U.S.-Iran war unlikely: John Bolton is all bark, no bite, says columnist

Guests: Houchang Hassan-Yari, Eli Lake

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VOICE: I think Iran would be making a very big mistake if they did anything. If they do something, it'll be met with great force. But we have no indication that they will.

AMT: That's the U.S. President Donald Trump yesterday suggesting that if anything happens he's being defensive and not on the offence, but in the verbal sniping between the U.S. and Iran that's not clear. Since the weekend, the already problematic rhetoric has ramped up with President Trump tweeting, "If Iran wants to fight that will be the official end of Iran." That tweet came after a rocket exploded close to the U.S. embassy in Iraq in Baghdad. Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif responded to Mr. Trump with his own tweet calling the U.S. threats "genocidal taunts." Along with that there are new reports that Iran has quadrupled its production of enriched uranium. The U.S. has moved an aircraft carrier and B52 bombers into the region. The tensions have been rising since President Trump triggered a pull out of the Iran nuclear deal with other world powers a year ago. Democrats warn the U.S. may be torqing its intel. They'll get a briefing today, but they are wary of the president's national security adviser John Bolton, a longtime advocate of regime change in Iran and one of the people behind the U.S. invasion of Iraq where they deliberately used misleading intelligence and claimed weapons of mass destruction for that invasion. Watching all of this unfold is Iranian-Canadian Houchang Hassan-Yari. He is a Professor Emeritus in the political science department at Royal Military College of Canada and he's in Paris today. Hello.

HOUCHANG HASSAN-YARI: Good morning, Anna Maria.

AMT: How volatile is this situation today?

HHY: It's extremely volatile I believe. As you mentioned earlier, the level of rhetoric is getting almost out of hand. The Iranians are claiming that if there is a war they will defeat the Americans. Apparently Presdient Trump doesn't and he reacts to that. Plus a few incidents here and there including the projectile that was launched and landed close to the American embassy in Baghdad. Plus obviously the attacks against the four tankers in the the United Arab Emirates, the waters.

AMT: So the U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton is getting a lot of tension in this. What role has he played bringing the U.S. and Iran to this point?

HHY: His role is crucial. Again as you mentioned, he is advocating the regime change in Tehran. For many years he was and continue to be a big supporter of the Mujahedin, an organization that is fighting the Islamic Republic and he participated in a number of their activities, conferences and so forth. So he is the one that Mr. Bolton is the one who is looking for the regime change in Tehran because the regime is, from his perspective, is creating a number of problems for the U.S., Israel and other allies to the US in the region.

AMT: So you're telling me his relationship with Iranian dissident groups is shaping what he's saying to the president.

HHY: At least he shares some ideas with that group.

AMT: And what's his end goal?

HHY: The end goal is I'm quite sure about that one, the change of regime. You remember that for example when the Americans decided to invade Iraq in March 2003, the preparations was done many many years before the actual invasion took place. So in the case of Iran also, it took a lot of time to get to the point that we are now here. When for example, before the elections, the US presidential elections, Donald Trump mentioned that this is a very bad agreement, the nuclear agreement on Iran.

AMT: Oh sorry, we almost lost you there. I'm going to play a clip for you. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius is speaking on MSNBC's Morning Joe last week. Listen to what he says.

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VOICE: I worry that the situation in Iran is is going well beyond what Trump imagined. He said as recently as yesterday, well they'll want to talk to me. They'll want to come back to the table.

AMT: Okay. Will they want to come back to the table, Houchang Hassan-Yari? Has that situation gone too far or can they do that? Hello. Oh I think we lost him, is he there? Hello. Professor Hassan-Yari are you there? Okay we apologize for this. We're just going to try to get him back. Bear with me. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. Eli Lake is waiting in the wings to talk to us as well, so I'm going to bring you in early Eli. Eli is a columnist with Bloomberg. He reports on national security and foreign policy. What's your take on John Bolton?

ELI LAKE: I think that a lot of the focus on John Bolton is really misplaced. I don't think that the Trump administration is anything, it can be compared in any meaningful way to the George W. Bush administration in the months and year leading up to the Iraq war. There is no serious plans for an invasion. It's true that John Bolton's positions on Iran are well-known. He's advocated for bombing its nuclear program. He certainly has accepted speaking fees from that organization the Mujahideen, which seeks to unseat the regime in Tehran. So all of that is true, but the president is Donald Trump, who does not like middle eastern wars and doesn't like nation building in general and the kinds of Iraq war. What we're really talking about now is marshalling deterrence and in that respect you know really the onus is on the Iranians. The Iranians are angry because the United States has reimposed sanctions that were lifted as a result of the 2015 nuclear deal and they have decided to respond by increasing these kinds of probing attacks and moving missiles and largely the targets so far has been American allies. And so before the Iranians to do something really reckless like launch an attack that would end up killing Americans or something more serious than a drone in a parking lot in the U.S. embassy in Baghdad the message has been that there will be significant military force in response if you go ahead and do that. That is not the same as preparing for invasion, which would end seat by military power. The government in Iran I too favour as an as a goal regime change I don't know why anyone of conscience wouldn't given the horrendous regime in charge of the Iranians right now. But my the method that I support and that is democratic revolution that has worked in so many countries really in the 20th century and the 21st century, not a military invasion. And that's really not what we're talking about right now. A better example would be the 1988 response to Iran's mining of the Persian Gulf and an attack at a mine attack that ultimately damaged a significant U.S. warship and that resulted in something called Operation praying mantis which sunk Iran's navy at the time and the value of that particular military conflagration that was more than 30 years ago is that the Iranians have not mined despite threats to the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz since. And that's really I think the level of what you're talking about that if American targets are if American targets are attacked that there will be a military response and at least historically if the Iranians believe that to be the case then they have backed off and that is hopefully what will happen this time.

