B (2:38)

What if.

A (2:38)

No, please mine when it's too legit to split. That's cravenience. Get a 3 pack for 99 cents with our app ampm. Too much good stuff plus tax where applicable prices and participation may vary. Terms and conditions apply. Hi, Gina. Thank you for coming on the podcast.

B (3:08)

Thank you for having me.

A (3:10)

You know, I said. Right before we went on, I said, thank you for writing this book. And you started to say, my pleasure, but then you stopped yourself and you say, well, not really my pleasure, because this is a really hard subject. But I'm guessing it is your honor to do it. We live at such interesting times right now where nobody's willing to tell the truth, look into the truth, even challenge themselves on the truth. And to be able to do something as important as what you did in this book, what an honor for. For you to be. And for them and for all of us to witness it. So thank you.

B (3:49)

Yeah, that. That's exactly how I feel about it. It was my honor. And I always tell them that whenever they thank me for anything. Yeah, it. This story changed me in a lot of ways, and I kind of go into that in the book.

A (4:03)

Yeah.

B (4:04)

But, you know, I've been a journalist for 40 years, so you lose a little bit of the conviction that you went into it with. And it takes a story like this to remind you what your job is.

A (4:21)

I really want to go there. But let me start with. For anybody who doesn't know the story, what's the story of Raven23?

B (4:29)

The story is that these four guys who were from a Blackwater personal protection detail. Well, actually, they were a TST team, tactical support team that were supporting a US Diplomat or another team that was rescuing a US Diplomat from a bombing in Baghdad, were fired upon in Nisar Square, which is the name of the traffic circle that they were hoping that this other team would come through. They got into a firefighter, some gunmen were killed, a couple of civilians were killed, and they returned to the Green Zone not thinking anything about this, but because of various factors, including the timing of this, but also the fact that it got on CNN and US Cable news quite quickly and was played repeatedly. They were accused of perpetrating a massacre, and they were put on trial three times in the United States and were put in prison essentially for their rest of their lives over this incident.

A (5:41)

And I remember this at the time because everybody was eager to say, oh, Blackwater is so evil. We weren't. We weren't so willing to say the American soldier was evil, but we were willing to throw Blackwater under the bus. I don't know if Blackwater has ever recovered from. From any of that. But what was your view of Blackwater at the time?

B (6:03)

Oh, I thought the same thing as everybody Else, I was against the war. I didn't think that we needed to have mercenaries fighting it for us. If Congress could not raise an army of volunteers, I didn't think we needed to be in there.

A (6:17)

Right, right. And has any of that changed in the pursuit of this story?

B (6:24)

I still think that it was a mistake to go in there. I think that we went in for the wrong reasons. And the outcome is, I think, supports that view. But here's the deal. You know, at the time we told these kids, and they were kids, that these people were threatening our way of life and we needed to do something about it. And every single one of the guys that I represented in this book were absolute believers in that. They did exactly what they were supposed to do. They went there with exactly the right attitudes, and they were rewarded in a very bad way.

A (7:02)

So the first time this happened, didn't this happen under George W. Bush?

B (7:07)

Yes, yes, the incident happened under Bush, but this, you know, dragged out for three presidential administrations.

A (7:14)

So were they arrested under Bush?

B (7:18)

They are just questioned.

A (7:21)

Under Bush?

B (7:22)

They were questioned, and then they were. They actually surrendered at the Salt Lake City Federal courthouse. And I believe that was in 2008 or 2009.

A (7:32)

Okay. So under.

B (7:33)

But then the case was. Then the case was dismissed shortly after Obama came in.

A (7:38)

So then why.

B (7:40)

And then reinstated.

A (7:41)

Yeah. So why? Like, because it was like two years later, all of a sudden they think everything is fine. And then two years later, they bring it up in court again and they're in. They're in court. What happened?

B (7:53)

Right, exactly. Well, the case was thrown out by Judge Urbina, who was a Clinton appointee, for the reasons that there's no evidence to support a massacre. The prosecutors were very vindictive about the case and were basically violating ethical and constitutional protections. He threw it out. But what we discovered after doing some investigation was that there were foreign policy objectives that were going to be served by bringing them back to court.

A (8:35)

What were the foreign policy objectives?

B (8:39)

Basically, the Obama administration was intent on making sure that Nouriel Maliki was the Iraqi prime minister because they felt that they could work with him. They didn't really know whether, because they had put him in power, basically, whether they could really work with a Democratic. A democratically elected candidate, because people were furious over in Iraq about the state of affairs. I mean, they had no infrastructure. There was a civil war raging. People wanted. The Iranians had basically infiltrated the Iraqi government in many ways, and they wanted Blackwater and all the contractors out of there so they could do whatever they wanted.

