Welcome to Washington Secrets and your guide to the capital’s politics. Why is the harvesting of prisoners’ organs in China not a bigger story? We have part of the answer. Plus, a long-lost pair of Abraham Lincoln’s spectacles appears at auction, and has Joe Rogan put his finger on Donald Trump’s decision to go to war?
Millions of prisoners of conscience have their blood tested and tissue typed every year. When their hearts, lungs, or liver are needed, they are executed and delivered to surgeons.
It sounds like the stuff of dystopian science fiction.
Yet Jan Jekielek has spent the best part of two decades trying to tell the world that China is murdering people for their organs. His book, Killed to Order, will be published on Tuesday and sets out the case against Beijing’s communist rulers with brutal precision.
It describes how a prison population of millions, drawn predominantly from Falun Gong practitioners and the Uyghur Muslim population, is used to provide organs for up to 90,000 transplants a year.
“In an ethical system, you typically have to wait,” Jekielek told Secrets. “There has to be a catastrophic accident. … There’s an ethics team. … Tissues have to be matched. That takes time.
“In two weeks, you can get a heart in China. The so-called donor is prematched and killed to order. At scale.”
It is an extraordinary story.
But perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the allegations is that they have been around for years. So why isn’t it a bigger story?
The answers say something about the way China has pursued critics, but it also reveals something about today’s fragmented news business and how we weigh the messenger.
“There are multiple reasons,” Jekielek said. “In some ways, it is just so unbelievable.
“People just don’t want to believe it.”
On Monday night, he will launch his book at the Kennedy Center in a discussion with comedian Rob Schneider. It comes with a blurb from Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon: “Read this book and take action, then hug your kids and pray.” Praise from “Dr. Phil” McGraw garnishes the front cover: “A must-read, and once consumed and processed, cannot be ‘unread.’”
The location and the endorsement illustrate the way in which the organ harvesting story has spread in Trumpworld. The question now is whether the growing weight of evidence can take the matter to the mainstream. And whether Jekielek’s book is the vehicle to do that.
He is not a neutral observer. Nor does he claim to be. He is a Falun Gong practitioner, a member of a spiritual community founded on teachings rooted in Buddhist and Taoist traditions, that stands opposed to the Chinese Communist Party.
And he is a founding editor at the Epoch Times, a right-wing newspaper that takes a scorched-earth approach to bringing down Beijing, with a reputation for putting ideology at the forefront of its journalism.
It has pushed “spygate” stories, suggesting that the Obama administration embedded spies in the 2016 Trump campaign, leaned into the idea that the 2020 election was rigged, shared vaccine misinformation, and two staffers promoted QAnon theories on its YouTube channel.
The danger is that the idea that China had rounded up millions of prisoners to serve as breathing organ providers might have gone the same way — little more than fodder for dark corners of the internet.
Things are changing. In 2019, an independent tribunal in London looked at the evidence, transplant numbers, recorded calls with hospitals, and testimony from doctors and victims. It was chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice KC, who prosecuted Serb leader Slobodan Milošević at his war crimes trial.
It concluded that forced organ harvesting had been practiced in China for years on a significant scale, and that Falun Gong practitioners were probably the principal source of organs.
As a result, the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation has refused to publish research involving Chinese transplants.
Some of the best detail came from a Cheng Pei-ming, a Falun Gong prisoner, and the only known survivor of China’s forced organ harvesting program.
He escaped before undergoing surgery for a second time when doctors forgot to shackle him to his bed.
He described at a Washington press conference two years ago how he was tortured in prison and forced to have multiple blood tests. Scans in the United States revealed that segments of his liver and a portion of his left lung had been removed.
Congress is taking notice. Last week, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) introduced the Falun Gong and Victims of Forced Organ Harvesting Protection Act. It would impose sanctions on those responsible for organ harvesting in China.
Jekielek said a world that had long leaned into the idea that, somehow, China was liberalizing and that with a bit of encouragement would embrace democracy was waking up to the truth. Draconian crackdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic had revealed its brutal methods.
And dismissing revelations about organ harvesting because they were being exposed and promoted by Falun Gong, one of two groups targeted for exploitation, made no sense.
“Of course they are motivated to expose it,” Jekielek said. “But to say that means it is false is non sequitur. It sounds like CCP propaganda.”
Killed to Order: China’s Organ Harvesting Industry and the True Nature of America’s Biggest Adversary is published by Skyhorse Publishing on Tuesday. Tickets for Monday’s launch at the Kennedy Center are available here.
Abe’s eyeglasses
A long-lost pair of Abraham Lincoln’s reading spectacles comes up for auction next week, offering you a chance to own a unique piece of history … if you can meet the expected $300,000 prices.
The eyeglasses were first discovered by Mary, the wife of Lincoln’s son Robert, while sorting through items from first lady Mary Todd Lincoln’s estate. They were shipped to Hildene, the Lincoln family home in Vermont, where they stayed forgotten in a trunk until 1977.
Once rediscovered, they were put up for auction in 2010. But a labelling error and the incorrect inspection of the lenses concluded they were the wrong prescription for Lincoln himself, and so they must have belonged to his son.
A 24-year-old college student and Lincoln buff smelled a rat. He managed to buy the glasses, with a distinctive X-bridge design, privately years later and worked with experts to prove that they had, in fact, belonged to the 16th president.
They also have a bent arm, possibly a homemade effort to fit them better to Lincoln’s face. He was known to have superior oblique paresis, a misalignment of the eyes, possibly the result of being kicked in the head by a horse at the age of 9.
In a paper discussing his findings, Ethan Afshani describes how reading glasses tell the story of Lincoln’s presidency.
“Within this research article, Abraham Lincoln’s eyesight reflects the physical strain he took during the four years that he led the Union through the Civil War,” he wrote. “The X-bridge eyeglasses, along with the five other pairs mentioned in this article, represent perhaps the most intimate pieces of Lincoln’s personal legacy.”
They are being offered by Alexander Historical Auctions on March 27, with bids starting at $100,000.
The catalogue describes the spectacles as “one of the most spectacular Lincoln relics one could hope to own, thoroughly researched and with impeccable provenance.”
When you’ve lost Joe Rogan …
A string of recent quotes from the podcaster about the war in Iran are being shared as evidence that Trump is losing some of the people who propelled him to a comeback victory in 2024.
In fact, Joe Rogan has broken with the president on a number of issues during the past year. This, from last Wednesday’s episode, is possibly the most damaging:
“He’s 80, he doesn’t have much to lose. That’s the scary thing about old leaders — it’s like, death is imminent. It’s within a decade, if you’re lucky. That’s spooky. You’re making decisions for … the future of the world, and you’ve only got maybe 10 years left on earth.”
Lunchtime reading
MAHA movement grows louder as Republicans debate its power ahead of midterm elections: It has been one of the successes of the Trump administration after expanding the voter coalition in the 2024 election. So what comes next?
White House puts RFK Jr.’s HHS on tighter leash after MAHA setbacks: Read in conjunction with this, which suggests that the White House is worried about polls showing that Kennedy’s vaccine moves are unpopular.
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