Avenger | 5. The Flight Logs

Hello, Avenger listeners, It's Steve Fishman and I'm really glad you've tuned in. I hope you love this show as much as we do. A quick word on an upcoming bonus episode. We're doing a bonus with Miriam, the real Miriam. We'll be asking her questions, your questions and getting answers. She'll update us on what's going on in her world and a lot has Please email your questions or thoughts or comments too. Info at Orbitmedia dot fm. Oh And Fisher Stevens can answer your questions too. He's our co

Before we begin, please note that for this story we interviewed medium and everyone else for dozens of hours in Spanish. We hired actors to voice their words in English.

It called me by surprise, suddenly there was another journalist in Argentina investigating the death flights and seeing it in Pachinadose, one of the country's most influential publications. Well, after all this time investigating this alone with Giancarlo, this was our story and ours alone. So I storm into my boss's office at Canalre. I hand him the article and tell him we're getting scooped on a huge story. He looks at the article and downplays it, telling me, come on,

From Orbit Media. I'm andres caa was schedo. This is Avenger the story of Medium Lewin episode five the flight Logs. Medium's boss had been dragging his feet for months, coming up with one excuse after another to not pursue this story. None of them made sense to Medium, but finally she managed to corner him. The story was going to be done one way or another. Medium's boss gives in, he will run the story. Medium starts working with her colleagues

We need to see the planes, get our cameras there, but we have to be careful. We can't just call the owners and say, yeah, hi, we're calling because you own an aircraft used for one of the cruelest operations during the dictatorship.

But while they're strategizing, Medium's boss tells her he can't afford to center to Florida. Instead, they can hire a freelancer he knows there, Bruno Vine.

So I call Bruno, I explain what we need and tell him to schedule a meeting to see the plane in for the Lauderdale. I brief him and I tell him to be careful that he should not lead with the information about the death flights.

When I get there, I realize the owner is not aware of the plane's history and I can't remember why it happened. But all of a sudden, he tells me he has some documents that came with a plane. I had no idea what I was about to find.

Medium Bruno seeer.

Bruno confirms it's the plane, and then he tells her something unexpected. The plane comes with the flight lugs. Medium hangs up with Bruno and he immediately caused Giancarlo.

I remember when Miriam called me. I was in Rome having dinner with friends at the restaurant. I had to leave the table and go outside so I could hear what she was saying.

I just hung up the phone with Bruno. In Florida, he saw the sky Evan and the owner had no clue about its history. He even said he had the flight lugs dating back to nineteen seventy six, details roots names of each one of those pilots.

I was excited, not cautious. I told her to stop talking about this over the phone. I hung up and booked a flight to Buenos Aires right away.

Once they're both in Buenos Aires, Giancarlo and Medium start pouring over the flight lugs. Bruno sent over, but there's a snag.

A bunch of abbreviations and jargon in the logs that we don't understand.

We need someone who knows about planes and how that world works to help us decipher the logs.

I suggest going back to Enrica Pinero, but Medium won't have it.

I was still bitter about Enrique saying no to us earlier. Also, Canal Trece had already told me they did not want us to use him, because frankly, it's like this petty thing where they did not want to inflate his fame even more.

One of Medium's coworkers has connections. She knows another pilot who might be able to decipher the flight lugs. She sets up a meeting.

We chose a cafe near Canal Trece.

Medium arrives a few minutes early. She's holding a plastic bag with copies of the flight lugs.

I sit at a table with a view of a park, and it just so happens there's a mural by Mnuaktis. She's actually an artist who is imprisoned with me. She also survived. It's like a sign we're on the right track.

Medium orders a coffee and waits. Fifteen minutes go by, no pilot. She calls his.

Phone, It goes straight to voicemail.

She waits another fifteen minutes.

I try again, no answer, so I call my colleague at Canal Tresi to see if anyone has left a message. No, no messages.

It's clear nobody is showing up. Medium is concerned. The pilot seems so willing, and then nothing, no phone call, no messages. Medium's antennas go up. Her producers shift gears and connect with another pilot.

