1018: Phil Elwood | Manipulating Media for the World’s Worst Humans

1018: Phil Elwood | Manipulating Media for the World's Worst Humans

This transcript is yet untouched by human hands. Please proceed with caution as we sort through what the robots have given us. We appreciate your patience!

[00:00:00] Jordan Harbinger: Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger show.

[00:00:01] Phil Elwood: It was weird. They had these briefcases, they were black snake skin briefcases that were filled with money, and the bills were like they were in plastic wrap. You just take the garbage bag out and you fill it with cash, and then you walk through the Bellagio with this garbage bag.

[00:00:25] Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers and performers, even the occasional tech luminary, music mogul, extreme athletes, or hostage negotiator.

And if you're new to the show or you wanna tell your friends about the show, our episode starter packs are a great place to begin. These are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion and negotiation, psychology, geopolitics, disinformation, and cyber warfare, crime and cults and more. It'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show.

Just visit Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started today on the show, a man whose job was to generate fake news and get things done in government or in Vegas for some of the world's. Oh, worst people. Frankly, Phil Ellwood has been a PR operative and fixer for dictators, royals, spies, and crooked politicians alike.

Not good for your soul. Unsurprisingly, the man has some stories and I'm keen to dive in. So here we go with Phil Ellwood.

Thanks for joining me, man. Your job was slash is have was, but I guess is to make some of the worst people on Earth. Seem not only palatable, but frankly help them get their way kind of regardless of how tasteless or possibly is it safe to say illegal that their agenda is, it's not illegal maybe, but it's quite distasteful.

[00:02:01] Phil Elwood: You know? I promised my wife that I'd stay away from saying what's legal and illegal in her? Is your wife also

[00:02:06] Jordan Harbinger: your lawyer? No, my lawyer

[00:02:08] Phil Elwood: is my lawyer. My wife is my wife and both of them have of them veto power over anything I do these days. I think that's a good idea. I mean,

[00:02:14] Jordan Harbinger: as a lawyer, not your lawyer, probably shouldn't say all the illegal things that you've done on any podcast.

[00:02:19] Phil Elwood: Yeah, we go with words like questionable, questionable, questionable is a good one. I should have thrown that in there. That's definitely the way to go, but I don't any longer work for. Dictators. I won't work against democracy and I won't break the law. It's a low, low bar. It's a low bar for, well, you know, we're working on it.

It's a, it's every life is a work in progress.

[00:02:39] Jordan Harbinger: Alright, let's we'll back up and start a little earlier. So you dropped outta college. Can you tell me why?

[00:02:44] Phil Elwood: Yeah. I developed a bit of a cocaine problem. Gotcha. Okay. When I was about 20 years old. The way I like to look at this, uh, the early part of my life is in kind of two ways.

So there's the Instagram way or the LinkedIn way. Mm-Hmm. And then there's the reality of the situation. Right. So if you look at my LinkedIn profile, it says that by the age of 24, I held degrees from both Georgetown and the London School of Economics. Mm-Hmm. Robert. And also worked for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynahan, the chairman of the Finance Committee.

And Senator Carl Levin, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. In reality, at the age of 20, I dropped outta college because of a drug problem and moved to DC to dry out. I don't know how much you know about dc but that's not exactly the place to do it. But did successfully kick the, uh, drug issue and interned for, uh, Senator Moynihan and their office helped me get into George Washington University.

Pretty good school in dc Yeah, I was promptly thrown out after I, uh, drunkenly fell through the window of Gelman Library at gw. One afternoon, Moynihan was retiring. He couldn't give me a job in his office, so he leaned on Carl Levin's office. They were across the hall in the Russell Senate office building to hire me.

Why did he do that for you? Because that's because I was a good intern.

[00:03:57] Jordan Harbinger: Okay. Because dropping outta college, joining the office, and then getting thrown out of a college they get you into because you fell through a window, through negligence. Right, right. It's like you must have been a really good intern.

[00:04:09] Phil Elwood: I was. Well-liked

[00:04:10] Jordan Harbinger: yikes. I was well-liked. Yeah. Good. Well, that seems to be your superpower, I suppose.

[00:04:13] Phil Elwood: Uh, getting to know people. Yeah. And getting to trust people and getting people to trust you is a skill.

[00:04:19] Jordan Harbinger: You told me earlier that my job isn't to manipulate the narrative. My job is to get media gatekeepers, like CNN to do it for me.

It's not just CNN, right? What does this mean? Because Sure. It's kind of a damning indictment of media when it's like, oh, I can just get these guys to do dishonest stuff.

[00:04:35] Phil Elwood: Well, the first thing I wanna say is that the purpose of this book was not to increase cynicism or skepticism, right? But rather to increase media literacy.

Good. And you know, I want people to understand how the news is made, but the important part of that sentiment is that the media is just that. They're just a thing in between. I'm not terribly interested in getting a reporter to write a story unless it does something kinetically out in the world. Mm-Hmm.

So you do a story in order to punish a villain or get a law changed, or, you know, expose corruption of some kind. That's why you do a news story, not just to see your name in the newspaper. Mm-Hmm.

[00:05:14] Jordan Harbinger: But your job was to get your clients not just their name in the newspaper, but to do those kinetic things in the real world.

Right. And I've suddenly become very aware that you're on my podcast and we're doing media about the, but it's interesting because thinking about it, podcasting has become part of this sort of potentially toxic ecosystem. Well, first of all, an example from my own life is China trying to pay me to post this video about how covid must have come from the American white-tailed deer.

It's like this poorly narrated, animated video. They were just going through everybody with a YouTube following, and YouTube is like 1% of this, this audience. So the bar is pretty low and it's like a fake ad agency. Mm-Hmm. Or a real ad agency based in, you know, some country that may or may not be China, and they're trying to pay you a pittance to post this.

And when you say, actually my following's mostly audio, they're like, oh, let's see what we can do with this. How, how big is it? And it's like, would you consider doing an audio version or maybe discussing the topic of how Covid must have only definitely come from the American whitetailed deer. And it's just like, that's a clumsy example of something that maybe resonates a little bit with what you do or had done in the past.

[00:06:19] Phil Elwood: Sure. So there was a time later in my career when I was working for some former Israeli spies and their trade craft, their method of extracting information from targets was to create online avatars. I. They, it would create like open job postings Mm-Hmm. For a desirable job and have the target in mind and advertise that job posting at the target in order to get them to apply for a job.

So this is like a LinkedIn trap? Absolutely. So what they do is get them to apply for a job and then have them turn over work product from former employers who they knew very well who they formerly worked for. Mm-Hmm. Because they were the target of an intelligence operation. And if the source was really good, they would bring the avatar to life and lure the target into a jurisdiction where it's legal to audio or video tape someone.

Mm-Hmm. And they would extract additional information from them.

[00:07:16] Jordan Harbinger: Really. Okay.

[00:07:17] Phil Elwood: Their tagline was, uh, something along the lines of everything we do is legal in the jurisdiction in which we do it. Sure. Right. That's handy.

[00:07:26] Jordan Harbinger: You hear also about Russia, China, Iran doing similar things. A lot of the focus is on China.

I'm not just obsessed with China. I mean I am, but a lot of the focus is on China right now. 'cause you hear these academic professors or whatever going over there giving a talk, and then they get invited to a dinner and it's like, tell us how this machine metal printing innovation thing works. And they're like, well, I'm not gonna give away anything secret, but I'm gonna get right up to the edge.

Mm-Hmm. And then they have another guy come in the same industry and they ask him different questions and he is like, well, I'm not gonna give anything away secret, but I'm gonna go right up to the edge. But it's like the other side. And it's eventually so obvious. Maybe they don't tell you what's in the center, but they make the outline of the thing around whatever's in the center.

Mm-Hmm. At some point if, if this analogy makes sense, it does. And then by the time they've gotten four or five of these guys over there, they've maybe found one who's like, I will divulge stuff I probably shouldn't for $500,000 and luxury trips to China. Where I see my fake girlfriend that's an intelligence officer or something in China, and they eventually just get that IP and everybody thinks they just barely maybe did something that they kind of sort of wouldn't normally have done, but it's no big deal, right?

Once you make that equation, it's just like it adds up to valuable intellectual property. Other sort of dishonest media. I mean rt, I know you talked about that in the book. They tried to hire me a long time ago and I was just like, you're just gonna plant stories. And they're like, look, people do this for this paycheck.

Mm-Hmm. Your journalism paycheck is crap. They didn't do their homework. I was a lawyer and then I did this. So I either made a lot of money or no money and then back to a lot of money. So then offering me like 80 grand instead of 40 or whatever they thought they were gonna, you know, most people in my position were making it was not worth it.

But that's the lure. So when you wonder why crazy people on RT are putting fake stories and it's because their paycheck is doubled or their nuts or both.

[00:09:10] Phil Elwood: Yes. Right. And so, well, my experience with RT was a little different than that. They were a client of the firm. So at the time we had two media companies as clients, Al Jazeera and Russia today.

Okay. And so cleaning up after Al Jazeera was a little difficult because this was just post nine 11. America didn't really want the, you know, middle Eastern perspective on what we were doing over there. Mm-Hmm. But RT was an interesting assignment because I had to, I had to meet up with, and I always say her last name wrong, I had to meet up with Margarita Somalian.

Oh yeah. And, uh, take her on a tour of newsrooms of New York. Meet with my employers. Uh, so who is this person? She was the 25-year-old at the time, managing editor of Russia today.

[00:09:53] Jordan Harbinger: 25-year-old managing editor.

[00:09:55] Phil Elwood: Yes. It was a really, uh, she was a little young for the position, I would say, but, uh, yes, Russia today, for those who don't know, is kind of the English language mouthpiece of the Russian government.

Mm-Hmm. Or Putin's kind of English language mouthpiece. She and I met up at a bar, I believe in Hell's Kitchen at 1130 in the morning and started drinking martinis. Okay. As one does as, I mean that's

[00:10:18] Jordan Harbinger: very

[00:10:18] Phil Elwood: New York

[00:10:19] Jordan Harbinger: though, too.

[00:10:19] Phil Elwood: Very, very New York, very Russian. It was appropriate for the situation. I can't recall with any certainty because we kept drinking and I can't recall with any certainty any of the meetings we went to, with the exception of the last one, which was at the nation.

We met with the editor of the nation and, uh, I can't remember any of the substance of the meeting. Mm-Hmm. But they really got along very well and it was a very odd, odd interaction. Yeah. Have

[00:10:46] Jordan Harbinger: a Russian mouthpiece getting along with it. An American. Yeah, an American Israel. So what are we doing for rt? What are we, what are you doing for RT and Al Jazeera?

I shouldn't use the Royal we, when we're talking about this stuff. What are you doing for RT and Al Jazeera at this point? Because you gave her a tour of American newsrooms, but Al Jazeera is like, that's what a Qatar based. Yes. And I won't say propaganda mouthpiece, even though it, it kind. I would you say propaganda mouthpiece, I'll let you say it instead of me.

[00:11:10] Phil Elwood: They have done in the past some very good legitimate journalism. Yeah. And some great people have worked for Al Jazeera. Mm-Hmm. Over the years. I remember one anecdote that a managing, I don't remember his name, but the managing editor of Jazeera was on a panel with somebody from CNN and somebody from another news network.

And they said, you know, how can you be legitimate journalism? You're state funded and you get your money from the government. And he turned it around on him and said, how can you be legitimate? You get your money from corporations. Mm-hmm. Who have a vested interest in your coverage. It's, you know, you know, an interesting question of if money's gonna corrupt, where does the money come from?

You know, I'm not defending Al Jazeera. Mm-Hmm. I'm just saying that there are complications in every media environment.

[00:11:56] Jordan Harbinger: Would you trust news from those sources?

[00:11:58] Phil Elwood: It would depend on what kind of news it was. Mm-Hmm. Qatar was under an embargo from four of their neighbors for a, a number of years, and their coverage of their neighbors wasn't exactly objective.

So like, do I believe Jazeera's coverage of what's going on in Saudi Arabia? I don't know. Or in the United Arab Emirates or in Egypt. I, I'm not sure. But they have done some legitimate journalism in the past. I know that.

[00:12:26] Jordan Harbinger: What about rt? Would you trust news from rt? No. No. Okay. That's what I'm getting at. No.

Yeah. No, I'm afraid not. I've got a friend who thinks RT is the only real legitimate news source and it's because he's living in a, what my friend Renee Dur Resta, who you would love, calls a bespoke reality. Okay. It's not a shared reality with other people who exist, live in the same universe as us. Sure.

It's a person who's terminally online. Oh no. And doesn't understand motivated reasoning and cognitive bias have completely taken over his brain.

[00:12:57] Phil Elwood: Oh my gosh.

[00:12:58] Jordan Harbinger: Right. And it's sad, right? Because he's genuinely concerned about me and my media diet because I read a variety of news sources, all of which are totally fake and fabricating and trying to get me to believe the narrative that, you know, whatever disease is actually a real thing or like whatever sort of political situation is.

