Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel | Lex Fridman Podcast #199

Lex Fridman 0:00 The following is a conversation with Roger Reeves, one of the most prolific drug smugglers in history. He worked for Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa, the leaders behind the Medellín Cartel. Roger was the employer and close friend of Barry Seal, the infamous drug smuggler who was the main character in the movie American Made. Roger transported countless tons of cocaine and marijuana, covering six continents. He escaped prison five times, was shut down in both Mexico and Colombia, and was tortured nearly to death in a Mexican prison. Through all of this, his wife, Mari, the love of his life, was there with him and when he was in prison, she waited for him. He recently got out of prison where for many years he worked on his memoir called Smuggler. This podcast is an exploration of his story. Quick mention of our sponsors: Noom, Allform, ExpressVPN, Four Sigmatic, and Eight Sleep. Check them out in the description to support this podcast. Let me say a few words about Roger Reeves, Pablo Escobar, and the War on Drugs. This conversation with Roger is unlike any I've ever done. In the eyes of many, including the law, Roger is a criminal, a bad man who has added to the suffering in the world. But he never directly engaged or participated in the violence, unlike his bosses, Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa. His crime was the transport of drugs. I thought about this and about Pablo Escobar, who was at once both a brutal murderer and a Robin Hood figure who helped the poor and was loved by thousands, if not millions. We sometimes idolize murderers and destroy good, honest men. We give power and money to corrupt politicians and dictators that starve and murder their own people. Given this, I think about what makes for a good man and what makes for a bad man, and who decides? Sitting across from Roger, I saw a complicated man, but one who has kindness in his heart, a love for money and adventure, and a disdain for violence. Again, his crime was the transport of drugs. Since 1971, the War on Drugs has cost US $1 trillion. Marijuana legalization alone would save and make $13.7 billion. That could send more than 650,000 students to public universities every year. Then there's the human stories of the 500,000 human beings sitting in prison for drug-related offenses, and the 1.1 million on probation and parole. Their life is damaged or ruined beyond repair due to the prohibition of drugs. There's a lot more to be said about the damage done by the War on Drugs. But when reading about Roger's story and talking to him, I couldn't escape the thought that while society wants to label him a criminal and a bad human being, there are much worse men out there who we give a pass to, even give power to, even men who hold political office or run companies. I also think about my role as an interviewer, sitting across a man like Roger. In these interviews, in life, in many ways, I continue to be myself. A person who, like Dostoevsky's the idiot, seeks the good in all people, but is hurt by it on occasion, and maybe is destroyed by it in the end. I'm not naive, but I'm also optimistic and have hope for humanity. That's who I am and that's what these conversations are. I hope you join me and I hope you understand that I come from a place of love. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast, and here's my conversation with Roger Reeves.

Lex Fridman 3:49 You are one of the most prolific drug smugglers in history. What would you say motivated you? Money, power, the thrill, or was it something else?

Roger Reaves 3:59 Money.

Lex Fridman 4:00 But isn't there a point where you've had more money than you can possibly know what to do with? Or was it always more money?

Roger Reaves 4:09 You know, I had plenty of money several times, and I think it's sort of like if you was in Las Vegas and you had the slot machine handled down and the gold coins were tumbling around you and you had sweepers bagging them up, when would you let it go?

Lex Fridman 4:27 But isn't some part of that the thrill then?

Roger Reaves 4:30 Oh, there was a lot of thrill. Sometimes way too much.

Lex Fridman 4:33 You made, uh, certainly tens of millions of dollars, probably much more. What memorable experience did having that much money make possible for you? So there's one thing is the money, and the other thing is what that money can buy.

Roger Reaves 4:47 Well, I bought everything (clears throat) that I could hide.

Lex Fridman 4:49 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 4:50 I bought seven farms. I owned, uh, the, um, the city, the land where the city of Moreno Valley, California is.

Lex Fridman 4:59 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 4:59 I had an option on that land, did the planning and development of that. Uh, the most expensive coin in the world (clears throat) , um, y- yachts, ships, airplanes galore.

Lex Fridman 5:12 That bring you happiness?

Roger Reaves 5:13 No, absolutely not. In fact, I think I'm happier now. I know I'm happier now.

Lex Fridman 5:19 So looking back, would you do it the same way all again?

Roger Reaves 5:24 (laughs) No way.

Lex Fridman 5:26 Really? Even the thrill of it?

Roger Reaves 5:28 Not even the thrill of it. It wasn't worth 33 years in prison being away from my lovely family.

Lex Fridman 5:34 (inhales deeply) So money, what about the power? Just being on top of the world where nobody can... not the governments, the police, all the big bad agencies chasing you, and you could do whatever the heck you wanted?

Roger Reaves 5:52 As far as having to look over your shoulder everywhere you did, went and every phone call you made, make sure that you was naked with somebody in the ocean before you talked. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 6:02 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 6:03 It's rather uncomfortable. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 6:05 Yeah. Um...I like to make phone calls the same way.

Lex Fridman 6:11 What, uh, was it like meeting and working with Pablo Escobar, the leader of the Medellin cartel?

Roger Reaves 6:18 He was just a, just seemed like a gentleman when I met him. He was just like you and I, sitting here, shook hands and... I had flown one load for a fella and, uh, it didn't work out well. The fella that I gave it to got shot and it took a while to get my money, and they didn't put as many kilos on the plane as they were supposed to, and so I wasn't gonna work with them anymore. And my contact down there introduced me to J- Jorge Ochoa, and, uh, we went up (clears throat) in Envigado, we went up and the gate opened and we was escorted in. There must've been 50 men out in the yards, a hitching rail on an old house, and we was escorted right in. And there was a beautiful woman in there, I mean gor-

Lex Fridman 6:58 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 6:58 ... drop-dead beautiful, and she made us a cup of coffee and then we was, uh, ushered in to see Jorge Ochoa. And he had 12 telephones on his desk, and all of them was a different color. And he shook hands, was very friendly, spoke English. And, uh, he said that each one of those telephones re- represented another city in the United States. This was for Chicago and this was New York. If I rang, I knew who was calling. And so we chatted awhile and, uh, he asked me what type of airplanes I had and what experience I had flying across the US border, and I told him. He seemed, um, pleased with it, and he called the lady in and she went next door and in came Pablo Escobar, and he introduced me to Pablo Escobar, and he asked the same questions again and, uh, I answered them. And I says, um, uh... And I, uh, I asked him how much they paid, and they paid $5,000 a kilo to haul it. And, uh, so I said, "How much you put on the plane?" He said, "300, 500." So that's one and a half, two and a half million dollars for an eight-hour trip. It sounded pretty good to me.

Lex Fridman 8:02 And we're talking about cocaine?

Roger Reaves 8:04 Cocaine.

Lex Fridman 8:04 And we're talking about Colombia?

Roger Reaves 8:06 Colombia and cocaine and Medellin cartel.

Lex Fridman 8:09 And-

Roger Reaves 8:09 Colombia-

Lex Fridman 8:09 ... uh, Jorge Ochoa was one of the, what would you say, founding members of the Medellin-

Roger Reaves 8:14 He was probably the brains behind the whole thing.

Lex Fridman 8:16 The brains, and spoke good English?

Roger Reaves 8:17 Yes.

Lex Fridman 8:18 And they were nice people?

Roger Reaves 8:20 Really nice people.

Lex Fridman 8:21 Were you scared?

Roger Reaves 8:22 Not at all.

Lex Fridman 8:23 What's wrong with your mind that you weren't scared? Here's some of the most dangerous men in this world and you weren't scared.

Roger Reaves 8:31 Well, I knew I was gonna do exactly what I said I was gonna do. Mari and the children were down there, they went down and they stayed in a hotel, five star, treated royally on my first load. And I, they just did ass security to make sure that I wasn't a DEA agent. So I, uh, I did the first load and they was, they can say they were hostages, but they really weren't. It was just a insurance.

Lex Fridman 8:53 So there was some integrity to the way they operated? I mean-

Roger Reaves 8:56 Completely. I mean, straight, straight up. The money was ironed and banned, bad, banded (laughs) and just right, and the, and the numbers were never once anything wrong with it.

Lex Fridman 9:09 What would you attribute that honesty to? Within the, um, their own moral system and their own set of rules, why weren't people crossing the line and shaving off the top and, and, uh, in injecting chaos into the system to where y- it would be unpredictable and people would be dishonest and greedy and all those kinds of things?

Roger Reaves 9:31 That's true, most people are, but there's certain people at the top of the food chain that they don't need that, and if they're completely honest, then they don't have to think of, remember the lie they told.

Lex Fridman 9:43 Mm-hmm.

Roger Reaves 9:44 And, and plus they're just honest to start with. They're, they're, they're making plenty of money. They was making as much money as I did. I, uh, I'll tell you how that, um, that came about. I understand that 10,000 people were killed every year in Medellin, Colombia, and what they were doing, they didn't, they didn't have any organization. And, uh, if one fella had 10 kilos and he wanted it shipped to New York, he would tell his friend and his friend says, "Sure, I'll ship it. I have a pallet and I'll ship it up." And then he would look in the newspapers, "Oh, 40 kilos was busted in New Jersey. I'm so sorry, yours got busted." Bang, bang, he's dead. So here comes Jorge Ochoa and the three Ochoa brothers and Pablo Escobar and Gacho, and they decided that we will make an insurance company, that we would charge you $10,000 to take it to your contact in Miami. If it gets lost anywhere between the time I put it on the airplane or the time you give it to us and the time we give it to your man, we will replace it in Colombia for you. So there was no way anybody could lose. And I understand they got 100 tons piled up under that insurance program, and I was right there the first day, so I had all the work I could do. I would land and they'd, I'd say, "When do you want me to come back?" "We're waiting on you, senor."

Lex Fridman 11:08 Well, let me ask a difficult question. Uh, some see Escobar as a brutal murderer and some see him as, um, maybe a Robin Hood-like figure who helped the poor. How do you see the man?

Roger Reaves 11:20 Both of them. I think he started out, to be honest, with help the poor, and then they had a war down there and they blew up and killed his people, and, uh, the country was divided almost equally three ways. They had the, uh, the military, they were just as much into it as anybody, and then you had the FARC guerillas, they had about a third of the country, and then you had the Contras who was like the white farmers, and, uh, they're the ones that I was dealing with, and they were at war with one another. And so if one of them started killing their people, "Well, I'll kill some of yours too." So that, that's how it happened and... And then when, uh, I heard about Pablo Escobar blowing up that airliner and killing those women and children, I was sorry I ever shook his hand. That's, that's brutal murder.

