Smuggling 101: The Ultimate Guide to Roger Reaves' Journey Through Perilous Adventures

23:33And then they put me in a cell back in the back. I guess it was about five foot square and maybe 12 feet tall with a light burning. And it was a torture area of the prison. And I could hear for several days, you didn't know, they'd bring you food from rice and beans at different times. They'd bring it close together, and it'd sometimes be a long time. They were trying to disorient you. And they beat the living daylights out of people. And you would hear them crying and slapping and begging. They had chains, a chain on the wall. and you next, bitch, you next. And they took me out and put my head under water, like seltzer water, and three of them put my head under it.

24:10And if you take a little whiff of that, I'll guarantee you three of them can't hold you down. So I found out to act like I was just that way right before I had to breathe. And I survived that all right. And they beat me because there wasn't one inch on my body that wasn't black and blue and yellow and green. and they had the paper right in front of me, sign this, and it's all over. Well, I knew I was six years in prison if I signed it. So I reckon they could have killed me. They almost did. So then they took me out there naked and chained me over something barrel, and my hands pulled as far as they could apart with those little things like a boat up.

24:51It stretched me out, and he came up there with some oil and buttered my backside, and I thought, oh, boy. And then he just crammed me full with a big old thumb of hot chili pepper. And that was just awful. That stuff burned. It burned something terrible up in your colon. Well, when I quit cussing, I was nearly unconscious from it. And they come in. I have some kind of little enema. They let me wash myself out with it. Then they put me back in that cell. When I just recovered some, they brought a slim black man that was frozen. and he was wrapped in newspaper, frips. And he was just like a mummy, wrapped from head to toe.

25:34All of them was wrapped. And they put him on a meat hook and hung him on a bolt on the side of my cell and said, you next, son of a bitch, you next. Was he dead? Yeah, he was dead. Of course, he was frozen. But they put him in there with everybody. He's just a tortured thing. And that didn't bother me, not much at all. I killed hogs and cows and goats. It didn't bother me. or see a man dead man. So, but when he started, his head was kind of this way, and when he started thawing out, it looked like the tears were running down his cheek. Sad, sad things, hanging dead man in a cell. And then his orphases all started opening up, and that formaldehyde went running out on the floor.

26:16Well, I got high from it, and I had visions of flying pink pigs with wings on them flying in that cell. And I knew I was in danger, so I put my face on that filthy floor. There was a half inch, I guess, under the door, and I put my lips right up under it, sucked in as much clean air as I could, and I passed out. And I woke up in the hospital with a doctor. He looked like he was really concerned. He almost had tears in his eyes. He had a respirator on me. Breathe, man, breathe. Breathe, man, breathe. And I was sick for a long time, and my wife came down and paid$17 ,000. and before morning, daylight one morning, the guard ushered me out the back door like I was escaping.

26:59So I count one of my five prison escapes, but it was a payout really and truly. It was all in on it. But they had to act like for the prosecution and all that I had escaped. So that was my introduction. So with that, I decided I had one more encounter with them down there. And then I decided I better go to find me another stomping ground. I'd found out that there was seven American DEA just in on that, and they were sent down there to stick the federalist on me and told them to stop me, that I had an Air Force of planes and a Navy of ships. That's all in part out of there, and I got pretty big then.

27:37So you were on their radar. So you probably got on their radar. Oh, yeah. They didn't know how I was getting it in, and most everybody was getting caught coming up. But I got away. I would go down there, and just at daylight, I would load up, and then I would go to the middle of Baja to a beautiful excluded goat ranch. And muskete trees, and they had a runway there that they used to all meet out of there. It's 20 miles to the nearest highway at that time. In Atlanta, there's a guy named Juan riding his fast mule, and he'd meet me, and we'd unload that marijuana. It'd be about 2 ,200, 2 ,400 pounds.

28:14I had twin beaches at that time. and he put it under the tree and I'd go into Moulet and I'd have him wash the plane, fill it up with fuel and I'd rent a room and I'd have lunch or whatever, just relax, relax, stay there in the village of Moulet and then in the afternoon, it was only a 20-minute flight back out to that ranch and I would go there and we'd load the plane back up with the marijuana and then I would take out and go west out of there and there was an island of Guadalupe 200 miles off the coast. And I would fly over that, and then I would head northwest and would be about 300 miles out from the west coast of the United States, west of San Diego, and I'd put it down low.

29:00Some of them had salt on the windshield so much I couldn't even see it. When I'd get that, I'd come up here behind the Santa Barbara Islands. They were about 4 ,000 feet tall, I believe. And I'd come up behind them. The only thing that could see me when I come up was the radar Vandenberg. but they weren't interested, and I'd go on out in the desert and unload it. And I did that for 100 times at least. Wow. Just over and over and over. So that was how I was getting it in. And I brought the price down. When I started, it was$100 a pound in California, and before the season was over, it was$60. Now, at this point, you're probably making good money, and then after these tortures and beatings, did you consider like, hey, I made some money.

29:41Maybe now's the time to go clean. Yes, I kept thinking that all the time. But I kept investing that money with thieves. I had people a lot smaller than I was. They was lawyers and such, real estate tycoons. And I bought all the land, which is now Moreno Valley. And I paid for the planning and zoning of that place. I'd be a multi-billionaire if I'd have kept that. But anyhow, I did stuff like that. So then after the last bad encounter in Mexico, I went down to Colombia, and I met up with the Medellin cartel, and then I made some serious money then.

30:41You know, here was marijuana, which, as we all know, is practically legal now, more or less in the United States and wasn't as big a deal as cocaine. And you got tortured, beat, shot at, chased by the police in at least two countries. And now you're thinking, OK, I need to make my life a little easier. You went to Colombia to be with the Medellin cartel and start bringing in a much more dangerous drug. Is this maybe a regret, or do you think this was a good decision? Oh, none of it was a good decision. It was just what happened. Yeah. You know, of course, looking back on my life, it was a stupid thing to do that stuff and get shot and put in prison.

31:28I was in prison 33 years. They gave me 35 years for marijuana here in the United States. Most of it was parole and probation, but still, they took my property, my home, my family away from me, put the children in foster care until my wife could get back here and get them. It was just a mess what they do. They kid you over a pot plant. How do you think you and your wife survive this in terms of the marriage? You know, just because we both are Christians. We have faith in God, and we love one another. And, I mean, I never loved anybody else. She hasn't either. It's just like, and I was surprised when I got life sentence down in Australia that she didn't divorce me.

