Robert Young Pelton

Infobox Writer
name = Robert Young Pelton


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caption = Robert Young Pelton ©Spencer Mandell. Used by permission.
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birthdate = Birth date and age|1955|7|25
birthplace = Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
deathdate =
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occupation = Journalist, author
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website = http://www.comebackalive.com/

Robert Young Pelton (b. July 25, 1955, Edmonton, Canada), is an author, journalist and documentary filmmaker. A self-styled adventurer, he considers himself a "witness" to conflict, rather than a journalist. He has witnessed conflicts such as the siege of Grozny in Chechnya, the battle of Qala-I-Jangi in Afghanistan, the rebel campaign to take Monrovia in Liberia. He embedded himself with the CIA during the hunt for Bin Laden, and spent time with both insurgents and Blackwater security contractors during the war in Iraq. [cite web |url=http://www.upj.pitt.edu/12453/ |title=Author, Journalist and Documentary Filmmaker Robert Young Pelton to Speak Oct. 10 |accessdate=2007-12-18 |format= |work= ]

Pelton's regularly published guide "The World's Most Dangerous Places", which provides practical and survival information for people who work and travel in high risk zones, was a best seller. [cite web |url=http://www.times.com/books/00/08/13/bsp/bestpapernonfiction.html |title=http://www.times.com/books/00/08/13/bsp/bestpapernonfiction.html |accessdate=2007-12-18 |format= |work= ] He was also host of the Discovery Travel Channel series "Robert Young Pelton's The World's Most Dangerous Places" from 1998 to 2003. Now residing in Los Angeles, California, Pelton currently writes books and produces documentaries on conflict-related subjects.He is a popular interview subject appearing as an insightful expert with ground experience or as an often humorous raconteur of his various misfortunes and safety tips on shows as diverse as Oprah, Conan O'Brian, CNN, Fox, BBC, ABC, CBS, NBC and others. Most recently he has been in negotiations with the President of Equatorial Guinea regarding the arrested coup plotters, many of whom had worked for Executive Outcomes in the mid-1990s. The story behind the coup and his efforts to free Nick du Toit and Simon Mann are documented in the May 2008 Men's Journal "How to Stage a Coup".

Writing projects

Robert Young Pelton's first major writing project was the breakthrough guide to conflict; The World's Most Dangerous Places. The massive 1000 page plus book was disguised as a travel guide and written in a humorous and apolitical style. To create the book, Pelton worked with a network of like-minded individuals that ranged from conflict journalists, to mercenaries to rock album reviewers.Fact|date=July 2007 The first edition was written in 1993 and it currently is in its fifth edition. The mascot of the book is Mr. DP, a laughing skull that has been seen stickered on AK's and in bars around the world.

Pelton has written about contemporary private military contractors ("Licensed to Kill, Hired Guns in the War on Terror"), as well as his experiences with US Special Forces in the opening weeks in the war on terror ("The Regulators"). He has also written a fictionalized account of his early life, entitled "Raven", as well as an autobiography entitled "The Adventurist".

He is currently working on the updated version of "DP: Professional Strength" while writing a column entitled, "Pelton's World" for "National Geographic Adventure".

Among Pelton's many interviews: Hashim Salamat of the MILF in the Southern Philippines; "Mono Jojoy", "Tiro fijo" Marulando and the top FARC leadership in Colombia; Francis Ona, the leader of the BRA in Bougainville; Ahmed Shah Massoud; Al Qaeda prisoners and the world's first interview with the senior Taliban leadership in Afghanistan; the world exclusive interview of captured Russian GRU agent Aleksey Galkin in Grozny, Chechnya; the first post 9/11 interview with the American "Al Qaeda" jihadi John Walker Lindh in December 2001 (Lindh was the second American jihadi who had been trained and fought for bin Laden; the first was Aqil Collins who was featured in Pelton's DPTV America special along with Russell Means, Willie Nelson and Peter Fonda). Pelton most recently did exclusive interviews with imprisoned mercenary Niek Du Toit and President Obiang in Equatorial Guinea, and with Erik Prince, the owner of Blackwater USA.

Pelton has shown how he gets access and interviews in his TV series "The World's Most Dangerous Places" for the Discovery Channel.

