 Broadcasting live via Think Tech Hawaii Studios in downtown Honolulu. Welcome to Top of the Line. I'm your host Ben Lau, Aloha, and thank you for tuning in. I begin our episode with a lesser known quote by a better known person, someone you'll all recognize, someone who's affected us all. Quote, the most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation that is to come. End quote. Many might not recognize the author of these words, though you're going to recognize the author, Steve Jobs. Like Jobs, I have the utmost respect and gratitude for our best storytellers. They make a difference in our world and our lives, since the beginning of time and as far as we know, the rest of time. Many of you might not recognize my guest today. He is, as Jobs says, one of those people. And time, time is one of the ways he is known and I trust will be remembered. He's my friend, Sir Bruce Crumley. Born in Seattle, Washington and raised in the Bay Area, inculcated with Midwestern American values by parents from the heartland of America, Iowa. Bruce has been in France since 1987, following his graduation from USC where he majored in Slavic languages and literature and minored in Soviet studies. He currently writes for the 95 Mac.com group, principally for dronedj.com. And he has worked for a number of leading publications, including, this is quite a list, The New York Times, The Guardian, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, AFP, which I'll have to have Bruce pronounce for us, Al Jazeera and Time Magazine, where he was the last bureau chief in Europe stationed in Paris, France. Covering a range of subjects, world leaders and public figures, Bruce is recognized as an expert on the subject of terrorism and European politics. He's written extensively on a wide range of matters covering all the important and major subjects and many of the important people and personalities. What you're seeing on screen is just but a fraction, a tiny fraction of the written work that Sir Bruce has created over his career. When I say a small fraction, I can tell you that I got up to about page eight and there were at least another 50 pages to go just on this one particular site, storing some of his works. And that's just one of many of the publications that Bruce has written for. He's done a lot. Recognized for his contributions to his adopted country, Bruce has been recognized by the highest in the land. Bruce has been knighted and awarded with membership to the exclusive national order of merit by the president of the French Republic. You'll see the medal here. You'll see the order and admission to membership up on the right side of the screen. Awarded the title Chevalier, Bruce has been awarded one of the highest honors of France. Alongside its elder sibling, the Legion of Honor, there is no higher honor. This stands Bruce in the rarefied company. The president of the French Republic is the grandmaster of the order. And each prime minister of France has made a member after six months of service. Bruce, standing by now, joins us from France. Hello, Bruce. Aloha Ben. How are you? I'm good. Thanks. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for agreeing to come on, Bruce. It's a real honor. It's great to see you here. Bruce, I want to dive right into serious matters with you, right off the starting block. You get the references. We're just days past the sixth anniversary of the devastating events of November 2015, what are known as the Paris attacks. Let me try and set the backdrop. It's November 13, 2015. There's a series of terrorist attacks underway across Paris. And if I've got your career timeline correct, Time Magazine has, at this point, already closed down much of its international operations. And you've moved on, having shut down and essentially turned off the lights for time. You had been serving at this point as editor at AFP, but that's past tense, AFP being the world's oldest news agency. You've recently left that job, too, and are like other mere civilians watching the events unfold across your hometown city of Paris. These events are your expertise, terrorism. And you are without your counter-terrorism tools, your pen, mightier than the sword, as the saying goes, and your platform, a world news agency. Tell me, tell us, what's going on? How can time and other agencies not have you on Overwatch, watching from the watch tower? Well, it's kind of a question of practicality and pragmatism. Legacy media has been getting shellacked by the consequences of digital media, online media, can't make enough as much advertising money as they used to everywhere in papers and magazines. And the readers consume news a lot differently. And so no international news organization laid people off closed bureaus because they were happy about it. It was something they just had to do. They had to adapt to in their coverage. And so as a consequence of that, as you said, I'm kind of a decommissioned officer in the world of terrorism reporting. And when I heard the news start coming in on that night, my first kind of reflex was, you know, you have professional muscle memory. You immediately think, oh, I gotta get going. I gotta think about who I can call and who might be able to tell me what's going on, et cetera, et cetera. And a few things went through my mind very quickly. A, well, I can freelance this stuff, but before I put my calls in, I better make sure I have something to sell it to. And second of all, the more I thought about it, the more I saw the enormity of the attacks, you know, which I wound up killing 130 people left, hundreds more injured, including critically. A lot of those people will be marked for life. Well, probably all of them will be marked for life. Yeah, let's go back to the graphic, Bruce. I mean, I want to focus in on this. The events of 9-11, as terrible as they were, this is its own horror in its own way. And can you lay