Speaker 1: I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a
Speaker 1: CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
Speaker 1: in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 2: And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
Speaker 2: and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
Speaker 2: our adversaries.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories large and small.
Speaker 3: Could they be true?
Speaker 2: Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1: This is mission implausible.
Speaker 3: This is part two of our conversation with Gareth Gore.
Speaker 3: Gareth is a financial journalist.
Speaker 2: Who's written the book Opus, The.
Speaker 3: Cult of Dark Money, human trafficking, and right wing conspiracy
Speaker 3: inside the Catholic Church. He's been telling us about the
Speaker 3: secretive Catholic sect known as Opus Day. I have a question,
Speaker 3: so we all are perceiving this as a somewhat cult
Speaker 3: like structure. I certainly felt it was a cult when
Speaker 3: I was there. But usually a cult is got one
Speaker 3: figurehead who's benefiting from it, or a family that's benefiting
Speaker 3: from it. These founders are long since deead. Who are
Speaker 3: the beneficiaries? Now, who's the head of this?
Speaker 4: I mean there is a head of Opa stay in
Speaker 4: Rome who runs the entire thing. But like many cults,
Speaker 4: there's a worship of the founder, so everything that the
Speaker 4: founder said and wrote down is now taken as gospel.
Speaker 4: But yes, I mean, in effect Escrevard, this priest who's
Speaker 4: been dead since nineteen teventy five, in fact, he's still
Speaker 4: in charge. I mean, there are all kinds of horrendous
Speaker 4: and abusive practices that he wrote down, that he stipulated
Speaker 4: in his writings, and I think the modern organization realizes
Speaker 4: that many of these practices had no place in society
Speaker 4: and in fact are really damaging to the reputation of
Speaker 4: Opus Day globally. Because of this cult like worship of
Speaker 4: the founder, they're unable to question anything he said or did.
Speaker 4: And recently it was discovered that Opus Day has allegedly
Speaker 4: been involved in the trafficking of young girls, from recruiting
Speaker 4: these girls in places like Argentina and Nigeria the Philippines
Speaker 4: and entrapping them in the organization as effectively unpaid servants
Speaker 4: for the elite and the organization and federal prosecutors in
Speaker 4: Argentina have recently formally accused the organization of engaging in
Speaker 4: human trafficking and serious labor abuses, and there's going to
Speaker 4: be trial this year or next with four Day Priests
Speaker 4: standing trial. I think the organization realizes that those practices
Speaker 4: have no place in today's society, but they're unable to
Speaker 4: stop doing it because that's what the founders said should
Speaker 4: be done. So to answer your question, he's dead, but
Speaker 4: Escrivar is still in charge. His message of infiltrating society
Speaker 4: at the very top is what drives Opus Day still
Speaker 4: to this day.
Speaker 1: We've mentioned that Opus Day seems to have people in
Speaker 1: senior positions in Washington been the right wing and the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, and Leonard Leo and Bill Bara in this
Speaker 1: sort of thing. I think we're suggesting they may have
Speaker 1: some undue influence in right wing politics, but also in
Speaker 1: our politics. Evangelical Protestants seem to be unusually supportive of
Speaker 1: the right wing in the United States. It would seem
Speaker 1: that they would be natural not enemies, but competitors. Is
Speaker 1: there something about Opus Day in that it's your private
Speaker 1: relationship with God or something that makes it similar to
Speaker 1: Evangelical Protestantism or what's the relationship there, if any?
Speaker 2: Just before I answered that, I think I should be
Speaker 2: clear as well. That.
Speaker 4: There's no implication in my book call in anything I'm
Speaker 4: saying that this head of Opus Dane Realm that he
Speaker 4: sat the issuing orders out to lended Leo or the
Speaker 4: Supreme Court justices or whatever. That's not the way it works.
Speaker 4: It's not that kind of conspiracy. The conspiracy is simply
Speaker 4: to recruit from the elite to society and have the
Speaker 4: people in positions of power so that we can push
Speaker 4: forward this reactionary agenda and rip up any kind of
Speaker 4: progressive advances. That's the conspiracy that these people not being
Speaker 4: told specifically what to do. You need to devote this
Speaker 4: way or you need to push this It's about creating
Speaker 4: the right conditions. It's about creating a network and having
Speaker 4: the right people rise up and to help each other
Speaker 4: out to advance this cause. And now, to get back
Speaker 4: to your question, from time to time they get into
Speaker 4: bed with like minded groups and individuals who have nothing
Speaker 4: to do with Opus Day and who have nothing to
Speaker 4: do with even with the Catholic Church. At one stage
Speaker 4: in the late two thousands, the kind of senior upper
Speaker 4: stay members in the US were obsessed with the idea
Speaker 4: of stopping same sex marriage from going into law. And
Speaker 4: so Opus Stay basically teamed up with the Mormon Church
Speaker 4: to push to get called proper Position eight onto the
Speaker 4: ballot in California, which was a major step to slowing
Speaker 4: down the rassification of same sex marriage. Ultimately, they failed,
Speaker 4: and people in the US can now have same sex unions.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I mean, you know, that's one example of
Speaker 4: them teeming up with like minded groups which fall outside
Speaker 4: of the natural comfort zone.
