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Dec. 29, 1999 - Art Bell
02:44:02
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Politics, J. Edgar Hoover, and Aliens - Jack Anderson
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Time Text
Welcome to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight, featuring Coast to Coast AM, from December 29th, 1999.
From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening, or good morning, wherever you may be across this great land of ours, and there's a lot of it to be across.
From the Tahitian and Hawaiian island chains, out west, eastward, to the Caribbean and the U.S.
Virgin Islands, south into South America, And north all the way to the pole.
This is Close to Coast AM and I'm Art Bell.
It's great to be here.
It's going to be a very, very interesting night.
An American legend is going to be here in the next hour.
Columnist Jack Anderson.
And I'm really, really, really looking forward to that interview.
His new book, Peace, War, and Politics, is going to be a winner.
I'm going to read a little bit of the introduction to it.
Just before he comes on, and that'll give you some idea of the magnitude of the interview you're about to hear.
He had, uh, really big fights with J. Edgar Hoover and people in the Nixon administration, and those were some pretty wild times.
So, Jack Anderson, next hour.
Boy, do I have a lot of news for you, and most of it not being reported by Any of the major media.
That's not wholly true, but this story has been buried.
We'll get to that in a moment about Great Britain.
But first, kind of an extension of what we did last night, the Sprint Report that we found on a government website.
The Sprint Report outlining the failure in telephone communications in my community and According to what we have here, not just here, but a little part of Las Vegas, apparently, and Military Base Area 51.
It says it right on the form.
And people were calling me last night saying, ah, it's got to be a hoax.
Wrong!
It's on a U.S.
government site.
We've got a link to it on my website.
If you want to go check it out yourself, it's in PDF format on the government site.
If you can decode from PDF, then you will have it.
Otherwise, for the rest of you, we have put the report up in a legible form.
But earlier today, I called Sprint, one of the listed numbers.
And I spoke to an apparently high-level technical official there.
And I asked him, I said, you know, Said, cause of incident, circuit breaker was turned off.
Now, it doesn't say tripped.
It says turned off.
And that caught my attention first, you know, right away.
And he said, well, whoever made out the report here must have misspoken.
And he meant tripped, because turned off, oh, that's an intentional human action, right?
A circuit breaker, as you know, trips into a middle position.
That's tripped.
Turned off is all the way down.
As in, off.
You know, off.
Off, off.
But this one, this one was, it says, turned off.
And the gentleman I spoke to suggested that that was simply a slip-o-de-lip.
Then we get to the geographic area affected, and I said, Las Vegas, Pahrump, and Military Base Area 51.
And I said, why did he write that on there?
He said, I think we had no idea this was going to end up on a government site.
He said we've been taking an awful lot of calls on this, and I chose not to further identify myself at that point.
He probably isn't real happy with me, but... Damnedest thing, there it is on a government site.
Military Base Area 51, the one the government officially says doesn't even exist.
It's on one of their own sites.
Now that shows you how our government does things, huh?
Anyway, my phones, I guess, are tied up with those phones at Area 51.
Now that's something to contemplate, and I've been contemplating that.
Very, very, very, very interesting, this whole story, and it's still on the government site.
They didn't bring it down today.
I kind of thought there would be a redacted version, but I guess, you know, it's so public now, they can't do it.
It was so cool we caught that.
All right, now.
This is not being reported.
Essentially, I haven't seen... I've been watching CNN and CNN headline news.
I don't know what the networks did.
We have a news section on our website.
Oh, I guess I ought to tell you about that.
A news section on my website.
And it's going to have something to do with Y2K failures.
As they are reported, we are going to put the reports of them, what ones we get, on the website.
I'll tell you about it as soon as the page gets to load here.
The headline of this one is, Y2K Bug Triggers Credit Card Snafu.
Now, this was reported earlier.
I talked to A good friend of mine at the Intel Corporation earlier today said, hey, hey Art, did you hear that all the ATM machines in Britain failed today?
And I said, what?
He said, yeah, yeah, I heard it on CBS News, he said, radio news.
All right, now I can look.
Let's take a quick look here.
It's in the newest side editions, and it's simply going to be entitled to, well, no, wait a minute.
Maybe it isn't there.
Oh no, here it is.
Ongoing Activities.
Just below that.
Entitled, Y2K Problems and News Reports.
We will keep a running list of news reports of Y2K-related glitches on our Related Links page.
Check the above link to view them.
So as we get these, we're going to put them up for you.
And the first candidate just arrived.
You know, one person hearing a report and passing it on is not enough, so I began calling friends, and I've got friends who used to live in Britain, and they did some checking.
They said, no, I've been listening to the BBC, and there hasn't been a thing.
You know, he listened to a whole newscast on BBC, and it wasn't there.
But here it is.
My wife found it on the computer for me just before airtime.
Thank you, hon.
It is the Associated Press by Caroline Byrne, and it says, in part, a Y2K triggered failure in credit card swipe machines causing frustrating delays for thousands of retailers and customers trying to ring up purchases all across Britain on Wednesday.
The machines, manufactured by Raquel, that's R-A-C-A-L Electronics, and supplied by HSBC, whatever that is, One of Britain's largest four banks.
Improperly rejected credit cards because of a failure, listen now, because of a failure to recognize the year 2000 said a bank's spokesperson.
The Y2 glitch appeared to be the most serious to come to light in the days leading up to the new century.
Retailers claimed they have lost as a result five million dollars in sales so far due to the problem and are reportedly getting this threatening to bring a class action lawsuit against the bank Linda Stryker public relations exec for HSBC here in the US said the error should not hit any US credit card swiping machines she said it was specific to software machines in Britain
Now that's interesting, isn't it?
Now, what do we have here?
There's a U.S.
branch, and they were absolutely sure, at talking to the AP, that it wouldn't happen to any of the machines here in the U.S.
None of you would have any problem.
But wouldn't... I just... I don't understand.
How could she know that so quickly?
Unless she knew it beforehand.
Maybe they had somebody really quickly go into the code for the software used in Britain compared it to the U.S.
and, you know, came up with that answer that way, I don't know.
But, when people start making, you know, such sure statements like this on the heels of a massive failure, and that is a massive failure in Great Britain, you gotta wonder a little bit.
So, you know, it looks to me like we're going to have an awful lot of coverage of Y2K.
Certainly everybody in the world is.
All of the networks, as far as I can see, including CNN and CNN Headline News and so forth and so on, all plan to have correspondents all around the world.
Beginning with an island in the Pacific at 1.30 in the morning, my time, on tomorrow night's show.
Probably not getting particularly meaningful until midnight arrives in Australia, and then later Europe.
By the time I get on the air Friday evening, we will be two hours from the magic moment on the East Coast.
So we're going to be reporting to you as things occur.
Now, you might ask yourself, why would this massive bank failure in Britain occur this many days before Y2K?
I mean, it's not time yet, right?
Well, it might have something to do with something in the software system, which I suppose relates to Money totals after the first of the year, you know, as people were withdrawing, and I'm only guessing here, but you know, something like that.
And it simply did not show up until now.
Now, you can consider this in one of two ways.
An isolated pre-incident, which is not really reporting.
An isolated pre-incident.
I like that phrase.
Or, you know, that's completely anomalous and it has no bearing on what's going to happen when midnight comes, and especially the first business day back for everybody after Y2K, but I'm telling you right now, a lot of businesses, we don't know how many, but a lot are going to not be able to properly operate after New Year's.
Their computer systems are going to be down.
It's as simple as that.
How many?
Ah ha ha.
That's the 64... Well, a million dollars wouldn't do it.
Maybe it's the 64 billion dollar question.
You know, if it really gets serious, I guess it would go up into the billions, right?
So we are going to keep you informed right here.
That which others are not telling you, we will try and tell you here.
I've got more.
I'll do this big pitch to advertise the greatest radio in the world, every word of it true.
And then I say the secret and I don't give out the phone number.
That's really brilliant, huh?
Forget to give out the phone number.
If you want this greatest radio in the world, and it is, call in the morning, beginning at, I think, 630 Pacific Time.
1-800 522-8863.
That's 1-800-522-8863.
So much news, so little time.
8863. That's 1-800-522-8863. So much news, so little time.
The various airlines are saying that they're going to cut back anywhere between, it looks
like about 15 and 35, 34, 35 percent on the number of flights on New Year's Eve. They say
because not enough people are flying.
Okay.
Do I buy that?
Well, I don't know.
I don't think so.
Not fully.
In other words, do I think some of it is Y2K related?
Yep.
And I also don't, now it may be true generally that people don't fly at the New Year.
That's what they're saying.
I'm not sure whether that is true or not.
I don't recall hearing it before, because in Las Vegas, normally at the New Year's, you absolutely cannot get an airplane to Las Vegas, and if you want to get a room, lots of luck.
But I'll tell you what I'm hearing, and it's not just about Las Vegas, but the following is true in Las Vegas.
They were talking about 800,000 people going to Las Vegas.
800,000 is what they expected.
Another figure bandied about for the longest time.
You know, big celebration.
Well, now they are drastically revising downward the number of people they think are going to show up in Las Vegas to greet the new millennium, as they are revising downward numbers all across the nation.
Turns out people want to stay home.
Now, What do you think it is people might sense that has them all staying home?
Well, they're just family types, right?
I don't know.
Bye.
We're going to have to sift through, somehow, if we can do it, the propaganda and the reality as the reports come in.
And there's going to be a lot to sort through.
You should see all the stuff people are sending me.
About suddenly worry about telephone systems being out.
Telephone companies talking about mission failures, the possibility of mission failures.
Now, what does a mission failure mean?
Well, in the military, you have a mission.
You get that in orders, an objective, something you are to do, or a place you are to go, or whatever.
That's a mission.
I mean, it's a basic thing.
It's like Sea Crane Company sells radios, right?
It is their mission.
And they could write off a mission statement.
So that's what a mission is, my friend.
And if your mission fails, then your main reason for existing in the world is failing.
Now again, I'm not, mind you, saying that that's going to be the case.
that uh... there is going to be that kind of uh... of failure with phone
systems but they are suggesting now it is at the very least possible
so and then people out buying a lot of water and doing all the
things they should have been doing a long time ago
A lot of that going on now, too.
And I guess that kind of sums up the beginning.
Is it the beginning of just a few glitches or could it be the beginning of the end
you're listening to arkbell somewhere in time on premiere radio networks
tonight on the presentation of coast to coast a m from december twenty ninth
nineteen ninety nine the
the the
I'm just a light up the hall.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time.
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from December 29th, 1999.
Top of the morning, I realize I'm subjecting you to my hang-ups.
I'm hung up on this song, you know?
When I was recording all the music I was going to play leading up to the Millennium, this was a song that just came out of left field that I had never heard before.
I don't know why, but I had never heard it, and so it hit me like a new song, and I just fell in love with it.
So I play it.
Until my ears bleed.
I'm that way about songs.
Again and again, and the more the better.
You know, until somehow you rid yourself of the bug that has been planted.
I guess I better not talk about bugs, huh?
In your brain.
Whatever it is that's planted in your brain that makes you listen to it again and again.
that would be worth a whole show one day well the phone companies plural we now have many since
breakup of mob l Bless her memory.
Boy, I miss Ma Bell.
Anyway, the phone companies, some of them are now suggesting they may have a problem, and they're worried about everybody, all of you out there, picking up the telephone at the same time, right at midnight.
And they say if everybody picks it up, well, they can't handle it.
And so, maybe you won't get a dial tone or, you know, whatever.
Then in some cases, I'm getting stories here about various phone companies that aren't so sure they're going to be around.
One in Missouri here.
Here's an article entitled, Don't Call.