We choose a new meeting place away from downtown and this guy he shows up.

By then, Medium knew how the death flights worked. What she and gian Carlo couldn't figure out was how this was recorded in the logs. The pilot helps and.

Right away he starts pointing out irregularities that catches attention. For example, some flights took a lot longer than usual. He tells me that doesn't make sense. A lot of these flights are just from one nearby airport to another. They shouldn't take very long. So I asked him, could these be death flights? Yes, he says absolutely.

It's exactly what medium needs an expert who can point to the inconsistencies, talk about him on camera and say.

These logs raise serious red flags. That's what we wanted, a professional, certified pilot questioning them.

But when she asks the pilot if he'll go on air and say this, he says no, a flat out no.

He tells me that back in nineteen seventy eight, a lot of the military pilots who had flown during the first two years of the dictatorship eventually went on to work for airlines. Most of them were still active and had moved up the ranks. He says he'll only talk off the record, that showing his face would be like signing his death sentence.

He's not the only person afraid of this story. It turns out that the first pilot she wanted to meet, the one who ghosted her, actually fled the country after realizing what the meeting was about.

He freaked out and booked a flight to Uruguay. Didn't even tell his mother or wife. He was terrified.

This is one of the consequences of a country that transitioned to democracy but left people who tortured and killed operate freely throughout the country.

Right former torturer, now working normal jobs, still in positions of power.

They were trying to do whatever was necessary to keep their past buried.

In two thousand and eight, a star witness in a trial involving crimes by the dictatorship suddenly vanished. That impacted a lot of survivors who decided to stop collaborating with court proceedings out of fear.

There was definitely a culture of silence. But we still needed an expert and someone who would go on the record. So again I insisted we have to talk to Enrica Pinero. He's not going to cower.

He has no fear and he loved to talk. He loved to be quoted in the press.

I hated it, but Giancarlo was right. We had to go back to Enrique.

Medium and Giancarlo are walking through a ritzy part of Buenos Aires where a lot of expats live. They pass by the botanical garden and arrive at Enrique's film production company.

It's a two story building with automatic doors. We go in, then we're ushered into Enrique's office. He immediately hugs Giancarlo. They laugh and exchange some words in Italian.

We show him the flight logs and video of the planeing Florida that Bruno collected. He starts looking at everything, So.

They bring me this pile of papers, the technical log of this plane they found. It's a maintenance document where a pilot list the duration of the flight, the departure, the names of crew Members's cryptic on purpose. We use sort of a traffic lingo. For example, zero point five means half an hour.

So we start seeing how flights that normally take two hours were logged as if they had taken more than four hours.

And I come across a number of flights that just make no sense from a narrow nautical standpoint. For example, there was a flight from arrow Parque to Punta del Indio, normally a forty five minute flight. In the log it appears as a four hour and fifty minute flight. What do you mean? It's ludicrous, Darling, Where are you really going?

It's incredible. How come these logs weren't destroyed? I mean the dictatorship tried so hard to keep the flights a secret.

Well, normally you don't mess with the technical logs. If you want to sell the plane, the new owners have to have access to that history. You can't just sell or transfer planes without them.

But Enrique thinks there's another reason the logs weren't destroyed.

These people lived with a great sense of impunity. They really thought they were going to get away with everything, and they would never be questioned. I think the Nazis in Germany were more careful with destroying evidence than these guys. Now, Miriam and jian Carlo they've struck gold.

Now Rique is fully on board.

They have to finish filming for the TV report. They need footage.

We just have to go back to the Electra, the plane at the Junkyard in Buenos Aires.

Last time she couldn't go near that plane. It made her sick, physically ill. This time, the trip to the Junkyard turns into an expedition.

We had a mini convoy, me, Giancarlo, my producer, and the camera operator. We park our cars in a straight line outside the gate. I clip on my levelier Mike, and I tell the cameraman to start recording.

The plane is right there waiting for them.