Lex Fridman 12:07 So you would say Escobar is not a good man?

Roger Reaves 12:10 Not at all. He's terrible.... now, but looking back on it, when I met him, he was good. Did just exactly what he said he would do.

Lex Fridman 12:19 Could he be a bad man and a man you can trust? Are those-

Roger Reaves 12:23 Absolutely, you could trust him, yes.

Lex Fridman 12:27 So from your perspective, in terms of business, he was reliable, he was honest, had integrity, you could work with him-

Roger Reaves 12:36 Oh, yes.

Lex Fridman 12:37 ... and you felt safe?

Roger Reaves 12:38 Completely. Um, we flew up in, uh, to his ranch and he w- m- l- we brought out motorcycles to start with, and, "Can you ride a motorcycle?" "Of course I can ride a motorcycle."

Lex Fridman 12:48 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 12:48 So I took off across the grass and there was a little ditch there, (laughs) and the-

Lex Fridman 12:51 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 12:51 ... front wheel dropped and that thing, and I must have s- slid across that grass 20 feet before I got stopped. He almost fell off of his, of his bike waiting 'cause they knew what it's gonna do. And then we got on horses, and went out there and pretended type to round up some cows, and he put a MAC-10 machine gun pistol over my shoulder, "Do you know how to use this?" Well, I never had, but (laughs) it was all right. I think it was like, "Okay, you got 10 bodyguards. What do you need me for?" So that's the kind of time, we laughed and talked and drove some cows over the stumps.

Lex Fridman 13:23 You said H- Jorge Ochoa was perhaps the brains of the Medellín cartel. What was he like, and why do you say he was the brains?

Roger Reaves 13:35 Well, he was a gentleman, and I suppose he sh- shipped a- no telling how many more times of cocaine than Pablo did, just in him and his brothers. You could tell by the, they had on each, h- a load that was in duffel bags, and it was big football-shaped, um, fluffy stuff made with ether, and, uh, they would have three horns on it or a rattlesnake or four X's on each bag, and you kind of got to knowing which was, which was which, and they shipped a lot. So, um, and he was just a gentleman. I took the family, we went one weekend to his ranch, or his, uh, palatial place out near Barranquilla, and oh, we, he just treated the family, his family, had a, his younger brother wro- uh, made a bullfight, and we had, uh, skiing and, uh, little airplanes on floats down on the water. It was really nice, and he was really nice.

Lex Fridman 14:35 (sighs) How do you make sense of the tension that a man could be a gentleman, could have integrity, but also be a murderer?

Roger Reaves 14:44 Well, murder is, is a, is a stronger word than killing.

Lex Fridman 14:50 Can you explain the, the, the line, the gray area we're talking about? I mean, I've just talking with Jocko Willink, and we talked a lot about killing in the context of, um, military conflict and the context of war, so there, there's a line between murder and killing that you can draw. What's, uh, the line that you're referring to?

Roger Reaves 15:12 It's something similar. If you g- if people are shooting at you, and you shoot back and kill him, I don't, that's not murder whatsoever. That's, uh, uh, he's trying to get away or, or out, out of the situation. But if, uh, some woman don't pay you and you send a hit man over to, to, to kill her and her children-

Lex Fridman 15:28 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 15:29 ... that's, that's-

Lex Fridman 15:29 That's murder.

Roger Reaves 15:29 ... that's murder.

Lex Fridman 15:30 Was Jorge involved in those kinds of things? So-

Roger Reaves 15:33 I don't think so at all. It just, I mean, he was, he was just such a gentleman. He had, um, a restaurant before, and, and he was just smart. I understand that, uh, the first 10 kilos he sold, he was sitting on a, on a motorcycle in the, in the sidelines, in the parking lot, and when the DEA come in, he sped away. (laughs) So he didn't come back to America. He was just smart. Some people just have, are savvy, and he was such a gentleman, and the whole family, the mother and the father, the two brothers, their sister, it w- I was there when she was kidnapped, and, uh, finally, he kidnapped our, our, I guess, 100 leaders of the FARC, and, uh, said, "All right, when she don't come back, none of these are gonna come back."

Lex Fridman 16:13 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 16:13 So they made a deal.

Lex Fridman 16:15 Is there something you can say about the power structure, the hierarchy of the Medellín cartel that you interacted with? Was, uh, was it a dictatorship where Pablo ran everything? Was there a bunch of power centers? W- was it like a company where you have CEO, CTO kind of thing, and then there's like managers and all those kinds of things? What's the, like how did it run from a leadership perspective?

Roger Reaves 16:40 I understand that about five of them got together and made this, I would call it an insurance company, and, uh, now known as the Medellín cartel, and I didn't see any difference. Each one of them had their own business, and, uh, their people from the jungle or wherever made the cocaine, gave it to them, and they shipped it, and, uh, so it didn't, it didn't seem to be any, any power play between them at all. But my main contact was Jorge Ochoa, and Pablo Escobar was right there, and I hauled plenty of stuff for him too.

Lex Fridman 17:16 It's strange that they didn't betray each other regularly. You know, uh, greed makes men betray each other. How do you explain that? H- how much betrayal did you see?

Roger Reaves 17:29 I didn't see any. Absolutely none. If, if they shipped his 100 kilos, he got paid for it. If the other one, uh, shipped his, I'm sure they got paid for it.

Lex Fridman 17:40 How do you explain that?

Roger Reaves 17:42 Well, there was no need to. The money was just unbelievable. You think about f- 500 kilos in the plane at $50,000 a kilo at the time, and they paid $5,000 to ship it, and they made 5,000 without even touching it. They just had a, somebody to load it onto the airplane. I gave it to their man in Miami. They gave it to whoever it belonged to by the, uh, by the marks on the duffel bags. So they was making just untold millions, just, uh-... no reason.

Lex Fridman 18:16 But greed can blind men. I, you know, it's still, it's still strange to me that there was not more betrayal. It, it speaks of something else perhaps that's bigger than money. Um, may- maybe, maybe not, but it seems like just like in the casino, like you mentioned, uh, we, um, get accustomed to the, whatever level of money we have, we get accustomed very quickly.

Roger Reaves 18:43 Yes.

Lex Fridman 18:44 And then there's a tension that's natural between human beings, and when that tension combined with money, combined with power, combined with, like you mentioned, beautiful women and a, a bit of violence, it seems that, um, betrayal should be commonplace, but it's not.

Roger Reaves 19:05 It wasn't, not at all. This Carlos Lehder, uh, I don't know he betrayed anybody, but he started that. I- he was r- running cocaine through the Bahamas, and he had the island.

Lex Fridman 19:14 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 19:14 I, I didn't go. I was offered to fly with a DC-3 with that, but I didn't like it. So I had my route through the oil wells in Louisiana.

Lex Fridman 19:22 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 19:22 And, uh, so I, I didn't want to go and change, but, uh, he, he talked a lot, and I don't know if he betrayed, but they didn't like him.

Lex Fridman 19:29 Yeah. So as you expand, there could be tensions that-

Roger Reaves 19:33 Yes.

Lex Fridman 19:33 ... uh, that lead to conflict. Colombia was, like you said, an ultra-violent place. How did you survive? Who protected you?

Roger Reaves 19:43 I was their hero. They, they liked me. I mean, I was just treated royally. All I did, I would come over El Banco. There's a radio station at the forks of the Magdalena River. I believe it was 720, if I remember right, on the, the AM, and I'd fly in at 10,000 feet, and I'd see below me there'd be a Cessna. And I'd wiggle my wings and he'd wiggle his, and I'd fall in behind him, and we might go 100 or 200 miles, and I'd land on some jungle strip or some, uh, banana plantation, and they'd fuel me up. I could eat steak, spend the night. It was just, like, treated royally and I mean, uh, take off the next morning whenever I wanted to. It was just like that was protected. And I was, I was a honored guest. It wasn't anything like in that movie putting your, putting a gun to your head and taking your sunglasses and betting. So one time I, uh, complained to, um, Jorge Ochoa that the runway was pretty short that they were using, and I went back down there and it looked like Los Angeles International.

Lex Fridman 20:40 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 20:41 They had bulldozers in there, they had that thing 5,000 feet long.

Lex Fridman 20:44 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 20:44 And just like, just the next week it was all done. The jungle was gone and clay put up there and...

Lex Fridman 20:50 (sighs) And all the while you were not afraid. You were treated like royalty.

Roger Reaves 20:54 Yes. No, uh, there I was. I was afraid when I landed in the United States.

Lex Fridman 20:58 Well, maybe let's go back to the beginning. What was the first time you, uh, flew an airplane with drugs on it? Tell me the story of the first time you smuggled drugs.

Roger Reaves 21:08 All right. I, uh, I flew down to Jalapa, Veracruz with a Cessna 182. And, uh, we landed at the town, it was a lovely town, and just an old town, looked like Bible times. People, women were washing their clothes in the streets and ir- with stone basins and a stream running through. I just was just, uh, dumbstruck. It was just so pretty. And I went in a church, in a Catholic church, and it had the Stations of the Cross all carved magnificent. I'd never seen that. And I come home and told Mary about that. That would just almost brought tears to my eyes it was so beautiful. And three o'clock the next morning I went out to the airport and taxied down to the taxiway, and there was a guard came out and, uh, wanted to know what I was doing, and I pulled out, I was on the f- I was on the fire department at Redondo Beach, California. So I pulled out my wallet and in, in it was a fire department badge, and oh, he shook my hand and was so glad. (laughs) Uh, so I taxied on down there and we loaded up about 400 pounds in the plane, and, uh, came on back and I was, uh, running into headwinds more than I thought, and I landed on a little strip.

Lex Fridman 22:14 You're talking about on the way back?

Roger Reaves 22:16 On the way back, on the way north after we loaded up early in the morning.

Lex Fridman 22:19 Gotcha.

Roger Reaves 22:19 And, uh, I had the only time I ever got vertigo. The mountains were coming down at a, a 30 or 40 degree angle and it's, uh, Milky Way was overhead, and somehow I wanted that airplane to be level with the stars.

