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On February 21, 2019, John Raymond Boulanger is preparing to leave the country to return to Colombia. On the last day of his probation, he reveals for the first time many secrets about his career as a mercenary pilot. From the CIA to Pablo Escobar, from the deserts of Libya to the Cali cartel, no Quebecer has lived a similar story.
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00:04it's being touted as the biggest drug bust in canadian history and probably the most dramatic
00:10a story covering two continents a plane chase and up to a billion dollars worth of cocaine
00:16this was a big case i considered it the largest case i'd ever worked we did not know anything
00:21about the pilot 23 years for the pilot boulanger his name is raymond boulanger raymond boulanger
00:29well i don't forget it was a hell of a lot of fun let me tell you it was quite
00:33a ride
00:35i was involved in a lot of different operations operations supervised by the cia i used to think
00:43the cia were the good guys and then you start to realize the more you work for them we're not
00:47the
00:47good guys we're actually the bad guys i talked with pablo many times and then he was well into the
00:53cia
00:53they were all in bed with him cocaine that's when it got interesting i was considered one of the
01:01biggest traffickers at that time they asked me if i can help him and i did the cartels have a
01:11history
01:11of violence a wide trail of destruction and death bad people this was it's the far west it's all part
01:19of the game my grandfather said there's three ways you can live life you can lead you can follow or
01:26you
01:27get the fuck out the way i prefer to lead
01:47raymond raymond boulanger what a character eh my first impression yeah that guy's a bundle of nerves
01:55it was love at first sight eh well i was pretty good at flying at low level and stuff like
02:00that so
02:00and i was a bit daredevil let's put it that way
02:07i think that to be a bush pilot you have to be passionate and a little crazy
02:10that was the start of my flying career he took a lot of risks what happened was bound to happen
02:17he had an accident when you're looking for trouble you're gonna find it
02:25they said there's a contract coming up nobody said you want to go to asia that's all part of the
02:29black operations cycles but you're generally getting shot at most of the time yeah so that
02:35was the start of his adventures it's probably what influenced what was to come time would tell
02:45john raymond take one here we go
02:56how should we start the documentary how should we what no idea a huge boom maybe
03:07zoom in on a con bear
03:12i don't know
03:17i'm a born rebel it's in my blood people like bad boys people like people that flip the bird
03:23its authority and the government i've always been a black sheep i always will be i don't walk with the
03:27crowd ever never did ever in my life i'm a loner i'm like a lone wolf you're responsible for your
03:50actions not anybody else's
03:50they won't believe in many ways he's like a modern day indiana jones like a formula one pilot
03:56only he pilots planes he has flown over 50 aircrafts his career is quite unique in the aviation world
04:04a few pilots have flown that many planes in such differing conditions as well
04:11it's as if he were born piloting a plane it was in his blood i think he's uh
04:19better than most pilots he's quite a character raymond belanger
04:24he was able to work under a lot of pressure he was capable of taking huge risks
04:30when you take a look at his life there aren't many people that would have done all that
04:35there are very few people like him we have to keep that in mind he's a one-of-a-kind
04:40pilot
04:40he was a bandit in legal terms but i've always seen him as a gentleman
04:45he was very polite respectful uh funny and crazy
04:54two arrests two escapes and caught a third time after being on the run for a year
05:02raymond wasn't easy to manage
05:06listen you're a pretty incredible person a really likable guy and you seem to be able to deal with the
05:12risk involved in what you do in a remarkable way a little unsettling i must admit well certain people
05:18it seems like a lot but that's how it is and there's risk in everything we do without risk
05:23there's no reward you know we're pirates we have ways and means to get things done you want to
05:28with us we'll with you that's the name of the game if i did illegal stuff like that well
05:35i wouldn't be too vocal about it hold on hello yes okay we're shooting yeah but sure no problem
05:50go ahead we're shooting but yeah you have to leave the room to speak privately with your lawyer
05:58of course i tend to tell clients not to extrapolate their way of life we've tried to tell mr boulanger
06:06to avoid going into the details of his situation given the circumstances did it work more or less
06:15i'd say in this case it was a challenge okay before you answer all the questions there are a few
06:21details
06:21i would have liked to go over with you privately can we talk now is it is it safe yeah
06:25sure no problem
06:26go ahead if you need to go to another room all right here okay
06:39there isn't a lack of witnesses stories or accounts of this adventure concerning the casey case
06:46you come to realize well i can't believe at all i can't why the monarch most of the things that
06:52i knew about him is because he himself told me about that is he going to say exactly what happened
07:02from his perspective i think so here's the story you either like it or you don't if you don't like
07:07it tough could i care less couldn't give a damn period it's that simple
