http://bornepress.com/interview-with-nick-bryant/

JT: How did your peers respond to The Franklin Scandal?

Nick Bryant: I didn’t get a lot of help from my fellow journalists. That’s one of the things about writing The Franklin Scandal that I found to be very, very difficult. People in mainstream journalism did not want to touch this story. They didn’t want to touch it as an article and they didn’t want to touch it as a book. They would rather not believe what I wrote about in The Franklin Scandal.

JT: Have things changed since the atmosphere around abuse has changed?

Nick Bryant: When Sandusky broke I was getting a lot of radio interviews from mainstream radio stations and the sales of The Franklin Scandal spiked. But after that died down the radio interviews died down. That was unfortunate. Sandusky raised awareness of just how far institutions are willing to go to protect their power, and their prestige, and their money. By covering up child abuse. We’ve seen that also in the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts. Penn State put it right in front of everybody’s face.

JT: There is a lot that goes into the suppression of information. How did you see this play out with the Franklin cover-up?

Nick Bryant: There are a lot of factors that allow a Franklin-like pedophile network to exist. Blackmail was certainly one of them. There are people in positions of power that are blackmailed. In Franklin you see state and local law enforcement covering it up in Nebraska. And when the legislative committee investigating Franklin saw a lot more evidence, state and local law enforcement weren’t powerful enough to cover it up. Ultimately it was a cover-up by the Department of Justice and the FBI. It was the Secret Service that did all the dirty work in D.C. and the FBI who did all the dirty work in Nebraska.

JT: What impact did Caradori’s plane accident have on you and your research?

Nick Bryant: I came to this story about 12 years after Gary Caradori’s death. It was devastating of course for his family. It was also devastating for those who were advocates for the victims and the people who’d worked with him for so long. There’s an old Chinese proverb: “Kill a man and silence a thousand men.” Kill a man and his child and you silence thousands. The Franklin Scandal is an extension of Gary Caradori’s work. I got a lot of my information from people who were affiliated with Gary Caradori. I also acquired the sealed grand jury documents from someone who trusted me enough to give it to me. But the moral transgressions were so egregious that I felt a moral imperative to publish. Especially because the grand jury was so corrupt.

JT: Have you felt threatened because of publishing material that was supposed to be secret?

Nick Bryant: I could be arrested any day for publishing that material. I could be put in front of a judge and asked, “Where did you get that material?” I would say that I respectfully decline to answer that and could get slapped with 18 months for contempt.

JT: How do you deal with the stress about it all?

Nick Bryant: I run. I meditate. I play softball. I’m kind of a jock at heart. I’m a pretty footloose and fancy-free guy but the Franklin scandal definitely imbued my life with a certain gravitas. I’ve written about some pretty heavy duty stuff before but nothing comes close to what I investigated in the Franklin scandal.

JT: Do you remember the moment you decided you were going to dive into this book?

Nick Bryant: I came across that U.S. Customs report about the Finders. (A 1987 case involving a group known as the “Finders” that was allegedly involved with the trafficking of children.) One thing I’ve learned is to approach my work with an open mind to documentation. With this Finders report you’ve got a weird cult doing really bad things to children. Then all of a sudden the CIA squashes the investigation and the kids are given back to the cult. If somebody had told me that, and I hadn’t seen the document, I really would have been incredulous. When I saw that document I knew something was seriously awry. It inspired me to go to Nebraska. And when I went to Nebraska I took a lot of heat, including a death threat, and that really showed me I was on the right path. I knew that something had come down in Nebraska but the Franklin scandal eclipsed everything I’d investigated previously.

JT: Did you ever come close to saying, “This is too much. I can’t go any further?”

Nick Bryant: No, I never did. Once I decided to go for it, I never came close to giving in. I always have a lot of skepticism. But once I realized it was real—and all these children had been destroyed with impunity—that was it. I decided I had to go for it. I never looked back.

JT: When did you end up with the support of a publisher?

Nick Bryant: I was represented by a very prestigious literary agent and after working on the book for four years, I gave them a book proposal. They dropped me as a client in two weeks. I found another agent. He’s a pretty gutsy guy who’s sold a lot of controversial books. He tried to sell it, and he couldn’t. Then Trine Day heard about me. They flew me out to Oregon and checked me out. They realized I was a good guy and I did have the story. The eventually gave me a contract to publish the book.

The rest: http://bornepress.com/interview-with-nick-bryant/