Lex Fridman 22:31 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 22:31 And it got, it got me, and it's, it's a phenomenon, a pilot has vertigo. It's the only time I ever had it was on that load. So anyway, the wind was on the nose of that Cessna, and I wasn't gonna make it to the dry lake where I had fuel. So I landed on a little bitty strip and there was a, a little house that was caved in and there was a little boy named Lazareth, about six or seven years old, and he was herding some goats. So we put the marijuana in that house and the man stayed with it so while I flew into some town and got fuel and came back and we sat down with the lunch that I brought back and little Lazareth sat there and ate with us and we had a good time. We loaded on back and came on home.

Lex Fridman 23:06 (laughs) Oh, wow. I wonder where he is now.

Roger Reaves 23:09 Yes. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 23:10 So what, what was it like to fly? Maybe describe the details of do you have to fly low? Um, is- is there details that are unique to this experience of flying an airplane with drugs on it on board?

Roger Reaves 23:24 All right. Well, one of the mistakes that just thous- hundreds and hundreds and thousands of pilots make, they don't stop at the border going down and get their permit. Once you get a permit to be in Mexico, you got it for six months. You can go anywhere, any fishing village, any little town, any little place, show 'em this and you're welcome.

Lex Fridman 23:43 Mm-hmm.

Roger Reaves 23:43 If you don't have that, you go straight to jail. So you go down there and you think, "Okay, they're gonna have fuel for me to come back and so forth." "Oh, sorry, senor, that was, uh, had a rusty leak in it." (laughs)

Lex Fridman 23:53 Mm-hmm.

Roger Reaves 23:53 "We don't have any." Well, you better be able to go to town and get it.

Lex Fridman 23:56 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 23:57 So, uh, that's what I did. And when I was coming back for several years, I would fly, uh, fly up at Mexicali and cross the border right at Calexico just... I would act like I was landing on the Calexico side just after dark.

Lex Fridman 24:11 Mm-hmm.

Roger Reaves 24:12 And then I would zip across the border and then go over to the Salton Sea and go below sea level 100 and something feet, I believe 170 feet, and come on up and go out there in a- above Palm Springs and land at 29 Palms in the desert.... and put my stuff under a Joshua tree and fly into town to get my pickup, and go on back out and get it, and that was fun. And then it got really dangerous. They had, uh, Operation Starlight, I believe was the name of it, and they caught a lot of pilots coming across the border. So I changed it, and by that time I was flying bigger planes. I was flying Beech 18s. And I would refuel in Mulegé on the, halfway down on the Baja Peninsula, and then over in the middle, 20 miles from the nearest road, was a, was a goat ranch where they milked goats and made cheese. And I would go there and, uh, unload the load coming up out of anywhere in southern Mexico, and I would land there and a guy named Juan would, uh, we'd put the, put the marijuana under the trees and I'd fly into Mulegé and they'd wash my plane and g- gash it up and I'd, I'd eat a lunch and rent a room for a few hours and take a nap and a shower, then go back in the afternoon and, and fill up. And then I would go northwest out of there and fly 200 miles off the coast of the island of Guadeloupe, and from there I would fly on a more northwesterly heading, about 300 miles out over the Pacific. And then I would come in behind the Santa Barbara Islands, down low, and then I'd come up and go out in the desert and land. And, uh, I did that for the rest of them marijuana trips.

Lex Fridman 25:44 What was the hardest part about flying those routes?

Roger Reaves 25:49 The hardest part was getting good marijuana. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 25:52 So the hardest part isn't the flying? The hardest-

Roger Reaves 25:55 Not as the flying.

Lex Fridman 25:55 ... part is just like driving your car down.

Roger Reaves 25:57 But then I had people that would bring me on strips that were just unworthy of an airplane.

Lex Fridman 26:02 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 26:02 Like when the, the... I'd land on a highway-

Lex Fridman 26:04 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 26:04 ... and, uh, and it's... and in the rainy season I would come back to land again and the guy would, uh, wouldn't think about it and he'd have like little hills on both sides and, uh, the wings were out there. Well, the, the grass and the weeds would grow up and it'd sound like (exhales sharply) I mean, it'd sound like tearing the airplane apart when those wings hit, mowing the grass down both, both shoulders of the airplane.

Lex Fridman 26:24 Oh, wow.

Roger Reaves 26:25 The weeds would grow up high in the tropics. So some of that stuff was bad and, oh, getting bad gasoline and telling me that, "L- land here in the light and, and knock the wheels off when you land. Oh, you shoulda landed a little further up here, senor. There's a ditch down there." (laughs)

Lex Fridman 26:40 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 26:40 You know, that sort of thing.

Lex Fridman 26:42 What, what was it like landing on a highway? And, and when did you have to land on a highway?

Roger Reaves 26:47 I landed on a highway most of my life, most of the times. In Mexico, first time I went down, there was a place called Pichilingue and it had a 900-foot strip, and, uh, I would fly down and I'd carry gasoline with me and, uh, uh, Mari and I would, uh, go to the grocery store and buy all kind of little goodies and candies and toys to bring to the children. And, uh, that sand strip in the, in the bend of a river was just too short to take off with a load, so there was a young man there named Pedro, must not have weighed much over 100, maybe 120 pounds, and he'd get in the plane with me and, oh, he'd direct me 20, 30, 40 miles away to a highway. And the people walk in and the people would pull out in a two-ton truck with a machine gun on it and bunch of guys with their arms would just... and they'd block the road and then another one would block it up about a mile away and I'd land right over that truck and they'd load me up and it looked like a bucket brigade when the marijuana come in. I'd shake hands with all of them, then I'd take off right over the other trucks. And sometimes there'd be 20, 30, 40 cars lined up. Uh, one time I remember a, a patrol car, highway patrol car, with... he didn't have his lights on, took off right over him. And then, uh, when I started flying to Louisiana, the bridge over the Mississippi River, there were several contractors that went broke and that thing was out for years, and about five miles from the river was flashing red lights and a detour and then there's swamp on both sides of it. In the middle of it was growing up were 20 feet trees and that was like an international runway from anywhere in the world.

Lex Fridman 28:22 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 28:22 So I landed on that over and over, those red lights were just like the end of a runway, and then the next morning we'd go out there and scrub the marks off the highway where I'd landed before daylight.

Lex Fridman 28:33 Wow.

Lex Fridman 28:34 Let's go to somebody you've known well, somebody who is, who's also a drug smuggler, is Barry Seal. Who is Barry Seal? How did you meet him?

Roger Reaves 28:45 Barry Seal is a friend of mine. Uh, Mari and I and the children went down in, uh, Honduras and we went up, uh, Lake Ozul, I believe it was, and we're looking at a, a ranch to buy. I was looking for something in Central America where I'd have a, a halfway place.

Lex Fridman 29:02 Mm-hmm.

Roger Reaves 29:03 Oh, it was lovely. We stayed up there for some days and our clothes got muddy and we went in the river and all kind of thing. So we got to San Pedro Sula and, uh, we was going back to New Orleans. So, uh, went to, to the cleaners to get our clothes and most all of them was in there. And the guy, "Oh, senor, they'll be ready tomorrow morning. We're not ready now." Well, the plane leaves at 9:00 or whatever. So I told Mari to, to... for her and the children to go on to the airport because it'd be easier for one just on the standby flight. So I went to the, um, laundromat for the clothes and they were ready and there was a pile of them and I put them on my back and got in a taxi and the old taxi, we're driving with it and I'd give him $100 to go faster and he just blew his horn more rapid, so... (laughs)

Lex Fridman 29:50 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 29:50 Finally we got to the airport and I jumped out and ran around on the tarmac and here's a brand new 727 taxiing out.

Lex Fridman 29:58 Wow.

Roger Reaves 29:59 Oh, no. So I'm waving to the pilot and he's a young fella, and he waves back. Then I see Mari's face in the cockpit and then the nose goes down to where he puts on brakes and he laughs and he puts the stairwell out. And I run for the stairwell and he pulls it back up and goes like a hitchhiker, gonna pick you up and go, go again.

Lex Fridman 30:18 Yeah. Yeah. (laughs)

Roger Reaves 30:18 Then he put it out and I got on and the whole crowd clapped and I'm coming home with that load of clothes.

Lex Fridman 30:25 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 30:26 ... so (laughs) I go way down in the middle and the pla- plane's full. And Miriam, uh, daughter's about nine years old then, and she was sitting in the middle and by the window was Barry Seal. Of course, I didn't know it. And I sit in the middle, and, uh, we took off and the wheels come up, went clunk. And then they got up about 5,000 feet and we had a little cl- clunk. And she said, "What was that, Daddy?" I said, "He just turned on his autopilot." And that feller reached over, and I done looked at him. I said, (laughs) "He looks like CIA or FBI, something."

Lex Fridman 30:54 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 30:55 Man (laughs) , he ain't supposed to be here.

Lex Fridman 30:56 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 30:56 Clear blue eyes, gentleman-looking man. And he said, he said, "You fly these things?" I said, "I got a few hours, mister." He said, "I, I fly them too," or something or other. And he said, "My name Barry Seal." And he reached over on Miriam and shook hands, and we got-

Lex Fridman 31:09 Uh-huh.

Roger Reaves 31:09 ... to talking. And, uh, I thought, "There's no choice of seats on this. It's just open seating, so..." But I don't believe him one bit. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 31:17 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 31:18 And he started talking about he just got out of jail that morning, just got out of prison.

Lex Fridman 31:23 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 31:23 And I said, "Uh-huh." (laughs)

Lex Fridman 31:26 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 31:26 And he told me that he'd been a pilot with, um, TWA and this and other, and, uh, well, he told me about what he was for. And so we had a nice jo- conversation with a couple of hours to New Orleans. (clears throat) I didn't believe him.

Lex Fridman 31:38 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 31:39 So he got off in front of us, and what a crowd of people w- to meet him. An old mother and a wife and little children hanging onto him, crying and hugging and kissing. I said, "He was telling the truth." (laughs)

Lex Fridman 31:53 (laughs) Uh-huh.

Roger Reaves 31:53 So I reached over and gave him a, a little piece of paper I had them already write it out with our address. I said, "Barry, I might have some work for you."

Lex Fridman 32:00 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 32:00 "Come on up to-"

Lex Fridman 32:00 What was he in jail for? Well-

Roger Reaves 32:01 He had, he got caught with 100 kilos of cocaine in a small plane. And so he served a year.

