This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing from My Heart Radio. It's officially summer, and that means it's time for our tradition and here's the thing where our staff shares their favorite episodes from the archives in our Summer Staff Picks series. One of my favorite episodes was with filmmaker James Jones, director of the Apples series,
wanted the escape of Carlos Gone. The conversation so intrigued me I wanted to explore the story even deeper and interview one of the subjects of the film, Michael Taylor, which I did earlier this year. Here's my conversation with James Jones and Michael Taylor. Bernie Madeoff, Elizabeth Holmes, Sam Bankman Freed. It's easy to think that shocking levels of greed and corruption are simply nothing new in the world
of white collar crime. But what is new is an accused chief executive evading prosecution by escaping to a foreign country in a box. That's the story of Carlos gon, former CEO of both Nissan and Renault. Goen was arrested on the eve of a proposed merger between the two companies and charged with financial misconduct. He was first placed in solitary confinement and then house arrest, awaiting trial in Japan. That is until former Green Beret Michael Taylor and his
son Peter shipped him off to Lebanon. The scandal ultimately resulted in the sentencing of the tailors and former Nissan executive Greg Kelly, while Goon walks free, maintaining his innocence. Documentarian James Jones, director of the BAFT winning Chernobyl The Last Tapes, brought this story to life in the four part series Wanted the Escape of Carlos Gon on Apple TV. The series weaves questions surrounding a corporate takedown and the potential framing of Gone with the claims of CEO excess.
I wanted to know what was the background of someone who went from CEO to fugitive in such a swift fall from grace.
So he is a fascinating character. So he was born in Brazil, in a town in the deepest Amazonian jungle, grew up mainly in Lebanon, went to university in France, but was always kind of viewed as an outsider. You know, he was never really accepted by the French establishment. He never played the game of sucking up to politicians, going to the right clubs, you know, having dinners with captains
of industry. He kind of thought he was so brilliant he could play by his own rules, which ultimately left him without many allies when it all came crashing down. He worked for Michelin, the tire company, which is where he kind of showed that he had this skill for like cost cutting and turning companies around, and then was recruited by Reno and became known as Lacoste Killer, and you know, broke kind of French unions and sacked a lot of people, shut down factories, was like hugely controversial.
And then when Reno took over Nissan, they thought, this is the guy to go to Japan and just like modernize this company, be ruthless, fire the people he needs to fire, and just like save this company from death.
It's so strange to hear someone reference going into the Nissan culture to strip down and to make a Japanese car company leaner and better and more competitive, when you're always under the impression that the Japanese companies, particularly car companies, are the leanest and meanest of them all. When Gone goes over to Japan, does he find a lot of fat there?
He does. There were practices that had just always been the same way. There were you know, car companies, own shares in supermarkets, so all these kind of weird idiosyncrasies that the Japanese staff just saw as normal, you know, and it took an outsider like Going. And another interesting thing about Going is I think, you know, some people in Japan said to us, you know, he was viewed with great suspicion to begin with, but the fact that
he was like culturally hard to place. You know, he wasn't French, he wasn't American, you know, he was willing to be the bad go Yeah, exactly. He didn't kind of stand on ceremony. He was absolutely ruthless, and on some level, perhaps because they were facing you know, complete extinction, they kind of went with it. And the results were so quick. He said, if I don't turn this round within three years, are quit. He turned it around within a year, and you know, it was just massive efficiencies
straight off the bat. And you know, I think initially people thought he'd cooked the books, but it was it was just the same ruthlessness he had, and he's he's an interesting guy because he's obviously brilliant, but he's not someone like a Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg who has one design or iconic brand or something that's associated with him.
What he did, he just had this focus and this work ethic, and he inspired the people around him to commit to going further than they'd ever pushed before and sticking with him when he made hard decisions. And so what was so fascinating making the series is you see how all these things that made him brilliant, as the success started to go to his head, he kind of
lost them. You know, he wasn't working so hard. He was spending a lot of time on the private jet go you know, throwing parties at Vesai, going to Rio Carnival, you know, whereas his employees were still buying their own stationery and you know, desperately working and trying podcasts wherever they could. And actually, like it was just a really old,
kind of tragic story of success. It's like losing sight of what made you so great and suddenly people around you thinking, you know, this emperor has no clothes.
I'm aware of this story, and you decided you wanted to make this documentary after Gone went to Lebanon and after the tailors went to prison.
Yeah, so I became aware of the story really when he escaped. You know, I remember the headlines around the world. The New York Post had this like enormous double bass case, and you know, the rumor was he was smuggled out in a music equipment box. But the film came about, I think it was the summer of twenty twenty one, and Apple wanted to do a series on the story. They had approached this production company. At that point, we
had no access to Gon. It was a couple of months before the tailors were extradited to Japan, effectively swapping places with the man they'd helped escape. So we started with very little really. You know, we knew this was an amazing story. There was a kind of Hollywood heist element to it of one of the world's most famous business people being smuggled out of an island, a very kind of closely monitored country, smuggled inside a music box on a private jet.
I want to be clear for our audience. When you say music box, you mean the cases that they stowed musical equipment.
In right exactly. Yeah, and there was like a guitar case on top.
Gone was a bit of a band, and there was a little guy. So that made getting him out of the country slightly easier than I would have been if he was six foot five or something. So you became aware of the story after the escape.
Yeah, exactly. The name was familiar. You know, he was this kind of superstar in the car industry. But you know, I'm a journalist a filmmaker, but I don't follow the car industry that closely. I mean, I remember, you know, there was shock you know, in Japan, he was like a demigod. You know, there were like manga comic books about his life. He was voted you know, the man women would most like to have children with, you know,
and he's not a conventionally handsome guy. So you know, he had this aura and this incredible reputation and then overnight, suddenly all that just came crashing down.
