The FRONTLINE Interviews

Jon Ronson

Journalist and Documentary Filmmaker

Jon Ronson is a British journalist and documentary filmmaker. He is the author of Them: Adventures with Extremists and The Men Who Stare at Goats.

Following are excerpts of an interview conducted by FRONTLINE filmmaker Michael Kirk on March 12, 2020. They have been edited for clarity.

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Tell me what it is that you were most attracted to about younger Alex Jones when you first met him.

I first met Alex at a bonfire at David Koresh’s church in Waco.I was making a documentary about Randy Weaver whose family was shot by the FBI at Ruby Ridge a few years earlier.

And Randy had mentioned that he had never been to Waco.So, I said, “Ah.Let’s go to Waco together.”So, I went on a road trip with Randy Weaver.And as he turned up, he kind of gasped and said, “Oh, my God.That’s Alex Jones.”And it was this 26-year old kid who was completely unknown outside militia and Austin hipster circle at the time.

So, I started talking to him.And it was clear back then, you know, he had an amazing way with words.He was very eloquent, funny, funny in a kind of, sort of intentional and unintentional all at the same time, type way.And then, about a year later, I kept hearing this conspiracy theory, that there was a shadowy group that met in a Redwood forest in northern California, where they had a ritual that culminated in a human effigy being thrown into a bonfire in front of a giant stone owl.And people like Henry Kissinger and George Bush and Dick Cheney would go to this ritual.

So, I thought—well, my first thought, well, it can’t be true.And then my second thought was, well, I should try and sneak in.And my third thought is, well, I won’t do that on my own.Remember that guy I met at Waco.

Wow.

So, I found Alex Jones.

So, when you, when you meet him, does he ever articulate his aspirations or his politics or things that matter to him?

At the time, this back in the late nineties, he didn’t strike me as being malevolent as he seems today.There was a bunch of them about, sort of Libertarian, anti-new world order, anti-globalist conspiracy theorists.And sure, they sort of flirted with the far right and the far right back flirted back with them.But I could see a separation between the two…

Right.

I did begin to notice that there was a little bit of a template, like everything was a false flag operation no matter what it was.So, you know, that was Alex’s thing.It was like a government conspiracy to take away our guns.That was always what it was about.

Second Amendment stuff.

Yeah.He was a very, he was a Second Amendment person back then.He didn’t strike me as racist.He didn’t strike me as being particularly objectionable.I mean, obviously, I’m no Second Amendment person but I thought, hey, and fair enough that’s his culture.

Sure.

And he also seemed like he was really on the rise.He was going to be a sensation.

How could you tell?

He was so, I mean he was so good at it.I went to his house.And at the time Infowars was broadcast from a child’s bedroom in his house, with little choo-choo train wallpaper and an Empire Strikes Back poster on the wall.And Alex is like, you know, ranting down a little microphone in this child’s bedroom.

And Infowars at the time was like him, his girlfriend, and his producer Mike.And that was it.It was the three of them.And, you know, the apocalyptic sort of eloquence was just remarkable.I mean, I met conspiracy theorists back then.And Alex was definitely the most entertaining.

Schtick or from the heart?

Well, that question has galvanized me for many years...I thought, okay, it’s schtick.It’s all schtick.

Yeah.

And I thought that right up until a couple of years ago when I met a whistleblower who worked for Alex, a guy called Josh Owens.And I said to Josh, “It’s schtick, right?”And I told him that story.And Josh looked very, you know, surprised and said, “No. No. No.I’ve been with Alex every day for, you know, five years and it’s not schtick.The way he is off camera is exactly the same as the way he is on camera.”So, I’ve sort of, you know, amended my opinion on that.

Let’s go back to Bohemian Grove.Who’s there?How do you get in?What do you see?

Right.It was, what a night.It was—so, we turned up at this little town called Monte Rio.This is all kind of around Napa, just north of Napa Valley and checked into a motel.All I knew was there was a conspiracy theory that there was this secret campgrounds just up the road where the likes of Henry Kissinger dress up in robes and hoods and have a ritual that culminates in a papier mâché effigy of a human being throw into a bonfire in front of a giant stone owl.

Why did Alex Jones go?

Oh, he just—as soon as I suggested it, he was all over it.“We’re going to sneak a camera in.And we’ll be right up in those devil-worshipping, globalist faces.And we’ll confront them red handed about their devil worship.”And I said, “I think stealth might be a better approach.”And he went, “Okay. Stealth. Good thinking.”

What do you see when you’re in there?