Speaker 2: Did you grow up in the Catholic Church. I did.
Speaker 2: I'm just wondering if you did. No, I didn't.
Speaker 4: I was raised, as I guess, a Cultural Church of
Speaker 4: England member. I went to a church and England school.
Speaker 4: We said the Lord's Prayer every morning, and we prayed
Speaker 4: and we sang hymns. But I don't think I really
Speaker 4: believed in any of it.
Speaker 5: I did grow up Caretholic, not that Opah state, the Dominicans,
Speaker 5: but within the Catholic Church are the elements of the
Speaker 5: Catholic Church. We like to talk about Opus Stay right,
Speaker 5: and we snicker about them.
Speaker 4: So this again goes back to the cult like worship
Speaker 4: of the founder. So the founder I think was a
Speaker 4: bit of an unstable individual, as many of these cult
Speaker 4: leaders are his father had fallen into pankruptcy, if the
Speaker 4: family had fallen on hard times, his father had died,
Speaker 4: and he is the eldest son. It was all on
Speaker 4: his shoulders to lift family back to the bud all
Speaker 4: days and being rich and wealthy again. And so I
Speaker 4: think he was carrying around quite a little burden and
Speaker 4: he was struggling. But his way he over ate, the
Speaker 4: way that he dealt with I think a lot of
Speaker 4: his problems was to basically punish himself, to punish his body.
Speaker 4: And this is something that people self mutilation is not
Speaker 4: that far from self flagellation, which is what's happening here.
Speaker 4: I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist, and but my interpretation
Speaker 4: is that this is the way that he dealt with
Speaker 4: his problems. So he would do it in two ways,
Speaker 4: and you mentioned one of them. The scyllis, which is
Speaker 4: basically like a barbed wire that often usually you were
Speaker 4: around around the thigh but couldn't be used to You
Speaker 4: can wear it around other parts of the body as well,
Speaker 4: and it's made up of these kind of like flaws
Speaker 4: which dig into the skin. The idea is that it's
Speaker 4: meant to be very uncomfortable. It's that breaks the skin, maybe,
Speaker 4: but it's just it makes it uncomfortable to sit or
Speaker 4: to do anything. And it's meant to remind you of
Speaker 4: the suffering of Christ. So that the Founder was a
Speaker 4: big wearer of the scillys. He would wear it four
Speaker 4: hours on end, sometimes around his thigh, often around his waist,
Speaker 4: which kind of goes back to his discomfort around his
Speaker 4: weight and his issues around weight. But he also used
Speaker 4: to use this other thing called the discipline, which is
Speaker 4: a whip. Now, a normal discipline would be made of
Speaker 4: kind of cord a rope, and maybe you'd have kind
Speaker 4: of three lashes, and you'd take off your shirt and
Speaker 4: you would hit yourself over the back and again the
Speaker 4: idea is that it's to remind you of the suffering
Speaker 4: of Christ. But for the Founder of ober Day that
Speaker 4: wasn't enough. He pimped up his discipline so he would
Speaker 4: add raizor blades to the rope, so that when he
Speaker 4: whipped himself, he would cut into his back and those
Speaker 4: around him were worried about his psychological state. His mother
Speaker 4: and his priest even begged him to stop doing this.
Speaker 4: The walls would be spattered with blood after he'd had
Speaker 4: these sessions, but Escrevar made it compulsory for the numery members,
Speaker 4: the celibate members of Opus Day, the kind of the
Speaker 4: elite members of Opu's day, to continue this practice.
Speaker 2: So many of.
