1
00:00:00,040 --> 00:00:02,759
Speaker 1: I want you to put yourself in a very specific

2
00:00:02,799 --> 00:00:06,200
scenario for a second. Imagine you're helping clean out your

3
00:00:06,240 --> 00:00:07,320
grandparents' house.

4
00:00:07,320 --> 00:00:09,439
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, a classic weekend project exactly.

5
00:00:09,839 --> 00:00:12,759
Speaker 1: So you climb those creaky pull down stairs up into

6
00:00:12,800 --> 00:00:16,879
the attic. It's sweltering hot. It smells like, you know,

7
00:00:17,079 --> 00:00:21,920
fiberglass insulation and decades of accumulated dust, right.

8
00:00:21,879 --> 00:00:23,800
Speaker 2: Just that very specific old house smell.

9
00:00:23,920 --> 00:00:27,399
Speaker 1: Yeah, And tucked away in the absolute darkest corner, behind

10
00:00:28,079 --> 00:00:31,039
I don't know boxes of old holiday decorations, you find

11
00:00:31,079 --> 00:00:34,000
this heavy, locked metal foot locker.

12
00:00:34,079 --> 00:00:35,840
Speaker 2: Okay, color me intrigued.

13
00:00:35,520 --> 00:00:37,600
Speaker 1: Right, So you managed to pry it open, and you're

14
00:00:37,640 --> 00:00:41,079
expecting maybe some old tax returns or faded photograph, maybe

15
00:00:41,119 --> 00:00:44,520
war metals, But instead you find stacks and stacks of

16
00:00:44,520 --> 00:00:45,920
official government documents.

17
00:00:45,960 --> 00:00:47,759
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that is not what you expect to find

18
00:00:47,759 --> 00:00:49,000
next to the Christmas ornaments.

19
00:00:49,039 --> 00:00:50,560
Speaker 1: No, not at all. And as you sit there on

20
00:00:50,600 --> 00:00:55,079
the dusty floorboards reading them, your blood just runs completely.

21
00:00:54,479 --> 00:00:56,159
Speaker 2: Cold because of what's on the pages.

22
00:00:56,719 --> 00:01:01,320
Speaker 1: Exactly, because you realize that every paranoid tinfoil hat rumor

23
00:01:01,359 --> 00:01:04,599
you ever heard whispered at family gatherings, the ones you

24
00:01:04,680 --> 00:01:10,599
explicitly laughed off as absolute unhinged nonsense was actually true.

25
00:01:10,319 --> 00:01:12,200
Speaker 2: And worse, you're holding the evidence.

26
00:01:12,439 --> 00:01:16,159
Speaker 1: Yes, the box is full of the actual receipts proving it.

27
00:01:16,239 --> 00:01:18,959
Speaker 2: You know. It's the ultimate paradigm shift. It forces a

28
00:01:19,120 --> 00:01:24,079
complete recalibration of your worldview. It really does, because you

29
00:01:24,120 --> 00:01:27,599
suddenly realize the historical foundation you've been standing on is

30
00:01:27,959 --> 00:01:31,159
to a large extent, a completely sanitized construction.

31
00:01:31,359 --> 00:01:35,120
Speaker 1: Exactly, and that visceral feeling, that profound ground shifting realization

32
00:01:35,560 --> 00:01:37,959
that the adults in the room were actually the monsters

33
00:01:38,000 --> 00:01:40,920
in the closet. Yeah, that is exactly what happens when

34
00:01:40,920 --> 00:01:44,799
a global superpower is finally forced, usually kicking and screaming,

35
00:01:45,120 --> 00:01:48,879
to declassify its darkest secrets. So welcome to thrilling Threads.

36
00:01:48,959 --> 00:01:49,680
Speaker 2: Thrilled to be here.

37
00:01:49,840 --> 00:01:52,120
Speaker 1: I am incredibly bunked you're here with us because our

38
00:01:52,159 --> 00:01:56,400
mission today is massive. We are meticulously unpacking a towering,

39
00:01:56,480 --> 00:01:59,120
sprawling stack of freshly unearthed.

40
00:01:58,760 --> 00:02:01,120
Speaker 2: File It really is a mountainwork, it is.

41
00:02:01,560 --> 00:02:06,120
Speaker 1: We're looking at sealed records and declassified documents that expose

42
00:02:06,239 --> 00:02:10,360
the unsettling mechanical truths of government operations over the last century.

43
00:02:10,400 --> 00:02:12,479
Speaker 2: We're getting into the weeds today we really are.

44
00:02:12,599 --> 00:02:15,639
Speaker 1: I mean, we are talking about the granular logistics of

45
00:02:16,000 --> 00:02:20,599
literal mind control, the funding of psychic spies, and bringing

46
00:02:20,599 --> 00:02:23,400
it all the way up to the deeply controversial twenty

47
00:02:23,439 --> 00:02:27,199
twenty six Epstein files drop. We are pulling the thread

48
00:02:27,240 --> 00:02:28,039
on all of it.

49
00:02:28,479 --> 00:02:32,039
Speaker 2: But before we pull that first thread, it is vital

50
00:02:32,080 --> 00:02:34,960
that we established the framework for how we are analyzing

51
00:02:35,000 --> 00:02:35,680
these sources.

52
00:02:36,000 --> 00:02:37,960
Speaker 1: Ground rules are important here, definitely.

53
00:02:38,240 --> 00:02:41,319
Speaker 2: As we navigate this declassified material, we are going to

54
00:02:41,400 --> 00:02:45,479
encounter highly politically charged operations, very charged. We'll be examining

55
00:02:45,479 --> 00:02:49,520
the mpi's historical targeting of domestic civil rights leaders, deeply

56
00:02:49,599 --> 00:02:54,560
controversial foreign policy decisions at devastated communities, and modern Department

57
00:02:54,599 --> 00:02:58,639
of Justice data dumps involving incredibly powerful elite networks.

58
00:02:58,680 --> 00:03:01,159
Speaker 1: And people have strong feelings about all of those exactly.

59
00:03:01,199 --> 00:03:02,879
Speaker 2: So I want to be absolutely clear to you the

60
00:03:02,960 --> 00:03:08,080
listener Thrilling Threads operates with complete impartiality. We are not

61
00:03:08,159 --> 00:03:11,800
taking sides, we are not endorsing any political viewpoints, and

62
00:03:11,840 --> 00:03:13,800
we are not here to pass partisan judgment.

63
00:03:13,879 --> 00:03:15,759
Speaker 1: We just follow the documents right.

64
00:03:15,919 --> 00:03:18,719
Speaker 2: Our sole purpose is to act as your analytical guides.

65
00:03:19,400 --> 00:03:23,879
We are here to report, dissect and synthesize the factual

66
00:03:24,000 --> 00:03:28,639
contents of these newly available historical records, explaining the mechanics

67
00:03:28,680 --> 00:03:30,319
of how and why these events occurred.

68
00:03:30,520 --> 00:03:32,759
Speaker 1: Yeah, we are just looking at the ink on the paper,

69
00:03:32,919 --> 00:03:35,560
examining the bureaucratic machinery and asking how it.

70
00:03:35,560 --> 00:03:37,560
Speaker 2: Actually functioned precisely.

71
00:03:37,719 --> 00:03:40,280
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this, and to do that we need

72
00:03:40,319 --> 00:03:44,159
to step into a very specific psychological environment.

73
00:03:44,240 --> 00:03:45,560
Speaker 2: We really have to set the scene.

74
00:03:45,639 --> 00:03:48,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, we are going back to the paranoid, sweat soaked

75
00:03:48,439 --> 00:03:51,599
heights of the nineteen fifties. The intelligence community of the

76
00:03:51,680 --> 00:03:55,840
United States government is utterly terrified of two existential.

77
00:03:55,199 --> 00:03:58,599
Speaker 2: Threats, atomic annihilation and communist infiltration.

78
00:03:58,919 --> 00:04:02,240
Speaker 1: Exactly and fight these threats, they decided they needed to

79
00:04:02,280 --> 00:04:05,120
map the absolute limits of the human body and the

80
00:04:05,199 --> 00:04:07,879
human mind. Let's start with the physical. Let's talk about

81
00:04:07,879 --> 00:04:08,759
Project Sunshine.

82
00:04:08,919 --> 00:04:12,439
Speaker 2: Project Sunshine, which was initiated in nineteen fifty three by

83
00:04:12,439 --> 00:04:16,319
the Atomic Energy Commission, where the AEC is the perfect

84
00:04:16,360 --> 00:04:17,079
starting point.

85
00:04:17,279 --> 00:04:19,600
Speaker 1: It really sets the tone for everything else it.

86
00:04:19,560 --> 00:04:24,600
Speaker 2: Does because it brilliantly illustrates how a bureaucracy operationalizes panic.

87
00:04:25,319 --> 00:04:29,360
The government was they were detonating nuclear weapons at an

88
00:04:29,519 --> 00:04:33,680
unprecedented rate, creating immense radioactive fallout.

89
00:04:33,399 --> 00:04:35,000
Speaker 1: Right, just blowing things up left and right in the

90
00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:35,920
desert exactly.

91
00:04:36,120 --> 00:04:39,480
Speaker 2: But they realized they had a massive scientific blind spot.

92
00:04:39,560 --> 00:04:45,160
They didn't fully understand how that fallout, specifically a radioactive

93
00:04:45,199 --> 00:04:49,079
isotope called strontium ninety, was globally dispersing, and.

94
00:04:49,079 --> 00:04:51,319
Speaker 1: More importantly, how it was getting into the food chain.

95
00:04:51,439 --> 00:04:54,240
Speaker 2: Yes, how it was accumulating in the human biosphere.

96
00:04:54,279 --> 00:04:56,680
Speaker 1: And the biology of strontium ninety is what makes this

97
00:04:56,800 --> 00:04:59,079
so insidious. I was looking into the mechanism of this,

98
00:04:59,519 --> 00:05:02,040
and the best way to understand strontium ninety is to

99
00:05:02,079 --> 00:05:06,160
think of it like a master counterfeitter slipping fate one

100
00:05:06,240 --> 00:05:07,879
hundred dollars bills into a bank vault.

101
00:05:07,920 --> 00:05:09,319
Speaker 2: That's an interesting way to look at it.

102
00:05:09,279 --> 00:05:13,079
Speaker 1: Right, because chemically, strontium ninety is incredibly similar to calcium.

103
00:05:13,160 --> 00:05:14,519
Speaker 2: It mimics it almost perfectly.

104
00:05:14,800 --> 00:05:18,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, So if a human being ingests it through contaminated

105
00:05:18,399 --> 00:05:21,360
milk or crops or water, the human body, acting as

106
00:05:21,399 --> 00:05:25,439
the bank teller, doesn't recognize it as a toxic radioactive invader.

107
00:05:25,680 --> 00:05:27,800
Speaker 2: The body just sees a building block exactly.

108
00:05:27,839 --> 00:05:31,240
Speaker 1: The body thinks, great, calcium, we need this to build bone.

109
00:05:31,519 --> 00:05:35,199
So it takes this highly radioactive material and locks it

110
00:05:35,240 --> 00:05:36,920
directly into the skeletal.

111
00:05:36,480 --> 00:05:38,759
Speaker 2: Structure, right into the vault, right into.

112
00:05:38,519 --> 00:05:40,959
Speaker 1: The vault, where it just sits there, radiating the host

113
00:05:41,000 --> 00:05:44,199
from the inside out, causing bone cancer and leukemia.

114
00:05:44,439 --> 00:05:48,000
Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is that the body's own biological efficiency

115
00:05:48,160 --> 00:05:51,720
becomes its downfall. That's a highly accurate analogy.

116
00:05:51,879 --> 00:05:53,519
Speaker 1: It's terrifying when you think about it.

117
00:05:53,519 --> 00:05:56,360
Speaker 2: It really is. Now to understand the global spread of

118
00:05:56,399 --> 00:06:01,040
this specific isotope. The AEC needed data, and to get data,

119
00:06:01,279 --> 00:06:02,160
they needed bones.

120
00:06:02,600 --> 00:06:04,639
Speaker 1: But they didn't just need any bones, did they.

121
00:06:04,839 --> 00:06:07,680
Speaker 2: No, they didn't. The mechanics of human growth meant they

122
00:06:07,680 --> 00:06:11,439
needed young bones. Infants in children are rapidly absorbing calcium

123
00:06:11,480 --> 00:06:11,879
to grow their.

