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Speaker 1: This is Jay Dyer from Jays Analysis. You're listening to

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Esoteric Hollywood. Esoteric Hollywood is where I deconstruct the biggest

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films in an unparalleled way, from the classics of the

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silver screen to today's blockbusters. Learned to watch film with

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new eyes as we enter Esolitic Hollywood. Listening to Esoteric Hollywood.

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This is your host, Jaydyer of Jasonalysis dot com. Today,

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I have with me Professor Richard Spence of the University

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of Idaho. Professor Spence has a PhD in Modern Europe

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and Middle Eastern history, and he's written some really relevant books.

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I think to listeners and readers of Jays Analysis, you're

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going to find this material fascinating and quite revealing, really,

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because there's a lot of meat that's in Professor Spence's book.

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I've had a chance to make a good way into

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his book Secret Agent sixty sixty six, which deals with

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Aleister Crowley and his connection to British intelligence and the

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much debated issue as to whether or not he really

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was an agent, was he working for someone else?

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Speaker 2: Who knows well?

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Speaker 1: Rich Professor Spence has done some work in this arena

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and it's really good. I've also been told he has

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another book that he's co authored with Walter Bosley, Empire

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of the Wheel, and this is going to be a

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fiction piece, as I understand, coming out soon. And Professor

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Spence also did a piece on Riley Ace of Spies

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and so this is.

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Speaker 2: A trust No.

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Speaker 1: One, The Secret World of Riley Sidney Riley, which you

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can actually find that at Amazon as well. And if

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you've ever seen a suspies I believe with Sam Neil,

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then you'll know what we're talking about here.

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Speaker 2: Professor Spence, how are you today?

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Speaker 3: I'm great?

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Speaker 2: How are you doing well? Doing well?

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Speaker 1: I'm glad to be in contact with you. So I've

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got some notes here. First of all, I guess, if

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you don't mind, what prompted your interest in such a

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crazy topic as Crowley's relationship to British ineligence.

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Speaker 3: Well, it actually, like so many things do, I came

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to that by looking for something else, right, There's a

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lot of serendipity in this kind of stuff, and especially

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in this sort of research. So you started looking for

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one thing and you come across other stuff, and the

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challenge is to recognize what you've found, because very often

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you're so focused on the one thing that you're looking for,

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you can ignore it. Only later do these things have significance.

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So it actually goes back to the book that I

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was working on back around two thousand on Sidney Riley,

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and Riley kind of summoned up. He spent most of

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the First World War period in New York, engaged in

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various activities, and those activities brought him into contact with

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various people connected to, let's say, the German intelligence apparatus

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and the British intelligence apparatus and the Russian intelligence apparatus.

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And I had heard these stories. I wasn't particularly interested

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in Crowley at that point. Keep in mind, he's not

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really on my radar, but I knew that Crowley was

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in New York at the same time, and that he

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had later claimed to have connection to British intelligence, which

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would have meant, if that was true, that he and

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Riley would have been in contact with the same people,

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not necessarily with each other, but with the same people.

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So I was kind of curious about it. And I

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was riding off to the National Archives in Washington, and

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I was requesting various old files out of something called

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the Military Intelligence Division. So a little bit of history

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there people tend to think today that American internal securities

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in the hands of the FBI. Well back in nineteen

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seventeen nineteen eighteen, the period I was looking at the FBI,

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which was then just the plain old BI, the Bureau

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of Investigation was a very kind of marginal small organization

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or the Department of Justice. And what actually took over

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during the wartime period nineteen seventeen nineteen eighteen to really

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handle most of internal security was a branch of the

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US Army, something that became called the MID or the

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Military Intelligence Division as such, it pretty much ceased to

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exist by the nineteen forties, but then it was pretty important. Now.

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The thing about it is that the MID files, because

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they belonged to a defunct organization, are all declassified and

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are available at the National Archives. And that's kind of

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exceptional because most intelligence records, even going that far back

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today are not readily accessible, and these were, and they

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one of the things they is they had this neat, little,

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you know, nineteen seventeen model of you know, having little,

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you know, index cards for all of their suspects, and

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all of that's been microfilmed, and it's a wonderful resource

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for that period of time in terms of what American intelligence,

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encounterintelligence was interested in. So I wrote, I wrote, asking

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for the files or if there were files on a

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certain number of individuals, and I just sort of threw

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Alistair Crowley's name in there, just to see whether he

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came up. We did, and it turned out there was

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a file, not a very big file, a little one,

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and so I got it and I went through and

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most of the stuff and it was not terribly interesting

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or revealing. But one of the things that did show

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is that in nineteen eighteen, the mid was interested in him,

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and they were interested in him because he had had

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contact with known German operatives in the US. That was

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quite true. He was in association with Medeo. In fact,

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he had been most prominently before the US under the

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war writing articles for a New York magazine called The Fatherland.

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And if that sounds vaguely like it could be a

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pro German publication, we're absolutely right it was. And not

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only was he writing for the Fatherland, but he was

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writing what can only be described as scurrilous anti British propaganda.

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And so the later accusations that Alistair Crowley spent the

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First World war, not doing his bit whatever that might

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have been in England, but in New York writing anti

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British propaganda for a known German propaganda outlet, The Fatherland

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was true. But Crowley would later claim that, well, you know,

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I did this really under the auspices of His Majesty's government.

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You know what I was doing was wasn't real propaganda.

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It was propaganda meant to look so ridiculous and over

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the top that it actually discredited the Germans as opposed

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to help.

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Speaker 2: Them of provocateuring basically kind of.

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Speaker 3: Kind of a provocateur. And that was one of those

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things that was debated back and forth between you know,

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this was simply Crowley, you know, trying to cover up

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his past sins by claiming association. But in going through

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this little mid file, there was, as there often is,

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a little gem that appeared in it something I wasn't

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looking for. The Americans knew about his German connections, and

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they knew about some of his activities. He'd spent part

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of this summer up in an Island and the and

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the up in the Hudson River Valley, and that had

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attracted their attention, and they were basically thinking about arresting him,

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and they inquired because he was a British subject with

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the British Consulate in New York. And I think this

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is quoted in the book, but basically what the British

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consulate said was to lay off. We know what he's doing,

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and he is an he's working in a confidential manner

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for the British government. So that was kind of surprising

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because that was the first thing that confirmed that, at

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least at that time, at least in nineteen seventeen, nineteen eighteen,

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he was indeed in the confidence of the British government

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and they knew what he was doing and they had

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no problem with it. The other thing that was a

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little and that sort of you know, led me to

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write a short article which I appeared in a in

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a journal I think Intelligence and National Security. No, a

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Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. Yeah, that's one of those

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scholarly journals that nobody reads, but nevertheless that's where it appeared.

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Speaker 2: I got a id read it.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so I wrote this up. I gave it the

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title Secret Agent sixty sixty six because that sounded like

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a good title, and it was one of those things

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that again appeared in a journal which you wouldn't expect

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a lot of people to read. But one of the

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things that happened to it is that it was sort

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of spread over the internet. He was one of those

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things that people, by the way, quite illegally, I think,

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sort of copied and pasted the article and spread it around.

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And by the way, for me, that's a good thing. So,

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just in case anybody has ever interested, academics as a

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general rule, effects as far as I know, do not

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get paid for writing scholarly articles. And therefore one of

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the things that data is they got exposure to this,

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and so I started getting feedback. I got letters, I

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got emails from people, and most of them were saying, well,

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you know, maybe you should really follow this further. You know,

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maybe there's something there's more of a story to be

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told here. Because if he was, as he later claimed,

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working for the British government in America in nineteen eighteen,

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then where out was that the only occasion or there

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other occasions for this. So eventually I got con vinced

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to do that, which caused me, by the way, to

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put aside another project I had. But that's not unusual,

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and so I said, well, okay, I'll look into this,

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I'll try to expand the article. Maybe I can make

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that bigger, maybe it'll turn into a book. And well

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it did, And as one went through sort of went

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back and just looked at the various episodes and associations

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in Alistair Crowley's career, you know, beginning with his college

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days in Cambridge and then going on through his association

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with the Golden Dawn, his connection with the Oto and

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Theodore Royce, all the way up to World War Two.

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And one of the things that I found is that

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all through his career he was continually coming in contact

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and often fairly close association with people who were connected

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to British intelligence.

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Speaker 2: Right, so like Dennis Wheatley, presumably right.

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Speaker 3: Dennis Wheatley, Maxwell Knight, even I think Gerald Yorke, a

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guy named Robin Fine. I mean, every time you turn,

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and part of this is simply investigating these people. And

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you know, one of the things that for some reason,

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it was never my intention, but with people like Crowley

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and Riley and a variety of others, I always seem

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to pick these these these figures who are in some

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ways sort of semi mythologized by themselves and others, and

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which also tend to well, in most cases, lie a

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lot and and sort of invent various things about themselves.

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But they're not but the other things that they're not

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lying all of the time. It's always this sort of

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combination of fact and fiction, but people who in many

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ways sort of obscure who they actually are, and and

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trying to piece together their activities. One of the things

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becomes very important is not just following them, but then

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always going off for these tangents to explore anybody they

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come in contact with. I mean, is this a casual acquaintance,

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is it someone who's you know, directly related simply to

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to sort of personal activities or business activities or occult activities,

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or is this someone who connects them to government toward

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or intelligence agencies. And one of the things I found

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in Crowley's case is that every time you turn around,

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he was bumping into a spook, and way too often

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for that to be coincidental. So this was eventually the

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picture that emerged as I began to put these various

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pieces together, that Crowley was not you know, he's not

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an intelligence officer, he's not a full time spy, but

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he was an asset. This is basically what agencies do

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agencies and the really limited number of you know, official officers,

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people who work and get their paychecks from SIS or

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CIA or whatever it might be. The field agents recruit

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and and run at sets. And Crawley, I think early on,

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probably as far back as his Cambridge days, was sort

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of spotted as a potential asset and then was exploited

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on occasion for those purposes. And one of the things,

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I mean, why would anybody pick I mean the question

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you usually get is that, well, this was a guy

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who was notorious, He had a bad reputation, he gets

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nicknamed the wickedest man in the world. And therefore, why

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would any intelligence agency want something to do with a

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person so disreputable. His notoriousness and his bad behavior was

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irrelevant to those activities. I mean, this is the whole

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point in an asset. You don't recruit assets because they're

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nice people. You don't even necessarily recruit them because you

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can trust them. You recruit them for one reason only

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that you can use them, that they have a utility.

