Speaker 1: I'm back everyone. I'm Matt Ford, and welcome to the
Good Trouble Show. As you may have noticed, I've been
away for quite some time as my mother passed away recently.
This is needless to say, it's been a really an
enormously difficult time for me, my family, and I just
I want to thank everyone, each and every one of
you for your kind words, your thoughts, replies to tweets.
DMS even got a really really kind message from a
debunker that does another show, and it was quite genuine
and I really appreciate it. And anyway, my heart has
really been warmed by everyone's response. And my advice to
everyone watching this show, that those of you that still
have both of your parents are one of your parents,
is to call them every day and let them know
how much you love them. Get off of your cell
phone scrolling around or on YouTube or x but pick
up the phone, call them, visit them, spend time with them,
ask them the questions only they can answer. Maybe your
mom knows some family history that you would love to
know about, or your dad, but really spend time with them.
And I think a lot of times in this topic
sort of pursuing this UAP topic. It's easy to kind
of become hyper focused and lose focus on a lot
of the things in life that matter. I know that
I certainly have not been the best of it best
at that, but I want to thank all of you
for your kind words. Now, my mother, she was a
fighter growing up. I remember her telling me to always
stand up for what is right. She's to say to me,
give them hell, Harry. I remember her telling me that,
I think as early as nine years old, and she
would always say, never be afraid to go to the mat,
stand up to bullies and cowards. And that is what
today's show is about. Bullies that are targeting three individuals
who have served this country with distinction, targeting these individuals
by defeiming or removing the Wikipedia pages of these public figures. Today,
Trial Attorney Todd McMurtry will join us to discuss the
potential legal remedies for public figures whose Wikipedia pages have
been a target of these attacks. But first hit the
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All of that allows us to bring you excellent guests
like we have today now on with the show. So
who are these folks that have been targeted on Wikipedia?
And how have they been targeted? These are public figures
who have served this nation with distinction. These are individuals
that are highly, highly accomplished, and I'm going to read
you some of their bios. This is a bio about
Harold Mongren. This is actually taken out of his obituary.
He passed away early in the summer. Ambassador Doctor Harold B.
Mongren of Warrington, Virginia, a distinguished economist diplomat to US presidents.
Harold was a man of exceptional intellect and integrity whose
work shaped global economic policies and influenced international trade relations.
He served as a senior advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy,
Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford. This guy
was clearly no slouch. He clearly was a brilliant man.
Unfortunately I did not have the pleasure of ever meeting
him or interviewing him. But yeah, this this man lived
a full life. Another person who was recently targeted, Pippa Malgram,
is actually Harold Harold Maunngrim's daughter. Pipa Malmgram an economist, author,
and economic advisor to President George W. Bush. Pipa Mountgram
is known for expertise in global financial markets and geopolitics.
She served President George W. Bush and the White House
as Special Assistant to the President on the National Economic
Council after nine to eleven. She was also responsible for
assessing terrorism risks to the economy and technology as a
source of geopolitical competitiveness. Malmgram is the author of five books,
including Geopolitics for Investors and The Leadership Lab. Her most
recent best seller, The Infinite Leader, won International Press Award
for the Best Book on Leadership. Again. Another individual that
has served this country with distinction as clearly a brilliant woman.
And yeah, another victim of what we're going to talk about. Finally,
Chris Mellon, who I've had the pleasure of knowing about
a year or so. He's on The Good Trouble Show.
Who is Chris Mellon. Chris Mellon spent nearly twenty years
in the US intelligence community, to include serving as the
Minority Staff director of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence under Presidents Clinton
and Bush. This is again someone that has served this country.
He has taught at Georgetown University, authored over a dozen
articles on public policy issues, and received numerous awards, including
the National Reconnaissance Office Gold Medal, the DIA, the DIA
Director's Medal, and the Secretary of Defense Exceptional Public Service Award,
the highest award that can be bestowed on a Department
of Defense civilian by the Secretary of Defense. Chris has
worked hard the last few few years to draw attention
to the fact that the US intelligence community has failed
to alert senior officials that large numbers of unidentified aircraft
are violating restricted US airspace on a recurring basis. Now
earlier today, I was alerted that all three of these
individuals Wikipedia pages were submitted for deletion. Now Momgren's page
late last night. As you can see here, the bulk
of Harold Mamgren's page was deleted, not the entire page,
but I mean, just look at the volume of what
was originally on his page completely removed. I want you
to take a look at the mountain of information that
was deleted by this debunker editing on Wikipedia. This is
what is at the top of his daughter and former
presidentially cannot advisor Pippa Malgrim's page. And hours before large
portions of Harold Mongren's page were deleted. The Wikipedia page
a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Christopher
Mellon was completely deleted. The entire Wikipedia page that he
has had on here on Wikipedia talking about everything he
has done for this country was completely deleted. And get this,
Chris Mellon comes from the Mellon family, very famous family.