Pelton has also investigated from the inside the drug business in Colombia and Peru, "mafyia" in Georgia and Turkey, and bounty hunting in Mexico.

Pelton purchased and later sold the Fielding travel guide concession named after Temple Fielding.

Film and print projects

Pelton has built a career around his own unique experiential style of reportage and documentary filmmaking, spending time with many different terrorist, rebel or insurgent groups around the world, often returning with exclusive and unique footage. Pelton began the "SoJo" concept or solo journalist concept for ABC News in 1996. Pelton filed copy, photos and video as he went to the world's longest running hotspots. The series called "Dangerous Places" had a viewership of 800,000 people per day (second highest rated web event at the time after the death of Diana) as they followed Pelton to Bougainville, Afghanistan and the Sudan. Peter Jennings documentary crew Bob Woodruff and Jay Ananai abandoned their attempts to follow Pelton.

Some of the groups Pelton has lived with and interviwed include, the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, the LURD rebels in Liberia, MILF in the Southern Philippines, Bougainville Revolutionary Army, the SPLA in Southern Sudan, the Taliban leadership in Kabul, the FARC leadership in Colombia, and the Chechen rebel leadership. His interviews initially were to create the well known travel guide "The World's Most Dangerous Places" but then morphed into his TV series and then into a series of other books and film projects.

Pelton exec produced and hosted seven one hour specials for Discovery from 1998 until 2003. According to the site www.comebackalive.com (which has video clips and a timeline) This was the line up of Pelton's series:

1) "The Crescent and the Cross" - first footage of a new communist rebel group on Negros, the MILF, pirates, a crucifixition and Pelton tracks down the most wanted man in the Philippines

2) "The Lion of the Pansjshir" - Pelton enters Afghanistan to find Ahmed Shah Massoud and then he enters the war on both sides. First with the Northern Alliance and then the feared Taliban.

3) "Home of the Brave" - A journey through America on a motorcycle to find rebels, revolutionaries and militias. Pelton visits with Willie Nelson, Russell Means, Peter Fonda and finds an American jihadi who trained in bin Ladens camp

4) "Inside Afghanistan" - In his first post 9/11 show Pelton reenters Afghanistan, this time he is only outside witness to war with a Special Forces team that fights on horseback with a brutal warlord. He is in the battle of Qali Jangi and finds an American jihadi named John Walker Lindh.

5) "Inside Liberia" - Pelton enters a little known war in which he is surrounded by armed child soldiers in a brutal fight to the death

6) "Inside Colombia" - Pelton meets with the leaders of the left wing FARC rebel group and interviews their leaders. Barely escaping being kidnapped by Mono Jojoy at a drunken party. Pelton then switches sides and searches for the right wing death squads. While waiting he provides an inside view on the drug trade from growing to the final product.

7) "Kidnapped" - Pelton intended to be back from vacation to film a show about 9/11 in America but was kidnapped. His footage of the brutal kidnap is interwoven with previous trips to Grozny where he interviews a captured Russian spy, Uganda where a young terrorist puts a bomb under his table. Pelton spends a long bloody night in Kampala before heading to meet the SPLA in Sudan and finally Peru in which Pelton's journey inside the drug war is cut short when he is hit by a car while riding his motorcycle. He would produce "House of War" with Paul Yule to document the largest and most bloody battle in the operation.

Eventually other journalists would be allowed to enter the war by the time Anaconda was in operation but Pelton returned from Afghanistan to cover the unknown war in Liberia with the LURD rebels. After a number of intense weeks in Liberia with his crew being the only outsiders, Pelton decided to take a vacation and hike the Darien Gap, something he meant to do when he was 19 and ended up living on an island in Colombia instead. Pelton and his two hiking companions were ambushed, kidnapped and the Kuna Indians who housed them were brutally murdered by the AUC-BEC (the oldest right wing paramilitary death squad unit in Colombia.) After he was released, Pelton then invited by U.S. Special Forces who were on the ground already in Iraq. Pelton headed to Iraq to cover the war for ABC Investigative and then led a search for a find of chemical tipped rockets for CBS's "60 Minutes". Pelton eventually chose to hang out along the Syrian border with insurgents and later document evidence of mass graves around the country, traveling in a red Bentley previously owned by Uday Hussein.