Lex Fridman 32:07 And that was, uh, from Colombia?

Roger Reaves 32:10 I don't know where he'd come from. He got caught in Honduras, probably refueling. But, um, he'd b- he'd been in prison down there before for bringing explosives to the, um, con- uh, Cuban Contras. And he lost his job with the airlines. And then later on, I found out he was ex-CIA and George Bush Sr.'s protege and had 1,000 parachute jumps and was there. He wa- he was a hotshot pilot.

Lex Fridman 32:34 There's a million questions I wanna ask here. But, um, maybe can we linger on it a little bit longer? What was your relationship with him like? You, you were-

Roger Reaves 32:46 Let-

Lex Fridman 32:46 ... a drug smuggler. He's a drug smuggler. Um, you're friends. How often do you guys talk? How often do you work together? What was the relationship like?

Roger Reaves 32:58 Well, I'll back up and just finish where I started off there. He, uh... I, I gave him the, "Thanks, Barry. I may have some work for you. I know I got some work for you."

Lex Fridman 33:05 Mm-hmm.

Roger Reaves 33:05 And, uh, I says, uh, "Come out to Santa Barbara." And so, I don't know, a week or two later, he flew out and went to our house and stayed with us for a couple of days. And I had a almost brand new s- uh, Aero Commander 690B. That thing was turbo prop and it was hot. It's the hottest thing I'd ever had. So I said, "Let's go, Barry. Let's see what you can do." (laughs) Said, "I'm sorry I said that." We got up about 10,000 feet.

Lex Fridman 33:30 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 33:30 (laughs) And he was like one of them Blue Angel pilots. He wrung that thing out.

Lex Fridman 33:33 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 33:34 And I said, "That's enough." And then, um, he did a falling leaf. That's where you cut the engines and the plane falls from side to side. I saw Bob Hoover do that in a air show once, and that's the only person I ever saw do it. And I was... My hands was white knuckle hanging onto the seat.

Lex Fridman 33:49 He shut off the engine?

Roger Reaves 33:50 Yeah, he shut off the engines and landed it, flying it side by side like this.

Lex Fridman 33:54 How do you explain that? Was he just, uh, a wild man or was he sufficiently skilled to where-

Roger Reaves 34:00 He was sufficiently skilled. Absolutely.

Lex Fridman 34:02 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 34:02 He knew what he was doing. I can get a plane from one spot to another, and I guess I'm known as a good pilot. But that guy, who was an aerobatic, uh... (laughs)

Lex Fridman 34:12 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 34:13 (laughs) So anyway, he stayed with us a couple of days. And then I told him, I said, "This plane needs, uh, needs tanking now." I g- I said, "I got some work down in Colombia and it needs to come back to Louisiana, and I need 2,500-mile range." He said, "I got somebody in Mena, Arkansas to do that and keep their mouth shut." So I gave him $10,000 and he flew away. And in a few days, he called me and says, "Come to my house in, um, Baton Rouge." So I went out to his house in Baton Rouge and I stayed with him for a few days, and that plane was tanked. I mean, beautiful from stem to stern. I could went from Bolivia to Canada with it.

Lex Fridman 34:45 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 34:46 (laughs) So, uh, he was, uh... Then I hired him to fly. And, uh, he was funny. I paid him a million dollars a trip. I paid him $2,000 a kilo, so about a million-dollar trip. And I didn't get paid until they- th- the people received it. They had to ship it to Chicago and New York, and then the money come back. So it's, it was a couple of w- two or three-week pipeline. Well, I always had to pay him before I... before he'd go again. I mean... And he'd belly ache. I mean, he'd moan and groan. So, uh, one time I, uh, I gave him a million dollars and I put it in a box real nice.

Lex Fridman 35:21 So how big is a box that contains a million dollars? Are we talking about $100 bills?

Roger Reaves 35:25 $100 bills. It's not very big. You can put it in a large briefcase. It weighs exactly 10 kilos.

Lex Fridman 35:31 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 35:31 Each, each of... Each bill weighs a gram, so you can weigh your money and almost get it exactly right.

Lex Fridman 35:36 So 10- 20-something pounds is a million dollars.

Roger Reaves 35:38 22 pounds.

Lex Fridman 35:39 22 pounds.

Roger Reaves 35:40 Of $100 bills. But $100... In $1 bills, it's one ton, 2,200 pounds.

Lex Fridman 35:46 Hmm.

Roger Reaves 35:47 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 35:47 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 35:48 We didn't even accept them.

Lex Fridman 35:49 Were you the one that introduced Barry Seal to, uh, Pablo Escobar?

Roger Reaves 35:53 No. I didn't introduce him at all. And, uh, he's... And I... Our deal was that you don't meet my people. I mean, we just-

Lex Fridman 36:00 Mm-hmm.

Roger Reaves 36:00 ... kind of cross... You working for me to fly the airplanes. So he wanted these Panther conversions, cost $400,000 each, with a storm scope and radar. So I'm, "On anything you want."

Lex Fridman 36:11 What's that mean? Sorry to interrupt. Panther conversions.

Roger Reaves 36:14 A Panther conversion was, um... These people called Panther, they took everything out from the firewall and the instruments and all and converted them, and put Q-tip propellers on them, full-bladed, and you... Very quiet. And the CIA developed those-

Lex Fridman 36:28 I see.

Roger Reaves 36:28 ... in Southeast Asia for running behind the lines.And that's where Barry had flown in those things, so he knew about them.

Lex Fridman 36:34 Mm-hmm.

Roger Reaves 36:35 So, uh, hey, that's what he wanted and that's what we got him.

Lex Fridman 36:38 How does that connect to Pablo? And so-

Roger Reaves 36:40 Well-

Lex Fridman 36:40 ... he worked for you and you got those upgrades.

Roger Reaves 36:43 I, I think he flew about 30 loads for me, and then I got arrested and, and was, got a... for everything in the world. Got 35 years sentence. But let me back up a little bit. Barry, uh, was our friend, uh, Mari and I, both friend.

Lex Fridman 36:57 We should pause real quick and say Mari is, uh, uh, your wife and we'll... hopefully she'll... uh, we'll convince her to join us in a li- uh, in, in, in a little bit. She's the love of your life and sort of, she, uh, weaves in and out of many of these stories that you tell.

Roger Reaves 37:13 Yes, she was there. She was behind the scenes.

Lex Fridman 37:16 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 37:16 But I kept her out of it completely.

Lex Fridman 37:19 And then also you mentioned Miriam as, uh, as, uh, your daughter.

Roger Reaves 37:22 Yes. Rhett, our son, was, was a baby.

Lex Fridman 37:24 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 37:25 And, uh, I remember we went out to La Festivall, was my favorite restaurant in Coral Gables. Oh God, it was good.

Lex Fridman 37:31 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 37:31 And Barry knew about it. Anyhow, we went out to dinner and, uh... So we came back and there was no rooms. "So, Barry will spend the night with us." So he goes to our hotel room with... and we got two, two big beds in the, the Omni Hotel. And he lays over there and gets down to his stripey sh- undershorts and his T-shirt and he puts the baby up on his belly and gives him the bottle and said, "Mm, ain't that good, Rhett? Oh, my, my."

Lex Fridman 37:55 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 37:55 And he just feeds the baby. We laugh and talk and-

Lex Fridman 37:57 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 37:58 ... so that's how close we were that we could all stay in a hotel room together.

Lex Fridman 38:02 (laughs) He said... And would you say he's a good man?

Roger Reaves 38:04 A wonderful man. A gentleman, Southern gentleman. Just, he's looked after his mother, his family, everybody around him. Everybody loved Barry.

Lex Fridman 38:14 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 38:14 He just had a... he had a little, little smile on his face always.

Lex Fridman 38:18 So you got arrested and then, uh, what happened to Barry?

Roger Reaves 38:21 Well, Barry knew the, the people that, uh, unloaded. Of course, he sent the cars down, all that. So he met the unloader, a guy named Lito, Luis Carlos Bustamante, a Venezuelan. And, uh, so he just kept on flying.

Lex Fridman 38:37 Mm-hmm.

Roger Reaves 38:37 But he, uh, he... I believe he had three of my airplanes at $400,000 a piece and they owed me some money. Well, he collected a lot of that and gave Mari the money and put it in his safe and took her to his house and all after I got arrested, sent a lawyer in. He got me the best lawyer in the country, Albert Krieger.

Lex Fridman 38:53 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 38:54 He was head of the defense team for all America. Wonderful man.

Lex Fridman 38:59 Can you tell the story of the months that led up to Barry's assassination? What di- what, what, what did you know? What did you sense? What did you think?

Roger Reaves 39:10 Okay. When I got out of prison, I hadn't been out long. I was, uh, watching... eating breakfast and there was Ronald Reagan's face right in the television. "We have absolute proof that the communist Sandinista government is into cocaine running business." And there was that fat lady, the C20- 126 on the runway with the belly in, and I thought, "Oh God-"

Lex Fridman 39:32 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 39:32 "... he had done it." So I had heard that Barry might have been working with him. So it wasn't long before-

Lex Fridman 39:39 Working with?

Roger Reaves 39:40 With the DEA or whoever. Yeah, he... that he had... he was no longer on our side, you know?

Lex Fridman 39:45 So, uh, can you clarify how you got that from the Reagan making a statement about, "We've heard..."?

Roger Reaves 39:51 Okay, there was his plane. There was there... Barry's plane and... Okay, on the way north, we could stop in, in Nicaragua and land on a military base or on a, a base that they used as crop dusters and all, and refuel.

Lex Fridman 40:04 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 40:05 And so that shortened our trip. We go further into the jungle and come up, and that was what Pablo Escobar and Ochoa and them, and they had, uh... they was associates with the, the people in, uh, Nicaragua.

Lex Fridman 40:15 So Barry was... if that plane was there, that means Barry was feeding the DEA information.

Roger Reaves 40:22 He was working with them at that time. But let me back up a little bit. When, when I was flying and I told Barry we would... we would refuel an, uh, change airplane, the, the loads in Belize where I had a, a spot up there. And then that's when the... they told me, "We can refuel in, in, uh, Nicaragua and then you fly all the way." And Barry couldn't believe it. He says, "All right." But I wanted him to land... I had a place in Louisiana for $10,000 that I could land, unload, and the sheriff and all of them was paid off. And, uh, he said, "No, no, no, I can't get caught in Mena, Arkansas." I said, "What do you mean you can't get caught in Mena, Arkansas? You get caught anywhere." He said, "I can't." He said, "But it's going to cost you $50,000 every time my wheels touch the ground."

