Hi, Robyn Semien, here. I executive produce Question Everything. I reported the two-part series on Jeremy Loffredo that just ran on the show.

You have to listen to the episodes if you haven’t! Find them here: Episode 1 & Episode 2

Spoilers to follow.

For those of you who nerd out on the minutia, I have no small amount of in-the-weeds details from reporting these episodes on Jeremy Loffredo.

Thankfully my editors did a lot of work trying to keep the weeds out of the piece.

But for those of us in the reporting business and anyone who is wondering about the daily bread of reporting (and I bet there are more than a few of you on this list), this one’s for you.

There’s this one detail, I think, that really illuminates the challenges of reporting on an unreliable narrator, like Jeremy Loffredo. And again, I hope it goes without saying, Jeremy was wrongly arrested and held in Moscovia Detention Center in the Russian Compound of Jerusalem. Those things are absolutely true, absolutely terrifying.

Jeremy told me that he was starved. To me, it was the biggest abuse allegation he told me about. That while he was in police custody and in jail, he wasn’t given food or water until the morning of his third day in prison. 

I am incensed by the notion that he wasn’t given food. Anyone held in prison should be given food. It’s a requirement. It’s the law. And Israeli prisons are notoriously giving Palestinian prisoners starvation-level amounts of food, with a marked reduction in food for prisoners in the past year.

On Jeremy’s third and final morning in Moscovia, Jeremy said he was given two Dixie cups of water and a chocolate pudding. He says this:

Jeremy Loffredo: .. the pudding was great. I mean, it was a normal chocolate pudding…

I can only imagine. I’m glad he got anything, and a single chocolate pudding is patently not enough food to eat. 

Over the past two months or so, as I was playing back through hours of Jeremy tape, I really began to hear different stuff in it. What he was saying and the way he was saying it, ascribing quotes to people who couldn’t have said them, like the prosecutor in court telling the judge, “the Grayzone doesn’t like Israel.” Or the implausible thing Jeremy told me an IDF soldier said to him. That Jeremy was “the only one who has all their paperwork, because [Jeremy] had a press card.” Jeremy, of course, did not have a press card.

At one point I decided to interview Jeremy on the things he’d told me that others — the people he was with in the car that day, and Jeremy’s lawyer —  had contradicted, or failed to corroborate, or questioned. I had questions from my editors and of my own, too. I’d chosen 15 discrepancies to ask him about. I’d never had to ask anyone I’ve interviewed about so many inconsistencies before. The list I put to him didn’t even cover all of them, I tried to be selective and pare them down.

I discussed killing the story with my producer Zach. I couldn’t tell if Question Everything could portray Jeremy’s experience while balancing our concerns about Jeremy’s unreliability. I kept returning to the interviews I had with Jeremy looking for more clarity about what to do, what made sense, what didn’t. What was solidly, factually, unequivocally true.

Then I was combing through what we called the Big Packet here — which was an English translation of all of Jeremy's court hearings, and on the bottom of page 18, on Jeremy’s second day in court, I noticed Jeremy’s lawyer, Lea Tsemel, say something about Jeremy’s food in prison. Specifically, she entered on record that Jeremy has food allergies. Jeremy, she says, is allergic to peanuts and fish.

Hunh, I thought. And ok, good to know. But also: Why is the court taking notes on Jeremy’s allergies when he isn’t getting food? Wouldn’t being denied food be a pressing issue for a human rights lawyer to enter on record? Wouldn’t it be the thing?

Lea Tsemel didn’t answer my text about this. She was beyond generous with my ongoing questions for this story. I told my editors and my producer Zach, and we decided food and food allergies, the details I’m including here in this newsletter, were both too granular and too hard to conclude either way if Jeremy was denied food or not, and that we should avoid food in the story, since we couldn’t be sure. It raised more questions than answers.

I couldn’t sleep. It sucked.

I tried the Israeli Prison Service. I tried the US Embassy. I couldn’t get an answer about, well, food. 

I tried to let it go. Jeremy wasn’t given food. I can imagine that. It’s terrible. He wasn’t given food. Starved, he said. Let it go.

