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Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her impactful behavioural discoveries on chimpanzees. It wasn't until one of the chimpanzees began to lose his fear of me, but I began to really make discoveries that actually shook the scientific world. Survive on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. From Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio, this is La Monstra, a story of abomination and conspiracy. The story about the man who simply become known as. Lamaster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to behind the ******** the only podcast where the host has spent the previous seven hours drunk and staring at a box of 5.56 tracer ammunition and wondering if he could get away with starting a fire in his front yard with it and then deciding that no, he lives around too many people, but I can't get the thought out of my Daniel, how are you doing today? I'm great. I'm especially great thinking about that moment, just especially in the dark. Watching those rounds flying through the air would be great. It would be great, and I think everyone in my neighborhood would enjoy it, but ******* cops, man. Yeah, I know that. Yeah, man, those are loud rounds, but that's just so joke. So, Daniel. Yes, Sir. Sophie. Robert. This is an episode about Jack Adima Part 2. Now, when we laughed our friend off, he had, he 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. Why isn't scams out the wazoo? Out the wazoo? Every now and then, just enough credibility to some of them to where it's like, what's going on? Is there something 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 and yeah, we're turning around and we're like, what the **** are you doing here? And I was like, let's show people. 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 green beret. I guess he knows how to run a counterterrorism. Well, 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 U.S. special forces began on June 19th, 1952 at Fort Bragg, NC, with the establishment of the 10th Special Forces Airborne Group. Now, obviously, elite military operators had existed since the dawn of time. Like the story of the Trojan horse is kind of like the story of a of a special OPS raid. Basically. That's true. Yeah, it's it's kind of, yeah, more or less. And elite German airborne units in World War 2, the Fallschirmjager pioneered many of what we would consider like modern special forces strategies. It was not until the Vietnam War that 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 ****. But they're also like showing up in the media, these elite, heavily armed ******** with special skills carrying out these unbelievable death defying missions. So like the movies we get under like Rambo and Commando and ******* 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. 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 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 MVA patrols into ambushes, and it's like, ****** him up for the rest of his life. And it's not a cool story, but it made for good, it made for good media stuff. And so journalists, obviously, as soon as stories about green berets and Navy seals start like hitting. The world, like journalists who embed with soldiers, start wanting to try and embed these guys, which was not an easy thing to do. U.S. 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 died out now because the assassination of Osama bin Laden meant that you could make millions of dollars if you were like a special forces guy who wrote a book afterwards. So nice. Yeah. But back in the day, you weren't supposed to talk about the **** you did in special forces, and so journalists really couldn't get an angle on these guys. And back in 2001, Special Forces dudes were 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. The he was the only US journalist who ever had a real in-depth embed with U.S. special forces, Robin Moore. Now Moore was the author of the book The Green Berets. There's that John Wayne movie that Jack Adima had loved as a kid was based on, and in order to write the Green Berets more, it had to do something no civilian journalist 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, as to whether or not what he did was even really journalism, because he took part in firefights and killed a **** load of people, a lot of journalists. Say you shouldn't do what Robin Moore did, but it's fair to say that he was a legend. We're going to talk more about him later. What matters right now is that the importance of special forces ramped up hugely during the start of 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 desperate to talk to any of these guys and none of them will talk. And Jack Adima sees this feeding frenzy and knew he'd found the perfect grift because, after all, he'd 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 of the invasion, Adima has managed to establish himself. Is 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 treated 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 Marilyn Mason Dan Rather in 60 minutes too. 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, *******. Listen to whatever he has to say. Yeah, she was in special forces and human. Human there. In January of 2002, U.S. special forces cornered Osama bin Laden for what they were absolutely sure was the last time the spoilers they were. It took about another decade. Jack Adima began shopping around a set of tapes at the same time that held seven hours worth of videotaped al Qaida 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 number of media organizations. A lot of them are like scary images of terrorist commandos doing armed drills. Now, once the stills had wetted everyone's appetite, adima 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. 