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 2: Could they be true or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1: This is mission implausible.
Speaker 2: I'm really pleased to have and more than a little
Speaker 2: curious to talk with our guests today. Gareth Gore. Gareth
Speaker 2: is a financial journalist with close to two decades of experience.
Speaker 2: He's reported from over twenty five countries and has covered
Speaker 2: some of the world's biggest financial stories. But incongruously per Cabs,
Speaker 2: he's come out with this great book Opus, The Cult
Speaker 2: of Dark Money, human trafficking, and right wing conspiracy inside
Speaker 2: the Catholic Church. So today we're going to begin an
Speaker 2: episode talking maybe about a mixture of conspiracy and conspiracy
Speaker 2: theories involving one of the oldest and most mysterious organizations
Speaker 2: in history, the Catholic Church. But not the Catholic church
Speaker 2: like the one. I was an ultra boy at Saint Leo's,
Speaker 2: but one of its most secretive, lay fanatical fringe factions.
Speaker 2: Opus stay. So Gareth, welcome, and maybe let's start out
Speaker 2: with you briefly telling us about Opus Day and see
Speaker 2: if you can do it without mentioning the Dan Brown
Speaker 2: book or the Tom Hanks movie Da Vinci Code, and
Speaker 2: then how you ended up going down this railmit. Hey, guys,
Speaker 2: must of.
Speaker 3: All thank you for having me on.
Speaker 2: It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 3: Great, yes, opuse, I think many of your listeners will
Speaker 3: be surprised to hear that it isn't some kind of
Speaker 3: medieval organization. This group is less than one hundred years old.
Speaker 3: It was actually founded in nineteen twenty eight by a
Speaker 3: Spanish priest by the name of Josimeria Espliva, who it
Speaker 3: was a bit of a lost priest for I think
Speaker 3: for a number of years he considered just ditching the
Speaker 3: priesthood entirely. He was torn. He wanted to make money,
Speaker 3: he wanted to be a success, but he'd fallen into
Speaker 3: the priesthood partly by accident. He applied for a bunch
Speaker 3: of jobs. He tried to become a civil servant to
Speaker 3: work for the government at one stage, but didn't get
Speaker 3: the job, so.
Speaker 2: He was a bit of a lost soul.
Speaker 3: But then one day, whilst on retreat in Madrid in
Speaker 3: October nineteen twenty eight, he had this vision. So he
Speaker 3: told everyone afterwards that basically God spoke to him and
Speaker 3: out the outline of vision for a new organization that
Speaker 3: would help ordinary Catholics to go a bit deeper, to
Speaker 3: be more serious about their faith, without the need to
Speaker 3: become priests or nuns. And that's basically how Opusta was born.
Speaker 3: But very quickly it kind of evolved into something else.
Speaker 3: So it started out as basically a group that would
Speaker 3: just help you to become a better Catholic. But this
Speaker 3: was Spain in the late nineteen twenties early nineteen thirties.
Speaker 3: It was a country that was deeply divided on the
Speaker 3: brink of civil war. The workers were rising up. They
Speaker 3: over through the monarchy. They were demanding new rights for
Speaker 3: themselves and critically for Escrivaughn for Opah's day, they were
Speaker 3: turning the backs on the church and he was horrified
Speaker 3: about this. So what he did was he took this
Speaker 3: vision and he transformed it into something else, and this
Speaker 3: is where the conspiracy comes in. So he secretly drew
Speaker 3: up documents for a brand new organization that would infiltrate
Speaker 3: every part of society and use its power there to
Speaker 3: reshape society, to unwind all of these progressive advances and
Speaker 3: to go back. So he drew a new vision for
Speaker 3: opu's day as a reactionary, secret, reactionary force in society,
Speaker 3: and that's what it continues to be today.
Speaker 1: So how is it viewed within the Catholic Church?
Speaker 3: Now, the Catholic Church is a wide church. Obviously that
Speaker 3: there's the liberal parts of the church. The most famous
Speaker 3: person within that, within the part of the church, of
Speaker 3: course is the Pelp Pop Francis is considered a progressive,
Speaker 3: a liberal Polpe. But you know that the church also
Speaker 3: has a conservative wing and an arch conservative wing, and
Speaker 3: Opus Stay.
Speaker 2: Is very much part of that.
Speaker 3: So I think the liberal progressive side of the church
Speaker 3: has always viewed Opa Stay with a certain amount of suspicion,
Speaker 3: but it's very much welcomed by the arch conservatives.
