Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 325 - Viktor Bout, The Merchant of Death: Part 2

Episode Date: August 18, 2024

Part 2/2 GET LIVE SHOW TICKETS: www.universe.com/events/lions-led…s-belfast-83V5QD SUPPORT THE SHOW, GET BONUS CONTENT: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys If you want to support the show via a one time donation without using Patreon, you can PayPal us at [e-mail] Check out Failure to Launch: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fail…ch/id1585592962 *since the time of recording, all prisoners involved in a possible exchange for Viktor Bout have been released. Once upon a time the film Lord of War was made about the international arms dealer Viktor Bout. They had to tone it down in order to make it more believable. Bout, a possibly, maybe GRU operative became the premier arms smuggler for anyone in the world who needed it, contributing to the deaths of untold millions and fueling wars that continue to rage to this day. sources: Estulin, Daniel, Shadow Masters Greg Cambell. Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World's Most Precious Stones www.nytimes.com/2003/08/17/magazi…-and-the-man.html archive.globalpolicy.org/intljustice/…venience.htm www.cbsnews.com/news/viktor-bout-…-brittney-griner/ www.theguardian.com/world/2008/mar/…ernationalcrime Douglas Farah, Stephen Braun. Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible.

Hey everybody, if you ever wanted to see us live but you missed the other shows, well, you have another chance. Me and the boys are hitting the road once again and the Lines Led by Dunkies podcast is coming live to Belfast at the OYE Music Center Saturday, October 26th. So get your tickets while they last. You can find the link in our show notes. So get them now. Do it. Hey everybody, welcome to the Lines It By Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me is

Tom and Nate. We are the tired UN arms investigators pouring over reams of documents have been collected by our people in the field. We have Victor Boot, one of the world's most dangerous and well-known arms smugglers dead to rights. We have forwarded our findings to our supervisors and we have been authorized to deploy the harshest response the UN has available to them. A strongly worded letter of concern. That's right everybody won Victor boot part two. What's up guys? Hey, what's up? Yeah, we did the live show last night and Tom and I should be on our way to the airport now, but British Airways canceled our flight. So Joe is stuck with us. And before

Tom and I go to our airport hotel in Rotterdam, we are going to record another episode. British Airways said we had to share a room if we wanted a refund, and I just simply said, yeah, that's not gonna happen. The only way you can get a refund is if you share a large bath, like the bucket family. The only way you get a refund

is if you share the honeymoon suite at the airport motel. It's got a heart shaped bubble bath. I mean honestly I would do that. They didn't offer me that. Sometimes you just gotta treat yourself, you know? Yeah I love over the past like three days, like we arrived and the studio has just become more and more cluttered. There's what, six vapes on the table?

There's like- Surrounded by a sea of cardboard from opening stuff for the studio and putting it together. Yeah. Also Joe's toilet doesn't work at all. And on the business complex he's in on the weekends. No one's in. So you can't use that bathroom. So we've just been making strategic visits to a corner stores and other restaurants and the old hotel. I lost my laptop charger. I left it in the hotel this morning. We were just chilling and I was like, you know, I'll fuck it. I'm going to go back. It's only like 10 minutes away went in there like, Oh, someone has checked into that room, but I'll go up and check. So I was like, okay, I have 10 minutes. I'm going to take the world's quickest shit right

now. Well, I mean, they did have a nice bathroom and you know what they don't have here in the studio, a nice bathroom or a bathroom that works. That's unfair. The bathroom actually is quite nice. You just can't use it. It's got a nice decorative mirror, a little hand towel holder, and if you flush the toilet after dropping a deuce, it'll stay in there until kingdom comes. It just stays in there until it gets its nationality. It's like a toilet, but it's marked replica on the side. It's like taking a shit at a Home Depot showroom.

Yeah. Next time we're here, we're just going to have to build an outhouse out the back of the studio. My landlord's asking me why I'm digging a hole in the backyard. Like, you know why, motherfucker? Yeah, exactly. You know, you put two veterans and one Armenian. Could be a veteran, could be an Armenian. They're gonna dig a slit trench one way or the other. I've learned here, since sometimes I worked past those normal business hours in the Netherlands, that if you walk into any of the corner cafes or restaurants with the look of confidence on your face, they don't know you're not supposed to be using the

bathroom. Yeah. You just like walk past the counter. I do it the whole time because I'll be out with people who's like, oh she needs to use the toilet. I'm like, there's no toilet. I was like, there's a pub right there. And they're like, yeah, but don't have to buy it. No, just walk in and look like you're looking for someone and then look around and you'll spot where toilet is going. go do your stuff and then get out around here i'm gonna have to like change my route so like the the restaurant on the corner like the bagel shop's like oh no he's back to take a shit again

because they're gonna recognize you you are pretty identifiable yeah it's true here comes the big shitter one time when i lived in fucking stealth pooper he's back one time when i was studying in france when i was 17 i tried to do this and I almost got away for away with it Except I didn't realize that they had a very very low like Eve in the stairwell And I knocked myself the fuck out and fell down the stairs I'm dead. I did take a huge shit though, but I could knock myself out and fell down the stairs So yeah, don't don't don't that's for me. I always, I have the sort of like Calvinist approach to like illicit pooping that like you're going to be punished either in this life or the next.

A friend of mine, since we are technically touring a tour of one show, a friend of mine who toured quite a lot, this is such a horrible story. They were driving along in the van and they were in Germany. So it's like like there's nothing for like at least another 40 minutes. And there's no public bathrooms to speak of anyway. Well there is. There's highway rest stops where it's literally just a stairwell where you park and you go with this chin in the woods. It used to happen in Germany, might not anymore but that used to be a thing.

It's the wooden pooping. But he was like I need to go so badly. And one of the guys had like made himself a packed lunch in the previous hotel. So he took the sandwich out of the Ziploc bag, handed him the Ziploc bag. He had to shit into the bag and throw it out the window. I just said, did he close the bag? So it was just gonna get neatly sealed.

But there was like a car behind them. You don't wanna get hit with prop wash on that one. You're just driving along and your windscreen gets hit with a flying ziplock bag full of shit. Wir sind nicht in Bergheim! Was ist los? People will pay good money for that. That's wasting. Yeah, I was thinking about the reading the book about the replacements that apparently they were always drunk on tour so they just like basically you weren't allowed to shit in the van but they just used like the running board on like a Ford Econoline van just piss in it as they were driving so they didn't have to stop.

If I was like an 80s era gross touring band I would just cut a hole into the bottom like through the floor so if you have to shit just put your put your ass all over the hole and shit directly. Hand shake between touring bands in the 80s and Spanish trains. I think they're better now, but in the 90s Spanish trains flat out, I remember as a kid, open the toilet and see sunlight and track. Dead serious. Why did this train derail?

Someone left a fucking growler on the tracks like a penny. I remember years ago I was in Romania and I was taking a train from the north down to Bucharest and like this train would like stop every like 40 minutes. It was like barely being held together. It was rattling along. The conductors were drunk and were selling moonshine to the passengers and I had to go to the toilet and I was like sat down and I was like there's no bolt on it. So I was sitting down with both my legs out straight against the door and I was like there is not a whole lot of balance so if this stops suddenly I'm

going upside down. Have to do a rollover drill for the toilet. I feel as though I would be disappointed if I didn't get that kind of experience on a train in Romania. Like if Romania has just become such a modern country that's just like taking Deutsche Bahn, I'd be like, but, but I was promised all of this just guys selling jugs of plum brandy and people with horse carts and so on and so forth. We've alienated all of our own Romanian listeners, but. We've ruined tradition of the like Eastern European train by making them join the EU.

Yeah. But look, I will defend Romania's incredible country, beautiful, beautiful country. You should go. I'd love to go. I've never been. I've heard the streets are paved with gold and or platinum from catalytic converters. Go and get yourself some Michi, go get a nice slice of rye bread and put Unsari, which is literally rendered pork fat on it. Oh this is amazing.

Ow my insides. I mean it is very funny because like in current trajectories if economic growth in the former eastern bloc continues Poland will have a bigger GDP than the United Kingdom in not too long from now. Wasn't there some study done that like if the United Kingdom joined the United States it'd be like one of the poorest states in the union? Yeah but I feel like that's one of those like really big heuristics about why GDP per capita is a bad marker of actual wealth and actual status because

by that logic, Ireland is the wealthiest country in Europe and like, do you think the median Irish person is worth 125,000 euros, Tom? No, and as someone who's studied economics for four years, GDP is bullshit. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing they typically go off of when they say that Britain would be poorer than Mississippi. It's still poor as fuck, but it's just, it's poor in a different way. But speaking of someone who probably generated as much GDP as an entire country, Victor boot. Oh yeah. Oh boy. Yeah. Without Victor boot in Europe, they have to go make money on the black market. The-fashioned way, importing cocaine.

Yeah. But they could be selling Kalashnikovs and... To be fair, he was also selling cocaine. I didn't realize... Yeah. Okay. Now, we're onto Victor Boot too, the bootaloo. And when we left you last time, we're explaining just why a man so well known by at least a

dozen agencies across the world was allowed to operate, busting sanctions, arming genocidal regimes, and of course, becoming the frozen chicken king of Africa. Agencies didn't talk to one another, policy makers had other priorities, and to make a very long, depressing story short, but also very frequent, without the great power games of the US vs the USSR, nobody gave a single fuck about the goings on in Africa, which is where boot generally worked. However just because the UN was toothless and various countries within it didn't care did not mean that everyone was just gonna sit back and do nothing, and the people that

would eventually put their noses to the ground and do the actual heavy lifting the hard work need to pin Boot down, were probably not who you think they are. Because the earliest and best work in Africa about the black market weapons trade and Victor Boot was done by, and I need you guys to take a breath on this one, NGOs and think tanks. LLOYD It's the one time they've actually done anything. SEAN Yeah, I mean, I know this is not the podcast to talk about the various critiques of NGOs and think tanks, because while many do, specifically NGOs, think tanks do nothing good for anybody, but NGOs do some good work in developing parts of the world.

