How a Green Beret Smuggled Carlos Ghosn out of Japan | Mike Taylor (throwback ep)

ORIGINAL AIRDATE - 6/9/23 Michael Taylor is a Special Forces veteran who had a hard-earned reputation for taking on dicey assignments. Over the years, Taylor had been hired by parents to rescue abducted children. He went undercover for the FBI to sting a Massachusetts drug gang. He is most well known for smuggling Carlos Ghosn (former chairman of Nissan) out of Japan. Grab Vitamin 1 here:⬇️ https://www.drinkvitamin1.com Today's Sponsors: The Lite Sleeper⬇️ (VETERAN OWNED, US MANUFACTURED) the perfect addition for the light backpacker, ground sleeper, or prepper/survivalist. https://THELITESLEEPER.com/discount/teamhouse click the link to get The Lite Sleeper and get 10% off your first order! https://THELITESLEEPER.com/discount/teamhouse To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is Ashley Canetti from the Ben and Ashley I Almost Same As Podcast. You know that feeling when your skin just needs a tall drink of water? That's what Clinique Moisture Surge 100 Hour Moisturizer is for. Moisture Surge 100 Hour Moisturizer absorbs instantly and hydrates for 100 hours for plump glowing skin. That's right, 100 hours. It's a lightweight, oil-free gel cream, safe for sensitive skin, it's allergy-tested, and fragrance-free. So try Clinique Moisture Surge 100 Hour today at Clinique.com. Feels like Moisture Surge.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of 5-star Trust Pilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:04Speaker 02

  The Team House with your hosts, Jack Murphy and David Park.

• 1:16Jack Murphy?

  Hey, everyone. Welcome to episode 214 of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with David Park. Our guest tonight in studio is Mike Taylor. Mike served in Special Forces, numbered different assignments in Europe, in Central America, in Lebanon, left the Army, went and became an entrepreneur, got, did some undercover work with federal law enforcement, even got involved in repatriating children who'd been kidnapped from the United States and brought overseas. Spent time in Iraq as a security contractor, time in Afghanistan as an intelligence contractor. He was also probably most famously involved in the Carlos Ghosn affair.

• 1:55Jack Murphy?

  The Nissan CEO who was arrested in Japan and then brought out of Japan to Turkey and then on to his home in Lebanon. And, you know, I was talking to Mike when he got back from that and all the way up until you were extradited to Japan and spent what nearly two years in prison altogether. So this is Mike, his first time breaking his silence really after all of that went down. So Mike, we really appreciate you joining us here tonight.

• 2:24Speaker 04

  Great being with you guys.

• 2:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's a real privilege. Um, so Mike, we, you're a superhero, obviously. What's your origin story? What like led you to the military? How'd you grow up?

• 2:36Jack Murphy?

  And please remember to like and share and subscribe to the channel, guys. Really appreciate it.

• 2:40Speaker 04

  What led me to the military? Well, my dad was in ASA, Army Security Agency, which later became Army Intelligence Service. And, you know, we lived on different bases where those guys were and the school for ASA and the Morse code and blah, blah, blah, all that code breakers. And I hated the army. I hated the military because most of those guys were dorks. Hey, I remember I'd go to the gym. Where's the kids gonna hang out in a military base? You go to the gym. And anytime we needed money for lunch, we'd go down and buy a sub and a soda. We'd play two of these dorky guys from ASA in basketball, two on two. We'd play them for each for two bucks. Two bucks buys us a sub and a soda.

• 3:25Speaker 04

  So we know we're gonna win. We didn't have a penny in our pocket, so we're gonna have to fight if we lost, but we're fighting dorky, dorky GI. So yeah, we're gonna win, so we win our money. I hated them. And then up at Fort Devens, they bumped in these other guys that looked fairly normal. Some had long hair and good guys and they were helping us with lifting and telling jokes and stuff and none of they were special forces guys. So, long story short is I was due to go to college and play football. And at the last minute, I said, no, I'm gonna try out for SF because through the SF guys I knew in the gym.

• 4:01Speaker 04

  They found out that they were running like an x-ray program, which means you could try out right from high school. They were doing it back then, back in seventy-nine. And I happened to be lucky enough to fit into that period of time where I went right from high school in, went to basic A I T, jump school, and right to pre-phase. And I don't know how it is now, but pre-phase back then, they're trying to wash everybody out. They didn't give a damn. And, and ended up making it through. And one of my classmates was Gary Gordon, God rest his soul, Medal of Honor winner from Somalia. So, yeah, and two-thirds of our graduating class came right from high school. So, we used to tease, you know, the older guys when we got in the team, said, yeah, S F school ain't that

• 4:46Speaker 04

  hard, because two-thirds of our graduating class came right from high school. Last year, we were in high school, this year, we're Green Berets.

• 4:51Speaker 05

  I'm sure they loved that.

• 4:52Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, we, they, they go over very well. But we had to tease them, you know how it is. So, that's how I ended up in the military.

• 4:59Speaker 05

  Yeah. And then, what was, like, what was it like when you first got, well, first off, what, what M O S. did you go through? What?

• 5:07Speaker 04

  It was eighteen Charlie.

• 5:08Speaker 05

  Eighteen Charlie?

• 5:09Speaker 04

  Well, back then, it was twelve B. They converted to eighteen Charlie. Yeah.

• 5:12Speaker 05

  So, okay. And then, what was it like when you first got to your team?

• 5:15Speaker 04

  Oh, see, I, I went to, I went to the pig team. We had Colonel Potter, their group commander, they call it the Potter Imperial Guard Team, because they got all the good missions. And this team was stacked. It was all E-sixes and E-sevens and E-eight as a team sergeant. I was a Halo team, the green light team. And so, I was the junior demo man at first. And it was great, because everybody there was, the, the next closest guy to me was an E-six. And that was Jeff Hanley, who ended up becoming one of the Golden Knights, and then the chopper pilot, but just, just, and he came from the Ranger Battalion. So, just a wealth of knowledge and experience. And it was great, because those were, you know, as you know, those are my teachers then.

• 6:00Speaker 05

  That's pretty rare for a brand-new guy to end up on a green light team, right? Because you had to be both scuba and Halo, right?

• 6:06Speaker 04

  No, only Halo.

• 6:07Speaker 05

  Oh, really?

• 6:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, only Halo. Yeah.

• 6:10Speaker 05

  So, for, you know, we haven't really talked about green light teams very much. Can you, and it's really not talked about that much at all. Can you tell us what that was?

• 6:18Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, it's essentially, you know, and this part's been in the newspaper. So there's nothing classified about it. It's the SADOM device. It's a special atomic demolition munition. SADOM is the acronym for it. And that's one of the things that, uh, we had in our tools to use in case of war.

• 6:36Speaker 05

  And I, how fast you have to run to get away from that device if you jump it in?

• 6:42Speaker 04

  I don't know. How fast is a nuke?

• 6:45Speaker 04

  So, yeah, we, you know, the older guys are funny about it because they said, look, you got the least experience. You're a demo man. You've been through the school. So your ass is going to be the one that pushing the button and we're going to be far away.

• 6:59Speaker 04

  So, yeah, that was my job. Push the button.

• 7:01Speaker 05

  So what were those training exercises like? Like I've heard some pretty like wild stories about.

• 7:06Speaker 04

  Well, we have to take, uh, you know, guns and ammo with us live, everything live, because you got to protect that device. And, you know, the worst part of it is jumping it in. You know, somebody says, well, I gotta jump the device. You're not jumping the device. The device is jumping you. I've got over 3,000 free falls and that's still a major league pain to jump that thing. It's brutal. And you end up sitting, sitting on it, falling in free fall. You, you don't, you're not flat and stable like you should be. So, and then all your other gear is divvied up. So you, all of a sudden you're a refugee because my gears, I gotta go look for my, uh, my, my, my warmies, my snivel gear to the junior

• 7:48Speaker 04

  commo man. I gotta get my socks from, you know, the medic and I gotta get one of my C rations from the weapons guy, you know? So it's, yeah, being a young guy in a team with the, with the green light mission is not fun.

• 8:01Speaker 05

  Was it feasible, uh, to, to move, uh, the SADOM like once you jumped it in or wherever you landed? Was that where it was just gonna have to?

• 8:10Speaker 04

  No, no, no, no. We, we hump it.

• 8:12Speaker 05

  Really?

• 8:12Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. It's not that heavy.

• 8:14Speaker 05

  Oh, really?

• 8:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:15Speaker 05

  Interesting.

• 8:15Speaker 04

  I don't know if the weight's classified, so I'm not gonna say.

• 8:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, I don't.

• 8:18Speaker 04

  But you can, believe me, we've all humped a lot heavier rucksacks.

• 8:22Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 8:22Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Much heavier.

• 8:24Speaker 05

  Interesting. And then was it, well, I don't want to, yeah, okay. I'm, was it uh, manual or did you, could you like get away from it and?

• 8:35Speaker 04

  Everything back then was manual.

• 8:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:39Speaker 05

  Yeah. So you have to actually punch the code into the device and hit enter and pull ass.

• 8:42Speaker 04

  Yeah. And, and their clocks we were trained on are, are routinely, continuously, historically off. So, you know, the, you know, the old army watches they would give to you once in a while, uh, they kept better time than this device was. That's how bad it was.

• 9:05Speaker 05

  It's a little iffy.

• 9:07Speaker 04

  What are you gonna do?

• 9:08Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. What, I mean, obviously that was a very secret program at the time. What did, like, did you realize when you got picked for that team, sort of that you were being put into this, this special access? Did you?

• 9:22Speaker 04

  No, no, I had no idea whatsoever. I had no idea. I knew it was the Halo team. I was jacked about that. Um, even though Halo school was closed at the time, too many guys were dying in Halo school, so they shut it down. And then, um, you know, after I got there, I got briefed and whatnot. And so that was, that was, yeah, it's an eye opener. Wow, this is great. Does it get any better than this? So, but, um, yeah. And then I had to wait to get to Halo school, although, you know, these guys are all got thousands of jumps. So I was jumping with the, the parachute club and we'd go out and do our Halo drops at helicopters or C130s or whatever without oxygen. So they had me doing that before I even went to Halo school. And then Halo school was shut down for, I don't

• 10:05Speaker 04

  know, maybe a year or so. And then they opened it up where we were using the wind tunnel at Wright Patterson Air Force Base before we had our own. And they run us through that, which I thought the wind tunnel was the hardest part of free fall. And, um, and then after that, we'd fly back to Bragg and when we're flying back to Bragg, our first jump at 12,500 feet was flying back to Bragg. So, but Halo school is the absolute gentleman's course. You know, you lay down on the table most of the time where you're going to wind tunnel. It's great.

• 10:35Speaker 05

  Good times. Yeah.

• 10:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:38Speaker 05

  And after your time on the Greenlight team, you got, did a couple deployments down to Central America, right?

• 10:43Speaker 04

  No, that was early on. And, uh, no, actually I didn't, I didn't get to go to the places I wanted to go, um, because Seventh Group ended up taking it over. And at that time, Seventh Group was fighting for all those. And our group commander at the time, Potter, was fighting. And we ended up, although we had, you know, Russia and Norway and Scandinavia, we ended up in Beirut. So we didn't get to go to Central America. I think maybe one time, but uh, you know, all of our time was spent over in the Middle East and we're a winner warfare.

• 11:17Speaker 05

  So it was 10th group. Were the like, were the groups really established like 10th group was Europe and the group was

• 11:23Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:23Speaker 05

  Middle East.

• 11:24Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:24Speaker 05

  But you guys were still doing that?

• 11:25Speaker 04

  We don't know how it happened.

• 11:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:27Speaker 04

  We don't know how it happened. We heard that, you know, somebody down in the Pentagon threw this on a table and group commanders were fighting over and Colonel Potter ended up getting it.

• 11:35Jack Murphy?

  I I could be wrong, but I believe the division happened because like political considerations that had to do with, we didn't want the same SF guys going back and forth from Israel to Arab countries and then back again, that there's some security concerns. So I think that's why 10th group ended up taking over like Israel, Lebanon for a little while.

• 11:54Speaker 04

  Interesting. I didn't know.

• 11:55Jack Murphy?

  I believe that's why that came about like that.

• 11:57Speaker 04

  But it came out of the blue, you know, we're up in above the Arctic Circle for 90 days at a time, December, January, February. You don't see light. It's anywhere from 40 to 70 below. Um, you're constantly skiing. You're constantly moving. We're doing our best to make snow caves and, and you know, we're dreaming of warm weather.

• 12:15Speaker 05

  Right.

• 12:15Speaker 04

  And, and then all of a sudden, you know, you get a, a flash message. You got a 10 digit grid. Go here for an evacuation. Oh, what could this be? Oh, we're going to war? Okay, great. We're going to war instead of playing with the Russians and the, and the GRU and the KGB on the border. Uh, we're going to war. Then we find out you guys in big trouble. You're going to Beirut. What are you kidding me? This is the best weather on earth.

• 12:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:41Speaker 04

  Send us, please. So it was, it was pretty nice to go from the Arctic freezing at, you know, 40 to 70 below to, uh, you guys are going to Beirut.

• 12:49Jack Murphy?

  So what was like that? Like you, I think you told me once you were on the first NTT to.

• 12:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, they put a composite team together pretty much because we had a few spots on, on our team, you know, back then teams weren't at full strength. Um, so we were missing a couple.

• 13:05Speaker 04

  Team members, I think we're missing a medic. We're always missing medics. You never have enough medics. But, um, so we're missing a couple of people, so they threw some people with us and we ended up having a composite team. And went over in the first MTT and it was, it was really eye opening. You know, we spent about three months in isolation preparing for it. Um, which of course by then we knew everything about the country, the people, so on and so forth. Three months is a long time to study. Uh, such a small country, um, but it was a very dynamic country because everybody and their brother was in there making problems and fighting and and backstabbing and art of the quadruple deal and so on and so forth. Everything that you could think of was going on. It was there. And it was the terrorist capital of the world.

• 13:47Jack Murphy?

  And, and what year was this that you guys went in there?

• 13:49Speaker 04

  Eighty-three.

• 13:49Jack Murphy?

  Wow.

• 13:50Speaker 04

  Yeah. What happened was in September fourteenth, nineteen eighty-two is when their president-elect Bashir Jamal was assassinated. Uh, and after that, they had the massacres of Sabra and Shatila in the Palestinian camps. Um, and then, uh, you know, what's, it's just quite common over there. Bashir Jamal was assassinated. And his brother ended up taking over for him to be the president. He wasn't elected, but he was the brother. That's how it goes there.

• 14:18Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 14:18Speaker 04

  You know, that's how it is.

• 14:19Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 14:20Speaker 04

  So, and it was after that, that, you know, uh, Marines were in right away, pretty early after the Sabra and Shatila stuff. Because they were there as peacekeepers. Um, which I, I never believe in sending our Marines in as peacekeepers. You know, Marines are there to destroy things. That's it. You know, bring, bring the heat and let's, let's make some order and discipline here. That's what the Marines are for. So I felt bad, horrible that, you know, they're sitting at the Beirut airport and they're getting sniped at constantly and, you know, random mortar attacks and rocket attacks. And they're not allowed to fight back because the State Department's got their nose in it and, you know, anytime the State Department is giving orders to the military, there's going to be problems.

• 15:02Speaker 04

  And hence October twenty-third, nineteen eighty-three, when the, uh, BLT got blown up.

• 15:09Jack Murphy?

  So walk us through, you know, like landing in Beirut for the first time and what your mission was?

• 15:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, first of all, we went in in a civilian aircraft, civilian clothes. It was all undercover until we got there. And we got there, you know, intentionally like three in the morning. The airport's closed, it's shut down, but you know, they opened it for us. So we ended up flying in with a TWA flight out of JFK. And we stopped in Germany, I think we stopped in Frankfurt just to refuel. Ended up going in and we're on a, on an army, Lebanese army bus, little bus, probably holds about 20 people. Driving through downtown Beirut at three or four in the morning. And all you see is ruins all over the place. It looks like something out of the movies.

• 15:55Speaker 04

  And I would say a good 50%, 60% of the buildings were, were damaged and destroyed. And it just like, like the apocalypse had come through. But again, that was a result of, I don't know how many years of civil war at that time. But they ended up having about 17 years of civil war. In addition, it was, you know, the Israelis had come in and started to attack the Palestinians to, to get them out. Because the Palestinians were firing across the border. And the Lebanese army wasn't sufficient to provide security to stop the Palestinians from there, from being there. So that whole mess just boiled over and in 1982, the summer of 82, we saw the Israelis invade and

• 16:40Speaker 04

  end up forcing the Palestinians out. So that's what we went into as, you know, a young 20 year old kid. It was interesting.

• 16:47Jack Murphy?

  And was your job to, the training mission was for the Lebanese army?

• 16:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, the primary mission was, you know, the cover of it was to train the Lebanese army, which we did. We trained the Lebanese army. And they were getting all kinds of shipments of brand new gear, brand new 113s coming in, brand new tanks. You know, brand new M60, brand new M60. We've never seen such new equipment before. And it was being shipped in there. It was great. They still had the transportation grease on the APCs that were going in. So it was pretty interesting. And, you know, we had, you know, two full teams of SF. And it was great because, you know, most of the guys were older and had a lot of experience. So, yeah, it was a great time. And so you said that was the cover mission. What was the real mission? We were doing all kinds of stuff. We name it. We were getting all kinds of stuff.

• 17:35Speaker 04

  But you know, we had, you know, a lot of problems back then because the Palestinians were actually providing us with good security, good intel. So they were giving us a lot of intel. That's why you didn't have many problems with anybody messing with Americans. But soon as the Palestinians were outed, you know, we started having some real problems. April 18th, 1983, our embassy blew up. We lost, I think, 17 Americans, 63 people in total. Most Lebanese that worked with us and people outside. I was on my way to a meeting there at 1 o'clock and I had stopped to get some orange juice from the kids pushing the carts of orange juice. Otherwise, I would have been in there at 1 o'clock. So I just missed that one. So you heard the bang when it when it happened? I was across the street. Jesus.

