May 21, 2020 • 53 mins
Robert is joined again by Danl Goodman to continue to discuss Jack Idema.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the only podcast where
the host has spent the previous seven hours drunk and
staring at a box of five point five six tracer
ammunition and wondering if he could get away with starting
a fire in his front yard with it. Uh and
then deciding that no, he lives around too many people.
But I can't get the thought out of my Daniel,
(00:23):
how are you doing today? I'm great, I'm especially great
thinking about that moment, just especially in the dark, watching
those rounds fling through the air. It would be great,
It would be great, and I make everyone in my
neighborhood would enjoy it. But fucking cops man, that those
are loud rounds. So Daniel, Yes, sir Sophie, this is
(00:46):
an episode about Jack Edema part two. Now, when we
laughed our friend off, he had he had had a
pretty winding path And it's kind of hard for me
to summarize, just because there's so much that's weird about
this guy, like hims out the wazoo, out the wazoo
every now, and just enough credibility to some of them
to where it's like, what's going on? Is there something
(01:07):
I'm missing? Very hard to say that will continue, but
the scams get a lot bolder from here on out.
It's like he's snuck in the back door of so
many war scenes in there, like what the funk are
you doing here? And I was like, let yeah, yeah,
Like he really traded on the fact that he was
technically a Green Beret because people are like, well, I
guess he knows how to train cops. He was a
(01:29):
Green Beret. I guess he knows how to run a
counter terrorism school. He was a Green Beret. I guess
he can lead us into Afghanistan. He was a Green Beret,
and nobody like did the work to realize, like, oh,
all you did is a green Beret? Was like pack
parachutes anyway, it's cool. So the history of the modern
US Special Forces began on June ninety two at Fort Bragg,
(01:52):
North Carolina, with the establishment of the tenth Special Forces
Airborne Group. Now obviously, elite military operators had existed since
the Dawn of Time. Story the Trojan Horse is kind
of like the story of a of a special Ops raid. Basically, um, yeah,
it's it's kind of yeah, more or less, and elite
German airborne units in World War two, the Falschworm Yeager
(02:12):
pioneered many of what we would consider like modern special
forces strategies, But it was not until the Vietnam War
that's special operators in the modern sense of the word,
really burst onto the modern stage. So suddenly in Vietnam
you have and you know, these guys are actually doing
ship but they're also like showing up in the media,
these elite, heavily armed badasses with special skills carrying out
(02:34):
these unbelievable death defying missions. Um So like the movies
we get on there, like Rambo and Commando and fucking Predator,
like these are all right. When America, like kind of
in the wake of Vietnam, America started to really fall
in love with the idea of special forces guys because
it seems really romantic, like it's a job that's very
fit to to to make movies about. I actually had
(02:55):
an uncle who was a Green Beret in Vietnam, and
his job was basically to be alone in the jungle
trying to lead groups of envy A patrols into ambushes.
And it's like fucked him up for the rest of
his life. And it's not a cool story, um but
it made for good Uh, it made for good media stuff. Um.
And so journalists, obviously, as soon as stories about green
(03:16):
Berets and Navy seals start like hitting uh, the world,
like journalists who embed with soldiers start wanting to try
and embed these guys, which was not an easy thing
to do. US special Forces from the beginning have had
a very adversarial relationship with the media. They build themselves
as quiet professionals who were as exceptional in their discretion
as they were in their fighting ability. And that's all
(03:38):
died out now because the assassination of Osamba and Lauden
meant that you can make millions of dollars uh if
you were like a Special Forces guy who wrote a
book afterwards. Yeah. But back in the day, you weren't
supposed to talk about the ship you did in Special Forces,
and so journalists really couldn't get an angle on these guys.
And back in two thousand one, special Forces dudes were
(04:00):
still quiet professionals, and the idea that any of them
would speak directly to the media was nearly unthinkable. There
was only one journalist who actually had a shot at
getting that kind of story. Uh. He was the only
US journalist who ever had a real in depth in
bed with US Special Forces. Robin Moore now More was
the author of the book The Green Berets, which that
John Wayne movie that Jack Adema had loved as a
(04:21):
kid was based on. And in order to write The
Green Berets More, it had to do something no civilian
journalists had ever done. He went through Special Forces training
and qualification and like qualified as a Green Beret, and
because of his skills, he was allowed to travel with
the Green Berets and report on what they did. And
it's kind of debatable as to what he did is
(04:42):
whether or not what he did was even really journalism
because he took part in firefights and killed a shipload
of people. A lot of journalists will say you shouldn't
do what Robin Moore did, but it's fair to say
that he was a legend. We're gonna talk more about
him later. What matters right now is that the important
of Special Forces ramped up hugely during the start of
(05:02):
the War on Terror. These guys were the bulk of
the early effort in Afghanistan, and journalists were starving for
information about what spec ops guys were doing and seeing
as ed artists of Knightsbridge International told the Columbia Journalism
Review quote, the media were in a frenzy. They were
interviewing each other about what they'd interview someone else about
if they had someone to interview. So they're just like
(05:25):
desperate to talk to any of these guys, and none
of them will talk. And Jack Odema sees this feeding
frenzy and knew he had found the perfect grift because,
after all, he had technically been in Special Forces and
he was currently in Afghanistan, so why shouldn't he present
himself as an expert on what U S Special Forces
were doing in Afghanistan. So within a matter of weeks
(05:47):
of the invasion, Adema has managed to establish himself as
the mainstream media is leading expert on special Forces and
as one of its leading experts in Afghanistan. The Columbia
Journalism Review later noted quote he was read it as
an expert on all three networks, was a terrorist hunter
on Don Imus's radio show, a Northern Alliance advisor on
Fox News, and a key source for Merely Mapes and
(06:09):
Dan Rather in sixty minutes to the fact that he
is calling in from Afghanistan on the phone and had
once been in Special Forces is all the backup anybody does,
and they're like, yeah, fucking listen to whatever he has
to say. He was a special He was there in
January f twos in two US Special Forces cornered Osama
bin Laden for what they were absolutely sure was the
(06:31):
last time, spoilers they were It took about another decade.
Jack Adiema began shopping around a set of tapes at
the same time that held seven hours worth of videotaped
Al Qaeda training sessions. You've seen pieces of these tapes.
There's like a lot of like the guys going on
jungle gyms and running around with rifles and stuff. He
first sold stills from several of these tapes to a
(06:51):
number of media organizations, and a lot of them were
like scary images of terrorist commandos doing armed drills. Now,
once the skills had wetted everyone's appetite, Adema contracted the
William Morris PR Agency to auction off what he claimed
was the first ever US broadcast rights of like terrorist
training videos from al Qaeda that would like reveal what
al Qaeda was planning to do in the United States.
(07:14):
So he delivered letters to all of the may or
his PR agency delivered letters to all the major networks,
setting a minimum price of a hundred and fifty thousand
dollars in demanding that Jackadema be credited. When the tapes
were aired. Surprisingly, Fox said no, and so did NBC.
They were put off by the Yeah, they were put
They thought it was too expensive and there was also
(07:34):
there was no supporting evidence that these tapes actually showed
an al Qaeda training base. There were just guys with
guns running around, running around. Yeah. An NBC producer later recalled,
there was no way to verify them. It was either
you trust Keith Adema or you don't. CNN backed out too,
after their national security analyst did a cursory amount of
(07:55):
googling and discovered Keith ademonst criminal record in history of
suing everyone he's ever talked to. They were the only
network to blacklist him as a source as well as
turned down his offer. Now, some of the distrust of
Adema and his tapes came from the fact that he
seemed to have a different story about where they came
from for every news agency that asked. He told the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation that he bought the tapes from an
(08:17):
intelligence asset. After several back alley meetings. At midnight, he
told NBC's Today Show that he got them after he
filmed a group of Northern Alliance fighters taking over a
compound where the video was filmed. Adema then claimed to
have tracked down the camp's commander at home and hunted
down other al Qaeda recruits to find more footage. These
obvious lies fooled no one, no one that is besides
(08:39):
Dan Rather. Yeah, yeah, Dan Rather in sixty minutes fall
immediately and hard for Jackadema's tapes, and in fact, Rather
flies immediately to Afghanistan to interview Keith Adema and visit
the compound where the videos had been filmed. Yeah, it's
(09:00):
he just is immediately on board with this ship. I
am so down. The journalism school building at the college
that I went to but didn't go to journalism school
at was the Dan Rather School of journalism. And maybe
not the guy to take super details. I'm gonna quote
(09:26):
about the from the Columbia Journalism Review talking about this
particular grift at a time when workers were still sifting
through the nural wreckage of the World Trade Center, the
story reinforced the prevailing sense of Panic men in camouflage,
tunics and ski masks were shown storming buildings, staging drive
by shootings, and laying siege to golf courses. Sometimes the
men laughed as they rehearsed maneuvers, which Rather interpreted as
(09:48):
evidence that they approached their grim mission with glee. The
footage also contained numerous exchanges in English. A sign Rather
told viewers that they want to take scenes like this
to the West. Now. The reality is that these tapes
were absolutely a forgery made by Jack Adiemo, which is
why people were speaking in English. Yeah, gosh, good, disgracious,
(10:13):
Dan No, buddy, Yeah, that's that's really, that's really. That's
real bad. That's real bad, and you gotta do better. Yeah, well,
he spoilers for Dan Rather's career. He would not, he
would not, he would he would not. He would go
on to fall from more fake bullshit. Hell yeah, analysts, obviously,
(10:34):
I say they're obviously a forgery. It is impossible to
state that with a perfect degree of confidence one way
or the other, and you will. You can, in fact,
find a couple of different interpretations of these videos. But
it is worth noting that the tactics shown in the
tapes were not the sort actually used by Al Qaeda fighters.
The video depicted armed raids similar to the kind of
(10:55):
attacks ISIS would carry out years later in Europe. But
these are completely different from this sort of bombings that
all kind of actually engaged in at the time. Um put, simply,
all kinda never did anything even vaguely like what was
shown in these tapes. Like, it's just not the sort
of ship that they pulled off. And yeah, there were
other reasons to doubt the province of the tapes. The
(11:16):
place that Keith Adema said that he had rated to
capture them, the compound where these tapes were filmed, mere Bakt,
was under coalition control during the time that the tapes
were actually filmed, and had been thoroughly searched at the
time when Jack claims to have conducted the raid. Now again,
the reality of the situation was never conclusively determined one
way or the other, and Dan Rather's career didn't explode
(11:39):
for this particular funk up. But the almost certain reality
is that the videos were staged by Jack. He likely
found an old compound that had already been liberated by
the coalition and then hired a bunch of locals to
pretend to be terrorists. The Columbia Journalism Review talked to
a special retired Special operations officer with knowledge of the
CIA's investigation into the tapes, and this guy claims they
(11:59):
did a voice analysis us in a technical analysis. Not
only were they staged, but you could single Adema's voice
out directly. So the CIA, for its part, disputes having
done any kind of analysis. But the CIA is the CIA,
so I really don't give a ship what they say happened. Ever, uh,
they are the CIA. Now, it seems pretty safe to
(12:21):
conclude that these were bogus from the get go, whether
or not Jack Adema himself actually filmed them. But at
the time, this took off like gangbusters among a terrified
American public, and Dan Rather's big scoop helped to solidify
Jack Adema's reputation who was someone as someone who was
not a shameful fraud, and for a few months he
was the talk of the Cabul media set. According to
(12:43):
New York Magazine, he boasted a war correspondence about the
many Al Qaeda suspects he had apprehended and embroidered his
bad his banter with tales of special Forces daring in
Central America, and it was more than just his speech
that was growing too colorful for its own good. One
heated argument over war coverage at a party ended with
a Dimas firing a pistol at a Dalla Morning News
correspondent Todd Robertson and barely missing his left arm when yeah,
(13:06):
he gets drunken shoots shoots at the Dallas Morning news man.
