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State Secrets II (Part 2) - What the Conspiracy!
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Josh and M are back together, so the sensible thing to do is destroy both of their brains by having M try once again to find the point to "State Secrets II" - local author Ben Vigden's book of local conspiracy theories - and communicate it to Josh. Things do not go well.
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Transcript
New Hosts and Role Changes
00:00:00
Speaker
Previously on the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy... Due to legal guidance, recent episodes of the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy have been retracted and replaced by filler episodes.
00:00:11
Speaker
We apologize for the disruption of service and the previous hosts of the podcast, Fred Ampleweight and Sam Ankles, have been fired. Yes, we here at Illuminate Incorporated are happy to announce that Wedge Bilious and Jock Shackley are back as the characters Josh and M. Although, in a cunning twist, Jock, who used to play Josh, will now play i and Wedge will no longer be playing in but Josh.
00:00:35
Speaker
So, roll on the old and possibly improved podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, and welcome to Season 3.
Season 3 Announcement
00:00:44
Speaker
Season of the Wedge.
00:00:53
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Edison and Ian Denteth.
00:01:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy in Auckland, New Zealand. I am Josh Addison in Guangzhou, China. They are Dr M Dentif. We're here, both of us, together, and the same call.
00:01:26
Speaker
Everything's back to normal. All is right in heaven. Fine. For how long, we do not know, but for the time being, we shall celebrate this unity, this unification, this coming together of podcasting spirit, bringing harmony, peace, and joy to at least one small segment of a world that probably shouldn't even exist.
Family and Holiday Discussions
00:01:50
Speaker
Probably. Yes, I've been dealing with a bit of but a bit of family illness. That's my excuse for not being around um a couple of weeks ago. Em, you've been on holiday. Yes, so my partner and i partner of the show, subscriber of the show, listener of the show, probably someone who's going, why are you just using my name right now, listening to this very episode of the show, Partner, we went to Shenzhen for a little a little bit of a break during the national holiday here in China.
00:02:19
Speaker
And we decided that as part of the break, we would go and see the sights of the world in China, because there is a park in Shenzhen, Wonders of the World, which is devoted to giving you recreations on different scales of famous monuments around the world. there's an entire section devoted to Japan.
00:02:41
Speaker
There's a small recreation of Stonehenge, not Spinal Tap small, but not quite real-life large, There's a recreation of the Sydney Opera House.
00:02:53
Speaker
There's a weirdly scaled version of Piazza San Marco in Venice, which you kind of have to go to to realise why it's so odd when you get there.
Cultural Appropriation at the Park
00:03:06
Speaker
And then, and what is possibly a diplomatic incident, there is a Maori village, which which has people in costume teaching tourists how or to do, and I put here in quotes, traditional and festive Maori dances.
00:03:30
Speaker
Right. I assume it was perfectly culturally sensitive and accurate. It was certainly something. It was affectionate, I assume. i assume it was a...
00:03:43
Speaker
It was a tribute by people who were doing the best they could with what they did. It is. mean, it's one of those things where we kind of knew we were going to a place which was going to be filled with cultural appropriation.
00:03:55
Speaker
So, for example, there's an entire section which is devoted to the cultures of South America. And what apparently the cultures of South America are, are versions of roller coasters. So there's a Machu Picchu ride you can do.
00:04:11
Speaker
which appears to be a roller coaster that goes in and outside of a mountain facade. There's a version of the Giza Plateau, which you can wander around in scale.
00:04:24
Speaker
So we kind of knew cultural appropriation and crude representation was going on, but it never really quite hits you until you see either your own culture or the indigenous culture of your country.
00:04:39
Speaker
being mangled by people who are dressing up as Maori. a But you had fun in general? We did.
00:04:52
Speaker
it I mean, I got to climb a scale representation of the Eiffel Tower, which was kind of interesting. When you say climb, do you mean like up inside or on the outside like King Kong?
00:05:03
Speaker
Up inside as opposed to on the outside like King Kong. Also, King Kong never climbed the Eiffel Tower. No, but if he did... Yeah, I know, but if he if he had... it would have been like that. That's what I'm saying. Like just the style of climbing, not necessarily the situation.
00:05:19
Speaker
anyway Anyway, we may, um judge just putting this out there, we may be getting a little bit off topic.
Book Discussion: 'State Secrets 2'
00:05:24
Speaker
Yes, but Josh, that's because neither of actually want to be on topic for today's episode.
00:05:30
Speaker
Well, that's probably not. No, we're going back to our to our What the Aotea conspiracy, where Emma's telling me about a book they found, which I'm choosing to believe is cursed, and the curse is we have to talk about it on this podcast.
00:05:44
Speaker
Yes, so we're returning back to State Secrets 2, Return Fire, the story of gun running and terrorism, what the New Zealand government doesn't want to know, by Ben C. Victor, which of course I picked up when I was in Dunedin now a couple of months ago.
00:06:00
Speaker
And in our first episode in the series, which was over a month ago, we looked at the first two chapters of this book. And now we're going to look at a few more chapters. Now, Josh, it's been a long time since we've talked about State Secrets 2, and we've never talked about State Secrets 1 because, as stated in the previous episode, State Secrets 2 is less of a sequel and more of a remake of that original book. But, Josh, tell me, what do you recall of our first episode looking at Ben's book? Give me a summary of where we got to,
00:06:39
Speaker
So that then we can launch on to where we're going to go. Well, frankly, a summary is is all I actually remember. in in well The gist of it, from what I recall, is that this book talks about a conspiracy, a gun running, an arms smuggling conspiracy whereby arms are smuggled.
00:06:59
Speaker
through Aotearoa New Zealand by international criminal organisations. I think the government was involved, ah but my main sense was that the author of this book,
00:07:11
Speaker
ah has challenges when it comes to structuring a story and things were very much all over the place and didn't make a lot of sense. And the sources that you'd chosen to investigate didn't seem to back up the things that he was saying they said in the actual book.
00:07:24
Speaker
Yes, having gone back to it again and again and again to try and make sense of the narrative, I've come up with the following analogy. Reading State Secrets 2...
