June 29, 2024 • 53 mins
Jesse Fink is the author of 6 books, including 'The Youngs,' 'Pure Narco,' 'Bon,' and his latest book, 'The Eagle in the Mirror'. Fink shares his incredible literary journey that saw him spend a decade chronicling AC/DC, delving deep into Pablo Escobar's cocaine empire, and most recently, uncovering the secrets of Dick Ellis, the top spy of MI6 during World War 2.
Ellis is a controversial figure, accused of being a triple agent—allegedly working for the Allies, the Nazis, and the Soviets. Fink discusses how the Americans recognized Ellis's contributions, yet his reputation suffered in the aftermath of the war. Nonetheless, Ellis played a pivotal role in the formation of the CIA, the premier agency in global intelligence and counterintelligence today.
Get a copy of 'The Eagle in the Mirror': https://amzn.to/3XF0Neg
Join the SOFREP Book Club here: https://sofrep.com/book-club
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Lute force. If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough.
You're listening to Software Radio, Special Operations, Military Nails and
straight talk with the guys in the community.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Hi, welcome back to a wonderful episode of soft Rep Radio.
I am your host, rad and before I introduce my
next guest, I just want to mention our merch shop,
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(00:57):
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Forward slash book hyphened club. So if you take a
look at our book club, enroll in it. These books
are picked and curated by the guys behind the scenes
(01:17):
like Brandon Webb and Guy and all of everybody out there,
even myself and my next guest. Hopefully his book and
books will become part of our book clubs. And let
me introduce Jesse Fink, who is an author and he
has written quite a few books actually, so let me
just read a little bit of his bio here. Jesse
Fink a British Australian author of six books, including twin
(01:40):
biographies of the hard rock band ac DC, The Youngs,
The Brothers who Built ac DC and Bond The Last Highway,
the cocaine trafficking Story Pure Narco. And the book that
we're going to talk about more than the other ones
is The Eagle in the Mirror, a biography of British
intelligence officer Dick Ellis. His books have been translated into
some languages. And I just want to welcome to the show.
(02:02):
Welcome to the show, Jesse.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Great to see you again, my friend.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yes, this is round two with Jesse and I. We
linked up a little while ago, and now it's better
that you're in London and we've got you connected. Now
that's interesting. White Friy's better.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
There, better reception than Washington. Here.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Hey, let me ask you something. I get hit this
all the time by people that reach out to me
and they're like rad you know, I'm a struggling writer.
I got out of the military and I want to
write or I just want to write, and they reach
out to me because I talked to folks like yourself.
You know, what was it that helped you get into
writing in the beginning that maybe you can you know,
(02:43):
inspire somebody out there before we get into your book
The Eagle in the Mirror.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
I mean, I did a journalism degree at university, like
a lot of people, but it sort of didn't really
prepare me for real life at all, straight into unemployment.
So you know, I think the idea of sort of
getting degrees to qualify you for writing and being a
journalist is an outdated idea. I think really it comes
down to self education, travel, reading as much as you can,
(03:12):
you know, reading people that you admire, and I think gradually,
sort of just through a process of you know, patience
time in osmosis, you develop some sort of skills in
your own writing. As long as you're reading good writers
and sort of you know, taking hints from you know,
(03:34):
what they do, eventually it leaches into your own work.
So I mean, that's the best advice I can give
anyone is just read a lot, you know, just read
what you're interested in. And the great thing is, now
you know the way the book industry is. You know,
there are a lot of pathways for writers who can't
(03:54):
get agents or can't get publishers to publish themselves. You know,
I'm doing it myself. I mean I published with you know,
normal book publishers throughout my career. But you know, this October,
it's coming up to the fiftieth anniversary of A Bond
Scott Jordan ac DC and I just had literally, you know,
(04:17):
two hundred pages of material that I didn't use in
the last book I did on Bond Scott. So I
just thought, you know, I'm going to put it on Amazon.
I'll just make it six American bucks and just see
how it goes. And already I've had a lot of
pre orders for it. So you know, there are a
lot of different ways that you know, people can get
into the business.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
It's really cool and good advice too, And so the
Bond Scott and E. C. D C. Let's hit on
that a little bit, right rock and roll, bro, you
got your smiling, I'm smiling. You know what was it
like to like be around that environment for the years
you were there and then write the book?
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Well, you know, the book came about really through through
a dark period of my personal life when and I
had a marriage breakdown. You know, this was back in
you know, two thousand and seven. So I had written
my first book, which was about Australia at the soccer
(05:12):
World Cup, and then you know, my marriage fell apart,
and really I went into sort of like this five
year kind of downward spiral of you know, excessive drinking
and excessive dating and and really didn't think I had
much of another book in me. And then I ended
(05:34):
up writing a memoir about this time. And I remember
sort of during this period, there was one night where
I felt really suicidal about my sort of situation and
was very tempted just to walk out in front of
the garbage truck. This is like at three o'clock in
the morning one night, and for whatever reason, I just
(05:55):
put on some ac DC on my laptop at three
o'clock in the morning, and it was like this incredible job.
It was this fabulous antidepressant that sort of just pulled
me out of this incredibly dark moment. And I thought,
you know, that's the power of rock and roll. That's
(06:15):
the whole point of ac DC. This is this is
why people connect to this music on a on a
really visceral physical level, and it explains the popularity of
a CDC, which is the biggest rock band in the world,
so huge, huge, you know, you know, just you know,
even the military connection. I remember, you know, talking to
(06:36):
a guy who you know, would play a C d
C on in his helicopter in Somalia and you know,
things like that. So you know, I talked to these
people and I said, you know, why do you connect
to this music? And this was really kind of like
the starting point for me to kind of write this
appreciation of the music of a C d C, which
(06:57):
at that time, you know, critics didn't take very seriously.
It's always sort of been regarded as a bit of
a sort of a gimmick rock band, and you know,
the American critics don't take it very seriously. And I
ended up writing this book called The Youngs, which was
just their story through eleven important songs, and it was
(07:19):
a very successful book, sort of went around the world,
went to twenty countries. I suddenly had success that I
hadn't had in my previous two books, and suddenly found
myself an ACDC biographer. So that was how you know,
that came about. And then because of the success of
that book, my publisher was interested in another music biography,
(07:42):
and I suggested Bond Scott, because you know, Bond Scott
is a folk hero to people the world over, and
he has a remarkable personal story and his life ended
in fairly tragic circumstances at the age of thirty three.
So I then wrote another book about a CDC. So
really it all just came out of, you know, very
(08:07):
unusual personal circumstance. But the great thing was that, you know,
you write books like this and then you have people
reach out to you on social media like Facebook or
Twitter or whatever, who will say, hey, I just read
your book, and I just went through exactly the same thing.
You know, I lost my job, or I lost my wife,
(08:28):
or I'm a widower or whatever. And all these people
have a personal story that is sort of anchored in
the music of rock and roll, whether it's Led Zeppelin
or ac DC or the Who or whoever. But that's
what rock and roll music does. It's this fabulous, bandy depressidant.
(08:51):
So that was really how I ended up writing music biographies.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
I love it, and I love rock and roll, and
I think we all love rock and roll and music
consued the soul, right and it just does you know,
you just turn on something and look, you got triggered
by a C d C at three in the morning.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Yeah, yeah, that's right. And then I ended up sort
of spending the next ten years of my life writing
about them.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
You know.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
It wasn't what I thought would happen. And then, you know,
during the course of writing the biography of Bob Scott,
which took four years to write, I met some people
in Miami who, after the book came out, they contacted
me and said, oh, by the way, would you talk
to this cocaine trafficker in Miami who wants to write
(09:40):
a book? And you know, I ended up sort of
talking to this guy on WhatsApp from Sydney, he was
in Miami, and we sort of agreed to write a
book about his life, and then spent sort of two
and a half years working on that. And so that
just sort of came out of the Bond Scott book.
It was just a complete accident, and suddenly I'm writing
(10:02):
about Pablo Escobar, right and dea you know, talking to
guys from US Customs.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Yeah, no, I'm just like, I'm just listening to you.
It's just the story. You know, You're like, you're you're
at one point in your life and then that takes
you to another place. After music involves the music in
this other story of Pablo Escobar just kind of comes
out of that, and now here you are writing about
the cocaine trafficking of Pablo Escobar.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Yeah, that's right. So and then I spent two and
a half years working on this book and then the
you know, I can't I don't know if I could swear,
but you know, yeah, that's fine. Fucking pandemic hits right,
that's right, and Australia gets absolutely smashed more than other countries.
You guys in America thought you had it bad. I mean,
the Australians had it really bad because the government wouldn't
(10:52):
let us leave the country at all at all, So
we were basically prisoners of the Australian government, stuck in Australia,
couldn't go anywhere. And I, you know, I thought, you know,
that's a sort of a violation of my human right.
If I want to leave the bloody country, I should
be able to do. They wouldn't allow anyone to leave, so,
(11:15):
you know, Pure and Arco basically came out at the
worst possible time. So I've just spent two and a
half years working on this book and we couldn't promote it.
You know, the guy that I wrote it with, Lewis Navia,
he couldn't come to Australia from Miami. I couldn't go
to the United States. It really hurt the book. But
(11:37):
the funny thing was, you know that the the few
things that Australians could do was we could go shopping
at a supermarket, we could fill up our cars with petrol,
or we could go to thrift shops. And so I
was spending a lot of time in thrift shops, which
(12:00):
were over sort of in the morning, and I would
meet my father there because it was the only place
we could meet, right, So we couldn't go and sit
in a cafe because there were no tables. He literally
couldn't sit at a table. And so we would meet
in this thrift shop and we would just sort of,
you know, find out what books were on the shelves.
