Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel
音乐与艺术政治与社会生物与进化心理与人性技术与编程
📋 章节目录
暂无章节信息
🔑 关键词
gotsaidwentputdidndonbarrymangoingprisonmoneyrogercamestoryplanetoldwasnshottookfeet
💬 精彩语录
暂无语录
🎙️ 完整对话（3120 条）
Lex Fridman (00:00.260)
The following is a conversation with Roger Reeves,
以下是与罗杰·里夫斯的对话，
Lex Fridman (00:03.140)
one of the most prolific drug smugglers in history.
历史上最多产的毒品走私者之一。
Lex Fridman (00:06.340)
He worked for Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa,
他为巴勃罗·埃斯科瓦尔和豪尔赫·奥乔亚工作，
Lex Fridman (00:10.420)
the leaders behind the Medellin Cartel.
麦德林贩毒集团背后的领导人。
Lex Fridman (00:13.460)
Roger was the employer and close friend of Barry Seal,
罗杰是巴里·西尔的雇主和密友，
Roger Reaves (00:17.420)
the infamous drug smuggler who was the main character
Lex Fridman (00:20.060)
in the movie American Maid.
电影《美国女仆》中。
Roger Reaves (00:22.060)
Roger transported countless tons of cocaine and marijuana
罗杰运输了无数吨可卡因和大麻
Lex Fridman (00:26.320)
covering six continents.
覆盖六大洲。
Roger Reaves (00:27.980)
He escaped prison five times,
他五次越狱，
Lex Fridman (00:30.200)
was shut down in both Mexico and Colombia,
墨西哥和哥伦比亚都被封锁，
Lex Fridman (00:32.400)
and was tortured nearly to death in a Mexican prison.
并在墨西哥监狱中被折磨致死。
Lex Fridman (00:36.920)
Through all of this, his wife Mari, the love of his life,
通过这一切，他的妻子玛丽，他一生的挚爱，
Roger Reaves (00:40.920)
was there with him, and when he was in prison,
和他在一起，当他在监狱里时，
Lex Fridman (00:43.600)
she waited for him.
她在等他。
Roger Reaves (00:45.200)
He recently got out of prison where for many years
他最近刚出狱多年
Lex Fridman (00:47.820)
he worked on his memoir called Smuggler.
他正在写回忆录《走私者》。
Roger Reaves (00:50.680)
This podcast is an exploration of his story.
这个播客是对他的故事的探索。
Lex Fridman (00:54.180)
Quick mention of our sponsors.
快速提及我们的赞助商。
Roger Reaves (00:56.200)
Noom, Allform, ExpressVPN, Four Sigmatic, and Aidsleep.
Noom、Allform、ExpressVPN、四西格玛和 Aidsleep。
Lex Fridman (01:01.920)
Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
Roger Reaves (01:04.880)
Let me say a few words about Roger Reeves,
Lex Fridman (01:06.920)
Pablo Escobar, and the war on drugs.
Roger Reaves (01:09.920)
This conversation with Roger is unlike any I've ever done.
Lex Fridman (01:13.320)
In the eyes of many, including the law,
Roger Reaves (01:15.840)
Roger is a criminal, a bad man who was added
Lex Fridman (01:18.720)
to the suffering in the world.
Lex Fridman (01:20.560)
But he never directly engaged or participated
Lex Fridman (01:23.160)
in the violence.
Roger Reaves (01:24.420)
Unlike his bosses, Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa.
Lex Fridman (01:29.280)
His crime was the transport of drugs.
Roger Reaves (01:32.080)
I thought about this, and about Pablo Escobar,
Lex Fridman (01:35.280)
who was at once both a brutal murderer
Lex Fridman (01:38.080)
and a Robin Hood figure who helped the poor
Lex Fridman (01:40.680)
and was loved by thousands, if not millions.
Roger Reaves (01:44.200)
We sometimes idolize murderers and destroy good, honest men.
Lex Fridman (01:48.240)
We give power and money to corrupt politicians
Lex Fridman (01:50.600)
and dictators that starve and murder their own people.
Lex Fridman (01:53.960)
Given this, I think about what makes for a good man,
Lex Fridman (01:57.400)
and what makes for a bad man, and who decides.
Lex Fridman (02:01.440)
Sitting across from Roger, I saw a complicated man,
Lex Fridman (02:04.720)
but one who has kindness in his heart,
Lex Fridman (02:06.960)
a love for money and adventure, and a disdain for violence.
Roger Reaves (02:11.960)
Again, his crime was the transport of drugs.
Lex Fridman (02:14.680)
Since 1971, the war on drugs has cost U.S. $1 trillion.
Roger Reaves (02:20.040)
Marijuana legalization alone would save
Lex Fridman (02:22.560)
and make $13.7 billion, that could send
Roger Reaves (02:26.680)
more than 650,000 students
Lex Fridman (02:28.760)
to public universities every year.
Roger Reaves (02:31.280)
Then there's the human stories of the 500,000 human beings
Lex Fridman (02:34.880)
sitting in prison for drug related offenses,
Lex Fridman (02:37.440)
and the 1.1 million on probation and parole.
Lex Fridman (02:40.800)
Their life is damaged or ruined beyond repair
Roger Reaves (02:44.100)
due to the prohibition of drugs.
Lex Fridman (02:46.400)
There's a lot more to be said about the damage done
Roger Reaves (02:48.840)
by the war on drugs, but when reading about Roger's story
Lex Fridman (02:52.360)
and talking to him, I couldn't escape the thought
Roger Reaves (02:55.280)
that while society wants to label him a criminal
Lex Fridman (02:57.960)
and a bad human being, there are much worse men out there
Roger Reaves (03:01.520)
who we give a pass to, even give power to,
Lex Fridman (03:04.740)
even men who hold political office or run companies.
Roger Reaves (03:09.120)
I also think about my role as an interviewer,
Lex Fridman (03:11.940)
sitting across a man like Roger.
Roger Reaves (03:14.080)
In these interviews, in life,
Lex Fridman (03:16.640)
in many ways I continue to be myself,
Roger Reaves (03:19.020)
a person who like Dostoyevsky's The Idiot,
Lex Fridman (03:21.940)
seeks the good in all people,
Lex Fridman (03:24.160)
but is hurt by it on occasion,
Lex Fridman (03:26.180)
and maybe is destroyed by it in the end.
Roger Reaves (03:29.740)
I'm not naive, but I'm also optimistic
Lex Fridman (03:32.380)
and have hope for humanity.
Roger Reaves (03:34.420)
That's who I am, and that's what these conversations are.
Lex Fridman (03:37.720)
I hope you join me, and I hope you understand
Roger Reaves (03:40.640)
that I come from a place of love.
Lex Fridman (03:43.160)
This is the Lex Friedman Podcast,
Lex Fridman (03:45.200)
and here's my conversation with Roger Reeves.
Lex Fridman (03:48.240)
You are one of the most prolific drug smugglers in history.
Lex Fridman (03:54.000)
What would you say motivated you?
Lex Fridman (03:55.840)
Money, power, the thrill, or was it something else?
Roger Reaves (03:59.420)
Money.
Lex Fridman (04:00.440)
But isn't there a point where you've had more money
Roger Reaves (04:04.200)
than you can possibly know what to do with,
Lex Fridman (04:06.360)
or is it always more money?
Roger Reaves (04:09.000)
You know, I had plenty of money several times,
Lex Fridman (04:13.080)
and I think it's sort of like if you was in Las Vegas
Lex Fridman (04:17.160)
and you had the slot machine handled down,
Lex Fridman (04:20.480)
and the gold coins was tumbling around you,
Lex Fridman (04:22.560)
and you had sweepers bagging them up,
Lex Fridman (04:25.360)
when would you let it go?
Lex Fridman (04:27.280)
But isn't some part of that the thrill then?
Lex Fridman (04:29.960)
Oh, there was a lot of thrill, sometimes way too much.
Roger Reaves (04:33.120)
You made certainly tens of millions of dollars,
Lex Fridman (04:35.960)
probably much more.
Lex Fridman (04:37.040)
What memorable experience
Lex Fridman (04:38.920)
did having that much money make possible for you?
Lex Fridman (04:41.720)
So there's one thing is the money,
Lex Fridman (04:44.120)
and the other thing is what that money can buy.
Roger Reaves (04:47.320)
Well, I bought everything that I could hide.
Lex Fridman (04:50.280)
I bought seven farms.
Roger Reaves (04:52.200)
I owned the city,
Lex Fridman (04:55.760)
the land where the city of Moreno Valley, California is.
Roger Reaves (04:59.320)
I had an option on that land.
Lex Fridman (05:01.040)
Did the planning and development of that.
Roger Reaves (05:04.440)
The most expensive coin in the world.
Lex Fridman (05:09.120)
Yachts, ships, airplanes galore.
Lex Fridman (05:12.360)
Did that bring you happiness?
Lex Fridman (05:13.760)
No, absolutely not.
Roger Reaves (05:16.880)
In fact, I think I'm happier now.
Lex Fridman (05:18.280)
I know I'm happier now.
Lex Fridman (05:19.800)
So looking back, would you do it the same way all again?
Lex Fridman (05:24.640)
No way.
Lex Fridman (05:26.640)
Really, even the thrill of it?
Lex Fridman (05:28.360)
Not even thrill of it.
Roger Reaves (05:29.680)
It wasn't worth 33 years in prison,
Lex Fridman (05:31.880)
being away from my lovely family.
Lex Fridman (05:34.900)
So money, what about the power?
Lex Fridman (05:37.980)
Just being on top of the world where nobody can,
Roger Reaves (05:41.000)
not the governments, the police,
Lex Fridman (05:46.320)
all the big, bad agencies chasing you,
Lex Fridman (05:50.320)
and you could do whatever the heck you wanted.
Lex Fridman (05:52.740)
As far as having to look over your shoulder
Roger Reaves (05:54.860)
everywhere you went and every phone call you made,
Lex Fridman (05:58.060)
make sure that you was naked with somebody in the ocean
Roger Reaves (06:00.560)
before you talked.
Lex Fridman (06:03.640)
It's rather uncomfortable.
Roger Reaves (06:05.040)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (06:07.840)
I like to make phone calls the same way.
Lex Fridman (06:09.840)
What was it like meeting and working with Pablo Escobar,
Lex Fridman (06:15.640)
the leader of the Medellin Cartel?
Roger Reaves (06:18.320)
He was just, just seemed like a gentleman when I met him.
Lex Fridman (06:21.320)
He was just like you and I, sitting here, shook hands,
Lex Fridman (06:23.280)
and I had flown one load for a fellow,
Lex Fridman (06:26.600)
and it didn't work out well.
Roger Reaves (06:28.920)
The fellow that I gave it to got shot,
Lex Fridman (06:30.600)
and it took a while to get my money,
Lex Fridman (06:31.920)
and they didn't put as many kilos on the plane
Lex Fridman (06:34.000)
as they're supposed to,
Lex Fridman (06:34.840)
and so I wasn't gonna work with him anymore,
Lex Fridman (06:37.200)
and my contact down there introduced me
Roger Reaves (06:39.160)
to Jorge Ochoa, and we went up,
Lex Fridman (06:43.440)
and in Vigado, we went up and the gate opened,
Lex Fridman (06:45.680)
and we was escorted in.
Lex Fridman (06:47.200)
There must have been 50 men out in the yards,
Roger Reaves (06:49.840)
hitching a rail on an old house,
Lex Fridman (06:52.480)
and we was escorted right in,
Lex Fridman (06:54.720)
and there was a beautiful woman in there.
Lex Fridman (06:57.040)
I mean, gore, drop dead beautiful,
Lex Fridman (06:59.760)
and she made us a cup of coffee,
Lex Fridman (07:02.440)
then ushered in to see Jorge Ochoa,
Lex Fridman (07:06.040)
and he had 12 telephones on his desk,
Lex Fridman (07:08.160)
and all of them was a different color,
Lex Fridman (07:09.880)
and he shook hands, was very friendly, spoke English,
Lex Fridman (07:13.720)
and he said that each one of those telephones
Roger Reaves (07:15.840)
represented another city in the United States.
Lex Fridman (07:18.280)
This is Chicago, and this is New York.
Roger Reaves (07:20.360)
If I ring, I knew who was calling,
Lex Fridman (07:22.720)
and so we chatted a while,
Lex Fridman (07:24.440)
and he asked me what type of airplanes I had
Lex Fridman (07:28.040)
and what experience I had flying across the U.S. border,
Lex Fridman (07:31.480)
and I told him he seemed pleased with it,
Lex Fridman (07:35.080)
and he called the lady in, and she went next door,
Lex Fridman (07:37.680)
and in came Pablo Escobar,
Lex Fridman (07:39.520)
and he introduced me to Pablo Escobar,
Lex Fridman (07:41.320)
and he asked the same questions again,
Lex Fridman (07:43.560)
and I answered him, and I asked him how much he paid,
Lex Fridman (07:49.600)
and he paid $5,000 a kilo to haul it,
Lex Fridman (07:53.000)
and so I said, how much you put on the plane?
Roger Reaves (07:55.520)
He said 300, 500, so that's one and a half,
Lex Fridman (07:59.240)
two and a half million dollars for an eight hour trip.
Roger Reaves (08:01.520)
Sounded pretty good to me.
Lex Fridman (08:02.840)
And we're talking about cocaine.
Roger Reaves (08:04.720)
Cocaine. And we're talking
Lex Fridman (08:05.560)
about Colombia.
Roger Reaves (08:06.520)
Colombia, and cocaine, and Medellin cartel.
Lex Fridman (08:09.160)
And Jorge Ochoa was one of the, what would you say,
Lex Fridman (08:12.560)
founding members of the Medellin?
Lex Fridman (08:14.200)
He was probably the brains behind the whole thing.
Roger Reaves (08:16.160)
The brains, and spoke good English.
Lex Fridman (08:17.760)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (08:18.600)
And they were nice people.
Lex Fridman (08:19.880)
Really nice people.
Lex Fridman (08:21.440)
Were you scared?
Lex Fridman (08:22.560)
Not at all.
Lex Fridman (08:23.640)
What's wrong with your mind that you weren't scared?
Lex Fridman (08:26.400)
Here's some of the most dangerous men in this world,
Lex Fridman (08:30.000)
and you weren't scared.
Lex Fridman (08:31.120)
Well, I knew I was gonna do exactly what I said
Roger Reaves (08:33.000)
I was gonna do.
Lex Fridman (08:34.080)
Murray and the children were down there.
Roger Reaves (08:35.400)
They went down and they stayed in the hotel,
Lex Fridman (08:37.080)
five stars, treated royally on my first load.
Lex Fridman (08:40.240)
And they just did ask security to make sure
Lex Fridman (08:42.640)
that I wasn't a DEA agent.
Lex Fridman (08:44.680)
So I did the first load,
Lex Fridman (08:47.440)
and they can say they were hostages,
Lex Fridman (08:49.960)
but they really weren't.
Lex Fridman (08:51.120)
It was just insurance.
Lex Fridman (08:53.000)
So there was some integrity to the way they operated.
Lex Fridman (08:56.240)
Completely.
Roger Reaves (08:57.400)
I mean, straight up.
Lex Fridman (09:00.160)
The money was ironed and banded,
Roger Reaves (09:02.360)
banded and just right.
Lex Fridman (09:04.960)
And the numbers were never once anything wrong with it.
Lex Fridman (09:09.280)
What would you attribute that honesty to?
Lex Fridman (09:11.600)
Within their own moral system and their own set of rules,
Lex Fridman (09:17.600)
why weren't people crossing the line
Lex Fridman (09:20.040)
and shaving off the top and injecting chaos
Roger Reaves (09:24.440)
into the system to where it would be unpredictable
Lex Fridman (09:28.080)
and people would be dishonest and greedy
Lex Fridman (09:30.160)
and all those kinds of things?
Lex Fridman (09:31.800)
That's true.
Roger Reaves (09:32.640)
Most people are, but there's certain people
Lex Fridman (09:34.200)
at the top of the food chain that they don't need that.
Lex Fridman (09:37.560)
And if they're completely honest,
Lex Fridman (09:40.520)
then they don't have to think of,
Roger Reaves (09:41.840)
remember the lie they told.
Lex Fridman (09:43.960)
And plus they're just honest to start with.
Roger Reaves (09:45.880)
They're making plenty of money.
Lex Fridman (09:48.320)
They was making as much money as I did.
Roger Reaves (09:51.600)
I'll tell you how that came about.
Lex Fridman (09:54.920)
I understand that 10,000 people were killed every year
Roger Reaves (09:57.920)
in Medellin, Colombia, and what they were doing,
Lex Fridman (10:00.600)
they didn't have any organization.
Lex Fridman (10:03.760)
And if one fellow had 10 kilos
Lex Fridman (10:06.480)
and he wanted it shipped to New York,
Roger Reaves (10:08.840)
he would tell his friend and his friend says,
Lex Fridman (10:10.800)
sure, I'll ship it.
Roger Reaves (10:11.640)
I have a pilot and I'll ship it up.
Lex Fridman (10:13.160)
And then he would look in the newspapers,
Roger Reaves (10:14.840)
oh, 40 kilos was busted in New Jersey.
Lex Fridman (10:17.200)
I'm so sorry, yours got busted.
Roger Reaves (10:19.520)
Bang, bang, he's dead.
Lex Fridman (10:22.600)
So here comes Jorge Ochoa and the three Ochoa brothers
Lex Fridman (10:26.960)
and Pablo Escobar and Gacho.
Lex Fridman (10:28.640)
And they decided that we will make an insurance company,
Roger Reaves (10:33.400)
that we will charge you $10,000
Lex Fridman (10:35.560)
to take it to your contact in Miami.
Roger Reaves (10:39.960)
If it gets lost anywhere between the time I put it
Lex Fridman (10:43.000)
on the airplane or the time you give it to us
Lex Fridman (10:45.320)
and the time we give it to your man,
Lex Fridman (10:47.280)
we will replace it in Colombia for you.
Lex Fridman (10:50.400)
So there was no way anybody could lose.
Lex Fridman (10:52.680)
And I understand they got a hundred tons piled up
Roger Reaves (10:56.240)
under that insurance program.
Lex Fridman (10:57.920)
And I was right there the first day.
Lex Fridman (11:00.720)
So I had all the work I could do.
Lex Fridman (11:03.360)
I would land and I said, when do you want me to come back?
Roger Reaves (11:05.800)
We're waiting on you, Senor.
Lex Fridman (11:08.640)
Well, let me ask a difficult question.
Roger Reaves (11:10.400)
Some see Escobar as a brutal murderer
Lex Fridman (11:14.080)
and some see him as maybe a Robin Hood like figure
Roger Reaves (11:17.800)
who helped the poor.
Lex Fridman (11:19.560)
How do you see the man?
Roger Reaves (11:20.840)
Both of them.
Lex Fridman (11:22.360)
I think he started out to be honest with help the poor.
Lex Fridman (11:25.160)
And then they had a war down there
Lex Fridman (11:27.040)
and they blew up and killed his people.
Lex Fridman (11:29.320)
And the country was divided almost equally three ways.
Lex Fridman (11:32.920)
They had the military.
Roger Reaves (11:36.040)
They were just as much into it as anybody.
Lex Fridman (11:38.200)
And then you had the FARC guerrillas.
Roger Reaves (11:40.520)
They had about a third of the country.
Lex Fridman (11:42.720)
And then you had the Contras.
Roger Reaves (11:43.960)
It was like the white farmers
Lex Fridman (11:46.120)
and they're the ones that I was dealing with
Lex Fridman (11:48.400)
and they were at war with one another.
Lex Fridman (11:50.840)
And so if one of them started killing their people,
Roger Reaves (11:53.680)
well, I'll kill some of yours too.
Lex Fridman (11:55.760)
So that's how it happened.
Lex Fridman (11:57.240)
And then when I heard about Pablo Escobar
Lex Fridman (11:59.960)
blowing up that airliner
Lex Fridman (12:01.080)
and killing those women and children,
Lex Fridman (12:02.840)
I was sorry I ever shook his hand.
Roger Reaves (12:05.040)
That's brutal murder.
Lex Fridman (12:07.080)
So you would say Escobar is not a good man?
Roger Reaves (12:10.640)
Not at all.
Lex Fridman (12:11.560)
He's terrible.
Roger Reaves (12:13.240)
Now, looking back on it, when I met him, he was good.
Lex Fridman (12:16.840)
Did just exactly what he said he would do.
Lex Fridman (12:19.520)
Could he be a bad man and a man you can trust?
Lex Fridman (12:22.800)
Are those the things you...
Roger Reaves (12:23.640)
Absolutely you could trust him, yes.
Lex Fridman (12:27.560)
So from your perspective, in terms of business,
Roger Reaves (12:31.440)
he was reliable, he was honest, had integrity.
Lex Fridman (12:35.600)
You could work with him and he felt safe.
Roger Reaves (12:38.280)
Completely.
Lex Fridman (12:39.720)
We flew up to his ranch
Lex Fridman (12:41.640)
and we brought out motorcycles to start with.
Lex Fridman (12:45.440)
And can you ride a motorcycle?
Roger Reaves (12:46.560)
Of course I can ride a motorcycle.
Lex Fridman (12:48.160)
So I took off across the grass
Lex Fridman (12:50.080)
and there was a little ditch there
Lex Fridman (12:51.840)
and the front wheel dropped in that thing
Lex Fridman (12:53.720)
and I must have slid across that grass 20 feet
Lex Fridman (12:56.560)
before I got stopped.
Roger Reaves (12:57.560)
He almost fell off of his bike waiting
Lex Fridman (13:00.240)
because they knew what it was gonna do.
Lex Fridman (13:01.920)
And then we got on horses and we went out there
Lex Fridman (13:04.120)
and pretended to round up some cows
Lex Fridman (13:06.720)
and he put a Mac 10 machine gun pistol over my shoulder.
Lex Fridman (13:09.800)
Do you know how to use this?
Roger Reaves (13:10.920)
Well, I never had, but it was all right.
Lex Fridman (13:13.080)
I think it was like, okay, you got 10 bodyguards,
Lex Fridman (13:16.160)
what do you need me for?
Lex Fridman (13:17.840)
So that's the kind of time we laughed and talked
Lex Fridman (13:19.880)
and drove some cows over the stumps.
Lex Fridman (13:23.000)
You said Jorge Ochoa was perhaps the brains
Roger Reaves (13:26.960)
of the Medellin cartel.
Lex Fridman (13:30.320)
What was he like?
Lex Fridman (13:31.640)
And why do you say he was the brains?
Lex Fridman (13:35.160)
Well, he was a gentleman.
Lex Fridman (13:37.360)
And I suppose he shipped,
Lex Fridman (13:39.400)
and don't tell me how many more times of cocaine
Roger Reaves (13:41.880)
than Pablo did.
Lex Fridman (13:43.320)
Just him and his brothers,
Roger Reaves (13:44.720)
you could tell by the, they had on each load,
Lex Fridman (13:47.880)
they was in duffel bags and his big football shaped
Roger Reaves (13:52.520)
fluffy stuff made with ether.
Lex Fridman (13:55.240)
And they would have three horns on it
Roger Reaves (13:58.600)
or a rattlesnake or four Xs on each bag.
Lex Fridman (14:02.080)
You kind of got to knowing which was which
Lex Fridman (14:04.360)
and they shipped a lot.
Lex Fridman (14:07.000)
So, and he was just a gentleman.
Roger Reaves (14:09.600)
I took the family, we went one weekend to his ranch
Lex Fridman (14:12.520)
or his palatial place out near Barranquilla
Lex Fridman (14:17.520)
and oh, he just treated the family.
Lex Fridman (14:20.360)
His family had, his younger brother made a bull fight
Lex Fridman (14:24.680)
and we had skiing and little airplanes on floats
Lex Fridman (14:30.280)
on the water.
Roger Reaves (14:32.000)
He was really nice and he was really nice.
Lex Fridman (14:36.200)
How do you make sense of the tension
Roger Reaves (14:39.440)
that a man could be a gentleman,
Lex Fridman (14:42.040)
can have integrity, but also be a murderer?
Roger Reaves (14:44.680)
Well, murder is a stronger word than killing.
Lex Fridman (14:50.040)
Can you explain the line,
Lex Fridman (14:52.920)
the gray area we're talking about?
Lex Fridman (14:55.000)
I mean, I've just talking with Jocko Willing,
Roger Reaves (14:57.160)
can we talk a lot about killing in the context
Lex Fridman (15:00.400)
of military conflict in the context of war?
Lex Fridman (15:05.440)
So there, there's a line between murder and killing
Lex Fridman (15:08.720)
that you can draw.
Lex Fridman (15:09.920)
What's the line that you're referring to?
Lex Fridman (15:11.960)
It's something similar.
Roger Reaves (15:13.160)
If people are shooting at you
Lex Fridman (15:14.920)
and you shoot back and kill him,
Roger Reaves (15:16.360)
that's not murder whatsoever.
Lex Fridman (15:17.840)
He's trying to get away or out of the situation.
Lex Fridman (15:22.240)
But if some woman don't pay you
Lex Fridman (15:25.560)
and you send a hit man over to kill her
Lex Fridman (15:27.960)
and her children, that's murder.
Lex Fridman (15:30.840)
Was Jorge involved in those kinds of things?
Roger Reaves (15:33.280)
I don't think so at all.
Lex Fridman (15:34.880)
I mean, he was just such a gentleman.
Roger Reaves (15:36.480)
He had a restaurant before and he was just smart.
Lex Fridman (15:39.880)
I understand that the first 10 kilos he sold,
Roger Reaves (15:42.720)
he was sitting on a motorcycle in the sidelines
Lex Fridman (15:46.200)
in a parking lot and when the DEA come in,
Roger Reaves (15:48.040)
he sped away.
Lex Fridman (15:49.520)
So he didn't come back to America.
Roger Reaves (15:51.240)
He was just smart.
Lex Fridman (15:52.080)
Some people just are savvy.
Lex Fridman (15:53.760)
And he was such a gentleman.
Lex Fridman (15:55.320)
And the whole family, the mother and the father,
Roger Reaves (15:57.680)
the two brothers, their sister,
Lex Fridman (15:59.760)
I was there when she was kidnapped.
Lex Fridman (16:01.440)
And finally, he kidnapped our, I guess,
Lex Fridman (16:05.560)
100 leaders of the FARC and said, all right,
Roger Reaves (16:10.400)
when she don't come back,
Lex Fridman (16:11.240)
none of these are gonna come back.
Lex Fridman (16:13.320)
So they made a deal.
Lex Fridman (16:15.440)
Is there something you can say about the power structure,
Roger Reaves (16:17.800)
the hierarchy of the Medellin cartel
Lex Fridman (16:20.240)
that you interacted with?
Lex Fridman (16:21.960)
Was it a dictatorship where Pablo ran everything?
Lex Fridman (16:26.000)
Was there a bunch of power centers?
Lex Fridman (16:28.320)
Was it like a company where you have CEO, CTO kind of thing?
Lex Fridman (16:32.640)
And then there's like managers
Lex Fridman (16:34.040)
and all those kinds of things.
Lex Fridman (16:35.360)
How did it run from a leadership perspective?
Roger Reaves (16:39.520)
I understand that about five of them got together
Lex Fridman (16:43.440)
and made this, I would call it an insurance company.
Lex Fridman (16:46.920)
And now known as the Medellin Cartel.
Lex Fridman (16:50.440)
And I didn't see any difference.
Roger Reaves (16:51.640)
Each one of them had their own business.
Lex Fridman (16:55.080)
And their people from the jungle or wherever made the cocaine,
Roger Reaves (16:59.880)
gave it to them and they shipped it.
Lex Fridman (17:02.120)
And so it didn't seem to be any power play
Roger Reaves (17:05.760)
between them at all.