Many reporters began to regard a demon as a fraud
in a menace. Still, he was quoted in many major
newspapers as a Special Forces operative or a Green Beret.
On a representation from the photo agency Polaris. A Dimas
sold the footage to sixty minutes too for an undisclosed fee,
(13:29):
and the rest of the press corps, including NBC's Dateline
in the Today Show scooped up the sensational footage in
the networks wake. So that's great now. In December of
two thousand two, remember that guy Robin Moore who like
literally became a Green Beret and killed people with the
Green Berets and then wrote a book about him. That journalist, Well,
he shows up in Afghanistan in December of two thousand two,
(13:50):
h Now he was no longer the young, fit warrior
who battled alongside US forces in Vietnam. More was in
his seventies, racked with Parkinson's disease and reliant to pon
a cane to get around. So he's not not in
great shape. Still, Clearly, whatever else you can say about him,
U a frightening badass to like, go wander on alone
in Afghanistan in your seventies and two thousand two is
(14:12):
a it's a tough guy. That's pretty hard. Yeah, that's
pretty hard. Now. He had a goal of publishing the
first on the ground memoir from the war in Afghanistan,
and it would be a book about the hunt for
Osama bin Laden. When Jack first heard that the author
of the book that had become his favorite movie was
in Afghanistan, he knew he had to find him, and
tracking down More was not difficult. There were not a
(14:35):
whole lot of old white dudes wandering around the country
in the wake of US Special Forces. Once there, Jack
plied More with the same story he'd successfully used on
many journalists, already putting himself forward as an ideal source
for Moore's next book. This line of bullshit worked because
Jack just seems to have had some sort of ability
to like not all or even most journalists, but there
were there are these guys like Skirka before him and
(14:57):
now Robin Moore that just like fall in love with
a line of ship that Jack is pushing. And soon
the two men were collaborating, collaborating together on a book
titled The Hunt for Bin Laden. Now, crucially, while they
were in Afghanistan, More In Adema spent almost no time together,
and this is because More was still widely respected by
US Special Forces dudes, and they gave him real access,
(15:19):
and for obvious reasons, Jackodema did not want to get
anywhere clear near US Special Forces in Afghanistan, not a
good idea, So they didn't really start to collaborate until
uh they got home to the United States in later
that year. Jack had to head back after his mother died,
and this is where he and Robin Moore would go
(15:40):
on to have the bulk of their contact. So More
was back in his States by the end of that year,
trying to bang out his notes and interviews from Afghanistan
into a book that people would want to read. Adema
offered himself up for additional background information and soon more
was listening with bated breath. Well, Jack Adiema just lied
to him. This random paragraph from the book they wrote
together gives you an idea of what sort of stuff
(16:02):
Jack was telling him. And again this is one paragraph.
Oh yes. In January, Jack uncovered an al Qaita plot
to kill President Clinton and march. Standing in the middle
of a Kabul street. Armed with a Russian assault rifle
and six hundred rounds of ammunition, Jack held off Islamic
fundamentalists for four hours as they tried to take eighteen
four in citizens hostage, keeping them at bay until Engineer
(16:24):
Ali and the Northern Alliance arrived to back him up.
By the end of March, Oh yeah, that's a character
right there. By the end of March, Jack was in
a Northern Alliance helicopter on his way to the Nachman
earthquake with the Associated Press photograph the lone American rescuing
a little girl. She wasn't the first child he would
save or the last. I'm gonna tell you right now,
Jack Ademon never saved goddamn kid. He definitely posed with
(16:47):
some sick and injured children, but I think he saved
them in the same way he saved his friend with
the leg injury. Yeah. Now, for his part, Robin Moore
said that Jack's stories check doubt very well when he
tried to verify them, and this is almost certainly a lie,
as Mary Anne Strong, Moore's agent at the time, claims
that Robin Moore's actual experiences in Afghanistan were just too
(17:10):
dull to make a good book. Basically, he was too
old to find anything cool, So he came back home
like kind of bummed out, with like a few interviews
that were not that exciting and no stories of actual
daring do because he's seventy and had Parkinson's. So Jack
comes along and it's like, I can spice up this
fucking book for you. Many Strong, He's like, let me
(17:30):
add some con to that ship. Also, Yeah, Moore's agent
later claimed Jack came along and rewrote the entire thing.
He came up with terribly exciting, excellent copy. Now, she
claimed that More himself only wrote a few pages of
the book in the end, and the resulting product was
one of the most ridiculous pieces of FOE journalism in
the entire history of the War on Terror, which is
(17:52):
a fucking achievement. The cover of the book features a
shirtless Jack Adimo wielding an a K forties Yeah Baby Now.
New York Magazine goes into more detail about precisely how
bad this book was. It asserts out right that a
demon was the only Green Beret gathering intelligence on the ground,
(18:13):
and a dema routinely storms the center of the book's
action to perform herobic feats of bravery. It is as
though given the chance to influence a Robin Moore book,
Adema had to cast himself in the twenty one century
sequel to The Green Berets. So he basically finds the
author of the book that became his favorite movie and
turns himself into a character in that book, clearly in
(18:34):
the hope that a movie will get made about him,
which honestly kind of rules a little bit. I mean, yeah,
I want to see this movie. It'll be it'll undoubtedly
have like Danny McBride, or like Danny McBride would be
the right guy to play Jack Adeem a whole ship. Yeah, yeah,
completely overly confident, which is everybody looking around. It would
almost be like a Tommy Boy thing, where you know,
(18:55):
you have the Chris Farley character and then David's bade
trying to clean up the mess that's following him. I
think actually the right way to play this is to
just have Daniel McBride do his character from Eastbound and Down.
This guy who was just has this completely divorced from reality, beliefs,
beliefs about himself, um, just rolling through Afghanistan and somehow
not dying but getting a lot of people killed. Yeah,
(19:19):
I think we should go to an ad break because
you know what won't convince an elderly ailing legend of
war reporting what the products and services in this None
of them will trick a sick old man into writing
a fake book about how you shirtlessly fought the Taliban.
That is a guarantee. We make fucking talk space not
(19:41):
going to do that. Not, no, sir, No sir. We're
back and we are talking about Jack Edema. So it's
a great book. U. Jack Edema cons this guy to write,
(20:02):
and the book was a hit among an American public
hungry for stories of military glory after September eleven. Yeah,
people eat this ship up. It quickly climbed to a
respectable place on the New York Times bestseller list, and
although it never made its way up to number one.
It's sold very very well now, Since more the ostensible
author was elderly and in poor health, the responsibility for
(20:23):
shamelessly plugging the book landed on Jack Edema. He was
only too happy to hang out in bookstores doing readings
from chapters he'd written about things he absolutely did not do.
During numerous media appearances, he even gave direct advice to
the Pentagon, making statements like we in Special Forces have
been lobbying for a lighter, faster army, but General Tommy
(20:44):
Frank's isn't listening. Is It's great? That's I mean, I'm
loving it. Just catch catch him at book soup. That's
where I'm trying to see him. It's kind of ironic
because like there are so many Special Forces grifts around
the day, like today, like about a third of the
people who wind up becoming Special Forces operators do it
to like cash in on some book as soon as
(21:04):
they get out. Um. But the only kind of Special
Forces griff that wouldn't work today is like what Jack
Adema is doing, because there's now so many of these
guys in the media who would be like, now this
this dude's just lying like he was never never did anything. Yeah,
has never seen goodness, I mean nothing, not a thing. Ye,
well anywhere. Like any great grifter, Jackodema succeeds during the
(21:26):
only period in history in which he could have possibly succeeded. Yes, exactly.
The Hunt Forbidden Lauden elevated Adma to a national figure,
just in time for him to weigh in on the
most critical political issue of the day, the invasion of Iraq.
Since he had been the subject of the first memoir
of the war in Afghanistan, TV news booking agents saw
(21:46):
him as an ideal get as they discussed whether or
not going to war with Iraq was a good idea
and I'm gonna quote from a rolling stone right up here.
A Deema's career as a media personality reached its peak
during the final breathless weeks of the run up to
the war in Iraq. Much of the information he provided
during that period echoed the Bush administration's hotly contested rationale
for a war. He told in MSNBC that the link
(22:06):
between Iraq and Al Qaida was common knowledge on the
ground in Afghanistan, and claimed in an interview with w
n y C radio's Leonard Lopate that Iraq has been
involved in supporting al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations with money,
with equipment, with technology, and with weapons of mass destruction.
He told other white eyed journalists that there was ample
evidence linking Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia to
(22:29):
al Qaeda into the attacks on September eleven. You know
famed allies Iraq and Iran for sure. If there's one
thing you can't stop Iran from doing, it is collaborating
closely with Saudi Arabia and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. There's nothing
Iran loves more than working with those specific two groups
of love it. Uh boy so Adima professed to have
(22:52):
firsthand knowledge of nuclear weapons being smuggled from Russia and
to all to all three members of the Access of
Evil Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. Few in the media
questioned Adema's claims, much to the alarm of some of
those who know him. The media saw this outfitted, gregarious,
apparently knowing guy, and they didn't checking out, said an artist,
chairman and founder of the humanitarian organization Knightsbridge International. Uh
(23:14):
They ran story after story that further the cache of
a self serving self aggrandizing criminal and that's totally accurate. Yeah,
that is accurate. Yeah, But the sales of his book
were good, but reviewers did not like it. In fact,
it was pretty much universally panned, and journalists who did
look into it repeatedly questioned the veracity of claims. Like
(23:35):
Jack Edema fought the entire Afghan War on his own,
the sheer volume of doubt seems to have cracked through
whatever brainwashing Adema managed to carry out on Robin Moore.
Moore began to demanding from his publisher that a revised
edition of the book be published, with Special Forces officers
reviewing and correcting Adema's lies. Random House his His publisher
refused these changes, and when Jack Adema learned that Moore
(23:57):
was trying to write him out of the book, he
issued a press release filed yet another lawsuit. He started
claiming that a secret cabal of Special Forces soldiers has
as symboled to take him down because they were jealous
of Jack Adama. Jack also filed lawsuits against night Bridge
and Partners Internationals, the two groups providing aid in Afghanistan,
because he was certain that they were a part of
all this. His main claim to having suffered damages came
(24:20):
from the fact that Fox News dropped him as a
regular commenter. True to form, Jack also sued Fox News.
These suits were all tossed out of court. But yeah,
just keep suing. Just always be suing, baby. That is
a huge part of being a really good grifter is
just keeps on suing everyone you can, Sophie, who are
(24:42):
we suing right now? Uh? Cody Johnston. It sounds like
a good idea. Yeah, let's throw some lawsuits out to Cody.
Get on that. So the book sales were good in
spite of the controversy. So Jack decided to form a
promotional company, the Hunt Forbid law An LLC, with a
handful of business partners. I have to give him credit.
(25:07):
That's easily the best name for an LLC that anyone's
come up. That's I kind of want to start. If
that's defunct, now, I want to make that myle LLC
and just do something else with it. Like, clearly it's
clearly not more than the number of characters in The
Hunt Ribbon Ladon LLC, which, like, I want to start
(25:31):
an LLC dedicated to like feeding the homeless, but just
call it that and that we could be like when
the police shut us down. The cops are trying to
stop the hunt for Bin Laden. Man, have you forgotten
where we all were on nine eleven? There's there's potential
in this. So Jack adeemons the Hunt for Bin Lawdon
llc uh. The goal of this company was ostensibly to
(25:52):
raise funds for a US count for US Counter Terrorist Group,
which was a training camp that Jack had founded an
upstate New York to quote helped the Northern Alliance and
to fight al Qaeda. This was almost certainly a grift,
but as the weeks went by and Jack battled increasing
questions about his legitimacy, his colleagues watched his behavior turner
(26:13):
ratic and dangerous. According to New York Magazine, one of
Jack's business partners eventually testified during the inevitable lawsuit over
the Hunt forbid Lauden llc. That Jack quote destroyed the
interior of his own house with a samurai sword, that
he choked his girlfriend in a fight, that he forged
a letter on Fox News stationary for uses evidence and
his lawsuit against the network. A lawsuit from the U.
