Danny Jones Podcast - #302 - Cult Investigator: Satanic Rituals, Scientology & Israel-Palestine | Lawrence Wright

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

Watch every episode ad-free & uncensored on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Lawrence Wright is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of multiple books including "Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood & the Prison of Belief", and "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11". His newest book "The Human Scale" tells a story of an Israeli cop and a Palestinian-American FBI agent who join forces to solve the murder of an Israeli police chief in the West Bank. SPONSORS https://cash.app - Download Cash App today & use code DANNY10 http://evening.ver.so/danny - Use code DANNY for 15% off your first order. https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off EPISODE LINKS The Human Scale - https://a.co/d/62tQUig Going Clear - https://a.co/d/d6csGr9 The Looming Tower - https://a.co/d/dfySVIo FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Scientology's Sea Org 19:04 - L. Ron Hubbard's deathbed confession 30:16 - How has Scientology survived? 34:26 - Jim Jones & the Jonestown Cult 43:36 - The Sisters of Mary Morning Star 52:39 - Fighting the death penalty 01:01:38 - Satanic ritual abuse 01:17:26 - Whitley Streiber's childhood experiments 01:22:58 - Jack parsons 01:26:34 - Why Lawrence gave up religion 01:36:40 - The new Silicon Valley ideology 01:44:37 - The Looming Tower 01:54:13 - Did the FBI allow 9/11? 02:06:32 - Where Bin Laden got his money 02:16:52 - 9/11 alternate theories 02:25:02 - The Human Scale 02:37:30 - American CIA vs. Israel's Mossad 02:44:58 - Israel's troubled history 03:03:47 - How Lawrence chooses projects Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Mr. Lawrence Wright, it's really a pleasure to have have you have you on here it's been a long time coming i've been uh i've been watching i've been watching and reading your work for a very long time not a very long time i think the first time i discovered you was in 2015 when going clear came out the document on hboh and um i was sort of blown away because this place is right in my backyard i sure is and i kind of grew up around all of it because i i spent a lot of my youth in downtown clearwater running around my friends and you know just you know goofing around and i was born and more and plant hospital, which is basically right across the street from the flag building.

That's right. And I kind of never really dug too deep into them until I saw your film. And then I was just like blown away that this was all right here this whole time. Yeah, it's the headquarters. And you know, back when El Ron Hubbard had taken to the high seas to avoid subpoenas and finally decided to come back to America and he sent a delegation around looking for the right place and they settled on Clearwater. And they wouldn't tell anybody at the time, you know, what they were. They were some sort of, you know, vaguely Christian organization. Just let the word out.

But when people in Clearwater found out, they were pretty upset, you know. And he was buying up a lot of the real estate downtown, which is still a part of the church catalog. It's a fascinating story. I mean, I was, you know, the Scientology. had kind of put this electric fence of legal threats and reputational threats around their story. And so the other writers had taken wax at it. But I still felt that there was a great story on the ground to be told. And it was fabulous story.

I was, despite all the, you know, we're going to get you sort of stuff that comes along with dealing with sciontology, it was always just a great story. And so, you know, you're always grateful as a writer to have that opportunity. It's funny. Just recently, I was having a conversation with my brother-in-law, and he works for one of the biggest Scientology-owned companies in downtown Clearwater. It's called No Before. It's like an antivirus software for computer software.

And he's like, it's all Scientology owned. And all of the higher-end executives, like all the high, like, executives on the executive floor, they're all Scientologists. So there's like a Scientology floor and there's like a civilian floor. And it's like him and all of his buddies will always joke like under their breath or like make fun of the Scientologists. And like, you know, it's kind of like this weird dichotomy of these people all working together in the same building, but you know you're inside of a cult building. Like these people are all in this cult. And I was like, wow, that would make such a great TV show about it would be like the office meets like some sort of like

science like cult science fiction you know reality show or something like this and I was asking him I was like because we were in a restaurant right across the street from where he works and I was like I'm like how do you know I'm like do you know but by looking at somebody if they're a Scientology's like oh yeah 100% and I was like how do you know he's like just look into their eyes and you can see you can tell by just looking into their eyes it's like we're almost robotic the way they look and sure shit, I was like looking around. He's like, there was like five people in that room at the time.

He's like, there's one guy in here. It's definitely a sign to all. See if you can figure it out. I looked around and sure shit, I nailed it. I was like, definitely that guy. Well, I don't have those powers. You see a lot of people. It's just such a wild phenomenon.

The Sea Org, which is their clergy, you know, dresses in naval outfits. Yeah. And so you see a lot of that in Clearwater because that's their base. Is that the vest? Like the vest around the white shirt? Yeah, and oftentimes more, you know, what looks really very much like a military uniform. And the C-org is, you know, when you sign up for it, you know, you sign off for a billion years of service. Right.

And because the idea that you get reincarnated in a billion years in the time span of eternity is just a small sacrifice. Yeah, I've thought a lot about this. And it seems like it's, you know, obviously there's a ton of terrible things about Scientology, right? Like, like the harassment campaigns they go on and the outright slavery that they participate in with having their C-org members. And the most gruesome thing is the cadet farm or the cadet organization where they have all the babies in there that are just like not taken care of. And I think it was one of the women in your documentary who was John Travolta, right, like John Travolta's handler, I guess. Spanky.

Spanky. That's right. Yeah. Her baby was in there and she found her baby in there was like covered in fleas and like not fed sick. Fever. That is probably the most gut wrenching aspect of what they're doing and of your documentary, I think personally. But, you know, if that stuff wasn't a part of it, I feel like this is just a, you

just no different than any other religion other than the fact that it's more modern, and we know the guy that created it lived in modern times in our lifetime, and it's got a way better marketing plan. Yeah. You know, I don't have anything against Scientology except for the human rights abuses that we're talking about. And I think John Travolta and Tom Cruise are great stars. I'm grateful for their talents, but I hold them responsible for bringing so many people into Scientology and knowing they have to know, you know, the depredations that are visited on people in the C.org and also the, you know, the child care thing, the way the families are broken up and so on, these are these are terrible, terrible things to do to people. And a lot of Scientologists,

you know, don't know or don't want to know. of what's going on inside the C.org, there's several different places where the C.org tends to headquarter. And most people will say, well, you know, but it's given me something really valuable. And usually that is a sense of being skilled in a particular area or connections and with the you know the most conspicuous thing is the actors that are involved you know they don't have another tom cruise uh Elizabeth moss is a second generation of Scientologist so she wasn't drawn in to the organization she was born into it but um you know actors is one of the things I learned when I was working on this is a lot of them like Tom Cruise you know they

drop out of high school, or he didn't drop out, he finished, but they go into, they go to Hollywood when they're really young. And imagine you get out of high school, I'm gonna be an actor, I'm gonna be a movie star, I'm gonna go to Hollywood. Meantime, your friends are in college, they're studying, they're getting, you know,

their medical degree or whatever, you know, they're going on with their life. And you're standing in line for, you know, a role, you know, one in the background, somebody in a crowd scene or something like that, you're desperate to break it and you're, you know, that you don't seem to any choice.

And then along comes a person with a brochure handing him out to all these would-be movie stars saying, how to get an agent, you know, come to the Celebrity Center, you know, we'll show you how. And just like a message from God, you know. You just somebody's going to help me get an agent or, you know, how to get insurance. And, you know, these kinds of things that freelancers like actors are desperate for.

So once into the Celebrity Center, they're given a menu of different programs that you can take there. And, you know, people like, well, Jerry Seinfeld, you know, he attributes some of his early success to taking, I've forgotten which program. it was but it felt you know that it gave him more confidence and you know others a lot of actors and have been through and never got very deeply in it but did taste it and and most of them will tell you that it did them some good did you lose any friends making that writing that book or making that film or were there any people like in your life that maybe you didn't know or scientologists that kind of just like disappeared one one time When I was in college, I was living in an apartment with my girlfriend at the time, and downstairs there was a little Scientology org.

It was tiny, you know, and I had heard of it, you know, but this was back in the middle 60s, a long time ago. And so Scientology was totally new. and they showed me the, I forgot the name of the little lie detector. The e-meter? The e-meter, yeah. And I was intrigued, but I wasn't, I was also a little suspicious. But anyway, they were a good neighbor. I'd sometimes go downstairs and, you know, hi, how are you doing?

But that was my only introduction into Scientology. before I actually decided to write about it. And I've written about a lot of religions over my long career, and I'm always intrigued by the fact that reporters tend to pay a lot of attention to politics. But my observation is that you can have really strong political beliefs that don't affect your behavior at all.

And I'm sure everybody knows those people. But if you have a really strong political beliefs, if you have strong religious beliefs, they tend to govern your life. And I think it's a mistake to avoid that subject. A lot of reporters think it's impolite, you know, prying into what people believe. And yet they'll readily ask, are you a Trump supporter or something like that? But they won't ask, are you a Mormon? Or, you know, it's just, it seems impolite and also pathetic. reporters typically are very skeptical and religion is one of those areas that we tend to tend to put some distance between us and that so I because I was interested in

religion and had been very religious when I was a teenager Scientology was always on my you know my scope and but I needed a I needed an excuse to write about it and And I thought about when John Travolta's son died, if you remember that, there was, he was very ill. It was apparently some kind of environmental toxin that affected him. And there was a Scientology treatment that was employed. And I don't know if the boy was. boy could have been saved otherwise. But anyway, he died.

And I thought, well, maybe he will leave the church, and that would give me an excuse to talk to him. And I mentioned it to my editor at The New Yorker, and he said it was too tabloid, which I thought, you know. Yeah, but it's still very interesting, you know. And so then Paul Haggis dropped out of the church, and Paul Haggis was a two-time, Academy Award-winning writer and director.

He had been in the church for more than two decades. And he dropped out very quietly. He wasn't talking about it. But I thought, you know, most of my readers would look at Scientology with kind of a sneer on their face. You know, it's like, I would never believe that crap. You'd never get me in it. And what was interesting to me about Scientology, it was deeply app. appealing to a lot of people.

And for the Hollywood types, I didn't see that it was giving them any advantage. It was like the opposite. It was like a public relations martyrdom. You know, that they were, people thought, what's wrong with Tom Cruise that he's in Scientology or any of the other stars? And so what is it that would take someone

as talented and interesting as, Travolta or Cruz or any of the others, what would it take to have them enlist in this organization and adopt these beliefs that seem so weird? And so when Paul dropped out, I was working on something else. I finally decided, well, I'm going to ask anyway. So I found the number for his business manager,

and I said, hello, this is Lawrence Wright with the New Yorker, and I would like to talk to your client about his decision to leave the Church of Scientology. Are you kidding? Get the fuck off my phone. And click, you know. That was the entire conversation.

And but the next day I got Paul's email address, and I wrote him a letter and said, well, I spoke to your business manager, and he said this wasn't the best time to talk. But if there's ever a time where you'd like to discuss your, as I said, intellectual and spiritual development, I would be honored to do that. And 20 minutes later, I get a call, a text,

very flattered, let's have lunch on Tuesday. And he was in New York, so I flew up, and we had lunch, and then he wanted to smoke a cigarette, and so we went out on the street. And I said, well, you know, this is going to be apropos of your decision to leave the church, and his eyes got wide, but he continued to talk, and it was like nine months later,

and so deep into this story, he finally admitted it had never occurred to him. It would be about Scientology. He was just so flattered the New Yorker was going to do a profile of him. So I felt, I totally understood and felt a little sad that that happened. But on the other hand, he was a very courageous source. And he went through a lot of shit, as did many of the sources that I spoke to.

And, you know, I spoke to hundreds. And, you know, it's a difficult decision when, you know, you're facing an organization that's quite famous for its retribution to decide that it's so important to talk to a reporter that you'll feel, you know, you'll face that. And, of course, the more that you talk to, the more will talk to you. And there's strength in numbers. I think that played a role in the access that I finally got. 100%. It's amazing to me how I know they were rated by the FBI once. I think that was in the early 90s, right? And it's amazing to me that they have not, the FBI has not shut them down. Is that because they got that religious exemption and they're quote unquote a religion now? Yeah. You know, it gave them enormous amount of leeway. So that's that that designation they got from the IRS when they basically assaulted them with law. and brought them to the, brought the IRS to his knees. Brought the IRS to its knees and got the IRS to basically wipe out a billion dollars

and back taxes. Yeah. That somehow makes them exempt from all of this unbelievably horrifying humanitarian atrocities that they're considering, that they're carrying out on their headquarters with children and people paying them basically no money, making them scrub toilets and all this. stuff. Yeah, it's the First Amendment, freedom of religion, along with press and speech. So it's a very powerful concession. The other day I tried to split my dinner bill, and we're all aware of the payment apps that take three days to send your money, and it always forget your password.

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Send $5 to a friend within the first 14 days, and you'll get $10 dropped right now. into your account. That's Cash App, baby. It's linked down below. Now back to the show. And, you know, it's, if people say it's a religion, there's, you know, how do you contradict that? You know, it's odd because the Hubbard, the founder would say it was not a religion. It was a scientific approach to spiritual enlightenment. And, but now it's a religion. And with all the protections at the Constitution awards for that. Is it true that he famously said something on his deathbed or something like that about like this was all a, this was all some scheme to make money?

Yeah, well, it was, I know I'm like butcher. Sarge, I'm trying to remember Sarge's last name. Oh, yeah, Sarge, the guy who he asked him to get rid of his body or something. Right. when he was in his last days when Hubbard was in his last days he was this little horse ranch in southern California adjoining Kenny Rogers ranch but oh wow he was in disguise he was in hiding and he was very ill and he fowth Sarge fowth he asked Sarge to make him an e-meter that would actually electrocute him.

And this is the way he wanted to go out. And he was living on this little blue bus, blue bell bus, I forgot the name of it. And Sarge was racked with guilt because he had essentially pledged his life in the service of this man. And so he did make him of an e-meter that was essentially tied to an automobile battery that was just enough to give him

a real shock but not kill him. But he did die, you know, a couple of months later. Was it anything related to that or no? Yeah, it, I wouldn't want to say that Sarge killed him. I think that it was a terrible shock. It might have affected something. He was, he was. He was, was, he did talk, he was used Sarge as a kind of confessor. He talked about how he wasn't going to return and that he was going to circle this star for eternity. And, you know, he was, you know, it's interesting at that point. I don't think he was talking to anyone else in any way the same, with the same degree of intimacy and sorrow that he expressed to Sarge. I had heard that Sarge had this information, and I was at this retreat with former Scientologist, and I asked Sarge if he would talk to me.