They have their own Wikipedia page. Well guess what this
debunker Wikipedia editor did. He completely erased any reference to
Christopher Mellon on his own family's Wikipedia page. It's insane.
I mean, how vindictive is that. Now, who deleted it?
I'll tell you an anonymous Wikipedia editor by the name
of Chetzford is targeting their pages due to their advocacy
for UFO UAP transparency. That's right, This guy or girl,
whoever this is, this Chetzford is vindictively targeting these three
individuals simply because they are pushing for UAP transparency from
the government. That's it. That's the only reason this person
is doing it, not for any altruistic reason. He's doing it.
He or she is doing it out of spite. And
now you may be asking yourself, so how can this happen?
How can these people get away with this on Wikipedia?
The truth of the matter is that they are all
part of an organized network of Wikipedia editors dedicated to
hijacking Wikipedia pages to to push their worldview. One such
group is the Gorilla Skeptics of Wikipedia, a nonprofit based
out of Selina's, California, led by its founder Susan Gerbik. Now,
what does what are the Gorilla Skeptics of Wikipedia do?
This is Susan in her own words.
Speaker 2: So, I run a Wikipedia editing group, and it's an
international group of approximately one hundred and fifty people. We're
located on Facebook in a secret group called the Secret Cabal.
Speaker 3: Because these are private groups or secret groups, you can't
join them. I have to allow you, and I have
admins that will allow you to join the group, but
we check you out because we don't want to allow
you know, somebody in who's you know, infiltration.
Speaker 1: My gosh.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So that's how we spend a lot of our time.
Speaker 3: But we've worked on pages on UFOs and spontaneous human
combustion and all kinds of different topics that are pseudo
science or or misinformation. Wikipedia is the single most important
tool in the skeptical toolbox.
Speaker 4: That we have.
Speaker 3: But we keep track of all the Wikipedia pages that
we have made a massive.
Speaker 4: A rewrite to or have written.
Speaker 3: And we are now at one two hundred and thirty pages,
and we keep track of how many pages, how many
page views those and thirty pages have, and we're fifty
one million.
Speaker 4: Page views, over fifty one million page views.
Speaker 3: Homeopathy. We've changed that page drastically. The lead, the very
very first couple sentences of the page, which most people
is the only thing they read, we've used the word quackery.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's so awesome. I am so proud of
these people and the other one hundred. I have one
hundred and thirteen people, and I'm always looking to recruit
and require more.
Speaker 3: How in the world of people still support this woman.
We even have on here her conviction, her legal conviction
here if.
Speaker 1: You click on for a gold investment scheme.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we have it so you can actually go and
see where she's a convicted felon. So when people say
she's a convicted felon, We're like, go to Wikipedia.
Speaker 4: There it is. In the last week, those five hundred
pages have created in the last week two hundred and fifteen,
seven hundred and forty two page views, in the last
month one million, five hundred and thirty sixty three thousand,
four hundred and ninety three page views. And in the
whole time that these page views have existed, these pages
we've written. The GSoW project has written those five hundred pages,
and those page views are now at nineteen million, sixty three,
nine hundred and thirty four page views.
Speaker 1: So if you want to be part of the solution unbelievable.
Now you may be wondering, like how prolific is this
organized effort? For instance, the Gorilla skeptics, the Gorilla Skeptics
alone consist of over two hundred editors. Two hundred editors
that have edited over two thousand Wikipedia pages that they
consider pseo pseudoscience. So it could be anything from chiropractic
to homeopathy, to UFOs UAPs, to bigfoot, to ghosts to massage,
anything that they consider pseudoscience. What they do is they
train up a group of editors, and this is probably
happening with other organized skeptic groups. They recruit people that
are interested in editing on Wikipedia. They teach them how
to edit. Wikipedia has a very sort of a strict
set of rules that you have to learn. You can't
really just kind of go in there and edit successfully.
The other thing is that Wikipedia editing is based on seniority.
