Vincent Bugliosi, Manson prosecutor and O.J. Simpson trial critic, argues the prosecution’s incompetence—ignoring $8,750 cash, a sobbing phone call, and Judge Ito’s racial missteps—doomed Simpson’s conviction despite overwhelming evidence. On TWA Flight 800, circumstantial clues like explosive residue and black box pings hint at sabotage, while callers propose wild theories: Stinger missiles from ultralights, mistaken Israeli targets, or military cover-ups tied to a pre-crash JFK bomb threat. Ultimately, the episode blends legal skepticism with fringe speculation, leaving Flight 800’s cause as murky as ever. [Automatically generated summary]
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Vincent Mumiosi, author most recently of the number one New York Times bestseller, Outrage.
Just made the New York Times bestseller list, Outrage and or the five reasons why OJ Simpson got away with murder.
So, that's coming up in just a moment.
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You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from July 23rd, 1996.
His most famous trial, the Charles Manson case, which became the basis of that book, Helter Skelter.
And you know of that.
But even before the Manson case, in the television series, the DA actor, remember Robert Conrad, patterned his starring role after Bugliosi.
Both Helter Skelter and his subsequent Till Death Do Us Part won Edgar Allan Poe Awards for Best True Crime Book of the Year, Bugliosi's most recent true crime book.
And The Sea Will Tell was number one on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list.
All three books have been adapted for network television.
Now comes Outrage or the five reasons why O.J. Simpson got away with murder.
And congratulations, Mr. Bugliosi, number one on the New York Times bestseller list.
You believe, summing up, that the jury in the Simpson case wasn't smart.
The judge was bad.
The prosecution was atrocious.
And as far as the so-called dream team is concerned, quoting from your book, quote, in fact, it was only the greater incompetence of the prosecution that saved Cochrane Shapiro-Beli-Ashek et al.
Yeah, not only do I believe it, not only do I allege it, but anyone who reads the book is almost compelled to go along with those conclusions because if there's one thing about me, Art, that I never do, I never make a charge without supporting it.
And I have a tremendous amount of support for everything that I say.
I don't just say something without giving four or five examples to support what I'm saying.
When I talk about the incompetence of the prosecution in this case, it's page after page after page.
There's just no way that anyone could read this book without coming to the same conclusion.
And it's because of these revelations, these shocking revelations of incompetence in my book, Outrage, that the word of mouth has been such that the book has shot up to number one in the country.
Because heretofore, the American people have been blaming the jury for this verdict.
And of course, the jury was very bad.
Don't get me wrong on that at all.
Very, very bad.
Many have been blaming the LAPD, claiming the LAPD botched the case before it came to trial.
But the main reason why this case was lost was the unbelievable incompetence of the prosecution in this case.
And you have to realize, Art, I think you know my background.
I'm very pro-prosecution.
No one in this country was more supportive of these prosecutors than I was throughout the entire case.
I mean, I even sent them a telegram on the morning of their summation trying to pump them up.
But I had an option here, either not do the book, and actually I was talked into doing it by my editor, and I'm happy now that he did, or write the book and be candid.
And this is a very serious charge that I'm making against the prosecution in this case, but I support it in faith.
I kept it to a minimum, but I got on radio and TV and said many of the things that I'm saying in the book now.
So this is not Monday morning quarterback, but I'd get on radio and television and say they've got to offer some of this evidence, this very, very incriminating evidence.
It was a conventional type of evidence that lay people, you don't even have to be very bright, lay people have been consistently basing verdicts of guilty on for the past two centuries.
It's a type of evidence that is automatically Associated, even by people of rather low intelligence, with guilt.
DNA is very good evidence.
Don't get me wrong, and I'm not criticizing the prosecution for presenting DNA evidence in this case.
But DNA is very complex, very difficult to understand.
It was almost alien to this jury.
But evidence like Simpson taking off when he was being charged with these murders and they're finding in his possession a gun, a passport, a cheap disguise, several fresh changes of underclothing, and Cowling's the driver of $8,750 in cash on him, which he proceeds to tell the police that Simpson had given him inside the Broncos.
That type is automatically associated by lay people with guilt, yet it was not offered to this jury.
