Speaker 1: You know those moments when you hear something so outlandish,
so unbelievable, that you instantly just think, Okay, that's pure fantasy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, like a secret society pulling strings, or some
hidden tech the government's hiding.
Speaker 1: Exactly. We all have that mental file for conspiracy theories.
But what if that filing system isn't quite as neat
as we think. What if history itself, you know, blurs
those lines, sometimes revealing times when the so called unbelievable
stuff actually happened, and often orchestrated by institutions we're sort
of taught to trust.
Speaker 2: That's precisely the well unsettling territory we're venturing into today.
It's fascinating and maybe a little disturbing to think how
many documented historical events, if you just heard them cold,
without context, you dismiss them as paranoid delusions. So our
deep dive today it cracks open the archives on several
occasions where the US government got involved in covert, really
controversial operations, things that sound more like spy thriller plots
actual history.
Speaker 1: Exactly. Forget the dry textbooks for a minute. We've got
our hands on some compelling historical documents, reports, things that
expose some truly jaw dropping government overreach. I mean, we're
talking surveillance that makes Big Brother look like amateur hour,
sophisticated manipulation of public opinion, and frankly unethical experiments done
on their own citizens without them knowing or consenting.
Speaker 3: It's pretty shocking stuff.
Speaker 1: Now, you might have a vague awareness of some of this,
maybe seen a headline or something, sure, but we're going
to pull back the curtain, really look at the specifics,
connect the threads, hopefully give you a much deeper and
maybe yeah, more unsettling understanding of what really went down.
Speaker 2: Our goal isn't to drown you in details, but to
shine a light on these events with clarity, reveal some
of the really surprising truths in these records. And it's
crucial to get that these aren't just relics of some
bygone era. Looking at these past actions gives us a
really essential framework for analyzing current talks about government power.
That exactly the delicate balance of civil liberties and just
how important transparency and account of are in any democracy. Really,
it raises a big question, as informed people, how do
we learn from these often uncomfortable truths about our own history.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's kick things off with something called Cotelpro. Now
this wasn't some shadowy fringe thing. This was a fully authorized,
covert program run by the FBI.
Speaker 2: The FBI from nineteen fifty six right up until nineteen
seventy one.
Speaker 1: And the official goals they sounded pretty harmless. Protecting national security,
preventing violence, maintaining the existing social and political order. Sounds almost,
I don't know, patriotic, right.
Speaker 2: But then you dig into the operational reality what they
actually did, and the picture gets significantly darker. While the
stated aims were these broad security ideas, the program's actual
focus was illegally disrupting dissident political organizations right here the US.
Speaker 1: So not foreign espionage. This was about suppressing domestic descent,
targeting groups pushing for change, and the list of targets yeah, wow,
it's a real cross section of progressive movements from that time.
We're talking women's rights groups, the nonviolent civil rights movement, Core,
the Congress of Racial Equality, the American Indian movement.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And it went even further, specifically targeting prominent black
leaders and civil rights organizations.
Speaker 1: I mean like the Black Panther Party, Martin Luther King
Junior's SCLC.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, the Nation of Islam under Elijah Mohammad and Malcolm
X before he was killed. Even established groups like the
NAACP and SNCC.
Speaker 1: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. It's truly staggering list when
you see it.
Speaker 2: All laid out like that, And what's really revealing are
the objectives written down in internal FBI memos. Their goal
wasn't just to watch these groups. No, No, the stated
goal was, and I quote, to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit,
or otherwise neutralize these movements and their leaders neutralized.
Speaker 1: Wow. So it wasn't about investigating crimes. It was a
deliberate effort to just dismantle legitimate movements people exercising free
search exactly.
Speaker 2: It was about dismantling them.
Speaker 1: And JAJR. Hoover, the FBI director for like forever, he
made the agency's view totally clear. He called the Black
Panther Party the greatest threat to the internal security of
the country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let that sink in, a domestic civil rights group
a bigger threat than actual foreign spies or terrorists.