• 18:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, but we lost a lot of good Americans. We lost Bobby Ames and a staff of other guys there that, you know, he was the region chief of the CIA. A wonderful human being and just, you know, that hurt us badly. That hurt us badly. And again, we never had those problems before when the Palestinians were there providing us with information. And then after that, it was just a few months later. That was April 18th, 1983. October 23rd, 1983, when the Marine Barris got blown up and the French Barris got hit and blown up also simultaneously. So, yeah, that wasn't, that wasn't a good time. And, you know, it's interesting. There's a show out now by Peter Bergen.

• 19:02Speaker 04

  Called The Ghost of Beirut. It's on Showtime. Brilliant, brilliant show. I've only seen some of the trailers and Peter Bergen's a really, really intelligent guy and really wired in. So if he's, he's a producer for it, it's gotta be good. So I'm looking forward to watching that. And it's about that error and about Iman Mughnay, who's known as the number one terrorist in the world. You know, it used to be, but we got to him. He's dead. Um, so yeah, it's it's about that timeframe also.

• 19:30Speaker 05

  What was it about the Palestinians that they were providing intelligence? Were they sort of in competition with some of the other Islamic groups in the area?

• 19:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, they were and they weren't. They weren't in a sense that they were looked down upon because one, they're not Lebanese. And they could never be Lebanese. The law is such that even if a Palestinian marries a Lebanese woman, a Palestinian man marries a Lebanese woman, you can't have the passport. So no foreign man, any country, anywhere that marries a Lebanese citizen can have the citizenship. It doesn't work that way. So that's one of the things that the Palestinians were always, you know, under their craw about. But number two, the Palestinians, there were tons of them. They had numbers and they were better organized, they were better trained, and they had better intel than the local Amal militia or any other militias there.

• 20:22Speaker 04

  And, you know, in time, the Palestinians started having their own divisive problems with, you know, different people wanting to split off, like George Habash wanted to split off and create his own group. He thought he was smarter and better than Arafat. So, so then they had started having their problems, but a lot of those really didn't come until after 1982, when Israelis invaded. So, and, you know, and again, that goes back to the history that, you know, everybody thinks that they went from Israel slash Palestine and it got kicked out, went right to Lebanon. They didn't. And it's amazing how many people that live in that region of the world don't know that they actually went from Israel slash Palestine over to Jordan. And it was King Hussein that kicked them out and they went to Beirut.

• 21:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 21:07Speaker 04

  So, but yeah, they dominated Beirut. It was the Palestinians.

• 21:12Speaker 05

  Looking back on that experience, I mean, I know you sort of developed like over time a sort of affinity for Lebanon and, you know, learn the language and a lot of things, but.

• 21:21Jack Murphy?

  I mean, what did you make, looking back on it, of the American military presence there, be it special forces or Marines or whoever, I mean, do you think it was wrong for us to be there? Do you think we had a potential to help?

• 21:32Speaker 04

  No, I don't think it was wrong for us to be there for the most part. Like, training the army still was very good, and I think to a degree that's still happening. I think that's very wise for us to do. We gotta keep a hand in that. And we gotta do that for obvious reasons, and obvious reasons are, one, you got Hezbollah there. So, we don't want Hezbollah taking over the army. We don't agree with them. And number two, you have the Syrians that are always looking to have influence, and they've actually, you know, occupied Lebanon for many years. It wasn't until President Bush, the son, was in and he got them to leave. But Hafiz Assad was the smart, you know, Syrian leader for, I don't know how many decades, but he was the real brains behind it, and he's the one that ended up having his claws into Lebanon.

• 22:17Speaker 04

  They were draining in the resources from Lebanon, especially from the port. Because, you know, the port of Beirut is a deep-water port, and they can do a lot of commerce. So the Syrians came in and, you know, as a favor to help keep peace between Lebanese and the civil wars from battling each other, which was effective at first. And then they stopped fighting, and the Lebanese citizens realized that, okay, we may have a different religion, but it's okay, we can get along. Of course you can get along, because they have a weird dynamic. You go over to Africa and the Lebanese, regardless of the religion, they're having cookouts, they're going to each other's weddings, it's no problem. It's only in there, in the country, when they're battling.

• 22:58Speaker 04

  So, yeah, it was, uh, it was always something going on. It was a very fluid situation. I think that we should stay there, training the army. I don't think we should have had our Marines there as peacekeepers. That's the part I didn't agree with. And again, Marines aren't peacekeepers. If you, you know, let's say positively needed destroyed overnight, send the Marines. Don't bullshit around by having them stand there and, you know, wait for you to be nice. Marines aren't nice. Marines aren't made to be nice. They're a killing machine. Let them kill. But no, they shouldn't be peacekeepers, and we ended up losing a whole bunch of them because they were put in a position where the State Department was controlling them.

• 23:42Jack Murphy?

  Dave, you want to give a quick shout out for our sponsor for this podcast?

• 23:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, so anybody who's been in the military knows that the only thing the military ever got right was Whoopi. And our friend, our friend Dustin Ward, episode 201, if you haven't seen him, he's done even one better with Whoopi and created what the Light Sleeper. It's a lightweight Whoopi, like high-speed Whoopi with a spot for your sleeping mat to actually hold it in place. So anybody who's ever tried to use a, like a sleeping mat on the ground knows you roll off it in the middle of the night or whatever else. But this has a place of a pocket for the sleeping mat. It has a pocket for the pillow and it doesn't come with either

• 24:29Speaker 05

  of those, but it has a place for them. And then it packs up in this amazing little go bag. It weighs like under four, no, under two pounds. It's good down to 40 degrees. Let me make sure I got the weight right. But it's good down to 40 degrees by itself. And you can put a poncho on it if, if, you know, if you need some weatherproofing or whatever else. But honestly, I really wish that this, that this had been around when I was in. It's, it's honestly one of the greats. It's 2.1 pounds.

• 25:04Jack Murphy?

  So go check it out at thelightsleeper.com and use the promo code T-Mouse. You'll get 10% off your order. It's a really good product.

• 25:12Speaker 05

  It's an amazing product. Yeah.

• 25:16Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, thank you, Dee.

• 25:17Speaker 05

  The Light, L-I-T-E sleeper.com. Check it out. Get one.

• 25:22Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 25:37Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 25:48Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 25:53Speaker 08

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 25:59Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 26:19Speaker 09

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.comPARENTS to learn more.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 27:16Jack Murphy?

  So after Lebanon, you got out of the army in 1987. I mean, before we move on, are there any other interesting army episodes that you'd like to highlight?

• 27:25Speaker 04

  No, not really. There's always somebody, you know. Like I told you, I saw the other day, you guys had Nick Brockhausen on. That's the guy that's got the interesting stories.

• 27:34Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, Nick's awesome.

• 27:36Speaker 04

  He is.

• 27:38Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, we've had him and Jeff on a couple of times.

• 27:40Speaker 04

  Jeff's another one.

• 27:41Jack Murphy?

  We'll have to do it a couple, we'll have to do it again. So what led up to you deciding to leave the military in 87?

• 27:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:52Speaker 04

  I was thinking about going to work for another government agency at the time. And because of my language, that was, you know, a big plus. Um, so that was interesting. Um, so that was a path I was going down. And then, um, I ended up back in Lebanon and, you know, because I could speak a language, I was working in the civilian side. So I ended up doing some more training and things like that and getting into contracting. And then, you know, one thing led to the next. I had a security company. I was in the special forces reserves at the time and then came back, was raising a family and I opened a security company. And then originally our first customer was Ali North.

• 28:33Speaker 04

  Because he, he had a, he had a threat against them from some people in the Middle East, legitimate threat. And, you know, he was writing his book at the time and he had gone through the Iran contra issues and so then he started the book tour and he went to Europe with it as well. Um, so we had to provide him with some real protection. So that's how the security company got it started.

• 28:57Jack Murphy?

  And you, there were, uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but a couple like close calls with Ali while you were traveling with him, uh, as far as attempts?

• 29:05Speaker 04

  Uh, well, there's always somebody trying to get to him. I don't think they were really, these, these were trying to kill him, but he had legitimate threats on him. And, you know, it was sickening to see some of the politicians grilling him, saying, why did you have a security fence? And why did you have a security alarm at your house?

• 29:22Jack Murphy?

  Oh, I remember that, yeah.

• 29:23Speaker 04

  Come on, he's, he's, he's out there doing America's work and he had legitimate threats against him by legitimate terrorists. But there was also, he also has another element of crazies out there that don't know how to kill anybody, wouldn't kill anybody, and they'd probably puke on themselves if they saw a dead person, but they would still try to do embarrassing things to him.

• 29:41Jack Murphy?

  Right. I, I remember, and if my memory serves me right, that during the Iran contra hearings, they were grilling him about that he used government funds to have an alarm system put in his home. And that was like a point of controversy, whether or not that was appropriate.

• 29:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't know if it was government funds or funds from the, uh, the sale of the, the HAWK missiles to the Iranians at a hundred percent profit. So I don't know, but, but who cares where it came from? Well, you know, the guy's got a legitimate threat. He's doing work for the government, us, the American people. He's not doing work for himself. He's not enriching himself. So, yeah, he, he needed protection.

• 30:18Jack Murphy?

  So as time went on, how did that security company kind of expand and sprawl out into, into other areas?

• 30:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, one of the, uh, one of the early bigger projects we got to do was, um, work on the, the vulnerability assessment for Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, right in New York. It was after the February 1993 car bombing in the World Trade Center. And then we got the subcontract from a much larger company to come in and do essentially a vulnerability assessment. They were trying to figure it out. They had a bunch of former CIA and Secret Service guys and some brilliant brains and what they did, but they don't know how to target something. So they asked for the SF guy to come in and, and I look at it from a terrorist perspective. You know, they've got the George Washington Bridge, they've got the JFK Airport and, you

• 31:08Speaker 04

  know, in special forces, that's what we do. We, we're the nightmare for the other people. You know, when they stay awake at night, it's because of guys like us. We're going to find out where their vulnerabilities are. We're going to exploit those vulnerabilities and we're going to kill a lot of people or put them out of business or, or both. So that's what we did here. And then we just turn it around so we can mitigate it and prevent it from happening. So that was one of our biggest, uh, contracts to date. And, uh, that was a good one because we got to spend, you know, I spent about six, seven months here in New York City, uh, done by the World Trade Center work. And we did every one of their facilities, the outer bridges, the airports, the communications facility, the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the path system, the Port Authority bus terminal, you name it, without a bridges, we did it all.

• 31:53Speaker 04

  It was great. It was a good experience.

• 31:55Speaker 05

  Is there, when you're doing that, especially with so many targets and in a free country, how do you mitigate like all the risks?

• 32:04Speaker 04

  You don't. You're absolutely right. And one of the things, interesting thing, when you, as soon as you said free country. We were looking at the, some of the tunnels, I'm not going to get into specifics, but some of the tunnels they have, I went and bought the blueprints for the tunnels for $7, because they're available to the public. And that was one of the things we said, you know, one of our recommendations, shut that off, don't let anybody come buy that, there's no need for the public to have it.

• 32:31Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 32:31Speaker 04

  So, and that's the world we, we started creeping into as of February 1993, from that first car bombing.

• 32:38Jack Murphy?

  I, I have to ask, of course, considering everything that happened subsequently on 9/11, I mean, do you have any thoughts on, I mean, that's another threat that would have to be mitigated elsewhere, um, to prevent that attack from happening, but I mean, what was going through your head when, when that happened, when that attack happened?

• 32:55Speaker 04

  Told you so.

• 32:56Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 32:57Speaker 04

  Told you so. Because I actually wrote it, and I got a lot of pushback saying, look, if you, you know, follow up on all these recommendations we make, one of the only things we can't help you out is, you know, kamikaze type attacks, which is, you know, the people doing the screening at the airports. And the screeners at the airport back then, everybody that flew knew that most of them could barely speak English, and they didn't want to do their job, they didn't care, they're getting paid minimum wage and just, yeah, whatever, go buy. So, you know, getting a couple of box cutters on an airplane wasn't a, a complicated task.

• 33:30Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 33:30Speaker 04

  But I actually wrote about that, and, and speaking about it on the Bill O'Reilly Show, you know, after 9/11 happened, because he had found out about it and asked me.

• 33:39Jack Murphy?

  Wow.

• 33:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:43Jack Murphy?

  Around this, somewhere around this time back, we're talking to late 80s, early 90s, you also got involved in doing undercover work for the government?

• 33:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, and it was just because, uh, it was an SF connection, one of the agents was a former SF soldier, and asked me, he says, hey, um, you speak Arabic, and we know you were over there for a long time during the war, uh, we're trying to penetrate this organization, um, would you mind helping us out? What do, what do we know about this stuff? I said, okay, yeah, sure, I'll help you. Um, that was on a Wednesday, he said, we spent, you know, a lot of money trying to get into this kingpin. Uh, just of Arab descent. Okay. And that's Sunday. I was having brunch with that guy that they spent years trying to get just because of the contacts in Lebanon.

• 34:29Jack Murphy?

  Uh huh.

• 34:29Speaker 04

  So luck or whatever.

• 34:31Jack Murphy?

  So were you posing as a buyer?

• 34:34Speaker 04

  I wasn't posing as anybody. I went in as who I was. I went in as my real identity.

• 34:38Jack Murphy?

  Uh huh.

• 34:38Speaker 04

  You know, again, I didn't know anything about, you know, doing law enforcement type of work. But a guy asked me to help. Sure, I'll help. Country asks you to help, you're gonna help. Four years later, we, everybody was arrested, indicted and a hundred million dollars worth of drugs that came from the Middle East.

• 34:54Jack Murphy?

  Wow.

• 34:55Speaker 04

  So it wasn't bad.

• 34:57Jack Murphy?

  And so you were over there for four years doing that, trying to identify?

• 35:00Speaker 04

  No, no, no. It wasn't just over there. It was both here and there, mainly in the US.

• 35:04Jack Murphy?

  Mm hmm.

• 35:04Speaker 04

  Yeah. And the arrests happened here in the U, in the US.

• 35:08Jack Murphy?

  So they had to get every, get them over here to make the arrests?

• 35:11Speaker 04

  Some of them actually lived here.

• 35:13Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 35:13Speaker 04

  The, the, the leaders of it actually lived in, on the east coast in the US.

• 35:18Jack Murphy?

  And, and that was like one of a string of like, uh, sort of undercover federal investigations you helped with.

• 35:23Speaker 04

  Yeah. And then there was another one called the super note.

• 35:26Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. I'd love to hear about that.

• 35:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was interesting. It was a super note and it was a counterfeit hundred dollar bill that was so good, it passed through the Federal Reserve undetected.

• 35:38Jack Murphy?

  We shit.

• 35:39Speaker 04

  Federal Reserve banks. So of course, you know, we needed to find out who's doing this. And the purpose behind it was to undermine the confidence in the US currency.

• 35:48Jack Murphy?

  Mm hmm.

• 35:49Speaker 04

  You can't beat us militarily. So you're gonna try to undermine the world's confidence in our currency.

• 35:54Jack Murphy?

  When you got brought into it, did they know where those notes were coming from?

• 35:57Speaker 04

  No.

• 35:57Jack Murphy?

  Oh shit.

• 35:58Speaker 04

  No, they had a ballpark idea, but we ended up finding out and through the diplomatic channels, they shut it down. But it was the real deal. And ultimately, the people who were doing it were. From the Shaw era. Mm hmm. But there the Shaw era, people from the Mint then were no longer in charge. They were forced to do this. So they had no choice, otherwise they'd get their families would be killed and they'd be killed. Can you tell us a little bit about how that investigation went down from your point of view? Um, we just spent a lot of time doing the basic, you know, investigative work and talking to people and working sources. And just like if you're looking for somebody that's been kidnapped, it's the same thing. Um, you're not getting calls from these guys, though. That's the difference.

• 36:41Speaker 04

  You know, when somebody gets kidnapped, you're usually going to get a call saying, hey, uh, I got so and so. And what are you going to give me for him? That that wasn't the case here. We had to go find it and through the sources. So once we found our way through the sources, we were able to determine where the supplies were coming from. Um, who was actually making it? And how it was being distributed? So once we had that information, we brought it all back and they were able to shut it down diplomatically. So, so how were they doing that? Wow. You need a Secret Service agent to explain the details, but what they did, they had the, the, the paper. Um, and this is when the, they first started putting those strips in the, the hundred dollar bills. They actually had those strips.

• 37:26Speaker 04

  We were able to get some of those strips that they had. How they actually manufactured that stuff and got it? I still couldn't tell you today. I don't know because our sources can only go so far, but we were able to get it. So only one sheet was had the print and the other sheet didn't. And our source would say, okay, here's a real hundred dollar counterfeit bill and here's a fake. Give that to your people and tell me which one is real. He's telling me which one is real. He's testing us. So I remember going to a Secret Service agent in a, in a meeting and saying, okay, here, look at this. He says, this one's real, this one's fake.

• 38:09Speaker 04

  Secret Service agent pulls out his briefcase, his little lab and starts looking at it. He says, uh, sorry to tell you this, but your source is playing you. You got a bad source because they're both real.

• 38:21Speaker 04

  So, oh, okay. Then they're saying, well, don't go back. You know, this is dangerous that the source is playing you, playing you. About 15 minutes later, he says, oh, timeout, I stand corrected. These are both super notes. So, oh, no, oh, my source is no good. Now, but you've been doing this for 17 years, and you don't know it's that good, you couldn't tell right away.

