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The Return of the State Secrets II
181 Plays2 hours ago
M has finished Ben Vigden's "State Secrets II" and - as a punishment - Josh has to find out how it ends.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Schedule
00:00:07
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Edison and M Denteth.
00:00:27
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcast's guide to the conspiracy in Auckland, New Zealand. I am Josh Edison in Guangzhou, China. They are Dr. M. Denteth. ah Is it Christmas time? This is going to be going out at Christmas time, isn't it? It's kind of Christmassy. I mean, the secret sauce is that we actually now record two weeks ahead of any particular deadline, which gives us a lot of leeway if things get in the way of...
00:00:53
Speaker
recordings and sorting things out but it does also mean I'm going well this is going to go out next thursday is next thursday next Thursday is Christmas
Christmas Day Release: Challenges and Commitment
00:01:02
Speaker
Day right? literally Christmas Day so this is this is this is our Christmas present to the world I mean, we could put it up a day or two earlier or later, I guess. No, I refuse. I refuse to buck the publishing schedule. We publish on a Thursday. We record sometimes two weeks in advance, sometimes a week in advance. It's hard to say. We are sticking to the Christmas Day miracle, which is this podcast. Admittedly, Christmas Day miracle for people in certain parts of the world, Christmas Eve miracle for people in other parts of the world.
00:01:38
Speaker
Yeah, i mean, I was going to say, i assume people have better things to do on Christmas Day than listen to podcasts. No, no, no, no, Josh. though A lot of people will be looking for something to take their minds off the interminable family drama that is the Christmas Eve or Christmas Day meal.
00:01:56
Speaker
And so listening to us may well take the edge off that family anguish that so many people suffer over the Christmas period. Well, very well then. In that case, you're welcome.
Concluding 'State Secrets 2' Discussion
00:02:08
Speaker
And what what ah what ah what a Christmas present we have for you. it's it's the now i' i was This is the lump of coal of our podcast. And that this is hopefully the last bit of coverage of Ben Vingdon's State Secrets 2.
00:02:27
Speaker
And this is going to go out not with a bang, but very much a whimper. Yes. im i'm Now, with the Martin Butler, that was important. It was like the the seminal work around which your whole academic career is is is originates.
00:02:46
Speaker
So even though that one dragged on for a while, it was kind of worth it. I think i think we need to stick ah put it put a little line in the sand here and say this will definitely be the last episode, come what may. Even if we talk about it for an hour and realize you only to go a little bit in, then you can just say, oh, and in the last two chapters, this happens the end.
00:03:02
Speaker
I think we need to make a commitment. It would be really great if somehow we could swing in and then the twist is Martin Butler did it. That would be hilarious if we could fit that in It's not going to be the case. See, I thought you were to go, look, we're going to struggle through to the bitter end, even if the recording takes five hours. We're going to get through all four chapters today.
00:03:25
Speaker
Not even slightly. if it goes and If it goes a second longer than I think it should, i will hang up this call, fly to k Guangzhou, China, and do unspeakable things about your person to stop you from ever saying anything more.
00:03:39
Speaker
Yeah, but if you're in Guagge, we would have to record a podcast in person. And what better thing do than to complete the story? Well, yeah, um and by complete the story, you mean record me beating you to death with a copy of Ben Vigdon's book. Actually, do you have a physical copy?
00:03:53
Speaker
I do. I mean, did there is there is no e-book of this volume. There really is. Just because we are an audio podcast for proof. Tactile I do have to say this as though it is not a hardcover book so i would be hard pressed to do lasting damage to Ian with that as my weapon of choice so dad you wish you this but It would start off as a brutal beating and then eventually become I think somewhat pleasurable as you just gently fan me with a book going why won't you die why won't you die
00:04:25
Speaker
Okay, I think we've put put it off long enough. I think we do actually need to start talking about this book. So let's play a chime and then talk about this book.
00:04:36
Speaker
It's time to play What the Conspiracy.
00:04:47
Speaker
So given, Josh, that this is technically
What the Conspiracy: International Arms Plot
00:04:50
Speaker
a what the conspiracy, I'm going to ask you, for the final time this year, the three questions. The what the conspiracy, the who the conspiracy, and the why the conspiracy. So search back in your memory okay for the first two episodes, what is the conspiracy? The conspiracy, if I recall, and I make no promises, is that there's an international criminal organization smuggling arms through New Zealand, which is conspiratorial in itself, and then possibly there's a little bit of sort of government collusion involved at some point. Mostly right. Now, who is the conspiracy? Well, anyone a little bit foreign who visited New Zealand, from the sounds of things, according to the author, especially anyone a little bit Middle Eastern, I think,
00:05:40
Speaker
ends up being a ah suspect, according to this guy. Plus, plus ah the what's the what's the guy's name? Simon Spitz? Yes, yes, Simon Spitz.
00:05:52
Speaker
That's the one name I actually remember because, as I said on Blue Sky, it makes me think of Sir Lawrence Lips in that sketch about the the bit of a Christopher Nolan film where you start following the plot. um And and a bunch of other ah bunch of other criminal people whose names I made no effort to remember at the time and as a consequence cannot tell you now. And finally, why the conspiracy? well you the why Have we got really got into the why? I mean, apart from just, you know, if if you're smuggling weapons, you're presumably doing it to make money.
00:06:24
Speaker
unless there are other political goals around arming particular hostile states or something. I assume it's just for the cash. Yeah, so this part three might give us a little bit of the why. Because, yes, at the moment, it is a story of gun running and also money laundering.
00:06:43
Speaker
and And public urination. Public urination. Well, that, to be honest, is... Pretty much the only thing I remember from last episode, except that T.Y. Point, the aluminium smelting place, came into it as a location. But at near the end of it, the author of the book and another guy were going to going on some sort of a stakeout, but it all went wrong and he missed the guy largely because he stopped for a piss on the way. That is my recollection. You did actually say maybe maybe he did find a public toilet and go in, but the impression I got was that it was very much in on the side of the road thing. Josh, I could check. i could go I've got the book in front of me. i could crack the page open to that particular spread, check to see whether it was pissing against a tree or using a public urinal.
00:07:33
Speaker
I'm not going to. I don't care. don't. please And that is basically going to be the tenor of this episode. I have finished the book, and in the end, I don't care. i thought this going to be an exciting adventure where take a book with weird tales, with ah a big grandiose narrative, and I got to the end of the final chapter and went, oh, it's just a lot of insinuation.
00:07:58
Speaker
And, as we're going to see this episode, whole bunch of sexism as well. But by and large, I mean, the book does end with a coder that tells you what the book was about. And the coder is kind of interesting, because if it had occurred at the beginning of the book, where admittedly it wouldn't be a coder, it would have been a good way of going, oh, he's going to claim X, Y, and Z.