Lex Fridman (17:07.560)
But my main contact was Jorge Ochoa
Lex Fridman (17:10.200)
and Pablo Escobar was right there.
Lex Fridman (17:12.920)
And I saw plenty of stuff for him too.
Roger Reaves (17:16.040)
It's strange that they didn't betray each other regularly.
Lex Fridman (17:20.640)
You know, greed makes men betray each other.
Lex Fridman (17:25.200)
How do you explain that?
Lex Fridman (17:27.400)
How much betrayal did you see?
Roger Reaves (17:29.360)
I didn't see any, absolutely none.
Lex Fridman (17:32.720)
If they shipped his 100 kilos, he got paid for it.
Lex Fridman (17:36.280)
And if the other one shipped his,
Lex Fridman (17:38.480)
I'm sure they got paid for it.
Lex Fridman (17:39.960)
How do you explain that?
Lex Fridman (17:42.200)
Well, there was no need to.
Roger Reaves (17:43.400)
The money was just unbelievable.
Lex Fridman (17:44.640)
You think about 500 kilos in the plane
Roger Reaves (17:47.920)
at $50,000 a kilo at the time.
Lex Fridman (17:53.760)
And they paid $5,000 to ship it.
Lex Fridman (17:57.440)
And they made 5,000 without even touching it.
Lex Fridman (18:00.560)
They just had somebody to load it on through the airplane.
Roger Reaves (18:03.920)
I gave it to their man in Miami.
Lex Fridman (18:05.640)
They gave it to whoever it belonged to
Roger Reaves (18:07.080)
by the marks on the duffel bags.
Lex Fridman (18:10.920)
So they was making just untold millions.
Roger Reaves (18:14.160)
Just no reason.
Lex Fridman (18:16.680)
But greed can blind men.
Roger Reaves (18:20.960)
It's still strange to me
Lex Fridman (18:24.640)
that there was not more betrayal.
Roger Reaves (18:26.640)
It speaks to something else perhaps
Lex Fridman (18:28.800)
that's bigger than money.
Roger Reaves (18:31.520)
Maybe not.
Lex Fridman (18:34.240)
But it seems like just like in the casino,
Roger Reaves (18:36.120)
like you mentioned, we get accustomed
Lex Fridman (18:40.120)
to whatever level of money we have,
Roger Reaves (18:42.120)
we get accustomed very quickly.
Lex Fridman (18:43.680)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (18:44.640)
And then there's a tension that's natural
Lex Fridman (18:47.240)
between human beings.
Lex Fridman (18:49.160)
And when that tension combined with money,
Lex Fridman (18:52.640)
combined with power,
Roger Reaves (18:54.720)
combined with, like you mentioned, beautiful women
Lex Fridman (18:57.600)
and a bit of violence,
Roger Reaves (18:59.640)
it seems that betrayal should be commonplace.
Lex Fridman (19:04.600)
But it's not.
Roger Reaves (19:05.440)
It wasn't, not at all.
Lex Fridman (19:07.040)
Carlos later, I don't know if he betrayed anybody,
Lex Fridman (19:09.640)
but he started that.
Lex Fridman (19:10.840)
He was running cocaine through the Bahamas
Roger Reaves (19:13.240)
near the island.
Lex Fridman (19:14.200)
I didn't go.
Roger Reaves (19:15.040)
I was offered to fly with a DC3 with that,
Lex Fridman (19:17.080)
but I didn't like it.
Lex Fridman (19:18.520)
So I had my route through the old wells in Louisiana.
Lex Fridman (19:22.000)
And so I wasn't gonna change,
Lex Fridman (19:24.440)
but he talked a lot and I don't know if he betrayed,
Lex Fridman (19:27.200)
but they didn't like him.
Roger Reaves (19:28.440)
Yeah, so as you expand,
Lex Fridman (19:31.680)
there could be tensions that lead to conflict.
Roger Reaves (19:35.640)
Columbia was, like you said, an ultra violent place.
Lex Fridman (19:40.480)
How did you survive?
Lex Fridman (19:41.960)
Who protected you?
Lex Fridman (19:43.440)
I was a hero.
Roger Reaves (19:44.520)
They liked me.
Lex Fridman (19:45.560)
I mean, I was just treated royally.
Roger Reaves (19:47.480)
All I did, I would come over El Banco.
Lex Fridman (19:49.600)
There's a radio station at the Forks of the Magdalena River.
Roger Reaves (19:52.960)
I believe it was 720, if I remember right, on the AM.
Lex Fridman (19:57.120)
And I'd fly in at 10,000 feet
Lex Fridman (19:58.840)
and I'd see below me there'd be a Cessna.
Lex Fridman (1:00:00.040)
it was still somehow accurate.
Roger Reaves (1:00:02.400)
Like they captured the spirit.
Lex Fridman (1:00:05.520)
So it was historically accurate
Lex Fridman (1:00:06.960)
and the spirit was captured.
Lex Fridman (1:00:08.360)
That was one of the most incredible like series
Roger Reaves (1:00:10.720)
I've ever seen.
Lex Fridman (1:00:11.720)
It convinced me that the movie was made by non Russians.
Roger Reaves (1:00:17.440)
It convinced me that if you really care about a story,
Lex Fridman (1:00:21.640)
you don't have to have been brought up in it.
Roger Reaves (1:00:23.440)
You don't even need to speak the language.
Lex Fridman (1:00:25.320)
If you're truly a scholar of it,
Roger Reaves (1:00:27.320)
if you talk to a lot of people, if you learn,
Lex Fridman (1:00:29.720)
if you just pour your heart and soul into it,
Roger Reaves (1:00:32.760)
you can create something really special.
Lex Fridman (1:00:34.640)
And so your son says you could do that with the story
Roger Reaves (1:00:37.920)
with this period of time.
Lex Fridman (1:00:39.320)
Oh yes, it was a story that needs to be told.
Roger Reaves (1:00:43.360)
It need to be told in the correct way.
Lex Fridman (1:00:45.040)
Not like we're trying to bash a certain angle.
Roger Reaves (1:00:49.480)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:00:50.400)
Well, if Netflix or HBO are watching this,
Roger Reaves (1:00:52.800)
you need to tell the story of Roger Rees, in my opinion.
Lex Fridman (1:00:56.520)
There you go.
Roger Reaves (1:00:57.480)
This is a young picture of you.
Lex Fridman (1:00:59.080)
Yeah. There you go.
Roger Reaves (1:00:59.920)
That's from National Geographic.
Lex Fridman (1:01:01.360)
Jorge Archoa, Pablo Escobar, it's you, Roger and Barry.
Roger Reaves (1:01:05.960)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:01:06.800)
And the Muggler, a memoir.
Roger Reaves (1:01:09.760)
Yeah, I really do hope that they make a movie of this one.
Lex Fridman (1:01:15.080)
There's a movie called Blow that tells the story
Roger Reaves (1:01:17.480)
of George Young, Boston George.
Lex Fridman (1:01:19.880)
Did you know George Young?
Roger Reaves (1:01:22.000)
That's one way to ask it.
Lex Fridman (1:01:23.280)
The other is what do you think of the movie Blow?
Roger Reaves (1:01:25.640)
I didn't know George Young, but it was a wonderful movie.
Lex Fridman (1:01:29.240)
Absolutely.
Roger Reaves (1:01:30.640)
It captured it.
Lex Fridman (1:01:31.800)
It did.
Roger Reaves (1:01:32.640)
Yes, it did.
Lex Fridman (1:01:33.480)
That's the way it should be.
Lex Fridman (1:01:34.600)
So he was a little bit before your time?
Lex Fridman (1:01:36.360)
Exactly the same time.
Roger Reaves (1:01:37.800)
Exactly the same time.
Lex Fridman (1:01:38.800)
He was using stewardesses to fly the marijuana
Roger Reaves (1:01:41.720)
out of Manhattan Beach,
Lex Fridman (1:01:43.800)
and I was on the fire department in Redondo Beach,
Roger Reaves (1:01:46.160)
10 miles away, flying it up, sending it back.
Lex Fridman (1:01:49.560)
Somebody was sending it back.
Roger Reaves (1:01:50.560)
He might've been sending it back,
Lex Fridman (1:01:52.960)
but he didn't have near the excitement that I did.
Roger Reaves (1:01:55.720)
I was shot down twice.
Lex Fridman (1:01:57.840)
I escaped from five different prisons.
Roger Reaves (1:02:00.200)
I was tortured almost to death in a Mexican prison.
Lex Fridman (1:02:02.160)
So he didn't have all that fun that I had.
Roger Reaves (1:02:04.080)
Fun in quotes.
Lex Fridman (1:02:05.040)
Yeah, so yours is a heck of a fun adventure.
Roger Reaves (1:02:09.120)
Just to linger on a little bit.
Lex Fridman (1:02:10.720)
So Johnny Depp plays George,
Lex Fridman (1:02:14.440)
and Ray Liotta plays his father,
Lex Fridman (1:02:16.640)
and there's this son father kind of scene at the end.
Roger Reaves (1:02:22.760)
I don't know.
Lex Fridman (1:02:24.640)
It's heartbreaking.
Roger Reaves (1:02:26.480)
Like that scene paints a picture of a life
Lex Fridman (1:02:29.840)
that could have been had if none of this wild drug
Roger Reaves (1:02:36.240)
smuggling happened.
Lex Fridman (1:02:38.840)
I don't usually, I mean, I don't, I'm almost,
Roger Reaves (1:02:42.520)
I really never get like teary eyed in a movie,
Lex Fridman (1:02:46.920)
but that got me.
Roger Reaves (1:02:49.000)
It's almost like confronting at the end of your life
Lex Fridman (1:02:53.160)
what your life could have been with your father,
Roger Reaves (1:02:56.160)
the way he calls him Georgie.
Lex Fridman (1:02:57.640)
It, like you fucked up, Georgie.
Roger Reaves (1:03:03.320)
Yes, I did too.
Lex Fridman (1:03:05.320)
I really, really did.
Roger Reaves (1:03:07.120)
Mario waited for me all those years
Lex Fridman (1:03:08.880)
and the children raised them without me,
Roger Reaves (1:03:11.120)
visiting me in prisons all over the world.
Lex Fridman (1:03:13.640)
It's unbelievable.
Roger Reaves (1:03:14.720)
It's just, nothing's worth that kind of money.
Lex Fridman (1:03:17.280)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:03:21.880)
Can you tell the story of when you were tortured
Lex Fridman (1:03:24.440)
nearly to death in a Mexican prison?
Roger Reaves (1:03:27.080)
I sure can and I'm smiling,
Lex Fridman (1:03:28.880)
but it was nothing to smile about, I can tell you.
Roger Reaves (1:03:32.120)
I was in a pool and a gentleman came over
Lex Fridman (1:03:35.680)
and shook hands with me and put handcuffs on me.
Lex Fridman (1:03:37.840)
And I thought, what in the world?
Lex Fridman (1:03:39.280)
That was at one of the nice hotels.
Roger Reaves (1:03:41.160)
They put me in a jail cell and I sat there
Lex Fridman (1:03:45.120)
and all the drunks and thieves and stuff kept coming in
Lex Fridman (1:03:48.200)
and they had a bucket and it overrun.
Lex Fridman (1:03:50.800)
And I said, I remember like 18 people in a room
Roger Reaves (1:03:53.000)
about 12 foot square.
Lex Fridman (1:03:55.120)
Oh, it was hot and I thought,
Roger Reaves (1:03:56.800)
somebody's gotta come get me, this ain't real.
Lex Fridman (1:04:00.040)
I hadn't done anything.
Roger Reaves (1:04:01.360)
It's like, it was a pilot come to see me up in Hermosillo
Lex Fridman (1:04:05.160)
and he stopped and he made a mistake
Lex Fridman (1:04:06.920)
and went to the International Runway
Lex Fridman (1:04:08.160)
instead of where he was supposed to go.
Lex Fridman (1:04:09.960)
And he had my phony name in his pocket, so they got me.
Lex Fridman (1:04:15.160)
So they said I was a drug smuggler.
Lex Fridman (1:04:17.880)
So after about three days, they put me back into the back
Lex Fridman (1:04:21.040)
and it was a torture place.
Lex Fridman (1:04:23.360)
And they put me in a little cell like,
Lex Fridman (1:04:25.160)
I guess it wasn't hard even, it wasn't six feet,
Roger Reaves (1:04:27.000)
must've been about five feet square and about 12 feet high.
Lex Fridman (1:04:30.240)
And it was June, the end of June, and it was hot.
Roger Reaves (1:04:34.600)
I mean hot.
Lex Fridman (1:04:36.560)
And they left me in there for, I guess a few days.
Roger Reaves (1:04:40.520)
You didn't know, so every once in a while
Lex Fridman (1:04:43.440)
they'd come drag me out and first off,
Roger Reaves (1:04:45.880)
they put my head under water
Lex Fridman (1:04:47.520)
and it had seltzer in it or some kind.
Lex Fridman (1:04:49.680)
And I took one whiff of that and three or four of them
Lex Fridman (1:04:52.080)
couldn't hold me down.
Lex Fridman (1:04:53.640)
So then I learned that just before you have to breathe,
Lex Fridman (1:04:56.880)
tear loose like that and they'll let you up.
Lex Fridman (1:05:00.440)
And that was the first treatment.
Lex Fridman (1:05:02.200)
And then they started beating me.
Lex Fridman (1:05:03.960)
And they beat me with a blackjack and rubber hose
Lex Fridman (1:05:06.320)
until I was black and blue and yellow
Roger Reaves (1:05:08.080)
from the bottom of my feet to my head.
Lex Fridman (1:05:10.200)
What did they want from you?
Roger Reaves (1:05:11.040)
They wanted me to sign a confession
Lex Fridman (1:05:12.920)
that I was a drug smuggler.
Lex Fridman (1:05:14.960)
And they put the papers under your nose.
Lex Fridman (1:05:17.720)
This is all over if you'll sign.
Roger Reaves (1:05:19.000)
Well, I knew if you signed, you got six years.
Lex Fridman (1:05:21.400)
I wasn't gonna sign, I wasn't gonna sign.
Lex Fridman (1:05:25.400)
But they didn't want you to snitch on anybody.
Lex Fridman (1:05:27.760)
They just wanted you to say.
Roger Reaves (1:05:28.600)
No, they just wanted me to sign that paper.
Lex Fridman (1:05:29.800)
And you still didn't.
Roger Reaves (1:05:30.640)
I didn't even bow to it.
Lex Fridman (1:05:32.760)
I ain't a beat and ate that bad.
Roger Reaves (1:05:34.800)
So.
Lex Fridman (1:05:35.640)
So anyhow, it just got them into the good part.
Lex Fridman (1:05:40.640)
So then they come and they take me out,
Lex Fridman (1:05:42.920)
I'm bug naked and they bend me over
Lex Fridman (1:05:44.800)
and they have things to pull you,
Lex Fridman (1:05:45.920)
like chains click, click, click, click, click.
Lex Fridman (1:05:47.560)
And they bent me over and they put butter
Lex Fridman (1:05:50.560)
on my bum and they commenced to put hot chili pepper
Roger Reaves (1:05:55.320)
up there and that stuff was bad.
Lex Fridman (1:05:57.640)
I mean, it was red hot and that was, that was awful.
Lex Fridman (1:06:05.880)
And still.
Lex Fridman (1:06:06.720)
That was just awful.
Roger Reaves (1:06:07.960)
Yeah, but still you didn't.
Lex Fridman (1:06:09.160)
I didn't think about it.
Roger Reaves (1:06:10.120)
I ain't going to, I guess if I'd have known
Lex Fridman (1:06:12.840)
he was gonna kill me, I wouldn't have done it.
Lex Fridman (1:06:14.080)
But I wasn't about, you get hurt bad enough
Lex Fridman (1:06:18.320)
you'll pass out, so I didn't pass out.
Lex Fridman (1:06:20.680)
So I was all right.
Lex Fridman (1:06:22.480)
So then the last thing they did was
Roger Reaves (1:06:25.120)
they brought a dead man in there and he was wrapped.
Lex Fridman (1:06:27.840)
He was frozen.
Roger Reaves (1:06:28.680)
He was wrapped in newspaper, little strips
Lex Fridman (1:06:30.400)
about a half inch wide, just like a mummy.
Lex Fridman (1:06:33.000)
And he was frozen and they hung him on the wall
Lex Fridman (1:06:35.200)
with a meat hook and you next son of a bitch, you next.
Lex Fridman (1:06:41.040)
And so he's sitting there like this
Lex Fridman (1:06:43.120)
and as he starts to throw out, which is pretty quick,
Roger Reaves (1:06:46.440)
it looks like he's crying and it looks like he's peeing
Lex Fridman (1:06:50.120)
and the paper starts unraveling on him
Lex Fridman (1:06:52.600)
and the formaldehyde puddles on the floor.
Lex Fridman (1:06:55.360)
Ooh, what a smell that rotten insides
Lex Fridman (1:06:58.920)
and the formaldehyde and there was a little space.
Lex Fridman (1:07:02.280)
It wasn't even a half inch high under the door.
Lex Fridman (1:07:04.280)
And I lay on that filthy floor with my cheek
Lex Fridman (1:07:06.560)
and put my lips right up under that door
Lex Fridman (1:07:08.160)
and we're sucking that fresh air.
Lex Fridman (1:07:09.320)
And I went to sleep after some time.
Lex Fridman (1:07:11.280)
And I know where Walt Disney gets his ideas.
Lex Fridman (1:07:14.640)
I saw white pink pigs with wings on them,
Roger Reaves (1:07:18.240)
all kinds of stuff flying around.
Lex Fridman (1:07:20.720)
So when I woke up, I didn't know which was real
Lex Fridman (1:07:22.840)
and which was the nightmare.
Lex Fridman (1:07:24.560)
It took me a minute to figure out where I was
Lex Fridman (1:07:27.480)
and what was going on.
Lex Fridman (1:07:29.400)
How did you stay mentally strong through that time?
Lex Fridman (1:07:33.960)
Like what?
Lex Fridman (1:07:34.800)
I don't know that I did.
Roger Reaves (1:07:35.640)
I was, yeah, I was mentally strong.
Lex Fridman (1:07:37.920)
So I was just like I am now.
Roger Reaves (1:07:39.320)
Stubborn.
Lex Fridman (1:07:40.160)
I mean, you could be that man that could have killed you.
Roger Reaves (1:07:43.000)
Yes, I could have.
Lex Fridman (1:07:44.200)
So what gave you hope?
Lex Fridman (1:07:46.240)
Did you have hope?
Lex Fridman (1:07:47.320)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:07:48.160)
Or you were just a stubborn son of a bitch?
Lex Fridman (1:07:49.720)
I think some of both of it.
Lex Fridman (1:07:50.920)
And I think they aren't going to keep you here forever.
Lex Fridman (1:07:53.440)
You know, you're going to get out into the prison
Roger Reaves (1:07:54.920)
or they're going to let you go or something.
Lex Fridman (1:07:56.160)
If you sign that paper, you ain't going nowhere.
Lex Fridman (1:07:58.440)
And I want to go home.
Lex Fridman (1:08:01.680)
I got shot down a few weeks before that.
Roger Reaves (1:08:05.240)
I got shot from out of the sky.
Lex Fridman (1:08:07.040)
80 bullet holes through the plane,
Roger Reaves (1:08:08.680)
killed a fellow on the ground,
Lex Fridman (1:08:09.960)
shot the leg nearly off the man in the plane.
Lex Fridman (1:08:12.880)
Where was this?
Lex Fridman (1:08:13.720)
In that little place of Peachy Lingy.
Lex Fridman (1:08:15.160)
You want to tell you that story?
Lex Fridman (1:08:16.000)
And they were shooting you from the ground.
Roger Reaves (1:08:16.840)
Yeah, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:08:17.680)
All right.
Roger Reaves (1:08:18.520)
A little 900 foot strip there at Peachy Lingy,
Lex Fridman (1:08:20.560)
a poor, poor village with starving donkeys.
Lex Fridman (1:08:23.000)
And that's where they'd,
Lex Fridman (1:08:24.080)
I'd give them $17,000 for the load.
Lex Fridman (1:08:26.200)
And I'd go over on the highway and load.
Lex Fridman (1:08:27.880)
Well, on day 13, I did a load every day for 13 days.
Roger Reaves (1:08:31.120)
They had a bunch of marijuana, pretty good piled up.
Lex Fridman (1:08:33.480)
And I was going low today.
Lex Fridman (1:08:35.320)
And on day 13, I had that little warning sign
Lex Fridman (1:08:39.120)
going off in my stomach.
Roger Reaves (1:08:40.240)
Uh oh, uh oh, don't do it.
Lex Fridman (1:08:42.800)
But I asked this Joaquin,
Roger Reaves (1:08:45.200)
oh, we had the federal, all this paid off,
Lex Fridman (1:08:47.040)
nowhere we were.
Lex Fridman (1:08:47.880)
So I spent the night in a hammock
Lex Fridman (1:08:49.800)
and walked down to the airplane,
Roger Reaves (1:08:52.720)
just as it get in daylight.
Lex Fridman (1:08:54.440)
And 10 or 12 men walked with me and Pedro got in.
Roger Reaves (1:08:57.400)
I brushed my teeth in the little stream.
Lex Fridman (1:08:58.920)
It was about foot deep,
Roger Reaves (1:09:00.400)
a little river coming through there.
Lex Fridman (1:09:02.440)
And got in the airplane and I fired her up.
Roger Reaves (1:09:05.400)
Bam, blah, blah.
Lex Fridman (1:09:06.440)
And bam, I thought a tire blew out.
Roger Reaves (1:09:09.640)
I looked over and it still ain't dawned on me.
Lex Fridman (1:09:14.200)
And Pedro was yelling, police here, police here Roger,
Roger Reaves (1:09:16.880)
police here.
Lex Fridman (1:09:17.720)
Well, it dawned on me.
Lex Fridman (1:09:19.520)
And I shoved it, the throttle to the firewall.
Lex Fridman (1:09:23.360)
And I only had about.
Lex Fridman (1:09:24.200)
So that was a bullet.
Lex Fridman (1:09:25.880)
Yeah, somebody, there's officer sides, they'd shot.
Roger Reaves (1:09:28.440)
They'd shot just a warning, like get out, stop.
Lex Fridman (1:09:31.120)
We're gonna rob you, whatever it is.
Roger Reaves (1:09:33.360)
That's what they do.
Lex Fridman (1:09:34.720)
They just taking the plane and me
Lex Fridman (1:09:35.880)
and put me in prison, old thing.
Lex Fridman (1:09:37.280)
So, but I, even though I had papers.
Lex Fridman (1:09:39.760)
So I just shoved it to the firewall
Lex Fridman (1:09:41.720)
and there wasn't enough room to take off on that strip.
Lex Fridman (1:09:43.920)
And there's half of it was behind me
Lex Fridman (1:09:46.080)
or some of it was behind me.
Lex Fridman (1:09:47.640)
And so just at the end, I'm just like,
Lex Fridman (1:09:49.720)
I think that thing stalls at about 50 miles an hour.
Roger Reaves (1:09:51.880)
Just turning 50 and I just pulled it right up
Lex Fridman (1:09:55.760)
and put the flaps on.
Lex Fridman (1:09:57.560)
And as I pulled off the ground,
Lex Fridman (1:09:59.720)
they opened up on both sides of me with machine guns
Lex Fridman (1:10:02.200)
and they riddled that airplane.
Lex Fridman (1:10:03.800)
I mean, the windshield came out.
Roger Reaves (1:10:06.600)
I got hit three times.
Lex Fridman (1:10:09.120)
You, like your body?
Roger Reaves (1:10:10.400)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:10:11.280)
And I didn't know I was hit.
Roger Reaves (1:10:14.520)
I mean, it was just the gasoline just pouring in.
Lex Fridman (1:10:17.840)
The world turned yellow.
Roger Reaves (1:10:18.920)
I must've went into shock.
Lex Fridman (1:10:20.680)
So it just stopped in slow motion.
Lex Fridman (1:10:23.480)
And one bullet hit the strut right by my head.
Lex Fridman (1:10:26.720)
And it just, parts of that bullet just went all over me.
Roger Reaves (1:10:30.920)
I just looked like I'd been peppered with lead.
Lex Fridman (1:10:35.320)
And the gasoline was just pouring in.
Roger Reaves (1:10:37.560)
I mean, just pouring in where they'd shot the wing up above
Lex Fridman (1:10:40.200)
and the windshield's gone.
Roger Reaves (1:10:41.840)
I mean, it was just like a hail storm.
Lex Fridman (1:10:47.160)
So I was...
Lex Fridman (1:10:48.440)
Airplanes did stall or no?
Lex Fridman (1:10:50.760)
I was in a stall anyway, and I didn't realize it.
Lex Fridman (1:10:53.120)
And I guess you wouldn't unless you trained for it.
Lex Fridman (1:10:55.320)
But when you're in a stall,
Roger Reaves (1:10:56.720)
the elevator is kind of flappy.
Lex Fridman (1:10:59.840)
And I didn't realize it at the time.
Roger Reaves (1:11:01.280)
I thought they had shot the elevator cable in too.
Lex Fridman (1:11:04.040)
So I thought, oh God.
Lex Fridman (1:11:05.120)
So I just reached over and switched it off,
Lex Fridman (1:11:07.160)
switched the mixture, pulled everything.
Lex Fridman (1:11:09.840)
And in the river, there was rocks
Lex Fridman (1:11:12.600)
about as big as this table.
Lex Fridman (1:11:14.400)
And they were like the turtle back
Lex Fridman (1:11:16.200)
all the way up until there was a waterfall.
Roger Reaves (1:11:17.840)
There's quite a pretty place.
Lex Fridman (1:11:19.640)
And I crashed straight onto it.
Roger Reaves (1:11:21.280)
I thought if I get those rocks.
Lex Fridman (1:11:22.960)
And when I did the first time I hit, the wings came off
Lex Fridman (1:11:25.680)
and then it bounced.
Lex Fridman (1:11:26.560)
And the next time the nose came up
Lex Fridman (1:11:28.240)
and came under the plane and I'm sitting there,
Lex Fridman (1:11:30.360)
I must've been knocked unconscious
Roger Reaves (1:11:31.800)
called Pedro shaking me.
Lex Fridman (1:11:32.800)
Come on, Roger, come on, Roger.
Lex Fridman (1:11:34.720)
So I stepped out into the water
Lex Fridman (1:11:37.360)
and here comes these four Federalists
Roger Reaves (1:11:38.960)
still shooting at us.
Lex Fridman (1:11:40.200)
And I'm bulleted to hit the airplane.
Lex Fridman (1:11:42.800)
And I kept a nine millimeter Browning high power
Lex Fridman (1:11:45.800)
taped to the top of the radio in case I ever needed it.
Roger Reaves (1:11:51.000)
So, cause you didn't want it in the airplane.
Lex Fridman (1:11:53.840)
So I just, it was just handy just laying there.
Lex Fridman (1:11:55.320)
So I took and popped a few caps out of them
Lex Fridman (1:11:57.040)
and they ran into the rocks.
Lex Fridman (1:11:59.840)
So we took off running.
Lex Fridman (1:12:03.080)
And then I looked and Pedro's foot nearly shot off.
Roger Reaves (1:12:05.320)
They'd shot him on one side of the ankle
Lex Fridman (1:12:07.160)
and it just blown out the other side.
Lex Fridman (1:12:08.920)
And it wasn't even hardly bleeding, the shock of it.
Lex Fridman (1:12:11.720)
So I took my T shirt off and gripped it
Lex Fridman (1:12:13.760)
and tied it best I could.
Lex Fridman (1:12:15.080)
But you had still bullets in you.
Lex Fridman (1:12:16.400)
So like you could still run.
Lex Fridman (1:12:17.840)
I shot the top of my toenail off.
Roger Reaves (1:12:20.120)
I shot it across my head and my kneecap.