07:17great sound eh it's like music to my ears
07:35my brother had been born and they were expecting a girl the second time around
07:38when i arrived well i was a boy so that was it john was the first name that came out
07:44so i ended up the
07:45john raymond well what's funny is that in all the documents when i worked in black ops the passports
07:52all the passports i had my identities there was a john in all of them a john kelly john clarkson
07:58it
07:59always started with a john it was a traditional thing in a sense my scottish relatives they all had
08:04a john in their family my mother was scottish she was born in kilmarnock airshire and i met my dad
08:13in 1943
08:14in glasgow my mom came over here as a war bride 1943 she arrived in quebec city and my grandfather
08:21bought her a fur coat because she figured she wasn't dressed well enough for her canadian
08:25clothes so he bought her a big fur coat which she kept all her life beaver coat my dad didn't
08:31arrive
08:31until 45 and then they sent him home but my mom was already here
08:43and he managed quite a lot of employees he was pretty well known he was a war hero here
08:48and he was also a staff sergeant my father was really well known around here
08:55in the early 30s it was the great depression and that's when he started his career as a bootlegger
09:02of alcohol oh that's it okay the kids used to do that back that was in the prohibition there was
09:08a lot of bootleg going on because canada was exporting all the booze to the united states and
09:12that was one of the jump off points you know the eight to ten year old crowd there they would
09:15get
09:16paid to go and listen spot for the the revenuers where the rcmp or the the police let the bootleggers
09:23know so they can hide the booze for the cops got there so they were getting paid 25 cents an
09:27hour for
09:27that so in those days that was big time money there's no such a thing as a legal way to
09:32make
09:32money you make money or you don't make money you know illegally it all depends on whose perspective
09:41now raymond boulanger's father was also one of the instigators of raymond's future passion for aviation
09:49because in the early 1960s he started piloting himself i used to fly with my dad all the time but
09:56i'd sit on his knees to fly but my legs weren't long enough to reach down to the rudder pedals
10:00he
10:00put these two big wooden blocks on the rudder panels so that then i could touch them i couldn't
10:04pray use the brakes but i didn't really need to i could actually touch the rudder paddles so i could
10:08fly so that was kind of fun you see the point there that's where i live avenue de vitrin there
10:14right
10:15there below you used to walk down here for kids
10:22mongeville uh it was an airport uh there for quite some time during the war it was a patrol airport
10:26it was an air gunnery school for the commonwealth air training program quite a lot of activity and
10:31several airlines were operating there it was non-stop and they had quite a mix of airplanes you never knew
10:36what was coming down you know it would be a york and then a dc-4 then a c-46
10:40and whoa here comes the
10:41globe master so it was quite impressive we had quite a lot of fun that we'd sit around on the
10:47airport during recess and watch them coming and going all the time we'd bring our little snacks and
10:52stuff like that and just go sit out there and you know on the butt in the hill and watch
10:55the airport
10:55and i liked the dc-3 because it was a particularly graceful airplane
11:06i love the sound of the engines of the dc-3 it had a very particular sound to it only
11:10a dc-3 sounds
11:11like that comfortable roar of a big heavy duty piston engine there's nothing like it it's music
11:17and sure enough i grew up and when i was 21 years old i finally got my captain's check on
11:22a dc-3
11:25there was no question in my mind i was that's what i was going to be doing flying one of
11:28those things
11:29when i when i grew up yeah it has to be in your heart it's love you know it's not
11:33just it's not
11:34a profession i went to cartierville in the center rock to wandel aviation so i could complete my
11:53commercial license multi-engine and instrument rating and that was the start of my flying career
11:57but uh that was pretty busy airport raymond raymond boulanger what a character eh the
12:07first time i saw him i think it was a dispatch at wandel aviation
12:13my first impression yeah that guy's a bundle of nerves
12:18just saying to russia he was my instructor when i did my commercial license a little rough around the
12:23edges definitely not the airline type but uh an excellent pilot so i got to know him pretty good
12:28he acted like a kid that's why nicknamed him la floe or kid he was really really skilled
12:38but humans are like machines there's always a way to go beyond one's limits hey kid calm down
12:56fuck right there was a kind of freedom that existed back then that has probably vanished today
13:02today there are many more pilots following set parameters in very precise security protocols
13:08back then things were pretty open people wanted to fly they wanted a sense of freedom that wasn't allowed
13:16otherwise in society as aviators or pilots people got that taste of freedom
13:25the simple fact of piloting airplanes made you um attractive let's say
13:31it's busy i've never done anything really in my life to seduce girls to me it's very secondary
13:39so i was more interested in my flying and all that girls were not a priority in my life
13:43ever never were it's always been my airplanes but my first love happened when i was 17.
