← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
How Nuclear War Starts: WW3, Aliens, Nazi's & CIA Secrets | Annie Jacobsen PT 2
01:42:57
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Annie Jacobson
Nuclear war is the only event other than an asteroid strike that could end civilization. If you believe your enemy is vicious and wants to kill you, you're going to create programs that mirror theirs. This is so dangerous.
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Podcast Host
Whoa.
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Annie Jacobson
These are the mysteries of some of the dark and dirty secrets
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Podcast Host
so taboo. Let's talk about it. Billy would. Billy was an assassin. For people that don't know, Billy would. I think it was Billy that said when you saw that he had a knife, oh, God, this might have been somebody else. But you were like, why do you have a knife instead of guns? Because some operations have to be done quietly. So why do you think? As a. Now I'm asking you, as a writer, As a writer, as somebody who understands other people, gets inside their head. Explain to me an assassin and how they can wrap their head around killing somebody and feeling like this was or is justified.
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Annie Jacobson
Okay, so a couple thoughts on that. I mean, assassin is such a, like, you know, narrative word. I never. Billy never called himself an assassin. I never called Billy an assassin.
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Podcast Host
How did he refer to himself?
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Annie Jacobson
Well, but hang on. So however, and we used to have this discussion and I would say, I would try to get some details from him and he would, he would usually say, you know, I can't talk about that. And, and you are right. Someone once said, you know, this guy killed more people than cancer, right? So there was definitely a suggestion. I was interested in reporting Billy's story and I was more interested in the long form of the story. And asking that kind of point blank question is a really quick way to get somebody like Billy Waugh to say, we're done here and that's it. So and I knew it was more valuable for me to get the real big long arc of Billy Waugh and let people decide if he was a air quote assassins. With that said, I was at Billy's house in Florida one day and he was showing me, you know, all various weapons and he had all kinds of artifacts framed on the walls. I mean he had so many awards. And I came upon an award of beautifully framed silver gilded Persian sword framed with a big medallion from the CIA and an inscription that said to Billy Waugh the assassin. And I describe exactly in the book Surprise Kilvanish what it said. But I pointed it to it and said Billy, what about this? And he told me a little bit about it. You can read it in the book. But he never used that word himself. That's a word that was given to him interestingly by the agency.
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Podcast Host
So setting the word aside for a second, how did he think about killing? Was he obviously operated on some kind of code, I'll do whatever I need to do to protect my country or this is a bad person, they have it coming. Or do you have a sense of how he conceptualized the job?
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Annie Jacobson
I mean Billy, first of all, he began operating when Eisenhower was president. Assassination truly was still legal, meaning the CIA. The CIA has a code called Title 50 that they adhere to. The military works under Title 10 and Title 50 is part of the President's what is called the third option. So there's diplomacy then that's the first option. Then there's war. Second option, when war is a really bad idea, you do the third option which is covert action. So all elimination of leaders, shall we say falls under the rubric of COVID action. And it is legal under Title 50 and it used each president before the church hearings in the 70s had a program under. And I write about all of this in the book documented from declassified documents like Eisenhower's was called I believe the Health Alteration Committee. Literally dark. That was the assassination program. So they all have had them and they've changed the way they're framed over the years. I mean Obama's program using drones to kill people was called targeted killing.
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Podcast Host
Certainly self descriptive.
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Annie Jacobson
So again this is like our attitude towards what is taboo and what isn't taboo. And that other part you mentioned where I that's in the prologue of the book. I talk about someone coming and staying with me, an operator that I knew and him, my kids being little and having GI Joes. I have two boys and they were like obsessed with the GI Joes. And he showed them like how the GI Joes would really hold their weapons and everything and asked if it was okay if he showed them some real guns. And I said yes. And he set them up. And I describe it in the book. And then afterwards there was a case that he didn't open and I asked him what it was and there was a knife inside of it. And I said, what is that for? Immediately realizing my naivete or foot in mouth. And he said, sometimes a job requires quiet. And by the way, I can't tell you how many people have, you know, in the agency have said to me, by the way, I don't even know if I believe that opening story. And I shared with at least one of them not the name of who that person was, but by location, a few details about who that person was. And they went like, oh, shit, that was that. Right. So it's interesting people's perception of what is true, what is taboo, what you're allowed to say, how you describe something, which is kind of my long winded way of saying that I don't know that I would want to put words in Billy's mouth about what it was he thought about bad guys and about killing, because it's so much better coming from Billy himself. And he's my main source in Surprise, Kill, Vanish, and I quote him extensively. And I also have hours of footage with Billy talking. And I think one day it will get made into a documentary and it's going to be great because you really just want to see him explain how his world works. I think that's the greatest gift of journalism when you're willing to do long form, as I am, go spend time with someone, travel with someone. I traveled with Billy back to Hanoi, back to Havana, to various battlegrounds of the Cold War where he operated. I flew with him in airplanes, I sat with him in hotel rooms, I rode with him in taxicabs, almost like reconning old places. And that's where I got the best of Billy Waugh, meaning what he thought, how he thought he could share it with me. And that then I hopefully conveyed that in the book about him. And you got the sense of who he was, which I think might be a better answer than putting words in his mouth because it's such a taboo subject. I could never do that. I could never do that job. And yet Billy Waugh and I related on so many human issues. I told you this in the before, before we got on air. And I'll. And I'll share it here because it's just one of my favorite stories about you couldn't have two more opposite people. Our upbringings, our professions, we couldn't have been more different. And yet there was something that drew us to one another, like magnets, you know. And one time we figured out this common trait that we both had, and it made us smile, which is that Billy said to me that when he was a little kid, he just wanted to be good at school. And he used to sit in the front row and every time the teacher asked a question, he raised his hand like that. And I laughed because I said, billy, that's me. That's the same as me. I was that kid. Only difference is I had little braids hanging down. And I didn't go on to become the longest serving operator, euphemism for the CIA. I became a journalist who writes about people.
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Podcast Host
As a journalist who writes about people, what did you feel when you were shown that knife and explained that that's used obviously for up close killing?
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Annie Jacobson
Well, that's exactly to our point that we've been discussing. I thought about Taboo, and there was a delayed reaction because at the moment, in the moment, I went like I could, and I write this in the book, I could envision that individual killing people with a sniper rifle. That was perfectly fine and acceptable, shall we say, to me, that's how bad guys were taken out in the war on terror. And I'm being somewhat facetious here, because why, okay, so they're still being killed. But the thought of that person sneaking up behind someone and slitting their throat or jabbing it into their ribs was shocking to me. And then I stayed up at night thinking, why is that? And I had, of course, been writing about Area 51 and this concept of, you know, bombardment, like, looking back at. Because everyone in. A lot of the people in Area 51, the sources were World War II heroes. People like Colonel Slater, people like General Ledford, all of whom are in the book that I got, you know, this opportunity to interview, not Ledford, but all the others. And I was thinking about air power, this idea that you could just carpet bomb Japan as we did, or carpet bomb Berlin as we did, indiscriminately killing people. And I was thinking about the idea that we use these two nuclear weapons indiscriminately, killing civilians, and what the difference was and how technology was changing and shaping and all of that. And I had been thinking about that. And, you know, bombing people from the air at one time was taboo. And by the time World War II came, it certainly was no longer. And so I had been. So I was thinking about that and then I had that, for me, a very illuminating experience with my own self, my own preconceptions by asking exactly those questions. Why did I think of them as different animals, if you will? And that inspired me to write Surprise, Kill, Vanish.
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Podcast Host
Okay, so realizing that you had a gap between thinking of sort of the up close and the faraway as two different animals, what was there any reconciliation for you in doing all that research and writing the book?
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Annie Jacobson
In a way I want to know also how things work, but my particular brain is suited for the specifics of it and I learn the specifics and then maybe I say, hmm, now I think I understand more generally. And it takes a lot of information to fill in the gaps of that. And then when I began researching and reporting Surprise, Kill, Vanish, and I went back to the origin of the CIA and I learned, okay, this all began when the CIA began in 1947. Oh, except for it didn't. Because of course, every origin story has an origin story. And the origin of the CIA is from the oss, which was the organization. It doesn't exist anymore. But that was the first kind of, you know, unit that America created to kill enemies, close kill Nazis. And the. One of the units of the OSS were called the Jedburgs. They were the ones that jumped out of airplane into Nazi occupied France and killed Nazis with their bare hands. Their motto was Surprise, Kill, Vanish. That was the motto of the Jedburghs. Again, taboo, like. And the, and the OSS and the Jedburghs are seen as these heroic Nazi killers. Like, who cares how you kill a Nazi as long as he's dead? That's the idea. But wait, killing people in the modern day with a knife is not right. I do. You see. And so then. Oh, interesting, interesting. And then I just began to report the story. And for me it's just a journey and then one thing leads to the next and before you know it, you're in cartoon learn. I mean, not physically, but mentally. And you're just learning and you're trying to, if you're me, you're trying to report the story in a narrative manner that keeps it interesting and keeps it charging forward. And that isn't bringing in my own preconceptions. One of the great things about writing about things that you know almost nothing about before you start, you know the general lay of the land, but you don't know the specifics. I didn't know, I did not know that the CIA had a group Called the President's Guerrilla Warfare Corps. That is what they were called in 1947 when they were created. They were specifically, you know, to do the President's bidding. Plausibly deniable covert action, direct action, which means killing in whatever manner it needs to happen. And it was set up specifically, and I quote the documents from the National Archives in the book. It was set up specifically to counter the vicious actions of Soviet Russia. Again, bringing us back to our big concept here, which is that if you believe your enemy is vicious and wants to kill you, you're going to create programs that mirror theirs. Monkey see, monkey do. If you can move toward, as I would hope society is, move toward this idea of, okay, some men are really aggressive. And then when I say men, I mean men and women, right? But we don't all have to be, and we can actually evolve. We can train our own thinking. You can train your brain to see optimistically as opposed to being suspicious. You can, I know that for a personal fact. Go take a hike and watch what happens.