Lex Fridman (1:12:22.560)
So I was just nicked.
Roger Reaves (1:12:23.720)
Okay, got it.
Lex Fridman (1:12:24.880)
It was very painful later on,
Lex Fridman (1:12:26.600)
but right that time I didn't, it was just hot.
Lex Fridman (1:12:29.520)
And there's a bullet still in my foot from it,
Roger Reaves (1:12:31.240)
a piece of a bullet.
Lex Fridman (1:12:32.360)
Good size slug.
Lex Fridman (1:12:34.880)
So we went on up the mountain through the cactus
Lex Fridman (1:12:37.320)
and just running.
Roger Reaves (1:12:38.440)
Just going, I want to go down.
Lex Fridman (1:12:39.520)
No, no, the federal is going the easy way.
Roger Reaves (1:12:42.360)
Let's go, this young fella.
Lex Fridman (1:12:44.240)
And we came to an old donkey.
Roger Reaves (1:12:45.720)
She must've been 30 years old, long and way back,
Lex Fridman (1:12:48.760)
long hair on her, Charlotte, Charlotte.
Lex Fridman (1:12:51.680)
And he petted the donkey and we jumped on.
Lex Fridman (1:12:54.040)
And we rode for seven.
Lex Fridman (1:12:54.880)
Like an actual donkey?
Lex Fridman (1:12:55.800)
A donkey.
Roger Reaves (1:12:56.640)
There were donkeys all over the place.
Lex Fridman (1:12:57.600)
Anyhow, he knew that one from the village.
Lex Fridman (1:12:59.680)
And so we rode seven miles, two of us,
Lex Fridman (1:13:01.720)
on a donkey with no bridle, no saddle, nothing.
Lex Fridman (1:13:04.080)
And we came to a little man plowing a little horse
Lex Fridman (1:13:08.360)
and a little ox.
Roger Reaves (1:13:09.560)
Both of them were spotted and the ox was,
Lex Fridman (1:13:11.720)
the yoke was across their back this way.
Lex Fridman (1:13:13.440)
And he was plowing with a little plow among stumps.
Lex Fridman (1:13:15.720)
It was like one of these people clearing
Roger Reaves (1:13:17.160)
a little piece of land.
Lex Fridman (1:13:18.240)
And he had a little house there.
Lex Fridman (1:13:20.160)
And so we went into his house
Lex Fridman (1:13:21.400)
and his wife and his daughter,
Roger Reaves (1:13:22.600)
they put like a cloth over my wounds and on Pedro's.
Lex Fridman (1:13:26.760)
It was terrible.
Lex Fridman (1:13:28.760)
And they poured diesel oil on it to keep the flies off.
Lex Fridman (1:13:32.840)
So I'm covered in diesel.
Lex Fridman (1:13:34.520)
So the man left and he was gone all day.
Lex Fridman (1:13:38.120)
And then about dark, he showed up,
Roger Reaves (1:13:39.520)
maybe about 15 or 20 horses and mules showed up
Lex Fridman (1:13:42.320)
in the yard, walking fast.
Lex Fridman (1:13:44.240)
And a doctor got out, he said,
Lex Fridman (1:13:45.280)
I'm Dr. Benjamin Soso with Red Cross.
Lex Fridman (1:13:48.120)
And he worked on my foot and he worked on Pedro.
Lex Fridman (1:13:50.280)
He gave us a shot of morphine and tetanus shots.
Lex Fridman (1:13:53.440)
And he said, you got to get to hospital.
Lex Fridman (1:13:55.400)
He said, Pedro will die if he don't get to hospital.
Roger Reaves (1:13:57.680)
He said, they are looking for American pilots
Lex Fridman (1:14:00.200)
been shot down and they think he's dead.
Roger Reaves (1:14:02.000)
There was a lot of blood in that airplane.
Lex Fridman (1:14:04.160)
And so they rode, I don't know how far we rode,
Lex Fridman (1:14:07.840)
but we rode miles and we'd come to a road
Lex Fridman (1:14:09.720)
and there was a big truck
Lex Fridman (1:14:10.960)
and it was loaded with corn in the ear.
Lex Fridman (1:14:12.880)
And they dug holes in that corn, put us in it
Lex Fridman (1:14:16.120)
and covered us up.
Lex Fridman (1:14:17.240)
And the road was rough.
Lex Fridman (1:14:18.240)
And every time we'd hit a dirt road,
Lex Fridman (1:14:20.560)
that corn would cover me up.
Roger Reaves (1:14:21.760)
They'd scratch my face out again.
Lex Fridman (1:14:24.360)
And when they came to the highway,
Roger Reaves (1:14:26.600)
we went into a house and they got me some clothes
Lex Fridman (1:14:28.680)
and mine was messed up and a white basin.
Lex Fridman (1:14:32.320)
And they must've brought 20 jugs of water different times.
Lex Fridman (1:14:35.080)
I kept washing and washing my foot
Roger Reaves (1:14:36.640)
till all the blood and the crud got off of me
Lex Fridman (1:14:39.080)
and put on those clothes.
Lex Fridman (1:14:40.920)
And somebody went to, they said,
Lex Fridman (1:14:42.840)
you can't go North, the road's blocked.
Roger Reaves (1:14:44.400)
They're looking for the pilot.
Lex Fridman (1:14:45.760)
So you got to go South.
Lex Fridman (1:14:47.080)
So they found a taxi in Mazatlan.
Lex Fridman (1:14:51.280)
And it was a rather new taxi.
Lex Fridman (1:14:52.480)
And the fellow would take me to Guadalajara,
Lex Fridman (1:14:54.600)
which was, I don't know, seven, eight hours South.
Lex Fridman (1:14:58.480)
So we got in that taxi and they propped me up
Lex Fridman (1:15:00.160)
with sheets and blankets and pillows in the back seat
Lex Fridman (1:15:03.520)
and gave me these great big white pain pills.
Lex Fridman (1:15:06.800)
And I was quite content.
Roger Reaves (1:15:08.800)
Then I was shot down in Columbia also.
Lex Fridman (1:15:13.320)
What, can you tell that story?
Roger Reaves (1:15:14.920)
I sure can.
Lex Fridman (1:15:17.120)
All right, I went down for a load of marijuana
Lex Fridman (1:15:20.560)
and we got to the place and we got there too early.
Lex Fridman (1:15:23.920)
And the guerrillas screamed,
Roger Reaves (1:15:26.200)
you got to get out of here, you got to get out of here.
Lex Fridman (1:15:28.160)
And so we went back to the place where we stayed from
Lex Fridman (1:15:31.080)
and refueled.
Lex Fridman (1:15:32.320)
I had a beautiful DC3, carried three tons.
Lex Fridman (1:15:36.200)
And so while I was waiting,
Lex Fridman (1:15:39.560)
I ate something for lunch and I went around behind the house.
Roger Reaves (1:15:45.560)
We refueled a plane up and I had to wait till late afternoon.
Lex Fridman (1:15:47.680)
They wanted me to come just at dark
Lex Fridman (1:15:49.400)
so the military planes couldn't see me on their strip.
Lex Fridman (1:15:54.880)
So I'm leaning in the hammock asleep
Lex Fridman (1:15:57.440)
and I hear this terrible roar.
Lex Fridman (1:16:00.320)
And I looked right up through the trees
Lex Fridman (1:16:02.040)
and at the end of two military jets going straight up.
Lex Fridman (1:16:07.120)
They do a dive over and they came back down the strip
Roger Reaves (1:16:09.280)
in front of that airplane and they just tear it up
Lex Fridman (1:16:11.120)
with 50 caliber machine guns.
Roger Reaves (1:16:12.880)
They just showing out.
Lex Fridman (1:16:14.920)
So I run for the airplane, I just give that guy $80,000
Lex Fridman (1:16:18.440)
and he ran for the truck
Lex Fridman (1:16:19.480)
and all the rest of them ran for the truck.
Roger Reaves (1:16:21.160)
I should have ran with my money,
Lex Fridman (1:16:23.680)
but I didn't, I ran for the airplane.
Lex Fridman (1:16:25.720)
And the copilot got in and his name was Al.
Lex Fridman (1:16:28.720)
He got in with me and two fellows got in the back.
Roger Reaves (1:16:30.600)
We had drums of fuel in there to refuel
Lex Fridman (1:16:32.600)
when we got down to the guerrillas.
Lex Fridman (1:16:35.920)
So we took off and I couldn't get the gear up
Lex Fridman (1:16:39.680)
because I'd taken off in such a hurry.
Roger Reaves (1:16:41.280)
These pins in the struts of a DC3 and with big flags on them
Lex Fridman (1:16:45.440)
and you have to take them up
Lex Fridman (1:16:46.360)
so that the plane won't come up.
Lex Fridman (1:16:49.000)
So these jets swarmed on me and they tried to get me to go.
Roger Reaves (1:16:51.640)
They kept telling me which way to go
Lex Fridman (1:16:53.040)
and the pilot would be just as close
Roger Reaves (1:16:54.800)
as just right over there.
Lex Fridman (1:16:55.880)
I could see him.
Roger Reaves (1:16:56.720)
I just held up the old iffy piece.
Lex Fridman (1:16:58.440)
I didn't think they would shoot.
Roger Reaves (1:17:00.320)
I really didn't.
Lex Fridman (1:17:02.040)
Nobody had shot before.
Lex Fridman (1:17:04.480)
So I kept flying out and I kept getting slower and slower
Lex Fridman (1:17:07.920)
and they kept slowing down, down, down
Lex Fridman (1:17:09.600)
and the black smoke rolling.
Lex Fridman (1:17:11.680)
And then they started shooting up under me.
Roger Reaves (1:17:13.960)
Boom, boom, boom, boom with them 20 millimeter cannons.
Lex Fridman (1:17:16.680)
And then the tracers just going up.
Roger Reaves (1:17:18.480)
They looked like they're curving up from me.
Lex Fridman (1:17:20.480)
I woo and I pushed the nose over
Lex Fridman (1:17:22.360)
so they couldn't get under me.
Lex Fridman (1:17:23.520)
And later on I heard they thought I tried to ram them.
Lex Fridman (1:17:27.440)
So one of them went for fuel and I kept on going
Lex Fridman (1:17:30.480)
and the one just tore the left wing tip up
Roger Reaves (1:17:34.440)
with the 50 caliber.
Lex Fridman (1:17:35.600)
And then he come back again and shot the tail up.
Roger Reaves (1:17:38.560)
He's warning me.
Lex Fridman (1:17:39.840)
And I tell the feller in there, I says,
Roger Reaves (1:17:41.040)
you know, if you bring me enough water,
Lex Fridman (1:17:42.840)
I believe I can fly this thing.
Roger Reaves (1:17:44.400)
My mouth got quite dry.
Lex Fridman (1:17:47.680)
So I went on and I landed on a big pasture.
Lex Fridman (1:17:54.600)
And it was huge pasture and it was rougher than it looked.
Lex Fridman (1:17:57.720)
And the wings just flapped and I come to a stop
Lex Fridman (1:17:59.720)
and jumped out and pull those tabs out,
Lex Fridman (1:18:01.880)
threw them on the ground so I could get my gear up.
Lex Fridman (1:18:04.640)
And I understand that during the 1980 World Series
Lex Fridman (1:18:07.440)
baseball game that it says American DC three
Roger Reaves (1:18:10.600)
has just been shot down by American jets,
Lex Fridman (1:18:12.680)
by Colombian jets.
Roger Reaves (1:18:14.200)
You know, it's the first plane shot down
Lex Fridman (1:18:15.920)
on Reagan's new war on drugs.
Lex Fridman (1:18:17.560)
But he's up, he's up and away, ladies and gentlemen.
Lex Fridman (1:18:19.560)
We keep you posted.
Lex Fridman (1:18:20.800)
So I took off again and I went into a thunderstorm
Lex Fridman (1:18:24.040)
and they came close to the mountains.
Lex Fridman (1:18:26.040)
So I spiraled up and every time I'd come out,
Lex Fridman (1:18:28.520)
that jet was there, boom, boom, boom.
Lex Fridman (1:18:30.920)
And I'd go back into that storm and boom, boom, boom
Lex Fridman (1:18:35.040)
in there and at 20,000 feet, I started icing up.
Lex Fridman (1:18:37.920)
So I went out one last time and he was right there waiting.
Lex Fridman (1:18:40.120)
He had me on radar.
Lex Fridman (1:18:41.320)
So I went back in and I kicked it over
Lex Fridman (1:18:43.320)
and put it into a spin and went straight down to 2000 feet
Lex Fridman (1:18:46.360)
and come out under it.
Lex Fridman (1:18:48.000)
And I was flying along the Guaviera River
Lex Fridman (1:18:52.360)
and it was 20 feet above the water.
Lex Fridman (1:18:54.680)
It looked like a pasture, it was just grass.
Lex Fridman (1:18:57.480)
And I made several runs to tear the grass down
Lex Fridman (1:19:00.680)
and it looked like, and it felt hard.
Roger Reaves (1:19:02.600)
That old DC three weighs 30,000 pounds
Lex Fridman (1:19:04.680)
and I put it down on the fifth run.
Roger Reaves (1:19:06.760)
I said, all right, now we're gonna land now.
Lex Fridman (1:19:08.920)
And as I was.
Lex Fridman (1:19:09.760)
Did you do like close several times?
Lex Fridman (1:19:11.840)
I put the wheels down.
Roger Reaves (1:19:12.760)
Oh, you put the wheels down without landing.
Lex Fridman (1:19:15.200)
And just, so I'm making a run for it, you know.
Lex Fridman (1:19:18.760)
So you, okay.
Lex Fridman (1:19:19.760)
So you're being tracked by a jet.
Roger Reaves (1:19:23.000)
He's going.
Lex Fridman (1:19:23.840)
He's trying to, well, before that,
Roger Reaves (1:19:25.800)
I'm just like retelling this story, how insane it is.
Lex Fridman (1:19:29.200)
So he's trying to shoot you down
Lex Fridman (1:19:32.080)
and there's a thunderstorm that you're escaping into.
Lex Fridman (1:19:36.000)
And then you do a spin down to what, 2000 feet?
Roger Reaves (1:19:39.740)
Whatever you said, like somehow escaping all of this.
Lex Fridman (1:19:43.360)
And then you try to land on a pasture
Roger Reaves (1:19:46.340)
on a giant heavy plane that carries three tons
Lex Fridman (1:19:51.720)
by touching down five or six times
Roger Reaves (1:19:55.240)
to make a landing strip for yourself.
Lex Fridman (1:19:58.800)
Yeah, the grass is three or four feet high.
Lex Fridman (1:20:01.640)
So it looked really good after about, after a few times.
Lex Fridman (1:20:04.440)
So then just before it stopped,
Roger Reaves (1:20:05.720)
I said, Al, take your feet off the brakes.
Lex Fridman (1:20:07.600)
He said, I don't have my feet on the brakes.
Roger Reaves (1:20:09.200)
Well, I knew I had broken through the crust
Lex Fridman (1:20:11.800)
and I put full power on, but it didn't.
Roger Reaves (1:20:13.840)
That old big plane just come on down
Lex Fridman (1:20:15.520)
and it just did a head, as it came to a stop,
Roger Reaves (1:20:18.440)
it did a headstand, 90 degrees to the ground.
Lex Fridman (1:20:21.920)
Oh, wow.
Lex Fridman (1:20:22.760)
And the engines held it up
Lex Fridman (1:20:24.880)
and the nose and all just crushed in right on it.
Roger Reaves (1:20:27.140)
We fell between the two seats to keep from getting killed.
Lex Fridman (1:20:29.600)
Wow.
Lex Fridman (1:20:30.440)
And when it come to a stop,
Lex Fridman (1:20:31.320)
all that fuel was pouring out on those hot engines
Lex Fridman (1:20:34.160)
and there was an escape hatch at the top.
Lex Fridman (1:20:35.680)
I just stepped out, took my suitcase with me.
Lex Fridman (1:20:40.640)
Was there fire?
Lex Fridman (1:20:41.480)
No fire, left the plane there
Lex Fridman (1:20:43.240)
and the two guys that was in the back,
Lex Fridman (1:20:44.480)
one of them broke his thumb and it was with the barrels
Lex Fridman (1:20:46.840)
and they had to put a hose,
Lex Fridman (1:20:49.000)
tie gas hose together to shimmy down to get out.
Roger Reaves (1:20:51.840)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:20:53.320)
So.
Roger Reaves (1:20:54.160)
That's an incredible story.
Lex Fridman (1:20:55.780)
Well, let me just tell you,
Roger Reaves (1:20:56.800)
they had a little bit more to it.
Lex Fridman (1:20:58.160)
I learned to fly with the idea
Roger Reaves (1:20:59.400)
of being a missionary aviation fellowship pilot,
Lex Fridman (1:21:02.440)
fly the missionaries in and out of the jungle.
Roger Reaves (1:21:04.800)
Well, I went 11 days through that jungle.
Lex Fridman (1:21:06.480)
The rest of them went on down the road and went to prison.
Roger Reaves (1:21:09.040)
I said, I'll crawl on my belly six months in here a year,
Lex Fridman (1:21:12.560)
eating snakes before I'm going down the road.
Lex Fridman (1:21:14.800)
So I went in there and I was 11 days in the jungle
Lex Fridman (1:21:18.120)
and I finally came to this place and it had airplanes.
Roger Reaves (1:21:21.600)
I kept asking the Indian, dandistai avions.
Lex Fridman (1:21:24.080)
I want to steal an airplane and get out of there.
Lex Fridman (1:21:26.460)
And when I came to the place,
Lex Fridman (1:21:28.320)
I asked, what is this place?
Roger Reaves (1:21:29.800)
Lovely place.
Lex Fridman (1:21:30.640)
It looked like Honolulu in World War II.
Roger Reaves (1:21:34.160)
There was a runway there.
Lex Fridman (1:21:35.080)
Said, you don't know.
Roger Reaves (1:21:36.680)
This is Loma Linda headquarters
Lex Fridman (1:21:38.240)
for Missionary Aviation Fellowship for the Amazon.
Lex Fridman (1:21:41.780)
And they flew me out.
Lex Fridman (1:21:43.240)
Wow.
Lex Fridman (1:21:44.160)
You escaped from prison five times?
Lex Fridman (1:21:48.920)
So what stands out to you as the most difficult
Lex Fridman (1:21:52.560)
or miraculous escape in the bunch?
Lex Fridman (1:21:58.660)
The most black miraculous was
Roger Reaves (1:22:00.040)
when I was in the courtroom in Spain.
Lex Fridman (1:22:01.720)
I think I was on the third floor of Real High
Lex Fridman (1:22:04.400)
and I ran across the courtroom, handcuffed,
Lex Fridman (1:22:06.840)
kicked the window out.
Lex Fridman (1:22:08.200)
And I looked down and it was above the palm trees.
Lex Fridman (1:22:10.480)
I thought there might be a power line
Roger Reaves (1:22:11.840)
or something I could grab on as I went down.
Lex Fridman (1:22:13.860)
There was nothing.
Lex Fridman (1:22:14.980)
And there was a car parked, a station wagon on the side.
Lex Fridman (1:22:18.400)
You just jumped out?
Roger Reaves (1:22:19.600)
I jumped out from 31 feet and on top of that car.
Lex Fridman (1:22:22.660)
And it exploded in the street.
Roger Reaves (1:22:24.560)
The windshield went over three or four cars.
Lex Fridman (1:22:26.600)
It looked like snow going up.
Lex Fridman (1:22:27.960)
And I looked like Donald Duck with the thing coming off
Lex Fridman (1:22:30.880)
and handcuffs and I got out.
Lex Fridman (1:22:32.600)
And you just kept running?
Lex Fridman (1:22:33.440)
Yeah, I kept running.
Roger Reaves (1:22:34.280)
They ran me down and hit me in the back.
Lex Fridman (1:22:35.800)
I still got a dead spot in my back
Roger Reaves (1:22:37.200)
where the policeman hit me with a shotgun.
Lex Fridman (1:22:39.960)
And they brought me back.
Roger Reaves (1:22:41.100)
Murray was there and they were saying,
Lex Fridman (1:22:43.260)
your husband is crazy.
Roger Reaves (1:22:44.700)
That was spectacular.
Lex Fridman (1:22:45.760)
But I escaped from Lubeck, maximum security prison.
Lex Fridman (1:22:48.820)
And I cut out of there and got out.
Lex Fridman (1:22:50.640)
That was a miraculous escape.
Lex Fridman (1:22:51.480)
And that was where?
Lex Fridman (1:22:52.420)
In Lubeck, Germany.
Lex Fridman (1:22:54.120)
What was that escape like?
Lex Fridman (1:22:56.520)
I was there and they was going to extradite me
Roger Reaves (1:22:59.280)
back to the United States
Lex Fridman (1:23:00.200)
where I still had all these charges
Lex Fridman (1:23:01.640)
and 25 years special parole.
Lex Fridman (1:23:04.360)
And I was cleaning the lawyer's visiting room
Lex Fridman (1:23:10.520)
and on it was bars that looked like piano notes
Lex Fridman (1:23:14.800)
or this way to make it pretty.
Lex Fridman (1:23:17.000)
But they was a little bit,
Lex Fridman (1:23:18.880)
so I got a rope from a guy where they made boats in there.
Lex Fridman (1:23:22.640)
And I had 20 minutes.
Lex Fridman (1:23:25.780)
So I went in there and I wrapped it around
Lex Fridman (1:23:27.480)
and I put a broom handle in it
Lex Fridman (1:23:28.680)
that was cut off and wrapped it around
Roger Reaves (1:23:30.360)
until they pull the bars together on that side.
Lex Fridman (1:23:33.000)
And then I pulled them together on the other side.
Lex Fridman (1:23:34.400)
But that only put me in inside the prison yard
Lex Fridman (1:23:37.720)
where the soccer equipment was kept.
Lex Fridman (1:23:40.680)
But they were putting new windows on one side of the prison
Lex Fridman (1:23:44.420)
and they had it scaffolded up to the fourth floor.
Lex Fridman (1:23:47.460)
So there was a little recess there
Lex Fridman (1:23:48.800)
and there was guard towers every 100 feet or so.
Roger Reaves (1:23:52.080)
I mean, they would shoot and kill you.
Lex Fridman (1:23:53.880)
So I got behind that and climbed up holding to the bricks
Roger Reaves (1:23:57.900)
on one hand and the scaffolding on the other
Lex Fridman (1:23:59.720)
and went to the roof.
Roger Reaves (1:24:00.600)
I lost my shirt and most of my clothes
Lex Fridman (1:24:02.160)
going through the window.
Roger Reaves (1:24:03.120)
I got all the skin off of me.
Lex Fridman (1:24:04.520)
I thought I was gonna die.
Lex Fridman (1:24:05.780)
And I was trying to go sideways like this.
Lex Fridman (1:24:07.440)
And finally I got a grip and the bars let me through
Lex Fridman (1:24:10.440)
and took all the skin off of me.
Lex Fridman (1:24:12.360)
So I got up on that roof and I have asthma
Lex Fridman (1:24:14.760)
and I just lay there trying to catch my breath.
Lex Fridman (1:24:16.600)
Didn't bring my inhaler.
Roger Reaves (1:24:19.960)
With blood everywhere.
Lex Fridman (1:24:21.200)
Oh, I was bloody, yes.
Lex Fridman (1:24:22.680)
And so I got down to the end
Lex Fridman (1:24:24.440)
and on the end, the reason I did it,
Roger Reaves (1:24:26.200)
they would put it, they was putting a new wall again
Lex Fridman (1:24:29.080)
around the prison to make it larger.
Lex Fridman (1:24:32.900)
And they had taken all the wire off above the Sally port
Lex Fridman (1:24:36.960)
where they could join the two walls together.
Lex Fridman (1:24:38.620)
And I saw that when I came up and there was a guard,
Lex Fridman (1:24:42.040)
a half of like a dome sticking out of that brick building
Roger Reaves (1:24:46.520)
where there's a guard there with a gun and he'd kill you.
Lex Fridman (1:24:48.840)
And I mean, he was made,
Roger Reaves (1:24:49.680)
he was surely trained to kill you.
Lex Fridman (1:24:51.400)
And we had some bad people in that place.
Lex Fridman (1:24:53.960)
So I lay up one floor above it
Lex Fridman (1:24:56.520)
and I saw a guard and his wife come with a double umbrella.
Roger Reaves (1:24:59.120)
It was just pouring down the rain.
Lex Fridman (1:25:00.720)
Here I am without a shirt on, bloody.
Lex Fridman (1:25:03.100)
And she had a little boy with him under that double umbrella
Lex Fridman (1:25:07.240)
and I knew him and when he come
Lex Fridman (1:25:08.600)
and she started back from the Sally port,
Lex Fridman (1:25:10.800)
I hit the top of that guard tower, bam, with both feet.
Lex Fridman (1:25:15.000)
And I jumped, I guess it's three more floors.
Lex Fridman (1:25:17.260)
I jumped, there was a pile of sand,
Roger Reaves (1:25:19.240)
like a cone where they were digging it there.
Lex Fridman (1:25:21.200)
And I hit that and my feet buried up to the knees,
Lex Fridman (1:25:24.600)
but I didn't fall.
Lex Fridman (1:25:26.080)
And I ran straight towards her so he couldn't shoot me.
Lex Fridman (1:25:28.840)
And then I went around some bushes and went downhill.
Lex Fridman (1:25:33.040)
And then I heard bam, bam, bam, bam, bam behind me.
Lex Fridman (1:25:35.840)
And I looked and that fool woman was in a big old car
Lex Fridman (1:25:38.280)
and she was knocking down the parking meters behind me.
Roger Reaves (1:25:41.200)
She was trying to run over me.
Lex Fridman (1:25:42.640)
And I ran behind the car
Lex Fridman (1:25:44.600)
and she tore the fender off of her car,
Lex Fridman (1:25:47.260)
trying to yell and yow, yow, yow,
Lex Fridman (1:25:49.000)
and a terrible evil looking face at me, screaming at me.
Lex Fridman (1:25:51.640)
And the sirens going off in the prison.
Lex Fridman (1:25:54.880)
And there was a fence there, a wall.
Lex Fridman (1:25:57.240)
And I jumped up on it to jump over
Lex Fridman (1:25:58.980)
and it had glass embedded.
Lex Fridman (1:26:00.560)
And I cut my hands and my arms all up getting over that.
Lex Fridman (1:26:03.320)
And I hit the ground on the other side
Lex Fridman (1:26:04.960)
and it was like, it was that mucked muck
Roger Reaves (1:26:07.720)
where some farmer had dug it.
Lex Fridman (1:26:09.560)
I dug in there and Maury had slipped me $200 into prison.
Lex Fridman (1:26:12.680)
And I had that in my shoe and I lost my shoes in that muck.
Lex Fridman (1:26:15.440)
But anyway, I got out of there and got to Holland.
Roger Reaves (1:26:17.680)
Really a heck of a story how I did that.
Lex Fridman (1:26:20.640)
What was prison like, whether it's Germany
Lex Fridman (1:26:23.360)
or whether it's Australia?
Lex Fridman (1:26:24.920)
What were some of the darker moments in prison?
Roger Reaves (1:26:28.160)
The United States prisons are awful,
Lex Fridman (1:26:30.360)
awful evil places now.
Lex Fridman (1:26:32.200)
And just really, there's nothing nice about them.
Lex Fridman (1:26:34.700)
There's the guards.
Lex Fridman (1:26:37.160)
In LA?
Lex Fridman (1:26:38.400)
And everyone I went to.
Roger Reaves (1:26:40.600)
It seemed like the further east I went to Oklahoma
Lex Fridman (1:26:42.360)
and it was nicer, but all of them on the West Coast,
Roger Reaves (1:26:45.400)
they was hatred there.
Lex Fridman (1:26:47.120)
And they got really stupid people hired, just incredibly.
