Dan Luzadder | The Manchurian Journalist: Lawrence Wright, the CIA, and the Corruption of American Journalism

00:01 The planet's puppet masters all must surely have a plan There is clearly maybe something there beyond the realm of man And until we've thoroughly tested every last close-chested view I find the more we think, we know the less we really do Where would be without THC? Because we know they're lying to us Just don't know what it brings Here we go, Hiresite Chatters. Doing what we do from the Sunshine State I'm Greg Carlwood and it should be no surprise as to why the state of our society is unraveled into a variety of individualized reality tunnels where the credibility of any established journalism is severely eroded

01:01 We've seen too many examples of mainstream media figures fawning over narrative regurgitating journalists with producers carefully selecting from their pre-approved roster of award winning, well connected Ivy League educated intelligence trained establishment tools to tell whatever story the system wants told. It seems that anyone paraded out on prime time has already checked the ideological boxes required to be given the airtime And one has to wonder just how far compromised the system is when almost any household name in the entire media landscape can be called on to uphold the same system-wide script on any newly emerging issue. It seems so ironclad and absolute that it gives the game away to anyone with a critical eye, leaving many of us to cobble together our own sense of truth from the outside with our own personal pantheons of independent journalists we've decided to trust!

01:53 Well, today's guest the Pulitzer Prize winning Dan Luzadar could certainly be such a journalist as he's deconstructed our sad situation in his new book The Manchurian Journalist. Lawrence Wright, the CIA and the Corruption of American Journalism where he uses Lawrence Wright, a longtime fixture of American journalism as an example of a well-established template where certain intelligence connected people are selected to be the beacons of truth in our media. Writing the New York Times bestsellers that seed official narratives on a whole host of highly charged stories Dan himself has been a journalist for over 40 years and has been honored nationally by the American Bar Association for exposing corruption in the federal courts. And he's won numerous state and regional awards for writing and reporting, in addition to a 1983 Pulitzer for general local reporting. He's been twice nominated for investigative work including his inquiries into the police handling of the Columbine High School massacre

02:52 He was also named a member of the Scripps Howard Journalism Hall of Fame in 1993. His new book from our friends at Trine Day is a great deep dive into a subject well worth exploring, so let's do it! The intelligence web detangler propaganda press prodder and mockingbird media meddler Dan welcome to The Higher Side. Hey Greg thanks for having me yeah thanks for doing this i really enjoyed your book we know media today is highly compromised we've seen the montage of dozens of news stations reading the same corporate script. We know high profile people like anderson cooper come from prominent families with intelligence training often glossed over in their resume, we heard at least the cliff notes of operation mockingbird

03:39 And like I kind of said in that intro, it seems like this program has been almost too successful. They've given the game away because it's not just a few select people peppered in to steer things to their liking now. It basically seems like the whole media apparatus but let's start with how it turned into this what do you consider some of the important things for people to understand about this process of compromising journalism? To the degree that it has been today Well, let me go back to when I started taking a look at these issues involving the CIA and the post-World War II intelligence community. At the time as we were exiting the Second World War and there was a realization that intelligence was going to be a prominent part of the coming years

04:34 the CIA and its fellow travelers were concerned about what Americans were hearing about capitalism, about communism, about the state of our own culture. And I think their anxiety in the wake of World War II is what stimulated the development of programs to bring people closer to the elite intelligence community that existed within the country at the time. And that community was not just the Central Intelligence Agency, it was a broader network that involved people involved in banking and law

05:14 in other parts of the American culture who were interested in preserving the idea of Western cultural values and promoting democracy. But, the problems that I saw when I began to look into this was that there was a lot of secrecy about what was going on behind the scenes involving media. And, of course we didn't know generally speaking that individuals within the American media were treated differently by those who sought to secure their cooperation and so even though I had been in the business and journalism my entire life since i was a teenager

05:56 I wasn't really aware of the depth to which efforts had been developed to recruit people who had ideas that were useful to promoting a certain attitude within the country and stifling other ideas about our culture that might be talked about if the publishing world were a little more independent from the intelligence community. So, it was something of a journey for me into this area of journalism that I hadn't particularly taken a look at before. That kind of opened my eyes to the idea that there are influences that have existed and long existed that affected not only newspapers and radio or TV but also affected the entertainment media certainly movies and book publishing

06:50 And this was an eye-opener for me into how people go about shaping ideas that we accept as true and don't question. Certain ideas, cultural ideas certain attitudes and certain beliefs about the rest of the world that we end up adopting yet we don't know where are roots of these ideas come from That is a great summary and i'm curious about what you said about seeing this in the entertainment industry obviously that's not huge part of your book but. I see that too and i have had some guests talk about the history of hollywood and how they used to show,

07:31 war footage, carefully selected war footage before films. When you got everyone there to see something totally unrelated you hit them with the propaganda before the movie starts and then movies themselves I mean it's always rah-rah America for the most part even if they try to market it as critical it ends up coming back around to serving the narrative typically and even just types of people, and our perception of even Native Americans. It's colored by the film industry in the Wild West and all that stuff. And so many action films will have a villain that is Russian some kind of Russian spy, that whole thing we went through that chapter but

08:16 Talk to us a little bit more for people who might not make that connection because it's kind of easy to see in journalism why intelligence agency would be interested and compromising reporting on real world events but even entertainment we see it where do you see it there. Well, I think you make a good point about American perceptions of the Wild West and the days of Native Americans. Certainly that presentation in the entertainment industry was skewed dramatically toward what was acceptable to white Americans and blatantly distorts history where the conditions of expansion or the American frontier were concerned but... The idea that movies