32:09Even the children said, Mom, he's never coming home. He's got life. And her mom and dad, nice Christian people said, Larry, we wouldn't blame you if you divorce him. And she just said at the table, we sat there, the family, and we hold hands around the table, and I say the blessing, same blessing every day. And she said, I just could not imagine another man sitting there saying the blessing for the children here. Said, I just couldn't imagine it. That was sweet of her. So she's the heroine of this family by staying with me. And she stuck with me. We got, I guess, a thousand letters we wrote back and forth in the 33 years that I was in prison.

32:46But I escaped five times, and she didn't meet me wherever it was. And we lived in Argentina and Brazil and France, Spain, South Africa. And then I'd get caught, do it again or something. So that was a real love affair. and she's writing her memoir. And when I was working with Apple, the writers wanted her to write, she calls it The Convict's Wife. And I hope she finishes it and gets it published. I hope so too. And she could come on this podcast afterwards. And so you're in Columbia and you decide to meet the Medellin cartel and presumably Pablo Escobar or people associated with him. Like, what happened then?

33:29How did you get started with, and what kind of money were you making with the cocaine runs? Start off when we went down there looking for pot. I had a DC-3 in 1981, and I was over the Amazon down in the FARC area. I landed at the strip, and two jets came down. I was eating some boiled chicken under a tree, and I'm like, oh, fuel. And they come in with a machine gun just tearing up that airstrip right there. Oh, baby. Well, I jumped in my airplane because at that time they had never shot anybody down. And I took off cold. I don't know if you know what a DC-3 is, but it's a big airplane. And a 105-foot wingspan.

34:11It carried, I believe, 45 passengers, 42 passengers. So it's big enough. So I took off, and they swarmed on me. And the cannons roared up under me, and I pushed it over right down close to the jungle so they couldn't get under me. and they'd come right upside of my face and two young pilots, one on each side with their jets and they're trying to take me to go to the Ovincentia military base and I wouldn't go. So I'd taken off and on those planes, you had to put big pins in the struts, the hydraulic struts, so that if they collapse, it wouldn't fall. So I'd left those pins in so I couldn't get my wheels up, so I wouldn't make it any time.

34:52There was a big, big pasture ahead of me and I thought, I'll land this thing on. He had a truck as big as a semi-truck on it. And I landed, and boy, that bounced across that, and I got out and took the pins out. Well, anyhow, unbeknownst to me, they was announcing this on the radio all over the world. I was like O.J. LaFar O.J. This crew had just been shot down by the Colombian jets. This is the first plane shot down on Reagan's war on drugs. I had friends here that heard it. And anyhow, I took off, and then they really did. One of the planes had to go away and get fuel, I guess, and the other one just tore the tail up.

35:32He tore the wing nearly off right back to me. He didn't shoot me, thank goodness. And I went into a thunderstorm to get away and stalled it and spiraled down and got away from him. And then I said, I'm going back and get that load. And I was going over the jungle, and I came along the river Guarviare. and there was a tall bank there, like it's 20 feet up, and grass for miles. And I said, I'll make me a runway. So I'd go and I'd put the plane and big tires down. I went five or six times. It looked like a runway. And I said, all right, I'm going to put it down this time. And so right when it got almost stopped, I thought the copilot had his feet on the brakes.

36:12I said, get your feet off the brakes. I don't have them on it. And I knew what had happened. It was a hard crust, but underneath it was mud. And that big plane, it's 30 tons. It fell through. And when it did, it just did a handstand. Just come right up, just right up with the tail standing straight up in the big engines. Oh, they're huge radios. It was holding that thing off from killing me. And the whole nose, I fell in between the seats. It just crushed right into me. And when it stopped, the escape hatch was right over me. I just stepped out and got my satchel. Well, I was 11 days in the jungle.

36:49I tell about other fellas in there. They went on down the road and went straight in prison. But I stayed in the jungle for 11 days, and my wife heard me. I was in a dugout canoe with an Aboriginal man, and she said she heard me say she was taking a shower, that I said, I'm all right, Marty, I'm all right. I kept saying it to her, so she thought I was dead. and so I finally came to, after 11 days, I came to a place. I wanted to, where's the airplanes? Loma Linda, Loma Linda. I said, where is it? It's Leo, far. I went about 300 miles and finally got to Loma Linda and it looked like Hawaii, World War II, shiplap boards and buildings and airplanes.

37:32What in the world? And I went in, a pretty lady, how did you get here? I'm like, what is this place? You don't know. This is Loma Linda, headquarters for Missionary Aviation Fellowship for the Amazon. They put me in a cabin with a redhead electrician from Tarts, California, and I'd worked for the same electrical company that he did. And boy, he was on fire for the Lord. So the next day, they flew me out. They flew me to the Vincenzo military base, and a military policeman took my satchel out of the airplane. And quite a job getting to Bogota and getting a stamp in my passport. That was another chapter.

38:11So with that, I thought, I went back down, and I was trying to get hooked up. The fellow that hooked me up with that load said, I got something better for you. So we flew to Medellin and went to a high-rise building right downtown, and that was so beautiful. Medellin, Columbia, green, I mean, emerald, and that place, that carpet, and had a guy there, ugly man. like Winston Churchill, somewhat ugly Winston Churchill. And that man spoke every language you could think of. He was brilliant. Fernando Cordero. And he was drunk. But he was a one-ton cocaine ship. And he sent me to his wife and said, she takes care of it.

38:56So we went over to her places in the country club. What a nice house. And she was so nice. And she said, listen, he'll sober up one time. And he's got plenty of work as a pilot. I was in Belief, and she called and says they're having a birthday party over on the Pacific Ocean. So we have, I believe, 15 miles of beachfront property over there. And we have a place, and says we were invited to his birthday, and everybody in the country that's of any consequence will be there. So I called a commercial flight in Panama, and then they picked me up in Panama and took me to Medellin. Then we was on an airline.

39:31They put us in airlines, these little British shorts. I guess they care about 30, 40 people. And they flew over. And that thing was about as far away from anywhere you could ever get. It was south of Panama, I guess, maybe 100 miles, just jungle. And when we landed, there was airplanes up on their side and bulldozers, million-dollar ones with the exhaust pipe off, where they made that runway. That's where they was loading ships and bringing the DC-6s and 7s in there to load these ships and planes out of there. I was just, so I was on that airplane, and I met a young couple, a beautiful young couple, and Mario Matilda.

40:12So she spoke perfect English, and he was a handsome fellow. And so we kind of made friends coming over on the flight. And then when I got off the plane, there was a log house there right on the river, and a river flowing fast coming by and bringing mud and clay. and then it was going into the ocean and the ocean turned red and the beach was kind of red from it. And I just pulled my shoes off and was walking down the beach and a young woman, and she had inexpensive clothes, I will say, very nice, but she looked like a poor person that come from the barrios. And she was kind of cute and frail and just innocent.

