The Eric Metaxas Show - Lis Wiehl (Encore)

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

Lis Wiehl shares the intriguing tale of "A Spy in Plain Sight: The Inside Story of the FBI and Robert Hanssen -- America's Most Damaging Russian Spy" and shows how this "worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history" unfolded. (Encore Presentation)

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m. Investments.com. That's legacy pm investments.com. A Texas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Folks, welcome. We have a really exciting guest talking about a very exciting book and subject, exciting, depressing, amazing. I don't know where to begin. You probably already know my guest. Lee's Wheel, maybe you saw her over the years on Fox News or on CNN or any place. Just a prominent legal mind federal prosecutor on and on and on it goes. And she has now written a book.

I got to tell you, it's nothing less than shocking. It's titled A Spy in Plain Sight, The Inside Story of the FBI and Robert Hansen, America's most damaging Russian. spy. Remember the Cold War folks? Remember when we were at war with the Soviet Union? They were a superpower in those days. And there was somebody on the inside. It's just, it's one of the most amazing stories ever. A number of books have been written about it. This is being called The Best of Them All, a spy and plain sight. Lee's Wheel. Welcome to the program. Eric, it's great to be with you. Thanks so much

for that kind introduction. Well, I tell you, when I read originally about Robert Hansen, it was one of these things. It's out of a movie. It's a nightmare that somebody would be this deeply embedded in our FBI working for our enemies. Today it would be, you know, working for China. But give us the background. And for people who don't remember the details, the timing, the years, the decades, so that we have some sense of who this monster Robert Hanson was. Yeah, and you've got it right.

He really is a monster. I mean, finally he's locked up now forever. So he's in a 24-hour or 23-hour solitary confinement in Florence, Colorado, in a supermax. But he started, you know, kind of an unremarkable upbringing. He was a middle class in Chicago. His father was a cop. Kind of tough on him. I mean, really tough on him.

We'd call it child abuse now. But he grew up, became an accountant, and then joined the FBI, which is really the pinnacle for him. You know, it was just the thing that he wanted to be. He admired James Bond. He wanted to be everything James Bond. So he enters in the early 80s into the Bureau. And Eric, within a year of entering the FBI, he approaches the Russians. They don't have to flip him.

He approaches them. He doesn't tell them who he is, but he says he has this great intel information for them. And indeed it is. The first thing that he gives them is the identity of our major, the prima Russian asset that we had at the time on the ground. And, of course, we rely on those people to give us information from, you said it, China, North Korea, Russia. He was at the very top level of the counter espionage unit in the FBI. And he spied for the Russians, gave him information about Russian assets, gave him information about our nuclear plans, et cetera, for 20 years within the FBI.

It's mind-bending. It's absolutely my—there's so many levels of sickness to this. And I want to be clear, speaking as a public Christian, when you're talking about evil, right, a lot of people, you know, either they don't believe in God, they don't believe in evil, whatever. When you look at something like this, I want to know what you would call it if it's not evil, because here is a man who, I guess, I mean, I haven't said it, but he, to make things infinitely worse, was ostensibly a dedicated Catholic Christian. In other words, it's kind of like the devil wearing, you know, priests, roe, It's a stunning thing.

So he wasn't just some secular person who doesn't believe in anything. Publicly, he put on the face of a man of faith. So I have to ask you, just to go to the beginning, what do you suppose, or who do you suppose he was, that he would, upon entering this life, that he would go to them and do something like this? In other words, was it some crazy James Bond? narrative he had, I'm going to be a double agent.

I'm going to be what, what do you suppose was in his mind? Because a lot of people could get pulled over, over time. Life gets tough. Things get complicated, and you find yourself drifting. He goes to them. Why do you suppose that was? Well, he was as a disgruntled employee. He thought that the FBI didn't appreciate him enough and that the FBI agents around him

were kind of dullard, not as smart as he was. he always had to be the smartest guy in the room. We know people like that, right? Well, this is the Benedict Arnold story, right? I mean, if you want to go to the ultimate traitor, Benedict Arnold felt he was being passed over. He was so amazing and he was not being acknowledged. So that's kind of like the standard reason, right?

