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April 22, 2007 - Art Bell

02:36:40

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Kidnapped in New York - Stanley Alpert

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	From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you may be in the world's time zones, as prolific as they may be, and all covered like a blanket by this program, Coast to Coast AM.
	I'm Art Bell, second half of the official weekend is here, and it's my honor and privilege to be escorting you through it.
	All right, let us begin by looking at the never-to-be-disappointing dismal world news.
	Virginia Tech gunman Sungwee Cho was as mysterious in death as he was in life, leaving behind few clues for medical examiners.
	Dr. William Masello, the assistant state medical examiner based in Roanoke, said Sunday that Cho died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his temple after firing enough shots to wound his 32 victims more than 100 times.
	But there was nothing unusual about Cho's autopsy at all.
	Nothing that would have even hinted at any psychological problems that might have led him to commit the worst shooting massacre in modern US history.
	And I don't think it is usual, although I suppose at times they may find some physiological reason for something like that, a tumor in a wrong place, that sort of thing.
	So, nothing.
	Investigators looked through wreckage Sunday to try and figure out what caused a Navy Blue Angel jet crash during a maneuver while the military identified the fallen pilot as a 32-year-old who was performing in one of his first air shows with the team.
	Lt.
	Cmdr.
	Kevin J. Davis of Pittsfield, Mass., was in his second year with the Blue Angels, a team known for its high-speed aerobatic demonstrations.
	Lt.
	Cmdr.
	Garrett Casper said, How many that makes.
	I know that over the years I have had to read quite a few headlines about the Blue Angels.
	I'm not sure how many crashes.
	Somebody will dig that up for me.
	Representative Juanita McDonald, a seven-term Congresswoman from Southern California, described as a trailblazer and a leader in election reform.
	Died late Saturday of cancer, 68 years of age.
	McDonald died at her home in Carson, According to her Chief of Staff.
	Iraq's Prime Minister is saying Sunday that he has ordered a halt to the U.S.
	military construction of a barrier to separate a Sunni enclave from surrounding Shiite areas in Baghdad after fierce criticism over the project at home.
	The challenge to the U.S.
	initiative came as Prime Minister Maliki began a regional tour to shore up support from mostly Sunni Arab nations for his Shiite-dominated government as sectarian violence persists despite a 10-week-old security clampdown.
	Back to Virginia, still grieving and increasingly wary of the media spotlight.
	Virginia Tech students returned to their beleaguered campus Sunday, preparing to salvage the final weeks of a semester eclipsed by violence.
	The scene on campus resembled a move-in day in late summer, with parents helping their children carry suitcases into dorms.
	There were cheers, there were hugs, goodbyes.
	But instead of excitement, as you might expect for the coming year ahead, there was simply determination to endure and regroup in the fall.
	There's going to be a runoff, a very interesting presidential runoff in France.
	Presenting France with a fundamental left-right choice between a conservative Who could push his anxious nation toward painful change, and oh, that would be painful for France, wouldn't it?
	And on the other hand, a socialist who would be the country's first female leader.
	Royal is the first woman to get this close to the home of this major European economic, military, diplomatic power after a campaign marked by suspense, surprise, and unusually dynamic candidates who lured voters to the ballot box in near-record numbers.
	Be very interesting to see which way it goes.
	Tornadoes in Texas.
	Downed power lines, flattened houses, roads littered with debris kept many residents from returning to their homes Sunday in this rule-panhandled town.
	Called Cactus, Texas it hit very very hard by what appeared to be a group a swarm if you will of tornadoes
	At least 14 people were injured one of them critically during the storms late Saturday that knocked out power to
	about 20,000 customers in that region in a moment. We'll take a
	look at some of the rest of the news As I mentioned to you last night
	Briefly actually and said I would read a little more tonight. We have now found a planet
	Outside of our system that has water in it This is big!
	Astronomers have detected water in the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system for the very first time.
	The finding, to be detailed in an upcoming issue of Astrophysical Journal, Very Prestigious confirms previous theories that say water vapor should be present in the atmospheres of nearly all the known extrasolar planets.
	Even hot Jupiters, gaseous planets that orbit closer to their stars, and Mercury to our Sun are thought to have water.
	The discovery announced today means one of the most crucial elements for life as we know it can exist around planets orbiting other stars.
	Travis Barman, an astronomer at Lowell Observatory in Arizona.
	We know that water vapor exists in the atmospheres of one extrasolar planet.
	And there's good reason to believe that extrasolar planets, others, contain water vapor.
	HD 209458 b is a well-known planet among hunters.
	I didn't happen to recognize it.
	In 1999, it became the first planet to be directly observed around a normal star outside our system.
	And a few years later, it was the first exoplanet confirmed to have oxygen and carbon in its atmosphere.
	It is separated from its star by only about 4 million miles, 7 million kilometers, and about 100 times closer than Jupiter is to our sun, so it's really hot.
	They think it's losing about 10,000 tons of material every second as vented gas.
	Water actually survives over a broad range of temperatures, he explained, but it would need to get quite a bit hotter to completely break the water molecules apart.
	What this obviously means is that life is probably common in the universe.
	There's probably a lot of it out there.
	And so, by the way, in a moment we're going to open up, I guess I could say unplanned, certainly unscreened, open lines and let you talk about anything you would like.
	But I do have a bit of a question for you.
	And that is, if you were an alien civilization, would you contact us?
	If you had been observing us, would you be in a hurry to contact us, or would you watch from afar?
	Anyway, west of the Rockies, the numbers 1-800-618-8255.
	East of the Rockies, many of you there, 800-825-5033.
	First time callers, we have many lines.
	Area code 818-501-4721.
	keys. Many of you there. 800-825-5033. First time callers, we have many lines. Area code
	818-501-4721. Wildcard line folks. Area code 818-501-4109.
	That's where we actually have a lot of lines.
	First time callers, just one.
	International 800-893-0903.
	If you were a member of a highly developed extraterrestrial society, would you like to meet humans?
	Do you think you'd benefit from an encounter with humanity?
	In our search for extraterrestrial life, we've got to keep in mind that the present level of our technology Well, it might not be the only obstacle that's preventing us from finding an advanced alien civilization.
	Intelligent extraterrestrial species might not want to be discovered by us at all.
	In an article in UFO Area, they take a good close look at certain aspects of our society that can shatter our dreams of possible contact with aliens.
	Why would aliens want to hide from us?
	The mind of extraterrestrial beings is perhaps way beyond our comprehension, and we can only speculate about their reasoning and intentions.
	The presence of UFOs throughout history indicates aliens are in some way connected to this planet.
	Why?
	Do they monitor us?
	Are they curious about our species?
	Or are they simply following our irresponsible acts on the planet?
	If UFOs originate from a remote part of this galaxy, it is likely that pure scientific curiosity would attract them to this planet.
	However, if alien beings have their home in our cosmic neighborhood, then they have every reason to be concerned.
	At the end, our weapons can be a danger to their world as well.
	To a technologically and socially advanced extraterrestrial race, we can appear just as primitive as Well, say the Stone Age man was to us.
	Although humanity has made some progress, we're still an intolerant, warrior-like race, and we live in a violent and destructive society.
	We will kill and destroy our society, our environment, and in the end, ourselves.
	This could be a reason why an alien race doesn't want to make first contact.
	By monitoring us, they simply protect themselves from us.
	The first thing to do is to revise our attitude with respect to our own planet and ourselves.
	We've got to get rid of bad notions that we have the right to exploit other peoples, even other nations or planets, for our own profit.
	We must get rid of our deep-rooted self-confidence that we have the right to plunder all possible resources we ever see or touch.
	When we've achieved these goals, if we do, then perhaps we have the right to hope for future contact with intelligent alien species and perhaps go further.
	But that represents, doesn't it, a very interesting question.
	After all, if the aliens are watching us, they can see what we do to our neighbors, whether Any particular nation feels what they're doing is justified or not.
	We cross borders, lop off heads, drop bombs, do things that an alien probably would look at and say, and they're not ready for us just yet, but they might keep looking.
	Engineers at the University of Glasgow in Scotland are designing a new breed of planetary explorers.
	Little tiny shape-shifting devices that can be carried on the wind like dust particles.
	But guess what?
	They're also smart enough to communicate, fly in formation, and take scientific measurements.
	Dust particles consist of a computer chip about a millimeter in dimension, surrounded by a
	polymer sheath that can be made to wrinkle or smooth out by applying a small voltage.
	It'll roughen the surface of the polymer, meaning the drag on the smart dust particle
	increases and it floats higher in the air.
	Conversely, smoothing out the surface causes the particle to sink.
	Simulations show that switching between rough and smooth modes, the dust particles can gradually hop toward a target, even in swinging winds.
	Swirling, swinging winds.
	So, in other words, what we're making is smart Dust.
	As if we don't have enough now.
	Smart dust.
	So we can send dust anywhere we want.
	They can launch the dust and then guide it where they want it.
	Let me try and think of the uses for that.
	First time caller line, you are on the air.
	Hi.
	Yeah, Art.
	Great to be on.
	If I was an alien, Civilization, I would probably look at the planet and assume that the dolphins are the intelligent life because they just play in the water all day.
	And I would wonder who in the heck these humans are.
	Well, look, I don't really think that's the case.
	I mean, you know, an alien species would look at our cities, they would look at our machines, cars, rockets.
	They would see we have things in orbit.
	No, they would look at us.
	They would look at humans as, you know, the rulers of the planet.
	They might not like what they see.
	Yeah, I am being a little facetious.
	I would probably just sit back and wait.
	It looks like between the energy issues and climate issues and the space debris catastrophe that we seem to be rapidly heading towards, you know, we're on a real path to hurting ourselves.
	and i would probably get it back and i'll watch the fireworks and i looked at our planet said what a beautiful
	blue wonderful planet look at all the water in the natural resources
	uh... but we don't have to invade we just have to wait a little longer and
	it'll all be ours uh... pretty much and if they've got the technology to uh...
	get here they they might be a time travel into the future a few thousand years
	you know things clean themselves up and then they can grab the resources.
	You know, that's assuming that another breed of ape doesn't evolve.
	Yeah, that's true.
	All right.
	Well, I get it, and I kind of agree.
	Now, would they monitor us?
	Yes.
	And that's probably what we're seeing in our skies.
	We're seeing all kinds of things, and I'm sure that we're being monitored, and probably have been since 47.
	That's when most say it began.
	West of the Rockies, you are on the air.
	Hello?
	Hi, turn your radio off, please.
	That's number one.
	Yes, I'm doing that right now.
	Oh, all right.
	This is really important.
	I think that if They taught the students at the schools to attack rather than run.
	I really believe that they would stop this.
	Oh, you're certainly right, if they could really do that.
	But my dear, when you're looking down a couple of gun barrels, spitting bullets per second out, that's easier said than actually done.
	I don't really think so.
	They taught them to be heroes.
	Uh, it would put an end to it.
	And not only that, but like the one boy said, he was behind the door and he heard him re, uh, you know, what do you call it?
	Uh, reload.
	Yeah.
	Reloading.
	Um, it would have been an ideal chance for them to jump him.
	You know, I really do believe that they would put an end to it because they wouldn't be able to set any more records.
	And also, if they gave the teachers tasers rather than guns.
	Have you ever had anybody shooting at you?
	No, but I'm not afraid to die.
	Well, okay.
	Look, I appreciate the sentiment, and she's saying that if the students in mass had rushed him, perhaps they could have stopped it, and perhaps they could have.
	Those of you in the audience who have ever had anybody shooting at you, probably have a different view of it.
	So it's an easy thing to say, you know, just fling your body in the way, rush toward the guy with two guns.
	Now, perhaps in a moment when he was reloading, something could have been done, but even then, a kind of paralyzing terror sets in that's hard to describe.
	Wildcard Line, you're on the air.
	Hey Art, how you doing?
	I'm fine.
	Really good.
	Great question you asked.
	I almost felt it was redundant, but I felt motivated to call you.
	So, I don't think they would.
	I mean, I hope they would.
	It would be nice, but I think more or less they'd look at us pretty much the way we look at an ant farm.
	We watch it.
	We observe it.
	We don't try to talk to the ants.
	It might not be that bad.
	That much of a difference.
	If they catch the 6 o'clock news, Is that bad?
	Well, if they're catching the 6 o'clock news, then they're interested in what we're actually doing.
	But it's what we're actually doing that has me concerned.
	And it seems to me that they would rule out contact.
	If somehow they had made it by Discovery of Element 92, they had stopped their wars, they now have a peaceful society a million years ahead of ours, they'd look at us and go, You know, if by one in a million they make it, we'll check back in a few years.
	Right, yeah, that's... A few thousand years.
	Yeah, that's optimistic.
	I would go with that, but presently... Do you think, based on today's headlines, that we're going to make it?
	I'll tell you, it looks doubtful, but I'm an optimist, so I think we will.
	You know, I really have to try and also be an optimist, but boy, the news is a little depressing.
	Very depressing.
	I hardly ever watch it.
	Good for you.
	Thank you very much.
	The news is depressing because it's all bad news.
	Now, as I've mentioned a few times in the last couple of weeks, if we did nothing but good news, that's assuming I could find it.
	Uh, we would be tuned out so quickly your head would spin.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello?
	Hello.
	Yes, hi.
	So, Bill, how are you doing?
	Uh, is this the first time... Is this the first time caller line?
	No, it's the East of the Rockies line.
	Oh, okay.
	Uh, this is my first time calling.
	Well, then, technically, you just blew it, because you could've... But anyway, it doesn't matter.
	You're on the air, so go ahead.
	Oh, okay.
	Hi, I remember a few weeks ago you had a gentleman and y'all were speaking about a potential military conflict with China.
	Yes.
	And you had asked whether the U.S.
	would, one, get involved with a war with China, and two, will the U.S.
	Well, I think I asked whether... To defend Taiwan.
	Yeah, Taiwan, that's right.
	Or China.
	And my opinion, and this is just my opinion, the answer is no.
	Even though the U.S.
	I'm sorry, I tend to agree with you, sir.
	I think we'd send some of our capital ship or two to the area, but I don't think we'd get in a war over Taiwan.
	I don't even think One ship would be sent because I look at... I hate to cut you off, but we're right here at the top of the hour.
	I'm sorry.
	I do think one ship or so would be sent.
	We would show the flag.
	And then I think we'd back far away.
	From the High Desert, I'm Mark Bell.
	The following from Great Britain.
	Bus drivers have nicknamed a white cat Macavity.
	That's after it started using the number 331 several mornings a week.
	This feline, which has a purple collar, gets onto the busy Walsall to Wolverhampton bus at the same stop most mornings.
	Then he jumps off at the next stop.
	That'd be about 400 meters down the road near a fish and chip shop.
	The cat, nicknamed McCavity, has one blue eye and one green.
	The cat was nicknamed that after the mystery cat in T.S.
	Eliot's poem.
	He gets on the bus.
	In the front row of a 1950s semi-detached group of houses jumps off at a row of shops down the road which include a fish and chip shop.
