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March 20, 2004 - Art Bell
02:52:30
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - David Race Bannon - BPL & Interpol
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This is an Encore presentation of Coast to Coast AL with Art Bell.
From the high desert at the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening, good morning, good afternoon, in whatever time zone you may reside within, because we cover them all.
All on earth from this very location.
I'm Art Bell, and the program is Coast to Coast AM, weekend version.
How you doing, everybody?
Listen to me very carefully.
This is going to be one of the most important 90 minutes ever broadcast on radio.
What's coming up?
Please, if you're able to, record it.
In fact, pass it on.
To any member of the media that you know, if you're friends with somebody in the mass media, at the network level, you're going to want to pass this on.
So I'm going to give you a moment to get your recorders going, if they already are not, and then we'll get underway.
In my opinion, what you're about to hear involves nothing less than a sellout of our safety And our privacy for greed.
Nothing more than corporate greed.
We'll be right back.
Suppose I were to tell you that an agency of the United States
government is...
is encouraging cheerleading a technology that in part could do the following it could destroy or degrade emergency communications across the entire American landscape all across America so that when not if but when another 9-11 or something like it happens or perhaps an earthquake or a hurricane or you know whatever there's always something happening man-made or Delivery from on high is going to happen.
You and I both know, we all know it's going to happen.
Something's going to happen.
So we depend on people to save our lives, to coordinate emergency response, to get the medics to the people who are dying and maimed, to get help to those who need it.
Well, what if they couldn't talk to each other?
What if they could not coordinate their efforts?
Further, listen carefully now, this technology has the potential to make George Orwell's big brother seem like, like nothing by comparison.
Suppose, just imagine, every single electrical outlet, every electric socket in your home or your business could serve as a conduit to log And report every move you make to some corporation, or even the government.
What if I told you that this is not science fiction?
Not my wild imagination, and you know I have one.
No, I'm afraid this new technology is being deployed right now.
That an agency of our federal government, seemingly in league with big money corporate interests, is actually behind this nightmare that's unfolding across America.
You don't know a thing about it till now.
You don't know anything about this.
You better listen very carefully.
You probably say you don't believe it.
Well, the agency is the Federal Communications Commission.
Those corporate interests I mentioned?
None other than many of the nation's largest, very largest power companies.
You know, the people who bring you 120 volts AC, or whatever.
The technology we're about to discuss is called BPL.
That stands for Broadband Over Power Lines.
Now, very briefly, it could disrupt, listen to me very carefully, see if you're affected by any of this.
It could disrupt HF, that's High Frequency Overseas Aircraft Communications, ILS if you're a pilot, you know what that is, right?
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has said it will virtually destroy their ability to communicate in an emergency.
Explosive detection systems?
Military communications?
Public safety radio systems?
Aircraft navigation systems?
It will destroy ham radio.
It will destroy Citizens Band.
Are you listening to me out there, truckers?
It will destroy CB.
It will destroy time and frequency stations like WWV.
It will destroy the ability of some emergency medical service people to talk to each other.
Many police and fire departments, highway patrol, radio control devices.
You know those little airplanes people fly around out there by radio control?
Gone!
Are you listening?
Some cordless telephones.
Television channels, two through six, in trouble.
AM broadcasting.
From the FCC side itself, maybe even HDTV.
Do you have one of those, high-definition television?
Over-the-horizon radar that our military depends on.
In a moment, well no, now, we'll talk with Jim Haney, who is president of the very prestigious American Amateur Radio Relay League.
for the entire nation, and leads the world, really, in a lot of ways, with regard to amateur radio, and also somebody you might know, Joe Walsh, who's the lead guitarist of the Eagles.
So, let us begin, and let's start with Jim Haney.
Jim, welcome to the program.
Well, thank you very much, Art.
It's a pleasure to be here, and I've got to say good morning to all your guests out there, because it is morning here in Dallas, where I'm at.
Indeed.
Perhaps not morning in America, though.
Jim, let me just very quickly get a, I think you two men know each other, the lead guitarist for the Eagles and a ham operator himself.
Joe Walsh is here.
Joe?
Yes, I'm here.
All right.
Well, the two of you say, are you hearing each other okay?
Very well, and good morning, or good afternoon to you, Joe.
Hi, Jim.
How are you?
I'm doing well.
All right.
Jim, I think the way to begin this is to explain to people, heck, half the ham operators don't know, so the American public certainly doesn't, what BPL is.
Broadband over power line is another method or another pipe, as Chairman Powell ...put it to communicate via the internet.
And instead of using the dial-up or the telephone or DSL or your cable modem or even a satellite, it's using the power lines coming into your home.
And it puts a signal on those power lines, and it goes from 1.8 to 80 megahertz.
I know a lot of your listeners probably don't know what that means, but it's a broad swath of the spectrum.
And we're quite concerned about it.
Actually, it's the entire shortwave band, isn't it?
Plus?
That's correct.
It goes, as you mentioned in your lead-in, it goes up into the lower end of the TV channels as well.
Yes.
Yeah, so they're talking about putting a signal on power lines.
Now, everybody probably at home who has, like, for example, cable TV, they know they've got a cable coming into their house, a shielded cable, that's the important part of this, that delivers television to your to your home.
Now, that has a shield on it, and that protects all these signals from escaping from the wire.
And the difference with BPL is that it's going to be on all of our nation's power lines.
You know, those things that go by your house, and they're like gigantic antennas, so they're going to actually be transmitting from these gigantic antennas, and virtually in every single American person's home.
Isn't that about what they're after?
That's correct, and one of the other things you need to think about is not only transmitting, but you're able to receive, too.
So that has us concerned as ham radio operators, but as you mentioned, a lot of the citizen ban operators and some of the law enforcement, in fact, they're in California.
The California Highway Patrol still uses the frequencies down in the range that would be affected Well, the first question, the obvious question I would have is, for example, I read the FEMA document, FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, you know, they wrote this incredible thing about BPL, I'll read a little bit of it here in a moment, but they wrote this amazing thing saying, look, our agency's transmitters are not going to be able to operate if you put this BPL into service, and they sent this to the Federal Communications Commission
And I think most of us said, ah, whew, boy, they're not going to be able to ignore this.
They'll kill BPL quickly.
But somehow, how can they ignore this?
I don't know.
I'll be honest with you.
There's another study out there, too, that we're all anxiously waiting to hear from, and that's the NTI study.
But in our research, and also in talking to various agencies, we don't do this just by ourselves.
I don't want people to think that just the ham radio operators are affected, because we're not.
We're amongst everybody that's in that spectrum.
In fact, the NTIA said there's over 18,000 frequency assignments by the federal government, just the federal government, between 2 and 30 megahertz, the FBI being one of them.
So FEMA's concerned because if there is a disaster, and California's had certainly their share of fires and earthquakes and whatnot, what FEMA does is go into the area and set up HF, as you mentioned, high frequency communications.
To aid in the disaster relief.
And if we have a large noise in the neighborhood, in this case BPL, they wouldn't be able to do that.
So I was really surprised when the FCC kind of sloughed that off.
I got a little dramatic at the beginning of this, and I said, you know, nothing less than sort of a, I don't know, government giveaway and a corporate re-grabs kind of deal.
But that is what it feels like.
And the Federal Communications Commission would think normally would be concerned with our safety, at least, if not our privacy.
And so this is sailing through.
An obvious question is, how can this be getting approved like this?
How can it happen?
I mean, it's just beyond the pale.
How?
It surprises us as well at the league, I'll be honest with you, because the evidence is there.
And if you've gone to our website, you can see some of the videos that we've done that shows what occurs.
And I was pretty flabbergasted when the commission went ahead with the proposed rulemaking.
And so while it's not a done deal, and everybody has a chance to make a comment on it, It looks like to me that the steamroller is going.
It's going to happen in some form or fashion.
And while amateur radio operators are not against BPL per se, we are against the interference.
And the people that asked for the proposed rulemaking, the PLCA, did not get everything they wanted.
I have to admit, there was some relief there about mitigation of interference.
But the onus is on us.
It's on the people that are interfered with.
I'll tell you what.
I watched the video, and it's a very long video.
I wouldn't recommend it for the general public, but for amateur radio operators, I've got a link up tonight to the ARRL site, and there you can watch a video which will show you exactly what it's going to be like when BPL comes to your neighborhood.
And I gave Joe Walsh an opportunity to watch it just before he came on the program tonight.
What were your impressions, Joe?
I was absolutely shocked.
I was absolutely shocked.
It compared with and without, and we're talking about all shortwave communications as we know it, and they virtually disappeared.
All signals on shortwave radio just virtually disappeared when the BPL was fired up, and I was shocked.
Well, you know, it does mean, now, the three of us here are all hams.
I think that it very nearly would seem to be the end of ham radio.
But, you know, that's us.
Most of the public is going to go, well, ham radio, gee, wouldn't it be nice to have the internet right there in my wall socket so I can plug my computer in and be on the internet?
I wonder if the public has considered another aspect of having a two-way communication system in every single one of their wall sockets.
Jim, doesn't it seem to you that the manufacturers will start turning out appliances that, well, maybe on the benign side will start by reporting your usage or something like that?
But gee whiz, big brother.
Talk about big brother.
Holy mackerel!
It's coming.
I have to admit, some of the refrigerator manufacturers have already started putting chips in, or they say they will.
They'll let you know when you need a gallon of milk, or some more eggs, or cheese, or whatnot, and this will all be done via chip.
And it'll be connected to the wall socket, as you say, because the refrigerator's plugged in.
And where does it go from there?
I mean, Madison Avenue would certainly love to know what programs I listen to, or watch, see and and uh... what i go to the to the dairy and of the
grocery store and what about
and all this is uh... certainly possible in fact uh... ed thomas of the federal
communications commission was talking about that one of his interviews with another
reporter not too long ago
uh... well there's uh... at the oscar government, for example, has this Echelon deal where they monitor the telephone calls, certainly international calls, even domestic calls, you know, in the name of homeland security.
And while I understand that, if it were possible to have some sort of communication device in somebody's house, stealthily plugged into the wall somewhere, gee, they could monitor everything you do in your house.
They would know when you come home, when you go watch TV, when you go to bed, when you get up in the morning because of the electrical load and the chip in the electrical meter be monitoring all of that.
So your habits would be pretty well documented.
All right.
You know what?
I'm sort of tearing into the FCC here, probably unwise since I have a broadcast license and a lot of other licenses.
However, the FCC, which used to be made up primarily of engineer type, you know, engineers, real radio or television broadcast engineers, and they are still there, but their numbers are smaller, aren't they, Jim?
There's a lot of bureaucrats there now, huh?
That's true.
Over the last several years, it's gone more toward political-type appointees and less engineer-type people that understand the actual spectral problems.
But let me point out that, quite frankly, the FCC doesn't care whether BPL succeeds or fails.
But their argument is, well, they make it possible, and if it's economically feasible, then great.
If it's not, then it'll fail on its own accord.
Tonight, before I came on your show, I downloaded some documents from the Carnegie Mellon Institute, and it's a very prestigious university, and they talked about the promises and false promises of powerline over broadband communications.
So the title of the article is written by Mr. Otonga.
He's a Ph.D.
and research professor, and basically what he's saying is it's not economically viable.
But nonetheless, there's a big push behind making it available.
Well, and the FCC almost seems to be cheerleading it.
I mean, there were some statements I know made by commissioners that suggested this is going to be the best thing since sliced bread, you know, butter bread or something.
Yeah, that's true.
I've been kind of disappointed in the commission, but I understand, like you, I have a license as well, and the ARRL, the American Radio Relay League, still has to do business for the commission, so I can't jump out there to the hard but i would i would say this
that uh... there should be a regulating agency in and not a chamber of commerce
well again there's still a lot of good guys and gals in the fcc but but at the
top uh... it would seem as though
uh... there's a sort of a steamroller kind of attitude about
bpl and and they would seem to be sort of on the side of the instead of you
know the commission is usually neutral and it's like let's examine this let's
take comments on whether or not this is a wise thing for our nation to do.
And by the way, while we're on the subject, a lot of nations have tried this and decided it was not so wise.
Isn't that right?
Like Japan?
That's correct.
There's a number of countries, Austria, Japan, Both finally said that they didn't want it in their country because it made so much noise, it made their communications intolerable.
And I was surprised the commission didn't take some of the data that they had and examine what some of these other countries had experienced.
It's like, well, we're America, we can do it better, we can do it different.
And that's what the industry, PLCA, is telling the commission.
They seem to have the commissioner's ears pretty well.
I just wanted to add that the Netherlands was kind of a test case for Europe, and the Netherlands is shutting it down.
They tried it on a limited basis, and they're completely stopping it, totally, in July.
And they say it's a nightmare they wish they'd never gotten into.
Yes, and the Japanese... And also, I mean, none of this, of course, is really presented to the FCC.
