The MeidasTouch Podcast - SNEAK PEEK: ‘American Psyop’ Episode 2 will leave you SPEECHLESS

Episode Date: November 20, 2022

On this episode of The Mighty, MeidasTouch co-founder Ben Meiselas gives you a sneak peek of episode 2 of the brand new MeidasTouch/Bunker Crew podcast, American Psyop. American Psyop takes the audience through the amazing and inexplicable life of Wes Clark jr, the son of a NATO General and presidential candidate. After leaving the military for Hollywood, Wes finds himself subject to foreign intelligence operations. Soon, Wes is surrounded by a religious cult, loses his grasp on reality and descends into a world of dirty politics, mercenary organizations and possible threats to American Democracy. Now, with the help of journalist Emily Bicks, Wes tries to make sense of his messy life. In Episode 2, titled "Hollywood Babylon," Wes enters the film industry where he is almost immediately targeted by intelligence operations as well as shady Hollywood players, and he discovers that sometimes these worlds overlap. Add American Psyop right now on all of your favorite podcast apps for new episodes weekly: https://pod.link/1652143101 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Ben Mycelis from the Midas Touch podcast here. So for anyone out there looking to replace a midterm-sized hole in their lives like me, we have a treat for you. We here at the Midas Touch Network are releasing our first podcast miniseries, and we couldn't be more excited about it. As you know, it's called American Psyop, and we previously played the first episode from American Psyop. It's a completely mind-bending true crime thriller with some very relevant political implications. A good way to think of it is it's

sort of like if Forrest Gump and Fight Club had a child, and it's a true story. So it's about Wes Clark Jr., the son of the four-star general who ran for president in 2004. As his father becomes a prominent figure, West Jr. starts getting targeted by intelligence operations and shady international characters. In 2016, he gets surrounded by a cult, goes insane, and while having a psychotic episode, leads 4,000 veterans in a protest against the Standing Rock oil pipeline. And I'm just telling you, you're going to be shocked by how much the story informs and knocks up against important political events today. We're working with a great team on this. It's directed by Jack Bryan from Bunker Crew Media. They're the guys behind Kremlin File and the Vice show QAnon, The Search for Q.

Jack also directed the Trump Russia documentary, Active Measures, and also producing it with us is Stacey Sher. She produced Django Unchanged and Contagion, and we couldn't be more excited to be working with her on this as well. So we are going to play for you right now episode two. We previously played episode one. Episode one is called Genesis. So episode two is called Hollywood Babylon. And in this episode, Wes Jr. enters the film industry where he is almost immediately targeted by intelligence operations as well as shady Hollywood players, and he discovers that sometimes these worlds overlap. So here we're going to play for you the full episode of American PsyOP, episode two, Hollywood Babylon. You can check out our feed also where we played episode one, Genesis. And if you want to catch up on all of the episodes of American PSYOP,

go right now and check out American PSYOP wherever you're listening to this podcast. Just search American PSYOP, P-S-Y-O-P, American Psyop. Check it out. Subscribe to the American Psyop podcast page. We're going to be releasing one episode each week, and the episodes just get more incredible each week. So I'm excited to share for you the full series. But without further ado, we will play for you now the full

episode two, Hollywood Babylon. And don't forget to go now and subscribe to American Psyop on the American Psyop channel, wherever you get this podcast. I'm Ben Micellis. Enjoy episode two. Welcome back to American Psyop, a podcast miniseries in nine parts. I'm Emily Bix, continuing my conversation with Wesley Clark Jr. and our attempt to figure out what happened to him. So, welcome back to this strange journey that brought me to a place I didn't understand. So, you know, that thing about my Australian friend coming back from Macau, I look at that with new eyes, like 15 or 20 years later.

And looking at it now, it feels like a blackmail operation. Like how many other people who sold their tech companies get taken to Macau and put in compromising situations? For sure. And looking back on meeting Delane, who sold their tech companies get taken to Macau and put in compromising situations. For sure. And looking back on meeting Delane, when you saw that blow up in the news. I thought, thank God they never called me back. So as we go through this story, because it's so complicated, we are kind of breaking it up. Last week, we talked about how you were a ripe target for operations based on the fact that your dad was a high-profile general who had gone toe-to-toe with the Russians

and outplayed them, possibly leaving them wanting payback. Today, we're going to focus mainly on your film career. After you left the military, this is when you believe you started getting targeted by both state-run operations and by self-interested individuals. Is there something about the film industry that makes it especially susceptible to operations and grifters? Well, absolutely. First, it's international. So money moves between countries. If you were trying to put people into a country, a film would be a great way to do it. It would be a great way to have cover. But but also most films lose money. So any business that loses a lot of money is a great target for money laundering. When you put together grifters, spies, and movie producers, the differences between them are rather minor. And it sounds like all of this somehow leads to the 2016 Standing Rock oil