Lex Fridman 41:09 Why... Can you explain why he can't get caught in Mena, Arkansas?

Roger Reaves 41:12 He said he was... he was hooked up with the... with some of the very top. And he even said, "I'm gonna have dinner with the governor tonight."

Lex Fridman 41:19 That's... at that time-

Roger Reaves 41:21 So Mena, Arkansas-

Lex Fridman 41:22 ... M- Mr. Bill Clinton.

Roger Reaves 41:23 Undoubtedly. And it's like, did Bill Clinton... "Did you give him any money?" And I said, "No, I never gave the man any money." But it was like the money that I had went to Grand Cayman Islands. And I told my lawyer, I said, "I never touched that money." He said, "You don't have to fondle it to be guilty." So... (laughs) Uh-

Lex Fridman 41:40 So what... (sighs) I mean, there's a lot of conspiracy theories-

Roger Reaves 41:43 And a lot of people-

Lex Fridman 41:43 ... around the relationship between (laughs) Barry Seal and the Clintons.

Roger Reaves 41:46 Absolutely.

Lex Fridman 41:47 What evidence do we have? What, what would you say from your best understanding, um, of what was the relationship between Bill Clinton and Barry Seal?

Roger Reaves 41:59 Barry said, and he knew, that he couldn't get caught in Mena, Arkansas. And when that movie was gonna come out, be called Mena, somebody stopped it. I mean, they stopped it dead in the tracks for two or three years, and the producer even quit. I mean-

Lex Fridman 42:14 You mean the American Made with Tom Cruise movie?

Roger Reaves 42:16 It wasn't American-

Lex Fridman 42:16 It was gonna be called Mena?

Roger Reaves 42:18 It's... the name of it was written and produced as Mena. (laughs) And w- waiting on Hillary to be elected, they, they would not-

Lex Fridman 42:26 Oh, interesting.

Roger Reaves 42:26 ... let that movie out. And that movie was changed drastically.

Lex Fridman 42:30 But to push back on that, that doesn't mean there's truth there. That means they were worried about...... the power of the conspiracy theory, which-

Roger Reaves 42:38 That's right.

Lex Fridman 42:38 ... stuck. (laughs)

Roger Reaves 42:39 Exactly. I don't know.

Lex Fridman 42:41 I mean, it, you know, some, some conspiracy theories, just because they're popular doesn't mean they're true, and ones that, uh... But it also doesn't mean they're not true, and there's ones that are not very popular that could be true, but that one, that one really stuck. Did you, do you... I mean, what's your sense?

Roger Reaves 43:00 Well, I paid one and a half million dollars for Barry to land at Mena, Arkansas, so I was pretty well-assured that he couldn't get caught, and I said, "Well, I can't get caught in Colombia. We can't get caught in Nicaragua. I guess we got a license."

Lex Fridman 43:13 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 43:14 So we went for it.

Lex Fridman 43:15 Oh, so when you say, "I can't get caught," just to clarify, there's a, there's a sense where this is a safe place to land?

Roger Reaves 43:22 Yes, like, completely safe.

Lex Fridman 43:23 So you don't think he was referring to some kind of, um, you know... Like my grandfather who fought in World War II would talk about bullets can't hit him.

Roger Reaves 43:36 No.

Lex Fridman 43:36 So it's almost like-

Roger Reaves 43:37 No,

Lex Fridman 43:37 ... believing-

Roger Reaves 43:38 ... that wasn't what he was talking about.

Lex Fridman 43:39 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 43:39 He was taking that $50,000 and giving it to somebody.

Lex Fridman 43:41 To somebody, yeah.

Roger Reaves 43:42 And Barry was honest, so he wasn't just taking it from me, because he was making a million dollars and he didn't care for the $50,000.

Lex Fridman 43:49 Oh, man.

Lex Fridman 43:51 Taking the story forward, uh, the months leading up to his assassination, what, what, uh, w- what do you understand why he was assassinated? What, w- who were the players involved? Maybe could you have stopped it?

Roger Reaves 44:08 Well, I'll tell you, after I saw Reagan's face on the television saying, "We have the absolute proof," the phone rang, and it was Barry. I hadn't heard from him in a couple years, and he said, "I'm coming out tonight, Roger." And oh boy. So, uh, he came out and he said, "I'll meet you in this, uh, French restaurant." I don't even know it in Santa Barbara. And I walked in and there's about 20 or 30 people in there, and they was all 30, 40 years old, women with plastic or leather skirts and men in their blue jeans, and I looked around and Barry was at the back. He was leaned up, he had gained weight, and I walked up and I said, "Barry, are you wired?" He said, "No." I said, "Well, I'm not gonna talk. Are these DEA agents?" He said, "Every one of them."

Lex Fridman 44:56 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 44:56 (laughs) So...

Lex Fridman 44:57 Ah, with jeans and skirts. I like it. (laughs)

Roger Reaves 44:59 Oh, boy. So I said, "Well, Barry, I'm gonna sit you and you just talk to me, buddy, and tell me what's on your mind." And he sat there and he just went to talking, and he told me about that he was left holding the bag and that, um...

Lex Fridman 45:13 What do you mean by that? Like that nobody's supported him, no- nobody helped him out?

Roger Reaves 45:17 Well, I think for some or another, he was, um, and, and I don't know this. I mean, this is just what-

Lex Fridman 45:22 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 45:22 ... what happened, uh, putting it all together, that he had some CIA buddies that was pretending, "We going to supply Oliver North with arms, and with that, you can land cocaine back here by the ton." So he's taking his little planes and putting some AK-47s and maybe ammunition or whatever, and takes it down to the Contras, uh, against the Communist Party of Nicaragua where we'd been landing, and Oliver North was involved in this. So, uh, when the, when all that... And so his CIA buddies was certainly involved. We know they were. And Barry had been in the CIA earlier when he first got out of school. So, uh, when, when, um, as they say, the shit hit the fan, they all fled and left Barry holding the bag.

Lex Fridman 46:13 The CIA and the DEA?

Roger Reaves 46:15 Yeah. No, not the DEA, the CIA. The DEA wasn't in on it. The CIA was, was selling that cocaine and bringing it in, and, uh...

Lex Fridman 46:23 Just to clarify, uh, what's Iran-Contra scandal? What was the alleged involvement of the CIA in, uh, in using drug trade to fund things? What do you know? What do you think is true? What should we know?

Roger Reaves 46:42 Well, I know what I know is true, that Barry was ha- taking a small amount of arms back to Central America and giving them to whoever Oliver North group, group were.

Lex Fridman 46:54 Who is Oliver North?

Roger Reaves 46:55 Oliver North was a colonel that got implemented and almost brought the government down. And so they said, "All right, we're getting the guns from Iran, and we're taking cocaine to pay for them."

Lex Fridman 47:04 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 47:04 "And since Congress won't give us money to fight this war, we gonna, we're gonna circumvent it." So that was, that was the whole thing.

Lex Fridman 47:12 So it was, uh, CIA's effort to circumvent the funding mechanisms of government by you- selling drugs?

Roger Reaves 47:21 Yes, but it was a handful of renegade CIA agents that was Barry's friends that was making a load, a load of money, tons of it come up. If you would like to read the book, uh, The Big White Lie: The CIA and the Crack Cocaine Epidemic, the CIA put, according to this, uh, uh, the book and Michael Levine, I- I didn't remember his name last time I talked, uh, wrote that book, and he was a, a head CIA agent. He was a head DEA agent that exposed this, and the CIA tried to kill him. And he says they put crack cocaine... They developed their, their chemists developed crack, and they put it in every count- every city in the United States on one weekend. So, uh, they were bringing it up by the tons, and that's for sure.

Lex Fridman 48:07 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 48:07 And Barry was bringing it.

Lex Fridman 48:09 Well, can I ask you a small tangent question? Do you think the public should trust the CIA and the DEA? Do you think they're mostly good people that are carrying out a good mission?

Roger Reaves 48:23 Yes.

Lex Fridman 48:23 Because this kind of makes it sound like there's renegade agents that are just doing whatever the hell they want and w- with, uh, sometimes no regard for human life.

Roger Reaves 48:34 Well, that's certainly true, but that's not everybody in there. That's just sometime you get a few policemen in a, in a department that- that do these things.

Lex Fridman 48:41 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 48:41 I- I don't believe... I believe that our government is, is good.I think we got some fools running it.

Lex Fridman 48:46 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 48:46 I don't know how we get 'em there, but, uh, (laughs) I don't-

Lex Fridman 48:50 Well-

Roger Reaves 48:50 ... think, I know.

Lex Fridman 48:51 Okay, so what- what was Barry's involvement here? And how did, uh-

Roger Reaves 48:55 So Barry- Barry leaned back in that chair and he told me that, you know, he'd- uh, he got caught with one and a half tons and he bellied it in, uh, the runway in Nicaragua and, uh, had f- cameras flashing inside and out, and then he flew it back to Homestead with- with an agent there. And he brought the agent over, um, Jake Jacobson, really nice fellow, I think he was a crop duster. And we'd have got along if we'd been on the right side. And, uh, so we, uh- we sat there and drank Chivas Regal until I got pie-eyed and- and, uh, Barry told me about it. He said that he went to see Edwin Meese. He flew his ... he got out on bail and he flew his Learjet up to Washington and went in to see the attorney general, Edwin Meese. And they run him out of the office. The next day he went back, he said, "I have absolute proof that the CIA is bringing tons of cocaine, or they're running tons of cocaine into the United States." And Edwin Meese put him up with this agent, Jacobson I believe it was, and they went down and got one and a half tons. And on the way back they bellied it in and Pablo Escobar and some of the other ones on general there in Nicaragua, you can see 'em toting it from one plane to the other. It's called- in the book called The Big ... no, uh, Kings of Cocaine.

Lex Fridman 50:11 Mm-hmm.

Roger Reaves 50:11 It's got a mention of me too, and also the other one has a mention of me in it. Said I'm in more files with the DEA than Noriega.

Lex Fridman 50:20 (laughs) So who was wanting to get rid of Barry? Is it- is it the c- who wanted to get rid of Barry more, the cartels or the CIA?

