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Jan. 16, 2005 - Art Bell

02:53:47

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Michael Drosnin - The Life of Howard Hughes

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01:00:59

michael drosnin

01:20:40

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Speaker	Time	Text
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Great Americans of us.
		I greet you all, good evening, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you are, the world's beloved times.
		Every single one of you covers like this program the weekend version of my bell.
		Good morning to you all.
		It's great to be here.
		And what going on in the household?
		We have a visitor.
		My mother-in-law Julia is here, and I promise she could say hello tonight, and so it shall be.
unidentified		First of all, we shall review the world.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told the Army to do anything that's needed to end Palestinian rocket, mortar, and bomb attacks.
		And the government has now dismissed call by the PLO leadership for a halt to militant violence hours before Palestinians claimed that Israeli tank fire, in fact, had killed a 28-year-old man and his mother in the Gaza Strip despite the change in Palestinian leadership.
		We note that those at the top have not begun any action whatsoever to halt the terrorism, Sharon said.
		And the situation cannot continue.
		U.S. troops staged a series of raids in Mosul and elsewhere in northern and central Iraq on Sunday, arresting dozens while insurgents stepped up their attacks two weeks ahead of national elections, ambushing a car that carried a prominent female candidate, also killing 17 people in other assaults.
		Defense Secretary Wolfowitz conceded the U.S. and Iraqi forces cannot stop extraordinary intimidation by insurgents before the January 30th vote.
		And while Americans like President Bush for the most part, they don't like the war.
		The majority of Americans say they feel hopeful about the president's second term, but those hopes are clouded by doubts about when the bloodshed in Iraq is ever going to end.
		People say Iraq should be the president's highest priority.
		According to the Associated Press, or a Associated Press poll, they found that those surveyed are not particularly optimistic about a stable government and the possibility that it could take hold there.
		How about you?
		How do you feel?
		Are they going to get a stable government there?
		Charlie Bell, who began his McDonald's corporation career as a part-time worker, shows you what you can do, in a suburban Sydney restaurant, later became chief exec of the fast food icon, died Monday of colon cancer in his native Australia.
		He was 44 years old.
		Bell was diagnosed with cancer last May, only a month after ascending to the top job.
		He left the fast food giant in November after several rounds of treatment.
		His announced death Sunday evening was announced here in the U.S. Zhao Ziang, the former Chinese Communist Party leader who helped pioneer reforms that launched China's economic boom, but was ousted after the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protest, died Monday at a Beijing hospital, 85.
		They did everything they could, heroics and all the rest of it, but he didn't make it.
		All right, we're going to do open lines in a few moments.
		I do have a couple of other items for you, however.
		Stay right where you are.
		Listen to me carefully, everybody.
		Since I'm talking to those of you from virtually the Arctic Circle on south, this is worthy of mention, definitely worthy of mention.
		Our son, good old soul, let loose with a coronal blast that is headed directly for Earth.
		As a matter of fact, it has begun to arrive.
		In minutes before the show, I think the KP Index, which is a measure of what's going on out there, hit about six or seven, I don't know.
		Anyway, space weather says we are in for a severe solar storm.
		Now, that doesn't mean a whole lot to most people, except that it may be possible, just possible, that in the next few hours, those of you in the higher and perhaps even middle latitudes of the U.S. would be able to walk out, and if you have a nice, starry, clear night, you may get quite an auroral treat tonight because it's really going to lay down on us, folks.
		Now, what happens is these particles come from erasing from the sun at the speed of light, and then other particles come speeding from the sun at a little less than the speed of light, and when they hit our magnetic field, it bends,
		it pushes, it gives a little bit, and the result many times in our skies is just a beautiful display of auroral lights that's sometimes shimmy like jellow and can be red and green and blue and just virtually every color of the rainbow.
		So if you've never seen the aurora, while there are no guarantees, those of you in the northern latitudes have a really good chance, even those of you in the, and you never know, every now and then, it's just a few years ago, I think, that during my program, we got a big warning, and sure enough, I went outside during a break, and the entire northern sky was blood red.
		It was cool.
		And I think I came back in here and screamed full-tilt boogie, and a lot of you went outside and got to see it.
		So I'm not guaranteeing it for tonight, but we are really getting hit right now.
		The following appeared on the Drudge Report, and it was by a senior space writer.
		And The article is entitled, E.T. Visitors: Scientists See High Likelihood.
		Decades ago, it was physicist Enrico Fermi who pondered the issue of extraterrestrial civilizations with fellow theorists over lunch, generating the famous quip, Where are they?
		The question later became central to debates about the cosmological census count of other star folk and possible extraterrestrial visitors from afar.
		Fermi's brooding on the topic was labeled later Fermi's Paradox.
		It is a well-traveled tale from the 1950s when the scientists broached the subject in discussions with colleagues at Los Alamos, New Mexico.
		Thoughts regarding the probability of Earth-like planets, the rise of highly advanced civilizations out there, and interstellar travel, these remain fodder for trying to respond to Fermi's paradox even today.
		Now, a team of American scientists note that recent astrophysical discoveries suggest that we should find ourselves in the middle of one or more extraterrestrial civilizations.
		Moreover, they argue it is a mistake to reject all the UFO reports, since some evidence for the theoretically predicted extraterrestrial visitors just might be found there.
		The researchers make their proposal in the January-slash-February 2005 issue of the Journal of the British.
		Pick up any good science magazine, and you're sure to see the latest in head-scratching ideas about superstring theory, wormholes, or the stretching of space-time itself.
		Meanwhile, extrasolar planetary detection is on the verge of becoming mundane.
		They're finding so many planets up there, it's beginning to get mundane.
		The scientists point to two key discoveries made by Australian astronomers and reported last year that there is a galactic habitable zone in the Milky Way galaxy, and more importantly, that Earth's own star, the Sun, is relatively young in comparison to the average star in this zone by as much as, say, a billion years.
		Therefore, they explain in their article, an average alien civilization would be far more advanced and have, I don't know if that's good news or not, far more advanced and have long since discovered us, Earth.
		Additionally, other research work on the supposition underlying the Big Bang, known as the theory of inflation, shores up the prospect, they advise, that our world is immersed in a much larger extraterrestrial civilization.
unidentified		Hmm.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And yet still we screech and scream, where are they?
		All these were, well, maybe that is evidence.
		Now, the next story, I don't know what happened to the caller.
		I picked up a call, being totally honest with you, during the news break before the beginning of the show, and the caller said, did you hear about the love bomb?
		I said, huh?
		What?
		Love bomb?
		What do you mean?
		And I had heard some talk about this.
		You know, it sort of bounced off me, and I didn't quite get it.
		So I ran over to Matt Drudge's page because one can always depend upon Matt to have whatever's around.
		And sure enough, searching the archives and putting in Love Bomb, here it came.
		Headline.
		U.S. planned to make love, not war, with Gay Bomb.
		That's right, folks.
		Gay Bomb.
		The U.S. military, this has got to be part of the, before I even begin reading, I haven't read the article yet.
		The headline ought to be enough.
		Anyway, this is probably some of what you heard last night.
		You know, being able to modify the genetic code of the human or whatever.
		Let's see what's up here.
		The U.S. military investigated building a gay bomb, which would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other.
		You've got to be kidding me.
		Apparently not.
		Other weapons that never saw the light of day include one to make soldiers obvious by their bad breath.
		You've got to be kidding me.
		To make their breath so bad that even if they were hiding.
		The U.S., this is our tax money, folks.
		Our tax money.
		The U.S. Defense Department considered various non-lethal chemicals meant to disrupt enemy discipline and morale.
		The 1994 plans were for a six-year project costing $4 million, but they were never pursued.
		I guess not dollars, English pounds.
		The U.S. Air Force Wright Laboratory in Ohio sought Pentagon funding for research into what it called harassing, annoying, and bad guy identifying chemicals.
		The plans were obtained under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act by the Sunshine Project, a group which monitors research into chemical and biological weapons.
		Plan for a so-called love bomb completely dreams.
		The plan for a so-called love bomb envisioned an aphrodisiac chemical that would provoke widespread homosexual behavior among young troops, causing what the military called a distasteful, however, completely non-lethal blow to morale.
		Scientists also reportedly considered a stingy chemical weapon to attract swarms of enraged wasps or even angry rats toward enemy troops.
		A substance to make the skin unbearably sensitive to sunlight was also pondered.
		Another idea was To develop a chemical causing severe and lasting halitosis, bad breath, so that enemy forces would be so obvious, even when they tried to blend in with civilians.
		Well, I guess on balance, that's not such a bad one, right?
		They would have such horrible halitosis, bad breath, that even though they look just like everybody else on the streets of Baghdad or wherever, their bad breath would give them away.
		man u_s_ plan to make love not war with gay bomb or you we really could develop
		If we could develop a gay bomb, a bomb that when dropped would make soldiers on the other side of the hill absolutely irresistible to each other, would you, if you were President of the United States, say, drop it?
		What would be the morality, or the immorality, if you will, of doing such a thing?
		It certainly tickles the mind's eye a little bit, doesn't it?
		Am I really doing that?
		I just read that along with you.
		All right, so now this is kind of interesting.
		You remember when Galaxy 4, that would be one of our communication satellites, at the time, a very, very important one for television and radio and pagers.
		You remember the Galaxy 4 satellite that went up in smoke and just became, you know, a boat anchor in orbit?
		Well, apparently, in the cold vacuum of space, on a gleaming metal surface inside Galaxy 4, tiny whiskers of tin, that's right, tin, grew in perfect stealth,
		that is, until May 19, 1998, that is, when at least one of those little whiskers bridged a pair of metal contacts in the satellite's control processor and the short circuit killed the satellite.
		Some 40 million pagers stopped working all over the country.
		Doctors weren't getting their pagers.
		Oh, man, millions of dollars worth of ATM and credit card transactions stopped cold.
		You might remember this.
		The $250 million satellite became, in the words of NASA engineer Henning Ledlecker, a doorstep in space.
		The loss of Galaxy 4 was just one of the more visible consequences of a little understood problem with catastrophic potential for electronic and electrical systems, metal that grows whiskers, an F-15's radar system,
		pacemakers, fuse switches in air-to-air missiles, electronic relays in a nuclear power plant, global positioning system receivers, not to mention many, many other satellites, all have fallen victim to this problem.
		One group of University of Maryland theorists has estimated that tin whiskers have caused losses of billions of dollars to date.
		That's really weird stuff.
		What is it that would eventually cause metal, polished, finished, machined metal, probably really good stuff.
		You know, they put in the satellites.
		It's all better than mil-spec to do something like that.
	That's really bizarre.
	And then this from Seattle.
	An expensive MRI machine.
	I know about those with my bad back.
	I've been inside one, and they're pretty cool, actually.
	Anyway, a very expensive one of these machines, they have an incredible magnet in them, as you know, sustained about $200,000 in damage when a metal floor buffer, try and imagine this, a metal floor buffer was mistakenly placed nearby and was sucked in by the machine's powerful magnets.
	The accident happened January 3rd when a member of the housekeeping staff improperly took the buffer near the machine despite a warning not to use metal objects near it.
	Virginia Mason's spokesperson did not respond to repeated associated press phone messages for comment left Monday night with a hospital switchboard ops.
	The MRI imaging machines are very sophisticated diagnostic tools to provide detailed pictures of the body's interior and in this case you can only imagine when they turned that on it must have gone in there like a rocket ship.
	Well, obviously with $200,000 damage.
unidentified		Yikes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Love bomb.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hello.
		Hello.
		Are you there?
		Going once, going twice, going three times.
		Oh, you are there.
unidentified		Are you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, you're not.
		Now you're not.
		Let's go here to the wildcard line.
		You're on the air instead.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Hello.
		I'm sorry.
		I got to turn off the radio.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, you do.
		Are you not?
		That's immediate.
		Talk radio 101.
		Radio off.
		All right.
		What's your first name?
unidentified		Michael.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Michael.
unidentified		How you doing?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm quite well, Michael.
unidentified		What's up?
unidentified		I apologize for the beginning.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sorry.
unidentified		About the La Tunchita, California Mudslide.
		Uh-huh.