Speaker 2: Forget this right, it was a conspiracy, a real conspiracy.
Speaker 2: They were trying to infiltrate these places. But it was
Speaker 2: also in response to a conspiracy theory Escreva right Winery standard.
Speaker 2: He thought the world was controlled by the Jews and
Speaker 2: the Freemasons, Republican side of the Spanish Civil War, the
Speaker 2: Democrats and Communists and Bolsheviks. So his conspiracy was reaction
Speaker 2: to conspiracy theories that he saw all around him.
Speaker 3: You're absolutely right, Jerry, so Escriegart. After he had this
Speaker 3: initial vision, this quite benign vision for just helping ordinary Catholics,
Speaker 3: all of this crazy stuff was happening around and there
Speaker 3: were church burnings, that was fighting on the streets, he
Speaker 3: kent to the conclusion that this was all employed by
Speaker 3: the Communists and the Jews and the Masons to take
Speaker 3: over Spain, to rip up its Catholic past, and to
Speaker 3: basically push forward this atheistic kind of society. He brought
Speaker 3: into all of these conspiracy theories that it was a yeah,
Speaker 3: it was a conspiracy to radically change Spanish society. And
Speaker 3: the way that he began to redevelop Opa stay. He
Speaker 3: started to see Opustae as almost like a militia to
Speaker 3: fight back against these hidden forces.
Speaker 4: And that gives you a permission. We're seeing this around
Speaker 4: the world today. When you're in your mind fighting against
Speaker 4: this grand conspiracy that sort of can give you free
Speaker 4: change to do the very things that you claim the
Speaker 4: other side does. They're censoring us, so we're going to
Speaker 4: censor them. They're destroying us, so we're going to destroy.
Speaker 4: Something I was thinking about in the context of your
Speaker 4: book is when you look at business activity that we
Speaker 4: might call corruption, we might whatever. If you look at
Speaker 4: the history of business activity, as a general rule, money
Speaker 4: was always controlled by secretive groups. It was very often
Speaker 4: family groups or culturally specific groups. And I think that's
Speaker 4: for sort of pragmatic reasons that before the development of
Speaker 4: modern commercial law, before the development of the modern corporation
Speaker 4: or the publicly held corporation, how would you spread money
Speaker 4: around the world, how would you come up with trade agreements?
Speaker 4: It was generally you did it with your family. There's
Speaker 4: a lot of family business throughout history. Or you did
Speaker 4: it with members of your insular group, you know. I
Speaker 4: mean this is part of the reason Jews in the
Speaker 4: Middle Ages or in the Middle East, as well as
Speaker 4: Lebanese today, or ethnic Chinese throughout Southeast Asia. I mean
Speaker 4: you can point to a lot of these groups. And so,
Speaker 4: in a weird way, I was reading Opus day as
Speaker 4: a just an example of solving a problem, which is
Speaker 4: when you have this group that's spread around the world
Speaker 4: that specifically it hosts a bit to join the world.
Speaker 4: Little scary. You're giving up some credibility, but you're gaining
Speaker 4: credibility with a little with a group. It's almost inevitable
Speaker 4: in my mind, that's going to lead you to financial
Speaker 4: transactions because if I'm whatever, I'm in Detroit and I
Speaker 4: want to do business with someone in Madrid, and I
Speaker 4: can be like, oh, we're in the same in group.
Speaker 4: It's very costly to betray someone within your same in group.
Speaker 4: So I trust you, you trust me, we can start
Speaker 4: doing deals that just saying I'm going to do deals
Speaker 4: with Catholics in a country like Spain or that's not
Speaker 4: very meaningful. Everyone's a Catholic. I guess I'm forced to
Speaker 4: ask a question and not just give a filibuster. Was
Speaker 4: it was it designed to do that or was that
Speaker 4: just a result like they found themselves, Hey, we're an
Speaker 4: insular group that has this ability to be harnessed for
Speaker 4: financial gain, let's go ahead and do that.
Speaker 3: It very quickly developed into a kind of controlling organization,
Speaker 3: and I think that was for a number of reasons, Screevaw.
