We Promise John Batchelor is Not Crazy

According to radio host John Batchelor’s bio, WABC in New York recruited him the day after the 9/11 attacks and told him to stay on the air until Osama bin Laden was either killed or captured. He assured Imus that he’d be employed for some time to come.

“We know where he is,” said Batchelor, whose show airs at 9pm ET. “He’s in North Waziristan with his pals, completely under the protection of the Pakistani secret service.”

The United States has had this information for a long time, he added, and is just going along with “the way business is done out there,” namely by Saudi Arabia, where bin Laden used to be a citizen.

“The Saudis are taking care of their own; they don’t want him killed, and they certainly don’t want him in American custody,” said Batchelor. “So they hire the ISI of Pakistan to supervise or look after his safety in North Waziristan, and he lives crudely in his own spiritual fantasy world in a very, very, very difficult landscape.”

While it might sound like Batchelor’s got a few screws loose, he maintains he’s merely connecting the dots using readily available information. The I-Man, for one, quickly caught on, confessing that he sometimes thinks a “shadow” government is really running the country.

As the conversation degenerated into a meeting of Conspiracy Theorists Anonymous, Batchelor went on to say that this country’s relationship with Saudi King Abdullah—we need their oil, along with peace in the Gulf of Mexico—is what really prevents the U.S. from ever finding bin Laden.

Originally a novelist, Batchelor said WABC enlisted him to tell what everyone presumed would be a “fast and thrilling romance,” where a bad guy attacks America and America goes and gets him. So much for that plan.

Batchelor’s skepticism, however, is not bin Laden-specific; he’s got plenty to say about Iran, too, which he said, ‘wants to be the boss of the region.”

“That’s very useful for some countries, and very threatening to others,” he said, using Israel as an example of the latter.   “It’s very useful to Russia because Russia needs Iran as a block between radical jihad, which is Sunni-based, and the Russian underbelly: the Central Asian countries and the Northern Caucasus.”

China also needs Iran where it is, Batchelor explained, because it relies on Iran for its energy. As such, the U.S. is “puzzled” because it’s “out of the game right now.” World affairs, he posited, are merely a game in which there are no permanent friends and no permanent foes. “There are just permanent interests,” he said.

To which Imus replied, “People must think you’re a psychopath.”

-Julie Kanfer