This is exactly right.

This story contains adult content and language.

Listener discretion is advised.

And they can see all of these messages, and they realize these phones, this is where the

criminals have been hiding.

I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor in Austin, Texas.

I'm also the co-hosts of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right,

and throughout my career, research for my many audio and book projects has taken me around the world.

On Wicked Words, I sit down with the people I've met along the way,

amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers, and podcasters

who have investigated and reported on notorious true crime cases.

This is about the choices writers make, both good and bad,

and it's a deep dive into the unpublished details behind their stories.

In 2018, the FBI discovered that high-level criminals around the world

were using encrypted devices to plot intricate crimes. When a powerful, secure new app began

courting these syndicates, members of the underworld flocked to it. One problem for the criminals,

though, the app was created by the FBI.

Joseph Cox tells us the incredible story from his book, Dark Wire. Why don't you give me sort of your

elevator pitch of what this book is about when you're talking to someone who says, oh, I heard you write a book. I don't

know anything about it. Tell me about it. I mean, to come out swinging straight away, it is about how

the FBI secretly ran a tech startup for organized crime in order to wiretap the world. It's very

crazy when you put it into one sentence like that, but this was the largest sting operation ever.

...