Don't call Missouri after December 31st, 1999.
We probably won't answer.
And it's somebody, Richard, in Marshfield, Missouri, who did a little research in his area on how Y2K may affect him.
And he says, it doesn't look so good for the phone system there, and probably the electric system, and gives me a couple of references.
A check, he says, on Missouri's Y2K website found that telecommunications are likely to fail on New Year's Eve.
Maybe we'll get that up.
Maybe we'll get that link up.
A similar check of the Public Utilities webpage shows that out of 1,200 electric providers in Missouri, only 657 have responded to a survey sent out by the Public Service Commission.
A survey?
Are you ready?
Well, we're not answering.
It's up to us, I imagine, to imagine, try to imagine, what that means if they're not answering the survey.
Could well be the CEO just said, Hell, we're ready.
Throw that away.
Not answer the survey.
I don't know.
I have a feeling we're all about to find out.
I went on a search for Big Ben.
I had to have the sound of Big Ben.
Everything less than Big Ben sounds like child's play.
There's a thing about Big Ben.
There's nothing like Big Ben in the world.
So I went on a search for Big Ben.
My network in Oregon searched.
The network in Los Angeles searched.
Nobody had Big Ben.
I said, oh man, they came up with a bunch of bells that sounded like your grandmother's clock.
And they looked.
They came up with about four or five choices.
All of them were either grandma's clock or something a little short of.
And they tried as they might.
They couldn't find Big Ben.
So I looked up Big Ben on the web.
And I found Big Ben on the web.
I just went to a search engine and I entered Big Ben Sound.
And I found it.
So I sent it up to them.
And they put it together from being one gong to being a nice dramatic series of gongs that I thought I would use on New Year's Eve.
And I will use it.
I mean, you've got to admit, that's a gong.
Right?
It's not your grandmother's clock.
That's a real Gotcha gone.
I mean, listen to that sucker reverberate.
It just keeps going.
That's Big Ben.
There's no other sound like that.
Now, in preparing that, the network made a second version, which I don't think they meant to have it aired.
And I certainly would not air it on New Year's Eve, because it would freak people out.
But I'm going to play it for you now.
The following...
What you are about to hear in no way represents reality of any kind.
Do you hear me?
This is an announcement.
This is a disclaimer.
What you are about to hear represents no reality at all, other than that in the mind of the technician up in Medford, Oregon, who put it together.
But I really couldn't resist playing it for you.
So I'm going to.
This does not reflect reality.
This comes out of the mind of a technician.
Listen carefully.
Very carefully, as a matter of fact.
Here we go.
There are a few added little goodies here.
Ha ha ha! I think that's a machine gun you're hearing.
It's a machine gun.
The end.
you Oh
Maybe looting?
I thought that was looting there.
Sounds like artillery.
Oh my god, what was that?
F-16, maybe?
Explosions?
An alarm going off?
Definite machine gun fire.
Lasers?
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
On stun, I hope.
And then the melting... the melting of the chips.
The final sound is the melting of chips.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
So that's what they put together at the network.
I wouldn't dare play that on New Year's Eve.
But I thought I'd play it for you anyway.
That's the only way it's ever going to hit air.
But it was funny.
Straight out of the mind of a technician.
Alright, let's go to the phones.
Jack Anderson here at the top of the hour.
What's for the Rockies?
You're on the air.
Hello.
Hello there, Art.
Oh, it's Fritz.
How are you doing, Fritz?
It sounds like the aliens are landing.
Anyhow, in December, you know, every time you hear the Star of Bethlehem, there's a discussion going on.
Articles are written.
Of course, mainstream science always try to explain it away.
They're looking way out in the cosmos, and yet the answer's right in the backyard.
But screaming and kicking, we're going to get him in.
But, uh, you heard the scenario that a thousand times they said, why don't they land on the White House lawn, right?
Right?
Yeah, I've been giving that some thought, Fritz, but go ahead.
Why don't they fly over the Super Bowl or hover over the Super Bowl?
But my inversion, my speculation is it won't happen that way.
They're gonna go to the cradle of civilization, the Middle East and the star of Bethlehem.
The scenario will be repeated.
It's like a wake-up call.
What makes you think they won't land and be taken directly to Saddam Hussein?
No, no, no, no.
No, I'm serious now.
You said the cradle.
That is the cradle of civilization.
Well, that's the civilized spot is Bethlehem, Jerusalem, that area.
Well, that's a Christian center.
But a lot of people argue that Saddam's homeland is really the center of the cradle of civilization.
But when the scenario should replay, and I hope it will, there will be so much attention given.
All the jets will fly around the Israeli jets.
Imagine the Staff Battalion reappearing in the same spot, like 2,000 years ago, and shining a light down.
I mean, nobody be thinking about shooting at it, because it's a symbolism of Fritz, my friend, you've got a great heart.
I know you've got a great heart, but it wouldn't work out that way, Fritz.
It's a wake-up call.
That doesn't mean they're going to land.
It's just as simple.
It's just spoon-feeding again.
There'd be people out there, Fritz, shooting at them so fast your head would spin.
There was a story, I appreciate it, earlier today about one hunter who killed another while he was trying to kill a deer.
That was just a mistake.
If aliens landed, first of all, obviously, why land at the White House, right?
Can you imagine if aliens landed in Baghdad?
They'd be taken to Saddam Hussein Underground somewhere and he'd say, boy, have I got a deal for you.
Now, Fritz has a good heart, but most people would view them as enemies if they landed here for sure.
And the lead would fly.
I've said it a million times.
A little gray or green guy walking down the ramp wouldn't last ten seconds.
He'd be way more in lead than he did in alien body herbs or whatever unit of measurement they have.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hi.
Let me extinguish my radio.
Thank you.
I like an alert caller.
Yeah.
Aloha Art?
Yes.
From Maui?
Maui.
Ah.
How are ya?
I'm fine.
Paradise.
Maui Paradise.
Ah, yes.
The islands.
Endless, endless paradise.
Every day.
Temperatures the same.
I can't take it!
We gotta tell Fritz that they're gonna land in Haleakala Crater when I'm camping.
I'll come out in my skivvies and they'll be standing there taking pictures of me.
Well, that'll blow up for the human race, won't it?
Well, it'll blow up for me anyway.
I'll probably lose it right there.
These people, all of them, deserve to die.
Rise and push the button.
You had a repeat of a guest on two nights ago.
I think it was the gentleman who spoke at one point where the nuclear strikes would first hit.
Oh, yes.
And I was sitting here listening and it was a replay.
Probably Joel Skousen.
Yes, that was him.
And I think the second place that he mentioned was Maui.
Because of the supercomputer and the tracking station.
And that really made my night.
Well, on Maui, just out of curiosity, when the nuclear missiles are coming, where does one go?
One goes straight to the beach and immediately assumes the lounge position.
Yeah, right.
I appreciate your call, sir.
All right.
Aloha and have a great New Year's.
Very same to you.
That's right.
I live for a period of time on Maui, and it is truly paradise.
I mean, it's the most beautiful place with exotic flowers everywhere and perfect temperatures and white beaches.
That's when I was there.
But you know what?
I found that after about six months, that's how long I was there, exotic flowers and beautiful beaches This was before Maui had built up a lot.
It's built up a lot since.
And after a while, you couldn't take it anymore.
One more beautiful beach day and I'll throw up!
It's for some people, but every day, just paradise.
It's actually something that a lot of human beings can't take.
They've got to have a little misery, a little snow.
Man, let's have a northerner come in.
Kick the heck out of him.
Now that's weather.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hello, Art.
This is Kurt in Maryland.
Hi, Kurt.
How are you doing tonight?
All right.
Fantastic.
I've got a little bit of quickening news for you from the East Coast and a truck driver story.
Okay.
Real quick.
First, the quickening news.
I've been noticing the gentleman you have on the air that talks about the contrails and the chemtrails.
Oh, yes.
I've been noticing a lot of bright green.
Neon green and neon purple in the clouds around contrails when the sun hits them just right.
Now that's nothing you'd want.
No, that doesn't sound very good.
What do you think it is?
Well, I'm not, you know, a chemist or anything, but I do know enough to know that there's some kind of, if you put fire to copper, it makes green and so forth.
So there must be something there with the light, with some kind of a chemical.
That would be my guess.
Well, that sure is what a lot of people suspect.
And I'll tell you this, there's a lot of other people out there, and I'm not sure there's any cause for this, who connect the always annual flu outbreak, which we're right in the middle of right now, big time, to the spraying.
Well, I don't think I buy that.
We have a flu outbreak every year.
Well, this has been very noticeable up and down the I-95 corridor in most of the states.
And also, I delivered a load of electrical test equipment to a certain power company, I guess to remain nameless.
The lady in the main office I know very well as a friend... Excuse me, you delivered a load of what?
Power test equipment that they use to test the... Oh yes.
The big... Yes.
Pole... Gotcha.
Right.
I don't know.
I was talking to her and there was another lady that I didn't know that was like a temporary
employee and I asked her what the deal was.
She said, well she's been here for the last six months working on Y2K stuff.
I said, well what do you all think about this Y2K thing?
I was in an office of about 20 people with open cubicles and it was just like the E.F.
Hutton commercial.
When E.F. Hutton speaks, everyone listens.
Even the birds quit singing on the commercial.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's basically the atmosphere in the room for a good solid ten seconds.
You mean everybody in the room heard it?
Everybody in the room heard me ask the question, and then everybody sees what they were doing.
Oh really?
And the answer was?
And the answer was, which was the best answer I've had to date about Y2K, and it's something I agree very much with.
And that is, anybody tries to tell you it's definitely not going to be anything at all is wrong.
Anybody that tries to say it's going to be the end of the world is probably wrong, too.
It's somewhere in the middle.
And nobody knows for sure.
Yeah, that's my take on it, too.
I have no idea what's going to happen.
Now, this, I'm calling it a precursor event in Great Britain that got vastly underreported, is, I think, A kind of an interesting indicator, don't you?
Oh, definitely.
This early?
Definitely.
And, you know, I'm just... I've always been the one that said that I was born 150 years too late anyway, so if we go back to the colonial days, more power to us.
I think it's something... I think this, you know, the people that... I don't want to do that.
Look, I have so many high-tech toys that I enjoy playing with, that if this happens, life is... it's over for me.
Well, we live in the country.
We're pretty basic here at the house.
And we always have been.
We live off the farm, off farm animals.
Well, then you're going to do fine.
Me, I'm doomed.
I'm telling you.
I've got satellite gear.
I've got weather satellite gear.
I've got everything you can imagine.
You know, toys that you could want to have if you're into electronics.
And every one of them are no doubt threatened.
It would be the end of life as I know it.
Well, the one thing I could hardly stand would be that I wouldn't be able to I watched the real-time video of you doing your thing there at the station, at the house.
I wouldn't be able to see that, I guess, without pedaling the generator a little bit.
Or turning the crank, as you say.
Well, I tell you, I've got some interesting news for you.
What?
Listen to me.
Okay.
Listen to me.
The video that you're watching, that will in fact end I'm led to understood at midnight on December 31st.
In other words, two days from now, it's all over.
So we'll get to see a little bit.
Well, Gordon won't be live.
He'll be on the phone, right?
He'll be on the phone, yes.
Well, my wife and I will both definitely be listening to the whole show that night.
All right.
And also, one other thing, Art.
Yes?
I'm in the process of putting together, writing my own book.
I've had 18 years over the road, tractor trailer experience.
What are you going to call it?
Well, the title's up in the air right now.
I've got a couple of different beginnings, a couple of different endings, and I'm working on the middle.
How about on the road again?
That would be good.
I gotta go.
Thanks a lot, Art, and keep up the great work.