(12:22):
And he mentioned to me that he had picked up
a book about this Canadian SPI called William Stevenson, and
in the book it had mentioned a guy called Dick
Ellis and said, and Fred, who's my father, said well,
check out this dick Ellis feller. I think he's very interesting.
There might be a book at it. So I'm stuck
(12:44):
in Sydney. I'm looking for another book to do, but
I can't travel anywhere, I can't do anything. And suddenly
dick Ellis falls into my lap literally, you know, well
not literally, you know.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Yeah, yeah, Dad, Dad knows what's up.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
But the great thing was because of the pandemic. You know,
the National Archives in the UK, which have a lot
of these intelligence files, they made it all free because
of the pandemic because no one could go into a library.
So I was able to download thousands of files from
the National Archives, and I was able to do this book,
(13:23):
you know, from my laptop in Sydney. And that's how
I ended up writing about spies. So, you know, each
each book kind of fell into the other in a
strange way, you know, And that's how I ended up
going from sport to divorce, to ac DC to cocaine
to spies.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
I love it. That's a great little timeline you just
put out right there. And and this book, The Eagle
and Mirror, it goes after Charles Howard. Dick Ellis, right,
he had such you know a name that we know
him ass and a lot of people had doubts about him,
but he was the longest serving six operative. Right is
that right that worked in I six?
Speaker 3 (14:10):
It was essentially m I six is top man in
America during the second ward.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Can ask a question, if you're a spy, you have
to be kind of like a spy to the other
side too, because you're trying to get spy information for
your spy, and so you know they're going to want
to pit him as like this multiple spy of spies.
But it's kind of the job of a spy to
be a spy.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Well, I mean, there's you know, there's there's spying on
your enemy, and it also you know, I guess trying
to figure out who is sort of in your midst
at the time and what information they're trying to get
out of the people that you work with. You know,
are the people that you work with actually working for
the other side. And you know that famous quote about
(15:01):
you know, the spy game being akin to a wilderness
of mirrors.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
You know that so computed, You know that that you know,
it's very easy to become.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Paranoid obviously in an environment that so anyway, dick Ellis
was It was an Australian, a fellow who was born
in eighteen ninety five, and he he had a very
tough childhood. His mother died very young, his father couldn't
(15:37):
take care of him. He ended up sort of becoming
a self educated classical musician and ended up on a
scholarship to the UK and left in nineteen fourteen and
war broke out and he ended up joining the British Army,
got injured multiple times on the Western Front and took
(16:02):
up learning Russian and this was of great use to
the British intelligence services. So after his time as a
soldier was over, he got recruited by m I six
and he was sort of thrown into the field too
essentially encounter at the time, you know, the great menace
(16:24):
of the Soviet Union, which had just been sort of
created by the Russian Revolution, and so the great fear,
obviously of the British was that the Communists were going
to try and take over Great Britain. And you know
that the the security apparatus of Britain was very much
(16:44):
geared against you know, this this Russian menace, the Red menace.
So dick Ellis was incredibly valuable to Britain because of
his language skills. He married a Ukrainian woman who was
well connected into Ukrainian exile communities who were against the Soviets,
(17:09):
and so he basically operated as a as a like
a field agent in Western Europe, basically gathering information that
could be used against the Soviet Union. And during the
course of this time, there was some sort of cooperation
between the Nazis and the Great Britain against the Soviets.
(17:33):
And this is where sort of dick el has got
into trouble that many years later he was accused of
being a Russian and the Soviets, sorry, a Russian and
Nazi spy. But this was many years later. This was
in the nineteen sixties, so we don't know exactly what
(17:55):
he was up to sort of between the wars, but
there was a lot of complicated double agentry and triple
agentry going on in Europe at that time, and the
Brits and the Germans were actually cooperating with each other
against the Russians. And then dick Alis came to America
(18:17):
in nineteen forty and he was officially the British consul
in New York, so he was sort of running the
Passport office in New York, but he was essentially fronting
or heading up six in America. And at that time,
the Americans hadn't joined the war effort against Adolf Hitler,
(18:40):
and the purpose of Els being in the United States
was essentially to sort of try to get the United
States to join Great Britain in fighting the Nazis. And
you know, the fascinating thing for me was that I
came across an old interview that he had done with
(19:05):
a Canadian television company that had never aired that he
said that he had got warning of the attack on
Pearl Harbor about four months before it happened, and that
this warning had been actually relayed to the FBI and
to President Roosevelt himself, and which sort of rewrites the
(19:31):
whole sort of story around Pearl Harbor and sort of
undermines this idea that, you know, that the Americans were
worn as this sort of grand conspiracy. I think there's
a lot more to it. And Dick Ellis contributed a
great deal to the American war effort. He set up
the OSS, which became the CIA. You know, he set
(19:53):
up training centers in Maryland and in Ontario in Canada
for OSS personnel. He was given a legion a merit
by President Truman. He set up the Australian Secret Intelligence Service.
He did all these remarkable things, and then he died
(20:19):
in nineteen seventy five. And you know, in the nineteen
eighties a couple of books came out which accused him
of being a Russian and German spy, which was quite
shocking to his family, so shocking that his daughter returned
all his medals to the British government, and that his son,
(20:42):
who was a Canadian intelligence officer, was incredibly disgusted by
the way that his father had been smeared and the
case against him, I thought, having reviewed all the evidence
was pretty flimsy. So this book is really an attempt
to kind of clear his name.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah, and I mean you kind of have to play
both sides of the fence. But again, where did he
pass away at? Where was his fight? Where was he
where'd he die? What country?
Speaker 3 (21:12):
He died in England in nineteen seventy five, So he
was he was eighty years old.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Yeah, and jeez, I wasn't even born yet. I was
two years still for me, Holy cow.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Yeah, I was born in seventy three, So I was
only too yeah when he died. And you know, like
I said, I knew nothing about this guy until my
father had mentioned him, you know, during the pandemic. He said,
looking to this person, he's quite fasinating. And I thought, well,
he's a remarkable Australian story. He's a great British story exactly,
(21:46):
and he's a great American story. And he's he's had
this remarkable kind of intelligence and military career over three
countries and served as an intelligence officer essentially from about
you know, nineteen twenty one three to nineteen seventy five.
(22:07):
I mean, it's a remarkable kind of trajectory, an arc
of a man's life. And yet and also it has
this allegation of working for Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler.
So I couldn't really believe that this story hadn't been told.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
It's not like he resided his rest of his life
in Germany or in you know, off the coast of
Russia and on a Black island or anything. It's not
like he died there. He died in the UK, right
where you know, where he fell at home. That's that
was home obviously, And so he was, and he was
awarded by our President of America at the time, Roosevelt,
(22:44):
right awarded him with like probably the closest thing to
a medal of honor, I'd imagine, you know, yeah, right,
And so he got awarded that he didn't get it.
Did he get awards and accolades from like Hitler and
from Russia Stalin and or anybody?
Speaker 3 (22:58):
No, no, no, no, he didn't get anything from then.
But you know, the thing was, I mean, I don't
know how much you know about Russian espionas, but I mean,
obviously the great traitor of the twentieth century in Britain's
eyes is a fellow called Kim Philby. And Kim Philby
(23:21):
worked for mi I six and defected to the Soviet
Union in nineteen sixty three, and greatly embarrassed that, you know,
the intelligence services of Britain and the United States that
this person had operated at a very high level for
decades and given all these secrets over to the Russians
(23:45):
and then defected in nineteen sixty three. So after Philby defected,
that was when Ellis was interrogated by people within m
I five and six in London, and he was confronted
with sort of reports of Nazis who had been arrested
(24:06):
after the Second World War, mentioning that a source for
a lot of their information was it was a man
called Captain Ellis.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
And.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
The report of one Nazi officer it ended up on
the desk of Kim Philby, who in nineteen forty six
was working with Dick Ellis. And this person had written
in the margin on this document it said who was
this man Ellis? And Kim Philby had answered and said,
(24:37):
you know, essentially that he didn't know, and that no
further action should be taken, right, which is odd given
that they were working together in this office in London,
So you know, jumped to nineteen sixty five. It's, you know,
two decades later. People are looking at this report thinking,
(24:59):
why did why did Kim Philby cover for Dick Ellis here?
Why did he say that he didn't know who he was? Right?
Maybe they were working together, Maybe Dick Ellis was this
other Russian mole within m I six And and that
was really the starting point for the British investigation against
Dick Ellis. And but I went back to all the
(25:24):
you know, the original documents that were available you know,
the ones that certainly sort of been released anyway to
see what the case against Ellis was. And my my hunch,
my conclusion was that Dick Elis was actually involved in
(25:47):
something that the British didn't want the rest of the
world to know about, which was that they were actually
working with the Germans prior to the outbreak of the
Second World War and that their their common enemy was
the Service Union, and that Dick Ellis didn't want to
get his boss at m I sets into trouble basically
(26:07):
for working on an unsanctioned program, which was to work
with the Nazis. So it's a very convoluted, very sort
of dense tale about someone who's been completely forgotten, but
who's very significant in sort of the history of the
Second World War and the history of the Cold War.
(26:28):
Who deserved I think the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
A different microscope. Like today we can go back on
DNA and find out that there was DNA on the
crime scene and like they can rediscover who possibly the
suspect is. Today from the sixties, they're fighting missing persons
all the time, So why couldn't a case be relooked
at from such a long time ago? To just say, hey,
you know, let's let's let's put it this way like
(26:54):
Dick Ellis boy, I had my thought of you know,
he was okay. So if they're going to say that
Germany was sympathizing with the UK pre war to go
against Russia, well here in America, our Congress was also
sympathizing with Germany in some aspects that our president had
(27:15):
to say this, we don't want to go to war,
but we have to go to war. This isn't okay.