That somebody like that, they think, I'm better than everybody. Nobody's acknowledging me. I'm going to get them horrible. Right. And also, you touched on the point, Eric, that to the outside world, He was this devout Catholic, Opus Day even, went to Mass every day, had all these kids, five kids with Bonnie, his wife, and he put him through parochial school, lived in the nicest suburbs, and said to everybody that would listen to him, the Russians are godless people, those commies, I hate them. You know, so the outside world, the person that he portrayed was this devout Catholic. And, of course, what he was doing was unchristian to the nth degree.

But he compartmentalized his life so that he somehow thought that, you know, he was doing God's work. I mean, Eric, it was so warped. And you have to, when you deal with criminals like this, you have to go into their mindset, right? We don't think like they do, thank goodness. We don't think like they do. But he thought in his worked way, and this I got from the psychiatrist, David Charney, that by showing Americans where our weaknesses were with the Russians, like that somehow, and Russians exploiting that,

that we would then shore up those weaknesses and somehow become a better country. It's bogus. It's a bogus analysis. It's a warped way of thinking. But that's what I think he thought. He disgruntled, had to be the smartest guy in the room, loved the glamour of James Bond. I got that from his best friend.

And then finally, this war. sense that actually he was doing good when he was doing so many awful things to us. I mean, yeah, let's be honest. People died because of what he did. Yes. Let me ask you, what did he... Yeah, directly. I mean, the first intel he gave was over this Russian asset that we had, right? Poliukov. And so what the Russians do immediately, there's no trial or anything like that. They execute him and then they videotape the execution.

And it's a horrible execution. But they videotape it to deter other potential spies. That's just the first intel that he gave in early 1980s. It goes on and on and on to the point where we no longer had any Russian assets on the ground. That's when the FBI realized that there was a problem and there was a mole somewhere where there was the FBI or the CIA. It's just astonishing. And again, I want to say to folks listening, if you don't believe there's such a thing as evil, what do you make of something like this?

This is demonic evil. To be able to compartment, to be able to go to mass every day and then to do these kinds of things, it's very tough for us to process. It should be tough for us to process. And sometimes if you're solving for X, there's no other answer. It is evil. This is really as dark as it gets. we can do all the psychoanalysis we want.

I just have to ask, so you did get the impression then that this man thought on some perverse level he was doing good. He really did somehow think that. And this I got from his doctor. I'm not making this up. I mean, I got it from his psychiatrist, David Charney, who told me that in this work sense, he thought he was doing good. when in actuality, I mean, Eric, you're exactly right. Evil.

I mean, I've written books about the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, who, by the way, is in the same prison as Hansen is. I've written a book about Charles Manson. I mean, they are the epitome of evil. They do it in different ways. But the playbook, I mean, you, you know, traitor's playbook is used over and over and over again. And that was, you know, such a big shock to me when I did all this research to talk to agents about, you know, the possibility of another Hanson. We're going to go to a break. Folks, we're talking to Lee's wheel. The book is a spy in plain sight. We'll be right back. Tell me, Eric, why is Relief Factor so successful at lowering or eliminating pain? I'm often asked that question.

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That's inspireinsight.com. Go there. Folks, we are talking to Lee's Wheel. You probably know her, remember her from Fox News and many other prominent places talking about many things kind of like this. But nothing can top this. She has a brand new book out called A Spy in Plain Sight, The Inside Story of the FBI and Robert Hansen,

America's Most Damaging Russian Spy. It really is nightmarish. And I always say, Lees, that, you know, apart from my faith in God, I don't know how it would process this. I think you would just be frightened at how evil the world is, how dark it is. I have to ask you the most basic question.

What do you suppose that Robert Hansen got out of this? In other words, it's kind of a funny thing. I always feel that these traders sell themselves extraordinarily cheaply, you know, that China has billions of dollars to spend on if there's anybody out there willing to kind of, you know, give them a leg up here or there. What was Russia giving this man? And again, we want to be clear. This wasn't Russia. This was the Soviet Union, as wicked as it gets.

the evil empire. What were they giving him to make him feel that it was worth his doing this? Because he could have made a decent job doing the right thing. What were they giving him? Right, exactly. Cash. I mean, they were giving him bundles of $30,000, $10,000, $50,000. At one point, he asked for diamonds.