In late 2004 he lived with a Blackwater USA security team running Route Irish in Baghdad while researching "Licensed to Kill". He continues to travel to hotspots to produce documentaries like National Geographic Explorer's "Iraq's Hired Guns" and magazine projects like his upcoming on "Inside Special Forces" for Popular Mechanics and ongoing work for National Geographic Adventure.

Currently Pelton contributes to National Geographic Adventure, Men's Journal, IraqSlogger and other publications.

Pelton continues to be featured in a number of upcoming documentaries on a diverse variety of subjects that range from mercenaries, child soldiers, security contractors and conflict. They are a diverse selection including "Iraq for Sale" by Robert Greenwald, "Shadow Company" by Nick Bicanic, "Weapons of Mass Deception" by Danny Schecter, "Children at War" and "Bounty Hunting" by Bobby Williams as well as news documentaries and interviews by Al Jazeera, CNN, Dan Rather and many others.

Kidnapping

In January 2003, Pelton and two 22 year old travellers were kidnapped in the Darien Gap by the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) and held for 10 days before being released. [cite web |url=http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/americas/01/24/colombia.journalists/ |title=3 Americans freed, 2 journalists still captive in Colombia |accessdate=2007-05-22 |format= |work=CNN.com ] [cite web | last =Markey | first =Sean | authorlink = | coauthors = | title =Adventure Writer Reportedly Kidnapped in Panama | work = | publisher =National Geographic News | date= January 22, 2003 | url =http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/01/0122_030122_kidnapping.html | format = | doi = | accessdate =2007-05-15 ]

Bibliography

*"Licensed to Kill, Hired Guns in the War on Terror" (ISBN 1-4000-9781-9)
*"DP Professional Strength" (ISBN 0-06-112021-9)
*"The World's Most Dangerous Places" (ISBN 0-06-001160-2)
*"The Adventurist, My Life In Dangerous Places" (ISBN 0-7679-0576-8)
*"Hunter Hammer and Heaven, Journeys to Three World's Gone Mad" (ISBN 1-58574-416-6)
*"Come Back Alive" (ISBN 0-385-49566-8)
*"The Best American Travel Writing"
*"Best Adventure and Travel Stories"
*"American Soldier"
*"Boots on the Ground"
*"Fielding's Hot Spots, Travel in Harm's Way"
*"Fielding's Borneo"
*"Three Worlds Gone Mad: Dangerous Journeys through the War Zones of Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific", The Lyons Press; (2003), ISBN 1-592-28100-1

External links

* [http://www.comebackalive.com Come Back Alive.com] , Robert Young Pelton's website.
* [http://www.iraqslogger.com IraqSlogger] , Robert Young Pelton's news service from inside Iraq
* [http://www.salon.com/books/int/2002/04/23/pelton/index.html "The real war on terrorism"] , interview with Pelton from Salon.com, April 23 2002.
* [http://www.cnn.com/2001/COMMUNITY/10/02/pelton/ "Robert Young Pelton: Insights into Afghanistan"] , interview of Pelton from CNN, October 2 2001.
* [http://www.booktv.org/feature/index.asp?segid=7345&schedID=454 Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror] , video of Pelton on Book TV, October 14 2006.

National Geographic Adventure Columns

"Pelton's World" column from "National Geographic Adventure Magazine"
* [http://nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0606/columns/robert_young_pelton.html "The Good Books"] , June 2006
* [http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0605/columns/robert_young_pelton.html "Kidnap Course"] , May 2006
* [http://nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0603/columns/robert_young_pelton.html "Global Outreach"] , March 2006
* [http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0602/columns/robert_pelton_travel_clubs.html "Travel Clubs"] , February 2006
* [http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0512/columns/packing_tips.html "Packing Tips"] , December 2005
* [http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0511/columns/pelton_world.html "Now You Can Go Zones"] , November 2005
* [http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0510/columns/pelton_military_vacations.html "Military Vacations"] , October 2005.
* [http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0509/columns/peltons_world.html "Overland Expeditions"] , September 2005
* [http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0508/excerpt4.html "Solo Travel"] , August 2005
* [http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0506/excerpt3.html "Self Defence"] , June 2005.
* [http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0505/excerpt2.html "Motorcycle Trips"] , May 2005
* [http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0410/excerpt7.html "Travel Guides"] , October 2004
* [http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0412/excerpt4.html "Cheap Airfares"] , December 2004
* [http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/robert-young-pelton/pirates.html "Piracy"]

