Author Max Hawthorne joined guest host Richard Syrett (Twitter) to discuss the real sea creatures that inspire the gigantic marine monsters in his Kronos Rising series. The chief paleo-protagonist in his novels is the plesiosaur - a prehistoric marine reptile that looked like an enormous crocodile mixed with a whale, Hawthorne explained, noting the largest specimens were around 50 feet in length. According to Hawthorne, the animal died out 90 million years ago, though there have been anecdotal sightings reported throughout the decades.
As an example, he referenced a Carnival Cruise Line employee who was asked by a group of vacationers to identify a massive sea creature swimming next to the ship. The employee described an animal that was at least as big as a blue whale - 50 feet long when compared to a lifeboat - that was cruising as fast as the ship, Hawthorne reported. Another unbelievable sighting took place in 1969 when a fisherman captured film footage of an enormous animal moving across the surface of the ocean. Hawthorne examined and enhanced frames from the footage. "What he filmed was some kind of gigantic turtle," Hawthorne said, suggesting the animal was 38-feet long and may have been the mysterious super predator that ate a tagged 10-foot Great White shark in 2003.
Author Max Hawthorne has provided video and images for his appearance. Pictured is his illustration of a "super turtle." View more here.
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During the second half of the program, John O'Connor, the lawyer for Deep Throat, provided a new look into Watergate. Deep Throat was the pseudonym given to the informant who provided information to The Washington Post investigative journalist Bob Woodward in 1972. O'Connor revealed the identity of Deep Throat as former FBI Associate Director Mark Felt. According to O'Connor, there is much circumstantial evidence to support this claim, including that Felt knew details about the Henry Kissinger wiretaps which he claimed to have shared with Woodward at a meeting at a trucker's bar on March 5, 1973. Only a handful of people knew about these wiretaps and by process of elimination it had to be Felt that met with Woodward about it, he reported.
O'Connor spoke about the difficulties he encountered trying to get his book on Watergate published, and how Woodward actively campaigned against him to induce doubts with Felt's family. He suggested Watergate was really about a CIA operation that implicated the Democratic National Committee in kind of prostitution ring for VIPs. All of this was covered up by the Post. "The Post withheld from its reading audience... many important facts, much evidence that the court of public opinion should have heard so that the public could see what really happened here," he said. If they had reported what they knew, it would have outed the DNC, O'Connor added.