4:00

industry. So Charles McGonigal, white

4:02

male traitor, getting four years

4:05

for weakening our democracy, weakening

4:07

our national security by serving

4:09

not just the Russian

4:12

regime. He was on the payroll

4:14

of the worst of the worst

4:16

of the Russian mafia oligarch thugs,

4:18

Oleg Deripaska, the

4:21

thug that won the aluminum wars in

4:23

the Karabom 1990s in Russia. Deripaska is

4:27

extremely close to Putin. Deripaska

4:29

is extremely close to longtime

4:31

Kremlin operative in Ukraine, Paul

4:33

Manafort, whose right hand man

4:35

is a known GRU agent,

4:37

Konstantin Kalimnik. And all

4:39

of this, like all the work

4:41

of Charles McGonigal, the FBI being

4:43

compromised, the New York FBI,

4:46

I should say, the New York FBI being

4:48

compromised, we saw that out in the open

4:50

through their behavior, through all the leaking the New

4:52

York FBI was doing in the press to do

4:54

everything they could to hurt Hillary Clinton in 2016

4:56

to tip the scales in

4:59

that extremely close election for Donald Trump

5:01

in 2016. We saw that with Rudy

5:03

Giuliani on Fox News giddy, literally saying

5:06

they had something up their sleeve. They

5:08

had a big old October surprise. And

5:10

that turned out to be the infamous

5:13

James Comey letter, which analysis showed significantly

5:15

tipped the election for Trump in the

5:17

final hours of the 2016 election. That

5:21

stupid James Comey letter was a

5:23

big old fabricated manufactured October

5:25

surprise between right wing

5:28

Republicans in the house and

5:30

the New York FBI getting up in

5:32

arms because of confidential

5:34

whatever Hillary Clinton emails found on

5:37

devices owned by Anthony Weiner, Anthony

5:40

Weiner, who was married to longtime

5:42

Clinton aide, Huma Abidine. And

5:44

that just set off a firestorm in the press.

5:47

And it just made her look shady.

5:50

And in stark deliberate contrast

5:52

to that, the New York

5:54

Times publishes a front page

5:56

story saying that the FBI

5:58

saw no connection between

6:01

Trump and Russia. Never

6:03

mind. There's already reporting,

6:05

extraordinarily credible reporting, drawing

6:07

direct connection between Trump and Russia.

6:10

Just the fact that Paul Manafort was

6:12

managing his election was a

6:15

smoking gun. Like Paul Manafort was always the

6:17

smoking gun of Russiagate.

6:20

The Steele dossier, Christopher Steele being

6:22

the spy that formerly ran the

6:24

Russia desk for the UK, Christopher

6:26

Steele and his infamous Steele dossier

6:29

put Manafort's center as a central

6:31

node of connecting the Russian mafia

6:33

in the East with the Trump

6:35

campaign, with the Russian mafia in

6:38

the West. There's all this

6:40

reporting by then and yet the New York

6:42

Times, the so-called newspaper record, comes out and

6:44

just puts a lid on the thing. Really

6:47

made people like me, who was

6:49

sticking my neck out at the time, look insane by

6:51

saying no, Trump is mobbed up with the Russians. The

6:54

New York Times front page story, the

6:56

FBI sees no connection between Trump and Russia.

6:59

Well, who was their source? Was it Charles

7:01

McGonigal? We need to know that for the

7:03

public record. We need to know that. Was

7:06

it people around Charles McGonigal that are still

7:08

in the New York FBI who need to

7:10

go, who haven't been caught yet? A

7:13

lot of questions there that remain unanswered. Charles

7:16

McGonigal has those answers and he's going to

7:18

go to prison for four years, service time,

7:20

maybe get pardoned by Trump, should Trump win

7:22

again, and then cash out again in a

7:24

very big way. So that's what

7:26

we have to look forward to. I want

7:29

to point out

7:31

that Putin just

7:33

did his big end-of-the-year speech where he

7:36

just runs his mouth and went on

7:38

and on and on about how they're

7:40

going to take all of Ukraine. They're not going to

7:43

be stopped. His total invasion continues.