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So one of the things that Crowley, one of his

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elements of his utility, was that he had connections through

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his occult associations through his membership infringe Masonic organizations, the

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OTO and elsewhere, to all of the various societies that

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he belonged, he was then plugged into what could be

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called the early twentieth century European occult underground, and that

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in and of itself was is a kind of network.

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It's a network that crossed borders. It combined you know,

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people in different countries, sometimes within the same country, but

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in different countries, belong to these fraternal organizations, and usually

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fairly secret fraternal organizations, which not always but in some

240
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cases created this bond that transcended nationality, that transcended other factors.

241
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And that was this network through which information, like all networks,

242
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flow that Croley could tap into. And there was a

243
00:15:08,679 --> 00:15:12,879
particular occasion again it's in the book, but it's during

244
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coccurs during the nineteen twenties, and during the nineteen twenties

245
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that's a kind of that whole decade is a sort

246
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of low point in Croley's career.

247
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Speaker 1: He was.

248
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Speaker 3: Struggling on and off, mostly on with his heroin addiction.

249
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Most of his financial ventures had fallen through handsome fairly

250
00:15:36,840 --> 00:15:41,480
hard times and also had been pretty clearly early in

251
00:15:41,480 --> 00:15:46,440
the twenties, put on the shelf by British intelligence. They

252
00:15:46,519 --> 00:15:50,000
had sort of separated from him, I think partly because

253
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of a snaffy that happened in Italy and Sicily around

254
00:15:54,000 --> 00:15:59,000
nineteen twenty two, and that's where he was expelled by

255
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the I think, and when Mussolini kicked him out. And

256
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one of the little details you look at that is

257
00:16:04,799 --> 00:16:08,399
the Italians going through there found various papers, and these

258
00:16:08,440 --> 00:16:13,639
papers indicated to them that Proley was working for British intelligence.

259
00:16:14,960 --> 00:16:17,399
I don't think the fascists were making that up. I

260
00:16:17,399 --> 00:16:20,840
think that's exactly what it was that they found, and

261
00:16:21,080 --> 00:16:27,480
that was a serious breach of tradecraft. The one thing

262
00:16:27,600 --> 00:16:30,240
that you would never do is to leave stuff around

263
00:16:30,480 --> 00:16:33,840
that would show a link between you and the government.

264
00:16:34,360 --> 00:16:38,360
And that's where he screwed up, and they seemed to

265
00:16:38,360 --> 00:16:40,679
have nothing to do with him. A few years later, though,

266
00:16:40,720 --> 00:16:42,720
a question came up and it actually had to do

267
00:16:42,840 --> 00:16:45,799
with some sort of I don't know what is referred

268
00:16:45,799 --> 00:16:50,399
to when the report is sort of East Asiatic deviltry

269
00:16:51,200 --> 00:16:53,679
or some sort of secret societies. It was something that

270
00:16:53,679 --> 00:16:56,320
had attracted the British interest in China and the Far East,

271
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and so the question came up as to, well, I

272
00:16:59,720 --> 00:17:02,679
don't know who might know about these sorts of things,

273
00:17:02,960 --> 00:17:06,920
and it was suggested that, well, you know, I kind

274
00:17:06,920 --> 00:17:10,359
of get, almost apologetically, it's put forward, I kind of

275
00:17:10,359 --> 00:17:14,279
its kind of reluctantly suggest this. But but Alistair Crowley

276
00:17:14,839 --> 00:17:18,440
is probably the person who could provide some sort of

277
00:17:18,480 --> 00:17:22,599
insight to these things. And you can, you can almost,

278
00:17:22,960 --> 00:17:27,119
you know, read between the lines the distaste with which

279
00:17:27,160 --> 00:17:30,359
that suggestion is made and with which it has received.

280
00:17:31,079 --> 00:17:34,119
But then there's also this kind of tacit recognition that well, yeah,

281
00:17:34,279 --> 00:17:37,000
I suppose he would be the guy if he really

282
00:17:37,079 --> 00:17:39,920
had to. And then again was an example of where

283
00:17:40,000 --> 00:17:42,359
it had nothing to do with him being liked or

284
00:17:42,400 --> 00:17:45,480
trusted or admired or anything else, but whether or not

285
00:17:45,680 --> 00:17:50,759
in a particular thing, a particular circumstance, he could be useful.

286
00:17:52,200 --> 00:17:54,000
Now I have to add on this, I have to

287
00:17:54,039 --> 00:17:56,279
backtrack a little bit and point out I always point

288
00:17:56,279 --> 00:17:59,359
this out whenever I'm I'm asked to say anything about

289
00:17:59,400 --> 00:18:01,640
Crowley in the book, just to make it very clear

290
00:18:01,680 --> 00:18:05,000
where I'm coming from, and that's I am not a telamite,

291
00:18:05,079 --> 00:18:07,079
I am not a croleite, I am not a follower

292
00:18:07,119 --> 00:18:09,759
of any of his ideas. I have nothing against his ideas.

293
00:18:10,039 --> 00:18:12,920
I am not an anti croleite. I tried to come

294
00:18:12,960 --> 00:18:19,599
at this from as objective a viewpoint as I could,

295
00:18:20,400 --> 00:18:22,680
you know, in re membory, in starting looking at the book,

296
00:18:22,759 --> 00:18:25,640
my assumption here, well, obviously you know I didn't. My

297
00:18:25,720 --> 00:18:30,000
assumption really to begin with, is that his association, well

298
00:18:30,039 --> 00:18:32,319
it might have existed in the World War One period,

299
00:18:32,480 --> 00:18:35,480
was probably pretty limited. I was perfectly prepared to find

300
00:18:35,559 --> 00:18:39,279
nothing else, and I was somewhat surprised by the amount

301
00:18:39,319 --> 00:18:41,839
of material I found. And much of that is simply

302
00:18:41,880 --> 00:18:44,720
when you begin looking for it. You Knowziel saying, if

303
00:18:44,720 --> 00:18:46,480
you're not looking for it, you're not going to see it.

304
00:18:47,319 --> 00:18:50,319
But once you understood who these people were, he was

305
00:18:50,359 --> 00:18:57,119
connected to how his travels, let's say, you know, in

306
00:18:57,160 --> 00:18:59,880
the years before the First World War in southern China,

307
00:19:00,039 --> 00:19:02,440
which just happened to be through the main opium growing

308
00:19:02,519 --> 00:19:06,640
districts where there were British and French colonial tensions, how

309
00:19:06,680 --> 00:19:09,839
that was or easily could have been more than a

310
00:19:09,920 --> 00:19:13,440
kind of casual trip. I mean he was. And then

311
00:19:13,480 --> 00:19:16,079
you look at even in his confessions where he'll say

312
00:19:16,359 --> 00:19:19,640
he's stopping in and checking in with British consulates along

313
00:19:19,680 --> 00:19:24,440
the way, you know, it all becomes sort of blatantly obvious.

314
00:19:24,640 --> 00:19:26,839
Speaker 1: Let me ask you a question about the World War

315
00:19:26,880 --> 00:19:30,839
One period. You mentioned in the book more or less

316
00:19:30,839 --> 00:19:35,480
the possibility of the Lusitania, which of course provokes World

317
00:19:35,519 --> 00:19:39,200
War One to bring the US in, And I was

318
00:19:39,279 --> 00:19:41,039
it's funny you said that, because I just read this

319
00:19:41,119 --> 00:19:44,440
section in Carol Quigley's Tragy and Hope where he kind

320
00:19:44,440 --> 00:19:47,359
of hints around that actually there's a lot of suspicion

321
00:19:47,480 --> 00:19:50,960
that points to the fact that perhaps the British Admiralty

322
00:19:51,000 --> 00:19:56,480
themselves sunk that ship for the purpose of provocation in propaganda.

323
00:19:56,599 --> 00:20:01,279
And you mentioned a new tidbit to me that apparently

324
00:20:01,319 --> 00:20:06,359
Croley helped to convince Germans that this attack that they

325
00:20:06,359 --> 00:20:08,720
should provoke the US in this regard.

326
00:20:09,400 --> 00:20:11,359
Speaker 3: Yeah, part of his one of the things that he

327
00:20:11,440 --> 00:20:16,160
managed to insinuate himself into New York was a kind

328
00:20:16,200 --> 00:20:20,839
of semi official It was official, but a thing called

329
00:20:20,839 --> 00:20:23,480
that what the Germans called the propaganda Cabinet. They didn't

330
00:20:23,480 --> 00:20:26,160
really give very subtle names to these things. And one

331
00:20:26,200 --> 00:20:27,960
of the key figures in it was the fellow who

332
00:20:28,039 --> 00:20:31,200
I had mentioned before this New York magazine The Fatherland.

