This is CBSI in the world. I'm John Batchel with the distinguished correspondent for the Wall

Street Journal, Brett Forrest, who has a new book that tells a story of many years, Lost Sun,

an American family trapped inside the FBI's secret wars. In May of 2015, Billy gets on the aircraft,

continues on his way to Moscow. In December of 17, Brett is at the Washington offices of the

Wall Street Journal, and he gets a call from Bob Forsman. What is the nature of the call and what do you

do about it, Brad? Thank you.

Certainly, John. So Bob, I've known for a little while. He is an American guy who had been

living and working in Russia and Ukraine since the 90s, working in the financial sector.

And he had developed a lot of very interesting and valuable relationships in business,

obviously, but also in power structure in both countries and in the Russian Orthodox Church.

Bob's a very religious guy. And he and I had been meeting talking about various events in Eastern Europe for, you know, off and on for a little while, until one day he told me we were sitting at a cafe outside the ice skating rick at Rockefeller Center.

And he told me that he had something that he wanted to give me, but it wasn't quite the right time. As you can imagine, as a journalist, as a reporter, every time you hear something like that, he said, well, you know, I need to know what is it? It's, uh, anyhow, eventually, some weeks later, I was sitting at the, uh, at my desk in, in the Washington Bureau of the journal. And Bob called. And he said,

now is the time I'm ready to tell you. And this is what he told me. He knew very little of the

Riley case, but he said there was a young man from Michigan who had worked for the FBI for a number

of years and counterterrorism and had traveled to Russia and disappeared there. And shortly after

his disappearance, uh, Billy's FBI handlers visited the family's house,

the Riley's house outside of Detroit, professed ignorance of Billy's trip to Russia and began

confiscating devices from the family and eventually shut the Riley's out.

That's all Bob really knew.

And I knew instantly that there was a story here of great depth, something that could be worth

putting real effort and time into to try and unravel.

You get on your way to Michigan, which you know because you went to school there.

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