• 38:43Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 38:44Speaker 04

  So that's how good they are. If you got a Secret Service agent's been doing this for 17 years, he couldn't tell initially. See, it took him about 15 minutes before he could say, oh, these are definitely super notes. So that's how good they were.

• 38:56Jack Murphy?

  So do you know, do you know if it was ever determined that if somebody from our own Mint, Mint was sourcing this stuff to them?

• 39:05Speaker 04

  No, no, no, that, that, no, that had nothing to do with us. Nothing to do with us. That was all foreigners. And what happened was, when the Shah was in power, his people came over and they saw how our Mint worked. They saw how we made our currency. So they went back, and then they were out of power, and they were grabbed by the Khomeini-type people and said, here's what you guys are gonna do for us. This is what we want to do.

• 39:29Jack Murphy?

  And so they could use the money to finance their illicit activities, but also, as you said, undermine the dollar?

• 39:34Speaker 04

  Absolutely. And they were distributing it by the, by the crate loads in Europe.

• 39:39Jack Murphy?

  Oh, my God. That's incredible.

• 39:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was unbelievable. But, you know, it was at the time, and I'll never forget, it was Vice, Vice President Cheney who shut it down diplomatically. So he's the one that had the meetings with whoever in the Middle East.

• 39:54Jack Murphy?

  They put pressure on the Iranians somehow?

• 39:56Speaker 04

  He told them, you know, I think it was actually through the Syrians that this is gonna stop, or else we're gonna have some serious problems. And remember, at the time, the Syrians also controlled the Baka Valley.

• 40:07Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 40:07Speaker 04

  And the Baka Valley had hash crops and opium for, from the furthest north to the further south, down to Zahli and the Baka Valley. All hash crops, as far as I could see, guarded by Syrian Russian tanks. So they don't want to let, you know, they don't want the Americans to come in and destroy their hash crops.

• 40:29Jack Murphy?

  The Iranians were manufacturing the bills in Syria, or they were manufacturing Iran, brought to Syria, and then on to Europe?

• 40:34Speaker 04

  I think that they were doing it, they used Syria as a transit point, and they were actually making them in Lebanon.

• 40:41Jack Murphy?

  Oh, wow.

• 40:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:43Jack Murphy?

  That's amazing.

• 40:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, that is a complicated case.

• 40:45Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 40:48Speaker 05

  But there was, but again, like if it wasn't, if somebody from the Mint was like one of the company, because aren't some of those things like the strips, whatever, they're kind of proprietary, right?

• 40:58Speaker 04

  It's all proprietary, even the paper is proprietary. So, because you look at the paper thing and it's got the, like a little blue.

• 41:04Speaker 05

  And the little colors.

• 41:05Speaker 04

  Little red, like little hairs in it. Yeah, that's, that's all proprietary.

• 41:09Speaker 05

  So somewhere along the way, there was a supply chain weakness, whether it was an individual or it was.

• 41:14Speaker 04

  But I don't know if it's a supply chain weakness or they were bleaching $100 bills and using the paper.

• 41:22Speaker 05

  Oh, oh, oh, oh, that makes sense.

• 41:25Speaker 04

  You know, now you're getting into stuff that I don't know about, it's very technical.

• 41:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:29Speaker 04

  You gotta talk to a secret service agent about that, but those are other options.

• 41:33Speaker 05

  Fascinating.

• 41:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:35Jack Murphy?

  One of the other things you got involved in around this timeframe too, was recovering children who'd been kidnapped. And I remember a few of the parents actually reached out to me at one point. I was wondering if you could tell me like how you got brought into that world?

• 41:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, I, I don't remember. I think it was, somebody was in deep shit and I got a phone call saying, hey, this kid's been abducted, blah, blah, blah, blah. We need your help. It wasn't a matter of could you help, it was we need your help. And it's a kid who's not going to help a kid.

• 42:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:07Speaker 04

  Um, but I've also had calls, actually going back to 1993. I was on top of the George Washington Bridge doing the vulnerability assessment on the intermediate supports. You know, the towers, I was up on the tower when I got a call from an FBI agent. I won't say his name, he's retired now though, and said, we need your help because there's been a, a, a child abducted and taking to Beirut, Lebanon. And the mother is presently in Cyprus. And she's getting ready to go into Beirut to try to get her child back. And we're scared because the husband will probably kill her.

• 42:48Speaker 04

  And the wind's blowing and I'm thinking, did I hear this right? And said, yeah. So he says, um, we need your help. Um, can this lady call you? Uh, sure. Have her call me. All right. She's in Cyprus. She's gonna call you in five minutes. Okay, lady calls me, you know, and it's a mom. I said, well, is it possible you can wait until I get there? She, absolutely not. This is mama bear. She's going for a child. Don't get in the way of mama bear going for a child. She said, absolutely not. I'm going to get my son. Said, okay, um, well, do you have a phone number there? She gave me her phone number. So I was able through her phone number. She got in there and she played it cool. We talked about how she'd play it, play it cool with your, your husband and, you know, try to be nice and

• 43:31Speaker 04

  no hard feelings and don't, you know, beat him up or anything and don't stab him when he's sleeping. And just be calm and give, give me a few days and we'll catch up to you. Okay. So I was able to catch up to her, end up meeting her at the local, uh, produce market right on the street. Was able to talk to her and she did, the FBI confirmed there's an arrest warrant for the father. The, the mom has custody through the courts. Uh, and the state department wanted them back also. So it was, had the blessing of all that and it was legit, you know, through the courts. So I said, okay, so you did the standard, what puts of surveillance on? Um, we had the inside scoop with the mom because she was living there.

• 44:11Speaker 04

  So we saw when the father would drop the, the child off at school, we dropped the child off at school, pulled up with the mom right behind. See the father take off, the child, mom calls the child, hey, uh, Johnny, come here. Johnny comes running over, mom gives him a hug, let's go, we're going off. We went, cross over to Damascus, get on an airplane, goodbye.

• 44:32Speaker 04

  So, and home, safe and sound.

• 44:35Speaker 05

  And you ended up doing a handful of those, right?

• 44:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, we did several of them, but not just there. We did them in Peru. We did one, uh, in Northern Ireland. You know, it was back in the days when the IRA was still, you know, bombing stuff and big, big war going on there. So that one, that one was a dicey one as well. But yeah, we've done them in many different parts of the world. But it's always been with the blessing of the state department and law enforcement and, and the courts given the, the parent custody here.

• 45:03Speaker 05

  How often, uh, do the local governments help you and how often do you avoid them?

• 45:09Speaker 04

  We'd never talk to him.

• 45:10Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 45:11Speaker 04

  Never talk. Oh, I take that back. We talked to, in England, we had to get the Lord Chancellor's office to stamp some papers for us, the court orders from the, the judge here. And then from there, uh, we went to Belfast. And because we had the Lord Chancellor's office stamp it,

• 45:31Jack Murphy?

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:31Speaker 04

  we were able to get police support as well.

• 45:34Jack Murphy?

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:34Speaker 04

  So the police came in with their armored personnel carrier, surrounded the house, and we were able to go in. So that's one time we were able to use local. Otherwise, we don't say a word. We're just in and out.

• 45:45Jack Murphy?

  Because if you were to be caught doing this in a place like Beirut, I mean, ostensibly, you'd be charged with kidnapping, right?

• 45:50Speaker 04

  You got a problem.

• 45:51Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 45:52Speaker 04

  You got a problem.

• 45:53Speaker 05

  And a lot of places where particularly fathers run with the child, like if, if he's a Middle Eastern descent, like the, the, the state recognizes the father's right to the child.

• 46:02Speaker 04

  That's right. But under Sharia law, the mother has custody until the daughter's like eleven or thirteen with its son. And after that, the father gets custody.

• 46:13Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 46:13Speaker 04

  So. But still, at the end of the day, you, you gotta have father's permission to travel.

• 46:20Jack Murphy?

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:20Speaker 04

  A lot of, a lot of those countries.

• 46:23Jack Murphy?

  Another interesting one that you had mentioned was that, uh, there were several different times it sounded like where you were tracking some of the former TWA hijackers, uh, for potentially for them to be arrested or swooped in on. Just wondering if you could detail some of that.

• 46:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was interesting. You know, we've been approached about that a few times, but, um, you know, I was going over there a lot and really didn't want much to do with that, you know, because that could be dangerous for people I know and so on and so forth. So I kind of brushed that off and didn't pay much attention to it. And I don't believe in those bounties anyway. I think they're all, I think they're all bullshit.

• 47:01Jack Murphy?

  Bounties from who?

• 47:01Speaker 05

  Like bounties for justice type things or?

• 47:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. I've actually spoken to the State Department, and I don't remember the guy's name, but he was a former SF guy. So he gave me the straight scoop. He said, look, that's only there because we've got to put it there. I said, now, what if somebody just says, I'm going to get somebody and I'm going to bring them back? He says, we've never had that happen, and we don't recommend it.

• 47:22Speaker 05

  Sort of like

• 47:23Speaker 04

  And I've actually had other law enforcement guys, federal law enforcement, say, don't do it because you'll get prosecuted.

• 47:29Speaker 05

  For like kidnapping or whatever?

• 47:31Speaker 04

  No, just for, for getting the wanted guy.

• 47:34Speaker 05

  Right.

• 47:34Speaker 04

  And then I've been told, well, that's in case, you know, is an American law enforcement officer is on vacation or something and he sees one of these guys. I said, come on, you got to think of something better than that. That's your bullshit.

• 47:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:46Speaker 04

  You know, who's, who, tell me, uh, you know, a guy from, uh, NYPD is going to be in Beirut on vacation. He's going to bump into some terrorists.

• 47:54Speaker 05

  Right.

• 47:55Speaker 04

  He's going to handcuff him and bring him home. Yeah.

• 47:57Speaker 05

  Are, are those rewards more for like people who might be in that organization or be around and like, I'm going to turn this guy in?

• 48:04Jack Murphy?

  Like, like putting a bounty on Bin Laden.

• 48:05Speaker 04

  Originally, no. I don't think originally they were set up for that. I think originally they were set up for the old American bounty hunter.

• 48:13Speaker 05

  Right.

• 48:13Speaker 04

  To go get them.

• 48:13Speaker 05

  Right.

• 48:14Speaker 04

  Um, but I think later it developed into that because, you know, agencies started using sources to get information and, and sources to lure people out and do those kind of things.

• 48:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:25Speaker 05

  That's interesting.

• 48:26Jack Murphy?

  Let's get into, uh, Iraq then. I mean, nine 11 happens, the war's on and having this, all the experience that you have and already having experience as a security contractor. I mean, you were involved in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

• 48:38Speaker 04

  Yeah. Um, yeah, it was interesting because, uh, the undercover case was still going. When the first, when Desert Storm started and that undercover case went from nineteen eighty-eight to September nineteen ninety-one. I forgot when Desert Storm first happened. I think it was January, February.

• 49:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 49:02Speaker 04

  Of nineteen ninety.

• 49:03Speaker 05

  Ninety-one, right?

• 49:04Speaker 04

  Or ninety-one?

• 49:06Speaker 05

  Wait, was it ninety or?

• 49:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was ninety-one.

• 49:10Speaker 05

  Ninety-one, yeah.

• 49:11Speaker 04

  Positive. Anyway, I got, uh, activated. So I remember calling, uh, the case agent, one of the case agents on the case and, uh, said, hey, guys, just want to let you know I'm leaving. I got activated. So, no, no, no, no, no, stay right there. Now, that case you had FBI, IRS, customs.

• 49:34Speaker 04

  FBI. So there's four different case agents. After every undercover meet, I had to come back and debrief with four different agents. They all wanted me alone. And there was four hours right there. So if I have a two hour undercover, I gotta give them a Reader's Digest version because I know I got four more hours to go. So we're gonna cut that short. So what happened was I called one of the case agents said, hey, I got activated. I'm out of here. Oh, no, no, don't go anywhere. And probably within thirty or forty minutes, I must have had fifteen or twenty, you know, G cars in my driveway. All the different agencies were coming over. It's no, no, no. They brought their little mobile van with the the the the high tech telephones

• 50:19Speaker 04

  and commo gear in it and stuff. And they were calling the Attorney General saying, hey, we need you to call the Pentagon. Because he can't go now because we're close to the end of this. We're only we later realized only about four months away, I think, or five months away from the undercover case being wrapped up. So they said, you can't go. You just can't do this right now. We'll lose four years of work. And my my shit's already packed. I went and packed my my duffel bag and my my kit bag. I'm ready to go. And they said, no, you can't go. So I was disappointed. So anyways, they said, well, you can go right after we finish the operation undercover. I didn't get to go. But anyways, they end

• 50:58Speaker 04

  up going as a as a contractor back in two thousand and three. When we December, January of two thousand and three, when we first started, and we're doing, you know, a ton of PSD work. We did a lot of work with Department of Justice, the mass graves. Got to work with some great guys there, some of the US attorneys, some of the agents. And it was it was helpful too, because I speak Arabic and You know how it is, there's not a lot of people that speak Arabic. And State Department was, you know, scarfing up everybody they could that could speak Arabic. So we'd go out in the middle of a desert to a mass grave that was identified.

• 51:39Speaker 04

  And they'd bring all the scientists out, we'd set camps up, you know, and, and they'd bring the chow in and, you know, you'd have showers and some, a mini camp there. And they'd have the DNA specialists and the, the, the, the, what do you call it? The FBI, uh, evidence response team folks, just people that are absolutely brilliant in this stuff. And they'd dig up all these bodies.

• 52:02Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 52:02Speaker 04

  And start going through to get the DNA and start working on it. So we secured that and we secured the transportation to and from people, so on and so forth. So that was, that was interesting. And we also did, you know, because the Department of Justice, a lot we had to do with the protection of some of the witnesses against Saddam and an administration and when they're building a new courthouse over there. So it was really impressive to watch.

• 52:28Jack Murphy?

  This was a lot of security and protection work mostly.

• 52:30Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

• 52:32Jack Murphy?

  But how long did that keep you busy going back and forth from?

• 52:35Speaker 04

  Well, that was to like 2008. Yeah, 2007. Yeah, that was busy because it was constantly, you know, they're just throwing contracts at you, throwing, just throwing money at you. We need you to do this, we need you to do that. So it was a busy time.

• 52:51Jack Murphy?

  Now, what were some of the other things, because in your bio, like you mentioned, some of the other things that you were asked to do during that time or hired to do, like what were?

• 52:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, uh, uh, Codell, we had the Codell contract, the Congressional delegation, delegation. So anytime those people would come in, the politicians, we'd have to pick them up at the airport and, and bring them into the green zone, take them wherever they want them, do their protection for them. And, you know, until it got really bad and then we'd start flying them in or they take the, that Iron Dragon to and from. You know, the, the big, big piece of Target Club.

• 53:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's one of the things we did, we did a lot of static protection at Tajhi, which is north of, uh, of Baghdad. Uh, we did some of the UN facilities, we did, um, uh, protection for some of the logistics sites as well.

• 53:41Jack Murphy?

  Did you ever cross paths with, uh, Bob Adolph by chance? He was a SF officer. Actually, I believe he was a 10th group guy and he was running security for the UN building when it got blown up.

• 53:53Speaker 04

  Oh, no, no, we didn't have it then. We had it, we had a UN site. I forgot where it was. Not Tajhi, the opposite direction. I forgot the name of the site. Anyways, it was a UN camp, a small camp. It was mainly military there. It wasn't civilians. But I know what you're talking about. You're talking about the UN corporate building.

• 54:13Jack Murphy?

  It was early on in the war.

• 54:15Speaker 04

  The headquarters building. Yeah, yeah. No, no, we had a, we had a military, a UN military place that we were secured and they had, you know, foreigners that are assigned to the UN force that were staying there. So that's the base we protected.

• 54:30Speaker 05

  And then you mentioned that like during this time, you were also asked to sort of set up an intel network, like a local intel network, right? Or?

• 54:36Speaker 04

  That was in Afghanistan.

• 54:38Speaker 05

  Oh, that was Afghanistan. Sorry.

• 54:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was Afghanistan.

• 54:40Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 54:41Jack Murphy?

  How did Afghanistan figure into this? Because you said you were bouncing around to Iraq like till like oh, seven, oh, eight. When did Afghanistan kind of come up on the radar for you?

• 54:49Speaker 04

  That was in 2007, 2008, right around the same time. Soon as we done, we finished with one, we started on the other.

• 54:58Jack Murphy?

  So it was, it was that when you say we, I mean, it was like your entire security company kind of moving from one to the other?

• 55:04Speaker 04

  Yeah. And we worked a lot with the, the company that was a prime contractor and a lot of these called MBM. The guy Dario Marquez, great guy, and, and Rob Rubin, another great guy. Rob was the brains that make everything happen. You know, he's just, just dudes off the chart smart. I'd call him on a Jewish holiday at, you know, three in the morning his time. And he'd say, well, look, you know, my daughter, my wife Rachel's the daughter of a rabbi. I really can't be using anything electronic, anything electronic today, but let me sneak into the closet and I'll bring my laptop with me. And he'd bang out of, he'd bang out all the numbers on a proposal in the closet when he wasn't supposed to. So I hope Rachel's not watching this. But he was a great guy. But he, he's the guy that

• 55:49Speaker 04

  made, that made it all happen.

• 55:52Jack Murphy?

  And so what was the, what kind of contracts did you start picking up in Afghanistan?

• 55:57Speaker 04

  Afghanistan, it was, it was actually a maintenance contract. We would embed with SF teams who were training the, the commandos, the Afghan commandos.