pipeline protests. I mean, when I look back on my life, I'm like, all these things brought me here. But yeah, I actually think it's all tied together. Last week, we ended in 2004 when your dad's run for office ended. Today, we're going to step back and focus on your life starting in 1996, right after you left the military. We are starting after the Genocide in Bosnia by Serbian troops, which ended when your dad negotiated for peace while serving as a top presidential military advisor. So I got out of the army in 96, loaded up the car, drove out to Los Angeles. I PA for like six months. And I thought, do I want to do this for the rest of my life? So I sent out applications all over town and I got a call back from Jersey Films. This woman is like, so you're in the army, huh? And I'm like, yeah. And she goes,

can you put up with a lot of bullshit? I said, yes. And I got hired. And the job I wound up getting at Jersey Films was reading scripts. So I was reading five to six scripts a day. But I got really into writing stuff. And we wound up optioning a Philip Dick novel called A Scanner Darkly. And I read it and I'm like, oh, dude, I'm going to try and adapt this. And then in three weeks, I wrote the entire script start to finish. And I was dating this girl named Mia at the time who ran her brother Judd's production company. And she's like, oh my God, you should go quit your job immediately and write full time. And I did.

And it was like the biggest mistake of my life. Then in 1998, my dad became the head of NATO. I get this call from a guy named Mo, happens to be the representative of Bosnia at the United Nations. It's 1999, it's like January. And he was an American who grew up in America, who went to Tulane. And then we need somebody who's connected in the States. And he's like, we're trying to get this movie made about the siege of Sarajevo. I heard you're out in Hollywood. and I heard that you were a creative executive and we're looking for somebody out there because we've got interest from Richard

Gere and Julia Armand and John Malkovich. And there's an Academy Award nominated director. And Bono said, we can use anything we want from the YouTube library. And we have $10 million. And I was like, yeah, of course I'll help do that because the Bosnians need to do something to get people in the West to care about them and not just think, oh, well, they're Muslims, they deserve it. Because that was the prevailing attitude among a bunch of people as a genocide was carried out. Survivors are telling about the Serb reign of terror. How could a group do this? Continue to burn, to loot, to kill, murder

on such a mass scale. It's just unfathomable. Was there a script? They said they had a script. And I'm like, okay, so this is just kind of what I did at Jersey Films, which is you read it, you figure out what the budget's going to be.

You figure out how to get stars involved and how to line everything up and produce the movie. And I'm like, okay, I'll help with that. So the war in Kosovo happens in March, 1999. The war where your dad is leading a bombing campaign as the head of NATO against the Serbians, one of the last conflicts in the Yugoslav wars. Yeah, that's correct. Like within the first 24 to 48 hours, I get a phone call from my dad saying, listen, we've gotten reports.

The Serbs know where you live and they may be sending someone to kill you. So move out of your house tonight. Take everything you need. Go to you know who's house. You just can't talk about it over the phone. All your phones are tapped. Just do it. And tomorrow there will be a guy coming out from NATO to give you some basic security help. Were you scared? I mean, I had a gun. So I just slept with the gun under my pillow that night and carried it

with me everywhere. I figured they're not going to send 20 people after me. And I had a dog. So I figured the dog would wake me up. So the next day, I move into this safe house in Santa Monica. And this dude comes out from NATO, who's part of the diplomatic security group. I get a couple lessons in defensive driving and counterintelligence, how to check your car for bombs, stuff like that, how to see if you're being watched. And then he got me a concealed carry permit and registered me with the Santa Monica police. And that was it. He took off, said, all right, see you later. And during this time, everything had still been progressing with the movie. And Mo has been trying to schedule dinner with John Malkovich, who he supposedly

knows this entire time is a big step forward. So during the war, while Malkovich, who he supposedly knows like this entire time is like a big step forward. So during the war, while Malkovich is shooting a vampire movie in Lichtenstein. To create the world's most realistic vampire movie, director F.W. Murnau dug up an actor who didn't just play the part, he lived it. He's like, Malkovich has agreed to have dinner with us. We have dinner with Malkovich. He's a really nice guy. Like any actor, he's like, well, it all depends on the amount of money I'm offered and I have to see the final script. But on the way back, I stopped through New York because he's like, we're going to hit up Richard Gere in New York because there's some event at the UN. And this is Mo. This is Mo, the representative of Bosnia at the United Nations.