		Yes, I strongly believe that suburban sprawl and development without emphasis to the surrounding environment accelerated the mudslide process.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, probably.
		I mean, it's going to be never ending in California and along every single one of our coasts, Michael.
		You know, we're developing like crazy on the East Coast.
		It's hurricanes, and everybody screeches the same thing that you are right now.
unidentified		Yeah, in the West Coast, if they're not Mudslides, they'll talk about earthquakes or hellfight fires in the light.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
unidentified		That's right.
		Well, the reason I called, I discovered that somebody I knew on the internet is the Monda Missing in La Tinchita.
		I found this out just today from speaking with her family over the internet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, don't give us any names.
		I'm very sorry to hear that.
		You never want to announce somebody missing when you don't know for sure.
		But I'm very sorry to hear that.
unidentified		I'm calling from Indio, California.
unidentified		So it's not very far when you look on a national map from Ventura.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's exactly right.
unidentified		Now here in the desert, we really have like three inches of rain in about two days' time.
unidentified		And remember, here in the Palm Springs area, three inches of rain is usually like a year's rainfall.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Actually, you know, I heard some areas got up to 10 inches or something absolutely incredible like that.
unidentified		Such as the La Conchita area, they said something about 8 to 9 inches, and it's right on the coast.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, we can, in a way, in a lot of ways, we should thank our lucky stars that it was not worse.
		And it surely could have been worse.
		In other words, with all of that rain, with the fires having occurred the previous year and that amount of rain, frankly, I expected, bad as it is, and tragic as what happened is, I expected a lot worse.
		And I thought a lot of the areas that had burned, just incredibly burned, maybe we got slightly lucky.
		In other words, perhaps there was just enough time for a little bit of greenery to sprout out after the fires and before the rain.
		Just enough greenery to keep a real disaster from having occurred.
		I don't know.
		Well, what happened certainly is a real disaster, but it could have been worse.
		We're going to take a quick break here at the bottom of the arrow, and then I'm going to fulfill a promise.
		No, we don't want that.
		We want a rock.
		Like that.
		Anyway, from the high desert, everybody, where I'm happy to say it's now dry and the humidity is down, I'm Art Bell.
		This is Coast to Coast AM.
		In the darkness.
unidentified		Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
		You don't have to go.
		Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
		You don't have to go.
		Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
		You don't have to go.
		Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi.
		All those tears I cry, hi, hi, hi.
		Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi.
		Let.
		Wanna take a ride?
		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 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.
		Well, this is not Art Bell, but this is his better half.
		Hi, everyone.
		I'm Ramona Bell, and I want to introduce you to someone very close and very special to me.
		She hasn't been out here in Perump in quite a while and had quite a shock when she first saw the place.
		Again, after almost seven years, I think, human.
		And I would like you to intert has introduced you to his mom, and now I want you to meet my mom.
		This is my mom, Julie Nichols.
		Hold on.
		Hey, hey, hey, this is Julie Nichols.
		Hi, everybody at the Santa Ana PNDC.
		This is me.
		I told you I was going to say hi.
		Anyway, I hope you guys have a good night.
		Thank you so much.
		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		By the way, for those of you who don't know, Julie was referring to her co-workers at the postal department.
		She's a postal worker and postal.
		In fact, I think she's a supervisor or some such with the post office department in Southern California.
		That's a big job.
		And these days, I would think really, it was a tough enough job before all the messiness.
		But imagine what it's like now.
		All right, let us begin.
		On the international line, you're on the air.
		Where are you calling from, please?
unidentified		Guam.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're calling from Guam.
unidentified		Yes, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Guam!
		All the way over on the other side over the date line.
		You're on the other side of the date line, aren't you?
		You are.
		What time is it there, roughly now?
unidentified		4.4.39, 4.49.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In the afternoon.
		Man, oh, man.
		Well, anyway, welcome to the program.
		What's up?
unidentified		Thanks.
unidentified		I wanted to ask, is this the time when I can ask any question?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, absolutely.
unidentified		The predictions by the remote viewers like Interd Deans, he predicted that there might be another tsunami.
		Would that affect from Japan to Hawaii?
		Because Guam is in between the two.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it absolutely potentially could.
		I mean, any place with shoreline is absolutely up to the possibility.
		You've got nothing but shoreline on Guam, right?
		So sure, it could be.
unidentified		Okay.
unidentified		one question before I go.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		If I wanted to call you again, which number would I be calling?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You'd have to call this one.
		That'd be the only one that you could reach us from all the way to Guam.
		That's a long haul.
		I'll tell you what.
		We began affiliation in Guam.
		I think it's been about two or three years now, and it's certainly satisfying to hear that they've got us on live now in Guam.
		They've done that on quite a number of occasions.
		And so, yo, and good morning in Guam.
		If you call the international number, go ahead and try and get through.
		First time caller line, you're on the air.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hello, this is Tanya from Phoenix.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		I first had a question, then I had a comment.
		Sure.
		My question was on the, last night you had talks of the Bible code, a guy that was supposed to be coming to your show.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, how about tonight, in about 20 minutes, Michael Droznan, who wrote the Bible Code?
unidentified		Oh, really awesome.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, awesome.
		That's right.
		We're going to talk about that and Howard Hughes, which is really one of my favorite subjects.
unidentified		Okay.
		Oh, okay.
		I'm sorry.
		Go ahead.
		No, no.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You go ahead.
unidentified		I had also, concerning the topic of last night about the weather and everything, there was also the talk of Antarctica is melting, which is supposed to lead us into an ice age.
unidentified		I don't know if anybody watches the day after tomorrow, but it was supposed to be something like that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I've heard of that.
unidentified		So over time.
		I keep up on all that stuff.
		I think it's really awesome.
		But yeah, I think that has some to do with our weather.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, of course it does.
		That's the concern.
		And once again, even though we should be concerned with both the top and the bottom of the world, let me clarify for you one more time.
		The ice at the top of the world is melting.
		People in Alaska would be able to tell you, particularly the southern portions of Alaska, how incredibly it's melting.
		But nevertheless, at the North Pole, if the ice melts, not a gigantic deal for human beings, although it could be in one sense.
		But in the sense that the ice is already in the water, as ice cubes would melt in a glass of water, the glass of water is not going to rise and overflow.
		It's going to remain at the same level.
		Now, the ice at the southern part of the world, in the Antarctic, is above water.
		A very great deal of it is above water, the Ross Ice Shelf, for example.
		And if that melts, then we no longer have the ice cubes in the water, but we suddenly toss lots of ice cubes into the water, right?
		Ban.
		Then the water overflows.
		Then people on islands around the world that are only a few feet above sea level, or in some cases, under and below sea level, well, that land just simply won't be habitable any longer.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Top of the morning.
unidentified		Yeah, morning, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		Fairbanks, Alaska.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Way up in Fairbanks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, welcome.
unidentified		Yeah, I wanted to comment about the guy that was talking last night about age and technology and stuff.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		He was talking about 1800s, his average age was like 37 years old.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
unidentified		Well, I've got longevity in my family, so how would the nanotechnology deal with that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't know.
		Let's run this by you.
		How old are you now?
unidentified		Oh, I'm 50.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're 50?
		Okay.
		You've got a reasonably good shot, according to almost all these experts that I interview last night was one of them.
		And all these experts say that, look, if you can just live fairly long, you've got a very good chance of making it to the point where you could live forever.
		and that's for real i mean that's not And so it's a very interesting question.
		And it is, do you want to live forever?
		If you had the opportunity to live forever, would you take it?
unidentified		There's days right now I feel like I'm 95 years old.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You do, huh?
		Arthritis.
		Well, that still doesn't address the question.
		If you had the opportunity to live forever and will even toss away your arthritis in the deal, would you take it?
unidentified		Good possibility.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A good possibility.
		You know what?
		I actually haven't made up my own mind.
		I don't know if I would want to live forever.
		How about you?
		There are certain concerns.
		I mean, even with stimulating, well, who knows, you know, all sorts of stimulating things like virtual reality, the ability to live others' lives as though you were actually there.
		Even with all of that in place and the advance in other technologies, I think there would be a certain time when human beings would just say, you know, enough.
		Enough already.
		In fact, this goes back to a very sacred theory of mine.
		And that is, have you ever noticed, well, certainly I remember when I was 12 and 13 years old, you know, I'd rock out my room.
		Well, my dad, who was a jazz fan and didn't like rock at all, used to say very unflattering things about the music that I played.
		And in fact, I still play it.
		You see, I have my choice.
		I can play anything I want on the air, and so I play all my favorite music.
		Well, my favorite music does not happen to include rap.
		I am not a rap fan.
		I'm not even close to a rap fan.
		In fact, when I hear rap, I run.
		And I think that this is part of a bigger picture.
		In other words, I think that as we age, as my father despised my rock and roll, I now find myself not enamored of what's new.
		In fact, I don't even really honestly consider it to be music.
		And I think this is all God's plan.
		In other words, as we age, by the time we get to be 70, 80, 90, even 100 years old, should we make it that far, we've had it.
		Things have changed, and not for the better, and not for our liking.
		The music, contemporary art, everything that's going on around us has changed so much that, oh, by a certain age, we throw our hands up mentally and we say, God, it's night.
unidentified		It's take me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I've had it.
		Take me.
		And that's a natural course of events.
		But what if that natural course of events is altered by some genetic whiz who stops the aging gene or even reverses it?
		And then we can suddenly stick around and go through several changes of music and culture.
		Well, the question is, could the human beings stand it?
		Maybe not.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Yes, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Yeah, this is Mark in Ohio.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello, Mark.
unidentified		And yes, is this a screener I'm talking to?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, I don't.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Listen.
unidentified		Well, you don't have screeners.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm Art Bell.
		I don't have screeners.
		I do have a mother-in-law.
		You heard from her.
		But, I mean, I don't have screeners.
		So that's it.
		Buddy, you're on the air.
unidentified		Yeah.
		All right, Art.
		Oh, I've got a real quick space joke for you if you want to hear that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A space joke.
unidentified		A space joke, yes.
unidentified		This was.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A clean space joke?
unidentified		Yes, this was one of those late-night characters, you know, you're aware of.
		This was a couple years ago.
		I think they had predicted that the so-called psychic prediction that the Pope and the former senator John Glenn would be shot into space together.
		The mission would be a failure, but they would both come back to earth with a full head of hair.
		They regrow their hair somehow.
		Anyway, the comment I wanted to make about climate change was that what we need to keep in mind with climate change is that I think we may be staving off.
		I'm not an expert in this area.
		I took marine geology and was studying oceanography down at Texas A ⁇ M. But I took environmental chemistry, which is a very interesting course.
		That was my graduate level, though.
		But anyway, the gist of it is that we were natural forcing.
		We're putting more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, far more than man was.
		That's what I was taught at that time.
		But that's been re-scented completely.
		Now, an article I read in a Scientific American magazine by James Hansen, who was a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Science Institute, they're saying the anthropogenic forcings, man-made forcings, far exceed the natural forcings.
		And particularly, of course, CO2 and even methane is thrown in there.
		CFCs, certainly CFCs.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and it's probably going to lead to a massive and very swift climate change.
		That's what I think.
		That's what both Whitley, Streeber, and myself think.
		One day, perhaps far into the distant future, when the sun is not as bright, but rather a yellow smudge in the sky, maybe that far into the future, they'll dig into the ice somewhere, and they'll find a nearly perfectly preserved 20th or 21st century human being with something in their mouth, something undigested.
		And then perhaps they'll bring in an ancient language expert, and after months of careful examination and translation, they'll determine it says something like quarter pounder with cheese.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're very welcome.
unidentified		Pardon?
unidentified		Yeah, I'm calling from the radio station WISN, Milwaukee area.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Milwaukee.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		Glendale.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		You come through loud and clear.
unidentified		Very good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's good.
unidentified		A couple of weeks ago, you laughingly made a comment about a video that somebody produced claiming that President Bush was involved in the Twin Tower situation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
unidentified		I'm wondering, that's got me curious.
		Is there a way to get a copy of that video or something or you know of any source that I wouldn't help promulgate such a thing?
		Oh, I know you wouldn't.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they're out there.
		I have no idea and don't want to know.
		You're going to have to do your own research.