A (9:24)

So As a what? As a way to gain favor with the public. Obama gave these guys up.

B (9:33)

Well, essentially, I mean, you know that. I don't know what happened in their meetings, but we do have some diplomatic cables that are in the book from the charge d' affaires, Robert Ford to Hillary Clinton saying that as soon as Judge Urbina threw the case out, there was a huge uproar in Iraq, in the media, in the mosques, in the government. Everyone was speaking out about the fact that the Americans could do whatever they wanted in Iraq and kill everybody and have no consequences. So these guys literally became the sacrificial lambs for the rest of our screw ups in Iraq.

A (10:17)

And so then at what point were they convicted?

B (10:22)

They were convicted in 2014 of marriage. Three of them.

A (10:28)

This is the third time now that they're being tried. Well, or the first time they weren't tried. First one was about. Yeah, okay, 09 maybe.

B (10:37)

Yeah.

A (10:38)

And then. So this is the second trial, correct.

B (10:42)

So they were supposed to go on trial In February of 09, I think that's right. Or February of 10.

A (10:48)

Right.

B (10:48)

And judge Urbina threw the case out before that. So it had been worked up. They went to a grand jury and did all, all that. But then Judge Urbina threw it out and they had about maybe 18 months. And the government, the DOJ, started trying to figure out a way that they could bring it back with no evidence, with evidence that they had been shot at and witnesses from Nisser Square who told a US army investigator that in fact there were gunmen in the square. The government had a huge hill to overcome. They had to figure out exactly how they were going to get it past a grand jury. They brought it back for another grand jury that got thrown out. Then a third grand jury. They finally got what they wanted and tried them in 2014. Got their verdict in, I think it was October. And then in April, they were sentenced and that's when I found out about it.

A (11:50)

And they were sentenced to how long?

B (11:54)

Nick Slattin was sentenced to life in prison and the other guys were sentenced to 30 years to life based on a weapons charge because they were carrying weapons that the government assigned to them that were used in the commission of a felony. That was kind of really ridiculous, but that's what drew the mandatory sentence.

A (12:19)

Okay, so when this happens, this is when your dog comes to the back door through the screen door, right?

B (12:26)

Yes.

A (12:27)

Okay.

B (12:27)

Yes.

A (12:29)

I mean, if this isn't providential, I don't know what is it?

B (12:33)

I'm telling you, it really was. So I had Just finished the first book that I did, which was Netflix, a book about the founding of Netflix. And I had moved to Corpus Christi to write it. And I had fallen in love with this guy who was an oil field gauger. And I was living with him in Taft, which is north of Corpus. And I had a little dog named Jessica Simpson. She was a Shih Tzu. And you know, every morning he'd get up and go out to, you have to go to work. So I'd make his breakfast. I let her out and she came back dragging a newspaper. And you know, I thought, well, we don't get the paper. And we lived in a really blue collar neighborhood, so I didn't know where it came from. But she brought it in and I put it up on the counter and he grabbed it and opened it and said. And he was reading it over breakfast and saw that Dustin heard who he knew that name, had been sentenced to 30 years to life. And he was just shocked because Dustin grew up across the street from him with his son. And he said, oh, you know, I think this is my friend's kid. And I looked at it and I said, oh, he was a Blackwater guard. Yeah, well, he probably got what he deserved. So he said after he confirmed that that's who it really was, he said, well, you gotta do something about this. And I said, no way, dude. You know, I'm a financial reporter. I did not agree with the war here. I don't even know how I would go about doing this because I don't know anything about foreign policy. It would take forever. But plus, if my attitude is this bad, there is just no way that anybody is going to look into this again.

A (14:33)

And so what changed your mind?

B (14:37)

He did. He just wouldn't let it go. He started looking into it and he'd forward me news stories about it. And so I started reading him and I realized before anything that the stories were pretty one sided. You know, I've done a lot of criminal court reporting and you always try to get something from the defense attorneys, right? Most of the time they'll, they'll tell you nothing because, you know, they don't want to, you know, disadvantage their clients. And a lot of times the judges will put a gag order on it. But what was really interesting was that it seemed like whoever was leaking to the press, which someone was, was obviously from the government. And there was absolutely nothing about the men, their backgrounds, anything like this. So they were allowed to exist as these caricatures in the media, which I thought was really unfair. So that kind of got my interest going. And then later he and I went to his hometown, where I live now, and he engineered this meeting with Stacy Hurd, who is Dustin's dad, because I had told him, I said, dude, I vote Democrat, I'm a liberal. We're going into deep red Texas. And these people have been totally abused in the media. There is no way any of them are going to talk to me. But he managed to get them to talk to me and then they gave me the trial transcript and I looked at that and I knew immediately that something was wrong.