It's crazy, but it's a cult kind

[00:13:18] Phil Elwood: of.

[00:13:18] Jordan Harbinger: But that's the point. Right? Right. So, alright, backing up a little bit, why would a journalist on a major news channel platform your guy or help you achieve your ends? You know, you've got a client and they say, Hey, I wanna put this. Into the zeitgeist. Why would they do that for you?

[00:13:34] Phil Elwood: Usually because it's true. Hmm. So an example that I can give is from, um, 2009. So I was summoned to my client's embassy. My client at the time was the Kaddafi family. So the dictator of Libya. Yeah. And I was summoned to the embassy for the Libyans in Washington dc which strangely enough was at the Watergate Hotel.

Okay. Because nothing shadys ever happened there. No. So I get, I get to the embassy and I sit down with the ambassador and he tells me that in 48 hours, a national hero is gonna be returned to Libya and it's gonna be a great day, and they're gonna throw like a ticker take parade or something like that for this guy.

And I'm like, well, who is he? And he tells me his name is Al McGraw. And he was in jail until then because he was responsible for blowing up Pan Am flight 1 0 3 and killing about 270 people.

[00:14:30] Jordan Harbinger: So this guy's a terrorist who blew up an airliner.

[00:14:32] Phil Elwood: He is a terrorist who blew up an airliner and he was set to receive a hero's welcome in Tripoli.

And the ambassador wanted to know what I thought the global media was gonna do with this piece of information. Mm-Hmm. And I told him it was gonna go very badly for us. And he told me that my job was to get a positive piece of press for the Libyans that week, or else we were in danger of losing our contract.

[00:14:55] Jordan Harbinger: I see. So this is like, we're gonna release this guy, or we're gonna get this guy and it's gonna make us look bad. So find a way to use magicians, misdirection so that when they do that, it's big in Libya and everybody, it gets buried by something else.

[00:15:09] Phil Elwood: Right, right. You know, put lipstick on this pig somehow.

So I had in my research known that the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee helped open the door to Libya back in 2004 when we wanted their help in the War on Terror. I went to his office. I had some contacts there due to, due to a recent operation I did with them. I said, look, Libya's getting the shit kicked out of them in the media right now.

Now mm-Hmm. If we don't do something, they're gonna pull away from us and become our enemies again and undo all the good work you did. So I had drafted a letter from the congressman to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the time, and the letter said, knock off the Libya bashing. Mm-Hmm. And I leaked this to a reporter at Politico and the headline that ran the next day was Knock off the Libya bashing.

So I actually secured a positive piece of press. For the Libyans, the weak Al McGraw, he was released. Wow. And I think that, you know, the way I put it in the book is that I deserve whatever the opposite of a Pulitzer is.

[00:16:10] Jordan Harbinger: The opposite of a Pulitzer. Yeah. Uh, I don't know how to say that backwards. I wish I did.

This is, well, first of all, working for Gaddafi. I mean, this is a real detestable character instead of characters. I mean, this is what are some of the horrible things that he is. So he sponsored a, the destruction of that airliner, which was just a bunch of innocent people traveling. What was the point of that again?

I mean, it was terrorism, but to what end?

[00:16:32] Phil Elwood: I don't know. He said he was trying to get back at us for something we did. And it's all ridiculous, right? I mean, he's just a delusional psychopath. You can't justify any, I mean, I could talk for this entire show about the idiosyncrasies of this family. Mm. I mean, we'll get there.

We're got, we got some good stuff. But

[00:16:51] Jordan Harbinger: feel free

[00:16:51] Phil Elwood: to begin now. Begin now? Yeah. Okay. Like, let's just get into his protection detail.

[00:16:56] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, right. Yeah. Let's do that. That's

[00:16:58] Phil Elwood: 400. What did he, Virgin nuns who were all trained in the martial arts, so he literally had an all girl army of kung fu killers protecting him.

Didn't

[00:17:09] Jordan Harbinger: they ride horses?

[00:17:10] Phil Elwood: I, I don't know. I think they rode horses. They probably, that would be on brand for this man. It

[00:17:15] Jordan Harbinger: was like a showman thing, but it was also like a. It had like a pervy element to it. It really did.

[00:17:21] Phil Elwood: Yeah. It really had a, there was a lot of that, there was some weirdness. You know, he had a thing for Condoleezza Rice.

[00:17:26] Jordan Harbinger: That's hilarious actually. And he

[00:17:28] Phil Elwood: had the, like in his compound when it was uncovered, he had like this weird book of pictures of Condoleezza, like a scrapbook that he put together.

[00:17:36] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Like we there should, I would love to ask her about this. I would. She for sure knows. And I wonder if she's see it. I mean, is she on the

[00:17:42] Phil Elwood: podcast next week?

[00:17:42] Jordan Harbinger: Uh, not next week, but no, I would, I would love to have her on sometime, but I don't think I can say in my pitch. And I want to talk about Gaddafi's scrapbook of photos that, because she'll be like, the secret service will be like, we just wanna have a talk with you, Jordan. We just wanna chat. Could

[00:17:55] Phil Elwood: you just come to this room?

Back here's with no windows. That's right. Yeah. I've been in that room. It's not fun. That's so

[00:18:00] Jordan Harbinger: weird. What a weird, I mean, he was a weird, when you look at him also, he had like Michael Jackson level plastic surgery on his face. Oh yeah. I mean, he was such a freak. This guy,

[00:18:08] Phil Elwood: everybody who interacted with him said he was on drugs.

He took over the country in his twenties. Ruled it like a God. Mm-Hmm. For 40 years, like Kim Jong-un style, there were more pictures of Kadafi on the street than there were stop signs. Yeah. Yeah. You can even talk about the family a little bit more. I mean, his daughter who, you know, the reputable one was an attorney and her client was Saddam Hussein.

[00:18:32] Jordan Harbinger: Right. Okay.

[00:18:33] Phil Elwood: Just before he was hung. Yeah. She was his, uh, she was his attorney. So, I mean, it's this weird kind of.

[00:18:38] Jordan Harbinger: Where'd she go to law school? Like, I don't wonder, was it, I, I'm not the UK or the us I'm not sure in the book you do a good job of describing the Libyan, the embassy. Tell me about that. Because it just sounds like walking into the eighties, like yes, the eighties, but also like kind of a divey bar in the eighties.

Yeah, but it's an embassy.

[00:18:56] Phil Elwood: But it's an embassy and you know, no alcohol because, uh, yeah. So

[00:19:00] Jordan Harbinger: a lame dive bar,

[00:19:01] Phil Elwood: a la a lame dive bar because you know, the Libyan or the Kaddafi, at least were very observant Muslims, you know, until you get to Vegas and then it's a little different. Well, we'll get there. But you know, the embassy was just old.

It was, everything smelled like cigarette smoke. Yeah. It was just kind of a dodgy place. And you go in and you sit there, and the first time I went into the embassy, we were on a conference call. Trying to set up a golf game between the ambassador and Donald Trump. And Trump was on the other end of the phone talking about how he, you know, wanted to do business with the Kaddafi family.

Mm-Hmm. And open a golf course in Tripoli and all kinds of, it was, I didn't know who was the strangest person on the call actually. Right.

[00:19:43] Jordan Harbinger: That sounds like a hot golf course.

[00:19:45] Phil Elwood: Oh, that dangerous golf.

[00:19:48] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, possibly. Well now it's, now it's a dangerous golf course. Yeah. But the AEE was probably, was it dangerous back then?

I mean, cities where there's a dictator running things are usually quite safe. Yeah. 'cause the criminals are all dead. Right, right, right. The violent criminals on the street are all dead. The real criminals of the people controlling the police, running the country. Right. And

[00:20:04] Phil Elwood: controlling the $60 billion Sovereign wealth fund.

Right. Yeah. Geez, my God.

[00:20:09] Jordan Harbinger: So the, the smell and look of the Libyan office. Yeah, yeah. It's like 1980s, but really does sound like, like a mad men style office, but decrepit 40 years outta date. Fewer women, no women in no booze. So. What did you do for them? You talk about this trip to Vegas with the doctor. Yeah.

Tell me about this guy. 'cause this, this is, yeah. The worst trip to Vegas ever.

[00:20:30] Phil Elwood: Oh. Well, it was three important things to know about the Vegas trip. The first of which is I had never been to Vegas before.

[00:20:37] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, wow.

[00:20:38] Phil Elwood: Yeah. I had never even seen the Hangover, I believe, because it was just coming out and I watched it on the flight home from this horrible trip.

I watched The Hangover and I was like, well, that's kind of wild, but not nearly what I just went through. Right. So I'd never been to Vegas before. The second thing you have to understand is that I didn't know why I was going until they closed the door on the airplane. I received an email. It was telling me what I was gonna be doing for the next three days.

Oh, so

[00:21:06] Jordan Harbinger: you didn't travel with them? It was just like, go to Vegas, you have a client meeting, and you're like,

[00:21:10] Phil Elwood: all right, totally. Just, you gotta go to Vegas. I thought I was going for like some conference or something like that. Not right. World of concrete. Yeah. Not this. And so I, I read this email and I'm like, can I get off this plane?

Because it's nuts. If you printed it out, it would've been four pages long. And there was a list of demands from Matam Kaddafi, who was one of the sons of Muer. Kaddafi, the brother leader. He was the national security advisor of the country. He was 35 years old at the time, and he wanted to party in Vegas before his father spoke at the United Nations General Assembly the following week.

So, uh, his other sons were in different cities in America and we had teams with them. And I was just assigned to be the babysitter in Vegas. And I knew about this family because I had a Google News alert. And I'd read it every day. So I read about his brother Hannibal. Hannibal got in a little Who? The names their kid Hannibal, by the way.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, he's naming after the guy who took the elephants across the mountains. I mean, or the leader

[00:22:17] Jordan Harbinger: of the, A team, but Yes.

[00:22:19] Phil Elwood: Or the leader of the A team. I don't think that, I don't think Mu Mefi was a big fan of the, A team. No, I don't know,

[00:22:25] Jordan Harbinger: man. He, they love the eighties, so you never know. They

[00:22:27] Phil Elwood: do, they do.

So I'm thinking about his brothers and, and his brother Hannibal has been arrested on every continent, but Antarctica, he once got arrested in France for driving the wrong way down the Sainte. Oh wow. I mean, this is, yeah. This is not a normal family. Right. And when he got in trouble in Switzerland, that caused a diplomatic.

Kerfuffle Kadafi divested billions of dollars from Switzerland. He arrested Swiss diplomats in Tripoli. He called on the United Nations to revoke their charter as a country. Like who? Who picks a fight with Switzerland? Yeah. Well, I mean, they're neutral. That's like their whole thing, right?

[00:23:03] Jordan Harbinger: Our brand is, we don't mess with you.

I know. Wow. Wow. So why did he get arrested in Switzerland?

[00:23:09] Phil Elwood: He was beating up a hotel employee.

[00:23:12] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, I heard about this.

[00:23:14] Phil Elwood: And yeah, it was real bad. I think he spent the night in jail and pled diplomatic immunity got released the next day, but they were so mad that the Swiss authorities had the audacity to arrest this God King's child.

Right. So this is the mentality that I have in the back of my mind when I'm landing in Vegas. So as I land, I turn on my phone and I get a call from the head of security for Matsa. He says they're throwing us out of our rooms. I'm like, what do you mean they're throwing you out of the Mm-Hmm. I quickly realized they're trying to clean the rooms.

Oh, right. And there is a language problem going on. So he starts swearing at me in Arabic and I'm like, I don't speak that. And so we get it resolved, but like the second I get to the Bellagio, I run to the concierge's desk and I'm like, look, I gotta tell you some stuff I'm not supposed to tell you. This guy is staying in your hotel.

His father runs Libya. I'm gonna give you a bunch of money to help make this go easier. Mm-Hmm. And so we all understood the gravity of the situation and, and they didn't clean their rooms anymore. Yeah,

[00:24:20] Jordan Harbinger: sir. This is Las Vegas. I know exactly what you need and just, and, and here's the duffle bag that you can fill with cash in order to make this go smoothly.

You know what? You won't have to sell your soul to afford the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Chewy. We have two Hinx cats, our first babies before our human babies came along, and Chewy is our go-to for all their needs, whether you have furry, scaly, feathery, or like us hairless pets.

Chewy has everything to keep them happy and healthy. Chewy stocks a plethora of over 100,000 products from just about every brand you can think of and delivers everything straight to your door within one or two days. Need pet prescriptions, insurance, or even telehealth vet visits, which is an awesome idea.

By the way, Chewy's got you covered there too. They're even launching vet clinics all over the country. Momo are one of our cats. He loves this treat called Cat mandu, life Essentials, freeze Dried Alaskan salmon, which I have tasted. And, uh, thanks to Chewy's autoship feature we never run out of it. Along with other essentials like litter pellets, pee pads, and more.

