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#388 - Cartel Insider Exposes ‘Sasquatch’ Triple Murder You Won’t Believe | David Holthouse
02:33:55
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- [00:07]
A
All right, David, thanks for coming, man.
- [00:09]
B
Yeah, thanks for having me.
- [00:10]
A
Incredibly, huge fan of your work, bro. I just watched the. Almost. The most recent one I watched was the. The Sasquatch movie, which is incredible. We'll talk about it.
- [00:19]
B
Cool.
- [00:20]
A
But just right before we started, we were talking about the Operation Odessa movie, which is one of the most insane documentaries ever. I was surprised because when I was. When I was doing some background research on you, and I saw that, I was like, no, I'm like, this is. That was one of my top top 10 pro movies I've probably ever seen. So why don't you explain that one real quick for people? How did you get introduced to that one?
- [00:44]
B
Yeah, so Operation Odessa was directed by a really good friend of mine, a longtime colleague, Tiller Russell. And he'd been working on that story for about a year, trying to get access to this Russian gangster named Ludwig Feinberg, AKA Tarzan. Because Tiller and I had worked on a show together that actually, I think, never actually made it to air that was about undercover agents, okay? And there was this one undercover agent that we interviewed that was, like, the DEA's top Russian mob guy. And off camera, Tiller asked him, okay, like, what's the craziest case that you ever worked? And this guy was like, bar none, the first case I ever worked. And he told us the story of Operation Odessa, which was that this Russian mobster, Tarzan, got connected with a Colombian trafficker named Juan Almeida and a Cuban spy known by Tony Ester. And this is right after the fall of the Soviet Union. And Tarzan had connections in the former Soviet Union to get, like, surplus military hardware. Because in, like, you know, in Russia right after the fall, like, no one was mining the store. And so, like, you could get motorcycles, military motorcycles, AK47s, RPGs, whatever, right? All these, like, military generals and officers on down the line weren't getting paychecks, okay? And so they started this trio. They connected at this strip club that Tarzan ran in Miami called Porky's. Cause he was a big fan of the movie, okay? So he named his strip club Porky's. And they started off moving like motorcycles to a cartel in Colombia, okay? To the Cali cartel. And from there, it went to the cartel asked him if they could get a heavy military transport helicopter, which they could use to move tons of coke with by hooking it up on a cable hook. And they brokered that deal successfully and transported this massive Soviet military helicopter to Colombia using a transport plane.
- [02:51]
A
Holy shit.
- [02:52]
B
And so after they pulled that off, the Cartel was like, can you get us a submarine? Okay. And so that's the story of Operation Odessa. That's the. You know, that's the story of the film.
- [03:04]
A
And wasn't there a famous scene in there or one of the parts I remember where they sitting in a sauna and the dude's like, you want a new.
- [03:11]
B
Yeah, so. So the three, like, the. Tony Yester is, like, straight out of Scarface. He was a Cuban intelligence agent that Castro sent over on the Mariel boat lift with the intention of getting into the cocaine trade to send drug proceeds back to the Castro regime in Cuba. And so Tony, Esther was a trained fighter pilot and trained intelligence agent that came over on the boat lift with the intention of getting involved in drug trafficking, which he did. But after a couple years of sending money back as he was ordered to, he was like, you know, I can be a spy and get my own thing going. So he kept funneling money back to Castro, but he also had his side business going. And. Yeah, and the scene you're referencing was he went to Russia with Tarzan while they were trying to broker the submarine deal. And all the military guys, the Soviet military guys, wanted them to go in the sauna because a lot of business is done there. It's kind of a thing in Russia,
- [04:15]
A
and we all get naked and sweaty and do business.
- [04:18]
B
Exactly. You know, there's a thing, like, when you're naked, like, you see one another as you really are. Right. And Tiller and I. The jumping around. Tiller and I, when we were making Operation Odessa, we went to, like, a Russian Mafia sauna in Moscow with Tarzan. It was, like, part of, like, you know, building rapport with him. Like, we had to do the thing with, like, getting beat with the, you know, the evergreen branches and the whole thing and drinking beer and eating shrimp. I still have the hat from that sonopl, you know, all these, like, mob guys. So anyway, but Tony, you know, Tony's Cuban, and he's like, you know, as he told the story, he's like, tarzan, I'm from Cuba, man. I don't do this get naked with other guys thing, you know, and Tarzan. But Tarzan was in the sauna with the. With the Soviet. Former Soviet military officers. And he came out at one point and he's like, tony, they're saying they can sell us a nuclear weapon. Should we buy a nuclear weapon? Tony's like, fuck, no, man. No, we're here to buy a submarine. Like, stop with the nuclear weapon talk. Right. But, you know. Oh, my God. Yeah, but that Just shows you how crazy shit was, you know, in the Soviet Union after the collapse. It was just like anything goes.
- [05:24]
A
They were just trying to sell anything and everything that was left behind. Yeah, dude. So what year was that?
- [05:31]
B
When they were.
- [05:31]
A
No, when you were filming. When you were filming?
- [05:33]
B
Oh, I would say 2014.
- [05:36]
A
2014?
- [05:37]
B
Yeah.
- [05:39]
A
How much time did you guys spend in Moscow?
- [05:42]
B
Just about a week.
- [05:44]
A
What was it like?
- [05:45]
B
Man, it was sketchy. And we were warned by that DEA agent before we went to Moscow. He was like, look, you guys should assume from day one when you land that you're under surveillance, that your hotel rooms are bugged, that you're being watched constantly. Partly just because you're an American documentary crew, but also because of who you're there to talk to, you know, assume that they know what you're doing. And so we were like, really cautious the first few days we were there, but we were staying at the Four Seasons. It just opened right off Red Square, like five star hotel. And was it nice? It was fucking awesome. I mean, it was like, you know, heated floors. I mean, it was super. It was super lux. Yeah.
- [06:29]
A
And compared to dc, how would you rate it?
- [06:35]
B
And well above. And so we were, you know, we'd interviewed Tarzan for a couple days, a couple days of all day interviews with him. And we thought we were being careful with the footage. We thought we were sending a copy of each day's footage via FedEx back to LA. That was one copy. The second copy we were leaving in the hotel safe. And the third copy was with our line producer. Okay. So we thought we had three copies of the footage and one was leaving the country and there were these Chechen secret police, you know, guards that were not so secret because they're, you know, they're pretty easy to spot and they're all over the tourist area.
- [07:14]
A
Chechen secret police?
- [07:15]
B
Yeah, they got beards. They got beards. They wear like kind of ill fitting off the rack suits. They're all like super ripped. You know, Know they're undercover, they're not in uniform, but like, you know who they are.
- [07:27]
A
Is there any reason they're Chechen?
- [07:30]
B
Putin likes Chechens. Okay, okay.
- [07:33]
A
All right.
- [07:33]
B
They're just, they're, it's just a thing. Okay, all right. They're like a branch of the sfb, the former KGB that are there to surveil, you know, Westerners that are staying in these hotels. Okay. I mean, that's, that's how it was explained to me. And they were always in the lobby. And so we had this like, kind of saying, like, as long as the Chechens stay in the lobby, we're cool. But we got careless. And it was like the third day we were there, I think. And Tiller got a call from Tony Yester, the Cuban spy, who, like, everyone we'd interviewed. FBI, dea, Department of Justice, whatever, they told us, there's no way you're gonna get this guy to go on camera. We can't find him. He was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list at the time. Nobody claimed to even know where he was in the world.
- [08:18]
A
Which guy are you talking about?
- [08:19]
B
Tony? Yesterday?
- [08:21]
A
Yeah.
- [08:21]
B
The guy that wouldn't go in the sauna. Okay. The guy that came over on the boat lift.
- [08:24]
A
Right.
- [08:24]
B
And while we were in Moscow, you know, Tiller had been using every contact he could to try and get word to Tony that we wanted to talk to him. And we got a call. Tiller got a call from Tony, Esther, that said, I hear you're in Russia, you know, interviewing the waiters. Why don't you come to Africa and interview the chef? And we got really excited because we were like, we got a line on this guy. He didn't agree to do an interview, but he agreed to talk to us. He's like, meet me in Johannesburg in 72 hours and I'll talk to you guys. That's what he told Tiller. And so that night, we were, like, in our hotel room and we fucked up. And we were, like, in our line producer's hotel room, and we were just talking openly about all this. Submarines, Cuban spies, DEA going to Africa, you know, because we got so excited and we were careless. And the next day when Tiller and I met Tarzan in the hotel, and we left the hotel and the Chechens got up out of the lobby and started to follow us. And they're just following us. And, like, Tarzan picked up on it right away. Tiller and I saw him. I mean, they weren't being subtle about it, okay? Badass looking.
- [09:34]
A
They were making it obvious they were chasing. They were following you.
- [09:37]
B
Yeah. And so we got on the phone with the line producer, and he's like, guys, we've got to. He didn't even know that. That we were being followed. He's like, guys, we got a problem. He's like, that footage that we thought we were sending back to LA every day, it's still here at the hotel. And the hotel is saying that those copies of the footage and the copies we've been leaving in the hotel safe are both, like, under the control of Somebody not us, like the hotel, can't give them to us. There was a problem with the paperwork supposedly sending them out. And there's powers that be that have interest in this footage and they have control. So now the only copy of the footage we have is control of the line. Yeah, we have one copy and that's that the line producer has. And so we were just like, fuck it. We pulled the plug on the last day of interviews and we basically just went to the airport in Moscow and got the first plane out, which was to London. But we got footage. No, no issues. But we were sweating it. Dude, it's a bus ride from Moscow. It's a good 30 minute, 40 minute ride. And you know, we were on this bus with this fixer that we, that we'd hired to kind of smooth things out, you know, in Moscow, who we always kind of assumed that she was probably working for the government. And she like popped a bottle of champagne on the way out there that she'd been saving for the end of the shoot. And we all like fucking ducked, man. We were sketched out. We were sketched out. Yeah, no, but we got to the airport and you know, we were really sweating it all the way through security, but we got got out with the one copy of the footage.
- [11:04]
A
Oh my God. That's insane. So you went from there to London?
- [11:10]
B
Yeah.
- [11:10]
A
And then did you go meet him in Johannesburg after that?
- [11:13]
B
Yeah, we did. Went from London to Joburg again without the guy agreeing to do an interview. And then, you know, Tiller and I. Tiller met with him alone a couple times. And I was really sweating that because, you know, Tiller got in a car with this guy and was gone for, you know, a few hours and out of touch. And I was like, I don't know if, I don't know if Tiller's coming back. I was really, really, really scared for him. But he did. And then Tiller and I went out to dinner with him that night. And then Tiller met with him again alone and talked him into doing the interview. And the leverage that Tiller used, which is really smart, was like, this is, this is your chance to tell your story for your kids. Like, we picked up on that. This guy Tony really regretted that he was not a part of his kids lives because he was on the run. Yeah. He was a fugitive.
- [11:59]
A
Right.
- [12:00]
B
And so Tiller was like, look, this is your chance to tell your story. Your kids will see this. And you know, that's why he agreed to do it.
- [12:08]
A
Dude, it's. I've Heard so many stories over the past few years from a lot of people that have been in here that I reported on, like the car cartel stuff that's been happening in South America and Mexico and everything. And the, the level of technology that they've been able to get their hands on over the years is just astonishing. Like the. Not even just talking about weapons and stuff, the types of surveillance and spy, espionage, like equipment and technology that they have, like tracking people's whereabouts at all times and stuff that they're getting from, from. They somehow get this stuff. They buy this from companies all over the world, from like Israel to, from Israel to Europe, Africa, and they get it somehow. And, and they have like their own decoupled, like military intelligence. And I wouldn't be surprised if they got their hands on a nuke at one point, you know, I mean.
- [13:06]
B
Well, they have unlimited funding, practically speaking, and they've got lots of ex intelligence guys on their payroll, whether it's Mossad or, you know, CIA, Green Berets. I mean, they actively seek these guys out and bring them down there both to train their guys, but also because of the access to the kind of hardware that you're talking about.
- [13:23]
A
Yeah, famously. I think Noriega was the guy. We had a dude on here recently who did a whole story on Noriega and he was, he, he wrote this whole story, made this documentary. It was a documentary. I think it was a documentary or was it a book? No, he wrote a book about this guy who was an ex Mossad agent who was hired by Noriega and was like Noriega's right hand man during like his whole run. And this dude, this dude was like in his late 80s, maybe early 90s when he was telling him all this stuff. Just crazy stories, man. And yeah, man, it's frightening to think of like all of the, the military equipment and weapons and that, those, that, those basically their cartels, rogue cartel militias have. And you know, they don't have. There's no mutually assured destruction when you're talking about cartels. Like, they could put a tactical nuke in the bed of a pickup truck in any country or state and you would, they would never know where it came from.
- [14:20]
B
Right. And you know, Trump talking about going down, you know, sending, you know, the 101st Airborne in New Mexico or whatever to bang it out with the cartels. Yeah, I'm sure they could take him, but I think it may be more of a fight than he may be anticipating. And I mean, that shit, I mean, another doc that I worked On Tiller Russell with was called the Last Narc. It was about like CIA cocaine trafficking and kind of the origins, the origin story of the Mexican drug cartels. And you know, back in those days, 80s, 90s, I mean, all the drug lords, they wanted to die old and rich. And the guys that are running the game in Mexico right now, they're all younger. Most of them are addicted to coke and. Or meth. And they just like. It's all about like clicks and views and going out in the blazing. It's just.
- [15:04]
A
They're completely different.
- [15:06]
B
They're all out of tik tok nuts, man. And. And it's. It's terrifying. It's just like a. It's like a. Almost like a nihilistic death cult down there right now. But they have like, you know, heavily, heavily armed, and it's just all about your social media and going out in a blaze of glory.
- [15:22]
A
Yeah, dude, I had this. This guy was showing me these TikTok videos of this guy. I think his name was Elmini Leak or something, who was one of the. I think he was one of the security guards for El Chapo's kids. And yeah, he was just like. He had millions of TikTok views, posting videos of his shoe collection, his money, his golden AK47s that he had driving around in like lifted trucks and Lamborghinis or whatever. These guys are just. Yeah, they're. They're super wealthy and they're like in many cases teenagers from what I understand. And they just like, they want to be Internet famous or something. Yeah, it's so strange.
- [16:02]
B
They're influencers.
- [16:03]
A
They're influencer. Yeah, exactly.
- [16:05]
B
Narco influencers.
- [16:08]
A
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- [18:03]
B
I was, yeah. The, the, my most recent show, it's out on a Canadian streamer called Crave, which they're best known for that gay hockey player show he did, Rivalry. But they just about a month ago in February dropped Narco Mennonites, which is a three part series on a Mennonite drug cartel. So in the process of reporting that series, I was in Chihuahua, Chihuahua City and. Which is near where the, where the Mennonite cartel is based in Mexico, which is.
- [18:36]
A
I've never even heard of the Mennonite cartel.
- [18:37]
B
Yeah, most people have. And that's what made it such a fucking great story. I never heard of it until I got onto it, you know, but, but you know, I was in.
- [18:46]
A
Where is Chihuahua geographically on the Mexican map?
- [18:49]
B
It's up against Texas.
- [18:51]
A
Oh, okay. Oh, so it's on the border?
- [18:53]
B
No, no, it's Chihuahua cities. Oh shit. I don't want to fuck this up. Few hours. The border. Okay, but you know, I was in. Jumping around geographically and topically. I was in Ukraine like a couple years ago and I was far more scared and worried about my safety in Chihuahua City than I was anywh Ukraine. I was there because the, the, the people.
- [19:18]
A
Oh, okay. That's where it is.
- [19:19]
B
Yeah.
- [19:19]
A
Oh, it's huge.
- [19:21]
B
Yeah. And so where the Mennonite cartel's base is a little town called Quack Tamuk, which is about 45 minutes north of Chihuahua City. Okay, yeah, but, but and part of it was like the people, the people in Chihuahua City, like you could just feel the climate of fear and it's supposedly it's neutral territory. Like a lot of the, like drug lords, like their kids go to private schools in Chihuah. You know, it's supposed to be a place where like, you know, you're not supposed to take each other out, but you could just, you could just sense that things could jump off at any time and you could literally just like see the fear in, in people's eyes. Just like the people on the streets. There's just an atmosphere of fear. Yeah, that's the word, fear. And I didn't find that in Kyiv. You know, I, I didn't find that, that people were, were just sort of like commonly terrified like they were in Chihuahua City.
- [20:17]
A
What were you doing in Kyiv?
- [20:19]
B
I was, I was doing reporting for a project that I can't say a whole hell of a lot about. It involves like intelligence agencies and corruption in Ukraine and like the US Department of Justice using the power of politically motivated prosecutions of certain like alleged organized crime figures. In Ukraine. I know I'm being vague, but I kind of have to be because that's still in development. But I was, I was in Kiev meeting with, you know, high former high ranking Ukrainian officials and politicians, I guess I would say. And that was another situation where I just assumed I was being surveilled the entire time I was there. Yeah. Yeah.