I asked Jeremy in an email. I asked this way:

4. In our interview you told me you weren't given food or water while in IDF and police custody, until the chocolate pudding which was given you on your final day in prison. Is that accurate? 

He responded this way:

4. Food

I was given two small dixie cups of water and then a cup of chocolate pudding.

And then at some point, I was going through my recorded interviews with Jeremy, and kind of remembered how much Jeremy liked the chocolate pudding he was given in prison. It was great, he said. 

I played back to that part of the interview, let the recording run a sentence further, and heard this next bit. 

You can listen here.

Jeremy says:

Jeremy Loffredo: … the pudding was great. I mean, it was a normal chocolate pudding. At that point, I wasn't too scared to eat. 

Too scared to eat? At that point? 

I called my producer Zach and asked him to listen to the tape. I said I needed to play something for him,  and that I needed him to tell me how he interpreted what was being said.

And at that point, I wasn’t too scared to eat.

Zach and I thought the same thing: It sounded like Jeremy was implying that he was given food and didn’t eat it out of fear, but we didn’t know. 

I really wanted to corroborate this detail, which is why I’d hoped to have Jeremy’s girlfriend or his dad talk to me. I had other questions and they must’ve talked about the food, and if they could tell me they also believed that Jeremy wasn’t given any food, that would help. Maybe, I thought, Jeremy’s dad had asked the US Embassy about this, since the spokesperson for the US Embassy told me they had been in contact with Jeremy's family. Or maybe Jeremy’s girlfriend had told his lawyer about Jeremy’s food allergies?

Jeremy wouldn’t put me in touch with his dad or girlfriend for this story. That decision of Jeremy's is his prerogative. From the prerogative of someone reporting on his abuse allegation, it makes it harder to say with confidence what happened, when people who have knowledge about it aren't made available to speak to that.

And that speaks to the limits of my reporting, in this instance, on food.

In the second episode of the podcast, I wanted to say — Jeremy was starved. Like he said he was. And I wasn’t able to get solid on that despite weeks of trying. I hate that he might have been. And I couldn’t say it without being more sure. 

A week ago Monday, a few days before the final episode of the series aired, I offered to tell Jeremy what was in the story. I was anticipating a hard conversation. I also knew he had some concerns about things he’d told me on the record and I’d planned on letting him know not to worry about those things specifically, by then I knew they weren’t in the piece. I think it is good practice to tell sources what I'll be saying in a story that might be consequential to them, so they aren’t caught off guard. Jeremy didn’t take me up on that offer.

So, still trying to get solid on food, just in case there was some way to include it, I put this question to him in an email. 

My email question to Jeremy:

You and Max have also said that you were “starved” and denied food while in prison. That said, you told me in our interview that by the time you were given the chocolate pudding: “At that point, I wasn't too scared to eat.” And in the court documents, Lea entered that you have food allergies. This suggests that you may have been given or offered food that you, for any number of reasons, including distrust of the food itself, and maybe allergies, may not have accepted or eaten. Can you please clarify if that’s what happened?

Jeremy’s response:

On whether or not I was subjected to starvation tactics: I was denied a sufficient amount of food while simultaneously held prisoner and interrogated as an enemy of the state. Not offering a prisoner anywhere near a sufficient amount of food amounts to starvation. Whether or not I had thoughts about the safety of any theoretical food seems beside the point. A generous estimate of what my caloric intake should be for 3.5 days is 7,000 calories. I was only given 40-60 calories. It should go without saying that offering a prisoner 40-60 calories in the course of 3.5 days is a form of abuse, if not starvation. Your attempt to place this clearcut issue up for debate suggests you are seeking to undermine my testimony.

I didn't want to undermine Jeremy’s account. I wanted to verify it before reporting it to our audience, to no avail. I’d asked him too many fact-checking questions by then. Ultimately, I’d had a good too many examples of what Jeremy had told me fall apart under reporting’s scrutiny. 

One thing I can say for certain: During the course of reporting this story, I grew suspicious of Jeremy, and Jeremy grew suspicious of me. 

–

Please weigh in! Question Everything wants your feedback. We're dying to know what you think! And we may even use some of your questions on the show...

Send us an email at hey@placementtheory.com. We read every response.