In a Sense

Compech on April ten, two thousand six. In his first round of recorded interviews with the Reward Manuelatios, blank You insisted that he had purchased the d C nine, that the previous owners, Fred Geffen and Royal Son's Inc. Had committed a major error by not immediately canceling the plane's registration. Here's what he told many owner in our own people.

It was their mistake, he says, the grave one, because the plane was flying as if it still belonged to its US owners, and no one will believe them when they say that they had already sold it. Blankfield claims that he had nothing to do with Geffen and Royal Sons. He claims that Jorge whom he describes the business partner in his legal companies coordinated the purchase at the DC nine without any knowledge of Blankiell's plans for the plane.

Hop Sticker, however, just doesn't buy it. Were you growers in the airplane and in that plane when it was questioned owned Fred given Oh if you read again, his willing document had been mosted by d A and rolled over and was working for them ever since. Perfect Yes, although actually thank you does mention the CIA so very briefly.

Here's what he told Menu yet, which means I can send you those documents, that the planes really were connected to the CIA, that the plane was in Montanamo, that the plane was in Paris with the CIA, that the plane, my plane really made flights for the CIA. Thank You'll never sent those documents. But he told Manuel that the d e A sent an agent on April eleven, the day after the drug bust. That agent interviewed local airport

authorities from Blankio says, we're on his payroll. Those authorities, confronted with the evidence from the Falcon twenty, also confiscated in Campeche, told the d e A agent that Raoul Himenes Alfaro was the owner of the plane and that Raoul Himenez Alfaro was Fernando Blanco Scena. From that moment, Blankio says, the d A spent two years confiscating businesses, properties, and bank accounts belonging to Fernando Blanco Scena and Raoul

Himenez al Faro. But the d A never charged Blancio or Raoul with any crimes related to the DC nine, not even when they realized that they had arrested him or rather both of them in the Dominican Republic by mistake, perhaps illegally. The plane shows up on a runway but a small coastal airport in Mexico, stuffed with coke. The Mexican Army says that irregular flight behavior raised suspicions and that the plane and the blow belonged to El Chapo Busman.

The Venezuelan government investigates the plane and produces witnesses who say the plane was empty as it was being repaired on the runway in Caracas. Fred Geffon says he sold the plane through a broker and does not know the identity of the purchaser. Jorge Coles says that Geffon does know who the purchaser was, though he declines to name him.

Two reporters and Fernando Blancio, who was also Raoul Himenes Alfaro and Luis Albert Ortega sal and Jorge Alberto Mario Serrano and Luis Fernando luch Castillo says that the plane and half of the coke were his, that the other half belonged to his Columbian partner. Blanco also says that he loaded the plane there in Venezuela before the first of the two doomed take off attempts, And he says that he never had anything to do with Geff and royal Son's Inc. And that, by the way, the plane

used to make CIA flights to Wantnamo. And you know what, I think they all lie. They mixed pieces of truth with bits of lies and try to tell captivating story, an exciting story, a useful story for moving whatever it

is they're trying to move. What we can gather from all these stories, however, is that a single airplane loaded with cocaine brings together the d e A, the CIA, the Mexican Army, the Venezuela National Guard, and Fernando Blancos, a mid level pilot an air logistics manager for illegal drug corporations, with some thirty years of experience under his belt, now serving time in the US for things he didn't

even do. My name for now is John Gibbler, and this like Jacob Homer is Transportista episode ten in a sense m H. When Fernando Blanco Sisna reached out to Detective, he promised the story that would be better than the Zapatista rebellion of January and the murder of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio nearly three months later. Here again is how many Latios described Blankio's first getting in touch with