Many also exist, much like think tanks, to simply funnel in massive amounts of grant money that could be better used doing literally anything else into the pockets of DC dickheads and lanyard aficionados who really want you to think they're important or because once they worked in the White House getting someone's coffee or whatever. I fucking hate this group of people. And this should not be a surprise to anybody listening to this show. Yeah, it's a jobs program for morons who are like too stupid to do any introspection about what they've done with their life.

So what's truly heartbreaking about a lot of these people is they enlist the work of like- Really well meaning and hard working people that they pay nothing. Yes, and specifically from the countries that they're working in and fill their heads full of ideas like, we actually mean good. And in reality they're like, oh we can't pay you anything while all of our bosses have like mean good and in reality they're like oh we can't pay you anything while all of our bosses have like million dollar homes in DC well no I mean like you'll find these things like certain DC think tanks that

are owned by created by and owned by people who are worth 11 figures but they they don't do paid internships for example like you have everything is self-funded and it's like that's getting the good end from them if you're not in like the failson kind of cadre them if you're not in like the failson kind of cadre like if you as you were the ones that are just like unofficial arms of some state yeah and if you work as you said locally like the field workers the the local staff for these agencies they get treated off yeah they bust their fucking ass they get treated like shit and then when you are eventually tired and need some kind of

help or whatever especially a lot of these think tanks and NGOs who do legitimately dangerous work in a lot of places where it's not necessarily safe to do that work, they'll throw you away like you're disposable. They'll fill your head full of promises that they'll protect you and then they'll be like, you know, brush their hands like, well, we need a new one. Well, you know, like every organization does need its load bearing fail zone cadre. Like every business, every organization just has to have a group of losers that like functionally don't do anything, but they're there for morale I

suppose. I'm kind of laughing at the idea that the reason why this happened with Victor Boot could just be that like a think tank was run by a really hardcore Ukrainian nationalist and they're just like, wait, a Russian guy is making money off selling drugs in Africa and he's not hiring us. Now that we've shit on them a lot, we do have to point out that in the midst of this rotten fetid shit pool of humans, of like the wash, backwash, the fucking, the smegma of the Ivy League fail kids, there's good people, like we said, that do legitimate hard fucking work.

And one of them was a woman named Cathy Austin Austin who worked for the Institute of Policy Studies. And she was sent to the African Great Lakes region to figure out something like we point out in the last episode that nobody was trying to do. Not who was fighting who and why, but how the fuck they were getting weapons. It did not take her long to discover Victor Booth's seemingly never-ending network of fake airlines. Austin was a good investigator, but Booth was also lazy as fuck. It's important to point out here, he was not a genius, he was not a mastermind. He was just so used to people not looking into him too hard, he wasn't even trying. For example, several of his planes used the exact same tail numbers and filed identical paperwork with just the dates change, and sometimes he didn't even bother doing that.

Austin reported her findings to the Human Rights Watch, who was doing a lot of investigation work into Booth's operations in Austin, Belgium. That work in Belgium wasn't being done, again, by who you think it was. It was not an NGO. It was not a think tank. It was not a member of the Belgian government. It was not a member of any intelligence service. It was just a guy. Yeah. What? It was a grassroots peace activist named Johan Pelleman who was a philosophy student. I mean, listen, you're studying philosophy, you got a lot of time to think about things. He was a part of this grassroots organisation called the International Peace Information Service, but calling it an organisation is kind of making it seem much bigger than it

was. It was mostly just Pelemen working out of a decommissioned monastery, alone. So this dude is just like, I am going to go into an abandoned monastery and track this Russian guy down. He became a monk, but for like illegal arms trafficking. Honestly, I want to hear this guy's story and not Victor Boo. I mean, also like guy doing investigative podcasts about human rights abuses in a former hair salon in the Hague Netherlands. You know what? Maybe you guys are spiritual brothers. What is a hair salon but a monastery of a certain type? You come in and you do your devotions. Welcome to the follicle monastery.

Now after objecting to service in the Belgian military, because the Belgian military at the time had a description, he got involved in peace activism and became obsessed with what he called the war economy, or how wars in faraway places suddenly became awash with weapons. Pelleman and a few of his fellow activists in Austin quickly began looking into the strange, badly labeled flights taking off from their local airport. Namely, one key hint here tipped them off that something wasn't right. Cargo planes always took off empty, and they landed empty.

Nothing was ever offloaded in Austin, Belgium. And right off the bat, that they landed empty. Nothing was ever offloaded in Austin, Belgium. And right off the bat, that makes no sense. For a cargo company to make money, it needs to be transporting cargo both ways. But Boot was smart enough to not smuggle shit into Western Europe. He stayed the fuck out of it. He just used it as kind of like a base. Soon he started charting planes that once they left Belgium, they landed in Bulgaria, where he had a connection with factories and members of the government. And then seemingly only went to war zones in Africa. From there, he was quickly able to piece together who Boot was and what he was doing.

Then Pelleman and his friends printed off a ton of flyers that had a, it didn't have a picture of Victor Boot, but it named him and said that he was an arms trafficker. He was actively killing thousands of innocent people across Africa, all that kind of stuff. And then just taped them up around Ostend in a campaign of shaming that he hoped would force the Belgian authorities to take notice. GRIM This is just, this is where you realise that he's a student, because this is the most student thing to do. Like now he'd be sharing it on his Instagram story, like just a really well made graphic.

And I need to point out here, he did more damage to Boot's operation than anybody had up until this point, because once word got out, combined with Pelemen organising constant protests outside the airport itself with him and a small group of friends and colleagues, Boot closed up shop and moved his entire operation out of Belgium so fast that by that time the Belgian federal police showed up, he was long gone. So, Pelemen won, yeah? I'm actually kind of surprised because I would have assumed this would end with,

you know, Pelemen getting a phone call from a guy named like Frans Wauverhoegens telling him, you know, like, hey man, how would you keep it the fuck down? Or like a whole bunch of dudes packed into a G-Wagon and that makes them fall down eight staircases and shoot himself in the back of the head yeah I feel like we haven't quite gotten to that era yet yeah but we're getting their clothes and to be fair boots never been connected to any violence personally hmm he is very

obviously keeping his hands clean on that front but then again what year is this this is the late 90s, early 2000s. The late 90s, the Belgians were still up to fucking crazy shit at this age. Well, the Belgians were, but what I'm saying is that the kind of like non-state actor in scare quotes where it's like the Russian state being involved with like people committing suicide by falling down the stairs in a padlocked duffel bag kind of shit wasn't quite happening as overtly yet. Mostly because Russia was completely destabilized economically and socially at the time. And

like, obviously this picks up a lot in the next decade. Yeah. Like in Belgium, like you had the entirety of the broadband killers in the like eighties and there was kind of non-state actors that were like heavily connected to the police force, obviously with the issue of federalization and that sort of thing. But could like, you're right. I mean, that's the thing is, I was thinking more of sort of like the way it manifests in the UK when it's obviously the Russian state. And remember like it was in the last episode where like Austin Belgium's airport was pretty famously known for also being like a CIA

point as well. So like the Belgians were almost certainly aware of Victor Boot was operating there. Oh, 100%. But again, like we pointed out last time is like, Boot operates in a world of temporary usefulness. States love him because if they need a guy, Boot's their guy, all the way up until they have to look some in the eye and like, we hired Victor Boot. And they're like, oh no, I can't believe he was working here. Fuck, burn our documents. Yeah, all state agencies know how to do is eat hot chip, charge they phone, and hire Victor Booth. Exactly.

Be bisexual, lie. I mean the lie part comes, I mean I think it's, yeah it's the plausible deniability, isn't it? That like, you know. Plausible deniability personified is Victor Booth. But also I think to bear in mind this is relevant when it comes to the US and sort of international fuckery abroad that there is obviously the legacy of this not being particularly well covered up and going very badly back when they used to put people in prison for this in Iran-Contra. And so like that was relatively recent at the time. So like there's a degree to which like as soon as they stopped doing it, it just had to be a lot less connectable in the

sense that like Iran-Contra was not, it wasn't just you know, Olly North immediately going to like Israeli guy who knew some Iranians who got them weapons. Like there was, there were some layers, but there weren't enough layers for it not to be traceable. Whereas in this case, it feels like Victor Boot hasn't become as well known. And also like it sounds as though a lot of this stuff is done through like in this, the sort of inner business Intermediary equivalent of the plane has to go to Bulgaria first before it can pick up the shady shit to go to East Africa Yeah, exactly thing and it's also like someone like figure like Ali north obviously was officer in the military

Whereas Victor boot only can operate as long as nobody really knows about him. Mm-hmm Once everybody's like yeah, we know who Victor Boot is, he's on the news, you stop getting high. And also the thing about Iran-Contra that I think was that when it broke was that when there was, you know, you have these back and forth swings with who controls Congress in America and Reagan wins in 80 and then in 82 there's a big swing towards the Democrats and the Democrats in power in the House and I think the Senate also basically passed legislation to stop

the funding of the Contras because of human rights abuses and basically Reagan's approach through North and other intermediaries is shut up libs, no. And so they just do it illegally. So in that regard, there's such an obvious contravention of a thing that's been said, stop doing this. Whereas in this case, there hasn't been a law passed just yet saying don't arm, I don't know, Paul Kagame or Joseph Kony for that matter. You know what I mean? You can see the smile spreading across. Yes, I can.

Cause this will become important in a little bit. No. Pelliman was giving his information to the Human Rights Watch and Kathy Austin, who was now touring DC and trying to find anyone who would listen to her about arms trafficking and smuggling into Africa and why it was important to stop. At the time in the late 90s it was the Clinton administration and though Austin found a few people within the federal law enforcement intelligence community that was interested, they had to tell Austin honestly, we have no policy guidelines at all from the White House on this kind of shit. We have nothing. They have given us, it's not that they're pro or against, they have nothing. Then, Clinton finally did make what was called a quote, transnational crime

priority. Specifically, arms trafficking and things of that nature. And the people charged with carrying it out quickly realized they had no idea what they were doing. Because, like I'd point out in the last episode, nobody like Boot had ever existed before and arguably they probably never will. Yeah, it was a case like how do you legally find out, like how do you figure out, okay, all these jurisdictions like working together, he's operating like internationally, who's going to lead the charge on it? That was the main like catching point is like, okay, but he, because before now, American enforcement of arms trafficking was trafficking arms specifically into the United States.