7:45

He has his eyes set on specific

7:47

cities. They're going to continue going

7:49

all in. As Part of

7:51

this effort of what's going to

7:53

help Putin seize all of Ukraine, you

7:55

have his close ally in the

7:58

European Union, Viktor Orban, blocking much-needed. You

8:00

Aid to Ukraine. European Union Age

8:02

Ukraine. As Ukraine heads into these

8:05

critical winter months and of course,

8:07

aids Ukraine. Has been slowed down. I

8:09

needed this eight a long time ago. Some Mike

8:11

Johnson. Who has his own? It

8:13

is dark many connections to the Russians. Did

8:15

his job for the Russians. As

8:18

it give, this is all real does all

8:20

happening? We have to stare this nightmare in

8:22

the face in order to overcome it.are. doing

8:24

last night to roll star of the Black

8:27

Diplomats podcast or who spent quite a bit

8:29

of time in Ukraine covering the war there?

8:31

He I met with a group of Americans

8:34

that have spent time volunteering and are working

8:36

in Ukraine who had plans to go back

8:38

there to continue to help and we brainstormed

8:40

ways to really dig in our heels to

8:43

overcome these fast as threats it to really

8:45

get Ukraine to support it needs and long

8:47

haul. As part of those efforts were going

8:49

to organize a fund raiser for Rossum for

8:52

Ukraine. In. New York City this

8:54

February March. If you are local, look

8:56

out for that and that's going to

8:58

be a very important community about bringing

9:00

our community listeners together and really going

9:02

to find some way to really energized

9:04

people. Still, you know we'd been here.

9:07

Before we've we've faced these home grown

9:09

i'm sauces threads united with these global

9:11

fast as threads which we we survived

9:13

the nineteen thirties and eighteen forties. The

9:15

first go around, we're all. we're going

9:17

to do it again. A democracies going

9:19

alternately prevail. And it's when the

9:22

going gets tough. It's when and everything

9:24

feels dark. That we really need

9:26

to redouble our efforts. And.

9:28

Just link arms and refuse to turn

9:30

away and his fight like hell. For.

9:33

Our shared freedom. Know what we're doing? Shared.

9:35

liberation for everyone to roll stars and

9:38

me back on the show this coming

9:40

tuesday we're going to talk about the

9:42

threats were up against both foreign and

9:44

domestic and how to overcome them and

9:47

this week for the bonus episode of

9:49

a special surprise as a treat for

9:51

our supporters at the truth teller level

9:53

a higher on patriot on it's my

9:56

conversation with media historian rate the marsh

9:58

a leading biographer of gareth Jones,

10:00

who shares timely insights into

10:02

Gareth's own reporting into Nazi Germany.

10:05

A reminder that Gareth wasn't only

10:07

battling Stalin, as you see in my film,

10:09

Mr. Jones, he was also battling Hitler. So

10:12

the world was just chaos

10:14

then, monsters, empowering monsters and

10:16

traitors here at home. And

10:19

so I brought Ray on the show

10:22

to learn those lessons specifically, you know,

10:25

to sort of get that shot of

10:27

courage, moral courage, as we head into

10:29

a critical year, 2024. To

10:32

hear this full episode, subscribe

10:34

to the show at the

10:37

truth teller level or higher

10:39

on Patreon by signing up

10:42

at patreon.com/gaslit. That's patreon.com/gaslit. Thank

10:44

you to everyone who supports the show.

10:46

We'll see you for an all new

10:49

episode this coming Tuesday featuring Tyrell and

10:51

to our supporters at the democracy defender

10:53

level and higher on Patreon. Send in

10:55

your questions for our regular Q and

10:57

A's. We always look forward to hearing

10:59

from you. Thank you to everyone who

11:01

supports the show. We could not

11:03

make gaslit nation without you. Hello,

11:13

everyone. It's Andrea of gaslit

11:15

nation. I am here with

11:18

journalism professor Ray Gamash, who

11:20

is the author of

11:22

several books, including Derek Jones on assignment in

11:25

Nazi Germany 1933 to 1934. Well, you know,

11:27

if you've seen my film, Mr. Jones, which

11:34

is a dramatic version

11:36

based on the real life

11:38

hero, the independent Welsh investigative

11:40

journalist, Gareth Jones, who at

11:43

a tender age, he

11:45

was a man for his generation being

11:47

in his late 20s. You're you're like

11:49

an old man by then in the

11:51

1930s. During his late 20s, he set out

11:53

to take on Hitler's Germany and

11:56

Stalin's Russia. And that is what he did.

