Transcripts For CSPAN3 Brett 20240704

Looking at corruption and match fixing in the world of football, soccer. To many of you here, an article on the subject, even resulting in the inspiration for a simpsons episode. Surely the pinnacle of anyones career. He is a National Security reporter for the wall street journal, where hes invested. Get to work often focuses on the former soviet union. His new book centers on a Young American missing in russia. Was it a personal quest gone wrong or related to his work for the fbi . First will be in conversation with susan glasser. Glasser is a staff writer for the new yorker and the author of its weekly letter from trumps washington, as well as the cnn Global Affairs analysis. So please join me in welcoming Brett Forrest and susan glasser. So. Well. Thank you so much. Can you guys hear me . Yes or no . I think its on. On. All right. Im going to do this up. All right. What about this . Yes, this is better. Okay. Well, thank you so much. I have to say, i am delighted to be here with brett because it is a terrific book. You know, i can shamelessly hock it since, you know, thats not really as appropriate for him. But i can tell you that it is just an incredible yarn and most importantly, a real feat of reporting. It is also a nice break on a friday night. Ive just come from reading that 44 page indictment and lets just say the thing speaks for itself. Although i do recommend maybe you take a read yourselves. Brett im really delighted to be with you. Your book, lost son an American Family trapped inside the fbi secret wars. This is this is a rich book filled with a lot of different subjects. Its about russia. Its about ukraine. Its about the fbi. Its about a detective story. Its about this one sort of lost soul. This character, billy riley, and i think we should start with with with the human piece of this, because people are always interested to peel back the curtain a little bit. And what we journalists do. You are clearly a fearsome investigate a reporter. And yet i think in some ways it must have been this personal story of this young man that kind of captured your attention. Tell us why, billy riley, why you told this story. Well, first of all, susan, thank you for graciously hosting this event. And and and to politics and prose for doing likewise and for everyone whos come tonight. Yeah, its i when i first heard of this story, i immediately saw its narrative potential because i saw that that it was a it was a story about big institutions, major geopolitical events. But at its heart, it was a story about one person, a young man, who was trying to find his way in the world, in the post911 world. And he, billy riley, was really for me, a bridge between the global war on terror and the war in ukraine. Well, i expand on that a little bit, because its a kind of a provocative thought. Right. You know, the war in ukraine, i think for many americans, part of this is a chronology issue. Right . For many americans, the war in ukraine began on february 24th of last year. But in ukraine, thats not how they see it, is it . Thats right. And you know, from your experience in that part of the world, the the reality the truth is that this war began in 2014, of course. And. Billy riley was attracted immediately to that event. And a year later, he found himself in russia directly in connection to russias war efforts in ukraine. But the way i look at it is that billy, who became in starting in 2010, confidential human source for the fbi, billy began working in counterterrorism for the fbi excuse me. But then he his interests ultimately widened and broadened and and then he started working on on issues related to the war in ukraine for the fbi. So it was sort of a continuum. Well, and i think one of the things that one of the themes that clearly leaves out to me is that were living in this, you know, sort of age of of online activation, and were all, you know, familiar with the stories of, you know, how that can radicalize people, you know, whether the cause is, you know, radical islamic terrorism or whether its, you know, a sort of right wing russian nationalism, you know, that there are so many different ways in that his story is also a story about that, that it wouldnt be possible in the pre 911 preinternet, pre social media era. Yeah, well, when i first heard about this story, i thought, i thought that it had shaped of into the wild world readers here we know that book by jon krakauer about a young man who was idealistically following his dreams and into something that he couldnt really handle. Ultimately. But. But billy story had shades of that. But also with technology, because billy was in high school when 911 happened and he was immediately drawn to global conflict, to world religions, to foreign languages. And he was able to to follow these interests online because he was he was in adolescence at the same time that the internet itself was in an adolescence, social media was just developing. And so these two forces came together and they enabled billy to to teach himself russian and teach himself arabic, just in his own home, on his computer, on his phone, and also develop a real expertise, specifically in the middle east, just following his own personal interests. And then ultimately, the thing that led him to the fbi was