Ep 1 | Tim Ballard | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Hey, welcome to the podcast.

Today you're going to hear an amazing story of somebody you've never heard of in history.

Her name is Harriet Jacobs.

Her story was really literally erased, but she is one of the most amazing characters in American history.

And she made this courageous decision, one right after another, that seemed nuts, but she knew exactly what she was doing.

And it's an amazing tale.

Also,

something that kind kind of spilled out about, I don't know, halfway through, it kind of flows into a very personal story that I hadn't planned on sharing.

It happened over the

summer of 2018 and was extraordinarily traumatic for my family.

And

it's taken me a while to be able to share it.

And in this podcast, it just kind of came out.

And the reason why is because of Tim Ballard.

If you've ever listened to my show, you know who he is, but I don't think you've ever heard him like this.

Tim was

a government agent.

He was in the CIA.

Then he worked for Homeland Security, but he was an undercover guy.

I didn't even know that he was an agent.

I thought he was an author.

He's a really good writer.

It was about five years ago that he said to me,

Can I meet with you?

And I did.

And he pulls out a badge, and I'm like, Am I under arrest?

And he said, no, I have to tell you who I really am.

And the reason why is he wanted to start Operation OUR.

We are Operation Underground Railroad, a team of former CIA and military personnel created to rescue trafficked children and dismantle these criminal networks.

Now, a few years later, after he's really gotten OUR running and we play a big role in that and we're grateful to be a part of it, he's also taken on the role of overseeing the Nazarene Fund, which is saving women and children in the Middle East from slavery and about to go global on that as well.

I think you're really going to enjoy today's podcast with Tim Ballard.

A couple things have happened.

One, and I want to start here, I've learned so much history

and seen stories that

you just, you don't see anywhere.

You don't see anywhere.

They're just gone.

But there's fragments.

And if you start to pull that thread, you start to say, oh my gosh, here it all is.

Your book, Slave Stealers, tells the story of somebody I've never even heard of.

And it's the most riveting

emancipation story, slave story, I've ever heard.

Tell me,

who is Harriet Jacobs?

Harriet Jacobs is my hero.

She's my hero.

She was a

the great, one of the greatest, maybe the greatest abolitionists.

Her story,

she was a slave in Edenton, North Carolina, escaped slavery, but but not only liberated herself, but her two children.

She was hounded by, I mean, hounded by the worst master you can imagine.

You just want to rip this guy's eyeballs out when you're reading her story.

But the way she escaped, the way she outsmarted him, and the reason she did it, the motive was love, always love.

She wanted to become free so she could help others, her own children.

So there's amazing parts of this story.

I want to start before

she obviously escapes with her children, before she even has children.

She's really young and she's with,

I mean, you describe the family as a good of a slave owner family as you can get.

They still own slaves, but they treat them like people.

They teach them how to read, right?

Correct.

And they promise them that they're going to be released.

And they are.

But it's at the time of the American Revolution.

And so there's chaos everywhere.

What happens?

So

the family, these are kind of the forebears to Harriet.

Their master liberates them, gives them money, and says, get out of here.

And they're off to go find their lives.

And they're stopped by,

you know, again, the Revolutionary War is going and they're stopping ships.

They stop them.

They get greedy.

They're black people.

So we can say they're slaves, even though they have emancipation papers and they sell them.

And they parse them out.

They divide this family, and they parse them out to different

people who purchase them.

And Harriet's grandmother ends up in Edenton, North Carolina, owned by the Hornablow family, who is one of the purchasers of human beings.

And her grandmother is

put up for auction, right?

Or her aunt, Molly, who

her grandmother.

Her grandmother.

And she's put up for auction in that town.

Yes.

But she's so loved by everybody that when her and her new slave master knows that the town's gonna go,

they know that she was supposed to be released, right?

And so he says, We're not gonna have a public auction, and she demands it.

Yes, and so she's standing on the auction block, and

the white people of the town, right?

Correct.

It's the white people in town,

they stand up and say, No,

she's not a slave, she's not supposed to be a slave.

She's supposed to be free.

And

nobody bids on her except a white woman who bids on her, I think, what was it, $50?

$50,

which was a lot of money back then, $50,

buys her, nobody else bids for her.

Buyser takes her right to the courthouse and fills out the papers of emancipation.

Correct.

Just that part of the story alone.

is amazing.

Here's this town that they're there to buy slaves, buy buy humans, but they see this one slave and they're like, no, we can't buy her because she's supposed to be free.

How do you make of that?

It's the strange world of slavery.

It's the most complex, most

bewildering concept because it's so unnatural and so wrong that it creates those kind of complexities.

cognitive dissonance.

Right.

And we live through those today, through modern-day slavery.

I see those things things every day throughout the world, where it's just this bizarre world.

Okay, so

the daughter or the granddaughter, Harriet, sold to this monster of a family.

The guy is truly a monster, making children with all of the slave women.

And

Harriet in a way outsmarts him, but in a way also causes trouble, probably not as much trouble as she would have had

because he was raping everybody.

But what does she do to get away from him?

She does outsmart him.

I mean, that's my favorite part of the story is how she

first she tells the wife.

Right.

She takes steps.

The first thing she says is, your husband is a predator.

And this is an unspoken thing.

Of course, she sees the babies being born that look like her husband all over, but we don't talk about that.

12, right?

Yeah, at least 12 that she had identified.

And she's young.

She's 12, 13 years old.

And she goes to the wife and says, he's preying on me, and I'm not going to let it happen.

Help me.

And Harriet talks about how slavery makes the wives wretched.

The husband's monsters and the wife's wretched.

Because now this wife, what does she do?

She's been called out by a slave.

Her husband's been called out about something you don't talk about.

And

she's jealous.

She becomes jealous at Harriet, but also so upset at her husband that she won't let her husband be close to Harriet.

So

her plan worked.

But now she's dealing with this jealous wife who is now in trouble.

Her husband is in trouble.

Yeah.

And he makes Harriet pay.

But he strangely...

Is it his...

Is it the fact that he can't get his hands on her that drives him?

It's his love

of power absolutely

cannot and it makes him want her more yeah she's the only one that will not submit she will not submit to his lust his

his desires and she cannot handle it so she falls in love yes with a free black man yeah in town yep after

he says

the slave owner, look, I'm going to make you, you know, I'll make you the mistress of the house.

You're going to be, you're going to, and I don't want for anything.

And she's so disgusted by him, she's like, no,

won't be involved with him.

He tries kind of romantically, right, to kind of coax her.

Oh, he tries everything.

Yeah.

And then she falls in love with a free black man.

And she has another moment that slaves don't have,

where he's saying, the guy you love is a puppy.

He's a dog.

Says,

well, at least the dog never beat me.

Putting him below the dog.

Yes.

Which enrages him.

Yes.

And she does this on purpose.

She's brilliant.

She's 15.

She knows what she's doing.

And she's playing, it's psychological warfare, and she does it her whole life to him.

I think she puts him in his grave in the end.

But

she says, yeah, she weighs them both in the balance and he loses.

It's like, I choose the puppy over you.

And he jumps up, grabs her, he beats her up, throws her down.

And he's like, who is this, this, this, this girl?

Who are you to talk to me like that?