Speaker 3: He had all of these grand ideas about he wrote
Speaker 3: all of this stuff down in my teen thirty one
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty two about infiltrating society and having his people
Speaker 3: basically running the government and the judiciary and schools and
Speaker 3: business and the rest of it. But the fact was
Speaker 3: he had no faults. For about the first five or
Speaker 3: six years after coming up with this idea of Elpus Day,
Speaker 3: he failed to recruit almost anyone. He had about fifteen
Speaker 3: to twenty young boys who had recruited, and so he
Speaker 3: then began to realize that his efforts to recruit and
Speaker 3: attract people to help us Day it just wasn't working.
Speaker 3: So he came up with this entirely new system, this
Speaker 3: very controlling system, where he basically groomed people to join,
Speaker 3: and so it very quickly became not just a family,
Speaker 3: but a kind of a dysfunctional, controlling family were every
Speaker 3: element of these people's existences was watched and controlled. So yes,
Speaker 3: you had this closed network. And by the way, many
Speaker 3: of the people when they joined, were forced to leave
Speaker 3: the blood family behind and the friend network behind the
Speaker 3: lives became Opus Day and just help us day. But
Speaker 3: he then kind of layered on top of that the
Speaker 3: system of watching each other and of controlling every movement.
Speaker 3: So it's the Mafia times ten. Because you have no
Speaker 3: freedom to even go and have a drink in the
Speaker 3: local bar or whatever. You're being watched the entire time.
Speaker 5: You're describing just classic cult behavior. Yes, was it always
Speaker 5: a cult or did it evolve into a cult?
Speaker 3: I think initially he started off by genuinely trying to
Speaker 3: talk people into joining of their own free will, But
Speaker 3: I think it very quickly evolved, I think within five
Speaker 3: six years. And as I said before, he basically recruited
Speaker 3: no one in the first few years, and from that
Speaker 3: point he discovered that cult like recruitment and cult like
Speaker 3: kind of retention was the way forward. It became it
Speaker 3: was a very successful way to grab people and to
Speaker 3: retain them. Then you had this kind of hiatus of
Speaker 3: the Spanish Civil War, which meant that the people he
Speaker 3: recruited were either killed or left or were dispersed around Spain.
Speaker 3: But then once Franco won the civil war, he then
Speaker 3: fell back on this playbook of cold bike recruitment and
Speaker 3: it was super successful in the Franco years and to
Speaker 3: come back to what we were saying before about the money.
Speaker 3: He then found ways of of basically pilfering from the state,
Speaker 3: of positioning opu Stay within the state apparatus to get
Speaker 3: control over state funds for education and research, and of
Speaker 3: using that network to then ensure that he could use
Speaker 3: the money to expand op Stay around the world.
Speaker 2: Let's pause for a second, we'll be right back. Could
Speaker 2: you maybe go unto the Benko popular banking scandal that
Speaker 2: Opuste was at the batum Ut.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, through the nineteen forties, spefi'd very quickly realized
Speaker 3: that they needed money to He had huge ambitions to
Speaker 3: take Opa Stay not just all across Spain but around
Speaker 3: the world, and he needed money to do that. So initially,
Speaker 3: as I was just saying, he managed to get make
Speaker 3: rolls into the Franco regime and managed to siphon off
Speaker 3: state funds to help open Stay expand they began to
Speaker 3: set up networks of businesses as well, so through Opus
Speaker 3: Stay's connections with the regime, and so they set up
Speaker 3: businesses to benefit from those relationships with the Franco regime.
Speaker 3: But I think at one stage in the early fifties
Speaker 3: they realized that to get control of the bank would
Speaker 3: take things to an entirely different level. Being dependent on
Speaker 3: the Franco regime to win contracts or whatever or just
Speaker 3: get state money was very restrictive because those taps could
Speaker 3: be turned off very quickly. But if you had control
Speaker 3: of the bank, you had control over the savings of
Speaker 3: potentially millions of Spaniards who put their money into the bank,
Speaker 3: and you could use that money to lend to your
Speaker 3: various initiatives around the world. And we've seen many banks
Speaker 3: infiltrated and used in this way over the years. And
Speaker 3: the way they took control of their first bank was
Speaker 3: quite interesting. They got winds of scandal. It's a big
Speaker 3: Spanish bank. Ironically, one of the big bosses at the bank,
Speaker 3: who was a devout Catholic and fan of Opus Day,
Speaker 3: he turned to Opus Stay and confessed that the owner
Speaker 3: of the bank had been doing all these dodgy deals
Speaker 3: in France and if the Franco regime got wind of it,
Speaker 3: the bank was going to be punished and potentially people
Speaker 3: who go to prison. So opus Stey got this information and.