They've got a...
They've got a presentation where this interference issue really is hardly mentioned and there's really no published information with the pro-BPO people about the interference.
Well, I keep asking why?
I mean, does anybody really have the answers about why the FCC's ear isn't bent toward listening to those who say this is going to be an utter disaster?
Instead of listening to the corporate side, which I understand has money and influence, but gee whiz, they're supposed to be in the middle.
That's true.
The thing that concerns me, not only is the ham radio operators, but we did some research.
It's not scientific by any means, but I went back and looked at some of the manufacturers of equipment for The frequency is 50 megahertz and below.
And there's just a numerous number of small towns, small volunteer fire departments, small 1 and 2 and 3 police departments, you know, members of the police departments out here in rural America that still uses these frequencies.
And I'm curious what happens when they fire it up.
Now, one of the things that always amazed me about the hype that the PLC has done And that's over BPL.
Well, every American home has a wall plug.
We can do Farmer Jones out here ten miles out of town, and he can have broadband.
Well, I have to ask the question, and this is a pretty simple question.
Why doesn't he have it now?
Why doesn't the cable companies run a cable out there?
Why doesn't the telephone companies run a DSL line out there?
Well, the answer, of course, is it's not economically viable.
Well, if it's not economically viable, then I wonder if it's going to be with BPL.
Tell you what, gentlemen, we'll pause here for a moment.
And we'll come right back.
We're discussing BPL.
You've probably never heard of it before.
Listen very carefully.
We've got a lot more.
Well I heard some people talking just the other day.
And they said you were gonna put me on a shelf.
But let me tell you I got some news for you.
And you'll soon find out it's true.
And then you'll have to eat your lunch all by yourself.
Because I'm already gone.
And I'm feeling so...
So...
to the best of Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
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Even though BPL will wipe out ham radio, will wipe out CB radio, Aeronautical stuff and the list goes on and on and on and on even though it's gonna wipe out my hobby.
I think you all should be aware of the fact that it's also gonna wipe out emergency communications in many cases.
It's gonna put Big Brother right in your house.
In every single electrical socket in your home.
You need to write to your congressman.
You need to write to your senator.
And say stop BPL, or at least, at the very least, stop and take a good, long, hard look before you decide to do something that many other countries wisely have tossed out the window.
Listen to just a little bit of what FEMA said.
They're very, very important.
FEMA's very important to us.
Federal Emergency Management Agency.
They said, in summary, with what they filed to the FCC, they said, And the HF spectrum is a unique resource for survivable, long-distance, fixed and transportable communications that are independent of fragile infrastructure.
Other communications media cannot meet FEMA's requirements for disaster response and other mission-critical communications.
Other users of the HF spectrum are similarly affected by the proposal, and only HF radio can meet their needs as well.
Implementation of BPL under the present or relaxed emission restrictions would make HF radio unusable.
Did you hear that?
that that's from fema would make h f radio on usable
depriving our nation of an invaluable irreplaceable public safety resource
the purported benefits of bpl in terms of expanded service in certain
communication sectors do not appear to out way
the benefit to the overall public of h f radio capability as presently used by
the government broadcasting and public safety users That's FEMA.
Once again, the president of the organization that represents my hobby
nationally, uh...
Jim Haney, president of the Amateur Radio Relay League, along with Joe Walsh, who's the lead guitarist for the Eagles and happens to also be an amateur radio operator.
Welcome back, you two.
Is it possible, do you think, either one of you, that the engineers, and there are still good engineers in the FCC, are simply not managing to have their voice heard Over that from the other side, or is it possible that simply they're not listening to their own people in this case?
I think that it's just they're not listening to their own people.
I mean, I've talked to a number of engineers at the Commission to shake their head, but they're being overwhelmed by upper level management and other sources, I think, coming from.
You mentioned in your lead a while ago about the FEMA summary statement.
I think a little bit more could be added to that, and that is, after 9-11, everybody in the emergency response teams, such as police and fire and aviation and whatnot, discovered that we have a very fragile and very complicated infrastructure for telecommunications.
That's right.
Sitting here with a little cell phone, smaller than a pack of cigarettes, but it's very complicated to make it work.
And the cell phones, for the most part, in the 9-11 area, were totally useless, weren't they?
They were, and it's a common occurrence.
The Murrah building in Oklahoma City, when it was bombed, all the cell phones around the area got tied up by media, and the emergency services couldn't do anything.
So they've gone back to the basics, point-to-point communications, and that's what we're talking about here in BPL, interfering with, is point-to-point communications.
I'm really concerned about that, as everybody should be.
I think it's just one small fragment of the society, how we work and how we communicate.
But it's also a very important one, like I mentioned a while ago.
It's particularly important right now, Jim and Joe, because 9-11 did just happen.
It's very fresh in our minds.
We know something awful or something else is going to happen.
We're at war.
We've so declared it.
A war, right?
We're at war.
So something else is going to happen.
If that doesn't, Mother Nature will deliver something.
Our people, our emergency response teams, have to be able to talk to each other.
And I just don't see, in this era of homeland security, how they can be ignoring that.
Well, I agree.
There is a volunteer emergency infrastructure in this country that is maintained by AM radio operators.
And it's not really that much known about, but in terms of disasters, if it wasn't for the hams who established communications in the disaster areas, Horrible things would happen.
You wouldn't get any word out.
Every hurricane that happens, Joe, inevitably the media is trying to report on what's going on in the area, and the first word coming out is always an AP story about a ham operator who's managing communications and getting word out about injuries and that kind of thing.
Absolutely.
Any disasters in South America, the only way to contact down there is through ham radio operators.
The only way a ship at sea can contact the mainland, any mainland, in case of an emergency, is through shortwave radio.
Well, here's another thing, and you just reminded me, Joe.
We have this wonderful constellation of satellites that gives us television and lets us talk on the telephone over long distances, but in the case of a conflict, Or perhaps even an unhappy action from our sun, like a giant flare we had one recently that, had it been pointed toward Earth, would have fried every satellite in its path.
If we suddenly were without that fragile infrastructure, then this kind of communications is the only thing that could get through.
Am I wrong?
No, you're absolutely correct.
And I'd like to take it a step further.
Whenever you take that next trip to Tokyo, and you leave LAX and get on that big 747 and if you've
been out for about an hour, he loses communications with his center and has to switch
to HF, high frequency, to report position and fuel state and stuff like that.
This has done all international flights.
And AirRank, which handles that type of communications, already had to shut down one of their systems there in Half
Moon Bay, California, because of interference.
Really? What is the state of BPL deployment?
I mean, what's going on right now?
There's about 30 cities that have trial experiments in it, and some of them as many as 100 homes.
Most of them, though, a few as four, three or four.
And they're doing the testing.
I have to admit, for your public listeners that are not up to the technical aspect of BPL, if I were the CEO of a power company, Let's use Manassas, Virginia, for example, which is where the power company is owned by the city.
I would have to look at possible revenue sources and putting internet over my power lines, which I already own, is certainly something that I would want to look at.
But I would also want to look at both sides.
And the industry that's promoting it turns a very blind eye toward the interference issue.
And not only the interference that it creates, But the interference that it can receive, and if you don't understand that, just go outside and break off the antenna off your car and see how well you hear this radio station you're listening to.
It's a two-way street.
I actually saw something, Jim, that said the FCC is accepting comments on whether BPL should be also included across the AM broadcast band.
I've not seen that.
And if that's the case, I would think the National Association of Broadcasters would Get all over that like a cheap suit.
Very unhappy, you would think.
That would virtually destroy AM broadcasting, or make it extremely difficult to hear AM stations.
Very much so.
Now, here's another thing.
Everybody needs to understand they're talking about actually transmitting from power lines, or trying to transmit through power lines, but as they do, these aren't shielded.
They're wide open, giant antennas, so they're going to actually That's true.
It will, whether you subscribe to the service or not.
it doesn't stop there this is going to go into every home ultimately perhaps in
america which means that everybody's house wiring
we've all got the wiring in our home right the electric wiring in our home
that's all going to be radiating as well isn't it that's true
uh... it will will be subscribed to the service or not to if your neighbor has
it uh... you're going to have a two uh... but but but but but but but
uh... it will that brings us back to this privacy
uh... aspect of it They're not talking a lot about that, are they?
No, I've not heard a word other than the one comment made by the FCC people, and it was on the plus side.
I have heard some talk about these smart appliances, and you already have a V-chip in your television set, so to add one more chip, and now the networks will know what you're watching, and when you watch it, and when you turn the set off, and so on.
That bothers me a little bit.
It really does.
All right.
Jim, what has the AORL done?
I mean, representing ham radio operators, you would certainly imagine that your organization would have been a heavy lobby organization to the FCC, trying to stop this or at least slow down enough so that we work something out.
We've been doing that.
In fact, just a short while ago, last month, I was in Washington visiting with some of the congressmen, and also I was there at the Initial rollout of the proposed rulemaking.
I was at the commission when they announced all that.
But what I would like to see and what the league is going to push for is more awareness by the public.
Not just amateur radio.
We're not the one that's been damaged the most.
There's so many other services that are out there and we're working with these people and we've had one meeting already with what we'd call an alliance of other shortwave users.
And what I would like to see is a Committee formed in Congress to have hearings on it.
And I've talked to Congressman Walden from Oregon about that.
He's also a ham radio operator, by the way.
Oh, good.
And Congressman Mike Ross from Arkansas is a ham radio operator.
And if we could get a hearing just going in Congress just to explain both sides, I think that would be extremely beneficial.
And that's one of the directions the league is going toward is this type of awareness And try to bring it to a higher level of information to the general public.
Let's see if we can quantify how much noise we're talking about.
This is just a little on the technical side, but I'll tell my audience right now, a lot of the AM stations that you're listening to, if you were listening on a receiver, would not be plus 30 dB in strength.
Now, they'd be a lot less than that, many of them, and yet you're sitting listening comfortably.
This BPL noise that's going to be radiated, in a lot of cases, Jim, how strong will it be?
We're talking about the raising of noise level all across the shortwave band from, again, from 2 to 80 megahertz, if not more.
How much noise are we talking about?
Double.
You used the term 30 dB, and I know that's a scientific term, but some of our measurements have been as much as 57 to 60 dB, so that's virtually double.
And the way you could think about that is if you're going to a concert hall and you're by yourself and talking to your wife, rather, the conversation can happen, but once the concert hall is filled, that's virtually impossible.
So that's what we're talking about, noise.
Pollution.
What I refer to as spectrum pollution.
It was okay for me to, let's say, change the motor oil in my car and flush it down the toilet.
Well, who would know?
But if it happens across a million homes, everybody would know.
Sooner or later, I think somebody's got to take a look at what we call spectrum pollution.
We've got air pollution.
We've got noise pollution.
We've got water pollution.
And now we need to take an address I've got my own little list of things I thought would be affected.
BPL is the leader in that.
Other than the fact that ham radio will be virtually wiped out along with CB, what other
services, I've got my own little list of things I thought would be affected, Jim, what are
the main services that you see being affected negatively?
Well, the shortwave listeners of course, they'll have a real problem with it.
But again, I go back to the rural America where the small volunteer fire department uses 47 megahertz, for example, to communicate from City Hall to the fire trucks, the small one- and two-man police forces, and the large infrastructure, the California Highway Patrol, for example.
There's just a myriad of services that use the spectrum that will be affected.
And I have to ask, where are these people right now?
Are they waiting for the NTIA to come out, which is all the government stuff, but I think the small municipalities should stop and take a look.
Do you have enough money in your treasury at the City Hall to scrap your current communication system and buy something up in the 800 megahertz range, which would not be effective?
Well, they're going to be blindsided, many of them, aren't they?
In other words, they don't even see this coming.
Jim, as badly as it's going to...
Perhaps Killaham Radio, half the hams I talk to aren't aware of it, much less the general public and perhaps some highway patrol group somewhere.
They're going to get blindsided.
That's true, and I'm disappointed.
We've done everything we can as a national organization to publish it on our website and our magazine, but it's just like in the military.
There's always a percentage that never get the word.
Wouldn't it be best for the audience, realizing the magnitude of what we're talking about tonight, to contact their senator, their congressperson, and, you know, I would say, hey, write to the FCC, except don't.
Because I just don't think the FCC's interested in listening to this side of it.
So what about Congress and the Senate, Jim, and both of you?
You think it's a way to go?
I do.
I think the congressmen now are aware of it to some extent.
In any letter you might write, you need to explain what it is.
And one of the avenues I guess I would use is the spectrum is public.
It's not renewable and they're not making any more of it.
So would you want to take and go and pollute Yellowstone or some of the other national parks?
It's a natural resource and we need to take care of it.
Our airwaves are a natural resource, aren't they?
Absolutely.
Sure.
Joe, you've been a ham, what, all your life?
I've been a ham since 1960.