AMT: And we're talking another time, President Trump, clearly you're making the point that this is a strategy. That he's talking tough, but they're matching each other, right. So is it like do you see a danger in that back and forth and that each one is providing the same level of rhetoric?

EL: Well are they matching each other? Last week the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who admittedly is advanced in his years, but is supposed to be the boss of everyone said that he was not looking for a war with America and America was not looking for a war with him. So we saw from him at least last week significant de-escalation of the rhetoric. Admittedly we've seen more rhetoric that's been escalatory, but I think that these are responses to actions from the Iranians and you know keep in mind one of the reasons why the Trump administered operation pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal was because it defanged a powerful tool of statecraft. These economic sanctions while Iran was still involved in sending advanced weapons to its proxies in Yemen and Syria and in Lebanon that were threatening American allies and destabilising the Middle East. So again the aggressor as it often does in the Middle East comes down to the Iranians if you really look at the full history of it and what you're seeing now with these with you know the statements from Trump and the movement of the aircraft carrier and the bomber squadron is a messaging of deterrence. So the idea is that you know you want to prevent this kind of escalation historically as I said the Iranians will escalate if they believe that they can get away with it with a kind of liable attack.

AMT: We have Houchang Hassan-Yari back with us. Professor Hassan-Yari, what do you think?Do you think then that Mr. Trump can get Iran back to the table?

HHY: I doubt it really, for the simple reason that for the past 40 years anti-Americanism is part of the fabric of the Islamic Republic. The only way and the only way that the Iranians Islamic Republic's leaders would go to the discussion table, peace stays, peace negotiations or de-escalation is when they really heat the fire. I give you two examples. When Khomeini was in power during the Iraqi Iran war, he till the last moment used to say that we are going to liberate Jerusalem by liberating during the Iraqi war and suddenly one day in the morning he accepted Resolution 598. I ask a number of Iranian deputy foreign ministers in 1993, so why he accept it? He said because the Americans became very clear from Khomeini's perspective that the next step is the involvement of the Americans in the war. So this is why he backed out. The second example is the recent nuclear negotiations when Khomeini established so many red lines by saying that we are not willing to back down from the second third and there are so many other red lines and finally he accepted to sign the agreement. Again here too for the same reason. He said it's a very clearly that he didn't have any other choice, but to accept it. So I believe that if the Islamic Republic came to the conclusion that its survival is in jeopardy, it will accept. Otherwise they are ready to push as far as they can, but as soon as they hit the wall, they will back down.

AMT: But they'll back down, the Iranians will back down you're saying.

HHY: Yes I'm talking about the Iranians.

AMT: So is that what President Trump understands? Is that what this is about then?

HHY: I believe yes because if you again, if you go back to the last 40 years of U.S.-Iranian relations there was no other American president who did as Donald Trump is doing now. All of them including Reagan in the context of a hostage crisis when the Iranians took the American officials of the American embassy in Tehran as hostage. even Ronald Regan did not go as far as Trump is doing. So I believe in this case Trump made it very clear to the Iranian leadership that there is no other choice for them, but to accept those twelve conditions that the Americans and the Mr. Pompeo established a few weeks back. If they accept those conditions they will be OK. Otherwise they will be in a difficult situation and I think my reading of the the Iranian leadership discourse at this point is that they are very very belligerent now. That is you can see inflation in the rhetorics now by talking about defeating the Americans and so forth. But if the American administration shows some resolve then we can expect the Iranians first to to deny any kind of damage and then to accept to negotiating with the Americans. And what is important an event that happened yesterday I believe was the visit by the minister fresponsible for foreign affairs in Oman to Tehran. This was not planned. It happened suddenly. So maybe he has some message for the Iranians or he went to Tehran to get a message for the Americans from the Iranians. So we'll see that's what is important is really the level of attention is getting gradually out of hand.

AMT: Okay. Eli Lake, today is the day that Secretary of State Pompeo, the acting Defence Secretary Shanahan, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff staff, General Joseph Dunford are on Capitol Hill to brief members of the House of Representatives. What do you expect to hear there?

EL: Well I think we're starting to understand that the nature of the threat is that they Iran has moved missiles to some of its proxies in Iraq, which would be something that they haven't done before. And those missiles would be capable of hitting U.S. allies as well as U.S. bases with U.S. servicemen. And I think you'll also probably be talking about increased activities from some of the Shia militias in Iraq that are most closely tied the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in and. I want to say I largely agree with the professor when he said this is that if if the Trump administration shows a kind of resolve here that it's not willing to relent on economic pressure and that it's very serious that any kind of attack from Iran's proxies will be met with force against Iran itself then I think that has a chance of really working and he's right that you know historically the Iranians are willing to back down when they feel that there is a kind of existential risk to their regime. We saw that in terms of the 2015 nuclear negotiations where they resisted such negotiation for years. But when the sanctions bit hard enough they were willing to go to the table and I sort of talked about that other example before. So in terms of the briefing I think that much of this stuff about the intelligence not being real is sort of overblown. It hit a peak last week when you saw a British general who works in the coalition against ISIS say that he had not seen a kind of increased threat but that was quickly sort of walked back by the government of tourism surveying and the British foreign minister. And now we're starting to see even people like Adam Schiff the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee acknowledging that there is an increased threat in the intelligence. So this line that the intelligence has been somehow juiced you know and there there's a parallel to the narrative about the Iraq war is just not accurate. And as it is also not accurate that there is some sort of invasion plan underway for Iran to you know have a military style regime change.

AMT: And just briefly Eli Lake, in the meantime there is still that proxy war in Yemen. The Houthi rebels of course have support from Iran and they've been active attacking Saudi targets because Saudi is also looking at putting tightening the noose around Iran.