	The driver who first saw the cat jumping on the bus in January said, It's really odd.
	First time I saw the cat jumping off the bus with a group of passengers, I hadn't seen it get on.
	That was a bit confusing.
	Next day I pulled up on Churchill Road to let off a couple of passengers.
	As soon as I opened the doors, the cat ran toward the bus, jumped on, ran under one of the seats.
	Don't think any of the passengers noticed.
	Because I'd seen it jump off the day before, I carried on driving, and sure enough, when I stopped just down the road, he jumped off.
	I don't know why he'd catch the bus, but he seemed to like it, told some of the other drivers on the route, and they have seen him, too.
	Since January, when the cat first caught the buzz, he's done it two or three times a week and always gets on and off at exactly the same stops.
	Now, earlier tonight, I watched my cat, Abydos.
	As you know, or you probably know, they're running a high-definition series called Planet Earth on Discovery.
	And, Abydos discovered planet Earth tonight, and for a full 30 to 45 minutes, he sat there, right in front of the screen, until I finally went and got him a chair.
	He was so interested, his little cat eyes never left the screen, and a couple of times, he tried to jump through.
	So, cats, what can you say?
	Back in a moment.
	You know, actually, come to think of it, I think that, uh, We've got a plasma TV and of course it's very good and high-definition and I think that Discovery Channel advertises it, you know, as their window to the world or something like that.
	Wouldn't that make a great promo?
	All they'd need is a high-def camera focused on, for example, my cat.
	And here come a few little flitting things across the screen.
	They were showing zillions of them.
	That's what got Abby so interested.
	He just wouldn't leave.
	Anyway, at the appropriate moment, all they'd have to show is a little cat sitting in front of the screen, a little flitting thing coming out, and then CLUNK!
	Trying to jump through the window, and that would be as good a promo as you could possibly cook up.
	On the international line, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hi.
	Turn your radio off, please.
	Yes.
	Thank you.
	And where, pray tell, are you?
	You're from the South Bronx.
	Well, that's almost out of the country.
	Yes, sir.
	Hey, what's up?
	I've been dying to tell you a story that I had about when I was younger.
	I was about 14 years old.
	About a UFO.
	Okay.
	And I could recall at one time, me and my brother was playing one time, right here in the Bronx, and we seen a UFO.
	In the Bronx?
	Yes, in the Bronx.
	And the crazy thing about it was that now, as we're older, and I record this, every time I see my brother, we try to bring up the conversation, it's like completely off my mind.
	Is there any missing time or any other effect that you had from it?
	Yes, I'll be having crazy dreams about it too.
	Well, maybe something happened to you.
	Sometimes the only way to really find out about something like that is to go back and have somebody hypnotically regress you.
	It wouldn't seem like the Bronx would be a place that would be UFO infested, but on the other hand, why not?
	Because in the Bronx, you'd hardly ever take a moment to look up, would you?
	Wouldn't spend a lot of time with the sky.
	And in most cities, to be honest, most people, they don't.
	They just, uh, they keep their eyes straight ahead, looking out for danger.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello?
	Going once, going twice, gone.
	First time caller line, you are on the air.
	Hello?
	Hi.
	Is this, uh... Yes, it is.
	Turn your radio off, please.
	Hi.
	Hi.
	I'd like to talk to Art Bell.
	Um, okay.
	Press 4 on your touchtone pad now, please.
	Alright.
	Hi, this is Art Bell.
	Hi.
	Hi.
	Hi, this is Tom.
	I've listened to you for years and never called you at all, but I'm curious about something and it's something I grew up with and I'm curious.
	So it goes.
	Um, alien visitors and odd things.
	Do you think that they all combine together because I have a good story to tell you?
	Actually, yes, I do have some, quite a few thoughts about all of that, you know, it being common, yes.
	Why?
	Um, well, see, I grew up next to my grandmother's house and, well, that was the first guest I ever seen was when I was four years old was at my grandmother's house.
	And as a child growing up, I watched my grandmother's barn.
	And I watched this three times in my life get struck by lightning.
	That I've seen it myself.
	That I was out in the kitchen getting a drink of water and I looked up and I watched the barn get struck three times by lightning.
	Okay, but what does that have to do with ghosts?
	Um, well, the ghosts were there already.
	The ghosts, that was the first place I've seen the ghosts.
	But, the aliens are coming in next.
	The thing is, And my parents still live in denial over this, and like finally my sister came out of denial last year over this.
	But as a kid, there was one time I went out and I was drinking, getting a glass of water, and all of a sudden I looked up and there was five lights shining down on my grandmother's barn.
	And I completely, you know, freaked out.
	And it took me about two minutes to finally start yelling my father, to my father, and My father came out there and my sister finally admits that this has happened.
	My parents still live in denial.
	They don't believe that this happened still.
	So they actually saw it and deny it?
	Yeah.
	But your sister saw it and now admits it?
	My sister now finally, yeah, she admits it.
	It did happen.
	And my sister, like a year ago, she finally, like, I was talking to her on the phone and She was just suddenly like, do you remember that night that there was three lights shining down on Grandma's barn and I'd go, five.
	I was going to say, I thought you said five.
	She said, what?
	And started laughing.
	And I was like, no, there was five.
	And I was just like, where were you years ago when I was telling this to Mom and Dad at the table?
	And they were all kind of going... Oh, so Mom and Dad didn't see it.
	They were just told about it.
	No, Mom and Dad were there.
	Oh, they were there?
	They were there.
	They still live in denial over this.
	They don't.
	I mean, we brought, me and my sister, just recently after talking to my sister, me and my sister, we both brought it up to my parents, and my parents are like, what are you talking about?
	Well, you know, I guess that's the way it goes sometimes.
	Older people just don't want to admit that they saw something that they simply can't explain.
	It's kind of like the military.
	Military doesn't want to really admit there's something out there they cannot control.
	Well, Cardline, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Hello, Art.
	This is Mike Cohen from Auburn, Washington.
	How are you?
	I'm fine, Mike.
	Well, I have a suggestion for you, and this is kind of based on something that Ed Dames talked about during his last program.
	Yes?
	And he was talking about how he would like to... the reason why he teaches a lot of these workshops and sells these videos is because he wants people to follow his work and do remote viewing.
	That's right.
	And, you know, with all these videos that are being sold and all these workshops that are being taught, I don't remember... Now, you might want to correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I don't remember hearing anybody, you know, call up on coast-to-coast and say that, yes, I've taken these workshops and I've remote-viewed this and remote-viewed that and... Oh, no, you're wrong.
	No, no, no, no, you're way wrong.
	We've had many of Ed's students call on the air and say they had a great time in his workshops.
	Oh wow, did they give any specific answers or any kind of things that they remote view that they shared?
	Many times, yes sir.
	Really?
	Yes.
	Have you ever devoted a particular night or a particular open line to people that are just remote viewers, that are amateur, that are not known just to share?
	No, I never have.
	It's a very good idea though.
	Yeah, I wanted to share that with you, I thought I'd bring that up, so I wanted to Say to any, you know, amateur remote viewers out there, you know, one of these nights when you have that, you know, be ready, you know, do some remote viewing right now on some of the important worldly issues and then have your results ready so that when you have one of these open line nights they can call up, perhaps on a particular line that you have set aside for them, and they can share the results of what they've foreseen or what have come up during this process.
	Perhaps I could go and remote view Lucifer, as Ed did.
	Although Ed said Lucifer was aware of his presence, so... I don't know.
	Well, you don't have to remote view Lucifer.
	It could be other things.
	Just remote view humans and world events and that kind of thing.
	Just to see what's in store for the planet.
	I think that would be useful.
	I've had a lot of my regular guests lately begin to hit an awful lot of nerve-wracking things.
	Oh, yeah.
	Well, maybe there's some positive things out there, too.
	You know you're right, and I'm sure there are, but again, kind of like the news, would it be interesting if remote viewers came on and remote viewed, I don't know, some woman's club charitable event or something?
	Would people be interested?
	No.
	What do people want?
	They want World-threatening things.
	They want to know about tsunamis, earthquakes, being fried by the sun, emerging viruses, tidal waves, tsunamis.
	Speaking of tsunamis, it's possible that Crete was what was actually referred to as Atlantis and that Crete Was devoured by a giant tsunami.
	If you want to read about it, it's on coast2coastam.com right now.
	First time caller line, you're on the air.
	Hey, well, doggone!
	This is great!
	I'm calling from Bakersfield, California.
	Wonderful.
	And you probably talked here before.
	Hey, you know what I was thinking?
	You had these people on here who were talking about magnetism and UFO crafts.
	and how the government has things.
	Now, I figure, you know, you have a lot of us listening to you, we're all family.
	I've been living in your family here for over 10 years right now.
	And why don't you ask us to donate a dollar a month so that you can get more people.
	Well, so that we can, remember that guy you had years ago, I bought his book, Doug Ruby?
	Oh, yes.
	Okay, his book, I've only bought two books off your people there.
	But, you know, those crop circles, he shows you, so you want to get some people together who can build a craft.
	And those who have the instructions and have the money for it.
	You see, now you can afford, Art, to go up there and ride around the spaceships.
	You know, us average people here make 50 grand or less.
	We can't actually afford that.
	But you have all these experts coming out here talking about that they know the secrets of anti-gravity and they write these books on it.
	And we want to find out who's got the truth.
	And with enough money, you know, I'd be more than happy to give you a dollar a month, you know, considering if most of your listeners did that, you orchestrate it so that somebody with some property would come out there and maybe take shifts.
	I'd be happy to work on a project like that and try to find out what works and what doesn't work before the big rock comes and gets us or, you know, the 13th planet, whatever happens.
	If Uncle Sam is doing this stuff already, which you've seen there's a pretty good chance there is, we can do the same thing too.
	And if it costs money, I'll bet you, if you ask, a lot of people would send you a buck a month to be able to afford something like that.
	And you've got all those arch parts and everything that you don't use, and I think, you know, you should do that.
	Be our leader and make something happen.
	All right.
	Well, first of all, I'm certainly not rich enough, nor do I know anybody who is, to go be riding around in rocket ships.
	Save those who have booked a passage on the space shuttle for a short period of time.
	I guess you can pay for that.
	Around $20 million is what I hear the going rate is, but I'm certainly nowhere near that category.
	Thank you.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Yes, hi.
	How are you doing?
	I've been listening to you for a long time, and I think you're a great guy, and I like what you're doing.
	Thank you.
	I just wanted to comment that just like with a lot of the other people in the world, there are people who care and want to help, and there are people who just want to pretend like nothing is going on and turn their backs.
	And I feel like there's different planets that have different types of aliens or whatnot that some of them are already here, maybe among us, that are trying to help us that we're unaware of.
	And there are some that are turning their back and just simply watching.
	So it's a lot like the people here on this planet.
	You know, there's people that are always willing to help, like your show does, and there's always those other shows that, or people that are willing to just stand by and watch.
	And some are leaders and some are followers.
	I suspect some come down, monitor us for a while, and leave laughing.
	I believe so.
	I really do.
	And if you don't mind me asking, I want to ask you one other question that's off the subject, if that's okay.
	Go right ahead.
	Okay, I really appreciate it.
	I was listening one night and it was about the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe.
	She's in Canada.
	Do you remember that?
	No, I didn't do that program.
	I think that may have been George.
	Yeah, that was George.
	Could you please tell me or connect me with one of your assistants as to who that is and where she is located and can be seen performing?
	Right, right.
	Do you know where she is?
	I'm going to have to refer you to George on that one.
	Okay, okay.
	Had you asked about the King, I could have told you instantly.
	International Line, you're on the air.
	Good morning.
	Hey, how you doing Art Bell?
	This is Hector calling from Ontario, Canada.
	Hi Hector.
	I'm right near Detroit there.
	I'm a Streamlink member.
	I just want to say that it's a wonderful thing and all you coast-to-coast people out there should really look into that if you can't catch the show.
	It is wonderful.
	Anyways, let's get to what I want to talk about.
	You know, I don't know if you follow sports at all, but there's this guy, Gary Sheffield for the Detroit Tigers, and he's been playing awful lately.
	And I'm beginning to think maybe, like, something, some person put some voodoo on him, or voodoo hex, or even maybe an alien took over his body because he's playing, like, unbelievably bad.
	Like, he's never played this bad.
	Playing good his whole career, he gets to Detroit and now he's God-awful.
	God-awful.
	You know, a lot of baseball players, as you well know, go into slumps and they're very, very superstitious.
	Yeah.
	Now, I guess the fans are too.
	Yeah.
	One more thing, Art.
	If you're ever in town, I'd like to have you over for a beer.
	Take care.
	Bye.
	Alright, you take care and thank you very much.
	Very, very, very superstitious.
	You know, if you get something and you have a very, very good game, no matter what position you play, you're liable to keep it exactly the same.
	It turns into a compulsion, in fact.
	Wearing the same, everything, that sort of thing.
	Wildcard line, you're on the air.
	Hi Art, this might sound kind of frivolous to you, but it's important to me.
	Is there any way that a person who has no internet and no access to the internet can order Your Pizza Punch?
	Not that I'm aware of at the moment.
	Oh, for Pete's sake.
	Pizza's sake.
	No, I think that you, at this point, at this point in time, you have to have the internet to do it.
	It's ArtbelsPizzaPunch.com.
	Now, you can always go to, like, a library or something like that.
	Oh, that's an idea.
	Okay.
	There you go.
	Alright, thanks.
	You're very welcome, and we continue to get rave reviews on Pizza Punch.
	People are ordering more, and I guess that's the best review of all, right?
	When people come back for more.
	Incredible.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hi, Art.
	This is John Call from Salishburg, Pennsylvania.
	Hey, John.
	Hey.
	I'm calling about the show you had the other night where you were saying, what's going on in society?
	That's right.
	It just seems like not only my wife and I have noticed this.
	We're long-time fans.
	As a matter of fact, we listen on Streamlink.
	But not only is society becoming more, as you had mentioned, evil, it just seems more like there's stupidity starting to seed itself and everybody is just so blatantly ignorant of other people's feelings.
	That's partly because, in my view, of the isolation that the Internet and that current technology give us.
	Just centralizing everybody's feelings.
	Yeah, we're not face-to-face anymore.
	We can all do it from afar.
	I just wish there was some answer that could cure all this, but I guess it's not going to happen that quick.
	No, and if anything, you know, it's really going the other way.
	I mean, if we want to be, we can become more and more and more isolated all the time.
	Technology gives us that ability.
	So it's very much a two-edged sword, and I've got a feeling that one edge of it's already cutting near the bone.
	From the high desert, the Great American Southwest, I'm Art Bell.
	Good morning, everybody.
	This is going to be very interesting.
	Stanley Alpert.
	is an environmental lawyer who worked for years as a federal environmental prosecutor in New York.
	He now runs his own firm, the Alpert Firm, suing polluters with the kinds of lawsuits that were popularized in the Erin Brockovich movie.
	In fact, Stan at times works with a real Erin Brockovich.