124
00:06:11,879 --> 00:06:14,040
Speaker 1: Skeleton because they're growing so fast.

125
00:06:14,040 --> 00:06:17,920
Speaker 2: Exactly, which means they would absorb proportionally higher concentrations of

126
00:06:17,959 --> 00:06:22,439
strontium ninety. So the declassified transcripts of the secret AEC

127
00:06:22,600 --> 00:06:28,040
meetings reveal that they initiated a clandestine global logistical.

128
00:06:27,480 --> 00:06:29,240
Speaker 1: Operation to harvest bones.

129
00:06:29,319 --> 00:06:31,639
Speaker 2: Yes, to harvest bones and tissues from the dead.

130
00:06:31,800 --> 00:06:34,279
Speaker 1: And this is where the bureaucratic language in the source

131
00:06:34,319 --> 00:06:36,040
documents just absolutely chilled me.

132
00:06:36,240 --> 00:06:38,040
Speaker 2: The phrasing is incredibly clinical.

133
00:06:38,319 --> 00:06:41,519
Speaker 1: It is they literally referred to this as a baby

134
00:06:41,560 --> 00:06:42,519
sampling program.

135
00:06:42,879 --> 00:06:44,399
Speaker 2: Yeah, that phrases hard to stomach.

136
00:06:44,480 --> 00:06:47,759
Speaker 1: There's a specific quote in the declassified meeting transcripts where

137
00:06:47,839 --> 00:06:51,800
researchers coldly complain about the logistics of acquiring samples. They

138
00:06:51,800 --> 00:06:54,319
state that the bones of very young children were easy

139
00:06:54,319 --> 00:06:57,279
to obtain in the United States, but they needed international

140
00:06:57,319 --> 00:06:59,800
samples to track the global fallout Cloudy.

141
00:07:00,199 --> 00:07:04,319
Speaker 2: The logistical network they built is just astounding. They utilized

142
00:07:04,360 --> 00:07:08,800
a sprawling web of hospitals, morgues, and international scientific partners

143
00:07:09,000 --> 00:07:11,639
across Europe, Australia, and South America.

144
00:07:11,680 --> 00:07:14,399
Speaker 1: Just a massive global dragnet.

145
00:07:14,079 --> 00:07:17,079
Speaker 2: Right all to funnel these tissue samples back to labs

146
00:07:17,120 --> 00:07:22,079
in Chicago, New York. And the critical horrifying component here

147
00:07:22,480 --> 00:07:25,079
is that they did this almost entirely without the knowledge

148
00:07:25,160 --> 00:07:26,959
or consent of the grieving families.

149
00:07:27,439 --> 00:07:29,120
Speaker 1: That's the part that just breaks my heart.

150
00:07:29,199 --> 00:07:33,360
Speaker 2: They were taking limbs, vertebrae, and sometimes entire cadaurers of

151
00:07:33,399 --> 00:07:37,079
stillborn infants under the guise of routine medical procedures.

152
00:07:37,199 --> 00:07:39,480
Speaker 1: I just I can't get past the disconnect. It's like

153
00:07:39,560 --> 00:07:42,360
stealing the foundational beams out of someone's house just to

154
00:07:42,399 --> 00:07:44,399
see if the soil in the neighborhood is settling.

155
00:07:44,480 --> 00:07:45,800
Speaker 2: It's very apt comparison.

156
00:07:45,959 --> 00:07:50,720
Speaker 1: It violates the most sacred, intimate boundary imaginable. I just

157
00:07:50,800 --> 00:07:53,920
keep asking myself, how does a scientist, a doctor who

158
00:07:53,959 --> 00:07:58,439
took the Hippocratic oath justify running a covert international body

159
00:07:58,480 --> 00:07:59,279
snatching ring.

160
00:08:00,000 --> 00:08:02,720
Speaker 2: It requires an understanding of the macro level mindset of

161
00:08:02,720 --> 00:08:05,079
the Cold War era. You have to place yourself in

162
00:08:05,079 --> 00:08:07,000
the boardroom with these AEC commissioners.

163
00:08:07,040 --> 00:08:08,800
Speaker 1: Okay, put me in the room. What are they thinking?

164
00:08:09,360 --> 00:08:12,399
Speaker 2: They genuinely believed the world might end in therm nuclear

165
00:08:12,439 --> 00:08:13,639
fire at any given moment.

166
00:08:13,720 --> 00:08:15,800
Speaker 1: So they were basically in a constant state.

167
00:08:15,600 --> 00:08:21,240
Speaker 2: Of panic, a profound existential dread, and that dread warped

168
00:08:21,240 --> 00:08:24,040
their ethical calculus. In their minds, they were trying to

169
00:08:24,079 --> 00:08:28,160
calculate the survivability of the human species on a post nuclear.

170
00:08:27,839 --> 00:08:29,240
Speaker 1: Earth, big picture survival.

171
00:08:29,639 --> 00:08:32,840
Speaker 2: Exactly when you are doing the math on the potential

172
00:08:32,879 --> 00:08:36,000
extinction of billions of people, the sanctity of a single

173
00:08:36,080 --> 00:08:40,480
grieving family in a morgue suddenly registers as a statistical zero.

174
00:08:40,720 --> 00:08:42,519
Speaker 1: Wow, a statistical zero.

175
00:08:42,720 --> 00:08:46,159
Speaker 2: It's a chilling calculus, but it's a purely utilitarian one.

176
00:08:46,399 --> 00:08:49,559
The greater good completely devoured individual rights.

177
00:08:49,679 --> 00:08:52,320
Speaker 1: But the danger of that utilitarian math is that the

178
00:08:52,399 --> 00:08:55,960
slope is infinitely slippery. Oh absolutely, Because once a government

179
00:08:56,039 --> 00:08:59,240
establishes that the physical human body is just raw material,

180
00:08:59,600 --> 00:09:02,759
just anset to be harvested for the defense apparatus, the

181
00:09:02,799 --> 00:09:06,120
psychological mind is obviously the next logical target.

182
00:09:05,799 --> 00:09:08,480
Speaker 2: You made from the bones right to the brain exactly.

183
00:09:08,159 --> 00:09:11,320
Speaker 1: Which brings us to a program that sounds so cartoonishly evil.

184
00:09:11,360 --> 00:09:12,919
I almost didn't believe the files were real.

185
00:09:13,120 --> 00:09:16,159
Speaker 2: Project M Cultra. The jump from Project Sunshine to M

186
00:09:16,159 --> 00:09:21,080
Culture is indeed a dark logical progression. If Sunshine was

187
00:09:21,080 --> 00:09:25,399
about measuring physical damage and Culture was about exerting psychological control.

188
00:09:25,519 --> 00:09:27,000
Speaker 1: And it was authorized at the highest.

189
00:09:26,799 --> 00:09:30,519
Speaker 2: Levels, Yes, authorized by CIA Director Alan DoLS in April

190
00:09:30,639 --> 00:09:34,679
nineteen fifty three. N Culture was this massive umbrella project

191
00:09:35,080 --> 00:09:37,879
encompassing over one hundred and forty nine subprojects.

192
00:09:38,080 --> 00:09:39,480
Speaker 1: That is a lot of subprojects.

193
00:09:39,480 --> 00:09:42,200
Speaker 2: It was huge. It was driven primarily by a chemist

194
00:09:42,320 --> 00:09:45,120
named Sidney Gottlieb. And we have to be clear here,

195
00:09:45,519 --> 00:09:48,320
this wasn't just a few rogue scientists testing drugs in

196
00:09:48,360 --> 00:09:49,279
a basement.

197
00:09:49,080 --> 00:09:50,440
Speaker 1: Right, This was official policy.

198
00:09:50,519 --> 00:09:53,559
Speaker 2: It was a highly structured, heavily funded network of experiments

199
00:09:53,799 --> 00:09:58,720
exploring coercion, behavior modification, and the literal dismantling of the

200
00:09:58,799 --> 00:09:59,519
human psyche.

201
00:09:59,559 --> 00:10:01,879
Speaker 1: The machic of how they went about this or terrifying

202
00:10:02,240 --> 00:10:07,919
the files detail methods including profound sensory deprivation, prolonged isolation, hypnosis,

203
00:10:08,120 --> 00:10:11,559
and most infamously, massive non consensual doses of LSD.

204
00:10:11,720 --> 00:10:14,600
Speaker 2: The LSD experiments get the most attention for good reason

205
00:10:14,879 --> 00:10:15,320
they do.

206
00:10:15,799 --> 00:10:18,799
Speaker 1: But I want to zero in on one specific subproject

207
00:10:18,799 --> 00:10:23,080
that really illustrates the mechanics of this psychological dismantling. The

208
00:10:23,120 --> 00:10:26,720
work of doctor Ewan Cameron at the Allen Memorial Institute

209
00:10:26,720 --> 00:10:27,399
in Montreal.

210
00:10:27,639 --> 00:10:30,639
Speaker 2: Yes, Cameron's work is incredibly.

211
00:10:30,000 --> 00:10:32,480
Speaker 1: Grim, it really is. And before we get into what

212
00:10:32,519 --> 00:10:34,840
he actually did, I think it's crucial to point out

213
00:10:34,879 --> 00:10:37,480
how the CIA funded him because they knew this was

214
00:10:37,559 --> 00:10:39,759
highly illegal, so they didn't just write him a check

215
00:10:39,799 --> 00:10:40,440
from Langley.

216
00:10:40,679 --> 00:10:43,159
Speaker 2: No, they needed a layer of deniability exactly.

217
00:10:43,519 --> 00:10:47,080
Speaker 1: They used a sophisticated front organization called the Society for

218
00:10:47,120 --> 00:10:51,240
the Investigation of Human Ecology to funnel grants to his institute.

219
00:10:51,440 --> 00:10:54,679
It was entirely designed to eliminate the paper trail exactly.

220
00:10:55,120 --> 00:10:58,399
Speaker 2: The bureaucracy of secrecy was just as sophisticated as the

221
00:10:58,440 --> 00:11:03,240
experiments themselves. Now regarding doctor Cameron's actual methodology, he was

222
00:11:03,279 --> 00:11:05,799
exploring a concept he termed deep patterning.

223
00:11:06,320 --> 00:11:07,960
Speaker 1: Patterning it sounds so harmless.

224
00:11:08,159 --> 00:11:11,559
Speaker 2: It is an incredibly clinical, sterile term for what was

225
00:11:11,799 --> 00:11:15,759
in practice, the systematic annihilation of a person's existing personality.

226
00:11:15,960 --> 00:11:17,360
Speaker 1: Annihilation is the right word.

227
00:11:17,639 --> 00:11:20,919
Speaker 2: Cameron theorized that to cure profound mental illness, you had

228
00:11:20,919 --> 00:11:22,519
to wipe the slave completely clean.

229
00:11:22,840 --> 00:11:25,759
Speaker 1: But the wiping wasn't therapy, it was torture.

230
00:11:26,159 --> 00:11:30,440
Speaker 2: From a modern medical standpoint, unequivocally, yes, the mechanics of

231
00:11:30,480 --> 00:11:35,399
deep patterning involved inducing prolonged pharmacological comas. He would use

232
00:11:35,440 --> 00:11:38,600
heavy barbiturates to keep patients asleep from up to fifteen

233
00:11:38,639 --> 00:11:39,320
to thirty.

234
00:11:39,120 --> 00:11:42,080
Speaker 1: Days a month long coma just imagine that.

235
00:11:42,519 --> 00:11:45,159
Speaker 2: And while they were in this chemically indued twilight state,

236
00:11:45,519 --> 00:11:49,240
they were subjected to severe electroconvulsive.

237
00:11:48,320 --> 00:11:50,679
Speaker 1: Therapy shock therapy, yes.

238
00:11:50,759 --> 00:11:54,720
Speaker 2: But sometimes administering shocks at a voltage and frequency vastly

239
00:11:54,759 --> 00:11:58,000
exceeding any standard medical practice to the point of inducing

240
00:11:58,080 --> 00:11:59,279
profound amnesia.

241
00:11:59,360 --> 00:12:00,639
Speaker 1: They were just from their brains.

242
00:12:00,720 --> 00:12:02,840
Speaker 2: They would forget how to walk, how to talk, who

243
00:12:02,840 --> 00:12:03,559
their parents were.

244
00:12:03,679 --> 00:12:06,120
Speaker 1: And once he had effectively erased their hard drives, he

245
00:12:06,159 --> 00:12:09,279
instituted phase two, which he called psychic driving.