333
00:20:31,240 --> 00:20:33,720
It was published by a German American by the name

334
00:20:33,759 --> 00:20:38,519
of George Sylvester Viereck, a very interesting guy if any

335
00:20:38,519 --> 00:20:42,960
of your you know listeners want to check into Verrek's

336
00:20:42,960 --> 00:20:46,400
background both in both world wars. He is an active

337
00:20:46,440 --> 00:20:52,160
German agent in the US. But Verrek then connected you know,

338
00:20:52,279 --> 00:20:55,400
crole connected to Viereck that then connected into other people

339
00:20:55,480 --> 00:20:58,880
within the German consulate, even to the German embassy in Washington.

340
00:20:58,960 --> 00:21:01,119
And one of the things to remember is that for

341
00:21:01,240 --> 00:21:03,920
most of the First World War from nineteen fourteen through

342
00:21:03,920 --> 00:21:06,680
the middle of nineteen seventeen, the United States is a

343
00:21:06,720 --> 00:21:11,039
neutral country, at least ostensibly. The Wilson administration may have

344
00:21:11,079 --> 00:21:14,119
been pro allied in its heart, but the country was neutral,

345
00:21:15,160 --> 00:21:20,359
and that meant that there was a real propaganda war

346
00:21:20,640 --> 00:21:24,559
underway for let's say, the hearts and minds of the

347
00:21:24,599 --> 00:21:27,960
American populace and to some degree of the American government,

348
00:21:28,039 --> 00:21:33,480
the efforts to sway American public opinion. And the British

349
00:21:33,720 --> 00:21:37,000
have a great advantage in this because they're dealing with

350
00:21:37,720 --> 00:21:41,799
the you know, they have a language advantage, and overall,

351
00:21:42,039 --> 00:21:47,240
German propaganda was more successful and more subtle in its

352
00:21:47,279 --> 00:21:52,799
approach than was German propaganda. Now Curley showed up. It's

353
00:21:52,880 --> 00:21:55,039
kind of think he actually shows up in New York

354
00:21:55,319 --> 00:21:58,000
very early in the war. He shows up on Halloween.

355
00:21:58,119 --> 00:22:00,839
I love this part. He shows up on Octoberber thirty first,

356
00:22:00,920 --> 00:22:05,400
nineteen fourteen, and he arrives by the way on the Lusitania.

357
00:22:06,160 --> 00:22:09,480
Now that Lusitania won't meet its destruction for about another

358
00:22:09,519 --> 00:22:11,160
six months, but he shows up in the fall of

359
00:22:11,240 --> 00:22:15,720
nineteen fourteen. And he presents himself once he gets to

360
00:22:15,759 --> 00:22:21,480
New York as an Irish nationalist, and you know which

361
00:22:21,480 --> 00:22:25,039
he's not. Aliser Crowley was not Irish by any description.

362
00:22:25,160 --> 00:22:28,039
I don't think I ever visited the place. But he sort

363
00:22:28,039 --> 00:22:34,319
of invented this whole pseudo Irish background for himself, which,

364
00:22:34,359 --> 00:22:38,640
as far as I could determined, was absolutely uninteresting and

365
00:22:38,799 --> 00:22:42,359
unconvincing to any of the real Irish nationalists in New York.

366
00:22:43,079 --> 00:22:45,880
They seem to have had virtually nothing to do with him.

367
00:22:46,039 --> 00:22:51,000
But instead he was able to sell himself to the

368
00:22:51,119 --> 00:22:53,960
Germans in New York. And then there are other reasons

369
00:22:53,960 --> 00:22:56,440
why he was able to do that, as someone who

370
00:22:56,480 --> 00:23:01,799
could be useful to them in providing a kind of

371
00:23:01,960 --> 00:23:06,400
insight into the Anglo Saxon mentality. So one of the

372
00:23:06,480 --> 00:23:08,519
things that he's trying to convince them of and seems

373
00:23:08,519 --> 00:23:12,640
to have been successful, is that, well, you know, the

374
00:23:12,960 --> 00:23:16,440
Americans are sort of childlike, they don't have much real

375
00:23:16,680 --> 00:23:20,160
acquaintance with the rough and tumble of world politics. And

376
00:23:20,160 --> 00:23:22,440
therefore there's two ways you can approach them. One is

377
00:23:22,440 --> 00:23:26,880
that you can try to mollify them and to try

378
00:23:26,920 --> 00:23:29,240
to you know, please them. The other is you can

379
00:23:29,279 --> 00:23:30,759
just kind of scare the hell out of them, just

380
00:23:30,799 --> 00:23:34,519
show them how tough you are, right, and this is

381
00:23:34,599 --> 00:23:36,400
this is part of the idea that, you know, one

382
00:23:36,440 --> 00:23:37,839
of the things you have to do in wars, you

383
00:23:37,960 --> 00:23:42,160
just have to show your determination, and that seems to

384
00:23:42,200 --> 00:23:44,240
have sort of missed with an idea that was already

385
00:23:44,279 --> 00:23:48,359
sort of current in German war propaganda is that, you know,

386
00:23:48,440 --> 00:23:51,240
we simply want to convince our enemas as to how

387
00:23:51,279 --> 00:23:55,519
powerful and tough and ruthless we would be. And therefore,

388
00:23:55,759 --> 00:24:01,079
you know, the destruction of the Lusitania, which was you know,

389
00:24:01,160 --> 00:24:04,799
again very polarizing, it was a huge black eye for

390
00:24:04,880 --> 00:24:09,400
the Germans. Even though this is an interesting thing. In

391
00:24:09,759 --> 00:24:14,000
a review by an American court looking over the decision

392
00:24:14,119 --> 00:24:19,319
was that because the Lusitania was carrying war contraband, in

393
00:24:19,400 --> 00:24:23,759
other words, because its cargo holds were full of war

394
00:24:23,880 --> 00:24:27,480
material l which was deliberately placed in a passenger ship.

395
00:24:27,960 --> 00:24:29,559
You know, you can look at it two ways. Either

396
00:24:29,599 --> 00:24:33,200
it was placed there in order to encourage an attack

397
00:24:33,400 --> 00:24:36,200
upon a liner or to use the liner as a

398
00:24:36,240 --> 00:24:39,839
cover for bringing in this. But then in that sense,

399
00:24:39,960 --> 00:24:43,559
because it carried war material, you know, the whole submarine

400
00:24:43,880 --> 00:24:46,519
sinking from a distance might be questionable, but the Germans

401
00:24:46,559 --> 00:24:49,759
didn't least have some reason to attack or seize the vessel.

402
00:24:50,720 --> 00:24:52,880
And this is later one of the things that the Germans,

403
00:24:52,960 --> 00:24:55,319
you know, would would say that well, you know, this

404
00:24:55,440 --> 00:24:59,960
was this was something that was legitimate, you know, I mean, yes,

405
00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:02,279
it was a passenger liner, but it was a passenger

406
00:25:02,279 --> 00:25:07,759
liner being used for military purposes. And they even struck

407
00:25:07,799 --> 00:25:11,240
a medal to commemorate it, in other words, to show

408
00:25:11,240 --> 00:25:15,160
that they were in fact proud of this. And this

409
00:25:15,279 --> 00:25:18,079
isn't something that you can solely sort of tack up

410
00:25:18,119 --> 00:25:20,960
to the influence of Crole, but Croley's influence with the

411
00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:24,039
propaganda cabinet in New York. He was even invited to

412
00:25:24,079 --> 00:25:31,640
their meetings and you know played into this. You know what,

413
00:25:32,440 --> 00:25:34,839
the idea with any sort of good propaganda is that

414
00:25:34,920 --> 00:25:37,839
you don't convince people to do something they don't want

415
00:25:37,880 --> 00:25:40,640
to do or wouldn't have thought of. You convinced them

416
00:25:40,680 --> 00:25:44,039
to do something they're inclined to do to begin with. Yeah,

417
00:25:44,079 --> 00:25:49,519
and so he was able to provide that that push

418
00:25:49,559 --> 00:25:51,960
another thing, you know, the meetings of the Propaganda Cabinet.

419
00:25:52,000 --> 00:25:54,039
One of the things is that British intelligence in New

420
00:25:54,119 --> 00:25:57,880
York eventually was able to tap their phone line, which

421
00:25:57,920 --> 00:26:00,559
meant they had to figure out what telephone was and

422
00:26:00,599 --> 00:26:03,000
they had to get someone into the room in the

423
00:26:03,039 --> 00:26:07,440
building and do that. And I would somehow strongly suspect

424
00:26:07,440 --> 00:26:09,920
that Alister Crowley was the person who set that up

425
00:26:10,440 --> 00:26:13,079
because he was the only British operative who was there

426
00:26:13,240 --> 00:26:15,720
at the meetings. He could have identified everything about it.

427
00:26:16,519 --> 00:26:18,680
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this because it makes me think,

428
00:26:18,759 --> 00:26:21,160
even though this is a World War One period, there's

429
00:26:21,200 --> 00:26:26,240
a very similar kind of mirrored event that after the

430
00:26:26,279 --> 00:26:31,400
same pattern that occurs prior to World War Two, where

431
00:26:31,680 --> 00:26:35,480
in Craig Cobble's book on Ian Fleming's Secret War, as

432
00:26:35,519 --> 00:26:39,000
well as Philip Knightley's book Second Oldest Profession. They both

433
00:26:39,039 --> 00:26:46,920
discussed Ian Fleming and Bill Donovan basically being connected to

434
00:26:47,559 --> 00:26:50,440
what's going on in New York like you're talking about,

435
00:26:50,480 --> 00:26:57,599
because as I understand, it was William Stevenson, yeah, in Trepid,

436
00:26:57,759 --> 00:27:01,720
who had an office in Rockefeller Center, and they were

437
00:27:01,759 --> 00:27:09,119
basically involved in convincing Roosevelt and others. That it was

438
00:27:09,160 --> 00:27:13,079
Donovan working at the behest of Stevenson to convince Roosevelt

439
00:27:13,119 --> 00:27:16,400
and others of the need for US involvement in this war.