Roger Reaves (1:26:50.920)
Oh, hatred by the guards.
Lex Fridman (1:26:52.720)
And the inmates, like I speak Spanish
Lex Fridman (1:26:55.600)
and I walked in to the Spanish TV room
Lex Fridman (1:26:58.840)
and it was saying, you know, no, you can't come in here.
Lex Fridman (1:27:01.960)
And I walked across to the black,
Lex Fridman (1:27:03.320)
hey, get out of here, white boy.
Lex Fridman (1:27:06.000)
It was just like, what?
Lex Fridman (1:27:07.880)
Man, I like all you people, you know?
Lex Fridman (1:27:10.200)
And so I walked down to the white people and said,
Lex Fridman (1:27:12.120)
show us your paperwork.
Roger Reaves (1:27:13.840)
You can't come in here until you show your paperwork.
Lex Fridman (1:27:16.560)
We don't let snitches and homosexuals
Lex Fridman (1:27:19.000)
and all this sort of stuff in here.
Lex Fridman (1:27:21.160)
So they have, so it's just like,
Roger Reaves (1:27:23.820)
man, I don't wanna be in here.
Lex Fridman (1:27:25.520)
I mean, it sounds absurd,
Lex Fridman (1:27:26.800)
but you're saying like the basic humanity is gone.
Lex Fridman (1:27:29.800)
Completely, completely in the guards.
Roger Reaves (1:27:32.360)
It was just like, come here, Reeves.
Lex Fridman (1:27:35.000)
And I woke up to him, get the fuck out of my face.
Roger Reaves (1:27:37.880)
Sticks his chin out, like for me to break his jaw.
Lex Fridman (1:27:40.920)
Like, what in the world, man?
Roger Reaves (1:27:44.080)
I love people and it's just.
Lex Fridman (1:27:45.440)
Yeah, you got this joy to you.
Roger Reaves (1:27:48.320)
You have a joyful nature.
Lex Fridman (1:27:51.640)
And it didn't seem like that broke you.
Roger Reaves (1:27:53.600)
Not a bit.
Lex Fridman (1:27:54.920)
How did you persevere?
Roger Reaves (1:27:56.700)
Did you know, I didn't even think I persevered,
Lex Fridman (1:27:58.160)
but I try to enjoy my life wherever I am every day.
Roger Reaves (1:28:01.720)
I do.
Lex Fridman (1:28:02.560)
I ran every day.
Lex Fridman (1:28:03.920)
And like I told you, why do you run so, Roger?
Lex Fridman (1:28:06.240)
I said, to help me suffer these fools.
Lex Fridman (1:28:08.440)
And I played a game of chess every day,
Lex Fridman (1:28:10.720)
almost of my life in there.
Lex Fridman (1:28:12.280)
And I read two books a week.
Lex Fridman (1:28:14.480)
And I talked with people, storytellers,
Roger Reaves (1:28:16.480)
guys would come in and, tell us another story, Roger.
Lex Fridman (1:28:18.840)
Give us a poem.
Roger Reaves (1:28:19.680)
Tell us one you never told us before.
Lex Fridman (1:28:21.440)
And so it was just nice.
Roger Reaves (1:28:22.440)
A lot of them have original boys.
Lex Fridman (1:28:23.920)
They picked their country music and it was all right.
Roger Reaves (1:28:28.800)
Red, Morgan Freeman's character
Lex Fridman (1:28:31.080)
in The Shawshank Redemption says the following.
Roger Reaves (1:28:35.280)
These walls are funny.
Lex Fridman (1:28:36.780)
First you hate them, then you get used to them.
Roger Reaves (1:28:39.560)
Enough time passes you get, so you depend on them.
Lex Fridman (1:28:42.960)
That's institutionalized.
Lex Fridman (1:28:45.760)
Is there truth to that?
Lex Fridman (1:28:47.160)
100%, I didn't even see the walls,
Roger Reaves (1:28:49.560)
except whenever I was planning on escaping.
Lex Fridman (1:28:51.720)
In Shawshank Redemption, he spent so many years in prison
Roger Reaves (1:28:56.160)
that he almost didn't know what to do with himself
Lex Fridman (1:29:00.200)
once he left, once he was a free man.
Roger Reaves (1:29:03.880)
That's the, you get so used to the system,
Lex Fridman (1:29:08.240)
the rituals, having to follow orders,
Roger Reaves (1:29:15.240)
even being treated poorly,
Lex Fridman (1:29:16.900)
all those kinds of things that you become dependent on.
Roger Reaves (1:29:20.160)
Well, down in Australia, I spent the first,
Lex Fridman (1:29:23.980)
a little over a year in the shoe.
Roger Reaves (1:29:26.500)
It was like, did you see the movie,
Lex Fridman (1:29:28.820)
The Silence of the Lambs, thank you, Marty.
Lex Fridman (1:29:32.360)
And he said, I had five or six guards
Lex Fridman (1:29:34.740)
looking at me with a one way mirror.
Lex Fridman (1:29:36.980)
And that's whenever I thought I might never get out,
Lex Fridman (1:29:38.960)
I got a life sentence.
Roger Reaves (1:29:40.080)
I had all this time waiting here in Germany.
Lex Fridman (1:29:43.000)
And so that's, they had a computer in there,
Lex Fridman (1:29:48.400)
but it didn't have a program on it.
Lex Fridman (1:29:50.040)
And I wrote, so I just started writing
Roger Reaves (1:29:51.640)
these little stories of stuff I did in my life.
Lex Fridman (1:29:53.560)
And I wrote one line and I wrote over a million words
Roger Reaves (1:29:57.280)
with them looking at me.
Lex Fridman (1:29:58.120)
So it was after a year, they let me out.
Roger Reaves (1:29:59.920)
It wasn't long before they put me
Lex Fridman (1:30:01.240)
in a place called Self Care.
Lex Fridman (1:30:02.920)
And particularly, I was in what they call the lifers pod.
Lex Fridman (1:30:07.860)
There was 268 men in Self Care there.
Lex Fridman (1:30:10.700)
And it was unbelievably good that we were left alone.
Lex Fridman (1:30:17.300)
Basically, they was there or the guards
Roger Reaves (1:30:19.300)
were certainly there, but they had their shack
Lex Fridman (1:30:22.160)
and we had apartments, four apartments to the building.
Lex Fridman (1:30:26.780)
And six men to the unit with your own door
Lex Fridman (1:30:29.660)
and a key to it and a kitchen, dining room,
Roger Reaves (1:30:32.420)
freezer, refrigerator.
Lex Fridman (1:30:34.020)
And they gave you, allowed you $360 a week to buy groceries.
Lex Fridman (1:30:38.380)
And I cooked for about 16 years and learned to cook good.
Lex Fridman (1:30:43.060)
And the people and other people have their specialties.
Lex Fridman (1:30:46.580)
And so that was quite, it wasn't so like being in prison.
Lex Fridman (1:30:53.160)
It was somewhat living with me and it was difficult, man.
Roger Reaves (1:30:55.620)
I had some good fights and carry on.
Lex Fridman (1:30:58.660)
You don't get along with everybody.
Lex Fridman (1:31:00.540)
But then whenever I came back to the United States,
Lex Fridman (1:31:03.660)
I was laughing and talking.
Lex Fridman (1:31:05.500)
And when I got off the plane in LA,
Lex Fridman (1:31:07.940)
I had three marshals with me from Australia.
Roger Reaves (1:31:11.100)
I was slammed upside the wall.
Lex Fridman (1:31:13.020)
I mean, hard, put ankle mics on and handcuffed so tight
Roger Reaves (1:31:19.220)
till they cut my lane off.
Lex Fridman (1:31:20.980)
Face forward, face forward, lands apart.
Roger Reaves (1:31:23.780)
Good gracious.
Lex Fridman (1:31:25.180)
And walked me 50 steps and turned me over to the marshals
Lex Fridman (1:31:28.500)
and they took part of that off.
Lex Fridman (1:31:29.700)
That was a border patrol that was there
Roger Reaves (1:31:31.700)
over my marijuana charge from 1977.
Lex Fridman (1:31:36.340)
I did 11 years for parole violation.
Roger Reaves (1:31:38.460)
Now they want me for more violation.
Lex Fridman (1:31:40.140)
And they put me in, down in Los Angeles,
Roger Reaves (1:31:42.660)
they put me in, the marshals put me in there
Lex Fridman (1:31:45.300)
and they put me in isolation.
Lex Fridman (1:31:47.260)
I thought, what in the world they got me for isolation for?
Lex Fridman (1:31:50.420)
I'm doing anything.
Lex Fridman (1:31:53.140)
How long did you spend in isolation?
Lex Fridman (1:31:55.380)
More than six months.
Lex Fridman (1:31:57.140)
So I, after three or four days
Lex Fridman (1:32:00.060)
as the little Judas window slide open
Lex Fridman (1:32:02.580)
and a man, a nice looking man in a suit come there,
Lex Fridman (1:32:04.460)
hello Reeves, I wanna, just wanna see what you look like.
Roger Reaves (1:32:07.500)
I saw your National Geographic documentary
Lex Fridman (1:32:10.220)
and it does me pleasure to keep you in isolation.
Lex Fridman (1:32:12.780)
And he slammed the thing and I couldn't get out of there.
Lex Fridman (1:32:15.180)
And by law, the US Parole Commission
Roger Reaves (1:32:17.140)
is supposed to give you a hearing within 90 days.
Lex Fridman (1:32:20.300)
So Murray paid a lawyer $7,500
Lex Fridman (1:32:22.820)
and he never picked up the phone.
Lex Fridman (1:32:25.180)
Somebody got to him.
Lex Fridman (1:32:28.540)
Who's that somebody you think?
Lex Fridman (1:32:29.820)
Christopher Cannon was his name
Lex Fridman (1:32:31.180)
and I don't know who got to him,
Lex Fridman (1:32:32.540)
but he didn't do anything to get me out of there.
Roger Reaves (1:32:35.700)
I got one 15 minute phone call a month
Lex Fridman (1:32:38.420)
and I couldn't get out.
Lex Fridman (1:32:40.540)
So then after six months, they put me on Conair,
Lex Fridman (1:32:47.340)
double shackled and black box on my hands.
Lex Fridman (1:32:51.540)
And I went to Oklahoma
Lex Fridman (1:32:53.780)
and they let me out on the floor.
Roger Reaves (1:32:58.540)
I couldn't imagine.
Lex Fridman (1:32:59.420)
Then I could call after a couple of days
Lex Fridman (1:33:01.540)
and they said, there was a man here from Washington
Lex Fridman (1:33:03.900)
give you a parole hearing and you only got here at 3.30.
Lex Fridman (1:33:07.060)
So he left, he said he'd be back next year.
Lex Fridman (1:33:10.100)
What?
Roger Reaves (1:33:11.220)
I've been in now over six months.
Lex Fridman (1:33:13.020)
So then there was a lovely little lady,
Roger Reaves (1:33:14.540)
she was a case manager or something.
Lex Fridman (1:33:16.780)
She said, you can ask for parole on the record.
Lex Fridman (1:33:19.940)
And I said, please do.
Lex Fridman (1:33:21.460)
So I sent them an email
Lex Fridman (1:33:22.780)
and the next day I got my parole.
Lex Fridman (1:33:25.140)
90 days later, they sent me to Terminal Island
Lex Fridman (1:33:27.420)
and put me in the place there with the invalid,
Lex Fridman (1:33:29.780)
I guess since I'm as old as I am, 78 years old.
Lex Fridman (1:33:32.740)
So they put me in the people in there dying
Lex Fridman (1:33:34.380)
and wheelchairs and legs off and arms off and cancer.
Lex Fridman (1:33:38.220)
So I was in there and I pushed the fellows around
Lex Fridman (1:33:40.780)
and I went, come out of the chow hall there
Lex Fridman (1:33:44.060)
and I went to go to the right to get me a haircut
Lex Fridman (1:33:46.420)
and the two Mexican guys there, Lieutenant and another one,
Roger Reaves (1:33:49.340)
walked between us and he went like the boop, boop, boop.
Lex Fridman (1:33:52.020)
I could outrun you.
Lex Fridman (1:33:53.420)
And they slammed me, put me on the ground,
Lex Fridman (1:33:55.940)
handcuffed me and put me in the shoe for a week.
Roger Reaves (1:33:59.180)
I got out and man, they put me back in the place.
Lex Fridman (1:34:02.140)
They treated me rough.
Lex Fridman (1:34:04.100)
So I got in a little more trouble
Lex Fridman (1:34:06.660)
and they put me back in the shoe and I wouldn't come out.
Roger Reaves (1:34:10.700)
They had that, the virus was out killing people.
Lex Fridman (1:34:14.060)
So they killed eight people in that unit I was in.
Lex Fridman (1:34:16.980)
So I mean, I wouldn't even come out to take a shower.
Lex Fridman (1:34:19.260)
I had a little straw that I put in the sink
Lex Fridman (1:34:22.140)
and I'd take a sock that I had and scrub myself with it
Lex Fridman (1:34:26.340)
with some slope and a glass of water over my head
Lex Fridman (1:34:28.780)
and then clean the floor up and put it in the toilet.
Lex Fridman (1:34:31.060)
So that was your time during the coronavirus pandemic.
Roger Reaves (1:34:34.180)
I got out last April, right in the middle of it
Lex Fridman (1:34:36.580)
and they were dying bad in there.
Lex Fridman (1:34:40.420)
So I was treated worse for that last year in America
Lex Fridman (1:34:42.700)
than I was for the whole 20 years in Australia,
Roger Reaves (1:34:44.860)
the 18 years in Australia.
Lex Fridman (1:34:46.660)
And then you were a free man at the end of that year.
Roger Reaves (1:34:50.780)
They put me out and sent me home
Lex Fridman (1:34:52.460)
and the parole officers couldn't even come.
Roger Reaves (1:34:54.600)
They weren't working.
Lex Fridman (1:34:55.440)
They were just doing everything by video.
Roger Reaves (1:34:57.340)
They said, better not have a drink.
Lex Fridman (1:35:00.020)
The only constituent thing was
Roger Reaves (1:35:01.740)
I couldn't even have a drink of wine.
Lex Fridman (1:35:03.620)
So after a year, I had to take psychiatric treatment.
Roger Reaves (1:35:08.580)
Every week I had to go talk to the psychiatrist,
Lex Fridman (1:35:11.220)
psychologist and me and her got along great.
Roger Reaves (1:35:14.220)
She was a good Christian woman.
Lex Fridman (1:35:15.460)
We just chatted and talked.
Lex Fridman (1:35:16.900)
And I think they said,
Lex Fridman (1:35:17.740)
so I had to pee in the bottle every week.
Roger Reaves (1:35:19.780)
I said, I've been in 33 years.
Lex Fridman (1:35:21.360)
How many piss deaths do you think I've had?
Roger Reaves (1:35:23.680)
Never been dirty.
Lex Fridman (1:35:24.520)
Only thing if you all wanna clean when you come get me.
Roger Reaves (1:35:26.940)
Before I talk to you about love,
Lex Fridman (1:35:29.020)
let me ask you a difficult question.
Roger Reaves (1:35:33.220)
You write in your book,
Lex Fridman (1:35:34.740)
''I don't consider myself much of a criminal.
Roger Reaves (1:35:37.400)
I don't lie, cheat or steal.
Lex Fridman (1:35:39.660)
And I always take up for the underdog.
Roger Reaves (1:35:43.020)
Violence makes me sick.
Lex Fridman (1:35:45.380)
Yet I know I'm an outlaw
Lex Fridman (1:35:47.740)
and those that break the law must be punished.
Lex Fridman (1:35:51.280)
I think many people listening to this
Roger Reaves (1:35:53.520)
or some people listening to this
Lex Fridman (1:35:55.660)
will see you as a criminal, as a bad man
Roger Reaves (1:35:58.720)
who increased the amount of suffering in this world.
Lex Fridman (1:36:02.560)
What do you have to say to them?
Roger Reaves (1:36:06.060)
I would like to tell them
Lex Fridman (1:36:06.900)
that they have been indoctrinated by the spin
Roger Reaves (1:36:10.780)
of news and politicians
Lex Fridman (1:36:12.700)
and they don't know the truth of the situation.
Roger Reaves (1:36:15.460)
You lay the truth out there in an envelope,
Lex Fridman (1:36:17.180)
let me open it besides something else that is false
Lex Fridman (1:36:20.620)
and it's staggering.
Lex Fridman (1:36:22.020)
The truth is that I was a tobacco farmer
Lex Fridman (1:36:26.500)
and tobacco kills 500,000 people a year in America
Lex Fridman (1:36:31.100)
and 6 million have debilitating diseases because of it.
Roger Reaves (1:36:36.820)
Drugs, all drugs combined kill
Lex Fridman (1:36:39.980)
between 10 and 15,000 people a year by overdose
Lex Fridman (1:36:43.220)
and 60% of those are pharmaceutical.
Lex Fridman (1:36:46.580)
Now, then when I was a tobacco farmer,
Roger Reaves (1:36:48.340)
come sit on the front pew, Mr. Reeves,
Lex Fridman (1:36:50.200)
come on up here, you're a gentleman.
Roger Reaves (1:36:52.100)
You just joined the Masonic Lodge and you joined our church
Lex Fridman (1:36:55.020)
and you just come on and sit down with the good people.
Roger Reaves (1:36:58.160)
You grow two marijuana plants,
Lex Fridman (1:36:59.860)
get out of here you scumbag
Lex Fridman (1:37:02.100)
and the marijuana doesn't hurt anybody.
Lex Fridman (1:37:04.380)
It's just, that's the truth of it.
Lex Fridman (1:37:06.560)
And so in your career,
Lex Fridman (1:37:11.800)
you walked amidst violence
Lex Fridman (1:37:16.000)
but you never participated in the violence.
Lex Fridman (1:37:18.100)
I didn't even see it.
Roger Reaves (1:37:21.860)
Just didn't happen around me, in prison it did.
Lex Fridman (1:37:23.920)
I sewed people up, they called me doc.
Roger Reaves (1:37:25.600)
I had dental floss and one time I had to get a blade
Lex Fridman (1:37:31.040)
and try to help keep from my patient from getting again.
Lex Fridman (1:37:35.960)
But I was just like, if I shot at those people,
Lex Fridman (1:37:40.520)
I shot at them to keep them from killing me.
Roger Reaves (1:37:42.760)
I certainly didn't mean to kill them.
Lex Fridman (1:37:45.440)
So that's just, some people are evil
Lex Fridman (1:37:47.600)
and they will kill you and hurt you and lie to you.
Lex Fridman (1:37:49.760)
I just don't do any of that.
Roger Reaves (1:37:51.120)
It just makes you sick.
Lex Fridman (1:37:52.960)
I've seen it.
Roger Reaves (1:37:54.120)
When I was in the shoe, three guys tried to kill a guy
Lex Fridman (1:37:56.640)
and they stabbed him so many times,
Lex Fridman (1:37:57.840)
but they stabbed Blake and the blood getting out of the room.
Lex Fridman (1:38:01.440)
I said, you're gonna kill him.
Roger Reaves (1:38:02.280)
You're gonna kill him and save his life.
Lex Fridman (1:38:04.080)
Drug him up there where the guards could see him.
Roger Reaves (1:38:06.800)
There's stuff like that.
Lex Fridman (1:38:07.640)
I'm just not of that nature of those people.
Roger Reaves (1:38:09.960)
They're just evil.
Lex Fridman (1:38:10.960)
They're people born evil, I believe.
Roger Reaves (1:38:15.160)
It is heartbreaking to hear that the basic humanity
Lex Fridman (1:38:18.240)
is gone in prison in the United States.
Roger Reaves (1:38:21.360)
That's heartbreaking because that basic humanity
Lex Fridman (1:38:23.560)
is actually the light at the end of the tunnel.
Roger Reaves (1:38:25.480)
It's the thing that saves us as opposed to,
Lex Fridman (1:38:28.160)
when it's absent, it's the thing that destroys us.
Roger Reaves (1:38:30.720)
The prisons are filled, absolutely filled with people
Lex Fridman (1:38:34.200)
that have some mental problems.
Roger Reaves (1:38:37.200)
Now, you see Tent City all the way up and down here.
Lex Fridman (1:38:40.760)
I guarantee you, every one of those people
Roger Reaves (1:38:42.560)
have mental problems, some degree.
Lex Fridman (1:38:45.720)
However little it is, but they are a little bit off.
Roger Reaves (1:38:48.480)
Now, then you get a DEA agent
Lex Fridman (1:38:50.720)
that wants to make a name for himself.
Roger Reaves (1:38:52.520)
He goes down there and gets two of them,
Lex Fridman (1:38:54.000)
one of them to sell a little two grams of methamphetamine
Roger Reaves (1:38:56.600)
to the other one, and he gets a conviction.
Lex Fridman (1:38:58.760)
And a young prosecutor, he gets a conviction.
Roger Reaves (1:39:00.880)
He wants to make a judge.
Lex Fridman (1:39:02.440)
And we got the judge in, where was it?
Lex Fridman (1:39:04.760)
I'm gonna give a million, what was his name?
Lex Fridman (1:39:06.760)
Gilbert.
Roger Reaves (1:39:07.600)
I'm gonna give him in a million years
Lex Fridman (1:39:09.320)
before I get off the judge.
Roger Reaves (1:39:10.440)
You get fools like that in charge.
Lex Fridman (1:39:14.680)
You're gonna fill prisons up with pitiful humanity.
Lex Fridman (1:39:20.040)
And those are the ones.
Lex Fridman (1:39:21.240)
And then the other is people over drugs.
Lex Fridman (1:39:25.480)
And drugs should be a health issue.
Lex Fridman (1:39:31.760)
You cannot police it enough.
Roger Reaves (1:39:36.160)
It's just, they know the only thing
Lex Fridman (1:39:38.280)
that overdoses is opioids, the heroin.
Lex Fridman (1:39:41.160)
And if they can give it to him,
Lex Fridman (1:39:42.320)
it costs about a dollar a day
Roger Reaves (1:39:43.680)
to give the worst addict his fix.
Lex Fridman (1:39:46.640)
But they'll give it methadone,
Roger Reaves (1:39:47.720)
which is from a pharmaceutical company,
Lex Fridman (1:39:49.640)
which is just as bad.
Lex Fridman (1:39:51.440)
Why in the world, we tried it all over the world
Lex Fridman (1:39:54.560)
in Portugal and England.
Lex Fridman (1:39:57.480)
And when they give the girls cleanup,
Lex Fridman (1:40:00.280)
no more stolen cars, why?
Lex Fridman (1:40:03.640)
Who wants to keep this farce going?
Lex Fridman (1:40:07.160)
They just perpetuating it.
Roger Reaves (1:40:08.600)
Like, oh, every little police place
Lex Fridman (1:40:11.720)
is getting all these suits and armor and machine guns.
Roger Reaves (1:40:15.440)
It's just like, oh, it's such a spin, it's sad.
Lex Fridman (1:40:19.800)
Do you think all drugs should be legalized?
Roger Reaves (1:40:22.000)
I don't know about that,
Lex Fridman (1:40:24.480)
but they certainly should be controlled.
Roger Reaves (1:40:26.760)
If a person is an addict,
Lex Fridman (1:40:29.280)
he should be able to go down and get his fix
Roger Reaves (1:40:32.200)
with somebody there to help him
Lex Fridman (1:40:33.440)
with a clean needle and a glass of orange juice.
Roger Reaves (1:40:36.000)
It's so much cheaper than prison.
Lex Fridman (1:40:38.280)
It's so much cheaper than him stealing cars
Roger Reaves (1:40:40.800)
or a prostitute having to go to work.
Lex Fridman (1:40:42.840)
That's sad.
Roger Reaves (1:40:44.600)
You've lived one heck of a life.
Lex Fridman (1:40:47.880)
Looking back, there's a lot of young people
Roger Reaves (1:40:51.920)
that listen to this, high school, college students.
Lex Fridman (1:40:55.960)
What advice would you give them?
Lex Fridman (1:40:57.680)
How to live, how to have a successful career,
Lex Fridman (1:41:02.000)
how to have a good life, how to be a good man or woman?
Roger Reaves (1:41:07.920)
To be a good man or woman,
Lex Fridman (1:41:11.120)
if I had it to do over with,
Roger Reaves (1:41:12.520)
I'll just tell you what I'd have done.
Lex Fridman (1:41:14.200)
I would have paid attention and studied my lesson
Lex Fridman (1:41:16.920)
and did the best I could.
Lex Fridman (1:41:19.560)
In school. In school, yes.
Lex Fridman (1:41:21.320)
And went as far as I could have.
Lex Fridman (1:41:23.080)
I would have liked to been a doctor.
Roger Reaves (1:41:24.480)
I just didn't have the stickability
Lex Fridman (1:41:25.880)
or anybody to tell me, hey, go over there and do that.
Lex Fridman (1:41:29.760)
And if you can do that at a very young age,
Lex Fridman (1:41:32.800)
start in a trade, learn to do something.
Roger Reaves (1:41:36.080)
It doesn't matter what it is.
Lex Fridman (1:41:38.240)
If you learn to do something good,
Roger Reaves (1:41:40.320)
there is a great demand for you.
Lex Fridman (1:41:43.760)
And I would say that in prison,
Roger Reaves (1:41:46.000)
that the prison system should come in
Lex Fridman (1:41:47.880)
and you get a thief, young fans of thief,
Roger Reaves (1:41:51.200)
robber, and you say, all right, we need carpenters.
Lex Fridman (1:41:56.400)
We need plumbers.
Roger Reaves (1:41:57.240)
We need electricians.
Lex Fridman (1:41:58.080)
We need sheep.
Roger Reaves (1:41:59.240)
Sentence them to that trade.
Lex Fridman (1:42:02.080)
And when you get an A plus in that,
Roger Reaves (1:42:03.720)
where you can go out and make you $30 or $50 an hour,
Lex Fridman (1:42:06.360)
you go home.
Roger Reaves (1:42:07.960)
Now you can mess around 10 years if you want to,
Lex Fridman (1:42:10.480)
or you can do this in two.
Roger Reaves (1:42:11.840)
I think that's just for the prison.
Lex Fridman (1:42:14.760)
But anyway, I would say that they find somebody
Lex Fridman (1:42:17.480)
and be true to them.
Lex Fridman (1:42:19.000)
That we have, just be honest and true in your life.
Lex Fridman (1:42:25.680)
You mean like relationships, friendships?
Lex Fridman (1:42:27.720)
Relationships, yes.
Roger Reaves (1:42:28.560)
I mean, so many, so many people,
Lex Fridman (1:42:31.320)
particularly our children, are from relationships
Roger Reaves (1:42:34.840)
where they not wanted their divorce.
Lex Fridman (1:42:37.960)
Their father's left.
Roger Reaves (1:42:38.840)
They don't know who their daddy is.
Lex Fridman (1:42:40.360)
They're just in foster homes.
Roger Reaves (1:42:42.080)
500,000 children are in foster homes in America today.
Lex Fridman (1:42:45.760)
And we have, and our government inadvertently
Roger Reaves (1:42:49.200)
isn't encouraging those people.
Lex Fridman (1:42:51.400)
My daughter is a doctor and she delivered a couple
Roger Reaves (1:42:54.240)
of years ago a baby from a 10 year old child.
Lex Fridman (1:42:58.280)
That child, and she said in the visiting room
Roger Reaves (1:43:00.480)
is four generations, all of them on welfare.
Lex Fridman (1:43:03.200)
Now we got one more.
Lex Fridman (1:43:04.320)
And it reminds me of Elvis Presley's song, In the Ghetto.
Lex Fridman (1:43:08.360)
So for an individual, learn a trade, become a craftsman,
Roger Reaves (1:43:13.360)
learn a trade, become a craftsman of sorts,
Lex Fridman (1:43:16.720)
and find somebody to love and who loves you.