They gave him diamonds. And he had a cash flow problem, right? Because you can't put more than $10,000 in cash into a bank without alerting all sorts of things. So he would just honestly, he put it in a drawer, he put it under the bed. And in fact, Eric, one time when he had the cash in the drawer, Bonnie, his wife, saw the money in the drawer. It was like a sock drawer or something, you know, a basic drawer like that. She pulled out the money, he sees all this cash. She confronts him.

This was early on in his spine, confronts him. She thinks it's money for a mistress because he's done that before. Say that again, money from what? For a mistress. For a mistress. Oh, because he had cheated on his wife. Right. Uh-huh.

So she thinks that. She confronts him. He says, oh, no, no, Bonnie, I'm not cheating on you. This is just money that I got from the Russians for spying. Like, that was better. But he did say that to her. Yes, no, he admitted it to her. And then they, but here, Eric, here's a twist.

they go to their priest. That's what Bonnie, his wife, wants to do. They go to the priest. The priest basically says, oh, that was bad. Don't do that again, spying, that is. And you can be absolved from it if you just give the money that you've already made to the church, which Hansen does, and he doesn't spy for a little bit, and then he starts up again. But the idea that a priest would say that, that basically, you know, hey, you know, don't do that again.

that's too bad, but, you know, it's all okay if you give the money to the church. And that, of course, you know, Bonnie was okay with that. Well, it's kind of like, you know, you say like somebody's going to pay me, you know, $10,000 to whack some guy tonight. I'm going to blow his brains out and I'm going to take the money and I'm going to say, you know what? It's on my conscience. Father, what can I do?

I murdered someone. Well, give the money to the church. Well, I'm glad that the money went to the church. But the idea that he doesn't deal with the murder, that he doesn't deal with the murder, that he doesn't deal with the primal sin here is, of course, extraordinary. It's humbling, isn't it, to think that there are people this foolish out there being looked to for leadership? Way beyond foolish. I mean, it's just, it's just incomprehensible to me that a man of the cloth would do that.

I mean, because if he had said, you know, stop, or I'm going to report you, or I am going to report you, then lives would have been saved, billions of dollars of, you know, information would not have been given. And it was one of the places where Hansen could have been stopped. I mean, there were others what I call Puffs of Smoke in the book where there were clues that it could be Hansen and they weren't followed up on. But the priest was the first instance of that happened. It's mind-bending. What led you, Lee's Wheel, to write about this case? I mean, because you've written many books before.

What was it that led you to write about this man? Well, I'd heard about Hanson, of course, growing up, my dad being an FBI agent, and then after his arrest and all of that, I mean, my dad was just up in arms about it. He was out of the FBI by then, but still, you know, once you're in the agency, you're kind of a member of the federal family, and he hated to see this black mark happening against the FBI. I was curious about it. I was curious about the story and wondering now with all this history, you know, 20 years yesterday was when he was sentenced, whether I could get interviews, you know, that were more productive than what had been written at the time. And if I could further the story. And I was lucky in the sense, this sounds a little strange, but I was lucky in the sense that I wrote most of it and did most of the research during the pandemic. And so I had, you know, people that had a little more time on their hands, probably.

And then also, you know, FBI agents, even at the highest level, are probably not going to hang up the phone when I call as a might of regular journalist because I was a federal prosecutor. My dad is and was an FBI agent. So, you know, I kind of open up that federal family key and one person leads to another, leads to another, leads to another. And that's how you, you know, move the story forward and get new information. And remind us, because it's so long ago, I mean, it seems like yesterday in some ways, 20 years isn't what it used to be, but I have to say that I don't remember the details of how it was that he was tracked down. In other words, what was it after, you know, roughly two decades of this extreme wickedness, this evil, that they finally got him? What was the silver thread that they pulled that led them to this man? Well, they realized, you know, late 90s, early 2000, that there was a mole somewhere in the FBI or CIA.