(26:34):
S Attorney's Office also arrived, followed by a letter from
North Carolina's postal inspector, charging a demon with mail fraud
for using a post office box registered to the company
to solicit funds for US counter terrorist Group. Thompson said
that after he noticed eighteen thousand from dollars from the
company had gone missing, he drove down to Fayetteville to
closed the company bank account. He says that Dema followed
him there and threatened to kill both him and his girlfriend.
(26:56):
More Jesus, he's awesome. When do the police step is
not almost never. They arrested that. He did get busted earlier,
but he goes right back to committing mail fraud. Totally murdering. No,
that was something else. He didn't murder anybody. He no,
I mean, he definitely murdered people, but no, he didn't
(27:18):
go to jail for that. He went to jail from
mayor fraud. Oh, that's right, it was just mail fraud.
That was the first. That was our first, our first
military exploratory fellow or whatever. Yeah, there's there's so many
grifts here it is hard to keep track of the
motherfucker's yeah and yeah. More. At the same time as
this was all going on, More learned that Edema had
(27:39):
ordered hundreds of copies of The Hunt for Bin Lawden
from Moore's account with Random House and then never paid
them for him. He just got the books and then
sold them by hand at full price. So just like
this mix of these incredibly bold grifts where he's like
tricking national news networks and stuff and selling thousands of
books and these petty fucking bullshit like it's incredible. Um,
(28:01):
he couldn't stop himself. So Jack continued to attack Robin
Moore Viya lawyer for months, throughing out lawsuits like Rice
at a wedding. He was only interrupted in his quest
to destroy the lives of the people who had been
his friends and colleagues due to his devotion to yet
another unbelievable grift in Afghanistan see. In two thousand four,
(28:22):
Jack returned to Kabul. He rented a house, telling the
landlord he planned to start a rug exporting business. I
shouldn't even need to tell you that this was a lie.
His real goal was to form a paramilitary unit named
Task Force Saber seven. Yeah, baby, He designed the uniforms
and patches himself. Their goal was to hunt Al Qaeda.
(28:43):
He brought along a former soldier, Brent Bennett and a
veteran TV cameraman named Eddie Caraballo to help him and
document his adventures. They hired several Afghan fighters and started
kidnapping and interrogating Afghan citizens at random. Um so pretty
good grift, Daniel, that I mean this this UH people
(29:06):
were really really gullible. You could get away with anything
at this period of time. It was amazing being confident
in speaking confidently and just doing the things you say
you're gonna do. People are just letting it happen. That's
just really wild. I'm impressed and horrified. But yeah, it's
it's pretty great. And you know what else is great, Danial?
(29:29):
And you know what doesn't kidnap and torture random citizens
of UH? Do products and services not do that? Sometimes
they not ours, Danial. Every product advertised on this show
carries the official behind the bastards have not kidnapped and
tortured any Afghan citizens seal of approval. That is the
(29:53):
only guarantee we make of our products and services, and
we do not make guarantees about other countries. But we
will prom message no one in Afghanistan tortured by the
sponsors of this show. We're back uh, So, Daniel, this
(30:14):
story of Task Force Saber seven is fucking difficult for
me to parse out. So I say he's kidnapping random
Afghan citizens, and that seems to have been true a
lot of the time, But it also doesn't necessarily seem
to have been true all of the time, because on
at least three occasions, NATO troops helped Edema carry out
raids and NATO went on to arrest at least one
(30:35):
of the suspects that Task Force Saber seven took in,
and there's also some evidence that he some he or
his men may have helped stop assassination attempts on ALFA
Afghan political leaders. But also almost all of the people
that they actually handed over to NATO were later released
for lack of evidence to convict them. And it is
(30:55):
entirely possible that all of the Afghan political leaders who
claimed that Edema and his men saved them or carried
out gave them intelligence that was useful. We're just bribed.
Because we're talking about the government of Afghanistan in two
thousand and three and four. They're trying to they're trying
to cause disturbance as much as anybody else. So it's
just like you'll take your money and say some dumb
ship to make people confused. Perfect. Yeah, it does seem
(31:19):
fair to say that there were people within NATO, in
people within the Department of Defense who treated Task Force
Saber seven as a legitimate, uh non governmental military contractor
in country for a pretty brief period of time. But
it did happen. And you can either say it's because
they were actually finally doing good work, or yeah, just
(31:39):
because it's easy to trick the fucking government in Afghanistan
of a ton of bullshit, Like there's a hundred billion
dollars worth of hospitals that got built by government contractors
in Afghanistan and aren't hospitals, so fucking it's easy to
get away with griffs in Afghanistan. Um. Now, while all
this was going on, nights Bridge and Partners International, these
(32:00):
two veteran own charities, continued to desperately try to warn
the CIA and the Defense Department and everyone that would
listen that Jack Edema was a dangerously incompetent con man,
but no one listened to them until April two thousand four,
when Adema made the error of emailing several of his
friends back in the United States and update on the
progress of Task Force Sabers seven. This email included pictures
(32:23):
of Jack Adema and his men torturing civilians. At least
one of the people Jack emailed ahead, Yeah, light torture, Daniel,
Oh God, light torture, Okay, barely even torture under most
international treaties. I'm nervous, So at least one of the
people that Jack emailed had a soul and forwarded the
(32:45):
emails to the Department of Defense. Warrants were issued for
Jack's arrest in Kabul, and he was eventually busted on
July five by Afghan police forces. New York Magazine notes
when Afghan police had arrested the trio on July five,
they said they had a They said they saw a
mini a small our scale version of the gruesome prisoner
abuse photos from the Bagdad interrogation cells in Abu Grabe.
Early press photos indicated that three prisoners found in a
(33:07):
demon's custody during the raid were blindfolded and beaten, and
then strapped to the ceiling by their feet. Five others
were tied to chairs with rope in the small dark
room down a hall that was littered with bloodied clothing.
All of the prisoners in a Demon's custody were subsequently released.
None was shown to be connected to al Qaeda. I mean,
of course, yeah, of course, yes, of course, yeah, absolutely,
And like it's frustrating because you read like reporting from
(33:30):
the time from like when this all happened, by good
journalists and good reporters, and a lot of them will talk,
will like quote people who were in the Department of
Defense somewhere saying like, oh no, a demon did this,
or Task FORCEAB seven did that. And I can't say
again to a point of certainty that everything they did
was bullshit. But my gut is telling me that all
of those people who thought they did anything useful were
(33:52):
just taken in by the con because Jack Ademo was
a fucking con man, and it's easy to get away
with cons in Afghanistan. Yeah, that's my feeling. Maybe I
am wrong, but I'm not. Everybody likes sale, Everybody like everybody,
you know, even if they don't like to be taken,
they like to be sold something. And he was selling them. God,
(34:12):
yeah the worst. Now, at his trial in Kabul, Adema
did say something that I don't think is untrue. He
stated that he had been operating with the U. S
military's approval and consent, and it does seem that this
was at least part partly true. Yeah, exactly, because they're
they're not good at their jobs. Like that's the fun part. Look,
they said I could do it, and they all have
(34:33):
to sit on their hands and be like, I mean, like, yeah,
we kind of did, we did, we did again. I
don't want to be like Slandering better reporters than me,
because a lot of the guys who wrote about him,
like back into this in four are but they're so
confused by the fact that legitimate military people aren't uniform
about whether or not this guy as a con man.
And like, guys, the army's bad at its job, Like
(34:55):
the Defense Department's bad at its job. Look at how
the war in Afghanistan is. God, we're not. They're not
good at this. Yeah, they're not good at winning wars.
They make all sorts of dumb mistakes. Ask us, Ask
any veteran, ask a hundred percent of veterans. They make
(35:17):
shitty calls all the time, and this was one of them.
One video played during the trial showed a demon talking
with officials from US General William Boykin's office about an
impending attack he planned on a terrorist cell. Yeah, they
probably thought he was legitimate at some period of time,
or at least enough of them did that he was
able to get away with it for a while. Now,
what I can easily bust is Jack Ademos claimed that
(35:40):
he in Task for Savers Set Saber seven, never tortured anybody,
which is what he argued in Afghan court. But unfortunately
the judge who was trying their case was somebody that
Jack had abducted, arrested, and tortured. And this judge actually
testified at Jack's trial, which is since he was the judge,
I would call it best in unorthodox legal precedent. So
(36:03):
and again yeah, but also the judge was almost certainly Yeah,
and it's weird because like I have no trouble believing
this judge was like maybe doing ship with the Taliban,
maybe doing just other shady ship because he's a political
official in Afghanistan in two thousand four and they were
all on the fucking take. Um. Yeah, like yeah, there's
(36:25):
probably he's probably a sketchy said of a bit, but
like also Jack and his guys absolutely tortured this guy
and then he winds up trying their case just like you.
That's that's like the record scratch scenario you want. And
you're just standing at the table ready to see, and
then you see the guy's face, and one of the
(36:49):
dozens of guys I torture winds up being my judge.
What are the odds? Shoot? So here's a rolling Stone
quote from the trial where the judge gets up and
talks about his beerience. The judge then stood up in
mind out how somebody acting like James Bond a Dima,
of course, came into the house waving a weapon, shouting
hands up, hands up. Also taken into custody were two
(37:11):
of the judge's brothers, as well as four the relatives
and a family retainer. The eight prisoners would be discovered
by Afghan authorities when they later busted a Dima's jail.
The judge told me the first night, around midnight, I
heard the screams of four people. They then poured very
cold water on me. I tried to keep myself from
screaming but couldn't. Then they played loud, strange music. Then
they prevented me from going to the bathroom, a terrible situation.
(37:32):
I was hooded for twelve days Jesus Christ twelve. The
trial also brought up evidence that did seem somewhat exculpatory
for Jack and his men. US military authorities repeatedly admitted
under questioning that they had been aware of Jack's task force,
and some evidence emerged that Adema and his men may
have thwarted an assassination again attempt against the Afghan Education
(37:54):
minister Um. But again it's impossible to say what the
funk actually happened here, and this is made more complicated
by the fact that the FBI apparently took a bunch
of documents and tapes from a Dima's home after his
arrest and then withheld them from defense lawyers. This is
peculiar because the FBI should not have had any jurisdiction
in an Afghan court case. And this is all complicated
(38:15):
by the fact that it happened in fucking Afghanistan, a
country with an enormous amount of government corruption and huge
numbers of officials who were straight up on the take.
I have read a lot of articles about this, and
I have no idea conclusively about what went down, But
looking at the life of Jack Adiema on the whole,
I do think it is safe to say that Task
(38:35):
Force Saber seven was some sort of grift. The vast majority,
if not the entirety, of the people that he went after,
targeted and tortured were completely innocent, and he deserved the
sentence that he received, which was ten years in Afghan prison.
The judge that he tortured sentences him to prison. Um,
(39:00):
I just love that the judge whom he tortured sentences.
Now their journalists who visited him while he was in jail,
and they all note kind of bemusedly that he was
very popular with his guards and managed to get himself
and his men into a luxury cell with carpet, satellite
television in a private bathroom like a kitchen, and all
(39:22):
sorts of nice stuff. And they're just like, well, it's
like that's what these journalists say. And the obviously he
bribed them, he gave the money, he has money, he
paid it to them. Like I like that. I like that.