Good night.
Jack Anderson, coming right up.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from December 29th, 1999.
This is a clip from the first season of the show.
This is a clip from the first season of the show.
you the
the the
Tonight's program originally aired December 29th, 1997.
It's time to meet a legend.
Jack Anderson, columnist Jack Anderson, is here.
And this is going to be a really, really, really interesting night.
Somebody in the Reagan administration conducted a survey, and they were asking about the credibility and trustworthiness of journalists.
And in that survey, Jack Anderson came out just ahead of Walter Cronkite, really, really trusted.
Not exactly loved by everybody, but trusted.
Let's see what a few people have said.
J. Edgar Hoover said, uh, Jack Anderson is lower than the regurgitated filth of vultures.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Geez, I've worried about the press I've had.
The regurgitated filth of vultures.
Ooh!
From the FBI director.
New York Times said that few reporters ever go from writing news to being news, and certainly no reporter has made the passage more conspicuously than Jack Anderson.
Newsweek said Jack Anderson has mercilessly catapulted half a dozen national figures to their ruin.
Time Magazine said no laws have been passed or policies changed because of Jack Anderson's columns, but a number of former incumbents are now retired because of him.
He spread a not unhealthy apprehension throughout Washington.
George Bush said sometimes I'd get furious with him.
It was a strange thing with a very pleasant personal relationship.
I think Jack was very much misunderstood because of the power of his inquiry.
And it goes on and on and on.
Bob Woodward, the Washington Post said Anderson, was frequently a target of White House efforts to discredit him And locate his sources, according to information made public during the various Watergate investigations.
And of course, during one poignant moment in the Watergate investigations, Jack thought he was going to be the actual target of assassination for his reporting.
so he is a legend and he'll be here in the moment jack anderson
has been writing for the uh... column at washington merry-go-round since nineteen
forty seven and seventy three one a polluter prize for exposing richard
nixon's lies about the u s tilt in the India-Pakistan War.
His columns were syndicated by a thousand newspapers nationwide, he had a national talk radio program, and on and on and on and on.
He's a legend, really.
He's old enough that he has become a legend in his own time.
That's pretty unusual, Jack.
Legend in your own time.
I listen to the Build Up With Grateful Embarrassment, but I've heard just as terrible things about you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yes, it's a strange thing.
You step on the toes of a man like J. Edgar Hoover, and at the time that I trampled on his toes, he was God.
He was deity.
He was not human.
At the time that I trampled on his toes, he was God, he was deity.
He was not human, he was the most powerful person in Washington.
I was flying with Hale Boggs, he was the Democratic House leader.
We were just sharing seats on an airplane and we got on the subject of Hoover and he
said that Hoover has so much in his files on everybody that no one dares to criticize
That's a true story.
Yeah.
And when I got back to the office from that flight, I called my staff together, and I
said, I understand that if we write anything derogatory about J. Edgar Hoover, we'll be
destroyed.
I think we're going to have to find out whether that's true, whether the top cop in America is that powerful.
I said, the way we're going to do it.
We're going to do a burlesque of an FBI investigation.
We're going to do an FBI investigation of J. Edgar Hoover.
I had my reporters follow him wherever he went.
I had them interview his neighbors to find out what kind of neighbor he was.
And I did a garbage profile.
You went through his garbage?
We went through his garbage.
We found in his garbage cart an empty jelly cell carton and some menus in his own handwriting
That made me sick to my stomach and so we concluded that he was suffering from gas pains
And we I didn't call him saying he was suffering from gas pains
Yes, God do not have gas pains and this brought him down I think better than anything that has ever been written
from his deity status Because you said he had gas pains. Yeah
We concluded that from studying his garbage Ha ha ha ha!
Well, that's a pretty tentative first stab.
What was the immediate reaction?
What did he do?
He very foolishly responded to it.
He would have been wiser to keep his mouth shut, to keep quiet and to ignore it.
He blasted me and referred to the story.
And he went after my reporters.
The reporter who was following him, I won't name him right now because it's a little embarrassing to him, I think.
The FBI came to his door, took pictures of him, caught him with flash bulbs and harassed him and he finally gave up and left.
He quit.
He took a less turbulent job.
What year was that?
Oh boy, I'm bad on years.
I don't remember.
It was near the end of his term.
It was the beginning of the end for him.
I got away with criticizing, with condemning, with denouncing J. Edgar Hoover and I found out a number of other things following him around.
I discovered that he had, for example, five bulletproof limousines and that he would, in spite of the fact that he was riding in a bulletproof limousine, he would duck down and prop his head up at the other end.
I concluded that he was also like the Wizard of Oz.
Maybe he had reason to be doing that.
In other words, maybe he knew that He'd be killed given the first real opportunity.
Well, he was afraid of that.
Let me say this, Art, because I didn't mean to jump on poor the late J. Edgar.
Yes, you did.
Well, I did and I did.
Art, he started out to be a great man.
He took a bunch of misfits and welded them into the most He's a formidable law enforcement agency in our government and probably in the world.
He deserves great credit for that, but he went too far.
My first tangle with him, Art, was over the Mafia.
He said there was no Mafia.
He denied that it existed.
I had evidence that it did exist.
I went out to prove it, and I talked to, I think, over half of the Mafia Godfathers.
I met them in their lair.
May I ask you this?
Why would he say there is no Mafia?
Why would he even say that?
Well, I believe people have written since I exposed the fact that there was a Mafia, and my stories were picked up by The late Estes Kefauver, Senator from Tennessee, who conducted a Senate hearing based on why he called me and said, Can you prove this?
I said, No, but you can, because you got the subpoena.
Why don't you do it?
And he did it.
And he proved once and for all there was a mafia.
J. Edgar Hoover was caught with bubble gum all over his face.
Yeah, but again, again, Jack.
People, well, people, people wrote that He was... It sold out to the Mafia.
I don't believe that.
I don't think he sold out to the Mafia.
Then what reason can you think he would say there is no Mafia?
I am convinced that he just felt that he could not tackle the Mafia.
The Mafia was too... Too much?
Too tough for him.
And he knew that if he admitted that there was a Mafia, that Congress would vote him money and tell him to investigate it and to break it up.
And he didn't think he could do it.
Do you think that if he, well of course if he admitted there was a mafia, then it would be incumbent on him to be going after it really hard, because that would be his job, right?
That was his job, and he didn't feel that he could do it.
Maybe he thought the mafia would kill him.
He may have thought that, but the real problem was the Narcotics Bureau, that's what it was called in those days, was headed by a guy named Harry Amsler.
He was more The bulldog that J. Edgar Hoover pretended to be.
His guys did infiltrate the Mafia, some of them, and he told me contemptuously that Hoover's idea of sending the FBI into the Mafia would be to take off their ties.
Would you think they had an understanding with the Mafia?
He's been accused of that.
I don't believe it.
I don't think.
There are a lot of terrible stories that have been written about him, even that he was a cross-dresser.
I don't believe it.
You don't believe that story?
I do not believe it, and I am the one who did the original investigation of J. Edgar Hoover.
I'm the one that took him down a notch.
I'm the one that reduced him from deity status to human status, and I think I would know.
I don't know why some of the people who hated J. Edgar Hoover feel that they have to go to those lengths to destroy him.
Well, that's a pretty widely circulated belief.
I don't believe it.
What I did find out was that he spent all his spare time with Clyde Tolson, his number one man, his right hand power.
I found out that Because we were following him around.
Business time or social time?
Business and social.
We found out because we were following him that Clyde Tolson lived in an apartment and J. Edgar Hoover lived in a home.
Every other night they would have dinner with each other at first the apartment, then the home, then the apartment, then the home.
They had lunch every day at 11.30.
At the Mayflower Hotel, same place, same table, same food, basically.
They went on vacations together.
And this led to the rumors that there was a homosexual relationship between them.
But you don't buy that?
Oh, I think it's possible.
I couldn't prove it.
But you're saying you think he might have been gay?
I think he might have been gay.
I think there's a real possibility that he was.
But I do not believe that he would have cross-dressed.
He was so conscious of his image.
He stuck that bulldog jaw out for the public to see.
He didn't want them to see anything else.
And even in the privacy of his home, he wouldn't dare have dressed Like a woman, he would be afraid of being caught.
Well, you know, in my way of thinking, I don't know about the cross-dressing, but if he was gay, so what?
If he did his job... So what, Art, is that he was denouncing gays.
Oh, that's a problem.
So, hypocrisy.
Yeah, if you're going to denounce gays, it's best not to be.
Yeah, that's definitely true.
That's definitely true.
But you still maintain, all in all, he built an agency that America was proud of.
There is no question about it.
We owe him our gratitude for that.
And we can be doggone glad we stopped him when we did.
Well, what was it specifically that caused him to say you were Lower than regurgitated filth of vultures.
Now that's pretty bad.
That's pretty bad.
I think it was getting into his garbage.
When Nixon came under fire, he sent his counsel.
You don't remember his name, Mark.
Are you talking about Magruder?
No, not Magruder.
The one who defected.
Oh, John Dean.
Yeah, John Dean.
He sent John Dean over to the FBI to ask Hoover for the file on Jack Anderson.
And Hoover said, and John Dean tells this story in his book, that Hoover responded, I'll be glad to give you the file on Jack Anderson because he is lower than dog crap.
Let me explain what I mean by that.
I have a puppy dog whose bowels are not under control.
he said let me explain who worked at let me explain well i mean by that ok
i have a puppy dog
uh...
whose bowels are not under control and i have to uh... i have to keep her head to clean it up
put it in the garbage and jack anderson went through that garbage
and that proves that he's lower than dog crap uh...
But you know, isn't that exactly what the FBI did when it investigated people that go through the trash, right?
Well, that's why I did it.
That's what I told my staff.
Let's do unto Hoover what Hoover does unto others.
And let's burlesque it, because if we can get people laughing at him, We might survive.
You can survive and you might not, too.
They tell me he can destroy us.
We're going to have to find out whether that's true, I said.
How old were you then, Jack, roughly?
Well, I was young enough to be older than I probably would be today.
I've got old and decrepit and I've got Parkinson's.
I just got back from the hospital where I had an operation.
I have a poor specimen today.
You stayed a lot longer than you planned to stay, didn't you?
Yeah.
I guess I would have been about 30 years old then.
Yeah, that's about the time.
You're young enough.
You're foolish enough.
In retrospect, boy, I'll tell you, I don't know whether I would have done that.
I mean, you had to worry that somebody in the middle of the night was going to show up and you were going to end up out of windows or something like that.
Well, we had Nixon's aide, G. Gordon Liddy, who... That's just some story.
He was in the recruiter's office attending a staff meeting.
Jack, hold this story.
It's too good.
We're at the bottom of the hour.
Let me take the break and we'll be right back.
Really good story.
You're gonna like this.
Ah, good morning everybody!
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from December 29th, 1999.
Why aren't you done?
Watching back up Till you return
Signing that score And watching it burn
Now it begins Day after day
This is my life Taking away
Moon river Wider than a mile
I'm crossing you in style Someday
Oh dream maker You heart breaker
Wherever you're going I'm going your way
Two drifters off to see the world There's such a lot of world to see We're after the same rainbow's end Waiting round the bend You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from December 29th, 1999.
Yes, indeed.
My guest is Jack Anderson, the columnist Jack Anderson, the troublemaker Jack Anderson.
It's a real honor to have him here.
He'll be right back.
This is a part of the song that I like.
Isn't that nice?
anyhow will be right back i cannot resist this and therefore i'm going to read it
It's in the prologue to Jack's book, which is called, by the way, Peace, War, and Politics, an eyewitness account.
I gotta read a little of this, I just have to.