Diego so Orno and Detective, pitching them his life story. First, he was like, really mysterious guy because he only gave me a phone number, and he told me, you gotta call this guy. He's supposed to be in jail. He he's been telling me that he has a great, great story to tell us that is better than a documentary that we released couple of months months earlier. In in ethics started like I don't know if the right name. He was looking for the age and he was really

anxious to talk to him. So Dego gave me the assignment and so I called him. When I read through the transcripts of Blankie's interviews with Menue, I noticed that blank You mentioned a few other reporters with whom he had been in contact. I decided to call him up and asked them about their experiences speaking with and the impressions of blank You. The first reporter I called agreed

only to speak to me off the record. The second reporter I called this herd reis a remarkable Colombia investigator journalist, the director of UNIVISILS investigated Unit, the author of many books, including most recently alex sob The Truth About the Businessmen who Became a multi Millionaire Nicolas Malulu's Shadow. An episode two of this podcast, I mentioned that when I first reached out to Raise an early one, he was surprised to hear that I was working on a story about

link Field. Raise told me that Blink he had long promised him the exclusive rights his story, that he would tell rays all that he had done and all that he knew for a book or a film that would blow people's minds. Raya said that while he was still hoping for the promised permission to materialize, he had not been in touch with things recently, as we heard an episode two, Rays was getting ready to release the television segment using interviews with BLENK Hill in two thousand seventeen

when blink Hill sent him a strange letter. Here again is what Ray has told me. So when we were preparing a special program about the Chappo Bushman, I convinced blank Hire to go on the record. My idea was recording him from jail by using his voice over with a video and image. As the people from the Making

a Morder documentary did greatly. He was very helpful. He not only described Goose Money, his different stage of his lives and basically he's playing out the air force of the Sinaloa cartel, operates the procedures to land a small plane in Aclandestine, track of the Sierra Madre, the international routes of the drug trade, and how they refuel the planes on Earth. He explained that step by step. But days before we were going toward the program, blame him a step back and he said that he would not

authorize the interview. He sent a letter in legal terms arguing that the revelation of his sustainments will put him and his family and risk, or something like that despite that I have his authorization on the record, I decided not to use the interview. Then I learned that you guys been in contact with several reporters offering his life story. The letter, in legal terms that Rais mentions, is an affidavid that Blankholl wrote, signed, had notarized, and filed in

his own court case in November two thousand seventeen. The affidavit summarizes blank Hill's correspondence with Rays and then forbids Rays from using any of the material from those interviews. The document, written after Blankholl gave Raise his authorization, as far as I can see, has no legal standing whatsoever. If two people sign a contract, one person alone cannot

rescind or change the terms of that contract. When two parties established an initial agreement, both parties must similarly establish any alterations to that agreement. Pretty basic right. Thus, finding an affidavit about his interviews with the journalist in his drug trafficking court case, which he pleaded guilty and then unsuccessfully tried to alter his plea, seems to me to be a kind of legal oid trick designed to intimidate reporters.

Rais says that he had Blankiell's authorization on the record, but decided not to use the interview that He was thus surprised when I reached out to him and said that Blankio had been telling his life story to defective. When I accessed Blinkiell's court case, I found another affidavit filed in January, and this time naming Daniel Hopsicker. Hop Sicker told me he didn't even know that this affidavit existed. It seems that Blankio filed the affidavit after speaking with

Hopsicker in person. Blinkio had reached out the Hopsicker and invited him to visit him and talk in prison, just as he had done with Reis. When I first called hop Sicker, I didn't know that he'd been to meet blank You in prison. Here's how he described that meeting to me. I guess you wanted to talk a little bit a bit about Fernando who I went up to

see UM three or four years ago. Um, there's nobody even knew, Okay, I mean, I had written been writing about the the bust of the DC nine with five and a half tons of cocaine UM, and he was arrested, UM extradited too. The U S um, convicted to trial

and sent to prison, all before anyone. And you know, you could see I probably did five a couple of hundred stories about it um without anyone knowing, without without without anyone knowing that he had been involved with five and a half turns of cocaine um, which is pretty amazing. But but but it's the way, it's the way things go. It's the way things go here in the stage. He wouldn't he UM. I mean he would he talked, but he wouldn't talk talk. I mean it was like he

would like late he was. He was attempting to market what he knew two prosecutors in Nil Chapel case. And I don't know if he was distressful or not, because I got disgusted. Oh, I don't know if we're still in prison or not. The god forsaken prison in North Carolina that hop Sicker mentions is the River's Correctional Institution from which Blankfield spoke with Menu on a smuggle the cellphone.

