Latest / History Dark / He Survived Crashes and Wars_ Then Flew for the Cartels _ Mercenary Pilot_ From CIA to Pablo Escobar

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He Survived Crashes and Wars_ Then Flew for the Cartels _ Mercenary Pilot_ From CIA to Pablo Escobar · History Dark

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: It's being touted as the biggest drug bust in Canadian
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: history and probably the most dramatic. A story covering two continents,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: a plane chase, and up to a billion dollars worth
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: of cocaine.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: This was a big case. I considered it the largest
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: case I'd ever worked.
• 0:20
  Speaker 3: We did not know anything about the pilot.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: 23 years for the pilot Boulanger. His name is Raymond Boulanger.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Raymond Boulanger.
• 0:29
  Speaker 4: Well, I don't regret it. It was a hell of
• 0:31
  Speaker 4: a lot of fun, let me tell you. It was
• 0:33
  Speaker 4: quite a ride. I was involved in a lot of
• 0:37
  Speaker 4: different operations.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Operations supervised by the CIA.
• 0:43
  Speaker 4: I used to think the CIA were the good guys,
• 0:45
  Speaker 4: and then you start to realize the more you work
• 0:46
  Speaker 4: for them, we're not the good guys. We're actually the
• 0:48
  Speaker 4: bad guys. I talked with Pablo many times, and he
• 0:52
  Speaker 4: was well into the CIA.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: They were all in bed with him. Cocaine. That's when
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: it got interesting.
• 1:00
  Speaker 5: I was considered one of the biggest traffickers at that time.
• 1:04
  Speaker 5: They asked me if I can help him, and I did.
• 1:09
  Speaker 6: The cartels have a history of violence, a wide trail
• 1:13
  Speaker 6: of destruction and death.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Bad people. It's the far west.
• 1:19
  Speaker 4: It's all part of the game. My grandfather said there's
• 1:23
  Speaker 4: three ways you can live life. You can lead, you
• 1:26
  Speaker 4: can follow, or you can get the fuck out the way.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: I prefer to lead.
• 1:47
  Speaker 6: Raymond.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Raymond Boulanger. What a character, eh? My first impression? Yeah,
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: that guy's a bundle of nerves.
• 1:55
  Speaker 7: It was love at first sight, eh?
• 1:57
  Speaker 4: Well, I was pretty good at flying at low level
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: and stuff like that, so I was.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: A bit daredevil, let's put it that way.
• 2:07
  Speaker 6: I think that to be a bush pilot, you have
• 2:09
  Speaker 6: to be passionate and a little crazy.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: That was the start of my flying career. He took
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: a lot of risks. What happened was bound to happen.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: He had an accident. When you're looking for trouble, you're
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: going to find it. They said there's a contract coming up.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Nobody said, do you want to go to Asia?
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: That's all part of the black operations cycles. But you're
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: generally getting shot at most of the time, yeah?
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: So that was the start of his adventures. It's probably
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: what influenced what was to come. Time will tell.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: John Raymond, take one. Here we go. How should we
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: start the documentary? How should we what? No idea. A
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: huge boom maybe? A zoom in on a con bear?
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm a born rebel. It's in my blood.
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: People like bad boys. People like people that flip the bird.
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: It's authority and the government. I've always been a black sheep.
• 3:26
  Speaker 4: I always will be.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: I don't walk with the crowd, ever. Never did, ever
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: in my life. I'm a loner.
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: I'm like a lone wolf. You're responsible for your own actions,
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: not anybody else's.
• 3:50
  Speaker 8: Raymond Boulanger, in many ways, he's like a modern-day Indiana Jones.
• 3:55
  Speaker 9: Like a Formula One pilot, only he pilots planes. He
• 3:59
  Speaker 9: has flown over 50 aircrafts. His career is quite unique
• 4:03
  Speaker 9: in the aviation world. Few pilots have flown that many
• 4:06
  Speaker 9: planes in such differing conditions as well.
• 4:11
  Speaker 10: It's as if he were born piloting a plane. It
• 4:15
  Speaker 10: was in his blood.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: I think he's a... Better than most pilots. He's quite
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: a character, Raymond Boulanger. He was able to work under
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: a lot of pressure. He was capable of taking huge risks.
• 4:30
  Speaker 8: When you take a look at his life, there aren't
• 4:32
  Speaker 8: many people that would have done all of that. There
• 4:35
  Speaker 8: are very few people like him.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: We have to keep that in mind. He's a one-of-a-kind pilot.
• 4:41
  Speaker 11: He was a bandit in legal terms, but I've always
• 4:43
  Speaker 11: seen him as a gentleman.
• 4:45
  Speaker 5: He was very polite, respectful... Uh, phony and crazy.
• 4:54
  Speaker 10: Two arrests, two escapes, and caught a third time after
• 4:58
  Speaker 10: being on the run for a year.
• 4:59
  Speaker 11: Raymond wasn't easy to manage.
• 5:04
  Speaker 12: Listen, you're a pretty incredible person, a really likable guy,
• 5:10
  Speaker 12: and you seem to be able to deal with the
• 5:12
  Speaker 12: risk involved in what you do in a remarkable way.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: A little unsettling, I must admit. Well, certain people excuse
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: like a lot. But that's how it is. There's risk
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: in everything we do. Without risk, there's no reward. You know,
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: we're pirates.