Chewy's autoship is flexible, cancelable, and a real lifesaver. Chewy's customer service is also outstanding with 24 7 expert advice via chat or phone. Plus, with their a hundred percent satisfaction guarantee, you can return anything within a year if it's not a perfect fit, no questions asked.

[00:25:36] Jen Harbinger: Chewy has everything you need to keep your pet happy and healthy.

And right now you can save $20 on your first order and get free shipping by going to chewy.com/jordan. That's chewy.com/jordan To save $20 on your first order with free shipping chewy.com/jordan. Minimum purchase required. New customers only terms and conditions apply. See site for complete details.

[00:25:56] Jordan Harbinger: This episode is also sponsored by Shopify. Real quick, what's the easiest choice you can make? Express checkout when you've only got a few items. Outsourcing business tasks you hate. What about selling with Shopify? What I love about Shopify is it's got your back as you grow. No matter how big you want your business to get, Shopify gives you all the tools you need to step up and take things to the next level.

If you're thinking of launching anything, whether it's cutting edge tech, complex puzzles, cool educational tools, Shopify makes selling a breeze. And if you bought anything online, it's likely powered by Shopify. And have you noticed how quick Shopify's checkout is? It's approximately 36% faster than the competition.

Shopify equips sellers with all the tools you need from creating compelling product descriptions to engaging blog posts. With its intuitive dashboard, you're in full control, smoothly handling orders, optimizing shipping, and overseeing payments right from your smartphone.

[00:26:42] Jen Harbinger: Sign up for a $1 per month trial period@shopify.com slash Jordan in all lowercase.

Go to shopify.com/jordan now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in, shopify.com/jordan.

[00:26:54] Jordan Harbinger: If you're wondering how I manage to book all these amazing authors, thinkers, and creators every single week, it is because of my network, the circle of people I know, like, and trust. I'm teaching you how to build the same thing for yourself.

I know you're not booking for a podcast, but you're probably doing a job. Maybe you're retired, you just wanna up that social life. This is worth a dive in. Trust me, folks, this course is all about improving your relationship skills, inspiring other people to wanna develop a relationship with you, and it's non cringey.

It's very down to earth. Just takes a few minutes a day and many of the guests on our show subscribe and contribute to the course. So come on and join us, and you'll be in smart Company where you belong. Again, the course is free. over@sixminutenetworking.com. Now back to Phil Elwood. Because it's like any place in the world is gonna be like, oh, we understand that.

You want discretion and unreasonable requests 24 hours a day. We're here for you. It's Las Vegas.

[00:27:43] Phil Elwood: It is. But I didn't know that I, you know. Right. I was very new to this. How did they

[00:27:46] Jordan Harbinger: pick you for this gig? Man, they should have sent me. They should've said, not that I would've said yes, they should. I would've said yes,

[00:27:51] Phil Elwood: anybody.

I mean, the way I, I was telling my buddy, I talked to my buddy Preston a lot while I was there. You know, he said a couple of things about it. When I interviewed him for the book, he was like, well, this is the first time I ever heard you truly afraid at work. And also he, when I told him that I was going there, he said, well, you babying sitting somebody in Vegas is like fighting fire with gas on.

Yeah. Like, what is, what are they thinking?

[00:28:18] Jordan Harbinger: Were you supposed to keep them out of trouble or just be like the person who talks to the hotel staff?

[00:28:22] Phil Elwood: Apparently I was supposed to be the person who was drunk the whole time. Well, I mean, we were, we were pretty much drinking every moment we were awake the entire time we were there.

It was one outrageous demand after the next. And you know, we had these like four car motorcade that would go through and getting from point A to point B on the strip is impossible. Now try doing it with four cars traffic. So these are like security

[00:28:47] Jordan Harbinger: vehicles

[00:28:47] Phil Elwood: and whatever. Oh my gosh. No. There were the entourage had some security people Sure.

And some friends and his trainer and his girlfriend and his girlfriend's friend. And there were a lot of people. Was his girlfriend Libyan? No.

[00:28:59] Jordan Harbinger: No. Where was she from? I'm curious.

[00:29:02] Phil Elwood: Europe

[00:29:03] Jordan Harbinger: somewhere. Somewhere in Europe.

[00:29:04] Phil Elwood: European

[00:29:05] Jordan Harbinger: model.

[00:29:05] Phil Elwood: Ah,

[00:29:06] Jordan Harbinger: I think shocking. And her friend was, I would imagine also, also a model.

Yeah. Yeah. These guys are really predictable.

[00:29:12] Phil Elwood: They really are. Yeah. They, they, they, they like, they like blondes. Yeah. I don't, I don't know. I don't know what that's

[00:29:17] Jordan Harbinger: about. Can't walk around with those in Libya maybe. No. So what I love about this is the guy. Has jean shorts that he's wearing the whole time.

Yeah. Well, he wants, jorts wants, those are aspirational js aspirations. It's not like, where can I get the shorts? With the the jeans? Yeah. Without the jeans. So, bro, you want a pair of jorts, like torturers and jorts is what you should have named the book. Yeah, I know.

[00:29:42] Phil Elwood: Well, there were a couple of titles that came up.

I mean, uh, it's, um, but I, I like you to explain why

[00:29:47] Jordan Harbinger: he couldn't find jts because they were out 20 years before he wanted to go buy. Look, let's just go buy a pair of jeans and a pair of scissors and make your own jts Make

[00:29:56] Phil Elwood: make your own jorts. Yeah. We'll get a members only jacket. It'll be great. Hang out

[00:30:00] Jordan Harbinger: with, uh, Medina Jott or whatever in your members.

Only jackets. Every Iranian president has one of those. Yeah, we did, we did throw a party

[00:30:07] Phil Elwood: for the Libyans once at the Willard Hotel to celebrate 40 years of Gaddafi's Wonderful leadership. Mm-Hmm. And you know, I was thinking to myself as we were putting the invite list together for this party, I'm like, no one's gonna come to this.

Then Obama announced he was giving his first address to a joint session of Congress the same night. Oh. I'm like, well, definitely no one is coming to this event. But the room was full. I mean, I don't know what that says about DC but like, we had a major speech by the president going on This is the party celebrating 40 years of gaddafi's leadership.

Mm-Hmm. And we were able to pack a room at the Willard. It was

[00:30:48] Jordan Harbinger: people who knew how to party were like, one of these is gonna be way more fun than the other. And one of these is gonna be covered in the news. The other one's not. Let's go to the one that's not gonna end up in the newspaper.

[00:30:57] Phil Elwood: Probably. Yeah. I mean, well it was a, it was a dry reception, so don't tell anybody this.

So it's a dry reception. And so what I did was went to the bar. There are several bars in the Willard Hotel. So I went to two of 'em and I opened, uh, with different credit cards, tabs, Mm-Hmm. And the people, I invited the party, I told them to take their juice, drink upstairs, have it spiked on my tab, and then come back to the party.

Right.

[00:31:21] Jordan Harbinger: That makes sense.

[00:31:21] Phil Elwood: Well, you know, I mean, I mean it was so strange.

[00:31:25] Jordan Harbinger: What's weird is why pretend to be an observant Muslim then go to Vegas and do blow the whole time while you're drinking and then you have a hotel party and you're like, don't put the alcohol in the room. It's like no one's gonna, first of all, no one's gonna find out.

Certainly no one's gonna say anything. Yeah. 'cause you will kill them if you Right. So the whole charade is so ridiculous to me.

[00:31:43] Phil Elwood: It is. And you know, when we were in Vegas, it was the last week of Ramadan, which is like, you know, a pretty sacred time. Mm-Hmm. We were not observant. We were definitely not praying five times a day.

[00:31:54] Jordan Harbinger: No, no. And he wants what? Share tickets.

[00:31:57] Phil Elwood: Yeah. Oh, we also saw, it wasn't the Blue Man group, it was, uh, the Cirque de Sole. Oh, well that's solid. And that was weird. I mean, so what I'd do is I'd go and buy tickets, the best tickets, and nine of the best tickets, all of the shows on the strip that night so that they could.

Pick what they, this is not an efficient way to spend money. No. But it is a way to spend a hell of a lot of it. The only cool part about the Vegas trip is that I got to go with an unlimited amount of money. Mm-Hmm. So if you can go to Vegas and like. Spend with reckless abandonment. Right.

[00:32:30] Jordan Harbinger: Like hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of dollars.

For sure. Yeah.

[00:32:33] Phil Elwood: I mean, I have no earthly, I think I have blocked out what the final bill was at the Bellagio. 'cause they presented to me in this like, it looked like a Russian novel and I don't know, I don't know what it was.

[00:32:47] Jordan Harbinger: Let me just call American Express before you try to run this. Yeah. Oh, the card got, my card got rejected.

Absolutely. The first

[00:32:53] Phil Elwood: time it was just like, Nope, this isn't running. And uh, so that was a little awkward. Yeah. I don't know what they do to you in Vegas if you can't pay your seven figure bill. I mean, it was a town founded by gangsters, so I have to assume it's not good. Right. Yeah. The first call is not to the police.

Yeah, not to the coroner

[00:33:13] Jordan Harbinger: man. These guys, do they bring cash with them or is it just like, we'll pay you back later? 'cause it seems like a cash kind of, it obviously seems like a cash guy.

[00:33:21] Phil Elwood: Cash guy. Cash guy. No, they were, it was weird. They had these brief briefcases. They were black. Snake skin briefcases that were filled with money.

My God. And, well, I had to pop open one at one, and the bills were like, they were in plastic wrap. Like they'd come straight from the treasury, you know, and thrown in, shrink grabbed. Wow. Yeah. Just thrown in the briefcases and handed to these guys. I have no idea how much, I mean, I, they sent me up there several times to just grab cash so that they could continue gambling.

Uh, like go in the room and get us $200,000

[00:33:57] Jordan Harbinger: and bring it back in. No, it was

[00:33:58] Phil Elwood: nothing like, it was not, there were no specific numbers. It was just give, give, give us a bag. Money by the bag. Yeah. Got it. It was either a stack or a bag. And so what you do is you get the garbage bag out of the little garbage can that they have in the room.

Mm-Hmm. You just take the garbage bag out and you fill it with cash, and then you walk through the Bellagio with this. Garbage bags. Wow. Okay. What the fuck else are you gonna do?

[00:34:23] Jordan Harbinger: Right? And what's weird is you're not the only person walking through the Bellagio with a garbage bag full of a hundred dollars bills.

[00:34:29] Phil Elwood: No, I'm, no. Maybe the

[00:34:30] Jordan Harbinger: only, the only one giving it to Libyan dictator's kids, probably.

[00:34:34] Phil Elwood: Yeah. The problem with this book is that it feels like it's not relatable because a lot of people can't say like, oh yeah, the first time I went to Vegas, I had to babysit this lunatic. Mm-Hmm. But the relatable portions of the book really come if you've ever been asked to do something you're uncomfortable with at work, like, yeah, this is an extreme example of that.

This is an extreme example of that. But like everybody has had a situation where their employer was like, eh, just white out that number. Like, you know, punch in for me, or, you know, whatever. But this is 270 pages of really awkward requests from your employer.

[00:35:10] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. What are these people like? I mean, they're angry, they're spoiled, but are they.

Also kind of pathetic and maybe scared.

[00:35:20] Phil Elwood: Well, it had reason to be scared. Matam gained notoriety later in his life because he was executed next to his father when the Arab Spring really got down to business in Libya. How did they

[00:35:34] Jordan Harbinger: kill Gavi again?

[00:35:35] Phil Elwood: You remember? Very badly. He was thundering through the desert in a 75 car motorcade.

Mm-Hmm. And, you know, our surveillance drones caught this. Also, we intercepted a phone call. One of our predator drones operated by somebody in Vegas actually fired. It's all full circle. Yeah, I know. Fired on the, this is what you get for not paying the bill for overpaying the bill. Yeah, we, we, yeah. So they fired on his motorcade and then the French fired, I think.

And then that gave the Libyan people enough time to catch up to the brother leader. And he was beaten very badly and tortured as was Matson. Matson was shot a few times. The brother leader, there's video of this, and I remember watching it. I don't remember if it was on the internet or on Jazeera. They showed him, and a gun is put to the back of his head, and the last words out of his mouth are, do you know?

Right from wrong. And then they shot him.

[00:36:32] Jordan Harbinger: I mean, a true psychopath who just had no clue

[00:36:34] Phil Elwood: right up until the end. Yeah. There was no moment of reality ever. But I know, or I have heard that dictators around the world watch the footage of gaddafi's execution as a cautionary tale. Mm-Hmm. Geez. Wow. Wild trip to Vegas.

Yes. Yeah. Haven't been back. Well, I went back, once. I went back, I did a favor for a friend of mine and he gave me tickets to the Grammys in exchange for the favor. So I gotcha. Went back to Vegas once. It was nicer. I stayed at the Bellagio, but it was, it was, oh, you're back. No, no, no, no. It's just me. This time's just me.

