Trapped Inside the FBI's Secret Wars with Brett Forrest

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1:58wherever you get your podcast, and leave us a review. We all love a review, even the bad ones. I want to hear the parts you're enjoying or how we can do better. You know, I can roll with the punches, so let me know. Anyways, let's get to it.

2:17As you'll hear later on in the show, today's story is a personal one for me. I wish I could have helped the Rileys more in the fight to find their son, Billy. I'm glad Brett has told Billy's story in his new book, Lost Son. There's a coming of age, loss, world conflict, exploitation. It's an emotional read, but ultimately an incredibly powerful one.

2:47Joining us now on Open Book is Brett Forrest. He's a reporter at the Wall Street Journal, has written an incredible book. There's a tragedy in this book, obviously, but it's also a painful exposition of what does go on in the geopolitical realm. The title of the book is Lost Son, An American Family Trapped Inside the FBI's Secret Wars. So, Brad, I don't want to give away the plot. I'm going to talk very generically about the book. It's great to have you on. I have a minor role in this book, and you and I have talked about it, so we'll just fully disclose that to my viewers and listeners. This is a story, again, the general plot is a son goes missing in Moscow and the family can't get any information out of his former employer or the current employer, the FBI.

3:34And they're standing outside of Fox News one day. I'm walking in. I'm part of President Trump's executive transition team. And they approached me and asked me if I could be of some help. Unfortunately, I wasn't super helpful to them, but at least we tried. And you wrote an amazing Wall Street Journal article that you converted into this book. So let's set the scene there. This story obviously impacted you, sir. How did it impact you? And why did you turn that award-winning article into this great bestselling book? Well, Anthony, first of all, thank you very much for having me on. And I was so glad to get your invitation because I think you underplay your role, to be honest, in the resolution of this mystery.

4:13I mean, without you, I don't think it's probably fair to say it might not have happened. And I think I know that a lot of people who've read the book, when they come to your part in the book, which admittedly is brief, a lot of people stop and it's very surprising to them that this sort of fairly anonymous family from Michigan, the Riley family, whose son had worked for the FBI and went missing in Russia, that they came upon you and you enter the scene as a character and you facilitate the entry of their case directly into the incoming Trump administration. And I think that speaks to the permeability of the early Trump presidency or pre-presidency.

4:54And it also speaks to the level of desperation that the family had. They felt like they were out of options and the last thing they wanted to do was come to New York City and just try and find somebody who could help. So very pleased that you and I are speaking about this now. And I'm happy to talk about how this book became very, very personal with me. You know, it's interesting because you did, when I read the book, that word permeable came up. It made me think about it. Shouldn't the government be permeable to people like the Rileys? It should be. It should be. This is something that came to mind as I was banging on a million doors in Washington and elsewhere, were trying to get answers for this family and was repeatedly turned away just as they were, which was a little bit surprising to me, given that I was doing this on behalf of the Wall Street Journal.

5:43And, you know, often that's enough to get people to get on the phone or have a meeting with you. But in this instance, it wasn't. And, you know, the conclusion that I came to is that we often think of government as a monolith, but it's not. Government is made of people, And it's made of people who make decisions. And it's made of people, I think, who too often think about what's legal or what's going to help or hurt their careers rather than casting things on a moral scale. And that was my pursuit for the Rileys. You know, I was appealing to people's morality. He was a family that was searching for a lost son.

6:22And they were always looking, as I was, for someone with access to power who had an inclination to help them. And again, back to you, you were really the only one. Well, listen, I do think you give me a little bit too much credit, but I do appreciate you saying it. And, of course, I went into the government to serve people. So a story like that, to me, is the reason why you go into government, frankly. You want to help people and see if you can help them. Unfortunately, this is a tragic circumstance. Let's go to Billy Riley for a second. You tell such an amazing story about Billy Riley. Entice a reader.

6:58Bring somebody over the line here to go buy your book. Who is Billy Riley? And why does he get so interested in Russian and Arabic and Islam, et cetera? Well, let me backtrack. So I was in New York when 9-11 happened. And I remember the rush among journalists and writers to explain what had happened. And I remember hearing one wise person say, well, you know, you got to wait to write something for years because that's when we're really going to see the true impact. And, you know, as interesting as Billy's story is in the Russian context, it really tells us a lot about the impact of 9-11, especially on younger people, people who were like Billy in high school or around that age at the time of 9-11.