I watched the film and I look at a timeline when you likely got involved. So when you see the party, he goes to the Versai at a restaurant Corveracai, and he has this party, and yet you have a lot of footage from that party. How did he film the party?
Yeah, so the Ghones had organized the Marie Antoinette themed party at Versailles, and like, if you know your history, Marie Antoinette is you know the symbol. You know, her famous quote is let the meat cakes. She's the symbol of kind of extreme inequality. And you know, within France, people getting their come up, and so like perhaps an unwise party theme for a man who's using his company brace the yeah, bit of hoo race, you can say.
And yeah, the party organizers hired a videographer to shoot all these people dressed in kind of Marie Antoinette themed you know, garbs, and it's kind of completely revolutionary France. Yeah, I mean it stirs up a revolutionary in all of us, I think.
See, so you get some wonderful footage things like that, the party, you're sit downs with Gone and his wife.
But Going in particular that shot I'm assuming in Lebanon after the fact, when he's when he's once he's escaped to Lebanon exactly, and and Gone strikes me as it seemed like one of those situations where James Jones could have left the room for several hours and gone could have spoken into the camera ceaselessly, you know, decrying his innocence about what he seems like somebody who he could go on and on forever to maintain his innocence. He's almost never going to be satisfied.
Absolutely, he feels wronged. You know, when I asked him, do you feel sorry for the victims in this story? You know, there's been a huge amount of collateral damage, lives ruined by this whole saga, and he kind of there's one moment he looked blankly at me and said, if there's a victim here, it's me. You know, can't he can't see beyond that. He feels there was a conspiracy in Japan to take him down, and everything flowed from that.
But but at the same time your documentary and I could be wrong, maybe this is just what I glean from it. There's a whiff of the idea, or even just a slight whiff of the idea that that's certainly possible. Meaning you walk away from watching your program with the idea that the political life and the policies that are enforced by the Japanese government are very often controlled by
business itself. Nissan isn't just some company. Nissan, like Sony, is a huge company with tentacles into every corner of the world, and one of the major companies with the Japanese headquarters. And to say that people wanted to derail the Reno Nissan merger is not a foolish idea, correct, absolutely.
I mean, the interesting thing about this series, in this whole story, is that it's not a black and white story of kind of good versus evil. There are lots of kind of contradictory truths, and like, there's no doubt in my mind that there was a conspiracy to take down Carlos Gone. You know, you believe there was a conspiracy. There was absolutely at first. And so Nissan is like, as you say, one of the crown jewels in Japanese industry.
The thought of that being, you know, subsumed by a French company Reno was just an insult to Japanese pride, and so they wanted and they realized that Carlos Going, having led them to huge success, saved them from extinction, was now thinking about pulling off this merger, partly because he would do quite well out of it.
How was Reno viewed as a car company.
I think by the Japanese as you know, a kind of poor relation. You know, they didn't admire French kind of mechanics design. They bought a huge steak in Nissan at a time when Nissan was was about to go bust, so it was a kind of marriage or convenience. But then the idea that they would be fully subsumed by a full alliance was just anathema to them. So there's no doubt in my mind that Nissan and the Japanese justice system decided to take Carlos going down.
Eventually is excoriated for paying himself huge amounts of money, and the Japanese were like, listen, no one deserves to be paid that amount of money when you're producing cars. I mean, no one at the head of a company, no matter how successful it is, should be paid this amount of money. Is that correct?
That's right? And I think it's partly a cultural thing, you know. I think in France extreme wealth is viewed with great suspicion. Likewise in Japan, where you're kind of you know, these companies are kind of hierarchical. You work there for your whole lifetime and incrementally increase your salary. Carlos Gone comes some more of a kind of American business background, where the CEO is rewarded, you know, proportionately with the company's profits. So he thought he was worth,
you know, five times what he was getting. He saw himself on a level with Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, all these kind of people. Carlos Gon's problem is that it wasn't Carlos Going Inc. He was working for two companies that had shareholders. He was an employee of these two companies, whereas in his mind he became bigger than these companies and deserved whatever he wanted to take.
Now, when you think that gol was framed, you think that he was set up in order again to derail the merger, and the Japanese powers that be wanted to hobble him, if you will. How much was he being paid in those final years and how much was he accused of stealing from the company.
So the interesting thing is that he kind of operated in this gray area where he was paid by both companies and he could kind of operate the way he wanted because there wasn't the scrutiny. He surrounded himself with yes men at both companies. He spent a lot of his time, increasingly on a private jet, often flying to places not on business but to kind of enjoy the
trappings of his success. But what's interesting is that even though it was a conspiracy at first, they almost then stumbled across evidence of real corruption, you know, so almost by mistake they found on the laptop.
On the Nissan side of the Rennao side.
So the Nissan lawyers basically went and searched his former lawyer's office in Beirut, discovered a laptop which had a hard drive with all these flows of money which he'd kept secret from Nissan basically to and from Middle Eastern businessmen. And he was writing checks from Nissan and Reno and then through very convoluted means, through shell companies and so on, he was receiving tens of millions of dollars back into
his pocket, and he kept that secret. And when we put it to him, he doesn't really have a convincing answer for why, you know, he would be writing these checks and receiving money and keeping it secret from his employees. So that is why he's now wanted not only in Japan from where he escaped, but the French now want to put him on trial for corruption.
So I guess what's frustrating and confused for me is that on one hand people maintained that the Japanese government set him up. On the other hand, he stole from both companies. Which is it right?
Well, that's the thing, you know, we we pose the question in film four. The title is victim or villain, and it doesn't need necessarily need to be either or you know, he can be a victim of a conspiracy who suffered greatly, was in solitary confinement, interrogated without a lawyer. You know, they call the Japanese justice system the hostage justice system because you're effectively kept hostage until you confess. So there's no doubt that he and his family were
victims at that point. The problem for him is that they did then stumble across real corruption and the case just became you know, these allegations are much much more serious, and so it's very hard for him to dismiss the label of villain unless he's willing to go and stand trial in France, which he's not. You know, right now, he's a fugitive in Lebanon, and as far as I can see, that's where he's going to spend the rest of us.