EL: Well that's absolutely true. And so far what we've seen is the Saudis have said the Iranians are responsible for the drone attack last week against their oil installations, but they have not responded inside of Iran. So at this point I think it's more likely that you'll see a Saudi response within Yemen against the Houthis attacking Iran's proxies for the things that are kind of the long arm of the Iranians, I think is a recipe for you know more escalation from the Iranian side.

AMT: OK. We have to leave it there. Thank you both for this conversation. I've been speaking with Houchang Hassan-Yari, Professor Emeritus in the political science department at the Royal Military College of Canada. He's in Paris today. Eli Lake is a columnist with Bloomberg. He reports on national security and foreign policy. He's in Washington D.C. The news is next and then it has the makings of an Agatha Christie yarn, stolling 17th century art, an opera singer, Nazi looters. Stay with us to hear how the mystery becomes entwined with the fight for gay rights in Poland and the European Union. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, online on cbc.ca/thecurrent, on podcast and on your radio app.

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Poland's LGBT community gets unexpected allies because of a painting looted by Nazis

Guests: David Crocker, Craig Gilmore, Evelyne Paradis

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

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AMT: Still to come author and journalist Mark Bowden returns to the story of a disappearance of two little girls that has haunted him for decades. But first, how a stolen painting led an American couple to an unlikely role in the fight for LGBTQ rights in Poland.

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AMT: Craig Gilmore and David Crocker love art. They collect whatever they can. In 2006, when they had the opportunity to buy a 17th century Flemish painting, they jumped at the chance. They paid $5000 US.. They proudly hung that painting in their kitchen. Fast forward a decade. Craig Gilmore and David Crocker were shocked to discover the past of this painting. U.S. Homeland Security arrived at their door to reveal that the painting they loved had been looted from Poland by the Nazis. The painting is called Portrait of a Lady by Melchior Geldorp. That revelation has led the couple on a surprising path. They are now active in the LGBTQ rights movement in Poland, at a time when those rights are being challenged as an election issue. Craig Gilmore and David Crocker are in Los Angeles California. Hello.

DAVID CROCKER: Good morning.

CRAIG GILMORE: Good morning. How are you doing, Anna Maria? Thank you so much.

AMT: I'm well. How are you?

CG: Great. Thanks for having us on your show. We appreciate it.

AMT: Well let's talk about this painting. First of all, Craig what does this painting mean to the two of you?

CG: Well we are the kind of collectors that collect things not because of monetary value or things that we think might escalate as an investment. We have brought things into our house that we fall in love with and when we saw this painting listed at an auction in New York City we fell in love with her. We put in a bid and before we knew it, she was arriving at our doorstep in Los Angeles, frameless. She came to us without a frame and we found a beautiful 19th century wooden frame that David had actually purchased in Philadelphia that we put around her.

AMT: And David.

CG: Which we also donated.

AMT: OK well we'll get to that donation. So David, Homeland Security knocks at your door. What do they tell you?

DC: Well I was actually at work that day, so it was Craig that answered the door and stepped outside.

CG: Yeah I can tell you that you're never quite prepared for the moment that Homeland Security shows up on your doorstep, let alone to tell you that you have a piece of looted art. It was a super, super shock. I didn't let them in because I to tell you the truth at that time I still was not sure that they were even who they said they were. They didn't come. You know you have a picture of maybe what Homeland Security would look like with the suits and the earpieces and the dark glasses and they were nothing like that. They had jeans and t-shirts and Homeland Security ICE jackets.

AMT: And what did they tell you?

CG: They said We believe that you purchased a painting ten years ago that has been looted from the Nazis from Poland's National Museum.

DC: It was attributed to a different artist than what we had gotten from the auction house. So that was the sort of the research that we had to check out and see what the different story was.

CG: And when they came to our house, they gave us some provenance papers and I never actually let them into the house that day because I was really fairly wary of them, but they did leave us with some paperwork and I ran straight in. First I called David to drop this news on him and then I ran to my computer and I started Googling and Googling and within 10 minutes it led me to the division for looted arts website, which is a website that Poland maintains that chronicles 60,000 pieces of looted art. And they've you know they have hundreds of thousands of pieces that are still missing from the war.

AMT: When you realized that was what was hanging in your kitchen, what did you think? Like what was the emotion?

DC: Well we always thought she was a beautiful painting that was worthy of being in a museum. And so to have that news almost, I mean certainly it was a surprise, but it seemed like a valid piece of information.

CG: And at the same time I felt really it felt like the Nazis had come into our house and slapped us across the face. I mean we all hear about the Nazis almost on a daily basis still, but to have something that they had their hands on and that they looted directly from Poland's national museum really was disturbing. It made us feel bad that first day that Homeland came, we were able to spit out well if this is true, we would like to participate in getting her back to her homeland.

AMT: And that happened last fall, right?

CG: That actually happened two years ago and the repatriation it took about two years for all of the red tape to go through and for the repatriation to happen last fall. Yes.

AMT: OK. So you showed up for the repatriation, which was last fall?

DC: Yes in September.

CG: We were invited by the government.

AMT: And what was that like?

CG: Well we didn't know what to expect really. We walked up to them. It was at the National Museum Warsaw. We walked up the courtyard, it was filled with media trucks because these are really very important moments for Poland when they get pieces of their national patrimony back. And so we saw all these and all of these media trucks and we just looked at each other and thought well here goes nothing. We weren't sure what to expect. We walked in. There was maybe 50 cameras and photographers and newspeople and there past them we saw our painting surrounded in this beautiful frame that we had also donated and we walked straight through that line of media. And we felt you know like it was a moment to just be there with our painting for the first time in two years. And we put our hands on the frame. We spent a moment and then just spontaneously we both turned around and we posed for the media, which sounds kind of trite, but what we were really doing is wanting to make sure that the media and anybody there knew that we were a couple and that it was a gay couple that had participated in returning this painting to.

DC: Voluntarily.