09:00 presentation of ideas through the movies would be part of a propaganda program to encourage certain attitudes. Struck me most particularly when I started to take a look at the censorship board that was developed during the start of World War II, or actually just at the beginning of World War And a man named Lowell Mellott, who came from Indiana which is where I'm from and Nelson Pointer who was the founder of the Poynter Institute very influential in American journalism. Those two men were responsible for selecting what was acceptable in American films and worked through the federal government to help convince Hollywood movie producers and directors

09:49 present American attitudes and American ideas in particular ways. And so that was something that was not too hard to find in history, but as I was looking into the arena of publishing and discovered that there was a network that was composed to recruit people into the publishing industry and into journalism and into the entertainment media in all forms, it became more apparent to me that this was not something to which there was mild interest paid. There were significant interests paid and the individuals who are participating in this were very influential and very powerful throughout not only American government but American culture and society so

10:39 These all form legs of the stool in which we as Americans, I think did not see a really accurate picture of who we were and what we were. And the controversies that went on within society about what we should or should not do or what we should or should not believe. I think while there were...as you mentioned Operation Mockingbird, there were dedicated programs out of the Central Intelligence Agency itself There was a network of intelligence cooperatives that worked outside the agency but in close coordination with the Central Intelligence Agency to help represent these ideas and make them part of our culture.

11:22 Again great summary and you really nailed it with selecting what's acceptable because so often with these conversations the emphasis is on. The creator themselves the journalist themselves the actor of the screenwriter and, the question of how conscious a participant are they in all this and really, it can be quite unconscious cuz if you have the producers and the agents and publishers and people who decide what's elevated and what doesn't get picked up that is something that kind of creates a perception. And you might have a person who never went to the Ivy Leagues or never was trained in intelligence, but they've written two books and they didn't get picked up and then they look at what does get picked up and they're like oh well maybe I should write a 9-11 book that just is boilerplate official narrative and then maybe that'll get me into The New York Times bestsellers list

12:23 Obviously that would be a conscious action but it just shows how when you control the mechanisms of making a career in journalism or entertainment. You can just using the economic lovers control people and what they're going to produce because you just see what makes in what doesn't if your perceptive enough and not create a whole confusion around like who really was brought up in all this and who just saw what works and took it. But, yeah that's the kind of control mechanism I think that's what should be highlighted is those producers those publishers those agents because that's the means of production as they say. You know i think it's easy to look at this intelligence environment that exists within our country

13:13 consider it sort of an amorphous, unidentified situation that we can't really pull apart. We can't pull the threads apart but as I was doing this book and came across this summer class a summer course that was produced at Radcliffe College, the Radcliffe Publishing Procedures Course. I began to see the first physical evidence really, trackable evidence of how our recruiting program could be put together to attract people specifically into the publishing industry itself

13:50 And so while we might think, well their ideas are skewed one way or another or we show particular favoritism in dealing with authors or writers who present acceptable ideas. It was deeper than that when you set about to recruit people into the publishing industry and I'm talking about major publishing houses, The Random Houses and the Harper & Brothers kinds of organizations in New York that really were so influential and picking writers that were going to be promoted, their ideas were going to be pushed forward. In seeing an organization that worked to select people who are favorable to those kinds of things it takes on a deeper meaning

14:43 And in the book, I identified those individuals who were working through this intelligence network to promote these ideas. So it wasn't just casting your bread upon the waters and hoping that people picked up on the idea. It was more selecting the oarsmen who were going to row the boat across the stream and which direction it was going to go. as I was investigating this and digging ever deeper into it, I began to see that the cultural impact of deciding which writer might be promoted, which writer might not be promoted had a lot of value to those who were very interested in shaping ideas in America about what we should do, what we shouldn't do and what our attitudes internationally should be toward others.

15:38 yes i have a lengthy quote about the radcliffe program i took from your book that is really interesting and lawrence right this is where he got his journalistic credentials and laurence wright might be. One of these people who is more selected as an orzman and for people who aren't familiar with his work he wrote the looming tower al qaeda in the road to nine eleven, the terror years from al qaeda to the islamic state so very big in crafting the perceptions around the war on tear. And then more recently he also wrote the plague year america in the time of cove it i can only guess what kind of perspective offer and that book. But to talk about the radcliffe program a little bit this is the quote you say,

16:27 Wherever Wright heard about the six-week summer course at Radcliffe, he must have been planning participation for some time. The course I would learn recruited most of its students itself even using publishing houses and their agents to visit prospective journalism and English programs to search for promising candidates Helen Venn, an assistant director of the RPPC upon its inception and director from the early 1950s until 1980 would herself travel to interview students' records showed. Wright made his enrollment sound like a whim, but in fact the program turned away two-thirds of its applicants and they made applications a full year in advance. It was a tough program to get into but Wright had no problem enrolling I would quickly discover the Radcliffe Publishing Procedures course wasn't really for writers or even those who wanted to be writers nothing in the curriculum sustained that ambition or notion other than exposing students each year to famous American authors