The concierge

[00:37:11] Jordan Harbinger: had retired. Yeah. Gosh. But you are on a list of like, oh God, if this guy walks in, grab his bags, make him feel at home. Because they're just like, this is a guy who paid a $7 million or whatever, bill. And all we had to do was fumigate the room and replace the bedspread in the carpet. Nine rooms, yeah.

Nine. Yeah, whatever. I mean, it was worth it. They made the, the margins were nice on that trip.

[00:37:33] Phil Elwood: I'm sure

[00:37:34] Jordan Harbinger: you talk about sinking a body. Yes. And tell us what this is. Tell

[00:37:37] Phil Elwood: me

[00:37:37] Jordan Harbinger: about this. So

[00:37:38] Phil Elwood: I come up with cute nicknames for PR strategies. Mm-Hmm. So, sinking the body is a, a strategy for, you know, concealing the truth when something really bad is going on now.

The way I tell this story in the book is, uh, it's the only story from my childhood. And, uh, it's when I was 12 years old, my job was to be the altar boy from my father who was an Episcopal priest. So, uh, I would be his altar boy at weddings, but more often funerals. And I got paid $50 a funeral to stand there, hold the cross and look sad for the whole time.

So we're doing a funeral and you know, I did a lot of 'em in middle school. We're doing this funeral and the backhoe has come and dug the grave and they've lowered the coffin into the grave and we're doing the service. And, but there's this row of flowers so nobody can see into the hole except my father and I, eh, and so we're talking here.

He, my father's doing the yay that we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I hear water looking at the hole, and sure enough, it's filling with water. Oh no. And the coffin is rising.

[00:38:42] Jordan Harbinger: And because there's air sealed in there with the body. Yeah. Oh. So it's, it's

[00:38:46] Phil Elwood: floating up to the surface. And I kind of, I nudge my father and I try to get him to look at this to see what's going on.

His response is to start talking faster. Oh, no. To get the surface over with. And at one point the coffin is nearly level with the ground, and I nudge him again, and I'm like, what do I do? And everybody in the audience is just crying and moaning and, and they're very sad about this person who has died. And my father tells me to put my foot on the coffin.

To submerge it. That's a bit,

[00:39:15] Jordan Harbinger: I mean, this is a last ditch effort at this point, right? Like, someone's gonna go, did you see the altar boy step on the coffin? Is that supposed to happen? And your dad's like doing this calculation in his head, like they're gonna notice that. But what's worse is gonna be when the whole thing sort of right sides itself and point straight up in the air and everyone starts screaming because grandpa's alive after all, and trying to escape the coffin.

You've got it. Oh, you've got, oh my gosh,

[00:39:40] Phil Elwood: you've got the problem. So, you know, he ushers, he finishes. So,

[00:39:44] Jordan Harbinger: so the backhoe had, had dinged like a sprinkler or a water main or something. It was low

[00:39:48] Phil Elwood: on the water table. It was a place next to the ocean. So

[00:39:51] Jordan Harbinger: it dug a

[00:39:51] Phil Elwood: well by

[00:39:52] Jordan Harbinger: mistake,

[00:39:53] Phil Elwood: accidentally sprung a leak in the hole.

The coffin's coming. I'm, it was a mess. So it ends with he ushers the congregation away without them noticing anything. Oh my. And he just says to me as he's walking away, deal with this. Oh, he like 11, 12. So, so after everybody's gone away, I, I jumped on the coffin. To submerge it. I fell in the grave. Oh man.

And ended up pulling myself outta the grave and walking back to our house, which was just a couple hundred yards away. Rang the doorbell 'cause I didn't have my keys. Mm-Hmm. And my mom answered the door, looked at me, covered in mud, very confused as to what had happened at this funeral. Oh my gosh.

[00:40:32] Jordan Harbinger: How did they eventually bury that body?

I mean, they might had to move it, I assume and everything,

[00:40:36] Phil Elwood: you know, I spent the rest of the day in my room crying. Yeah. I think I, I don't think that I really checked. Yeah, no, that's

[00:40:42] Jordan Harbinger: understandable. My god. And that has to do what with pr now?

[00:40:46] Phil Elwood: Well sometimes you have to distract the audience and sometimes you have to sink the body of the truth.

Mm-Hmm. In order to deflect away from something that's going on.

[00:40:58] Jordan Harbinger: So a lot of people are gonna say, oh, this guy's a publicist. You're not a publicist though. No. You're, you say you're a political operative or, or a publicity operative. Sure. A PR operative. PR operative. Okay. What's the difference?

[00:41:11] Phil Elwood: Well. There are many good publicists.

Mm-Hmm. And that is a great profession. It just isn't what I do. So a publicist is there to take inputs and amplify them.

[00:41:22] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm. Yeah. Those are the people that send me your book and say, this, this guy would be interesting for your show. Yes. And then they write a really generic two paragraphs or whatever with some bullet

[00:41:30] Phil Elwood: points.

You gotta bold some shit in there too. Yeah. And you know, you got Crookes

[00:41:34] Jordan Harbinger: reviews, loves this book. Yeah. I mean, here's the three people that wrote on the back. One of which you've heard of maybe.

[00:41:41] Phil Elwood: Right. Hey, hey. Actually one of the great thrills of my life was corresponding with Christopher Buckley Mm-Hmm.

During writing this book, he, uh, he wrote, thank you for smoking. Mm-Hmm. Which, uh, yeah, this

[00:41:52] Jordan Harbinger: book definitely reminds me. There's a few places in the book where I'm like, oh, this is that guy.

[00:41:56] Phil Elwood: Yeah.

[00:41:57] Jordan Harbinger: We'll get there. So tell me, so the publicist writes a pitch pitches, journalists. Sure. Et cetera. You're not doing that?

[00:42:04] Phil Elwood: No, I haven't sent a pitch email in. Other than for the book in years, that's not how I do it. What I do is work with people in newsrooms, so I don't send 'em a pitch email, I send 'em a text message or an encrypted messenger service. Mm-Hmm. Message that just says, Hey, I've got some shit that nobody else has.

Do you want it? Mm-Hmm. And then that starts a conversation. I always come from the position of I'm willing to put my body between a piece of information and the media, which is a very dangerous place to be. And most publicists wouldn't do that. A publicist is a, it's a safe job. I once had a, one of my bosses once turned to me when I was questioning what we were doing is, you know, the safety of what we were doing.

And he said, Phil, we didn't pick a safe profession. Mm-Hmm. And I'm like, dude, I did. Yeah. Public relationships. I just googled this the other day 'cause I heard it. I couldn't believe it. Public relations executive is one of the most stressful jobs in America. They say really in the top 10. I don't believe that I should have became a cop.

Should became, should have been a cop or a neurosurgeon. That's right. Would've been able to relax.

[00:43:16] Jordan Harbinger: You know what won't cost a duffle bag full of unmarked bills to afford fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Cremo. When it's blazing hot outside and I'm sweating buckets.

There's nothing quite like a refreshing shower. Yes, once every five days to help tackle the funk. And in these days, CMOs bourbon vanilla body wash has been my go-to it transforms how you smell. Cremo excels in their rich, hydrating formula that lathers up beautifully in the cent are truly next level.

Their bourbon vanilla variety combines bold spices, Madagascar, vanilla, and aged oak. I feel so silly saying that, but I love the smell of this stuff. It turns me from a sweaty B vine to suavely scented bourgeoisie in a single wash. If you could only smell fewer speakers, folks, uh, maybe, maybe not. I'm really particular about scents, and anything that smells synthetic or chemically is just gross.

A no go for me. It makes me physi. It just makes me angry. It's very weird. It can also make me feel sick. Thankfully, Cremo is on point. They work with top perfumers to perfect their fragrances, which smell great and even evolve during the wash, adding a touch of luxury to the experience. And on top of that, Cremo offers an array of other men's grooming products from shave creams to beard oils to shampoos each featuring distinctive scents that really stand out.

[00:44:26] Jen Harbinger: You can find Cremo Men's Body Wash in its new distinctive bourbon vanilla scent@walmartorwalmart.com. Once again, that's Walmart or walmart.com.

[00:44:35] Jordan Harbinger: This episode is also sponsored by Greatness Wins. I've been really dialed into keeping active working on the sculpted dead bud. However, the struggle to find workout apparel that is both comfortable and fits well has been quite real.

Then I discovered greatness wins, and yes, I do feel like doing a fist pump every time I say greatness wins. This brand crafted by none other than Derek Jeter, Misty Copeland, and the founder of Untuck It. They really know their stuff. They struck the ideal balance between comfort and performance. The fit is really good.

You can sleep in it, you can work out in it. You can just sort of regular wear it. It looks good. Doesn't have that weird baggy look that a lot of the sports stuff does. I don't know why they do that. It's very sort of old dad ish. This is not that. Rocking Greatness wins for the past few months has been really, really nice.

It's the kind of gear that makes me feel less like a sweaty mess. And more like an action hero in training. It's soft, breathable, really tough so far. I do some annoying stuff on the ground that usually rips up my shirts. This stuff has lasted. It stands up to intense workouts in a gazillion laundry cycles without losing its mojo or getting disgustingly stinky.

Give greatness wins. A whirl might just make you wanna fist pump too, especially when your workout clothes finally feel as motivated as you are.

[00:45:39] Jen Harbinger: Upgrade your athletic wear@greatnesswins.com. Now use Code Jordan and you'll receive 25% off your first purchase. Greatness Wins, where the demands of sport.

Meet the science of fit. Check them out now. That's greatness wins.com code Jordan,

[00:45:53] Jordan Harbinger: if you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors. All of the deals, discount codes and ways to support the show are searchable and clickable over on the website at Jordan harbinger.com/deals.

If you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find the code, please email meJordan@jordanharbinger.com. I am happy to surface that code for you. It is that important that you support those who support the show. Now for the rest of my conversation with Phil Elwood, the way you spun this Iraq War documentary, that's what reminded me of Thank you for smoking.

Yeah, tell me about that. This is like in Thank you for smoking. It's a great movie. I. The guy gets kidnapped. He's a publicist, sort of a PR operative for the smoking industry, tobacco industry. And these activists in one of one of the scenes, they kidnap him. They throw him in the back of a van and they stick like hundreds of patches, nicotine patches on him.

To basically let him die from nicotine is like a message. And he doesn't die. He's in critical condition. He is in the ICU. He comes back recovers, and then he, he goes and says, smoking saved my life. I would not have had the nicotine tolerance. I would've been in cardiac arrest if I otherwise, but thank God you're smoking.

I smoked cigarettes and I was able, and it was just like at that point you go, oh, you learned nothing. You learned, you've learned nothing, absolutely nothing from interested. Right. And that's what this Iraq war documentary is, right, is the embodiment of

[00:47:15] Phil Elwood: that. It was the first PR assignment I'd ever worked on.

You know, I was working at this PR firm. It was like. Two other people and me. Mm-Hmm. And we had this client that was this documentary film Gunner Palace. It was about the Iraq War. It was about an artillery unit that lived in Uday. Hussein's bombed out palace in the MIA section of Baghdad during the second Iraq war.

And it was one really cool thing about the documentary is that the entire soundtrack was hip hop done by the soldiers. The problem with that is that the word appears in the film like a hundred times, and the Motion Picture Association of America says if the word appears in the movie more than once, I think it's twice.

Mm-Hmm. He gets an automatic rating. Well, what we were trying to do was get people who were like 15 and 16 to watch this documentary because they were the ones who were considering enlisting in the military. I see. And we wanted them to see what it was like firsthand, like there's a shootout. In one of the opening scenes of this documentary, and it really shows people what it's like to be there.

And yeah, the word appears several times in the movie, but it's still important for kids to see. We appeal to the Motion Picture Association of America. We put 'em on TV talking to, uh, you know, Fox, C-N-N-M-S-N-B-C. And every time they were like, look, we need a PG 13 rating here, Uhhuh. These people have to see this.

And to this day it is rated PG 13 and it's one of the most profane PG 13 movies in existence.

[00:48:50] Jordan Harbinger: So you just applied enough pressure Yes. Saying this is a, if you put this as are, you're doing a disservice to essentially the military. Right? The armed forces.

[00:48:58] Phil Elwood: The armed forces. Why? Jeez. I mean, why not? And you know, Fox, when they had us on, or when they had the director and the soldier on, tried to position it as an anti-war documentary.

Mm-hmm. To kind of push their agenda. And that's not what this was. This was like the most pro soldier documentary I've ever seen.

[00:49:16] Jordan Harbinger: What's it called? Gunner Palace. Gunner Palace, okay. Yeah. Maybe we could link to it in the show notes, or at least the IMDB people could find it. So it seems like you get between the source and the journalist.

Mm-Hmm. And you, you do the spin, right?

