When You Meet Carlos the Jackal, Something Weird Happens... | Joby Warrick

WATCH FULL EPISODE: https://youtu.be/OCNkGL-4ZQI?si=PD0MrN01bp5rCev6

Subscribe Here: @JulianDoreyDaily

JOBY'S LINKS

- X: https://twitter.com/JobyWarrick

- NEW "CARLOS THE JACKAL" BOOK: https://a.co/d/0fIq94lm

Joby Warrick spent years pursuing the most elusive interview in international security journalism — a face to face conversation with Ilich Ramírez Sánchez the man the world knows as Carlos the Jackal sitting in his French prison cell. His new book The Jackal: The Rise and Fall of Carlos the World's First Super-Terrorist was published in August 2026 and draws on newly declassified archives secret police files long-repressed eyewitness accounts and that rare personal interview. Julian Dorey examines the full Carlos the Jackal story with Warrick — the 60s and 70s terror wave that produced him who Carlos actually was before the mythology the Venezuelan sleeper agent background how he eluded capture for twenty years the fable-like existence of a man who was the world's most wanted terrorist while living in Eastern European hotels the fact that he was the guy before Bin Laden the French prison conditions the French government's specific discomfort with Carlos getting access to a microphone how Joby hatched the idea to write the book the boogeyman figure Carlos represented when Warrick was a kid how Carlos moved to the Middle East and befriended people with massive charisma the son of a Communist attorney whose father considered Lenin the most important human ever to exist the Che Guevara hero worship the specific revelation that Carlos would say the right things but didn't give a crap about politics and the Bourne Identity connection.

The who was Carlos thread is the episode's most historically significant and most immediately entertaining contribution. Let's roll back the clock. The 60s and 70s terror wave — the specific political and cultural moment that produced Carlos — was categorically different from the religious terrorism that came after it. Carlos was a secular Marxist mercenary who took money from the highest bidder and styled himself as a revolutionary while caring primarily about his own lifestyle. He was born Ilich Ramírez Sánchez in Venezuela — named Ilich by his Communist attorney father who considered Lenin the most important human being ever to exist. Che Guevara was his hero. He moved to the Middle East befriended the right people with massive charisma and built the specific international network that made him the world's most famous terrorist for two decades. He would say the right things about Marxism and revolution and anti-Zionism. But he didn't give a crap about politics. He liked large paychecks and killing people.

The man before Bin Laden thread is the episode's most analytically significant and most culturally resonant contribution. Carlos the Jackal was the Bin Laden of his era — the specific boogeyman figure that the Western world organized its fear around from the late 1960s through the early 1990s. The specific innovations Carlos introduced to modern terrorism — the international freelance model the spectacular set-piece operation the media-conscious staging of violence for maximum television impact — were the template that every terrorist organization that followed him used. He personally masterminded the kidnapping of the entire OPEC oil ministers conference in Vienna — one of the most audacious single terrorist operations in history. He was the guy before Bin Laden. And the Bourne Identity novel's primary antagonist was specifically based on him — which tells you everything about the specific cultural space Carlos occupied in the Western imagination during his twenty years on the run.

Inside This Clip:

Let's roll back the clock — the 60s and 70s terror wave and what produced Carlos

Who Carlos the Jackal actually was before the mythology

Venezuelan sleeper agent — the specific background and the Communist attorney father