Bill Boggs interviewing legendary thriller writer Robert Ludlum, who hasn’t let his 2001 death slow “his” writing output. No year specified, but it was likely 1982. Video less than stellar.

The opening of a 1977 People article about Ludlum: “‘I start every book with something that outrages me,’ says novelist Robert Ludlum. ‘I’m outraged by the FBI, the CIA and computers that seem to have catalogued our lives. Power too often is accompanied by irresponsibility.’

Ludlum, a former actor and producer, has managed to turn his fury into six best-selling thrillers since 1969. To date his books have sold over 10 million copies in 22 countries. ‘sit in total awe,’ he says. ‘I don’t understand it. I’m just grateful.’

His current hit, The Chancellor Manuscript, which fictionalizes the death of J. Edgar Hoover as part of a conspiracy, is in its fourth printing. The Gemini Contenders (twin brothers search for a religious document that would alter Christianity) is a paperback best-seller, and The Rhinemann Exchange (covert trade of diamonds for gyroscopes between the U.S. and Nazi Germany during WW II) reappeared on the paperback list after an NBC-TV miniseries in March.

Ludlum readers often take his fictionalized version of history seriously. ‘They all have a conspiracy they want to talk about,’ he says. ‘Unfortunately, they want to talk at 3 a.m.’ The Ludlums now have an unlisted phone in their Leonia, N.J. home.

He also has a special following within the intelligence community—and some private complaints from one federal agency he won’t identify. “They have said, in effect: ‘We’re very displeased with you. Your nonsense is becoming offensive.’ My answer is: ‘Dreadfully sorry, old chap. I’m just a storyteller.’ But his fiction has come very close to truth. The Osterman Weekend, for example, about domestic CIA operations, was published two and a half years before the agency’s illegal wiretaps were exposed.”