his ability through the internet to Contact People who were living lives of great stakes internationally. Here was a kid living in oxford, michigan, just north of detroit, a pretty slow paced life. And he wanted his life to matter. Okay. But i have to say that i came away thinking like i wasnt sure that the fbi had any business. You recruiting this young man and and and working with him and that thats part of your story that youre telling here is both the incredible almost metastasis zation, not only of online threats in this post911 world, but also of our security apparatus, the fbi itself. And i think it raises some real questions. Im curious whether, you know, you answered a lot of questions in this book, but whether your own, you know, qualms which do come through about whether whether this kid, billy, should have even been working with the fbi. Thats a very good question. But the thing is, after 911, we all remember that time period, right . The frenzy for answers and for information. And it was the fbis responsibility to come up with information and intelligence and mandated by capitol hill and the administration, the fbi really changed from being simply a Law Enforcement body that was charged with collecting evidence that could be used in court in federal cases to an Intelligence Agency that was working really beyond doj in many cases, to short circuit, principally terrorist conspiracy. So in that effort, the fbi created something called the confidential human source reengineering project, which gathered all of its informants into one group, but also started recruiting new people, like people like billy, who are rank amateurs and bringing them into professional intelligence, people who had special skills. I remember when i said he he he taught himself arabic and russian to a pretty capable degree. He knew the players in the middle east. He knew different terror groups and his internet traffic attracted the fbi to his door and when they learned about his skills and abilities, they said, you know, why dont you do it for us . But back to your question. Was that something the fbi should have been doing. See, thats a question, though. Youre you know, youre answering my question with a question. I hate you. I dont want to get ahead of ourselves. And i should say that were not going to be doing any spoiler alert, because this is also, you know, a mystery, a reporters journey to try to answer. One familys kind of very agonized question about what happened to their son who disappears into russia. But so without any spoilers, i do think that you know, people here might want to understand a little bit of the basics of, you know, billy and why you ended up, you know, devoting so much of your own life to his story. Because basically, we know at this point in our conversation, he an fbi informant, that hes a kid who has been sort of activated in some way by 911. But why russia . You know, how does he how does he end up in russia . And how does that connect to the some of the very disparate things that youve done as a journalist . Right. Well, he was he worked for the fbi for five years, starting in 2010, just as he was coming out of college. And he he was working mostly in counterterrorism for for the fbi office in detroit. He started out simply filing reports as the arab spring was beginning and as isis emerged in the world and became a priority for u. S. Intelligence and Law Enforcement and counterterrorism. But he graduated to doing field work around detroit and and his his handlers were directing him toward investigative targets around detroit. Again, mostly connected to counterterrorism. But in 2014, when the war broke out and in donbass, after russias annexation of crimea, many of us, of course, remember the downing of mh 17, the malaysian airliner over Eastern Ukraine, and thats when thats really when his interest in the war in ukraine began because his fbi handler directed him to that event to try and figure out all he could about it online. From that moment on, billys attention was really focused on on events between russia and ukraine. Did he have a bias or a preference or, you know, what was what was he getting out of this . Did he have a point of view in in this conflict . Well, billy was really, i guess, the simplest way to say is he was an iconoclast, because billy was of european descent, born and raised in michigan, a catholic went to Catholic High School and after 911, he became so fascinated by all of those important issues that a year after 911, he converted to islam and he could be seen at the back of the classroom in Catholic School reading the koran. So he was lets just say he made he made some choices that would maybe surprise people who knew him. People. I mean, these are not traditional choices. Lets say when it came to the war in ukraine. You know, billy was billy was really interested in finding information that other people werent looking for. You know, after 911, he didnt accept the explanations of the terrorist attacks that were that were being sent out. But sort of traditional news media. He didnt you know, he didnt really believe that islam was to blame. And he looked more deeply into the issues. So when the war in ukraine broke out, i think he took the same approach. You know, he applied it to trying to figure out, you know, whats