Episode 325 - Viktor Bout, The Merchant of Death: Part 2

hey everybody if you ever wanted to see us live but you missed the other shows well you have another chance me and the boys are hitting the road once again the lines led by dony podcast is coming live to Belfast at the oh yeah Music Center Saturday October 26th so get your tickets while they last you can find the link in our show notes so get them now do it [Music] like [Music] [Music] [Music] hey everybody Welcome to the lines of by Donkey podcast I'm Joe and with me is Tom and Nate we are the tired un arms investigators pouring over reams of documents have been collected by our people in the field we have Victor boot one of the world's most dangerous and well-known arms Smugglers dead to rights we have forwarded our findings to our supervisors and we have been authorized to deploy the harshest response the UN has available to them a strongly worded letter of concern that's right everybody when Victor boot part two what's up guys hey what's up yeah we did the live show last night and Tom and I should be on our way to the airport now but British Airways cancel our flight so Joe is stuck with us and before Tom and I go to our airport hotel in roddam we are going to uh record another episode British Airway said we had to share a room if we wanted a refund and I just simply said yeah that's not going to happen the only way you can get a refund is if you share a large bed like the bucket family the only way you get a refund is if you share the honeymoon suite at the airport motel it's got a heart-shaped bubble bath I mean honestly I would do that but they sometimes you just got to treat yourself you know yeah I love over the past like three days like we arrived and the studio has just become more more cled there's what six Vapes on the table there's like surrounded by a sea of cardboard from opening stuff for the studio and putting it together yeah also Joe's toilet doesn't work at all and on the business complex he's in on the weekends no one's in so you can't use that bathroom so we've just been uh making strategic visits to uh corner stores and other restaurants and the old hotel I lost my uh laptop charger I left it in the Hotel this morning I we were just chilling and I was like you know what [ __ ] I'm going to go back it's only like 10 minutes away went and they're like oh someone has checked into that room but I'll go up and check so I was like okay I have 10 minutes I'm going to take the world quick as [ __ ] right now well I mean speed [ __ ] they did have a nice bathroom you know and you know what they don't have here in the studio a nice bathroom or a bathroom that works dude that's unfair the bathroom actually is quite nice you just can't use it yeah it's got a nice decorative mirror a little hand towel holder and if you flush the toilet after dropping a deuce it'll stay in there until kingdom comes so it just stays in there until it gets its nationality it's like a a toilet but it's marked replica on the side it's like taking a [ __ ] at a Home Depot uh like showroom yeah next time we're here we're just going to have to build an ouse out the back of the studio my landlord's ask me why I'm digging a hole in the back y like you know why [ __ ] yeah exactly you know you put two veterans and one Armenian could be a veteran could be an Armenian they're going to dig a slit trench one way or the other I've learned here since sometimes I work past was normal business hours in the Netherlands that if you walk into any of the corner cafes or restaurants with the look of confidence on your face they don't know you're not supposed to be using the bathroom yeah you just like walk past the counter I do it the whole time cuz i' be out with people who's like I need to use the toilet I'm like there's no toilet I like there's a pub right there and they're like yeah but don't you have to B like no just walk in look like you're looking for someone and then look around you'll spot where toilet is go in go do your stuff and then get out around here I'm going to have to like change my route so like the the restaurant on the corner like the bagel Shop's like oh no he's back to take a [ __ ] again they're going to recognize you you are pretty identifiable yeah it's true here comes the big [ __ ] one time when I the [ __ ] stealth pooper he's back one time when I was studying in France when I was 17 I tried to do this and um I Almost Got Away for away with it except I didn't realize Iz that they had a very very low like Eve in the stairwell and I knocked myself the [ __ ] out and fell down the stairs I'm dead I did took a huge [ __ ] though but I knocked myself out and fell down the stairs so yeah don't don't don't that's for me I always I I I have the sort of like calvinist approach to like illicit pooping that like you're going to be punished either in this life or the next a friend of mine since we are technically touring a tour of one show um a friend of mine who toured quite a lot oh this is such a horrible story they were driving along in the van and they were in Germany so it's like there's nothing for like at least another 40 minutes and there's no public bathrooms to speak of anyway well there there there's highway rest stops where it's literally just a stairwell where you park and you go piss [ __ ] in the woods they used to have that in German they might not anymore but that used to be a thing it's the wooden pooping but he was like I I need to go so badly and one of the guys had like made himself a packed lunch in the previous Hotel so he took the sandwich out of the Z Block Bag handed him the Z Block Bag he had to [ __ ] into the bag and throw it out the window did he close the bag behind them you want to get hit with prop wash on that one you're just driving along and your wind screen gets hit with a flying Ziploc bag full of [ __ ] in Lo people will pay good money for that that's wasting yeah I was thinking about the reading the book about The Replacements that app apparently they were always drunk on tour so they just like basically you weren't allowed to [ __ ] in the van but they just used like the running board on like a forward Econoline van just pissing it as they were driving so they didn't have to stop y if I was like an 80s era gross touring Pand I would just cut a hole in into the bottom like through the the floor so if you have to [ __ ] just put your put your [ __ ] Over the Hole [ __ ] directly handshake between touring bands in the 80s and Spanish trains I think they're better now but in the '90s Spanish trains flat out you I remember as a kid F open the toilet and see sunlight and track you dead serious why did this train derail someone left a [ __ ] growl around the tracks like a penny oh I remember years ago I was in Romania and I was taking a train from the north down to Bucharest and like this train would like stop every like 40 minutes it was like barely being held together was rattling along the conductors were drunk and were selling moonshine to the passengers and I had to go to the toilet and I was like sat down and I was like there's no bolt on it so I was sitting down with my both my legs out straight against the door and I was like there is not a whole lot of balance so if this stops suddenly I'm going upside down have to do a rollover drill for the toilet I feel as though I would be disappointed if I didn't get that kind of an experience on a train in Romania like if Romania has just become such a modern country that's just like taking Deon they' be like but but I was promised all of this just gu selling jugs of plum brandy and people with horse carts and so on and so forth I'm sure we've alienated all of our Romanian listeners but we've ruined tradition of of the like Eastern European Train by making them join the EU yeah but look I I will defend Romania's an incredible country beautiful beautiful country you should go I'd love to go never been I've heard the streets are paved with gold Andor Platinum from catalytic converters go and get yourself some Mei go you know get a nice slice of rye bread and put unari which is literally rendered pork fat on it this is amazing ow my insides I mean it is very funny because like in current trajectories if economic growth in the former Eastern block continues Poland will have a bigger GDP than the United Kingdom not too long from now wasn't there some study done that like if the United Kingdom joined the United States it'd be like one of the poorest states in the union yeah but I feel like that's one of those like really big heuristics about why GDP capita is a bad marker of actual wealth and actual status because by that logic Ireland is the wealthiest country in Europe and like do you think the median Irish person is worth €125,000 Tom uh no and someone who studied economics for four years chdp is [ __ ] yeah yeah and that's the thing they typically go off of when they say that Britain would be poorer than Mississippi it's still poor as [ __ ] but it's just it's poor in a different way but speaking of someone who probably generated as much GDP as an entire country Victor boot oh yeah oh boy yeah without Victor boot in Europe they have to go make money on the black market the oldfashioned way importing cocaine yeah but could be selling kalashnikovs and to be fair he was also selling cocaine I didn't realize yeah okay now we're on to Victor boot to the boodaloo and when we left you last time we're explaining just why a man so well known by at least a dozen agencies across the world was allowed to operate busting sanctions arming genocidal regimes and of course becoming the frozen chicken king of Africa agencies didn't talk to one another policy makers had other priorities and to make a very long depressing story short but also very frequent without the great power games of the US versus the USSR nobody gave a single [ __ ] about the goings on in Africa which is where boot generally worked however just because the UN was Toothless and various countries within it didn't care did not mean that everyone was just going to sit back and do nothing and the people that would eventually put their noses to the ground and do the actual heavy lifting the hard work need to pin boot down were probably not who you think they are because the earliest and best work in Africa about the black market weapons trade and Victor boot was done by and I need you guys to take a breath on this one Nos and think tanks is the one time they've actually done anything yeah I mean I know it's this is not the podcast to talk about the various critiques of Nos and things think tanks because well many do specifically NOS think tanks do nothing good for anybody but NOS do some good work in developing parts of the world many also exist much like think tanks to Simply funnel in massive amounts of grant money that could be better used doing literally anything else into the pockets of DC [ __ ] and lanyard afficionados who really want you to think they're important or because once they worked in the white house getting someone's coffee or whatever I [ __ ] hate this group of people this should not be a surprise to anybody listening to the show yeah it's a jobs program for morons who are like too stupid to do any introspection about what they've done with their life so what's truly heartbreaking about a lot of these people is they enlist the work of like really well-meaning and hardworking people that they pay nothing yes and specifically from the countries that they're working in and fill their heads full of ideas like we actually mean good and in reality they're like oh we can't pay you anything while all of our bosses have like million doll homes in DC well I mean like you'll find these things like certain DC think tanks that are owned by created by and owned by people who are worth 11 figures but they they don't do paid internships for example like you have everything is self-funded and it's like that's getting the good end from them if you're not in like the failson kind of Cadre like if you as you the ones that are just like unofficial arms of some State yeah and if you work as you said locally like the field workers the the local staff for these agencies they get treated awful yeah they bust their [ __ ] ass they get treated like [ __ ] and then when you are eventually tired and need some kind of help or whatever especially a lot of these think