Director James Jones, and later I'll speak with Mike Taylor himself. If you enjoy conversations with documentary directors uncovering corporate corruption, check out my episode with Alex Gibney, director of Enron, The Smartest Guys in the Room.
The ghosts of all my films tend to follow me, and I often keep in touch with sources and interview subjects, and in odd ways they keep coming back to films I make henceforth, so they kind of reverberate. It's a little bit like that moment in Ghostbusters. So they say, don't cross the streams. Well, my streams are constantly getting crossed. It seems like characters from one film are intruding into another.
To hear more of my conversation with Alex Gibney, go to Here's Thething dot org. After the break, James Jones shares the intricacies of how Carlos Gon was smuggled out of Japan in a box. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Former automobile executive Carlos Gon is a fugitive currently living the life of a free
man in Lebanon. I was curious to learn that while the Japanese authorities couldn't get their hands on going due to Lebanon's extradition laws, was the money he allegedly laundered recoverable.
That's a good question. I mean, I think some of his assets in France were frozen. I think some of his assets in the States as well. But you know, I think most of that money that ended up in his pocket was in shell companies arranged from Lebanon, you know, either within Lebanon itself or it in kind of tax havens around the world. So I think Carlos Gohn is still living a pretty comfortable life. He's living in the
mansion paid for by Nissan. He's got his super yacht paid for by the you know, the money from the Middle Eastern businessman. So I think the thing that kills him is that his legacy has gone. You know, his reputation will never recover. He's a fugitive. We all know him now as a man who escaped in a box, and that kills him because he would have gone down in you know, the Automotive Hall of Fame as one of the genius businessmen of the twenty first century.
So he decides to escape. Now, the tailors, I want you to describe how they come together. I doubt that tailors have a website called We'll put You in a Box and Smuggle You at Lebanon dot com. How did that relationship get forged?
So, Mike Taylor is a former Green Beret. He'd served around the world, and then after leaving the military, he'd actually spent some time in Lebanon during the Civil War. There had met his wife, who is Lebanese, who is a kind of distant cousin of Carlos Gohen's wife. So I think Carlos Gohan's wife kind of started putting the word out in Lebanon, saying, you know, Carlos is going to die in a Japanese prison. He's in sology confinement. It's freezing cold. You know, he's not going to, you know,
live much longer. I'm never going to properly see him again.
You know.
Beirut is like a big village. Everyone knows everyone, and someone said, there's this guy, Mike Taylor, and he's got quite a reputation. He'd helped journalists escape from the Taliban. He'd he had a specialty in kids who are abducted by one parent. He'd go in and get the kid back for the parent who paid him to do it. And so he just had this like amazing reputation. He met Carlos Gohan's wife in Beirut. They talked about a
possible plan. But you know, this is not getting someone out of Egypt or something like that.
This is Japan.
It's an island, a CCTV everywhere going is under house arrest. This is like, you know, for someone like Mike Taylor, this is you know, if you're a mountain climber, it's like climbing Everest or whatever. This is just like the ultimate challenge.
Tayl we used to call a soldier of fortune, right exactly. This is a great challenge for him.
It's a great challenge, and you know, I'm sure he realizes that at some point it could be quite lucrative, but I think just and also I think on a personal level, he met Carlos Goen's wife and felt great sympathy, felt like there was an injustice, thought the Japanese system was was unfair and cruel, and so he started formulating
this plan. And you know, they could have gone by boat, but it was winter, the sea could be choppy, and he thought, let's get him in a Let's get him in a box, take him on a private jet, you know, small airport, not in Tokyo. You know, the security is more lax on private jets. He did a test and saw that they check the luggage going into it into Japan, but not coming out. He made sure the box was too big to fit through the X rays. So he was like, you know, it's a military operation, planning every
single detail because he was prepared. He was prepared.
But for me, when I'm curious about us, who contacted TA who's working with Gone? That access as tailor?
So that I mean basically because Carlos Gone was pretty clear that his phone was tapped, and you know he could tell that because one day he called a newspaper journalist to say, they're a guy standing outside my house and we have evidence that Nissan did use spies to follow him and other people they were kind of going after. And the day after he called the journalist, the spies didn't come to stand outside his house, so he thought, okay,
I know they tapped my phone. So he had to get a special burner phone, but was essentially communicating with his wife, who was communicating with Mike Taylor. So his wife was in Lebanon at this time. So she is a fascinating character because she's his second wife. She's kind of beautiful, blonde, charismatic, incredibly warm, and she was kind of associated with Gohon's transformation from this kind of nerdy mister Bean character, yes, to someone who loved lavish parties.
And yes, stressed different, dress differently, had hair implant, you know, laser eye surgery, sharp suits, and you know, suddenly was on the red carpet at can you know, this was.
Like a totally unknown world. This is red carpet going exactly. So she was seen, I mean, a bimbo is too strong, but certainly someone who enjoyed the finer things in life. But what you saw over the course of this whole saga is that she, first of all, when he was locked up, she went out on the media and kind of almost single handedly changed the world's perception of the Japanese justice system to the point where even a UN body issued a report about hostage justice. You know, the
terrible violations of human rights. Now, you might say, Carlos Gohn is an unlikely champion of human rights, but that that's what his wife did. And then she also played this kind of amazing strategic role in pulling off this escape, which she doesn't want to talk about clearly for legal reasons, but you know, it's quite clear that she was pulling the string. But she now within Lebanon is kind of celebrated as this power behind the throne who pulled off
this amazing plot. Obviously gone was the man who was brave enough to actually lie down inside this box in the dark and just pray that he made it to Lebanon. But I think, you know, I think that's interesting about his own psychology, right. I mean, he's a man who is willing to take these incredibly high pressure decisions, and
he can seem almost quite robotic sometimes. So he just weighed up the kind of cost benefit and the risk of getting in that box and risking everything, and he thought it's worth it, because otherwise, you know, I die in prison in Japan.