One of the things included in the subscription is it
had carpet. Yeah, ship Man prison with carpet ain't the
(39:43):
worst prison. So Jack was released in two thousand seven
and quite wisely decided he could never turn home to
the United States. Uh, and again he was released like
seven years early. Probably bribery, but it was through a pardon.
Who the funk knows, Maybe was something to please the
Defense Department. Um. Either way, as soon as he gets
(40:03):
out of Afghanistan, he knows that he absolutely cannot go
home to the United States because he still has wire
fraud warrants after his arrest in North Carolina, and they
were pinning federal charges for all of the crimes he'd
committed in Afghanistan when he was torturing people. So instead
he went to Dubai and attempted to set up a
drug in arms smuggling syndicate. This failed, and so Jack
Adima headed to the last refuge of all true grifters, Mexico.
(40:29):
Yeah yeah, fuck. I love how often episodes of the
show end in Mexico. It is always such a treat
whenever we get to Mexico. So Jack bought a boat
and started running a charter boat service for tourists. He
called himself Captain black Jack and patterned his personality after
(40:51):
Captain Jack Sparrow. Yes, you might say there has been
a degradation from his his tie him as a terrorism
expert so now he's doing booze cruises and pretending to
be Jack Sparrow. He built a home and in an
imitation Middle Eastern style, and was said to relax there
in a thobe, which is like the long gown that
(41:13):
men in parts of the Middle East, where his ex
girlfriend claims that he would regularly go on multi day
of vodka and cocaine suit suit soaked binges while looping
either Arabic music, the Apocalypse Now soundtrack, or just playing
Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World on repeat for hours. Yeah. Yeah.
At some point, Daniel Jack Adama caught HIV, possibly due
(41:37):
to the fact that he had constant casual sex with
strangers and never ever used protection. Sometimes that happens. Yeah,
this is a this is a different part of the story.
Oh buddy, we are getting into a twist in the tail.
So we we we do not stand an unsafe sex
participants knows none of the unsafe sex with people you
(41:58):
don't know, fam. We don't know when Jack Edema got HIV,
but we absolutely know that getting it did not cause
him to start using condoms, because he gave it to
his girlfriend without telling her that he was sick in
the first place. She later recalled that he explained he
thought he was immune to the disease because, in his words,
(42:20):
in his words, Danial, he had super blood. What what
are one more time he had super blood? He had
super blood. I just wanted to hear you say it
again again. As we're getting into this point, Jack Edema
has seemed like he oh, definitely a con artist. The
(42:44):
stuff that came out about him later in his life
makes me suspect that there was also either mental illness
as a result of just like he was, he got sick,
or because of his constant drug abuse he damaged his brain.
It is unclear. But what happens next, Like, yeah, there's
(43:05):
a lot about Jack Adema, Like what this what his
girlfriend's reports revealed. Is this just a lot about Jackodemo?
We don't know. I up until I started reading her
accounts of him, I thought he was just a standard grifter.
And now there's a part of them that's like he
may have actually been ill outside of the HIV. It
is very hard to say. Um, but this is the
(43:26):
part at which things get moderately less fun because his
very last girlfriend, Penny, a lazy contracted HIV from Jack,
and given that she did, it's almost guaranteed that God
knows how many other people got HIV from this guy,
because again he would throw days long cocaine and liquor
or gy benders while he was in Mexico and before
(43:46):
while he was in Afghanistan, and he probably had HIV
for a large chunk at that time. So he gets
so many people sick. He's this is a guy who
does nothing but leave shattered lives in his wake. Now
that girlfriend Penny ale See wrote a blog post about
what Jack did to her, and it's honestly heartbreaking, and
I am going to read a quote from it now,
(44:08):
a long one, so we'll have to pause a couple
of times in this I did not get HIV via
drugs or being a hooker. I got it the way
a lot of women get it. I was in love
and stupid period, and because of love and stupidity, my
life will never be the same, whatever is left of it.
So the story is not for profit. It is for
peace of mind into that when I meet my maker,
I will know I did all I could to stop
this monster. Jack Adiema has a lot more sins than
(44:30):
just giving out HIV. I am as concerned about other
people being sick as I am, and about dying. The
other stuff will come out eventually, although I am sure
won't be around long enough to see it. So yes,
I am mad, very mad sad as well. Now. She
claims that Jack started their relationship by flirting with her
online while he was locked in prison in Afghanistan. Um,
which is again you'll notice the last time he was
(44:51):
in prison he also exited with it with a woman
he had been flirting with remotely. Uh yeah, yeah. So
he used her to take care of business he needed
done in the United States when he got out of
prison because he couldn't re enter the country, And he
also relied on her to take care of his dog
when he went off doing whatever the funk Jack Adema
did when he wasn't taking care of his dog. He
(45:12):
also doesn't deserve a dog, Yeah, he doesn't that one
does not deserve a dog, do Yeah. So she was
like the last person to know Jack well. And it
is from Penny that we get some of our final
big revelations about Jack Edema. Quote. Jack always told me
(45:32):
he was a heterosexual, and when I finally found out
the truth, it was too late. Now, I also know
that he was bisexual years ago. A Green Beret he
was stationed at Fort Bragg has come forward and told
me of his meeting Jonathan Keith Adema as he called
himself back then. He met him at a news stand
located on Bragg Boulevard in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in early
two thousand, two thousand one. They would have sex in
the back room. He also went to four fifty Robuson
(45:53):
Street and had sex with Jack at his apartment next
to his office in that building. Two other men have
also come forward. Jack was also went to cross dressing
secretly then too, as well as having his anus penetrated
by dildos. He never used condoms then. Now he occasionally does,
but the damage is already there. The disease has progressed.
I've also been told about his encounters with men when
he was in prison in Kabul, Afghanistan, Apparently Thursday nights
(46:15):
their war for man sex. I wish to God he
had told me this himself when I first met him,
so I don't know how true that is, uh, but
Jack definitely had HIV which progressed to full blown AIDES,
and it definitely seems credible that he was just fucking
a bunch of people his entire life and never taking
any care about the fact that he was spreading diseases
(46:35):
to them. Um. I think that it's possible Penny has
some weird homophobias stuff, although it's kind of unclear from
her writing. But it also seems really credible that this guy,
Jack Ademo was just fucking people and spreading diseases his
entire life without a goddamn care in the world. Um,
So that's cool. That's a cool story. Jack was accused
(46:55):
of rape at least once in two thousand ten by
a young woman who visited his home. He temporarily fled
to Belize to escape justice, but returned to Mexico and
was unmolested by the law until his death in January
two thousand twelve as a result of AIDS. So that's
how this story ends. Robert Young Pelton, somewhat legendary war correspondent,
(47:17):
is probably the reporter who wrote most about Jack Adiemo
without falling for his bullshit. And I found an article
written after Jack's death in McClatchy by Pelton or that
quotes both Pelton and Penny Elsie, and it provides some
final explanations for how Jack got away with his schemes
for so long. He would meet somebody that he needed
or wanted to be like, like the author Robin Moore,
(47:37):
and then he would absorb all their mannerisms, words, and
the way they dressed. Pelton said it worked in part
because he was highly intelligent. Few con artists could warm
their way into helping more the author of the Green
Berets write a book, and few could come up with
such strong legal arguments for so many spurious causes, he said. Indeed, Alessie,
his former girlfriend, said Adema wrote nearly all of the
legal filings he was involved with over the years. I
(48:00):
know because I sat there and watched him, she said.
Then the lawyers would just sign off on them. So
at the end of this, I don't know what to
fucking make of this dude, other than that he was
a monster and a grifter. But it is very hard
for me to tell how much of this was like
a coldly calculated piece of ship and how much of
this was like just a damaged ill man compulsively possibly
(48:26):
based on the fact that he actually had delusions like
fucking ship up, like I really don't know where to
land on this guy other than that he was a monster.
But that's the story of Jack Edema. Sounds like a
piece of garbage, a dying, war obsessed piece of trash
who did not participate in safe sex and has ruined
the lives of probably hundreds of people at this point.
(48:49):
Oh god, Yeah, there are so many like poor young
men and if we're honest, probably kids who I am
fucking certain got sick because Jack Edema, you know, contracted
their services as uh sex workers and then just rolled
on with his life. It's like, it's actually, if you
imagine that this guy is as it seems likely, he
(49:10):
was just spreading HIV around Afghanistan's sex worker population for
a couple of years. Like, there's no telling how many
people got sick as a result of him. Undoubtedly way
too many. Yeah, that's cool, that's a cool story. Another
bastard in the bag. Yep, another bastard in the bank. So, Dan,
(49:35):
how you feeling, you know, Uh, I don't know, not great,
not great? Would you feel better to know that prior
to the two thousand one invasion, Afghanistan had one of
the lowest rates of HIV infections in the world, and
that after the war they had a skyrocketing AIDS crisis. No,
(50:00):
that doesn't make that doesn't make you feel good. Oh
of course it doesn't, because it's it's unspeakably terrible. Cool. Uh, well, Robert,
you are an incredible, incredible person. You tell you what? Who? Well? Dan? Yes?
Where can people find you on the internet if they
(50:22):
want to give you the internet equivalent of a sexually
transmitted disease, which is fandom? Yes, I don't really know
where I'm going with this. Well, if you want to bother,
it's okay. I haven't had. They're all imaginary friends I have.
You can follow me on Twitter at DJ Underscore Daniel
(50:43):
d A n L. You can follow me on Twitch
at twitch dot tv slash dj Underscore Daniel. Come off
to play video games and we'll hang out and tell stories.
And I can tell you behind the scenes stuff about Robert,
like when he gave me a knife and I have
it right here. It sounds like that you heard it
open just now. Yeah, come look at my knife on Twitch.
That is not what I meant. Okay, come come look
(51:05):
Dan knife on Twitch and send him pictures of your
own knife. Whatever knife means to you personally. You know,
we all get to define the word knife for ourselves
and for and for the record, my the knife that
I'm talking about fits the Twitch standards and practices. I'm
(51:28):
talking about an actual flip blade by cr k t
kt R. And I'm done and to cut all this,
cut none of this, and cut nothing yourself, listeners, as
you go out into the world, and by go out
into the world, I mean stay in your homes for
the love of God. I'm Robert Evans. I have a
(51:50):
podcast called The Women's War and you can find it
presumably just google it. It'll it'll come up. Google it
in the word podcast if you need to, you'll fucking
find it. Like we all know to use the Internet,
like you know the title. That's all you fucking need.
What are you doing? What are you doing demanding I
give you more information I've given you if you figure
it out Twitter, and I post links to episodes because
(52:12):
I'm a nice person and Robert as a hack, I'm sorry,
I just I'm just abusing the audience to make them
love me more, which is the kind of thing that
I'm certain Jack Adema did a lot over the course
of his life. Compare yourself to that nightmare, Robert you're
a good boy. No, no, you don't know what I
got up to in Afghanistan, Sophie. I'll give you one hint.
(52:34):
There was never an Osama bin Laden. That ship's fake
news anyway. Robert Evans here taking credit for September eleven,
the movie Big Trouble and signing off. You can follow
him on Twitter and I right, okay. You can follow
us on Twitter, Instagram at Bastards Pod. You can find
the sources for our episodes under part one of this
(52:56):
episode under the episode description we have a tea public
still or I'm gonna look at Robert unworsh here. Ever,
that's that's the episode. Wash your hands or not. If
you're at home, it doesn't matter. It could be as
stilty as you want to wash your hands. Don't listen
to this asshole. Live like a monster, be a gorilla.
