Josh Owens

Well, to get a sense of the chaotic nature of that world, the trip came together in a day.

We were basically told to pack our bags and leave with no idea when we would return.

It's pretty simple.

Jones saw a video online.

He made some assumptions about what that video meant, and then he sent us out there with a preconceived idea for us to report on.

So at Surfers Beach in Half Moon Bay, a man shot a video showing high radiation levels.

So Jones tied this all together in his mind.

He believed that post the Fukushima disaster— That's the nuclear disaster in Japan, right?

Correct, at the Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Jones believed that radiation was floating over onto the West Coast.

So he had this idea that the West Coast was riddled with radiation and it was a nightmare scenario.

And he wanted us to go there, drive along the Pacific Coast Trail and take readings with a Geiger counter that you said we barely knew how to use.

Yeah, well, we didn't find what we were looking for.

We did not find high radiation readings.

And at the time, this was in the early stage of my employment there.

I, along with the people who I was there with, just believed that's what we should report, what we were finding.

And so that's what we did.

And Jones got incredibly angry.

And the interesting thing about it is that Jones wasn't necessarily explicitly telling us to lie.

I think if he was doing that, he wouldn't have as many people working for him because there was this pretend idea that we were searching for the truth.