- [21:03]
A
Dude, you're like a fucking cowboy. You're nuts. You're going to all the hottest hornet nests all around the world. Just like immersing, immersing yourself into all this stuff. You're, you're, you're one of the original immersionists. There's not many more people like you left, man.
- [21:23]
B
Well, you know, and I've, I mean, yeah, I, I still, I still consider myself to be a gonzo journalist, even though my medium has changed for the most part from, you know, writing to, to filmmaking. But like that I first like became aware of your work with that deckhands.
- [21:39]
A
Really?
- [21:40]
B
That was gonzo as, bro. That's gonzo, man.
- [21:43]
A
That's my favorite thing I probably ever did.
- [21:46]
B
Yeah, I mean, guys, it's hard to define what gonzo journalism is, but like, you know it when you see it. And that was gonzo.
- [21:54]
A
That's awesome, dude. Yeah, we had so much fun doing that. It was so like, not even planned either. Just me and my buddy Were just one day bored. And we're like, dude, you know those crazy crackheads we see hanging out in front of 7:11? It's like we should just go film them, see what they have to say. We're like, fuck it. Okay.
- [22:11]
B
Yeah.
- [22:12]
A
The next thing we know, we're just fucking sucked into the Twilight Zone with these guys. And it's crazy how, like, it's crazy how you can go into something like that just by like seeing an interesting looking person and going to talk to them and then getting sucked into this whole other universe of a story about like a corrupt corporate system that is right in your backyard, that connects to everything around, like to Washington D.C. you know?
- [22:41]
B
Right.
- [22:42]
A
It was so insane. And like those people, dude, those, those like those people that we met and that we like spent time around. The fact that they've been living here in this town right under my nose my whole life and I never even knew about it, that kind of blows my mind more than anything.
- [22:59]
B
Yeah, but to do, to do gonzo, right? You've got to be gonzo yourself. I mean, meaning that they picked up on something about you to where they trusted you to tell their stories. Yeah, like the godfather of gonzo. Hunter as Thompson had that saying that like, when the going gets weird, the weird turns pro. The weird. When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. And like, you gotta be weird, you gotta be fringe yourself to do gonzo journalism. Right? And it's like, you know, a lot of the, A lot of the most important work like takes place like off camera or off the record, like, you know, building relationships with people. But also they recognize something in you as a gonzo journalist that makes you able to temporarily inhabit their world and get down with them.
- [23:42]
A
Yeah, you got to get down and dirty and, and you got to like live like them, you know? Right when we were doing that, we were. I was like, you know, it'd be like 1:00pm 1:00pm I'd be sitting on an. On a rat infested island drinking vodka and Mountain Dew with these guys, you know, just like making sure my. Fuck. I had enough battery in my camera camera to get this footage. Yeah, dude, it's just. God, man, that was so much fun. The hard thing about it is though, it's like, it's. It's not that sustainable to be able to. At least for me it was like. It was hard for me to find stuff like that, you know, like that was a. For me, that was like a, like finding a diamond in a rough. But for me to Actually, like, go out and seek out those stories all the time. I feel like I would go crazy.
- [24:31]
B
Yeah, it could be hard on the soul, too, you know? Yeah, it's a lot of darkness.
- [24:37]
A
A lot of darkness, bro.
- [24:38]
B
Yeah.
- [24:40]
A
The last narc, what year was that that you guys did that?
- [24:45]
B
Well, we were. We were making it like 2018 to early 2020.
- [24:50]
A
Okay.
- [24:50]
B
And then it came out, I think, fall of 2020.
- [24:53]
A
And that's essentially the story of Kiki Camarena, right?
- [24:56]
B
Yeah, but it's really. Yes, it's the story of Kiki Camarena, who was a DEA agent who was kidnapped and tortured to death in Mexico in 1985. And.
- [25:07]
A
And they based a whole season of that Netflix series on it, right? Yeah, they did the Narcos. Was it called Narcos?
- [25:13]
B
Yep, Yep, they did. But in my opinion, they pulled some punches on the CIA of it all. You know, I'm. I'm convinced that Kiki Camarena was. Was killed because he stumbled across the CIA's cocaine trafficking operation where they were moving coke from Colombia to Mexico, the trampoline, and then into the US and then using that money to illegally fund the Contras in Central America. I don't think Kiki Camarena knew what he'd stumbled across, but it's clear we were able to get a hold of the actual transcripts because when Kiki was being tortured, it was being recorded, and we were able to get a hold of what I'm convinced are the legitimate transcripts of those torture interrogation sessions. And they were asking him questions that he clearly didn't have the answers to. Like he couldn't give them the information that they wanted because he didn't know it. And I think he had just. He'd been really kind of laser focused on Rafael Carl Quintero. And I think Kiki had been surveilling an airfield and had seen, you know, planes that were CIA operative planes.
- [26:28]
A
And he thought it was cartels.
- [26:30]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't. I don't think that. That he knew what he. I don't think he knew why he was being tortured to death. He couldn't give him the information that they wanted. But it's clear from the questions they were asking that that's what they were. They were getting at, you know?
- [26:43]
A
Do you think you know who killed him?
- [26:45]
B
Well, I mean, I think he was. I think it's. It's an oversimplification to say that the CIA killed Kiki Camarena. I mean, it's. I think it's a mistake to think of the CIA as this sort of like, monolith. Yeah, yeah. I mean, but. But I think a CIA operative was involved, let's put it that way. You know, specifically a guy by the name of Felix Rodriguez who. Now, I don't think Felix Rodriguez actually tortured Kiki Camarena or actually murdered him. I think it was just, you know, thugs, cartel thugs, that did the actual torture and murder. But Felix Rodriguez is one of those guys that, I mean, you think he
- [27:20]
A
was interrogating him maybe?
- [27:21]
B
Yeah, I think he was directing it. And I think things got out of hand. I mean, Carl Cantaro fucking hated Kiki Camarena because Camarena had taken out Carl Quintero's, like, biggest marijuana plantation, you know, And I don't think that they planned to murder him. I think they planned to interrogate him. And so I want to be careful here. I don't think that Kiki Camarena was murdered on orders from Felix Rodriguez, but I think Felix Rodriguez was involved, involved in the abduction and interrogation of Kiki Camarena. And then, you know, he was being held captive, you know, at a. At a house that was controlled by the Guadalajara cartel. And I think that things just got out of hand and they took things too far with the torture and, you know.
- [27:59]
A
Did you guys ever try to get a hold of Felix?
- [28:02]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah. He wouldn't do an interview.
- [28:04]
A
Really? Yeah, we. We interviewed him.
- [28:06]
B
Did you?
- [28:07]
A
Yeah.
- [28:07]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [28:08]
A
I asked him about Kiki.
- [28:10]
B
What'd he say?
- [28:11]
A
Ah, he, He. He kind of threw his hands up and like, no, no, no, no. Oh, those fucking morons. No, no, no. That is. That's the wrong guy. I was in Miami. I was in Miami that day.
- [28:25]
B
Well, I'll tell you this. I mean, we. We did interview on the record, you know, three different cartel, you know, you could call them sicarios, enforcers, you know, guys that were around. Guys that did everything from, you know, carrying out hits to fetching cigarettes and booze for, you know, hooker parties. Right. But guys that were around, and the guys that were around, you know, that mansion while Kiku is being held captive. And their accounts were entirely consistent that Felix Rodriguez was. Was, you know, in, in and out of that mansion.
- [28:56]
A
See if you can find the clip, Steve, from the interview where I asked him about it. Be interesting to see. So there. So all the guys, the. Who are the guys that you said that had consistent stories?
- [29:06]
B
They were, they were, they were, you know, they worked for. They, they each kind. They were all former police officers that had Become. I mean, they may have still carried bad. They did still carry badges, but they'd gone to work for, you know, for the cartel. Yeah. And they're. I mean, you know, they're all on the record in the last Narc, like, telling their stories and the story.
- [29:26]
A
I guess the idea is. Or the story goes he had a. Like a fake name or a pseudonym. Went back in that time.
- [29:33]
B
Yeah.
- [29:34]
A
And that it wasn't Felix. They were calling him something else, Right?
- [29:36]
B
Yeah.
- [29:36]
A
But whatever that name was, he said that he didn't have that name yet. I forget what the name was. You remember?
- [29:45]
B
I can't.
- [29:46]
A
I can't.
- [29:46]
B
I know it's in the show, but I can't.
- [29:47]
A
Yeah, yeah. Anyways, he. Yeah, he said, A, he goes. He goes, I have an alibis that I was in Miami that day. And B, he goes, I didn't get that pseudonym yet. I was.
- [30:00]
B
What's he gonna say? I was a little nervous when I asked him. Right. Of course.
- [30:03]
A
Of course he's gonna say no. But it was interesting when I was in there, when I went to go meet him in Miami, he wouldn't come here. We had to go to Miami to interview him. Like, there was all these other Cuban dudes around there, all these, like, Bay of Pigs dudes in this building. He owned this museum, I guess, this, like, this Cuban American anti Communist museum. And there was, like, posters and shit and books on the wall of, like, pictures of Kennedy with, like, crosshairs on his forehead. And. And they all hated Kennedy, man. That was cra. That was crazy to see. Like, one guy pulled me aside, like, look at my new book. And he's showing me, like, the picture, like, the COVID is literally Kennedy with a bullseye in his forehead.
- [30:47]
B
Yeah.
- [30:48]
A
Well, is this the clip?
- [30:51]
B
Yes.
- [30:51]
A
Yeah, play. Let's see what. Let's see what he actually says. Documentary out there about the DEA agent in Latin America or in Mexico. And there's people that. In that documentary, they accuse you of being tied to the murder of the DEA agent.
- [31:06]
B
You're familiar Kiki Camarina. Kiki Camarena. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we've been aware of that. Yeah.
- [31:11]
A
What is your response to those people?
- [31:13]
B
No, no, absolutely lie. First of all, I can prove where I was during that day, and especially now. I have since I knew that thing was happening. I was taking note of the thing that I do every day. Okay. And now more. In 1993, I started writing everything in detail, what I do every day. So you tell me that I did something. 1995, September 4th three o' clock in the afternoon. I can't tell you exactly where I was, who I met, what I did, what did I eat. Everything. When Kiki Camare, when they claim the day I was supposed to be killing Kikamare, I have a. A phone call with the White House. That's when they called me that day to tell me that General Gorman wanted to talk to me.
- [32:00]
A
And they gave me a phone number
- [32:01]
B
to call General Gorman in Panama, who he's talking about. That day I had a meeting with Perry Rifkin, the director of Immigration here in Miami, with Pedro Reborrero, the mayor of the city of West Miami. We had three Nicaraguan Contra fighters who have been very badly wounded. One called El Tigrito, he had a bullet through his face here. All this thing was hanging down. He destroyed his mandibula and half of his thumb, everything. And the other two were paralyzed. And we were able to go through a friend of mine, the Hospital of Recarrey in Cuba, which is now, I guess he owes a lot of.
- [32:38]
A
Anyways, he goes on a long tangent.
- [32:40]
B
Well, I mean, look, first of all, he's talking about one day, right? And I don't think any of the, you know, cartel sources that we interviewed necessarily put Felix Rodriguez there on the day that Kiki was actually killed. They basically just finished him off. This went on over several days.
- [32:58]
A
Right, okay.
- [32:59]
B
And they said that he was. He was in and out.
- [33:01]
A
He was tortured for several days.
- [33:02]
B
You know, I will say this about Felix Rodriguez, first of all, good on you for getting that interview.
- [33:05]
A
That's fucking figured he's not got much time left.
- [33:09]
B
No, Right, right. God, I'd love to tell that guy's story, you know, but when we were, you know, when we were trying to get an interview with Felix Rodriguez, like, I exchanged several letters with him and, you know, he wrote me, like, he obviously looked into who I was and looked into my background and, you know, I'm very open about the fact and done a lot of advocacy about it, that I was sexually assaulted when I was seven years old. And he wrote me a really, like, heartfelt letter about that, you know, expressing a lot of empathy for me and respect for the. You know, for. For telling my story and trying to help other survivors and things. And I really appreciated that. So I. While I. I think, you know, I. I'd bet the house that he actually was at that mansion while. While Kiki was being tortured and that he knew Kiki been picked up, as they say in Mexico. Picked up, meaning kidnapped. You know, I. I I still have a lot of respect for Felix Rodriguez.
- [34:07]
A
Yeah, yeah, that's wild, man. I didn't know about that. So, yeah, he, the story. You're familiar with the story, how he killed, how he caught Chegg Guevara? Yeah, it's like, that's insane, man. Like, and he wasn't the one who killed him either. Like, he was just like, went in and like, had an interview with like, just talked to him for a few minutes before they went out and executed him and then brought his body back. I mean, the amount of that that guy's seen, look at the amount of death, especially when he's in Vietnam. Yeah, like mowing down people in Vietnam. Like, I've heard a lot of stories about dudes in Vietnam and they come back like, different. If you ever shopped online, chances are you purchase from a store powered by Shopify. It's easy to spot their purple shop pay button. And that's what we use for our merch store. The purple button has all your payment and shipping info so you don't have to track down your card or hope your browser remembered your payment details. There's a reason why so many businesses are using Shopify and that's because they make it incredibly easy to run and manage your own business. Business, it's the business behind the business that really counts. And that's where Shopify excels. With convenient tools and workflows, Shop Pay has the best converting checkout on the planet. Meaning fewer abandoned carts and way more sales. That's a game changer. You can spread your brand's word with the built in marketing and email tools. Don't want to build your own page? Shopify has hundreds of beautiful ready to go templates to express your brand and forget the code. Like daylight computer, which is gorgeous. So if you've got a product, a dream, and the drive to make it happen, Shopify is the platform to help you do it with ease. Because businesses that sell sell more with Shopify. See less carts abandoned and more sales go with Shopify and their shop pay button. Sign up today for your $1 per month trial at shopify.com Danny Jones all lowercase. Again that's S H-O-P-I-F Y.com Danny Jones shopify.com Danny Jones yeah, I did interviews
- [36:01]
B
for this, for this show that, that it was a development gig, right was 15 years ago, one of my first gigs in documentary filmmaking where I just interviewed Vietnam vets all day long for 10 to 12 hours a day for like, for like two weeks. Man, and it really online too. It's all online like trying to do casting for this, this show. The concept was it was going to follow one combat platoon all the way through the Vietnam War as guys got killed and replaced and cycled out. So it's a pretty good idea actually, but didn't get picked up. But, but man, the stories and just seeing the like different levels of trauma still like and how it manifests in these guys lives and then the special Forces guys were like a breed apart. Just, still, just, just fucking ice in the veins, like to this day cold. Like no, you know, comparing them to like the, you know, the guys that were drafted, grunts that were still just like haunted by everything they'd seen and done. Like it was, it was really remarkable comparing them to like the like SOG guys.
- [36:57]
A
You know, there was like very few guys who like seeked it out, you know, like seeked out the war. Like there was guys who. There's one guy named Billy Wa. Who Annie Jacobson writes about him in this move in this book that she did called Surprise Surprise Kill Vanish that during Vietnam he guess he worked at the post office and he like would catch, he would catch the bus from where he lived in Texas to D.C. so he go sign up for the Vietnam War, like that's how bad he wanted to go to war and like sent him off to Vietnam. And I think like the first week he got shot in the foot or the leg and like he literally almost died. Like he was crawling back to the helicopter like to get out of there, like crawling over dead bodies. His foot got like smashed into a million pieces. And then he got sent home and need to do the rehab forever. And they were like, you got whatever, you got the purple Heart, you're good. And he wanted to go back. Like he just, he, he kept going back. Like did all like went, went to the hospital, tried to get like more surgeries done to make his foot better. And like they were like, no, no, you can't go back. You're literally disabled. And he's like, no I'm not. I can run faster than you. And like they eventually just sent him back. And this was when he was in his 20s and he stayed in the military until like his late 80s. He was deploying to the Middle east like in his 80s for the CIA to go track Osama bin Laden. Like this is one of the dudes that was. Every fiber of his being was drawn to this, you know. Yeah, that's him. But most, most people, I feel like most people that I've talked to on the show are people that, you know, since the. If you were talking about, like, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they went to those wars. They weren't like that. They just signed up for those wars because they didn't really have any better options.
- [38:49]
B
Yeah.
- [38:50]
A
You know, it was like, oh, I could go to college or I could go to this, or I could sign up for this war. You know, this sounds exciting. Let me try this. And then they go do that and they come back and they're like, well,
- [39:03]
B
it's a range of reactions. I mean. I mean, some of them then go, you know, work as contractors, then mercenaries. You know, some of them get hooked on it.