246
00:12:09,399 --> 00:12:13,600
Speaker 2: Yes, psychic driving was the reprogramming phase. Cameron would place

247
00:12:13,600 --> 00:12:17,960
football helmets equipped with headphones on these deeply traumatized amnisiac patients.

248
00:12:17,960 --> 00:12:20,200
Speaker 1: Football helmets seriously.

249
00:12:20,120 --> 00:12:23,360
Speaker 2: Yes, Or he'd wire speakers under their pillows. He would

250
00:12:23,399 --> 00:12:26,200
then play repetitive recorded audio messages to them.

251
00:12:26,480 --> 00:12:29,919
Speaker 1: We are talking about tape loops, playing a single phrase

252
00:12:30,279 --> 00:12:33,840
hundreds of thousands of times over days and weeks.

253
00:12:33,360 --> 00:12:35,240
Speaker 2: Just playing over and over and.

254
00:12:35,200 --> 00:12:39,440
Speaker 1: Over, exactly attempting to implant new thoughts, behaviors, and personality

255
00:12:39,480 --> 00:12:41,639
traits into the void he had created.

256
00:12:41,960 --> 00:12:44,679
Speaker 2: I was reading the first hand accounts from the survivors

257
00:12:44,679 --> 00:12:48,399
of the Allen Institute, and it is just gut wrenching.

258
00:12:48,600 --> 00:12:51,240
One patient described the aftermath by saying, I feel like

259
00:12:51,279 --> 00:12:53,480
my mind has been completely invaded.

260
00:12:53,159 --> 00:12:54,600
Speaker 1: To trauma was permanent.

261
00:12:54,720 --> 00:12:57,279
Speaker 2: Imagine waking up and realizing that the very essence of

262
00:12:57,320 --> 00:13:00,720
who you are, your memories, your quirks, your identity has

263
00:13:00,799 --> 00:13:04,799
been tampered with, scrambled and stolen by an intelligence agency

264
00:13:04,840 --> 00:13:05,879
operating through a cutout.

265
00:13:05,960 --> 00:13:07,159
Speaker 1: It's a profound violation.

266
00:13:07,399 --> 00:13:10,879
Speaker 2: Well, look, if Cameron's work was the clinical hospital setting

267
00:13:10,960 --> 00:13:14,600
side of him CULTRA, Operation Midnight Climax was the absolute

268
00:13:14,600 --> 00:13:16,200
descent into operational madness.

269
00:13:16,279 --> 00:13:20,000
Speaker 1: Oh, Midnight Climax is entirely different territory. Please explain the

270
00:13:20,039 --> 00:13:22,440
mechanics of Midnight Climax to me, because when I read

271
00:13:22,480 --> 00:13:26,000
this section of the declassified files, the sheer logistics of

272
00:13:26,039 --> 00:13:27,159
it brew my mind.

273
00:13:27,919 --> 00:13:30,679
Speaker 2: Operation Midnight Climax is where the clinical mask of the

274
00:13:30,720 --> 00:13:37,440
CIA falls completely away, revealing pure, unadulterated espionage theater theaters. Right.

275
00:13:37,679 --> 00:13:40,120
Starting around nineteen fifty four, under the direction of an

276
00:13:40,120 --> 00:13:43,919
operative named George White, the CIA set up literal slighte

277
00:13:43,960 --> 00:13:47,080
houses in cities like San Francisco, New York City, and

278
00:13:47,120 --> 00:13:47,720
Mill Valley.

279
00:13:47,799 --> 00:13:50,000
Speaker 1: But they didn't look like government buildings.

280
00:13:49,600 --> 00:13:52,840
Speaker 2: No, not at all. They were decorated to look like lavish,

281
00:13:52,960 --> 00:13:57,360
bohemian bordellos. The CIA hired sex workers to act as

282
00:13:57,440 --> 00:13:58,679
essentially field agents.

283
00:13:58,799 --> 00:14:00,720
Speaker 1: The CIA was paying sex workers.

284
00:14:00,879 --> 00:14:04,200
Speaker 2: Yes, these women would lure unsuspecting men off the streets

285
00:14:04,200 --> 00:14:05,759
and into these safe houses.

286
00:14:05,519 --> 00:14:07,679
Speaker 1: Right, and once the mark was inside. The mechanics of

287
00:14:07,720 --> 00:14:10,679
the trap spring. The men were secretly dosed with LSD

288
00:14:10,840 --> 00:14:13,399
and other mind altering substances, usually slipped into a.

289
00:14:13,399 --> 00:14:16,000
Speaker 2: Cocktail, unknowingly consuming massive doses of.

290
00:14:15,960 --> 00:14:20,360
Speaker 1: Psychedelics, and then the CIA agents, these federal employees with

291
00:14:20,399 --> 00:14:25,279
security clearances would sit behind custom installed two way mirrors,

292
00:14:25,320 --> 00:14:28,559
sipping drinks, taking notes on a portable toilet they had

293
00:14:28,600 --> 00:14:32,120
repurposed as an observation chair, Yes, the infamous toilet chair,

294
00:14:32,240 --> 00:14:35,919
and they're just watching the ensuing drug fueled chaos.

295
00:14:36,000 --> 00:14:40,200
Speaker 2: That is the exact logistical setup and the justification for

296
00:14:40,279 --> 00:14:43,679
this massive expenditure of time and taxpayer money.

297
00:14:43,879 --> 00:14:45,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was the excuse?

298
00:14:45,320 --> 00:14:48,840
Speaker 2: The official internal documentation claimed they were studying the intersection

299
00:14:48,919 --> 00:14:53,519
of intoxicated behavior, sexual blackmail, and interrogation techniques.

300
00:14:53,720 --> 00:14:55,960
Speaker 1: So they claimed it was for national security.

301
00:14:55,799 --> 00:14:57,720
Speaker 2: Right, they wanted to know if a man who thought

302
00:14:57,720 --> 00:15:01,440
he was having a private illiciting count could be chemically

303
00:15:01,440 --> 00:15:03,279
manipulated into revealing secrets.

304
00:15:03,480 --> 00:15:05,919
Speaker 1: I have to push back on that official justification, though,

305
00:15:05,960 --> 00:15:10,559
Go ahead, because watching unsuspecting, non consenting civilians hallucinate from

306
00:15:10,600 --> 00:15:14,000
behind a mirror in a fake brothel feels less like

307
00:15:14,039 --> 00:15:17,759
a rigorous scientific study on national security and way more

308
00:15:17,799 --> 00:15:20,399
like a frat house run by unchecked voyeurs with a

309
00:15:20,440 --> 00:15:21,200
black budget.

310
00:15:21,279 --> 00:15:22,720
Speaker 2: It's hard to argue with that assessment.

311
00:15:23,000 --> 00:15:25,960
Speaker 1: There is no control group, there is no scientific rigor.

312
00:15:26,039 --> 00:15:27,200
It's just chaos.

313
00:15:27,879 --> 00:15:31,639
Speaker 2: Your pushback is entirely valid, and it highlights the operational

314
00:15:31,720 --> 00:15:34,799
drift within M cultra. To understand how they got to

315
00:15:34,840 --> 00:15:37,759
a fake brothel in San Francisco, you have to trace

316
00:15:37,799 --> 00:15:39,200
the trajectory of the paranoia.

317
00:15:39,279 --> 00:15:40,200
Speaker 1: Okay, trace it for me.

318
00:15:40,519 --> 00:15:44,080
Speaker 2: M Cultra initially started as defensive panic in the early

319
00:15:44,159 --> 00:15:47,200
nineteen fifties. The CIA was terrified that the Soviets and

320
00:15:47,240 --> 00:15:51,080
the Chinese had mastered brainwashing because of the Korean War exactly.

321
00:15:51,120 --> 00:15:54,960
They saw American POWs returning from the Korean War making bizarre,

322
00:15:55,480 --> 00:15:59,279
seemingly programmed anti American statements, and they thought, the Communists

323
00:15:59,320 --> 00:16:01,039
have a chemical gaps up on us. We need to

324
00:16:01,039 --> 00:16:03,399
figure out what they're using and how to defend against it.

325
00:16:03,720 --> 00:16:05,639
Speaker 1: But it didn't stay defensive for long.

326
00:16:06,440 --> 00:16:09,559
Speaker 2: Rarely does anything in the intelligence world stay purely defensive.

327
00:16:10,000 --> 00:16:12,480
It quickly morphed into offensive ambition.

328
00:16:12,159 --> 00:16:13,639
Speaker 1: So they wanted to use it themselves.

329
00:16:13,720 --> 00:16:17,080
Speaker 2: Right. The bureaucratic question shifted from how do we protect

330
00:16:17,080 --> 00:16:21,080
our agents from mind control to how can we weaponize LSD?

331
00:16:21,720 --> 00:16:23,919
Can we slip this into the soup of a foreign

332
00:16:24,000 --> 00:16:27,000
leader to make him appear insane during a speech. Can

333
00:16:27,039 --> 00:16:29,000
we use this to crack a captured spy.

334
00:16:29,279 --> 00:16:30,840
Speaker 1: They were looking for a weapon.

335
00:16:30,559 --> 00:16:34,360
Speaker 2: They were searching for a chemical magic bullet for behavioral coercion.

336
00:16:35,240 --> 00:16:39,679
But what they ultimately found was that LSD is wildly unpredictable.

337
00:16:39,759 --> 00:16:43,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can't exactly steer a bad trip, exactly.

338
00:16:42,519 --> 00:16:46,679
Speaker 2: You can't control a hallucinating asset. And that realization of

339
00:16:46,759 --> 00:16:51,799
chemical unreliability is exactly what forced the intelligence community to

340
00:16:51,879 --> 00:16:53,799
pivot their methodology.

341
00:16:53,200 --> 00:16:56,639
Speaker 1: Which transitions us perfectly to the next stack of files.

342
00:16:57,039 --> 00:17:00,000
Because if you are an intelligence agency and you realize

343
00:17:00,279 --> 00:17:03,919
you cannot reliably manipulate the chemical biology of the brain

344
00:17:04,000 --> 00:17:06,359
to get the secrets you want, what do you do?

345
00:17:06,440 --> 00:17:07,839
Speaker 2: You look for a different vector.

346
00:17:07,720 --> 00:17:10,279
Speaker 1: Exactly, And in the case of the US government, they

347
00:17:10,319 --> 00:17:13,759
decided to completely disregard the laws of conventional physics and

348
00:17:13,799 --> 00:17:14,720
reality itself.

349
00:17:14,799 --> 00:17:16,519
Speaker 2: They cast a very wide net.

350
00:17:16,319 --> 00:17:19,039
Speaker 1: There, really did. The government didn't just stop at drugs.

351
00:17:19,079 --> 00:17:20,319
They went full paranormal.

352
00:17:20,599 --> 00:17:24,440
Speaker 2: You're referring to the shift toward parapsychology. Most notably housed

353
00:17:24,519 --> 00:17:25,759
under Project Stargate.

354
00:17:26,039 --> 00:17:29,359
Speaker 1: I am Project Stargate. This wasn't a brief weekend experiment either.

355
00:17:29,640 --> 00:17:32,240
This program ran from the late nineteen seventies all the

356
00:17:32,240 --> 00:17:33,440
way to nineteen ninety five.

357
00:17:33,559 --> 00:17:35,519
Speaker 2: That's a very long run for a program like this.

358
00:17:35,960 --> 00:17:39,279
Speaker 1: It is the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency the

359
00:17:39,359 --> 00:17:44,319
DA officially funded a foray into psychic spying. The bureaucratic

360
00:17:44,440 --> 00:17:46,519
term they coined was remote viewing.

361
00:17:46,759 --> 00:17:47,960
Speaker 2: Remote viewing. Yeah.

362
00:17:48,240 --> 00:17:52,279
Speaker 1: The underlying premise was that certain individuals possessed the anomaloust

363
00:17:52,359 --> 00:17:56,799
cognitive ability to project their consciousness across the globe bypassing

364
00:17:56,839 --> 00:18:01,680
all physical barriers to observe and describe distant places, objects,

365
00:18:01,799 --> 00:18:05,440
or events like astral projection exactly. And they weren't just

366
00:18:05,519 --> 00:18:09,400
practicing on guessing what's inside a sealed envelope and a lab.

367
00:18:09,440 --> 00:18:12,680
They were actively targeting the most heavily fortified enemies.

368
00:18:12,359 --> 00:18:16,319
Speaker 2: Of the state, Soviet submarine yards, Chinese nuclear facilities.