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Podcast Host
It's interesting. I was just going to say that in listening to all that, I think I understand the way you like to be approached, which is as a deep journalist, somebody who's just reporting the facts that I think only about synthesizing things, putting them together. What do they mean? What does this mean? How is it useful? You want to present the facts devoid of your read of the situation, devoid of any moral compass or judgment. This simply is what is. But then when you were saying that you can train yourself how to think, that tells me that there's more to it. But in an interview, I have a feeling that if I pursued that leg, okay, give me other things that you can train yourself to do or whatever, that you'll end up pulling back. All right, so let's talk conspiracies through the lens of a journalist. Because I think of UFOs, CIA, they are part of a larger sense of control of focus, control of information via disinformation. Quite frankly, that that seems like the most likely thing now, I, I don't go very deep into these things, so people may know it better and think that's a totally off read. And fair enough, but what are the conspiracies? My word, you may not even like that word. But things that, you know, the general public will think of as a conspiracy, whether it's Area 51, whether it's JFK, whatever, what are the ones that you have spent the most time with that you're like, I understand the facts of this situation.
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Annie Jacobson
Conspiracies come up in all of my work. I mean, when I began writing area 51, conspiracies were sort of pushed over to like a very small group of individuals. I think that was back in 2009. Certainly. The number of people interested in these kinds of things that I write about has grown exponentially. Why, I don't know, but that just is what it is. But I drill down on all these different conspiracies trying to demonstrate that no wonder there's conspiracies. I guess that would be the takeaway, maybe the best. So while I can't tell you which one I've spent the most time on because they just appear and reappear, I can certainly tell you two interesting things to be true is one, you know, almost all military programs have a thread back to the Nazi scientists.
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Podcast Host
Why?
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Annie Jacobson
Well, why were the Germans the smartest people in the world? Like, okay, just as a sort of. If you look at the amount of Nobel prizes they won in science, why were they so darn smart? And then why did they become Nazis as a society? I can't answer that. I cannot answer. I've read a million books on the theories, but still there is no answer yet. It doesn't make any sense to me. I can understand why lack of education, why religious zealotry leads toward insanity and cruelty. I can understand that part, but I can't understand how the educated mind goes there. That's the conundrum of the Nazis to me. But so most of the weapons technology loops back there because we were so we, the United States, suddenly in pole position after World War II, wanting to stay in pole position, wanting to stay at the front, knowing that the Soviet Unions, the Soviet communist ideals were absolutely counter to democracy and we could not be allies with them anymore, like immediately, not even when the war ended, but as the war was ending. And it just such it was that the weapon systems became incredibly important, developing them to be able to beat the Russians. So many things loop back to the Nazis, which is problematic because the Nazis are like the biggest locus of conspiracies. That's just a fact. But on the specifics of why do I spend time on them and what do I spend time on? I think it's because it's interesting that there's always a threat of truth. So I say to myself, well, no wonder people think this is a conspiracy. Or think. And I'll give you an alternate. I'll give you one, one specific example about the moon landing, right? So. And I try to interview people from Both sides of the aisle. So when I interviewed Buzz Aldrin, second man on the moon. Right. Who went to the moon? If you're. If. If you're on that side of things. Right. Okay.
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Podcast Host
And then did he punch you for even bringing it up?
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Annie Jacobson
Oh, no. And. But then I look at these photographs that I have in one of my books, a couple of my books of astronauts training to moon, what it would be like to walk on the moon, to stumble around on the moon. And they're inside atomic craters, so craters left behind of atomic weapons we exploded in the 1950s. And you see these astronauts with mock ups of what? Of their backpacks, you know, walking around in them, and you see them close up, and it look. If you look at it close up, it looks like they're on the moon. And then you pull back and you realize, you know, it's. They're in a crater on Earth. And so no wonder there are these different conspiracy theories. Now, what really gets interesting and more interesting to me in terms of, like, Hollywood and science fiction is why that is, why is it that those ideas are fostered? Is that human nature? Is it just in the zeitgeist, people talking about it and then more people talking about it and more people questioning? Or is it in someone's interest to generate more ideas along those lines? And if so, who is that? Who is that someone? For me, that's why I enjoy watching
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Podcast Host
Hollywood movies, just for the speculation. But having seen so many of these things up close, you don't have a sense of like, oh, I've seen this kind of playbook before. While I don't know the specifics, it's going to be something like this.
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Annie Jacobson
I certainly feel that way with UFOs. And keep in mind that I am friendly with many of the country's leading ufologists. And when I say friendly, meaning I can sit next to them at a dinner party and have. I can call them up and have a conversation. Some of them send me their papers. Oh, Annie, this is a really interesting paper. We now think that actually there are, you know, UAPs under the ocean. Read this and tell me what you think. They. I can read that. But my. And they all know that I am on the other side of the aisle with I don't believe there are aliens among us, which doesn't mean I'm not going to be pleasantly surprised if I'm wrong. What an interesting thing. But right now, that's not the position that I take.
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Podcast Host
Because when you look at the evidence, you see what I see. Paul Benowitz the guy who the CIA broke mentally.
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Annie Jacobson
I see strategic deception campaigns and I also see way too much inside baseball. If you were to whiteboard out the players of the ufologists, that whole thrust, it's the same people over and over again. And the new players seem to be, to me, the Paul Benowitzes, the people being used to further that idea. I mean, I've had so many people that are in the center of all this contact me that I have ongoing conversations with, by the way, just out of intellectual curiosity, out of interest in human nature. Some, I mean, a lot of them we're having conversations where I'm like, I'm not gonna. I'm not writing about this just so that you know, because I have other things I wanna report on. But I love having this conversation. Cause it's super interesting. People who tell me all different kinds of things about this world. And I know I'm sounding cryptic here, so forgive me, but the bottom line takeaway for me is it's so much more interesting and in many ways lighter than talking or thinking about war and weapons. So far, as far as I know, aliens. These supposed aliens haven't killed anyone. War and weapons do a lot of damage. It's hard to think about. It's easier to think about something that is incredibly fanciful and probably in my mind lives much more along the axis of Jung's thinking, Carl Jung's thinking. I think of UAPs and UFOs as man's desire to make sense of his world.
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Podcast Host
Where do you think things get back to the truth. So if when you look at UFOs you see strategic deception, what do you think? When you look at something like jfk, you've got rfk, who's saying, I'm telling you right now, the CIA killed my. I think he says both his uncle and his father, but certainly his uncle. Do you go, strategic deception. They're dragging this out to keep people guessing, but really this is going to end up being innocuous. Or do you go, yeah, that actually makes sense.
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Annie Jacobson
That might fall into the just don't make me do it category. Like, you know, I think it's RFK Jr. S opinions about that are very interesting. That's his father and his uncle. That's very interesting to me. I don't put a judgment on that. It's really more.
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Podcast Host
I put a judgment, I'm more trying to get at the facts.
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Annie Jacobson
So I have no reason to think that's true. Again, that's kind of like the uap.
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Podcast Host
Why do you think they don't reveal, like, so many years later.
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Annie Jacobson
Of course that's crazy. Of course it is totally crazy. But my feeling is, and I'm going to tell you an interesting story about JFK in a minute. My feeling is that, and this is pure speculation, is that whatever the answer is, and my eye goes toward Cuba, I mean, killing a United States president, whoever did it, there's going to be some payback. Let's just say this fact came out and it was a nation state, there would be payback involved. How could there not be? How could a president reveal that and not be asked to? And now you have. Let's point right there at that book, Nuclear War. That would be my speculation. But here, you want an interesting anecdote about the JFK.
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Podcast Host
Always.