440
00:27:17,720 --> 00:27:21,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd actually recommends there's another book on that whole issue.

441
00:27:22,480 --> 00:27:27,559
It's by Thomas mal mhl it's called Desperate Deception British

442
00:27:27,599 --> 00:27:30,480
Covert Operations in the United States nineteen thirty nine to

443
00:27:30,559 --> 00:27:35,880
forty four, and it's a pretty interesting book because basically,

444
00:27:37,559 --> 00:27:41,319
I FDR was from the World War One period, and

445
00:27:42,200 --> 00:27:44,240
I think it's fair to say that he was pro

446
00:27:44,319 --> 00:27:50,839
British thoroughly and pretty much. His administration allowed British intelligence

447
00:27:50,839 --> 00:27:53,799
to do whatever it was. It damn well pleased exactly.

448
00:27:54,599 --> 00:27:58,000
They could, you know, fort American neutrality laws and get

449
00:27:58,039 --> 00:28:01,880
away with all kinds of things. And that was even

450
00:28:01,920 --> 00:28:04,400
more so in the Second World War period. So there

451
00:28:04,400 --> 00:28:07,359
was close collaboration between the two and you got Sir

452
00:28:07,359 --> 00:28:14,119
William Stevenson Donovan. Another guy who's pivotal in the First War,

453
00:28:14,319 --> 00:28:17,559
but who also if you look closely, crops up sort

454
00:28:17,559 --> 00:28:22,400
of an auxiliary role in the Second World War is

455
00:28:22,400 --> 00:28:24,559
a fellow of the name of Sir William Wiseman.

456
00:28:25,400 --> 00:28:27,880
Speaker 2: Yes, and a right.

457
00:28:27,920 --> 00:28:30,240
Speaker 3: Wiseman is one of these guys that you know, if

458
00:28:30,440 --> 00:28:32,599
I get around to it, I want to do a

459
00:28:32,680 --> 00:28:36,240
biography of because I don't think that has ever been

460
00:28:36,279 --> 00:28:40,960
done thoroughly. It leaves in an article form. William Wiseman

461
00:28:43,720 --> 00:28:47,039
is an interesting figure both in British intelligence and even

462
00:28:47,079 --> 00:28:51,559
He later becomes a partner of the qune Lobe Investment

463
00:28:51,599 --> 00:28:55,359
Bank in New York. He becomes an executive at Paramount

464
00:28:55,400 --> 00:28:59,039
Pictures ing. One of the things he does at Paramount

465
00:28:59,039 --> 00:29:03,440
in the thirties is that he uses his influence on

466
00:29:03,480 --> 00:29:08,680
the Paramount board to encourage making films that portray the

467
00:29:08,720 --> 00:29:12,920
British Empire in a positive light and discouraging the production

468
00:29:13,000 --> 00:29:15,440
of films that would not portray the British Empire and

469
00:29:15,480 --> 00:29:18,319
a positive light. So if you look at things like

470
00:29:18,400 --> 00:29:21,119
Lives of a Bengal Lancer Gunga Din, a variety of

471
00:29:21,160 --> 00:29:25,599
other films. Wiseman, both in paramount elsewhere, was using He

472
00:29:25,680 --> 00:29:28,599
spent much of his career even in business, as what's

473
00:29:28,599 --> 00:29:33,279
called an agent of influence, and an agent of influence

474
00:29:33,519 --> 00:29:36,599
is certainly someone who has never officially connected with that.

475
00:29:36,720 --> 00:29:40,920
But their job is to represent the interests of their

476
00:29:40,960 --> 00:29:47,640
government through business, through social contacts, not in anything that

477
00:29:47,680 --> 00:29:50,640
would be called spy. They're not really involved so much

478
00:29:50,640 --> 00:29:55,599
in gathering information. They're involved in spin. I suppose that

479
00:29:55,640 --> 00:29:57,920
would be one way to put it. And so you

480
00:29:58,039 --> 00:30:03,640
find Wiseman was the head of the New York station

481
00:30:04,640 --> 00:30:07,960
from nineteen sixteen to about nineteen nineteen of what was

482
00:30:08,000 --> 00:30:11,839
then called m I one C in M I one

483
00:30:11,920 --> 00:30:14,480
CE with what would be later known today as six

484
00:30:14,720 --> 00:30:18,440
which by the way, for your listeners, is really the sis,

485
00:30:18,799 --> 00:30:22,880
all right, the Secret Intelligence Service. And and he again,

486
00:30:22,920 --> 00:30:24,559
do you have one of these things of agencies that

487
00:30:24,759 --> 00:30:27,960
masquerade publicly under a name that's not their real name.

488
00:30:28,960 --> 00:30:32,559
But he ran that, and he ran it very efficiently,

489
00:30:33,119 --> 00:30:36,119
and he was in fact the fellow who was controlling

490
00:30:36,160 --> 00:30:39,480
all of these operations at the British Consulate in New York,

491
00:30:39,559 --> 00:30:43,359
and therefore ultimately is the person that Proley would have been,

492
00:30:43,839 --> 00:30:46,960
if not working under then working under the auspices of

493
00:30:48,279 --> 00:30:50,599
I think the guy that actually was managing Crowley in

494
00:30:50,599 --> 00:30:55,519
that period was Wiseman's number two, an equally interesting character,

495
00:30:55,559 --> 00:30:58,240
but the name of Norman Thwaites, and I think he

496
00:30:58,240 --> 00:30:59,880
can come up with a more English name than that.

497
00:31:00,960 --> 00:31:05,160
But Norman Thwaites, again was connected. He had prior pre

498
00:31:05,279 --> 00:31:09,200
war connections to American newspapers. He in fact had been

499
00:31:09,240 --> 00:31:13,240
the personal secretary to Joseph Pulitzer. He had worked in

500
00:31:13,240 --> 00:31:15,519
the New York World. He had all kinds of connections

501
00:31:15,519 --> 00:31:20,720
in the American press, and you better believe used every

502
00:31:20,799 --> 00:31:25,440
one of those to push British propaganda during the war.

503
00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:28,559
The other thing that's interesting about Norman Thwaites, which I

504
00:31:28,599 --> 00:31:31,279
didn't realize at first, is that he had a long

505
00:31:31,599 --> 00:31:33,720
and deep interest in the occult.

506
00:31:34,279 --> 00:31:38,680
Speaker 2: Oh okay, and that's you know, and.

507
00:31:38,559 --> 00:31:40,720
Speaker 3: Then there's that kind of connection. I mean, this is

508
00:31:40,759 --> 00:31:42,480
one of the weird things that came out of the way.

509
00:31:42,480 --> 00:31:45,640
One of the things I really didn't expect is that

510
00:31:46,079 --> 00:31:50,599
is this crossover, this kind of intermingling of what could

511
00:31:50,599 --> 00:31:56,960
be called the occult or esoteric societies and intelligence organizations,

512
00:31:57,519 --> 00:31:59,519
and again it's one of those things that comes up

513
00:32:00,160 --> 00:32:05,480
far too often to be just incidental or coincidental. And

514
00:32:05,880 --> 00:32:09,079
to me, what that began to suggest, and something I

515
00:32:09,119 --> 00:32:12,279
sort of continue in various branches of research to look at,

516
00:32:12,480 --> 00:32:15,759
is the way in which not just an individual like

517
00:32:15,839 --> 00:32:18,160
Proley could be used as an asset, but in which

518
00:32:18,599 --> 00:32:22,160
entire organizations can be used as an asset.

519
00:32:22,599 --> 00:32:22,799
Speaker 2: Yeah.

520
00:32:22,839 --> 00:32:25,359
Speaker 1: Actually, my book will be coming out in a few

521
00:32:25,400 --> 00:32:28,799
months and it deals with that very topic, in part

522
00:32:28,920 --> 00:32:32,599
in relationship to Hollywood. So there's a lot of those

523
00:32:32,640 --> 00:32:35,319
same tie ins that we find in the Hollywood sphere,

524
00:32:35,359 --> 00:32:37,279
which you just pointed out with Wiseman.

525
00:32:37,359 --> 00:32:40,480
Speaker 2: And there's of course, many of the.

526
00:32:40,440 --> 00:32:45,000
Speaker 1: Figures in MGM were part of this pro British propaganda

527
00:32:45,119 --> 00:32:51,519
set that included Hitchcock and some of the other moguls

528
00:32:51,559 --> 00:32:54,160
at the top of MGM in the forties and fifties.

529
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:58,839
And of course Noel Coward would figure into this. Just

530
00:32:58,839 --> 00:33:01,640
give me not no Coward, but uh, the author of

531
00:33:01,720 --> 00:33:03,000
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

532
00:33:05,039 --> 00:33:07,119
Speaker 2: Well, what's his name? He was also British intelligence. My

533
00:33:07,119 --> 00:33:08,000
mind just went blank.

534
00:33:08,079 --> 00:33:15,839
Speaker 1: But the author of the Kids' stories and excuse me, yeah, yeah,

535
00:33:16,559 --> 00:33:20,559
but yeah, so that these tie ins are are fascinating,

536
00:33:20,559 --> 00:33:22,279
like you said, and it makes me think of the

537
00:33:22,799 --> 00:33:26,519
quote that you put in the book from Curly's Moonchild novel,

538
00:33:26,559 --> 00:33:29,720
which roughly hits at this point where I'm gonna paraphrase,

539
00:33:29,720 --> 00:33:31,440
he says something to the fact of, you know, the

540
00:33:31,480 --> 00:33:36,000
investigation of this spiritualism makes for good ground in terms

541
00:33:36,039 --> 00:33:36,799
of espionage.