Roger Reaves 50:28 The cartel. But, uh, so Barry leaned back and he- and he- he told me the story. And the tears came down between his fingers as he put his hands over his eyes and he said, "I- I- I just couldn't do it, Roger. I just couldn't do three life sentences. So I've told them everything. I went to Congress and I've testified before Congress." (clears throat) And he testified before Congress for all these things that he'd done and he said, "I told them all about you, but you're under my umbrella. You gotta testify with me before a grand jury in Miami." And so the guy said, "You can come down," the DEA agent said, "You can come down tomorrow with Mari first class, or I'll take you down in chains. And if you don't testify with Barry, the only place you'll ever see your wife and family again is in a federal prison visiting room."

Lex Fridman 51:14 Was that a difficult conversation?

Roger Reaves 51:16 Oh-

Lex Fridman 51:16 Looking at him?

Roger Reaves 51:17 ... my ice- my guts was just like ice water. I can't testify against my friends. I just can't do it. How am I going to do it? I just- I can't work with people and they was honest with me, how am I gonna testify against them? I can't spend the rest of my life in a federal prison. What on Earth, what a mess, Barry, you've got me into. So, uh-

Lex Fridman 51:37 Is that a kind of betrayal there?

Roger Reaves 51:40 Yes, but it still ... I wish he'd left me out of it. (laughs) I understand him getting his- i- i- i- in such a mess that he told because if- if the CIA and whoever else was behind him betrayed him-

Lex Fridman 51:53 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 51:53 ... then he's gonna tell everything if you ... So I says, "All right, I'll be in Miami." So Mari and I flew down first class and I- and I went to a lawyer, one of the biggest lawyers in Miami and I said, "Man, I am in a mess."

Lex Fridman 52:05 Mm-hmm.

Roger Reaves 52:06 "This fella's told everything and I've got to say something but I'm not a snitch, man. I mean, I- can you h- what- what can I do?" And he said, "Well, being a snitch is like being pregnant. You either are or you're not." (laughs)

Lex Fridman 52:21 (laughs) Oh.

Roger Reaves 52:22 And he says, "I- I don't represent snitches but if you wanna fight this case, I'll do it for $600,000." And I- boy my face turned red, "Well, I'm not a snitch." He said, "Well, that's what you're talking about." He said, "Let me tell you something, if you go in there and say one thing and sign that paper and you don't tell them everything you know-"

Lex Fridman 52:40 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 52:40 "... then they will convict you of everything you've ever done and you've told them. So you can't do it." So, uh, I said, "Barry, I- I'm having trouble with a lawyer. Give it- I'll go tomorrow, let's go." He said, "All right, use my lawyer," and he gave me his card, the lawyer's card. So Mari and I went to the Le Festivall restaurant that night and Barry and Debbie came in, she was dressed pretty and Barry was and so we was already about finished so we had dessert together and I said, "Barry, they're gonna kill you, friend." He said, "No, they ain't gonna kill me, so and so, such and such is gone," and this and the other. I said, "Barry, they gonna kill you, man, they know ... you can't deny it." And, "Ah," and I says ... I didn't tell him I wasn't gonna testify so I- I hugged his neck. I really like ... and we fled to Brazil, but I took Mari and the children and went to Brazil.

Lex Fridman 53:26 So you decided there you're not going to stay?

Roger Reaves 53:27 I knew, I just thought, "We're gonna..." I- I didn't know what I could do. I'd talked to a lawyer, I mean, I just didn't- I didn't know what- what I could do but the best in Miami said what he told me. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 53:37 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 53:37 So I had to go and so-

Lex Fridman 53:39 And you went to Brazil?

Roger Reaves 53:40 We went to Brazil and-

Lex Fridman 53:41 Did you have a conversation with anybody at the cartel just ... I mean, that's such an interesting moment that tests a man's character to not snitch. And did you have a conversation with anybody?

Roger Reaves 53:57 No.

Lex Fridman 53:57 Pablo, with-

Roger Reaves 53:58 No.

Lex Fridman 53:58 ... about it, like-

Roger Reaves 53:59 Not at all.

Lex Fridman 54:00 So it's just understood?

Roger Reaves 54:02 I just didn't- couldn't do it.

Lex Fridman 54:04 But how many men like you are there?

Roger Reaves 54:06 Not many. I had all my friends testified against me, I had 11 friends and every one of them put their finger up, "Roger did it." And I was facing life continuing criminal enterprise, carried-

Lex Fridman 54:15 And still you couldn't do it?

Roger Reaves 54:16 I just couldn't do it.

Lex Fridman 54:18 Do you ever get respect from the cartels for that? From the- from the people in the cartel?

Roger Reaves 54:23 Oh, there was old time I got back and stuff, they owe me money and I can't get it (laughs) so.

Lex Fridman 54:27 Well, that's- that's about money, I just mean about human beings.

Roger Reaves 54:31 Oh, I think so. I mean-

Lex Fridman 54:32 Having integrity.

Roger Reaves 54:32 ... I've been back down there and I've been welcomed. I- I have my, uh, my contact and when I was in Brazil I was trying to get this money, they owed me three and a half million dollars.

Lex Fridman 54:41 Mm-hmm.

Roger Reaves 54:41 So I called up there and he was gonna pay me, "Oh, I got 600,000 today and I'll get you some more tomorrow." And then the next week I called, "Hey, hey, guy, great news, great news! Barry Seal's been killed."So, oh, no, when I went back to the hotel, we was up in, um, northern part of Brazil, and... Where was it muddy? Uh...

Lex Fridman 55:01 I think we were in Guarujá.

Roger Reaves 55:02 Yeah. And, uh, so I went back, and I told Mario and Miriam, and, uh, and they cried and I cried. I really cried.

Lex Fridman 55:09 H- how, how was that great news from the cartel perspective?

Roger Reaves 55:12 Oh, well, now there's no case against me and him and them.

Lex Fridman 55:15 Do you know who killed him?

Roger Reaves 55:16 Yes. I'll tell you about that story. On the first load I did, I landed in a, at a banana plantation. And it was raining, and it was a muddy strip, clay. And they put the, the 300 kilos of cocaine in there, and the ugliest man you could imagine, named Renaldo, got in there with a MAC-10. And, uh, he was making sure I took it to Louisiana.

Lex Fridman 55:37 Mm-hmm.

Roger Reaves 55:37 (laughs) So-

Lex Fridman 55:39 This is many years before?

Roger Reaves 55:40 Yeah, couple years before.

Lex Fridman 55:42 Okay.

Roger Reaves 55:42 So, anyway, he, uh, uh... We took off, and the mud got up in the wheel well so, so thick until the wheels wouldn't come up. Well, I'm going 200 miles an hour instead of 300 miles per hour with wheels coming down.

Lex Fridman 55:55 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 55:55 Well, I can't go back there. If I do, I'm gonna be in the same situation till the sun dries it out in a few days. And so, but in Belize, I had a, a runway that we, had been used for $10,000.00, used to refuel. So, I told the guy, "Listen, we got to land in Belize to refuel." "No, no, no," he put the MAC-10, and, and, uh... "I'll shoot you." I said, "Go ahead, fool, you're gonna die too." So... (laughs)

Lex Fridman 56:18 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 56:18 It was in the tur-... So, I don't-

Lex Fridman 56:20 He w- he wasn't just ugly, he was also angry?

Roger Reaves 56:22 He was a bad, bad killer.

Lex Fridman 56:24 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 56:24 And so, uh, he's the one that actually killed Barry, the one that w- went up on the first load with me, and, uh, Renaldo, and he's in- doing life in-

Lex Fridman 56:36 So, he- he's just a killer?

Roger Reaves 56:37 Yeah. He's doing life in Louisiana.

Lex Fridman 56:40 I wonder who, uh... Is it, is it known who made that decision?

Roger Reaves 56:44 Uh, the younger, uh, Ochoa brother, I understand. Faviio, was the one paid for the hit. I don't know that, but that's what I've heard, and it probably sounds about right. He's, he's down in Jesup, Georgia, doing a long, long time. I think he's about to get out. He's been in 30 years or whatever.

Lex Fridman 57:03 The movie American Made, w- what do you think that movie got right? What did it get wrong?

Roger Reaves 57:11 Almost everything wrong.

Lex Fridman 57:13 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 57:14 (laughs) It was disgustingly wrong.

Lex Fridman 57:17 (laughs) Okay, um, which parts? Can you, can you, um... (laughs) Can you-

Roger Reaves 57:22 Well, one movie-

Lex Fridman 57:22 ... maybe elaborate?

Roger Reaves 57:23 ... it was about Barry Seal, and it just didn't even... It was nothing, uh, that... Whoever wrote it had no idea who Barry Seal was.

Lex Fridman 57:29 Hmm.

Roger Reaves 57:30 They sat in a rocking chair and just tried to think of what was some baby-bashing drug dealer doing.

Lex Fridman 57:37 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 57:37 And it's just like, God. Just, you just don't have any idea of the, of the spirit of the man.

Lex Fridman 57:42 So, they wanted just to try to tell a fun story without actually, uh, studying the story?

Roger Reaves 57:47 He d- they didn't know him. They just had no idea.

Lex Fridman 57:49 Right.

Roger Reaves 57:50 And Barry was such a nice person, such a really nice, gentleman person.

Lex Fridman 57:54 They talked to you, or no?

Roger Reaves 57:55 No.

Lex Fridman 57:56 The people that made the movie?

Roger Reaves 57:57 They didn't talk to me at all. Uh-uh. And, uh, I see all these people telling about, about Barry, never met him. They tell me all about him. I think that's just ridiculous.

Lex Fridman 58:04 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 58:05 And, uh, that... For one thing, for his character, coming out of whorehouses and all that. That was just, like, ugly. And then, down in Colombia, putting a gun to his head, gonna take his sunglasses, and then he put 25,000- million dollars worth of cocaine on his plane, and then they're gonna bet $100 he don't have enough room to take off. (laughs) That's just insane.

Lex Fridman 58:26 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 58:26 I mean, just, just, it... The whole thing. And then they, he's talking to the DEA agents when he's coming up. You don't know what fre- frequency they own. How he's got five planes, and they all split when the DEA comes out. These are just somebody's just fantasy about doing-

Lex Fridman 58:41 But those are, like, those are details of the man, details of the story. Is there some big, profound things they missed about just this whole period, about... That's something that's really important to you that was missed?

