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EPISODE LINKS:
Smuggler (book): https://amzn.to/3xydszD

PODCAST INFO:
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OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
3:49 - Money
6:10 - Pablo Escobar
13:22 - Jorge Ochoa
20:58 - First time
25:44 - Landing an airplane on the highway
28:34 - Barry Seal
38:58 - Mena, Arkansas
43:50 - Assassination of Barry Seal
57:03 - American Made
1:01:14 - Blow
1:03:21 - Story of torture in a Mexican prison
1:08:01 - Getting shot down
1:21:44 - Prison
1:35:26 - Reflections on a life of crime
1:40:44 - Advice for young people
1:43:42 - Love
1:57:02 - Death
1:59:48 - Meaning of life
2:03:51 - Poem

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The following is a conversation with Roger Reeves, 1 of the most prolific drug smugglers in history.

He worked for Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa, the leaders behind the Medellin Cartel.

Roger was the employer and close friend of Barry Seal, the infamous drug smuggler who was the main character in the movie American Maid.

Roger transported countless tons of cocaine and marijuana covering 6 continents.

He escaped prison 5 times, was shut down in both Mexico and Colombia and was tortured nearly to death in a Mexican prison.

Through all of this, his wife Mari, the love of his life, was there with him and when he was in prison, she waited for him.

He recently got out of prison where for many years he worked on his memoir called Smuggler.

This podcast is an exploration of his story.

Quick mention of our sponsors, Noom, Allform, ExpressVPN, 4 Sigmatic, and AIDSleep.

Check them out in the description to support this podcast.

Let me say a few words about Roger Reeves, Pablo Escobar, and the war on drugs.

This conversation with Roger is unlike any I've ever done.

In the eyes of many, including the law, Roger is a criminal, a bad man who was added to the suffering in the world.

But he never directly engaged or participated in the violence, unlike his bosses, Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa.

I thought about this, and about Pablo Escobar, who was at once both a brutal murderer and a Robin Hood figure who helped the poor and was loved by thousands, if not millions.

We sometimes idolize murderers and destroy good honest men.

We give power and money to corrupt politicians and dictators that starve and murder their own people.

Given this, I think about what makes for a good man and what makes for a bad man and who decides.

Sitting across from Roger, I saw a complicated man, but 1 who has kindness in his heart, a love for money and adventure, and a disdain for violence.

Again, his crime was the transport of drugs.

Since 1971, the war on drugs has cost US $1 trillion.

Marijuana legalization alone would save and make $13.7 billion.

That could send more than 650,000 students to public universities every year.

Then there's the human stories of the 500,000 human beings sitting in prison for drug-related offenses and the 1.1 million on probation and parole.

Their life is damaged or ruined beyond repair due to the prohibition of drugs.

There's a lot more to be said about the damage done by the war on drugs.

But when reading about Roger's story and talking to him, I couldn't escape the thought that while society wants to label him a criminal and a bad human being, there are much worse men out there who we give a pass to, even give power to, even men who hold political office or run companies.

I also think about my role as an interviewer, sitting across a man like Roger.

In these interviews, in life, in many ways I continue to be myself, a person who like Dostoevsky's The Idiot, seeks the good in all people, but is hurt by it on occasion, and maybe is destroyed by it in the end.

I'm not naive, but I'm also optimistic and have hope for humanity.

I hope you join me and I hope you understand that I come from a place of love.

This is the Lex Friedman Podcast And here's my conversation with Roger Reeves.

You are 1 of the most prolific drug smugglers in history.

Money, power, the thrill, or was it something else?

But isn't there a point where you've had more money than you can possibly know what to do with?

You know, I had plenty of money several times.

And I think it's sort of like if you was in Las Vegas and you had the slot machine handled down and the gold coins was tumbling around you and you had sweepers bagging them up, when would you let it go?

But isn't some part of that the thrill then?

You made certainly tens of millions of dollars, probably much more.

What memorable experience did having that much money make possible for you?

So there's 1 thing is the money, and the other thing is what that money can buy.

I owned the land where the city of Merino Valley, California is.

Did the planning and development of that.

So looking back, would you do it the same way all again?

It wasn't worth 33 years in prison, being away from my lovely family.

Just being on top of the world where nobody can, not the governments, the police, all the big bad agencies chasing you, and you could do whatever the heck you wanted.

As far as having to look over your shoulder everywhere you went and every phone call you made, make sure that you was naked with somebody in the ocean before you talked.