	One night, he was on his way home, alone, when a gang of thugs with automatic weapons grabbed him on the street.
	They got his PIN number at gunpoint.
	When they found out he had a big sum of cash in his savings account, they decided, well, they'd keep him so they could get the money the next day.
	What followed was a 24-hour kidnapping ordeal, both harrowing But also at times, apparently, hysterical.
	And Albert was, after all, a federal prosecutor, so he was gathering clues the entire time just in case he managed to get out of there alive.
	Something you would not expect.
	These clues would eventually lead the FBI and the New York PD to round up this gang just two days after Stan made it out and the gunmen are in prison to this very day.
	So Stanley, his work and his kidnapping in a moment.
	Stanley Alpert, welcome to Coast to Coast AM.
	Hello Art, how are you?
	I'm very well indeed.
	This sounds like it's going to be kind of an interesting night.
	I sure hope so.
	You worked as a federal environmental prosecutor.
	Where was that and when?
	So I worked in the Eastern District of New York, which covers New York City, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and all of Long Island.
	So it's not just New York City, but all of Long Island.
	I did that from 1990 until 2003.
	And what exactly does a federal environmental prosecutor do?
	Actually, it was a wonderful job.
	A bunch of different things that I got to do.
	I was responsible for all different levels of government in the federal system for prosecuting cases under the hazardous waste laws, clean air laws, clean water laws, safe drinking water laws, even endangered species laws.
	Believe it or not, we have endangered species in New York City and on Long Island.
	You mean people with money?
	Well, people with money in Manhattan are unfortunately not an endangered species.
	It'd be better if they were, but they're not.
	Alright, so you went around making friends in all kinds of high places.
	Well, that's right.
	Sometimes friends and sometimes a lot of enemies.
	I often think that they have a dartboard with my face on it in the halls of ExxonMobil.
	I bet they do.
	Yeah, you particularly spent a lot of time with ExxonMobil, right?
	Yeah.
	In the government, I did a case with them, and now that I'm in private practice, I've actually had a couple different kinds of cases with them.
	One was when I was leading the effort on MTBE, which is a gasoline additive that the oil companies put in gasoline that when they put it in, they knew it was going to contaminate groundwater across the country.
	The hydrogeologist told them that, they put it in anyway, and lo and behold, it polluted groundwater across the country.
	Were they forced to put it in, or is this something they voluntarily went ahead with?
	Yeah, they were not forced to put it in.
	That's the story that they want people to believe, but the real story is totally different than that.
	They started putting it in years in advance of any kind of a legal requirement to put it in.
	They did it at the time.
	You know, lead had to come out of gasoline.
	They needed something to make cars run better.
	So they needed something.
	And there were several alternatives they could have used.
	They picked MTBE because it was cheaper than the alternatives.
	It's made out of a byproduct of the refining process.
	So they were able to do it cheaper.
	And in fact, there was some evidence that it helped gasoline burn better and might help with the air pollution problem.
	The problem is, in-house, as we learned from the documents that were discovered in these cases, their hydrogeologists would tell them, you better not do this, guys.
	You're going to pollute the groundwater all across the country.
	It's going to get in drinking water supplies.
	I'm pretty sure that in northern California, in parts of California, there were some really severe cases of that.
	Yeah.
	Well, the two cases that are very famous are the Lake Tahoe case.
	There you go.
	And the Santa Monica case.
	Those are very severe cases of contamination where people literally, you know, could not drink the water.
	A lot of the cases now involve levels that are low enough that nobody knows whether they'll ever cause cancer because nobody's ever done the studies, but they have taste and odor problems at very low levels.
	So the water tastes kind of funny.
	It tastes a little bit like turpentine.
	Great.
	Great.
	Oh, great.
	Water that tastes like turpentine.
	Yeah, just, you know, just a faint taste of it.
	You know, sometimes people get used to a bad taste in water, so maybe they don't complain that much because, you know, there's different kinds of things that can cause a bad taste, but it's there.
	It's there at extremely low levels, so you really can't serve it to people except at very low levels.
	And the oil company's documents in-house, even going back to the 80s, told us all about that, but like I said, they've used it anyway.
	And then what you were referring to, Art, was starting after 1990 and about 1992, there were some new Clean Air Act requirements where oil companies had to use something to sort of improve the air pollution situation.
	They had plenty of options.
	They chose MTB, as I said, because it was cheaper.
	And like I said, as a result, you've got water that some municipalities can't serve to their people.
	All right.
	So you spent a lot of time, I guess, digging up evidence and going to court?
	Well, the MTV stuff was in my later phase that I'm doing now as a private lawyer, kind of a male version of Aaron Brockovich with a law degree.
	In the days at the U.S.
	Attorney's Office, Yeah, that's what we would do.
	We'd be the courtroom lawyers for the government.
	You know, the government has all these different agencies that deal with environmental problems.
	For example, the Coast Guard, which, you know, of course they don't have quite enough staff as they ought to, to really patrol well enough, unfortunately.
	But one of their great jobs is when there's an oil spill in a harbor, you know, they investigate it.
	I would go to work in the morning, and maybe I'd be listening to AM radio or looking in the local paper, and I'd see that there'd been a spill, and so I could jump on that right away.
	I could call my friends at the Coast Guard, the investigators.
	They would start investigating.
	We'd do the case together, and we'd try to see if we couldn't figure out who was to blame for that kind of a spill.
	Right.
	You know, I kind of joked about it, but certainly you probably made a lot of potentially very powerful enemies doing that kind of work.
	Did you ever find yourself in a threatening situation as a result of the work you did?
	Well, the funny thing is, I know we're going to talk a little later about my having been kidnapped in the book, but the funny thing is when it happened, at least one of my friends was thinking that I must have been picked up By some bad guys that I was investigating.
	Now, I joke in the book about how if Mobile Oil Company had been smart, they would have kidnapped me.
	But actually, at the time, one of my friends knew that I was investigating a spill that was by a company that was alleged to have some mafia ties, and one of my buddies actually thought I might have gotten picked up for my job.
	The work I do, I think people are pretty civilized, you know, the likes of The likes of an Exxon Mobil is not going to do something physical.
	What they'll do is they'll litigate you to death until you get to the edge of the trial, and then maybe they'll settle it on the eve of trial.
	Well, you representing the government, while Exxon Mobil certainly has a lot of resources, legal and otherwise, the government is not exactly bereft in that category itself.
	Yeah, you know what?
	It's kind of a mixed bag.
	I mean, in some ways the government is quite powerful.
	But if you look at investigative resources for environmental cases, there simply weren't that many EPA agents in the New York area that could do it.
	I mean, it needs a lot more.
	And then when you're talking about the courtroom battle, you know, it was always sort of me and maybe one or two colleagues against an entire room full of suits.
	So they had the advantage in terms of person power, but what we had was a belief in what we were doing.
	And we would sit there, you know, people think government employees don't work.
	You know, we would sit there and burn the midnight oil night after night, you know, because we cared about what we were doing.
	And so we would counter the room full of suits by just working extra hard.
	Sure.
	Stanley, if you look at the bigger environmental picture in the U.S.
	and in the world right now, it's not good.
	Do you have any comments on it?
	Yeah, I think that law enforcement Starting really, you know, some of the best progress we made really started in the days of Richard Nixon, believe it or not.
	It shows how much our political system has changed.
	Some of the most far-reaching and impressive environmental laws were passed back in the days of Richard Nixon.
	And since then, there's been tremendous improvements.
	You used to have the Cuyahoga River catching on fire, literally.
	The Hudson River here was absolutely dead.
	And the Riverkeeper under Bobby Kennedy, well now under Bobby Kennedy, they started waging little fights against polluters that were just dumping all kinds of stuff in the Hudson.
	They have succeeded now, and together with the new federal laws and also federal law enforcement, they have succeeded in cleaning up the Hudson to the point that it is one of the richest, well probably the richest water body in terms of sea life, river life.
	Uh, which becomes sea life down at the estuary, um, anywhere in the Northeast.
	Uh, so there's been huge progress.
	The problem is, is that in some other ways we're in trouble.
	I mean, one of the things that, I worked on some Ocean Dumping Act stuff when I was at the U.S.
	Attorney's.
	One of the things that bothers me the most is how much we've overfished.
	Uh, so that, you know, the notion that, you know, that our kids are going to be able to eat salmon.
	That they can grab out of the ocean.
	I mean, it's just getting more and more difficult.
	There are also insidious chemicals that are, you know, that climb up through the food chain, you know, and then make it up into, you know, animals, let's say, that you see up around the Arctic Circle.
	Very, very scary stuff.
	So, I think my perspective, having done this as an environmental prosecutor for several years, is we've made huge improvements, but we have a lot more work to do.
	Well, we do.
	I've seen headlines suggesting if we don't change things, all the fish in the ocean actually could be gone in 50 years.
	That's hard to even contemplate.
	For me, it's a source of intense sadness.
	I mean, the notion that we have to rely solely on fish farms to eat fish, you know, and that they have to use pink dye to make a salmon look like a salmon.
	This is sad stuff.
	We've got to care a lot about this stuff.
	I think that people are taking the environmental issue more seriously now than they have in my lifetime, but not seriously enough.
	You apparently are now involved with some sort of lawsuit against a company called Keyspan or something like that?
	Right, right.
	So this is, again, now I'm in my role as a private environmental toxic tort lawyer doing sort of Aaron Brockovich type cases.
	Yeah.
	So, Keyspan is an energy company.
	Actually, they're trying to merge with a larger foreign company called National Grid.
	They're an energy company.
	They deliver electricity in this part of the country and elsewhere.
	And it's sort of typical of what the polluters do.
	They'll get away with as much as possible.
	So, on Staten Island, they polluted Not just their own property.
	Well, I mean, they bought this, you know, from a predecessor company.
	They polluted not just their own property, but they've... The pollution actually goes on to the private properties of eight really lovely homeowners that live right next door to it.
	And what they did was they proposed to the state agency a clean-up where they would... They wouldn't even clean up their own property.
	They would just put a wall around it and keep it there forever.
	It's something people do sometimes, but you shouldn't do it in a residential neighborhood when you're right next to people.
	But the pollutants that continue onto my client's property, they've made a cold, corporate decision to leave it there forever.
	And they just don't give a damn about how afraid my clients are, whether their kids can play in the backyard, whether there's toxic vapors in their houses.
	They don't care.
	And they're able to push the state agency into it because they've got a lot more power.
	The state bureaucrats don't even have enough Resources to investigate these things, let alone push around a big energy company like that.
	They'll take what they can get.
	So I was forced to sue them in state court.
	I've got some really lovely clients, good people, just a lovely group of people.
	The best sort of example of the melting pot in America you could want.
	I got people of every different race and nationality.
	They get along incredibly well.
	They're good neighbors.
	And they're very upset.
	Their children go to sleep some nights crying because they're frightened by what Keyspan is doing to them.
	How do you feel being in private practice now versus having, you know, the big federal government behind you?
	It's interesting, you know, there are two separate legal systems.
	The federal government thing is really statutes that get written out of Washington.
	The private lawsuits that I bring are more out of the Common law tradition that came from England, which is basic principles of human justice.
	You know, like, don't hit me over the head or I can sue you.
	Or, you know, use your property so as not to hurt my property.
	That's a basic, decent, conservative value that we have in property rights.
	So in my new job, I use these sort of common law principles.
	And the funny thing is, you'd think the almighty power of the federal government is so wondrous.
	It sure is, but these private principles sometimes are even more powerful.
	There's a guy who used to head Earth Justice, which is one of the environmentally friendly non-profit groups that fight environmental cases, and he's now in private, and he says that he's able to do more good now because If you sue an oil company to clean up MTBE, I mean in Santa Monica where they couldn't drink the water, the oil company settled for numbers that are somewhere between three and five hundred million dollars.
	That's way more money than the government typically gets out of people.
	Sure.
	So in some ways what I'm doing now is actually more effective than being a government enforcer.
	So you're going to stay then in private practice?
	Or if offered a job, would you go back into government service?
	You know, I think the problem is, and people ought to understand this, a lot of guys like me who do this kind of work give up a lot of money to do it.
	You know, the U.S.
	Attorney's job is not a bad-paying job, but it's nowhere near what private lawyers make in New York, and I don't want to tell you what it costs to buy a studio apartment in New York City.
	It's ridiculous.
	The problem is at some point in your life you realize that all your friends and everybody else around you and even your clients are owning their own homes, you know, and you're out there renting.
	So at some point you realize that you want to try to actually give it a go in the private system.
	I loved my job in the Feds and I did it for 13 years.
	It wouldn't be a bad thing if I could make a little money by being a private lawyer.
	And also, as I said, even while it's possible to make a better living this way, you can also do a lot of environmental good.
	So it's kind of a nice combination.
	So I'm going to stick with this for a while.
	Perhaps in the future, I may go back in some form of government service.
	Stanley, I'm not sure whether you can comment on this or not, but right now in the world's oceans, there are all of these really weird, really scary dead spots.
	Literally areas where nothing is living.
	Nothing.
	Not even microbes.
	I mean, really dead areas.
	And I wonder how much ocean dumping gets caught.
	I have this awful feeling that an awful high percentage of what's dumped into the oceans just gets dumped and nobody ever gets caught.
	My feeling is the same as yours, Art.
	It's way too easy to do.
	I mean, we've caught some people.
	I mean, you know, we did prosecute companies.
	You know, you have to keep special logs of how much oil is going over the side of your boat because you're not allowed to dump it over, so you have to keep records of all this stuff.
	And, you know, we've caught companies like that and prosecuted them and put people in jail.
	There was also a really cool prosecution down in Miami of, you know, one of these big cruise liners.
	That was just dumping their garbage over the side.
	Oh, yeah.
	Remember that one?
	I do.
	I think a passenger actually got video of it being dumped.
	Yeah.
	I mean, that's good stuff.
	And then I think after they were alerted to it, I know that the Feds floated helicopters, you know, over some of those ships to try to see if they could catch them in the act.
	And I think, you know, I think the problem is, you know, that stuff that gets caught is probably the tip of the iceberg.
	Well, that's what I was thinking, and not so much even with the cruise ships, but I mean big intentional dumps out in the middle of the ocean.
	I wonder how much of that's going on, and I bet not a lot gets caught.
	I think you're right, and the other problem is there are all these insidious chemicals that nobody's ever really fully studied.
	Like DuPont makes this chemical called PFOA, or ammonium perfluoroctanate, which is used for things like stain prevention on carpets or couches.
	And was used in Teflon.
	And, you know, they put these chemicals out there.
	They don't give a damn whether it's going to hurt anybody.
	And they don't really ever fully test it on anybody.
	They just kind of do a massive experiment.
	This stuff slowly leaches in through the rivers, you know, wherever their plants are, like they've got one down in New Jersey.
	And knows whatever it's going to do.
	Listen, Stanley, hold tight a moment.
	We're at a break point from the high desert.
	I'm Art Bell.
	Indeed.
	Stanley Alpert is my guest.
	He was a federal environmental prosecutor.