So flying back through the States, we stop off in New York, and we go to this event at the top of the UN. And the first thing I realize is that all of the Ramones are there, having a meal with some guy who was like 70 years old. And then I met all the representatives for all the Balkan nations were at this event. And the Balkans is a region of Europe, east of Italy and north of Greece that includes Romania and Bulgaria and the countries that formerly made up Yugoslavia, such as Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, and Albania. And it was the weirdest thing that had ever happened to me to that time because they were all coming up to me acting like I had some kind of influence on anything that was happening in their countries at that moment. They all had like message to give to NATO, tell NATO this. And I'm just relaying all the

information, but I can't help anyone with anything. But Wes, this is at a time when your father, as the head of NATO, is leading a war in the Balkans. And if at the time you made a list of the 100 best people in the world to get a message to the top of NATO, wouldn't you be one of those 100 people? So that's not nothing. Oh, no, no. I guess that's something. I guess that's something. Is it possible that part of what made you susceptible is that you were a little naive about how much access and influence you had? I guess that and another weakness is I believe people when they talk to me.

Was Richard Gere there? Richard Gere was there. He goes, sounds interesting. You know, we'll have to wait for an offer. And of course, we'll have to read the script. Good luck. You know, it was like, here's a sentence and a half that just, I just totally wasted that trip. So looking back, do you think that the motivation in bringing you to that event was to introduce you to Richard Gere or for Mo to elevate his profile by showing the leaders of the Balkan countries that he had access to the guys running a war there? Well, it definitely wasn't to introduce me to Richard Gere.

No pretty woman? No. I went back to LA for a couple months, wrapped stuff up because I had to move over to the Balkans, took over editing the script and figuring out how we're going to fix it and start putting everything together. And we went down to Bosnia and I did all these interviews with people who'd fought in the battles, people who simply lived through the siege. How long were you over there? Months. So the war ended by the time you go over there, right? Yes.

Were you nervous about going to a region of the world where your father had just conducted a war? Not really. Should you have been more nervous? Yes. And what were you working on? Well, I was working on the script. Got it. Okay. And it turns out the Academy Award nominated director was this guy named Velko Belyach.

And Belyach was nominated for a 1967 movie, Bitka Nadaretva, like a Yugoslav partisan movie starring Orson Welles and Yul Brynner. We attack. That's Chetnik politics. Right, Commander. And when you watch it, you're like, no, look, it's the little Yugoslav movie that could, but it wasn't great. It was like, oh, shoot, this guy hasn't made a movie in a while. And he hadn't completed his last two films.

And I'm like, how am I going to get a bond? And then Mo tells me, listen, we're going to have they've already spent $3 million of the budget. I'm like, what? First of all, I'm not being paid for anything I'm doing, but what do you spend $3 million on before you have a script? He's like, well, they were using it to fly around the world and stay in hotels and interview art directors

and fly costume people over from Italy. And I'm like, holy shit. And they're like, so really, what we brought you on to do was fire the director, Velko. I'm like, what? He goes, look, man, Velko could have any of us killed. Like the guy who used to make partisan movies for Tito.

And he's ruthless. And no one's going to kill you because your dad is like the head of NATO. And I was like, holy shit. And Tito was the post-World War II communist leader of Yugoslavia. Yes, correct. So I fired Velko and he's like,

and he's like 90 something years old, popping heart pills. And he's like, Clark, you're nothing. I make partisan movies with Tito. You're not even a little shit and he walks off not really fast because you know he's like 90 and I go back to Brotch and I

you know I'm like god what the hell am I going to do now and then I get a call from my dad he says you need to get a car and go to Sarajevo right now I'm like what? He's like can't talk about it get a car go to Sarajevo right now. I'm like, what? He's like, can't talk about it. Get a car, go to Sarajevo right now. And Sarajevo is the capital of Bosnia. Correct. So I borrowed my girlfriend's mom's car. We took the ferry over, drove down the highway.

And the highways in Croatia back then, I mean, crazy dangerous highways. People passing each other on them, no shoulders, nothing. Imagine like a two lane highway on a really steep mountain with no guardrails. And on every one you look down and like 80, a hundred, 200 feet down, there's a little burned out Yugo or Trabant at the bottom of it. So we drive through that and then into Bosnia, which is occupied by like three different armies. And it ended like midnight after leaving at like five in the morning. And they're like, oh, Ambassador Galbraith's upstairs.

