“He’s not a trustworthy witness to his own story. Everything is ten times bigger and better than it really was — except when he was accused of crimes, in which case he can’t really remember anymore.” — Joby Warrick on Carlos the Jackal

Yesterday, WOLA’s Adam Isacson and John Walsh described how the US government has appropriated the term “narco-terrorism” to justify their Latin American killing spree. Today, we talk the real thing. Pulitzer Prize-winning Joby Warrick has a new book out about the rise and fall of Carlos the Jackal, who he calls the “original super-terrorist.”

So who was Carlos the Jackal? Originally he was named by his Venezuelan Marxist father Ilich in homage to Lenin. Then he renamed himself Carlos, borrowing from a fake passport the French police happened to find in 1975. While The Jackal came from the London Guardian after reporters spotted Frederick Forsyth’s best-seller on the bookshelf of his London safe house. Ilich (i.e. Carlos) loved it. Anything for attention. Especially from the capitalist media.

His career, as a proxy Palestinian terrorist, was equally audacious. His solo debut, at 24, was the attempted London assassination of Marks & Spencer chairman Joseph Sieff. Two years later, Carlos waltzed into OPEC headquarters in Vienna and kidnapped most of the world’s oil ministers, a terrorist heist that, Warrick reveals, was financed by Muammar Gaddafi.

Then all of Carlos’ yesterdays — and there are many, as Warrick discovers when he interviews him in his French jail. He spent twenty years on the run, mostly barely camouflaged in faded Eastern European hotels. The Mossad didn’t even consider him worth assassinating. By the eighties he had become a gun for hire who’d stopped attacking Israelis. And at 75, in his convent-turned-prison outside Paris, the world’s original super-terrorist cooks his own meals, repeats old leftist slogans, and misremembers everything except his innocence.

In spite of his pathetic fate, Carlos matters because, as Warrick notes, the Jackal model is back in fashion. Russia and Iran now hire petty crooks on Telegram for a few hundred dollars to firebomb synagogues or assassinate dissidents. Gaza’s tragic hopelessness echoes the post-1967 conditions that bred the first wave of Palestinian terror. Social media is now infested with wannabe violent influencers. The day of the Jackal, then, is not only our history but also our future.

Five Takeaways

• Interview with the Jackal. A year of negotiation for ninety minutes in a converted convent outside Paris — no recorder, notebook only. At 75: natty, charming, forgetful, and a worthless witness to his own story.

• Ilich, Carlos, Jackal: An Accidental Brand. Named Ilich by a Marxist father, Carlos by a fake passport, Jackal by the British tabloids via a Forsyth novel on his bookshelf.

• From Five Bullets to Kidnapping OPEC. The Sieff test: five bullets, a jammed gun, a target saved by his teeth. Then Vienna, 1975: kidnapping the world’s oil ministers at 26. The scoop: Gaddafi, not Saddam, sponsored it.

• Twenty Years, No Capture — and a Mossad Pass. Budapest hotels, proud Eastern Bloc hosts, Khartoum at last in 1994. The deflation: the Mossad never bothered — he wasn’t worth the effort.

• The Return of Violent Chaos. Russia and Iran hire criminals on Telegram — synagogue grenades, dissident hits, no return address. The Jackal is in his cell; his business model is everywhere.

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.

Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Buy The Jackal: simonandschuster.com

Chapters:

00:00:31 Introduction: from WOLA’s killing spree to the first super-terrorist
00:02:18 Into the prison: a year of negotiating for ninety minutes
00:03:43 The Jackal at 75: natty, nerdy, and charming
00:06:51 A pre-digital influencer
00:07:54 Ilich, Carlos, Jackal: how the name was assembled
00:15:00 Five bullets for Joseph Sieff: the Marks & Spencer test
00:15:54 “Good old Milk Marketing Board”
00:16:22 Kidnapping OPEC: the most audacious act
00:20:38 The PFLP and Hamas: not one inch, not even Haifa
00:21:55 After Munich, after Entebbe
00:24:13 Twenty years on the run: Budapest’s favorite guest
00:26:33 Why the Mossad gave him a pass
00:28:01 A convent, the Nazis, and the big man on campus
00:30:59 No recorder, no camera: an untrustworthy witness
00:33:00 The revelation: Gaddafi, not Saddam, sponsored OPEC
00:35:41 The new Carlos: Telegram, crypto, and terror for hire
00:38:37 The antisemitism question
00:40:59 Back to WOLA: America’s own extrajudicial turn
00:43:43 Congratulations and goodbye