The Daily Beast Podcast - The CIA’s Slipshod Path to Torturing Its ‘Forever Prisoner’ w/ Alex Gibney

Episode Date: December 3, 2021

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance breaks down the Supreme Court’s bad intentions on abortion, filmmaker Alex Gibney talks about the jaw-dropping reckless of the CIA’s torture program and NPR’s Tim Mak explains WTF happened to the NRA. If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes its just discussing the fuckery. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you’ll support The Beast’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, everybody. We wanted to give you a quick update about the new abnormal. Our good friend Rick Wilson, who helped launch this podcast, is not returning as co-host. But the good news is that we have lined up a regular new co-host, who you love, Andy Levy. He's, of course, been on the pod before, and we're really excited to have him join permanently starting on our next episode. Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast, and welcome to the Daily Beast, the new abnormal. I'm a left-wing pundit and an editor at large at The Daily Beast. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. Our world has been turned up to down. On the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and figure out

how to get ourselves out of it. And I'm producer Jesse Kennan. I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. of an excellent show, director Alex Gibney, who you of course know from his movies like Enron, the smartest guys in the room, Taxi to the Dark Side, and the inventor, Out for Blood, is going to talk to us about his latest movie on Abu Zabeda, the Forever Prisoner. And then we'll talk to NPR's Washington investigative reporter Tim Mack about his new book, Misfire, inside the downfall of the NRA. But first, we have MSNBC legal analyst and host of the Sisters in Law podcast, Joyce Fants.

Welcome to the new abnormal, Joyce Vance. It's really nice to be here with you today, Molly. I'm very excited that you're here. Can we talk about Roe? All I've been thinking about is Roe. I saw you on MSN talking about the oral arguments. Are you shocked that we're here? I wish that I could say that I was shocked, but I'm not.

You know, most people don't think of Alabama as a leader in trends. That's something that I've observed over time is that Alabama is, in fact, a leader in conservative trends. And so this persistent effort to pass laws like the one in Mississippi that formed the basis of this lawsuit, but also Alabama. Texas obviously have been passing various forms of personhood bills or Alabama has a bill that, for instance, would make it a crime for a doctor to perform an abortion. And those bills have been in the works for close to a decade, really for longer than a decade, but a serious effort for the last decade to try to find a vehicle to reverse row. So no, I'm not that surprised, to be honest. What happens now? It's an interesting

question. You know, this seems to be pretty obvious, but there are nine justices and you have to get a majority of five to win a case. But within that five, you sometimes have cases where the judges agree about the result, but they don't agree about how to get there. So to have a bunch of finding precedent, you need a majority opinion. Sometimes you get a plurality. Everybody could, you know, five justices could agree that Mississippi's law is okay, but they might agree for different reasons. And that would leave us in a really difficult, in a very dangerous space, frankly, where there wasn't agreement on what the new rules about abortion are. I think the court will work really hard to avoid that sort of a plurality setting because a big part of the base

for Mississippi's argument yesterday was that the post-Roe and Casey rule, which is essentially the viability standard with an undue burden approach for restrictions on abortion, that that's not workable. I don't agree with that, but that's Mississippi's argument. So you can't really replace that with a plurality opinion that would be even more unworkable. I think that there will be enormous pressure on the court to come to some sort of majority rule. I don't think, Molly, that it will be one that you and I will lie. What I was really interested in was you really saw a lot of these justices just like play their hands yesterday, right? You never know, though. You know, I mean, it's so frequent for judges

in oral argument, not just Supreme Court justices, but other appellate judges, they try positions on for size to see what's wrong with them. So yes, you know, when Brett Kavanaugh's says, you know, we don't need any of these federal rules. Let's just let the states decide. It did feel like he was tipping his hand. But it's also possible that he was trying that position out to see just how vigorous the opposition to it would be. The pushback on that is pretty strong, right? We don't let states decide rights for the obvious reason that they won't protect them. Right. Of course, they did let states decide rights in Texas already with the Texas abortion bill. I mean, by not overturning that, they made it very clear where they are on that.

It's really concerning that they've let that situation linger. In the Texas case, and this is how these abortion cases present. A state passes a law that's clearly in violation of Roe v. Wade. Abortion providers or proponents go to court, and they seek to enjoin the law from going into effect while they litigate its constitutionality. And because the laws are clearly unconstitutional, they get enjoined. So it's not a final decision on their merits, but the law doesn't get to stay in effect while that litigation, which can take years, is ongoing. It is deeply concerning that the court has permitted that reprehensible Texas statute to stay in effect.