	That's quite a job.
	And is now in private practice doing sort of the same kind of work, actually.
	And I suppose there are a lot of bad companies that do a lot of bad things.
	But, you know, those companies are really bringing us what we want.
	It's a lot like the media.
	They're delivering what we want.
	Actually, what we need.
	In this case, oil.
	We have this Voracious appetite for oil.
	We've just absolutely gotta have it, right?
	And so, they bring it to us, and I suppose in that process, things that we don't want to know about happen.
	We'll be back in a moment.
	Well, we're going to talk about the kidnapping here shortly, and I think you're going to find that fascinating.
	Can you imagine being a kidnapper and finding out that you grabbed a federal prosecutor?
	Oh, God.
	Anyway, Stanley, on the environmental thing for a moment, we do have to have oil.
	I mean, we really just Insatiable.
	We've got to have oil.
	We use tons of it in the U.S.
	Do you have any thoughts on whether peak oil has actually occurred, whether peak oil is real, or is a supply of oil going to go on forever and ever?
	I think that there's no question that the supply of fossil fuels is going to get tighter and tighter.
	I think that's what the studies are showing.
	So I think we need to Start deciding as a society what other means we're going to use to power our automobiles.
	And our power plants, and on and on and on.
	Are we moving quick enough in that direction right now, or does the present administration have sort of a blind eye about oil?
	The present administration is very open-eyed, because they were put into office by the oil You don't have to look very far to see that Dick Cheney worked for Halliburton, and so their interest is in maximizing short-term profits for the companies that either gave them political donations or that they literally worked for, and then will go back to work for when they get out, as opposed to doing what's in the best interest of the American people, which would be creating some incentives for a more diverse energy portfolio.
	Is that something that's going to happen soon, or are you discouraged?
	I've been discouraged about this for a long time.
	I mean, I was a pretty young boy in 1973 when we had an arable oil embargo and we had lineups for gasoline, and it seems to me the country knew at that time that it'd be really wise to create incentives to go into other forms of energy.
	Nobody's saying that you're going to do without gasoline right away.
	We need gasoline, there's no question.
	We want to drive cars, we need them.
	The question is, will we create incentives for this incredibly vibrant economy with incredibly smart people that work in it to come up with alternatives that will slowly replace the need for us to be drinking oil out of a foreign place that doesn't particularly want us there and forces us to get into wars every several years.
	That's right.
	Well, I'm going to hope for the best, and maybe there'll be a change.
	Who knows?
	I mean, I think there's movement these days in good directions.
	There is some movement, but there's so much more we can do.
	I mean, if you only look at how much energy we waste, and I'm not talking about not driving.
	I'm talking about living our lives to the fullest.
	I'm talking about wasted energy, like houses that burn oil that aren't insulated so that the oil you're burning blows straight out into the street.
	Why do we do that?
	I mean, we have the resources and the intelligence and the technology to insulate those homes so that we don't blow 30% of the oil right out the door.
	Well, I guess it's all connected to prices.
	And as oil becomes more expensive, it will force us in these directions that were not being taken in otherwise, I suppose.
	And I think we're getting pretty close to that, aren't we?
	Well, I hope so, but I mean, there are people who have done studies about what the true cost of oil, or true cost of a gallon of gasoline is, and you can figure out, you can figure in all sorts of things.
	For example, you know, if you want to figure out how much it really costs you to drive your car, you've got to take into account how much it costs to build those highways that you drive your car on.
	And that's not figured in.
	And another thing we certainly don't figure in is how much it costs us to keep fighting wars to try to keep those supply lines open.
	So the costs to us are actually much higher, and they're more insidious costs.
	I mean, gasoline contains benzene.
	Benzene is a proven human carcinogen.
	That means that a certain percentage of family members, of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, of your listeners, a certain small percentage, small but certain percentage, are going to get cancer over the next 10 years.
	Because of those contaminants and others, we pay a huge cost in hospital costs in this country for that.
	Nobody's figuring any of that in.
	And my only point being is that it's smart as a society to try to build incentives in to use oil smarter.
	That's all.
	Alright, let's try this on you.
	How much of a factor do you think oil is in the current Iraq conflict?
	Well, there's no question it's a huge factor.
	If the administration had not been lying about the weapons of mass destruction, then I think anyone who says it's only about oil is Is exaggerating, and it's just, you know, using that for political reasons.
	Because obviously there were other issues besides oil involved.
	I mean, we were attacked by terrorists, and certainly Saddam Hussein, if he'd had the capacity, would have wanted to use nukes or chemicals on us if he could have.
	The problem is we found out later that they were just vivid about the whole thing, and he really didn't have any of that stuff.
	So, you know, from my point of view, by opening up that can of worms, they've just made things worse for the United States.
	Not better.
	But is oil a big factor?
	Absolutely.
	Why are we so interested in that part of the world?
	We're so interested and we give so much attention to it because we need oil.
	I kind of, I'm with you.
	I mean, if we did it as a humanitarian thing because Saddam Hussein was such a bad, mean guy, then we should have been invading Cambodia back during the killing fields and any number of other, or Africa, when they were lopping off heads, or there's any number of other countries that, you know, we could have justified going into and getting involved in for those humanitarian reasons, and we did not.
	I'm with you.
	Well, now I'm with you, Art.
	I mean, I'm ashamed that nobody did anything to stop Cambodia.
	And I'm ashamed that nobody did anything to stop Rwanda.
	And frankly, when the massacre in Bosnia was going on, the Europeans were perfectly happy to sit there and watch it happening and do nothing until the U.S.
	finally stepped in.
	So I think there are probably times when U.S.
	force has to be used for humanitarian purposes, and I don't think... I mean, we weren't invading Saddam Hussein.
	Rumsfeld was there shaking his hands a couple of years before he was gassing the Kurds.
	When he gassed the Kurds, we didn't do a thing about it.
	So I don't think that's our only motivator.
	I think we're motivated by a lot of things, including oil, which is a big one in the Middle East.
	Well, again, a lot of scientists are saying that we're about to get to peak oil, that if we haven't already arrived at that point, we're just about there.
	And that means we're not going to have as much oil to pump out of the ground as we have now or as we have recently had.
	And it's going to begin to get a lot more expensive.
	Do you know any projections?
	I mean, I'm not an expert on that.
	I've certainly read some of the projections, and they don't look favorable at all.
	I mean, this is not just an environmental issue, which is my primary thing.
	This is a national security issue.
	For our national security, we need to become energy independent.
	Well, I think that's an important aspect of all of this.
	Now, the oil companies make mistakes, some of them perhaps intentional, some of them Real mistakes, but they're doing a big job.
	They're getting a lot of oil to this country that absolutely has got to have it, right?
	We definitely need oil and we definitely need gasoline.
	I mean, we need to heat our homes and we need to drive our cars, there's no question.
	The real question is, are we guided?
	I mean, for example, ExxonMobil has invested millions in lobbyists and false studies to try to tell people that global warming isn't happening.
	Look around you and you'll see global warming is happening.
	I mean, it's pretty scary stuff.
	You know, the patterns of bird migrations in the Northeast have changed dramatically in the last couple of years.
	I mean, this is frightening stuff.
	It's going to cause a lot of disruptions.
	A lot of beachfront property is going to go under.
	A lot of economic disruption is going to be caused.
	But ExxonMobil has been investing for years in trying to tell people it doesn't exist.
	and try to lobby people to say it doesn't.
	So that's not the way a decent, respectable American company
	ought to be spending its resources.
	They ought to be spending their resources working on how we can go to alternatives.
	You know, let's add in... Stanley, what really shocks me is how well it's been working.
	Now, I've done quite a number of shows on global warming.
	It's just about a settled science.
	Most scientists agree.
	But it's amazing.
	Amazing, Stanley.
	The oil company lobby has done such a good job that it provokes fights you wouldn't believe how angry people get.
	I know that, because there are some people out there that are giving people enough information that they think they've got a basis.
	But, I mean, it's pure nonsense to deny global warming.
	I mean, just about every respectable scientist on the planet is in agreement.
	So, you know, to argue against it is really just about short-term profit for a few people.
	And that's bad for all of us.
	You know, I mean, nobody knows, Rennie, this is going to end up.
	I mean, but the one thing you do know is you're probably going to have a lot more conflict, a lot more war, a lot of economic disruption, a lot of places that are going to be flooded and a lot of other places are going to have droughts because of these kinds of disruptions.
	And potentially a lot of hungry people, too.
	A lot of hungry people.
	That's right.
	You know, so my only point is that good companies If they're motivated by the right purposes, instead of dedicating their resources to convincing people of hocus-pocus, which is what ExxonMobil has been doing for years, what they ought to be doing is hiring some really smart American engineers, maybe even encouraging U.S.
	kids to go to engineering school so they can come out and come up with smart energy alternatives.
	This is a great country.
	We can do a lot if we only put our mind to it.
	Well, when you hear about a few Pacific Islands going under the water, polar bears drowning, and even Bangladesh going underwater, you go, yeah, that's bad.
	But I suppose until the waves begin washing up the middle of Broadway, people aren't really going to notice.
	I'm thinking of buying a condo on a high floor right in the center of the island.
	All right, well listen, it's really good work that you have been doing and that you are doing, but I want to get to your book for some reason.
	By the way, you didn't write a book, I guess, did you, about your work with the federal government or the work you're doing now, right?
	Well, one of the things I do, the book is about the kidnapping, but it's a memoir, so it includes a lot of aspects of my life and really impacts that the kidnapping had, spin-off impacts on family and friends.
	So I talk a little bit in there about my work as an environmental prosecutor.
	Okay.
	Alright, well let's talk about your book.
	I mean, start from the beginning.
	Radio's wonderful.
	We've got all the time in the world, pretty much, and so we can hear the whole story in detail.
	What and when did this all start?
	So, there I was in January of 98.
	You know, probably that day I was sitting around At my desk, pushing the latest 20 boxes of documents that had come in from ExxonMobil from one side of the office to the other, and, you know, trying to start going through them.
	I then was out that evening.
	I actually, you know, I'm a single guy in New York City, so I had a blind date that night, which didn't go anywhere, and then I was on my way home on the subway, and I happened Start up a conversation with a very nice young woman and ended up, she got up off the train near where I did, ended up walking her home, said goodnight.
	Then I walked up the street and I'm feeling good.
	You know, you don't meet a woman on the subway.
	That's just not something that typically happens.
	That's right.
	And as I get to the corner of 10th Street and 5th Avenue in Greenwich Village, I feel a tug on my elbow from behind.
	I spin around.
	And there's a Tec-9 machine pistol sticking in my gut.
	Oh my God.
	A Tec-9 machine pistol.
	I had some young lady call during the first hour of the program, Stanley, and she was referring to the recent tragedy last week, and she suggested that what the students should have done was to have rushed the gunman At Virginia Tech.
	And I asked her if she'd ever been shot at, and she didn't have much say about that.
	I think, no.
	But I presume that at that moment, with a Tech-9 in your belly or at your elbow, you decided not to rush them and cooperate.
	Well, that's right.
	And I think the issue, whether you rush somebody, is very complex.
	Typically, you don't have the ability to do that, because a Tech-9's a real powerful weapon.
	There may be some instances where, you know, you can get them from behind or something, The problem is, these guys had the drop on me, not vice versa.
	How many were there?
	On me in the street, there were two guys.
	They then pushed me into a car where there was a third guy, and he had a pistol that was in my face.
	Well, were you at an ATM, or were you doing banking as this occurred?
	Or you were just walking down the street?
	I was just walking down the street, feeling all good.
	Just met somebody on the train, going home, going to have a cup of tea and read a book.
	I had this really interesting book on the Vietnam War, A Bright Shining Lie.
	I was going to sit home and read it, you know, just feeling great.
	And all of a sudden my life changed.
	So, you know, they grabbed me from behind.
	I didn't see it coming.
	I mean, people talk about having guns and that that's going to help them.
	It might help people sometimes, but I got to tell you, if I'd have a gun on me, I probably would have been killed a lot quicker because they had the drop on me from behind.
	I couldn't, I couldn't have shot.
	Sure.
	So they shove you into a car?
	Right.
	So sitting out, sitting out in the street was a, uh, a brand new, uh, black car, a black Lexus.
	And, um, they put me in the car.
	Shut the door and, um, started driving.
	At this point, what did you think had just happened to you?
	I mean, did you think, uh, probably you thought your work was involved?
	You know what?
	I was in such shock that I really didn't even have time at that moment to think about it.
	I was just in shock.
	I mean, you just can't imagine the feeling.
	I only think maybe the way a bear feels when it gets its claw caught in a trap.
	You know, one minute you're walking along, you're a powerful bear.
	The next minute, you're gone.
	And that's kind of what it felt like.
	And I basically immediately went into survival mode.
	My immediate instinct was to look down so that these guys wouldn't think I was looking at their faces.
	Right.
	To try to recognize them.
	Right.
	So they didn't have anything over their faces.
	Their faces were fully visible?
	That's right.
	That's right.
	So I purposely looked down in a way so that they wouldn't think I could remember who they were.
	At that point, I couldn't think about whether it was job related.
	It very quickly became obvious to me that this was a straight robbery.
	This was them grabbing a guy on the street to try to get money.
	Did they say anything initially?
	Yeah, well, I can't use the words on national radio, but, you know, get in the effing car, MF'er.
	You know, we'll blow your effing head off.
	Yeah, and then once they had me in the back seat, like I said, I'm looking down, the leader actually was a very well-spoken guy who starts explaining to me that I need to give him my wallet and he wants my PIN number and that, you know, I better cooperate or his henchmen will murder me and that they're going to take me to the bank and take out the money.
	Um, this seems like an awfully well-equipped mugging to me.
	I mean, they didn't really know who you were, did they?
	No, they didn't, and it was only about 15 minutes into it before they asked me what I did for a living, because, you know, they took me to the bank, they drove me over there, got my pin number out, the leader of the gang goes in to get the money, and You know, there's a thousand dollar daily limit.
	And so they're trying to figure out, well, how can I get more money?
	And they're asking me how much money I have in my savings account.
	Well, I had to fess up that, you know, my, my life savings that I, you know, it's sweated over, you know, working at a law firm before I went in the government was sitting there and, um, you know, and they're like, whoa, what do you do for a living?
	And I couldn't lie about it because my business card was in my wallet.
	I said, well, guys, you really kind of picked up the wrong guy because I'm an assistant U.S.
	attorney.
	Oh my God.
	At this point, your mind is probably calculating your odds of getting out of this from here on are just plummeting, right?
	Yeah, yes, that's right.
	My thought was that I was in big trouble.
	Very big trouble.
	Yeah, that's right.
	I mean, you'd seen their faces.
	I would think I would not get out of it alive.
	All right, Stanley Albert, stay right where you are.
	So he's been shoved into a car, Tech 9 in his belly.
	We'll take it from there when we get back.
	Put yourself in this man's place.
	Now, I don't know a lot about New York City muggings, but I don't think they're normally pulled off with three guys, with automatic weapons, and with a new, modern, expensive vehicle that you get shoved into.