And he says, I'll take you to jail.

I can put you in jail.

Oh, please.

I want to go to jail.

And she did.

As she proves later when she gets where she hides eventually.

And he's like, oh, no, she would like to go to jail.

No, you had to stay here.

And then he's just, he doesn't know what to do.

He's confused.

And she's winning this thing.

And she's 15.

Yes.

And she is outsmarting him every step of the way.

So then

she realizes, and I can't even imagine what this was like.

She realizes that

he's never going to let her go.

He's never,

her,

you know, betrothed says, I'll buy you.

He says, no price.

No price.

Never going to let her go.

She knows that that will mean that if they marry, they'll have children, which will belong to the slave master and debt, and he'll sell them.

He'll use those kids

and he'll sell them.

And she says to

her

fiancé,

you got to go away and never look back.

How hard,

how hard do you think that must have been?

She says that was when the lights went out for her.

Her last dream, her only dream, her last dream, it's gone.

It's gone.

That's how old is she now?

17?

She's now 17, yeah.

At 19,

she's got another plan.

Oh, yeah.

To

beat the slave owner.

Yes.

He offers to build her a cabin out in the woods.

You'll never have to worry about it.

Be the mistress, be the concubine, yeah.

Yeah, you'll never have to worry about a thing.

I'll only come visit you occasionally.

And she wants no part of that.

And so living next to her grandmother in this same town

is a lawyer, a white lawyer

that

she

starts

flirting with

because of why.

And she says, you know, she says, look, I'm a moral person.

I'm a Christian woman.

I believe in God, but this is my only way out.

I will never get away from this monster.

And she allowed herself,

she made a romantic relationship with Sam Sawyer, who's this bachelor.

And a good guy.

A good guy.

He's a young bachelor, wealthy lawyer.

Tries to buy her.

Tries to suggest to buy her

free her.

And he won't.

And Norcum, James Norcomb, he's the master of the town doctor.

He will have nothing to do with it.

So she says, okay, I'm going to fall in love with him.

I'm going to have babies with him.

And that was intentional

because then she would be be connected to a powerful person in town, a white man in town.

And she'd also be, you know, it's a major slap in the master's face because that's all he wants is to be that, to be the father of her children.

And she just wears him down.

And she says, I did it for that purpose.

I'm wearing this master down until he dies.

Whatever I need to do, I'm getting away from him.

That was her goal.

And so she has two children by Sam Sawyer, who takes care of the kids financially and always trying to buy the kids.

Norcombe won't have it.

He won't sell the kids, but he doesn't know what to do.

Now she's living with grandma, who lives next door to Sam Sawyer, because James Norcombe's wife won't let her live in the house because she's so jealous of him.

Now she's pregnant.

Can you imagine what her life was like?

Oh, I mean, just the complexity alone

of

this woman was amazing just up to this point.

Oh, yeah.

And she hasn't even turned 20 yet.

Yeah.

Yeah.

the uh

nat turner rebellion happens yeah if people don't know what that is what was that rebellion nat turner he he was a slave in virginia and he said enough is enough so i'm not going to do this anymore And he rose up.

There's a great movie called Birth of a Nation that came out, I think, two years ago, maybe, that tells this story.

Not the original Birth of a Nation.

No, no, no, no.

no, no, not that one.

I was like, great movie.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, the one that came out two years ago.

And he rises up and he starts a rebellion.

And he starts,

they literally go around and start murdering all the slave owners and taking their things.

And eventually

he gets crushed, he gets taken.

But he scared the heck out of slave owners.

And it started this movement.

It started making people realize, well, maybe we can't, you know, we aren't slaves.

Just because that guy says we're slaves doesn't mean we are.

So it had this empowering kind of

movement to it, but it also created

negative externalities that no one wanted, the slaves didn't want, because it scared the heck out of everybody, including the neighboring North Carolina where Harriet was living.

And they came in and they just decided they had to make a

show of this.

And they created

these raids.

created these these raiders came in the militia sanctioned by the state and they started beating and terrorizing and killing and imprisoning black people free ones enslaved ones to no one was safe no one was safe they were planting evidence to as if there were a rebellion there wasn't one but to scare everybody but you

you put a spin on this that i have not heard before and and it's not your spin it's from the evidence of harriet's life she again, was so smart.

And I'm not sure I understand exactly how this worked, but

the part that you brought out was

that it wasn't the intelligent, well-to-do that were on these raids.

It was the downtrodden white guy who had been crushed his whole life, had no future in his life, probably a lot like people who probably joined the Nazi party you know or these crazy parties today who they just feel like nobody's listening to me nobody cares those are the guys that go in

because they're living pretty much the the same life as a slave far as what they have and and how they live

And this is the way for them to feel superior to somebody.

Yes, that's right.

So what did Harriet do?

So again, Harriet, because her grandmother is now free, because we mentioned how she was emancipated, and she runs a bakery in town.

Everybody loves her.

And everyone loves her.

She's grandma.

They call her Auntie Molly.

Yeah.

That's what they call her.

And Harriet lives there.

And

they're okay.

They're not wealthy, but they have nice things.

And these raiders come in and she knows they're coming.

because they're going to make this whole dog and pony show to scare everybody.

So she brings out the nicest tablecloth.

She makes it brings out the flowers.

She decorates the house to make it even look nicer than it usually is.

And in come these lowlives,

these, you know,

these white raiders who just signed up for the militia just for this purpose, for this day of raid and horrible things.

And they come in and

they're sick.

Because they walk in and they see this black family has more than they have.

I would think if I were with Aunt Molly and Harriet, I would say, no, do the opposite.

I know, right?

I know.

I don't know how this worked.

She, in order for her to actually wage this psychological warfare on her master and on the bad people in the town, she had to have this defiant spirit.

And it manifested itself, maybe even when maybe she didn't really want it to sometimes, but she couldn't help herself.

She knew she was a daughter of God and no one could tell her.

that her skin changed that.

And she

would do these things.

And they walked walked into the house and she would fight with them and say, find your there's no evidence here.

And then she'd try to kick them out of the house.

And then she was so smart, she had a couple of white, powerful friends in town who, once things got to the point, she gave them the sign.

They walked in and stood in the house and said, it's time for you, you boys to leave.

And

then there's this funny part in the story where as they're walking out, they're cussing and racial slurs.

And I can't believe you bleepity bleeps have all this stuff.

You know, we don't have tablecloth like this.

Where did you guys get this?

And Grandma Molly, who has that same defiant spirit, says, Well, you can rest assured we didn't find them from, we didn't get them from your homes.

And with that, they get booted out of the house.

You know, so

I think that Harriet was

righteously defiant, you know, and she, and she couldn't, she couldn't, it's who she was.

So she's transferred to the plantation because she won't give in to her master's will.

And he says,

I'm going to break the family up.

I'm going to work your kids to the bone.

I'm going to sell your daughter.

I'm going to sell your daughter.

And she knows what that means and what he means by that.

And he says, I'm going to first put you at the plantation.

And again,

she says, okay.

Right away.

And he says, no, no, you need a week to think about that.

And he leaves.

And she's like, no, I've got my answer.

You can send me.

He comes back a week later later, and he says, So, what have you been thinking?