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Annie Jacobson
Okay, so Dr. Bud Wheelon was incredibly interesting for me to interview the mayor of Area 51. That was his terminology for himself. The first director of the Directorate of Science and Technology at CIA. Incredibly brilliant person, didn't give interviews to a lot of people, had given some, but definitely had not spoken about Area 51 before. He agreed to talk to me because I was interviewing a number of the A12 oxcart pilots who said, you gotta talk to Annie. So he let me come up to his ranch in Santa Barbara and interview him for a number of hours. The minder in between us. Cause there's always kind of the liaison between you and someone in the agency. Not always, but often and certainly at his level, said to me, by the way, you may not ask any questions about jfk.
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Podcast Host
Interesting.
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Annie Jacobson
So of course I'm like, what do you mean? Like, I mean, but I, you know, I was reporting area 51. I really wanted him to talk to me on the record about Area 51. My answer was, of course I didn't ask. But it was in the back of my mind. It was in the back of my mind, never asked. Whelan said a really interesting thing to me at the conclusion of our interviews. He. And he was so patient with me. I mean, he had the drawing papers out. He was explaining to me how missile technology worked. He was just like so many of those people, so incredibly gifted, such a. Such a consummate professional. Remember, he's. He built the first satellite program called Corona for the United States. Like, he was a bunch of firsts. I thank him in the end of the book here and list some of the things he did. And he said to me when the interview was closing, okay, so, by the way, until your book publishes, whatever you need fact checking, you want to double Check a quote you want, photographs, whatever you want, I'll happy to oblige. But the day your book publishes, we will never speak again. Just such a CIA interesting. Sort of like, wow, that's like. Must be some kind of code. And it just was. It sticks with me because it was so shock. It was such a shocking thing to say, and it was so interesting. And sure enough, you know, no contact from Dr. Bud Whelan. Flash forward, maybe one or two or three years later, I'm in my house and I say to my husband, honey, have you seen my cell phone? Like, where is it? It's usually in my back pocket or something. And he said, oh, yeah, it rang. It's right over there. And I pick it up, and it says, missed call. Dr. Bud Whelan. He called me. I said, kevin, oh, my God. What? He's gonna tell me about jfk. That's all I could think of, right? And I said, what do I do? And Kevin said, call him back. And I was like. I was like, I'm nervous. I gotta. He said, no, just pick up. Just call him back. He called just a few minutes ago. So I stepped out onto the balcony, and I'll just never forget that moment, because I'm, like, looking out over downtown Los Angeles from my balcony, going, I'm about to learn the secret of JFK, of JFK's assassination. He's having, like, a near deathbed, you know, moment. He's decided to tell someone, and it's me. I hit redial. A woman answers the phone. Young. I mumble my name. This is. She goes, yes, Annie. And I said, Dr. Wheelon just called me, and I'm returning his call. And she said, no, he didn't, and hung up.
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Podcast Host
Whoa.
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Annie Jacobson
And that was it.
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Podcast Host
Whoa.
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Annie Jacobson
And he died just a few weeks later.
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Podcast Host
Really. Ah, give me the chills.
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Annie Jacobson
And my husband said to me, you were not supposed to know who killed jfk.
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Podcast Host
I'm so crestfallen you didn't answer that call when it came in.
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Annie Jacobson
But I mustn't have been. Okay, so here's another one. Really? And my husband is right. Because there is a story about Whelan that I did ask him, which. Because, of course, when I learned. Back up. When I learned, like, don't ask him. You cannot ask him about jfk. Of course, I had to, like, Google, you know, or rather, read in books. Like, what does he know? And what I learned was that when JFK was assassinated, Dulles, Allen Dulles, took the five top directors of the different directorates at CIA down into the basement for several hours, several hours immediately after JFK was assassinated. And the story goes that they all came up white faced. So that whatever really happened, those five people were told, that's one story. And another story I learned from asking around different agency people. You know, I can't ask him about jfk, but why do you think that is? And another one told me a story, they said, you know, whelan, in the 70s, I think it was, had a private plane that he used to fly around in a lot. And one day he lent his plane to his neighbor and the plane blew up.
- [33:21]
Podcast Host
Whoa.
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Annie Jacobson
And I asked him that during our interviews. I said, why do you think that plane blew up? And he said, you shouldn't lend your plane to your neighbor.
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Podcast Host
And that's it.
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Annie Jacobson
No follow up question there. Because the follow up question would have been, was it linked to jfk? So, you know, I mean, we're, we're talking about all of this with levity, but it's a very serious issue. That's the only reason why I can think that those records are still classified is because it's too dangerous. And I would think that has to do with a nation state. I mean, I have interviewed literally hundreds of people that have worked for the CIA and none of them ever have given me an indication that it was an inside that the CIA assassinated jfk. That's certainly what Robert F. Kennedy makes public that he thinks. But, you know, what do I know? And the real question is, what does he know?
- [34:32]
Podcast Host
Yeah, very good question. If you were going to point yourself or the public at asking the right series of questions to get to that answer, how would you approach that problem? Like when you encounter a conspiracy, and let's use JFK as the example, but when you encounter a conspiracy, how do you work your way through so that you don't fall for disinformation or something fake?
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Annie Jacobson
I don't know that I would ever dare to try to solve a mystery that's so powerful and impactful because I think it would be, it would be like Waiting for Godot.
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Podcast Host
What does that mean?
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Annie Jacobson
Well, like you would just be writing for a really long time without getting an answer. I mean, the best answer I can say to that is my friend and colleague Tom o', Neill, who wrote a book called Chaos. Do you know about Chaos? The Secret history of the 60s? The CIA and the Secret History of the 60s?
- [35:28]
Podcast Host
I've seen it on audiobook.
- [35:29]
Annie Jacobson
I've never listened to it. It's one of my favorite books. Tom's one of my Favorite people. And Tom is the example of why, of, of why that wouldn't work for me. And Tom and I always joke because he took he five years to write his book and I write a book every two years. So Tom got an assignment in the late 90s to report on the, whatever it was, 30th anniversary of the Manson murders. And he finished, he immediately started reporting on, was like, oh my God, this is gonna be a book. And he finished the book, you know, a couple years ago and it published it. It's been an incredible bestseller ever since. It's one of the most incredible books I've ever read. Does Tom come to a conclusion about who killed the Mansons? I mean, of course we know who killed the Mansons. But I don't want to give the spoiler alert actually. Should I? I'd, you know, because you'll.
- [36:24]
Podcast Host
When you have spoiler alert, here it
- [36:25]
Annie Jacobson
is if you have Tom on the show, which you should. And I'm sure many of the readers know because the book's been out for a bunch of years now. But Tom posits that Charles Manson was a CIA asset.
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Podcast Host
Whoa.
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Annie Jacobson
And when there's a point in the book where he asked one of his sources, oh my God, do you mean Charles Manson was a CIA experiment gone wrong? They said, no, he was in a CIA experiment gone right. And remember, this was in the time when the CIA was actively trying to create people who they could manipulate into killing other people. We know that that is a fact.
- [37:13]
Podcast Host
Why would they kill Hollywood? A Hollywood star?
- [37:15]
Annie Jacobson
You got to read Tom's book. You got to read Tom's book. But the point of all that is Tom isn't able to actually produce a document. He's very careful about saying that he is suggesting. But you he demonstrates in exquisite detail over a 25 year reporting period with incredible sources why he believes this to be true. That's the kind of JFK book I would really be interested in reading.
- [37:47]
Podcast Host
So. But what does that process? What do those questions look like? What I want to understand because the, the. I've written this question down on my pad like three times now, but I'm trying to figure out is where you like you're giving so many examples of things where it's like, yeah, the government probably really did that. Yeah, the government probably really did that. And so I'm just like the. I now just go, I am always going to look at sideways question it. I'm not just going to take it at face value, but somewhere you re engage with truth and just Assume that, oh, this is real until proven otherwise. How do you find that line? So how. When you're asking questions, how do you vet the answers? How do you know what the next question is to ask? Like, what is that mental process?
- [38:37]
Annie Jacobson
Well, I'm not trying to solve the JFK murder. So, like with Billy Waugh, I'm just simply trying to find out. You know, you get the idea to write a book about the CIA's paramilitary. When you see your colleague, someone you know, with a gun and a knife, and you go, wait a minute, what? And then he. And you suddenly realize there's a huge gap there and I need to fill it. And then you just learn everything you can and work with as many sources and tell the story, and the story unfolds in that manner. And you go through history. That's how my books are.
- [39:06]
Podcast Host
So you are effectively. I'm trying to lay out a narrative.
- [39:10]
Annie Jacobson
Yep.
- [39:10]
Podcast Host
I'm asking a bunch of questions that are trying to fill out that narrative. I find where the gaps are, and I'm gonna. Because you've talked about. I was reading a Pentagon budget report, and they made a reference to this thing. And I've read enough of these documents to know that thing connects to this thing. And now I have more dots on the narrative that I'm trying to lay out.