I looked up from my desk.
One day in December of 71 was confronted by the ashen face of Jeb Stuart Magruder, special assistant to President Nixon.
It was not often that any of this president's men darkened my doorway.
This is Jack speaking.
Magruder fidgeted a moment and then in measured words explained his mission.
He'd come about a possible misunderstanding at the White House.
Gordon Liddy, now a talk show host, one of the notorious White House plumbers, might be under the mistaken impression that Richard Nixon wanted me, Jack Anderson, dead.
Magruder explained that he had complained at a staff meeting about some columns that I had written that were somewhat embarrassing to the President.
Unappreciative White House reviews were common enough in those days, but following this particular review session, Magruder Had added, quote, listen to this now, the president sure would like to get rid of that guy, end quote.
Liddy at that point had abruptly stood up and walked out of the meeting.
Now, Magruder thought nothing of the characteristic Liddy exit.
No explanations, no goodbyes.
That's Liddy, all right.
But moments later, his assistant, Bob Reisner, rushed breathlessly into the office with a look of humor on his face and said, Did you tell Liddy to kill Jack Anderson?
Reisner blurted out, Liddy, Liddy just walked by my desk and said you told him to rub out Jack Anderson, rub out Jack Anderson.
My God, Magruder gasped, get him back in here.
So they stopped Liddy before he got out of the building and Magruder told him that, quote, get rid of had simply been a figure of speech.
Liddy sniffed with contempt.
Where I come from, he said, that means a rub-out.
With Liddy, it was best to be specific.
Is that surreal, huh?
I was amazed to see Magruder.
The White House staff people have been ordered to keep away from me.
As you said, I was always in trouble.
At least I tried to be.
I worked at it and had some success at keeping in trouble.
And Magruder told me this story.
The way I protected myself, frankly, would be to go to another government agency that didn't like the White House and get them to conduct an investigation of the White House.
So I went up on the hill and I got Frank Church, a Democratic Senator from Idaho, to conduct
an investigation of G. Gordon Liddy.
He brought witnesses in, took some more testimony, found that G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt,
these are the two guys that were in the White House basement, they had a sign on their wall
with my name on their wall to inspire them on against the foe in their basement hideout.
And according to Frank Church's investigation, they had gone to a CIA doctor by the name of Edward Gunn.
That's a great name.
Edward Gunn.
Edward Gunn.
Spelled with two N's.
And asked him for exotic poisons to use against him.
He said, what do you want these poisons for?
Jack Anderson.
He happily refused to give them to him.
They came right out and they said?
This is a matter of sworn testimony before Frank Church's committee.
I persuaded him to come to my aid.
He had Liddy and Howard Hunt before them.
He questioned them.
They said that they just wanted to make me look foolish.
They didn't want to kill me.
Jack, what inspired you to play such dangerous games?
Look, they were dangerous games.
Let's not make any mistake about it.
You're right about that.
They are very dangerous games.
The people will do for power.
They won't even do for money.
That's right.
Well, the stories I was writing affected people in power.
It determined whether they stayed in power or didn't stay in power.
Yeah, power is more important than money, isn't it?
Because people... Nixon had every government agency on my tail, everyone that had a law enforcement They're following me two blocks behind wherever I went.
I mean literally following me.
Did they use the IRS?
Let me tell you a sad story.
They cracked down on my income tax returns.
My accountant said, don't worry about it.
They will determine in 48 hours that your returns are clear.
They're very simple.
I've taken good care of them, don't worry.
Six years later, they were still investigating me.
They were looking for dirt, and believe it or not, they forged a tax return in my name.
I cannot prove that this was done by the top people.
It may have been done by anybody inside the IRS.
They forged a phony tax return.
And use that to crack down on my bank accounts, to start closing my bank accounts, and start putting me out of business.
Fortunately, I had a source inside of Internal Revenue.
He came up with the forged return, and I waved this under the noses of the Internal Revenue people, and they dropped their investigation in a big hurry.
You're telling me they forged your signature on a tax return?
They forged my signature at the top of my return on somebody else's corrupt return and used that forgery to crack down on me and try to put me out of business.
The FBI at one point subpoenaed all my telephone records.
I went to court.
I fought back.
I went to court.
John Sirica, the Watergate judge, was the judge in court.
I remember him, yes.
He was a pretty good guy.
He asked the FBI representative, how many copies of the Anderson material do you have?
He said, well, we have one in every FBI office.
Well, he said, I want you to gather them up and bring them in today.
And they said, we can't do that.
The law forbids us from tampering with FBI files.
He pounded his rostrum and said, if you don't have them here by next Tuesday, you're going to find out what the law is.
And they brought them in.
I won most of those fights, but those were Those were tough times.
The CIA in violation of law.
You see, the CIA is forbidden by law to conduct the investigations inside the United States.
They had me under surveillance.
All I had were my kids.
Jack, I have a question.
They were tapping your phone, and they had court orders to tap your phone, in order to We're trying to find out where I was getting my information.
They were trying to put me out of business and scare off my sources and plant phony stories.
I would get phony CIA documents shoved under my door.
I would take these documents to my sources.
Disinformation trying to catch you, right?
Yeah, they did.
I got my kids.
I have nine children.
We've had children by every form of birth control.
These kids, I told them, go on out and look for two men in the cars, two men with walkie-talkies.
They spotted them.
I eventually got from my sources the surveillance reports.
They were called Operation Mud Hen.
I was the Mud Hen.
Operation Mud Hen.
Mud Hen?
Mud Hen.
M-U-D-H-E-N.
I'm the Mud Hen.
I got these reports and I've lost all confidence in the CIA as a result of the reports.
Let me give you an example.
One of the reports that I remember.
Unidentified female, my daughter, unidentified female approached vehicle from rear, see diagram number one.
She circled vehicle, see diagram number two.
She pulled out a camera and took picture of occupants of vehicle, see diagram number three.
They had this diagram.
It was embarrassing.
They were so inept that my kids Outspied the CIA.
Now that was a CIA report, right?
That's a CIA report.
You actually got it in your hands?
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
In my hand.
I couldn't hold them all.
I had about a... But you just pointed out yourself, Jack.
It's not legal.
It's not legal.
I had a two-foot stack of surveillance reports from the FBI.
One of them was... They were following me when I had Lunch with the CIA Director.
Richard Helms had lunch with him at a hotel in Washington.
And there's big discussion in the CIA papers about, what are we going to do?
Can we spy on our own boss?
And they resolved it by not eavesdropping on our conversation, but taking a table about three or four tables down so they could watch
they watched it but they turned off the
uh... these dropping the change while i was sitting with
the director of the cdc that's uh... that's
if that implies there is movement within the cia uh... not directed by the director
uh... the director obviously didn't know about it because they're arguing
there they're debating and then uh... an exchange of memos
whether they should go ahead with the surveillance because they had just
discovered that by luncheon date that day was going to be the head of the cia
uh... this Thank you.
This is unbelievable.
What I went through was... Well, when I grew up, I was brought up to believe I'm going to tell you something.
I still do.
I still believe that in spite of all that they did to me, in spite of the scandals that I've uncovered, in spite of the way they've resisted them, I don't see myself as an alienated critic.
I see myself as part of the process.
Because I've been in other countries, and I've seen how other governments work.
Yeah, me too.
And ours works best.
Yeah, there's no question about it.
And they permit you and me to talk the way we're talking, and to do what you do, and to do what I do.
So far.
Yeah, so far.
You think that's going to continue?
Are you concerned about that?
In other words, yeah, you got away with it, sort of, kind of.
You're still alive, anyway.
I got away with it.
I am concerned about it.
The time has come for me, at age 77, to hand over the baton to the next generation, I guess.
We owe it to our children to pass it on to them intact.
Who are you handing it to, John?
Well, we pass it on to our children.
This priceless American heritage.
No, but I mean your role.
Who's doing your role today?
Oh, a guy named Doug Cohn.
Doug Cohn?
Doug Cohn is my partner.
Doug Cohn does the column with me.
He believes in the same things that I do.
We don't agree on everything.
We have some serious disagreements.
I'll tell you the truth, Art.
I'm concerned about the kids.
This priceless American inheritance that many Americans have left to the schools to provide.
The surveys show that the schools have failed us.
I have established at Utah State University the School of the Future because I'm so concerned about what they're teaching in school.
They have banished God from the classrooms.
Oh, I know.
They have defamed and diminished American heroes.
They have focused on the dark side of our history.
Not surprisingly, the kids lack a real appreciation for the land of the free.
Surveys show that most of them don't understand the history and the traditions of their country.
It's because they don't travel.
You know, if they traveled, if they went to some of these other countries, I've been around the world, I know you have, then they'd know.
I thought it would be a good investment for the government to buy a ticket, you know, round trip, one time only, for somebody who turns 21 years of age to some third world country somewhere.
So I get a good look at the way it happens elsewhere.
Oh yeah.
Be a good investment.
Serve time in the Peace Corps.
Get overseas.
Because what the kids do not understand, they cannot value.
What they don't value, they won't likely defend.
And what they won't defend, they will lose.
They will lose.
And you ask me whether I'm concerned?
Yes, I am concerned.
On their behalf.
I've got all these kids and grandkids, and I'm worried about what's going to happen to them.
The news, to many of us, Jack, seems really managed.
You know, the major networks, CNN even, all of it seems rather managed.
Maybe it's always been managed.
Well, not so much managed as... Selected?
Reporters travel in packs, and they see things From the same perspective, the people who cover Capitol Hill here, you see them going up and down the corridors of the Capitol, slapping backs and shaking hands and behaving like congressmen.
You're telling me they're part of the club?
Yeah, they get up on Mount Olympus and they breathe the heady air up there.
And they look down upon the people below, and they see the people below you and I, and the people that you and I represent.
They see them through the eyes of the political elite up on the mountaintop.
The correspondents who cover the State Department, first thing you know, they're wearing tweed jackets and puffing on pipes.
I do believe.
I don't think it's... I don't think that they're managing the news, but the effect is the same.
It's not with malice, it's just with what they have become.
And that process does not take very long, does it?
No, because they want to fool one another.
You've got to go... Do you ever get here in Washington?
Come to Washington, attend a press conference, and you'll go home.
At these press conferences, they try to impress one another.
Hold on, Jack.
We're going to take a break here.
We'll be right back.
Jack Anderson is my guest, and he's toning like it is, so you might want to listen.
you're listening to our bill somewhere in time tonight featuring a replay of coast to coast a m from december
twenty ninth nineteen ninety nine
called pretty
Though I smiled, the tears inside were a-burning.
I wished him luck and then he said goodbye.
He was gone but still his words kept returning What else was there for me to do but cry?
Would you believe that yesterday This girl was in my arms and swore to me
She'd be mine eternally And the reason is I'm plain as plain
Though I smile the tears inside were a-burning I wish tomorrow would be...
Sweet dreams are made of the end Who am I to disagree?
I travel the world and the seven seas Everybody's looking for something
Some of them want to use you Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you Some of them want to be abused
Sweet dreams are made of the end Who am I to disagree?
The troubles of world and the...
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from December 29th, 1999.
And we're about to open the phone lines for Jack Anderson, an absolute American legend.
Good morning.
Stay right where you are.
There is more to come.
Okay, once again, here is Jack Anderson.
You holding up alright, Jack?
Yeah, sure.
I'm enjoying this.
I'll probably sleep the next two days.
This is great.
Before we leave, Winchell, Winchell got into like a blood feud with Hearst.
Yeah.
I don't know much about it, Art, except listening to Winchell.
but first then sort of one broken uh... it was a high level of what you're part
of the art except uh...
listening to what you're up which all had such a massive ego
uh... i was struck by uh... is
because his concept where not realistic He didn't talk reality.