whats behind what everybodys saying. And there i think he got into a bit of a shadow area. And i think he was a little bit the beguiled, lets say, by some information that was coming out of russia. Yeah, well, i mean, i think youre being very sort of gentle, but i have to say, just as an outside reader, you know, you have the perspective here of somebody who is prone to conspiracy theories, who is activated, who has very little actual grounding in his subjects is, you know, being used by the u. S. Government to do things. He have no real idea is very prey and susceptible to misinformation, to, as you said, you know, russian cover stories. And that was what was astonishing to me is that, you know, we can all and sort of envision this. And its clearly something thats thats greatly affecting our politics here in the United States, as well as in or nationally. And yet then it goes from the virtual to the actual. This guy shows up in russia and you start out with this very to me, a very compelling image. Again, because we can all see it of this sort of clueless Young American guy in a train station in moscow. I know it well. And you know, there hes going to meet his contacts, you know, who are going to supposedly sweep him off to fight with the prorussian separatists in Eastern Ukraine. And theyre these hardened, you know, killers, these militia. And a picture is snapped of him, you know, he seems like like like, you know, theyre almost a caricature of, you know, the foolish Young American abroad. And what is he doing . Hes pulling his black really back suitcase. He doesnt seem like hes somebody whos ready to go fight with you know, deadly russian militants. Certainly not in the suitcase, really, as something that is quite interesting. Right . Right. A few people, i think, would seriously go to war with with one of those. Definitely not in my experience, russian paramilitary. Right. Right. This wasnt a carry on and this is something you got to check. So also, never bring checked baggage to a war. I mean, lets be clear. Right. Right. I you know, i mean, i. Okay, its true. I might i might be charitable to billy, but because i you know, hes hes a fascinating character or to me, its very hard to understand exactly what hes thinking. And also the fact that hes working for the fbi is something that you can never escape because you never really know the full truth of the relationship and what theyre telling him, what theyre directing him to do, what theyre suggesting. Now, you know, ive read hundreds and hundreds of pages of fbi manuals, specifically related to how agents are instructed to target, recruit and handle confidants, all human sources. And theres a lot of stuff in these manuals that that really make you question their intentions. And i just think of a guileless person like billy. He was 23 when he was recruited by the fbi. Hed never spent a night away from home alone. Hed always lived with his parents or his family being sort of, you know, romanced and recruited by the fbi. Fairly sophisticated fbi agents whove been to quantico and been through all the training. You know, i look at billy with a little sympathy because hes kind of defenseless. Yeah. No, its an incredible portrait here. And lets talk a little bit about your more broad reporting on the fbi and what you learned in the course of doing this at what it tells us about the nature of the post911 security state. You know, do you think any of this would have been possible. Before september 11th . Thats a its a great question. I mean, the thing that happened after 911, as i mentioned earlier, is that it was just an incredible expansion for the fbi, not only the fbi, but so many other Law Enforcement and intelligence agencies in the u. S. The thing you see over the the history of the fbi is you see that time and time again, agents sort of overstep and make mistakes or do things perhaps intentionally, that they shouldnt be doing that are borderline illegal. Right. And then you see congressional oversight come in, rein them in. And then very soon after, theres a new National Emergency that loose loosens those chains and actually gives the fbi more license. And 911 was the classic example because 911, of course, was was the fbis greatest failure, their responsibility among others, is counterterrorism. And to to ferret out a conspiracy against the United States domestically. And they they failed. Now, what happened after their failure . They were given even more license. The congress, the 911 commission, said that they had to make more usage of people like billy, more usage of confidential sources. So, yeah, i mean, billys im not sure that to answer your question more directly, i dont think it would have been possible before 911. Its after 911. The whole thing just expanded to another degree. Well, one of the things i appreciate, actually, about this story is that its out of the current context in which theres so much, you know, overheated and sort of partizan rhetoric around the fbi and this takes us back, you know, to a previous and very consequential, you know, moment in fbi history. And i, i appreciate that this is a sort of ideology free, you know, kind of telling of something that that mattered regardless of, you know, any individuals political career. But do you think that there was i mean, the