So the Tailors are arrested. There is an extradition treaty and some kind of legal arrangements between the United States government and the Japanese government and the Tailors are arrested in the US first, correct, right at the behest of the Japanese government. Absolutely yeah, and always make no attempt to flee that prosecution.
No. I mean, the Tailors could have laid low in Lebanon like Carlos Gone, and you know, enjoyed the fruits of their amazingly successful escape, but they wanted to go back to the States. They didn't want to hide away. I think deep down they thought it wasn't such a serious crime, and you know, the States wouldn't give up their own citizens, let alone a kind of war hero.
But they underestimated how mad the Japanese were. I think, you know, this was a national humiliation to lose its most famous prisoner, who pops up in Lebanon and gives a press conference, you know, slamming the Japanese justice system. So I think they were so determined to get the Tailor's back because they knew they'd never get Carlos Gone.
They are extrad added to Japan and they serve how much time in Japan?
So they served nearly two years, and it was brutal, correct, it was brutal. I mean it was like you know, solitary confinement, freezing cold cells. Mike Taylor is not a young man. You know, he came out of prison, you know, incredibly gaunt and sick. He looked about thirty years older than he really is. They told us these stories that they'd be forced to they'd be given a big piece of cardboard and they'd have to rip it into smaller
and smaller pieces. Yes, and I think the prison system would say that was entertainment, that was to you know, stop them being bored. But you know, Mike Taylor said that his fingers were like painful, and it was like, you know, sounds to me more like torture rather than entertainment. So they certainly had an even harder time than Carlos
going in prison. And you know, I think for Mike Taylor, the thing that was even more painful than the kind of physical discomfort and hardship was that he'd involved his son. And his son is not a kind of hardened war veteran. He's a you know, young guy in his twenties who probably completely adores his dad, has always wanted to emulate
his dad. So the chance to be part, even a small part of his most outlandish plot was probably just too exciting to turn down, but then no one would have ever thought that he'd end up spending you know, years in a Japanese prison as well.
And in the program Gone, I believe in one of your sitdowns with him, he's quoted as saying something along the lines of everybody knew.
The risks they were taking, yeah.
And so Gone does not have a lot of sympathy or empathy for the tailors.
I was genuinely surprised how little he had.
Beg insight into Gone that comment. Real incided to go God. Like I said, Goan's about gone totally, and he uses people to get what he wants and to move along the game board as he desires. And then he doesn't really when he does somebody use for you anymore. It seems like he just forgets about you. One thing that I was confused about was what was the fee that the tailors were told they would be paid for the escape just the escape itself.
So they were given expenses ahead of the escape, which was I think one point three million dollars, which was just to cover private planes, you know, a reki, the pilots or you know all those but you know, and probably a bit for yourself as well. But Mike had always said, after the fact, we will we'll talk money. You know, the priority is getting you out after we do it. And I think they did come to an arrangement afterwards for some money in the in the low millions.
But then Mike and his son spent years in Japanese prison and say they've got kind of a million dollars of legal fees, which Goane had assured them he would pay, and to date has he paid. He's paid them a tiny fraction of that.
Is it difficult for them to take Goan's money? Is that the legal issue?
Well, they can't touch him. I think, you know, Mike has gone to Lebanon to meet Going and kind of appeal to his decency exactly. You know, it's like, I saved your life, unique brand of decency when Gone got out of the box on the private jet and he said to Mike Taylor, you know you saved my life, And he really did. Like if it wasn't for Mike Taylor, Carlos Gohen would still be in a Japanese prison and Mike Taylor would have just been living a free man in Massachusetts.
Where is Taylor now?
He's back home in Massachusetts and where's his son? His son is in Dubai kind of starting out various businesses. I think is.
Taylor willing to talk about what happened or is he better off not talking about what happened. I mean, he served his time.
He served his time. You know, he gave us his first interview and Peter Taylor and you know, he kind of trusted we were doing it right. He didn't want it just to be the Carlos Goon show as well. But I think he knows now because he has spoken out about feeling let down by going and you know, the legal fees not being paid. I think he recognizes that that relationship is over. He's not going to receive a pennymore.
Right now, when you're sitting down and doing the one on ones with Gone, you did them in Lebanon. Correct? Yeah, I'm assuming you did hours and hours of interviews with him, correct or limited.
He's he's an impatient guy. But as long as you're on top topics he likes talking about. He'll give you all day. It's when you start asking the tough questions he suddenly starts looking at his watch.
You know, ah, did you ask the tough questions? We did yeah.
Yeah, So we asked about the omar and allegations. We also asked, you know, his his dad was a convicted murderer priest.
That's amazing part of the story.
And you know, as his wife said, you know, Gon basically just shut down that whole topic. You know, he was a kid, his father was accused of killing a priest, was sentenced to death. Goan was kind of six years old. It must have been incredibly traumatic and formative. But it's a secret. You know, no one talks about it. It's kind of known about Lebanon, but had never been reported.
Goan had always refused to talk about it. But what was so interesting is that his wife, Carol said, his whole life has been trying to prove to his dad that he's not his dad. And then you think, my god, he's tried to prove that he's not a criminal like his dad, but he's ended up breaking the law, you know, now a fugitive in Lebanon. It's just like kind of come full circle. So I thought that was just so revealing of his mentality and drive.
When you should something like this, it's presumed that there's a lot of stuff you leave out that you might have wished you had left in Was that the case?