out for audiences what's going on? I mean, it's a series of attacks that happens across the city. You don't have the massive infrastructure destroyed that we did on 9-11. And you don't have a resulting invasion of foreign country and long decades, long wars. But what is going on with these terrorist attacks in your home city? I mean, what they did, they just didn't kill 130 people. They went on a killing spree. Yeah, in a way, this is a different paradigm, terrorist paradigm than 9-11 or 2004 attacks in Madrid. I think it was 2005 attacks in London, where you had armings in places where there are a lot of people that could do a lot of, invoke a lot of carbonage in just a single go. In this case, you had basically what were small teams of commandos who were armed to the cheese with rifles and with explosives. They took over the Batoclon concert hall while a rock concert was being staged. And others just leisurely walked down the boulevard, lined with cafes. It was quite a nice night out. And it's a kind of re-gentrified part of town. It was only about a mile away from my house. And just started picking people off. It was like something out of a dystopian television series. One of these commandos turning off and just taking people out. I actually, the first inkling I had that something was wrong, I was watching the French national team play a football match at the Stade de France, which is just north of Paris. And sometime just after halftime, I think it was, this big explosion went off. The players all stopped. Everybody looked and they went on it. And interestingly, people kind of mistook it, the announcers mistook it for a bomb, what they call an agricultural bomb, which is loud, but it doesn't do a lot of damage, that some of the rowdy or soccer fans used to blow in off in stadiums years back. And so a lot of people just, the announcers, the commentators said, ah, it's probably just one of those they went on. It wasn't until later that everybody realized that this was something far, far faster than not only than just a stadium prank, but in terms of carnage, in terms of terror attack, it was a whole new level of slaughter. I want to get this right too though, Bruce. When you say everyone mistakes us, I mean, I was 9-11 and I mistook what I saw, which was the towers already having been invaded, one of them, or actually that one, both of them by planes. My brain couldn't process it, but you're not like other ordinary human beings. You're kind of super extraordinary in ways. And you're very familiar with acts of terrorism. And I kind of wonder, are you always kind of, in some of an alert mode, or you're aware it takes less to trigger you being keenly aware of the possibility of a terrorist act than say someone like me? I don't know. I think everybody's different. I think everybody has different reactions. I know that from what I learned in my work and what the information I was given by security intelligence sources, anti-terrorism investigators, the whole lot, you come to look at things a little bit differently. You come to look at the broader picture. And I think you tended not to, you see the threat as something larger, maybe not something quite as pressing, not something as maybe you have to keep looking over your shoulder all the time, although there have been periods, including after those attacks in 2015, where I was very careful. I'd get on a metro, I'd see somebody who had left a suitcase next to the door and wasn't paying attention to it. And you're not supposed to do that. And I'd keep a very close watch to see, is this person going to stay in the metro? Is he going to get off? Is he going to leave the bag, that kind of thing? So, you know, you're more aware, but the one thing though I know that's shocked a few people that I spoke to back in the U.S. after these attacks was they said, aren't you terrified? Are you going to leave the city or are you going to move back here? And I said, no, that's insane. Why would I do that? Well, you're only a mile away, you could have died. I could die of getting hit by a truck. I could, you know, in a car accident. And there's a lot of ways you can die. You have to put these things in the perspective. And I think that's one of the goals of terrorism is to make us all lose our perspectives, not only in the way we see the threat as present to ourselves, but indeed, in the way we respond to them. And I remember one terror official, one of my best sources at one point told me, says, you know, you have to always be careful, the response to terrorism doesn't trample the same rights that terrorists are trying to take away from you by force. Go into more of that, because we've talked about, you know, in preparation for this about having to balance the concern of doing the terrorist job for them, which is to spread terror, and reporting the news, educating the people so that if we do hear strange sounds, if we do notice images or activities on the street, outside the bistros and cafes, we're more heads up. How do you strike that balance that's so seemingly impossible to arrive at? Again, I think it's something that everybody differs at. I mean, it's, this is going to sound like a stupid comparison, but it's the kind of, I was going to say the intellectual reaction, but there's a lot of emotion, a lot of psychology in play when, you know, you're talking about terrorism, you're talking about fear factor, you're talking about being provoked into a reaction that is not your normal reaction. And a level of security you normally wouldn't take and adopt. And I think it's just difference per person. I mean, the stupid comparison I was going to make, it's like the sight of blood, you know, some people just say, ah, big deal, okay, you know, let's take care of the guy, let's put a banner on him or her and move on. And other people just freak out, they can't deal with it. And again, I think that difference