Caught on Tape: The Moment John McAfee Realized Vice Screwed Him
Three years ago, Vice traveled to Central America to meet up with John McAfee, the antivirus software icon turned paranoid, strung-out narcotics icon. McAfee claimed his life was in danger, and kept his location secret—until Vice fucked up and revealed it, as is finally documented in this video.
The video, uploaded by freelance photographer Robert King, does little to clear up how exactly McAfee's exact GPS coordinates were published on the internet, contrary to McAfee's wishes. BuzzFeed reports King uploaded the video in part to help defend himself, years later:
"We were never allowed to tell our side of the story," King told BuzzFeed News, in a phone interview from Berlin. "It always followed me around — the geodata, that I leaked the fucking geodata." King, who has been a conflict photographer for more than 20 years, said the fact that Vice never clarified why the metadata was attached to the photograph has put him in danger on subsequent assignments.
But we don't see much of Vice's side of the story in this heavily edited video. Instead, we're greeted by John McAfee doing his best John McAfee impression: haggard, face looking like fruit leather, and vaguely describing some sort of Guatemalan death squad that was on its way to apprehend them all. "I have ten fingers now, I may have fewer by the end of the day," McAfee tells the camera. He goes on to warn former Vice editor Rocco Castoro that he might suffer "ill treatment" if they're all captured.
Castoro is seen throughout the recording, mostly nervous and frantic in the background as he pleads with his New York office to fix the privacy fuck-up. At one point, when McAfee tells him how to "spin" the disaster, Castoro appears to storm off and tell McAfee "fuck out of here." The video ends with McAfee listening to some classic Rolling Stones tunes in a car while doing a really gross tongue-flicking thing into the camera. It's not exactly illuminating.
In the brutally uncomfortable comment section of the YouTube video, McAfee offered this elaboration:
Let me explain what's happening in this video. The first part is about two minutes after I found out that Vice Magazine had just revealed our location in Guatemala. Not much happening. The nighttime segment is as we are racing to Guatemala City just a few minutes ahead if two platoons of Guatemalan Special Forces attempting to catch up with us to do their "thing". The phone call I am making is to the technical dude at Vice who forgot to remove the Exif data from the photo that Robert King took and sent to Vice. It is a joke. I am merely ragging his ass. The last segment (Rolling Stones), is Samantha and I grooving to "Gimme Shelter" as the soldiers are closing in on us. Please take note of the last few seconds of the video showing Rocco Roccoro, the world famous, balls of steel, fearless Senior Editor of Vice Magazine. He doesn't appear to be enjoying himself considering the awesome energy of Mick Jagger's divine vocals.
From this we can conclude that John McAfee to this day hates Rocco Castoro, and that everyone had a really bad time in Guatemala.