What was it like meeting and working with Pablo Escobar, the leader of the Medellin cartel?

He was just, just seemed like a gentleman when I met him.

He was just like you and I sitting here, shook hands, and I had flown 1 load for a fella, and it didn't work out well.

The fella 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're supposed to.

And so I wasn't gonna work with them anymore.

And my contact down there introduced me to Jorge Ochoa.

And we went up, and in Vagada, we went up and the gate opened and we was escorted in.

There must have been 50 men out in the yards, a hitching rail on an old house, and we was escorted right in.

And there was a beautiful woman in there, I mean gore, drop dead beautiful, And she made us a cup of coffee, then was ushered in to see Jorge Ochoa.

And he had 12 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 1 of those telephones represented another city in the United States.

And so we chatted a while and he asked me what type of airplanes I had and what experience I had flying across the U.S.

And I told him he seemed pleased with it.

And he called the lady in and she went next door and in came Pablo Escobar and he introduced me to Pablo Escobar and he asked the same questions again.

And I answered them And I said, and I asked him how much he paid, and they paid $5,000 a kilo to haul it.

And so I said, how much you put on the plane?

So that's 1 and a half, 2 and a half million dollars for an 8 hour trip.

And Jorge Ochoa was 1 of the, what would you say, founding members of the.

He was probably the brains behind the whole thing.

What's wrong with your mind that you weren't scared?

Here's some of the most dangerous men in this world and you weren't scared.

Well I knew I was gonna do exactly what I said I was going to do.

They went down and they stayed in the hotel, 5 star, treated royally on my first load.

And they just did it 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.

So there was some integrity to the way they operated.

The money was ironed and banded and just right.

And the numbers were never once anything wrong with it.

What would you attribute that honesty to?

Within their own moral system and their own set of rules, why weren't people crossing the line and shaving off the top and injecting chaos into the system to where it would be unpredictable and people would be dishonest and greedy and all those kinds of things?

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're completely honest, then they don't have to think of, remember the lie they told.

And plus they're just honest to start with.

I understand that 10,000 people were killed every year in Medellín, Colombia.

And what they were doing, they didn't have any organization.

And if 1 fellow 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, 40 kilos was busted in New Jersey.

So here comes Jorge Ochoa and the 3 Ochoa brothers and Pablo Escobar and Gacho and they decided that we will make an insurance company, that we will 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 Colombia 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.

I would land and I'd say, when do you want me to come back?

Some see Escobar as a brutal murderer and some see him as maybe a Robin Hood-like figure who helped the poor.

I think he started out, to be honest, with helping 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 3 ways.

They were just as much into it as anybody.

And they're the ones that I was dealing with, and they were at war with 1 another.

And so if 1 of them started killing their people, well, I'll kill some of yours, too.

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.

So you would say Escobar's not a good man?

Now, looking back on it, when I met him he was good.

Did just exactly what he said he would do.

Could he be a bad man and a man you can trust?

So, from your perspective, in terms of business, he was reliable, he was honest, had integrity, you could work with him, and he felt safe.

We flew up to his ranch and he, we brought out motorcycles to start with, and can you ride a motorcycle?

So I took off across the grass and there was a little ditch there and the front wheel dropped in 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 to round up some cows.

And he put a Mac-10 machine gun pistol over my shoulder.

I think it was like, okay, you got 10 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.

You said Jorge Ochoa was perhaps the brains of the Medellin cartel.

What was he like and why do you say he was the brains?

Well, he was a gentleman and I suppose he Shipped and no telling how many more times of cocaine than Pablo did Just him and his brothers you could tell by the they had on each to each load They was in duffel bags and his big football shaped fluffy stuff made with ether.

And they would have 3 horns on it or a rattlesnake or 4 X's on each bag.

You kind of got to knowing which was which, and they shipped a lot.

I took the family, we went 1 weekend to his ranch or his palatial place out near Barranquilla.

And oh, 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.

How do you make sense of the tension that a man could be a gentleman, could have integrity, but also be a murderer?

Well, Murder is a stronger word than killing.

Can you explain the line, the gray area we're talking about?

I mean, I've just talking with Jocko Willink and we talked a lot about killing in the context of military conflict and the context of war.

So there, there's a line between murder and killing that you can draw.

What's the line that you're referring to?

If people are shooting at you, and you shoot back and kill him, 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 hit man over to kill her and her children, that's murder.

Was Jorge involved in those kinds of things?