369
00:18:15,759 --> 00:18:18,200
Speaker 1: Hostage situations in the Middle East. They were trying to

370
00:18:18,319 --> 00:18:21,039
use psychics for real time intelligence gathering.

371
00:18:21,160 --> 00:18:24,480
Speaker 2: The mechanics of how this was operationalized are fascinating. The

372
00:18:24,519 --> 00:18:28,160
declassified files detailed millions of dollars in funding provided to

373
00:18:28,200 --> 00:18:33,079
the Stanford Research Institute or SRI in Menlo Park, California

374
00:18:33,119 --> 00:18:35,640
to rigorously test these purported psychics.

375
00:18:35,680 --> 00:18:38,319
Speaker 1: And there are some really prominent names in these files.

376
00:18:38,200 --> 00:18:44,039
Speaker 2: Yes, specifically individuals like Ingo Swan and Pat Price. The

377
00:18:44,119 --> 00:18:46,000
protocols they developed were strict.

378
00:18:46,559 --> 00:18:49,039
Speaker 1: How did it actually work? In practice?

379
00:18:49,200 --> 00:18:52,200
Speaker 2: A remote viewer would sit in a sterile room and

380
00:18:52,279 --> 00:18:57,160
a handler would give them a set of geographic coordinates, nothing.

381
00:18:56,880 --> 00:18:58,200
Speaker 1: Else, just numbers, just.

382
00:18:58,200 --> 00:19:02,119
Speaker 2: Latitude and longitude. The viewer would then sketch or verbally

383
00:19:02,160 --> 00:19:05,799
describe whatever their minds supposedly saw at those coordinates.

384
00:19:06,000 --> 00:19:09,240
Speaker 1: The claims in these files are wild. Ingo Swann, who

385
00:19:09,279 --> 00:19:12,519
was a New York artist and self proclaimed psychic, claimed

386
00:19:12,559 --> 00:19:15,240
he could project his consciousness up to the ceiling to

387
00:19:15,240 --> 00:19:19,240
look down into hidden boxes during the initial testing protocols, and.

388
00:19:19,200 --> 00:19:21,240
Speaker 2: The military took him seriously they did.

389
00:19:21,640 --> 00:19:26,160
Speaker 1: And Pat Price, a former police commissioner, supposedly accurately sketched

390
00:19:26,200 --> 00:19:29,680
the massive cranes at a secret Soviet research facility in

391
00:19:29,759 --> 00:19:30,640
Semi Palatins.

392
00:19:30,880 --> 00:19:33,039
Speaker 2: That was one of their biggest purported successes.

393
00:19:33,160 --> 00:19:35,079
Speaker 1: Right, So look, I have to ask you this directly

394
00:19:35,119 --> 00:19:37,240
because I guarantee you the listener's thinking the exact same

395
00:19:37,240 --> 00:19:37,920
thing right now.

396
00:19:37,880 --> 00:19:38,319
Speaker 2: Late on me.

397
00:19:38,599 --> 00:19:43,640
Speaker 1: I'm looking at these formal stamped government reports on astral projection.

398
00:19:44,079 --> 00:19:47,480
So what does this all mean? Was this just classic

399
00:19:47,559 --> 00:19:50,200
Cold War wish casting? Were they just so desperate they'd

400
00:19:50,200 --> 00:19:53,480
believe anything, or do they actually find an exploitable anomaly?

401
00:19:53,960 --> 00:19:57,200
Speaker 2: The declassified post mortems of the program suggest it was

402
00:19:57,319 --> 00:20:01,799
primarily the former, driven by an almost suffocating intelligence deficits,

403
00:20:01,799 --> 00:20:06,200
So is desperation almost entirely. To understand why they funded this,

404
00:20:06,640 --> 00:20:09,680
you have to understand the mechanics of espionage before the

405
00:20:09,759 --> 00:20:10,799
modern digital age.

406
00:20:10,960 --> 00:20:12,880
Speaker 1: Paint a picture of that era for US.

407
00:20:12,759 --> 00:20:15,880
Speaker 2: Today, the intelligence community relies on constellations of satellites that

408
00:20:15,920 --> 00:20:18,440
can read a license plate from low Earth orbit and

409
00:20:18,559 --> 00:20:22,440
signals intelligence that vacuums up terabytes of digital communications instantly.

410
00:20:22,640 --> 00:20:22,799
Speaker 3: Right.

411
00:20:22,880 --> 00:20:24,319
Speaker 1: They see everything now.

412
00:20:24,119 --> 00:20:27,480
Speaker 2: But in the nineteen seventies, the Soviet Union was a massive,

413
00:20:28,160 --> 00:20:33,000
impenetrable geographic and informational black hole. Human intelligent skies on

414
00:20:33,039 --> 00:20:36,279
the ground was incredibly difficult and dangerous to maintain.

415
00:20:36,119 --> 00:20:39,319
Speaker 1: So they were basically starved for data, completely starved.

416
00:20:39,559 --> 00:20:42,440
Speaker 2: They were operating in such darkness that even a vague,

417
00:20:42,519 --> 00:20:47,400
completely unverifiable psychic claim was deemed a worthy investment portfolio.

418
00:20:47,640 --> 00:20:48,400
Speaker 1: That's wild.

419
00:20:48,559 --> 00:20:50,960
Speaker 2: Think of it as venture capitalism for espionage.

420
00:20:51,079 --> 00:20:54,759
Speaker 1: Oh, I like that, venture capitalism for espionage.

421
00:20:54,880 --> 00:20:57,359
Speaker 2: If a remote viewer had even a one percent chance

422
00:20:57,359 --> 00:21:01,039
of accurately describing the interior of a new Soviet submarine class,

423
00:21:01,480 --> 00:21:03,880
the CIA figured it was worth throwing a few million

424
00:21:03,920 --> 00:21:06,000
dollars at SRI to see if it panned.

425
00:21:05,799 --> 00:21:09,119
Speaker 1: Out high risk, massive reward Exactly the.

426
00:21:09,079 --> 00:21:13,200
Speaker 2: Files showed deeply mixed results. Believers within the agency champion

427
00:21:13,279 --> 00:21:17,559
the oddly specific hits like Pat Price's crane sketches, while

428
00:21:17,599 --> 00:21:20,400
skeptics pointed to the mountains of vague, inaccurate misses that

429
00:21:20,400 --> 00:21:23,319
could be chalked up to educated guessing or the Barnum effect.

430
00:21:23,519 --> 00:21:26,160
Speaker 1: Throw enough darts, you'll hit the bull's eye ends slightly.

431
00:21:25,920 --> 00:21:28,759
Speaker 2: But the sheer fact that the military intelligence complex kept

432
00:21:28,799 --> 00:21:31,359
the lights on for Project Stargate until nineteen ninety five

433
00:21:31,920 --> 00:21:35,160
proves how deeply the desperate desire for an edge penetrated

434
00:21:35,160 --> 00:21:37,160
the government. They wanted omniscience.

435
00:21:37,400 --> 00:21:40,279
Speaker 1: It's the ultimate pursuit of the all seeing eye, and

436
00:21:40,440 --> 00:21:43,880
if Stargate was the government attempting to forcefully project its

437
00:21:43,920 --> 00:21:47,279
vision outward, to pierce the unknown. The next set of

438
00:21:47,319 --> 00:21:49,640
files is the exact inverse.

439
00:21:49,319 --> 00:21:50,640
Speaker 2: The unknown coming to us.

440
00:21:50,880 --> 00:21:55,119
Speaker 1: Yes, it is the unknown, forcefully piercing our reality and

441
00:21:55,160 --> 00:21:58,480
the government scrambling to cover its own eyes. We have

442
00:21:58,559 --> 00:21:59,799
to talk about Project blue Book.

443
00:22:00,000 --> 00:22:02,799
Speaker 2: Project blue Book is a crucial pillar in understanding the

444
00:22:02,799 --> 00:22:04,400
government's relationship with the unknown.

445
00:22:04,640 --> 00:22:07,039
Speaker 1: It's the granddaddy of all UFO files.

446
00:22:07,119 --> 00:22:09,480
Speaker 2: It is. It was the United States Air Force's official

447
00:22:09,759 --> 00:22:14,079
systematic investigation into unidentified flying objects, head quartered at Wright

448
00:22:14,119 --> 00:22:17,119
Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. It ran from nineteen

449
00:22:17,160 --> 00:22:20,079
fifty two until December nineteen sixty nine.

450
00:22:20,039 --> 00:22:22,759
Speaker 1: Over a decade and a half of official UFO hunting.

451
00:22:22,880 --> 00:22:25,920
Speaker 2: Yes, the final official public conclusion of blue Book, which

452
00:22:25,960 --> 00:22:28,839
was heavily influenced by a CIA convened group called the

453
00:22:28,920 --> 00:22:31,440
Robertson Panel, was famously dismissive.

454
00:22:31,559 --> 00:22:33,519
Speaker 1: They basically said nothing to see here, folks.

455
00:22:33,799 --> 00:22:37,240
Speaker 2: Exactly. They stated unequivocally that there was no evidence of

456
00:22:37,279 --> 00:22:42,400
extraterrestrial vehicles, no evidence of technology beyond modern science, and importantly,

457
00:22:42,839 --> 00:22:45,880
no threat to national security. It was a neat, tidy,

458
00:22:45,960 --> 00:22:49,759
bureaucratic bow designed to reassure a jittery public, but.

459
00:22:49,960 --> 00:22:53,720
Speaker 1: The actual declassified files till a vastly different, much more

460
00:22:53,720 --> 00:22:56,200
stubborn story than the public relations summary.

461
00:22:56,359 --> 00:22:58,559
Speaker 2: The raw data is much messier, way messier.

462
00:22:58,839 --> 00:23:01,640
Speaker 1: Out of the twelve thousand, six hundred and eighteen sightings

463
00:23:01,680 --> 00:23:05,599
officially reported to and investigated by Blue Book, seven hundred

464
00:23:05,680 --> 00:23:10,319
oh one remain stubbornly definitively classified as unidentified. That's a

465
00:23:10,359 --> 00:23:12,480
significant number of unknowns, it is, And I want to

466
00:23:12,519 --> 00:23:14,599
be clear about the mechanics of these sightings for you

467
00:23:14,680 --> 00:23:17,400
listening right now, we aren't talking about a lone farmer

468
00:23:17,440 --> 00:23:20,000
saying swamp gas or a weather balloon reflecting venus.

469
00:23:20,079 --> 00:23:23,039
Speaker 2: Now, the truly compelling cases involve trained observers.

470
00:23:23,119 --> 00:23:27,279
Speaker 1: Right The files detail high fidelity multisensor encounters. Take the

471
00:23:27,359 --> 00:23:30,279
May nineteen sixty four sightings at the Asheville School for Boys.

472
00:23:30,599 --> 00:23:34,720
You had multiple credible witnesses, detailed sketches, and corroborating accounts,

473
00:23:34,799 --> 00:23:35,319
and that's.

474
00:23:35,160 --> 00:23:37,119
Speaker 2: Just a civilian case exactly.

475
00:23:37,480 --> 00:23:40,160
Speaker 1: Then you have the truly chilling incident involving an Air

476
00:23:40,200 --> 00:23:43,640
Force pilot into Cooma, Washington, who engaged with a set

477
00:23:43,680 --> 00:23:47,119
of unknown lights, resulting in a catastrophic loss of control

478
00:23:47,200 --> 00:23:50,200
of his aircraft and his subsequent death. We are talking

479
00:23:50,240 --> 00:23:54,279
about visual confirmation backed up by hard radar returns.

480
00:23:53,960 --> 00:23:57,119
Speaker 2: And that intersection of visual and radar confirmation is where

481
00:23:57,119 --> 00:24:00,480
the true gravity of the Bluebook files lies. If we

482
00:24:00,519 --> 00:24:03,599
connect this to the bigger picture of Cold War geopolitics,

483
00:24:03,880 --> 00:24:06,319
the question of whether these seven hundred and one unsolved

484
00:24:06,319 --> 00:24:10,799
files proved the existence of extraterrestrial life is almost beside

485
00:24:10,799 --> 00:24:11,279
the point.

486
00:24:11,319 --> 00:24:13,920
Speaker 1: Wait, hold on, how are aliens beside the point? I mean,

487
00:24:13,960 --> 00:24:16,920
if these craft are extraterrestrial, that feels like the entire

488
00:24:17,000 --> 00:24:18,119
point of human history.