It made my life, vastly improved the quality of my life.
I have a little bit of background in electronics.
And I just absolutely, I know that this is not going to work.
Can you contemplate the end of your hobby?
Well, no.
I can't even imagine.
But that's what will happen.
Yeah, I agree with that.
Jim, unless I didn't watch your video, which is available on the ARRL site, properly, it's about five minutes long, if I didn't see it properly, tell me, but you couldn't operate under those conditions?
No, no, you could not.
It would be virtually impossible.
The noise level would be Like, what's difficult to describe, you just need to go there.
It's a 70 megabyte download, I think, if I'm not mistaken.
It's big.
Yeah, there is a demonstration available on the internet.
And again, when you watched that, Joe, you were set back a little, weren't you?
Well, yeah.
I mean, through the entire spectrum, there's virtually no signals getting through.
Yeah.
Absolutely none.
No signals getting through.
This is Kansas.
Can anyone hear me?
You know, you can send remarks to the FCC over the internet.
Yes, I know.
I don't know if that's going to do any good, because anyone with a background in electronics that's commented has said this will not work.
About six countries have tried test cases and said it's not going to work.
Well, that's really something.
I mean, why would Japan, which is a very technologically advanced society, right up there with us, if not beyond in some areas, they tossed it out on its ear?
Yep.
Surely our own government would have had to have reviewed why the Japanese threw it out, why other countries have thrown it out, but we're embracing it.
Well, something smells really bad, that's all I can say.
Yeah, and you know what?
I'm going to thank you, Joe.
I'm going to hold Jim for about 30 more minutes if I can, and thank you, Joe, all so much for being here tonight.
And what I want to do is take some calls, and we've only got so many lines here we can deal with.
So, Joe, I'm going to thank you for coming up and speaking on behalf of Ham Radio.
Well, thank you very much.
It's an honored privilege to be a guest on your show, and I'll leave it with Jim.
And I love the Eagles.
Oh, thank you.
You've been a guitar player for the Eagles for how long?
Oh, since last century.
Art, if you've never been to one of his concerts, be sure and go.
I went to my first one up in Massachusetts, wasn't it, Joe?
Yep, sure was.
I was just overwhelmed.
You guys do such a great job.
Alright, then this is for you, along with everything else I played last hour.
Joe, thank you!
You're welcome.
Go ahead, Jim.
You got it.
Alright, Jim.
When we get back, we'll take some calls.
How about that?
That'd be great.
Stay right where you are.
Jim Haney, president of the ARRL, Amateur Radio Relay League, is my guest.
I'm Art Belvis.
This is Coast to Coast AF.
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There's a good friend of mine who's fond of saying, has the whole world gone crazy?
What's going on out there?
Why in the world would we take unshielded power lines, which run all across America, and intentionally introduce RF, radio frequency, that's going to radiate from them and virtually destroy the entire shortwave band.
Everything perhaps from 2 through 80 megahertz.
Any of the technicians out there know that's a That's all there is.
I mean, that's the entire shortwave band.
Gone!
In front of our eyes.
And then at the same time, they're going to come into every single American home.
Whether you want it or not, your electric socket is going to have two-way internet in it.
And if it doesn't, it's going to have your neighbor radiating.
And so, with that, they can literally watch every single move we make, ultimately.
I mean, why not?
The electrical powers there, the communication capability.
Well, hell, they could plant a bug in your house and be watching what you do in downtown Bangkok or something.
We'll be back with Jim Haney and your phone calls.
he's president of the and radio relay league just one of the organization's
concerned with what's well actually happening right now coming up at the bottom of the hour doctor david race bannon
who was in This is going to be very... I've never talked to anybody who was an Interpol person.
They just don't talk very much.
But right now, Jim Haney, president of the ARRL.
Jim, welcome back.
And I would like, if I could, to take a few phone calls from the audience on this issue now, that hopefully they understand it.
Is there anything you wanted to get on tonight, Jim?
Any fact you wanted to drive home that we haven't managed to get to?
I think we've covered the subject pretty well.
It's something, like I said, that concerns us, and as the American Radio Relay League, it's the number one job on our priority list right now is to make sure that all amateur radio operators and the public, as best we can inform them, are aware of BPL and the various problems it presents.
Thank you for the American part.
I don't know why.
I always say I'm at a radio relay league.
It's the American Radio Relay League.
And you've been in existence for how long, Jim?
Well, this is our 90th year.
We were founded in 1914.
Wow.
All right.
Here come a few calls.
First time caller line, you're on the air with Jim Haney.
Hi.
Yes.
Good evening, Art.
Good evening.
And Mr. Haney, good morning.
Good morning to you.
This is Greg W6EZV in Burbank, an amateur radio operator, so I do have somewhat of an axe to grind.
Art, you may recall we talked during the fires here in Southern California recently.
That's right.
Greg was involved in the media coverage of the fires in California, so he knows a lot about this, Greg.
Well, I can tell you if my Means of communicating with the outside world, because my cell phone was no good during that week.
And if my means of communicating with the outside world, that is, ham radio, had been blocked by BPL interference, I would have been a most unhappy camper.
So I do have an axe to grind with this.
But a few questions have come up tonight.
There's been the question of why is the government turning a deaf ear Towards the objections to this, why are we not paying attention to the problems that other countries have had?
Why would we allow spectrum pollution after all we've been through with the pollution of the air and the water?
And I'm here to point the fingers at corporate interests.
And I have some real problems with the way that the corporate world now exerts disproportionate influence On our government.
In fact, it's becoming a toss-up as to who's really in charge of our society.
Government or corporate interests.
And unfortunately, I think the balance is being tilted more towards the corporate.
Case in point, there really has been no mention of this in the national media.
This should be on the agenda of national discussion.
And yet, you're the only media outlet that I've heard so far that has mentioned this at all.
Now, if you think back ten years ago, when there was a major giveaway of a lot of the Spectrum for digital television, there wasn't much discussion about it either.
And we're talking about Spectrum that could have been worth, had it been auctioned off as has been done in the past with Spectrum for broadcast, could have generated billions of dollars in revenue.
And the only media outlet that I ever heard bring it up was uh... what harry sheeran on uh... on npr are armed on uh... public radio and uh... you didn't hear about it on the mainstream media outlets well-worn well corporations pretty much the national media there really isn't uh... a lot of outlets for alternative uh... now i i i just uh... got off the uh... two meters with another him here in burbank uh... w six a i k
Who pointed out that the real money to be made in this BPL scheme is not providing internet.
So, when they say that, well, we may or may not make money on this, that's not very encouraging because the real money to be made in this scheme is the sale of information.
When the power companies can sell your information to a myriad of other entities, I mean, think of how valuable it would be For your health insurance provider to know how much mayonnaise you're consuming.
If your refrigerator can always keep your shopping list.
That's right, that really is right.
Now your refrigerator is snitching you out to your health insurance provider.
So, you know, there is a lot of money at stake here.
And so the corporations are going to exert as much influence as they can on the Commission and other government entities to make sure that this happens.
And I have a problem with that.
More and more corporations are... they seem to be only looking at the short-term returns and propping up their stock prices rather than long-term sustainable growth.
All right, well, Greg, thanks.
And Jim, you want to comment on that?
Well, I think he's got a point there in a way.
Those that are members of the American Radio Relay League Get our magazine and see our website.
I go to Washington fairly regularly and represent Amateur Radio to our elected officials, and I feel somewhat inferior from the standpoint that we are a 501c3 organization, so we're not allowed to contribute to campaigns and re-elections, but once I started going back in 2000 a lot, I get invitations from Congressmen and Senators all the time for a breakfast or a dinner or Go to their hunting lodge and whatnot, and we can't do that, but the corporations can.
Well, let's see now.
You can't contribute to a politician, but on the other hand, a power company, for example, interested in BPL, they could contribute.
Oh, absolutely.
I wonder if that could have anything to do with this.
I don't think Congress has gotten involved with it at that level yet, but it's going to.
It's going to have to.
Uh-huh.
Well, so again, I'm trying to urge people at this point to contact Congress or their senator, write off a note and say, look, please, at the very least, pause and have some hearings on the advisability of this BPL before it's pushed through and the American people are blindsided.
That's exactly the way to do it, and do it in such a way that the representative in your district or your senator Understands.
It doesn't take a long letter.
I know in the business world that I'm in, and getting letters from him, don't write me a long letter.
Sometimes I don't have time to read it.
But if I've got a short one, but precise.
A professor told me one time the hardest letter to write is a short one.
That's right.
But it's the most effective.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Jim Haney.
Hi, this is Larry in Fort Lauderdale.
I had a comment and then a question.
I was involved in emergency communications down in South Florida after Hurricane Andrew.
Yes, sir.
And one thing I noticed, it reaffirmed something that I've been driving home during planning stages with people and organizations and government and law enforcement organizations that are planning to buy systems, is don't throw away the point-to-point simplex radio systems.
And for your listeners, those are radios that are like walkie-talkies, where you can always put one radio up Even if you have to put an antenna on top of a fire truck ladder, you can talk from one radio to another without being dependent upon a lot of electronics that the trunk systems require.
Yes.
And after Andrew, lots of repeaters, the old-fashioned repeaters, were knocked out, and the Navy even came in to do some help, some assistance in South Florida, and it was only the point-to-point radios, the most basic, simple radios, that worked.
And if BPL is going to threaten something like that, then we're out for lunch.
And my question is, is this, is that if there are so many agencies from FEMA to even the military, isn't the battle lines pretty well weighted to where the FCC cannot survive trying to jam this thing through, let alone the competition from the cable companies and the other people?
It seems to me that they're way outnumbered and this thing should not go through.
You know, that was my attitude too, Jim.
I agree with it.
It shouldn't go through.
But on the other hand, it's an economic situation where, as I mentioned earlier, if I'm the CEO of a power company and I've got a grid in place and my stockholders say, hey, I want maximum return on my stocks, I've got to look at this.
I've got to do it.
Or put another way, follow the money.
Follow the money.
That's exactly right.
NTIA represents all government interests.
And like I say, they haven't weighed in on this yet.
And everybody's just waiting to see what the NTIA is going to do.
People ask me, haven't you talked to the Department of Army, haven't you talked to the Navy, the Air Force, the Forestry Department, and yes we have, but they have to make their comments through their representatives, which is NTIA.
FCC represents and governs the public end of it.
And I would think now that they've authorized or got a dose of proposed rulemaking out, if this goes through, they've stepped on the NTIA, the government's toes, big time.
I would think they would really holler.
Oh, you would think they really would holler.
And you affirm, Jim, that there are some FCC engineers that are just shaking their head.
That's true.
I've had meetings with them, and not with the commissioners, and they say, you know, this is, well, we've got to do what we're told.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Jim Haney.
Hi.
Yes.
Is that John on?
Yes, that is you.
John in New Orleans.
Yes, John.
A great, rare honor and pleasure to get in through Art Bell and Jim, of course.
Just a note from another caller that the control at the top, in my opinion, of course, is the military.
They're at the top of that ladder, the military.
Just like 1984, the proverbial frog in the cold water.
That heats up and the frog finds itself dead, and that's why they're not still fighting what they were fighting before in life.
Does this come under Homeland Security or am I just being paranoid about that?
Oh, not at all.
Thank you, sir.
I saw a recent report on demonstrators, even peaceful demonstrators, being tagged as terrorists and their actions as terrorism.
I see this all as that 1984 frog who's well dead by now.
Where is Homeland Security and the military kind of pulling these strings and ropes?
Yeah, okay, fine.
Let's talk a little bit about Homeland Security.
Surely, we're in a war.
The President declared it to be a war with terrorism.
And, of course, it was just tragedy in Spain.
It's going to hit home in America again.
Not a matter of if, but when.
And we're going to need those communications that we're getting ready to wipe out, Jim.
I've created a lot of friends over the years of being a ham radio operator, as you have, Art.
And I got a call not too many months ago, and it was from an FBI agent.
And he says, you know, you may not be aware that every FBI office in the United States is connected via HF using the ALE protocol.
And there's another big buzzword that a lot of your audience wouldn't know, but it's a way of communication.
He uses HF, high frequency, just in case the phone lines go down or the satellite gets blasted by a solar flare.
And this goes on 24-7.
If they can't do that, then suddenly the FBI offices are isolated.
There's many, many agencies like that that do homeland security and do public service that would be affected by it.
So I really hope that the NTIA, which assigns those frequencies, Have finished their work and about to publish their report.
God, I hope so.
I hope so, because the cheerleading at the Commission right now is just scaring everybody to death.
It really is.
So at this point, people should start writing their Congress people and their Senators and saying, please review BPL before it, you know, before we're blindsided.
And it's already happened to us, as so many other things have in America.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Jim Haney.
Hello.
Hi, Art.
Hello.