Roger Reaves (1:43:19.720)
That's right, have a family and stick with it.
Lex Fridman (1:43:25.600)
Surely you're gonna get angry.
Roger Reaves (1:43:27.120)
You're gonna get disappointed.
Lex Fridman (1:43:28.240)
You're gonna get all kinds of stuff,
Lex Fridman (1:43:29.400)
but come back and make up before you go to sleep.
Lex Fridman (1:43:33.240)
Well, I did half of those things.
Roger Reaves (1:43:37.040)
I got the first one and working on the second one.
Lex Fridman (1:43:38.960)
So I appreciate the advice.
Roger Reaves (1:43:40.480)
Well, Mari, thank you so much for joining us.
Lex Fridman (1:43:45.320)
Can you tell me the story of how you two met?
Roger Reaves (1:43:47.920)
Well, my parents every summer would go to the lake
Lex Fridman (1:43:52.720)
in Canada and the place was called Turkey Point,
Roger Reaves (1:43:56.080)
which is on Lake Erie, and just have a nice summer holiday
Lex Fridman (1:44:00.040)
there, water skiing, swimming, sunbathing.
Roger Reaves (1:44:03.640)
This was back in the 60s and I was sitting on the pier
Lex Fridman (1:44:06.760)
with a few girlfriends and telling them my story.
Lex Fridman (1:44:10.120)
And then all of a sudden I looked up
Lex Fridman (1:44:12.520)
and I saw this figure in the distance coming onto the pier.
Roger Reaves (1:44:18.200)
Now we're all dressed in bathing suits and swimwear.
Lex Fridman (1:44:21.240)
We're swimming and this, that, and the other.
Lex Fridman (1:44:22.920)
And here he comes, dark trousers.
Lex Fridman (1:44:25.480)
In fact, they were black, white shirt and a tie
Lex Fridman (1:44:30.640)
and a straw kind of a Panama hat.
Lex Fridman (1:44:34.040)
And so he stood out.
Lex Fridman (1:44:38.360)
And so I invited him to come and sit down.
Lex Fridman (1:44:41.160)
And so he continued to talk and we just talked
Lex Fridman (1:44:43.880)
and talked and talked and then later moved to the beach.
Lex Fridman (1:44:47.200)
And I think the next time I saw him,
Roger Reaves (1:44:50.320)
he was talking to another girl and I thought, yeah,
Lex Fridman (1:44:53.080)
you know, I know, I was okay, okay, next.
Roger Reaves (1:44:58.560)
Well, but six months later I receive a letter
Lex Fridman (1:45:02.360)
and it's a letter from Roger.
Lex Fridman (1:45:05.120)
And then we start this lovely correspondence
Lex Fridman (1:45:07.560)
and we just start writing, you know, in those days,
Roger Reaves (1:45:10.000)
you just wrote everything.
Lex Fridman (1:45:11.840)
And then the next summer he was coming up again.
Roger Reaves (1:45:16.120)
He was on his way to Alaska and he says,
Lex Fridman (1:45:20.640)
I would like to come by and see you.
Lex Fridman (1:45:22.440)
And I said, well, I'll be in the same place
Lex Fridman (1:45:24.160)
that I met you last year.
Lex Fridman (1:45:26.240)
And so when he came up this time,
Lex Fridman (1:45:29.720)
for some reason Roger reached for my hand
Lex Fridman (1:45:32.760)
and I reached for his and man, that was it.
Lex Fridman (1:45:36.440)
It was like love at first touch.
Roger Reaves (1:45:39.560)
That was love.
Lex Fridman (1:45:40.400)
It was just like a silence, you know, and oh my gosh.
Lex Fridman (1:45:44.640)
And we didn't even look at each other.
Lex Fridman (1:45:47.440)
It was just, oh my goodness, what happened here?
Lex Fridman (1:45:50.200)
And I was the type of person, I never wanted to get married,
Lex Fridman (1:45:52.920)
not way, way, way down the road, never have any children.
Lex Fridman (1:45:56.600)
And I wanted to see the world first and then do all that,
Lex Fridman (1:45:59.760)
you know, and.
Lex Fridman (1:46:02.280)
But that was it, that was love
Lex Fridman (1:46:03.800)
and you've been together ever since.
Roger Reaves (1:46:05.280)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:46:06.640)
Well, the thing is about the love
Roger Reaves (1:46:11.000)
that the two of you have for each other
Lex Fridman (1:46:13.240)
is it had to persevere through quite a heck of a journey.
Lex Fridman (1:46:17.940)
So how did Roger's drug smuggling
Lex Fridman (1:46:23.640)
change the nature of your love and your relationship?
Roger Reaves (1:46:27.760)
Well, Lex, that remained steadfast.
Lex Fridman (1:46:31.360)
It endured and since Roger's been home,
Roger Reaves (1:46:36.140)
I think we've rekindled the love that we had
Lex Fridman (1:46:39.240)
when we first met.
Lex Fridman (1:46:40.920)
Yeah, what?
Lex Fridman (1:46:42.320)
But I think my faith, you know, my faith,
Roger Reaves (1:46:46.840)
my steadfast faith and also the fact
Lex Fridman (1:46:50.240)
that Roger and I communicated.
Roger Reaves (1:46:51.960)
We wrote letters, you know, he never complained.
Lex Fridman (1:46:55.640)
I know there were the children there.
Roger Reaves (1:46:57.120)
He never had mistreated me.
Lex Fridman (1:46:58.800)
I love this guy and we had a lot of experiences.
Roger Reaves (1:47:02.080)
It was just, even though I.
Lex Fridman (1:47:03.920)
He's good looking, charismatic, he's pretty, you know.
Roger Reaves (1:47:06.040)
Yeah, and he was adventurous, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:47:09.040)
and I, would you say that again?
Lex Fridman (1:47:14.280)
But yes, it was just, I know, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:47:18.440)
I missed him physically, but he was just,
Roger Reaves (1:47:20.600)
we were just so strong in spirit, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:47:24.640)
and we could talk to one another.
Roger Reaves (1:47:28.300)
Yep.
Lex Fridman (1:47:29.180)
Well, what was it like, Roger, when you're a free man
Lex Fridman (1:47:35.200)
seeing Mari for the first time in person again?
Lex Fridman (1:47:40.020)
I cried for three days.
Roger Reaves (1:47:42.080)
Everything, I had to look at a picture of her.
Lex Fridman (1:47:44.160)
I came home and there she prepared a meal for me
Lex Fridman (1:47:49.200)
and it was the old oak table that I'd redone
Lex Fridman (1:47:53.600)
and the chairs, the same one, and the green placemats
Lex Fridman (1:47:57.160)
and the same china that we had and the same silverware.
Lex Fridman (1:48:01.320)
And it just, just all of it just brought back
Roger Reaves (1:48:03.200)
the same paintings on the wall.
Lex Fridman (1:48:04.960)
It was just like unbelievable.
Roger Reaves (1:48:06.000)
After 35 years, she had all my clothes cleaned
Lex Fridman (1:48:09.880)
and my shoes shining and I put the shoes on
Lex Fridman (1:48:12.720)
and I walked out on the strings on this
Lex Fridman (1:48:14.440)
and the soles came off, but the shirts
Lex Fridman (1:48:16.760)
and all fit perfect and everything.
Lex Fridman (1:48:18.480)
So it was just wonderful.
Lex Fridman (1:48:19.880)
And just to see her and then just to think about,
Lex Fridman (1:48:22.800)
see her picture of her 50th birthday
Roger Reaves (1:48:24.680)
or her 60th birthday or her 70th birthday.
Lex Fridman (1:48:28.320)
I wasn't there.
Lex Fridman (1:48:30.000)
And the picture of her and with the children,
Lex Fridman (1:48:31.440)
it just, it was heartbreaking.
Lex Fridman (1:48:33.160)
And about the third day, I thought,
Lex Fridman (1:48:34.400)
man up, fella, I mean, you've got to.
Lex Fridman (1:48:37.320)
So I got over it and quit the tears.
Lex Fridman (1:48:42.400)
It was, everything was just pulsating with life.
Roger Reaves (1:48:45.800)
It was just unbelievable to get out of that place.
Lex Fridman (1:48:48.800)
It really was.
Roger Reaves (1:48:49.980)
Is there, do you regret the drug smuggling
Lex Fridman (1:48:57.900)
that took you away from the woman you love?
Roger Reaves (1:49:00.900)
Oh yes, 100%.
Lex Fridman (1:49:03.740)
Just, you know, I wouldn't have done it again
Roger Reaves (1:49:08.340)
if you don't think you're going to get caught.
Lex Fridman (1:49:11.300)
And it's just, no, it's just, I did it for money
Lex Fridman (1:49:14.900)
and I had everything in the world I wanted
Lex Fridman (1:49:16.380)
before I did that.
Lex Fridman (1:49:18.220)
So the adventure, I mean, it was one heck of an adventure
Lex Fridman (1:49:22.860)
for the two of you, for the both of you.
Lex Fridman (1:49:25.220)
Were you able to enjoy it or was it always danger?
Lex Fridman (1:49:29.020)
Was it always something that threatened your relationship,
Lex Fridman (1:49:33.160)
your love, your family?
Lex Fridman (1:49:35.660)
Or were you able to enjoy the adventure of it?
Roger Reaves (1:49:37.460)
You know, we'll all die.
Lex Fridman (1:49:39.060)
Life is short.
Lex Fridman (1:49:40.460)
And to live that kind of adventure.
Lex Fridman (1:49:42.840)
Well, whenever I did the first loot, I got $10,000.
Lex Fridman (1:49:46.340)
And that was just about, that was just about two years
Lex Fridman (1:49:48.540)
pay on the fire department take home.
Lex Fridman (1:49:50.580)
And I brought that home and.
Lex Fridman (1:49:52.380)
I put my hand over my mouth.
Roger Reaves (1:49:54.100)
I said, Roger, I can't believe this.
Lex Fridman (1:49:57.540)
All the money and money like, oh my, what in the world?
Roger Reaves (1:50:00.980)
Roger said, let's go have dinner.
Lex Fridman (1:50:03.260)
And so we went to the little restaurant
Roger Reaves (1:50:04.980)
that we would normally, we would go to, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:50:07.260)
and he said, and don't you dare look
Roger Reaves (1:50:09.140)
on the right hand side of the menu.
Lex Fridman (1:50:11.420)
He said, just order anything you want.
Lex Fridman (1:50:13.940)
And it was just, as we were in the restaurant, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:50:17.900)
it was just, we were giddy about it.
Roger Reaves (1:50:20.700)
Yeah, I was giddy about it.
Lex Fridman (1:50:22.900)
And.
Roger Reaves (1:50:24.020)
Were you afraid that, I mean, did you think about the fact
Lex Fridman (1:50:27.700)
that it's illegal and Roger can end up in prison?
Roger Reaves (1:50:32.780)
Oh, yes.
Lex Fridman (1:50:34.180)
Did you guys talk about it?
Roger Reaves (1:50:36.460)
Well, I just, I kind of thought I was bulletproof.
Lex Fridman (1:50:38.620)
I mean, they didn't catch you.
Roger Reaves (1:50:39.940)
I thought if they didn't catch you, you was all right.
Lex Fridman (1:50:41.700)
And it was hard to get you.
Roger Reaves (1:50:42.540)
It was hard to catch you in the air.
Lex Fridman (1:50:45.460)
So you never thought, hard to catch you in the air.
Roger Reaves (1:50:48.020)
I like it.
Lex Fridman (1:50:48.860)
I didn't know that if your friend told on you
Roger Reaves (1:50:52.420)
five years later, you'd still go to prison.
Lex Fridman (1:50:54.580)
That was a problem.
Roger Reaves (1:50:55.660)
I didn't know that.
Lex Fridman (1:50:56.900)
Did you guys ever talk about walking away?
Roger Reaves (1:51:00.660)
I asked Roger to walk away.
Lex Fridman (1:51:03.380)
And he says, I can't, Mario, just now, you know.
Lex Fridman (1:51:06.700)
And then of course, the amount of people
Lex Fridman (1:51:09.820)
that he began to support, the family and the gifts and the.
Roger Reaves (1:51:14.540)
The deals.
Lex Fridman (1:51:15.380)
The deals, yes, the deals.
Roger Reaves (1:51:17.700)
Big ones.
Lex Fridman (1:51:18.540)
Yes, and then you always want to do,
Lex Fridman (1:51:20.580)
what do you do with the money?
Lex Fridman (1:51:22.860)
So you want to, I guess you clean it up
Roger Reaves (1:51:26.620)
or you want to invest in an enterprise or in a business.
Lex Fridman (1:51:31.020)
Well, it just doesn't work.
Roger Reaves (1:51:33.060)
They know the source of it and they take it and run.
Lex Fridman (1:51:37.420)
Every one of them.
Roger Reaves (1:51:38.380)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:51:39.460)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:51:40.300)
But he was very generous, extremely generous
Lex Fridman (1:51:42.940)
and benevolent and.
Lex Fridman (1:51:45.100)
And when I started, I would ask about,
Lex Fridman (1:51:48.180)
I went to a lawyer and a good number of people
Roger Reaves (1:51:52.100)
in California at that time wanted to legalize marijuana
Lex Fridman (1:51:55.140)
back in 1973.
Lex Fridman (1:51:57.300)
And I went to a lawyer and I says,
Lex Fridman (1:51:58.740)
Mr. Lawyer, I put $100 on to say,
Lex Fridman (1:52:00.820)
what would they do if I caught me
Lex Fridman (1:52:03.180)
bringing marijuana across the border?
Roger Reaves (1:52:04.660)
He said, if you have a criminal record, I said, no,
Lex Fridman (1:52:07.860)
I've never had a speeding ticket, nothing,
Roger Reaves (1:52:10.820)
not even a traffic ticket.
Lex Fridman (1:52:12.700)
I said, he said, you work for the fire department?
Roger Reaves (1:52:15.020)
I said, no sir.
Lex Fridman (1:52:15.860)
I said, yes, sir.
Roger Reaves (1:52:16.900)
He said, you'll get probation.
Lex Fridman (1:52:18.940)
The worst you'll do is you'll get one year
Lex Fridman (1:52:22.140)
and you'll spend four months raking leaves
Lex Fridman (1:52:24.020)
on a military base.
Lex Fridman (1:52:25.780)
So my mother and my father died some years before
Lex Fridman (1:52:28.100)
and I brought mother and baby sister came out
Lex Fridman (1:52:30.060)
and I took them down to Disneyland
Lex Fridman (1:52:31.860)
and she said, what you doing, boy?
Roger Reaves (1:52:33.940)
I said, I'm hauling pot, mom.
Lex Fridman (1:52:35.940)
She said, how much you making?
Roger Reaves (1:52:36.780)
I said, I'm making $40,000 any day I want to go.
Lex Fridman (1:52:40.180)
And she said, what do they do if they catch you?
Lex Fridman (1:52:41.500)
And I told her, what the lawyer said.
Lex Fridman (1:52:43.580)
Four months at the most raking leaves,
Lex Fridman (1:52:45.260)
that's what do you think?
Lex Fridman (1:52:46.500)
She said, do you need a copilot, son?
Roger Reaves (1:52:48.620)
Yeah, money is money, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:52:54.480)
So your relationship persevered through some big challenges.
Roger Reaves (1:53:00.700)
Is there advice you can give about what makes
Lex Fridman (1:53:04.380)
for a successful relationship?
Roger Reaves (1:53:07.240)
Oh, well, you know, I think the initial igniting,
Lex Fridman (1:53:13.420)
meeting someone, you know, that's the love.
Roger Reaves (1:53:17.140)
That's it.
Lex Fridman (1:53:17.980)
And that little fire, that fire just keeps burning
Lex Fridman (1:53:22.420)
and burning and burning.
Lex Fridman (1:53:23.860)
You can't put it out no matter what.
Roger Reaves (1:53:26.300)
It's the love fire.
Lex Fridman (1:53:29.820)
But it gets difficult.
Roger Reaves (1:53:31.500)
It's funny, the love fire.
Lex Fridman (1:53:33.560)
So you're saying the love fire is all it takes
Roger Reaves (1:53:35.620)
to persevere through the difficulty.
Lex Fridman (1:53:37.180)
Well, no, well, that's a huge part of it.
Lex Fridman (1:53:40.780)
And also I contribute my individual situation
Lex Fridman (1:53:44.980)
to in order to endure the prison years is my faith.
Lex Fridman (1:53:52.300)
Faith in God?
Lex Fridman (1:53:53.140)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (1:53:54.980)
And friends who were unconditionally still loved me
Lex Fridman (1:53:58.940)
no matter what, yes.
Lex Fridman (1:54:02.100)
So you had love around you in general.
Lex Fridman (1:54:05.260)
I did, and my children.
Roger Reaves (1:54:07.780)
They, you know, and that was a real purpose
Lex Fridman (1:54:11.780)
to guide them and to love them
Lex Fridman (1:54:13.900)
and to help them become citizens.
Lex Fridman (1:54:19.380)
What about you, Roger?
Lex Fridman (1:54:20.740)
What advice would you give?
Lex Fridman (1:54:22.780)
I just don't know how to do it,
Lex Fridman (1:54:23.620)
but I do know that you have to work on a relationship.
Lex Fridman (1:54:26.540)
Mara and I's had problems.
Roger Reaves (1:54:27.960)
I mean, we get really.
Lex Fridman (1:54:28.800)
You guys get in fights?
Roger Reaves (1:54:29.900)
Oh, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:54:30.740)
That's pretty regular, but not,
Roger Reaves (1:54:34.180)
they don't let them last long, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:54:36.500)
but certainly we are so different.
Roger Reaves (1:54:38.700)
We're the same, and yet we're so different, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:54:42.100)
Like little stuff?
Roger Reaves (1:54:43.080)
Little stuff, yes.
Lex Fridman (1:54:45.020)
And it might be big, but I usually win her over, you know?
Lex Fridman (1:54:49.420)
But anyhow, I just feel like Mara was always there.
Lex Fridman (1:54:53.500)
It was like she was my anchor.
Roger Reaves (1:54:55.900)
I was coming home.
Lex Fridman (1:54:57.360)
I was always coming home to her and the children.
Lex Fridman (1:54:59.700)
And you can see throughout my life,
Lex Fridman (1:55:01.780)
I'm working on getting there.
Lex Fridman (1:55:03.860)
Are you afraid for his life, by the way?
Lex Fridman (1:55:05.660)
Oh, yes.
Roger Reaves (1:55:06.740)
Oh, yeah, there are times, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:55:08.680)
But you know, I had faith in him.
Roger Reaves (1:55:11.420)
He was an excellent pilot.
Lex Fridman (1:55:13.420)
For example, I always said,
Roger Reaves (1:55:14.720)
Roger, if the ship's going down,
Lex Fridman (1:55:16.860)
I'm jumping in the lifeboat with you
Roger Reaves (1:55:18.660)
because I know we're going to get to shore.
Lex Fridman (1:55:20.620)
You will save us.
Lex Fridman (1:55:21.660)
And so I had that faith in him, you know?
Lex Fridman (1:55:25.060)
I mean, he's a man, but yet he's the one
Roger Reaves (1:55:27.920)
you want to get into the lifeboat with.
Lex Fridman (1:55:29.780)
Definitely.
Lex Fridman (1:55:30.880)
But then there is, you know, Pablo Escobar,
Lex Fridman (1:55:34.460)
one of the most dangerous humans in history,
Roger Reaves (1:55:37.220)
plus the U.S. government.
Lex Fridman (1:55:39.140)
Yep.
Roger Reaves (1:55:40.300)
Worst by far.
Lex Fridman (1:55:43.300)
Very difficult, very difficult to get away.
Roger Reaves (1:55:48.180)
In terms of your faith, how has your faith helped you
Lex Fridman (1:55:52.740)
to be the woman you are in this relationship
Lex Fridman (1:55:55.220)
and seeing love the way you see it?
Lex Fridman (1:55:59.980)
Well, I think my faith gives me hope.
Roger Reaves (1:56:02.620)
I have lots of hope.
Lex Fridman (1:56:04.380)
It helps me to dwell on the good side.
Roger Reaves (1:56:09.420)
You know, when I ever meet someone
Lex Fridman (1:56:12.660)
and there's some negative,
Roger Reaves (1:56:14.820)
I try to see why they are like that
Lex Fridman (1:56:17.300)
or what's the source of all that.
Lex Fridman (1:56:19.300)
And I try to pull out the good.
Lex Fridman (1:56:22.500)
I really do.
Roger Reaves (1:56:23.420)
Not that I'm a goody goody,
Lex Fridman (1:56:24.900)
but that's what your faith does.
Roger Reaves (1:56:26.540)
You know, you see them as God sees us.
Lex Fridman (1:56:29.820)
You know?
Lex Fridman (1:56:31.540)
How has he changed over the years?
Lex Fridman (1:56:33.380)
Roger?
Roger Reaves (1:56:34.220)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:56:35.060)
He's still the same.
Roger Reaves (1:56:36.180)
Actually, I like him better now.
Lex Fridman (1:56:39.380)
He's a little calmer.
Roger Reaves (1:56:40.540)
Yeah, that's crazy.
Lex Fridman (1:56:41.660)
Oh, yes.
Lex Fridman (1:56:42.860)
And happy to be, you know, at home,
Lex Fridman (1:56:45.100)
or he'll say, Mari, I am just so happy
Roger Reaves (1:56:48.340)
to be with you here in this condominium.
Lex Fridman (1:56:51.040)
I'm content.
Roger Reaves (1:56:51.900)
Because I used to call him my homing pigeon.
Lex Fridman (1:56:55.020)
I just have to let him fly.
Roger Reaves (1:56:56.340)
I couldn't, you know, he has to fly,
Lex Fridman (1:56:58.540)
but he always came home.
Lex Fridman (1:57:02.720)
Do you think about the end of this ride, our mortality?
Lex Fridman (1:57:06.900)
Do you think about your death?
Roger Reaves (1:57:08.300)
I do.
Lex Fridman (1:57:09.660)
Particularly, I'm going to have a heart valve replacement
Roger Reaves (1:57:13.820)
in about seven days where I could not make it.
Lex Fridman (1:57:18.260)
You know, it's a very serious operation.
Lex Fridman (1:57:20.060)
And I think about that very much.
Lex Fridman (1:57:22.980)
And I ask for peace.
Roger Reaves (1:57:26.700)
I just lost my brother about 10 days ago, so unexpectedly.
Lex Fridman (1:57:31.300)
And that really put, you know,
Roger Reaves (1:57:33.300)
makes you think of your mortality.
Lex Fridman (1:57:35.860)
Are you afraid?
Roger Reaves (1:57:38.580)
Somewhat, and yet not.
Lex Fridman (1:57:42.980)
Yeah.
Roger Reaves (1:57:43.860)
I want to live, Lex.
Lex Fridman (1:57:45.220)
I want to live, you know?
Roger Reaves (1:57:48.100)
This life is fun.
Lex Fridman (1:57:49.140)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (1:57:50.540)
Do you think about your death, Roger?
Lex Fridman (1:57:52.540)
I have visions.
Roger Reaves (1:57:54.780)
Visions, and they often happen very, very clear,
Lex Fridman (1:57:57.900)
like what I have seen in the future.
Roger Reaves (1:58:00.500)
Scientists might call it wormholes,
Lex Fridman (1:58:02.060)
or in the Old Testament they called it prophets,
Lex Fridman (1:58:05.140)
but I see sometimes into the future around the corner.
Lex Fridman (1:58:08.240)
It's clear as we're sitting right here.
Lex Fridman (1:58:10.060)
What's that look like?
Lex Fridman (1:58:11.700)
I was on a porch,
Lex Fridman (1:58:12.540)
and I believe I was in like Central America place.
Lex Fridman (1:58:14.980)
I was an old man with khaki pants and a white shirt.
Lex Fridman (1:58:18.220)
And it was a chair with a wide arms, and it was straight,
Lex Fridman (1:58:22.140)
and there was like the beams coming out above my head,
Lex Fridman (1:58:25.180)
and I'm on a porch.
Lex Fridman (1:58:26.340)
Bokunbi, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:58:27.660)
And I come, I have out of the body experiences also.
Lex Fridman (1:58:33.340)
And I came out of my body,
Roger Reaves (1:58:35.100)
just, I just floated out of my body,
Lex Fridman (1:58:37.340)
and went into a veil, and like into a mist.
Lex Fridman (1:58:41.060)
And I believe that's probably why it happened.
Lex Fridman (1:58:43.820)
You talk about like it's in your past.
Roger Reaves (1:58:47.180)
This is your future.
Lex Fridman (1:58:48.020)
This is in my future.
Lex Fridman (1:58:50.340)
But this is something he has seen,
Lex Fridman (1:58:52.260)
you know, in the past. I've seen it in a vision.
Roger Reaves (1:58:53.340)
Yeah, in a vision. No, I know, but it's funny,
Lex Fridman (1:58:55.040)
just the tense you use, it happened,
Lex Fridman (1:58:58.780)
and yet it's something that will happen.
Lex Fridman (1:59:00.660)
Yes. Two.
Roger Reaves (1:59:01.700)
Both are true.
Lex Fridman (1:59:03.060)
It's just unbelievable that,
Lex Fridman (1:59:04.280)
and I don't know how many people have it, but I have it.
Lex Fridman (1:59:07.620)
I walked out of my body just like,
Roger Reaves (1:59:09.660)
just where I could come up to you and look,
Lex Fridman (1:59:11.080)
and set up on the radio.
Roger Reaves (1:59:12.180)
I used to be at work on the railroad,
Lex Fridman (1:59:13.780)
and I had them there.
Lex Fridman (1:59:15.180)
How do you explain that?
Lex Fridman (1:59:16.420)
What do you think, what the heck is going on
Lex Fridman (1:59:18.380)
in this universe that's possible?
Lex Fridman (1:59:20.540)
Oh, I don't know, but certainly,
Roger Reaves (1:59:23.180)
certainly a phenomenon which has happened.
Lex Fridman (1:59:25.180)
And there's a guy, Bill Monroe,
Roger Reaves (1:59:28.580)
that wrote the book on it, Out of the Body.
Lex Fridman (1:59:30.140)
He tells about it.
Lex Fridman (1:59:31.220)
And who was the guy that writes The Alchemist?
Lex Fridman (1:59:35.860)
Pablo Coelho.
Roger Reaves (1:59:37.460)
He has them also, just like that.
Lex Fridman (1:59:39.480)
And he tells about how it happens on him.
Roger Reaves (1:59:41.820)
Mine happened differently.
Lex Fridman (1:59:43.180)
But you certainly can come out of your body.
Lex Fridman (1:59:48.180)
What do you think the meaning of this life is,
Lex Fridman (1:59:51.440)
maybe from your faith,
Lex Fridman (1:59:55.860)
but also from just the amazing adventure
Lex Fridman (1:59:59.220)
that you lived through?
Lex Fridman (20:01.440)
And I'd wiggle my wings and he'd wiggle his
Lex Fridman (20:03.600)
and I'd fall in behind him and we might go 100, 200 miles.
Roger Reaves (20:06.520)
I'd land on some jungle strip or some banana plantation.
Lex Fridman (20:11.720)
And they'd fuel me up.
Roger Reaves (20:13.440)
I could eat steak in the night.
Lex Fridman (20:15.680)
It was just like treated royally.
Lex Fridman (20:17.520)
And I mean, take off the next morning whenever I wanted to.
Lex Fridman (20:21.000)
It was just like that was protected.
Lex Fridman (20:22.920)
And I was honored guest.
Lex Fridman (20:25.960)
It wasn't anything like in that movie,
Roger Reaves (20:27.480)
putting a gun to your head
Lex Fridman (20:29.520)
and taking your sunglasses and betting.