politics of this really cut both ways in the end, both democratic and republican politicians ended up supporting things like the usa patriot act because, you know, they felt that it was politically impossible, probably not to. Yeah. Well, i appreciate you noticing that as an ideological, ideological free zone in this book. You know, i mean, this article, this this book grew out of an article at the wall street journal where, you know, thats thats our focus. You know, just gathering the facts and synthesizing them and and putting them out there. And i and i hope that the book is in the same spirit as written in the same spirit. Yeah. I mean, this is these are these are consequential issues that that i think demand constant scrutiny because the fbi time and again, even though there is an apparatus for oversight on capitol hill, you know, they just slip out of it time and again. Even in this case. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about, you know, the efforts to, you know, sort of interact with them as youre trying to unravel this story. I mean, i think thats an interesting aspect of the story, is, you know, youre trying to get information from the people who have a great incentive, of course, not to give it to you once things go sour for 4 billion and for his family, we havent talked about his family, but i do i suspect that it was also your empathy for his for his parents and whove, you know, sort of lost this son that informs why you chose to spend so much time unraveling the tale. Yeah, i think that, you know, at its best, what we do for a living journalism, it performs a public service. And not to get too high and mighty here, but i think thats true. And and when i met the rileys, billys parents, terry and bill riley, i saw people who had spent two years plus trying to find their son, and they were out of options and they needed help. And having lived in russia, having lived in ukraine, having worked in those countries for a considerable amount of time, i felt like perhaps i could do something and it felt sort of like professional negligence if i were to decline, at least looking into the story, looking into the case. Yeah. I mean, what happened to the rileys . And again, not to give away the ending of the book, but, you know, they they they they went through an experience that was sort of a combination of an investigative project for them, grief and a having lost contact with their son and then and then rage at the Us Government because they, they discovered evidence that the fbi was lying to them about its foreknowledge of billys trip to russia and his activities there. And they felt like the fbi and perhaps other parts of the u. S. Government were actually thwarting their efforts to find their son. So it was it was for me, it was a little bit irresistible. And did you end up ultimately agreeing with them that that the fbi was sort of not being fully forthcoming, not not telling the truth, fear of being an obstacle to finding this Young American . I did because i saw the same evidence. Now. Now, mind you, im not into fbi. Ive written about the fbi off and on over the years, and. And ive met, you know, good, professional agents around the world working for the fbi who are mindful of the responsibility they carry. But its also a big organization. Its a lot of people work there and ive also written about cases where they sort of bungled things and ive come into contact with agents who are of less quality and less responsible. Do they respond to your reporting at all in this . Oh, i made visits. You know, its our policy, of course, at the journal before we publish something to be forthright with, with our the people who write, were writing about the agencies were writing about and businesses and such. And i, i gave the fbi a fair opportunity. I handed them more than 100 questions before the article published. And they didnt answer any of them. They gave me one single line which said that they had not sent billy to russia. One single line that contains multitudes. I want to make sure before we get to the audience questions actually, that we talk a little bit more about the the russia and ukraine aspects of of your reporting. First of all, one thing that struck me was that, you know, a lot of this you were able to do, you know, in reporting in 2019 and 2020. So both before the pandemic and before the full scale russian invasion of ukraine, you wouldnt have been able to tell billys story had you started working on it later. Thats a thats a great point. Thats something that billys parents and i sometimes talk about, like our efforts to answer these fundamental questions. Yeah, its the timing was was i dont know what you can say. Perfect. You know, i started on the story the first time i heard about it was december 2017. And so i worked on it throughout 18. And then 19, and we published the original article in 2019. Yeah, and youre right, very soon after the pandemic hit, and that would have made it virtually impossible to do the work and then practically impossible after last years invasion. Yeah. So, i mean, you already knew a lot. Obviously, youd reported for a long time in the former soviet union and in the region. But im curious, did you in hindsight, did you learn anything in your reporting for this book that helped you to