489
00:24:18,200 --> 00:24:20,599
Speaker 2: It's beside the point. From the perspective of the Pentagon's

490
00:24:20,599 --> 00:24:22,680
internal logic, think about the mechanics of power.

491
00:24:22,759 --> 00:24:23,480
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm tracking.

492
00:24:23,519 --> 00:24:26,119
Speaker 2: You had the United States military in the mid twentieth century.

493
00:24:26,519 --> 00:24:29,880
It is most well funded, technologically advanced, and heavily armed

494
00:24:29,960 --> 00:24:32,240
organization in the history of human.

495
00:24:32,039 --> 00:24:34,640
Speaker 1: Civilization, absolute global dominance.

496
00:24:34,880 --> 00:24:38,480
Speaker 2: They possess nuclear weapons, elite fighter squadrons, and state of

497
00:24:38,519 --> 00:24:41,599
the art radar networks designed to detect a Soviet bomber

498
00:24:41,599 --> 00:24:45,599
fleet thousands of miles away. And yet the truly eerie

499
00:24:45,680 --> 00:24:48,279
takeaway from the raw blue Book data is that this

500
00:24:48,400 --> 00:24:53,599
supreme military force routinely encountered physical objects operating in their

501
00:24:53,640 --> 00:24:57,880
own sovereign airspace, that they were utterly powerless to explain,

502
00:24:58,240 --> 00:24:59,720
intercept or control.

503
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:02,079
Speaker 1: They were getting out maneuvered in their own backyard.

504
00:25:02,240 --> 00:25:07,160
Speaker 2: Exactly. The objects whatever they were routinely demonstrated kinematic speeds

505
00:25:07,160 --> 00:25:11,119
and maneuvers that defied the known laws of aerodynamics.

506
00:25:10,400 --> 00:25:12,319
Speaker 1: Doing things that our best jets just couldn't do.

507
00:25:12,720 --> 00:25:16,519
Speaker 2: For a global superpower, that level of impotence is terrifying.

508
00:25:17,119 --> 00:25:20,480
The systemic secrecy and the dismissive public conclusions of Project

509
00:25:20,519 --> 00:25:24,559
Bluebook weren't necessarily about hiding the existence of aliens. They

510
00:25:24,599 --> 00:25:26,720
were about hiding the reality of vulnerability.

511
00:25:26,759 --> 00:25:29,000
Speaker 1: Oh wow, they couldn't admit they were helpless precisely.

512
00:25:29,079 --> 00:25:31,599
Speaker 2: Yeah, the military could not afford to let the Soviets

513
00:25:31,759 --> 00:25:34,640
or the American tax paying public know that the United

514
00:25:34,680 --> 00:25:37,440
States Air Force did not have total control of the skies.

515
00:25:37,640 --> 00:25:40,960
It was an exercise in maintaining the illusion of absolute supremacy.

516
00:25:41,200 --> 00:25:44,920
Speaker 1: Wow, that actually reframes the entire UFO debate. For me,

517
00:25:45,319 --> 00:25:48,279
It's not necessarily a cosmic cover up. It's a bureaucratic

518
00:25:48,519 --> 00:25:50,000
ego defense mechanism.

519
00:25:50,079 --> 00:25:51,440
Speaker 2: That's a very good way to summarize it.

520
00:25:51,519 --> 00:25:54,359
Speaker 1: But you know, while psychic spies and anomalous radar returns

521
00:25:54,400 --> 00:25:57,799
feel very sci fi and esoteric, The government's pursuit of

522
00:25:57,839 --> 00:26:00,000
supremacy wasn't always directed at the cloud.

523
00:26:00,440 --> 00:26:02,160
Speaker 2: No, much of it was very grounded.

524
00:26:02,279 --> 00:26:06,839
Speaker 1: It had incredibly dark, grounded, and tangible consequences here on Earth.

525
00:26:07,359 --> 00:26:10,240
Because to ensure they beat their enemies, the US government

526
00:26:10,359 --> 00:26:14,359
routinely decided that the ends justified the means they were

527
00:26:14,400 --> 00:26:16,720
willing to get into bed with the very monsters they

528
00:26:16,759 --> 00:26:19,920
had just finished fighting. The morality of empire is a

529
00:26:19,960 --> 00:26:22,039
brutal thing to examine, and there.

530
00:26:21,920 --> 00:26:25,400
Speaker 2: Is perhaps no starker historical example of trading ethics for

531
00:26:25,480 --> 00:26:28,640
geopolitical supremacy than Operation paper Clip.

532
00:26:28,799 --> 00:26:32,319
Speaker 1: The timeline here is critical. It's September nineteen forty six.

533
00:26:32,720 --> 00:26:35,839
President Harry S. Truman secretly signs off on a program

534
00:26:35,880 --> 00:26:39,960
that would ultimately funnel over sixteen hundred Nazi scientists, engineers,

535
00:26:39,960 --> 00:26:42,119
and technicians out of the ruins of Germany and into

536
00:26:42,119 --> 00:26:42,920
the United.

537
00:26:42,599 --> 00:26:44,279
Speaker 2: States, right at the dawn of the Cold War.

538
00:26:44,440 --> 00:26:47,480
Speaker 1: World War II had barely ended, the ashes of Europe

539
00:26:47,480 --> 00:26:51,319
were still smoldering. The Nuremberg Trials were exposing the absolute

540
00:26:51,359 --> 00:26:54,440
depths of human depravity and the US government made a

541
00:26:54,440 --> 00:26:59,680
calculated decision acquiring German scientific expertise before the Soviets could

542
00:26:59,680 --> 00:27:01,759
get their head hands on. It was vastly more important

543
00:27:01,799 --> 00:27:03,240
than historical justice.

544
00:27:03,319 --> 00:27:07,359
Speaker 2: The mechanical rationale behind paper click was entirely pragmatic, driven

545
00:27:07,400 --> 00:27:10,160
by the looming shadow of the Cold War. The German

546
00:27:10,240 --> 00:27:16,200
war machine had made terrifying, unprecedented advancements in rocketry, aerospace, engineering,

547
00:27:16,440 --> 00:27:17,440
and chemical weapons.

548
00:27:17,519 --> 00:27:19,319
Speaker 1: They had the V two rockets exactly.

549
00:27:19,519 --> 00:27:22,559
Speaker 2: The US military inductrial complex determined that they needed that

550
00:27:22,599 --> 00:27:26,839
intellectual property, so they initiated a covert program run largely

551
00:27:26,880 --> 00:27:31,519
by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency or JIOA, to actively

552
00:27:31,599 --> 00:27:33,359
scrub the records of these scientists.

553
00:27:33,519 --> 00:27:35,119
Speaker 1: They just erased their pass.

554
00:27:34,960 --> 00:27:38,680
Speaker 2: They circumvented Truman's explicit order not to recruit ardent Nazis.

555
00:27:39,160 --> 00:27:41,640
The most famous figure to emerge from this pipeline, of course,

556
00:27:41,960 --> 00:27:43,319
was Werner von Braun.

557
00:27:43,240 --> 00:27:45,160
Speaker 1: The face of the American space program.

558
00:27:45,440 --> 00:27:49,839
Speaker 2: He became the towering, celebrated architect of NASA's Marshall Space

559
00:27:49,920 --> 00:27:52,960
Flight Center and the man who helped build the Saturn

560
00:27:53,079 --> 00:27:55,440
V rocket that took humanity to the Moon.

561
00:27:55,720 --> 00:27:59,079
Speaker 1: But here's where it gets really interesting and deeply disturbing.

562
00:27:59,680 --> 00:28:03,160
All I grew up with this highly sanitized history, right,

563
00:28:03,200 --> 00:28:05,559
this mythology of the good German.

564
00:28:05,359 --> 00:28:08,119
Speaker 2: The idea that they were just a political scientists exactly.

565
00:28:08,279 --> 00:28:11,160
Speaker 1: The narrative was that these guys were just brilliant engineers

566
00:28:11,200 --> 00:28:13,799
who were unfortunately caught up in a bad regime, just

567
00:28:13,880 --> 00:28:17,400
keeping their heads down and doing math. But the declassified

568
00:28:17,440 --> 00:28:19,440
files absolutely shatter that myth.

569
00:28:19,519 --> 00:28:21,000
Speaker 2: The reality was far darker.

570
00:28:21,519 --> 00:28:24,000
Speaker 1: Let's look at the mechanics of von Braun's V two

571
00:28:24,160 --> 00:28:28,480
rocket program in Germany. It didn't exist in a sparrow laboratory.

572
00:28:28,680 --> 00:28:32,039
It relied entirely on horrific forced labor.

573
00:28:31,960 --> 00:28:34,279
Speaker 2: Slave labor to be precise, Yes, they.

574
00:28:34,279 --> 00:28:38,079
Speaker 1: Utilized prisoners from the Middle Bowdra concentration camp. Tens of

575
00:28:38,160 --> 00:28:41,160
thousands of human beings were starved, beaten, and worked to

576
00:28:41,200 --> 00:28:44,799
death in freezing, lightless underground tunnels to build the physical

577
00:28:44,880 --> 00:28:47,480
rockets that von Braun designed. And von Braun was fully

578
00:28:47,519 --> 00:28:51,680
aware of this, and another key paper clip figure, Arthur Rudolph,

579
00:28:51,960 --> 00:28:55,599
was the operations director of that exact underground facility. He

580
00:28:55,720 --> 00:28:59,279
was directly implicated in the utilization of that slave labor.

581
00:28:59,119 --> 00:29:02,000
Speaker 2: And Rudolph was late brought to the US, worked for

582
00:29:02,119 --> 00:29:05,680
NASA and helped develop the Pershing missile and the Saturn.

583
00:29:05,480 --> 00:29:07,880
Speaker 1: V until he finally had to flee YES.

584
00:29:07,680 --> 00:29:11,319
Speaker 2: Before quietly leaving the country decades later when the DOJ

585
00:29:11,480 --> 00:29:12,960
finally started asking questions.

586
00:29:13,319 --> 00:29:16,200
Speaker 1: It's infuriating to use an analogy. It's like a police

587
00:29:16,240 --> 00:29:20,400
department arresting a notorious, prolific serial killer, but instead of

588
00:29:20,400 --> 00:29:23,440
putting him in a maximum security prison, the chief of

589
00:29:23,519 --> 00:29:26,279
police hands him the keys to the precinct and gives

590
00:29:26,359 --> 00:29:28,880
him a six figure salary because the killer happens to

591
00:29:28,920 --> 00:29:31,079
be a world class IT guy and they need their

592
00:29:31,119 --> 00:29:31,960
servers updated.

593
00:29:32,039 --> 00:29:33,960
Speaker 2: That analogy hits the nail on the head regarding the

594
00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:34,799
moral compromise.

595
00:29:35,000 --> 00:29:37,839
Speaker 1: We wanted the top German minds, and the cold hard

596
00:29:37,880 --> 00:29:40,039
reality is that the pop Germans were the ones who

597
00:29:40,039 --> 00:29:43,039
had been coveted, promoted, and utilized by Hitler and Himler.

598
00:29:43,599 --> 00:29:45,720
You didn't get to run the V two program by

599
00:29:45,720 --> 00:29:46,599
being a wallflower.

600
00:29:46,759 --> 00:29:51,559
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate exercise in institutional historical whitewashing. The

601
00:29:51,640 --> 00:29:55,960
JIOA literally put paper clips on the immigration files of

602
00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:59,519
the scientists they wanted, signaling to the evaluators to ignore

603
00:29:59,559 --> 00:30:00,920
their not ZA affiliations.

604
00:30:01,039 --> 00:30:03,400
Speaker 1: Hence, the name Operation Paper Club.

605
00:30:03,519 --> 00:30:06,920
Speaker 2: Exactly. We took the logistical architects of a nightmare, scrubbed

606
00:30:06,920 --> 00:30:10,680
their resumes, granted them security clearances, and eventually put them

607
00:30:10,680 --> 00:30:14,240
on the covers of American magazines as heroes of the

608
00:30:14,240 --> 00:30:14,880
space race.

609
00:30:15,039 --> 00:30:18,160
Speaker 1: It's hard to reconcile that with our national narrative.

610
00:30:18,319 --> 00:30:22,079
Speaker 2: It forces anyone reading these files to confront an incredibly

611
00:30:22,160 --> 00:30:27,240
uncomfortable truth. The soaring, inspirational triumphs of the American Space Program,

612
00:30:27,319 --> 00:30:30,200
one of the crowning achievements of human history, were built

613
00:30:30,319 --> 00:30:33,799
at least in part, on a foundation of sanitized, unprosecuted

614
00:30:33,839 --> 00:30:34,359
war crimes.