Dominic Dunn, the respected writer, has publicly stated why the prosecution didn't present that evidence.
He says, through his sources, that he's aware of taped conversations of Simpson during the Bronco chase, where he's talking on a cellular phone, sobbing, crying, claiming to be an innocent man who's been framed.
It means nothing when someone is charged with murder and they deny guilt.
Of course they're going to deny guilt.
Who in the world expects them to confess?
That is the reason, by the way, that the prosecution did not offer that evidence, nor did they offer a suicide note, which absolutely reeked with guilt.
I mean, surely an innocent person charged with murder who would write a note like that.
Also, the 32-minute interrogation of Simpson the day after the murders, incidentally, I was able to get a hold of the audio of that 32-minute interrogation, and I've transcribed it, and it's in an appendix of the book.
It's the only book on the Simpson case that has the interrogation in it, where he admits dripping with blood on the night of these murders, has no idea how he got cut, but in that interrogation, he also denies guilt.
And the prosecutors, you're right, they kept that out.
They kept that out, all of that, because they didn't, this is what they said, and you can't make this up.
It's too far out to make up.
Gardner says it in his book.
They didn't want the jury to hear Simpson denying guilt without his taking the witness stand.
But Arn, the jury already knew that Simpson had denied guilt.
I mean, they knew he pled not guilty.
That's why they were having a trial for Pete's sake.
I mean, if the guy had confessed, if he had pled guilty, there would not have been a trial.
You're going to keep out extremely powerful evidence like this just to prevent the jury from hearing something that they already know.
That's mind-boggling.
And this is the mentality of these prosecutors, good people, the good guys lost here.
This is the mentality of these people who are representing the state in the Simpson case.
And people wonder why this guy's out in a golf course with a smile on his face.
You're going to keep out, for instance, the passport, the cheap disguise, several fresh changes of underclothing, and the fact that Cowling has all this money on him, which Simpson gave him, all this cash, because he's denying guilt?
Darn and Clark both had a very in-your-face kind of presentation, and a lot of people translated that to competence, and they apparently didn't look a little bit deeper at some of the things we just talked about with regard to the evidence not presented.
They may have been a little in the face outside the presence of the jury when they were talking to Judge Ito in front of the jury.
They couldn't possibly have been more diffident.
Imagine in your eyes what this guy, Simpson, did to these two victims, viciously stabbing them to death, you know, their lifeblood draining out of them, the horror and the fright in their eyes, the last moments when they were trying to survive.
Imagine that.
Now imagine Marcia Clark during jury selection telling this jury, well, this thought is in your mind that I just told you, he is such a sympathetic guy, okay, then telling the jury, this is not a fun place for me to be.
I'm not making this up, this stuff's in the transcript.
If she tells the jury, this is not a fun place for me to be, Art, that's like telling the jury, you know, I really don't want to be prosecuting this guy, but I've been assigned the case, so what can I do?
Then she tells the jury, you may not like me for bringing this case.
I'm not winning any popularity contest for doing so.
Art, psychologically, nothing could be worse than to tell a jury that you're not winning any popularity contest, because if you're telling them that, that's like telling them the majority of people outside that courtroom don't even want this guy to be prosecuted, and by necessary extension, if they come back with a verdict of guilty, they're going against the majority of people.
Darden, in his final summation, unbelievably telling the jury, nobody wants to hurt this guy.
We don't.
There's nothing personal here, but the law is the law.
If you're telling the jury that nobody wants to hurt this guy, Art, you're telling them that virtually everyone outside that courtroom is pulling for him.
Yes, a very good articulation, but they were not forceful at all.
The prosecution has the burden of proof, and it's difficult to meet that burden if you're not forceful.
They were not forceful.
Here's Dartin in his summation telling the jury, on this question of whether Mr. Simpson is guilty or not guilty?
That's a tough question, and I'm glad I'm not in your shoes.
Art, do you realize what that is saying?
That's almost telling the jury that this is a reasonable doubt case and the prosecutor should be conveying to the jury, of course, that the evidence of guilt is so overwhelming that you folks shouldn't have any difficulty at all coming back with a guilty verdict.
And here's Darden saying, boy, that's a tough question.