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: We have ways and means to get things done. You
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: want to f * * * us, we'll f *
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: * * you. That's the name of the game.
• 5:31
  Speaker 6: If I did illegal stuff like that, well, I wouldn't
• 5:36
  Speaker 6: be too vocal about it.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: Hold on, hello? Yes, Raymond? Yes. Ah, Jacques Tormonteau. Okay.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: We're shooting. Yeah, but sure, no problem. Go ahead. We're shooting.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: But yeah.
• 5:53
  Speaker 13: You have to leave the room to speak privately with
• 5:55
  Speaker 13: your lawyer. Of course, I tend to tell clients not
• 6:01
  Speaker 13: to extrapolate their way of life. We've tried to tell Mr.
• 6:06
  Speaker 13: Boulanger to avoid going into the details of his situation,
• 6:10
  Speaker 13: given the circumstances.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: Did it work? More or less. I'd say, in this case,
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: it was a challenge.
• 6:17
  Speaker 14: Okay, before you answer all their questions, there.
• 6:20
  Speaker 13: Are a few details I would have liked to go
• 6:22
  Speaker 13: over with you privately.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: Can we talk now? Is it safe? Yeah, sure. No problem.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: Go ahead.
• 6:27
  Speaker 13: If you need to, go to another room.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 6:30
  Speaker 11: Okay.
• 6:40
  Speaker 10: There isn't a lack of witnesses, stories, or accounts of
• 6:43
  Speaker 10: this adventure. concerning the Casey case.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: You come to realize, well, I can't believe it all.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: I can't.
• 6:51
  Speaker 5: Most of the things that I knew about him is
• 6:53
  Speaker 5: because he himself told me about that.
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: Is he going to say exactly what happened? From his perspective,
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: I think so.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Here's the story. You either like it or you don't.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: If you don't like it, tough shit. Could I care less?
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: Couldn't give a damn. Period. It's that simple.
• 7:16
  Speaker 6: Mmm, great f * * * ing sound, eh?
• 7:21
  Speaker 15: It's like music to my ears.
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: My brother had been born and they were expecting a
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: girl the second time around.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: When I arrived, well, I was a boy. So that
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: was it. John was the first name that came out,
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: so I ended up with John Raymond. Well, what's funny is.
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: That in all the documents when I worked in Black Ops,
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: the passports, all the passports I had, my identities, there
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: was a John in all of them. John Kelly, John Clarkson,
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: it always started with a John. It was a traditional
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: thing in a sense. My Scottish relatives, they all had
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: a John in their family.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: My mother was Scottish.
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: She was born in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, and I met my
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: dad in 1943 in Glasgow.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: My mom came over here as a war bride.
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: 1943, she arrived in Quebec City, and my grandfather bought
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: her a fur coat, because he figured she wasn't dressed
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: well enough for Canadian clothes, so he bought her a
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: big fur coat, which she kept all her life, beaver coat.
• 8:30
  Speaker 4: My dad didn't arrive until 45, and then they sent
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: him home.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: My mom was already here.
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: Oh, well, my dad was the superintendent of the foundry
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: here in Morangerie, and he managed quite a lot of employees.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: He was pretty well-known.
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: He was a war hero here, and he was also
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: a staff sergeant. My father was really well-known around here.
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: In the early 30s, there was the Great Depression, and
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: that's when he started his.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: Career as a bootlegger. Oh, that's it. The kids used
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: to do that. Back then, that was in the prohibition.
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: There was a lot of bootleg going on because Canada
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: was exporting all the booze to the United States, and
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: that was one of the jump-off points. You know, the
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: 8- to 10-year-old crowd there, they would get paid to
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: go and listen, spot for the revenuers, or the RCMP
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: or the police, let the bootleggers know so they could
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: hide the booze before the cops got there.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: So they were getting paid 25 cents an hour for that.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: So in those days, that was big-time money. There's no
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: such a thing as.
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: An illegal way to make money. You make money or
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: you don't make money. Illegally, it all depends on whose perspective.
• 9:41
  Speaker 8: Now, Raymond Boulanger's father was also one of the instigators
• 9:46
  Speaker 8: of Raymond's future passion for aviation. Because in the early 1960s,
• 9:52
  Speaker 8: he started piloting himself.
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: I used to fly with my dad all the time,
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: but I'd sit on his knees to fly, but my
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: legs weren't long enough to reach down to the rudder pedals.
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: He put these two big wooden blocks on the rudder
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: pedals so that I could touch them. I couldn't use
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: the brakes, but I didn't really need to. I could
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: actually touch the rudder pedals so I could fly. So
• 10:09
  Speaker 4: that was kind of fun.
• 10:09
  Speaker 10: You see the point there?
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: That's where I live, Avenue de Viteran. There, right there below.
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: We used to walk down here when we were kids.
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: Montgelis was an airport there for quite some time. During
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: the war, it was a patrol airport. It was an
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: air gunnery school for the Commonwealth Air Training Program. Quite
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: a lot of activity and several airlines were operating there.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: It was non-stop.
• 10:35
  Speaker 4: They had quite a mix of airplanes. You never knew
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: what was coming down, you know. It would be a
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: York and then a DC-4, then a C-46, and, whoa,
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: here comes a Globemaster.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: So it was quite impressive. We had quite a lot
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: of fun.
