James Jones and Michael Taylor - Summer Staff Picks

It’s time for our summer tradition at Here’s the Thing, where staff members choose their favorite conversations from the archives in our Summer Staff Picks series. This week, we revisit Alec Baldwin’s 2023 interview with documentary filmmaker James Jones, who tells the unbelievable story of CEO-turned-fugitive Carlos Ghosn in “Wanted: The Escape of Carlos Ghosn.” In 2018, the former auto executive of Nissan and Renault was arrested in Japan on charges of financial misconduct. He escaped prosecution by being smuggled out of the country…in a box. Jones, director of the BAFTA-winning “Chernobyl: The Last Tapes,” explores questions surrounding CEO excess and a potential corporate takedown in this 2023 Apple TV+ series. Alec Baldwin speaks with Jones about getting Ghosn to be interviewed for the series, the people who suffered collateral damage and if Ghosn, now residing in Lebanon, will ever be held accountable.  And in an additional recent interview, Alec speaks with Michael Taylor, the Green Beret who coordinated Ghosn’s escape, about how he became involved in the plot, what it was like for him serving time in a Japanese prison for his role in the affair and if he and Ghosn ever crossed paths following his release. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from My Heart Radio. It's officially summer, and that
means it's time for our tradition and here's the thing
where our staff shares their favorite episodes from the archives
in our Summer Staff Picks series. One of my favorite
episodes was with filmmaker James Jones, director of the Apples series,

(00:23):
wanted the escape of Carlos Gone. The conversation so intrigued
me I wanted to explore the story even deeper and
interview one of the subjects of the film, Michael Taylor,
which I did earlier this year. Here's my conversation with
James Jones and Michael Taylor. Bernie Madeoff, Elizabeth Holmes, Sam

(00:45):
Bankman Freed. It's easy to think that shocking levels of
greed and corruption are simply nothing new in the world
of white collar crime. But what is new is an
accused chief executive evading prosecution by escaping to a foreign
country in a box. That's the story of Carlos gon,

(01:05):
former CEO of both Nissan and Renault. Goen was arrested
on the eve of a proposed merger between the two
companies and charged with financial misconduct. He was first placed
in solitary confinement and then house arrest, awaiting trial in Japan.
That is until former Green Beret Michael Taylor and his

(01:27):
son Peter shipped him off to Lebanon. The scandal ultimately
resulted in the sentencing of the tailors and former Nissan
executive Greg Kelly, while Goon walks free, maintaining his innocence.
Documentarian James Jones, director of the BAFT winning Chernobyl The
Last Tapes, brought this story to life in the four

(01:49):
part series Wanted the Escape of Carlos Gon on Apple TV.
The series weaves questions surrounding a corporate takedown and the
potential framing of Gone with the claims of CEO excess.
I wanted to know what was the background of someone
who went from CEO to fugitive in such a swift

(02:10):
fall from grace.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
So he is a fascinating character. So he was born
in Brazil, in a town in the deepest Amazonian jungle,
grew up mainly in Lebanon, went to university in France,
but was always kind of viewed as an outsider. You know,
he was never really accepted by the French establishment. He
never played the game of sucking up to politicians, going

(02:34):
to the right clubs, you know, having dinners with captains
of industry. He kind of thought he was so brilliant
he could play by his own rules, which ultimately left
him without many allies when it all came crashing down.
He worked for Michelin, the tire company, which is where
he kind of showed that he had this skill for
like cost cutting and turning companies around, and then was

(02:55):
recruited by Reno and became known as Lacoste Killer, and
you know, broke kind of French unions and sacked a
lot of people, shut down factories, was like hugely controversial.
And then when Reno took over Nissan, they thought, this
is the guy to go to Japan and just like

(03:15):
modernize this company, be ruthless, fire the people he needs
to fire, and just like save this company from death.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
It's so strange to hear someone reference going into the
Nissan culture to strip down and to make a Japanese
car company leaner and better and more competitive, when you're
always under the impression that the Japanese companies, particularly car companies,

(03:43):
are the leanest and meanest of them all. When Gone
goes over to Japan, does he find a lot of
fat there?

Speaker 2 (03:50):
He does. There were practices that had just always been
the same way. There were you know, car companies, own
shares in supermarkets, so all these kind of weird idiosyncrasies
that the Japanese staff just saw as normal, you know,
and it took an outsider like Going. And another interesting
thing about Going is I think, you know, some people

(04:10):
in Japan said to us, you know, he was viewed
with great suspicion to begin with, but the fact that
he was like culturally hard to place. You know, he
wasn't French, he wasn't American, you know, he was willing
to be the bad go Yeah, exactly. He didn't kind
of stand on ceremony. He was absolutely ruthless, and on
some level, perhaps because they were facing you know, complete extinction,

(04:35):
they kind of went with it. And the results were
so quick. He said, if I don't turn this round
within three years, are quit. He turned it around within
a year, and you know, it was just massive efficiencies
straight off the bat. And you know, I think initially
people thought he'd cooked the books, but it was it
was just the same ruthlessness he had, and he's he's
an interesting guy because he's obviously brilliant, but he's not

(04:57):
someone like a Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg who has
one design or iconic brand or something that's associated with him.
What he did, he just had this focus and this
work ethic, and he inspired the people around him to
commit to going further than they'd ever pushed before and
sticking with him when he made hard decisions. And so

(05:19):
what was so fascinating making the series is you see
how all these things that made him brilliant, as the
success started to go to his head, he kind of
lost them. You know, he wasn't working so hard. He
was spending a lot of time on the private jet
go you know, throwing parties at Vesai, going to Rio Carnival,
you know, whereas his employees were still buying their own
stationery and you know, desperately working and trying podcasts wherever

(05:43):
they could. And actually, like it was just a really old,
kind of tragic story of success. It's like losing sight
of what made you so great and suddenly people around
you thinking, you know, this emperor has no clothes.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
I'm aware of this story, and you decided you wanted
to make this documentary after Gone went to Lebanon and
after the tailors went to prison.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
Yeah, so I became aware of the story really when
he escaped. You know, I remember the headlines around the world.
The New York Post had this like enormous double bass case,
and you know, the rumor was he was smuggled out
in a music equipment box. But the film came about,
I think it was the summer of twenty twenty one,
and Apple wanted to do a series on the story.