And he was scared and conflicted. It was, you know, of all the people that I talked to, he was the one who actually knew. that Scientology had been proved false because the founder had confessed to him. And so it was a very interesting, powerful interview. Is that quote in the document, like El Ron Hubbard's actual quote to what he said to him? I don't remember the quote. But he talked about, you know, he disavowed much of what he had said before that church doesn't believe that happened but um you know i got it on film did you what kind of um backlash or intimidation

tactics or or any sort of threats did you personally get when you made this well first of all let me say that you know what happened to me and then later alex gibney who directed the documentary doesn't compare to what happened to our sources right and uh for me um you know i had had, Tommy Davis was the spokesperson for Scientology when I started the story. And he had pledged that he would take me through Scientology. You know, he was really excited. And it was going to be like the, I think it was a Labor Day weekend. It was a three-day weekend.

And so I flew out on Thursday and then Friday expected to hear from him. This is after the film? No, it's before. This is when I'm first interviewing. And finally, on Monday afternoon, after I've been in the hotel for three days, he and his girlfriend, later wife, Jessica Feshbach, came to my hotel and said, we're not going to talk to you. You could have told me that on the phone.

Anyway, they finally did come along with three. along with three lawyers to talk to me at the New Yorker after we'd sent in our first tranche of queries. They demanded it be in email. So we sent 960 questions, fact-checking questions, and there were more after that. And suddenly, you know, here come this Scientology delegation, and they have brought along, I don't remember how many binders it was, but it stretched for seven or eight feet. And the, you know, longer than this table that we're at, you know, it was an impressive amount of literature, all designed to respond to these questions that we had.

And what was, the assumption, I think, was we're going to drown them in information. but you can't drown a reporter in information. It's like pouring water on a fish. What is it going to do with it? He's just going to swim in it. And my editor looked at it and he said, you know what you got here. If you smuck, you got a book. I said, I know.

They're very kind to me. So that happened. There were, you know, constant legal threats. You know, we had, you know, they, one of their lawyers had been a, a federal prosecutor and, you know, there was, you know, they brought some high power into the room. And we were always aware of the threat that we were going to be sued. And it never happened. In fact, it never happened with the book.

It never happened in the United Kingdom where we also sold it. And they have these very, you know, aggressive libel laws there. And it didn't happen there. It didn't happen with the series. Oh, it's a television movie. So, you know, there was all empty threats. But, you know, there was, you know, the private detectives, you know, that was in my case kind of a joke, you know.

He followed me around, but I rarely go anywhere. So, but if I had a speech or I'm in a band, sometimes he would come to my gigs, which I was always grateful for. You knew who he was? Yeah, he came and identified himself one time at one of my gigs and asked me to sign his book. What? Hi, Lawrence. I'm the Scientology PI to follow you around. Can you send my book? Yeah, well, the other thing that, you know, the New Yorker around Valentine's Day every year has this anniversary issue.

We just published our 100th anniversary. So we had it. But there's always this Victorian general. gentleman with the monocle and the butterfly on the cover. And his name is Eustace Tilly. And they made a, the Scientologist made up a mock New Yorker with me as Eustace Tilly looking disheveled and just out of the gutter and then out of the top hat. I was wearing, it's Paul Haggis. And they passed them out in front of Times Square office.

And so it's a treasured artifact. in my collection. But that, but the harassment that the sources got was very personal. And, you know, they were followed. They were, you know, garbage was empty. They were spied on constantly. They were harassed, threatened.

And, you know, they paid a price. One, when the movie came out, we put it in theaters for a couple of weeks in Austin where I live a woman came out of the theater and she was so worked up she drove her car through the front door of the Scientology building in Austin right across from the university she didn't stop there she drove around knocking over shelves and you know decks and desk and stuff Oh, my God. She did a thoroughgoing job, and I had to issue a statement disavowing violence in uniform. But they closed it down for a long time.

Now it's back and revivified. But, you know, people were upset about what they saw on that talk. Yeah, there's a lot of folks around this area who are a former Scientologists that have built their own YouTube channels. There's one guy named Aaron who lives around here. He has a great channel called Growing Up in Scientology because he grew up literally with his parents that they were Scientologists. He grew up working in the C.org and all this stuff. Now he's he's amassed this incredible following of basically just talking about all the things that are happening constantly in Scientology. And, you know, it seems like there's just this crazy resurgence of stuff online and YouTube of new age, younger folks investigating.

Scientology and like walking into the building and interviewing the lady at the front desk and and you know trying to investigate all these recent court battles there's this other guy named Grant Cardone who's this big celebrity internet figure who's like into real estate and like you know brags about all the jets that he owns and then you know films himself walking around the flag building you know over there and you know there's just so much like scandal And just crazy stuff happening involving all these big figures and Scientology and the people investigating it's like a new Scientology documentary that comes out on YouTube every week, it seems like. So to me, it's just bananas how this organization can continue to survive and thrive for this long with the way that the media landscape has evolving and everyone talking about it. Well, they have a lot of money and they have a lot of lawyers.

And, you know, they don't have a lot of members. And they don't have the kind of celebrity profile that they enjoyed for so many years. So I would, you know, but of course they're so secretive about their membership and their budget and everything. It's only estimate. But, you know, people report that, you know, nobody's in. those buildings and you know i i i don't i don't wish harm on scientology i just wish that they would reform their practices where their most ardent members are concerned what do you think uh david miscavage the new leader he has done like two interviews in his life is that right yeah did you ever did

you actually try to reach out to him oh yeah or did you just think that's futile at the point the private an investigator that was trying to get to me wanted an interview of me. And I said, oh, sure, I'll do that if you'll let me talk to Muscavage. Oh, my God, you know, what are you talking about? And the church was outraged, you know, that I would ask such a thing. And I said, well, you know, the deal's on the table. And it's been on the table for decades now. I mean, you know, he's never wanted to open himself up after he had a, you know, a colossal fail, you know, when he had that big interview with, was it Ted ABC? I think it was. Way back in the day, right? Yeah, but it was merciless.

And he came off really poorly. So I think there's publicity strategies Don't let anybody talk to him Yeah Yeah there's something about Like just like watching your documentary And watching those That big ceremony they put together in Los Angeles

After they won the war against the IRS And just the way he struts around The way he walks The way he shakes people's hands It's just like whoa This dude is like really putting on a performance I mean, he's really putting on a show. And then I saw another thing recently that I wasn't aware of that there's like somewhere down the street in Clearwater off of like Highway 19 or something.

There's this huge apartment complex, this like run down apartment complex, which allegedly is the spot where all the Cork members live. Yeah. And they turned basically like one bedroom apartments that might be the size of this room right here. and they basically have six or seven people living in each apartment, like shoulder to shoulder on cots, which is crazy that that's allowed. Yeah, they're trying to undo that in prisons now. So it may be the last repository of the confined dormitory.

They're trying to undo it in prisons? Yeah, there's, you know, giving more cell space and stuff like that. Oh, yeah. You know, it's a lot of times, when the violence occurs in prison it's in those dorms. Right. Yeah, but anyways, I heard that Miscavage was living on that property, on that apartment complex property. He probably has an apartment, you know, somewhere there.

Yeah. Or maybe in the old hotel. I imagine he stays around here in this area or L.A. maybe. Yeah, well, he has residences in different places. Mm. Yeah. It'd be interesting to see how long this thing survives, you know? And like, you spent a lot of time.

You've done lots of investigative research on cults, right? Well, the only other, what I would call a cult that I spent time on was the Jonestown cult, Jim Jones. And that was the hardest story and the most wrenching story I ever did. That was, how long ago was that? Oh, I see. That was in the, the Jonestown thing was in like the, was that the early 90s? Yeah, but it was, excuse me, my story was apropos of the Branch Divideans. Oh, yeah.

And when the Branch Davidian just before the apocalypse, my editor then was Tina Brown, and she asked me to go to Waco, you know, and I said, Tina, There are more reporters than Branch Davidians in Waco now. I just don't see joining the pack. Right. But I don't know if you would remember this, but there was a moment before the tanks started poking holes in the building and sending in tear gas and so on.

David Koresh sent out a lot of the children. And there were, I don't know, just one or two vans with these kids. You know, through the military line, the ATF, the FBI, the press, you know, and then out of the property into a world, they didn't know. And they were leaving behind everybody they knew. And their faces were so forlorn. You know, I just remember, you know, they were passing the, news cameras and and they just lost little kids and I thought well that must have happened

before and so I started researching and it turned out that there were survivors of the Jim Jones suicide massacre and three of them well there were more than that but there were three who were the sons of Jim Jones. Oh yeah. Two of them were adopted, and one, Stephen Jones was his natural son. And they happened to have been in Georgetown, Guyana, playing basketball with the national team and leaving their families in the jungle in Jonestown, in the Guiana jungles. And so I got in touch with Stephen.

and, you know, he, they had never talked about it. You know, it had been 15 years since the Jonestown debacle. And, but this business in Waco brought it all back for them. So I went to, you know, they all three boys lived in the Bay Area. And I had these intense conversations with them. One of them, Tim, he was a big guy. He could curl 100 pounds in either arm. And he was, you know, very obviously tough guy.

But he hadn't, since Jonestown, he hadn't been able to get on an elevator. He had tried to get on a plane, but he made it turn around, which, you know, it never happens unless Godzilla tells you. Right. But so he was wounded. And he agreed to talk, but he wanted to do it in a public place so he wouldn't cry. And he wanted to bring his wife along because he was only going to tell the story once and he wanted her to hear it. So we went to this nice restaurant somewhere around the bay. And after like 10 minutes, he was sobbing and pounding the table.

and the waiter made this huge, you know, loop away from the table. Everybody in the restaurant was riveted and looking at their food. And he told the story of he was the one who was chosen to fly back into Jonestown and identify the bodies of 900 people. His wife and children, his parents, his birth parents, his adopted parents, his friends, everybody he knew, his children. He had children. He had to identify.

And, you know, I was never more impressed with the power of belief that it would lead to such a colossal tragedy. And were they supposed to be there? Yeah, they were. And their attendance at the basketball game was very controversial in the Jonestown community. and they you know these boys they were young men when I talked to them they bear a lot of guilt because they feel that had they been there they might have been able to stop it but I think that's not true I mean I think I don't think it was stoppable you know for for months Jones had been training his followers you know having these white nights as they called it where they would

drink what they thought was cyanide and in a Kool-Aid, you know, that's where the phrase comes from, drinking the Kool-Aid, right. But then they'd be fine. So, but in this particular case, a congressman Leo Ryan had just flown down from San Francisco because some of his constituents were worried about relatives that were in Jonestown

and he was killed by some of Jones's followers. Oh, my God. And so, you know, it was, too late at that point. You know, and Jones knew that, you know, trouble was coming his way, and he didn't want to die alone, so he wanted everybody to die with him. He was shot to death, and not, I guess he refused to take the cyanide, but. Yeah, who shot him? It was, I think it was this woman that was one of his mistresses. What do you think,

it is about the human mind that creates people like Jim Jones. Like what, what are not, not necessarily about the human mind, but maybe it's probably something about people's upbringing and their development. And like how do you, how does nature create a Jim Jones type type character? Well, the longing for power is a very human quality and it manifests in different ways. You know, he was a powerful speaker. You know, he had a way of being, you know, extremely compelling presence, very dramatic looking, man. He was part Cherokee and had very dark complexion and dark eyes and, you know, handsome in a rugged way. He also, was a conniver

and he would fake healings and things like that I think all of this is with the idea of controlling other people I think there's a you see it in politics I mean it's not

just religion you see the longing to exercise control over other people is very powerful and if you have the capacity that he had to be so compelling as he was, then his only goal was to increase his control. And that was why he moved his whole church out of San Francisco to the jungles of Guyana.

And they did it overnight. You know, people would wake up and they'd find their spouse gone or, you know, parents had moved away. I mean, it was all secret and done, you know, with amazing security. And they were flown to Guyana, a place that most of them couldn't even put on a map. And then, you know, they lived out their final days in this jungle. So dark. You have a way of navigating your way through these, the darkest stories of human history.

Actually, I'm doing a story now that you would think is dark, and it is dark. But it's, it's, it's, I'm looking at religion in a different world. way. There's the story that I wrote in The New Yorker, in their 100th anniversary just a couple of months ago, that I'm making into a book now. Oh, really? I was walking with a friend, and she was talking about her mother who's in the Catholic prison services, and spent time talking to women on the death row in Texas. There are seven women on death row. And she talked about these nuns that came to visit them every month. And I thought...

Oh, these are the young nuns? There aren't very many young nuns. Right, they're mostly older. The average age for a nun in America is 80. Right. But this is a new order called Sisters of Mary Morningstar that Pope Francis ordained. And they live in Waco, oddly enough, not so far from the remains of the Branch Davidian compound.

But this sort of hero in my book is this Catholic deacon named Ronnie Lastavica, who's a cattleman. And he lives in Belton, Texas. and, you know, a real Texas figure, but, you know, he's a very pious Catholic, and his bishops said he wanted him to start ministering into the women's prisons. There are five, I think, in Gatesville, and four of them are women's prisons, and one men. Huntsville has most of the men. But so he started interviewing the women who are ministering to the women on death. death row and it occurred to him that there were some women who lived very similar lives so he drove

over to waco and knocked on the door of the convent and bear in mind these nuns although they haven't taken a vow of silence essentially they're silent and praying all day long and and although they're not cloistered they don't they don't go out very much so ronnie knocks on the door and says you know sister there's some they're some they're some some women who could use your help. And, you know, they're living in community, but they don't know how. And you've got, you know, ancient monastic traditions about how to live together. And I think you could help them.

And, oh, okay, well, where are they? Well, they're on death row. Oh, we don't get out much, you know. So these women, their average age is mid-30s. and so if there's a future of Catholicism, you know, I think they're going to be a part of it. But they were terrified, but they felt obligated because Arani had asked and it seemed like something that they were capable of. So they went to this highly secure prison. And interestingly, the guards were a little scared of the nuns.

they answered to a different order. They were on their best behavior and a little awed. And they're all in these gray habits. You know, they look, you know. What a riveting scene. Yeah. And they walk into the common room where the death row women are all dressed in white.

And the weird thing is they immediately embraced each other. And it was true they have very much in common. You know, they each live in cells, as they're called, in the convent. They each arise around 4.30 in the morning and pray, and then they got crafts and stuff. You know, it's just very similar lies. But one of the nuns said, also you should understand that we are not beautiful women. We don't use cosmetics.