11:58

And we're going to have this

12:01

wonderful conversation grounding

12:03

everyone in the life and times

12:05

of Gareth Jones because unfortunately

12:08

it's very similar to what

12:10

we're living with now. You have economic

12:13

instability arguably on a much

12:16

much more destructive

12:18

scale because this was the Great

12:20

Depression. You had in the wake

12:22

in a crash of the capitalism

12:24

caused global collapse of the Great

12:26

Depression. You had the rise of

12:28

fascism. You had the big social

12:30

upheaval of the most exciting social

12:33

experiment the world has ever seen,

12:35

communism with the Bolshevik Revolution. So

12:37

you had these warring ideologies that

12:39

were ripping apart Europe and

12:42

replacing the vacuum of power less with

12:44

the collapse of monarchies, the royal houses,

12:46

the empires that no longer existed in

12:48

the wake of the Great War that

12:51

destroyed everything. And in the wake people,

12:54

individuals caught up in the forces of history

12:56

were trying to build a new future competing

12:58

on what it would look like. You're

13:01

coming off of the Rosie 1920s,

13:03

the progressive era, where a lot

13:05

of activists, community organizers, neighborhood organizers,

13:07

activists of all kinds were taking matters

13:10

in their own hands, building all new

13:12

organizations. It was an extremely exciting time,

13:14

a progressive time, a promising time, but

13:16

it was also a time where

13:18

humanity, the civilization as we knew

13:21

it, was already entering

13:23

into a period of staggering mass

13:25

murder, unlike the world had ever

13:27

seen. So I'm going to turn

13:29

now to our guest, right? So

13:31

obviously I've covered quite a bit,

13:34

Gareth Jones reporting from Soviet Russia,

13:36

but before that he's reporting on

13:38

the Nazis in Germany, and not

13:40

only that, Germany is

13:42

a country that he has a lot

13:44

of affection for. German is one of

13:47

the languages, he speaks fluently, he's got

13:49

old friends across Germany, he's taking lots

13:51

of summer trips and so on there.

13:53

So walk us through Gareth Jones in

13:55

Germany and how he winds up in

13:57

Nazi Germany or Germany on the cusp

13:59

of... of Hitler's rise to power and

14:01

what that adventure, what that

14:03

reporting looks like. Sure.

14:06

Here, a study in

14:09

Germany over the

14:11

course of his academic career. And,

14:14

you know, he makes a point of saying

14:17

in 19, first in 1932, then in

14:19

1933 and 1934, he

14:23

desired to make sure he visits Germany

14:25

at least once a year, usually

14:28

during the summer. And so he's

14:30

able to do that. And

14:32

obviously he was fluent in

14:35

German. It

14:38

was one of the languages he worked at,

14:40

you know, while he

14:42

was at Cambridge, as well as

14:44

Russian. And

14:47

his employment with David Lloyd

14:50

George, gave

14:52

him the kind of access

14:55

that the leaders on

14:59

both Nazi Germany and the Soviet

15:01

Union wanted him to

15:03

visit. Just to clarify, David Lloyd

15:06

George was the former World

15:09

War I Prime Minister of Great Britain

15:11

and a fellow Welshman. So there was

15:13

this very close Welsh connection

15:16

and the great David Lloyd George, great statesman,

15:18

saw Gareth as my boy. He

15:21

was a mentor, like a father figure to Gareth.

15:23

That opened up a lot of halls of power

15:25

for Gareth. Absolutely. And

15:28

I think the confusing part

15:30

for people, it

15:33

stems from this kind of duality

15:35

that Jones had. On the one

15:38

hand, being an aid, a

15:41

foreign policy expert for David

15:43

Lloyd George, as well

15:45

as trying to establish

15:48

himself as a journalist. Journalism

15:50

is a very tough industry to break into

15:52

even back then, because when you're a stringer,

15:54

you're a freelancer who's going to pay your

15:56

bills. So Gareth worked a day job being

15:58

this foreign as far as the bike. there for

16:00

a powerful statement in London. Right.