Go upstairs. Did you know who this man was? I knew he was the ambassador to Bosnia. Okay. I go up to his study and he goes, okay, first of all, I want you to know you're not in trouble. I'm like, okay. And he said, you are the target of an operation being run by the Bosnian government to get revenge for some story written in the New York Times about President Izubegovic's son selling apartments in Sarajevo. And I'm like, what? And he said, listen, France, Russia, England, Germany, Serbia,

Croatia, they're all listening to all of your phone calls. Because a lot of people think you're part of the CIA. We both know that's not true. He says, but there's a team coming up to kill you from Montenegro and you need to evacuate the Balkan Peninsula immediately. And so I thought, okay, that's the end of that movie job. So the entire film was just an intelligence operation? Yeah. There was no, did you call your dad and were like, what the fuck? No, I just, because they're like, everything's being listened to.

So I went back to Brac. I stuck around there for a day or two because you're young and you're stupid. And you're like, I'll see him coming. I had a misperception of that operation. I thought their intelligence was wrong. You know, they're construing a state reason for something that's a business dispute because Velko is Montenegrin. And so, yeah, the hit team's coming up for Montenegro because Velko is going to have me whacked for firing him. So I thought they were misinterpreting what it was about, but it was my first kind of

education into it. And I took the wrong lessons out of it, which was the intelligence people don't know what they're talking about. And why do you think you came to that conclusion? Because I was stupid. I mean, no, I was, I was, I was naive. How old were you? No, I was probably 30. Okay. 29, 30. You didn't talk about this with your dad? We talked about it a little, but not much. He wasn't like, Hey son, like he didn't, this is legit. Well, he thought it a little, but not much. He wasn't like, hey, son, this is legit. Well, he said it's legit that you're about to get killed, but he doesn't know legit as to what the purpose is. Because as you get deeper and deeper into these things, the reasoning behind it or who's actually behind it all becomes kind of opaque. You can't see it. That's why they're all

successfully run operations. Okay. So speaking of opaque, now can't see it. That's why they're all successfully run operations. Okay. So speaking of opaque, now I'm going to talk about Dave, a friend of mine. We were close in the late 90s and into the beginning of the century. And I felt like he had something to do with Standing Rock. The things they kind of knew about me to manipulate me felt like they were scripted out by someone who knew me, someone who knew the kind of story I would jump into and that I wouldn't be able to resist getting involved. So when I worked at Jersey Films, this guy came in, Dave, who had been an enlisted guy on submarines. He had gotten out of the Navy and lived in LA and seemed like a good dude. And because I didn't know that

many veterans out here that were in the business. And we'd have these long conversations about geopolitics and strategy and the economy and the direction things are going in. And he'd written the script. I'm like, oh, it's a pretty good script. And I talked Jersey Films executives into hiring Dave. And as we remained friends, he became a lot closer friends when stuff in Kosovo started to heat up. He came over there and visited and went with us to Sarajevo and checked it out and had come by the house in Belgium.

But his movie Training Day had finally gotten set up around that time. So boom, his career took off. The only thing more dangerous than the line being crossed. Today's a training day, Officer Hoyt. You think you can handle it? He's the cop who has crossed it. I will do anything you want me to do. We'll see. And afterwards, we just talked like every day for an hour or two.

Hey, it's Ben Mycelis here. Hope you are enjoying episode two of American Psyop, Hollywood Babylon. I wanted to take a quick break though to remind you, if you can, to check out our Patreon website at Midas Touch. Go to patreon.com slash Midas Touch. That's P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash Midas Touch. Over at Patreon, we have exclusive content that you could only see on the Patreon site if you become a patron. It's a paid subscription thing, and I know you have lots of subscriptions, so no worries if you can't do it. But here's what I want to say. We at the Midas Touch Network are not funded by any outside investors at all, zero outside investors. So our competition, the both sides media and that pro-fascist media who uses millionaire and billionaire investors to push

their messages and narratives and all of the upsetting and disappointing things that come their way, we are 100% independent and don't do what they do. So we're 100% accountable to you, the listener, and you alone. We're 100% independent. And to help grow this community, I know you subscribe to a lot of things, but if you go check out our Patreon site at patreon.com slash MidasTouch, Wherever you are in the world, you could become a patron. It goes a long way to help build this community because that's what this is. It's more than just a media network. This is a community. This is your community. And so go check it out. Patreon.com slash MidasTouch. Again, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com slash MidasTouch. Thank you so much.

And now back to episode two, Hollywood Babylon. And during this period where you are talking to Dave a lot and he comes and visits you, the Russian Serbs and other intelligence services are monitoring you and listening to your calls. That's right. And the most calls I had back and forth were with him. And we were always talking about geopolitical stuff. 9-11 happens, everyone's like, how could we not see this? And then David begun working with, you know, a writer's group that a three-letter agency put together out in LA.