17:25 The course had been designed for those who would publish writers, for those who would pick a writer's work as viable, recommended and promote it as appropriate. And enable the mechanisms of publishing to make those works available to the reading public at large by distribution and promotion." This mini-masters degree in the world of American Publishing claimed something that would be the envy of any academic venture—a better than 95% placement rate for its graduates! many, if not most among the elite empires of book and magazine publishing literary agencies and academic presses across the country. Well that says a lot I'm sure this program is just one of many but it is a peek into how The Machine works and Lawrence Wright curiously...the reason this is kind of relevant is because he wrote an autobiography

18:16 on himself before he really was popular. He kind of backlogged all of his background so that the background that people knew in this memoir would cut around all the intelligence aspects and anything that might lead a person to think he was less than organic and genuine, is that right? I think that's a pretty good summary One of the things that was so interesting as I began to look into Lawrence Wright's background was, I discovered that his father had become president of a small storefront bank in Dallas Texas. And right in his memoir that he wrote when he was in his 30s late thirties

19:01 talks about his father's history as a military man and his patriotism and his interest in encouraging development in East Dallas, and his participation in various programs in the city government there for the betterment of their community. But one of the things he failed to mention was the fact that this little storefront bank had been founded and was owned by a very prominent individual in American culture, not someone whose name jumps readily to mind when you think about the history of American democratic development around the time of World War II.

19:41 but someone who was extremely influential, and that was Robert Story. He was head of the American Bar Association during his tenure. He was head of the Southern Methodist University Law School. He was the dean there. He was head of the International Bar Association and he was chief executive trial prosecutor in the Nuremberg War Trials In addition to that, he was working with the State Department to develop scholarship programs for foreign students that were brought to America. And interestingly enough, the Fulbright scholarships and other programs that were bringing people in were targeted toward individuals whose families were influential in foreign countries or who had

20:29 access to people in power. And so this recruiting network that Robert Story was involved in, was a little slice also that exposed some attitudes about how intelligence networks were developed But Lawrence Wright never mentioned the fact in any of his writings, in his memoirs, magazine stories, his books. Never mentioned this close relationship between his father and this very prominent individual, very influential individual at our intelligence community. And I thought that was odd and that was

21:07 Part of what led me to track down the working mechanisms of this recruiting program, which it turned out included a foundation out of Dallas Texas, the Hoblitzell Foundation. Which was put together by Carl Hoblitzell who was very close to Robert Story and they worked very cooperatively and Hoblitzell Foundation produced some $500 million in funding back in the 40s and 50s to sustain these recruiting programs, to encourage development of book publishing operations, to develop book publishing operations overseas. One of which was the Franklin Books Program, which was a direct

21:54 effort to develop Western cultural ideas around the world. And Helen Venn of the Little Radcliffe Publishing Procedures course was very influential in that program, and she traveled the world recruiting publishers in foreign countries into these operations encouraging them with funds, with opportunities, with travel to the U.S., with whatever they might be interested in to continue to develop intelligence friendships But we never saw any of that, never heard of any of that. And certainly Lawrence Wright never mentioned any of his close association to these programs going back to his own family in all of his work

22:37 So, one of the things that was kind of fun and was kind of interesting as I was looking into this was...I went to Harvard Library and dug up the Radcliffe Publishing Course archives. And there, I found a photograph of Helen Venn with editors from Rolling Stone Magazine and the founder and editor of Texas Monthly which is very popular high culture magazine produced out of Austin. In one of those photographs, the producer of Texas Monthly...the founder of Texas Monthly is kneeling and kissing Helen Ben's ring more or less as you can see in the book. But the idea that these background systems existed and these cooperatives existed in people were in publishing even what we consider practically alternative publishing like Rolling Stone

23:29 that these were people who were involved in these programs of recruitment and encouraging ideas, developing writers who had acceptable ideas. Those sorts of things that encouraged the idea is that this intelligence network wanted to promote it. That was a fascinating sort of journey into the detail and fabric of these kinds of programs Yeah, it's always so wild when I learn about a new person and just the bullet points on their resume. Robert Story head of the American Bar Association Dean of a law school executive trial prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials involved in this Franklin book program crafting stories for education and then involved with Helen Venn who was headed this Radcliffe program And then it just seems like

24:23 You select your buddy's son hey you know lawrence wants to be a journalist let's put him in the school it's given the credentials here and then we've got all the access will be on all the networks is books will become popular. And that's just the way it goes and i can't believe were almost a quarter into this thing and we haven't mentioned going clear, scientology hollywood and the prison of belief which is probably laurence writes most popular work And this is the odd one to me because I understand why the system at large would want a book about Al Qaeda and the road to 9-11, or why they'd want The Plague Year America in the time of COVID. I'm not as clear on why they would want a book about Scientology or why Scientology would be attacked in this way and I'm always really hard on religions and cults and this sort of thing so I'm primed

25:17 eat all this up and just be like yes i am tala g is a cold where they use this confession booth two point intelligence gathering to compromise people and then get their secrets in the charge them. Monthly for dues until the end of their days and these people are kind of afraid to speak out because they already gave all their dirty little secret so the organization, add That's how it is presented and that is kind of what I have accepted. spin is on Scientology, I guess because it all seems like it fits pretty well. But here's a guy whose whole career is crafting spin What do you think was the motivation for going after Scientology in this way? And what do you think are the major things that are wrong about the public perception

26:17 You know, one of the questions and the way I got into this project was through the Church of Scientology. I was freelancing, I was doing some work for The New York Times, New York Daily News and others when you're a freelancer, you're constantly looking for opportunities. And I was contacted by the church when they were relaunching a magazine that they had produced for many years and which, interestingly enough, had done some really quality investigative work back in the 70s and 80s in opening up government records to