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 $150,000 and demanding that Jack Adima. Be credited when the tapes were aired, surprisingly, Fox said no, and so did NBC. They were put off by the yeah, they were they they thought it was too expensive. And there was also, 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. No. Yeah. Yeah, an NBC producer later recalled. There was no way to verify them. It was either you trust Keith Edema or you don't. CNN backed out, too, after their national security. Analysts did a cursory amount of Googling and discovered Keith Edimus 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 edema in 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 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, a dema then claimed to have tracked down the camps 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 Dan rather. The deep yeah. Yeah. Dan rather, in 60 minutes, fall immediately and hard for Jack Ademas tapes and in fact, rather flies immediately to Afghanistan to interview Keith Edema and visit the compound where the videos had been filmed. Yeah, it's it. He just is immediately on board with this ****. I'm so down the the 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 detailed. So mistake there. A quote about the from the Columbia Journalism Review talking about this particular grift. At a time when workers were still sifting through the 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 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 Adima, which is why people were speaking in English. Yeah, no, gosh. Goodness gracious. Damn. Nobody. Yeah, that's that's really, that's really, that's a real bad. That's real bad and you gotta do better. Yeah, well, he did spoilers for Dan Rather's career. He would not. He would not. He would. He would not. He would go on to fall for more fake ********. Oh, hell yeah. Analysts, obviously. I 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 would 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 Qaida fighters. The video it depicted armed raids, similar to the kind of attacks ISIS would carry out years later in Europe. But these are completely different from the sort of bombings that Al Qaeda actually engaged in at the time. Put simply, al Qaeda never did anything even vaguely like what was shown in these tapes. Like it's just not the sort of **** that they they pulled off. And yeah, there were other reasons to. To doubt the province of the tapes, the place that Keith Edema said that he had raided to capture them. The the compound where these tapes were filmed, mere Batcha caught, was under coalition control during the time that the tapes were actually filmed. It 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 for this particular **** **. 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 a retired special operations officer with knowledge of the CIA's investigation into the tapes, and this guy claims they did a voice analysis and a technical analysis. Not only were they. Staged, but you could single edemas 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 **** what they say happened, ever. They are the CIA. Now, it seems pretty safe to conclude that these were bogus from the GETGO whether or not Jack Adima 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 Adima's reputation. Who was someone as someone who was not a shameful fraud. And for a few months, he was the talk of the Kabul media set. According to 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 DEMAS firing a pistol at a Dallas Morning News correspondent, Todd Robertson, and barely missing his left arm. Many report. Yeah, he gets drunk and shoots shoots at a Dallas Morning News reporter friend. Uh, man. Many reporters began to regard edema as a fraud and a menace. Still, he was quoted in many major newspapers as a special forces operative or a Green beret under representation from the photo agency Polaris. Adima sold the footage to 60 minutes 2 for an undisclosed fee. And the rest of the press corps, including NBC's Dateline on the Today Show, scooped up the sensational footage in the network's wake. So that's great. Now in December of 2002. 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 2002. Now, he was no longer the young, fit warrior who battled alongside U.S. forces in Vietnam. More was in his 70s, racked with Parkinson's disease and reliant upon a cane to get around. So he's not not in great shape. Still, clearly, whatever else you can say about him, a frightening ****** to, like, go wander around alone in Afghanistan in your 70s. 2002 is 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 whole lot of old white dudes wandering around the country in the wake of U.S. special forces once there, Jack. Provide 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 ******** worked because Jack just seems to have had some sort of ability to like not all or even most journalists. But there were there were these guys like skurka before him and now Robin Moore, that just, like, fall in love with a line of **** 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 adima. Been almost no time together, and this is because Moore was still widely respected by U.S. special forces dudes and they gave him real access. And for obvious reasons, Jack Adima did not want to get anywhere clear near U.S. special forces in Afghanistan. Not a good idea, so they didn't really start to collaborate until 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 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 note, notes and interviews from Afghanistan into a book that people would want to read. Adima offered himself up for additional background information, and soon more was listening with bated breath while Jack Adima just lied to him. This random paragraph from the book they wrote together gives you an idea of what sort of stuff Jack was telling him. And again, this is 1 paragraph. Oh yes, in January, Jack uncovered an Al Qaeda plot to kill President Clinton in March, standing in the middle of a cabul St. Armed with a Russian assault rifle in 600 rounds of ammunition, Jack held off Islamic fundamentalists for four hours as they tried to take 18 foreign citizens hostage, keeping them at Bay until engineer