Roger Reaves 58:55 Yes, they just try to, uh, sensationalize on little things that people remember, and it's just not true. It's just-

Lex Fridman 59:02 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 59:02 It was just, like, a business deal, and, and, and, and good people, and good airplanes, and good flying, and, um... It w- it was like a, a, a, a good watch that was made. It just clicked, and it just went on. And they missed all that. They tried to make it sound like it's something very ugly.

Lex Fridman 59:20 Do you think it was a story that could've been told way better? And still be-

Roger Reaves 59:23 Oh, my goodness, yes.

Lex Fridman 59:23 ... a hell of a good story? Well, there's a, there's a series called Chernobyl done by HBO, and because I have sort of family connected to that period, um, you know, they did an incredible job of being historically accurate, and only not being historically accurate when it helped the story.

Roger Reaves 59:43 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 59:43 Only in those rare cases when they, on purpose, left the story to, uh, to make it easier for people to understand. But it was, it was still somehow accurate. Uh, and even though all the actors were British actors speaking English, with a British accent, it was still somehow accurate. Like, they captured the spirit.

Roger Reaves 1:00:05 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:00:05 So, it was historically accurate, and the spirit was captured. That was one of the most incredible, like, series I've ever seen. It convinced me that, uh... The, the movie was made by non-Russians. It convinced me that if you really care about a story-

Roger Reaves 1:00:21 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:00:21 ... you don't have to have been brought up in it. You don't even need to speak the language. If you're truly a scholar of it, if you talk to a lot of people, if you learn, if you, um, just pour your heart and soul into it, you can create something really special. And so, your sense is you could do that with th- with, uh, with the story with this period of time?

Roger Reaves 1:00:39 Oh, yes. It was, it was a, an, a story that needs to be told, and it needed to be told in the correct way, not like we're trying to bash a certain angle.

Lex Fridman 1:00:49 Yeah. Well, if Netflix or HBO are watching this, you need to tell the story of Roger Rees, uh, in my opinion. There you go. This is a young picture of you.

Roger Reaves 1:00:59 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:00:59 There you go.

Roger Reaves 1:00:59 That's from National Geographic. Okay.

Lex Fridman 1:01:01 Jorge Ochoa, Pablo Escobar, that's you, Rodger and Barry.

Roger Reaves 1:01:06 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:01:06 Smuggler: A Memoir. Yeah, I- I really do hope that they, uh, they make a movie of this one.

Lex Fridman 1:01:15 There's a movie called Blow that tells the story of George Jung, Boston George. Did you know George Jung? That's one way to ask it. The other is, what do you think of the movie Blow?

Roger Reaves 1:01:25 I didn't know George Jung, but it was a wonderful movie.

Lex Fridman 1:01:29 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 1:01:29 Absolutely, it captured it.

Lex Fridman 1:01:31 It did?

Roger Reaves 1:01:32 Yes, it did. That's the way it should be.

Lex Fridman 1:01:34 So, he was a little bit before your time?

Roger Reaves 1:01:36 Exactly the same time.

Lex Fridman 1:01:37 Exactly the same time?

Roger Reaves 1:01:38 Same. He was, uh, using stewardesses to fly the marijuana out of, uh, Manhattan Beach, and I was on the fire- fire department in Redondo Beach 10 miles away.

Lex Fridman 1:01:47 Mm-hmm.

Roger Reaves 1:01:47 Flying it up, sending it back. Somebody was sending it back. He might have been sending it back. But he didn't have near the excitement that I did. He- I was shot down twice, I escaped from five different prisons.

Lex Fridman 1:02:00 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 1:02:00 I was tortured almost to death in a Mexican prison. So, he didn't have all that fun that I had.

Lex Fridman 1:02:04 Fun in quotes, yeah.

Roger Reaves 1:02:05 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:02:05 So, yours is a- is a heck of a fun adventure. Uh, just to linger on a little bit, so, uh, Johnny Depp plays George and Ray Liotta plays his father, and there's this son/father kind of scene at the end. I don't know. It's- it's heartbreaking. Like, that scene paints a picture of a life that could have been had if none of this wild drug smuggling happened. I get- I don't usually, I mean, I don't al- almost, I really never get, like, teary-eyed in a movie, but that- that got me. It's almost like confronting, at the end of your life, what your life could have been with your father. The way he calls him Georgie. It, um, like, "You fucked up, Georgie." (laughs)

Roger Reaves 1:03:03 Yes. (laughs) I did, too. I really, really did. Mario waited for me all those years and the children raised him without me, visiting me in prisons all over the world. Just unbelievable. It's just, nothing's worth that kind of money.

Lex Fridman 1:03:17 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 1:03:19 (sighs)

Roger Reaves 1:03:21 .

Lex Fridman 1:03:21 Can you tell the story of when you were tortured nearly to death in a Mexican prison?

Roger Reaves 1:03:27 I sure can, and I'm smiling but it was nothing to smile about, I can tell you.

Lex Fridman 1:03:32 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 1:03:32 I was, uh, I was in a pool and a gentleman came over and shook hands with me and put handcuffs on me and I thought, "What in the world?" That was at one of the nice hotels. They put me in a- in a jail cell and I sat there and all the drunks and thieves and stuff kept coming in and they had a bucket near overrun, and I saw 18 people in a room about 12- 12 foot square. Oh, it was hot and I thought, "Somebody's got to come get me. This is- this ain't real." I hadn't done anything. It's like, it was a pilot come to see me in, up in Hermosillo and he stopped and he made the mistake and went to the international runway instead of where he was supposed to go.

Lex Fridman 1:04:10 Mm-hmm.

Roger Reaves 1:04:11 And he had my phony name in his pocket, so they got me. So, they said I was a drug smuggler. So, after about three days, they put me back into the- into the back and it was a torture place. And they put me in a little cell, like, I guess it wasn't hardly, it wasn't six feet. It must have been about five feet square and about 12 feet high and it was June, end of June, and it was hot. I mean hot. And, uh, they left me in there for, I guess, a few days. You didn't know they, uh... So, every once in a while they'd come drag me out and first off they put my head under water and it had seltzer in it or some kind and I took one whiff of that and three or four of them couldn't hold me down. So then, I learned that just before you have to breathe, tear loose like that and they'll let you up. (laughs) And, uh, that was the first treatment and then they- then they started, uh, beating me and, uh, they beat me with a blackjack and rubber hose until I was black and blue and yellow from the bottom of my feet to my head.

Lex Fridman 1:05:11 What did they want from you?

Roger Reaves 1:05:11 They wanted to sign, me to sign a confession that I was a drug smuggler and-

Lex Fridman 1:05:15 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 1:05:15 ... they put the papers under your- under your nose, "This is all over if you'll sign." Well, I knew if you signed, you got six years. I wasn't gonna sign. (laughs) I wasn't gonna sign. So, uh-

Lex Fridman 1:05:26 But they didn't want you to snitch on anybody, they just wanted you to say-

Roger Reaves 1:05:29 No, they didn't. They just wanted me to sign that paper.

Lex Fridman 1:05:30 And you still didn't.

Roger Reaves 1:05:31 (laughs) I ain't about to.

Lex Fridman 1:05:32 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 1:05:32 (laughs) I ain't, a beating ain't that bad. So... (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:05:37 (exhales)

Roger Reaves 1:05:39 So anyhow, it's coming to the good part. So then, they come and they take me out and I'm buck naked and they bend me over and they have things to pull you, like chains, click, click, click, click, click and they bent me over and they put butter on my bum and they-

Lex Fridman 1:05:53 Mm-hmm.

Roger Reaves 1:05:53 ... commenced to put hot chili pepper up there.

Lex Fridman 1:05:56 Mm.

Roger Reaves 1:05:56 And that stuff was bad. I mean, it was red hot.

Lex Fridman 1:06:00 Mm-hmm.

Roger Reaves 1:06:00 And that was- that was awful.

Lex Fridman 1:06:04 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 1:06:05 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:06:05 And still- still-

Roger Reaves 1:06:06 That was just awful.

Lex Fridman 1:06:08 Yeah, but still you didn't-

Roger Reaves 1:06:09 I didn't think about it. I ain't gonna tell you, I- I guess if I'd have known it was going to kill me, I wouldn't have done it, but I'm, but I wasn't about... You get hurt bad enough, you'll pass out, so I didn't pass out, so I was all right. (clears throat) So then, the last thing they did was they brought a- a dead man in there and he was wrapped, he was frozen and he was wrapped in newspaper, little strips about a half inch wide, just like a mummy.

Lex Fridman 1:06:32 Right.

Roger Reaves 1:06:33 And he was frozen and they hung him on the wall with a meat hook and, uh-

Lex Fridman 1:06:37 Oh, God.

Roger Reaves 1:06:38 "You next, son of a bitch, you next."

Lex Fridman 1:06:40 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 1:06:41 And so he's sitting there like this and, uh, as he starts to thaw out, which is pretty quick, it looks like he's crying and then it looks like he's peeing (laughs) .

Lex Fridman 1:06:50 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 1:06:50 And the paper starts unraveling on him and the formaldehyde puddles on the floor.

Lex Fridman 1:06:54 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 1:06:55 Hoo-hoo, what a smell, that rotten insides and the formaldehyde and there was a little...... uh, space. It wasn't even a half-inch high under the door. And I lay on that filthy floor on my cheek and put my lips right up under that door, and was sucking that fresh air, and I went to sleep after some time. And I know where Walt Disney gets his, gets his ideas. I saw white, uh, pink win- uh, pigs with wings on 'em, all kinds of stuff flying around.

Lex Fridman 1:07:19 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 1:07:20 So when I woke up, I didn't know which was real and which was the nightmare.

Lex Fridman 1:07:24 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 1:07:24 It took me a minute to figure out w- where I was and what was going on.

Lex Fridman 1:07:29 How did you stay mentally strong through that time? Like, what-

Roger Reaves 1:07:34 I, I don't know that I did. I would, (laughs) yeah, I was mentally strong. Sure I was, just like I am now.

Lex Fridman 1:07:39 Stubborn. I mean, you could be that man. They could've killed you, so-

Roger Reaves 1:07:43 Yes, they could have.

Lex Fridman 1:07:44 So what gave you hope? Did you have hope?