Speaker 1: It really shows the lens they were using, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: It really underscores the ideology. They weren't seen as citizens
with rights, but as fundamental threats to the social order
Hoover wanted to keep. It shows this pattern, you know,
government actively suppressing dissent, defining certain movements as threats. It
highlights that tension between state security and citizen rights.
Speaker 1: So how did they actually try to neutralize these groups?
The tactics were well remarkably underhanded, you say, the least
our sources talk about spreading rumors to incite violence, like
they faked a letter from one black power group to
the Black Panthers warning about an ambush, all orchestrated by
the FBI.
Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
Speaker 1: They actively tried to exploit disagreements within or between groups,
so division weaken them, exploit dissension, and of course the
classic tactic fear mongering, linking them to communism, painting them
with that double evil brush. As one source put it.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, linking civil rights or any descent to communism.
That was a super effective tactic for the FBI during
the Cold War.
Speaker 3: Played on people's fears exactly.
Speaker 2: It let them delegitimize these groups for a lot of Americans.
As one expert in our sources says, these black organizations
knew perfectly well that being labeled read was the main
way the government could justify dismantling their efforts.
Speaker 1: It's chilling seeing these tactics laid out so plainly in
the documents, Just the insidious nature of it all. It
makes you ask, have we really moved past this or
do we see echoes co intel pro today?
Speaker 3: Well, that's the thing.
Speaker 2: This broader context reveals some disturbing parallels in how movements
like Black Lives Matter are sometimes discussed or surveilled.
Speaker 1: You mean, like that twenty seventeen FBI report the Black Identity.
Speaker 2: Extremists one exactly that, and operations like Ironfist, which used
more intelligence gathering undercover agents. It raises serious questions, are
these past tactics truly history? The language used, the focus
on perceived internal threats, it really echoes the co intel
Pro justifications.
Speaker 1: It's a sobering thought, and it makes the fact that E. C.
Berkeley's Library now has this digital database of FBI records
on co intel Pro surveillance incredibly important.
Speaker 3: It's huge.
Speaker 1: It gives us a real searchable window into these past abuses,
not just for academics, but like one source suggests, maybe
even an unplanned guide for activists.
Speaker 2: Today, Absolutely access to these records is vital for understanding
these long term patterns of surveillance, how dissent has been managed,
sometimes suppressed. Yeah, and this wider raises another question, what
responsibility does the government have to actually make these significant
records accessible transparently.
Speaker 1: Good point. Okay, let's shift gears to another really troubling chapter,
the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment.
Speaker 3: Oh, Tuskegee, this wasn't.
Speaker 1: Brief or isolated. He went on for an astonishing forty years,
nineteen thirty two all the way to nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 3: Forty years the US Public Health.
Speaker 1: Service, Tuskegee Institute. They supposedly started to just observe untreated
syphilis in black men in rural Alabama.
Speaker 2: But I mean the ethical violations they were just baked
into the core of this experiment from the start.
Speaker 3: It's deeply disturbing.
Speaker 2: Ow so well, first off, they never got informed consent.
These men were told they were getting free medical care,
government meals, but they were deliberately left untreated for syphilis.
Even after penicillin became available in the forties as a
known effective cure, they actively.
Speaker 1: Withheld it, so they weren't just denied treatment, they were
actively deceived, lied to systematically.
Speaker 2: They thought they were in some special government health program
helping them, but really they were being studied like lab
animals while the disease ravaged their.
Speaker 1: Bodies for four decades. It only stopped in seventy two
after it became public knowledge thanks to a whistleblower, right,
and an advisory panel recommended ending it.
Speaker 2: That's right, and looking at the bigger picture, the consequences
were just devastating. Hundreds of black men suffered needlessly, Many
died early from syphilis complications.
Speaker 3: And their families too tragically impacted.
Speaker 2: Some wives got the disease from their husbands in the study.
Children were born with congenital syphilis.
Speaker 3: Just awful.
Speaker 1: It's a truly horrific legacy, a stark reminder of how
bad research ethics can get. But there were some formal consequences,
A lawsuit an apology.