And I think that's why we're all reading the tea leaves in such a negative way. If the court had good intentions here, that Texas law would be enjoined right now. Right. Also, if the court really cared about laws and how they work, I mean, That law has a bounty system. We've never had a law in America that's had a bounty system except for when it came to slavery. I mean, this is something that is right out of like Handmaid's Tale meets, you know, more than 100 years ago. So won't Texas set a precedent for everything else? It depends on how the opinion is written. Texas could be a very narrow system that directs the states that they can't avoid responsibility for laws that they pass through this sort of duplicitous mechrist. of claiming that it's being enforced by private citizens. Look, let's just knock that one right off the table. When you pass a law and say that you're going to avoid judicial review of it by letting

private citizens engage in vigilante justice, it's just as though you're making all of those people, your agents and the state is really enforcing the law. So it's very silly. I am surprised for which expedited briefing and argument in that case didn't very quickly take advantage of the opportunity to smack Texas on the wrist and tell other states, hey, you guys can't do this either. And there is something, as you say, that's very concerning about that. By letting Texas make laws and not overruling this, are ultimately kind of calling into question all of their legitimacy, right? I mean, aren't they supposed to be the last word? Yeah. I mean, this court is facing a real problem, and it's the problem that Justice Sotomayor pointed out so elegantly yesterday asking if the court would be able to

survive the stench of politicization. Those aren't her exact words, but that's essentially what she was asking. She used that word stench of the political. If they were to approve this Mississippi law, which was passed after Mississippi legislators explicitly said, okay, guys, we've got a majority of the Supreme Court. Let's get to work, right? That's the whole issue here. Is this politics or is it law. If it's law, you have to give great weight to 48 years of precedent, this analysis that there is a substantive due process, liberty, and trust under the 14th Amendment that a woman's right to an abortion is encompassed within, and that you can only reverse this sort of precedent in a very limited, very extraordinary sort of situation. And the state of Mississippi here has raised no new extraordinary, for instance,

changes in the facts, all that Mississippi argues is the same arguments that the court heard and rejected in Casey. So for the court to take this action in Mississippi would look extremely political. I think you're right in saying that what's going on in Texas, the longer it drags on, begins to look political. And at the end of the day, this country works because people believe that the courts, while imperfect, do follow the law. If the legacy of the Roberts courts is that it's political, not legal. We are in really serious institutional trouble. Yeah, I think that seems right. I can't even imagine what is happening with these three liberal justices, too, because you have Breyer really is getting a lot of pressure to retire. I mean, we could see a world

where there are six or seven conservative judges. I know a lot of people seem to have strong feelings about Breyer one way or the other. I frankly just think that it's his choice. He's the one who's sitting in the seat. And there is a part of me that really worries that Mitch McConnell, I mean, you know, let's remember Mitch McConnell refused to hold a confirmation vote on a highly qualified justice who had been nominated because he was not super liberal. He was a very middle of the road guy acceptable to Republicans and Democrats. But Mitch McConnell gets his party to tow the line that there won't be a vote in an election year. And then he gets Amy Coney-Barrick confirmed after voting has already started in 2020.

I don't think any sort of gamesmanship is beyond him to control the Supreme Court. What happens now with the DOJ? Trump is claiming executive privilege. Will that case go up to the Supreme Court? So I think we're talking about the documents that Trump is trying to prevent the National Archives from turning over to the January 6th Committee. And here's the problem that the former president has. It's that he's a former president and the current.

president, the sitting president, has made a decision that the document should be turned over, and he's stated a compelling justification for that, the need to get to the bottom of what happened on January 6th. The district judge wrote a very strong opinion. The case is now sitting in the D.C. Circuit. I would be surprised if they did not affirm the district judge's opinion, at least in result. And then we're headed off to the Supreme Court. And of course, they don't have to hear the case. They can duck it. They can decline to hear it, which would have the effect of affirming the lower courts, presumably causing release of the documents, or I suppose that they could decide to hear it. And if this Supreme Court hears that case and slows it down and delays the process of getting to

the truth past the point of political reality, then shame on the court. That'll be another black mark on the record of the Roberts Court. You could see the Supreme Court running interference for Trump. What I think is so interesting is that this summer we saw Amy Comey Barrett and Alito give speeches, right, about the court and Thomas too. And how they weren't partisan. And they do care about public sentiment, even though they don't theoretically need to. Well, I think that they do and I think that they need to because one of the most important things about, you know, the courts are just like, it's just like, being a prosecutor. The system can only function if people have confidence in it. And that means that you have to be making your decisions on an objective basis. And so it's critical for the court that

people view them as being non-political. And it reminds me during the immigration challenges, where Trump kept talking about, you know, Democrat judges. And finally, the chief justice had had enough, and he made for him an exceptionally rare statement where he said there are no Republican judges. Democratic judges. They're just judges. That's both the reality, but also the appearance that it's critical for the court to maintain, for the public to have confidence. So to the extent, and look, courts are used to deciding these difficult issues. They wouldn't be in front of the Supreme Court if they weren't complicated like abortion is, where there are strong advocates for rights on both sides of the issue. And no matter what the court rules, somebody's going to be deeply unhappy about it.

