These are wild tales, but they’re all true, each scrupulously fact-checked by my brilliant colleagues at The New Yorker. Together, I hope that they illuminate something about crime and punishment, the slipperiness of situational ethics, the choices we make as we move through this world, and the stories we tell ourselves and others about those choices.
After finishing Rogues, I find myself immediately going back and questioning the title. A “rogue” is defined as “a dishonest, knavish person; scoundrel. A playfully mischievous person; scamp”, and honestly, that language doesn’t feel adequate to capture the people Patrick Radden Keefe has written about here. Even the subtitle “True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks” barely covers the range of “roguery” that goes from someone like the druglord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán (reputed to have ordered the murders of tens of thousands of people) to Anthony Bourdain (decidedly more scamp than scoundrel, he definitely seems out of place in the company of terrorists, murderers, and arms dealers.) In twelve long articles that have formerly been published in The New Yorker, Keefe shines as an investigative journalist who gets to the bottom of every story, and whether he’s writing about criminals, their victims, or his own reaction to a situation, he has a real knack for emphasising the humanity behind the headlines. Overall — and this isn’t Keefe’s fault — this collection made me a little depressed: There are so many bad people out there, hurting other people in the pursuit of money (which of course I already knew), and governments supporting the rogues if it suits their mandates (which of course I already knew), and victims struggling, fruitlessly, to find justice (which of course I already knew) that reading this all at once felt a little overwhelming. Consistently well-written and globe-trottingly fascinating, Rogues should be a satisfying followup for readers of Keefe’s recent bestsellers. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
Of the twelve entries, these are a few bits that made me go Hmmm for one reason or another.
Could Rodenstock have become so proficient at making fake wine that his fakes tasted as good as, or even better than, the real thing? When I asked Parker about the bottle, he hastened to say that even the best wine critics are fallible. Yet he reiterated that the bottle was spectacular. “If that was a fake, he should be a mixer,” Parker said. “It was wonderful.”
In “The Jefferson Bottles” (originally published in 2007), we are introduced to Hardy Rodenstock: a German wine collector who repeatedly uncovered forgotten stashes of rare old wine (including, as per the title, a case of French wine intended for Thomas Jefferson with his name etched on the bottles), which Rodenstock then sold for huge sums at auction. The narrative primarily focuses on American billionaire Bill Koch — avid art and wine collector — who, when he was told that the various wines he had bought that originated with Rodenstock were probably all fakes, embarked on his other great passion: suing the pants off anyone who crossed him. The article traces the investigation into Rodenstock’s sketchy career, explores the world of top tier œnophilia, and encourages us to join Keefe in feeling superior to the kitschy Koch (with his “cowboy room” [Keefe’s quote marks] filled with Remington bronzes and Custer’s firearms) as Keefe joins Koch in a glass of fine wine from the billionaire’s cellar. This is the first article in the collection and I was immediately struck by two things: There is definitely a liberal political slant to Keefe’s writing and there’s a jarring out-of-syncness to reading out-of-date investigative journalism. At the end of each entry, Keefe does update the story and this one ends in part with, “In 2018, Hardy Rodenstock died, at age seventy-six” and Bill Koch continues to pursue his lawsuits “very happily, to this day.”
Dornstein ushered me up to the third floor, where two cramped rooms were devoted to Lockerbie. In one room, shelves were lined with books about espionage, aviation, terrorism, and the Middle East. Jumbo binders housed decades of research. In the other room, Dornstein had papered the walls with mug shots of Libyan suspects. Between the two rooms was a large map of Lockerbie, with hundreds of colored pushpins indicating where the bodies had fallen. He showed me a cluster where first-class passengers landed, and another where most of the economy passengers were found. Like the coroner in a police procedural, Dornstein derives such clinical satisfaction from his work that he can narrate the grisliest findings with cheerful detachment. Motioning at a scattering of pushpins some distance from the rest, he said, “They were the youngest, smallest children. If you look at the physics of it, they were carried by the wind.”
In “The Avenger” (originally published 2015), Keefe writes about Ken Dornstein whose older brother David was on Pan Am Flight 103 that exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. This was so interesting in the details but had a weird feeling as we follow along with an investigative journalist as he tells the story of an investigative journalist who was looking for answers in his brother’s death (Dornstein would go on to write the book The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky and film a three part documentary for Frontline called “My Brother’s Bomber”.) One thread that interested me in particular: The CIA linked the timer on the bomb that was planted on the plane to a Swiss electronics company whose owner doesn’t deny providing timing devices to the Libyan regime over the years, telling Dornstein “Switzerland is neutral, and I’m neutral in this thing.” Keefe reached out to this man and reports: In an email, (Edwin) Bollier told me that any suggestion that he was linked to the destruction of Pan Am 103 is a “despicable accusation” and a “fictional idea.” His email address, which I discovered on his website, is Mr.Lockerbie@gmail.com. (And even though Dornstein was seeking, and found, bigger fish than Bollier, “rogue” doesn’t feel sufficient to describe even him.)