16:02

He had spent part

16:05

of the summer of 1929 after he had

16:08

completed his degree at

16:10

Cambridge working for the

16:13

London Times. And

16:15

it was there that, you know, they

16:17

put him on the Russian desk. And

16:21

so he was rewriting coffee

16:23

from their correspondent. And

16:25

that lasted for, I think, six

16:28

to eight weeks. At the

16:30

end of that, they recommended that

16:32

he work for a regional newspaper

16:34

before, you know, China joined an

16:37

established paper like the Times. And so

16:40

they kind of shunted him off. And

16:44

that's when the offer from Lloyd

16:46

Georgetown. And so he starts working

16:49

for him early

16:51

in 1930. That really

16:53

was a major break for

16:55

him because Lloyd

16:58

George, you know, happily sends him off

17:01

first to the Soviet

17:03

Union in 1930. He

17:06

ends up going,

17:08

you know, going

17:10

again in August

17:12

of 1931, this

17:14

time with the

17:16

American businessman, Jack

17:18

Hines II, who had

17:20

just graduated from Cambridge.

17:22

And he takes Hines

17:25

into the Soviet Union unaccompanied,

17:28

for the most part, and they

17:30

travel by themselves. And there are

17:32

some really interesting photographs from that

17:34

trip that I had seen at

17:37

the archives in Pittsburgh.

17:40

And then Jones goes

17:42

back in 1932 to Great

17:45

Britain. He starts working for

17:47

Lloyd George again. And by

17:50

the end of the year, he's

17:52

made the determination that that he

17:55

will travel to Nazi

17:58

Germany and

18:00

then the Soviet Union, a

18:03

two-part series of newspapers

18:05

of articles for the

18:07

western mail that he calls the Welshman

18:09

looks at Europe. And

18:11

the western mail is the newspaper of Wales. Correct.

18:15

And as you mentioned in your

18:17

introduction, you know, this

18:20

fact-finding mission to both of

18:23

those competing ideologies was, you

18:25

know, his number one goal

18:27

at the beginning of 1933.

18:32

There's no question about that. It

18:34

was the story. So Berlin

18:36

and Moscow were exotic,

18:39

exciting international hotspots. People

18:41

flock to these cities

18:43

because of how avant-garde

18:46

and innovative they were. And

18:49

the fact that Joan spent time, as

18:51

he did in Germany, a lot of

18:53

people of his generation spent a lot

18:55

of time in Germany. And

18:57

one of the reasons why Ray and

19:00

I are having this conversation is because

19:02

it's the 90th anniversary of the

19:04

Voldemort, Stalin's genocide family in Ukraine.

19:06

And I wanted to also highlight

19:08

his work also, unfortunately,

19:10

with the ongoing

19:13

genocide, Russia's genocide in Ukraine,

19:15

which Russia is refusing to

19:17

give up. That's Russian

19:20

imperialism. That's what

19:22

happens in your dictatorship. You have to create a

19:24

forever war to distract the home front and

19:27

create all sorts of enemies internal and external

19:29

and so on to have that totalitarian control.

19:31

And that's what Putin stuck in until he

19:33

dies. He's trying to be like any dictator

19:35

and die in power. And as

19:37

the war continues, as it unfortunately drags on,

19:39

you're going to have useful

19:41

idiots in the West, whether they realize

19:43

they're a useful idea or not, but

19:46

these cynical disinformation attention grabs

19:48

where they cynically try to

19:50

get attention for themselves. They

19:52

try to get their name

19:54

in print by taking some

19:56

very disturbing, unethical contrarian positions.

19:59

And unfortunately, because Gareth

20:01

Jones happened to be a

20:03

journalist, you know, bouncing around Nazi

20:05

Germany, reporting on the Nazis, charming

20:08

his way to the front door of Nazi Germany

20:10

as he did in the Soviet Union. As you

20:12

see in my film, Mr. Jones, he charms his

20:15

way in with the Soviets. He like leads them

20:17

by the nose to get the access he needs

20:19

to report the story. He was a hustler through

20:21

and through. He was, he had swagger. He knew

20:23

how to put on a good game. A lot

20:26

of journalists are like that. And I can assure

20:28

you the number one rule of

20:30

media training and Ray may agree with me

20:32

as a professor of journalism, never trust a

20:35

journalist, always be careful what you

20:37

say in front of them, even if it's

20:39

a throwaway comment, if it's a good story,

20:41

they will use it. I was at a

20:43

brunch with a bunch of journalists, editors

20:45

at the major, major mainstream

20:48

power outlets. And the question

20:50

came up, would you ever let yourself

20:52

be interviewed by another journalist? The

20:54

entire table said no. Why

20:56

would all these journalists refuse to? Because

20:59

they don't, they know that the journalist is

21:02

a shark, they're after a good story. They're after

21:04

something that is going to get attention for themselves,

21:06

make a name for themselves and build

21:08

their name, build their power. Gareth is

21:10

a different kind of journalist because he

21:13

saw something he could not unsee. And that

21:15

was his Trek in Ukraine, which Ray covers

21:17

in another book, all about Gareth's time in

21:19

the Soviet Union, which is a must read

21:21

book, which I've read. And Gareth

21:23

sees the famine, the station of the manmade

21:25

famine. He's the first to call it a

21:28

manmade famine. And that's when he's like, enough.