CG: Voluntarily, yeah.

AMT: And why was that that important to show that to make sure they understood you were a gay couple?

CG: Well pretty pretty early on we started doing research on Poland. I mean within days.

DC: Neither of us are Polish.

CG: Yeah neither of us are Polish, but we started researching and it became very evident very quickly that the rights for our community in Poland were just horrible. And so we had been asked by the Los Angeles Times to write an op-ed and after that op-ed came out we got this amazing outpouring of support from all of these different communities and when we really looked, we realized it was the LGBTQ community, it was the Jewish community and it was the Polish community. And that's when we started kind of dreaming of a moment where maybe we could reach out to all of those communities and under the auspices of our paintings return, bring them together for a moment of celebration and kind of cross-cultural bridge building. And so we started thinking of who we might reach out to now. And that's when we started. Go ahead.

AMT: At the actual ceremony, there was an official thank you. Did it turn out as you thought it would?

CG: Well, no I did not.

DC: Well the thank you came from the Polish government and also from our U.S. ambassador to Poland.

CG: But the first thank you or I guess I should say lack of thank you came from a deputy prime minister who gave his speech and during the speech he thanked me and David who was sitting next to me who has been my partner for over 20 years, who was 50 percent of all of the decision making to make sure this painting got home, who had found the frame and so it was literally all of his decision to be able to donate the frame was left out of the thank you. And that shocked us, but we were in the middle of a piece of international diplomacy. So we really didn't say anything until months later when something else happened that just horrified us.

AMT: What happened?

CG: And that's when. Well we came back to Poland in the spring and we saw all of these pamphlets that the government was dispersing. And on the pamphlets there were rainbow hands reaching out across the pamphlets to children. So it was like saying that the LGBTQ community is coming after your children to molest them and these hands are just reaching out to grope these children. And we were so horrified that a government would release that about their own citizenry that we decided that we needed to really be in solidarity with our community there and tell our story. So which we had really been trying to do for two years anyways with our t-shirts.

AMT: Were you guys activists really before this? Like going out of your way to just sort of look at the politics?

CG: Yeah. It was more in the 90s in America when we had absolutely no legal rights for our community here and I had starred in a movie years ago that's considered a kind of an important document of that time period and that was when I was able to do all my publicity as an openly gay actor, which back in the 90s was kind of a big thing. And so I feel like I had that context. And David I know I was doing a lot of.

DC: Volunteer work for AIDS.

AMT: But you didn't think you'd have to sort of reignite your activism till you had these experiences in Poland?

CG: No.

DC: It was thrust upon us sort of. We wanted to be a positive role model as a couple for a country. Returning something voluntarily for not just the LGBTQ community, but for the Jews of Poland and for the Poles of Poland for all the citizenry of Poland to know that here is a positive example of one couple doing something for all of them.

CG: And that's why when we started reaching out with donations, we chose entities from all three of those communities. And then we also developed the phrase, "share the pride" and we made up these fantastic t-shirts and hundreds of posters and over 10,000 stickers that we sent to the LGBT community in Poland to invite them to share in the pride that we had been feeling in being able to do this for their country.

AMT: And how did the community respond to you?

CG: They at first I think didn't believe that what was happening. I think they were a little suspicious at first, but you know within a month or so we really felt like we were working together with them. And since that it's amazing because all of these organizations actually when we started were kind of an idea in our head but when we went back to the repatriation in September these these entities that were organizations suddenly became people with names and smiles and you could see the work that they were doing and there are really so many heroes in each of the communities that we were reaching out to. So to be able to bring them together which we ended up doing at the National Museum we created an event where all of these communities were able to come into a room. The painting had been brought into a private room and we were able to have an incredible morning where all of these communities were talking to each other and building bridges and it was really a very special special moment for us.

DC: And that was just last month.

CG: Yeah that was just last month.

AMT: So this continues to unfold. What else are you planning to do?

CG: Well it's funny, one of the biggest things we did actually that made the biggest statement was at the end of our trip this last time. We've been doing a documentary on our journey and we have our documentarian with us in Poland. And we were doing some filming in a park and I really felt like this is a quintessential experience for David and I as a couple. And we have been together for 20 years and talked about marriage. And so I was feeling very moved and very proud to have him there with me and so about five minutes before I decided well I reached out to our documentarian and said have your camera ready. Because in about five minutes I'm going to ask David to marry me. And we pulled up to a beautiful pavilion and we went up I took David up to the pavilion and I bent down on one knee and I asked him to marry me. It was a beautiful beautiful moment that we could not have realized was going to end up in the New York Times and The Washington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle and in five or six languages all over the world. And then even more significantly maybe three days later we woke up to a flurry of texts from Poland and they sent us these photos and it ended up that Poland's biggest newspaper published a beautiful article on David and my outreach and our painting and right there for millions of Poles to see was a photo of me me kneeling down in front of David aasking him to marry me.

AMT: So interesting about that. Congratulations, but also that.

CG: Thank you.

DC: Thank you.

AMT: The snub from the deputy prime minister turned into a whole lot of activism. Well congratulations and thank you both.

CG: Thank you so much.

AMT: Thank you very much.

DC: Thank you.

CG: Thank you and you have a great one.

AMT: That is Craig Gilmore and David Crocker. Craig is an opera singer. David Crocker is an artist and they joined us from Los Angeles, California. Slava Melnyk is one of the Polish activists who's come to know David and Craig. He's the executive director of the Campaign Against Homophobia in Warsaw. He says the atmosphere in his country is tense for the LGBTQ community in the lead up to this week's European Union parliamentary elections.

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VOICE: It is very frustrating for people and for me personally. It gives me a thought once in a while whether I should look for a better life elsewhere where I can feel comfortable living with my partner and not fearing that one day I will not be able to ask a doctor for his medical records if something horrible happens.

