[00:03] [music] >> Something beside me. A light to the kerosene. [music] And the places aren't real anymore. And the faces don't say anything. In [music] the silent light of the mind control sphere. It's a game
[00:36] >> [music] >> of devil's chess club. Devil's chess club. >> [music] >> Welcome to American Exception. I'm Aaron Good. This is the excerpted first portion of a full episode of the American Exception podcast. If you would like to view or listen to the rest of the episode, subscribe to the American Exception podcast on Patreon. We have
[01:06] hundreds of episodes available for subscribers. If you want to better understand the deep politics and history of the US Empire, American Exception is the best place to go. The URL is patreon.com/americanexception. Subscribe if you can and either way, please kindly like this video and subscribe to this American Exception channel. Happy today to have Tanrıverdi here co-hosting with me and we are joined by John Kiriakou. John, how are you doing? >> Doing well, thanks. How are you? Good to see you. >> It's great to see you again. We were The
[01:37] three of us were together in Washington D.C. last September and uh it was weird because bro when Tucker Carlson was going to speak well it got that that didn't happen. I'm not a huge Tucker fan, but it was interesting he was doing that 9/11 documentary, so I was interested to see what kind of attention he he bring to the to the subject, but then Charlie Kirk gets killed in Utah and that's the end of that, but everything else went on. But you and Dennis Kucinich both were there and instead of really getting into
[02:08] the minutia of 9/11, you both spoke about Israel a lot. >> Yes. >> And it was on everybody's mind with the Kirk assassination and the and these these this conflict in West Asia, the Gaza genocide, it all turned to Israel because 9/11 and the Neocon 21st century that we lived in it's it's as though those issues were suddenly so salient that you couldn't talk about one without the other and that wasn't always the case with 9/11. It was sort of taboo to mention the Neocon to to to associate the Neocons with Israel, 9/11 with the Neocons and
[02:40] thus 9/11 with Israel and yet it was this sort of subtext to everything. So, uh you know, do you what do you how do you feel about this in the 21st as we're approaching in another anniversary, the 25th anniversary of 9/11? Maybe this is before we get into some of this other historical stuff. What do you what would you say about that conference in the way that are we are starting to approach this history differently of of the Neocon nightmares culminating in the Gaza genocide and Iran war? >> This is actually very complicated for me.
[03:10] Uh for a couple of reasons. First, I have never ever been what I would describe as a 9/11 truther. I don't believe that it was an inside job. I don't believe it was the Saudi royal family. I don't believe it was the Bushes. I don't believe it was the space aliens or the Jews or I mean, having been not just inside the CIA at the time, but in the CIA's Counterterrorism Center working actively
[03:41] against Al-Qaeda, I can tell you with 100% certainty it was Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda did it. And not just they did it, they took credit for it and they threatened a second attack, to use a some of Bin Laden's words that would dwarf 9/11. So, no. I I I've never described myself as a truther. However, one of the aspects of the 9/11 truth movement has been
[04:11] to look at all possibilities. For example, building seven. I don't have any idea why building seven fell down. I've heard lots of speculation with 25 different, you know, reasons. I don't know. I'm not an engineer. I'm not an architect. I have no idea. Um but one of the things that's always been important to me is something that uh was discussed at this uh conference. And
[04:42] I just felt that it needed to to be out there. It needs to be in the mainstream. And that is my belief, and it's an educated belief, that the Israelis knew that a major attack was coming against the United States, as we did. We knew that there was going to be a major attack, but we didn't know when, and we didn't know where. And so, we were desperate to find sources to help us disrupt this attack. I believe the Israelis had the sources.