So if you are a Wikipedia editor that say, been
editing since you know, five, six, seven years ago, you're
gonna have higher seniority than somebody that is brand new
to Wikipedia. So let's say you edit a page on
Christopher Mellon and you're this Chatsford individual who's done this
for a number of years. Well, here comes a new
Wikipedia editor or a junior Wikipedia editor that says, looks
at what Chatsford has done and said, you know what,
this is bullshit. This is this is trashing this guy's page. Well,
this Wikipedia editor goes in this what they call a
talk page and has a conversation it's kind of like
a chat that's recorded with this senior Wikipedia editor. Well,
these senior Wikipedia editors, because they have seniority, basically can
boot out what this junior editor is doing. Oftentimes, what
happens is if this junior editor comes along and is
trying to do the right thing. These Wikipedia editors, this
organized group of debunkers, they have the seniority to ban
from Wikipedia that individual from edit ever editing Wikipedia ever. Again,
That's that's how they control it. Another way they control
it is if they see someone up and coming, someone
that they know that is going to be in the news,
they create the page from the beginning. Susan Gerbek of
the Gorilla Skeptics of Wikipedia did that for Lou Elizonda
when Lou first came on the scene. Now why did
she do it? She did it so she can exert
control over his page. Now why are they doing this
with Wikipedia. The thing to keep in mind is Wikipedia
is one of the top ten most trafficked websites in
the world. I know at one point it was is
showing like the seventh most trafficked website in the world. So,
if you are someone that is say, interested in UAP UFOs,
and you're not on Twitter or x whatever you want
to call it, or Reddit, and you're not following any
of it, and you want to know what is you know,
what is up with this UAP thing that I keep
hearing Congress is doing something about. Most people will go
to Wikipedia and they will look it up. Now what
happens is these gorilla skeptics and other organized groups they
write the Wikipedia page in such a way that it
promotes the debunker point of view. They stated, as you know,
as you heard that the first I think it's I
don't know, a couple three sentences they know are the
most important. So they will take a Wikipedia page and
they will rewrite it if it's already been written, and
they will. They will throw a bunch of editors on it.
They will perfect it. They will edit this thing offline,
manipulate it so it pushes the UH the debunking skeptical
point of view. They will change the wording such that
if you were to look at these pages, you would
think Wow, this sounds like a bunch of bs or
or maybe luel Azondo is full of uh, full of
you know what. They cleverly use uh sort of charged words,
charged words and and uh in you window to skew
the pages so that anyone that is brand new to
this sort of thing or anything for that matter. Again,
it could be a chiropractic, they'll go on there and
they'll they'll read it and they'll go, oh, I don't
want to go see a chiropractor on homeopathy and gerbick
crowd that they managed to get the word quackery approved
on the Wikipedia page when they edited the Wikipedia page
for homeopathy. So it's not it's not only things like
UFO's UAPs, which we like to talk about on the show.
This is what they do now. If you go when
you look at whistleblower government whistle blower David Grush, look
at his page. You scroll through here and uh it,
you know, it talks about all sorts of stuff. But
then you scroll down to a section called Responses from
Relevant Experts, and it is paragraph upon paragraph upon paragraph
of skeptics. These are all skeptics, These are all debunkers.
These are people that go out of their way and
spends oodles of time on staring that they don't even
believe is true. Now you have to ask yourself, why
would these individuals spend so much time on something that
they just don't believe in. It makes no sense. And
talk about these folks as relevant experts experts they are not.
They are propagandists. Not only do the guerrilla skeptics of
Wikipedia and other outfits like that target target pages such
as uap UFOs or anything that they consider pseudoscience, they
also rewrite or write from scratch the pages of their own.
In other words, they're fellow debunkers. Mcwest, UFO debunker Susan
Gerbik Her folks wrote his Wikipedia page. Now you may
ask may be asking yourself, well, why would these debunkers
be writing other debunker's pages. Because they know that any say,
like segment producer from CNN or ABC News or whatever.
Let's say that that segment producer wants to interview UFO
skeptic Micwest, They're going to make damn sure that Mick
West's Wikipedia page is in tip top shape. It psychologically
does what they want. These folks, they take care of
their own folks. This is propaganda. This is information warfare.
They want to tell you how to think. They want
to control the narrative. They want people to go to
Wikipedia and not know the whole picture. Now, we don't
know if this editor Chetsford is related to the gorilla
skeptics of Wikipedia, but it is, it wouldn't be surprising.
We've seen this type of thing from the guerrilla skeptics
editors before. Now you may be asking yourself, are these
editing efforts? Are they altruistic? Is there any sort of
perhaps good intentions behind this? Well, a window into that
is a little known thing in Wikipedia called talk pages.
These things they exist on the Wikipedia page itself, so
you have the front facing page, which of course is
what everyone sees. But when these pages are up for
editing or deletion, there's a little section called the talk page.
And this page is kind of like, I don't know,
like a group chat or something, but it's you know,
it doesn't the messages don't disappear. So the Wikipedia editors
they engage in discussions amongst each other with other editors
on these talk pages. And these pages can give you
a window into these editors true true motives. And I
want to read some of some of that, and again
I think this will give you some idea as to
this Chetsford individual if they're up to no good or
they just start doing what they think is right. So
let's look at the talk page for Harold Momgren again.
This is from this Chetzford individual. The late Harold Mongren
has catapulted to awareness in the wild corners of the
Internet populated by UFO enthusiasts due to his wacky claims
about marauding space aliens. He was a minor staffer in
the JFK administration and later worked as a financial advisor,
though UFO enthusiasts on social media have recently reimagined him
as the man who saved the world from nuclear apocalypse
during the Cuban missile crisis, based apparently on Momgren's claims
of having beaten Curtis LeMay in a staring contest. It's
uh uh, it's see he goes on large segments he
or she large segments containing illustrious assertions about his educational
pedigree and globe trotting accomplishments are totally unreferenced. The Daily
Mail and News Nation, which we have proscribed from using
as a source of for any coverage touching the topic
of UFOs under UFO Nation is what these folks call
news nation. It's uh, you know, it's you. You read this.