tanks and ngos who do legitimately dangerous work in a lot of places where it's not necessarily safe to do that work they'll throw you away like your disposable they'll fill your head full of promises that they'll protect you and then they'll be like you know brush their hands like well we need a new one well you know like every organization does need its loadbearing failson C like every business every organization just has to have a group of losers that like functionally don't do anything but they're to for morale I suppose I'm kind of laughing at the idea that the reason why this happened with Victor boot could just be that like a think tank was run by a really hardcore Ukrainian Nationalist and they're just like wait a Russian guy he's making money off selling drugs in Africa and he's not hiring us now that we've [ __ ] on them a lot we do have to point out that in the mid of this rotten FedEd [ __ ] pool of humans of like the wash backwash the the [ __ ] the smma of the IV League f kids there's good people like we said that do legitimate hard [ __ ] work and one of them was a woman named Kathy Austin who worked for the Institute of policy studies and she was sent to the African Great Lakes Region to figure out something like we point out in the last episode that nobody was trying to do not who was fighting who and why but how the [ __ ] they were getting weapons it did not take her long to discover Victor boot's seemingly NeverEnding network of fake Airlines Austin was a good investigator but boot was also lazy as [ __ ] it's important to point out here he was not a genius he was not a mastermind he was just so used to people not looking into him too hard he wasn't even trying for example several of his planes used the exact same tail numbers and filed identical paperwork with just the dates change and sometimes he didn't even bother doing that Austin reported her findings to the Human Rights Watch who was doing a lot of Investigation work into boots operations in Austin into Belgium that work in Belgium wasn't being done again by who you think it was it was not an NGO it was not a thing tank it was not a member of the Belgian government it was not a member of any intelligence service it was just a goly yeah what it was a Grassroots peace activist named Johan pelman who was a philosophy student I mean listen you're studying philosophy you got a lot of time to think about things so he was a part of this Grassroots organization called the international peace information service but calling it an organization is kind of making it seem much bigger than it was it was mostly just Pelin working out of a decommissioned Monastery alone so this dude is just like I am going to go into an abandoned Monastery and track this Russian guy down he became a monk but for like illegal arms trafficking honestly I want to hear this guy's story not Victor bu rules also like guy doing investigative podast about human rights abuses in a former har Salon in the ha Netherlands you know what maybe you guys are spiritual Brothers what is a ha Salon but a monastery of a certain type you know you come in and you do your devotions welcome to the the follicle Monastery now after objecting to service in the Belgian military because the Belgian military time had description he got involved in peace activism and became obsessed with what he called the war economy or how Wars in Far Away places suddenly became a wash with weapons pelman and a few of his fellow activists and Austin quickly began looking into the strange badly labeled flights taking off from their local airport namely one key hint here tipped them off that something wasn't right cargo planes always took off empty and they landed empty nothing was ever offloaded in Austin Belgium and right off the bat that makes no sense for a cargo company to make money it needs to be transporting cargo both ways but boot was smart enough to not smuggle [ __ ] into Western Europe he saved the [ __ ] out of it he just uses kind of like a base soon he started charting CLS that once they left Belgium they landed in Bulgaria where he had a connection with factories and members of the government and then seemingly only went to war zones in Africa from there he was quickly able to piece together who boot was and what he was doing then pelman and his friends printed off a ton of Flyers that had a now it didn't have a picture of Victor boot but it named him and said that he was an arms trafficker he was actively killing thousands of innocent people across Africa all that kind of stuff and then just taped them up around Austin in a campaign of shaming that he hoped would force the Belgian authorities to take notice see this is just this is where you realize that he's a student because this is the most student thing to do yeah like now he'd be sharing it on his Instagram story like just a really well-made graphic and I need to point out here he did more damage to boots operation than anybody had up until this point because once word got out combined with pelman organizing constant protests outside the airport itself with him and a small group of friends and colleagues boot closed up shop and moved his entire operation out of Belgium so fast that by the time the Belgian federal police showed up he was long gone so pelman won yeah I'm actually kind of surprised cuz I would have assumed this would end with you know pelman getting a phone call from a guy named like Francois ver hugin telling him you know like hey man how would you keep it the [ __ ] down or like a whole bunch of dudes packed into a G wagon and that makes him fall down eight stair cases and shoot himself in the back of the head yeah I feel like we haven't quite gotten to that era yet yeah but we we're getting there close and to be fair boot's never been connected to any violence personally he is very obviously keeping his hands clean on that front but then again what year is this this is the late 90s early 2000 the late '90s the belgians were still up to [ __ ] crazy [ __ ] at this the belgians were but what I'm saying is that the kind of like non-state actor in scare quotes where it's like the Russian State being involved with like people committing SU suicide by falling down the stairs in a padlock duffel bag kind of [ __ ] wasn't quite happening as overtly yet mostly because Russia was completely destabilized economically and socially at the time and like obviously this picks up a lot in the next decade yeah well like in Belgium like you had the entirety of the Broadband killers in the like 80s and there was kind of nonstate actors that were like heavily connected to the police force obviously with the issue of federalization that sort of thing but could like you're right you're right I mean that's thing is that I was thinking more of sort of like the way it manifests in the UK obious the Russian State and remember like it was in the last episode where like Austin Belgium's airport was pretty famously known for also being like a CIA Point as well so like the belgians were almost certainly aware of Victor boot was operating there oh 100% but again like like we pointed out last time is like boot operates in a world of temporary usefulness States love him because if they need a guy boots their guy all the way up until they have to look some of the eye like we hired Victor boot mhm and like oh no I can't believe he was working here [ __ ] burn our documents yeah All State agencies know how to do is H Eat Hot Chip charge St phone and hire Victor boot exactly be bisexual lie I mean the lie part comes I mean I think it's yeah it's the plausible deniability isn't it that like you know plausible deniability personified is Victor boot but also I think to bear in mind this is relevant when it comes to the US and sort of international [ __ ] abroad that there is obviously the legacy of this not being particularly well covered up and going very badly back when they used to put people in prison for this in Iran Contra and so like that was relatively recent at the time so like there's a degree to which like it's not they stopped doing it it just had to be a lot less connectable in the sense that like Iran Contra was not it wasn't just you know oi North immediately going to like Israeli guy who knew some Iranians who got them weapons like there there was there were some layers but there weren't enough layers for it not to be traceable whereas in this case it feels like Victor boot hasn't become as well known and also like it sounds as though a lot of the stuff is done through like in this the sort of inter business intermediary equivalent of the plane has to go to Bulgaria first before it can pick up the shady [ __ ] to go to East Africa kind of thingly and it's also like someone like VI like Ali North obviously was officer in the military whereas Victor boot only can operate as long as nobody really knows about him mhm once everybody's like yeah we know who Victor buot is he's on the news yeah you stop getting H and also the thing about Iran Contra that I think was that when it broke was that when there was you know you have these back and forth Swings with who controls Congress in America and Reagan wins in 80 and then in 82 there's a big swing towards the Democrats and the Democrats in power in the house and I think the Senate also basically passed legislation to stop the funding of the contr because of Human Rights abuses and and basically Reagan's approach through North and other intermediaries is shut up Libs no and so they just do it illegal so like in that regard there's such an obvious contention of a thing that's been said stop doing doing this whereas in this case like there hasn't been a law passed just yet saying don't arm uh I don't know Paul kagami or Joseph con for that matter you know what I mean you can see the smile spreading across my face cuz this will become important in a little bit no pelman was giving his information to the Human Rights Watch and Kathy Austin who was now touring DC and trying to find anyone who would listen to her about arms trafficking and smuggling into Africa and why it was important to stop at the time in the late '90s it was the Clinton administration and though Austin found a few people within the federal law enforcement intelligence community that was interested they had to tell Austin honestly uh we have no policy guidelines at all from the White House on this kind of [ __ ] we have nothing they have given us it's not that they're Pro or against they have nothing then Clinton finally did make what was called a quote transnational crime priority specifically arms trafficking and things of that nature and the people charged with carrying it out quickly realized they had no idea what they were doing because like I point out in the last episode nobody like boot had ever existed before and arguably they probably never will yeah it was a case like how do you legally find out like how do you figure out okay all these jurisdictions like working together he's operating like internationally who's going to lead the charge on that was the main like catching point is like okay but he because before now American enforcement of arms trafficking was trafficking arms specifically into the United States when it came to some guy who technically had two businesses in the United States but never came to the US never committed crime in the US they're like what the [ __ ] do we do with this they had no idea where to start and thankfully for them the Nos and peace activists had several years head start on the US government and dumped all of this Research into their laps to make their jobs easier this is where I really like to say and Victor boot was captured in 1998 but he wasn't what didn't make the jobs easier for all these different departments was refusing to seed authority over one thing or another and constantly getting in [ __ ] fits with each other cuz remember none of them are talking none of them are sharing any information with one another and across the board through all of them Africa wasn't on anybody's radar it was nobody's priority so they're all just kind of shrugged I don't know if that you've researched this specifically for this episode but I am curious just because in the late 90s prior to the big event that makes American intelligence agencies start talking to each other a little more there was a precursor event yeah the Embassy