Sorry, when you say a three-letter agency that put this together. It was like, you know, those letters are C-I-N-A. Sorry. When you say a three-letter agency that put this together... the CIA had imagined that. We talked all the time on the phone and he was just kind of using the information I had and then going to this thing and being like, I'm a foreign policy expert. But he got me involved with it. He's like, you should come in and be a part of it. You should come in and do it. So I'm like, okay. I got brought onto this group. It's like, hey, have some pizzas and talk shit for a couple hours. Carl Weathers was there. Wait, who's Carl Weathers? He's Apollo, man. He's Apollo Creed from the Rocky movies. Why was he there?

They were looking for all the kind of storytellers out there who had any kind of military experience or anything like it. So I guess, you know, Carl Weathers was there. He was a really smart guy, too. The first one, I was like, what do you think's going to happen when we invade Iraq? Because we hadn't invaded Iraq yet. And I'm like, if we invade Iraq, you're opening up Iraq to Iran, which will come in and fill that strategic space. He goes, and this is the, I think, head of counterterrorism or something. He goes, hey, man, we just do what we're told. That was it. Great. Opinions noted.

So what? We got orders. Anybody who thinks the CIA, that its actual structure is doing anything other than what the president tells it to do is crazy. I mean, they operate off the agenda the president gives them. The president was like, we are invading Iraq. They're like, okay, we're going to invade Iraq. Now we have to figure out how do we deal with the terrorism that comes out of that. So let's get a bunch of screenwriters together. So let's get a bunch of screenwriters together and figure out what kind of dangerous things could be dreamed up that we should plan for that we have no idea about right now. But it was the idea that if you heard things on right-wing fear sites, like terrorists are planning this, it's like, maybe terrorists aren't planning that.

Maybe that's just one of many scenarios that they've been given to say, hey, this is something that could happen. Fox News has obtained an FBI bulletin that warns terrorists could use pen guns, just like in James Bond, filled with poison as weapons. And that's the thing is you can't discount these institutions desire to cover their ass. So because what if somebody did do some crazy thing like and they say, oh, we didn't even think about that. So I went to like three or four of those things. And then I was like, man, you know what? You're a problem.

Don't come back. But Dave stuck it out. And a couple of my other friends stuck it out that were working there. Then around the time my dad was running, late 2003, 2004, Dave believed people were following him and that somebody or some group of people were trying to send him messages. He said it a few times over the course of a couple of months. So I remember he had an office on the street and it had like a gate in front of it. And we were coming back from lunch and there was like a little action figure, like I think a Batman or something, halfway in the alcove behind the gate. And he's like, did you see that when you got here earlier? Someone's been fucking with me. Someone put

that here as a message. I wrote it off at the time, like maybe smoke a little bit less pot. But when I look back on it, I mean, if someone was in my communications, they knew he was working with American national security, they would have picked up everything. David and I had signed on to do a remake of an old noir movie called Crime Wave at Warner Brothers. I was going to write it. He was going to direct it. I wrote it and went into the studio and got fired from it, which was strange because I'd done everything they'd asked for. And Dave said he had my back and I didn't hear from him again for a couple of weeks. And he calls me up. He goes, I found out something about my dad. You got to come with me. His dad died when he was really young. I remember him telling me he found his father

after he'd committed suicide. I think he was like four or five. He was convinced his dad was involved in something to do with nuclear weapons technology and was like killed in some kind of conspiracy. So he'd also be an ideal target because of early childhood trauma. You know, that line between victim and perpetrator gets blurred. And we went up to like the Cascade Mountains to meet some guy who knew his dad. And he was like, no, dude, your dad suffered from depression. So there was no like plot. And on the way up, you know, we were talking and he's like,

there's a plan to take down the United States. So I'm like, okay, whatever. He goes, no, no. What year is it? This is like 2005, 2006. Okay. It was a, you know, a game for like FBI and DEA to practice for like a takedown in the United States. And this was based off all the stuff we chit-chat about on the phone. Because remember, he stayed on doing scenarios and stuff for people. I didn't. I see. So Dave had been given an assignment to write a scenario of how the United States democracy could be taken down and assess its vulnerabilities. That's right.