You you hear the You hear the snarkiness, you hear
the uh uh, the the sarcasm. Let's look at Pipa Malgram.
Pipa Malgram, the economist and former presidential advisor.
Speaker 3: She uh.
Speaker 1: Let's see what the talk page says from her about her. Again,
this is the this Chetsford individual, not a single piece
of W. P. Colin's Sick God. I have no idea
what that abbreviation is for in this in this vanity piece,
I'm speculating based on the licensing of the seer's glamour
shot in the info box finds nothing. Either does not
presume notability for her for the minor post of special assistant.
The only other possible claim are apparently self nominated persons
who pay a one hundred dollars registration fee. Again, listening
to this Wikipedia editor, this debunker, it's it's clear that
this person is does not have altruistic reasons. Let's let's
move on now. Finally to Christopher Melon Christopher mellon News
nation is not usable as a source. Mellon served briefly.
It appears, less than two years as a deputy assistant
secretary in the Pentagon, while sub cabinet officers often get
benefit of the doubt for w P. Colon in under
w P, I don't know what the what this means.
We have never extended that all the way down to
lowly rank of deputy assistant secretary, which is below assistant secretary,
under secretary, deputy secretary and secretary. There are more than
one hundred uh uh das. Don't know what that means
in US government at at any at any point. Again,
it's it's obvious that this Wikipedia editor is is just
foaming at the mouth of of of of just uh
of just starcasm and wanting to play down Christopher Mellen's accomplishments.
You know, look, look this guy up on LinkedIn, look
at his CV and see what he has done in
his life and for this country. It's absolutely disgusting. What
uh you know what these folks are are up to?
But you have to ask yourself. Are the editor's hobbyists
just kind of occasionally getting on or editing on Wikipedia.
The data shows that they are anything but hobbyists. Now,
certainly some are. But let's let's take a look at
the stats for this Chetsford character. These are the administrative
stats for user Chetsford. Chetsford has made forty seven edits
edits plus deleted forty three thousand, seven hundred and eighty.
Chetsford has deleted one hundred and fifty four pages. I
wonder if that one hundred and fifty four includes Chris Mellons.
He's protected three hundred and ninety pages, which means that
a lot of times these these debunker editors, they will
go and lock a page down to make sure nobody
can mess with it. I actually think Louela Zondo's page
is locked down, blocked fourteen users and get this user
rights modified one hundred and fifty. In other words, Wikipedia
editors that that Chetsford doesn't like what they're doing, which
is probably trying to do the right thing. This guy
he goes and a girl don't know if it's a
guy girl modified? There what they can do on on Wikipedia? Now,
how much time does Chetsford spend debunking and sort of
vandalizing all these Wikipedia pages. Let's look at Chetsford's Wikipedia
time card. Now you look at this and what this
says to me, and all the bigger the dots, the
larger the number of posts per hour per day, But
what this says to me is Chetsford, this is like
a full time job. This guy or girl is he
they're unemployed and has nothing better to do or is
likely being compensated for this. This is like a forty
to fifty hour week job. In UTC UTC time, you
can see that that Chetsford cranks up at eight am
like a job and ends at about two thirty pm.
I'm sorry, no, I take that back. It starts at
eight am, goes until up until midnight editing away on Wikipedia,
and then does even more at midnight and shuts down
about four So literally UTC time from eight am until
two am, this Chetsford debunker is editing Wikipedia. Now, you
cannot tell me that that person or persons it could
be more than one, that is doing this a paid professional. This,
this is not. This is not any kind of hobbyist.
I can I can. I can tell you that this
looks like a paid full time job. So the question
is is there anything legally that these public figures can
do about the targeting of their public wick, their public Wikipedia.
I can't talk. I'm getting time tied, their public Wikipedia pages.
Joining up, joining us again, all time tied today, joining us.
One of them is one of America's premier trial attorneys.
He has represented numerous public figures in defamation cases, including
a member of a royal family. Please welcome trial attorney
Todd McMurtry. Todd, how are you, sir?
Speaker 5: Doing well?
Speaker 1: Matt, how are you great? Thanks for thanks for joining us.
I know this is on a really short notice. Now
you are one of the most prominent trial attorneys in America,
and you know we just covered in the program what
has happened and to these three individuals on Wikipedia, what
is your reaction to this?
Speaker 5: Well, I've noticed I've had a number of people contact
me over the years about Wikipedia and about manipulation of
their pages. And you know, it's an interesting process on
how editors are able to go in and capture certain
people's profiles. And I've noticed this primarily in the space
of conservative figures, but now thanks to you and some others,
it's come to my attention that people involved in the
UAP space are also suffering from this manipulation by editors.
