Reporters love nothing more than a source with important inside information about the secret operations of a powerful institution. For the public, the word “whistleblower” evokes the individual citizen putting themselves at risk to stop wrongdoing by an employer. It’s a powerful idea – one justifiably lauded both in fiction and fact, and protected and encouraged by a set of federal laws set up precisely to encourage such heroic behavior. But not all whistleblowers are created equal. In fact, there is a business model based entirely on former employees couching in the terminology of whistleblowing falsehoods motivated either by self-interest or paranoid delusion.

Meet Karen Hudes, whose bio says she worked as an attorney at the World Bank from 1986-2007, during which time, she says, she revealed conspiracies such as one she says involved a crony of then president of the Philippines illegally taking control of a bank in that country. Hudes says that these revelations eventually led to her firing. She now makes her career as an anti-bank activist billing herself as the “World Bank Whistleblower”. Using that as her brand, Hudes has been able to build a small but devoted following among consumers of the so-called alternative media. (Her name occasionally makes its way into more mainstream forums, such as in a recent speech by actor Edward James Olmos.)

For a news organization that is looking for ammunition in the war against banks but is not particularly concerned about accuracy, Karen Hudes presents the intriguing possibility of unfettered access to information about the unimaginable evils banks do behind closed doors. But this lack of concern about accuracy comes with a very obvious risk. What if the purported whistleblower making charges against their former employers also makes other statements which reveal that the “whistleblower” (to put it politely) is very obviously unreliable?

Hudes says that she was fired by the World Bank after her 21 years of work there because she spoke out about issues related to “massive, massive, massive corruption” which the World Bank wants kept quiet. Just how massive is this corruption? Hudes says that the US gold reserves have been stolen by the Jesuits under the direction of a person she calls “the Black Pope” and that the US gold now resides in the Vatican. Oh, and she says that the “Black Pope” is not a human, but is of what she calls “a second species”. As she recently explained on a podcast:

“There’s a second species on this planet. They’re not extraterrestrials. They’re very much with us. They made maps in the previous ice age. The remnants of their civilizations are all over the place – a lot of times along the coast. It’s submerged because the sea level has gone up by 400 meters. This group has large brains. They’re very distinct from homo sapiens. Their DNA is so different, that if the two species mated, their offspring would be infertile, and we know this because their DNA was just tested. They have skulls all over the place because they have been on earth with us. But after the ice age, there weren’t that many of them, so they’ve been hiding, and one of the places that’s they’ve been hiding is in the Vatican. That’s why the Vatican are wearing those miters. It turns out that that’s what the high priest wore in the early beginnings of Judaism. Moses was actually Akhenaten, who was a pharaoh. They know this because the papyra that was taken from one of the pyramids talks about this. The people who are doing archeology in Israel know this. And the reason is, not only is homo capensis (?) trying to keep human beings under control by divide and conquer using our money system, they’ve also been doing this with our religions – organized religions – trying to get human beings to hate people of different religious faiths so that they will kill each other off, so that the people who are manipulating human beings could … use us like cattle. That’s what’s been going on through our history.”

Hudes goes on in the interview to explain that she learned of the existence of this world-controlling, large-brained, non-human species from “a retired neurologist named Edward Spencer,” and that his views were confirmed to her by an unnamed email correspondent in Portugal who, she says, attended a meeting of large-headed hominids with inhuman blue eyes. Hudes also claims to be part of a network of whistleblowers from various financial institutions who have taken their concerns to the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions. Hudes and Spencer have also sent emails about this conspiracy to a long list of US military and government officials. (Another Hudes podcast interview on this subject is available here. More details about Hudes’ and Spencers’ beliefs are available here.)

Hudes has appeared several times on RT, where she’s billed as “the World Bank Whisteblower”, discussing everything from Obamacare to the government shutdown to the NSA. In those appearances, she fails to mention the “Black Pope” or large-brained hominids. Instead, she gives RT audiences what they expect: conspiracy theories involving bankers controlling the US and dire predictions of the economic collapse of the West.

In June 2013, Hudes was interviewed by Abby Martin in a segment of her RT program Breaking the Set. Although Martin’s introduction promised shocking revelations of World Bank corruption involving money laundering, no such revelations were forthcoming, only a series of unsupported charges.

In the interview, Hudes first claims that she knew of a scheme involving the theft of $180 billion dollars from the World Bank, that she reported this to her superiors there, and that she was fired for pursuing the matter in spite of intervention by several US senators on her behalf. Oddly, Hudes fails to take advantage of the opportunity to reveal details of this theft, which would surely be one of the biggest news stories of all time. Instead, Hudes starts down another path, claiming that 188 ministers of finance and the US Congress were involved in covering up the theft of $900 million dollars of funds designated for fighting poverty in the Philippines. She says that she’s part of an international network of World Bank whistleblowers who are trying to reveal a massive conspiracy of international bankers and prevent what she describes as “a currency war” ending in the collapse of the world financial system.