(06:31):
They had approached this production company. At that point, we
had no access to Gon. It was a couple of
months before the tailors were extradited to Japan, effectively swapping
places with the man they'd helped escape. So we started
with very little really. You know, we knew this was
an amazing story. There was a kind of Hollywood heist
element to it of one of the world's most famous

(06:53):
business people being smuggled out of an island, a very
kind of closely monitored country, smuggled inside a music box
on a private jet.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
I want to be clear for our audience. When you
say music box, you mean the cases that they stowed
musical equipment.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
In right exactly. Yeah, and there was like a guitar
case on top.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
Gone was a bit of a band, and there was
a little guy. So that made getting him out of
the country slightly easier than I would have been if
he was six foot five or something. So you became
aware of the story after the escape.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
Yeah, exactly. The name was familiar. You know, he was
this kind of superstar in the car industry. But you know,
I'm a journalist a filmmaker, but I don't follow the
car industry that closely. I mean, I remember, you know,
there was shock you know, in Japan, he was like
a demigod. You know, there were like manga comic books
about his life. He was voted you know, the man

(07:45):
women would most like to have children with, you know,
and he's not a conventionally handsome guy. So you know,
he had this aura and this incredible reputation and then overnight,
suddenly all that just came crashing down.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
I watched the film and I look at a timeline
when you likely got involved. So when you see the party,
he goes to the Versai at a restaurant Corveracai, and
he has this party, and yet you have a lot
of footage from that party. How did he film the party?

Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, so the Ghones had organized the Marie Antoinette themed
party at Versailles, and like, if you know your history,
Marie Antoinette is you know the symbol. You know, her
famous quote is let the meat cakes. She's the symbol
of kind of extreme inequality. And you know, within France,
people getting their come up, and so like perhaps an
unwise party theme for a man who's using his company

(08:36):
brace the yeah, bit of hoo race, you can say.
And yeah, the party organizers hired a videographer to shoot
all these people dressed in kind of Marie Antoinette themed
you know, garbs, and it's kind of completely revolutionary France. Yeah,
I mean it stirs up a revolutionary in all of us,
I think.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
See, so you get some wonderful footage things like that,
the party, you're sit downs with Gone and his wife.
But Going in particular that shot I'm assuming in Lebanon
after the fact, when he's when he's once he's escaped
to Lebanon exactly, and and Gone strikes me as it

(09:15):
seemed like one of those situations where James Jones could
have left the room for several hours and gone could
have spoken into the camera ceaselessly, you know, decrying his
innocence about what he seems like somebody who he could
go on and on forever to maintain his innocence. He's
almost never going to be satisfied.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
Absolutely, he feels wronged. You know, when I asked him,
do you feel sorry for the victims in this story?
You know, there's been a huge amount of collateral damage,
lives ruined by this whole saga, and he kind of
there's one moment he looked blankly at me and said,
if there's a victim here, it's me. You know, can't
he can't see beyond that. He feels there was a
conspiracy in Japan to take him down, and everything flowed

(09:56):
from that.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
But but at the same time your documentary and I
could be wrong, maybe this is just what I glean
from it. There's a whiff of the idea, or even
just a slight whiff of the idea that that's certainly possible.
Meaning you walk away from watching your program with the
idea that the political life and the policies that are
enforced by the Japanese government are very often controlled by

(10:19):
business itself. Nissan isn't just some company. Nissan, like Sony,
is a huge company with tentacles into every corner of
the world, and one of the major companies with the
Japanese headquarters. And to say that people wanted to derail
the Reno Nissan merger is not a foolish idea, correct, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
I mean, the interesting thing about this series, in this
whole story, is that it's not a black and white
story of kind of good versus evil. There are lots
of kind of contradictory truths, and like, there's no doubt
in my mind that there was a conspiracy to take
down Carlos Gone. You know, you believe there was a conspiracy.
There was absolutely at first. And so Nissan is like,

(11:03):
as you say, one of the crown jewels in Japanese industry.
The thought of that being, you know, subsumed by a
French company Reno was just an insult to Japanese pride,
and so they wanted and they realized that Carlos Going,
having led them to huge success, saved them from extinction,
was now thinking about pulling off this merger, partly because

(11:25):
he would do quite well out of it.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
How was Reno viewed as a car company.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
I think by the Japanese as you know, a kind
of poor relation. You know, they didn't admire French kind
of mechanics design. They bought a huge steak in Nissan
at a time when Nissan was was about to go bust,
so it was a kind of marriage or convenience. But
then the idea that they would be fully subsumed by
a full alliance was just anathema to them. So there's

(11:53):
no doubt in my mind that Nissan and the Japanese
justice system decided to take Carlos going down.

Speaker 1 (12:01):
Eventually is excoriated for paying himself huge amounts of money,
and the Japanese were like, listen, no one deserves to
be paid that amount of money when you're producing cars.
I mean, no one at the head of a company,
no matter how successful it is, should be paid this
amount of money. Is that correct?

Speaker 2 (12:19):
That's right? And I think it's partly a cultural thing,
you know. I think in France extreme wealth is viewed
with great suspicion. Likewise in Japan, where you're kind of
you know, these companies are kind of hierarchical. You work
there for your whole lifetime and incrementally increase your salary.
Carlos Gone comes some more of a kind of American
business background, where the CEO is rewarded, you know, proportionately

(12:42):
with the company's profits. So he thought he was worth,
you know, five times what he was getting. He saw
himself on a level with Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, all
these kind of people. Carlos Gon's problem is that it
wasn't Carlos Going Inc. He was working for two companies
that had shareholders. He was an employee of these two companies,
whereas in his mind he became bigger than these companies

(13:05):
and deserved whatever he wanted to take.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
Now, when you think that gol was framed, you think
that he was set up in order again to derail
the merger, and the Japanese powers that be wanted to
hobble him, if you will. How much was he being
paid in those final years and how much was he
accused of stealing from the company.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
So the interesting thing is that he kind of operated
in this gray area where he was paid by both
companies and he could kind of operate the way he
wanted because there wasn't the scrutiny. He surrounded himself with
yes men at both companies. He spent a lot of
his time, increasingly on a private jet, often flying to
places not on business but to kind of enjoy the

(13:51):
trappings of his success. But what's interesting is that even
though it was a conspiracy at first, they almost then
stumbled across evidence of real corruption, you know, so almost
by mistake they found on the laptop.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
On the Nissan side of the Rennao side.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
So the Nissan lawyers basically went and searched his former
lawyer's office in Beirut, discovered a laptop which had a
hard drive with all these flows of money which he'd
kept secret from Nissan basically to and from Middle Eastern businessmen.
And he was writing checks from Nissan and Reno and

(14:27):
then through very convoluted means, through shell companies and so on,
he was receiving tens of millions of dollars back into
his pocket, and he kept that secret. And when we
put it to him, he doesn't really have a convincing
answer for why, you know, he would be writing these
checks and receiving money and keeping it secret from his employees.

(14:47):
So that is why he's now wanted not only in
Japan from where he escaped, but the French now want
to put him on trial for corruption.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
So I guess what's frustrating and confused for me is
that on one hand people maintained that the Japanese government
set him up. On the other hand, he stole from
both companies. Which is it right?

