--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Basketball superstar Brittany Griner just got sentenced to nine years for bringing some hashish oil into Russia.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I never meant to hurt anybody. I never meant to put in jeopardy the Russian population. I never meant to break any laws here. I made an honest mistake and I hope that in your ruling that it doesn't end my life here.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's a wildly disproportionate seeming sentence for the crime she was charged with, But Britney might get out much earlier than that via prisoner swap, and it might be the most lopsided prisoner swap in the history of the practice.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: These are hard deals. Victor Boot is a real horrible criminal. Britney Greiner, Paul Whelan, they're innocent Americans. So when you do these trades, they're uncomfortable trades. One of the greatest athletes alive for one of the most notorious arms dealers in history.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Britney Greiner for the merchant of death, ahead on Today Explained.
--:-- [Music transitions to a new segment]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from the FIFA World Cup, of all things. The FIFA World Cup 26 is coming to North America next summer. It is the ultimate celebration of sports and culture.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can get closer to the beautiful game with a hospitality package, closer to the action, the best seats, the best suites, closer to match day and that world-class food and that world-class entertainment, closer to the experience of a lifetime.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Book a hospitality package at fifaworldcup.com slash hospitality.
--:-- [Music transitions to a new segment]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for this show comes from strawberry.me. Be honest. Are you happy with your job? Or are you stuck in one you've outgrown? Or never wanted in the first place?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sure, you can probably list the reasons for staying. But are they actually just excuses for not leaving? Let a career coach from strawberry.me help you get unstuck.
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--:-- [Music transitions to a new segment]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So let's just get right out the gate with this question. Victor Boot for Brittany Greiner. Fair trade? I don't think it's a fair trade, but I think it's a necessary trade.
--:-- Douglas Farah: I think that Victor has actual blood on his hands for many conflicts and has done horrendous things or empowered people to do horrendous things for the years he was trafficking in weapons to Charles Taylor in Liberia, the RUF in Sierra Leone, Laurent Kabila in Democratic Republic of Congo, the Northern Alliance, and then the Taliban in Afghanistan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there's nothing fair about it in terms of absolute justice. But I do think that he is not in a position to wreak a lot more havoc in his life.
--:-- Douglas Farah: And I think Brittany Greiner is in significant danger in Russia because of her sexual orientation, because of who she is and because of the prize that the Russians have in her, that it's worth the trade at this point to bring her back.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is Douglas Farah. He's the co-author of Merchant of Death, Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible.
--:-- Douglas Farah: It's the definitive book about Victor Bout.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It came out a few years after Lord of War, which is the definitive movie about Victor Bout, in which a Victor Bout-type arms dealer is played by Nicolas Cage.
--:-- Douglas Farah: We assume by this point you're familiar with Brittany Griner, one of the greatest basketball players alive, but in case you've never seen the movie or haven't yet read my book, I'd like to tell you about Viktor Bout.
--:-- Douglas Farah: Viktor Bout came out of the Soviet intelligence structures. He was working in Africa as a young man, late 20s, early 30s, when the wall goes down.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thousands and thousands of West Germans come to make the point that the wall has suddenly become irrelevant.
--:-- Douglas Farah: And he has this incredible bolt of lightning moment, road to Damascus moment, where he realizes that there are all of these aircraft sitting around the former Soviet Union that no one's flying because no one has money for fuel.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there are all of these weapons depots where there are massive amounts of weapons where the guards aren't being paid, where you can buy, you know, boatloads of AK-47s or light anti-tank weapons or rocket-propelled grenades, essentially, for a song.
--:-- Douglas Farah: We're sold by the kilo. They're second-hand weapons, but they're still OK.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So he began flying the aircraft to the United Arab Emirates.
--:-- Douglas Farah: From the United Arab Emirates, set up a distribution hub where he could fly to get the weapons, bring them back, and then start distributing around to all the wars that were breaking out in Africa at this point is where he initially got started.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Victor began in the late 1990s, 96, 97, 98.
--:-- Douglas Farah: Bout interwove his arms trafficking empire with a seemingly innocuous logistics business.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: His clients included rebel groups and militias from Congo to Angola and Liberia.
--:-- Douglas Farah: In Afghanistan, he sold guns to Islamist Taliban insurgents and their foes in the pro-Western Northern Alliance.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It could have started earlier. No one knew who he was for a long time.
--:-- Douglas Farah: By the late 1990s, Boot was a legend in the shadowy world of illicit arms dealing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So elusive that the only two pictures that surfaced of him back then were taken without Boot's knowledge by a Belgian photographer.