	If I were a federal prosecutor, and that much happened to me, by the time I got into the car, number one, I would think it was much more than just a robbery.
	Number two, I would think that I was not going to get out of it alive, particularly if they were not wearing any masks or anything like that.
	I would think I would be moments away from the next life, moments away from the next part of the story.
	We'll be right back.
	Well, once again, Stanley, I'm not an expert in this sort of thing, but most muggings are, you know, a knife in the ribs or a gun and then a grab and a run.
	Not three guys, automatic weapons, new expensive vehicle, that sort of thing.
	I mean, it must have seemed at the very beginning like an awful lot more.
	It sure did.
	It was absolutely overpowering.
	And you're right, a typical mugging, you know, you hand over the money, and then they run away.
	And it's over.
	This was something totally different.
	Well, so then, running through your mind probably was, it involved your job, and I'm dead.
	Um, the thought that I would possibly be dead was definitely there from the start and never really went away for the whole ordeal.
	The job part, I think it was pretty obvious to me once I was in there and hearing them talking about taking me to the bank and PIN numbers, it seemed to me that it was a robbery.
	And then it was a robbery that morphed, you know, because as I mentioned, They took me to the bank and, you know, I've got this big chunk of money sitting in my savings, my life savings sitting there, and they've got a $1,000 limit on the cash machine card.
	So that's when they changed their plan.
	Instead of just taking the guy to the cash machine, now the plan was, let's keep him.
	Let's figure out how to get all this money.
	Okay, so they didn't take you to get at least the first $1,000, or did they?
	They did.
	They drove me to a cash machine on the corner of 23rd Street and 6th Avenue.
	Leader of the gang goes in.
	I'd already taken out $200, because the following night I was taking my friends out for my birthday to see a musician at the bottom line.
	So there was only $800 left to take on the daily limit.
	The leader of the gang got that, and then he's trying to figure out other ways he can steal from me, and basically came up with this plot.
	Let's take the guy, let's kidnap him, let's blindfold him and take him to our apartment and, um, you know, and then in the morning we'll take him to the bank and force him to turn over his money.
	Because they blindfolded you so you wouldn't know where their apartment was, but not so you wouldn't see their faces.
	Well, that's right.
	I mean, this was not necessarily the, uh, you know, the sort of the, the, you know, MIT of robbers.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I think I've got that.
	You know, and their plan was, you know, was hatched sort of on the spot.
	Now, as I mentioned to you, I purposely kept my face down in the car so that I wasn't looking at them.
	I didn't want them to think that I'd be able to recognize their faces.
	Yeah, but not by their order.
	I mean, this was your own thinking to sort of look down, right?
	That's right.
	That's right.
	You know, it was instinctual, and I gotta tell you, if you grew up in New York City, You develop some pretty strong instincts.
	Sure.
	About crime.
	Because you kind of get used to it.
	You know, I've got some of the vignettes from what happened to me and my brother and other family members growing up in New York or in the birthday party.
	Some of them are not in there because there wasn't space for all of them in a 300-page memoir.
	Yeah.
	So, yeah, you're right.
	I mean, once they blindfolded me...
	There was ten minutes where I could have spotted their faces, and the blindfold really was just keeping me from seeing where they were taking me.
	Alright, well, were you nevertheless putting together in your mind a mental picture of what you could see and remember just on the off chance that you would live through this?
	I mean, one of the things that's real interesting, I think, I don't want anybody who's driving right now to do this, but anybody who's at home in a safe place, have you closed your eyes for a few minutes?
	You'll see that you can see a lot with only your ears.
	It's amazing what you can pick up through your other senses besides sight.
	Once I was blindfolded, I just went into that mode.
	The one thing that's really interesting also is that I think none of us really knows how we're going to perform when we're challenged in this way.
	But you have extraordinary strength in you when you have an emergency like this happening.
	And I was very focused.
	So I was listening to everything that was happening.
	Anytime I had the chance to sort of negotiate for my life by being polite or giving a decent answer that wouldn't make them angry, I would do it.
	And I also started gathering clues from the minute I was in there.
	What kind of stuff were they asking you, anyway, obviously about the money, but what other stuff?
	I mean, obviously they asked, what do you do for a living?
	I'm a federal prosecutor.
	Okay, boom.
	Yeah, well, I'm an assistant U.S.
	Attorney, and one of the things that I like about my own book is that it's both incredibly scary and also really funny.
	I mean, these guys are actually trying to relate to me and figure out what was going on.
	So, you know, they're like, you know, You got a wife?
	No.
	You got a car?
	No.
	I live in Manhattan.
	Who has a car?
	You're 38 years old?
	Yeah.
	You got a girlfriend?
	Well, you know, I'm casually dating someone.
	I wasn't going to tell them that.
	No.
	Okay, so Stanley, you got all this money in the bank.
	You're 38 years old.
	You ain't married.
	You ain't got no wife.
	What the hell have you been doing?
	To which I responded, you should ask my parents.
	They've been wondering the same thing.
	So, you know, and it's real interesting.
	I mean, them having me in there, you know, they started to sort of play with me and kind of get to know me, you know, sort of find out what my life was like.
	And, you know, so there's some real interesting interactions.
	And I think that, My instinct was to be as nice and polite and decent as possible.
	There's no way I was going to bust up and say, hey, if you guys don't let me go, you're going to be put in prison for the rest of your lives because I'm a federal prosecutor.
	I wasn't going to do that.
	Good thought.
	But I mean, after all, kidnapping... Robbery is bad enough, but kidnapping, particularly of the kind where you're blindfolded and taken somewhere, that's a big offense.
	It's an extremely serious crime, and one of the reasons I wrote the book is I want people to understand what it feels like to be the victim of this kind of a violation.
	It stinks.
	You know, like you said before, you have a muggings over in five minutes or less.
	You know, the thought that you have to go through hour after hour, kind of psychological torture of knowing that people who couldn't care less about you You can just end your life on a whim.
	This was real psychological torture for a lot of hours.
	Did you, uh, were you able to figure out whether these were killers?
	Um, when I got, you know, they blindfolded me and they drove me to an apartment.
	I wasn't quite clear where.
	It seemed like it was somewhere on the Brooklyn-Queens border.
	When I got there, and they were talking to me in the beginning, they kept calling me Stephen.
	I kept saying, my name's not Stephen, it's Stanley.
	And they were laughing, they were like, oh yeah, yeah, that's the guy we did this to the other night.
	Now, the couple of guys that they'd done it to before, they had not taken to the apartment.
	They'd only taken them to the bank, gotten the money, and then they'd let them go.
	So I knew from what they told me that there were other robberies involved.
	As to whether they killed somebody, I never knew it.
	I still don't know it for sure.
	I pretty much doubt it.
	I think these guys were, you know, this was like a start-up venture.
	You know, they were just getting going.
	So it never occurred to them to, I don't know, put stockings over their head or anything at all that would hide and prevent a description, an accurate description, from being given to the police?
	Well, in the beginning that's right.
	I mean, you know, the one guy had a knit cap down to his eyebrows, so there was some Some hiding, but not much.
	I still saw his face.
	And, as I say, I kept my face away.
	And then, once they decided to keep me, well, then they had the bright idea of using a blindfold.
	So, at that point, they did it.
	But, no, in the beginning, they were just... Because, again, you've got to keep in mind that their plan changed.
	Originally, it was just a quick robbery that was going to be over.
	So, in other words, you're driving around in this car, and they're making the plan as you go?
	That's right.
	That's right.
	This is the guy who couldn't shoot straight.
	I mean, the leader of the gang was a fairly intelligent guy.
	He was attending, you know, I learned this later, he was attending college.
	Actually, one of the things he was studying was criminal justice.
	And, you know, so he was a pretty smart guy.
	He had a job, he had a fiancée.
	The other two guys were thugs, you know, basically the heat, guys carrying the guns.
	In the apartment, you have to understand, also, there were four more people.
	One was the guy who rented them the space in the apartment.
	Wow.
	And then there were three girls there, and I say girls advisedly, 16-year-old prostitutes.
	Yikes.
	The leader of the gang is their pimp.
	And, you know, they come over and they look at this well-dressed man who's sitting there on the mattress, blindfolded, and they say, what the hell are you doing?
	What did you drag home, boys?
	You know, really, these guys hadn't thought about it in advance.
	They just kind of did it on the spur of the moment to get at my money.
	Okay, so you had what, a few hundred thousand dollars or something in the bank?
	I had about a hundred thousand dollars that I saved up from working at my law firm job for a few years.
	Okay, so when you told them that, that's when the other plan began to form, I guess.
	What was the plan?
	What were they going to do?
	Next thing, have you go to the bank?
	So the idea was that in the morning they were going to drive me, the first idea was it would be to a drive-thru bank and then they decided it would be at a regular bank.
	They would drive me to the bank and they would be waiting outside the bank with their guns and I would withdraw $50,000 and they would shoot me if I didn't do it.
	Then they were talking about maybe one of them would come in the bank with me.
	Then when I got to the apartment and they were pointing the guns at my head, they were saying that they would blow my brains out if I didn't cooperate.
	You know, Stanley, you ever seen one of these machine pistols?
	All I gotta do is pull this trigger, bam, bam, bam, your brains will be all over that wall.
	But then they came up with a threat that was even worse than what I'm describing, because they told me that if I didn't cooperate, they would go to my father's apartment and kill him by breaking every bone in his body.
	Oh, God.
	See, I was going to say, otherwise, just taking you to the bank under any circumstances and letting you walk in is not too bright because you'd just stay there.
	Well, that's right.
	Yeah.
	And actually, as the night went by, they eventually realized that the plan didn't make any sense and they changed it.
	But that was the original plan.
	And, you know, when they made the threat to kill my father, I got to tell you, that was probably the worst moment of the whole thing.
	Sure.
	You know, you can kill me, you can beat me, you can do anything you want to me, but the thought of somebody doing it to someone I love was just, you know, beyond horrifying.
	Just absolutely beyond horrifying.
	So they made you tell where your father was or they found out somehow?
	So, you know, sometimes in life, Art, you do things that you think are good and they end up coming around to bite you.
	I used to carry my father's business card on me.
	He was pretty much retired, but he was a cantor, which is the Jewish guy that sings in the synagogue, and he would marry people.
	He married thousands of people in his career, so he kept a business card in case somebody needed for him to officiate at a wedding.
	Sure.
	The card in my wallet that I was, sort of, it was like almost a good luck charm.
	I was helping my dad by carrying his card in my wallet, kind of like, you know, being proud of him.
	And it turns out, you know, it has his home address on it, so from that card they could know where he lived.
	So, as I say in the book, what I paved with good intentions became a road leading to hell.
	Because the thought that they would use that and go to my dad's was just devastating.
	So they kept you on a mattress blindfolded the whole time?
	That's right.
	That's right.
	They brought me into this crash pad apartment somewhere on the Brooklyn-Queens border.
	As I walked in, there was clothes on the floor.
	I could feel a lumpiness as I walked on top of people's clothing.
	They put me down on a mattress.
	You know, they wanted me to take off my shoes, which my instinct was not to do it.
	I thought, you know what?
	In their minds, they should have the idea that I'm going to walk out of here.
	And I didn't want to take off my shoes.
	And I kept my jacket on the whole time.
	And I sat there on that mattress for the next 24 hours or so.
	So you refused to take your shoes off?
	Yes, politely.
	You know, I was like, you know, Stanley, why don't you take off your shoes?
	And I said, well, thanks, you know, but I'll keep them on.
	Politely.
	Yeah, and I'm sure you were sitting there, what, all this time, 25 hours I think this went on, right?
	Yes, yes.
	So, you must have been trying to figure out, how am I going to escape, or can I escape?
	You know, there's a moment, there's a moment in the middle of the afternoon, the thugs who had grabbed me on the street had gone out for the day, I didn't know exactly what they were doing.
	I learned later that they were using my credit cards to buy things.
	The last guy, the fourth thug whose apartment it was, he was guarding me the whole day and the three girls were there.
	It was a quieter time and there were fewer people that could have killed me there.
	I ran through my head, maybe I ought to try to either convince him to let me go or just kind of run for it.
	It just, it didn't make any sense.
	If I had made a move for the door, you know, I might have just ended up getting whacked in the head with the gun.
	You know, not even killed, but hurt.
	And it just would have spiraled downward.
	Could you see anything at all with this blindfold on, or was it really effective?
	So it was my own scarf that they blindfolded me with.
	And when they brought me into the building at first, I could actually see out the bottom Uh, of the blindfold, and I saw the pattern of the tile in the building that they took me into.
	And one of my favorite parts of this story is when I got out, I described that for the FBI and the NYPD.
	Well, guess what, Art?
	Within 48 hours, there are FBI agents out in that neighborhood going building to building looking for the pattern on the tiles that I had described.
	Wow.
	That I love about it.
	Then when I got inside, I couldn't see out of it.
	There was one moment again in the afternoon when I was just with the one guy and the girls that he left the room and I could tell that there was nobody else in there but me.
	And I just creaked my head back and looked out the bottom of the blindfold and I could see just a little bit across the room and I could see a little kid's red fire truck.
	It looked like it was a place where a kid really lived.
	Um, and then as soon as the guy came back in the room, I snapped my head back down and I didn't try to look again.
	Um, you know, it was important that, um, that they not think that I could, you know, that I could see out of it.
	Were your hands free?
	My hands were free.
	Yeah.
	They, they actually, on the way back to the apartment, they, um, bought duct tape to tie me up.
	But I was so cooperative that they never bothered to use it.
	I suppose that's the way to be.
	Did that cooperation really pay off?
	I mean, it relaxed them apparently enough so they didn't do that kind of thing.
	Yeah, you know what?
	After I got out, I read an article that I talk about in the book that describes what you're supposed to do in a hostage situation.
	And a lot of what I did on Instinct was sort of just the right thing.
	You can't get anywhere by challenging them.
	You have to be cooperative, put them at ease.
	It even says you ought to use humor after the first hour because that may help.
	Again, you have to be very careful how you use it.
	So, you know, I think being polite, keeping them calm was the best strategy.
	And frankly, by the time we were done with the ordeal, I think they really didn't want to kill me.
	I think they kind of liked me.
	There's some funny parts where they Start suggesting that I ought to join their gang and
	recommend friends that they can kidnap You know
	This is after I've been there about 20 hours and they were they were actually you know
	These guys were smoking marijuana and then they had these prostitute girls there
	So they were one of their fringe benefits in this startup company of theirs
	Was that you know, they got sexual favors from the girls. I see
	So so I and I can and I'm blindfolded. Thank God for the blindfold, but I could hear what was going on around me and
	And after they've smoked pot and they've had sex with the girls, they're kind of relaxed.
	So they started playing with their new toy, which was me.
	And they're like, you know, tell us about your law career.
	Oh, by the way, would you mind giving us some legal advice?
	Have this problem, have that problem.
	Stanley, hold on, we're at a break point.