So it was a mixed attack. The Russians would take down the electrical and communication grids while homegrown neo-Nazis would carry out attacks on things like pipelines, maybe a nuclear station, maybe set a couple bombs off in cities. And then how would they stop that was the whole purpose of the game because we're writers. So when you get a project, you're like, how would this happen? How would this happen? How would we put this together? And this is a few years after you left the group. Do you know if he was still working with the CIA or was he doing this for someone else? That one I think was a joint operation with the FBI and DEA. So at the very least, Dave wasn't just advising the CIA, but also acting as a consultant for

multiple law enforcement and intelligence agencies? I believe so. Was he getting paid? He was getting paid at some point. And like a week later, he calls me up and he's like, dude, you've been blacklisted. Like for screwing up the script, you've been blacklisted from Warner Brothers, you've been blacklisted from all these places. And I'm like, what? So this is the film you and Dave are supposed to work on together. You're writing, he's directing. You guys work on the script together, submit it.

Right after it's submitted, you guys talk about the assignment he got to write a war game exercise about the destruction of American democracy. Then right after that, he tells you based on the script you guys submitted, not only have you been fired from the project, but you've been blacklisted from every studio as a result? Correct. And that was the end of my writing career. Fast forward, like 2010, I'm getting divorced. I haven't spoken to Dave in like five or six years. I was moving out all my stuff from the house as I got separated. And I was like, what can I say? What can I throw away? And I had this stack of scripts. And I was like, oh, this is the copy they gave me at the meeting. When you go into the script meeting, they always give you a copy

of the script. This is a script that you and Dave submitted, which got you fired and blacklisted? That's right. And I'm reading it and I'm like, wow, I didn't write like 10 or 11 pages of this. 15 pages of this. Like, what is this script? I couldn't swear to it. But the only answer I could think of was he rewrote the script himself, sent it in saying it was me. And I got fired.

So that's why you got fired from? Yeah, that was the script they'd read. And that was it. That was the end of my career, which I didn't realize till like five or six years later. So when you were at the meeting, you weren't flipping through the script? No. He totally smoked me out right before the meeting. He's like, don't worry, dude. I'm a big shot. I'm a director. It was like a full setup, like start to finish. I'm like, am I imagining this happened? I called him up. I'm like, Hey, I'm going through a divorce.

I wanted to talk to you about some stuff. And he's like, yeah, yeah, sure. And his career had really taken off by that point. And he took me out to lunch and he showed me the plan again. He had all the art up for the war tank movie he was going to make. And he admitted that he gotten really drunk one night and sabotaged the script to get me fired. And he said, listen, man, there's only like five or six action writing jobs a year. The less people that can beat against, the better. That's business, homie. I'll pay for your lunch.

That was it. Man. Yeah. I felt like such a chump. Did you guys ever speak again? Yeah. Really? But not for several years.

He came back into my life after Standing Rock. And the way it came about and other pieces it ties into led me to believe that he had something to do with the operations. What did your wife think of him and other friends? She hated him. She was like, nope, nope, goodbye. So my writing career is over. I just, I wrote it off at the time. I was like, I'm doing something else.

Fuck Hollywood. I'm going to like do renewable energy and I'm going to try and save the planet. Because I was still obsessed when I went home to visit my dad in NATO, and this was 2000, and he said, we got this briefing that civilization was going to end in 2030 because of climate change. So it's a very real thing. And it feels like the end of the world. And everybody, we're all just watching it happen. And we don't know how to stop it. I mean, that's what I wanted him to address when he ran for office.

And he barely talked about it. And then I was like, well, we'll see if the market can solve this problem. I start project managing, putting up wind turbines. I put them up in the Midwest. I put them up in Colorado and my life started to collapse from PTSD. I had never really been to therapy for it. I've been more or less the same weight since I was in high school. I'm like six feet tall and I'd always weighed between like 165 and 175. And I was down to like 130, covered in rashes, couldn't sleep, couldn't eat. I was miserable. I did not want to be in the marriage I was in. So looking back, what do you think triggered that? Don't know. Just being miserable.

And then the Serbs entered my life again in like February 2011. And to me, that's when the really weird stuff really starts to happen in life. Stuff that at the time I thought, this is just amazing coincidence, or I'm just a genius. But no, I was getting played. These were the same guys that asked you about the film in Yugoslavia? Different guys, but because the Balkans is small, they knew the whole story. They knew everyone involved. They knew Veljko Belyaev. They knew Mo. They knew everybody. And do you think this is connected to Standing Rock?

Absolutely. And they approach you while you're... Like right as I'm able to hold a conversation without going, dude, what's wrong with that guy? And it's this really wealthy ex-Yugoslav banker, Milan, who is a partner at the time in the largest private equity fund in the world. So he had maybe a couple hundred million dollars and he'd invested in the King's Speech and he wanted to put money into movies. And he had an offer and he had somebody he wanted me to meet. Ultimately, he put me in touch with this guy named Mishko, who was a Serbian film producer. I'm hired by Mishko. So did they fly you out there?