And she's like, I told you last week, I'm ready to go.

I mean, because he gave her the offer of the cottage again: go to the cottage, your kids can stay with grandma, they can stay with you.

And he was just bewildered.

Are you seriously?

Did you hear what I told you?

I'm going to sell your children if you don't become my concubine.

Your kids are sold.

Right.

And she's like, I can answer you right now.

Yeah, I'm going.

Let's go.

Bags are packed.

I'll go to the plantation.

And on the surface, you would think, Harriet, what are you doing?

Like, you are now creating the very thing you fear the most.

But she didn't live on the surface.

She didn't think on the surface.

She knew exactly what she was doing.

She was always 10 steps ahead of this guy.

So she goes to the 10 steps.

She was, or was she,

was she, was she, were her actions smarter

than she even knew?

Was she, was she always,

I mean, because that takes

incredible

courage to do what she did.

You know, if you really believe you're being guided by God, which I think she

did for sure believe,

you know, that gives you some extra, but you do still are a human being and you have to go, oh my gosh, I, because she did not want to lose her children.

That's all that mattered to her.

She could lose her life, but she wanted to make sure her children never lived in slavery.

Okay.

So she had that fear.

Do you think sometimes she thought to herself, maybe I've gone too far in this time.

Oh, I think she had to have.

Had to have.

Because I've read her autobiography so many times and I'm thinking, Harriet, what are you doing?

You know,

why are you doing this?

You know, and she doesn't reveal to you exactly in that moment why she did things.

Was it God inspiring her?

Was it her kind of being overzealous?

Whatever it was, though, she ended up figuring it out.

Right.

So she gets to the plantation and she appears to have a plan.

Yes.

From day one, she becomes the most subservient, the most obedient, working over hours, everything she can do.

And

James Norcombe, the master's son, runs that plantation, and they fall in love with her.

They think,

what's my dad talking about?

She's the best slave we've got.

In fact, she can't do enough to help us.

And she talks about, she's like, I knew what I was doing.

She's like, I needed them to be complacent.

I needed them to start loving me and start trusting me.

And that's when I can work my works.

And from day one, she started doing that.

And she knew the day would come, as Norcum promised, the kids would come out and be what they said,

broke in, broken in as slaves.

And eventually her daughter was going to be harassed sexually by this man.

And

when that day came,

she knew, I mean, she had it already figured out.

She had taken her clothes weeks earlier, or maybe months earlier, out of Grandma Molly's, of her room from Grandma Molly's house in town.

The plantation is about six miles outside of town.

And she hid them with a friend.

Yeah, so these were her private things that stayed in town.

She took her everyday clothes to the plantation.

Right.

But all of her stuff that she, if you were going to go someplace, you wanted those things.

Right.

All of her possessions.

And she quietly, no one knew except grandma, I presume, took all of those things and hid them.

And hid them.

And no one would know why she did that when she did it.

Right.

But here's the day

she's been waiting for.

The kids are coming tomorrow.

Tomorrow the kids come to the plantation to be broken in.

Well, that's the night she slips out the window.

They're not watching because they trust her.

And she heads into the woods and just disappears.

So the next morning, the last thing, and she knows what she's doing because they're not going to bring the kids out to the plantation plantation because they're only two years old and six so who's going to watch them is going to be a drain on the the the the the economy of the farm right so she knows they're not going to come out unless she's there to take care of them so she keeps her kids safe in that in that in that instant and norcum goes nuts she's escaped i can't believe she's escaped how did you guys let this happen and he sends out the patrols and they go and raid grandma molly's house and all her possessions are gone well she's not in town is she she went north she's out of here so Brilliant.

So he concentrates all his efforts on searching for her in the north when, in fact, she's a mile away hiding in the woods.

But all calculated.

Just amazing.

She is

in trouble.

She's bitten by a snake.

Yeah.

And now she's in trouble.

And

she has got to get help.

Somebody in town has got to help her.

And it's a white woman who owns slaves.

Yes.

And

doesn't she go to

Grandma Molly or Aunt Molly and say,

I can help, which had to be a big roll of the dice.

Oh, huge.

Right?

Huge.

Trusting for both sides at this point.

Right.

And this is the point, I think, where.

And when you say, hang on, when you say both sides, later.

Later, you will see that there was a slave that was

trying

to find Harriet

because she then could be the master's favorite.

So when you say both sides, the white person knew, I'm going to be destroyed.

The black person knew,

if this is a trap, I'm toast,

right?

Oh, yeah.

They both had everything to lose.

Everything to lose.

And they're looking, I picture this moment.

They're looking at, her name is Martha Blount is her name.

And she's looking across the table, kind of like you and I are right now, and Grandma Molly.

And they're just looking at each other.

Can we trust each other?

Because if either of us betrayed this secret, we're both dead.

Or if one of us does, we're both dead.

This is a trap.

Did Norcum send you to me?

And Molly's out in the woods bitten by a snake.

I'm sorry, Harriet.

And she had these moments where I think it was like, I'll do all that I can do, and then I leave the rest up to God.

Because she hit a point where she's like, okay,

I need someone to help me.

I didn't expect the snake.

And she's she's going to die.

She's a poisonous bite, she can tell.

And so grandma says, very religious, very prayerful.

She said she felt a peace.

God said, you can trust Martha.

You can trust her, even though she owns slaves.

And so.

Can we stop here for just a second?

Let me, let me.

This is the point of the story

that Anne Frank came to mind.

That it's

not just the slave trade where we've seen this kind of stuff.

It's Anne Frank and the Nazis.

Somebody comes to the door and says, I can hide you.

You don't know.

You don't know.

We have it now in the Middle East with ISIS and with Christians.

I can hide you.

I can get you out.

Yeah, you might take me right directly to an auction block or to somebody who wants, you know, to harvest my organs.

I mean, it's, it's,

this

is still happening.

Still happening.

And it was happening back then.

Solomon Northrop, you know, the 12 Years of Slave, that story, the same thing.

He was trapped.

They took him and they said they're going to, they're going to, I write about in the book where they're going to take him and make him a musician and a talent.

And the producers are slave owners and it was all a trap.

And so this is the world you live in when slavery exists.

It's this horrible place.

And all you have in that moment, Molly and Martha, is God to intervene and you're both, you're hoping for a witness because that's all you've got.

And you have

even the best intentioned people if you look back at John Merrick, the elephant man, and you see he went from one cage

kind of to another, you know, where he was a showpiece in some regard.

Okay, back to the story.

So, Martha sends one of the jolliest old characters in the whole book.

Her name is Old Betty.

Old Betty is the one slave that Martha says I would give my life to.

She trusts her and she tells her the secret.

Can't trust the other slaves in her own house with the plan she's about to do.

You would think

that if you're a slave,

you would be the most trustworthy on hiding a slave.

Right?

Wouldn't you?

Yeah, this is one of the surprising parts of the story

that Harriet knew she couldn't trust other slaves.

They would rat her out

and be Norcum's hero, you know?

So it's greed and power on one side, and it's

survival and power on the other side.

Yeah.

Lots of games running all over the place.

So old Betty goes.

This is

the cook for slave

for Martha Blount.

Goes and

Grandma Molly tells her where Herod's hiding in the wood.