[00:49:28] Phil Elwood: Yeah, sometimes I do a lot of litigation, communications. Mm-Hmm. So I'm in involved in lawsuits and what I tell the lawyers that I work with is, you know, if the journalists had gone to law school and the reporters and the lawyers had spent any time in journalism school, I wouldn't have to exist really.

But really what I do is mediate between the source and the reporter and help the source, get the reporter what they need in a format that tells a story. How expensive is this? You know, asking for a

[00:50:02] Jordan Harbinger: friend?

[00:50:02] Phil Elwood: Yeah. Asking for a friend. Well, it depends. Sometimes it's very expensive if you're working for a country.

The price tag is very high because you have to register under the Foreign Agent's Registration Act with the Department of Justice, which is a whole expensive and time consuming paperwork process in order to do any of this stuff. Uh, well, theoretically most people register and then they don't actually fill out the forms entirely to let everybody know what they're doing.

The far a database is one of the most impenetrable in the world. Glad to hear we're on top of all

[00:50:34] Jordan Harbinger: that here. As a Oh yeah. Country. There are like four

[00:50:36] Phil Elwood: people that work at the far office. Mm-Hmm. The Department of Justice. So, I mean, they're buried in paperwork mile. They're buried and there's no chance. And you have firms that are like one of the firms working for Saudi Arabia.

They submitted their contract to the Foreign Agents Registration Office in Arabic. We don't have a rule against that. No. Come, come on, man. So Politico had to pay to translate the entire contract into English, and then they published it. So, you know, kudos to them for doing that. I can imagine

[00:51:04] Jordan Harbinger: the

[00:51:04] Phil Elwood: FAR

[00:51:05] Jordan Harbinger: Office is like, Hey, can we get a copy of that so that we can read it too?

'cause it's an Arabic in our office. Oh, e, exactly. Good Lord. Could

[00:51:10] Phil Elwood: you guys help us out a little bit? I mean, well, you know, people think this is uncommon, but it's all publicly disclosed. Who is working for whom? Yeah. Kind of in this world. My firm that I was working on was taken to task once by, uh, Richard Edelman.

Have you ever heard of the PR firm? Edelman? Yeah. Okay. They're, they're the largest privately held PR firm in the world. Okay. Edelman, after it came out that we worked for the Kaddafi and the Assads and the qris, and he was all very bad, he said, you know, not everyone deserves representation and that PR people are not defense attorneys and that we were awful people basically for taking these contracts.

I see. Now I will have, you know, last year Richard Edelman personally registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act to work for. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Mm-Hmm. More specifically Mohammad bin Salman. Right. So if not everyone deserves representation, I'm sorry, what the fuck was his point again?

[00:52:10] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. His point was, I don't get these clients and I'm mad about it. Oh, you're, oh, you wanna hire me? You know, maybe I should rethink my position. I mean, given my $18 million contract with Saudi Arabia.

[00:52:21] Phil Elwood: Right. It's very uncomfortable. And what you will find is that there are people in Washington, in America who are willing to take these contracts.

[00:52:31] Jordan Harbinger: Sure. It's almost like insider trading, but for the media. Mm-Hmm. Except

[00:52:35] Phil Elwood: it's also legal. Yes. Yes. It's the Faustian deal we've made with the First Amendment. Mm-Hmm. It's nearly impossible to restrict what we can do. The Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 gives it a shot. But I really think we need to update that law to have better tracking and better transparency.

What about

[00:52:56] Jordan Harbinger: Putin? He seems like a guy who would retain services from folks like you. Mm-Hmm. If not you directly.

[00:53:01] Phil Elwood: Sure. I mean, I talk about this in the book. Putin had a contract for a Russia head of contract for a very long time with a PR firm called Catch m. Mm-Hmm. Which is owned by a big holding company.

But no, they worked for them totally legally registered. Believe they, uh, helped place an op-ed by Putin in the New York Times. Yep. About the Syrian war. About the Syrian

[00:53:23] Jordan Harbinger: war. Mm-Hmm. Yes. What was that supposed to do? Like people listening at home, they're jogging their grocery shopping. Right. Mike and Amy are grocery shopping.

They're like, what are you talking about? Putin hired a PR firm to put an op-ed in a New York Times for the serial. They're lost right now, so hold our hand through this one. Sure. As we walk through the dairy aisle,

[00:53:42] Phil Elwood: some of it is just normalizing it. You looked at the origins of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, you know, 1938 it was, we created that law because of Hitler.

'cause he was hiring American PR firms to promote op-eds and articles and newspapers that were sympathetic to the Nazi cause. Just after nine 11, Saudi Arabia spent millions hiring firms to clarify their position on the issue to basically do covert propaganda. Mm-Hmm. And it's so common in the world, in this field.

I mean, I have chosen not to do it anymore. Mm-Hmm. And rather to kind of take what I've learned working for these folks and apply them to better causes.

[00:54:29] Jordan Harbinger: You don't do this anymore at all. Now you're on the up and up now. That's fine and good. But I still wanna talk about all the bad shit you've done in the past.

Yes, of course. Of course. Tell me a little bit about how your firm made money, right? You get the retainer from the client, but it sounds like also. Hey, uh, we need a private plane to go from here to Vegas, and it's like, sure, I'll charter that for you. Assume there's a markup on stuff like this. Sure,

[00:54:50] Phil Elwood: sure.

How does that work? So in normal PR firm, there is a 17.5% markup on any expense. So say you go out to dinner, you have Danny Tip, the waiter, the whole thing gets added onto the bill, plus 17.5%, oddly specific number, but okay. I don't know where it came from, but it's kind of, a twenties is

[00:55:08] Jordan Harbinger: too high, it's kinda

[00:55:09] Phil Elwood: like 17,

[00:55:10] Jordan Harbinger: a little bit too low.

It's kinda

[00:55:11] Phil Elwood: like tipping, you know, uh, 17.5. I'm not sure

[00:55:15] Jordan Harbinger: exactly. I guess when you're talking about millions of dollars, the 0.5, that's like three people's entire yearly salary or whatever.

[00:55:21] Phil Elwood: It seems silly, but uh, yeah. So there have been occasions. There was one specific occasion where I was, had to get a private plane for somebody and I got the invoice.

And I sent it to my company for approval, and then they sent it back to me and they had, you know, whited out the numbers and added about $10,000 onto the, onto the invoice. And they're like, just get paid in cash, it'll be fine. So, you know, this happens over and over and over again and I end up stealing, I, I don't wanna use the word stealing.

I end up appropriating Yes, you did use the word stealing,

[00:55:55] Jordan Harbinger: but that's okay.

[00:55:55] Phil Elwood: We knew you meant

[00:55:56] Jordan Harbinger: appropriating. We, we knew you meant appropriating. Right.

[00:55:59] Phil Elwood: Uh, you know, several tens of thousands of dollars from my client.

[00:56:03] Jordan Harbinger: These dictators though, not that this justifies it, but unlimited resources is unlimited resources that they have plundered from their country's treasury.

So this is a drop in the, but like, even if you took a hundred million dollars from the Gaddafi family would nuts. They would go, oh. Uh, I dunno, we probably shouldn't hire that guy again anyway. What's for lunch? Right? It would just be irrelevant. Yeah. Completely. And you're dealing with these disgusting people.

It's gotta be really easy to sort of morally justify Look, if you're working for like, the church Yeah. Or a family that's a nonprofit that's helping kids in Africa. Yeah. You probably go, oh man, I'll see what I can do to negotiate the price a little, maybe the, the minimum markup, whatever it is. You're not hopefully stealing tens of thousands of dollars from this charity, but when it's Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein, the modern day Hitler, you're just kind of like, you know what, 10 grand.

It's actually better off, not in your hands anyways. Yeah. We're gonna, I'm gonna do better things with this money than you are. Literally, literally, anybody would do better things with this money than you. Yeah. Oh man. You went to Sarajevo though as well, that, that's an interesting city man. I went there and it's gotta be kind of tough to go to a place like that and work with the quote unquote bad guys because Sarajevo.

To give people a picture, there's a soccer stadium that used to be an Olympic where they had the Olympics in I think 1984. Yeah. And it's full of graves. And the reason it's full of graves is they couldn't get the bodies out that were shot and blown up by Serbian snipers during the war because the city was surrounded in under siege and people were starving.

And they would shoot people waiting in line for bread. And I mean, like kids, they would launch mortars into the city from places and there's all these holes in the ground and the pavement, and they fill it in with red gummy plaster so that you can see where people died from these just totally random terroristic mortar attacks from the either Bosnian Serb army or, or militias and things like that.

It was just really gross. So when you go to a place like that, you don't wanna be on the retainer of the bad guys.

[00:58:02] Phil Elwood: The way I put it in the book is that this was the first time I had to see what the business end of my business looked like. Mm. And it was incredibly hard for me to go through because it is, it's a living.

Museum to the atrocities that were committed against these folks. So you say you don't wanna be on the payroll of the bad guy. Well think about the Bosnian War. Who was the bad guy? Exactly.

[00:58:26] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:58:27] Phil Elwood: Yeah. Because the Bosnians are Turkic Muslims. The people who were killing them were Serbs Christians. So when the Americans first heard about this during the Clinton administration, the American response to this was to institute an arms embargo against the Bosnians.

So not only didn't we help 'em, we stopped the, from getting what they needed to defend themselves.

[00:58:53] Jordan Harbinger: Sarajevo was a mixed city. So the people who got blown up and shot there, they were Christians and yeah, Catholics and Muslims and you know, it was just, they didn't give a shit. It was just kill anybody who was really No, it was kill 'em all.

Yeah.

[00:59:05] Phil Elwood: And you know, the United States said, we knew it was happening, and we stood by, I don't know how many Bosnians you talked to, and you were there. They're happy to meet Americans.

[00:59:15] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I literally, but

[00:59:16] Phil Elwood: there's this, there's this giant fucking asterisk next to that happiness to meet Americans. And that is why didn't you help me sooner?

[00:59:25] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Did you go to the tunnel that they dug into the airport? That was in Krista. There's a tunnel there that Muslim Bosnians had dug underneath the UN controlled airport because they couldn't get food and bodies and guns, weapons in and out. So they dug this tunnel into the airport. 'cause even if they were walking, the UN wouldn't let them traverse the airport because this sort of thing was, Hey, if you're gonna let people traverse the airport, we're gonna shoot people who are at the airport.

So we're gonna consider it a military target. And the UN was like, we need this place. So the only thing they could do is dig a tunnel. There's some sort of rumor like, did they know the tunnel was there? Probably. It's really hard to dig a tunnel underneath an airport, but were they gonna do shut it down?

They had plausible deniability. Yeah, but it's creepy going in there, man. Yeah. I mean, it's small and you just think, wow. Everybody who did this risk their lives. And it sort of comes up in like some dude's backyard. They, they said there's a shed around this. And we basically just trucked dirt in and out for three years, taking this like a Shawshank redemption style prison escape.

It was just absolutely incredible. Sir Abel's an amazing place. People should go there. People should go there and eat the food and hang out. It's amazing. It's amazing. And drink the coffee.

[01:00:30] Phil Elwood: Yeah. People who want to sow instability in this country or want to see, you know, bad things happen. I, I always tell 'em, try visiting Sara, Eva.

Mm. To

[01:00:40] Jordan Harbinger: wake up call man.

[01:00:42] Phil Elwood: Yeah. Go someplace where this happen, where brutality against people just really, I don't know.

[01:00:48] Jordan Harbinger: It's very sobering. So if you're watching us on YouTube, there's a table in front of us and we've got some chairs and a couch, and it's about, this area is about the size of a large-ish bathroom.

You in Sarajevo would see a little park, like a patch of grass like this, and there would be. Probably six people buried on it because they had no other place to put the bodies. And you see the gravestones, the Muslim gravestones are like these sort of O bliss. There would be six of 'em. And I just remember going, what, how are these, why are these all over the place?

Thinking like what God he designed. And my friend's like, those are graves, man.

[01:01:23] Phil Elwood: Yeah,

[01:01:23] Jordan Harbinger: those are pro, you know, a family could have been sitting here and took a mortar and that was the end and they're all buried here. And it's just like, it's absolutely sobering. I mean, you will not, but it's not a depressing place at the same time.

No, it's so interesting how they've managed to thread the needle with this. It's like, it's not Auschwitz, right? Where you go, you come out crying and you have nightmares for a month. It's like, yeah. It's just very hard to explain. I highly recommend. In case people haven't figured it out, it'll change traveling to Yugoslavia, it'll change.

And

[01:01:50] Phil Elwood: there's a fountain there. They say if you drink from it, you'll go back. You'll go back. Yeah.

[01:01:55] Jordan Harbinger: I would not drink from a public fountain in a, in a city. I in Yugos la Yeah. And have you been back? Yeah. No, not yet. There you go.

[01:02:02] Phil Elwood: I'd like to.

[01:02:03] Jordan Harbinger: There you go. Tell me about the World Cup sabotage job. This is interesting, and I think probably a lot of sports fans maybe know a little bit about sports washing.

