This reminder from Kevin Cul­len of what journ­al­istic com­pet­i­tion was like. Back in the dying days of the pre-mobile, pre-online era.

We found ourselves in a seedy bar in Podgor­ica, the gray cap­ital of Montenegro, ask­ing for a gang­ster named Momo. We paid Momo 700 deutsche marks for phony visas to get back into Serbia.

Momo took our money, but sat in the bar for hours, hand­ing over the visas only after the last plane for Bel­grade took off. Per­son­ally, I don’t go around telling gang­sters how to con­duct their busi­ness. But Lynch is less retir­ing and lit into Momo, accus­ing him of pur­posely mak­ing us miss the plane.

“I am sorry, my friend,” Momo replied gen­i­ally, put­ting his hand on Lynch’s shoulder, and in doing so revealed what looked very much like a 9mm Ber­etta in a shoulder hol­ster. “But a man from the BBC paid me 10,000 deutsche marks to keep you off that plane.”

The man from the BBC thought we worked for a rival network.