When it came to some guy who technically had two businesses in the United States, but never came to the US, never committed crime in the US, they're like, what the fuck do we do with this? They had no idea where to start. And thankfully for them, the NGOs and peace activists had several years head start on the US government and dumped all of this research into their laps to make their jobs easier. This is where I really like to say and Victor Boot was captured in 1998 but he wasn't. What didn't make the jobs easier for all these different departments was

refusing to cede authority over one thing or another and constantly getting in shit fits with each other. Because remember none of them are talking, none of them are sharing any information with one another, and across the board through all of them, Africa was not on anybody's radar, it was nobody's priority. So they're all just kind of shrugged. I don't know if you've researched this specifically for this episode, but I am curious just because in the late 90s, prior to the big event that makes American intelligence agencies start talking to each other a little more there was a precursor event yeah the two bombings yes almost simultaneous

embassy bombings in Nairobi Kenya and Dar es Salaam Tanzania in 1998 that's exactly what changes all of their minds two American embassies were bombed one in Kenya and one in Tanzania by al--Qaeda. Suddenly all DCIs were on Africa, and the head of the National Security Council's Africa Department, Gale Smith, said, if we want to stop shit like this from happening, Victor Booth needs to be our number one priority. All while the UN had hired a pelemann on full time, and sent him to the UAE to try and track down Bo Boot personally. This led to a confrontation in a hotel room lobby, or is it like a hotel lobby, between

Pelemon and Boot's brother. So the thing that I find really interesting about this is that the US knew that, for example, Bin Laden had been kicked out of Sudan in 96 because through the collusion, basically Omar al-Bashir didn't necessarily want to kick him out But he kind of had to in the sense for international cred But it was because if I remember the specific incident correctly Sudanese cars with diplomatic plates got caught smuggling like anti-aircraft missiles into Egypt And it was bin Laden's people basically because they were hand in glove with the Sudanese government, right?

So like that is the kind of thing that US intelligence agencies would have known that like, oh, this guy who is in some way connected to what is it, Ramsey Youssef and the people who tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, like is in Sudan and is just kind of doing his thing. And so like the idea that they were just completely unaware of that connection. They were completely aware of the Victor Booth connection. Now, the problem is, is the compartmentalization of intelligence. The CIA was fully aware of who Victor Booth was. In fact,

they had worked with him already to some extent. The FBI, probably not so aware. The DEA, ATF probably weren't aware of who he was at all because the CIA saw him as being possibly useful in the future and he would be. There's a lot of people who are a little bit useful at the time you know there's this guy I remember seeing this really really nice headline saying anti-soviet warrior puts his country on a path to peace. Exactly and so it was around this time as the 90s crept into the 2000s that the full extent of Boots operations in Afghanistan came to light and by came to light I mean beyond the CIA and other intelligence.

In Afghanistan? Yes. Oh wow. By this point Afghanistan was almost entirely under the control of the Taliban with the Northern Alliance kind of sort of just barely hanging on. Boots through the UAE acted as a connection and eventually became the Afghan air system as a whole. So it was a really quick potted history of post-Soviet withdrawal, Afghan war.

You just understand that effectively the Soviets left and you had the government led by Mohammed Najibullah and the Taliban started in more or less in 94 as kind of like a coalescing of Islamist groups specifically opposed to warlord rule. There's like a foundation myth No one knows if it's true or not that Mullah Omar basically led like a lynch mob to kill two separate warlords who were fighting over Who got to fuck this one young boy and that like basically he's like why don't we kill both of them and so on and so Forth, and I don't know one knows if that's true or it's just this apocryphal thing But basically it was sort of he's this guy standing up against the sort of in ality of the warlords because the overwhelming

Majority of the damage to the cities for example in Afghanistan was not from the Soviet war it was from the news the war of War and so 96 that the Taliban take Kabul they famously hang Mohammed Najibullah they hang him off the barrel of a tank like there's a photo of him hanging dead off the barrel of a tank And Taliban guys kind of hugging and celebrating around it at that point Yeah, we talked about that at the end as an epilogue to our Soviet Afghan war series We'll eventually do a little bit more into it at some point because that whole era needs More bring it up to the area where you're talking about by 2000 2001 pre 9-eleven

There's basically only two places that are controlled by the Northern Alliance That is what's now panchayar province which which was part of, I believe, Kapisa province, and Badakhshan province, which is like the most remote part of Afghanistan. Other than that, the entirety of the country is controlled by the Taliban. And we are nominally on the side of the Northern Alliance as the US, but like, the US is not really involved.

No, not at this point. It would be in a few years. It was just more the fact that there are still American politicians who were involved with dumping weapons in money, well, money into Pakistan to buy weapons to for Afghan Mujahideen. And so there was still some sort of like amity towards Amit Shah Massoud. Yeah, people. And there wasn't much. And Massoud constantly complained like, hey, if you give me what I need, I could defeat the Taliban. But yeah, that would be coming in a few years and Mr who to be dead already the famous

Ending line of Steve Cole's ghost wars talks about basically when Hamid Karzai learns the news that Amit Shah Masood got blown up by a fake newspaper camera in a fake Al Jazeera interview in 2001 two days before 9-eleven and apparently his reaction to this news was what an unfortunate country Anyway, nothing happened after that. Yeah reaction to this news was what an unfortunate country. Anyway nothing happened after that. Yeah. So at this point, Boot kind of sort of all but officially runs Ariana Air or the official Afghan Air Carrier. That's crazy because yeah Ariana is Afghan national carrier. Yeah still was still technically is and one of the things he was doing was legit air travel as well as all of

the things you imagine a guy who runs the national Afghan air carrier for the Taliban would do. He handled legit freight in and out of the country mostly just the Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE were the only three countries that recognized the Taliban government. That's a really important detail that like post 1996 basically no one recognized Talibaninn. Fun fact, that's three more countries that ever recognized the Confederacy, so. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Confederate's taking strays in the Victor Boot episode. The Taliban just coming into the possession of an ungodly amount of frozen chicken.

Yeah, and one of the other things that they were doing was burying thousands of foreign volunteers into the country that were almost certainly members of Al-Qaeda. Yep. Now, this makes Victor Booth 100% connected to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, who obviously Al-Qaeda's on a lot of people's radars after the embassy bombings in Africa. Because remember, small blip in what would become a much larger blip later on is the US did bomb Afghanistan after those embassy bombings. They absolutely did, because I can very clearly remember the Beastie Boys speaking out against

it at the 1998 Video Music Awards. Yeah, I mean- They also bombed Children's Aspirin Factory in Sudan. Yeah, we did. And there was another target I can't remember. I know Afghanistan, Sudan, and I think there was somewhere else, but I can't quite remember. The Bin Laden boys were effectively using this airline as something of a ferry into the country because, like you pointed out

They had to change their operational center from Sudan into Afghanistan And they did so using boots airlines bin Laden boy sounds like a group of like school bullies Well, I mean like Saudi bin Laden group is like one of the biggest construction companies in the world Yeah, amazing never missed a beat Yeah construction companies in the world. It's amazing. Never missed a beat. Yeah, you know. In turn, these same planes transported massive quantities of drugs out of the country and into the global market, normally after being flown back into Russia. Eventually, Ariana was hit with sanctions from the US and the UN. And this is very funny if you think of Ariana Grande being hit with UN sanctions. But as always, boot was there to make sure

everything continued running as smoothly as it always had. Then when the UN authorized humanitarian flights into Afghanistan, they chartered with a UAE company called Flying Dolphin, which you probably already know was absolutely owned by Victor Boot. It's like, Flying Dolphin could be the text written on a Lisa Frank trapper keeper, or a Victor Boot shadow company. I'd like to believe that this planes are painted that's yeah like weird LSD fucking like glitter. Yeah. It took two months for everybody to figure out god damn it. We're working with Victor boot again. But it's like imagine being like the guy who has to file all the paperwork for these

companies like, okay, I have to register another LLC. Okay. I have to grab this file. And I was like, you were just spending your entire day, like 16 hours a day, just like filling out forms to register shell companies for Victor boot. It was one guy in Texas. Of course. Do you think you ever just got a little Foxy with it and just registered drug trafficking LLC or something? See if anyone would notice. They won't notice. Black market airlines we'll see pop airlines you know what that's German popcorn logistics is very important they had to charter their planes despite everyone's work to try to stop or even barely slow him down boots operations continued to expand after his legit

businesses into Afghanistan were taken out. Before long, even with all these eyes on him, he was branching into Latin America. And I would argue this is what would eventually bring him down. But you have to put a pin in that one and come back to it later. Like imagine you, because obviously aside from all the trafficking, like he did work in like, you know in transporting legitimate goods and having some veneer of legitimacy. Oh he made a ton of money trafficking, or trafficking, but transporting legit goods as well.