We did an episode about, we did a sports washing episode, episode 8 29. This is kind of the same thing. Uh, it's the other side of that coin.

[01:02:16] Phil Elwood: It was a long shot sports washing campaign. My client at the time was the, uh, government of Qatar. Mm-Hmm. And they got in their head that they wanted to host the World Cup in 2022.

And, uh, ESPN said at the time, it would make more sense to play the Super Bowl in a lake than it would to play the World Cup in Qatar. So those were the odds we were kind of facing. But you know, the. Karis were very persuasive with certain members of the FIFA committee. Persuasive,

[01:02:50] Jordan Harbinger: eh,

[01:02:51] Phil Elwood: the root of all evil

[01:02:52] Jordan Harbinger: duffle bag full of cash.

Persuasive.

[01:02:55] Phil Elwood: Well, people, I, I don't wanna make, you know, accusations, but there are people in jail for having received bribes related to this bid. Yeah, that's true. And so one day, the US Congress, who is our opponent to host the games, this is another dark secret. My job wasn't to support the contrary bid. It was to go after their opponents, which is against FIFA's rules.

So I think I will be banned from ever working on another FIFA bid, because I'm admitting this. I see. Which is fine. You know, I don't, don't really need to do that again. So the US Congress introduced a resolution supporting our own bid to host the games. A sense of the house resolution. These mean nothing.

Mm-Hmm. So my employer called me up and said, you know, the Qy saw this resolution. They're upset. They want you to get a resolution introduced into the US Congress opposing their own bid to host the games. Mm-Hmm. That's impossible. Then he said something like, I said it, you make it true, and hung up on me.

So I went out to a bar at around three in the afternoon on, uh, 17th Street in dc. It was a place called Fox and How, and I was sitting there having a vodka soda, and this group of school children walks by and they were all morbidly obese. Mm. And I was like, there's my answer on a cocktail napkin. I wrote a resolution, and the resolution said the United States government would not support bids for any international games, world Cup or Olympic until we fully funded physical education programs in public schools.

I then met up with a lobbyist who agreed to get a member of Congress to consider introducing the resolution for a fee. So he got this congresswoman to introduce the resolution.

[01:04:37] Jordan Harbinger: You said Furphy. That sounds like something Congress people are not supposed to do.

[01:04:41] Phil Elwood: Right? Well see. The lobbyist thought that he was being hired by the Healthy Kids Coalition, which is what a fake,

[01:04:49] Jordan Harbinger: yeah.

AstroTurf organization. An astro. Can you explain briefly what these are? Sure. I mean, people probably know, but

[01:04:55] Phil Elwood: Sure. So it comes from a grassroots organization is a good group of people. It's like the Brady campaign or something like that, that gets a bunch of people together to support a cause, an AstroTurf organization, you say fake grassroots organization that gets a bunch of fake people together and makes it look like a bunch of people support a cause.

[01:05:15] Jordan Harbinger: But it's like one person, one corporation, or one country's agenda. Yeah. So you hear about these a lot. You're like, oh. The Citizens for a Better Ohio wants me to vote yes on Prop four. And then you're like, let's read prop four. Yeah. Open a casino in the middle of, in your like abolish school lunches for poor people.

And it's like, wait, wait, wait. Citizens for a Better Ohio, I almost voted for this without reading it because the name is your AstroTurf organization is what? Like Citizens for, uh, healthy Kids. You said Healthy Kids Coalition. The healthy Kids. Right. And this is just Qatar going, ah, we want the World Cup.

We don't want the US to outbid us on this, so let's make a fake organization that pretends to care about, oh,

[01:05:55] Phil Elwood: no, no. Qatar didn't make the AstroTurf and that existed. See, I borrowed that from a friend of mine. Oh,

[01:06:00] Jordan Harbinger: you, oh, you just borrowed the fake organization from a friend. Yeah. A fake

[01:06:03] Phil Elwood: organization existed for something totally unrelated.

I see. Years before I see. And, and I just went and I was like, Hey, can I borrow this Healthy Kids Coalition? It sounds good. So, but it was

[01:06:12] Jordan Harbinger: for the purposes of getting Qatar, the World Cup, it had nothing to do with kids. The kids were a random afterthought while you were nursing a cocktail, right. In the afternoon.

Right, right. Okay. And

[01:06:21] Phil Elwood: so I get this resolution introduced. I leaked the resolution to a reporter at Politico, who I knew was a sportsman, and he wrote a story with a headline, world Cup versus Gym Class. And what this did, now, I don't know if this switched any votes, but what it did was provide cover to absolutely everyone who voted for the qy bid, because they could say, look, the United States Congress isn't on board with hosting the games.

Right. Why would we give the games to them? Why not give it to Qatar? Who. A hundred percent of the people who were allowed to talk say they supported.

[01:06:59] Jordan Harbinger: Right, right, right. I'm surprised. It seems like the Detroit mayor should have hired you. That guy was a real scumbag.

[01:07:05] Phil Elwood: Kal Kilpatrick, yes. Yeah. Yes, yes. Very interesting guy.

[01:07:07] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, he's a interesting, is a good word. Is he still in prison?

[01:07:10] Phil Elwood: I don't know the answer to that. He was for quite some time and then he had some problem and then got out and I think he was, I don't know. Problem.

[01:07:19] Jordan Harbinger: You have a lot of stories in the book working for kim.com. Yes. But you have interesting PR rules and one of them is all press is good press.

And that's a myth. Myth. Tell me about why.

[01:07:29] Phil Elwood: Well, I mean, I press is good press. I personally point to Gaddafi's, visit to New York to speak at the United Nations as the moment he lost control of Libya because it was the first time he was shown in the global media and to his own people to be a human, to be, uh, mortal.

And it was embarrassing the press coverage that he got on his trip to New York. It was just awful. I think the people in his country saw that and for the first time realized that he could be killed and that unraveled everything. So all press is good press. Absolutely not. Yeah.

[01:08:09] Jordan Harbinger: This is why you don't see Kim Jong-un giving a, a conference at the No.

Well, anywhere other than something tightly under his own control.

[01:08:16] Phil Elwood: Right. Vladimir Putin doesn't do things. They're not a hundred percent controlled. Mm-Hmm.

[01:08:21] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Very interesting. Another rule is never repeat the negative. Gimme an example of that.

[01:08:26] Phil Elwood: Sure, sure. So if you, any of your listeners were alive for Richard Nixon Mm-Hmm.

If you had to say, quote Nixon, gimme a Nixon quote, the only one you'd be able to come up with is, I am not a crook.

[01:08:38] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm. Okay. That's the only thing I, yeah. I attribute

[01:08:41] Phil Elwood: another quote to him. Nobody can.

[01:08:42] Jordan Harbinger: Nobody can,

[01:08:43] Phil Elwood: so I am not a crook. He cemented in the historical record. He was probably a crook. Right? By just repeating the negative, like that's all he had to do was one soundbite.

I mean, it's, if somebody asks you, you know, when did you stop setting house fires? Right? You don't say, I'm not an arsonist. You say, I believe in the fire codes. You know? Right. I think we should have sprinklers. You know? Then you just

[01:09:12] Jordan Harbinger: obfuscate a little bit. You set this trade war with Antigua in the United States.

Explain this, 'cause this is particularly adept, I would say this is like a country like Antigua doesn't have any leverage against the United States, except

[01:09:25] Phil Elwood: what if you can find leverage, right. That's the whole trick to this game that we play, is finding a leverage point. Finding an inflection point. So yes, I was working for the government of Antigua.

They had a longstanding train, small

[01:09:40] Jordan Harbinger: Caribbean island,

[01:09:41] Phil Elwood: small Caribbean, Eastern Caribbean country. You gotta take two planes to get there. There are no direct flights in the United States. Beautiful. Mm-Hmm. I mean it's, they call it the island of 365 beaches, but wonderful place. So they've been in this long standing dispute with the United States over online gambling.

So we went through, we shut down the online gambling business basically in the Caribbean, and they took us to the WTO and the WTO said, well, yes, the US is in violation of international trade laws. Mm-Hmm. Not only that we signed, but that we wrote. So there's no excuse for us not following these trade laws.

Mm-Hmm. And so finally, the WTO said, okay, you can sanction the United States government. Well, how would they possibly do that? Well, there's a provision in international trade law called cross retaliation. Most people don't know about this. But about a decade prior, Brazil used it absolutely perfectly. They were in a trade dispute with the United States over dumping cotton, so selling cotton for less than it's worth.

In the Brazilian economy, we were dumping hundreds of millions of dollars of cotton. So they said through cross retaliation, we are going to mass manufacture US aids, drugs, brand name aids medications, and give them away for free. Mm-Hmm. To Africa to dilute the market and put US pharma companies out of business.

So then the pharmaceutical companies suddenly got very interested in cotton subsidies in Brazil and leaned on the administration to put a stop to it, which they did. So we just decided to modify this a little bit by having, instead of mass producing a pharmaceutical product, 'cause Antia doesn't have.

Pharma industry, right. They did have a lot of servers laying around because they ran an online gambling empire. So we could just launch a file sharing website like Kim dot com's, mega upload and sell us movies, music and software on the open market without paying royalties to anybody. And that was the threat.

[01:11:45] Jordan Harbinger: And you could afford to do that at just at the cost of the electricity and server maintenance, right? Yeah. So instead of $10 for a movie, it's like a buck 99 or something like that. Yeah,

[01:11:53] Phil Elwood: exactly. Exactly. So what we said we were going to do was sell this stuff on the market until we earned back all the money.

The United States had taken that owed us.

[01:12:04] Jordan Harbinger: Right. And so now you've got the MPAA and the, the music companies going, excuse me, white House. We are losing our shirts because the entire world is now shopping in Antigua for 80% off.

[01:12:15] Phil Elwood: And we didn't even have to launch the site. I'm sure all we had to do was threaten to do it.

[01:12:19] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, really? So you didn't even have to make the thing. We didn't

[01:12:22] Phil Elwood: even make

[01:12:23] Jordan Harbinger: it. Wow.

[01:12:23] Phil Elwood: We didn't even have to use the servers they had laying around. We just said, we're thinking about doing this. And it caused a media shit storm. I bet. Such that somebody did

[01:12:32] Jordan Harbinger: the math,

[01:12:32] Phil Elwood: the New York Times editorialize that the United States needed to settle

[01:12:37] Jordan Harbinger: this.

Oh, wow. Yeah. I mean, look, you're, you're not always in beautiful places. Well, I shouldn't say that. I was gonna use that to transition and segue to Nigeria. Nigeria's probably actually Beautiful. It's just a, it sounds it's not

[01:12:49] Phil Elwood: the part I went to. It's

[01:12:49] Jordan Harbinger: not in, it's not safe. Not safe. Right. Tell me about Nigeria.

I mean, how does it feel when you're there? First of all,

[01:12:55] Phil Elwood: it was scary. So I scary. I had an Uber, Dr. Very scary. I had an Uber driver the other day from Nigeria. Mm-Hmm. And I was like, you know, I, I've been to Nigeria. He's like, oh, when did you go? Right? I was like, 2014. He goes, oh shit.

[01:13:08] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah,

[01:13:08] Phil Elwood: it wasn't safe.

Then the year, the

[01:13:10] Jordan Harbinger: year I skipped going home for Christmas because, you know, I was like,

[01:13:14] Phil Elwood: he was like, well, that was a bad time to go. And I was, yes, it was. It was during, Boko Haram is a terrorist organization. Right. They were having a particularly active time in Nigeria. Is this when they kidnapped all those girls?

Yeah. So they kidnapped about, I, it was two or 300 girls right. From the Chiba region. They were in a Christian school, I believe. Mm-Hmm. And they were taken and sold as ISIS brides. We were hired by the government of Nigeria. By good luck, Jonathan, to help communicate what the government was doing to get these girls back.

And this is another instance where you have your mindset, you have to shift a little bit. Because the people in the government that we were talking to, it's not that they didn't think this was a problem. They knew it was a problem because the world's media had descended upon. Michelle

[01:14:10] Jordan Harbinger: Obama was like holding.

Yeah. Hashtag

[01:14:12] Phil Elwood: bring back our girls. Right? They knew it was a problem, but kidnapping is a business there. I mean, it's pretty common. So they did not understand what all this was about and why the world was so upset. The government wasn't exactly. Competent. Mm-Hmm. They weren't doing anything. Yeah, they

[01:14:33] Jordan Harbinger: weren't.

Yeah. My friend's, girlfriend's uncle was kidnapped in Nigeria and he was like working for the government of Nigeria. Yeah. They shot up a train, they stopped it and they took a bunch of people off. They ended up shooting him in the arm or whatever. A shoulder took him into the jungle and he was released, I think, recently.

Oh, geez. Yeah. I mean, this is, you know, this is a place where people who even work for the government get kidnapped on train heists. I mean, you don't want to be, you don't mess around In Nigeria,

[01:14:59] Phil Elwood: it was a frightening place. We did have a great security detail. I bet The cars were armored. Everybody had guns.

