Hello and welcome to Slate Money Criminals, a little mini-series on some of the most interesting
financial criminals of history.
I'm Felix Salmon of Axios, as ever I'm here with Emily Peck of Axios and Elizabeth
Spires of New York Times and elsewhere.
Today we are talking about John Acabley Miser, who single-handedly skipped around the world
UK, London, Ghana, Korea. Did he make it to Korea? You're bokeh? He did, yeah. It was a short trip.
And just swindled people out of millions of dollars and this is a wild story. We are here with
the woman who is quite undoubtedly the world's greatest expert on this guy. Yippurka, you were welcome.
Thank you so much for having me. Introduce yourself. Who are you?
I'm a writer and my first book is called Anancy's Gold, which is the story of John Acabley Miser
and this remarkably strange card. It's a great title too. Anancy, of course, being this sort of
central figure in Ghanaian folklore, who's just this mischievous, kind of like spidery type figure,
right? Yeah. And Miser totally fits into that trope. We are going to talk about his ability to
swindle money out of people about those people's ability to kid themselves that it's all real and
to join forces with him even when they know it's all based on lies about the racism, the heart of
this, about the way that he was basically piggybacking on the CIA and the Cold War. It's a crazy
story. It's all coming up on slate money criminals. Okay, so Yippurka, let's start just with
the book. What is the book about? What is the story of the book?
Anancy's Gold is about a man named John Acabley Miser, although that was not his real name.
And between the 70s and the 90s, he conned hundreds of people out of hundreds of millions of dollars.
And it was a classic inheritance gown. He said he had been related to or a confidant of like the
story change quite a bit, depending on who he was talking to. But he was a confidant of Garner's
first president, president Kwame Gruma, and that on his deathbed, and Gruma had told in this
insane secret, which is that before he was deposed in a coup, he realized that people were after him.
So he took millions upon millions of Garner's wealth in gold and money and diamonds and stashed
it all in Swiss vaults. And it was John Acabley Miser's job to liberate this money
and give it back to the people of Garner. But there was so much wealth sitting there in Switzerland
that he could do whatever he wanted with a portion of it. And so if you helped him deal with the
administrative costs and greasing officials and making it all happen, he would give you return
to ten to one or a hundred to one. Or you would become a giant ship in Garner because you've
been in lots and lots of government contracts. My first problem is, I don't even know what his name
is. I've been mentally thinking of him as John Blay, but like you give him this like longer name
through most of the book. How old was he when he got his like longer name?
So it sort of progressively got longer and more grand as he went along. And as he portrayed
himself as a more and more sort of important prominent person. So he was born John Blay and then
he added Miser and then Doctor and then named reflect the part where he became a traditional chief
and it sort of started to go on and on and on. And he basically added all these like names, almost like
flourishes to stand up the idea that he was incredibly wealthy and had been a confidant of Garner's
president. And this was of course a complete lie. He was born into relative poverty. He made up
everything. But some of it was true. He really did become a tribal chief at one point. He really
did become incredibly wealthy. Like he did drive around in Rolls Royces and stay in the grandest
hotels. And he just did it by lying to people. And this is the amazing subject of the book.
So before we get into like how he managed to do this, I think we should probably start with
just a very quick overview of the con which I think is probably familiar to most of us who have
email addresses. Yeah, it's the standard like a Nigerian prince need your help freeing a fortune
and we'll give you a part of that fortune if you give them some money upfront. It's a classic
inheritance scam. And the victims of the scam, the people who paid him money in the hope that they
would see tenfold returns. They really they they were they started in the United States interestingly
enough in Philadelphia. But then it went global. He found a bunch in Korea. And importantly,
there was a non-neglishable number in Ghana, right? Yeah, he managed to charm Ghanaian officials.
It helped that he had been in prison in the 1960s briefly with a lot of Ghanaian politicians who
have been thrown in jail for corruption. By Kwame Krupp. Some of them were absolutely innocent
with thrown in jail just because they post some kind of threat. But he was incredible at watching
people and making them and learning from them. And so it had been surrounded by prominent people
who had literally founded the country and he soaked them up like their stories, their mannerisms.
And then when it was time to come people, he either rode on their credibility or their contacts.
So everybody has seen that if you knew all these like big, big men and like the former attorney general
and several businessmen, that what he was saying had some truth to it. At very late in the book,
you you talk about how the investors start, you know, catching on to the fact that this is probably a
con. And they all sort of wonder, well, why can't we just sue the banks directly for this money?