He talked Winchelality.
Well, he did take off after the Nazis early.
He did that, and Drew joined him.
They worked together on that project.
They actually worked together to help build up J. Edgar Hoover during those days.
Drew finally turned against Hoover, not openly so much as I did, but after Drew died.
And Winchell stuck by Hoover to the end.
He praised Hoover to the end.
But during the Nazi, during World War II, the two of them joined in promoting Hoover and building him up and supporting him, and they were right in doing it.
I agreed with what they did.
How did this begin for you?
I should have really asked that way back in the beginning of the interview.
How did you get to be doing what you did?
I got started when I was 12 years old writing.
I grew up in Utah.
The Deseret News, which is a Salt Lake City paper, Start at the Boy Scout page.
I became the editor of it at age 12.
Then I went to work during the summer for a weekly newspaper south of Salt Lake City in a place called Murray, Utah.
I wrote for the Murray Eagle.
I was 12 years old.
I had learned through the Boy Scouts at the Desert News how to write a story.
I pedaled around on my bicycle covering police and fire and other events in Murray, Utah.
One day, on the road, Far Down Avenue it was called, the road I lived on, a narrow bridge,
and a buddy of mine riding his bicycle hit the bridge at the same time that an automobile
did.
There wasn't room for both of them.
He was knocked over into the creek, badly injured, and I wrote an impignant, scalding
piece denouncing this bridge.
And I got a letter from the county commissioner saying, Dear Mr. Anderson, I was 12 years old.
That impressed me.
And he said in the letter, Thank you for calling to our attention this hazardous bridge.
We will take care of it immediately.
They came and they enlarged the bridge.
And I decided this is the work for me.
Alright, I began about 12-2 with radio.
Very early, I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and you obviously did as well.
What kind of radio did you do?
You know, it's really funny that you should bring that up, because what started me in radio is something you took a shot at one time.
Oh?
Yeah, that's right.
At 12, I became a ham operator.
I took a shot at a ham operator?
No, you took a shot at ham radio generally.
Long time ago, you said that the hams were hogging the airwaves, had too much airspace, and that the CBers ought to get some of it.
Do you remember that?
I don't, and the reason I don't is that I have reporters, and the reporters would have done that.
If I had done the story, I would remember it.
I don't remember that story.
One of my reporters did it, but I accept responsibility for it.
Go ahead.
As a matter of fact, that was in 1977.
So you started as a ham?
Yeah.
And then I started hanging around broadcast stations waiting for somebody to get sick.
And they did.
How did you get your own network?
You are big stuff across the country.
Well, that happened... I don't know how that happened.
One guy who didn't know much about radio came along and said, I'd really like to show, let's syndicate it, okay?
That limped along for a year or two, and then somebody who really knew what they were doing bought it, and the rest is history.
You know, it just sort of blossomed.
I have no idea how it happened.
It just, it was a natural thing.
Probably the same way it was for you.
Well, let me say that I have enjoyed getting acquainted with you.
I have a feeling that you and I share a lot of Of feelings, and I'm glad that there's somebody out there who agrees with me.
There's a lot of people that agree with you.
A lot of people.
I want to take a few calls and let a few people ask you questions.
Oh, please.
All right, good.
Let's do it.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Jack Anderson.
Howdy.
Bless your heart.
Where were you calling from, hon?
Nebraska.
Nebraska, okay.
Jack, you don't know how many people agree with you.
Oh, bless your heart.
And we have not forgotten you.
Oh, how nice of you.
And, Jack, if I may call you that... Oh, I wish you would.
Okay.
Was the sitcom, All's Fair, All's Fair, I believe that's what it was, with Richard Crenna and the red-haired person, was Jack...
I heard rumors that that was about you.
Balls Fair?
Yeah.
The comedy that ran on one of the networks?
Oh, Bernadette Peters and Richard Crenna.
That was based on Jack Anderson's life?
Right.
And Jack, I remember you doing a cameo here and there.
I tell you, I don't think that it was.
I've had all kinds of Hollywood people wanting to build a TV show around our operation.
We had a unique operation, I'll tell you that.
The best way to understand our operation would be if you've seen the movie, the TV show, Mashed.
We were sort of a Washington Mashed, an irreverent group of reporters.
That's why I'm asking, because that sitcom was very, very blunt.
Well, alright.
If there is a movie done on your life, inevitably, just like Winchellville, do one on your life, can you imagine what kind of movie that would be?
Well, it depends on who does it.
We had a great operation.
Who would you like to have play you if there was a movie?
I haven't really thought about it.
Somebody handsome.
Your picture is in the book.
I don't want people to think that I'm as ugly as I am.
I've gotten an Alfred Hitchcock profile.
I would like to be remembered as a little more slim and a little more handsome than
I am today.
And I'm going to insist upon a lead character that portrays that.
Well, that's why I'm on radio, Jack.
I'm not so handsome either.
So, you know, it's a theater of the mind here on radio for the most part.
I think you're going to get a movie about you before I get one about me.
Boise, Idaho.
Yes, sir.
Boise, Idaho.
I don't think so.
West of the Rockies, you're on there with Jack Anderson.
Hello there, where are you please?
Hi Art, this is the lone gumman from your affiliate in Boise News Radio, 630k IDO.
How you doing?
Boise, Idaho, yes sir.
Boise, Idaho.
I grew up in Salt Lake City, so I'm here from my end of the country.
Are you a Mormon judge?
Yeah, I am.
Well, I'm not.
Anyways, Jack, I saw a report on Dateline NBC tonight that I never thought I would see on NBC.
We all remember the bombing of the Sudanese supposed chemical weapons plant in the wake of the Monica scandal.
I don't know a lot about it, but I remember it.
Well, Dateline, I guess they launched an investigation into this, and what they found was basically the only evidence that the United States had against the Sudan factory was a soil sample which was taken about eight months ago outside the plant.
And this was when the plant was under different ownership.
And they basically bombed the embassy on the strength of that.
And the allegation that Dateline was making was really You know, that Clinton did this.
I'll tell you what, let's just ask Jack straight on.
Jack, what he's really asking is, would an American president, this one perhaps, in order to mask domestic difficulties, send our U.S.
military to do something that would grab the news?
That's the bottom line here.
That's the bottom line, and the answer is, Bill Clinton would do it, has done it.
And we'll do it again.
Is that blunt enough for you, sir?
It is.
And, you know, I sort of cross-referenced it in my mind with... Well, you did a repeat show the other night with a guest.
I can't remember what his name was, but he was talking about Clinton changing his stance on the nuclear policy, where we would absorb a strike before retaliating.
That's right.
Well, I can't imagine that we would prefer to take a nuclear attack before we retaliated, but we would attack a small chemical Well, I've never known a more political person than Bill Clinton.
never made any reparations for them and uh... when was more than happy to make reparations to
the uh... the chinese embassy in yugoslavia that we bombed
so i kind of shows you where uh... where the man's uh...
ties are well i i would have a lot of uh... more political person
than bill clinton uh... booklet
you've got it you've got a bill when you stand back argue
i look at the way he operates and i have
some twisted admiration for the way he's able to manipulate public opinion
He is an absolute master at it.
It cannot be denied.
Whatever else you think of him, he can get in front of the camera and he can just mesmerize people.
Oh yeah.
On a personal level, he is probably okay.
He is a very likable guy.
I live on the Congressional Golf Course and my grandkids hit the ground running.
They're on a perpetual E-string hunt for golf balls and they sell them back to the golfers for 50 cents.
One day, not terribly long ago, Bill Clinton was golfing.
My grandkids recognized him and waved to him.
He is gregarious.
Absolutely.
He came over.
He visited with my grandkids.
Absolutely.
My 12-year-old Chris gave him a golf ball and said, Mr. President, would you accept this?
He didn't charge him 50 cents.
He figured, this is the President.
I'm not going to charge him 50 cents.
And Clinton took the golf ball and said, yes, I'll take it if you'll accept these from me.
And he gave him two back.
Typical Democrat, I should add.
This is also Clinton.
I have talked to Republicans who hated the very sight of Bill Clinton, who have gone to the White House and met him, and been completely charmed.
He's a charmer.
Well, do you really think That in America today, we could elect a president who was bluntly honest, told the truth.
Would such a person be electable, or is lying a prerequisite to becoming president of the United States?
I hope, Art, I hope that we could elect Somebody who told the truth and it would be so refreshing that he would be re-elected and everybody after that would decide that they had to tell the truth.
But I'm not as confident as I'd like to be.
Yeah, I'm not either.
I'm not either.
We have developed in this country a politically elite.
And this, this is, in this classless society of ours, We have a political elite high in their ivory towers that have set new political standards that threaten to change the character of our country.
They have defined what is politically correct, even though it may not be factually correct, even though it may not be morally correct.
They have given new meanings to old words.
They've placed new standards in old packages.
Well, Jack, if you were 30 years old today, what would you be doing?
Boy, that's... I would like to think I would do again what I did when I was 30 years old.
But I'm not too sure I could get away with it.
And live through it?
I'm not too sure I could survive it.
But I would like to believe that I would do it all over again.
And that the Constitution would keep you alive?
I do not regret.
Oh, of course, there are some things you regret.
I made some mistakes.
I regret every mistake I ever made.
I regret every... You sometimes harm the wrong people.
You know, politicians, in particular, have big egos.
And when you rip into them, it hurts them.
I can tell you that Bill Clinton suffers inwardly.
I talk to people who are close to him.
He suffers from these attacks on him.
Hillary suffers from these attacks.
All politicians suffer.
It's a cruel thing that I do.
And I tell my reporters, if you enjoy this too much, I'm not too sure I'm going to like you.
Political office is a public responsibility.
And our job is to report on political abuse, and that's what we've got to do.
But be sure you're right, because if you're wrong, some of these people would rather lose an arm and a leg
than their...
Maybe your arm and your leg.
Yeah.
I've pondered a lot of times, Jack, that I have far too much power.
I have far too much power.
I'm not elected to a damn thing.
I'm nothing but a talk show host.
Yeah, you and I need to commiserate on this, because this is what I feel, too.
And the media in general, I mean, boy, I'll tell you, when Dan Rather or Brokaw or whatever, when they speak, it's like, it's like the word.
Yeah, but they don't have, they don't have the editorial Flexibility that you do.
That's absolutely correct.
They are not as effective as we are because we can't tell it like it is.
They have to tell it like CBS and NBC tells it.
That's absolutely right.
Alright, listen.
Let's do one more segment.
Okay.
Hold on.
Stay right where you are and we'll be right back.
Alright.
Alright.
We'll talk a little bit about responsibility.
Jack Anderson is my guest.
Have you ever heard him before?
Well, tonight's your chance if you haven't.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from December 29th, 1999.
The Coast to Coast AM concert is a tribute to the late John Lewis.
The concert was held on December 29th, 1999 at the San Francisco International Music Center.
you Good morning, everybody.
the you're listening to our bills somewhere in time
tonight featuring a replay of coast to coast a m from december twenty ninth
nineteen ninety nine morning everybody jack anderson is my guest and in a
moment he'll be back about that big questions as one of those cnn shows
says they always have big questions coming up the
Isn't that pretty sax?
I love that.
Let's stay with the if only I was 30 again thing for just a second.
Jack, recently in our history and now the reason for a lot of domestic terrorism are two things that people consider, many people consider to be atrocities and they wave the flag when they commit some terrible act like blowing up a building or something.
Yeah.
Waco and Ruby Ridge.
Yeah.
Now, had you been 30 when these things occurred?
What do you think you'd have done?
Would you have gone after the Attorney General?
Would you have gone after the FBI?
What would you have done?