My problem with this is, if shortwave is taken away, I don't want to sound too paranoid, but it seems to me that that's really our only source of, you know, well I hate to say it, but uncensored news in this country.
You can say it.
The stuff you see on the 5 o'clock evening news just seems to me like No, well, here's the thing.
All countries propagandize, or even we propagandize our own people to a degree, and the only way to really get the news straight, as you pointed out, is to be able to listen to the BBC, listen to other countries.
When that's gone, they can tell us anything we want.
We're going to get our news somewhere, so we will become sheep.
I hadn't thought of that angle, but Jim, he's right, isn't he?
In other words, this will affect the shortwave listener's ability to hear the BBC or Radio Australia or whatever.
The BBC, and interestingly you bring that up, did file some very terse comments about BPL that was a test going on in Scotland, I believe.
And their report that they published was very critical.
of uh... short world will be the book bpl so you exactly right uh... if you enjoy listen to bbc or
some of the other shortwave stations of us call
will be no more that's
it's too credible to believe that my international liner on the
original hanyan are well-liked
hello yet uh... my name is peter
Okay, Dieter, you're going to have to speak up good and loud.
You're not too loud, so yell at us.
Okay, how about now?
Is that better?
Yes, sir.
Okay.
Yeah, I agree with what the previous caller just talked about in regards to you would not be able to listen to other shortwave broadcast stations.
And not only that, but what about amateur radio as well as some other radios, you know, being the last bastion of free, open, uncensored communication?
In other words, You're not forced into commercialized communications whereby you have to pay.
To me, it's one of the last open, free methods of communication.
The other thing I'd also like to point out is during 9-11, I'll never forget when that happened.
I left work and I rushed home.
I turned on my shortwave amateur rig, and I've got to tell you, There were about a dozen emergency nets that covered the complete eastern coast of the United States from Maine all the way down to Florida and out to the Midwest, and communications on HF was the only way to do it, and it was excellent.
It cannot be emphasized enough that we need a wireless communications infrastructure that does not rely upon cell phone towers, receivers, or satellites.
Yes.
Exactly right.
That is exactly right, isn't it, Jim?
Absolutely.
I was also watching television when 9-11 occurred.
And while they weren't showing the Pentagon, they were showing the Twin Towers.
And within a few minutes, I got a call from the Salvation Army, their national headquarters, wanting to know how many amateurs could I muster up and get up to the Pentagon.
That's where they were interested in getting help right away.
And fortunately, we did.
Ham Radio has been a passion in my life for a long time.
Many instances I've had an opportunity to help somebody else and as one of our people pointed out, Ham Radio saves lives and we want to continue to be able to do that and it's an important part of the fabric of this nation is to have this independent infrastructure that doesn't depend on all the high-tech type of communications.
And so to rip all this out from under us in a blindside move and just sort of wake up one day and have the end of all this is just It's completely unthinkable to me, Jim.
And again, when FEMA filed their comments, I thought, oh, thank God.
You know, the government can't ignore that.
There's no way they can ignore FEMA saying that it can't communicate with its emergency network once this happens.
They can't ignore it.
And yet, man, they brushed that aside like yesterday's news.
I would like to see you sometime try to get a hold of Alan Shark, who's the president of the PLCA, and see what his take or what he has to say about the interference issue.
I would, too.
Listen, Jim, thank you for being here.
President of the American Radio Relay League.
Bless your heart, and this is just like the opening salvo.
They're going to be hearing a lot more from me and from you on this subject, Jim.
Absolutely.
The league is, like I say, devoting a tremendous amount of its resources to educate and to make sure that our congressional people are fully aware of what's going on.
We're just keeping the, keep slugging.
That's what we gotta do.
Thank you, partner.
Take care.
Good night.
That's Jim Haney, president of the American Radio Relay League.
From the high desert, we're about to take another adventure.
In the meantime, with regard to BPL, be sure and write your congressman or your senator and say, hey, hey, take a good, long, hard look at this before we do it, please.
Riders on the storm.
Riders on the storm.
Don't count me in.
We don't come easy, you know we don't come easy Got to pay your dues if you want to see the blues, and you
know we don't come easy You don't have to shout or beep the bells, you can even
play them easy Get up out the back and hold your sorrow
Cause the future won't lie To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
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The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
From west of the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
International callers may reach Art by calling your in-country Sprint Access number, pressing
option 5 and dialing toll free, 800-893-0903.
From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
Alright, in summary then everybody, this BPL...
The thing we've been talking about for the past hour and a half is the threat to all of shortwave.
All of it!
So you truckers, you guys who like CB, your hands out there, and then all of you, the general public, the people who have all of this information passing technology in every single one of their electric sockets, you folks out there, you folks who might be worried about the next attack on America and our inability to communicate with our emergency services should, you know, something happen.
You might want to drop your congressperson, you really might on this one, or your senator, a little note saying, let's examine this BPL more carefully before jumping into the fire, huh?
In a moment, Dr. David Race Bannon, who holds a doctorate degree in Asian history, From Seoul National University, a master's degree in computer science.
He's fluent in Korean and Japanese, has published books on political and military history of the region, as well as a martial arts encyclopedia and computer textbooks.
He has appeared on the Discovery Channel, which I dearly love.
Oh, what a great channel.
A&E, the History Channel, has also spoken on international security at world conferences from Berlin to Tokyo to Washington.
David's latest book, Race Against Evil, is an electric account of his nearly 20 years with Interpol.
from the streets of marseille to the alleys of soul he reveals how we battle
terrorists and smugglers on the front lines of international crime coming right up
you know since america's entire communications emergency communications
infrastructure is threatened by this bpl thing uh... you might contact anybody you know
And I mean anybody you know in the media at the network level.
Have them contact Jim Haney, have them contact me, have them contact anybody.
Have them hear this last hour and a half.
This story needs to be told nationally and it needs to be told fast.
Now to Dr. Bannon.
Welcome to the program.
Thank you, Art.
Wow, I have never spoken to a soul that worked for Interpol.
In fact, Interpol is kind of like another one of those sort of shadowy things that most Americans, you know, they hear about it in the movies and that's about it, really.
Sure, and as a matter of fact, all across the country when I talk with people they always say, Inter-what?
It's the world's second largest international organization, right after the UN, with 180 plus member countries, and a huge annual budget, and yet it's a testament to the effectiveness of their intelligence work that nobody's heard of them.
So they're that effective?
They hide in plain sight?
Exactly, exactly.
Interpol itself, its actual name is the International Criminal Police Organization.
It's been around since 1923, designed specifically to encourage cooperation between international law enforcement officers.
However, they also have their own officers.
As a matter of fact, in Spain, there are those recent terrorist bombings, and CNN's on the scene, and they're filming, and they see these agents wandering around.
They ask them where they're from, and they say, Interpol, and disappear.
And naturally, it's very difficult for anyone to get an interview with an Interpol officer, and when someone like myself writes a book about all of my years working for Interpol, the agency responds very negatively.
Did they respond very negatively to you?
Oh, they certainly did.
Really?
In what form?
Well, at first they were veiled threats, and then ultimately they sent a number of Interpol officers to my home to encourage me to sign an affidavit that essentially denied the validity of the book.
They would then use that affidavit To get the publisher to pull the book from the shelves.
That must have been some moment when they put that down in front of you.
How did that go?
It did not go well, Art.
Actually, at the time, my Interpol supervisor of some 20 years, Jacques Taffare, and other colleagues came to my aid.
Over the course of two months, we ultimately ended up in Marseilles, France.
Where we had acquired enough documentation from my Interpol supervisor, Jacques Deferre, to ensure and guarantee my safety and the safety of my family.
However, during the resulting struggle, Jacques Deferre was killed on May 10th of last year.
And the matter of his death?
Oh, there were three agents who attempted to ...acquire the documentation, some 256 pages of material that Jacques had amassed over 30 years in the intelligence community.
They attempted to acquire this material, and during the resulting struggle, Jacques was shot and killed.
Thank God.
I'm assuming that this material is sort of a collection of skeletal material from Interpol that they simply, absolutely would not want public?
Exactly, and although I was with Interpol for many years, my inside information doesn't even come close to someone like Jacques, who is a commissioner with the organization, and actually helped create the sub-directorate For which I worked all these years.
He was something of a master spy, to use a melodramatic term.
Dr. Bannon, would it do me any good at all to survey you on some of that material?
Probably not, huh?
Oh, well, I gave some of it to an intelligence agency here in the United States as a guarantee of my safety, and the rest of it, of course, is distributed among other intelligence officers uh... as a guarantee of
mcgrath safety of myself and my family holy smokes
well where there is uh... from public information about interpol i think people
might find shocking and certainly i think they might be interested to
know what the sub-directorate for which i worked uh... was doing what we
do uh... archangel was the code name of the sub-directorate
because we always try to come up with really cool names of course
That's a cool name.
Yeah, and we were designed specifically to locate those who buy and sell children across international lines for the child sex slavery trade, and also the resulting pornography that's sold.
The numbers are staggering and ghastly and the problem has not gone away over the past 20 years, but gratefully has gotten more attention in the international media.
So you think that, but just for the sake of the question, the problem of trade in children and child pornography is no, not necessarily any worse by magnitudes than it ever was, just more publicized?
I think more publicized.
As time goes by, there are occasionally officers, for example, just last July there was a special agent with the FBI who said that the numbers in the past ten years have increased three-fold, and perhaps that number is accurate.
I do know that because the nature of humanity is such that we often turn away from this type of atrocity, It can grow right before our eyes, and we continue to deny it.
When Archangel would find people involved in this kind of trade, what sorts of actions would ensue?
Well, there are a myriad of things which we could pursue.
My particular team of three members was designed specifically to identify and track these individuals, and when assigned by the technical arm of Interpol, Rosetta, given a dossier of that individual, we would then eliminate the target.
Eliminate the target.
Eliminate the target.
Then that's vigilantism.
It is absolutely vigilantism, and as a matter of fact, one of my colleagues over the many years, Henri Wolper, with the French counter-terrorist agency, the DST, came forward after the publication of the book, one, validated everything that was in the book, and then said publicly that that type of vigilantism is something of which he never approved and never would.
Well, you know what?
There's a lot of people saying, good, out there.
Right now.
You catch somebody doing that kind of thing?
Good.
Goodbye.
Don't let Earth Store kick you in the butt, as on your way out.
Or down, as the case may be.
And that public sentiment certainly exists regarding child sex slavery and regarding terrorists.
You may remember last year, on February 3rd, that Time Magazine cover story on the CIA's secret army clearly identified that the CIA has a list of terrorist leaders that the agency is authorized to kill.
This type of hit list mentality has existed with covert agencies for years, and Interpol has been just as guilty as others.
Can it be done legally?
I mean, I understood that we had a policy... I don't know what our policy is about assassination.
It was something about foreign leaders, certainly.
But what is the United States policy?
Will there be Interpol or the CIA or anybody else regarding wet work?
The stance is that it's absolutely unacceptable, and yet that type of activity ensues.
In The Economist, last year on January 11th, they asked the telling question, is torture or assassination ever justified?
Yes.
And the answer was this, from The Economist last year, American officials are seeking absolution for their violent interrogation methods that are illegal, but which they feel are just and necessary.
And that's a quote directly from American officials that gave an interview to The Economist.
Well, alright, we're in kind of a scrap with El Cato right now.
If we get our hands on an El Cato operative, is it your opinion that we're torturing them for information?
Straight out, do you think we are?
In my opinion, as far as Interpol is concerned, there is no doubt whatsoever.
That if they get their hands on members of terrorist cells, they torture them for information.
As a matter of fact, my years with Interpol, whether we were working with North Korean terrorists who used child pornography to fund their cell, or with the actual producers of the child sex slavery rings, we would frequently torture them to acquire information about the network.
You know, the average American cringes, but You know, we have people who are trying to kill us.
Yeah.
They're trying to kill us.
They want us dead.
They don't want to bargain with us.
They don't want to change our national policy.
They want us dead.
Right.
And they're proving that again and again and again.
And when you're into that kind of situation, then torture or assassination, it just never goes down well.
But maybe there are times I mean, if you're talking about airplanes crashing into buildings of the Pentagon or whatever might be coming our way, that's a hard world, but it's a real world, isn't it?
Very much so, and because we dealt specifically with the child sex slavery rings, children as young as 18 months, and on occasion even younger infants, They were kidnapped, tortured, and abused.
Frequently, the material was photographed and sold across these international networks.
When you see that type of material with these eyes, I've witnessed it.
Although I feel a dull horror and guilt at having taken the lives of other human beings, I also have a strong sense, especially when I was working for Archangel, that These types of individuals have crossed the line into human barbarity and have earned their punishment.
In what way, Dr. Bannon, was Archangel formed within the organization?
I mean, is this something where one agent sort of I don't know, feels out another agent about how they feel on these kinds of subjects.