[05:14] I believe the Israelis had that specific information, those specific details that would have allowed us to conclude that the attack was going to be inside the United States, which we didn't think. We knew that Bin Laden wanted to attack inside the United States. We didn't think they had the wherewithal. We thought that they were going to blow up another embassy. Um and the Israelis decided to keep it from us. Now, why would they keep it from us? Obviously, because chaos in the Middle
[05:44] East is to Israel's benefit. Right? If there's war in Iraq and Saddam Hussein is overthrown and the the Iraqis are busy fighting each other and killing each other, that is to Israel's benefit. If there's chaos in Libya, that is to Israel's benefit. If the US is attacking Iran, that is to Israel's benefit. And the Israelis knew that if we were to be attacked inside the United States, if thousands of Americans were killed in such an attack,
[06:15] that we would kill 2 million Muslims over the next 20 years and that's exactly what happened. And so I think the American people have a right to know what the intelligence says about those uh accusations and uh it should be something that we're all talking about because I think that we we really need this kind of information to be out there publicly available so that as Americans, we can assess the kind of relationship that we want to have with
[06:47] Israel. A relationship that's built on fact. >> Right, which is uh kind of the defining condition of the 21st century political uh reality in the US that we that there are things that cannot have happened the way that they we are told and yet there's nothing we can do about it, whether it's the Skripals or you know, the Skripal poisonings or other ridiculous things. Even October 7 and those those rows and rows of incinerated cars. I mean, it's it's all it's just one one more of these things that we are not we
[07:19] know that we don't know. >> Right. Right. I have a I have a friend who is um he's a Greek journalist at one of the the big investigative um newspapers in Athens and he told me that he got to Gaza on October 8 and um of course, you know, you have to go in with an IDF handler, but he said going into Gaza that day, there was a line of cars still with dead Israelis inside them.
[07:51] But with giant rocket holes in the roofs of the cars. And he said he asked his handler, "What what the heck happened here?" And he said the IDF handler said, "Don't worry about that. Ask questions when we get to Gaza." They wouldn't even answer the questions. So yeah, there's a lot that uh that just doesn't stand up to scrutiny. >> I think there was a number of people who compared those cars to sort of the
[08:22] highway of hell. >> Yeah. >> Highway of death. >> Yes. >> The highway of death, yeah, of um in the first Gulf War. >> Yes. >> Yeah. I went to the highway of death in in the the days after it took place. And you know, at the time, we thought this was an act of genius. It was a traditional flanking maneuver ordered by General Schwarzkopf, and we took the Iraqis by surprise, and blah blah blah. That wasn't it at all. It was It was a
[08:54] It was a crime against humanity. >> a massacre, right? I mean, it was actually >> Yeah. >> Reading Robert Fisk's account of the the highway of death is very harrowing. It's It's very just Yeah. >> Yeah, terrible. >> Well, I think uh this might be a good time to get into some of this history and I I can't go I'm not going to planning to go over these all these slides in detail cuz it would take forever, but and then they're all they're part of a bigger series that I'm doing on the neoconservative takeover of US foreign policy and how we how the US
[09:26] grand strategy for empire became intertwined with the greater Israel project in such a way on purpose, I think, sort of designing it so the US if the US wants to remain the hegemon, it has to support the greater Israel project. And I think that's what we're seeing now is like, "Oh my god, we're pursuing it, and in so doing, we're destroying US hegemony because it depends on this dollar system. And I want to go back a little bit because my colleague, uh, Max Arvo has written about the CIA and, uh,
[09:59] and Israel, its relationship to Israel. And and how, you know, one of the things that Max Blumenthal and I have researched in different ways are the power struggles between more realist imperialist actors of the US, because the US has been interested in, you know, hegemony over the capitalist system since the end of World War II. But the the So, the realists versus the, uh, the the neocons and the super Zionists. And one aspect of this, which I'm not sure how familiar you are with it, is KK Mountain. Have you looked Have you ever heard of this program of
[10:30] >> I've never heard I've never even heard of the KK digraph. >> That's that's also very important because it Since this article was written by Max Arvo over at Secret Power the on a on Substack, he told me additional things. But what he wrote here in this article is that the CIA had a uh, in cooperation with the Mossad, etc., since 1951. But there are other programs in particular that people don't know about. KK Mountain was a crypt was a the code name cryptonym