Why do you think that didn't occur to them in the beginning?
In the beginning, they were very much convinced that this was a sort of something for
nothing deal. The returns they were promised and the business they were promised was so great.
A few of them were convinced that they had won over on by May the like he didn't really understand
what it was that he had access to. Lots of them had state the future of their businesses. Like
this presented the future of these companies and a lot of them were also just into deep to start
questioning it and right the way through by Mesa and his sort of American business partner,
Robert Ellis promised that like the money was coming quick, you'd get it in weeks or months
of the most a year. But then sometimes it was like tomorrow and he would like fly all of the
investors into some like town in Switzerland or something like it's happening at four o'clock
today. And you're like, you know it's not happening at four o'clock today. And it seems to me like
he the story of this book and the number of draw on the floor moments that where he's just like
doing like painting himself into a corner that you're like, how on earth is he going to get out
of this one? And he's doing things like bringing all of the investors together as Elizabeth
says. Like eventually they wind up talking to each other because they've got no one else to talk
to when he's like pretty elusive. But like why you know he's doing these things like introducing
them to each other, which just again seems completely batshit if what you're doing is a is a con
and a scam. And and like that kind of sheer boldness is one of the things that really really
fascinates me about this guy. I think that worked because he kept people kind of siloed. So like
all the investors from Philadelphia would know each other, all the investors from like the Ghanaian
government would know each other, all the Ghanaian businessmen would know each other, all the people
in the UK would but they didn't really cross over many times. So a lot of the times on like one of
these occasions where he's like it's coming tomorrow, fly to Switzerland and stay there. They would
see other groups of people sort of rushing around and as you they were the bankers when they
were just like another set of investors. You compare the belief, I thought this was such a good
analogy because you know he'd tell these people the money's coming tomorrow then the money wouldn't
come tomorrow but they would still believe him that it was coming at some point and you said it was
like those doomsday cults that believe the world is going to end on such and such date. The
data approaches the world doesn't end but somehow they still convince themselves that the world is
going to end. It's just on another day in the future and it just sort of goes on and on. The belief
doesn't diminish at all. No, the doomsday never coming and the money never coming seem to strengthen
people's faith in the way they are. Yeah. And in the Amaran Ganges Trust Fund and I know for some
of them they just stayed too much of it like too much in it so they had to make it work.
Yeah, people were really invested in it and I think that's one of the real lessons of this
book is that when you're conning people in this way eventually pretty quickly actually, surprisingly
quickly the people you're conning become your biggest defenders rather than and you know he
winds up getting tried in Pennsylvania and all of his victims are the ones writing to the judge
saying please be lenient on him like we need this guy he's incredibly important and that dynamic
of using your victims as a way to to help yourself like not just from it's not like he he just kind
took their money and absconded he took their money and then kept them close and used them
over and over again for various different purposes. Yeah, they would fly into the office in London
with something to happen and while they were there they'd be on the phone calling other people
to encourage them to be reversed or Nixon's former attorney general John Mitchell apparently
spent a lot of time calling investors who wanted to pull out and convincing them to keep their
money in just happened with like one very prominent than an investor he sort of managed to also just
use them to prep up his like with theater of things that confirmed that he did indeed have access
to this money. It's almost like a pyramid scheme in that way where it's like everyone on the
pyramid is kind of working to scam someone below them except in this case no one's benefiting
really except the thing that strikes me is that it's it he really is playing on and you're very
good about like the racist assumptions that allowed him to do this that everyone was just so
convinced that like Africa is this sort of dark and primitive continent full of golden wealth that
you know and corruption that of course like it makes perfect sense that there would be billions of
dollars' stashiness with bank account like obviously but like at the same time there's this kind
of affinity scheme right that he's like driving around in Rolls Royces and staying grand hotels
and friends with all the right people and so he presents in the right way just as like you know
Elizabeth Holmes say like presented as a Stanford dropout who had a bunch of important people
on her board and that helped persuade everyone that she was for real and not just making shit up.
You have a great see and also where you know as the plot starts to unravel the investor show up
at one of the luxury hotels that he's staying at and they try to confront him and in that case
you know he's not expecting them and he fakes a heart attack and you know calls in this private
doctor who sort of launders the whole scenario and makes it seem real and this is a tactic that he
uses several times do you think and you note that the investors had told him that they weren't going
to pay the luxury hotel bill but then they realized that paying per night in a hospital is going to
be more offensive for them so they just let them they let him keep faking heart attacks.