40:56The way she's talking to me and just jabbering away in Spanish and we was walking along by the water. And I met Mario and Matilda. And Matilda said, Roger, Mario says that you're walking with the girlfriend of the most vicious killer in Colombia. He suggests you get away from her. Who was he referring to? Pardon? Who was he referring to? Who was the most vicious killer? Her name was Jaime Ordonez. He had got caught with a ton of coke, and he killed 16 judges. So I went on, and then I was in the bunkhouse that night. and I stand there talking to some men. Can I ask, when you're talking to these people and they say, what do you do, do you say, oh, I'm here to...

41:39I'm a pilot looking for work at that place like that. All right, yeah. Everybody was walking around with their bags of cocaine. Try mine, try mine. It was just the cocaine. About 400 people. They had judges there, police chiefs from every city. They had stand-up comedians. I mean, it was a rock concert. That woman flew right into me. That man had shoved that one. Oh, baby. Worst killer at Columbia. Anyway, his old fella. And he was drunk, and they got around him and stopped him. And so I was thankful for that. But then after the next day, the, oh, it was going on, I don't know, for a day or two.

42:19And then the helicopters, those million-dollar helicopters, and the planes flew away and left us poor folks there. I got me a plate of food, and I went around behind the place and laying under a shade tree, reading the book MMK, The Far Pavilions. And the blood splattered all on me and on the book. And I quit rolling. And oh, what did happen? And I quit rolling. I looked, and there was a dog, a white dog with a black face, a black eye around him like the little rascals used to have. And he had been shot right in the head, and he would turn his somersets, and that blood was what flew on me. but there was a young black man there, and he had been shot right in the femoral artery in his leg, and he was really bleeding.

43:01And there was a white man there, a brown man, and he had the pistol, and that young black man took that pistol right out of his hand, wham, and put it right between his eyes and went click, click, click, click. It was only two bullets in that gun. And so the man walking on backwards in Spanish, It's the best thing. I said, I'm a doctor. I can stop the blood. Let me help you because I was a firefighter and I took all kinds of first aid. Of course I could have done it. He put that gun at me and I didn't want it going click, click, click. So he went on back down there and died. And then the people back in that village up under those trees back in the back, oh, la, la, la, la, la, all kind of crying and screaming.

43:42And we had a generator. They had a generator there and had lights. And that night the lights went out and the natives went crazy. and we thought it was going to kill us. Yeah, Matilda had a little pistol, a little.32, and I stayed close to her. And the next morning, we stayed all night long buggy. We put some gasoline and diesel in some little cans and put a wick in it and had some kind of little smudgy blow, and all of us stayed together in a wake. And those people were afraid to come in with the machetes and just kill all of us. It was over a wrench that had been gone missing, and the guy accused the black man of stealing it and whatever.

44:20It was all over a$1 wrench. Oh, my gosh. The next morning there was cans and limbs and stuff all over the runway and three soldiers was there and they were very mean to us. Anyhow, that's the whole thing in my book. But with that, I went back to Medellin with Arcali, maybe Medellin at the time and on the same plot with Mario Matilda and he took me to Envigada and went up we went to one of those guard gates was up two guys with guns went on a little road around about half a mile up through the bromeliads and old trees and we come up to I'm going to say old because everything was old that house was 200 or 300 years old and out in front of it was maybe 40 men working like men with their fedoras on, they were waiting to see El Jefe.

45:13So we just ushered right in. And it had been a real, it wasn't a mansion, but it had been a real nice place. It's where they called Finkers. They're just outside of town where they'd have a few acres. And that was somebody rich had built that thing a long time ago. And when we went in, the floor was uneven. The house, the earth had moved. And it was so polished that you could see yourself in it. There was a hole in it. And a real pretty lady says, be careful with the hole. He didn't fix, I mean, just because he left it natural. And, oh, she was gorgeous. I told her, drop-dead gorgeous gal. And she introduced me, went right in to see some.

45:50She introduced me to Jorge Ochoa. Opened the door, and there he was sitting there, and he got up, shook in. He spoke a little English, so we got by with that. And he had 12 telephones on his desk. He had a big desk and no telephones. And he said, what's the old telephone? You look like you're in business. He says, oh, yes, this is from my dealer in New York, and this is San Francisco, and this is Seattle, and this is Chicago. When they ring, I know who I'm talking to. So he asked me what kind of planes I had, and I told him I had a DC-3, and I had a turbojet, aero commander, and a B-shaped team.

46:26I said, I can haul anything you got. He asked me about my trips, how many I had. I told him I had over 100 trips across the border. So he said, well, I have all the work. We have all the work that you can do, and we pay$5 ,000 a kilo. and I said, how much you put in there? He said, 300, 500 kilos. I figured that's one and a half million, two and a half million dollars for an eight-hour flight. I was anxious to go to work. They said, let me introduce you to my compadre. So the pretty woman went next door, and in came Pablo Escobar, khaki pants, plaid shirt, and the guy about my side shook hands.

47:00He didn't speak any English, but we got along well, and he said to ask me the same questions that Jorge had asked, and he said, we have all the work you can do. I said, all right. I went and got my plane and went to work. That's how I met Pablo Escobar.

47:30The first flight that you made for him, were you a little nervous? Was it exciting? Like, because of the money? Did everything go off without a hitch that first flight? And no, it didn't. I came in there with a little air commander, a turboprop. It's got small wheels, and it's fast, like a little jet. And I landed at a banana plantation, and the runway was clay. It was just almost standing water, not quite. And so we loaded up, and when we took off, the clay stuck to those tires and filled the wheel well up. I mean, just filled it up. It stuck up there like a wash nest. And I couldn't get the tires up, couldn't get the gear up.

48:12There was nowhere for it to go. It was heavy. So they had this guy, Ronaldo. Oh, he was an ugly man. I mean, full-on ugly. And he had a Mac-10, little Mac-10 pistol, and he sat back on the load in the back. And I told him, we've got to stop and get this. Well, go back. I said, no, we'll be in the same shape we're in. and we can't go there. We've got to go somewhere. But I know a place in Belief that I used to refuel my marijuana at a big ranch. No, no, Louisiana, because I told them we was going to Louisiana. And I said, well, no, we can't make it to Louisiana. We'll fall in the ocean. Oh, I'll kill you if you don't go.

48:52He put the gun right up in my head. No, Louisiana. I said, well, shoot, fool. You're going to die, too. I knew you wasn't going to shoot. So I landed at the farm there in the ranch near Orange Walk of Belief. And the boy came out and washed the plane clean. The wheel wells out. And we sat on the veranda. I remember we had a real chicken skew. And old Mr. Carter, he treated us good. This guy was happy with his death now. He looked there. He's all right. So we went on up, and I landed at a place that Barry had found for me. And Barry unloaded it. Is this Barry Seal? Barry Seal. Okay, we'll get to him later.