We don't dress any. There's nothing to be afraid of us, you know, because we are playing. And, you know, the women on death row had, you know, long since gone past the days when they were, you know, vibrant young. women you know the the years have taken a toll on them so i think they really felt a kinship and um so i'm i'm i'm working on that story yeah that's that's uh an interesting thing about death row i mean there's um a huge percentage i don't i don't remember the exact percentage maybe steve you can find it but of people that end up on death row who are innocent. And it's like a big to do to get any sort of look over or like a redo of their conviction or like a relook at like looking at their DNA.

Because I know the DNA. They get the DNA wrong a lot. Or like for whatever reason, whoever, whoever, gets these convicted the prosecutors who get these convictions and the judges and um they just there's this reluctance to admit that they got something so something so um serious like this wrong well there's one woman on death row who is actually innocent some people struggle to fall asleep others struggle staying asleep. And then you have people like me who constantly wake up throughout the night with their thoughts racing. I normally wake up in the middle of the night, tossing and turning for hours.

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But she was convicted by this prosecutor in Brownsville, Texas, who was running for Congress, and he was essentially working for the cartel. And he was selling sentences, and Melissa didn't have any money. So it would look good on his record if he had a death conviction for a child abuse case. And so he was hiding evidence. eyewitness testimony from her own children who saw the little girl fall down the steps and that wasn't admitted in the trial her defense attorney had just applied for a job with the district attorney and his wife was working for the judge so it was a very comfortable scene in brownsville

oh my god the prosecutor eventually went to prison himself he was sentenced for 13 years for fraud and serve, I think, five of those years. But Melissa was finally demonstrated to be innocent because of all these factors. And once the fact that the eyewitness testimony was allowed in the court, it became very clear that she would never have been convicted. And yet, even now she's on death of row because the court of criminal appeal. The court of criminal, is twiddling his thumbs, waiting to decide, you know, should we free this one? Because of what you say, there's this sense that if the jury spoke and said, she's guilty, then, you know, we have to move heaven and earth to actually change that. And that there's another woman,

Brittany Holberg, who was convicted of murdering this 80-year-old man in Amarillo. She was a prostitute at the time. But it was a gruesome 45-minute struggle between the two of them. And in a capital case, there are several things. You don't get executed just because you murdered somebody. It has to have an additional factor. It has to be a child. It has to be in process of a robbery or, you know,

or process of escaping from prison. You know, there are like 10 different things. Anyway, a jailhouse snitch. Yeah. They put a woman in the cell with Brittany. And then she came out and said that Brittany told me she enjoyed killing him and that she was going to do it again and that she stole all this money. And so that eventually got to, you know,

the Court of Criminal Appeals in Texas and the Fifth Circuit. in New Orleans. And her conviction has now been vacated, but it will be challenged by Texas, I'm sure again. But in my opinion,

you know, when you use a jailhouse snitch who was paid for her testimony, I think that should, you know, retrial at best. Oh, for sure. 100%. I have

a good friend who is a a local lawyer around here. And he takes a lot of crazy, crazy cases. One of his first cases, actually, that really, like, put him on the map was a boat captain who was driving a boat from Columbia to Tampa with, like, I forget, a hundred tons of cocaine on it or whatever. And the guy was sentenced to life in prison. And he got him off scot-free, didn't spend a day in prison. The guy, he actually let this guy stay in his house. Yeah. During the whole trial because he had nowhere to stay, he was poor.

And essentially the story was the cartel boarded a ship on the way to Tampa and held a gun to his head, said, you're taking all this cocaine to Tampa or we're going to kill you in your whole fucking family. So he took it to, you know what I mean? And that's my friend, his name is Bjorn. He's a, the lawyer, he was explaining to me. And since then, he's been taking hundreds of cases, very similar to this, where essentially the cartel will take these these, you know, these poor people like the boat captain or, you know, just pawns in this whole game and make them transport all this stuff. And if they don't do it, they threaten to kill their family. And the only people that get in trouble are these people that are put in these situations, these poor people who have no part in the moneymaking of the cartel or all the death that happens with the cartels.

And these kingpins, these high level guys, they are just untouched. Right. And they never see a courtroom in their life. And the point I was, I originally wanted to make about this lawyer friend of mine, Bjorn, was he, enjoy that magic mind. It's delicious. He took a case with a convicted murderer who was on death row for basically he was a truck driver who was on death row who was on death row for killing a prostitute at a truck stop. And we, I was interested. This was back in the day when I was making documentaries.

And I thought this was a fascinating case because Bjorn thought that he was innocent because of the some of the, it's a little bit foggy, but there was no conclusive DNA testing to prove that he did it. He claimed he was innocent, right? And the family of this prostitute, they wanted this got to be murdered. They wanted him to be executed. He was on death row. He's been on death row since like 1990. And this was, we filmed this probably in 2015.

So long time he's been on death row's whole life. And we went out. We traveled out to this little town in the middle of Florida. I forget the name of the town. But it's one of the last places. It's one of the only places. I think one of the two prisons in Florida where they still execute people. Middle of nowhere.

Spooky town. And we got there right at sunset. And we were. And there was this big field with TV reporters and on one side of the field and it was cordoned off with like caution tape was this group of people who were supporting the guy who was about to be executed. And about 100 yards away, there was another boxed off little area with all the people who were family members of the woman who died or friends of them. about an equal amount of people. And we were going back and forth interviewing both of them. And it was just the most insane experience to hear both of their sides.

I mean, on the side of the people that were trying to stop the guy from being executed where two of the people there had just gotten off death row after spending their entire lives on death row and being exonerated after finally getting their case pushed through. And, you know, also seeing like Bjorn, the lawyer, who was really emotionally invested in all this and the TV cameras were all over.

I mean, he was like beside himself during this whole process. And like the guy, the guy who was convicted for murder who was on death row, he was strapped to the table on a gurney getting ready to be lethal injected. And they had like this theater in that room, right?

Where they pull the curtains back and like certain people like the lawyers and like some of the family can be in this theater while they watch the person be executed. And I guess they had the guy strapped to the gurney for like three, hours while they waited for the court to give the decision whether they were going to the Supreme Supreme Court whether they were going to stay the execution or not. So like this guy strapped

to this table for hours waiting for the verdict to come down from the Supreme Court. And we're all and this didn't end to like three or four in the morning. Wow. And eventually I think they ended up executing him. And it was just the most bizarre experience. Like it's like it was to for me like the experience was like, it's amazing that we're living here. This was like 2015 and like the way the world has evolved, we're still like in this, we're so primitive in some of, in this, in this sense, you know? Yeah. That, that, you know, we're still, we still can't figure out if people committed a crime or not.

And we're like, we have, the fact that we have movie theaters for people to watch people be executed is just bizarre. I compare it more to a peep show. you know the old times carnival thing you know where you'd have a curtain move by yeah right right right feels feels more

and also it's um prurient you know but on the other hand I you know I'm opposed to the death penalty I wasn't until I got into the story it just wasn't important enough to me

and I'd seen a lot of people in prison that I never wanted to see get out of prison and I'd you know I thought I'd save my charitable concerns for other projects. But seeing how justice is administered in Texas, and it's probably no worse off than many states, you just can't know for certain. Right.

But you can put a question to a jury fairly or unfairly. And different lawyers would get different results. Well, is that justice? You know, different juries would make a difference, you know, an imperfect game. And the process of appeals when there really is a cause to appeal is, you know, it's very difficult to undo a conviction. Yeah, just the slow bureaucracy of the court system. Right. Yeah, I can imagine, I mean, I could see how it would just be so easy to lose hope if you got stuck in that system. Oh, sure.

You know. You also worked on a wild story about satanic ritual abuse. Oh, yeah. Which ties into all this crazy stuff. I was in therapy back, this was like in early 90s. And I loved my therapist. because they were such dear, intelligent people. And because I was an investigative reporter,

you know, they said, well, you know, we've been seeing a number of patients, you know, basically young women. Yeah. Who in therapy are having these flashbacks, recovered memories of satanic abuse. And a lot of times they have multiple personnel. disorder.

Huh. And then they said, and Satanists are responsible for more than 50 murders a year in Austin. Satanists. Yeah. How do you define a Satanist? That would be my first question. Well, my first question was, you know, we don't have 50 murders in Austin a year. Oh, wow.

You know, whether Satanist or not, that's more than we've ever had. So, but I was intrigued. And then there was a conference of police who were being, the lecturer was about satanic ritual abuse. And this cop who was going around the country with his, you know, slideshow said that Satanists were responsible for 50,000 murders a year in the U.S. And once again, it was more than our actual total homicide count. Right. And these are cops. You know, they should be a little more skeptical.

But no. And so I went to my editor, Tina Brown, that's a New Yorker, and I was proposed to do an article on multiple personality disorder. And she was, oh, huh? And I said, well, you know, and sometimes in therapy, they recover these memories of satanic abuse. Oh, that's so hot, that's so hot. She was so through.

Yes, yes, Larry, yes. I thought, well, how would I approach this? The Internet was young at that point, but it was very useful, and I could go through and find all these court cases of people who were suing their parents for abuse or their therapists or, you know, just there were hundreds. And there was one case in which a person was convicted of satanic abuse. and he had confessed. And his name was Paul Ingram. He was a deputy sheriff in Olympia, Washington. I thought, well, if there's anything to this, that'll be it.

So I went to Olympia. And what I found was that Paul's had a family of four, and two girls and two boys. and the girls, one of them, Erica, had made the initial outcry. And it got, you know, got into the sheriff's apartment where Paul was a deputy. And so the assistant sheriff arrested him. And they brought in his preacher, an evangelical preacher who, told Paul that God will not let a false memory come into your brain.

And then they brought in a psychiatrist who hypnotized him. And Paul had said, I know my girls wouldn't lie, but I don't remember it. So to help him remember, you know, the psychiatrist and the preacher sat there with the deputy and elicited these memories of, you know, satanic, crimes. And in the church that they were a part of it, they called the Church of the Four Square Gospel, there was a lot of gossip. You can imagine something like this was just, you know, on everybody's mind. And the preacher had access to the deputies and so on. So there was information coming out. And so that would generate new memories on the part of the daughters.

and then they, and then it would be reported back to Paul, you know, what they were saying, and he would come up with memories, but that they never had the same memory. There were all these disparate memories, and the, you know, girls were talking about. Make Mother's Day even more special at Whole Foods Market. Kick off brunch or dinner with quality cheese and charcutory with no synthetic nitrates. Then go seafood. There's an abundance on sale at Whole Foods Market. market, where it's all sustainable while caught are responsibly farmed. At the bakery, grab seasonal treats like their strawberry pretzel cream pie, and you can't go wrong with a ready-to-he

LeRaein, deviled eggs, and fresh-cut fruits to go. Celebrate Mom with Whole Foods Market. These satanic fires, you know, they'd have these campfires, you know, and they were, uh, the girls were impregnated and then later nailed to a table and had the, uh, you know, the, uh, the girls were, uh, impregnated and then later nailed to a table and had the fetus withdrawn from them, you know, and their neighbors had committed homicide and, you know, and it was bizarre stuff, you know, but the cops took it seriously. They had helicopters flying around looking for, you know, where the fires might have been, digging up the yard. And I asked the, the undershers. sheriff, you know, did you find any bones? You know, there was, well, there was, yes.

Really, what was it? Well, it was an elk bone. Obviously, offering this is evidence, right? And so, but the thing was that Paul confessed, and he felt like he must have done this. And, you know, when the questioning was so bizarre because so Paul, you know, he had two friends that were also implicated by the girls. So when Ray or Jim, you know, would come in, what did they do? Well, I think they must have raped my wife. Okay. And then what did you do?

Well, I would have gone back to work. and it was all in this conditional tense. It must have been this way. I would have done this. He never said, I did it, but he confessed. So he went to prison. And at some point, I was in L.A. And I decided to go to the headquarters of the Church of the Four Square Gospel.

It was a church that Amy Simple MacPherson created back in the old days of Hollywood. So I was talking to the leader of the church, and I said, you know, that first outcry by this girl, Erica, happened, I think, at your summer camp. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. One of our counselors led that. and I said, is she here? Yeah, yeah, Paula, come on in the office, you know? So Paula, the evangelist who had been speaking at this church camp,

came in and I asked her about, you know, the setting for this church camp and how many girls were there and what was her role and so on. And she said, you know, I would be talking to them. the I would say there's a girl in the room I can I can see her in a closet she's in a closet and and and she's so afraid of her father and and she's she hears the footsteps coming towards into some girl cried out it was me it was me and you know a lot of hysteria and and so at the end of camp she says I was preparing to leave and some of the counselors came over and said, there's a young woman who needs your attention. And so Erica was actually a counselor at this camp. And, you know, we don't know what to do with her.

She's on the stage and she's just weeping. And so Paula came over to Erica, and she said, now I put my hand on her head and I prayed over her. And I heard God say, you've been abused. And then I said, and it's been happening for a long time.

And it's your father. Now, this was a very religious young woman, Erica, was. And she was getting this message from God telling her that her father had been abusing her. There was no evidence. It never was any evidence of it. It was only this transmittal, you know, the hand on the head and the message from God.

And it led to the ruination of Paul Ingram's life and the splintering of his family. And, you know, it was – but he served years in prison. And, you know, once again, the business of trying to roll back a conviction is extremely difficult, especially one that had been framed as child abuse with a satanic addition to it. Is that them? Yeah. Yeah, that's the family before it became the – What did he say about, like, what?

Did anyone ever ask him? Like, why did you admit to doing this? Oh, yeah, I talked to him about it. You know, he, it's hard for him to understand because, you know, it seemed that he must have done something. He had a, he was very guilty. And he's a fervent believer. So he trusted his preacher and the psychiatrist. And, you know, these, these, you know, I.

Wow. I know you have a lot of interest in UFOs and stuff like that, but there was a study done in Georgia, which would not be allowed nowadays, but a psychiatrist or psychologist had a patient, and he told her I'd like to do a little experiment. And I'm going to tell you, I'm going to hypnotize you, and I'm going to put some suggestions in your mind.

It's not going to be true. It's just, you know, just see. And, you know, so he hypnotized her. And he said, you were late to our session. What happened? Which wasn't true, you know. And she said, well, I was driving along the road, and I saw a cow on the side of the road, you know,

who was trying to give birth. And she was really struggling. So I thought I could help. So I got out of the car and I went over to help her and he said, and then a light appeared. And she said, and then a light appeared overhead. And a spaceship came down. And, you know, and she was abducted.