00:07:36
Speaker
is like this. You go to a pub, you have a few drinks, and you end up talking to a stranger in a corner who spins you a really, really long yarn with an awful lot of digressions.
00:07:52
Speaker
And you wake up drunk the next day going, ''Oh, he told me something really interesting.'' and you're trying to recall what they said, and you're writing it down as a kind of stream of consciousness. Oh, and then he talked about this thing, but actually he talked about that thing. I can't remember, did he talk about that thing before that thing or during that thing? And there some connection to something over that.
00:08:14
Speaker
So essentially, it's like listening to a drunk man when you're drunk, having sobered up and then trying to make sense of the drunk rantings, which were themselves mitigated by your own drunkenness at the time, if that makes any sense.
00:08:30
Speaker
And you're doing this in real time stream of consciousness rather than writing down all your thoughts first and then trying to collect them and organize them in a way that makes sense. Precisely. Yeah. Yeah. No, I get it. I get it.
00:08:43
Speaker
And so the struggle with trying to create a narrative out of state secrets to... is that I don't think there is a narrative per se.
00:08:55
Speaker
There is a conclusion, and that conclusion is that the Paul White affair, which we talked about in the first episode, the rather disastrous end of the...
00:09:09
Speaker
whistleblower and possibly also blackmailer Paul White, who it said, well, ah was there the official story is he dies in a car crash, but according to some sources like Ian Wishart and Ben Victim, actually it's an assassination plot.
00:09:26
Speaker
The conclusion is there's more to the Paul White affair than you know. How we get there is another matter entirely.
Paul White and Adnan Khashoggi
00:09:38
Speaker
Right. So, i mean, i know i know there are multiple chapters. Last time you said that, like, we talked about pretty much chapter one the entire time because there was so much there and it jumped all over the place. I seem to recall last time you saying that the subsequent chapters sort of go a bit quicker,
00:09:58
Speaker
possibly because there's less to them. So what are we going to talk about today? Well, we're kind of almost halfway through the book. So I think the point where I got up to in the last set of reading is about chapter eight, which is about halfway through the book. So we're going to be looking at around about six chapters in this particular episode of State Secrets 2.
00:10:27
Speaker
So the important thing to note is there are two main characters in this narrative. There's Paul White, whose unfortunate end is going to be explained by the narrative in this book.
00:10:39
Speaker
And then there's Adnan Khashoggi, uncle to Jamal, who is the main villain of this text. Having been told that he is the main character of the text, he actually disappears for several chapters, so it doesn't get mentioned at all.
00:10:54
Speaker
So he's kind of like a shadowy figure lurking in the background, as opposed to someone that Ben is going to come back to time and time again. Right, so it'll just be an interesting surprise when he pops back in to to ector to reveal he was he was behind behind things all along.
00:11:11
Speaker
Well, except he's not really much of a surprise when he does pop back and he just gets mentioned and then the narrative continues. He's a main character sense that cameos in a lot of scenarios.
00:11:24
Speaker
despite the fact he doesn't actually seem to be doing much in those things. It's almost like where's Wally of conspiracy theory narratives. Actually, there's a big conspiracy going on, but Wally just keeps on being involved in all of them, maybe in minor parts, maybe in major parts, but he's always there.
00:11:42
Speaker
He's always there, Josh. Adnan Khashoggi is the where's Wally of Ben's conspiracy theory. That's where's Waldo for our American listeners.
00:11:54
Speaker
Yes, that's all. I've never quite understood why she no i because i have never quite understood why the why why do Americans need to have things renamed for their own local seems very strange.
00:12:07
Speaker
i don't know And probably more more worth looking into than the contents of this book, but the contents of this book are what you have in front of you right now. So hit me. Where does it go next?
1990s Events and Real Estate Rackets
00:12:18
Speaker
All right. Now, I also need to remind you of two other characters from the first episode. You need to recall the BCCI, the Bank of Credit Commerce International, although Ben calls them the Bank of Crooks and Criminals International because he's quite witty in that way.
00:12:34
Speaker
And then, of course, there's Simon Spitz, who's who was this character that Ben makes out to be this major drug runner who was investigated by the serious fraud office back in the day.
00:12:46
Speaker
Although, as we saw when we actually went and looked at the actual sources that Ben relies upon, it turns out that Simon Spitz was certainly doing some untoward things, but wasn't really the major character he makes him out to be.
00:13:02
Speaker
So yes, we've got Paul White, Adnan Khashoggi, the BCCI and Simon Spitz. Right. Locked that in So what does he have to say about them or some combination of them?
00:13:16
Speaker
Well, now we have to travel back in time. Of course we do. How far? We're going back to the We're going back to 1990s specifically.
00:13:27
Speaker
Righto, 1990, Dick Tracy comes out in the movie theatres trying to cash in on the popularity of 1989's Batman. It does not work out. Interesting film, though.
00:13:38
Speaker
Interesting film. ah Madonna in a topless, and not topless, in a see-through top in what is ostensibly a kid's film. I remember seeing that. man That was... Yeah, but a lot of Dick Tracy doesn't make any sense for any particular audience. It's kind of the reason why it flopped. it wasn't really directed anyone other than its main star.
00:14:02
Speaker
Right. so so So what does Dick Tracy have to do with this book? Well, Dick Tracy would be the kind of person who would be chasing down a villain like Abdul Nadal.
00:14:14
Speaker
Now, Josh, you know who Abdul Nadal was? I really don't. So he was a Palestinian militant. He basically split from PLO and formed his own political movement, ANO.
00:14:30
Speaker
It is suspected by some that actually the split from the PLO was actually generated by Mossad because it is suspected that Nadal was actually on Mossad's payroll.
00:14:43
Speaker
Whatever the case, he's now dead. And he was possibly assassinated on the orders of Saddam Hussein. Oh, OK. So significant. Yeah, this is well before his death, because apparently in 1990, he visits Queenstown back in the South Island of Aotoroa, New Zealand.
00:15:04
Speaker
Aha. Going for a skiing holiday, no doubt, and nothing else. Well, that's the thing. So he's apparently not picked up by the authorities because as he's a Palestinian militant, he's at this stage considered to be a terrorist of some particular description and thus is on a whole bunch of wanted lists all around the world.