And how they realized that is all the Russian assets were dead. And so somebody must have been tipping the Russians on. And they started an investigation. They put people in, let's call it the vault, you know, because there were no windows. This was a place in D.C. And they did a matrix where they put, you know, they put individuals they thought might have been involved. And they figured out in this matrix who they thought. it was. But at first, Eric, they got the wrong guy. They got a guy named Brian Kelly, a CIA

operative. And they being the FBI, the FBI was conducting the investigation. They target Brian Kelly. He's completely innocent, but his life is, you know, pretty much ruined. They interrogate all of this stuff. And I spoke with his widow, Patricia McCarthy, who told me that the stress of it and the anxiety and the humiliation of it all, you know, led to his early death. So they had this guy, they thought they had the guy, but Russian assets were still dying, information was still going out. So they realized it's probably not him. And the head of the investigation, Mike Rochford, found a Russian source. They eventually paid that Russian source much more than Hansen ever got, about $7 million. And that guy gave him a tape.

that the FBI was able to listen to at the tape between Hansen and the Russian handler that he had and they were able through tape through the ear identification, audio identification to realize that it was Hansen. And then they did a sting operation on him

because they couldn't put this Russian asset on the stand, right, if you went to court because he's been paid $7 million, he's a preyed for his life, etc. So the FBI really did a whole sting operation on Hansen. And the other twist on that, Eric, is that Hansen was looking at mandatory retirement within four months of when they figured out who he was.

So they had to move fast, right? They did a sting operation. They caught him at that last drop. He's making one final drop. It was his final. He didn't know it. Drop to the Russians. And the FBI swarmed in, made the arrest.

And he says to them, what took you so long? He's always got to be the smartest guy in the room. Always got to show up that the FBI's not as smart as he is. Well, you've written so much about crime. Do you understand this pattern comes up over and over again, this desire to outwit others? I think we saw this. I can't remember, but because you wrote about the Unabomber, there was some aspect of that. There's this cat and mouse game always going on. I mean, I remember with the son of Sam, you know, writing to the post to Jimmy Breslin. There's always this kind of game. It's a bizarre. It's a bizarre. thing that you find over and over again, that they seem to be, to have this, this, this, this, onus to prove something to someone. I don't know what it is, but you, you get that here, that he was, uh, in his mind. That's what mattered to him. I absolutely. I may have been his father, you know, who I, I said was abusive to him. He was a

cop in Chicago and, you know, really was really pretty awful to Hansen. And may have been trying to prove something to his father. he just always, you know, but he had to be the smartest guy, but he didn't fit in, nor did the Unabomber, you know, antisocial, wouldn't hang out with the FBI, his colleagues, you know, for fun times, right? The FBI agents like to play hard, work hard, play hard. And Hansen had none of that. He was creepy, they said.

He looked like a mortician. They said they called him mortician because he was always dressed in black. This is like the definition of what people think of as a religious creep. It is just so evil. We'll be right back, folks. We're talking to Lee's Wheel. The book is a spy in plain sight. In case you haven't been paying attention,

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They can help you roll your retirement account into a gold-backed IRA where you still own the physical gold. They can also ship gold and precious metals. safely and securely to your house. Call Legacy at 866-528-1903 or visit them online at LegacyPMinvestments.com. Folks, welcome back. We're talking to Lee's Wheel. You'll remember her, I don't know, from the radio factor. Lees, you've been all over the place writing about crime, talking about these things.

You said your father was himself an FBI agent, so you've been in this world. And you were describing kind of the camaraderie of the agents. the FBI and how they saw this genuinely evil man, Robert Hansen, as creepy. And I always find it, you know, as a person of sincere Christian faith, you can see how people who don't share that faith, they have this idea of what these kind of creepy religious types are, Opus Day. You get it in a movie like the Da Vinci Code, really these bizarre people. And the funny thing is, here you have this man who fits that stereotype. I mean, creepy on every level, as you're describing him, horrifying, really.

Yeah, creepy but not, you know, dangerous. I think they thought he was weird, but he was really into computers and IT and very good at it. And most of his colleagues, you know, they're about resting people and, you know, going out there in the field. So they said, Han said, okay, you know, you do your thing and you do the computers. which of course gave him even better access to all of our classified secrets all across the Bureau. And Bureau really has to watch out for that because they're still not very good at, you know, at computerization.

They just don't care about it all that much. And, you know, that's dangerous in today's world. But he, you know, he abused that. He abused that trust because, again, they thought he was weird, but not untrustworthy. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's a staggering thing. I mean, I have to ask you, since you come from an FBI family, what do you suppose, where, where are we today? Because I think that power, of course, corrupts.