Speaker 2 (15:09):
Well, that's the thing, you know, we we pose the
question in film four. The title is victim or villain,
and it doesn't need necessarily need to be either or
you know, he can be a victim of a conspiracy
who suffered greatly, was in solitary confinement, interrogated without a lawyer.
You know, they call the Japanese justice system the hostage

(15:29):
justice system because you're effectively kept hostage until you confess.
So there's no doubt that he and his family were
victims at that point. The problem for him is that
they did then stumble across real corruption and the case
just became you know, these allegations are much much more serious,
and so it's very hard for him to dismiss the
label of villain unless he's willing to go and stand

(15:51):
trial in France, which he's not. You know, right now,
he's a fugitive in Lebanon, and as far as I
can see, that's where he's going to spend the rest
of us.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
Director James Jones, and later I'll speak with Mike Taylor himself.
If you enjoy conversations with documentary directors uncovering corporate corruption,
check out my episode with Alex Gibney, director of Enron,
The Smartest Guys in the Room.

Speaker 3 (16:22):
The ghosts of all my films tend to follow me,
and I often keep in touch with sources and interview subjects,
and in odd ways they keep coming back to films
I make henceforth, so they kind of reverberate. It's a
little bit like that moment in Ghostbusters. So they say,
don't cross the streams. Well, my streams are constantly getting crossed.

(16:44):
It seems like characters from one film are intruding into another.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
To hear more of my conversation with Alex Gibney, go
to Here's Thething dot org. After the break, James Jones
shares the intricacies of how Carlos Gon was smuggled out
of Japan in a box. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're

(17:14):
listening to Here's the Thing. Former automobile executive Carlos Gon
is a fugitive currently living the life of a free
man in Lebanon. I was curious to learn that while
the Japanese authorities couldn't get their hands on going due
to Lebanon's extradition laws, was the money he allegedly laundered recoverable.

Speaker 2 (17:36):
That's a good question. I mean, I think some of
his assets in France were frozen. I think some of
his assets in the States as well. But you know,
I think most of that money that ended up in
his pocket was in shell companies arranged from Lebanon, you know,
either within Lebanon itself or it in kind of tax
havens around the world. So I think Carlos Gohn is
still living a pretty comfortable life. He's living in the

(17:58):
mansion paid for by Nissan. He's got his super yacht
paid for by the you know, the money from the
Middle Eastern businessman. So I think the thing that kills
him is that his legacy has gone. You know, his
reputation will never recover. He's a fugitive. We all know
him now as a man who escaped in a box,
and that kills him because he would have gone down

(18:19):
in you know, the Automotive Hall of Fame as one
of the genius businessmen of the twenty first century.

Speaker 1 (18:26):
So he decides to escape. Now, the tailors, I want
you to describe how they come together. I doubt that
tailors have a website called We'll put You in a
Box and Smuggle You at Lebanon dot com. How did
that relationship get forged?

Speaker 2 (18:43):
So, Mike Taylor is a former Green Beret. He'd served
around the world, and then after leaving the military, he'd
actually spent some time in Lebanon during the Civil War.
There had met his wife, who is Lebanese, who is
a kind of distant cousin of Carlos Gohen's wife. So
I think Carlos Gohan's wife kind of started putting the
word out in Lebanon, saying, you know, Carlos is going

(19:05):
to die in a Japanese prison. He's in sology confinement.
It's freezing cold. You know, he's not going to, you know,
live much longer. I'm never going to properly see him again.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
You know.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
Beirut is like a big village. Everyone knows everyone, and
someone said, there's this guy, Mike Taylor, and he's got
quite a reputation. He'd helped journalists escape from the Taliban.
He'd he had a specialty in kids who are abducted
by one parent. He'd go in and get the kid
back for the parent who paid him to do it.
And so he just had this like amazing reputation. He

(19:37):
met Carlos Gohan's wife in Beirut. They talked about a
possible plan. But you know, this is not getting someone
out of Egypt or something like that.

Speaker 1 (19:45):
This is Japan.

Speaker 2 (19:46):
It's an island, a CCTV everywhere going is under house arrest.
This is like, you know, for someone like Mike Taylor,
this is you know, if you're a mountain climber, it's
like climbing Everest or whatever. This is just like the
ultimate challenge.

Speaker 1 (19:59):
Tayl we used to call a soldier of fortune, right exactly.
This is a great challenge for him.

Speaker 2 (20:05):
It's a great challenge, and you know, I'm sure he
realizes that at some point it could be quite lucrative,
but I think just and also I think on a
personal level, he met Carlos Goen's wife and felt great sympathy,
felt like there was an injustice, thought the Japanese system
was was unfair and cruel, and so he started formulating
this plan. And you know, they could have gone by boat,

(20:26):
but it was winter, the sea could be choppy, and
he thought, let's get him in a Let's get him
in a box, take him on a private jet, you know,
small airport, not in Tokyo. You know, the security is
more lax on private jets. He did a test and
saw that they check the luggage going into it into Japan,
but not coming out. He made sure the box was

(20:47):
too big to fit through the X rays. So he
was like, you know, it's a military operation, planning every
single detail because he was prepared. He was prepared.

Speaker 1 (20:56):
But for me, when I'm curious about us, who contacted
TA who's working with Gone? That access as tailor?

Speaker 2 (21:05):
So that I mean basically because Carlos Gone was pretty
clear that his phone was tapped, and you know he
could tell that because one day he called a newspaper
journalist to say, they're a guy standing outside my house
and we have evidence that Nissan did use spies to
follow him and other people they were kind of going after.
And the day after he called the journalist, the spies

(21:28):
didn't come to stand outside his house, so he thought, okay,
I know they tapped my phone. So he had to
get a special burner phone, but was essentially communicating with
his wife, who was communicating with Mike Taylor. So his
wife was in Lebanon at this time. So she is
a fascinating character because she's his second wife. She's kind
of beautiful, blonde, charismatic, incredibly warm, and she was kind

(21:51):
of associated with Gohon's transformation from this kind of nerdy
mister Bean character, yes, to someone who loved lavish parties.

Speaker 4 (21:58):
And yes, stressed different, dress differently, had hair implant, you know,
laser eye surgery, sharp suits, and you know, suddenly was
on the red carpet at can you know, this was.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
Like a totally unknown world. This is red carpet going exactly.
So she was seen, I mean, a bimbo is too strong,
but certainly someone who enjoyed the finer things in life.
But what you saw over the course of this whole
saga is that she, first of all, when he was
locked up, she went out on the media and kind

(22:30):
of almost single handedly changed the world's perception of the
Japanese justice system to the point where even a UN
body issued a report about hostage justice. You know, the
terrible violations of human rights. Now, you might say, Carlos
Gohn is an unlikely champion of human rights, but that
that's what his wife did. And then she also played

(22:51):
this kind of amazing strategic role in pulling off this escape,
which she doesn't want to talk about clearly for legal reasons,
but you know, it's quite clear that she was pulling
the string. But she now within Lebanon is kind of
celebrated as this power behind the throne who pulled off
this amazing plot. Obviously gone was the man who was
brave enough to actually lie down inside this box in

(23:12):
the dark and just pray that he made it to Lebanon.
But I think, you know, I think that's interesting about
his own psychology, right. I mean, he's a man who
is willing to take these incredibly high pressure decisions, and
he can seem almost quite robotic sometimes. So he just
weighed up the kind of cost benefit and the risk
of getting in that box and risking everything, and he

(23:35):
thought it's worth it, because otherwise, you know, I die
in prison in Japan.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
So the Tailors are arrested. There is an extradition treaty
and some kind of legal arrangements between the United States
government and the Japanese government and the Tailors are arrested
in the US first, correct, right at the behest of
the Japanese government. Absolutely yeah, and always make no attempt
to flee that prosecution.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
No. I mean, the Tailors could have laid low in
Lebanon like Carlos Gone, and you know, enjoyed the fruits
of their amazingly successful escape, but they wanted to go
back to the States. They didn't want to hide away.
I think deep down they thought it wasn't such a
serious crime, and you know, the States wouldn't give up
their own citizens, let alone a kind of war hero.

