Danny Jones Podcast
#302 - Cult Investigator: Satanic Rituals, Scientology & Israel-Palestine | Lawrence Wright
Mon, 12 May 2025
Watch every episode ad-free & uncensored on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Lawrence Wright is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of multiple books including "Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood & the Prison of Belief", and "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11". His newest book "The Human Scale" tells a story of an Israeli cop and a Palestinian-American FBI agent who join forces to solve the murder of an Israeli police chief in the West Bank. SPONSORS https://cash.app - Download Cash App today & use code DANNY10 http://evening.ver.so/danny - Use code DANNY for 15% off your first order. https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off EPISODE LINKS The Human Scale - https://a.co/d/62tQUig Going Clear - https://a.co/d/d6csGr9 The Looming Tower - https://a.co/d/dfySVIo FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Scientology's Sea Org 19:04 - L. Ron Hubbard's deathbed confession 30:16 - How has Scientology survived? 34:26 - Jim Jones & the Jonestown Cult 43:36 - The Sisters of Mary Morning Star 52:39 - Fighting the death penalty 01:01:38 - Satanic ritual abuse 01:17:26 - Whitley Streiber's childhood experiments 01:22:58 - Jack parsons 01:26:34 - Why Lawrence gave up religion 01:36:40 - The new Silicon Valley ideology 01:44:37 - The Looming Tower 01:54:13 - Did the FBI allow 9/11? 02:06:32 - Where Bin Laden got his money 02:16:52 - 9/11 alternate theories 02:25:02 - The Human Scale 02:37:30 - American CIA vs. Israel's Mossad 02:44:58 - Israel's troubled history 03:03:47 - How Lawrence chooses projects Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is Scientology's Sea Org?
Mr. Lawrence Wright, it's really a pleasure to have you on here. It's been a long time coming. I've been watching and reading your work for a very long time. Not a very long time. I think the first time I discovered you was in 2015 when Going Clear came out, the documentary on HBO. And I was sort of blown away because this place is right in my backyard.
It sure is.
And I kind of grew up around all of it because I spent a lot of my youth in downtown Clearwater running around my friends and, you know, just, you know, goofing around. And I was born in Morton Plant Hospital, which is basically right across the street from the flag building. And I kind of never really dug too deep into them until I saw your film.
And then I was just like blown away that this was all right here this whole time.
Yeah, it's the headquarters. Back when L. Ron Hubbard had taken to the high seas to avoid subpoenas and finally decided to come back to America, and he sent a delegation around looking for the right place, and they settled on Clearwater. And they wouldn't tell anybody at the time what they were. They were some sort of vaguely Christian organization, just let the word out. But when...
people in Clearwater found out, they were pretty upset, you know, and he was buying up a lot of the real estate downtown, which is still a part of the church catalog. It's a fascinating story. I mean, I was... You know, Scientology had kind of put this electric fence of legal threats and reputational threats around their story. And so the other writers had taken wax at it.
But I still felt that there was a great story on the ground to be told. And it was a fabulous story. I was... Despite all the, you know, we're going to get you sort of stuff that comes along with dealing with Scientology, it was always just a great story. And so, you know, you're always grateful as a writer to have that opportunity.
It's funny. Just recently I was having a conversation with my brother-in-law, and he works for one of the biggest Scientology-owned companies in downtown Clearwater. It's called Know Before. It's like an antivirus software for computer software. Yeah. And he's like, it's all Scientology owned.
And all of the higher end executives, like all the executives on the executive floor, they're all Scientologists. So there's like a Scientology floor and there's like a civilian floor. And it's like him and all of his buddies will always joke like under their breath or like make fun of the Scientologists. And like, you know, it's kind of like this weird dichotomy of.
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Chapter 2: What was L. Ron Hubbard's deathbed confession?
Well, the longing for power is a very human quality and it manifests in different ways. You know, he was a powerful speaker. You know, he had a way of being, you know, extremely powerful. compelling presence. Very dramatic looking man. He was part Cherokee and had very dark complexion and dark eyes and handsome in a rugged way. He also
was a conniver and he would fake healings and things like that i think all of this is with the idea of controlling other people i think there's a it's you see it in politics i mean it's not uh it's not just religion you see the longing to exercise control over other people is very powerful and
if you have the capacity that he had to be so compelling as he was, then his only goal was to increase his control. And that was why he moved his whole church out of San Francisco. to the jungles of Guyana and they did it overnight. People would wake up and they'd find their spouse gone or their parents had moved away. I mean, it was all secret and done with amazing security.
And they were flown to Guyana, a place that most of them couldn't even put on a map. And then they lived out their final days in this jungle.
So dark. You have a way of navigating your way through the darkest stories of human history.
Actually, I'm doing a story now that you would think is dark, and it is dark. But I'm looking at religion in a different way. There's the story that I wrote in The New Yorker in their 100th anniversary just a couple of months ago. that I'm making into a book now.