That's human nature. We know that, the temptation to corruption and to doing these kinds of things whenever you have power. And then the emergence of what we today call the deep state. And it was that these ideas, the ideas that they're people acting kind of independent. thinking they're doing a good thing, part of a bureaucracy. I mean, look, it goes all the way back to Jay Edgar Hoover. But it really seems to have borne fruit, full fruit, horribly lately, with Strach and Page and so on and so forth. What is the morale, do you suppose, in the FBI today? I don't know if you can comment on it, but I mean, it's just, it's always horrifying to Americans

when you find out that people in these agencies that you once trusted were. really not, they were not all in on, you know, the founder's vision of America. Let's put it that way. Exactly. And I've got to preface it with, you know, 99.9% of the line agents out there, you know, are doing God's work and getting the bad guys and putting them away and they go into it for the right reasons to do that. But it's these rogue agents that, you know, for whatever warped reasons and there are different reasons for different people, go ahead and do this. And and they really stain the reputation of the FBI in general. And that is so sad for me to see and for my dad to see because, like I said, the people that I worked with, my dad and the people that he worked with, really solid citizens apolitical about their job.

And this should be, should not be politicized. You know, law enforcement in general should not be politicized. People may have their views one way or the other, but they should stop at the FBI doors when they enter, right? It's all about keeping us safe and getting the bad guys. And anything that hurts that reputation hurts the line agents out there trying into good work. Well, it is just amazing. And, you know, whenever, I mean, it's the same with the church. I mean, you can only imagine that people who were in his parish and who thought of him as a serious, faithful Christian,

then find out that you could hardly be more wicked than what he did and how it hurts the faith. And I guess did any of the, you mentioned a priest, were any of these people dealt with? Did they pay any price? It's kind of amazing that they were around this and that they somehow didn't do anything or didn't see the red flags. I don't know. No, not that I know of. I mean, the collateral damage, of course, is Brian Kelly, that CIA agent who, you know, really has led to his demise, his kids, his wife. embarrassed, humiliated, you know, her life pretty much destroyed.

You know, so he had people around him that were extremely hurt by this. But, you know, I don't think that anybody, certainly not that priest. He was never, you know, there was never reprimanded for that. And it's kind of interesting. I start the book with an opening chapter with Louis Free, who was the head, you know, director of the FBI at the time. He was at the same, his kids went to the same parochial school that Hansen's kid did. And so Hanson's sitting there in the front row while Louis Free is delivering this, you know, this speech about ethics and government and, you know, honesty and all of that to their kids' graduation, knowing at that point, because they had a sting operation going on, knowing at that point that this guy, Hanson, was the traitor that he is, incredible.

Do you suppose that there would be a modicum of repentance in somebody like Hansen that at any point then or, since that he would see what he did? You know, he said when he was sentenced that he, you know, was sorry and, you know, wrote words of remorse. Again, I spoke with his psychiatrist at length, and I'm not sure he ever, to this day, realized the damage that he did. You know, the Russians were familial, embracing,

loving to him almost. You know, he kind of saw them as his family. I don't, I can't get into his mind because per his plea agreement, he can't talk to anybody. But, you know, he said that he was sorry. Honestly, Eric, I don't believe it for a minute. I want to come back to this, my goodness,

very important story. A spy in plain sight is the new book. A spy in plain sight. Lee's wheel. We'll be right back. Hey there, folks. Eric Metax is here. As you know, our friend, and he's a real friend, Mike Lindell, has a passion to help everyone get the best sleep of their life. But he didn't stop by simply creating the best pillow. Now Mike has done it again by introducing his My Slippers.

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The offer will not last long. So order now with promo code Eric at MyPillow.com or call 800-978-3057. 900, 978, 3057. Our love is a lie. Folks, welcome back. We're talking to Lee's Wheel, who's the author of a spy in plain sight, the inside story of the FBI and Robert Hansen, America's Most Damaging Russian Spy. Let's think about that subtitle. America's most damaging Russian spy, of all the evil spies we had during the Cold War,

this man who was a regular communicant, as they say in the Catholic Church, who was a member of Opus day, a family man. He was by far the most damaging of them all. He is now in a supermax facility. By God's grace, he's no longer doing what he was doing. But Lee's Wheel, you had an opportunity to talk to people who knew him personally. Were you able to talk to his family or were they will not talk? No, Bonnie, his wife, again, for the plea agreement that she struck with the government, can't talk to anybody. The kids are grown, doing. in their own thing. And no, they wouldn't talk to me. But I got his brother-in-law, Mark Wawk, who tried to turn him in at one point, went to a supervisor, Agent Lyle. And Mark says that he said,

you know, I have real suspicions about this guy Hanson. You know, Bonnie found this money in the drawer. He's talking about retiring to Poland. I mean, what? We're in the Cold War, right? It doesn't make any sense. And we're looking for a mole. So Mark says to me that he did report the guy. We did report Hansen. Lyle, the agent who was a supervisor, says it didn't quite go down that way. So I don't know. I mean, you've got to read the book and you look at the both accounts and you can make up your own mind.