That's why it's so important to have confidence in their integrity so that when you lose, you don't like it, but you understand that it's part of a fair rule of law process. And that's the balance that this court will have to struggle to maintain now. It's funny, though, like the Roberts court was very committed to appearing impartial, even if they weren't necessarily, right? Like they would, you know, they might take something apart, but they would always sort of care so much about, you know, what it look like. Whereas I feel like this is not the Roberts Court anymore.

This is the Kavanaugh Court, right? Because Kavanaugh is the swing voter now. Well, of course, it's always the Roberts Court because he's the Chief Justice. Right. But you make a really good point that for this Chief Justice, managing a 6-3 conservative court where he is no longer the swing vote, that is going to be a very difficult act for him to pull off. Yeah.

And it really does undermine kind of his. whole gestalt. To the extent that you believe that he's an institutionalist and that he's interested in preserving that, yes, it makes it more difficult. Yeah, it is really problematic. And it seems like this is a very tough situation for him. Well, it is, you know, I once had a conversation with a very conservative Republican federal judge about his opposition to some Democratic nominees. And his comment was super well qualified, somebody who would be a great judge. However, while in 99% of the cases, that's fine. In 1% of the cases where you care about how somebody's going to rule, that's not fine.

And to me, that was a really disappointing acknowledgement that there is some expectation, at least on the right, that judges will be political. You know, that's not the way that I was raised to think about the law. I'm married to a judge. My father-in-law was a judge. Dergast was always that you decide cases based on the law and the facts. and if the result is contrary to your personal beliefs, well, so be it. Your obligation is to the law. That's how our judicial system is supposed to work.

Oh, so worrying. I tweeted that I was frustrated with Merritt Garland and I got a lot of people mad at me. Am I right to be frustrated with Merritt Garland? Am I missing something? I think that that's a very hard question to answer while we're in progress. If we get to the end of this administration and look back, then we'll be able to better discuss what our frustrations are and aren't. But look, I would be lying if I didn't tell you that I'm concerned that we're at this point and we don't have any indication as to whether

or not there's a serious investigation going on beyond the people who overran the Capitol on January 6th. By the same token, I spent enough time at DOJ to know, and I was on the bad side of a number of cases where people complained bitterly in the press about the fact that I wasn't doing anything at the point in time where we had a full-fledged ongoing investigation that we were doing such a great job of protecting that nobody knew until we indicted. That could be the case. We frankly just don't know here. There is obviously enormous hesitance to engage in purely political prosecutions, and I think that that's appropriate by the same time when you have folks who engage in plotting an insurrection. If you have an if is going to do a lot of work in this sentence, if you have proof

beyond a reasonable doubt that people engaged in a seditious conspiracy, engaged in a conspiracy to interfere with the functioning of the United States, then I think you're obligated to investigate that seriously and to prosecute if the evidence is there and to let the cards fall where they may. Ah, so useful, so interesting, and so helpful. Thank you so much, Joyce Vance. Thank you so much for having me. Hey folks, if you haven't heard every single week we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Corey Booker or the folks who explain what's happening behind the scenes in media, like Jim Acosta or Soladadobrian. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner.

And sometimes we just have friends around to analyze what's happening in the news. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you'll support the Beast. fearless journalism, as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member, head to New Abnormal. Dot the DailyBeast.com. That's New Abnormal. Dot the DailyBeast.com. Alex Gibney is the director of Enron, the smartest guys in the room, Taxi to the Dark Side

and The Inventor Out for Blood, and his latest movie, The Forever Prisoner, which premieres on HBO on December 6th. Welcome back to the new abnormal, Alex Gibney. Thank you, Molly. So let's talk about this documentary. Why did you pick this? It was kind of one that I couldn't help but take on. It followed on a dock I did some years ago called Taxi to the Dark Side. And at the time, Taxi had sort of broached the idea that the CIA was responsible for what we saw at Abu Ghraib. And at the time, that was a controversial thing. Since then, a lot of people know about it. But over the years, more and more information came out. And I thought it would be interesting to go back into that territory. to understand just why it was that the CIA felt so compelled to go down this path.

It was ultimately so destructive and so useless. And along the same time, a pal of mine named Ray Bonner and somebody else from a completely different direction, a journalist named Kathy Scott Clark came and said, geez, you know, we're really interested in this case of Abu Zubeda. And it all fell into place. And so I decided to tell the story. I will say you've done it really well. So one of the most interesting things I think that did come about since Taxi on the Dark Side was that CIA really let Ali Sufran tell his story. In this era like where this week all we're talking about is like the CIA is still defending, redacting Kennedy assassination things.