Or groups of editors.
Speaker 1: Okay, I want to read you a message that I
received from another attorney who has also been looking into
this and sort of what is happening to these folks,
And I'm curious if you agree with this individual's take.
This person said, by the way, this attorney said, by
the way, this is calculated in some ways. The reason
they are all of a sudden pushing to delete the
pages instead of manipulate or edit the text is because
they avoid libel by eliminating the page and assume no
risk by trying to rewrite the narrative of a living person.
This is clearly by design so they don't get sued
and dragged into a deposition where their identities are revealed
and they are put under oath. They one on these
issues previously, but they are carefully calculating the fact that
one day they could lose, and it only takes one
good court ruling to blow that open. So easier to
just try and erase the person.
Speaker 5: Your reaction, That's entirely possible. I mean that would make sense.
If I were the attorney representing people who were engaged
in active disinformation, I would say you either need to
stop or you need to have correct everything and make
sure that it's accurate and truthful and that the opinions
are based upon disclosed facts. So yes, I think that's
completely legitimate take on what might be going on.
Speaker 1: I understand that defamation is almost impossible to win in court,
and you have a legal approach that would address this,
which we're going to get into in a few minutes.
But why is defamation so so difficult to win in
a court of law?
Speaker 5: So, defamation if you're a public figure and you know
the people that the common names and whether it's government,
whether it's politics, whether it's UAP, there's you know, there
are people that everyone knows who they are and they
achieve this status of public figure. And when you're a
public figure, you can become a target for defamatory comments.
But the only way to hold the other side liable
for those defamatory comments is to meet the standard that's
called actual malice. And it's a constitutional standard, you know,
part of the First Amendment, and it says that that
if you're going to call somebody, you know, say that
they're a fraud or that they're a liar, or that
they're a thief, if you're going to say those things.
To hold the person you said them a lot, you
have to show that they acted with actual malice, which
means that they knew or recklessly disregarded the truth and
made the false statement anyway, And a lot of what
you see in in the UAP area, you know, are
are slander terms. Uh you know, you know that somebody
is involved in a conspiracy, or that somebody's you know, lying,
or that they're you know, a disinformation agent. All these
different things that people use to attack public figures in
the UAP space, they're probably defamatory, but you have to
say did they are they knowingly lying? And then the
other defense that's available in a defamation action is called opinion.
And an opinion is I, you know, I think so
and so as a bad person, or here are these
four facts. Based upon these four facts, I think this
person is a liar, and and then you're protected the
same Well, that's just your opinion, and that's what everybody
says everywhere you go. It's like, well, that's just your opinion.
You know, that's my opinion, So I'm allowed to say
almost whatever I want. I think that's wrong, but that's
that's what the law is. And you know, just just yesterday,
I think it was the day before, Sarah Palin had
a lawsuit that had gone all the way to trial
against The New York Times, and a jury ruled against her,
finding that The New York Times did not engage in
actual malice from reporting about her conduct and relation to
the congresswoman Tulsi gab Not Tulsi Gabber, but there's a
congresswoman in out in the Southwest. I'm forgetting her name,
but you know, she was shot. And then the New
York Times ran a hit piece on Sarah Palin that
intimated that Sarah Palin's politics led to the radicalized shooter.
And she lost that case because you couldn't prove that
they factually, that they knew they were lying, and that
they were not being factual.
Speaker 1: Now in this case, you know, for instance, Christopher Mellon's
entire Wikipedia page was scrubbed from Wikipedia, as well as
references or his name on for instance, the Melon family
Wikipedia page. Is the removal of the Wikipedia page of
a public figure. Is that defamatory in and of itself?
Speaker 5: You know, it's not necessarily defamatory, but it's part of
a larger scheme that these editors have taken to delegitimize
people in the in the UAP field, you know, people
who are coming forth and trying to be a whistleblower
or just explain how things work in government, you know.
And a person like Christopher mellan is is basically has
an unimpeachable character. There's not much you know, you can't
I mean, he just has an unimpeachable character. He's got
a very high level of credibility based upon his personal
history and his governmental service. So he's he is one
of the you know, most authoritative people in this field,
just based upon who he is. So when somebody's that
has has that level of character, the only thing you
can do is try to eliminate them. It's like you
know Soviet era situation where Stalin would take the pictures
of people that were in disfavor out of the foote,
out of the official photographs, and that's what we have here.
So is it actionable? Yeah, I think there are ways
that something like this could be actionable. And Matt as
you know, there's there's some researchers out there that have
done some deep dives on these editors and organizations of
editors in the working with Wikipedia and how they you know,
intentionally delegitimize the fame, cast in a false, false light.