		Go to Google.
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		You're right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm very, very displeased, disgruntled, and unhappy with the conspiracy theory people who think that President Bush ordered 9-11 to happen.
		I mean, I'll just lay it on the table.
		I think it's a bunch of crap.
		And even that doesn't say it sufficiently.
		I can't do it on the radio.
		We get in trouble these days.
		I mean, it's really a bunch of crap.
		I'm willing to entertain a lot of conspiracy theories.
		I'll entertain them.
		That doesn't mean I believe them.
		But this one is so far out of the ballpark that I may not be a great fan of President Bush, but I am a fan of the United States of America.
		And I'm a fan of the honor of the presidency.
		And I don't think for not one second do I imagine that one of our presidents, any of our presidents, would ever order their own biggest city and their own citizens killed.
		I don't think that for one second.
		I think it's an insult to intelligence.
		I think the people that are doing it are wrong.
		I get messages from them constantly calling me a traitor.
		That's the kind of language they use.
		You traitor!
		Why don't you look at the evidence?
		Well, I've looked at all the so-called evidence, and it's a pile of crap.
		And so now I'm going to get a million emails again.
		I don't care.
		The whole thing really ticks me off.
		There's a lot of things that I might be willing to entertain, a lot of things I might be willing to believe, and that's not one of them.
		So, no, I don't think President Bush did that.
		And anyway, you know, I could go on for a long time about that, and I'm not going to.
		First time call a line, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		I'm speaking five thousand.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That would be me.
unidentified		Okay.
unidentified		This is an open line, right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes.
unidentified		Okay.
		They report two different things here.
		I live in New York City, in Queens.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In Queens.
unidentified		I live in between the airports, and there was those controls, that you the controls that you were talking about.
		I finally witnessed them.
		But the thing about it was that I never heard anybody mention was that this were escorted by those load of helicopters with double blades.
		I don't know what kind of helicopters they are, but the army uses them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, with the big double main rotors.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's what you're talking about.
unidentified		When I looked out my window, I seen the controls like they were just finishing.
		And there was like about 500 helicopters that were all facing the city.
		And they were all in a row.
		And as soon as the controls, the planes making the controls finished, they kept on going east.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The people who believe that there's some sort of experiment going on, sir, refer to them as chemtrails.
unidentified		Yes, chemtrails.
		That's exactly the first time I have seen them.
		I have heard you talking about them many times, but this is the first time I actually witnessed them.
		And as soon as the planes finished making those chemtrails, the helicopters took off at the same direction.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, let me do the best I can to give you a guess.
		There's no way to know.
		We've been told that there is aluminum particulate in whatever is being sprayed.
		I have no absolute evidence that they're really doing this.
		You know, it would appear as though they are.
		It would appear as though chemtrails are real.
		There really is something to this.
		Now, what are they doing?
		One could imagine all sorts of things.
		Perhaps they're vaccinating us against something they know might come around and get us.
		That would be sort of benign, right?
		Or another idea is that they are putting material into the atmosphere to then be affected in some manner by HAARP, that's H-A-A-R-P, which radiates intense RF energy from Alaska.
		And they think that perhaps some chemical combined with the intense radiation coming back off the ionosphere would in some manner affect our weather.
		Now, all of this is not that far out on a limb, even though it sounds that way, weather control and all that sort of thing.
		Not when you consider that those who actually work in the HAARP project have suggested that what they're doing may indeed be able to affect the weather in some manner or another.
		So I don't dismiss it, and with the strange HF conditions, and baby, they are strange, we have experienced months now of the ionosphere not being, as we all remember the ionosphere being.
		That is very, very reliable at certain frequencies.
		It's been non-existent.
		I mean, as I mentioned last night, within an hour of sunset, you can't talk to the people you normally talk to.
		Something is wrong with the ionosphere.
		Now, could it be HARP?
		That's got to be considered a good and educated guess.
		Well, coming up in a moment, Michael Drosman, author of The Bible Code, and now Citizen Hughes.
		All about Howard Hughes.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		I can see a line back in your satin dress in a room where you do what you don't confess.
		Someday you better take care if I find you've been creeping down my backstay.
		Someday you better take care if I find you've been creeping down my backstay.
		She's been looking like a queen.
		She must fly.
		The sunsets come.
		The sunsets go.
		The clouds won't lie.
		The earth turns slow.
		The end of the time you always grow.
		And she must fly.
		She must fly.
		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.
		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning across the globe.
		This is a particularly auspicious evening to interview Michael Drosman to have that honor.
		Because you know the aviator, the aviator, won for Best Picture.
		You knew that, right?
		I didn't have to tell you.
		The Golden Globes were Sunday, 1.16.
		This is the night we interview Michael Drosman on his new book, Citizen Hughes, and so much more.
		Michael Drosman is a former reporter for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.
		He is the author of three New York Times bestsellers, which include Citizen Hughes, The Bible Code, and The Bible Code II, The Countdown.
		I wonder if we can dredge anything out of him about that.
		I doubt it.
		His book, Citizen Hughes, is based on exclusive access to nearly everything that Hughes ever put in writing.
		In fact, the book is half in his own words, Howard's.
		So it's really Howard telling his own story of the hidden years, the secret life of the world's richest and most secretive man, from the only reliable source, really, Hughes himself.
		It's also the only Hughes book that was a bestseller.
		In fact, outsold all the other 20 Hughes books combined.
		Michael currently lives and works in New York City.
		So both of these topics, you know, as a talk show host, it has been absolutely inevitable, personally and from a professional standpoint, that something for a show like this, something with the impact of the Bible code, would not have a severe impact.
		And we have discussed it with countless guests and callers.
		And then the second subject, every bit is fascinating to me.
		You know, I live here in the desert, and this was where Howard called home there toward the end, right?
		And the influence he had on my area, you just can't imagine the influence he had on this area, Las Vegas area.
		It was incredible.
		I think I told a bit of a story the other night about Howard buying a TV station in Las Vegas so they could run his favorite movies late at night.
		That's all really true, and even more, so much more.
		You're going to hear it all tonight on both those subjects.
unidentified		So stay right where you are.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		My guess is Michael's been interviewed to death on the Bible Code, but first time here.
		Michael Drasnan, welcome to the show.
		It's an honor.
		Great to be with you tonight.
		Where are you, actually?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I'm in Los Angeles.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		L.A. On tour?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		No, I'm out here talking with people in Hollywood about a couple of movies.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You loved figures.
		Your books convert very well, don't they, into motion pictures.
		How do you feel about the Best Picture Award?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm happy for Marty Scorsese, who, of course, is a great director, although I don't really think this was one of his great movies.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		The real Howard Hughes story is so much better than anything you can possibly make up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, hold it right there.
		I mean, we're going to attack the Howard Hughes angle very hard in a little while.
		But, you know, as I said, I do this show, and, Michael, your book, The Bible Code, I'm telling you, man, it affected this show, you know, ever since it came out.
		I mean, other guests, people talking about it, controversy about it.
		So a couple of questions about it.
		Let's do that and then move to Howard Hughes.
		Like, for example, where and when did you discover the Bible code?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		No, I'm just a reporter.
		My background is Washington Post, Wall Street Journal.
		I was working on another book in Thali, visiting with the Chief of Intelligence in Israel.
		And his young aide, taking me back to my car, said, there's a mathematician in Jerusalem you have to meet.
		He discovered the exact day the Gulf War would begin before the war started in a code in the Bible.
		And I was getting into my car and I just thought to close the door and my only comment was, I'm not religious.
		I thought it was crazy.
		He held the door open.
		He wouldn't let me close it.
		He said, neither am I. But he found the exact day.
		And he gave me the name of the scientist who turned out to be no one ordinary, one of the smartest people on the planet, the world's leading authority in the field of math that underlies quantum physics.
		And I'm a reporter.
		I was curious.
		I went to see him.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But you are a reporter.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So I'm guessing that before you would swallow this to the point that you'd be willing to write about it, it would take a lot of convincing.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		More than a lot of convincing.
		I was probably the most skeptical person on the planet.
		I'm not at all religious.
		I never have been.
		I'm not to this day, in fact, although I've written two books that are international bestsellers about the code and the Bible, which is without question real.
		But I cannot account for it.
		I can only tell you that it does exist.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it is real.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		There's no question.
		In the world.
		It keeps coming true.
		I meet regularly with heads of intelligence agencies here and in Israel.
		And they don't meet with me because they are religious.
		Some are, some aren't.
		They meet with me because the code keeps coming true.
		World leaders meet with me for the same reason.
		The code keeps coming true.
		Now, I can only report that fact.
		I cannot tell you who it comes from or how anyone or anything can possibly see the future.
		But the code does keep coming true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is there any relationship yet that's been discovered between the content of the literal text side of the Bible and the underlying codes?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is there a relationship or are the underlying codes just completely contextually different?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		It's a very interesting question, Aught, and I don't have an answer for sure.
		The scientist who discovered the code Is not only a mathematical genius, but also a deeply religious man.
		And he believes that since the Bible itself comes from God, because he believes what the Bible itself says, that God gave Moses the first five books in the Bible on Mount Sinai, that the code, since it's inherent in the text of the Bible, must also come from God.
		He is certain of it.
		I can't share his certainty because I'm not religious.
		I, in fact, don't even believe in God.
		I believe the code is real for the very simple reason that it keeps coming true.
		It's a reporter's reason.
		There's no leap of faith involved.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do we know who wrote the Bible?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I don't know who wrote the Bible.
		All religious people believe that the Bible was dictated by God to Moses, the first five books, and that all of it was inspired by God.
		Now, I can't say that's not so.
		I have no proof one way or the other.
		And since I'm a reporter, I need evidence.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But, Michael, how could you go through the process of discovering that this was real beyond any question?
		Even satisfying a very sophisticated reporter like yourself that it's true, and not, I don't know, you know, you said you don't believe in God, but not to start to have qualms.
		I mean, it's too incredible.
		It can't be, and yet you're telling me it is.
		Well, so that's so impossible that wouldn't you start to have little qualms?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Not qualms, because that would suggest fear.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		It doesn't arouse fear at all, a certain amount of awe.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Awe and wonder.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		It's certainly the most exciting story I've been involved with.
		As a reporter, I could not ask for more, but it has, you're asking me really, doesn't it raise questions about my pre-existing beliefs?
		Doesn't it challenge what I had previously thought?
		The answer is, oh, yeah, of course.
		The world turns out to be a far more interesting place than I had previously known.
		I will go that far.
		There are other levels of reality that I did not previously, as a flat-footed investigative reporter, possibly begin to believe.
		But I cannot tell you what else exists.
		I can only say with a certainty that since there's a code, there must be an encoder.
		And it's not one of us.
		It's not one of us 3,000 years ago when the Bible was written.
		And it's not one of us now.
		None of us can see across time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		None of us can see across time.
		And if this is real, and you are saying it's real, then it sees across time.
		There are people who say it predicted the Holocaust, did it?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, not in advance because the code was not discovered until after the Holocaust, but it was encoded in a 3,000-year-old text.
		So certainly, 3,000 years before the Holocaust happened, it was foreseen.
		What finally convinced me was not the extraordinary man who discovered the code, although he is the best person I've met in my life, the most intelligent, Professor Eliyahu Rips, but rather, and not the fact that other great mathematicians at Harvard, at Yale, at Hebrew University confirmed it was real.
		Finally, a code breaker at the U.S. National Security Agency, who set out to prove it was a hoax, instead proved it was real.
		None of that convinced me.
		I had too much skepticism.
		What finally convinced me is that I found myself in the code a warning that the Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, would be assassinated a year before he was killed.
		And I personally warned him a year ahead of time.
		You did.
		And then when Rabin was killed, as the Code predicted, in the place the Code predicted, in the year the Code predicted, I said out loud, oh my God, it's real.
		And before that, I believed it intellectually, or I would not have warned Rabin.
		But I did not believe it in my heart or in my gut until that moment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that was enough.
		There are rumors that Dr. Professor Ripps has perhaps attempted to distance himself from the book.
		Is that true or false?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Dr. Ripps is a deeply religious man and a scientist.
		I am totally secular and a reporter.
		We are, in a way, at opposite ends of humanity.