Like imagine you're just like, I don't know, you get the Tholman catalog and you live in the modern day Germany and you're like, oh I'm going to buy a Stratocaster and it's just delivered by a Russian war criminal. I'm also thinking too, it's like Latin America at the time. It's like you probably know where this is going Well, I mean you've got the fart you've got the so you know that first try oh wow Guatemalan Civil War the what is it the Lack of him not wanting to support the Guatemalan Civil War so he never met any of them Yeah, yeah

also the Guatemalan Civil War was less a Arms-trafficking opportunity because they just had all the weapons they wanted from the US And it was because you're not thinking the way boot does you might see like not an arms trafficking Opportunity he always looks on the brighter sides like I see you're using American weapons How would you like to use different ones for much cheaper? And also you could just pay me with the shirt that you're wearing pay me in tortillas. I mean, it would just be drugs produce drugs Yeah, I mean yeah in Guatemala be drugs. Produce drugs. Yeah, I mean, yeah, in Guatemala's case it's, I mean, they don't produce them, but they

definitely have them. Yeah. Yeah. But nobody's entirely sure how, but Booth made contact with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Now to make a very long story short, FARC is once a Marxist revolutionary group that had long since transformed into little more than a narco gang once any hope of victory was gone. By the late 90s and early 2000s, FARC was fully in its narco mafia arc which it continues

to be in. They make a lot of money through heroin, cocaine trafficking and kidnapping. Yeah, just keep your ears out for maybe in like 10 years time for me to do a series on Farc. Exactly. Soon Boot was flying planes in a nightmare journey, from Jordan to Peru with forged handbills saying weapons he was bringing were for the Peruvian government. Then without offloading anything they would simply leave Peru, bust a turn over the Colombian jungle and chuck the weapons out of the back of the plane, hopefully to land via parachute. Eventually some of these weapons were captured and inspected and found not to be what FARC was normally armed with, that being hand me downs captured from Colombian state actors

or you know, sometimes homemade weapons and shit like that. Or even ones that were like trafficked across the border into... Yeah, they were used, right? These were brand new AKs in their original packaging, still with packing grease on them, originally manufactured in East Germany. They had never even been opened. You know what's interesting is like, Peru is a bit of a wild card choice there because like around this time is after the Shining Path war and the Peruvian Civil War had ended,

but like the Peruvian state was putting lots of fucking people in jail So like the Peruvian state is also incredibly correct. That is very true. Which is what all boot needs to exist. Yeah, fair enough. It's just one of those things where it's sort of like it's both a corruption drug country and go to jail as hell country So like yeah, if I had to hazard a guess I would have guessed Venezuela and not Peru, but yeah surprise hazard a guess I would have guessed Venezuela and not Peru but yeah surprise and it was funny as soon as these crates got cracked open in Columbia everyone just kind of like rubbed their temples like it was him wasn't it yes fucking we got booted we've been booted boot was paid for these in pure cocaine hell yeah which he then transported back to Russia sold to

the Russian mafia and then shipped back into Europe This is like he was one of the main Russian drug smugglers for years And remember that he has the green light to do this by the Russian state Basically like every single person doing lines at like the show that Daft Punk played to funk at the first time in like 1995 probably got it from Victor boot. Oh probably yeah like it's a good chance Yeah 95 probably got it from Victor boot. Oh, probably. Yeah. Like it's a good chance. Yeah. If you were high as tits, fucking listening to future sound of London, like you probably got it from a guy who was also like, he was booted. You've been booted. Yeah. A lot of people

don't know that daft punk wrote around the world about Victor boot, but like it's so funny because at the moment there's a, there's a rising problem in Europe of cocaine trafficking being taken over by like explicitly white nationalist fire right groups. So like, huh, the police are capturing bricks of cocaine coming in that are stabbed with swastikas on them. That's a lot on the nose. Oh, I didn't know that. Cause I knew about the, a friend of mine did a really good series about drug trafficking in Belgium and the Netherlands and it was all basically Moroccan gangs making deals with cartels in South America, but I didn't know about neo-Nazi drug traffickers as well.

A- This strange handshake between the most confused cartelmen in the world meeting Belgian skinheads. D- Yeah, cause like a lot of it is coming from up through the Balkans into Eastern Europe and then is like going through like the Netherlands and Belgium to be traffic into the UK and the US in some cases but like in the late 80s early 90s like the Netherlands was like the hub for ecstasy pill pressing. So like. Don't look at Rotterdam today.

Yeah. There's a reason why there's strange explosions in the city, like, every time you turn on the news. I do like the idea the cartel shows up in Belgium thinking that they're gonna meet, like, you know, a guy who's a Dutch speaking person with, you know, Moroccan background and instead they meet a guy who looks like, fully like Cletus from The Simpsons shirtless except he's got a Royal Sporting Club Anderlecht tattoo across his entire chest. Yeah, it's like the effects of taking ecstasy in different countries in the 80s has different

outcomes like if it's in the UK you turn into Sean Ryder. Yeah, or if in the UK you're supporting fucking the guy who did Edo Fox, but like yeah. Or if you're doing it in the Netherlands and Belgium, you just become a hardcore neo-Nazi skinhead who listens to Gabber. Still Boots' operation continued to expand into Liberia and Central Africa. He was transporting arms, vehicles, and soon entire helicopters and jets using little more than forged paperwork. In one case, through a strange mix of connections, he supplied the personal jet of the president of the Central African Republic. However, when the president took his shiny new jet

abroad, he learned from the Gambian delegation that something was wrong with his tail number. An investigation was concluded that found that tail number was faked, and the jet did not have an airworthiness certificate. He had just been sold a shiny piece of shit that had a new paint job. It's... everything else is barely functioning. It's actually just a copper, like, hot water cylinder with wings? The president put a worn out for boot, which was a problem, because he was still in the Central African Republic at the time, and he had to smuggle himself out of car, in the trunk of a car, into the safety of Liberia. Oh

You know this man sucks, but I have to say I bet you he would have been good as fuck at Geo guesser Oh, man, he'd be like the Geo guesser guy Yeah, we think you'll guess our guy but only for like nondescript dirt strip airports But it's just like this man has done Quite a bit of globe-drodding to places most people don't go to if they're not from there or have family connections there. Only him and strange YouTube travel people. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

They're absolutely not paid by the local government to do propaganda. Victor Booth, Lord Miles handshake win. You know what, say what you will. They do have one thing in common. They have both materially supported the Taliban. Victor Booth doing the hardest geezer rolling through Africa. will they do have one thing in common they have both materially supported the Taliban. Victor Booth doing the hardest geezer rolling through Africa. Yeah Lord Miles shows up on North Sentinel Island and they've all got huge bricks of cocaine and brand new AKs. Fuck Booth's been here.

At this point the US is actively trying to counter Booth but ran to a small problem. He wasn't operating in US soil so they need allied help taking him down. They found one willing partner in South Africa because the apartheid was over and they knew Booth worked with the apartheid regime. So they're not a big fan. Granted, he did work with the ANC as well. But you know, it's a grudge it's okay to hold on to, you know, in my opinion. I feel as though if you are the ANC and you experience things like the so we do massacre and Various mass shootings of student young student you don't give that guy a pass

You know like both sides hey like you did hook us up a little but you also hooked up Yeah, you eat Svander boost you and his like entire fucking detachment of auxiliaries with the stuff that they used to kill us with Yeah, and they closed down one of his companies in, I believe his headquarter in Cape Town, and charged him with over 100 crimes, only for Boot to vanish out of South Africa before they could do anything. The UN was also forced to publicly outline Boot's various forays into sanction-busting throughout Africa, mostly due to the work of Pelemon and not many other people. It's often framed as a UN report, but it's like, no, it's Pelemon and not many other people. Like it's often framed as like a UN report but it's like no it's Pelemon's report. Pelleman is just like he is such a god level hater like

like that is a level of hate that you should aspire to that's pure. He's easily the coolest guy in this whole story. Basically he was imbued with the spirit of like a 14th century monk who had lived in that same monastery who was just like, this stupid piece of shit cat keeps pissing on my manuscripts and like, just wrote an entire illuminated manuscript treatise against all fucking cats, he just hates them and it's just like, that level of haterdom just rested in the building waiting till it could find the correct host, and it found it, in Pelemen. He put it to good cause, maybe he also hates cats too. Entirely possible. 20th century narcissus and Goldman shit. I was actually thinking this is funny, it's a little bit

of an aside, but the person who I keep thinking of is, are you guys familiar with the French romantic poet, Arthur Rambeau? Yep. So, Arthur Rambeau- Of course I knew. Yeah, you just say bisexual icon, Arthur Rambeau. Very, very famous as a surrealist romantic poet in the 1870s and 1880s, but he published the entirety of his work between the ages of about 17 and 21 and then vanished. And he did a lot of insane like traveling Europe by foot, covering, going all over Western and Central Eastern Europe on foot. But he eventually wound up as a coffee merchant in Harar in what's now Ethiopia, in what was called Abyssinia at the time, and made a fortune sanction busting selling guns from Europe to warring factions

in colonial wars, but also just like regional wars in East Africa in the 1880s before basically being such a hard-o that he refused to get his fucked up knee looked at and then he went up getting cyanobitis and then getting bad medical care in Marseille and dying. But I keep bringing this up because it's just sort of like this make your money by selling weapons to people without any kind of like notion of the social implications of it is like obviously it's such a thing. It's interesting to see how like this wouldn't necessarily have made someone persona non grata all that long ago but boot kind of like runs up to the end of this In the sense that like because post cold war there was no longer it has become so powerful

You have to be involved at like that level if you're like a lower level mid-tier guy. You're easily crushed You're easily ignored, but if you go pro like boot did you kind of and you become so powerful? They kind of have to let you go because they also have to work with you Yeah And so instead of I would say or instead of Rambo being the Victor boot of the late 19th century You kind of and you become so powerful they kind of have to let you go because they also have to work with you Yeah And so instead of I would say or instead of Rambeau being the Victor boot of the late 19th century You have to go more personally like a king Leopold the second level pretty much and then you also get investigative journalism from one one Dedicated guy who decides he's gonna bring you down never let your hate never let anybody call you a hater your Pure visceral hatred for one guy might be enough to stop

like crimes against humanity. Yeah. Victor boot was like, you know, everyone just has to let me go. They are the waiters at my table of success. Sometimes the haters don't become the waiters, but the table of success is a table a few miles from here elsewhere in the Hague that you sit at where the whole structure of international diplomacy also joins the hating. You could say it's just pure hateration, but for a good cause. The greatest haters, the ICC. The ICC was just pocket watching Victor Boot. His rack's too large, his bitch

too big. Exactly, they had to kill him. They're gonna kill you, Victor Boot. Soon after that, the Belgians and the Dutch joined the US and South Africa in chasing Boot. They were eventually joined by the UK who had been tracking Boot since the mid 90s but never thought to say anything about it. Together a plan was formed. They needed a place secure enough that Boot couldn't use his network to get out of, which was agreed that it should be the United States.

However there was no way Boot would ever step foot in the country, so they would need to find an allied country to do business with and arrest him, at which the US would, in effect, kidnap him, skip the annoying and long extradition process and bring him back to the US and charge him, and this is before extraditional rendition was a thing. Also, there's a small little asterisk to this whole thing. This story could end here. Cause it's at this point Boot applies for a visa to enter the United States.