Speaker 2: Yes, there was a class action lawsuit in nineteen seventy four.
It resulted in a settlement for the survivors and their families. Okay,
And then much later, nineteen ninety seven, President Clinton issued
a formal presidential apology acknowledge the profound moral failures the
government's role. That moment also led to establishing the National
Center for Bioethics and Research and Healthcare at Tuskegee University,
a real effort to learn from this promote ethical.
Speaker 1: Standards, and the impact went beyond just this one study, right,
It changed research practices more broadly.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Tuskegee was a major catalyst for fundamental, sweeping changes
in how research on humans is done and overseen.
Speaker 3: Like informed consent exactly.
Speaker 2: It drove home the critical, non negotiable importance of fully
informed consent, the right to access treatment, the ethical duties
or researchers, All the ongoing efforts worldwide for ethical research standards,
they're directly linked to the painful lessons from Tuskegee.
Speaker 3: It raises such an.
Speaker 2: Important question, doesn't it. How do we as a society
stay vigilant ensure that seeking knowledge never again costs basic
human dignity rights ethics?
Speaker 1: Okay, let's pivot now to something that sounds well like
it's straight out of a political thriller movie script. Ah
Business Plot of nineteen thirty three.
Speaker 2: Ah Yes, the Wall Street pusch some call it right, or.
Speaker 1: The White House push the core idea was this alleged
conspiracy to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt FDR and install
a retired Marine General Smedley Butler as a dictator. I mean,
at the service, it sounds almost cartoonishly unbelievable, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: It really does. If it were fiction, you'd probably dismiss
it as too far fetched. But what's so fascinating and
historically significant is that General Butler himself testified under oath
before a special House committee in nineteen thirty four about
this exact plot.
Speaker 1: The general himself, Wow, yeah.
Speaker 2: He detailed how he was approached by people representing wealthy businessmen.
They were allegedly planning this huge fascist veterans organization, with
Butler supposedly leading it to eventually carry out a coup
against FDR. He even mentioned a promised army like five
hundred thousand men and significant financial backing.
Speaker 1: Butler, this incredibly decorated military guy, two medals of honor.
He claimed he was approached to lead this coup. What
did he say their motivations were?
Speaker 2: According to Butler's testimony, these conservative, very wealthy businessmen were
just fundamentally opposed to Roosevelt's new deal policies, okay, especially
things like moving off the gold standard, and they had
these deep fears about what they saw as socialism creeping
into his economic reforms.
Speaker 1: So they saw FDR's programs as a threat to their money,
their status quo.
Speaker 2: Pretty much a grave threat to their financial interests and
the established order.
Speaker 1: So what happened after Butler gave this explosive testimony. Did
the Congressional committee find anything to it? And how did
the public the media react?
Speaker 2: Well, the McCormick Dixtein Committee, the House committee looking into it.
They did issue a formal report, and in that report
they stated very clearly, there is no question that these
attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed
in execution basically if the backers decided the time was right.
Speaker 1: So the committee did find credible evidence that a plot
was being discussed by powerful people.
Speaker 2: Yes, they concluded some kind of plot was definitely being
actively considered. But despite that finding, nobody was ever prosecuted
for it. No prosecution none, And initially big newspapers like
The New York Times were super skeptical, dismissive, called it
a gigantic hoax. It wasn't until later after the committee's
final report came out, and there was some corroborating testimony
from others like James van Zandt, the VFW commander then
who said he'd been approached to that. The narrative started
shifting a bit towards maybe taking it more seriously.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating and yeah, a bit unsettling how the first
reaction was just to laugh it off, and then later
Congress confirms it was discussed. What's the general historical take
on it now.
Speaker 2: Later historical assessments, they generally agree that while you know,
how likely it was to actually happen is still debated,
the consensus now is that some kind of wild scheme,
as historians put it, was definitely being considered talked about
by some very wealthy, influential people. There have even been
these persistent allegations, though still debated, not definitively proven, about
figures like Prescott Bush, grandfather of a later president, maybe
being involved potentially liaising with people connected to the German
government as part of this whole anti Roosevelt planning.