It's fine. Suck it up for society. By h
Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the only podcast where
the host has spent the previous seven hours drunk and
staring at a box of five point five six tracer
ammunition and wondering if he could get away with starting
a fire in his front yard with it. Uh and
then deciding that no, he lives around too many people.
But I can't get the thought out of my Daniel,
(00:23):
how are you doing today? I'm great, I'm especially great
thinking about that moment, just especially in the dark, watching
those rounds fling through the air. It would be great,
It would be great, and I make everyone in my
neighborhood would enjoy it. But fucking cops man, that those
are loud rounds. So Daniel, Yes, sir Sophie, this is
(00:46):
an episode about Jack Edema part two. Now, when we
laughed our friend off, he had he had had a
pretty winding path And it's kind of hard for me
to summarize, just because there's so much that's weird about
this guy, like hims out the wazoo, out the wazoo
every now, and just enough credibility to some of them
to where it's like, what's going on? Is there something
(01:07):
I'm missing? Very hard to say that will continue, but
the scams get a lot bolder from here on out.
It's like he's snuck in the back door of so
many war scenes in there, like what the funk are
you doing here? And I was like, let yeah, yeah,
Like he really traded on the fact that he was
technically a Green Beret because people are like, well, I
guess he knows how to train cops. He was a
(01:29):
Green Beret. I guess he knows how to run a
counter terrorism school. He was a Green Beret. I guess
he can lead us into Afghanistan. He was a Green Beret,
and nobody like did the work to realize, like, oh,
all you did is a green Beret? Was like pack
parachutes anyway, it's cool. So the history of the modern
US Special Forces began on June ninety two at Fort Bragg,
(01:52):
North Carolina, with the establishment of the tenth Special Forces
Airborne Group. Now obviously, elite military operators had existed since
the Dawn of Time. Story the Trojan Horse is kind
of like the story of a of a special Ops raid. Basically, um, yeah,
it's it's kind of yeah, more or less, and elite
German airborne units in World War two, the Falschworm Yeager
(02:12):
pioneered many of what we would consider like modern special
forces strategies, But it was not until the Vietnam War
that's special operators in the modern sense of the word,
really burst onto the modern stage. So suddenly in Vietnam
you have and you know, these guys are actually doing
ship but they're also like showing up in the media,
these elite, heavily armed badasses with special skills carrying out
(02:34):
these unbelievable death defying missions. Um So like the movies
we get on there, like Rambo and Commando and fucking Predator,
like these are all right. When America, like kind of
in the wake of Vietnam, America started to really fall
in love with the idea of special forces guys because
it seems really romantic, like it's a job that's very
fit to to to make movies about. I actually had
(02:55):
an uncle who was a Green Beret in Vietnam, and
his job was basically to be alone in the jungle
trying to lead groups of envy A patrols into ambushes.
And it's like fucked him up for the rest of
his life. And it's not a cool story, um but
it made for good Uh, it made for good media stuff. Um.
And so journalists, obviously, as soon as stories about green
(03:16):
Berets and Navy seals start like hitting uh, the world,
like journalists who embed with soldiers start wanting to try
and embed these guys, which was not an easy thing
to do. US special Forces from the beginning have had
a very adversarial relationship with the media. They build themselves
as quiet professionals who were as exceptional in their discretion
as they were in their fighting ability. And that's all
(03:38):
died out now because the assassination of Osamba and Lauden
meant that you can make millions of dollars uh if
you were like a Special Forces guy who wrote a
book afterwards. Yeah. But back in the day, you weren't
supposed to talk about the ship you did in Special Forces,
and so journalists really couldn't get an angle on these guys.
And back in two thousand one, special Forces dudes were
(04:00):
still quiet professionals, and the idea that any of them
would speak directly to the media was nearly unthinkable. There
was only one journalist who actually had a shot at
getting that kind of story. Uh. He was the only
US journalist who ever had a real in depth in
bed with US Special Forces. Robin Moore now More was
the author of the book The Green Berets, which that
John Wayne movie that Jack Adema had loved as a
(04:21):
kid was based on. And in order to write The
Green Berets More, it had to do something no civilian
journalists had ever done. He went through Special Forces training
and qualification and like qualified as a Green Beret, and
because of his skills, he was allowed to travel with
the Green Berets and report on what they did. And
it's kind of debatable as to what he did is
(04:42):
whether or not what he did was even really journalism
because he took part in firefights and killed a shipload
of people. A lot of journalists will say you shouldn't
do what Robin Moore did, but it's fair to say
that he was a legend. We're gonna talk more about
him later. What matters right now is that the important
of Special Forces ramped up hugely during the start of
(05:02):
the War on Terror. These guys were the bulk of
the early effort in Afghanistan, and journalists were starving for
information about what spec ops guys were doing and seeing
as ed artists of Knightsbridge International told the Columbia Journalism
Review quote, the media were in a frenzy. They were
interviewing each other about what they'd interview someone else about
if they had someone to interview. So they're just like
(05:25):
desperate to talk to any of these guys, and none
of them will talk. And Jack Odema sees this feeding
frenzy and knew he had found the perfect grift because,
after all, he had technically been in Special Forces and
he was currently in Afghanistan, so why shouldn't he present
himself as an expert on what U S Special Forces
were doing in Afghanistan. So within a matter of weeks
(05:47):
of the invasion, Adema has managed to establish himself as
the mainstream media is leading expert on special Forces and
as one of its leading experts in Afghanistan. The Columbia
Journalism Review later noted quote he was read it as
an expert on all three networks, was a terrorist hunter
on Don Imus's radio show, a Northern Alliance advisor on
Fox News, and a key source for Merely Mapes and
(06:09):
Dan Rather in sixty minutes to the fact that he
is calling in from Afghanistan on the phone and had
once been in Special Forces is all the backup anybody does,
and they're like, yeah, fucking listen to whatever he has
to say. He was a special He was there in
January f twos in two US Special Forces cornered Osama
bin Laden for what they were absolutely sure was the
(06:31):
last time, spoilers they were It took about another decade.
Jack Adiema began shopping around a set of tapes at
the same time that held seven hours worth of videotaped
Al Qaeda training sessions. You've seen pieces of these tapes.
There's like a lot of like the guys going on
jungle gyms and running around with rifles and stuff. He
first sold stills from several of these tapes to a
(06:51):
number of media organizations, and a lot of them were
like scary images of terrorist commandos doing armed drills. Now,
once the skills had wetted everyone's appetite, Adema contracted the
William Morris PR Agency to auction off what he claimed
was the first ever US broadcast rights of like terrorist
training videos from al Qaeda that would like reveal what
al Qaeda was planning to do in the United States.
(07:14):
So he delivered letters to all of the may or
his PR agency delivered letters to all the major networks,
setting a minimum price of a hundred and fifty thousand
dollars in demanding that Jackadema be credited. When the tapes
were aired. Surprisingly, Fox said no, and so did NBC.
They were put off by the Yeah, they were put
They thought it was too expensive and there was also
(07:34):
there was no supporting evidence that these tapes actually showed
an al Qaeda training base. There were just guys with
guns running around, running around. Yeah. An NBC producer later recalled,
there was no way to verify them. It was either
you trust Keith Adema or you don't. CNN backed out too,
after their national security analyst did a cursory amount of
(07:55):
googling and discovered Keith ademonst criminal record in history of
suing everyone he's ever talked to. They were the only
network to blacklist him as a source as well as
turned down his offer. Now, some of the distrust of
Adema and his tapes came from the fact that he
seemed to have a different story about where they came
from for every news agency that asked. He told the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation that he bought the tapes from an
(08:17):
intelligence asset. After several back alley meetings. At midnight, he
told NBC's Today Show that he got them after he
filmed a group of Northern Alliance fighters taking over a
compound where the video was filmed. Adema then claimed to
have tracked down the camp's commander at home and hunted
down other al Qaeda recruits to find more footage. These
obvious lies fooled no one, no one that is besides
(08:39):
Dan Rather. Yeah, yeah, Dan Rather in sixty minutes fall
immediately and hard for Jackadema's tapes, and in fact, Rather
flies immediately to Afghanistan to interview Keith Adema and visit
the compound where the videos had been filmed. Yeah, it's
(09:00):
he just is immediately on board with this ship. I
am so down. The journalism school building at the college
that I went to but didn't go to journalism school
at was the Dan Rather School of journalism. And maybe
not the guy to take super details. I'm gonna quote
(09:26):
about the from the Columbia Journalism Review talking about this
particular grift at a time when workers were still sifting
through the nural wreckage of the World Trade Center, the
story reinforced the prevailing sense of Panic men in camouflage,
tunics and ski masks were shown storming buildings, staging drive
by shootings, and laying siege to golf courses. Sometimes the
men laughed as they rehearsed maneuvers, which Rather interpreted as
(09:48):
evidence that they approached their grim mission with glee. The
footage also contained numerous exchanges in English. A sign Rather
told viewers that they want to take scenes like this
to the West. Now. The reality is that these tapes
were absolutely a forgery made by Jack Adiemo, which is
why people were speaking in English. Yeah, gosh, good, disgracious,
(10:13):
Dan No, buddy, Yeah, that's that's really, that's really. That's
real bad. That's real bad, and you gotta do better. Yeah, well,
he spoilers for Dan Rather's career. He would not, he
would not, he would he would not. He would go
on to fall from more fake bullshit. Hell yeah, analysts, obviously,
(10:34):
I say they're obviously a forgery. It is impossible to
state that with a perfect degree of confidence one way
or the other, and you will. You can, in fact,
find a couple of different interpretations of these videos. But
it is worth noting that the tactics shown in the
tapes were not the sort actually used by Al Qaeda fighters.
The video depicted armed raids similar to the kind of
(10:55):
attacks ISIS would carry out years later in Europe. But
these are completely different from this sort of bombings that
all kind of actually engaged in at the time. Um put, simply,
all kinda never did anything even vaguely like what was
shown in these tapes. Like, it's just not the sort
of ship that they pulled off. And yeah, there were
other reasons to doubt the province of the tapes. The
(11:16):
place that Keith Adema said that he had rated to
capture them, the compound where these tapes were filmed, mere Bakt,
was under coalition control during the time that the tapes
were actually filmed, and had been thoroughly searched at the
time when Jack claims to have conducted the raid. Now again,
the reality of the situation was never conclusively determined one
way or the other, and Dan Rather's career didn't explode
(11:39):
for this particular funk up. But the almost certain reality
is that the videos were staged by Jack. He likely
found an old compound that had already been liberated by
the coalition and then hired a bunch of locals to
pretend to be terrorists. The Columbia Journalism Review talked to
a special retired Special operations officer with knowledge of the
CIA's investigation into the tapes, and this guy claims they
(11:59):
did a voice analysis us in a technical analysis. Not
only were they staged, but you could single Adema's voice
out directly. So the CIA, for its part, disputes having
done any kind of analysis. But the CIA is the CIA,
so I really don't give a ship what they say happened. Ever, uh,
they are the CIA. Now, it seems pretty safe to
(12:21):
conclude that these were bogus from the get go, whether
or not Jack Adema himself actually filmed them. But at
the time, this took off like gangbusters among a terrified
American public, and Dan Rather's big scoop helped to solidify
Jack Adema's reputation who was someone as someone who was
not a shameful fraud, and for a few months he
was the talk of the Cabul media set. According to
(12:43):
New York Magazine, he boasted a war correspondence about the
many Al Qaeda suspects he had apprehended and embroidered his
bad his banter with tales of special Forces daring in
Central America, and it was more than just his speech
that was growing too colorful for its own good. One
heated argument over war coverage at a party ended with
a Dimas firing a pistol at a Dalla Morning News
correspondent Todd Robertson and barely missing his left arm when yeah,
(13:06):
he gets drunken shoots shoots at the Dallas Morning news man.