00:15:25
Speaker
He's apparently not picked up because he's able to come into the country because he's traveling on a diplomatic passport. So that's the first red flag here. Why is a Palestinian militant travelling on a diplomatic passport to Queenstown?
00:15:42
Speaker
That's a good question. Does he supply an answer, or is it still are we still at the innuendo phase? Well, right here lies the issue. So, Nadal is said to have had BCCI account, which is probably plausible, given that the BCCI was largely operating in the Middle East, and whilst it engaged in some criminal activity,
00:16:09
Speaker
or at least it is allegedly engaged in some criminal activity, it also was in many respects a fairly normal bank. So having a BCCI account doesn't make you a criminal even if the bank itself is engaging in criminal behaviour.
00:16:25
Speaker
So he has a BCCI account allegedly and is travelling on an alleged diplomatic passport and is allegedly visiting in Queenstown.
00:16:38
Speaker
But Ben suggests that the British MI6 has an agent in our intelligence community who tells the IRD that Queenstown is off limits.
00:16:53
Speaker
The IRD? Yes, the Inland Revenue Department. Not the NZSIS or anyone like that. Yes, now this is a bit confusing because as you are quite rightly thinking, and as we're about to explain to our non-New Zealand listeners, the Inland Revenue Department is not a member of the New Zealand intelligence agencies.
00:17:16
Speaker
It is in fact just a revenue department, thus its name, Inland Revenue Department, and thus i don't tend to be engaged in the Policing of international criminals.
00:17:29
Speaker
But Ben takes it. The reason why the IRD has been told that Queenstown is off limits is there's a billion dollar real estate racket going on in Queenstown.
00:17:43
Speaker
Right, and the suggestion is that Adnan is involved in this. Abdul. Abdul, sorry, yeah getting my name mixed up. yes Except here and lies the issue, because Ben doesn't seem to have spotted that when he talks about the intelligence community telling the IRD that Queenstown is off-limits, this is well after Nadal's visit to Queenstown.
00:18:06
Speaker
Right. does does he Is that coming from his book? He's messed up his own dates. right Yes, he's messed up his own timeline. So if he's correct that MI6 is telling our intelligence community that Queenstown is off limits when he's telling the IRD that, he's talking about a period which is well after Nadal's visit to Queenstown.
00:18:31
Speaker
Right. But he's still going to claim that he was there for some sort of dodgy real estate dealings? I mean, it is ed it is alleged he was seen there and thus that that alleged spotting needs to be explained.
00:18:48
Speaker
Right. Okay, so that's a that's that that's ah thing, i guess. that's another dar That's another point on the cork board to attach Red Stream to.
00:18:58
Speaker
is it, though? but i to hope now these None of this makes sense. I don't think it is because we have ah claim that Nadal is visiting Queenstown.
00:19:13
Speaker
And we have a claim that MI6 is telling the IRD not to investigate real estate rackets going on in Queenstown. And we have a claim that these two things are linked.
00:19:25
Speaker
But we A, we don't know that Nadal visits Queenstown. And we don't actually know that MI6 is telling the IRD not to investigate real estate rackets going on in Queenstown.
00:19:36
Speaker
I don't think we can attach any red string to this at all. But he spends quite some time talking about this. And just unsupported claims. They're just things he said happened, but he doesn't refer to any evidence or sources. Well, he has sources, but they're unnamed.
00:19:51
Speaker
Ah, So is this is this going to be another thing that that's brought up now and never never come back to again? Well, i and this is a terrible thing to insinuate. We're going to insinuate it anyway.
00:20:05
Speaker
I think the fact that this person has a Middle Eastern name is the reason why this comes up. Because Nadal is very close to Khashoggi, despite the fact that one's a Palestinian militant and the other is from a completely different country entirely.
00:20:24
Speaker
Yes, yes. So but he says you think he's just sort of cast his net wide and any time he saw a Middle Eastern sounding name popping up in New Zealand over the last 50 years, he said, aha.
00:20:37
Speaker
Yes, a lot like Alan Partridge. Right, very good. Okay. I hesitate to ask, but where does the book go from there? air Well, then we get some actual support for the claim that arms smuggling was going on in the South Island of New Zealand.
00:20:53
Speaker
Right, okay.
New Zealand Military and Arms Discussions
00:20:54
Speaker
Now we're back on familiar territory then. This is what we were talking about last time. What is this evidence? All right, so, Bend's claim is that the New Zealand military sold out-of-date arms overseas, and that eventually our out-of-date armaments found their way to other countries.
00:21:20
Speaker
And in some cases, these other countries were engaging in either internal terrorism due to civil war or external terrorism.
00:21:31
Speaker
These armaments found their way into the arms of people who committed acts of terror, notably against the United States. Right. i don't know I don't know how this works, really. is that is Is this something that would have been above board to begin with? And the suggestion is that after they were sold, they were moved around? or was or Or is them being sold and in the first place not something that should happen? I genuinely don't know how we deal with out-of-date weapons in the military. So this is the thing.
00:22:01
Speaker
The selling of old armaments to other countries or private military forces is unfortunately quite common.
00:22:12
Speaker
but Largely because the military goes, we're not going to destroy these guns. We're just going to sell them on. but it's the reason why we had out-of-date airplanes for a long time and probably still do back home.
00:22:25
Speaker
We bought someone else's aircraft. out-of-date military craft to supplement our air force. So this is actually quite a common thing. That doesn't mean it's a good thing.
00:22:36
Speaker
It is, in fact, quite deplorable, but countries do tend to sell old armaments rather than destroy them. So if this is Ben's evidence for gun running, it's not particularly good evidence.
00:22:51
Speaker
I mean, it evidence that our armament may have ended up in the hands of people doing bad things. But it's not deliberately funneling those arms to those people.
00:23:04
Speaker
It's more, unfortunately, this is what government allow militaries to do. Yes, yes, unless you can show that our government actually sold these weapons directly to terrorists.
00:23:16
Speaker
Once they've left our hands, we can't really control where they go after that, can we? No, no. So if that's the evidence for arm smuggling from the South Island, it's not particularly good evidence.