bombings yeah almost simultaneous Embassy bombings in Nairobi Kenya and dar Salon Tanzania in 1998 that's exactly what changes all of their minds two American embassies were bombed one in Kenya and one in Tanzania by Al-Qaeda suddenly all dcis are on Africa and the head of the National Security council's Africa Department Gail Smith said if we want to stop [ __ ] like this from happening Victor boot needs to be our number one priority M all while the UN had hired on fulltime and sent him to the UAE to try and track on boot personally this led to a confrontation in a hotel room Lobby or is it like a hotel lobby between pelman and boot's brother something that I find really interesting about this is that the US knew that for example Bin Laden had been kicked out of Sudan in 96 because yeah through the collusion basically Omar Al Bashir didn't necessarily want to kick him out but he kind of had to in the sense for international cred but it was because if I remember the specific incident correctly sudanes cars with diplomatic plates got caught smuggling like anti-aircraft missiles into Egypt and it was Bin Laden's people basically because they were handin glove with the Sudanese government right so like that is the kind of thing that us intelligence agencies would have known that like oh this guy who is in some way connected to what is it Ramsey yusf and the people who tried to blow up the world train Center in 1993 like is in Sudan and is just doing his thing and so like the idea that they were just completely unaware of that connection they were completely aware of the Victor boot connection now the problem is is the compartmentalization of intelligence the CIA was fully aware of who Victor boot was in fact they had worked with him already to some extent the FBI probably not so aware the de ATF probably weren't aware of who he was at all because the CI saw him as being possibly useful in the future and he would be there's a lot of people who are a little bit useful at the time you know there's this guy I remember seeing this really really nice headline saying anti-soviet Warrior puts his country on a path to peace exactly and so it was around this time as the '90s crept into the 2000s that the full extent of boots operations in Afghanistan came to light and by came to light I mean beyond the CIA and other intelligence in Afghanistan yes oh wow by this point Afghanistan was almost entirely under the control of the Taliban with the Northern Alliance kind of sort of just barely hanging on boot through the UAE acted as a connection and eventually became the Afghan air system as a whole so it was a really quick potted history of post Soviet withdrawal Afghan War uh you just understand that effectively the Soviets left and you had the government led by Muhammad niala and the Taliban started in more or less in '94 as kind of like a coalescing of islamist groups specifically opposed to warlord rule there's like a foundation myth no one knows if it's true or not that Mula basically LED like a Lynch Mob to kill two separate Warlords who were fighting over who got to [ __ ] this one young boy and that like basically he's like why don't we kill both of them and so on and so forth and I don't no one knows if that's true it's just this apocryphal thing but basically it was sort of he's this guy standing up against the sort of venality of the Warlords because the overwhel majority of the damage to the cities for example in Afghanistan was not from the Soviet War it was from the it was the warlord Civil War and so 96 the the Taliban take kabell they famously hang Muhammad nialah they hang him off the barrel of a tank like there's a photo of him hanging dead off the barrel of a tank and Taliban guys kind of hugging and celebrating around it at that point yeah we talked about that at the end as an epilogue to our Soviet Afghan war series we'll eventually do a little bit more into it at some point because that whole era needs more bringing it up to the era where you're talking about by 200201 pre 911 there's basically only two places that are controlled by the Northern Alliance that is what's now panser province which was part of I believe Capa Province and bakan province which is like the most remote part than that the enti of the country is controlled by the Tali yep and we are nominally on the side of the Northern Alliance as the us but like not involved yeah no not at this point it would be in a few years it was just more than the fact that there were still American politicians who were involved with dumping weapons in money well money into Pakistan to buy weapons to for Afghan mujahadin and so there was still some sort of like Amity towards Amad sha massud yeah people but there wasn't much massud constantly complained like hey if you give me what I need I could defeat the Taliban but yeah that would be coming in a few years and massud would be dead already the famous ending line of Steve Cole's ghost Wars talks about basically when Hamed carai learns the news that Amad massud got blown up uh by a fake newspaper camera in a fake Al jazer interview in 2001 two days before 911 and apparently his reaction to this news was what an unfortunate country anyway nothing happened after that yeah so at this point boot kind of sort of all but officially runs Ariana air or the official Afghan air carrier That's crazy cuz yeah Ariana is Afghan National carrier yeah yeah still was still technically is and one of the things he was doing was legit air travel as well as all of the things you imagine a guy who runs the national Afghan air carrier for the Taliban would do handled legit Freight in and out of the country mostly just the Pakistan Saudi Arabia and the UAE were the only three countries that recognize the Taliban government important detail that like post 1996 basically no one recognized T fun fact that's three more countries that ever recognize the Confederacy [Laughter] so Confederates taken Strays in the Victor boot episode the Taliban just coming into the possession of an ungodly amount of frozen chicken yeah and one of the other things that they were doing was bearing thousands of foreign volunteers into the country that were almost certainly members of al-Qaeda yep now this makes Victor boot 100% connected to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban who obviously al-qaeda's on a lot of people's Radars after the Embassy bombings in Africa cuz remember small blip in what would become a much larger blip later on is the US did bomb Afghanistan after those abely did because I can very clearly remember the beasty boy speaking out against it at the 1998 Video Music Awards yeah I mean they also bombed children's aspir Factory in Sudan yeah we did and there was another Target I can't remember I know Afghanistan Sudan and I think there were somewhere else but I can't quite remember yeah the bin lad boys were effectively using this Airline as something of a fery into the country because like you pointed out they had to change their operational center from Sudan into Afghanistan and they did so using boots Airlines the bin Laden boy sounds like a group of like School bullies well I mean like Saudi Bin Laden Group is like one of the biggest construction companies in the world it's amazing never missed a beat yeah yeah you know in turn these same planes transported massive quantities of drugs out of the country and into the global market normally after being flown back into Russia eventually Ariana was hit with sanctions from the US and the UN and this is very funny if you think of Ariana Grande being hit with un sanctions but as always boot was there to make sure everything continued running as smoothly as it always had then when the UN authorized humanitarian flights into Afghanistan they chartered with a UAE company called Flying dolphin which you probably already know was absolutely owned by Victor boot it's like flying dolphin could be the text written on a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper or a Victor boot Shadow company I'd like to believe that this planes are painted that same way like weird LSD [ __ ] like glitter yeah it took two months for everybody to figure out God damn it we're working with Victor boot again but it's like imagine being like the guy who has to file all the paperwork for these companies like okay I have to register another LLC okay I have to grab this file and I was like you were just spending your entire day like 16 hours a day just like filling out forms to register shell companies for Victor boot it was one guy in Texas of course I me do you think he ever just got a little foxy with it and just registered drug trafficking LLC or see if anyone would notice they won't notice Black Market Airlines busy pop Airlines hey you know what that's German popcorn Logistics is very important they had to Charter their planes despite everyone's work to try to stop or even barely slow down boot's operations continued to expand after his legit businesses into Afghanistan were taken out before long even with all these eyes on him he was branching into Latin America and I would argue this is what would eventually bring him down but we have to put a pin in that one and come back to it later like imagine you because obviously aside from all the trafficking like he did work in like you know transporting legitimate goods and like having some veneer of legit imy oh he made a ton of money trafficking or trafficking but transporting legit Goods as well like imagine you're just like I don't know you get like the Tolman catalog and you like live in the modern day Germany he like oh I'm going to buy a Stratocaster and it's just delivered by a Russian war criminal I'm also thinking too it's like Latin America at the time it's like you probably know where this is going well I mean you've got the farc you've got the Civil War first try oh wow okay I was going to say Guatemalan Civil War the what is it the it wasn't from the lack of not wanting to support the Guatemalan civil wars that he never met any of them yeah yeah also the Guatemalan Civil War was less a arms trafficking opportunity because they just had all the weapons they wanted from the US and it wasn't really that's because you're not thinking the way boot does you might see like non-armed trafficking opportunity he always looks on the brighter side like I see you're using American weapons how would you like to use different ones for much cheaper and also you could just pay me with the shirt that you're wearing pay me in tortillas I mean it would just be drugs produce drugs yeah I mean yeah in Guatemala's case it's I mean they don't produce but they definitely have them yeah yeah but nobody's entirely sure how but Boot made contact the Revolutionary armed forces of Columbia or Fark now to make a very long story short farc is once a Marxist revolutionary group that had long since transformed into little more than a Nar gang once any Hope of Victory was gone by the late '90s and early 2000s farc was fully in its Narco Mafia Arc which it continues to be in and they make a lot of money through heroin cocaine trafficking and kidnapping yeah just uh keep your eye ears out for maybe in like 10 years time for me to do a series on Far exactly soon boot was flying planes in a nightmare Journey from Jordan to Peru with forged hand bills saying weapons he was bringing were the Peruvian were for the Peruvian government then without offloading anything they would simply leave Peru bust a turn over the Colombian jungle and Chuck the weapons out of the back of the plane hopefully to land via parachute eventually some of these weapons were were captured and inspected and found not to be what farc was normally armed with that being hand-me-downs captured from Colombian State actors or you know sometimes homemade weapons and [ __ ] like that or even ones that were like trafficked across the border or into they were used right these were brand new AKs in their original packaging still with packing grease on them originally manufactured in East Germany they had never even been opened you know what's interesting is like Peruan is a bit of a wild card choice there because like around this time is after The Shining path War and the Peruvian Civil War had ended but like the Peruvian state was putting a lots of [ __ ] people in jail so like the perian state is also incredibly corrupt that