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: We'd sit around on the airport during recess and watch
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: them coming and going all the time. We'd bring our
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: little snacks and stuff like that and just go sit
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: out there on the butt in the hill and.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: Watch the airport.
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: And I liked the DC-3 because it was a particularly
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: graceful airplane. I loved the sound of the engines of
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: the DC-3. It had a very particular sound to it.
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: Only a DC-3 sounds like that. Comfortable roar of a
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: big heavy-duty piston engine. There's nothing like it.
• 11:16
  Speaker 8: It's music.
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: And sure enough, I grew up, and when I was
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: 21 years old, I finally got my captain's check on
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: a DC-3. There was no question in my mind that's
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: what I was going to be doing, flying one of
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: those things when I grew.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: Up, yeah. It has to be in your heart. It's love,
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: you know. It's not just, it's not a profession.
• 11:49
  Speaker 4: I went to Cartierville and Ville Saint Laurent to Wandale
• 11:51
  Speaker 4: Aviation so I could complete my commercial license, mount the engine, and.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: The instrument rating.
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: And that was the start of my flying career. But
• 11:58
  Speaker 4: that was a pretty busy airport.
• 12:02
  Speaker 8: Raymond.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: Raymond Boulanger. What a character, eh?
• 12:07
  Speaker 6: The first time I saw him, I think it was
• 12:09
  Speaker 6: at dispatch at Wandale Aviation. My first impression? Yeah, that
• 12:15
  Speaker 6: guy's a bundle of nerves.
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: He was my instructor when I did my commercial license.
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: A little rough around the edges, definitely not the airline type,
• 12:25
  Speaker 4: but an excellent pilot, so I got to know him
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: pretty good.
• 12:28
  Speaker 6: He acted like a kid. That's why I nicknamed him LeFleur,
• 12:33
  Speaker 6: or kid. He was really, really skilled. But humans are
• 12:40
  Speaker 6: like machines. There's always a way to go beyond one's limits.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Hey, kid. Calm down, right?
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: There was a kind of freedom that existed back then
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: that has probably vanished today. Today, there are many more
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: pilots following set parameters, in very precise security protocols. Back then,
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: things were pretty open. People wanted to fly. They wanted
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: a sense of freedom that wasn't allowed otherwise in society.
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: As aviators or pilots, people got that taste of freedom.
• 13:21
  Speaker 16: The simple fact of piloting airplanes made you attractive, let's say.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: I've never done anything really in my life to seduce girls.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: To me, it's very secondary.
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: So I was more interested in my flying and all that.
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: Girls were not a priority in my life, never were.
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: It's always been my airplanes. But my first love happened when.
• 13:54
  Speaker 7: I was 17. In 1966, I was 19. I was
• 13:58
  Speaker 7: a pretty wild girl.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: For the times.
• 14:06
  Speaker 7: That day, Marie-France and I were in my car. We
• 14:10
  Speaker 7: were driving around and suddenly we saw a sign. plane ride,
• 14:15
  Speaker 7: fly over the city. I think that, if I recall correctly,
• 14:18
  Speaker 7: it was $ 10. $ 10 for a plane ride?
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: Let's do it.
• 14:27
  Speaker 6: One day, I don't recall it precisely, but two girls
• 14:32
  Speaker 6: showed up, two friends.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: They showed up at Wondell Aviation, and they wanted a
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: plane ride.
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: They came for an airplane ride, and they were dressed
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: in these go-go-girl type costumes, you know, like hippies, all
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: flowery stuff.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: And they both arrived to go for the airplane ride.
• 14:49
  Speaker 7: We went in. There were a bunch of guys. Two
• 14:53
  Speaker 7: of them stood out, Ghislaine and Raymond.
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: So he took them up for their little $ 5 airplane ride.
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: And we hit it off with both girls and started
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: dating them. He dated Marie-France, and I was dating Louise.
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: So that started from there.
• 15:08
  Speaker 6: But the real story is that he and I and
• 15:11
  Speaker 6: the two go-go dancer girls, both couples were married within
• 15:15
  Speaker 6: a year.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: It was love at first sight, eh?
• 15:28
  Speaker 7: He was an excellent pilot. We did acrobatic flights. We
• 15:33
  Speaker 7: did rolls.
• 15:34
  Speaker 15: We did spins.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: It was never enough.
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: Flying at low altitudes and chasing around, they were just
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: goofing off.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: He was a daredevil. We'd play tag.
• 15:44
  Speaker 7: Gislaine and Marie-France were in one plane, and we'd be
• 15:47
  Speaker 7: in another, and we'd chase after each other a bit.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: It's a lot of fun to do that, loops and
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: rolls and spins and dives.
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: You know, it's fun.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: It was completely illegal.
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: You just go very up fast, and you just change
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: attitude really fast, and you get to zero part where
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: you just float up, and we'd chase each other around
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: the cows' fields and up and down.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: The cows weren't scared.
• 16:07
  Speaker 6: But you never do tricks like that at low altitudes
• 16:11
  Speaker 6: close to horses.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: They go crazy. It's incredible. Forget about it. Horses, stay
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: away from them. But the cows, no problem, okay?
• 16:20
  Speaker 11: Okay.
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: The adrenaline, that's all part of it. That's basically why
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: we fly, you know, and we enjoy being up in
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: the air.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: That's the element. It's never enough.