	Stanley Alpert is my guest.
	This is Coast to Coast AM.
	My guest is Stanley Albert, and his book is The Birthday Party, a memoir of survival.
	Indeed so!
	You know, you can, perhaps we're, I don't know, a little, a little used to all the violence since it's all around us, but I can assure you, if something like you're hearing about tonight happened to you, you'd probably figure you were dead.
	We'll be right back.
	Well, okay, Stanley, this ordeal went on for about 25 hours.
	Remind me of about what time?
	It was at night when you were grabbed, right?
	At 11 o'clock at night.
	11 at night, all right.
	So, let's see, 11 at night.
	So, really, I don't know when banks start the new day.
	Do they begin it at midnight?
	Could they have gone back, taken you back for another thousand after midnight, or what?
	That's exactly right, and they had my PIN number.
	So they went sometime after midnight, they went back to a bank in their neighborhood and got another $1,000.
	And then when they kept me for an additional day, one of the reasons they kept me all that time was to get the one last hit after midnight again, right around the time they dropped me off.
	Sure.
	Okay, well, yes, but their plan had been sometime, I guess, during the day.
	To either take you to a drive-up or into a bank and they were threatening to kill your dad.
	What became of that part of the plan?
	So, as the night goes on, the leader of the gang, who's gone out to visit with his fiancée, the other two thugs are sitting there and they're discussing the plan.
	They're saying, this isn't going to work.
	It's going to look really funny for the three of us, you know, to go to a bank with a Caucasian And try to withdraw a large sum of cash.
	We're going to get caught.
	And I actually kind of sort of helped them along with that by agreeing that the last time I tried to take a lot of cash out of the bank, the manager came over and all that.
	So when the leader of the gang came back in the middle of the night, they tried to convince him not to do this plan.
	And eventually they did convince him to do it.
	One of the interesting things is they hadn't quite focused on what I told them about being an assistant U.S.
	attorney yet, so the leader pops his head into the room while they're having their little conference, and he says, what did you say you'd do for a living again?
	And I said, I'm an assistant U.S.
	attorney.
	And he says, U.S.?
	Oh no, the FBI's the FBI.
	Well, the FBI is going to be after him anyway.
	This is what?
	The third, at least the third, kidnapping they've done?
	Well, the third bank robbery where they held people, at the bank at least, this is the first sort of larger kidnapping.
	Take the guy to the apartment.
	They've never done this before.
	You probably would have been prosecuted by the state at that point.
	Nobody had crossed state lines.
	Once you start messing with the federal prosecutor, you know, And making it into a larger bank robbery, which is what my thing became.
	You're running the risk of a federal prosecution.
	It turned out on this one that state sentences were a lot higher, so they ended up getting prosecuted under state jurisdiction.
	So anyway, they talked the leader out of the idea of taking you to the bank.
	They talked him out of it.
	So at that point, his plan at that point was to actually take me back to where he'd gotten me.
	That morning at about nine in the morning.
	And he told me that's what he was going to do.
	But then hour after hour went by and the leader of the gang doesn't come back and nobody who's guarding me has any idea what happened or why he's not coming back to return me.
	And as you can imagine, I was petrified.
	There's nothing like being told you're going to get released.
	Right.
	And then waiting hour after hour with no explanation.
	I didn't know what was happening to me.
	I didn't know when they were going to come back and just stick a bullet in me.
	Right.
	Right.
	And, you know, that would be my thought.
	I mean, certainly you had seen their faces.
	You probably could identify them.
	You probably did identify them in the end, didn't you?
	I went to line up and I actually, you know, I told you I was looking down in the car so they wouldn't think I was able to recognize them.
	I had a feeling I could recognize all three of them, but you know what?
	I was wrong, and what I did pick one out of the three in the lineup.
	The one guy in the car who was the most violent, he kept putting the gun in my face.
	Every time he talked to me, I was trying not to look at them, but I kept glancing up.
	He was the one guy who hung tough in interrogation.
	He wouldn't give the whole story up like the others did, and he's the one guy that I managed to successfully pick out of the lineup.
	Um, how did you get released?
	Did they just... I, I mean, to me, if you're gonna, if you're gonna grab somebody as they grabbed you, um, now, by now they've got nearly a couple of thousand dollars of your money, uh, so it's a big crime, kidnapping, all the rest of it, um, uh, I, I, it's amazing to me they just decided to release you.
	What did they imagine would happen?
	Well, um, I think that a couple of things happened.
	One is that they had bonded with me.
	William Grimes, writing a review in the Times, said that I induced reverse Stockholm Syndrome in them, which I just love that he said that.
	I think also, before they released me, the leader of the gang asked me if I had the chance Put him away for life, would I do it?
	Yeah.
	What do you say to that?
	If you say yes, you're dead.
	If you say no, you're dead.
	I mean, how stupid are people, right?
	So what did you say?
	I said, look, you know, you already told me, you know, where I live, you know, where my father lives.
	I don't know who you are.
	I don't know where we are.
	You haven't hurt me yet.
	And you say you're going to release me unarmed.
	I don't think this has to go any further.
	That's a good thing.
	Actually, that's very good.
	That was my answer.
	And, you know, he was kind of satisfied with that.
	He was like, well, all right.
	And, you know, I think also, in addition to that, I think they realized that they had a hot potato at this point.
	Sure.
	I mean, kidnapping a federal prosecutor is bad enough.
	And certainly, as I said, I convinced them that they probably wouldn't get caught.
	But if they had murdered me, I mean, you know, you might face a federal death penalty for killing somebody because he's a federal prosecutor.
	They had a real hot potato on their hands.
	I think they needed to let me go.
	And you know the other thing that's very typical in any criminal gang, anytime people are involved, somebody's going to give it up at some point.
	If my body had ended up in a dumpster and nobody found it for a month, and then one of those girls got picked up on a prostitution charge and somebody starts leaning on them, somebody was going to give it up at some point.
	That's just the way it happens.
	Speaking of the girls, they offered you.
	They offered you one of the girls, didn't they?
	Well, they did when they found out it was my birthday.
	They thought that was very funny that they had kidnapped the MF-er on his birthday.
	And they said, you deserve something nice for your birthday.
	How about a blankety-blank for your birthday?
	Uh-huh.
	And, you know, at this point that sounds, you know, quite humorous, but at the time it was just frightening because I couldn't really afford, while being held at gunpoint, To be violated in that fashion.
	Right.
	You know, nobody thinks a man can be raped.
	Um, and, uh, you know, like, or maybe there's something funny about that.
	But the fact is when somebody's holding a gun at your head, the last thing in our on earth you want to think about is sexual contact.
	Absolutely.
	So luckily I managed to sort of dodge that bullet.
	You know, I was afraid they would think that, uh, that I didn't like their girls, you know, and I had nothing against their girls.
	I just didn't want to, I didn't want to be, You know, forced into sexual acts at gunpoint.
	So you kind of made friends of them?
	That's right.
	You know, by the time we were done, they were suggesting that I join their gang.
	Join the gang.
	They actually said a couple of times that it was a shame we had to meet under these circumstances.
	That if we met under different circumstances, we could have been friends.
	And you know what, Art?
	The funny thing is, in some strange sense, they're right.
	If we had met under different circumstances, we could have been friends.
	I'm pretty open to different kinds of people.
	I grew up in New York City.
	I'm sure I could have been friends with these folks.
	The problem is, is we didn't meet under different circumstances.
	We met where they'd made a choice to try to ruin my life by holding a gun on me, by threatening to murder my father, by throwing the fear of God in me, by causing me extreme trauma, By taking the chance of killing me, if anything had gone wrong, they would have killed me as quickly as you might squash a bug.
	Sure.
	And so we didn't meet under different circumstances.
	So I'm really happy, of course, even though I sort of get the point, I'm really happy that the justice system has put them away for a really long time, because it needed to.
	We need these people off the streets, because these are dangerous people.
	So what, did they just drop you off roughly where they had found you, or what?
	There's a moment in the book where I'm actually pretty sure towards the end that they're actually planning to kill me, and I try to describe for the reader what it's like the moment you know that you're about to lose your life.
	Right.
	But I was wrong.
	Thank God they actually were not planning to murder me.
	And they drove me to Prospect Park in Brooklyn, which is quite a distance from where they picked me up, and let me off there.
	And they let me off blindfolded.
	They told me to just walk.
	I took a few steps and I didn't know where I was.
	I thought maybe I'd end up in a river.
	So eventually I stopped walking, you know, with my hands up, you know, like some kind of a scene in a movie.
	I finally said, are you there?
	And nobody answered.
	I spun around.
	I pulled off my blindfold and God had given me my life back.
	They were gone.
	All right, but at that point, now, remembering they had your dad's address, they certainly knew where you lived, so you've got to think pretty hard before you pick up the phone, don't you?
	You're absolutely right.
	I raced over to a pizza place in Park Slope, you know, the first place I could find open at that hour, and begged the guy to use the phone.
	You know, New Yorkers are kind of a tough bunch, so he was looking at me like I was crazy.
	He almost didn't want to let me use his phone, but the first phone call I made was to my dad because I wanted to see if he had been harmed.
	Right.
	And I was also afraid that they would go to his house and try to hurt him.
	Of course.
	So that was my first call.
	And you know, his phone line was busy.
	I called some other people.
	I ended up back calling my dad and he told me that, um, you know, he was okay.
	And, uh, you know, but I, then I should call my apartment and, you know, in my apartment, We already had FBI agents and detectives who were already looking for me.
	Oh, really?
	How did that happen?
	The FBI said, please send somebody over to guard my dad.
	Oh, okay.
	Alright, so you called the FBI.
	The FBI was one of the calls you made right away.
	Well, I don't know.
	I didn't call them.
	What had happened was, you know, it was my birthday, so my friends were supposed to be meeting me that night.
	When I didn't show up, they flipped.
	Okay.
	So they ended up coming over to my apartment to see if, you know, maybe somebody's bludgeoning me here in my room.
	And, um, I'm not here.
	And they, um, they see my answering machine's going off.
	So they, um, they play the answering machine.
	And on the machine are two bone-chilling messages.
	Number one, Mr. Alpert, there's been unusual activity on your cash machine card.
	Please call the bank immediately.
	Number two is from some lovely woman in a neighborhood called Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn who had found my credit cards on the street at seven in the morning.
	Wow.
	And you know, some of my friends are prosecutors, so it doesn't take them too much time to put this together.
	Their buddy's been missing since at least 7 in the morning.
	He hasn't shown up.
	Nobody's, you know, he hasn't called.
	He doesn't show up for his birthday.
	There's been unusual activity on his cash machine cart.
	Got it.
	My friends were pretty sure I was dead.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, so the decision really was made for you.
	I mean, the FBI was already there.
	It was already in motion.
	I got picked up in Park Slope by the FBI and the NYPD.
	Yep, they came and got me.
	And then you've got this decision, of course they're going to ask you right away, and I guess you just decided to open right up, or did you pause and say, look, I don't know really whether I want to talk about this or not.
	You know what, Art, I talk about this in the book, if I had ever given it a moment's thought to not speak openly with the police, I had a moral obligation to prevent them from doing this to the next guy.
	Right.
	You know, and you know what the funny thing is?
	Actually, you know what?
	This is a part of the book that got edited out because it was too much of these stories about what was happening up in New York.
	I had the same experience growing up in New York.
	There were guys on a subway train that tried to set me and my friend on fire.
	Oh my God.
	You know, literally, six of them.
	You know, let's set these guys on fire.
	Because New York was kind of the Wild West in the 70s.
	And, you know, I ended up getting a cop to catch all of them.
	And my friend said, we better not go to court.
	And I said, screw that.
	We're going to court.
	I'm going to get these guys.
	People can't do that to people.
	I think it's real important.
	I know people are a little afraid at times, but I think it's real important that people make the justice system work.
	You have a moral obligation to the next person.
	It's going to get victimized.
	And the other thing, of course, is once the FBI and the NYPD are interviewing me, you know, if I lie, it's a criminal violation.
	Well, that's of course true, but now going back for a moment, before they released you, did they issue any threats about what would happen if you talked?
	No.
	No?
	They didn't.
	In fact, I think that I think that they had been convinced by what I just mentioned to you that probably they had done such a good job with the blindfold and not telling me where they were that probably they couldn't get caught.
	So I think I sort of put their minds at ease as to whether they were going to get caught or not.
	No, they didn't threaten me at all about going to the cops.
	Okay, so you talked right away and apparently you told them about this floor that you saw.
	How long did it take the FBI or the NYPD to gather them up?
	48 hours.
	Haha, 48 hours.
	Within 48 hours, I was of course in a safe house.
	I wasn't staying at my apartment because I was afraid they'd come try to kill me.
	I'm staying in a safe house at a friend's in Upper Manhattan.
	And within 48 hours, the lead detective on the case calls me to tell me they're starting to round them up.
	I gotta tell you, Art, that was one of the most thrilling moments of my life.
	I imagine your dad was also... wasn't your dad protected also?
	My dad was protected by the FBI.
	He had agents who stayed with him the whole night, that night that I was being interviewed.
	One of the funny aspects of the thing is that the FBI and the NYPD interviewed me that night, and they didn't tell me this at the moment.
	I learned this many months later, but My story was so crazy that they actually thought I made it up.
	Really?
	Yep.
	Yeah.
	First of all, you know, kidnapping in the United States, this kind of thing, is very uncommon.
	In New York, you hear about it sometimes with drug gangs, that maybe somebody's girlfriend gets kidnapped as revenge.
	This kind of thing doesn't happen.
	It's a very serious crime.
	It may go on, you know, like in South America or Mexico, but not in New York.
	Second of all, the details.
	You know, the guy gets kidnapped on his birthday, they're offering him sexual favors, they're telling him to join the gang.
	The whole thing made no sense.
	Well, did they hint ever with their questions about what they thought your motive would be for lying about all this?
	Yes.
	What the police say is that, in their experience, a guy's doing something, he's where he wants to be.
	He's either out buying drugs, And he gets rolled.
	Or he's out warning with prostitutes, and he gets rolled.
	There was a very high-powered lawyer in New York about 15 years ago who got murdered in a motel room in the Bronx because he was with prostitutes.
	Or, there was a gay party going on in the West Village, and if I was at that party, and I wanted to cover my tracks, I would come up with this kind of an elaborate story.
	Those were their ideas.
	Those were their thoughts.
	And, you know, even though they had those ideas, of course, starting in the morning they had to investigate.
	It wasn't long before they found out that their ideas were wrong.
	In fact, the details I gave them started to add up.
	So they quickly, in the morning, realized that I had been telling them the truth.
	Okay, and then you decided to write a book about all of this.
	Now, not a lot of people would write a book about something as frightening as this.
	An incident like this, they just wouldn't write a book about it.
	What made you do that?
	Well, you know what?
	Um, when I first started, the story was so life altering and also crazy with so many twists and turns that I just thought it had to be written.
	There's another thing on a, on a, on a personal level.
	You know, you go through something like this, uh, everybody's shocked.
