Speaker 1: This is the seventy seven WABC Mini.
Speaker 2: Cast with Megan from News Nation. She puts together the
Speaker 2: most interesting, useful reports News Nation has. She should be
Speaker 2: on the air more and they should pay her more. Megan,
Speaker 2: what are you working on this week?
Speaker 1: I mean say it, louder Walter.
Speaker 2: But they should put her on more. They should put
Speaker 2: her on more. I'll put reverb on it later. They
Speaker 2: should put her on more, and they should pay her more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's what we're talking about. It's so good
Speaker 1: to be back with you. You know. We are working
Speaker 1: on a bunch of things. I just walked in the
Speaker 1: door from the studio. I did two interviews today. I
Speaker 1: did part two of our Scientology series. But it's a
Speaker 1: really interesting one that I'm going to bump up to
Speaker 1: the next episode to air. Was this crazy story about
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein, Hugh Heffner, playmates and the sp It's like
Speaker 1: that's the intersection, like that's the trifactor right there. But
Speaker 1: apparently Playboy Playing has come forward saying she told Hugh
Speaker 1: Hefner that Jeffrey Epstein had sexually assaulted her and then
Speaker 1: trafficked her back in two thousand and four, and then
Speaker 1: Hugh Hester called the FBI, and she was like, I
Speaker 1: heard him on the phone with the FBI. He reported it,
Speaker 1: he did the right thing. They never followed up with me.
Speaker 1: They never said anything. The case was never opened, nothing
Speaker 1: ever happened. It went nowhere. So I talked today to
Speaker 1: a former FBI agent, former CIA agent, and I asked
Speaker 1: her to her face, Number one, what happened? Why would
Speaker 1: they not take that seriously someone's high profile as Hugh
Speaker 1: Hefner saying that. Secondly, why would they take it seriously
Speaker 1: about Epstein? Because you know at that time they were
Speaker 1: already building a case against him. You know, they had
Speaker 1: a file on him. So if somebody at that high
Speaker 1: profile would complain and make that call, you would think
Speaker 1: they all up on it. So the big thing I
Speaker 1: asked her straight to her face, was is the FBI corrupt?
Speaker 2: And she said, well, she.
Speaker 1: Said yes, But why she said yes? It is the
Speaker 1: interesting part. You know, we got into the different layers
Speaker 1: of one person could be and and you know, she asked,
Speaker 1: She's like, well, what do you mean by that? And
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know what I mean is Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 1: Was Jeffrey Epstein paying someone within the FBI, who was
Speaker 1: on his payroll? Did he have blackmail on somebody? What
Speaker 1: are the chances that this did get brought back straight
Speaker 1: to him and then he somehow made it go away.
Speaker 1: And we talked about, you know, yes, that's possible, and
Speaker 1: here's here's why. You know, not only was that his
Speaker 1: mL blackmail being his his mL, but there's also you know,
Speaker 1: bad eggs in every organization and that then things can
Speaker 1: go other ways. And she was like, there's also a
Speaker 1: level to it of like maybe they didn't report or
Speaker 1: fall up on it because they felt like Epstein, the
Speaker 1: FBI being they thought Epstein was more value to them
Speaker 1: alive or not just alive, but not in jail and
Speaker 1: not convicted because he had information possibly with you know,
Speaker 1: international relations aspect of it, like hey, this country that
Speaker 1: you know, we're not too friendly with, he might find
Speaker 1: out before us who our next president will be, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So, you know, we talked a lot about
Speaker 1: the victim, the accusations, the high profile of it, and
Speaker 1: the in are workings of the FBI and the CIA
Speaker 1: and where they really dropped the ball.
Speaker 2: Well, the long rumor is that the FBI and the
Speaker 2: CIA do not coordinate on anything, and that may have
Speaker 2: been the opportunity. That may have been the opportunity that
Speaker 2: was lost. The thing that always strikes me about Epstein
Speaker 2: is this was the busiest man who ever lived. There
Speaker 2: were there are three million, three million emails, there's all
Speaker 2: of this coordination. Half a billion dollars was just handed
Speaker 2: to them by the guy who started the the limited.
Speaker 2: I'm like, what the hell an extraordinarily busy guy without portfolio.
Speaker 2: Nobody on Wall Street says he did any transactions with
Speaker 2: any firm that anybody knows of. So all of this
Speaker 2: money came from G We're not sure it went to
Speaker 2: scoreless activities and G We're not sure about that. And
Speaker 2: anybody who got near him in the public eye has
Speaker 2: been fired and banished like instantly the minute they were connected. Therefore,
Speaker 2: there must be a roote assumption that he was doing
Speaker 2: really bad stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he seems like the fall guy in a
Speaker 1: lot of sense. I mean, like you said, he was
Speaker 1: the busiest man ever. Well, there had to be a
Speaker 1: lot of other people doing the dirty work and just
Speaker 1: pushing him from ward as the face guy, and all
Speaker 1: that stuff might just still be going on.