00:23:30
Speaker
and And we can add to that that his claim that Simon Spitz was running a major gun-running smuggling ring through his airline, which he claimed that Charles Sturt of the SFO had proven in his book, and we saw in the last episode, that no such thing was proven in that book whatsoever.
00:23:51
Speaker
It does seem that Ben's claims here are on increasingly shaky grounds. Okay, so we've got mysterious Palestinian, we've got arms sales to other countries. is is Is there a common... No, I don't know. not i'm going to ask. that Of course there's no common threat. Well, where does he go next?
00:24:13
Speaker
Iran-Contra. Of course he does. Well, that was arms sales adjacent, wasn't it? Well, yeah. So he does have a point that the US, via such projects as Iran culture or project democracy, have ended up arming people who then eventually became the enemies of the US. So, you know, the US arms Taliban, they arm Taliban to cause problems in Afghanistan.
00:24:43
Speaker
Eventually, the Taliban become a problem for the US as well. So there is this quite terrible thing of some governments have actually quite deliberately taken their old arms, armed the enemies of their enemies, only to find out that the enemies of their enemies become their enemies as well.
00:25:04
Speaker
Is it true that the end credits of Rambo 3 originally said ah this goes out to the brave fighters of the Mujahideen and then it was eventually changed to to the brave people of Afghanistan or something?
00:25:17
Speaker
Or is the claim that it used to directly reference the Mujahideen just sort of a ah more recent urban myth than and it's been corroborated with Photoshop's? I don't know. i've heard I've heard both claims being made, and it's one of those things. I don't want to stake a position here because I'm fairly sure there's a 50-50 chance I'm going to get it completely wrong.
00:25:41
Speaker
Okay, I'm just looking it up now on Wikipedia. Apparently the film ends with the on-screen caption, this film is dedicated to the gallant people of Afghanistan, and apparently it wasn't until after the September 11 attacks that we began an urban legend that said it used to originally say to the brave Mujahideen fighters of Afghanistan.
00:25:59
Speaker
So there you go. According to Wikipedia, it's an urban myth. Are we living in a world where that did happen and it's been it's been subtly changed by some kind of Rambo-Rombo effect?
00:26:17
Speaker
No. Oh, okay. Well, fine then. All right, so going back to Iran-Contra. So Ben does have a point that this stuff has happened, but this is in no way a major revelation.
00:26:30
Speaker
Most people, I say most people, most people who know anything about the politics of the 20th century are aware that things like Iran-Contra were going on and were deplorable.
Smuggling Allegations and Electricity Usage
00:26:42
Speaker
New Zealand's involvement apparently begins in 1987.
00:26:50
Speaker
And it's all focused around T.Y. Point. Now, Josh, why is T.Y. Point so famous back home? um It's famous for not... It's a name that I've heard, but I'm ridiculously ignorant of my own country's history.
00:27:06
Speaker
So I know it's significant, but I don't actually know the details of why. you know You're not aware of the large amount of power we send there? Oh, is that the smelter?
00:27:18
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, the smelter. That's how I know it. Aluminum smelting. Yeah, okay, yeah, so that's why. Because everyone pops up in the news that they use enormous amounts of electricity and then always get good deals or not and affect the prices of electricity for the rest of the country. Right.
00:27:33
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, in a kind of corporate conspiracy... angle Kamelko, who run the smelter at Tiwai Point, keep on threatening to leave New Zealand and do their aluminium smeltering elsewhere unless the government gives them a good deal for power.
00:27:54
Speaker
Successive governments both left and right have always kind of folded to the corporation. As many people point out, if the smelter wasn't there, electricity prices back home would be a lot lower because aluminium smeltering uses a huge amount of power and it could be done elsewhere. It doesn't need to be done back home.
00:28:14
Speaker
The interesting thing about having an aluminium smelter at the kind of the bottom of the South Island is, of course, there's an awful lot of industrial trade and shipping going on there because you need to bring the aluminium in because we don't have the ore in our backyard and then you need to ship the refined product out.
00:28:35
Speaker
So, of course, it would be the perfect place if you were running gun smuggling, to run it through a point where there's a lot of industrial trade going on all the time.
00:28:48
Speaker
I hate to say it, but that actually makes sense. Yeah. And so his focus when he's talking about this is about a corporation called Minerva Security, a New Zealand Zimbabwean security firm who he claims may have smuggled guns via Tiwai Point back in 1987. Right.
00:29:10
Speaker
right and And once again, does he cite evidence for this? Well, right, so here is here here is where, once again, it gets a bit fuzzy. So Manoeuvre Security gets liquidated in 1987, but an anonymous source claims that they reinvented themselves and are working as private military contractors in Iraq at the time of writing.
00:29:35
Speaker
Okay. I mean, that makes them sound like possibly dodgy individuals who wouldn't be above gun smuggling, but not proof positive. And this is where Simon Spitz comes back into the story.
00:29:49
Speaker
Good old Simon. At around about this time, his Australian operations... ostensibly delivering food to Somalia but according to Ben he's actually delivering drugs instead and you know who is running the drugs for?
00:30:09
Speaker
um i Adnan Khashoggi No, the UN Adnan doesn't appear for a chapter Sorry, I forgot, yes no no he disappears for a while yeah okay yeah so i've got'm going to draw suggest ga and I'm going to be right eventually I mean, eventually, yes. So drug running has is been run for the UN. Okay.
00:30:29
Speaker
ah but Because the UN is... this Is Ben a... The UN is evil type? I think so. I think i think he's against world cup world governance, big or small, I suppose. Yeah, I guess that fits. Yep, yep, okay. Drug running is not gun smuggling, though.
00:30:49
Speaker
No, but... Ben claims that Australian journalists show that the UN was working with Spitz and the US State Department to do something.
00:31:03
Speaker
Something. That sounds suspicious. Is it? We don't know what that something was. Right. And the evidence here is very much anonymous source said or Ian Wishart was contacted by an alleged member of.
00:31:19
Speaker
Because sourcing has not been strongpoint and thus it's very hard to work out what is and isn't speculation and what is and isn't exaggeration.