This huge plane suddenly rises up from the middle of all this industrial junk, sustained by two metal columns. I get closer to the plane and I can see the rust that's eating into the blue and white colors of the Argentine flag painted on it. A lone palm tree stands at one side, and on the other there are stairs connected to the plane's open door. It looks sturdy, but we're still told to be careful.

They walk on board one by one.

Giancarlo and our cameraman go first. I get closer, I start feeling anguish all over again. The cabin was big enough for Giancarlo and the cameraman to work freely. My producer scanning every corner. He points out a switch with a sign next to it the instructions on how to use it to open the plane's door in mid air. I I freeze for a bit. I think of the people who's fall from the sky meant the end of

When they finished filming, Medium finally meets the owner. He tells her how he bought the plane as junk, which meant it came to him without flight logs.

He actually planned to turn it into some sort of attraction for kids. He wanted to build a candy store inside of it.

When Medium gets back to Canal Trees later that day, she calls two other survivors of the asthma for her report. She needs their testimony about what happened on Wednesdays, the infamous transfer Wednesdays we've mentioned before, when prisoners were put on death flights. Medium keeps researching and she finds a BBC documentary about the sky Van. It actually in Argentina when this one.

Was delivered in the dock.

They're celebrating the legacy of the sky Van. Immediately I recognize its ID. It was one of the planes on our list. That sky Van was used in the death flights. They had no clue what they were filming.

Medium's team is finalizing the report. She starts talking to the editor about the potential airtime, but Canal Trece doesn't think it's the right time to publish it. Her editors say they're worried it's the end of the year. The store doesn't fit with the holiday spirit. Canal Trece will sit on this story for about another five months.

Finally, on a very hot night in February twenty ten, were huddled together in the studio watching the story as it airs on National Television PA.

That's the voice of the real Medium narrating the report starts showing the brown, choppy waters of the river the Rio la Plata in total quad de Lolfo Silingo, the Navy officer who had confessed to take him part in the death flights, is featured throughout the report, saying that four thousand people were killed in these flights. Medium speaks with survivors, prosecutors, historians. She bluntly asks, why does the Navy keep hiding the truth?

Porqui lamava no the Silla Barda.

In the footage, you can see her walking inside the death plane at the junkyard. She looks around. She has straight red hair and wears a black leather jacket.

All you and contre monto de la Florida HeLa Sotalo soundles.

There's an interview with the owner of the sky van she found in Florida.

When the Navy purchased it, they bought the option of having.

The There's footage from the flight lugs that were in that plane and then Enrique Pinedo appears, pointing out the inconsistencies, raising questions. He's just what the show needed, someone authoritative, commanding a role he was born to play. A It was all there in Medium's report for Argentina and for the world to see. Medium couldn't wait to hear the reaction.

I remember hugging my producer. We were proud, we were happy. We got a call from the higher ups ae Canal Trees, but they gave us lukewarm praise.

Early the next morning, she called Ciancalo to debrief, eager to assess the impact of the story.

I admit it also took me aback.

The story had zero traction in the newspapers, no coverage on the radio.

It might be a disappointment, a big disappointment after years of work. But Medium wasn't going to let go. She wasn't going to rest.

This TV report was just one step in our plan.

After all, she still hadn't revealed the names of the pilots who had to be held responsible. She was thinking ahead. Now Medium and Giancadlo turned to the courts, and the pilot's names will prove invaluable in the next episode. A prosecutor against the junta's leaders, delivers a surprise punch.

He makes this bold request for every branch of the military to surrender all of their lugs for all of the planes they've flown during the Junta years.

From Orbit Media, this is Avenger, the Story of Medium Lewin. I'm your host and senior producer Andresca A. Scheedo. The series was produced by es Seguielrodrie Sandino and edited by Monica Campbell. Original Nicolas Paschela, mixing and mastering Christopher Hoff and Austin Smith. Assistant producers andres Feschtenholz and Eleana Gillespian. FactCheck Alejandro Marinelli and leonardos Canoni. Legal review Neil Rossini,

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