26:55 the public. And The Church's magazine was very influential in developing the Freedom of Information Act, as it turned out I would discover as I was looking into this. But I was contacted by The Church and they were looking for an investigative reporter to do some work for this magazine, Freedom Magazine, as they were relaunching it But what they mainly wanted me to look at was the coverage of the church and asked me to evaluate how fair and equitable it was, whether or not the press was antagonistic toward the church unnecessarily. So when I undertook that, I said you know, I'm happy to take a look at all that but here's

27:42 I'm going to ask questions, and you have to answer them. If you want to participate in this program, you're going to have to document what you say." And so that was one of the interesting things, is that as I worked with church officials and worked with and around the magazine and asked for records they were very good about bringing them forward. Of course you know the church was interested in promoting their own particular point of view and their own ideas about that coverage. But as I began to look into Lawrence Wright's history then and try to pursue the idea of why did he write this book about Scientology when there were so many subjects out there that journalists could write about,

28:26 Part of the interesting aspect was that I couldn't define any clear line to the reasons that Lawrence Wright decided to do this book, even though what I did discover was that the Church's Scientology had been of interest to the American intelligence community for a long time. And I think part of the reason for that was that the church took a stance about war, peace, the development of war machines in the American culture. Anti-war and those ideas were antithema to some of the ideas that were being promoted by the intelligence community that supported the necessity of developing strong defense preparing the country for a

29:15 constantly for preparing for the perpetuation of our military-industrial complex. And so there was definitely some antagonism toward the church in the early days, a lot of suspicions and a lot of effort by the Central Intelligence Agency to develop information about them. But I couldn't necessarily draw a bright line to why Lawrence Wright wrote this particular What it did do was it opened up some ideas to why journalists might adhere to a particular point of view or particular attitude. So I would say that Lawrence Wright's work in multiple arenas, from the War on Terror to other aspects of American culture did follow a pattern that was

30:12 one of acceptability and one of exclusion. And those are two aspects that I found important to understanding what had happened in the past. So, as I worked more closely on this idea of Lawrence Wright's accuracy in his coverage at church, that's when I began to explore his background and what he had written about himself So, one of the interesting things that I noticed early on was that not only was Lawrence Wright writing books but he was writing screenplays. And often his work was mentioned by journalists who were writing about him and about his explorations that he was prescient in things that were happening

31:04 within the culture. He was writing about them on the cusp of things that were happening, and one illustration that I saw that was very important was a screenplay he did for a movie called The Siege. It was a movie with Denzel Washington and Annette Bening, and it described a terror attack in the city of New York and reactions...political reactions to that terror attack that imposed restrictions on citizenry But this book talked about terrorists, the Middle East and identified individuals who were eerily like those who were described then subsequently in 9-11 and the attack on New York. And so Lawrence Wright himself even talked about this publicly when he produced his book and a film he did with Alex Gibney My Trip to Al Qaeda. He describes his own prescient

32:04 perspective through his film. But this was illustrative of what had gone on in Hollywood and in the entertainment industry where certain ideas were influenced by the CIA or the intelligence community that's broader than the CIA, but we don't see that. We don't hear about it. We don't know what those influences were so in looking at the church and in looking at that coverage, while I never was able to answer definitively why he decided to do that book or the film that followed with Alex Gibney, a documentary film. It was illustrative of the things behind-the-scenes that I came to understand were important

32:48 in the background of the development of attitudes or promotion of attitudes and people with appropriate attitudes that fit with the cultural ideas of this community. And so, in that way While I didn't come to a conclusion about Wright's purpose or intent, or some particular intelligence-driven idea toward negative coverage of the church. Certainly it was part of the same mix. It was all part of the same recipe. Yeah and this isn't about Scientology but it's just interesting

33:25 that we have this public perception and then you learn about the person who largely crafted it. And it seems like all the work they've done is really calculated and, all about setting up a narrative and maybe Scientology was just an unfortunate target to establish some credibility because if it's all highly charged military operations work, then you're like well this is clearly an operation but this is the one that stands out. This work on Scientology and maybe as handlers or whatever we're just like hey these guys have been kind of thorn in our side they criticize the military industrial complex let's take them down

34:06 And I don't know where the truth and the fiction really is, but it's just interesting to know about a motivation. Because when you look at Scientology you would think oh well these people are basically prisoners of this religion and so the person who exposed this clearly it's just doing that out of the goodness of their heart too expose this great misdeed like its the NXIVM cult or something but It just doesn't seem to be that way. So I don't know the truth about Scientology, I don't have a dog in the Scientology fight but that was the first thing where i was like wait a minute! I thought I knew about Scientology? I thought I had a pretty good grasp on the bullet points here of this organization and now that's all called into question?! I don't know to what degree but it is just interesting to have to rework some of that and sometimes

35:01 You know it doesn't mean that's all fake, it just like well there was a motivation to highlight this organization over others. I also see a lot of that happening to Mormonism which is another religion that people say is really great at intelligence gathering and record keeping and maybe its just the CIA looking at this as competition like hey these people they got an intelligence apparatus here we need infiltrate and we need to take them down from a PR perspective You know, one thing that was fascinating to me was this journey into the Church of Scientology and taking a look at their history and their own desires and their own programs. You know, Scientology became an illustration for coverage of certain areas of our culture by the American media. And so

35:58 I think the happy or unhappy accident, however you might describe it of me having to come in contact with the church and their magazine reflects something that I think is part of my own history. Is that as a journalist, I was given an opportunity to explore worlds that most people don't come in contact with. And so One of the approaches that I made as a young journalist was to look into stories that people dismissed or people weren't interested in necessarily as being part of their particular worldview.