A (16:13)

More with Gina in a second. Right now, the average American is still finding it difficult to pay expenses every single month. In most cases, there's nothing left to cover any of the extras. Most people haven't gotten a raise and expenses are way up. It can be very hard to manage without grabbing the credit cards. Listen, if you're a homeowner and you're frustrated with that endless cycle that only produces more debt, I want you to take 10 minutes today and give a call to American Financing. If you, if you're constantly carrying a credit card, balance each and every month with an interest rate in the 20s, some of them are in the 30s. American financing can show you how to put your hard earned equity to work and get you out of that debt that seems never ending. The salary based mortgage consultants are saving their customers an average of $800 a month. That could be you. So to get started, all you have to do is just call American Financing. There's no upfront fees. It doesn't cost you anything to find out how much you could be saving every month. Their number is 800-906-2440. It's American financing.net 800-906-2440. How difficult was it? Because there's been things that I firmly believed and then I get right up on top of it. I'm like, oh my gosh, I've been wrong. You know, I thought, I thought I could trust my side. I thought I could trust my side. And my side is like not good, you know, doing some really bad things. And it's hard to admit it, it's hard to look at it. It's hard. I mean, it takes courage and grit to just go, well. But that's the truth. When did you start having the feeling that, oh my gosh, my side is not the angels that I thought they were?

B (18:05)

That would be, you know, because I had a lot of doubts. What you're saying is, I think every journalist goes through that lately it's not something that I remember from back when, you know, when we were younger, but it's gotten so tribal that I was really worried. Like, I read the transcript and I thought, oh, my God, you know, there's at least three Brady violations here. Why didn't anybody write about it? This, you know, this is crazy. This trial is so high profile. This is the kind of stuff that, you know, that needs to be talked about. Especially because these were the same prosecutors that were investigating the Ted Stevens case that got their hand slapped, that almost got disbarred, and then they're doing it again. You know, so I. I don't work in D.C. but I'm. I'm aware of what the politics are and how hard that can be to go up against the government because they, you know, they'll shut you out. You won't get press releases, you know, they won't return your calls. It makes your job really difficult to do. So I understand it, but what made it really hard was I had the trial transcript. I had a lot of stuff from the FBI investigation that was really shady. And when I tried to give it to some of my friends, because I wasn't in. I wasn't working for an outlet at the time, I tried to give it to them, and none of them would touch it. They would not touch it.

A (19:29)

Why?

B (19:30)

I went. Because, you know, they just. They thought they're, you know, they're the same thing I did. Like, there's gotta be some reason that they did this. Like, what is the underlying reason that no one is talking about?

A (19:43)

Isn't it strange how. Because I've done that a million times and I have to stop myself and go, no, look into it. Because it's so. We're so trusting that we just assume the government could never do something like that. Now, there's gotta be some. There's something I don't know. You know, we're just. We've all been conditioned. We used to all believe, you know, our side used to be all of America's side. And so we believe our government now, you know, it's kind of been split in half, Republicans and Democrats, but we're still now conditioned in our side to believe our side, not the other side. And, yeah, it's. It's bizarre.

B (20:26)

Not just. It's not just conditioning, it's peer pressure. Because, you know, I actually. So I Actually, when I was not able to get anybody to look at it at the. At the major outlets where I had friends, I started to get kind of mad. About it because people are telling me, don't touch this. You are going to ruin your career. Nobody wants to hear about this. I mean, literally, people were saying stuff like that to me, and I thought, well, how did we get here? There were times earlier in my career, 20 years ago, where my editors were delighted when I would bring in evidence that the government or somebody, a Democrat or whoever, was misbehaving. Because that's what we do. We're not here to worship the government or anybody in it. We're here to make sure that they adhere to what they say and what the law is.

A (21:24)

Yeah.

B (21:24)

So. And I mean, my agent who represented me for the Netflix book, I went to him and I said, look, this is a fabulous story. You know, they tried these guys one time, now they're going to try them two more times, or Nick Slattin two more times. They have violated the law every which way that you possibly can, and the media is not paying attention to it. And he said, I am. I won't represent a book like that. I'm. Morally. Morally, I can't. And I said, morally, what? What's the moral part? That they work for Blackwater or Eric? You don't like Eric Prince because he's Christian or rich or what? I did not understand it, so. But there was an immense amount of peer pressure when I was.