Assassination, torture, taking someone out, cleaning a problem off the face of the earth.
I mean, how do you recruit people to that?
Well, Art, it's interesting that you use the term cleaning a problem because within the parlance of the trade, we are actually known as cleaners.
Cleaners.
Assassins were known as cleaners.
And there was other work that we did as well, but that was primarily our team's function.
Interpol itself has such a long and nefarious history, a shadowy history, even in the United States, where they were granted complete immunity from prosecution for any of their actions from President Reagan.
Because of this history, they tend to organize sub-directorates that do not communicate with other sub-directorates about their functions.
So although I do know that Commissioner Jacques Dafferre began working against child sex slavery in 1979, when he founded the Archangel Sub-Directorate, how he was then able to continue to acquire funding through the many years until 1991, when it was disbanded, is something about which I'm ignorant.
With regard to how recruiting is done, do they recognize that you seem to have particularly harsh emotions when working in this area?
And does someone come to you and say, look, we've got sort of an organization within an organization that takes care of these kinds of things.
How's that done?
Well, in my particular case, I had been recruited as nothing more than a snitch, just someone who would infiltrate Smuggling rings in South Korea because I spoke Korean fluently at the time and Because of that I was connected with a smuggling ring in South Korea and other Contacts in France and I was therefore used really is nothing more than an undercover operative in a snitch over the course of time, however, I was working with a French counter-terrorist agency and fell in love with one of their agents should a rim bow and I
Sid was killed during a joint operation against some North Korean terrorists in Marseille, France, and these terrorists were using child pornography to fund their cells.
As I watched Sid die, literally, in my arms on the streets of Marseille, after that Jacques d'Affaires with Interpol, who had been using me previously as an undercover operative, Approached me with something much more dramatic.
I had a number of skills that appealed to them and he felt that I had been properly groomed for a different type of work within Interpol's organization.
And that's when I was made aware of the existence of Archangel.
Watching someone die like that, they calculated, put the right kind of motivation in you.
I think so, and certainly I was filled with a raw lust for vengeance that was Easily manipulated by the archangel training and propaganda.
And certainly, this type of propaganda convinces you that the individuals you're tracking are truly evil, in that term, if I may use it.
You may.
Excuse me?
I said you may.
Evil is fine.
That's what child pornography is.
It's evil.
It is that.
And because of that, and this raw lust for vengeance, although at the time I was very confused, certainly, I felt deeply hurt over the loss of my fiancé.
I was still fully prepared to take those negative emotions and apply them to what I was convinced
at the time was a positive role.
Alright, now it sounds, when I'm listening between your words, it sounds like, I don't
know, either you're sorry for some of what you did or you regret what you did or you
have reservations now about the work you did.
I'm trying to put it together as I listen to you.
I hear that in between all the words.
And you're very, very astute, Art.
That's certainly true.
Seven years of therapy later, I can talk about it.
My feelings are very complicated on this.
As I mentioned previously, There are many of the individuals that we targeted that I would come upon them as we tracked them actually in the act of abusing these children.
We would see the videos of their actions and certainly be filled with disgust and felt that our role was entirely justified.
Having said that, when you felt the dull, throbbing horror of taking another human being's life, No matter what the justification, it's difficult not to feel some remorse.
Yes.
Does that dull with the years, or does it grow?
It grew for many years, and grew to a point where I just couldn't stand to work with Interpol anymore, and viciously worked my way out of the organization, which ultimately led to the death of my supervisor.
And the reason I published this book was for two reasons, actually.
One, that people need to be aware that these intelligence organizations and their military arms exist.
And two, I strongly believe that assassination teams and that type of work are not the answer to stop child sex slavery.
That the only way we can stop it is through awareness, so that we as citizens of the world can band together to stop it.
All right.
Boy, are we going to do a lot of talking about this.
Dr. David Racer Bannon is my guest.
He worked for Interpol for many, many years and did some very serious work for Interpol.
My goodness, this is going to be quite an interview.
From the high desert, I'm Art Bell, and this is Coast to Coast AM, right here in the middle of the night where we
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What an interview.
We've walked right into the middle of here.
Dr. David Race Bannon, an Interpol member for many, many years, here to tell us what Interpol's all about.
More than I think you thought it might have been about.
We'll get right back to him.
Once again, Dr. David Race Bannond.
Doctor, welcome back.
Thank you.
Doctor, years ago, my son was molested.
If I could have gotten to the perpetrator before the law enforcement did, I'd have killed him deader than a doornail.
And I've always wondered how I'd look back on that, whether I would have regretted it, you know, if that had occurred.
I've always wondered about that.
And I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't have that answer.
You might.
I myself am a father.
If my daughter were a victim, as your son was, I suspect that my feelings would be so raw and so intense that my actions would be far beyond anything that I did for Interpol.
Although my feelings were very strong and we sometimes felt very attached to these children, Certainly, the feeling of a parent is far beyond that.
There are a number of assignments about which I do not feel even an ounce of guilt.
It's beyond caring about consequences.
It's beyond everything.
I've never had an opportunity to question somebody who's done the things you've done.
How, for example, is somebody easily dispatched?
I mean, are they shot?
Are they poisoned?
Or any of the above?
They're just taken out?
Oh, any of the above.
It's always a case-by-case scenario, and members of the team tended to specialize in either close-quarter combat or marksmanship, etc.
We were all trained in all the various methods of assassination, but people naturally excel in different areas.
Certainly.
Is it possible to make a body Not exist?
Disappear?
It is.
However, I should say that for most of our assignments, 99% of them, we instead would leave evidence for what's known in Interpol as washer-dryers.
That is, the agents assigned to watch the subsequent investigation of the death of this individual.
Frequently, we would leave in plain sight Much of the material, particularly the photographs of that individual molesting children, which frequently made for a very quick investigation by the homicide detectives in whichever country.
Often those homicide detectives were working in tandem with Interpol on the investigation anyway.
So, like under the category of these things happen.
So, Doctor, Let's come back to where we were at the top of the hour.
I mean, I kept sensing, you know, a regret.
How?
How did this start on you?
How did you, when did you realize you weren't, either you weren't cut out for this or it began to weigh on you so heavily that you took a different view of it all?
I mean, how did that happen?
Well, I won't pretend that there isn't certainly an addictive nature to bloodlust, and that was encouraged.
As a matter of fact, there is an entire mechanism within the Interpol subdirectorate, Archangel, that patted us on the back for a job well done.
And although I may have had a number of moral reservations for the actions that we were doing, I bought completely into the training.
Having said that, however, there were a number of occasions when, after completing an assignment, I was not only shocked at how I perhaps enjoyed eliminating this individual, but also at how we enjoyed torturing these individuals.
It is a great shame to anyone who has been involved in this type of work that they grow to enjoy it.
uh... and that certainly war on me that dawning realization you did get to
enjoy yes uh... add to my shame
i did uh... there is certainly uh...
an addictive quality to bloodlust uh... and to the power
involved when you have this entire organization behind you yes uh... in
performing activities Although sometimes we performed alone or in teams, and if we were entirely alone in a country, we're known in the parlance of the trade as naked.
And many assassins would work in that type of situation.
Even so, you always know that there is Safety, as soon as you leave that country.
And, as I said, a whole bunch of people are going to pat you on the back.
However, over the years, I saw so many of my colleagues killed.
As a matter of fact, I was told by Jacques Taffere, shortly before he was killed, that of the some 250 operatives for Archangel, all, except myself and he, were dead or missing.
A very high toll in human life, and I saw also the heavy cost played on not only my colleagues, but friends and acquaintances who had nothing to do with this dirty business, but ended up either being affected by it or actually killed in the crossfire, so to speak.
If somebody went to Interpol now and said, listen, what are your records on Dr. David Bannon, how would Interpol respond?
They have issued only one statement about the book in which they viciously, vehemently deny the existence of Archangel and of anyone mentioned in the book, including myself.
A very brief statement, but they have come forward absolutely and said they deny it categorically.
Did you expect anything else?
Oh, not at all.
As a matter of fact, I would have been shocked if they didn't.
You had a daughter yourself, right?
Yes.
And then you kept working even after your daughter's birth.
There must have been an effect on you by your own daughter's birth.
Oh, dramatically so.
And you had asked before, when did I start feeling remorse?
And I think it was... Then?
There's something that happens to anyone who is a parent.
I'd be a lesser person if I weren't a father.
I really think so.
And whatever changes occurs over the years as a parent, I started to regret the life I had chosen and the work in which I was involved.
How many years did you do it?
My last assignment for Interpol was in November of 1999.
My first assignment was in the early 1980s.
My first assignment was in the early 1980s, so about 18 years.
There must have been a point, yet another point, when this caught up with you and you decided to talk to somebody at Interpol about what you were doing.
How did that one go?
Well, my primary contact was always my friend, colleague, father figure, and enemy, all in one, my supervisor, Jacques Deferre.
And over the years, we spoke frequently about the work I was doing, and in 1989, the European Council became aware of the Archangel's existence.
And in their meeting in 1989, they said that this organization, quote, was above the laws of any land and not legally accountable for its acts.
And they insisted that Archangel be disbanded, or they would curtail funding from Interpol.
And nothing is more powerful than pulling the purse strings.
And so over the course of two years, from 1989 to 1991, Archangel was slowly disbanded.
However, after that, the assignments I had were either with truly legitimate law enforcement cooperation, or they continued to work in this rather shadowy type of assignment Although not under the auspices of Archangel.
Yeah, it may not be called Archangel now in Interpol and other agencies of our government, but is there any question in your mind whatsoever that we continue the same sort of work today?
Oh, no question.
No question, huh?
No question whatsoever.
I must admit, Doctor, I have mixed feelings about it.
I'm not For example, with respect to information from Al-Qaeda, whether it requires torture or killing them, I don't think I have such a problem with that, Doctor.
It's an interesting paradox.
I think all human beings understand what it's like to have mixed feelings on something, and I join the crowd.
There are people who have written many emails to my website saying I shouldn't feel any guilt, and I recognize in my mind the justification for stopping these terrorist cells that use child pornography to fund their activities, and for stopping this nefarious child sex trade that victimizes over 900,000 children across the world every year.
Let us for a second talk about pedophilia itself.
Is it your experience, doctor, that pedophiliacs can in any way, other than being in jail or dead, be stopped from being, you know, have the recidivism stop, or is there no way to stop it?
This sounds harsh, and certainly I lack the psychiatric training to say anything other than... Your experience.
In my experience, absolutely not.
These individuals will not stop.
And I say individuals because although we frequently equate this crime with males, our profiles identified that it was just straight down the middle males
and females and this particular dark grotesque fetish crosses all socioeconomic
religious and financial borders
uh... you never know who's going to be yes the type of individual that will either be one
a consumer trader that's the uh... fourth grade teacher you hear about who's
molesting local children and buying and selling porn on the web child porn
yes and then the producers they're the ones who actually buy and sell the
children themselves across international lines and you just never know where
they're going to come But in my experience, to answer your question, Art, no, they won't stop.
Even if incarcerated, they will not reform.
Then, short of the kind of answer that Archangel provided, what else do we do?
Well, first and foremost, I think there just needs to be an awareness of the severity of this problem.
When aware of that problem as it exists, and the huge numbers involved, parents can then be much more proactive in protecting their own children, although that's no guarantee either.
Which then brings us to the final payoff of awareness, which is much stiffer punishment.
Much more aggressive support of law officers as they track these individuals and stop them before they victimize another child.
Well, there have been some states, Doctor, I believe, that have recognized the fact that pedophilia, that it goes on and on, and it doesn't stop, and you can't seem to do anything to stop it.
And based on that, they go to jail, once convicted, and then out of jail they go into some sort of A psychiatric facility where they don't get out.
Right.
They just don't get out.
Now, it's probably in the end going to be said to be unconstitutional or something or another, but maybe that's sort of society's last attempt within the law to be able to deal with this, recognizing that it never stops.
Right.
And well said, Art, within the law.
And there are certainly states that still have capital punishment.
Within due process.
The nature of Archangel is that there was a total lack of due process.
That we were indeed above the law and as Interpol President Jolly Begarin said when he used an assassin for some of his own work, quote, in the fight against crime we also use criminals which completely eliminates any accountability of these organizations.
If, within due process, we can identify these individuals, either give them long-term psychiatric help where they're incarcerated and never get out, or if it's decided by a jury to use capital punishment, that type of mechanism, I think, gives much more just punishment to these individuals.
Would it be your opinion, Doctor, that perhaps for this crime, for child pornography, for the trafficking in children when convicted of that crime, that perhaps the death penalty should be applied?
Well, based on what I used to do for a living and on all of the training, I think so emphatically.
I truly believe that some of these individuals are evil to their core.
You know, you've heard, Art, how people say that, oh, everyone's decent, only their actions are evil?
Not these guys.