It's denied. Nobody's sure why. That's so odd. Most people assume it's because the CIA had an inkling that Boot would get snatched up if he entered the US and they pulled enough strings to make sure he didn't get a visa. Because they still had one last deal they had to do. They knew he would be useful in the future because Booth's true use to the United States has not happened yet because it is not yet 9-11 has not yet happened.

Because the anti-Soviet warrior hasn't quite done that last step of putting his country on the path to peace. Exactly. And as everything seemed to be working in the right direction in the possible capture of Booth, George W. Bush becomes president and all the policy makers, all the people in government who are advocating for and planning for Boots downfall all pretty much lost their jobs overnight on the changing of administration. They all have to go on unemployment and get hired as waiters at the table of success. Mostly just think tanks I think. It is interesting because when you get down to it like the Dick Cheney model of state and industry synergy is really

just like a genteel version of what Victor Booth does. Yeah I mean if Booth was the Republic of Booth he wouldn't be punished for anything. I mean like yes I realize whoa man I'm smoking weed and it's like they're all the same but like when you think about Dick Cheney's overt personal enrichment as a result of what happened with Halliburton and so on and so forth. That's unfair, you're forgetting KBR. I am forgetting KBR and Fluor and Northrop Grumman and all of the various, yeah, the whole kind of feeding frenzy shit.

But like- Oh, don't worry, we'll get to that in a second. So yeah, so basically I suppose the big bifurcation of the story is about to take place when the South Florida Aviation College's least distinguished graduates make their mark. Yeah, but thankfully some people from the old team remained and they began pitching this whole we should crack down on this whole sort of thing to Condoleezza Rice, the new national security advisor, and she agreed. Though none of this would be made better or easier, as obviously it's now 2000 turning into 2001,

and it would be about a full seven years before it would be captured. And as fun as it would be to hear everything that happens the next seven years worth of political bickering, I'm gonna try to speed our story along for the sake of everyone. Here's a few things that we absolutely need to talk about, but just a small little detail here, nothing super important. In 2001, Boot helped the US War effort in Afghanistan directly, not as a subcontractor. So this guy named Sajjivan Rupra was a go-between for Boot and countless people and effectively acted as an accountant amongst other things. He was just like Boot's guy. people and effectively acted as an accountant amongst other things. He was just like Boots Guy.

He flipped at some point in the early 2000s before the hammer was possibly about to fall, showing American intel agencies Boots books and how Boot was linked to, well, everyone. And that's when 9-11 happens and the US invades Afghanistan a few months later. According to Rupra, another man worked for Booth within the US and virtually every European intelligence agency and the US reached out to Booth's companies knowing about who they were and like what they were capable of. Like they had ins in Afghanistan which happens to be this place they all need to invade now. So Booth's companies directly moved, supplied, and assisted American special forces going into Afghanistan in the opening stages of the war. So really quick, really, really quick part of history of that CIA Jobbreaker team and people from

10th Special Forces Group go in, I think Jobbreaker goes in in like late September, 01. 10th Group guys go in in October, 01. Like the Taliban government does not last very long. And obviously, significantly the US bombing campaign that takes place is almost immediate. I mean, they're attacking Kabul with cruise missiles within a day. And by December of 2001, Afghanistan is completely under the control of what's called the coalition NATO, but the US really. Yeah. Of course, American officials deny that they did any of this with boot, saying that they use their own aircraft or Northern Alliance

helicopters which were supplied by Victor Boot. But let's be honest here, it makes sense that they would use Victor Boot. There was no one else who knew the ins and outs of Afghanistan and happened to have a large fleet of cargo aircraft available immediately and nearby. It seems like they used Boot for the first few months in Afghanistan specifically, then discarded him returning to the status of a guy they were actively investigating. It was only after this in February 2002 that Belgian authorities issued an Interpol red notice for Boot. This is effectively an arrest warrant, but they did not announce it, so they could, along with the British, attempt to grab him before he learned about it and slipped back into Russia where he'd be unreachable.

They tracked one of his personal planes as it landed in Greece, and they assumed now was our chance to snatch this motherfucker. Belgian, British commandos, Greek authorities, and a few others all teamed up to raid this plane, only to find it completely empty other than the pilots. Despite the Belgians and the British operating in official encrypted channels only, someone somewhere had to boot off. It's suspected that the United States, or at least elements within the US government, warned him. By the time they raided the plane, he was already in Moscow. After this, there is wall to wall international news coverage about him as well. So like, he's now a complete public figure. And the US-

Now it's easy to think of what this trade could be, right? Only a few months before he's actively helping the US war effort. Now suddenly he's able to know about encrypted British intelligence communications. Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh uh yeah I mean- I will say this is all alleged, as all sides deny that this is exactly what took place, but it's the only fucking situation that makes sense. Yeah, I mean I will say this is all alleged as all sides deny that this is exactly what took place But it's the only fucking situation that makes sense Yeah, I mean because well there's got to have been something this got out one way or the other So it's like the people who read it who were read on to it would be in the only ones who would have known

So like and boots not stupid. He knew he was working with the US government. He doesn't need money He's never worked with the US government up until this point at this capacity this officially. He had to work for them for something more than money. Rather than lay low, Boot went public, doing an interview on the radio claiming he was just a simple Russian businessman and this is just another classic example of anti-Russian bias. Now this is pretty embarrassing for Russia. Russia is a member of Interpol, and while his radio interview was on air, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, Boot was not in Russia, only to backtrack after they realized that he was actively

talking on a Russian radio station. Like, uh, yeah, he's in Russia, but we don't think he's guilty, so we're not going to arrest him on the Interpol red notice. Then he kept going on every news channel in Russia doing the same thing over and over again. I'm going to throw something in really quickly also for context. You have to understand that even the early days of Putin being president and right beforehand, like, I'm not going to say that Russia was tied in with NATO and with Western military and government stuff to a huge extent.

But there were things happening in terms of cooperation that just simply would be unthinkable now. Yeah, we're actually about to go into that. The US military did join exercises with the Russian military in 2000. When you think about the Kosovo war, there was direct contact military stuff going on, coordination, et cetera. It was just a different era than it is now. And so it's interesting because Russia was sort of like, there was this kind of veneer of,

oh no, we are a member of the international community now. It's actually more closely tied to the global war on terror because, in case you don't remember, in the early 2000s, Russia and the US had kind of become close over the concept of anti-terrorism. The US was balls deep in the global war on terror at this point, and Russia was similarly Russia and the US had kind of become close over the concept of anti-terrorism. The US was balls deep in the global war on terror at this point and Russia was similarly balls deep in the second Chechen war which they quickly flipped around and said it was an anti-terror operation part of the US's global war on terror. Russia actually offered to send troops to Afghanistan in 2001.

Now for obvious reasons the US said no. This might not be a welcome move, but they did offer. It's also another thing that we could connect the dots here is why the US is involved and could possibly be the one that kind of gave Boot the heads up is that Russia and the United States is becoming much closer as Boot is actively working with the United States. So the US suddenly turns a blind eye and then possibly tips him off while simultaneously getting close to Russia, all while Boot is almost certainly still working with the Russian state. So it's not much of a stretch to feel like this is a three sided favour.

Yeah, he's kinda doing matchmaker shit. He's setting the US and Russia up on a blind date for going to a cafe to make awkward small talk. Well, you know, George Bush did say that he met Vladimir Putin and felt like he could see into his soul and that he was a good person underneath. So maybe that- He got lost in his eyes. The Putin Bush meet cute was a Victor Boot arrangement. It was like dinner date. Meet boot. Once again, Victor Boot is living in a slice of life anime.

A Victor Boot isekai. I've gotten booted to another universe? So despite there being a UN flag on his travel and an Interpol arrest worn out for him, Boot's shipments of weapons into Africa did not even slow down. His operations in Sudan and Libya only expanded as they were safe havens, and there were even reports that Taliban operatives, who obviously under heavy pressure from the United States military were trying to get their things that they thought they might need later out of Afghanistan because they knew they weren't going to withstand a full scale American invasion.

They're moving stockpiles of money, precious metal, and drugs into Pakistan by way of Boots planes. From there, coincidentally, all those things that they just moved to Pakistan were moved to Sudan and Libya. Two places where Boot had a foothold. Boot was not in Pakistan, but he was heavily in Sudan and Libya, all while the US put everyone else that had been working on the Boot investigation on other projects. So Taliban affiliated people, ministers, government people people they have to fly to Pakistan I wonder if there are any Kandahar or Kabul flights to a little town called a badabad

Just spitballing. Hey, who knows then the US invades Iraq You all know where this is going They're a combination of looking the other way and just straight-up not caring as long as cargo flights Delivered what they thought they needed. That meant that Boot was soon making cash hand over fist, contracting and subcontracting for the vast networks of private company vultures that the US had hired in order to build a logistical system in Iraq. And as people worked there said, Boot's pilots were their favorite pilots.

Quote, as long as they got paid, they would fly. years. He's the violence is middleman. Yeah. Yeah. Like how much death has been facilitated almost directly by Victor boot. And is there literally any single, single person in the world that can even compare to it aside from like talking like Genghis Khan. It's hard to quantify how much damage you did. That's why everybody says it's kind of like hyperbole to say that his nickname merchant of death. Yeah. But like, I think it fits. Yeah. Like these pilots were fucking fearless, also very drunk. Machine guns, rockets, and shitty runways, it didn't matter.

Several of the Russian crews crashed their plane, jumped out, and got into a different plane. They did not give a fuck. And immediately the rest of the world who was trying to track Boot down and possibly arrest him turned to the US and was trying to track boot down and you know possibly arrest him Turned to the US and was like guys what the fuck Like he's sitting under a pile of sanctions He's on a UN blacklist and has an Interpol red warrant like and the US denied any Knowledge of working with boot in Iraq despite everyone absolutely knowing he was and they just kept going in fact

He was such a prolific subcontractor that if you were an American soldier in Iraq between 2003 and 2004 and received a package or letter from home, there is a near 100% chance that Victor Boot delivered it because he was the main contractor for all civilian American mail services into the country. What's interesting about that for me is that when people who were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan received mail, it was put through the military postal system and the initial destination was Germany.