They go get her, bring her back, and they hide her in this closet room that's

adjoining the master bedroom where Martha Blount

resides.

And she's the only one with the key, and she locks her in there and says, you can't come out.

You can't make a noise.

Let's figure this out.

Let's figure out what's going on.

And so there, they take care of her.

They leave her well.

And now Norcum can't find her.

He's freaking out.

And he does the unthinkable.

The part for me that

drew me more to this story than anything else.

Because I obviously, we'll eventually get into this, my personal connection to why I almost obsessed over this story and the personal application to me.

Norcombe decides to update Annie and he takes the two children, as is his right.

He owns those children.

He snatches them out of Grandma male's house and he throws them in this tiny little jail that still exists i i go there i've been there many many times i saw the pictures of it i've prayed there i've very small and he takes these two years old and six years old

and throws these little babies into jail

and

holds them as hostages

and says, let's the word out that until and unless Harriet returns, those kids will stay in jail.

And Harriet learns about it.

She's up in the closet and she learns.

Your kids are there.

All you got to do is go to them.

He'll let them out.

Now you'll be,

you're destroyed.

And this is the, I think maybe the hardest part for her.

Do I trust in God?

Do I trust in my plan?

And God was telling her, and her plan was telling her, let them stay in jail.

Stay in the closet, stay in jail.

That will lead to their ultimate liberation.

And she's right, by the way, but she's having to put faith in this now.

When you say stay in the closet, it is truly a small little closet, right?

And locked by

either the cook or the mistress of the house.

Right.

No other slave has a key to it.

No one can get in.

And she has to stay quiet because there's slaves all over the house who will rat her out.

At one point, one of the slaves is trying all their keys because she's moved.

They've heard her.

Yes.

And they think, oh,

there she is yes right exactly

what did why didn't that go anywhere well i guess it did they came to the house and she was she was hiding under the floorboards in the kitchen is that right yes so um

they kept coming and checking everyone's houses and and and every time the word would get out old betty would come grab harriet throw her under the floorboard in the kitchen and she'd sit under that thing for days if necessary and then back and forth and back and and forth

and then things just got too hot.

Norcom was asking too many questions and they realized they need a more permanent, better hiding place for her.

But first they had to get her out of town, put her somewhere.

And this is one of the most horrifying parts of the story.

And I've been to this horrifying place.

It's called Snakey Swamp.

It's just, Edenton's a little coastal town, hasn't changed much

from the 19th century um and so you can go there and see this and smell this and you can you feel your the story is aunt molly's house still here in the town her lot is still there the house is no is no longer there and so they take harriet there's there's her late father's friend peter they let him in on the secret he puts her in a canoe and rows her out to snakey swamp now snakey swamp today is a um it's a historical site certified by the state of north carolina as an underground railroad haven uh it's this is before before.

This is before the Underground Railroad.

This is before the Underground Railroad was up and going, really.

And so she goes out there and spends two horrifying nights fighting snakes, mosquitoes.

He rolls her three miles deep into

Snakey Swamp, wanting to learn her story

more than just for this book, but for my own pursuits, which we'll talk about eventually.

I went out there.

I rented a canoe and I went by myself one afternoon into Snakey Swamp.

And, you know, the guy who rented me the canoe, he says, where are you going?

I says, I'm going to go into Snakey Swamp.

He says, no, you're not.

He says, there's, they called that for a reason.

There's snakes everywhere.

I said, I've got to, I've got, I came all the way out here.

I traveled 3,000 miles to go into this swamp.

There's these waterways that take you miles deep.

And he said, he's like, listen, sir, the snakes are in the trees.

If they see something moving below, they jump out onto your head.

You don't want to go in there.

And he saw my consternation and he said,

you know, he kind of relented and he said, well, most of them aren't poisonous, so maybe you'll be okay.

I need a heavier deposit on the canoe.

And so

I was just hell-bent on getting out there.

So I went about a half a mile in.

And after my third confrontation with the snake, I'm done.

I turned that thing around and I I couldn't get out of there fast enough.

And

so I can't even fathom.

She's three miles deep into this place.

And she describes the snakes are everywhere.

They're crawling on her.

She's all night just going, just blindly stabbing around to keep snakes away from her.

Kind of like when Indiana Jones jumped down into the

snakes.

That's exactly it.

They eventually, after two days, they were creating another hiding place for her in Grandma Molly's house.

And it was an attic space, about

three feet by two feet high,

seven feet in length.

It was a little attic space they just created with a false compartment.

Peter got her out of the snakey swamp, put her up in grandma's house, and he said,

this will be your last walk.

Enjoy it.

This is the one block from the water to Molly's house.

And she went up into that place.

Now remember, Molly is a target.

She's a bakery.

There are bakeries in her house.

Molly does not come down.

I'm sorry, Harriet does not come out of that little space for seven years.

She's holed up into this little place.

There's a replica in Edenton.

You can actually go and crawl in it.

There's a picture of it in the book.

And

that's where she stayed for seven years.

Tell me, because I...

I don't want to reveal all the story, but then

tell me the happy ending.

The happy ending is

really the person that is Harriet Jacobs, her motive for doing all of this,

her,

her, her love of God and her, her, her spirit of

service that she

just

displays to everybody.

She just wants to help people.

You know, it wasn't like, and I'll let people read the daring rescue, how she got her kids out of jail, how she got out of, I mean, it's a crazy story, but I want, you're right, well, we won't give everything away.

But when she gets her freedom, and this is the part that just is so tender to me, she could have done anything.

She could have pursued professional things.

She could have,

she didn't.

She gets, like Harriet Tubman, before, you know, who's also a hero in this book, she gets to her freedom.

And by the way, she's not free yet.

She's a fugitive, and that's a whole nother story, how she's fighting in the north now.

But she turns around and goes back into the south.

She goes to the front lines of the Civil War

because she wants to be there for the thousands of fugitive children who are being liberated by this war and running north and coming destitute, coming orphaned, coming hungry.

And she's on the front lines.

She establishes the Jacobs Free School, she called it.

Later, she established the Lincoln School for these children.

And she helped these kids get adopted, which is also a personal thing that connects to my story.

And so

she lived to serve God and man,

and nothing could distract her.

All these distractions, all this people, their hate, their viciousness, she was able just to put it aside and say, there's real things going on here.

God is real.

I am real.

These children are real.

This war is real.

I'm going to focus on these things.

That's why I am liberated.

That's why God allowed me to be liberated so that I could focus on these real

things and make people's lives better.

I heard a great phrase the other day.

It was from the pulpit of the church, and

somebody said,

In the midst of the darkest of human suffering,

that is where you'll find God.

You're looking for him right there.

Go there because that's where he's dwelling.

That's what she did.

That's what she did.

And

if you don't mind, it's brought to mind something.

You know, people asked me often.

They've asked me, how do you go nose to nose with traffickers and buy and sell children?

Even though you're doing it undercover, how do you do that and not just become so darkened yourself and just cynical?

And I couldn't answer that question for a long time because the answer made me look crazy.

Because the answer was, as I thought, I thought, those are some of the lightest moments.

Those are some of the most brilliant moments of my life.

And I was embarrassed to say it because, again, I would look foolish or crazy or immoral or something.