A (22:09)

Wait, wait, what did he say? Did he answer that? Did you ask him morally, what does that mean?

B (22:15)

Yeah, I said, right. He just said, I just don't want to support Blackwater or anybody, you know, who made money off the war. And I said, but, dude, we all voted to do this. You know, I didn't like it, but the American people wanted us to go in, and now we have a duty to protect the people that went over there and did the job that we wanted them to do.

A (22:41)

Good for you.

B (22:42)

I mean, I asked probably two or three times, and he absolutely would not do anything about it. And so I went around to some other people who had done war books and things like that, and they. They said, you know, there's no ending to this yet, so we. We can't really represent it. So it was very depressing because I couldn't get anybody interested until Michael Flaherty, who was the co founder of Walden Media. He's an evangelical Christian. He worked for William Bulger. He has a lot of friends in the Republican Party and in Fox News. So he's the one. He came to me because I had done a podcast about my Netflix book for Wondry, and it was really Successful. So he came to me and said, hey, can I option your book? And I said, yeah. And so we started talking about that project, and. And I said, hey, you know what? I have this other thing that I just. I can't get it off my mind. I can't get anybody to look at it. Do you think, you know, you could look at this for me? And so I sent him. I had written so many different proposals for it. I sent him one, and he was, within a day, on board with it, and he started taking it around to the conservative media. And, you know, I can't speak to what their agenda was with this, but they embraced it wholeheartedly. We got to Pete Hegseth, and he really, really was the reason that this got to President Trump. But it was just. It was so disheartening because even when we did a podcast to try to explain the story, to counteract what was going on in the media, and we were approaching people and looking for this pardon, or at least some kind of attention to it, and people just were so locked in to the version that the government had shopped and the major media had shopped, that we made this Parliament podcast to really go over very minutely what the evidence was and what it wasn't. And when I was trying to get interns to come and work on this thing, people who I was going to pay, I couldn't get anybody to do it. They would literally look at the subject matter and say, I don't want to work on that. It was unbelievable.

A (24:54)

So what does that say to you? Not about journalism, but the. Even the journalistic schools that are. I mean, if you're taking interns, younger people, you know, when you were young, when I was young, we both knew what a journalist was supposed to do. You are not part of the government. You are in opposition of the government, and it doesn't mean. Right. And you are just holding them in check. And, you know, it's one thing to be too. Too much of a zealot and going after everything. And, you know, I know they're always lying. They're turning out to do that, but, you know, it's one thing to be maybe overzealous, but there, There's. There's. They're on the same team now, and that's really dangerous. What does that say about the next generation, that the young ones that should still be idealistic, I'm standing for these values. Don't even know what those are.

B (25:59)

Yeah, I. I don't know. It's. It's like some Kind of a video game that they live in or something. You know, it's almost like people don't understand what the, you know, what the outcome of this type of, you know, my team, your team interaction is. Because, you know, the beauty of being a journalist is that you're kind of a no man. You know, to live like a journalist is a little bit. I mean, I'm not going to say it's like a monk or anything, but, you know, I never socialized with the people that I covered. My friends were all reporters because, you know, people felt very uncomfortable hanging around with us because they would, you know, they were worried that we would, we would find out something and investigate them. And I guess that's kind of the way it should be. And the guys who trained me, I mean, I hate to generalize about them, but they were mainly mental. Some women, some really amazing women who. The story was it, it was about the story. It wasn't about currying favor with people or, you know, getting points with people for not running something or, or for running something a certain way. It just was, it was very pure, in my opinion. It was. I mean, obviously newspapers always have a point of view and that's fine. You know, at least you know what the slant is, you know who you're talking to and, you know, you can read it from a lot of sources. But to amplify either side with the power of the press, you need to be cognizant of what that does to the people way down the ladder. You know, the story of Raven 23 is a story of people who are not getting hurt in this country. And I think that's part of the reason that people are so angry and that they are so tribal.