		We are also very good friends.
		My book is written from my point of view, a secular point of view.
		He deals with the code from a religious point of view.
		What we agree on is what's important, not what we disagree on.
		What we agree on is that there is a code in the Bible That does reveal events that happened thousands of years after the Bible was written.
		We agree on that absolutely.
		We agree that sometimes we find these events before they happen.
		In other words, first in the code and then they happen in the real world.
		We agree on that 100%.
		The area of disagreement really comes down to how we can make use of it in the world.
		I believe that the code exists for us to have the information we need in order to survive.
		I believe that it's like an early warning system.
		And that is why I meet with world leaders, heads of intelligence agencies.
		I give them information that I often don't publish.
		Because we live in a very dangerous world and you don't need the code anymore to see that.
		The code did warn of the world we now live in long before anyone saw it coming.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		I want to ask you a question.
		And this would be a good question for you, really.
		If you don't believe in God, then, you know, our best theoretical physicists right now are beginning to toy with the idea of time travel.
		And while this might seem off the wall, if you didn't believe in God, then certainly what's contained in the code would seem to suggest the possibility of time travel.
		At least suggest it.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I've considered every possibility, but I have no answer.
		I won't rule it out, and I wouldn't say I have any evidence of that either.
		I'm aware that Einstein's theories allow for it, that major physicists say that it may in fact be possible.
		It's certainly not something we can yet do.
		But there's a very famous scientist who asked a question about time travel.
		If in fact it's possible, how come we don't have visitors?
		Now, that is a reasonable question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And there are some reasonable answers.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		No, of course, there are answers.
		I've been through it and I've studied it because it fascinates me.
		One of the really interesting questions raised by the very existence of the code is what is the true nature of time?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You betcha.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Now, Einstein said there is no distinction between past, present, and future, however persistent the illusion.
		I love how he put it.
		He was not only a brilliant scientist, he's a brilliant writer also, actually.
		The way he expressed himself was extraordinary.
		And I would have to accept that he's right, although I still experience it as yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
		And it's very easy for me to tell the difference between the three.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm sure everybody asks you this, but I mean, it's a question to ponder.
		And that is why would God, or the author, or the time driver, or whoever did all this, why would they put something in there that could only be deciphered at a certain point?
		And with the help, I might add, of modern computers?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		There's a very simple answer to that.
		And I can tell you it is the reason because I don't know who did it or even why.
		I'm assuming a benevolent reason to help us, reaching across time to help us.
		But I can give you the logical answer.
		What good would it have done desert nomads and sheepherders 3,000 years ago to be told that now we might face the ultimate horror, a nuclear world war?
		They wouldn't have understood the meaning of the concept, nor could they have done anything about it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's true.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		It would make a great deal of sense, however, to create a code in a book that would last through 3,000 years, as no other book has, that could only be opened by the technology of a certain moment when that information would be needed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a profound thought, isn't it?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		In other words, the code had a time lock built in.
		It could only be found when the computer was invented.
		And that's because we need the information now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are there decipherable predictions from this moment on that are very important for us to know about?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they are, and they will be in my next book, Bible Code 3, which will be the last of the trilogy, and it's something we won't discuss tonight.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You won't talk about that?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		No, of course not.
		I talk about that with people who run countries and people who run intelligence agencies.
		And eventually, most of what I find, I publish, some I never do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Some you never do.
		Michael, hold on.
		We're at the bottom of the hour.
unidentified		This is the perfect book.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		designed to be decided for three thousand years later i wonder what's in the third i worry about that i think this is those those and will be right back
unidentified		you know i love you i always will my mind's made up by the way that i feel there's no beginning there'll be no end she doesn't give you time for questions as she locks up your eyes
		The End She doesn't
		give you time for questions As she locks up your arms and you fall up to your sense Of which direction completely disappears While the blue tar walls near the market the stalls There's a hint there she leads you to These days she says I feel my
		life Just like a wave for running through The year I can't Can't 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.
		From West to the Rockies, call Art at 800-618-8255.
		International callers may reach ArtVell by calling your in-country spread 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is indeed.
		I'll tell you what, we'll spend the next segment also on the Bible code, but then we're going to spend the final two hours on Howard Hughes.
		I live in the desert.
		That man had a profound influence on this part of the desert where I live, and in fact, the whole world.
		Absolutely incredible stuff.
		michael drosman is my guess and he'll be right back Once again, Michael Drosman.
		Michael, you put a lot more emphasis, I believe, on the longer codes.
		There are some short codes, short messages, and then some incredibly long ones, and you really emphasize the long ones.
		Why?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
		I would say long codes versus short codes on codes that are mathematically significant.
		The Bible code is a mathematical code.
		It was, as I said, discovered by a great mathematician.
		You can go on the internet and find all kinds of silly things that people say about the code, either believing in it or not believing in it, but without substance in either case, because they don't pay attention to the math.
		When it is statistically way against the odds that a combination of words will appear together, and it consistently happens way against the odds that accurate information about events that happen long after the Bible is written appear together, you have something very interesting.
		Otherwise, you're playing tennis without a net on a court with no boundaries.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But when it's statistically punching you in the jaw, you almost don't have any choice.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that comes in the longer codes, whereas just mathematically you don't have to.
unidentified		Exactly.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		It's as much as longer codes as a combination of ingredients.
		You're looking for the shortest code sequence, the closest proximity of the words, and finally, the only real computer program, which is not available commercially at all, created by the mathematician who discovered the code, which is what I use, which does the mathematics for me.
		Otherwise, I could not do this at all.
		And it calculates the meaning mathematically of any particular find.
		People who don't understand this are simply playing a game, probably not doing very much harm, but simply playing a game.
		And you can find anything you want if you don't obey the rules.
		If you do obey the rules, then you can find something that is not real.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Suppose you obeyed the rules and you took Warren Peace or something else like it and applied the same software.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, as a blind test, that's something actually done.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Original experiment that the mathematician who discovered the code performed, the one that he published in a mathematical journal in the United States that tests three levels of peer review, meaning review by other scientists,
		all of them secular, by the way, all of them certain this could not be real, but unable to find any flaw in the experiment, was to take one piece in Hebrew,
		the Bible in Hebrew, and which of course is the original language of the Bible, and another original Hebrew text that is non-biblical.
		And to look for exactly the same information using the same computer program in all these three texts.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What happened?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		One of them was war and peace, in fact.
		And what happened is that in the Bible, the information about all about people and events that happened long after the Bible was written was found together against odds of at least 10 million to one.
		And in the two control texts, War and Peace and the other non-biblical text, nothing that you would expect beyond random chance.
		In other words, this was exactly the experiment that was performed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's incredible.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I just some people are fooled by critics who, I suppose to get attention, I can't imagine for what other reason, make believe that they have found the same phenomenon in novels like Moby Dirk or War and Peace, but they haven't.
		And what they have done is ignored the rules completely.
		They play tennis without a net on a court with no boundaries.
		They ignore the math.
		And we're talking even about some mathematicians who know better, but need to disbelieve and pretend you can find the same thing anywhere.
		It's simply not true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you ever been concerned?
		Has there been a moment of concern when somebody calls you up on the phone and says, hey, Michael, so-and-so says they've got absolute concrete proof that some book they've done has come out and there it is.
		They found messages, meaningful messages, long messages, the whole thing.
		And then you investigate it and poof.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's happened a number of times.
		Poof.
		The leading critic of the code on the Internet is an Australian mathematician, not nearly, of course, of the same rank as the man who discovered the code.
		Kind of a junior high school science teacher as opposed to Einstein, okay.
		And he has not attacked the code on a mathematical basis.
		He has not attacked it on a computer science basis.
		He has oddly attacked it on its Hebrew, which is truly bizarre because he's a man who does not read Hebrew, which is the language of the code.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That is very odd.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		And yet, people pay attention to him as if this had substance.
		But he on his own code, on his own website, says none of the things that I have here from Moby, Dick, or War and Peace have any mathematical meaning whatsoever.
		That's in very small print.
		And people don't recognize that what they're seeing is, in fact, the real hoax.
		No one pretending that the code is not real when it actually is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you're intellectually, totally satisfied the code only appears in the Bible?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		It's without doubt.
		There's simply no question of it.
		No one has ever shown otherwise.
		No one could.
		People have tried.
		Look, I've met three times with the chief of the Mossad, Israel's famed intelligence agency.
		Of course.
		He's never met with another reporter in his life, including any Israeli reporter.
		He meets with me for one reason.
		The code keeps coming true.
		He is not religious.
		There has never been a religious man, chief of the Mossad.
		There has never been a religious prime minister of Israel.
		People think Israel is a theocracy.
		Actually, the United States is far closer to it, especially under the current administration.
		The people who take this seriously, the highest levels of American and Israeli intelligence take it seriously for the simplest of reasons, the same reason I do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's real.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		It keeps coming true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It keeps coming true.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		You may not want to believe NIP, but when it keeps coming true, you finally have no choice.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You've written the Bible Code 3.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You've already said you're not going to talk about it.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I haven't written it.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I am writing it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But you know what you're going to write.
unidentified		And you're writing.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		You know part of what I'm going to write.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That part you know you're not going to talk about.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		No, not at all.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		I want to try one question.
		in what you know of michael is there a prediction with regard to the and of it all is there in Yeah, I am not at all apocalyptic.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I'm the opposite.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but you're not religious either.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		No, well, but one could believe the world is coming to an end without being religious.
unidentified		I think.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		You just look around and you could easily come to that conclusion without being religious at all.
		But I'm neither a secular apocalyptic person nor a religious apocalyptic person.
		I'm the opposite.
		I have great faith in mankind.
		I believe we will save ourselves, but not easily.
		Not easily.
		We live, obviously, in a time of extraordinary danger.
unidentified		Yes.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		And I think that's why the code exists and why we're finding it at this particular moment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, here's another one I bet you probably can't answer.
		So it is written.
		I mean, it's in the Bible.
		The codes are real.
		You know some things we don't know about what may be coming.
		In your opinion, can what is written and is coming be changed?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I'm absolutely certain of it.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Indeed, I'm certain that the whole reason that there is a code and we are finding it now is so we have a chance to change our future.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Otherwise, you're just telling the puppets they're puppets.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		And there is, in fact, a very important insight into this in an ancient religious text called the Talmud, which every religious Jew takes as seriously as the Bible itself.
		It's a 2,000-year-old commentary on the Bible.
		And it says, everything is foreseen, but freedom of action is granted.
		And for 2,000 years, great wise men have debated in religious terms the meaning of this apparent paradox.
		How can God see all and yet man have free will?
		And now this computer code in the Bible forces even people like me, who are completely secular, to face the same paradox, ask the same question.
		If the future is known, how can it be changed?
		And the answer is in both cases the same.
		Every possible future is known, but what we do using our free will determines what actually happens.
		It's up to us.
		And the answer, I think, does not lie in prayer, but in rolling up our sleeves and doing the hard job necessary to save our world, because we're not puppets.
		And I think, whether you're religious or secular, you can easily come to the conclusion that even if you believe there is some higher being who created us, he did not intend for us to be puppets.
		He intended for us to save ourselves.
unidentified		Or not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or not, or not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, I'm kind of like our choice.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		i'm not really decide some people asked me when i told them the dangers ahead when i
		And I said, the good news is that some intelligence reached across time, cared enough about us to leave us the information that we would need in order to survive.
		But the Bible code is not like the Bible itself.
		It doesn't contain any threat of divine punishment or any promise of divine salvation.
		It is simply information, and it's up to us how we use it.
		And if we use it intelligently, then yes, of course we will survive.
		And I believe we will use it intelligently.
		I have, as I said, if not faith in God, that remains a mystery to me.
		Great faith in mankind.
		And I do believe we will survive.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Michael, I'm like you.
		I'm not very religious, particularly.
		Not at all.
		And I don't know about God.
		I hope there's a God, but I'm sort of there, you know.
		I hope there's a God.
		I have to be able to lay my hands on things to believe them.
		And I guess that's kind of like a reporter in a way.
		Anyway, you mentioned prayer.
		And there are these studies going on at Princeton about human consciousness.
		There are these studies going on, these scientific studies, double-blind studies about prayer, where people prayed for seem to do better than the people who aren't prayed for.