13:54in 1966 i was a 19 i was a pretty wild girl
14:03for the times that day marie france and i were in my car we were driving around and suddenly we
14:13saw
14:13a sign plane ride fly over the city i think that if i recall correctly it was ten dollars
14:20ten dollars for a plane ride let's do it
14:27one day i don't recall it precisely but two girls showed up two friends
14:35they showed up at wandel aviation and they wanted a plane ride
14:40they came for an airplane ride and they were dressed in these go-go girl type costumes you know
14:45like hippies all flowery stuff and they both arrived to go for the airplane ride
14:49we went in there were a bunch of guys two of them stood out gislin and raymond so he took
14:56them up
14:57for the little five dollar airplane ride and we hit it off with both girls and started dating them he
15:02dated marie france and i was dating louise so that started from there but the real story is that
15:09he and i and the two go-go dancer girls both couples were married within a year
15:21it was love at first sight he was an excellent pilot we did acrobatic flights
15:31yeah yeah we did rolls we did spins it was never enough flying at low altitude and chasing around
15:40they're just goofing off he was a daredevil oh we'd play tags just land marie france were in one plane
15:46and uh we'd be in another and we chase after each other a bit there's a lot of fun to
15:50do that loops
15:50and rolls and spins and dives you know it's fun it was completely illegal you just go very up fast
15:56you just change attitude really fast and you you get the zero part where you just float up and we
16:01chase each other around the cows fields and up and down the cows weren't scared but you never do
16:09tricks like that at low altitude close to horses they go crazy it's incredible forget about it horses
16:16stay away from them but the cows no problem okay
16:28the adrenaline that's all part of it that's basically why we fly you know and we enjoy the
16:32being up in the air that's the element it's never enough the thrill and the buzzy adrenaline you get
16:38out of doing stuff like that that's the whole feeling it was never enough i loved it i always
16:44wanted him to do it again i'd ask him to do it again and again and again
16:53i'm sure that lots of pretty girls i wouldn't would say he's a pretty good lover
17:18my god show some restraint please
17:30he was fearless and he took a lot of risks and of course he had a taste for danger
17:38so what happened was bound to happen he had an accident when you're looking for trouble you're
17:44going to find it
17:50i was in saint therese i was part-time chief instructor there
17:56raymond was flying there too it was about a half an hour and not even a half an hour just
18:02before sunset
18:06and i were at the galaxy flying club in saint therese and a friend of his asked to go fly
18:14with him
18:15his name was robert arsenal he was working towards his private license he didn't have it yet
18:20he says come with me you know so i was about to leave to go home it was about just
18:24past six in the
18:25afternoon i said okay we'll go we'll do one ride so i went along with him
18:34so uh raymond and robert took off um gisley and i stayed up behind
18:41and we waited for them they were supposed to be gone for 15 to 20 minutes
18:46the sun set night fell and they didn't come back
18:53a few minutes after takeoff the plane crashed in an old military camp called camp bouchard
19:00the aircraft stalled out you know on the turn and then went go straight into the bush
19:08the accident was spectacular robert arsenal was killed on the spot
19:14he died his head was smashed into the instrument panel and the control column there was a little
19:20steering thing like that was up his rib cage so that was it me i went through the windshield and
19:24everything right it was late in the evening it was dark out what was going on
19:34i grabbed the phone and started making calls
19:38i called the quebec police and asked them if they knew something
19:43and i crashed just past six so i'd been up in the bush there for six hours
19:47so i'd lost a lot of blood that was pretty badly smashed up i took my jeans and wrapped them
19:50around
19:50my leg with some foam i so i was conscious enough to do that the survival buster kicked in the
19:56instinct
19:57kicked in i had no recollection of doing it
20:03i finally got the news and that evening was awful awful awful six hours of pure hell is what it
20:09was my god
20:10we found out that one of the two was theoretically deceased and the other one was at the saint jerome
20:17hospital so my dad said well we better get in the car let's go and see if it's ours so
20:26i went to go see ramo there that same evening he was banged up banged up pretty bad and he
20:32was
20:32complaining he was asking for morphine or anything else yeah both legs broken on my left side my jaw
20:37punctured lungs virtually smashed the ratchet jaw bones all my on my left side was pretty well
20:44broken up he had broken bones all over his body so uh it was really serious one could say it
20:52was a
20:52miracle he survived the crash unfortunately robert didn't have such luck oh robert he passed away
21:14in third it was ramo's responsibility to say whoa whoa whoa stop it why in the hell should i have
21:22any regrets
21:24about what why should i regret anything i don't have any regrets for it period it happened it happened
21:31it is i took responsibility for it move on what's the point of sticking on this thing
21:39so
21:47so
21:49so
21:50so
22:07I said, all right, listen, did you learn anything?