in keeping that in mind, I think as journalists, if you're covering terrorism, again, you have to kind of try to keep the big picture. Yes, people have just died. Yes, people are bleeding and they're maimed for life. Yes, this is a horrible thing that's and it's traumatized a lot of people. And it was attacked on just not one society, but really society at large. But you also have to make sure you don't, you don't, it's already terrorizing enough that you don't have to dramatize it even further. And I think that's been a mistake that a lot of media has. And as a matter of fact, I think there's a big mistake that media has, that mass media has been covering terrorism today. It becomes something that people don't really follow day in and day out the way I was very lucky that I was able to, you know, among other things, politics and life in France will have you economy. But, you know, time was good about telling me, you know, yeah, you just follow this every day, you know, keep working on it because when something happens, we want you to be able to respond to that, but also put it into large perspective. I think now there's no larger perspective. It's just put the cameras on where, you know, the carnage is and get the vox pops. This is a longer conversation, perhaps. And I don't want to equate nor conflate what has just recently happened here on this side in the United States and a town called Michigan City. I'm sorry, Oakland City, I think in Michigan. We had a young sophomore student who's now being prosecuted as I'm reading it as an adult for taking a gun, his father's, and going down his school halls and just murdering his classmates. And the interesting thing is, as it's coming out in the news, local authorities, as supported by the governor of Michigan, are seeking to charge the boy not just with murder and intentional murder, the state equivalents there, but also with terrorism for inflicting terror upon his classmates. Do you have any thoughts or insights about that? I've read a little bit about it. I've heard about it. But I don't have any obviously any firsthand news. I don't have any information. I don't know anything, probably about the lesson you do about it. But my was surprised to hear that terrorism had been added to the list of crimes, because terrorism has traditionally been a very specific kind of political act. It's been a it's been it's maybe an illegitimate political act. And I think we're almost all agree it is illegitimate political act. It's an act of blind violence and indeed one that is intended to inspire target innocent noncombatants and inspire so much fear in that society that it will react, it will succumb to the demands of the attackers. And that has always been the political so called justification for those who subscribe to it of terrorism. This sounds like I won't say a random act of violence, but a different or the motivation doesn't seem as politicized as it was, as it was, for example in the Paris attacks in 9 11. And I think if you're going to start applying these kind of definitions to terrorism, and this again, this is a bigger story, much open to bid, I'm not making any definitive statements here, I'm just saying that if this is an act of terrorism, then you're going to have to go back and in 1999, we classify column bind as terrorism, you're going to have to go back into what was it, 1989, I think it was or 1979, and classify, remember the, oh, I don't like Monday's girl in San Diego who shot up a whole playground full of kids just because she was unhappy. It was Monday. Oh, you're going to have to go back and recall if all those it's terrorism, I have the feeling for it to be in a situation where everything is terrorism, nothing is terrorism. I had to bring it up because it's in the news today and it's such it's just the link is terrorism and it's not the same kind of terrorism, but let's not stay here, let's table this, this is a much deeper, longer conversation, maybe we can come back to it. Let's go back in time Bruce, terrorism, terrorism. I want to go back to your origins. I'm going to put up on screen these images of you when I knew you, going back to when we swam together at USC. Talk about terror. Well, we called it the dungeon. It was called the dungeon for us, right, our pool, prior to the one, the beautiful one that Fred Utenkso built for us at the Utenkso Aquatic Center. So you go from there and you get invitations to the most exclusive of places, houses, inner sanctums. You have private audiences with world leaders. You cover those who make the news and those who the news is about. You hang with leading public figures, this one being one of the most decorated strikers, right, football players in Europe. Yeah, he's a 1998 World Cup champion, 2000 European champion, and he was a great star with my favorite Premier League team, Arsenal, who unfortunately just lost to Manchester United tonight. And I think knowing you, I think another reason why you respect him, as if I understand it, he's an activist. He's done a lot to address racism, discrimination, and the like. And so, well, let me get to this. This sets the frame. You're in Europe, but you came from the U.S. How do you, as an American, and when you were timed, an American-based publication, a non-French-born journalist working for a U.S. BMF, how did you get access to those inner quarters of secrecy and power? How do they let you into the palace? Well, I think in a lot of ways, I guess you could compare some of the competitions I was allowed to swim in while I was at USC with some of the people I was allowed to interview when I was at time. A lot of it is who you're with, where you're coming from, who's representing you, who's backing you. You come in with Peter Dayland, coach Peter Dayland saying, he's on my team and we're USC and we're swimming here. So, way for him. That's kind of the same thing as when you call the Elyse