And so that implies that at some point in the logistics chain getting there, it went from whatever chartered carriers, cargo, whatever they had, you know, leaving sorting facilities in Germany into, you know, a shitty Antonov that then got to Baghdad or to Mosul or to create or any of these places where you had large us bases. That's pretty much what happened. Yeah. So I mean, it's also like the us had lots of military and also industry capacity. It's just so strange that they were like, no, we're just going to go with this guy. Yeah.

And I know I said it in the last episode, but getting served your divorce papers 8,000 miles away by Victor Booth. Yep. That definitely happened more than once. The merchant of death, but the merchant of divorce. It was only after a journalist broke the story that the US is working with Booth that the US military said that they would stop doing business with him. However, they were in so deep with him and his countless companies, they actually did not know how many contracts they had with Booth directly or indirectly. One journalist described the Department of Defense reliance on Booth companies as quote, comically hapless. I mean,

how on earth can you take the high ground and criticize a Navy Admiral for getting a hand job supplied to him by Fat Leonard when this was happening? Fat Victor. Yeah, that guy in Texas just working absolute overtime. I mean yeah, he probably ran out of normal sounding companies and had to register Fat Leonard Handjob LLC. That was one of Victor Boots companies. Meanwhile, like years later the Fat Leonard scandal unfolded and felt like actually that one's not, that wasn't me. Like that was just word association.

Hey, listen, if we, if we ever have to register a branch of this podcast in the UK, I'm calling it fat Leonard hand jobs, LLC. I have to believe that this guy had like, we're a title generators or whatever. He has like a Victor Bootshell company name generator he hits randomize on. It's just like a group of guys sitting around a table and it's like in Mad Men, like, oh we need to come up with more names. No we already did that. I mean he was using the same one as the spam generators in the mid 2000s where you'd get

an email from a guy named like, Pallets of the Sectomy or something like that. A deep investigation into this entire fiasco led to a discovery of two things Malice and incompetence the government contracting agency in charge of this whole thing continued to contract out to boot companies because Previous blacklists only applied to previously named companies added to the list and since boot Constantly changed the names of his companies, he rendered the list effectively useless. Any actual information about Boot, flags, warrants, all that shit, just wasn't shared with them by the intel community, either on purpose or on accident.

Look, I have an auditor and he has confirmed with me that the providence of two-hand grip like guts from berserk handjob LLC is a completely legitimate company and is not involved with drugs and arms trafficking. Grip in the dick like the dragon blade? A member of like the GAO sitting in front of like a congressional subcommittee reading off like yeah, yes Mr. Speaker I am investigating berserk upside-down handjob LLC Vincent, but airlines and We are totally not trafficking drugs and or weapons into Africa lol LLC

Yeah, and the European affiliate cream team gorilla grip SA I mean like to be fair Victor boot was the original fake taxi like a Ukrainian and Russian pilot climb aboard the fucking like there's cameras everywhere like to make 500 euro Victor boot just hard times I don't make me come back there and slap your tits. I feel like there's an extent to which like we always envision the pilots as being like loose, dissolute, Russian drunkards and they probably were but like I don't necessarily know if these guys were going to be as much of like the kind of euro perverts like I once recently saw a guy driving a huge amazon truck late at night and he had like lace curtain stuff in an eastern

european style and a crucifix and aions doll as the most Polish man to ever exist. I genuinely could imagine that Boots people were probably not... They weren't Fat Leonard, they weren't Playboys. It was just like a fucking plane being piloted almost into the ground on a runway near Darfur. I was just like, this is my Minion, it's my good luck charm, it's Kevin. You know, Kevin from Despicable Me is my favorite. I really like the Gru. I like when they say banana.

You're trying to land a seaplane on Lake Givu and you realize the suction cup on your car's two plush doll is starting to come undone in the cockpit. Also because of the compartmentalization of virtually every bit of information about him within all of the government specifically the US government like it just meant to just because someone was under investigation blacklist or you know had an Interpol warrant out from did not mean the department granting the contracts or knew about any of it and And even if they did, they used a completely separate blacklist from say the FBI, the CIA, or anyone else.

Boot wasn't even the only person under investigation that the DoD did business with either. A. Caring, or B. Just not bothering to look into them. As one person within the Department of State said, quote, we did everything we could to save the DoD from itself. We failed. Well, so one of the scandals that I think that people don't talk about as much is that obviously with the unpopularity of the Iraq war and like the longer than planned duration, which I mean like that's incompetent and malice all in one, is that in the initial invasion

of Iraq, the US activated not just the tons and tons of active duty units, you know, deployed them, but rather activated National Guard and lots of army reserve units. And so a lot of the logistics stuff, the army would perform everything from mail hauling and sorting, laundry, cooking, all that stuff. The reserves have more tightly controlled limits on how long they can be deployed without certain kind of congressional things whereas like state National Guard Less so and you heard story horror stories from the early part of the war of National Guard units being there for like 18 months For example, but when that shortfall began to be apparent in early oh four That's when they're just like contracted to every shady fun

Yeah If you have an LLC and like a plan of action in a contract you get it's and in the case with boot It's like it's not just a sort of like the, you know, daring do and trying to subcontract other people's planes. He owns the planes. Yeah. He's got the pilots. He's got all these contacts and places that like they're going to need to go to go off

radar to bring this shit in. But what's really interesting here is this is now becoming public information that the U.S. is working with them and they need to divert attention from this. This is bad PR. So the U.S. supported actions to freeze his assets both inside and outside the United States but made sure to only cite his business deals with Charles Taylor as the reason for it rather than anything else. They also rated the businessman in Texas, a guy named Richard Cotkley who was working

at Richardson Texas, they rated that office and arrested Richard and they flaggedged Boot and his company as an international supporter of terror, meaning doing business with him for any reason would mark you for prosecution. So once again, if you hit the spliff 30 minutes ago and said, it's like the DOD are all terrorists, man, like you were correct. The stoner guy who thinks that the Mayans had satellite communications was correct. We, the sober realists, were wrong. So about that. So the US Army Central Command asked for a waiver so they could continue doing business with Boot and several of his companies.

It was approved without question. I love having the war crimes waiver. I love having the like- What does that waiver even look like? Yeah, we know that he's wanted in literally every Interpol country in the world to include our own but like sign here Please like this and god damn my soldiers need their bussy pop Yeah, my soldiers need their I don't know illegal tooth now illegal 2004 trucker pills They need issues of the worst versions of Maxim magazine

They need to know about new Ryan Reynolds movies They need logs of Copenhagen dip get it to them or or the war is going to be more of a shitshow than it already is. These contracts remained in force until 2005, and boot-owned planes continued their operations into Iraq and Afghanistan, supporting the global war on terror while legally being an internationally wanted terrorists. And after all of this was over, the US and various European countries once again decided, okay, let's make an attempt to arrest Boot again as he traveled because he was freely traveling

under one of his various passports. Remember, he had five, all of them are Russian, all of them with variants of his own name. Though he made sure to go to countries that wouldn't risk a blow up with the Russians if they tried to arrest him on the Interpol warrant. But people were still hunting for him. And he had a daughter living in Spain at the time, and he planned to go there for her birthday.

Once the Brits, the Dutch, and the Belgians learned about this, they set up an operation to snatch his ass. This was all derailed due to the Madrid train bombings. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh the day before he was set to go to Madrid. So he canceled his flight and ruined the plan. He didn't get to get any croquetas, Iberico, jamon. Yeah. Victor Boot. He could have said that flown to him. It's fine.

He, not Ben Lerner, could have been leaving the Atocha station on his train to go see his daughter and get snatched up by Every single weird named European commando, but it didn't happen after this the world is paying more and more attention to him Which isn't great if you happen to work in the black white and gray markets all simultaneously But that didn't mean he had stopped doing his life's work rather than it just meant his clients got well More like Fark and the Taliban and less like the US government and the UN like they had been. That being said, there seemed to have been a bit of a civil war within the intel and

law enforcement agencies of the world regarding actually going after him in earnest. Because there's a wealth of evidence to suggest that the ATF, DEA, and the FBI wanted to arrest Booth, but the CIA absolutely did not and actively discouraged their efforts by not sharing what they knew about his operations. Furthermore, there's people within the ATF, DEA, FBI and US government who also do not want people to go after him. This effectively made it impossible. All of the bad things that happened in the mid to late 20th century and the start of

the 21st century is directly the consequence of the existence of the Bush Lineage. And a guy travelling to Spain on a fake Russian passport that probably said Bologna is Grukhovski or something like that. He very narrowly avoided being arrested by a guy called Ignacio DeFasciism in the world's tightest, like, beige shirt. Yeah, exactly. Imagine the conspiracy theories that would have popped up if a boot was killed in the Madrid train bombings.

Oh man. I mean, I was just laughing to myself that they have all the GIGN and the fucking whatever the Direct Action Group for MI6 is, and the US, all their DA people from fucking various agencies, but they have to let the Pol see a national guy actually do the arresting. So yeah, like you said, like a guy named Ernan who's got like fucking the gayest tight, basically cut off polo shirt with huge biceps. It's just like, I have come to arrest you. Victor boot, you're done. Or it will be him arguing with a guy from the Guardia Saviour like about like whose responsibility it is to arrest him. And then just gets just casually walks away. It's just the sound of like very

loud Spanish arguing and then Victor was like, are you guys done? The old dusty trail. I'm going to go have a cigarette. You guys don't mind. This might shock some people more than others I suppose. But having a guy like boot willing and able to deliver a plane load of guns and bombs to literally anyone on earth as long as a check cleared was a hell of a boon to an agency like the CIA or the DEA or the ATF or the FBI or even elements of the US government who really liked to do that with frequency and this isn't to say that he was the only gun runner on the CAA's payroll he absolutely is not I'm not saying he was he was hardly the only one there is a lot but none of them were as good as he was a lot of them were just like random frat guys from Texas or from other places in America who just sort of like got because of like the famous uncle Nexus just got read on to the fact that the US needed people who were willing to do this shit and yeah he was just the best at it.