21:31

And he risks his life and career

21:33

to report article after

21:35

article gets blacklisted by Dave Lloyd George,

21:37

has to move back to

21:39

a small town in Wales. He's

21:41

gets stuck in this, writing cultural

21:43

stories and all of that. Those beats are

21:46

historically accurate. You see them in my film.

21:48

I know I'm jumping the gun here and

21:50

I'm interviewing myself at this point, right? But

21:53

I think all of this framing is really

21:55

important to understand also why we're having this

21:57

conversation. Because unfortunately, Gareth Jones is being

21:59

victimized. And we're here also

22:01

to back check the truth to basically make

22:04

a stake of what's real, what's not. And

22:06

Ray, I will now let you continue. Why

22:08

journalists don't want to be interviewed by

22:11

other journalists perhaps is you lose control

22:13

of the narrative, right? I

22:15

mean, whatever information you

22:17

provide as a source,

22:20

how that is then going to be

22:22

represented, it's out of your hands, right?

22:25

And so the idea of controlling

22:28

the narrative, it becomes really important.

22:30

We see it today in terms

22:32

of support for Ukraine, or,

22:36

you know, you're talking about war

22:38

against Russia, Russia can't move. These

22:42

competing narratives, we

22:44

see the parallel certainly in the

22:47

1930s, where again, especially

22:49

in regards to what happens in Ukraine in

22:52

1932 and 33, as reported by Jones, but

22:54

also by

22:59

a number of other journalists,

23:03

Ria Klimmer, for example, is thrown out

23:05

of the Soviet Union in September of

23:07

1932, because

23:10

she has reported on mass

23:12

conservation conditions, others

23:15

as well before

23:17

Jones comes back from his

23:19

trek through Ukraine through some

23:22

of the whole cones, the state

23:25

farm, as well as the collective

23:27

farm. And he reports

23:29

what he has seen, the devastation. Jones

23:32

acting as a source does

23:36

wonders because he speaks to

23:38

reporters stationed in Germany, right?

23:41

In Berlin, there are far more

23:44

foreign correspondents stationed in

23:46

Berlin than there are in Moscow.

23:50

And many people fail to

23:52

understand that, that that's where

23:54

the center was. London,

23:56

Berlin, Moscow, there were no foreign correspondents

23:58

stationed in Berlin. and correspondence until

24:01

1921. And only as a result of

24:03

the relief agency, right,

24:05

that Hoover

24:11

started to help mollify

24:13

the famine that had occurred in 1921-22,

24:15

it's only because of

24:18

the ARA, the American

24:21

Relief Administration, the condition

24:23

of which you're going to,

24:25

right, our Western journalists into

24:27

the Soviet Union, and

24:30

the Soviets have to

24:32

relent, and

24:34

that's how we have our

24:36

first Western correspondence in

24:39

Moscow. And, you

24:41

know, they have to renew every

24:43

six months. Well, the Soviets

24:46

use that, right, reapplication process

24:48

to weed out anyone like

24:51

Rea Clymer, like, um...

24:54

Paul Sheffer. Paul Sheffer, thank

24:56

you. He's denied

24:58

reentry, and even Durante

25:01

is threatened after he reports

25:03

as early as November 1932 that this harvest

25:08

is in patterns. That's

25:10

the censorship that they

25:12

face in

25:14

Moscow, whereas in Berlin, all

25:17

the Western correspondents gathered at

25:19

this one restaurant called La

25:21

Taverna. Jones goes there

25:23

with a list of the journalists he

25:26

wants to speak to, and

25:28

he interviews several of them

25:30

while he's there, and

25:32

they're all doing the same thing

25:35

that he is, courting the

25:37

Nazis to get access

25:39

to information and stories

25:41

in terms of what their

25:44

agenda is going to become, which

25:46

we've discovered quite quickly

25:48

in early 1933, as

25:52

soon as they call from the

25:54

boycott of Jewish businesses, which

25:56

Jones reports on. you