I'm glad I'm not in your shoes.
It's beyond incompetence, Art.
The book has many, many instances where we're getting into the area of unprecedented, unheard of, bizarre, unique.
And it's because of these revelations that the media did not see.
The media was seeing what they expected to see.
And what they expected to see was competent prosecutors taking care of business.
They didn't see what was actually in front of them.
Now that they're seeing, the American people are seeing what actually happened during this trial, this is why the word of mouth on outrage is such that it's shot to number one.
Well, you know, I wasn't down there, but by everyone I've spoken to near the end, they were very, very worried, and they would have settled for a hung jury at the end.
Well, Clark was the chief prosecutor, and the co-prosecutor was Darden.
Clark knew about what was going to happen.
She apparently was opposed to it, but not enough to say, no, you can't do this.
If she had intervened and said, no, you're not going to do that, it would not have happened.
Here's another area now of unbelievable incompetence.
Everyone's talked in the country about the fact that even a first-year law student is not going to conduct a serious experiment in court like this that could backfire you without knowing what the result's going to be in advance.
Everyone knows that.
But there's another aspect of that glove demonstration that no one's talked about, and I talk about it in the book, that's perhaps even more incompetent.
And it goes to the next issue.
The first issue is you don't conduct the experiment unless you know what's going to happen in advance.
The second issue is if you do conduct the experiment, how do you conduct it?
Now, it was the position of Darden and Clark that even though those gloves had shrunk, and even though Simpson was wearing latex gloves, they still would have fit him if Simpson hadn't prevented the fit by the way he positioned his hands and fingers when he was putting the gloves on.
In fact, Darden argued to the jury, Simpson faked it.
He used the word Simpson faked it.
Those gloves, Art, were extremely important pieces of evidence.
And as a prosecutor, you don't turn over any evidence in any case to the defendant of all people on the face of this earth and have him tell you if there's a match.
Obviously, what you do, if you want to find out if there's a fit, you have a third party put the gloves on him, feeling his hands and fingers along the way to make sure he doesn't do anything to inhibit the fit.
Let me give you a parallel.
It's not the best parallel, but I think it illustrates the point.
Say the police find a gun on someone's person or in their home and they suspect it's the murder weapon.
Well, what they do, of course, they test fire the weapon, and then they take the test fire bullets and they put it under a comparison microscope with the evidence bullets and see if the striations or markings on the test fire bullets match up with the evidence bullets.
They don't turn the gun over to the defendant and tell him to conduct the test and report back to them.
That's absurd.
What you have here, and this may sound cute when I say it, that I'm trying to be cute or sarcastic, but this is in essence what you have here, and it's unbelievable.
Darden gives Simpson the gloves, and in effect tells Simpson, if these gloves fit, you're in trouble.
If they don't fit, you might be able to walk out of court and play golf.
Now, knowing in advance that if these gloves don't fit, you might be able to walk out of here.
Tell us, OJ, do these gloves fit?
Darden literally turned the gloves over to Simpson and let him be in complete charge and be the one to decide if there's a fit.
That's beyond incompetence, Art.
That's getting into the area of unprecedented and unheard of.
Remember when they began to produce the domestic abuse evidence?
Right.
There was kind of a controversy about how much of that to present.
And I think that the prosecution got the sense that some jurors, specifically Brenda Moran, for example, seemed almost put off by the domestic abuse testimony.
You know, the shaking of heads.
We couldn't see all of that.
But apparently that was going on.
And so that convinced them to lay off that aspect.
And I don't hit them too hard in the book on that point, although I certainly would have presented more domestic abuse evidence.
I would have presented evidence, for instance, that Simpson had stalked.
They put no evidence of stalking on him.
That Simpson had stalked Nicole and her boyfriend.
She'd go to restaurants, and he'd go to restaurants and sit a couple tables away and stare at them for a half hour.
I would have put that on.
There was evidence that he was peering through the window, observing her doing things with other men.
He was following her around in her car.
He'd be behind her.
She was at Starbucks once with Ron Goldman and a friend of Ron Goldman's, and he pulls up, honks the car, very angry, and tells her to come over to the car, orders her over to the car.
This was just a couple of months before the murder.