Ali in the Northern Alliance arrived to back him up by the end of March. And that's a character right there. By the end of March, Jack was in a Northern Alliance helicopter on his way to the Nahrain 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 going to tell you right now, Jack Adima never saved a *** **** kid. He definitely posed with some sick and injured children, but I think he saved them in the same way he saved his friend with a leg injury. Yeah, no. Now, for his part, Robin Moore said that Jack's stories checked out very well when he tried to verify them. And this is almost certainly a lie, as Marianne Strong, Moore's agent at the time, claims that Robin Moore's actual experiences in Afghanistan were just too 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 Dukes. He's 70 and had Parkinson's, so Jack comes along and is like, I can spice up this ******* book. For you, man. Oh yeah, for sure. Strong later claims that he's like, let me add some con to that ****. Also, yeah, Morris agent later claimed Jack came along and rewrote the entire thing. He came up with terribly exciting, excellent copy. Now she claims that Moore himself only wrote a few pages of the book in the end, and the resulting product was one of the most ridiculous pieces of faux journalism in the entire history of the War on Terror, which is a ******* achievement. The cover of the book features a shirtless jacket. Ammo wielding an AK47. Yeah, baby. Now, New York magazine goes into more detail about precisely how bad this book was. It asserts out right that edema was the only green beret gathering intelligence on the ground, and edema routinely storms the center of the books action to perform heroic feats of bravery. It is as though, given the chance to influence a Robin Moore book, Adima had to cast himself in a 21st 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 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 Adima. Holy ****. Yeah, like, yeah, completely overly confident, which is everybody looking around. It would almost be like a Tommy boy thing where, you know, you have the Chris Farley character and then David Spade trying to clean up the mess that's following him. Ohh wonder. I think actually the right way to play this is to just have Danny McBride do his character from eastbound and down. This guy who is just has this completely divorced from reality beliefs and beliefs about himself just rolling through Afghanistan and somehow not dying but getting a lot of people killed? Yeah, 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 and this. None of them will trick a sick old man into writing a fake book about how you shirtless, sly fought the Taliban. That is a guarantee we make. ******* talkspace not going to do that. No. No, Sir. No, Sir. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying one or for a family. And it meant. Families start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text, plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any mint mobile plan and keep your same phone number along with all your existing contacts. Just switch to Mint mobile and get premium wireless service starting at 15 bucks a month. Get premium wireless service from just $15.00 a month and no one expected plot twists at mintmobile.com/behind. That's mintmobile.com/behind. Seriously, you'll make your wallet very happy at Mint Mobile. Com slash behind now a word from our sponsor better help. If you're having trouble stuck in your own head, focusing on problems dealing with depression, or just you know can't seem to get yourself out of a rut, you may want to try therapy, and better help makes it very easy to get therapy that works with your lifestyle and your schedule. 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And the shocking discovery I made where I faced the consequences of writing a book I thought would help people? Isn't that funny? It's not funny at all. It's depressing. Very depressing. Religious history is back with more. Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. We're back, and we are talking about Jack edema, so it's a great book that Jack Adima Cons this guy to write. And the book was a hit among an American public hungry for stories of military glory after September 11th. Yeah, people eat this **** up. It quickly climbed to a respectable place on the New York Times bestseller list, and although it never made its way up to #1, it sold very, very well now, since more the ostensible. Author was elderly and in poor health. The responsibility for shamelessly plugging the book landed on Jack Adima. 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 Franks isn't listening is it's great. That's. I mean, I'm loving it. Just you should catch. Catch him at book soup. That's why 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 1/3 of the people who wind up becoming special forces operators do it to, like, cash in on some book as soon as they get out. But the only kind of special forces Griff, that wouldn't work today is like what Jack Adima is doing because there's now so many of these guys in the media who would be like, no, this this dude is just lying like he was never, never did anything. Yeah. Yeah. Has never seen goodness. I mean nothing. Not a thing. Yeah, well, anyway, like any great grifter, Jack Adima succeeds during the only. In history in which he could have possibly succeeded. Yes, exactly. The hunt for Bin Laden elevated edema to a national figure just in time for him to weigh in on the most critical political 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 agent saw him as an ideal get as they discussed whether or not going to war with Iraq was a good idea. And I'm going to quote from a Rolling Stone right up here, it dema'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. Echoed the Bush administration's hotly contested rationale for a war. He told MSNBC that the link between Iraq and al Qaida was common knowledge on the ground in Afghanistan, and claimed in an interview with W NYC 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 others wide eyed journalists that there was ample evidence linking Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia to al Qaeda and to the attacks on September 11th. 