00:31:30
Speaker
Okay. So once again, keeping score, we have Mysterious Palestinian, we have... Stuff happening through TY Point, we have drugs being run to Africa.
00:31:44
Speaker
ah Well, again, is is is this still just some sort of buckshot scattering of of mysterious things and and dodgy personages? Well, I think the general tenor here is to try to show to the reader that a lot of bad stuff is happening in Aotoroa, New Zealand, that you're just not being told about. Okay, that's fair enough, I suppose.
00:32:05
Speaker
But um is he going to actually introduce the main the main thrust of anything? all right. Here we go to chapter four, and this is where Adnan Khashoggi shows up again.
00:32:18
Speaker
Right.
Viktor Bout and Arms Smuggling
00:32:19
Speaker
As well as a character called Victor Bolt. Now, do you know who Victor Bolt is? That's B-O-U-T. So it's a Russian last name. Oh, right. I was going to say Usain's uncle, but tom ah no, I do not.
00:32:33
Speaker
All right. So Victor Bolt is a convicted armed smuggler and was the prototype for Nick Cage's character in Lord of War. Oh, okay.
00:32:44
Speaker
Is that true? It's true, yes. Oh, yeah okay. Yeah, Nick Cage's character Lord of War is based upon Victor Bolt. Okay, well, it's so he's he's someone, right?
00:32:55
Speaker
He's a vegetarian, and as we're about to find out, being a vegetarian doesn't necessarily make someone a good person because he... was a weapons manufacturer and a former Soviet military translator.
00:33:13
Speaker
He gained the nicknames the Merchant of Death and the Sanctions Buster when it was revealed that he was illegally smuggling arms from Eastern Europe to Africa and the Middle East.
00:33:24
Speaker
during the 1990s and the early 2000s. He was convicted of a conspiracy to kill Americans and spent 10 years in prison in the US as a consequence, only to return to Russia and become an elected politician.
00:33:45
Speaker
Okay, so so that this is a person who was doing the sorts of dodgy things this book is about at the time period that this book has been interested in so far. But I notice you mentioned Africa and Asia.
00:33:59
Speaker
and New Zealand's not in either of those. ah Also, there's one thing I do want to point out. Victor Bolt now appears as an occasional correspondent on Infowars. Oh, okay. Yeah.
00:34:10
Speaker
Good for him, I suppose. Yeah. so he gets a he gets mentioned, and then we just move on to the fact that Ben's been watching episodes of Border Patrol.
00:34:21
Speaker
Of course we do. Of course we do. When you say that, do you mean he's going to be talking about border issues a bit and it's obvious where he's been getting his inspiration, or does he literally start talking about episodes of Border Patrol?
00:34:33
Speaker
Well, no. So he admits he watches an episode of Border Patrol showing New Zealand troops getting ready to go to Afghanistan and thinks that the plane's livery looks very close to the livery on Simon Spitzer's aircraft.
00:34:49
Speaker
Oh, okay. Okay. I mean, again, he so suspicious takes it that this must mean that the the plane that's taking New Zealand troops to Afghanistan belongs to Simon Spitz. It's not just similar, it must be one and the same.
00:35:05
Speaker
And as we know, Charles Sturt said that Spitz was a New Zealand-based gunrunner, even though we know that's not true. Okay, so so he's now saying he's taking he's he's transporting our troops...
00:35:18
Speaker
And which I guess would be a good cover if if you're also, smart you'd be you'd be taking guns anyway, so why not just chuck a few more in there and then offload them discreetly somewhere else?
00:35:31
Speaker
He has additional evidence to support this claim. So he claims that he identifies a plane that was used by New Zealand troops around about that time that was also used by an associate of Simon Spitz.
00:35:46
Speaker
Okay, again, tangential. but and you have to remember, Simon Spitz used to run and a shipping company by air. So being an associate of Simon Spitz could actually be a fairly broad category of other drug runners or gun runners or simply other aviators.
00:36:07
Speaker
Yes, I understand that airplanes can be used to transport things other than guns and drugs. Yeah, but it's not very likely. Oh, well. I mean, we'll see. yeah we will say So a lot of this hinges on a plane with the registration UR82008 and a dossier of papers found on August 5th in the year 2000 when the Italian police arrested a Ukrainian-Israeli mobster, Leonard Minham, in Italy.
00:36:38
Speaker
Now, said plane had, on March the 14th of 1999, sent munitions to Burkina Faso and these munitions were used by the Revolutionary United Front in the Civil War in Sierra Leone.
00:36:55
Speaker
And said operation was funded by... Adnan Khashoggi. Or at least part funded by buy him. so I got it i got right that time. You did, yes. I mean, you were you were primed. I mean, I was going to get it right. It's going to happen eventually, but yeah.
00:37:10
Speaker
Okay, so good, good, good. Yeah.
00:37:15
Speaker
it's still There's still no through no no real through line here. There's just, you know, drugs, planes, arms, arms dealers. here's Here's a whole bunch of them. Guilt by association. by association. is Does he think if he can just get enough enough of these things all together and stir them up in a pot, he's going to going to come up with some sort of a cohesive conspiracy theory?
00:37:39
Speaker
Well, yeah, because i mean this is we go back to the point you made before, that planes can be used for more than one thing. Because the fact that the same plane was used for two things doesn't tell us the two things are connected. So, for example, we wouldn't say that United Airlines is a terrorist airline just because four of those planes were hijacked by hijackers on September 2001. Yeah.
00:38:04
Speaker
And we certainly wouldn't say that the planes before they were hijacked were proto-terrorist planes. Those happen to be planes that were used for terrorism at a particular point in time, if you accept the official theory of generally.
00:38:17
Speaker
and we do generally Well, i mean, we do generally think the planes are proto-terrorist planes, or we do generally accept the official theory of nine eleven That kind of ambiguity could get could could get you into a Ben Vigton book there, Josh.
00:38:34
Speaker
Oh, sweet. In that case, I retract nothing. Yeah, and mean he does the same thing in Chapter 5. He notes that two Air Sophia planes did business in New Zealand and that Air Sophia has run guns in the past. So you make the connection.