36:38 So one of the things I did was, I investigated prisons and human rights conditions in prisons. And I had a city editor at one point tell me why are you spending your time on this? These people are in prison because they committed crimes there where they belong and who cares what happens inside Well, my attitude was we need to know what's happening inside our prisons and how people are being treated because these are human beings for one thing. And for another they're reflective of the kind of culture we develop in government to treat people fairly or not treat people fairly. So I looked into the worlds of crime. I went underground many times to develop relationships with people even into organized crime in Chicago

37:24 and those sorts of things. So when this opportunity came along to take a look at the Church of Scientology, I think a lot of reporters would have said no that's not...you know we know what this is all about and I don't want to be involved in this but i think it's important for journalists to step back from their own attitudes of course and to take a fairer look at things more objectively than we tend to do So, what I saw with the Church of Scientology was that reporters, journalists covering aspects of the church or writing about it tended to pile on with what was the acceptable idea. Just as you couldn't get reporters interested in covering issues in state prisons or federal prisons because it's difficult and it's very messy to do that kind of reporting

38:12 So also, it was much easier for reporters to assume that what was reported before about the church was gospel if you will. And so rather than doing that I did what I think all journalists should do which is to suspend those beliefs of what's reported before no matter who is reporting and find out for yourself what's actually going on. That was the journey that I was involved in finding out. And I did that by interviewing Scientologists really all over the world, and by getting on the inside of the organization where I had the opportunity to talk with the leadership at the church to ask questions. Sometimes there were antagonistic moments in that process because there were certain things that I disagreed with or talked about or raised issues and we fought about them

39:06 But we always fought about them in an equitable way. And so, in the end I was impressed with the leadership of the church and their ability to actually step back from themselves and try to look at their coverage I did find some faults in how they responded often to the media coverage and often encouraged them to be more transparent. In fact, that was one of the hallmarks of my association with it was encouraging more transparency as they were doing with me to see what really was going on but that was i think somewhat difficult for them because they'd been the subject of attacks throughout the history of the organization. Did you ask David where his wife is?

39:50 Actually, I knew where she was. Did you meet her? I did as far as I knew she was perfectly fine You know there was a lot of hype Tremendous amount of height all surrounding these things and why did that exist because it drew attention because As part of our entertainment media We've created a system where we allow people to say things and sometimes we don't hold their feet the fire make sure they're true within that environment So I think, you know, while again back to your question of why did Lawrence Wright do this? Did the CIA have a particular interest in denigrating the church or tearing them down. I don't think the CIA needed to do that they'd had enough rough publicity throughout their history but what was more interesting was whether or not this was just an opportunistic kind of thing for Lawrence Wright and for Alex Gibney, the documentarian both

40:44 who are involved in journalistic work on the war on terror and other major issues, it did seem out of place to me that they should decide that this was a topic that was important enough or that the church was as I said dangerous. That much attention shouldn't go into the organization Yes, and I agree with you that your whole thing is objective journalism. And these are hit pieces on Scientology they're not objective and they should be interpreted as hit pieces it doesn't mean that some parts of it aren't true but clearly there's a motivation to frame things in certain way now I think David and his wife need just start a YouTube channel very easy to get in front of the public can be transparent if you want to be

41:32 But you know that's their problem i didn't wanna say when you mentioned building on prior momentum that is a big one kinda like we talked about selecting what's acceptable uc going clear become this big phenomenon and your life well maybe all right my scientology book and i know how to frame it because i know what makes itself popular. And so yeah, that happens. We talk about that with history so much there's a lot of stuff about history the further you go back the more it's true That we have perceptions and when you dig dig dig down into the sources It'll be like one book that was written in ancient Greece Now what are you gonna do? We don't have other sources. We can't go back You know The time has passed

42:19 It's still interesting that a lot of big chunks of history are based off of a book, a document. And you don't know what that person's motivations were or if they were being objectively true or if they were crafting the narrative for their government or in their intelligence operation but yet it's what we have to go on And that framing of it is just completely stripped away. And you'll have a thousand books written about ancient Greece or about the Egyptians, and it's all just like well we use these three original authors as the source every time and it's like well those people are long gone they can't even be vetted but to just assume that that's the objective truth is a little sketchy. Well you hit on important point

43:09 One of the things I've learned from trying to get on the inside of organizations, there are a lot of myths in history that we just accept as being true and we rely on them and we make decisions based on those myths. One of the most interesting examples in my long career that I've seen was the history of the Chicago mob, organized crime in Chicago. And I developed relationship with an individual many years ago. He was a colorful character, he was Italian I met him in northern Indiana actually met his son and that over the course of time got to know him in ever better ways And being a colorful character entertaining the way he was speaking as he did with his Italian accent is rough character nature

44:07 I would never have guessed that he would turn out to be one of the primary movers within organized crime in Chicago. The first introduction I had to him was in the kitchen of a farmhouse in northern Indiana, and his first words to me when I was introduced to it by his son were all journalists are liars And, you know I never met him. Never talked to him and that was the first words out of his mouth he knew i was a journalist but didn't know much about me but all journalists were liars well we developed that theme over a period of years and the idea behind his attitude was that one of the most significant myths involving the Chicago mob was that Al Capone ran the Chicago mob in the 1920's and 30's