I've looked into their eyes, I've seen their actions, I've had to work undercover with them, and they are evil in their very souls.
That's such an interesting, really interesting comment.
So then, this lust they have for children, it goes across and controls literally everything they do all their lives, and you see in that, you really see in those people what we would recognize as the real McCoy, real evil.
I think so, yes, from my experience.
I believe that there must be a special circle of hell reserved for those who would harm innocents.
Yes, there must.
We now have the Internet.
Hell, if they approve it, it'll be coming out of our wall sockets pretty soon!
And, of course, that's a playground for people hunting children, isn't it?
Very much so, because it crosses so many international borders.
And there have been a number of joint operations to stop these huge pedophile rings.
In 1998, I was involved in the sting of the Wonderland Club, which over 26 countries, they apprehended 108 individuals who were providing, as qualification for membership in this club, 1,000 images of child pornography, 1,000 of which had to be the member applicant actually involved in molesting children.
And the Wonderland Club's sting was a very positive action that worked within the law.
And in the subsequent trials afterwards, however, a number of the individuals, even though it was just in 1998, Are already free and back on the street.
Mistakes in trial?
What?
Frequently mistakes in trial and there are some countries that have much more lax laws about this type of crime.
As a matter of fact, in Pakistan and Afghanistan until recently and Thailand in particular, Child prostitution is completely legal.
Buying and selling an infant for the sex trade is within the law in those countries.
And so you have an individual who can kidnap an American child, and it's estimated that 10% of the missing children in the United States are sold overseas for the child sex trade at about $30,000 per child.
They can then take that child to a country where it's legal And if they remain in that country, they cannot be prosecuted.
Oh, that's unthinkable.
And that is the reason that organizations like Archangel existed.
Well, you know what?
I understand.
I hate to say it, but I understand.
I really do, and I'm not even sure I don't support it.
So, yeah, mixed feelings, mixed feelings, big mixed feelings.
Some people already back out on the street?
I mean... Yeah, that's why our... I mean... It's vigilanteism, but... I don't know.
Maybe there are times in our life when vigilanteism is... Justified?
Is the word justified?
Or have you come to the conclusion, doctor, it's never justified?
I have not come to that conclusion.
It didn't sound like that.
Yeah, my feelings are very mixed on the issue.
Oh, yeah, I can hear that.
All right.
Dr. David Race Bannon is my guest, and if you've been listening, you clearly understand what he did for a living.
His book, by the way, and I bet you would want to read it.
I sure do.
It's called Race Against Evil.
From the high deserts in the middle of the night.
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To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
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From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
My guest is Dr. David Race Bannon, and he cleaned up messes for Interpol and for you
and for me.
Peace.
I'm gonna go get a drink of water.
He cleaned up big messes.
We'll be right back.
Once again, Dr. David Rays-Bannon. Doctor, you, when you work for an agency of that sort and
particularly part of that agency is sensitive as Archangel, so you're
leading a I mean, you've got a home life,
You've probably got a wife.
At some point you begin to have a daughter on the way and then born.
So you've got a family and surely they don't know your friends.
They don't know what you're doing, right?
That is correct.
And as a matter of fact, years later when it all came out, certainly when I published the book, most of my family members, particularly my parents, just had a great sense of relief.
Because so much was explained behind mysterious disappearances.
Thought you were some kind of criminal or something?
Oh, sure.
And we had cover jobs, complete cover identities known as legends.
However, anyone who's truly close to you can't help but notice.
Of course.
And particularly, even my daughter would notice.
I'd disappear for three weeks and come back with bandages and new scars.
A big tip-off.
Yeah, a big tip-off.
And as much as I hate to say it, there's just scars all over my body from the many occasions where, as effective as I tried to be, those we were tracking were also effective.
I spent much more time in the hospital than I care to admit.
Actually, Doctor, you spent some time in a North Korean political prison?
A North Korean political prison?
Yes.
I was involved in an assignment where we were tracking a double agent who was working for Interpol and was also a North Korean mole.
During the confrontation, I was captured in South Korea and taken across the border to North Korea where I spent three days in a North Korean slave labor camp.
Uh, where they tortured me to acquire information regarding Interpol and Interpol's knowledge of North Korean moles within South Korea.
Uh-huh.
So that was kind of a departure from, uh, the usual M.O.
and, uh, this was just straight-out intelligence kind of things they wanted to know.
It was.
Uh, and the nature of the intelligence community is such that there's always gray lines and crossovers of that nature.
So you know something about torture?
Unfortunately, I know not only about inflicting torture, but also receiving it and attempting to resist as long as possible before one is driven insane.
With regard to torture, Doctor, a lot of people wonder, ultimately, is it possible for a human being to be tortured up to the edge of death, and of course many times over the edge?
And not give up the information?
I mean, is that humanly?
Is it humanly possible?
And if it is, in what percentage of the cases?
I mean, how many people can withstand that kind of torture?
Nobody.
Sooner or later, everybody breaks.
It's one of the things, a cliché in movies that we've seen that's actually true.
Everybody breaks sooner or later.
There are some people who have different pain tolerance, other people some torture will work on and others not, but sooner or later, A qualified interrogator will get every bit of information they want out of you.
Um, our enemies certainly are not bothered at all by resorting to torture.
So, you know, I guess you have to ask, should we be restricted and not able to use that method to extract information on the one hand, when on the other hand it could mean hundreds, thousands, even millions of American lives?
An excellent question, and from my experience, Art, I'll give you one example.
It's in the first chapter of my book, as a matter of fact.
We tracked a producer of child pornography to London.
I was assigned to track this individual and extract as much information as possible, and this was the type of guy who would buy and sell children across international lines.
Over the course of three hours, When this individual was tortured, the information we received opened up a network that led to either the apprehension or elimination of literally hundreds of individuals all across the world.
My subsequent assignments for months after that were after the individuals that he had named within his network in New York, in Seoul, South Korea, in Thailand, and all across the globe.
Berlin, Ghana, etc.
So, in that particular case, torture supplied us with the information that helped save the lives of thousands of children.
So, it's politically really easy to be against torture, just because it's torture.
Yes.
But, when you're balancing it against many lives, then I don't know.
It is a balance then, isn't it?
And then you enter this gray area where the world is not filled with absolutes, and you see that perhaps, on occasion, the end may indeed justify the means.
Your whole work, it seems like, Doctor, was past a certain point.
All of it was in a gray area, wasn't it?
Yes, I think so.
What a life.
What a life that must have been.
And then the decision to write a book about this, you'd have to think about 50 times before you did that.
Did you think 50 times?
Oh, hundreds!
I wrestled with it for a long time, and certainly, having published this book, I'm sure it will haunt me for many years in a negative way, and in a positive way, I'm absolutely convinced I did the right thing.
There has been a dramatic increase in awareness of child trafficking because people like myself and many others have come forward to talk about the facts.
And also, on a much more personal note, Art, it's something like a confession for me.
I believe that many of the actions of which I'm guilty cannot be expunged until I am willing to tell the world the truth.
Maybe.
Depends on how it all works in the end, huh, Doctor?
Absolutely.
But I understand the urge to tell all, or if not all, at least as much as you were able to.
But, Doctor, then, you know, this sort of thing is still going on, and surely your book did that cause, that particular cause, some at least temporary harm.
And I'm sure you thought that over, didn't you?
I did.
And at first, my Interpol supervisor of many years, Jacques Taffare, was furious that I was writing this book and even tried to stop it himself.
However, over time and prior to his death, he shared with me that he felt it was probably the right thing to do.
Do you ever worry that you yourself might be eliminated or cleaned away before you could get the book published?
Yes, I was very concerned about that and after the publication of the book there were indeed attempts on my life.
Oh, there were?
And having said that, although I was very worried for my own safety and the safety of my family, I still chose to publish the book because I think that when an organization like Interpol is allowed this type of secretive power Using it against child slavers may be justified, but what is to stop them using it against their own ex-agents like myself or any other target they deem above the law?
And that was the line that I felt that perhaps Interpol had crossed, which I could not bear.
Yeah, but the thought that they would cross it with you.
I mean, for example, do you think that Interpol uh... tried to have you killed you said there were attempts on your life do you do you think it was uh... uh... interpol uh... inspired or uh... or if i do you do i do however i cannot then come forward and trot out reams of evidence to support that thought it is only uh... again with korea for a second uh... in a in political prisoner
I mean, you're after a double agent, and somehow you get caught and tossed in prison.
What happened with the double agent?
Well, during the confrontation, she was in a parking garage in downtown Seoul and was known to me.
That's why she and I have been friends for a number of years, and I was assigned to track her.
She was about to Place and then detonate a car bomb that would have killed everyone in the building.
At first, she only wanted to place it and detonate it later.
When I attempted to stop her, she tried... I'm sorry, this is in Seoul?
Yes, Seoul, South Korea.
Seoul, South Korea at this point.
Yes, okay, so... And when I attempted to stop her, she then tried to detonate the bomb right then, sacrificing her own life.
What was the whole point, the motivation of the bombing in the first place?
Why?
Well, at that time in Rangoon, the president of South Korea at the time, Jeon Doo-hwan, was scheduled to meet with other Asian leaders for a conference.
In Rangoon, a bomb went off that killed a number of individuals.
This was in 1983.
At that conference, the president of South Korea wasn't there.
At the same time, North Korean terrorists were planning on firing off other bombs in Seoul as a joint effort, very similar to what happened in 9-11.
A joint effort across the country, and across various countries.
And so this was just one of the many assignments that these terrorists had been given.
Some of the bombs successfully went off, such as Rangoon, and in this one I was able to stop her from detonating the bomb, Physical force was required, and ultimately lethal force was required.
After she was eliminated, two other North Korean agents were able to apprehend me, who were working in tandem with her.
Doctor, you had to kill her?
Yes, I did.
She was about to detonate that bomb.
It would have cost the lives of 400 people in that building, and perhaps more.
So, how do you get from there to the North Koreans grabbing you and ending up in a camp?
Well, the two other North Korean agents had intended on escaping to North Korea.
They had an escape plan all set with the third agent.
With the third agent dead, they instead used me.
They stuck me in a box and I recall waking and feeling water and then later waking again in a truck and ultimately we were pulling up in that truck into the North Korean slave labor camp.
I found out later from my colleagues in the South Korean Secret Service that they had used a raft and then ultimately a boat that had been waiting specifically to assist their escape.
To transfer me to the slave labor camp.
What got you out alive?
In South Korea, I had worked for many years with a very close friend, who in the book is identified as Lee Kyung-jin, which is not his real name.
He, working with Jacques Defer and Interpol and other international agencies, arranged what's called a spy swap.
There was a known North Korean mole within the South Korean Secret Service.
They exposed him and traded him for me.
I'm aware that, you know, trades are done from time to time, but it's rarer than not, isn't it?
I mean... It is.
And I don't think I had any juice at all, Art.
I think that it was that my longtime colleague and friend in the South Korean Secret Service had the juice.
Gotcha.
And Jacques Defer with Interpol had the juice.
Well, it's still who you know.
Right, that's all who you know.
And gratefully, it is a type of work that's based entirely on personal loyalties.
And they felt a sense of loyalty to me to the point where they assisted in getting me my freedom.
Apparently so.
Doctor, we live in a time where they're driving airplanes into buildings and I think that the need for this sort of thing is greater in a way than it ever was before, and I'm speaking bluntly about tracking people down and killing them before they kill us.
It just seems like the need today would perhaps even be greater than when you were doing the work you were doing.
And over the course of many years, I do find that I agree with you, Art.
When we uncovered terrorist cells that were using child trafficking and child pornography to fund their activities, we found that these terrorists, whether North Korean or Chinese or whatever country, they were more than willing to sacrifice their own lives.
Because of that, it has cost the lives of many counter-terrorist agents all across the world, and perhaps it is the only answer to deal with that type of fanaticism.
You know a lot about Korea, obviously.
Korea, right now, is the one great unfriendly nation that has most recently acquired atomic weapons.
We believe them to have quite some number at the moment, and probably manufacturing more and playing games politically about whether they're going to disassemble what they have or not.
When you look at the North Korean dispatches, it sounds like the North Korean government is crazy.
I mean, they're just blinkin' crazy.
They are.
So you're saying they are.
In other words, these are people with atomic weapons.
How much concern should the American people have that if the North Koreans get the opportunity, they're going to use them?
Oh, there is a long history.
In North Korea, ever since they were created in, well, they claim 1950, we say 1953, whichever, there's a long history there of very, very strident militaristic activity and a belief that if you have the power but refuse to use that power, you are weak.
And I'll give you a quote from Kim Il-sung, who was North Korea's self-proclaimed great leader until he died in 1994.
After the Korean War armistice in 1953, and when the hostilities finally stopped in 1954, Kim Il-sung was quoted in the Chosun Shinmun as saying, this is quote, the United States had atomic weapons but were too cowardly to use them.