Speaker 4: The teachers were at the school in the Heights where
Speaker 4: John attended. Many of those teachers would have been numery
Speaker 4: members celibate members of Opus Day, and they are still
Speaker 4: to this day expected to do those two forms of
Speaker 4: corporal multification. So then they're expected to work the sibis
Speaker 4: for two hours a day you'd do in the afternoons,
Speaker 4: and they're expected to whip themselves using the discipline, presumably
Speaker 4: without the razor blades, for a period, usually on a
Speaker 4: Saturday afternoon. That's still ongoing to this day. And those
Speaker 4: are the kind of the elite members, the normal members,
Speaker 4: the supernumeraries, the people that live out and the in
Speaker 4: normal harms with kids or whatever. They've been couraged to
Speaker 4: do these things too, but there's not the same level
Speaker 4: of expectation or control to sure they do it. But yeah,
Speaker 4: this is very much still alive and well within the organization.
Speaker 3: Going to the conspiracy aspect of this show, the word
Speaker 3: that is most commonly associated with Opus day is secretive?
Speaker 3: Why be secretive? Why not be open about what you
Speaker 3: believe and what you're trying to accomplish in this world
Speaker 3: like other organizations are. Again, it always comes back to
Speaker 3: the founder. He was a conspiracy theorist himself. He realized
Speaker 3: that he was building this army and he saw it
Speaker 3: as an army. He described it in his writings as
Speaker 3: an army. He knew he was building this secret army
Speaker 3: in a hostile environment, so it made sense to him
Speaker 3: to keep it flanderstin Yeah. Like.
Speaker 4: He specifically told his members to not disclose their membership
Speaker 4: to anyone else, to even their friends or family. He
Speaker 4: was obsessed with the idea of we need to keep
Speaker 4: this below the radar because there are enemies of Christ
Speaker 4: add and as well as infiltrating the upper echelons of society.
Speaker 4: He also tasked his followers with and I guess u
Speaker 4: cia guys will enjoy this, but he tasked them specifically
Speaker 4: with collecting information on the enemies of Christ. He saw
Speaker 4: this as a battle and the open Staine membership it
Speaker 4: was a gorilla army that would infiltrate society and use
Speaker 4: their positions there to one push through the agenda, but
Speaker 4: two also to collect information on the enemies out there
Speaker 4: and people that might be that might stop them from
Speaker 4: pushing through the throat. Yes, these documents were written in
Speaker 4: the nineteen thirties. These documents are held up as like
Speaker 4: tablets that Nausi's brought down from the mountain. This is
Speaker 4: still the way the organization thinks about itself and about
Speaker 4: its membership today in the twenty first century.
Speaker 1: Just hold on for a short break, can be right back.
Speaker 2: So no discussion of all this stay is complete without
Speaker 2: at least touching Reverend Jan mccoskey, right, He was the
Speaker 2: American sort of patron of Opus Day, bringing it into
Speaker 2: the US, building it up, charismitic guy. He converted New
Speaker 2: Gingrich and Larry Kudlow and Senator CM brown Beck and
Speaker 2: a number of other people. A huge money raiser, and
Speaker 2: in the end he ended up with charges of sexual exploitation.
Speaker 2: I think a payout of a million dollars was made
Speaker 2: to a number of young women. I wonder if you
Speaker 2: could bring us through some of the charges of our
Speaker 2: sexual assault, but of the charges against against mcclus key
Speaker 2: and of Opus Day in general.
Speaker 4: You're absolutely rights and describing as sexual assault. So yes
Speaker 4: in the early two thousands, he groped one of the
Speaker 4: women who came to him for a spiritual direction and
Speaker 4: Opusday member in fact, and she reported the issue to
Speaker 4: Opus Day and they did nothing, and she threatened to sue.
Speaker 4: And when she threatened to sue, Opus Day decided to
Speaker 4: smuggle this out of the country. They basically sent him
Speaker 4: off to England to live in the Olpah Stay Center
Speaker 4: in London. Well, he couldn't be served with papers or
Speaker 4: arrested or whatever. And there was a good reason for that,
Speaker 4: and that was because m mccoskey had become the face
Speaker 4: of Olpus Day in Washington, d C. And as you say,
Speaker 4: he'd recruited vast numbers of the Conservative Republican elite to
Speaker 4: OLPA Stay. He'd enticed all of these people into the
Speaker 4: Olpah Stay network. People looked up to him. He was
Speaker 4: frequently on places like Meet the Press. He was the
Speaker 4: kind of the go to guy in central Washington. He
Speaker 4: was confessor to all of these powerful people. The last
Speaker 4: thing Olpus Day needed was for him to be embroiled
Speaker 4: in this sex gangle, and so they shipped him off
Speaker 4: to England. Meanwhile, they agreed pay off with this woman,
Speaker 4: I guess got her to sign a non disclosure agreement.