What do you enjoy this?

And I couldn't figure out what it was until I heard someone once talk about angels and

the doctrine of angels, you know, the reality.

reality.

And

then I was relieved.

And it has hit me like a ton of bricks.

That's what it is.

When I'm close to the darkest things and those kids are right in that other room about to be sold,

that's what I've been feeling all these times.

You know, that's the light.

God is there.

The angels are with these children.

It's, you know, some people lose their...

their

belief, their faith in God.

I've watched people in my industry, people who are undercover operators, they turn from God because how could God let this happen?

How could God let these children be abused this way?

There is no God.

I'm out.

I watch it all the time.

And my experience has been just the opposite because the closer I get to the darkest place, especially where the kids are,

I witness angels there.

And God is there.

And you can't get closer to God than by going there.

You and I went to

Thailand together.

And

I will never forget walking down the street with you

and

talking to you about one of the

worst guys that you had ever encountered, who was just a monster.

You remember?

And you told me the conversations.

that you had to have to gain his trust.

Can you share a little bit of that so you you

know how dark this is?

It is, well, I'll tell you this: at the end of those conversations,

I'm running to the bathroom and throwing up and literally vomiting.

Yeah.

Talking about children like you're selling a computer piece or a car.

Right.

And they're, you know, it gets so grotesque that I'll stop there.

So I asked you at that point because there's something,

there's something to be said for a parent, a father, and a man

that

may or may not be unique to our gender.

But

I asked you,

how do you not just pull a gun and kill these people?

How do you know?

I mean, I know

you're probably very handy with your hands.

I would need a gun.

You're probably more handy with your hands.

And do you remember what you said to me?

Mm-hmm.

I think about those kids.

If I mess this up, if I were to do that

and

end the sting operation, there would be children who wouldn't be lost.

The prosecution wouldn't go through.

He would probably be free and I'd be in jail.

I mean, there's all the, it's the kids.

It's the children that I think of in those moments.

Don't betray the kids.

Don't betray the kids.

And that smile on my face, though it's looking at evil,

stays.

And I

finish the job.

But you've had days where you've come home and looked at your kids

and thought, I can't do it anymore.

When I first

talked to you,

you were kind of going through that.

I can't do it anymore.

I've had many, I still have those days.

And it is usually with my children.

When I come home and I see them,

you know, I've done operations where the kids we just rescued were miles away from where I live.

And going from that

scene to this scene.

And you're filled with guilt, almost guilt.

Why are my kids okay?

And that child is not.

Why do my kids have two parents and a family system?

Well, they have a trafficker as the only adult in their life who's raping them and selling them.

And I've buckled.

I mean,

I've passed out.

I've dropped to the floor.

It's a really, really hard thing

to confront.

We didn't talk about this in advance, and I didn't plan on this advance, but

we prayed before we went on.

So I feel

compelled to share something that you know about, that nobody else knows about.

I've not talked about this with anybody.

You say you feel guilty, you know, why are my kids?

I felt my kids were safe.

And you've been to my house.

I have 24-7 armed security.

I have...

thousands of dollars worth of equipment at my house.

We have firewalls.

We have, you name it, we have it.

The police actually call my, my house the compound.

Okay.

And one night at one o'clock in the morning,

because we happen to have phones in our house that have different lines, my wife happened to be awake and she saw the the phone rang, just half a ring.

And then she looked at the phone and she saw that the light went on.

Somebody had answered.

And then it went off right away.

She woke me up and she said, Somebody answered the phone.

And I said, Are the

kids asleep?

She said, I just went into both their rooms.

They're asleep.

Somebody is in the house.

So I said, okay, let's calm down for a second.

Let's just wait.

Let's just, let's talk about this for a minute.

And then about 20 minutes later, that light went on again.

And

we could see that the call that had come in was from California.

So now I grab my gun and my dogs.

And I

go out in the house.

And I'm looking for somebody in our house.

And I say,

I hear something, and I say,

if you're one of the kids,

announce it right now.

If you're security, announce it right now.

I have a gun and I have a dog, and I feel under threat, and I will shoot you.

Announce who you are now.

Nothing.

I'm serious.

If there there is someone in this house,

I will shoot you.

Announce.

And I heard my son say, it's me.

My son had been playing on PlayStation

and

had been contacted by a guy in California

and they were, quote, just talking about the games at 1 o'clock in the morning.

He was a 30-year-old man, I think.

And

my son thought that that was normal.

And my wife and I said, no, that's not normal, honey.

He called at night, and then you picked up on half a ring and said, I'll call you back.

And why is he calling?

At that time, it was 2 o'clock in the morning.

I am so blessed to have

my security and to know you.

I think at 5 o'clock in the morning, when I thought people might start be getting up, I wrote to you.

I contacted security and said,

here's the guy's name.

Here's what was on caller ID.

And I called you.

And you had the child

services come over to our house right away.

you want to talk about that at all and what

it's you know that that could happen to you of all people

not only because

your cause is our cause you you know this you're one of the few who's so

open

and supportive of the cause of protecting children and you know the physical security of your house and yet one of these creeps penetrated got into your house and my son was defending him.

Yeah.

At first, my son was defending.

At first, my son said, Dad, you're always paranoid about everything.

And I'm like, son, this is a 30-year-old man.

You're 12.

And of course, we figured out that you were right about that person.

Your hunt was correct, and he is,

you know, his days are numbered.

And he's a predator.

And he got into your house.

And

it's such an important story for all parents and all people that that's how many predators there are out.

There are.

Two million children are in the commercial sex trade.

Two million children.

So what kind of demand justifies that number?

That's how many predators are looking for our kids.

They'll find them on Facebook.

They'll find them on Instagram.

They'll find them on PlayStation.

They're finding them on.

When,

you know, the children's

sex crimes division came over, they asked for the PlayStation.

My son said, Well, I don't record anything.

They said, Oh, don't worry.

Everything, everything is recorded.

And I'll never forget, he looked at me and he said,

Do I have your permission to transcribe all of your son's conversations?

And I said,

That's available?

He said, yep.

And I said, oh, you have my permission,

which led them to a lot of discovery.

But what they did was they took my PlayStation, and they just had done this a few weeks before with somebody else

whose son was in exactly the same situation and had been taken to another city.

And just by the grace of God, they caught him.

He had already been abused, but they caught the person.

And it's because they were playing a game.

She was, it was a woman.

She was forty.

And she was

bonding on the game and then molesting.

And

so what they do is they take these PlayStations when they find them and they pose as people.

And

this particular person,

the the last I have on this is or last I care to share is that there were 12 children that he was grooming

yeah

and because of this what happened well that's why he'll be stopped if he hasn't already we can't really talk about it so I am

I don't think people I think people think this is a far-off problem.

They do, and that's the problem.

Because it's not.

It is everywhere.

It's horrifying to look at, and they don't want to look at it, but we've got to.

We've got to look at it.

For the kids at home, for the kids abroad, we have to stand up and be the parents to all these kids who don't have anybody.

You know, what makes me so...

I want to say angry, but it doesn't because

I understand it, and it just turns into frustration for me

of trying to do we're repeating history all these people who say oh our founders were so bad all these people are so bad how how come that white community knew that was going on with Harriet and they did nothing yeah sure that one woman bought Molly but the town people they knew that woman how come they didn't stand up Well

because nobody wants to look at it.