And he woke her up and he said, look, this is what you said. Bear in mind, you made it up. You know, I planted it inadvertently in your mind. But, you know, just free yourself of this. She couldn't shake the feeling that. that it was as real to her as any other memory. And I think that's part of what was going on with Paul and to some extent with his children.

You know, they're fantasizing, you know, they were charged with the idea that something happened. And that phrase has done a lot of damage, especially in child abuse cases and the old daycare pursuits, remember the daycare hysteria, you know, there was always, well, maybe they didn't, you know, fly to Mexico and bury a giraffe, which was, for instance, in Austin, that was one of the daycare stories.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Maybe that didn't happen, but something happened, or these kids wouldn't be so screwed up. So the jury would convict them on the something happened charge. Yeah, what was that story about the daycare? The kid was telling their parents that they, like, flew to Mexico. go and buried a giraffe or something? Yeah, a friend and Dan's daycare. And, you know, it was just a kind of neighborhood daycare.

During that time, there were a lot of these daycare cases arising, and some of the parents were concerned. And so a mother asked, you know, her daughter, you know, had anything gone on in the daycare. and I think the daughter gave, you know, responded to one of the suggestions, you know, well, maybe or something like that. It was hard to, so she called a psychologist, a local psychologist in Austin who I had interviewed, and she assembled some other family members. And they had, back then they would have dolls that they used.

to illustrate, you know, where did he touch you here and stuff like that. So these were parents and a psychologist interviewing very, very young children. And I went to about an hour of trial of Fran and Dan. I think they might have been tried separately. I don't remember. but there's a little girl on the stand sitting in her big sister's lap and the prosecutor you know honey did did did Dan hurt you and she had a she said no did did did Dan touch you someplace you didn't know you honor me we have a recess and then it was yes after the recess yeah and I it made me really

scared to think that and and I was just a spectator I wasn't on the jury and they might have heard other more compelling evidence but they did hear evidence about how these kids were flown to Mexico and they were you know slaughtering wild animals and and then flying back just in time to be picked up by mommy and daddy I mean that they served years in prison before they were exonerated and you know it's it's it's a really dark mark on our culture that that kind of hysteria is allowed to proliferate and what year was that happening i don't remember the exact year but the daycare cases all took place in the early in the 90s in the 90s oh god yeah we had um i had a gentleman on here um by the name of whitley streber yeah i've talked to him he lives in texas or he used to live in texas He lives in L.A. I think. He lives in L.A. now. And he had a crazy story about a military school he went to when he was a kid.

And he said there was a lot of hypnotizing going on and a lot of weird psychological experiments going on in there. Where they were like putting kids in boxes and things and like experimenting with telepathy. And he also explains the story, which he doesn't really talk about much anymore. But he was, he's done two separate radio interviews in the past where he's, uh, mentioned when he was a kid, he was flown down to Mexico as a to some, to some, to some, a part of some military experiment during the Cold War. And, uh, allegedly, um, him and the rest of these children were shown videos of people being like mutilated in like dead bodies and they were explained, they was explained to these kids that it was their fault

that this happened to these people. So it was some crazy experiment to induce trauma in children um to induce some sort of psychic or psionic abilities and kids again this is like the cold war sounds like crazy woo-woo stuff but but this is the story that he told um and and he he doesn't talk about the me anymore but that that reminded me of it and um you know during that time in the cold war there was also a lot of like crazy um remote viewing type things that were going on, experiments within the intelligence community, trying to figure out better ways to spy on the Soviet Union, and they thought that this remote viewing thing could happen. And there was people like Ingo Swan and Uri Geller, who, not Uri, but Ingo, Swan,

and a bunch of the other remote viewers in this program called the, it was a Stanford Research Institute program, were Scientologists. Yeah. which is bizarre. I recently had a gentleman on here named Jeffrey Mishlob, who explained this all to me. And he was, I was asking, I'm like, why are all these remote viewers, Scientologists? It's so strange. He's like, yeah, there was a lot of them. How put off was another one. And I asked this guy, Jeffrey Mishel. I'm like, why do you think this was? And he says, I think El Ron Hubbard was on to something. Well, I had a letter from Whitley.

years ago after I did that remembering Satan piece, and he said that he wished it I would write about him because he knows that there's something wrong with him. And people think he's the village idiot. But these are, just like I said about that test, these are real memories to me. But I know that they can't be. So, you know, please, you know,

consider writing about me. So I was tied up on something else. And then Whitley came out with another book about abduction. And his, we have a mutual friend, Jim Connetka, and he and Whitley wrote a bestselling novel together. They went to school together, as a matter of fact, but they called War Day. It was a New Times bestseller and so they were always in contact and Jim and I went to see Whitley at the bookstore when he was signing books and afterwards I said whether you remember that letter you wrote to me and he said yeah yeah yeah I remember that but you know that was before I found out about the implants so I mean I thought I've always been interested in why people how it is that people fantasize these

things. I don't believe he's deliberately making it up. But there's something wrong and it intrigued me. But I also felt I felt he was too fragile to take on. I'm glad I didn't write about him. Was that before the movie came out, the communion movie, with Christopher Walken? I don't know. I don't remember. Yeah, that was a long time ago. But I can't believe, I mean, that's pretty wild that you can write something like that. And then they make a freaking Hollywood movie with Christopher Walken playing your character. You know, like I wonder what that does to you, what that does to your belief. You know, like say, for example, that he, you know, he thought that these memories can't be real.

Something weird happened. I don't know what it is, but I don't necessarily believe it. And then some crazy blockbuster Hollywood movie gets made about it. Well, it's reinforcing. make money out of something like that. And so there's a disincentive to walk. But at one point in his life, he wanted to break the spell

and he thought that I could help him. Yeah, he also writes a lot of very dark, dark fiction. Right. Stuff about vampires and werewolves and things like this. Yeah. I got to take a leak real quick. Okay. Take a quick break.

We'll jump back in. All right. While we're on the topic of all this satanic stuff, though. Elron Hubbard and Jack Parsons, that story is fascinating. It is. Because Jack Parsons was really into all this satanic stuff, right? And had some sort of connection to Alistair Crowley. Is that right? Yeah. He would, to some extent, considered himself ordained by Alistair Crowley. And Hubbard ran off with his girlfriend. It was annoying to him. Yeah. It was a quite a scene on south orange avenue

in Pasadena back in the day so Parsons who was this you know JPL he was like I founded JPL right a legitimate high level rocket scientist yeah ends up like how does a guy like that

end up being like involved in all this satanic stuff and like he wanted to he wanted to like bring the Antichrist right yeah your question presupposes that a really smart person wouldn't go into all of this. But the truth is that a lot of these people, a lot of Scientologists are really smart and very successful personalities. It doesn't have anything to do with intelligence.

And I think to some extent there's a lot of fantasizing going on, which is something we've been talking about in this last hour. But if Jack Parsons can be accused of, you know, being a cultist, a fanatist, you know, he's exploring the universe, but he's also sort of exploring, you know, the outer limits of human behavior. And I, I mean, he was very proud of it. I mean, he didn't hide it. You know, he really had this, you know, sort of satanic temple. And people were drawn to it. And he legitimized it, too, by being such a prominent scientist and so on. So I don't know.

He wound up killing himself. And that was kind of sad into his interesting life. There's a spot in the Everglades, allegedly, that he had a site that he worked on. Are you familiar with that? No, I don't know about that. There's this guy who does videos in the Everglades, catching iguanas. And up there's this spot. I can't remember that.

Steve, maybe you can Google it. But it's an abandoned, I guess abandoned Air Force Base rocket launch area. There's actual silos in there where apparently Jack Parsons used to work at. And there's like, he goes into the woods into the Everglades and he finds all these abandoned overgrown houses with like pentagrams in there and all kinds of like dark satanic stuff which is wild i didn't know that you know it's it's you know it's just uh it's so strange to me it's just so because like being satanic is like it's like being religious you know it's just like going the opposite direction yeah you don't have to you don't have to play it the whole video but i

was just wondering if you could google where that where jack parsons this place was in the everglades um Are you religious? No, I was religious as a teenager. And the Methodist, so I was religious as you get to be in the Methodist church. But I was in young life in some of these Christian organizations. And left it aside somewhere long in college. But I've always been interested and attracted to religious ideas without. actually being able to allow myself to believe in them. So I can associate ideas. I mean,

you know, I think Jesus is a fascinating historical character and I think a wonderful model. And so was he conceived by immaculate conception or, you know, did he go to heaven? I don't, in some ways those things don't matter to me. I think, you know, what Jesus would mean to me now is I'd like to incorporate more of his behavior into my own. And I think that's something admirable. And I feel that way about, you know, I don't know that much about Buddhism, but I'm intrigued by the lessons that people draw from those religious teachings. Do you remember the point where you, like, stopped being really religious?

Was there like an exact point, or was it just kind of like a slow? But it was this one moment. I wouldn't say that it was the moment my life changed, but it was a moment. In Young Life, we had these two leaders who were sexual magnets, Roy and Johnny. Roy was, he played in the Rose Bowl. He had a rosebow finger on his finger. He was a center. As you would expect, an impressive piece of meat.

And his wife, Johnny, was an airline stewardess and just this high. as she could be. So for a lot of teenage kids, you know, these are appealing role models. And the, and of course their marriage didn't last as I understand it. And he ran off with one of the high school students is what the rumor was. But there was a moment when I was, we were, you He was preparing us for the challenges of college, you know, and all the existentialists that awaited us. And so I was supposed to play one of these snooty intellectuals who believed that God, you know, it was the watchmaker analogy. You know, he created the watch and wound it up and then left us to our own devices. And so I made a very compelling case for that.

And he said, now refute yourself. And I couldn't do that. You know, it just because the way to refute that is simply through belief. And I realized that I couldn't find my way there. And that was a, you know, I had talked myself out of it. The idea of God seems to be a, a fundamental part of the operating system of the human mind. Yeah.

I don't think it's... I mean, it might be tied to the era that we live in. You know, I think, and it's also the culture we're in. You know, I've spent a lot of time in other countries where you don't have the diversity of belief. You know, you can only believe one thing. You can believe it more or less, but there's this one thing. And it's Islam or it's Buddhism or, you know, it's whatever.

But in America, you can believe anything. And like El Ron Hubbard, if you don't find something, you just make it up. You know, you create your own religion. And it's a, we're, I think, a dynamic religious culture in our country more than any other country. It's kind of, it seems like a kind of a double-edged sword, right? because America, there's no really like unifying identity to what it is to be an American, right? Like we're such a diverse country with different beliefs, different, you know, values. And some other countries like Israel, for example, or let's just say some Middle Eastern country,

they would go as far for their, you know, so far for their beliefs in God to strap a bomb to their chest and detonate it, right? And it's, it's almost like the opposite here, right? So it's like, it's like they have a very, very from like a, even from if you want to put it into like a national security frame. Like is it great that some countries can have this very strong, unifying identity? Is that, is that good for a country in some, in some sense? Um, versus us. who as a population, we don't have this cohesive glue that helps us all stick together. But, you know, we have this giant military, this giant government, all this money, all these weapons and all these things. It kind of makes for a very interesting dynamic.

Well, you know, I take into account you're younger than I am. And I had the idea, I always had an idea of being an American and is imperfect. an identity as that is. It was always something that was dear to me. And as a reporter, going into other countries where, you know, you didn't have the freedom to speak. You didn't have the freedom to think clearly, you know, on your own. And, you know, you lived your life, if not in fear, then at least in, you lived it at a lower

level than you might have had you had your freedom. And I often think that maybe other countries have a clearer idea about America than we do ourselves. And there's a sense in which every country has a foot in America in some way. It's like I think we understand so little about the world. And it's like we're surrounded by this mirror glass where we just see ourselves. But But outside, they see who we are. And oftentimes, I mean, I think invariably, you go into a country and they'll have an uncle in America. You know, there's somebody they know in America, someone they're related to, usually.

They know a lot about what's going on with that person, and they compare the life that they're living in Egypt or Saudi Arabia or Thailand or wherever to the life their relative is living in Des Moines or Los Angeles and something. So there's a constant point of comparison. which is America and that is a very powerful and very precious thing to have but we we abuse it and we treat you know treat the rest of the world so poorly that it you know I think people want to be I think people want to love and attention of America I remember when this was back in the 80s and I went to Nicaragua and the Sandinistas were in the middle of the

revolution. Yeah. And I, it was the most anti-American country I had ever been in at that point. And it was very impoverished. But I went to a baseball game with this, the mistress of one of the commandantes was my escort. She was, she was a good number, I'll tell you. I bet. You know, she, we had our bags checked and, you know, they pulled out this big pistol in her purse. And I thought, well, I'm going to really behave myself here. and so we sat up in the stands above the commandanties and I looked down there and they were all you know they had their hands to their mouths and it looked like they were praying and I asked the escort you know can I get you a coke this is no no alcohol served here and sure so I went up

and I ordered two coax and they were if the country was so poor they couldn't afford paper cups So they poured the liquid into sandwich bags, little plastic, you know, sandwich bags. So they weren't praying. They were manipulating the liquid in the bag into their mouths. And so as it happened, just a couple of weeks before I went to Monagua, the Baltimore Orioles had come. The Baltimore Oils at that time had three Nicaraguan players. including their ace pitcher Dennis Martinez. And the legendary manager of the team, Earl Weaver, said,

well, let's just go to Nicaragua and show off a little bit. So they flew the team, and they had an exhibition game. Nobody could stop talking about it. They hated America, but they love the Baltimore Oils. And, you know, it's just, it was the most important thing that had happened since the revolution. Wow. And I think we forget the immense amount.

out of power that we have over other cultures, although I think we're squandering it so badly these days that it's, its value is disappearing. The reason I bring this up is because I've been noticing a lot of reporting recently on people in Silicon Valley trying to like map Christianity onto everything that's going on in Silicon Valley, which historically is kind of like an anti-religious area, right? Peter Thiel is one of the biggest people. You know, Peter Thiel's a really interesting guy. He's a gay Christian billionaire who is, you know, one of the original investors in Facebook.

I mean, all kinds of, you know, really big companies. He also is the owner of Palantir, which is a huge company that's biggest client is the U.S. military and intelligence services. I think the CIA is using Palantir. and this guy is putting on these crazy conferences in San Francisco inviting people to these Christian conferences. I think it was him and the guy from this company called Y Combinator, who is a big part. It's like a kingmaker in Silicon Valley. They fund a lot of startups.