is very true which is what all boot needs to ex fair enough it's just one of those things where it's sort of like it's both a corruption drug country and go to jail as Hell Country so like yeah if I had to Hazard a guess I would have guessed Venezuela and not Peru but yeah surprise and what's funny is as soon as these crates got cracked open in Columbia everyone just kind of like rubbed their temples like it was him wasn't it it [ __ ] we got booted we've been booted boot was paid for these in pure cocaine hell yeah which he then transported back to Russia sold to the Russian mafia and then shipped back into Europe This is like a he was one of the main Russian drug smugglers for years and remember that he has the green light to do this by the Russian state so basically like every single person doing lines at like the show that daff punk played def Funk at the first time in like 1995 probably got it from Victor boot oh probably like it's a good chance yeah if you were high as tits [ __ ] listening to Future Sound of London like you probably got it from a guy who was also like getting booted you've been booted yeah a lot of people don't know that da Punk wrote around the world about Victor boot but like it's so funny because at the moment there's a there's a rising problem in Europe of um cocaine trafficking being taken over by like expli L like white nationalist farite groups so like huh the police are capturing bricks of cocaine coming in that are stabbed with swastikas on them that's a l on the nose huh I didn't know that cuz I knew about the a friend of mine did a really good series about drug trafficking in Belgium in the Netherlands and it was all basically Moroccan gangs making deals with cartels in in South America but I didn't know about Neo-Nazi drug traffickers as well the strange handshake between the most confused cartel men in the world meeting like skin heads yeah cuz like a lot of it is coming from up through the Balkans into Eastern Europe and then is like going through like the Netherlands and Belgium to be trafficking to the UK and the US um in some cases but like in the late ' 80s early 90s like the Netherlands was like the hub for ecstasy pill pressing so like don't look at roddam today there's a reason why there's strange explosions in the city like every time you turn on the news news yeah I do like the idea the cartel shows up in Belgium thinking that they're going to meet like you know a guy who's Dutch speaking person with you know Moroccan background and instead they meet a guy who looks like fully like Cletus from The Simpsons shirtless except he's got a royal Sporting Club anderle Tattoo across his entire chest yeah it's like the the effects um of uh taking ecstasy in different countries in the 80s has different outcomes like if it's in the UK you turn into Shawn re or yeah or if in the UK supporting [ __ ] the guy who did gido Fox but like yeah if or you're if you're doing it in like the Netherlands and Belgium you just become a hardcore neonazi skinhead who listens to gabber still boot's operation continued to expand into Liberia and central Africa he was transporting arms vehicles and soon entire helicopters and jets using little more than forged paperwork and one case through a strange mix of connections he supplied the personal jet of the president of the Central African Republic however when the president took his shiny new jet abroad he learned from the gambian delegation that something was wrong with his tail number an investigation was concluded that found that tail number was faked and the Jet did not have an airworthiness certificate he had just been sold a shiny piece of [ __ ] that had a new paint job it's everything else is barely functioning it's actually just a copper like hot water cylinder But Wings the president put a warn out for boot which was a problem because he was still in in the Central African Republic at the time and he had to smuggle himself out of car in the trunk of a car into the safety of Liberia oh you know this man sucks but I have to say I bet you he would have been good as [ __ ] at geoguesser oh man he'd be like the geoguesser guy he'd be the geoguesser guy but only for like non-descript dirt strip airports but it's just like this man has done quite a bit of globe trotting to places most people don't go to if they're not from there or have family connections there only him and Strange YouTube travel people yeah yeah exactly they absolutely not paid by the local government to do propaganda Victor boot Lord miles handshake win you know what you say what you will they do have one thing in common they have both materially supported the Taliban Victor boot doing the hardest Geer roll through Africa yeah Lord miles shows up on North Sentinel Island and they've all got huge bricks of cocaine and brand new AK [ __ ] who's been here at this point the US is act ly trying to counter boot but ran into a small problem he wasn't operating on us soil so they need allied help taking him down they found one willing partner in South Africa because the apartheid was over and they knew boot worked with the apartheid regime so they're not a big fan granted he did work with thec as well but you know it's a it's a grudge it's okay to hold on to you know in my opinion I feel as though if you are thec and you've experienced things like the soo Massacre and all the M of student student you give that guy a pass both sides you did hook us up a little but you also hooked up yeah Eeps Vander boosta and his like entire [ __ ] Detachment of auxiliaries with the stuff that they used to kill us with yeah and they closed down one of his companies in I believe his uh headquartered in Cape Town and charged him with over 100 crimes only for boot to vanish out of South Africa before they could do anything the UN was also forced to publicly outline boots various foray and sanction busing throughout Africa mostly due to the work of pelman and not many other people like it's often framed as like a un report but it's like no it's pelon's report pelman is just like he is such a god level hater like like that is a level of hate that you should aspire to that's pure he's easily the coolest guy in this whole story basically he was imbued with the spirit of like a 14th century monk who had lived in that same Monastery who was just like this stupid piece of [ __ ] cat keeps pissing on my manuscripts and like just wrote an entire illuminated manuscript Trea against all [ __ ] cats he just hates them and just like that level of hater them just rested in the building waiting till it could find the correct host and it found it impel he put it to good cause maybe he also hates cats too yeah entirely possible 20th century narcissist and Goldman [ __ ] I was actually thinking this is funny it's a little bit of an aside but uh the person who I keep thinking of is are you guys familiar with the French romantic poet Archer Rambo yeah no so arur Rambo of course all knew yeah say bisexual icon arur Rambo very very famous as a surrealist romantic poet in the 1870s and 1880s but he published the entirety of his work between the ages of about 17 and 21 and then vanished and he did a lot of insane like traveling Europe by foot covering going all over Western Central and Eastern Europe on foot but he eventually wound up as a coffee Merchant in harar in what's now Ethiopia and what was called abisinia at the time and a fortune sanction busting selling guns from Europe to Waring factions in colonial wars but also just like Regional Wars in East Africa in the 1880s before basically being such a Hardo that he refused to get his [ __ ] up knee looked at and then he went up getting sinovitis and then getting bad Medical Care in Marse and dying but I keep bring this up because it's just sort of like this make your money by selling weapons to people without any kind of like notion of the social implications of it is like obviously it's such a thing it's interesting to see how like this wouldn't necessarily have made someone Persona nrata all that long ago but boot kind of like runs up to the end of this in the sense that like because post Cold War there was no long secret has become so powerful you have to be involved at like that level if you're like a a lower level mid-tier guy you're easily crushed you're easily ignored but if you go pro like boot did you kind and you become so powerful they kind of have to let you go cuz they also have to work with you yeah and so instead of I would say instead of Bo being the Victor boot of the late 19th century you have to go more PS like a king Leopold thei level pretty much and then you also get investigative journalism from one one dedicated hater who decides he's going to bring you down never let your hate never let anybody call you a hater your pure visceral hatred for one guy might be enough to stop like crimes against humanity yeah Victor boot was like you know everyone just has to let me go they are the waiters at my table of success sometimes the haters don't become the waiters but the table of success is a table a few miles from here elsewhere in the ha that you sit at where the whole structure of international diplomacy also joins The Hating yeah you could say it's just pure hateration but for a good cause the greatest haters the IC the ICC was just pocket watching Victor buo it's like his rack's too large his [ __ ] too bad exactly they had to kill him they're going to kill you they're going to kill you Victor boot well soon after that the belgians and the Dutch joined the US and South African chasing boot they're eventually joined by the UK who had been tracking boot since the mid90s but uh never thought to say anything about it together a plan was formed they needed a place secure enough that boot couldn't use his Network to get out of which was agreed that it should be the United States however there was no way boot would ever step foot in the country so they would need to find an Allied country to do business with and arrest him at which the US would in effect kidnap him skip the annoying and long extradition process and bring him back to the US and charge him and this is before extradition rendition was a thing also there's a small little asteris to this whole thing this story could end here cuz it's at this point boot applies for a visa to enter the United States it's denied nobody sure why that's so odd most people assume it's because the CIA had an inkling that boot would get snatched up if he entered the US and they pulled enough strings to make sure he didn't get a Visa because they still had one last deal they had to do they would be useful in the future because boot's true use to the United States has not happened yet because it has not yet 9/11 has not yet happened because the anti-soviet warrior hasn't quite done that last step of putting his country on the path to peace exactly and as everything seem to be working in the right direction in the possible capture of boot George W bush becomes president and all the policy makers all the people in government who are advocating for and planning for boots downfall all pretty much lost their jobs overnight on the changing of administrations they all have to go on unemployment and get hired as waiters at the table of success mostly just think tanks I think it is interesting because when you get down to it like the Dick Cheney model of state and Industry Synergy is really just like a gentile version of what Victor boot does yeah yeah I mean if boot was the Republic of boot he would wouldn't be anything yes I realized Whoa man I'm smoking we and it's they're like they're all the same but like when you think about Dick Cheney's overt personal enrichment as a result of what happened with halberton and so on and so forth that's unfair you're forgetting KBR I am forgetting KBR and flu war and North Grumman and all of the various yeah the whole kind of feeding frenzy [ __ ] but like oh don't worry we'll get to that in a second so yeah so basically I suppose the big bifurcation of the story is about to take place when the south Florida Aviation colleges least distinguish graduates make their Mark yeah and uh but thankfully some people from the old team remained and they again pitching this whole we should crack down on this whole sort of thing to condar Rice The New National Security adviser and she agreed though none of this would be made