Speaker 1: Wow, that adds another layer of intrigue and maybe a
bit of a shiver down the spine thinking about those connections.
It really sounds like this Forganti footnote that's almost too
wild to be true, and it even popped up in
pop culture recently.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly the story. The almost unbelievable narrative of the
business plot was a direct inspiration for that twenty twenty
two film Amsterdam. It just shows the enduring and frankly
still shocking nature of this true story that often gets
skipped over. It makes you wonder, doesn't it. How many
other seemingly crazy conspiracy theories from the past might have
had some basis in reality but got dismissed or just
forgotten over time.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's break ourselves now for a deep dive into
a particularly dark, disturbing area.
Speaker 3: Project M Cultra ah M Cultra.
Speaker 1: This was a highly secret CIA program started in the fifties,
ran into the early seventies, and its main focus mind
control research. The name itself sounds like science fiction or
a Cold War spy thriller.
Speaker 2: It really does. And what's particularly striking and deeply unsettling
when you look at where it came from, yeah, is
its direct link to the horrific human experimentation the Nazis
did during World War Two, especially their use of drugs
for interrogation and concentration camps.
Speaker 1: Wait really a direct link to Nazi experiments.
Speaker 2: Historians like Stephen Kinser have argued pretty compellingly that M
culture was in many ways a continuation of that, pointing
to CIA documents showing they used mescaline on unwitting subjects,
eerily mirroring experiments done at Datcha and other Nazi sites.
Speaker 1: So the CIA basically picked up where the Nazis left
off experimenting on human minds. That's incredibly chilling. What exactly
were they trying to achieve with M culture?
Speaker 2: The program had this huge, disturbing range of aims, mostly
developing drugs and procedures for interrogation, torture, mind control, even
creating what they called robot agents.
Speaker 1: Robot agents like controllable people.
Speaker 2: Individuals whose thoughts and actions could theoretically be controlled, and
under a subproject MK Delta, they specifically looked at drugs
for harassment, discrediting, or disabling people they saw as threats.
Speaker 1: The methods they used not just secret but incredibly unethical, right,
especially the lack of consent.
Speaker 2: Totally declassified CIA documents show they investigated all sorts of chemical,
biological and radiological mind control methods poured millions of taxpayer
dollars into it, and shockingly, a lot of these experiments
were done on completely unwitting citizens at all social levels,
including vulnerable people, mental patients, prisoners, drug addicts, but also
unsuspecting CIA employees, military personnel.
Speaker 3: The general public, christ anyone.
Speaker 2: This seems like it. In many cases, powerful drugs like
LSD other psychoactive stuff were given without the person's knowledge
or any consent, a clear awful violation of the Nurember
Code basic human rights.
Speaker 1: Operation midnight climax. No one always stands out it sounds
particularly awful. What was that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, midnight climax. The CIA set up several agency run
brothels and secret safehouses in San.
Speaker 1: Francisco athols run by the CIA.
Speaker 2: Yes, the perverse idea was to get men who'd likely
be too embarrassed to talk about what happened there later.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: These unsuspecting men were then secretly dosed with LSD without
their knowledge or consent, and the encounters were filmed watched
through one way mirrors by CIA agents for study.
Speaker 1: That's unbelievable.
Speaker 2: It's a really stark, deeply troubling example of the agency
just completely disregarding individual autonomy, dignity, basic ethics, all in
the pursuit of mind control techniques.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just LSD they messed with, it was it.
It was a whole cocktail of dangerous drugs and questionable
psych techniques.
Speaker 2: Absolutely right Beyond M culture, researchers explored effects of barbiturates, amphetamines, heroin, morphine,
to mespem mescaline, psilocybin, scopolamine, alcohol, even truth serums like
sodium pental thal They also looked into psychological manipulation, hypnosis,
sensory deprivation, even using electroshock with drugs to try and
break someone's wiel during.