Nobody wants to look at it.

It's too big to solve.

They don't know what they're going to do.

What am I going to do about it?

That's exactly where we are right now.

Nobody wants to look at it.

I can literally see minute-to-minute ratings.

And Tim, every time you come on, every time we talk about Nazarene Fun, OUR, saving kids, every time you come on, I can see my ratings go right to the floor.

Sorry.

No, no, no.

No, no, no, no.

I've tried a million different ways to package it.

It doesn't matter.

I know.

Nobody wants to hear it.

I know.

And yet,

I said on the air,

if you're looking for God, you're going to find him

at the point of the most human suffering.

That's where he is.

But if you're looking at God, what is God?

God is love.

He's compassion.

He's empathy.

He's help.

He's comfort.

He's all of those good things.

All of those good things.

I don't find any of those things on Twitter.

I don't find any of those things on Facebook.

I don't find any of those things on talk radio, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC in Washington, D.C.

I find none of that there.

And that's what we're missing.

If I am convinced,

you talked me into,

well, you didn't do a lot of talking into, but you talked me into

this cause, not just because of the children,

but because this is the way to heal.

This is it.

This is it.

Everybody's asked me over and over again, okay, so now what do we do?

We know the problem.

What are we going to do?

This, this is what we do right here.

This.

We save

people.

We save children.

We save Christians.

We save the Muslims in China.

We save

people.

And that's exactly why the NFL coach, Mike Tomlin, came to me.

He had the same realization you had.

In fact, when he was talking to me, I thought, I saw your face.

So you're talking the same language

that Glenn was talking about, what this cause is.

See, I was so myopic, just let's save the kids, let's save the kids.

And you started talking about healing, how this could heal the nation.

And then Mike Tomlin, out of the blue, calls me

last year, and he says, come to Steelers camp.

And I was just, you know, I'm a football fan.

And

I can't believe the Steelers are calling me to come.

He's like, I want to talk about who you are.

I'm like, okay, so

I get to Steelers camp with him.

And the first day, he says, meet me for lunch.

Just you and me, no one else.

And he says this.

He says, I have a dirty little secret I have to tell you.

Oh, boy.

And I'm like,

what is this?

Where are we going?

I've got some children I'd like to sell you.

I thought you might have some connections.

I mean, I don't know.

It could go anywhere from here.

I'm like, what's going on?

So we sit down and he says, look, before I say this to you,

I want you to know that the most important thing

is saving kids.

And that's why I want you here.

But I do have an ulterior motive for having you here.

And he says to me,

he says, why did you call your foundation the Underground Railroad?

And I said, because I love the movement.

You know,

we can talk later about what, I mean, I was, you know, I am.

In the beginning, when I was in the early 2000s, I didn't know who to turn to to teach me about slavery because no one was talking about it.

The word trafficking, human trafficking, that wasn't even a thing.

And I turned in quiet desperation to history.

That's why people like Harry Jacobs are my heroes.

And I started telling him, that's why.

And he says, but the Underground Railroad, he opened my eyes.

He's a very smart guy, you know, very well read.

He said, the Underground Railroad, Tim, that was a time of bitter hate.

People were killing each other because of the color of their skin.

And, oh, it was just this horrible time.

And he said, yet there were people of all colors and all creeds who dropped the hate.

And they found something that was real, something that they all agreed was real.

They might not agree on anything else, politics, you know, everything else, states' rights versus this and everything else.

But they all agreed that people shouldn't be abused.

And so they dropped their hate, they came together, black, white, and every other color and creed, and they joined hands and they went into the dark together and they healed.

And he said, look at me right now.

Look at me.

Look at the NFL.

He says, I'm getting hit up all over the place, this whole kneeling of the anthem.

And he's like, I hate all this stuff.

I hate, how can we be so distracted by all this stuff and and whether we should take statues down or not and all this stuff and yes it's it's so important to some people but children are being raped by the millions here in the u.s and and elsewhere and he said can we what if we followed the example of the original underground railroad and he says what if we got everybody to focus on something that's that we can all agree even if it's the only thing we can agree that's wrong children shouldn't be sold and raped and trafficked.

And then we're together in the trenches.

And then we learn to serve alongside each other.

We learn to serve one another.

And we start seeing each other as people.

And then the healing begins for the nation.

And I thought, as he's talking, I said, Glenn Beck told me that a year ago, this very same thing.

And this is why Mike Tomlin wrote the foreword to this book, because he wants that message.

out.

And that's in the end what this book, Slave Stealers, is about.

It's these exciting stories of rescue then then and now.

But in the end, it's, guys, this is real.

There's things that are real and there's things that aren't so real.

There's enough real things, real suffering, and God is there.

When you go to those things, he'll receive you.

He'll embrace you.

It's hard to go there.

You got to open your eyes.

You got to take some of your, you're going to lose some innocence.

by going into this dark place.

But God is there and he'll wrap you up and he'll love you for coming there.

And he will begin this healing.

And if we can spread it to the world, to the nation.

I was trapped in a jungle with you.

And I was surrounded by, you are so,

you are so Christ-like with children.

I'm very awkward around children.

I was an awkward kid and I'm an awkward man.

And you are so good with children.

They just love you and they flock to you.

And you brought me to this place that OUR has supported, and it's for all these kids that have been rescued

where they're happy.

They're happy.

They've got nothing, but they're happy.

And

you said

the

the

sex crimes division is coming out and they're going to show you some things

and give you an update on things.

And I said, I want to see it all.

I want to s I want to see it.

I want to see it.

And how long was that briefing?

Twenty minutes.

And I I finally just said, Turn turn it off.

I can't.

I can't.

I was a mess.

I was a mess.

I did interviews with these kids and I couldn't even talk.

They were all happy and I couldn't even talk.

I was just a wreck.

And then you come out

and you say,

I'm glad he didn't show you the tough stuff.

The founders

were progressives when it comes to slavery.

They were progressives.

We're not going to convince anybody.

Let's just start dismantling it one piece at a time.

Let's first stop the slave trade in a few years.

Then we'll do this in a few years.

It didn't work that way, but that's what they were trying to do because they knew they couldn't stop it.

The slave trade, the abolitionist Ben Franklin, was called insane at the end of his life.

They mocked him and ridiculed him because of slavery and him standing up and being an abolitionist.

The Liberty Bell is only known to be the Liberty Bell.

It's only called the Liberty Bell.

It was just a broken old bell until the abolitionists found it.

proclaim liberty throughout the land.

So can we take that old bell and use that?

And they took it on tour to proclaim liberty throughout the land.

It was an abolitionist message.

It wasn't a founding fathers, hey, let's all come together and build a country.

That liberty bell, we know it because of the abolitionists.

People tried everything from plates.

You know, the wedgwood plates that they made, anything to get people

to see it and to talk about it and to think about it.

And they tried bringing you down to the slave ship so you could see it and smell it.

That didn't work out well.

What is the message, Tim, that

can get people to really...

I mean, I believe this will come together.

I believe this is what we need.

This is, this is,

I told you, September 11th made me a better man.