I think almost everything is in there. There were a few people who knew Gon very well, who would only speak to us on background, but who gave us the idea of him as a narcissist, and you know, helped us understand his psychology to kind of join the dots of the facts we had. For instance, we had the contents of his mobile phone when he was arrested and he was like totting up his personal wealth, and there was the final note was and if I pull off
this merger, I'll become a billionaire. And so like we had insights like that to him. But there are a few people who had been very close to him for a number of years that we would have liked to go on camera. But in terms of the key players like having gone and his wife and then the tailors, those are the key players who who we just needed to have to make it feel like we're telling the full story.
Were you commissioned to do this? Did Apple commission you? Or this was your pro Apple commissioned it? Yet? God, And if we go down your filmography, Dispatches, Panorama, This World, the Frontline episodes, Children of guys are more than a few of them commissions or you like commissions.
Yeah, it's a mixture. I mean the last film I did before this was about Chernobyl, and that was my idea that we then took to Sky and HBO. I'm working on a Russia film now that's independently funded that we will hope to premiere at film festivals and then, and that's been actually great working in a different way. So you're not necessary boroughly answering straight to a broadcast or streamer. I think streamers are more prescriptive probably than
traditional broadcasters, right. I think I've been lucky solec Chernobyl. It was a very clear concept of like telling the story entirely through archive, a lot of it unseen, and you know, I think you just try and make sure that you accept the commission from people who buy into that vision. So I've never had a situation where someone has wanted the film to be something completely different.
So pretty much get that sorted at upfront.
Yeah, exactly.
You guys both want the same thing, exactly, So I've never felt arguments about what stays in and what's gets cut out.
It'll be Yeah, you get minor notes, but I think like maybe, unlike with a movie where you have like studio execs, you know, demanding major changes, I think from the whole a doc director, at least in my experience, you feel like it's always your own and you might have to compromise on a couple of things, but it's your vision that they're buying into. But maybe I've just been lucky.
Now does go and roam the streets of Lebanon of be rude or where have you? Freely? Does he have to mask himself? Because the guy that gets put in a box in Japan and sent to Lebanon could justice easily be kidnapped, put in a box and shipped to Japan and go you know, round trip if you will.
I mean, and we know who might put him in the box and take him back. Right there's a guy who's got a who's probably seeking revenge right now. But yeah, he drives around with heavy security. You know, he has armed guards. He's very careful about the way he travels. And you know, Lebanon, it's not just about being sent back to Japan. But Lebanon is a very unstable place. So although it's you know, beautiful country, great food, good beaches.
You know, you can walk in the mountains. You know, Hezbolaar is one of the largest parties, and that you know, it feels like it's constantly on the brink of economic collapse, civil war. So he's trapped in a place that for a man who's accustomed to flying the world on private jets and living, you know, the life of ultimate freedom, he's constrained. He's constrained and you know, who knows what Lebanon will look like in five years.
Where's Kelly now?
Kelly's back home in Nashville. So Kelly was his kind of right hand man, the man who was kind of tasked with keeping going at the company. As he said, Goan was like the Michael Jordan of the car industry, and it was my job to make sure he didn't go anywhere.
His story in the show is painful because you really see him suffer. Right, you know, the tailors committed a crime. The tailors, although their hearts were in the right place, they were mercenaries. They took money, They committed a crime. Goan is probably guilty of some of what they're saying. He is at least, oh they should pay. At least it appears that way, at least a layman would would say that. But Kelly seems like the one person of
the project was purely innocent. Yeah, he didn't deserve any of what happened to him.
Absolutely, And they tricked him into coming over to Japan knowing that he needed back surgery. He was in agony, so he had this incredibly long flight. They assumed that he would just be desperate to go home. When they confronted him with these charges, he'd sign whatever they wanted and he'd throw going under the bus.
I can't believe you've got on the plane. I know, why did he go? Who's his lawyer? I know?
I know, Well, there is there is one person in particular who was like Greg Kelly's protege, who is the one who called him back, who he trusted mistakenly, and you know they underestimated Greg Kelly. He was just like, well, these charges aren't true. I can't possibly sign this, And he ended up spending three years of his life stuck in Japan.
What are you working on now?
So it's a film about Russian assassinations, which is we're submitting to festivals for next year. But he finished, we're getting close to the end, but it feels like we're living no. So we're gonna hopefully premiere a festival early next year and then take it from there.
So when this is over, when you're done with Carlos, goon, guys getting stuffed in boxes, Russian assassinations, I'm assuming the project you're doing next is something like the History of Candy.
That would be lovely.
My Thanks to documentary filmmaker James Jones, I recently had the opportunity to speak with Michael Taylor, the former Green Beret that kept Carlos going from rotting in a Japanese prison, but then ended up serving time there himself for his role in the escape. Taylor's background linked up perfectly for the job. He trained with the Army Special Forces and
became a Green Beret. After his time in the service, Taylor worked with the FBI and atf and as a private security contractor, providing risk assessments and going on rescue missions. I wanted to hear from Taylor what it takes to become an elite soldier in the military.
You're going to be very strong mentally, and there's a bit of cockiness that goes along with it, you know. I was talking to a major that worked with my dad. My dad would as a career soldier as well. And a major that worked with my dad who was rifted and then became my recruiter, and he was telling me, you know, you're going to join special Forces.
You're going to do well.
You're going to have to push yourself because everybody doesn't make it, he says. And it takes a bit of hackingness to make it, he says. And nothing wrong with that, just you know, be humble about it. But it does take some self confidence to step on a ramp of a C one or a C five a galaxy at forty one thousand feet at night, where you see the curvature of the earth and you're going to step off into a foreign country you've never been before. So it does take a little bit of self confidence.
Yeah. Now, I'm assuming you did not know who Gone was before you were engaged in all this activity. You didn't know him, That's correct, I did not. You never knew him, So who reaches out to you?