It was, uh, except

[01:15:07] Jordan Harbinger: for the police in, in Army in Nigeria who sell their guns because they need to eat. We sold their guns right to, to Boko Haram a lot of the time.

[01:15:14] Phil Elwood: Yeah, that was, that was an arms trafficking problem.

[01:15:17] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. That was, I would imagine everyone has a bodyguard unless you are just at the bottom of the food chain in Nigeria.

Yeah.

[01:15:24] Phil Elwood: Uh, the arms dealers, some of them had bodyguards and some of them didn't. The guys I remember most from the Hilton and Abuja were these guys from Idaho who were there, uh, building shooting ranges for the military. And these were some Second Amendment enthusiasts. If I've ever one imagine met one. I can imagine.

Sure. I grew up in Idaho, which means that I learned how to shoot a gun before I learned long division. So I, I really got along with these fellows and they, they had a very interesting perspective on the conflict with Boca or Rob. Hmm.

[01:15:55] Jordan Harbinger: I'm curious, but one thing at a time here. By the way, I had dinner with Malala Yusuf.

Zai. Yes. That was a flex last night actually. No kidding. And she, yeah. And she makes a cameo in your book.

[01:16:05] Phil Elwood: She does. It was her 17th birthday party. My, my buddy organized it for her. She came, that's a little unexpected. Very, okay. Very. Before

[01:16:13] Jordan Harbinger: anybody jumps to conclusions, she's an amazing human being.

[01:16:16] Phil Elwood: Amazing human being.

Yeah. Amazing. Like one of the leading human rights activists in the world. Nobel Prize. Winning the, the story is amazing. You know, she was persecuted for trying to learn how to read and for teaching young girls how to, how to read. I mean, it just an amazing story. And a human rights icon even at the age of 17.

[01:16:36] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. We cooked brownies together last night as part of the dinner party and we, um. It did not go well. Her and I are not good at cooking brownies. Oh no. I was like, no, it's uh, I should save the story for when she comes on. But it was, yeah. She's like, you know how to do this right? And I was like, no, you don't know how to cook.

She's like, no, my mom was the cook. So it was, it was quite funny. It was like, between us, she had a Nobel Prize winner and some Schmucky podcast, or neither of us could make fricking brownies, which by the way have like three ingredients. Right,

[01:17:03] Phil Elwood: right. It comes in a pre-made box. Yeah.

[01:17:05] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It's how many eggs?

Well, it says this, but we're making more than one, and I'm like, I'm lost. I can't do it. Can't do the math. Well,

[01:17:11] Phil Elwood: no. Um, Malala was, she was the perfect person to give us what we deserved, which was she came to Nigeria and made us look terrible. Hmm. I mean, me and the other public relations executives that were working on this account were doing all we could to make good luck, Jonathan.

Look like he was, I. He was on top of the situation and doing everything right. And so we're like, yeah, let's do a photo op with Malala. Right. This is gonna be a, this is gonna be a good idea. Right. And so we do. And then she kind of talks to the international media and makes us all look terrible. I, I refer to this kind of in my mind is the time I got my ass kicked by a 17-year-old human rights actor.

Oh yeah.

[01:17:57] Jordan Harbinger: And she's soft spoken and she will eviscerate you.

[01:18:00] Phil Elwood: Done.

[01:18:00] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[01:18:01] Phil Elwood: Done. I mean, I, we didn't, we didn't have a chance, but you know, it ended up with the, the world kind of reacted poorly. The hashtag someone tell Levit that was the name of the firm I was working for at the time. Lick the hashtag Someone Tell Lick was trending for like a week.

And it was just like, what are these people doing? Going to Nigeria? Trying to tell 'em Whitewash boco around. Yeah.

[01:18:25] Jordan Harbinger: Or well whitewash the regime who is incompetent against Boko around. What's the difference? Some of these Israelis that you worked with as well are really sketchy, man. Mm-Hmm. This, what is it S Group or the S group?

Yeah. Is the name of the organ. So this, who are these guys? This is like Black Cube. And if you know, black Cube a competitor to play. Yeah. So, but people don't know what that is either. Yeah. So tell us about this.

[01:18:45] Phil Elwood: Okay, so where to start? So you have Waze on your phone, right? No. Okay. Well, most, A lot of people have Waze on their phone.

Waze started out as an Israeli military program to help them move military equipment throughout cities more efficiently. Well, somebody from the IDF retired, the guy who designed it, retired, did a civilian version and sold it to Google for a bunch of money. Right? And so the Israelis that I worked for did the very same thing.

It's just they didn't design apps for the IDF. They ran the psychological operations for the IDF. So the fellow who founded the PS group recruited out of the Israeli Defense Forces and the Mossad. Pretty exclusively. Mm-Hmm. Uh, younger operatives. So kids who are doing their military service. If you do military, if you live in Israel, you have to do military service, right?

For a couple of years. If you choose the intelligence track, it's a five year term. So once they get out, they have a number of skills that are marketable to the private sector. So all they were doing was privatizing what they used to do for the Israeli government, but doing it for corporations in the United States and abroad.

Okay. That sounds like spying on behalf of corporations. It really does, doesn't it? It does.

[01:20:01] Jordan Harbinger: Uh, so I mean, I'm trying to, I know you gotta dance with this a little bit. Yeah. So I'm, and I'm not here to hold your feet to the fire on this. I'm here to get the story out in a way that doesn't require you going to talk to the FBI after this conversation again.

Again. Um, because, so what I found in the book, which is just ridiculous, is they give you this laptop and they, it's on and they're like, put this in your desk drawer. Mm-Hmm. And leave it on, and then leave it plugged in forever and then lock the drawer. Yeah. Do you have any idea what that was for? None.

Okay. So I asked people that might know the answer to those types of questions. Awesome. That definitely know the answer to those types of questions. And it turns out that they run a special version of Linux and they put these essentially sort of overblown wifi cards in there. Okay. Some of 'em are actually wifi cards.

They will connect to any device that gets near it. So any meeting you have, I was probably also listening to you of course, but any phone call you have, any meeting you have, if I walk in with my cell phone, it'll connect to that computer and they're like, oh, okay. Who's this phone? Well, that they go through the database, whatever the thing is that they hacked and they go, oh, Jordan Harbinger visited him.

Why would that guy be there? Huh? Okay. So they start to map all of your connections, listening to your meetings, your phone calls, even people walking by outside. Mm-Hmm. They can go, what? Why was that guy in a car out front for 15 minutes? That's unusual. That's what those laptops can do. I think it's funny that you just went Okay, and just no questions whatsoever.

I mean, that's like, there's like a bumper sticker for your job, which is don't ask, don't ask questions, don't ask. Yeah. It seems like you just had to do that kind of thing.

[01:21:35] Phil Elwood: You know, I was, I was talking to a, a reporter about this the other day and they said, Phil, how much of this was willful ignorance?

Just 80% the question. Absolutely floored me.

[01:21:48] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah,

[01:21:49] Phil Elwood: and the only thing I could come up with to say is that you know where I hate the characterization. I can't disagree.

[01:21:55] Jordan Harbinger: Mm. The whole industry is duplicitous, right? It's the whole, and you mentioned the PS group. They're being paid by the Gulf States, right?

The Gulf States don't want to be on the records with wiring millions of dollars of money to Israel. And people who work at the bank are like, why aren't we paying Israel? Aren't we supposed to be kinda like enemies of those guys? So they're wiring money through the ion Cyprus because. They don't want the optics of looking bad.

So somewhere in Cypress, since the shells are bankers that are just loaded, taking a percentage that they can put a rubber stamp on a money transfer. Mm-Hmm. From the Israeli government. It's just, or from the Gulf states to the Israeli go, or corporations? Not, not the government, it's just banana. The whole thing is just such a layer of spray paint on a crumbling facade.

I

[01:22:40] Phil Elwood: wish I could say that I've only been paid from a Cprt account once Uhhuh. Uh, but it's happened multiple times.

[01:22:47] Jordan Harbinger: And this group is under investigation by Rob, or was under investigation by the F from the FBI, Robert Mueller. I mean, these are like not typically people you would hang out with if your corporation is totally above board.

[01:23:00] Phil Elwood: Right? Right. A few things on that. I mean, it is shocking the number of legitimate corporations that met with us that we're considering using these folks. It's amazing what people can get away with.

[01:23:13] Jordan Harbinger: When did this start affecting your mental health? Yeah,

[01:23:17] Phil Elwood: that's, um,

[01:23:18] Jordan Harbinger: not did it, when did it right. When did it, I'm, I'm like, there's an African proverb that also is in your book that I love.

I'm, I'm remembering this forever. 99 lies will help you. It's the 100th lie that hurts you.

[01:23:30] Phil Elwood: Yeah. Then that certainly was true of me. My mental health started, I've worked with a lot of doctors on this. Yeah. So we've kind of pinpointed that the depression and, uh, some other things hit when I was about 20 uhhuh, which was what caused the problem in college.

Things just kinda piled up and I didn't get a proper diagnosis really until I was about 35.

[01:23:52] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. So you suffered for a decade and a half or longer.

[01:23:56] Phil Elwood: Yeah. Geez. Yeah. Just thinking all of this stuff that's in the book was normal.

[01:24:01] Jordan Harbinger: Well, and you're drinking Yes. And you're probably sleeping like crap.

[01:24:04] Phil Elwood: Yeah, right.

Yeah. I mean, I was definitely treating my problems with alcohol and pot and not sleeping. And it does catch up with you. I mean, I don't know if this is a hundred percent analogous, but in, uh, in the Harry Potter movies, they talk about how it's when you kill somebody, it tears the soul and it just continually does that.

And didn't expect a Harry Potter reference in this podcast. My wife's a huge Harry Potter fan, and I mean, I'm

[01:24:33] Jordan Harbinger: not against it, I just thought, Hmm. We're talking about depression, mental health espionage. Yeah. Gaddafi murdering people, by the way. And Harry Potter. And Harry Potter. Yeah.

[01:24:42] Phil Elwood: No, I, I'm always there with a weird reference.

Sorry about, about that. No, I appreci it. I'm here

[01:24:45] Jordan Harbinger: for it.

[01:24:45] Phil Elwood: But, um, it did catch up with me. It was one thing on top of another until I thought that I'd, my job is all about creating options. I just thought I was outta options.

[01:24:55] Jordan Harbinger: How bad did it get emotionally or mental health wise, you know? How close did you get to the bottom?

[01:25:01] Phil Elwood: Well, I could definitely smell it if I, I was, I was near the, near the end of my rope because I just didn't know, didn't know where to turn. Mm-Hmm. And, uh, ended up, strangely enough, finding a solution to the mental health problem through Ketamine therapy. Tell me about that. I tried that with a, with a doctor?

[01:25:22] Jordan Harbinger: Yes. Yeah. A lot of people are like, oh yeah, me too, bro. No, with a doctor. Yeah. But I don't, I don't have depression or anything. It was just a doctor who's a friend who like, hey. A lot of people really like this. Yeah. Which is a strange thing to do with medical treatment now that I think about it. He meant well.

Yeah. Right. Because I had a bunch of friends that were doing it that were like recommending it and I maybe he just assumed, yeah. That I was also in that. But I tried it and it was, it was terrifying because it feels, I don't know, I've never been, had a near death experience. I can imagine. This is probably kind of what it's like.

It's like this dying, falling through the floor and then you're in space, but then space opens up and you're falling through a hole in space. And I remember saying, 'cause you're still, you're not totally out. No. I told the nurse, there's a nurse there, thank God. 'cause otherwise, you know, and I said, I am dying.

You need to turn it down. And she was like. Oh, and she did, and then I became way more sort of sober and then I said, I have a family, I can't die. She's like, no. And the doctor came in and he's like, it's fine, whatever. I, you know, they had a conversation, but it was clearly, I just was very alarmed at the fact that my body knew to say, I am dying.

Mm-Hmm. Because maybe I was dying because ketamine is not something you sort of screw around with, you know? It really isn't and it's intravenous ketamine.

[01:26:35] Phil Elwood: Yeah. It's, I wanna say one thing, don't do drugs too. Before we start talking about this. I have never used ketamine outside of a doctor's office, and I never would.

You should not. Yeah. It's not any of that shit. Do not fuck around with this, but. In a doctor's office under the supervision of an anesthesiologist and an ER trained

[01:26:56] Jordan Harbinger: nurse. Yeah, that's what this guy's, an anesthesiologist. By the way, I am happy to refer people to this practice in the Silicon Valley area of California because I don't want people ordering ketamine from the dark web.

No. And giving it a shot because it's expensive where they are illegal.

[01:27:10] Phil Elwood: Yeah. You don't want to do any gray or black market No stuff with this shit. Especially with like fentanyl rolling or No, no. Just go to the doctor's office. They'll give it to you and you're hooked up to a blood pressure monitor and a blood oxygen monitor and heart rate monitors, and it's all very safe.