- [39:28]
Annie Jacobson
Yeah.
- [39:30]
Podcast Host
So I assume, then, if you were Approaching Whether it's UFOs, JFK, whatever, you're gonna say, okay, let's get a timeline, or let's tell a narrative that makes sense from motive through to completion, and I'm gonna connect all these dots and probably find things in obscure places. What do you do when you run into an unreliable narrator where you're like, huh, you just told me a thing. I'm not so sure that thing is true. So, for instance, take the. You call it the last 12 pages. It was an audiobook for me, so I don't know. But the last 12 pages of Area 51 is the whole thing that this was stolen. The. The little aliens that people saw really were alive. They really were humans who had been surgically altered to look like they had big heads, gigantic eyes. And the reason that you believe that is you believe the person that told you that he was a part of it. So walk us through how you go about assessing whether this guy's for real or not.
- [40:32]
Annie Jacobson
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- [41:32]
Annie Jacobson
I did a podcast with Lex Friedman a month ago, a long podcast like this one, where I told Lex the name of the source for the first time in 12 years. And the source's name is Al O'. Donnell. And the reason I told Lex that was because it made sense within the context of what Lex and I were talking about. And it certainly makes sense in the context of what you're asking me here, which is how do you trust someone? So that source, Al o', Donnell, is also someone I thank. In nuclear war scenario, Al o' Donnell was also known as the trigger man. So I actually write about Al O' Donnell in Area 51. If you go into the back of the book in the index and you look up Al o', Donnell, you can see where he's written about. He just also happens to be the source for the story of Area 51 and the so called aliens. That part of the story. We keep him anonymous, but he's the same person. And so how do you trust someone like that? Well, he wired, armed and fired 186 nuclear weapons for the government. He has. If you don't trust someone like that, you have to really ask yourself, wow, so the government trusted this guy to arm, wire and fire all these nuclear weapons as a member of the arming party. They sent him to the Marshall Islands repeatedly. And he had a Q clearance and a top secret clearance. He's got awards all over his wall. He's got a wing in the Nevada, in the museum, the Atomic Testing Museum named after him. This guy's credible in the technical canonical sense of the word credible. He's not living in a trailer, drinking beer and shooting squirrels and taking drugs. So then you have to say, what is this information and how does it fit into the context of the story? I'm telling you and am I going to include it? Because people tell me all kinds of things and it may not. I mean, that's the privilege of the journalist where you make the distinction of whether or not you want to include something. So does that answer your question about how you trust someone?
- [43:56]
Podcast Host
Does it? I have follow up. So the obvious question to ask is, given everything you yourself have encountered, where the somebody is being used for disinformation. While I'm not close enough to this problem to know how you would or wouldn't be useful, but it is certainly possible that he realized you could help disseminate a lie, that you could throw people off the scent. Here's a very credible journalist and I'm going to give her a piece of information from a very credible source. And especially, I don't know if he asked you to keep him anonymous at first, but certainly that is a plausible thing that could have happened. So do you go off gut instinct that just doesn't feel right, or do you have something that you use as a barometer to weigh whether you think you're being part of the manipulation?
- [44:46]
Annie Jacobson
It's a long process because if you put someone on the spot, of course, that might be the, you know, we're done here. Al O' Donnell I interviewed for 100 or more hours. What's important to keep in mind if you reread the 12 pages in the end is that in addition to telling the story of what he believed happened at Roswell because he was not there, he also tells the story of the government creating a program that simulated what was believed to be the Russian program of creating child sized aviators to look like aliens.
- [45:24]
Podcast Host
Was he involved in that?
- [45:26]
Annie Jacobson
He was involved in that, according to him. So then you have to ask yourself, I'm following your logic here. Wait a minute, you were involved in this? So now he's implicating himself in a program in which people were murdered. That's a big leap for a person with a long history, a credible history, a reputation, a legacy to in essence rip apart. And he absolutely agreed that I could tell his name when I felt it was appropriate. So there's that piece of the puzzle. Then there's also the fact that after the book published his, it was obvious to his family it was him. Of course they knew it was him. And I was asked to come out to his home and I arrived at his home and his entire family was sitting in the living room and we had like a come to Jesus discussion. That's a metaphor because they were devastated. They were devastated. And his wife of 60 years, in essence, like, begged him, like, tell us this is not true to your point, to which he said, it is true. And so that is remarkable in my mind, because what he said to me, and as I write in the book, the reason that he revealed that information was he wanted to make the point that he was a deep, dedicated patriot. He dedicated his life to the American way of life, to working in the military industrial complex, to wiring, arming, and firing nuclear bombs. He believed in democracy. He believed in defense. He fought in World War II. He fought at the Battle of Okinawa. What he did in that little pro, in that little instance of a program, he was ashamed of and he wished he had never done, had been authorized by the government, whoever the government may have been. And the reason he shared it, according to him, was as a cautionary tale to let people know that be careful what you're willing to do in the name of government, even if you're told it's for the safety and security of the nation. That is what he wanted known, and his family knew that, and his family had to accept that.
- [48:13]
Podcast Host
What was your role in the family conversation? Who was it that wanted you there specifically?
- [48:19]
Annie Jacobson
That's a good question. As I remember, I have to go back and look at my notes. I think it was him. And also his wife. You know, I had spent hours with Ruth, his wife. You know, a very interesting thing happened. I stayed in contact with him for a long time. We would always go have Chinese food and talk about things. And then one day I got a call from his minder that said, you need to stop talking to him.
- [48:48]
Grainger Announcer
Whoa.
- [48:50]
Annie Jacobson
And I knew enough from people I work with in the agency that if you ever get a call like that, I mean, I have children, and I just accepted that. And I never called him again. And then I got a call when he died, the morning he died, and it was the same minder. And they said, he died and he wanted you to know. And I said, thank you so much for calling me and telling me. That's, like, so kind of you. And they said, don't thank us. Thank him. It was on his list. He had 10 people he wanted notified. And you were number two. I wanted to say I did say. I think I did say, who was number one? Maybe I didn't say that. I was shocked, you know, and then I said, may I come to the funeral? And they said, absolutely not.
- [49:44]
Podcast Host
Why not?
- [49:46]
Annie Jacobson
These are the mysteries of the intelligence community. These are the mysteries of the Atomic Energy Commission, now called the Department of Energy. These Are the mysteries of some of the dark and dirty secrets. So there is no doubt that Al o' donnell was the keeper of a dark and dirty government secret. What it is, we don't know. Toward the end of his life, you know, he and I talked about this, which is why I imagine they put the kibosh on it. Who was listening, how was listening, I have no idea. Doesn't matter. But I wanted to know what he thought because, of course, there were two theories, Even though his identity was not known, although it was known to some, a very few, select group of people, you know, one idea was that he was fed misinformation. So even though he believed what he was told, it may have been misinformation, but he still did what he did. And he always stood by that to the end. This reverse engineering program that's so dark that you have to read if you want the details of. But, you know, we talked about whether or not he had been misled, and we had long, thoughtful conversations about it, Kind of like you and I are having, but without lights, camera, action, Just two people talking. We'd go have Chinese food and wonder about these things, and then the conversation would shift to other things. And I knew a lot about him. I know his whole life, and so we were friends. Why he chose to tell me that story is a great mystery. What exactly the truth is about all of that is a great mystery, and I certainly hope that someone is able to report further on that.
- [51:36]
Podcast Host
What do you think the handlers would have done if you had not backed off?
- [51:41]
Annie Jacobson
Don't know. Don't need to know. Because I backed off.
- [51:45]
Podcast Host
You said, though, I have kids.
- [51:47]
Annie Jacobson
Again, this is where you can really go conspiratorial thinking. But one of his children wound up in a wheelchair.
- [51:54]
Podcast Host
Say more.
- [51:55]
Annie Jacobson
That's all I'm going to say.
- [51:57]
Podcast Host
Man, I jumped to conclusions on that one.
- [51:59]
Annie Jacobson
That's all I'm going to say.
- [52:02]
Podcast Host
Okay. Very intriguing to be sure. Let's go back to what started these 12 pages. So if all of that is true, and Stalin had. So in fact, before we get into Stalin, what is the punchline of Area 51? Why is it called Area 51? What does it have to do with aliens? Exactly.