22:12Yeah.
22:14I asked him what he could do to change his ways,
22:17given the lessons he learned.
22:21He said, nothing.
22:25I'm not convinced that the accident, as serious as it was,
22:31made him want to change his ways at all or his frame of mind.
22:36I'm not sure.
22:37I'm not sure.
22:45Something happens to him one day, and the next day, it's done, it's behind him.
22:49He started flying again, life was beautiful.
22:52I don't think he has any regrets.
22:54No, I don't think so.
22:58There's lots of other stuff that I don't feel responsible for, too.
23:01That's my job.
23:03When I take somebody out in a combat operation,
23:05I put him, send him on a one-way ticket to visit his ancestors,
23:10I don't go feeling responsible for that, either.
23:14All is fair.
23:15In love and war, so that's just the name of the game.
23:21After the accident, he kept on working a bit at Wandel's,
23:24but I think he needed more than that.
23:25He wanted to venture out into the unknown.
23:27An opportunity knocked eventually.
23:29For example, one of his friends started a company called Dolbu Aviation.
23:32Dolbu Aviation.
23:34That's where he got his first job as a bush pilot.
23:44I think that, to be a bush pilot, you have to be passionate and a little crazy.
23:48It's physically difficult.
23:50It's very hard, and you're always flying in treacherous conditions,
23:53bad weather and stuff like that,
23:54so I take my hat off to bush pilots.
23:56They're the best in the world.
24:00Most of the time, bush pilots transport hunters, fishermen, geologists,
24:05and prospectors to remote places.
24:08You have to be able to land on land and water at any time.
24:13Bush pilots, as opposed to aviators that are members of a club
24:16or work for an air carrier, have to plan their trips from A to Z.
24:22They have to take into account all the resources they will need, like fuel.
24:27They must make sure that where they land,
24:29gasoline cans are ready in order to refuel and make the round trip.
24:33They must take into account weather conditions.
24:35They are 100% responsible for their flights.
24:41A good pilot has to understand all the possible dangers
24:48The dangers are present much more in the bush
24:51because of the remoteness of the areas.
24:54You develop your skill, or you die doing it, one or the other.
24:57But that's all part of it.
24:59There's always fire in the bush.
25:00You have to be very careful,
25:01because once the forest fire starts, it's pretty damn hard to stop it.
25:04And it gets out of control.
25:16That was the summer of 1971.
25:18It was a huge forest fire.
25:20God knows it burned out.
25:21Something like 850,000 acres or something like that.
25:24I'm not sure, but it was huge.
25:33I had to go evacuate some people from the lake.
25:35Five American customers that were up there.
25:38Get them out, because it was an area-wide evacuation order.
25:41They wanted everybody out of the area.
25:43I flew up to Fire Lake to get these guys
25:45and pick the five of them up, and that's it.
25:49It was like a snowstorm, but only it was cinders, ash.
25:53There was smoke everywhere.
25:54You could see the ash forming, like huge snowflakes.
25:57The fire was blazing.
25:58My God, it was nuts.
26:00So I went up there to get the guys,
26:01and I told them, my, get your asses on board, boys.
26:03That's it.
26:04Leave the baggage.
26:05Get the plane.