Why do you think they allowed him to be unleashed? It's a really good question. I'm not sure exactly why. Though it was clear that when we launched our lawsuit, there was a lawsuit launched by myself and Ray Bonner, it was just so embarrassing what they had done. that I don't think they really wanted to go before a court. I mean, in the case of Ali Sufant, they redacted the first person's singular pronoun. Now, if you see that on a page, it's pretty obvious what's being redacted. You know, it would be like redaction went to a secret site, right?

And so it's clear. It's I. So the ridiculousness of the redactions, the fact that they were purely punitive at a time when they had allowed Mitchell tell a story about Diabuzubeta interrogation to get George Tenet to tell a story, Jose Rodriguez to tell his story. That was all fine. But Ali Sufhan, no. So I think they may have been embarrassed, but the truth is, I don't know. It's an interesting dynamic of the story because, like, what you illustrate so well,

and, you know, like, whether it's looming tower or reign of terror, you see over and over again, like, these stories and they are told well, but you really show this dichotomy that Abu Zabeda has been stripped of all rights. he can't talk to you in this movie, he can't talk to anybody. They say they're never going to speak to anybody just as you show at the stop. Yet these people are being unleashed to now tell the CIA's side of the story. Right. One of the things I learned over time was how carefully the CIA crafts its narrative.

They spend a great deal of time trying to make sure that it's their narrative that's accepted, whether or not it's by working with filmmakers, you know, who made Zero Dark 30 or having the same person basically ghost write, you know, all of the key memoirs. this guy, Bill Harlow, who he's a very, very gifted and go-to writer for all of these people. Wait, stop. He did all the memoirs of all the CIA. He did Tenet. He did Rodriguez. I believe he did Rizzo. God, what the fuck. Because there's such control freaks that they just have to have.

Yeah. And Bill Harlow would say, I've just. helping people tell their stories. He's the go-to ghostwriter. I mean, you know, if you heard about this in the Soviet Union, you'd think, well, of course that's what they do. That's Tass. But here for the CIA, you have Bill Harlow. Yeah, this is like the type of stuff if the Cohen brothers got it in the writing room. They'd be like, ah, tacky. Right. You know, that's that's too overreaching. Nobody would believe that. Do you feel like the CIA operates as its own kind of country? I think they do. I think there's a way to think about it that maybe isn't, you know, too deep stateish, which is to say they're so invested in protecting the institution.

And I found that odd. And I don't really get into it so much in the doc, though I do include dissenting voices from the CIA. Because what's clear about this story, the Abu Zubeda story, is that there are many people inside the CIA who were outraged about what was going on and tried to speak up. But those are not the people that the CIA allows to speak up. And so, you know, you don't hear the debate that goes on within side the agency. The people at the top of the agency decide this is something that we did. Therefore, we're going to protect ourselves and we're not going and we're going to pretend that it would be bad for the morale of the agency to accept any criticism. Even though, you know, it's hard for me to understand what happens to the morale of the people at the agency who are trying to do the right thing and raise the ruckus over torture.

Do you think that they're still as pro-torture as they were? Of course, they'll still, they still won't call it torture. They say what we did was legal. It wasn't torture. Right. I have seen a shift over the last 20 years where Americans are less interested in going in foreign wars. Like, do you see the CIA less interested in torture or the same?

No, I see them less interested in it because they got so much blowback from it. As Michael Hayden famously said, next time you act is to do this, you better provide your own bucket. I think is the way he put it. What's dismaying, though, is that there seems to be no remorse and no interest in permitting the true story of this episode to be told. Because after all, the purpose of history is not to just embarrass people. The purpose of history is to see what happened the last time so we don't get it wrong the next time. And that's why it's been so dismaying that the CIA, for example, won't allow release of the, you know, the full torturous. report. It's still classified, why they still fight, you know, tooth and nail over, over these

issues. Like, Ali Sufhan was this, you know, the FBI agent who interrogated Albusubeta first, according to standard rapport building techniques. We were able to get through FOIA, you know, his interrogation notes and also some of the cables that he sent back. But these are all still heavily redacted and we know by reading them that what's being redacted are names that everybody is familiar with. But the CIA just wants to make it difficult for people to understand the story because they find the history of it to be embarrassing. One of the things I think that you really did in this is you show James Mitchell, who's the brains behind enhanced torture or enhanced interrogation techniques. You get him on film and really let him be himself, which comes off as

demented and harrowing. What was that like getting that footage in there? This seems like just so intense. And every time he's on screen, I was fully freaked out. Yeah. Well, he's an intense character. I was a bit surprised that he agreed to an interview, but that was due to the hard work of a woman named Kathy Scott Clark, who's writing a book on the same subject, which I guess

will be out next year. And he agreed to an extensive interview. I think in part because he felt he was taking the entire rap for enhanced interrogation techniques. And after all, there was an agency who hired him and who actually pushed him further than he wanted to go. So he wanted to get his side of the story out. At the same time, it's clear that his side of the story is nervous making, to say the least, that he who had no experience in interrogation whatsoever was put in charge of this new interrogation program.