But there were all these, you know, puffs of smoke. There were all these clues. You know, he hacked into one of his colleagues' computers and got caught. And he said, well, I was just trying to show you how our weaknesses in our computers. and they let him go with that. I mean, so there were chances to catch him, and I talked to all the people that were that close to him, and they just didn't get it.

They weren't looking to police themselves at that point. Again, this is so dark looking into the soul of somebody like this, and you've written about others like this. How do you keep from getting nihilistic or cynical or hurt by it yourself? Because it does seem to me that when you're, you brush up against this kind of evil, it's just, there's just something terrifying about it and depressing about it. What keeps you going in the midst of this? Because you've written a lot about these kinds of figures. I guess, you know, I'm a very optimistic person. I always see things,

the glass half-full. And my kids have even said, Mom, why do you write about these people? Why do you give them, you know, a space and a book? And I tell them, and I really believe. believe this, that we need to know about history. We need to know the right account of these guys, whether it's a Unabomber, Manson, Hanson, because we need to learn, right? You need to learn from history, lest it repeat itself again and again and again. So, no, I've got, you know, I've got a great life, great kids. I'm a Christian. I'm a believer. So, you know, I write about these bad guys, but I don't let them intrude on my life. Well, you've written many books. You've written many books. This is evidently the most recent, but it's called a spy in plain sight.

And I just imagine that you're doing a lot of interviews talking about this. Do you suppose that Robert Hanson in the Supermax facility is aware that people out in the world are talking about him? I don't know. It'd be interesting. I mean, what I'm interested in is that, you know, with this one hour outside of solitary confinement, Who is he hanging out with? The Unabomber? I mean, El Chapo.

That's a pretty scary thought. I'm glad that it is a Supermax. I've been in those Supermax. Last time I was in, it was with Tex Watson at his last parole hearing. You know, Charles Manson's right-hand guy, the guy that did all. Yes. And so he's asked about this, right? How could a good Christian man like you do this?

And he says... Wait, you're talking about Tex Watson? Who are you talking about right now? Tex Watson. Okay, one of the murderers part of the Manson family. Yeah. And he says because Charlie, Charlie, Charles Manson, showed us love. Why couldn't a good Christian like him, you know, be good?

You know, and it was incredible. It was like a teenager talking. You know, oh, I got shown love by somebody else. Same with Hanson, right? The Russians showed him love. He wasn't getting that kind of feeling from anywhere else. I mean, we need to know about this so we're aware. And so we can keep it from happening again and again and again.

And I want to be clear, you know, when I say something is sheer evil, I always have to make a theological point. There's no human being who is sheer evil. We're all created in God's image, and God died to redeem every single one of us who is willing, who opens our hearts to him. And I think of the happy story of David Berkowitz, the former son of Sam, there was a guy as dark and sick as you can imagine. And I've corresponded with him. There is no question that he has now given decades. of his life to serving God. He's earnest. He's not even asking for parole. He's saying, I don't deserve to get out. So I think it's important for us to know that if God can reach a David Berkowitz and reach him profoundly, this is not some surface, you know, conversion. There's hope for everybody. And so I would encourage everybody to hope, to pray rather, for these folks,

because there's something nightmarish about giving your life over to this kind of evil. Absolutely. We have to pray for redemption for everybody. It's, it is amazing, though, as you say, you know, these folks, Texwasson, they're shown love. They say we were shown love. And it also tells you that even in these darkest of stories, you see a picture of what human beings long for, what we're created for, and how easily we can be fooled. So I say to folks out there, you know, if you're a person of faith, show others the love of God because this is what they maybe don't believe it exists. They hope it might exist. But when you hear about a story like this that a man who is treated kindly and given a few thousand

bucks would do these kinds of things, it's just it's absolutely chilling. Liz, we've just got 30 seconds left. What are you working on or what will you work on, do you suppose, for your next book? Well, right now I'm concentrated on this one. That's what I do. I get all into something. I don't have two books going on at one time. But we'll see.