44:59 Eventually, I wrote a book. I haven't published as yet. I'm still working on the manuscript but the individual who actually ran the Chicago Mob was not even Italian he was a Russian Jew, Jake Guzik and he's built in history as the account for Al Capone That is a complete myth. Capone was muscle for the organization, Jake Guzik was there when Capone arrived on the scene and he was there long after Capone departed the scene He took care of Capone but he believed in loyalty and he believed in the workings of a criminal network

45:36 that relied on politics, culture and a lot of other things. Jake Guzik was a genius of organization and he's the man that took the mob from The Days Of Prohibition into gambling in Las Vegas and to other criminal networks throughout the country. And so the myth of Capone was created by American newspapers. And the reason I think journalists believe that Al Capone was head of the Chicago Mob is because he talked to them and he presented as if he was in charge. And they accepted that idea, but their reporting then became historical fact and known around the world. You know you travel in France and talk about being an American they say oh Al Capone yeah right The History of America, American Mob it's all about Al Capone It wasn't about Al Capone at all it was about much more intensive network involving people

46:31 Nobody realized we're involved in organized crime. It also makes you think about all the media that has been made since. The Sopranos, The Godfather... All this stuff! Why are these household names? Well they just kind of prop up this same old myth. This myth that like okay run with that yeah run with that because I'm sure the mob had their own organizations of ways to kind of protect themselves clearly they did because Jake Guzik isn't a household name They put out a Patsy so-to-speak but

47:17 i wanted to go back to predictive programming something you kinda mentioned with rights. Novels and his screenwriting so he writes these nonfiction books then a peppers in all these fictional books as well, there's apart in your book where u mention that he was on Morning Joe on MSNBC to talk about this recent novel that he wrote where there is a fictional pandemic that, as they said is like wow. That's pretty on the nose for what actually happened and then you have the siege where he predicted a New York terrorist attack two years before 9-11 it's like man clearly It seems as if

48:04 he's being fed information from his intelligence network, as to events that might occur. And just that fact, just to say that you could seed this kind of stuff people expect these to be completely organic random events I mean the terrorist attack in New York no one's supposed to know about that except like the network of terrorists who did it right? and then the pandemic no one's supposed to know about that because it's just a random well probably a lab leak or you could say the bat thing but either way it's like an event that happened that wasn't premeditated So, just that alone is interesting.

48:41 i wonder why you would do it there's also people suspect in flaming who had all the success with the james bond novels he's a guy comes from wealthy banking family whose father was in parliament. Then there is the famous example of the novel utility about an unsinkable ship called the titan that mirrors the sinking up the titanic, that guy who wrote that was in the navy and apparently according to his wikipedia page uncredited inventor of the periscope So these people are always really close to the network that they are writing a fictional story about and then our real event happens i guess my question is like.

49:22 Why allow that? Because it just seems like such a vulnerability. You already have the public captured and you can capture the media and make them believe any fictitious narrative about events that you want, why allow people to write fictional stories that come true because it is just a vulnerability. People like us are looking at this like okay well then these are all premeditated planned events that are connected to this intelligence network? Why leave yourself open like that, what does that do?" You know it's interesting that you know we look backwards when we observe these things and we see something that occurred and then we backfill the story with what we believe is true or what we think may be true.

50:13 there's a lot of opportunity, I think to reach conclusions by what we are able to see when we are not able to see the detail behind it. And that's where investigative reporting comes in to this mix because Most people don't have the time or the inclination to get behind the story, to understand what's going on. And so they're very susceptible to the powerful reporting that goes on by mainstream media and as we talked about not just magazines and newspapers when they were still vigorous

50:53 or television, but also the entertainment media and the presenting of ideas that we find acceptable. You're talking about organized crime and The Godfather. I've read that the individual who originally put together a book that turned into the movies really had no exposure to organized crime didn't know anybody in organized crime but was able to piece together a fairly accurate picture of some things because Some generalized ideas are based in fact, but when we go backward and we look at the detail of things and try to pull apart in an investigative way what the structure is. We begin to find things that are not obvious to us and our telling in seeing this world in a sharper focus

51:45 I think those people who have been cooperative with the intelligence community as journalists, those people who are nurtured or encouraged by that intelligence apparatus are not always witty about their participation. They may not know where certain attitudes are coming from or who it is that's really encouraging their development And this is, I think something that's important to realize. Not everything a writer writes is being controlled dictated or necessarily influenced or colored by the some amorphous organization that seeks to promote Western cultural values but they are in a position where their voice becomes more authoritative

52:30 And so they may be choosing what it is that they're interested in and what they're writing about. But certain aspects of culture, certain parts of society, certain parts of the American attitude are promoted within their work in particular ways and those ideas become acceptable, those become the norm, those are what we expect to be part of our culture. And yet, when we pull apart some of the ideas behind them, some of the myths that color history, we begin to see things in a slightly different way. Part of what worries me a bit I think about writing about these things and trying to define them and to actually name names of people who are involved with these programs and those sorts of things is as we come up with the attitude that

53:23 Everything in individual rights may be of importance to the intelligence community. I don't think that's accurate I think those particular attitudes, like the war on terror promoting the idea that America is so at risk that we need more surveillance, more domestic surveillance. We need more intelligence going on into our own individual lives that we can justify that because of a threat from the outside. Well what is that threat from the outside? How real is that threat? How important is it to our daily lives