Has no apologies for it, doesn't consider it to have been torture, and considers it to have been his patriotic duty. And I believe him in that, but that leads to the question of, well, you know, do the ends always justify the means? So as long as you say you're a patriot, can you do anything? And you illustrate that really well, but like he is belligerently reactionary to the things. and, like, kind of does the stupidest defenses. I really can't believe how shallow his defenses for what he did were that you showed in this.

Well, and also, I think there's an aspect to it which is covering up for what really happened. And, you know, what was hard to get him to talk about was the early period, that is to say, April and May, when they were interrogating opposite data and clearly using what would later come to be called enhanced interrogation techniques, but they did not yet have legal approval for them, even though, they got kind of wink and nod approval, you know, which allowed them to go forward. They were clearly experimenting. But because they didn't have official legal approval, you know, Mitchell likes to say that, oh, he was just an advisor being consulted on resistance techniques.

To everyone else who was there, he was the guy who was running the show. So the other thing I think that you did an incredible job in this doc was showing the drawings that Abu Zabed made of his torture because. And you talk about how there's no video of this and there's this really interesting detail in all of his drawings, which is like there's nine cameras in every drawing, it feels like. Do you think that those tapes are really destroyed or do you think that this is just another thing that they're holding back? I think some tapes were destroyed. The question is, are there additional copies? I suspect there are because that's almost always the way it happens.

People keep copies for various reasons. But I don't know that for sure. So I suspect that there are, but I don't know. They videotaped everything. Going back to April and May, the cameras were always running. And obviously they videotaped all of the torture in August. And they videotaped, as I understand it, the torture of Nashiri, which happened right after Obos Beda.

All those tapes were destroyed. In fact, I'm told that there was a rather nervous CIA representative who drove them from northern Thailand down to Bangkok. And God knows what would have happened if somebody had opened up trunk of his car. So there are aspects of this operation that people like to present of the height of science and deliberation,

which were very much off the cuff all the time. I think, you know, one of the other things you do is you make this really coherent point that, you know, like when so many people talk about Abu Zabeda, it's like, well, this is a slippery slip of justice, but you actually make the point that I think Spencer Ackerman's reign of terror

and Adam Serber's cruel, is the point make, which is that this is why we see a crueler world today. And when everybody's wondering how we got here, you and those books have made this point. But do you think there's any undoing of that? I think there is. And I think that, you know, this is always a struggle. You know, this stuff comes back over and over and over again. I mean, the CIA apologized for its role in torture to the Congress in, I believe it was in the 1980s, if I'm not mistaken, and said this will never happen again. Well, clearly they didn't read their own testimony when it came time to, you know,

reviewing how they were going to interrogate Abu Zubeda. So, so this stuff tends to be a constant struggle. How do you keep vigilant about this material? And, of course, one way you do is by being honest about the past. And we're still having arguments about the past constantly. I mean, particularly in the area of civil rights, torture is another one. I mean, you know, let's, let's open up the book. and really see what happened. And one of the things that I was, you know, gobsmacked by as I began to

get into this to the extent that I was able to tell the story with some of this new testimony and new documentation was how careless it was. I mean, on the one hand, they were tremendously careful about erecting this kind of legal scaffolding that would protect them from prosecution. But the recklessness with which they went into a new program of interrogation techniques was really jaw-dropping to me. I mean, there wasn't some kind of worldwide study of what they might do. There weren't a lot of different people who were considered for the job. No, it was just, you know, on a Friday afternoon, the wife of Jose Rodriguez's lawyer says,

yeah, I know a guy. And they hired him. Yeah, that's really depressing. Alex, this is so interesting. I can't wait to see the movie. Thank you so much for joining us. Delighted. Tim Mack is NPR's Washington investigative reporter and the author of the new book, Miss Fire, Inside the Downfall of the NRA. Welcome to the new abnormal, Tim Mack.

Thank you. NRA, good or bad? Well, the NRA right now, not very good. I mean, this book is really about the hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars in corruption in the organization and how the NRA declined over the last decade. So wait, were they ever good? No, they were always bad, right? I'm saying they're in a terrible financial and legal trouble, right? Oh, well, that's good. So explain to us a little bit about how they got there. So, you know, it's an interesting kind of arc over the last decade. So the book, Misfire,

goes behind the scenes to show what happened inside the NRA as it all kind of fell apart. but of course it wasn't always that way. The NRA really was doing well during the Obama administration. During those years, it was able to sell and package fear to their membership, and that led to a lot of increases in fundraising and a lot of folks joining the NRA. But ironically, that kind of set the stage for a lot of the corruption that would take down the organization in the Trump years. I mean, they spent so much time and effort trying to get Donald Trump elected in 2016.