Many reporters began to regard a demon as a fraud
in a menace. Still, he was quoted in many major
newspapers as a Special Forces operative or a Green Beret.
On a representation from the photo agency Polaris. A Dimas
sold the footage to sixty minutes too for an undisclosed fee,
(13:29):
and the rest of the press corps, including NBC's Dateline
in the Today Show scooped up the sensational footage in
the networks wake. So that's great now. In December of
two thousand two, remember that guy Robin Moore who like
literally became a Green Beret and killed people with the
Green Berets and then wrote a book about him. That journalist, Well,
he shows up in Afghanistan in December of two thousand two,
(13:50):
h Now he was no longer the young, fit warrior
who battled alongside US forces in Vietnam. More was in
his seventies, racked with Parkinson's disease and reliant to pon
a cane to get around. So he's not not in
great shape. Still, Clearly, whatever else you can say about him,
U a frightening badass to like, go wander on alone
in Afghanistan in your seventies and two thousand two is
(14:12):
a it's a tough guy. That's pretty hard. Yeah, that's
pretty hard. Now. He had a goal of publishing the
first on the ground memoir from the war in Afghanistan,
and it would be a book about the hunt for
Osama bin Laden. When Jack first heard that the author
of the book that had become his favorite movie was
in Afghanistan, he knew he had to find him, and
tracking down More was not difficult. There were not a
(14:35):
whole lot of old white dudes wandering around the country
in the wake of US Special Forces. Once there, Jack
plied More with the same story he'd successfully used on
many journalists, already putting himself forward as an ideal source
for Moore's next book. This line of bullshit worked because
Jack just seems to have had some sort of ability
to like not all or even most journalists, but there
were there are these guys like Skirka before him and
(14:57):
now Robin Moore that just like fall in love with
a line of ship that Jack is pushing. And soon
the two men were collaborating, collaborating together on a book
titled The Hunt for Bin Laden. Now, crucially, while they
were in Afghanistan, More In Adema spent almost no time together,
and this is because More was still widely respected by
US Special Forces dudes, and they gave him real access,
(15:19):
and for obvious reasons, Jackodema did not want to get
anywhere clear near US Special Forces in Afghanistan, not a
good idea, So they didn't really start to collaborate until
uh they got home to the United States in later
that year. Jack had to head back after his mother died,
and this is where he and Robin Moore would go
(15:40):
on to have the bulk of their contact. So More
was back in his States by the end of that year,
trying to bang out his notes and interviews from Afghanistan
into a book that people would want to read. Adema
offered himself up for additional background information and soon more
was listening with bated breath. Well, Jack Adiema just lied
to him. This random paragraph from the book they wrote
together gives you an idea of what sort of stuff
(16:02):
Jack was telling him. And again this is one paragraph.
Oh yes. In January, Jack uncovered an al Qaita plot
to kill President Clinton and march. Standing in the middle
of a Kabul street. Armed with a Russian assault rifle
and six hundred rounds of ammunition, Jack held off Islamic
fundamentalists for four hours as they tried to take eighteen
four in citizens hostage, keeping them at bay until Engineer
(16:24):
Ali and the Northern Alliance arrived to back him up.
By the end of March, Oh yeah, that's a character
right there. By the end of March, Jack was in
a Northern Alliance helicopter on his way to the Nachman
earthquake with the Associated Press photograph the lone American rescuing
a little girl. She wasn't the first child he would
save or the last. I'm gonna tell you right now,
Jack Ademon never saved goddamn kid. He definitely posed with
(16:47):
some sick and injured children, but I think he saved
them in the same way he saved his friend with
the leg injury. Yeah. Now, for his part, Robin Moore
said that Jack's stories check doubt very well when he
tried to verify them, and this is almost certainly a lie,
as Mary Anne Strong, Moore's agent at the time, claims
that Robin Moore's actual experiences in Afghanistan were just too
(17:10):
dull to make a good book. Basically, he was too
old to find anything cool, So he came back home
like kind of bummed out, with like a few interviews
that were not that exciting and no stories of actual
daring do because he's seventy and had Parkinson's. So Jack
comes along and it's like, I can spice up this
fucking book for you. Many Strong, He's like, let me
(17:30):
add some con to that ship. Also, Yeah, Moore's agent
later claimed Jack came along and rewrote the entire thing.
He came up with terribly exciting, excellent copy. Now, she
claimed that More himself only wrote a few pages of
the book in the end, and the resulting product was
one of the most ridiculous pieces of FOE journalism in
the entire history of the War on Terror, which is
(17:52):
a fucking achievement. The cover of the book features a
shirtless Jack Adimo wielding an a K forties Yeah Baby Now.
New York Magazine goes into more detail about precisely how
bad this book was. It asserts out right that a
demon was the only Green Beret gathering intelligence on the ground,
(18:13):
and a dema routinely storms the center of the book's
action to perform herobic feats of bravery. It is as
though given the chance to influence a Robin Moore book,
Adema had to cast himself in the twenty one century
sequel to The Green Berets. So he basically finds the
author of the book that became his favorite movie and
turns himself into a character in that book, clearly in
(18:34):
the hope that a movie will get made about him,
which honestly kind of rules a little bit. I mean, yeah,
I want to see this movie. It'll be it'll undoubtedly
have like Danny McBride, or like Danny McBride would be
the right guy to play Jack Adeem a whole ship. Yeah, yeah,
completely overly confident, which is everybody looking around. It would
almost be like a Tommy Boy thing, where you know,
(18:55):
you have the Chris Farley character and then David's bade
trying to clean up the mess that's following him. I
think actually the right way to play this is to
just have Daniel McBride do his character from Eastbound and Down.
This guy who was just has this completely divorced from reality, beliefs,
beliefs about himself, um, just rolling through Afghanistan and somehow
not dying but getting a lot of people killed. Yeah,
(19:19):
I think we should go to an ad break because
you know what won't convince an elderly ailing legend of
war reporting what the products and services in this None
of them will trick a sick old man into writing
a fake book about how you shirtlessly fought the Taliban.
That is a guarantee. We make fucking talk space not
(19:41):
going to do that. Not, no, sir, No sir. We're
back and we are talking about Jack Edema. So it's
a great book. U. Jack Edema cons this guy to write,
(20:02):
and the book was a hit among an American public
hungry for stories of military glory after September eleven. Yeah,
people eat this ship up. It quickly climbed to a
respectable place on the New York Times bestseller list, and
although it never made its way up to number one.
It's sold very very well now, Since more the ostensible
author was elderly and in poor health, the responsibility for
(20:23):
shamelessly plugging the book landed on Jack Edema. He was
only too happy to hang out in bookstores doing readings
from chapters he'd written about things he absolutely did not do.
During numerous media appearances, he even gave direct advice to
the Pentagon, making statements like we in Special Forces have
been lobbying for a lighter, faster army, but General Tommy
(20:44):
Frank's isn't listening. Is It's great? That's I mean, I'm
loving it. Just catch catch him at book soup. That's
where I'm trying to see him. It's kind of ironic
because like there are so many Special Forces grifts around
the day, like today, like about a third of the
people who wind up becoming Special Forces operators do it
to like cash in on some book as soon as
(21:04):
they get out. Um. But the only kind of Special
Forces griff that wouldn't work today is like what Jack
Adema is doing, because there's now so many of these
guys in the media who would be like, now this
this dude's just lying like he was never never did anything. Yeah,
has never seen goodness, I mean nothing, not a thing. Ye,
well anywhere. Like any great grifter, Jackodema succeeds during the
(21:26):
only period in history in which he could have possibly succeeded. Yes, exactly.
The Hunt Forbidden Lauden elevated Adma to a national figure,
just in time for him to weigh in on the
most critical political issue of the day, the invasion of Iraq.
Since he had been the subject of the first memoir
of the war in Afghanistan, TV news booking agents saw
(21:46):
him as an ideal get as they discussed whether or
not going to war with Iraq was a good idea
and I'm gonna quote from a rolling stone right up here.
A Deema's career as a media personality reached its peak
during the final breathless weeks of the run up to
the war in Iraq. Much of the information he provided
during that period echoed the Bush administration's hotly contested rationale
for a war. He told in MSNBC that the link
(22:06):
between Iraq and Al Qaida was common knowledge on the
ground in Afghanistan, and claimed in an interview with w
n y C radio's Leonard Lopate that Iraq has been
involved in supporting al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations with money,
with equipment, with technology, and with weapons of mass destruction.
He told other white eyed journalists that there was ample
evidence linking Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia to
(22:29):
al Qaeda into the attacks on September eleven. You know
famed allies Iraq and Iran for sure. If there's one
thing you can't stop Iran from doing, it is collaborating
closely with Saudi Arabia and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. There's nothing
Iran loves more than working with those specific two groups
of love it. Uh boy so Adima professed to have
(22:52):
firsthand knowledge of nuclear weapons being smuggled from Russia and
to all to all three members of the Access of
Evil Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. Few in the media
questioned Adema's claims, much to the alarm of some of
those who know him. The media saw this outfitted, gregarious,
apparently knowing guy, and they didn't checking out, said an artist,
chairman and founder of the humanitarian organization Knightsbridge International. Uh
(23:14):
They ran story after story that further the cache of
a self serving self aggrandizing criminal and that's totally accurate. Yeah,
that is accurate. Yeah, But the sales of his book
were good, but reviewers did not like it. In fact,
it was pretty much universally panned, and journalists who did
look into it repeatedly questioned the veracity of claims. Like
(23:35):
Jack Edema fought the entire Afghan War on his own,
the sheer volume of doubt seems to have cracked through
whatever brainwashing Adema managed to carry out on Robin Moore.
Moore began to demanding from his publisher that a revised
edition of the book be published, with Special Forces officers
reviewing and correcting Adema's lies. Random House his His publisher
refused these changes, and when Jack Adema learned that Moore
(23:57):
was trying to write him out of the book, he
issued a press release filed yet another lawsuit. He started
claiming that a secret cabal of Special Forces soldiers has
as symboled to take him down because they were jealous
of Jack Adama. Jack also filed lawsuits against night Bridge
and Partners Internationals, the two groups providing aid in Afghanistan,
because he was certain that they were a part of
all this. His main claim to having suffered damages came
(24:20):
from the fact that Fox News dropped him as a
regular commenter. True to form, Jack also sued Fox News.
These suits were all tossed out of court. But yeah,
just keep suing. Just always be suing, baby. That is
a huge part of being a really good grifter is
just keeps on suing everyone you can, Sophie, who are
(24:42):
we suing right now? Uh? Cody Johnston. It sounds like
a good idea. Yeah, let's throw some lawsuits out to Cody.
Get on that. So the book sales were good in
spite of the controversy. So Jack decided to form a
promotional company, the Hunt Forbid law An LLC, with a
handful of business partners. I have to give him credit.
(25:07):
That's easily the best name for an LLC that anyone's
come up. That's I kind of want to start. If
that's defunct, now, I want to make that myle LLC
and just do something else with it. Like, clearly it's
clearly not more than the number of characters in The
Hunt Ribbon Ladon LLC, which, like, I want to start
(25:31):
an LLC dedicated to like feeding the homeless, but just
call it that and that we could be like when
the police shut us down. The cops are trying to
stop the hunt for Bin Laden. Man, have you forgotten
where we all were on nine eleven? There's there's potential
in this. So Jack adeemons the Hunt for Bin Lawdon
llc uh. The goal of this company was ostensibly to
(25:52):
raise funds for a US count for US Counter Terrorist Group,
which was a training camp that Jack had founded an
upstate New York to quote helped the Northern Alliance and
to fight al Qaeda. This was almost certainly a grift,
but as the weeks went by and Jack battled increasing
questions about his legitimacy, his colleagues watched his behavior turner
(26:13):
ratic and dangerous. According to New York Magazine, one of
Jack's business partners eventually testified during the inevitable lawsuit over
the Hunt forbid Lauden llc. That Jack quote destroyed the
interior of his own house with a samurai sword, that
he choked his girlfriend in a fight, that he forged
a letter on Fox News stationary for uses evidence and
his lawsuit against the network. A lawsuit from the U.