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 to group. Love it, love it, boy, so adima professed to have. This knowledge of nuclear weapons being smuggled from Russia and to all to all three members of the axis of evil, Iran, Iraq and North Korea, few in the media questioned Adiemus 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 check him out, said Ed artist, chairman and founder of the humanitarian organization Knightsbridge International. They ran story after story that furthered the cachet of a self-serving, self aggrandizing criminal. And that's totally accurate, yeah. That is accurate, yeah, but the sales of this book were good, but reviewers did not like it, and in fact, it was pretty much universally panned, and journalists who did look into it repeatedly questioned the veracity of claims like Jack Adima fought the entire Afghan War on his own. The sheer volume of doubt seems to have cracked through whatever brainwashing edema 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 Ademas lies Random House has. But his publisher refused these changes, and when Jack Adima learned that more was trying to write him out of the book, he issued a press release and filed yet another lawsuit. He started claiming that a secret cabal of special forces soldiers has assembled to take him down because they were jealous of Jack edema. Jack also filed lawsuits against Knightbridge and Partners International, 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 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 spend all your always be suing baby. That is a huge part of being a a really good grifter is. Just keep on suing everyone you can. Sophie, who are we suing right now? Uh, Cody Johnston? That sounds like a good idea. Yeah, let's throw some lawsuits out to Cody. Get them in the mail on that. I'm getting on that. So the book sales were good in spite of the controversy. So Jack decided to form a promotional company, the Hunt for Bin Laden, LLC, with a handful of business partners. I I have to give him credit that's easily the best name for an LLC that anyone come up with a great LLC name? I kind of want to start. If that's defunct now I want to make that my LLC and just do something else with it. Like is there a character limit for LLC's? I clearly it's clearly not more than the number of characters in the hunt for Bin Laden LLC. Which like I want to start an LLC dedicated to like feeding the homeless, but just call it that. And that would 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 9/11? There's there's potential in this. So Jack edema is the hunt for Bin Laden, LLC. The goal of this company was extensively to raise funds for a US count for US counter terrorist group, which was a training camp that Jack had founded in upstate New York, to quote help 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 turn erratic and dangerous. According to New York magazine, one of Jack's business partners eventually testified during the inevitable lawsuit over the hunt for Bin Laden, 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 stationery for use as evidence, and his lawsuit against the network. A lawsuit from the US Attorney's Office also arrived, followed by a letter from North Carolina's. Visual inspector charging edema 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 18,000 from dollars from the company had gone missing, he drove down to Fayetteville to close the company bank account. He says Adima followed him there and threatened to kill both him and his girlfriend, bro more. Exists. He's awesome. When do the police step in? Not almost never. They arrested they he did get busted earlier, but he goes right back to committing mail fraud. Totally murdering saucy. Like, no, that was something else. He didn't murder anybody. He no. I mean, he definitely murdered people. But no, he didn't go to jail for that. He went to jail for mail fraud. Oh, that's right, it was just mail fraud. That was the 1st. 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 ************* she's we use. Yeah. And yeah, more at at the same time as this was all going on more. Learned that Adima had ordered hundreds of copies of the hunt for bin Laden 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 ******* ******** like it's incredible. He couldn't stop himself, so Jack continued to attack Robin Moore via lawyer for months, throwing 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 2004, 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 7. Yeah, baby, yes. He designed the uniforms and patches himself. Their goal was to hunt al-Qaeda. 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. So. Pretty good grift, Daniel. I mean this, this. People were really, really gullible. You could get away with anything at this period of time. It was amazing being confident and speaking confidently and just doing the things you say you're going to do. People are just letting it happen. That's just really wild. I'm impressed and horrified, but yeah. Man, it's it. It's pretty great. And you know what else is great, Daniel? And you know what doesn't kidnap and torture random citizens of Kabul? Do products and services not do that? Sometimes they, not ours, danel. Every product advertised on this show carries the official behind. The ******** have not kidnapped and tortured any Afghan citizens seal of approval. That is the only guarantee we make of our products and services, and we do not make guarantees about other countries. But we will promise you no one in Afghanistan tortured by the sponsors of this show. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying one or for a family and at Mint. Families start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text, plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any mint mobile plan and keep your same phone number along with all your existing contacts. 