During the Korean War.
Someday we, that is North Korea, someday we will challenge them and they will not have the courage to face the might of our people.
That is the type of rhetoric that has been, for the past 50 years, rampant in North Korea.
The only way to deal with them is to combine with China and take a hard line on this issue of weapons of mass destruction.
Although it's all come out in the last year, anyone in the intelligence community can tell you they've had a Weapons of Mass Destruction program for 50 years.
They had it 20 years ago when I was there.
And they fully intend to use them.
And the only way to stop them, and I stridently urge this, is to work with China to stop them.
A lot of American people, Doctor, would say, look, they won't use them.
They won't use them because it's suicidal.
And there is that line of thinking.
You use a nuclear weapon, you face nuclear obliteration.
Right.
And so during the break, and we are coming up on a break, this is what I want you to think about a little bit, if you would, please.
And that is Yeah, suicidal.
You know, it would be suicidal, and so they'd never do it.
But you know what?
See, that might not be true of a nation whose leaders are crazy.
And I'm not just tossing that word around lightly.
Crazy.
Would a crazy person do something that would result in their ultimate own demise?
Well, yes, they would.
So, are the North Koreans really that crazy?
I guess that's going to be the question, and if the answer is yes... Well, if the answer is yes, then we need an international archangel or something.
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800-893-0903. From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM
My guest, Dr. David Race Bannon.
And this one... This one's a keeper.
Stay right there.
Alright, so here is, I mean, I need to know, are the North Koreans mad?
Mutual assured destruction was always enough, Doctor, to, you know, to keep us all from destroying each other.
But if you're crazy, truly crazy, then I suppose your own destruction doesn't mean much if you accomplish your goal.
And an excellent point, Art.
We've been able to negotiate with the Chinese.
We were able to negotiate with the Soviet Union before its collapse, and still continue negotiations with the Russians, who have a nuclear arsenal.
But we've found that there are some dictatorships, and in particular, some dictators, whose actions defy any logic that we can follow, and more to the point, ...seem to go out of their way to aggressively defy any type of nuclear arms convention or chemical weapons convention.
North Korea right now has a Taepodong-2 missile, and to give you a sense of what that is, according to the CIA, that missile, its two-stage version, could hit any point in North America along the western seaboard.
And deliver a nuclear weapon.
And could deliver a nuclear weapon.
That seems alarmist.
However, people in the intelligence community have known it for quite some time.
And in the first day of any conflict, they could rain 300,000 to 500,000 artillery shells just on South Korea alone.
When we say, how could they do this?
Are they just crazy?
That was the thought right after World War II.
We thought that North Korea would certainly not invade South Korea When the pact along the 38th parallel had been struck and agreements had been reached and the United States was poised to defend its interests in South Korea, North Korea invaded anyway.
The difference, however, is at that time they had the backing of China.
And over its long history, the Korean Peninsula has rarely jumped without asking China how high.
In this occasion, China has taken a stance against North Korea's aggressive posturing, and it is through China that we need to reach a balanced agreement to disarm the North Koreans.
Do you think we're going to be able to do that, or will the North Koreans hang on to what they've got in fact to use it?
I think that it's very possible they will use it, because there's every evidence that the leader of North Korea at this time is just plain wacko.
Crazy, as I ask.
Alright, we have a lot of questions from the audience.
One of them, by computer, a couple of good questions actually.
Please ask if U.S.
organized crime are big players in child trafficking.
Now, I don't know much about the mob.
But I always heard there was kind of a loose code, even within the mob in this country, organized crime, that they didn't do this kind of thing.
What's the truth?
Organized crime certainly will invest in anything where there's a high return.
And that's why terrorist cells are involved in the child sex trade, because there's a high return.
Having said that, in our experience, we found that most of the networks were not directly involved with what we would call the Mafia in this country.
There may have been peripheral involvement, but the primary producers tended to be working within their own network, outside of traditional organized crime organizations.
What is your take on September 11th?
In other words, we all have had plenty of time to think of it since then, and if you were in charge of things now, Doctor, what would you be doing with respect to Al-Qaeda?
Well, I do believe that there's been a lot of aggressive movement by very competent intelligence professionals.
I think that in this particular case, and I know how bloodthirsty this sounds, but we must continue in the track we've been taking, which is to aggressively infiltrate these networks as much as possible and, if not torture, find other means to prosecute these individuals and, if necessary, eliminate them.
I recognize that's a bloodthirsty stance, and there may be many people who disagree, but in this case we're talking about saving not just thousands, but tens of thousands of lives if we can stop these fanatics from infiltrating within the U.S.
borders and taking lives.
Here's something purportedly from a police instructor.
I'm a police instructor.
He says, how can I obtain a CD or cassette copy of the interview tonight?
I'd like to use it for training.
Well, it really wouldn't happen, would it, Doctor?
I would strongly encourage any legitimate law officer to strenuously avoid making the choices that I did.
Right.
Others would like to sign up.
I'm getting this, you know... I get that a lot.
Do you really get that a lot?
I get it through my website all the time.
First, I should say this.
Interpol sub-directors like Archangel choose their own recruitment methods.
They identify people that either have the Language skills, the moral ambiguity, the natural inclination, etc., and then aggressively pursue those individuals and recruit them.
So there is really no way to just sign up.
And also, I should stress this.
On air, it may sound satisfying to eliminate these individuals, but this life of deceit and lies and violence Although perhaps walking that line protected innocents, it also carries a heavy burden on the soul of the individuals we ask to walk that line, and I would not recommend it for anyone.
Well, there certainly are others that have done your work.
They have not written books.
They choose to remain silent.
So, in some way, do you think they... I mean, you did, after all, work with others occasionally.
Did they come to terms with it, Doctor, in a way that you were not able to, do you think?
Oh, I think, ultimately, everyone must come to terms with it on their own.
Some people have come to terms with it through macho posturing, and others come to terms with it in their own quiet way.
Because each individual has their own moral beliefs, their own religious beliefs, and their own experiences, I think that ultimately we all have to learn to live with it.
And this is just the way I chose.
If weapons of mass destruction, Doctor, really were the main motivation as we stated when we attacked Iraq, did we attack the wrong country?
As compared to North Korea, for example?
Yes, for example, yes.
I frequently found myself wondering this.
I've even spoken to some of my colleagues about this simple question.
If we're looking to police the world, we can look at the grotesque traffic in children in Thailand and put a stop to that.
We can look at the nuclear arms in North Korea and put a stop to that.
Why did we choose Iraq?
Beyond my comprehension, no doubt there are people with the inside information who can answer that, but... It's beyond mine, too.
What's that?
It's beyond mine, too.
Yeah.
I really did.
I mean, after all, we suspected they had weapons of mass destruction.
And yes, well, maybe they spirited what they had into Syria, or maybe they never had them.
Who knows?
But with respect to North Korea, we know they're not weapons of mass destruction, and crazy enough, as you pointed out quite well a little while ago, to use them.
Right.
So, gee, looks like we attacked the wrong country.
I think that argument can legitimately be made.
Are you going to write another book?
Are you done writing?
Is this it?
No, not at all.
I have found that there's been enough requests for another book that certainly we're working on one now with the clever title, Race Against Time, rather than Race Against Evil.
Meaning?
Race Against Time, in this case, meaning what?
In this case, we're going to zoom forward in time to just last year and use the framework of everything that happened last year leading to the death of my supervisor, Jacques Deferre, as he and I literally raced to acquire documentation to protect and guarantee the safety of myself and my family.
Short of that documentation that you've got ready to go in the case of your untimely demise, no doubt, Would you be dead now?
I believe so, yes.
If it were not for the sacrifice of Jacques Taffare and others who came to my aid, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Is it at all dangerous that we are having this conversation?
Well, within the intelligence community, it is very difficult to leave that secret world, and certainly Interpol is furious with me.
However, Many intelligence officers will tell you that their loyalties ultimately are not to their organization, but are loyalties based on experience to other intelligence officers.
And so because of that, there are other intelligence officers who have this material and have made it very clear that they are willing to use it should anything happen to me.
Because of that, I feel safe at this time.
I take it if the material were used, there would be a lot of people whose names we might know embarrassed?
Absolutely.
Every once in a while we hear about some famous rock star or television personality involved in these pedophilia rings, but we never hear about famous politicians or leaders of the world of finance, and those are the individuals who would be most damaged, as well as Interpol itself.
I wish you good health.
Let's take a few calls to see what we get.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Dr. Bannon.
Hello.
Yes.
Yes, Art.
I have a question.
Good.
Go ahead.
My question is, Dr. Bannon, I'd like to congratulate you, first of all, for doing a great service for the children of the world.
Thank you.
And number two, I'd like to know if you have ever heard of A rogue intelligence agency within our own country having dealt with kidnapping and transporting children overseas.
I have heard rumors, yes, that actually there was a rogue agency involved in the child traffic.
However, I should state this, unequivocally they were only rumors and I have no direct experience.
That's an incredible thought.
With what as a motive?
Theoretically.
I mean, it's only rumors, so with it must come why an agency would do something like that.
Right.
And certainly the financial motivation is very powerful, because the sums involved are in the billions of dollars.
That's billions of dollars.
Anyone who listened to President George Bush's U.N.
address last September 23rd heard him use just that phrase, billions of dollars.
There's so much money involved that if someone is willing to swallow any moral objections, they can literally become millionaires within a very short amount of time by trafficking in these innocent children.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. David Rays-Bannon.
Hello.
Going once.
Going twice.
Gone.
West of the Rockies.
You're on there with Dr. Bannon.
Is this West of the Rockies?
It is, yes.
Yes, this is Kenny in Chandler, Arizona.
Yes, sir.
And I wanted to sort of make a comment and ask a question.
Being from Arizona, the child pornography issue is really an outrage to me because our state voted Sandra Day O'Connor as its Person of the Year.
After she was the swing vote to lift a ban on child pornography on the internet.
And I just didn't quite understand the mentality of while we were getting ready to go to war.
Wait a minute, you're telling me something I didn't know.
What do you mean lift a ban on child pornography?
Since when?
That happened at the time that we were going to war with Iraq.
Since when is child pornography legal on the internet?
I never heard of that.
They did.
They lifted the ban, and that was one of the... Are you aware of that, Doctor?
No, as a matter of fact, I'm aware of it.
It was a 5-4 decision, and it was right about the same time that we went to war with Iraq.
I find that not believable.
Well, what the argument was, was the fact that... What was the case?
That they were arguing it was their freedom of speech that they could put these pictures on the internet, because what they were doing was, is they were not using the actual complete body of the child, they were transferring a face.
Oh no, okay, so you're not talking about real child pornography, you're talking about pseudo-child pornography, where they take, uh, I understand.
case of somebody over 18 or something like that who looks very young and morphs in with
another body, some are like that, right?
Yes.
Okay, all right.
What happened was, is that throughout many, many cases, a wheelchair pronoter is in the
process.
I understand.
Now I know what he's talking about, Doctor.
Do you?
Yes, I do.
He's referring to the Child Pornography Act of 1996 that made it illegal for any visual depiction that appears to be a minor to be transferred over the Internet.
And then in 2002, that Child Pornography Act was declared unconstitutional and virtual or digital pornography was held to have constitutional protection.
That is, images that were created or morphed using digital technology, but did not represent real children.
And what's your reaction to that ruling?
Oh, I have such an abhorrence of anything that feeds this dark, grotesque fetish.
And isn't that what that does directly?
I think it does directly.
I recognize that there are those who would say, well, it's only animation or it's digital, etc.
However, that technology can make things seem so real That an individual who may already be unbalanced can view that and desensitize their natural abhorrence of the act to the point where they may convince themselves to go outside and victimize a child.
Yes.
So, should this be approached now?
I mean, should somebody be passing a law in Congress for a constitutional amendment?
What has to happen to turn that around?
In no way, it seems to me, do you want to encourage pedophiles?
Period.
The laws that are in place against child pornography of real children are very stringent and not in question here.
We're talking about those laws that only deal with animation or digital make-believe.
I believe that, yes, anyone who wants to take an aggressive stance on this should contact their congressman.
If you go to my website, davidbannon.net, and it's a link right there on Coast to Coast, There's, on our information page, there's a link where you can just type in your zip code and it will provide for you your local representatives.
I strongly encourage anyone to take a stance on this and let them know that if that one act was unconstitutional, let's find a way to stop it that is within the Constitution.
Indeed.
So you're already really on this case?
I have strong feelings about it, absolutely.
You obviously still have very strong feelings about all of this, so no matter what water went under the bridge during the years when you worked, it really hasn't changed at all the way you feel about all this, has it?
It has not.
When it comes to the victimization of innocent children, I personally believe that those individuals have sacrificed any rights they have to be part of the human experience.
A part of the human experience, yeah.
Indeed.