- [52:29]
Annie Jacobson
Area 51 is a secret base in Nevada where, you know, the CIA, the air force and other government agencies have been working on military and intelligence programs across the cold war. Many of them have to do with aerial reconnaissance. This idea that was developed out of in the early days of the cold war that we would spy on Soviet Russia that we wanted to know what was going on inside that enigmatic nation. You know, remember the Churchill quote, Russia is an enigma wrapped inside a puzzle. Right? We didn't know. We didn't know what was going on in there. We didn't know how it worked. In many ways, we're back to that same. And today, what is Russia thinking? What are the Russians thinking? Why are they acting the way they do? We don't know. But we built the U2 spy plane to try and take photographs of the military installations in Soviet Russia so that we could see specifically if they were lining up for war. I had the great privilege of interviewing Hervey Stockman, the first man to fly over the Soviet Union in a U2. He took those photographs, you know, click, click, click, came home with wet film. The CIA developed that film and learned more about the Soviet Union than we had known and learned they were not lining up for war. Everything at Area 51 in the beginning was designed for reconnaissance. ISR Intelligence, Surveillance and reconnaissance. This idea that we didn't want to have nuclear war with the Soviets, but we had to know what they were doing. And then things have progressed through the years. There's no doubt Area 51 continues to be a great mystery. Most of my reporting in that book is from the 50s, 60s and 70s, because that was declassified. What's going on there now? You know, I can't wait to find out. It always keeps coming up in my Surprise Kill, Vanish book. I learned from CIA operators that a bunch of Iraqi special Forces, you know, were flown to Area 51 and a really dark unit, I'm going to call them, they were called the Scorpions. I mean, they did some dark and dirty stuff back in Iraq. Where were they trained? Out at Area 51. So it's a massive base inside of a massive base inside of the Nevada Test and Training range.
- [55:07]
Podcast Host
One of the things you said in the book was that but Stalin was upset that they didn't have nuclear capabilities, so the US had beaten them on that. And that if the. Whatever crashed in Roswell actually was an advanced form of propulsion that he wanted to show I've got this thing that you guys don't have. And that there was a tie to his thinking that given what he had seen with War of the Worlds, that a radio program caused people to freak out because they thought there was actually an alien invasion. He was trying to drop something in to say, look, I have this better technology and I'm going to cause your populace to go bananas. What do you think he was after? Was it really just that an fu and I'm going to try to cause a scare or. I mean, that just seems so extreme.
- [56:03]
Annie Jacobson
There's two concepts you're bringing up. One is strategic deception. One is this idea of hysteria, of making people, you know, overwhelming people with the obsession about something. UFOs, we could say in 2024, certainly if the seeds were laid, then the seeds have grown. People are obsessed with UFOs to a manner that boggles my mind because I would say mostly there's nothing there. I mean, you keep hearing this repetition of the Tic Tac and the this and this guy and I mean, it's just the same names ad nauseam. Congress is doing an investigation. It's not a whole lot as far as I'm concerned. So Stalin's idea is clearly a wise idea. Keep the people hysterical, keep them interested. But another situation that was in play is this idea of doesn't exist in the same manner. But in the late 1940s and 1950s, we didn't have ICBMs. If nuclear war would have happened, it would have happened with aircraft. And so this idea very specifically was to overwhelm the US airwaves. You have everybody in the world making phone calls like they did during the War of the Worlds radio broadcast when Orson Welles delivered it. The telephone lines go down and it allows the bombers to do a sneak attack. Sneak attack has changed over the decades with science and technology, but it's always there, a sneak attack. I begin the nuclear war scenario with a bolt out of the blue attack, which is what I was told everyone in Russia fears most. That's a sneak attack. The difference is America, the military industrial complex, has spent trillions of dollars putting system into space so that the sneak attack is detected in the first second. It's still a sneak attack. There's nothing anyone can do about it. That's what makes nuclear weapons different from all weapon systems. The reason why you wanted to do a sneak attack is because if someone knows it's coming, they can do something. Nuclear weapons defy all of that because you can't do anything. You can't shoot a nuclear weapon down, almost assuredly, and you can't redirect it. And so all of these things, all of my reporting does entwine in an interesting narrative way, certainly interesting to me, and definitely supports the ride the horse in the direction it's going. Because remember, each one of these ideas has come to me after the other book finishes, I go, another little seed is left, you know, planted. And I say, that would. That's really interesting. I want to follow that thread. And the thread takes us both forward and also always ties back to World War II in my reporting.
- [59:09]
Podcast Host
Is there a fundamental reason that you want to tie things back to World War II? Or do you see this just. It is still this big echo out of World War II.
- [59:22]
Annie Jacobson
The latter, because I write about war and weapons and national security and secrets. And it all began in World War II with America's science and technology programs suddenly being funded by the US military. And that is the key. There is so much money there, taxpayer monies. And so this is a very interesting idea that we've been talking about all day, which is that. But Congress does what the people are interested in. So the people really do have the power. As much as that sounds like a cliche. The people have the power to put pressure on X, Y or Z of interest. The only real point, I suppose is the takeaway of our conversation that I think I have made, which is important is if you divide the people and they can't agree on anything, they're certainly not going to be pushing in the right direction of a certain kind of change which is away from the military industrial complex, setting the agenda for everyone. And I believe that some pushback on that is a great thing.
- [60:37]
Podcast Host
Yeah, that to me is what I felt reading your work. That is the thing that I. The more I go down the rabbit hole of how does the world really work? I keep running into. It's not a perfect manipulation machine. It's super messy. I don't want people to think, I don't even think there's like some evil cabal behind the scenes. But I think that there are enough little pockets of hyper self interested groups that have managed to find ways to confuse the public in a way that allows them to have their little fiefdoms. And you get enough of these little fiefdoms and things derange. And so yeah, and this has become such a cliche but late stage Empire vibes. And I just have a feeling that you get enough of these little things and they're like little cancer cells and they just spread and the each one of them is just looking out for itself and not in some horrendous way, but that the military starts with the good intentions of wanting to protect the nation. But then it becomes the military industrial complex. Then it becomes a lot of people with a lot of bonuses that benefit from war. And then it becomes, well, we can actually steer people's thinking a little bit. And now all of a sudden you have social media, and it's like, oh, wow. Well, if we can make these. If we can control what gets published, then we can really influence what people care about. And since I as the government only have to care about what the people care about, if I can control what they care about. Now wait a second. Like, I can really make things better for myself and I'll even grant them. Let's just say that they really want good things for people. But it's like, well, they're all sheep and they need to be guided. And, you know, we can't just let them hear any truth. Like, that's crazy. And so I think part of the reason that Covid changed things for so many people, myself included, is I remember when the mask mandate came out and I said to my wife, I'm like, that doesn't make sense. Either masks work or they don't. And because the first thing they said was, no, no, no, they don't work, so save them for medical professionals. And I was like, what? Like, that doesn't make any sense. Either they work or they don't work. That doesn't. Like, this is just a non compute. And so seeing though, how people would do what they were told because they were afraid, and I was like, ooh, this is very unnerving. If you can keep people afraid, if you can keep them confused, you can really get them to agree to things that may not be in their best interest. And it's. It is very interesting because I see that thread through your work which is there, and maybe I'm making it more sort of like this all encompassing thing that just eats the universe and you keep it in a much more confined way. But when I look at it, I just see in each book there's this element of we're going to control things. So take surprise, kill, vanish. It's all clandestine. We don't talk about that. We create title 50 to make sure that we can do it and that it's legal and all is well. We code name things in a way that doesn't sound bad. And so we just begin siphoning things off Area 51. It's like if it really was a. Because if I remember correctly from your book, it becomes called Area 51 because the crash in Roswell in 47 gets moved there in 51. And so it's like, well, but that was Stalin trying to mess with us. We stopped him. Horrible experiments being done, but we kind of take a lesson and go, whoa. Like, maybe we could do something similar. We start our own Horrendous experiment. But it's like, oh, people think it's. It is aliens. Maybe that's not such a bad thing. And let's let them run with that. And, you know, maybe we leak a little bit here and there to get people focused on that thing. Because the reality is that if this was a, hey, guys, know that this, the nuclear thing is going to play out with airships, and we have better technology than you, and this is a way for us to go back and forth, and we don't want people to know that. You just start to go, okay, wait a second. This isn't about transparency. This is about control of focus, control of information. Clandestine wars, obviously, as we go into the Cold War, really trying to do it all underground, behind the scenes. And now, since I'm trying to go, okay, I'm living in a moment, how do I navigate this moment? Well, I know that we don't have a pure competitor in Russia. Russia's not where we're at. China, though, is a peer competitor. And so now are we running the same playbook? Can I believe the information that I hear about what's going on in their economy? Maybe I can, maybe I can't. What's going to play out between them and Taiwan? How do I position myself to be in a good position? Is the US Government collecting all this data on us? They're telling me I need to be worried about China, but Is this owning TikTok? Is it really a problem that China owns TikTok? Is this a play to weaken Elon Musk's hold on the one social media that sits outside of this? And so as I go through all of these things, I'm not saying I know any of these to be true. I'm just saying what I am learning through all of this is that not only do I need to encounter the facts, which you do a phenomenal job of putting on the table, but to your point earlier, to Dwight Eisenhower's point, you have to make up your own mind. You have to synthesize this information, and you have to come up with a coherent, constrained narrative. Because when people spin out of control and everything's a conspiracy and there is no truth and it's all this grand lie, I think they will end up missing what is probably more true, which is there's clumsiness, there's messiness in all of this. There's some stupidity, there's some moments of brilliance, there's manipulation that works, there's manipulation that fails. I mean, the. What SR71 was kept a secret for 20 years and 10,000 people knew about it, I think is a stat I heard directly from you. So I mean, it's, it's a little bit of, yeah, sometimes you really are being tricked and duped and bamboozled and, and other times it's just clumsy awkwardness and you have to be an informed, alert citizenry.