Barack Obama made me a better man.

Donald Trump's making me a better man.

The slave trade is making me a better man.

That strife makes us better because it pushes us up against the wall.

And if you're pushed hard enough, you'll finally figure out who you are.

Either somebody who's living up to their highest potential or a coward.

Some people will choose coward.

As a nation that is already pushed to the absolute limit

and is focused on all of the wrong things,

how do we get them to look at an even bigger problem

that nobody wants to even admit?

You know, it's I don't know the answer, except I do know our job is to just continue telling the story because we do make converts every time we tell the story.

We film everything we can.

I've written this book for that very purpose.

You talk about it, and we do have history that gives us some insight.

For hundreds of years, no one did anything about slavery, nothing.

So, when was there a movement in the 19th century?

A movement begins and you start getting recruits.

Finally, why?

It was the media.

It wasn't the government.

As much as I love Abe, he didn't just rise up one day and say, hark,

I'm liberating everybody.

That's not what happened.

What happened was the people.

Frederick Douglass spoke up.

Harriet Tubman spoke up.

Harriet Beecher Stowe writes her book, Uncle Tom's Cabin.

This was the media.

They were the media.

It was books.

It was tracks.

It was lectures.

And they start speaking.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, her story is so amazing.

She was one of the ignorant in the North that didn't believe or know or had heard of it, but didn't really engage it, just like today.

People have heard of human trafficking, but they don't want to engage it.

They don't really look at it.

They know it's there and they move on.

She was that person.

She admits it.

And she crossed, she was, she was in Cincinnati and she crossed the river into slave territory and stumbles upon slavery, sees it.

Kind of sees it like a lot of people stumble upon our website or stumble upon your show one day and hear this podcast or hear us talking.

And she didn't cower.

She was one of those that didn't cower, but she said, who am I?

This human captivity is before me.

Who am I?

And she went home and she couldn't sleep.

Mike Tomlin had a similar experience.

You had a similar experience when you were introduced to this.

You couldn't sleep.

She couldn't sleep.

And

she wrote a letter to her sister.

And said, what do I do?

And she was more embarrassed from a northern perspective because we're complicit in this.

We in the north, we know what's happening.

We do nothing for hundreds of years.

And her sister wrote her back and says, well, what can you do?

You're not an operator.

You're not a government official, but you can write.

You're a writer.

And she stands up and she tells this story.

She takes

her sister's letter in her hands and crumples it up in her hand.

And she says, I will write something.

I will if I live.

And she sat down, she researched out what slavery was, and she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Within a year, two years, millions are reading it and they're saying, what?

This happened?

So there is a precedent.

We can make converts.

And then those people ask the question, what can I do?

Well, I'm good at speaking.

I'm good at planning events.

I happen to be an operator, a former Navy SEAL.

I can go and now, and everyone does what they can.

And then all of a sudden, that was the movement that ended slavery.

That was the beginning of the end of slavery.

It shook the foundation so much that the government had to respond.

And when Abraham Lincoln meets Harriet Beecher Stowe for the first time during the war, according to her son, he bends down and grabs her little hand and he says, so you're the woman who wrote the book that started this war.

And so that's where it begins.

It has to begin with the people and the media.

And, you know, I come home from operations.

when I'm focused in it and I've seen these kids and I'm weeping and I can't even look at my kids yet.

I need to like decompress.

And I go to my news feed as the airplane's landing and I'm reading this crap that everyone's caring about.

Fake crap.

Really?

You're just so worried about what this person did or who they paid and what they said.

And I just saw 12 kids being raped for money, and we just barely got them out.

I hope they heal.

And all you guys are caring about everywhere is how outraged you can be because it feels good to you or whatever.

And that's what we're fighting.

I went to Mexico City with you and your team, and I met three people that had been rescued.

These

amazing women.

Literal.

One of them,

a sex slave that

is Harriet's story.

I mean, it's Harriet's story,

where her children are being used against her in the

horrible story.

Another woman who's a literal labor slave who had a chain around her neck.

I mean, the scars were still around her neck.

And I sat there and I talked to them about their story, and we captured them all on tape.

And they were,

I've never met bigger, stronger women.

One of the women, the women, the one woman with this chain around her neck.

I said, could you just hold up a blank piece of paper?

Because we're going to put this at the end.

And could you just hold up a blank piece of paper and say, my name is,

and

I was a slave.

And then hold up the paper and say,

but I am the only author of my story.

I write my story.

Meaning that that slavery doesn't mean anything.

I can choose my own path now.

She said, I won't do that.

You know the story?

I won't do that.

I said,

okay, why?

She said, I wasn't a slave.

I wasn't a slave.

No one can make me a slave.

I was free in my mind.

I was not a slave.

And I had to change the language for her to say, some

would say I was a slave.

I mean, that's how strong

these people are.

Yeah.

I get on the plane and I come home.

My wife and I are just devastated.

I mean, it was three days, just devastated.

And we had that weekend, was the weekend we were pulling down statues, and I saw college kids saying that they were being oppressed by this statue, and I had just

been

with slaves.

I wanted to run to the bathroom to vomit.

I was so disgusted by us.

We're living in a world where

nothing matters.

Literally, nothing matters.

Truth doesn't matter.

Math doesn't matter.

Science doesn't matter.

Nothing matters.

Nobody cares.

Principles don't matter.

If your party says one thing, you'll turn on a dime because it will help our side beat that side.

So nothing matters.

And at the same time,

the littlest things we are fighting to the death over.

On Twitter and Facebook and in our own personal lives, we are willing to fight to the death.

We're on the edge of civil war over meaningless stuff.

Meaningless.

Those statues don't oppress anyone.

Put them in.

I don't care.

Melt them down.

Put them in it.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter.

This is happening now.

Will you just spend

what time we have left

telling me the personal side of this?

Yeah.

This was the hardest book I've ever written.

It took me three, four years, I think,

to tell this story.

It hurt.

You know, some people ask, it's so weird because every other chapter alternates between Harriet's story and mine.

And it's in no way to compare myself to her.

I go on page 15, I say, I'm here to learn at her feet because she did something I need to do.

Let me just say something here here first.

Anybody who says that doesn't know you.

You're the most humble, decent man, honorable man, God-fearing man I think I've ever met.

Wow.

And if you die before I do, I will do my best to raise money to build a statue, which I know you would hate.

But you will go down in history as

in the

league, I think of a Bonhoeffer.

You are remarkable.

Oh, wow.

Thanks, Glenna.

I don't believe that, but it's kind of.

I know.

So, you know, in the early 2000s, I got pulled into the child crimes unit, and

I was doing different criminal, you know,

investigations.

And I was scared to death of this.

And no one knew what they were doing.

Our agency was leading the way.

It was great, but no one knew what it was.

Human slavery, modern-day slavery, children, child slavery, sex slavery.

I mean, you could Google, like I said, you could Google human trafficking and probably the Department of Transportation would come up, you know,

trafficking trends or something.

Like no one even knew what it was.

And they sent me to undercover school.

But it wasn't, it's not new.

It's been around forever.

It's been around.

It'd been so hidden.

It had been so hidden.

It wasn't being spoken of.

And it started leaking out.

You know, it's so hidden when you get into the underbelly.