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I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. We're back. Ah, so. Daniel, this story of Task Force Sabre 7 is ******* 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 of the suspects that task force Saber Seven took in. And there's also some evidence that he, someone he or his men may have helped stop assassination attempts. And our 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 entirely possible that all of the Afghan political leaders who claim 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 2003. And four, they're trying to, they're trying to cause disturbance as much as anybody else. So it's just like, yeah, we'll take your money and say some **** **** to make people confused. Perfect. Yeah, it does seem fair. To say that there were people within NATO and people within the Department of Defense who treated task Force Saber 7 as a legitimate 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 because it's easy to trick the ******* government in Afghanistan of a ton of ********. Like there's $100 billion worth of hospitals that got built by government contractors in Afghanistan and. Aren't hospitals so ******* it's easy to get away with grips in Afghanistan? Now while all this was going on Knightsbridge and Partners International, these two veteran owned charities continued to desperately tried to warn the CIA and the Defense Department and everyone that would listen that Jack Adima was a dangerously incompetent con man. But no one listened to them until April 30th 2004 when Adima made the error of emailing several of his friends back in the United States an update on the progress of Task Force Saber 7. This e-mail included pictures of Jack Adima and his men torturing. Civilians? At least one of the people Jack emailed. Head yeah. Light torture, Daniel. Ohh God, light torture. OK, barely even torture under most international treaties. I'm nervous. So at least one of the people that Jackie emailed had a soul and forwarded the emails to the Department of Defense. Warrants were issued for Jack's arrest in Kabul and he was eventually busted on July 5th by Afghan police Forces, New York magazine notes. When Afghan police. Arrested the trio on July 5th. They said they had a they said they saw a mini a smaller scale version of the gruesome prisoner abuse photos from the Baghdad interrogation cells in Abu Ghraib. Early press photos indicated that three prisoners found in Ademas 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 the hall that was littered with bloodied clothing. All of the prisoners in Ademas 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 the time from like, when this all happened by like, good journalist 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, edema did this, or task force Saber 7 did that. And I can't say again to a point of certainty that everything they did was ********. But my gut is telling me that all of those people who thought they did anything useful were just taken in by the Khan because Jack Adima was a ******* con man and it's easy to get away with cons. Afghanistan, yeah, yeah, that's my feeling. Maybe I am wrong. No, but I'm not. Everybody likes on 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, yeah. The worst. Now, at his trial in Kabul, Adima did say something that I don't think is untrue. He stated that he had been operating with the US military's approval and consent. And it does seem that this was at least part partly true. Yeah, exactly. Because they're so they're not good at their jobs. Like, that's the ****** ** part. Look, they said I could do it and they all have to sit on their hands and be like, I mean. Yeah, we kind of did. We did. We did again. I don't wanna be, like, slandering better reporters than me because a lot of the guys who wrote about him, like, back in 2004, are. But they're so confused by the fact that legitimate military people aren't uniform about whether or not this guy is a con man. And, like guys, the army's bad at its job. Like the Defense Department's bad at its job. Look at how the war in Afghanistan is gone. 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 100% of veterans. Suck. They make ****** calls all the time, and this was one of them. One video played during the trial showed Adima 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 Ademas claimed that he and task force Saber Saber 7 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 an unorthodox legal precedent. So 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 **** with the Taliban, maybe doing just other shady **** because he's a political official in Afghanistan in 2004 and they were all on the ******* take. Like, yeah, there's probably, he's probably a sketchy set of a *****. But like, also Jack and his guys absolutely tortured this guy. And then he winds up trying their case, which is like, what are you, what are you God? That that's a that's like the record scratch scenario. You watch and you're just standing at the table ready to sit down and then you see the guys face walks in just like, oh. Man, one of the 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 experience. The judge then stood up and mimed Dad house. Somebody acting like James Bond adima of course, came into the house waving a weapon, shouting hands up, hands up. Also taken into custody were two of the judges, brothers as well. As for the relatives in a family retainer. The 8 prisoners would be discovered by Afghan. Authorities when they later busted Edemas 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. I was hooded for 12 days. Jesus Christ, bro. The trial also brought up evidence that did seem somewhat exculpatory for Jack and his men. U.S. military authorities repeatedly admitted under questioning that they had been aware of Jack's task force, and some evidence emerged that edema and his men may have thwarted an assassination again attempt against the Afghan education minister. But again, it's