- [66:57]
Annie Jacobson
I think you said that really well. And then the takeaway is, with the exception of COVID just don't make me do it right, because then you can really say, this is what I want to focus on. I want to be alert and knowledgeable. And now I'm also going to clear my head and go on a hike because I think living your life with a certain optimism and a positive attitude toward the future, mindful of, wow, there's a lot to digest. Here is a balance, because you would completely become overwhelmed.
- [67:29]
Podcast Host
What has researching nuclear war, CIA assassinations, aliens, Hitler, unexplained phenomena. What has all of that taught you about how the world really works?
- [67:42]
Annie Jacobson
I appreciate pulling back the veil and exploring what might really be there. I also think what's very important in the common denominator takeaway is that people are a lot smarter and a lot more curious than maybe they generally give themselves credit for. And my books tend to make people feel like, oh, I understand something I didn't understand before.
- [68:17]
Podcast Host
What is that thing?
- [68:19]
Annie Jacobson
Government and government secrecy is such a powerful player in all of our lives in 2024. And if you go back in time, when I began reporting on these issues, sort of in the early days of the war on terror, I think people's perception was very different. It's a combination of maybe technology and general sort of mayhem and chaos in the world that has people, that has left people more curious. And I know that's a very big generalization, but I'll give you an. Shall I give you an example? Right. Because I write about very complex science and technology programs within the government and the CIA, and I strive to make them understandable to regular people. I come from old school journalism whereby the people that you write for simply need a high school education. There isn't sort of a high falutin sense of like, you know, we understand more than you do. It's just more like, here's the facts, ma'. Am. I had someone, you know, I get quite a bit of fan mail and I had one individual write to me a couple years back. But I still like to share this story because it sums up, I think, the kind of work I do, maybe the underlying so the person who wrote to me was a truck driver, a long haul truck driver. And he said, and I'm paraphrasing him, but he said, all my life, people tried to tell me I'm stupid. I've listened to all your books on audio, obviously driving his truck. And he said, now I know I'm actually quite smart. And I think that probably sums up the fundamental underpinnings of all of my work.
- [70:27]
Podcast Host
Whoa. Okay. I hope people hear that. That is one of the things that I wanted to ask you is what is the point of mis and disinformation? Why does the government go so hard to confuse us? What advantage is it to keep the populace confused?
- [70:43]
Annie Jacobson
I might disagree that it's a big giant government strategy. To do that. I would take more personal responsibility. So in other words, yes, case by case, I can by all means take you through multiple programs that involve what is called strategic deception by the CIA, but that is only a tiny portion of the national security apparatus at work. I mean, and the Defense Department is doing war fighting and the CIA is doing intelligence gathering, and, and things have gotten very confused and conflagated in the war on terror. And I've written about this in multiple books. But to your question about why is the government trying to confuse us, I would say, I would go back at you with a different question, which is why are people that are fundamentally curious so quick to think someone's doing something to them when perhaps they might actually have a part in that and might be doing it to themselves? And usually that has to do with. Now here's where I get very biased not reading, because I believe if you read, and I'm talking about reading a bunch of different things. Reading, you know, if you're reading short form, if you're reading newspapers, you should read everybody's. And I'm not, I don't mean to say opinion. You should read news reports from opposing organizations and then make your own decisions about what you think is significant to you.
- [72:27]
Podcast Host
Have you seen the meme of. It's the curve. So low IQ people, the government's manipulating us. Mid curve people. Come on, bro. Like, you know, it's not this vast conspiracy. They'd never be able to keep this stuff secret. And then high IQ people, the government's manipulating us.
- [72:44]
Annie Jacobson
I have not seen that meme. And I don't agree with it. I don't agree with it because I think. I think. Well, first of all, I think we're all a lot smarter than. I don't. I don't really believe in, like, channels of intelligence. I think that there's people who enjoy using their brains and therefore they become more informed. Like, if you like learning about things, you're going to naturally become, in what, air quotes is smarter, right? You're naturally going to become more informed. But I believe also that you want to have that open mind, open channel, to be able to think about alternate ideas about what you're thinking about. Otherwise you're just gathering information to prove something that you want to believe is true. So if you want to believe the government is a big, giant conspiracy factory, by all means there's information out there. I mean, I'm fascinated. Of course. I read what people believe about my books, particularly the CIA, and there's always, you know, people who take things away from my books that are diametrically opposed.
- [73:59]
Podcast Host
So, meaning some people are like, the government really is a conspiracy factory. And other people are like, thank you so much for exposing. This is really more mundane and just sort of day to day business.
- [74:10]
Annie Jacobson
I'll give you an example. At almost all of my book signings, including the one for nuclear war, someone there tells me that they have a chip in their brain that has been implanted there by DARPA. Okay, so I have written about DARPA's brain implant programs. Does that mean. And then you can do the dot, dot, dot, right? So one group of people might take away from that idea and say, wow, this is really dangerous that DARPA's working on these kind of programs that could really get out of control. Because that's certainly the lane of thinking that I pursue in the DARPA book, based on interviews with people like the Jason scientists. And then another group of people could say, oh, that believe they have a chip in their brain that has been implanted by darpa. That would say, Annie's book demonstrates that, in fact, I have a chip in my brain. Now, those are wildly divergent examples, but I think that's what it kind of speaks to, the generalization that can happen about my work.
- [75:30]
Podcast Host
Okay, I. That seems fair. However, as a student of your work, you cite many, many times where the government is clearly manipulating people. I have it in my notes. I'm not able to find it super fast, but there was a guy that the CIA knew had seen some classified airplanes flying, and so they literally sent him to an insane asylum because they just gaslit him so hard that it ended up breaking him psychically. We've got the whole thing that you wrote at the end of Area 51. The hypothesis that you put forward is that the aliens that crashed in Roswell were actually humans that were surgically modified by Joseph Stalin and that the US Was doing a similar program. I can assure you that the government is manipulating the money supply, that is for sure. And that has a tremendous impact on us. You've also talked about that you think that it's possible that they're downplaying some of the impact of the difference between the atomic bomb and thermonuclear weapons because they just really don't want you thinking about it. So it's one of those where it really does seem like there is a ton of evidence for that. And so what I want to understand is you're a very careful journalist who is certainly right now being very thoughtful about, look, if you're looking for conspiracy, you're going to find it, but it's maybe not the right conclusion to draw. So help me understand, in the face of, of all the stuff that is real, why would you still want people to break to the other side of just get informed and you're going to be fine?
- [77:10]
Annie Jacobson
Well, I think it has to do with, I mean, I'm looking at the word impact theory, right? What impacts you directly. So break it down specifically. The first situation you're talking about is a guy called Paul Benowitz. And I use him as an example when people ask me, do you believe there are aliens among us? And I use. Because it's not a discussion that I want to really spend a lot of time having for a number of reasons. I think there are a lot more significantly powerful things to be discussing right now than aliens among us. And by the way, there are so many people that will have that conversation for hours. So I'm. And you know, I use Benowitz as an example because he exists on the public record as someone who in the late 1970s, believed he saw UFOs, was targeted by the Air Force intelligence to become an influence operation for purposes. We really don't know why, but there's no doubt that he was targeted and they didn't put him in a mental institution. He went bonkers, which happens to a lot of people who cannot get out of a thinking loop. And when there are outside forces encouraging them to think about things that are, simply put, bananas. And so I think he's interesting in that regard. I think that aliens in general are really not that interesting to me be when I think about going back to the word impact, what is really impacting your life?
- [78:57]
Podcast Host
Okay. That is certainly followable logic. However, I will ask. I'm not a conspiracy guy. I spend almost no time thinking about conspiracy theories, but I think a lot about what Dwight Eisenhower said as he left office. So at first it was, hey, beware of the.
- [79:17]
Annie Jacobson
The.
- [79:17]
Podcast Host
The military industrial complex. But he was also like, you need to be an informed and alert citizenry, and that's what keeps the government in check. As we've moved into the age of the Internet and social media, I see a problem that has arisen that I think is being wielded against us by companies to make more money and by governments to keep us confused. And I think that the confusion is strategic. So with velocity and volume of information, you can keep people confused enough that you can direct their attention. And so, taking that, the aliens thing, so I've talked to privately, so I'll hedge how much I talk about it. But Eric Weinstein, who's a friend of mine, who's like, look, I don't know that there's really anything to the aliens thing, but I'm more interested in why is it being pushed so hard, and is it being pushed to distract us? Now, Now, I haven't gone far enough down the rabbit hole to know if I'm right, but this feels like, especially given that story that you just told, that if you're trying to hide something, you'd much rather people be talking about aliens. Now, I don't know that that means that we know what they're trying to hide. I think it would be a foolish conclusion to assume that we do. But it is yet another tick in that column of there really is something going on. And if we are going to be an informed and alert citizenry, I think it is wise to ask sober questions, which, as a podcaster, my ilk is not necessarily known for. But asking sober questions of what is going on, that seems pretty important to me. Agree or disagree?