understand when the war in ukraine actually broke out . Like, you know, for me, it was illuminating to sort of see the pipeline at work in moscow sending these fighters directly into the conflict in Eastern Ukraine. We like to pretend here in the u. S. At that time it was convenient to pretend that it was sort of not a real war, a frozen more in in ukraine and maybe some of you remember the first impeachment of donald trump. And there was, you know, the testimony by the former ambassador, u. S. Ambassador to ukraine, bill taylor. And remember how he gets up and he reads this really powerful opening statement. He talks about this is an actual war and people are fighting every day and ukrainians are getting killed. And so for me, it was very interesting that youre doing your reporting kind of at this moment in time when we here in washington are largely, you know, forgetting about the war and pretending that it doesnt really exist. And yet you establish almost incidentally, a kind of very direct pipeline from moscow itself and a level of command and control as well by russian and state agencies and the fsb, the gru, who are clearly present and hands on in the conflict. Yeah, because you remember, as im sure many of us do, that in 2014 when war broke out in Eastern Ukraine, the question was, who are these guys . Theyre theyre the famous little green men in crimea. They were the little green men who were, you know, actual soldiers and intelligence agents from from the russian state. But then there were locals in Eastern Ukraine and and the line from the kremlin was, well, these are these are folks who are fighting for their rights, you know, against the sort of, quote unquote, nazi regime in kiev. And what i learned, or at least sort of underlined in my reporting, was that, you know, this was a very deliberate effort from moscow. And there were, of course, the two sort of socalled republics in donetsk and lugansk in Eastern Ukraine that sprouted up and what i what i learned digging deeply into this is that there were the sort of intelligence bodies. In these two socalled republics, but these were these were russian agents. And they took their their orders from russia. And one of the things we were able to figure out or discover in the course of the reporting was a hacks database of social media messages between a host of these people, which just, you know, think about these types of folks speaking in a way that they think will forever be private. And suddenly its leaked. So they were speaking frankly with one another about their plans, their intentions, you know, sort of bad things they were doing. And it just, you know, just blows the lid off any any kind of contention that it was, you know, sort of revolution from within. Yeah. You know, its interesting. I remember reading a few years ago that you in when it came to like a divorce cases in the us Something Like you know 90 or more of them included, you know, Facebook Messages and other social media people just cant help themselves. And i thought of that actually while reading, you know, about these these leaked messages from vkontakte, which is a leading russian social media site. And its like, you know, like the same thing is true, not just in divorce cases, but the gangsters and the you know, the fighters and whatever. They cant stop themselves. They just. Yeah, its too seductive to put it all in messaging, although in credibly difficult to decode it and i think thats where your reporting came in. Now, you then went back for the wall street journal and you were reporting last year in ukraine after the beginning of the invasion, including being one of the first outside reporters from anywhere to go and to start to uncover the horrific war crimes in buka outside kiev. Im wondering, you know, how much you felt like you were dealing with a sort of chronicle of a disaster foretold . I mean, just, you know, its one thing, right . We knew intellectually that russia was had a long history of this kind of human rights abuses. But, you know, tell us a little bit about what it was like to actually do that reporting. Yeah. So i was in in kiev with a few colleagues from the wall street journal on on february 24th last year, when when the war began, or at least when the wider invasion took place and i you know, i didnt i didnt think that putin was going to do it because i just didnt think it was in russias national interest. And i found it to be, you know, was a folly. And so when it happened, i was very surprised. But we had to get word to get to work very quickly and of course, we were very busy. The appetite for information was, you know, was very high. And then youre right about i guess it was maybe five or six weeks later when russia pulled out its troops from around kiev and just by happenstance of timing, i happened drive into butcher square the day after that and nobody knew what had happened there. And, you know, i, i persuaded the the the head of the militia to to give me a couple of his guys to drive around. They said, you know, its not safe. The russians had trapped a lot of the town. But but it was important to try and figure out what had taken place. And yeah, it was it was as raw as you can imagine. The ukrainian authorities hadnt had time to to address the situation. As many of you probably know, there