542
00:33:37,440 --> 00:33:39,799
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's one of those things that can be used.

543
00:33:40,440 --> 00:33:42,839
Is it kind of cover for this? And I suppose

544
00:33:42,880 --> 00:33:44,640
in a way that goes back to something I'd mentioned

545
00:33:44,640 --> 00:33:48,039
earlier about what you know, why considering his his notar

546
00:33:48,319 --> 00:33:52,799
notorious and even negative attributes, would he be used Well, again,

547
00:33:52,839 --> 00:33:56,119
he's he's useful. And but also with something that pointed

548
00:33:56,119 --> 00:33:59,000
out to me is that you know, there are there

549
00:33:59,000 --> 00:34:02,640
are various kinds of professions that you can often which

550
00:34:02,680 --> 00:34:05,880
are sort of perfect for a spy or someone engage

551
00:34:05,920 --> 00:34:11,280
in intelligence, and those are often things like reporter, missionary,

552
00:34:11,719 --> 00:34:15,280
or explorer. Okay, And what all of those have in

553
00:34:15,320 --> 00:34:19,320
common is that reporters, missionaries, and explorers all can have

554
00:34:19,480 --> 00:34:23,199
some ostensible reason to be somewhere that no one else

555
00:34:23,360 --> 00:34:27,800
would be in remote areas, and also asking questions of

556
00:34:27,840 --> 00:34:30,639
the kind so well of those are commonplace. I mean,

557
00:34:30,679 --> 00:34:34,760
where would someone who is a kind of professing you know,

558
00:34:35,000 --> 00:34:38,480
occultist come in. Well, one it interests they can also

559
00:34:38,559 --> 00:34:42,880
go into a territory, a territory again of secret associations

560
00:34:44,199 --> 00:34:47,360
that wouldn't otherwise be visible. But also somebody must put

561
00:34:47,400 --> 00:34:50,400
was that, you know, the very thing that would make

562
00:34:50,480 --> 00:34:55,239
someone argue that this guy couldn't possibly be a spy

563
00:34:55,400 --> 00:34:59,760
because he's to this or that is precisely the thing

564
00:35:00,239 --> 00:35:04,440
that recommends him for that. The idea that one would

565
00:35:04,440 --> 00:35:09,079
on the surface discount this is a recommendation that that

566
00:35:09,159 --> 00:35:12,239
would would be used. And and I think that went

567
00:35:12,280 --> 00:35:17,559
into it as I think his reputation became something that

568
00:35:19,719 --> 00:35:23,719
became a burden that he that he spent probably about

569
00:35:23,719 --> 00:35:26,280
the last couple of decades of his life really trying

570
00:35:26,400 --> 00:35:29,719
unsuccessfully to correct. And I have to say that while

571
00:35:29,719 --> 00:35:32,039
I'm no follower of Crowley, and I you know of

572
00:35:32,079 --> 00:35:34,119
his ideas, but one of the things that I sort

573
00:35:34,119 --> 00:35:37,239
of emerged from from working for this is that I

574
00:35:37,639 --> 00:35:44,000
think his reputation for evil was a bit overdone, sure,

575
00:35:44,519 --> 00:35:46,679
and I think that was that was part of a

576
00:35:46,760 --> 00:35:52,519
kind of persona and character which he carefully created and

577
00:35:52,599 --> 00:35:56,119
which he enjoyed, but which is which was in many

578
00:35:56,119 --> 00:35:57,840
ways a kind of character. And that's one of the

579
00:35:57,920 --> 00:36:00,880
questions I was left with, is that where is the

580
00:36:00,920 --> 00:36:02,000
real person at.

581
00:36:01,960 --> 00:36:03,559
Speaker 2: This That's what I was going to ask you was

582
00:36:03,880 --> 00:36:05,199
you know, I'm not in any.

583
00:36:04,960 --> 00:36:08,159
Speaker 1: Way a scholar of Crowley. I've read a couple of

584
00:36:08,159 --> 00:36:10,519
the books to get an idea of what his thought was.

585
00:36:10,719 --> 00:36:14,800
And you know, I could already see, just from a

586
00:36:14,840 --> 00:36:16,719
kind of a cursory glance of reading over a couple

587
00:36:16,760 --> 00:36:21,440
of books, that I think he had a pension for showmanship. Yeah,

588
00:36:21,519 --> 00:36:22,920
you know, that was a big part of it, and

589
00:36:22,960 --> 00:36:27,360
that would tie in directly to the possibility of espionage

590
00:36:27,400 --> 00:36:32,079
work and covert work and that double life, you know,

591
00:36:32,239 --> 00:36:34,639
kind of I think matches up to his persona that

592
00:36:34,679 --> 00:36:37,719
you talk about in the Book of saying that, you know,

593
00:36:37,800 --> 00:36:40,840
him claiming to have an anarchistic mind and an aristocratic heart.

594
00:36:40,920 --> 00:36:43,760
So even even in him as an individual, there's this

595
00:36:43,840 --> 00:36:46,400
kind of double persona that that seems to go back

596
00:36:46,440 --> 00:36:50,639
to that on the one hand, stricture in the Plymouth

597
00:36:50,679 --> 00:36:58,039
Brethren sect and the fundamentalist kind of moral absurdities of

598
00:36:58,079 --> 00:37:00,320
that sect, and then and then his desire to kind

599
00:37:00,360 --> 00:37:03,079
of go to the pendulum swing opposite end of the

600
00:37:03,079 --> 00:37:09,320
spectrum with the you know, the libertarian licentiousness of you

601
00:37:09,360 --> 00:37:12,840
know what he what he wanted to oppose in his upbringing.

602
00:37:14,280 --> 00:37:17,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's you know, a shrink could have a field

603
00:37:17,519 --> 00:37:21,239
day with him. Yeah. And you know, you mentioned the fact,

604
00:37:21,239 --> 00:37:24,360
you know, he's raised in what we would the day

605
00:37:24,400 --> 00:37:29,239
call a Christian fundamentalist household, and it's immersed in this.

606
00:37:29,679 --> 00:37:33,159
And you know, as much as he seemed to go

607
00:37:33,239 --> 00:37:36,280
against everything that that stood for, I mean, you know,

608
00:37:36,519 --> 00:37:39,400
and I think in his rejection to sort of conventional morality,

609
00:37:39,519 --> 00:37:43,519
that was him, you know, simply enjoying himself in a way.

610
00:37:44,320 --> 00:37:46,880
But the interesting thing is that his father, his father

611
00:37:47,000 --> 00:37:48,679
died when he was fairly young, I think about the

612
00:37:48,719 --> 00:37:51,760
age of ten or eleven, but he was quite close

613
00:37:51,800 --> 00:37:54,320
to his father, or you know, maybe because of that

614
00:37:54,559 --> 00:37:59,039
separation he idolized him in that way. But the family

615
00:37:59,079 --> 00:38:01,840
was fairly wealthy. They had made their money off of

616
00:38:02,480 --> 00:38:04,960
the Crowley ales, They had part of the money from

617
00:38:05,000 --> 00:38:08,679
a brewing empire, and his father also invested in real estate.

618
00:38:09,599 --> 00:38:11,159
But one of the things that did is that it

619
00:38:11,239 --> 00:38:14,920
left his father, Edward Crowley the ability to go out

620
00:38:14,920 --> 00:38:17,960
and preach. His father wanted was a preacher, he was

621
00:38:18,559 --> 00:38:22,639
a lay minister. And if you look in terms of

622
00:38:22,679 --> 00:38:27,199
what his son does in a different way, you know,

623
00:38:27,320 --> 00:38:30,840
preaching a very different faith, you might argue one that

624
00:38:30,960 --> 00:38:34,400
contradicted most of the principles. That's still what he becomes.

625
00:38:34,440 --> 00:38:37,519
He sort of follows in his father's footsteps, and he

626
00:38:37,599 --> 00:38:44,039
becomes a prophet. He becomes a dispenser of religious doctrine,

627
00:38:44,159 --> 00:38:46,480
and is one of the things that really struck me

628
00:38:46,559 --> 00:38:53,480
is that is has sort of rebellious as Crowley was.

629
00:38:54,599 --> 00:38:56,880
I always had this my feeling about him is that

630
00:38:57,000 --> 00:39:04,760
inside there was a a conservative English gentleman always screaming

631
00:39:04,800 --> 00:39:09,320
to get out, or sort of just barely contained of that.

632
00:39:10,400 --> 00:39:12,519
And I'm not even sure that that further deep down

633
00:39:12,559 --> 00:39:16,079
there wasn't really a kind of Christian fundamentalist was screaming

634
00:39:16,079 --> 00:39:16,719
to get out as well.

635
00:39:16,760 --> 00:39:18,000
Speaker 2: So I was going to say, is the.

636
00:39:19,719 --> 00:39:24,320
Speaker 1: I'm very familiar with the eschatology of that group and

637
00:39:24,519 --> 00:39:27,920
what would later become kind of the Schofield Bible type

638
00:39:28,159 --> 00:39:32,920
presentation of the different dispensations in terms of how there's

639
00:39:32,960 --> 00:39:37,159
a kind of imminent millennialism involved in that group and

640
00:39:37,199 --> 00:39:40,280
a heavy focus on John's Apocalypse of the Book of

641
00:39:40,280 --> 00:39:44,119
Relation and the revelation of John. And what we see

642
00:39:44,119 --> 00:39:48,239
there is that even into his later esoteric days, he

643
00:39:48,360 --> 00:39:53,519
carries that fundamentalist view of even John's apocalypse to the

644
00:39:53,920 --> 00:39:56,880
extent that he seems to think, presuming that he really

645
00:39:56,920 --> 00:40:00,840
believes in his magical theories and whatnot, that he could

646
00:40:01,079 --> 00:40:03,119
incarnate the last days, you know, that he could kind

647
00:40:03,119 --> 00:40:08,239
of bring this about through his gnostic reading of John's apocalypse,

648
00:40:08,519 --> 00:40:10,719
turning it into a kind of magical ritual where he

649
00:40:10,719 --> 00:40:15,760
could you know, invoke this imminentized eschaton, so to speak.