	Everybody talks about it for a few weeks.
	It's just like the news, the news media though.
	After a few weeks, the whole thing kind of dies out and you forget about it.
	There was a feeling in me that this was such a life-altering experience that it needed to be recorded.
	That somehow, you know, it would not be right to just sort of let it go.
	And the fact is, is I didn't do it for this reason, but once I did it, it was cathartic to write the book.
	Sure.
	When you write about something, you kind of give it up.
	So it actually helped me psychologically.
	To write the book.
	And you know what, also Art, having written it, I realized that there are some important reasons why people ought to read this book.
	People ought to get what it's like to be a victim of a crime, because we need to fight harder in this country to stop it.
	There's a lot of anger involved afterwards, isn't there?
	Huge amount of anger.
	Now I had an advantage that not everybody has, which is my guys got rounded up within 48 hours and they got put away for a really long prison sentence.
	All right.
	Hold tight, Stanley.
	We'll be right back.
	I'm Art Bell.
	Obviously, a very, very bright guy.
	Stanley Albert is my guest.
	And you are now welcome to come with questions over a wide span.
	That is to say, you may have questions about the job he did as a federal environmental prosecutor.
	You may have questions about MTBE.
	I know there's a lot of talk about that going on.
	You may have questions about The incredible ordeal that he went through, and I guess you've got to try to put yourself in his shoes to understand the terror that must have been going on for 25 hours in this man's mind.
	So in any of those areas, you're welcome to ask questions.
	This is Coast to Coast AM, and we'll be right back.
	Stanley, a couple of more questions, then we'll go to the phones.
	You said it was a life-altering event.
	Now that it's over, now that you've written the book, I am curious in what ways it has altered your life.
	So, I don't want to downplay too much the traumatic aspects and what I had to struggle through to get over this, but I do have to say, and I finish up the book, the last chapter, focusing on this, in a chapter called Get What You Want, for me, Almost being killed brought very much into focus the fact that our lives are short.
	We don't know how long we're going to have them.
	And life is a wonderful thing.
	So to me what is now most important is to live life to the fullest each day.
	Is to really grab it by the horns and go for it because you just don't know when you're going to lose it.
	So I'm actually a person these days who will Jump into things a lot quicker than I used to.
	If a friend says he's going on a trip to Costa Rica and I want to come along, you know, in the old days, well, maybe I'd have 14 different excuses.
	Now I'm much more likely to say, yeah, sure, love to.
	And I think what I try to tell people in the last chapter of the book is, is you got to grab your dream.
	You know, I don't pretend to define for anybody what their dream is.
	It may be to build a small business in your town.
	It may be to take a big trip.
	It may be to, you know, see your son graduate from college.
	Whatever that dream may be, jump on it and live it.
	We don't know how long our lives have, what we have our lives.
	I mean, one of the things I mentioned in the birthday party is the arrogance of the living.
	We sort of all expect that we're just going to wake up tomorrow morning.
	Well, it ain't true.
	I mean, our lives are limited.
	And so while you got it, you really need to do the most with it.
	I get these computer messages as we do the show, and Brian in Berkeley, Ohio says, you know, people in prisons are always listening to Coast.
	That's true.
	I get thousands of letters from guys in the joint.
	He says, these guys may well be listening to this.
	If they are, what do you think they're making of it?
	Well, I think that there's probably a lot of frustration that they chose this criminal path, because when you go down this criminal path, that's where you end up, is in prison.
	I'd like to hope that what they're making of it is that someday when they get out, they want to live good and productive lives.
	I don't have a lot of hope that that's going to be true, but I would like to think that.
	I'm sure it's a sense of frustration.
	You make choices like this, you put yourself in the system, and you end up in a very bad place.
	Don't you have to worry about that, Dave?
	I think that all of the data on what criminals do when they get out of prison shows that the Robert De Niro, Cape Fear movie situation just doesn't happen.
	When people get out of prison, they have a lot bigger and better things to worry about than trying to go after their victims.
	And certainly I think what the guys in my thing learned was that it was really dumb to kidnap a federal prosecutor.
	It'd be even dumber for anything to ever happen to me.
	I mean, if I ever slip on a banana peel, the first place the FBI is going to look is these guys and their families and anybody connected with them.
	There's no body coming after me.
	Okay, and maybe this is the most important question, and that would be to anybody else out there who finds themselves in a situation like you were in, and there's a lot of people listening right now, Stanley, how would you advise them to act?
	You need to be calm, you need to stay cool, you need to be polite to the people that are Doing this crime to you, you need to try to bond with them, if you can.
	You need to just be decent and not try to be aggressive.
	I think probably a lot of people would have the instinct to get aggressive and say, damn it, if you touch one hair on my head, you're going to be prosecuted, or to try to bust out of there.
	These are nice fantasies, and these are nice for the movies, but they're not reality.
	You know, when you've got seven people on you and at least two guns that I knew about, these are fantasies.
	The best thing you can do is try to be polite and cooperative.
	I mean, the easiest advice I can give people when they're mugged in the street is don't be a hero.
	Take out your wallet, turn it over, and go earn the $200 that you lost, go earn it back.
	Because when you're facing a gun or a knife, you don't have much chance.
	Yeah, that's actually...
	Absolutely.
	And too many people do try to be heroes, too, and they do it for a few hundred bucks or whatever.
	You know, I grew up in Brooklyn.
	You know, I'm not a wimp.
	I mean, I fought in the streets against guys who weren't carrying guns and knives.
	But once that knife is on you, once the gun is on you, I mean, even people who are black belts in karate will tell you that when a gun's on you, forget it.
	You can't do anything.
	Just turn over your money.
	Just be polite, turn it over, and hope that the guy doesn't kill you anyway.
	All right, let's give it a try.
	Tom in Madison, Wisconsin.
	You're on the air with Stanley Alpert.
	Hi.
	How you doing?
	Great show tonight, Art.
	Thank you.
	Pretty interesting guest.
	I had a question for him.
	It's a little bit into the background that he had in the environmental stuff he was doing.
	I had run into Midnight Dumpers in Ohio in the mid-80s, and they were dumping in the Cuyahoga River.
	And I lived right along it.
	I ended up living in sort of a fearful situation for several months because I went after these people and organized the community.
	Did he ever, I just wondered if he had ever had any confrontations or any prosecutions against some of these people that were known as Midnight Dumpers back then.
	Okay.
	Yeah, I did all sorts of criminal investigations and prosecutions when I was at the U.S.
	Attorney's Office, and you would get those instances of midnight dumping.
	That would be, under federal law, that would be a violation of what's called the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which tells you what you can do with your hazardous waste that you're generating and disposing of today.
	There are very strict regulations if somebody does that kind of a midnight dump.
	They're putting themselves up for a potential federal prosecution and maybe a couple years in federal prison.
	It's, you know, I live out here in the desert, Stanley, and I hear people, the desert is a wondrously beautiful, life-filled place.
	It doesn't appear that way to a lot of people, and they use it as a dumping ground, and oh my God, it makes me angry.
	So, you know, I hope that we can begin to, maybe we've already started to kind of stop this stuff in America.
	It's our own land, it's our own country, and we sure don't want to trash it.
	Alright, Mike in Alaska, you're on with Stanley Alpert.
	Oh yeah, Stanley said earlier that it's everybody's obligation to stop the people who did what they did to him, and you know, pursue a prosecution against them.
	And well, what do you do when the police do that to you?
	You know, like what they did, what the kidnappers did to you.
	I mean, you can't afford an attorney, and the public defender I had wouldn't prosecute the cop.
	I'm not clear.
	You're saying a policeman mugged you, essentially?
	Basically, yeah.
	I mean, it's a long story.
	Let's make a short story out of it.
	I came into town, reported a broken window in my motorhome.
	Thirty minutes later, I was handcuffed on the ground because I reported a broken window.
	And, you know, it's a long story, but anyway, if I had any money, I would have sued him.
	I don't know, Stanley.
	There are certainly cases where there are bad cops, and that is an interesting question.
	I don't know what you'd do when it was the police.
	You know, my birthday party memoir gives the positive side of the cops because I show them for the heroes that they were in my case for having got these guys.
	I do understand that policemen have a lot of power and sometimes they misuse it.
	And I think in your kind of situation, Mike, you do need a lawyer to investigate it and to bring a lawsuit against the police if they've done you wrong.
	Sometimes you have to pay for it, which is a problem, I understand, to afford it.
	If you've been wrongfully imprisoned or hurt by the police, you might be able to get a lawyer to take it on a contingency basis, which means they don't charge you and they only get paid if you win the case.
	If they feel it's strong enough, they'll take it that way, but there is this blue wall, Stanley, I don't know whether you've run into it or not, because really you were sort of part of it, but there is this blue wall with the police and they do tend to protect each other.
	I think you're right, Art, and I think that In his situation, I think that it depends on whether he's been seriously abused by the police, and then whether he can prove it.
	And if it's just his word against theirs, there could be a problem.
	And you also might have a hard time getting a lawyer to take it, because of the evidentiary problem.
	Exactly.
	Alright, Jim in Ohio.
	You're on with Stanley.
	Yeah, hi.
	I might sound nervous here, but I'm not.
	I've been on radio and television a lot, but my heart's just pounding like heck, and I feel really, really bad for your guest.
	As a former law enforcement agent, him being so many assailants going after him, I think he made the absolute best choice, even though he's probably a much better expert on it than I am.
	But I have a short story about something that happened to me and it may help out other people.
	My wife had just announced to me that she was going to file for divorce one night and I drank a couple beers and I decided that I was going to go down to the local quick food stand, you know, and I drove about four miles away in this small city, about 30,000 people.
	And I got a couple burgers.
	I was bringing them home.
	And there was a guy hitchhiking.
	It was raining.
	He was about my age.
	This was back in about 1989.
	I was between police jobs at the time.
	I was just a security officer at the time.
	But I did have a revolver with me.
	And I tucked the revolver under my left leg.
	And the guy got in the car.
	And it was raining and I felt bad for him.
	As soon as he got in the car, he pulled a 9mm out of his boot and he set it on his lap.
	And he said, uh, mister, you effed up because you are going to die tonight.
	And, uh, I hope your guest doesn't have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
	I do.
	Uh, but it's not just because of that.
	It's because of other things.
	Okay, well, we don't have a lot of time, so how did it resolve?
	What happened?
	Well, after it resolved, what I did, I don't know if it was the guardian angel or what happened, but I hit the gas, and I'm going 70 miles an hour through a city, and I'm running red lights.
	And I told him, I said, thank God.
	I said, you're going to shoot me.
	I said, will you pull the trigger now, please?
	And he said, what the F are you talking about?
	And I said, shoot me, shoot me, shoot me.
	And he said, are you crazy?
	And I said, no.
	I said, my wife's going to divorce me.
	I was just going to go home and blow my brains out.
	But if you shoot me, I'm going to go to heaven.
	And you're going to go to hell.
	Well, actually, that's a fairly decent tactic.
	I take it he did regard you finally as crazier than he was and backed off, huh?
	Well, what happened?
	We ran lights.
	I went past police cars at 70 miles an hour.
	They didn't stop us.
	In the old days, you just had a belt around your waist.
	He didn't put his belt on anyway, but at any rate, to make a long story short, he just kept telling me I was crazy and I kept telling him to shoot me because you're going to hell and I'm going to heaven.
	Right, and so what happened?
	I got it up as fast as I could and I hung on for dear heck and slammed on the brakes.
	And this guy's face hit the windshield and the blood flew.
	And I swear he had to have broken his nose.
	Everything else was all over the car.
	He jumped out of the car running like heck, yelling.
	I'm sure.
	Alright, I've got it.
	I appreciate the story.
	That's kind of a...
	That's kind of a, it's kind of like some of the women who have been attacked, raped, and they do all kinds of things.
	I mean, they claim they have AIDS, some advise, throw up, you know, just make yourself completely unappealing.
	Well, this guy, I guess was at a stage in his life where he could make himself more unappealing than the guy who had the revolver on his On his lap.
	That's one approach.
	One I wouldn't take, but, you know, that was his state of mind, Stanley.
	Yeah, well, I think I'm totally with you on the rape thing.
	I think it's such a horrible thing for a woman to be in that situation and throwing up on herself, you know, if she can do it and somehow just disgust the assailant to the point that he won't do the act.
	I'm with you.
	It's not a typical choice.
	Hi, how are you feeling?
	I'm good, how are you?
	instances but typically the calm polite approach that I had used probably works
	a little better but but Jim also you know had his own thing by speeding and
	then hitting the brakes he managed to put the guy through the windshield well
	good for you that that that worked for you. Okay Michael in Albany New York
	you're on the air with Stanley Alpert hi. Hi how are you Stanley? I'm good how are you?
	I've just been listening a little bit to you I'm driving a taxi and I've had an
	incident 20 minutes ago. What?
	One of various that I've had throughout the year.
	Are you still there?
	No, we're here.
	They tried to rob somebody down on one of the streets locally, and he runs up to my cab yelling, call the police, call the police.
	They're trying to rob me.
	He jumps in.
	The fellow on my left He stopped.
	He froze.
	I looked at him in a very serious way.
	The other fellow was trying to climb in.
	The assailant was trying to get him on the right.
	I stepped on the gas and took off with him.
	On a prior time, I went to pick up a party at an address that I was called to.
	And a fellow comes in, jumps in the cab, in the front seat, pulls out a serrated knife, He says, give me all your money or I'll cut your throat.
	I calmly said, it ain't gonna happen.
	He went berserk.
	He goes for a gun he had in his secret pocket behind his belt.
	And he can't get to it because he can't close the knife.
	I stepped on the gas at that moment.
	He tried grabbing what he could, slugging me with his left hand and out the door.
	Jumped and ran back.
	Caller, is that what your company advises you to do in a condition like that, if somebody's robbing you?
	No, no.
	My company says just give them all they want and just step out of the van and give them the van also.
	We've had guys here that the company has no way of stopping what's going to occur.
	And nobody afterwards tried to help the individual unless, for example, one person that did get shot got some help.
	We've had several drivers shot.
	Alright, listen, we're way short on time.
	I'm sorry to hear about all that.
	Stanley, we seem to be getting stories of people who decided to fight back, and that's kind of exactly the opposite of the advice you gave, right?
	Yeah, I'll tell you what, Art, I've put up a blog for people who want to talk about their crime stories.
	People can go to stanleyalpert.com if they want to talk about these things.
	I don't advise That, what he's done, I think these are deeply personal choices, and I do understand that when you're victimized, you're very angry, and your natural instinct is to fight back, and especially for men, you know, there's the thought that... Stanley, Stanley, I've got to ask you to hold on.
	We'll be right back.
	Indeed, here I am, Stanley Albert is my guest, from being an environmental prosecutor, federal one, to the incredible ordeal he went through in a kidnapping Where I'm sure he thought it was the end of his life.
	Chris in Louisiana asks, please ask Stanley if he's attempted to visit the convicted kidnappers since they've gone to jail.