(Mark) Burnett is fluent in the jargon of self-help, and he has published two memoirs, both written with Bill O’Reilly’s ghostwriter, which double as manuals on how to get rich. One of them, titled Jump In! Even if You Don’t Know How to Swim, now reads like an inadvertent metaphor for the Trump presidency. “Don’t waste time on overpreparation,” the book advises. At the 2004 panel, Burnett made it clear that with The Apprentice he was selling an archetype. “Donald is the current-day version of a tycoon,” he said. “Donald will say whatever Donald wants to say. He takes no prisoners. If you’re Donald’s friend, he’ll defend you all day long. If you’re not, he’s going to kill you. And that’s very American. It’s like the guys who built the West.”
In “Winning” from 2019, Keefe tells the story of producer Mark Burnett and his role in raising (and polishing) Donald Trump’s profile. It would seem, from this article, that both Burnett and Trump are rogues. Keefe recalls the 2016 Emmys where Jimmy Kimmel blamed Mark Burnett for Donald Trump’s resurrection, making it clear that Trump would have never successfully run for president had it not been for “the sneaky little crumpet-muncher” Burnett (who declined an interview with the author). In the concluding update for this story, Keefe writes that after Trump lost his bid for reelection, “He retreated to Mar-a-Lago, to plot his comeback. If he doesn’t run for president again, it will almost certainly involve television, and if it involves television, it could very well involve Mark Burnett.”
For the next two years, Soiles and a team of agents from the SOD pored over old case files, studying Kasser’s operation. But gathering sufficient evidence of his involvement in various crimes was difficult, and pursuing Kassar for the Achille Lauro charges might be barred, because it would amount to double jeopardy. By early 2006, Soiles and his colleagues had decided that they needed to attempt something radical. Rather than try Kassar for a crime he’d committed in the past, they would use the strong conspiracy laws in the United States to prosecute him for something that he intended to do in the future. They would infiltrate Kassar’s organization and set him up in a sting. Many European countries have “agent provocateur” laws to guard against entrapment, but in an American court it would be difficult for a trafficker with Kassar’s history to protest that he was in no way disposed to clandestine weapons deals.
In “The Prince of Marbella” (originally published in 2010), Keefe tells the story of fabulously successful international arms dealer Monzer Al Kassar. Like Bollier above, who takes no personal responsibility for what anyone does with the timing devices he might sell to bomb makers, Kassar was able to position himself as a mere middleman between arms manufacturers and they who would rather buy their weapons without a papertrail. This wasn’t technically illegal — and Kassar reportedly worked with the American government during the Iran Contra Affair — but the Americans eventually decided to go after him and they set him up in a sting operation. The undercover buyers said that they represented Colombia’s FARC guerrilla forces, and as American Special Forces often teamed with the Colombian government to suppress the rebels, selling to FARC could be interpreted as intending to attack Americans (and based on Kassar saying on tape that he’d be happy for Americans to die in the conflict, he has been serving a sentence at a federal prison in Marion, Illinois since 2009). I have no love for Kassar or other underground arms dealers, but even as the sympathetic Keefe describes the sting, it sounds a bit roguish, too.
All told, Bourdain has traveled to nearly a hundred countries and has filmed 248 episodes, each a distinct exploration of the food and culture of a place. The secret ingredient of the show is the when-in-Rome avidity with which he partakes of indigenous custom and cuisine, whether he is pounding vodka before plunging into a frozen river outside St. Petersburg or spearing a fatted swine as the guest of honor at a jungle longhouse in Borneo. Like a great white shark, Bourdain tends to be photographed with his jaws wide open, on the verge of sinking his teeth into some tremulous delicacy.
“Journeyman” from 2017 is an admiring biography of celebrity chef, bestselling author, and gastronomic world-traveller Anthony Bourdain. Other than some early drug abuse, nothing about Bourdain fits into the “true crime” profile of this collection, but I guess plenty of people might have described him as roguish. This was a hard one to read, knowing that this oversized personality would eventually take his own life, and it was definitely uncomfortable to read, “Bourdain often thinks about dying; more than once, he told me that if he got ‘a bad chest x-ray’, he would happily renew his acquaintance with heroin.” This is a strong article, an interesting read, but it did feel out of place here.