		And so I wonder if you've looked into that at all.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I'm aware of it.
		I'm curious.
		Look, if you're a reporter, you're endlessly curious.
		And if I weren't curious, I wouldn't have gotten involved with a Bible code in the first place.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But let me explain this to you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This is really interesting, Michael.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Here is what I would suggest.
		Two things.
		One, I'm not saying prayer doesn't work.
		I'm not saying God doesn't exist.
		I'm not saying that people are religious are wrong.
		The man who discovered the code is far more intelligent than I am.
		He's deeply religious and believes totally in prayer.
		He prays five times a day.
		As a religious Jew, he follows 613 commandments every day of his life.
		I can't say he's wrong, but I can give you an answer as to why people might think that prayer helps and yet it does not, which is anything that you believe in will help you get through the day.
		Anytime you believe, if you're sick, that you're going to get well, you are far more likely to get well than if you don't believe it.
		There is a tremendous power of positive thinking in everything that we do.
		And you don't have to be religious to recognize that.
		And you don't have to believe in God to recognize that, and you don't have to pray to recognize that.
		But one of the things that people believe the most in God is prayer is religion.
		And so it probably does work for them as long as they don't use it to divide and separate and as an excuse to hate and kill, which unfortunately is also the history of religion in the world.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's true.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		So it has both sides to it, certainly.
		That kind of talk gets me in trouble.
		I'm honest.
		I always tell people what I actually believe.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do me a favor, as a reporter, go look into something called the Human Consciousness Project at Princeton.
		This is using computers.
		They've got computers scattered all over the world.
		And Michael, they've shown the graph.
		These computers all report back to Princeton.
		And the computer at Princeton, you know, normally spitting out random numbers.
		30 minutes before 9-11, it went off the charts.
		Looking at other big human events prior to their actual occurrence, like a seismograph, it goes off the charts.
		This is verifiable, Michael, and it's through time.
		It's through time.
		So it's worth looking at as a reporter.
		When you're talking about consciousness and prayer and all the rest of that, this thing at Princeton is worth your investigation.
		And that might modify some of your views in this area, only because it's scientifically verifiable.
		Listen, hold on.
		When we come back, we're going to move on to Howard Hughes.
		God, what a fascinating, absolutely fascinating man Howard Hughes was and how much influence he had here.
		In fact, I'll read you the back of Citizen Hughes when we get back.
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		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is.
		Top of the morning, everybody.
		My guest is Michael Drosman, author of the Bible Code, Bob Code 2, and soon the Bible Code 3.
		And the Bible Code 3 sounds a little ominous, kind of like the third secret of Fatima or something.
unidentified		We're going to turn now to his latest book, What a...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Howard Hughes.
		I live in the desert, and if I go out in my front porch, which I frequently do at night, and I look to the east, I see the glow of that great city of Las Vegas.
		It lights the night sky, whether there are clouds to reflect it or not.
		It's an amazing, amazing city, and it's the one he chose to live in.
		Let me read just from the back of this book.
		It'll set up what we're about to do, I think.
		At the height, it's on the back of the book.
		I always read the back of the books.
		How about you?
		At the height of his wealth power and invisibility, the world's richest and most secretive man kept what amounted to a diary.
		The billionaire commanded his empire by correspondence, scrawling thousands of handwritten memos to unseen henchmen.
		It was the only time Howard Hughes risked writing down his orders, plans, thoughts, fears, desires.
		Hughes claimed the papers were so sensitive, quote, the very most confidential, almost sacred information as to my innermost activities, end quote, that not even his most trusted aides or executives were allowed to keep the messages he sent them.
		But in the early morning hours of June 5th of 1974, unknown burglars staged a daring break-in at Hughes' supposedly impregnable headquarters and escaped with all of the confidential files.
		Despite a top-secret FBI investigation and a multi-million dollar CIA payback, buyback, they offered to buy it back.
		None of the stolen secret papers were ever found.
		That is until investigative reporter Michael Droznan cracked the case.
		In Citizen Hughes, Droznan reveals the true story of the great Hughes heist and of the real Howard Hughes.
		Based on nearly 10,000 never-before-published documents, more than 3,000 in Hughes' own handwriting, Citizen Hughes is far more than a biography or even an unwilling autobiography.
		It's a startling record of the secret of our times.
		Now, if you read that on the back of a book in the bookstore, you'd take that book home, wouldn't you?
		Well, we have the luxury of having the author right here.
		in a moment in a moment we continue with michael drowson or the You know, it can be very hard to pepper Michael with questions about Howard Hughes.
		I'm not going to do that.
		I'm going to just sort of turn it over to him.
		But I do have one at the beginning.
		Michael, how could you get what the CIA couldn't with millions?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I'm better than they are.
		No, here's the truth.
		There was the appearance of a massive investigation when Howard Hughes' secrets were stolen from his headquarters.
		Every power center in the world was shaken because Hughes was involved with all of them, with the CIA itself, with the Pentagon, with the mafia, with the White House.
		He bribed presidents.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Excuse me?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		He bribed presidents with bundles of $100 bills.
		Howard Hughes was, in his latter years, like a villain in a James Bond movie.
		You never saw him, but he exerted enormous control from hiding.
		And when his secrets were stolen, the world shook.
		But it shook the CIA and the FBI so deeply that they never really investigated the case at all.
unidentified		They pretended to.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I know this because I received under the Freedom of Information Act the files from the FBI and the CIA about their investigation or their pretended investigation of the burglary of Howard U's headquarters.
unidentified		And here's what really happened.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		They decided not to investigate.
		They decided that Howard's secrets were too hot to handle.
		They decided that they did not want to find the evidence that Richard Nixon, still in the White House, had received $100,000 in secret cash from Howard Hughes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I was going to press you for that, but there it is.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		They decided that they did not want to find the truth about themselves.
unidentified		The CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		They were terrified of the mess they would be in if they actually tracked down the burglars and got hold of Howard user's secrets, because then they would be legally obligated to prosecute the president.
		They would be legally obligated to prosecute themselves.
		So they decided in secret never to really look for the burglars at all.
		That is why I was able to do what they could not do, because I decided to actually look.
		Now it took me six months, but I knew after three phone calls that something was terribly wrong, because I made the three calls I would have made the first day I went to work at the Washington Post when I was 20 years old.
		I called the three people anyone investigating that break-in would have had to call just to start looking into it.
		And those people had never been contacted by anyone that stopped me going.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So do you name these people?
unidentified		I could, but I won't.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Because my arrangement in the end, when I did track down the bird, was very simple.
		I told them I was going to write a book.
		It was either going to be a book about the Break-In and about them, or it was going to be a book about Howard Hughes.
		But if it was going to be a book about Howard, then I needed those secret papers.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Here's something I don't get, though, Michael.
		These giant powers that we just talked about, the presidency, the CIA, all the rest of them, how could they be comfortable not reaching out and touching those burglars because they could not know the intent of the burglars with regard to the information they held?
		So how could they simply dismiss the investigation and rely on the good intentions of the burglars who now had information that could ruin their lives?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		And the answer, I think, is that you don't understand how a government bureaucracy really works, which is to try to avoid at all costs taking the responsibility for Dealing with a terrible can of worms.
		The CIA and the FBI, at the highest levels, made the decision that they didn't want to open the can of worms because if they opened it, they had to deal with it.
		They had no choice under law.
		Whereas if I opened it, they didn't have to deal with it, and they didn't.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And plus they can deny it, of course.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Deniability.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		No one ever denied one word in my book, Citizen News.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		No one.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How did you interact?
		And I suppose, did you interact with the burglars?
		You must have.
		How did that interaction take place?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I tracked down the man who had led the burglary team.
		And as I told you, I gave him a very simple choice.
		It was either going to be a book about him and his cohorts or a book about Howard Us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Did they hold that over your head and say, look, we want to be the book?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no, the opposite.
unidentified		And they had committed a crime.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		They did not want it reported, obviously.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		They would go to jail.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Very much so.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		They, however, did not instantly agree to do what I wanted, which was to give me the papers so that I could write a book about Howard.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		That took another six months after I found them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Meetings, I imagine meetings with them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		To trust them.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		It's really what reporting is largely about.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You bet.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		It helped that I had once gone to jail rather than reveal a confidential source.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That would help.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		they knew they could trust me because i had shown myself trustworthy uh...
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		in a similar situation uh...
unidentified		and uh...
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		but finally They did give in, or I wouldn't say they gave in.
		The chief burglar decided he liked me.
		I would say more than anything else, that was why.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What about jail, Michael?
		I mean, okay, fine.
		You went to jail once previously, not because you would not reveal sources, and I can see how that would help you in your negotiation with them, but writing this book could put you right back.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		No.
		First of all, when I was jailed for refusing to reveal confidential sources, what I did is write a story from the New York Times about the condition inside the jail, from inside the jail, that caused the federal judge to shut the jail down.
		This made me fairly immune to being jailed again.
		You know, how many jails do they want to lose?
		But the truth has a tremendous power.
		The press, when it plays its proper role, has a tremendous power.
		And the authorities are very leery of going after the press when the press is not timid.
		It's only when the press is timid that the authorities go after it, as they do these days.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Totally.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No question in your mind about the authenticity of what was given to you.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, there's none at all.
		In fact, no one ever denied that the documents were real, and everyone who knew, who had any basis for knowing, confirmed it.
		The man who received most of the memos from you, no friend of mine, by the way, confirmed it on national television that these were authentic documents.
		He also confirmed that he had indeed given the bribes to the presidents, as I said he had.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		By the way, what was he bribing the president for?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Howard Hughes told him to.
		Howard Hughes, I would not say, was an actual evil man, because he did not seek to do others harm.
		He was terrified of the entire world outside.
		I know that's hard for people to believe that the richest man in the world could also be the most frightened man in the world.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Did he have cause?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		But that fact was the case.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, the big question is, did he have cause to be terrified?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Was it paranoia?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Howard Us was quite literally a naked madman.
		For the last 20 years of his life, he lived in hiding in one blacked-out hotel room after another, never wore any clothes, lived in filth, was a billionaire junkie.
		He was shooting up codeine.
		He was as mad as a Hatter on one level, and on another level, completely lucid, extremely intelligent, a very good writer, by the way, which is part of why the book works so well, because it is Howard telling his own story.
		And he had, from the time when he was young to the day he died, all during the period of his madness, an iron will.
		And because of his great wealth, he was able to impose that will on everyone, including presidents of the United States.
		But what he was seeking was not so much to promote his business interests or escape his taxes, although he didn't pay any for 17 consecutive years.
		I know that because I also have his income tax return.
		That's incredible.
		what he was really seeking, above all, was to protect himself from what?
		The answer is from everyone and everything outside this blacked out room.
		Um, but finally, his fears came to rest most of all on the nuclear test the government was conducting in the Nevada desert, not far from his hideout in a penthouse of a Las Vegas casino on the Las Vegas Strip.
unidentified		Well, then why would he be there?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Well, one might say if you're going to hide out from the world, why the Las Vegas Strip?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I mean, the most garish place in the universe, the most public place.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		One is asking why, yes, why?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		And the only answer is he had seen that before in his life when he was young and liked it.
		Now, you could say that doesn't make much sense because he never left his room.
		So it wouldn't matter where he was.
		He never looked outside the windows.
		He had them blacked out the moment he arrived.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're telling me his greatest fear began to be the tests they were conducting?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		You got it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Because let me tell you something, Michael.
		I've lived in Las Vegas many, many years.
		I worked for KDWN in Las Vegas and I used to announce on the radio, stand by, because at 10.47 this morning, there's going to be a nuclear test.
		And if you're on a high building or something, get off, you know, a precarious position, get off, because it's going to rock.
		And baby, it rocked.
		I went through those tests.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		This is what happened to Howard.
		Try to imagine this situation.
		Here is the richest man in the world.
		He has chosen as his hideout the penthouse suite of the Desertent Hotel on the Las Vegas Drip.
		And then he buys the hotel.
		He buys every surrounding hotel.
		And in order to feel safe, he buys the hotels surrounding the surrounding hotels until he owns all of Las Vegas, in effect.
		He buys the governor.