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: The thrill and the buzz of the adrenaline you get
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: out of doing stuff like that, that's the whole feeling.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: It was never enough. I loved it.
• 16:44
  Speaker 7: I always wanted him to do it again. I'd ask
• 16:47
  Speaker 7: him to do it again and again and again. I'm
• 16:54
  Speaker 7: sure that lots of pretty girls, I would say, he's
• 16:58
  Speaker 7: a pretty good lover.
• 16:59
  Speaker 15: My God, show some.
• 17:05
  Speaker 8: Restraint, please.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: He was fearless.
• 17:34
  Speaker 11: And he took a lot of risks. And of course,
• 17:36
  Speaker 11: he had a taste for danger. So what happened was
• 17:40
  Speaker 11: bound to happen. He had an accident.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: When you're looking for trouble, you're going to find it.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: I was in St. Therese.
• 17:52
  Speaker 6: I was part-time chief instructor there. Raymond was flying there too.
• 17:59
  Speaker 6: It was about a half an hour, not even a
• 18:01
  Speaker 6: half an hour, just before sunset.
• 18:05
  Speaker 7: Raymond, Gisle, and I were at the Galaxy Flying Club
• 18:09
  Speaker 7: in St. Therese, and a friend of his asked to
• 18:13
  Speaker 7: go fly with him. His name was Robert Asenon.
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: He was working towards his private license. He didn't have
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: it yet. He says, come with me. I was about
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: to leave to go home. It was just past six
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: in the afternoon.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: I said, okay, we'll go. We'll do one ride. So
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: I went along with him.
• 18:35
  Speaker 7: So Raymond and Robert took off. Gislet and I stand
• 18:39
  Speaker 7: up behind. And we waited for them. They were supposed
• 18:44
  Speaker 7: to be gone for 15 to 20 minutes.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: The sun set. Night fell and they didn't come back.
• 18:54
  Speaker 11: A few minutes after takeoff, the plane crashed in an
• 18:58
  Speaker 11: old military camp called Camp Bouchard.
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: The aircraft stalled out, you know, on the turn and
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: then went straight into the bush.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: The accident was spectacular. Robert Arsenault was killed on the spot.
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: He died, his head was smashed into the instrument panel
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: and the control.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: Column, there was a little steering thing like that was
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: up his rib cage.
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: So that was it, me, I went through the windshield
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: and everything, right?
• 19:28
  Speaker 6: It was late in the evening. It was dark out.
• 19:31
  Speaker 6: What was going on? I grabbed the phone and started
• 19:36
  Speaker 6: making calls. I called the Quebec police and asked them
• 19:41
  Speaker 6: if they knew something. and I crashed just past six.
• 19:44
  Speaker 6: So I'd been up in the bush there for six hours.
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: So I'd lost a lot of blood. I was pretty
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: badly smashed up. I took my jeans and wrapped them
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: around my leg with some foam. So I was conscious
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: enough to do that. The survival bus had kicked in.
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: The incident kicked in. I had no recollection of doing it.
• 20:03
  Speaker 7: I finally got the news, and that evening was awful, awful, awful.
• 20:07
  Speaker 7: Six hours of pure hell is.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: What it was. My God. We found out that one
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: of the two was theoretically deceased. And the other one
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: was at the St. Jerome Hospital. So my dad said, well,
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: we better get in the car. Let's go and see
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: if it's ours.
• 20:26
  Speaker 6: I went to go see Ramon there that same evening.
• 20:29
  Speaker 6: He was banged up, banged up pretty bad. And he
• 20:32
  Speaker 6: was complaining. He was asking for morphine or anything else. Yeah,
• 20:36
  Speaker 6: both legs broken, all my left side, my jaw, punctured lungs.
• 20:39
  Speaker 6: Virtually smashed a ratchet. Jaw bones, all my left side
• 20:43
  Speaker 6: was pretty well broken up.
• 20:45
  Speaker 7: He had broken bones all over his body, so it
• 20:47
  Speaker 7: was really serious.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: One could say it was a miracle he survived the crash.
• 20:57
  Speaker 7: Unfortunately, Robert didn't have such luck.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: Robert, he passed away.
• 21:14
  Speaker 6: In 30, it was Raymond's responsibility to say, Raymond, whoa, whoa, whoa,
• 21:19
  Speaker 6: stop it.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: Why in the hell should I have any regrets? About what?
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: Why should I regret anything? I don't have any regrets
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: for it.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Period.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: It happened. It happened. It is. I took responsibility for it.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: Move on. What's the point of sticking on this thing?
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: I said, all right, listen, did you learn anything?
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 22:15
  Speaker 6: I asked him what he could do to change his ways,
• 22:17
  Speaker 6: given the lessons he learned.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: He said, nothing.
• 22:26
  Speaker 6: I'm not convinced that the accident, as serious as it was,
• 22:32
  Speaker 6: made him want to change his ways at all or
• 22:34
  Speaker 6: his frame of mind.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure. I'm not sure.
• 22:45
  Speaker 7: Something happens to him one day, and the next day,
• 22:48
  Speaker 7: it's done, it's behind him. He started flying again, life
• 22:51
  Speaker 7: was beautiful. I don't think he has any regrets. No,
• 22:54
  Speaker 7: I don't think so.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: There's lots of other stuff that I don't feel responsible for, too.
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: That's my job. When I take somebody out in a
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: combat operation, I put them.