49:30Yeah. So that fellow met Barry, and I don't know where Barry took him to, but they went on to do whatever was to be done with the load. So that's the guy that came and killed Barry later, a couple of years later. And he just got out of prison a couple of months ago. I guess he spent 40 years in there, 42 years. Oh, my gosh. And he got out. He was still an ugly, skinny man. He had a woman, had a backside you'd measure with an axe. It's a cartoon coming out of that Angola prison there in Louisiana. So, yeah. Now, do you ever get worried he's going to try to find you? No reason for me. I didn't do nothing.

50:08I didn't tell on anybody, so ain't nobody. I'm their golden boy. Yeah, yeah. They look after me. So, basically, you bring it up to Louisiana, and then Barry and whoever else distributes it to all the dealers around the country. Well, Barry didn't. Barry would just, he knew a fellow with a runway. And he said, once you land here, I can take care of you here. Later on, I found out that he was paying Bill Clinton$50 ,000 every time the wheels touched the ground. And did Bill Clinton know what it was for that this guy? I'm sure he didn't. He didn't inhale either. Right. Right. I see what you're saying.

50:45And this began the, you would just do this. The cocaine years, yes. From Columbia to, was this in Mena, Arkansas that you were landing or were you landing in Louisiana? Both. Okay. Then that was Barry's deal. I had a spot in Louisiana. So I didn't hold that many loads. I think I did seven loads, and I got above the cloud, above the fog one night, and I couldn't get down. And it scared me bad. I mean, anybody can get scared to think they're fixing to die for sure. Yeah. And I didn't have enough gas to get to Houston or where I might have got to Houston, but it wouldn't help. but wherever it was fogged in from Chicago to Miami.

51:28So I didn't know what to do. So I just came down the glide slope in New Orleans International Runway, straight out midnight. With all this cocaine. Blind, blind, zero, zero, and absolutely crashed on that runway, bounced down that sucker. I couldn't see anything. You had all this cocaine in the gravel. Pardon? You had all this cocaine in the plane. Yeah, it loaded to the chunk of black foot. and I sat there off to the side of that runway. I walked as a mile one way and while the other, I knew there was nothing. We got a little radio that just says, airport's closed, you know, zero, zero visibility.

52:05So I was a man. I didn't know what to do. You're sitting on the end and off the runway all night long or the next morning, daylight came and still nothing. You couldn't even see far. It was one light to the other, 200 feet. And then you could see it wasn't thick. It just was there on the ground. And I was afraid like a rental car cop or whatever was going to come down that runway and catch me, just anything. I was just like nervous. Wow, I'm fixing to get a life sentence here. If I get caught in this, it'll surely give you life for that. So when it broke up just a little bit, I had an hour or so of fuel.

52:44I took off. I just couldn't sit there no longer. And I just zipped. just the time I pulled back on it, I was back in the sunshine. And I went across, and I was at St. Timothy Aviation, just across Lake Pontchartrain. And I circled, and I could see the runway. It's 3 ,000-foot paved. And Harvey was there, and I had a walkie-talkie, and I talked to him. He said, you can't see anything down the runway, but you can see it straight down. Well, I'm about to have some red flashing light for fuel. So I just come over and come back around and saw it and dove for it. And I got right, I landed perfectly, and I crawled up there, and baby, I had said, that's it.

53:22I'm giving up these guns. I got enough money. I ain't going to do this no more. Yeah, seven loads. That's over$10 million for you. Yeah, that's what I had in the cash there. I told the boy Lito was one that would always take the product in Miami, a really nice fellow. They killed him, too. So I told him, I'm not going to do it anymore. Oh, Roger, no, no. See, they was making money by taking and distributing it for them. Because every bag would have a, they were duffel bags and they were locked. They would be, I think, 20 kilos in it, 24 kilos, whatever. Each one of them would have three rattlesnakes or three horns or some brand on it.

54:00And those belonged to different people. What had happened when Ochoa and four others got together and they said, we're going to make an insurance company. So they told the people of Columbia, quit killing each other. 10 ,000 people were killed every year shooting each other. One of them would give somebody 40 kilos and say, take it to New Jersey or wherever it'd go. And the fellow in New Jersey would be looking, oh, looky, here's someone busted in North Carolina. That was yours coming up. Bang, bang, bang. They were just cheating and stealing. So he made the deal that, all of them did, but I believe Jorge Ochoa masterminded, that we will insure your product.

54:42It's worth$10 ,000 a kilo in Colombia. If it gets busted anywhere from the time you give it to us until it gets to your man, wherever you send it, we will replace it in Colombia. Well, they just got all the pot, all the cocaine in three countries piled up on them. They couldn't move it fast enough. They just bring it out of Peru to have the old chores bring it up. Somebody said they had 100 tons to lose. Well, when I'd go in, I just said, When you want me to come back, we waiting on you, Senor. I could have went every day and made$2.5 million. As fast as you could. My problem with buying cars, I'd buy cars.

55:23I'd buy like six cars a week. And I'd put air shocks to hold them up level, fill the trunk up, new hoses, new tires that wouldn't go flat. And in big cars, there would be big Mercury's, Marquis, and Ford LTDs. and just drive those. I said, I'd give it to the Clemmons. I'd park it in a hotel and show them where it was. And I said, you owe me$5 ,000 for that car. Oh, no. I said, I don't ever want to see it again after it's been to your house. Oh, no, looking at your house, buddy. Anyway, they got love in my cars. They had a great idea. I said, you can send it to New York. All the paperwork's right above the sun visor.

56:03So, ain't no telling how many cars. I had two people buying and fixing up cars for me up in Orlando. And so I got, so when he said, Roger, please, and I said, do you know anybody? So I went to see Barry Seale and said, Barry, would you like a job flying? Yeah, so he come out to California and I had him take me up flying. He rung me out until I was sick. I'm sorry, I asked him. He's like one of them Blue Angel pilots. I'm just a transport guy. So anyway, Barry started flying and he would fly. I mean, he would go one time right after that, but he wanted to be paid first. So I paid him a million dollars a trip.

56:43And if he wasn't paid, boy, he would barely ache and moan and groan. Not serious, but almost in fun, you know. And so I remember one time I got him a million dollars in a box and made it like a gift. And it opened it up. I was in the grocery store or drugstore, and I saw these Stay Free mini pads, these Tampax. and I put that on top of it, right on top of the money. He thought that was so funny that he made a spot on his mantelpiece with Stay Free Mini Pads. And so he had lots of humor. So he's now doing these runs and he's doing it every day. He's making millions of dollars a day. A million dollars.

