It’s safe to read THEY KNEW now.

As safe as it’s going to get, anyway.

My book THEY KNEW is out in paperback! You can buy it at Bookshop (here), Amazon, (here), Left Bank Books (signed), or the vendor of your choice.

I’m glad that I wrote THEY KNEW when I did, in the latter half of 2021. If I were to write it now, I would not have that clarity of mind. Too many atrocities have happened in the interim — some of which were predicted in THEY KNEW — and nowadays a book like this may well be prohibited from publication.

THEY KNEW, like its predecessor HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT, got in under the wire when books diving deep into organized crime, institutional rot, and long-buried state secrets were being marketed to mainstream audiences. Others from that period that would likely not get published now — at least in their original form — are Tom O’Neill’s CHAOS and Ronan Farrow’s CATCH AND KILL.

In THEY KNEW, I discuss “Anomalous Eras of American Accountability”: fleeting periods when the truth briefly comes to light, and consequences seem possible. 2017-2020 was one such era.

The sense that buried truths were clawing their way out of the ground began to fade in late 2020 — but with covid, everything seemed to be ending.

In April 2018, when my book THE VIEW FROM FLYOVER COUNTRY came out, I wondered whether there would be backlash. In April 2020, when HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT came out, I wondered whether there would be paper. (There was not paper, for a while, due to supply chain chaos.)

By the time THEY KNEW came out in September 2022, the liberation movements of the previous years were being forcefully contained. They were stopped from above by state censorship and corporate power, from the margins by a firehose of bullshit meant to eradicate critical thought, and by algorithms restricting access to vital information.

In 2024, we live in the backlash. It is the most violent and repressive backlash I have witnessed. This moral reversal was predictable, but it is still painful to see.

In THEY KNEW, I wrote: “History is a ghost, and these days, the future is a ghost too, so what better existence is there than to be a ghost of the present, a shadow of conscience in the dead of night?"

THEY KNEW was always a ghost story. It’s about America, after all.

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Why would anyone suppress sweet little THEY KNEW, with its calming cover and innocuous premise? I got to hear a lot of reasons in the fall of 2022, when journalists told me reviews and interviews had been killed by bosses and CEOs. It was not their own decision, but one ordered from above.

Most of the reasons had to do with Chapter Three, “Epstein Wasn’t the First.” Some had to do with Chapter Six, “Memory-Holing a Coup.” And some had to do with Chapter Eight, “The Octopus,” which describes Danny Casolaro and other reporters who covered the same topics I did and were murdered for it.

The information in THEY KNEW shocked people at a point when it seemed shock could be translated into action.

That era is over, the bad guys have grown confident of their impunity — but a reckoning is brewing. Times will get worse before they get better, but you can feel righteous reprisal in the air, cutting like moonlight through the fog.

I recommend reading THEY KNEW. I cite too many censored books and murdered journalists to suggest otherwise.

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THEY KNEW is a hard book to describe:

The basic premise is that conspiracy theories are on the rise because officials refuse to enforce accountability for real conspiracies.

I explain the difference between a conspiracy (a secret plot by powerful actors working against the public good), a conspiracy theory (a neutral term denoting an interpretation of the conspiracy based on the information available, which is limited due to the conspiracy’s obscured nature), and a weaponized conspiracy theory (propaganda and hateful lies dressed up as “conspiracy theory” in order to stigmatize the search for truth; Alex Jones is a perpetrator of this method.)

I also discuss many actual conspiracies, focusing on 1980s operatives who created the world we live in today. In that sense, THEY KNEW is a sequel to HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT, which describes Donald Trump’s rise to power in conjunction with the corruption of American institutions from the 1970s onward.

But THEY KNEW is weirder. Weirdness, like poetry, is an excellent weapon in times of censorship. You should learn it for the years to come.

In THEY KNEW, you’ll get questions. I’m extremely in favor of questions and wish people would stop demonizing those asking them. That demonization leads to conformity, which leads to complacency — and in times of extreme danger, complacency is complicity.

Everything in THEY KNEW is true and meticulously cited. My books, unsurprisingly, have to undergo a very rigorous legal review.

THEY KNEW sticks to facts and revives inquiries, but don’t expect easy answers. This is real life, and real life has dead ends. It has detours and disruptions and deaths. Stories were killed along with the people who told them. I try to do the victims justice: the tellers, and the tales.

THEY KNEW is a history book about the future.

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Here is a chapter-by-chapter description:

1) Deaths of Deception. I wrote this chapter when Delta covid was sweeping Missouri as the Biden administration proclaimed the pandemic over. It was also becoming clear then that Trump and his crime cohort would face no meaningful consequences. I was tired of writing about both topics — and given the impending backlash, wary of 2022 censorship — so I wrote around them. I told the story of Norman Baker, a Depression-era demagogue politician, and radio host who conned Americans to death while peddling a fake treatment for cancer, and then hiding the corpses in what is now a haunted Arkansas hotel.

2) Theories of Conspiracy. This chapter lays out the theoretical points on conspiracy versus conspiracy theories.

3) Epstein Wasn’t the First. I wrote about Jeffrey Epstein in HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT in 2019, before he was arrested or (allegedly) committed suicide, because he is a key figure in a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government. I had to rewrite that book quickly in the summer of 2019 as those events transpired.