At that point do you think they're all pretty aware of what's happening and they're just afraid that
he's going to die on them they'll never see their money again or or was it do you think they
were still convincing themselves that this could work out. I think it was half and half I think
that lots of them were convinced this was genuine but that he had perhaps expensive taste that
they knew along the one to ban crawl and a lot of them were especially once there were multiple
investigations and people out and out told them they considered him a crook but they were
incredibly sort of they were like willing to participate in the crookery as long as it meant that
they got the money back. Yeah I mean we definitely saw that in in the made-off case as well there were
a lot of people not necessarily the majority but a significant minority of made-off investors
who were convinced that he was you know insider trading basically or that he was you know making
his returns in illegal ways and they're like great this is awesome because it gives me an edge
and I can make you know I can get my great returns these ways like investing with a crook is
something that is quite attractive to people because they're like well crooks can make a lot of money.
Yeah and also like for a lot of people in a lot of scenarios investing in crooks pays off well
like as long as you got paid out earlier and you're not still around when he gets messy.
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you point out even if it's true that the the first leader of Ghana took all the gold out of the
country and stashed away in Switzerland the the suggestion that investors from the US should be the
ones to get that money back and take it away from Ghana is pretty horrendous yeah even if that's
true which on its face is extremely damaging to the Ghanaian people and you're like yeah yeah
I'm down that's what I want let's let's recall on a lot you like let's do it again let's take all
the money from Ghana again or something so I think that people were fully aware of this the
were a group of investors especially in the beginning who were more about sort of supporting
like newly independent African nations and helping to build their economy they're mostly African
American and they're mostly like tied to sort of the justice aspect of taking the money back
but for everybody else he would sort of put on a great show like even towards the end like you
would turn up dressed in his full finery and covered in gold looking like a very very exotic very
wealthy person and sometimes he wouldn't say a word and that was enough people would just like
finish the story from themselves and invest and I think a lot of them also just thought that he was
like a rude but he didn't fully realize that the money did not really belong to him and he probably
did not have the ability to give it to investors and I think the idea from the beginning that they
had one over on him strengthened their faith in it there is something very seventies about the
whole thing right like like when you look back on the seventies like nothing about the seventies
like there were all those hijacking those didn't make sense like the seventies was just a really
weird decade and I do kind of wonder how like uniquely seventies this was or and versus like
how much of this is him doing you know a con is ages old and as he say it goes back to like you
the age of privateering in the sixteenth century or whatever like you know and the human nature
never changes and that these kind of cons will always be with us. I spent a lot of time trying to
figure this out like why would you think this was a thing and so I went back and tried to figure out
what would happen if you went into the library in like 1974 and asked for just information on
or information on Kwame and Krumah and mostly what you would find was sort of like
some incredibly incredible like there was a there was a time magazine cover where they had a south
African leader being like oh there's no way they can run themselves it's appalling and that was
the entire tone of the piece and then you would find a ton of American coverage of the coup that
the post president and Krumah they like the military and the police who had actually enacted
this coup and who has thought sort of been funded by the CIA among like other groups would throw
these press conferences and they get the political prisoners he had thrown in jail up to say that
they personally saw in Krumah take briefcases of money he had gold taps a gold Cadillac horns
all over Africa many many mistresses just endless outlandish lies that turned out after like
I think like the 1970s Garnier like investigators and judges said to figure out that none of that was
true but all the people who were like spoken of those press conferences had themselves taken
massive sums of money and hid them away and landed in Switzerland and plus there was like a cold war
going on right and and Krumah was like a pan-African you know Russian bags kind of communist kind of
guy and there was a feeling of like you can profit from this war I thought it was maybe not uniquely
70s what was really interesting about his scam was the way he sort of manipulated and you say this
throughout the book the way he sort of manipulated history and you know it was this revisionist history
of I'm hope I say right the revisionist history of Krumah and who he was playing off that and
changing the story of reality in order to create his own story so that he could build people out of
tons of money and I feel like that's still happening in all kinds of ways now like you see in
American politics there's a constant sort of like reframing of history so to sell your own story
to really to scam people out of money in the case of maybe former presidents right now who are
trying to sort of reshape the narrative and yeah and essentially change history you know at a fragile
time and really take advantage of instability to sell their own story that's kind of what happened
with him it seems like it's entirely what happened to him and obviously he got very very good