26:05We're leaving.
26:06And we never got back to Albedale,
26:08because the fire by that time had reached the west side of the lake,
26:12so I couldn't get back.
26:15So I just followed down the west side of Lake Bistassini,
26:18looking for a river that would run
26:20so I could follow that river westward
26:22and get the hell out of the fire.
26:24The treetops were all in flames and everything.
26:26Oh, and the treetops were burning.
26:27It was really intense.
26:29It wasn't just a small fire.
26:31It was a huge one at home.
26:33The Americans were all excited, though.
26:35They were filming it.
26:36It was a big adventure for them.
26:37They thought it was big and exciting.
26:39Me, I had my side window down.
26:41I'm wiping the front window
26:42because of the suit and the cinders.
26:43Well, I was pretty damn concentrated and doing my job,
26:46so I wasn't going to kill my ass and all the rest of them.
26:48So you concentrate and you take care of what you're doing
26:52just to get your ass out of there
26:53to make sure you don't become a statistic.
26:56So you just keep busy doing your damn best
26:58to get your skills to get you out of there.
27:02The heat had gone and everything was off the clock
27:04and the engine was just, by the grace of God,
27:06it was still kicking over.
27:08I said, it's got to stop.
27:09I saw this lake and I said, okay, here it is.
27:11So I just pulled the power and then I went.
27:15Yeah, I cranked the flaps down and I headed for the lake.
27:19Zoom.
27:20I cut the engine and it dropped right in.
27:23We had to stick the tail of the aircraft in the trees
27:25and we cleared a few trees
27:27and we spent the night on top of the airplane
27:28as the fire burned its way past the mountain.
27:31The next step is figuring out how long we're going to be here
27:33and how we get out of here.
27:36Yeah, in the morning, once the sun rose,
27:38we got down from the plane and we saw a little island
27:41out on the northwest side of the lake
27:43and it was quite wide so we made it to the island
27:46and the funny thing is that the Americans were all smokers
27:48and in my survival kit, I had a big can of players' tobacco.
27:52You know the big players' cans they sell with rolling papers.
27:55And they started rolling that and I said,
27:57well, you should limit your cigarettes, you know,
27:59because you could be here for a little while.
28:01We'll be out here in a couple of days.
28:06But within two or three days, they smoked all the tobacco
28:09and then they ended up having to smoke the dry tea leaves.
28:12Yeah, and we were stuck there for 13 days.
28:20What I found out, they had disappeared.
28:22Raymond was with them.
28:23It wasn't just a group of Americans.
28:26Again with the drama, again with the worry.
28:28It wasn't easy.
28:30I was kind of young to be a widow,
28:31but it was, yeah, it was devastating.
28:38So along with me, his father and his sister,
28:40me, Jack and Gail,
28:42so we took Jack's car and we drove up to Shibugamu.
28:51My engine, I'd run it every hour or so
28:53and I'd put a copper wire,
28:55I'd ran it up to my HF antenna
28:57and I ran two porcelain cups on the top of some trees
29:00and I ran a wire there
29:02so I could increase the range of my reception
29:04or my transmission via HF radio.
29:06The oil cooler was cracked and everything
29:08so I couldn't leave the engine running
29:10for any more than a couple of minutes at a time.
29:12Yeah, I did that for a number of days.
29:14If I remember correctly, it was a Monday morning,
29:16our 13th day.
29:1713 is a lucky number for us.
29:19An auditor of the Canadian Air Force answered me that day
29:22and he had just taken off from Albinel.
29:24We got you.
29:25So they picked off and then they flew right over us
29:27and then they pinpointed us.
29:32Finally, yeah, good news.
29:34He had been found.
29:36It was a time to party.
29:38It was a big party at the hotel that night.
29:39It was quite a celebration.
29:41Yeah, it was fun.
29:42They thought we'd crashed into the lake.
29:44Yeah, but everything turned out fine.
29:54I didn't find any time to go to bed.
29:56We went up to our room and closed the door.
29:58Louise, she said,
29:59well, I didn't get married.
30:00You don't have a husband always be gone and this and that.
30:02She said, you have to make a choice.
30:04It's either me or your airplanes.
30:06Something broke inside of me that day, probably.
30:09It was hard for me to accept that Raymond's number one passion was planes.
30:13I wanted to be his number one passion.
30:16That was a bad decision she made.
