Part Two: A Conversation with Vladimir Bukovsky

Vladimir Bukovsky was “the most widely-known prisoner of conscience in the Soviet Union,” according to the New York Times. He spent 12 years in Soviet confinement, during which he spent time in the psychiatric prisons of the USSR. He has fearlessly fought for human rights and freedom of speech for over fifty years.

Bukovsky’s international bestseller, Judgement in Moscow, was finally published in English in May 2019, twenty-three years after its original publication. Bukovsky refused to rewrite parts of the book deemed politically incorrect by the editor.

You can read an earlier interview with Bukovsky here. 

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Welcome to Secure Freedom Radio. This is Frank Gaffney, your host and guide for what I think of as an intelligence briefing on the war for the free world. In many ways, this program may be one of the most important intelligence briefings that this program has been able to provide you over some ten years of broadcasts. That’s because the man that we’re going to be speaking to for this full hour is one of the most thoughtful, astute and courageous men I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing. And who has brought those marvelous skills to bear to inform us all about the nature of totalitarianism, specifically that practiced by the Soviet Union, one of the most egregious of the totalitarian regimes of all time. And what has been bequeathed by it to Russia, for one, and China and others elsewhere around the world. His name is Vladimir Bukovsky. He has been described by the New York Times, no less, as, quote, a hero of almost legendary proportions among the Soviet dissident movement, unquote. He grew up in the Soviet Union, spent most of his young adulthood and early years in prison, labour camps, and psychiatric hospitals, because he was a refusenik. He was fighting the regime and his inspiring story, his courage, as I said, and his insights are now captured, finally, in an English translation of his masterwork, Judgment in Moscow: Soviet Crimes and Western Complicity. It is a book that has been a long time coming in English. It has been out for many years in other languages, including his native Russian. But it is finally with us and it is such an important read and the chance to talk with him about it is truly one of the great privileges of my life and I think you’ll find it to be one of yours as well. Vladimir Bukovsky, welcome back. It is so good to have you, sir.

We had an opportunity recently to schedule an interview with you and you were unable to make it. I know you’re not feeling well and I so much appreciate your taking the time to speak to us about Judgment in Moscow. On that occasion, we ran the original broadcast, a reprise performance, if you will. And so, we’ve covered some of the past history of the book and why it took so long to become available in English, but we might just take a minute or two at this point to introduce what was the genesis of this book in terms of your deep dive for the very brief period when they were available into the archives of the communist party of the Soviet Union. Would you tell us a little bit about that story?

VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY:

Sure. In 1992, as it so happened, when the Soviet Union was not existing, the Communist party was prohibited from functioning in Russia, and sued the government in the constitutional courts of Russia, arguing that prohibiting them is against the Constitution. As a result of the hearings in the constitutional courts of Russia, to which I was invited to be an expert witness, I have the capacity to subpoena whatever documents from the archives might be necessary. And that’s what I did in abundance. I also tried to copy as many of them as possible using scanning, hand-held scanner, which was a novelty at the time. So, not many people understood what I was doing. Anyway, as a result of all this accumulation of material, I have written a book called Judgment in Moscow, which was successfully published in eight or nine countries. But in the English language, the establishment was against publishing it. They reckoned too many important names would be compromised in the documents. And they threatened the publisher to ruin him, to bankrupt him, with big lawsuits. No matter whether his right or wrong. So, for quite a while, I couldn’t find any courageous publisher to publish it. While in all other countries, it was already quite successful. So, finally, we got some American enthusiasts, a small group of amateurs who had never published books before, but decided to try and they were successful. So, luckily for us, the book is finally published in English.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

And what is it comprised of?

VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY:

It’s more based on the secret documents of the Central Committee archives and Politburo archives. And it’s kind of a post-mortem of the Soviet regime. I tried to establish why and how it demised and what contributed to it and so on. So, it’s a really bulky book consisting of so many documents.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Yes. Well, it’s – it’s a resource of incomparable importance, it seems to me. About seven hundred pages long, all told. And what I think is as interesting as anything, and in a way, it’s why the suppression of the book went on for so long, I think, is the tale that you tell of the lengths to which Western politicians, business leaders, and academics and others, the lengths they went to, to perpetuate the Soviet Union. It might have fallen of its own weight years before had it not been for the active intervention and financial assistance of détente. Is that right?