We can't have insurrection.
You have to have law and order, but I am concerned about the abuse by government.
We are the sovereigns.
The American people are the sovereigns, and we've got to make the government conform to our will.
But we have to have order.
That comes first.
The first duty of government is to protect the citizens.
They're not doing it well enough.
I can't condone these militant groups.
I really can't.
So you think that what was done at Waco ultimately... Oh, I think they handled it.
Don't misunderstand me.
I'm saying that when I don't think our government has deteriorated that badly.
I saw throughout the country certain groups like the one at Waco, like the one at Ruby
Ridge that are divorcing themselves from the government, declaring that they no longer
are a part of it, no longer are going to take orders from it.
I don't think our government has deteriorated that badly.
I don't think we've reached that point.
I think that that time could come, and when it comes, we'll have Revolutionary War II.
Maybe they're just aberrations, and as you point out, they certainly weren't handled correctly.
They were not handled correctly.
They were aberrations.
The great danger, as I keep saying, is The bureaucracy has become so inefficient that it's bogged down.
It cannot perform.
It spends too much of our money.
Do you realize, and I'm sure you do, that half of your money, half of your earnings, now go to the government in some form or other?
I well know, yes.
We fought the Revolutionary War over a 1% tax.
Now it's 50%.
We're taking it.
We're accepting it.
I find it incredible that we... Well, it's a trade-off.
It's comfort.
People are trading their comfort for it.
Yeah.
That's what they're doing.
You were asking about the...
Millennium.
Yeah.
I mean, we're two days away.
Do you feel that this is going to bring significant change?
I've wavered back and forth on what I think.
With regard to Y2K, even with some of the stories I'm getting now about Great Britain, which I told you about earlier.
i still think it's going to be more of a people problem that it's going to be a
machine problem i think you're right
and i really do you prepared oh yes
and i'm here and i got seventy two hours so that's all the preparation i thought
i needed is that all the trip to the grocery store and uh... i got
water i got groceries i got medicine
i'm ready for a seventy two hour and disruption i don't expect any more than that here
i would expect more than that in some countries in Africa.
Now, if there was to be a terrorist action, Jack, bluntly, it probably would occur either in New York or Washington.
They'd be the prime candidates, I would think.
Yeah, and they're on guard for it.
They expect something like this might happen.
We've been lucky so far.
I'll tell you what I think is going to happen in the new millennium.
I think that we're going to get closer with our neighbors in outer space.
Oh, do you agree?
Our neighbors in outer space?
You want to clarify that?
Well, I doubt that you would agree with me on this, but let me try you out.
Okay.
I've seen some scripture, it's not sanctified scripture, it's scripture by ancient prophets that's been found in the past 30-40 years in the Holy Land.
Enoch is one of them, some other prophets, and I've put together bits and pieces from their writings and it begins to make sense.
that populated planets without number are linked in a vast celestial society complete
with interplanetary communications, transportation and operations.
But the reason that we here on Earth feel so alone as we do on this little pinprick
of the Earth, this pinprick of greenery.
So what we are.
is that we've been isolated.
We've been shut off from the interplanetary system.
We are even space-wise isolated.
If you look at the Earth and its position with reference to the galaxy, we're in the suburbs here.
Yeah, we've been left alone to twist.
The Earth has been left alone to twist on its axis.
What these ancients believed was that we are under quarantine.
That we are being isolated from the populated Perhaps with good cause.
Well, they believe... Did you know about this?
Yes, Jack.
And I say again, perhaps with good cause.
In other words, we've not yet really earned a right to join such an organization.
Well, they believe that dormant physical forces are activated by an all-powerful spiritual force.
This latent force, they believed, was the key to the universe.
That the intelligent beings, well, let me, they believe that active planets are quite
different from one another.
Each has its own unique planet and animal life.
Yet, they believe that intelligent beings who inhabit these far-flung worlds are celestial The ones that have the same basic human characteristics, though some civilizations are more advanced than others, and they believe that the dormant physical forces are activated, as I said, by a spiritual force, and that it's with this spiritual force that they create, through spiritual control, they
Allies from different planets form joint ventures in interplanetary construction.
They are the planet makers.
They believe that you have to keep the spiritual force pure, that wickedness and violence are contaminants.
Well, then we are, at present, contaminants.
Yeah.
That's why we're under quarantine.
This isn't my idea.
I'm fascinated by it.
I got it from these ancient scriptures, and you may not believe in ancient scriptures, but it makes some sense.
It makes a whole lot of sense, Jack.
What doesn't make sense, you know the old Occam's Razor thing, the most likely scenario is probably the right one, and when you look up in the night sky, all those pinpricks of light, they're all suns, and they have planets going around them, we now know.
So there's life out there, and I wouldn't think that we've yet earned our way into the club.
I have Dr. Michio Kaku, one of the best theoretical physicists in our nation on the air, and he says, if we make it past the discovery of Element 92 without destroying ourselves, then we will progress.
I add to that what these ancient scriptures say, that wickedness and violence are spiritual pollutions that can foul the delicate mechanisms that cause the universe to run so precisely as it does, and this may be the reason that the earth has been isolated.
Do you think, Jack, that we are moving toward a more spiritual understanding and an eventual union, or do you think at present, anyway, we're going the other way?
I think that we have gone about as far as we're probably going to go, because I have a sense that we're swinging back.
We have been going the other way, but I have a sense that we are swinging back.
That moral pollution on Earth The ancients believed that moral pollution could generate earthquakes, tidal waves, and other disasters.
When the spiritual controls go berserk, you're going to have catastrophes.
There have been more earthquakes.
Maybe it's just that we're measuring them better.
We've certainly recorded more earthquakes.
Yes, Jack.
We have recorded more 6-plus earthquakes.
I could go on and on.
You know, the ice at the Arctic is melting.
About 40% of it gone.
The Antarctic ice shelf is breaking off.
The planet is definitely... The weather is undergoing a change.
Europe just got smashed with two storms.
The meteorologists can't even begin to explain.
There's some pretty bad stuff going on right now.
Well, you asked about the Millennium.
I think this is the Millennium where all this is going to iron out.
We're either going to have to take control of this planet and get rid of the spiritual pollution.
Or it will lose us.
Or we're going to lose...
What do you think about the UFOs?
Well, Jack, I've seen two of them.
You have actually seen them?
I've never seen any.
Directly above my head, Jack.
I live out here in the desert, about 20 miles from Death Valley, near Area 51.
In that kind of area, you're more likely to see them.
I had one come right over my head, Jack.
How did you know that it was what you believed it was to be?
Did you get a good look?
I got a real good look.
It was about 150 feet above my head.
It was a triangle.
It was moving.
It wasn't flying.
It was floating.
I could have thrown a rock at the damn thing.
It was gigantic, maybe 150 feet from one point of the triangle to the other.
My wife was with me.
It came over us without sound.
I could hear a cricket a quarter mile away as it came over my head, and we stood and watched it for five minutes go across the valley.
You know what I think?
When you've seen something like that, what do you think?
Well, you know.
You have to believe your eyes.
I know your reputation, and I think I've gotten to know you well enough to believe you completely.
Do you know what I think is happening?
That we're under quarantine and visitors from outer space out of curiosity are coming through to see what's going on here.
I think they're curiosity seekers.
I don't think that they're spying on us.
I don't think that they're going to do us any damage.
I think that they are just curious because we have been shut off from this interplanetary system that the ancient prophets wrote about.
Have you ever told anybody else you believe this?
No, I don't think so.
I...
You brought it up when you brought up the Millennium, I just...
It's just the time of year, the time in our universe when things are going to happen, I believe.
Why do I agree with you?
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Jack Anderson and Art Bell.
Hi.
That's you, yes.
Where are you calling from?
I'm calling from Oklahoma City.
This is Paul.
Could I ask you a question about the murder building?
Murder building bombing?
Yes.
I'd like to also ask him something about that.
Go ahead.
I live just a few blocks from there where it blew up, and I was wondering what he thought Well, I think that they had some lucky breaks.
I wasn't following it closely enough to be an authority on it, but I thought that they had some lucky breaks and that those lucky breaks were correct and that they nailed the correct people, don't you?
You think they nailed all the correct people?
No, no.
I think that there were many people involved.
Not many, a few people involved.
A few.
And I think that they were And some of them you think are still on the loose?
Some of them I think are on the loose.
I don't think it was just two of them involved.
Yeah, I don't either.
I just don't believe it.
What about the Kennedy assassination, I'm sure?
Well, the Kennedy assassination I know a lot about.
I spent 20 years investigating that.
And?
It's hard to sum up in two minutes, but let me try.
The United States, the CIA, was attempting to kill Fidel Castro.
Attempting to knock him off.
Fidel Castro, on September 7, 1963, called a press conference and said, and accused the CIA of doing what it was doing.
And he went on to say, two can play at this game.
If you continue to try to kill Cuban leaders, then American leaders will not be safe.
It was his warning.
It was ignored by the press in Washington.
It appeared below the fold on page 7 or something like that, because it was considered to be just more mouthings from Fidel Castro.
But the CIA regarded this as a direct warning, and when Kennedy was killed.
John McCone, Robert Kennedy, had been placed in charge of the CIA by Jack Kennedy.
He didn't have a formal title, but he was in charge.
Right after his brother was killed, John McCone came directly to Bob Kennedy's home, spent three hours with him.
Kennedy's pastor was turned away.
I called McCone and said, what were you doing there?
He said, routine CIA business.
Do you believe that?
Everybody in the world was talking, had only one subject on their mind, the killing of John F. Kennedy.
And you can't convince me that the head of the CIA went to see Bob Kennedy to discuss routine business right after that killing.
The next day, John McCone, the head of the CIA, went to the White House.
Only three people were there, Lyndon Johnson, John McCone, and McGeorge Bundy, the National
Security Advisor.
I was not there.
I cannot tell you what was said, but I can tell you what John McCone told others that
he said.
He told Lyndon Johnson so he said, and I had sources that got this directly from McCone.
Thank you.
He told Lyndon Johnson that the Cuba Missile Crisis had happened just nine months earlier, and we had forced Khrushchev to take his pants down in public.
We had humiliated him.
He had backed down.
He was in great trouble.
In fact, he was ousted not long after it.
He was in great trouble in the Kremlin.
And McCone warned the President, if you pin this on Fidel Castro, and it was Fidel Castro using the Mafia, if you pin this on Fidel Castro, the Russians, Khrushchev is reckless, he's impulsive.
Final straw?
It's final straw.
He may push the button and it could cost, we could We could have a Holocaust that would cost us 40 million lives.
Wow.
Jack, we're coming up on the final hour here.
I have one more hour of program, and I always give my guests a choice to stay on or go to sleep.
Oh, I'm having a good time.
All right, then.
Let's have some more good time, because I want to... If you don't mind, I don't want to take over.
If you've got something... No, no, no.
You stay right where you are.
Stay right there.
All right, good.
Really good.
We'll be right back.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from December 29th, 1999.
It's good to be strong, we gotta get right back to where we started wrong.
Oh, oh, oh.
Oh, oh, oh.
Premier Radio Networks presents Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight's program originally aired December 29th, 1999.
Good morning everybody, I've got some very sad breaking news, very troubling breaking news about George Harrison and his wife.
We'll get that on and get right back to Jack Anderson in a moment.
No time to be young.
the no time to be on
well the bad news is uh... former beetle george harrison and his wife are in the
hospital right now suffering from stab wounds
barely an intruder we believe broke into his house
stabbed him in the chest stabbed his wife Both are alive at this point, in stable condition, in the hospital.
Again, George Harrison and his wife have been stabbed.