And there's this church. I forget that I mean, there's this big church right in the middle of San Francisco. And like they're putting on these big conferences and, and, and, and, and, you know, trying to really sort of push this push Christianity and religion onto all the people inside Silicon Valley to sort of give them some sort of purpose. I don't know what it is. I really can't wrap my mind around what's going on. But like, is it reasonable to suggest that if they were to push this religion onto a place like, Silicon Valley and these places that are coming up with these new innovative technologies that are being used for different things around the country and around the world that are a huge part of our economy and our military and everything else. Would that somehow strengthen us as a country on the world stage if we were more cohesively involved in a unifying religion?

Well, I don't think that we will be involved in a unifying religion. We're fortunate that it's not as divisive as it is, you know, like in Israel and the Middle East. Yeah. The, my impression of Palantir is, that I just read Carp's book, The Technological Republic, I think is called. And, you know, the main goal is, you know, he feels that the, you know, the, the community, the Silicon Valley community has been created in America, but they don't feel allegiance to America. And I think there's some merit in that. And also, you know, it's been charged with Palantir has, with helping the Defense Department. But on the other hand, when

your adversaries are Russia and China, you want to keep ahead of the algorithms. So, you know, I'm not one that says, you know, what's interesting to me is, you know, they're developing very powerful tools. But people with varying ideologies can use them for different purposes. And, you know, we're entering an era where technology awards such unprecedented amount of power to small groups and even singular individuals. And, you know, I wrote about terrorism after 9-11. You know, these were guys who were using suicide bombers and stuff like that.

Ben Laden wanted to get a nuclear bomb, but he never could. Right. You know, nowadays, you know, the amount of power that al-Qaeda or any group like that could assemble easily is just terrifying to consider. I remember the day that I awakened to the drone thing was, you know, some, you know, been more than 10 years, I guess, but somebody flew a drone over the White House fence. And I thought, oh, my God, it's that easy, you know, and it's, it is that easy. We know, there are all these anti-dron efforts right now that Defense Department has been working on. Yeah. But swarms of drones, which are being trained like to fly through a forest, a way a flock of birds would do.

Right. It's one of the new Palantir things. Yeah. It's really. It's like spreadsheet warfare. It's chilling. And, you know, it's, so, you know, Silicon Valley is, you know, government itself is losing its role in our society and it's being replaced by private industry

for good or ill and you'll see good or ill you'll see both in massive amounts because there's a lot of fervor in Silicon Valley and in private investment in general and even the defense department I was talking to one of the guys who procures weapons and what they do now rather than imagining a weapon, you know, and then going out and bidding a contract, they go from shop to shop where people are developing algorithms and saying, you know, what do you have? And it's kind of like shopping. You know, maybe we could use that.

You know, there's not a design in effect. It's all, you know, it's like vintage clothes shopping, you know, in my thinking. and it's a good idea to keep on top of what's the latest. Yes. But on the other hand, it seems to be that there's no idea about what they actually need or want. Yeah, it's interesting the types of characters that you can find in there. Like, again, going back to Peter Thiel and Alex Carp, two very different people, right? And one of them is he made Alex the CEO of his company.

and they're both very, I think Alex Carp donated like millions of dollars to Kamala Harris's campaign. And then you have Peter Thiel who is like one of the biggest backers of Trump and his vice president. And, you know, Alex Carp proclaims to be this progressive guy, liberal person, but, you know, is also very much, you know, like a, if you could call him a war hawk, but he's a very like expansionist type of guy, right? And I think he said in his, there was a New York Times article I read about him and he said something. something like, something like, and I might get this quote wrong, but it was something to the effect of the idea of taking lives and saving lives is really interesting to me. Yeah, it is interesting. I hope that's as far as you go with it. Right. Just like, it's bizarre. It is bizarre. The idea of private industries taking control of, you know, some of the, some of this technology. that can be used, you know, around the world in war zones and things like this or for espionage.

You know, it's a terrifying idea to think about what would happen if some of these private industries, you know, were able to slip out of control of the United States government or the United States military. Right. And there's a little question that'll happen. I mean, in a globalized world, you know, where the market, is, you know, you see, you know, the evasion of sanctions everywhere, you know, I mean, Russia's getting pretty much all it needs, even though it's sanctioned. You know, other countries are providing. And it's, you know, once you develop these tools, there's little available to keep them in the box.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. So I want to talk to you about Looming Tower. And I want to get to your new book, too, on the human scale, which was fascinating. I was able to, I wasn't able to read the whole thing. I made it through the first seven chapters, though. All right. I'll just keep my remarks limited to the beginning. No, no, no.

I want to talk about all of it. I think it's fascinating. But I want to spend a good amount of time on that. But I wanted to ask you about a little bit about looming tower. How long after 9-11 did you decide to write about this? Oh, on 9-11. It was on 9-11. Yeah, it was, you know, when the planes hit, it took out the phones in Manhattan.

So I texted my editor. At that time, I was, you know, maybe thinking about leaving journalism and going into the movie business. And so my relationship with the magazine was a little tentative. and I wrote Remnick, David Remnick, the editor, and I said, put me to work. And so that afternoon, we had a, the phones came back on. We had a conference call. And there were, you know, maybe a dozen New Yorker writers

were scattered around. Everybody was on a story or something, you know. So, I mean, Jane Mayer, our member, he was in Washington, and Jeff Goldberg, and you could hear the ambulances you headed towards the Pentagon and stuff like that. Wow. And I... You were in Austin?

I was in Austin, and it was very frustrating because you couldn't fly anywhere. You know, planes were grounded. And so I couldn't go to New York. I couldn't go get into the story. So I started searching on the Internet and also asking friends. You know, is there somebody I can talk to?

And I interviewed some Muslims in Dallas, Fort Worth, and so on. But a friend had met this young man at a film conference. He was a reporter. And he was working for an investment magazine called Waters. And he was supposed to have an interview on top of the World Trade Center. and the windows on the world restaurant on the 101st floor. But for the first time in his life, he slept through his subway stop. So he got off the subway and rushed back in the opposite direction,

got to the World Trade Center. Back then, you know, the World Trade Center had a bank of elevators. There were more than 100. And you had to go up a flight of stairs, an escalator. Yeah, they had the escalators that went up. Yeah. Yeah. So he went up, got on the elevator, and he was late.

He was a young man, so he didn't have a watch. He just had his iPhone. So he looked at his iPhone, and it was like 801. And the elevator operator held the door for this woman who was walking across the lobby. and you know his reporter really was you know

let's go let's go and she stepped on to the elevator he has a an amazing memory and he looked down and he saw as she stepped on that she had a rose tattoo on her ankle and that made an impression

and then the plane hit and so the doors to the elevator accordioned and he walked out and he wasn't an earthquake nobody had any idea but there were pieces of plaster and stuff lying on the floor of the lobby and some he said were like the size of a shoebox and some were the size like of an office desk you know and so it was a weird landscape and remember he had to go up that flight of stairs or escalator but he saw outside

a patio and he thought he was going out into the world and so he stepped out into the patio this was like second second floor or something yeah it was mezzanine or whatever and he stepped out

and he said there were hundreds of shoes and what looked like luggage but he realized they were human tors and so he his story about getting walking home to queens became the bookend of the black issue of the new yorker and i had been

interviewing him and giving my wife the tape and to tape up type up and you know it was you know weeping and you know it was really a difficult time and uh my my one of my editors uh said you know you've got enough, don't worry about it. And I thought, no, you're kidding? This is it. This is the story. And then that night, David Remnick called and said, I want everything you can get from this because this is the book end of the story, which I knew it had to be.

So after that, I was looking for a way to write about the story in a larger way. But how do you take a catastrophe like that, some vast human tragedy and making it? shrink it down in some way to make it relatable. And I've always had this idea of what I call the donkey, which sounds like a deprecating term, but a donkey is a beast of burden, and it can carry a lot of information on his back. And he can take the reader into a world he's never been.

So I'm looking for that person. And on the Washington Post site, I think I was looking at Obit, that were streaming online. On the Washington Post site, I found this obituary for John O'Neill, who had been head of counterterrorism at the FBI in New York

and had the warrant on bin Laden. But he had been washed out of the FBI when he took some classified information out of the office to a retirement conference as it happened. So he took a job as a head of security at the World Trade Center. So I thought, instead of getting bin Laden,

bin Laden got him. And I didn't know if he was a hero or a goat, you know, but he was a hell of a donkey. And so that's how I got started on the looming tower. And I had to, my other donkeys were Iman Elsa Woffrey, number two guy and bin Laden himself and Prince Turkey Al-Faisal, who was the head of Saudi intelligence. And through these interweaving biographies, I could tell the story of 9-11. Wow. And how, as far as like approaching a story like this? I imagine you had to find a lot of sources within the FBI and the intelligence community, right?

Yeah. What was that like? I was real fortunate. It took a while for me to understand why I was so fortunate that the FBI, I had written a movie called The Siege. Right. That came out in 1998 and with Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis and a number of other fine actors. And Denzel's job was the same as John O'Neils. And that was odd to me, you know, and then the movie was about what would happen if terrorism came to America as it had in London or Paris.

You know, what if it came to New York? That was the premise. And then it came out in 1998. And so it was three years before 9-11, but it was eerie in many respects that these parallels were in the movie. And so I felt having a memory. imagined the scenario. Then I wanted to find out what really happened. And that's what led me on that odyssey to write the Looming Tower.

And was it like when you were doing this research and talking to sources, I imagine some of these people were still actively working? Oh, yeah. Well, I get back to your question. I had to talk to the FBI. Right. And when I was writing the movie, I didn't get very much cooperating. and suddenly it seemed the gates were opening.

And one guy I really wanted to interview was named Ali Sufant. Right. When I wrote the movie, I knew, I had heard about this Lebanese American FBI agent who spoke Arabic and very few, I think seven in the whole industry, the whole bureau spoke Arabic. So he was an incredibly valuable source and asset. And he was made available to me. And that was a good sign. And then other agents that I was interested in were made available. And then finally I figured out what was going on.

The CIA was trying to blame the FBI for 9-11. And so I became part of their defense. And so practically anybody I wanted to talk to in the Bureau, I was able to talk to. And the CIA, I talked to people in the CIA, but they weren't nearly as forthcoming. And then a lot of my questions had to do with the fact that two of the hijackers came to America in January of 2000,

like 19 months before 9-11. And the CIA knew they were in America and didn't tell the FBI. And so they were trying to shove responsibility off of them. and put it on to the Bureau. And the Bureau was not perfect. But they didn't know that Al-Qaeda was in America until the CIA came and told them in late August of 2001

a month before the actual tragedy. So they didn't have the time to go out and find al-Qaeda. The reason I'm convinced that the CIA ever came to tell the FBI is that they lost them. They didn't know where they were. And so now they maybe had been planning in colloots with the Saudi intelligence

to turn these guys. That's the theory of a lot of FBI guys. But they couldn't turn them if they had disappeared. And so they didn't see them again until they showed up on TV. So the idea here with this

internal riff between the CIA and the FBI is that John O'Neill and the FBI, Ali Sufant, they wanted to find the culprits and get rid of them. or arrest them. And the intelligence community, the CIA, they wanted to keep their distance and try to figure out their way to get more intelligence out of this. There was always a conflict in the mission of these two bureaus. But that was compounded by personal animosity. And, you know, one of the leader of the bin Laden unit in the CIA

testified before Congress that one good thing happened on 9-11, John O'Neill was killed. That's the level of their hatred. And it got in the way. You know, I mean, America could have withstood, you know, an attack of some sort. But 9-11 was a trauma, deep wound in the country. And I still think that the CIA bears a lot of moral responsibility for that. And so John O'Neill and, well, mainly I think Ali Sufant, they pretty much, snuffed the whole thing out, right?

Well, you know, Ali was a, you know, unique individual. Yeah. You know, he had... Super young. He was very young. He was the youngest case agent. You know, I mean, he was in his 20s when he made the, was case agent for 9-11. And he's the guy that, he's the guy that identified the hijackers.

And, you know, he was, he didn't torture. anybody, you know, it's, he was very clever interrogator. You know, he would, for instance, he had a little snippet of some taped conversation between two of these Al-Qaeda guys. And so that's all he had, you know, in this one interrogation. And he got a bunch of, he got a shopping cart, you know, with a bunch of, you know, with a bunch of, similar shape cassettes, you know, and make it look like he had this, you know, library.

And he walked into this interrogation, and he just picked randomly, supposedly, this one tape and popped it in and played this bit. And, you know, the suspect's eyes are like, oh, my God, they overheard my telephone calls. And what else do they know? And so he just spilled the beans. There was no more beans.

There was one bean, you know. But it was just, it was clever. interrogation of a little trickery involved, but no torture. And he's a guy that pulled the FBI out of Guantanamo and said, we don't torture people. And he was going to arrest the CIA operatives that were doing the torture. You know, he was prevented from doing that. But he's a man of the kind of principles that we'd like for the country to stand for. Yeah.

I'm sure you know John Kariakou, right? Not personally. Right. Yeah. His story. I mean, he was the one who basically like blew the whistle on the whole torture program. Yeah. What happened to him, they sent him to prison and ruined his life.

Yeah. Stripped him up his retirement. So where did I want to go with this? Bin Laden. So I've had people on the show, including John, actually, who talk about how in the years leading up to 9-11, we had CIA people, paramilitary folks over in Khartoum in Africa and in the Middle East, basically tracking bin Laden's every move.

And in fact, there's this guy who, this guy by the name of Billy Waugh, who's like this famous CIA paramilitary commando, basically, who Annie Jacobson writes about in her book, Surprise Kill, Vanish,

who was like there tracking the guy and going on daily jogs around the mosque that he would be, visiting every day in Khartoum. He was taking photos of the guy. He would, I mean, of Bin Laden, he would be like literally across the street from bin Laden taking photos of him around the clock. And they couldn't get the, and then the way I understand it is, um, they couldn't get permission to take out bin Laden, even though they very easily could have.

One, two, a one, two, three, four. Give me a break. Give me a break. Yeah. Break, break piece of that Kit Kat bar! Have a break. Have a Kit Kat. And as far as your understanding, why was that? Well, at that time, there were a couple of things going on.