In addition to the above rogues, we meet mass workplace shooter Amy Bishop; banker Hervé Falciani, who leaked the details of thousands of HSBC’s secret, tax-evading accountholders (“In France, Falciani looked like a whistle-blower; in Switzerland, he looked like a thief”); Mexican druglord “El Chapo” (and as this article was mostly about the first great hunt for Guzmán, it was awkward for it to end with “they caught him but he escaped and was later caught again” and then have a parenthetical update that said “and he escaped again and was caught again”; jarring way to update the out-of-date); there is insider trading, the modern-day looting of African resources, a Dutch gangster (as well as the abetting family who eventually turned on him); and celebrated defense attourney Judy Clarke — who represents “the worst of the worst” in capital crime cases — and follow along on her failure to save Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar “Jahar” Tsarnev from the death penalty. (In July 2020, the death penalty was overturned, but in March of 2022, “the court voted to reinstate it”.)
Although interesting and probing, Keefe is definitely not impartial in his storytelling. When billionaire George Soros is working behind the scenes on the world stage, he’s doing good; when billionaire Bill Koch says he wants to collect rare wines and never drink them (because collecting is the point), he’s a bit of a clown; when Israeli billionaire investor Beny Steinmetz flips a mining contract (in what he calls a standard practise), he’s a criminal (and by Keefe’s account, he probably is; Steinmetz is currently appealing a conviction for bribery). I did like how Keefe puts himself in the story — I enjoyed travelling the world with him as he follows leads and don’t really mind seeing the people he meets through his eyes — but for anyone expecting journalistic detachment, this is not that. Still a highly interesting collection; but are they all rogues?
I don't think of myself as someone with a particular interest in True Crime, but as someone who is just so over scripted television, true crime stories do cross my viewing path. While reading the first article about the wine forger Hardy Rodenstock — and likely the reason why I was attracted to that passage about “If that was a fake, he should be a mixer. It was wonderful.” — I was reminded of a fascinating movie I once watched on a plane about wine forgery called Sour Grapes (and I was amused to learn that that film was produced by Bill Koch when I went to search for the title). In a very similar fashion to Rodenstock's story, wine expert Rudy Kurniawan would claim to have discovered some rare vintage, and some of the bottles he would sell, and some he would generously share with other œnophiles, and if it wasn't for the selling and the scamming, it raised a very interesting question to me: If someone is talented enough to perfecly replicate an experience for someone who would not otherwise be able to have that experience (and as rare wines are increasingly consumed or relegated to a permanent collection somewhere, the rare will only become rarer), is that the most evil crime? If someone had a life-changing tasting experience that they believed to be authentic, does it matter it if wasn't? I don't know the answer to that.
I watched an extraordinary documentary on TVO a while ago called There Are No Fakes — about the recent discovery that a huge percentage of the paintings attributed to Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau are forgeries — and it turns out that even in his lifetime Morrisseau knew that people from his community were faking his paintings and he didn't think it detracted from his own legacy (he was quoted as saying something like, "We are all simply taking what we need from a passing river. I do not own that river and I would not stop someone else who needs to take from it.") If a person bought a Morrisseau painting because they loved that painting and wanted to be around it, it shouldn't matter whether or not the painting is authentic if the experience is. It's only when the documentary gets around to the white man who was orchestrating the fakes — the kind of greedy and familiar rogue who would dam the river to keep it to himself — that the story began to take a nasty turn; and it all came down to money.
I was also reminded of a limited series I recently saw on Netflix, Murder Among the Mormons, about Mark Hofmann: an incredibly talented coin and document forger who kept "discovering" early letters and other paperwork from the founding days of the Latter Day Saints that church fathers were quick to buy up and suppress (due to their subversive nature). It was hard to tell from that series whether Hofmann was motivated by money, a desire to undermine the religion he no longer believed in, or just to see what he could get away with, but when he started making bombs to deflect mounting suspicion, his actions went beyond any debate about whether this could have been a mostly harmless crime. But philosophically: If someone created an absolutely true-to-life Shakespeare First Folio, Gutenberg Bible, or first edition of any favourite novel, and someone could have the pleasure of owning, displaying, leafing through one of those — what harm?
Maybe we'll have Star Trek replicators someday and anything anyone could want — the Chateau Mouton-Rothschild, the Picasso, the original annotated Beethoven score — would be ours for the asking; if it feels authentic, doesn't that make it authentic? It would certainly cut down on roguery. Is this why rogues want NFTs, crypto, and blockchain? What would feel authentic about owning some digital artefact? That is, ultimately, pure money and the thought leaves me cold.