They spent more than even the Trump Super PAC did to get Donald Trump elected. But after Trump was elected, they weren't able to sell and package that fear nearly as well. So money and membership goes off a cliff at that point. And that's where all these problems begin to bubble off to the surface. Whistleblowers begin to emerge. And investigative reporters like me begin to make some headway for the first time. reporting out what was happening inside this organization. So it's funny, it's almost like had they not gotten Trump elected, they'd be in much better space. Yeah, that's the real irony of this all,

right? It's like the dog that catches the car and doesn't know what to do. They didn't have a strategic plan for what to do after they got what they wanted. And, you know, without that beer in a package, they really didn't have much to sell. So interesting. What happened? So Trump was elected. So Trump is elected, and there's this big financial contraction at the NRA. They start running out of money. In 2018, they were almost unable to make payroll for their employees. It was that serious. That had serious, serious cash crunch. And Wayne Lep here, the head of the NRA, reaches out to his old friend Oliver North and pulls him into the organization. Yeah, who better? When I'm in trouble, I always look for someone I know who's, yeah.

Notorious for being the head of one of the biggest governmentally corrupt things over the past 40 years. Yeah, yeah, that's who I turned to, too. But he's become like, since it ran Contra, Oliver North has become this, like, huge kind of celebrity in the conservative world. He was, you know, appearing on Fox and he was doing documentaries and things like that. And Wayne Lapeer really thought the solution to his problems was to bring in Oliver North the fund raised their way out of this problem. Yeah, that makes sense. Oliver North gets into this organization and he realizes that something is terribly wrong. It's wrong even for him.

That money is being spent in ways that he just really doesn't understand. And he demands an internal audit of the NRA. And there's this very climactic scene in the book where Oliver North and Wayne Laupier confront each other in a Indianapolis hotel suite just days before the 2019 NRA annual convention when Trump and Pence are expected to speak. And basically, Wayne Lapeer pushes Oliver North out of, the organization and says he's not going to support him. And this is around the time when it really all bubbles out to the surface. Oliver North publicly steps back as the president of the NRA while all these

reporters are sitting at a convention hall watching this unfold and chaos is totally raining and no one knows what's happening. And the NRA has been on a downward trajectory ever since. Couldn't have happened to a worst group of people, but they still have a lot of power, right? They still raise hundreds of millions of dollars. Right now, they have this mortal threat in the form of New York Attorney General Letitia James, who investigated the NRA and after an 18-month investigation, filed a lawsuit saying that the NRA is too corrupt to exist as a nonprofit and should be dissolved. And so right now that this case is in the courts. Back to like the not being able to make payroll, which like every time this happens, like with a Republican outfit, I'm like,

don't you people run on that the, that like you know how to run businesses? Like, what were they even spending money on aside from that stupid TV network where like Dana Lash would just say crazy shit all day? Well, we're talking about millions and millions of dollars in private jets for Wayne LaPierre, hundreds of thousands of dollars in suits from this Italian menswear boutique on Rodeo Drive called Zena, exotic vacations to the behind. Bahamas to be on a yacht, which Wayne said in, in, uh, made him feel more safe. Going to Lake Como and Italy and all sorts of lavish meals.

During the bankruptcy trial, Wayne LaPierre said that he, he went to this yacht in the Bahamas so that he could be safe after Parkland. He was worried about the fallout of that, of that mass shooting for him personally. He couldn't really answer why being on a yacht in a foreign country surrounded by unvetted people would actually make him more safe. Yes. You painted an interesting picture, though, in your book that, like, you know, you talk about, like, how he nearly left his wife on the altar and that, like, this is a man with, like, a... Not the Charlton Heston macho thing that the NRA likes to portray, but instead, like, a real freak who has, like, paranoia all through him.

So, you know, if you only relied on the NRA's public messaging on who Wayne LaPierre is, you'd think he's, like, a great shot in, like, a, you know, a stoic, uh, conservative. type person. But yeah, you're right. The book opens with the scene at his wedding in the late 90s, and he doesn't want to get married. He's been asking his friends all week, if there's any way he can get out of it. His best man is outside with him and slaps a $100 bill on the dashboard of the Jeep that they're in and says, hey, we could drive out of here right now. But he gets kind of like harangued into it by his wife and the priest. And it then follows this like really, awkward and strange wedding ceremony where he doesn't make eye contact with the bride at any point. He's looking up. He's looking down. He's looking everywhere. It's just so weird for all the people

watching, many of whom are like these NRA luminary types, right? I opened the book with that story because it tells you something deeper about Wayne LaPierre and why the NRA is in such serious financial and legal trouble. Because people, powerful people in and around the NRA have realized that if you yell at Wayne Lapeerer long enough, if you harass him enough, that he's going to eventually greenlight what it is that you want, whether it's millions of dollars in contracts

for contractors with an inn at the NRA or golden parachutes for executives. That's really been the key to understanding the NRAs, understanding Wayne Lopier's weird character. He really does sound quite weird. Can you talk a little bit about what happens with him in Oliver North?