impossible to say what the **** actually happened here. And this is made more complicated by the fact that the FBI apparently took a bunch of documents and tapes from Adima'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 by the fact that it happened in ******* Afghanistan, a country with an enormous amount of government corruption and huge numbers of officials who are 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 Adima on the whole, I do think it is safe to say that task 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 10 years in Afghan prison. Amen. So the judge that he tortured sentences him to prison. I just love that the judge whom he tortured sentences. Yeah. Now there are 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 and a private bathroom, like a kitchen and all sorts of nice stuff. And they're just like, yeah, well, it's like, that's what these journalists say and the obvious. He bribed them. He gave them 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. **** man. Prison with carpet ain't the worst prison. So. Jack was released in 2007 and quite wisely decided he could never return home to the United States and again he was released like 7 years early. Probably bribery, but it was through a pardon. Who the **** knows, maybe it was something that please the Defense Department. Either way, as soon as he gets out of Afghanistan he knows that he absolutely cannot go home to the United States because he still has wire fraud warrants out for his arrest in North Carolina and there were pending federal charges for all of the crimes he committed in Afghanistan when he was torturing people. So instead, he went to Dubai and attempted to set up a drug and arms smuggling syndicate. This failed. And so Jack Adima headed to the last refuge of all true grifters. Mexico. Mexico? Yeah, baby. Yeah, here it is. **** I love how often episodes of this show end in Mexico. It is always such a treat whenever we get to Mexico. So, yay, Jack bought a boat and started running a charter boat service for tourists. He called himself captain blackjack and patterned his personality after Captain Jack Sparrow. Dude, yes, you might say. There has been a degradation from his his time as a terrorism expert, so now he's doing booze cruises and pretending to be Jack Sparrow. He built a home in in in an imitation Middle Eastern style, and was said to relax there in a thobe, which is like the long gown that men in parts of the Middle East, where his ex-girlfriend claims that he would regularly go on multiday vodka and cocaine suit suit soaked binges while looping either Arabic music. The Apocalypse now soundtrack. We're just playing Louis Armstrong's what a wonderful world on repeat for hours. Hell yeah. Wow. Get after it. Yeah, at some point Daniel Jack Adima caught HIV, possibly due to the fact that he had constant casual sex with strangers and never ever used protection. What? 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 and unsafe sex. Participants knows we know none of the unsafe sex with people you don't know, fam. We're we don't know when Jack Adima 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. Peter recalled that he explained he thought he was immune to the disease because in his words, in his words, Daniel, he had super blood. What? What are you one more time? One more time. He had super blood. He had super blood. I just wanted to hear you say it again. No, sorry. Again, as we're getting into this point. Jack Adima has seemed like a ohh definitely a con artist. The 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 he he was he got sick, or because of his constant drug abuse, he damaged his brain. He has it is unclear, but what happens next? Like, yeah, there's a lot about Jack Adima. Like what, what? This, what his girlfriend's reports revealed. Is this just a lot about Jack Adima? 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 him that's like, he may have actually been ill outside of the. HIV it is very hard to say so, but this is the part at which things get moderately less fun. Because his very last girlfriend, Penny Alizzi, 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 **** benders while he was in Mexico and before while he was in Afghanistan, and he probably had HIV for a large chunk of that time, so he. You get so many people sick. He's this is a guy who does nothing but leave shattered lives in his wake. Now, that girlfriend Penny Elisi 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. 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 ******. I got it the way a lot of women get it. I was in love and stupid. And because of love and stupidity, my life will never be the same, whatever is left of it. So this story. It's not-for-profit, it is for Peace of Mind. And so that when I meet my maker I will. No, I did all I could to stop this monster. Jack Adima has a lot more sins than 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. Which is again you'll notice the last time he was in prison he also. Exited with it with a woman he had been flirting with remotely. Yes. 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 reenter the country. And he also relied on her to take care of his dog when he went off doing whatever the **** Jack Adima did when he wasn't taking care of his dog. He also gave deserve a dog. Yeah, he sure doesn't. I would like to back out on that one. Does not deserve a dog. Does not deserve a dog. Dog. Dog. Yeah. So she was like. 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 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 who was stationed at Fort Bragg has come forward and told me of his meeting Jonathan Keith Adima as he called himself back. Then he met him at a news stand located on Bragg Blvd. In Fayetteville, NC in early 2000, 2001 they would have sex in a backroom he also went to. 450 Robeson St and had sex with Jack at his apartment next to his office. In that building. Two of their men have also come forward. Jack was also into crossdressing secretly then too, as well as having his **** penetrated by ******. 