There was German sympathizers in our Congress, you know. So
it's like that wasn't out of the norm. That's what
I'm trying to say, to have the countries talking to
Germany pre German War.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
And there were a lot of people were in the
Nazi Party prior to the outbreak of the Sycamore War
who could see what where Hitler was taking Germany and
they didn't want any part of it. They actually wanted
to get rid of Hitler. So people within MI six
were actually talking to Admiral Kanaris, who was one of
(27:52):
the main plotters against Hitler, who you know, was was
rounded up and executed.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Exactly because people are trying to take out Hitler and
say they did what they're like.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
This is my conclusion was that dick Elis was involved
in some sort of plot against Hitler, working with sort
of cooperative kind of elements within the Nazi Party itself,
you know that. So the thing my point is that
you know, things can be said in documents that can
(28:28):
be interpreted in many different ways. It depends what your
your mindset is or how you're seeing that information and
what your own agenda is. Right. So, in the context
of the nineteen sixties, you've got all these people who
are incredibly embarrassed about Kim Philby defective to the Soviet Union,
and suddenly they're like, okay, ship, we've got to fucking
(28:49):
you know, make up with this, with this gross negligence,
put a li on it, and find someone else, right. So,
and this happens all the time. So I think dick
Ellis was at was a victim of this. Unfortunately, his
name has been associated with, you know, betrayal and sabotage,
(29:13):
and he's like a Benedict Arnold an intelligence world, and
I don't think I don't think it really sort of
stacks up to be a solid case. So this book
is my attempt in you know, very difficult circumstances in
that I don't have access to you know, all these
(29:34):
classified file health that are still held by m I
six were then ever going to get released, right But
I went through every every possible document, every possible mention
of this fellow that had ever been printed and reconstructed
essentially his life, put together a timeline. I figured out
(29:55):
where he was at any particular time, and Wow, basically
came to the conclusion that he can't be guilty of
all these things that he's accused of. So I think
people who are interested in, you know, the way that
intelligence agencies operate, who are interested in you know, I
(30:17):
guess you know your your country is dealing with this
right now, this whole issue of trust.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Right who do we trust? You don't we trust? Do
we trust? The judicial system? Do we trust the DOJ
Department of Justice? Do we trust? I mean, you know, trust.
It's got to have.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Trust, that's right, you know. So I think that it
would be interesting because people who are who are concerned
with those sort of issues, and I think you know,
every everyone whether you're in the U S Or the UK,
or Australia or Western Europe right now, I think there's
this there's this contagion of distrust of of government agents.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
It's it's just been put out there to thwart the
the justice systems and the trust of the people because
somebody's getting themselves put in front of a judge and
a magistrate and so they're going to say that they're
innocent and that this is all lies and this is corrupt,
and then people will just and you got the internet, right,
(31:21):
it just can pile on so fast and the next thing,
you know, it's just what's going on here is going
on over in the EU, you know, you know, and
I have to far right wings trying to take over
in France and right now, you know, and people trying
to do snap elections over there so that Mark Home
can get you know, the party aligned and et cetera.
(31:42):
And then you've got I mean, I pay attention, right,
this is kind of what's going on, and it's.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
You know, and if you can and and this is
a good example of that that you know that they're
elements within any.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
But it's not so much that Jesse, it's not so
much being told, it's that we see it ourselves. We
see the words being said out of the person's mouths
and they're saying it to us, and they're coming back
later saying they never said it. Right, That's that's that's
where this has happened. This is it's like we watched
you say that. Now you're saying you never said that.
Like this is all lie. It's like, yeah, trying to
(32:26):
like make us go crazy to you know, move forward
their agenda.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
And their lie.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Yes, that's that. Yeah. And again it's what's happened to
to Dick is that he was kind of in the
right place at the right times for all sorts of
intermingling with all of these different elements of the world.
Brow he just happened to just be this little puzzle
piece that was like hey, you know, coming over to
(32:55):
the US saying you guys should take a look at this.
This is a situation going on over here. He's you know,
working for the UK, he's you know, definitely working for
the Allies, it seems like. And you know, but pre war,
he's got to talk to you know, he's got to
get intel they call it human and you know, human
intelligence and all this other intelligence. You've got to probably
befriends somebody who wants to give up, and.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
Very likely you have to pay them at some point
with money that you don't have. So one of the
core sort of allegations made against Ellis was that at
some point he pocketed some money from an enemy source.
Right now, Yes, on the surface, that appears a terrible thing,
(33:38):
what a betrayal. You're accepting money from your your enemy, right,
But if you're if you're a drug dealer pretending to
be sorry, if you're a policeman pretending to be a
drug dealer and you're working under cover, you're going to
accept the money because you want the other side to
think that, you know, you're a drug deal right And
(34:00):
not exactly, it's the same sort of situation if you're
working as a spy and you want the other side
to think that you're ploiable and amnable and corruptible, and.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
You know, it just reminds me of the book of
the movie Point Break with Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayzey.
There's a scene when they go into the house and
and and the guy from it Hot Chili Peppers is
in there, Anthony Keatis and everybody, and it's like and
Tom Sizemore is like, what do you do? And this
is my this is my case, this is my I
got this tattoo on my neck. I've been with these
guys for five years. You think I want this tattoo
(34:31):
on my neck. And he's the total undercover cop, like
they're blowing his cover. You know, he's like, what are
you doing? That's what It kind of reminds me of.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
The point would be linked to my book there you go.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Yeah, yeah, dude, it's like I had to get this tattoo.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
Man.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Yeah, So what is the spy to do? You know,
especially when the spy is on your side, you gotta
have some leeway and that money. How do we know
that money didn't necessarily go to the miss.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
I don't know. If we don't know where that was
spent or yuh, if he did spender himself, maybe he
probably wasn't getting paid enough. And look, anyone who watches
that vacation, anyone who watches any spied drum on television,
you know, the main protagonist of that series is confronted with,
(35:24):
you know, morally complicated situations on a daily basis. It's
part of the job, right, So you know the point
I'm making is that, you know, two decades later, you know,
some some sort of you know, information on a piece
of paper that that can be interpreted in a certain way.
(35:44):
Isn't a slam dunk against that person. You know that
there's there's a lot more involved, there's a lot more
nuanced that's that's not there on the paper, And and
I think that that's what he was a victim of.
It was just that there was a witch hunt going on,
and you know, his name had been mentioned by several
sort of Nazi officers, and on the surface it looked
(36:05):
very damning, but I don't think it was.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Yeah, it's like, you know, trying to go after some
soldiers that had to do their job as a soldier
and then just try on paper that does not look good,
but in the in the throes of the situation, it
may and.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
It's really worth a Russian agent one he would have
given up, you know, so many of his colleagues to
the Soviet Union when he had the opportunity, and he
probably would have ended up living in Russia, not in
England on an That's what I'm saying. Yeah, So anyway,
that's that's that's the conclusion that I come to, you know,
(36:44):
after two years working on this book, and it's you know,
it's a pretty sad tale really, actually, I think he's
quite a heroic figure who has just been completely let
down by by people.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
I think that with reaching out, we could reach our
listeners and our viewers out there to talk about you know,
Charles Howard Dick. He goes by Dick, right, that was
his nickname, was Dick, But it's it's Charles Howard Ellis,
but he went by Dick. So that's why we keep
referring him to him as Dick. I'm sure that you know,
us talking about him and bringing his name back up
and just opening up this little bit of can of worms,
(37:21):
like hey, you know, there's a lot of people out
there that are obsessed with detective podcasts and like you know,
unsolved crimes and unsolved mysteries, and like, hey, could this
be you know, rethought about, you know, like what is
this piece of paper that's charging him? And if they
go and read your book The Eagle in the Mirror,
they can start to get better understanding of what we
are trying to talk about without giving away your entire book.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
Yeah, but I mean, you know, the big import of
this book, obviously is that an Australian classical musician was
instrumental in setting up your country CIA, right, and no
one knows. But now the big thing is, oh, was
this Australian classical musician also a Nazi and Soviet spy?
(38:06):
And is your CI a compromised from its very inception?
And this is not a story you hear anyone talking about.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
No, there needs needs to be a movie. Hello, Knock Knock, Hollywood.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
Yeah. So you know, there's a lot, a lot that
hasn't been written about, you know, the the sort of
the intelligent sort of efforts of Britain and in America
during that sort of pre war period and at the
(38:39):
early part of World War Two. It's it's quite a
sort of a murky kind of area for historians. And
there's obviously a lot of debate going on about what
the Americans actually really knew about, you know, what was
going on with the Japanese Pride of Pearl Arbor.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
With Pearl Harbor right exactly, like you know, these preemptives
that he was trying to let them know, like, hey,
there's chatter they're trying to coin up an attack. You know,
I always thought that, you know, Russia went inside of
Japan to fight America. So Japan decided to take it
on their own regard to come just attack. But if
there was prior four months prior notice to the situation,
and then you know all those sailors and everybody that
(39:17):
were just in the situation, I mean, look what happened.
It caused the nuclear or the atomic bomb to be
taught exactly.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
I mean these have huge consequences for.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
I'm like thinking, wait, what's this domino, this one little
domino of a musician from Australian Australia, what is his
domino in this whole nomeno?
Speaker 3 (39:38):
So the whole series of butterfly effects that sort of
ends up with the dropping of the nuclear bomb on Japan.
So yeah, so it's it's a it's a very difficult
kind of it's not an easy it's not an easy child.
But I think, you know, the greatest, the greatest obstacle
(39:59):
obviously for me, was you know, you're writing about a spy.
So spies don't really let you know about what was
going on in their personal lives, and so you know,
try and trying to sort of understand who he was
as a human being on a sort of a personal level.