615
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:34,799
Speaker 1: Wow.

616
00:30:34,880 --> 00:30:37,440
Speaker 2: When national security is played as the ultimate trump card,

617
00:30:37,880 --> 00:30:41,920
morality is immediately categorized as an operational liability.

618
00:30:41,440 --> 00:30:44,039
Speaker 1: And that exact same playbook, making deals with the devil

619
00:30:44,079 --> 00:30:46,680
to fight a shadow war and ignoring the collateral damage,

620
00:30:46,720 --> 00:30:49,720
was dusted off and used again decades later. Let's fast

621
00:30:49,759 --> 00:30:52,559
forward to the nineteen eighties, the Iran Contra era, Yes,

622
00:30:52,920 --> 00:30:56,519
the height of the Reagan administration, and the explosive investigative

623
00:30:56,559 --> 00:30:59,559
reporting of a journalist named Gary Webb. This is the

624
00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:01,000
Dark Alliance series.

625
00:31:01,240 --> 00:31:03,880
Speaker 2: Gary Webb was an investigative reporter for the San Jose

626
00:31:04,000 --> 00:31:08,319
Mercury News who in nineteen ninety six published a deeply

627
00:31:08,440 --> 00:31:14,279
controversial series of reports detailing a complex logistical pipeline.

628
00:31:13,680 --> 00:31:15,240
Speaker 1: And what a pipeline it was.

629
00:31:15,480 --> 00:31:19,920
Speaker 2: Web outlined how the CIA backed anti Congress rebel groups

630
00:31:19,920 --> 00:31:22,920
in Nicaragua known as the Contras, were deeply linked to

631
00:31:22,960 --> 00:31:26,200
the narcotics networks that fueled the crack cocaine epidemic in

632
00:31:26,240 --> 00:31:26,920
the United.

633
00:31:26,680 --> 00:31:28,359
Speaker 1: States right into our own cities.

634
00:31:28,559 --> 00:31:33,160
Speaker 2: Specifically, he traced the pipeline directly into south central Los Angeles.

635
00:31:33,240 --> 00:31:36,400
Speaker 1: The mechanics of this are a tragic collision of geopolitics

636
00:31:36,400 --> 00:31:39,519
and chemistry. You have the CIA under the Reagan administration,

637
00:31:39,640 --> 00:31:44,039
absolutely obsessed with overthrowing the left wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

638
00:31:44,119 --> 00:31:46,200
Speaker 2: It was their primary focus in Central America.

639
00:31:46,240 --> 00:31:51,200
Speaker 1: But Congress passes the Bowland Amendment, which explicitly legally prohibits

640
00:31:51,240 --> 00:31:54,039
the CIA or the Department of Defense from funding the Contras.

641
00:31:54,480 --> 00:31:57,440
So the Contras suddenly have a massive cash flow problem.

642
00:31:57,480 --> 00:31:59,400
Speaker 2: They needed alternative funding streams.

643
00:31:59,559 --> 00:32:02,599
Speaker 1: They need money to buy guns to solve this. Figures

644
00:32:02,640 --> 00:32:06,200
associated with the contrast partner with Colombian drug cartels to

645
00:32:06,240 --> 00:32:10,519
smuggle massive quantities of incredibly cheap powder cocaine into the

646
00:32:10,640 --> 00:32:12,160
US to raise funds.

647
00:32:11,960 --> 00:32:14,680
Speaker 2: And that influx of cheap cocaine hit the streets at

648
00:32:14,720 --> 00:32:17,640
the exact same moment that a chemical innovation occurred at

649
00:32:17,640 --> 00:32:18,319
the street level.

650
00:32:18,400 --> 00:32:21,880
Speaker 1: Exactly, drug dealers in Los Angeles figure out the mechanics

651
00:32:21,880 --> 00:32:24,640
of cooking powder cocaine with baking soda and water to

652
00:32:24,839 --> 00:32:29,559
create crack, a devastating innovation. It transforms an expensive luxury

653
00:32:29,640 --> 00:32:33,960
drug into something highly addictive, easily transportable, and incredibly cheap.

654
00:32:34,200 --> 00:32:37,279
The Contras get their shadow war funding, and the horrific

655
00:32:37,279 --> 00:32:40,799
byproduct is that South central LA, and eventually urban centers

656
00:32:40,880 --> 00:32:44,440
nationwide are absolutely devastated by the crack epidemic.

657
00:32:44,519 --> 00:32:46,279
Speaker 2: The societal impact was catastrophic.

658
00:32:46,599 --> 00:32:49,599
Speaker 1: Entire communities are destroyed, a generation is lost to addiction,

659
00:32:50,000 --> 00:32:54,079
The ensuing gang violent skyrockets, and the mass incarceration era begins,

660
00:32:54,480 --> 00:32:57,279
and the CIA, according to the documents, essentially look the

661
00:32:57,359 --> 00:33:00,599
other way because the drug money served their geopulitay anti

662
00:33:00,599 --> 00:33:01,559
communist goals.

663
00:33:01,799 --> 00:33:05,400
Speaker 2: When Web initially published this, the blowback was fierce. His

664
00:33:05,440 --> 00:33:08,759
reporting was heavily attacked and discredited by major media outlets,

665
00:33:08,880 --> 00:33:10,559
and he was essentially ruined.

666
00:33:10,240 --> 00:33:12,279
Speaker 1: Professionally they destroyed his career.

667
00:33:12,440 --> 00:33:16,279
Speaker 2: He was pushed out of journalism. But the profound vindication

668
00:33:16,400 --> 00:33:20,240
the declassified receipt came years later. In nineteen ninety eight,

669
00:33:20,359 --> 00:33:24,480
the CIA's own Inspector General, Frederick Hitz, released a dense,

670
00:33:24,799 --> 00:33:26,799
multi volume internal report.

671
00:33:27,160 --> 00:33:28,400
Speaker 1: And what did that report say?

672
00:33:28,839 --> 00:33:32,079
Speaker 2: Buried within the bureaucratic language of that report was a

673
00:33:32,200 --> 00:33:36,480
quiet acknowledgment of the core truth web. It uncovered the

674
00:33:36,559 --> 00:33:40,240
agency indeed had relationships with individuals and entities tied to

675
00:33:40,279 --> 00:33:43,680
the contra effort who were heavily implicated in narconics trafficking.

676
00:33:43,720 --> 00:33:44,119
Speaker 1: He knew.

677
00:33:44,319 --> 00:33:47,079
Speaker 2: The report admitted the CIA knew about these activities, did

678
00:33:47,119 --> 00:33:50,640
not prioritize stopping them, and in some cases actively intervened

679
00:33:50,680 --> 00:33:53,759
to protect these individuals from law enforcement scrutiny because they

680
00:33:53,759 --> 00:33:55,319
were valuable assets.

681
00:33:55,440 --> 00:33:57,680
Speaker 1: So they admitted it. But why did it take a

682
00:33:57,720 --> 00:34:00,680
decade for that truth to surface? Why did the institution

683
00:34:00,839 --> 00:34:02,960
let Gary Webb take the fall and ruin his life

684
00:34:03,000 --> 00:34:04,200
while they sat on the truth.

685
00:34:04,559 --> 00:34:07,519
Speaker 2: It comes down to the bureaucratic concept of an issue

686
00:34:07,519 --> 00:34:12,440
becoming radioactive. You have to understand the self preservation mechanisms

687
00:34:12,719 --> 00:34:14,760
of a massive intelligence apparatus.

688
00:34:14,840 --> 00:34:16,480
Speaker 1: How does that self preservation work.

689
00:34:16,679 --> 00:34:20,760
Speaker 2: When an agency makes a covert operational decision to ignore

690
00:34:20,840 --> 00:34:24,960
drug cartels to fund an illegal shadow war, retracting that

691
00:34:25,039 --> 00:34:29,079
operation or genuinely investigating the fallout becomes virtually.

692
00:34:28,760 --> 00:34:30,920
Speaker 1: Impossible because everyone is implicated.

693
00:34:31,079 --> 00:34:34,360
Speaker 2: Exactly because the mechanics of the cover up are too intertwined,

694
00:34:34,760 --> 00:34:39,000
Pulling that single thread threatens to unravel the entire institutional sweater.

695
00:34:39,119 --> 00:34:40,280
Speaker 1: It's a domino effect.

696
00:34:40,519 --> 00:34:44,199
Speaker 2: If an internal investigator exposes the drug runners, they expose

697
00:34:44,280 --> 00:34:47,519
the contra's funding stream. If they expose the contras, they

698
00:34:47,519 --> 00:34:50,920
exposed the CIA handlers who authorized it. If they expose

699
00:34:51,000 --> 00:34:55,000
the handlers, they exposed the executive branch officials who bypass Congress.

700
00:34:55,400 --> 00:34:56,960
Speaker 1: The whole house of cards comes down.

701
00:34:57,079 --> 00:35:00,440
Speaker 2: The entire chain of command becomes radioactive. Nobody wants to

702
00:35:00,440 --> 00:35:04,119
touch it, so the institution instinctively buries the truth, attacks

703
00:35:04,159 --> 00:35:06,920
the accuser, and protects the ecosystem.

704
00:35:06,519 --> 00:35:09,199
Speaker 1: Which brings us to a devastating realization about how these

705
00:35:09,239 --> 00:35:13,679
agencies operate. The weapons, the tactics, and the absolute paranoia

706
00:35:13,760 --> 00:35:17,559
developed to fight overseas. Enemies don't stay overseas.

707
00:35:17,599 --> 00:35:18,400
Speaker 2: They always come back.

708
00:35:18,599 --> 00:35:23,320
Speaker 1: The imperial boomerang always returns. The tactics bleed onto American soil,

709
00:35:23,360 --> 00:35:27,119
affecting everyday citizens and leaving scars that last for generations.

710
00:35:27,639 --> 00:35:31,079
We've seen it with the crack epidemic destroying communities. But

711
00:35:31,639 --> 00:35:35,440
let's look at how the government actively intentionally targeted its

712
00:35:35,480 --> 00:35:38,360
own people. Let's talk about the mechanics of co intel pro.

713
00:35:38,559 --> 00:35:42,280
Speaker 2: Co intel Pro, which is an acronym for counterintelligence program,

714
00:35:42,639 --> 00:35:46,320
was a series of secret, often highly illegal projects conducted

715
00:35:46,360 --> 00:35:49,239
by the FBI from nineteen fifty six in nineteen seventy one.

716
00:35:49,159 --> 00:35:50,360
Speaker 1: The j Edgar Hoover era.

717
00:35:50,599 --> 00:35:53,360
Speaker 2: Yes, the stated purpose of the program, which was laid

718
00:35:53,400 --> 00:35:56,599
bare and stunning detail by the Senate's Church Committee investigations

719
00:35:56,599 --> 00:36:01,920
in the nineteen seventies, was to actively expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit,

720
00:36:02,039 --> 00:36:07,119
or otherwise neutralize domestic groups and individuals the FBI deemed dangerous.

721
00:36:07,159 --> 00:36:09,840
Speaker 1: And we really need to define who the FBI considered

722
00:36:09,920 --> 00:36:12,199
dangerous in this context, because we aren't just talking about

723
00:36:12,280 --> 00:36:14,239
violent extremists or foreign spies.

724
00:36:14,519 --> 00:36:16,880
Speaker 2: No, the net was cast incredibly wide.

725
00:36:16,920 --> 00:36:21,440
Speaker 1: They aggressively targeted mainstream civil rights groups, anti war activists,

726
00:36:21,719 --> 00:36:27,039
black liberation movement, feminist organizations, and incredibly prominently, doctor Martin

727
00:36:27,119 --> 00:36:28,280
Luther King Junior himself.

728
00:36:28,440 --> 00:36:30,239
Speaker 2: MLKA was a primary target.

729
00:36:30,079 --> 00:36:33,199
Speaker 1: And the mechanics of their tactics went far beyond simply

730
00:36:33,239 --> 00:36:38,079
watching people. They were actively destructive. We're talking about widespread,

731
00:36:38,239 --> 00:36:44,079
warrantless wiretapping, deploying agent provocateurs to incite violence within peaceful groups,

732
00:36:44,559 --> 00:36:48,960
drafting forged letters to ruin marriages, and planting false stories

733
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:51,960
and friendly press outlets to turn allied groups against each

734
00:36:51,960 --> 00:36:53,039
other from the inside out.