I'm always up for a new adventure. So we'll see what happens next. Yeah, I know what you mean. Especially when you're promoting a book, you don't even want to think about whatever it is that lies ahead. Well, listen, is there a website where people can find you? Sure. Leasewheelbooks.com is my website.

just you can order a book on Amazon or go to every end up. Obviously, obviously. A spy in plain sight. Lee's Wheel, the author. Lees, thank you so much. Thanks, Sarah. Thank you so much. Be well.

Wait for the morning night. To shining through. Albin, I think we right now have one of the most important announcements we've ever made on the seven years of this show. Really? Yes. Oh. Folks, are you listening?

Oh. I hope you have a pencil. According to my notes, listen carefully, my pillow.com, that's the website. Use the code Eric, right? Are you ready for the announcement? It says, the fur-lined slippers at mypillow.com are not discontinued. Did you hear that? Whoa.

The fur-lined slippers at mypillow.com are not discontinued. Don't be fooled. When people tell you they've been discontinued. discontinued. I have a note here. It says they're not discontinued. Equally important, wide widths will arrive in the fall. Oh, that's good. You know, I got the slippers just recently, and I said there was a little note that said, you just got the last pair. I guess that wasn't, no. That's a lie. According to my notes here, if you go to Mypillow.com, the fur-lined slippers. Now, this is faux fur, okay? So faux animals were murdered.

and skinned, and the faux fur was used for these slippers. So the faux fur slippers are not discontinued. You've got to use the code, Eric, my pillow.com. Wide widths will arrive in the fall. Whether you like it or not, they're arriving in the fall. According to my notes, these slippers are finished with high-quality leather suede made from U.S. cow hides. Okay, no communist cattle was killed. These are all American cows.

American. My slipper linings are soft and cozy faux fur. Okay, and then it says sizing recommendations with my slippers. You'll want to add a half to a full size to your normal shoe size. For example, if you wear an 8 or 8.5, 8.5, 8.5, please choose a size 9. This is an important announcement. You go to MyPillow.com, use the code Eric. And also it says sizing recommendation with all season my slippers, you'll want to go down if your normal shoes a half size.

For example, if you wear 8.5, please choose the size 8. So this is very complicated. I know. If you want the fur-line slippers, you want to go up. If you get the all-season slippers, you want to go down. We don't know why this is, but we were told on pain of death, read these announcements on the air. When you go to MyPillow.com, use the code, Eric, and be sure the full furline slippers, if you wear an eight or an eight and a half, you want to get a nine, the all-season.

and slippers, if you wear an eight and a half, you want to choose an eight. I know this is complicated, but we're going to be repeating this over in the weeks ahead. And we haven't even gotten to the sandals yet, right? The sandals have three-tier cushioning system. Imagine three-tier cushioning system. Not just cushioning, it's a cushioning system. And if you've got vertigo, be careful, folks. Three-tier cushioning system. It reduces the stress put on your feet and joints. and who's putting the stress?

I don't know. It could be you, could be gravity. But the sandals reduce the stress all day comfort, not like the other slippers, that they go 20 hours, and then they're good for nothing. This is 24-hour comfort built with durable construction that will last,

molded and form to cradle and support the foot. And the foot is the very thing, think about it logically, that fits in to the sandal, great recovery foam, super fashionable and you can wear them anywhere. Go to mypillow.com. Use the code Eric. Hurry up. Hey folks, Eric Mataxis here. I'm away from the studio this week, but I wanted to bring you an important announcement. The fight for the unborn, as you know, is raging in our country. An

unprecedented leak from the Supreme Court indicates that Roe v. Wade is on the brink of being overturned. The debates have never been stronger. During this critical time, a new movie is about to be released. The award-winning film, The Matter of Life, cuts through the rhetoric and hatred and exposes the real issues surrounding the plight of the unborn. The Matter of Life. Stream it at SalemNow.com. It's been hailed as the best pro-life movie ever made. Stream it today at SalemNow.com. That's SalemNow.com. There's a battle taking place in America, whether you're pro-choice or pro-life, you need to see this film. Please stream it today at Salem now.com and have your own life transformed as you watch the matter of life.