Matt Potter

From a Q & A with Matt Potter, author of Outlaws Inc.: Under the Radar and on the Black Market with the World's Most Dangerous Smugglers:

Q: The men in this book are mostly from the former Soviet Union. Are you trying to paint a negative picture of business in these countries?

A: Far from it. I’m a lifelong russophile, and I hope I’ve treated everyone in the book fairly and with respect. The men and women I met, flew with, spoke to, followed and investigated have all been honest and open with me, and if the experience of researching and writing Outlaws Inc has taught me anything, it’s that caricatures, public enemies and villains belong in the realms of fairy-tale. Family men working hard with what they’ve got… that’s reality.

Of course, some of the men in this book have done very bad things. Things I like to think I wouldn’t do. They fly, charter or order up planes, but that’s where the certainties end. Some traffick guns, some illicit substances, some both. Some bust heads, or smuggle people, or drop dangerous payloads on remote lands. Some bust sanctions. Many flit between daylight and the darkest corners of the global underworld.

As it happens, the main characters in the book are also Russians, Ukrainians, Serbs, Belorussians, because they were the ones in the eye of this particular hurricane – the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. But they could be, and equally often are, American,...[read on]

Visit Matt Potter's website.

--Marshal Zeringue