Because of space considerations, I had to omit a disturbing story I had long wanted to tell: Epstein’s predecessor, Craig Spence, who ran a child trafficking and blackmail network similar to Epstein’s, was given puff pieces in the press like Epstein and then was ignored by the press like Epstein, and got arrested and died shortly after in a mysterious “suicide” like Epstein. Like Epstein, he was connected to multiple governments and intelligence agencies. Spence was also connected to the Franklin scandal, another trafficking operation often written off as a myth, but unfortunately is real. (You can watch an interview with me on that here.) Many tied to Spence’s activities are still involved in politics today.

This chapter also discusses the operatives surrounding Epstein, like Robert Maxwell, the Israeli super-spy father of Ghislaine Maxwell who also happened to be the best friend and legal client of Samuel Pisar, the stepfather of Secretary of State Antony Blinken. [Insert your favorite George Carlin quote here.]

4) The Cult of the Criminal Elite. This chapter continues the revelations from chapter three, discussing Bill Barr, Robert Mueller, and other career cover-up artists. It also discusses QAnon and “preemptive narrative inversion”: the way powerful actors will create a mythology so ludicrous that serious and real conspiracies are dismissed by association.

5) Savior Syndrome and Normalcy Bias. This chapter discusses the cults of bureaucratic saviors that sprang up during the Trump years — QAnon and the “Mueller Is Coming” DOJ worship cult — and their respective threats to American civic life. It also discusses “normalcy bias”: the belief that if a problem were real and serious, officials would promptly intervene to stop it. This is a dangerous assumption. The belief that the worst is impossible is often what ensures it happens.

This chapter also discusses climate change, which Exxon framed as a conspiracy theory in the 1980s to thwart serious inquiry. It then goes into the rise of the evangelical movement in the Reagan era, how they sought and still seek the end of the world, and how their greatest partners lie in extremists in or supporting the Israeli government. This is a very relevant chapter to reread in light of the fanatical Kahanists in the Netanyahu administration and their backers abroad. Some of their worst plans, like their desire to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque, are outlined here. This was the chapter I least wanted to come true, but at least it tells you what to beware.

6) Memory-Holing a Coup. This chapter was very controversial in 2022-2023 because of the false belief that Joe Biden and Merrick Garland were going to hold Trump accountable for his many crimes, including the attempted coup. (Here is why Garland did not and instead enabled Trump; it has to do with his lifelong best friend, Jared Kushner’s lawyer.) My warning about DOJ inaction is no longer controversial, which is unfortunate. It’s safe to read THEY KNEW now, for all the wrong reasons.

This chapter also discusses digital media, the erasure of history, and how predictable tragedies are cloaked in lies of “no one could have imagined this was possible.” Yes, I use 9/11 as an example, and yes, there is a mention of an X-Files spinoff series, and no, I will not apologize for either. I also discuss “Deja News”, a term I coined to discuss repeated reporting on a well-documented phenomenon as if it were brand-new information. This is the main way the media operated, back when we had a media.

7) America Is Purple, Like a Bruise. This is the chapter closest to my heart. I discuss how oligarchs and plutocrats plan to strip the US down and sell it for parts, and how they exploit a false binary of “blue” and “red” America to try to achieve this goal. Their tactics have only gotten more dangerous since I wrote THEY KNEW. I discuss what secession and dissolution would actually look like using examples from around the world, and the particular pain of raising children in the center of a country its own rulers wish to collapse.

8) The Octopus. This chapter discusses people investigating serious government conspiracies who were murdered for doing so, including journalist Danny Casolaro and artist Mark Lombardi. It also discusses books censored by the US government that became bestsellers, like Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks’ THE CIA AND THE CULT OF INTELLIGENCE.

Finally, it discusses the Meyer Lansky syndicate, its connection to Trump’s mentor Roy Cohn, and the Kefauver hearings of the early 1950s. The Kefauver hearings were America’s first Must-See TV event. They confirmed what many suspected: the country is dominated by organized crime. I describe why certain mobsters, like Lansky, escaped punishment, while others became the public face of the mafia.

I discuss the fleeting moments when it seemed things could change. This is the chapter on “Anomalous Eras of American Accountability” and how they end.

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There is a lot more, so if you’re wondering if I omitted something, I suggest picking up the book and seeing if it’s in there already. I was getting so many threats while I wrote THEY KNEW that I assumed it would be my last book, either because of censorship or…other reasons. I decided to pack a lot in.

But THEY KNEW was not the final word. I signed another two-book deal with Flatiron in 2022, and my next book, THE LAST AMERICAN ROAD TRIP, comes out in March 2025. THE LAST AMERICAN ROAD TRIP is the heartfelt journey of an American family driving through their homeland, visiting classic destinations like Route 66, national parks, and the Mena, Arkansas airport used by Iran-Contra drug runners. You know, the usual stuff.

Thank you for reading this summary! You can read an excerpt of THEY KNEW in Vanity Fair here. And since I oppose paywalls, here are some FREE excerpts below!

But first, a note about this newsletter — because I refuse to paywall in times of peril, my newsletter is supported entirely by voluntary paid subscribers. If you like my writing, please consider a paid subscription, as it is what pays my bills.

And onto THEY KNEW! Hey look, the first excerpt is about paywalls being bad:

"There is no longer a public sphere, but there is a public flat earth.”

“The New Civil War is being fought so that you will forget that the Old Cold War ended as a corporate merger.”

“The world is a white Bronco and the highway never ends.”

“Impunity, the sadist’s conception of freedom, mainstreamed and marketed as the new American Dream.”