VLADIMIR BUKOVKSY:

Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. Well, I was very much surprised by – I already observed it. In a sense, sociologically speaking, in a sense, it’s their dream to have a socialism on earth. And even if they don’t agree with everything the Soviet Union was doing, the direction of their development seemed to be for them as progressive and important. And that’s why they will justify any crime in it.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Yeah. They justified any crime towards the people of the Soviet Union and its, well, as Reagan called it, Evil Empire, beyond, but also, you know, crimes that it was perpetrating elsewhere in the world as well and the enabling of those crimes and the pass that they were given is an extraordinarily important story and I want to turn – we have to take a short break, Vladimir Bukovsky, but when we come back, I want to start with specifically the era of Gorbachev, what he was doing, and what he was enabled to do by his friends in the West, including some here in the United States of America. We’ll be speaking much more about all of this with Vladimir Bukovsky, straight ahead.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Welcome back. We are spending this hour with Vladimir Bukovsky, an extraordinarily important figure in the war for the free world. He was a dissident inside the Soviet Union. He was an inspiration once he was released in 1976 in exchange for the Chilean communist leader, Luis Corvalan. He has been writing and essentially championing freedom in the West ever since, notably through his extraordinary prison memoir, To Build a Castle, and now through his newly released English translation of Judgment in Moscow: Soviet Crimes and Western Complicity. And I want to speak to you, Vladimir, at this point about Western complicity with the last gasps of the Soviet system, namely the determined effort of Mikhail Gorbachev, the general secretary of the Soviet communist party in its endgame, to perpetuate the regime and the sorts of techniques that he used both within Russia and externally. Let’s talk first and foremost about this phenomenon that he dubbed glasnost. What’s the literal meaning of the word glasnost in the Russian tradition?

VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY:

Well, glasnost as such means openness. Transparency. But in the Russian context, it means more than that. In history, in 19^th Century in other bills, when the great reforms were introduced into life, it all started with glasnost. A period where the past mistakes and crimes were openly and publicly debated. So, this happened the same with Gorbachev, except it was a deception. He had no intention of abandoning communist system. He simply tried to salvage it, to correcting it a bit from one or another side and continuing it, claiming that now it is a democracy. While it was still the same regime. Except in a more mild form. So, that was the basic idea. The whole concept, the whole approach it took, perestroika and glasnost, was a big deception, a big KGB deception.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Now, on this point, it seems as though central to that deception was the idea that the West would be more forthcoming with aid and financial underwriting and other technology and benefits, if it were persuaded that this sort of reformation was taking place. You mentioned perestroika. Define that term for us as well and what in fact it meant in the Soviet context.

VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY:

It was not very deep rearrangements, within the system, rearrangement, trying to make the system a bit more productive than it usually was. And that’s it. No changes in principle were visualized. Gorbachev was speaking about democratization, but he never meant democracy. He would speak about socialist market, market socialism, and all kind of nonsense, but he would never introduce the open and simple market economy.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Which would have required a degree of relinquishing control by the Soviet system and the Communist party.

VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY:

He used society to sell truth, sell government, which the communists had no intention to do. So, that’s how it went and, as a result, since it was only a half-measure, it ended up in disaster. They collapsed.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Yeah. I’d like to think that’s in part because the residual practice of Ronald Reagan in trying to help bring down the Soviet Union, towards the end he became much enamored of Gorbachev, of course, but I think some of the policies that Reagan had set in train simply were not possible to reverse at that point and helped bring about the end of this horrific regime. And yet, it wasn’t really the end, was it, Vladimir Bukovsky? What you’ve described powerfully in Judgment in Moscow, was it was more like a Chapter Eleven, sort of bankruptcy reorganization. And I’d ask you to talk about specifically the role played by Vladimir Putin in all of that, as well as Boris Yeltsin. But specifically Putin, because he’s – he’s very much with us today, of course.

VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY:

Yes. Faced with the collapse and bankruptcy, the system kind of mutated and yet they decided to pretend to be democracy. And whatever, the market. In order to salvage itself from the bankruptcies. And, of course, who was to implement such a difficult plan if not the former KGB? Who at that stage still existed although under a different name and this pretense that they’re not as bad as the previous version, you know. In reality, they were exactly the same and they were just seizing power in the country, total control, and trying to make impressions that they’re different.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Now, you, of course, have a lot of experience with the KGB, having been one of the victims of its repression. You also, I think, have studied very closely the various steps that were taken to obscure its true designs and its sort of reincarnation under different acronyms. But as you look at it, Vladimir Bukovsky, what is it that would be the continuing characteristics of that security state apparatus and the preservation of the kind of control that the party had had before the fall of the Soviet Union and that now resides in Vladimir Putin and his coterie of oligarchs, I guess primarily, and, you know, sort of power ministry apparatchiks?

VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY:

Well, it used to be called nomenklatura. This sudden top, top layer of bureaucracy, whether it be in politics, in finances, in the army, in the security, whatever. So, these people didn’t want to part with the power and this enormous pre-religious [UNCLEAR] So, they will admit, it is a very clever plan of resurrecting and pretending to be as any other country. While in reality, it was still controlled by the old apparatchiks. And of course, all the profits generated by whatever way they did would be shared between them. And would not benefit the country. So, it’s a parasitic arrangement.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Yeah. Very, very well said. And essentially, it was a case of stripping the state of its resources. Most of which had been organized, of course, as state-owned entities. And putting them in the hands of trusted allies of Putin, did they not?

VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY:

Yeah. So, this is what we have at the moment and this regime, although they are stable, still cling to power and its not that easy to change it.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

That’s a key observation. That it is still, fundamentally, an authoritarian, if not a totalitarian regime. And, as you – just if you could, Vladimir, in terms of your own experience with such a system, what does that mean for the people of Russia today? Are they still effectively enslaved by Vladimir Putin? Are they still essentially following the – this kind of state-dominated life that you rebelled against back in the day?

VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY:

The system there right now is a bit, a very little bit, more relaxed than the totalitarian system. They do have several possibilities such as emigrating from the country. And that’s what happens en mass. Millions of people, hundreds of thousands of people, emigrated from Russia in the last twenty years. And this trend continues. So, that is practically what’s different or what differentiates the current regime from the previous one. Also, they tried for a long time to run some small businesses and medium-sized businesses and, for a while, they managed, but, of course, the state machine would come and suffocate them all. So, now it’s not [UNCLEAR] anymore.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

And there is, there’s no real evidence that any kind of political pluralism is going to be tolerated, is there? There’s talk about anti-Putin parties and candidates, but they seem to be being suppressed fairly effectively by the regime.

VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY:

Oh, sometimes, they even killed. Real cold and systematic. A number of oppositional figures, journalists looking to find the roots of the system and so on and so forth. It’s massive. It’s murderous. And, of course, apart from that, the chance of many outside independent figures to get into an open fight with the regime is very small.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Yeah, very small and very dangerous, needless to say. Vladimir Bukovsky is our guest for this full hour. Extraordinarily important conversation. And when we return after a short break, we’re going to discuss with him what Putin is up to now with respect to our own country as well as his policies more broadly around the world and what it means for all of us. That and much more with Vladimir Bukovsky, the author of Judgment in Moscow: Soviet Crimes and Western Complicity, straight ahead.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Vladimir Bukovsky is with us, thanks be to God, for a very, very important conversation about the nature of Soviet communism and what has evolved from it under Vladimir Putin most especially, what it means for the people of Russia, but what it means for the rest of us, in particular those of us in this country. Vladimir Bukovsky has been working on, writing about, warning of the nature of totalitarianism, specifically as its been practiced under the various leaders of the Kremlin, but we have been privileged to catch him to talk about both the history of the Soviet era in which he played an important role in helping it come to an end and what, as I say, is going on at the moment and what may be coming next. These are the topics that he has addressed brilliantly and with copious detail, including documents taken from the communist party of the Soviet Union’s archives that were influential in some of the end of the Soviet period, but also very important to our understanding of what’s – what’s afoot now. So, Vladimir, again, welcome. It’s so good to have you. Let’s talk a little bit about what Putin has been doing lately. We’ve been hearing endlessly about the interference that the Russian Federation engaged in, in our 2016 elections. We’ve been hearing a lot about collusion between Donald Trump and the Putin regime. Not proven, I hasten to add, but nonetheless, we hear a lot about it. If you could, just talk to us about the nature of Putin’s regime as it relates to the United States and, in particular, if you would, the likelihood that, in fact, Putin would have preferred to have a Hillary Clinton in the presidency rather than a Donald Trump.

VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY:

Yeah. Well, essentially, if you tried to assess what exactly the Putin regime is trying to achieve right from the beginning, it’s pretty observable that he is trying to return the Soviet system without naming it. It’s a kind of back-to-the-earth czar moment. He returned the red banner to the army, the old national anthem. A bit changed words. He always claims about the former Soviet sphere of influence and trying to restore it, be it in the nearby former republics of the Soviet Union, as well as among the Eastern European countries and other satellite countries of the Soviet Union. He is trying to restore the same empire, the same Soviet Union, without naming it, in the same way. And, of course, it doesn’t work completely. I mean, part of it does work, but most of it doesn’t. As a part of that scenario, they do need a constant confrontation with the United States, which gives them the impression of being a superpower and some kind of a force to be reckoned with, you know, is attractive other, of [UNCLEAR] for different countries. So, that’s one of the things. And, of course, when doing that, they will be constantly, in one or another form, in conflict with the law of the United States, including the election system which they routinely tried to enforce. Believe me, much before – much before Putin. It was part of the game all the time. Since at that time there was no computers to do it, so they had to. But in the party, they always tried some ways of influencing the outcome of elections. Now, of course, for them, Hillary Clinton is a geo-partner. They would be mostly doing exactly what they both want. Trump is a difficult part – difficult fellow to understand. Somewhat unpredictable, some maverick. And yet, it couldn’t be a smooth regime as it could be with Hillary, you know. Decidedly, because he is some kind of maverick. So, it wasn’t a good result for them to have him elected.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Well, this is so fascinating, because I think what you’ve said makes eminent sense because Hillary was a known commodity. Not only that, but arguably, she was deeply compromised by, among other things, the Uranium One deal and this program of technology transfer to Russia under the rubric of this Skolkovo, sort of Silicon Valley for Russia. And this would have been a woman that they would have, I think, seen impossible to have their way with, shall we say? Which makes the whole question of the intervention of Russia on Trump’s behalf, I think, even more preposterous, but let me ask you this, Vladimir, because as you’ve looked at what Putin is doing at the moment, as you say, he needs the United States to be an adversary to promote his own stature and that of Russia as a superpower and to justify the enormous expenses that he’s, you know, investing in. Nuclear weaponry and the like. To the extent that that is so, is it really a fool’s errand to think that we can have normal relations with Putin that our mutual interests in some places around the world and the threat that I think, frankly, is posed to both countries by shariah supremacists on the one hand and communist China on the other might create a basis for collaboration? Is that a possibility or not so much?

VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY:

No, I don’t think there is any chance of the United States and Russia finding common policies and collaboration. I don’t think so. No, the Putin regime means that you lack a – lack a, some kind of a big threat to humanity which they’re protecting humanity from. Now, it’s a bit general, but if you look at what they’re doing, they’re carefully trying to restore their sphere of influence. Look at what they’re doing in the Ukraine where they’re trying to recapture Ukraine and deprive it of its independence. Slowly by provocations, by some kind of aggression. Aggressive policies in some parts of it, confiscating the whole Crimea, by the way, and so on and so forth. So, of  course, they hope will re-achieve it, slowly achieve the deterrent to the complete control over the Ukraine. But they know they can’t do it quickly. At the moment, what they’re doing – they’re not terribly successful. They’re stuck. In the short – initial stages, they seemed to be successful, but then they’re stuck. And now, with the opposition of the entire world, there is very, a small chance that they will be successful.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

In taking over Ukraine or making broader inroads in the so-called Near Abroad beyond?

VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY:

Yeah.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Well, that’s a good thing if so, needless to say. Stuck is where we want them to be. But I am intrigued and I want to talk with you in greater detail here in a moment about lessons from the Soviet and Russian eras for our relationship with the next horrific totalitarian communist regime that clearly threatens us and that is communist China. But before we go there, Vladimir Bukovsky, when you look at Putin and the ambitions that he has, do you anticipate that the sorts of threats that he has periodically made to say the Baltic States, for example, or to, for that matter, some in Eastern and even Central Europe, may be something that he would be as prepared to act upon as he was Crimea at one point? Or do you think that having gotten stuck in the Ukraine he may not feel that he’s got the latitude to act further aggressively?

VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY:

Well, I wouldn’t rule out a possible chance of him trying. He might try something stupid in Baltic countries and some other areas. Although, I’m pretty sure he would fail. His attempts are not going to be successful. It’s already obvious. He lost the moment. He could have been more successful in the earlier stages. Now, it doesn’t promise anything.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

When you look at his policy towards China, and we’ll talk about this, again, a bit more on the other side of a short break momentarily, but he seems to me, Vladimir, to be adopting a kind of apres moi le deluge kind of attitude towards the Chinese that he is throwing in with them strategically. He is selling them advanced weapons. In sharing technology, he is enabling them to exploit the resources of Siberia and in so many ways, it seems setting the stage for a much more ominous problem for his successors from the Chinese quarter. Do you see it that way and, if so, very quickly, what do you think might be his calculation?

VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY:

Well, I think his policy is a bit one-sided. He does – he does try to become partner with China. But China doesn’t need him as a partner. And they might use some of his offering, some of his possibilities in land and trade and whatever, but they, by and large, they ignore him.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

They consider him a vassal state like they do most of the rest of the world evidently. Vladimir Bukovsky, we have to take a last short break. We’ll be right back with more with the author of Judgment in Moscow: Soviet Crimes and Western Complicity. And we’ll drill down on lessons that should be learned from mistakes we’ve made, vis a vis the Kremlin, now being made, vis a vis, well, communist China, right after this.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

We are in the concluding segment now of the very interesting, very thoughtful, very informative conversation with one of our time’s really outsized figures. His name is Vladimir Bukovsky. He was a dissident at a very young age in the Soviet Union and I think contributed materially, ultimately, to its downfall. He has been writing and analyzing and helping the rest of us think about the successor to that state and others that are trying to emulate its global ambitions. Notably, the People’s Republic of China under Xi Jinping. And Vladimir, I wanted to just explore with you, if you could, some of the most important insights from the era of détente, which you document through these various materials that you were able to extract from the communist party archives in Moscow that speak to the proclivity of Western companies and banks and financiers and governments, for that matter, to try to prop up, to appease, and otherwise endear themselves to these totalitarians and lessons to be learned, because we certainly seem to be doing that, if anything, in an even bigger way, vis a vis the danger we face today from China.

VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY:

Well, it’s my hope that people draw some certain conclusions from previous stages of struggles with communists. I mean, it took decades before the world found a certain answer to the communists in the role of Reagan, obviously, which was effective. And before that, they tried everything else which was not effective. So, why don’t we go straight to what we have already achieved, found as a right strategy?

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Namely, that of Ronald Reagan, I take it. And just characterize that for us, because again, you were watching it with the insight of someone who had been, you know, at the core of the opposition to the Soviet regime. How did you see the Reagan strategy and what specifically did you think was most effective about it?

VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY:

Well, first it was open admittance that we are in confrontation. And there’s no way we can kind of satisfy each other or find common ground. It’s confrontation. One of these regimes is supposed to disappear in the ash heaps of history as Ronald Reagan put it. And he insisted that communism is one of those systems which is going to end up on this ash heaps of history. And he proved himself right.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Yeah. And – but you knew very well that that was the view of the Soviets also. That they were going to put us on the ash heap of history. They were about ultimate achievement of their global ambitions, no? And that is very much the view, it seems, of the communist party of China at the moment.

VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY:

Well, the most important lesson to draw from Ronald Reagan’s time and the confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States is that we stopped looking for compromises, right? And once we decided that there is no possible working compromise in our relations, we start gaining. Victory after victory followed. So, uncompromising our policy is going to be, so much the better.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

This is such an important insight. And one of the pieces that was very much part of that refusal to compromise, of course, was challenging the legitimacy of the regime in Moscow. The, as said earlier, the Evil Empire is how he characterized it. Describe for us both what it meant to the dissidents of the Soviet Union like yourself as well as what it meant to, you know, the fight to ultimately bring down that regime. That we had that kind of clarity, the moral clarity about the nature of it, the evil nature of it, specifically.

VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY:

It was a huge moral support, but it turned out to be sufficient. We hardly expected or needed anything more than that. And moral support was quite enough. And provided that the other side is not going to – to try compromises, to help to salvage the Soviet system from bankruptcies and so on and so forth. So, provided that doesn’t happen, the moral confrontation was enough.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Yeah. Alas, after Reagan left office, George H. W. Bush became president and pursued a rather different policy that contributed, I think it’s fair to say based on your research, to the failure to have the kind of purging of the system of the Soviet communist elements. We’ve talked about how they reorganized, we’ve talked about how they found new leadership under Vladimir Putin. But especially as we’re looking at China today, Vladimir, how important is it that we not only be clear-eyed about the nature of the regime – and, by the way, we’ve had a very interesting, teachable moment on that score here just in the past few days, as you probably are aware, with respect to the National Basketball Association, which is now cravenly groveling, kowtowing, I guess, is the technical term for it, to the masters of the forbidden city. This is the kind of unlearned lesson, it seems to me, that we need to – to recover from. But your thoughts on that particular point, Vladimir, the importance of actually both understanding what is the source of the threat, namely, this totalitarian ideology, and insisting not only that it – it be put out of business, but that it be torn out by the roots.

VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY:

Yeah. Also, constantly uncover the nature. They will pretend, as they do now, that they’re not a communist country anymore. Well, I agree. It’s not in the economic sense. They have certain models of economy which are different. It’s total rubbish. They don’t have any other models, it’s the same model. So, you have to uncover that deception often systematically.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

This is so critical and, you know, again, to some extent, where we have had as a fruit of the engagement or détente in the old days of our academic institutions and our culture and our business leaders and indeed many in our intelligence and defense and other government circles all having been deceived or willfully blind to the reality of this threat. It makes vastly more difficult, doesn’t it, uncovering it and countering it effectively, including, as I say, insuring that there is this kind of delustration that is required to exorcise from the community in question, whether it’s Russia in the past, Soviet in the past, or China today, the toxic nature of the communist system.

VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY:

Right. Well, I hope – I hope you’re going to be successful in doing that. The more you’re straightforward, then the more successful you are.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Amen. And one of the things that may give you some heart is we have helped to re-establish something called the Committee on the Present Danger, specifically for the purpose of focusing on China, but to be informed by the experience of that group, which, as you may remember, Vladimir Bukovsky, was at Reagan’s right hand as he was thinking through the strategy that would be needed to deal with the Soviet Union and to take it down and that ultimately helped him actually execute that strategy with very considerable effect. At least up to a point. And that point is the one where we find ourselves, I think now, perhaps with Donald Trump and China, where we are reckoning with this adversary in a much more clear-eyed way, but do we have the will? Do we have the wherewithal, moral as well as financial and political to really contest this regime in China and hopefully bring about its end, but in a much more comprehensive and thorough way than we did the Soviet Union? Vladimir Bukovsky, alas, we are out of time. I am so grateful for yours today, for the heroic efforts you have made to bring these important insights to all of us. God bless you, sir. I hope you will be well and come back to us in the future. I hope the rest of you will join us again tomorrow. Same time, same station. Until then, this is Frank Gaffney. Thanks for listening.