using current events to his advantage so if the money never arrived it was because
there had been a coup or government officials were feeling weary but also for this like at one
point he ran for president he was an incredibly prominent figure in Ghana people thought he was
actually a millionaire people would see his motorcade of like very expensive cars driving through
town all the time he managed a football team that was incredibly popular and made up
slash stole a chant that people still use to this day so a lot of people thought of him as
fairly credible even then so the stories he would tell especially about in krumah seemed
credible as well and they dovetailed with the stories from abroad and the stories that
people who had been jailed by in krumah and hasten quite a bit told as well and so all this sort
of reinforced his plot and his stories he was running for president of Ghana and his whole thing was
like if I win this solves all my problems and it really was like oh my gosh that is what
Dr. Trump is doing like he's facing all this legal trouble and if he wins if he gets to
me president he can make it all go away I was like this is the same thing and the really amazing
thing is there's another parallel there which is that he was eventually disqualified from running for
president because of his various like you know curriculum beta basically just as right now there's
this whole attempt to disqualify drump on 14th amendment grounds and saying like well because you
you know an insurrection that's not allowed to run for president and it's just there was so
many parallels it's absolutely amazing it's scary yeah when I first started looking into this
everything about it seemed outlandish and then like I guess the news and history started to happen
and it's even less less outlandish which is actually more of more disturbing one of the one of the
other parallels is that if you look at the indictments against drump and the various reporting
that has been done about what happened after the 2020 election it was just complete chaos
in the White House and the round Trump no one really had a clue what they were doing and
I really did get the impression from reading the book but there was never a scheme there was never
a plan he was making it up as he went along the whole thing like sometimes he'd wind up in jails
sometimes he'd wind up in the hotel suite sometimes he'd make up one line sometimes he'd make
up another line and like everything was just like I'm just going to play this you know
I'm just going to improvise the whole time and and like do you think that like in his mind some
way he had like a multi-year plan of like I'm going to do this and this and this and this and
like I know how this is going to end I don't think there was just because everything like
he just said so happy as it uh I think in the beginning his assumption was that he would get to
a certain like level of prominence and surround himself with enough people that he could just
go legit and run a series of companies like even if he couldn't give investors their money bag
he could give them like government contracts or something else that would allow him to
see even like become who he said he was and then they just kept taking more and more money from
people and so by this time he was running out of if he was running for president it was completely
just out of control there was no way they were going to get like they started with like 82 million
was the first disbursement he said and that it was like twice that they just they just had no way
to make that happen even if he did go legit at every stage he was scrambling to make something work
and the people who knew him and were around him when these things were happening were like he was
just incredibly calm and cool and level-headed about all this chaos and he could on a dime seem
like he was in charge of what was happening and it wasn't chaotic or bizarre um unfortunately
towards the end he just kind of ran out of road yeah that there's a running theme in the book about
like his diplomatic passport and how he needs a diplomatic passport to pull this off and you're like
dude like you're you're basically defrauding the governing government and giving you a diplomatic
passport like you're not exactly you're not exactly you know painting the governing government
particularly like honorable light here on krumah notwithstanding i mean he that was kind of i think
the first straighting thing for a lot of officials at the time because i were plenty of people who
were remembered who he was in the 60s who had met a man or people he had screwed over in the 70s
like there was a government official he had told people was going to help in stage a coup
like that person was like still in charge of investigating and so there were there were plenty of
people who were like this does not work on the face of it or people who actually knew and krumah
and his family and knew that he had died with an incredibly modest estate it was basically royalties
from his books and nothing else and people knew how his family were living and they tried over
and over and over again through like various government like investigations in the media
like going specifically to officials to be like what the hell are you doing you know this man
as a crook there was a whole trial where he was exposed as a crook and none of that mattered because
like there were enough people in power right the way through from like the 70s to the early 90s
who thought that even if even like a tiny bit of this was true even if it was a lie about in krumah
but the money was dirty money from somewhere else it didn't matter
yeah you also mentioned though that he he would make enemies of people who knew that he was a
con man he would somehow figure out how to charm later yes and befriend them how did how did that
happen yeah this this was also very strange when I did speak to people who had known him and worked
with him they were still very fond of him people who had like there was one of the sources was a
police officer who had been assigned to follow play mazer around and keep the diplomatic passport