Yeah. So there's this kind of this family drama, okay? To set the stage, the NRA has long been in a kind of symbiotic relationship with this PR firm in Oklahoma called Ackerman McQueen. And so Angus McQueen who headed up that firm and Wainla P.R. are like best buds for decades and decades and decades. But his son-in-law, this guy, this lawyer named Bill Brewer, ends up becoming an emerging lawyer that starts working. working on all the NRA's accounts. And there's tremendous bad blood between Angus McQueen and his son-in-law, Bill Brewer. And it becomes this kind of family feud, who's going to take control of the NRA with Wayne in the middle. It leads to a very, very nasty divorce. And while this is all happening, Oliver North is like, where is all the money going? Millions of dollars are going towards Bill Brewer's

firm. He doesn't understand. He asks for an internal audit. And so all this drama is happening. Lawsuits are flying. This divorce between accurate. and the NRA is all unfolding, and it's leading to all sorts of corruption bubbling up to the surface for the first time. Jesus fucking Christ, can you explain to us what the NRA does so well? Because they do, do, besides making money for Wayne, they're good at this, right? Our country is flooded with guns. I think it's a couple things. I mean, the NRA has done a really good job of growing its membership to the size that it is.

This membership does a good job of advocating for the NRA. The NRA takes a lot of credit for the things that a lot of folks in their community do, right? Right. They took credit for Heller, for example, when they had very little to do with that Supreme Court decision and all the litigation that related to it. But when you talk to lawmakers and you ask like, what are you worried about with the NRA? Why do they, why did their positions concern you? They're like, look, it's not about the money. Money helps, and the NRA certainly has a lot of it.

But what really lawmakers are worried about, they're worried about getting yelled at at a town hall, their inboxes getting flooded, their phone lines, switchboards getting jammed up. And the NRIs members move and are mobilized when the NRIs says to do so in a way that's, I can't really think of a comparable organization that's able to move as many people as fervently as quickly. as the NRA can. And I think that's their real strength. Not the organization, not Wayne LaPierre, not the money. It's their ability to tap into their members and their members' willingness to then go and try to pressure lawmakers into doing things.

So, Tim, though, there was, like, this era pre-Trump that, like, a Grover-Norquist endorsement and, like, an NRA endorsement were, like, really, really crucial. Is it no longer that those endorsements are the thing? it's really the mobilization that they've done of riling people up? Yeah, that's a really good point. I mean, I think that those individual endorsements have really lost power over time.

And, you know, the Grover-Norquist NRA era, what is a decade ago, I think right now, you know, a Trump endorsement might be the most analogous thing to that. But aside from that, I'm not sure voters are taking those kinds of endorsements all that seriously, that the nation has become so polarized that, you know, You fall in line. You're not just NRA endorsed, but you're endorsed by a whole slate of other organizations. Politicians are much more monotonous. They're much more uniform than they used to be. Recently, the NRA was hacked. I feel like we haven't heard much about what's happened from that. Do you know any news with that? Yeah, well, there's been some of these files have shown up on the

dark web. Some can be validated and some can't. Someone who's been doing really good work on this is this guy, Steve Gutowski, over at the reload, who covers gun issues. And, he's been digging deep into these files, it appears that, you know, some important files were released. I haven't- Maybe less. ...validated these files, but it's clear that there has been some sort of breach of their system. I haven't seen that it's led to anything substantial. They're in so much legal trouble as it is. I don't think this is kind of the thing that puts them an enormous amount of trouble. I'm really looking at the New York Attorney General's lawsuit and the court case that will

unfold over the next year as the real thing that determines the future of the NRA in our gun politics. When do you think that would happen? Sometimes next year, I don't think the specific dates have been put out there, but sometime in early 22 is when this trial would get underway. What about them moving to Texas? Does that going to help them have a future, or can Tish James just really make their life miserable with this?

So this is, this was so complicated. A lot of people are like, did the end? NRA filed for bankruptcy, did they move to Texas? They tried. They didn't. So the sequence of events was the New York Attorney General filed this lawsuit seeking to shut down the NRA. And the NRA decides, okay, we're going to try to swerve this by filing for bankruptcy and using the protections of bankruptcy law to reorganize, leave the state of New York and go to Texas. And the bankruptcy judge was like, you can't do that. Like, can you imagine any time a nonprofit accused of...