30:18So anyway, she was invited to leave and locked the door on her way out.
30:22That was it.
30:22It was instantaneous.
30:24I don't take a long time to make decisions.
30:26I would be dead if I did.
30:28In my business, you have to act pretty damn quick.
30:31That's what happened.
30:41Of course, during the divorce, things got pretty ugly.
30:44For me and for anyone, divorce is far from pleasant.
30:48It's painful, but that's how it is.
30:51Game over.
30:53That was it.
30:54No woman ever going to give me an ultimatum, ever.
30:58That was probably my last bush flight, I think.
31:01I handed in my resignation three or four weeks later.
31:05A month later, that's it.
31:07I'd had enough of forest fires.
31:09And there you have it.
31:10That was the wildfire story in June 71.
31:13I think it was in 71.
31:16And I started black operations the year after, 72, 73, something like that.
31:33The owners of the flying school where I was at were pilots that had worked there during the Second World
31:39War.
31:39They were very skilled pilots that developed their skills flying across here, extremely difficult terrain to fly over.
31:45Well, I was pretty good at flying at low level and stuff like that.
31:49And I was a bit daredevil, let's put it that way.
31:51They said there's a contract coming up.
31:53Nobody said, do you want to go to Asia?
31:54That's all part of the black operations cycles.
32:03At that time, the Americans were involved in the Vietnam War.
32:07It was during the last years of the war, in the early 70s.
32:11Officially, the U.S. troops were only supposed to be on mission in Vietnam.
32:15But they also had ops in Cambodia and Laos.
32:18They needed pilots to supply troops and, at the end of the war, to pull them out of there.
32:24This particular type of operation where you would fly in at night, undercover, and relocate agents.
32:31You bring information out, you bring people in, take people out.
32:34It's just like a shuttle service, but clandestine because we're operating undercover.
32:41You see, Vietnam starts here, up north.
32:44All that's Vietnam, right here.
32:47We were stationed in this area, here.
32:51And I'd go all the way up to here, and different places, like Cambodia.
32:57We'd go, but we knew we were in red zones, and these were occupied by Viet Cong.
33:01But we went in and out, choo-choo, just like flies.
33:03We land, we do our thing, and leave like mosquitoes.
33:06And we leave real quick, really quickly.
33:10In Southeast Asia, you had to fly over rivers and jungles.
33:14Flying out there is really dangerous, and Raymond says that the conditions there were just about the roughest he flew
33:22in during his mercenary career.
33:24There's never two flights exactly the same, and you're flying at night, and particularly if you're in the wet season,
33:31it rains all the time.
33:34Well, if you have the rainy season, the monsoon season, yeah, it's like rains.
33:39Makes for difficult flying conditions, but you generally can pick your way among the rain showers, yeah.
33:45It's quite tricky.
33:46Yeah, you've got to be really careful, so you have to know your terrain, your landmarks pretty quick.
33:50And you have to be really fast and making a decision, otherwise you smash into the hills and kill yourself.
33:55It's very dangerous.
33:58That's why you stay low, so you go fast.
34:01You try to, you know, camouflage yourself as much as possible.
34:04But you're generally getting shot at most of the time, yeah?
34:09This is not the kind of work for people that are overly cautious, or fly by the book, because you
34:14better go somewhere else.
34:16It's a war.
34:17You're trying to kill the other guys, so you've got to keep it together.
34:21You have to stay calm.
34:22There's no room for panic.
34:24Or you could stay right over the trees, which is a good technique, too, right out to the trees, because
34:28they can hear the noise of the airplane, but they can't see it.
34:31So by the time they go, you're over them and past, so.
34:38They have a very minimal chance of hitting you with small arms fire.
34:44That was very important, to keep an eye on where the supplies were coming, so that you had logistics, and
34:49they knew where to bomb at particular times.
34:51But at one point, they just gave up.
34:53They just carpet-bombed the whole area, Cambodia and everything.
34:56It's totally illegal what they did.
34:58It's a crime against humanity, and nobody was ever prosecuted for that.
35:01That's when I started thinking, hmm, what the hell are these guys doing?
35:04I mean, what gives them the right to go and kill all these millions of people?
35:07Nobody asked them to come here.
35:11When they started bombing Cambodia and Laos, Nixon was in charge.
35:15And what they were doing down there was just downright criminal.