- [80:56]
Annie Jacobson
I mean, I personally think it's more interesting to talk about nuclear war than aliens right now in 2024.
- [81:02]
Podcast Host
But I'm not pushing for aliens. What I'm saying is I think we have to answer the question of, and let's make it about nuclear war. We have to ask the question of why isn' this front and center? Why are you having to write a book about this to remind people of the horrors of this? Is that strategic? Did the government really just take their eye off the ball and stop talking about this, or do they want to be stockpiling stuff in the background? Even if just because of the war machine, is there a reason for the way they're handling the situation?
- [81:34]
Annie Jacobson
The situation, meaning nuclear war? And the threat of it.
- [81:37]
Podcast Host
Correct.
- [81:38]
Annie Jacobson
I mean, and I asked that same question of one of my sources, like when I began to report this book and learn just how much of a precipice we are all living on, to quote UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, that we're one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear Armageddon. Nuclear annihilation were his words. I began to wonder why is this not front and center? And I asked a source exactly that question, like why isn't the Congress doing something as we now have nine nuclear armed nations and people are worried about UFOs when they should be thinking about nuclear war. And he said to me, Annie, the Congress only pays attention to what the people are paying attention to. Which would be to my point that if the people are sitting around thinking the government's after me, the government is creating conspiracies, the go, then the people aren't thinking about perhaps things that are more legitimately of concern. So then you have to ask yourself which came first, the chicken or the egg? Is it. Is the government push? It sounds like that is what you are asking, right? If we're.
- [83:00]
Podcast Host
That I'm waiting for you to finish. That is my follow up question for sure.
- [83:03]
Annie Jacobson
So is the government push? Like don't look over here, just that would be one way of looking at it. I think one of the important situations for me as a journalist is always to maintain this idea that I try to write books that people can take away their own conclusion. And the best example I give sometimes has to do with a book I wrote called Operation Paperclip. Can I give you the example? It goes like this. Okay, so this was back in Operation Paperclip about the Nazi scientists that came to America after World War II, published in. In 2014. And back then a journalist, I. E. Me, could go on Fox News and CNN in the same week. Now you can't do that, which is too bad, the polarization of everything. But you could then. So I went on, let's just call them a conservative organization and a very liberal organization. And I went on the very conservative organization and they said, oh my goodness. Annie Jacobson, thank you so much for writing Operation Paperclip. You showed us in absol. Explicit terms that, you know, these were Nazis, but we had to hire them because if we didn't we would all be speaking Russian now. Thank you so much for writing this book. Good job. Then I leave. Then I go on to the liberal news outfit and they say, Annie Jacobson, thank you so much for writing this book. You showed us in no uncertain terms, these Nazis should have all been hung at Nuremberg. This is the worst, most despicable, disgraceful thing that the United States government ever did. It's a shame. And you showed us that in no uncertain terms. Thank you so much for writing this book. They read the same book and they took away radically different conclusions. I do think that is also an important part of a democracy. So I do not fault one side or the other. I am more interested in holding both of those ideas at the same time. And that's something I have learned, by the way, from having a great editor edit my books. You know, and you want to. That's what you really want to be. I think you want to. You want to strive to surround yourself with people who have all kinds of different ideas about things that you might not necessarily agree with. And then you can ask yourself, whether you're out walking or driving your car or doing a podcast, you can keep your mind open and flexible to ideas that you hold to be true and ideas that you might be willing to shift a little bit.
- [85:54]
Podcast Host
Makes sense very much. Does the government have an interest in directing what we focus on?
- [86:01]
Annie Jacobson
Well, I mean, again, I think that kind of broad question is a little bit dangerous for me, and I'll tell you why. Like, here's. Here's example. People often say, like, like the CIA. I have written about the CIA in all seven of my books. The CIA has many components. You. You cannot. I would never say the CIA. I would say, you know, the, The. There's like, science and technology elements of the CIA that I write about in Area 51. There's paramilitary teams and trigger pullers in the CIA that I write about in Surprise, Kill, Vanish. There's. There's the former MK Ultra manipulation programs that I wrote about in many of my books. Those are not the same lanes of the CIA. And so the government would be another example. There's. To me, the government isn't the big bad government. It's like, what are you talk. Are you talking about Navy Intelligence? Are you talking about the Air Force? I'm not saying you specifically. I just mean in general. So I would have to. I think it's better. I think you can be more critical about your thinking or more focused about your thinking and help with the conclusions you draw by being a little bit specific. So to answer your question, your question was, is the government trying to get us to focus on X, not Y?
- [87:26]
Podcast Host
Sort of what I'm trying to. I'm trying to map how you think about this. So What I want to know is, would they have an interest in controlling our. Directing our focus? It's a way less loaded word. Would they have an interest in directing our focus? And then if the government has an interest in directing their focus, does the government apply energy and resources to things that they have an interest in doing? And so what I'm trying to map out is. And what I'm getting from what you're saying, and tell me if I'm headed in the wrong direction. What I'm taking away from what you're saying is, is, look, all of these things are true. However, if you then apply that as a blanket statement, you're going to step back and go, everything is a grand conspiracy and you're going to be as blind as somebody who's not paying attention at all.
- [88:13]
Annie Jacobson
I think that's well said. But while you were talking, I think I realized there may be a distinction here. Maybe what you're talking about is when you say the government, I would say you could perhaps substitute that for political parties. And the reason I say that is I completely stay out of politics, very specifically and very ardently. So I don't write about, I mean, I've written about all the presidents in all of my books, but I'm writing about potus, President of the United States. And sometimes it requires commenting on the individual because of their policies. But I find the most disheartening element of my own country and my own democracy and my own critical thinking right now having to do with the polarization of America with this crazy idea and this directly links to nuclear war, this crazy idea that you have to be on one side or the other and that the other side isn't just your adversary or your opponent. Kind of I see opponent as a sportsman's term, but rather that the other side is the enemy. And then if you are talking about an enemy, then you get into some really, you know, what I find to be odious language about destroying people. And, you know, I mean, that becomes to me not only unhelpful in living your life, but dangerous. And so if you substitute the questions that you asked me about the government with the two political parties, I might now see a little bit more about what it is you're getting at. And I might tend to agree with you. You. Because if you, if you, if I read something in the news that's political, politically based, politically driven, I mean, my instinct is really like, I'm not going to even read this because I can just see the, the bias and the intention to make me Think that way coming at me so strong it becomes uninteresting to me because it's just opinion based. So I stay away from that kind of thinking.
- [90:56]
Podcast Host
Okay, so now I'm back to where we started, where you said that governmental secrecy is. Governmental secrecy is a powerful force in people's lives. Did you mean when you said that political parties or did you mean the government?
- [91:15]
Annie Jacobson
Well, I meant the government when we were talking about that, because, remember, that's my area of expertise. And when I say the government, let me re. Let me be specific, because I'm not talking about the political part of the government. I'm not really even talking about the executive branch per se. I'm talking about the military and the intelligence community, because that is what I write about. I write about war and weapons and national security and government secrets within the context of the military and the intelligence. So I don't write about the Democratic parties. And then point over there. I'm writing about. Out about military and intelligence programs. And because so much of this is science and technology based. And again, let me clarify that. I'm writing about the military and the intelligence community from World War II forward. And because technology. And I found this all out almost inadvertently in my reporting that so much of our world is shaped by military technology that is developed to fight wars. That is probably what I meant more specifically when I said how impactful it is to all of our lives.
- [92:32]
Podcast Host
Why do people need to understand that?
- [92:35]
Annie Jacobson
Well, they maybe don't. It's not a requirement. But if they want to, they can certainly read my books to learn the origin stories of things.
- [92:46]
Podcast Host
But I'm guessing so you spend roughly two years per book.
- [92:50]
Annie Jacobson
Book.
- [92:50]
Podcast Host
So I have to imagine that you pick a topic that you think matters or do you just pick something that you find interesting? So it's just. I find this fascinating. So when you wrote Surprise Kill, Vanish about CIA assassinations, there was no sense of like, hey, it's important that you know that your government does this. It's just, whoa, this is interesting. Interesting.