00:38:51
Speaker
Well, yes, and I gather Ben's not going to, so I guess one of us will have to. And so he tries to link all of this to Aotoro New Zealand via basically cases of associates of people like Shogi or Spitz having connections to New Zealand firms, which is interesting, but it's not a particularly telling thing.
00:39:15
Speaker
No, yeah again, it's still it's still just a whole lot of it's His chalkboard is all all pins and no red string as far as I can tell. But he does take it that people in positions of authority are aware of his investigation. Because in chapter five... his investigation okay Well, remember he's he's at this stage, he's releasing Deadline, the the investigative magazine, which he claims that the New Zealand air Force has, because they've bought copies of it in the past, must be up to date with everything that he's doing. So he writes this.
00:39:53
Speaker
Related to this point, the grumpy non-commissioned officer who had maintained the military stopped using such firms, for example Pacific Express, Simon Spitz, when they found they found them to be dodgy.
00:40:05
Speaker
This statement should be put into the context that the New Zealand military ban on such firms only happened after UR 82008 made an appearance in deadline in September 2003.
00:40:19
Speaker
Further, the alleged dropping of such airlines only occurred after the publication of several articles in this issue by deadline. Remember, it can be proven that Defense HQ, by their payment by check for issues of deadline, were paying close attention to deadline at the stage.
00:40:38
Speaker
Further, State Secrets had become a best-selling book, had also dealt with the issue, causing an additional controversy to erupt at civil aviation, or so Wishart maintains.
00:40:48
Speaker
While in turn, Spitzer's activities, which were enlarged upon in State Secrets, were covered by Rod Vaughan from TVNZ's assignment, as well as covered by several newspapers as early 1991.
00:41:02
Speaker
Right, a little bit a little bit of self-insertion there, I guess. and A lot of shades of Alex Jones there. a And also the claim that X bought so X read is a pretty weak argument because I'm looking at a whole host of academic books I have bought and never read.
00:41:21
Speaker
The fact I've bought the book doesn't mean anything about whether I even have an intention to read it. Yes, and and and again, I understand there are multiple people in the New Zealand military.
00:41:33
Speaker
no, no, no. More than a couple? Just one or two. okay. That non non-commissioned officer probably is, you know, the entire ranking military at the time.
00:41:46
Speaker
Right, and so if he's reading deadline, then then they all are because he is all of them. ah Okay, yeah I'm sold, I'm sold. You should be. Now, at this stage, Charles Sturt reappears in the store storyline because one thing that Sturt notes in his book...
00:42:03
Speaker
is that he doesn't think there's anything to the Paul White assassination story. So he very much thinks that Paul White was a drunk who got drunk one night and drunkenly drove into a pillar, killing himself by drunkenness.
00:42:18
Speaker
And Vigdon finds it very amusing that Sturt would believe that, whilst also believing that Simon Spitz is a drug runner, Which of course is amusing for me, for the sheer fact that having read Charles Sturtz's book, it's fairly clear that yes, he does think that Paul White killed himself in a drink-driving incident, but he also doesn't think that Simon Spitz is the person that Ben Vigdon does.
00:42:43
Speaker
Yeah, is is is Ben still referring to his book as a source by this point? Yes, he is, because he also notes that Sturt testifies in the book that Eastern Bloc weapons regularly pass through New Zealand, and Sturt makes no such claim in his book whatsoever.
00:43:01
Speaker
Well, that's a bit depressing, to be honest. Yeah. ah wait What chapter are we at now? So we're somewhere in the midst of chapters six and seven.
00:43:11
Speaker
Okay, all right. um Okay, I'll just keep keep it coming. Where does he go next? Well, all right, so we've got...
South Island Smuggling Paradise
00:43:19
Speaker
What we've got so far is a claim that the bottom of the South Island of Aotearoa, New Zealand, is a drug and gunrunners paradise.
00:43:29
Speaker
So things are being shipped in and out of Tiyoipo all the bloody time, and they're being shipped overseas to fund Islamic terrorists for the most part. Now, Ben then has a section...
00:43:44
Speaker
on the fact that his military past has been called into question and It's one of those things. It's a little bit like David Icke in that Ben does kind of make fun of his low-level military intelligence background Having worked for the military for a short amount of time But then he gets a little bit snide about his critics and he writes There are basically two types of people who read my material.
00:44:15
Speaker
Those who know from their own experience that my statements on NZ z role and I'm reading verbatim here so the grammar mistakes are bent and not mine. My statements on NZ role and highly classified covert operations are usually accurate.
00:44:29
Speaker
You get it right about 70% of the time to quote one informed source. Then there are the wannabes. The latter never come to me to directly challenge me with their doubts.
00:44:40
Speaker
Instead, they choose to speak knowledgeably, end quote, though without displaying their own qualifications in the open, about material they clearly know little about.
00:44:51
Speaker
Okay, that did actually, I think, possibly gives me the greatest understanding into this book of anything I've heard so far. It's the kind of book where the author will suddenly ah diverge off into defending himself from his critics and suggesting that people who don't like him are ignorant. So I think I'm now actually in the right mindset to appreciate the story that you've been laying out for me, because I think I get that kind of person.
00:45:16
Speaker
I have a feeling Ben would think we are in that latter camp. Okay. Almost certainly. It is true. We haven't reached out for him for comment in any way, shape or form, but that's because that's not what we do on this podcast.
00:45:29
Speaker
No, no, we don't generally. Said that one time we talked to David Icke. Isn't that weird? One time we talked to David Icke. Yeah, that is that is still one of those. That really did happen. And they reached out to us. We did not reach out to them.
00:45:46
Speaker
that's the I think that's the oddest part of the entire story. They wanted to know whether we wanted to talk to David Icke as opposed to us finding there was an opportunity and chasing it.
00:45:57
Speaker
have you I've been getting more if so or more emails from the person who wants us to read their book on how on who really killed RFK. Oh, so i they've started emailing me now. Oh, good. They've obviously decided that you are not responding, so I have to respond instead.
00:46:14
Speaker
i just i just don't tend to I just tend to not respond to these things. The person who wanted us to interview Richard Gage, I never got back to them either. We're just not that kind of podcast.
