The special agent | The Gas Man Ep 1

Elon's Spies | Tortoise Investigates

Tortoise Media

True Crime, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.6 • 5.4K Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2024

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the 1980s Special Agent Dennis Bass received a tip-off that changed the course of his career. 30 years on reporter Chloe Hadjimatheou sets out to solve the mystery of how an international fugitive got away with his crimes – and why he's still on the run.

To find out more about Tortoise:

Download the Tortoise app - for a listening experience curated by our journalists

Subscribe to Tortoise+ on Apple Podcasts for early access and ad-free content

Become a member and get access to all of Tortoise's premium audio offerings and more

If you want to get in touch with us directly about a story, or tell us more about the stories you want to hear about contact [email protected]

Reporter: Chloe Hadjimatheou

Producer: Claudia Williams

Editor: Jasper Corbett

Narrative editor: Gary Marshall

Sound design: Hannah Varrall

Original theme music: Tom Kinsella

Original artwork: Jon Hill

FX credit: Telex by YleArkisto at freesound - License: Attribution 4.0

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Tortoise. And we were like, well, how did this all start? Well, let's just start with how it all started.
0:20.0	Yeah. And so, you know, we thought we'd start with you and a punch in the street in Germany.
0:26.0	Oh yeah.
0:27.0	Yeah, versus Siegberg.
0:31.0	Siegberg.
0:32.0	That's right, yeah. This is Mike. This is Mike.
0:35.0	We first met over 20 years ago when I was making an undercover documentary.
0:41.0	You contacted me, didn't you? You and Dahlia contacted me. I didn't you? You and Dahlia contacted me.
0:45.5	I didn't really know what I was doing back then. It was my first move into journalism.
0:51.2	I'd rigged up this tiny spy cam in a clutch bag and along with a friend started filming.
0:57.0	Mike helped us turn all those hours of footage into a passable documentary. We stayed in touch, drifting in and out of
1:07.6	each other's lives from afar. Until last year when we went for a coffee around the corner from the tortoise office.
1:19.1	And then it was really weird because we were drinking coffee and we realized we both done documentaries on Syria.
1:24.7	Yeah, yeah, that's right. And then, and then I got talking about the chemical weapons documentary that I had made.
1:33.0	Mike started telling me about this one film he'd made over a decade ago.
1:38.0	It was about chemical weapons, the militaries who'd used them
1:42.0	and the victims who'd suffered devastating consequences.
1:46.0	And as he was running through the story, he mentioned one of the people featured in the documentary just in passing.
1:53.4	What was interesting was this guy had been on the run for 20 odd years.
2:01.0	He was on Interpol's red list of international criminals.
2:05.0	Mike was interested in him because he'd admitted to selling massive amounts of illegal chemicals in the 1980s.
2:14.0	Chemicals that could be used to make nightmarish weapons
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -261 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Tortoise Media, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Tortoise Media and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.