I was walking with a friend and she was talking about her mother who's in the Catholic prison services and spent time talking to women on the death row in Texas. There are seven women on death row. And she talked about these nuns that came to visit them every month.
And I thought, oh, these are the young nuns.
There aren't very many young nuns. Right, they're mostly older. The average age for a nun in America is 80. Right. But this is a new order called Sisters of Mary Morningstar that Pope Francis ordained. And they live in Waco, oddly enough, not so far from the remains of the Branch Davidian compound. But...
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Chapter 3: How has Scientology survived over the years?
So it wasn't – he was anti-American. He was making noise. But at this point, the king was trying to reconcile with him. And he sent Jamal Khashoggi. Jamal Khashoggi, yeah. It was bin Laden's – and although not a follower, but he was a friend of his and had spent time in Afghanistan with bin Laden during the Mujahideen days. And Jamal was a reporter, and he was a friend of mine. Oh, really?
Oh.
And so the way Jamal explained it to me, he'd spent three days in Khartoum. And bin Laden was always very close to the point of pronouncing terrorism because he was homesick. But finally, he wouldn't cross that line. So Jamal went home empty-handed, and at that point, the Sudanese decided to expel him and rob him of practically everything that he had, all of his possessions.
I went to Sudan three times, tracking that story down. The first time I went, I had been working closely with the Sudanese intelligence because someone had referred me. And so they would drive me around and show me where bin Laden lived and the mosque and where the soccer fields were and all this sort of stuff. But I said, look, I need to talk to somebody, somebody in al-Qaeda. And so...
One day I was in my room in what they called cheerfully the Hilton. And I'd have to flash back a little bit. The first time I flew to Saudi Arabia,
i i had a job there i'm mentoring these young reporters and at this saudi gazette um i when i got off the plane i was in terrible pain my back was really killing me and i you know for the three months i was there the first time um i couldn't raise my toes i was just you know a terrible sciatic pain so the next time i went back to saudi arabia i took one of those
exercise balls that you know you sit on when your back is back then you didn't have the pump so you had to blow it up you know and then unblow it and so I flew to Khartoum with my exercise ball and so there was a knock at the door and the Sudanese intelligence officer was there and he had this this guy with him And he wouldn't tell me who he was. So come on in.
And I offered the guy, the mysterious guy, the desk chair. And the intelligence agent lay down on my bed and went soundlessly. So it left me with this guy that I quickly discerned was an al-Qaeda member. and uh and so i sat down on the ball and he was over there and i started asking him questions and he knew everything and i thought jesus who is this guy and uh so
I flew back to America, and I researched him, and I triangulated, and I came up with Muhammad Loy Boyazid. His Qaeda name was Abu Ridda al-Suri, and he was the guy who took the notes when Al-Qaeda was founded. It's in his handwriting. And I thought, holy shit.
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Chapter 4: What are the connections between Jim Jones and cults?
really wildly and you know uh expressively yeah and so uh Rick used him in a couple of his pictures as a kind of raving maniac who was sitting in the back of a cab um sprouting all these conspiracy theories so the looming Tower had just come out and I was you know I was at the party and and Rick he was a mischievous fellow you know he comes over and says Larry, I wanted you to meet somebody.
And Alex, this is Larry Wright. And I thought you guys might talk about 9-11. So Jones starts off on what happened. I said, gosh, that's not true at all.
Like what?
I don't remember exactly what it was, but it was, you know. way off base and uh and i told him what did happen and he he turned around and walked away um you know i but after that whenever i make a speech about you know the looming tower uh there would always be people in the audience that would you know what about this what about that and You know, what about the World Trade Center 7?
Or, you know, why didn't this structure fall? You know, it must have been dynamite in it. If you look at it, it's clearly an explosion. I mean, the thing is, it was a horrible tragedy, and it happened, and it was hard to believe that it happened. So, therefore, people wonder why. You know, there must be some explanation for this, because this is...
something that surely one man in a cave couldn't have pulled this off. And the truth is one man in a cave did pull it off.
It's wild. It really is. Because there are a lot of crazy questions that are, why did they leave stuff out of the commission report? Why was the black box in the plane never shut? Why did the FBI cover that stuff up? We'll never know the answer to that, I feel like.
I'd like for that to be fully... The only thing that we... are missing here is the truth. And I believe it's pretty clear what happened, but I think the evidence that the CIA was in cahoots with the Saudi intelligence is not something that's been admitted But why not just go ahead and say it because that's what I think really did happen. But instead, they're stuck with no answer.
They can't tell you why they waited a year and a half to tell the fbi which had the authority of over terrorism in america that's what the whole plot of the siege was my movie yeah uh was a rift between the cia and the fbi right over who is going to control terrorism and then it became a you know it came true in real life
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