Well, it's it's interesting. There were two couples in Beirut that were having dinner one night. One of the ladies, I guess the subject came up about Carlos being stuck over there and needed they needed to rescue him. But it's just a monumental task. It's just impossible to get done. And one of the ladies there that I happened to know, said, well, if my husband was over there, the guy i'd called me Mike Taylor. I didn't know this until, you know, a year later or so, and the couple says, oh,
I know him. He helped me out in Iraq once because this guy sells insurance and he needed to get into the green zone over there, so I helped him out as a friend of a friend. So he's the one that called me and said, hey, we've got this situation. We need a guy to get him out of a place. And he didn't give me any details, and I said, well, you know, I got a brown dog.
How big is the dog?
You know what kind of dog is? I need a little more detail than that. You know, can I get the guy out more than likely? Yes, that's that self confidence, but I need some details. And finally he gave me some details. I met up with him a couple weeks later, I think we met in Beirut and he told me he's over in Japan and this is what happened. So of course I got on the internet and started researching it, making some calls, and that's how I first found out.
Now, when you meet these people over there, are you in and out of Are you in and out of Lebanon on a regular basis? No, but you just had contact. But I can go over there, yeah, yeah, and so and so. When you find that funny that your name is on the lips of every woman in the Middle East whose husband has been wrongly imprisoned in their mind or been kidnapped, I think that's really funny. Well, you know the guy that got my husband out of the box at the airport they were going to kidnap him
is Mike Taylor. Mike Taylor. It's funny that you're.
But to go to what happened before. When I was driving here from Boston, I was looked at the George Washington Bridge, and it was back in probably ninety two ish, where I was doing a vulnerability assessment for Port Authority of New York and New Jersey after the World Trade Center bombing. I was on top of the New Jersey support structure on top of the George Washington Bridge when I got a call from the FBI saying, hey, we need some help. We got an American child who was
kidnapped taking the Bay route. Of course them all in give me details, feed me. He said, the mother is going to call you in a few minutes. The mother's in Cyprus. So we got involved. At the requests of the Bureau and the mother, we got the child back, an American citizen back here. We had them back in probably ten days so, and there were many stories like that. So that's that's what some of the history.
That's why that.
Lady happened to mention of my husband, you know, kidnapped the guy I'm calling it's Mike Taylor.
After that dinner, what happens.
I went over and met with him. He introduced me to Carol, Carlos's wife, and that's where I got, you know, the intel dumb. All the information came and they gave me all the details. And one of the things that really struck me and hit me in a heart hard about this was part of his bail condition was he's not allowed to talk to his wife.
What I learned in the documentary that Japanese system was pretty brutal.
I was shocked about that. I didn't think that the Japanese were that bad, and I've never heard anything like that before. Part of your bail, you can't talk to your wife, you can't see her, and you can't talk to her.
Who does that?
What civilized nation does that?
So when you have prior knowledge of the way this is going to work, the box and this and the this, you're calling the shots, meaning I'm going to do this airport because I think this is the best opportunity for us.
Yeah, first of all, there's not a lot of private planes that fly in and out of Japan, really, so it can't take him in out of Tokyo because he's too well known. He walks down the street and he'll have a whole bunch of people with him wanting to autograph and talk to him, so on and so forth. So we had to find another way out. So I looked at Osaka. Osaka had a new VIP terminal private airport that had just opened with the commercial airport. Private
airport's on one side, commercials on the other. And I did the research on it and found out they only do security checks on the way in, nothing on the way out. You need to know your enemy, very very important. I need to know how the Japanese think. They're very robotic. Everything's sop, nothing's outside the lines. They don't have people like us. You know, you put one Japanese person there and tell him to lead something, he's going to be lost.
You put ten of them together, they'll get anything done. Really, as long as they have all the same mission. Tell them what the mission is, they'll get it done. But you got to put parameters up for him. So I know they're not going to weigh the box. I know they're not going to do anything to the box. So the security is only checked on the way in, not the way out. And I made the box too big for their X ray machine anyway, so it won't go through. Yeah,
and they seem to think which I got from. You know, I did this on purpose. But the prosecutor was telling me when he was trying to interview me that, you know, you said you were musicians. I said, that's absolutely not true. I never said we're musicians. You people thought we're musicians because there was a guitar case on top of the music box, so that's why. And he was pretty embarrassed about that. They get embarrassed about things like that.
But did you what did you tell them? Did you tell them me you were like a film crew. No, the equipment is their anything.
To tell the care Look, we're coming in on a private plane a two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a leg to go there.
I don't need to tell you anything. It's filled with suntry whiskey. Yeah.
Yeah, I knew based on studying them that they're only going to check the security in a way and not the way out.
So what I did.
I put some sub wolfers in the big box when they took it off the plane, so there was some weight in it. And then I had another smaller box about half that size that wouldn't fit in the cargo hole because it wasn't big enough, so we put it in a cabin. And then I had the guitar case.
What was in the smaller box, nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing. Now when you pull this off, when this happens, you get him into the plane, into the box, loaded the box of the plane, you take off. I'm assuming, oh, there's a bit of a relay here from Japan to Turkey, Turkey to Lebanon to beab Root. Do you accompany him the entire way, or you're done in Japan. The plane takes off and you deliver him door to door.
I was on the plane right and in fact, the Japanese ground crew from the VIP terminal couldn't lift the box. So I had to help them lift the box from my hotel where I put him in the box, rolled them down in the elevator downstairs to the lobby. I had to have six Japanese on one side. I'm on the other side. Put him in the van. Then we got to the airport, which is only a ten minute ride, not even a ten minute ride. I have to help take him out. Then there's wheels they can roll it
up to the conveyor belt. The conveyor belt they put it on there and the conveyor belts about three feet away from the cargo hole.
The door of the cargo hole, there's a gap there and.
I see it as I walk up, and I say, oh boy, that's a problem. There's a Japanese guy, he's maybe five foot tall, one hundred and twenty pounds inside the cargo hole trying to lift that one end.