Why are they a nonprofit? They were formed that way. They were formed in New York after the Civil War. Yeah. And obviously, you know, over the years, they organized as a nonprofit. So insane. The bankruptcy judge was like, no, you can't do that. Just imagine if, you know, any nonprofit, if they were accused of wrongdoing,

could you say, I'm just moving to another state to avoid... any oversight by the state government. So he kicked it back. He said the bankruptcy was not filed in good faith. And so now we're back to New York and the proceedings there. Could that like keep going? The lawsuit or the process? Yeah. I mean, is it done now or can they kick that up to a higher circuit court? No, I don't think that they're going to appeal that. I mean, they've had the chance to and they had to appeal within a certain amount of time and they haven't done that. Okay. So right now they're, they're now set up for this confrontation with the New York Attorney General. So they're not going to move to Texas?

Not in the short term. Well, that's a huge relief. This is such an interesting and strange story. Do you think that ultimately the NRA will go back to its former glory, or do they not even need it? Because they'll have all the courts. I think that they've kind of built this movement that's on this trajectory that exists with or without them. You know what I mean? that if the NRA disappeared tomorrow,

their millions of members would think the same things tomorrow as they did yesterday. So they've really affected the culture and the laws of this country in a very serious way, that even if the organization were to be dissolved overnight, we still have to grapple with and reckon with the laws that it promulgated to begin with. Thank you so much. Please come back, Tim. Well, thank you so much for having me.

What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one of the first to listen to Fever Dreams, the new podcast from The Daily Beast, tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin Subisang and Will Summer, checking in on the movement of the radical right. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's fever dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Jesse Cannon.

Molly Jong Fast. Sumber Winter Day. What's going on? Another day in Gilead. This is true. Really, life comes at you fast. You know, you're just like watching this dystopian future on Hulu one day. Then you're living in it. Yeah.

We did a lot of Supreme Court talk, but there's a lot of fuckery going on. And I think the worst thing today, well, I don't know if it's worse, but an equally bad thing that we didn't talk about on the podcast, but I think we should, is it's so funny because it's like it's really the case against small dollar donations, right? Like, we think, you know, I remember for so many years listening to like people, pundins lecture me about how small dollar donations would be the thing that would, you know, save. democracy. Well, it turns out that small dollar donations on the Republican Party tend to be rewards for horrible behavior and racism. Tell me where you're seeing this, Molly. Well, one of the things that Marjorie Taylor Green, who has become a sort of fundraising powerhouse, juggerna, not of riling up the maga mums. Right. And Lauren Bupert, Bopert, whatever her name is, the two of them have discovered that the way to raise money is to say racist stuff, pick on Ilhan Omar, because she's

Muslim, and they use the anti-Muslim rhetoric to get everyone riled up, and then, or everyone in their base, riled up, and then they do this thing where they raise money off of it. It's really sleazy, it's really depressing, and it's happening everywhere. So, uh, for, to the For that, those two Marjorie Taylor Green and Representative Boebert are my fuck that guys. Yeah, it really is dark. And also, Lauren Bobert, very bad liar. Couldn't keep that story straight. You know, it's a staffer.

It's a cop. I mean, come on, girl. If you're going to be a liar grifter in the Congress, like, do your homework. But, you know, she's not the brightest bulb in the box. Yeah, I don't think do your homework. Yeah, and Lauren Boper belong in the same sentence. Jesse Cannon, who is your fuck that guy? Oh, mine comes from the same field of Maga Chud, just awful person.

One Steve Bannon, the intellectual slob of the America First Movement. What was it there, the international dark web? Intellectual Dark Web. The intellectual dark web. Bannon is the intellectual shirt web. Triple shirt, triple shirt, triple shirt, yes. Triple shirt, the triple shirt thread, Steve Bannon. You know, I will tell you, it really has made it so I get distracted whenever I see a man wearing three shirts now.

I'm like, he's doing the full band. How often do you see a man wearing three shirts? Ever since this was brought into my thing, like, you know, like whatever that phenomenon is where you start to notice something, but you're like, did this always happen? It's been a couple times. All right. Okay. Well, so what did Steve Bannon do to earn your ire? So he is now trying to turn the table on the January 6th investigation and blow it up.

After being held in criminal contempt of Congress, he's now trying to oppose the investigation and show who else that they've been questioning and trying to get a leg up on the investigation so that he can hamper it and make it less effective at going after the people who did a coup against our government. And as always, this man is on the worst side of history and the worst side of everything. He is the brains behind the lack of brains in Bobert and Green Strategy. And Bobert is a frequent flyer. on his show too. Yes. I'm sure everybody sits with bated breath

waiting to know the latest intellectual things that come out of her mouth. Yeah, the intellectual dark web. They can teach at Barry Weiss's University.

On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from the Daily Beast. In future episodes we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast

and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world.

We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber.

Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.