Speaker 2: Seems likely ironically, there's always been a general belief that
Speaker 2: at root, Hugh Hefner was an honest businessman. You've never
Speaker 2: heard him about fraud, corruption, You haven't. You may not
Speaker 2: have liked his business, but he was running a legal business.
Speaker 2: And the fact that he picked up the phone and
Speaker 2: called the FBI, well that tells you a lot about Hefner.
Speaker 1: YEP, I totally agree, and we talked a lot about
Speaker 1: that in the episode today because you know, had started
Speaker 1: with I'm kind of alongs here about this story of
Speaker 1: Hugh Heffner, because before his death, I say, straight out
Speaker 1: he was the man, right like, he did a legitimate business.
Speaker 1: People wanted to be him. He had the man, he
Speaker 1: had the girlfriends, he had all this stuff and it
Speaker 1: was it was legitimate and he was the man. So
Speaker 1: we all would he died, We're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: an icon has passed away. But since his pasting, all
Speaker 1: these allegations have come out from former girlfriends x ex
Speaker 1: wives about him not painting him in the best life,
Speaker 1: you know, saying that the mansion was really an abusive
Speaker 1: and controlled, the psychological, damaging place to be and you know,
Speaker 1: the quelus and the filming and all this stuff. Has
Speaker 1: kind of come out that's kind of pain in him
Speaker 1: in a bad light. So, you know, we talked about
Speaker 1: that today about how do you reconcile these two different
Speaker 1: images of this man that that we're seeing, And you know,
Speaker 1: in reality, I mean, maybe it was just both. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe he knew, like, hey, I'm going to protect one
Speaker 1: of my playmates because she moved into the mansion. The
Speaker 1: Abstein accused her in this scenario, she did move into
Speaker 1: the Playboy mansion of course security purposes. So she felt
Speaker 1: scared obviously, and she had her moved her in to
Speaker 1: make sure that she was safe. So you know, I
Speaker 1: think it was probably just both. But yeah, we talked
Speaker 1: about that a lot because there's a lot of weird
Speaker 1: parallels there.
Speaker 2: Did you learn anything about part two of Scientology that
Speaker 2: has caused you to be concerned?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I'm always concerned. You know I've I've
Speaker 1: said to you before and I didn't say in the
Speaker 1: episode today, I can't even believe I'm doing this series
Speaker 1: because I said that I never wanted to really get
Speaker 1: that was pientology. But the guests who I talked to,
Speaker 1: I mean, he those of them every single day. He's
Speaker 1: got a great sum stack and these written books, and
Speaker 1: he's covering all the trials and stuff. But you know,
Speaker 1: we really talked about the inner workings of how Scientology
Speaker 1: beat the irs and how they caught tax rexemption status
Speaker 1: after it was revoked from them in the first place.
Speaker 1: And it really is like government espionage style tactics here
Speaker 1: that they used to, you know, breach hundreds of US
Speaker 1: government offices, confiscate thousands of confidential documents to really get
Speaker 1: their tax exemption status back. So we really talked about
Speaker 1: the kind of the inner workings of the Scientology playbook
Speaker 1: of retaliation, and you know, we really give the celebrity
Speaker 1: aspect of it about, you know, why these celebrities are
Speaker 1: useful to them, and the Danny Masterson's case, the that
Speaker 1: Semi show actor who is behind bars for sexual being
Speaker 1: convicted of sexual assaults of multiple women, and why they
Speaker 1: were having you know, Lisa Marie Presley talked to the
Speaker 1: victims about not coming forward, just kind of the weird
Speaker 1: sense or stuff that goes on behind the scenes that
Speaker 1: nobody in the media really talks about, because well, one,
Speaker 1: there you're intimidated by the retaliation effects of efforts by Scientology,
Speaker 1: or two you just don't really think it's a story
Speaker 1: because it's past. But that's not true because Scientology is
Speaker 1: fighting today right now to get that sect of Enter
Speaker 1: Danny Maxson out of jail, and they're also in court
Speaker 1: right now is Lea Ramini bashing her and shaming her.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot going on there that people might
Speaker 1: not think is timely or something to be talked about
Speaker 1: right now in the news. But there's a lot going on.
Speaker 2: When is this getting on the air.
Speaker 1: Next week? We'll do so Wednesday, whatever that date is,
Speaker 1: maybe the twenty sixth, you know, you know, all the
Speaker 1: calendar goes. Next Wednesday we will do the Playboy Ebscene
Speaker 1: Accusations episode with Hugh Hefner, and in the following week
Speaker 1: we will start this series on Scientology.
Speaker 2: Fantastic, good luck with those kids. I appreciate you being
Speaker 2: on the other side of Midnight