(26:34):
S Attorney's Office also arrived, followed by a letter from
North Carolina's postal inspector, charging a demon with mail fraud
for using a post office box registered to the company
to solicit funds for US counter terrorist Group. Thompson said
that after he noticed eighteen thousand from dollars from the
company had gone missing, he drove down to Fayetteville to
closed the company bank account. He says that Dema followed
him there and threatened to kill both him and his girlfriend.
(26:56):
More Jesus, he's awesome. When do the police step is
not almost never. They arrested that. He did get busted earlier,
but he goes right back to committing mail fraud. Totally murdering. No,
that was something else. He didn't murder anybody. He no,
I mean, he definitely murdered people, but no, he didn't
(27:18):
go to jail for that. He went to jail from
mayor fraud. Oh, that's right, it was just mail fraud.
That was the first. That was our first, our first
military exploratory fellow or whatever. Yeah, there's there's so many
grifts here it is hard to keep track of the
motherfucker's yeah and yeah. More. At the same time as
this was all going on, More learned that Edema had
(27:39):
ordered hundreds of copies of The Hunt for Bin Lawden
from Moore's account with Random House and then never paid
them for him. He just got the books and then
sold them by hand at full price. So just like
this mix of these incredibly bold grifts where he's like
tricking national news networks and stuff and selling thousands of
books and these petty fucking bullshit like it's incredible. Um,
(28:01):
he couldn't stop himself. So Jack continued to attack Robin
Moore Viya lawyer for months, throughing out lawsuits like Rice
at a wedding. He was only interrupted in his quest
to destroy the lives of the people who had been
his friends and colleagues due to his devotion to yet
another unbelievable grift in Afghanistan see. In two thousand four,
(28:22):
Jack returned to Kabul. He rented a house, telling the
landlord he planned to start a rug exporting business. I
shouldn't even need to tell you that this was a lie.
His real goal was to form a paramilitary unit named
Task Force Saber seven. Yeah, baby, He designed the uniforms
and patches himself. Their goal was to hunt Al Qaeda.
(28:43):
He brought along a former soldier, Brent Bennett and a
veteran TV cameraman named Eddie Caraballo to help him and
document his adventures. They hired several Afghan fighters and started
kidnapping and interrogating Afghan citizens at random. Um so pretty
good grift, Daniel, that I mean this this UH people
(29:06):
were really really gullible. You could get away with anything
at this period of time. It was amazing being confident
in speaking confidently and just doing the things you say
you're gonna do. People are just letting it happen. That's
just really wild. I'm impressed and horrified. But yeah, it's
it's pretty great. And you know what else is great, Danial?
(29:29):
And you know what doesn't kidnap and torture random citizens
of UH? Do products and services not do that? Sometimes
they not ours, Danial. Every product advertised on this show
carries the official behind the bastards have not kidnapped and
tortured any Afghan citizens seal of approval. That is the
(29:53):
only guarantee we make of our products and services, and
we do not make guarantees about other countries. But we
will prom message no one in Afghanistan tortured by the
sponsors of this show. We're back uh, So, Daniel, this
(30:14):
story of Task Force Saber seven is fucking difficult for
me to parse out. So I say he's kidnapping random
Afghan citizens, and that seems to have been true a
lot of the time, But it also doesn't necessarily seem
to have been true all of the time, because on
at least three occasions, NATO troops helped Edema carry out
raids and NATO went on to arrest at least one
(30:35):
of the suspects that Task Force Saber seven took in,
and there's also some evidence that he some he or
his men may have helped stop assassination attempts on ALFA
Afghan political leaders. But also almost all of the people
that they actually handed over to NATO were later released
for lack of evidence to convict them. And it is
(30:55):
entirely possible that all of the Afghan political leaders who
claimed that Edema and his men saved them or carried
out gave them intelligence that was useful. We're just bribed.
Because we're talking about the government of Afghanistan in two
thousand and three and four. They're trying to they're trying
to cause disturbance as much as anybody else. So it's
just like you'll take your money and say some dumb
ship to make people confused. Perfect. Yeah, it does seem
(31:19):
fair to say that there were people within NATO, in
people within the Department of Defense who treated Task Force
Saber seven as a legitimate, uh non governmental military contractor
in country for a pretty brief period of time. But
it did happen. And you can either say it's because
they were actually finally doing good work, or yeah, just
(31:39):
because it's easy to trick the fucking government in Afghanistan
of a ton of bullshit, Like there's a hundred billion
dollars worth of hospitals that got built by government contractors
in Afghanistan and aren't hospitals, so fucking it's easy to
get away with griffs in Afghanistan. Um. Now, while all
this was going on, nights Bridge and Partners International, these
(32:00):
two veteran own charities, continued to desperately try to warn
the CIA and the Defense Department and everyone that would
listen that Jack Edema was a dangerously incompetent con man,
but no one listened to them until April two thousand four,
when Adema made the error of emailing several of his
friends back in the United States and update on the
progress of Task Force Sabers seven. This email included pictures
(32:23):
of Jack Adema and his men torturing civilians. At least
one of the people Jack emailed ahead, Yeah, light torture, Daniel,
Oh God, light torture, Okay, barely even torture under most
international treaties. I'm nervous, So at least one of the
people that Jack emailed had a soul and forwarded the
(32:45):
emails to the Department of Defense. Warrants were issued for
Jack's arrest in Kabul, and he was eventually busted on
July five by Afghan police forces. New York Magazine notes
when Afghan police had arrested the trio on July five,
they said they had a They said they saw a
mini a small our scale version of the gruesome prisoner
abuse photos from the Bagdad interrogation cells in Abu Grabe.
Early press photos indicated that three prisoners found in a
(33:07):
demon's custody during the raid were blindfolded and beaten, and
then strapped to the ceiling by their feet. Five others
were tied to chairs with rope in the small dark
room down a hall that was littered with bloodied clothing.
All of the prisoners in a Demon's custody were subsequently released.
None was shown to be connected to al Qaeda. I mean,
of course, yeah, of course, yes, of course, yeah, absolutely,
And like it's frustrating because you read like reporting from
(33:30):
the time from like when this all happened, by good
journalists and good reporters, and a lot of them will talk,
will like quote people who were in the Department of
Defense somewhere saying like, oh no, a demon did this,
or Task FORCEAB seven did that. And I can't say
again to a point of certainty that everything they did
was bullshit. But my gut is telling me that all
of those people who thought they did anything useful were
(33:52):
just taken in by the con because Jack Ademo was
a fucking con man, and it's easy to get away
with cons in Afghanistan. Yeah, that's my feeling. Maybe I
am wrong, but I'm not. Everybody likes sale, Everybody like everybody,
you know, even if they don't like to be taken,
they like to be sold something. And he was selling them. God,
(34:12):
yeah the worst. Now, at his trial in Kabul, Adema
did say something that I don't think is untrue. He
stated that he had been operating with the U. S
military's approval and consent, and it does seem that this
was at least part partly true. Yeah, exactly, because they're
they're not good at their jobs. Like that's the fun part. Look,
they said I could do it, and they all have
(34:33):
to sit on their hands and be like, I mean, like, yeah,
we kind of did, we did, we did again. I
don't want to be like Slandering better reporters than me,
because a lot of the guys who wrote about him,
like back into this in four are but they're so
confused by the fact that legitimate military people aren't uniform
about whether or not this guy as a con man.
And like, guys, the army's bad at its job, Like
(34:55):
the Defense Department's bad at its job. Look at how
the war in Afghanistan is. God, we're not. They're not
good at this. Yeah, they're not good at winning wars.
They make all sorts of dumb mistakes. Ask us, Ask
any veteran, ask a hundred percent of veterans. They make
(35:17):
shitty calls all the time, and this was one of them.
One video played during the trial showed a demon talking
with officials from US General William Boykin's office about an
impending attack he planned on a terrorist cell. Yeah, they
probably thought he was legitimate at some period of time,
or at least enough of them did that he was
able to get away with it for a while. Now,
what I can easily bust is Jack Ademos claimed that
(35:40):
he in Task for Savers Set Saber seven, never tortured anybody,
which is what he argued in Afghan court. But unfortunately
the judge who was trying their case was somebody that
Jack had abducted, arrested, and tortured. And this judge actually
testified at Jack's trial, which is since he was the judge,
I would call it best in unorthodox legal precedent. So
(36:03):
and again yeah, but also the judge was almost certainly Yeah,
and it's weird because like I have no trouble believing
this judge was like maybe doing ship with the Taliban,
maybe doing just other shady ship because he's a political
official in Afghanistan in two thousand four and they were
all on the fucking take. Um. Yeah, like yeah, there's
(36:25):
probably he's probably a sketchy said of a bit, but
like also Jack and his guys absolutely tortured this guy
and then he winds up trying their case just like you.
That's that's like the record scratch scenario you want. And
you're just standing at the table ready to see, and
then you see the guy's face, and one of the
(36:49):
dozens of guys I torture winds up being my judge.
What are the odds? Shoot? So here's a rolling Stone
quote from the trial where the judge gets up and
talks about his beerience. The judge then stood up in
mind out how somebody acting like James Bond a Dima,
of course, came into the house waving a weapon, shouting
hands up, hands up. Also taken into custody were two
(37:11):
of the judge's brothers, as well as four the relatives
and a family retainer. The eight prisoners would be discovered
by Afghan authorities when they later busted a Dima's jail.
The judge told me the first night, around midnight, I
heard the screams of four people. They then poured very
cold water on me. I tried to keep myself from
screaming but couldn't. Then they played loud, strange music. Then
they prevented me from going to the bathroom, a terrible situation.
(37:32):
I was hooded for twelve days Jesus Christ twelve. The
trial also brought up evidence that did seem somewhat exculpatory
for Jack and his men. US military authorities repeatedly admitted
under questioning that they had been aware of Jack's task force,
and some evidence emerged that Adema and his men may
have thwarted an assassination again attempt against the Afghan Education
(37:54):
minister Um. But again it's impossible to say what the
funk actually happened here, and this is made more complicated
by the fact that the FBI apparently took a bunch
of documents and tapes from a Dima's home after his
arrest and then withheld them from defense lawyers. This is
peculiar because the FBI should not have had any jurisdiction
in an Afghan court case. And this is all complicated
(38:15):
by the fact that it happened in fucking Afghanistan, a
country with an enormous amount of government corruption and huge
numbers of officials who were straight up on the take.
I have read a lot of articles about this, and
I have no idea conclusively about what went down, But
looking at the life of Jack Adiema on the whole,
I do think it is safe to say that Task
(38:35):
Force Saber seven was some sort of grift. The vast majority,
if not the entirety, of the people that he went after,
targeted and tortured were completely innocent, and he deserved the
sentence that he received, which was ten years in Afghan prison.
The judge that he tortured sentences him to prison. Um,
(39:00):
I just love that the judge whom he tortured sentences.
Now their journalists who visited him while he was in jail,
and they all note kind of bemusedly that he was
very popular with his guards and managed to get himself
and his men into a luxury cell with carpet, satellite
television in a private bathroom like a kitchen, and all
(39:22):
sorts of nice stuff. And they're just like, well, it's
like that's what these journalists say. And the obviously he
bribed them, he gave the money, he has money, he
paid it to them. Like I like that. I like that.