(24:24):
But they underestimated how mad the Japanese were. I think,
you know, this was a national humiliation to lose its
most famous prisoner, who pops up in Lebanon and gives
a press conference, you know, slamming the Japanese justice system.
So I think they were so determined to get the
Tailor's back because they knew they'd never get Carlos Gone.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
They are extrad added to Japan and they serve how
much time in Japan?

Speaker 2 (24:48):
So they served nearly two years, and it was brutal, correct,
it was brutal. I mean it was like you know,
solitary confinement, freezing cold cells. Mike Taylor is not a
young man. You know, he came out of prison, you know,
incredibly gaunt and sick. He looked about thirty years older
than he really is. They told us these stories that
they'd be forced to they'd be given a big piece

(25:10):
of cardboard and they'd have to rip it into smaller
and smaller pieces. Yes, and I think the prison system
would say that was entertainment, that was to you know,
stop them being bored. But you know, Mike Taylor said
that his fingers were like painful, and it was like,
you know, sounds to me more like torture rather than entertainment.
So they certainly had an even harder time than Carlos

(25:33):
going in prison. And you know, I think for Mike Taylor,
the thing that was even more painful than the kind
of physical discomfort and hardship was that he'd involved his son.
And his son is not a kind of hardened war veteran.
He's a you know, young guy in his twenties who
probably completely adores his dad, has always wanted to emulate

(25:53):
his dad. So the chance to be part, even a
small part of his most outlandish plot was probably just
too exciting to turn down, but then no one would
have ever thought that he'd end up spending you know,
years in a Japanese prison as well.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
And in the program Gone, I believe in one of
your sitdowns with him, he's quoted as saying something along
the lines of everybody knew.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
The risks they were taking, yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
And so Gone does not have a lot of sympathy
or empathy for the tailors.

Speaker 2 (26:23):
I was genuinely surprised how little he had.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
Beg insight into Gone that comment. Real incided to go God.
Like I said, Goan's about gone totally, and he uses
people to get what he wants and to move along
the game board as he desires. And then he doesn't
really when he does somebody use for you anymore. It
seems like he just forgets about you. One thing that
I was confused about was what was the fee that

(26:48):
the tailors were told they would be paid for the
escape just the escape itself.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
So they were given expenses ahead of the escape, which
was I think one point three million dollars, which was
just to cover private planes, you know, a reki, the
pilots or you know all those but you know, and
probably a bit for yourself as well. But Mike had
always said, after the fact, we will we'll talk money.

(27:16):
You know, the priority is getting you out after we
do it. And I think they did come to an
arrangement afterwards for some money in the in the low millions.
But then Mike and his son spent years in Japanese
prison and say they've got kind of a million dollars
of legal fees, which Goane had assured them he would pay,

(27:37):
and to date has he paid. He's paid them a
tiny fraction of that.

Speaker 1 (27:43):
Is it difficult for them to take Goan's money? Is
that the legal issue?

Speaker 2 (27:47):
Well, they can't touch him. I think, you know, Mike
has gone to Lebanon to meet Going and kind of
appeal to his decency exactly. You know, it's like, I
saved your life, unique brand of decency when Gone got
out of the box on the private jet and he
said to Mike Taylor, you know you saved my life,
And he really did. Like if it wasn't for Mike Taylor,

(28:10):
Carlos Gohen would still be in a Japanese prison and
Mike Taylor would have just been living a free man
in Massachusetts.

Speaker 1 (28:16):
Where is Taylor now?

Speaker 2 (28:17):
He's back home in Massachusetts and where's his son? His
son is in Dubai kind of starting out various businesses.
I think is.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
Taylor willing to talk about what happened or is he
better off not talking about what happened. I mean, he
served his time.

Speaker 2 (28:32):
He served his time. You know, he gave us his
first interview and Peter Taylor and you know, he kind
of trusted we were doing it right. He didn't want
it just to be the Carlos Goon show as well.
But I think he knows now because he has spoken
out about feeling let down by going and you know,
the legal fees not being paid. I think he recognizes

(28:53):
that that relationship is over. He's not going to receive
a pennymore.

Speaker 1 (28:56):
Right now, when you're sitting down and doing the one
on ones with Gone, you did them in Lebanon. Correct? Yeah,
I'm assuming you did hours and hours of interviews with him,
correct or limited.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
He's he's an impatient guy. But as long as you're
on top topics he likes talking about. He'll give you
all day. It's when you start asking the tough questions
he suddenly starts looking at his watch.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
You know, ah, did you ask the tough questions? We
did yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
Yeah, So we asked about the omar and allegations. We
also asked, you know, his his dad was a convicted
murderer priest.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
That's amazing part of the story.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
And you know, as his wife said, you know, Gon
basically just shut down that whole topic. You know, he
was a kid, his father was accused of killing a priest,
was sentenced to death. Goan was kind of six years old.
It must have been incredibly traumatic and formative. But it's
a secret. You know, no one talks about it. It's
kind of known about Lebanon, but had never been reported.
Goan had always refused to talk about it. But what

(29:51):
was so interesting is that his wife, Carol said, his
whole life has been trying to prove to his dad
that he's not his dad. And then you think, my god,
he's tried to prove that he's not a criminal like
his dad, but he's ended up breaking the law, you know,
now a fugitive in Lebanon. It's just like kind of
come full circle. So I thought that was just so

(30:13):
revealing of his mentality and drive.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
When you should something like this, it's presumed that there's
a lot of stuff you leave out that you might
have wished you had left in Was that the case?