• 56:10Speaker 04

  And it was first started out a very small pilot program at first. It was only like three or four people and none of the big companies wanted it. So yeah, we'll take it. So we did it. Put the proposals in only two people, only two companies put proposals in it, us and one other one. And the other one, they weren't even technically acceptable. Their proposal was like two pages long. We actually saw a copy of it later. But so we got the contract and then from there it built, you know, it grew and they kept adding more and adding more, you know, FOBs and more teams that wanted us to be embedded and train them on, on the maintenance, the mainly the Afghans trained them on how to repair

• 56:51Speaker 04

  your weapon, how to clean your weapon, how to do the night vision, you know, and your generators and so on and so forth. Cause they were terrible about it, which a lot of armies are, you know, it's just basic maintenance that they'd say, well, the gun don't work, throw it out. Might help if you clean it once in a while.

• 57:09Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Yeah. So then how did you get involved then with, um, you know, the Dewey Claridge, uh, over there?

• 57:16Speaker 04

  Well, actually I knew Dewey from way back in the days of Beirut. Um, but then we ended up working together on a couple of different projects. And one of them was, um, there was a, a New York Times reporter that got kidnapped, um, and taken across the border and ended up being in the custody of the Haqqanis. The Haqqanis took him over. So somehow a connectional, New York Times contacted me and asked for help and we were able to help do some work on that. And of course Dewey was instrumental in it. You know, uh, the guy's got contacts all over the place. It's just stunning, you know, is it, he was the, the, the first, uh, head of the counterterrorism center for the CIA.

• 58:01Speaker 04

  So there's not many people Dewey didn't know anywhere in the world.

• 58:04Jack Murphy?

  Okay. You able or willing to talk about that at all about, uh, about how you could get that reporter out of there, how that came about?

• 58:12Speaker 04

  Well, um, you know, again, it's issues and sources and, and, and different sources and confirming. So you get three or four sources and eventually, uh, you know, you find out that two of them are telling you the straight scoop and one's not. So you, you push them aside and you're constantly trying to develop more sources. So it's like any kind of investigative tool. We pull that up, that information, all the sources and I'll use sources, Dewey will use sources, other of our guys will use sources. And we pull our information, we analyze it and see what's right and what's not. And look, find out where he's at. And, you know, we have people on the ground there if we need it, if we need to take some kind of action. Um, and it's only a plane ride away. And, you know, ultimately we find

• 58:57Speaker 04

  out where he's at. And that's when you start zero in and, you know, the bad guys that, you know, Hakani's are asking for millions and millions of dollars. And, you know, then you got the FBI involved also on another angle because it's a US citizen that's been abducted. So they're involved and, you know, and I gotta say the, the reporter's wife was just, you know,

• 59:22Speaker 04

  what a lady constantly working for him, constantly pushing people and, and different agencies and the emotion of it. And she was just an amazing human being, just, you know, pushing. If, if I was ever kidnapped, I want somebody like her pushing to help me because she took no prisoners. And smart lady and she worked hard at it. But yeah, so ultimately it's, it's, you know, developing sources and working those sources and getting the intel, processing it, analyzing it, and then seeing what's the best options to get him out. At the end of the day, I think, uh, there was a book written by the, the, the reporter that said he escaped. So.

• 59:59Speaker 05

  What, what is it? You know, we, obviously we know about the CIA, we know about the DIA. And then we know, a lot of us know about Dewey Claridge. Like there are these sort of private intelligence efforts out there across the world, you know, very involved sometimes and very competent. What, what is that? What does that look like from the inside? I'm sure that it's very compartmentalized. You're just doing your thing. But like, do you worry about funding? Do you worry about covered? You know, or, or, and I don't mean cover as in like, uh, like a cover, an alias, but top cover, like the State Department, like.

• 1:00:39Jack Murphy?

  Taking care of you.

• 1:00:40Speaker 04

  Great question, great question. We've been one of those, you know, outfits that provided intelligence. We had a contract and it comes from some of the big contractors and it goes to a second. And then we're the third subcontractor. And I heard they do that, you know, so it just gives you more top cover per se and less people know about you. Bullshit. They all know about you because we're the guys on the ground over there. So they find out about us. They don't know who the other two contractors above us are and they don't care because they never have any dealings with them. We're the ones passing the intel up and and it's a one way street. We're not tasked to do things. We're contracted to go collect information and that's what

• 1:01:23Speaker 04

  we did. We collect a bunch of intel and we send it up the pipeline. And you know, there's the the difference between collecting it for force protection and collecting it for intelligence person purposes. We're collecting it for force protection.

• 1:01:39Jack Murphy?

  Atmospherics, I think is the term.

• 1:01:41Speaker 04

  Indeed it is.

• 1:01:41Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:01:42Speaker 04

  Indeed it is. Yeah, so we're collecting atmospherics.

• 1:01:45Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:46Speaker 04

  So we pass our atmospherics up and then, you know, we can sometimes see the results in the newspapers.

• 1:01:51Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:51Speaker 04

  Which we have seen. We've seen, you know, drone strikes based on some of our intelligence we provided. But again, we're not tasked with anything and we don't know where it's going.

• 1:02:01Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:02:01Speaker 04

  We get the information. We think it's good. We pass it up.

• 1:02:04Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:02:05Speaker 04

  What what the government does with it, it's their business.

• 1:02:07Jack Murphy?

  Right. You mentioned, you know, you were pretty close with with Dewey and I mean, he's not with us anymore. But I mean, I was wondering if you had any interest in in talking a little bit about like what he was like as a person, as an intelligence professional.

• 1:02:20Speaker 04

  Oh, boy. Oh, boy. He was like, you know, we were kids. We had these Britannica encyclopedias. He was like Library of Congress of those put together. The guy was, first of all, he's a Brown graduate, so he's no dummy. And he ended up running, you know, the first counterterrorism center for the for the agency. But we had issues going on in some place in the Middle East and, you know, we needed to contact Israelis to let them know that stay out of this for deconfliction purposes. And Dewey says, yeah, the problem I got that. What do you mean you got that? He's, he looks at me, he said, what did I just say?

• 1:03:03Speaker 04

  You said you got that, but I don't know what that means. What does that mean, Dewey? He says, I'll call so and so and I'll make sure that there's not a problem. So and so was the last head of the Mossad. So that's the kind of guy.

• 1:03:17Speaker 05

  So he had that.

• 1:03:18Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I say, I got that. I got that. Okay. All right, cool. So of course I'm going over, searching the name of the guy. So I'll be damned. He's right. That's the former head of the Mossad.

• 1:03:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:29Speaker 04

  So, but the guy was absolutely brilliant, brilliant, practical.

• 1:03:36Speaker 04

  You know, and 100% pro-American. Oh, to the bone, to the bone, you know? We're all pro-Americans and Dewey was actually in the military for a little while. They made them when they first signed up to CIA. They say, go join the army. Go join the army and then come back and we'll touch base with you and come back and check in with us in six months. So they go in as officers and lieutenants and they do some of their basic stuff that officers do. And then six months later, a year later, they come back and start their training in the CIA. So, but you know, he did the Fozzie Yunus also, that capture.

• 1:04:15Speaker 04

  Fozzie Yunus was, I forgot what the crime was, but that's the one they did in the Mediterranean, where they lured the guy out, the terrorist out. And on a boat with bikini clad women and partying and drugs and all that. And that was Dewey's mastermind. He was the mastermind behind that. And then the FBI agents, the girls in bikinis were FBI agents. And they had some of the HRT guys there and they arrest them. Right there on the boat. And then they take them over to one of the Navy ships, our Navy ships. Get them to an aircraft carrier, put them in a straitjacket, fly them straight back to Andrews. And then they prosecuted them there.

• 1:04:59Speaker 04

  So that was Dewey's, that was Dewey's brainchild.

• 1:05:03Jack Murphy?

  It's pretty wild stuff. And then, you know, as you mentioned, you know, the security contact contract relationship you had to provide maintenance to the Afghan military. And that kind of like blew up at a certain point on you.

• 1:05:20Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, we had big problems from it, which shocked me because, you know, this is again, Harvey Silverglade wrote a book, A Felony a Day. Great book. And, you know, you think that the justice is going to be fair and legit and all that. Now, I've been on that side. I've seen how prosecutors work and agents work because I spent four years undercover with them. So, you know, there was, you know, Department of Defense had the inspector general's office out looking for people to prosecute. And they ended up prosecuting us because they thought we had done something wrong. They thought we knew what the other company was

• 1:06:01Speaker 04

  going to bid for a project. Although they had the evidence, because they subpoena everything, they have the evidence showing in an email traffic that that wasn't true. Their whole case is based on when they prosecute somebody or charge somebody. Well, you had inside information. Well, check with everybody on on the selection committee. Nobody knew us. Nobody knew anybody else. And this is all in transcripts, and it's all in the motions, and it's all in the judgment. But it's some weird shit that went on because we had a judge originally that our local counsel in Utah was friends with the judge. The judge recused herself in writing, a written order, because there's a conflict because her good friend is one of our lawyers.

• 1:06:44Speaker 04

  Well, that lawyer unbeknownst to us, we didn't know that why she recused herself because she didn't say why, just recused herself in an order. Okay. The judge, the local counsel tells us, well, we've got a, we're busy. And this case looks like it's going to take a lot of time. Can you get a other local counsel? Didn't know any better. Said, yeah, sure. We got other local counsel. The judge takes the case back from another judge.

• 1:07:12Jack Murphy?

  Really?

• 1:07:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:15Speaker 04

  Isn't there something in the law that says the judge can't have a sense of bias? Yeah.

• 1:07:21Jack Murphy?

  It's kind of weird.

• 1:07:22Speaker 04

  Yeah. I've talked to guys that were involved with the prosecution of Saddam Hussein, U.S. attorneys and some of them have been, you know, career prosecutors for 25, 30 years that they've never seen that, unheard of. So, no, it's not unheard of. It happened.

• 1:07:39Jack Murphy?

  And so they were accusing you of essentially bid rigging. I mean, it's kind of what it comes

• 1:07:42Speaker 04

  Having, the accusation was violation of procurement integrity act, which I never heard of before in my life. But anyway, that charge was dismissed. So, and then they charged you with money laundering and a host of other. Money laundering is because you submitted an invoice to Department of Defense and you got paid pursuant to the contract. But they're saying since you had inside information, the contract's no good. So, we consider that money laundering. It's all a crock of shit. Anyway, the bottom line is the violation of procurement integrity act gets thrown out. Prosecutor's got a real problem now because we had a suppression hearing to catch the agents under oath lying

• 1:08:24Speaker 04

  and confirming they violated the search warrant. You got a search warrant for the year 2007. Did you look at anything else? Absolutely not. You're under oath. You're under oath, Mr. Special Agent from the IG's office, the OD IG's office. You're under oath. Nope, we don't look at anything. Oh, here you go. You know, it's like when they got F. Lee Bill, he got Furman. You sure you never use the N-word? You sure? Yeah, I'm sure. Oops.

• 1:08:53Jack Murphy?

  Here's the tape.

• 1:08:54Speaker 04

  Well, here's the document. This is you, Mr. Special Agent from Inspector General's office. You lied. You said that you didn't go outside the warrant. Here it is, outside the warrant. Anyways, the Reader's Digest version of this, they said, okay, look, we're going to give you $2 million back. Plead guilty to any charge you want. And we'll call it a day.

• 1:09:14Jack Murphy?

  It's so weird that like.

• 1:09:15Speaker 04

  This is after they freeze your money also.

• 1:09:17Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:09:18Speaker 04

  So you, you can't fight.

• 1:09:19Speaker 05

  That, how long has, ha- how long have, has your, has your personal, and this isn't, we're not talking about your business money, right?

• 1:09:26Speaker 04

  No, this is business money.

• 1:09:27Speaker 05

  Okay. How long has that money been frozen? Well, you know?

• 1:09:31Speaker 04

  Oh, they, they freeze it before they charge you with a crime.

• 1:09:33Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:09:34Speaker 04

  So that was probably frozen about 24 months, 20, 24 months.

• 1:09:38Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:09:39Speaker 04

  Your funds are frozen.

• 1:09:40Jack Murphy?

  And in the meantime, they're.

• 1:09:41Speaker 05

  So you're not innocent until proven guilty then?

• 1:09:44Speaker 04

  No, absolutely not.

• 1:09:45Jack Murphy?

  Well, you're, the way they get around that is your money is not, um, but nonetheless, I mean, they, they threw you in the slammer because they considered you a flight risk. So how long are you cooling your heels in prison?

• 1:09:55Speaker 04

  14 months. Yeah. They considered me a flight risk because, huh, listen to this, because I speak Arabic. They didn't say anything about Norwegian. I guess you speak Norwegian, you're not a flight risk. So anyway, because I speak Arabic and two, they said I bribed Taliban officials.

• 1:10:13Speaker 04

  And their silence and crickets. How do you bribe a Taliban official? Because what's his name? Ross? I think it's Brian Ross, ABC investigative reporter, wrote an article saying that unnamed sources said, American International Security Corp, which is my company, paid a few hundred dollars to bribe garbs to look the other way. So the New York Times reporter could escape.

• 1:10:42Speaker 04

  So based on that.

• 1:10:44Jack Murphy?

  You're a flight risk.

• 1:10:44Speaker 04

  Judge says you're a flight risk because you're a danger to the community because you bribe foreign officials.

• 1:10:50Jack Murphy?

  I don't know if a Taliban.

• 1:10:51Speaker 04

  This isn't writing. This, we're at war with the Taliban.

• 1:10:54Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:10:55Speaker 04

  This is the judge's decision in writing.

• 1:10:57Speaker 05

  And, and, and so basically you paid your company at, at, you know?

• 1:11:04Speaker 05

  Paid guards to look the other way while the journalist escaped and that's paying, that's paying foreign officials.

• 1:11:11Speaker 04

  So that's the reason to keep you detained.

• 1:11:14Speaker 05

  It's all bullshit.

• 1:11:15Speaker 04

  Yeah. Because if they don't have a strong case, it's a white collar case. You get out on bail.

• 1:11:20Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:11:20Speaker 04

  Personal recognizance. It's a white collar case. No violence here, no drugs, no guns, none of that stuff. What's the problem? The problem is they got a weak case, so they gotta put as much pressure as possible.

• 1:11:30Speaker 05

  But where?

• 1:11:31Speaker 04

  And here, here's the big kicker now. This is a real kick in the gut. They said plead guilty, any charge you want. Okay, I'm gonna plead guilty to the violation of procurement integrity act. You know why? Cause it was dismissed. So give me my $2 million back and I'll plead guilty to that. So that's what the deal was.

• 1:11:52Speaker 05

  What?

• 1:11:56Speaker 05

  Do you know where they developed this chart on? Like, did, did, did some other company try to sink you?

• 1:12:01Speaker 04

  What I think is that investigators start going down the path.

• 1:12:05Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:12:06Speaker 04

  And they don't stop.

• 1:12:07Speaker 05

  They put so much work into it. They don't wanna go to the boss.

• 1:12:09Speaker 04

  Time and money into it that they're not gonna stop.

• 1:12:12Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:12:12Speaker 04

  And you know what? What do they care?

• 1:12:15Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:12:15Speaker 04

  What do they care? We caught you. We got the transcripts now. He's all transcribed. You lied under oath.

• 1:12:21Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:12:36Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:12:47Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you, you're not alone.

• 1:12:52Speaker 08

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:12:58Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 1:13:18Speaker 09

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.comPARENTS to learn more.

• 1:13:45Speaker 10

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:14:15Speaker 04

  Both. They got promotions afterwards.

• 1:14:17Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:14:18Speaker 04

  Because there were guilty verdicts. That's justice in America.

• 1:14:22Jack Murphy?

  Right. Did that, I gotta ask, I mean, did that feel like a big kick in the balls? Not just because of that, but because you had done a lot of work with federal law enforcement? You'd try to work with these guys over the years. And then the way they kind of came at you like this, I mean, did that kind of embitter you, I guess?

• 1:14:38Speaker 04

  Absolutely. Of course it did.

• 1:14:39Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:40Speaker 04

  Absolutely. You know, when they said, "We're investigating this," and when I first heard about it, I blew it off. I laughed. I said, "Well, they're good investigators. They'll figure it out. I'm not worried. I'm not worried at all." And I said that based on my experience with investigators and prosecutors.

• 1:14:54Jack Murphy?

  Right. Right. Nothing's gonna come of this.

• 1:14:56Speaker 04

  Yeah. I wasn't worried at all. They'll figure it out. These guys are smart. No.

• 1:15:02Speaker 05

  What I don't understand, though, is because the government, the government went after a number of, especially smaller, like the government didn't go after Halliburton, obviously, right? They don't go, they don't go after, right?

• 1:15:12Speaker 04

  Of course not.

• 1:15:13Speaker 05

  They go after these smaller companies. I have a friend whose company they went after. But it was a civil case, I think, you know? I mean, I don't, maybe it was criminal, but, but why did they go after you as an individual instead of just like your, like you as?

• 1:15:29Speaker 04

  As a company?

• 1:15:30Speaker 05

  As a company.

• 1:15:30Speaker 04

  They did.

• 1:15:31Speaker 05

  For civil.

• 1:15:32Speaker 04

  They went after the company also.

• 1:15:34Speaker 05

  But how do you get?

• 1:15:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, I I just, you know, when you look, I think

• 1:15:40Jack Murphy?

  I'm getting angry for you right now.

• 1:15:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think I think in my opinion, grand juries were created way back when for prosecutors who were ethically right and honest and presented true evidence. And now they say, you know, you can indict a ham sandwich. Why is that? Is it because the prosecutors aren't being ethically honest? Not telling them to scoop? It's pretty, pretty simple to convince, you know, a group of people who don't necessarily want to be sitting in that jury room that to go ahead and you give me a yes vote to indict somebody.

• 1:16:16Jack Murphy?

  Or know all the intricacies, very complicated intricacies of security contract.

• 1:16:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, and there's not a lot of prosecutors that know government contracting because these prosecutors didn't know government contracting.