--:-- Douglas Farah: I was hearing as a reporter the name Victor delivering weapons, the Brits, the UN, other people had picked up, that there was somebody supplying these weapons.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I don't think anybody really knew until the British parliamentarian stood up in British Parliament and called him the merchant of death and publicly identified him.
--:-- Douglas Farah: That was the first sort of coming out of Victor Boot as a public figure at that point.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What makes him the merchant of death? It's such an incredible, powerful, and horrifying title.
--:-- Douglas Farah: Was he wildly successful in comparison to other arms dealers around the world? Oh, without question.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He could move this stuff and drop it with pinpoint accuracy to any desert, to any jungle, to any other remote place in the world, right into the hands of what I refer to as the potpourri of global scum.
--:-- Douglas Farah: Many people could sell you lots of AK across Africa I was living there in the times of the war and covering the wars It wasn't hard to acquire crappy old Soviet weapons It wasn't hard to acquire a few hand grenades.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But what Victor Boot brought to the table was the ability to deliver attack helicopters deliver anti weapons that could be fired through entire villages and burn a village down with one shot.
--:-- Douglas Farah: The fact that you could bring in high-caliber machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, no one else could do that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: After the wall came down, $32 billion worth of arms were stolen and resold from Ukraine alone, one of the greatest heists of the 20th century.
--:-- Douglas Farah: The primary market was Africa. 11 major conflicts involving 32 countries in less than a decade. A gunrunner's wet dream.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so as he built his reputation, both sides of the same conflict would hire him on numerous occasions.
--:-- Douglas Farah: So in what was then Zaire, you had Mobuto, the dictator who had been there a long time, being chased out of office by Laurent Kabila's forces sweeping across the DRC.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Victor was selling weapons to both sides.
--:-- Douglas Farah: And while Kabila's forces were trying to kill Mobutu, literally, as he was fleeing the country, he flew out of the country on Victor Boot's aircraft.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So he had armed the people who were trying to shoot down his own airplane and the president.
--:-- Douglas Farah: And that's what made him so incredibly successful was that he could do all of that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And one of the questions I asked and my co-author asked a lot of people, why did both sides tolerate this? Why didn't someone kill him, right?
--:-- Douglas Farah: If you're explaining to me. And they were like, well, you don't kill the mailman.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Bleak. But he's the one person who could deliver. You just don't kill the mailman.
--:-- Douglas Farah: Like, are you stupid? And I was like, well, maybe I am.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But that was consistently the answer.
--:-- Douglas Farah: He did what he said he would do at the price he said he would do it at. And that made him unusually successful.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Who was his supplier this whole time? Is it just Russia?
--:-- Douglas Farah: It was the entire former Soviet bloc where all of these arsenals had been abandoned.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Ukraine wasn't the only former state with an unpaid army and stockpiles of guns.
--:-- Douglas Farah: There was Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Belarus, all there for the taking.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So if someone showed up and paid the commander $1,000 and said, I'll take this load of weapons out, thank you very much, fine.
--:-- Douglas Farah: And most of the Soviet-era major arsenals had airstrips built into their facilities. So he could land there, load up, and fly out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it was, you know, apparently a relatively easy process.
--:-- Douglas Farah: It sounds like he did a lot of dirty deeds, especially on the continents of Africa.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Does his involvement in them play a central role in accelerating the conflict or accelerating the end of the conflict?
--:-- Douglas Farah: His ability to supply weapons to some of the worst warlords on the planet was, I think, transformational for those wars.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Elevating bloody conflicts from machetes and single-shot rifles to... AK-47s, not by the thousands, but by the tens of thousands.
--:-- Douglas Farah: When these wars started, most people had hunting rifles and machetes, and they were nasty and they were palacious.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But when you add AK-47s and light anti-tank weapons and RPGs, obviously the human toll escalates dramatically.
--:-- Douglas Farah: He transformed these young adolescent warriors into insidious, mindless, maniacally driven killing machines that operated with assembly line efficiencies.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Victor Boot, in my eyes, is one of the most dangerous men on the face of the earth.
--:-- Douglas Farah: On the face of the earth. Without a doubt.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do we have any idea the amount of people he armed? Do we have any idea how many people his arms may have killed?
--:-- Douglas Farah: I don't think anyone's ever done that calculation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But if you look at the wars, you have Liberia, you have Charles Taylor, which are tens of thousands of victims of that war.
--:-- Douglas Farah: And neighboring Sierra Leone, where they're fighting over weapons and the group supported by Charles Taylor, another tens of thousands.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He was in the Angola conflict, arming both sides of that conflict. He was in the Democratic Republic of Congo, arming both sides of that conflict.