		He buys the gaming commission.
		He buys the city councilman.
		He buys everything in order to feel safe.
		And then, so he never had to appear publicly to get a license like everyone else had to because he never appeared at all.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He bought the gaming commissioner.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		He bought everybody.
		Now, and I mean lockstock and barrel.
		Now, there he is thinking, finally, I am safe.
		And one day, his penthouse begins to sway.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's absolutely right.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		And what is it?
		It is a nuclear test out in the Nevada desert.
		And how would you use at a time when no one understood how dangerous these tests really were?
		He was dead right.
		They were very dangerous.
		Saw the danger.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Did that drive him crazy?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		And it drove him even crazier.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that would be something.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		And what he did with his iron will and his vast wealth was unique in all of American history.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		That's a great place to drive the government into doing what was right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, hold it right there.
		We'll be right back.
		It's the bottom of the hour.
		Unbelievable stuff.
		And I think this song sings it just the right way, actually.
		As you're thinking about a man like Howard Hughes and what you've heard so far.
unidentified		Sweet dreams are made of the ends.
		Who am I to disagree?
		I travel the world and the seven seas.
		Everybody is looking for something.
		Some of them want to use you.
		Some of them want to get used by you.
		Some of them want to abuse you.
		Some of them want to be abused.
		Some of them want to be abused.
		There are telling me I got to beware.
		I think it's time we stop.
		Children, watch that sound.
		Everybody look what's going down This battle line's being wrong.
		Nobody's right if everybody's wrong.
		Young people speak in their minds are getting so much resistance from behind.
		Every time we stop, hey, what's that sound?
		Everybody look what's going down Why?
		What a field day for the heath.
		A thousand people in the street.
		Do 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.
		Do talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies.
		Call toll-free at 800-825-5033.
		From west of the Rockies, call Art at 800-618-8255.
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		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Paranoia strikes Eve.
		seems appropriate and then it's freaks in your life i wonder if that's Michael Drosman knows.
		right back.
unidentified		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Was Howard Hughes, Michael, able to influence the United States government's testing policies?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, absolutely.
unidentified		Really?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		First, he tried to bribe Lyndon Johnson to stop the bomb tests in Nevada.
		And here's how he put it to his aide.
		I want you to try to determine who is the real, honest-to-God bad man at the White House.
		And please don't be frightened away by the enormity of the thought.
		I have done this kind of business with the president before.
unidentified		So he wears no awe-inspiring robe of virtue with me.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I am sure that the president is waiting to hear from us on some kind of hard-cash adult basis.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Those are his words?
unidentified		Totally.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I'm quoting.
		What's wonderful about Hughes is that he said openly what others do but pretend is some form of participation in politics, civics, patriotism.
		Howard was blunt and open about what he was doing.
		He was using money to get his way, to buy power, to buy what he wanted in the world.
		Here's what he had to say about the second man he approached on the subject, Richard Nixon.
		I am determined to elect a president of our choosing this year and one who will be deeply indebted and who will recognize his indebtedness.
		If we select Nixon, then he, I know for sure, knows the facts of life.
		Johnson, offered a million-dollar bribe at his ranch in Texas by Hughes' right-hand man, refused to sell Howard the bomb.
		Made it very clear that he was happy to exempt him from any antitrust laws.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What do you mean, refuse to sell him?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're telling me Howard Hughes wanted a bomb.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		No, he didn't want a bomb, literally, but that's how Johnson saw it.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		And he was outraged by this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Stop the testing.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		He was outraged by this.
		I can't use the language on radio or our current FCC, which is so difficult, will not allow me to quote a president of the United States and what his reaction was.
		Lyndon Johnson was as plain spoken as Howard Hughes.
		However, in Richard Nixon, Howard had found his perfect president.
		Soulmate.
		And what Nixon did, first he tried shuttle diplomacy.
		He offered to send Henry Kissinger to come to Las Vegas to meet with Howard to negotiate this issue.
		And Hughes reacted with rage.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, this sounds like science fiction.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Hughes reacted with rage because, as he put it to his henchmen, having Kissinger come here will only embarrass me.
		You know that I won't meet with him.
		Remember, Howard has seen no one now for, you know, something like a decade.
		And for the next decade, we'll see no one again, right?
		He will see no one until he dies.
		No outsider enters his room.
		He didn't want Kissinger.
		He wanted it into the test.
		And he said, go back and offer Nixon the money.
		And Nixon took the money and moved the bomb tests to Alaska.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't remember that.
		No, I don't remember that.
		Move the bomb test to Alaska.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, they didn't actually conduct any in Alaska, though, did they?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They did.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Then they ran into a problem because the Russians protested it was too close to where they were.
		No one, you see, this is the ultimate not-in-my-backyard issue.
		But Howard had the cash.
		The Russians only had, what, their own nuclear arsenal.
		Nixon went for the money.
		Now, this is the incredible power of the man.
		And I often have wondered, how would these presidents have behaved if they had known, which they did not, no one knew, that they were dealing with a naked madman.
		Someone with his hair down to his backside.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm not sure it would have mattered.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Beard down to his navel.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From what you've told me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Never wore clothes.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		He stored his urine in mason jars in his bedroom closet.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I am talking crazy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why did he.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Because he could not let go of anything that was his.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		We were talking about madness at a level you can't even begin to imagine.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		As you read these in his own words.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I have the original papers.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you still have them?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I have a certain number of them in order to make sure they were fully authenticated by document experts.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When did they begin?
		When was Iraq?
		When did they begin, Michael?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		They begin in earnest when Howard arrives in Las Vegas in 1967.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And what was the state of his descent?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		In 1966.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Thanksgiving of 1966.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And at that point, what was the descent, state of his descent into madness?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it was total.
		And he'd already spent ten years building himself up to this point.
		And in living in a bungalow, the Beverly Hills Hotel, and endlessly watching the same movies over and over.
		He saw one movie a hundred times.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I heard that he started one of our channels in Las Vegas, bought a TV station.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		You knew why, and apparently without reading my book.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Howard bought the network, the station in Las Vegas, and it was the local CBS affiliate, in order to put on the movies he wanted to watch at night.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's now our Channel 8 here.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Now, this is before VCRs.
		In order to program your own television station, you had to own it.
		Now, for Howard, that wasn't good enough because he kept changing his mind.
		And he would, like at 2 a.m.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Call him up.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Call him up.
		No, he won't call him up.
		He had the aide call him up and say, instead of Great Drew robbery at 2 a.m., Mr. Hughes would like to see Hired Gunn.
		And he would do this every night, all night.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I bet it drove them out of their minds.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Out of their minds, clearly.
		And then finally, he said, I understand that some of the viewers, again, I'm quoting him exactly, have complained about the movies listed not being the ones shown.
		In order to resolve this problem, I suggest that we no longer list the names of the late-night movies.
unidentified		This should make everybody happy.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		These exact words.
		Now, this wasn't enough for him.
		He decided to buy an entire television network.
		He staged a hostile takeover bid and succeeded.
		He could have owned ABC.
		He had more than half the stock.
		And then, one night, while he was in the midst of this takeover battle, which he had succeeded in, he saw on ABC a program called The Dating Game.
		I don't know if you recall this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Of course I do.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		But it's where a man had a pick between three women on scene, or a woman had a pick between three men on scene.
		In this case, it was a man who had a pick between three women on scene.
		And Howard thought that this man, who was black, had picked a white woman.
		And Howard was a crazed racist, not out of hate, but again, out of fear.
		Blacks terrified him for the same reason germs did.
		There was no reason, in other words.
		And it was, in fact, not a white woman at all, but a light-skinned black.
		Howard didn't know this, but over the show, and his rage canceled the ABC deal.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Or else he would have owned an entire network.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's madness.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That is madness.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		His goal in buying the network was purely, again, his viewing pleasure.
		You have to understand that his whole life was television.
		He never looked outside.
		Never went outside.
unidentified		But he would have proposed to program for the entire nation.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Well, he would have been programming for himself only, and the entire nation would have watched.
		Howard is what is called a solipsist, someone who only truly believes in his own existence.
		This is who he was.
		He believed in other people in only one sense, as a threat to him.
		He had no concern for anyone else, but he had immense concern for himself.
unidentified		Well, you know what you read on his own being.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you read me so far, Michael.
		You know, it may have been madness intent by our standards, but I mean, it was quite lucid, actually.
		So it was only a kind of madness, right?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Everything about him was like that.
		There was always a method in his madness.
		There was a lucidity.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Even at the extreme, even at the no matter how lunatic what he was doing was, he was doing it with incredible precision of a trained engineer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's not at all.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		With this incredible craftiness, this absolute insight to the dark side of human nature.
		He knew exactly how to get his way.
		He always succeeded, always.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		By the way, do we know, does anybody know, how much money Howard Hughes had?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Well, you have to, of course, think of it two ways, in the terms of then and the terms of now, because inflation changes all numbers rather rapidly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, in today's though.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Howard Hughes became, in 1968, Fortune magazine declared him the first American billionaire.
		They said he had $1.3 billion.
		Now, later, When a small part of his empire was sold to General Motors, it was sold for $5 billion.
		So you can see that, of course, if you think of it, and that was like 10 years ago.
		So if you think of it now in today's terms, Howard had, I'm not sure how we would even estimate the amount, because the value of all of Las Vegas, which he bought, also ballooned incredibly.
		The value of he was the sole owner of one of the top 10 defense contractors.
unidentified		He owned it completely.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		He owned a movie studio, an airline, and more land than anyone else in the country.
		He owned the patent on the drill that was needed to drill every oil well in the world.
		That was the source of his money.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That would do it.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		His father invented the drill bit.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That would do it.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		And that poured out.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		That was like a goose that laid the golden eggs.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So Howard had some gold eggs when he arrived.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		He's orphaned at the age of 18.
		His father dies.
		His mother had died two years earlier when he was 16.
		And at 18 years old, Howard is at once abandoned in the world, an orphan, and a multi-millionaire.
		He always could do exactly what he wanted to.
		And one of the few people who were allowed in his presence during that last 20-year period, one of six people, all of them Mormons, because Howard decided that only Mormons were pure enough, clean enough, to come into his presence.
		So his staff of personal nursemaid attendants were all these Mormon men.
		And one of them, and I interviewed them before I wrote the book.
		And I got the first interviews with them as well as the secret papers.
		So I could get a picture of what it was like in that room.
unidentified		And what they told me just blew me away as much as what Howard had written.
unidentified		How did they even know?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Very interesting.
		In a sense, people have asked me, what's the rosebud?
		Because they think of Citizen Kane.
		What's the secret of Howard Hughes?
		Why did he go crazy?
unidentified		And there is no one answer.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		You don't get that crazy for a single reason, okay?
		But to the extent you can give an answer, that is it.
		It isn't good for a man to be able to do anything he wants to.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A life without limitation at all.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, none ever.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sort of a god, in a way.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		None as close as one of us can get.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You could ever be because you could manipulate everybody.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		It is the ultimate money doesn't buy happiness story.
		Howard Hughes did not have a moment of happiness in those last 20 years of his life.
		They were years of increasing terror.
		And it was terror that mounted not day by day, but practically minute by minute.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that came through in all of these writings?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		It's incredible.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		And they are all in effort to deal with his terror by controlling the entire world outside his room.
unidentified		Of course.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A man who has everything becomes ultimately terrified and then tries to ultimately control and incredibly, apparently, for the most part, succeeds.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Almost entirely.
		Almost entirely.
		There is no record of anyone turning down his money.
		Let me put it that way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Did researching all of this in the end make you cynical?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And if it didn't, how could it not about, I don't know, about human beings?
unidentified		It's not about human beings.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		it made me certainly more cynical about the true nature of power in america it made me Of course, he thought they'd remain forever secret.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		But who else would say, I want you to find the real honest-to-god bagman at the White House?
unidentified		I mean, no one else puts it that way, even if it's their goal.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		And I assure you, it is the goal of many wealthy.
		I would have to say that at this moment, our government is every bit as much for sale as it was back then, and indeed that our president is right now every bit as much bought as the president that Howard Hughes bought.
		But no one who gives money to George Bush would ever put in writing anything like, I'm determined to elect a president of our choosing this year and one who will be deeply indebted and will recognize his indebtedness.