• 1:16:27Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:16:28Speaker 04

  And the the the special agent from the inspector general's office, he didn't know very well either. And it's pretty sad that when their own expert they go to says is the question by the Department of Defense inspector general agent was, were they making too much profit? Well, your own expert in writing says, no, it's a firm fixed price. That means the company's taking the risk.

• 1:16:54Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:16:54Speaker 04

  We took the risk.

• 1:16:55Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:16:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, not the government, we take the risk.

• 1:16:58Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:16:58Speaker 04

  Because if it goes over, we pay for it.

• 1:17:00Jack Murphy?

  Right, right.

• 1:17:00Speaker 04

  So, hello.

• 1:17:02Jack Murphy?

  So fourteen months overall? You get out? And is that when you start going into other entrepreneurial endeavors?

• 1:17:11Speaker 04

  No, actually, what happened was when I got out, I got contacted to help on another undercover operation in the Middle East.

• 1:17:19Jack Murphy?

  Even after all that, the government came back to you and wanted your help?

• 1:17:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:17:24Jack Murphy?

  Did you do it?

• 1:17:24Speaker 04

  I did.

• 1:17:25Jack Murphy?

  Yeah?

• 1:17:26Speaker 04

  I did.

• 1:17:26Jack Murphy?

  What was that?

• 1:17:27Speaker 04

  And it was successful. That was just some wingnuts ripping off Visa for like 700 million dollars. Just, you know, scamming stuff. And I knew this from before when I was doing investigative work and undercover stuff in Egypt. You know, after the fall of Gaddafi, there were a whole bunch of problems that arose out of that. Yeah. But yeah, after, after that, that case with the violation procurement integrity act. Come on, really? That's dismissed and you're gonna let somebody plead guilty to that?

• 1:18:01Jack Murphy?

  It doesn't make sense.

• 1:18:02Speaker 04

  So I had to go to my priest later and ask for forgiveness because I swore that I did that when I didn't. And I had to do that just as a business perspective to finish it and get out of jail.

• 1:18:12Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:12Speaker 04

  So that's justice in America, unfortunately.

• 1:18:18Speaker 04

  And how does a judge recuse herself? Her buddy is my lawyer. He gets off the case, says he's too busy. How convenient is that? Now, we didn't know the relationship. It goes to another judge and we start to, to process with the other judge. That lawyer says we're too busy, big law firm.

• 1:18:40Speaker 04

  Get a new lawyer, local counsel, and then she takes the case back, which is a violation of their own local rules.

• 1:18:48Jack Murphy?

  It's bizarre.

• 1:18:49Speaker 04

  Isn't there something, just stinks there?

• 1:18:51Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

• 1:18:55Speaker 04

  And, oh, by the way, her husband was general counsel for that law firm.

• 1:19:01Jack Murphy?

  So after all of this, you, you go back, start doing some undercover work for the government again. Now, now we're, now we're into the Arab Spring, it sounds like, around that timeframe?

• 1:19:08Speaker 04

  Just after.

• 1:19:09Jack Murphy?

  Just after, yeah.

• 1:19:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, just after. I banged that out quick, but then I was working mainly on Vitamin One, the new drink that I've got.

• 1:19:18Jack Murphy?

  Right here. Why don't you tell folks about your company?

• 1:19:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's delicious. I'm just gonna say this right off the bat. And you can get it on Amazon. What happened was in Iraq, um, you know, they had the big, uh, the big, uh, pits out there, uh, the, the wooden pits, the like.

• 1:19:35Speaker 05

  Fire pits?

• 1:19:36Speaker 04

  No, not the fire pit, uh.

• 1:19:38Speaker 05

  Like the burn pits?

• 1:19:39Speaker 04

  No, not a burn pit, a bit like a big, uh, box.

• 1:19:42Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:19:42Speaker 04

  The big ass box.

• 1:19:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:19:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:19:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:19:44Speaker 04

  With fill with, uh, Gatorade.

• 1:19:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:46Speaker 04

  And we were all drinking Gatorade. We bring it back somewhere and put it in the refrigerator and drink Gatorade.

• 1:19:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:19:50Speaker 04

  And we're cramping up.

• 1:19:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:19:51Speaker 04

  You know, it's a hundred and twenty, a hundred and forty degrees Fahrenheit during the summer there.

• 1:19:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:19:55Speaker 04

  And, uh, we're cramping up and we couldn't figure out why. And one of the flight surgeons told us, uh, you guys are eating too much cake. I said, doc, look at the, the, these are abs. Does it look like we were eating cake? No, we figured out it was the sugar in the Gatorade.

• 1:20:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:20:09Speaker 04

  So that's where I got the idea to make vitamin one. So this has got the electrolytes in it. It's got the good vitamins and it's got no sugar. So we don't have that issue and it's clear, no artificial coloring and it actually tastes great, all natural flavors. So.

• 1:20:23Speaker 05

  It does taste great. And I'll tell you one of the things I love about this is it like, you know, you talk about Gatorade or Powerade or these other things like, when you're really hot, they're like thick, they're syrupy, like they're, they're like, they're not refreshing.

• 1:20:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:20:35Speaker 05

  You know, you, I mean, I used to cut mine, you know, with water because they're not refreshing. These, this is really light. Like, I don't know if you guys see, but it's like, like, like you said, it's clear, it's delicious, it's light and it has.

• 1:20:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's fantastic. It really is. So, yeah, I've been focused on that. Uh, we were shipping overseas to Qatar, Lebanon, UAE, um, pre pandemic, but then after the pandemic happened, you know, the pricing for shipping containers went through the roof. And to ship to the Gulf Coast countries, you gotta ship in a, in a refrigerated containers. So instead of a normal forty foot container, you gotta, it's gotta be refrigerated and that's usually double the price. So now you're talking somewhere between six and $10,000 to ship a container. So what we're gonna start doing in the near future with the company, probably in the next 60 days is start manufacturing over there. That way we don't have that cost.

• 1:21:28Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:21:28Speaker 04

  Yeah. Transportation.

• 1:21:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:21:30Speaker 04

  And for our viewers, I mean, where's the best place to go and purchase these if they're interested? Amazon. Yeah, it's on Amazon. It's a, it's a good rated drink on Amazon and we're not also up in New England. We're in the market basket supermarkets. So we're always looking for more, more distributors, but it's a, it's a tough, tough competition here because Coke and Pepsi and Dr. Pepper Snapple, they dominate everything. They dominate everything.

• 1:21:56Jack Murphy?

  So while you're, you know, involved in this entrepreneurial effort, you're starting your vitamin one company. Somewhere along this timeframe, you get contacted by Carlos Scone or his people. How, how did that come about for you?

• 1:22:13Speaker 04

  Oh, I never heard of him before.

• 1:22:17Jack Murphy?

  It's not what I read in the newspapers.

• 1:22:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, you can't believe everything you read. Well, it's funny. I got, you know, I, I was bitter from the judicial system that I went through because I was pissed off about it. You know, how many criminals, if you're really a criminal, offered to take a polygraph?

• 1:22:34Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:22:35Speaker 04

  And then they say, well, we, we can't, you know, use that in court. It's not admissible bullshit. Use it as an investigative tool.

• 1:22:41Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:22:42Speaker 04

  Come on, hook me up. I didn't do anything wrong. Hook me up. No, not doing it. Anyways.

• 1:22:48Speaker 04

  So I had a bad taste in my mouth about that. And then I get a call from a guy that's saying, hey, uh, uh, we need some help. Can you help us get somebody out of somewhere?

• 1:23:01Speaker 04

  Uh, okay. Yeah, sure. Uh, when you want it done? Tonight? Five o'clock? Yeah, no problem. That's literally, can you help us get somebody out of somewhere? I don't know. What are you talking about? So I found out that there were two couples that I know over, I don't know if it was in Amman, Jordan, or in Beirut, Lebanon, they were talking. And one of the wives said to the other three, if my husband was ever kidnapped, I'd call Mike Taylor because he'd get him back for me. That's how the person said, oh, I know him. I can call him. So that person called me and said, hey, we've got this problem. Anyways, I said, you gotta give me more information, you know?

• 1:23:43Speaker 04

  Next day, he gave me more information. He told me this guy Carlos Gossone is over in Japan. He got set up. He's being tortured. He's out right now, but he's being tortured. They held him for 22 days. Then they charged him with another crime, so they can hold him for another 22 days. And then after 44 days goes, they charge him with another crimes. Just to joke him, and they keep him in solitary confinement and, you know, he's got to sleep on the floor. He only gets two showers a week, so on and so forth. Okay. And then I met his wife, was a very nice lady. And of course, she was distraught over it. It's her husband's over there. And one of the things that really got under my skin about this is that the Japanese court told Carlos,

• 1:24:27Speaker 04

  "You're not even allowed to speak to your wife."

• 1:24:31Speaker 04

  "That's part of your bail condition."

• 1:24:32Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:24:33Speaker 04

  What do you mean, you can't speak to his wife?

• 1:24:36Speaker 05

  draconian.

• 1:24:37Speaker 04

  You can't talk to her on the phone? You can't see her? You can't speak to her? Wha- wha- what is this? That sounds like something Saddam Hussein would, you know, put as a bail condition. Or North Korea.

• 1:24:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, real quick, can you give us a brief background on Carlos Gossone? Was he just some guy who was tagging walls, spray painting?

• 1:24:57Speaker 04

  No, no, no, no, no. Good point. Carlos Gossone was the chairman of Nissan, Renault, and Mitsubishi all at the same time. And it's my understanding that part of this was set up because Renault, a French company, was taking over a large portion of Nissan, their shares. And from internally, this had been going on, this investigation that they had set up against Carlos and Greg Kelly, the American attorney for him, which ultimately resulted in a coup d'etat, if you will, where Carlos went into Tokyo and Greg Kelly came in, because they said it was an emergency meeting, they'll send a corporate jet for him.

• 1:25:39Speaker 04

  Greg Kelly said, "I really can't because I gotta have back surgery in a couple of days and Thanksgiving's coming up." They said, "Please, please, please, please." Sent the plane over. He did, you know, the honorable thing. He said, "Yes, there's work to be done. I'll do it." Jumped on a plane, went over there. They arrested them both. Threw them both in solitary confinement and...

• 1:25:58Speaker 04

  Uh, Greg Kelly, short end of it, they charged him with four, four different crimes. Uh, three and a half years later, his trial happened. And he was found guilty only one, three, not guilty. So I don't know if he was really guilty that one. Or maybe they're just trying to save face.

• 1:26:19Speaker 05

  What were they charging?

• 1:26:19Speaker 04

  Anyway, it took three and a half years. I don't know, just, I don't know what, what the crimes were like, uh, uh, you know, misuse of funds or some, something along those lines, you know, and, you know, violation of the confidence of the shareholders or, you know, misappropriation of money. Things like this, so, but anyways, you're gonna put people in solitary confinement, torture them

• 1:26:43Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:26:43Speaker 04

  for this? So that's what they did. They did it to him. So anyways, they asked me to help. I met with the wife several times. Um, wonderful lady. And ended up saying, okay, I'll do it. I'll, I'll get him out. Uh, remember at the time, I was still bitter and pissed off about my experience and I, I thought it was very unfair and today I think it's unfair and I'd sit with the judge and tell the judge that and tell those, those prosecutor knows it. Prosecutor called one of my attorneys afterwards and said, we're so sorry about this, so many mistakes. Bullshit. If you're sorry, you stand up and do the right thing, a bunch of cowards. Anyways, uh, I felt bad and I said, I'll, I'll do it. I'll get the guy out. And I did. I got him out. I planned it. The operation was absolutely perfect.

• 1:27:27Speaker 04

  Um, it was smooth without a glitch. And I pulled him out like I said I would do and he's free and clear in Lebanon, living a life.

• 1:27:37Speaker 05

  Can, can you? Can, can you share the details of how you got him out? Are, are you willing to do that?

• 1:27:44Speaker 04

  Sure, well, you know. He's so well known. Everywhere he goes, somebody knows him. He goes to have a dinner, somewhere, a lunch, everybody, hello, Mr. Goan, they call him Goan over there, Mr. Goan. Um, he's a guy that, uh, I think he was born in Lebanon, raised some in Brazil.

• 1:28:06Speaker 04

  And he's got the French citizenship also, so he's a Lebanese citizen, Brazilian citizen and French citizenship.

• 1:28:14Speaker 04

  So I couldn't just walk him on an airplane and get him out because he's so well known. So I came up with a plan where I gotta hide him. So I thought about a mask, mask is not gonna work. Uh, I said, okay, I, I got the idea, I'll, I'll rent a Lisa aircraft, I'll fly over there. Take a music box, you know, that they use for stagehands, stage boxes. I'll build one of those, gotta make sure it's custom built, so it fits in the cargo of the airplane. And I make sure I check which airplane I'm getting, so I know the cargo size to fit it in properly. I had it, so it was only, uh, about one centimeter. The box one centimeter short enough to fit in, so it fit in perfect.

• 1:28:57Speaker 04

  And then I'll, I'll go over and he's in Tokyo. I'll land in Osaka because I did the vulnerability assessment on the airports. There's no security on the way out in Japan, only on the way in. No security and I made the box big enough anyway, where it wouldn't foot fit through the X-ray machines, their X-ray machines, because the box was too big. And I left it open, no locks on it. You put locks on it, what do people think? There must be some important shit in there. Don't put a lock on it. So I landed in Osaka, I took the boxes to my hotel. Checked in, put the boxes there. The Japanese cargo people from the, uh, uh, private airport is the ones that moved it for me.

• 1:29:42Speaker 04

  And I jumped on a bullet train, went to Tokyo, uh, linked up with Carlos, let's go. US Special Forces here to rescue you, let's go home. Um, put him on a train, went back, go hit a mask, glasses and a hat. And everybody over in Japan wears the mask. This is before COVID hit. And, um, but they still wore masks and took the three hour train ride back. No, was he on house arrest at the time, or? No, no, no. He was just on bail. Okay. So he could travel anywhere within the country for, I think it was like forty-eight or seventy-two hours with it out telling the prosecutors, as long as he stayed within the jurisdiction of Japan. So he could travel around us. So being on the train is not a big deal. So what? He's on a train.

• 1:30:25Speaker 04

  So he went down to Osaka on the bullet train. Bullet trains are great, by the way. They're smooth and they're fast. A little bit crowded, and the food they sell on it, it's horrible.

• 1:30:35Speaker 04

  Went into my hotel, where he still had his camouflage on. Said, okay, we're gonna leave at twenty-two hundred. That's ten o'clock for non-military people.

• 1:30:49Speaker 04

  And I said, okay, we're gonna wait a little bit. The people from the airport showed up in the vans at ten P M. So we're gonna wait so we can be a little bit late. Now, I had gone over to the airport about an hour before at nine o'clock to tell the lady, the manager, we gotta make sure that we leave on time. I can't be late. Cause I got an important meeting in Istanbul. I was looking for surveillance, or any extra law enforcement or anything going on. That's what I was, I was doing a recon.

• 1:31:23Speaker 04

  And then I went back to the hotel, saw him. The people were there. I said, let them wait. We gotta be late. So, we're late. Japanese are very, very punctual. Everything's S O P. They don't think outside the box. If it's not in the S O P, we're in deep shit. That's how they are. They're just like robots. And of course, in the S of mentality, it's just the opposite. So, we're gonna be intentionally late. I tell them, we're gonna be like twelve minutes late. So they're downstairs, you know, going through a panic. And I said, okay, now we can go. Get in the box. Throw a bed sheet on him. Shut the box, roll them downstairs. Bottle of water, some food? No, no, no. I had drilled holes in there. He don't need food. He's not gonna be there very long.

• 1:32:07Speaker 04

  I don't need any food. So, and then he might be drinking, then he's gonna piss. Then we got a problem. Right. So I had drilled holes in the bottom so he could breathe, so there's plenty of oxygen. So then, rolled them downstairs, put them in the elevator, down, went to the lobby. Come, Japanese people took the case. They couldn't lift it and put it in the back of the van.

• 1:32:29Speaker 04

  So I'm the VIP. I'm the guy with the private jet. I'm not supposed to be doing this stuff. I'm supposed to be, you know, somebody special. So I got like eight Japanese guys on one side. I'm on the other side. We lift the box up because Carlos is in it. So we lift the box up. They couldn't get in a van. So we finally get in a van, shut the door, jump in the two vans and we go back to the airport. Great. Everything's there. The same immigration guy that was there in the morning, we ride at 10:00 in the morning, 9:30, 10:00, was there. Same policeman with a nasty little old revolver. Looked like it came out of World War II, still there. And that was it. And, you know, I threw my rucksack on the x-ray machine, say, let's go.

• 1:33:11Speaker 04

  And say, no, no, no, no, no. You guys are in a hurry. Besides, no screening, no security check on the outside. When you guys are leaving, no security check. So, okay, great. Let's go. Push the, uh, the big box with Carlos in it and I had another smaller box. Push the two boxes through from in the van on the airplane. The jet was a global express. They put the conveyor belt for the luggage up to it. It's about a three foot gap here. They didn't know how to drive the conveyor belt very well. So there's a guy, a little Japanese kid that goes in the cargo. He's trying to lift the box. He's got a better chance at a lunch with God lifting that box.

• 1:33:48Speaker 04

  Hey, uh, you know, Hop Singh, come here. Go, go, go over there. Get out of here. Get out. So I lift the box up and I got like eight Japanese pushing the other side. So we had to get over that three foot gap. We got it in, no problem. Sit in, uh, I had the pilot, hey, come shut this door. Make sure it's sealed properly. So the pilot shut the door. We're good to go. Okay. I knock on the box. That was our code that everything's okay. And plus he can hear what's going on and I'm talking loud enough so he can hear he's inside the box. So button up. Now it's probably about, I had asked the pilots also earlier, can we leave at 22:30? We're supposed to leave at 2300. So can we leave at 20, 22:30?