And that is the thing you have to understand is that it's temporary. Mm-Hmm. And you will come out of it. It's, the disassociation is very jarring. The first time I

[01:27:39] Jordan Harbinger: thought it was five hours,

[01:27:40] Phil Elwood: it was 20 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. You're in, you're in the chair for an hour. Yeah. Total. But it's. I don't know what it does exactly except that for me, it cures depression and suicidal ideation and reduces panic attacks a great deal.

I was taking one to two, one milligram Xanax pills a day just to live.

[01:28:07] Jordan Harbinger: Just to not, yeah, just to live. Yeah. And were you were also drinking? Yes. Holy, that is so dangerous. Yeah. That's the old, remember in the eighties, I dunno how old you are. You're about my age. P yeah. That's how a zillion famous people died, right?

Yeah. They would take sleeping pills, quote unquote, and then they would have a martini and they would just zonk.

[01:28:27] Phil Elwood: That would be it. Yeah. It was, it was scary. And you know, I was working with a psychiatrist who had me on a bunch of different SSRIs and other, um, medications that didn't do anything. Yeah. And finally it came to a head, you know, I went into my doctor and she said, well, I think you have.

Treatment resistant depression. Sure. And I said, well, doc, that sounds an awful lot like a death sentence after, you know, I mean, this, this isn't good. Yeah. Are you giving up? And she said, you know, we should try ketamine therapy. And how are you feeling now? Feel great. Good. I mean, for me, it truly is a performance enhancing drug because if, if your baseline depression level is, if you're feeling like a two mm-Hmm.

Or a three, you can't really do anything.

[01:29:15] Jordan Harbinger: Right.

[01:29:16] Phil Elwood: It's impossible to get out of bed and be creative. And I wouldn't say that I'm a confidence man, but I mean, my job requires a great deal of confidence in order to pick up the phone and do these things. And if you feel like you have nothing left, there's, there's nothing.

[01:29:35] Jordan Harbinger: Have you ever used this skillset for anything good? Oh yeah. Okay, let's talk about that. Let, I don't want, you know, 'cause you've sat here sort of in the confessional flogging myself, right, right. And it's like, well, alright, didn't you rescue some gymnasts from Ukraine? Yes. I mean, tell me, tell us about this.

Well,

[01:29:51] Phil Elwood: okay, the Ukrainian story is good. My favorite kind of good guy story from early in my career actually, when I was working for all the bad folks, was there was this barber, a Turkish barber in Saudi Arabia. He had a barbershop in Jetta. And uh, one day he got into an altercation with a customer and said the words, goddammit.

And the customer called the religious authority God. He said he was arrested the same day he was given a one day trial with no lawyer and no translator. Oh, he didn't speak fluent Arabic. And he was sentenced to death for saying goddammit. Right. And so. I went to my client, a Turkish American, translated an article from the Turkish press for me, sent it to me and said, get the English speaking press to write about this.

So I called up my buddy, uh, Peter Slutsky, still a very good friend, wrote for the Huffington Post at the time. And he wrote this wonderful 750 word piece about the injustice of this, how wrong it was. And then the Saudis were hosting a conference at the UN on religious tolerance or something like that.

[01:31:03] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, the irony is so rich.

[01:31:05] Phil Elwood: So I sent, uh, some reporters to this conference to have them ask questions about this barber right robbery bog day. And then the next week he received a pardon from the king of Saudi Arabia. Wow. And he was given a one-Way ticket to Istanbul. Yeah. And said never to come back to the kingdom.

Sure. And so he's alive. This guy's about my age, and he has a family. Does

[01:31:28] Jordan Harbinger: he

[01:31:28] Phil Elwood: know

[01:31:28] Jordan Harbinger: you did any of this? No. No. If anybody knows this guy, this would be such an interesting way to connect because there's definitely, we have tons of Turkish listeners. Unfortunately that name is probably massively, but someone gonna be it like John Smith over that, but like, I think that's my friend's uncle who's like a guy who runs the bar.

Like I

[01:31:45] Phil Elwood: think he's still, I haven't heard any updates.

[01:31:48] Jordan Harbinger: Like nobody has cut there. Like nobody's business enjoying every day of his freedom. Probably. I hope.

[01:31:53] Phil Elwood: I hope so. It's not why I do this. People have asked several times like, why do you do this? Is it for the money? And I didn't get Rich doing this stuff.

I mean, when I was working for all of the dictators, I was making less than a hundred thousand dollars a year. Really? Yeah. That's

[01:32:09] Jordan Harbinger: such a low price to right here I am thinking like, well, a lot of people would do things for $850,000 plus bonus. Yeah. What you're making as much as like a paralegal. Yeah.

Selling your soul paralegals get to go home at five usually. Exactly. Right. Exactly. Exactly. They're making, those people are really important by the way, but they are not selling their soul by any stretch.

[01:32:28] Phil Elwood: Right. I didn't do it for money. I honest to God think that I do this, that I'm driven by the story, like I have to be true.

You know, there's

[01:32:37] Jordan Harbinger: other professions where you can be driven by the story. It's called journalism. You might wanna give it a shot

[01:32:41] Phil Elwood: they'd never have for crying out loud. Never start a fricking

[01:32:44] Jordan Harbinger: podcast, anything but helping out. Who's up? 'cause Kim Jong-Un, or whatever the next client is. Jesus Christ. Don't say that in Saudi Arabia.

Oh my God. Jesus. I guess you could probably say that in Saudi Arabia.

[01:32:54] Phil Elwood: Yeah. I don't think I'm gonna be traveling to the Middle East anytime soon.

[01:32:57] Jordan Harbinger: Geez. The things you know, and there's these tips in the book that just give like an insight into your life. You said in Lebanon, always stay above the sixth floor because car bombs typically only damage the lower floors.

Yeah. And I'm thinking. Here in New York, you're like, can I get like a, you wanna be low enough that the firetruck can rescue you? Right. But high enough where like you're not taking a shower and you look out the window and you realize the hot dog cart vendor can see your wiener. Uh, it's just like, you know, those are the calculations we're making here.

Right. Over there. A completely different game.

[01:33:27] Phil Elwood: It is. Beirut was, um, a very, uh, interesting trip. It was both scary because of the reason that we were there, but it was also really beautiful. Yeah. Just a great, they're not kidding. It is like the Paris of the Middle East. Mm-Hmm. I haven't been back since the blast.

I understand that was pretty bad for the city. Yeah.

[01:33:50] Jordan Harbinger: On that same token. You've been to some of the worst places in the world to work with some of the worst people in the world.

[01:33:56] Phil Elwood: Yeah.

[01:33:57] Jordan Harbinger: What's a surprisingly awesome place, apart from let's say, the murderous dictator in charge? You mentioned Lebanon. Anything else come to mind where you're just like, wow, this place would be great, except for the guy murdering everybody who jaywalks.

[01:34:10] Phil Elwood: I have heard the Roman ruins in Libya are absolutely outstanding. Yeah, I heard the same. I have heard the soccer stadiums in Doha are really ugly, but they at least disassembled most of them. Mm. And got rid of them. Where's a nice Antigo, of course is well, yeah. Wonderful. Trying to think of the best. Yeah.

Nigeria is not, I wouldn't recommend Abuja. I'm sorry. Yeah. I think DC is the place that everybody should go visit,

[01:34:40] Jordan Harbinger: or, I mean, look, Lebanon, I've tried to go there a few times. Unfortunately, there's a. Either an invasion or a civil war. Yeah. Or some kind of thing. Every time I've made, I've tried three times.

Mm-Hmm. Once Israel invaded another time, there was something going on with Hezbollah and I was like, you know, the universe, which I, I don't love this phrase, but the universe is trying to tell me something. I trying to tell if they cancel three trips to Lebanon over a period of a decade. Like my timing is off on this.

Yeah. Although next time I go or next time, if I manage to go, I'll stay on the seventh floor.

[01:35:08] Phil Elwood: Well, where I think people should get Turkey actually. Ah, I love Turkey actually. Is the best food ever. Is the gym the best food ever? Some of the best beaches. Just absolutely a beautiful country. I can't say enough good things about visiting Turkey.

[01:35:22] Jordan Harbinger: I don't have a clever ending to this particular podcast. Well,

[01:35:25] Phil Elwood: you know, we could, you know, we could just. Make one up and Yeah. Well, that's what I usually do.

[01:35:30] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It it's been a pleasure talking with you, man. It really

[01:35:32] Phil Elwood: has

[01:35:32] Jordan Harbinger: been. You're still in the game though,

[01:35:34] Phil Elwood: right? I am. I am. So long as, uh, as long as you're not a dictator or working against democracy.

I was gonna

[01:35:40] Jordan Harbinger: say, did you draw any, have you drawn a line in, in the sand? Absolutely

[01:35:45] Phil Elwood: no dictators, nothing against democracy and nothing illegal. Those are the lines that I've demarcated. There's a little bit about the word deadline. Would you like to hear that? Yeah,

[01:35:55] Jordan Harbinger: let's do it.

[01:35:56] Phil Elwood: Okay. So in newsrooms, everybody's life is governed by a deadline.

So I decided to look up the origin of this word. Mm-Hmm. And it turns out it comes from the American Civil War, and it has to do with a line around POW camps, prisoner of war camps. Mm-Hmm. And they would draw a line in the dirt and put a sniper at each four corners and told the inmates, if you cross this line, you'll be shot.

And it was known as the deadline. Now how that migrated into newsrooms. Yeah. I'm not entirely

[01:36:26] Jordan Harbinger: sure. A lot darker than I thought it was gonna be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But for

[01:36:29] Phil Elwood: me, you know, a deadline is something that I set after all of these things happened that, that I couldn't cross or else I wasn't gonna live.

Mm-Hmm.

[01:36:40] Jordan Harbinger: Well, I'm glad you're alive. Hey. Sitting in front. Me too. Happy to be here. Yeah.

[01:36:44] Phil Elwood: Thank

[01:36:44] Jordan Harbinger: you. Thank

[01:36:45] Phil Elwood: you.

[01:36:47] Jordan Harbinger: Here's a sample of my interview with Amanda Knox, who is coerced into wrongfully confessing that she was at the scene of her roommate's grizzly murder without being made aware of her rights or being given access to a lawyer.

Here's a quick look inside.

[01:37:02] Clip: I was 20 years old. I was studying abroad in Italy. The day after Halloween, I came home to find a murder scene. The cops arrive, they break down my roommate's door and find her body there. And for the next five days I was at the disposal and. Mercy of the police officers who unbeknownst to me had targeted me as a person of interest.

My thought was to just take direction. I did what I was told and what I was told was by the police to come in every day for questioning, and I sat for hours and hours and hours and hours. I often worried that maybe the reason that they were upset or short with me was because I just wasn't speaking Italian well enough.

I thought that was the reason why they kept asking me questions over and over and over again. No matter how many ways I answered the same question. They never seemed happy with it. I just sort of submitted myself to what was ultimately a very coercive interrogation technique that culminated with an overnight interrogation and broke me.

I was. Made to believe that the reason they were upset with me was because I didn't remember correctly. I realized that the truth didn't matter and that I couldn't count on the truth to save me. People believed it. I was convicted. I spent four years in prison

[01:38:48] Jordan Harbinger: for more, including why it's not uncommon for an innocent person to give a false confession to a skilled interrogator.

Check out episode 3, 8 6 on the Jordan Harbinger Show. Whew, yikes. I could not do that job and also sleep at night. And apparently Phil couldn't either. Hence the ketamine therapy. Really interesting line of work. I think he's a good dude at heart. I think he's. Man, the things we do for money. I suppose from what I can see during my brief experience with him, this is not some sort of like nefarious evil guy.

It's just sort of a job that he fell into. I don't think I can stay in it though. Thank you to him for being so candid on the show here today Off air. By the way, Phil told me that if a reporter doesn't explicitly agree that something is off the record, that it is not off the record, and so that might be useful to some of us.

I guess I'll have to remember that if I ever really decide to get dirty over here, but that's something that can trip up a lot of people. It's tripped up a lot of people. In fact, that's why he told me that, so that's why I'm sharing it with you all as well. All things Phil Elwood will be in the show notes over@jordanharbinger.com.

Advertisers deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show. All at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Don't forget about our newsletter as well. Wee bit wiser. Every Wednesday we give you something specific, something practical, something that'll have an immediate impact on your decisions, your psychology and your relationships in under two minutes, making wee bit wiser, quite we.

And if you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out. It's a great companion to the show. Jordan harbinger.com/news is where you can find it. Don't forget about six minute Networking as well over@sixminutenetworking.com. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn and this show has created an association with Podcast one.

My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends. When you find something useful or interesting, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about.

So if you know somebody who's interested in these kind of lesser known careers, a little bit of shady stuff that might appeal to one of your friends or loved ones, definitely share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time.