were hundreds of civilians fatalities there. You know, Russian Troops that had murdered many, many ukrainian citizens. What was your first indication as you were driving into butcher that something really awful had happened there . Like, you know, was there a moment thats that you remember . Well, i think there were two moments. One was just the sort of the the the carnage of of Armored Vehicles that had just been, you know, exploded. There were so many of them. Id never seen anything like that and were you realize youre getting close to something very serious. And then the other thing was, i mean, i hesitate to share a lot of the details of things i saw there because theyre, you know, theyre just it was just very gory. But ill ill share one and ill try and describe it adequately. But, you know, i was driving around that that in those first moments in butcher with a couple guys from the the militia tower over on and we stopped and we got out and they said, hey, look at this and and it was just, you know, it was it was a part of a leg from the knee down with the shoe on and then, you know, and then they said, look over there. And about a hundred yards away, there was an identical just the other the other like and it was like that all over town. And if you remember those that first day, i mean, nobody had ever heard of butcher unless you really knew kiev well and you knew what kind of place it was. The word butcher wasnt yet a sort of International Word and or an internationally known one. So it was kind of an experience where you, you know, you cant prepare yourself for that. But during that first day, i as i collected these images in my mind, it sort of hit me like, okay, what im looking at here, these are atrocities. And once i understood that, you know, i understood the importance of getting to work and finding survivors and getting their information from them as quickly as possible. And and filing something as quickly as possible to get it into our pipeline to get it to our readers, because it was that important. Yeah, i know what youre describing is literally the the essence of foreign correspondents. And its interesting because, of course, youre an investigative reporter. And this this book is a work of long term investigative reporting, not not breaking news, investigative reporting. But i just i, i appreciate you sharing that story because i think that, you know, these are not unconnected things, even though your book doesnt deal with with the scale of that. And right now, im curious what you think just this week, obviously, weve seen another kind of atrocity in ukraine, which is the destruction of a major civilian dam, a huge, enormous catastrophic flooding. And the beginning of this sort of long heralded counteroffensive, which we dont know what the what the outcome will be, what what is your sense of, you know, how long ukraine can can hold out against russia . How successful they can be . Im sure youre sort of bracing for the concept of if there are further liberated territories in this counteroffensive. I think many now expect that there will be future butchers that will be uncovered, that its part the russian way of war. Yeah, well, i just think that butcher is the face of this war. You know, we know that. We know that russia has targeted civilians throughout the war intentionally and also unintentionally, with a lot of unguided missiles that have, you know, hit apartment buildings. But theyve also, you know, theyve targeted civilians on purpose, you know, at the dam of course, was, as you mentioned, just another terrible thing that we know. We think we think russia perpetrated and, you know, i think, you know, like let me let me share this. Nato. So i was having lunch recently in washington with a russian man and he said we were talking about butcher. And he said, yeah, you know, all wars are terrible. I said, thats not the point. The point is that this war is terrible and that russia invaded ukraine unprovoked. That is the truth. And its important not to lose sight of that. One one other thing, among many things that i learned during my coverage of the war in ukraine is that and this is sort of a personal conclusion and is that, you know, history is is is for more than just reading. I dont know if that that grabs you like i felt like i was living through a historical event and that doesnt often happen. Well, thats a thats a good way of putting it. You know, i want to invite the audience to get up and start. Think of questions you want to ask brett as well. And i will while youre doing that, im going to ask you one which is about you. This is a book about a lost son, about a missing person. I you know, im sure many of us i certainly have been thinking about another lost son in the last few weeks. And thats your colleague from the wall street journal, evan gursky. What can you tell us . Are there any prospects, as far as youve heard, for getting him released . What do you think about that case . Im so glad you mentioned him. You know, when he when he was detained by russian authorities among the many thought i had was the understanding over time, well all start to forget about him. So its so important to to keep him front and center for many reasons. But especially for for those of us who report on russia. You know, it could have it could