Speaker 3: Interrogation, trying to break people.
Speaker 2: They even tried combining drugs like a barbiturate in one
arm amphetamine in the other, just desperate attempts to unlock
the secrets of the mind.
Speaker 1: In the scale of this was huge, right, experiments across
lots of institutions, maybe thousands of people, many never knowing
they were guinea pigs.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Senate Subcommittee hearings found over thirty different institutions universities
in North America involved in secret testing for M culture.
Speaker 1: Thirty institutions.
Speaker 2: In a later GAO report said between nineteen forty and
nineteen seventy four, the Department of Defense and other agencies
also studied thousands of people in tests with hazardous substances,
often working with or alongside the CIA's program.
Speaker 1: Or even reports of secret detention camps black sites where
they could do even more extreme stuff away from any oversight.
Speaker 2: Yes, in the early fifties, Cold War height, the CIA
set up a network of secret detention centers black sites
in Europe and East Asia, places under US influence or control.
Why there they were deliberately located where the CIA thought
they could operate outside US and international law, avoid prosecution, accountability.
Speaker 1: And Inside these sites people.
Speaker 2: Suspected of being enemy agents, others the agency deemed expendable.
They were subjected to brutal torture, extreme experiments for drugs, electroshock,
sensory deprivation, all trying to figure out how to control
or destroy the human mind.
Speaker 1: Eventually, some of this started coming out right. Investigations happened Yeah.
Speaker 2: The CIA's illegal domestic stuff, including in cultra's unethical experiments,
first hit the mainstream with a bombshell New York Times
report in nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 3: Ah, that triggered.
Speaker 2: Formal investigations, the Church Committee in the Senate, the Rockefeller Commission.
They confirmed the unethical nature, the lack of informed consent.
Speaker 1: But did they get the full picture?
Speaker 2: Well, that was the problem. A huge obstacle was discovering
the CIA had deliberately destroyed most of the emculture records
just before the investigations started, destroyed the records.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: In the case of Frank Olsen, the CIA scientist who
died after being given LSD without knowing, that's still a
really tragic, suspicious part of this whole story.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Frank Olson's death is still highly controversial, deeply unsettling. Initially,
the CIA said he died by suicide, falling from a
hotel window after they secretly dosed him with LSD at.
Speaker 1: A meeting, But that wasn't the whole story. Well.
Speaker 2: Later an independent exhumation forensic analysis, it found significant head
injuries inconsistent with just a fall, suggesting he might have
been unconscious before he went out the window.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: His family has always maintained vehemently that the CIA murdered
him because he'd become a security risk after his bad
LSD trip. We knew too much about classified programs.
Speaker 1: Even a later medical examiner called his death a homicide.
The Olsen families fight for justice goes on even today.
It just underscores the lasting, devastating impact of these secret,
unethical programs.
Speaker 2: It's incredible, maybe, but frightening how much culture themes have
seeped into pop culture Stranger things, books, films, games. Yeah,
it really seems to have grabbed the public imagination reflects
this deep unease about hidden government experiments mind control potential totally.
Speaker 1: The enduring presence of m culture and pop culture shows
this ongoing public fascination and deep unease about secret government
activities manipulating minds. It's a constant reminder of the risks
of unchecked power, the importance of vigilance oversight, and it
raises a key question, how much do these historical revelations
about in culture still fuel conspiracy theories and public distrust
in government today?
Speaker 3: Hmm?
Speaker 2: Okay, Finally, let's delve into what might be one of
the most odd, daysacious, almost unbelievable proposals in modern history.
Operation Northwoods Earthwoods.
Speaker 1: Yes, this is a proposed false flag operation right from
the heart of the US Department of Defense in nineteen
sixty two. The truly shocking idea was to stage elaborate
terrorist attacks against American military and civilian targets, then blame
Cuba and use that as the reason to invade Cuba.
Speaker 3: The sheer audacity it truly is staggering.