- [93:19]
Annie Jacobson
It's the latter. Whoa, this is interesting. Oh, yeah. No, I'm not. I am not. I mean, I am a storyteller at heart. I love a good story. I want to be. I want to lean into a story. And so when I hear when I learned about Billy Waugh, I just wanted to know more about him. And I just spent a couple years trying to get him to agree to talk to me. And then once he did, you know, game on, that was that book. And then I build the book around It. But all of my books kind of grow out of a sense of we talked about this in the green room. Fate and circumstance which you may or may not agree with, but I fundamentally believe that to be true. And then my reporting, you know, I hear a thread of a really interesting. Want me to give you a specific example? I'll give you the most famous first one, which is Area 51, the book that, you know, I pretty much owe my career as a national security reporter to because it was read by so many people and continues to be read by so many people. And sure, there's the last 12 pages with the, you know, what you spoke of. And everybody goes bananas about that and wants, well, there's 400 pages before that that are really pretty damn interesting. And that is about the CIA's aerial espionage programs that it worked on in the 50s and 60s in utter secrecy out at Area 51. And I learned about that program completely by accident. I was at a, at a, at a Christmas Eve dinner party with a group of people that are sort of family members by marriage that I had been, I had attended that similar dinner party for, I don't know, five, six years when the guy sitting next to me leans over an 87 year old man says, I got a really interesting story. I was reporting on terrorism at the time. He said, I like your reporting, I got an interesting story. And you know, you think, okay, everybody has an interesting story. Well, he said, the CIA just declassified 50 years of my life work. And I was like, what? I knew he was a engineer at Lockheed and I had this like preconception that he designed windows or airplane parts. I didn't know know. Well, it turned out he was the lead physicist for Lockheed Skunk, works on the U2 and then the A12 oxcart, the precursor plane to the SR71. And when he said that to me, that was exactly that. I said, wait a minute, where did you do that? It was just kind of a naive person's question. And he said, out in the desert in this place we called, you know, Watertown. This place we called the Ranch. Really? Where is that? Well, you know, and there was kind of a mysterious mystique to what he was saying. And then during the course of that conversation, right then and there, I realized that is Area 51. And I said, My God, you mean Area 51? He said, we're not supposed to say that. The word was still classified at the time. So that's a perfect example of. I didn't sit around and think like I've got to break the story of Area 51. I. I pity the person who did that because they probably would never get at it. You need to have the inside, I believe, laying from someone who has access to things. And so that's that concept we were talking about before the podcast. Ride the horse in the direction it's going. And in that case, you know, when Ed Lovick essentially just like, rode up on a horse and like, here's the story. And I got on my horse and followed him. He introduced me to all of his friends, pilots that flew the U2, engineers that built it. Then they introduced me to Dr. Bud Whelan, the first director of Science and Technology at the CIA. Bud Whelan invented the Corona satellite. So I've been going on and on, but let me bring this back full circle. What can people learn from my books? They can learn the origin stories of things. They can learn how it began because I come into a topic not knowing about it. I didn't know about the U2 spy plane. I didn't even know what it was, but it seemed like such an interesting story. And so I began the journey of learning it. And that's why I believe I have regular people reading my books, like the Truck Driver, because I explained to them in the simplest terms the same way my brain had to learn about it.
- [97:56]
Podcast Host
It's interesting. I am so curious to know if we take the same thing away from the truck drive story. Truck Driver.
- [98:03]
Annie Jacobson
So what do you take away from it?
- [98:05]
Podcast Host
That the reason he said everybody's always told me that I'm dumb. And then after reading your books, I realized that I'm really smart, is that people were telling me that the way that I thought the world worked wasn't accurate. And now reading your books, I realize the way that I believe the world works is actually accurate. Which, as somebody who is enthralled by your work, that is exactly what it feels like to me. So it's very possible that I'm just projecting, but I have become obsessed, obsessed with understanding how the world works, understanding the points of manipulation. I don't want. I don't want to blind myself going to my earlier comment by becoming conspiratorially minded, but at the same time. So the one that I'm obsessed with is inflation. So when you think about money printing, money printing is quite literally an invisible tax, to use the least offensive language, I think you could call it theft left in that as they print money, they are socializing the losses. And this is why people get so mad at like, why are you bailing out the rich? Because the way that the federal government, sorry, the federal bank gets the quote unquote money into the economy is by buying assets. So call it bonds, treasuries. And so who's holding those investors? The quote unquote rich, rich. So now you have the federal bank, in coordination with the federal government, putting money into the system by literally taking from everybody. But you're taking from the poor, you're taking from low middle class, middle class, the wealthy, everybody equally. But you're only giving it to the people at the top of the food chain that own assets to get that money into the system. So you feel like, but wait a second, I just got money. Why would this ever be bad? Bad? It's bad because your money loses buying power. Now they know this, and the government, or certainly the federal bank, they fully understand that this will come due. There is no universe in which you can just print money and it doesn't become a problem. Otherwise, just give everybody a trillion dollars. Like you. You need to only ask that question, why not give everybody a million dollars? And the reason is because you will take, take what the value of a million dollars is and drive it very close to zero. And so you can't do it. But then why is it cool to give people $5,000? And the answer is, you can't do that either. It's just a small enough amount that people don't realize that you've just spread this loss across everybody, including, and this is part of the reason why they love it, China, who owns debt in our country. And we just made that death debt worth less. And so, so when I started going down that rabbit hole, I was like, whoa, I'm being manipulated. My buying power is being stolen from me as I begin to put together a worldview. Because people look at me and they think because I got wealthy that, oh, like he must already understand all this stuff. Not at all. I got good at one thing, making money. I understand how to run businesses. That, that is the thing that I knew how to do as I started actually, like your truck driver peeling the layers back and going, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a second, second. We actually. So Billy Waugh, who you mentioned earlier, I heard you quote somebody saying about him, he's killed more people than cancer. So I'm like, what? Like we have that many people running around doing government sanctioned murder.
- [101:32]
Annie Jacobson
No, no, no, no, no. Billy Wall was unique. What's interesting about our discussion here about the truck driver, I, I think the conclusion is, is that two People can take away very different points of view about a story. And that gets to be perfectly great in my book because we all have different points of view that we're pursuing. I see that truck driver, totally different. I just see him as having read my books and go, wow, I can actually read a whole book and totally understand it and then wanna read the next one. Because, by the way, a lot of people don't read anymore. I mean, they really don't. You might. Most people don't. And so it's also interesting. Other paradox there. Cause he was actually listening to my books and I read all my books. And now I really believe listening to somebody else read a book is reading a book. It's the same thing. So we take away different ideas from that same story, which is part of it. But the Billy Waugh of it is if you read Surprise, Kill, Vanish. I think one of the fascinating things about Billy Waugh is he was so unique. He was what was called a singleton. And he operated in a way that I'm not so sure many people operate anymore. I don't know if I'm wrong about that, but that idea has certainly been corroborated by many people in the upper echelons of the agency who I interviewed. When I asked them, you know, know, is Billy special? They were like, hell, yeah. Now, you know, your theory could be right, that that's just government disinformation and there are lots of assassins running around doing the dirty work of the government like Billy did. We. We won't know until another journalist comes along and peels back the onion, which is a really important part of all of this. I think what we're doing is just having conversations about what we think might be true. I'm really not so sure that you can't hold two ideas at once.
- [103:50]
Podcast Host
I think you can give me the example. What two ideas are you talking about?
- [103:54]
Annie Jacobson
Well, you can hold the idea Billy Waugh is special, or maybe there are many people just like him and they don't have to be mutually exclusive. It's not a. I don't know that I could ever find out that answer. Answer.
- [104:09]
Podcast Host
There's a lot going on right now. Boys and girls, heads up. Take in the information. Think carefully. React cautiously. Be thoughtful. Annie, I have thoroughly enjoyed encountering your work. This, I think, was the first time that I had a chance to read your stuff. And I'm really, really impacted. Like, it a lot. Where can people engage with you?
- [104:33]
Annie Jacobson
Bookstores every. Everywhere. Bookstores everywhere. And anniejacobson.com I love it guys.
- [104:39]
Podcast Host
The most recent one is nuclear war. It it will curl your hair. Take give it a read. It's amazing. Speaking of things that are amazing boys and girls, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. A vacation rental should come with support, not surprises. That's why VRBO comes with a VRBoCare guarantee and 24. 7 life support from Real people. So if something goes sideways, verbo care can help. If the host cancels verbo care if
- [105:11]
Annie Jacobson
the listing says heated pool but there's
- [105:12]
Podcast Host
actually no pool to heat, Definitely a verbo care thing.
- [105:15]
Annie Jacobson
If my teenager starts calling me Leslie
- [105:17]
Podcast Host
instead of mom, that's a family thing. Leslie.
- [105:19]
Annie Jacobson
That makes sense.
- [105:20]
Podcast Host
Sorry. Book with support, not surprises. Verbo Care and 24. 7 Life Support. If you know you're VRBO terms, apply. Seeverbo.com Trust for details.