Was extremely difficult, but I think I did the best
(40:20):
possible job that I could do, and I hope that
you know, someone someone else, maybe you know, goes and
sort of takes the book and uses it as a
as a as a starting point to you know, maybe
try to write more about you know, both him and
all these very important issues, and that more work is
(40:42):
done on on you know, the stories like like Pearl
Harbor and how that happened, and the role of the
British and the setting up of American intelligence. You know,
at the moment the I mean you you you look
(41:02):
at the you know, the O. S. S. And it's all,
you know, sort of credited to William Donovan. But you
know that I have multiple quotes in the book from
from people within the US government saying that Dick Ellis
was actually running the O. S. S. And it wasn't
William Donovan, Right, So who is this Australian musician who's
(41:24):
running the you know, the most important sort of intelligence
agency for the US government. You know, the fact that
we're talking about it and is a starting point. But generally,
you know, the the level of public awareness about you know,
Dick Ellis and the role of the British and the
American government at that time is very minimal.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
Well, yeah, because they wanted to keep it low profile.
Why would they want to boast about it and like
have all these like, you know, tweets about it back then,
like oh, hey, Dick Ellis is helping out here, you know,
and like hey hey Germany, Dick Ellis is over here
dot x or whatever. I mean, like, you know, we
kind of put our foot in our mouth all the
time with these tweets, And I mean, how can you
have a spy game? How could anybody be a spy
(42:10):
today at all if they were born with some chip
in their hands, some screen, you know. I mean, like,
how do you go about being covert?
Speaker 3 (42:17):
You know, a very good question. I don't know if
a guy like Ellis would be able to operate today
with the same efficiency that he did. But you know,
back in those days it was a very different world
where you know, just getting from getting from New York
to London would taken an ordon and amount of dog.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
You know, correct, And the camera systems in London today
are nothing compared to what was happening back then. Now
you can like follow every your film like fifteen thousand
times in a minute.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
Yeah, you know, and we have mobile phones and social media.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
It's like a hundred percent complete, so everybody's their own
production company and filming and uploading, a producer and director
and actor. Dude, this would make a really good either
series because then you can follow the Dick ellis, you know,
from you know, classical music learning guy to who he is.
(43:11):
This would make a great series, honestly, not I mean
a movie would be great, you know with you know,
that would be awesome, but a series would be cool too, right,
because I just that'd be cool if make Because you
said it yourself. We've watched so many spy movies. We
like him.
Speaker 3 (43:26):
Yeah, yeah, there's I think. Look, I mean all the
books that I've done, I think I think, you know,
the pure Na book would be probably the easiest to
translate into it into a series.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
Oh yeah, pure and narc Oh, yeah, for sure, and
everybody would watch that.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
At the time, you know, we had a we had
an agent, the guy who was uh the agent for
Jack Rachel. He was handling it.
Speaker 5 (43:57):
And what happened was that basically we got the feedback
that at that time when the book came out, you know,
it was just really just issue of timing, that the
whole Narco's craze had kind of died out a bit,
and that you know, drug trafficking wasn't the flavor of
(44:22):
the month anymore, and that and that producers just wanted
strong female characters.
Speaker 2 (44:29):
Okay, okay, okay, okay, cool, cool, cool, and narcos.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
And so there wasn't really much we could do about it.
So yeah, unfortunately that didn't get made into a series.
But you know the thing is these things are all cyclical,
and you know, drug trafficking will become very popular on
television I'm sure like within the next three to four years,
and you know, pil Narco will get made into a series.
(44:56):
So you know, that's just the way.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
Well, it's still justice, it's still just as going on,
know as it was. And I mean, as long as
we have the three letter agency running DEA laws around here,
there's always going to be guys trying to get underneath
their skirt their laws. That would make a great TV
series that I'd love to be in it on the beach,
(45:18):
I'll be a guy on the beach all he went
that way.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
That was one of the themes of that book actually
was was you know the whole issue of the War
on drugs and how the War on drugs was really
kind of propping up this you know, huge American bureaucracy,
all these sort of government agencies that were sort of
dedicated to destroying drugs, and you know the how the
(45:46):
you know, the the people customs, the court system, the
Bureau of Prisons. How it was this massive ecosystem that
basically relied on drugs to exist and that you know,
tens of thousands of people relant on on you know,
(46:07):
salaries from their jobs for these agencies to you know,
to take them through to retirement. And it gets in
no one's interest to actually solve this particular problem.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
We're all getting paid because we're.
Speaker 3 (46:20):
All getting paid, and we're all going to retire early
at fifty or whatever. And why would we want to
sort of crush the cartels when you know, we can
continue to get paid and get paid very well and
retire early and sort of have.
Speaker 2 (46:36):
Got very Goldwater involved, and you know, brought Goldwater in
to start the DEA and then all of a sudden
you've got you know, communities being affected by you know,
DEA agents and throwing them in jail and disrupting families
over you know, even pot, right, cannabis and marijuana and stuff,
because it's it's so highly scheduled, right, all these drugs
(46:56):
are so highly scheduled. I'm a big believer in freedom
of choice. However, I understand that, you know, what can
you do when someone like the president creates this entity
to go after and they give it billions of dollars?
So who at the top is going to want to
ever say, oh, I don't want this job. I got
billions of dollars at my disposal. I've got teams of
people at my disposal. We're all making incomes, and we're
(47:18):
all you know, you know, making incomes.
Speaker 3 (47:22):
Yeah, but like you know, I was in New York,
you know when we first spoke, and I was shocked.
I was absolutely shocked by what I was seeing with
the street, like just from the last time that I
was there about ten years ago, like seeing you know,
people who were you know, look like zombies were on something.
(47:42):
And it's like I hadn't seen that the last time
I was in New York, and so something going on there.
And I don't know where you live, but I was
utah utah, right, I don't know what the fentomyl situation
is in.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
That's just like, yeah, that's the word methth but you
want to know what it is. It's adderall. It's descriptions
of adderall to children that the parents are taking. Let's
be clear.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
In in New York, I was just shocked in a
terrible state and there were you know, people who looked
like literally they'd been sort of you know, exhumed from
a crypt. So there's obviously like a serious sort of
social kind of sort of problem going on there with
(48:35):
with you know, rampant kind of drug use. And obviously
I think, you know, not just the United States, but
you know Britain. Britain's got the same problems. Australia has
got not not as bad as the US, but we're
also to deal with. But we've got to come up
with different solutions to the drug problem.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
It's really interesting because we'll give it to our pilots,
you know, like here's here's some go pills, is what
it's called. I'm going to say that, right, A lot
of the pilots that fly these jets they're called got pills,
and they get out of the military and where's these
got pills at right right where are they? You know,
so now of a sudden they're starting to go and
wander and find it and get involved in you know,
(49:16):
the corner alley and whatever you want to see, you know, shading,
this is what they're called. But you know, and it's
just like, uh, it goes from being prescribed, is what
I'm kind of getting at too. They go downhill to
try to find it after the prescription stops.
Speaker 3 (49:28):
Yeah, story is like but you know, dude, I mean
it goes you know. What I was getting at is that,
you know, they in telling the story of this, this
cartail member, he's recommendation really was that you legalized cocaine.
(49:48):
That you know, you stopped the cartail the boat by
doing that. And that's not a conversation that I think
is h people are ready for yet, but I think
it's inevitable. But you know, how are you going to
stop things? Caw tills. It's a major situation, and that's
(50:10):
a right.
Speaker 2 (50:12):
You legalize that. If you legalize it, in my opinion,
you kind of cut back on the trafficking of the humans,
which is the biggest problem. Yeah, okay, so then you
cut out the mules of the human trafficking, because now
there's only just going to be like you know, uh,
really ill wheel trafficking and you got to stop that.
That's what it should be about, is that kind of
(50:33):
human enslavery junk like that that they are made to
carry that across into borders and into other countries. Guys
writing in coffins called a submarine that the coast Guard
are banging on trying to get them to open up
as they're just barely above the water. You know, these
guys are risking their everything for whatever reason. We don't know,
political persecution in their country. Their families could be held hostage,
(50:55):
and you don't know that they have guns to their heads.
And these guys have to go into the submarine and
traffic the stuff because they're just now pawn in the
whole scheme. There's just so much. And yeah, so we
should check out your books. We should check out the
tell me the name of the Narcos book, Pure Narco,
and that's already out, and so we're going to put
(51:16):
that in the little dissertation on our website. We'll have
Pure Narco in there. And then also of course we've
been talking about the Eagle in the mirror and Dick Ellis,
Charles Howard Ellis and his role within World War two
and the world at that time, and how he was
such an intricate piece to the security of nations. And
(51:37):
I'm just ed Hee's a musician from Australia, Okay, and
I just want to bring that up, all right, so
rock and roll, you know I love rock and roll.
And then we just had a great conversation and I
just want to really thank you for taking the time
on the other side of the world for me over
there in London. I'm here in Utah, so thank you.
On this day, it is Sunday, so I just want
to say thank you for making the time to link
(51:58):
up with me on a Sunday.
Speaker 3 (52:00):
No worries. It's good to talk to you again. And
hopefully so came together perfectly.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
It does it is. You're great and you're really enjoyable
to listen to. And I know my listener, uh is
going to enjoy this conversation and we're all going to
be opened up now more to talking about Dick Ellison,
making our own opinion about the guy, right, you know,
let's give him another chance at you know, being a
successful dude for America. And the Allies all right during
(52:29):
a really bad time. So on behalf of Jesse Fink
and his book The Eagle in the Mirror and his
publicist and I'm gonna give you a shout out and
okay because you're ranging all this, so thanks so much.