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: Send him on a one-way ticket to visit his ancestors.
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: I don't go feeling responsible for that either. All is
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: fair in love and war, so that's just the name
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: of the game.
• 23:21
  Speaker 11: After the accident, he kept on working a bit at Wandel's,
• 23:24
  Speaker 11: but I think he needed more than that. He wanted
• 23:26
  Speaker 11: to venture out into the unknown. An opportunity knocked eventually.
• 23:29
  Speaker 11: For example, one of his friends started a company called
• 23:32
  Speaker 11: Dolbo Aviation. That's where he got his first job as
• 23:36
  Speaker 11: a bush pilot.
• 23:45
  Speaker 6: I think that to be a bush pilot, you have
• 23:47
  Speaker 6: to be passionate and a little crazy.
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: It's physically difficult, it's very hard, and you're always flying
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: in treacherous conditions, bad weather and stuff like that, so
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: I take my hat off to bush pilots.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: They're the best in the world.
• 24:00
  Speaker 6: Most of the time, bush pilots transport hunters, fishermen, geologists,
• 24:06
  Speaker 6: and prospectors to remote places.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: You have to be able to land on land, and
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: water at any time.
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: Bush pilots, as opposed to aviators that are members of
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: a club or work for an air carrier, have to
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: plan their trips from A to Z. They have to
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: take into account all the resources they will need, like fuel.
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: They must make sure that where they land, gasoline cans
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: are ready in order to refuel and make the round trip.
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: They must take into account weather conditions. They are 100%
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: responsible for their flights.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: A good pilot has to understand all the possible dangers
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: and be able to face them.
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: The dangers are present much more in the bush because
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: of the remoteness of the areas. You develop your skill
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: or you die doing it, one or the other. But
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: that's all part of it. There's always fire in the bush.
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: You have to be very careful because once the forest
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: fire starts, it's pretty damn hard to stop it. And
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: it gets out of control. That was the summer of 1971.
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: It was a huge forest fire. God knows it burned
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: down something like 850,000 acres or something like that. I'm
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: not sure, but it was huge. I had to go
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: evacuate some people from the lake, five American customers that
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: were up there. Get them out, because it was an
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: area-wide evacuation order.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: They wanted everybody out of the area.
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: I flew up to Fire Lake to get these guys.
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: I picked the five of them up, and that's it.
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: It was like a snowstorm, but only it was cinder ash.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: You spoke everywhere. You could see the ash forming, like
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: huge snowflakes. The fire was blazing. My God, it was nuts.
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: So I went up there to get the guys, and
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: I told them, get your asses on board, boys.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: The baggage, get in the plane, we're leaving. And we
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: never got back to Albedale because the fire by that
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: time had reached the west side of the lake, so
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: I couldn't get back. So I just followed down the
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: west side of Lake Mustassini, looking for a river that
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: would run so I could follow that river westward and
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: get the hell out of the fire.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: Treetops were all in flames and everything. The treetops were burning?
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: It was really intense. It wasn't just a small fire.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: It was a huge one. The Americans were all excited, though.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: They were filming it. It was a big adventure for them.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: They thought it was big and exciting. Me, I had
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: my side window down. I'm wiping the front window because
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: of the suit and the scissors.
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: I was pretty damn concentrated in doing my job, so
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: I wasn't going to kill my ass and all the
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: rest of them.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: So you don't.
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: You concentrate and you take care of what you're doing
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: just to get your ass out of there. to make
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: sure you don't become a statistic. So you just keep
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: busy doing your damn best to get your skills to
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: get you out of there. The heat had gone, everything
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: was off the clock, and the engine was just, by
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: the grace of God, was still kicking over. I said,
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: it's got to stop. I saw this lake, and I said, okay,
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: here it is. So I just pulled the power, and
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: in I went.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I cranked the flaps down, and I headed for
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: the lake. Zoom. I cut the engine, and it dropped
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: right in.
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: We had to stick the tail of the aircraft in
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: the trees, and we cleared a few trees, and then
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: we spent the night on top of the airplane as
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: the fire burned its way past the mountain.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: The next step is figuring out how long we're going
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: to be here and how we get out of here.
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: In the morning, once the sun rose, we got down
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: from the plane and we saw Little Island. out on
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: the northwest side of the lake. And it was quite wide,
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: so we made it to the island. And the funny
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: thing is that the Americans were all smokers. And in
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: my survival kit, I had a big can of Player's tobacco.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: You know, the big Player's cans they sell with rolling papers.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: And they started rolling that, and I said, well, you know,
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: you should.
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: Limit your cigarettes, you know, because you could be here
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: for a little while, and we'll be out here in
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: a couple of days. But within two or three days,
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: they smoked all the tobacco. And then they ended up
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: having to smoke the dry tea leaves.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we were stuck there for 13 days.
• 28:20
  Speaker 7: When they found out they had disappeared, Raymond was with them.
• 28:23
  Speaker 7: It wasn't just a group of Americans. Again with the drama,
• 28:27
  Speaker 7: again with the worry. It wasn't easy. I was kind
• 28:30
  Speaker 7: of young to be a widow, but.
• 28:34
  Speaker 16: It was.
• 28:34
  Speaker 7: Yeah, it was devastating. So along with me, his father
• 28:40
  Speaker 7: and his sister, me, Jack and Gail. So we took
• 28:43
  Speaker 7: Jack's car and we drove up to Shibugamu.