57:26And you're doing well too because you're you know... I was making a million and a half. so I hired another guy out of California Jerry Wills and so I had two airlines running and I bought them three or four of those Panthers wonderful airplanes I didn't ever know they'd go that far but they sure will and carry a load so I had them go in and they didn't know who each other was but the Colombians were sticking each other on them to make them go on the other guy did two loads last week or whatever and I had the money just piling up on me. And we had a lovely lady. I guess he was Ken DeOchoa. Her name was Marta Ochoa.

58:09And she had a little boy about seven years old. And I'd meet her every Wednesday at the Rusty Pelican Inn in Miami out on Key Biscayne. And she would come with a uniform, a nurse's uniform with a stethoscope in her pocket. And we'd go over the accounts of what they owed me. And so I remember one night, we sat there over our little drinks and I said, you owe me$7.5 million. I'm not going again until I get paid now. Giddy-gird. No, Roger, only$7 million. I'm bull, now it's$7.5 million, so we had a little tough about it. She's thinking, she said, remember Monday night when Lito met you or actually met you at such-and-such of the Holiday Inn and he was in the yellow Cadillac and he gave you two boxes?

58:58That was a half a million. Oh, no, I forgot that, Martha. I'm so sorry. So that's how much money was coming in. You forget a half million dollars somebody gives you. So I thought that was worth telling. Anyhow, she lets Grisaldo have some Coke, I think 200 kilos, and Grisaldo killed her and garroted her. Had the man garroted her and killed a little boy, and they wrapped him in plastic and put him in a canal there. Oh, I hate that woman. That was such a beautiful lady. Oh, she was just beautiful. Just her spirit, her soul were beautiful. Marta Uchoa. That was how it was going. And then, I mean, after that, I mean, at some point, are you ever saying, like, here you've got 10 million, 20 million.

59:43At some point, and this is a big question for everybody who makes money, like, at some point you say, okay, look, this is really risky in a lot of ways. My life, other people's lives, prison. I should just stop. I got my family. we got enough. I know it's really hard to say that, but why is that really hard to think or say? Well, I've answered it like this before. If you was in Las Vegas and you was on a slot machine that was putting out gold coins, gold cougar ends, and you got five watermelons and you got the handle down and it's just flowing them out on the floor and you got two guys shoveling them up, putting them in bags, when would you turn that handle loose?

1:00:25Because you know you're never going to get that again. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, that's a good question. You always say, okay, one more time. I did quit. And right after that, I got arrested and put a marijuana charges. Everybody I knew took testimony against me. They charged me with continuing criminal enterprise. It carries life in prison for possession of marijuana. I was number 41 to ever be charged with that terrible crime in the United States. And John Gotti was number 42. I gave up all I had. You weren't able to kind of like long bearer? You weren't able to sneak away anything? Not much, but we had a few coins.

1:01:08I had the most expensive coin in the world. I had a Brasher to Bloom. It's worth$10 million now. Of course, my wife had to sell it while I was in prison. I was in prison. I'm 33 years now. It's a long time to be gone. Yeah. And she raised the children. And when I got out of prison for the marijuana, I didn't stay in there but about two and a half years. The old judge gave me 30 years of parole, special parole. So when I got out, I just got home and I was having breakfast. And there was Ronald Reagan's blue eyes right on the television. And he said, we have absolute proof that the communist Sandinista government is in the cocaine running business.

1:01:50and there's one of my old airplanes sitting on the runway, bailed in. And I thought, Barry has done it. So that was when that Oliver North found out about it and he blew the whistle. It was messing up his operation there with the war that was going on.

1:02:20Thank you.

1:02:25so the phone rang and barry said roger i'm coming out tonight i'll be be there at nine o 'clock and a little French restaurant there in Santa Barbara. I forget what it was. So I walked in. I was nervous. I knew he was already talking. I'd heard that he might have switched. And so I went in, and he was at the back of the restaurant, leaned up the back, and I walked up to him. I said, Barry, are you wired? He said, no. I said, well, I'm not going to say anything. I says, the EAsian? He said, all of them. There was about 30 people in 20, 30 people in there, leather shirts in their johns, and you could see them under there, all young men and women.

1:03:07So I sat down there, and he started telling me what had happened, how that he was getting three life sentences. I just couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. I got out on bail, and I went up to see Edward Meese, Attorney General of the United States in Washington, and I told him we're bringing in tons of cocaine. He didn't believe me and run me out, and I had to go back the next day. And so he hooked me up with this cellar right over here, Jake Jacobson. And we went down and got one and a half tons. And I came back to Nicaragua and I billeted in there. And I called and they told him to ask Pablo to bring another plane up.

1:03:43So he flew up with another one. You can see it. It's a good book called The Kings of Cocaine. And it got pictures of Pablo and Barry and all of them. Barry took over 1 ,000 photographs inside the airplane and out. He said you could hear the camera click and click and click. They had got killed so it wouldn't even have been like killing a mosquito if they had found out what they were doing there, that agent. Anyhow, the agent came over and says, you know, you can come tomorrow and testify with Barry before a grand jury. The only place you're ever going to see your family again is in a federal penitentiary visiting room.

1:04:18I said, I believe I'll. He said, you can come down first class with Mari tomorrow. I'll take you down tonight and change. I said, I believe I'll go first class. So I went down with Mari, and I thought, what in the world can I do? I just got out of prison. What on earth can I do? I can't. I'm not a snitch, but maybe I can say something. So I went to see a lawyer. It's supposed to be the best one in town, but his wife, his partner, had just got blown out of his shoes for representing a snitch. I didn't know that. So the guy was on the treadmill. When I told him the story, he said, well, you know, I represent you for$600 ,000, but I don't talk for snitches.

1:04:56I said, I'm not a snitch. He said, well, that's what you're talking about. He said, you go in that grand jury and you tell them everything you know and you leave one thing out. They'll convict you of everything you've said. You've got to tell them everything. He said, it's like being pregnant. You either are or you're not. I said, well, I'm not. He said, well, I went to see another lawyer and he told me about the same thing. I said, well, I can't do that. So that night I went to Lefesto Royal Restaurant there in Carl Gables, and Barry knew I liked that. So him and his wife, Debbie, came in. She was looking good, and we had dessert together.

1:05:27And when it was over, I hugged Barry and I kissed him on the cheek. I said, dear friend, they're going to kill you. Oh, no, bop, bop, bop, bop. Well, I took Mario and the children, and I fled to Brazil. And a few months later, the same guy that was on that first load of sassins just absolutely murdered him, shot him 50 times, I guess, in the parking lot. When he pulled in, the judge gave him six months in a halfway house. And the prosecution and the lawyers and all said, that's a death sentence. They said he should have thought of that before he did this. So the judge killed him, 100%. And I guess they have to kill him to kind of not only prevent him from snitching more, but to show an example, too, that this is what happens if you do that.