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 in a parking lot, and when the DEA come in, he sped away.

And the whole family, the mother and the father, the 2 brothers, their sister, I was there when she was kidnapped.

And finally he kidnapped our, I guess, a hundred leaders of the FARC and said, all right, if she don't come back, none of these are gonna come back.

Is there something you can say about the power structure the hierarchy of the Medellin cartel that you interacted with?

Was was it a dictatorship where Pablo ran everything?

Was it like a company with you have CEO CTO kind of thing and then there's like managers and all those kinds of things.

What's the, like how did it run from a leadership perspective?

I understand that about 5 of them got together and made this, I would call it an insurance company, and now known as the Medellin Cartel.

Each 1 of them had their own business, and 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 Ochoa and Pablo Escobar was right there and I saw plenty of stuff for him too.

It's strange that they didn't betray each other regularly.

You know, greed makes men betray each other.

If they shipped his 100 kilos, he got paid for it.

If the other 1 shipped his, I'm sure they got paid for it.

And they made $5,000 without even touching it.

They just had somebody to load it on through the airplane.

They gave it to whoever it belonged to by the marks on the duffel bags.

I, you know, it's still, it's still strange to me that there was not more betrayal.

It speaks to something else perhaps that's bigger than money.

But it seems like just like in the casino, like you mentioned, we get accustomed to the, whatever level of money we have, we get accustomed very quickly.

And then there's a tension that's natural between human beings.

And when that tension combined with money, combined with power, combined with, like you mentioned, beautiful women, and a bit of violence, It seems that betrayal should be commonplace, but

Carlos Lader, I don't know if 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 oil wells in Louisiana.

And so I didn't want to change, but he talked a lot and I don't know, he betrayed, but they didn't like him.

Yeah, So as you expand, there could be tensions that lead to conflict.

Columbia was, like you said, an ultra-violent place.

There's a radio station at the forks of the Magdalena River.

I believe it was 720, if I remember right, on the AM.

And I'd fly in at 10,000 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 100, 200 miles.

I'd land on some jungle strip or some banana plantation, and they'd fuel me up.

I mean, take off the next morning whenever I wanted to.

It wasn't anything like in that movie, putting a gun to your head and taking your sunglasses and betting.

So 1 time I complained to Jorge Ochoa that the runway was pretty short that they were using.

And I went back down there and it looked like Los Angeles International.

They had bulldozers in there, had that thing 5,000 feet long.

It's just like, just the next week it was all done.

The jungle was gone and clay put up there and.

Well, maybe let's go back to the beginning.

What was the first time you flew an airplane with drugs on it?

Tell me the story of the first time you smuggled drugs.

All right, I flew down to Jalapa, Veracruz, with a Cessna

It was an old town that looked like Bible times.

Women were washing their clothes in the streets with stone basins and the stream running through.

I went in a church, a Catholic church, and it had the Stations of the Cross all carved magnificent.

And I come home and told Marie about that.

That just almost brought tears to my eyes.

And 03:00 the next morning, I went out to the airport and taxied down to the taxiway, and there was a guard came out and wanted to know what I was doing.

I was on the fire department out at Redondo Beach, California.

So I pulled out my wallet, and it was a fire department badge.

And Oh, he shook my hand and was so glad to.

So I taxied on down there and we loaded up about 400 pounds in the plane.

And I came on back and I was running the headwinds more than I thought.

On the way back, on the way north after we loaded up early in the morning.

And that's the only time I ever got vertigo.

The mountains were coming down at a 30 or 40 degree angle and the Milky Way was overhead.

And somehow I wanted that airplane to be level with the stars.

It got me, and it's a phenomenal pile of vertigo.

It's the only time I ever had it was on that load.

So anyway, the wind was on the nose of that cistern.

I wasn't going to make it to the dry lake where I had fuel.

So I landed on a little bitty strip, and there was a little house.

It was caved in, and there was a little boy named Lazarus, about 6 or 7 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 the lunch that I brought back and little Lazarus sat there and ate with us and we had a good time.

Maybe describe the details of, do you have to fly low?

Is there details that are unique to this experience of flying an airplane with drugs on it, on board?

All right, well, 1 of the mistakes that just thousands, hundreds 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've got it for 6 months.

You can go anywhere, any fishing village, any little town, any little place, show them this and you're welcome.

If you don't have that, you go straight to jail.

So you go down there and you think, okay, they're going to have fuel for me to come back and so forth.

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Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel | Lex Fridman Podcast #199