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: My engine, I'd run it every hour or so, and
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: I'd put a copper wire, ran it up to my
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: HF antenna, and I ran two porcelain cups on the
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: top of some trees, and I ran a wire there
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: so I could increase the range of my reception or
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: my transmission for my HF radio. The oil cooler was
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: cracked and everything, so I couldn't leave the engine running
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: for any more than a couple of minutes at a time. Yeah,
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: I did that for a number of days. If I
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: remember correctly, it was a Monday morning. Our 13th day.
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: 13 is a lucky number for us. An auditor of
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: the Canadian Air Force answered me that day and he
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: had just taken off from Albany.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: We got you.
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: So he picked up and then they flew right over
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: us and then they pinpointed us.
• 29:32
  Speaker 7: Finally, yeah, good news. He had been found. It was
• 29:37
  Speaker 7: a time to party.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: It was a big party at the hotel that night.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: It was quite a celebration. Yeah, it was fun. They
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: thought we'd crashed into the lake. Yeah, but everything turned
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: out fine. I didn't find any time to go to bed.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: We went up to our room and closed the door. Louise,
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: she said, why didn't you marry? You don't have a husband,
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: always be gone and this and that. She said, you
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: have to make a choice. It's either me or your airplanes.
• 30:06
  Speaker 7: Something broke inside of me that day, probably. It was
• 30:09
  Speaker 7: hard for me to accept that Raymond's number one passion
• 30:12
  Speaker 7: was planes. I wanted to be his number one passion.
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: That was a bad decision she made. So anyway, she
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: was invited to leave and lock the door on her
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: way out.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: That was it.
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: It was instantaneous. I don't take long time to make decisions.
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: I would be dead if I did. In my business,
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: you have to act pretty damn quick.
• 30:31
  Speaker 7: That's what happened. Of course, during the divorce, things got
• 30:43
  Speaker 7: pretty ugly. For me and for anyone, divorce is far
• 30:47
  Speaker 7: from pleasant. It's painful, but that's how it is.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: Game over. That was it.
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: No woman ever going to give me an ultimatum, ever.
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: That was probably my last bush flight, I think. I
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: handed in my resignation three or four weeks later. A
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: month later, that's it. I'd had enough of forest fires.
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: And there you have it. That was the wildfire story
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: of June 71. I think it was in 71. And
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: I started Black Operations the year after, 72, 73, something
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: like that. The owners of the flying school where I
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: was at were pilots that.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: Had worked there during the Second World War.
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: They were very skilled pilots that developed their skills flying
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: across extremely difficult terrain to fly over. Well, I was
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: pretty good at flying at low level and stuff like that,
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: and I was a bit daredevil, let's put it that way.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: They said, there's a contract coming up. Nobody said, do
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: you want to go to Asia? That's all part of
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: the Black Operations cycles.
• 32:03
  Speaker 11: At that time, the Americans were involved in the Vietnam War.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: It was during the last years of the war, in
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: the early 70s. Officially, the U.S.
• 32:13
  Speaker 11: Troops were only supposed to be on mission in Vietnam,
• 32:16
  Speaker 11: but they also had ops in Cambodia and Laos. They
• 32:19
  Speaker 11: needed pilots to supply troops and, at the end of
• 32:21
  Speaker 11: the war, to pull them out of there.
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: This particular type of operation where you would fly in
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: at night undercover and relocate agents. You bring information out,
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: you bring people in, take people out. It's just like
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: a shuttle service, but clandestine because we're operating undercover. See,
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: Vietnam starts here, up north. All that's Vietnam, right here.
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: We were stationed in this area, here.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: And I'd go all the way up to here and
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: different places like Cambodia.
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: We'd go, but we knew we were in red zones,
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: and these were occupied by Viet Cong. But we went
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: in and out, choo-choo, just like flies. We land, we
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: do our thing, and leave like mosquitoes.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: And we leave real quick, really quick.
• 33:11
  Speaker 11: In Southeast Asia, you had to fly over rivers and jungles.
• 33:15
  Speaker 11: Flying out there is really dangerous. And Raymond says that
• 33:19
  Speaker 11: the conditions there were just about the roughest he.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: Flew in during his mercenary career. There was never two
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: flights exactly the same.
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: And you're flying at night, and particularly if you're in
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: the wet season, it rains all the time. Well, if
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: you have the rainy season, the monsoon season, yeah, it's
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: like rains. Makes for difficult flying conditions, but you generally
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: can pick your.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: Way among the rain showers, yeah. It's quite tricky.
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you gotta be really careful, so you have to
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: know your terrain, your landmarks pretty quick, and you have
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: to be really snap fast in making a decision, otherwise
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: you smash into the hills and kill yourself.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: It's very dangerous.
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: That's why you stay low, so you go fast. You
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: try to, you know, camouflage yourself as much as possible.
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: But you're generally getting shot at most of the time, yeah.
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: This is not the kind of work for people that
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: are overly cautious or fly by the book.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: You better go somewhere else. It's a war. You're trying
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: to kill the other guys. So you got to keep
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: it together.
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: You have to stay calm.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: There's no room for panic.