- [39:10]
A
Some of them get hooked on it. Yeah. But some of them don't. Some of them spiral out of control after that, after they get back, you know, and then get like. I mean, just what was the. What's the stat, like, how many veterans kill themselves every day?
- [39:22]
B
It's staggering, you know, and I've tried. I tried to get traction several times that. With a documentary on just that. I mean, if you look at, like, you compare the. Almost take any. Any combat unit that saw heavy action in Iraq and Afghanistan and compare their casualty rate when they were in country to the casualty rate of guys that have either died of overdoses, accidents, or suicide since they got back. And across the board, it's comparable. And in a lot of cases, like, if you take a unit, more guys have died since they got back from misadventure or drugs or eating a bullet, then got killed in the Middle east, and it's fucked up. Our government's done a terrible job of helping these guys out. Yeah, you know.
- [40:05]
A
Yeah, it's up, man. And like, now that's, like, everyone's kind of aware. I feel like. I mean, I don't know, I'm. I'm young, but it feels to me like more than any time in my life that everyone's kind of like, more aware of all, like, the government lying. You know, I think it's probably a lot to do with, like, technology and social media and podcasts. There's way more access to information, and it's like the emperor has no clothes now. And like, you even have veterans from the Iraq war and Afghanistan that are like, what the. Were we doing? Like, this was all for what? And how do you justify any more wars? It's like we're living in this. This hyper normalization. Like when the Soviet Union, you know, Adam Curtis, the BBC documentary filmmaker, he does. He does these crazy documentaries. Where he basically compiles footage, like, historical footage, and he lays them out in a storyline with his voiceover. And he kind of, like, tells the. And I highly recommend the great historical, like, storytelling. And one of them is called Hypernormalization. And, like, it explains how during the Soviet Union, before it fell, during the 70s and 80s, how, like, everyone who lived there was aware how their government and their economy and their society was failing, but there's nothing they could do about it. And they were just trying to pretend as long as they could that nothing was wrong. And eventually it all just collapsed. But they were basically just, like, living in a fake reality and they all knew about it. Like, the. Like, the government knew that they knew, and they knew. The government knew that they knew that nothing was real and everything was on the brink of collapse. And that's kind of like what I feel like we're living in right now.
- [42:01]
B
Yeah, I was about to say so. Kind of like, America right now.
- [42:04]
A
Yeah, man. It's scary, dude.
- [42:07]
B
One more thing about Felix Rodriguez, if I could, because I don't want to leave that thread hanging, because, yeah, he's basically. He called me out and on your show is, like, one thing I would say, like, what motivation would these three cartel gunmen have to lie versus what would Motivation would Felix Rodriguez had to lie? But also, you know, think about that.
- [42:25]
A
Totally.
- [42:25]
B
Okay. And the second is, Felix Rodriguez is a classic case study in what is the CIA? Like, was Felix Rodriguez a CIA agent? No. Was he taking action on behalf of the CIA, at least a faction within the CIA? Right. I mean, there's all kinds of, like, factions within the CIA, and a lot of times one hand doesn't know what the other's doing.
- [42:46]
A
He was. He was. Was he not.
- [42:48]
B
He was an operative. I mean, he was.
- [42:49]
A
He was like, a paramilitary guy, right?
- [42:51]
B
Yeah, yeah. But he wasn't, like, recruited out of American University to join the CIA.
- [42:56]
A
Right, right, right.
- [42:56]
B
You know what I mean? But he was a CIA asset or CIA operative. So that's where it gets like. There's a. There's a lot of tentacles coming out of the CIA. And so it's like. It gets tricky when you start saying things like, the CIA killed Kiki Camarena. It's like, well, you know, I don't think William Casey, like, put a hit on a DEA agent. Right. But, like, just went south.
- [43:15]
A
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There's so many people that are employed by the CIA. It's insane. And it's this. It's like the same thing with Kennedy. Like, people like to say, oh, the CIA killed Kennedy. But it's like, you know, there was probably less than a handful of people that actually knew what was going on. You know, like, if you could track all the cables and all this stuff like that, there was. There was probably, I would say less than 10 people if I was to guess that actually knew what was going on. And, you know, that's another thing. That's another, like, that's another thing that they. They never will have to fess up to. But like, if you. If you pulled all of Americans today and asked them, like, do you think Lee Harvey Oswald did it or do you think the CIA did it? I bet you like a 90 of people would say they think the CIA did it. But it's like, is that gonna change? No, no, nothing's gonna change.
- [44:11]
B
Who was the MK Ultra guy that went in and like, spent time with Jack Ruby in prison? That's, that's. That was when I finally tumbled where I was like, wait, what?
- [44:20]
A
Jolly West? Yes, yes, Jolly West. Dude, he was everywhere. Yeah, he was attached to everything. Charles Manson, Kennedy with Jack Ruby. He was even meeting with Stanley Kubrick and Edgar. Is Edgar Casey or. No, it was. Yeah, I think it was Stanley Kubrick and Edgar Casey when Stanley Kubrick was filming 2001 Space Odyssey over in the UK. Yeah. Look at this. This is on the set of 2001 Space Odyssey. And that's Stanley Kubrick in the front and it's fucking Jolly west in the back.
- [44:58]
B
Yep. What the fuck?
- [45:00]
A
This guy was everywhere. So the Sasquatch movie, how did you get involved in this one? Is this. This is not. This was not very recent. This was at least four years ago.
- [45:14]
B
Four years ago? Yeah, it came out. Yeah, I'd made. I'd made a couple shows with this filmmaker named Josh Rofe, and he. He was a big fan of this podcast, the Sasquatch Chronicles. And he was, you know, one day he was just kicking around ideas. He was like, man, if we could just find like a. A true crime story that had a Sasquatch angle. And like, I immediately like, tumbled back to this memory from, like, 1993 when I kind of visited a. I was hanging out, you know, on a weed plantation, the Emerald Triangle. And there's this story going around about how, like, you know, three dudes had been killed on this backwoods weed plot by a Sasquatch. And it was just being like, you know, it was just like a legend, basically. Maybe. Right. Or story, a rumor. And so I was like, well, you know, why don't we, like, try and track that story that was going around in Mendocino and Humboldt county in the fall of 1993. Try and follow that back to its source and see what we find out. So that's how that project got going.
- [46:20]
A
So you. But you were there at, like, the start of this. This whole movie. Like, this was. This all started out, like, when you were in your early 20s in 1993, sitting in this log cabin.
- [46:31]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [46:32]
A
In the middle of the wood, the redwoods.
- [46:33]
B
Yeah, yeah. Really.
- [46:34]
A
And these tweakers come in saying they just saw some guys get chopped up. And it was the big.
- [46:39]
B
They claimed that they had just been at the. At the, you know, scene of this crime, and that, like, there was bodies that were mutilated. There was, like, Bigfoot footprints, and they were, like, legit terrified. And I was on mushrooms. I was coming down, but I was still tripping, you know, and I was just like, they. Their energy was so panicked. And I hadn't had a lot of experience with crystal meth by that point in my life, you know, that I really recognized, like, that that was also an element in their behavior. Right. So I just kind of tried to sink into the couch, you know, but I kind of just like, took it in and it stuck with me. And then when we, you know, I. When I told Joshua Fay about that instance, he was like, well, let's just start making some calls and see if, like, anybody else heard that story. And so that was really the genesis of it. It's like. And we. And we did that on camera, like, just calling, like, every connection I could find, you know, that was involved in the weed trade and the emerald triangle in the 90s. Be like, hey, did you ever hear this story? You know, and it was like, a lot of, like, dead ends. And. And then finally we started to hit on people that were like, yeah, I remember that. I remember hearing that, like, yeah, like, three dudes got. Got killed. And the word was that. That somehow a Sasquatch had. Had. Had killed him. And then it extended from there that there was like, this. Supposedly this sort of, like, tribe of Sasquatch that were, you know, like. Like the. As the farms were pushing further and further up into the woods off road, like, there was, like, people were having encounters with these pissed off Sasquatch that were, like, hucking rocks at them and stuff. And, like, bl. And so it kind of like, got all wrapped into this one urban legend about, like, that the dope growers had infringed upon this Sasquatch Turf, if you will, and that the three dudes that got killed, like, they set up a plot and they were, like, camping on it, and that's what led to them being killed. Of course, we did track down, I think, the true story of. Of who killed those guys and why. But I don't want to spoil it for anybody that hasn't seen the show.
- [48:50]
A
Yeah. Yeah, dude, that was, like, scaring the shit out of me watching it. Just the way that. That. Just the way that whole landscape is laid out, you know, where you're meeting these confidential sources on the top of these giant wooded mountains that have. You have no cell phone signal. Yeah, nothing like that.
- [49:10]
B
Like,
- [49:13]
A
did. Were you not terrified?
- [49:16]
B
I. I kind of get into this zone when I'm reporting like that, where I'm. Where I'm able to kind of just disassociate, I think.
- [49:26]
A
Yeah.
- [49:27]
B
You know, and. And then. But then I get an adrenaline dump after, and that's when I get sketched out. But, yeah, especially the. There's this one road, one mountain, Spyrock, and there's this road, Spyrock Road, that's like. Like, to this day, like, the police will not go there unless they' rolling deep. Meaning, like, unless they're going with, like, basically SWAT team force like this. You know, it's. It's. It's really. Yeah. There was. There was one scene that I think, for the most part, didn't make it into the show. And I had. I went up Spyrock by myself most of the time. I had, like, a. An ex cop that would kind of be along with me in an under, you know, undercover, but kind of, like, watching my back, basically. But in this instance, I was by myself and wound up on this dope farm that was run by these, like, two women, both heroin addicts, and they had a bunch of pit bulls. And one woman told me the story about. And I. And I had a, like, hidden camera, and I was wearing a wire. Okay. And was working on it.
- [50:35]
A
Makes your nerves even more.
- [50:37]
B
Now, one of them, not the one that's telling me the story I'm about to relay, but the other one had become a contact. And, like, I had interviewed her a couple times on camera. She knew I was making a movie. You know, I think she probably would have covered for me if they'd figured out that I had a camera or recording device, hopefully, but didn't come to that. But her friend told me the story about, you know, how these. How these black guys from Los Angeles had come up, make a big deal, and how she and some biker friends of hers had just killed these guys and took their money instead of selling them the dope and they buried them on her property. And she's telling me all this on camera and one of the guys had she. And she told this story like it's funny how one of the guys as he was waiting to be murdered basically had pissed himself. And after they buried his body, one of her pit bulls had smelled the urine or something and gone and dug up his shoe and brought it back to her cabin and dropped it. And she was telling this story like it was hilarious and her friends laughing and I'm having to force myself to laugh like this is the funniest fucking thing I've heard too, you know. But the reason that we couldn't use it is cause she was dropping the N bomb and describing these guys. And like Hulu wouldn't air that footage just because even if we bleeped that they were like, they still know what she's saying. And so like that just that one word is so radioactive. Right. That we can't even use this footage. It was, you know, it was hard won footage. But that was, that was probably in, in the entire experience of making Sasquatch, that was probably the time that I was the most sort of puckered.
- [52:20]
A
You were by yourself?
- [52:21]
B
I was by myself, yeah.
- [52:23]
A
Because I've been in that situation before where, you know, you're just getting gold.
- [52:28]
B
Yep.
- [52:28]
A
But like I've always had somebody with me or I'm like looking at him like, can you believe this is real? Like, can't wait to get this down the hard drive.
- [52:35]
B
Right.
- [52:38]
A
But like, oh my God, being alone, dude. Especially not like you're hiding the camera. So like you're terrified if they discover it. Like you don't know what the fuck is going to happen. These people are like self admitted murderers.
- [52:53]
B
Yeah, yeah. I mean it was one I was in a watch. And then I also had a camera that's in like a key fob. So I had to kind of keep my keys out and you know, kind of work the angle on it. Yeah. You know, and I had, you know, I had a rifle in the trunk of my car. But I was like, I was always very aware of how many steps away from that trunk I was. And it was, yeah, it was, it was sketchy, man. And I. And but the only way that I was going to get that access was to go by myself. Right. You know, and this was this, this was, this was somebody that supposedly had, you know, information about that triple homicide back in 1993.
- [53:33]
A
So, yeah, I. I was completely unaware until watching that film that that part of California was like that. That it was. It's just like this Twilight Zone where people can get away with. It seems like just people can get away with murder. Like it's nothing there. And especially these people that are like, living off the grid.
- [53:55]
B
Yeah.
- [53:55]
A
And I don't. Do they have electricity up there?
- [53:58]
B
Some don't. Some live totally off the grid, you know, and it's. But like, I mean, there's still like some like just kind of classic hippies up there. Right. That are.
- [54:09]
A
I really love. My favorite guy was the guy who remind. He reminded me of Captain Hook from the movie Hook with Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman. He's got like the hook eyebrows. The hippie guy.
- [54:18]
B
Yeah.
- [54:19]
A
Like leathery skin. Yeah, he was awesome.
- [54:21]
B
Ghost dance.
- [54:22]
A
I don't remember his name. He was on the right side of the frame. He had like a bookshelf behind him.
- [54:26]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He. Yeah, he was a great source. He was. He grew weed for the Hell's Angels, like back in the day. He was really their weed master. And he still has a lot of. A lot of juice in there and it's pretty well protected and that's why he felt comfortable going on camera.
- [54:43]
A
Yeah. You were like, I think we found the killer. He's like, oh, really? He's like, used to be my neighbor. I get you his number?
- [54:50]
B
Y. Yeah. Yeah.
- [54:54]
A
So do you think that, that. So that guy that you talked to, do you think he was the killer that you. You complete. You never said his name once on the. On the film. You bleeped his name out of the film?
- [55:06]
B
No, no, I don't.
- [55:08]
A
You don't?
- [55:08]
B
I think. I think he probably knew something about it, but I don't think he was actually involved.
- [55:12]
A
Yeah. Cuz it was very weird how when you. I mean, it's. It was like first of all, the way you just so bluntly asked him straight up.
- [55:19]
B
Yeah.
- [55:19]
A
Like, do you know. So you're telling me you didn't murder three people? He's like. He's like, I don't know what you're talking about. Click and then hangs up. He seemed pretty guilty to me.
- [55:29]
B
Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, I think it. Well, it depends on what you mean by the murder. Do I think he actually carried it out? No. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and it's funny that it's like biker slang kind of like played into it and that like the story was is that like these three guys had like somehow Abused some dude's daughter. But, like, in the outlaw biker world, daughter can mean like just kind of a young woman under your protection, too, you know, and so that's where, like, things got a little vague, I guess.
- [56:07]
A
Interesting.
- [56:08]
B
You know, it's like the story was. Yeah. This guy's daughter had been, you know, by these three guys.
- [56:13]
A
Yeah.
- [56:13]
B
You know, that was one version of it, right.
- [56:16]
A
Yeah, that's so. It was so also so weird how you would get all these people telling you this story, or. I don't know if it was one source or two sources that told you that story.
- [56:24]
B
Yeah.
- [56:24]
A
And, like, you talked to the guy named Bigfoot. Bigfoot Jacobs or whatever his name was, and Bigfoot Gary. Bigfoot Gary's like, I never even had a daughter in 93.
- [56:33]
B
Yeah. And that's where this up. But that's where that's what I mean is it's like he may have had a biological daughter, but, like, if there was a young woman that was not romantically involved with him, but it was kind of like a foster kid in a way, which is kind of common in that world. You know, like splintered families and, like, sort of taken under his wing, she would be known as his daughter, even though she's not his biological daughter or adopted daughter, even. Just like a young woman that's sort of like. Like part of his tribe.
- [57:02]
A
Okay. Did you ever meet him face to face, Bigfoot Gary?
- [57:07]
B
No, no, no. We tried. Like, even, you know, one of the guys that I made that show with, you know, went so far as to kind of like, stake out this. This gas station that we knew he got coffee at every morning, and he just happened not to show up a couple mornings. And then, like, the second or third day that Zach was there, he got made and kind of, like, run off. So we. We pulled out all the stops to try and. But I did finally get him on the phone. Yeah.
- [57:31]
A
That was nuts. Yeah.
- [57:33]
B
Yeah.
- [57:34]
A
And some of those biker gang dudes, like, some of the Hell's Angels dudes, have, like, protection from the FBI. Like, some of them work with the FBI, Right.
- [57:42]
B
Yeah, yeah, of course.
- [57:44]
A
So I wonder. I wonder, like, how many of them are, like, just protected or, like.
- [57:48]
B
Well, I think basically in any order, performance.
- [57:51]
A
Right.
- [57:51]
B
Many organized crime. You know, there. There. There's guys that are. Yeah, just that. Informants. I mean, look at Whitey Bulger, right? I mean.
- [58:01]
A
Yeah, that's. That's another scary thing. Like, these guys, like, you're not just some, like, undocumented migrant that's out there farming stuff like, you're like a legitimate, like, documentary filmmaker, American citizen doing this stuff. So it's like, on one hand, you think you're safe because of that, but on the other hand, you don't know. Like, maybe these guys have like a get out of jail free card.