35:18The fact is, you know, the Americans, during the Vietnam War, they dropped more tons of bombs on Vietnam, Cambodia,
35:27and Laos, than they did during all of World War II.
35:33That's a pretty chilling image.
35:35It's that criminal?
35:37These people didn't do anything to the United States.
35:39They didn't give a shit about the U.S.
35:42The parties that want these operations to take place don't want anybody to know that they're the ones that are
35:48organizing this, because it's criminal.
35:50You know, you're killing people.
35:53I don't miss it one bit.
35:55Southeast Asia wasn't my favorite place at all.
36:10The astronaut club, that was a social club at the airport in Carseyville at Warrondale Aviation.
36:15It was quite a lot of fun, so a lot of the activity pilots meet there, discuss jobs and who's
36:20flying where, what's going on.
36:22It's called a glorified room and meal fueled by beer, lots of beer.
36:25Obviously, it was the 70s, swinging was in, and pilots followed suit.
36:32They'd swap contracts, and when people were looking for pilots for specific missions, you could meet them in those kinds
36:39of places.
36:40And in one of those bars, Raymond Boulanger met someone by the name of Peter Knox.
36:46Who was he?
36:47He was a stunt artist, but he was also a stand-in for an American actor, James Coburn.
36:54And he did a lot of flying and stuff like that, flying marijuana back from Mexico into the United States.
37:04And so, one night, he was having a drink with Raymond, and he said,
37:07listen, I'm looking for a co-pilot for a mission I'm going on south of the States.
37:12And he told Raymond, it's kind of a special mission.
37:16Basically, what Peter Knox did was to take off from the States and go down to Mexico to pick up
37:22marijuana.
37:24Cocaine wasn't in the picture yet.
37:26It was all about marijuana.
37:28I think that Raymond quickly came to understand that an empty plane means no money.
37:35He was making $35,000 to $40,000 per flight.
37:42It was his first experience transporting marijuana.
37:45For him, it was a job like any other.
37:47He didn't get a special thrill out of it, other than having to fly low.
37:51He had to avoid getting caught, so he had to fly below the radar.
37:57It was kind of funny.
37:59So that was the start of his adventures.
38:01It probably would influence what was to come.
38:05Time would tell.
38:11They called them hippies in those days.
38:13They were peace and love, and they didn't want war.
38:16They were the major engineering behind the protests against the Vietnam War.
38:20But the kind of people I pretty well associated with, they weren't of the hippie crowd type.
38:24They were the cut and dry shirt and tie types.
38:29They weren't your general goof-offs, smoking dope and hippies like that.
38:33They were dressed for the part, you know, in that jeans and t-shirt and ready to move quick.
38:37You couldn't be a hippie without smoking dope.
38:39You don't know what's going on around you.
38:41If you behave that way, you don't survive in this business.
38:53The Vietnam War, picture it, it started around 1962.
38:59It lasted until 1975.
39:02So during that time, there were tens of thousands of military specialists.
39:07Some of them were aviation experts.
39:11Those people were looking for work in the United States and elsewhere.
39:16And what they knew especially was flying aircrafts.
39:20At one point during his career, Raymond Boulanger met pilots that flew planes during the Vietnam War.
39:29The most of them were potheads.
39:35They were seen as pariahs because there was an anti-war movement in the States.
39:40They were considered garbage, like failures.
39:44A lot of pilots left their service after the Vietnam War, and they felt really free over there.
39:50It was complete freedom.
39:52The kind of freedom Raymond was looking for.
39:56I think Raymond felt he had a lot in common with veterans.
39:59Well, sure.
39:59Indeed, a lot of these guys were, you know, combat pilots and had flown helicopters for several years in Vietnam.
40:04These guys were good.
40:05These people had nothing left to lose?
40:06You're skillful pilots, you know.
40:08You're not just, you're not bus drivers here.
40:10You're talking, it's different, it's different altogether.
40:12They just smoked dope all day long, but that was their normal state of affairs, so they functioned quite well.
40:16So they all ended up as drug addicts or doing clandestine stuff, you know, working in the pot business, and
40:23that's basically what these guys were doing.
40:27So they started flying marijuana into the United States from Mexico, and they asked Raymond Boulanger to join them.
40:39Basically, what these Vietnam vets did was to take off from a housing project in the Florida Keys, a project
40:48that had never been completely finished.