		No one else would put it that way.
		No one would say, I think we need to deal with the president on a hard cash adult basis.
		Only Howard wouldn't put it that way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It kills me even hearing that.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		This is like the Nixon tapes, the Watergate tapes from the other side of the ledger.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		Yeah, it actually kills me to hear that.
		And that's what brought on the cynical question.
		If everybody can be bought, everybody can be bought, or if they're not bought, something can be bought to make them do what you want them to do anyway.
		In other words, ultimately, there's a way to absolutely get it to everybody.
		We're at a breakpoint.
		Hold on, Michael.
		Man, that doesn't make you cynical.
		I don't know what would.
		Realizing that if you have enough money, There's nothing on earth that could stop you.
		Nothing.
		Very thought-provoking.
unidentified		more about howard use michael drossman in a moment but You got the dream of that.
		You got the dreams.
		You know he's never gonna stop moving Cause he's rolling, he's the rolling When you wake up it's a new morning The sun is shining, it's a new morning You're going, you're going home You're
		going, you're going, you're going, you're going You're going, you're going, you're going Thank you.
		The card 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.
		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, in about an hour, when I'm off the air, I'll go into the other room, living room, and I'll set up my state-of-the-art high-definition satellite receiver to watch one of those playoff games that I haven't seen yet.
		You know what it is?
		It's a Hughes satellite receiver.
		That's right.
		A Hughes satellite receiver.
		Not to mention all the Hughes birds that were launched into orbit.
		Hughes 1, 2, 3, 4.
		There's designations for them all.
		Hughes satellites, they were everywhere.
		Apparently, so was Howard Hughes.
		classic story of a descent in the madness.
unidentified		Music
art bell ▲ ● ▼		By the way, Ched in Almogordo, New Mexico, you know, you can send me this fast blast, says Project Kinikin art was a nuclear test conducted on Amchitka Island, Alaska, at 11 a.m.
		Bering Standard Time, November 6, 1971.
		Kinikin, a slightly less than five megaton device, was the largest underground nuclear test conducted in the United States.
		Something I didn't know.
		Michael, welcome back.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I will never mislead you, Art.
unidentified		By the way, Howard chose Alaska.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		He actually said, I'm not asking that the president stop these tests, but I do suggest that he move them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		To Alaska.
unidentified		Perhaps to Alaska.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that's actually where they went.
		Oh, my God.
		So, you know, but then, as I said, you know, I'm going to go use my Hughes satellite receiver, the very latest.
		And Hughes has satellites up, satellites.
		So the man had to be a real visionary at some point.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Of course he was.
		Howard Hughes was all his life a visionary, at least all his adult life.
		Yes.
		And it's this odd mixture of genius and madness.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And it remained with him even through the very end or not?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Yes, but in a different way.
		In the beginning, he was pursuing his dreams, his passions.
		In the end, he was running from his fears.
		He was.
		First, he lived the American dream and then the nightmare.
		And always with the same intensity.
		Always driven.
		When he was young and heroic, when he was old, and you'd have to say patrol under the bridge, I would say.
		He remained as driven and as determined and as visionary in his own way.
		It's just that his visions changed.
		Let us put it this way.
		When he decided to bribe President the United States to stop the nuclear tests in his backyard, he understood the real danger of nuclear testing underground when everyone else stopped worrying about it because the mushroom clouds had disappeared.
		And Howard understood, wait, it's going to contaminate the groundwater.
		It's nuclear rays, well, we can't stop them.
		They're going to spread.
		This is dangerous.
		I don't care what the government says.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I wonder how bad it got.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		He, in fact, Was right.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		He saw the true danger of nuclear testing at a time when no one else did.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, when those tests were going on, Michael, what were the writings like?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, obviously it affected him incredibly, so he must have done some writing about what it was like to go through the test and what he felt like.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		He would grip the side of his bed in white-knuckled terror.
		And you could see actually in the handwriting how frightened he was.
		His handwriting was usually very clear and legible.
		But when he was in the grip of nuclear terror, it became wildly erratic.
		And he would go through the countdown as the test approached, writing memo after memo to the man who spread his money around for him to buy off every politician in sight.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can you talk about that man at all, by the way?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		His name is Robert Mayu.
		He was not a businessman.
		Howard Hughes chose as his right-hand man in these hidden years, not a businessman at all, but a tough guy, a man who had been an FBI agent, but that doesn't begin to touch who Robert Mayu was.
		He was the go-between for the CIA and the Mafia in the Castro assassination plot.
		I don't know if you recall that, but there was a time when the CIA actually did conspire with the Mafia to kill Fidel Castro.
		I remember Robert Mayu was the man who brought them together.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I remember.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		So Howard Hughes chose to be his right-hand man and the man to whom he sent most of the memos and the man who then carried the black bag filled with $100 bills to presidents of the United States.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I can't even imagine receiving a note like that.
		Not my wildest dreams.
		And what would you do once you did receive it?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Even Robert Mayhew, tough guy, hardened that he was, could not quite handle Howard.
		There came this moment, and it's, I think, the most shocking of all the memos Howard wrote to how I begin my book, Citizen News.
		Howard is watching television and suddenly sees Bobby Kennedy assassinated.
		He immediately grabs his yellow legal pad and scrolls a memo, and here is what it says.
		I hate to be quick on the draw, but I see here an opportunity that may not happen again in a lifetime.
		I don't aspire to be president, but I do want political strength.
		And he goes on to order Robert Mayu to hire the entire Kennedy political machine to become the used political machine with the goal of placing his own man in the White House.
		Now, you can say madness, but he succeeded.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe not.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		He did not get the entire Kennedy machine, but he got its leader, Larry O'Brien, the man who had managed John Kennedy's presidential campaign, was the manager of Bobby's presidential campaign, and was soon to become chairman of the Democratic Party.
		And while he served as chairman of the Democratic Party, he was secretly on the U's payroll doing Howard's bidding.
		At the same time, Howard was paying off the president, the Republican, Richard Nixon, who had $100,000 in secret cash, never went into any campaign, it went into Nixon's pockets.
		And then Nixon became terrified, another paranoid, that Larry O'Brien on the Hughes payroll would discover the money that Hughes had given to Nixon.
		And it was like Edgar Allan Pohl's Poe story of the Telltale Heart, where this man thinks he can hear the heart beating of a man he has killed.
		He can hear the heart beating louder and louder and louder.
		This was Nixon with the Hughes money.
		And so finally, Richard Nixon sent his burglars into the Watergate building where Democratic National Committee headquarters were located into Larry O'Brien's office.
		And what was the goal?
		To find out what O'Brien knew about Nixon and Hughes and to get the proof that O'Brien was on the payroll so that he could neutralize O'Brien.
		This was Watergate.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		It would not have happened absent Howard Hughes.
		The Hughes-Nixon-Kennedy triangle was what lay behind Watergate.
		So Howard Hughes, trying to buy the government of the United States, instead brought it down.
		Remarkable, isn't it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes, it's remarkable.
		During Watergate, let me see.
		Would he have been, was he alive during all Watergate was treated?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Was he died in 1976, two years after Nixon resigned?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So then there must have been lots of notations because I don't remember a day waking up for a long time without Watergate being every headline and every paper.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so how was that being digested by Hughes?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Not at all.
		Because Howard left Las Vegas in the dead of night, carried down the fire escape in the back on a stretcher, although he could walk.
		He chose to go this way, and left the United States to go to the Bahamas, where he stopped seeing the news.
		He only watched movies again.
		He no longer watched television.
		And he was absolutely unaware of Watergate of the incredible undoing of the government that he had triggered.
		Absolutely unaware of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How could a man so manipulative and aware of government turn his back on what's happening?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Because to him the world was himself.
		And one day in the Bahamas, he's now not gotten up out of bed for more than 15 years.
		Howard Hughes sees a picture of an airplane in a newspaper, and his old passion about flying comes back.
		Now the headline on the top of the page says Nixon resigns.
		Okay, it's August 1974.
		Okay, Hughes flips over the paper, sees the headline, turns to one of his mormons, and says, what's Watergate?
		True story.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's really true.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I ask you to receive it to get up out of bed, put on his own old flying outfit, his snaprun fedora, and fly again.
		With one small exception.
		He takes off all his clothes before he takes flight.
		And Howard Hughes does fly again before he dies.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Nude.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Buck naked.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		See, you know, I've never heard any of this.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		You see, the real Howard Hughes story is so extraordinary that it could not possibly make up a better story.
		And it's why I have an issue with the Aviator.
		I know it won three Golden Globes last night.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It didn't go far enough.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		It won Best Picture.
		Leonardo DiCaprio won the award.
		But I am telling you that that's like a horror movie without the monster.
		This is not the real story of Howard Hughes, not at all.
		It's not even the real story of the young Howard Hughes.
		let alone the real story who are you who he became the uh...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		how could you even I mean, could you actually put together a high-budget motion picture and tell the real story?
		You've got the real story.
		I mean, do you think anybody would dare?
		Would dare do that?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You do?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, you mentioned early in the program that you were able to believe it will happen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, really?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		The true story of Howard Hughes will be told, and it will knock you flat.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Don't you think that it's still too soon?
		I mean, I know that perhaps the statute's expired in a lot of this that we're talking about tonight.
		But, I mean, still, it's too close for some of the kind of stuff you've told me.
		It seems like the Powers Bee would squish you like an aunt.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		My book was a top New York Times bestseller for months.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		It became a bestseller all over again in paperback, and now it's been republished with The Aviator and is once more on its way to becoming a bestseller.
		The Powers That Be cannot stop a free press.
		Only a free press can stop itself in America.
		The book is actually, Citizen Hughes is right now being published all over Europe as well to come out with the movie, which comes out a month later there.
		It's getting a whole new life, and a whole new generation has been introduced to Howard Hughes by the aviator, so I'm very thankful for the movie, but I have to say, this is not the true Howard Hughes story, and the real story is so much better.
		You cannot even begin to imagine how extraordinary the true story is.
		No one could make it up.
		No one would dare to tell a story like this and before not curious.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know it's hard to believe.
		Even I'm having a hard time with some of this.
		But, you know, how could you not worry just on the eve of the publication of this book about some repercussions?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no, I never worry.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Because I'm a reporter and I've been a reporter my entire life.
		I was the youngest reporter ever hired by the Washington Post.
		I was 20 years old.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Reporters can worry, though.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		And you cannot be a reporter and worry about telling the truth.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		The only thing you should ever worry about is getting the story wrong.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, by the way, let's take a little side, just a little tiny side trip here, and let me ask you about this getting stories wrong thing in CBS.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You got any take on what's happened?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think that it's a shame that they got taken in by such an obvious forgery.
		Um they did do their homework.
		I mean, I have to say they didn't make any real effort in terms of what they were taken in by their own law material.
		Now, what is most unfortunate about it is that the substance of the story they were reporting was without question the truth.
		George Bush did evade his service in the National Guard, and he joined the National Guard in the first place to evade combat in Vietnam.
		Those things are true and beyond question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		And there's also an awfully good question why he didn't show up for his final medical exam.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, hold it right there.
		We're at the bottom of the hour.
		And it's a good thing, I think, that we only have one more segment.
		Because he may not worry, but listening to this, I'm starting to get worried.
unidentified		I sing, Lord.
		Mmm, my Lord.
		Mmm, my Lord.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Anyway, listen, everybody, stay right where you are.
		My guest is a very shocking Michael Drosman.
		We've spent the first hour with the Bible Code.
		You're going to be able to hear that coming up in repeat in the next hour.
		That is totally worth hearing.
		And, of course, what we're doing right now with respect to Howard Hughes.
		Well, it's beginning to worry me, and I don't worry easily.
unidentified		We'll be right back.
		Where are those happy days?
		They seem so hard to find.
		I tried to reach for you, but you have lost your mind.
		Whatever happened to our love.
		I wish I understood.
		It's just a face of us.
		It's just the pain so good So when you're near me, darling Can't you hear me?
		S-O-S The love you gave me Nothing else can save me S-O-S When you're gone How can I even try to go on?
		When you're gone Though I try, how can I carry on?