Speaker 2 (30:25):
I think almost everything is in there. There were a
few people who knew Gon very well, who would only
speak to us on background, but who gave us the
idea of him as a narcissist, and you know, helped
us understand his psychology to kind of join the dots
of the facts we had. For instance, we had the

(30:45):
contents of his mobile phone when he was arrested and
he was like totting up his personal wealth, and there
was the final note was and if I pull off
this merger, I'll become a billionaire. And so like we
had insights like that to him. But there are a
few people who had been very close to him for
a number of years that we would have liked to
go on camera. But in terms of the key players

(31:08):
like having gone and his wife and then the tailors,
those are the key players who who we just needed
to have to make it feel like we're telling the
full story.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
Were you commissioned to do this? Did Apple commission you?
Or this was your pro Apple commissioned it? Yet? God,
And if we go down your filmography, Dispatches, Panorama, This World,
the Frontline episodes, Children of guys are more than a
few of them commissions or you like commissions.

Speaker 2 (31:39):
Yeah, it's a mixture. I mean the last film I
did before this was about Chernobyl, and that was my
idea that we then took to Sky and HBO. I'm
working on a Russia film now that's independently funded that
we will hope to premiere at film festivals and then,
and that's been actually great working in a different way.
So you're not necessary boroughly answering straight to a broadcast

(32:03):
or streamer. I think streamers are more prescriptive probably than
traditional broadcasters, right. I think I've been lucky solec Chernobyl.
It was a very clear concept of like telling the
story entirely through archive, a lot of it unseen, and
you know, I think you just try and make sure
that you accept the commission from people who buy into

(32:24):
that vision. So I've never had a situation where someone
has wanted the film to be something completely different.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
So pretty much get that sorted at upfront.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (32:34):
You guys both want the same thing, exactly, So I've
never felt arguments about what stays in and what's gets
cut out.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
It'll be Yeah, you get minor notes, but I think
like maybe, unlike with a movie where you have like
studio execs, you know, demanding major changes, I think from
the whole a doc director, at least in my experience,
you feel like it's always your own and you might
have to compromise on a couple of things, but it's
your vision that they're buying into. But maybe I've just

(33:01):
been lucky.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
Now does go and roam the streets of Lebanon of
be rude or where have you? Freely? Does he have
to mask himself? Because the guy that gets put in
a box in Japan and sent to Lebanon could justice
easily be kidnapped, put in a box and shipped to
Japan and go you know, round trip if you will.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
I mean, and we know who might put him in
the box and take him back. Right there's a guy
who's got a who's probably seeking revenge right now. But yeah,
he drives around with heavy security. You know, he has
armed guards. He's very careful about the way he travels.
And you know, Lebanon, it's not just about being sent
back to Japan. But Lebanon is a very unstable place.

(33:42):
So although it's you know, beautiful country, great food, good beaches.
You know, you can walk in the mountains. You know,
Hezbolaar is one of the largest parties, and that you know,
it feels like it's constantly on the brink of economic collapse,
civil war. So he's trapped in a place that for
a man who's accustomed to flying the world on private

(34:03):
jets and living, you know, the life of ultimate freedom,
he's constrained. He's constrained and you know, who knows what
Lebanon will look like in five years.

Speaker 1 (34:12):
Where's Kelly now?

Speaker 2 (34:14):
Kelly's back home in Nashville. So Kelly was his kind
of right hand man, the man who was kind of
tasked with keeping going at the company. As he said,
Goan was like the Michael Jordan of the car industry,
and it was my job to make sure he didn't
go anywhere.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
His story in the show is painful because you really
see him suffer. Right, you know, the tailors committed a crime.
The tailors, although their hearts were in the right place,
they were mercenaries. They took money, They committed a crime.
Goan is probably guilty of some of what they're saying.
He is at least, oh they should pay. At least
it appears that way, at least a layman would would

(34:49):
say that. But Kelly seems like the one person of
the project was purely innocent. Yeah, he didn't deserve any
of what happened to him.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
Absolutely, And they tricked him into coming over to Japan
knowing that he needed back surgery. He was in agony,
so he had this incredibly long flight. They assumed that
he would just be desperate to go home. When they
confronted him with these charges, he'd sign whatever they wanted
and he'd throw going under the bus.

Speaker 1 (35:12):
I can't believe you've got on the plane. I know,
why did he go? Who's his lawyer? I know?

Speaker 2 (35:17):
I know, Well, there is there is one person in
particular who was like Greg Kelly's protege, who is the
one who called him back, who he trusted mistakenly, and
you know they underestimated Greg Kelly. He was just like, well,
these charges aren't true. I can't possibly sign this, And
he ended up spending three years of his life stuck
in Japan.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
What are you working on now?

Speaker 2 (35:37):
So it's a film about Russian assassinations, which is we're
submitting to festivals for next year. But he finished, we're
getting close to the end, but it feels like we're
living no. So we're gonna hopefully premiere a festival early
next year and then take it from there.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
So when this is over, when you're done with Carlos, goon,
guys getting stuffed in boxes, Russian assassinations, I'm assuming the
project you're doing next is something like the History of Candy.

Speaker 2 (36:04):
That would be lovely.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
My Thanks to documentary filmmaker James Jones, I recently had
the opportunity to speak with Michael Taylor, the former Green
Beret that kept Carlos going from rotting in a Japanese prison,
but then ended up serving time there himself for his
role in the escape. Taylor's background linked up perfectly for
the job. He trained with the Army Special Forces and

(36:32):
became a Green Beret. After his time in the service,
Taylor worked with the FBI and atf and as a
private security contractor, providing risk assessments and going on rescue missions.
I wanted to hear from Taylor what it takes to
become an elite soldier in the military.

Speaker 5 (36:51):
You're going to be very strong mentally, and there's a
bit of cockiness that goes along with it, you know.
I was talking to a major that worked with my dad.
My dad would as a career soldier as well. And
a major that worked with my dad who was rifted
and then became my recruiter, and he was telling me,
you know, you're going to join special Forces.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
You're going to do well.

Speaker 5 (37:11):
You're going to have to push yourself because everybody doesn't
make it, he says. And it takes a bit of
hackingness to make it, he says. And nothing wrong with that,
just you know, be humble about it. But it does
take some self confidence to step on a ramp of
a C one or a C five a galaxy at
forty one thousand feet at night, where you see the

(37:32):
curvature of the earth and you're going to step off
into a foreign country you've never been before. So it
does take a little bit of self confidence.

Speaker 1 (37:39):
Yeah. Now, I'm assuming you did not know who Gone
was before you were engaged in all this activity. You
didn't know him, That's correct, I did not. You never
knew him, So who reaches out to you?

Speaker 5 (37:49):
Well, it's it's interesting. There were two couples in Beirut
that were having dinner one night. One of the ladies,
I guess the subject came up about Carlos being stuck
over there and needed they needed to rescue him. But
it's just a monumental task. It's just impossible to get done.
And one of the ladies there that I happened to know, said, well,

(38:09):
if my husband was over there, the guy i'd called
me Mike Taylor. I didn't know this until, you know,
a year later or so, and the couple says, oh,
I know him. He helped me out in Iraq once
because this guy sells insurance and he needed to get
into the green zone over there, so I helped him
out as a friend of a friend. So he's the
one that called me and said, hey, we've got this situation.

