The Journey 44. Roger Phelps: “These Guys are Ruthless”

Kris Millegan and Roger Phelps discuss “Not Exactly the CIA: A Revised History of Modern American Disasters,” Roger’s book about a string of disasters, such as Gander, Lockerbie, Oklahoma City, and 9/11, the nefarious characters around them, and their effect: our acceptance of reactionary political measures in the name of “national security.”

K: I call it the secret societal system which is able to be above the fray so to say and to reach down and use different organizations for their own effect. What got you interested in this subject?

R: Howard Hughes and Walt Disney. As their empires rose, high on the payrolls were CIA agents. I wondered why. I started looking at events at that time and made a chronology of people and companies up to about 2015, and you have the same thing happening, the same names appearing around the fringes of big historical events. In my book, they are modern American disaster events.

K: The book “Elite Deviance” shows, since the 1960s, major scandals happening all the time that used to happen about once every 60 years. They all seem to have some of the same players involved. It’s almost like these scandals are produced to push us in a particular direction.

R: Very well put.

K: In the Gander crash, they took down a whole plane to silence one guy?

R: Yes. [248 soldiers were killed in the 1985 crash.] Someone close such activities said, “These guys are totally ruthless. They would down a whole plane to kill one or two people.

K: My father left the CIA because he wouldn’t be involved in the drug running. You find intelligence operations and drug trade side-by-side a lot. Talk about [those] planning years and these attacks prior to 9/11.

R: The first in the book is Gander, 1985. Followed by Lockerbie, 1988. The first bombing of the World Trade Center, 1993. Oklahoma City, 1995. And TWA Flight #800, 1996. This string is where you really see the recurrence of the names. “Former” CIA agents, FBI agents, soldiers – Oliver North; Erik Prince is another perfect example [“former U.S. Navy SEAL … founder of the private military company Blackwater USA, now called Academi” – Wikipedia] – all qualify as “not exactly the CIA.”