• 1:34:29Speaker 04

  They said, okay, no problem. So we're buttoned up by 20 minutes past 10:00 PM. And I said, we leaving in five minutes? They said, no, Tower won't allow us because we filed the flight plan to leave at 11. They will make us wait till 11. Oh, bastards. So we couldn't even turn the engines on. So it was about a quarter to 11. We're allowed to turn the engines on.

• 1:34:53Jack Murphy?

  Meanwhile, were you was is Carlos still down in the hold?

• 1:34:56Speaker 04

  No, no, no. He will. Okay, you got it. Look, look, he's in it. He's in a cargo, but the cargo is here. Then the bathroom's here and then the cabin's here. It's all on the same deck.

• 1:35:05Jack Murphy?

  Oh, it's not like a belly or something.

• 1:35:07Speaker 04

  No, it's all on the same deck.

• 1:35:08Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:08Speaker 04

  But what happened was, once we sealed the door, we got everybody off the airplane and shut that door. I lifted the box Carlos was in. I said, sit tight until we take off.

• 1:35:18Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:35:19Speaker 04

  Everything's good. We're golden. Don't worry. And I put a towel in there, a bathroom towel, just to keep the lid open a little bit more. Because it was it was tight back there in the cargo area. So I did that and then we got wheels up right at 11. They let us right at 2300. We were wheels up. See you later. Okay. And I went back through the bathroom, just a little bathroom and to open it up. Carlos had gotten himself out of the box and was sitting on top of it. I said, okay, great. We're good to go, buddy. Well done. So it was probably about, I said, just sit here. Give me a few minutes till we get stable at like 30,000 feet. Wait a few minutes. So we got up to 34,000 feet cruising speed and I had to tell them, look, you know,

• 1:36:03Speaker 04

  don't go over, don't go over Europe. Go over Russia, over China and Russia. Because if we have the emergency, we got to go down. I'd rather go down in Russia or China because they don't like Japan. So we should be okay there. So anyways, that's the flight path we took. And then once we got stable at cruising altitude at 34,000, I went back and said, come on out. He came out and, you know, sat and we were talking and done deal. Get to Istanbul, Turkey, bright and early, like O dark 30, maybe zero four ish. I had another aircraft there waiting for him, a smaller private jet. I put him in it and transferred him. He went with, you know, one other guy, a local Turk and off to Lebanon he went.

• 1:36:45Speaker 04

  And I went over to the commercial airport, took about a 40 minute ride to the commercial airport. I got my visa at the private airport, went over to the commercial airport, jumped on a commercial flight, went into Beirut. Mission was a success.

• 1:37:01Jack Murphy?

  And so Carlos pops up in Beirut, like how long after the rescue? Like because I mean, this became like a huge international news story like pretty quickly.

• 1:37:10Speaker 04

  I'll say, I pulled him out on December 29th, 2019.

• 1:37:18Speaker 04

  And

• 1:37:22Speaker 04

  December 30th. He was in Beirut. He arrived maybe like seven in the morning.

• 1:37:35Speaker 04

  And media probably knew by an hour later, maybe eight in the morning that he was there. It's Beirut. Everybody knows everybody.

• 1:37:43Jack Murphy?

  Were you hoping to keep it quieter a little while longer before this?

• 1:37:47Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, at least until I got back into Beirut. Yeah, at least a few more hours. But look, I knew, you know, the world's gonna sit up and take notice. This guy's back in Lebanon. That part's okay. It's, you know, he's not gonna hide himself.

• 1:38:01Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:38:02Speaker 04

  But.

• 1:38:02Speaker 05

  And Lebanon, he felt like Lebanon's not extradition to Japan, like he felt safe there.

• 1:38:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. And they don't extradite their citizens, unlike the United States.

• 1:38:11Jack Murphy?

  So there is, there is one other like wrinkle in all of this that I have to bring up because it comes up later is your son's alleged involvement.

• 1:38:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:38:20Jack Murphy?

  And all of it. What, what was, was he there in Japan with you? Like, what was his?

• 1:38:26Speaker 04

  Let me tell you what he did in his involvement.

• 1:38:28Jack Murphy?

  Sure.

• 1:38:29Speaker 04

  He was doing search engine optimization for Carlos. So all the media was coming out. He was boosting the good articles to push down the bad articles. That's what his focus was there. The mistake that was made was he had Carlos, he'd go visit Carlos several times in Japan and met with him in his lawyer's office and so forth. He had his hotel room. When Carlos came the day, December 29th.

• 1:39:03Speaker 04

  Peter came to meet me to show me where his hotel room was in the lobby. And Carlos had changed clothes in his room. Peter didn't know it. So because of that, they charged Peter with a crime for assisting in bail jumping.

• 1:39:21Jack Murphy?

  So you get back.

• 1:39:22Speaker 04

  But Peter actually left the country.

• 1:39:24Jack Murphy?

  Before.

• 1:39:24Speaker 04

  He didn't know we were leaving that day. He didn't even know I was coming to Japan that day until I called him when I was in Japan. Basic opsec.

• 1:39:33Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:39:34Jack Murphy?

  Why did, why did you bring him over there though? Like he could have done SEO stuff from back home, right?

• 1:39:38Speaker 04

  He, the timing had nothing to do with each other. We didn't know.

• 1:39:42Speaker 05

  He was going over there on his own.

• 1:39:43Speaker 04

  He was going over there on his own anyway. We didn't know we could get the airplane until that day.

• 1:39:47Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:39:47Speaker 04

  December 29th, when, uh, December 28th, when I knew I could get the aircraft in six hours, the next morning.

• 1:39:54Speaker 05

  And in Japan, if you get charged with a crime, you're pretty much going to be.

• 1:40:00Speaker 04

  Well, the Japanese judicial system has a 99.4% conviction rate. That's higher than North Korea.

• 1:40:06Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:40:07Speaker 04

  That's higher than Russia. That's higher than Iran. 99.4%.

• 1:40:15Jack Murphy?

  And, uh, we'll get, we'll get into that. We'll touch on that again in a moment. But so you get to Beirut? And then are you heading back home from there?

• 1:40:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was gonna head back home, but the news broke and somehow or another, uh, my name leaked. And I had news reporters all over me. So I was doing E and E for a little bit.

• 1:40:41Speaker 05

  Do you, did you ever find out why your name leaked or how you were associated with it?

• 1:40:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, we, we think, we know why. Yeah, I'm pretty sure.

• 1:40:49Jack Murphy?

  Was it somebody who was trying to fuck you?

• 1:40:51Speaker 04

  No, I don't think it was, it wasn't intentional.

• 1:40:53Jack Murphy?

  Oh, I see.

• 1:40:54Speaker 04

  No. No, it wasn't intentional.

• 1:40:57Speaker 05

  But it, but it wasn't, it wasn't like, like Japanese, the Japanese law enforcement didn't put it all together.

• 1:41:06Speaker 04

  Oh, no, no, no. This was laid out for them on a silver platter by the media.

• 1:41:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:41:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:41:11Jack Murphy?

  And, and I mean, I think that's why, at least part of why they came down so hard on you is because you just embarrassed the Japanese police, made them look like a bunch of chumps. The way you got him out of there so easily. I think that's a part of it.

• 1:41:24Speaker 04

  Is what it is.

• 1:41:25Jack Murphy?

  And it's it's a face saving, you know, uh, uh, sort of culture, so.

• 1:41:30Speaker 04

  Is what it is.

• 1:41:31Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:41:32Speaker 04

  If they didn't torture people, I wouldn't have done it.

• 1:41:34Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:41:34Speaker 04

  So, you know, look, let's, I was there, I, you know, my sentence, you, I couldn't have a trial. Cause to go, I was extradited, I was, you know, I was betrayed by my country, Trump and Pompeo. Both of them, in my opinion, are bags of shit.

• 1:41:48Jack Murphy?

  Hmm.

• 1:41:48Speaker 04

  So, and I got no problem saying that to their face either.

• 1:41:51Jack Murphy?

  So, let's, let's get to that. You get back home, you're trying to like lay low, avoid the media. They, they're keep pounding on your door. Um, what, what kind of hap- what happens at that?

• 1:42:00Speaker 04

  Media went away eventually because Carlos had a, a, a big press conference over there. Media from all over the world was there and he was dealing with the media. So, all the media attention was on him now. And I was clear, nothing going on, but too late. Japan, uh, January twenty eighth, I believe it was, the Japanese issued an arrest warrant for me and Peter. And the next thing was they're gonna issue a red notice. So, I had lawyers come over. Now, I had lawyers before this tell me it's not a crime, what you're doing. If you're gonna go rescue, it's not a crime. Because what a lot of people don't know, bail jumping in Japan is not a crime. You can jump bail in Japan, it's not a crime. So, if you're helping somebody jump bail, how can that be a crime?

• 1:42:44Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:42:46Speaker 04

  Okay. All the legal scholars, legal scholars in Japan, not all, many legal scholars, even professors. An American professor named Clancy, over there says, still to this day, it's not a crime. It was not a crime, was never prosecuted. The law they prosecuted us under says, it's Article one oh three of the Japanese penal code, that you cannot help somebody escape custody. Custody means from jail, from the back of a police car, handcuffs, something like that, prison.

• 1:43:18Jack Murphy?

  Hmm.

• 1:43:19Speaker 04

  So, that's custody. He's not on bail.

• 1:43:21Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:43:22Speaker 04

  Custody. So, if bail jumping is not a crime, how's assisting somebody in it a crime? I'll tell you how, because they spent a hundred and thirty, they, the Japanese, spent a hundred and thirty-eight million dollars a year on lobbyists inside the Beltway. That's how it becomes a crime.

• 1:43:36Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:43:37Speaker 04

  So.

• 1:43:38Speaker 05

  So they put this, uh, arrest warrant out for you?

• 1:43:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, then, then, and the lawyers came and tell me, it's, look, we gotta be careful. They did an arrest warrant, might be a red notice next, so probably best to stay here.

• 1:43:51Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:43:52Speaker 04

  In Lebanon. I said, I'm not staying here. If we're, if we're gonna have a legal battle, I want it in my country, where maybe I can get a fair shake.

• 1:43:59Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:44:00Speaker 04

  And so, I came back to the US, and was waiting here for it. If we're gonna have a battle, let's do it here. Cause it, even all the lawyers that I had here in the US said, they'll never extradite you. Never, not gonna happen, not for this. Cause number one, it's really not a crime.

• 1:44:15Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:44:16Speaker 04

  And number two, you don't get extradited for little nittinoid things like this.

• 1:44:20Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:44:21Speaker 04

  You know? Like, the Taka Airbag thing, they had, you know, three Japanese citizens indicted in Michigan in December twenty sixteen, and there's a result of their indictment is, they're indicted because, to date, they've caused twenty-nine people to die. Twenty-nine deaths on their hands, and they weren't extradited. So, they're not gonna extradite me and my son for this, it's a nittinoid thing. They did. And that's because Trump and Pompeo allowed it.

• 1:44:48Speaker 05

  And you were, again, locked up in prison here.

• 1:44:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:44:53Speaker 05

  Locked up in jail here, awaiting extradition while that whole played through the American court system.

• 1:44:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, cause here, under the extradition treaty, they have to detain you. They must detain you, unless there's really special circumstances. So you're forced to be detained because of the extradition treaty. And Japan only has extradition treaty with two countries. Wonder why that is?

• 1:45:16Speaker 05

  South Korea and the United States.

• 1:45:17Speaker 04

  South Korea and the United States. Nobody else wants to do a extradition treaty with them, because they violated human rights, constantly. Every day, they're violating human rights by torturing people.

• 1:45:27Speaker 05

  And that's, but, I mean, that's one of the arguments about Guantanamo Bay, one of the reasons why we can't send people from Guantanamo Bay back to their countries, is because their countries violate human rights. So we keep them in Guantanamo Bay, so that they don't get their rights violated. But the US will send a US citizen to a country that's known for violating human's rights.

• 1:45:50Speaker 04

  That's right. And it's even on the State Department's website, that they have no heat. They put you in solitary confinement and these are, these are violations against the, the convention against torture.

• 1:46:02Jack Murphy?

  And I, I, I had to research this stuff when all this was going on and you were facing extradition and we were talking while you were in jail and, and I mean, this isn't just, I should point out, it's not just Mike Taylor's opinion, like Human Rights Watch and others have done reports on this and other foreign nationals who have been charged and put in Japanese prisons and subjected to what can only be described as draconian treatment, things that are not in line with anything as Americans, we would consider a justice system. You mentioned the conviction rate, the way they charge people over and over again. There, there's this presumption, a presumption of guilt in their system, right? That if they charge you with a crime that you must be guilty and you need to like pay

• 1:46:45Jack Murphy?

  penance for that and you need to, you, you need to plead to that because it's sort of, again, sort of a face saving culture, right?

• 1:46:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, and everything's punitive.

• 1:46:56Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:46:56Speaker 04

  There's no rehabilitation whatsoever. It's all punitive.

• 1:46:59Jack Murphy?

  And they will drag you out into interrogation at all hours of the night until you plead to something.

• 1:47:05Speaker 04

  Well, they did that to us. We had a 15 hour plane ride from Boston to Tokyo and then we spent another four hours, three to four hours in the airport being interrogated, lame interrogation, and then we go check into the Tokyo detention house. Prosecutors are waiting there to interrogate us again. This is all in one day. Oh, and mind you, you got no attorney client privilege either. Your attorneys are not allowed to be with you. And anytime you want to communicate with your attorneys, there's a guard in there sitting next to me with an interpreter, listening to everything and writing everything down.

• 1:47:41Speaker 05

  Do you, do you know why Trump and Pompeo decide, cause, cause is it, is it essentially the president, the president's decision? Like whose decision is it?

• 1:47:50Speaker 04

  On the extradition, how it works is Japan can file a request for an extradition. The State Department can flatly say no without any reason whatsoever, or they can say, let's see if they're legally. Allowed to be extradited. So they send it through Department of Justice. Department of Justice comes arrest you, puts you through court and decides if you're allowed to be by law, according to the extradition, if you're allowed to be extradited. Now, some of the points we argue, look, I had some great lawyers. I had Dan Marino, Tillman Finley, Abby Lowell. Abby Lowell represented Bill Clinton when he was being impeached. Abby Lowell, you know, represents Hunter Biden now, I think, but he also represented at

• 1:48:31Speaker 04

  the time Jared Kushner. So Abby Lowell, you know, one of the great lawyers in the world. Same with Dan Marino and these other guys. They're brilliant and they're hard workers. We also had Ty Cobb. Ty Cobb was the White House General Counsel under Trump that left, you know, advising us and helping. And Ty Cobb never even charged a penny for his time, by the way. These are guys are good guys, good Americans. They don't need this case. This is a peanut case, but they jumped in to help. Impressive. And then we, another great lawyer, Paul Kelly in Boston, you know, former AUSA, he's the one that prosecuted that undercover case I did. Oh, right. So when I think about prosecutors, I think of guys like him who are honest and ethical and they don't bullshit and they don't lie and they're fair. They're fair.

• 1:49:16Speaker 04

  They got a lot of power. The power federal prosecutors have is awesome. And you want guys like him using it because they don't abuse it. Right. So anyways, these guys all jumped in and they're all saying, no, there's no way you're going to be extradited. Not going to happen. It's a, it's a penalty case. It's foolish. But, you know, but the State Department, you know, finally gave, the judge asked for a sworn affidavit saying they're not going to be tortured. And the State Department Deputy Secretary of State wrote the sworn affidavit and gave it to the judge that we're not going to be tortured, which is a ball face lie. Because on the State Department's website, they talk about there's no heat in there in the winter. There's no air conditioning

• 1:49:59Speaker 04

  or ventilation during the summer. You're subjected to, you know, months of solitary confinement. Now, solitary confinement over in Japan is not like the United States. The United States, you get one hour out a day. Japan, you get no hours out a day. You get no time out. I went six and a half months and only two showers. Only allowed to have two showers. I spent seventeen out of twenty months in Japan in solitary confinement. And you sleep on the floor. Everything's on the floor, the lights on twenty-four seven, and you got a CCTV camera in there. So that solitary confinement there, you only know what time it is, and there's mold all over the place. Mold all over. You only know

• 1:50:41Speaker 04

  what time it is by based on the meals that you get, you know, during the day. You get about twelve hundred calories a day of meals, of rice and tofu. So make sure there's no rice and tofu around me here. So.

• 1:50:54Speaker 05

  How did the DOJ, like if the State Department referred it to the DOJ, how did the DOJ like, look at the case and say, well, he actually didn't break a law in Japan, so what are we sending for? How did they?

• 1:51:08Speaker 04

  They don't, they don't say that. They say that's for the Japanese to decide if you violated a law there. DOJ went after it hard. Prosecutor from Boston went after it hard. It was like the case of his lifetime. You know, you, you, you're trading Americans out. You get caught in the political stuff. Yeah, yeah, you're doing your job. Bullshit. Have some balls. Stand up and do your job, really. That doesn't exist very much in America nowadays. So, yeah, they say essentially, you know, we don't have a ruling on the, on the law. Even the judge says, you know, I can't tell the Japanese, uh, how I can't interpret their laws for them. They have to decide that. So they leave it up to the Japanese.

• 1:51:53Jack Murphy?

  I remember the judge saying herself that like, you would be put under deplorable conditions that we do not really consider to be in line with American justice.

• 1:52:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, but they still sent us.

• 1:52:03Jack Murphy?

  They did, yeah.

• 1:52:04Speaker 04

  Yeah. But who, who in America gets that treatment? It's clearly a violation. United Nations said it's a violation. It's a violation of human rights. Oh, there's a million violations there. Um, there's a, a Turkish lawyer, Katuslas, that is representing us within the United Nations. But come on, you get six, six and a half months, you get two showers? Two showers in six and a half months? Who does that? Refugees get better treatment than that. Send me to Guantanamo. I'd rather go to Guantanamo. Those guys get showers daily. They get pizza when their lawyers show up. They get soccer. They get recreation. I was out eight times in a year to see the sunlight. And those, most of those times, you're like in dog kennels.