in his hands so play mazer would travel on his own a regular person passport and this police
officer would be the one to present the diplomatic passport whenever he needed it to prove he was to
like the banks or whatever and people told me pretty early on that he sort of it was like he went
AWOL and they didn't hear about him and then when they did hear about him it was that like
play mazer like bought him clothes and was paying him a salary and it like turned him and I went to
actually talk to this foreign police officer and he runs like a gorgeous hotel in
tema which is like the port city near a car and so I was just sitting in his office waiting for
him to finish some stuff up so he could like we could speak and in one corner there was like it
high up on like a sort of like a cupboard or like a pretty russer it was like a globe up there and
next to it was a gold frame picture of play mazer because that was those were the glory days man
traveling first class you know it was like here's a correct but at least you know he like it was
it was a glamorous glamorous trick he was an obvious character but this guy was police officer and
he was supposed to be not taken in by stuff like that and he absolutely was and like yeah I just
I was stunned by how many people even this far down the line were easily charmed by him and
thought of him really really fondly and he thought of him as like a kind giving person even though
he had personally defrauded I feel like we cannot underestimate how charming a rich person or
someone who appears to be rich can be you know he had everything he had the roles Royce he had
the nice houses he had the lavish hotel suites you know great parties I mean I think at the
end of the day people just like that yes they just want to be around and like a bit of
yeah also like they got to live like he got to live so like he took her a Florida hotel and
everybody would get a gorgeous room and then the flip side of that is that he and I think this
is probably unique to to this series like you know if we talk about say Martha Stewart then clearly
like she is used to a certain lifestyle she goes to prison and that is definitely like the low
point of her biography and she doesn't like it there and doesn't help her at all whereas with
Blamisa it's just like he is constantly in an out of prison he is constantly being jailed in
like multiple countries and he's he's like not seemingly particularly upset about this and just
uses it to it he gets out and then he he is quite proud of it and he uses it to his advantage and
he's like yeah my opponents jailed me and that proves how noble my cause is because you know
these evil opponents wanted to jail me and they were briefly successful but now I'm out and I
will get you know I will fight for truth and righteousness and that ability to to sort of do that
kind of jujitsu move on imprisonment was wild and I don't see that very often yeah also it's like
would they have led him out of jail if he was actually a cropped no absolutely not
sadly yeah he actually also I think because of his first stint in jail in the 1960s and all the
remarkable people and stories that he encountered when he went to jail again after the 1979 trial he
got really really good at charming the prisoners like one point he bought them all haircuts and they
bought some barbers and he like improved the sanatorium which is sorry the like a prison hospital
bit because it's where he ended up spending most of his time but like I remember seeing a source who
said years later that like in Kramer had brought in like window coverings and fridges and just like
given the prisoners a great time and so everybody who is in jail that including political prisoners
thought of him really fondly he just he just knew how to function in that situation and knew how to
curry favor in surprising places so much so that like the things he did that were
kind and generous sort of outlived him as much as the scandal it's like it's like that scene from
Goodfellas right where like they're in jail but they're like cooking up a storm and they're
having a great life you like okay got it yeah so so that's a really good point so his his scam he
didn't it never fully unraveled the only reason it came to an end is because I guess this is a
spoiler alert but spoiler alert I'm sorry to spoil your book he died um and that's how it kind of
ends but I mean even after he dies people still are trying to get the money out of Switzerland
yeah people still believe this is going on people don't even believe that he's died like they're
like no you know this is another one of his like get out you know like wily plans yeah even even
everybody who's like part of the organization and they're really really like overly involved
with it everyday investors weren't sure you died like some of them heard he'd been taken to Switzerland
and put in a cryogenic chamber some of them heard he was like Germany in hospital and then
disappeared and uh I think that helped people continue to run the pond because everything about
the way it ended at least with him was so hazy um so after he died um the doctor who would
regularly help him out of like sticky situations by confirming that he had indeed had a heart attack
and um his brother who in taught way Mesa Tai Chi as a way to like improve his health um they
sort of took over the organization and sent season deceased letters to other investigators
sorry to other investors and investigators to I guess cut them off and then there was like a huge
private trial in Ghana where the doctor won and then there was an appeal and um the judge in the
appeal for the original judge just like an insane crook there and that was just I found like
little pockets of people all over right now still perpetrating the fraud still calling up new
people and old investors so you spent a bunch of time talking to his kids how how do they
like feel about him at this point I think it was complicated especially them because like
it was different for his wife who eventually started to see the contours of what was going on