00:08:24
Speaker
He only does that at the end, and it's not a really convincing argument, all things considered. So we're going to be looking at four chapters, which basically takes us right through to the end of the book.
00:08:41
Speaker
And I'll just... remind you and the listeners that this is ostensibly a tale of who was really behind the death of Paul White. So this is the the tragic story of a computer programmer who got a whole bunch of disks from some banks in New Zealand, basically tried to blackmail those banks and started what we call the One Box Inquiry. And Paul White dies in the official version of a drunken car crash,
00:09:12
Speaker
But Vigdon and Wishart have always maintained there was something very suspicious about, a the timing of White's death and the nature of White's death.
BCCI and Adnan Khashoggi Connections
00:09:24
Speaker
So they've always maintained something else was going on there. and so ostensibly, this is meant to be a book explaining who is really behind the death of Paul White, and which is BCCI, the Bank of Credit Commerce International, or as Ben calls them, the Bank of Crooks and Criminals International. And notably, the role of Anand Khashoggi in the BCCI, who Ben keeps on telling us is the book's main character.
00:09:56
Speaker
Now, Kishogi appeared a lot in the first part. He appeared only a few times in the second part. He appears a few more times in these last four chapters.
00:10:09
Speaker
And these last four chapters, they cover a lot of material. And so what I've done this time is I've largely focused on material that seems to directly relate to Aotearoa New Zealand and directly relate to the gun running and money laundering stuff that Ben says is kind of the central storyline for the real reason why Paul White died.
00:10:36
Speaker
So we're going to be focusing only on well, I say only, mostly on the New Zealand stuff and stuff which is related to gun running and money laundering. I am skipping a lot of material, a lot of which simply seems to exist for Ben to go, oh, and what about X and what about Y? And I've had a thought about Z as well. Yeah.
00:10:59
Speaker
Okay, that sounds like a good idea. So where are we at? We are at Chapter 7, the sum of all fares. Is it 12? I actually don't think No, I don't think we actually get an actual number at the end.
00:11:17
Speaker
i mean, we could probably sneak sneak in a reference to the Magnus archives here with the fares, but let's just leave that to one side, at which point the answer would be 8. Yeah, okay, well, I'm a little disappointed already, but carry on carry on. What is the sum of all fears?
00:11:31
Speaker
Well... To get to the sum of all fears, which we won't, but let let's let's pretend the title but just direction of that let's assume the title in some way, shape, or form has a connection to the material within it.
00:11:46
Speaker
This chapter is a very long section on international gunrunning and the liberation tigers of Tamal Elam, also known as the Tamil Tigers.
00:11:57
Speaker
And I don't don't know about you, but when I was growing up in the eighty s discussion of the Tamil Tigers was going on all the bloody time, it seemed. Well, I've certainly heard of them, yes. They they were in the news. Yeah, and that was because of what was going on in Sri Lanka at the time. So they were a resistance movement by their name, a liberation movement. They seem to be in the news all the time. Maybe one of the reasons why this is so prominent in my thinking about the 80s and early 90s is that my chemistry teacher at Rossmini College, a secondary or high school in the American... in the American terminology, was Sri Lankan, and being it was a Catholic boys' school, rampant with sexism and racism, a lot of people like like to tease that teacher by accusing her to be a tamilta Tamil tiger, which, in retrospect, someone really should have put a stop to, and yet no one in the administration seemed to care.
00:13:01
Speaker
No, that tracks for the 80s and early 90s, though, I'm afraid to say. Oh, which, and this is a complete side issue, there was an interview with the writer of Dude, Where's My Car? recently, where he talks about how he re-watched that film recently, and when...
00:13:19
Speaker
This is really quite cringy. These are a lot of jokes making fun of ethnicities, oppressed people, and trans people.
00:13:31
Speaker
I don't really know why I wrote this. I guess I thought it was funny at the time, but it doesn't seem very funny now. Which is one of those few cases where a...
00:13:42
Speaker
Comic writer from the 90s or early 2000s is going, yeah, ah I don't know how I got away with that stuff. That's the 80s, man. That's the 80s.
00:13:54
Speaker
I saw a Revenge of the Nerds when I was 12 years old. That's got a whole joke about raping someone. More than one. Yes, unfortunately. Different times. different tigers anyway anyway can you Can you guess the connection between the Tamil Tigers and New Zealand? I'm going to assume gun running. I assume someone smuggling weapons to them through New Zealand.
00:14:17
Speaker
No, you see, in 2001, a taxi driver was murdered in Wellington. he may have sold some vehicles to the Tamil Tigers.
00:14:29
Speaker
Right. so so So vehicle running... It's not just not as g glamorous as gun running. No. and I mean, maybe they were using those vehicles to run guns in Sri Lanka.
00:14:41
Speaker
But... Who knows? So Ben wants to try and connect this murdered taxi driver to the LTTE. He also points out that Helen Clark once pulled out of a dinner hosted by a Tamil delegation due to claims was funded by the Tamil Tigers. Allegations which were denied by the Tamil community is simply being evidence of propaganda by the Sri Lankan government at the time.
00:15:11
Speaker
Right, so all we've only you just started and already it feels like more of the, hey, here's here's a thing that happened and also another thing that happened, and they involve foreign people, therefore I'm against it.
00:15:23
Speaker
Yeah, and the final connection between the Tamil Tigers and Aotoroa New Zealand is that a member of the Tamil Tigers once had a student visa for New Zealand.
00:15:36
Speaker
yeah we do so i think i mean I think that's case closed. Someone may have sold some vehicles. Helen Clark almost went to a dinner which may have been funded by the Tamil Tigers and one of the members once thought about studying in New Zealand. Obviously, that means there's an international gun running network supplying arms to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam running out of the country.
00:16:06
Speaker
Exactly. I think it essentially says that that that New Zealand and the Tamil Tigers are one and the same. i think you and I are Tamil Tigers, according to according to this thing, and I believe it implicitly. That explains a lot and also nothing.
00:16:21
Speaker
Right. Well, where does he go from there, having rocked our respective worlds? Well, he then moves on to talk of the chief arms trader of the Tamil Tigers, one Kumaran Padmachian, who might have visited New Zealand at some point in the 90s.
00:16:39
Speaker
And this is the person who apparently ordered the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. And can you guess who funded that assassination? I'm going to say Adnan Khashoggi because that's almost the only name I can remember.
00:16:51
Speaker
Correct. Adnan Khashoggi and the BCCI. Obviously, yes. yes yeah so Basically, we have an entire chapter where you've got some very vague connections between Aotearoa New Zealand and Sri Lankan Liberation Forces, but there's no direct connection. It's mostly just speculation.