Bin Laden was sort of laying low. And he spent, I think, four years in Sudan. He wasn't active. He was mainly al-Qaeda become a kind of agricultural institution. You know, he was developing all these seeds that he was. he was very proud of and he was a you know he had may have owned more land in Sudan than any other individual um and they played soccer and stuff like that so it wasn't uh he was anti-american he was making noise but at this point the king was trying to reconcile

with him and he sent jamal kashoggi uh you bravely jama kashoggi yeah it was ben Lodin's buddy and although you know not a follower you know he was but he was a friend of his and had spent time in Afghanistan with bin Laden during the Mujahideen days and Jamal was a reporter and he was a friend of mine and oh really he was sent to Khartoum explicitly to get bin Laden to renounce terrorism and then you'll be welcome home who sent him there the king oh and so uh the way jamal explained it to me he spent three days uh in cartoon um and bin laden was always very close to the point of pronouncing terrorism because he was homesick but finally he wouldn't he wouldn't cross that line So, Jamal went home empty-handed, and at that point, the Sudanese decided to expel him and rob him of practically everything that he had, all of his possessions.

And I had a, I went to Sudan three times tracking that story down. And the first time I went, I had been working closely with. the Sudanese intelligence and because I had a, someone had referred me. And so they were, they would drive me around and show me where Bin Laden lived and the mosque and where the soccer fields were and all this sort of stuff. But I said, look, I need to talk to somebody. I need somebody in Al-Qaeda. And so one day I was in this, in my room in what they called cheerfully the Hilton.

And I'd have to flash back a little bit. I had, the first time I flew to Saudi Arabia, I had a job there. I'm entering these young reporters at this Saudi Gazette. When I got off the plane, I was in terrible pain. My back was really killing me. And I, you know, for the three months I was there the first time, I couldn't raise my toes. I was just, you know, it was a terrible sciatic. pain. So the next time I went back to Saudi Arabia, I took one of those exercise balls that

you sit on when your back is pain. Back then you didn't have the pump. So you had to blow it up and then unblow it. And so I flew to Cartoon with my exercise ball. And so there was a knock at the door and the Sudanese intelligence officer was there and he had this guy with him. And and he wouldn't tell me who he was. So, come on in, and I offered the guy, the mysterious guy, the desk chair, and the intelligence agent lay down on my bed and went soundlessly. So it left me with this guy that I quickly ascertained was an al-Qaeda member. And so I sat down on the ball, and he was over there.

and I started asking him questions. And he knew everything. And I thought, Jesus, who is this guy? And so I flew back to America, and I researched him and I, you know, triangulated and I came up with Mohamed Loy Boyazid. His Qaeda name was Abu Riddha El-Suri. And he was the guy who took the notes when al-Qaeda was founded. it's in his handwriting and i suddenly holy shit i was talking to the guy that has been in

al-Qaeda from the moment it started and i didn't know that so i flew back to cartoon and he wouldn't see me and that was disappointing and so finally he agreed if i came again he would talk to me and so i flew back i said uh loe you know It's a lot of trouble coming to a cartoon. Why didn't you see me last time? He said, well, I didn't know how seriously to take you. When we met the first time, you were sitting on a balloon. So that's how I got into Al-Qaeda.

Wow. It was, you know, when bin Laden left Sudan, you know, there's a case to be made. We should have just left him alone. Because we helped bin Laden originally, right? We helped him against the Soviet Union. Yes, in that sense. We didn't directly give money to him, but we were fighting the same cause. And so, you know, in that sense, we were allies.

But there was a myth that, you know, that we were underwriting him. That never was true. Nor would he even want it, you know. Really? Yeah. I mean, he got plenty of money from Saudi Arabia. He didn't need ours. Yeah.

Ben Laden. So the history of bin Laden, he's interesting. So his dad, his father made a ton of money working for the king of Saudi Arabia, right? He got some sort of, he wants some sort of contract to build some, like a huge road or something. Well, yeah, he was the major contractor in Saudi Arabia. Up until that point, he had been working for an American company that was building, you know, roads in Saudi Arabia when they when that happened there were practically no roads right and there's there's a ridge of mountains um that is right above the western shore of Saudi Arabia on the red sea and uh jida for instance where I was the station was in that level ground below the level, you know, between the sea and the desert above this high palisade.

And the, it was a real challenge, you know, the American companies walked away from the deal. But, you know, the only way to get from Jeddah to Riyadh was, you know, some sort of camel trail or, you know, early aviation. So Muhammad bin Laden, the father, took on the challenge. And he went up, got up on top of this mountain palisade, and he pushed a goat over the edge and followed him down, marking the path that the goat took. That's amazing. Then that became the route of this very twisty-turning highway.

united the country and so he became a national hero and he more or less was responsible for the renovation of the mosque in mecca and um you know he was highly valued uh famous uh character he died in an air crash and um but you know he left behind this fifty three kids right yeah i think they were 56 i think so um and so there were you know one of my best sources was jama caliphah his brother-in-law but that's not an exclusive term when you have that many brothers and sisters and uh that he he was great it was it was a eye-opening experience wow and going back so 9-11 happens and we like or actually before 9-11 is when the United States intelligence community

goes to the FBI and says, we know these people are in the U.S., but we lost track of them. Yeah, that's in August of 2001. Right. And did they, how long before that did they know that they were like, for example, taking these like flying lessons over here in Florida,

like down the street from where we are now and being handled by these, Saudi intelligence people. It was episodic with the information that wasn't pulled together. You know, there was suspicion. Like in Arizona, there was an industrious guy who found out about these Saudis

who were in a flight school, but they didn't feel like they needed to learn how to land. Right. And it was a similar story with a guy named Masawi, who was very flagrant. in his and aggressive about getting to fly, he wanted to fly Boeing planes.

He was very, you know, it was suspicious enough that the local FBI chief reported it. So, but was there ever the moment where somebody said, I'm getting a lot of reports of these guys who are Saudis who were trying to learn how to fly and not land? Yeah. That never happened.

No. There was also a safe house I think on the West Coast in California where some of these guys were staying and there were Saudi official or Saudi intelligence people that were somehow connected to this. These two hijackers that I told you about earlier

who they arrived in they flew in from Malaysia. There'd been a big meeting of Qaeda operatives and from that meeting they came to America. And

also from that meeting, there were some guys who would then go blow up the USS coal. So it was a high level of meeting a terrorist in Kuala Lumpur. And two of these guys, Midharan Hasmi, Al-Hasmi, flew into LAX on January the 5th, I think. And then on January 15th, the CIA found out about them. So early on, and they were told by Saudi intelligence, I interviewed Prince Turkey-Al-Faacil who said that he told the chief of station in Riyadh about these two Al-Qaeda guys. So the CIA found out about it, not through their own detection.

But then... Was the CIA working with Saudi intelligence? Well, that's what I believe. I think that... I mean, they were closely tied, but... And Turkey, you know, went to school for a while. Bill Clinton, I've forgotten exactly what the... Anyway, he was...

he was very close, you know, Saudi intelligence and U.S. intelligence worked together closely. Okay. But not as closely as they should have. And when the CIA found out about this, by that time, these two hijackers, shortly after they arrived, they were greeted in a restaurant by a fellow Saudi who had just come from the Saudi embassy or consulate in L.A. And lo and behold, surprise, you're from my country. And he sits down and tells him, well, you must move to San Diego. I will help set you up.

and he does do that. And they moved down to San Diego. And it's at that point that the CIA is beginning to take an interest in them. We don't know, you know, they won't, to date, they haven't really divulged, you know, what they did. And this, I don't want this to die. I want to see this information come out. Is this part of the report that was never shown, part of the 9-11 commission that was hidden? There's still stuff that's redacted about it.

And the 22 pages or whatever it was that the victim's families finally forced out of the CIA, it didn't cover all the material, but it did expose some very interesting stuff like the tests. You know, they would, Saudis would be on airplanes and they would, you know, in one of the, case, for instance, walk up and open the cockpit door. Oh, I'm sorry. You know, I thought it was a bathroom. And it got so suspicious that the plane was grounded and they were interrogated. And they said, oh, no, we're Saudis, you know, we're very prominent. Prince Bandar, who was the head of the ambassador to the U.S. as a friend of ours. As a matter of fact, Bandar's wife was sending money to the people that were, to the hijackers.

So, really? Let me try to get this straight. She was sending money, I'm afraid to get too deep into the well there because I'm not exactly, money from her was given to the operative who was working with the hijackers or to them, the hijackers themselves, but I forget exactly how that was. worked. But on these test runs, you know, they were, they were clearly planning the operation as it was going to go down. Yeah. And, you know, where would we sit on the airplane and sort of how do how hard is it to get into the cockpit? Well, not hard as it turned out. Right. And all that came

out in those pages that had been suppressed for no reason except to protect the dignity of the of Saudi Arabia. My thinking about this is that I don't think that the Saudi king wanted to attack America. And I think that, you know, when Prince Turkey divulged the presence of two Saudis to the CIA, he, you know, he was doing us a great favor. and I'm sure that he thought that, you know, America would take care of this problem. I also think that the CIA decided,

let the Saudis handle this. You know, they can follow them and then they have their means, they can turn them, and maybe that's out of our capacity. So for that reason, they were just going to lightly monitor the situation and expect that the Saudis would take care of the problem. has your has your view or your thinking around 9-11 evolved or changed at all since you first wrote about it?

Because there's like, I mean, obviously there's like tons of different theories that float around out there about 9-11 like conspiracy theories that, you know, Alex Jones is one of the biggest proponents of it, how he called it out like, whatever, a year before it happened. And there's documentaries that are out there that, you know, try to tie things like 9-11 to like look at not. Operation Northwoods, you know, it's the same concept, but, you know, years later and in a different context. And, you know, like, why? There's, there's tons of, like, legitimate questions that are asked about it from people that weren't really close to it. I've noticed. I've noticed the people that were really close to it are directly affected by it through family or friends. They are the ones that don't have patience to entertain any of that stuff. But the one, the people that are more disconnected from it, who maybe were another part of the country or were born afterwards,

who weren't directly really emotionally affected by this. I haven't changed my view. And the first time I really ran into the denier thing, my friend Linklater, Rick Linklater, was having a party to open up one of his movies, and I forgot which one it was. But he invited Alex Jones, who was a kind of non-entity in Austin at the time.

He had been on, we used to have this community TV station, you know, so anybody wanted to get on. We'd do, you know, it was crazy. Madeline Murray O'Hare, the atheist had a show on it. And, you know, and so Alex got a spot on it, and he was, he could talk really wildly and, you know,

expressively. Yeah. And so Rick used him in a couple of his, pictures as a kind of raving maniac who was sitting in the back of a cab sprouting all these conspiracy theories. So the looming tower had just come out and I was, you know, I was at the party and Rick, he was a mischievous fellow and, you know, he comes over and says, Larry, I wanted you to meet somebody and Alex, this is Larry Wright, you know, and I thought you guys might

talk about 9-11. So Jones starts off on what happened. And I said, gosh, that didn't, that's not true at all. And, you know. Like what? Like what? I don't remember exactly what it was, but it was, it was, you know, way off base. And I told him what did happen.

And he turned around and walked away. You know, I, but after that, whenever I make a speech about, you know, the looming tower, there would always be people in the audience that would, you know, what about this? what about that? And, you know, what about the, you know, World Trade Center 7? Or, you know, why didn't this structure fall? You know, it must have been dynamite in it. If you look at it, it's clearly an explosion.

I mean, the thing is, it was a horrible tragedy, and it happened, and it was hard to believe that it happened. So, therefore, people wonder why. You know, there must be some explanation for this, because this is something that surely, one man in a cave couldn't have pulled this off. And the truth is, one man in a cave did pull it off. It's wild. It really is. Because there, I mean, there are a lot of crazy questions that are, you know, like, why do they leave stuff out of the commission report? Why were the, why was the black box and the plane, you know, never shut? Why did the FBI cover that stuff up? You know, we'll never know the answer to that. I feel like, we'll never know. I'd like for that to be fully, you know, the only thing that we are missing here is the truth. Yeah. And, you know, I believe it's pretty clear what happened. But I think, you know, the evidence that the CIA was in cahoots with the Saudi intelligence is not something that's been admitted. But why not just go ahead and say it? Because that's what I think really did happen. But instead, they're stuck with no answer. Right. They can't tell you why they waited, you know, a year and a half.

to tell the FBI, which had the authority over terrorism in America. That's what the whole plot of the siege was, my movie, was a rift between the CIA and the FBI over who is going to control terrorism. And then it became true in real life. Yeah, and the way in 9-11 changed, you know, changed everything, too, in America is bizarre, you know, like some of the things that were enacted as far as, you know, like the TSA, the Patriot Act. You know, I had a guy in here recently, Tom Drake, who was a whistleblower for the NSA,

who worked for the NSA. His first day on the job of the NSA was 9-11. And, you know, he was explaining to me the optimism of everybody in the NSA that day and how they were like just elated with the idea of implementing their new, the new, I forget the name of the software now to where they could basically just do dragnet, dragnet surveillance on and collecting of data of all Americans. And, you know, it's just, it's a, it's just crazy how our world and our country changed after 9-11. When I, when I talk to younger people about that question, I recount when I was in high school, I took a date to the airport in Dallas.

And it was a cheap date, you know. And, you know, we were young enough that, you know, it still was interesting to go to an airport. So we walked out on the tarmac and climbed into this 707 or something. You know, we sat in the first class seats and, you know, imagine the plane had just arrived from Paris. And the stewardess, as we called them then, came and offered us a treat. And so we sat there, you know, having a little party in the plane. And then we walked into the FAA tower. Yeah, come on in, kids.

and watch them land the planes. That was America. That was the freedom we had before 9-11. And I'm fearful that that America is gone. And it's gone from our memory. And younger people don't realize what we've lost. But if we've lost it and without the idea that we want to steer back to it,

then we'll never get back to it. Wow. Yeah, that's something that young people don't have any, comprehension of, you know, unless they hear stories like, like what you explained. And like I was too young to even, you know, I was in, I think I was in like sixth grade when it happened. I remember vividly. I remember, I don't remember like going through airports, but, but, you know, I remember that day. It's not encouraged now. Right, right. But so, so I want to talk about your new book and human scale. And it's, it's all about, it seems like the timing.

is unimpicable with you, with you coming out with these books. You know, not only with this one, which I think this, you turned in your draft for this, I think right before October 7th, right? Right. And you had been working on it for how long before then? Well, actually, a long time, because it originated as a screenplay that never got made. I think all my novels started out of screenplays, but the, you know, the, you know, the, then I did a one-man show, which I called The Human Scale.