I appreciate you. And Brandon Brandon Webb who runs the site,
and Anton who's my producer, and guy who's an editor,
Martin on the back end. Thank you so much everybody.
(52:52):
And I just want to say go check out the
merch store and thesoft rep dot com forwards. Last book,
hyphen Club, and this is rad Save peace.
Speaker 1 (53:06):
You've been listening to self red Ldia h
Lute force. If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough.
You're listening to Software Radio, Special Operations, Military Nails and
straight talk with the guys in the community.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Hi, welcome back to a wonderful episode of soft Rep Radio.
I am your host, rad and before I introduce my
next guest, I just want to mention our merch shop,
soft rep dot Com Forward slash Merch. Go check out
the merch keep us in business. That's what's making that
fireplace stay lit and going and flickering. And we really
appreciate all of you out there tagging us on the
(00:57):
internet with soft Rep and soft reap mafia hashtag on
your merch It's super cool. Also, we have a book
a book club. Excuse me, it's soft Rep dot Com
Forward slash book hyphened club. So if you take a
look at our book club, enroll in it. These books
are picked and curated by the guys behind the scenes
(01:17):
like Brandon Webb and Guy and all of everybody out there,
even myself and my next guest. Hopefully his book and
books will become part of our book clubs. And let
me introduce Jesse Fink, who is an author and he
has written quite a few books actually, so let me
just read a little bit of his bio here. Jesse
Fink a British Australian author of six books, including twin
(01:40):
biographies of the hard rock band ac DC, The Youngs,
The Brothers who Built ac DC and Bond The Last Highway,
the cocaine trafficking Story Pure Narco. And the book that
we're going to talk about more than the other ones
is The Eagle in the Mirror, a biography of British
intelligence officer Dick Ellis. His books have been translated into
some languages. And I just want to welcome to the show.
(02:02):
Welcome to the show, Jesse.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Great to see you again, my friend.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yes, this is round two with Jesse and I. We
linked up a little while ago, and now it's better
that you're in London and we've got you connected. Now
that's interesting. White Friy's better.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
There, better reception than Washington. Here.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Hey, let me ask you something. I get hit this
all the time by people that reach out to me
and they're like rad you know, I'm a struggling writer.
I got out of the military and I want to
write or I just want to write, and they reach
out to me because I talked to folks like yourself.
You know, what was it that helped you get into
writing in the beginning that maybe you can you know,
(02:43):
inspire somebody out there before we get into your book
The Eagle in the Mirror.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
I mean, I did a journalism degree at university, like
a lot of people, but it sort of didn't really
prepare me for real life at all, straight into unemployment.
So you know, I think the idea of sort of
getting degrees to qualify you for writing and being a
journalist is an outdated idea. I think really it comes
down to self education, travel, reading as much as you can,
(03:12):
you know, reading people that you admire, and I think gradually,
sort of just through a process of you know, patience
time in osmosis, you develop some sort of skills in
your own writing. As long as you're reading good writers
and sort of you know, taking hints from you know,
(03:34):
what they do, eventually it leaches into your own work.
So I mean, that's the best advice I can give
anyone is just read a lot, you know, just read
what you're interested in. And the great thing is, now
you know the way the book industry is. You know,
there are a lot of pathways for writers who can't
(03:54):
get agents or can't get publishers to publish themselves. You know,
I'm doing it myself. I mean I published with you know,
normal book publishers throughout my career. But you know, this October,
it's coming up to the fiftieth anniversary of A Bond
Scott Jordan ac DC and I just had literally, you know,
(04:17):
two hundred pages of material that I didn't use in
the last book I did on Bond Scott. So I
just thought, you know, I'm going to put it on Amazon.
I'll just make it six American bucks and just see
how it goes. And already I've had a lot of
pre orders for it. So you know, there are a
lot of different ways that you know, people can get
into the business.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
It's really cool and good advice too, And so the
Bond Scott and E. C. D C. Let's hit on
that a little bit, right rock and roll, bro, you
got your smiling, I'm smiling. You know what was it
like to like be around that environment for the years
you were there and then write the book?
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Well, you know, the book came about really through through
a dark period of my personal life when and I
had a marriage breakdown. You know, this was back in
you know, two thousand and seven. So I had written
my first book, which was about Australia at the soccer
(05:12):
World Cup, and then you know, my marriage fell apart,
and really I went into sort of like this five
year kind of downward spiral of you know, excessive drinking
and excessive dating and and really didn't think I had
much of another book in me. And then I ended
(05:34):
up writing a memoir about this time. And I remember
sort of during this period, there was one night where
I felt really suicidal about my sort of situation and
was very tempted just to walk out in front of
the garbage truck. This is like at three o'clock in
the morning one night, and for whatever reason, I just
(05:55):
put on some ac DC on my laptop at three
o'clock in the morning, and it was like this incredible job.
It was this fabulous antidepressant that sort of just pulled
me out of this incredibly dark moment. And I thought,
you know, that's the power of rock and roll. That's
(06:15):
the whole point of ac DC. This is this is
why people connect to this music on a on a
really visceral physical level, and it explains the popularity of
a CDC, which is the biggest rock band in the world,
so huge, huge, you know, you know, just you know,
even the military connection. I remember, you know, talking to
(06:36):
a guy who you know, would play a C d
C on in his helicopter in Somalia and you know,
things like that. So you know, I talked to these
people and I said, you know, why do you connect
to this music? And this was really kind of like
the starting point for me to kind of write this
appreciation of the music of a C d C, which
(06:57):
at that time, you know, critics didn't take very seriously.
It's always sort of been regarded as a bit of
a sort of a gimmick rock band, and you know,
the American critics don't take it very seriously. And I
ended up writing this book called The Youngs, which was
just their story through eleven important songs, and it was
(07:19):
a very successful book, sort of went around the world,
went to twenty countries. I suddenly had success that I
hadn't had in my previous two books, and suddenly found
myself an ACDC biographer. So that was how you know,
that came about. And then because of the success of
that book, my publisher was interested in another music biography,
(07:42):
and I suggested Bond Scott, because you know, Bond Scott
is a folk hero to people the world over, and
he has a remarkable personal story and his life ended
in fairly tragic circumstances at the age of thirty three.
So I then wrote another book about a CDC. So
really it all just came out of, you know, very
(08:07):
unusual personal circumstance. But the great thing was that, you know,
you write books like this and then you have people
reach out to you on social media like Facebook or
Twitter or whatever, who will say, hey, I just read
your book, and I just went through exactly the same thing.
You know, I lost my job, or I lost my wife,
(08:28):
or I'm a widower or whatever. And all these people
have a personal story that is sort of anchored in
the music of rock and roll, whether it's Led Zeppelin
or ac DC or the Who or whoever. But that's
what rock and roll music does. It's this fabulous, bandy depressidant.
(08:51):
So that was really how I ended up writing music biographies.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
I love it, and I love rock and roll, and
I think we all love rock and roll and music
consued the soul, right and it just does you know,
you just turn on something and look, you got triggered
by a C d C at three in the morning.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Yeah, yeah, that's right. And then I ended up sort
of spending the next ten years of my life writing
about them.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
You know.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
It wasn't what I thought would happen. And then, you know,
during the course of writing the biography of Bob Scott,
which took four years to write, I met some people
in Miami who, after the book came out, they contacted
me and said, oh, by the way, would you talk
to this cocaine trafficker in Miami who wants to write
(09:40):
a book? And you know, I ended up sort of
talking to this guy on WhatsApp from Sydney, he was
in Miami, and we sort of agreed to write a
book about his life, and then spent sort of two
and a half years working on that. And so that
just sort of came out of the Bond Scott book.
It was just a complete accident, and suddenly I'm writing
(10:02):
about Pablo Escobar, right and dea you know, talking to
guys from US Customs.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Yeah, no, I'm just like, I'm just listening to you.
It's just the story. You know, You're like, you're you're
at one point in your life and then that takes
you to another place. After music involves the music in
this other story of Pablo Escobar just kind of comes
out of that, and now here you are writing about
the cocaine trafficking of Pablo Escobar.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Yeah, that's right. So and then I spent two and
a half years working on this book and then the
you know, I can't I don't know if I could swear,
but you know, yeah, that's fine. Fucking pandemic hits right,
that's right, and Australia gets absolutely smashed more than other countries.
You guys in America thought you had it bad. I mean,
the Australians had it really bad because the government wouldn't
(10:52):
let us leave the country at all at all, So
we were basically prisoners of the Australian government, stuck in Australia,
couldn't go anywhere. And I, you know, I thought, you know,
that's a sort of a violation of my human right.
If I want to leave the bloody country, I should
be able to do. They wouldn't allow anyone to leave, so,
(11:15):
you know, Pure and Arco basically came out at the
worst possible time. So I've just spent two and a
half years working on this book and we couldn't promote it.
You know, the guy that I wrote it with, Lewis Navia,
he couldn't come to Australia from Miami. I couldn't go
to the United States. It really hurt the book. But
(11:37):
the funny thing was, you know that the the few
things that Australians could do was we could go shopping
at a supermarket, we could fill up our cars with petrol,
or we could go to thrift shops. And so I
was spending a lot of time in thrift shops, which
(12:00):
were over sort of in the morning, and I would
meet my father there because it was the only place
we could meet, right, So we couldn't go and sit
in a cafe because there were no tables. He literally
couldn't sit at a table. And so we would meet
in this thrift shop and we would just sort of,
you know, find out what books were on the shelves.
(12:22):
And he mentioned to me that he had picked up
a book about this Canadian SPI called William Stevenson, and
in the book it had mentioned a guy called Dick
Ellis and said, and Fred, who's my father, said well,
check out this dick Ellis feller. I think he's very interesting.