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INTERVIEWS & ARTICLES
* [http://www.mensjournal.com/] Men's Journal, May 2008. How to Stage a Coup D'Etat" Pelton's time with the mercenaries who tried to overthrow Equatorial Guinea
* [http://www.mensjournal.com/] Men's Journal, January 2008. Blackwater. The story behind the shootout in Nisour Square and a look inside Blackwater
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zfP1jikEPE] Coast to Coast. Pelton discusses Blackwater and his experiences in Baghdad with the private security firm
* [http://www.shadowcompanythemovie.com/] "ShadowCompany" footage and interview with Pelton on mercenaries and contractors.
* [http://iraqforsale.org/robert_pelton.php] "Iraq for Sale" interview with Pelton on mercenaries and contractors.
* [http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/writer/7/Robert_Y_Pelton] , IraqSlogger.com. Pelton's news service on the Iraq War, 2006-2007.
* [http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/channel/explorer/preview.html] National Geographic Explorer "Iraq's Guns For Hire" (Executive Producer)
* [http://www.history.com/] Bounty Hunting - History Channel - Interview and footage about Pelton's bounty hunting in Mexico with Irish-American Jihadi Aqil Collins
* [http://www.history.com/ Child Soldiers - History Channel - Pelton's footage and interview from his time in Liberia as "General Jungle Fire" with the LURD rebels
* [http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HK04Ak01.html] Asia Times review of "Licensed to Kill"
* [http://www.strategy-business.com/press/16635507/06407j] Strategy+ Business: Best Business Books
* [http://www.newsobserver.com/105/story/506536.html] Soldiers For Hire
* [http://www.rolfpotts.com/writers/index.php?writer=Robert+Young+Pelton] Vagabonding Interview with Rolf Potts
* [http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/09/sb-six-questions-robert-young-pelton-1157654152] Interview with Harper's magazine
* [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/jan-june07/outsourcing_02-07.html] PBS NewsHour Interview on private security contractors
* [http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1506812.html?page=4] "Riding Shotgun in Baghdad" Pelton's time with Blackwater running the airport road in 2004 - Popular Mechanics
* [http://savvytraveler.publicradio.org/show/features/1999/19990109/interview.shtml] Savvy Traveller interview
* http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/johnson200604210628.asp] "Traveling With Danger" National Review Online
* [http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/archive/200403/20040324.html] PBS Tavis Smiley interview
* [http://www.csoonline.com/read/093004/interview.html] "Stranger In A Dangerous Land" CSO Magazine interview
* [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/03/0330_040330_peltoninterview.html] National Geographic Interview: The Hunt for Bin Laden
* [http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0112/24/se.01.html] CNN's Transcript of Pelton's report with Special Forces in Afghanistan
* [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1785318] NPR Interview on the Hunt for Bin Laden
* [http://www.globaldefensegroup.com/terrorist-profiles/the-john-walker-lindh-story.html?Itemid=35] The Truth About John Walker Lindh
* [http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0112/02/sun.13.html] CNN Robert Young Pelton reports his discovery of John Walker Lindh
* [http://www.lost.art.br/ryp_e.htm] Lost Arts Interview
* [http://archives.cnn.com/2001/COMMUNITY/10/02/pelton/index.html] Insights Into Afghanistan CNN
* [http://www.oss.net/extra/page/?action=page_show&id=363&module_instance=1] Golden Candle Award
* [http://archives.cnn.com/2001/TRAVEL/NEWS/03/02/danger.side/index.html] CNN interview
* [http://www.oprah.com/tows/booksseen/tows_book_19990518_rpelto_b.jhtml] Oprah interview
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwdaXakYOv0] Lecture

References