FOG OF A DIRTY WAR: 1/4: Lost Son: An American Family Trapped Inside the FBI's Secret Wars by Brett Forrest (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 25 September 2023
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Son-American-Family-Trapped/dp/0316591610/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
When Billy Reilly vanished, his parents embarked on a desperate search for answers. Was their son’s disappearance connected to his mysterious work for the FBI, or was it a personal quest gone wrong? Only when Wall Street Journal reporter Brett Forrest embarks on his own investigation does a picture emerge: of the FBI's exploitation of US citizens through a secretive intelligence program, a young man's lust for adventure within the world's conflicts, and the costs of a rising clash between Moscow and Washington.
Sept. 11th roused Billy Reilly's curiosity for religions, war, and the world and its people beyond his small town near Detroit. Online, Billy taught himself Arabic and Russian. His passions led him into jihadi Internet forums, attracting the interest of the FBI.
An amateur drawn into professional intelligence, Billy became a Confidential Human Source, one of thousands of civilians who assist FBI agents with investigative work, often at great hazard and with little recourse. When Russia stirred rebellion in Ukraine, Billy set out to make his mark.
In Russia, Billy's communications dropped. His parents, frantic, asked the FBI for help but struggled to find answers. Grasping for clues, the Reilly family turned to Brett Forrest. Commencing a quest of his own, Forrest applied years' worth of research, along with decades of extensive experience in Russia, illuminating the inner workings of the national-security machine that enmeshed Billy and his family, picking up the lost son's trail.
A masterwork of reporting, composed like a thriller, blending political maneuvering and international espionage, Lost Son illustrates one man's coming of age amid new global dangers.
1917 ROSTOV ON DON
Transcript
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| 0:20.3 | This is CBS Eye on the World with John Bachelor. Here's John Bachelor. |
| 0:27.1 | It is May 2015 on the way to the Detroit Metro Airport, a family of mom and dad, |
| 0:35.3 | the son Billy, and there is a sister and her husband. Billy Riley is of great interest at this |
| 0:42.6 | moment because he's headed to Moscow. Why is Billy going to Moscow? What do his parents make of it? |
| 0:50.9 | Is the subject of a new book, The Lost Son, an American family trapped inside the FBI's |
| 0:58.8 | Secret Wars. I welcome the author of the Distinguished Wall Street Journal correspondent, |
| 1:03.7 | Brett Forest. Brett, congratulations for your work. A very good evening to you. Who is Billy Riley |
| 1:10.4 | at this moment and what does he think of himself? Good evening to you. |
| 1:14.9 | Good evening to you, John. Thank you very much for inviting me on your program. This is going to be |
| 1:19.5 | a really interesting talk. Who was Billy Riley at that moment? He was a young man who'd come |
| 1:26.3 | of age after 9-11. He was in high school at that time and that one event diverted the path of |
| 1:33.2 | his life. He developed great deep interests in the global conflicts, world religions, foreign |
| 1:42.1 | languages that developed at a time, a perfect time when the internet itself was in its own |
| 1:49.2 | adolescence and Billy Riley began learning about the wider world through the developing |
| 1:57.2 | internet from his parents' home outside the Detroit. His internet traffic caught the attention |
| 2:04.8 | of the local FBI office in Detroit and an agent came to the house and was impressed by Billy's |
| 2:12.4 | abilities and knowledge and invited him to come and work for the FBI. |
| 2:19.6 | He is then a category of an informant called a CHS. His mom and dad know this, his sister knows it |
| 2:27.8 | and maybe some other people. But Billy is striking in that he has not traveled widely except in his |
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