• 1:52:48Speaker 04

  They put you in a dog kennel. And that's where you walk on a dirt floor. That's your outside time. So when I got back, my vitamin D.

• 1:52:57Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:53:11Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:53:22Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you are not alone.

• 1:53:28Speaker 08

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:53:33Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 1:53:53Speaker 09

  ChatGPT for teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.comPARENTS to learn more.

• 1:54:21Speaker 02

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:54:51Speaker 04

  Efficiency was so bad, I had to have a prescription for NB12 injections. Um, the food over there is horrible. Nobody speaks, uh, you know, English. It's very rare. You gotta have an interpreter to speak English. My father, my attorneys told me in September of last year, twenty, what is this, twenty twenty-two, in September, my Japanese lawyers came and said, uh, your father's dying of cancer. My father's a, a career soldier also. And they said, maybe days, weeks. I put a request in to call my dad. They said, no, absolutely not.

• 1:55:28Speaker 04

  Not allowed. It's not, you know, you're not allowed. We don't allow that. Said, okay. And the day that my lawyers told me your dad's dying, I got called into the deputy warden's office for an investigative questioning. He says, uh, you had a visit from your lawyers today. I said, yeah, yeah, I did. You don't know that? Would they sneak in here? Uh, anyways, he says, yeah, but you raised your voice and that's a violation of our rules. I said, I didn't raise my voice. I said, there's five people in that room. Two lawyers on the other side of the glass. I'm sitting here. Your guard's sitting here. The interpreter's sitting there. Four of the five people will tell you I didn't raise my voice. This is

• 1:56:13Speaker 04

  all through interpreter. He says, well, who are the five, four of the five people? I said, my two lawyers and me. They'll tell you I didn't raise my voice. And your guard will tell you I didn't raise my voice. He said, why you say the guard? I said, cause he's sound asleep. If I raised my voice, he would've woke up. If you doubt my word, pull the videotape. The only person doing this is trying to get a promotion is your interpreter. I thought he was calling me into his office, the deputy warden. Maybe you need a grief counseling or we're gonna let you call home or your father before he dies. But, oh, no, no. They wanted to try to get me in trouble.

• 1:56:51Speaker 04

  So that's the Japanese prisons and they suck. The people that run them suck.

• 1:56:57Speaker 04

  The politicians suck. They're horrible. Who would human go six and a half months with two showers?

• 1:57:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know, for such a sort of a what we consider a shame based culture, they should really be ashamed of of their politicians and how they conduct their law.

• 1:57:12Jack Murphy?

  There's a there's another. There's another story along these lines that I'm working on now about an American soldier. This guy is an active duty soldier who I think you're familiar with the case. Had hypoxia at altitude, driving around in the mountains.

• 1:57:26Speaker 04

  Fuji.

• 1:57:26Jack Murphy?

  And tragically accidentally, you know, killed two people.

• 1:57:31Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:57:31Jack Murphy?

  And yeah, another guy who got railroaded. There's a lot of different stuff that I won't get into here. But I mean, another guy who got railroaded by the system over there. I mean, it's terrible.

• 1:57:43Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. And you know what? They spend a lot of money. They spend $140 million a year ballpark inside the Beltway on lobbyists. So Japanese get what they want in America. They own a lot of politicians.

• 1:57:54Jack Murphy?

  What's what's I'd like to ask, you know, what's Mike Taylor's take on all this? I mean, I know you're personally invested, obviously, but why was the prosecutor in the United States so cock hard to extradite you? And then why were the Japanese also? It begs the question, too, why are they so adamant about extraditing you? Is it just because they've been shamed publicly? Is that what this is about?

• 1:58:17Speaker 04

  Everything that I've heard and learned and talked to, and I've talked to guys, the Japanese prisoners, some of them. And they all say the same thing. They say, you're our hero. You know, in China, I meet Chinese people, they say, you're our hero. Because the Chinese don't like the Japanese. And they said, you know, you embarrassed the Japanese government. We're proud of that. We're so happy for you. You know, the guys are saying, I wish I had a camera. I could take a picture with you. I said, guys, please just. You know, back off you a little bit, you know, too close for that stuff.

• 1:58:48Jack Murphy?

  Like some Yakuza guy who's missing fingers and.

• 1:58:50Speaker 04

  They are, they do, but the Yakuza guys were all nice guys.

• 1:58:53Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, I mean, you embarrass the Japanese government and then, but then the Japanese government went and embarrassed themselves by, by making this a deal by, by, and then our American government, you know, embarrassed itself.

• 1:59:07Speaker 04

  But like. Wait a minute, you get the Takata airbags, three Japanese.

• 1:59:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:59:11Speaker 04

  Ci- citizens that are wanted for the murder of 29 people.

• 1:59:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:59:15Speaker 04

  They don't get extradited?

• 1:59:16Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 1:59:17Jack Murphy?

  It's um, one of these things that extradition treaties, and this also exists, interestingly, back to the child kidnapping thing, is that when foreign children are kidnapped by a parent and brought here to the United States, we will enforce the laws and the international agreements we have and repatriate.

• 1:59:33Speaker 04

  In accordance with the Hague Convention.

• 1:59:35Jack Murphy?

  But when it happens, when one of our citizens, an American child, is kidnapped and brought overseas, we won't put pressure on, let's say, the French government or whatever, because we don't want to mess up international relations.

• 1:59:45Speaker 04

  Especially the Japanese government, it happens a lot.

• 1:59:47Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:48Speaker 04

  When a mother or a father will take the child and go back to Japan, the Japanese government protects them. They've even arrested the other, the father coming in, it was an Australian came in, he wanted to visit his.

• 1:59:58Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:59Speaker 04

  Children, they arrested him because he showed up to visit his child.

• 2:00:03Jack Murphy?

  I, you know, my, my position on this has always been, you know, i- if, if you committed a crime, then, okay, maybe Mike has to pay the price for that.

• 2:00:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, gotta pay up for it.

• 2:00:12Jack Murphy?

  I don't have a problem with that necessarily, but I do have a problem with the human rights violations. I'm not okay with, with what they did to you.

• 2:00:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, you know, i- it's, I still, it's amazing that people can't believe 17 months of solitary confinement. I forgot what my voice sounded like. You know, and you're only allowed to write four letters a month.

• 2:00:32Jack Murphy?

  Wow.

• 2:00:32Speaker 04

  And it's on small stationary. My highlight was when I got to write my son. After six months of solitary confinement, they allow you five letters. And I was allowed to write my son who was in a different prison. So we could communicate. That was like Christmas morning for me, whenever I got a, a letter from him.

• 2:00:51Speaker 05

  Did, did you ever, I mean, Jack asked us and I kind of derailed a bit. Did you find out why the prosecutor, why the Department of Justice had such a hard on for you?

• 2:01:00Speaker 04

  No, I think it was a young prosecutor, he was making a name for himself.

• 2:01:04Speaker 05

  Well, he's a shitbag, whoever he is, so that's his name. Figure it out and he's a shitbag.

• 2:01:10Speaker 04

  So he's a West Point graduate too, by the way.

• 2:01:14Speaker 05

  Shitbag, he should be shunned.

• 2:01:16Jack Murphy?

  On a, on a personal level, I mean, all that time.

• 2:01:19Speaker 04

  Pompeos, excuse me, Pompeos, a West Point grad too.

• 2:01:23Speaker 05

  They, I'm highly disappointed, like, it's disgusting.

• 2:01:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is.

• 2:01:29Jack Murphy?

  What was it like for you on a personal level going through that experience? Almost like two years in, in Japanese prison, right?

• 2:01:34Speaker 04

  Twenty months.

• 2:01:35Jack Murphy?

  Twenty months.

• 2:01:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:01:38Jack Murphy?

  What, what did you do with yourself? What's going through your head as you're having to have this experience?

• 2:01:42Speaker 04

  Well, look, some of it, you know, is really, uh, you know, if you're gonna commit a crime, you gotta be prepared to do the time. Okay. But when all these legal scholars say it's not a crime and you go ahead and do it, and you know bail jumping is not a crime. Okay, then you get a problem with the, you know, processing that. You gotta, you gotta, you got an issue, you got an issue with processing that you've been betrayed by your secretary of state and your president. Um, because they traded you off.

• 2:02:14Speaker 04

  And then you got a problem because they got a 99.4% conviction rate. If I want to go to trial in Japan, it's gonna take me three to three and a half years. So do I want to sit in solitary confinement or jail to enforce labor for three to three and a half years? Just to be able to have a trial?

• 2:02:32Speaker 04

  Where's the fairness?

• 2:02:33Jack Murphy?

  And then do your two years anyways.

• 2:02:35Speaker 04

  And then do your, yeah. So, now, mind you, my sentence was 24 months. My son's sentence was 20 months. We both did 30 months. Because the Japanese judge says, we don't care that you were in, in the prosecutor. Prosecutors over there make the rules and the Japanese judge.

• 2:02:54Jack Murphy?

  You're supposed to get time served.

• 2:02:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, you're supposed to get credit for time served. No, because the Japanese judge says, no, we don't care about the time you were in America fighting extradition. Prosecutor said, no, when we requested extradition, you should have come immediately. Oh, oh, what do you think? I'm your bitch or something? No, you guys got it wrong. It's not how it works. Not that, no, it's not how your extradition works. You know, but that's again, the power of a prosecutor.

• 2:03:21Jack Murphy?

  How is this, I mean, I understand that you only would know this in retrospect after the fact, but I mean, how did the Japanese press cover all of this?

• 2:03:30Speaker 04

  I don't know. I haven't seen much Japanese press, so I really couldn't say.

• 2:03:38Speaker 04

  You know, we didn't get good newspapers over there. They only have one newspaper that we were allowed to get in English. And it was always about how great Japan is, how many gold medals they won during the Olympics. We're sitting there soaking sweat, breathing in COVID, you know, about how great the Japanese leaders are and how great Shinzo Abe is.

• 2:04:01Speaker 05

  That's right. I forgot.

• 2:04:02Speaker 04

  That was all about the newspaper. That's what was in the newspaper.

• 2:04:05Speaker 05

  The plague happened while you were in prison. I forgot all about that.

• 2:04:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, we had COVID also. And then Shinzo Abe got shot by a Japanese kid.

• 2:04:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:04:12Speaker 04

  Yeah. Great security.

• 2:04:14Speaker 05

  Was there any effort at any point during the Trump or Biden administrations to get you back?

• 2:04:21Speaker 04

  No, no. We had a bunch of guys from the military, especially the SF community, reaching out to people and the Special Forces Caucus. And Carl De Urio, Rocco Procopio, a bunch of great guys, you know, teammates of mine pushing. But, you know, they go to some politicians like Mike Walsh in Florida. He didn't do anything for us.

• 2:04:43Speaker 04

  You know, and other congressmen would say, well, you know, he's not in my jurisdiction. I can't help him. He's not a constituent. It's amazing, though, when we're fighting a war.

• 2:04:53Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:04:53Speaker 04

  We're fighting for the whole country, not one district.

• 2:04:57Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:04:57Speaker 04

  Not one congressman. So next time, next time we go to war, we got to make sure we clarify that. Hey, hey, shit stain. We can't fight for you. We can only fight for the district we lived in.

• 2:05:09Speaker 05

  Right. What about, was, I mean, did Brazil or France or like Lebanon try to, try to intercede in your behalf?

• 2:05:22Speaker 04

  No, no. In fact, the French have actually brought charges against Carlos Guzman for something. I don't know, some, you know, white collar stuff.

• 2:05:32Jack Murphy?

  So don't embarrass the Japanese is what you're saying?

• 2:05:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. Look, the Japanese yield a lot of influence because they have a lot of power. It's the second largest economy on earth.

• 2:05:41Jack Murphy?

  Hmm.

• 2:05:41Speaker 04

  You know, they're, they're, the next in line is China.

• 2:05:44Jack Murphy?

  Hmm.

• 2:05:44Speaker 04

  First the US, Japan, then China. So they've got a lot of money.

• 2:05:48Jack Murphy?

  We have a pretty strong military and intelligence relationship with Japan as well, which plays into all that.

• 2:05:53Speaker 04

  Absolutely. And I heard they were in the, in the process of buying some Aegis radar land base. Then people that were gonna be near it in southern Japan didn't want it. So the Japanese backed out of that deal. And then Pompeo went over in October 2020 and got them to buy, you know, at a several billion dollar more. Put it on two ships. So now they have two Aegis destroyers.

• 2:06:18Jack Murphy?

  Good work if you can get it. Yeah.

• 2:06:19Speaker 04

  Yeah. And, and, and but how convenient. It was just after that, that, you know, we were told we were being extradited.

• 2:06:26Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:27Speaker 04

  So I'm, you know, I'm curious if we were part of that deal.

• 2:06:29Jack Murphy?

  So, oh, almost 20 months in prison, you guys get out.

• 2:06:35Speaker 04

  Seventeen of the 20 in solitary confinement.

• 2:06:38Jack Murphy?

  And you, you finally get released, come back home.

• 2:06:42Jack Murphy?

  How do you, how do you start putting things back together after that?

• 2:06:45Speaker 04

  It's gotta, just gotta do it. It's like, it's like being on a 40 mile rock. You've just gotta keep putting one foot in front of the other. You got blisters and your, your feet are hurting and your back is sore and just gotta keep doing it.

• 2:06:56Jack Murphy?

  I remember P, uh, I talked to Peter, I think, first when you guys got back and I remember him saying like, you lost a lot of weight and we're trying to get back into shape.

• 2:07:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, I dropped about 52 pounds there, but you're only getting a thousand or 1,200 calories a day.

• 2:07:08Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:07:09Speaker 04

  You know, 75% rice, 25% tofu.

• 2:07:12Jack Murphy?

  Body by Japanese prison, man.

• 2:07:13Speaker 04

  So when, when did you get back to the United States? Um, I got back, uh, October 28th.

• 2:07:22Speaker 04

  October 28th, my father died October 8th. I got released from prison and they already knew I was gonna be released because the federal magistrate came over and did the the hearing, the transfer hearing. So the Japanese knew I was gonna be released if Japanese Ministry of Justice approved the transfer to the US. So bearing in mind all that, they still wouldn't let me call my father was on his deathbed.

• 2:07:45Speaker 05

  What shitbags. I mean, honest, honestly, like.

• 2:07:48Jack Murphy?

  And and then you had to spend like, was there like a month in American prison on the way back?

• 2:07:52Speaker 04

  About three weeks. They fly us into LA. And the people that flew us in from the Bureau of Prisons, the the transporter, they were professional. They were phenomenal, very good. They said, look, you guys don't need to wear change. We're not chaining you up. We went with the Japanese. We had chains. They take your shoes. We had a dog leash on us.

• 2:08:10Jack Murphy?

  They had like six guys on you, right?

• 2:08:12Speaker 04

  Six? They had seventeen. Seventeen. We were in the 787. Seventeen, a couple prosecutors, interpreters. Oh, yeah. I I wasn't allowed to go to the shower without six guards. And you got a 15 minute shower. You come out of your room, you go to the shower and back. Yeah.

• 2:08:32Speaker 05

  Like they're they're treating you as though you were an international terrorist. They bombed their subways.

• 2:08:37Speaker 04

  That's why I said, look, I, you know, I was asking the consulate, could you send us a Gitmo?

• 2:08:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:08:42Speaker 04

  Send us a Gitmo.

• 2:08:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:08:43Speaker 04

  At least they got decent weather there.

• 2:08:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:08:46Speaker 04

  Here, we we freeze, we get frostbite in the mornings on our on our on our feet and our hands. Every day you get frostbite.

• 2:08:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:08:52Speaker 04

  No heat, none, Zippo. And you're not allowed to use a blanket to stay warm.

• 2:08:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:08:58Speaker 04

  And in the summer, you're soaking wet. There's no, no air sea, no ventilation. And your screen, you can't tell if it's daylight or dusk because there's so much mold on it.

• 2:09:10Speaker 05

  I I'm just, I'm so frustrated with. I obviously Japan is Japan, like they can fuck off and do whatever they want, you know, whatever. I'm so frustrated with the United States in this scenario. When we make this big, you know, to do about human rights around the world and human rights in this country, when really, when it comes down to political expedience. It it doesn't matter.

• 2:09:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, we beat our chests like we're the the beacon of human rights.

• 2:09:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:09:40Speaker 04

  It's all bullshit.

• 2:09:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:09:41Speaker 04

  You know, I laugh when I hear Blinken and.

• 2:09:43Speaker 05

  That's somewhere out there. There is a West Point graduate who's a prosecutor who didn't care about human rights. Good job on you.

• 2:09:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, and Pompeo too.

• 2:09:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:09:52Speaker 04

  At the end of the day, Pompeo could shut that down anytime he wants.

• 2:09:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:09:55Speaker 04

  Didn't do it. So I I do you guys stop being hypocrites about human rights.

• 2:10:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:10:00Speaker 04

  You're full of shit.

• 2:10:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:10:02Jack Murphy?

  So what has what has post-prison life been like for you? I mean, getting back to the United States, putting your life back together?

• 2:10:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, like I said, one step at a time. You drop that heavy rock and you just gotta keep pushing, you know, and I'm putting a lot of my time and effort into Vitamin One and.

• 2:10:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:10:18Speaker 04

  Want to increase the sales.

• 2:10:19Jack Murphy?

  No more rescue missions overseas?

• 2:10:21Speaker 04

  Not yet.

• 2:10:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, but let me ask you something.

• 2:10:25Jack Murphy?

  Sure.