[11:00] for a conduit for CIA funding of millions of dollars to the Mossad in order for Mossad to carry out whatever operations were so secret that you would farm them out to Mossad with no record. And the KK, uh, prefix at the beginning, Max found, was all of them essentially got to went to Angleton's office. So, it's part of Angleton's Israel account. And that this was maintained throughout the '60s especially. He He was saying he
[11:30] thinks it got created around 1960 or 61. Maybe it got created after the defeat of Eisenhower and the election of Kennedy. I don't really know, but it he speculates that it's the early 60s somehow. So, this is another example of Angleton at running a CIA within the CIA and the it it being something that intertwined the deep state of you know, Israel as it were and and the US in a really sinister way because these are operations with very little accountability or oversight
[12:01] if Angleton's got you know, controlling access to them. And they would also give the Israelis some potential blackmail power over the US if the US is tasking them with the most sensitive things with no paper trail essentially. So, are you familiar with arrangements like this or how much is is this stuff discussed in terms of CIA people trying to understand what happened with the agency and what happened with the US the US foreign policy? >> Yeah, it's it's not unusual to have
[12:34] secret relationship within a secret relationship. I see here on the slide that the Mossad would conduct ultra-sensitive operations around the world from which the CIA wanted to keep as much official distance as possible. That's not at all unusual. What is unusual and frightening is that rather than to go back to the office of Near Eastern Operations, this would go back to James Angleton personally. That sends chills up my spine.
[13:06] >> [clears throat] >> Do you think John that this would have anything, and I haven't looked into this operation too deeply, but do you think this would have anything to do with um Dimona? >> Oh, it absolutely could. Sure. Sure, it could. >> Because there was such a struggle between Kennedy and Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir. >> That was the big fight. It was all about Dimona. >> It was all about Dimona. >> Right? >> And if you are an intelligence agency and you do have to arrange liaison
[13:37] relationships, perhaps using other intelligence agencies as a proxy, which is which is pretty common, >> Yep. >> you would need to evaluate how suitable the different countries were in that regard. And it seems like an objective assessment of Israel would caution against entrusting them with them with this kind of power because they have foreign policy objectives that are potentially so disruptive to US standing in in a very important region
[14:07] that you wouldn't want them to have all access to all of this sensitive information because not only because are there object do they have a different set of strategic objectives in their near abroad, but also they have a power they are they are they represent they have a powerful section of the US oligarchy that has a lot of money and power that's very much a partisan of this of this as well. So it like the potential for political problems caused by this would seem enough that you shouldn't even know that it never should
[14:38] have been allowed to develop. >> No, should have never been allowed to develop. And you know, just the reason why this in my mind is clearly true is because efforts like this have never ended. You know, at first it was us doing for Mossad. We we need to have a strong partner in the Middle East. We need to help create and then build and then fund this this well-trained
[15:10] intelligence organization. And now it's flipped where the Mossad wants to Well, section 219 of the National Defense Authorization Act actually embeds Mossad in in the Pentagon. And this is happening at the same time that the Defense Intelligence Agency, just 2 weeks ago, sent out an all hands email warning that Israeli espionage against the United States is at an all-time high right now. And this email warned DIA employees to
[15:41] beware of Israeli intelligence operations against them. Uh just today there was a report that was released, well, it was leaked saying that a that a top secret CIA assessment says that the Israelis right now are racing to make the US-Israel political-military-intelligence alliance irreversible. So that as public opinion changes and becomes more anti-Israel that the United States can't do anything
[16:12] to back out of the relationship. So this makes perfect sense to me. >> Yeah, it's this it is a strange history of I think essentially blackmail that we have seen over time in different episodes. And I'll move on a little bit past this. And I say about the Zionist role in JFK that Israel used its role in the clandestine state of the US including, you know, killing JFK. And that that's been a part of blackmailing the US because I don't
[16:43] think in 1963 Israel could have just decided, "We're going to kick out the president. Let's do it. No problem. We'll cover it up. It's fine." They would have had to have some authorization from something in the US. I suspect the Joint Chiefs and the Continuity of Government Doomsday Emergency Network. Somehow you just declare that Kennedy is a security risk for his secret talks with Castro or something. Whatever decision you make and that it's so sensitive it would kill the US in the Cold War. So you got to cover it up. Something like that. And Israel was a part of it. But in this you