Well, it’s a pretty remarkable place.It’s camps.It’s sort of campsites scattered throughout the forest.And each campsite is sort of themed.And the themes really did play into Alex’s paranoid imagination because the themes were quite, were satanic.They were like little devil eyes and sort of horns and stuff.But then other themes were more sort of rock and roll themes.Like there were camps with pianos and bands playing.This was a very high society gathering, all men, mainly elderly.I would have been, at the time I was in my thirties.So, I would be the youngest person there.

Fully stocked bars.Like a very posh campsite with weird milieu.And then there was this pond.And in front of the pond was a giant owl.Now Alex came to believe or probably pre-believed that the reason for the owl is because they were worshiping Moloch, the owl god.But I think a more plausible explanation is that it was an owl sanctuary.Like there were these little huts with like stuffed owls in them and like the history of the owl of the northern California redwood forest.

And then about 9:00 o’clock in the evening or something, we’d been there probably three or four hours by then, a bell rang.And this was the sign for everybody to do down to the pond.And there’s probably 1,000 old men there.And they all sat on a lawn on one side of the pond.And the owl was on the other side.And the ceremony began where it started with a man standing—my memory is that there was a redwood tree with a stage cut out of the tree.So, it was almost like the person was inside the tree.And he was wearing lederhosen covered in leaves, like something out of a Midsummer’s Night Dream, I guess.

And he does this like operatic recitation of, you know, nature, “Oh, trees, oh, owls,” whatever, “Oh, leaves.”And then, it is like bom, bom.And one of these figures like posh Klansmen in sort of purple robes and hoods all appeared from the trees.And this big ceremony started, which Alex was secretly filming.So, you can watch it on YouTube.And it was this, it was an elegy to nature.These men, we are here.We are powerful people.To summarize the ceremony, it’s, "We’re here for a couple of weeks in this beautiful nature.We must leave our cares behind.All the cares of the marketplace we must leave them all behind to enjoy our vacation."

And then this voice, which is the voice of their cares, “dull care,” suddenly echoes through the trees, “Ye shall not leave me behind.I will follow you everywhere for I am your troubles.”Then the high priest says, “No.We shall burn thee tonight.

And in flames that eat thine effigy, we shall read sign, ‘Midsummer sets us free,’” And I could tell that everyone was really into this.And Alex and Mike were behind me like, you know, with their cameras just looking so shocked.And I’m the only sane person in this entire redwood forest.Like I’m the only person who thinks this is ridiculous.Although, in retrospect, I think that is probably not true…

But Alex’s reaction to it?

Oh, utterly convinced that he was witnessing satanic, you know, an actual human sacrifice, even though it was clearly papier mâché.Because the voice of dull care, after protesting that it is impossible to leave him behind, the high priest summoned him and he turned up in a gondola with like smoke effects on the pond, pulled out of the gondola and sacrificed.And it was like [makes sound] you could hear its voice echoing [makes sound].It’s clearly the same ceremony that they’ve had every year for like, since the 1920’s or whatever.And Alex, there was no talking Alex out of the fact that we had witnessed satanism and it may have actually been a human sacrifice which it very clearly wasn’t.

What do you chalk that up to?

I’d say a number of things.Partly, wishful thinking.Partly schtick, showmanship.Maybe partly a disorder that he sees the world differently to other people.You know, narcissists, the rules don’t apply to them.So, it kind of, it kind of doesn’t matter whether it was true or not…

So, he makes a film.Are you surprised when you see the film?

Well, we met back at the hotel that night.So, an hour later we were all back together.And we watched Alex’s footage.And Alex’s girlfriend didn’t come in because there’s no women allowed.So, she stayed back at the hotel.So, Alex was explaining it all to her.And I could see straightaway that he was exaggerating what we saw and refused to believe that the owls were there for more innocent reasons then his Moloch theory.So, I wasn’t surprised when his film came.So, his film was called Dark Secrets Inside Bohemian Grove.

He’s totally overselling the whole thing in a sort of irresponsible way.Which forced me into a sort of strange position, that I had to then sort of bring it down a bit and say, “No. No. No.You know, it wasn’t actual human sacrifice.It was just a papier mâché.So, for a little while I was like going around the world basically as a sort of self-appointed defender of the Bush’s right to have a mock human sacrifice, which was a weird position to be put in by Alex.But I felt, obviously, I felt I had to.I had to like tell truth.

And, yeah.So, that’s when me and Alex began to fallout.

You watched his star rise from afar.

Yes.I mean I encountered him a number of times in the intervening years.But that was our main adventure.When my book The Men Who Stare at Goats came out, he had me on his show.And that was actually fine.That was like 2004.But then 9/11 happened and—because Bohemian Grove was probably like a year earlier than 9/11.And Alex became the world’s leading 9/11 truther.And actually, everything just got worse and darker.

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