Nothing about the crime, no motive, probably isn't one, other than stabbing George Harrison and his wife.
John Lennon, and now, George Harrison.
We'll be right back.
It's a great honor to have him on the program this morning, and particularly to have him with us this long.
He's on the East Coast, by the way, so it's after five in the morning there.
Jack, sorry to be laying this news on you, but you mentioned something to me during the break about John Lennon.
You had helped him get into the country, is that right?
Yeah, as a matter of fact, actually he came in on his own, but they were going to deport him.
Strom Thurmond was leading the battle to deport him because he had been arrested once for
possessing marijuana, less than an ounce, just a little bit of marijuana. They were
going to arrest him and I intervened. I wrote a story about it. He wrote me a letter, his
wife actually, the Japanese girl. He wrote me a letter thanking me for preventing them
from being thrown out of the country.
And I'll see you next time.
The reason that Strom Thurmond was wanting to do this was because he regarded the Beatles and John Lennon as subversive.
Ironically, at the same time in Prague, John Lennon was the hero of the anti-communist movement there.
In Prague, they had what they call the John Lennon Wall up in there.
And this wall was used by the anti-communists to run Beatles songs, words from the Beatles, that they used to inspire them against the communists.
Can you imagine the irony?
Here, the same John Lennon, who's lebanon wall
the inspiration for the anti-communist was being out there that i want to ask that just drop their
blood about it because
they considered him to be pro-communist as a person
now in modern america for some reason jack uh... maybe it's always been true i
don't know but fame is a real big to ed sword and uh...
and now in america you can just be killed because you're famous because as somebody wants to make a name for
themselves and be remembered as
being big i guess just be remembered and they even if it's for killing somebody
without motivation
I It's a shocker.
It's...
Yeah.
I agree.
I feel badly for them.
I didn't like their music much.
I think you probably would disagree with me on that because you're younger.
I listen to today's music and I can't handle it at all.
I just plain can't handle it.
I'm sure you're just one tick away from that.
I'm a big band character.
I come from World War II and the big bands and to me everything they sing sounds like
ya ya ya.
I know.
Well you know I have a theory about that Jack and my theory is that this is the way God
In other words, as you get older, you finally get so disgusted with everything that's going on in the world, including That by the time you're at the age where you're kind of ready to go, you're ready to say, take me Lord, get me out of here!
I'm tired of listening to this stuff!
Now going back to the Kennedy assassination, you said that Castro and the mob had Kennedy killed and that it couldn't be revealed because that would push the Soviet Union Over the line.
That is what John McCone, the head of the CIA, told Lyndon Johnson.
I wasn't at the meeting.
Is that what we're going to find out after the 50-year seal?
There's a 50-year seal on all this stuff.
Is that what we're going to find out after 50 years?
I don't think so.
I don't think that that's in the record.
I think Lyndon Johnson kept it out of the record.
The next day, After he was told that this could lead to World War III, could lead to 40 million American casualties, Lyndon Johnson called J. Edgar Hoover.
I did not listen to their conversation, but I knew both men.
They lived across the street from each other.
They were good friends.
They had spent 30 years living across the street from each other.
I know them.
I can almost guess what was said.
Lyndon Johnson said, Edgar, I want you to save your country.
Hoover would have clicked his heels at the other end of the pole and said, yes, sir, Mr. President, what is it you want me to do?
Lyndon Johnson would have said, if we involved Castro in the Kennedy assassination.
It could lead to World War III and could cost us 40 million American lives.
I want you to keep that out of the investigation.
And Hoover would have agreed.
And he did agree.
I know that he did keep it out.
I know that Lyndon Johnson formed the Warren Commission.
But the Warren Commission never did its own investigation.
The FBI did the investigation.
And I know that Hoover and the FBI knew about Castro and his threat.
And his threat to retaliate against the CIA for trying to kill him.
And I know that Hoover kept that out.
I know Lyndon Johnson.
He would always have an ace up his sleeve.
The ace up his sleeve was the sixth man on the Warren Commission.
And the sixth man on the Warren Commission was Allen Dulles, the former head of the CIA who had planned the plot to kill Castro, who knew all about it.
And the transcripts of the Warren Commission reveal that it was Allen Dulles Who told his fellow members, oh, these things have always been the work of one man.
And I know this too, that when Lyndon Johnson, who approved, who said a number of times, dozens of times, that he concurred with the Warren Commission Report, he was interviewed by Harold Smith, remember the fellow who had kind of a bad eye who was ABC anchor?
Yes.
Well, Smith was his name.
He told me that he was interviewing Lyndon Johnson and that, among other things, he asked him about the Kennedy assassination and Lyndon Johnson blurted out, Kennedy tried to kill Castro, but Castro responded and got Kennedy first.
Smith almost fell out of his chair.
He told me that he started, he said, what do you mean by this?
And Lyndon Johnson acted as if he didn't realize he'd said it out loud.
He tried to retract it.
But it was said.
Yeah, but it was said.
And I got my information about what happened from some of the Mafia dons who were involved in the plot to kill Castro.
Let me tell you, one of them was Johnny Roselli.
Johnny Roselli was directly involved in that plot.
Was he?
Johnny Roselli.
It took me five years to get him to talk to me.
When I finally got him to talk to me, he began to trust me.
Before he was executed, because he was executed by the mob, he told me all that he knew.
I got a call from his brother-in-law.
His brother-in-law called me from Florida.
And said, Johnny is missing.
I said, that sounds ominous.
I'm sorry to hear it.
But in effect, I asked him why he's calling me.
He says, well, because we believe that he was, that he may have been killed for talking to you.
His body turned up in a metal barrel, wrapped in chains.
It washed up on this game day.
I got a call from... Have you revealed publicly, Jack, all he told you?
Uh, pretty much.
I got a call from two Miami detectives.
They said, can we come see you?
I said, sure.
They did.
They told me the same thing.
They said, we hear from our mafia sources that Johnny was killed, executed by the mob for talking to you.
I don't know whether that's true or not, Art.
I know that that's what the brother-in-law said.
I know that's what the two detectives said.
And I don't think if he was killed for talking to me, I don't think he was killed for lying to me.
I don't think they would have minded his telling me lies.
I think he was killed for telling me the truth.
He told me that the Mafia was involved.
That could outcast us in the killing of John F. Kennedy.
Johnny told me that.
Other sources told me that.
Their testimony wouldn't be accepted in the court of law.
Let's ask you about, you know I live just over the hill from Las Vegas.
Yeah.
Well, the founding father of Las Vegas was Bugsy Siegel.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, he stopped in the desert and said, here.
And he built it, and they came, and they're still coming.
And now, when you look at Las Vegas, you don't exactly see the mob anymore.
What you see is multinational corporations and billion-dollar casinos and all the rest of this sort of thing.
Is the mob still there, Jack?
I don't think that they have, well they certainly don't have the kind of control that they used to have.
I suspect that they are present in the same way.
What happened is that some of the younger, the children of the mob leaders went to Harvard and other schools and they learned how to do it the American way.
They're doing it the American way, but they do not openly control anything in Las Vegas today that I know of.
Uh-huh.
A lot of people in Las Vegas over the hill will be very happy.
Whoever opposed, they live.
All right, listen, back to the phones here.
Are you used to the Rockies?
You're on the air with Jack Anderson and Art Bell.
Good morning.
Yes.
Where are you, sir?
I'm in Cleveland.
Cleveland, Ohio.
There's some, I think, genuine muckrakers like Noam Chomsky and Michael Parenti, and some former CIA officers around the magazine Covert Action magazine.
These are real muckrakers, and I don't think they'd ever be on your program, but they consider Jack Anderson to be an absolute fraud and a kind of a sewer disinformation pipeline for some of the most vicious Slanders of the shadow government, the CIA, whether he's been on one faction or another for his own advantage, or jumping ship from one arc to another, overall he has represented throughout his career some of the worst slanders of everyone who's been on the military-industrial-complex-CIA-shadow-government hit list, and brainwashing American public for
Hostilities or attacks against whether it's Castro, whether it's the Soviet Union, Nicaragua, or whatever.
And I think one of the most vicious lies was his lie about the Kennedy assassination.
The book Unreliable Sources points out that he was working in a kind of a COINTELPRO way for J. Edgar Hoover before he decided to apparently jump ship on a secret mission to interview Jim Garrison about the assassination to find out what he knew.
He came back and reported to Hoover that Garrison made a very strong case that the CIA, not Castro, did it.
But in all of his public appearances, he said exactly the opposite.
Exactly the CIA line, exactly the FBI line.
And this whole attempt, I think, to frame up Castro is right in line with that.
The mob was working for the Central Intelligence Agency.
They hated Castro's guts.
Kennedy was making moves towards normalizing relations with Castro weeks before, or months before, he was assassinated.
The Central Intelligence Agency, he said he was going to destroy and cast to the wind in 10,000 pieces.
He was going to get out of Vietnam.
This is the reason that he was assassinated.
Alright, we'll slow down.
Slow down.
I can only conclude that one of my problems is that there are so many jackasses.
He's got somebody else, because the things that he is saying have nothing to do with me.
I have not done the things that he says that I have done.
I did go see Garrison during my investigation of the Kennedy assassination.
And your conclusion?
I was met at the airport by two big strapping guys.
I did not know who they were.
They took me to Garrison's office and Garrison finally said, why did these two guys, I guess he got worried that I might know who they were, he said, why did two of Carlos Marcello's thugs bring you into my office?
I said, they met me at the airport and you were the only one who knew I was coming.
He was tied in with Carlos Marcello.
There is no question that he was tied in with Carlos Marcello.
He ran his investigation in order to divert attention from Marcello.
You see, Marcello was the godfather of New Orleans, but Dallas was under his jurisdiction, and the mob has their own protocol, and they had to deal with Carlos Marcello.
Believe me, I have spent 20 years investigating this.
The closest that any official group has come was by the House Assassination Committee.
They went into it much deeper than anyone else.
The guy who ran the investigation told me privately that he agreed with me, but that members of Congress would not go along with it.
Jack, you don't do Through your life, what you've done without making lots and lots of serious enemies.
How many times have you felt nervous about the possibility of your own assassination?
Well, I have been threatened a number of times, including by Moe Dalitz.
Moe Dalitz used to outright own the Desert Inn there in Las Vegas, where you're from.
I got a message that he didn't like what I was writing, and he was going to do me in.
I don't mean to sound bravado, because I knew that the Mafia was worried about going after newsmen for fear that the newsmen would cause them more trouble than what they could solve.
Still, though, you've got to take it somewhat seriously.
But when I came to Las Vegas, I drove out with my wife and my kids in the station wagon, and I suddenly said to my wife, you wait here.
I'm going over to the Desert Inn.
I went over to the Desert Inn.
I asked for Moe Dalitz.
He came down to the lobby.
He met me.
I said, I got your message.
I thought that I would come and make it easier for you.
What are you going to do about it?
What message?
I told him what message.
I told him who had delivered it.
And he said, no, I didn't write that.
I didn't send you any message.
He said, stay in my hotel.
See the show.
Be my guest.
I said, no thanks, and I walked out.
You have to confront them.
Now, if I really thought he was going to shoot me, I would not have gone there, of course.
Well, you couldn't be sure.
You couldn't be absolutely sure.
There's no way.
I mean, when you walked in there, you had to be at least a little concerned that you might have been... This guy that talked to us a moment ago, it sounded to me like he had been listening to... Well, you make enemies, Jack.
You make enemies.
Hold on.
We'll be right back.
George Harrison and his wife are in the hospital.
They've been stabbed.
You'll be getting many more details on this as the day progresses.
I'm Art Bell.
this is Coast to Coast AM with Jack Anderson.
