Disinformation founder Richard Metzger
by Daniel Robert Epstein for SuicideGirls (http://suicidegirls.com/)

Disinformation isn’t what you think. It’s not gangsta rappers putting you down but actually the real information coming to you from a company that isn’t affiliated with Turner, Murdoch or any of the other mega-corporations.

The founder of Disinformation is Richard Metzger a small town boy who made good. Disinformation get it’s dope to you by way of books Book of Lies, DVDs of their British television and of course the internet at disinfo.com.

Daniel Robert Epstein: Does Disinformation practice what they preach?

Richard Metzger: In what way?

DRE: Disinformation is becoming a big company. Do they do everything they can to give credit where credit is due and treat people with respect?

RM: Sure, I think so. It’s not that big of a company though. Don’t be fooled. We only have three staffers then we outsource a lot of stuff. When you do a book, someone writes that book, they give it to you on Microsoft Word then you hire a freelance designer to design it. Then it gets sent to a printing press and from there shows up in a warehouse of the book distributor so they do their thing and take their cut. It’s not that labor intensive that we have to have people on staff to be a publishing company. So we don’t own printing press.

Let me ask you a question. So you thought it was a big company?

DRE: I thought it was, you seem to do a lot of stuff.

RM: Yeah we do. We’re putting out a book about every three weeks. We also have a DVD line coming out.

DRE: How did a guy from a small, stifling Christian community in West Virginia come to do what you’re doing?

RM: I think it was just a reaction to my environment because there was nothing whatsoever to do in my hometown except do drugs, fuck girls and in my case read weird books in the local library. My library was stocked with fucked up occult books and weird counter culture stuff. I became very interested in those things. I was a strong willed kid and I wanted to seek out the people who wrote these books I was interested in to figure out what they knew that I didn’t. I got kicked out of high school for smoking so I got the hell out of that town.

DRE: What happened?

RM: I was hitting on a bowl of hash literally in front of the school. I turned my head and the principal and the track coach who hated my guts were standing right behind me. Being that it was West Virginia they had to make an example of me so they kicked me out two months before I would have graduated.

DRE: Did you ever go back to school?

RM: No, that was a dancing lesson from god. I went to live in England, sort of did the punk rock thing and squatted.

DRE: How did the Disinformation TV show come together?

RM: I had been doing an Art Bell type talk show for this internet television station called Pseudo.com. The woman who produced the show made cable access versions and put it on Time Warner Cable. Channel 4 in the UK saw it and asked me to do a show for them based on the website. They told me to make it as weird and challenging to the censors and legal department as possible. So I did.

DRE: How was it being American and having a show on English TV?

RM: It was fine. In fact it was probably easier for me to get over with what I was doing because if it had been a show about English people and English eccentrics they probably wouldn’t have let me go as a far as I did. They probably looked at it like “Oh those crazy Americans.”

DRE: Sci-Fi Channel was going to air it. Why did they pull out?

RM: We sent out about 100 copies of a 45 minute demo tape that had the weirdest and most fucked up stuff that was on the show. We thought it would grab people’s attention if they saw the she-males and the mind control CIA sex slave lady immediately. You can’t hide what that show is. It’s not Mary Poppins, it’s Caligula. There was no way to send people the tamer stuff so we had to show the most outrageous stuff. Out of those 100 tapes we got almost no response to it at all. People didn’t even say no. But Sci-Fi Channel contacted us. It’s my guess that whoever made the decision to buy the show, and they spent quite a bit of money on it, must have watched in fast forward while they were on the phone. It just seemed that within the bureaucracy of that network that no one watched it and there were some executive changes.

Finally it gets to be that we’ve recut the shows with new wraps and it’s 12 days before it’s supposed to air. I sent a memo to them saying that I would cut the part about George Bush being a child molester but I’m not cutting another part. I was giving them the list of what I was taking out and digital blurring and if they had a problem with that they should contact me immediately. The clock was running down and ultimately they asked me to come in with my producer Brad Novicoff. We knew fully well what was going to happen and at that point I didn’t even want it to air on the Sci-Fi Channel because I thought no one would watch it. I thought there might be a chance to get it on HBO or Showtime but that didn’t happen. They thought it was too fucked up too. I actually think HBO didn’t want it because they didn’t produce it and Showtime said it was too much like their Penn and Teller show which I think is bullshit in and of itself.

DRE: Are you a paranoid person?

RM: Do I sound paranoid? I do think the world is going to hell in handbasket really but I’m not paranoid. What’s paranoia but a form of awareness.

DRE: Do you have that form of awareness?

RM: I’m not a conspiracy theorist but I do play one on TV. People will watch the Bryce Taylor piece and hear her conspiracy theories then ask me “How much of what you think she says is true?” How about none of it! The other question I get is “Of all the conspiracies theories you’ve investigated, how many of them do you think are true?” The answer is zero because I’ve gone there, met these people, I see their homes and they are mostly marginal people.

DRE: You’ve mentioned that you think the NSA is monitoring your phone calls. Is that true?

RM: No I don’t think they care. A close family member of mine did at one point work for the CIA told me that they would probably look at disinfo.com from time to time and probably do buy the books. Just so they could keep tabs on this kind of information. People ask me if I feel bad about publishing books that the government would look at. I like that because I want them to have good and valid information. I think I am providing a service not just to the reading public but to the CIA. You know that movie Three Days of the Condor?

DRE: Sure.

RM: That’s what you have, these post-college grads who are in these jobs to scan newspapers, magazines, popular and obscure books just to glean information. I would be happy to know they are looking at our work.

DRE: Has any of the people you’ve interviewed called you up pissed you off about how you portrayed them?

RM: No, I heard that the Satanist guys were pissed. But if you watch that piece you know that these guys are not the spookiest guys out there. They are about as spooky as Gilligan. When you do what I do there is a very fine line. You can’t let these people know you’re prepared to mock them.

DRE: I heard you might be developing a movie.

RM: We were at one point but it’s dead now. I’d like to but the one you are referring to isn’t happening.

DRE: Have you ever found out if you’ve changed people’s minds?

RM: Yes people tell me that all the time. Disinformation’s audience skews pretty young even though it’s been around for eight years. So somebody who was 12 when they first got on the internet in 1996 is 20 now and grew up on it. To some people it was really important to them. When I was a kid I read Maximum Rock and Rock and other zines which were meaningful to me and I think Disinformation is important to others.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Disinformation+founder+Richard+Metzger/