Internationally #1 Best-selling Political Thriller and multiple Award Winner Age of Secrets: The Conspiracy That Toppled Richard Nixon and the Hidden Death of Howard Hughes, available now as audiobook
Hello again, dear audiobook friends! Today’s Audiobook Spotlight article is dedicated to Age of Secrets: The Conspiracy That Toppled Richard Nixon and the Hidden Death of Howard Hughes written by Gerald Bellett, a renowned reporter with the Vancouver Sun in British Columbia. This is the acclaimed non-fiction book that exposes the real reason for Watergate, the greatest political scandal in United States history, the hidden death of the world’s richest person -Howard Hughes, and the illicit activities of the United States Central Intelligence Agency.
The audiobook version of Age of Secrets is performed by the distinguished Dennis Boutsikaris, who you may know from The Bourne Legacy and Better Call Saul. Dennis has also won 8 Audie Awards, the Audiobook equivalent of an Academy Award.
I’m super excited to listen to this audiobook, especially since I’ll discover some captivating facts about historical events, but also because I absolutely love Dennis as an actor and voice artist.
Before continuing with this article I’d love to share with you a trailer for the book:
The great thing is that there’s also an upcoming new film – Meiergate – developed on the life of former United States Senate Candidate and Howard Hughes’ right-hand man, John Meier. This is set to definitely change history, revealing the real reason for Watergate, as it is based on newly declassified United States Government documents. Meier has been referred to in the media as the man who brought down President of the United States Richard Nixon, and The Las Vegas Sun stated that a movie on John Meier’s life would be “much more exciting and bizarre than one on Howard Hughes.”
Meier’s son, Entertainment Executive Jim Meier, is attached as one of the Producers through his Meier City Pictures company. Screenwriters include Author Lisa Pease (A LIE TOO BIG TO FAIL) and former United States Secret Service Agent, John Biemeret.
Let’s check out the Publisher’s Summary so that we can have a better idea about the plot behind this audiobook, and after that I will tell you more about the author, the narrator and introduce you to John Meier, the extraordinary man that inspired this non-fiction book:
An acclaimed nonfiction international political thriller exposing the real reason for Watergate, the hidden death of Howard Hughes, and the illicit activities of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with the CIA’s worldwide pursuit of John Meier trying to expose it all, including revealing information on the Robert F. Kennedy assassination and critical comments by New York Times best-selling author Jim Hougan.
The major motion picture in development Meiergate is about the life story of John Meier.
During the Watergate hearings, one man wanted to tell a spellbound nation secrets about the Nixon White House, the CIA, and Howard Hughes. He could have told them why the burglary happened, but that was not what the Committee wanted to hear. To keep him from telling his secrets, he was persecuted, jailed, and forced into exile in Canada. His name is John Meier. His employer was Howard Hughes. Age of Secrets is his story.
Former US Senate candidate John Meier had top-secret security clearance with the US government and has been referred to in the media as the man who brought down president of the United States Richard Nixon in Watergate, the greatest political scandal in US history. Meier was the right-hand man to Howard Hughes, the world’s richest individual, and Meier was the first person to expose the CIA’s connection to the Hughes Organization and the only person to call for a congressional hearing into the death of Howard Hughes.
Meier was responsible for the CIA’s creation of the legal term Glomar Response, when an agency refuses to confirm or deny the existence of records or information, he was an intelligence agent with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), and he was involved with preventing the assassination of president of the Dominican Republic Joaquin Balaguer.
Howard Hughes supplied the CIA with a cover organization to hide anything they possess or do. When Meier opted out of the organization, he became an impediment to its continued existence.
John Meier was a diplomat who operated at the highest levels of government, including as vice chairman of the Humphrey-Muskie National Finance Committee, during vice president of the United States Hubert Humphrey’s presidential campaign, serving on President Richard Nixon’s Task Force on Resources and Environment and a special consultant to Nixon’s Environmental Quality Advisory Committee, and an advisor to several US senators including senators Hubert Humphrey, Robert F. Kennedy, and Mike Gravel, who credited Meier with preventing the spread of nuclear power within the United States.
The full US Senate Watergate Committee granted Meier immunity in order for Meier to testify at a public Watergate hearing on the relationships between the Nixon Administration and Howard Hughes. Meier was the next person to testify to tell the world what he knew, but the Watergate hearings went back into secret session to prevent Meier from revealing what he was going to expose, as he was told his testimony would be too damaging and that a lot of people were worried that too much would be uncovered about Howard Hughes’ dealings beyond President Nixon.
Meier has been a major source to the media, including America’s top investigative reporter, The Washington Post‘s Jack Anderson, and attempted to then expose what he knew through the media, with the CIA pursuing Meier across the US, Canada, UK, Japan, Australia, Tonga, and the Dominican Republic to stop him at all costs, including framing him for a number of offenses (including murder), and attempting to assassinate him.
In the afterword of the book, Meier sums up his politically motivated battle by saying, “My story is one of a man devastated by a corrupt system”.
The author, Gerald Bellett, is a reporter with the Vancouver Sun in British Columbia. Since 1974, he has written about John Meier and his monumental struggle with the White House, the CIA and the Howard Hughes organization. The story took him across North America from the deserts of Nevada, where he found the hidden gold mines of Howard Hughes, to the dangerous streets of Harlem in search of a CIA agent on the run. Bellett exposed the CIA’s infiltration of the Hughes organization and the agency’s use of Howard Hughes to supply its favored politicians with campaign contributions. He has won a number of awards including a National Newspaper Award for being part of the Sun’s reporting team that wrote a series concerning a notorious serial killer. He was born in Liverpool, England, and has lived in Canada since 1966. He now resides near Vancouver.
The narrator, Dennis Boutsikaris, is an American character actor who has won the Obie Award twice. He is also a narrator of audio-books, for which he has won 13 Golden Earphone Awards and 8 Audie Awards. He won Best Audiobook of the Year from Amazon for his reading of American Gods.
Boutsikaris was born in Newark, New Jersey, to a Greek American father and Jewish mother, and grew up in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. He took up acting while a student at Governor Livingston High School, because he felt he was too small to succeed in athletics. A graduate of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, Boutsikaris toured the country with John Houseman’s The Acting Company doing classical theatre.
Boutsikaris’ film credits include leading roles in The Dream Team, Crocodile Dundee II, Boys on the Side and In Dreams, among many others. His most recent indie films include Cherry Crush, The Education of Charlie Banks, Calling It Quits, The Bourne Legacy and Money Monster. He is Paul Wolfowitz in Oliver Stone’s “W.” In 2012, he co-starred in The Bourne Legacy, the fourth installment of the successful Bourne franchise.
He can be heard in over 160 audiobooks and has received eight Audie Awards and two Best Voices of the Year Awards from AudioFile Magazine. He was voted Best Narrator of the Year by Amazon for “THE GENE”.
John Meier was a Former United States Senate candidate that had Top Secret security clearance with the United States Government and has been referred to in the media as the man who brought down President of the United States Richard Nixon in Watergate. Meier was the right-hand man to Howard Hughes and was the first person to expose the CIA’s connection to the Hughes Organization and the only person to call for a congressional hearing into the death of Howard Hughes.
In the Afterword of the Age of Secrets, John Meier sums up his politically motivated battle by saying:
“My story is one of a man devastated by a corrupt system. Our governments are increasingly disrespectful of basic human rights such that we can no longer legitimately call our nations democracies. I hope that this story will contribute to changing this course”.
I will return soon with a full review for Age of Secrets, but until then, take care, stay safe and don’t forget, always listen with your heart!
Victor Dima
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