A (27:53)

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B (30:30)

Yeah, exactly. And it, it just seemed so incredibly petty to me that, that the Obama administration could not figure out how to achieve its ends without doing something so terrible. And something else that came up when I was doing this investigation because I was talking to justice for warriors and a lot of veterans groups to try to mobilized them, was the number of cases like this in the veteran community where you know, for example, there was a guy who was accused and may put on the sexual offender registry because you know, somebody was intent on showing that the Pentagon was doing something about sexual harassment and sexual assaults in the military. The case was just idiotic. But there were so many like that where they weren't doing the work of investigating and protecting people and making things better. It was like a show like okay, here, here's this case. I can show you. I did something about sexual harassment. I did something about us killing a lot of civilians. And remember all of this stuff with the Raven 23 case was happening during the drone war, the Obama drone war, where we were killing all kinds of civilians all over the Middle East. So, you know, it was, it was very weird. It was like some kind of deflection of all the other stuff that the government was doing, and they're blaming it on four guys from little towns who they felt could not fight back. And that's kind of what I love about this story the most, is that every single one of these little towns massed an army and fought back.

A (32:20)

You write, thanks to WikiLeaks, we know that behind the scenes, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Eric Holder pushed for convictions because of political pressure from a corrupt Iraqi government that they wanted to make appear legitimate. I know it sounds crazy, yet this is what happened. And I saw it with my own eyes. Yeah, go ahead, comment on that.

B (32:47)

So, you know, for a long time it was pretty obvious, you know, because the defense attorneys told the guys and their families when the trial was going on or when they were indicted initially in 2008, that it was basically a show trial just to show the Iraqis that they were going to hold somebody accountable for the supposed massacre in Nisser Square. And they felt, you know, they put on a very small number of witnesses because, as one of them told me, you know, we didn't think they didn't have any evidence, you know, so we just thought we were going to go through the motions and the jury would eventually vote to acquit them. Well, what they didn't realize was that they were going to be tried in Washington, D.C. where, you know, people are not. Yeah. And I mean, they violated the venue laws in ways that I describe in the book that are just outrageous. And the national association of Criminal Defense Lawyers wrote an amicus brief on their behalf saying if the government is allowed to shop venue anywhere they want, there is just absolutely no guarantee of due process. So where they should have been tried was Salt Lake City, where they had another defendant who was and admit, eventually removed from the case or dismissed from the case. Or Sparta, Tennessee, where Nick Slattin is from the Dallas area, where Paul Slough is from, and Dustin is from Olney, which is, you know, close to that. But so all. Or. Or New Hampshire, where Evans from any of those venues would have been fine, but it wouldn't have guaranteed them the result that they wanted. So basically we were kind of like, okay, they take them to, to D.C. and that. And that was bad. I mean, they did, they did fight against it. But we didn't know for sure that that's what was going on until Kristen Slough's attorney, Dave Harrison, checked WikiLeaks and found those emails between Hillary Clinton and I think his name is Harold Go, who was her chief legal counsel. And it was literally the day after the pardons are not pardons. The dismissal of the case was made public in Iraq was, I think, January 2nd or 3rd. She immediately emailed him and said, how can we make this case come back?

A (35:23)

Oh, my gosh.

B (35:24)

And. And that's literally it. It's like, so she did that, and then Joe Biden goes to Iraq about two weeks later and guarantees the Iraqis that, you know, they're going to get justice. It's like, what the second most powerful man in the world is going on TV and saying essentially that you're guilty and you got away with it. So, I mean, there's no way that there is a jury pool anywhere that didn't hear that, you know, so it's like, why would you do that? There's no presumption of innocence here when you're out there doing this stuff. And the reason is because of what else those cables revealed, which was that they were, you know, that they were trying to get Maliki to win in the March election, which was two months away, and he was complaining to the White House that he needed to look tough for the. For his constituents, that those are the words that are in the cables, and he was demanding that they appeal this decision. So essentially, American domestic policy and criminal justice is being decided by Nouriel Maliki and the desire to have him as the prime minister of Iraq.

A (36:46)

I had a guest on, well, I don't know, it's been the last 12 months. A husband who was over fighting in, I think, Afghanistan, and the. They went into a firefight, and it was. It was horrible. And one of the people was holding a baby. Mom. She was holding the baby, and she had a suicide vest on, and they killed her. The baby lived. And the Afghanis that were fighting with the Americans wanted to kill the baby because they were like, that baby will grow up and then be, you know, angry at our side. And so we got to kill it. And the Americans were like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And took the baby. And it eventually went back and forth. And this guy and his wife decided to adopt the little girl and bring her to America. But then the State Department got involved, and the State Department needed to have the smooth exit, if you could call that smooth. And they needed to Make a deal. And this baby was evidence that there were foreign fighters in Iraq, which they had said, no, there's no foreign fighters. So they had to erase this evidence. And so they were giving the baby back to nobody. They didn't even. There was no evidence that this family was related at all. It went back and forth, and there's a soldier telling me this story and saying it was my government, it was my State Department that lied and made us into the bad guys because they needed the bad guys to end the war and ended in the way the State Department needed. And it's like, I mean, how do you. How do you tolerate a government that will do all these things?