Roger Reaves 1:07:47 Yeah, I-

Lex Fridman 1:07:48 Or you were just a stubborn son of a bitch?

Roger Reaves 1:07:49 I think some of both of it and I think, "They aren't gonna keep you here forever."

Lex Fridman 1:07:53 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 1:07:53 You know, you're gonna get out into the prison or they're gonna let you go or something, but if you sign that paper, you ain't going nowhere. (laughs) And I wanted to go home.

Lex Fridman 1:08:01 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 1:08:01 I, I had got shot down, uh, a few weeks before that.

Lex Fridman 1:08:05 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 1:08:05 I got shot plumb out the sky. It was 80 bullet holes through the plane. Killed a fellow on the ground. Shot the, shot the leg nearly off the man in the plane.

Lex Fridman 1:08:12 Where was this?

Roger Reaves 1:08:13 In that little place of Pichilingue. You want me to tell you that story?

Lex Fridman 1:08:15 And they were shooting at you from the ground? Yeah, yeah.

Roger Reaves 1:08:17 All right. A little 900-foot strip there at Pichilingue, a poor, poor village with starving donkeys, and that's where they'd ... I'd give them $17,000 for a load and I'd go over on the highway and load. Well, on g- on day 13, I did a load every day for 13 days. They had a bunch of marijuana pretty good piled up and I always go and load a day. And, uh, on day 13, I had that little warning sign going off in my stomach, "Uh-oh, uh-oh, don't do it." But I asked this Joaquin, "Oh, we had the Federales paid off and they're where we were." So I spent the night in a hammock and, uh, walked down to the airplane, j- just as it getting daylight, and 10 or 12 men walked with me, and Pedro got ... And I brushed my teeth in the little stream, was about foot deep, a little river coming through there. And got in the airplane and, uh, I fired her up, bam, blah, blam. And bam! I thought a tire blew out. I looked over and see if it was ... And, and still ain't dawned on me. And Pedro's yelling, "Policia! Policia, Roger! Policia!"

Lex Fridman 1:09:17 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 1:09:17 (laughs) Well, it dawned on me and I shoved it, the throttle to the firewall. And, uh, I only had about-

Lex Fridman 1:09:24 So that was a bullet?

Roger Reaves 1:09:26 Yeah, somebody, they, they just, off to the side, say they'd shot, they'd shot-

Lex Fridman 1:09:29 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 1:09:29 ... just a warning like, "Get out, stop."

Lex Fridman 1:09:31 Gotcha.

Roger Reaves 1:09:31 "We're gonna, we're gonna rob you." Whatever it is. That's what they do.

Lex Fridman 1:09:34 Mm-hmm.

Roger Reaves 1:09:34 They had taken the plane and me and put me in prison, the whole thing, so ... But I, even though I had papers. So, uh, I just shoved it a firewall, and there wasn't enough room to take off on that strip. And it, it was, half of it was behind me, or some of it-

Lex Fridman 1:09:46 Mm-hmm.

Roger Reaves 1:09:46 ... was behind me. And so just at the end, I'm just like, I think that thing stalled at about 50 miles an hour, just, just turning 50 and I just pulled it right up and, uh, put the flaps on. And as I pulled off the ground, they opened up on both sides of me with machine guns and they riddled that airplane. I mean, the windshield came out. I got hit three times. Uh-

Lex Fridman 1:10:09 You, like your body?

Roger Reaves 1:10:10 Yeah. And, uh, uh-

Lex Fridman 1:10:13 Where did you get hit?

Roger Reaves 1:10:13 Well, I didn't know I was hit. I mean, it was just the, the gasoline-

Lex Fridman 1:10:15 Just adrenaline?

Roger Reaves 1:10:16 The gasoline just pouring in. The world turned yellow. I must have went into shock. So it just stopped in slow motion. And, uh, one bullet hit the strut right by my head and, uh, it just, uh, parts of that bullet just went all over me. I was just looked like I'd been peppered with, with, uh, lead. And, uh, the gasoline was just pouring in, I mean, just pouring in where they'd shot the wing up above.

Lex Fridman 1:10:39 Mm-hmm.

Roger Reaves 1:10:40 And the windshield's gone. I did- I mean, I could, I could, you know, it was just like light- a hailstorm.

Lex Fridman 1:10:46 Mm-hmm.

Roger Reaves 1:10:47 So I, uh, I was-

Lex Fridman 1:10:48 Did the airplanes stall or no?

Roger Reaves 1:10:50 It ... I was in a stall anyway, and I didn't realize it, and I guess you wouldn't unless you train for it. But when you in a stall, the elevator is kind of flappy.

Lex Fridman 1:10:59 Mm-hmm.

Roger Reaves 1:10:59 And I didn't realize at the time. I thought they had shot the elevator cable in too. So I thought, "Oh, God." So I just reached over and switched it off, switched it over, pulled the mixture, pulled everything. And, uh, in the river, there was rocks about as big as this table and they were like the turtle back, all the way up until there was a waterfall there. It was quite a pretty place. And I crashed straight onto it. I thought if I, if I hit those rocks... And when I did, the first time I hit, the wings came off and then it bounced. And the next time, the nose came up and came under the plane. And I'm sitting there, I must have been knocked unconscious, 'cause Pedro's shaking me, "Come on, Roger! Come on, Roger!" (laughs) So I stepped out into the water and here comes these four Federales, still shooting at us. And a bullet or two hit the airplane. And I kept a nine millimeter Browning Hi-Power taped to the top of the radio.

Lex Fridman 1:11:48 Mm-hmm.

Roger Reaves 1:11:48 In case I ever needed it. (laughs) So, 'cause you didn't-

Lex Fridman 1:11:51 (laughs) It's one of those times.

Roger Reaves 1:11:52 ... want, didn't, didn't want it in the airplane.

Lex Fridman 1:11:53 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 1:11:53 So I just ... It was just handy, just laying there. So I took and popped a few caps at 'em and they ran into the rocks.

Lex Fridman 1:11:58 Mm-hmm.

Roger Reaves 1:12:00 So, uh, we took off up, off running and then I looked and Pedro's foot's nearly shot off. They'd shot him on one side of the ankle and it just blown out the other side. And it wasn't even hardly bleeding, it ... the shock of it. So I took my T-shirt off and ripped it and tied it best I could.

Lex Fridman 1:12:15 But you had still bullets in you, so, like, you could still run?

Roger Reaves 1:12:17 No, I shot the en- ... I shot the toe, top of my toenail off.

Lex Fridman 1:12:20 Yeah.

Roger Reaves 1:12:20 I shot a cop across my head and my kneecap.

Lex Fridman 1:12:22 Okay.

Roger Reaves 1:12:22 So I was just nicked.

Lex Fridman 1:12:23 Okay, gotcha.

Roger Reaves 1:12:24 (laughs) But it was very painful later on, but right that time, I didn't ... It was, it was just hot. And there's a bullet still in my foot from it, a piece of a bullet, good-sized slug. Uh, so we went on up the mountain through the cactus and-

Lex Fridman 1:12:37 Just running?

Roger Reaves 1:12:38 Just going, "I want to go down." "No, no, they are Federales going this, the easy way. Let's go." This young fellow, so...

Lex Fridman 1:12:44 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 1:12:44 And we came to an old donkey. She must have been 30 years old, long and sway back, long hair on her. "Charlote! Charlote!" And he petted the donkey and we jumped on. And we rode for seven-

Lex Fridman 1:12:54 Like an actual donkey?

Roger Reaves 1:12:55 A donkey. There were donkeys all over the place. Anyhow, he knew that one from the village. And so we rode seven miles, two of us on a donkey with no bridle, no saddle, nothing. And, uh-We came to a little man plowing a little horse and a little ox. They was, both of them were spotted. And there was, the ox was, the yoke was across their back this way, and he was plowing with a little plow among stumps. It was like one of these people clearing a little piece of land, and he had a little, little house there. And so we went in his house and his wife and his daughter, they put, like, uh, cloth over my wounds and on Pedro's. It was terr- it was terrible. And, uh, they poured diesel oil on it to keep the flies off. (laughs) So I'm covered in diesel. So the man left, and he was gone all day. And then about dark, he showed up with about 15 or 20 horses and mules showed up in the yard, walking fast. And a doctor got out. He said, "I'm Dr. Benjamin Soso with Red Cross." And he worked on my foot and he worked on Pedro. He gave us a shot of morphine and tetanus shots. (clears throat) And he said, "You've got to get to hospital." He said, "Pedro will die if he don't get to hospital." And he said they were looking for a American pilot that's been shot down. They think he's dead. There was a lot of blood in that airplane. And so they rode... I don't know how far we rode, but we rode miles, and we'd come to a road, and there was a big truck. And it was loaded with corn in the ear, and they dug holes in that corn, put us in it, and covered us up.

Lex Fridman 1:14:17 Wow.

Roger Reaves 1:14:17 And the road was rough, and every time we'd hit a, a dirt road, that corn would cover me up, and they'd scratch my face out again.

Lex Fridman 1:14:24 (laughs)

Roger Reaves 1:14:24 And when we came to the highway, uh, we went into a house and they got me some clothes, uh, mine was messed up, and a, a white basin, and they must've brought 20 jugs of water different times. I kept washing and washing my foot till all the blood and the crud got off of me and put on those clothes. And somebody went to, uh, they said, "You can't go north. The road's blocked. They're looking for the pilot, so you gotta go south." So they found a, a taxi in, uh, Mazatlan, and it was a rather new taxi, and the fellow would, would take me to Guadalajara which was, I don't know, seven, eight hours south. So we got in that taxi and they propped me up with sheets and blankets and pillows in the backseat, and gave me these great big white pi- pain pills, and I was quite content. Then I was shot down in, uh, shot down in, in Colombia also.

Lex Fridman 1:15:13 What, uh... Can you tell that story?

Roger Reaves 1:15:15 I sure can. (laughs) All right, I was, uh, I went down for loading, loading marijuana, and we got to the place, and we got there too early, and the guerrillas screamed, "You gotta get outta here, gotta get outta here." And so we went back to the place where we staged from, and refueled. I had a beautiful DC-3, carry three tons. And, uh, so while I was waiting, I, uh, I ate something for lunch and I went around behind the house. We refueled the plane up, and I had to wait till late in the afternoon. They wanted me to come just at dark so the military