[17:17] had mentioned in an interview recently with The Young Turks that since 1967 and the war there is the US has tilted towards Israel and that's never been reversed essentially. >> And I want to point out some a few things that happened right before 1967 that are so spooky to me that I think they're really relevant and the the it's all around February and March and in it they involve Zionist actors like the Ramparts expose of the CIA support for the student National
[17:48] Student Association, right? Big scandal appears in Ramparts magazine. I had suspicions about this because it happened on the eve of the Six-Day War, so I looked into who wrote it and the guy was born in mandatory Palestine. It was his first article ever and he quickly switched from being radical leftist guy to a lifelong neo-conservative who has written books on how the Palestinians have, you know, tried to stop every effort for peace and uh etc. etc. So, very like that I was like, well, that's
[18:19] that can't be a coincidence cuz I I only looked into it because I had a suspicion he might be some sort of a guy connected to Zionism and it wasn't even a suspicion. He was born in mandatory Palestine to Zionist fanatics. So, also in the spring of '67, that's when Clay Shaw gets indicted by Jim Garrison and that did wrong-foot the CIA in a particular way and Garrison is in New Orleans district attorney, very corrupt city tied to the Teamsters. The guy who told him to investigate the Teamsters was the most corrupted guy in the or I'm
[18:51] sorry, the guy that told him to investigate the JFK assassination told Jim Garrison to do this was Russell Long. Who's who is one of the most Teamster corrupted senators whose father was tied to Meyer Lansky etc. etc. So, it's this happens also around the same time. You also have this article that appears from Jack Anderson, who's a Mormon guy with a lot of reasons I believe to think he's an Israeli asset. He's huge journalist in the US. >> Yep. >> And he leaked this story from his
[19:23] mobster friend uh or associate, I guess, um Johnny Roselli through his lawyer Arthur Morgan. And the story is that like it tells for the first time the story of the CIA mob Castro plots. And uh this leads to LBJ telling Richard Helms, "Hey, I want an Inspector General report on this. I need to know to get to the bottom of this." And it it really allowed the president and presumably his Zionist benefactors to have the CIA by the balls. All of these things on the eve of the Six-Day War. And they also in the early '67
[19:56] Howard Hughes took over all those syndicate Lansky casinos in Las Vegas. He took ownership of them. And he was a huge recipient of CIA contracts. To me, it cemented the sort of mob Hughes relationship with the CIA, and it made it even more sensitive. And it sort of limited the CIA's ability to like confront any of these actors because they're all connected to like Lansky, the syndicate, etc. So, all of these things happened. Now, I read, you know David Robarge, right?
[20:27] >> well. In fact, David replaced me in the Office of Leadership Analysis, and we were friends for years after that. >> Okay, so I was doing I was just putting things in the web search to try to like think of like Six-Day War, CIA, student association story, etc. And I found this article from 2005 in the Getting It Right >> say David David is Dr. David Robarge. He became the CIA historian. >> Yes. So, he's he is presenting what is the sort of
[20:58] acceptable CIA history >> Right. >> as of the early 2000s about this. But And the the article is long, but But this these parts are worth are worth looking at. He says the key intelligence achievement that carried the day for Helms and the CIA under LBJ was the agency's accurate analysis about the '67 war, one of those rare instances when unpoliticized intelligence had a specific clear-cut and immediate impact on US foreign policy. Um and he goes on, "February '67, the radical publication Ramparts exposed the CIA's long-standing
[21:28] secret relationship with the National Student Association. Mainstream press covered it. Ramparts' affair seriously disrupted the agency's covert political operations and damaged its reputation at home and abroad." Now, I think that these things were happening in the spring of '67 to essentially kneecap the realists at the CIA, which were Angleton's faction was a minority. >> Yeah. >> But he was he was intertwined with Helms, who had authorized a lot of these things, so Helms had to cover these things up. And when they say that this was a unpoliticized, specific,
[22:00] clear-cut, whatever, whatever intelligence, there's we also know now that Angleton had dispatched William Harvey to work with the Israelis and the Brits on the eve of the Six-Day War. So, they were actually coordinating, planning, and so on with them in ways that we never have known about, but >> You know, and then it makes you wonder, all of this is documented, we know it's happening, the CIA and Mossad and MI6 are all joined at the hip. And then the USS Liberty is attacked.