I think this would have been good evidence, but that's not the main reason why I've been criticizing them for their handling of this case.
But I do think they should have put on more domestic violence evidence.
All right, the jury seemed very impressed when they went to OJ's home, aside from the elegance of the home and all the rest of it, but there was a white rug.
The night of the murders, this guy has blood in his bronco, his car, and his home.
When they interviewed him at 1.35 p.m. the day after the murders, this is before now.
This is before they withdrew any blood from his arm and would have had any opportunity to plant or sprinkle it, they said, OJ, we've got a problem here.
You got blood in your broncho, the driveway, and your home.
How come?
And like I told you, he admits, he said, I cut myself last night.
I was bleeding.
How did you cut yourself, OJ?
These are his exact words.
I don't know, okay?
We're not talking about a little nick or scratch here.
We're talking about a deep cut to the knuckle of his left middle finger.
And in fact, it was bandaged at the time they were interrogating him.
And he says he has no idea how he got that cut.
So what I'm saying is that right, he admits, he admits that around the very same time of these murders, we'd have to believe that Simpson innocently cut himself very badly on his left middle finger.
And I think our, we're talking about DNA numbers here.
The astronomical probabilities against something like that happening are one out of five million, one out of a million.
And when you cut yourself, unless you're in a frantic, frenzied state, as he must have been in, you stop the bleeding with your hand or your handkerchief and you put on a bandage.
You don't bleed all over the place.
So there was blood.
25 swatches of blood were taken from the bronco.
There was another 20 stains that were not even taken because they were representative.
There was nine blood drops on the driveway.
There were five in the foyer, one in the bathroom.
And if the juror said, why wasn't there more?
Why should there have been even one blood drop on the night of these murders?
Apaxia, did the prosecutors try the tactics that you fought them for?
Because they were dealing with a jury system that's made up primarily of sympathizers to OJ and people who are not, quote, average citizens, end quote.
In other words, people who can take, you know, several months off work to attend a trial?
Well, I don't really know what that means because if these people weren't the brightest people in the world, which your question may imply, that's all the more reason why you offer conventional evidence like flight, you know, after he was being charged with these murders, he took off.
The fact that he cut himself and has no idea how he got cut.
The fact that he writes a suicide note.
I mean, you know, when you're charged with murder, if you're innocent, you're going to be blazing mad that you're being charged, desperately want to prove your innocence, find out who murdered the mother of your two children.
Instead, he becomes very passive and he writes this farewell letter that reads exactly like a suicide note.
He refers to himself as a lost person.
These things are incompatible with innocence.
So in answer to your question, that's all the more reason why they should have offered these conventional items of evidence.
I'm not saying they shouldn't have offered DNA, but not to the exclusion of these conventional.
Okay, now that, again, we get into absolute extreme incompetence here.
The defense, every time they made an argument to explain away incriminating evidence, the prosecution either did not respond at all, which is virtually unprecedented, or they responded in a very anemic fashion.
The main pieces of evidence in this case, other than that tape that I just told you, you give me $100 and a yellow pad, I would have convicted him on that 32-minute interrogation alone.
But the main item of evidence against Simpson was his blood was at the murder scene.
There was blood on the rear gate, which was also his.
No, it was not collected because Dennis Fong was the criminalist, and he did not pick it up that night.
And things like that happen.
That's just incompetence, too.
He was picking up blood everywhere.
I mean, it was awash in blood there, and he did not pick up the evidence from the rear gate.
It was seen that night.
There was even a photograph of two of the three blood stains that night, taken by the LAPD that night.
Now, they claimed that the stains on the rear gate were planted.
I'm talking about the defense.
They claimed that the glove at Rockingham was planted.
They claimed that blood in the Bronco was planted.
They claimed that the socks in Simpson's bedroom were planted.
But even these defendants, I mean defense attorneys who possessed the gonads of 10,000 elephants, even they, even they did not have the guts to allege that the five blood drops, four of which were immediately to the left of the killer's bloody shoe prints leaving the crime scene, even they did not allege that they were planted.
Here's what they alleged.
They allege that those blood drops there were exposed to the elements and lost all of their DNA because they were exposed to the element.
Bacteria, sunlight, what have you.