There might be a book at it. So I'm stuck
(12:44):
in Sydney. I'm looking for another book to do, but
I can't travel anywhere, I can't do anything. And suddenly
dick Ellis falls into my lap literally, you know, well
not literally, you know.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Yeah, yeah, Dad, Dad knows what's up.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
But the great thing was because of the pandemic. You know,
the National Archives in the UK, which have a lot
of these intelligence files, they made it all free because
of the pandemic because no one could go into a library.
So I was able to download thousands of files from
the National Archives, and I was able to do this book,
(13:23):
you know, from my laptop in Sydney. And that's how
I ended up writing about spies. So, you know, each
each book kind of fell into the other in a
strange way, you know, And that's how I ended up
going from sport to divorce, to ac DC to cocaine
to spies.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
I love it. That's a great little timeline you just
put out right there. And and this book, The Eagle
and Mirror, it goes after Charles Howard. Dick Ellis, right,
he had such you know a name that we know
him ass and a lot of people had doubts about him,
but he was the longest serving six operative. Right is
that right that worked in I six?
Speaker 3 (14:10):
It was essentially m I six is top man in
America during the second ward.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Can ask a question, if you're a spy, you have
to be kind of like a spy to the other
side too, because you're trying to get spy information for
your spy, and so you know they're going to want
to pit him as like this multiple spy of spies.
But it's kind of the job of a spy to
be a spy.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Well, I mean, there's you know, there's there's spying on
your enemy, and it also you know, I guess trying
to figure out who is sort of in your midst
at the time and what information they're trying to get
out of the people that you work with. You know,
are the people that you work with actually working for
the other side. And you know that famous quote about
(15:01):
you know, the spy game being akin to a wilderness
of mirrors.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
You know that so computed, You know that that you know,
it's very easy to become.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Paranoid obviously in an environment that so anyway, dick Ellis
was It was an Australian, a fellow who was born
in eighteen ninety five, and he he had a very
tough childhood. His mother died very young, his father couldn't
(15:37):
take care of him. He ended up sort of becoming
a self educated classical musician and ended up on a
scholarship to the UK and left in nineteen fourteen and
war broke out and he ended up joining the British Army,
got injured multiple times on the Western Front and took
(16:02):
up learning Russian and this was of great use to
the British intelligence services. So after his time as a
soldier was over, he got recruited by m I six
and he was sort of thrown into the field too
essentially encounter at the time, you know, the great menace
(16:24):
of the Soviet Union, which had just been sort of
created by the Russian Revolution, and so the great fear,
obviously of the British was that the Communists were going
to try and take over Great Britain. And you know
that the the security apparatus of Britain was very much
(16:44):
geared against you know, this this Russian menace, the Red menace.
So dick Ellis was incredibly valuable to Britain because of
his language skills. He married a Ukrainian woman who was
well connected into Ukrainian exile communities who were against the Soviets,
(17:09):
and so he basically operated as a as a like
a field agent in Western Europe, basically gathering information that
could be used against the Soviet Union. And during the
course of this time, there was some sort of cooperation
between the Nazis and the Great Britain against the Soviets.
(17:33):
And this is where sort of dick el has got
into trouble that many years later he was accused of
being a Russian and the Soviets, sorry, a Russian and
Nazi spy. But this was many years later. This was
in the nineteen sixties, so we don't know exactly what
(17:55):
he was up to sort of between the wars, but
there was a lot of complicated double agentry and triple
agentry going on in Europe at that time, and the
Brits and the Germans were actually cooperating with each other
against the Russians. And then dick Alis came to America
(18:17):
in nineteen forty and he was officially the British consul
in New York, so he was sort of running the
Passport office in New York, but he was essentially fronting
or heading up six in America. And at that time,
the Americans hadn't joined the war effort against Adolf Hitler,
(18:40):
and the purpose of Els being in the United States
was essentially to sort of try to get the United
States to join Great Britain in fighting the Nazis. And
you know, the fascinating thing for me was that I
came across an old interview that he had done with
(19:05):
a Canadian television company that had never aired that he
said that he had got warning of the attack on
Pearl Harbor about four months before it happened, and that
this warning had been actually relayed to the FBI and
to President Roosevelt himself, and which sort of rewrites the
(19:31):
whole sort of story around Pearl Harbor and sort of
undermines this idea that, you know, that the Americans were
worn as this sort of grand conspiracy. I think there's
a lot more to it. And Dick Ellis contributed a
great deal to the American war effort. He set up
the OSS, which became the CIA. You know, he set
(19:53):
up training centers in Maryland and in Ontario in Canada
for OSS personnel. He was given a legion a merit
by President Truman. He set up the Australian Secret Intelligence Service.
He did all these remarkable things, and then he died
(20:19):
in nineteen seventy five. And you know, in the nineteen
eighties a couple of books came out which accused him
of being a Russian and German spy, which was quite
shocking to his family, so shocking that his daughter returned
all his medals to the British government, and that his son,
(20:42):
who was a Canadian intelligence officer, was incredibly disgusted by
the way that his father had been smeared and the
case against him, I thought, having reviewed all the evidence
was pretty flimsy. So this book is really an attempt
to kind of clear his name.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah, and I mean you kind of have to play
both sides of the fence. But again, where did he
pass away at? Where was his fight? Where was he
where'd he die? What country?
Speaker 3 (21:12):
He died in England in nineteen seventy five, So he
was he was eighty years old.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Yeah, and jeez, I wasn't even born yet. I was
two years still for me, Holy cow.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Yeah, I was born in seventy three, So I was
only too yeah when he died. And you know, like
I said, I knew nothing about this guy until my
father had mentioned him, you know, during the pandemic. He said,
looking to this person, he's quite fasinating. And I thought, well,
he's a remarkable Australian story. He's a great British story exactly,
(21:46):
and he's a great American story. And he's he's had
this remarkable kind of intelligence and military career over three
countries and served as an intelligence officer essentially from about
you know, nineteen twenty one three to nineteen seventy five.
(22:07):
I mean, it's a remarkable kind of trajectory, an arc
of a man's life. And yet and also it has
this allegation of working for Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler.
So I couldn't really believe that this story hadn't been told.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
It's not like he resided his rest of his life
in Germany or in you know, off the coast of
Russia and on a Black island or anything. It's not
like he died there. He died in the UK, right
where you know, where he fell at home. That's that
was home obviously, And so he was, and he was
awarded by our President of America at the time, Roosevelt,
(22:44):
right awarded him with like probably the closest thing to
a medal of honor, I'd imagine, you know, yeah, right,
And so he got awarded that he didn't get it.
Did he get awards and accolades from like Hitler and
from Russia Stalin and or anybody?
Speaker 3 (22:58):
No, no, no, no, he didn't get anything from then.
But you know, the thing was, I mean, I don't
know how much you know about Russian espionas, but I mean,
obviously the great traitor of the twentieth century in Britain's
eyes is a fellow called Kim Philby. And Kim Philby
(23:21):
worked for mi I six and defected to the Soviet
Union in nineteen sixty three, and greatly embarrassed that, you know,
the intelligence services of Britain and the United States that
this person had operated at a very high level for
decades and given all these secrets over to the Russians
(23:45):
and then defected in nineteen sixty three. So after Philby defected,
that was when Ellis was interrogated by people within m
I five and six in London, and he was confronted
with sort of reports of Nazis who had been arrested
(24:06):
after the Second World War, mentioning that a source for
a lot of their information was it was a man
called Captain Ellis.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
And.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
The report of one Nazi officer it ended up on
the desk of Kim Philby, who in nineteen forty six
was working with Dick Ellis. And this person had written
in the margin on this document it said who was
this man Ellis? And Kim Philby had answered and said,
(24:37):
you know, essentially that he didn't know, and that no
further action should be taken, right, which is odd given
that they were working together in this office in London,
So you know, jumped to nineteen sixty five. It's, you know,
two decades later. People are looking at this report thinking,
(24:59):
why did why did Kim Philby cover for Dick Ellis here?
Why did he say that he didn't know who he was? Right?
Maybe they were working together, Maybe Dick Ellis was this
other Russian mole within m I six And and that
was really the starting point for the British investigation against
Dick Ellis. And but I went back to all the
(25:24):
you know, the original documents that were available you know,
the ones that certainly sort of been released anyway to
see what the case against Ellis was. And my my hunch,
my conclusion was that Dick Elis was actually involved in
(25:47):
something that the British didn't want the rest of the
world to know about, which was that they were actually
working with the Germans prior to the outbreak of the
Second World War and that their their common enemy was
the Service Union, and that Dick Ellis didn't want to
get his boss at m I sets into trouble basically
(26:07):
for working on an unsanctioned program, which was to work
with the Nazis. So it's a very convoluted, very sort
of dense tale about someone who's been completely forgotten, but
who's very significant in sort of the history of the
Second World War and the history of the Cold War.
(26:28):
Who deserved I think the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
A different microscope. Like today we can go back on
DNA and find out that there was DNA on the
crime scene and like they can rediscover who possibly the
suspect is. Today from the sixties, they're fighting missing persons
all the time, So why couldn't a case be relooked
at from such a long time ago? To just say, hey,
you know, let's let's let's put it this way like
(26:54):
Dick Ellis boy, I had my thought of you know,
he was okay. So if they're going to say that
Germany was sympathizing with the UK pre war to go
against Russia, well here in America, our Congress was also
sympathizing with Germany in some aspects that our president had
(27:15):
to say this, we don't want to go to war,
but we have to go to war. This isn't okay.