00:17:12
Speaker
ye Which is, as we've come to expect so far from this book. But yeah, it's a lot of, I mean, just just as a general thing, is like, I haven't so haven't seen much of a common thread throughout this book, really. There's been there's been sort of a common theme of of evil evil international organizations or what have you. But in terms of, you know fact A leads to fact B or fact A, B and C together prove, you prove claim D and there's just a whole lot of here's he here's a thing and here's another thing and here's another thing and here's another thing a josh they subsequently something us in a in and in a chapter there's something coming up in a chapter very soon which is the best example of well A and B might be connected and you're going yeah or they might not be but we'll get to that in just a minute okay
00:18:07
Speaker
Okay, well, then then yeah I won't delay you any further. Keep going so we can get there. Right, so we're now into Chapter 8, 30 pieces of silver. And this is where that plane comes in. Now, Josh, as i i'm I'm stretching here, but can you remember the serial number of that plane?
00:18:27
Speaker
Not even slightly.
Speculative Links: Plane UR82008 and Simon Spitz
00:18:28
Speaker
I can barely remember. I remember vaguely that there was a plane mentioned at some point. Yeah, so this is UR82008. This is the plane that, according to Ben, on March 14, 1999, sent munitions to Burkina Faso and was used by the Revolutionary United Front in the civil war in Sierra Leone.
00:18:53
Speaker
And this operation was said to be funded by Khashoggi, or at least part-funded by him. And this is where the Simon Spitz comes up, because...
00:19:04
Speaker
Ben wants to allege that Spitz doesn't run this plane himself, but knows a guy who flew that plane. And because Spitz is the person that Ben says Charles Sturt identified as a major gun runner, this then shows that this plane is involved in some very, very shady dealings indeed. But as we saw with the really wacky grammar of that previous sentence, Ben claims Charles Sturt makes claims about Simon Spitz.
00:19:37
Speaker
Ben is making claims about Charles Sturt's claims about Simon Spitz, which are in no way accurate to what Sturt says in his book that Ben references when making those claims about Sturt claiming things about Spitz. I'm sure that's very clear now.
00:19:53
Speaker
ah Only because this isn't the first time he's done it and we've we've we've had this dance before. and what a dance it's been. So yeah, so that plane comes up again and basically it says to ledge, well, look, there's all there all the shady deals going on and this plane is flying around the place and it just keeps on appearing in different records. Therefore, that just shows you how extensive this gun running activity in the South Island actually turns out to be.
00:20:24
Speaker
He mentioned Proc Bank, which was a Russian tax bank that was registered in Vanuatu, which had connections to the mafia and weapons smuggling, which happened to have a branch in New Zealand.
00:20:37
Speaker
There's no... evidence this branch was actually involved in money laundering or money from that branch was sent off to various parts of the world for weapon smuggling but it is suggestive that maybe prop if proc bank is here then who knows what terrible things that money might have been doing did patpa paying for guns and the smuggling thereof Or just running Russian money from New Zealand back to, at that time, the Russian Federation. I mean, that might itself be dodgy, given the way that Russia and Russians handle their money overseas for business purposes, but it doesn't necessarily show untoward dodginess. It might just be ye standard dodginess. Okay, then.
00:21:30
Speaker
So most of this chapter is he can find evidence of an international business that has had dodgy dealings in the past, which has some connection to Aotearoa New Zealand via either a branch of that business or a visiting luminary of that business coming to the country. Therefore, he claims we're deeply involved in their criminal activities. Right, I mean, that makes no sense at all, but that that that that has not been the standard I've held this to for quite some time.
00:22:05
Speaker
Yeah, i mean, here's an example from the chapter. Whilst the company Transdiesel was itself not guilty of any criminal action, having been caught in the unenviable role of an innocent middleman, the firm was most certainly of interest. Its website offered a large stock of obsolete and surplus parts, which its owner told the press could be used in a truck, a boat, an armored vehicle or tank.
00:22:34
Speaker
Could be. Could be. Parts that could be used in a tank or also a bunch of other things. Yeah, a truck or a boat. so young I'm selling some valves, Josh. I'm selling some valves. Oh, those valves could be used in a nuclear weapon. Yeah, or they could be used in a fish tank. Ah, so you are admitting the valves could be used in nuclear... Well, yeah, but I'm saying they're mostly used in fish tanks. Ah, because...
00:23:00
Speaker
but You're not denying that someone who's building a bomb could use one of your valves in it. I think you're engaged in weapons manufacturing. Yes, yeah it's not exactly like they were selling uranium.
00:23:12
Speaker
assume just just just bits. Could it be nuts and bolts for all we know. Well, precisely. And here's another example. Despite overtures made to the FBI, I've been unable to determine whether the New Zealand Prime International had links to Prime International firms or ANZ to ANZ nominee listed having been banned for their role in...
00:23:35
Speaker
ah arming pakistan there is no material to suggest that these firms have any link yet the similarity of the names alone certainly makes one curious so it's no wonder of the backgrounds of such men why in this case they caught my attention so two businesses which have similar names he's going well you know they probably are connected i mean i can't find any evidence they are but the names are similar therefore you connect the dots.
00:24:05
Speaker
I mean, there aren't there aren't there aren't any dots to connect, but um I'm struggling to think of two companies that are obviously very different but have similar names, I think because listening to this stuff...
00:24:17
Speaker
has largely destroyed my ability for independent thought. But um yes, not enough good reasoning. Not good reasoning. Faulty. Faulty reasoning, you might say. Yeah. And that's basically all I could actually drag out of chapter eight, 30 pieces of silver. So we are skipping merrily along to chapter nine, the I love you long time comm.
00:24:37
Speaker
Well, a bit racism right at the start there. Very good. Just get to just just prime the racism pump there. Yeah, right. So this this starts off with something which actually goes back right to the beginning of the book. So back in chapter one or two, he talks about how Adnan Khashoggi visited Queenstown and how there was this claim that the IRD was saying don't investigate any deals going on in Queenstown. So some kind of suggestion that the government was aware of shady stuff going on, but the tax department wasn't going to look at any of this.
00:25:14
Speaker
So he points out that Khashoggi apparently owns a 34% stake in a travel lodge in Queenstown, although it might be that BCCI had the stake in the travel lodge. Ben seems to kind of vacillate as to whether BCCI owns the stake and therefore Khashoggi has control over it, or whether Khashoggi owns the stake and just happens to be associated with BCCI.
00:25:42
Speaker
He arrives by private jet on April the 19th, 1976, and apparently he meets Robert Muldoon, then Prime prime Minister of the country, for a meeting.