Lex Fridman (20:31.560)
So one time I complained to Jorge Ochoa
Lex Fridman (20:35.120)
that the runway was pretty short that they were using.
Lex Fridman (20:38.360)
And I went back down and it looked like
Lex Fridman (20:39.840)
Los Angeles International.
Roger Reaves (20:41.000)
They had bulldozers in there.
Lex Fridman (20:42.480)
Had that thing 5,000 feet long.
Roger Reaves (20:44.680)
Just like, just the next week it was all done.
Lex Fridman (20:47.520)
The jungle was gone and clay put up there.
Lex Fridman (20:50.320)
And all the while you were not afraid.
Lex Fridman (20:53.240)
You were treated like royalty.
Roger Reaves (20:54.680)
Yes, there I was.
Lex Fridman (20:56.440)
I was afraid when I landed in the United States.
Roger Reaves (20:58.680)
Well, maybe let's go back to the beginning.
Lex Fridman (21:01.560)
What was the first time you flew an airplane
Lex Fridman (21:04.720)
with drugs on it?
Lex Fridman (21:06.280)
Tell me the story of the first time you smuggled drugs.
Roger Reaves (21:08.760)
All right, I flew down to Jalapa, Veracruz
Lex Fridman (21:13.720)
with a Cessna 182.
Lex Fridman (21:16.160)
And we landed at the town.
Lex Fridman (21:18.680)
It was a lovely town and just an old town.
Roger Reaves (21:20.760)
Looked like Bible times.
Lex Fridman (21:22.200)
People, women were washing your clothes in the streets
Lex Fridman (21:24.560)
and with stone basins and the stream running through.
Lex Fridman (21:27.720)
I just was just dumbstruck.
Roger Reaves (21:29.760)
It was just so pretty.
Lex Fridman (21:30.840)
And I went in a church and a Catholic church
Lex Fridman (21:32.960)
and it had the stations of the cross
Lex Fridman (21:34.720)
all carved magnificent.
Roger Reaves (21:36.800)
I'd never seen that.
Lex Fridman (21:37.960)
And I come home and told Mary about that.
Roger Reaves (21:39.760)
That just almost brought tears to my eyes.
Lex Fridman (21:41.640)
It was so beautiful.
Lex Fridman (21:42.920)
And three o clock the next morning
Lex Fridman (21:44.640)
I went out to the airport and taxied down to the taxiway
Lex Fridman (21:47.120)
and there was a guard came out
Lex Fridman (21:49.800)
and wanted to know what I was doing.
Lex Fridman (21:52.240)
And I pulled out, I was on the fire department
Lex Fridman (21:54.720)
at Redondo Beach, California.
Lex Fridman (21:56.480)
So I pulled out my wallet and in it was
Lex Fridman (21:58.680)
the fire department badge.
Lex Fridman (22:00.240)
And oh, he shook my hand and was so glad.
Lex Fridman (22:02.240)
So I taxied on down there and we loaded up
Roger Reaves (22:05.600)
about 400 pounds in the plane.
Lex Fridman (22:07.560)
And came on back and I was running to headwinds
Roger Reaves (22:11.400)
more than I thought and I landed on a little strip.
Lex Fridman (22:14.440)
You're talking about on the way back?
Roger Reaves (22:16.400)
On the way back, on the way north
Lex Fridman (22:17.720)
after we loaded up early in the morning.
Lex Fridman (22:19.840)
And that's the only time I ever got vertigo.
Lex Fridman (22:22.560)
The mountains were coming down at a 30, 40 degree angle
Lex Fridman (22:25.680)
and the Milky Way was overhead.
Lex Fridman (22:28.280)
And somehow I wanted that airplane
Roger Reaves (22:29.880)
to be level with the stars.
Lex Fridman (22:31.760)
And it got me, it's a phenomenal pile of vertigo.
Roger Reaves (22:35.480)
It's the only time I ever had it was on that load.
Lex Fridman (22:37.760)
So anyway, the wind was on the nose of that system.
Roger Reaves (22:40.080)
I wasn't gonna make it to the dry lake where I had fuel.
Lex Fridman (22:43.440)
So I landed on a little bitty strip
Lex Fridman (22:44.880)
and there was a little house.
Lex Fridman (22:46.360)
It was caved in and it was a little boy named Lazarus,
Roger Reaves (22:49.120)
about six or seven years old.
Lex Fridman (22:50.840)
And he was herding some goats.
Lex Fridman (22:52.680)
So we put the marijuana in that house
Lex Fridman (22:54.400)
and the man stayed with it while I flew into some town
Lex Fridman (22:57.280)
and got fuel and came back and we sat down
Lex Fridman (22:59.400)
with the lunch that I brought back
Lex Fridman (23:00.640)
and little Lazarus sat there and ate with us
Lex Fridman (23:02.480)
and we had a good time.
Roger Reaves (23:03.600)
We loaded on back and came on home.
Lex Fridman (23:05.160)
Oh wow, I wonder where he is now.
Lex Fridman (23:09.400)
So what was it like to fly,
Lex Fridman (23:12.240)
maybe describe the details of, do you have to fly low?
Roger Reaves (23:16.120)
Is there details that are unique to this experience
Lex Fridman (23:21.240)
of flying an airplane with drugs on it, on board?
Roger Reaves (23:24.480)
All right, well, one of the mistakes
Lex Fridman (23:26.200)
that just thousands, hundreds and hundreds
Lex Fridman (23:27.920)
and thousands of pilots make,
Lex Fridman (23:29.160)
they don't stop at the border,
Roger Reaves (23:30.680)
going down and get their permit.
Lex Fridman (23:33.320)
Once you get a permit to be in Mexico,
Roger Reaves (23:35.760)
you've got it for six months.
Lex Fridman (23:37.720)
You can go anywhere, any fishing village,
Roger Reaves (23:39.680)
any little town, any little place,
Lex Fridman (23:41.680)
show them this and you're welcome.
Roger Reaves (23:43.320)
If you don't have that, you go straight to jail.
Lex Fridman (23:46.400)
So you go down there and you think,
Roger Reaves (23:47.600)
okay, they're gonna have fuel for me to come back
Lex Fridman (23:49.480)
and so forth.
Roger Reaves (23:50.320)
Oh, sorry, Senor, that had a rusty leak in it.
Lex Fridman (23:53.480)
We don't have any.
Roger Reaves (23:54.440)
Well, you better be able to go to town and get it.
Lex Fridman (23:57.120)
So that's what I did.
Lex Fridman (23:58.680)
And when I was coming back for several years,
Lex Fridman (24:01.600)
I would fly up at Mexicali and cross the border
Roger Reaves (24:06.720)
right at Calexico.
Lex Fridman (24:08.280)
I would act like I was landing on the Calexico side
Roger Reaves (24:10.480)
just after dark and then I'd zip across the border
Lex Fridman (24:13.280)
and I'd go over to the Salton Sea
Lex Fridman (24:14.960)
and go below sea level, 100 and something feet,
Lex Fridman (24:17.320)
I believe 170 feet, and come on up
Lex Fridman (24:19.560)
and go out there above Palm Springs
Lex Fridman (24:21.800)
and land at 29 Palms in the desert
Lex Fridman (24:24.640)
and put my stuff under a Joshua tree
Lex Fridman (24:26.600)
and fly into town and get my pickup
Lex Fridman (24:28.600)
and go on back out and get it.
Lex Fridman (24:29.720)
And that was fun.
Lex Fridman (24:31.280)
And then it got really dangerous.
Lex Fridman (24:32.800)
They had Operation Starlight, I believe was the name of it.
Lex Fridman (24:36.120)
And they called a lot of pilots coming across the border.
Lex Fridman (24:39.360)
So I changed it.
Lex Fridman (24:40.360)
And by that time I was flying bigger planes.
Lex Fridman (24:42.080)
I was flying Beach 18s.
Lex Fridman (24:44.480)
And I would refuel in Mulahe halfway down
Lex Fridman (24:47.760)
on the Baja Peninsula.
Lex Fridman (24:50.480)
And then over in the middle,
Lex Fridman (24:52.440)
20 miles from the nearest road was a goat ranch
Roger Reaves (24:55.360)
where they milked goats and made cheese.
Lex Fridman (24:58.520)
And I would go there and unload the load
Roger Reaves (25:00.400)
coming up out of anywhere in Southern Mexico.
Lex Fridman (25:02.960)
And I would land there and a guy named Juan
Roger Reaves (25:05.360)
would put the marijuana under the trees
Lex Fridman (25:09.360)
and I'd fly into Mulahe and they'd wash my plane
Lex Fridman (25:11.960)
and gas it up and I'd eat a lunch
Lex Fridman (25:15.200)
and rent a room for a few hours and take a nap and a shower
Lex Fridman (25:18.400)
and then go back in the afternoon and fill up.
Lex Fridman (25:20.400)
And then I would go Northwest out of there
Lex Fridman (25:23.280)
and fly 200 miles off the coast of the island of Guadalupe.
Lex Fridman (25:27.000)
And from there I would fly on a more Northwestern heading
Roger Reaves (25:29.720)
about 300 miles out over the Pacific.
Lex Fridman (25:32.680)
And then I would come in behind the Santa Barbara Islands
Roger Reaves (25:35.360)
down low and then I'd come up and go out in the desert land.
Lex Fridman (25:38.880)
And I did that for the rest of their marijuana trips.
Lex Fridman (25:44.720)
What was the hardest part about flying those routes?
Lex Fridman (25:49.040)
The hardest part was getting good in marijuana.
Lex Fridman (25:52.920)
So the hardest part isn't the flying.
Lex Fridman (25:54.640)
No, it's the flying.
Roger Reaves (25:55.480)
It's just like driving your car down.
Lex Fridman (25:57.040)
But then I had people that would bring me on strips
Roger Reaves (25:59.560)
that were just unworthy of an airplane.
Lex Fridman (26:02.120)
Like when I'd land on a highway and in the rainy season,
Roger Reaves (26:07.120)
I would come back to land again
Lex Fridman (26:08.400)
and the guy wouldn't think about it.
Lex Fridman (26:10.360)
And he'd have like little hills on both sides
Lex Fridman (26:12.080)
and the wings were out there.
Roger Reaves (26:14.280)
Well, the grass and the weeds would grow up
Lex Fridman (26:16.240)
and it sounded like, I mean,
Roger Reaves (26:18.800)
it sounded like tearing the airplane apart
Lex Fridman (26:20.200)
when those wings hit.
Roger Reaves (26:21.320)
Mowing the grass down both shoulders of the airplane.
Lex Fridman (26:24.600)
The weeds would grow up high in the tropics.
Lex Fridman (26:26.800)
So some of that stuff was bad.
Lex Fridman (26:28.200)
And oh, getting bad gasoline and telling me
Roger Reaves (26:31.320)
that land here in the night
Lex Fridman (26:32.840)
and knock the wheels off when you land.
Roger Reaves (26:35.880)
Oh, you should have landed a little further up here,
Lex Fridman (26:38.240)
Senor, they ditched down, that sort of thing.
Lex Fridman (26:42.120)
What was it like landing on a highway
Lex Fridman (26:43.960)
and when did you have to land on the highway?
Roger Reaves (26:46.440)
I landed on the highway most of my life, most of the times.
Lex Fridman (26:49.560)
In Mexico, first time I went down,
Roger Reaves (26:51.800)
there was a place called Pichalingi
Lex Fridman (26:54.080)
and it had a 900 foot strip.
Lex Fridman (26:56.560)
And I would fly down and I'd carry gasoline wing with me
Lex Fridman (27:00.200)
and Maury and I would go to the grocery store
Lex Fridman (27:03.400)
and buy all kinds of little goodies and candies
Lex Fridman (27:05.160)
and toys to bring to the children.
Lex Fridman (27:07.080)
And that sand strip in the bend of a river
Lex Fridman (27:13.440)
was just too short to take off with a load.
Lex Fridman (27:15.320)
So there was a young man there named Pedro,
Lex Fridman (27:17.200)
must not weigh much over 100, maybe 120 pounds.
Lex Fridman (27:20.040)
And he'd get in a plane with me
Lex Fridman (27:22.400)
and he'd direct me 20, 30, 40 miles away to a highway.
Lex Fridman (27:27.400)
And the people walk in and the people would pull out
Lex Fridman (27:30.880)
in a two ton truck with a machine gun on it
Lex Fridman (27:32.840)
and a bunch of guys with arms with us
Lex Fridman (27:35.960)
and they'd block the road
Lex Fridman (27:37.240)
and then another one would block it up about a mile away.
Lex Fridman (27:39.400)
And I'd land right over that truck
Lex Fridman (27:40.840)
and they'd load me up and it looked like a bucket brigade
Lex Fridman (27:43.520)
with the marijuana coming.
Roger Reaves (27:44.560)
I'd shake hands with all of them
Lex Fridman (27:45.960)
and I'd take off right over the other trucks.
Lex Fridman (27:48.240)
And sometimes maybe 20, 30, 40 cars lined up.
Lex Fridman (27:51.240)
One time I remember a patrol car, a highway patrol car,
Roger Reaves (27:55.440)
he didn't have his lights on, took off right over him.
Lex Fridman (27:57.960)
And then when I started flying to Louisiana,
Roger Reaves (28:00.960)
the bridge over the Mississippi River,
Lex Fridman (28:02.840)
there were several contractors that went broke
Lex Fridman (28:04.920)
and that thing was out for years.
Lex Fridman (28:07.440)
And about five miles from the river
Roger Reaves (28:08.920)
was flashing red lights and a detour.
Lex Fridman (28:12.960)
And then they swamp on both sides of it
Lex Fridman (28:14.680)
and the middle of it we're growing up with 20 feet trees
Lex Fridman (28:17.280)
and that was like an international runway
Roger Reaves (28:20.720)
from anywhere in the world.
Lex Fridman (28:22.680)
So I landed on that and over and over those red lights
Roger Reaves (28:25.080)
just like the end of a runway.
Lex Fridman (28:26.200)
And then the next morning we'd go out there
Lex Fridman (28:28.360)
and scrub the marks off the highway where I'd landed
Lex Fridman (28:31.800)
before daylight.
Roger Reaves (28:33.320)
Wow.
Lex Fridman (28:34.560)
Let's go to somebody you've known well,
Roger Reaves (28:38.000)
somebody who's also a drug smuggler is Barry Seal.
Lex Fridman (28:42.840)
Who is Barry Seal?
Lex Fridman (28:44.720)
How did you meet him?
Lex Fridman (28:45.800)
Barry Seal is a friend of mine.
Roger Reaves (28:50.280)
Murray and I and the children went down in Honduras
Lex Fridman (28:53.160)
and we went up Lake Azul, I believe it was,
Lex Fridman (28:57.040)
and we were looking at a ranch to buy.
Lex Fridman (28:58.720)
I was looking for something in Central America
Roger Reaves (29:00.280)
where I'd have a halfway place.
Lex Fridman (29:03.240)
Oh, it was lovely.
Roger Reaves (29:04.200)
We stayed up there for some days and our clothes got muddy
Lex Fridman (29:06.680)
and we went in the river and all kinds of things.
Lex Fridman (29:08.720)
So we got to San Pedro Sula
Lex Fridman (29:10.920)
and we was going back to New Orleans.
Lex Fridman (29:13.840)
So we went to the cleaners to get our clothes
Lex Fridman (29:17.520)
and most all of them was in there.
Lex Fridman (29:19.680)
And they go, oh, Senor, they'll be ready tomorrow morning.
Lex Fridman (29:22.440)
We're not ready now.
Roger Reaves (29:23.320)
Well, the plane leaves at nine o clock or whatever.
Lex Fridman (29:27.400)
So I told Murray for her and the children
Roger Reaves (29:30.680)
to go into the airport because it'd be easier
Lex Fridman (29:32.600)
for one just on a standby flight.
Lex Fridman (29:35.280)
So I went to the laundromat for the clothes
Lex Fridman (29:39.400)
and they were ready and there was a pile of them.
Lex Fridman (29:41.440)
And I put them on my back and got in a taxi
Lex Fridman (29:43.160)
and the old taxi would drive him with it
Lex Fridman (29:44.800)
and I'd give him a hundred dollars to go faster
Lex Fridman (29:46.480)
and he just blew his horn more rapid.
Lex Fridman (29:48.600)
So finally we got to the airport
Lex Fridman (29:53.000)
and I jumped out and ran around on the tarmac
Lex Fridman (29:55.320)
and here's a brand new 727 taxiing out.
Lex Fridman (29:59.600)
Oh no.
Lex Fridman (2:00:00.880)
How do you make sense of why the heck we're here?
Lex Fridman (2:00:05.380)
I don't know.
Roger Reaves (2:00:06.900)
It's just kind of like who you are.
Lex Fridman (2:00:08.940)
Even when I was a child, I was like,
Roger Reaves (2:00:11.020)
I'm different from other people.
Lex Fridman (2:00:12.620)
You know?
Lex Fridman (2:00:15.140)
And just as a boy, I was, like I had a...
Lex Fridman (2:00:19.900)
Could you put into words how you were different
Lex Fridman (2:00:22.000)
or it was just the feeling?
Lex Fridman (2:00:22.840)
Yeah, like my brother, I mean,
Roger Reaves (2:00:24.700)
he kept his hands clean and his shoes shining.
Lex Fridman (2:00:27.280)
Here I was barefooted catching a wild hog
Roger Reaves (2:00:29.460)
or a rattle on a horse trying to get it down.
Lex Fridman (2:00:32.820)
I saw pictures of you climbing a tree recently.
Roger Reaves (2:00:36.260)
When I first got out of prison,
Lex Fridman (2:00:37.880)
always something like that.
Lex Fridman (2:00:40.580)
So I don't know.
Lex Fridman (2:00:41.780)
It's just that, and I noticed that something about me
Roger Reaves (2:00:46.220)
is sometimes in prison, there'd be a knife fight.
Lex Fridman (2:00:49.420)
And people just, you see them rough guys
Roger Reaves (2:00:51.780)
that turn white from it.
Lex Fridman (2:00:55.220)
I just kind of almost like smile.
Roger Reaves (2:00:56.920)
I mean, if they come at me, I turn white and get away.
Lex Fridman (2:01:01.180)
But it doesn't bother, those things,
Roger Reaves (2:01:02.740)
they still didn't bother me.
Lex Fridman (2:01:03.780)
I just, prison didn't bother me.
Lex Fridman (2:01:06.580)
So you don't know what the heck the meaning is.
Lex Fridman (2:01:08.220)
You just know you're a bit different than the others.
Roger Reaves (2:01:10.540)
Yeah, I might be a little bit kooky.
Lex Fridman (2:01:11.380)
Well, maybe the whole point is you want to realize,
Roger Reaves (2:01:18.100)
you want to let that madness flourish,
Lex Fridman (2:01:21.340)
that uniqueness flourish.
Roger Reaves (2:01:23.320)
That's the whole point of life.
Lex Fridman (2:01:24.300)
We're all different in our,
Roger Reaves (2:01:25.700)
in very interesting little ways.
Lex Fridman (2:01:28.100)
And the more different you are, you want to let that,
Roger Reaves (2:01:30.580)
you want to let that become, you want to let it be its full.
Lex Fridman (2:01:33.780)
It's like a garden, all the different flowers.
Roger Reaves (2:01:37.380)
You did mention you weren't sure
Lex Fridman (2:01:39.620)
if there's a free will or not.
Lex Fridman (2:01:42.500)
Do you think it's all predetermined?
Lex Fridman (2:01:44.620)
Or do you think we make our choices?
Roger Reaves (2:01:45.460)
No, we definitely make our decisions.
Lex Fridman (2:01:47.300)
I just said, if it is, I hope that,
Lex Fridman (2:01:49.500)
but I know that we make our decisions.
Lex Fridman (2:01:51.260)
Yes, I agree.
Lex Fridman (2:01:52.580)
And I know that we are spirits
Lex Fridman (2:01:55.140)
that are living in this flesh.
Roger Reaves (2:01:57.340)
That's beyond a shadow of a doubt for me.
Lex Fridman (2:01:59.760)
If you walk out of your body
Lex Fridman (2:02:00.940)
and have out of body experience, you will know it.
Lex Fridman (2:02:03.280)
So the body is just the temporary container
Roger Reaves (2:02:05.700)
for something much bigger.
Lex Fridman (2:02:06.540)
The spirit lives on eternally with no beginning and no end.
Lex Fridman (2:02:09.420)
And that's hard to fathom.
Lex Fridman (2:02:11.620)
Yeah, this is just a little,
Roger Reaves (2:02:12.980)
this is a shell to contain that spirit.
Lex Fridman (2:02:16.140)
This is the way we work on earth.
Lex Fridman (2:02:18.620)
But yeah, I know it.
Lex Fridman (2:02:20.100)
I'm an eternal being.
Lex Fridman (2:02:21.740)
So are you.
Lex Fridman (2:02:22.580)
Do you think there's a why to it?
Lex Fridman (2:02:26.660)
Do you think there's a meaning to this life?
Lex Fridman (2:02:28.840)
Well, I think the why is beyond my capability
Roger Reaves (2:02:32.520)
of understanding.
Lex Fridman (2:02:33.580)
It's someone greater than me.
Roger Reaves (2:02:36.020)
I don't understand it,
Lex Fridman (2:02:38.300)
but it's awesome.
Roger Reaves (2:02:40.220)
I just know that it's awesome.
Lex Fridman (2:02:42.300)
And one day we will know the answers.
Roger Reaves (2:02:44.180)
Once we get to that crossover to the other side,
Lex Fridman (2:02:47.920)
I think we will understand clearly.
Roger Reaves (2:02:50.420)
It says, you know, now we see through a glass darkly,
Lex Fridman (2:02:53.700)
but then when we are face to face with God,
Roger Reaves (2:02:56.100)
we will understand.
Lex Fridman (2:02:58.460)
And until we know, let's just enjoy this beautiful life
Roger Reaves (2:03:03.500)
while we got it.
Lex Fridman (2:03:04.340)
Absolutely.
Lex Fridman (2:03:05.180)
And we're meant.
Lex Fridman (2:03:06.020)
That was my gift.
Roger Reaves (2:03:06.900)
I love everybody and everything I do.
Lex Fridman (2:03:10.380)
And it just, and I'm sorry,
Roger Reaves (2:03:12.100)
if I put a stumbling block in anybody's way,
Lex Fridman (2:03:14.440)
I wouldn't want to,
Lex Fridman (2:03:16.020)
but these are these things that when I just think about,
Lex Fridman (2:03:18.760)
oh, what a hypocritical world we live in though.
Roger Reaves (2:03:24.800)
Like most anybody, I'd say, listen, okay,
Lex Fridman (2:03:27.700)
he's a drug dealer.
Lex Fridman (2:03:28.780)
And I would say most of them had committed adultery.
Lex Fridman (2:03:31.380)
That's a cardinal sin.
Lex Fridman (2:03:33.300)
And yet they move, throw rocks at me for moving a marijuana,
Lex Fridman (2:03:38.420)
cocaine across the road.
Roger Reaves (2:03:40.020)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:03:40.860)
It's just, if you saw the two different things,
Roger Reaves (2:03:42.500)
you'd say, what a terrible difference it is.
Lex Fridman (2:03:45.760)
But we become conditioned with this mad society
Roger Reaves (2:03:49.220)
that we have.
Lex Fridman (2:03:51.240)
You mentioned that your daughter, Miriam, wrote you a poem.
Lex Fridman (2:03:56.020)
Do you mind reading it?
Lex Fridman (2:03:57.220)
I'd be glad to.
Roger Reaves (2:03:58.320)
I was doing 11 years up in Lombok Penitentiary,
Lex Fridman (2:04:02.100)
maximum security prison for parole violation
Roger Reaves (2:04:05.460)
for possession of marijuana in 1977.
Lex Fridman (2:04:08.980)
They should have given me six months,
Lex Fridman (2:04:10.200)
but they gave me 11 years because they wanted me
Lex Fridman (2:04:12.140)
for what they call silent beef.
Roger Reaves (2:04:14.500)
Anyhow, while I was in that dungeon,
Lex Fridman (2:04:16.660)
I received a letter from my daughter, Miriam.
Roger Reaves (2:04:21.260)
It's called Daddy's Poem.
Lex Fridman (2:04:23.160)
A year ago, I became a poet when I wrote your birthday prose.
Lex Fridman (2:04:27.580)
And here I am today, ready to give it another go.
Lex Fridman (2:04:30.680)
First, I would like to wish you a very happy birthday to be
Lex Fridman (2:04:35.140)
and to thank you so very much
Lex Fridman (2:04:37.100)
for without you, I would not be me.
Roger Reaves (2:04:39.740)
Secondly, I want to say that your support has been immense.
Lex Fridman (2:04:43.640)
It has been true, honest, loving, and free of all pretense.
Roger Reaves (2:04:48.460)
Thirdly, it goes without saying,
Lex Fridman (2:04:50.880)
your love has surpassed all my wrongs
Lex Fridman (2:04:53.640)
and you always made me smile
Lex Fridman (2:04:55.500)
with one of your old country songs.
Roger Reaves (2:04:57.380)
I can remember on Cuervo, Daddy,
Lex Fridman (2:05:00.980)
with you holding me in your arms,
Roger Reaves (2:05:02.840)
as you sang Jim Reeves songs and talked about the farm.
Lex Fridman (2:05:06.540)
I can see you walking through the door
Roger Reaves (2:05:08.380)
from one of your travels far and wide
Lex Fridman (2:05:10.700)
and the thought of you coming home, Daddy,
Roger Reaves (2:05:12.600)
kept a twinkle in our eyes.
Lex Fridman (2:05:15.060)
I can smell you as I did when I used to climb into your bed
Lex Fridman (2:05:18.900)
and you would talk to me again
Lex Fridman (2:05:20.140)
about one of the adventures that you led.
Roger Reaves (2:05:22.780)
I can see me and Mario asleep
Lex Fridman (2:05:24.600)
in one of your airplanes extraordinaire
Lex Fridman (2:05:27.420)
and remembering wondering to myself
Lex Fridman (2:05:29.620)
why there wasn't an available chair.
Roger Reaves (2:05:32.460)
I remember having to meet you
Lex Fridman (2:05:34.100)
and worrying that you wouldn't be there,
Lex Fridman (2:05:36.140)
but you would pop from behind some counter
Lex Fridman (2:05:38.740)
and give us all a happy scare.
Roger Reaves (2:05:41.760)
You gave us presents in Key Biscayne
Lex Fridman (2:05:44.180)
and hotels pleasure galore
Lex Fridman (2:05:46.300)
and three dozen roses that we came through the airport door.
Lex Fridman (2:05:50.140)
I can see your face in Amsterdam with the luggage carousel
Lex Fridman (2:05:53.660)
and you look like a boy with a secret
Lex Fridman (2:05:55.260)
that you were just dying to tell.
Roger Reaves (2:05:57.900)
You taught me mathematics in the sands of far away places
Lex Fridman (2:06:01.420)
and taught me to sail and we left without any traces.
Roger Reaves (2:06:04.940)
We climbed glaciers in Argentina
Lex Fridman (2:06:07.060)
and saw the blue of the beautiful caves
Lex Fridman (2:06:09.420)
and witnessed the majestic beauty of such a juggling maze.
Lex Fridman (2:06:14.200)
I learned how to change gears on the dirt roads of Brazil.
Roger Reaves (2:06:17.560)
We ate hot dogs in Paraguay, a memory we smile over still.
Lex Fridman (2:06:21.940)
We talked about lions, elephants and bears
Roger Reaves (2:06:24.420)
on a Hacienda in Uruguay,
Lex Fridman (2:06:26.780)
but decided it was better if the Europe we did fly.
Roger Reaves (2:06:30.020)
Oh, the old world and all its luxury,
Lex Fridman (2:06:32.260)
what a good time it was.