650
00:40:16,199 --> 00:40:18,679
And so, yeah, I think you're absolutely right that that

651
00:40:19,119 --> 00:40:25,079
the he doesn't ever escape that the traditional conservative quote

652
00:40:25,159 --> 00:40:29,000
unquote fundamentalist perspective, even in his later religious thought.

653
00:40:30,440 --> 00:40:33,519
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's assuming he believes these things.

654
00:40:33,559 --> 00:40:35,800
Speaker 1: I mean, there's always the option that I've seen quotes

655
00:40:36,119 --> 00:40:37,599
in some of his books where he says, you know,

656
00:40:39,079 --> 00:40:41,119
you know, don't presume that all of this is real.

657
00:40:42,320 --> 00:40:44,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, that's that's always the sort of question about him,

658
00:40:44,960 --> 00:40:47,719
is to what degree, you know, he's playing a role

659
00:40:47,800 --> 00:40:51,360
to some degree, is his public persona, is this you know,

660
00:40:51,519 --> 00:40:55,440
this this kind of devilish character that hegrees and he

661
00:40:55,599 --> 00:40:58,559
enjoys that because it's shocked. I mean, he enjoyed shocking

662
00:40:58,599 --> 00:41:02,079
people and horrifying people. Uh. And that that, you know,

663
00:41:02,360 --> 00:41:05,559
might argue if if he had this, this kind of

664
00:41:05,679 --> 00:41:09,199
idealized relationship with his father, it's pretty clear he had

665
00:41:09,239 --> 00:41:11,760
a much more complicated emotional relationship with.

666
00:41:11,760 --> 00:41:16,280
Speaker 1: His mother, who I think you mentioned first calls him

667
00:41:16,320 --> 00:41:18,800
in a fit of fury the beast.

668
00:41:18,760 --> 00:41:20,920
Speaker 3: The beast, and he and you know, his story is

669
00:41:20,960 --> 00:41:24,000
he liked that, he sort of embraced it. So I

670
00:41:24,039 --> 00:41:26,000
don't know, I mean, if you wanted to be very

671
00:41:26,440 --> 00:41:28,920
it's far too simplistic, I guess, or it's just so

672
00:41:29,000 --> 00:41:31,639
simplistic that it cuts to the heart of the whole thing,

673
00:41:31,840 --> 00:41:33,480
is that how much of this stuff did he do

674
00:41:33,559 --> 00:41:36,719
basically just to piss off his mother? I mean, And

675
00:41:37,039 --> 00:41:41,239
what what new way can I horrify her? Because she

676
00:41:41,440 --> 00:41:44,599
was still alive I think up until the First World

677
00:41:44,599 --> 00:41:47,039
War period, and so you know, he had to deal

678
00:41:47,079 --> 00:41:51,320
with her for for well into his adult life and

679
00:41:51,480 --> 00:41:54,320
was to some degree even sort of depended upon her,

680
00:41:55,760 --> 00:41:59,800
reliant upon her for money. And so that that's you know,

681
00:42:00,360 --> 00:42:02,920
this is the man who idealized a father who died

682
00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:05,519
early and who was you know, did things to horrify

683
00:42:05,559 --> 00:42:08,880
his mother. You know, it can't be that simple, and

684
00:42:08,960 --> 00:42:12,199
yet it's certainly that's that's an aspect that's there. But

685
00:42:13,000 --> 00:42:15,199
you know, what happened is that in the other role

686
00:42:15,360 --> 00:42:18,639
saying is that if you play a role long enough,

687
00:42:18,719 --> 00:42:22,199
the role begins to play you. Yeah, And it's a

688
00:42:22,239 --> 00:42:27,039
bit like I suppose in enacting, becoming type cast. You

689
00:42:27,039 --> 00:42:29,239
you begin to play this role so that nobody can

690
00:42:29,280 --> 00:42:30,719
think of you in any different way.

691
00:42:30,800 --> 00:42:33,400
Speaker 2: But you're Gill again. You're never going to be Yes.

692
00:42:34,039 --> 00:42:36,440
Speaker 3: That's it. You're never going to go and be anything else.

693
00:42:36,559 --> 00:42:39,920
And you know, I guess in acting that that's kind

694
00:42:39,920 --> 00:42:41,559
of a blessing and a curse. At least you've got

695
00:42:41,559 --> 00:42:44,320
a recurring role you can come back to, but you're

696
00:42:44,360 --> 00:42:47,599
not going to get anything else. And that's partly what

697
00:42:47,679 --> 00:42:50,119
happened to him, I think, is that the wickedest man

698
00:42:50,159 --> 00:42:53,280
in the world, which again someone I think Orchio bottomly

699
00:42:53,920 --> 00:42:57,280
sort of attached to him, which again he sort of

700
00:42:57,360 --> 00:43:01,199
embraced with Gusto. You know, he eventually found out by

701
00:43:01,199 --> 00:43:04,639
the early thirties that this was also a huge limitation.

702
00:43:06,239 --> 00:43:08,519
It meant that in the eyes of much of the public,

703
00:43:08,639 --> 00:43:12,280
not just to mention officialdom, he was now this sort

704
00:43:12,280 --> 00:43:17,800
of semi satanic character. No one was paying much attention,

705
00:43:18,000 --> 00:43:20,320
and he was someone who desperately thought he had a

706
00:43:20,360 --> 00:43:23,480
religious message or a spiritual message of some kind and

707
00:43:23,559 --> 00:43:27,280
wanted to be paid attention to. And now found that

708
00:43:27,360 --> 00:43:30,480
this had sort of limited the way that he was perceived,

709
00:43:31,079 --> 00:43:33,639
and he made efforts he used his again. I mentioned

710
00:43:33,679 --> 00:43:35,719
this in the book. He'd had friends in the press,

711
00:43:35,719 --> 00:43:38,039
and he'd went through, particularly in the early thirties, this

712
00:43:38,079 --> 00:43:43,480
effort to try to reconstruct himself. I suppose in the

713
00:43:43,519 --> 00:43:48,199
eyes of the British public it was not successful. It

714
00:43:48,320 --> 00:43:51,239
wasn't successful because there was so much bad publicity that

715
00:43:51,280 --> 00:43:53,559
had come before that he had seemed to sort of

716
00:43:53,599 --> 00:43:55,960
immerse himself. He was never able to watch that stink

717
00:43:56,000 --> 00:43:59,559
off of himself. And the other thing is that that's

718
00:43:59,639 --> 00:44:04,119
what people wanted to believe. Uh. And you know that's

719
00:44:04,119 --> 00:44:08,400
one of the things that in in my work here

720
00:44:08,440 --> 00:44:13,960
and elsewhere, that yeah, it's it's it's a very powerful thing.

721
00:44:14,679 --> 00:44:17,639
I guess I could give you an example for the

722
00:44:17,679 --> 00:44:20,280
other person I've written on Sidney Riley. There are lots

723
00:44:20,320 --> 00:44:22,719
of story, you know. There's there's the whole Sam Neil

724
00:44:22,840 --> 00:44:25,719
portrayal of Sydney Riley. And I hate to say it,

725
00:44:26,079 --> 00:44:29,320
the real Sidney Orriley was absolutely nothing like Sam Neil.

726
00:44:29,760 --> 00:44:33,800
All right, Uh, didn't look like him, didn't sound like him. Okay,

727
00:44:34,000 --> 00:44:36,480
I mean that that's it. That is a great portrayal,

728
00:44:36,960 --> 00:44:39,119
but it has nothing to do with the real person

729
00:44:40,079 --> 00:44:42,119
or the other one. I think that you know, because

730
00:44:42,159 --> 00:44:44,360
you were interested in Fleming and Bond, you'll find this

731
00:44:44,800 --> 00:44:50,880
the constantly repeated mantra that Sidney Riley was some sort

732
00:44:50,920 --> 00:44:56,679
of model for James Bond. Again, there's really not much

733
00:44:56,719 --> 00:45:00,559
connection between the two. In fact, there's there's no connection

734
00:45:00,639 --> 00:45:03,320
between the two at all, and he's not really a model.

735
00:45:03,599 --> 00:45:06,239
But that's been so repeated so often that it is

736
00:45:06,400 --> 00:45:11,800
absolutely feudle to argue against it. People will still believe that,

737
00:45:12,480 --> 00:45:15,440
I think, no matter what you say. Another thing about

738
00:45:15,519 --> 00:45:20,960
Riley is the idea which has been developed through the miniseries,

739
00:45:21,000 --> 00:45:22,960
through most of the things written on him, even things

740
00:45:23,000 --> 00:45:25,840
that I have written, is that he of course is

741
00:45:25,880 --> 00:45:28,000
whether or not he was a model for James Bond,

742
00:45:28,639 --> 00:45:33,599
he is a archetypal example of the British secret agent.