Martin then asks Hudes why “the corporate media” has failed to report on these “facts,” to which Hudes replies that it’s because the media is owned by a single conglomerate with an interest in maintaining the cover-up.

“They’re part of this scheme to rip off everyone, every single citizen on this planet. That’s what I’m talking about.” Hudes goes on to claim that her allegations have been confirmed by a study conducted by the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, although the findings she recounts don’t relate in any way to her charges. Instead, as she describes it, the study found that a small group of elite business leaders control 40% of the world’s assets. Based on this fact, Hudes says (in what charitably could be described as a non sequitur) paper money now has no value, and that “pretty soon, in a matter of weeks probably, the whole system is going to come to a screeching halt with something called ‘gold backwardization’.”

Rapidly changing the subject, Martin asks Hudes about banks controlling the US political system. Hudes says this is proved by the fact that former World Bank president Robert Zoellick worked for the 2012 Mitt Romney campaign and that, she says, the media failed to report this. She also says cryptically that she asked CBS to report on international corruption “and they said the public didn’t need to know.” The host wraps up the interview by asking Hudes why her “revelations” haven’t “incurred the wrath of the government” as have those of Edward Snowden. Hudes answers that she doesn’t know, but thinks that the government may be “using Eric Snowden (sic) to stir up the public.”

Subsequent to that bizarre interview, which lasted only 8 minutes, RT had Hudes back in October for a 24 minute in-depth interview on Sophie Shevardnadze’s program, giving Hudes an opportunity to flesh out her theories. (Video and transcript available here.) Unfortunately for everyone involved, this interview is notable for largely being so incoherent as to be virtually impossible to summarize.

SS: So, the government shutdown. Is the move on the part of the Republicans justified? Is fighting off Obamacare worth all this mess? KH: I think there is something more going on behind the scenes. A lot more, actually. SS: What do you mean? KH: Well, there is terrible currency problem. We’re on the verge of the currency war. The Federal Reserve is printing dollars like there is no tomorrow, and if they keep going, the rest of the world is not going to accept them. As it is, the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – have decided that they are going to finance the trade among these countries with assets and pay for the difference in gold. And this is the right move for them… SS: But how is that connected with a shutdown though? KH: The US Congress has been fighting with the presidency, because the presidency (sic) have been in total contempt, and the highest legal officer of the United States government has also been in contempt of Congress in fighting this international corruption that is ruining the dollar as an international reserve currency.

And on it goes… Hudes explains her theory of “gold backwardization.” It turns out that it refers to a two-step conspiracy theory falsely charging that 1) gold reserves no longer exist (or, in Hudes’ case, that the gold has been stolen by the “Black Pope” hominid and hidden in the Vatican), and 2) that banks are short-selling this purportedly non-existent gold to deflate the gold market. The assumptions behind this conspiracy theory are false, of course, but it doesn’t really matter. Central banks exist to manage the money supply in order to stabilize currencies and encourage steady economic growth. Conspiracy theorists and promoters of schemes involving speculation in precious metals have a different view of these things though. From their point of view, those actions are intrinsically part of a plan to drive down the price of gold, since, when currencies are stable and the stock market sound, gold speculation is less attractive. This is how gold standard true believers like Hudes and other RT economics experts come to believe that the normal pursuit of a good economy is part of an anti-gold conspiracy.

Hudes goes on:

“The mainstream media is completely owned and controlled by the same companies, private companies that own the Federal Reserve System… Congress people are all bribed by these corrupt forces and the American citizens have zero confidence in their Congress… I’m not siding with Democrats or Republicans, because both of those parties have been co-opted by these terrible corrupt forces I’m talking about.”

Considering that the views she expresses elsewhere are so idiosyncratic, Hudes’ RT persona is mostly indistinguishable from what they usually broadcast. I’ll leave it to readers to reach their own conclusions about what that means. I say “mostly” because, inevitably, the mask sometimes slips. In response to an oddly-framed question on Obamacare and fears of the collapse of the US economy, Hudes shares this:

SS: You know, I’ve also heard Obama supporters argue that the American Capitalism is on the verge of death in its present form, the way it is existing now, and the social injections, meaning the medical care and Obamacare, are needed as the only way to reform it or save it. Do you agree or disagree with that? KH: The problem is not with the American citizens, they are a wonderful group, their values are good. It’s just that they are not given the tools that they need to have a just society. They are not given the basic information about what is really going on and who is benefiting from the economies that they are being told… they are being told that they have no money, they have taken an entire city, Detroit, and declared it bankrupt. When what’s actually happening is their tax dollars are not even staying in the society, their tax dollars are going by treaty to the United Kingdom, and then they are being transferred to the Vatican, to the bank of the Vatican. This is not a society that is going to be sustainable on any basis, for any reason.

Later, in response to a question about China, Hudes explains to her interviewer that China is controlled by the Jesuits. No large-brained hominids or Black Pope mentioned there, but some intriguing intimations of insanity on which the RT host somehow fails to follow up. Just another day at RT. Nothing out of the ordinary.