better or easier as obviously it's now 2000 turning into 2001 and it would be about a full seven years before boot would be captured and as fun as it would be to hear everything that happens in the next seven years worth of political bickering I'm going to try to speed our story along for the sake of everyone here's a few things that we absolutely need to talk about but just a small small little detail here nothing super important in 2001 boot helped us war effort in Afghanistan directly not as a subcontractor so this guy named sajan Rupa was a go between for boot and countless people and effectively acted as an accountant amongst other things he was just like boots guy mhm he flipped at some point in the early 2000s before the hammer was possibly about to fall showing American Intel agencies boots books and how boot was linked to well everyone one and that's when 9/11 happens and the US invades Afghanistan a few months later according to Rupa another man worked for boot within the US and virtually every European Intel agency and the US reached out to boot's companies knowing about who they were and like what they were capable of like they had ins in Afghanistan which happens to be this place they all need to invade now so boots companies directly moved supplied and assisted American Special Forces going into Afghanistan in the opening stages of the war so really quick really really quick potted history of that CIA jawbreaker team and people from 10 Special Forces Group go in I think jawbreaker goes in in like late September 01 10th group guys going in October 01 like the Taliban government does not last very long no um and obviously significantly the US bombing campaign that takes place is almost immediate I mean they they they're they're attacking Cobble with cruise missiles within a day and by December of 2001 Afghanistan is completely under the control of the What's called the Coalition NATO but the US really yeah of course American officials deny that they did any of this with boot saying that they use their own aircraft or Northern Alliance helicopters which were supplied by Victor boot but let's be honest here it makes sense that they would use Victor boot there was no one else who knew the ins and outs of Afghanistan and happened to have a large Fleet of cargo aircraft available immediately and nearby it seems like they used boot for the first few months in Afghanistan specifically then discarded him returning to the status of a guy they were actively investigating it was only after this in February 2002 that Belgian authorities issued an Interpol red notice for boot this is effectively an arrest warrant but they did not announce it so they could along with the British attempt to grab him before he learned about it and slipped back into Russia where he'd be unreachable they tracked one of his personal planes as it landed in Greece and they assumed now is our chance to snatch this [ __ ] Belgian British Commandos Greek authorities and a few others all teamed up to raid This Plane only to find it completely empty other than the pilots despite the belgians and the British operating an official encrypted channels only someone somewhere had TI boot off it's suspected that the United States or at least elements within the US government warned him by the time they raided the plane he was already in Moscow after this there is wall toall international news coverage about him as well so like he's now a complete public figure and the US no it's it's easy to think of what this trade could be right only a few months before he's actively helping the US war effort now suddenly he's able to know about encrypted British intelligence Communications yeah I mean I will say this is all alleged as all sides deny that this is exactly what took place but it's the only [ __ ] situation that makes sense yeah I mean because well there's got to have been something this got out one way or the other so it's like the people who read it who were read onto it would been the only ones who would have known so like and boot's not stupid he knew he was working with the US government he doesn't need money he's never worked with the US government up until this point at this capacity this officially he had to work for them for something more than money I mean he's too he's not a dumbass he's like I might need a favor uh now rather than lay low boot went public doing an interview on the radio claiming he was just a simple Russian businessman and this is just another classic example of anti-russian bias now this is pretty embarrassing for Russia Russia is a member of interpool and while his radio interview was on air the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said boot was not in Russia only to backtrack after they realized that he was actively talking on a Russian radio station like uh yeah he's in Russia but we don't think he's guilty so we're not going to arrest him on the interpole red notice then he kept going on every news channel in Russia doing the same thing over and over again I'm going to throw something in really quickly also for context you have to understand that in the early days of Putin being president and right beforehand like I'm not going to say that Russia was tied in with with NATO and with Western military and government stuff to like a huge extent but there were things happening in terms of cooperation that just simply would be Unthinkable now yeah we're actually about to go into that the US military did join exercises with the Russian military in 2000 like they when you think about the the Kosovo War there was like direct Conta military stuff going on coordination Etc like it was just a different era than it is now and so there's this it's interesting because like Russia was sort of like there was this kind of veneer of oh no we are member of the International Community now is actually more closely tied to the global war on terror because in case you don't remember in the early 2000s Russia and the US had kind of become close over the concept of anti-terrorism the US was balls deep in the global war in Terror at this point and Russia was similarly balls deep in the second chin War which they quickly flipped around and said it was an anti-terror operation part of the Us's global war on terror Russia actually offered to send troops to Afghanistan in 2001 now for obvious reasons the US said no this might not be a welcome move but they did offer it's also another thing that we could connect the dots here is why the US is involved and could possibly be the one that kind of gave boot the heads up is that Russia in the United States is becoming much closer as boot is actively working with the United States so the US suddenly turns a blind eye and then possibly tips him off while simultaneously getting close to Russia all while boot is almost certainly still working with the Russian state so it's not much of a stretch to feel like this is like a three-sided favor yeah he's kind of do he's doing Matchmaker [ __ ] yeah he's setting the US and Russia up on a blind day for go to a cafe to make awkward Small Talk well you know George Bush did say that he met Vladimir Putin and felt like he could see into his soul and that he was a a good person underneath so maybe that meat he got lost in his eyes the Putin bush meat cute was a Victor boot Arrangement it was like dinner date me boot once again Victor boot is living in a slice of Life anime a Victor boot isekai I've gotten boot to another universe so despite there being a un flag on his travel and an Interpol arrest warn out for him boot shipments of weapons into Africa did not even slow down his operations in Sudan and Libya only expanded as they were safe havens and there were even reports that Taliban operatives who obviously under heavy pressure from the United States military were trying to get their things that they thought they might need later out of Afghanistan cuz they knew they weren't going to withstand a full sale American Invasion they're moving stock PS of money precious metal and drugs into Pakistan by way of boots planes from there coincidentally those all those things that they just moved to Pakistan were moved to Sudan and Libya yep two places where boot had a foothold boot was not in Pakistan but he was heavily in Sudan and Libya all while the US put every one else that had been working on the boot investigation on other projects so Taliban Affiliated people ministers government people they have to fly to Pakistan I wonder if there were any Kandahar or Cobble flights to a little town called abadabad just spitballing hey who knows then the US invades Iraq you all know where this is going through a combination of looking the other way and just straight up not caring as long as cargo flights delivered what they thought they needed that meant that boot was soon making cash hand over fist Contracting and subcontracting for the vast networks of private company vultures that the US had hired in order to build a logistical system in Iraq and as people worked there said boots Pilots were their favorite Pilots quote as long as they got paid they would fly it's weird to think of Victor boot as like a single node of across like 20 25 years of like is he the most responsible for violence in the world for 25 years he's the violence is middleman yeah yeah like how much death has been facilitated almost directly by Victor Boot and is there literally any single single person in the world that could even compare to it aside from like talking like genas Khan It's hard to quantify how much damage he did that's why everybody says it's kind of like hyperbole to say that his nickname Merchant of death yeah but like I think it fits yeah like these Pilots were [ __ ] Fearless also very drunk machine guns rockets and shitty runways it didn't matter several of the Russian Crews crashed their plane jumped out and got into a different plane they did not give a [ __ ] and immediately the rest of the world who was trying to track boot down and you know possibly arrest him turned to the US and was like guys what the [ __ ] like he he's sitting under a pile of sanctions he's on a un Black List and has an interpo red warrant like and the US did any knowledge of working with boot in Iraq despite everyone absolutely knowing he was and they just kept going in fact he was such a prolific subcontractor that if you were an American soldier in Iraq between 2003 and 2004 and received a package or a letter from home there is a near 100% chance that Victor boot delivered it because he was the main contractor for all civilian American mail services into the country what's interesting about that for me is that when people who were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan received mail it was put through the military postal system and the initial destination was Germany and so that implies that at some point in the logistics chain getting there it went from whatever chartered carriers cargo whatever they had you know leaving sorting facilities in Germany into you know a shitty Antonov that then got to Baghdad or to mosul or to Creet or any of these places where you had large US bases that's pretty much what happened yeah so I mean it's also like the US had lots of military and also industry capacity it's just so strange that they were like no we're just going to go with this guy yeah I know I said it in the last episode but getting served your divorce papers 8,000 Miles Away by Victor boot yep that oh that definitely happened more it once The Merchant of death but The Merchant of divorce it was only after a journalist broke the story that the US was working with boot that the US military said that they would stop doing business with him however they were in so deep with him and his countless companies they actually did not know how many contracts they had with boot directly or indirectly one journalist described the Department of Defense Reliance on boot companies as quote comically helpless I mean how on Earth can you take the high ground and criticize a Navy Admiral for getting a hand job supplied to him by fat Leonard when this was happening fat Victor yeah that that guy in Texas just working absolute overtime I mean yeah right he probably ran out of normal sounding companies and had to register fat Leonard hand job LLC that was one of Victor boot's companies I meanwhile like years later the fat