[22:33] Why? Why would they risk all of this to attack the Liberty? It doesn't make any sense. >> What do you think the motive was there? There's different theories about it, but it was intentional, and it was Was it to be a false flag, or was it to blind the US in the about what they were doing? >> You know, I I think it was probably a combination of the two. I would lean false flag. I think that the Israelis, at least when the attack started, thought they could get away with blaming the Egyptians.
[23:05] Um maybe not realizing how many people had already heard the communications. And um and then they figured, well, in for a penny, in for a pound. And they just attacked it with wave after wave. >> And they got away with it. So, apparently, they >> Yeah, they did. >> miscalculate. >> Yeah. Yes, that's exactly right. >> Yeah. I mean, LBJ was just in the pocket of the of the Zionists. Like, if you look at his he was actually raised in a
[23:35] weird Zionist cult. It was like a not even a normal church. It was like a kind of quasi-Christian, but really worshipping Zionism in in a way. So, it's like he was their their dude. I mean, he was a He didn't grow up rich at all, and he became the richest man in the Senate. >> Yeah, he became the richest man in the Senate, owning one of the largest privately held radio and television networks in America. >> He was sort of the He was an original He's kind of the original Trump in in some ways with Although, it was was a
[24:05] different system, so he's not as crass, but essentially all those ties to the same kind of of actors. >> You're absolutely right. >> Um And and Nixon, so I I won't go into detail about all this, but the Watergate struggle was What I am arguing is What I What I think has happened was after '67, there was a realization from people that this war in in Israel was a a change to US policy that a lot that especially the CFR crowd, which is more
[24:36] Rockefeller-friendly, more oil, more of the Arabist kind of realist sympathizers, they uh there's a there's a group in '68, a discussion group, and they're talking about the need to alter the CIA's covert operations, I think in response to the exposure of the student association, and so on. Um and they're saying that they need to just restructure all of these these matters, which I think is relevant because part of the relationship with the CIA and Israel that makes it so explosive is that it is tied to organized crime. And
[25:08] that since Lansky handles all the money laundering operations, he's involved with he has an intimate knowledge, the Israelis do via him and other you know, people like Angleton, etc. They just know how the American clandestine financing system works and how it's intertwined with the drug traffic. And so it's a problem and the US eventually goes after Lansky. I think in a part in part because of the '67 War because they realize that this is a real problem. And I think I think this is a major cause of Watergate.
[25:39] >> Oh, I always believed that it was Nixon who went after Lansky for exactly that reason and that it was Nixon who called Golda Meir to say, "We want him out. Throw him out." Because Lansky when Lansky went to Israel, he thought he was going to live happily ever after. And that wasn't it at all. The official story is interesting in that we're supposed to believe that Golda Meir was shocked, shocked I tell you, that Meyer
[26:10] Lansky was living in Israel and she had no idea whatsoever. I mean, it's a laughable account. Um, I have to say I had no idea Santo Trafficante ever went to Saigon. That's fascinating to me. And and that just goes to show you that organized crime, the Mafia, the Trafficante family controlled well, they were based in Tampa, but they controlled mob operations in Florida. Um, and may have been involved in the Kennedy assassination.
[26:42] Uh, Trafficante was close to the CIA, had been close to the CIA for at least a decade at that point. And uh, it would account for the fact that he was never prosecuted on any charges having to do with drugs or specifically heroin importation coming from Southeast Asia. There it is right there. There it is. >> Yeah, and you know when he did he did well this look at here's something else that you will find very eerie.