And later on, when they were on a cotton swatches at SID, Scientific Investigation Division of the LAPD, at Piper Tech, that those five blood drops became contaminated with blood from Simpson's reference file.
They had no proof of that, no evidence, but they said the SID was a cesspool of contamination and possibly it happened, which is nonsense.
They had no evidence in any event.
In any event.
Marcia Clark then did not come back and make two very, very obvious arguments.
I'm no expert on DNA, but I know enough about DNA to tell you this, that if in fact there had been cross-contamination, and she didn't make these arguments, those five blood drops would have had EDTA in them.
EDTA is an anticoagulant.
It's a preservative that is added to blood taken from a suspect's arm.
It's put in the reference vial, then they put EDTA in it.
These five blood drops did not have EDTA in them.
She didn't tell the jury that in her summation.
It came out at the trial, but she did not argue that in her final summation, that there could not have been cross-contamination, because if there had been, there would have been EDTA.
Number two, if there had been cross-contamination, this is a separate, independent reason why there was not cross-contamination, the DNA would have been a lot higher on those five blood drops.
Because if the blood came from the, if the blood on those cotton swatches, actually, if the DNA on those blood, on the cotton swatches, came from the reference file, there wouldn't have been any degradation at all.
Whereas the blood drops taken from the scene had in fact degraded because of the sunlight, the moisture, the bacteria.
In fact, only a PCR DNA test was conducted on four of the blood drops, and an RFLP, the more precise type, was conducted on the fifth.
So there had been degradation.
But if there was cross-contamination, and it actually was the blood from the reference vial, there would have been no degradation, and the DNA would have been very, very high.
She didn't make these two obvious arguments.
So what I'm telling you is that every single time the defense made an argument to try to explain away evidence, the DA didn't respond in kind.
However, at one point during the trial, when there was a motion to suppress because of the little tiny spot of blood found in the Bronco initially, and then jumping the fence, I thought that that motion should have succeeded.
Both judges, Kathleen Paul Kennedy at the preliminary hearing and Ito at the trial, ruled that Simpson's Fourth Amendment rights were not violated.
What you had here is Rockingham is only about two miles away from Bundy, and the police, the detectives felt that it almost looked like an extension of the crime scene.
They go there and they find a dot of blood, a spot of blood above the door handle on the Bronco.
That alone is not enough to go over that fence.
But here's the additional evidence and circumstances that the judges felt constituted sufficient cause to go over the fence without a search warrant.
They had been told, the detectives by Westec, that's the security agency that worked for Simpson, that there was a live-in-made.
They'd been told that.
There was a live-in maid.
Now, they went to the phone, they called inside the residence, they also rang the intercom at the gate.
No one answered inside.
Even though there was supposed to be a live-in-maid, there were lights on inside the house, there were two cars in the driveway, and those circumstances are called exigent.
Exigent circumstances justifying going over the wall because there may be someone might be dead or hurt that needs immediate attention.
Now, once they got over the wall and saw blood on the driveway and in the foyer, etc., then of course Simpson became a suspect.
Up to that point, he was a suspect only in a generic sense that when a wife or former wife is murdered, the husband or former husband, they're immediately people that detectives routinely check out.
Yeah, but there were quite a few things indicating to them that someone may be inside who needs help because with the lights on and two cars in the driveway and they're supposed to be a living maid, how come no one's answering the phone?
I think he was democratic in his incompetence, but he was trying to, he was very conscious, and he conscientious, and he tried to be fair to both sides.
He made some terrible rulings.
Perhaps his worst ruling was allowing the defense to get into the race issue.
Thus far, the defense attorneys have gotten all the blame from the American people on injecting race into the case, and they deserve all the blame that they're getting in them some.
But Ito, prior to my book, has gotten a free ride on this issue.
He doesn't get a free ride in my book.
I blame him 100% for allowing this case to turn into a racial case.
And the reason I do is that he allowed the defense attorneys to do it, and he shouldn't have done that.
Under 352 of the California Evidence Code, if the relevance of evidence offered, in this case we're talking about whether Fuhrman had used the N-word in the past 10 years, if that relevance is substantially outweighed by the probability of prejudice to the opposing side, you keep it out.