Speaker 4: They paid her almost a million dollars. The whole story
Speaker 4: went away, although it was part of the agreement. He
Speaker 4: was no longer allowed to be back in d C.
Speaker 4: So he went off initially to Chicago, but then they
Speaker 4: shipped him out said that Valley to recruit out there
Speaker 4: in Silicon Valley. And this whole thing went away until
Speaker 4: a few years later and the woman she'd understood as
Speaker 4: part of the agreement with elpus Day that he would
Speaker 4: no longer be allowed to go out and preach, and
Speaker 4: he wouldn't be allowed to be alone with women, and
Speaker 4: she discovered that he was being allowed to carry he
Speaker 4: was carrying on doing that in his ministry, and so
Speaker 4: she decided to basically go public and to expose what
Speaker 4: had happened. So, yeah, are there influential people in other
Speaker 4: places around the world.
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 4: Almost every word that elpas Day operates, it's managed to penetrate,
Speaker 4: to a greater or lesser extent, the kind of elite
Speaker 4: of society. Going back to the sixties and seventies. There
Speaker 4: are all kinds of rumors that they were involved in
Speaker 4: the coup in seventy five in Chile. They were kind
Speaker 4: of part of the efforts to destabilize the Allende government
Speaker 4: in the early seventies. There these days in places like Poland, Spain,
Speaker 4: of course, they're extremely influential Hungary. I understand that they've
Speaker 4: got pretty big influence there as well. Any places like
Speaker 4: the Philippines. I think they over the years have really
Speaker 4: managed again to penetrate the kind of the Filipino political elite.
Speaker 4: One thing listeners should realize is that this is not
Speaker 4: no ordinary organization. If you're interested in joining up, as
Speaker 4: Dave you think you know, if you think it's a
Speaker 4: great organization, you want to sign up, you can't just
Speaker 4: go on to the website and punching your details and
Speaker 4: get a membership card posted through to the post. It's
Speaker 4: not possible to request membership. You have to be invited in.
Speaker 4: So they decide who they want to be part of
Speaker 4: the organization and they go after them. They caught them,
Speaker 4: they groomed them, and they push them into into membership.
Speaker 4: And again that tells you what you need to know.
Speaker 4: This is it's not a club that's open to anyone.
Speaker 4: It's a club specifically for or targeted individuals who are
Speaker 4: in a position to shape society.
Speaker 1: Guys, you're a financial investigator and journalists you talk about
Speaker 1: others either conspiracy or conspiracy theories in the financial industry.
Speaker 4: As you guys will now, behind every kind of conspiracy,
Speaker 4: you need money. And so banks throughout their history have
Speaker 4: been at the forefront of making stuff happen around the world.
Speaker 4: Whenever there's a coop or destabilization efforts or whatever they
Speaker 4: might be around the world, the money's going to come
Speaker 4: from somewhere. I mean, we were just talking before we
Speaker 4: started recording about the whole BCCI scandal the late eighties
Speaker 4: and early nineties, where people discovered that this bank had
Speaker 4: been used to funnel money to the Taliban, to Pakistani's
Speaker 4: into all over the place. There's a great book called
Speaker 4: Billion Dollar Whale, which is about huge scandal in Malaysia
Speaker 4: where billions were siphoned by this guy and some of
Speaker 4: the money was used to finance the film The Wolf
Speaker 4: of Wolf of Ball Street.
Speaker 2: So opuste a it he has goal? What are its
Speaker 2: goals through the US?
Speaker 6: Because you know, we see Project twenty twenty five, which
Speaker 6: has a huge amount of influence of opus day people
Speaker 6: leading it and guiding it forward. So what would a
Speaker 6: future US look like if OPUS day gets its way.
Speaker 6: I don't think Opusta has any specific goals. Its goals
Speaker 6: kind of shift and change according to whatever's happening. So
Speaker 6: in the early nineteen thirties and Spain, for example, I
Speaker 6: guess the goal would have been the elimination of the
Speaker 6: Communists and the Masons and the Jews, and the kind
Speaker 6: of the re establishment of the church's proper place in society,
Speaker 6: big church great again, but also make conservative reading of
Speaker 6: the Catholic faith great again. So I think these days,
Speaker 6: obviously there's the kind of hot button issues like abortion
Speaker 6: and same sex marriage and contraception and all that kind
Speaker 6: of thing. But I think really the goal for Opu's
Speaker 6: day is to have is what we were saying earlier,
Speaker 6: is to have the right hind of people, our kind
Speaker 6: of people in position of power making the right decisions,
Speaker 6: the right moral Catholic decisions about these things. And so
Speaker 6: there's no kind of policy agenda. It's about creating the
Speaker 6: right conditions. It's about creating this network and feeding this
Speaker 6: network with conservative Catholic doctrine, and then having those people
Speaker 6: go out and make the right decisions for themselves based
Speaker 6: on the reading of the Bible.