So many people that are involved in the in the
UAP space, and you know, it's an organized effort. So
what I what I think it is and I think
Christopher mell this action with Christopher Mellan falls in the
same category. It's a civil rico, you know, and that
is a racketeering, influence and corrupt organizations situation. In civil rico,
basically what it requires is the existence of an enterprise.
So in this circumstance, the enterprise is the relationship between
Wikipedia and the editors who are suppressing and creating suppressing
true facts and creating disinformation. There has to be a pattern,
and of course you and I have talked to these
researchers and we know that there's a significant pattern of
these people capturing these pages and then intentionally casting the
individuals in a false light. And so there is a
pattern that's happened again and again. There's participation. The editors
and Google are participating in the undertaking, and this participation
has to cause, you know, an injury, and the injury
here is reputational injury. Primarily, there could be some other
injury to business or property in some circumstances, and so
that is what you know that those are the basics
of what civil rico is. And you know, I do
think that that exists here. I think that there's a
viable case against Wikipedia and against the editors who have
captured these pages. And just so you know, I've talked
to you know, in my practice, we do a lot
of analysis of how people's characters are characters injured, and
so we have people that will you know, grub the
Internet and find all the negative references, find out how
many times those references have been repeated, and put a
monetary award or a monetary figure associated with that reputational damage.
And they're also familiar with how Wikipedia works and what
we were able to. We had them look at a
very prominent person's profile page and they're like, man, that
thing is locked down. You cannot get to it. And
so even influential people are not influential, but people who
are capable in a business setting cannot get to any
of these pages because there's a group of people that
have control of them and that manipulate them in a
way to create a known disinformation to discredit and to
undermine the credibility and the character of people who are
in the UAP space. And we all know who these
names are. It's all the top names, all the top people.
They are systematically being delegitimized and attacked by these editors.
And I would assume with Wikipedia's knowledge, I mean, Wikipedia
has to know that there are people that capture these pages. Yeah, right,
that's what I think.
Speaker 1: Well, and as you mentioned, it's it's these editors. So
one of the issues, of course, is that these editors
hide behind you know, anonymity. You know, you've got the
you've got their screen names, but that is it. Could
a RICO lawsuit compel Wikipedia to disclose the identity of
those editors during the discovery process?
Speaker 5: Absolutely, yeah, yeah, you can get to that information. You know,
social media companies and tech companies are notoriously difficult or
that they resist subpoenas. But I think if you brought
the lawsuit, you could definitely get that type of information
and then join those those editors and the people that
are anonymously delegitimizing and defaming prominent people in the UAP space.
You could you could get the names and then add
them to the lawsuit.
Speaker 1: Now we have spoken before, you know, you and I
have chatted before. I think about when we started chatting
about a year ago, and we talked about Susan Gerbick
and her group, the Gorilla Skeptics. It's a five oh
one c three run out of Salinas, California called about
time uh and their systematic targeting of Wikipedia pages. And
they literally have targeted, rewritten or whatnot around two thousand
of these things. And my question is, would an organize, sorry,
what an organization like her is this about time project?
Would they be liable as well?
Speaker 5: Yeah? I mean again, I don't want to. I don't
want to defame Susan Gerbick or that organization on this show.
But the investigation that I've undertaken in others, you know,
or that they've informed me of, indicates that there are
organizations like that that are that could be liable as well,
because we know that they are behind this this effort
to delegitimize, to fame and cast prominent people in false light.
Speaker 1: And she has also bragged that she is legally protected
from damages and in a reco case, would someone that
like We'll just say, theoretically, you know, runs an organization
that that does a sort of coordinated Wikipedia targeting page targeting.
Would they be protected like Susan or even like Jimmy
Wales personally? Can they hide behind sort of a corporate
veil if they're running a nonprofit protecting themselves from damages.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a good question. Basically, the way it works
is if you're the if you're the president of a
company and you are you are out in a driving
in your car, and you accidentally run a red light
and injure somebody, that's your company's liability. That's not necessarily
your personal liability. But if you do something, even if
you're operating under the shield of the corporation, where you
are speeding, sayer or drunk driving, then you would be
personally liable. So if a person who is an officer
or an employee of a company commits an independent tort,
and that would be in my example, front driving or speeding,
then they can be held personally liable. If they're merely negligent,
you know, maybe they're not liable, and you know that's
a there are some subtleties in how that works. So
let's say that you're a person who runs an organization
that systematically delegitimizes the fames and cast prominent people in
a false light, and you do so knowingly. That's not
an appropriate business purpose, you know, to surreptitiously gain control
of Wikipedia pages and delegitimize people on the Internet. So
I would think that there is a chance for personal
liability for individuals who are engaged in this process of
delegitimizing otherwise, you know, people of otherwise good character.
Speaker 1: Todd, have you seen any indication that these Wikipedia editors
or these organizations that run these these Wikipedia editor groups.
Do you have any indication or have heard any evidence
or potential evidence that these folks are being funded by
some outside entity?