743
00:45:34,039 --> 00:45:38,000
You know that he is an anti Bolshubit crusader. I

744
00:45:38,079 --> 00:45:42,760
would reveal here that that is not true. That Riley,

745
00:45:42,800 --> 00:45:46,679
through the latter part of his career was a Soviet

746
00:45:47,000 --> 00:45:51,159
mole within British intelligence. Interesting that he never had any

747
00:45:51,199 --> 00:45:54,559
fundamental loyalty to them, and then in fact spent most

748
00:45:54,559 --> 00:45:57,039
of his latter years betraying them, which I think is

749
00:45:57,079 --> 00:45:59,840
what a lot of the subsequent mythology about him is

750
00:46:00,239 --> 00:46:05,239
to obscure. But that's I suppose another story.

751
00:46:04,960 --> 00:46:07,920
Speaker 1: For another day, along the lines of the Campage five

752
00:46:09,159 --> 00:46:09,800
type story.

753
00:46:11,079 --> 00:46:15,159
Speaker 3: Well, it's I mean you there are all kinds of

754
00:46:15,239 --> 00:46:18,519
you know in this let's say, in both the sort

755
00:46:18,559 --> 00:46:25,159
of esoteric subculture and in the intelligent subculture. Everything has

756
00:46:25,199 --> 00:46:28,559
sort of stood on his head. So I get maybe

757
00:46:28,559 --> 00:46:31,039
to give another example of that. Kim Philby, I don't

758
00:46:31,079 --> 00:46:32,800
know many of your listeners. Kim Philby was one of

759
00:46:32,800 --> 00:46:37,880
the Cambridge Five, one of the arch traders in modern

760
00:46:37,880 --> 00:46:42,360
British history. Kim Philby is the standard story, was recruited

761
00:46:42,360 --> 00:46:46,000
by Soviet intelligence in the nineteen thirties, then rose to

762
00:46:46,679 --> 00:46:51,039
very high position within six and used his position to

763
00:46:51,360 --> 00:46:56,239
systematically betray British and other Western agents. And then eventually,

764
00:46:56,440 --> 00:46:59,360
when he has run out his string in the early sixties,

765
00:46:59,440 --> 00:47:02,840
he defects to Moscow and spends his last days there.

766
00:47:04,599 --> 00:47:06,639
And this is and he's he's become this kind of

767
00:47:07,960 --> 00:47:11,280
figure which many people had written elsewhere are fascinated in

768
00:47:11,360 --> 00:47:14,559
because he is this archetypal trader. I mean, the question is, what,

769
00:47:14,639 --> 00:47:20,599
why does someone who apparently has all the advantages that

770
00:47:21,239 --> 00:47:24,840
someone could have and and and Philby didn't come from

771
00:47:24,960 --> 00:47:27,079
the upper crust, but he certainly came you know, he

772
00:47:27,440 --> 00:47:31,519
had advantages in terms of education, in terms of his access.

773
00:47:31,559 --> 00:47:33,159
I mean, one of the ways that he was able

774
00:47:33,159 --> 00:47:37,679
to rise in intelligence was who he knew that was

775
00:47:37,719 --> 00:47:39,599
an you know, in the whole sort of networking hat.

776
00:47:39,760 --> 00:47:43,320
And yet this man betrays everything. So you know what,

777
00:47:43,559 --> 00:47:46,199
what's the explanation for Well, there's another story that doesn't

778
00:47:46,199 --> 00:47:49,079
get as much, which I don't buy, but I but

779
00:47:49,760 --> 00:47:56,360
I've taken into account that, well, maybe what Philby was

780
00:47:56,360 --> 00:48:02,360
was really a very successful and very deeply hidden British mole.

781
00:48:03,039 --> 00:48:05,599
Okay that he was he was a triple agent. That

782
00:48:05,639 --> 00:48:07,559
he was someone who was a British agent who was

783
00:48:07,599 --> 00:48:10,480
recruited by the Soviets. But what the Soviets never realized

784
00:48:10,920 --> 00:48:13,480
is that actually he was still working for London.

785
00:48:13,639 --> 00:48:17,559
Speaker 1: I think there had been a similar claim about the

786
00:48:17,639 --> 00:48:21,800
Lord Rothschild that had the same situation. Worked yeah, yeah,

787
00:48:21,840 --> 00:48:24,239
for British intelligence and then was he double oh maybe

788
00:48:24,280 --> 00:48:25,039
he was a triple agent.

789
00:48:26,000 --> 00:48:28,039
Speaker 3: Well, this is one of the things that's not unusual

790
00:48:28,159 --> 00:48:30,599
to encounter. I mean again, it is something that you

791
00:48:30,679 --> 00:48:32,920
know showed up in Riley. Riley's It's one de great

792
00:48:32,960 --> 00:48:38,159
other works for everybody. I mean, he had connections to Germans,

793
00:48:38,159 --> 00:48:40,519
he had connections to the Soviets, he had connections to

794
00:48:40,559 --> 00:48:44,360
the British. He was in many ways fundamentally someone who

795
00:48:44,440 --> 00:48:47,519
was just exploiting all of those contacts for his own benefit.

796
00:48:48,719 --> 00:48:51,800
And that the problem with these people very often is

797
00:48:51,920 --> 00:48:57,119
trying to figure out what their fundamental loyalty is.

798
00:48:58,119 --> 00:49:01,400
Speaker 1: Right, even the nature of this kind of work, I think,

799
00:49:02,000 --> 00:49:07,599
because it involves so much deception and compromise on the

800
00:49:07,639 --> 00:49:11,480
part of the person involved, they're probably not going to have.

801
00:49:12,960 --> 00:49:15,360
Speaker 2: Patriotic loyalties at a certain point.

802
00:49:16,079 --> 00:49:20,639
Speaker 3: No sort of standard patriotic loyalties appear to be quite rare,

803
00:49:20,840 --> 00:49:23,039
and I think in many of these characters. There's another.

804
00:49:23,159 --> 00:49:26,719
This is, you know, another sort of spy I'm interested

805
00:49:26,760 --> 00:49:29,320
in I've written a little bit about. Is a German spy,

806
00:49:29,440 --> 00:49:33,159
a guy with the name of Kurt Yanke, who, among

807
00:49:33,199 --> 00:49:36,480
other things, in his sort of you know bio, was

808
00:49:36,480 --> 00:49:40,159
a US marine for a while, and then he was

809
00:49:40,719 --> 00:49:44,639
an opium smuggler, and he was a saboteur. He did

810
00:49:44,679 --> 00:49:47,239
all kinds of things and had a career that goes

811
00:49:47,320 --> 00:49:49,639
all the way up through you know, both in the

812
00:49:49,800 --> 00:49:52,639
US and then eventually into Germany, and then you know,

813
00:49:53,159 --> 00:49:56,800
is at least ostensibly executed on Stalin's orders and in

814
00:49:57,039 --> 00:50:02,440
nineteen forty seven. But but Yankee is another one of these

815
00:50:02,480 --> 00:50:05,840
characters who works for everybody. He worked for the Soviets,

816
00:50:05,880 --> 00:50:08,280
he worked for the Weimar Republic, he worked for the Nazis,

817
00:50:08,320 --> 00:50:11,199
but he worked for the British. But he isn't loyal

818
00:50:11,280 --> 00:50:14,760
to anyone. And he is one of these figures who

819
00:50:14,920 --> 00:50:20,960
I cannot discern anything beyond his own sort of guile

820
00:50:21,280 --> 00:50:26,559
and self interest, which he had loyalty. Now, going back

821
00:50:26,599 --> 00:50:30,440
to Crowley, the one thing my sense of Crowley is

822
00:50:30,480 --> 00:50:32,880
that he did have a fundamental loyalty. He's a little

823
00:50:32,880 --> 00:50:35,239
bit different than these guys, and his fundamental loyalty was

824
00:50:35,280 --> 00:50:42,639
to essentially traditional England, or to that identity, and it's

825
00:50:42,679 --> 00:50:46,280
in the book. But he gives one sort of explanation

826
00:50:46,360 --> 00:50:49,360
that there's these little things that I think that sometimes

827
00:50:49,400 --> 00:50:52,480
reveals something about them. And he's he was once asked

828
00:50:52,480 --> 00:50:55,920
by someone another British officialist, why a person like you

829
00:50:57,480 --> 00:51:02,079
would possibly want to serve the king? I mean, you know,

830
00:51:03,039 --> 00:51:06,440
a person like you presumably has no particular loyalty and crawl.

831
00:51:06,440 --> 00:51:08,599
I'm gonna have to paraphrase this, but I get it

832
00:51:08,599 --> 00:51:12,000
fairly close. He goes, you have to understand that I

833
00:51:12,320 --> 00:51:14,800
don't believe is Crowley talking. I don't believe for a

834
00:51:14,840 --> 00:51:19,800
minute that the German kettle is any less black than

835
00:51:19,840 --> 00:51:23,119
the English pot. Okay, And in other words, my loyalty

836
00:51:23,199 --> 00:51:27,119
to England isn't because I think England is morally superior

837
00:51:27,199 --> 00:51:30,000
to Germany. That has nothing to do with it. He goes, No,

838
00:51:30,400 --> 00:51:35,039
my loyalty is that of Bill Sike's dog. I think

839
00:51:35,079 --> 00:51:40,519
he's making a Oliver Twist reference there. You know, my

840
00:51:41,159 --> 00:51:44,039
loyalty is that of a dog to its master. My

841
00:51:44,159 --> 00:51:49,199
master may beat me and starve me, but nevertheless, he

842
00:51:49,320 --> 00:51:53,360
is my master and I love him, and that to

843
00:51:53,400 --> 00:51:56,159
me was kind of revealing, because you know, what he

844
00:51:56,199 --> 00:51:58,760
was saying there was that my loyalty to England isn't

845
00:51:58,800 --> 00:52:02,440
based upon the idea that is that England is on

846
00:52:02,519 --> 00:52:07,000
God's side. And in one of the arguments, igains that

847
00:52:07,079 --> 00:52:08,800
is that if that's what it was based on, if

848
00:52:08,840 --> 00:52:11,239
my loyalty to my country or anything else is based

849
00:52:11,320 --> 00:52:13,360
upon it because I think it has some sort of

850
00:52:13,840 --> 00:52:17,440
moral superiority, well if suddenly I find out that's not true,

851
00:52:18,519 --> 00:52:22,360
then my loyalty will disappear, because my loyalty is dependent

852
00:52:22,480 --> 00:52:25,360
upon what I think is the kind of essential goodness

853
00:52:26,159 --> 00:52:28,760
or morality of the situation as opposed to the thing itself.