00:25:57
Speaker
Post that meeting, New Zealand starts exporting more materials to the Middle East. Right. What materials does it say? Well, it's mostly agricultural. I mean, we're an agricultural. That's what I was going to say. We basically start exporting a large amount of meat, as we've done in the past, and then stopped doing so because live meat exports turned out to be bad. And then we started resuming them because of our current government, et cetera, et cetera.
00:26:28
Speaker
Yes. Yes. And there is a whole thing in New Zealand's history about how we used to, when were part of the British Commonwealth, we could export land to Britain and not suffer any tariffs or have you, and then overnight that changed and we had to rejig our economy to being dairy and not exporting to Britain as heavily and moving to the likes of China and indeed the Middle East.
00:26:53
Speaker
So yeah, it was a thing that was happening. But the question is is, it an untoward thing? So I mean, it might well be the case that Khashoggi turns up in Queensdale. He meets Muldoon for a meeting, allegedly. He might suggest, well, you know, New Zealand's economy relies on exporting lamb, because at that time we were more a lamb nation than a dairy ye nation.
00:27:17
Speaker
So, you know, there's a actually quite a lot of demand for fresh lamb in the Middle East, particularly if you do live exports so they can be killed in a halal fashion for various festivities and and the like.
00:27:32
Speaker
And Muldoon may have gone, actually, that's a good idea. I'll take that to cabinet and we'll see what's going on. That's not necessarily... an underhand thing to do, to have a conversation about potential exports and someone going, oh, actually, that's not a bad idea.
00:27:50
Speaker
So Ben is aware that this is not the the greatest gotcha moment for notoriously well-loved Prime Minister Robert Muldoon. For non-New Zealand listeners, Robert Muldoon has a very interesting political career and also post-political career.
00:28:10
Speaker
So, strange man, interesting man, that's all I'll say. So, he also says, look, also, Muldoon visits Los Angeles in 1977.
00:28:25
Speaker
Now, l LA has a branch of the Security Pacific National Bank. Anand Khashoggi might be an owner of that bank. You connect the dots.
00:28:35
Speaker
You're going to have to stop saying that. Does he say that? Does he actually do that? No, no, no, no. He doesn't ever say you connect the dots, but it's pretty much implied by saying, well, look, Khashoggi might be an owner of that bank. Isn't it interesting that Muldoon was LA where a Khashoggi-owned bank allegedly was located at that time?
00:29:00
Speaker
He's basically saying you connect the dots. Yeah, so he he does. He just drops these facts one after the other, the implication being that they're related, and then moves on. to Does he do this sort of rhetorical eyebrow waggling at all?
00:29:15
Speaker
or is i mean, if he's doing it, he's doing with a flourish of his type, right? And you can't really flourish with a typewriter particularly well. I mean, he does he does expand upon this slightly. He points out that Muldoon's Think Big program required him to borrow an awful lot of money from the IMF and the World Bank. And he points out that the IMF and the World Bank aren't themselves actually large repositories of money. What they do is they kind of finance deals in the background so that governments can borrow money through the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. But the funds they're borrowing from actually tend to be kind of large consolidated funds. And so he goes, well, look,
00:30:00
Speaker
Muldoon met Khashoggi in 1976. He goes to LA in 1977, where Khashoggi has allegedly a bank.
New Zealand's Financial and Arms Trade Ties
00:30:12
Speaker
So what if when Muldoon borrowed money from the IMF and the World Bank, those loans came from a third party like that of Adnan Khashoggi?
00:30:23
Speaker
You connect the dots. What it yes if? Yes, if that were true... I actually don't even know what that would mean if it were true, but if... Yeah, I refuse to connect the dots, quite frankly. These are a bunch of points that are being thrown in my face, and <unk>m I'm not acknowledging a connection. You can't make me. Josh, why won't you connect dots? I'm giving you so many dots. I mean, these dots, you you could draw any kind of picture you like. Why won't you connect the dots? Well, exactly. that you You're not wrong there, though. It does seem very much the a shotgun blast of just just interesting points and insinuations.
00:31:05
Speaker
Indeed, you could, yeah, as he does. draw any connection you want to, really. Indeed. all right, so there's a long section in Chapter 9 on Faye and Richwhite, and it kind of encapsulates what people knew about the Winebox Inquiry at the time. which is to say that Fay and Richwhite were engaged in unethical, but not necessarily a legal tax evasion via the Kuki Arini tax laws at the time. so he kind of goes through, look, Fay and Richwhite are
00:31:41
Speaker
pretty awful people they were doing an awful lot of money laundering stuff as we now know it seems that what they were doing was was bad but actually not necessarily illegal which is why faye and rich right you know continue to live free lives just they're just not particularly welcome back home and so he goes look this is this is evidence that people want to engage in money laundering activity, which is fair. That is evidence that people are doing bad things.
00:32:13
Speaker
People doing a lot of bad things in the 80s. Notoriously, New Zealand tax law has never really been fit the purpose either internally or externally. We've been kind of a place where people go, oh, the tax authorities in that jurisdiction don't really do a lot of looking into shady deals. So we were kind of a natural place for people to engage in bad activity. which might have been deliberate. You can imagine this is a situation where successive governments are going, well, you know, we're getting kickbacks from these particular things. Or it might be that there's always been this weird strand of liberalism in our law making, which means, we oh, no, I mean, you you can't you can't stop businesses from doing what businesses do. That would be bad for business.
00:33:06
Speaker
I mean, that's kind of true, but... in a tautologist sort of logical sense, but in a practical sense, sometimes you do need to stop businesses doing what businesses do because what businesses want to do... Oh, no, I know. I mean, you should. We just didn't. Notoriously, our country has...
00:33:26
Speaker
very very low tax taxation rates and if you're paying any attention to New Zealand news you'll discover this week that due to this government reducing the tax revenue down they've discovered that they have less money to spend on things because it turns out that reducing your tax revenue makes it hard if you'd have money to actually do anything with so we live in a weird well you live in a weird country i belong to the weird country a a Anyway, he also brings up the Yakuza who were operating in New Zealand in the nineteen eighty s I don't know about you, but there were a lot of urban legends about the Yakuza and the Triads when I was growing up on the North Shore back in the nineteen nineteen eighty s People were always talking about foreign gangs of one kind or another.
00:34:17
Speaker
Yeah, I remember hearing about the triads. The Yakuza not so much, but maybe that was a North Shore thing. And also, i think people kind of assume they were one and the same.
00:34:27
Speaker
Well, yes, again, referring to 1980s racism. Yep. So he then moves on to a discussion of Queenstown in general and the idea that there were lots of money laundering schemes going on there in the 80s and 90s, which is where he brings up this claim that someone had told people that Queenstown is off limits to the IRD.
00:34:52
Speaker
And he connects all of this to the idea that an awful lot of rich people retire to Queenstown. And an awful lot of people who were former spooks or spies retire to Queenstown. And isn't that interesting?