(38:31):
We need a guy to get him out of a place.
And he didn't give me any details, and I said, well,
you know, I got a brown dog.

Speaker 1 (38:38):
How big is the dog?

Speaker 5 (38:39):
You know what kind of dog is? I need a
little more detail than that. You know, can I get
the guy out more than likely? Yes, that's that self confidence,
but I need some details. And finally he gave me
some details. I met up with him a couple weeks later,
I think we met in Beirut and he told me
he's over in Japan and this is what happened. So
of course I got on the internet and started researching it,

(39:00):
making some calls, and that's how I first found out.

Speaker 1 (39:03):
Now, when you meet these people over there, are you
in and out of Are you in and out of
Lebanon on a regular basis? No, but you just had contact.
But I can go over there, yeah, yeah, and so
and so. When you find that funny that your name
is on the lips of every woman in the Middle
East whose husband has been wrongly imprisoned in their mind
or been kidnapped, I think that's really funny. Well, you

(39:24):
know the guy that got my husband out of the
box at the airport they were going to kidnap him
is Mike Taylor. Mike Taylor. It's funny that you're.

Speaker 5 (39:30):
But to go to what happened before. When I was
driving here from Boston, I was looked at the George
Washington Bridge, and it was back in probably ninety two ish,
where I was doing a vulnerability assessment for Port Authority
of New York and New Jersey after the World Trade
Center bombing. I was on top of the New Jersey
support structure on top of the George Washington Bridge when

(39:52):
I got a call from the FBI saying, hey, we
need some help. We got an American child who was
kidnapped taking the Bay route. Of course them all in
give me details, feed me. He said, the mother is
going to call you in a few minutes. The mother's
in Cyprus. So we got involved. At the requests of
the Bureau and the mother, we got the child back,
an American citizen back here. We had them back in

(40:14):
probably ten days so, and there were many stories like that.
So that's that's what some of the history.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
That's why that.

Speaker 5 (40:20):
Lady happened to mention of my husband, you know, kidnapped
the guy I'm calling it's Mike Taylor.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
After that dinner, what happens.

Speaker 5 (40:28):
I went over and met with him. He introduced me
to Carol, Carlos's wife, and that's where I got, you know,
the intel dumb. All the information came and they gave
me all the details. And one of the things that
really struck me and hit me in a heart hard
about this was part of his bail condition was he's
not allowed to talk to his wife.

Speaker 1 (40:48):
What I learned in the documentary that Japanese system was
pretty brutal.

Speaker 5 (40:51):
I was shocked about that. I didn't think that the
Japanese were that bad, and I've never heard anything like
that before. Part of your bail, you can't talk to
your wife, you can't see her, and you can't talk
to her.

Speaker 1 (41:03):
Who does that?

Speaker 5 (41:04):
What civilized nation does that?

Speaker 1 (41:06):
So when you have prior knowledge of the way this
is going to work, the box and this and the this,
you're calling the shots, meaning I'm going to do this
airport because I think this is the best opportunity for us.

Speaker 5 (41:17):
Yeah, first of all, there's not a lot of private
planes that fly in and out of Japan, really, so
it can't take him in out of Tokyo because he's
too well known. He walks down the street and he'll
have a whole bunch of people with him wanting to
autograph and talk to him, so on and so forth.
So we had to find another way out. So I
looked at Osaka. Osaka had a new VIP terminal private

(41:38):
airport that had just opened with the commercial airport. Private
airport's on one side, commercials on the other. And I
did the research on it and found out they only
do security checks on the way in, nothing on the
way out. You need to know your enemy, very very important.
I need to know how the Japanese think. They're very robotic.

(41:58):
Everything's sop, nothing's outside the lines. They don't have people
like us. You know, you put one Japanese person there
and tell him to lead something, he's going to be lost.
You put ten of them together, they'll get anything done. Really,
as long as they have all the same mission. Tell
them what the mission is, they'll get it done. But

(42:18):
you got to put parameters up for him. So I
know they're not going to weigh the box. I know
they're not going to do anything to the box. So
the security is only checked on the way in, not
the way out. And I made the box too big
for their X ray machine anyway, so it won't go through. Yeah,
and they seem to think which I got from. You know,

(42:39):
I did this on purpose. But the prosecutor was telling
me when he was trying to interview me that, you know,
you said you were musicians. I said, that's absolutely not true.
I never said we're musicians. You people thought we're musicians
because there was a guitar case on top of the
music box, so that's why. And he was pretty embarrassed
about that. They get embarrassed about things like that.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
But did you what did you tell them? Did you
tell them me you were like a film crew. No,
the equipment is their anything.

Speaker 5 (43:04):
To tell the care Look, we're coming in on a
private plane a two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for
a leg to go there.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
I don't need to tell you anything. It's filled with
suntry whiskey. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (43:14):
Yeah, I knew based on studying them that they're only
going to check the security in a way and not
the way out.

Speaker 1 (43:20):
So what I did.

Speaker 5 (43:21):
I put some sub wolfers in the big box when
they took it off the plane, so there was some
weight in it. And then I had another smaller box
about half that size that wouldn't fit in the cargo
hole because it wasn't big enough, so we put it
in a cabin. And then I had the guitar case.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
What was in the smaller box, nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing.
Now when you pull this off, when this happens, you
get him into the plane, into the box, loaded the
box of the plane, you take off. I'm assuming, oh,
there's a bit of a relay here from Japan to Turkey,
Turkey to Lebanon to beab Root. Do you accompany him
the entire way, or you're done in Japan. The plane

(44:00):
takes off and you deliver him door to door.

Speaker 5 (44:03):
I was on the plane right and in fact, the
Japanese ground crew from the VIP terminal couldn't lift the box.
So I had to help them lift the box from
my hotel where I put him in the box, rolled
them down in the elevator downstairs to the lobby. I
had to have six Japanese on one side. I'm on
the other side. Put him in the van. Then we

(44:24):
got to the airport, which is only a ten minute ride,
not even a ten minute ride. I have to help
take him out. Then there's wheels they can roll it
up to the conveyor belt. The conveyor belt they put
it on there and the conveyor belts about three feet
away from the cargo hole.

Speaker 1 (44:39):
The door of the cargo hole, there's a gap there and.

Speaker 5 (44:43):
I see it as I walk up, and I say,
oh boy, that's a problem. There's a Japanese guy, he's
maybe five foot tall, one hundred and twenty pounds inside
the cargo hole trying to lift that one end.

Speaker 2 (44:55):
Of the box.

Speaker 1 (44:56):
I say, hey, buddy, step out.

Speaker 5 (44:58):
Let me go in there that jumps in big guys
about six to one, two twenty. I said, no, no, no, no,
I don't need you hurt in your back.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
Get out of here. I'll do this.

Speaker 5 (45:07):
He got and I there's like six or seven Japanese
on the back end pushing it up, and I yank
it into the airplane into the cargo hole over the crack,
over that three foot crack.