- [58:23]
B
Right. You know? Right, right. And I didn't trust the cops, you know, in that part of the world. I mean, it's just. You gotta. You gotta like, witness and experience the Emerald Triangle to understand it. It's like, you know, there's a couple state parks with the redwoods there. And, you know, people go there camping with their family. Once you get outside that part of that world, it is like. It's outlaw country, you know, it just is. I mean, it's like you got the. The kids, the trimmigrants that come from all over the world, they're like, every harvest season, you know, a lot of them just disappear every year, and it's been going on for decades. I mean, there's so. The missing persons rate in that part of the world is so high, it's crazy.
- [59:05]
A
Yeah.
- [59:06]
B
And, you know, they're just buried in the redwoods, right?
- [59:09]
A
Yeah. I'm sure the. I'm sure this. What if you. When you bury somebody in that soil, like just the. With the environment it's in, just, like, eats it up. Like, all the bugs and insects and stuff in the soil probably just soaks it all up and dissolves into nothing.
- [59:23]
B
Yeah. Like I said, that one woman was just laughing about, you know, two or three bodies being buried on the property. Yeah.
- [59:33]
A
It's like another world right in our own backyard. Like, right in this country.
- [59:36]
B
Yeah. And she was like. She was. I remember she was banging heroin, and she also, like, got right in front of you. Oh, yeah. And she had, like, a. A handle of Captain Morgan's, and she. And she wanted me to drive her into town to get a pint of ice cream. And so we drove down Spyrock. I bought her a pint of ice cream and a handle of Captain Morgan's and drove back up. And after she, like, shot up heroin, she was just pouring the Captain Morgans into the ice cream and just, like, eating it, you know?
- [60:01]
A
Whoa.
- [60:01]
B
Like, as. As I'm interviewing her. Whoa.
- [60:04]
A
That's crazy.
- [60:06]
B
Yeah.
- [60:07]
A
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- [61:38]
B
Yeah.
- [61:38]
A
Every night.
- [61:39]
B
Yeah.
- [61:39]
A
But like, does it have like any effect on your psyche when you spend that much time kind of like in a different part of the world, sort of disconnected from regular society and you're like out with, surrounded by all these misfits.
- [61:57]
B
Oh yeah, without a doubt. I mean every assignment like that where you're like basically embedding in a criminal subculture, you have to, you have to, you know, first you have to like develop some contacts and gain people's trust, right? But you have to start mirroring, you have to start making yourself, making yourself seem part of that world. So you like try and pick up as much of the like, you know, slang as you can. Quickly adjust the way you dress, just the way you act, your mannerisms, like and, and sort of give yourself over to that mindset. And that does exact a toll, you know, every time. I mean I've been doing this for 30 plus years now. My risk tolerance is lower than it used to be, you know, When I was in my 20s, early 30s, I would take what seemed to me to be now, like, crazy fucking risks. But, like, Sasquatch was definitely risky for sure. I mean, but to answer your question, I mean, those little towns that are just like, first of all, they're just riddled with meth. I mean, just riddled with method death and oxy, you know, and so you just got, like, junky zombies wandering all over the place. You got to be careful at all the gas stations that there's not, like, a little chip reader on the thing to steal your credit card, because there often are. There's, like, cheap little pieces of hardware to, like, steal your credit card number. So you got to peel them off before you get gas. And.
- [63:19]
A
Yeah, what is it about that part of the world that enables that behavior? Is it the woods?
- [63:26]
B
I think a lot of it's the remoteness, you know, and also, like, legalization hit that part of the world hard, you know, I mean, it's just like, it's a lot harder to make money growing weed than it used to be. And when times are hard, like, violence ticks up. And so, you know, it's like with the. With the legalization, with, like, big corporations coming in, like, putting up these, like, death stars of, like, hydroponic weed down around, like, Palm Springs or wherever, it's a lot harder for those, like, backwoods black market farmers, even if they're still selling on the black market market to make money. And so competitions fierce and competition, that part of the world equals violence, you know, and like, a lot of. A lot of. A lot of them have gone from growing to becoming rippers, you know, just stealing. Stealing plants, stealing money. It's just things there are rough.
- [64:13]
A
Is it still like that today?
- [64:15]
B
I assume it is. I haven't been back up there since, you know, 2021, but I assume it is.
- [64:21]
A
I heard that there were car. Like, literal car cartels doing operations up there now. Like the. Going into the wood and. And doing all their grows now because I guess it's a misdemeanor now.
- [64:31]
B
Yeah, I mean, and that was. That was. That also played into the. To the Sasquatch story is that it was like, you know, that cartels were, you know, Mexican cartels started to move in on the Emerald Triangle in the late 80s. And by the early 90s, you know, when this story about the Sasquatch killing three guys circulated, I mean, the cartels were definitely making a move there, you know. But speaking of cartels, like, one of the craziest stories in the Weed world for me is like these Chinese cartels that are growing weed on like, you know, native land, you know, around like New Mexico and Arizona. And like these. You know about this?
- [65:04]
A
No.
- [65:04]
B
Yeah, it's like these Chinese, Chinese organized crime have these like huge weed growing setups, you know, on reservations, basically. That's. That's a story that I haven't really get into yet. Yeah, yeah, it's been, it's been, it's been covered. That's. I'm not, I'm not, you know, it's been in weed of all drugs. Yeah, yeah, still in New Mexico, New Mexico, Arizona. Yeah. Four Corners region.
- [65:29]
A
It doesn't seem like a great place to grow weed.
- [65:31]
B
Well, it's all indoors, right? They're not. Yeah, yeah.
- [65:36]
A
You don't really hear much about Chinese organized crime anymore, do you? I've heard a lot of. I've heard about like, how they've been involved in Mexico, like with the fishing stuff offshore in Mexico and also buying up mines and stuff and mining lithium in Mexico and hiring the cartels is like security for their operations that they're doing down there as well as like bringing fentanyl into Mexico. But yeah, beyond that, and then buying up, buying up real estate and stuff in the US you don't really hear much about that. Bananas.
- [66:16]
B
Yeah, they're growing weed, you know, but the. Could talk about the Narco Mennonites series.
- [66:22]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [66:23]
B
So the. All, all that weed was like that the Mennonites started moving for the Mexican cartels in the 80s was all like outdoor weed, you know, from the, from the, what they call the golden triangle. Right. Like, Mennonites basically migrated from Canada to Mexico about a hundred years ago, a few thousand of them.
- [66:42]
A
Them.
- [66:42]
B
And they just happened to settle in this town, Kwaktemok, which is like the closest population center to where in the 1960s, like Mexican opium poppy farmers and marijuana farmers started to plant their crops. And so somehow in the 80s, like, you know, the first, first cartel, Guadalajara cartel, got the bright idea of starting to use Mennonites to run dope for them in the U.S. right. Thinking like, because the Mennonites, they, they had these special visas that enabled them to, you know, transit the US To Canada to visit relatives. And so the border guards, you know, in Mexico, the US And Canada, they just see a carload of Mennonites driving maybe with a, you know, truckload of furniture, and they think like, well, no problem. They just wave them on through. And a lot of time that furniture was packed with, packed with weed. But outdoor weed you know what we used to call Brick? Weed. Right?
- [67:36]
A
Huh. Not as good.
- [67:38]
B
Right, Right. And then in the 90s, when, when BC Bud started to come online, you know, especially in Canada, kind of pushed the Mennonites out of the weed business and they started, you know, shifting to harder drugs and coke specifically. Yeah.
- [67:52]
A
And that's what they're doing now, mainly
- [67:54]
B
now they're into everything, man. A lot of what they're doing now is, is laundering money for the cartel. Because, you know, this town in Mexico, Cuaktemoc, it's like every business, practically every business is Mennonite owned. They do do a lot of farming, but they do a lot of, you know, what our sources in law enforcement, Mexico told us is that, you know, yeah, they're still running dope, but a lot of what they do is, is launder money for the cartels now. Huh. And the Mennonites, they've been really smart about like keeping their finger in the wind and kind of like never getting too big and being very careful about when and how they shift their allegiances with all the cartels, wars going on in Mexico over the decades. So they're always like careful about who they're, they're sort of loyal to.
- [68:42]
A
Interesting.
- [68:43]
B
Yeah.
- [68:44]
A
Yeah. It seems like the, the, the heads, the leaders of all the cartels, they never seem to have to pay the price for anything. It's always like the low level pawns are the ones that are getting murdered and shipped around and they're the ones that get the blunt end of the stick. There. There's. I have this friend who's a, a lawyer, a, a criminal lawyer right down the street from here. And one of his first cases he ever got, he was a public defender for it. And it was a Cuban guy, or not a Cuban guy, he was a Colombian dude, a ship captain, cargo ship captain who got hijacked by a cartel on the way from Columbia to Florida. And halfway through on, halfway through the trip, the cartel boarded his ship, put a gun to his head and said, if you don't take all our coke into, into Tampa, we're going to kill you and your whole family. So of course he took the coke in. He went in and got like, like, you know, they were trying to give him like double life sentences and my, my lawyer buddy ended up getting him off scot free. Like this is, he had no, this, this guy was like fresh out of law school and the other guy had zero money. And you know, he was just trying to do this to make a name for himself and help the Guy let the guy live in his house for a couple months when they were fighting the case. And, you know, now, you know, he's been involved with more and more of these cartel cases in Mexico and South America. And, like, the. The heads of the cartels are trying to hire him for and, like, flying him down to Mexico City to meet at the Ritz Carlton. And like. And he. You know, the way he explains it to me is like, those are the people. It's like the low level poor fishermen, boat captains or whatever. Those are the guys that are lining the prisons. This, like, those are the guys getting arrested and killed. And it's like, it's never the dudes who are at the top of the pyramid, who are. Who are making the real money. You know, those guys are either just. They have too much money and too much security to get caught, or they're working with the feds.
- [70:52]
B
Yeah. Every once in a while the government of Mexico, though, it seems, decides to give one of these guys up. Like the. I can't remember the dude's name or the guy that was the head of the Jalisco New Generation cartel just got killed like, a couple weeks ago.
- [71:02]
A
Yeah.
- [71:03]
B
You know, which now all hell is breaking loose down in Mexico because of that. So for those.
- [71:08]
A
That guy.
- [71:08]
B
That's true.
- [71:09]
A
Yeah, that guy. I didn't follow that story.
- [71:10]
B
But, you know, I think every once in a while, like, the. The Mexican government decides, okay, we gotta appease the US and give one of these guys up. I think that they. They know, you know, where they are at all times. I think, you know, same thing happened, I think, with. With Chapo Guzman.
- [71:24]
A
El Chapo.
- [71:25]
B
Yeah. Yeah. Crazy story about Chapo. Like that same guy, Tony yesterday, that was in Operation Odessa.
- [71:31]
A
Yeah.
- [71:31]
B
After Chapo escaped from prison the second time, Tony, Esther called up Tiller, Russell and I, and was basically like, it. It took a while because he's got a heavy Cuban accent and he was calling, I presume, from Africa. And he was also talking sort of in code. But once we figured out what he was saying, he was saying that, like, Chapo wanted to do an interview and he could line up this interview. And Tiller and I talked about it for like, a couple days and we were just like, fuck, it just felt too dicey, and so we didn't do it. And then Sean Penn wound up getting it for Rolling Stone. Like, Chapa was just. Just determined to, like, tell his story, you know, way he's seen operation of you guys. I know, I know. We're still kicking our own Asses over it.
- [72:13]
A
Oh, that's so crazy, dude. Yeah, I heard that he's still calling shots from inside prison, I'm sure.
- [72:20]
B
Even in supermax.
- [72:21]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [72:23]
B
And his son just set up that. That guy, that was one of the, you know, OGs. And I mean, it's just chaos down there right now.
- [72:30]
A
Who did his son set up?
- [72:31]
B
Oh, I'm blanking on that name, too. But he, like, told the guy that they were going to go look at a real estate investment, like, just south of the US Border and wound up, like, landing in New Mexico. And then. And then the guy got arrested. This happened, like, year and a half or so ago.
- [72:47]
A
Oh, oh, are you. Are you talking about. Yeah, why am I blanking on this guy's name, too? The guy who was basically the boss of the Sinaloa cartel, right? Mayo. El Mayo.
- [72:59]
B
Yeah, El Mayo. Thank you. You.
- [73:00]
A
Yeah, it was Elio's son, I think. Yeah, that's. And Elio is another guy. Like, it's like no one, you know, no one paid attention to that guy forever when he was like the old dude behind the scenes. And El Chapo was really kind of like the poster boy, you know, he was kind of just like one of the. One of the henchmen to start out with and then just became like the most famous or notorious for whatever reason.
- [73:24]
B
Yeah, I mean, that's. The same guys that we interviewed for the last narc were telling stories about Chapo back in the day, and he was just like a low level thug.
- [73:31]
A
Right.
- [73:31]
B
It was just like a homicidal maniac.
- [73:33]
A
Right.
- [73:34]
B
You know? You know, why. Why just use one bullet when you can use 70 kind of guy.
- [73:40]
A
Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, the theme of all these stories is just like desperation drives, like, the most violence out of any. Like, people who are the most destitute, who have absolutely nothing to lose, will do, like, the worst, most heinous things to feed themselves or their families, you know? And it's like, whether you're talking about drug smuggling and cartels or like poaching animals in Africa, like the dudes that are. That are killing these endangered animals, like these elephants, and in Africa, these people are just trying to feed their families.
- [74:14]
B
Look at these guys are getting blown up in all these boat strikes. I mean, these aren't drug lords.
- [74:18]
A
Right.
- [74:18]
B
You know, these are guys just trying to feed their families.
- [74:21]
A
Oh, you're talking about the recent Venezuela thing.
- [74:23]
B
All, all those, all those, those, like, boats that, that, that we've been blowing up.
- [74:26]
A
Yeah.
- [74:27]
B
You know, the last six to eight months. I mean, it's all just like guys that are probably like part time fishermen.
- [74:32]
A
Yes. Yeah, those are poor. Those are poor people. Those people aren't calling any shows. Those people aren't making any difference. First of all, those boats that they're driving with the motors that they have on there, those guys can't make it halfway to Cuba, let alone the United States with those motors. Like, what are you talking about? They're bringing drugs to the US like
- [74:51]
B
a 50 horsepower Evan route.
- [74:53]
A
Yeah, yeah, right, right, yeah. The, the, the story they told us about that being about drugs was just like a joke. I don't think anyone bought that. It's a house of cars.
- [75:04]
B
You know, that they're narco terrorists, right? Come on.
- [75:08]
A
Yeah. No, man, it's a, It's a house of cars at this point, man. It really is. But like, so, so going back to the beginning of, like, what got you into this stuff in the very, very beginning, like, what was the, the first project that you worked on that got you into this type of journalism, this type of filmmaking?
- [75:29]
B
That's a good question. I mean, I. It's really started in college. Some, some buddies of mine and I started a newspaper, University of California, Santa Cruz, called the Fish Wrap. And, you know, we were all about Hunter S. Thompson, you know, and so we all, like, like, we're practicing our, you know, our version of gonzo journalism. I'd say the first, like, big story, though, that I did was my first job out of college was for the Anchorage Daily News. That's my hometown newspaper. I grew up in Anchorage, and a couple of street gangs from Southern California were making inroads in Anchorage at the time. And I did a, you know, big. It was like my first big, like, front page story. It was called A Question of Gangs. But it was when I realized that I really had a knack for kind of embedding with criminals, that I could get criminals to open up to me where they might not be as candid or as accepting of the presence of other reporters. And so that's when I think the switch clicked for me there. And then pretty quickly after that, you know, I, I bounced from mainstream daily paper to a chain of alternative weeklies in the 90s that at the time was New Times, that then became Village Voice Media. And, you know, then I just started writing like long form gonzo and just went all in, you know, embedding with gutter punks and street gangs and tweakers.
- [77:00]
A
Yeah, yeah. Didn't you embed with a bunch of meth addicts or something.
- [77:05]
B
Yeah, I did that a couple times. I did one story in Phoenix, but then I think the one you're probably talking about was I was working for a paper in Denver called the Westward, and I stayed up for 72 hours with some tweakers, but they weren't like. I don't know. I don't want to say yuppie tweakers. What were they? They had dough, they had jobs, and they had money. They had money to afford really, really pure crystal meth called shabu. You know, like, really, like, pure came, like in a. In a crystal statue that you just kind of, like, shave little curls off of and really smoke. Yeah, yeah. This is really popular in Hawaii.
- [77:43]
A
I guess these are, like, upper class dudes.
- [77:45]
B
Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. Like, you know, it's going far back enough they could say, like, somebody that owned a flower shop and a clothing store, you know, DJs, you know, that kind of thing. People that had lives other than crystal. Map path.