AMT: Slava Melnyk has watched gay rights become a wedge issue in this campaign. Governing Law and Justice party condemned a school sex education program that teaches students about sexual orientation. A campaign ad showed an umbrella with a party logo shielding a family from a gay pride rainbow. Slava Melnyk says he's hearing more frequently from people who are being targeted.

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VOICE: Since the issue of LGBTI people has risen in the public debate. We see an increase in the number of people reporting to us homophobic and transphobic incidents all across the Poland. It's mostly smaller cities and villages that hate speech is now being turned into the hate crimes that are targeting people directly.

AMT: He's discouraged. He's not surprised.

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VOICE: It's not an accident that there is a vulnerable group that is being scapegoated for the political gain and the previous election was refugees and this year we see very clearly that LGBTI people were the targets of the political campaigns in many cases.

AMT: Well my next guest is tracking anti-LGBTQ political rhetoric and actions in Europe. Evelyne Paradis is the executive director of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, which advocates for equality and human rights. Evelyne Paradis joins me from Brussels. Hello.

EVELYNE PARADIS: Hello Anna Maria.

AMT: How representative is Poland of what is happening across Europe in the lead up to the EU elections?

EP: Well sadly it is representative of a growing trend. I must say after a decade where we have been more on the positive side and in in Europe where things seem to be going in the right direction there's been a lot of opposition groups that have been fostering in the last decade or so and and the resurgence of the use of anti LGBTI rhetoric as a wedge issue as you as you explained is something that we've been observing over the past month in other countries like Bulgaria, Slovenia, Hungary, especially in the context of the European Union elections which are taking place at the end of this week.

AMT: And so you're talking about a regression. So Poland did have some recognition of same sex couples, but it's moving away from that?

EP: Well I think Europe looks at abreast of issues when it comes to equality and human rights for LGBTI people. Recognition of family is certainly one of those. But there are many other issues like protection against violence hate crimes rights for trans people and intersex people. And so in this context I think there is indeed a marked regression in Europe. Our organization publishes every year around May 17th which is the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia a map the rainbow map which gives a ranking of European countries. And this year it's the first time in our ten years of publishing the map that we actually see countries losing points because laws and policies that were previously in place have been removed. And Poland is one such country. Poland has lost points this year on our index because of. Because because until last year single women had access to assisted reproduction which would of course benefiting lesbian and bisexual women. And that is no longer in place. So this is one of the many signs what what I think Slava talked about just before me. It is the other important part of the coin which is the lived realities of LGBTI people whether it's in Poland and in many other countries is is going backwards. The levels of social acceptance are going backwards in many places but it's also most worryingly it's the levels of safety so we know that many members of the community but also married very very active and public LGBTI activists and countries again like Poland, but also Bulgaria, Hungary, just to name those have been targeted this year and those are the really worrying trends for us.

AMT: And also when it comes to transgender rights Poland is refusing to change birth certificates, am I right?

EP: Yes they are, but they're far from the only ones unfortunately. I would say most countries in Europe and not just central and eastern Europe have a long long way to go when it comes to recognizing rights and for transpeople. This has been for many years the one of our core messages many many countries in Europe to start with the Netherlands which as you know was the first country in the world to recognize marriage equality. Many countries have like that kind of fall into a sense of complacency that once you have marriage equality you've done the hardest piece of work which is we know not not the truth. And so many countries have been trying to catch up when it comes to trans rights and so it's clearly not a surprise that Poland is falling behind because many Western European countries and Northern European countries still have a lot of work to do.

AMT: And so you're seeing this you mentioned other countries, why do you think this is happening at this point in time?

EP: Well it's a combination of things. It's certainly the rise of populism which we see very very clearly in Europe, but is not unique to Europe. It's clearly a trend worldwide. So it has been the rise of populism combined with a very organized and resourced forces that work on challenging what they call gender ideology. So there are movements that are actually opposing, not just LGBTI rights, but women's rights, sexual and reproductive rights. And they've been driving these very divisive agendas and fuelling I would say hatred in many parts of the continent. And I think LGBTI communities are amongst the most vulnerable and in those context of increased hatred, the most vulnerable communities often are the first victims. And that's what we're really seeing happen.

AMT: Evelyne, it's important to hear what you've been tracking thank you for your time today.

EP: My pleasure.

AMT: That is Evelyne Paradis. She's the executive director of the ILGA group and she joined us from Brussels. Stay with us. When we come back, we're talking about how the story of a break-in, a case brought Mark Bowden, back to a story that haunted him for decades. Best-selling author joins me in 90 seconds. This is The Current.

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'A no-brainer': Why reporter Mark Bowden revisited crime case that haunted him for decades

Guests: Mark Bowden

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

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VOICE: Good afternoon. Chief Tom Major, Montgomery County Police Department. On March 25th, 1975 12-year-old Sheila Lyon and 10-year-old Katherine Lyon left their home and walked to nearby Wheaton Plaza. The girls never returned home. This case shocked our community in 1975 and has never been forgotten by the police department or anyone who followed the case 39 years ago. Our cold case squad has been able to identify a man who is currently incarcerated as a convicted child sex offender and we have established that this man was at Wheaton Plaza on that day and may have had contact with the Lyon girls. The person of interest is Lloyd Lee Welch.

AMT: Well that press conference in February of 2014 was how people in Baltimore first heard the name Lloyd Welch and learned about his possible connection to one of the most baffling and tragic mysteries in the history of crime in the state of Maryland. While the case became cold it was never far from the minds of the police who were desperate to solve the mystery and bring some peace to the girls' now aging parents. It was also never far from the mind of Mark Bowden. He was a 23-year-old reporter working for the small Baltimore News American newspaper in 1975. He covered the hectic first days weeks and months in the search for two missing sisters. Since then, Mark Bowden has become a celebrated author, using his journalism to piece together stories behind news stories with best-sellers such as Black Hawk Down, Hue 1968, Killing Pablo: The Hunt for Pablo Escobar. His new book is The Last Stone and it takes Mark Bowden back to the crime he first covered 44 years ago. And just to note, this interview is going to deal with descriptions of a gruesome crime and it may be disturbing to some listeners. Mark Bowden joins me from Philadelphia. Hello.