Leonard Scandal unfolds in fat Leonard's like actually that one's not that wasn't me that was just word association Hey listen if we if we ever have to register a branch of this podcast in the UK I'm calling it fat leard hand jobs LLC I have to believe that the guy had like word uh title generators or what whatever he is like a Victor boot shell company name generator he randomize on it's just like a group of guys like sitting around a table and it's like in Mad Men they like oh we need to come up with more names no we already did that I mean he was using the same one as the spam generators in the mid 2000s where you'd get an email from a guy named like pallets vasectomy or something like that a deep investigation into this entire Fiasco led to a discovery of two things malice and incompetence the Government Contracting agency in charge of this whole thing continued to contract out to boot companies because previous black lists only apply to previously named companies added to the list and since boot constantly changed the names of his companies he rendered the list effectively useless fat leard hand job 2 LLC he's doing it with two hands now he's going over under like a reverse grip sword any actual information about boot you know Flags warrants all that [ __ ] just wasn't shared with them by the Intel Community either on purpose or on acc look I have an auditor and he's confirmed with me that the Providence of twoand grip like guts from berserk hand job LLC is a completely legitimate company and is not involved with drugs and arms trafficking gripping the dick like the Dragon Blade a member of like the GAO sitting in front of like a congressional subcommittee reading off like yeah yes um Mr Speaker I uh am investigating berserk upside down hand job LLC Vincent butt Airlines and and we are totally not trafficking drugs and or weapons into Africa lol l LLC yeah and the European affiliate cream team gorilla grip essay I mean like to be fair Victor boot was the original fake toxy like a Ukrainian and Russian pilot climb aboard the [ __ ] like the there's cameras everywhere like you guys like to make 500 EUR Victor Bo just turns around don't make me come back there and slap your Tates I mean I I feel like there's an extent to which like we always Envision the pilots as being like Lou dissolute Russian drunkards and they probably were but like I don't necessarily know if these guys were going to be as much of like the kind of Euro perverts like I once recently saw a guy driving a huge Amazon truck late at night and he had like lace curtain stuff in an Eastern European style and a crucifix and a minions doll is the most polish man to ever exist like I genuinely could imagine that boots people were probably not they weren't fat Leonard you know they weren't it was they weren't Playboys it was just like a a [ __ ] like plane being piloted almost into the ground on on a Runway near Dar for I just like this is my minion it's my good look charm it's Kevin you know Kevin from Despicable Me is my favorite I like I really like uh the the gro I like when they say banana you're you're you're trying to land a sea plane on lake kevu and you realize the suction cup on your Cars 2 Plush Doll is starting to come undone in the cockpit Al because of the compartmentalization of virtually every bit of information about him within all of the governments specifically the US government uh like it just meant just because someone was under investigation Blacklist you know had an interpool warrant out for him did not mean the department granting the contracts knew about any of it and even if they did they used a completely separate Blacklist from say the FBI the CIA or anyone else boot wasn't even the only person under investigation that the dod did business with either and a caring or B just not bothering to look into them mhm as one person within the Department of State said quote we did everything we could to save the dood from itself we failed well so one of the scandals that I think that people don't talk about as much is that obviously with the unpopularity of the Iraq War and like the long the longer than planned duration which I mean like that's incompetence and Malice allinone yeah is that in the initial invasion of Iraq the US activated not just tons and tons of active duty uh units you know deployed them but rather activated National Guard and lots of Army Reserve units and so a lot of the logistic stuff the Army would perform everything from mail hauling and sorting laundry cooking all that stuff the reserves have more tightly controlled limits on how long they can be deployed without certain kind of congressional things whereas like State National Guard less so and you heard Story horror stories from the early part of the war of National Guard units being there for like 18 months for example but when that shortfall began to be apparent in early' 04 that's when they're just like contracted to every shady [ __ ] yeah if you have an LLC and like a plan of action in a contract You' get it sign and in the case with boot it's like it's not just a sort of like you know Daring Do and trying to subcontract other people's planes he owns the planes yeah he's got the pilots he's got all these contacts in places that like they're going to need to go to go off radar to bring this [ __ ] in what's really interesting here is this is now becoming public information that the US is working with them and they need to divert attention from this this is bad PR so the US supported actions to freeze his assets both inside and outside the United States but made sure to only cite his business deals with Charles Taylor as the reason for it rather than anything else they also raid the businessman in Texas a guy named Richard cotley who was working at Richardson Texas they raid that office and arrested Richard and they flagged Boot and his company as an international supporter of Terror meaning doing business with him for any reason would Mark you for prosecution so once again if you would hit the spliff 30 minutes and said it's like the dod are all terrorists man like you were correct the stoner guy who thinks that the Mayans had satellite Communications was we the sober realists were wrong so about that so the US Army Central Command asked for a waiver so they could continue doing business with Boot and several of his companies it was approved without question I love having the war crimes waiver I love having the like what does that waiver even look like yeah we know that he's wanted in literally every interpo country in the world to include our own but like sign here please like listen God damn my soldiers need their busy pop yeah my soldiers need their I don't know illegal two now illegal 2004 trucker pills they need issues of the worst versions of Maxim magazine they need to know about new Ryan Reynolds movies they need logs of Copenhagen dip get it to them or the war is going to be more of a [ __ ] show than it already is these contracts remained in forc until 2005 and boot owned planes continued their operations into Iraq and Afghanistan supporting the global war on terror while legally being an internationally wanted terrorists and after all of this was over the US and various European countries once again decided okay let's make an attempt to arrest boot again as he traveled because he was freely traveling under one of his various passports remember he had five all of them are Russian all of them with variance of his own name though he made sure to go to countries that wouldn't risk a blow up with the Russians if they tried to arrest him on the interpool warrant but people were still hunting for him and he had a daughter living in Spain at the time and he planned to go there for her birthday once the Brits the Dutch and the belgians learned about this they set up an operation to snatch his ass this was all derailed due to the Madrid train bombings the bombings happened the day before he was set to go to Madrid so he canceled his flight and ruined the plan he didn't get to get any cettas ibero hamon yeah Victor boot he just that flown to him it's fine he and not Ben larner could have been leaving the Atocha station on his train to go see his daughter and get snatched up by every single weird named European commando but it didn't happen after this the world was paying more and more attention to him which isn't great if you happen to work in the black white and gray markets all simultaneously but that didn't mean he had stopped doing his life's work rather than it just meant his clients got well more like farc and the Talib B unless like the US government and the UN like they had been that being said there seemed to have been a bit of a civil war within the Intel and law enforcement agencies of the world regarding actually going after him in Earnest because there's a wealth of evidence to suggest that the ATF da and the FBI wanted to arrest boot but the CIA absolutely did not and actively discouraged their efforts by not sharing what they knew about his operations furthermore there's people within the atda FBI and US government who also do not want people to go after him this effectively made it impossible all of the bad things that happened in the mid to late 20th century and the start of the 21st century is directly the consequence of the existence of the Bush lineage and a guy traveling to Spain on a fake Russian passport that probably said balonus gukovsky or something like that he very narrowly avoided being arrested by a guy called ignasio def fascism in the world's tightest like Bay shirt imagine the conspiracy theories that would have popped up if boot was killed in the Madrid train bombings man I mean I was just laughing to myself that like they have all like the G and like the [ __ ] whatever the direct action group for MI6 is and like the us all their da people for from [ __ ] various agencies but they have to let the police see a nasal guy actually do the arresting so yeah like like you said like a guy named Nan who's got like [ __ ] the gayest tight basically cut off Polo shirt with huge biceps it's just like I have come to arrest you Victor boot you're done or it would be him arguing with a guy from a guardi S like about like whose responsibility it is to arrest him and then he just gets away he casually walks away it's just the sound of like very loud Spanish arguing and then Victor's like all right are you guys done I'll the old dusty trail yeah she's like I'm going to go just have a cigar if you guys don't mind this might shock some people more than others I suppose but having a guy like boot willing able to deliver a plain load of guns and bombs to literally anyone on Earth as long as a check cleared was a hell of a boon to an agency like the CIA or the DEA or the ATF or the FBI or even elements of the US government who really like to do that with frequency and this isn't to say that he was the only gun runner on the ca's payroll he absolutely is not and I'm not saying he was he was hardly the only one there is a lot but none of them were as good as he was a lot of them were just like random frat guys from Texas or from other places in America who just sort of like got because of like the famous Uncle Nexus just got read on to the fact that the US needed people who were willing to do this [ __ ] and he was just the best at it and the US wasn't alone in this however this is from a guardian article quote one European intelligence official who had worked on the long-running investigation of boot's activities in Africa was openly cynical that he'd ever be caught arrest boot nobody wants to even my own government eventually shuts us down there has been a decision to hassle him with sanctions to keep him in line but everybody needs him at some point or might need him plus he'd just be replaced by someone else that we don't have so they could be they could also be even worse as long as he stays quiet and remains useful he can do this indefinitely so over the years the importance of boot's capture just kind of faded away not only because of those reasons but they certainly did not help not to mention boot was not an idiot like we've pointed out a large part of his extensive network was an unknown number of people plugged into the global Intel Network in various different countries he could smell a rat from a mile away and he stayed away from deals that he thought