--:-- Douglas Farah: He then was supplying weapons to the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and then to the Taliban.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I mean, I think, you know, easily tens of thousands of people were directly impacted by the weapons that were being supplied by Victor Booth.
--:-- Douglas Farah: Okay. And we're talking about Africa and the Middle East primarily.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I think a fact that is sometimes overlooked is that he was also at various points something of an ally to the United States.
--:-- Douglas Farah: Well, this is one of the reasons why I think the trade should be considered apart from whether it's just or not.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The most recent case where American officials and American private security firms were colluding with Victor Boot was during the Iraq war.
--:-- Douglas Farah: In fact, during the Iraq conflict, when hardly anyone would fly supplies to U.S. troops on the ground, Victor Boot flew hundreds of missions for U.S. and British and other forces into a war zone that was very important to us.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And as my co-author, Steve Braun, documented in the book, American officers who were making those decisions understood who Victor Boot was.
--:-- Douglas Farah: In fact, they publicly acknowledged it at one point.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But their trade-off in their conversations with us was, do we let our people on the ground die from lack of ammunition and food because this guy is a criminal? Or do we deal with the criminal and get the people on the ground what they need?
--:-- Douglas Farah: So how does he end up imprisoned in the United States?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Initially, there is a arrest warrant put out for him by Interpol, the international police, a red notice for his arrest.
--:-- Douglas Farah: He goes back to Moscow. On what grounds? On what crime? Weapons trafficking and violations of numerous laws in Belgium, primarily, where he had had a hub of operations.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so he goes back to Moscow, 2001, 2002.
--:-- Douglas Farah: And then over time, the U.S. intelligence services and the British and others who were monitoring him began to pick up clear indications that the FARC rebels in Colombia, who at this time were a major also drug trafficking organization, were trying to make contact with Victor Boot.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so they set up a sting operation where they sent in the people who pretended to be FARC who had done this successfully in past operations to present themselves to intermediaries, Victor Boots, as FARC, convinced Victor Boots that they were in fact FARC, and got Victor Boots against long odds to actually travel to a country, Thailand, that had an extradition treaty with the United States.
--:-- Douglas Farah: Which seems, it seemed preposterous when it happened because he was always very cognizant of whether there were extradition treaties or not.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: For some reason he decided to go to Thailand.
--:-- Douglas Farah: And then he said in the meetings with the undercover agents that you know he wanted to give them weapons
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He hated Americans He knew the weapons would be used to kill Americans
--:-- Douglas Farah: Wow, he said all that?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Eduardo and Comandante talk about how they want sniper sights for the rifles that they have so that they could, quote, start blowing their heads off American pilots.
--:-- Douglas Farah: Boot's response immediately is, yes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They let him run for a while because he was on such a roll.
--:-- Douglas Farah: And that's what ultimately he's convicted in the U.S. of trying to sell arms to a designated terrorist organization, the FARC, knowing that the weapons could be used to kill Americans.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's what he's ultimately brought down for.
--:-- Douglas Farah: Do his lawyers present in his defense the fact that the United States did business with him?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That was raised in the trial, but not as a significant point because the trial focused very narrowly on the events that led to the arrest in Thailand.
--:-- Douglas Farah: Victor Boot wrote to the judge basically saying, look, I've also worked for the U.S. companies. I've flown 140 flights. They've paid me $6 million. And so why would you be convicting me?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, the way the case was structured, they didn't charge him with a lot of other stuff.
--:-- Douglas Farah: He was only defending that particular charge related to that particular incident.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so he was convicted. And he's sentenced to 25 years in a federal prison in Marion, Illinois.
--:-- Douglas Farah: When does he start serving that sentence?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 2011.
--:-- Douglas Farah: Over the course of these 11 years, has Russia ever made any stink about his imprisonment?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Constantly, yes. From the very beginning, they have.
--:-- Douglas Farah: They have had their Congress, their Duma has issued numerous declarations asking for his release.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Every time a U.S. person has been arrested, they've always raised the possibility of an exchange for Victor.
--:-- Douglas Farah: So, yes, this is certainly not the first time they've raised the issue of trading for Victor.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But this is the first time they might actually get him back.
--:-- Douglas Farah: It's the first time we know that the U.S. has actually considered doing anything like that, yes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think it's the first time one could say that he may actually go back.
--:-- Douglas Farah: More with Douglas on Victor and Brittany in a minute on Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from Built Rewards.