- [77:59]
A
Right.
- [77:59]
B
But they would get together, you know, once a month and, like, you know, go at it hard for two to three days.
- [78:09]
A
Wow.
- [78:10]
B
And so. But I. I didn't try it. I didn't. I have done. I have done crystal, but not. And for that story, that story, I was. I was taking a Modafinil, which is like an anti narcolepsy drug.
- [78:25]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [78:25]
B
It will keep you awake. Yeah, yeah.
- [78:27]
A
It's like pro vigil.
- [78:29]
B
Same stuff.
- [78:30]
A
Okay.
- [78:30]
B
Same stuff.
- [78:30]
A
Yeah.
- [78:31]
B
And, you know, but. But if it's. I was. I was definitely starting to, like, kind of brown out, you know, around hours.
- [78:38]
A
Yeah, I was gonna say, like, that many hours, I would have, like, taken a little head.
- [78:41]
B
I still have my notebook from that story. And it's hilarious because the notes. The notes start off, like, really kind of lucid, you know, and you can just. And I keep. I kept doing timestamps and, like, by the end, it's just like. Like, hours are passing between the times I did notes, and some of them are just gibberish, you know, but it kind of, like, I was really worried about it. I was like. I think I didn't get the story because I just was not. I was not, like, cogent there at the end, but it kind of. It kind of worked in a way that even. Even in the writing of the story, it's. It's like written in a timeline format. It just gets more kind of scattered and kind of feels like it's going off, off the rails, which was the experience of, you know, embedding with Them for that time too. They, they started to go off the rails.
- [79:25]
A
What did you, what kind of stuff did you ask them? Were you just hanging out? Just, just like being a fly on the wall?
- [79:29]
B
Yeah. 100 just. Yep. Just observing participant observer.
- [79:34]
A
And how did you go about doing that? Like yo, you guys like math? Can I hang out and like about it?
- [79:38]
B
I mean, I, I. Oh, you okay? Yeah. I knew him before I knew that they did this. I kind of knew him from the.
- [79:42]
A
And it was like a ritual for them.
- [79:45]
B
Semi ritualized, I'd say. I mean they did it once a month. It was like planned out. They would clear their calendars, you know, they would all pull their money to buy this really good. And there's one guy's house that was kind of the mothership for the operation. They would go out to clubs and after hours spots and stuff and come back and smoke there. And then put the time I was with them, they decided about hour 36 or so to like get on a charter flight to Vegas. So we all went from Denver to Vegas, you know. Oh. And like it was summer. It was just like. Oh, it was so bad, dude. It was so bad. It was so rough. Just like the Vegas strip, like pounding sun, you know, you're just like dehydrated and just. Yeah.
- [80:29]
A
Oh, it was like hell yeah, it was.
- [80:33]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [80:35]
A
And you also embedded with like some skinheads.
- [80:39]
B
Yeah, I did quite a bit of that actually. I, you know, at least half a dozen times. Probably went undercover as a neo Nazi skinhead. And so to be clear, like with the, with the, with the Shabu smokers, they knew I was a journalist. I was there as a journalist. A lot of the reporting I've done on like neo Nazi organizations, white nationalist organizations that was done undercover. I think that's pretty much the only time I've worked undercover was when I
- [81:07]
A
was no idea that you're a journalist.
- [81:09]
B
No, I was posing as a fellow neo Nazi.
- [81:12]
A
And why, why would you do it that way? What do you think they wouldn't be open to you reporting on what they're doing?
- [81:18]
B
No, no, they, they have a very strict policy. You know, if anybody, if you're contacted by the media, the only thing you say is I have nothing to say. That's it. I mean they don't really do interviews sometimes. Right. But like the real hardcore like, like, you know, hate groups, they're not, they're not media friendly.
- [81:36]
A
Yeah, yeah. So where, so where did you first go?
- [81:39]
B
And Denver also. Denver.
- [81:41]
A
This was in Denver?
- [81:42]
B
Yeah, it was a, there was a investigator for the Anti Defamation League that got a hold of me and let me know that there was this event coming up called the Rocky Mountain Heritage Fest and was like, basically like, if you want, I will give you kind of a crash course and how to infiltrating. Yeah, yeah. And so like I, I spent, I think I only had like a couple weeks. I had hair like even longer than I do now, shaved it, of course, down to just a one buzz cut and just spent like a couple weeks just like learning how to dress, how to walk, the music, the, the slang, you know, the history of the, of that culture.
- [82:21]
A
Listen to Screwdriver.
- [82:23]
B
Yeah, of course, yeah. Listen to a bunch of Max Resist, you know, all the hate rock bands and you know, and, and winner cover it. But it got, it got up because like this like the Antifa had found out where the, where the event was going to be and they showed up in force in a way that like, shut it down. It was like it was originally going to be at this venue called the Aztec Theater in Denver. And like the owners like figured out because Antifa showed up what was going on and they like told the skinheads, like, this isn't happening here because it was clearly going to be a, A, a brawl.
- [82:57]
A
Yeah.
- [82:58]
B
And so it just. So then they were suspicious about who was like letting Antifa know, you know, what, where their location was. And so like, their security, their security was being run by these guys called the Hammer Skins. And the Hammer Skins, they're like a, they. Well, they were and I believe still are like a national skinhead organization. Their symbol is the crossed hammers from Pink Floyd, the Wall, those red and black hammers. Anyway, and so they were running security and like, nobody, nobody knew me. I didn't have an in, you know, and I also, I didn't have any tattoos.
- [83:29]
A
Right.
- [83:30]
B
And both of those things I did after, after that, I actually, after that story came out, I got a hold of the organizers because I think I wanted to get a quote from them from the story and did and was like, hey, that guy, you know, David from Alaska, that was me. I'm not really a skinhead. I'm a reporter. I'm doing a story. And I think I, they actually, actually did, contrary to what I just told you, give me a couple quotes about the event. Because they knew, they knew I had gotten in. And they were like, yeah, we, we knew there was something off about you. We didn't think you were a cop, but like, you weren't reading, right? And I was like, well, what was it? And they were like, well, you didn't have any tattoos, you know, like, were they mad? They weren't mad. They weren't. They were actually kind of, like, impressed.
- [84:10]
A
Wow.
- [84:10]
B
Like, dude, you've got some balls. You know? Like, you know, you would have gotten. Gotten curb stomped if we'd figured it out, right? You know? And I was like, are you going to come after me now? They're like, no. And I. You know, I think I treated him fairly in the story. Like, I didn't ridicule them, you know.
- [84:26]
A
What did you learn about him?
- [84:28]
B
Well, I. I'll answer that by saying what I've learned about skinheads more broadly, not just from that one story, is that a lot of skinheads grow up in the movement, or I'll just say neo Nazis, okay? And a lot of them grew up in the movement, but a lot of them are just like island of Lost Children that are just looking for a place to fucking belong. And it's like they took a wrong turn at the Renaissance Fair or something. And they wound up. Because there is something very seductive about that feeling of intense community based on your racial identity. Okay? Like, there is something, like, reassuring or empowering about being part of a skinhead set. And I also found out that when I. One of the things I did before I went to the actual Rocky Mountain Heritage Fest is I just went out in Denver dressed out as a skinhead by myself. And I, like, I realized, like, people were intimidated. You know, I'm not a small guy, but just walking into bars dressed fully kitted out, bomber jacket, dark martens, you know, the whole thing, white power shirt. Like, I could see people were like. And the reason they were is not. Is because they. I was representing them, that I'm part of something a lot bigger than just me. And if you with me, you're with me. And, you know, presumably my whole. My whole crew and, you know, and so I think if you're, like, somebody that doesn't, you know, have a lot going on in your life and you're, like, looking for an identity, there's something very attractive about that. What did I learn about him? I learned that even then, and this is like the early 2000s, like, that subculture is a lot broader and better funded and organized than most people understand. When I. When I say that culture, I don't just mean skinheads. I mean more broadly, like the white supremacist kind of underworld. It's funded well that they've got dough. Okay?
- [86:29]
A
You know, like. Like rich parents, you mean or they're. They. They have careers, they're kind of living two lives or they. This is kind of like baked in. Is this baked into every part of their life or do they kind of hide it from some people?
- [86:42]
B
And I think it varies a lot, but when I say that they're funded. Yeah, let me. That, like. Like a lot of it's merchandise sales. And also they. They smuggle a lot of. To Europe and make a lot of money that way because, like, stuff. Because of our First Amendment.
- [86:57]
A
Ukraine has a lot of Nazis. Right.
- [87:00]
B
Russia. Russia does, for sure.
- [87:02]
A
Really?
- [87:03]
B
Yeah. But in Europe, in France, for example, Germany, like, hate rock. Like, symbols, the shirts, the flags, all that shit's banned. You know, it's illegal.
- [87:12]
A
Right.
- [87:13]
B
So you can smuggle that over there and make, you know, a good amount of money.
- [87:17]
A
Whoa.
- [87:17]
B
Stuff that's cheap here because it's protected by the First Amendment.
- [87:20]
A
Yeah. This dude, have you heard of that. That guy named Daryl Davis? The black dude?
- [87:26]
B
Yeah.
- [87:26]
A
Who befriended the Nazis.
- [87:27]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [87:28]
A
When I was talking to him, he was. He was saying that, you know, the first time he ever discovered racism because he. He grew up, he said overseas, like, he was going to school overseas and like, he would come back here and he was like, doing this some boy Scout thing, like, doing some, like, march, some public march, and some dude threw a rock at his head.
- [87:46]
B
It.
- [87:46]
A
And he went home and he was like, asking his mom questions about it and his mom was explaining to him why they did it. And that was his first encounter, like, in his. He was maybe 10 years old. Of racism. Like, he had no concept of it whatsoever. And, you know, that's what got him so interested in the KKK and all that. Like, went out and started, like, going to bars, trying to meet these KKK members and ended up befriending a bunch of them, getting them to leave the clan for good. And like I think he said the biggest common denominator between all of them was that none of them had been outside the zip code they were born in. Like, they were all born and raised in this little town and none of them had left the country, let alone their zip code. Which I thought that. That kind of made sense to me. You know, if you're. If you're surrounded your whole life by this, like, certain ideology or people that have one way of viewing the world, you never exposed to any alternative view of anything, then maybe. Maybe that's just what happens to you.
- [88:53]
B
Yeah. I think white nationalist groups now, I mean, this is more than 20 years ago that we're Talking that I was doing this. I mean it's changed a lot. I mean those, those groups, they're a lot more online based now than they were, you know, in the early 2000s. And they're a lot more overt, they're, they're less underground. You know, I think they feel a lot more comfortable with publicly representing that ideology.
- [89:14]
A
Yeah, I've never run into it in the real world before. I've never run into anything like that. I know there's like a lot of clan around. Like there's like little pockets of Florida where you can find like the clan, like where they, there's bars and stuff they go to. And I'm sure they do meetings in the woods some somewhere around here. But like. Yeah, I don't know, I just never. I mean I'm not, I'm not out searching for it either. But yeah, it's like for me, you only, I only hear about it like on message boards and things like that. But it's, it's just wild to hear that they're like still doing their thing, you know.
- [89:48]
B
Well, the tightest spot I got in, I got in a couple. But one of them was at an event in, in Arizona called Aryan Festival. And there's always traditionally been a lot of, a lot of tension between like neo Nazis and the Klan, you know, but this was a, this was like a sort of a pan white supremacist gathering.
- [90:09]
A
So there were, there were questions if what's the. Why is there a rift between them? They don't like punk.
- [90:15]
B
I think this like skinheads, like it's part of, it's regional. Yeah. But I think like the skinheads, like kind of regard, like the Klan is like, you know, they had their day and they it up, up. Yeah. And just kind of look at him as like there's also an age difference. Like generally like, you know, skinheads are younger, right? Yeah, or neo Nazi guys. But there was, there was a, there was a Clavern there at Arion Fest and one of the clan guys just, he just called me out, you know, and I think I had one of those like disposable Kodak cameras I was taking photos with, you know, which is okay. I wasn't the only one taking photos.
- [90:51]
A
Yeah.
- [90:51]
B
And I think I just took one photo too many or something and he called me out and accused me of being like from the Anti Defamation League and I had to just get right in his face. I mean it was just one of those things where like I knew if I just pretended to ignore it you know, because he was kind of making comments out the side of his mouth at me.
- [91:09]
A
That your adl?
- [91:10]
B
Yeah, yeah, I took, I took a photo and he was like, oh, I guess we'll see that on the anti. On the ADL website next week or something like that.
- [91:16]
A
Yeah.
- [91:17]
B
You know, and I knew that if I just pretended like I didn't hear it or, or I tried to like laugh it off or something, that, that would, that's not, that wouldn't be right. That would like be suspicious. I just had to get right up in his face, you know, and just, and just call him out and call a clan, a bunch of posers, a bunch of she heads and you know, you know, like, don't, you know, asked. Yeah, you like, did.
- [91:45]
A
I mean, did you find anything? Any, any. Were you able to find any humanity in those guys? Like, was there, was there any sort of like any soft spot you could find for him or like you kind of understood them from a, from any kind of perspective or where you felt bad for him or like you could,
- [92:02]
B
you could understand much with the skinheads, but there was like an organization called the National Socialist Movement and, and they were like, you know, straight up brown shirts, swastika armbands, like dressing like they
- [92:16]
A
were from like they were Nazis ties.
- [92:17]
B
Yeah. And I just remember some of their rallies, like running into these kids that were just like, seem to have no idea what the they were doing there, what this group was really about, and just seemed like total lost souls, you know, they just somehow gotten wrapped up into this or you just wanted to like kind of take them under your wing and just get them out of there. Yeah, so I did have some empathy for them, you know, but most of the skinheads, like, I mean, but in the skinhead movement, like, it's really easy to become a leader. Like if you've got like, you know, decently high IQ and some organizational skills, you can become a big shot in that movement pretty easily. In the same way, like if you're just a mediocre musician, if you start making hate rock or white power punk, like, like all of a sudden you've got a fan base, right? You can actually sell records or, you know, now downloads, right? And have a fan base and like tour the world, you know, and have groupies and the whole rock experience. Point being, like, with some of the leaders, I was always wondering, like, how much do they actually like believe this shit? How much of it is just like power for power's sake? And they saw that this is a way to get People to like follow them,
- [93:24]
A
right. And then the other people just trying to fit into a crowd, you know, know, being misfits and just trying to find someone else, trying to find a place to fit in. Yeah, you know, it's like prison, you know, in prisons, you hear, you know, you people, you have to join one of the clubs, right? You have to. Either you could be with the blacks, you could be with the skinheads, you could be with the. Or like the, the one group you never want to be a part of is the chomos, who everyone tries to kill all the time. And it's like, it's like Lord of the Flies, you know? Hold that thought. I gotta take a pee real quick. We'll be right back, man. I hit this point recently where I just felt off. Same lifestyle, same workout schedule, same diet. But after 2pm I was just dragging. One of my guests said it sounded like a testosterone issue and suggested this natural pill which led me to Mars Men. It's designed to support your body's natural testosterone function without synthetics or needles. Just ingredients like tongkat ali, shilaji, zinc and boron. I instantly noticed more consistent energy, better workouts and clearer focus. Not a spike, but feeling normal again. It's made in the US third party tested and comes with a 90 day money back guarantee. And for a limited time, our listeners can get a whopping 50 off for life plus free shipping and three free gifts at men. Go to mars.com that's mengo2marms.com for 50 off and three free gifts when you check out and it's now on Amazon. After you purchase, they're going to ask where you heard about them. And please support the show by telling them we sent you locked and loaded. For the Lord Reverend Moon, who died in 2012, his church split apart and two of his sons established the new congregation. And their followers are eagerly awaiting the end times. And they are armed. It's called the sanctuary church. Here's, here's their members. This is what their members look like, bro. They look, look, I mean, look, that lady looks happy. Like that's how they go to church.
- [95:29]
B
Where is this?
- [95:30]
A
This is in Pennsylvania, dude. We might need to go investigate them.
- [95:36]
B
We should sign up.
- [95:40]
A
Attendees hold rifles and this is the, this is their blessing ceremony. Look at that dude. Like, how do you end up there? You know? Like, how do you get recruited to go to that? That's what I want to know. Like, how do you, how do you come up, like meet somebody and get convinced that this would be a great idea? To go here every other. Every once a week with your AR15 and await the end times. It's wild to me. It's wild to me. You know, this right here where we are right now is like, the hub of Scientology. This is like, this town is where Scientology all started, Right?
- [96:22]
B
Just down the road, right?
- [96:23]
A
Yeah. The church is, like, right down the street from here.
- [96:25]
B
Yeah.
- [96:26]
A
The dude who created L. Ron Hubbard had this ship that was parked right out there when he was alive, and that's how he tried to escape and tried to avoid all the tax evasion. It. This is. This is one of their E meters. This is what they use to do, like, technological exorcisms on people.