40:50There were really wide streets and no houses, so they'd take off from there.
40:54Then they'd head down to Mexico to get the marijuana, and they'd bring it back to the Keys.
40:59And it's during one of those flights that Raymond Boulanger made it out to Colombia for the first time.
41:06It's pretty simple.
41:07When they would be ready to do a load, they called me up, I'd come down.
41:10So I'd go out there, and I'd climb into DC-6, fire it up, and then cut to the east,
41:14and then head down between Haiti and Cuba.
41:17I'd never go more than five, six hundred feet in a nice sunny day, and head straight down to the
41:22Guajira in Colombia.
41:26Guajira. It's all this area here.
41:34You have to understand that Guajira is a very particular area.
41:37It's like no other place I've ever seen on the earth.
41:40It's a desert.
41:40It has a very mysterious aura about it.
41:45It's a strange, spiritual type thing, you know?
41:47And I've never seen any place on earth like it.
41:49It's really, really weird.
41:51But it's beautiful.
41:52It has a strange beauty to it, just the same.
41:55Have you ever been to the Guajira?
41:59It's the far west.
42:04It's the most northern point of South America.
42:09It also touches the Venezuelan border.
42:15So, it's a territory that was historically marked by different forms of illicit commerce between the two countries.
42:23Of course, just like from Mexico, marijuana runs were much shorter and less risky from there.
42:31It was also a passage point for cocaine and Colombian mafia and criminals.
42:42The Vietnam War veterans were key in all the Colombian criminality going on.
42:54Being a pilot for drug traffickers is very dangerous, of course.
43:00I remember when I got there the first time, the wind was blowing so hard, and the strip wasn't very
43:04large, and it wasn't very long.
43:06This stuff is not for amateurs.
43:09These people are obviously paid according to the dangers they face.
43:15It's not just about the money.
43:16There is a sense of adventure, the desire to be someone as well.
43:20Adventurous.
43:21Sure.
43:22Insane.
43:23That's how I define them.
43:24It's not just about making a lot of money.
43:27It's about how you make it.
43:31I would land there, and there would be a reception party, of course, waiting for us.
43:35So, I would land.
43:36I'd leave the engines, number three and number four, running.
43:40But they would load the aircraft from the left-hand side, because I didn't have to fuel.
43:44And they would just load it up, and I'd start the two engines, take off, and back in Florida.
43:48I was usually back by 4, 4.30 in the afternoon, and that was it.
43:52I'd go eat crab and drink beer with a bag full of cash.
43:57It's the first time Raymond Boulanger made it there.
44:02But that spot would become notorious in November 1992, because that's the peninsula from which
44:09Raymond Boulanger's Convair 580 took off to fly to Casey.
44:16Park the airplane, get out, and that's it.
44:19Jump in the car and head out to Ma's kitchen on the A1A, and the beer was good and cheap.
44:25And the stone crab, as much as you could eat.
44:28Just happened to be the place to hang out.
44:33So at some point one night, while sipping a beer, someone said, there's this company called
44:38Southern Airlines, and they're looking for pilots.
44:42But Southern Airlines, it turns out, was actually a front for the CIA.
44:46You're not working for the CIA, you're working for companies that are working for the CIA,
44:52or that are fronted, financed, and actually owned by the CIA.
44:57When the conflict was an insurgency in Nicaragua, they were trying to overthrow a communist government.
45:03Hi, fellow Americans, I must speak to you tonight about a mounting danger in Central America.
45:08I'm speaking of Nicaragua.
45:10The CIA are the biggest drug dealers in the world, bar none.
45:15I went in the back of there, and I saw a bag, and I lifted the tarpaulin on it.
45:18It was a bale of cocaine.
45:22And then when I got back, I told my boss, I said, by the way, we got cocaine in the
45:26airplane.
45:26He said, you know about that?
45:27I said, yeah.
45:27He says, mind your own business.
45:28He said, you're paid to fly the airplane.
45:32That's where the criminals are.
45:33And you think, a guy like me, that's doing my friggin' job?
45:37I'm a criminal?
45:38Yeah.
45:39Up yours, I say to the Americans, stop it.
46:08You think a guy like me, you're infract Petersburg, there's cops being on the wall.
46:08I, you think, a guy like me, it rocks him, here's a guy like me.
46:08Yeah.
46:09I got older than because I've been I've been paying.
46:09You
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