00:35:12
Speaker
You connect the dots. Is it because former spooks and spies are also rich now? I mean, that is part of the reason why people retire to Queenstown. I've actually never been, since what it been been kind of outside of my price point, but I do believe it's quite beautiful and incredibly expensive. And also, it has has a very high population of foreigners compared to most New Zealand towns or cities. Yes, it is ah it is our number one sort of tourist destination. So everything everything costs tourist prices, basically. Unfortunately, that includes housing.
00:35:50
Speaker
which is why they always find it they're finding it more and more difficult to find workers there there because workers cannot afford to live in Queenstown. And that's not... that's all like They can't afford to buy a house. They can't even afford to rent a house because of those house prices there.
00:36:05
Speaker
Now, he does make one point at the end of this chapter, which I do think is a kind of a legitimate hu question about Aotorau, New Zealand.
00:36:16
Speaker
and does actually link back to his main thesis about gun running, he does ask, why do we host so many arms expos in New Zealand? And that is a very good question.
00:36:28
Speaker
Every year there is an international arms expo, hosted normally in Auckland, but I think they've been hosted down in Christchurch as well, which get protested by left-wing protesters, because...
00:36:42
Speaker
Military armament suppliers from all around the world descend upon the country and have an expo about the weapons of death they can sell to other countries. And has always been a curious feature that for a country which doesn't really seem to be in the business of war we are very keen, successive governments of both the left and the right, to go, oh, no, no, those these army expos fine. I mean, they're they're not selling arms on New Zealand soil. They're just doing deals which allow those arms to be transe transacted on other soil after checks have cleared. We're not selling arms.
00:37:23
Speaker
We're just allowing arms to be sold. just facilitating arms sales. We're not actually making them. Yes, no, that is that is a bit weird. Yeah, and so I mean, I think that is that is a legitimate question to ask. Why do successive governments allow this kind of thing to occur?
00:37:42
Speaker
Both National and Labour have been presented with protests against it, and both National and Labour gone, oh, well, then there's not really anything to see here, it's all perfectly fine.
00:37:53
Speaker
Yes, it's all just business. it's all just but I mean, I assume when when you when you rhetorically ask why do governments allow this, I assume the actual answer is money. Yeah, money. There's money to be made.
00:38:03
Speaker
And yes, New Zealand has always had this particular view that if we host expos, then we'll get more expos. And expos mean money because people come to the country and they spend money on hotel services and the like.
00:38:17
Speaker
ah The thing which kind of doesn't work about the Expo thing is that many of many of the companies that own pavilions or hotels are international firms. So the money is kind of coming into the country and then almost immediately leaving it.
00:38:32
Speaker
Yes. Okay, so does he, I assume there's just yet another point of of innuendo. here He asks why do governments do this and doesn't supply any sort of answer. Yeah, once again, Josh, you connect those dots. Sure, I'll di'll connect them i'll connect them all the way to the moon.
00:38:49
Speaker
So now we come to chapter 10. Actually, I said there were four chapters, actually five. So chapter 10, the Brotherhood of the Rose. The... Sorry, what was the previous chapter title? The Love You Longtime Con. Okay, that wasn't. So I'm just, we've had sum of all fears in the the Brotherhood of the Rose so far, which are all books that were made into movies. did Does he have a theme? Are there clever references in the chapters, or is he just... I mean, sometimes, but no, not really. i mean, actually, can you guess what Chapter 11 is going to be called?
00:39:27
Speaker
um but ah just Just think about it over the course of chapter 10. I'll ask you when we get there, because it is it is a movie title, and it's say a movie I know you've seen. Okay. Is it the Omega Code?
00:39:42
Speaker
Oh, if only it were, especially if it was Omega Code 2, Megiddo. Yes. Okay. All right. Anyway. All right. So chapter 10, The Brotherhood of the Rose. Now, this is a bit where i got I actually laughed out loud, because as we discussed in the first episode, this book is called State Secrets 2. But essentially, it's easy it's a rewrite of the first book with new information.
00:40:06
Speaker
So when he starts the chapter by saying, look, if you want to know about the details of exploits by Israeli in Queenstown, go and read the first book. i'm going, but no, no, no You're meant to summarize what happened in the first book. This is a rewrite, a remake of that first book. You can't expect me to go and find a copy of State Secrets 1 in the year of our Lord 2025. Finding a copy of State Secrets 2 was ah hard enough. So I just found that.
00:40:33
Speaker
fairly amusing and he litigates again the idea there are rich people and politicians always going to queenstown and then then he brings up the russian federation in the 1990s did you know that in the 90s russia had a huge dairy debt to new zealand i did not know that Yeah, so we were exporting a lot of milk, butter, and cheese to Russia, and Russia was accruing a lot of debt in that particular process. So it was alleged that Russia offered us an arms for butter deal.
00:41:20
Speaker
And that rather than pay off the debt, they were going to give us armaments for the army, the navy, and the air force instead.
00:41:31
Speaker
Now, at the time, this was reported in the media. So it was reported at the time that Russia was going to try and pay off their debt by simply swapping one good for another.
00:41:43
Speaker
So Helen Clark denied it at the time. But Ben is incredulous because Ian Wishart had a source that said that this deal was definitely happening. He even names the source. Josh, can you guess the name of Ian Wishart's source? Is it Simon Spitz?
00:42:05
Speaker
No. it Sir Lawrence Lips? nos agan peters No. the name of the source is Spook. Okay, well, I mean, that's just lazy, quite frankly. At least Deep Throat had the head the had the thrill of reference to pornography. Yeah, there Spook is the kind of the worst name for a source, because really? Really? I mean, either...
00:42:31
Speaker
It's a spy with no imagination or a literal ghost. Yeah, I mean, you would have... It's barely one step up from calling him Mr. A-Spy.
00:42:43
Speaker
Or just Le Spy. Actually, Le Spy is a lot better name than Spook. Yes, I am Le Spy. Anyway, so so Bulger then comes up, because apparently Bulger was also asked the similar question. and he'sgen bulger you know So the actual deal that Russia offered at the time was offering us fighter jets, and his government basically laughed off that claim. Why would we need fighter jets? We have a minuscule air force. would rather have the money than your outmoded...
00:43:18
Speaker
potentially communist era fighter jets and ben thinks that bulger here is kind of telling a tall tale because maybe we didn't need those jets but we could have sold them if we got them now isn't i'm sorry just looking up because it has reference popped up okay yes no it was pepsi In 1989, Russia paid a debt to Pepsi with
00:43:50
Speaker
withwi wistless naval ships, causing Pepsi to very briefly be a naval superpower until they unsold them. But we didn't go that route, I guess. No. It would have been like Pepsi.