Of the box.
I say, hey, buddy, step out.
Let me go in there that jumps in big guys about six to one, two twenty. I said, no, no, no, no, I don't need you hurt in your back.
Get out of here. I'll do this.
He got and I there's like six or seven Japanese on the back end pushing it up, and I yank it into the airplane into the cargo hole over the crack, over that three foot crack.
Yeah, I was elect feet three feet yeah.
And it was crooked too, it was. It wasn't at a straight angle. So we got it in no problem because the box was probably closer to four feet long, so we had some space there to play with. And I had a centimeter all around on the box shorter, smaller than the cargo hole. So I knew it fit because I knew what the dimension of the cargo hole was.
What does have inside the box while he's being anywhere?
Just no, we don't need any water. He's only there for about thirty or forty minutes.
Oh that's really so I threw a bed sheet on him. And was he a good candidate for smuggling? Did he turn out to? It was very good? Made no sounds because he had a risk, he had a risk.
You know, he's he's gonna die in Japan in a jail. They'll put him in there for fifteen twenty years. He ain't getting out. So he was a very good candidate for it, and he did a great job. He did exactly what I asked him to do.
Yeah, so you get him on the plane, you take off. How soon after the plane takes off, does go and get out of the box.
Well, what happened was soon as we shut the door to the cargo hole, I had to pilot check it make sure that was right. They shut the passenger door, planes buttoned up, I opened the box and I tell him sit tight for a few minutes. When wheels up, i'll pull you out. And I take a big dish rag a bath towel from the bathroom because the cargo holes on the back of the airplane, then the bathroom
and then the cabin area. So I take the bath towel from the bathroom and I set it in between the box lid and the box itself so there's more ventilation, and sit tight. We wheels up, I'll pull you out. So we got wheels up, which we were late. You know, I asked for an earlier departure at ten thirty. Of course, the Japanese very sop. Your original plan was eleven o'clock, you gotta wait till eleven. So it was eleven o'clock. We weren't allowed to take off until then, which we did.
But I went back in and found him sitting on top of the box Indian style with a big smile on his face. Said okay, come on out. You can come into the main cabin now, and we had some champagne and gave him some salad, some food and eat before he was talking a mile a minute because he wasn't able to talk to the media. He wasn't able to he was talking to his wife on a back channel phone.
No, no, no waiting for him. Yeah, so you go to the flight from Japan to Turkey as how long with ruffly nine hours? Not too bad. No, then you get off that plane and you go right away.
So I did what I did, is I flew over a Russian airspace just in case we had a mechanical problem. I don't want to fly in another country because Russians we can do business with, so they won't grab them return them to Japan. So I made sure the flight pan was over Russian We landed in Istanbul Istanbul. The plane it so we land about four in the morning, draining dark.
Great.
Perfect, that's just what we want. I have another plane, smaller plane on standby for him. Put him on a smaller plane. Off he goes into Bay Route. Me and my buddy, we go to the commercial airport, get our visas, go to the commercial airport and catch a commercial plane in I don't want to land in Beirut. Have our names together, because my name will draw attension and his name will draw attension, and they'll know right away.
That's why I did that. And then where does he go? He went home?
His wife met him at the airport, and of course they're u fork. That was on the thirtieth of January twenty nineteen.
And he ever paid it.
No, he did pay some. I don't want to get into all the details, but he did pay some. But you know, for my legal fees afterwards, at a pocket expense was eight hundred and forty two thousand dollars. Lawyers are expensive, especially international camo. Yeah that but international case, and what are you gonna do? You have no choice? And I had some amazing lawyers, but we got traded by Trump. How so they cut a deal? Who did
Trump and Shinzo Abi, the Prime Minister of Japan. We understand that it was done over you just radar deal. So many legal scholars still today say bill jump is not a crime in Japan. A lot of Americans don't realize that bill jumping is not a crime in Japan. And aiding and embedding somebody it's something. Who's jump bail is not a crime, is not a crime. So what they did they charged us with harboring, But nobody has ever been charged with harboring unless police are actively looking
for him. Like you hit somebody in your house, or you hit somebody in the car when the police come and knock.
On the door, that's harboring.
So it's political and we got sold by Trump and Pompeo. That's the bottom line. So anytime Trump starts talking about, oh, I protect vets, that's all bullshit. He doesn't protect vets at all.
But when you go, you are sent there to go on trial there. You're not tried in the United States or tried over there.
We didn't go on trial because we don't want to wait three and a half years in solitary confinement to go to trial. I went right away, you know that. The night we got there, I said, look, I'm pleading guilty. I said, okay, we want to know everything. I'm not telling you everything, but I'm pleading guilty. What more do you want?
And did they tell you? Did you we aware? I mean, obviously if it's a bit of a dealing here that you were only going to do a year that was part of the agreement. No, that was never part of the agreement. What was the what term were you facing? Thirty six months and that's what you did? No? No, no, we did.
First of all, we did ten months in a county jail waiting to go because they detained in Norfolk. Yeah, Norfolk County and Denham, Massachusetts. And then after that we get transferred. We said, look, we've exhausted all of our appellate issues and every court mechanism available. The judge Tilwane asked the state Department, can you give me a document, a sworn statements saying they won't be tortured the tailors
won't be tortured if we send them to Japan. Of course, of course they gave them the sworn document, but they also know on the State Department's website. There's talk about Japanese prisons, torture and people the same website. So come on, guys, it's all bullshit.
So I wasn't a fair question to ask you? Were you tortured?
Oh?
Yeah, of course I was tortured absolutely for.
What for what? Just just for retribution or they wanted information from you about.
No no, no no, no no no no, just that's how they do. They were aliating, they were humiliating. I spent seventeen months in solitary confinement. Now, when I say solitary confinement in Japan, it's not like in the US where you get out for an hour a day. That door didn't open. You get people that you see three times a day, and that's a guard bringing your food. You don't speak to anybody.