Speaker 4: I think that's the goal. Yeah, I think it's in
Speaker 4: a good position to do that following the last election,
Speaker 4: as you were saying. Kevin Roberts, the president of the
Speaker 4: Heritage Foundation, the Architective Project twenty twenty five, this blueprint
Speaker 4: for a second Trump administration. He's a regular at the
Speaker 4: LP Stay Center in Central Washington. He gets his spiritual
Speaker 4: guidance from an olden state priest, and you can be
Speaker 4: rest assured that up state's pretty happy with most of
Speaker 4: the agenda that he's going to be pushing. In the
Speaker 4: last Trump administration, I think there were five members of
Speaker 4: the cabinets who were closely allied to Opus Day. I
Speaker 4: wouldn't be surprised to see a similar number, if not more,
Speaker 4: in the second. In the second administration, you might assume, Okay,
Speaker 4: they don't really believe in these particular policies.
Speaker 3: They're all in it for power. Half of the people
Speaker 3: believe it, and half of the people are seeing it
Speaker 3: as a train that can ride to power. But my
Speaker 3: impression of the people that I was surrounded with was no,
Speaker 3: they're doing this because they're true believers, and they specifically
Speaker 3: see the world as either good or evil.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 4: I think if you listen to some of the speeches
Speaker 4: given given by people like Leonard Leo and by Kevin Roberts,
Speaker 4: it's very clear that they see this as as a war.
Speaker 4: It's us versus them. It's not just a cultural war.
Speaker 4: I mean, they see this as a religious war. It's
Speaker 4: a war against atheism, it's a war against progressivism. They
Speaker 4: truly believe they're on the right side of history and
Speaker 4: that they're following the teachings of Christ. I think the
Speaker 4: Pope might have something to say about it.
Speaker 2: I think there are wide.
Speaker 4: Sections of the Catholic Church, including some of its most
Speaker 4: senior people, who recognize that Opus Day is a problem,
Speaker 4: and that many of the practices in OPA stay things
Speaker 4: like human trafficking, the targeting and grooming of children, the
Speaker 4: way that it controls and manipulates its members, that these
Speaker 4: are horrendous abuses that need that have no place inside
Speaker 4: the church. So I've got great feedback from sections of
Speaker 4: the church. Opus Day Opusta's reaction has been really interesting.
Speaker 4: It's decided to normally when in this day and age,
Speaker 4: or maybe in b ninety maybe maybe these days this
Speaker 4: doesn't happen, but certainly in recent history, whenever an organization
Speaker 4: was presented with horrendous scandal or abuse, the reaction is, oh,
Speaker 4: my goodness, this is terrible. We're going to launch a
Speaker 4: huge investigation. We're going to get to some of this,
Speaker 4: we're going to ensure that this is all sorted at,
Speaker 4: and we're going to absolutely going to get We'll get
Speaker 4: the bottom of this. Opus Day's reaction to my book
Speaker 4: and to the allegations I make in my book has
Speaker 4: been to stick their finger and fingers in their ears
Speaker 4: and go la.
Speaker 2: La la la la, la, la la lao.
Speaker 4: They just don't want to engage with the book in
Speaker 4: any way. They have mounted this disinformation campaign. They've tried
Speaker 4: to smear me and say basically, I'm a liar. I've
Speaker 4: tricked them into all of these kind of things or
Speaker 4: completely false. They've created this kind of alternative narrative that
Speaker 4: the book is all about this one Spanish guy and
Speaker 4: it's I'm besmirching his character and it's an assault on
Speaker 4: this poor guy. That's not true. This is the next
Speaker 4: bos A about toppers Day. You know, they basically don't
Speaker 4: want to engage with the book because to engage with
Speaker 4: the book, would involve them having to answer pretty serious questions,
Speaker 4: and would involve them having to admit too decades of
Speaker 4: use and manipulation, and would involve them having to admit
Speaker 4: that many of these practices one going today as well.
Speaker 4: Thank you guys for having me on.
Speaker 2: It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 3: Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'Shea, John Seipher,
Speaker 3: and Jonathan Stern. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission
Speaker 3: Implausible is a production of honorable mention and abominable pictures
Speaker 3: for iHeart podcasts.