7:39I mean, this changed the direction of his life because he became fascinated at answering the question why the attacks had happened. And this led him down the road to a fascination with world religions, foreign languages and international conflicts. And that really became those those three things together became his focus going forward. You know, I'm often thinking about guys like him going to public service. There was a young kid in my town. 9-11 happened. We lost many people. He enlisted in the Army. He was killed on Route Irish from an IED as an Army Ranger. And so in many ways, he's a casualty of 9-11.

8:21You know, it just happened to happen seven or eight years after 9-11. Do you think Billy's a casualty of 9-11? I never thought about it in those terms, but I can certainly see your point. I would say that there were other factors in play for Billy. And the largest and most obvious factor, of course, is the FBI and the FBI's own struggle for its very existence after 9-11. After 9-11 was the FBI's greatest failure. Yet it gave the FBI its greatest license to expand its work abroad and to expand its usage of cooperators and informants. And its drive to recruit such people. That's how Billy got swept up and began working with the FBI.

9:02So I think, you know, Billy would not have probably gotten interested in all of these fascinating global issues without 9-11. And the FBI would not have been looking for someone who had Billy's skills were it not for those attacks. So I think his story is fascinating that it marries the big idea with the personal idea. And you see the result. Yeah, I want to ask this. I think this is something that's been troubling me. When we have confidential human sources and something happens to these confidential human sources, as a journalist or somebody who believes in the free press, what do you think should happen?

9:38How does the government handle it? And how do you think they should handle it? Well, I'm not an opponent of the FBI. I've written about FBI cases over the years and I've gotten to know some agents. And it's a bit of a mixed bag. There are some agents who are very good at their jobs and are very sharp and understand the responsibility that they carry and have a good head on their shoulders. But it's a big agency with a lot of different agents. And quite frankly, there is another subset of people who work there who maybe aren't as responsible as we might like them to be. And I think that the FBI has always worked with cooperators and informants.

10:18It's the foundation of their work. But I think we see in Billy's case and others, you know, he's not the only one who sort of disappeared or had a problem at the direction of the FBI. I think we see many times that the FBI is really beyond any kind of congressional oversight when it comes to the usage of such people. When they recruit such a person, they input them into a special computer system called the Delta system using an alphanumeric designation. So it's impossible for anyone outside the FBI even ever to know what this person has officially done for them. So there's just layers and layers of secrecy, which I think they just should be more open about.

11:01Yeah. Again, I'm trying to be coy here because this reads like a thriller. I feel like I'm reading a Daniel Silva or a Brad Thor book. And so I want people to open the book, start reading. You're going to learn a lot about the world and the intrigue in the world. And you don't, you know, the truth in this book in many ways, as the cliche is, is obviously stranger than fiction. Let's stick to Billy for a second, though. He is, him and his sister are profiled here, Katie, not in love with the war in Iraq. They feel that the war is criminal. Set the scene for us. They attend a George W. Bush rally in Detroit.

11:40Tell us what happened there. Yeah, well, this is when they were in high school and they were, you know, like so many, I mean, like all of us in high school, just sort of beginning to come of age and become aware of their surroundings and develop political opinions and all this. And, you know, they had, Billy was a couple of years older than his sister and a strong influence on her. He had, a year after the 9-11 attacks, through his personal study online, he had grown very fond of Islam. He and his sister were raised Catholic. They were of Polish and Irish descent. So Islam and the Middle East were very foreign to them, but they took to it.

12:17And a year after the attacks, Billy actually told people he had converted to their religion. Katie followed him in that conversion. And then there was this rally that you talk about. It was a political rally for George W. Bush. And when Bush came out on stage, Billy leapt up and started hurling insults at the president. He called him Hitler. even. And a man nearby took exception to that, and Billy and this guy came to blows. So Billy was really starting to develop strong opinions about the world. But he's likable, though. You never met him, right? You did the report, obviously you didn't meet him, but he comes across likable in your book.

12:58Is that a fair description? Well, you know, I mean, likability, I would leave to the reader, to be honest. Okay. He came across likable to me. I'm glad that you felt that. I mean, I think for me, my purpose is just to make sure that the reader cares enough about the main character to want to know what happened to the person. Right. And I hope that we've achieved that. So Bill and Terry, these are Billy's parents. I meet them. It's late fall. President-elect Trump has won the election. I'm in front of the Fox News headquarters. You remember that? They hand me the milk. I do. I do. Because, you know, let me tell you something.

13:40I'm a parent. So as a parent, what I would say to you, the pain on Mrs. Riley's face, Brett, is something I won't forget. And I do have children as I was only imagining and the empathy for her of feeling that loss and the uncertainty and the trauma, but the mystery, you could tell there was a lot of sleepless nights in the family. And so I do remember it because there was a plea in her eyes. You know, she was pleading to find somebody to help her, you know, and one way or the other, the family was desperate to know what was going on. Tell us about Billy's parents, Bill and Terry Riley. Well, I'll tell you, this isn't the only case of this type that I've worked on over the years.