00:44:03
Speaker
Ben is now assuming armed deals rather than finding evidence for them. So we have two people saying, look, offers were made and we didn't accept them.
00:44:14
Speaker
Well, actually, so Clark denies it, but of course she's Prime Minister after Bolger. So Bolger says, well, look, there was a deal. It was fighter jets for butter. We thought this was a stupid idea, so we we laughed it off. And obviously Clark either wasn't roped in on that or just wasn't aware that this deal had actually been made.
00:44:36
Speaker
And Ben is going, well, I mean, they're saying it didn't happen. But it could have happened and then they could have sold the fighter jets on. And so he's just finding, he's assuming that armed deals are going on rather than finding any concrete evidence for them.
00:44:53
Speaker
And even he realizes, well, maybe this evidence isn't so strong. So he ends the section with the the claim, what proposal had the New Zealand government accepted instead? I.e. if they didn't accept the guns or the fighter jets...
00:45:07
Speaker
What did they get in return for that debt? Anthrax, I have to assume. absolutely. Russian anthrax. Yeah. It's the only logical conclusion. Now, this chapter then goes on to have a whole section on Bill Clinton acting shady at APEC meeting in New Zealand. Bill Clinton acting shady?
00:45:26
Speaker
i know. want hear a word of it. Yeah, back in... So September 12th, 1999, I actually remember that APEC meeting because remember there were a fair number of student protests led by students from the University of Auckland at the APEC meeting at the time. So I remember there being a whole bunch people on campus. do remember that, yeah.
00:45:48
Speaker
ah ah ah about that. He then engages in a whole bunch of sexism towards Helen Clark in this chapter. He thinks very little of her as a person and as an intellectual and just keeps on rubbing salt in that particular word, which...
00:46:08
Speaker
There's another disturbing section we're not going to talk about, which also seems fairly sexist in these last few chapters. So I don't think that Ben has particularly positive views of women based upon what he's written in this book.
00:46:25
Speaker
Indeed. Once again, that plane comes up, so UR82008 comes up, and then he talks about how during the US's war on terror in Afghanistan, it was alleged that the US flew munitions through New Zealand and Western Australia.
00:46:43
Speaker
which is possible. They may have flown things to get to afghan Afghanistan via military bases in the region. And he notes that these routes were also used by UR 82008. It seems like a pretty specious claim to to go, oh, look...
00:47:01
Speaker
That plane flew in the same air on the same planet as another plane. They must be connected. Yes, I mean, air routes are fairly fairly set, aren't they? I assume there's variations due to the weather and the wind and what have you. But generally, planes flying from from one place to another...
00:47:21
Speaker
go on the same route yeah doesn't mostly for the efficiency of fuel he does have a section which in retrospect is interesting so he has some interesting stuff about how involved we were in the war on terror in Afghanistan which was we are more we were more involved in the war on terror in Afghanistan than the government and the army said at the time And of course, a lot of this has been borne out by what we now know what our soldiers were getting up to, which wasn't very good stuff.
00:48:00
Speaker
So we were much more involved on the war in terror than, say, the Labour government and the national government of the time said. So the Labour government, as led by Helen Clark, said, oh, no, we're only doing peacekeeping missions there. National, when they came in under John Key, oh, no, we're just doing peacekeeping missions there.
00:48:19
Speaker
It turns out that either they lied or they were misinformed by the heads of staff of the army because we were doing a lot more than peacekeeping missions. In many cases, we were engaging in killing civilians. Yes, and ah it's been a long time since we've talked about this, but yeah, local journalist Nicky Hager did a whole thing on on one particular incident that I i think met the definition for a war crime. And also certainly involved the so johns John as well.
00:48:51
Speaker
ye And would the the army took them to court, didn't they, and lost. Yeah, they did. they really lost yeah and and and they And the court was very condemning about the the way in which the army tried to cover up what they did and also from looks of misleading ministers, so getting ministers to go, well, of obviously Nicky Hager and John Stevenson are vapid conspiracy theorists because we've been briefed by the heads of of of staff only to discover that they they they were lied to. Yeah. Yes, so there are so there there there are some interesting issues there, but um I'm assuming this book doesn't really go into them and instead... Well, self actual misery result I mean, this was this was published before any of that stuff came out formally. So it is, it is i mean, Ben quite rightly points out, we're probably more involved in the war on terror in Afghanistan than the government is putting forward.
00:49:51
Speaker
There is a question there as to whether he thinks that because he's just naturally suspicious, or given he is former army, whether he actually has sources going. Well, actually, the official line here is not quite what is happening on the ground there. So this section, he he does rightly point out there's a lot more going on than we've been told.
00:50:13
Speaker
and he is borne out by what we now know so credit where credit's due this is one place where I think Ben is right to say look there's some dodgy stuff going on overseas on the war on terror and you are not being told about our role in that dodgy stuff Okay, but but again, does he do anything interesting with that observation?
00:50:37
Speaker
just Not really, because he then he moves back to Queenstown again, and he focuses on a luxury resort in Queenstown called Millbrook, and asks a whole bunch of questions as to who its secret owners
Secretive Military Conferences in New Zealand
00:50:52
Speaker
might be. Can you guess who one of those owners might be?
00:50:55
Speaker
Well, I mean, the easy guess would be Adnan Khashoggi, but what I'm going to say was it Sir Lawrence Lipps. it will I will say it was not Sir Lawrence Lips. Anyway, his focus on Millbrook is that a top-secret conference on the War on Terror was held there in 2003.
00:51:15
Speaker
And this did happen. It was reported on in various media sources. So a whole bunch of mostly American, but some British intelligence people and chiefs of staff for various military organizations went to mil Millbrook to kind of hash out what they were going to do to rid the world of terrorism once and for all. And as we know, the war on terror was very successful. Terrorism has been eliminated, just like the previous war on drugs, which eliminated all drugs from the world. Just like how the the the world war eliminated the world.
00:51:52
Speaker
Yes, it's true. we we are we are living We are living in the figment of someone's imagination right now. Exactly. claim its Yeah. So, yes, this...
00:52:02
Speaker
This did go on. It did happen. The connection to arm smuggling is not clear. Yeah, that surprises me not one bit. So that means we now move on to the final chapter, which is, oh, was going ask, can you guess the name of this final chapter?
00:52:21
Speaker
Well, just going by the theme of of books that were made, that were televised, I'm going to see... No, no, no, no,
00:52:35
Speaker
doppelang of the ninety ninety three horror thriller film starring drew berymore no that's literally the only film i know so i'm afraid i'm out The chapter is called the Usual Suspects. Oh, okay. Well, I'm glad everyone involved in that film has gone on to live healthy lives and never done anything wrong.