	And that, in view of the fact that he wrote a book, is sort of an interesting question, which we will ask in a moment.
	Well, how about it, Stanley?
	Did you, for the sake of the book, consider perhaps visiting one or several of them in jail?
	No, I didn't do that.
	I managed to get the story of what happened from their point of view because six out of the seven of them confessed on videotape, and I was able to get access to that from the DA's office.
	So I'm able to present the story from their side, but I didn't go see them, and I don't want to go see them.
	They're in prison.
	They got what the system gives them.
	Apart from getting what justice required, I don't bear them any grudge.
	Any ill will, but I also have no interest in visiting with them.
	Okay, Jim in San Diego says, the guys, in quotes, in the pokey, in quotes, can only wish they had murdered Stanley.
	Let's be real, they're criminals, and they can only feel stupid, and their prison mates must be reminding them on a daily basis that they were stupid for not eliminating Stanley.
	They probably feel terrible that they didn't kill me, but if they killed me, they would have faced federal death penalty Uh, charges and probably would have been put to death.
	Yeah.
	Robert in Bethesda, Maryland.
	You're on with Stanley Albert.
	Hi.
	Good evening, gentlemen.
	I wanted to ask if, uh, the attorney, as a U.S.
	attorney, could you use your subpoena power to, uh, get information regarding, um, uh, Admiral Geis' testimony of what he's revealed in a documentary called Terror Storm.
	It's, uh, regarding the USS Liberty incident.
	Well, I'm not a federal prosecutor anymore, and you can't use this as being a power unless you have a particular reason to be investigating a crime.
	You can't just use it unless someone's brought to you information that's within your jurisdiction to investigate a crime.
	Alright, Lynn in Illinois, you're on with Stanley.
	Hi.
	Hi, did you say Lynn?
	I did.
	Oh, okay.
	I don't understand how people can't get help when the police are involved.
	When you've called the police, For a certain thing that you were supposed to over and over again.
	And then they still don't do anything.
	And now you're the one intimidated by both parties.
	Well, you probably have to give us a little more.
	What do you mean?
	Well, they were trespassers.
	And I was supposed to call on them to keep them off the private property.
	And the police came and everything, but they wouldn't do anything.
	And there's, I've made at least a dozen calls and they just never do anything.
	And then they told me that, um, well, some of them are cops, so they wouldn't, they wouldn't do anything.
	But that leaves me totally intimidated and, and not, you know, and then someone came, you know, it's a farm.
	So then someone came up really close to the house.
	When the police wouldn't do anything, it just escalated and it got real bad every time I'd walk out of the back door.
	You know, it's hard for the police to investigate when there's not a clear crime being committed.
	at the same time.
	Well, I'm sorry to hear it, Lynn, but I'm not sure it relates to anything.
	How can there not be anyone that you can call when you did the right thing and they even
	let you down?
	You know, it's hard for the police to investigate when there's not a clear crime being committed.
	What I'd advise in that situation is that you go on the civil side and get a lawyer
	to write a letter to these folks and tell them that they're trespassing and have the
	right to be on your property.
	Good advice.
	Bill in Arizona, you're on with Stanley Albert.
	Hello, gentlemen.
	First of all, I'd like to say that I had a friend that was an officer.
	He went from Arizona to New York to pick up a murderer suspect and bring him back to Arizona.
	When he got off the airplane in New York, There was an officer there, NYPD, that wanted to take his gun away from him.
	And he was not allowed to have his gun, so he told them to keep the prisoner.
	Well, they decided to let him keep his gun, but they posted an officer outside his motel room all night long and stayed with him the whole time until he got that fugitive back on the plane and left.
	Now, your incident that you've gone through is in a state, mind you, that has some of the most strictest gun laws in the country.
	But they didn't do any good.
	And the other point that I'd like to make is that, yes, you did come out okay.
	It sounds somewhat like your criminals were a little stupid, but you did come out okay and, you know, everything came out fine.
	But for every person that turns over and just does what they want, like the gentleman in the car that put the guy through the windshield, hey, in the end run, these people learn that they have to learn that someone might fight back and they're going to get hurt.
	And every person who gives up willingly and freely and gives it away, it just teaches them to do it more.
	Don't you think?
	And I gotta tell you, if you go to anybody in Europe and ask them to look at the United States and its situation with guns and violence, they shake their heads.
	They cannot understand how a country that is an advanced industrialized country can have this level of violence and this level of easiness to get guns.
	The reason there are guns on the streets of Brooklyn that guys can use against me is because it's real easy to get them down in Virginia.
	And in Virginia, if you're mentally ill, you can walk into a gun shop, buy it, and be killing your classmates within days.
	There's something awfully wrong about that.
	The only solution to reducing violence in this country is to at least very carefully regulate it.
	It's got to be at least as hard to get a gun in this country as it is to get a driver's license.
	Because right now you've got to at least go through some tests And you gotta show you have some ability to drive a car.
	Well, why isn't the same true of a gun?
	Why can a mentally ill kid go in and buy a gun?
	There's a problem with that.
	Damn good question.
	I mean, he supposedly went through the background checks that they had, right?
	So, why didn't that show up?
	Well, it should have.
	And it ought to be more careful.
	And there ought to be a waiting period.
	We had that for a while.
	There ought to be a waiting period, and in most states there is a waiting period.
	I understand Virginia's fairly lax in that category, and I guess most of the guns that are in New York and the Northeast do come from Virginia and South, right?
	The city of New York has in fact sued gun dealers from down there for being lax in the way they sell guns.
	Jim in Pennsylvania, you're on with Stanley.
	Art, it's always a pleasure to talk to you.
	Listen, I have a question for your guest.
	As much as I appreciate the work that he's doing for the environment and other people like Aaron Brockovich and all of that, I'm wondering if somehow, someway, every time Big Oil loses one of those suits to him and to people like him, if we, the motoring public, aren't the ones who are being punished for that after hearing such things as gas is supposed to hit $4 a gallon at the end of the summer.
	Your gas prices go up a lot when oil companies make decisions to pollute groundwater nationwide.
	They go up a lot when they make decisions to invest millions of dollars in fighting these things, and millions of dollars in trying to lie to the American public about the fact that global warming, in their view, doesn't exist.
	I mean, there's always an issue of cost in any of these things.
	There's a cost we pay as a society.
	The question is, where do you most Wisely use your resources.
	In my view, you wisely use your resources by cutting down on pollution, because in the end, the society pays less for the goods and services that it's getting.
	And so, it's important that we police these things.
	I sure wish that the oil companies didn't decide to contaminate groundwater.
	Then they would have saved some money.
	And you're right, that does drive up the price of the pump some.
	Thank you very much.
	You're very welcome.
	Mark in Kansas City, your turn with Stanley Albert.
	Yes, sir.
	It's a great pleasure to speak with you both, Mr. Bell, Mr. Albert.
	Thank you.
	My question, getting back to you, first of all, thank you for writing about this experience.
	I appreciate that you're sharing that information with us, your experience.
	My question is regarding your captivity.
	I was curious if you In the amount of time you were there, what happened in terms of did they offer you food or drink and even bathroom habits?
	So when I first got there, they offered me food.
	They'd gone out to get McDonald's for themselves and they wanted to know if I wanted it.
	I refused at that point because I was afraid it would be drugged.
	After I'd been there about 14 hours, I realized if I didn't take some food, I wouldn't be able to keep up my strength and keep with it.
	So I did accept the next time they offered.
	In the instructions that the FBI gives to people who are kept hostage, they say that if you're offered food, you should take it, because it's a bonding experience with your kidnappers.
	So that's what I would advise to anyone who's in that situation.
	As for the bathroom, several hours into it, they did ask me whether I needed it, and when I was about to get up, I was afraid they'd shoot me, because they were so nervous that I was getting up to go to the bathroom.
	So I kind of stayed put.
	I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on.
	I'm only going to go to the bathroom.
	I'm not going to do anything stupid.
	I was blindfolded, but they led me to the bathroom, and I did what I had to do.
	Tony, somewhere in Canada, you're on with Stanley Albert.
	Hi.
	Yes, hi.
	It's Tony, and I'm looking at Stanley's website, which looks great.
	I just want him to comment on a situation that we have in Canada.
	I'm a victim of A predatory lending practice which involves banks, and I've written two books about it, in the spirit that he said he wants to write books to help people to avoid situations like his.
	So I'm talking about sitting duck loans, and the fact that the Canadian system just will not talk about this and will not do anything, the police will not do anything.
	What do you do in situations where the system is totally against you?
	I don't know enough about your situation to really comment.
	It sounds like it may be a political issue that you have to build interest in fighting this sort of thing.
	Yeah, we've actually treated it at the political level.
	It's gone right to the Prime Minister.
	Sitting duck loans are well known.
	They've been talked about on coast to coast in some fashion with subprime mortgages and so on, where people are simply tricked out of their money.
	So when somebody like me writes two books and they're simply not allowed on the shelf, I like your website.
	I think I may take some lessons from that, but I don't know how to take lessons from you with regards to getting the police or the authorities or the politicians to do something to protect people who get themselves into a situation.
	Well, before they can act, there have to be laws in place with regard to what you're trying to get enforced.
	So I guess, as he pointed out, the political avenue is probably where to go first.
	Brendan in Yuma, Arizona.
	You're on with Stanley.
	Hi.
	Oh, well, hello.
	Hey, Art.
	It's a pleasure to talk to you.
	Thank you.
	Stanley, I just had a quick comment.
	I was at Circle K about an hour ago getting gas for my truck.
	I pulled up and, well, I'm a little nervous talking about it.
	I'm still kind of rattled.
	I pulled up.
	I walked in with my cash to pay.
	I usually use debit.
	Well, as I was pulling up, two guys in a white van pulled up behind me, talking real loud, yelling at each other.
	I'm going to beat you up, you know, blah, blah, blah.
	I come back and both of the guys are looking at me.
	I thought, you know, I thought, well, okay, you know, they're going to do something.
	They're going to, you know, try to rob me or whatever.
	They were looking at me.
	They just gave me a bad feeling.
	Well, they both come up, they have box cutters in their hands and they offered to do pinstripes on my expedition.
	My thought was, I just heard something earlier.
	I read a report that, you know, you should be as calm as possible, you should be as friendly as possible.
	So I thought, well, should I do it?
	They said it was going to be $20.
	I'm like, should I do it?
	I'm out $20.
	But I heard that you should be as friendly as possible with somebody like this because these guys look like they're spun out of their mind.
	They look like they're on drugs.
	And I said, all right, all right, you know, go ahead and do it.
	So they did it the whole time.
	They're looking at me with their box cutters.
	They do the pinstripes.
	And I mean, I think I'm making it sound worse than it was, but they seemed happy that I actually gave them the money.
	Well, again, we had somebody a little while ago who was kind of angry.
	At the advice to sort of give in, but is your life, and many times it does turn out to be your life, worth fifty, a hundred, a couple hundred bucks, even a thousand bucks?
	Is it worth that?
	Not really.
	So, I don't know.
	The approach Stanley has taken, took in this incident, seemed the right one.
	I mean, you're here to talk about it, Stanley.
	I'm not saying people should never try to fight, but it sounds like in your situation, sir, you did a great thing.
	I mean, you had two strung out guys with box cutters that could have cut you up, and you decided to play it nice and cooperative and just give over a little bit of cash to avoid getting cut up yourself.
	I think, God bless you, because you saved yourself a much bigger problem.
	Yeah.
	I agree.
	Bob in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
	You're on with Stanley.
	Hey, Yard, how's it going tonight?
	Fine.
	I just heard that call, and maybe I'm just a good old okie boy, but doing something like that, in my opinion, simply encourages people like that to do things like that in the future, you know, to go ahead and prey on innocent people.
	What would you have done?
	What would I have done?
	I would have told them, you know, I wasn't interested in their services.
	If they then began to approach me in a violent way, I would Without my concealed carry, legally concealed carry pistol, and, you know, if my life was threatened.
	If my life wasn't threatened, that's not necessary, but people like this, going around praying on the innocent, if we all start appeasing and giving into what they want just immediately, right off the bat, that's simply going to encourage more of this.
	He said something a little while ago about the gun laws in Virginia needed to be changed to affect New York.
	My opinion, and I would ask, don't you feel that prosecuting the criminals and holding the criminals to account, if you use a gun to commit a crime, you are held to the letter of the law and have the book thrown at you instead of infringing on my Second Amendment rights to purchase and own guns.
	I truly agree, mental cases, mentally ill people should not be able to get guns, and I agree with that.
	But at the same time, why should Virginia's gun laws be changed to help out New York?
	Why should New York enforce their laws?
	Okay, if you want to just look at the Virginia Tech thing, obviously we all know that Cho, the fellow who did this, was a danger to himself and others.
	I believe that little box was checked in a mental evaluation.
	Now that information Definitely should have been available to the gun shop owner who did a background check on Cho before handing over the weapons.
	Wouldn't you think?
	From what I've heard, Art, and I wasn't there, he voluntarily submitted after his counselors said, hey, this guy's a little crazy.
	The officers came to see him.
	He voluntarily submitted to a 48-hour watching period, whatever you want to call it.
	After that, the judge deemed he was not a danger to himself or others, and he was released.
	Yes, but any incident where you've had that box checked, where you are a danger to yourself or others, which is the reason for the hold, should be available to somebody doing a background check before you buy a gun.
	Once again, I wasn't there, but from what I've heard in the media, the 48-hour period where he went in was voluntary.
	There wasn't a box check to say he was a danger to himself or others.
	Regardless, he shouldn't have been able to buy a gun, walk in a gun store and purchase a gun, but if you wanted one, it's not hard to find.
	Virginia, New York, Massachusetts, anywhere.
	You want a gun, you can get a gun.
	It's not like you have to go into a store and complete the background check.
	You know, he purchased two 10-round magazines on eBay.
	It's obvious this gentleman was not informed about firearms.
	He planned it out, but he's not a firearms aficionado, if you know what I mean.
	And regardless, he got a gun.
	And if the guy at the gun store wouldn't have sold it to him, he would have been able to get it somewhere else.
	I suppose so.
	Alright, well listen, we're very short on time.
	Do you have a position, Stanley, on states that have concealed permit laws and allow people to carry guns?
	You know, part of me likes what the caller is saying.
	I mean, I'm not a criminal appeaser, and one of the things I talk about in the birthday party is how, even as a kid, I was fighting back whenever I could.
	If it was fist on fist, I would do it.
	I think that the studies and the statistics plainly show that by the fact that we've put so many guns out in the society in America, we're causing a lot more Armed and good.
	In my situation, I was grabbed from behind.
	If I'd had a gun on me, it probably would have gotten me killed.
	So, you know, and the fact is, is we've made it so easy to get guns and guns that are, you know, not just hunting rifles, which are, you know, easier.
	Stanley, I've got to stop you.
	I've got to stop you.
	The show is over.
	It's been a pleasure.
	The book is The Birthday Party, A Memoir of Survival.
	My friend, thank you.
	Thanks a lot, Art.
	Thanks for having me on.

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