have been any of us, quite frankly. I mean, weve all been in similar situations. Your book literally, actually includes an example where youre pulled in at an airport in russia for questioning by what is clearly a nonuniformed intelligence officer. That could have been the moment that it went badly for you. Right. Right. So. We all have great sympathy for evan. And what can i tell you . I mean, i cant tell you much. I you know, im not privy to to all that. All i can say is that, you know, the russian Authorities Say that the case is proceeding as should through their legal system. And, you know, we dont know their their ultimate goal here. Well, its something worth worth remembering. And ive noticed that you and your colleagues have mounted a very aggressive social Media Campaign and that the journal has done a lot to keep the visibility up on this case, which seems to be part of the strategy here. So, yeah, of course. I mean, hes we dont we dont have any idea how long its going to take. And and, you know, i just i wrote a story with a couple of colleagues a little while ago about the efforts of a prison in moscow to the trial detention center, where evan is being held. And i learned a lot about conditions there. And, you know, the cell where hes kept, where all the prisoners are, captors, as you can imagine, quite small. And hes there, you know, pretty much 23 hours a day. And i just often i find myself when im going about my normal life, just thinking of him sitting there, sitting there and probably, you know, he has moments where he thinks hes been forgotten. Well, its pretty powerful. I know. I was speaking with another colleague. You know, of course, many of evans friends who are fellow moscow correspondents with him now in exile. You know, ive been thinking about and they were telling me that actually the russian penal system has become oddly high tech in some ways. And so you actually can pay money to send an email letter to evan. And im told that he has been answering some of those. Is that right . Well, if you go an easy way to figure out is if you go on our site, youll see some sort of logistical tips that will help you write right to evan and i cant imagine it just must be so valuable to him to receive those missives from people. Well, thats right. Its a good reminder. So im sure if any of you are interested in writing a letter to evan, which i bet it would mean something to him. So were going to go to the questions now. We do have cspan with us, so please make sure you identify yourself and make it a question if you can. My name is bob carr, just a patron of the bookstore. This incident reminds me of this episode in iran, where apparently a cia agent was sent to iran by people who were not authorized to authorize a mission to iran and any similarities or differences or i think thanks for the question youre talking about the Robert Levinson case, i believe, right . He disappeared completely right. I believe so, yes. I mean, i know that initially there were some images of him sent back to his. But its been many years now. Yes. So its a good question. The difference i think, between the bob levinson case and the billy riley case is that bob levinson was actually you know, hed been an fbi agent, whereas billy was a confidential human source. He was not he didnt have the training. You know, he wasnt he was a freelancer. He was one of these people sort of scooped up by the fbi and and discarded at their leisure. So its a little different, you hot carry thermal. Can you hear me . Yeah. Thank you. Kenneth summer, a global nomad. I was wondering if you saw any similarities between billy and his journey. This is during the digital age and john walker lindh, the american taliban, who also was young, interested islam, went over there in a xenophobic america. Yeah, thats a good i think also youre getting into maybe a deeper point, which is that such things happen from time to time. Right. That maybe this isnt such an isolated case. But i would say the difference here is that, billy, you know, billy never expressed an interest to take up arms for russian interests. He his interest seemed to be more academic, if you will, on one hand. And on the other hand, sort of he lusted for adventure. You know, this was someone he was 28 years old, had always lived with his parents, had his life had really been consumed by the phone and the computer. And i think he was more interested in sort of finally seeing the world rather than becoming a militant. All right. Do we have some more questions. Thank you. Hello, im charmaine. Im a government attorney, so throughout the book, you kind of touch on, you know, the steps of your investigation. So im curious of during investigation, there were any moments where you really wanted to give up and what made you keep going . Good question. You make your. Yeah, i mean, i dont think there were any moments when i when i contemplated throwing in the towel just because the story was always for me, such a big one. There were times when when i realized that again, remember that the story was initially an article for the newspaper. Because because i knew i knew that my editors had certain requirements. So i wasnt the one who was going to be able to decide when it could publish. So i knew that we were going to have to cross some, you