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 night's their word 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, but Jack definitely had HIV, which progressed to full blown aids, and it definitely seems credible that he was just ******* a bunch of people his entire life and never taking any care about the fact that he was spreading diseases to them. I think that it's possible penny has some weird homophobia stuff, although it's kind of unclear from her writing, but it also seems really credible that this guy Jack edema was just ******* people and spreading diseases his entire life without a *** **** care in the world. That's true. That's cool. That's a cool story. Jack was accused of rape at least once in 2010 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 2012 as a result of AIDS. So that's how this story ends. Robert Young Pelton, a somewhat legendary war correspondent, is probably the reporter who wrote most about Jack Adima without falling for his ********. And I found an article written after Jack's death in Mcclatchy by pelted or that quotes both Pelton and Penny Alissi, 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, 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 worm their way into helping more. The author of the Green Berets write a book, and if you could come up with such strong legal arguments for so many spurious causes, he said. Indeed, Alessi, his former girlfriend, said Adima wrote nearly all of the legal filings he was involved with over the years. I 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 ******* 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 ***** ** **** and how much of this was, like, just a damaged ill man, compulsively, possibly based on the fact that he actually had delusions, like ******* **** up. Like, I really don't know where to land on this guy other than that he's a monster, but that's the story of Jack Adima, sounds like. A piece of garbage, a lying, 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. Oh God yeah. There are so many like poor young men and if we're honest, probably kids who I am ******* certain got sick because Jack Adima, you know, contracted their services as sex workers and then just rolled on with his life. She it's like it's actually, if you imagine that. This guy is is it seems likely he 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. Damn, that's cool. That's a cool story. Another ******* in the bag. Yep, another ******* in the bank. So, Dan? Yes, Robert, how you feeling? Huh? You know? I don't know. Not great. Not great. No, I'm good. You feel better to know that prior to the 2001 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, no it doesn't. That doesn't make you feel good. Ohh, of course it doesn't, because it's it's unspeakably terrible. Cool. Cool. Well, Robert, you are an incredible, incredible person. Tell thank you. Tell you what. Do it well, Dan. Yes, Rob, where can people find you on the Internet if they want to give you the Internet equivalent of a sexually transmitted disease which is fandom? I don't really know where I'm going with this. Well, if you wanna bother me on the Internet with it either, it's OK. I have a hat. They're all imaginary friends. I have a you can follow me on Twitter at DJ under score Daniel, DNL. You can follow me on twitch@twitch.tv/DJ. under score Daniel can watch and 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. You're damn right it does. Yay. Come look at my knife on Twitch. That is not what I meant. OK, come home. Oh, whoa. Come look at Dan's knife on Twitch and send him pictures of your own knife. Whatever knife means to you personally, you know? My God, we all get to define the word knife for ourselves. You did this to yourself. And and for and for the record, my the knife that I'm talking about fits the Twitch standards and practices. I'm talking about an actual flip blade by CRKT. 80 Alright, I'm done and you cut all this. Cut none of this and some cut. 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 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 ******* find it. Like, you know, we all know how to use the Internet. Like, you know the title. That's all you ******* need. What are you doing? What are you doing? Demanding. I give you more information. I've given you enough you can figure it out. And I post links to episodes because I'm a nice person and Robert is a hack. I'm sorry, I I just. I'm just abusing the audience to make. You love me more. Which is the kind of thing that I'm certain Jack edema did a lot over the course of his life. Don't 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. There was never an Osama bin Laden. That ****** fake news. Anyway, Robert Evans here taking credit for September 11th, the movie Big Trouble and Signing off. You can follow him on Twitter at I right. OK you can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at ******** pod. You can find the sources for our episodes under part one of this episode. Under the episode description, we have a tea public store from Robert on worst year ever. That's that's the episode. Wash your hands. Or not. If you're in home, it doesn't matter. You can be as filthy as you want. Wash your hands. Don't listen to this *******. Live like a monster. Be a gorilla. It's fine. **** it up for society. Bye. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break your handle the hosting creation. Distribution and monetization of your podcast go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her social discoveries on chimpanzees. So four whole months, the chimps ran away from me. I mean, they take one look at this peculiar white ape and disappear into the vegetation. Bring wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. From Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio, this is La Monstra, a story of abomination and conspiracy. The story about the man who simply become known as. Lamaster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.