Roger Reaves (2:06:34.580)
From South America to the Krosnopolsky,
Lex Fridman (2:06:37.040)
I think we fell in love.
Roger Reaves (2:06:39.220)
The European jaunt, well, it is considered a book in itself
Lex Fridman (2:06:44.340)
but it's a story about beauty and knowledge,
Roger Reaves (2:06:46.340)
suspense and worldly wealth.
Lex Fridman (2:06:48.640)
We went from Holland to Sweden,
Roger Reaves (2:06:50.020)
we went from France to Spain
Lex Fridman (2:06:52.180)
and I promise you I have no regrets.
Roger Reaves (2:06:54.660)
I would definitely do it all again.
Lex Fridman (2:06:57.420)
I would see the world with you anytime, sir.
Roger Reaves (2:06:59.740)
There's no doubt in my mind
Lex Fridman (2:07:01.660)
because being by your side, daddy,
Roger Reaves (2:07:03.780)
always ensures a wild good time.
Lex Fridman (2:07:06.940)
So our paths took a turn and we're back in the US of A,
Lex Fridman (2:07:10.260)
but life here isn't so bad and I'm plumb content to stay.
Lex Fridman (2:07:14.460)
I'm happy to be near you,
Roger Reaves (2:07:16.100)
although I'm not as close as I was before,
Lex Fridman (2:07:18.860)
but because of your love and encouragement,
Roger Reaves (2:07:21.100)
I've been able to open new doors.
Lex Fridman (2:07:23.640)
I'm grateful to be in school
Lex Fridman (2:07:25.700)
and I'm genuinely happy where I am.
Lex Fridman (2:07:28.420)
And I even like when you call and tell me to study
Roger Reaves (2:07:30.600)
for the next exam.
Lex Fridman (2:07:32.740)
What a life you've given me, daddy.
Roger Reaves (2:07:34.860)
It's a tremendous and a magical gift.
Lex Fridman (2:07:37.740)
We already have so many stories to tell,
Roger Reaves (2:07:40.020)
there are far too many to list.
Lex Fridman (2:07:42.340)
But I want to thank you again this day
Roger Reaves (2:07:44.540)
with a very big happy birthday to you
Lex Fridman (2:07:47.180)
and to tell you just a few more things
Roger Reaves (2:07:49.340)
that I knew in my heart to be true.
Lex Fridman (2:07:51.700)
That I love you, daddy,
Roger Reaves (2:07:52.860)
with all of your wrongs and your rights.
Lex Fridman (2:07:55.380)
That you're ahead of our family
Lex Fridman (2:07:56.700)
and you've kept us all bound tight.
Lex Fridman (2:07:59.300)
That you have a honest love in your heart
Roger Reaves (2:08:01.340)
for God and all mankind.
Lex Fridman (2:08:03.600)
And you truly do believe in yourself
Roger Reaves (2:08:05.620)
when you say it will all be fine.
Lex Fridman (2:08:08.340)
I know you will be there to catch me
Roger Reaves (2:08:10.340)
if ever I waver a slip
Lex Fridman (2:08:12.660)
and I know I'd want you as captain on any sinking ship.
Roger Reaves (2:08:16.460)
I also know a new chapter is written.
Lex Fridman (2:08:19.020)
It's almost time to move on.
Roger Reaves (2:08:21.660)
It's time to sail another sea
Lex Fridman (2:08:23.220)
and to witness a brand new dawn.
Roger Reaves (2:08:25.620)
It'd be good to see you at the helm again
Lex Fridman (2:08:27.700)
as you point out our destination,
Roger Reaves (2:08:29.860)
the laugh and dance on the upper deckers
Lex Fridman (2:08:32.140)
while the boat glides through.
Roger Reaves (2:08:34.780)
It'd be good to see you on the go
Lex Fridman (2:08:36.780)
as I know you like to be
Lex Fridman (2:08:39.060)
and to know you can open any door without any key.
Lex Fridman (2:08:43.440)
But while we revel in our days together,
Roger Reaves (2:08:45.820)
we will know better than to hurry
Lex Fridman (2:08:47.960)
because as you told me many times,
Roger Reaves (2:08:50.780)
life is an incredible journey.
Lex Fridman (2:08:54.500)
Wow, that's beautiful.
Roger Reaves (2:08:57.700)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:08:58.540)
Roger, I'm really honored that you would take the time
Roger Reaves (2:09:02.540)
to visit me in Texas and to sit down and talk with me.
Lex Fridman (2:09:06.700)
Thank you so much, Roger.
Roger Reaves (2:09:07.660)
Thanks so much, Mary. Thank you.
Lex Fridman (2:09:08.500)
Thank you, it was a pleasure.
Roger Reaves (2:09:10.180)
It's been a real pleasure.
Lex Fridman (2:09:11.260)
Yes.
Roger Reaves (2:09:12.180)
Beautiful.
Lex Fridman (2:09:13.720)
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Roger Reeves
Lex Fridman (2:09:16.260)
and thank you to Noom, Allform, ExpressVPN,
Lex Fridman (2:09:20.740)
Four Sigmatic and 8sleep.
Roger Reaves (2:09:23.240)
Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
Lex Fridman (2:09:26.940)
And now let me leave you with some words
Roger Reaves (2:09:29.020)
from Pablo Escobar.
Lex Fridman (2:09:31.220)
All empires are created of blood and fire.
Roger Reaves (2:09:36.660)
Thank you for listening.
Lex Fridman (2:09:37.640)
I hope to see you next time.
Lex Fridman (30:01.160)
So I'm waving to the pilot and he's a young fella.
Lex Fridman (30:04.040)
He waves back.
Roger Reaves (30:05.800)
Then I see Murray's face in the cockpit
Lex Fridman (30:07.520)
and the nose goes down where he puts on brakes
Lex Fridman (30:09.960)
and he laughs and he puts some stairwell out.
Lex Fridman (30:12.560)
And I run for the stairwell and he pulls it back up
Lex Fridman (30:14.800)
and goes like a hitchhiker going to pick you up
Lex Fridman (30:16.680)
and go again.
Roger Reaves (30:18.880)
Then he put it out and I got on and the whole crowd clapped
Lex Fridman (30:21.680)
and I'm coming home with that load of clothes.
Lex Fridman (30:26.240)
So I go way down in the middle and the plane's full
Lex Fridman (30:29.520)
and Miriam, my daughter, was about nine years old then
Lex Fridman (30:32.400)
and she was sitting in the middle
Lex Fridman (30:33.880)
and by the window was Barry Seal.
Roger Reaves (30:35.680)
Of course I didn't know it.
Lex Fridman (30:36.680)
And I sat in the middle and we took off
Lex Fridman (30:39.960)
and the wheels come up with clunk
Lex Fridman (30:42.160)
and then I got up about 5,000 feet
Lex Fridman (30:43.840)
and we had a little clunk and she said,
Lex Fridman (30:45.680)
what was that, daddy?
Lex Fridman (30:46.520)
And I said, he just turned on his autopilot.
Lex Fridman (30:49.160)
And that fella reached over and I looked at him.
Roger Reaves (30:51.000)
I said, he looks like CIA or FBI, something.
Lex Fridman (30:55.000)
He ain't supposed to be here.
Roger Reaves (30:56.440)
Clear blue eyes, gentleman looking man.
Lex Fridman (30:59.320)
And he said, you fly these things?
Roger Reaves (31:01.880)
I said, I got a few hours, mister.
Lex Fridman (31:03.240)
He said, I'll fly them too or something.
Lex Fridman (31:05.040)
And he said, my name's Barry Seal.
Lex Fridman (31:06.240)
And he reached over Miriam and shook hands
Lex Fridman (31:08.480)
and we got to talking and I thought,
Lex Fridman (31:11.800)
there's no choice of seats on this.
Roger Reaves (31:13.520)
It's just open seating so I don't believe him one bit.
Lex Fridman (31:18.560)
And he started talking about,
Roger Reaves (31:19.600)
he just got out of jail that morning.
Lex Fridman (31:21.200)
Just got out of prison.
Lex Fridman (31:23.320)
And I said, uh huh.
Lex Fridman (31:26.560)
And he told me that he'd been a pilot
Roger Reaves (31:28.280)
with the TWA and this and other.
Lex Fridman (31:31.200)
And told me what he was for.
Lex Fridman (31:33.880)
So we had a nice conversation
Lex Fridman (31:35.480)
for a couple hours to New Orleans.
Roger Reaves (31:37.240)
I didn't believe him.
Lex Fridman (31:39.200)
So he got off in front of us
Lex Fridman (31:40.680)
and what a crowd of people to meet him.
Lex Fridman (31:44.080)
An old mother and a wife and little children
Roger Reaves (31:46.840)
hanging on to him, crying and hugging and kissing him.
Lex Fridman (31:49.200)
I said, he was telling the truth.
Lex Fridman (31:53.440)
So I reached over and gave him a little piece of paper.
Lex Fridman (31:56.160)
I had Murray to write it out with our address.
Roger Reaves (31:57.880)
I said, Barry, I might have some work for you.
Lex Fridman (32:00.040)
Come on out.
Lex Fridman (32:00.880)
What was he in jail for?
Lex Fridman (32:01.720)
He got caught with 100 kilos of cocaine in a small plane.
Lex Fridman (32:05.840)
And so he served a year.
Lex Fridman (32:07.800)
And that was from Colombia?
Roger Reaves (32:10.040)
I don't know where it come from.
Lex Fridman (32:11.200)
He got caught in Honduras, probably refueling.
Lex Fridman (32:14.120)
But he'd been in prison down there before
Lex Fridman (32:17.360)
for bringing explosives to the Cuban Contras.
Lex Fridman (32:21.440)
And he lost his job with the airlines.
Lex Fridman (32:23.640)
And then later on, I found out he was ex CIA
Lex Fridman (32:25.720)
and George Bush Sr.'s protege
Lex Fridman (32:27.720)
and had a thousand parachute jumps and was there.
Roger Reaves (32:32.320)
He was a hot shot model.
Lex Fridman (32:34.720)
There's a million questions I wanna ask here.
Lex Fridman (32:37.360)
But maybe can we linger on a little bit longer?
Lex Fridman (32:41.160)
What was your relationship with him like?
Roger Reaves (32:44.880)
You were a drug smuggler.
Lex Fridman (32:47.000)
He's a drug smuggler.
Lex Fridman (32:50.400)
Your friends, how often do you guys talk?
Lex Fridman (32:53.720)
How often do you work together?
Lex Fridman (32:56.120)
What was the relationship like?
Lex Fridman (32:58.200)
Well, I'll back up and finish where I started off there.
Roger Reaves (33:01.480)
I gave him the things, Barry,
Lex Fridman (33:02.720)
I may have some work for you.
Roger Reaves (33:03.640)
I know I got some work for you.
Lex Fridman (33:05.280)
And I said, come out to Santa Barbara.
Lex Fridman (33:08.600)
And so I don't know, a week or two later,
Lex Fridman (33:10.760)
he flew out and went to our house
Lex Fridman (33:12.600)
and stayed with us a couple of days.
Lex Fridman (33:14.360)
And I had a almost brand new Aero Commander 690B.
Roger Reaves (33:18.440)
That thing with turbo prop and it was hot.
Lex Fridman (33:20.440)
It was the hottest thing I'd ever had.
Lex Fridman (33:22.640)
So I said, let's go Barry, let's see what you can do.
Lex Fridman (33:26.400)
So I'm sorry I said that.
Roger Reaves (33:27.920)
We got about 10,000 feet.
Lex Fridman (33:30.160)
And he was like one of them blue angel pilots.
Roger Reaves (33:32.200)
He rung that thing out.
Lex Fridman (33:34.080)
And I said, that's enough.
Lex Fridman (33:35.000)
And then he did a falling leaf.
Lex Fridman (33:38.160)
That's where you cut the engines
Lex Fridman (33:39.280)
and the plane falls from side to side.
Lex Fridman (33:41.480)
And I saw Bob Hoover do that in the air show once.
Lex Fridman (33:43.760)
And that's the only person I ever saw do it.
Lex Fridman (33:45.640)
And I was, my hands was white knuckle hanging onto the seat.
Lex Fridman (33:49.360)
You shut off the engine?
Lex Fridman (33:50.680)
Yeah, he shut off the engines
Lex Fridman (33:51.840)
and landed flying side by side like this.
Lex Fridman (33:54.640)
How do you explain that?
Roger Reaves (33:55.800)
Was he just a wild man
Lex Fridman (33:58.360)
or was he sufficiently skilled to work?
Roger Reaves (34:00.360)
He was sufficiently skilled.
Lex Fridman (34:01.960)
Absolutely.
Roger Reaves (34:02.920)
He knew what he was doing.
Lex Fridman (34:05.080)
I can get a plane from one spot to another
Lex Fridman (34:06.680)
and I guess I'm known as a good pilot,
Lex Fridman (34:08.160)
but that guy, it was an aerobatic.
Lex Fridman (34:10.280)
So anyway, he stayed with us a couple of days.
Lex Fridman (34:15.120)
And then I told him, I said, this plane needs tanking.
Lex Fridman (34:18.520)
And I said, I got some work down in Columbia.
Lex Fridman (34:20.200)
It needs to come back to Louisiana.
Lex Fridman (34:21.960)
And I need 2,500 mile range.
Lex Fridman (34:23.880)
He said, I got somebody in Mena, Arkansas
Roger Reaves (34:25.840)
to do that and keep their mouth shut.
Lex Fridman (34:27.480)
So I gave him $10,000 and he flew away.
Lex Fridman (34:30.560)
And in a few days he called me and says,
Lex Fridman (34:32.560)
come to my house in Baton Rouge.
Lex Fridman (34:35.560)
So I went out to his house in Baton Rouge
Lex Fridman (34:37.440)
and I stayed with him for a few days.
Lex Fridman (34:39.400)
And that plane was tanked.
Lex Fridman (34:40.960)
I mean, beautiful from stem to stern.
Roger Reaves (34:43.520)
I could went from Bolivia to Canada with it.
Lex Fridman (34:47.280)
So then I hired him to fly.
Lex Fridman (34:51.400)
And he was funny.
Lex Fridman (34:52.760)
I paid him a million dollars a trip.
Roger Reaves (34:54.440)
I paid him $2,000 a kilo, so about a million dollar trip.
Lex Fridman (34:57.560)
And I didn't get paid until the people received it.
Roger Reaves (35:01.600)
They had to ship it to Chicago and New York
Lex Fridman (35:04.000)
and then the money come back.
Lex Fridman (35:05.120)
So it was a couple of two or three weeks pipeline.
Lex Fridman (35:07.880)
Well, I always had to pay him before he'd go again.
Roger Reaves (35:10.840)
I mean, and he barely ache.
Lex Fridman (35:12.920)
I mean, he had moaning room.
Lex Fridman (35:15.360)
So one time I gave him a million dollars
Lex Fridman (35:19.920)
and I put it in a box real nice.
Lex Fridman (35:21.600)
So how big is a box that contains a million dollars?
Lex Fridman (35:23.960)
So we're talking about a hundred dollar bills?
Roger Reaves (35:25.240)
A hundred dollar bill, it's not very big.
Lex Fridman (35:26.480)
You can put it in a large briefcase.
Roger Reaves (35:29.480)
It weighs exactly 10 kilos.
Lex Fridman (35:31.680)
Each bill weighs a gram, so you can weigh your money
Lex Fridman (35:34.840)
and almost get it exactly right.
Lex Fridman (35:36.720)
20 something pounds is a million dollars.
Roger Reaves (35:38.680)
22 pounds.
Lex Fridman (35:39.800)
22 pounds.
Roger Reaves (35:40.920)
A hundred dollar bills.
Lex Fridman (35:42.200)
But in one dollar bills, it's one ton, 2,200 pounds.
Roger Reaves (35:48.080)
We didn't even accept them.
Lex Fridman (35:49.400)
Were you the one that introduced Barry Seal
Lex Fridman (35:51.200)
to Pablo Escobar?
Lex Fridman (35:53.160)
No, I didn't introduce him at all.
Lex Fridman (35:55.960)
And our deal was that you don't meet my people.
Lex Fridman (36:00.240)
I mean, we just kind of crossed your working for me
Roger Reaves (36:02.280)
to fly the airplanes.
Lex Fridman (36:03.480)
So he wanted these Panther conversions
Roger Reaves (36:05.240)
that cost $400,000 each with a storm scope and radar.
Lex Fridman (36:09.640)
I bought anything you want.
Roger Reaves (36:11.440)
What's that mean, sorry to interrupt,
Lex Fridman (36:12.840)
Panther conversions?
Roger Reaves (36:14.440)
Panther conversion was, these people called Panther,
Lex Fridman (36:18.280)
they took everything out from the firewall,
Roger Reaves (36:20.960)
the instruments and all and converted them
Lex Fridman (36:22.880)
and put Q tip propellers on them full bladed
Lex Fridman (36:25.600)
and you very quiet and the CIA developed those
Lex Fridman (36:28.680)
in Southeast Asia for running behind the lines.
Lex Fridman (36:31.880)
And that's where Barry had flown those things
Lex Fridman (36:33.560)
so he knew about them.
Lex Fridman (36:35.040)
So that's what he wanted and that's what we got him.
Lex Fridman (36:38.280)
How does that connect to Pablo?
Lex Fridman (36:39.880)
And so he worked for you and you got those upgrades.
Lex Fridman (36:42.840)
I think he flew about 30 loads for me
Lex Fridman (36:44.600)
and then I got arrested and was for everything in the world.
Lex Fridman (36:48.840)
Got 35 years sentence.
Lex Fridman (36:51.080)
But let me back up a little bit.
Lex Fridman (36:52.400)
Barry was our friend.
Roger Reaves (36:55.880)
Mari and I are both friends.
Lex Fridman (36:57.360)
We should pause real quick and say Mari is your wife
Lex Fridman (37:02.360)
and hopefully we'll convince her to join us in a little bit.
Lex Fridman (37:07.880)
She's the love of your life and sort of she weaves in
Lex Fridman (37:11.240)
and out of many of these stories that you tell.
Lex Fridman (37:13.520)
Yes, she was there.
Roger Reaves (37:15.280)
She was behind the scenes.
Lex Fridman (37:16.640)
But I kept her out of it completely.
Lex Fridman (37:18.920)
And then also you mentioned Mariam as your daughter.
Lex Fridman (37:21.920)
Yes, our son was a baby.
Lex Fridman (37:25.080)
And I remember we went out to a festival,
Lex Fridman (37:27.440)
was my favorite restaurant in Carl Gables.
Roger Reaves (37:29.640)
Oh God, it was good.
Lex Fridman (37:31.600)
And Barry knew about it.
Roger Reaves (37:32.840)
Anyhow, we went out to dinner
Lex Fridman (37:34.160)
and so we came back and there was no rooms.
Lex Fridman (37:38.160)
So Barry will spend the night with us.
Lex Fridman (37:40.480)
So he goes to our hotel room with us
Lex Fridman (37:42.040)
and we got two big beds in the Omni Hotel
Lex Fridman (37:45.680)
and he lays over there and he gets down
Roger Reaves (37:47.000)
to his stripy undershorts and his T shirt
Lex Fridman (37:49.600)
and he puts the baby up on his belly
Lex Fridman (37:51.840)
and gives him the bottle and said,
Lex Fridman (37:52.800)
mm, ain't that good, Red?
Roger Reaves (37:54.520)
Oh my, my.
Lex Fridman (37:55.360)
And he just feeds the baby.
Roger Reaves (37:56.720)
We laugh and talk and that's how close we were
Lex Fridman (38:00.160)
that we could all stay in a hotel room together.
Lex Fridman (38:03.240)
And would you say he's a good man?
Lex Fridman (38:04.760)
Oh, wonderful man.
Roger Reaves (38:06.440)
A gentleman, Southern gentleman.
Lex Fridman (38:09.160)
Just looked after his mother, his family,
Roger Reaves (38:11.800)
everybody around him, everybody loved Barry.
Lex Fridman (38:14.240)
He just had a little smile on his face always.
Lex Fridman (38:18.280)
So you got arrested and then what happened to Barry?
Lex Fridman (38:21.480)
Well, Barry knew the people that unloaded.
Roger Reaves (38:26.280)
Of course he sent the cars down and all that.
Lex Fridman (38:28.400)
So he met the unloader, a guy named Lito,
Roger Reaves (38:31.600)
Luis Carlos Bustamante of Venezuelan.
Lex Fridman (38:35.200)
So he just kept on flying.
Lex Fridman (38:37.320)
But he, I believe he had three of my airplanes
Lex Fridman (38:40.240)
at $400,000 a piece and they owed me some money.
Roger Reaves (38:42.760)
Well, he collected a lot of that and gave Marie the money
Lex Fridman (38:45.320)
and put it in his safe and took her to his house
Lex Fridman (38:48.160)
and all after I got arrested and sent a lawyer in.
Lex Fridman (38:50.600)
He got me the best lawyer in the country, Albert Krieger.
Roger Reaves (38:54.000)
He was head of the defense team for all of America.
Lex Fridman (38:56.720)
Wonderful man.
Lex Fridman (38:58.780)
Can you tell the story of the months
Lex Fridman (39:03.040)
that led up to Barry's assassination?
Lex Fridman (39:05.880)
What did you know, what did you sense, what did you think?
Lex Fridman (39:10.000)
Okay, when I got out of prison, I hadn't been out long.
Roger Reaves (39:12.200)
I was eating breakfast and there was Ronald Reagan's face
Lex Fridman (39:16.680)
right in the television.
Roger Reaves (39:18.360)
We have absolute proof that the communist
Lex Fridman (39:21.240)
Sandinista government is in the cocaine running business.
Lex Fridman (39:24.700)
And there was that fat lady, the C126 on the runway
Lex Fridman (39:29.300)
with the belly down and I thought, oh God, he had done it.
Lex Fridman (39:34.660)
So I had heard that Barry might've been working with him.
Lex Fridman (39:38.560)
So it wasn't long before.
Lex Fridman (39:39.400)
Working with?
Lex Fridman (39:40.220)
With the DEA or whoever, he was no longer on our side.
Lex Fridman (39:45.720)
So can you clarify how you got that
Lex Fridman (39:48.120)
from the Reagan making a statement about we've heard.
Roger Reaves (39:52.000)
Okay, there was his plane.
Lex Fridman (39:54.000)
There was Barry's plane and okay, on the way north,
Roger Reaves (39:57.120)
we could stop in Nicaragua and land on a military base
Lex Fridman (40:00.080)
or on a base that they used as crop dusters and all
Lex Fridman (40:03.560)
and refuel and so that shortened our trip.
Lex Fridman (40:06.600)
We'd go further into the jungle and come up
Lex Fridman (40:08.400)
and that was what Pablo Escobar and Ochoa and them
Lex Fridman (40:10.680)
and they was associates with the people in Nicaragua.
Lex Fridman (40:15.520)
So Barry was, if that plane was there,
Lex Fridman (40:19.200)
that means Barry was feeding the DEA information.
Roger Reaves (40:22.800)
He was working with them at that time.
Lex Fridman (40:24.400)
But let me back up a little bit.
Roger Reaves (40:25.720)
When I was flying and I told Barry,
Lex Fridman (40:28.140)
we would refuel in Trange Airplane,
Roger Reaves (40:31.680)
the loads in Belize where I had a spot up there
Lex Fridman (40:35.040)
and then that's when they told me
Roger Reaves (40:37.920)
we can refuel in Nicaragua and then you fly all the way
Lex Fridman (40:42.640)
and Barry couldn't believe it.
Roger Reaves (40:44.480)
He says, all right, but I wanted you to land.
Lex Fridman (40:46.120)
I had a place in Louisiana for $10,000
Roger Reaves (40:49.420)
that I could unload and the sheriff and all them was paid off.
Lex Fridman (40:53.000)
And he said, no, no, no.
Roger Reaves (40:56.280)
I can't get caught in Meena, Arkansas.
Lex Fridman (40:58.560)
I said, what do you mean you can't get caught
Lex Fridman (41:00.320)
in Meena, Arkansas?
Lex Fridman (41:01.160)
You get caught anywhere.
Roger Reaves (41:02.960)
He said, I can't, but it's gonna cost you $50,000
Lex Fridman (41:06.760)
every time my wheels touch the ground.
Roger Reaves (41:09.760)
Why, can you explain why he can't get caught
Lex Fridman (41:11.960)
in Meena, Arkansas?
Roger Reaves (41:12.800)
He said he was hooked up with him at the very top
Lex Fridman (41:15.860)
and he even said, I'm gonna have dinner
Roger Reaves (41:17.840)
with the governor tonight.
Lex Fridman (41:19.720)
That's at that time.
Roger Reaves (41:21.280)
Meena, Arkansas.
Lex Fridman (41:22.120)
Mr. Bill Clinton.
Roger Reaves (41:23.480)
Undoubtedly.
Lex Fridman (41:25.040)
And it's like, did Bill Clinton,
Lex Fridman (41:26.640)
did you give him any money?
Lex Fridman (41:27.800)
And I said, no, I never gave the man any money,
Lex Fridman (41:30.400)
but it was like the money that I had
Lex Fridman (41:31.640)
that went to Grand Cayman Islands
Lex Fridman (41:32.960)
and I told my lawyer, I said, I never touched that money.
Lex Fridman (41:35.960)
He said, you don't have to fondle it to be guilty.
Roger Reaves (41:38.880)
So.
Lex Fridman (41:40.040)
So what, I mean, there's a lot of conspiracy theories
Roger Reaves (41:43.480)
around the relationship between Barry Seal and the Clintons.
Lex Fridman (41:46.480)
Absolutely.
Lex Fridman (41:47.400)
What evidence do we have?
Lex Fridman (41:50.480)
What would you say from your best understanding
Roger Reaves (41:55.480)
of what was the relationship
Lex Fridman (41:57.000)
between Bill Clinton and Barry Seal?
Roger Reaves (41:59.520)
Barry said, and he knew that he couldn't get caught
Lex Fridman (42:02.600)
in Meena, Arkansas.
Lex Fridman (42:04.520)
And when that movie was gonna come out,
Lex Fridman (42:05.960)
be called Meena, somebody stopped it.
Roger Reaves (42:09.800)
I mean, they stopped it dead in the tracks
Lex Fridman (42:11.360)
for two or three years and the producer even quit.
Lex Fridman (42:14.120)
You mean the American Made with Tom Cruise movie?
Lex Fridman (42:16.320)
It wasn't American.
Lex Fridman (42:17.160)
It was gonna be called Meena?
Lex Fridman (42:18.080)
It's the name that was written and produced in Meena.
Lex Fridman (42:21.680)
And waiting on Hillary to be elected,
Lex Fridman (42:25.160)
they would not let that movie out.
Lex Fridman (42:27.920)
And that movie was changed drastically.
Lex Fridman (42:30.080)
But to push back on that,
Roger Reaves (42:31.560)
that doesn't mean there's truth there.
Lex Fridman (42:33.320)
That means they were worried about
Roger Reaves (42:35.840)
the power of the conspiracy theory, which stuck.
Lex Fridman (42:39.440)
Exactly.
Lex Fridman (42:40.280)
But I don't know.
Lex Fridman (42:41.640)
I mean, you know, some conspiracy theories,
Roger Reaves (42:44.600)
just because they're popular doesn't mean they're true.
Lex Fridman (42:47.320)
And ones that, but it also doesn't mean they're not true.
Lex Fridman (42:51.160)
And there's ones that are not very popular
Lex Fridman (42:53.080)
that could be true.
Lex Fridman (42:54.080)
But that one really stuck.
Lex Fridman (42:58.320)
I mean, what's your sense?
Roger Reaves (43:00.120)
Well, I paid one and a half million dollars
Lex Fridman (43:01.680)
for Barry to land at Meena, Arkansas.
Lex Fridman (43:03.800)
So I was pretty well assured that he couldn't get caught.