[27:14] In 1970 Lansky goes to Israel and he he he hands over control of his former you know management of these operations to Trafficante which I think was part of this the CIA you know US establishment plan was that if it's Trafficante it's we're going to change the structure of organized crime. Of course we're going to still work with them because we're the CIA but we're going to change the structure and it's not going to be directly tied to Israel but so Lan so this this changeover happens and you get Watergate around the same time. Lansky doesn't actually come back until the
[27:44] Watergate burglars are in jail. It's late 1972. So I would I there are other things going on there that I do not know that I cannot quite explain about why it happened but notice remember Lansky comes back and he does not get convicted or anything. There's a Nixon gets embroiled in Watergate and the neocons kind of emerge from Watergate more powerful with team B and everything else. So I think that gives you a clue right there. Not to mention Woodward and Bernstein the two components of the neocon coalition cuz Woodward was a military intelligence guy
[28:15] connected to all these right-wing generals that hated detente and Bernstein was Ben Breath >> Yes. >> Zionist visits Israel all the time. So it's like that's it right there. >> Red diaper baby from Bethesda Maryland. His parents were active communist Zionists. >> Right and with an emphasis on the latter I think as time has gone on cuz he's definitely anti-communist. >> Oh yeah. >> The other part of it about Trafficante is he stays in that position until 1986 and >> and it's he dies he gets finally gets
[28:47] indicted and then he dies shortly thereafter, but it happens to be around the same it's around that general time that Iran-Contra scandal comes out, which is another drugs and and and it issue there. Also in 1970, you have Hughes and the whole saga of what is going on with Hughes. He's taken to the Bahamas via Khashoggi's plane. Khashoggi close to the Israelis and Intertel Resorts, which is like kind of a Lansky mob type thing and they don't really know what happens to Khashoggi there. It's almost like a counter move to like, "Okay, you're
[29:18] going to go after Lansky, but we've got Hughes somewhere and and and it it freaked out the American I mean, it's a very strange saga over Hughes and it seems related to all these things. So, additionally, so you were touch we're talking about things that happened with foreign policy and the syndicate and the the these are relationships, but it was written about at the time a power struggle and Andrew St. George is a guy I think was a CIA asset and he's writing about the mafia versus the CIA and how there's these struggles there in Haiti in particular
[29:50] and that is a place where like Irving Davidson was able to send one of the main guys, the accomplices in the JFK assassination, George de Mohrenschildt. He basically gets him to leave the country with a $200,000 grant to go do like oil geology in Haiti, right? But that's Irving Davidson, this lobbyist who was also the office mate of Jack Anderson, if you can believe this. So, it's all these guys are it seems like this is what's going on in the early 70s, this fight over the national crime syndicate
[30:20] and Lansky and then a fight over the clandestine control of like places like Haiti. >> You know, thank God that we have we have academics like you who are able to put these very complicated puzzles together. The information's out there. It's just a question of of piecing it into a bigger picture. I didn't know that. I didn't know he went to Haiti. But it makes perfect sense, doesn't it? >> I mean the the the mob control there,
[30:52] the way that the system operates, the or do you think about Somoza in Nicaragua, how close he was to Irving Davidson even, who also was a representative of uh Jimmy Hoffa. He represented Hoffa, and it came out in an FBI report, he only approached Hoffa at the suggestion of the Israelis. So. >> The Israelis? >> The Israelis were the ones because they're because Hoffa this Hoffa was one of the main people along with Lansky who got the weapons in 1948 to the place. >> Right. >> And so the Teamsters would loan take
[31:22] they would take Teamster loans for example in the 50s and so on, build up the Las Vegas casinos, and the Las Vegas casinos would launder all the drug money. And it's all managed by Lansky working hand in glove with Mossad in other circumstances. It's just wild. Um And so this is where this is from All the President's Men, but it's a key scene that's never really explained. It doesn't make sense with the rest of the movie because it it's just out there, but this scene with Deep Throat. Everyone's life is in