1:06:15But they killed him, keep him telling on them. They was looking after their own eye. And plus, I would have got a life sentence too. So I was in Brazil, and when I got the message, I told Mari and Miriam, and they just cried. And I was sad too, my friend did, but I don't have a life sentence hanging over me anymore. So when they did catch me later on, they caught me in Spain. They took me to expedition, double expedition to the United States and to Germany. The United States put some little charge on me that wasn't real, but they wanted me for that 25-year special parole. They could make me do it all.

1:06:55I was in the courtroom. The courtroom was full. It was up on the third or fourth floor, and it had full guards. I'd got away from the Spanish police three times already, so they had me handcuffed like this, and the leg irons on, but they had to take that off and put the handcuffs in front of me. And I thought, oh, boy. And he took the leg irons off to go to court, and four of them standing behind me, four guards. And I asked the lawyer, how high are we? And he said, you'll kill yourself. And I said, I'm dead anyway. Two of them went to smoke or pee or whatever it was, and I bound across that courtroom and jumped on the stenographer's desk.

1:07:30She was nine months pregnant. She screamed and slid back, and I must have been 150 people in that courtroom. you could hear a big sucking sound. And I kicked that window out of the courtroom and jumped. I was on the ledge. And before those guards could come across, and I jumped out. And I was 31 feet from the bottom of that ledge to the top of the car that I jumped on. It was parked. And this roof of that car went to the ground. Mario had to pay$4 ,000 for that old car. And I got out handcuffed and ran and got away. And the next day, the newspaper said, Spider-Man escapes. Oh, my gosh. How do you survive, like, a 31-foot jump onto a car?

1:08:13Yeah, well, I had jumped into those nets when I was on the fire department. So I landed feet and butt that way. It cushioned the load right in the middle of the top of that big car. But it did run on down to the—I went to the drive head. It was a big thud. And then how do you know which direction to run? Like, obviously, they're all going to pull out. I just ran either way. I got about a mile away, and a police car came up behind me, and a young policeman got out, and he hit me in the back with a shotgun. I still got a dead spot in my back where he hit me. So they put me in jail, and they sent me up to Germany, to Lubeck, Germany, and I hired a German captain.

1:08:52I bought a ship in Holland, and we hauled 20 ton loads of ash and marijuana out of Thailand. And I paid him, and he went home. I gave him$400 ,000. He went home, bought him a new BMW and a long cigar, and he was bragging. And they came, arrested him, and found that$400 ,000. And they said, if you'll tell us who'll give you this money, you'll be on by Christmas. But he didn't tell them which Christmas. He got seven years from his own confession. And, of course, when he told, he couldn't back out because there was a crew on. There was a Polish crew. And I said, we'll bring every one of those 12 crewmen, and they'll testify against you.

1:09:27So that's what they would take. I'd never been to Germany, never made a phone call, never did anything in Germany. I said, how in the world am I being extradited to Germany? So they loaded me up on a military plane after a year and a half in that Spanish prison. Oh, I mean, it was rough. And flew me to Lubeck, Germany, and put me in the bottom of the prison. I mean, underneath it, kept me there four months, incommunicado. So I couldn't talk to anybody. So I had to plead guilty. I pled guilty to using a German citizen in an international crime. If you rob a bank in Argentina with a German citizen, they can convict you in Germany.

1:10:03I never heard of such a fool crying. So that's what they got me for. So I got, I believe, eight years for using a German citizen. And they put me right in there with him. That the best man went.

1:10:17So after one year, I escaped from that prison. And I went through the bars and almost all the skin on me nearly died. and jumped on top of a down from the fourth floor down on top of a guard tower. I mean, there were some bad people, and there was a guard tower every 100 feet or so. They'd shoot to kill you. And so I got away from there and got to Holland. How did you avoid getting shot at? Okay, I'll tell you about the escape there in Germany. When I was coming close to the end of my sentence in Germany, I got a job cleaning the offices. Well, you had a door that you went in. And I mean, that thing was like a blank vault where you went through that.

1:10:57So I'm not now in the worst part. But it was no sweetheart where you went into it full on with guard towers and razor wire and a wall. I guess that wall was 15 feet high and catwalk on it and guard towers all along. But then in the entrance to the port, they call it Sally Port, was a guard tower. And it was inside the office and it was kind of around like a silo on top of it. and the guy sat there with a, and I understand that he had a machine gun, and it took a few seconds for that glass to open, it bulletproof glass there, because there were some bad people from the Red Brigade there in Italy.

1:11:36There were some top-notch criminals in there. I went to the hospital for something. I kept thinking that I might escape from the hospital, so I kept having things wrong with me. They stuck a camera up my butt and said, your intestines are fine, go home, go back. And on the way back, it was raining, and I saw above the sally port all that razor wire that would just usually just gobs of it up there was missing. They were putting another wall up to join right there to the prison to make it larger. And they had huge piles of sand. I guess they were 20 feet tall where an excavator had piled it up just like sand.

1:12:19And that was one of them was just right out from that. and the wire was gone and I thought there is a way out of here and it was just pouring down rain. So I got somebody to give him a book of stamps to get me a mop. No, I wanted a jump rope and I had a mop and he got a rope and I told him I was going to play jump rope. He got a good drop rope and I cut that rope in two and I cut us, they had heavy mops. cut that in two and put one of the ropes on each one of those things and put that down my pants. And when I went in, I cleaned the lawyer's office and I had 20 minutes because the guard went with the guy that went into the computer room.

1:13:01And when I went in there, I tore the curtains off the window and jumped up on the table and there was bars, but they were not like real thick bars. They were flat bars and they looked like music notes to make it pretty in the lawyer's office. But they were strong, but you could get a little bit. So I took that rope and tied the bowling on it and put that mop handle in, turned it, turned it, turned it, and boy, them bars came right together. I stuck that one down, and it came loose and knocked the knuckles off my hand. I nearly peed my pants. I jumped down. I mean, I couldn't even harder breathe.

1:13:36It hit my hands so hard. Wow. Next time I got it stuck, and then I pulled the other one apart, and I could get through. But then my head went right through, but my chest is big and it wouldn't go through, so I pulled my shirt off. And then I got going and got right about here with those bars, and I'm going like this, and I can't get any further, and I have to let all the air out, all the air out, all the air out, and I still don't, and I could just imagine my head's been, rain just pulling on me. And finally I get scooping like this, and it catches a little, it just took all the skin off my chest, just skinned me.