Speaker 4: Did he literally confess like they broke the seal of
Speaker 4: the Confessional or it's more.
Speaker 3: I don't think it was in confession, but it was
Speaker 3: in one of these sessions that they call spiritual guidance,
Speaker 3: So that this guy had gone to an Opus Stay
Speaker 3: member and basically was looking for a bit of kind
Speaker 3: of Catholic guidance. And this the O Stay member, took
Speaker 3: this information and passed it along to his members, and
Speaker 3: they then turned the information against the bank to oust
Speaker 3: the owner of the bank, and they, you know, over
Speaker 3: a number of years, they gradually took control until by
Speaker 3: the end of the nineteen fifties, Opustey was effectively in
Speaker 3: control of one of Spain's largest banks. And from there
Speaker 3: the sky was the limit.
Speaker 5: Then what happened next with the bank fraud? Where did
Speaker 5: the story go?
Speaker 3: So, after taking control of this Spanish bank in the
Speaker 3: late nineteen fifties, Opustay very quickly began to rewire and
Speaker 3: renetwork the bank to ensure that it could benefit from
Speaker 3: the bank financially, but also to ensure that its own
Speaker 3: network around the globe would benefit directly from the bank
Speaker 3: as well. And so Bank of Popular this Spanish bank
Speaker 3: very quickly became away not just of extracting money to
Speaker 3: help to finance the expansion of Opus Day, but also
Speaker 3: became a way of it became a network for moving
Speaker 3: money around the world. During the Franco years, there were
Speaker 3: huge restrictions on transferring cash out of Spain to other
Speaker 3: and so they developed this network, initially through Switzerland and Andorra,
Speaker 3: but then through other kind of tax havens in Panama, Tinstein,
Speaker 3: Kurasau to traffic huge amounts of money, and over the
Speaker 3: course of the next kind of forty to fifty years,
Speaker 3: the bank became a cash machine for Opus Day. They
Speaker 3: extracted hundreds of millions of dollars probably more like billions
Speaker 3: of dollars from the bank to finance the expansion of
Speaker 3: Opuste around the world.
Speaker 2: And for a number of reasons.
Speaker 3: In the early twenty tens, the bank fell into all
Speaker 3: kinds of trouble. Now, some of it was I guess
Speaker 3: related to these outflows to OPA Stay and Opustey's semi
Speaker 3: control of the bank, but some of it was also
Speaker 3: related to what was happening to other banks around the world.
Speaker 3: They'd overinvested in the real estate market and had failed
Speaker 3: to get on top of their problems quickly enough, and
Speaker 3: the bank fell into a huge amount of trouble. And yes,
Speaker 3: in twenty seventeen, the bank collapsed. But the collapse of
Speaker 3: the bank was terrible for the bank's other shoholders and
Speaker 3: terrible for the bank's bondholders and predators, but was great
Speaker 3: for me because it meant that Opus Stay no longer
Speaker 3: had control over these archives, and this nauzy journalist from
Speaker 3: the UK was able to get in and pieced together
Speaker 3: this crazy story.
Speaker 1: It seems that Opus Day got it pushed forward when
Speaker 1: Paul the second gave credibility the group and shared their
Speaker 1: conservative view. But what is it about the tenets of
Speaker 1: the Opus Day that appeal to average personnel? How is
Speaker 1: it different than regular Cathalyicism in that sense?
Speaker 3: So I think there were two things. I think on
Speaker 3: the face of it, Opus Stay is very good at
Speaker 3: presenting itself as a serious organization dedicated to helping ordinary
Speaker 3: Catholics to go a step further in their faith and
Speaker 3: to really offer themselves up to God. And the way
Speaker 3: that they kind of reel people in is by telling them, look, you,
Speaker 3: as a doctor or a politician or a journalist or whatever,
Speaker 3: you can serve God by simply striving for perfection and
Speaker 3: everything you do, and that's your way of serving well,
Speaker 3: you don't need to become a priest orundne. You can
Speaker 3: achieve sanhood here on earth by just striving for perfections
Speaker 3: if you're a if you're a hot shot lawyer or
Speaker 3: a Republican congressman or whatever. That's the idea is quite appealing.