Speaker 5: Uh? I have. I have looked at some of the
tax statements, and if you if you looked at those,
you might interpret that that they are getting funded from
an unknown third party. It's not clear where the money
comes from. And uh, you know, generally you're not required
to disclose who your donors are. If you're a public charity,
you don't have to disclose that information. Uh, but you know,
you never know, So it's it's something to find out
in litigation.
Speaker 1: I think in a reco case, what are the the
legal remedies. What you know, what sort of damages could
a defendant potentially expect.
Speaker 5: So you can get your actual damages, which would be
reputational harm, harmed to business or property. You could then
have those damn damages tripled, so they call it trouble damages.
And so you could get if you had a million
dollars in damages, they would give you three million dollars
in damages, so they would triple those damages. And then
on top of that, uh, there is an ability to
recover attorney fees expended in the process. So it's it's
a it's a hammer for sure. But you know, like
so many things RICO, anytime you get involved in these
big lawsuits. Uh, they you know, these companies have the
most powerful, huge law firms in the country, and so
they it's a big fight. You know, it's a it's
a taxing, serious fight, a legal fight, and uh, but
but it's it's significant undertaking to try to do something
like that, especially when you're dealing with a behemoth, you know,
a tech company that basically has unlimited resources, and you know,
in fact, there'd probably be volunteer law firms that would
show up to you know, protect their First Amendment rights
or whatever, you know, whatever disguise or or lie they
want to use to to uh mislead you know, people
about what they're actually doing. You know, what they're actually
doing is controlling a narrative and creating a false narrative.
And and then all these people who do this type
of thing, you know, they all then say, well, it's
just the truth in the First Amendment. And it's like, no,
you have a corrupt purpose and it's not just the
First Amendment. The First Amendment is not designed to protect
a lie. Right, it's not designed to do that. And
a person's reputation shouldn't be destroyed through lies. And then
the law should be able to protect people and does
in many circumstances.
Speaker 1: And I'm guessing, of course, that this would be pretty
expensive to litigate. What would be the best way to
fund You'll say, if a bunch of folks wanted to
hire you as a class action suit in this, what
would be the best way to fund this? Do you think?
Speaker 5: Well, you see, this type of activity is normally covered
by what you would call a public interest law firm.
So there are you know, all different types religious, political,
and ever. You know, law firms in the city of Washington,
d C. Staffed with talented lawyers, and they will litigate
on behalf of the public interest that doesn't really exist
for people involved in the UAP space. So so what
you would need to do is either find a generous
donor who could you know, underwrite such litigation and then
also ask people who are involved to donate to a
to a legal fund, you know, and a legal fund
could then be used to pay attorneys to pursue this
and that That's pretty much what public interest law firms do.
And you know, this would just be a way of
having the public interest of transparency, legitimacy, and truth related
to people who are involved in the in the UAP field.
You know, you would you would try to have that,
and the way you would do that is through you know,
legal protections and legal actions against organizations such as Wikipedia
that are either knowingly or unknowingly facilitating this this disinformation.
Speaker 1: And as I understand that, there's really sort of no
way individual or individuals or organizations can protect themselves or
from these sorts of attacks on Wikipedia. In other words,
I can't go and edit my Wikipedia page or delete stuff.
Is that how you understand it as well.
Speaker 5: Right right, Many people try to do that and then
the editors come back in and re edit out, the
re edit back in the disinformation in the in the
you know, the narrative, the false narrative that they're trying
to create.
Speaker 1: And with all of this said, with everything that we've
seen that has gone on in the past couple of days,
and of course this long history of this sort of
targeted disinformation campaign or propaganda campaign, really, in my opinion,
with all of that said, what would your message be
right now to any editors or organizations that are engaged
in this type of behavior.
Speaker 5: Stop, stop generating disinformation, stop creating false narratives. State the
truth in Wikipedia. Serve the purpose of Wikipedia, you know,
the purpose is is that these editors are in good
faith trying to get to the bottom of things and
provide truth and truthful updates on information for those who
are by the people and the topics in Wikipedia. And
I would also assume that or I would also suggest
that they understand that they may be personally liable or
corporately liable for their misconduct to the extent that can
be proven. And as you and I have discussed, we've
seen a lot of bad things out there, a lot
of bad facts about this manipulation and about you know,
either taking down a profile or you know, telling lies
about people or casting people in a false light. That's
when you use true facts, but you manipulate them in
a way to create a false narrative. And so I
think hopefully that you know, whether it's this instance or
in the future, that somebody's able to discipline the editors
who are creating the false narratives and hold them to
account and hopefully clean that up so Wikipedia can meet
its intended purpose of being truthful about what it writes.
Speaker 1: Well, Todd, thank you so much for joining us. How
can victims of this sort of coordinated attacks, these coordinated
attacks on Wikipedia? How can folks reach out to you
for your legal help?