The two thousand sixteen Department of Justice report had this to say about the place Rivers had the highest rats of contraband finds excluding cell phones, inmate assaults on staff uses the force, guilty findings on inmate discipline cases and made grievances positive drug tests inmate on inmate sexual misconduct, and the lowest phone monitoring rate. God for sinking. Indeed, Blink You apparently was moved to another prison in Georgia

during the pandemic. I told the hop sicker that Blinks he was still in prison though he seems to have been moved, and asked him if you could tell me a bit more about what impression blinks You made on him when they met. Oh, I feel sorry for him when I met him. Um, by time I left, I didn't bet. But um, you know, the people are in prisoned in the United States and in conditions that that I should be international scandal. Um. I mean it wasn't as if he had things any harder than anybody else there.

But I mean it wasn't. It was only you know, it was like a media mock up. But it just looked, I mean, still divine. And then he had been there every four years already, and and he had solicited me to come see him, and so I should left all the way up there, you know, a day and a half drive up there, and he had decided, well, he would talk just a little bit because he was trying to retail his story to the plasticators in the JAPO case. He worked for Jack, so I disgussed. Didn't want to

tell the truth, he wanted to sell the truth. Hop stickers appraisal here find some support in the court documents. U S. Attorney's initially presented blink Yo as a star cooperating witness before cutting ties with him and accusing him of trying to sell his testimony. Blink Hill says that U S attorneys lie. He told Menu that the U S Attorneys told him not to include any information in his testimony while acts of violence carried out against him

and his family by another drug trafficker. He was also collaborating with the d e A. Such evidence retarnished that person standing as a reputable witness in other cases. Blinkyo says that the U S. Attorney has told him, I wouldn't be surprised if both the d e A and blink Kill's accusations against each other were actually true or true in part regardless, the idea of a man marketing

the truth resonates with me. Here what I've heard in how Blinkio tells his stories, and in the experiences of the reporters who have spoken with him, gives me the impression of a mid level executive in a global illegal industry, an industry that depends upon the constant production of official invisibility and thus on the marketing of stories told with

facts and lies. An executive who, upon being stripped of his airplanes and bank accounts and multiple passports and taken off to prison, turns to the only resource he has left to try and keep his business afloat. A man who, after decades of ups and downs flying cocaine all over the world, finds himself behind bars and becomes a trafficker of his own story, as Hopstaker says, a man who does not want to tell the truth, but to sell

the truth. Over the ten plus years he has been imprisoned during a thirteen years sentence, he has sought out and spoken with several reporters, and then filed legal oid documents attempting to forbid those reporters from publishing anything he

told them. The affidavits naming Herradorius and Daniel hop Saker are not the only ones in his file, and all these affidavits and a glorious twist of Irony are signed by one Luis Fernando Bertolo, a man arrested by the d e A in the Dominican Republic, taken to Miami and sentenced for drug trafficking crimes he had not yet committed.

A man who in a sense does not even exist, but on Sportista is that that the Diva production with Exiled Content Studio in partnership with iHeart Radio's Michael Tura podcast Network, Directed and narrated by John Gibbler, Transportista's voice by jaquinoo At Its ing and sound design by Ferdandolo La Rosa and Pedro Garcia. Reporting by John Gibbler, Emmanuel Adios produced by Juli Gonzalez. Voice recording by Ugo Merino and Rene Garcia. Transports interviews translated by Cardinal Ries Arguys.

Production supervision by Nando Vila and Albertosespees. Associate producers Alonso Hilar and Alexandro Duran Diego and Drique Orno Is the creator and executive producer along with Daniel Eilenberg and Eesactly. Executive producers for I Heeart Media are Conald Burne and just Sell Bunces. For more podcasts from my Heart, Is it the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.