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: Or you could stay right over the trees, which is
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: a good technique too, right out to the trees, because
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: they could hear the noise of the airplane, but they
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: can't see it. So by the time they go, you're
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: over them and past, so. They have very minimal chance
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: of hitting you with small arms fire. That was very
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: important to keep an eye on where the supplies were
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: coming so that they had logistics and they knew where
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: to bomb at particular times. But at one point, they
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: just gave up. They just carpet bombed the whole area,
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: Cambodia and everything. It's totally illegal what they did. It's
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: a crime against humanity. And nobody was ever prosecuted for that.
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: That's when I started thinking, hmm, what.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: The hell are these guys doing?
• 35:04
  Speaker 4: I mean, what gives them the right to go and
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: kill all these millions of people? Nobody asked them to
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: come here. when they started bombing Cambodia and Laos. Nixon
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: was in charge. And what they were doing down there
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: was just downright criminal. Fact is, you know the Americans
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: during the Vietnam War, they dropped more tons of bombs
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos than they did during all
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: of World War II. That's a pretty chilling image.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: It's not criminal?
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: These people didn't do anything to the United States. They
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: didn't give a shit about the U.S. The parties that
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: want these operations to take place don't want anybody to
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: know that they're the ones that are organizing this because
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: it's criminal.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: You know, you're killing people.
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: I don't miss it one bit. Southeast Asia wasn't my
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: favorite place at all. The Astronaut Club, that was a
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: social club at the airport in Carseyville.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: At Warrendale Aviation. It was quite a lot of fun,
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: so a lot of.
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: The activity pilots meet there, discuss jobs and who's flying where,
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: what's going on. Let's call it a glorified room and
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: mill fueled by beer, lots of beer.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: Obviously, it was the 70s, swinging was in. And pilots
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: followed suit.
• 36:32
  Speaker 11: They'd swap contracts, and when people were looking for pilots
• 36:36
  Speaker 11: for specific missions, you could meet them in those kinds
• 36:39
  Speaker 11: of places.
• 36:40
  Speaker 8: And in one of those bars, Raymond Boulanger met someone
• 36:44
  Speaker 8: by the name of Peter Knox.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: Who was he?
• 36:47
  Speaker 8: He was a stunt artist, but he was also a
• 36:50
  Speaker 8: stand-in for an American actor, James Coburn.
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: And he did a lot of flying and stuff like that,
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: flying marijuana back from Mexico into the United States.
• 37:04
  Speaker 11: And so one night he was having a drink with
• 37:06
  Speaker 11: Raymond and he said, listen, I'm looking for a co-pilot
• 37:09
  Speaker 11: for a mission I'm going on south of the States.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: And he told Raymond, it's kind of a special mission.
• 37:16
  Speaker 8: Basically what Peter Knox did... was to take off from
• 37:20
  Speaker 8: the States and go down to Mexico to pick up marijuana.
• 37:24
  Speaker 8: Cocaine wasn't in the picture yet. It was all about marijuana.
• 37:29
  Speaker 11: I think that Raymond quickly came to understand that an
• 37:33
  Speaker 11: empty plane means no money.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: He was making 35 to $ 40, 000 per flight.
• 37:42
  Speaker 11: It was his first experience transporting marijuana. For him, it
• 37:46
  Speaker 11: was a job like any other. He didn't get a
• 37:48
  Speaker 11: special thrill out of it, other than.
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: Having to fly low.
• 37:51
  Speaker 11: You had to avoid getting caught, so you had to
• 37:53
  Speaker 11: fly below the radar.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: It was kind of funny.
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: So that was the start of his adventures. It probably
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: would influence what.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: Was to come. Time will tell.
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: They called them hippies in those days. They were peace
• 38:14
  Speaker 4: and love and they didn't want war. They were the
• 38:17
  Speaker 4: major engineering behind the protests against the Vietnam War. But
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: the kind of people I pretty well associated with, they
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: weren't of the hippie crowd type.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: They were the cut and dry, shirt and tie types.
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: They weren't your General Gufoff's smoking dope hippies like that.
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: Dressed for the part, in that jeans and t-shirt and
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: ready to move quick. Couldn't be a hippie without smoking dope.
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: You don't know what's going on around you. If you
• 38:42
  Speaker 4: behave that way, you don't survive in this business.
• 38:44
  Speaker 14: The Vietnam War, picture it, it started around 1962.
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: It lasted until 1975.
• 38:56
  Speaker 11: So during that time, there were tens of thousands of
• 38:57
  Speaker 11: military specialists Some of them were aviation experts. Those people
• 39:13
  Speaker 11: were looking for work in the United States and elsewhere.
• 39:16
  Speaker 11: And what they knew especially was flying aircrafts.
• 39:21
  Speaker 8: At one point during his career, Raymond Boulanger met pilots
• 39:26
  Speaker 8: that flew planes during the Vietnam War.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: Most of them were potheads.
• 39:36
  Speaker 11: They were seen as pariahs because there was an anti-war
• 39:39
  Speaker 11: movement in the States.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: They were considered garbage, like failures.
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: A lot of pilots left their service after the Vietnam War,
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: and they felt really free over there. It was complete freedom,
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: the kind of freedom Raymond was looking for.
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: I think Raymond felt he had a lot in common
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: with veterans.
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: Well, sure. A lot of these guys were combat pilots
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: and had flown helicopters for several.
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: Years in Vietnam. These guys were good. These people had
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: nothing left to lose? You're skillful pilots. You're not bus
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: drivers here. You're talking. It's a different story altogether.