Speaker 3: But I think there's also another element to it. And
Speaker 3: I think this is very much true in places like
Speaker 3: Spain where Opus Day is strongest, but I think it's
Speaker 3: becoming increasingly true in the US as well. I think
Speaker 3: by joining Opus Day as a member, or just by
Speaker 3: entering into the elpus Day network, it opens a lot
Speaker 3: of doors. I think it's useful to think of Opusta
Speaker 3: as a network. By being part of the network, you're
Speaker 3: part of this kind of like minded group, these kind
Speaker 3: of like minded conservatives, like minded professionals. Because Opus Day
Speaker 3: very specifically recruits from the elite of society. They're not
Speaker 3: interested in the kind of the working classes in the
Speaker 3: middle classes. They specifically go after because they want to
Speaker 3: influence society. But by getting membership into this network, that
Speaker 3: opens up business opportunities and networking opportunities, professional advancement. And
Speaker 3: I would argue that these days to get ahead in
Speaker 3: place like Washington, d C. It helps to be Catholic
Speaker 3: and it helps to be part of this help US
Speaker 3: Day network.
Speaker 1: Just hold on for a short break.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. Okay. So you've got a screenvar
Speaker 2: who founds it and he's a big fan of Hitler,
Speaker 2: by the way, Mussolini. Today we've got Opus Stay, hugely influential,
Speaker 2: all out of portion towood size inside the US. So
Speaker 2: the US, you've got former head of the FBI, Louis Free.
Speaker 2: You've got people in the Supreme Court with close connections
Speaker 2: with Bilgar. Our heritage foundation is run by a guy
Speaker 2: with close relationship with Opus stain Scalia.
Speaker 1: In the op ste.
Speaker 3: Scalia, I don't believe he was a member, but he
Speaker 3: will certainly within the next He was a regular with.
Speaker 2: The Circle execut right, yeah, yes. And Amy Colmbero and
Speaker 2: she's not in Opa Stay, but she was in a
Speaker 2: similar type of thing. So where is Opus Day now
Speaker 2: inside of the US? Right, and talking about real conspiracies,
Speaker 2: what is Opus Stay's role inside of the US now?
Speaker 3: Right from the beginning, from the thirties onwards, Opusta has
Speaker 3: always aspired, has always conspired. She might say to infiltrate
Speaker 3: the upper echelons of society, because Esprievar realized from very
Speaker 3: early on that the way you push your reactionary agenda
Speaker 3: is by infiltrating the institutions that are in charge of
Speaker 3: shaping societies. Opusta entered the US in the late nineteen
Speaker 3: forties and initially it's set up in Chicago, a very
Speaker 3: Catholic city. It then soon ext and to Boston, but
Speaker 3: before long in area, in the early nineteen fifties, it
Speaker 3: was turning its attention to Washington because it realized that
Speaker 3: if it wanted to shape US society, then it had
Speaker 3: to be in Washington. In the fifties, it tried to
Speaker 3: set up an Opus Day University in Washington, d c.
Speaker 3: But that idea completely failed. But ever since then it's
Speaker 3: poured resources into the city and I think one for me,
Speaker 3: one kind of very interesting statistic is this OBUs Day
Speaker 3: officially has about three thousand members in the US, and
Speaker 3: as a Catholic organization, you would have expected that membership
Speaker 3: to be concentrated in Catholic cities like Chicago, Boston, New York,
Speaker 3: even Miami these days with the large Hispanic population there.
Speaker 3: But that's not true, the largest Opus day community in
Speaker 3: the US is in the Washington, d C. Area, and
Speaker 3: that kind of tells you all you need to know
Speaker 3: about where it's targeted its recruitment over the years, very
Speaker 3: much gone after targeting the Washington DC political and judicial elite.
Speaker 3: It's got two schools, two open stay schools in Washington,
Speaker 3: which kind of servered a double purpose. One is, and
Speaker 3: this has always been an open staate strategy. They've gone
Speaker 3: after the top students because that's a way of recruiting
Speaker 3: tomorrow's elite into the system from an early age, and
Speaker 3: it's really indoctrinating them from an early age. But two,
Speaker 3: by setting up these very good schools, it's a way
Speaker 3: of attracting the great and the good of Washington to
Speaker 3: get them to entice them into the schools, get them
Speaker 3: to send their kids there, and then you invite them
Speaker 3: to the kind of extracurricular meetings where you know, you
Speaker 3: get to know the parents as well, and it's a
Speaker 3: way of drawing them into the system. I mean, many
Speaker 3: of Washington's great and good send their kids to the boys'
Speaker 3: school which is called The Heights, and there's a girls
Speaker 3: school called Oak Crest, And maybe this is a good
Speaker 3: moment to bring in Johnson, your producer, which when we
Speaker 3: were setting up the interview, he reveals to me that
Speaker 3: he'd actually tended the Height School, the Upistaate School and
Speaker 3: just outside of Washington. So maybe I don't know if
Speaker 3: you want to talk about your observations and how they
Speaker 3: tally with what I or not.