might be traps but just because Intel agencies kind of sort of wanted him to be free didn't mean federal law enforcement agencies wouldn't have their own agenda boot dealt in a world of let's face it [ __ ] [ __ ] all trying to make money and stay out of prison so it didn't take long for one of his contracts a guy named Andrew smolan to fall into the fed's crosshairs wait wait wait Armenian spotted South African Armenian oh that's such a combo you know that smoked meat's hitting like the short shorts are like functionally useless because the leg hair forms a second pair of you're just describing me wearing shorts yeah it just becomes like a [ __ ] just basically like Lululemon leggings yeah once again just describing me wearing shorts at the live show Simoleon was a South African Armenian who had been an asset of the apart tied South African government as far back as the' 60s Simoleon eventually came into the orbit of boot due to having a like- minding business venture of you know being a dick he ran guns via shady and illegal cargo companies throughout Africa over the years they became close confidants who worked together frequently to arrange deals across the world however unlike boot simoan was kind of a [ __ ] idiot he was constantly bankrupt and running from debtors and you can imagine the kind of people he would own money to yeah not good meaning he wasn't so Discerning as boot was when it came to looking at Arms and you know taking them as long as the money was good enough and since he was a known member of boots orbit the feds assumed that he might be dumb enough to be used to get to boot so in 2007 agents the DEA posing as members of far contracted a Simoleon looking for a a rather large shipment of Russian surface to air missiles if this sounds kind of wild that the da is doing this and being the ones that track down boot well it was the da went rogue what they only told certain members of their own agency and even kept huge swats of the Department of Justice out of the loop for fear that they would kill their operation or worn boot ahead of time in case he wanted to slip away how many people were involved in this operation couple dozen I mean it does kind of make sense to that like they must have known that there some of this was compromised because [ __ ] kept getting to him time absolutely knew they assumed it was probably the FBI and the CIA but they just to be safe they actually used us they didn't do this illegally okay so a special unit was set up to run the operation through a legislation and guideline that was passed through you know War on Drugs type [ __ ] which allowed it to operate outside normal protocols that require us government-wide notification for fear of corruption so they use the government's own legislation and guidelines against them to go Rogue obviously the DEA went to Simoleon knowing he would have to go to boot for such an an arrangement and it's exactly what he did simoan met with boot in Moscow to pitch the deal and boot having worked at the farc before agreed and met with FEDS posing as farc members in multiple different places before finally hammering out the details of the deal do you reckon the DEA pulled out the Family Guy color chart it's like do you look dark enough to be a member of bark who we going to send I think they had a couple of like uh I think it was members of like the Colombian intelligence agency joined them on this one to be like extra cuz like boot was so smart that like he knew a lot about the farc he knew more about farc than the DEA certainly did yeah so like they needed like a Colombian guy to really like convince him do a little bit of selling the story if yeah missiles explosives and ammo in exchange for cash in drugs which is again a deal that boot had done multiple times before the kicker to this was that at the time the US had Pilots operating in Colombia along with the Colombian government to assist their anti-ar cardex operations the fake farc members made sure to point out to boot and smoon like we might use these against Americans boot kind of just like leaned back in his chair like I don't [ __ ] care yeah just [ __ ] take give me give me the cocaine and the money shut the [ __ ] up that meant he Victor boot emitted to a cop with a wire that he would sell them weapons that will be used to kill US military and law enforcement Personnel this is what the US needed to finally get him there we go they set up a meet in Bang talk Thailand in March 6 2008 and working with the Thai Royal police he was arrested after formally agreeing to the deal this is from the same Guardian article quote the da was laughing at the CAA in their offices because they had arrested someone that they perceived to be working for their agency they they they are clowning in this [ __ ] I mean I do feel like given how smug and like Yi Upper Crust CIA people are known to be it must be like if you're like Hank from Breaking Bad it must make you so happy to dunk on them before you have a panic attack in the elevator yeah there absolutely like stunting on them in the office hallways oh just like imagine how [ __ ] pissed the CIA was like what you did what he's like that's right [ __ ] I spent my entire career getting pissed on it Skull and Bones things to be able to run drugs into Iraq or out of Iraq or whatever the [ __ ] and now you're just going to come in here with drug enforcement soy affiliate what a agency I have no brain I'm cooked today boot was eventually exited to the US after after 2 years of fighting it and charged with a mountain of various crimes and this is true his representation was by a law firm headed by former US Attorney General John Ashcraft which was paid for by the Russian government you know how mad you must be if you were like one of the online bong vendors that John Ashcraft specifically designed a [ __ ] sting operation to send to jail in 2003 and then this happens but you may be Avenged by weed I'm just saying you may be Avenged by weed in the future he was found guilty in s to 25 years which is actually the legal minimum he could have very easily got life without I don't know and this is where the story would probably have ended boot would almost certainly have died in prison but then Russia invaded Ukraine and suddenly the US and Russia were back to Cold War political tactic of prisoner exchanges in 2022 Britney Griner and WNBA star who was playing in Russia at the time was arrested for leaving Russia while having a weed Vape in her luggage she was promptly sentenced to 9 years in prison during this time the US was already in talks with Russia to exchange boot for a different American prisoner a guy named Paul Wheeland who was certainly almost definitely certainly falsely imprisoned for spying there were other Russian citizens involved in this possible deal as well including one chin guy who assassinated a man in Germany he was like a kirovski who was a hitman for the government allegedly at first wheen and all these other guys were to be the swap for grinder but instead all of those were dropped a one for one trade grinder for boot which was accepted this is generally known in free agency as getting [ __ ] yeah like I said I'm happy Britney grinder is not in a Russian prison but I'm happy for the this deal could have been much more heavy on our end you know we need a new general manager behind the desk the longsuffering EAD shop operators from early 2000s internet American Commerce who went to jail for selling bongs because it was technically trafficking paraphernalia across state line and John Ashcraft put them in jail and then he went to bat for Victor boot but Victor boot got out because of a weed Vape so all I'm saying is not everyone really wins here not really anyone wins besides I mean Britney grinder because it's [ __ ] up what happened but those guys can at least be like [ __ ] you weed makes the world go round this teaches you a valuable lesson don't traffic weed traffic guns into War Z yeah if you if you if you traffic heroin and Co cocaine from the farc to buy other items if you basically run every bit of drugs that goes into Western Europe in in the '90s and 2000s you're okay yeah you're fine one weed Vape in Russia You Are An Enemy of the State definitely in some room somewhere where that deal happened Donald Trump's like it's a very bad deal guys terrible deal bad deal if they had read my book out of the deal he did say that absolutely said that I mean remember this is during the Biden Administration that this deal was made and he's like this is a very bad deal this is a very bad deal guys sleepy Joe bad deal bad deal I never thought I'd say these words but I agree you have Victor boot Prime free agent and you're trading a one forone deal for him absolutely not you could at least have gotten one of these other guys along with Griner for boot I kind of feel bad new general manager at the American sports team analogy I'm working in my head assuming that the guy you're describing was not in fact a spy like I feel kind of bad Paul wheelen was just kind of like a weirdo I don't think he there there's no like concrete evidence he was a spy but getting let out you were going to get let out and basically like you're like the guy walking out in Shaw Shank Redemption and then they zap you they blast you from the tower [ __ ] hit you with a sniper rifle and say it was a prison escape because actually we've got a trade for the weed Vape they didn't actually want Britney grinder back they just wanted that weed Vape so that c that we exactly that that was the only thing that would make his drug cocktails to saave off dementia work and so he has to hit the Dank on top of like all of the like the ultra Aderall they won't release to the market if you listen to Paul wheen he does kind of cuz there's been a few interviews with him since then he's like I was I was pretty much told I was being exchanged until I wasn't did he get out eventually no he's Paul wheen is still in Russian prison at the time of this recording but to like bring it back to the very start of the first episode it was like we had already established that there's a very strong chance that Victor Buu can dunk so in a way it was a one for one yeah well I just the only way to decide this is is Britney grinder and Victor boot have to meet up for a one-on-one like a andwood mixtape situ a yeah but knowing Victor boot it's going to wind up being in like the Central African Republic or like the deck I've made this whole basketball court out of landmines yeah I just also just the ball is a giant grenade the only way it could have been more like we've gone from all of these Zeitgeist political things like the you know the African World War you know the the second Congo War the first and second Congo War and the Rwandan Genocide and the break up of the Soviet Union and the second chin war and 9/11 and the Iraq War the only way it could be more zeitgeisty for 2022 is If Britney Griner had been arrested for performing an illegal Tik Tok dance in December of 2022 after 14 years in prison boot was released to Russia and in case you're wondering what he's doing now good news he's nuts he's going on podcast talking about how there's too many genders literally I know this I'm not I'm not spitballing I know it's true pretty much as soon as he hit the ground he went on Russian TV to talk about all of the genders in American society and why they're ruining everything one of these interviews is with Marina boua uh if that name is tickling the back of anybody's brain it's a woman who's previously arrested for spying and serving a year in federal prison after honeypotting pretty much the entire NRA a few years ago right I do remember that woman yeah that interview solid gold he claims that the US Federal defense attorney tanked his defense on purpose in court because he wouldn't have sex with her he says one of the hardest things about being in prison was not having access to to fresh garlic he Champions the attempted coup on January 6th because of course he does and says quote in America right now there is Reverse Racism to be a normal white person who wants a family who wants children who wants love is very difficult he learned a lot from prison apparently and quote imagine it American schools they're now teaching to first graders 6 or seven years old that there are 72 genders these are all direct quotes real piece