Dr. David Race Bannon Find out more about tonight's guest
log on to coast to coast am.com.
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This is an encore presentation of Costa Costa Yacht with Art Bell.
To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
line is area code 775-727-1222. To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free
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and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
My guest is Dr. David Race Bannon, and believe me when I tell you,
you don't frequently get to hear an interview like this.
More in a moment.
Once again, Dr. David Race Bannon.
Doctor, your book, I take it, is generally available, is it not, in, I don't know, Amazon.com, all the usual places?
Correct.
How's it sold?
How have you done?
Oh, well, we're in our second printing, and it's doing all right.
Yeah, it's doing all right.
There's certainly been a lot of interest, and I should say this, Art, people who've read it have They've been very generous in not only their praise of myself, but through this growing awareness of child trafficking, they've been actively involved.
I get many emails from people who have aggressively pursued means within their community to distribute brochures from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, to write their senators, etc.
And that is perhaps the greatest reward I could have for this book, that people are aware and taking action.
You wrote down a question to be asked of you, which is a really good one.
After all those years and all you did, would you do it all again?
And even though I wrote that to be asked every time... I assume you wrote it because it's really a good question.
I mean, it really is a good question.
At age 18 and a half and 19 years old, when I first joined Archangel, I was so sure.
I was doing the right thing, and I had very strong emotional reasons for pursuing that action.
When I think of the young children we were able to save, when I think of even one child in New Orleans in 1998 that we saved, I do believe very strongly that it was well worth the cost.
All right, back to the phones.
Ease to the Rockies.
You're on the air with Dr. Bannon.
Hi.
Hi, Art.
Hello.
Where are you?
Yes, I'm in Columbia, Missouri.
OK, welcome.
Thank you, Dr. Bannon.
It's an honor.
Thank you.
I was initially tuned in this evening and was shocked and very horrified about what I heard.
And I found myself judging you.
And I realized that, you know what?
I cannot judge you.
I have never been where you've been.
I've never even contemplated such horror that you have seen, sir.
And that I don't think anybody has the right to judge you, sir.
And I don't think that you ever, ever, ever have to defend your actions.
And furthermore, my father and grandfather were in the war and lived through it, yet it killed them in the long run.
I understand.
I still don't agree with torture, but I understand that there are no short, easy answers in a world that we have to deal with such crimes and such things of this nature.
I used to judge the movie.
It's still one of my favorite apocalypses now, but I understand now what Colonel Kirk's character was saying when he said, You know, if we can separate judgment and malice and just do the action, the horrific action, the evil deed without the intention of evil, if our intentions are pure of the good nature of the outcome is in our heart when we do an evil thing to an enemy, then it, you know, God understands.
Alright.
Okay.
Along those lines, Doctor, I watch, like many in my audience, I'm sure, Law & Order.
You know, the whole series.
I love the whole series, Law & Order.
And one of the variations of Law & Order is it deals with heinous sexual crimes.
You know, the Special Victims Unit part of Law & Order.
And those people who are depicted who deal frequently with crimes against children, you know, Their lives are emotionally shredded.
Totally emotionally shredded.
Everything else aside, the horrors they see and deal with so affect their lives that I just, I swear, I don't know how they can do the job.
And an excellent point, Art, and one that deserves special and careful thought Especially when people say, well, I'd like to get into that line of work to protect innocent children.
That is a worthy and virtuous desire, but one must take into account the heavy cost to one's soul at witnessing this.
As I worked undercover on assignments, it was required of me to act as though I were also a child sex slaver, that I was also enjoying These video images and photographs, etc.
And sometimes I was filled with such disgust that I would be shaking and those criminals whose organization I was infiltrating assumed that that shaking was some type of sexual excitement when actually it was disgust.
And those images will stay with me all of my life.
And as you said, emotionally shredded.
I myself turn to religion and have found some comfort there, but I think that ultimately anyone who is involved in this type of work will have to pay a price in emotional and spiritual terms.
So is there a length to the amount of time that the average person, no matter how well motivated, Well, within Archangel, there was definitely no coming back for any of us.
return and you know they they they get the the bloodlust as you pointed out
there I mean do they pass through some gate where there's no coming back well
within Archangel there was definitely no coming back for any of us we all passed
that gate usually within our first couple of assignments I suspect for
legitimate law officers what I've read is that there's a burnout rate of about
three to five years for those who work on what is called the innocent images
program in the Federal Bureau or the crimes against children units
That's what I would have expected.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. David Rays-Bannon.
Hi.
Yeah, hi.
Maybe we should all do a group prayer for the doctor's, for the sake of the doctor and his family.
Send some good energy his way, because I really believe that he's doing the right thing.
You know, I talked to you once before, and you mentioned an FBI unit that could be reached for, if you know someone who's an offender, like in the United States, and also, you know, would they go, you know, could they... You wanted to ask, I believe, if the FBI and Interpol are That too, yes.
Affiliated.
Affiliated in some way.
I suppose, Doctor, to some degree, all the three-letter agencies probably bump up against each other and share some information, or do they not?
Oh, they do.
There's this mix of the Alphabet Soup of spy agencies, and there's a lot of work together.
The Interpol The structure within the United States, the United States National Central Bureau of Interpol, reports to the Department of Justice and therefore frequently works with the Innocent Images Program with the FBI.
Having said that, however, Interpol officers are not answerable to U.S.
laws and therefore there's frequently a lot of animosity between the tactics employed by Interpol versus the legal structure of the FBI.
Yes.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Dr. David Rays-Bannon.
Hi.
Hi, Art.
Yes, hello.
Hi, Doctor.
This is Charlene from California.
I guess you already answered my question right after the break, but when you were talking about children being sold overseas as sex slaves for money, you're saying that some of these children are children from here in the U.S.
that have disappeared and have never been found?
Yes, that is correct, and I would point listeners to my website, DavidBannon.net.
Click on the library section and you'll see reams of documentation on this.
Perhaps the most telling is from the University of Pennsylvania, which, working with the University of Montreal and the U.S.
Department of Justice, found that about 10% of the missing children in the U.S.
Are trafficked overseas for about $30,000 each and within the United States, 268,000 children are bought and sold in the sex trade.
And we're talking about very young children as well as the 12 and 13 year olds that are recruited and used in states for prostitution.
That's incredible.
And I've heard that in South America, Brazil, for example, there is an awful lot of children that disappear, and I suppose disappearances in Brazil are more easily accomplished than in this country.
Certainly it's easier to smuggle children out of certain countries than others, and we do have a lot of very hard-working law officers in this country working to prevent that traffic.
Whereas in other countries, it's either legal, or if it's illegal on the books, it's kind of a wink and a nod where they allow the traffic, even though it's on the books illegal.
That's so incredible.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Dr. Bannon.
Hello.
Dr. Bannon, this is Christina from Albuquerque, KKOV.
Yes, ma'am.
And I want to thank you for your work and the suffering that your soul must go through, I have a... My oldest child, a boy, was molested between the ages of two and two-and-a-half in daycare, and he actually blew the whistle.
And I pursued it along with a group of 20 parents, but I was the only one to stick the course and ultimately change the law in the state of Colorado.
Regarding children's testimony and how it could be done through professionals.
So you actually got a precedent set and changed the law?
Statute, yes.
But, everybody dropped out but me.
And my motivation to the whole thing was that I wanted to be able to look at my son straight in the eye.
Of course.
Brought it up.
And say I did the best I could to make these people accountable.
I do believe that they were trafficking in pornography.
Ease to the Rockies.
Call toll free 1-800-825-5033.
Okay, well, I think we've got it.
Anyway... You know, doctor, if people suspect that something's going on, would it be the FBI That they would go to if they have information on a child, suspect child trafficking or something as horrible as that is going on.
Where do you go?
Where would you recommend people go?
Well, I frequently get emails.
As a matter of fact, during the course of this show, I got an email from a listener who said that he's attempted to tell local law enforcement, he's attempted to get attention and feels that there's been no response.
Perhaps it comes down to reaching the right people.
In that case, I would strongly encourage listeners who have information first to go to CyberTipLine.com.
The CyberTipLine is used in association with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which is at MissingKids.com.
And they have, over the past five years, seen an increase of some 750% of reports.
And I think that the problem hasn't changed.
It's that people are more aware.
When they go to CyberTipline, that information is automatically distributed to local law enforcement, from where you report it, as well as to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Crimes Against Children Special Units.
That is one of the most proactive ways to get response.
All right.
International Line, you're on the air with Dr. Bannon.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Yes, sir.
It's an honor.
Patrick from Vancouver.
Hi, Patrick.
Yeah, I've got a hypothetical question for Dr. Bannon.
Bannon, B-A-N-N-O-N.
Bannon, sorry.
Sure, go ahead.
Okay.
Say, for instance, you said that these individuals are all of different power, structure, money, financing, and all sorts of things.
Say, for instance, you went through legal terms of it, and you tried to prosecute this guy, and you knew he was guilty of hundreds and hundreds of crimes, but he was to get off.
Would Archangel still try and cleanse this guy, even if it didn't work through legal ramifications?
That was the reason Archangel was created in the first place.
To identify, prosecute, and, if necessary, eliminate individuals who may be considered, to use a melodramatic term, above the law.
Okay, so even if he went through the court system, you still knew he was guilty?
You still took him out?
Archangel did, yes.
Archangel has been disbanded, I should stress.
But yes, even if someone went through the legal system, if there was absolute proof this individual were guilty, and we're talking about eyewitness reports and unaltered video and photographic images, The technical arm of Archangel Rosetta would assign a dossier to a cleaner and the individual would be eliminated.
Okay, one more question.
Are you aware of CISS or CSIS, I think they're called here in Canada, or the RCMP being involved at all with Interpol?
Not that I know of.
No way.
Thanks for your time.
Thank you very much for your call and take care.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Bannon.
Hello.
Oh, hello.
Thank you, Art.
One very quick suggestion, I know you're short on time.
I mentioned to George Norian, I'll mention it to you and your audience, that our Congress is not paying attention to the public.
You can write letters, everybody from Richard Hoagland to your own problem with the FCC, and now child pornography.
I think the only cure for this is electronic initiative and referendum, which has to be put on the ballot through an initiative and referendum.
Well, even that has its limits.
I mean, there have been a number of referendums that have sailed right through and have the approval of, you know, just gigantic percentages of a state, for example, sir.
And the moment that the referendum is passed, the courts overturn it.
So that's why you need to use the electronic initiative in the referendum to recall the judges that would throw it out.
It's the only way to keep up And surpass the political bureaucracy, but it has to put it at the speed of light speed, not signing petitions that get torpedoed by your competition by illegal signatures.
Well, okay, but I'll tell you something.
Electronics are not fool-proof either, as I'm sure a recent show on voting machines and that sort of thing demonstrated quite clearly.
One more maybe.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Bannon.
Hello.
Hello, this is Phil from Brooklyn Park, Minnesota.
Yes, sir.
I'll get a quick question and let you guys answer while I'm off the air.
Sure.
Earlier you mentioned that some countries' forms of child pornography are legal, or child sex slavery is legal.
Dewey, can you name some of the countries that that's legal in?
And take it, I'll hang up and listen.
Well, I think you did.
I think, Doctor, you mentioned Thailand, and I don't know where all else.
Thailand and Pakistan, and up until recently, Afghanistan.
In Japan, it's a little bit grayer because it's completely legal to possess child pornography.
It's just illegal to produce it, which is one of those backhanded laws that doesn't seem to make sense by our way of thinking.
Yes, isn't that odd?
In China, they take a strong stance against it publicly, but in actuality, the traffic in children in China is booming.
Just last March, a year ago, some 23 infants, three months and younger, were found in suitcases being trafficked on a train, where they're going to be sold all across southern China.
And so there's a number of countries where they say it's illegal, but it's not, and others where they just simply embrace it, such as Thailand.
How could any country that claims to worship a deity, not as a result of that worship and those religious beliefs, transfer that to laws in their land?
You have to wonder about that.
Certainly, you would wonder.
And although I lack the moral authority or theological training to address that particular aspect of it, I can say this.
There are those who have apologized for Thailand and said that when parents sell their two-year-olds, they do not realize they're selling them to the brothels.
However, on assignment in Thailand, I have seen parents taking their children right to the doorstep of the brothels to sell them.
I cannot understand how any parent could do so.
Nor can I. It has been amazing having you here tonight, Doctor.
I really appreciate your being here, and we have you back again.
What an incredible story.
And I'm sure your book will sell very well.
It's called Race Against Evil, and I recommend it to you all.
If what you heard tonight intrigued you, then obviously you want to proceed to the book, Race Against Evil.
Doctor, thank you.
Thank you.
Good night, everybody.
And from the high desert, tomorrow night, incidentally, tomorrow night, by great and overwhelming popular demand, John Lear will be back.
Amazingly, John Lear will be back.
That's tomorrow.
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