1:14:15And when it got to my stomach, I was all right, but then the guards caught my belt, and my imp was too big to come through, so I had to undo my britches, and they fell off inside. And then I fell out six feet in the ground in the section of the prison there where they had the nets for soccer. Well, at that, there was a little recess in the wall, and I guess it was about four or five feet, and on that whole side was scaffolding up four floors. and beyond that was a little courtyard and then the guard towers and the wall. Well, I put my hands on the bricks on this side and the scaffolding on that side and I went up four floors where that guard couldn't see me.

1:14:59And when I got up on top, I was above the guard towers. And my wife had slipped me$200 and I had that in my shoe. I chewed it down until it was just flat. And so I laid out up there, and I have asthma, and I was wheezing so loud, I couldn't catch my breath. I was bleeding, skint. And I crawled down to the end, 200 feet down, I guess, on that black top. I mean, I always looked like shiny white up on top of that black roof, but they was looking up from the guard towers. and I got right above the Sally Port where the guard, half of a guard tower was sticking out. It's kind of like a silo. And I lay down there and I saw a guard coming with his wife and a little boy.

1:15:49And it was raining so hard until they had an umbrella up and it had, it was a double umbrella. I've never seen a double umbrella. It was big. And that little boy was between them, about three years old. And when she took him to the door, she went to go back. And when she got 20, 30-yard feet out there in front of it, I jumped and hit the top of that guard tower. Bam! He went, scared. And I went over that wall and hit, I mean, for a long way. I don't know how far I was in the air, but it's not little. And I hit the side of that sand bank, just like a skier would. And I went up to my knees in that sand.

1:16:27and it went down the side, and I ran straight towards that woman, the little boy, so they couldn't shoot me. And then I got in front of them, and I just, I mean, it's the nicest feeling in the world to escape from a place like that. That thing was a fortress. I'm just getting it. I mean, I am. I must have had a big smile on my face as I'm going down there. And I come around the corner, and it's downhill, and be, be, be, blam, blam, blam. I look behind me, and that woman is tearing her car up. She's up on the sidewalk trying to run over me, and she's knocking over the parking meters. Well, I jumped behind some car, and she has to swerve out, and she knocked her front fender plumb off.

1:17:07And she's looking at me like with a devil face, and that little boy's hanging on the front seat. I thought, she is crazy. I can't go any further this way. So there was a wall there and cement, and I jumped up to draw across it, and it had beer bottles broken all in the top of it. and I cut my hands and my arms up something crocious going over that wall, and I hit the other side of it, and my feet went nearly up to the knees in mud. There was a garden, and they plowed that stuff, and it rained in like that. My shoes and all came off. I lost that$200, and here I am flopping across that place. Anyway, I get quite a story how I get on, and I get to Holland.

1:17:48That's an egg of a journey that I made. wow so that's you should have been a stuntman in hollywood did it for myself that would have been a career for you that would have been a career for you oh i could have been yes i reckon so yeah do you think after all this like like okay so marrow we can argue all about marijuana is one thing cocaine is another thing but cocaine has created a lot of you know problems in in society and so on and And yes, a lot of higher political figures have been involved throughout the decades. But do you ever have some regrets about that choice specifically, like running cocaine and all the potential misery that might have caused?

1:18:32Listen, if I hurt anybody, I'm sorry of it. But let me just tell you a little about cocaine. For many, many years, it was a non-narcotic controlled substance. Yeah, like Sigmund Freud was a big user. There's a lot of famous users in history. It just, until the CIA made crack and put it in every city in America, nobody cared much about it. Read the book, The Big White Lie, the CIA and the Crack Cocaine Epidemic. They invented it and put it in every city in the black section of town. How many people killed? Yeah, no, I know. I interviewed once Freeway Rick Ross, who was the biggest crack dealer at the time.

1:19:18He didn't know it was all being funded by the CIA and eventually spent a lot of time in jail. But yeah, and then the Iran-Contra stuff, like a lot of people have forgotten that that's happened. But that was a pretty big crime, all the way up to either the president or the vice president. Like, we don't really know who, but it went to the top. Yeah. You know it did. Yeah. Absolutely. What was that? Like they were making money for the Sandinistas, but they were trading hostages with Iran. What was the Iran connection there? I really don't know. I don't know. It was like you'd have to tie yourself into a pretzel to understand that one.

1:19:53Yeah. But there was some big money flowing, and it was flowing both ways. Talking about Barry, I mean, the CIA was unloading Barry up there, some of his old cronies. and they justified it by putting a few guns in his plane or some bullets. Can you imagine running a war with a little twin-engine airplane, taking a few guns? That ain't nothing. That ain't even a pea shooter. That's a screenshot. Yeah. Or less. So, no, it was a scam. It was in the cocaine business, of course. There's no money in guns, particularly not that kind of guns. And so, like, was it that one scene in the movie American Made where at the end where Barry Seale says, Barry Seale says, you know, here's what's going to happen.

1:20:40They're going to, you're going to get a call from the governor in a few minutes and you're going to let me free. And they all laughed at him, but then it happened. Do you think that seems true? I know it was true. And he called the president of the United States, George Bush Sr. He said, hey, Barry, how you doing? It's not Barry, you know, Barry's been killed. He's been killed by a click. Wow. Of course it would. Well, let me just tell you what that gentleman did. I believe the book called The Hothouse, the pilot that flew George Bush three times to see the Ayatollah in Paris while the hostages were held in Iran and tell them do not release those hostages under any circumstance until after the election.

1:21:29451 hostages were released. Wait, I don't, I've been 451 days. I don't, anyhow, they were released the day after Jimmy Carter lost the election and George Bush went in. They were holding him politically to hurt Jimmy Carter, a wonderful man. Yeah. Who was George Bush? He was the boss of the CIA. That's right. Like, people forget that. Like, yes, he was vice president and president, but he got to be vice president because he had been the director of the CIA under, I guess, Nixon. Absolutely. And he did some terrible things. Terrible. Wars all over the world because of what they did. They can do whatever they want to.

1:22:14Whatever money they spend is never even accounted for under anything. There's no record of it. They have unlimited money. And now with all these experiences and, you know, you spend so much time in prison, but you've been able to kind of, like you said, and maintain the relationship with your wife. You've met all these people who were in the trade, including up to Pavel Escobar. It's an odd question, but what is the kindest thing one of these evil people has ever done to you? What's the kindest thing? How do memories think kind? Like, ask them. The ones that didn't pay me, you remember? No, they didn't do anything.

1:22:58And I worked for those people. just like a truck driver. That's what I was. And you go from California to New York with your truck, and you come here to this office, and you load up, and you go, and of course he owns it, and you might shake hands with him, but I wasn't in bed with him. I spent a weekend with the old children, and they were so nice. Their family was there in a big ranch, and I said, well, now, you know, sometimes$7 million is owed to me. What would happen if I go to prison? I said, we are honorable people, sir. We pay you. Well, they didn't. So I didn't, I don't see any, we had a nice time there, but to go out to dinner, but no, nobody's ever done anything.