- [96:40]
B
Right.
- [96:41]
A
Are you familiar with Scientology at all?
- [96:42]
B
Yes, I've seen the south park episode.
- [96:45]
A
That's all you need to know.
- [96:47]
B
No, I. Yeah, I am. Yeah.
- [96:49]
A
Yeah.
- [96:50]
B
A guy I worked with at the New Times in Phoenix, Tornio, Tony Ortega, he's done a lot of investigative reporting on. How do I know that name? He's done a lot of, like, reporting on Scientology. And, like, every few years, man, I get a call from somebody presenting themselves as, like, a private investigator or a filmmaker or something, and they're trying to dig up dirt on him, and they find me because they just know that I worked with him, you know, in the. In the 90s at a paper in Phoenix. It's crazy. They're still out to get him. Yeah.
- [97:20]
A
Tony Ortega. Yeah, I definitely know that name. The Scientologists are. They're. They're. They're ruthless with, like, the amount of intimidation and stalking they'll do.
- [97:31]
B
Yeah, that's what they're doing to him. Yeah, they're always just trying to dig up any, you know, any dirt. I have him on the day, so I just try and, like, mislead them.
- [97:39]
A
Yeah, I mean, you. You hear of all, like, the crazy, sinister, evil cults that have bubbled up in America over the years, and Scientology is the one that was able to get away with the most. They were able to get away with being tax exempt by attacking the IRS and having all their members sue the file lawsuits against the IRS and eventually having them cave. And, like, you know, I hear their membership is dwindling, but, like, dude, you walk up. You drive up and down the streets around here. They're everywhere. There's young people that are still in it that walk up and down the streets. Part of the Sea Org. The Sea Orgs, like, the faction of it who are, like, the workers who basically. They get paid nothing. They basically have to work for free, clean toilets and try to recruit people and do these auditing sessions on people and it's just like, like, God, you're these like. Just the other day I was driving by and this girl, she looked like she was maybe 21 years old, you know, And I just wonder like, how did you end up here?
- [98:35]
B
Can you spot them?
- [98:36]
A
Like you can spot them for sure. Yeah.
- [98:38]
B
They, how do you spot them?
- [98:39]
A
They wear this certain outfit. They wear this like this, a vest that's like this color, this like maroon color with like a, a white, a white long sleeve, button up collar dress shirt with this maroon vest they wear sometimes. It's a, it's like a royal blue vest and they all walk together and they look like robots. One of my, one of my, one of my friends. So like another weird thing is like, there's a bunch of big companies around here. Like all of the, all of the big Scientologists around here are very. Well, most of the wealthy people in this area are Scientologists. For some reason. They're, they're all super rich, like the high level ones and they own like a lot of big businesses around here. And one of my friends worked for one of the businesses that was owned by Scientologists. And I was, me and him were getting lunch one day and I was like, dude, I'm like, I'm like, this town is invested with science, with Scientologists, right? I'm like, I'm sure a lot of them are nice people, whatever. Like they don't bother anybody. But like, how do you, how do you know? Can you tell, like who isn't? Who isn't? He's like, oh, yeah, yeah. He's like, I can tell you. I know exact. It's easy for me to spot a Scientologist anywhere. I'm like, are there any here with us in this restaurant we're in? He's like, yeah. He's like, there's one right in this room right now. I'm like, what? How do you know? Like, there was no one dressed weird. Like everyone was dressed pretty normal. He's like, you just look into their eyes and it's just, it's like a robotic vibe you'll get from them. And I looked around and, and sure, I could spot him. Like, is it that guy? He's like, yep, that's the guy. And you could just tell like there was something about the, the guy, the way the guy carried himself and like the look in his eyes was just like robotic. And I, you know, one of somebody told me that One of the reasons they think that they were able to maintain for so long is because they never became a sex cult. Like, they were never, they were never associated with any like, sexual abuse or anything like that, you know, and it makes me wonder, like, was that on purpose? Like, was there an executive decision made, like early on, like, we're never going to do any kind of like, sexual depravity or like sexually assault people like every other cult does, right? So maybe that's, maybe that's why they were able to get by for so long. But apparently their numbers are dwindling. Apparently, like it's dying a slow death. It's crazy that also like L. Ron Hubbard was best friends with, with Jack Parsons and Aleister Crowley and all these people from back in the day, all these occultists. It's bonkers, man.
- [101:14]
B
You know, I did a series like a couple years ago, it was on Peacock called Krishnas that was about the Hare Krishna. It was about organized crime within the Hare Krishna movement, you know, and I spent a lot of time with, with Hari Krishnas and I got to say, like, they did not have that like, like, you know, robotic vibe really at all. Like some of the like, happiest, most well adjusted people I've ever met are Krishna devotees.
- [101:41]
A
What is that? Can you explain what that, what that group is?
- [101:44]
B
So, so it started in the U. I mean, I mean their, their sort of spiritual tradition is like ancient. It like far predates Christianity, goes back to the Vedas, like the oldest religious texts in the world known and. But it came to the US with this, I guess you could say guru from India, Prabhupada, who came. His timing was perfect. He like came over in the mid-60s, you know, just at the time as the. He just surfed the wave of the counter culture like perfectly. Like had like, you know, wow, you know, kind of events, I guess you could say in Golden Gate park in San Francisco. And like George Harrison of the Beatles got super into it and stuff. He like sent over a group of devotees to London to like recruit the Beatles in the movement. But, you know, I went into it like thinking like, are the Hare Krishnas really a cult? And I came away thinking like, no. But there was this one when Prun Prabhupada, the founder of the, what we call the Hare Krishnas in the US when he died, he like appointed all male, some of his like top disciples to be. To carry on the movement. And one of them was this guy named Keith Hamm, but his Christian name was Kirtananda. And he started this commune in the mountains of West Virginia that's still there, called New Vrindavan. Vrindavan is a city in India that's the birthplace of Krishna in that mythology or belief system. And he started this commune in West Virginia called Nuvrindavan. And speaking of the sex stuff, that's what took him down. He was abused, losing the kids, you know, in the. In the commune. That's what eventually, you know, got him dethroned.
- [103:28]
A
Is that him?
- [103:28]
B
Yeah, that's him.
- [103:29]
A
He looks white.
- [103:31]
B
Yeah, he is, yeah.
- [103:32]
A
Oh, he is, yeah.
- [103:33]
B
Yeah. All the. All the guys that carried, like, Prabhupada was. Was Indian, but all of his devotees that carried on the movement after. After he died were white guys. Americans, I think, maybe one Canadian. But anyway, this guy is like Keith Hammer, Kirtan Ananda in Vrindavan in India. There's this. There's his tomb is there. And he still has, like, devout followers of Kirtananda that, like, live around his tomb. And there's these, like, big buildings that look kind of half finished. And I went to Vrindavan to, you know, to film for this series and got access to Kirtan Ananda's tomb and was, like, interviewing the guy that kind of keeps it. You know, there's candles and pictures and. And I kind of asked one question too many, and all of a sudden, like, all these, like, devotees of Kirtananda started coming out of this building. And I was just there with, like, one camera guy and me and our, like, you know, interpreter. And the interpreter was like, it's time to go now. It's time to go now. Like, you get the fuck out of there.
- [104:34]
A
Whoa.
- [104:34]
B
Yeah, because he's real, like. Like, controversial figure. He's kind of, like, officially excommunicated by the. By the Hare Krishnas, but still has kind of adherence within the movement.
- [104:46]
A
So what do the Hare Krishnas believe? Like, what is their primary belief? Like, what sets them apart?
- [104:51]
B
Well, they believe in reincarnation, karma, you know, akin to Hindu. You know, I'm not a religious scholar, so I don't want to, like, misrepresent their belief system. But, yeah, they definitely believe in, like, the cycle of reincarnation, and they believe in dancing a lot.
- [105:12]
A
Dancing?
- [105:13]
B
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the Hare Krishna is like, you know, the old, like, you know, like that comedy in the 80s, like, airplane or whatever. Like, there was the running joke about the. The Krishnas in the airports. Used to see them in the airports in the US a lot. Like, in the 80s, they'd be like, selling flowers and books and. Or you'd see them, like, in Venice beach in California. Like, they call them kirtans, and they're like, like, sort of like dancing, drumming, ceremonies, chanting. Yeah.
- [105:37]
A
Wow. And what. And so. So. So you just, like, discovered one day you.
- [105:42]
B
You.
- [105:42]
A
You became aware of them and you went. And when you embedded with them, you didn't have to, like, you were.
- [105:48]
B
I stayed. I stayed at the. At the commune at New Vrindavan in West Virginia. I mean, where a lot of, like, evil went down. Like in the 80s and early 90s. Like, this guy, guy, Kirtan Ananda, he had, you know, basically this Vietnam vet that was like his enforcer that would just kill people on his orders, like, people that started to challenge his authority, you know, and he wasn't the only, like, guru that went bad. There was. There's another one guy who became known as the machine gun Swami, who was like, into, like, you know, running guns and shit. Like, some of these guys really went to the dark side because they had all that power. Because, like, if you're a, you know, if you're a guru, you're basically like a direct conduit to the divine. And so you had these, you know, I mean, I think Prabhupada was, like, really in a. In a jam. He'd started this movement that had grown very big, very fast in the US and then he died. Or, you know, on his deathbed, he kind of, like, appointed these guys to carry it on, but they were all just, like, young dudes in their 20s. And then all of a sudden, they're gurus, you know, and some of them kind of carried it on in a. In a righteous way. And some of them. Them, you know, went to the dark side. All that power went to their head.
- [106:57]
A
And how did the sexual abuse part get involved?
- [107:00]
B
Well, Kirsten Ananda was a pedophile. I mean, you know, and so he was, you know, and. And the. You know, the. The Hari Christian is, like, as. As a movement, have had problems akin to the Catholic Church. Although I'd say, like, unlike the Catholic Church, they sort of confronted it head on, you know, a decade or so ago. But Kirtan Ananda was one of the worst examples of, like, child abuse within that, you know, religion. And he just had. He had, you know, several hundred, I think. Yeah, several hundred, like, followers that lived on this isolated. Lived in this isolated commune up in the mountains in West Virginia. The closest city is Pittsburgh, but it's like, kind of. It's out there, man. You know, It's. It's. Especially in the 80s, they were really kind of cut off. And it was a place that, you know, if you were a fuck up in a. In a Krishna temple in Los Angeles or Denver, wherever, they would send you to New Vrindavan. So Kirtananda could kind of like, whip you into shape. So it was also kind of like a lot of, like, difficult personalities, I guess you could say, were sort of funneled to him. Yeah, you know, it was. It was. In some ways, it was kind of a dumping ground for the movement. But to this day, there's this temple there that's just like. It looks like a. Like a. Like the Taj Mahal or something. I mean, it's incredible. You're just driving on these winding roads in West Virginia, and there's just this. This palace, this, like, tribute to Prabhupada that's there that was, like, basically built by the devotees, and it's incredible.
- [108:31]
A
Whoa.
- [108:32]
B
Yeah.
- [108:32]
A
Is this one of your most recent movies?
- [108:34]
B
Yeah, yeah, it's on Peacock. Yeah, it's called Krishna's. Yeah, it came out a couple years ago.
- [108:40]
A
How long. How long do you typically spend on these projects?
- [108:44]
B
A little over a year.
- [108:45]
A
A little over a year?
- [108:46]
B
Yeah. Sometimes I'm working on more than one at a time. You know, I'm always usually making one and then trying to figure out what's next, you know, trying to sell the next thing. But like. Yeah, yeah. So sometimes I'm working on 2 to 2 at once, but in terms of one project, it's. I would say it nets out at about a year to year and a half.
- [109:02]
A
How involved do you get with, like, the editing and stuff?
- [109:04]
B
Stuff? Very. Yeah.
- [109:05]
A
Very, very much.
- [109:06]
B
Yeah. I have a really old school method. I mean, I take all the, like, interviews, all the archival material we have, and I actually write what's called a radio script, which is a really, like, kind of frankly antiquated method of doing things. And I have to have editors that are like, will work with me on that because I don't like to work on machines. I like to work with paper. Okay. Like, even sometimes pen and paper. I just think that I'm just. I'm not exactly a Luddite, but let's just say, you know, I prefer to write at least on screen when I'm creating. And so I write a script and then give it to the editors and be like, okay, take this part of the interview and then this piece of archival and this B roll and like, actually give them a script, and then we collaborate and you know, mix it up and stuff like that.
- [109:44]
A
Yeah, yeah. For me, like. Like, for when I was filming Deckhands, I remember it sat on my heart. It sat on hard drives for probably two years before I ever touched it, because I was, like, kind of scared to go watch it again. I knew it was on the hard drives, and I. Like, our. Like, the experience was so overwhelming. I was just like, you know, like, for me, it was just the. The. The idea of attacking all of that footage and trying to mold it into something just was so daunting. And I was like, I'm a. I'm a ferocious procrastinator. And I just. You know, I didn't want to dive into it, A, because it was so dark. I was like, I don't really want to go back into that. And, like, B, I knew it was going to be such a big project to, like, actually try to tackle and wrangle into something that made sense and that was cohesive. So, like, when I finally start. Like when I first started, like, putting it together, you know, you kind of like. Like, oh, okay, this is kind of cool. And then I started to piece more stuff together, Piece more pieces together. And then I, like. I kind of like. Like, I realized, okay, I'm missing a lot of. I'm missing a lot of transitions here. I got, like, a lot of cool, like, little pocket stories. But now I gotta go back all these years later and, like, I gotta fill in these gaps to make this make sense, you know, and, like, to actually tell the story. So, like, that was the kind of way. The kind of, like, the way I did it. And for me, like, the music was a huge part of it, too. Like, the mute. Like, it was kind of like a music. It was kind of like a. Like a creepy music video. Like, there was no narration. It was like. It was more of kind of like the music playing in with, like, the scenery and the ambiance of it kind of just, like, made you feel a certain way, you know? Yeah, yeah. It was just kind of like a dystopian music video in my mind, which I. I, like, enjoyed doing. I used to like doing music videos when I was younger.
- [111:43]
B
On Deck Ends. Did you have collaborators or did you just, like, cut that yourself?
- [111:46]
A
I did it all myself. Everything myself. Yeah.
- [111:48]
B
That's one of the things I like about making docs is, like, it's a. It's a collaborative, like, team effort. I mean, when I was doing just gonzo print journalism, I mean, every once in a while, I'd be paired with With a photographer on assignment. But for the most part, it was just, like, total lone wolf, you know?
- [112:02]
A
Yeah.
- [112:02]
B
And I really like working with crews, like, in the field, you know, camera crews and working with the editors. I mean, I do write those scripts, but then I like, sitting in the editing bay with a. With an editor and just, like, kicking ideas around and actually moving around and stuff. It's like. It's very satisfying creative process.
- [112:17]
A
Yeah. Yeah. It was just like. The part of it for me was just, like, jumping from, you know, in the middle of that, like, being on a boat with a bunch of dudes, like, doing blow and, like, watching their porno collection, I think going home and having dinner with my family that night, just like. Like, God, am I going to do this forever? Like, it's. It's crazy, you know, And. And it was like. It was really. It was. It was really like. It felt good to be able to, like, to accomplish that task, but I don't know. I guess I just, like, wasn't cut out. Like, what. What's the next thing gonna be? Like, how am I gonna go find and sustain this, you know, forever? Because I came from the. I came from, like, a world of, like, before I started doing that kind of stuff, like, on YouTube, I was kind of, like, trying to do what you're doing now. I was trying to, like, do, like, documentaries and, like, real documentaries, you know, and, like, sell them to, like, networks or whatever. This was kind of like, before streaming. I started doing that, like, in the boom of, like, the reality show type thing when, like, deckhand or not. I'm sorry. When, like, Duck Dynasty and, like, Pawn Stars were becoming big shows, like, the reality craze. And, like, trying to do that I thought was cool and, like, I was never able to get anything off the ground. And, like, that's when I started, like, just digging into, like, my archives, and it's like, I'm just gonna throw all this on YouTube and just see what happens. And, you know, that's when. When started to stick because, like, I got a really bad taste in my mouth from, like, working with those production companies and, like, trying to, like, deal with, like, you know, shopping it to networks and torture streamers like, that. It was like I was, like, constantly riding this emotional roller coaster of, like, like, my fate was in somebody else's hands. Hands, you know?
- [114:04]
B
Yeah. And you just got to get used to people telling you that. It's, like, right at the finish line and then they just kick your. Yes, exactly. Over and over again.
- [114:12]
A
I felt like I was Just getting put on a shelf with a bunch of other stuff.
- [114:15]
B
Yeah.
- [114:15]
A
You know, and, like, they're just. They're. They're intentionally. The. The parasites that are in that business. They're. They intentionally try to play on your emotions to keep you strung along, you know, and in that little shopping agreement that they have you locked into.
