On radio this morning, Glenn interviewed best selling author Brad Thor about his latest book, Hidden Order, which in light of recent events reads a lot more like faction than fiction.
“Brad Thor has a new book out today called Hidden Order,” Glenn said. “Brad, your last few books, almost all of them have come true now. You know, the things that you were warning about are here. You were just with us in Salt Lake, and I can't thank you enough… Here we are sitting in the town where the NSA, you know, container unit is, the world's largest collection facility, and nobody seems to really even care. Nobody seems to care. It is confounding.”
“Well, listen. Last summer this time you and I were talking about my thriller Blacklist, which was all about the total surveillance state that we're now living under. And what the NSA's doing,” Brad explained. “And, you know, the happiest people in this is the Department of Homeland Security because everybody's focused on NSA, and it's only the tip of the iceberg what's been uncovered so far. So, you know, last summer I said this is the next big thing we're going to be talking about is the NSA, and sure enough, here we are.”
Based on the write up on the cover of Hidden Order, it looks like it won’t be long until we are talking about those themes as well:
The most secretive organization in America operates without any accountability to the American people, hiding in the shadows, pretending to be part of the United States government, power beyond measure.
“That's all absolutely happening,” Glenn said. “We have that verified from the Washington Post when they were talking about the secret tribunals, the secret courts that are underneath the Capitol, underneath the visitors center, the new visitors center. We now know why it costs so much money because there's a lot of infrastructure underneath it. And they said that the Washington Post just ran a story, said that there are secret courts underneath that are operating outside the Constitution and they are offering Supreme Court style decisions on the rights of Americans that none of us even know about.”
While his books are tremendously entertaining pieces of fiction, Brad admitted that these situations are becoming reality faster than he can write the books.
“So for me the idea with Hidden Order was 9/11,” he said. “What Hidden Order is about, I learned about a group of powerful people that snuck out of New York one night in November in the early 1900s, went down to an island called Jekyll Island, and there they cobbled together. This is thriller writer gold. It's like out of a spy novel how they went down there and what they did. They cobbled together a plan for a central bank for the United States of America and they said, ‘What is going to be the name of this because nobody wants a central bank.’ There had been two before that had been killed. They said, ‘How are we going to do this, this time, so we can pull this off, these private guys?’ They said, ‘Let's call it ‘federal’ and let's use the word ‘reserve.’ It won't have anything to do with the Fed being the government, but let's call it the Federal Reserve.’ And then they went on to create such an elaborate smokescreen to keep Americans in the dark about what they were going to really do about this organization and as a thriller writer I said this is it.”
“In this book the Federal Reserve chairman leaves office very quickly, under very bad circumstances. There are five people in Hidden Order who are put up to replace him. They all disappear on the same night. So my character, Navy SEAL Scott Harveth, who's been doing work for the government on the side, gets called in to try to figure out not only where these people are but why were they taking. Is somebody trying to blackmail the Federal Reserve? And as he starts peeling this apart, he finds out that the Federal Reserve is doing something nobody in America could ever imagine would be done. They are financing operations out the back door, and I think all of this kind of stuff is going to actually in real life come to light very soon… and by the way, the Federal Reserve loves the NSA scandal. They love the IRS scandal because guess who's 100 years old this year and we're not talking about? The Federal Reserve. There is no mechanism in Washington to say, ‘Are these guys successful or not?’ And by the way, they're private and they are not accountable to any of the American people, and it's very, very interesting what they have been up to there. And I weave that into this thriller.”
Much like Glenn’s fiction books – The Overton Window, Agenda 21, and The Eye of Moloch – Brad’s fiction has taken on a meaning in the wake of recent events.
“You know me. And you do the same thing with your fiction,” Brad explained. “We're doing faction where you can't tell where the facts end and the fiction begins. This is supposed to be a heart pumping beach read. But if you finish the book and close it and you're smarter for having read Hidden Order, which I think people will be, especially with the content of this book, then that's icing on the cake for me as a thriller author.”
So much attention is currently being paid to the NSA because of the recent leaks in regards to surveillance practices, but Brad believes the Federal Reserve fall victim to the next scandal.
“They're not federal. That's the thing. They set out intending to confuse and mislead the American public. They are not accountable to the people,” Brad explained. “I've heard some pretty hair raising stories, a couple of which I've put into the book, about things that are going on behind the scenes there. And that's why I think the next big scandal in real life is going to be the Federal Reserve.”
In a very telling moment, Brad admitted that the books he has released the last couple of years are stories he never dreamed of being able to write. But sometimes real-life events dictate otherwise.
“I've got to tell ya, a few years ago I wouldn't have written a book about the NSA and total surveillance because I would have been afraid people would laugh me out of the, you know, out of the publishing world,” Brad said. “And, you know, I guess at this point nothing's going to surprise me.”