MARK BOWDEN: Hi.

AMT: The heart of this story involves two girls who disappeared all those years ago. Tell me about the Lyon sisters.

MB: While they were little Catholic girls. You know they I came from a family very much like theirs. They lived in a suburb of Washington D.C. Kate was in middle school or in elementary school and Sheila was in the middle school. 12 and 10. They were sweet little girls. They were on the verge of growing up. Had started taking an interest in wearing makeup and helping mom and you know like a lot of kids then interested in popular music, John Denver and you know they were just normal little girls.

AMT: And what is known about their disappearance in the days after they vanished, what was the story?

MB: Nothing. They just didn't come home. You know those were the days when I remember from my own childhood, my mom would feed us breakfast and she'd say get out of here and don't come back until lunchtime. So the community was sort of ours to explore and everyone felt safe and that was pretty much the way it was in Kensington, Maryland, where these girls lived. They'd gone off to the mall, which was just down the street to buy pizza and the afternoon stretched on and they didn't come home and dinner came and the parents sat down with their two sons and there were two empty chairs for the girls. And so they were annoyed. You know why weren't the girls home? Why hadn't they called if they got hung up somewhere? After dinner they started to get alarmed. They went looking through the neighbourhood, saw no trace of them, started calling their friends and then called police.

AMT: And this was really the first big, one of the first big crime stories you ever covered, am I right?

MB: First big story really. You know I was 23, I just started working as a reporter and because my job was to start very early in the morning and call every police barracks in the state and ask if anything happened overnight, this was a pretty big thing. So I drove out to Kensington and I end up spending two weeks staying on my friend's couch and covering the story, getting to know the parents and the detectives. It was the first time I ever had front page news in the newspaper. So it was pretty exciting for me.

AMT: And what was the coverage in those early days? What was it like in the media?

MB: Well John and Mary Lyon the parents recognizing the value in publicity and attracting attention opened their house to reporters like me and we hung around and asked questions of them. I went bounced back and forth from their house to police headquarters, where I talked to the detectives about what they were doing and they were obviously frantic and frustrated, inundated with tips that they were following up on. There were searches going on all over the county. It was hectic. And so there was a lot to do.

AMT: What do you think of John and Mary Lyon at the time?

MB: I admired them. I thought they were cool and yet caught up in this just impossible tragedy. It couldn't help but feel their pain and also to feel awkward about being there, even though they made me and everyone else feel very welcome.

AMT: And in the midst of all their fear and anxiety about their missing girls, they were subjected to cruel hoaxes.

MB: I know. This was shocking to me that you know as tragic as this was and as painful as it was, there were people who were trying to take advantage of the lines. They would call and say you know if you leave $10,000 dollars in a bag somewhere, you know we'll bring the girls back and you know they were just trying to extort money from people at the worst possible moment.

AMT: So how did Lloyd Welch first appear on police radar?

MB: He showed up back in 1975 as a 18-year-old kid with long hair and a headband high, who went back to the mall and asked to see talked to mall security and claimed he had witnessed the girls being led away from the mall by a man. And he told an elaborate story describing the man, describing the car he took the girls away in and then was given a lie detector test and asked a bunch of follow up questions by police until he ultimately admitted he'd made much of it up. So the report that he made was written up dutifully and the police wrote lied at the top of it and it just became another slip of paper that was added to a growing file that by you know some years later was 30 some boxes full of information.

AMT: Of course at the time this is where the benefit of hindsight, at the time they think he's you know he's lying because he admits he's lying and they kind of move on, but there was a young girl in that mall who described a man, a young man and they did a sketch and it looked like him.

MB: It did. Yeah. But you have to understand that you know in these first days when this happened the police were inundated with hundreds of tips and there was a reward being offered for information. So it was easy to dismiss Lloyd Welch as somebody who was trying to capitalize on the opportunity and maybe you know get some reward money. If they had taken a picture of him, which they didn't actually at that time or if they had noticed the resemblance with the police drawing they might have looked at him, gave him a second look, but they didn't.

AMT: And we learned later of course that police actually showed up at the door of the home where he was living.

MB: Where they think the girls were being held, yeah.

AMT: Yeah. But that was 40 years later that they realized. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit more about this because the police forget about Lloyd for nearly four decades and then he makes reappearance. How does that happen?

MB: Well Chris Homrock who was one of the detectives on the cold case unit had a suspect that he had come to believe was most likely the person who had kidnapped the girls. His name was Ray Mileski and he didn't have enough information to prove his case, but he came across serendipitously this statement that Lloyd Welch had given back in 1975 wherein he described the man taking the girls as having walked with a limp. Now Ray Mileski had a limp. So Chris was suddenly excited because he thought gosh you know I may have a living witness to Ray Mileski having taken the girls from the mall, so they set out in search of Lloyd Welch. Tried to figure out if he was still alive and where he was.

AMT: And so when they first come across Lloyd Welch, what is his life like?

MB: Lloyd is in prison in Smyrna, Delaware for child molestation. He had been locked up for more than 20 years. Was nearing the end of his sentence. He was hoping to get out in about two years. When they learned that he was already locked up for child molestation, they grew even more intrigued. They were initially and primarily interested in him as someone who might be able to identify Ray Mileski, but the fact that he had this past of his own made them slightly more suspicious of him.

AMT: Your book relies on hours of interrogation of Lloyd Welch by a few a handful of very specific detectives. Why did he speak with them? Why did he continue to speak with them?