735
00:36:53,239 --> 00:36:57,719
Speaker 2: This raises an important question about intent. The declassified memos

736
00:36:57,719 --> 00:37:01,280
from Cointel Pro raise a profound question about the fundamental

737
00:37:01,280 --> 00:37:03,079
philosophy of domestic intelligence.

738
00:37:03,199 --> 00:37:03,800
Speaker 1: What do you mean?

739
00:37:04,039 --> 00:37:06,800
Speaker 2: When you analyze the files, it becomes clear that Cointel

740
00:37:06,840 --> 00:37:10,800
pro wasn't about law enforcement in the traditional sense. Surveillance

741
00:37:10,840 --> 00:37:13,320
implies watching a subject to see if a crime occurs

742
00:37:13,599 --> 00:37:15,000
and then prosecuting that crime.

743
00:37:15,079 --> 00:37:16,519
Speaker 1: Right, that's what police are supposed to do.

744
00:37:16,719 --> 00:37:21,440
Speaker 2: Cointel pro was entirely different. It was about the extra judicial,

745
00:37:21,639 --> 00:37:25,880
unconstitutional destruction of progressive political movements in order to maintain

746
00:37:25,920 --> 00:37:27,599
the existing social status quo.

747
00:37:27,800 --> 00:37:30,159
Speaker 1: They were playing politics, not fighting crime.

748
00:37:30,280 --> 00:37:36,199
Speaker 2: The FBI inherently viewed social change, even peaceful democratic social change,

749
00:37:36,360 --> 00:37:38,719
as a threat to the national security. Apparatus.

750
00:37:38,880 --> 00:37:41,599
Speaker 1: The single most sickening piece of paper in this entire

751
00:37:41,719 --> 00:37:44,840
stack of documents is the anonymous letters sent to Martin

752
00:37:44,920 --> 00:37:46,840
Luther King Junior in nineteen sixty four.

753
00:37:47,079 --> 00:37:48,639
Speaker 2: That letter is infamous.

754
00:37:48,719 --> 00:37:53,280
Speaker 1: The FBI, operating under William Sullivan, Hoover's deputy, had illegally

755
00:37:53,320 --> 00:37:57,079
wire tapped King's hotel rooms. They compiled an audio tape

756
00:37:57,079 --> 00:38:00,400
of alleged sexual indiscretions, packaged it up, and mailed it

757
00:38:00,400 --> 00:38:02,679
to his home, along with an anonymous threatening.

758
00:38:02,400 --> 00:38:03,800
Speaker 2: Letter sent directly to his family.

759
00:38:03,880 --> 00:38:06,079
Speaker 1: And when you read the unredacted draft of that letter,

760
00:38:06,199 --> 00:38:09,440
the explicit, undeniable goal of the federal government was to

761
00:38:09,440 --> 00:38:13,119
cause him such immense psychological torment that he would commit

762
00:38:13,159 --> 00:38:15,920
suicide before accepting the Nobil Piece prize.

763
00:38:16,039 --> 00:38:17,119
Speaker 2: It is remarkably cruel.

764
00:38:17,280 --> 00:38:20,119
Speaker 1: The letter literally tells him there is only one thing

765
00:38:20,239 --> 00:38:23,400
left for you to do. When you read that, you

766
00:38:23,519 --> 00:38:27,239
realize there is no floor. There is no moral line

767
00:38:27,280 --> 00:38:30,000
the institution wouldn't cross to protect itself.

768
00:38:30,360 --> 00:38:34,360
Speaker 2: It demonstrates the terrifying, unchecked power of an agency operating

769
00:38:34,400 --> 00:38:39,000
in total secrecy, devoid of congressional oversight. When a domestic

770
00:38:39,119 --> 00:38:42,679
law enforcement bureau decides that it and not. The electorate

771
00:38:43,199 --> 00:38:47,360
is the ultimate arbiter of what constitutes an acceptable political ideology.

772
00:38:47,800 --> 00:38:50,840
The core mechanics of democracy are fundamentally compromised.

773
00:38:50,920 --> 00:38:52,559
Speaker 1: They set themselves above the law.

774
00:38:52,760 --> 00:38:54,960
Speaker 2: The agency becomes an entity unto itself.

775
00:38:55,039 --> 00:38:58,039
Speaker 1: Its collateral damage of the highest order. And speaking of

776
00:38:58,079 --> 00:39:01,039
collateral damage inflicted upon the citizen by its own government,

777
00:39:01,280 --> 00:39:03,880
we have to examine a literal physical poison that the

778
00:39:03,880 --> 00:39:07,079
military unleashed, not just on an enemy landscape, but on

779
00:39:07,119 --> 00:39:09,840
its own soldiers. Let's look at the mechanics of Agent

780
00:39:09,880 --> 00:39:11,239
Orange and Operation ranch Hand.

781
00:39:11,719 --> 00:39:15,239
Speaker 2: Operation Ranchhand was the US military's defoliation program during the

782
00:39:15,280 --> 00:39:18,679
Vietnam War, running from nineteen sixty two to nineteen seventy one.

783
00:39:18,760 --> 00:39:19,599
Speaker 1: What was the goal there?

784
00:39:19,760 --> 00:39:24,199
Speaker 2: The tactical military strategy was relatively straightforward. The Viet Cong

785
00:39:24,639 --> 00:39:28,599
utilized the dense jungle canopy for camouflage and relied on

786
00:39:28,719 --> 00:39:32,960
rural cross for sustenance right guerrilla warfare. The Pentagon decided

787
00:39:33,000 --> 00:39:36,199
to strip away that advantage by chemically destroying the ecosystem.

788
00:39:36,960 --> 00:39:40,760
To accomplish this, the Air Force sprayed nearly nineteen million

789
00:39:40,800 --> 00:39:44,719
gallons of highly toxic herbicides over the jungles of Vietnam.

790
00:39:44,840 --> 00:39:48,320
Speaker 1: Laos and Thailand nineteen million gallons.

791
00:39:47,920 --> 00:39:51,599
Speaker 2: And of that total, at least eleven million gallons consisted

792
00:39:51,639 --> 00:39:54,679
of the specific chemical cocktail known as agent orange.

793
00:39:54,760 --> 00:39:57,719
Speaker 1: The military goal might have been a sterile strategic equation

794
00:39:57,840 --> 00:40:00,679
on a map in Washington, but the biologic mechanics of

795
00:40:00,679 --> 00:40:03,840
what they actually did resulted in an incalculable human cost.

796
00:40:04,039 --> 00:40:06,719
Speaker 2: The health fallout was unprecedented.

797
00:40:06,159 --> 00:40:08,880
Speaker 1: Because agent orange wasn't just a heavy duty weed killer.

798
00:40:09,440 --> 00:40:13,480
During its expedited manufacturing process, it became heavily contaminated with

799
00:40:13,519 --> 00:40:17,599
a byproduct called TCDD dioxin, and TCDD dioxin is one

800
00:40:17,599 --> 00:40:21,440
of the most toxic, insidious chemical compounds known to science.

801
00:40:21,519 --> 00:40:22,760
Speaker 2: It is incredibly dangerous.

802
00:40:22,920 --> 00:40:25,880
Speaker 1: It is fat soluble, meaning once it enters the body,

803
00:40:25,920 --> 00:40:28,840
it doesn't leave, and the fallout didn't stay confined to

804
00:40:28,880 --> 00:40:31,639
the Vietnamese jungle, and it certainly didn't dissipate when the

805
00:40:31,679 --> 00:40:33,199
Paris Peace Accords were signed.

806
00:40:33,400 --> 00:40:37,400
Speaker 2: The exposure mechanism was inescapable for the people there. American

807
00:40:37,440 --> 00:40:41,119
troops on the ground were marching through soaked foliage, drinking

808
00:40:41,239 --> 00:40:44,840
contaminated water, and inhaling the mist. As the C one

809
00:40:44,960 --> 00:40:48,840
twenty three transport planes sprayed it directly overhead.

810
00:40:49,000 --> 00:40:52,119
Speaker 1: I want you, the listener, to really put yourself in

811
00:40:52,159 --> 00:40:54,599
the boots of a veteran for a second. Imagine it's

812
00:40:54,679 --> 00:40:57,840
nineteen sixty eight. You are drafted, you answer the call,

813
00:40:57,920 --> 00:41:00,840
you serve your country, and you managed to survive the

814
00:41:00,960 --> 00:41:05,400
visceral daily horrors of a brutal war in Vietnam or Thailand,

815
00:41:05,760 --> 00:41:08,440
much like the veteran Fred Marshall mentioned in our source.

816
00:41:08,199 --> 00:41:09,360
Speaker 2: Document, they went through hell.

817
00:41:09,559 --> 00:41:11,719
Speaker 1: You come home, you kiss the tarmac, you think you're

818
00:41:11,760 --> 00:41:14,280
finally safe. You start a family, build a life, and

819
00:41:14,320 --> 00:41:17,800
then ten twenty years later, the biological time bomb goes off.

820
00:41:17,920 --> 00:41:19,760
Speaker 2: The latency period is terrifying.

821
00:41:20,079 --> 00:41:24,119
Speaker 1: You develop early on set Parkinson's or severe peripheral neuropathy

822
00:41:24,480 --> 00:41:29,039
or a rare soft tissue sarcoma, and infinitely worse your children.

823
00:41:29,079 --> 00:41:32,079
Your biological children born years after you left the jungle

824
00:41:32,280 --> 00:41:36,440
are born with severe life altering birth defects like spina bifida.

825
00:41:36,599 --> 00:41:38,079
Speaker 2: It passes to the next generation.

826
00:41:38,320 --> 00:41:41,920
Speaker 1: You survived the sniper fire, only to realize years later

827
00:41:42,000 --> 00:41:45,039
that you brought a chemical weapon home hidden inside your

828
00:41:45,199 --> 00:41:49,199
very DNA. It is a living, transgenerational genetic curse.

829
00:41:49,519 --> 00:41:52,599
Speaker 2: The profound sense of betrayal felt by those veterans cannot

830
00:41:52,639 --> 00:41:56,639
be overstated because for decades after the war, the bureaucratic

831
00:41:56,679 --> 00:41:59,840
mechanics of the government and the chemical manufacturers worked in

832
00:42:00,039 --> 00:42:01,599
hand them to deny culpability.

833
00:42:01,639 --> 00:42:03,119
Speaker 1: They fought the veterans tooth and nail.

834
00:42:03,320 --> 00:42:07,239
Speaker 2: They aggressively dragged their feet on acknowledging the epidemiological link

835
00:42:07,480 --> 00:42:11,760
between agent orange exposure and these horrifying health outcomes. They

836
00:42:11,800 --> 00:42:15,000
demanded impossible burdens of proof from sick and dying.

837
00:42:14,840 --> 00:42:16,920
Speaker 1: Men, just waiting for them to die so they wouldn't

838
00:42:16,920 --> 00:42:17,280
have to pay.

839
00:42:17,440 --> 00:42:21,360
Speaker 2: Today, the Department of Veterans Affairs does finally recognize a

840
00:42:21,440 --> 00:42:25,679
long list of presumptive conditions tied to exposure, including providing

841
00:42:25,679 --> 00:42:28,920
benefits for the children of veterans with spina bifida, But

842
00:42:29,000 --> 00:42:32,400
that administrative recognition came far too late for thousands of

843
00:42:32,440 --> 00:42:34,920
families who went bankrupt paying medical bills.

844
00:42:35,000 --> 00:42:36,079
Speaker 1: Too little, too late.

845
00:42:36,280 --> 00:42:39,480
Speaker 2: It is a stark mechanical reminder that the true cost

846
00:42:39,519 --> 00:42:43,280
of war is never neatly confined to the battlefield timeline.

847
00:42:43,480 --> 00:42:46,239
It is carried forward in the cellular biology and the

848
00:42:46,239 --> 00:42:48,119
bloodlines of the people ordered to fight it.

849
00:42:48,320 --> 00:42:51,519
Speaker 1: And you know we sit here dissecting the nineteen fifties,

850
00:42:51,519 --> 00:42:55,400
the sixties, the seventies. It is so easy, almost comforting,

851
00:42:55,639 --> 00:42:58,039
to view this as dusty, black and white history.

852
00:42:58,119 --> 00:42:59,840
Speaker 2: You like to think we've evolved.

