 1: or wanted to be like, like the author Robin Moore,
Speaker 1: and then he would absorb all their mannerisms, words, and
Speaker 1: the way they dressed. Pelton said it worked in part
Speaker 1: because he was highly intelligent. Few con artists could warm
Speaker 1: their way into helping more the author of the Green
Speaker 1: Berets write a book, and few could come up with
Speaker 1: such strong legal arguments for so many spurious causes, he said. Indeed, Alessie,
Speaker 1: his former girlfriend, said Adema wrote nearly all of the
Speaker 1: legal filings he was involved with over the years. I
Speaker 1: know because I sat there and watched him, she said.
Speaker 1: Then the lawyers would just sign off on them. So
Speaker 1: at the end of this, I don't know what to
Speaker 1: fucking make of this dude, other than that he was
Speaker 1: a monster and a grifter. But it is very hard
Speaker 1: for me to tell how much of this was like
Speaker 1: a coldly calculated piece of ship and how much of
Speaker 1: this was like just a damaged ill man compulsively possibly
Speaker 1: based on the fact that he actually had delusions like
Speaker 1: fucking ship up, like I really don't know where to
Speaker 1: land on this guy other than that he was a monster.
Speaker 1: But that's the story of Jack Edema. Sounds like a
Speaker 1: piece of garbage, a dying, war obsessed piece of trash
Speaker 1: who did not participate in safe sex and has ruined
Speaker 1: the lives of probably hundreds of people at this point.
Speaker 1: Oh god, Yeah, there are so many like poor young
Speaker 1: men and if we're honest, probably kids who I am
Speaker 1: fucking certain got sick because Jack Edema, you know, contracted
Speaker 1: their services as uh sex workers and then just rolled
Speaker 1: on with his life. It's like, it's actually, if you
Speaker 1: imagine that this guy is as it seems likely, he
Speaker 1: was just spreading HIV around Afghanistan's sex worker population for
Speaker 1: a couple of years. Like, there's no telling how many
Speaker 1: people got sick as a result of him. Undoubtedly way
Speaker 1: too many. Yeah, that's cool, that's a cool story. Another
Speaker 1: bastard in the bag. Yep, another bastard in the bank. So, Dan,
Speaker 1: how you feeling, you know, Uh, I don't know, not great,
Speaker 1: not great? Would you feel better to know that prior
Speaker 1: to the two thousand one invasion, Afghanistan had one of
Speaker 1: the lowest rates of HIV infections in the world, and
Speaker 1: that after the war they had a skyrocketing AIDS crisis. No,
Speaker 1: that doesn't make that doesn't make you feel good. Oh
Speaker 1: of course it doesn't, because it's it's unspeakably terrible. Cool. Uh, well, Robert,
Speaker 1: you are an incredible, incredible person. You tell you what? Who? Well? Dan? Yes?
Speaker 1: Where can people find you on the internet if they
Speaker 1: want to give you the internet equivalent of a sexually
Speaker 1: transmitted disease, which is fandom? Yes, I don't really know
Speaker 1: where I'm going with this. Well, if you want to bother,
Speaker 1: it's okay. I haven't had. They're all imaginary friends I have.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Twitter at DJ Underscore Daniel
Speaker 1: d A n L. You can follow me on Twitch
Speaker 1: at twitch dot tv slash dj Underscore Daniel. Come off
Speaker 1: to play video games and we'll hang out and tell stories.
Speaker 1: And I can tell you behind the scenes stuff about Robert,
Speaker 1: like when he gave me a knife and I have
Speaker 1: it right here. It sounds like that you heard it
Speaker 1: open just now. Yeah, come look at my knife on Twitch.
Speaker 1: That is not what I meant. Okay, come come look
Speaker 1: Dan knife on Twitch and send him pictures of your
Speaker 1: own knife. Whatever knife means to you personally. You know,
Speaker 1: we all get to define the word knife for ourselves
Speaker 1: and for and for the record, my the knife that
Speaker 1: I'm talking about fits the Twitch standards and practices. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about an actual flip blade by cr k t
Speaker 1: kt R. And I'm done and to cut all this,
Speaker 1: cut none of this, and cut nothing yourself, listeners, as
Speaker 1: you go out into the world, and by go out
Speaker 1: into the world, I mean stay in your homes for
Speaker 1: the love of God. I'm Robert Evans. I have a
Speaker 1: podcast called The Women's War and you can find it
Speaker 1: presumably just google it. It'll it'll come up. Google it
Speaker 1: in the word podcast if you need to, you'll fucking
Speaker 1: find it. Like we all know to use the Internet,
Speaker 1: like you know the title. That's all you fucking need.
Speaker 1: What are you doing? What are you doing demanding I
Speaker 1: give you more information I've given you if you figure
Speaker 1: it out Twitter, and I post links to episodes because
Speaker 1: I'm a nice person and Robert as a hack, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I just I'm just abusing the audience to make them
Speaker 1: love me more, which is the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: I'm certain Jack Adema did a lot over the course
Speaker 1: of his life. Compare yourself to that nightmare, Robert you're
Speaker 1: a good boy. No, no, you don't know what I
Speaker 1: got up to in Afghanistan, Sophie. I'll give you one hint.
Speaker 1: There was never an Osama bin Laden. That ship's fake
Speaker 1: news anyway. Robert Evans here taking credit for September eleven,
Speaker 1: the movie Big Trouble and signing off. You can follow
Speaker 1: him on Twitter and I right, okay. You can follow
Speaker 1: us on Twitter, Instagram at Bastards Pod. You can find
Speaker 1: the sources for our episodes under part one of this
Speaker 1: episode under the episode description we have a tea public
Speaker 1: still or I'm gonna look at Robert unworsh here. Ever,
Speaker 1: that's that's the episode. Wash your hands or not. If
Speaker 1: you're at home, it doesn't matter. It could be as
Speaker 1: stilty as you want to wash your hands. Don't listen
Speaker 1: to this asshole. Live like a monster, be a gorilla.
Speaker 1: It's fine. Suck it up for society. By h