MB: I think he had a number of reasons. When I met him, he said he felt that he was forced to speak to them, which I don't believe was true. But much of what Lloyd says is not true. I don't think you can underestimate the appeal to someone who's been locked up for decades to get out of prison to go somewhere different to sit and have long conversations with people who are not inmates or guards. To get, it was a big deal for Lloyd to get fast food because he liked it better than the prison commissary and I think when he realized that they were suspicious of him and bear in mind he knows he did this. They don't know that he did it, but he knows that he did it. He needs to know how much they know in order to protect himself.

AMT: And then the dance begins and that's what the transcripts show us.

MB: It does. You know I've been fascinated, partly because I've been a reporter my whole life and I'm always interviewing people as you are. And the process of drawing people out of getting people to remember things, which is hard enough when people are trying to be helpful. When you're able to do it with someone who's trying to mislead you, who's deliberately lying to you. I was just really intrigued to find out how they had managed to get this guy who had every reason in the world not to tell the truth to admit what he had done.

AMT: Because we really learn a lot about how they get the truth out of a liar.

MB: Early on yeah Dave Davis, one of the detectives said that when people lie they make up the big stuff, but they fill in the lies with the truth. And I wasn't sure what he meant by that when he told me it, but as I worked on the story I came to see that it was true. That the stories that Lloyd told and they were constantly shifting, he would just turn on a dime and drop the story he had been telling for five months and tell a completely different story. The details of each story contained elements, which were the same and the police came to recognize that those details like if he said something happened in a car and he described that car, that description of the car would move intact from version to version to version. They began to realize that some of what he was telling them was true.

AMT: And it's fascinating and I'm going to hold that thought because there's another whole area I want to discuss with you and that is the way you wrote this book. You rely very heavily on the transcripts. You let them tell the story.

MB: Right.

AMT: And talk to me a little bit about how your choice to do that and what you were doing because it really takes us inside those conversations.

MB: Yeah. You know the recordings of the interrogations, which took place over almost two years, were what convinced me that I could write this book. I've always been fascinated as I said by interrogation and how they would get someone like Lloyd Welch to admit what he had done. And I asked the police, do you have records? Do you have transcripts or anything? And they said we have video. So not only was I then able to enter into the process and watch them at work and see how they worked Lloyd over this long period of time, there were 70 plus hours of interviews with him, I could observe exactly what they did. And at the same time, as a writer, you're always looking for scenes with real dialogue. You know with real characters. And here it was. I mean it was offered to me basically on a plate. It didn't make it easy because you had to, I had to extract a story from this great mass of material, but it did give me everything I needed to tell I think the story in a very immediate and compelling way.

AMT: I did the detectives always act ethically when they were interrogating him?

MB: No. I think they believe they did. But there are very strict rules, certainly in law enforcement where interrogation is concerned. They're not allowed to coerce or threaten, much less abuse someone they're questioning. But the interpretation of what is a threat you know, what is coercion are often you know can make very very interesting debates in court. And without question, on certain occasions the police used their leverage over Lloyd to place him in an uncomfortable position to threaten him. For instance they you know revealed that he was in prison for child molestation, which is something that made him a target in prison because child molesters are reviled and often attacked in prison. He had done a pretty good job over the years of covering up his crime and telling people he was locked up for something else. And so when you know they told him they were going to reveal that he was a child molester, that was a really amounted to a threat. So in the hands of a good defence lawyer, some of the tactics they used against him were questionable and might have been thrown out.

AMT: Now the police eventually turn their attention to the wider extended Welch family. Tell us a bit about that clan.

MB: Yeah it's kind of like a Gothic subplot to the story, but this is a family, every family has its own culture. This family had generations old history of molesting children, siblings, fathers raped daughters, sons, siblings experimented sexually with each other, cousins and they had many brushes with the law. And yet within the family this kind of behaviour, which is so at odds with our mainstream values, certainly where children are concerned, was very normal for them and you begin to see how someone like Lloyd Welsh is created.

AMT: What did he finally admit happened to the girls?

MB: He admitted ultimately that he took the girls from the mall, although he says he didn't kidnap them because they came willingly. He talked them into leaving with him. That's what he says then you know he admits that they were held, that they were sexually abused, although he claims that he himself didn't participate. That they were killed and cut into pieces and their bodies were burned and that he ultimately admitted disposing of the bodies.

AMT: And in his long conversations with those detectives he would give clues. And then like at one point he even said, it's not well you know they could be chopped and burned nda then he and they went wait a minute, who even suggests that?

MB: That was in the very first interview and they asked him at the very end because they hadn't gotten very far and all he's done is lie to them. They asked him to speculate what he thought happened to the girls and he says oh I expect they were killed and chopped up and burned. And so the detectives, some of whom were listening to this in the other room on a screen, look at each other and say who says chopped up and burned? I mean most people would probably you know speculate that the girls had been molested and killed, but who says chopped up and burned. That was very specific.

AMT: And it was those little things that he would give up and they learned to understand that thread of truth.

MB: Yup. They you know eventually they learned to ignore the stories that Lloyd told, but pay attention to the details in the stories that he told because those were the things that ultimately they could prove were true.

AMT: Was there any evidence that any of the other members of this violent family took part in the kidnapping, the rape or the killing of the girls?

MB: There is a lot of circumstantial evidence and Lloyd claims that they did, but there's no way to prove it. And his father who is the one who molested Lloyd when he was a child, is thought to have taken part or Lloyd claims he took part and he's dead. So there was no way for them to prove that. There's no physical evidence because they never found the girls' bodies. His uncle who Lloyd also claimed was a key participant, very consistently and emphatically and somewhat believably denied any involvement at all and was ultimately not charged.

AMT: So Lloyd Welch is convicted in the case and only Lloyd Welch. What sentence does he get?

