YouSaid · the spoken record

Roger Reaves

lines on the record: 179
first: 2021-07-11
most recent: 2021-07-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“and I would refuel in Mulah halfway down on Baha Peninsula, and then over in the middle, twenty miles from the nearest road was a goat ranch where they milked goats and made cheese. And I would go there and unload the load coming up out of anywhere in southern Mexico, and I would land there and a guy named Juan, we'd put the marijuana under the trees, and I'd fly in the Mulahay and they'd wash my plane and gass it up and I'd eat a lunch and rent a room for a few hours and take a nap in a shower, then go back in the afternoon and fill up, and then I would go northwest out of there and fly two hundred miles off the coast of the island of Guadalupe, and from there I would fly on a more northwestern heading about three hundred miles out over the Pacific.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fly up at Mexicali and cross the border radic Calexico. I would act like I was landing on the Clexico side just after dark. And then I would zip across the border and I'd go over to the Salton Sea and go below sea level, 100 and something feet, I believe 170 feet and come on up and go out there above Palm Springs and land out 20 feet. and put my stuff under a Joshua tree and fly into town and get my pickup and go on back out and get it. And that was fun. And then it got really dangerous. They had Operation Starlight, I believe was the name of it. And they caught a lot of pilots coming across the border. So I changed it, and by that time I was flying bigger planes, I was flying Beach 18s.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All right, well, one of the mistakes that just thousands hundred and hundreds and thousands of pilots make, they don't stop at the border, going down and get their permit. Once you get a permit to be in Mexico, you have got it for six months. You can go anywhere, any fishing village, any little town, any little place, show'em this, and you're welcome. If you don't have that, you go straight to jail. You go down there and you think, okay, they're going to have fuel for me to come back and so forth. Oh, sorry, Senora, that was had a rusty leak in it. We don't have any. Well, you better be able to go to town and get it. So that's what I did. And when I was coming back for several years, I would fly.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I land in a little bitty strip, and there was a little house that was caved in, and it was a little boy named Lazarus, about six or seven years old. And he was herding some goats. So we put the marijuana in that house, and the man stayed with it while I flew into some town and got fuel, and came back and we sat down with a lunch that I brought back, and little lads were sitting there and ate with us, and we had a good time. We loaded them back and came home.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the way back, on the way north after we loaded up early in the morning. And for only time I ever got vertigo, the mountains were coming down at a 30 or 40 degree angle and Milky way was overhead. And somehow I wanted that airplane to be level with the stars. And it got me, and it's a phenomenal pile of house vertigo. It's the only time I ever had it was on that load. So anyway, the wind was on the nose or that system. I wasn't going to make it to the dry lake where I had fuel.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And wanted to know what I was doing, and I pulled out. I was on the fire department at Redondo Beach, California. So I pulled out my wallet and it was the fire department bash. And oh, he shook my hand. We're so glad So I taxed it on down there and we loaded up about 400 pounds in the plane and came on back and I was running the headwinds more than I thought and I landed on a little strip.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I flew down to Halopa Vera Cruz with a Cestina 182. And we landed the town. It was a lovely town. It's an old town looked like Bible times. Women were washing their clothes in the streets with stone basins and the stream running through. I just was just dumbstruck. It was just so pretty. And I went in a church, a Catholic church, and it had the stations of the cross all carved magnificent. I'd never seen that, and I come home and told Murray about that. That was just almost brought tears to my eyes. It was so beautiful. And three o'clock the next morning I went out to the airport and taxed down to the taxiway and there was a guard came out.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I went back down and it looked like Los Angeles International. They had bulldozers in there, had that thing 5,000 feet long. Just the next week it was all done. The jungle was gone, and Clay put up there and.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was a hero. They liked me. I mean, I was just treated royally. All I did, I would come over El Banco. There's a radio station at the forts of the Magdalena River. I believe it was 720, if I remember right, on the AM. And I'd fly in at ten thousand feet, and I'd see below me there'd be a Cessna. And I'd wiggle my wings and he'd wiggle his, and I'd fall in behind him, and we might go one hundred two hundred miles, I'd land on some jungle strip or some banana plantation, and they'd fuel me up. I could eat steak, spend the night. It would just like treat it royally, and I mean take off the next morning whenever I wanted to. It was just like that was protected. And I was honored guest. It wasn't anything like in that movie putting you a gun to your head and taking your sunglasses and betting. So one time I complained to Jorge Ochoa that the runway was pretty short that they were using.