B (38:48)

Well, I mean, they're way more concerned with optics and some bizarre story that they've invented. And then they just need to erase any evidence that. That, you know, that. That the opposite is true. I mean, that's exactly what happened with the Raven 2, 3 case. And it's just bizarre. It's like you're spending. I never got an answer about how much this costs, but I asked some defense attorneys about it, and they said, okay. Three trials and probably at least half a dozen lawyers from the doj, not including the support staff, how much it costs to bring something like 46 Iraqis over to testify and keep them here for a month, you know, let some of them stay, preserve. Preserve. The evidence, which wasn't collected for a month after the incident. It probably cost about $50 million. And you're like, okay, we. We can't think of a different way to that doesn't cost $50 million and drove four people, innocent people in jail.

A (39:52)

Yeah.

B (39:53)

Really? You. You can't figure that out? So somewhere, it's just easier.

A (39:58)

It's just easier. People don't matter to this system. It seems. It's easier.

B (40:04)

I mean, I just don't. I mean, yeah, I think that's probably right. And I think that, you know, not everybody in government is bad, but it's just like what I went through trying to report on this case. The peer pressure is immense not to divert from what your side is saying. It is, I mean, almost violent anger when you do that. And I just don't understand that. It just is. Like, how do you get up in the morning and feel like you're doing anything valuable to the rest of society if you have to lie constantly to yourself about what's happening?

A (40:46)

I think it's really hard to admit that you've been wrong when you've built your whole life on something you believed in and then you realize, oh, I might be part of that. I don't. I mean, it takes an enormous amount of courage and fortitude to do that. I mean, you've done it, I've done it. But it. I think there's a lot of people that just. Their whole world will collapse around. They think their whole world will collapse around them if they, you know, decide. I'm not necessarily switching horses. I'm just getting off this horse because this horse is taking me to the wrong place.

B (41:23)

Yeah, exactly. But, you know, I am sympathetic to that because probably I would say the last 10 years of my career as a daily journalist, I understand. You know, I saw every, you know, day to day when I was covering the financial crisis, there were times at Reuters where stories were pulled because some hedge fund manager was, was mad, you know, oh, don't report on that, you know, what was happening with the bank collapse, because they pay for a lot of Reuters terminals. So there's a huge economic incentive to just go along with it. And because we do that, we tend to idolize these people who have a lot of money because of the erosion of the middle class. That's the power we have to hang to the, the tail, you know, tailcoats of people who have money because we, we don't have that power anymore. And I guess one of the things that I want to talk, you know, I want to make clear about in the book is you do have power. You know, we, we are fighting in exactly the same system that everybody else is right now. But we had it because we stood together and we stood for the truth.

A (42:35)

Yes, I was, I remember the first time I was really disillusioned by my own side. It was 2007, I think, and we were close to the collapse. And I had been talking about, you know, these CEOs and, and the way we're making loans on houses and what we're doing. This doesn't make sense. And I'm not an educated guy. I'm a self educated guy, which I think actually in this case helped because I didn't know all of the systems. You know what I mean? I could just see none of that makes any sense. And I was on with a guy who I watched for years, was a financial guy, and I really, really trusted him. And he had me on and I talked about it and he pushed back a little bit. We had a great conversation. And once the camera went off, he didn't even look at me. I got up and I said, thank you so much. And he said, you're the Most irresponsible man I've ever met. And I said, what? He said, you're the most irresponsible man I've ever met. And I said, did you not agree with me? He's like, no, what you said is true, but we have a responsibility not to tell the people because they'll panic. And I was like, oh my gosh, who put you in that ivory tower? That is your only job is to tell people what you found and what you believe is true. How do we get that back? How do we turn that corner from a. The ends justify the means, that the little guy can be crushed because the system is more important. How do we get that out of journalism?