Speaker 5: I'm pretty easy to find. Just just google my name
Todd McMurtry and I'll show up. My law firm has
a web page and contact and ability to contact me
right from that web page. So yeah, I'd be happy
to chat with people if they were to call.
Speaker 1: Fantastic Well, Todd, thank you so much for your time.
I know this was very last minute and you're very busy,
but we appreciate you coming on our shows, Tod mcmursery,
ladies and gentlemen, thanks for joining. That was an incredibly,
incredibly eye opening interview. It brings me hope. It brings
me hope that legally these people can be held to account. Look,
none of this is right. Of this is right. This
is a giant propaganda outfit. As Todd McMurtry said, records indicate,
and I think this would be for the the five
oh one C three, the what is it, the Center
for Inquiry based out of Amherst, New York. A couple
of years ago, they had more than five million dollars
in revenue come in and as Todd and Todd said,
and I don't know if he was talking about c FI,
but a lot of these organizations, it looks like when
you look at their IRS tax filings that they are
receiving money from overseas. Probably money from CIA cutouts would
be my guess. But this is not right. This flies
in the face of everything democracy stands for. It is immature,
it is vindictive. You go and you you read what
this individual says in the talk pages, and let me
tell you something else. A lot of these debunkers that
do this on Wikipedia, they go and they try and
hide their talk pages. There's a way of kind of
burying them that if you do not know how to
find them, most people can't find them. Well, let me
tell you investigator Rob Heatherly, who has been on the
show three times and has been investigating the grilla skeptics
of Wikipedia and others for well over three years, who's
put in literally tens of thousands of hours, he has
found all of those talk pages and let me tell you,
I've read them, and they are damning. Any trial attorney
that goes and looks at the talk they buried talk
pages for any individual that was targeted by these groups
on Wikipedia, I guarandamnt you will have a case. I
guarandamn to you. They will have a defamation case. And moreover,
I'm not a lawyer, but I would freaking bet my
house on it when Todd McMurtry or any other high
powered attorney goes and looks at the literal thousands thousands
of pages of evidence, Investigator Rob Heatherly has collected of
this large group of Wikipedia editors, the majority of which
are from the guerrilla skeptics of Wikipedia. When an attorney
goes and looks at what was said on these talk pages.
There will be zero doubt, zero doubt that the purpose
behind these edits was to defame, zero doubt. There will
be zero doubt that there has been racketeering and collusion.
I guarantee it. This cannot continue. This has been going
on far too long. People that have gone to the
mat for this country, people like whistleblower David Grush, people
like former intelligence official lou Elizondo, people like Christopher Mellon,
people like PIPA Malmgrim, people like her dad, Harold Malmgram.
All of these folks that have served this country with distinction,
all of these folks that have put country before themselves.
This is the kind of bullshit that they have to endure.
Doctor hal put Off, a scientist that has served this
country on on oodles of classified programs. They have vandalized
his page. You go and you look at at uh
at a doctor Putoff's page. It is filled with edits
from these debunkers. He doctor uh doctor Putoff went in
himself to try and correct it, like even like correct
dates of of of scientific papers that that he has written.
And guess what these debunkers these editors, such as the
Grilla skeptics of Wikipedia, they have such seniority they can
kick his edits out. So no matter what Doctor Howe
put Off does, he can't do a thing to fix it.
Lou Elizondo cannot go in and fix h fix his
biographical information because Susan Gerbeck has it locked down. This
is the information warfare that they are engaging in. And
this has to stop, and it has to stop in
one of two ways. It has to stop by everyone
banding together and people that have the money to do
this to fund a class action reco lawsuit against these
individuals and organizations and against the Wikimedia Foundation and the
owner co owner of Wikipedia. They need to sue them
in a in a civil reco case for racketeering. The
other the second thing that must happen. Members of Congress,
Members of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, you
have to step up to the plate and do something
about this. This cannot legally be allowed to happen. We can't.
We can't just be in a position where people need
need to cough up two hundred grand, five hundred grand
to right this wrong. There needs to be Congressional legislation
that puts an end to this information warfare that is
occurring on Wikipedia because you cannot trust Wikipedia. Wikipedia is weaponized.
Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, you
can change this. You can write by partisan legislation that
prevents this, stops all of this from happening, because it's
running rampant millions. I think it was over two million
edits that the grilla skeptics of Wikipedia have successfully made
on that platform. And my sources tell me that the
co founder of Wikipedia is well aware of the grilla
skeptics and what these debunkers are doing. I don't think
that these folks are amateurs, at least the organizations are not.
There's no way that these people are spending this amount
of time on essentially a full time job and not
getting paid by somebody from either a foreign government or
our own. We need to look into that. Congress needs
to pass legislation. There must be policy change, there must
be a RICO lawsuit. Folks, if you enjoyed today's show, again,
thank you for tuning in. We would really appreciate it
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