--:-- Douglas Farah: These days, it seems like everybody has a rewards program. You swipe your card and you get one cent on the hundred dollars.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But with your rent, frequently, you just pay month after month. You never get anything from it other than that roof over your head.
--:-- Douglas Farah: Not anymore, says Built Rewards.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Built Rewards says it lets you earn points on your rent.
--:-- Douglas Farah: By paying rent through Built, they say you can earn flexible points that can be redeemed toward hundreds of hotels and airlines, perhaps a future rent payment, your next Lyft ride, and so much more.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Your home isn't just where you sleep. It's your community.
--:-- Douglas Farah: And Built wants you to go out and do things in the community.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can eat at your favorite local restaurants, then earn more points.
--:-- Douglas Farah: You can get VIP treatment at certain fitness studios.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can enjoy exclusive experiences just for Built members every month.
--:-- Douglas Farah: When you're ready to travel, they say Built points can be converted to miles or hotel points all around the world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can earn points on rent and around your neighborhood wherever you call home by joining Built.com slash Explained.
--:-- Douglas Farah: That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We all have moments where we could have done better, like cutting your own hair.
--:-- Douglas Farah: Oh, yikes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Or forgetting sunscreen, so now you look like a tomato.
--:-- Douglas Farah: Ouch.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Could have done better.
--:-- Douglas Farah: Same goes for where you invest.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Level up and invest smarter with Schwab.
--:-- Douglas Farah: Get market insights, education, and human help when you need it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Learn more at schwab.com.
--:-- Douglas Farah: There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's one firearm for every 12 people on the planet.
--:-- Douglas Farah: The only question is, how do we arm the other 11?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Douglas, I know a lot of the dealings between the United States and Russia are backroom affairs, but do we have any idea who concocted this idea that, oh, we could trade one of the best basketball players who's ever lived for one of the most notorious arms dealers who has ever lived?
--:-- Douglas Farah: I don't know.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think I would like to know.
--:-- Douglas Farah: I remember when it was because my co-author and I were talking, he was sending me messages. He was monitoring everything.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He was traveling and saying, they're talking about Victor Boot now. They're talking about Victor for Greiner.
--:-- Douglas Farah: In the coming days, I expect to speak with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov for the first time since the war began.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I plan to raise an issue that's a top priority for us. the release of Americans Paul Whelan and Brittany Greiner, who've been wrongfully detained and must be allowed to come home.
--:-- Douglas Farah: And I was like, what? He said, it might actually be serious.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I was like, what? Do you remember when that was that you got that call?
--:-- Douglas Farah: Just a few weeks ago when the rumors started circulating.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't know who was behind it on the U.S. side.
--:-- Douglas Farah: I think the fact that Secretary Blinken sort of owned it a few days ago clearly shows it was made at a very senior level.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It wasn't some cowboy out there thinking creatively and trying to do something.
--:-- Douglas Farah: We put a substantial proposal on the table weeks ago to facilitate the release.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our governments have communicated repeatedly and directly on that proposal.
--:-- Douglas Farah: And I'll use the conversation to follow up personally and, I hope, move us toward a resolution.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How are we supposed to wrap our heads around how insanely lopsided this is?
--:-- Douglas Farah: Your rough estimation is Victor Boot may be responsible for the deaths of, I don't know, tens of thousands of brown people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Brittany Griner maybe smokes some weed once in a while.
--:-- Douglas Farah: I don't think it's a fair trade.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I have gone out of my way in talking about this and in our book and the other things to point out how absolutely horrific what Victor Boot did, what he enabled people to do over a period of years.
--:-- Douglas Farah: And you talked about, you know, the tens of thousands of deaths, but there are equal number more of rapes
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There are that many burned villages
--:-- Douglas Farah: There are that many children who were kidnapped often forced to kill their own parents burn their own villages and become child soldiers
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I have no illusions about who Victor Boot was
--:-- Douglas Farah: My main point is that he could be up for parole in a couple of years anyway.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's no longer, I don't think, going to be able to function in the world he helped create at that time.
--:-- Douglas Farah: And Brittany, as a gay woman, well-identified, being held in society where at least the upper echelons are extremely anti-gay, anti-LGBTQ community.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So that's a significant risk.
--:-- Douglas Farah: And if you can get her out without causing the rest of the world's significant damage, it should be considered.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't think it's that Victor Boot did anything like Brittany did.
--:-- Douglas Farah: She clearly has done nothing remotely comparable.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is there any fear amongst people like yourself who've covered Victor Boot or perhaps from the United States government at this point that Victor Boot could sort of rearm and re-up his supply and reestablish himself as a prolific arms dealer?