know, surmount some bar in the reporting. We were actually going to have to find out what happened to them. And that was a big request. So, yeah, i mean, there were many times when i thought, this feels impossible. John corrigan. Wall street journal. Brett, can you tell us what was the biggest the better be a tough one. Softball, please. What what do you think was the biggest reporting challenge in reporting out the book . What was the biggest challenge you faced . Well, the fundamentally the biggest challenge was the one i just mentioned, which is figuring out where billy was. You know, where was this lost son . Hed been gone by the time i learned of his case, he had been gone. Two and a half years. By the way, i should say were not offering spoiler alerts here, but i can tell you that the book does end with some conclusions. I was i was a little nervous there. You handled it well. All right. I promised brett i wasnt going to be spoiling anything, so. Yeah, so that was the biggest challenge. But it there were there were lots of sort of like 1b1c challenges. And among those was the fact this involved the fbi and having worked on fbi stories, the fbi in the past, i knew that at the fbi was very talkative about cases that ended well. That ended and then it ended in convictions. But then when things didnt go so well, they werent so forthcoming and i just i just. You just knew that they werent going to really share anything about this case because that that that was there were sort of two questions. Where is he . And was how was the fbi involved . So those were two very difficult questions to answer. It looks like they one high cindy, policy geek, avid reader. Im curious if you can talk a little bit about your relationship with the family just in terms of as you were doing this research as well as how theyve responded to the publication of the book . Thats a great question. If only its important not to lose sight of them and their struggle. You know, i mentioned well, i had a book party recently and i mentioned this and ill just reiterate it that, you know, as reporters, as journalists, especially when youre doing this sort of work, we often meet people at the worst of their lives, and its our duty to persuade them to let us in. And terry and bill riley, billys parents, they did let me in. And i will always be grateful to them. And they they needed help and they didnt they didnt hold anything back. You know, they gave me all kinds of material, all sorts of time. I got to know them very well. Now, the publication of the book, i think for them its you know, you have to manage just very, very difficult. Very difficult because it causes them, i think, as the article did a couple of years ago, it causes them to relive the events. But yeah, we became we became very close. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Well, i think thats probably all the questions we have. And brett, i want to thank you. No, we have one more. All leave breaking question. Hes going to be a so the question is, you were telling that you are not against fbi, but because you worked so much, you wrote so much about them. Did you felt that they some of their representatives were not so happy about you writing this book . I did. You feel it in some of the ways. Strange knocks on the door the middle of the night that. Well, you know, i, i mean, i tried to figure out how to answer this one. Listen, soon enough. Oh, you know, i gave up that fear of being listened to many years ago. You know, after adventures around to different places, but, yeah, you know, i knew that the fbi wasnt pleased about our interests in this case, and i knew that the fbi, i. Well, let me say this, too, because an interesting thing sort of happened once once i approached the fbi when i was pretty far into the reporting, they they probably heard about what we were doing. But at some point, it was the time to to request a meeting, go into headquarters and talk to them and not long after that initial meeting, the riley family received a call from the fbi and the fbi for a long time had held them at arms length. And that a lot of this is explained in the book. But the fbi starts having many conversations and meetings with the rileys after having shut them out. And when it and the rileys are trying to figure out why are they talking to us now . And the fbi sort of promising them new information about billy. And theyre not really providing it. And when it all sort of gets boiled down, the family realizes that the only reason the fbi reached out to them is to try and convince the family to persuade me not to write the article. Very cynical. Well, and thats, i guess, quite a note to end it on. Brett, i really want to thank you because this really is it is a terrific and really, really difficult piece of reporting. You know, its not all journalists could could have pursued this story and gotten the answers that you got. And im afraid that would include me, too, so seriously. And its its really its. Well written. Its a gripping read. Congratulations on it. And you know, thank you for sharing your time with us today. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good evening. Im tony clark from the carter library. Im really glad you all are here because i think this is going to be a fascinating evening because in