00:52:58
Speaker
Yeah, that's ah that's a problematic filmography right there in one film. So this chapter is mostly about Richard V. Allen, a former National Security Advisor to Ronald Reagan, who at the time of writing was living in Queenstown. I don't know whether he's a alive, and if he is alive, he's still living in Queenstown.
00:53:19
Speaker
And there's a character that Ben wrote two articles on for his magazine Deadline. And the result of those articles was a threatening legal letter which asked Ben to retract the articles in question.
00:53:35
Speaker
which did not lead to a retraction by Ben on the basis that he was simply reporting things that had already been reported in the media anyway. So it was stuff in the public domain.
00:53:50
Speaker
And the articles included claims from media sources that Richard V. Allen had said behind closed doors that there could be a swap of hostages for arms in Vietnam back during the Reagan administration.
00:54:06
Speaker
And the reason why Ellen may have wanted a retraction there is that even though it had been reported he set it behind closed doors, he claimed at various points that either this didn't happen or that his memory was playing tricks on him.
00:54:22
Speaker
So basically he's going, well, I didn't say it, or if I did say it, I was mistaken in my saying of it. And Ben quite naturally is going, well, look, this is, this stuff has been reported elsewhere, so you can't ask me to attract it. I'm just reporting on things which are in the public record anywhere.
00:54:42
Speaker
But the other thing which Ben talks about in these two articles is that Alan was implicated in the hostage crisis in Iran. He was a member of the so-called October Surprise Group, the group which...
00:55:00
Speaker
depending on who you talk to, swung an election through dubious means for one Ronald Reagan. Yes, I mean, these are all these are all things that that are known of that Mr. Vigdon did not invent himself, but...
00:55:16
Speaker
I'm almost afraid to ask, what does this have to do with anything? Well, he tries to connect Alan and his shady deals with the Paul White case. So I'll give you i'll give you a ah so a ah section from this chapter.
00:55:30
Speaker
Such points, these connections between Alan and Paul White, highlight the real politics and explain the political climate in New Zealand that may well lie behind a sum of Bin Laden's lieutenant, Dr. Ayman al-Zahir.
00:55:45
Speaker
Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri and the other terrorists, PMCs, and gunrunners reasons for coming to New Zealand to begin with. They provide possible illumination into how it is that planes carrying New Zealand armed forces might have ended up carrying weapons destined for Islamic militants operating the Balkans as well.
00:56:07
Speaker
It is the story of the real war on terrorism, a war which reaches beyond the power of states and into the realm of a new breed of multinationals, happy to exploit little men who want to look big and important, all the while they line their pockets and take a cut of the action.
00:56:26
Speaker
It's the story of the pursuit of power whose reach extends well beyond the power of sovereign nations. It's the real face of the war on terrorism, a war which New Zealand is more involved in than the public have been led to believe.
00:56:41
Speaker
i mean, that sounds not implausible as ah as a general statement, but if he's specifically trying to tie these these but the Paul White events into this other stuff...
00:56:54
Speaker
then now Now that sounds a bit dodgy. Yeah, and this is the kind of interesting thing about this chapter, because this chapter is very much about right-wing organisations wanting to change the nature of New Zealand.
00:57:09
Speaker
So he quite specifically talks about how there are a lot of right-wing organizations who, at the time of writing, wanted to change our anti-nuclear policy, because our anti-nuclear policy basically meant that we were, to a very large extent, isolated from the US, and to a slightly less extent, isolated from Australia, due to the fact that, historically, the ANZUS military arrangement was basically getting rid of the NZ part because of our unwillingness to allow nuclear ships into our ports.
00:57:46
Speaker
And of course, at the time, there was an awful lot of discussion going on that if National got into power, they would always talk about revising our nuclear-free policy. it was really only under the John Key government.
00:58:03
Speaker
that National gave up on, oh, we we will talk about allowing military ships back into our ports. So there was a lot of discussion going on at the time about, you know, should we be revising our nuclear-free policies?
00:58:18
Speaker
And in retrospect, what he's talking about here, which is people trying to change the nature of New Zealand society, is something which people talk about now with respect to things like the Atlas Group and the like.
00:58:31
Speaker
So political or organizations like the Taxpayers Union, the speech Free Speech Union, and the ACT Party itself being essentially fronts for right-wing organizations in the US that want to change New Zealand society through NGOs and political parties. So there is there's a ah germ of truth here.
00:58:57
Speaker
It's just it's very hard to connect this together To the death of Paul White. Yes, that seems to be the theme of the book as a whole, really. do the actual the the The actual connections seem particularly weak, um even even in the cases when the facts aren't dubious and poorly sourced or or completely made up. Which is why it's interesting that the book then ends with a summary.
00:59:26
Speaker
So I'm going to read out the first section of the summary in full here, because it kind of tells you what he's trying to tell us in this book. There are 11 chapters in this book. The first eight chapters deal with more than 13 case studies built around people known to be involved in some form of arms trade, either as consumers or suppliers, sometimes both, that are believed to have come to New Zealand.
00:59:51
Speaker
Chapter 9 looks at New Zealand's links to money laundering by exploring cases of intelligence-facilitated money laundering said to have occurred in the Pacific within the last three decades.
01:00:04
Speaker
The 10th chapter examines New Zealand's connections to people known to be involved in the Western intelligence community and or the war on terrorism, who either live in New Zealand or visit New Zealand, and how in many cases, these same people have or will financially benefit from wars in general via their involvement in the military-industrial complex trade.
01:00:29
Speaker
It also examines New Zealand's own role in the war on terrorism and the degree in which our involvement is being withheld from the public. The final chapter, chapter 11, he's writing this in chapter 11 here, so it's a bit weird to be talking about the chapter from outside of itself, uses the history of one man, Richard V. Allen, to provide some understanding of the geopolitics behind the arms trade. I use Ellen to to again highlight the New Zealand connections the sort of games and people who wage war on terrorism, while they are in reality just lining their own pockets.
01:01:06
Speaker
The sort of people who have been drawn to New Zealand in the last decade, and the sort of people who from the 1980s to the present day might be responsible for drawing New Zealand into a shadowy world built on such fine words as patriotism, but fueled at its raw source by pure and simple greed, the desire to get a slice of the action.
01:01:27
Speaker
These are the reasons why i believe the allegations as first made by Paul White in 1992 before his death, that New Zealand firms and New Zealand politicians have been involved in money laundering, should be taken seriously and examined further.
01:01:43
Speaker
These are the reasons why, more importantly, we should treat the accusations that New Zealand firms and New Zealand politicians have links to international black market arm dealers with the due consideration they deserve. Right. Yes.