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was not at all. Carlos Later, I don't know that he betrayed anybody, but he started that, he was running cocaine through the Bahamas and he had the island. I didn't go. I was offered to fly with a DC-3 with that, but I didn't like it. So I had my route through the Old Wells in Louisiana. So I wasn't going to change. But he talked a lot, and I don't know that he betrayed, but they didn't like him.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was no need to. The money was just unbelievable. You think about 500 kilos in the plane at 50,000 a kilo at the time. And they paid $5,000 to ship They made $5,000 without even touching it. They just had somebody to load it on through the airplane. I gave it to their man in Miami that gave it to whoever it belonged to by the... By the marks on the duffel bags. So they were making just untold millions. No”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Didn't see any. Absolutely none. If he shipped his 100 kilos, he got paid for it. The other one shipped his, I'm sure they got paid for it.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Understand that about five of them got together and made this, I will call it an insurance company. And now known as the Medigine Cartel. And I didn't see any difference. Each one of them had their own business. Their people from the jungle or wherever made the cocaine gave it to them, and they shipped it. And so it didn't seem to be any power play between them at all. But my main contact was Jorge Ochua and Pablo Esco bar was right there. And I saw plenty of stuff for him too.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think so at all. It just, I mean, he was just such a gentleman. He had a restaurant before, and he was just smart. I understand that the first 10 kilos he sold, he was sitting on a motorcycle in the sidelines and parking lot when the DEA come in, he sped away. So he didn't come back to America. He was just smart. Some people just are savvy, and he was such a gentleman, and the whole family, the mother and the father, the two brothers, their sister, I was there when she was kidnapped. And finally, he kidnapped our, I guess 100 leaders of the FARC and said, all right, she don't come back. None of these are going to come back. So they made a deal.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Something similar, if people are shooting at you and you shoot back and kill him, I don't. That's not murder whatsoever. He's trying to get away or out of the situation. But if some woman don't pay you and you send a hitman over to kill her and her children, that's”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was a gentleman. And I suppose he shipped. And don't tell me how many more times of cocaine than Pablo did. Just him and his brothers, you could tell by they had on each a load they was in duffel bags, and his big football shaped fluffy stuff made with ether. And they would have three horns on it or a rattlesnake or four X's on each bag. You kind of got to knowing which was which, and they shipped a lot. And he was just a gentleman. I took in the family. We went one weekend to his ranch or his palatial place out near Berenquilla. And he just treated the family. His family, his younger brother, made a bull fight, and we had skiing and little airplanes on floats on the water. It was really nice, and he was really nice.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Completely, we flew up to his ranch. We brought out motorcycles to start with. And can you ride a motorcycle? Of course, I can ride a motorcycle. So I took off across the grass, and there was a little ditch there. And the front wheel dropped and that thing, and I must have slid across that grass 20 feet before I got stopped. He almost fell off his bike waiting because they knew what it was going to do. And then we got on horses and went out there and pretended typed or round up some cows, and he put a Mac ten machine gun pistol over my shoulder. You know how to use this? Well, I never had, but it was all right. I think it was like okay, you got ten bodyguards, what do you need me for? So that's the kind of time we laughed and talked and drove some cows over the stumps.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not at all. It's terrible. Now, looking back on it, when I met him, he was good, did just exactly what he said he would do.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Both of them. I think he started out, to be honest, would help the poor, and then they had a war down there, and they blew up and killed his people, and the country was divided almost equally three ways. They had the military. They were just as much into it as anybody. And then you had the FARC guerrillas. They had about a third of the country. And then you had the conchures. It was like the white farmers. And they're the ones that I was dealing with. And they were at war with one another. And so if one of them started killing their people, well, I'll kill some of yours too. So that's how it happened. And then when I heard about Pablo Escobar blowing up that airliner and killing those women and children, I was sorry I ever shook his hand. That's brutal murder.