Part Two: Jack Idema: The War On Terror's Dumbest Grifter

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

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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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

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 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

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, 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, 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 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 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

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

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 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 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, 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, 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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, 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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,

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, 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. 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 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?

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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

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 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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. 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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