853
00:42:59,519 --> 00:43:01,559
Speaker 1: Right to say, Okay, while we were naive back then,

854
00:43:01,639 --> 00:43:05,159
the Cold War made people crazy, but we have congressional oversight.

855
00:43:05,239 --> 00:43:08,800
Now we have the Internet. The system is modernized and transparent.

856
00:43:09,360 --> 00:43:12,639
But the documents prove that is a dangerous, comforting illusion.

857
00:43:12,800 --> 00:43:14,599
Speaker 2: The underlying architecture remains.

858
00:43:15,000 --> 00:43:19,039
Speaker 1: The underlying mechanics of institutional self preservation haven't changed at all,

859
00:43:19,119 --> 00:43:22,320
which brings us inevitably to the present day. We have

860
00:43:22,400 --> 00:43:25,079
to unpack the mechanics of the twenty twenty six Epstein

861
00:43:25,119 --> 00:43:25,840
files drop.

862
00:43:26,039 --> 00:43:29,599
Speaker 2: The Jeffrey Epstein case has for over a decade served

863
00:43:29,639 --> 00:43:32,760
as the ultimate focal point for public distrust regarding the

864
00:43:32,800 --> 00:43:36,679
intersection of wealth, elite access, and the justice system.

865
00:43:36,480 --> 00:43:37,920
Speaker 1: The ultimate symbol of corruption.

866
00:43:38,239 --> 00:43:40,960
Speaker 2: But the specific event we are analyzing in these documents

867
00:43:41,000 --> 00:43:43,840
is the massive Department of Justice release that occurred on

868
00:43:43,920 --> 00:43:47,559
January thirty, twenty twenty six. After years of litigation and

869
00:43:47,599 --> 00:43:51,199
public pressure, a judge ordered the unsealing of a monumental

870
00:43:51,280 --> 00:43:55,480
data dump over three million pages of internal documents, flight logs,

871
00:43:55,719 --> 00:43:58,719
two thousand videos, and one hundred and eighty thousand images

872
00:43:58,719 --> 00:44:02,719
tied to the investigations to Epstein and his accomplice, Gislaine Maxwell.

873
00:44:02,800 --> 00:44:06,039
Speaker 1: The public demanded transparency. They wanted the hidden architecture of

874
00:44:06,079 --> 00:44:09,159
this horrific network exposed to the light. But what actually

875
00:44:09,159 --> 00:44:10,519
happened when the DOJ hit.

876
00:44:10,480 --> 00:44:11,519
Speaker 2: Public It was a disaster.

877
00:44:11,800 --> 00:44:16,159
Speaker 1: The logistical rollout was an absolute chaotic disaster. The DOJ

878
00:44:16,440 --> 00:44:19,639
was under strict legal orders to carefully redact the files

879
00:44:19,639 --> 00:44:22,360
to protect the identities of the victims and the survivor's

880
00:44:22,400 --> 00:44:25,119
people who had already suffered unimaginable trauma.

881
00:44:25,320 --> 00:44:27,880
Speaker 2: That should have been the absolute priority.

882
00:44:27,559 --> 00:44:32,400
Speaker 1: But instead the mechanics of the release failed catastrophically due

883
00:44:32,440 --> 00:44:36,119
to what they called data processing errors. There were massive

884
00:44:36,159 --> 00:44:40,199
redaction failures. The identities, real names, and in some cases

885
00:44:40,320 --> 00:44:42,920
unredacted photos of nearly one hundred women out of a

886
00:44:42,920 --> 00:44:46,119
protected list of three hundred and fifty survivors whose privacy

887
00:44:46,199 --> 00:44:50,199
was legally guaranteed were improperly exposed to the entire Internet

888
00:44:50,280 --> 00:44:51,639
in real time, which.

889
00:44:51,440 --> 00:44:54,800
Speaker 2: Forces us to critically examine the mechanics of modern transparency.

890
00:44:55,199 --> 00:44:57,519
When a failure of this magnitude occurs at the highest

891
00:44:57,559 --> 00:45:00,400
levels of the Justice Department. You have to ask, is

892
00:45:00,400 --> 00:45:04,079
this a case of persistent, staggering technical incompetence or is

893
00:45:04,079 --> 00:45:06,800
it a manifestation of willful negligence? Right?

894
00:45:06,840 --> 00:45:08,119
Speaker 1: How do you mess up that badly?

895
00:45:08,440 --> 00:45:11,119
Speaker 2: How does an agency with billions of dollars in funding

896
00:45:11,280 --> 00:45:14,639
fail to properly flatten the PDF or run a secure

897
00:45:14,679 --> 00:45:18,440
redaction script. Even when the public successfully forces the system

898
00:45:18,480 --> 00:45:22,159
to open its vault, the machinery of government bureaucracy remains

899
00:45:22,199 --> 00:45:26,599
incredibly chaotic and fundamentally protective of its own ecosystem.

900
00:45:26,679 --> 00:45:29,320
Speaker 1: It protects the elites and exposes the vulnerable.

901
00:45:29,679 --> 00:45:32,480
Speaker 2: The mishandling of the twenty twenty six drop prove that

902
00:45:32,559 --> 00:45:35,960
even in the modern digital era, with all our sophisticated

903
00:45:35,960 --> 00:45:40,760
e diiscovery software, the system is fundamentally flawed or perhaps

904
00:45:40,800 --> 00:45:43,679
working exactly as designed when it comes to handling the

905
00:45:43,679 --> 00:45:46,440
secrets of the powerful while disregarding the vulnerable.

906
00:45:46,679 --> 00:45:49,519
Speaker 1: And that right there is the overarching thematic mechanism of

907
00:45:49,519 --> 00:45:52,880
everything we've talked about today. It's the terrifying realization that

908
00:45:52,920 --> 00:45:57,679
the system isn't necessarily broken, It's functioning exactly as its architecture.

909
00:45:57,079 --> 00:45:58,880
Speaker 2: Dictator, it's doing what it was built to do.

910
00:45:59,079 --> 00:46:01,719
Speaker 1: Whether it's the cia A structurally covering up the contra's

911
00:46:01,800 --> 00:46:05,000
drug running to protect its funding, or the DOJ botching

912
00:46:05,000 --> 00:46:08,119
the protection of Epstein's victims while safeguarding the names of

913
00:46:08,119 --> 00:46:12,960
elite clients, the bureaucracy will always reflexively shield itself first.

914
00:46:13,119 --> 00:46:17,079
Speaker 3: The institution survives, at all costs the collateral damage, whether

915
00:46:17,119 --> 00:46:20,239
they are m culture tests subjects stripped of their minds,

916
00:46:20,679 --> 00:46:25,239
civil rights leaders driven to despair, Vietnam veterans carrying poison DNA,

917
00:46:25,800 --> 00:46:29,559
or trafficked women exposed to the public, are always mathematically

918
00:46:29,920 --> 00:46:32,880
secondary to the preservation of the institution itself.

919
00:46:33,199 --> 00:46:36,639
Speaker 2: If we attempt a grand synthesis of all these disparate threads,

920
00:46:37,119 --> 00:46:41,159
a very clear, highly unsettling picture of institutional mechanics emerges.

921
00:46:41,280 --> 00:46:43,159
Speaker 1: Tie it all together for us, from the.

922
00:46:43,159 --> 00:46:47,360
Speaker 2: Physical boundary violations of harvesting children's bones in Projects Sunshine,

923
00:46:47,559 --> 00:46:51,440
to the psychological torture chambers designed by Ewen Cameron and Culture,

924
00:46:51,719 --> 00:46:55,599
to the calculated historical whitewashing of Nazi engineers in Paperclip,

925
00:46:55,880 --> 00:46:57,920
and right up to the modern digital chaos of the

926
00:46:57,960 --> 00:47:03,719
Epstein records. The declassified documents consistently reveal a singular operational.

927
00:47:03,079 --> 00:47:04,400
Speaker 1: Truth, and what is that truth?

928
00:47:04,800 --> 00:47:08,199
Speaker 2: Large institutions, regardless of the era or the technology available,

929
00:47:08,280 --> 00:47:11,400
will routinely cross the most profound moral and ethical lines

930
00:47:11,440 --> 00:47:15,159
imaginal in the name of security, power, or mere bureaucratic convenience.

931
00:47:15,519 --> 00:47:19,239
The mechanism of power prioritizes its own survival above all else.

932
00:47:19,559 --> 00:47:23,360
Speaker 1: It's heavy. It is an incredibly heavy burden to process

933
00:47:23,440 --> 00:47:26,760
all of this and realize what the machinery is capable of.

934
00:47:27,280 --> 00:47:29,360
But we can't look away from the blueprints.

935
00:47:29,519 --> 00:47:33,079
Speaker 2: We absolutely shouldn't look away. While parsing this information can

936
00:47:33,119 --> 00:47:36,840
feel daunting or cynical, understanding the mechanics of these historical

937
00:47:36,880 --> 00:47:39,679
events is the ultimate tool for critical thinking.

938
00:47:39,960 --> 00:47:41,400
Speaker 1: It's how we defend ourselves.

939
00:47:41,960 --> 00:47:45,519
Speaker 2: When you understand the logistical history of how governments manipulate truth,

940
00:47:45,920 --> 00:47:49,800
how the operationalized shadow networks, and how they calculate human collateral,

941
00:47:50,440 --> 00:47:56,880
you become immune to blind default. Trust Knowledge is the countermeasure.

942
00:47:56,960 --> 00:47:58,639
Speaker 1: It shines a light in the bink corners.

943
00:47:58,840 --> 00:48:02,119
Speaker 2: It prevents these historical collisions from remaining hidden in the dark,

944
00:48:02,400 --> 00:48:05,639
and it allows us to demand rigorous accountability in the present.

945
00:48:06,079 --> 00:48:08,599
Because we have the receipts of exactly what they are

946
00:48:08,639 --> 00:48:11,000
capable of doing when they think no one is watching.

947
00:48:11,320 --> 00:48:14,079
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree more. Understanding the past is the only

948
00:48:14,119 --> 00:48:16,800
way to decode the present. And as we wrap up

949
00:48:16,840 --> 00:48:19,000
this deep dive into the archives, I want to leave

950
00:48:19,079 --> 00:48:22,719
you the listener with one final, deeply chilling thought.

951
00:48:22,760 --> 00:48:24,920
Speaker 2: Tom all Over, this is the part that keeps me

952
00:48:25,000 --> 00:48:25,440
up at night.

953
00:48:25,559 --> 00:48:28,440
Speaker 1: Think about the massive time delay we've been discussing today.

954
00:48:28,559 --> 00:48:30,840
We are only just now in the last few decades

955
00:48:30,960 --> 00:48:35,719
fully analyzing the unredacted declassified files from the nineteen fifties,

956
00:48:35,760 --> 00:48:38,800
the sixties, and the seventies. It took half a century

957
00:48:38,840 --> 00:48:41,519
for the mechanical truth about m CULTRA or the FBI's

958
00:48:41,599 --> 00:48:44,239
vendetta against MLKA to fully see.

959
00:48:44,079 --> 00:48:46,199
Speaker 2: The light of day, a fifty year leg.

960
00:48:46,440 --> 00:48:51,599
Speaker 1: So ask yourself, what highly classified logic defying deeply unaccountable

961
00:48:51,599 --> 00:48:53,880
programs do you think are running right now in this

962
00:48:54,039 --> 00:48:56,800
very second, deep within the black budget that won't be

963
00:48:56,800 --> 00:49:00,039
declassified until the year twenty seventy, When your grand some

964
00:49:00,159 --> 00:49:02,760
kids are cleaning out the attic and prying open that

965
00:49:02,880 --> 00:49:05,679
locked metal box. What receipts are they going to find

966
00:49:05,679 --> 00:49:06,239
about our era?

967
00:49:06,400 --> 00:49:07,519
Speaker 2: That is a question worth asking.

968
00:49:07,639 --> 00:49:10,960
Speaker 1: What do you think which of these declassified operations fundamentally

969
00:49:11,000 --> 00:49:14,400
shocked you the most, and what specific modern program do

970
00:49:14,440 --> 00:49:17,239
you suspect is currently hiding behind the wall of classification.

971
00:49:17,920 --> 00:49:19,840
Drop down and leave a comment below to answer. We

972
00:49:19,880 --> 00:49:21,280
want to know exactly where you stand.

973
00:49:21,400 --> 00:49:24,079
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us on thrilling threads, and remember, keep

974
00:49:24,159 --> 00:49:25,000
questioning everything.