Speaker 2: The specific proposals and the declassified documents genuinely shocking, almost
defy belief, Like what, okay, get this? Remotely controlling and
crashing civilian airliners, faking a US Air Force plane shoot down,
blaming Cuban MiGs, possibly assassinating Cuban exis in the US,
blaming Castro, sinking refugee boats filled with Cubans, blowing up
a US ship in Guantanamo Bay, blaming Cuba, even staging
terror attacks inside major US cities, all planned to be
falsely blamed on Cuba to manufacture support for war.
Speaker 1: So the goal was just make up a reason for war.
Did this incredibly dangerous plan ever get close to happening?
Speaker 2: Well, these extreme proposals were actually formally authorized by the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest military body in the
US authorized yes, But ultimately and thankfully President John F.
Kennedy rejected them.
Speaker 1: JFK rejected it, yes.
Speaker 2: And historians often point to that rejection as a really pivotal,
maybe underappreciated decision of his presidency, possibly averting a war
based entirely on deception.
Speaker 1: So thankfully this specific, incredibly dangerous plan died. But just
the fact it was seriously proposed, considered at the very top,
that's deeply concerning. And these documents were secret for decades.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: The main document detailing Northwoods was finally declassified and released
in nineteen ninety seven by the JFK Assassination Wreckers Review Board,
then published online by the National Security Archive.
Speaker 1: Ninety seven, so thirty five years.
Speaker 2: Later, right, and its release confirmed what had been disturbing
rumors for years sparked huge public debate about how far
governments might go plan unethical, illegal things for national interest.
And it's worth noting even after JFK rejected Northwoods, parts
of the Joint Chiefs kept planning other false flag pretext
operations against Cuba into nineteen sixty three. They kept planning, yeah,
including a chillingly similar idea stage of fake Cuban attack
on another country in the Organization of American States to
get wider support for intervention.
Speaker 1: It really makes you wonder about the internal ethics checks
or lack thereof. Did anyone inside raise objections to such
a morally bankrupt plan.
Speaker 2: Interestingly, the very DoD report outlining Northwoods did include a
brief acknowledgment. It said such contrived situations were inherently extremely
risky in our democratic.
Speaker 1: System, so they knew it was risky.
Speaker 2: It suggests at least some awareness inside the military Dood
about how problematic these ideas were, the potential backlash in
a society that theoretically values transparency rule of law, which
prompts a critical question what safeguards must exist in a
democracy to stop such ethically ubi as potentially illegal operations
from even being seriously considered, let alone implemented.
Speaker 1: Well. As we've taken this rather unsettling journey through these
documented events, cointelpro Tuskegee, the business plot, and Cultra Operation
north Was, a few key themes really stand out, don't they?
Speaker 3: They really do.
Speaker 1: Repeated instances of major government overreach, deeply unethical experiments on
unsuspecting people, calculated manipulation of public opinion using secret, deceptive methods,
and the profoundly unsettling realization that some of the wildest,
most improbable conspiracy theories actually have a disturbing basis in
historical fact.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and when you look at these seemingly separate events together,
a larger, maybe more troubling pattern emerges. It forces us
to face some really difficult questions about that tension between
national security and individual rights, the critical importance of government transparency,
real accountability, and.
Speaker 1: The potential for history to repeat itself right in.
Speaker 2: If we don't learn from these uncomfortable truths about our past.
Speaker 1: So as you continue to think about this deep dive
into some of history's darker corners, maybe you consider this.
Knowing about these documented events, these historical conspiracies that actually happened,
what should you, as an informed citizen, be most vigilant about? Now?
How does understanding these unsettling truths change how you interpret
current events, the information you see every day, the actions
of governments. It's definitely something to carry.
Speaker 2: With you Ultimately grappling with these often uncomfortable, disturbing historical events,
analyzing what they mean. It's not just essential for being
responsible citizen, it's vital for safeguarding against future abuses of power,
for working towards a more just, transparent society. The deeper
and more critically we all delve into these complex, challenging topics,
the better equipped we are to understand the world and
to actively participate in shaping a more ethical, accountable future.