--:-- Douglas Farah: I think not because I think he was the product of a specific moment in history when everything aligned for the ability to take out weapons and aircraft in a chaotic world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Putin in Russia no longer presides over a chaotic world.
--:-- Douglas Farah: He has everything extremely regimented.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Everything that Victor Boot was doing with the Taliban, with the Northern Alliance, with Charles Taylor was predicated on a personal trust between him and those leaders.
--:-- Douglas Farah: You can't just walk into places and start selling weapons and doing those things.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: All of those networks have disappeared.
--:-- Douglas Farah: Those people are no longer engaged.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He has none of those contacts left.
--:-- Douglas Farah: Is there a chance that if this trade happens, that it's Griner for boot, that a country like, I don't know, Iran or China or even Russia, who facilitates the trade, says, oh, this is great.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We should do this the next time LeBron James visits or the next time, you know, who knows, Nick Cage is in town?
--:-- Douglas Farah: I think that's a very real concern, and I do not minimize that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I believe we're sending the message that it is good business to deal in capturing, kidnapping, detaining of American citizens.
--:-- Douglas Farah: I just don't think this is the right way to go about it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My basic premise with Russia is that they are so far off the rails in regard to international law and human rights.
--:-- Douglas Farah: They're going to grab whoever they're going to grab, whether there's a trade or not.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They're operating now in their own logic, which is why they invaded Ukraine and have done all these things.
--:-- Douglas Farah: I do think the question about other countries, particularly China, because they're a big country and can do it, may give this pause.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think that that is something that has to be considered.
--:-- Douglas Farah: And it has to be considered by people who want to travel to these areas as well.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, I don't think anybody in their right mind right now would want to travel to Russia as a basketball player or a tourist because the risk is too high.
--:-- Douglas Farah: But I don't think that will change if they give Brittany back.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, I don't think that that basic equation will change.
--:-- Douglas Farah: Swapping prisoners, of course, isn't a new practice.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We even saw one earlier this year between Russia and the United States, and we covered on the show with Trevor Reed.
--:-- Douglas Farah: Is it ever even? Are these trades ever sort of comparable crimes or suspected crimes or accusations or whatever it might be?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: No, I mean, they really aren't.
--:-- Douglas Farah: If you look, you know, you have the Palestinian-Israeli swaps all the time where you get hundreds of people out of prison in exchange for three students.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Numerically, it may not be equal.
--:-- Douglas Farah: But I think, again, in situations like that, you look at the preponderance of what brings the most good to the most people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: At the end of the day, you have to calculate, are Americans better off and their security better off by doing the trade than not?
--:-- Douglas Farah: But ultimately, the president of the United States has to make that decision.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think in this case, it's the right decision.
--:-- Douglas Farah: But I don't think you can look at it in terms of absolute fairness, because in this case, it is horrendously unfair.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do you think there's something that these sort of international prisoner swaps teaches us about how the world works?
--:-- Douglas Farah: Well, I think it shows that every country has specific interests that it wants to protect and defend.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think one of the things I would like to think about with the United States in this particular case is we are willing to show compassion and a level of mercy that Russia would never be able to share in a similar situation.
--:-- Douglas Farah: I don't think it makes us necessarily morally superior or anything like that, but I think that being able to show compassion, especially when a sentence has been served.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Victor Booth's been in for 11 years.
--:-- Douglas Farah: He was actually held since 2008 in really crappy conditions in Thailand.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So he has those three years added on to it.
--:-- Douglas Farah: So I think that the sum of what he has paid, if he stays in prison here and gets out in two years, if we can just do it now and get Brittany back and save her life in a way, I think to me that is an act of mercy for Victor and an act of compassion for Brittany.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Douglas Farah is one of the authors of Merchant of Death, Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible.
--:-- Douglas Farah: You can find it wherever you find your books.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's also the founder and president of IBI Consultants.
--:-- Douglas Farah: They think a lot about security challenges in Latin America.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our show today was produced by Hadi Mawajdeh, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Victoria Dominguez, and mixed by Paul Mounsey.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks to 60 Minutes, you heard some of their interviews on the show today.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram from This is Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You get a pulse on all the latest trends and must-haves.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Try a romantic look with a sheer top from INC or mix it up with some fun textures like a faux fur bomber jacket from Karl Lagerfeld Paris.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: No matter your vibe, you can explore the Macy's Fall Fashion Guide and find the perfect look for you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Shop in-store or online at nacy's.com.