MB: He was sentenced to life in prison or what effectively is life. He's 60 some years old and I think he got 40-50 years in Virginia and he's serving out the remainder of his sentence in Delaware. So unless he lives to be the oldest man on Earth, he will be in prison the rest of his life.

AMT: Is it likely there could be other arrests in that case?

MB: I don't think it's likely. It's certainly possible because there is strong reason to suspect that he had help from other members of his family, but unless someone steps forward with some real evidence, it's doubtful.

AMT: What was it about this story that just you never let go?

MB: I think it was just the sympathy I had for the Lyon family. The enormity of that tragedy. I know, I remember feeling kind of ashamed of myself when I was 23 because I was so excited to be writing front page stories. At the same time I'm spending time with these lovely parents who've just lost these children and you know I could identify with that family. It's very similar to my own. And then later as I got older and had children of my own, the enormity of their loss, of the enduring tragedy of that never leaves you and it kind of, it haunts you. So yeah this was something that became an important part of my life through my reporting. And when I learned in 2015 that the police had finally arrived at some answers, it was a no-brainer. I had to go do it.

AMT: Because you covered so much war and violence and yet this was like very, like in your own backyard kind of violence. A different kind of personal destruction of people.

MB: Yeah it became personal for me.

AMT: Yeah. And then you met Lloyd Welch after his conviction. What were you hoping to discover about him?

MB: Well I think first of all I felt a sense of obligation and I do, whenever I write about someone, I want to meet them. At the very least, I want to interview them. Early on I had written to Lloyd telling him what I was doing and that he was going to be a prime subject of the book and I wanted to meet him and talk to him. He wrote back saying that he would allow me to interview him if I put $5000 in his prison bank account and if I made all these ridiculous promises to him, none of which I was going to do. But I I wrote him back to tell him that I would meet with him to discuss his terms, which would give me an opportunity to meet him face to face and I knew from having watched him for so long that he loved to talk. So I figured once I sit across from him, I'll probably get to ask a couple of questions and of course one of the big questions I wanted to ask was why in the world did you talk to the police for hours and hours and hours when all you had to do at any point was shut up and any lawyer, any defence lawyer would have told him not to talk. He got himself into this initially by showing up at police and telling one lie back in 1975 and then he managed to talk himself into a murder conviction down the road.

AMT: And then he kept lying to you like he lied to them.

MB: Yeah I was kind of glad actually that he, I told him that I wasn't going to give him any money and that I was definitely going to name him in the book, which was one of his conditions. And he wrote me very angrily saying that he was going to sue me, I presume he's planning to do that right now., if I wrote about him and he's going to get his lawyers to come after me and then he said, but if you put $300 in my account, I'll talk to you further. And his price had come down, but I really saw no purpose frankly in talking to him any further knowing that all he was going to do with me is what he did with the detectives, which is continue to lie and try to you know spin the story in different ways.

AMT: You, when you write about him, you say and I'm quoting here, "the blame is rightly his own, but the crime reflects the world that made him." What do you mean by that?

MB: Well I mean we discussed briefly you know his family, which was a very peculiar one in terms of its sexual practices. When exploiting or molesting children is part of your normal experience and you go out into the world, people shouldn't be terribly surprised that you continue practices like those. I think too, Lloyd's own family, which was a peculiar kind of mountain culture family and was never accepted or part of the very upscale suburban community that they found themselves in in the 1960s and 70s in the Washington suburbs and I think that that isolation breeds anger and breeds a certain contempt that was apparent in Lloyd's attitudes. So if you combine that anger of being an outcast with a propensity to molest children, you get some understanding of how Lloyd Welch came to be who he is.

AMT: You know there's so many podcasts now looking at cold cases and this particular cold case and I'm wondering what you think we can learn from this one beyond the tragedy of Sheila and Kate Lloyd.

MB: Well I was fascinated by Lloyd who became for me kind of emblematic of the times we live in. I think that we live in an age of lying. You know it's distressing for me as a journalist and I've been a journalist my whole life, to see what passes for journalism these days become propaganda. Whole networks of television devoted to basically selling a party or a candidate or an idea and on both sides of the political spectrum this is going on. I taught kids journalism for a number of years and found that I had to actually explain to them what the difference was between activism and journalism. You know on the one hand, you're selling something, on the other hand you're just trying to find out the truth. You're just trying to tell people something. So that I saw him as part of that and then of course in America's political life we've seen you know political figures like Donald Trump who lie repeatedly and it's not just him, but he's just you know the crowning example of it. And there seem to have no compunction about lying and have no particular interest in the truth. What they say is completely fungible. It is something that is designed to get over on people or to further whatever game they're playing. And that was Lloyd. I mean that's the kind of character he is. So I didn't set out working on this with that in mind, but I came to see that you know a book that really examines a very skilful pathological liar was actually kind of relevant to our times.

AMT: Well it was it was a fascinating read and there were a lot of lessons there. So thank you for your work and your time.

MB: You're welcome.

AMT: Mark Bowden, author of The Last Stone and he joined me from Philadelphia. That's our program for today. Stay with Radio One for Q. I want to go back to our earlier story about the fight for LGBTQ rights in Poland. The movement got a shot in the arm last year from the lead singer of the British pop band, Years & Years. Olly Alexander, the band's frontman, openly gay, appeared on The Voice of Poland with the group. That's a popular singing reality show, The Voice of Poland. And he wore a full tie dye rainbow outfit shirt, pants and a jacket. We'll leave you today with a bit of that performance. This is Years & Years. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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Performance by Years & Years on The Voice of Poland.

The Current Transcript for May 21, 2019

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

U.S.-Iran war unlikely: John Bolton is all bark, no bite, says columnist

Poland's LGBT community gets unexpected allies because of a painting looted by Nazis

'A no-brainer': Why reporter Mark Bowden revisited crime case that haunted him for decades

May 21, 2019 episode transcript

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