Robert Young Pelton

Robert Young Pelton is a Canadian born, American adventurer, journalist, and former strategic planner. He publishes a regularly updated guide, The World's Most Dangerous Places, which provides practical and survival information for people who work and travel in high risk zones.. He was also host of the Discovery Travel Channel series "Robert Young Pelton's The World's Most Dangerous Places" from 1998 to 2003. He currently writes books and does documentaries on conflict related subjects. His upcoming books range from his time inside private military contractors (Licensed to Kill, Hired Guns in the War on Terror - Crown), to his experiences with US Special Forces in the opening weeks in the war on terror (The Regulators), and even a fictional book (Raven- Penguin) based on his early years. He is currently working on the updated version of his best known book (DP- Professional Strength - Harper Collins), writes a column, "Pelton's World" for National Geographic Adventure and is shooting a documentary based on his new book on private military contractors.

Pelton's travels and projects have taken through well over 100 countries most often during times of intense conflict. He has traveled and worked (often alone) in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, Uganda, Myanmar, Sierra Leone, Eastern Turkey, Bougainville, Cambodia, Pakistan, the Southern Philippines, Algeria, Liberia, Tajikistan, Southern Sudan, Papua New Guinea, Colombia and the Darien Gap, as well as numerous other lethal locations. He considers himself a witness to conflict, rather than a journalist and usually defers credit when working behind enemy lines. Pelton preferes to use his experiences and coverage to create his own book and television projects. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

As an author and a journalist, Pelton may be best known for the world exclusive interview with John Walker Lindh in the battle of Qala'a-e Jangi, December 2, 2001 for CNN, his 10-day kidnapping in the Darien Gap in January 2003 by the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) and his exclusive interview inside Grozny in December of 1999 with captured Russian GRU agent Alexi Galkin, who admitted that the Russian FSB was behind the October 1999 apartment bombings that triggered the second Chechen war. Pelton has also been inside the drug business in Colombia and Peru, with the mafyia in Georgia and Turkey, bounty hunting in Mexico, hunting pirates with mercenaries in Sierra Leone and in on the hunt for Osama bin Laden along the Pakistani/Afghan border.

As an adventurer and filmmaker, Pelton has spent time with many of the world's most dangerous and well known terrorist, rebel or insurgent groups, often returning with exclusive footage and unique footage. A partial list includes: Ahmed Shah Massoud of the Northern Alliance, Francis Ona of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army, the Taliban leadership in Kabul, the FARC leadership in Colombia, Syrian insurgents during the war in Iraq, the Chechen rebel leadership in Grozny, the leadership of the LURD rebels in Liberia, Hashim Salamat of the MILF in the Southern Philippines and many others. He has also the only journalist in the early days of the war on terror in Afghanistan, living with US Army Special Forces A-Teams during the war in Afghanistan and General Dostum. During the war in Iraq, Pelton initially worked for ABC Investigative and then CBS 60 Minutes but eventually chose to drive around the country in a red Bentley Mulsanne (liberated from Uday Hussein) and document mass graves for two months. In late 2004 he he lived with a Blackwater USA security team running Route Irish between the Green Zone and BIAP doing the daily runs for a month. Most recently 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 '90s.

Pelton is also the moderator of The Black Flag Cafe an internet forum covering topics loosely related to safe travel in dangerous places, guerilla warfare, mercenaries, private military contractors, terrorism and etc. His handle is RYP. Not surprisingly, His famous email is ryp@comebackalive.com. Author Tim Cahill (who profiled Pelton in Men's Journal) fondly described him as "the person most men think they are after slamming two tequilas". Time Magazine profile describes Pelton as "a compassionate, open-minded and sharply intelligent man with a relentless desire to unearth the truth. On an action hero résumé, its easy to miss Pelton's greatest gift - He simply calls it like he sees it"

Those who have had a chance to read his new book, "Licensed to Kill" provide the following reviews:

"In his classic gunfire prose, Pelton provides an incredible look into the murky and virtually impenetrable world of private military contractors. While the rest of the press corps remains focused on conventional armies, Pelton may well have seen the future. I expect we'll all be consulting this book over and over to make sense of the wars that are to come."-- Sebastian Junger, author of THE PERFECT STORM and A DEATH IN BELMONT

"LICENSED TO KILL is smart, funny, sometimes scary, and always interesting. Pelton truly captures the cast of characters that make up our new 'coalition of the billing' in the war on terror."-- P. W. Singer, author of CORPORATE WARRIORS: THE RISE OF THE PRIVATIZED MILITARY

"Robert Pelton chose a washboard, pot-holed, dust-choked path to guide his life's work. With the scars that accompany his choice, Robert enjoys the credibility not shared by many to comment on the world's dark corners. LICENSED TO KILL sheds light on one of the corners…the world of private for-hire guns, mercenaries, and armies. It's a reality; it's a business; it's lucrative…Consider LICENSED TO KILL a "safety brief," a military term for "pay attention." Read it…pay attention."-- James A. "Spider" Marks, Major General, United States Army (Retired)

"In LICENSED TO KILL Robert Pelton reveals how the U.S. Military Industrial Complex has created its own dark version of the non-state warrior. In many unstable corners of the globe, dominated by warlords, Pelton asks if companies like Blackwater and Executive Outcomes could become the New Hessians for both multinational corporations and overstretched armies."-- Jonathan Taplin, Professor, Annenberg School for Communication, USC; producer, "Under Fire," "The Last Waltz" and "Mean Streets"

"'The dark side of the war on terror' may sound redundant, but how else can you describe the world of contractors, mercs and whackos who are paid big money to keep the key players alive and the war machinery humming? It's a cynical, funny, and very scary place, stretching from Arkansas to Fallujah, and no one gets it, or tells it, better than Robert Young Pelton." -- John Rasmus, Editor-in-Chief, National Geographic

"License to Kill is phenomenal -- gritty, groundbreaking, and compelling."-- Eason Jordan, Former President of News Gathering CNN, CEO, Praedict LLC

"Robert Pelton has written a rollicking read that takes you inside the murkyworld of military contractors. It's a global journey that Pelton describesvery well from the craggy passes of the Afghan-Pakistan boder, to the extremedanger of Baghdad's airport road, to the diamond fields of Africa. Licensedto Kill is not only a great travelogue, it is also has some important thingsto say about the brave new world of privatized violence that willincreasingly be a feature of 21st century wars."
-- Peter Bergen is the author of THE OSAMA BIN LADEN I KNOW and HOLY WAR, INC.

Robert Young Pelton: Encyclopedia BETA

Robert Young Pelton

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