Speaker 1 (45:18):
Yeah, I was elect feet three feet yeah.

Speaker 5 (45:21):
And it was crooked too, it was. It wasn't at
a straight angle. So we got it in no problem
because the box was probably closer to four feet long,
so we had some space there to play with. And
I had a centimeter all around on the box shorter,
smaller than the cargo hole. So I knew it fit
because I knew what the dimension of the cargo hole was.

Speaker 1 (45:41):
What does have inside the box while he's being anywhere?

Speaker 5 (45:44):
Just no, we don't need any water. He's only there
for about thirty or forty minutes.

Speaker 1 (45:47):
Oh that's really so I threw a bed sheet on him.
And was he a good candidate for smuggling? Did he
turn out to? It was very good? Made no sounds
because he had a risk, he had a risk.

Speaker 5 (45:57):
You know, he's he's gonna die in Japan in a jail.
They'll put him in there for fifteen twenty years. He
ain't getting out. So he was a very good candidate
for it, and he did a great job. He did
exactly what I asked him to do.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
Yeah, so you get him on the plane, you take off.
How soon after the plane takes off, does go and
get out of the box.

Speaker 5 (46:16):
Well, what happened was soon as we shut the door
to the cargo hole, I had to pilot check it
make sure that was right. They shut the passenger door,
planes buttoned up, I opened the box and I tell
him sit tight for a few minutes. When wheels up,
i'll pull you out. And I take a big dish
rag a bath towel from the bathroom because the cargo
holes on the back of the airplane, then the bathroom

(46:37):
and then the cabin area. So I take the bath
towel from the bathroom and I set it in between
the box lid and the box itself so there's more ventilation,
and sit tight. We wheels up, I'll pull you out.
So we got wheels up, which we were late. You know,
I asked for an earlier departure at ten thirty. Of course,
the Japanese very sop. Your original plan was eleven o'clock,

(47:01):
you gotta wait till eleven. So it was eleven o'clock.
We weren't allowed to take off until then, which we did.
But I went back in and found him sitting on
top of the box Indian style with a big smile
on his face. Said okay, come on out. You can
come into the main cabin now, and we had some
champagne and gave him some salad, some food and eat

(47:22):
before he was talking a mile a minute because he
wasn't able to talk to the media. He wasn't able
to he was talking to his wife on a back
channel phone.

Speaker 1 (47:32):
No, no, no waiting for him. Yeah, so you go
to the flight from Japan to Turkey as how long
with ruffly nine hours? Not too bad. No, then you
get off that plane and you go right away.

Speaker 5 (47:43):
So I did what I did, is I flew over
a Russian airspace just in case we had a mechanical problem.
I don't want to fly in another country because Russians
we can do business with, so they won't grab them
return them to Japan. So I made sure the flight
pan was over Russian We landed in Istanbul Istanbul. The
plane it so we land about four in the morning,
draining dark.

Speaker 1 (48:04):
Great.

Speaker 5 (48:04):
Perfect, that's just what we want. I have another plane,
smaller plane on standby for him. Put him on a
smaller plane. Off he goes into Bay Route. Me and
my buddy, we go to the commercial airport, get our visas,
go to the commercial airport and catch a commercial plane
in I don't want to land in Beirut. Have our
names together, because my name will draw attension and his

(48:26):
name will draw attension, and they'll know right away.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
That's why I did that. And then where does he go?
He went home?

Speaker 5 (48:32):
His wife met him at the airport, and of course
they're u fork. That was on the thirtieth of January
twenty nineteen.

Speaker 1 (48:41):
And he ever paid it.

Speaker 5 (48:43):
No, he did pay some. I don't want to get
into all the details, but he did pay some. But
you know, for my legal fees afterwards, at a pocket
expense was eight hundred and forty two thousand dollars. Lawyers
are expensive, especially international camo. Yeah that but international case,
and what are you gonna do? You have no choice?
And I had some amazing lawyers, but we got traded

(49:06):
by Trump. How so they cut a deal? Who did
Trump and Shinzo Abi, the Prime Minister of Japan. We
understand that it was done over you just radar deal.
So many legal scholars still today say bill jump is
not a crime in Japan. A lot of Americans don't
realize that bill jumping is not a crime in Japan.

(49:26):
And aiding and embedding somebody it's something. Who's jump bail
is not a crime, is not a crime. So what
they did they charged us with harboring, But nobody has
ever been charged with harboring unless police are actively looking
for him. Like you hit somebody in your house, or
you hit somebody in the car when the police come
and knock.

Speaker 1 (49:45):
On the door, that's harboring.

Speaker 5 (49:47):
So it's political and we got sold by Trump and Pompeo.
That's the bottom line. So anytime Trump starts talking about, oh,
I protect vets, that's all bullshit. He doesn't protect vets
at all.

Speaker 1 (49:59):
But when you go, you are sent there to go
on trial there. You're not tried in the United States
or tried over there.

Speaker 5 (50:07):
We didn't go on trial because we don't want to
wait three and a half years in solitary confinement to
go to trial. I went right away, you know that.
The night we got there, I said, look, I'm pleading guilty.
I said, okay, we want to know everything. I'm not
telling you everything, but I'm pleading guilty. What more do
you want?

Speaker 1 (50:22):
And did they tell you? Did you we aware? I mean,
obviously if it's a bit of a dealing here that
you were only going to do a year that was
part of the agreement. No, that was never part of
the agreement. What was the what term were you facing?
Thirty six months and that's what you did? No? No, no,
we did.

Speaker 5 (50:37):
First of all, we did ten months in a county
jail waiting to go because they detained in Norfolk. Yeah,
Norfolk County and Denham, Massachusetts. And then after that we
get transferred. We said, look, we've exhausted all of our
appellate issues and every court mechanism available. The judge Tilwane
asked the state Department, can you give me a document,

(50:59):
a sworn statements saying they won't be tortured the tailors
won't be tortured if we send them to Japan. Of course,
of course they gave them the sworn document, but they
also know on the State Department's website. There's talk about
Japanese prisons, torture and people the same website. So come on, guys,
it's all bullshit.

Speaker 1 (51:15):
So I wasn't a fair question to ask you? Were
you tortured?

Speaker 2 (51:18):
Oh?

Speaker 5 (51:18):
Yeah, of course I was tortured absolutely for.

Speaker 1 (51:21):
What for what? Just just for retribution or they wanted
information from you about.

Speaker 5 (51:25):
No no, no no, no no no no, just that's how
they do. They were aliating, they were humiliating. I spent
seventeen months in solitary confinement. Now, when I say solitary
confinement in Japan, it's not like in the US where
you get out for an hour a day. That door
didn't open. You get people that you see three times

(51:45):
a day, and that's a guard bringing your food. You
don't speak to anybody.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
There's no speaking, nor no outdoor activity.