I did it in New York and in Tel Aviv. And what drew me to the story was I had gone to Gaza after this 2009. A young Israeli soldier named Galad Shalit had been kidnapped by Hamas. And Israelis never found him. He was finally traded for a thousand Palestinian prisoners. And I was fascinated by that comparison. How does one life equal a thousand? That's what the human scale is all about.

So I did that show. It was interesting doing it in New York. There was a lot of anger. you know people uh it's sensitive subject you know when you talk about the middle east yeah and we had a

sandwich board outside the theater and somebody kicked it all the way down the street in Tel Aviv it wasn't anger but there was a lot of grief and um so it brought up feelings and I knew I was stirring something very deep um and yeah some years passed but

the story lingered. And I thought, is there some way I can write about this? Because I've spent so much of my career in the region. I lived for two years in Cairo when I was a young man teaching at the American University. And I've been back and forth to Israel and Syria and, you know, just everywhere in the Middle East and to Israel many times. Always looking at people, you know, trying to understand why this conflict is so durable. I mean, I am the same age as Israel, which... Right. That's crazy. Yeah, it's a young country, right? But so this conflict has been going on my entire life. And this is a life that has been lived through. I've seen apartheid disappear. I've seen the Soviet Union dissolve. I've seen a black man elected president.

We went through Vietnam, Iraq 1, Iraq 2, Afghanistan, all that's part of the history now, but this just keeps going on and on and on. So why is that? And I thought, well, maybe I can do it as a novel instead of, you know, try to get inside the brains of these people, my characters, and see the world from their perspective. Right. And my feeling, I will always believe that peace is possible, but it's not possible if you're under willing to see the world through the eyes of your adversary. Right. And that's what's happened in this case, is that it's, it's, there's a loss of human feeling

for your adversary. And so I decided to create characters that would be interesting and appealing, but would be totally opposite sides. And so the main characters, Yossi Bengal, is the deputy chief of police. in Hebron. Hebron itself is a character because it's the most violent, hateful environment I'd ever been in.

And when I was there in February of 23, I was a source of Peacnik, about the only peacock in Hebron, Issa Amro, was taking me through the old town, the old city of Hebron, which is mostly closed down by the Israeli police. and he was assaulted right in front of me. I mean, this big young soldier, they're all young.

They're just out of high school, these soldiers, and policing, you know, another population. But apropos, let me say this, there was no provocation. There was no provocation. Issa was taking us on this tour. It was me and Barbara Dubalooker, I think it's a Bernanese Belgian photographer.

We were going through seeing this shopping street. It was called, I remember when I was, went to Hebron the first time in 1997, this shopping street was very alive, but there was a settlement just above it. And these little settler kids were throwing rocks down at the girls who were just coming out of school and their little school uniforms

and then went through a rock at me and I was really pissed off I really wanted to throw that rock back. I had a pretty good arm back then. But I looked up and I saw this Israeli soldier with his M16 who was protecting the kids who were throwing the rocks. Oh wow. So cut to

X number of years later I'm walking down that same street. It's now totally deserted and all the shops are closed. It has this mausoleum feeling and then suddenly the soldier appeared he had confronted me and Barbara earlier but then he reappeared when Issa who was not allowed to walk on that street because he is a Muslim he rejoined us and the soldier he was so angry at

Isa for no reason and Issa reminded me I started my career at the race relations reporter and covering the civil rights movement. And he reminded me of the freedom bus riders and the sit-in people, you know, who knew they were going to get hurt. And, you know, I just always admired that kind of courage. I just didn't have it myself, but Issa was one of those people. And so, Issa says, call your commander, you're not doing the right. You know, he knew all the rules, you know, and it just pissed off the soldier even more.

but he did call his commander and he said that we have some liberals here some liberals some liberals and i said wait i'm from texas i was trying to cool things off um but at some point he grabs his son takes him over to a bench and forces him down and stands in front of him with his crotch right in front of his face and his M4 dangling you know bumping into Issa's legs and um finally he just the soldiers just exploded and he grabbed Issa by the neck and he's modest size but he lifted him up and he hurled him to the ground his head missing a curb by like a quarter of an inch and then wound up and kicked him so hard they nearly fell over other soldiers were around and I just trying you know calm the waters and say, you know, this is going south really quickly. And they were afraid of him,

of the, you know, this violent soldier. And what struck me, and so many things did, but one was, we were witnesses. We're standing right there. We're Westerners. And Barbara's saying, you know, he felt so enraged and so empowered that, and he was circling around. There was one other guy who trying to keep him from finishing up the job. And there had been a Palestinian assassinated by an Israeli soldier not far away. The guy was lying on the ground unconscious when the soldier shot him in the head. Oh, my God. So, you know, I thought that was going to be the conclusion of this.

But fortunately, we got Isa away. And but it caused me to go back and rewrite my, my novel. And I realized that it was taking me into deeper water than I thought it was, you know. And then along comes October 7th. And the draft that I had turned in ended in a war. But it was a war like the one that I'd seen before when I was in Gaza in 2009. And it was devastating for Gaza, but it wasn't obliterated. And so I had to go back and rewrite it again. This time I was faced with this situation. You know, this is such a deep wound.

And how can I ignore it? Can I set it earlier in time? Should I set it in the future? And I thought, there's really no other alternative, but to go right through it and have October 7th be the destination of this novel. And so this, you know, Yossi Bengal is investigating the murder of his chief of police. It's a heinous crime, and we think it's Hamas. But into town comes a Palestinian named Tony Malik, who's American.

And he comes in at the wrong time. And, you know, he's arrested. And they think he's probably the guy who killed the chief. But then they discover he's actually an FBI agent. And he had an appointment with the chief of police earlier that morning. So these two guys, Yossi and Malik, are very similar in many ways, and they have the same job. But they're torn apart by history, ethnicity, religion. You know, these are the forces that are pulling them apart.

and in short they hate each other but they have to solve the crime they have to work together and this is in some ways a buddy movie but it's set you know you see the world through their eyes and the eyes of other characters like the the figure that is loosely based on isa you know is a peasnick who's trying to bring peace to the region and then there's a yosie's daughter sarah who loves her father, but is so ambivalent about where Israel is going. She's in the marches that have been going on in Tel Aviv and elsewhere for the last couple of years. So she's a part of that contingent. So each of these characters represents a perspective, but I hope that they are fully imagined human beings.

So when you went about researching for this novel, did you go about it? I mean, I assumed you just went about it in like this typical way you research for your, for your nonfiction works, right? Yeah. Like you just investigated people like, how long did you spend actually going there? And how many times did you go into Israel or into Hebron to like, did you extensively interview individuals? Yeah. You know, you see, this evolved over a long period of time. Yeah, right.

I've been to Israel five times, I think. Wow. And then West Bank three or four times. Did you ever interview? Sorry to interrupt, but I was going to ask if you ever interviewed any of Israelis intelligence people. Oh, yeah, and they were very helpful, especially one who was in Shinnbet. And, you know, it helped me because one of my characters is in Shinn bit.

And that's the domestic intelligence. and yeah, there are American operatives who are with Arab background who have been very helpful to me, corresponding to my Palestinian-American FBI agent. Yeah, I've been very fortunate with my sources, and, you know, it wouldn't be the book that it is if I hadn't had the friendly advice of people on the inside. Right. I've talked to a lot of people on this show from the United States's intelligence community. And it seems to me like the writing on the wall is even if a lot of them won't outright say it, is there's a lot of, a simple way to put it is that America's intelligence, CIA and Israel's intelligence of Mossad don't get along for what it's worth it. and that their intelligence, it seems to be the sentiment that their intelligence is far more,

I don't want to say superior is the right word, but far more efficient for whatever reason. I would imagine that it's, you know, the fact that, you know, they're surrounded by, by enemies. and their ultimate goal is to is to propagate the future of their race, right? So they have, they have, there's more of an existential threat there. I have no question about it. And, you know, that what the Israelis do is monitor and control. And they have a vast population to monitor and control. And they feel, I mean, both sides feel like,

this is an existential question. Although it's not. You know, Arabs and Jews live together very peacefully in Brooklyn. There's just no reason for this except this compounding series of traumas that build on each other. And there's a mythology that each nurses is that we're going to win, we're going to push them into the sea, or we're going to drive them over to, you know, into Saudi Arabia and Jordan and somewhere just clear the West Bank, and then we'll have it all to ourselves. That's never going to happen.

And it, so it, it goes back to my question about why it's so durable. The, there's, first of all, the enemies of peace,

whenever something comes up and looks like peace, like the Oslo Accords or something like that, then you have suicide bombers suddenly appear, and then you have Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated, and so suddenly everything goes to shit.

And every time both sides, they fall for it, you know, they get enraged and they go back to war. But it's all one war. It's all the same war that's been going on since I was born. Right. There are periods of calm where they just rearm. But essentially, it's the same old war. And so with all the amazing intelligence that Mossad and, you know, has it has, it's capable. ability in Shenbet and their ability to try to control this very restive group of people.

They know that there is not a military solution. In fact, one after another, the heads of Mossad have been public. There's even a movie, a very insightful movie, where they're saying, we're doing the wrong thing. We need to make peace with these people. So it's generally known that there's not a military it's not going to be like World War II and the war is over and somebody won. It's going to be something entirely different. But it continues to be exactly the same thing. And it seems like what has been going on forever

is just like when Israel is demolishing Gaza and shooting kids through the heart and all these women and children are dying, it seems like what they're creating is and they're aware of it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yeah. They're creating more extremists and more hatred for it. The idea of the Israeli defense forces says that Hamas is back to full strength,

40,000 warriors. After all the slaughter, you know, what they've done is create a mighty recruitment theme. And that's always been the case. It's not different anymore. You know, it's not different now. It's just going to imagine if you. you are a young Palestinian man and you watched your family be killed or dispossessed. See, that's why I think, you know, when you put that question on either side, right. What would you do

if you were an Israeli or what would you do if you were a Palestinian? It's a question that nobody wants to answer because they know the answer. Right. You know the answer. If you're like, I can, I can tell you, you know, having my own kids if some group murdered my child. my toddler, I would do the most unthinkable things to retaliate. Yeah. I think that's part of being human. But it's also part of being human to try to find a way to restore justice and peace. And that's what's absent right now.

It's all retaliation. And it will be as long as we can see until people actually arise and demand peace. Peace has a price. And one is to sacrifice that longing to kill and revenge. And, you know, I wrote a play and then a movie and then a book, I mean, about Camp David, which was the Carter-Bagan-Sadat Summit in 1978. Carter came into office, and the first day in office, he told his vice president, my top goal is to bring peace to the Middle East.

Walter Mondale is the vice president. He told me he panicked. Is that what he's about? Because it was like the ultimate. You can't do that. But Carter brought in the president of Egypt and Marseudat who had been an assassin. And the prime minister of Israel, Monachin, Bagan, who was a terrorist. and Carter was a one-term Georgia governor

and they sit behind the trees in Camp David for 13 days imagine three world leaders totally cut off and they come up with a peace agreement that has endured since they signed the paper in 1979, not a single violation. So it's possible. But if you look at, then what happened to the peacemakers, Carter lost the election. He was not re-elected.

In fact, he lost the Jewish vote. for a democratic nominee in modern history. Monachan Began thought, oh, I can do anything now, and he invaded Lebanon for what he thought was going to be two weeks. And they were in Lebanon for 18 years. And he was hated. He was in isolation in his house. There were kids for years.

You know, they were just like the chance about, hey, hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill the day? It was that kind of atmosphere. So he died in seclusion and in disgrace. And then Sadat was assassinated. So that's what happened to the people who made peace. And I think that's been a lesson to the aspiring peacemakers. There's a lot of personal risk here.

Wasn't the first president of Israel? I believe he might have been the first president of Israel. In Gurian? No, before him. He was a yes, yes, Hymn Weisman. Yeah. Wasn't he, he was like a Zionist who came in and thought that basically we need to come in here and make the Muslims love us. Like we're going to bring in all this innovation and treat them kindly and just make them to where they just, they can't turn us away because we provide so much and improve their quality of life so much. And then after that, I think Ben Gurian kind of his view of it was like, no, that's kind of like a, the way that he, I think the way, correct me if I'm wrong, but the way he looked at it was like, you can't look at that. That's like pre-9-11 post-9-11. Like he looked at it like now that you have, you know, World War II in the Holocaust, you can't look at it like that anymore. Now we have to look at it through the lens that they're looking at it now.

Yeah. Well, in the early days of the Zionist movement, you know, they, first of all, they wondered, you know, where should we go? And, you know, there were Kenya was one of the, or Uganda, you know, at the time. And South America. But always there was the idea of the Holy Land. And that's in the first Zionist conference in Bern, Switzerland, in the 18th. 1990s, you know, it was decided that's where we're going to go. There were mixed thoughts, you know, Weissmann was the optimist, you know,

Ben-Gurion privately felt that the Arabs would never accept them. And it's not as if they did a lot to try to help make them acceptable. But, you know, at that time, the future Israelis would come and buy a lot of land up, and it was threatening to the native population, and there were Arab riots and stuff like that. So things got off to a bad start. And then when Israel declared itself as a nation, you know, the Nakhba, the expulsion of nearly 700,000 Palestinians, whether they were forced out or just simply not allowed to return to their homes, That was sort of the one moment, if I were to call history back and say, you know, there's this small change I want to make in the role of human events.

And I'd just let them come home and try to work it out. And, you know, the age of modern terrorism was born in that moment, too, because it was the Palestinian diaspora that led to the rise of, you know, these terrorist movements coming out of Palestine. Now, the history of this is, I think, and maybe you can elucidate this a little bit better, but originally, I think the UN came in and said it's going to be like a 56-44 split between the Jews and the Palestinians, right? And Palestine would be an international city. Right. And then... I mean, I'm sorry, Jerusalem. Jerusalem would be an international city. Oh, okay. Yeah, because the rift over, you know, these holy places was very profound.

And so what could we do to take that off the table? Well, we make it, it's not an entity belonging to either state. It's one where both can have their capitals. Oh, okay. And then down the road, it somehow got down to 20%, which is West Bank and Gaza, right, to what it is today. Well, even that is, you know, those, what's left of this, of the Palestinian state is, you know, just enclaves. And, you know, they're divided by different roads and walls and so on. It's not contiguous with each other.