- [114:30]
B
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm fortunate in that I'm always trying. I mean, I'm always trying to develop my own ideas, but I'm fortunate in that, like, if somebody has, like, a gonzo idea, they'll. They'll come to me. Like, with Narco Menonites is this filmmaker Sherry Finbow, who's Canadian, but she lives in Australia. And she'd figured out this story and had sold it. And she was like, hey, you know, I've sold this story to Crave the streamer in Canada. It sounds like something you might be interested in. I was like, what is it? And she's like, it's about a Mennonite drug cartel. And I was like, bingo. You know, I'm in. Right. Same thing with the. With the Krishnas. Like, I didn't have to sell that show. A production company had sold that show to Peacock, and then they, you know, wanted somebody to make it, and they were like, well, this. This seems like something Holthouse might be interested in. So I've gotten to that place, which is good, but I know it's. It's. You know, I can't tell you how many times the last couple years, especially with all of this, like, consolidation going on in the industry, everybody's nervous as about AI, you know, most recently, everyone's, like, wondering, like, this Ellison deal is going to go through. You know, when Netflix was in a bidding war with them and that dust still hasn't settled. Like, people just aren't buying a lot of stuff right now. It's a tough time. So I'm fortunate to be in that place where people are coming to me with shows that they've already sold and they just need help making them so
- [115:45]
A
you don't have to. To necessarily go kicking down doors and shaking the hustle. Are you. You're still trying to find stuff yourself?
- [115:52]
B
Yeah.
- [115:52]
A
How do you do that? You're just like, do you have, like, a network of people you're constantly talking to?
- [115:57]
B
Yeah, I do have. I. I do have a good network of. You know, my secret to my success has been working both sides of the street, meaning cops and crooks. So I've got, yeah, really good sources among law enforcement and really good sources on the other side of things, you know, so I'm always talking to them about stories and a lot of it's just, you know, just reading. Reading everything I can every day.
- [116:19]
A
Yeah.
- [116:19]
B
You know, about what's going on in the world right now. But also like, you know that library of books you have outside this room? You know, like that just constantly digging through, turning over rocks.
- [116:29]
A
Just looking under rocks.
- [116:30]
B
Exactly.
- [116:31]
A
Yeah. It's usually like the most interesting is the. That's not being reported on by anyone stuff that you're not going to find in the news, you know?
- [116:37]
B
Right.
- [116:38]
A
Stuff. More like the stuff you find behind the 7 11.
- [116:41]
B
Yeah.
- [116:41]
A
Yeah, man. The whole, the, the, like some of the stuff that's going on right now is just. It seems like. It just seems like supernatural, like bubbling up into reality where it's like you don't even know what's real. Especially with like, what gets reported on with like mainstream news. And like this whole thing about the, this Epstein files thing, I don't know how much you paid attention to that.
- [117:05]
B
I pay a lot to entertain, but
- [117:07]
A
it's like, like it's a. It's one of the most insane things to me is that that stuff can be made public and, and admitted to by the doj and like, nobody cares. It seems like nobody cares other than a few journalists.
- [117:24]
B
It's really disheartening. I think part of it's. Everybody's attention is so, you know, discombobulated. Like it just seems like there's, there's, there's so much to try and pay attention to right now. But that story's fucking crazy. I mean, it just seems clear to me that he was some kind of Israeli intelligence agent and was, you know, gathering blackmail material. I mean, he was both, both a pimp, but he was also, you know, running honey traps. I mean, it's not even, it's not even conspiracy theory. It just seems like that's been reported. I mean, yeah, the dots are right there. Big giant 24 point dots to connect.
- [118:00]
A
Yeah. And all of these crazy Qanon Pizzagate people are being vindicated. The people who we were all making fun of a few years ago, they
- [118:10]
B
didn't have it exactly right.
- [118:11]
A
They had it pretty damn close. I mean, it wasn't in the basement of a pizza shop in Washington dc, But it was everywhere else.
- [118:19]
B
Yeah, the guy should have gone and shot up Epstein's mansion in New York, right?
- [118:24]
A
Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. And like, you know, we've all, we've all heard like, heard the stories of like the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds. And here it is, plain as day in declassified emails, like, the guy is talking to the Rothchilds and now they're doing these subpoenas on all these people, like this Les Wexner guy who owns Victoria's Secret, and they subpoena, or they did a deposition of him, they did a deposition of Bill Clinton, deposition of Hillary Clinton, and they're all talking about, yes, the Rothschilds. He worked for the Rothschilds. And like, before all this came out, like, the consensus seemed to be, at least from my view, that, like what you said, he seemed to be like an intelligence agent who worked for multiple different intelligence factions, like probably the MI6, the Mossad and the CIA. But from what it seems like with these files is that they worked for him. You know, like, these people were like, he was a. Like there was that. That layer of intelligence that's kind of above the politicians that run countries. Right. So you have like US Politicians intelligence, and then you have this Epstein, Rothschild, Rockefeller layer that's like behind the curtain doing all these crazy arms deals and like, funding civil wars in Sierra Leone and like profiting off war, selling arms, Trilateral Commission stuff. It's like, it's like ripped open a veil in reality, that I don't think, I don't think people are, Are ready to accept that that's real, but they, They've made it public.
- [120:08]
B
Yeah, I don't mean to say that he was just. That he was just working with Mossad. I mean, there's also links between Epstein and fsb. I mean, there's emails where he was like, you know, trying to get to Putin through an FSB agent.
- [120:20]
A
Right.
- [120:20]
B
You know, I mean, so I think that he had. I think he had his. I was about to make a bad comparison. I won't.
- [120:28]
A
He definitely had the most. He had the biggest connection to the mod, for sure, because he had the guy, the former head of the former Prime Minister, like, at his house every day.
- [120:36]
B
What drives me crazy, though, is it's in the, in this, like, hyper partisan environment that we're in, that it's like both sides are taking what they want from the Epstein files, you know. Oh, it's. Oh, oh, oh, Bill Clinton. It's all about Bill Clinton. Oh, no, it's all about, like, Trump. Well, it's both of them.
- [120:52]
A
Exactly. And this is, this is the most.
- [120:54]
B
It's not either or, it's both.
- [120:56]
A
And yeah, it's the most bi. Bipartisan story probably of my lifetime there. Everyone is implicated in this stuff. It's not left or right. It's. It's not Republican, Democrat, left, right. It's us versus the layer above us. It's a, it's a vertical fight, not a horizontal fight. Right? And it's like, like, yeah, man. Like the, the more you pay attention to it, like the more it just drives you crazy. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium
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B
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A
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B
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A
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B
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A
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A
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B
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- [122:32]
A
And like the code words. The code words like jerky, like trafficking people and, and like allegedly. It looks like depending on how you want to interpret the code words they were using, that they were eating people.
- [122:46]
B
Like what and where are all the videos?
- [122:48]
A
Right?
- [122:49]
B
You know?
- [122:50]
A
Yeah, he had cameras everywhere.
- [122:52]
B
Where the are they
- [122:56]
A
and what did they. Like if the FBI's had all this for so long, like, like what did they make of it? Like what did. I'm sure they have to have some sort of analysis of what those code words meant, right? Like, I'm sure they had to come to some conclusion, but they didn't. Instead they're just like trying to hide everything and start wars to distract us from it or, you know, I don't know, man. It's a lot to digest. Going back to the, the Sasquatch film, it seemed like a lot of the people in, in that area, in the Mendocino area, there was like this overwhelming sort of like belief in the supernatural with those people, not just with the Bigfoot stuff, but it just seemed like that was kind of like a Yeah, I know.
- [123:45]
B
I know what, I know what you're saying. And. And it's. It makes a lot more sense if, if you've been there there. Okay. Meaning that, yes, the people there are much more willing to entertain the possibility of the paranormal and cryptids than like, your quote unquote, average American.
- [124:04]
A
Yeah.
- [124:05]
B
And part of that may be the level to which psychedelics permeated that culture, but there's also just something about those, like, ancient forests that lend themselves to giving credence to possibilities that maybe don't make sense in suburbia. Meaning that, like, there was one time I was hiking by myself in the redwoods, just kind of trying to get my head around the story, and I stopped and looked around and I was like, fuck, like, sasquatch makes a lot more sense, like, when you're actually here. I mean, I wouldn't have been surprised if a fucking brontosaurus had just started walking by me, you know, in those forests because they just feel so like. Like ancient and spooky and magical.
- [124:49]
A
Yeah, you got to feel it.
- [124:52]
B
Like, you got to experience it.
- [124:53]
A
I've. I've heard people explain something similar to me. Like this dude, Paul Rosley, who's been on the show, he's been. Spent most of his life in the Amazon. And he explains that, like, when you're there and you're like, disconnected from modern technological society and you're kind of like, like just walking barefoot on the dirt and you have like, all the insects, insect noises around you, like the birds and the, the monkeys and all those noises. He's like. He's like. It almost kind of like removes a layer between you and like something else that you can't really explain. Like, almost like it unlocks like a buried, ancient sensory ability that we may have had.
- [125:38]
B
Right. Your senses are definitely heightened.
- [125:40]
A
Yeah. And you're like more in. You're in. Tuned. You're in tune with something else.
- [125:46]
B
You can feel that current. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.
- [125:50]
A
Yeah.
- [125:50]
B
I think the same is true in, in those redwood forests and in a lot of other, you know, places where you can really feel that current.
- [125:58]
A
Yeah, I mean, it makes sense that, like, being like, living in a. A city surrounded by. Stacked on top, where you're in an apartment building stacked on top of people and there's traffic and, and like all these like crazy sounds and pollution. It's like you're kind of like a, like a killer whale in a tank at Sea world.
- [126:23]
B
Right.
- [126:23]
A
You know?
- [126:24]
B
Right, right. Well, that's like in the Emerald Triangle, man. It's Self selective. Right. These are people, for the most part that have either grown up there. So they are the descendants of people that made a deliberate choice to get away from that, to get away from the orca tank at SeaWorld, or they've made that choice for themselves as adults and have moved there in recent years. One of the two. Meaning those people by nature are going to be more open to those possibilities both because of their personalities and then you add on that the environment in which they're steeped in their daily lives and you get a lot more openness to the possibilities of the paranormal animal.
- [126:57]
A
Right. And so. Okay, but you, you grew up in Alaska, in Anchorage.
- [127:04]
B
Yeah.
- [127:05]
A
And then you moved to, to Santa Cruz, Is that what you said?
- [127:08]
B
Yeah, I went to college in Santa Cruz, California. Yeah.
- [127:10]
A
And that's pretty close to Mendocino, right?
- [127:13]
B
Oh, it's a few hours away. I mean, it's Bay Area, so it's, it's about, probably about three hours or so. Yeah, yeah, that's the Mendocino's way up way. It's just far north, man.
- [127:23]
A
Yeah, it is way.
- [127:25]
B
I mean, they would tell me these stories about like harvest season, you know, people driving like RVs packed with weed down to the Bay Area to sell it, you know, and it was just like running the gauntlet of cops, you know, it's just like, it's nerve wracking. And some of them were just idiots about it. I mean, they, they, they, they'd look like there's pictures of some of the vehicles. I mean, the people that got busted. I mean, they just look like deadheads or something. I mean, they'd be the. Might as well had a sign that said pull me over. Like driving a beach of like Winnebago, like painted with, you know, psychedelic eye of Horus and it's like, you know, come on, like the guys that got away with it is like the most nondescript vehicle you can imagine. You make multiple runs packed in a hidden compartment in the trunk. You know, change the vehicles. Like, be smart about it.
- [128:07]
A
Yeah, yeah, there's, yeah, there's. I mean, so many wild stories that come out of that part of that part of the country too. Like there's like, you know, there's a ton of UFO abduction stories that come out of that part of the world too. Or that part of the country too. You know, where you have people like, I wonder like how you know, where you explain like walking through the woods by yourself. You said you, you wouldn't be surprised if you saw a brontosaurus walk. Walk by. Like, I wonder what sort of, like, psychological connection there is between that and, like, people seeing flying saucers or think they got abducted by a UFO or something. You know, Like, I wonder, like, what. What that unlocks in the psyche that could be going on that's not, like, real, you know, nuts and bolts, you know, like, just like. Just like Bigfoot may not be some biological thing. Maybe it's just some, like, psychological phenomenon that is conducive to being in that. To living in that environment. Maybe that. Maybe the UFO thing has, like, a similar connection.
- [129:04]
B
Maybe. Maybe there's a port, there's portals around there. Right. I mean, some of the stuff that made. I don't know if it made the most sense, but I thought that was most interesting was people that lived in that area that believe that, like, there. There are interdimensional portals in the woods around there, and that that explains the Sasquatch sightings, that Sasquatch is like an interdimensional being or messenger that sort of, like, flits back and forth between our reality and a parallel universe in the metaverse.
- [129:29]
A
Whoa.
- [129:32]
B
Okay. That's like a commonly held belief up there. Just.
- [129:36]
A
Really?
- [129:36]
B
Yeah. Yeah.
- [129:38]
A
What are those. What do those people say about, like, UFOs? Do they have, like, any belief in that, or are they not into that?
- [129:46]
B
I didn't talk to him about UFOs. I was just really just focused on the.
- [129:49]
A
Because I saw that there was in. In your documentary, there's. You're talking to the guy in the first episode where, like, you're asked him about Sasquatch, he starts talking about UFOs, you're like, what?
- [129:57]
B
Yeah, right. Yeah, I do remember that. I was on the phone with him. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I saw a UFO.
- [130:07]
A
You did?
- [130:07]
B
I saw the Phoenix Lights, what, almost 30 years ago? Yeah, that was the. One of the. That. And the more time that went by after I saw that craft, and it did not, like, really after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, because I always, like. I believe that what I saw was probably a military sort of airship, giant airship that had a cloaking device of some kind, stealth cloaking device that had fritzed out, and they were testing it. I was like, I don't think that was a alien space really. But then after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and we didn't deploy anything like that, then I really started to think, well, maybe that was something else. You know, The. The. The 30th anniversary of the Phoenix Lights just. Just passed, like, right. March 13th, I think. Yeah. But I Mean, that was, you know, probably know that was like one of the, of the biggest UFO sightings, you know, ever documented. I wish we had these cameras and everyone had had a camera in their pocket on that night. There were some photos, there is, there is footage, there is footage was all at vhs, you know, and I just wish there'd been a lot more angles, a lot more footage of it. And so that's. Yeah, so people saw two different things, right? They saw this array of lights. And then in the East Valley, like over on Tempe or Mesa, where I was, a lot of people saw what I saw, which was a much bigger single craft.
- [131:28]
A
Like the V shaped craft.
- [131:29]
B
Huge, yeah, I saw the V shaped craft, but it also seemed like it changed shape to me into something that was like a lot, even bigger than just, than just that, that V shape, like that stealth bomber shaped thing. It seemed like it was changing shapes as it was flying.
- [131:50]
A
And you don't think it was alien?
- [131:52]
B
Well, the more time has gone by that we haven't that, that military technology has not been revealed to be military technology, the more, the more I question what it was. But I know what I saw and you know, I've. And I remember like the Governor of Arizona, Fife Symington saw it, but he had a press conference about it because people were freaking the out because like thousands of people had seen in two, at least two different UFOs or two different UFO phenomenon. And he had to where the governor had held a press conference about it, but he had like somebody dressed up in like a silver like alien spacesuit come out and kind of like mocking it, even though he had seen it himself.
- [132:32]
A
Yeah, that he actually came out and apologized for that after, didn't he?
- [132:36]
B
He did, yeah.
- [132:38]
A
Did you. Wait, so when you saw it, what time was it? Was it like, was it.
- [132:43]
B
It was night time. I don't know. Remember.
- [132:44]
A
I want to say it wasn't super late though, right?
- [132:46]
B
No, it wasn't super late.
- [132:48]
A
Were you able to see like other than the lights were able to see like an outline?
- [132:52]
B
Definitely, definitely. And that's what I'm saying is that I saw, I did not see the like sort of scattered array of lights that seemed to be smaller craft. And also remember that like that same night the military went up and dropped a bunch of flares. Okay. And then initially that was like one of the explanations for it. So why did the military go up and like, like drop a bunch of flares if not to like provide some kind of COVID story? Not a cover story, but an explanation for what people were seeing. In other words, people started to see the lights and then around the same time, the military went up and dropped a bunch of bright burning flares in the sky. So people saw a lot of stuff in the sky that night. What I saw was this. I saw the, a large craft with the V shaped lights on it. It. And then at one point those lights went out and it seemed to me as if the shape of that craft changed and elongated and got larger, like it was morphing. Okay. And, and at that point it was dark. There were, the lights went out, but it was at low altitude. A lot of people said that they saw it. It was really high up. What I saw over Tempe was low altitude, like close, noiseless, and almost like you could make out the shape by it blocking out, you know, light in the sky. You could just see a dark shape above it and went on, you know, several minutes. It was not like a fleeting thing and it was slow moving.