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So here comes Jorge and the three Ochoa brothers and Pablo Escobar and Gacho, and they decided that we will make an insurance company. That we would charge you $10,000 to take it to your contact in Miami. If it gets lost anywhere between the time I put it on the airplane or the time you give it to us and the time we give it to your man, we will replace it in Columbia for you. So there was no way anybody could lose. And I understand they got a hundred tons piled up. Under that insurance program. And I was right there the first day So I had all the work I could do. I would land in this. I said, When do you want me to come back? We're waiting on you, Senor.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's true. Most people are, but there's certain people at the top of the food chain that they don't need that. And if they are completely honest, They don't have to think of remember the lie they told. And plus they're just honest to start with. They make him plenty of money. They was making as much money as I did. I'll tell you how that came about. I understand that 10,000 people were killed every year in Medigin, Colombia, and what they were doing, they didn't have any organization. And if one feller had 10 kilos and he wanted it shipped to New York, he would tell his friend. And his friend says, sure, I'll ship it. I have a pilot, and I'll ship it up. And then he would look in the newspapers, oh, forty kilos was busted in New Jersey. I'm so sorry, yours got busted. Bang, bang, he's dead.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Completely. I mean straight, straight up. The money was ironed and banded and just right and the numbers were never once anything wrong with it.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I knew I was going to do exactly what I said I was going to do. Marry and the children were down there. They went down and they stayed in the hotel five star and treated royally on my first load. And they just did as security to make sure that I wasn't a DEA agent. So I did the first load and they can say they were hostages, but they really weren't. It was just insurance.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And what experience I had flying across the US border, and I told him he seemed pleased with it, and he called the lady in and she went next door and came Pablo Escobar and he introduced me to Pablo Escobar and he asked the same questions again and I answered him and I says I ask them how much they paid, and they paid $5,000 a kilo to haul it. And so I said, how much did you put on the plane? He said, $300, $500. That's one and a half, two and a half million dollars for an eight-hour trip. Sounded pretty good to me.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we went up and in Vigata, we went up and the gate opened and we was escorted in. They must have been 50 men out in the yards, a hissing rail on an old house. And we were escorted right in. And they was a beautiful woman in there. I mean Gore, drop dead, beautiful, and she made us a cup of coffee and then was ushered in to see Jorge Ochoa. And he had twelve telephones on his desk, and all of them was a different color. And he shook hands, was very friendly, spoke English. And he said that each one of those telephones represented a city in the United States. This is Chicago and this is New York, if I ring, I knew who's calling. And so we chatted a while and he asked me what type of airplanes I had.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was just seemed like a gentleman when I met him. He was just like you and I sitting here shook hands and I had flown one load for a fella, and it didn't work out well, the fellow that I gave it to got shot and it took a while to get my money in. They didn't put as many kilos on the plane as they supposed to. So I wasn't going to work with him anymore and my contact down there introduced me to Jorge Choa.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Far as having to look over your shoulder everywhere you went and every phone call you made, make sure that you was necked with somebody in the ocean before you talked. It's rather uncomfortable.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I bought everything that I could hide. I bought seven farms, I owned the The land where the city of Marino Valley, California is. I had an option on that land. Did the planning and development of that, the most expensive coin in the world. Yachts, ships, airplanes galore.”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I had plenty of money several times. And Think it's sort of like if you were in Las Vegas and you had to slot machine handled down and the gold coins were tumbling around you and you had sweepers bagging em up. When would you let it go”
2021-07-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #199 – Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source