Palace, the presidential palace, for instance, say, I'd like an interview with an advisor or I'd like an interview with the Prime Minister or something like that. Obviously, getting access to those kind of people only happens infrequently. You can get briefings from their advisors almost on a weekly basis, and you get to go in the same places you would if you were seeing the President or the Prime Minister or ministers. A lot of it is because you have that business card and because when those people speak to you, they know they're speaking to all that enormous audience behind that business card. That's not to say it's a shoe-in. Just to give you a very quick anecdote, we were turned down, I don't know how many times before the interview we wanted to do with the former French President Jacques Chihac, who was featured on one of the covers that you flashed, and it was in the walk-up to the Iraq war, and France at that point was taking it on the chin from the U.S., all these ridiculous things about freedom fries and cheese-eating surrender monkeys and what have you, because France opposed the war and as it turned out, for very good reason that there were no weapons of mass destruction and starting war that would format chaos in that region was worse than actually having a horrible dictator in place. But you state that as a fact, there were no weapons of mass destruction, and we learned that, but that's not what people are going out and maintaining and or arguing or presenting on the floor at the U.S. Exactly, and it was because in fact the French foreign minister don't need to be very forcefully basically said that's nonsense and we're not going to follow you. That, so many American legislators went a bit crazy and started this anti-French campaign again with the freedom fries. How ridiculous is that freedom fries? I mean, even break in coalition of the willing. I mean, who was in the Tonga or something? Anyway, but the point is, is to get that interview, we turned down a lot of times and I finally made one last appeal to Jack Shrek's press person and put my best argument out there and indeed telling them why giving to us in time would give them a bigger bang for their interview buck. And I assume that it worked because shortly after they said, yeah, come on in and he'll see you this weekend. The job, the way you describe it, the way you describe yourself as certainly not immune, but purposefully desensitized as opposed to sensitized to terrorists and acts of terrorism that we can die from anything any day and that's how you're going to live your life. You're not going to allow the terrorist to shape who you are, how you're going to live. I mean, that's an act of defiance in and of itself. Have you ever been placed in a situation where you've personally felt threatened because of your profession? Have you ever been placed in a situation where you thought you wouldn't survive it? No, I mean, the short answer is no. I know that a couple of times when I went to New York to meet with Ed or some time, just kind of touch base. A couple of times we'd have staff lunches and some people would ask, are you ever worried, do you think they're going to come after you and my dance was no? I mean, why would they come after me? I'm basically repeating what people are telling me, the intelligence sources and that's going to get out there. That could get out there anyway. So I'm not any threat to them and I'm not blowing their cover. The only time I actually felt intimidated was when your chief and I were called in to, I believe it was a private residence of a very high-ranking Saudi official in Paris who had been very much involved with intelligence services and apparently the kingdom was very unhappy about a book review of all things that Time wrote and it ran in its domestic edition about a book on, I believe it was 9-11 and a legend, Saudi ties to 9-11 and spiriting citizens out of the US in the wake of 9-11 and a lot of other things that were very controversial and this gentleman had us into his home, which was an entire multi-story building guarded by very large bodyguards and he had us and explained to us in no certain terms in terms of just how happy the Saudi leadership was and impressing our support and so we conveyed that happiness to our editors and I presume get something done about it and we tried to let him know that we're journalists, we don't do that and we're representatives in Paris, we have nothing to do with that article and our editors are not going to change their minds anyway because of what we tell them and a rather tense situation, the atmosphere got even tenser after that and so again I don't say I was in danger of my life but I will admit that both my very chief and I were impressed if not intimidated enough that we kind of walked out and about and blocked down the street just kind of went whoa what was that man that was that was that was pretty hairy you know so that was as close as it got but you know this happens when geopolitics intersects with you know controversy and something like terrorism and the national security you know things happen and a later event like the murder and disassembling of the body of Khashoggi inside the embassy that also may inform your past experience and put it through a new prism changed this added a bit of perspective let's say you know in hindsight and of course it was a different situation Mr. Khashoggi was a longtime dissident in a very high-profile critic of the kingdom and you know had made it clear that he was he was on for for life he was going to be battling that regime for life and we were just called in to carry the can for you know an editorial choice that we didn't even know about so you know the context is different but yeah you're right that when I read that news that that meeting did come back to mind even though again it would be under hyperbole to to suggest that there was any