14:23And I'll tell you one commonality they all share is that none of these families have any experience in what they're about to get into. too. The Reillies, they're just, I mean, I don't mean this in a pejorative sense. They're just regular folks, you know, regular folks from Michigan. You know, they don't speak Russian. They've never, you know, they don't have any real experience in Russia. They don't have any contacts there. This is where Billy disappeared, you know, and they don't know much about how the FBI works. They know that their son was working for the FBI, but that's about it. And suddenly, this very twisted puzzle is thrust upon them and they have to try and figure it out themselves.

15:02So basically their lives become a mixture of several impulses or emotions. I mean, they're alarmed at the disappearance of their son. They're obviously dealing with a lot of grief and sadness, but they have to get to work and they have to try and figure it out. I love your determinedness. I want to talk about you for a second, Brett. You are a, you know, I don't know if anyone's ever described you this way, but I feel like you're like the Rottweiler of journalists. You locked your teeth into the situation and you would not let go. Is that how you are in every assignment? Is this an assignment that, because of the facts that drew you in tighter?

15:40Or how would you describe yourself? I would, I mean, from the very get-go, I found something very special in this story. I mean, this case. I wasn't convinced immediately that it was a story for the Wall Street Journal because it was open-ended. And I knew that it would probably require some kind of resolution to the case in order to really to get my editors to publish it. And that was a big ask, you know, trying to find a lost FBI asset in Russia who'd been gone for a couple of years. But I felt like it was, it was worth it for many reasons, but principally because this was an opportunity to provide a service to a family that needed it, you know, and I felt like I had something to bring because I had lived in Russia for five years.

16:27I had been working in the country off and on for 15 years, and I had developed a host of contacts and friendships and knowledge of the place that I thought, you know, that I could possibly use to the Riley's advantage. And that, you know, that to me made it a special project and a special story. It wasn't just any other story. It was something where I could take an active role. You have this life experience. You traveled back and forth between Russia and Washington working on the book. You worked in both places. You lived in Russia. Tell us about the tension that we're now dealing with between Washington and Moscow and our two governments and the Russian and the American people.

17:08Well, I moved to Russia in 2002, a long time ago now, and it was a different world. Vladimir Putin was still pretty new as Russian president. He had a seeming friendship with George W. Bush, and they spent time together on Bush's Texas ranch. I'm sure you recall this very well. For our younger listeners out there, President Bush looked into Vladimir Putin's eyes and he said he could see his soul and he knew he was a good man. Never lived that one down. So, you know, I've had the good fortune, if you will, to see the evolution of the relationship, at least over those past 20 years, up close and personal.

17:44And, you know, unfortunately, it's really been a case of just devolving, if you will, relations. And that's one other thing that drew me to Billy's stories, because, you know, not only was it a story of one man's coming of age, his, you know, it wasn't just a story of a family search and my search, but it was also an opportunity to tell these larger, you know, these larger sort of geopolitical tales. and that was one that underpinned the whole thing. I mean, Billy went missing in Russia, which by that time was one of the most difficult foreign venues for any kind of U.S. intelligence or law enforcement asset.

18:26And the reason it was so difficult is because our relations had deteriorated so drastically, precipitously since 2000, really since Vladimir Putin came into office. So, the book does allow us that opportunity to explain that whole really important issue. Before we get into the last part of this podcast, I want to ask you a little bit about our state secrets, how the government keeps secrets. I want to test the theory on you and get your reaction. So I sort of feel like when we had a uniformity to our media, it was easier for the government to keep secrets. You know, the Pentagon Papers came out 50, 60 years ago, and that was a big deal.

19:02But most of the time they were able to corral and keep secrets. I mean, frankly, the mostly American public, didn't even know that FDR was paralyzed, right? They positioned him in a certain way. And now you have this massive proliferation of media, social media, every camera is a movie or radio or television studio. And I think it's becoming harder and harder for the government to use their tried old methods of suppressing things. And it's creating this whole almost, you know, we have a military industrial complex, but I feel like we have a conspiracy the industrial complex as well. Now we have this whole thing that gets ginned up because of these secrets that the government keeps, which, which are, I mean, we have this UFO controversy going on right now, and we don't know if there are UFOs or they're man-made or not man-made or woman-made, but you get the point that I'm making.