• 2:10:26Speaker 04

  If if you had the experience I had and somebody came to you and said, uh, my child has been taken or something like that, you're gonna turn them down?

• 2:10:33Jack Murphy?

  If it's a kid, I'd have a hard time just saying.

• 2:10:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:10:37Speaker 05

  But then again, I mean, knowing what slimy bastards a lot of people in the United States, like Department of Justice and and government are like, it it's sort of like, i- i- it's a gamble, right? It's it's a crap shoot.

• 2:10:53Speaker 04

  Well, you gotta make sure that there's custody here.

• 2:10:55Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:10:55Speaker 04

  You gotta make sure that the.

• 2:10:56Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:10:57Speaker 04

  There's a warrant for that person's arrest.

• 2:10:59Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:10:59Speaker 04

  An unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

• 2:11:01Speaker 05

  And that you don't pay the guards to look the other way when you do it.

• 2:11:04Speaker 04

  That could be very detrimental also.

• 2:11:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:11:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, we know how that pans out.

• 2:11:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:11:08Speaker 04

  In federal court.

• 2:11:09Speaker 05

  So Vitamin One, honestly, everybody, check it out. If if you, I mean, it's it's great. It tastes great. Like, we've been drinking it. It's delicious.

• 2:11:18Jack Murphy?

  Our our mini fridge is stocked up now, thanks to.

• 2:11:21Speaker 05

  Dee, what are you saying? There's a link in the description. Um, and then what else are you working on? Obviously, a movie, I mean, this, your life is.

• 2:11:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, MGM's uh, gonna produce a movie.

• 2:11:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:11:33Speaker 04

  Uh, a premiere movie.

• 2:11:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:11:35Speaker 04

  Um, Sam Rockwell's in it, Javier Bardem. Um, Sam's gonna play me, Javier Bardem's gonna play, uh, Carlos. And um, they're working on that, and that's in the going. And they're talking about a a TV series also. On the TV series, I believe it's on My Life. Uh, yeah, you know, different things I've did, I coached football in military and and rescuing people and that kind of stuff. So

• 2:12:01Speaker 05

  That's fantastic.

• 2:12:02Speaker 04

  They're gonna do that. And then, um, um, what else is there? You know, and then there's some other magazines coming up. Oh, there's also a book coming out. Um, we're shopping the book. So

• 2:12:16Speaker 05

  You wrote a book?

• 2:12:17Speaker 04

  No, it's not written yet, but we've, the proposal's done.

• 2:12:20Speaker 05

  Gotcha.

• 2:12:20Speaker 04

  But it's being done. The proposal's actually done. It might be done today, actually. But, and they're gonna shop that to some of the publishers. So we're gonna see how that goes.

• 2:12:28Speaker 05

  We'll let it know when, when that comes out and we'll, we'll happily plug it for you.

• 2:12:32Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 2:12:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. I know. I'd love to have you back.

• 2:12:34Speaker 04

  And MGM's doing the premiere movie too. So that'll be interesting. That'll be good.

• 2:12:38Speaker 05

  I just want to tell you, I'm so, like, I'm so heated right now. I'm so mad. I'm so angry. Like, I, I, uh, I, for you to, like, for you to kind of like get your life back and to move past this, like, I, I, if it had happened to me, I, I feel like I'd just be in this descent. So I, I admire, you know, not, you know, your whole career, but your ability to move past this. Cause right now I'm just like on fire thinking about how, like I said, fuck the Japanese and whatever they did, but, but how our own government treated you.

• 2:13:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, they betrayed us and they knew.

• 2:13:13Speaker 05

  In both cases.

• 2:13:14Speaker 04

  They knew. They knew you were gonna be tortured.

• 2:13:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:13:17Speaker 04

  And they turned a blind eye. And that's okay. You know, you're gonna have somebody tortured. You're gonna send them? Stop being a hypocrite, though. Stop talking about human rights. I don't want any bullshit about, you know, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Khashoggi. Knock it off. It's one guy.

• 2:13:31Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:13:31Speaker 04

  Knock it off. Come on. Stop talking about the Russians.

• 2:13:34Speaker 05

  We didn't really give a shit about that either.

• 2:13:36Speaker 04

  Well, that's true. But still, why are we talking about that?

• 2:13:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:13:39Speaker 04

  You know, uh, you got a drone strike that goes bad. How many innocent people die?

• 2:13:44Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:13:45Speaker 04

  You know, you, you're sending literally, and the fact of the matter is, it was under the Biden administration. Trump made the deal and approved it with Pompeo to send us. But the judge, the judge waited before making the final decision until the Biden administration took office.

• 2:14:00Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:14:01Speaker 04

  Once he was sworn in, then we started probing the judge a little bit, getting her to make a decision. Because we knew Biden wasn't gonna do anything. Biden had the chance to shut this down. He didn't either. Biden and Blinken. So again, chill out, guys, with bullshit on human rights.

• 2:14:16Speaker 05

  So both administrations are really just like full of shit.

• 2:14:18Speaker 04

  Again, the Japanese pay for American politicians.

• 2:14:21Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:14:24Speaker 04

  So do we have any questions for, uh, for Mike?

• 2:14:26Speaker 05

  Uh, I'm not, uh, let me look it up. Uh, do you do we have anything on Patreon?

• 2:14:30Speaker 11

  No.

• 2:14:31Speaker 05

  Okay, um.

• 2:14:35Speaker 05

  Let me get there.

• 2:14:38Speaker 05

  Uh, so vitamin one, make sure you, uh, get some hydrate, guys. Hydrate.

• 2:14:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's clean, it's clean hydration. Even diabetics can drink it because there's no sugar in it.

• 2:14:52Speaker 05

  Uh, let's see here.

• 2:14:56Speaker 05

  Uh, JC, thank you very much for the donation and we, I guess we have stickers now because people are like giving us stickers instead of comments. RS, thank you very much. Uh, thank you for having Mike on. Good to see he's doing well. Yes. Uh, Eric, thank you for both the donations. Uh, keep it up, guys. Enjoying the content. Cat Chaser Brock, thanks for the stickers. Um, Ian Hudson, uh, thanks. Fantastic episode. Ninja as hell escape story. For sure. Uh.

• 2:15:27Speaker 05

  And Cat Chaser, thanks again for the sticker. Say that again? What Gil is doing now?

• 2:15:34Speaker 04

  What is he up to? I have no idea. I don't either. No, I was hanging out in Lebanon. Yeah.

• 2:15:41Speaker 05

  Has, has he? Um. Like, ob- obviously he didn't go to jail and you did. Did he ever?

• 2:15:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know, expressed any appreciation for, for what you did or anything?

• 2:15:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think he did. Um, and you know, he's, he's got his hands full himself right now. Uh, you know, he's, he's, he ain't moving anywhere in Lebanon. Um, the French have an arrest warrant for him also.

• 2:16:14Speaker 04

  And the French have, you know, Lebanon used to be a French colony. So they have some influence there.

• 2:16:18Speaker 05

  Right, they do, yeah.

• 2:16:19Speaker 04

  And Lebanon is in, you know, dire straits right now economically and civilly and politically. They don't even have a president right now.

• 2:16:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:16:27Speaker 04

  Um, I don't think they have a parliament.

• 2:16:29Speaker 05

  Port blew up a year ago.

• 2:16:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, was it the largest non-nuclear explosion since Hiroshima? Nagasaki, that's, that's impressive.

• 2:16:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:16:38Speaker 04

  And that was all ammonium nitrate.

• 2:16:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:16:40Speaker 04

  It was a wing nut that was storing that there. But anyways, yeah, they're, they're in dire straits, so, you know, and, and the French have a lot of influence. But what's interesting though, he welcomed the French prosecutors in and sat with them and met with them. And then they went and charged them. But I would think that, why would you allow a prosecutor to come in if you were really guilty of something?

• 2:17:00Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 2:17:01Speaker 04

  Don't make any sense.

• 2:17:02Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:17:03Speaker 04

  He didn't have to let them do that.

• 2:17:06Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, Mike, did, did Carlos, uh, pay you for this? Or you just volunteer and go, go off and do this?

• 2:17:12Speaker 04

  No, I did not ask for a penny, uh, for service beforehand. I didn't ask for a penny of it, so. And I don't want to get into any of the talk about any of the funds. But no, I didn't ask for money. Uh, the, the issue of money came up saying, well, he's got leverage. And I'm insulted by that, because I never asked for a dollar.

• 2:17:33Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 2:17:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's, um, I mean,

• 2:17:40Speaker 05

  you did something

• 2:17:44Speaker 05

  super cool. I mean, something that would be in a, a movie written for screen. You know what I mean? Like you did, um.

• 2:17:53Speaker 04

  Look, I gotta say, the operation was flawless.

• 2:17:56Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:17:56Speaker 04

  Absolutely flawless.

• 2:17:58Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:17:58Speaker 04

  You know, it made Mission Impossible, like a joke.

• 2:18:00Speaker 05

  Right. And, and, and, and the fact that it was so flawless, I mean, I'm, that's probably why Japan acts like an angry three-year-old, you know, about the whole thing, is because.

• 2:18:12Speaker 05

  You conducting an awesome operation.

• 2:18:15Speaker 04

  You know, when I first got back, I go into a Chinese restaurant and I ordered some food, went to pick it.

• 2:18:20Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:18:35Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:18:46Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:18:51Speaker 08

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:18:57Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 2:19:17Speaker 09

  ChatGPT for teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.comPARENTS to learn more.

• 2:19:44Speaker 10

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:20:15Speaker 04

  up to Chinese restaurant and they knew who I was. They said, no, no, you can't pay.

• 2:20:21Speaker 05

  That's great.

• 2:20:22Speaker 04

  What you did to Japan, we love you.

• 2:20:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:20:25Speaker 04

  So I got free Chinese food.

• 2:20:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:20:28Speaker 04

  That is too bad.

• 2:20:30Speaker 05

  So, um, so you know, you've got, uh, vitamin one and, and you know, these other projects with the movie and the book and things like that. What, what else would you like, like what else interests you these days? And I'm sure you're super busy.

• 2:20:43Speaker 04

  Um, I'm, you know, I've got some good friends, uh, over in, um, in Dubai. I'm going to start manufacturing over in Abu Dhabi.

• 2:20:51Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 2:20:51Speaker 04

  But these guys are like brothers over there in, in Dubai, buddy of mine Ahmed. And I got two sons that live there too. Wonderful people. So we want to penetrate the market there and get this build up.

• 2:21:03Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 2:21:03Speaker 04

  And, you know, do a lot of skydiving. It's a great place to skydive.

• 2:21:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:21:08Speaker 04

  Beautiful weather, a little bit warm during the summer, but still.

• 2:21:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:21:11Speaker 04

  I'd rather be hot than cold.

• 2:21:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:21:14Speaker 04

  So, yeah, so I'm going to work on vitamin one and get it pushed all over and do some skydiving and enjoy life.

• 2:21:20Speaker 05

  Well.

• 2:21:20Jack Murphy?

  It's awesome, man.

• 2:21:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:21:21Jack Murphy?

  I'm glad.

• 2:21:22Speaker 05

  We, uh, deeply appreciate you.

• 2:21:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, thanks for having me on.

• 2:21:26Jack Murphy?

  This story had a, uh, had a happy ending, but it took quite a long time.

• 2:21:30Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, it did. And you know, I'm not sure it's over just yet.

• 2:21:34Jack Murphy?

  You think so?

• 2:21:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, there could be more to come.

• 2:21:37Jack Murphy?

  Like legal drama?

• 2:21:38Speaker 04

  Oh, no, I don't think legal drama.

• 2:21:40Speaker 05

  Oh, just your story? Oh.

• 2:21:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, but, but there's definitely legal issues with the United Nations. United Nations is going to come down pretty soon, uh, and say this is a violation of human rights and this is, so the United Nations Working Group out of Geneva, they've got this in hand.

• 2:21:54Speaker 05

  Can you, can you do a civil suit for, through the United Nations or is it all criminal?

• 2:21:59Speaker 04

  No, it would be civil.

• 2:22:01Speaker 05

  I hope so, man. I, I, I.

• 2:22:03Speaker 04

  But again, I don't know, I'm not clear on that.

• 2:22:06Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 2:22:06Speaker 04

  Yet, because look, the United Nations is going to say, yeah, you tortured him and you tortured his son. And they're going to say, no, no, we didn't. We do that to everybody. That's what, that's just what they do.

• 2:22:16Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:22:17Speaker 04

  And the United States, what do you think the Department of State is going to say?

• 2:22:20Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:22:20Speaker 04

  The White House and the Department of State are the biggest media machines on earth.

• 2:22:23Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:22:24Speaker 04

  They can bury you in, in the media.

• 2:22:26Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:22:26Speaker 04

  But the reality is you get one journalist that got some intestinal fortitude is going to say, uh-uh, timeout. You guys had this on your website that says they've got no heat. Your counselors have told you these people are being tortured. Your counselor has written to you in cable saying there's been 17 months of solitary confinement, six and a half months and only two showers, and you're allowing this? Well, they'll change their website. They like they'll change the text on the website. It's still on there. Plus, we've got prints of it. Yeah. Can't change it now. Yeah.

• 2:22:54Jack Murphy?

  So, I mean, what what is the additional drama that you think could come out of this that hasn't happened yet?

• 2:22:59Speaker 04

  Oh, I I think that, you know, the United Nations says, you know, you so-called beacons of human rights, you in Japan. Right. Yeah, you guys violated human rights and you knowingly did it.

• 2:23:08Jack Murphy?

  That'll be interesting.

• 2:23:09Speaker 04

  I hope so. I hope so for for your sake and everybody else. I mean, and not just Americans, for Japanese people there. Yeah, well, there's a lot of Japanese people that don't like their system of justice. You know, it's called hostage justice system. Yeah. They're gonna hold you until you plead guilty. Yeah. And once you plead guilty, then they'll cut you loose. But that's what they did to you here in America over your your case, right? Same thing. Like, like, we have it here too. We just pretend that's not what's happening. But that's exactly what's happening. Right. And it's happening every day. Right. People spend two years in jail before they ever get to see a judge. And how many times do we see a black American that spent 20 years in jail for some murder or rape or violent crime that we find out later he didn't do? Right. And what about that poor human being? Right. What about his life? Right. And by the way, where's the prosecutor who lied?

• 2:23:54Speaker 04

  Right. Oh, yeah. How come they don't go do those 20 years? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, yeah.

• 2:24:01Jack Murphy?

  Mike, I mean, this has been a like, pretty wild, all encompassing interview, and I would love to have you back when, you know, I I'm sure your book is gonna get published sooner or later. I mean, it's an incredible story. When it does, I'd love to have you back.

• 2:24:13Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 2:24:14Jack Murphy?

  You know, uh, and

• 2:24:18Speaker 04

  Sure. Sam's a great guy. I had dinner with him.

• 2:24:21Jack Murphy?

  Awesome. Okay, good. I'm glad that's coming together. Um, anything else that you think we failed to cover that you wanna get out there?

• 2:24:28Speaker 04

  No. I think that's pretty much it. Well, we deeply appreciate it. Well, we've been talking a while.

• 2:24:34Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, man. Um, well, guys, I thank you, everyone who joined us tonight. I mean, I think this has been a fucking amazing interview, to say the least.

• 2:24:43Speaker 04

  I'm hot. I'm just so angry right now. Woo!

• 2:24:45Jack Murphy?

  Uh, Tuesday, this Tuesday, we're gonna have Andrew Milburn on the show. He'll be here in studio. And then on Friday, also in studio, we'll have Toby Harndon and Justin Sapp. Uh, so I hope you guys will join us for that. We look forward to seeing all of you. Uh, Andy's always a fun time, and and so is Justin and Toby. Great guys. Mike, again, man, thank you.

• 2:25:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, we deeply appreciate you. Yeah. Yeah, we'll do it again.

• 2:25:10Jack Murphy?

  Absolutely. So, all right, guys, we will, uh, we'll see you on two steps.

• 2:25:14Speaker 05

  Everybody, please like, share, join our Patreon, do all that.

• 2:25:19Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:25:33Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:25:44Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:25:49Speaker 08

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:25:55Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 2:26:15Speaker 09

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 2:26:43Speaker 02

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:27:13Speaker 05

  Amazing stuff.

• 2:27:13Jack Murphy?

  Links are down in the description.

• 2:27:14Speaker 05

  And buy vitamin one.

• 2:27:22Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Ushkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:27:37Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic. In a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:27:48Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:27:53Speaker 08

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:27:59Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more. Because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 2:28:19Speaker 09

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 2:28:46Speaker 01

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:29:22Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:29:36Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic. In a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:29:47Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:29:52Speaker 08

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:29:58Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more. Because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 2:30:18Speaker 09

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 2:30:46Speaker 10

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:31:21Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:31:36Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:31:47Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:31:52Speaker 08

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:31:58Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 2:32:18Speaker 09

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 2:32:45Speaker 01

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:33:20Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:33:35Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:33:46Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:33:51Speaker 08

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:33:57Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 2:34:17Speaker 09

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 2:34:44Speaker 02

  Cash Flow Crunch on deck. Small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:35:22Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:35:37Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:35:48Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:35:53Speaker 08

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:35:59Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 2:36:19Speaker 09

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 2:36:46Speaker 01

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:37:24Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:37:39Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:37:50Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:37:55Speaker 08

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:38:01Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 2:38:20Speaker 09

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 2:38:48Speaker 01

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:39:25Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:39:39Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:39:50Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:39:55Speaker 08

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:40:01Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 2:40:21Speaker 09

  ChatGPT for teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 2:40:49Speaker 10

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:41:18Speaker 11

  She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

• 2:41:31Speaker 12

  Zolair 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolair, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolair. Zolair may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolair should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolair is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolair.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolair. This is an advertisement for Zolair,

• 2:42:16Speaker 12

  paid for by Genentech and Novartis.

• 2:42:18Speaker 09

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, Study Mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 2:42:46Speaker 10

  Cash Flow Crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.