ever any suggestion that we were actually gonna gonna take it on the chin well Bruce we have to wrap today's session I gotta wind down but a lot of what you say strikes me through another kind of a lens and that is seeing you more than worthy of your knighthood there's certain bravery and a courageousness that that goes with you in doing your job and and as you report on your own experiences I want to share just a little bit more insight with viewers into who you are as I know I want to share the story of how I did some actual reporting you know a real journalist like uh job how I had to persuade you to allow me to even share the facts of your knighthood on the show and obtain the evidence to display it I'm almost certain you would not have allowed me to bring it up and you would have omitted mentioning it to me but for the exchange you and I had in thanksgiving wishes by way of this email on screen and we don't have time for me to read it aloud right now but you again just make light of it and put it in an entirely different context that say someone like I or others who might probably display our metal our honor I would I would post it on my Facebook and my LinkedIn be one of the first things it's non-visible on yours I want to share what the real letter looks like and the real order and that's on screen it certainly doesn't hue to what you wrote me in the casual email what to get up on screen is your metal and more about the the order exclusive membership I want to share two things with viewers Bruce I want you to share your wife's response to news of your knighthood and the scheduling of your honoring and then I also want you to share about the meddling ceremony how how you're how united I'll walk you through this just extremely briefly first of all it's it's it's a little bit different than in France that it is in in the UK I mean people don't actually call you sir knight knighthood is a rank and there's I think it's commander and something else above that so you know it's it's night this is not like that nobody I was capped on the shoulder with a sword or anything like that what I basically happens is once a ministry or other public entity puts you up puts your candidacy up the order either accepts you it doesn't if it does it basically says look we've viewed your your candidacy as you seem to be a legitimate choice you're welcome to join us get somebody who's already a member to anoint you and you take care of how you do that and so therefore exactly how you do that is up to you I know people have had huge receptions I know people who had small ones etc etc and basically I was agonizing of what what to do I wasn't even sure at first I was going to accept it because I frankly I think some of these kind of things especially anything that it smacks of aristocracy or that kind of thing at all I just it just it kind of chills me I don't I don't take it very seriously in case and aristocracy actual aristocracy actually actually you know disdain it but after a while I thought you know I was very proud when France allowed me to become a citizen and I was appreciative and still am I thought well you know if it's extending me this order I'd be kind of a hypocrite to then you know wave it away at the same time I didn't want to do any big reception so I kind of say what do I do with my wife and she said I don't care but I'm telling you you know I know how you feel about this and I feel the same way you do something make sure it's not a weekday because I'm gonna be I'm gonna be working so I gotta be there and don't do it on the weekend because you know I have you know spinning class and then I do you know weightlifting and stuff so that's gonna be pretty tight too but you know otherwise it's up to you and I thought you're right I'm just gonna get somebody who's I know who's in this order and who's very much people I most respect on earth is one of my best terrorism sources matter of fact he was the senior anti-terrorism investigator and we went he agreed to do it we went to a cafe had lunch that we always do discuss terrorism was always do and when the coffee came he said oh gee we gotta do this fast because we're both gotta go to work now and so he read the letter gave me the two kisses on the cheek put the metal on and we went on a separate way and you think that's compliance with the order and the rights of passage you do things in your own unique way I could have grabbed a few packs of sugar and tossed them up for company you know but I just that would have been kind of you know an oh excessive show of vanity Bruce we have to wrap viewers I knew this was going to be a challenge the volume of works Bruce has created the volume of intelligence and talent with words and his sharp eye and brilliant mind his unique take on the world we're going to continue this conversation with Bruce we will be following up this episode with another one featuring Bruce as my next guest I can think of no better way or person I want to wrap this year up our next episode will be my last one for 2021 and I'll be back with Bruce so Bruce I'm going to call you that I thank you my friend yeah I know you wait it's I haven't been called worse and including by you so I thank you my friend I thank you my hero we haven't done this yet so as we sign off I'm going to raise a glass to you I didn't tell you I was going to do this but it's a little bit early in the day here it's late at night there thank you for staying up but I raise my glass to you and I cheer you Mahalo for joining me today my friend it's been my pleasure and thanks for having me on and you know I think technically you can get in trouble for drinking alcohol on on live television but I'm out of that business I'm not going to I'm not going to check her out oh Coca Cola viewers my friend and I Bruce we thank you until next time from my home to yours for me and my family to you and yours Mahalo and aloha