1:23:41Not one of them stood up for me or sent my wife any money when I went to prison. Not one. That last group when I got caught, I got caught in Australia with$400 million of cocaine. They didn't pay for my lawyer. Not once to my wife, nothing. Then they started something that I was with Mitch. It's just like, how on earth could you ever face such a thing? You know, why would they say that? Did they want to have an excuse to cover up their own stupidity and their loss? They had the one brother of the man that owned it came there, and he called his buddy over to come over to help me unload this big load, and they hooked him up in front of a woman.

1:24:21They didn't have the money to – they didn't have a credit card, They hooked up with that woman working with the DEA or with the federal police to get them a credit card. I mean, it was just their stupidity. The federal police was waiting on me. It was just unbelievable. So I bring it to their attention, and they don't like it. Yeah. Well, and now, out of prison, presumably, this phase of your life is behind you, you know, flying planes, running drugs. because I'm assuming you don't do that anymore. And what's the future hold? Nobody knows what the future holds. I'm down in South Africa. I'm flying down there.

1:25:03I spend most of the year down there. I enjoy it. Why South Africa? I got friends down there, and you can live there. South Africa is the biggest kept secret on Earth. Cape Town is 25 % the price for the United States. Excellent service. Excellent food. Wonderful people. The kindest people. Everybody's sweet and nice and kind. Shopping malls full of people. And, I mean, a good salary down there is$400 or$500 a month. So I can live like a king. Well, Roger Reeves, author of Smuggler. Do you think there ever is going to be a TV series? Obviously, you would make a great movie. Yeah, no, it's a great book.

1:25:49I can't see what I'm showing you. But let's see if I can punch that. Yeah, I see it. Yeah, no, we're going to mess with you, Bob. I'm going to talk all about your book and the intro. I told you. And this thing is 100 % true. There's not a word. There's not exactly. And I got 300 or something thousand words here I wrote while I was down in Australia. I was in a cage with the silence of the lambs. And I wrote that in there. And it dot for dot, word for word, just like I wrote it. And I tell all these stories in full in there. Oh, it's a great book. And it's, it's a true history of the past, you know, 30, 40 years, 50 years of, of the drug trade.

1:26:26I mean, it's very eyeopening and I'm going to talk about the book in the intro, Roger. I really appreciate you coming on the podcast. It's such an intense story and it's really eyeopening how much we don't know about what's going on out there between government and even now like the fentanyl trade and, and big pharma and, and, you know, going all the way back to the 70s with marijuana and cocaine and everything. I'd like to put in, and you'll clip this in if you will, there's a terrible, terrible injustice in our society with the prisoners. Half the prisoners, at least half the prisoners should be released.

1:27:06All the people in there for marijuana. One state is legal, another one is not. I saw such terrible injustice before I got out. I had to go to Oklahoma for a parole here that I never got. But I'd meet one young man, usually in mental cases, and I said, where are you going? He said, I'm going to Atlanta, Georgia. I've got to go for psychiatric evaluation. I said, what did you get caught with? I got caught with two grams of methamphetamine. Why are you going to Atlanta? I don't know. They're just sending me. I said, I want to take about three months, and he's on that plane and doing this. Then I met another young man.

1:27:47Where are you from? I'm from Albany, Georgia. Well, it's close to home. Where are you going? I'm going to Los Angeles for psychiatric evaluation. What? They're sending prisoners back and forth across country. They are absolutely, if you go up here to, I don't know what the name of that prison is there, above San Bernardino up in Apple Valley. But you can see at least 30 or 40$100 ,000 vans just parked there. Nothing. I saw when I was in Lompoc Penitentiary, I saw when their fiscal year is about it, they would have earth movers come and move dirt around the prison for nothing. They don't give the prisons any better food.

1:28:28They just waste it, just absolutely ungodly waste. And a lot of those people, just so many people, it looked like that the government is in business to put people in prison, not to help them, just lock them up. They need to get these homeless people off the street and not in prison. There is something, and I hope that Mr. Trump goes in, can hear this. Open the doors and let the people go, put them to work. It's just awful what they're doing. Yeah, I mean, I hope they do reform it. And then it's always unclear, like, you know, they've privatized prisons a little bit. Like there are some companies now that set up prisons, and that doesn't really seem like a solution either.

1:29:16You know, I don't know how they're going to get out of this. They shouldn't send those people to prison for what they send them for. They just shouldn't. You used to do a crime to go to prison. Right. Not just some little chicken shit thing. Good gracious. I mean, a DEA can go under a bridge and shoot heroin with those bombs and arrest this one for having a little bit and arrest the other one for having it. And they fill up our system. I like what the French did. I just read about they caught a boat with a bunch of, I think it had 15 Brazilians on it. And I don't know how much cocaine they had on the old boat, but it was going across.

1:29:56And the French Navy stopped them. They took the cocaine and gave them a letter to give to your boss so he won't kill you. They didn't want them in the French prisons. Fifteen people for 30 years, what'd they want them for? Why? Three million more that would do the same thing if they had the offer. He's not stopping it. Stop it at the store. Stop it. People using it. Why in the world? Yeah. No, I agree with you. I think that's why your story is so important to get out there, just to show what's happened and to who and how much even our government has been complicit for 50 years or more. So it's been a horrible thing.

1:30:38I agree with you. Oh, well, thank you. I'm in Georgia, too. I live in Atlanta. All right. So go Georgia. I'll tell you a joke. Did you hear about the Yankees were coming through with Sherman's march, and there was an old rebel up on the magnet? Hello, Yankees down there. I'm up here. I'll show you something. So Sergeant Corporal sent a couple of guys up there. They've been blam, blam, blam, and Yankees come flying off of the mountain. He said, Captain, send a platoon up there. Blam, blam, blam, blam. and he throws them off shoots them he said Captain send a company up to take care of that problem and he got on up there and he says General, General it's the trap there's two of them up here that's funny that's my only Atlanta joke that is funny it's true too well again Roger thank you so much I really appreciate it and thank you There might be a couple of other books that I was in, and it's worth reading about this.

1:31:53It's The Big White Lie, the CIA and the Crack Cocaine Epidemic. And the other one is Kings of Cocaine. I get a chapter in that, too. Okay. I will check those out. I haven't read those. Well, I mean, if you just read, you don't have to read all that book because it's that big. But they're good. Yeah. All right, James. I'll check them out. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Thanks, Roger. Thanks, Jay. Goodbye, you guys. Thank you.