There's no speaking, nor no outdoor activity.
Absolutely not. When I came back, I had to get vitamin D injections twice a week because my vitamin D was so bad.
Former Green Beret Mike Taylor. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be sort of follow here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When We Come Back, Mike Taylor describes the conditions of solitary confinement within the Japanese prison system. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. Former CEO Carlos Gon was sprung from house arrest in Japan by the herculean efforts of former Special Forces soldier Mike Taylor.
Yet while gone walks free, Mike Taylor and his son Peter served hard time in unimaginable conditions.
I was sentenced with thirty months. He was sentenced with twenty four months.
He got out after how long we got.
Out at the same time time when we came back to the States. He got out quicker than me.
And in this solitary confinement tableau that you've created, you never got to see your son once.
So no, no, no, soon as you Japanese took custody of us, we didn't see each other. We weren't allowed to see each other.
Yeah, they had the tearing paper thing.
Oh yeah, I had blisters on your fingers and I just kept doing it. And you can't lean against the wall. You're sleeping on the floor the whole time. There's no heat, so you get frost white every day during the winter time on your hands and your feet. You're not allowed to use a blanket until like nine at night. And summertime, it's just the opposite. People are, you know, dropping because of dehydration and you haven't suicides like every four days.
There seventeen months in solitary confinement. That door did not open and I didn't have a shower for six and a half months. After six and a half months, they gave me a little bucket of water and said you can shower with this.
It just sounds like unimaginable. But when you do get out and you're free, he hasn't paid you all the money, And I'm just I mean, obviously you're a man with a code and you have your honor and everything, and for me, I'm like, here, you save this guy's fucking life. Yeah.
One of the things that's important that a lot of people don't know and gets miscommunicated is I'd never ask for money up front. This wasn't done for money. Do I want to be paid, absolutely, but that was never talked about beforehand. Carlos told his wife and told my son, your dad got me over the barrel right now. When he was in Japan. He can charge me twenty five million dollars and I have to pay it. Right to me, that was insulting because I told his wife, I said,
shame on you, shame on him. I've never asked you for a dollar. The only money that we've taken was for expenses, and we had to make many trips back and forth to Japan and doing a lot of risks.
Consider your legal fees further expenses.
That was after the fact. I'm just talking operationally now. So I never asked you for any money. Could I have I said, yeah, I could have said, yeah, put twelve million up in escrow. Otherwise I'm not helping you. I didn't do that. I did it on being a good guy and being honorable.
You thought it was right. Yeah, So when you get out in Japan, twenty months in the prison and frostbite and there's no showers and all of us insanity, what happens then, when's the first time you lads and your.
Son, oh that was in the airport in Japan, were about to leave. Yeah, we were in the terminal in Japan and they brought him because he was in a different prison and I was in the so called the hard prison, which is great. If you got to do it, let's do it that way. But we got to Japan and then the guys from the Bureau of Prisons, there was three of them, Japanese, no Americans, from American Bureau
of Prisons. They came over to escort us back. First of all, they told the Japanese they signed for us. They took all the change office because they had us chained up, like you know, Charles Manson, They took all the change off and says, you don't need any change. You guys are good to go. I said, can I see my son? He's absolutely. He brought Peter in and we got the hug and it was emotional and feel like it would be wow.
Once you get transported by a Bureau of Prisons people from Japan to the United States, you're free from the Japanese facility and you go home. You didn't have to serve another day of time anywhere.
They know what happened to us. We flew us back to Los Angeles to the federal holding place.
You were there for how long?
About three weeks? Peter got out within a couple of days because he only had a twenty four month sentence and the ten months, and he had already served twenty months. We both served twenty months in Japan, and we both served ten months in Detum, so he was already he served more than a sentence of twenty four months. He served thirty months.
But when you get out, when you you were finally you go to the place in La it's kind of an eat intermediate place and then you get out and you're done. You never have to go into a facility, nothing, no court, no court rooms, trials, no violation alone in the US. And so you got out when what year that was?
November twenty two?
Tell me why one of the toughest men I fit from that? In my wife, you're in the vitamin water bis but happens. Let me tell you why.
Vitamin one you get it on Amazon. It's a good healthy drink. In Iraq during the war, it's one hundred thirty hundred and forty degrees here every day and we're pounding, you know, twenty five thirty bottles of Gatorade and have all the sugar. Sugar's just cramping us up and just brutal on us. So we had to fly a couple of airplane loads of Pedia Light. In Pedia light tastes horrible, I mean terrible, terrible. Maybe it tastes a little bit
better now, but it tastes terrible. So that's where I got the idea there's got to be something else out there. There wasn't, so that's where I created Vitamin One. It has no sugar, but it's got the electrolytes and the energy enhancing bikes going.
It's still okay. It's tough.
You know, Co Compepsia the big dogs on the block here. You know, our sales over in the Middle East are much better than here, but we sell here in Amazon. We're trying to get in a Costco Kroger the other stores we got. Arthur Demola's a market basket up in Massachusetts. Phenomenal, phenomenal supermarket chain. And what a great guy. He puts his money where his mouth is because he put is in every one of his stores. So we're in the full market basket chain thanks to Arthur Demolos.
So you're over in Beyrout on business and is there any are you ever anywhere in proximity to go?
And oh, I've seen him a couple of times.
You've seen him? Oh yeah, you sat with him. Yeah, you met with him face to face, but we was it pleasant your interaction with him? It was very civil. Yeah, amazing you could sit down with this guy who you've saved his life to. Well, let me just say, I don't have many people on the show that I can save this you, but I'm not an honor to meet you.
Oh, thank you.
My thanks to Mike Taylor and director James Jones. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and Maureen Hobin. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Daniel Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing that's brought to you by iHeart Radio.