And the US wasn't alone in this. However, this is from a Guardian article. Quote, one European intelligence official who had worked on a long-running investigation of Booth's activities in Africa was openly cynical that he would ever be caught. Arrest Booth? Nobody wants to. Even my own government eventually shuts us down. There has been a decision to hassle him with sanctions to keep him in line, but everybody needs him at some point or might need him. Plus

he'd just be replaced by someone else that we don't have. So they could be you they could also be even worse. As long as he stays quiet and remains useful he can do this indefinitely. So over the years the importance of Boots capture just kind of faded away. Not only because of those reasons, but they certainly did not help. Not to mention, Boot was not an idiot. Like we've pointed out, a large part of his extensive network was an unknown number of people plugged into the global intel network in various different countries. He could smell a rat from a mile away, and he stayed away from deals that he thought might be traps.

But just because intel agencies kind of kinda sorta wanted him to be free, didn't mean federal law enforcement agencies wouldn't have their own agenda. Boot dealt in a world of let's face it, fucking assholes, all trying to make money and stay out of prison. So it didn't take long for one of his contracts, a guy named Andrew Smololian, to fall into the feds crosshairs. Wait, wait, wait, wait Armenian spotted South African, Armenia That's such a combo you know that smoked meats hitting

Like the short shorts are like functionally useless because the leg hair forms a second pair of just becomes a whole you're just describing me Wearing shorts. Yeah, it just becomes like a fuck. That's basically like lululemon leggings wearing shorts. Yeah, it just becomes like a fuck that's basically like lululemon leggings. Yeah, once again just describing me wearing shorts at the live show. Smolian was a South African Armenian who had been an asset of the apartheid South African government as far back as the 60s. Smolian eventually came into the orbit of boot due to having a like-minding business venture of being a dick.

He ran guns via Shady and illegal cargo companies throughout Africa. Over the years, they became close confidants who worked together frequently to arrange deals across the world. However, unlike Boot, Smullian was kind of a fucking idiot. He was constantly bankrupt and running from debtors, and you can imagine the kind of people he would own money to. Not good. Meaning he wasn't so discerning as Boot was when it came to looking at arms deals and

you know taking them as long as the money was good enough. And since he was a known member of Boot's orbit, the feds assumed that he might be dumb enough to be used to get to Boot. So in 2007 agents of the DEA, posing as members of FARC, contracted a Smolian looking for a rather large shipment of Russian surface-to-air missiles. If this sounds kind of wild that the DA is doing this and being the ones that track down boot, well, it was. The DA went rogue. What? They only told certain members of their own agency and even kept huge swats of the Department of Justice

out of the loop for fear that they would kill their operation or worn boot ahead of time in case you wanted to slip away. How many people were involved in this operation? A couple dozen? I mean that does kind of make sense though that like they must have known that there some of this was compromised because shit kept getting to him. They absolutely knew. They assumed it was probably the FBI and the CIA but they would just to be safe. They actually used, they didn't do this illegally. Okay. So a special unit was set up to run the operation through a legislation and guideline that was passed through a war on drugs type shit, which allowed it to operate outside normal protocols

that require US government wide notification for fear of corruption. They decide to go rogue. Obviously the DEA went to Smolian knowing he would have to go to Boot for such an arrangement. Smolian met with Boot in Moscow to pitch the deal and Boot having worked at the FARC before agreed and met with Feds posing as FARC members in multiple different places before finally hammering out the details of the deal. I think it was members of like the Colombian intelligence agency joined them on this one to be like extra because like boot was so smart that like he Knew a lot about the FARC. He knew more about FARC than the DEA certainly did Yeah, so like they needed like a Colombian guy to really like convince him do a little bit of selling the story Yeah, yeah missiles explosives and ammo in exchange for cash and drugs

Which is again a deal that Boot had done multiple times before. The kicker to this was that at the time, the US had pilots operating in Colombia along with the Colombian government to assist their anti-narcotics operations. The fake FARC members made sure to point out to Boot and Smullian, like, we might use these against Americans. Boot kind of just like leaned back in his chair like I don't fucking care. Yeah just fucking take, gimme the cocaine and the money, shut the fuck up. That meant he, Victor Boot, admitted to a cop with a wire that he would sell them weapons that will be used to kill US military and law enforcement personnel. This is what the US needed to finally get him.

There we go. They set up a meet in Bangkok, Thailand in March 6, 2008, and working with the Thai Royal Police he was arrested after formally agreeing to the deal. This is from the same Guardian article, quote, The DAA was laughing at the CA and their offices because they had arrested someone that they perceived to be working for their agency. They're clowning in this bitch. I mean, I do feel like given how smug and like, Yalie upper crust CIA people are known to be, it must be like if you're like Hank from Breaking Bad, it must make you so happy to be able to dunk on them before you have a panic attack in the elevator.

Yeah, there's absolutely like stunting on them in the office hallways. Just like imagine how fucking pissed the CIA was like what you did what is like that's right, bitch I spent my entire career getting pissed on at skull and bones things to be able to run drugs into Iraq or out of Iraq Or whatever the fuck now. You're just gonna come in here with drug enforcement Associate-file yet what an agency I have no brain I'm cooked today but was eventually exorgyed to the US after two years of fighting it and charged with a mountain of various crimes. And this is true. His representation was by a law firm headed by former US Attorney General John Ashcroft, which was paid for by the Russian

government. Ahhhh. You know how mad you must be if you were like one of the online bong vendors that John Ashcroft specifically designed a fucking sting operation In 2003 and then this happens, but you may be avenged by weed I'm just saying you may be avenged by weed in the future He was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years, which is actually the legal minimum He could have very easily got life without Mmm, I don't know and this is where the story would probably have ended.

Boot would almost certainly have died in prison. But then Russia invaded Ukraine and suddenly the US and Russia were back to Cold War political tactic of prisoner exchanges. In 2022, Brittany Greiner, a WNBA star who was playing in Russia at the time, was arrested for leaving Russia while having a weed vape in her luggage. She was promptly sentenced to nine years in prison. During this time, the US was already in talks with Russia to exchange boot for a different American prisoner, a guy named Paul Whelan, who was, certainly, almost definitely certainly, falsely imprisoned for spying. There were other Russian citizens involved in this possible deal as well, including

one Chechen guy who assassinated a man in Germany It was like a Kadyrovsky who was a hit man for the government allegedly At first wheelin and all these other guys were to be the swap for Griner But instead all those are dropped a one-for-one trade Griner for boot which was accepted This is generally known in free agency as getting fucked yeah like I said I'm happy Brittany Greiner is not in a rush and I'm happy for the this deal could have been much more heavy on our end You know we need a new general manager behind the desk the long-suffering

E-head shop operators from early 2000s internet American commerce who went to jail for selling bongs because it was technically Trafficking paraphernalia across state lines and John Ashcroft put them in jail and then he went to bat for Victor Boot but Victor Boot got out because of a weed vape. So all I'm saying is not everyone really wins here. Not really anyone wins besides I mean Brittany Grindr because it's fucked up what happened but those guys can at least be like fuck you weed makes the world go round. This teaches you a valuable lesson. Don't traffic weed, traffic guns into war zones.

If you traffic heroin and cocaine from the FARC to buy other illicit items, if you basically run every bit of drugs that goes into Western Europe in the 90s and 2000s, you're okay. One weed vape in Russia, you are an enemy of the state. Definitely in some room somewhere where that deal happened, Donald Trump's like, the very bad deal guys, terrible deal, bad deal. If they had read my book out of the deal, he did say that. I mean, remember this is during the Biden administration that this deal was made. And he was like, this is a very bad deal. It's a very bad deal, guys. Sleepy Joe. Bad deal. Bad deal.

I never thought I'd say these words, but I agree. You have Victor Boot, prime free agent, and you're trading a one for one deal for him? Absolutely not. You could at least have gotten one of these other guys, along with Griner, for Boot. I kind of feel bad for the guy. I need a new general manager at the American sports team analogy I'm working in my head. Assuming that the guy you're describing was not in fact a spy like I feel kind of bad Paul Whelan was just kind of like a weirdo

I don't think he there's no like concrete evidence He was a spy but getting let out you were gonna get let out and basically like you're like the guy walking out in Shawshank Redemption and they zap you they blast you from the tower fucking hit you with a sniper rifle and say it was a prison escape because Actually, we've got a trade for the weed vape. They didn't actually want Brittany Grindereck, they just wanted that weed vape actually. That car for so dang. Biden wanted that weed vape so bad.

That was the only thing that would make his drug cocktails to stave off dementia work. And so he has to hit the dank on top of like all of the ultra adderall they won't release to the market. If you listen to Paul Whelan, he does kind of say, because there's been a few interviews with him since then, he's like, I was pretty much told I was being exchanged until I wasn't. Did he get out eventually? No, Paul Whelan is still in Russian prison at the time of this recording. But to bring it back to the very start of the first episode, it was like, we had already

established that there's a very strong chance that Victor Poo can dunk, so way it was a one-for-one. Yeah well I just... The only way to decide this is is Brittany Griner and Victor Boot have to meet up for a one-on-one and one mixtape situation. Yeah but knowing Victor Boot it's gonna wind up being in like the Central African Republic or like Laos. I've made this whole basketball court out of landmines. I'm just also whole basketball court out of land mines. I'm just also just the ball is a giant grenade. The only way it could have been more like we've gone from all of these zeitgeist political things like the, you know, the African world war, you know, the second Congo war, the first and second Congo war and the Rwandan genocide and the breakup of the Soviet union and the second Chechen war and 9-11 and the Iraq war, the

only way it could be more zeitgeisty for 2022 is if Brittany Griner had been arrested for performing an illegal TikTok dance. In December of 2022, after 14 years in prison, Boot was released to Russia. And in case you're wondering what he's doing now, good news, he's nuts. He's going on podcasts talking about how there's too many genders. Yes. I know this, I'm not spitballing, I know it's true. Pretty much as soon as he hit the ground he went on Russian TV to talk about all of the genders in American society and why they're ruining everything.