There was German sympathizers in our Congress, you know. So
it's like that wasn't out of the norm. That's what
I'm trying to say, to have the countries talking to
Germany pre German War.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
And there were a lot of people were in the
Nazi Party prior to the outbreak of the Sycamore War
who could see what where Hitler was taking Germany and
they didn't want any part of it. They actually wanted
to get rid of Hitler. So people within MI six
were actually talking to Admiral Kanaris, who was one of
(27:52):
the main plotters against Hitler, who you know, was was
rounded up and executed.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Exactly because people are trying to take out Hitler and
say they did what they're like.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
This is my conclusion was that dick Elis was involved
in some sort of plot against Hitler, working with sort
of cooperative kind of elements within the Nazi Party itself,
you know that. So the thing my point is that
you know, things can be said in documents that can
(28:28):
be interpreted in many different ways. It depends what your
your mindset is or how you're seeing that information and
what your own agenda is. Right. So, in the context
of the nineteen sixties, you've got all these people who
are incredibly embarrassed about Kim Philby defective to the Soviet Union,
and suddenly they're like, okay, ship, we've got to fucking
(28:49):
you know, make up with this, with this gross negligence,
put a li on it, and find someone else, right. So,
and this happens all the time. So I think dick
Ellis was at was a victim of this. Unfortunately, his
name has been associated with, you know, betrayal and sabotage,
(29:13):
and he's like a Benedict Arnold an intelligence world, and
I don't think I don't think it really sort of
stacks up to be a solid case. So this book
is my attempt in you know, very difficult circumstances in
that I don't have access to you know, all these
(29:34):
classified file health that are still held by m I
six were then ever going to get released, right But
I went through every every possible document, every possible mention
of this fellow that had ever been printed and reconstructed
essentially his life, put together a timeline. I figured out
(29:55):
where he was at any particular time, and Wow, basically
came to the conclusion that he can't be guilty of
all these things that he's accused of. So I think
people who are interested in, you know, the way that
intelligence agencies operate, who are interested in you know, I
(30:17):
guess you know your your country is dealing with this
right now, this whole issue of trust.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Right who do we trust? You don't we trust? Do
we trust? The judicial system? Do we trust the DOJ
Department of Justice? Do we trust? I mean, you know, trust.
It's got to have.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Trust, that's right, you know. So I think that it
would be interesting because people who are who are concerned
with those sort of issues, and I think you know,
every everyone whether you're in the U S Or the UK,
or Australia or Western Europe right now, I think there's
this there's this contagion of distrust of of government agents.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
It's it's just been put out there to thwart the
the justice systems and the trust of the people because
somebody's getting themselves put in front of a judge and
a magistrate and so they're going to say that they're
innocent and that this is all lies and this is corrupt,
and then people will just and you got the internet, right,
(31:21):
it just can pile on so fast and the next thing,
you know, it's just what's going on here is going
on over in the EU, you know, you know, and
I have to far right wings trying to take over
in France and right now, you know, and people trying
to do snap elections over there so that Mark Home
can get you know, the party aligned and et cetera.
(31:42):
And then you've got I mean, I pay attention, right,
this is kind of what's going on, and it's.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
You know, and if you can and and this is
a good example of that that you know that they're
elements within any.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
But it's not so much that Jesse, it's not so
much being told, it's that we see it ourselves. We
see the words being said out of the person's mouths
and they're saying it to us, and they're coming back
later saying they never said it. Right, That's that's that's
where this has happened. This is it's like we watched
you say that. Now you're saying you never said that.
Like this is all lie. It's like, yeah, trying to
(32:26):
like make us go crazy to you know, move forward
their agenda.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
And their lie.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Yes, that's that. Yeah. And again it's what's happened to
to Dick is that he was kind of in the
right place at the right times for all sorts of
intermingling with all of these different elements of the world.
Brow he just happened to just be this little puzzle
piece that was like hey, you know, coming over to
(32:55):
the US saying you guys should take a look at this.
This is a situation going on over here. He's you know,
working for the UK, he's you know, definitely working for
the Allies, it seems like. And you know, but pre war,
he's got to talk to you know, he's got to
get intel they call it human and you know, human
intelligence and all this other intelligence. You've got to probably
befriends somebody who wants to give up, and.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
Very likely you have to pay them at some point
with money that you don't have. So one of the
core sort of allegations made against Ellis was that at
some point he pocketed some money from an enemy source.
Right now, Yes, on the surface, that appears a terrible thing,
(33:38):
what a betrayal. You're accepting money from your your enemy, right,
But if you're if you're a drug dealer pretending to
be sorry, if you're a policeman pretending to be a
drug dealer and you're working under cover, you're going to
accept the money because you want the other side to
think that, you know, you're a drug deal right And
(34:00):
not exactly, it's the same sort of situation if you're
working as a spy and you want the other side
to think that you're ploiable and amnable and corruptible, and.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
You know, it just reminds me of the book of
the movie Point Break with Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayzey.
There's a scene when they go into the house and
and and the guy from it Hot Chili Peppers is
in there, Anthony Keatis and everybody, and it's like and
Tom Sizemore is like, what do you do? And this
is my this is my case, this is my I
got this tattoo on my neck. I've been with these
guys for five years. You think I want this tattoo
(34:31):
on my neck. And he's the total undercover cop, like
they're blowing his cover. You know, he's like, what are
you doing? That's what It kind of reminds me of.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
The point would be linked to my book there you go.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Yeah, yeah, dude, it's like I had to get this tattoo.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
Man.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Yeah, So what is the spy to do? You know,
especially when the spy is on your side, you gotta
have some leeway and that money. How do we know
that money didn't necessarily go to the miss.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
I don't know. If we don't know where that was
spent or yuh, if he did spender himself, maybe he
probably wasn't getting paid enough. And look, anyone who watches
that vacation, anyone who watches any spied drum on television,
you know, the main protagonist of that series is confronted with,
(35:24):
you know, morally complicated situations on a daily basis. It's
part of the job, right, So you know the point
I'm making is that, you know, two decades later, you know,
some some sort of you know, information on a piece
of paper that that can be interpreted in a certain way.
(35:44):
Isn't a slam dunk against that person. You know that
there's there's a lot more involved, there's a lot more
nuanced that's that's not there on the paper, And and
I think that that's what he was a victim of.
It was just that there was a witch hunt going on,
and you know, his name had been mentioned by several
sort of Nazi officers, and on the surface it looked
(36:05):
very damning, but I don't think it was.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Yeah, it's like, you know, trying to go after some
soldiers that had to do their job as a soldier
and then just try on paper that does not look good,
but in the in the throes of the situation, it
may and.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
It's really worth a Russian agent one he would have
given up, you know, so many of his colleagues to
the Soviet Union when he had the opportunity, and he
probably would have ended up living in Russia, not in
England on an That's what I'm saying. Yeah, So anyway,
that's that's that's the conclusion that I come to, you know,
(36:44):
after two years working on this book, and it's you know,
it's a pretty sad tale really, actually, I think he's
quite a heroic figure who has just been completely let
down by by people.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
I think that with reaching out, we could reach our
listeners and our viewers out there to talk about you know,
Charles Howard Dick. He goes by Dick, right, that was
his nickname, was Dick, But it's it's Charles Howard Ellis,
but he went by Dick. So that's why we keep
referring him to him as Dick. I'm sure that you know,
us talking about him and bringing his name back up
and just opening up this little bit of can of worms,
(37:21):
like hey, you know, there's a lot of people out
there that are obsessed with detective podcasts and like you know,
unsolved crimes and unsolved mysteries, and like, hey, could this
be you know, rethought about, you know, like what is
this piece of paper that's charging him? And if they
go and read your book The Eagle in the Mirror,
they can start to get better understanding of what we
are trying to talk about without giving away your entire book.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
Yeah, but I mean, you know, the big import of
this book, obviously is that an Australian classical musician was
instrumental in setting up your country CIA, right, and no
one knows. But now the big thing is, oh, was
this Australian classical musician also a Nazi and Soviet spy?
(38:06):
And is your CI a compromised from its very inception?
And this is not a story you hear anyone talking about.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
No, there needs needs to be a movie. Hello, Knock Knock, Hollywood.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
Yeah. So you know, there's a lot, a lot that
hasn't been written about, you know, the the sort of
the intelligent sort of efforts of Britain and in America
during that sort of pre war period and at the
(38:39):
early part of World War Two. It's it's quite a
sort of a murky kind of area for historians. And
there's obviously a lot of debate going on about what
the Americans actually really knew about, you know, what was
going on with the Japanese Pride of Pearl Arbor.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
With Pearl Harbor right exactly, like you know, these preemptives
that he was trying to let them know, like, hey,
there's chatter they're trying to coin up an attack. You know,
I always thought that, you know, Russia went inside of
Japan to fight America. So Japan decided to take it
on their own regard to come just attack. But if
there was prior four months prior notice to the situation,
and then you know all those sailors and everybody that
(39:17):
were just in the situation, I mean, look what happened.
It caused the nuclear or the atomic bomb to be
taught exactly.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
I mean these have huge consequences for.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
I'm like thinking, wait, what's this domino, this one little
domino of a musician from Australian Australia, what is his
domino in this whole nomeno?
Speaker 3 (39:38):
So the whole series of butterfly effects that sort of
ends up with the dropping of the nuclear bomb on Japan.
So yeah, so it's it's a it's a very difficult
kind of it's not an easy it's not an easy child.
But I think, you know, the greatest, the greatest obstacle
(39:59):
obviously for me, was you know, you're writing about a spy.
So spies don't really let you know about what was
going on in their personal lives, and so you know,
try and trying to sort of understand who he was
as a human being on a sort of a personal level.