00:46:26
Speaker
No, no. we were not good at it either, i would imagine. It's not all our thing. It's not what we do. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so so with a bit of a bit of um a bit of the author's personality you more clearly established, what have you got next
Ben Vigdon's Stakeout Story
00:46:41
Speaker
for me?
00:46:41
Speaker
Well, we're kind of coming to the close of this discussion, but I do want to talk to you about the time that Ben Vigdon staked out a person.
00:46:52
Speaker
Staked a person out? We're not talking in the vampire sense, we're talking in the cups of coffee on the dashboard of your car. Yes, yep, okay. So this is a large section of chapter six, which is called Aotoro Arms Incorporated.
00:47:09
Speaker
And it's one of those things so i tried to work out, can I actually summarize this? It goes on for five pages. So I'm going to try and do a condensed reading of the material.
00:47:21
Speaker
And please do stop me if you think there's something that's worth talking about. In 2005, after having written the article Aotearoa Arms Inc, which suggested that NZ was up to its bloody neck in Iraq via groups like Control Risk, who were busily recusing NZAS, police and other government parliamentary personnel, I was surprised to find that after a week of discovering people trying to get hold of me could not, my work phone, a prepaid unit, had been disconnected.
00:47:52
Speaker
One such person trying to contact me directly because of the article, thinking laterally, contacted me through one of my clients who advertises in Deadline. This client, an Irishman, identified the mysterious caller as an Irishman trying to sound English.
00:48:08
Speaker
Though the means supplied to me, I arranged to meet the mysterious stranger whose introduction had begun, youd better watch your back. You have seriously pissed off the South Africans. He gave me his name to which I promptly responded, don't worry, I'll soon forget it.
00:48:22
Speaker
It's not like your real name, is it? It's not like it's your real name, is it? The mysterious Irishman, hereafter referred to as Danny Boy, made no attempt to correct me.
00:48:33
Speaker
Isn't Danny Boy Scottish? Oh Danny Boy, the pipes are playing. and pretty sure. What's an Irish person trying to sound English sound like anyway? Yes.
00:48:45
Speaker
hello there, a very jolly good show, top of the morning to you, to be sure, to be sure. and don't know. I mean, a lot like the Scots,
00:48:56
Speaker
The Irish are actually fairly good at putting on a fake English accent to get around in English society. I mean, a lot like the Scots, they don't like to, but many Irish people, like many Scottish people, have a fake English accent ready to go in order to not have to deal with the racism of the English when visiting that blighted country.
00:49:17
Speaker
So I imagine an Irishman trying to sound English just sounds English. Oh, well. So what does our Irish slash Englishman have to say next? Well, so this meeting takes place at Nova Cafe in Dunedin. I have no idea whether that place actually exists anymore.
00:49:37
Speaker
And Danny Boy drops a bombshell. Tim Spicer was due to arrive in Dunedin to meet with New Zealand government officials. Danny Boy, who had claimed to serve in some shitholes, stated he had recently just come from the Green Zone from Iraq.
00:49:50
Speaker
From here, the conversation soon turned to discuss the arms claims of Paul White and Citibank. The shifty Irishman then opened his bag and produced what he claimed was Spicer's Citibank account number from a bunch of documents wrapped military-style in a plastic bag and bundled together with a rubber band.
00:50:09
Speaker
amongst the bundles he flipped through i caught a glimpse of a brand new canadian passport with a few apparent entries an item which conflicted radically with the apparent age and claims of this well-travelled irishman The feeling that I should not make the mistake of treating Danny Boy as a friend grew when on parting I was made with surprisingly limp handshake and Danny Boy's unwillingness to make eye contact.
00:50:35
Speaker
This and a few other events that had taken place during the interview had the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. One example was the crew cut gallery employee who I have never seen at the gallery before or since who turned up halfway through our talk and made fairly obvious attempts to study non-existent art on the walls of the video booth or inching closer and closer until we shut up.
00:51:00
Speaker
Although I was conscious at the time that the entire operation might have been set up or a hoax, I contacted TVNZ's John McDermott, courtesy of Ian Fraser's PA, who made an appointment with him.
00:51:12
Speaker
I explained that my plan was to attempt to secure Spicer and videotape. However, I was not overly confident that anyone would turn up. As I explained, i was pretty certain I was being sent on a wild goose chase.
00:51:23
Speaker
The entire exercise could be a ruse designed to get me to write a story, to embarrass myself, reducing the impact of any future stories I might write, or destroying my own credibility. So, I mean, at this point, what you've got onto, he's now he's now shifted entirely to talking about himself.
00:51:40
Speaker
Has it actually been that way all through the book? and see Has he always been doing it as in this this is what I got up to investigating this stuff? Or has he actually swerved from describing various events and facts to just talking about himself?
00:51:55
Speaker
He does weave his own life into the story to a very large extent. There are points in time where it does feel like this book could have been written by the ghostwriters who write the Alan Partridge.
00:52:05
Speaker
Sad. There is a sense that he has to put himself into the story, no matter what the story is. Okay. Okay, well so how does the story continue?
00:52:19
Speaker
Originally, I'd hoped to use two teams, using multiple cars to cover the two possible airstrips that Spicer would have to use. Having reportedly flown into Auckland at that time, made air travel the only way possible to be in Dunedin in the time frame given by Danny Boyd.
00:52:35
Speaker
Unfortunately, even the best laid plans can go pear-shaped at the best of times. One and one after another, my team became unavailable on the night in question. Thus, with surveillance team of two in a second-hand ladder, we set off into the night on our way to Dunedin Airport, having literally tossed a coin in the air to pick one of the two possible locations on a whim.
00:52:57
Speaker
Things only went from bad to worse, and the option of the drooling special forces began to look attractive when we arrived late to the airport, after having to go back and look for the video battery of my camera, which had fallen out when I'd stopped to answer the call of nature on the roadside in the dark.
00:53:12
Speaker
Spice, surprisingly, was nowhere to be seen, which, considering the reality of our farcical news team, was probably a good thing, all things considered. I mean, that's a nice anecdote, I guess. Especially since it turns out that Spicer wasn't in Dunedin, he was in Wellington the entire time.
