John McAfee: “I am the most sane person that I know”
Self-made millionaire and computer programmer John McAfee, 72, has a girlfriend called Janice and a daughter called Nyana. But he lives in fear, “One eye open, I sleep wide awake with a pistol in my hand.”
McAfee was born in the UK on a U.S. army base and was raised in Salem, Virginia. Employed at NASA in the 1960’s, he worked as a software programmer. Later on, he created the antivirus software that shares his namesake and sold his shares in the company for around $100 million. He is still creating new products, including his Bitfi wallet, and is a big believer in cryptocurrencies. Now, he exposes the workings of his mind, shining light on his paranoid appearance and asks if you can, really, trust anybody?
In the beginning
It was on April 30, 2012 when the Belizean authorities stormed his house on the pretext of illegal weapons and drugs. Until this point he had built a new home in Belize and provided guns to the local police force. In the raid, one of his dogs was killed and his house was damaged.
“How can you live in this world of chaos without making light of things, without seeing the humour in the most bizarre and extreme events?”
Once this died down, he allegedly supplied the Belizean government with infected computers to find evidence that they set him up. McAfee believed they want to kill him to suppress the information he found. Seven months later, Greg Faull was found dead at his home on the Belizean Island of Ambergris Caye. He died of a gunshot wound to the head. He was McAfee’s neighbour.
McAfee was named as a person of interest in the case but was never charged. He escaped to Guatemala where he was arrested and sent back to the U.S. McAfee maintains that he was the intended target and the Belizean government killed Faull out of incompetence.
An attempt on his life
On June 20, 2018, McAfee was rushed to hospital and lay unconscious for three days at the Vidant Medical Centre in North Carolina. He claims he was spiked by his “enemies.” He tweeted that he knew exactly who they were.
Jimmy Watson, an ex-navy seal and Executive Director of Team McAfee, said he was there when it happened. After taking his wife to the airport, he came back to find McAfee taking a nap. In the morning, he woke up to find McAfee “black and purple and pretty much dead.”
“In 2013, I lost my little brother. I found him in a similar way. To lose Mr John McAfee, was a nightmare, he is like a father,” said Watson.
From living in Iraq for four years, he was used to remaining controlled in the middle of disorder. He said finding McAfee like this really affected him. “I could barely control my heartbeat, it was so fast, it was hard to collect my thoughts.”
Watson said the doctors couldn’t explain what was wrong with McAfee as he had the “organs of a thirty-year-old.” The doctors said he was in a deep state but wasn’t coming to. “The colour of him was unusual. There was a strange… he had a bad memory. He was obviously poisoned, what else could it be?”
“They did a bunch of tests on him and found sepsis or something and he got severe MRSA in his lungs within minutes. That is a form of poison, the Russians did it for years. A little prick gives you MRSA, that is a game changer, in about three days you’re gone.”
In the hospital, Watson stayed up for three days straight and barely slept. He squeezed McAfee’s hand and played “All Along The Watchtower” by Jimmi Hendrix. “When he came to, he said he could hear those songs, that was a special moment.”
How does he sleep at night?
McAfee has since recovered from the incident but it has added to his conviction that nobody can be trusted.
“I live on the extreme but if I sleep with a pistol in my hand, someone bursting through the door is not going to reach the bed,” says McAfee.
Throughout his house lie “strange guns, almost unidentifiable” and everybody wears a gun. If he is alone, he holds his gun in his hand to give him a quarter-second advantage. “Now, you may call that paranoia, that’s fine, you may call it what you wish. To me, it’s what’s kept me alive.”
When McAfee goes to the shops, he asks if there’s been any odd traffic recently, if anything strange has happened. Sometimes he just won’t go. When he does do something, his first thought is how to minimise the security risks. “In all truth, I am the most sane person that I know. I do not buy bullshit, I question everything. People who don’t question everything to me, that’s insane.”
This thinking pervades his way of living. His house is full of armed and experienced security guards. He described Watson as “one of the meanest SOB’s I’ve ever met.”
Even in this world of armed guards and fear, McAfee jokes a lot and is always smiling and laughing. “Usually I just make up really weird shit and see if people will believe it. That Russia was originally part of China or something.”
“How can you live in this world of chaos without making light of things, without seeing the humour in the most bizarre and extreme events?”
Tim Copeland is an NCTJ-qualified cryptocurrency journalist at Decrypt Media. He covers breaking news stories in the industry and has interviewed key figures in the crypto space from John McAfee and Roger Ver to executives from Coinbase, Huobi and eToro. Follow him on Twitter here.