B (44:26)

Well, I think it's going in the right direction. What happened with the consolidation of media with corporations was really negative. You know, I think that what you're doing right now and what people like you are doing right now is exactly what we need because people are seeking out the truth. They want to know, they want something trustworthy. And, you know, and it's really interesting because when I, when we first started dabbling in the Internet to distribute news, when I was, I think I was at Reuters at the time and everybody was trying to figure out how to use all the social media and I thought, man, this, this is really a distraction. Like, I don't know how this is going to work out because everybody can get on and tell a story whatever they want, you know, and so eventually what it's going to come down to is who is, who is proven to be trustworthy and telling the truth. And I knew that just because of working with the markets that the markets will always seek the most reliable information. So whenever I am looking for some kind of real information, I either go to the government statistics or I go to whatever the Wall Street Journal is doing or Barron's or any of those guys, because the people, the traders are going to find out what's happening. And so I thought, well, that's exactly what's going to happen eventually. It's probably going to take a couple of decades to strike, to shake out to where the people who are doing propaganda are recognized as such. Because people at thirst for that kind of thing. Because the press is the engine of our society really, because things get stuck like they are right now in Congress because the press isn't doing its job. I mean, we should have known. I'm looking at Congress and I'm no expert or anything, but when you, you have people in my party who are in their 80s trying to represent A middle class that is in their 20s and 30s and they cannot figure out how to get housing going or make wages better or make people want to have kids. It's because the press is not covering. They're hanging on the every word of these people and not going into the community and saying, hey, what do you want? And what's happening when you tell your representatives that this is what you want?

A (46:49)

I am so happy to hear you say this. I think we're the same age. We probably disagree on politics almost on almost everything, but. But I. One of my main kicks is, you know, if we are the same age, you just miss the hippie era. I just missed the hippie era. Yes. And the damn hippies have got to let go. They've got to let go. You had your time, you did your thing. It's not even. We don't even get the chance, you know, we're the latchkey kids, so we didn't get the chance. It's past us because they wouldn't let go. They got to let go, and we have got to protect the young generation. Coming up.

B (47:32)

Yes.

A (47:32)

Turn it. It's their turn. It's their turn.

B (47:38)

That's exactly how I feel.

A (47:39)

Yeah, me too.

B (47:40)

I feel horrible that we did not get our opportunity because I think that we could have done a good job. People who are our age have great ideas and we know what we want, but it's almost the end of our time.

A (47:52)

It is.

B (47:52)

Because, you know, we don't now. I didn't work for a long time using social media or having to have side gigs and stuff like that. I had a job that paid me enough so that I could buy a house and do all the things I wanted to do. But the kids, now, they have to.

A (48:09)

It's a different world. It's a completely different world.

B (48:13)

Yes. And it just shocks me that nobody can figure out that you cannot live on $60,000 a year anymore. You can't buy a house, you can't have a kid. These are not hard problems to solve unless you're 80 and it's not important.

A (48:29)

Let me. You're singing. You're singing my song. Let me ask you, because you didn't switch horses. You just got off. No, you didn't switch horses. But do you look now at the things that are coming out of the government on Russiagate and see the same players and go, wait, maybe there is something there?

B (48:58)

Well, here. Yeah. Here's what I think about that. There is no question that this was a storyline that was invented. I'm not going to say that there was no wrongdoing and there was no improper contact or anything like that. However, this was hyped to the point that it just became something that it absolutely isn't. And I'll give you another example is the thing that's going on right now. I'm in Texas with the redistricting issue. And of course, Democrats are all upset about it. But then you look, you know, I lived in LA for a long time. Republicans were nowhere as a bill. You know, I lived in Pasadena when the last Republican, James Rogan, was voted out of office so that Adam Schiff could come in. So it is extremely difficult for a Republican to get elected there. And that's on purpose. It's hard for a Democrat to get elected here. But here's the thing. I live in a really little town. I am the editor of the newspaper here, which is. Is one of the most fun things that I've ever done. But this, the problems that I am seeing here are so solvable. We have a hospital that's about to go under because there's no money, and they're doing strange things with Medicaid. Our maternity hospital or our maternal care just got canceled. We were the only hospital in the whole county that had it. So if the Democrats would get off their butts and come down here and try to figure out how to solve these problems, nobody would be voting Republican. But they don't care about those issues. They spend all of their time trying to figure out how to make Ted Cruz look terrible or, you know, because he went on vacation.

A (50:39)

I said. I said this just I think today or yesterday, I heard Beto talking about redistricting, and it was so. It must have been Monday. At the same time, Donald Trump was on TV talking about crime in D.C. you can agree or disagree with what he's done in D.C. but which one of those. If it changes the lives of the people in Washington, which one of those says I care about the people, and which one says I care about power? Whether it's true or not, one is a clear message to the people, and it's not a winning. It's not a winning thing to say, and we're gonna keep doing whatever we have to do for power. It's not a winning message.