[31:52] danger, and then Woodward that's what Deep Throat said. And he says, "The covert activities involve the whole US intelligence community and are incredible." Deep Throat refused to give specifics because it is against the law. The cover-up had little to do with Watergate, but was mainly to protect the covert operations. So what I'm saying is these people who didn't like Nixon's didn't like détente, didn't like him going after Lansky's syndicate, they put these guys in jail who were linked to so many explosive crimes that if you investigated it, you would expose
[32:23] am amazing criminality and and connections with the mob and drug traffickers. And that seems to be what Watergate was. It was a game of chicken. Like, we don't like your policies, we're going to expose these things that'll devastate you unless Nixon's gone. >> Right. And then he was gone. >> And then he was gone. >> Yeah. >> Uh John, do you Where can people follow your work and what what have you been up to lately that you'd like to to talk about or promote? And we'll put links in the show notes cuz you're you've got new adventures going on all the time, so I'm >> Thank you, I sure do. I've got a
[32:53] website, johnkiriakou.com. It's still partly under construction, but I'm on um I'm on X and Facebook and LinkedIn and Instagram and TikTok and Cameo. My 10th book is coming out next uh in two the next two weeks. Um I I decided to do one, Aaron, that was that had nothing whatsoever to do with uh the CIA or intelligence. Um I I wrote a book called um Remains of the Day, a definitive guide to the historic
[33:24] cemeteries of Washington, D.C. >> Oh. >> [clears throat] >> So, coming to the Smithsonian bookstore near you. >> So, is that Did you get a chance to tour these uh different cemeteries and >> was during COVID. It was during COVID. I love cemeteries. >> thing you could do. >> Yeah. I I love cemeteries. I have since I was a little kid, and during COVID, you know, I I I had to get outside or go crazy. So, I I thought, "Oh, maybe I'll write about um Washington, D.C., cemeteries. Let me see what other people have said about them."
[33:54] And I realized very quickly nobody had ever written a book, ever, about Washington, D.C., cemeteries. Two dozen books have been written about Arlington National Cemetery, but why beat a dead horse? And so, you know, I've always been of the belief that everybody has a story to tell. You don't have to be famous, you don't have to be rich, but everybody's got a story. And so, I set out to explore every one of the cemeteries in Washington, D.C., and tell 220 stories
[34:25] uh not about the lives of the famous, but about the lives of the interesting. And so, it's being published by Simon & Schuster uh at the end of August. >> Well, that's cool. If there's a if I can find a pre-order link for it, I'll include that in the show notes. >> Thank you. I appreciate that. >> And I want to thank you. >> right now for pre-order. >> Great. Great. Well, I'll put that link there and thank you so much for being so generous with your time. It's always great. And thank you, too, Zachary. >> It's a pleasure. >> Thanks, John. >> Pleasure. Good to see you both.
[34:58] >> For access to the rest of this episode and the rest of our vast and growing library, subscribe to the American Exception podcast on Patreon. The URL is patreon.com/americanexception. Thanks to Dana Chavarria for producing this episode and thank you for tuning in. I also want to express my deep appreciation to all of our American Exception subscribers on Patreon. Please do consider subscribing to the American Exception podcast on Patreon. The URL is patreon.com/americanexception.
[35:28] American Exception exists thanks to our Patreon subscribers. On YouTube, we will never be viable. You may notice that we have dropped the Devil's Chess Club title from these episodes. After David Talbot had to leave our team due to his second, more debilitating stroke, I kept the Devil's Chess Club name and theme song and intro. I didn't want to close the book on David's partnership with Bryce and me. I had hopes that he would return. David and I planned to write two books together after 2024, one on the
[35:59] ultra-Zionist, neocon takeover of US foreign policy, and another on the RFK assassination. It now seems very unlikely that David will return to podcasting or to writing. As such, it didn't make sense to keep using the Devil's Chess Club brand. Still, to pay homage to David and the outstanding books that David wrote with his wonderful research assistant, Karen Croft, we're going to keep using the Devil's Chess Club theme song intro for our video episodes. David, if you're
[36:30] listening, know that we miss you very much. Finally, and again, please do consider subscribing to the American Exception podcast on Patreon. The URL is patreon.com/americanexception. Subscribe so that American Exception can continue to mind the darkness.