One of these interviews is with Marina Butina. If that name is tickling the back of anybody's brain, it's a woman who was previously arrested for spying and serving a year in federal prison after honeypotting pretty much the entire NRA a few years ago. Stan Right, I do remember that. Sean It's that woman. Yeah. Sean That interview, solid gold. He claims that the US federal defense attorney tanked his defense on purpose in court because he wouldn't have sex with her. He says one of the hardest things about being in prison was not having access to fresh garlic. He champions the attempted coup on January 6th because of course he does and says quote, in America right now there is reverse racism. To be

a normal white person who wants a family, who wants children, who wants love is very difficult. He learned a lot from prison apparently. And quote, imagine it American schools they're now teaching to first graders six or seven years old that there are 72 genders These are all direct quotes real piece of shit. Yeah, let's all pretend to be surprised Oh, I do think the garlic one is really funny. Yeah, I will say the rest is just dogshit right? If it was dill I'd believe him. Yeah Russians love dill. They do love dill. I love dill. It's fine Well the mayonnaise they give you is in small packets packets You can't cover every inch of food with it. It's a fucking crime. They served me with my food on the first day I look at it. It's like where's the why is it not all in jelly? No dill. No potato

72 genders no potato because I'm actually from Belarus He also spends a lot of his time on this guy named Vladimir Sloviyov's TV show I don't know if you guys are aware of this man. To make a very long story short, he's like what if Alex Jones was Russian and also literally worked for the government? Mm-hmm. Yeah, Slovov also went on Alex Jones. That's a different story entirely. Boot became a politician for the most batshit party in Russia, the Liberal Democratic Party. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is headed by a man named Leonid Slutsky. Not important, I just wanted to say his name. Formerly headed by Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

Yes. Then this is when Boot came back into my radar because of our good friends over at the show Knowledge Fight. In the beginning of June 2024, he appeared on a video chat on Infowars with Alex Jones. The interview I have to admit is very funny, because it seems Boots English skills have actually taken a serious nose dive, and Alex Jones being perpetually un-uppers and drunk seems to have a really hard time understanding him. He just constantly talks over him, Boots says something. Jones is either not paying attention or doesn't

understand him and just talks about something completely different. But I'm surprised that like, given how insane he went in prison, like he's not hanging around like Alexander Dugan or anything like that. I mean he might be to be fair. Like Boots a massive fan of Trump and Viktor Orban and Vladimir Putin of course. But I feel like he's kind of more, the vibe that I've gotten from the stuff you've described and the kind of person that he is, is that he's a more sort of like secular piece of shit rich guy as opposed to like weird, occult, Duganism. Yeah, I don't actually believe that Boot believes in any of the politics involved in the LDP, to be fair. I think he's just doing it because that is his job now. I mean, the man has worked for the Russian government this whole time.

But like, it was interesting in the sense that for the entirety of his operation, none of it ever really seemed to be directly politicised. It was like, whoever has money, I'll sell them. It was never political. Yeah. Other than working for Russia. Yeah, and like now he's kind of being radicalised in a different way. I don't think he's just radicalised. I think he's just doing it because that's his job. Because

I mean the LDP is pretty widely guarded controlled opposition. And it's just sort of like this is kind of how you have to be to be a public figure in Russia. Yeah, true. Insane shit. Yeah. And to kind of hit the nail on the head here during the interview with Alex Jones, Alex Jones says, you know, if I was Vladimir Putin, I would hire you to do propaganda. The man is very stupid.

The man is very enthusiastic. He has a music player playing. The man is very stupid. The man is very enthusiastic. Jones is a fucking moron. He doesn't know that's exactly what's going on. I mean, like I said, he had Slovijov on his show before boot. So it's like, he's so dumb, he doesn't realize it's exactly what's happening.

And yeah, he says that Trump and Putin were the only people defending the world from literal demons and Satan, transgenderism and of course the resulting nuclear war that would come from it. And that is what Victor Boot is still doing at the time of recording. That's the last update I have on Boot Watch. Yeah. We'll keep an eye out in the same way that on a line set by robots, we keep out for an eye out for G Gundam news, which surprisingly happened after 30 years after the show came out. So who knows? Yeah. Now we're just on boot watch forever. Yeah. Bootwatch in America is Max boot saying something dumb online. Bootwatch in Russia is whatever

kind of new weird conspiracy theory Facebook mom thing that this guy is spouting off. And to me, it's just, it's sad because it's one of these things where like, this man obviously facilitated so many horrible things for so long. And it feels like whatever reckoning happened, and obviously he's free now in Russia, there was no actual reckoning even in so far as he was punished. Like it was never really accounted for because like it turns out that he was good at a thing that was useful to our, you know, disgusting unaccountable governments and particularly like the right-wing militaristic expansionist versions of them. And it sucks.

It really sucks because none of this had to happen. And frankly, it's like when you think about like, I keep thinking about the kind of the human cost when we think about drug addiction, overdose deaths in Europe, you know, in all this time. Drugs floating into Central Africa as well. Yeah, yeah. A lot of that is, I mean, it's boots fingerprints all over it. And there's a very, very good chance he's still doing it now. I mean, if you think, I mean, of course, everybody knows about the rise and fall of Wagner and Eugenie Prigozhin, but Wagner had an air arm. It's still functioning. There's still Russian mercenaries operating in lots of areas outside of the battlefield of Ukraine in Africa. But it's probably still doing it at some extent. I mean, it's hard to believe that

the Russians would argue for years to try to exchange him and then get him back and then not put him back in the game You know yeah, that's true So fellas that is Victor boot and we do a thing on this show called questions from the Legion If you like to ask this question and donate to the show on patreon at any level You can ask us a question on patreon or in our Discord community where you would have access to once you support the show. Today's question is what is a silly non-essential item that you've held onto throughout all of your moves and changes in your life? I studied abroad when I was 17 and I accidentally brought back a

spoon from my host family. I just accidentally packed it in my bag and I've kept that but I'd say the other one is more of a reminder to never get too ahead of yourself. I still have my steak and shake apron from when I worked at steak and shake. It still has my name badge on it says Nate written with a label maker because I used to, I, my computer broke my sophomore year of college and I had to buy a new one on a credit card and basically work while full-time student and doing ROTC to pay off the bill. And every time I got my paycheck, I'd go down to the ATM and I'd fucking put it in my account that then would be used to pay

off the credit card bill. I worked 54 hours in one two-week period and made $275 so it sucked really bad and I worked third shift but never got the extra dollar an hour I was supposed to because the bastards at Steak Chick HR fucked me and so I keep that I actually have it hanging on the fridge because it's just a reminder of like, yeah, just remember, remember. Mine is, I guess it's practical and also silly. One specific coffee cup.

I got a coffee cup. I did not reenlist in the army to get this coffee cup because it's like, you know, sometimes you'd reenlist, they give you like a backpack or a coffee cup or from your unit, but I stole it from the retention NCO. And this is back in 2006 and I've had it with me it is in my apartment right now I bring with me everywhere I go it's not because I have some specific loyalty or this coffee cup means anything to me for some reason I've been moving so often that I very

rarely actually accumulate anything yeah dishes or silverware and in a lot of places specifically in Armenia when you rent a place It's already full of dishes and furniture So like but it would be all of the stuff that came with the apartment plus this one coffee cup And I just always make sure to bring it with me every time and it's still here It's a 16th Cavalry Regiment. Oh, it's my cup. I was like I was wondering what is it gonna be like it was one of the reenlistment cups to say like yeah like Reenlist first armor or was that you stole it gonna be like, it was one of the reenlistment cups that say like yeah, reenlist first armor, or was it that you stole it from his office and it was his

personal one that said like, happiness is your mom in my rear view mirror, or something like that. The fake version of the Afees cups they would always sell, like happiness is Fort Bliss in my rear view mirror, or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, it's just a shitty black coffee cup. Most of the decals have faded off from repeated dishwasher use or whatever. For a long time I wasn't sentimental about a lot of things. So like when I moved to the UK,

like I moved with 30 kilos of luggage and that was my entire life. Oh boy, do I know that feeling. Yeah. And it's like when you kind of have to pack everything up and like move to a different country and try and I suppose start again, you're kind of like, you really pare down the things that you have, but I don't really have anything that I've kept for years aside from a different country and try and start again, you're kinda like, you really pare down the things that you have, but I don't really have anything out of every years aside from my original 2013 MacBook Pro that I used to edit this show like two and a half years ago and it would like, Nate knows this, it would like spin up and sound like it was about to explode

when I was rendering stuff. But I'm supposed to kind of flip it, like I've become more sentimental now and anytime I go, because I travel a lot for work and I try and pick up like little stuff like in cities like when I went to Prague after we went to the Holocaust Memorial Museum and Jewish graveyard, I was waiting outside for someone and I just like walked into one of those like little knickknack shops and I was just talking to the guy behind the counter and he was like, Oh, where are you from? I was like, Oh, I'm from Ireland. He was like, did you want to buy anything? And I had no money.

And he just gave me this like little small terracotta golem. And he was like, here, just have that. And I was like, Oh yeah. And like it's still like, I have a picture above my desk at home and it has like a ledge on the frame. So I have like little Japanese like gotcha pawns and I have that one little golem that looks over me because you know, I am the podcast golem. Fair enough.

Nate has placed a scroll inside my head. We carved you out of clay and made you into this to settle, settle our petty beefs and protect us from the haters. And that is a podcast. Before we go on to plugs, make sure to check out our show notes and get your live show tickets. We're going to be live in Belfast. 26th of October in the OEM Music Center. Last night we had some Irish fans who flew to The Hague to see the show and they're going to be there in Belfast and you know, I wanted to give back because a lot of people don't come to Ireland or Northern Ireland to do shows. So Monday are part and it's our biggest show yet. So

buy tickets and also we will have a very Irish centric t-shirt exclusively to Belfast. So you go and you guys all host podcasts, plug your other podcast, um, beneath the skin. It's another history show. It's about, about tattoos, but also not about tattoos. Um, and clue factory, a podcast that isn't about anything, but it's very, very funny. What a hell of a way to die. A podcast about why you shouldn't join the military. Also, what a hell of a way to dad because we're changing the name because we're dads and we're boring trash shooter podcast about why the tech industry is terrible. Kill James Bond, a very, very funny film

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and until next time, smuggle weapons, break sanctions, get saved by a weed vape.