I'm Jack Anderson and this is Coast to Coast.
Don't have it you
It's easy to try.
No hell below us.
No hell below us, above us only sky Imagine all the people living for the day
Imagine there's no country living for the Jews Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from December 29th, 1999.
Good morning, Jack Anderson is my guest, a very rare treat indeed.
Get right back to him.
A dreamer, a spiritual person, or a socialist?
I don't know.
You tell me.
What a rough ride it's been, huh?
good morning everybody will get right back to jack anderson so that i have a back to your unverified of course uh...
from a fellow ham in midwest
who supplies me with his call letters and uh... telephone number and i seek you
number and so forth And I'll just read it to you and you can absorb it for what it's worth.
Art today at about 7.15 p.m.
on 6.96 megahertz lower sideband, I overheard a conversation between Arecibo, that's in Puerto Rico, the big telescope, radio telescope in Arecibo, and an unknown station.
They were discussing the reception of a signal from two light years out The signal consisted of low order numbers.
The repeat of a signal previously sent to space by Arecibo.
The unknown station said they had verified the signal with other sites.
It was not from a military satellite.
They repeated numerous times that it was not a test.
If necessary, I can be contacted, and he gives me the information here.
I'll follow up on it for you.
It may be nothing, or it may be really something.
Who knows?
Jack, welcome back.
Hi.
SETI has picked up a couple of messages that sounded like they were intelligent messages, but they went away too fast.
That's right.
They couldn't settle it.
That's right.
I've interviewed the head of SETI several times, and they've had a few things that they're unable to explain, but as you point out, they've always gone away too quickly.
All right, here we go.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Jack Anderson.
Where are you, please?
Yes, I'm calling from Westchester County, New York.
All right.
It's been a very long and a very interesting night.
Mr. Anderson, you are aware of the former CIA agent Victor Marchetti, who wrote a book back in the early 1970s about what he referred to as the MKUltra program within the federal government.
Yes, I am.
Certain allegations regarding mind control, the use of LSD to influence people.
And this segues into my question about John Lennon's assassin, or alleged assassin, Mark Chapman.
A lot of people have been talking within the alternative media for years that Chapman was a victim of government mind control when he was in Hawaii.
Do you have any information which might support that conclusion?
I don't have.
I'm sorry to say, I don't have any information to dispute it either.
But I don't know.
One of the things that did shock me, I used to not be a believer in these conspiracy theories that people have cherished so long.
But you know, when Hazel O'Leary, the Energy Secretary, walked in front of the country and said that we had fed plutonium to children and pregnant women and stuff like that, I lost something.
It's like I couldn't believe it.
I just couldn't believe it.
When I grew up, Jack, and I'm younger than you are, Uncle Sam's word, when I first came to Washington, Uncle Sam's word was good as his gold.
would come out and they'd have a press conference you know about the latest uh...
uh... personally caught or whatever i mean you could take that to the bank it
was like solid gold and now in modern america when the fbi comes out has press
conference people almost automatically disbelieve them
uh... alcohol and work when i first came to washington apple that work with
good gold today is not believed
or good reason Because it's a...
World War II was a different era, a different kind of war.
and he always tells lies. I mean, were we simply naive virgins back then?
World War II was a different era, a different kind of war.
Yes, they had security. Yes, they used censorship, but it was...
Propaganda?
It was considered to be in the national interest to do so.
What happened after the war is that the military had gotten used to having the right to classify whatever they wanted to classify.
They didn't have any censorship stamps in Washington, but they had a lot of secret stamps in Washington.
So when they had something they wanted to censor, They stamped it secret, top secret, and instead that still
goes on.
And I don't recognize the secrecy stamp anymore.
I have...
I'm the worst security violator in Washington because if it's something that the American people are entitled to know, I don't care what stamp is on it because the proper stamp should be censored.
Well, I think a lot of news, Jack, is managed by omission.
If you listen to shore wave stations around the world, you will hear things that absolutely ought to be big news here, and they are not.
They're not even mentioned.
they've added to the news well i think a lot of news jack is managed by omission
uh... you know if you listen to a shortwave stations around the world you
will hear things that absolutely ought to be big news here and they are not they're
not even not even mentioned uh... that doesn't mean they didn't
happen it just means for some reason uh... the press here decided
in their pathway not to report it Let me make a confession.
I have a reputation for digging up hot stories that nobody else gets.
That's because the press is covering only 20% of the news.
That leaves 80% for me to dig up.
It's easy.
You can dig up these stories because The press is only covering 20%, 80% is out there for you and me, and people like us, if we would only do it.
What do you think about the newest guy on the block, the internet guy, Matt Drudge?
Well, he started out as a gossip, He is settling down now.
He is checking his facts a little more carefully.
I'm opposed to tabloid journalists and he started out as a tabloid journalist.
A tabloid journalist operates the way a lawyer operates.
A lawyer can take either side and go into court and prove it.
A tabloid journalist decides what the story is before he writes it.
And he can prove anything.
And I tell my reporters that we don't know what the story is until all the facts are in.
Well, and then try tackling this one.
I mean, we went round and round about this stupid Monica Lewinsky thing for I don't know how long it absorbed our national attention.
There was a day when presidents did this kind of stuff, they just didn't get reported on, that's all.
I have a rule that politicians, government officials, private life is his own business unless it interferes with his public performance.
And by that token, I left these things alone.
I still do.
I didn't break the Lewinsky story.
And you would not have?
I sent two reporters when Bill Clinton became candidate for president.
I sent two reporters in Wisconsin and Arkansas.
They came back with stories that shocked me.
I didn't believe them.
I thought that they had gotten mixed up with some Clinton haters.
I didn't think that they could be as bad as they were.
Everything they brought back turned out to be true.
There's kind of an interesting thing going on now, of course, with Hillary in New York, considering a Senate run, or about to make a Senate run.
She is going to be living in New York to a large degree, occasionally coming back to Washington.
Well, at least during the campaign.
Well, at least during the campaign, they say.
Now, do you think that the Clinton marriage will survive the Well, to be truthful, there are only two people who really know, and that's Bill and Hillary.
I have talked to people who are close to them, and the people who are close to them tell me that Hillary is outraged at her husband's conduct, that she had a showdown with him after he got the nomination poor president and said to him, and this is second hand
because I didn't get it from Hillary, I got it from one of Hillary's friends.
She quoted Hillary as telling Bill, you have embarrassed me for the last time, if you do
it again I'm going to leave you and you're going to lose your wife and your daughter
and he loves Chelsea.
I know. I wonder if that's what's underway right now.
She said, I'm going to leave her, I'm going to leave you.
And he straightened up for a while.
But I'm told that on a trip, a Secret Service agent alerted Tiptoe, the First Lady, that he had a bimbo on board.
She went rushing out to the Andrews Air Force Field.
I'm going to divorce him and run against him in 1996.
in the beginning dressed afterward.
She came back and said to one of her friends, that bastard, I'm going to divorce him and
run against him in 1996.
Of course she didn't do it, but this is what she's threatened to do.
This was the period where even some of the rest of the press got pieces of the story
told about her throwing a lamp at him or something like that.
Pottery and various things.
I've heard all those stories.
Not too long ago, during the Lewinsky affair, a very good source of mine told me that she
was visiting with...
Hillary in Hillary's office and the president came in and started saying, how's my favorite lady?
How's my girlfriend?
How's my sweetheart?
And she let the glasses slide down the end of her nose, looked up at him and said, is there something I can do for you?
Very coldly.
So things are not well between them.
Well, I sensed that, and so I was kind of curious whether this New York thing might be, I guess, not the beginning of the end, but near the end of the end.
Well, let me hesitate, let me hasten to say, Art, that none of this was confirmed directly with Bill or Hillary, and it all comes second-hand, and you've got to be careful.
Of course.
It does, however, sound somewhat human and logical.
All right.
Well, to the Rockies, you're on the air with Jack Anderson.
Hello.
Yes.
Hello, Art.
This is William from Portland.
Hi there.
Good evening, Jack.
Good evening.
It's an honor to talk with you, sir.
Thank you.
I was just wondering, because of your unique perspective and knowledge of Washington politics, do you think there's any practical and workable plan to get soft money out of politics and possibly develop some kind of public financing of our candidates in Congress so we can get some honesty and real legislating out of them?
Well, the worst scandal in Washington is the way we finance politics.
We've got to do something, but I don't see them doing it.
I don't either.
As I said to you a little earlier, Art, they've been so turned off on politics that they don't This is caused a vicious circle that I described.
People are turning away from politics and the politicians are turning more and more to the special interests that are willing to finance their campaigns.
And the people who finance their campaigns want a return on their investment.
There is no answer.
They're never going to get rid of it.
I don't see it.
McCain is trying to do something about it.
If he became president, I think he could get something passed.
But as a low member of the Senate, he doesn't stand a prayer.
And even if he became president, he would have a tough time doing it.
Well, I think presidents, when they run, have one thing they believe in.
You know, a lot of them start out very well and then, you know, kind of like, All politicians, once they're in the White House, there are certain realities.
Somebody probably sits them down and lays out certain realities.
I guess I believe that.
Oh yeah, that happens to each one.
There's no question about that.
That does happen.
They are led to believe that politics as usual is a reality.
I contend that it is not.
I contend that The American people are the sovereigns.
The government belongs to them.
I hope so.
I think that you and I, we may be one of the few left, but the Constitution gives us freedom of the press.
Ours is the only profession mentioned in the Constitution.
There's nothing in the Constitution about freedom of practice law.
There's nothing in the Constitution about freedom of practice medicine.
There's nothing in the Constitution about freedom to engage in commerce.
There is something in the Constitution about freedom of the press.
And I take that seriously because the government needs a watchdog.
The government, how do you feel about this great growing Oh yeah, they're scared to death of it, because the internet is going to make it possible for people to vote, and I'm a little afraid of it.
One of the realities, Art, is that our founding fathers were trying to protect the minority from The abuse of the majority, and the ultimate minority is the individual, and the individual is going to be swamped by a lot of people who don't know what they're doing, who will vote without knowing who the candidates really are and what they really stand for.
I'm a little worried about the uneducated, the uninformed voting.
I'm afraid to say that, I'm going to be denounced for it, but that's going to be a problem.
That is a problem.
Jack, you're at the end of your career, pretty nearly, so how do you wish to be remembered?
How do you wish the American people to remember you?
Well, I've never put on... I've always stayed down in the...
Lowlands.
I never got up on Mount Olympus with my colleagues.
I don't travel with the pack.
I am a loader.
I would like to be remembered as the voice of the voiceless.
The oppressor of the oppressed.
The oppressor of the oppressor of the oppressed.
I think that's what I'd like to be remembered as.
Well, it's been a long, interesting, fascinating life that you've had, and aside from some regrets, which we all have, I'd wager you wouldn't take very much of it back.
Oh, no.
I said that earlier on your show that if I had to do it over again, I would do it the
same way.
Incidentally, can I invite people to send to my office for an autographed copy of this
You sure can!
How do they do that?
Well, I'll give them an autographed copy.
I just remembered I got a lot of them stacked up there, and I've got to get rid of some of them.
Peace, War, and Politics.
Name of the book.
It's a great book.
And if you want an autographed copy, how do you get one?
Just call my office during the Eastern Office hours.
I'm sure cherishing my copy.
And I appreciate the personal note you wrote, Jack.
Well, I appreciate spending this time with you.
Well, Jack, thank you.
You'll never know how much of an honor it has been for me to have you on the program, for you to consent to come on the program.
Well, any time.
Let's do it again sometime.
Jack, thank you and good night.
Good night.
Folks, that's Jack Anderson.
From the high desert, I'm Art Bell.
Good night.
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