		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 to the Rockies, call toll-free at 800-825-5033.
		From West to the Rockies, call ART at 800-618-8255.
		International callers may reach Art Bell 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't think there's anything I could bring you on the radio that would be wilder than what you're hearing right now.
		More unbelievable than you're hearing right now.
		More hard to digest than what you're hearing right now.
		And I understand some of you are rebelling at it.
		I mean, you just absolutely flat refuse to believe some of the things you've been hearing tonight.
		And I understand that reaction.
		nevertheless these things really happened the the My guest is Michael Droznan.
		What a night.
		Citizen Hughes is the name of the book.
		I'm sure by now, if you don't want to go buy this, well, I don't know about you.
		How could you not want to buy this book after just hearing all of this?
		And there's so much more.
		Now, I was trying to ask a controversial question.
		it turned out to be totally innocuous one michael trumps me with while the president did a service god i was trying to ask about c_b_s_ and somewhat Were they at CBS, in your opinion, Michael, taken in more easily because of their own bias?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		You know, I don't think so.
		There's a myth of the liberal press.
		It isn't liberal.
		The press is, if anything, leans very heavily toward the right and always toward whoever is in power.
		You have to realize that CBS is not an independent organization.
		It's owned by a giant media conglomerate, Viacom.
		And Viacom's interest is in being in the favor of those who are in power, whoever they may be.
		There is no desire at Viacom to attack the President of the United States in the middle of a presidential election.
		I think that it's quite simple.
		Dan Rather thought he had a good story.
		He thought it was the truth.
		I assure you, he thought it was the truth.
		He's an honest reporter.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's what I wanted to know.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		But he didn't do his job.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		It's that simple.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Yeah.
		Howard Hughes seems to have done everything else.
		Did Howard Hughes ever commit murder?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		He once killed a man, but accidentally.
		When he was young and possibly drunk, he hit a man while driving and he paid off the family so as to dispose of the problem.
		But it's quite clear that he did not intentionally kill the man.
unidentified		And Hughes, as I said, he did not hate.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		He feared.
		There's a very big difference.
		In fact, if you would describe the difference between Hughes and Nixon, and they're kind of like star-crossed twins.
		Nixon had power and wanted money.
		Hughes had money and wanted power.
		And I suppose perfect combination.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I suppose you don't want to kill someone that you couldn't buy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And he never found anybody.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		No, he never found anyone he couldn't buy.
		But it was, see, if you're going to take the difference between Hughes and Nixon, Nixon hated.
		Hughes feared.
		Nixon, you would have to say, killed.
		After all, look at the war in Vietnam.
		50,000 Americans killed.
		God knows how many Vietnamese.
		That's not Howard.
		Howard produced the weapons that our government used to kill, but that was just business.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When Howard's notes were all stolen, how did he react?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		He didn't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He didn't know.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		No one in his employee dared to tell him that his secrets had been stolen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh my God.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		He never knew it happened.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And no one dared tell him.
		Listen, we're at this portion of the show where I've got to let some people ask questions.
		Real quick, you're on the air with Michael Drosnan.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, Art.
		This is Richard.
		I'm calling from Pittsburgh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		Michael Droznan, I heard you last week on NPR.
		You were great.
		I really want to thank you for being so thorough with your research in Citizen Hughes.
		It's a great book.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		Sure.
		My two questions are, the hair clippings that were taken from Howard every time he had a haircut every five years or so, is it possible that he could be cloned?
		Okay.
		And the other question is, what a horrifying idea this is.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		You are overestimating the number of times Howard Hughes had a haircut.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, in 20 years he had one.
unidentified		Yeah.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		And it was right before he flew again at the age of 70, buck naked, after lying in bed for more than 15 years.
		There was a time with the haircut and a shave, and he got totally dressed in his old flight outfit, which he then proceeded to take off before he took off in the airplane.
		But that was the only haircut.
unidentified		What about the time with the governor?
unidentified		When he met the governor of the back of Las Vegas?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hold on.
		Everybody, hold on.
		The governor, what about the governor?
unidentified		He met the governor of Las Vegas to get the gaming commission to okay, what's his name?
unidentified		The guy who got in the thing for the TWA when Chester Davis became the head of the gaming.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Davis was Howard Hughes' lawyer.
		But like the others, he didn't meet Howard Hughes.
		He just worked for him.
		He never was employed by the Gaming Commission.
		He was one of the people who, along with Robert Mayu, caused the Gaming Commission to throw out the rulebook.
		Every other person who received a license to own a gambling casino in Las Vegas had to appear personally before the Gaming Commission.
		Howard Hughes bought all of the casinos in Las Vegas and never appeared once.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Indisputable.
		Listen, I walk on my front porch right now.
		I see the lights of Las Vegas invading the eastern sky, and I can go any time of day or night and see the lights of Las Vegas.
		That's how close I am.
		How in control of Las Vegas was Howard Hughes, really?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Well, he said, when anyone thinks of gambling, I want them to think of Hughes.
		I want the name Hughes to be as synonymous with gambling as sterling is with silver.
		This is a direct quote.
		Now, he owned practically every major resort casino in Las Vegas.
		He owned a television station.
		He owned a huge amount of the land.
		He owned the airport.
		He owned the governor.
		He owned the government of the state.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And how did he conduct business with the mafia?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Well, they were the prior owners of Las Vegas.
		They had created it and they sold it to him for what they thought were very good prices.
		As it turned out, as usual, Howard had made very good business deals.
		Those properties became so much more valuable because the next wave of buyers were corporate America.
		And they bought from the user state at prices way beyond what Howard had paid the mob.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
		I wonder how, were there any notations on did he deal with the mob like he dealt with presidents?
		I mean.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Well, it helped that his negotiator was the man who had been the go-between for the CAA and the mafia in the Castro assassination plot, and that the specific person in the mob who was involved was a man named Johnny Rosselli, who was the mob's ambassador to Las Vegas.
		He had more control over Las Vegas than any single figure in the mob.
		And Mayu and he were, well, as they say in the mob, a mica nostra.
		That's how Johnny Roselli put it to the people Howard wanted to buy from.
		He's saying, Bob here, Bob Mayhew, is one of us.
		So it helped tremendously.
		Hughes himself couldn't care less.
		For him, it was just whoever owned it, he wanted it, he paid for it, he got it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but generally dealing with a mob for anybody else, well, for anybody else.
		There you go.
		Well, to the Rockies, you're on the air with Michael Drosnan.
		Good morning.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, hello.
unidentified		How are you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, sir.
unidentified		Thanks for taking my call.
		Actually, you've touched on pretty much everything that I wanted to talk about.
		I read the book Next to Hughes by Robert Mayhew last year.
		One of the things I thought was really interesting is Robert Mayhew himself never met Howard Hughes personally.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		No, no, never once.
unidentified		Yeah, he spoke over the phone, which I thought was an interesting thing.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Mainly, he received these handwritten memos, which he was not allowed to keep.
		A Mormon would bring them to Mayhew.
		Mayhew would read Howard's instructions, and the Mormon would bring them back to Howard.
		He was that paranoid about anyone having his secrets.
		He would also sometimes talk to Mayu, in which he would inevitably repeat everything he had already written to him.
		Have you read the Mayhew book?
		I'm familiar with it.
		I can't say I've read it in detail.
		I did interview Bob Mayu at the time I was writing my book, and he appeared as a kind of adversary with me on a national television show.
		I don't know if you recall it.
		It was the Phil Donahue show, which was then like Oprah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Adversarial, in what sense?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		And it was a wonderful show because Mayu not only confirmed that the documents were genuine, but he confirmed that he bribed the presidents.
		He never denied anything.
		He didn't like it, but he didn't deny any of it at all.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He just perhaps would paint it a very different way.
		And I'm just wondering if he had in his book or, you know, let loose.
		What do you think?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's very hard to paint it a different way.
		I mean, I remember Mayu on another national television show, 2020, speaking of users' orders to buy the Kennedy political machine to become the used political machine.
		And Mayu claimed that he said to Howard on the phone, my God, Howard, the body is not yet cold.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		And Howard said, I want it done now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you had written maybe a bit premature, I believe, right?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I want it done now.
		Also, Mayou, at first, Howard was trying to make an alliance with the Kennedy group.
		And Howard wrote a very sharp memo back to him saying, Bob, you've misunderstood.
		I don't want an alliance with the Kennedy group.
		I want to put them on the payroll.
		You see, he was very direct.
		Always.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		directly to the tips i can only imagine those moments when he was a cop they you wait There must have been moments of indigestion, severe, getting one of those notes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You can only just imagine being handed, you know, the Mormon comes in and hands you the note directing you to go bribe the president, you know, and saying, don't worry, it'd be all right, basically.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I've done this kind of business with the war.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You'd have to think so, so, so hard before you would actually then get up and start doing it.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		But he did it.
unidentified		He did it.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		May you carried out Howard's orders.
		There's no question of it.
		He's admitted it.
		He admitted it under oath to the Senate Watergate Committee.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What do you think Howard would have done if his secrets had surfaced while he was alive?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And if you had written this book and he was still alive, what do you think?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Well, I wished, actually, that he were still alive.
		It would have been more interesting for me.
		But I did not find the burglars until very shortly after Howard died.
		And the chief burglar told me that had Hughes been alive, he never would have cooperated with me because it was his dream that he was going to sit down, as he put it, and play pair poker with Howard Hughes in person.
		And he, in that moment, would have the better hand.
		This is what he wanted.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, what was the motive, Michael, of the burglars?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		That's something I can't get into because I would be breaking my word as a reporter.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I promised to protect the identity of the burglars if they cooperated with me, which I've done to this day.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, there's money.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		And anything that goes to motive goes to who's involved.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		And I can't do that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Because whoever would be involved would have either political motive, power motive, or money motive.
		One of those two.
		And it doesn't seem like either one's been achieved.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Let me tell you this much, because it's in my book, so I can say it.
		The man who ultimately ended up with the papers was the professional thief who was brought in to do the job, and he never knew the motive of the person who ordered it done.
		So I don't have an answer to that question.
		I do know the motives of the man who did the job, but I don't know the motive of the man who ordered the job done.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Of the director.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		nor does the burglar himself well don't you wonder yourself then about Of course it has.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Well, a wonderful thing has been achieved.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The truth is out?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		The truth has been told.
		The burglar said to me, what are you trying to do to me?
		Turn me into Daniel Ellsberg?
		I said, exactly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		Of course.
		Because, you see, Daniel Ellsberg stole the Pentagon papers in order to bring out the truth about the war in Vietnam and the fact that our government had lied about it.
		And the New York Times and the Washington Post published those papers knowing that they were stolen because the public's right to know was far more important.
		I hope that I did the same thing.
		I didn't commit a crime.
		I solved a crime.
		And I persuaded the burglar to help me bring the truth to the people by making public how would use the secrets.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		then one might conclude that was the motive.
		And you were the end to that motive.
		Why wouldn't that now be the motive?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I turned it into the motive.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		It was not the original motive.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You don't think so?
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		The original motive, this was not Daniel Ellsberg who stole the papers.
		No, the original motive was not that at all.
		But it became the result of the break-in.
		So something very good was achieved.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		True.
		Listen, this has been incredible.
		I don't know how to thank you for being here, and I hope I can.
		You know, the way you've led your life, something else incredible is going to happen to you.
		You don't go from the Bible code to hues like this.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I have to say it's been interesting.
		There'll be done.
		And I feel so fortunate.
		I have always done exactly what I've wanted to and somehow managed to make it work.
		And it's been a life of one adventure after another, none of which were intended.
		I did not start out to write a book about how it used.
		I was investigating a CIA clandestine project, and it led me to this break-in.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, my friend, we got to go.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I did not start to find the Bible code.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		I stumbled over it by accident.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Gotta go.
		Good night.
		Good night, my friend.
michael drosnin ▲ ● ▼		Good night.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And thank you again.
		What an incredible program.
		Michael Drosman.
		That's Michael Drosman.
		My God.
		What a program.
		I hope you recorded this.
		Here's Crystal Gale.
		Good night.
unidentified		Good night in the desert, shooting stars across the sky.
		This magical journey will take the sun arise.
		Filled with the longing, searching for the joy.

▲