53:59 if it's going to influence what we find as acceptable, what we consider as acceptable limitations on our liberty. On our freedom to speak, on our ability to share ideas those are the things that are more in the shadows that are never quite clearly visible to us. Yeah well said! That's a big part of it and i've interviewed a lot of journalists who now find themselves on the outside and maybe once didn't end so often the story is. Publisher says we want you to write a book about x person says okay sure it's a paycheck this is my employer they write that book and then copy editor changes certain parts of it takes out a chapter two that the journalist might have thought was their best chapter and then the boat goes out,

54:53 And then they're offered the next job and it's just like you can either go with the flow. Have a nice career or you can say actually i don't like the way you manipulated that now your stock doing interviews of me, what is kind of what you get morning joey get greg carlwood but i dont give both but yeah so often it is just like It's not explicit, it's just kind of suggested and it's like they're almost trained by the publisher to be like this is the kind of book we want. And they always have the people in place to chisel the work down to what they wanna put out. It's the unseen hand, the hidden hand that really is directing the myths of life and just a violate what you said about

55:39 what may be not all the work is important i got to thinking about lawrence writes predictive abilities and i looked into his two most recent novels one came out in two thousand twenty three called mr texas npr's best book of the year by the way, how about a rancher who becomes a politician. I don't know i couldn't think of much there obviously haven read the book but then the human scale is a book of his novel that comes out next year, that centers around the new found and forced relationship between a palestinian american fbi agent and hardline israeli cop working together on easily to solve the murder of an israeli police chief in gaza.

56:22 I don't know if there's any clues or insights there, any predictive programming that might happen. But it's clearly a highly charged subject that's very in the news right now and if I was a police chief in Gaza, I'd probably watch my back. I will say that but I also read that the events of October 7th with the parachuting shooters and the music festival is a scene in the book. That's in marketing material for it so cementing that as history in a certain perspective. And, you know maybe the police chief in Gaza will see how he fares in the next few years but clearly there's some perception management going on within that story just based on how highly charged that area of the world and that particular story and set of circumstances seems to be right now? Well I think it's fascinating

57:18 that we have in Lawrence Wright, a journalist who also does literature and is writing about similar subjects both on nonfiction and a fictional basis. And so I think most of us take a look at our fiction writers or creative writers in this country and we think well they're sitting around Dan, they're coming up with creative ideas. They're researching out the popular things in the news. They are looking to write things that are timely and they're working on creativity but when your other role is as a journalist and you are developing sources in areas where most people don't have access

58:05 it does give you an opportunity to know things that perhaps are not on the horizon of other people. So, perhaps in the course of that if you're doing journalism and you're interviewing people in the State Department or you're interviewing people at the CIA or you're interviewing people in the federal government whatever level in say biology, immune science You're going to come up with ideas from talking with people that may lead to fictional work. That seems perfectly natural, perfectly appropriate but when you back up a little bit and ask yourself gee how do you get on the inside of these organizations? How do you get access? How do you get trusted enough by the CIA maybe that they take you inside and show you this secret documents right so that's a lovely thing as a journalist if your independent and your developing those kind of sources

58:56 you're doing good work and you're doing work the way it should be done to develop those sources. But if you have secret connections, if you have insider access that other journalists aren't getting, if you're allowed into the room where the discussions about the future of America are on the table and you don't acknowledge that access or you don't let your reader know about that kind of access, I think that creates a little different situation. So is Lawrence Wright just a prescient individual? Does he just happen upon these ideas and happen to write these major books about issues that are confronting us all? I can't tell you how that exactly works with Lawrence Wright and part of the reason I can't is because he won't answer any questions than I have for him

59:50 But I think we can draw clues, and that's what I've done all my life as an investigative reporter is I have tried to establish one thing that is true. And then another thing that relates to that but it also true. And you build blocks of information that way through which you can come to some kind of reliable conclusion And so, what I conclude about Lawrence Wright's history as a writer is he had extraordinary access to things that most writers, most journalists don't necessarily get. He participated in programs that were used to develop journalistic friends by the intelligence community and direct family ties to these organizations that were developed through systems and networks, but they never disclosed them

1:00:39 If he'd have disclosed them, if he just said well my father was employed by Robert Story and look who he was and all that. That's one thing to hide that is something else entirely which leads us to suspicions about things we don't know or can't determine You know, I asked Lawrence Wright several times. And I wrote him a letter before the book was published and outlined exactly what I was going to report in this book and ask for his commentary he would not respond or would many other people at literary circle respond to those kind of questions. Yeah. I thought that was really interesting your personal interactions with Wright but yeah on one hand

1:01:22 People don't bite the hand that feeds but when you omit certain things from your biography and these things are highly charged it does lead to suspicions. But man this is been really really great it's about that time i let you go but definitely tell us about any previous work or anyways people should follow you online or how to keep tabs on what you might be working on down the line Well, I've published another book besides some entry in journalistic collection of columns. It's called Street Talk and it has the contributions that I made to the Pulitzer that was won by the four-way news Sentinel for coverage of floods in that city. Are we going have to check out your own Pulitzer and see how legitimate that is? Yeah well yeah everybody go check take a look but I'm also working on a film project out of Indiana my home state