854
00:52:28,800 --> 00:52:30,840
And he goes, that's not it. I'm not loyal to

855
00:52:30,880 --> 00:52:33,440
England because I think that England is better than Germany

856
00:52:33,519 --> 00:52:35,760
or anything else, or that I think that people running

857
00:52:35,800 --> 00:52:40,440
it are morally superior. I am loyal to England because

858
00:52:40,480 --> 00:52:44,320
I'm English and that's what I am. And eventually you

859
00:52:44,400 --> 00:52:47,000
have to decide what you are and what side you're on.

860
00:52:48,360 --> 00:52:50,239
And that's one of the things that I think that

861
00:52:50,440 --> 00:52:53,920
made him in a way why he was useful, because

862
00:52:53,960 --> 00:52:55,840
he did possess that fundamental loyalty.

863
00:52:56,039 --> 00:52:58,119
Speaker 2: Sounds like Socrates in a way.

864
00:52:58,199 --> 00:53:00,639
Speaker 1: You know, maybe they're going to get rid of Socrates

865
00:53:00,719 --> 00:53:03,519
and his friends are trying to spirit him away, and

866
00:53:03,559 --> 00:53:08,440
he says, look, you know, the Athenian state gave birth

867
00:53:08,559 --> 00:53:08,760
to me.

868
00:53:09,320 --> 00:53:11,000
Speaker 2: I'm as child, and.

869
00:53:11,159 --> 00:53:15,760
Speaker 1: I'm going to die at their penal sanction, and that's

870
00:53:15,800 --> 00:53:17,320
just the way that it is, and that's the most

871
00:53:17,400 --> 00:53:18,480
righteous course of action.

872
00:53:21,920 --> 00:53:26,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's He's a figure, which I won't

873
00:53:26,320 --> 00:53:29,039
say entirely. By the time I had finished the book that,

874
00:53:29,800 --> 00:53:33,480
you know, I had found him to be an entirely

875
00:53:33,599 --> 00:53:39,880
redeemed and misunderstood character. I think he is misunderstood to

876
00:53:39,880 --> 00:53:42,760
some degree, but that his own actions has something to

877
00:53:42,760 --> 00:53:46,880
do with it, and his reputation for evil is somewhat

878
00:53:46,960 --> 00:53:52,840
theatrically exaggerated. On the other hand, I think I have

879
00:53:52,920 --> 00:53:55,360
to agree. I think it may have been Dennis Wheatley

880
00:53:55,440 --> 00:53:57,880
or someone else who said that the two things that

881
00:53:57,880 --> 00:54:00,239
he would never do concerning Alister Crowley was len him

882
00:54:00,239 --> 00:54:04,559
money or leave him alone with his children, and I

883
00:54:04,559 --> 00:54:09,159
don't think I would do either one of those. He was,

884
00:54:09,199 --> 00:54:14,599
you know, he was a terrible businessman. His his relationships

885
00:54:14,719 --> 00:54:21,039
with women were almost always disastrous. You know that there's this,

886
00:54:21,239 --> 00:54:22,880
you know, I think sometimes we read well, you know

887
00:54:22,920 --> 00:54:25,280
that every woman that Alistair Crowley, you know, who was

888
00:54:25,320 --> 00:54:28,159
sort of drawn into his orbit, you know, committed suicide

889
00:54:28,280 --> 00:54:31,360
or went insane. That's not exactly true, but some of

890
00:54:31,360 --> 00:54:34,800
them did. Some became alcoholics. His first wife and another

891
00:54:34,800 --> 00:54:37,760
one did end up in Colony Hatch insane asylum, and

892
00:54:37,800 --> 00:54:41,039
another one who was also an alcoholic. Well, at least

893
00:54:41,320 --> 00:54:44,519
he didn't stop being an alcoholic. At least one or

894
00:54:44,519 --> 00:54:46,760
two more were probably drawn in the drug addiction through

895
00:54:46,760 --> 00:54:51,559
their association with him. So there was certainly nothing in

896
00:54:51,639 --> 00:54:56,159
his relationship with his scarlet women that usually helped them

897
00:54:56,159 --> 00:54:59,639
in any way. I think it tended to be corrosive

898
00:54:59,679 --> 00:55:02,800
and pro will be destructive to them. On the other hand,

899
00:55:05,239 --> 00:55:08,480
the very things that sort of attracted them to him

900
00:55:08,519 --> 00:55:11,840
to begin with, the things going on in them, is

901
00:55:11,840 --> 00:55:16,880
that he didn't He didn't take a well balanced, confident

902
00:55:17,639 --> 00:55:21,760
woman and turned her into an alcoholic, drug addicted show.

903
00:55:22,280 --> 00:55:24,159
They were pretty much halfway there to begin.

904
00:55:23,960 --> 00:55:28,400
Speaker 2: With, so kind of already in the Bohemian the train was.

905
00:55:28,400 --> 00:55:30,679
Speaker 3: Already pretty well off the rails. In most of the cases,

906
00:55:30,800 --> 00:55:32,920
and he simply drove with that much further. You know,

907
00:55:32,920 --> 00:55:34,920
it comes out of the fact, again there's Curley and

908
00:55:35,039 --> 00:55:37,239
what type of women are going to be attracted to him?

909
00:55:37,239 --> 00:55:39,679
And those that tended to be attracted to the wickedest

910
00:55:39,679 --> 00:55:43,639
man in the world often had issues. But a lot

911
00:55:43,639 --> 00:55:47,840
of the cases are really you know, pathetic and tragic.

912
00:55:49,599 --> 00:55:52,639
But I somehow suspect that generally they their lives would

913
00:55:52,679 --> 00:55:55,280
would have been pathetic and tragic had he not come along.

914
00:55:55,639 --> 00:55:57,320
But he certainly wasn't their savior.

915
00:55:59,800 --> 00:56:03,480
Speaker 1: I go ahead, Well, you've met an interesting point, kind

916
00:56:03,519 --> 00:56:05,679
of touches on what you mentioned earlier in the book

917
00:56:05,760 --> 00:56:09,039
you talk about, is this this curious phrase that stuck

918
00:56:09,039 --> 00:56:10,880
out to me where he talks about the secret Chiefs,

919
00:56:10,920 --> 00:56:16,079
which of course ties into this Blovatsky great White Brotherhood mythology,

920
00:56:16,960 --> 00:56:20,800
and used to point out that he's actually.

921
00:56:20,440 --> 00:56:23,760
Speaker 2: Referring to the heads of in id or in my

922
00:56:23,920 --> 00:56:25,679
six perhaps.

923
00:56:25,519 --> 00:56:27,639
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think he was talking about the heads of

924
00:56:27,880 --> 00:56:30,559
the Admiralty Intelligence, the n I D. But it's one

925
00:56:30,559 --> 00:56:33,440
of those cases where he makes these little cross references.

926
00:56:33,480 --> 00:56:33,639
Speaker 1: You know.

927
00:56:33,639 --> 00:56:37,000
Speaker 3: Again, the idea that uh, you know that the study

928
00:56:37,000 --> 00:56:40,079
of the occult is this great preparation for secret service work,

929
00:56:40,199 --> 00:56:44,039
or that the secret chiefs you know, either are or

930
00:56:44,159 --> 00:56:48,400
must be like the heads of intelligence. I don't think

931
00:56:48,400 --> 00:56:51,079
those things are accidental, and I think they were based

932
00:56:51,159 --> 00:56:55,079
upon his actual observations of what went on between I

933
00:56:55,079 --> 00:56:57,519
think he was making and I think they're they're sort

934
00:56:57,519 --> 00:57:00,920
of revealing in a way. I mean part of one

935
00:57:00,920 --> 00:57:02,880
of the things that he was functioning under. I mean

936
00:57:03,039 --> 00:57:04,920
one of the questions that you know certainly came up.

937
00:57:05,320 --> 00:57:06,320
It was coming much to me before.

938
00:57:06,400 --> 00:57:08,559
Speaker 1: Is that well, you know, if you I've been listening

939
00:57:08,559 --> 00:57:11,719
to Esselter Hollywood in my interview with doctor Richard Spence

940
00:57:11,840 --> 00:57:15,280
covering his book Secret Agents sixty sixty six. If you'd

941
00:57:15,280 --> 00:57:17,880
like to hear the full interview the second hour as well,

942
00:57:17,920 --> 00:57:20,880
go to jaysonaisis dot com and subscribe for four ninety

943
00:57:20,880 --> 00:57:23,519
five a month, where you get access to all of

944
00:57:23,559 --> 00:57:27,239
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945
00:57:27,599 --> 00:57:30,280
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946
00:57:30,360 --> 00:57:33,119
year if you'd like to go that route. Also pre

947
00:57:33,280 --> 00:57:36,159
order my book Esseltery Hollywood, Sex Cults and Symbols and

948
00:57:36,239 --> 00:57:39,239
Film available at the links at the website, as well

949
00:57:39,280 --> 00:57:43,639
as Jamie Henshaw's book, Hollywood Mind Control. Thank you for listening,

950
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and please subscribe