01:01:59
Speaker
That really should have been at the start of the book. That would have made this a much, a much easier decision. I'll say easier to understand. Yeah, no, it would have been easier to understand at least where, if not where he was going, where he thought he was going every step of the way through this.
01:02:16
Speaker
Saving it to the end is a, like, did the he obviously hasn't read many philosophical essays because... They always start with that sort of and ah that sort of an abstract or an introduction and then sum it all up it again again at the end. Yeah, but I mean, i mean most most history books, for example, go look we're going to look at three periods of history there and show the common thread is that unicorn murdering is the reason why America was the greatest nation on Earth or something of that particular kind.
01:02:48
Speaker
I mean, I guess the thing which I find interesting about the summary is trying to draw that connection between the chapters and the death of Paul White. Paul White makes claims that New Zealand firms are engaging in shady banking transactions. Banking? Banky. I think I said banky transactions. That sounds much more fun. Shady banking transactions.
01:03:12
Speaker
Yeah, I like it. Shady banking transactions. And Ben obviously treats this, I think, more seriously than White did.
01:03:23
Speaker
And then he's going, oh, what kind of shady transactions could this be? Could it be gun running? Could it be international money laundering? drawing I think making this book be about the death of Paul White...
01:03:36
Speaker
actually doesn't serve the book particularly well because the evidence is actually fairly weak for linking with the poor white stuff. I mean, the evidence overall is fairly weak anyway.
01:03:47
Speaker
But if the book was simply, look, New Zealand hosts a lot of shady characters and we just don't know what they're doing here.
01:03:59
Speaker
Therefore, we should have more inspection about what people are doing with respect to export and import. We should be having more interest in the kind of financial deals that these people engage in. That seems like a fairly good thesis, a thesis that says, look,
01:04:17
Speaker
Our political climate and our monetary legislation actually can allow some fairly shady stuff to go on. Let's look at examples of this.
01:04:28
Speaker
This is the reason why we should change the the law. But he has to bring it into a conspiracy. And I don't think the evidence is there for a conspiracy in this case. I think the evidence is there to go, well, look, historically, particularly in the 80s, a lot of bad stuff was going on worldwide and New Zealand was not immune to that bad stuff.
01:04:50
Speaker
And maybe people don't know about that and it is something that should be drawn attention to But the poor white stuff... It just occurs at the beginning, gets mentioned a few times in the middle, comes up again at the end, and the connections just don't seem to be there. No, I mean, doest is there any actual evidence that Paul White was murdered, or is it simply that Paul White was in some way inconvenient to a whole bunch of nasty people, and therefore I think he they killed him?
01:05:26
Speaker
As far as I'm aware, there is no evidence that the death was staged. All the evidence suggests it was a a drunken car crash.
01:05:39
Speaker
a So, yeah yeah, that case, I agree. he would have done better to drop the Paul White angle. i and i figure, for instance, is is the death of Paul White what got him on this whole thing in the first place?
01:05:54
Speaker
and he simply couldn't give it up because that was what he was originally fixated on. i mean I mean, it's also something which Ian Wishart is fixated on. So I do wonder whether a they had a kind of mutually self-supporting fascination with Paul White.
01:06:10
Speaker
But yes, it seems to be the motivating factor for this kind of analysis. And in the end, the book would be stronger, which is not to say it would be strong, but it would be stronger stronger if the Paul White stuff was not in it.
01:06:26
Speaker
Yeah. Right. it was Is there any more? No, that is our yeahp we have we We have come to the end. We have. Yep. Well, that was a book that was conspiratorial. there' there's There's no doubting it. But um yeah, probably a good example of how not to set out a conspiracy more than anything else.
01:06:49
Speaker
Oh, and actually, and this is a something which I only thought about the other day. So we were meant to record this podcast ah last week when I was going to be in Juhai for work.
01:07:02
Speaker
And so I took the book with me on the metro to then catch the bus down to Zhuhai. And it did occur to me as my bag was being x-rayed upon entering the metro system that having a book called State Secrets is probably not a good thing to be carrying around in China. Possibly.
01:07:23
Speaker
But yeah, I assume i assume all liveither the worst that could happen is they get it out and read it and then immediately fall asleep. in some sort of coma and you could just walk off. Yes, that's that's true. it could be a they could It could be used as a sonorific device almost anywhere. yeah Okay, well, there we go. State Secrets 2.
01:07:46
Speaker
it's It's done. We're done. the year is done. Everything's done. It's true. It's all it's all over and done with. o so a Merry Christmas to one and all then.
01:08:01
Speaker
Now, are we going to do a bonus episode to go with this one or will we be off doing Christmas things at the time we would normally record a bonus episode to go with this episode?
01:08:14
Speaker
Well, I mean, i do feel we do have to get to the heart of the Anselmo case before the end of the year. That would be ideal, yes. So maybe manager maybe we can do a quick little a quick little bonus episode record session and see what we can give for you. Because, yeah yeah, we keep saying, i know i know we keep saying we're going to look at the Anselmo case.
01:08:36
Speaker
in the bonus episodes and our patrons will realise that that has not yet happened we've wanted to, we've tried to there's always been some reason just get so much breaking news or something which we have and also pre-empt
01:08:52
Speaker
Our source is still feeding us some information which makes us go, really? Huh? Okay. So some of it's still in flux, but I think we've got a handle on it now. So, yeah, we should probably talk about the Anselmo case to give people, at least our patrons, something else for Christmas Day.
01:09:11
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. well Well, we'll look into that. so um but But Merry Christmas to you, our patrons. Yeah. and me least get a machine Merry Christmas. Like, like you know, a regularly Merry Christmas to the rest of our listeners. But if there's such a thing as Super Merry, the then that's the kind of Christmas we're wishing to our patrons, I think. Was that Super Grand's first name?
01:09:34
Speaker
Maybe. i don't like that pun. And i'm I'm just going to pretend it didn't happen, I think. It's the hard part that pun. yeah Well, exactly. Exactly.
01:09:45
Speaker
um But if you want to become a patron and know what the hell we're talking about in these last bits of the episode, go to patreon.com and sign yourself up. It could be a Christmas present to yourself, but really to us, because we'll be the ones who get patron money because of it. um But if you don't, of obviously... Merry Christmas and and to all and to all a ah good Happy New Year or something.
01:10:10
Speaker
i we to don't know exactly when this is going out, so I'm hedging my bets a little bit. But there will definitely, i think i think I'm safe to say it will be next year before we speak to you again.
01:10:21
Speaker
So until then, conspiracy-later. Hang about. Watch out for Supergram. You've been listening to Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, hosted by Josh Addison and M. Denton. If you'd like to help support us, please find details our pledge drive at either Patreon or Podbean.
01:10:42
Speaker
If you'd like to get in contact with us, email us at podcastconspiracy at gmail.com.