And, of course, Gaza's set apart. So it's a different entity. And what's another crazy thing about this whole thing is the, I think I heard you explain this, but that the, the, the, um, the Jews in Israel and the Palestinians are genetically the same, right? Yeah. Their DNA and their heritage is essentially identical. You mentioned Ben-Gurian, and, you know, Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Bin Zvi, who was the second president of Israel, were living in Manhattan and lower Manhattan at the turn of the 20th century. And they wrote a book about the future of Israel.

And Bin Zvi, in particular, had spent a lot of time wandering through the way. West Bank in these Arab villages, and he noticed candles in the windows on Friday night, and he noticed Hebrew in the cemeteries. And it occurred to him that what we call the Palestinians were really the remnant of the Jews who were not in the diaspora. They just were always there. They didn't come from somewhere else. Right.

They were just the original inhabitants who had been Jewish, but over the years converted to Christianity or Islam, where, you know, you know, if you converted you didn't have to pay this tax that was on non-Muslims. So that was a strong incentive. And centuries pass. And they are a different people in some respects. But he was right because genetically they're very, very similar.

They're both descended from the Canaanites. And over time they may have differed a little bit, but not very much. They're essentially the same people they always have been. I thought. If you love diving into culture and comedy, like on Danny Jones podcast, playoff hockey is right up your alley. NHL on T&T has the best coverage,

making every game feel intense and unpredictable. Playoff hockey is a different level, overtime, big hits, and no one coast. The studio crew, with Paul Bissonette cracking jokes and Wayne Gretzky breaking things down, makes it even more fun to watch. Every shift matters, and the person. Keep Things Lively. Watch the Stanley Cup playoffs on TNT, TBS, True TV, and HBO Max. When I went to do that one-man show in Tel Aviv,

and I had just read that book by Binzvi and Ben Gurian, and I thought, well, maybe the Israelis don't know this. Maybe I can help them out just saying, you know, these guys are Jewish, right? And so it's true they didn't know it, But some people, when I pulled out my solution, said, yeah, we know that. And that threw me off. And I did a little more research, and I came upon this book, the need to have enemies and allies by this Cypriot American psychiatrist named Vamik Volcan.

And he had grown up in Cyprus, which was inhabited by Greeks and Turks, who were historic antagonists. And yet they're very similar people. And you could tell them apart. Both wore the same white garments, you know, these tunics, white tunics with, the Turks would have a green sash and the Greeks would have a blue one. You know, you knew who was who. They had different cigarettes. On this basis, you were able to tell this is not me.

This is the other. In Northern Ireland, the Protestants and the Catholics would paint their doors different. colors to signal which, you know, which they were. The Hutus and the Tutsis, you know, they were so alike. You had to ask which tribe you're in before we kill you. So in every case, you know, they were very, very similar people. And yet oftentimes with civil wars, for instance, they're bloodier than other kinds of battles. So why is that? And Vulcan references this Freudian idea of the narcissism of minor differences. which is simply that people that are more alike are more likely to be at war with each other

than people who are dramatically different. You can accept the difference if it's obvious. But if it's similar, it's the little things that separate you that can be really annoying. And Freud's idea is those things about yourself that you don't like, that you see in someone else. And you want to exterminate that thing that's in the other. Oh, that's interesting. You can almost see something like that bubbling up in America with like political differences in people that are the same, right?

Or religious differences. You know, like the, you know, in Saudi Arabia and Iran have differences, but, you know, they're in the same religion except one is Sunni and other Shia. And, you know, that has been an ongoing civil war for a long time. And yet to the average American. You know, like when we invaded Afghanistan, one reporter went through the U.S. Senate and asked him, what's the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite? Not a single senator could tell you, but we're going to go to war. And so, you know, those are minor differences.

What has been the response from people in Israel from this? I got a wonderful review the other day in Jerusalem Post, and beyond that, I haven't heard. I don't know if it's for sale in Israel, but, you know, it's, you know, we'll see. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you've noticed, but I've noticed online just, I mean, recently, like, obviously since October 7th and now, there is just so much debate happening in the U.S. or surrounding this whole topic. Well, it's been troubling to me to watch what's going on on on the campuses, although it seems to die down a little bit. but they were just replicating the anger and the hatred in the region instead of working for trying to create a solution.

You know, but, you know, the anti-Semitism, well, Arabs think that anti-Semitism is a comical charge because they're both Semites. And, you know, so it doesn't seem to apply to them. But the, what we need is friendly help. to try to, my feeling is, and anybody who offers a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem is naive. And so you have to say, you know, all right, I'm going to be naive for a moment, but you have to go through that. I think that the Israelis and the Palestinians have shown that they can't solve the problem, that they are in some way addicted to it. And so I think the world has to make a stronger case, take on more of the challenge. And by that, well, what do I mean?

I'm not sure. Most of the world has already identified Palestine as a state. If you look at a map of the globe and countries that have already accepted Palestine as a state, all of Asia, all of South America. And much of Europe, but it's essentially the G7 countries, you know, France, Germany, Australia, you know, the U.S., Canada. Mexico acknowledges Palestine as a state. Well, maybe that would be one thing is to unanimously say this is a country. And, you know, Israel has to declare its borders, which is never done.

And, you know, we have to find a way to create two or one. I don't care. I mean, or confederation. You know, there are other solutions. But the occupation is what is shattering both societies. And Israel has to stop occupying the country and they have to find a way to feel secure doing it. So that's the challenge. And I think the world can help with with forceful diplomacy and vast incentives. Yeah. And, you know, when it gets to be more worth it to stop fighting than maybe then we can find a way to talk about peace

yeah what do you make of you know a lot of people who are educated in this history far more than I am some of them like to say that you know maybe if America wasn't so tied up with Israel

and Israel didn't have such a strong influence over American politics and, you know, didn't have such a backing of America, maybe they would be more incentivized to come up with a solution. It may be true, but, you know, the, that they're... With APAC and things like this. Well, they're like 16 million Jews in the world, and they're narrowly divided between the U.S. and Israel. Right. Israel has about a million more Jews than America does.

but the next population is France with 400,000. So essentially, when we talk about the Jewish population, we're talking about the U.S. and Israel. So no wonder we're more interested in Israel than other countries because they're far more, I wish, another historical thing, I mean, if we had more Jews, if Roosevelt and Truman had just opened the gates, If you go to any city, you know, go look at the, you know, the hospital wings and the, you know, who's funding the symphony and the ballet. There's so many Jewish names there.

And they're just a very small percentage of the world. They're 0.02, 0.2, yeah, percent of the human population. And yet they contribute so much to our society. But it's, you know, now having taken. the road to creating a state in the Middle East, Israel has to find its way to being a Middle Eastern country among its neighbors. And I think that that was what frightened Hamas, was this agreement that was seemed to be steering towards a conclusion between Israel and Saudi Arabia. And if Israel and Saudi Arabia made peace, all the other Arab countries would fall in line. They're

tired of Palestinians and this whole drama. They just as soon walk away. And also some of the solutions are very threatening. You know, the idea that the Palestinians would be pushed into Jordan or Lebanon or wherever, Saudi Arabia. They don't want that. They don't want to have that additional problem. So suddenly Hamas, they've been dealt out of the game. And so they've been preparing this attack for,

a long time. And so that was the trigger. Yeah. And then you have, you know, them trying to, it looks like America is like gearing up to go to war with Iran, you know, when Israel, I think Netanyahu was, you know, in the 90s trying to get, trying to convince us that we needed to go to war with Iran and, you know, trying to back them, you know, in these wars and get in. entwined in these conflicts overseas that like seem to have no no benefit for us to get involved in yet we do yeah and it's uh you know it's frustrating it's frustrating to watch and then you have like this lady who recently went in front of congress some high level forget who she was i think she was supposed to be like an ambassador to the u.n and she's getting questioned in front of congress and she

says uh so they asked her if she believes that israel has a right to the west bank based on based on the Bible or something. And she was like, yes, they have a, Israel has a biblical right to the West Bank. Right. Like that's like something that's, that's absolutely insane to hear somebody say in front of Congress, like an actual high-ranking government official.

So does our ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. You know, in the Bible, God gives the promised land to Moses. twice. And the first time it's a big, bigger parcel. It goes from, you know, from like the Red Sea to the Latani River in Lebanon and, you know, all of the West Bank, Jordan, you know, just, and then the second time, I guess God has reconsidered a little bit. And it's a smaller entity, mainly Israel and the West Bank, but also some some other portions of other, what are now other countries. And then Moses dies before he's able to come into the promised land and Joshua is sent in to God has told him to kill every living thing not just people just kill every living thing wipe the tablet clean

now if you're using the Bible or the Torah as your guide you know that's a pretty startling model to follow Yes. And, you know, I, that's one of the reasons I felt, you know, that the genetic identity of these people is important because God gave, if God gave the gift to the Jews, the people that are called Palestinians are the original Jews. And so, you know, they should be in on it. But I don't know how many, I mean, I've been in the settlements, and, you know, there are fervent believers there,

but there are also people there that, you know, they're getting tax breaks. And so, you know, their rent is underwritten. So they have other reasons to be there other than that God gave them that land. Right. It's fascinating stuff, man. what else are you working on do you have anything that you're that you can talk about at least yeah that uh no i there's a story that i'm really enchanted with and it's um it's about these nuns that go visits oh yeah we mentioned that right right so that's i'm finishing that up

and um then i'm looking for the you're on fire yeah well i'm working all the time but i'm not working, I'm in despair. So I have to work. What, what, how do you decide what you're going to dedicate your time to? Because when you're working on these projects, they take a long time to turn out. That's the hardest question. I think the hardest question any writer has to face is what's the story? What, what story do I want to tell? Because it's not as if there is an absence of stories. You pick up the paper and there's stories all over the page. but what is it that calls to you, that stirs something in you and says, I've got to do this?

And, you know, with the women and the nuns and this sort of thing, the moment I heard the story that, you know, there were nuns going to visit the women on death row, I was enchanted. You know, I just said, this is fascinating to me. And, of course, it is a wonderful story. And there were awful parts of it. You know, the heinous crime. that some of these women have committed. On the other hand, I think of it as being like it's about redemption. And it's a quality that I'm curious about. And so it gave me, it was one of those times when I just went home and started making calls. I knew that was my next story. But it's rare that you have that immediate reaction.

and you know that you also have to take into account how long is this going to take right and you know you're going to waste your time right and time gets to be more precious the older you get and there's less of it so you have to think about you know is it if this is a five-year project then will i ever do anything else or will i even finish you know those are real existential questions that you you're always asking but you ask with increased urgency as you get older yeah it always it always um it's interesting to me how people like yourself who spend so much time on these on these complex deep stories are able to manage their time and be disciplined enough to to do their homework right and make sure they're following up on every single lead and you know getting uh corroboration on things and trying to navigate like am i getting a fed bullshit on this story or that story or you know even you like working with intelligence community the intelligence community and like and like people in the government and stuff like that like you know how do you know you're not just getting let astray on things and it seems like a

difficult thing to navigate it is hard but you know i i insist that there is a way of getting it at what is at least close to truth and the my my my the way i envision it is first of all you start a story and if it's going to be let's say looming tower big story you know how do I how do I start you start by you know who's in the story and so you find out names of people that you know might be able to talk and you write them down I use a legal pad and write down the name one of the 29 lines on the legal pad and then in a little inch and a half column on the left I write their telephone number and then I go talk to them and when I talk to them I take a highlighter and you know sort of run across so I've checked that one off but I always ask

who else should I talk to right and those are names I hadn't heard before so they go on that list and then I talk to them who else should I talk to and that's the way that you you know, it sinks in the root skin into the ground. Eventually, you run out of names, and, you know, that's how you populate the universe of the story. But that's the horizontal axis, you know, and it's sort of the, you know, the trope about journalism is you talk to everybody. But you can't talk to everybody, and not everybody wants to talk to you, but you talk to as many people as you can. Right. And in that case, I talked to 600 people, but it took me five years.

So it was, you know, long time coming. Then some of those hundreds of people are just more knowledgeable, more fun, have better access, you know. And I go back to them again and again. And that's, you know, the first, the horizontal axis is a seeking of consensus. And the vertical axis is a seeking of understanding. And so you're trying to get deeper into a story. If you got, you know, like one of my sources in Saudi Arabia was, you know, bin Laden's brother-in-law, and he was married to four women.

This was bin Laden at the time, you know, they had that option. And I wanted to talk to her. That was never going to happen. but he offered to take my questions to her every fourth night when he spent the night with that wife, Bin Laden's sister. Wow. And so she would respond, she wouldn't never see a person like me. Right.

But she would, through the medium of her husband, who was very helpful to me, she would respond to those questions. And so, you know, those, that was part of the horizontal axis. I wanted to talk to her, tell me things that other people wouldn't know. Like, how did bin Laden smell? You know, he wore this sandalwood cologne that a lot of Saudis wear. And so, you know, those kinds of things are just, they're access to intimacy that gives plausibility to everything you write.

I admire that so much. And I, you know, it's, it's very few and far between that. You meet people like yourself who go to like the primary, primary, primary sources of some of these things. You know, like boots on the ground, you know, firsthand accounts of what these people are like, what they believe. And there's not much of that in the media today. More of it is just like the telephone game. Like people talking about, let's, you know, our daily, I'm guilty of it too, you know, like a daily, like a talk show that you do weekly. And you're having people that are coming in. and we're talking about some reporting we saw in the New York Times or on some other publication

that they maybe got it through somebody else and they got it through somebody else. And it's hard to be able to have the determination and the belief in yourself to stick through something for so long and to do that kind of like boots on the ground reporting that you're doing. And I hope more people can continue to carry the torch that you've been carrying for so long in the future. Well, thank you. I would like to encourage reporters and journalists or people that might be interested in it to give it a try. Because no matter who you are, being a journalist will open your eyes to other people. and where they're coming from.

And it makes you more, it makes you wiser, I think, because you've learned how people differ and why those differences shouldn't be discounted. And you also have to consider who would you be in that scenario. All this is stuff that, you know, if you're sitting in an office and you're surrounded by people who are very much like you and, you know, have similar concerns,

and you're not going to be educated about how the world works and even if it's just for a couple of years you know it's a great way to grow into another person well thanks again i really appreciate your time oh thank you i enjoyed it myself and your new book the human scale yeah boom look at that beautiful cover we'll be on i'll link it below but on your website or amazon what's the best place to buy yeah you probably should go to amazon or your local bookstore. Okay. Fantastic. Lawrence Wright, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. Oh yeah, we have

Patreon questions. We have a couple questions on our Patreon for you from our beautiful Patreon supporters that will do that as well. Okay. But that's the end of the podcast. All right. All right. Good night, folks.