Speaker 5: I actually think that you're attributing more legitimacy to the school,
Speaker 5: then I think it deserves as a school.
Speaker 2: So I was there for.
Speaker 5: One grade, one year, eighth grade in the early eighties,
Speaker 5: and I'm Jewish, So why on earth did they accept
Speaker 5: a Jew? I think they had the misconception that maybe
Speaker 5: my family had some more influence, which we didn't, and
Speaker 5: also a fear that if they rejected me or they
Speaker 5: kicked me out, that that would somehow boomerang on them.
Speaker 5: There was two Jews and two Protestants in the school,
Speaker 5: and a few black kids, so we were the outsiders.
Speaker 5: It was a year of absolutely stagnant education for me.
Speaker 5: There was the education was just of the ne year
Speaker 5: of educating the kids. I didn't realize it at the time,
Speaker 5: but only in hindsight how many of the kids were
Speaker 5: kids of people of influence in journalism and politics and money.
Speaker 5: But it was also it was a very abusive environment
Speaker 5: physically and emotionally, and almost all the kids that were
Speaker 5: in there with me hated it, couldn't wait to get out.
Speaker 5: The Opus Stay is his members like Leonard Leo right
Speaker 5: from the Federal Society and responsible for putting three or
Speaker 5: four Supreme Court justices in. Then we've got the head
Speaker 5: of the Heritage Foundation, right, that's the authors of Project
Speaker 5: twenty twenty five. We've got people like Newt Gingrich, right,
Speaker 5: it was the father of the American Current, right, And
Speaker 5: so we've got all these tentacles going in and Louis Free.
Speaker 5: My understanding is head of the FBI was in Opus
Speaker 5: Stay and he was close to Robert Hanson and protected
Speaker 5: him in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2: And Hanson and I think we need to as former
Speaker 2: CIA offices, we need to get into this. And I
Speaker 2: want to talk to John Cipher about this a little bit.
Speaker 2: He handsent apparently in the early eighties actually confessed to
Speaker 2: a Catholic priest assocaid with Opus Day and said, I'm
Speaker 2: spying for the Russians, and they've given me diamonds and
Speaker 2: they've given me a huge amount of money, and the priest,
Speaker 2: this Opus Day priest, told him give the money that
Speaker 2: the Russians, this KGB bun it, give it to Opus
Speaker 2: Day and don't tell anybody about this. And I'm not
Speaker 2: sure that's really the right thing to do. So for me,
Speaker 2: that's espionage, that's conspiracy. I'm not sure quite how Opus
Speaker 2: Day is an organization fits in, but people certainly do.
Speaker 2: And johnah was going to ask you, you've worked on
Speaker 2: the Hanson case, what was the sense of his mental
Speaker 2: makeup that he was both in Opus Day and seeing
Speaker 2: a dominance at the same time.
Speaker 1: I don't think he was a conservative Catholic. It was
Speaker 1: when he got married. His wife was a very strong
Speaker 1: Catholic and he almost went overboard in that. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if it gave him a place to be
Speaker 1: in a place to think that he was part of
Speaker 1: the elite or something. But he was always an outsider,
Speaker 1: even in that sense. And yeah, he spied for the
Speaker 1: Russians from the late seventies when he was in New
Speaker 1: York and didn't have much money, all the way up
Speaker 1: to so until he was arrested in two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: And that's true. He did confess to a priest in
Speaker 1: the church and was told to give money to but
Speaker 1: you know, obviously a very very troubled person. And what's
Speaker 1: interesting is, yeah, his boss when he was at the
Speaker 1: FBI for part of the time he was at the FBI,
Speaker 1: was really free. He was also part of that same church.
Speaker 6: We're going to stop here today and we'll continue our
Speaker 6: conversation with Gareth Gore next week when we'll get into
Speaker 6: Opah Stay's political ambitions here in the US and around
Speaker 6: the world until next week on Mission Implausible. Mission Implausible
Speaker 6: is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Cipher, and
Speaker 6: Jonathan Stern.
Speaker 7: The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission Implausible. It is
Speaker 7: a production of honorable mention and abominable pictures for iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2: You can