19:52Do you think we're at a point here because of social media and the world of journalism and technology where the government has to switch up their thinking about what they can and cannot suppress? Yeah. You know, I, I, I feel the same way that you do. I don't favor this trend. There's no more Walter Cronkite, is there? There's no more authority, right? And we fight about the facts, sir. So not only is there no more Walter Cronkite, you may be watching a show different than mine. And so when we go to the cocktail party, we see the facts different even. We don't have the same set of facts anymore.

20:26And it's harder for average folks to find things that are reliable, to find information that's reliable and verified just because there's such a proliferation of media outlets out there. You know, but on the flip side, I do favor greater disclosure by our government. You know, I mean, you take the FBI's evolution and it's a story of gross oversteps followed immediately by, you know, congressional hearings and the drawdown on sort of FBI ability to sort of do its work to, you know, to put the FBI in a bit of a box and then followed immediately by some new national emergency that lets the FBI out of the box again.

21:08So, you know, I think it's vitally important that we press government at all times to tell us what it's doing. So, you know, I think that competes with the conspiracy theory or conspiracy theorists out there. The more disclosure we have and the harder we work to verify what we learn, you know, I think at least we can offer an alternative to the other way thinking. Yes. Yeah. I'm with you on all this. And I do think we agree on this stuff about there's a lost innocence that we're dealing with as well. And I think it causes people stress and fear. You've written a couple of other books too. You have The Long Bomb and The Fix.

21:50They're more sports focused. So this is a little different for you. I always end these podcasts with five words. I'm going to give you these five words. and I'd like you to react to the five words. Are you ready? I hope so, yeah. The FBI. An organization that provides a vital role but is in a desperate need of greater congressional oversight. Washington, D.C. Hot in the summer. And yeah, never a dull moment there. That's often where I find myself. And, yeah, boy, it's a one business town, one industry town. And a lot of, I mean, for me, and I guess obviously I didn't, I had an ill-fated career in Washington.

22:41It did seem like unnecessary drama is how I would describe it, frankly. There's a lot of drama in that town that doesn't need to happen. I agree. A lot of opera. A lot of opera going on. I mean, not to malign the whole city and all the people in it. No, there's great people. There's great public servants. A lot of people are very uptight about things they don't need to be. That's what I would say. Yeah, exactly. And they get their bees in their bonnets over nothing. What about Russia? They took things too far. You know, I really enjoyed living there when I did many years ago because I felt like it was a place of, and this has always surprised people who don't know the country well, it was always a place of great personal freedom at a time when I felt like our country was beginning to restrict things like free speech and other freedoms.

23:30And one of the worst things about this war in Ukraine, the worst thing, of course, is the effect it's had on the Ukrainian people and all the people that have been murdered there and killed by Russia. But another terrible thing that's happened is it has pushed down all of the positive aspects of Russian society, and you just don't see them anymore. It's brought out the worst parts of Russia. So that's very scary. And I think the Russian people know that too, right? I think the Russian people are also frustrated by that. I think it's a mixed bag. It's a mixed bag. It's a huge population, hard to generalize.

24:10I mean, there's no typical Russian, just like there's no typical American. I think some people, and I know this for sure, there's a section of the population there that really supports the war, that really loves Putin. And then, of course, there are folks in the middle and, you know, it's a mixed bag. Like every country. Okay, the concept, the word justice. Oh, I think, unfortunately, it's often in our country subjective. No question. Yeah, well, we learned that. And it's not meant to be. Yeah. So it's not as, there's an I-N in front of the word injustice oftentimes, right? And justice is sometimes injustice.

24:53The legacy of Billy Riley. Legacy of Billy Riley. Boy, you know, Billy, he lived in a small town that was too small for his ambitions. And I think that a lot of people around the country can relate to that. He was someone who wanted his life to matter. and I think his legacy is, you know, that he was willing to be curious about the world and to follow that curiosity into the world. I think that should be his legacy. What's your next thing? What are you working on? Another book? Yeah, I'm kicking around a few ideas. I'd like to get going on another big project soon. I have a lot of work, of course, at the Wall Street Journal.

25:36It's always a busy time with Russia and Ukraine still going at it. Sure. And yeah, just curious to find another idea that can hold my attention like Billy's story has. All right. Well, listen, this is a phenomenal book and I appreciate you coming on. This is Brett Forrest's book, Lost Son, an American family trapped inside the FBI secret wars. It's a brilliant exposition of what can happen when things go wrong, but also a very objective exposition of governmental response to when things go wrong, which I think is worth reading for people that want to understand the government and things that are happening in today's world.

26:17Thank you so much for joining us on Open Book. I really enjoyed it. Thank you. It was a real pleasure speaking with you. And thank you for having me on. And thank you again for your contribution to the resolution of the mystery here.