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: They just smoked dope all day long, but that was
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: their normal state of affairs, so they functioned quite well.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: So they all ended up, as drug addicts, doing.
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: Clandestine stuff, working in the pot business, and that's basically
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: what these guys were doing.
• 40:27
  Speaker 8: So they started flying marijuana into the United States from Mexico,
• 40:34
  Speaker 8: and they asked Raymond Boulanger to join them. Basically, what
• 40:40
  Speaker 8: these Vietnam vets did was to take off From a
• 40:44
  Speaker 8: housing project in the Florida Keys, a project that had
• 40:49
  Speaker 8: never been completely finished.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: There were really wide streets and no houses, so they'd
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: take off from there.
• 40:54
  Speaker 11: Then they'd head down to Mexico to get the marijuana
• 40:57
  Speaker 11: and they'd bring it back to the Keys.
• 40:59
  Speaker 8: And it's during one of those flights that Raymond Boulanger
• 41:03
  Speaker 8: made it out to Colombia for the first time.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: It's pretty simple.
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: When they would be ready to do a load, they'd
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: call me up, I'd come down. So I go out there,
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: and I climb into DC-6, fire it up, and then
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: cut to the east, and then head down between Haiti
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: and Cuba, and never go more than 500, 600 feet
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: on a sunny day, and head straight down to the
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: Guajira in Colombia. Guajira, it's all this area here. You
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: have to understand that Guajira is a very particular area.
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: It's like no other place I've ever seen on the earth.
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: It's a desert.
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: It has a very mysterious aura about it. A strange
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: spiritual type thing, you know? I've never seen any place
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: on earth like it. It's really, really weird.
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: But it's beautiful. It has a strange beauty to it,
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: just the same.
• 41:55
  Speaker 8: Have you ever been to the Guajira?
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: It's the far west.
• 42:05
  Speaker 7: It's the most northern point of South America. It also
• 42:11
  Speaker 7: touches the Venezuelan border. So it's a territory that was
• 42:17
  Speaker 7: historically marked by different forms of illicit commerce between the
• 42:21
  Speaker 7: two countries.
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: Of course, just like from Mexico, marijuana runs were much
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: shorter and less risky from there. It was also a
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: passage point for cocaine and Colombian mafia and criminals. The
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: Vietnam War veterans were key in all the Colombian criminality
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: going on.
• 42:54
  Speaker 8: Being a pilot for drug traffickers is very dangerous, of course.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: I remember when I got there the first time.
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: The wind was blowing so hard and the strip wasn't
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: very large and it wasn't very long.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: This stuff is not for amateurs.
• 43:09
  Speaker 11: These people are obviously paid according to the dangers they face?
• 43:15
  Speaker 8: It's not just.
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: About the money. There is a sense of adventure, the
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: desire to be someone as well. Adventurous.
• 43:21
  Speaker 8: Sure. Insane.
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: That's how I define them. It's not just about making
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: a lot of money. It's about how you make it.
• 43:31
  Speaker 4: I would land there, and there would be a reception party,
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: of course, waiting for us. So I would land, I'd
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: leave the engines number three and number four running, but
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: they would load the aircraft from the left-hand side, because
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: I didn't have the fuel, and they would just load
• 43:46
  Speaker 4: it up, and I'd start the two engines, take off,
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: and back in Florida. I was usually back by 4, 4.30
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: in the afternoon, and that was it.
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: I'd go eat crab and drink beer with a bag
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: full of cash.
• 43:58
  Speaker 8: It's the first time Raymond Boulanger made it there. But
• 44:03
  Speaker 8: that spot would become notorious in November 1992 because that's
• 44:08
  Speaker 8: the peninsula from which Raymond Boulanger's Convair 580 took off
• 44:13
  Speaker 8: to fly to Casey.
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: Park the airplane, get out, and that's it. Jump in
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: the car and head out to Ma's kitchen on the A1A,
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: and the beer was good and cheap. And the stone crab,
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: as much as you could eat. It just happened to
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: be the place to hang out.
• 44:34
  Speaker 11: So at some point one night while sipping a beer,
• 44:36
  Speaker 11: someone said, there's this company called Southern Airlines and they're
• 44:40
  Speaker 11: looking for pilots.
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: But Southern Airlines, it turns out, was actually a front
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: for the CIA. You're not working for the CIA.
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: You're working for companies that are working for the CIA
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: or that are fronted, financed.
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: And actually owned by the CIA.
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: The conflict was an insurgency in Nicaragua. They were trying
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: to overthrow a communist government.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: Hi, fellow Americans. I must speak to you tonight about
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: a mounting danger in Central America. I'm speaking of Nicaragua.
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: The CIA are the biggest drug dealers in the world,
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: bar none. I went in the back of there and
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: I saw a man, and I lifted the tarpaulin on it.
• 45:18
  Speaker 4: It was a bale of cocaine. And then when I
• 45:23
  Speaker 4: got back, I told my boss, I says, by the way,
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: we got cocaine in the airplane.
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: He says, you know about that? I says, yeah. He says,
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: mind your own business. He says, you're paid to fly
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: the airplane.
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: That's where the criminals are. And you think a guy
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: like me, that's doing my frigging job, I'm a criminal?
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Up yours, I say to the Americans. Stuff it.
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: Thank you.