Was extremely difficult, but I think I did the best
(40:20):
possible job that I could do, and I hope that
you know, someone someone else, maybe you know, goes and
sort of takes the book and uses it as a
as a as a starting point to you know, maybe
try to write more about you know, both him and
all these very important issues, and that more work is
(40:42):
done on on you know, the stories like like Pearl
Harbor and how that happened, and the role of the
British and the setting up of American intelligence. You know,
at the moment the I mean you you you look
(41:02):
at the you know, the O. S. S. And it's all,
you know, sort of credited to William Donovan. But you
know that I have multiple quotes in the book from
from people within the US government saying that Dick Ellis
was actually running the O. S. S. And it wasn't
William Donovan, Right, So who is this Australian musician who's
(41:24):
running the you know, the most important sort of intelligence
agency for the US government. You know, the fact that
we're talking about it and is a starting point. But generally,
you know, the the level of public awareness about you know,
Dick Ellis and the role of the British and the
American government at that time is very minimal.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
Well, yeah, because they wanted to keep it low profile.
Why would they want to boast about it and like
have all these like, you know, tweets about it back then,
like oh, hey, Dick Ellis is helping out here, you know,
and like hey hey Germany, Dick Ellis is over here
dot x or whatever. I mean, like, you know, we
kind of put our foot in our mouth all the
time with these tweets, And I mean, how can you
have a spy game? How could anybody be a spy
(42:10):
today at all if they were born with some chip
in their hands, some screen, you know. I mean, like,
how do you go about being covert?
Speaker 3 (42:17):
You know, a very good question. I don't know if
a guy like Ellis would be able to operate today
with the same efficiency that he did. But you know,
back in those days it was a very different world
where you know, just getting from getting from New York
to London would taken an ordon and amount of dog.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
You know, correct, And the camera systems in London today
are nothing compared to what was happening back then. Now
you can like follow every your film like fifteen thousand
times in a minute.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
Yeah, you know, and we have mobile phones and social media.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
It's like a hundred percent complete, so everybody's their own
production company and filming and uploading, a producer and director
and actor. Dude, this would make a really good either
series because then you can follow the Dick ellis, you know,
from you know, classical music learning guy to who he is.
(43:11):
This would make a great series, honestly, not I mean
a movie would be great, you know with you know,
that would be awesome, but a series would be cool too, right,
because I just that'd be cool if make Because you
said it yourself. We've watched so many spy movies. We
like him.
Speaker 3 (43:26):
Yeah, yeah, there's I think. Look, I mean all the
books that I've done, I think I think, you know,
the pure Na book would be probably the easiest to
translate into it into a series.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
Oh yeah, pure and narc Oh, yeah, for sure, and
everybody would watch that.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
At the time, you know, we had a we had
an agent, the guy who was uh the agent for
Jack Rachel. He was handling it.
Speaker 5 (43:57):
And what happened was that basically we got the feedback
that at that time when the book came out, you know,
it was just really just issue of timing, that the
whole Narco's craze had kind of died out a bit,
and that you know, drug trafficking wasn't the flavor of
(44:22):
the month anymore, and that and that producers just wanted
strong female characters.
Speaker 2 (44:29):
Okay, okay, okay, okay, cool, cool, cool, and narcos.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
And so there wasn't really much we could do about it.
So yeah, unfortunately that didn't get made into a series.
But you know the thing is these things are all cyclical,
and you know, drug trafficking will become very popular on
television I'm sure like within the next three to four years,
and you know, pil Narco will get made into a series.
(44:56):
So you know, that's just the way.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
Well, it's still justice, it's still just as going on,
know as it was. And I mean, as long as
we have the three letter agency running DEA laws around here,
there's always going to be guys trying to get underneath
their skirt their laws. That would make a great TV
series that I'd love to be in it on the beach,
(45:18):
I'll be a guy on the beach all he went
that way.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
That was one of the themes of that book actually
was was you know the whole issue of the War
on drugs and how the War on drugs was really
kind of propping up this you know, huge American bureaucracy,
all these sort of government agencies that were sort of
dedicated to destroying drugs, and you know the how the
(45:46):
you know, the the people customs, the court system, the
Bureau of Prisons. How it was this massive ecosystem that
basically relied on drugs to exist and that you know,
tens of thousands of people relant on on you know,
(46:07):
salaries from their jobs for these agencies to you know,
to take them through to retirement. And it gets in
no one's interest to actually solve this particular problem.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
We're all getting paid because we're.
Speaker 3 (46:20):
All getting paid, and we're all going to retire early
at fifty or whatever. And why would we want to
sort of crush the cartels when you know, we can
continue to get paid and get paid very well and
retire early and sort of have.
Speaker 2 (46:36):
Got very Goldwater involved, and you know, brought Goldwater in
to start the DEA and then all of a sudden
you've got you know, communities being affected by you know,
DEA agents and throwing them in jail and disrupting families
over you know, even pot, right, cannabis and marijuana and stuff,
because it's it's so highly scheduled, right, all these drugs
(46:56):
are so highly scheduled. I'm a big believer in freedom
of choice. However, I understand that, you know, what can
you do when someone like the president creates this entity
to go after and they give it billions of dollars?
So who at the top is going to want to
ever say, oh, I don't want this job. I got
billions of dollars at my disposal. I've got teams of
people at my disposal. We're all making incomes, and we're
(47:18):
all you know, you know, making incomes.
Speaker 3 (47:22):
Yeah, but like you know, I was in New York,
you know when we first spoke, and I was shocked.
I was absolutely shocked by what I was seeing with
the street, like just from the last time that I
was there about ten years ago, like seeing you know,
people who were you know, look like zombies were on something.
(47:42):
And it's like I hadn't seen that the last time
I was in New York, and so something going on there.
And I don't know where you live, but I was
utah utah, right, I don't know what the fentomyl situation
is in.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
That's just like, yeah, that's the word methth but you
want to know what it is. It's adderall. It's descriptions
of adderall to children that the parents are taking. Let's
be clear.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
In in New York, I was just shocked in a
terrible state and there were you know, people who looked
like literally they'd been sort of you know, exhumed from
a crypt. So there's obviously like a serious sort of
social kind of sort of problem going on there with
(48:35):
with you know, rampant kind of drug use. And obviously
I think, you know, not just the United States, but
you know Britain. Britain's got the same problems. Australia has
got not not as bad as the US, but we're
also to deal with. But we've got to come up
with different solutions to the drug problem.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
It's really interesting because we'll give it to our pilots,
you know, like here's here's some go pills, is what
it's called. I'm going to say that, right, A lot
of the pilots that fly these jets they're called got pills,
and they get out of the military and where's these
got pills at right right where are they? You know,
so now of a sudden they're starting to go and
wander and find it and get involved in you know,
(49:16):
the corner alley and whatever you want to see, you know, shading,
this is what they're called. But you know, and it's
just like, uh, it goes from being prescribed, is what
I'm kind of getting at too. They go downhill to
try to find it after the prescription stops.
Speaker 3 (49:28):
Yeah, story is like but you know, dude, I mean
it goes you know. What I was getting at is that,
you know, they in telling the story of this, this
cartail member, he's recommendation really was that you legalized cocaine.
(49:48):
That you know, you stopped the cartail the boat by
doing that. And that's not a conversation that I think
is h people are ready for yet, but I think
it's inevitable. But you know, how are you going to
stop things? Caw tills. It's a major situation, and that's
(50:10):
a right.
Speaker 2 (50:12):
You legalize that. If you legalize it, in my opinion,
you kind of cut back on the trafficking of the humans,
which is the biggest problem. Yeah, okay, so then you
cut out the mules of the human trafficking, because now
there's only just going to be like you know, uh,
really ill wheel trafficking and you got to stop that.
That's what it should be about, is that kind of
(50:33):
human enslavery junk like that that they are made to
carry that across into borders and into other countries. Guys
writing in coffins called a submarine that the coast Guard
are banging on trying to get them to open up
as they're just barely above the water. You know, these
guys are risking their everything for whatever reason. We don't know,
political persecution in their country. Their families could be held hostage,
(50:55):
and you don't know that they have guns to their heads.
And these guys have to go into the submarine and
traffic the stuff because they're just now pawn in the
whole scheme. There's just so much. And yeah, so we
should check out your books. We should check out the
tell me the name of the Narcos book, Pure Narco,
and that's already out, and so we're going to put
(51:16):
that in the little dissertation on our website. We'll have
Pure Narco in there. And then also of course we've
been talking about the Eagle in the mirror and Dick Ellis,
Charles Howard Ellis and his role within World War two
and the world at that time, and how he was
such an intricate piece to the security of nations. And
(51:37):
I'm just ed Hee's a musician from Australia, Okay, and
I just want to bring that up, all right, so
rock and roll, you know I love rock and roll.
And then we just had a great conversation and I
just want to really thank you for taking the time
on the other side of the world for me over
there in London. I'm here in Utah, so thank you.
On this day, it is Sunday, so I just want
to say thank you for making the time to link
(51:58):
up with me on a Sunday.
Speaker 3 (52:00):
No worries. It's good to talk to you again. And
hopefully so came together perfectly.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
It does it is. You're great and you're really enjoyable
to listen to. And I know my listener, uh is
going to enjoy this conversation and we're all going to
be opened up now more to talking about Dick Ellison,
making our own opinion about the guy, right, you know,
let's give him another chance at you know, being a
successful dude for America. And the Allies all right during
(52:29):
a really bad time. So on behalf of Jesse Fink
and his book The Eagle in the Mirror and his
publicist and I'm gonna give you a shout out and
okay because you're ranging all this, so thanks so much.
I appreciate you. And Brandon Brandon Webb who runs the site,
and Anton who's my producer, and guy who's an editor,
Martin on the back end. Thank you so much everybody.
(52:52):
And I just want to say go check out the
merch store and thesoft rep dot com forwards. Last book,
hyphen Club, and this is rad Save peace.
Speaker 1 (53:06):
You've been listening to self red Ldia h
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