1:02:17 I'm doing a documentary film on a series of cold case crimes from the late 1970s in Speedway, Indiana and the shadow of the Indianapolis 500. Five murders never solved and a string of bombings that resulted in a conviction of which I have discovered was a wrongful conviction. Police corruption was involved in that and the effort to target this individual, so we're working on hopefully a 10-part documentary that will look into that corruption and into why these crimes are never solved. Okay! I like that it's... The stories we don't hear but they don't surprise us either when we eventually do seems to be a tale as old as time. Corruption

1:03:02 Misdirection. Man, well this has been a serious pleasure I know it's a marathon session around here so i'll let you get on with the day but keep fighting the good fight and take care! Well thanks Greg thanks for having me on I enjoyed it And there we have it a swing back into the good old reliable world of practical down-to-earth nuts and bolts media manipulation And what a time to remind people just how deep this goes when everything is in full swing and we're staring down the barrel of a national election, just about two months away. Dan really is the man even though I wasn't familiar with the name Lawrence Wright when I took this on him certainly familiar with his overall influence and I think looking at them as a template does a lot of good

1:03:52 I mean, hell Lawrence Wright was a guest on JRE biggest podcast in the world just over a month ago. He's still very influential and I do think the Scientology stuff is weird. I know i'm a bit biased and my distaste for religions and cults in general but if I step back from it...I guess I don't know too much about Scientology itself in an objective sense And really if people want to believe something or be a part of something voluntarily that's their business. But it's just a good thought exercise i guess the thing hey did i form my own opinions objectively about, something like scientology or have i just gone along with the crowd and if there is this big cultural mono opinion why is that

1:04:41 Just something to think about regardless of the little micro stories like Danny Masterson and the new Lincoln Park singer, et cetera. Obviously this interview in this episode isn't even about Scientology itself it was just Dan's entry point into Lawrence Wright's work and given Wright's background this wasn't interesting first gig to burst out onto the scene with you can decide for yourself why that might have been Where the government intelligence networks getting a little paranoid about the intelligence gathering of the Scientology organization and they thought they needed to hit peace on them maybe, or perhaps he was tasked with doing one genuine ask. Kind of story some hip counterculture thing to get the journalistic street cred would be beyond joe rogan's podcast if you didn't write going clear probably not

1:05:36 Maybe going clear was written so he could just pepper in little bits and pieces about his other work it's a curious thing even dan can leaves that open, he does seem like a good old fashioned journalist i don't have a dog in any fight i'm just trying to do. The research and put out the findings But the reality is you only need a couple dozen Lawrence rights to control narratives on pretty much everything. The system will prop them up and convince most people that they are the journalistic authorities, and Bob's your uncle! I would also have to say i never heard that the head of the Chicago mob was a Russian Jew but like so many things does the real Head Of The Snake ever get cut off or ever get held accountable? Not really

1:06:29 So even though it's new information in a way, it doesn't really surprise me. But if you like the free first hour as always join plus to hear the full two hours show today's plus side added a lot of stuff to the mockingbird media pile. We also talked about some wild stories from Dan's journalistic past working on prison corruption and abuses And child abuses in juvenile centers and stories from befriending this mobster who told him all this insider knowledge i had a great time with dan very happy with how it all turned out. I'm always happy to promote a new book from trying day as icing on the cake they're doing the lord's work so to speak,

1:07:14 And when it comes to the last episode with matt roski obviously we never make everyone happy but when i put out a show that even has a few comments about being a new personal favorite. That's a win and there were a few people who said matt was in your favor no overall the rating is a four point seven pretty much where all of them land lucky for me, I'm not complaining but again we're probably gonna seek out a ratings plugin that allows for more variance and nuance. Sick of patting myself on the back all the time you know? But right now this is what we got, 4.7 obviously means i'm doing alright! Let's jump over to meetups on the books

1:08:00 It seems like coming up on the 18th we got Corner Bakery Cafe in Pasadena, September 19 Coral Tree in LA. October 14 Gilderbrats Alehouse in Eden Terrence Auckland New Zealand and then November 9 Trails Cafe in LA Wow! Four meetups on the books, three in the LA area and one in New Zealand. Man it's a big world out there I wish more people had an interest in meeting other like-minded folks but I just provide the opportunity The website is there and open to anyone And the rest of it just is what it is But Dan was super great! I hope he feels the love from you guys He seems to be in the final chapters Of a very long and altruistic career

1:08:52 that sometimes seems like it might have been a bit thankless. But hey, we know the kinds of people that get on the front page and get onto primetime and get propped up by the system so it is what it is I'm glad he wrote this book calling a lot of that out So until next time That's It for me! I've done my part Your move Mockingbird Media Agents Intelligence Tied Informants Propagandists And Predictive Programmers Your fucking mood. We put our kids through a pipeline where ignorance is culted. A good step to graduation or being in. They get a job somewhere that never pays enough, more like the cops' same machine that made them dumb! We can't live life into us. So much noise it's enough how do we undo this? Gotta kill the mockingbird

1:10:05 It's a vital step to unravel everything that's wrong. Today started years ago, it is now affecting everything! Put the toothpaste back into the tube... It's hard to advocate for circle in everything you do. I killed my mother to even have a chance. It's a vital step and an important dance because the stories of our lives we must reclaim them

1:10:53 They stole the truth and sold us lies, but who can blame them? We neglected y'all so much. We let the lizards run amok And now humanity is stuck But not for long we're coming right along Gotta kill the mockingbird with higher sidechats It's a final step, it isn't important