Like you've seen it in places like Thailand and Mexico with me and Haiti.

It's in the underbelly.

But once you're there,

it's thick.

And so they

take me to undercover school.

They say, we're going to teach you to be an undercover operator

to infiltrate child trafficking rings.

And I'm scared to death again.

And they put me in my first simulator.

It's a stage.

It's a house, it lists a stage.

There's cameras, there's black mirrors.

And I'm going toe-to-toe with probably the top undercover operator in the U.S.

government.

And he doesn't know why I'm coming.

They say, he's a general smuggler.

Get him to talk about the kids he knows are being sold.

Okay.

So I have no idea what I'm doing.

My stomach's churning.

I'm bringing up these Godforsaken

topics.

And this guy says, he cuts.

He's turning green.

He says, out of roll.

He says, I'm not going to do this.

And he looks at like someone set him up.

He's like, I have a daughter.

Is this some kind of joke?

I'm not going to talk about this.

And he leaves.

And I'm sitting there on a stage kind of like this, like all alone.

And I think, now what?

And this other instructor comes up and puts his arm around me and he says, hey, look at bottom line, we're pioneering this.

We've got to figure this out.

So minus.

This is 2002.

Early 2000.

Yeah.

Holy cow.

Yeah, we didn't, we weren't, we were dabbling.

We were doing some things.

And again, not to knock the angels I work for, because they were leading the way in it, but it just wasn't known.

There were no things like the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force was just getting up and running at that time, just barely.

These pedophiles were running amok online.

They were making child porn, and we weren't catching up to them.

And so I had nothing to turn to.

I said, Where's my manual?

Where's my curriculum?

And in quiet desperation, I did the best I could, and I bought every book I could on the transatlantic slave trade.

I recognized it as slavery.

What I saw was slavery.

These kids didn't control themselves, others owned their bodies.

Right.

And it's, and it's,

I suppose, we used to see it as prostitution.

We would see it as, oh, that, you know, that 16-year-old girl, well, that 16-year-old girl may have been an eight-year-old runaway.

That's exactly what happened or kidnapped at five.

Right.

Smuggled from Mexico.

Exactly.

And that's what we were seeing, criminalizing all prostitutes and not understanding the problem.

Right.

And so I started reading everything I can on slavery desperately.

And I started reading things and learning things.

And these people became my heroes.

William Still, the father of the Underground Railroad, Levi Coffin, his undercover operations.

I mean, I've used his tactics.

You know, how do you get in here?

What did he do?

He would pose as a slave hunter and get and become best friends with the slave hunters, with the bounty hunters, you know,

and then push them off

their track, give them false intelligence.

I mean, these guys inspired just the tactical side of it.

Harriet Tubman, running missions, going undercover,

using code words.

I mean, people don't know that Harriet Tubman was the first woman to lead a raid during the Civil War.

And she liberated 700 slaves in that raid.

She carried her pistol.

I mean, these were, I mean, I'm reading these stories and they're inspiring me.

They're my heroes.

And then

I come across this name, Harriet Jacobs.

And something happened to my heart.

You know, who is she?

She wrote the most important book on slavery, published in 1861, but she had to use false names because the people who helped her escape were still alive and they had broken the law.

And so by the next generation.

That's why it was buried.

That's why it was buried.

By the next generation, it was cast aside as a copycat of Uncle Tom's calendar.

Oh my gosh.

And she was lost to history.

Her name was Linda Brent.

And that's how she called herself in her book, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861.

Linda Brent's not a real person.

Academics up through our generation.

It was a fake book cast aside until

this one professor, Jean Yellen Fagan, an English professor,

started putting the pieces together

and verified the whole story.

Her book came out in 2004, the first book.

Have you met her?

I have talked to her.

I've talked to her.

I've read all her stuff.

But still, her story has not been out publicly.

It's still kind of hard to find.

I've never heard it.

You know me.

I'm pretty good with history.

I know.

I've never heard it.

And it's one of the most compelling stories.

I've read all the stories and to me, it is the most compelling.

It's riveting.

I could not put the book down.

Really could not put the book down.

Yeah, it's she, her story is just unbelievable.

And the fact that she has these two kids, now this is where it became so personal to me, because as you know,

I was looking for two kids.

that traffickers had held.

And it's so personal to me because they became my my children that I've adopted.

And they just came home a couple months ago, you know, and I love them as much as I love any of my children, you know.

But during the time, I couldn't get to them.

I couldn't reach them.

And this might sound over the top, but I took trips.

I don't live close to North Carolina, as you know.

I live in the West.

And I would take trips to North Carolina.

just to go to Edenton.

Edenton is a town that hasn't changed from the 19th century.

I I mean, the roads are paved and the cars are modern, but everything is the same.

So you look at a map from the 19th century, it still looks like that.

And I would go there and just walk the streets.

I took my daughter at one point.

She took the pictures for the book.

I wasn't going to write a book.

I was going to learn how to rescue these two kids because I didn't know where else to turn and because she had done it.

And I went to those places.

I went to the cemetery where she, she makes this covenant at one point in the book.

I write about this.

She goes and makes this covenant right before she does the most daring part of her rescue, which I'll let people read about.

She goes to the slave cemetery.

Which had been desecrated because of the Nat Turner thing.

Yes, they destroyed it.

To send a point.

Yes, they destroyed it.

It was rediscovered in 2001.

So all these things were happening as I was starting my career.

Like these things were being brought forth out of the dust, you know.

And it was rededicated in 2001.

So it's still, people don't even, in the town, don't even know it's there.

They don't really know.

I had to, it took me forever to find it.

And I knelt and I cried and I prayed.

It was the most spiritual experience of my life when I went to the Providence Cemetery.

It's this tiny little slave cemetery where Harriet Jacob's parents are buried

and where she dropped to her knees and said, God, I'm going to do this.

It might take my life, but I'm going to do this.

And I'm not going to tell you what it was.

I want people to read what it is that she went and did,

which led to the liberation.

And

she was there.

I believe in angels.

I'm telling you, I was on my knees.

And I've taken people, I've taken tours back to Edenton this last summer so people could experience this.

And so her story becomes what I'm trying to achieve, what I'm trying to emulate.

She was an aftercare.

She was a healer.

That was her main thing.

And as you know, you've been with us.

You know that the aftercare is the most important part of our operation.

And adoptions, I mean, she would take these children, fugitive orphans, fugitive slave kids, and find homes for them in the North.

And so everything she did, I just wanted to be, and I still want to do.

She is, that's why I said at the beginning of this interview, she is my hero.

And this book tells this story of how every other chapter, you go from her story to mine and the things I'm extrapolating from history, what she's teaching me.

And not just her, but

the other founders of the Underground Railroad and that amazing abolishes movement.

And you see these parallel stories kind of make their way across until she finds her kids and I find mine.

And then it kind of, you know, goes from there, but it's full of these rescue stories and triumphs and tragedies and miracles and

God enlightened service are the core of the whole book.

That's the key to not only finding kids, but to healing ourselves and our communities and our world.

It's an honor to know you.

Thank you.

And I thank you for

the safety of my son

and

for some of the worst experiences of my life that have made me a much better man.

Thank you.

Thank you.

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