Lex Fridman (43:08.840)
And I said, well, I can't get caught in Columbia.
Roger Reaves (43:10.840)
We can't get caught in Nicaragua.
Lex Fridman (43:12.200)
I guess we got a license.
Lex Fridman (43:14.680)
So we went for it.
Lex Fridman (43:15.520)
Oh, so when you say I can't get caught,
Roger Reaves (43:17.240)
just to clarify, there's a sense
Lex Fridman (43:19.680)
where this is a safe place to land.
Roger Reaves (43:22.000)
Yes, like completely safe.
Lex Fridman (43:23.920)
So you don't think he was referring
Roger Reaves (43:25.360)
to some kind of, you know,
Lex Fridman (43:29.640)
like my grandfather who fought in World War II
Roger Reaves (43:33.480)
would talk about bullets can't hit him.
Lex Fridman (43:36.200)
So it's almost like believing.
Roger Reaves (43:39.320)
He was taking that $50,000 and giving it to somebody.
Lex Fridman (43:41.800)
And Barry was honest.
Lex Fridman (43:43.520)
So he wasn't just taking it from me
Lex Fridman (43:45.120)
because he was making a million dollars.
Roger Reaves (43:46.520)
He didn't care for the $50,000.
Lex Fridman (43:49.040)
Oh man, taking the story forward,
Roger Reaves (43:53.440)
the months leading up to his assassination,
Lex Fridman (43:55.680)
what would you understand why he was assassinated?
Lex Fridman (44:01.040)
Who were the players involved?
Lex Fridman (44:04.880)
Maybe could you have stopped it?
Roger Reaves (44:08.000)
Well, I'll tell you, after I saw Reagan's face
Lex Fridman (44:10.560)
on the television saying we have the absolute proof,
Roger Reaves (44:13.920)
the phone rang and it was Barry.
Lex Fridman (44:15.960)
I hadn't heard from him in a couple of years.
Roger Reaves (44:18.640)
He said, I'm coming out tonight, Roger.
Lex Fridman (44:21.800)
And I, oh boy.
Lex Fridman (44:23.720)
So he came out and he said,
Lex Fridman (44:26.160)
I'll meet you in this French restaurant.
Roger Reaves (44:28.240)
I don't even know it in Santa Barbara.
Lex Fridman (44:30.120)
And I walked in, there's about 20 or 30 people in there.
Lex Fridman (44:33.400)
And they was all 30, 40 years old,
Lex Fridman (44:35.200)
women with plastic or leather skirts
Lex Fridman (44:38.960)
and me in the blue jeans.
Lex Fridman (44:40.600)
And I looked around and Barry was at the back.
Roger Reaves (44:42.640)
He was leaned up, he had gained weight.
Lex Fridman (44:45.080)
And I walked up and I said, Barry, you wired.
Roger Reaves (44:47.720)
He said, no.
Lex Fridman (44:48.680)
I said, well, I'm not gonna talk to these DE agents.
Roger Reaves (44:51.480)
He said, every one of them.
Lex Fridman (44:53.080)
So.
Roger Reaves (44:53.920)
Oh, with jeans and skirts, I like it.
Lex Fridman (45:00.600)
I said, well, Barry, I'm gonna set you
Lex Fridman (45:02.040)
and you just talk to me, buddy,
Lex Fridman (45:03.480)
and tell me what's on your mind.
Lex Fridman (45:05.680)
And he sat there and he just went to talking.
Lex Fridman (45:07.320)
And he told me about, he was left holding a bag.
Lex Fridman (45:11.280)
And it.
Lex Fridman (45:13.320)
What do you mean by that?
Lex Fridman (45:14.560)
Like that nobody's supported him?
Lex Fridman (45:16.720)
Well, I think it's something or another.
Roger Reaves (45:18.400)
He was, and I don't know this.
Lex Fridman (45:21.080)
I mean, this is just what happened, putting it all together.
Roger Reaves (45:25.200)
He had some CIA buddies that was pretending
Lex Fridman (45:28.760)
we're going to supply all of our Northwood arms.
Lex Fridman (45:32.080)
And with that, you can land cocaine back here by the ton.
Lex Fridman (45:35.520)
So he's taking his little planes and putting some AK 47s
Lex Fridman (45:38.880)
and maybe ammunition or whatever,
Lex Fridman (45:41.320)
and takes it down to the Contras
Roger Reaves (45:44.520)
against the Communist Party of Nicaragua,
Lex Fridman (45:47.880)
where we've been landing.
Lex Fridman (45:49.360)
And Oliver North was involved in this.
Lex Fridman (45:51.360)
So when all that, and so his CIA buddies
Roger Reaves (45:55.880)
was certainly involved, and we know they were.
Lex Fridman (45:59.440)
And Barry had been in the CIA earlier
Roger Reaves (46:01.840)
when he first got out of school.
Lex Fridman (46:04.000)
So when, as I say, the shit hit the fan,
Roger Reaves (46:10.880)
they all fled and left Barry holding the bag.
Lex Fridman (46:13.720)
The CIA and the DEA.
Roger Reaves (46:15.400)
Yeah, not the DEA, the CIA.
Lex Fridman (46:17.960)
The DEA wasn't in on it.
Roger Reaves (46:19.120)
The CIA was selling that cocaine, bringing it in.
Lex Fridman (46:22.480)
And.
Lex Fridman (46:23.480)
Just to clarify, what's Iran Contra scandal?
Lex Fridman (46:28.120)
What was the alleged involvement of the CIA
Lex Fridman (46:31.720)
in using drug trade to fund things?
Lex Fridman (46:37.120)
What do you know?
Lex Fridman (46:38.760)
What do you think is true?
Lex Fridman (46:40.960)
What should we know?
Roger Reaves (46:42.560)
Well, I know what I knew was true,
Lex Fridman (46:44.760)
that Barry was taking a small amount of arms
Roger Reaves (46:48.000)
back to Central America and giving them to
Lex Fridman (46:50.920)
whoever Oliver North group were.
Lex Fridman (46:54.160)
Who's Oliver North?
Lex Fridman (46:55.000)
Oliver North was a colonel that got implemented
Lex Fridman (46:57.200)
and almost brought the government down.
Lex Fridman (46:58.680)
And so they said, all right,
Roger Reaves (46:59.920)
we're getting the guns from Iran
Lex Fridman (47:02.000)
and we're taking cocaine to pay for them.
Lex Fridman (47:04.400)
And since Congress won't give us money to fight this war,
Lex Fridman (47:06.920)
we're gonna circumvent it.
Lex Fridman (47:10.120)
So that was a whole thing.
Lex Fridman (47:12.160)
So it was a CIA's effort to circumvent
Roger Reaves (47:16.480)
the funding mechanisms of government by selling drugs.
Lex Fridman (47:20.880)
Yes, but it was a handful of renegade CIA agents
Roger Reaves (47:24.800)
that were Barry's friends that was making a load,
Lex Fridman (47:28.720)
a load of money, tons of it come up.
Roger Reaves (47:31.320)
If you would like to read the book,
Lex Fridman (47:33.360)
The Big White Lie, The CIA and the Crack Cocaine Epidemic,
Roger Reaves (47:37.560)
the CIA put, according to this,
Lex Fridman (47:40.960)
the book and Michael Levine,
Roger Reaves (47:43.920)
I didn't remember his name last time I talked,
Lex Fridman (47:47.560)
wrote that book and he was a head CIA agent,
Roger Reaves (47:50.360)
he was a head DEA agent that exposed this.
Lex Fridman (47:53.920)
And the CIA tried to kill him.
Lex Fridman (47:55.680)
And he says, they put crack cocaine, they developed,
Lex Fridman (47:57.840)
their chemists developed crack.
Lex Fridman (48:00.400)
And they put it in every city in the United States
Lex Fridman (48:02.760)
on one weekend.
Lex Fridman (48:04.160)
So they were bringing it up by the tons
Lex Fridman (48:06.640)
and that's for sure.
Lex Fridman (48:07.600)
And Barry was bringing it.
Lex Fridman (48:09.600)
Can I ask you a small tangent question?
Lex Fridman (48:12.720)
Do you think the public should trust the CIA and the DEA?
Lex Fridman (48:18.680)
Do you think they're mostly good people
Lex Fridman (48:20.740)
that are carrying out a good mission?
Lex Fridman (48:23.840)
Because this kind of makes it sound
Roger Reaves (48:25.640)
like there's renegade agents that are just doing
Lex Fridman (48:28.640)
whatever the hell they want
Lex Fridman (48:29.960)
and with sometimes no regard for human life.
Lex Fridman (48:34.120)
Well, that's certainly true.
Lex Fridman (48:35.400)
But that's not everybody in there.
Lex Fridman (48:36.800)
That's just, sometimes you get a few policemen
Roger Reaves (48:39.440)
in the department that do these things.
Lex Fridman (48:41.600)
I don't believe, I believe that our government is good.
Roger Reaves (48:45.080)
I think we've got some fools running it.
Lex Fridman (48:46.760)
I don't know how we get them there,
Lex Fridman (48:47.880)
but I don't think I know.
Lex Fridman (48:51.200)
Okay, so what was Barry's involvement here?
Lex Fridman (48:54.440)
So Barry leaned back in that chair
Lex Fridman (48:56.680)
and he told me that he got caught with one and a half tons
Lex Fridman (49:02.160)
and he bellied it in the runway in Nicaragua
Lex Fridman (49:06.000)
and had cameras flashing inside and out.
Lex Fridman (49:11.560)
And he flew it back to Homestead with an agent there
Lex Fridman (49:14.200)
and he brought the agent over, Jake Jacobson.
Roger Reaves (49:18.680)
Really nice fellow, I think he was a crop duster.
Lex Fridman (49:21.040)
And we'd have got along if we'd have been on the right side.
Lex Fridman (49:23.400)
And so we sat there and drank Chevy's Regal
Lex Fridman (49:26.320)
until I got pie eyed and Barry told me about it.
Roger Reaves (49:29.400)
He said that he went to see Edwin Meese.
Lex Fridman (49:31.360)
He flew his, he got out on bail
Lex Fridman (49:33.160)
and he flew his Lear jet up to Washington
Lex Fridman (49:35.760)
and went in to see the Attorney General, Edwin Meese.
Lex Fridman (49:39.000)
And they run him out of the office.
Lex Fridman (49:41.240)
The next day he went back and said,
Roger Reaves (49:42.360)
I have absolute proof that the CIA
Lex Fridman (49:45.480)
is bringing tons of cocaine
Roger Reaves (49:48.040)
or they're running tons of cocaine into the United States.
Lex Fridman (49:50.520)
And Edwin Meese put him up with this agent Jacobson.
Roger Reaves (49:53.280)
I believe it was.
Lex Fridman (49:54.520)
And they went down and got one and a half tons.
Lex Fridman (49:56.840)
And on the way back, they bellied it in
Lex Fridman (49:59.280)
and Pablo Escobar and some of the other ones
Roger Reaves (50:02.360)
on general there in Nicaragua,
Lex Fridman (50:04.120)
you can see them toting it from one plane to the other
Roger Reaves (50:07.320)
in the book called The Big Kings of Cocaine.
Lex Fridman (50:11.280)
It's got a mention of me too.
Lex Fridman (50:13.160)
And also the other one has a mention of me in it.
Lex Fridman (50:16.560)
Said I'm in more files for the DEA than Noriega.
Lex Fridman (50:19.760)
So who was wanting to get rid of Barry?
Lex Fridman (50:23.320)
Is that, who wanted to get rid of Barry more?
Lex Fridman (50:25.840)
The cartels or the CIA?
Lex Fridman (50:28.880)
The cartel.
Lex Fridman (50:31.000)
But so Barry leaned back and he told me the story.
Lex Fridman (50:34.680)
And the tears came down between his fingers
Roger Reaves (50:36.760)
as he put his hands over his eyes.
Lex Fridman (50:38.080)
And he said, I just couldn't do it, Roger.
Roger Reaves (50:40.400)
I just couldn't do three life sentences.
Lex Fridman (50:42.520)
So I've told him everything.
Roger Reaves (50:43.440)
I went to Congress and I've testified before Congress.
Lex Fridman (50:46.240)
He testified before Congress
Roger Reaves (50:47.520)
for all these things that he had done.
Lex Fridman (50:49.320)
And he said, I told him all about you,
Lex Fridman (50:52.120)
but you're under my umbrella.
Lex Fridman (50:54.240)
You got to testify with me before grand jury in Miami.
Lex Fridman (50:58.480)
And so the guy said, you can come down,
Lex Fridman (51:00.120)
the DEA said you can come down tomorrow with Mari,
Roger Reaves (51:03.040)
first class, or I'll take you down in chains.
Lex Fridman (51:07.000)
And if you don't testify with Barry,
Roger Reaves (51:09.880)
the only place you'll ever see your wife and family again
Lex Fridman (51:12.440)
is in a federal prison visiting room.
Lex Fridman (51:14.400)
Was that a difficult conversation?
Lex Fridman (51:16.120)
Oh, my guts was just like ice water.
Roger Reaves (51:19.240)
I can't testify against my friends.
Lex Fridman (51:22.320)
I just can't do it.
Lex Fridman (51:23.800)
How am I going to do it?
Lex Fridman (51:25.000)
I just, I can't work with people.
Lex Fridman (51:27.080)
And he was honest with me.
Lex Fridman (51:28.080)
How am I going to testify against them?
Roger Reaves (51:29.680)
I can't spend the rest of my life in a federal prison.
Lex Fridman (51:32.480)
What on earth, what a mess, Barry, you've got me into.
Roger Reaves (51:36.920)
So.
Lex Fridman (51:37.800)
Is that a kind of betrayal there?
Roger Reaves (51:40.120)
Yes, but it's still, I wish he left me out of it.
Lex Fridman (51:42.960)
I understand him getting in such a mess that he told,
Roger Reaves (51:49.360)
because if the CIA and whoever else was behind him
Lex Fridman (51:52.280)
betrayed him, then he's going to tell everything.
Lex Fridman (51:54.920)
So I says, all right, I'll be in Miami.
Lex Fridman (51:56.520)
So Mari and I flew down first class.
Lex Fridman (52:00.040)
And I went to a lawyer,
Lex Fridman (52:01.600)
one of the biggest lawyers in Miami.
Lex Fridman (52:02.920)
And I said, man, I am in a mess.
Lex Fridman (52:06.160)
This fellow's told everything and I've got to say something,
Lex Fridman (52:09.520)
but I'm not a snitch, man.
Lex Fridman (52:10.840)
I mean, what can I do?
Lex Fridman (52:13.960)
And he said, well, being a snitch is like being pregnant.
Lex Fridman (52:16.240)
You either are or you're not.
Lex Fridman (52:22.720)
And he says, I don't represent snitches,
Lex Fridman (52:24.760)
but if you want to fight this case,
Roger Reaves (52:26.000)
I'll do it for $600,000.
Lex Fridman (52:28.520)
And boy, my face turned red.
Roger Reaves (52:29.960)
Well, I'm not a snitch.
Lex Fridman (52:31.280)
He said, well, that's what you're talking about.
Roger Reaves (52:32.840)
He said, let me tell you something.
Lex Fridman (52:33.720)
If you go in there and say one thing and sign that paper
Lex Fridman (52:36.760)
and you don't tell them everything you know,
Lex Fridman (52:40.200)
then they will convict you of everything you've ever done
Lex Fridman (52:42.440)
and you tell them.
Lex Fridman (52:43.440)
So you can't do it.
Lex Fridman (52:45.440)
So I said, Barry, I'm having trouble with a lawyer.
Lex Fridman (52:49.120)
Give it, I'll go to Mari, let's go.
Roger Reaves (52:51.200)
He said, all right, use my lawyer.
Lex Fridman (52:52.600)
And he gave me his card, the lawyer's card.
Lex Fridman (52:54.280)
So Mari and I went to the festival restaurant that night
Lex Fridman (52:58.040)
and Barry and Debbie came in.
Roger Reaves (52:59.520)
She was dressed pretty and Barry wasn't.
Lex Fridman (53:01.560)
So we was already about finished.
Lex Fridman (53:02.720)
So we had dessert together.
Lex Fridman (53:04.320)
And I said, Barry, they're going to kill you, friend.
Roger Reaves (53:06.640)
He said, no, they ain't going to kill me.
Lex Fridman (53:08.040)
So and so, such and such is gone.
Lex Fridman (53:10.160)
And this and the other.
Lex Fridman (53:11.440)
I said, Barry, they're going to kill you, man.
Roger Reaves (53:13.800)
You can't deny it.
Lex Fridman (53:15.960)
And I said, I didn't tell him I wasn't going to testify.
Lex Fridman (53:19.520)
So I hugged his neck.
Lex Fridman (53:21.720)
I really, like, and we fled to Brazil.
Lex Fridman (53:24.000)
But I took Mari and the children and went to Brazil.
Lex Fridman (53:26.040)
So you decided there you're not going to stay.
Roger Reaves (53:27.560)
I knew, I didn't know what I could do.
Lex Fridman (53:30.960)
I talked to a lawyer.
Roger Reaves (53:31.800)
I mean, I just didn't, I didn't know what I could do,
Lex Fridman (53:34.160)
but the best in Miami said what he told me.
Lex Fridman (53:37.800)
So I had to go.
Lex Fridman (53:39.600)
And you went to Brazil.
Roger Reaves (53:40.720)
We went to Brazil.
Lex Fridman (53:41.560)
Did you have a conversation with anybody at the cartel?
Roger Reaves (53:44.760)
I mean, that's such an interesting moment
Lex Fridman (53:48.000)
that tests the man's character to not snitch.
Lex Fridman (53:54.000)
And did you have a conversation with anybody?
Lex Fridman (53:57.240)
No. Pablo with, about it.
Roger Reaves (53:59.200)
Not at all.
Lex Fridman (54:00.600)
So it's just understood.
Roger Reaves (54:02.240)
I just didn't, couldn't do it.
Lex Fridman (54:04.360)
But how many men like you are there?
Roger Reaves (54:06.400)
Not many.
Lex Fridman (54:07.240)
I had all my friends testified against me.
Roger Reaves (54:09.480)
I had 11 friends and every one of them put their finger up.
Lex Fridman (54:11.440)
Roger did it.
Lex Fridman (54:12.680)
And I was facing life,
Lex Fridman (54:14.040)
continuing criminal enterprise care.
Lex Fridman (54:15.480)
And still you couldn't do it.
Lex Fridman (54:16.560)
I just couldn't do it.
Roger Reaves (54:18.480)
Did you ever get respect from the cartels for that,
Lex Fridman (54:21.800)
from the people in the cartel?
Roger Reaves (54:22.640)
Oh, there was a whole time I got back and stuff.
Lex Fridman (54:24.600)
They owe me money and I can't get it.
Roger Reaves (54:26.960)
So.
Lex Fridman (54:27.800)
Well, that's about money.
Roger Reaves (54:29.080)
I just mean about human beings.
Lex Fridman (54:31.080)
Oh, I think so.
Roger Reaves (54:31.920)
I mean, I've been back down there and I've been welcomed.
Lex Fridman (54:34.560)
I have my contact.
Lex Fridman (54:36.840)
And when I was in Brazil,
Lex Fridman (54:38.400)
I was trying to get this money.
Roger Reaves (54:39.440)
They owe me three and a half million dollars.
Lex Fridman (54:41.320)
So I called up there and he was going to pay me.
Roger Reaves (54:43.120)
Oh, I got 600,000 today and I'll get you some more tomorrow.
Lex Fridman (54:47.040)
And then the next week I called,
Roger Reaves (54:48.680)
hey, hey, got great news, great news.
Lex Fridman (54:51.200)
Barry Seale has been killed.
Roger Reaves (54:53.880)
So, oh no.
Lex Fridman (54:55.160)
And I went back to the hotel.
Roger Reaves (54:56.200)
We was up in the northern part of Brazil
Lex Fridman (54:59.280)
and where was it, Marty?
Roger Reaves (55:00.680)
It's been quite a job.
Lex Fridman (55:02.120)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (55:03.000)
And so I went back and I told Mary and Miriam
Lex Fridman (55:05.920)
and they cried and I cried.
Roger Reaves (55:08.080)
I really cried.
Lex Fridman (55:08.920)
How is that great news from the cartel perspective?
Roger Reaves (55:12.000)
Well, now there's no case against me and him and them.
Lex Fridman (55:15.440)
Do you know who killed them?
Roger Reaves (55:16.760)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (55:17.600)
I'll tell you about that story.
Roger Reaves (55:20.080)
On the first load I did,
Lex Fridman (55:21.800)
I landed at a banana plantation and it was raining
Lex Fridman (55:25.600)
and it was a muddy strip, clay.
Lex Fridman (55:28.000)
And they put the 300 kilos of cocaine
Lex Fridman (55:30.320)
and then the ugliest man you could imagine,
Lex Fridman (55:32.120)
named Ronaldo got in there with a Mac 10
Lex Fridman (55:34.680)
and he was making sure I took it to Louisiana.
Lex Fridman (55:38.440)
So.
Roger Reaves (55:39.280)
This is many years before.
Lex Fridman (55:40.480)
Yeah, a couple of years before.
Lex Fridman (55:42.160)
So anyway,
Lex Fridman (55:45.240)
we took off and the mud got up in the wheel well
Lex Fridman (55:48.560)
so thick until the wheels wouldn't come up.
Lex Fridman (55:51.600)
Well, I'm going 200 miles an hour
Roger Reaves (55:53.200)
instead of 300 miles an hour with wheels coming down.
Lex Fridman (55:55.720)
Well, I can't go back there.
Roger Reaves (55:57.760)
If I do, I'm gonna be in the same situation
Lex Fridman (55:59.840)
until the sun dries it out in a few days.
Lex Fridman (56:02.640)
And so, but in Belize, I had a runway
Lex Fridman (56:05.000)
that had been used for $10,000 used to refuel.
Lex Fridman (56:08.560)
So I told the guy, listen,
Lex Fridman (56:10.080)
we got to land in Belize to refuel.
Roger Reaves (56:12.480)
No, no, no, we put the Mac 10 and I'll shoot you.
Lex Fridman (56:16.080)
Go ahead, fool, you're gonna die too.
Lex Fridman (56:17.640)
So it was in a term.
Lex Fridman (56:19.640)
So.
Roger Reaves (56:20.480)
He wasn't just ugly, he was also angry.
Lex Fridman (56:22.040)
He was a bad, bad killer.
Lex Fridman (56:24.800)
And so he's the one to actually kill Barry.
Lex Fridman (56:28.040)
The one that went up on the first load with me.
Lex Fridman (56:33.360)
And Ronaldo, and he's doing life.
Lex Fridman (56:36.240)
He's just a killer.
Roger Reaves (56:37.240)
Yeah, he's doing life in Louisiana.
Lex Fridman (56:39.960)
I wonder who, is it known who made that decision?
Roger Reaves (56:44.640)
The younger Ochoa brother, I understand, Fabio,
Lex Fridman (56:48.640)
which one paid for the hit.
Roger Reaves (56:50.840)
I don't know that, but that's what I've heard
Lex Fridman (56:52.200)
and it probably sounds about right.
Roger Reaves (56:54.040)
He's done in Jessup, Georgia, doing a long, long time.
Lex Fridman (56:58.520)
I think he's about to get out.
Roger Reaves (56:59.360)
He's been in 30 years or whatever.
Lex Fridman (57:03.360)
The movie American Made.
Lex Fridman (57:07.280)
What do you think that movie got right?
Lex Fridman (57:09.280)
What did it get wrong?
Roger Reaves (57:11.200)
Almost everything wrong.
Lex Fridman (57:14.360)
It was disgustingly wrong.
Lex Fridman (57:17.800)
Okay, which parts?
Lex Fridman (57:19.960)
Can you maybe elaborate?
Roger Reaves (57:23.400)
It's about Barry Seal and it just didn't even,
Lex Fridman (57:26.080)
it was nothing, whoever wrote it had no idea
Roger Reaves (57:28.760)
who Barry Seal was.
Lex Fridman (57:30.080)
They sat in a rocking chair and just tried to think of
Lex Fridman (57:32.120)
what was some baby bashing drug dealer doing.
Lex Fridman (57:37.320)
And it's just like, God, you just don't have any idea
Roger Reaves (57:40.600)
of the spirit of the man.
Lex Fridman (57:42.720)
So they wanted just to try to tell a fun story
Roger Reaves (57:45.040)
without actually studying the story.
Lex Fridman (57:47.960)
They didn't know him, they just had no idea.
Lex Fridman (57:50.040)
And Barry was such a nice person,
Lex Fridman (57:51.640)
such a really nice gentleman person.
Lex Fridman (57:54.160)
They talked to you or no?
Lex Fridman (57:55.840)
No.
Roger Reaves (57:56.680)
The people that made the movie.
Lex Fridman (57:57.960)
And I see all these people telling Barry never met him.
Roger Reaves (58:01.720)
They telling all about him.
Lex Fridman (58:02.960)
I think that's just ridiculous.
Lex Fridman (58:05.200)
And for one thing, for his character coming out
Lex Fridman (58:08.000)
of warehouses and all that, that was just like ugly.
Lex Fridman (58:10.760)
And then down in Columbia, putting a gun to his head,
Lex Fridman (58:14.360)
going to take his sunglasses and then he put $25,000
Roger Reaves (58:17.640)
million worth of cocaine on his plane.
Lex Fridman (58:19.840)
And then they're going to bet $100
Roger Reaves (58:21.080)
he don't have enough room to take off.
Lex Fridman (58:24.800)
That's just insane.
Roger Reaves (58:26.200)
I mean, just the whole thing.
Lex Fridman (58:28.680)
And then he's talking to the DEA agents when he's coming up.
Roger Reaves (58:31.720)
You don't know what frequency they own,
Lex Fridman (58:34.280)
how he's got five planes and they all split
Roger Reaves (58:36.200)
when the DEA comes out.
Lex Fridman (58:37.760)
These are just somebody just fantasy.
Lex Fridman (58:41.080)
But those are like, those are details of the man,
Lex Fridman (58:43.120)
details of the story.
Roger Reaves (58:44.760)
Is there some big profound things they missed
Lex Fridman (58:47.720)
about just this whole period?
Lex Fridman (58:50.440)
But that's something that's really important to you
Lex Fridman (58:53.280)
that was missed.
Roger Reaves (58:55.000)
Yes, they just tried to sensationalize
Lex Fridman (58:59.000)
on little things that people remember.
Lex Fridman (59:00.720)
And it's just not true.
Lex Fridman (59:01.840)
It was just like a business deal and good people
Lex Fridman (59:06.240)
and good airplanes and good flying.
Lex Fridman (59:08.960)
And it was like a good watch that was made.
Roger Reaves (59:14.240)
It just clicked and it just went on.
Lex Fridman (59:16.640)
And they missed all of that.
Roger Reaves (59:17.920)
They tried to make it sound like it's something very ugly.
Lex Fridman (59:20.920)
Do you think it was a story
Roger Reaves (59:21.840)
that could have been told way better
Lex Fridman (59:23.200)
and still be a hell of a good story?
Roger Reaves (59:24.720)
Oh my goodness, yes.
Lex Fridman (59:26.560)
Well, there's a series called Chernobyl done by HBO.
Lex Fridman (59:31.760)
And because I have sort of family connected to that period,
Lex Fridman (59:36.640)
they did an incredible job of being historically accurate
Lex Fridman (59:40.160)
and only not being historically accurate
Lex Fridman (59:42.280)
when it helped the story, only in those rare cases.
Roger Reaves (59:45.280)
When they on purpose left the story
Lex Fridman (59:47.760)
to make it easier for people to understand.
Lex Fridman (59:51.240)
But it was still somehow accurate.
Lex Fridman (59:54.280)
And even though all the actors were British actors
Roger Reaves (59:57.600)
speaking English with a British accent,
🔗 相关节目