No, no, no. Mishko lived in LA. Oh. You know, he came over to the States and he's like, dude, in Serbia, you can't make a lot of money. But in America, you know, he's funny. He's a constant entrepreneur, always trying to push something. So he'd written this 260-page script. And all I could think is, dude, nobody's going to sit through a five-hour movie. And so, you know, he hired me to rewrite the thing and I rewrote it. And what was this script about?

It was about Constantine the Great. And Constantine was the first Christian Roman emperor and played a big part in the formation of early Christianity. A huge part. So a few hundred years after Christ, and it's a kind of a cult religion that's around the empire. Once he gets into power, Constantine then legalizes Christianity. And he winds up being the emperor when the Bible is made. Like essentially saying, listen, everybody's got their own crazy ideas. We need to have one idea. These are the books that are in it. So he has a huge imprint on it. And the Catholic church simply took on the Roman structure. So we think of counties, the Romans were organized as diocese.

So that's how the Catholic church was organized. It kind of became a way of formalizing power within the Roman Empire. So I worked with this guy and his point of view was dude, religion. It's like first you get them to believe and then you get the money. So we're telling the story of Constantine the Great like a mob boss and structuring it like the godfather. But interestingly, he talks about Russian foreign policy a lot with me. And the way everything works, it's a mix of guys who are from small areas where they know everybody. So if you're from Belgrade and you've got money and you're an influential

businessman, you know the chief of police, you know chief of the secret police, you know the foreign minister, because it's a small country. And I just thought this guy, Mishko, is such a character and so entertaining. But when I look back on it now, I feel like that was the beginning. It was like sussing me out, seeing what I would do, seeing how I reacted to things, seeing how I got along with people. But the thing is, I liked all these people. They were fun to hang out with. They always thought really big. Were you a little weary after what had happened with the first film? No, I wasn't. Because everything you do is a roll of the dice. And there's always the promises that happens for Mishka that, dude, Milan's a really

rich man. He's going to pay for all of this. But within a month or two, Milan's like, dude, fuck that Mishka guy. I'm not paying for shit. But I got through the project. And then in 2013, I wrote this script called Indivisible. It was a TV spec. And it was about a civil war in the United States caused by a populist president. And it opens with the president in jail. And then it tells the story of how he became president and all his policies that caused the nation to fall apart. And in the States, it got me meetings with huge directors and producers, and everybody wanted to talk about it. Like, could this really happen in America? And that got optioned by Mark Gordon Productions at ABC. So the reason everything got sidetracked

is because, I don't know, like that July or August when you're supposed to be going into, hey, this is what we're going to shoot and this is what we're going to concentrate on. Mark Gordon's Ray Donovan producer got arrested by the FBI for being part of some Russian organized crime poker games in Trump Tower. And I sent a copy of it to Mishko in Milan and say, hey, see if anyone in Europe wants to pay for this. Mishko, the Serbian producer, comes back into the picture literally the weekend in 2013 after Trump's Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Trump was in this video by this Russian rapper named Emin, whose father's like an oligarch. Mishko shows me the video and he goes, dude, this guy's going to be your next president. And I was like, you're fucking

high, man. You don't understand the United States. There's no way that'll happen. He's, dude, trust me, this guy, man. And then you, once we make you rich. It could have just been a coincidence. But in smaller countries, people talk a lot. And Serbia is super tied to Russia, foreign policy-wise, and super tied to people in the Trump administration before they came to power. Rudy Giuliani was working with Serbian nationalists as a political consultant at the time. But they're like, dudes, we'll make you big, and then they can influence you. And for me, I'm always like not interested. I mean, if I was interested in having power over people, I probably would have stayed in the army. And a year later, Milan, the Yugoslav finance guy called me, you know, he felt like the Constantine thing didn't happen. He didn't like working with Mishko, Serbian producer. So he's like, I want to do a movie about Mike Milken. Mike Milken created the junk bond market in the 1980s and goes to jail for breaking banking rules.

But I've got to get the job. So I've got to go down and pitch him the whole movie after I've done a few months of research. So he flies me down to St. Bart's on New Year's Day. Milan did this? Yeah. Why St. Bart? He likes boats's Day. Milan did this? Yeah. Why St. Bart? He likes boats, man.