of [ __ ] yeah let's all pretend to be surprised oh I do think the garlic one is really funny though I will say the rest is just dog [ __ ] rightwing if it was Dill I'd believe him Russians love Dill they do love D I love Dill it's fine the mayonnaise they give you was in Small packets you can't cover every inch of food with it it's a [ __ ] crime they serve me with my food on the first day I look at it and it's like where is the why is it not all in jelly no deal no potato 72 genders no potato because I'm actually from bellarus he also spends a lot of his time on this guy named Vladimir SLO off's TV show I don't know if you guys are aware of this man to make a very long story short he's like what if Alex Jones was Russian and also literally worked for the government mhm yeah SLO off also went on Alex Jones it's a different story entirely boot became a politician for the most batshit party in Russia the liberal Democratic party which is headed by a man named Leonid slitzky yep not important I just wanted to say his name formerly headed by Vladimir zanowski yeah that that guy then this is when boot came back into my radar because of our good friends over at the show knowledge fight in the beginning of June 2024 he appeared on a video chat on Infowars with Alex Jones the interview I have to admit is very funny because it seems boot's English skills have actually taken a serious nose dive and Alex Jones being perpetually on uppers and drunk seems to have a really hard time to un like understanding him he just constantly talks over him boot says something Jones is either not paying attention or doesn't understand him and just talks about something completely different mhm but I'm I'm surprised that like given how insane he went in prison like he's not hanging around like Alexander Dugan or anything like that I mean he might be to be fair probably like he's uh boots a massive fan of trump and Victor orbon and Vladimir Putin of course but I feel like he's kind of more the vibe that I've gotten from the stuff you've described in the kind of person that he is is that he's a more sort of like secular piece of [ __ ] rich guy as opposed to like weird Dugan ISM I don't actually believe that boot believes in any of the politics involved in the the ldp to be fair I think he's just doing it because that is his job now I mean the man has worked the Russian government whole time but like it was interesting in the sense that for the entirety of his operation never none of it ever really seemed to be directly politicized it was like Whoever has money I'll sell never political yeah and other than working for Russia yeah and like now he's kind of being radicalized in a different way don't think he I don't think he's radicalized I think he's just doing it because that's his job because I mean the ldp is pretty widely guarded as controlled opposition United this is kind of how you have to be to be a public figure in Russia to say this insane [ __ ] yeah and to kind of hit the nail on the head here during the the interview with Alex Jones Alex Jones says you know if I was Vladimir Putin I would hire you to do propaganda enthusiasm music to start playing Jones is a [ __ ] [ __ ] uh he doesn't that's exactly what's going on I mean like I said he had SLO off on his show before boot so it's like he's so dumb he doesn't realize it's exactly what's happening mhm and uh yeah he says that uh Trump and Putin were the only people defending the world from literal demons and Satan transgenderism and of course the resulting nuclear war that would come from it and that is what Victor boot is still doing at the time of recording that's the last update on I have on boot watch yeah we we'll keep an eye out in the same way that on uh lons up by robots we keep out for an eye out for G Gundam news which surprisingly happened after 30 years after the show come out so who knows yeah now we're just on boot watch forever yeah boot watch in America is Max boot saying something dumb online boot watch in Russia is whatever kind of new weird conspiracy theory Facebook mom thing that uh this guy is spouting off and I to me it's just it's sad because it's one of these things where like this man obviously facilitated so many horrible things for so long and it feels like whatever Reckoning happened and obviously he's free now in Russia there was no actual Reckoning even in so far as he was punished like it was never really accounted for because like it turns out that he was good at a thing that was useful to our you know disgusting unaccountable governments and particularly like the right-wing militaristic expansionist versions of them and it sucks it really sucks um because none of this had to happen and uh frankly it's like when you think about like I keep thinking about the kind of the cost when you think about drug addiction overdose deaths in Europe you know in all this time drug FL floating into central Africa as well yeah yeah a lot of that is I mean it's boots fingerprints all over and there's a very very good chance he's still doing it now I mean if you have if you think I mean of course everybody knows about the rise and fall of Vagner and progan but Vagner had an air arm yeah it's still functioning there are still Russian mercenaries operating in lots of areas outside of the battlefield of Ukraine in Africa boot's probably still doing it at some extent I mean it it's hard to believe that the Russians would argue for years to try to exchange him and then get him back and then not put him back in the game you know yeah that's true so fellas that is Victor Boot and we do a thing on this show called questions from the legion if You' like to ask us a question you can donate to the show on patreon at any level you can ask us a question on patreon or in our Discord Community where you would have access to once you support the show today's question is what is a silly non-essential item that you've held on to throughout all of your moves and changes in your life I studied abroad when I was 17 and I accidentally brought back a spoon from my uh host family I just accidentally packed it in my bag and I've kept that but I'd say the other one is more of a reminder to never get to ahead of yourself I still have my Steak and Shake apron from when I worked at Steak and Shake it still has my name badge on it it says Nate written with a label maker uh because I used to I computer broke my sophomore year of college and I had to buy a new one on a credit card and basically work while full-time student and doing ROTC to pay off the bill and every time I got my paycheck I'd go down to the ATM and I'd [ __ ] put it in my account that then would be used to pay off the credit card bill uh I worked 54 hours in one twoe period and made $275 so it Su it sucked really bad and uh I worked third shift but never got the extra dollar an hour I was supposed to cuz the the bastards that stake sh HR [ __ ] me and so I keep that I actually have it hanging on the fridge cuz it's just a reminder of like yeah just remember remember mine is I guess it's practical and also silly one specific coffee cup I got a coffee cup I did not reinlist in the Army to get this coffee cup cuz it's like you know you sometimes you reinlist they give you like a backpack or a coffee cup or from your unit but I I stole it from the retention NCO and this is back in 2006 and I've have had it with me it is in my apartment right now I bring it with me everywhere I go it's not because I have some specific loyal or this coffee cup means anything to me for some reason I've been moving so often that I very rarely actually accumulate anything like dishes or silverware and in a lot of places specifically in Armenia when you rent a place it's already full of dishes and Furniture so like but it would be all of the stuff that came with the apartment plus this one coffee cup and I just always make sure to bring it with me every time and it's still here it's a 16th Cavalry Regiment reenlistment cup I was like I was wondering is it going to be like it was one of the reenlistment cups to say like yeah like reinlist First Armor or was that you stole it from his office it was his personal one it said like happiness is your mom in my rearview mirror something like that the fake version of the AP cups they would always sell but like happiness is Fort Bliss in my rearview mirror or whatever yeah yeah it's just a shitty black coffee cup most the decals have faded off from repeated dishwasher use or whatever um for a long time I wasn't sentimental about a lot of things so like when I moved to the UK like I moved with 30 kilos of luggage and that was my entire life oh boy do I that feeling yeah and it's like when you kind of have to pack everything up and like move it to a different country and try and I suppose start again you're kind of like you really pair down the things that you have but I don't really have anything that I've kept for years aside from my original 2013 MacBook Pro that like I used to edit this show like two and a half years ago and it would like Nate no just it would like spin up and sound like it was about to explode when I was rendering stuff but um supposed to kind of flip it like I've become more sentimental now and anytime I go cuz I travel a lot for work and I try and pick up like little stuff like in cities like when I went to Prague after we went to the Holocaust Memorial Museum and Jewish uh graveyard I was uh waiting outside for someone and I just like walked into one of those like little knick-knack shops and I was just talking to the guy behind the uh counter and he was like oh where are you from and I was like oh I'm from Ireland I was like do you want to buy anything and I had no money and he just gave me this like little small terracotta Golem and he was like here just have that and I was like oh yeah and like it's still like I have a picture above my desk at home and it has like a ledge on the frame so I have like little Japanese like gacha Pond and I have that one little Golem that looks off me cuz you know I am the podcast Golem fair enough Nate has placed a scroll inside my head we carved you out of clay and made you into this to settle settle our our petty beefs and yeah protect us from the haters yeah and that is a podcast uh before we go on to plugs make sure to check out our show notes and get your Live show tickets we're going to be live in Belfast 26th of October in the OEM Music Center last night we had some Irish fans who flew to the ha to see the show and they're going to be there in Belfast and you know I wanted to give back because a lot of people don't come to Ireland or uh Northern Ireland to do shows so want to do our part and it's our big biggest show yet so buy tickets and also we will have a very Irish Centric t-shirt exclusively to Bell fast so there you go and you guys all host podcasts plug your other podcast um beneath the skin it's another history show it's about about tattoos but also not about tattoos um and glue factory a podcast that isn't about anything but is very very funny what a hell of a way to die a podcast about why you shouldn't join the military also what a hell of a way to dad cuz we're changing the name cuz we're dads and we boring trash future a podcast about why the tech industry is terrible kill James Bond a very very funny film criticism podcast this is the only podcast that I do so thanks for listening to it consider supporting us on patreon $5 a month gets you years and years of bonus content gets you every episode early gets you Discord access access to our wonderful little Community we've built gets you first dibs on Live show tickets and merch in case you've been trying to get stuff and are wondering why it's always selling out it's because patrons get first dibs and uh if you want a 2 to5 XL Fleet of the Damned or singr shirt we got big big shirts if you are a hefty person and like me you want to have a nice comfortable shirt while you listen and Nod sagely while listening to Crowbar at the time this comes out we'll probably be doing a fire sale on all the shirts or if you're Zumer who wants to go all baggy all the time when you have your sizes yeah get your 44 in waist jean means despite the fact you're like 58 and weigh £40 get the big t-shirt to match there you go dress in layers and with that and until next time smuggle weapons break sanctions get saved by a weed Vape