One of the things included in the subscription is it
had carpet. Yeah, ship Man prison with carpet ain't the
(39:43):
worst prison. So Jack was released in two thousand seven
and quite wisely decided he could never turn home to
the United States. Uh, and again he was released like
seven years early. Probably bribery, but it was through a pardon.
Who the funk knows, Maybe was something to please the
Defense Department. Um. Either way, as soon as he gets
(40:03):
out of Afghanistan, he knows that he absolutely cannot go
home to the United States because he still has wire
fraud warrants after his arrest in North Carolina, and they
were pinning federal charges for all of the crimes he'd
committed in Afghanistan when he was torturing people. So instead
he went to Dubai and attempted to set up a
drug in arms smuggling syndicate. This failed, and so Jack
Adima headed to the last refuge of all true grifters, Mexico.
(40:29):
Yeah yeah, fuck. I love how often episodes of the
show end in Mexico. It is always such a treat
whenever we get to Mexico. So Jack bought a boat
and started running a charter boat service for tourists. He
called himself Captain black Jack and patterned his personality after
(40:51):
Captain Jack Sparrow. Yes, you might say there has been
a degradation from his his tie him as a terrorism
expert so now he's doing booze cruises and pretending to
be Jack Sparrow. He built a home and in an
imitation Middle Eastern style, and was said to relax there
in a thobe, which is like the long gown that
(41:13):
men in parts of the Middle East, where his ex
girlfriend claims that he would regularly go on multi day
of vodka and cocaine suit suit soaked binges while looping
either Arabic music, the Apocalypse Now soundtrack, or just playing
Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World on repeat for hours. Yeah. Yeah.
At some point, Daniel Jack Adama caught HIV, possibly due
(41:37):
to the fact that he had constant casual sex with
strangers and never ever used protection. Sometimes that happens. Yeah,
this is a this is a different part of the story.
Oh buddy, we are getting into a twist in the tail.
So we we we do not stand an unsafe sex
participants knows none of the unsafe sex with people you
(41:58):
don't know, fam. We don't know when Jack Edema got HIV,
but we absolutely know that getting it did not cause
him to start using condoms, because he gave it to
his girlfriend without telling her that he was sick in
the first place. She later recalled that he explained he
thought he was immune to the disease because, in his words,
(42:20):
in his words, Danial, he had super blood. What what
are one more time he had super blood? He had
super blood. I just wanted to hear you say it
again again. As we're getting into this point, Jack Edema
has seemed like he oh, definitely a con artist. The
(42:44):
stuff that came out about him later in his life
makes me suspect that there was also either mental illness
as a result of just like he was, he got sick,
or because of his constant drug abuse he damaged his brain.
It is unclear. But what happens next, Like, yeah, there's
(43:05):
a lot about Jack Adema, Like what this what his
girlfriend's reports revealed. Is this just a lot about Jackodemo?
We don't know. I up until I started reading her
accounts of him, I thought he was just a standard grifter.
And now there's a part of them that's like he
may have actually been ill outside of the HIV. It
is very hard to say. Um, but this is the
(43:26):
part at which things get moderately less fun because his
very last girlfriend, Penny, a lazy contracted HIV from Jack,
and given that she did, it's almost guaranteed that God
knows how many other people got HIV from this guy,
because again he would throw days long cocaine and liquor
or gy benders while he was in Mexico and before
(43:46):
while he was in Afghanistan, and he probably had HIV
for a large chunk at that time. So he gets
so many people sick. He's this is a guy who
does nothing but leave shattered lives in his wake. Now
that girlfriend Penny ale See wrote a blog post about
what Jack did to her, and it's honestly heartbreaking, and
I am going to read a quote from it now,
(44:08):
a long one, so we'll have to pause a couple
of times in this I did not get HIV via
drugs or being a hooker. I got it the way
a lot of women get it. I was in love
and stupid period, and because of love and stupidity, my
life will never be the same, whatever is left of it.
So the story is not for profit. It is for
peace of mind into that when I meet my maker,
I will know I did all I could to stop
this monster. Jack Adiema has a lot more sins than
(44:30):
just giving out HIV. I am as concerned about other
people being sick as I am, and about dying. The
other stuff will come out eventually, although I am sure
won't be around long enough to see it. So yes,
I am mad, very mad sad as well. Now. She
claims that Jack started their relationship by flirting with her
online while he was locked in prison in Afghanistan. Um,
which is again you'll notice the last time he was
(44:51):
in prison he also exited with it with a woman
he had been flirting with remotely. Uh yeah, yeah. So
he used her to take care of business he needed
done in the United States when he got out of
prison because he couldn't re enter the country, And he
also relied on her to take care of his dog
when he went off doing whatever the funk Jack Adema
did when he wasn't taking care of his dog. He
(45:12):
also doesn't deserve a dog, Yeah, he doesn't that one
does not deserve a dog, do Yeah. So she was
like the last person to know Jack well. And it
is from Penny that we get some of our final
big revelations about Jack Edema. Quote. Jack always told me
(45:32):
he was a heterosexual, and when I finally found out
the truth, it was too late. Now, I also know
that he was bisexual years ago. A Green Beret he
was stationed at Fort Bragg has come forward and told
me of his meeting Jonathan Keith Adema as he called
himself back then. He met him at a news stand
located on Bragg Boulevard in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in early
two thousand, two thousand one. They would have sex in
the back room. He also went to four fifty Robuson
(45:53):
Street and had sex with Jack at his apartment next
to his office in that building. Two other men have
also come forward. Jack was also went to cross dressing
secretly then too, as well as having his anus penetrated
by dildos. He never used condoms then. Now he occasionally does,
but the damage is already there. The disease has progressed.
I've also been told about his encounters with men when
he was in prison in Kabul, Afghanistan, Apparently Thursday nights
(46:15):
their war for man sex. I wish to God he
had told me this himself when I first met him,
so I don't know how true that is, uh, but
Jack definitely had HIV which progressed to full blown AIDES,
and it definitely seems credible that he was just fucking
a bunch of people his entire life and never taking
any care about the fact that he was spreading diseases
(46:35):
to them. Um. I think that it's possible Penny has
some weird homophobias stuff, although it's kind of unclear from
her writing. But it also seems really credible that this guy,
Jack Ademo was just fucking people and spreading diseases his
entire life without a goddamn care in the world. Um,
So that's cool. That's a cool story. Jack was accused
(46:55):
of rape at least once in two thousand ten by
a young woman who visited his home. He temporarily fled
to Belize to escape justice, but returned to Mexico and
was unmolested by the law until his death in January
two thousand twelve as a result of AIDS. So that's
how this story ends. Robert Young Pelton, somewhat legendary war correspondent,
(47:17):
is probably the reporter who wrote most about Jack Adiemo
without falling for his bullshit. And I found an article
written after Jack's death in McClatchy by Pelton or that
quotes both Pelton and Penny Elsie, and it provides some
final explanations for how Jack got away with his schemes
for so long. He would meet somebody that he needed
or wanted to be like, like the author Robin Moore,
(47:37):
and then he would absorb all their mannerisms, words, and
the way they dressed. Pelton said it worked in part
because he was highly intelligent. Few con artists could warm
their way into helping more the author of the Green
Berets write a book, and few could come up with
such strong legal arguments for so many spurious causes, he said. Indeed, Alessie,
his former girlfriend, said Adema wrote nearly all of the
legal filings he was involved with over the years. I
(48:00):
know because I sat there and watched him, she said.
Then the lawyers would just sign off on them. So
at the end of this, I don't know what to
fucking make of this dude, other than that he was
a monster and a grifter. But it is very hard
for me to tell how much of this was like
a coldly calculated piece of ship and how much of
this was like just a damaged ill man compulsively possibly
(48:26):
based on the fact that he actually had delusions like
fucking ship up, like I really don't know where to
land on this guy other than that he was a monster.
But that's the story of Jack Edema. Sounds like a
piece of garbage, a dying, war obsessed piece of trash
who did not participate in safe sex and has ruined
the lives of probably hundreds of people at this point.
(48:49):
Oh god, Yeah, there are so many like poor young
men and if we're honest, probably kids who I am
fucking certain got sick because Jack Edema, you know, contracted
their services as uh sex workers and then just rolled
on with his life. It's like, it's actually, if you
imagine that this guy is as it seems likely, he
(49:10):
was just spreading HIV around Afghanistan's sex worker population for
a couple of years. Like, there's no telling how many
people got sick as a result of him. Undoubtedly way
too many. Yeah, that's cool, that's a cool story. Another
bastard in the bag. Yep, another bastard in the bank. So, Dan,
(49:35):
how you feeling, you know, Uh, I don't know, not great,
not great? Would you feel better to know that prior
to the two thousand one invasion, Afghanistan had one of
the lowest rates of HIV infections in the world, and
that after the war they had a skyrocketing AIDS crisis. No,
(50:00):
that doesn't make that doesn't make you feel good. Oh
of course it doesn't, because it's it's unspeakably terrible. Cool. Uh, well, Robert,
you are an incredible, incredible person. You tell you what? Who? Well? Dan? Yes?
Where can people find you on the internet if they
(50:22):
want to give you the internet equivalent of a sexually
transmitted disease, which is fandom? Yes, I don't really know
where I'm going with this. Well, if you want to bother,
it's okay. I haven't had. They're all imaginary friends I have.
You can follow me on Twitter at DJ Underscore Daniel
(50:43):
d A n L. You can follow me on Twitch
at twitch dot tv slash dj Underscore Daniel. Come off
to play video games and we'll hang out and tell stories.
And I can tell you behind the scenes stuff about Robert,
like when he gave me a knife and I have
it right here. It sounds like that you heard it
open just now. Yeah, come look at my knife on Twitch.
That is not what I meant. Okay, come come look
(51:05):
Dan knife on Twitch and send him pictures of your
own knife. Whatever knife means to you personally. You know,
we all get to define the word knife for ourselves
and for and for the record, my the knife that
I'm talking about fits the Twitch standards and practices. I'm
(51:28):
talking about an actual flip blade by cr k t
kt R. And I'm done and to cut all this,
cut none of this, and cut nothing yourself, listeners, as
you go out into the world, and by go out
into the world, I mean stay in your homes for
the love of God. I'm Robert Evans. I have a
(51:50):
podcast called The Women's War and you can find it
presumably just google it. It'll it'll come up. Google it
in the word podcast if you need to, you'll fucking
find it. Like we all know to use the Internet,
like you know the title. That's all you fucking need.
What are you doing? What are you doing demanding I
give you more information I've given you if you figure
it out Twitter, and I post links to episodes because
(52:12):
I'm a nice person and Robert as a hack, I'm sorry,
I just I'm just abusing the audience to make them
love me more, which is the kind of thing that
I'm certain Jack Adema did a lot over the course
of his life. Compare yourself to that nightmare, Robert you're
a good boy. No, no, you don't know what I
got up to in Afghanistan, Sophie. I'll give you one hint.
(52:34):
There was never an Osama bin Laden. That ship's fake
news anyway. Robert Evans here taking credit for September eleven,
the movie Big Trouble and signing off. You can follow
him on Twitter and I right, okay. You can follow
us on Twitter, Instagram at Bastards Pod. You can find
the sources for our episodes under part one of this
(52:56):
episode under the episode description we have a tea public
still or I'm gonna look at Robert unworsh here. Ever,
that's that's the episode. Wash your hands or not. If
you're at home, it doesn't matter. It could be as
stilty as you want to wash your hands. Don't listen
to this asshole. Live like a monster, be a gorilla.
It's fine. Suck it up for society. By h
Behind the Bastards News
Host
Robert Evans
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