Speaker 5 (51:52):
Absolutely not. When I came back, I had to get
vitamin D injections twice a week because my vitamin D
was so bad.

Speaker 1 (52:00):
Former Green Beret Mike Taylor. If you're enjoying this conversation,
tell a friend and be sort of follow here's the
thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get
your podcasts. When We Come Back, Mike Taylor describes the
conditions of solitary confinement within the Japanese prison system. I'm

(52:32):
Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. Former
CEO Carlos Gon was sprung from house arrest in Japan
by the herculean efforts of former Special Forces soldier Mike Taylor.
Yet while gone walks free, Mike Taylor and his son
Peter served hard time in unimaginable conditions.

Speaker 5 (52:53):
I was sentenced with thirty months. He was sentenced with
twenty four months.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
He got out after how long we got.

Speaker 5 (52:58):
Out at the same time time when we came back
to the States. He got out quicker than me.

Speaker 1 (53:02):
And in this solitary confinement tableau that you've created, you
never got to see your son once.

Speaker 5 (53:08):
So no, no, no, soon as you Japanese took custody
of us, we didn't see each other. We weren't allowed
to see each other.

Speaker 1 (53:13):
Yeah, they had the tearing paper thing.

Speaker 5 (53:16):
Oh yeah, I had blisters on your fingers and I
just kept doing it. And you can't lean against the wall.
You're sleeping on the floor the whole time. There's no heat,
so you get frost white every day during the winter
time on your hands and your feet. You're not allowed
to use a blanket until like nine at night. And summertime,
it's just the opposite. People are, you know, dropping because
of dehydration and you haven't suicides like every four days.

(53:38):
There seventeen months in solitary confinement. That door did not
open and I didn't have a shower for six and
a half months. After six and a half months, they
gave me a little bucket of water and said you
can shower with this.

Speaker 1 (53:49):
It just sounds like unimaginable. But when you do get
out and you're free, he hasn't paid you all the money,
And I'm just I mean, obviously you're a man with
a code and you have your honor and everything, and
for me, I'm like, here, you save this guy's fucking life. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (54:05):
One of the things that's important that a lot of
people don't know and gets miscommunicated is I'd never ask
for money up front. This wasn't done for money. Do
I want to be paid, absolutely, but that was never
talked about beforehand. Carlos told his wife and told my son,
your dad got me over the barrel right now. When

(54:26):
he was in Japan. He can charge me twenty five
million dollars and I have to pay it. Right to me,
that was insulting because I told his wife, I said,
shame on you, shame on him. I've never asked you
for a dollar. The only money that we've taken was
for expenses, and we had to make many trips back
and forth to Japan and doing a lot of risks.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
Consider your legal fees further expenses.

Speaker 5 (54:47):
That was after the fact. I'm just talking operationally now.
So I never asked you for any money. Could I
have I said, yeah, I could have said, yeah, put
twelve million up in escrow. Otherwise I'm not helping you.
I didn't do that. I did it on being a
good guy and being honorable.

Speaker 1 (55:03):
You thought it was right. Yeah, So when you get
out in Japan, twenty months in the prison and frostbite
and there's no showers and all of us insanity, what
happens then, when's the first time you lads and your.

Speaker 5 (55:17):
Son, oh that was in the airport in Japan, were
about to leave. Yeah, we were in the terminal in
Japan and they brought him because he was in a
different prison and I was in the so called the
hard prison, which is great. If you got to do it,
let's do it that way. But we got to Japan
and then the guys from the Bureau of Prisons, there
was three of them, Japanese, no Americans, from American Bureau

(55:41):
of Prisons. They came over to escort us back. First
of all, they told the Japanese they signed for us.
They took all the change office because they had us
chained up, like you know, Charles Manson, They took all
the change off and says, you don't need any change.
You guys are good to go. I said, can I
see my son? He's absolutely. He brought Peter in and
we got the hug and it was emotional and feel
like it would be wow.

Speaker 1 (56:02):
Once you get transported by a Bureau of Prisons people
from Japan to the United States, you're free from the
Japanese facility and you go home. You didn't have to
serve another day of time anywhere.

Speaker 5 (56:13):
They know what happened to us. We flew us back
to Los Angeles to the federal holding place.

Speaker 1 (56:17):
You were there for how long?

Speaker 5 (56:18):
About three weeks? Peter got out within a couple of
days because he only had a twenty four month sentence
and the ten months, and he had already served twenty months.
We both served twenty months in Japan, and we both
served ten months in Detum, so he was already he
served more than a sentence of twenty four months. He
served thirty months.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
But when you get out, when you you were finally
you go to the place in La it's kind of
an eat intermediate place and then you get out and
you're done. You never have to go into a facility, nothing,
no court, no court rooms, trials, no violation alone in
the US. And so you got out when what year
that was?

Speaker 5 (56:55):
November twenty two?

Speaker 1 (56:58):
Tell me why one of the toughest men I fit
from that? In my wife, you're in the vitamin water
bis but happens. Let me tell you why.

Speaker 5 (57:06):
Vitamin one you get it on Amazon. It's a good
healthy drink. In Iraq during the war, it's one hundred
thirty hundred and forty degrees here every day and we're pounding,
you know, twenty five thirty bottles of Gatorade and have
all the sugar. Sugar's just cramping us up and just
brutal on us. So we had to fly a couple
of airplane loads of Pedia Light. In Pedia light tastes horrible,

(57:27):
I mean terrible, terrible. Maybe it tastes a little bit
better now, but it tastes terrible. So that's where I
got the idea there's got to be something else out there.
There wasn't, so that's where I created Vitamin One. It
has no sugar, but it's got the electrolytes and the
energy enhancing bikes going.

Speaker 1 (57:40):
It's still okay. It's tough.

Speaker 5 (57:41):
You know, Co Compepsia the big dogs on the block here.
You know, our sales over in the Middle East are
much better than here, but we sell here in Amazon.
We're trying to get in a Costco Kroger the other
stores we got. Arthur Demola's a market basket up in Massachusetts. Phenomenal,
phenomenal supermarket chain. And what a great guy. He puts
his money where his mouth is because he put is

(58:02):
in every one of his stores. So we're in the
full market basket chain thanks to Arthur Demolos.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
So you're over in Beyrout on business and is there
any are you ever anywhere in proximity to go?

Speaker 5 (58:14):
And oh, I've seen him a couple of times.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
You've seen him? Oh yeah, you sat with him. Yeah,
you met with him face to face, but we was
it pleasant your interaction with him? It was very civil. Yeah,
amazing you could sit down with this guy who you've
saved his life to. Well, let me just say, I
don't have many people on the show that I can
save this you, but I'm not an honor to meet you.

Speaker 5 (58:34):
Oh, thank you.

Speaker 1 (58:38):
My thanks to Mike Taylor and director James Jones. This
episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City.
We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and Maureen Hobin.
Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is
Daniel Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing that's brought
to you by iHeart Radio.