B (51:28)

That's exactly right. I mean, I think both sides are exactly the same way. I get press releases in my inbox every single day, and they're not addressing the issues. They're fighting with each other and trying to make each other look bad, which is idiotic. Because if we literally, if we could have like two regulations changed in Texas, we could have our maternity services back in our hospital if they would do something about health care. We could have a beautiful little rural hospital, it's 100 something years, 112 years old. That would continue to serve the people here. And those are important issues. Okay. We don't care about plastic bags in Austin. We care about that kind of stuff. Okay. We have a water plant that's 100 years old. We sold bonds for it. And after Covid, the price of everything went up so high that we could not afford it. So we had to go back to the drawing board, try to figure out what kind of technology we could use to, you know, to get a water plant that was, that would serve the people here. So. And you know, and it's not like we need a ton of money, we just need people to pay attention to us. And the people here, I will give them so much credit. Almost every single one of them voted for Donald Trump. Trump or will vote for Republican. They see the hypocrisy and I think that they're extremely, feel very betrayed by the Democrats who portray themselves as being for the common man while not paying, you know, they're siloed in these cities and that's if you look at the map, it's like these little strongholds and they don't come out here. But they could easily convert these people if they would actually do their jobs.

A (53:10)

I, I'm convinced all this is changing. I don't know how. I hope it doesn't have to get worse than this, but I think it's changing. I know in me at least. I'm so done with the game of all of it. Somebody said to me, well, I'll tell you, it was Roger Ailes at Fox. When I left Fox, he said, you know what your problem is? And I said, no sir, I don't. And he said, you won't play the game. And uh huh. And I.

B (53:42)

What do you do when someone admits it?

A (53:44)

I know, I said, well, some of us don't believe it is a game. We actually believe in something and it's not a game. And then he just looked at me and I looked at him and I got up and walked out. It is viewed as a game to too many people. And I think the American people are figuring all of that out. I think they're figuring I've been played for a long, long time and everything is coming undone. And you know, hopefully without the, without any bad things happening, you know, Revolution wise. I think people are just going to say enough is enough. We just have to take care of business. Too many things matter that are so easy to fix. We're just fixing it.

B (54:33)

Right, right. Well, I mean, and it's not difficult, but they have to have a representative to vote for.

A (54:38)

Yes, yes.

B (54:39)

Who is going to do that? So in the absence of that, they are voting for Donald Trump who is deconstructing everything because they're sick of the system and they don't think that it works. And there is no one that I've seen in the Democratic Party who is stepping up and going, okay, what do you people need? You know, because honestly, if they would come out to some of these areas that are voting so heavily for Republicans and just fix some of this stuff, these places would be little oases. You know, we have a town here.

A (55:06)

It doesn't get clicked.

B (55:07)

Yeah. I mean, we have broadband, we have everything. You could come out here. The cost of living is low, but there is nobody who cares about that enough to fix it. And that, and the press is absolutely enraptured by these stupid fights about who went on vacation and, you know, who's, who's evil and who's not. You know, it's, I mean, I remember the whole argument about, oh, you can't write about, you know, somebody who's not just like you because you're appropriating. And I said, how in the world are we supposed to do our jobs? I'm a 61 year old white woman. You mean I can't write a book about somebody who's, you know, a different race or gender than me? It just, the conversation got so idiotic that I think that the American people just said, let's just blow this up and start over.

A (55:57)

I think if we live next door to each other, you and I would be fast friends, even though we don't vote the same way. I think we would be good friends. One last question. How many of the people that were involved in putting these guys in jail, how many of these people have gone to jail themselves, been fired? How many of them are still in government?

B (56:21)

Not. They're all there. Well, some of the prosecutors who are involved in this case have left the doj, but they weren't prosecuted.

A (56:30)

They didn't. They weren't punished.

B (56:31)

No, absolutely not. And the judge in the case who is older than dirt and should have retired a long time ago, is still hearing cases. Judge Royce Lamberth. And there's a big part in the book about that where I was investigating him and found that there was a scholarly or an academic paper written by a George Washington Law School professor about him several years before the Raven 23 case even happened where he was making the argument that this man is the poster child for why there should not be lifetime tenure for just judges. I mean, the story that he tells in this academic paper is just outrageous. The amount of money that this guy wasted and it just doesn't even seem like he cares about. He goes in, picks a winner and then just decides that it's like a personal game for him. So that's the kind of stuff that people are seeing and going this isn't working.

A (57:27)

I hope so. Gina, thank you. What a pleasure to have you on. What an honor to talk to somebody who is open minded enough just to continue to follow the truth no matter where it takes them. Thank you.

B (57:43)

Thank you.

A (57:49)

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