00:53:31
Speaker
Right. is this Is this representative of Ben's spycraft? I mean, it's the first example of investigations going wrong.
00:53:42
Speaker
There may be further examples later on the book. I haven't got there yet. Do we have more to talk about this time, or are we near the end of this time? not. That is the end of this particular mammoth session on State Secrets 2, the Ben Vigdon story.
00:53:59
Speaker
Right, so the story of Ben Vigdon losing a camera battery when he stops to take a piss. Yes. a that's that's that's that's That's drama, that is.
00:54:11
Speaker
that's actually I want more urination stories in my conspiracy theory books, really. Adds a bit of, I don't know. Piss and vinegar? bit piss and vinegar. I was going to say bit of grit, but if your urine's adding a bit of grit, you've got kidney stones. Yeah, and you should see a doctor in those situations. No, definitely do that.
00:54:30
Speaker
Okay, so I mean... yeah I feel the same way I did after the end of the first one. Basically, we've seen a whole lot of stuff and that does not appear to have really gone anywhere aside from just the sort of cloud of general claims about dodgy arms dealing things going on somewhere involving someone,
Potential Sequel to 'State Secrets 2'
00:54:52
Speaker
maybe. Yeah.
00:54:53
Speaker
And that's as good a software as anyone's going to give thus far because, I mean, I've excluded a lot of material in order to try and find some kind of through line.
00:55:04
Speaker
And as you can see, that through line is not an obvious one. It really is not, no, no. Okay, well, that sounds like a good ah good place to leave things then before both of our minds are completely destroyed. We can come back and and I think we so we need to carry on this way, I think. Do a bit of this, then just take a rest for a while and then then build up to it again once we're once we're again up to the task.
00:55:30
Speaker
Oh, I should point out, when I was in Dunedin and picked up this book from the hard-to-find bookstore in Dunedin, because there is still hard-to-find bookstore in Dunedin, the proprietor of the store said that Ben had been into the store recently and was talking about releasing another book.
00:55:49
Speaker
Oh, is it State Secret 3? State Harder? Mate, if we're lucky. We'll just have to see. ah But no, that's enough. that's That's more than enough for now, i think, of State Secrets 2. There'll be more later another time.
00:56:08
Speaker
But for now, we will draw this episode to a close and then go and record a bonus episode for our long-suffering patrons who've been without a bonus episode for a little wee while because we haven't haven't recorded one while we've been doing filler episodes and and and old episodes from the can.
00:56:25
Speaker
um And we I think there's there's been a month's worth of happenings, and more than a month's worth of happenings, I think, since our last one. So we can do a little bit of a little bit of a retrospective of the um ah important events over the last wee while.
00:56:38
Speaker
but ah little bit of um updates about other people's podcasts, maybe? and Indeed. Indeed. I have thoughts. I have thoughts. And whatever else strikes our fancies. So um if you want to be a patron and you're not currently, just go to Patreon and search for The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy and sign yourself up. And if you don't want to be a patron, that's fine too. You've sat through almost an hour of whatever the hell that was.
00:57:04
Speaker
ah So frankly, you're our kind of people. Yes, I do wonder whether listening to these episodes on State Secrets 2 is like trying to survive a major medical event.
00:57:16
Speaker
Because it often feels like it when when going... And the next point is, which doesn't we in any way connect to the last point, but bear with me, it just feels... I like too fun ah do find it amusing because of that sketch. I forget the comedian's name, but there's a ah little sketch called it's something like the...
00:57:35
Speaker
The part of the... God damn it, I've forgotten it now completely. The part when the plot of the movie loses you completely and it has a comedian doing two parts as the American and it's Michael Caine, essentially. yeah yeah So that's Michael Spicer, the British comedian, and doing basically a piss take of the kind of narrative things that Christopher Nolan does.
00:57:58
Speaker
Yeah, yes it's weird yeah. There's a movie, it's something along the lines of when the the plot of the latest Christopher Nolan film loses you completely or something. and has Yeah. and As the Michael Caine character just constantly... bre It's just the names, constantly new names. Here's this new guy.
00:58:12
Speaker
Yeah, although... The best version of this is actually a Python sketch, and it's on the second side of the album of the trailer of the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which is a concept album, which is great.
00:58:31
Speaker
It's essentially the concept of the album is they're covering the first showing of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. And side two starts with a sketch called The Story So Far, which is basically a whole bunch of unrelated events, one after the other.
00:58:48
Speaker
It's absolute genius. Right, the video, don't go on YouTube and look and look for a movie called That Scene in a Christopher Nolan Film When You Give Up Trying to Follow the Story.
00:59:00
Speaker
Or go and look go and look up Monty Python's holy Holy Grail concept ah album and listen to the beginning of Saito. Because basically, all the while you've been talking to me, I've basically been hearing you in a Michael Caine voice.
00:59:15
Speaker
i think that's what's been getting me through it, really. The fact that a you could reminds me more than anything of of watching that sketch, which is a very funny sketch. yeah But the worrying thing is, Josh, I have to dive back into this book to find content for another episode.
00:59:28
Speaker
And you might think that trying to understand what's going on when I relay it to you is hard. Trying to find something to talk about from this book is even harder. Well, we'll we'll give you ah we'll give you a good rest before we do it again.
00:59:42
Speaker
ah And I think that is all that is enough for us for this episode. It is, Yeah. yeah So until next time, and hopefully hopefully all of our our various entanglements have settled down and and we can go back to recording together like normal.
00:59:58
Speaker
So until that next time, conspiracy-later. actually I'm just going I've just lost the will to even say goodbye just going to to go deflate
01:00:23
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy features Josh Addison and Associate Professor M.R. Extentis. Our producers are a mysterious cabal of conspirators known as Tom, Philip, and another who was so mysterious that they remain anonymous.
01:00:37
Speaker
You can contact us electronically via podcastconspiracy at gmail.com or join our Patreon and get access to our Discord server. Or don't, I'm not your mum.
01:01:04
Speaker
And remember, it's not the fall that kills you. this time...