All these guys like boats. So he says, join me in St. Bart's. Yes, like I'll fly you down. You can stay on my boat. He had this British couple. They were probably in their early 20s that were the crew of the boat. But we would sail at night from St. Bart's to St. Kitts. And then we just sat in port because the

weather kind of sucked for like four or five days as I pitched him piece by piece, you know, the movie and how the movie would work. But we spent most of our time talking about geopolitics and what was going on in the United States. And so we talked a lot about Russia and the banking system in Russia. And this is in like 2014, probably 11 months after Ukraine got invaded, and how fragile the American political system was, and how everything could come apart, and how the security apparatus and the right wing planned to kind of take over the country. So this is conversation topics that are perfectly important to the script. Yeah. To the other script, the Civil War script caused by a populist president. Not about the Milken script.

Right. And there's this huge yacht, like 200 yards away. Like, direct angle from us. There's nothing between us and this gigantic yacht. And he's like, do you see that yacht there? That is Roman Abramovich's yacht. Can you tell our audience who Roman Abramovich is? Abramovich is a Russian oligarch and one of Putin's people. One of the richest men in the world who's got the most expensive yacht in the world. How big is it? The one I saw was fucking ginormous. I mean, it had what looked like multiple helicopter pads.

It was carrying a mini yacht on the yacht. And I spent all this time talking about all the ways the United States could be taken down by the right wing in direct line of sight to Roman Abramovich's boat. Were you like, oh, that's a crazy coincidence? I was like, that's a crazy coincidence. Super wealthy Slavic people like big boats. And then we went out to dinner one night at the little marina restaurant. And it was me and the British couple and him. What country are we in? St. Kitts.

We're in St. Kitts. And these two super obnoxious guys come in with these women. They look like mobsters. And these are Americans that come in. Yeah. And so Milan gets up and he's like, I'm going to go buy myself a cigar. And he asked these super noisy people to please quiet down. And then they get super belligerent.

And he walks off to get a cigar. And they get more and more belligerent as they're sitting there. Me and the British guy are looking at each other. And I'm like, are you ready to fight? Because these guys are like, it looks like we're going to get in a fight with these guys. So they're at the table. They're like, we're going to hit that guy in the head with a fucking ball when he comes back. And I stood up.

I'm like, no, you're not. And boom, they get up. And then the British guy gets up. Shit starts to get talked. And immediately, the manager of the restaurant snaps her fingers. And eight chefs come out with knives. They go to these two Jersey guys. They're like, get the fuck out. And then Milan strolls back in right after that happens. And still, I was not like, that was a setup. But that's how a setup

works. You see if your potential person you're recruiting is going to react without being told to react and how they'll react in different situations. When I look back on it now, it was some kind of setup. It's 2015. Mishko comes back in at that stage. But the last time you worked with Mishko was on which project? The Constantine project. Okay.

And I hadn't seen him in like three years. Like his daughter had died and they moved back to Serbia. So when he comes back into your life, it's like, yeah, dude, come on over.

Let's, uh, whatever. And he's like, dude, I'm just in town for a couple of days. I got this Serbian pop star.

She's going to be recording with Snoop Dogg, man. Can I bring her by your house on the way back from the airport? And I'm like, yeah, sure, dude. No problem. So he's like three black SUVs pull up to my house. Some Serbian pop star gets out and all these bald goonie guys in like mix Adidas and black suits. I'm like, yeah, come on in. Let's sit on the back porch, have a cigarette. I'll make everyone a drink. And these guys that are the bodyguards are like secret police from Serbia. I can't remember if the guy was the head of the secret police just in Belgrade or for the whole country. But Misko's like, dude, this is whatever. And all I'm thinking is, holy fuck, what is

happening here? And this is the same Serbian secret police that would have been monitoring your phone calls starting over a decade earlier and as recently as who knows. Yeah, that's correct. And what did you talk about? Oh, just, you know, Snoop Dogg and business and politics because they're like, oh, big changes are coming to the United States. And yeah, they did. Okay. Well, next time we're going to talk a little bit about Wes's time as a political pundit before getting into the activism that brought him into what he believes was a large scale psychological operation run against him. Yeah, no, it's, it's, I just wanted to give you all the background so it makes sense. And so that when I go back and I talk about a certain period of my life or one of these people that intersects with it, it's not like, what?

Because it's complicated. It's like you've had a messy life. Thank you for listening. We'll be back next week with more American Psyop. American Psyop is a Bunker Crew Media production in collaboration with Midas Touch. It was edited and directed by Jack Bryan. American Psy-Op is a Bunker Crew Media production in collaboration with Midas Touch. It was edited and directed by Jack Bryan. Our producers are Stacey Sher, Marlee Clements, and Jack Bryan.

Executive producers are Ben Maisalis and Grant DeSimone. Sound design by Joy Ellett. I'm your co-host, Emily Bix. Please join us again next time.