and complied accordingly but like to use his kids he was like generous and warm and a parent most
of the time obviously one who wasn't necessarily around all the time but still someone who was a lovely
parent and yeah I think he had he had the same effect on his actual children as he did on a lot
of other people he just seemed like a very nice person who was great at charming people around him
yeah I mean the you know the made-of saga ended with like his two sons dying basically um you know it
can be truly devastating these things can be truly devastating for your family and it can be
the thing ultimately that you know a certain type of person will be like well this proves that
crime doesn't pay because it ends up like just emissitating your family and who would ever want that
but I like I'm not sure that tidy sort of moral works in this case you know he he really did come
up from nothing had this great lifestyle what his kids up in a sort of arena of luxury that they
would never otherwise have had and was warm to them and gate and as you say it was actually a
relatively good dad and I kind of want to know you know now that he's written this book and published
this book like on a scale of one to ten how much of a villain was he like God knows there's no
shortage of like great villains in in sort of 20th century African history like where does he
stand on that scale he didn't kill anyone so with with his family it's it's worth remembering
that like as soon as he died and was on house arrest it got complicated with them and all that
luxury was like snatched away like uh his daughter talked about having to learn to like
clean for the first time um because they know how long to help so I think that was probably
incredibly distressing and drawing so with Blameyza himself there were lots of incredibly
difficult to stand up rumors and stories about what else he might have been doing people suggested
that he was dealing drugs or like laundering money for those crimes we spoke about earlier or
generally doing more stuff than just defrauding people to keep the fraud going in part um but I
think the people who knew to a certain extent he was a crook and still sort of let him their
credibility not worse but they like have a lot more responsibility than it uh it seems initially
like they were willing for large sums of money and also prospective large sums of money
to make everything he said seem real and even though they knew a great deal of it wasn't and they
were willing to sort of actively and with like a lot of gusto perpetrate these lies about
resident and prumer and about the way Ghana was run and about even just about the idea
that Ghana had been consistently ruled by crooks um which I think has been very warping because
there are also countless officials who do like a very diligent job in very very difficult
circumstances and right the way through have been telling people he was a crook have been pointing
out that this is not how many worked or how banking worked and worked kind of roundly ignored.
He was a villain in in terms of how he got yeah the powerful people to support him and like keep
up his web of lies and make Ghana more corrupt he corrupted a country and he perverted its history
because in a krumah I mean I didn't know much about him until I read your book but like it was a good
guy yeah like it's it's horrible that his his legacy was warped by this con artist and um the
governments that backed it. But it wasn't just Les Mesa telling lies about him it was also the people
he staged the coup it was the US government it was British government it was the New York Times it was
it was everybody who ran with these outlined niche stories about why resident and krumah was
the post like he wasn't alone he was just probably the one who used them
who was the best at using all the best to his advantage and sort of because of that began perpetuating it
because yeah for everyone else there were like geopolitical reasons to perpetuate his lies and
he didn't have any particular interest in you know he wasn't working for the CIA as well as we know
he was just out for money but like he had that tailwind of all of that CIA misinformation and disinformation
yeah it really highlights just how fragile history is and what we know about the past is and how
all those stories and narratives are shaped by whoever's in power yeah me too they're like most
disturbing part about researching this would be that I would find a reference to a source and a lot
of the time when I'd go looking for this like once even at the British Library I found the publication
and it was the right date but somebody had ripped out the pages that I was looking for which was
terrifying and I weren't looking for the report of the National Reconciliation Commission in Ghana
after the transition to democracy and it it had been scrubs from the internet and it took
absolute ages to find it it's like he document where people finally got to tell the stories of
these absolutely abhorrent things that happened especially during the leadership of Gerry Rollins
and it was just impossible to find and it's happened over and over and over again books that
should have been readily accessible had like vanished or were in really like far flung places and
I remember asking someone about this and they were like yeah people actively disappear sources
to help londa their reputations and the fact that they could do this even at like academic libraries
even at the British Library even with something as important as enough a frequency 8 commission
was just it was terrifying right the whole point of a reconciliation commission is to bring
the truth to light and expose it to sunshine and then yeah and then that's not even
and yeah when people are literally writing books like well once it's a book it can't be that hard
to find it's like well no actually it really can actually it can yeah thank you very much
for writing the book it's a great story and thank you for coming on slate money criminals it's
been absolutely wonderful having you here thank you so much it's been such a pleasure talking to you all