- [134:27]
A
I think there was photos or videos of somebody who was like up on a mountaintop, like, like really, really close to it. Remember?
- [134:34]
B
Do you remember?
- [134:34]
A
I was talking about that, Steve, Is that with David? No, not with Morehouse. Morehouse came in and he was a, he was saying that it was definitely military stuff. He was saying that it was a balloon, but if it morphed shape, that wouldn't make sense.
- [134:50]
B
No, it was not a balloon and it wasn't flares. Yeah, I, I, you know, I, I, I'm not to, going, not going to sit here and tell you that it was definitely an extraterrestrial craft, but I know what I saw. And it's like these explanations that it was like a balloon or that it was all these flares that the military dropped. There's no way that that conforms with what I saw. And I know what I saw. So, I mean, I was asked to come to like a 30th anniversary event this year and I didn't do it. And here I am talking about it on your show because I don't want to be that guy.
- [135:27]
A
Right.
- [135:27]
B
You know, but it's like, oh, that Project Blue Book shit about like, you know, deliberately setting it up so that people that recount these kinds of experiences or things that they saw that they're mocked, ridiculed, you know, it's done a good job because here I'm still, I'm nervous right now, like telling you about it because, like, I'm, you know, fuck, I'm going to be like the Phoenix Lights UFO guy now.
- [135:47]
A
You know, but I. Yeah, that's weird, right?
- [135:49]
B
I just keep coming back to it. I believe what I see and I saw it.
- [135:53]
A
Yeah. I mean, the fact that they had a whole project to discredit people and to, like.
- [135:58]
B
Right.
- [135:59]
A
So disinfo. Like, if it's. If it's nothing, then why would you go to that much effort to do that?
- [136:03]
B
Exactly. Yeah.
- [136:07]
A
Yeah. It's a. It's one of those topics that just gets like. You know, there's so many different layers to it and so many people that talk about it all the time. It's just like, God, you get kind of, like, burnt out on it. It's like, I don't want to hear anymore about this, you know?
- [136:19]
B
Know.
- [136:20]
A
It's like, let me know when you figure it out. It's, like, too much to pay attention to.
- [136:27]
B
Well, I feel it's like. I mean, the link between the Epstein files and UFOs is. Is that it's all right there out in front of us. It feels like right now it's, like, happening in real time. The evidence is right there. And it just almost like the idea of this, like, one top, you know, 10th of percent of people running the world, right. That the curtain got peeled back on that over here, and then here. It's like. It just seems like the evidence of these unexplained and unexplainable aircraft. It's all out in the open right now. It's just overwhelming, I think.
- [137:03]
A
Right. I think it's on purpose. You know?
- [137:08]
B
That's spooky.
- [137:10]
A
Right? Well, I mean, it's like, because of the Internet and there's so. Because there's so much available on the Internet, we have so much access to everything. They could. They could hide the real in there with a bunch of other. And nobody would know the difference. Right. It's like some sort of, like, weird limited hangout where it's like some people could know. Think they know the truth. Like, you could have the good mixed in with all the. And, like, it doesn't matter to you because no one's gonna ever know which one's real and which one isn't. It's like trying to pick a needle out of a haystack.
- [137:39]
B
Right. Because we're just flooded. Did.
- [137:41]
A
Yeah. And I'm sure there's a lot. I'm sure, like, dude, like, some of the craziest stories you've ever heard about UFOs. They could very well just be real. And to us, like, rational thinkers, like, you're like, no, of course that's like the craziest thing's never going to be the real thing, but like, if you're on. If you put the shoe on the other foot, like, you know, maybe it's some sort of like, weird psyop. Who knows? Who knows, man?
- [138:05]
B
You know, one of my teachers at UC Santa Cruz was, Was Frank Drake, who was one of the founders of seti, and he came up with the Drake equation, which is like a way to like, you know, punch in different variables to estimate the number of other intelligent species just in our galaxy, you know, and the way he broke it down is like, of course, of course there's probably hundreds of thousands of highly developed technological beings just in our. Just in the Milky Way. And it's very convincing. So I'm convinced that that's true.
- [138:40]
A
Yeah.
- [138:40]
B
You know.
- [138:42]
A
Yeah, I think it's probably. If it is anything, it could potentially be like a. A former breakaway civilization of human beings maybe that like lives underwater or like, was a part of a. They were maybe humans once and they like, evolved in a weird way for some reason. Like they developed some crazy technology, been tried to. To avoid some sort of catastrophe that happened on Earth. Maybe they went underground or underwater and like, they're so. And everyone else got wiped out. But they were so advanced technologically. Everyone else got reset, but they stayed the same. They were like some breakaway or whatever and they hid somewhere on Earth and like, maybe now they're like popping up in random places and we don't know what it is.
- [139:21]
B
I'll tell you what, if you were like, we're extraterrestrial life form and you wanted to come check us out, what better place to hide than the ocean, right? Yeah.
- [139:31]
A
We've explored more the surface of Mars and we have our own oceans.
- [139:34]
B
Yeah.
- [139:34]
A
It's insane. Yeah, it's bonkers, dude. And the, and the. The fact that like all those occultists and people that were hanging out with L. Ron Hubbard and the Nazis that we recruited to come over here and work on the atomic bomb, they were the same ones that were like, fascinated with all this UFO stuff, you know, that was right in the time that Roswell happened. Yeah, that's another layer that. I don't know. I don't know if humanity can handle that one being exposed, but who knows? I didn't think they'd be able to hand. I didn't. I didn't think people would be able to handle this, Epstein. But apparently people just can ignore it and just go about their day.
- [140:13]
B
It's just a massive state of denial.
- [140:15]
A
Yeah. I think so.
- [140:17]
B
Or refusal to confront it and what it indicates. Speaking about the, you know, about the Epstein files.
- [140:23]
A
Yeah. How many projects are you working on now? Or do you. Do you have, like, one in particular? I know we mentioned the Ukraine one, but, like, do you have anything, like, big you're planning on doing or that you can talk about?
- [140:35]
B
Yeah, I'm working on a couple projects right now. One of them's on basically on. On energy and. And focusing on, like, California's energy policy, which is, know California is that the vanguard are trying to move towards, quote, unquote, net zero in the United States. Right. And so California has essentially passed a lot of rules and regulations to try and shut down its domestic oil production in California. There's a lot of oil in California. Right. And so you think, like, okay, well, California is shutting down all this oil product. The government of California is making it so hard for these oil companies to do business. It must mean that California is using a lot of less oil. But that's not the case at all. California's still burning as much oil as it ever has. And so I started with that question. I was like, okay, well, what are the ramifications of that? And like, California is importing a lot of oil. And the single greatest source of imported oil for California is Iraq.
- [141:32]
A
What?
- [141:33]
B
Iraq. 40% of California's imported oil comes from Iraq right now. So people have this perception of California being, like, kind of at the vanguard the green movement in the United States. You know, it's a massive economy. It's now the fifth biggest economy in the world. California is Right. And so I'm just kind of like, digging into that and being like, okay, what are the, like, national security implications of California relying so much on oil from the Middle East? And is it really better for the environment to be trucking this oil from, you know, overseas on these tankers that burn this really dirty fuel.
- [142:05]
A
Yeah. Not only are they still burning the same amount of fuel, but now they're actually paying this tankers to burn more fuel just to get it there.
- [142:12]
B
Correct, Correct. So I'm still kind of feeling my way. You know, I partnered up with this great director named A.J. carter on this, and we're, you know, it's all, like, independently financed so that we have editorial control, total editorial control of this story. And that'll probably come out, like, later this year or early next, I would say. You know, but it's crazy that. But we started making this film, you know, a few months ago, and we were talking with, like, all these energy experts and national security experts about the Strait of Hormuz. You know, really, they were presenting it as, like, this theoretical risk, like, what if war broke out in the Middle east and all this oil that California is depending on is somehow has been cut off? It's going to be a real big fucking problem for California. And then it happened, dude.
- [143:00]
A
Like, so is California the most fucked
- [143:03]
B
state because of this gas? There was this USC professor who last year came out with this study, and he predicted the possibility of gasoline rising to $8 a gallon in California at the pump, because these big oil refineries in California are shutting down because the government's been so hostile to the industry that they just kind of threw in the towel. And he was saying, like, you know, something goes wrong, some X factor gets introduced to this gas could skyrocket to $8 a gallon in California. And he was fucking ridiculed by Governor Newsom. Right. His name was Michael Mache. He's a business professor at usc. And within a few days of the war in Iran starting, there were gas stations in Southern California that were posting prices of $8.20 a gallon. So. So he was totally vindicated. And so this idea that he put out there that was like, you know, seemed ludicrous or that was ridiculed by the governor and in the media was totally proven. Right. So that's just like, you know, I really like stories that sort of, like, challenge conventional wisdom.
- [144:08]
A
Yeah.
- [144:08]
B
You know, or challenge, like, the prevailing accepted truth, I guess. You know, and in this case, the accepted truth is that, like, shutting down the oil industry in California must be good. Good for the environment and good for the country. And I'm not so convinced that that's true.
- [144:25]
A
Yeah, that's a. That whole topic is a maze to try to navigate because there's so many, like, it's so. It's so political. There's so much political baggage that comes along with it, you know, and, like, it's really hard to know what's. What the. What's really going on with that.
- [144:47]
B
It.
- [144:47]
A
Because, like, I mean. Right. That's crazy. Like, right when you start this thing, you have the whole Venezuela thing happen.
- [144:52]
B
Yes.
- [144:53]
A
Where we apparently went over there to get all their. All their oil and then. Which actually kind of makes sense now. Now that we did the Iran war, it would kind of make sense that we would want to go get Venezuela first. Right. So it's. Maybe that was part of the plan the whole time. And now that you have the Venezuela or the Iran thing happening and choking off off all of that oil, like, how does that affect. How does that affect? I mean, I. First of all, I had no idea that different states could import oil from different countries. Yeah, I didn't know that was how it worked.
- [145:29]
B
Well, it works. That's the way it works in California. California is only California because they don't have an interstate pipeline. They have in state pipelines, but they don't have an interstate. In other words, California can't just like, like, buy a bunch of oil, you know, from Texas.
- [145:45]
A
Yeah.
- [145:45]
B
For example. All right. And so California could entirely, like, produce and refine its own oil just in California. But there were policy decisions made not to do that. But at the same time, because we don't have. With existing technology, we don't have the technology to replace fossil fuels right now. We just don't. Yeah, okay.
- [146:06]
A
All the windmills and solar panels. Can't do it.
- [146:08]
B
No, there's no way.
- [146:10]
A
There's so many of them. I know Death Valley is crazy.
- [146:13]
B
The amount of, like, solar panels that we'd have to have to, like, even come close and that's it. And solar, you know, wind and sun. Right, Solar. They only replace, like, electricity. In other words, you can't, like, you can't manufacture steel with, with solar power. You could do it with nuclear, but you can't, like, solar and wind power. Like, that only can address basically, like, our electricity needs. In other words, about 30% of our energy. Energy consumption. Believe me, I wish I hadn't learned a lot of the. That I've learned in the making of this, you know, documentary, because it's terrifying because it's like the technology, this whole idea of, like, just stop oil. It's like, completely unrealistic. This idea that we could just, like, flip a switch. If we just had the political willpower, we could just stop using fossil fuels and switch to renewables is, frankly, it's a fantasy. That's what I'm finding.
- [147:06]
A
Yeah.
- [147:06]
B
And you, and that's scary.
- [147:07]
A
You're. You were of the opposite belief before you started this. You thought it might have been possible.
- [147:12]
B
Yeah. Yeah, it was. I always thought that, you know, I always thought that nuclear power might need to be a part of the equation, but I didn't understand just how. How completely reliant our world is upon fossil fuels right now.
- [147:28]
A
I wonder what, what. How much to have you learned about the nuclear power possibility? Like, how much of a reality do you think that could be?
- [147:38]
B
I think that in my opinion, like, that's the answer. If we accept that climate change is like, Is a serious Threat. Assuming that that's true, then I think that in all of the above, energy approach is the only answer and that nuclear has to be a big part of that equation. I mean, what else? Again, because solar and wind can only address electricity, it doesn't address, like, transportation or manufacturing. Okay. Which is what most of the energy is used for.
- [148:08]
A
Yeah.
- [148:08]
B
So, and then what frustrates me is I see some of the same voices that 50 years ago in California, you know, were pressuring the government in California to put a moratorium on nuclear power in California. Some of those same voices today are like the just stop oil. Just leave it in the ground. We can just, you know, flip a switch and go to at zero. It's a fallacy. It's a comforting idea, but it's completely divorced from reality, in my opinion. Because look, even, especially with AI coming online right now and the energy demands of that, you start factoring that in the amount of energy that's derived from fossil fuels now compared to the 1970s, like, we're using just a little bit more in terms of percentage. In other words, there is no energy transition going on. The idea that there's an energy transition away from fossil fuels, there really isn't.
- [149:08]
A
But we're using way more energy, right?
- [149:10]
B
Yes, true. But I'm saying as a percentage of the amount of energy we're using, sure, we're using more renewables, but as a percentage of the total energy we're using worldwide fossil fuels, it's now about like 86%. Like in the 70s, it was about like 83, 84%. So it's slightly more now.
- [149:28]
A
Right.
- [149:28]
B
Than it was 50 years ago.
- [149:29]
A
Right. And then with the, with the onset of AI and all this stuff, I mean, it's going to be exponentially growing. It's not just going to be. It's not going to be a steady rate. Like, this is going to be an exponential growth as technology and AI and quantum computers start to become a thing. Like, how much energy is that shit going to take?
- [149:48]
B
Right.
- [149:49]
A
That's crazy.
- [149:49]
B
Then you think about all the, all the plants on Taiwan that we depend on to manufacture all the chips that are everything. They need that natural gas from the Middle east that's now choked off. They run on natural gas. So what happens if they can't make those chips? What happens like 6, 8, 12 weeks from now?
- [150:06]
A
Right, right.
- [150:07]
B
Okay. We're just now starting to feel the impacts of this, and right now it's just the price at the pump, but.
- [150:12]
A
Well, our whole, our whole economy is based off Oil. Right. That's what we got.
- [150:16]
B
The whole world.
- [150:17]
A
The petrodollar. Right. Is all based on. That's propping up the. Our currency as being the world currency is because of the oil that comes out of the Middle east and those. All those countries over there that export all that oil. The deal they made was to only take US Dollars so they could invest it in all these other companies and a lot of them, AI companies that are basically, like, doing a circle and fueling our economy in return. So, like, not only are they choking off all that oil and raising all the gas prices and creating all this destabilization in the energy sector, but they're also, like, gonna. I wonder what it's gonna do to the American economy in general. You know, like our stock market and. And all that stuff.
- [150:59]
B
Everything's gonna get more expensive.
- [151:00]
A
Yeah.
- [151:01]
B
Not just gas, you know.
- [151:04]
A
Yeah, right. Because the. The petroleum is used to make most things. Right. Plastics, or they use that to make plastics.
- [151:10]
B
These headphones.
- [151:11]
A
Yeah.
- [151:11]
B
You know, our phones, you know, the chairs we're sitting in.
- [151:15]
A
Yeah.
- [151:15]
B
The remote control they use to turn on the tv. The TV itself.
- [151:18]
A
Yeah, It's.
- [151:20]
B
It's everywhere.
- [151:22]
A
God, dude.
- [151:24]
B
Well, bro, fertilizer, you know.
- [151:26]
A
Oh, yeah. Everything, man. I mean, like. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what's going on, dude. I'm trying to make head. I can't make heads or tails of what the. Going on in this world right now. It's just.
- [151:37]
B
At least you're trying.
- [151:38]
A
I'm trying. The more I learn, the more confused I get. But, bro, thank you for doing this, man.
- [151:46]
B
Appreciate it.
- [151:47]
A
This has been. This has been phenomenal. We. Where can I tell people to go to? We just linked to your movies or do you have like a website or anything people can.
- [151:59]
B
I do have a website that has links and then the latest show, Narco Mennonites is on crave right now, which you can watch if you're in Canada, but I think it'll be available in the U.S. like, real soon.
- [152:08]
A
Okay, cool. And when. When is. What's the plan with that Ukrainian one or the oil one, too? Yeah, yeah.
- [152:14]
B
I'd say the oil documentary will be out like, later this year, maybe early next.
- [152:18]
A
Okay.
- [152:19]
B
Yeah. It's going to be a feature doc, not a series.
- [152:22]
A
Okay, cool. Fantastic, bro. Well, thanks again, dude.
- [152:25]
B
Thank you.
- [152:26]
A
This has been awesome. We have Patreon questions. We do. All right. We got people on our Patreon that ask you specific questions, so we'll do that separately. That's it for the podcast. Good night, everybody.