And here, the relevance of Fuhrman using the N-word in the past 10 years was extremely remote at best.
I mean, it's a non-sequitur and a broad jump of Olympian proportions to conclude that just because someone has used the N-word, or even is it racist, that they're going to go around framing innocent people of murder.
But the probability of prejudice to the prosecution was more than the requisite substantial.
It was monumental.
So under 352 of the evidence code, Ito should have kept it out.
It was an egregiously poor ruling on his part.
After he ruled that way, as you know, the fermented surfaced and it changed the complexion of the entire trial.
If Ito didn't want to follow the law, if he wanted to snub his nose at the law, common sense, common sense, which he had precious little of throughout this entire trial, would have dictated to him that you don't allow the defense to do that.
Every single day, thousands of white police officers arrest or investigate black suspects.
Does anyone really believe that when these thousands upon thousands of cases come to court, that it's perfectly proper to ask every one of these officers if he's ever used the N-word, and if he denies it, and you can show he did, have a separate satellite trial on that issue, which is exactly what happened in the Furman case?
That's absurd on his face.
Ito was off base here, and the prosecution had to pay for Ito's sins.
But even with the bad ruling by Ito, if the prosecution knew how to handle the Furman situation, they could have mitigated the damage substantially.
I don't know if we're going to have time to get into it, but they could not have handled the Furman situation worse.
They could have been better, no question about it.
But the media, they somehow thought that the LAPD lost this case before it came to trial.
I don't believe that for a moment.
You put any case under a high-powered microscope, particularly when you have all of this scientific evidence, all the blood, all the physical evidence, and so many people involved, you're going to inevitably have a few discrepancies here and there, incompetence, slip-ups, unanswered questions, but they don't add up to a hill of beams.
If Fuhrman were not involved at all in this case, the defense would have had a more difficult time arguing the conspiracy theory and injecting race into the case, but they would have found some way to do it.
Although it would have been more anemic, the prosecution would have had a greater likelihood of a conviction without Fuhrman.
The prosecution, when they presented scientific DNA evidence that Simpson's blood was found at the murder scene, they did.
They did, in fact, prove Simpson's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, beyond all doubt.
But we were dealing here with a jury that was not operating with too much intellectual firepower, number one.
Number two, many of them, particularly the black jurors, were probably biased in Simpson's favor.
However, here's the key point.
A powerfully presented case in summation, which we didn't have here at all, light years away from that, where you put a bib on the jury and you spoon feed them can handle both of those problems.
But this was a problem jury, no question about it.
And with a problem jury, it's going to be difficult to get a conviction, but you can do it.
You can do it.
We're talking here about an F minus presentation.
And yet the first vote that this jury took back in that jury room, people tend to forget this, a black juror and a white juror voted guilty on the first ballot.
That's the first ballot an hour after they entered the jury room.
If you can get a 10-2 with an F-minus presentation, you can imagine by extrapolation what would have happened if you'd had an A-plus performance, which the people of the state of California were entitled to, I think almost assuredly.
Even a C. Yeah, you'd have had a guilty verdict or at a minimum a hung jury.
But you'd have had problems with this jury unless you had an A-plus performance.
The only type of jury, the only type of jury that you can't turn around, Art, is the type of jury whose state of mind is, even though we know O.J. is guilty, we don't care.
We like O.J. Blacks have been discriminated against by whites throughout the years.
We're going to give O.J. two free murders.
But let me tell you, Art, it would be extremely difficult to find even one juror with that outrageous state of mind, much less all 12.
And in looking at the backgrounds of these jurors, for instance, the Simpson 4 person was the 1990 LA County Employee of the Year.
Listening to what they said on radio and television, reading a book written by three of them, I get no sense that even one of them had that state of mind, and I don't believe it for one single moment.
So this was not the best jury, but they would have responded to an A-plus performance.
What happened here is that the prosecution allowed this jury to live with their conscience.
They did not eliminate for this jury all possibilities of Simpson being found not guilty.
Had not the paw of the Rodney King business and the riots and all the rest of it been hanging over this, which it was, how much difference would that have made?
But again, again, invariably we come back to the unbelievable incompetence of these prosecutors.
Here's what Cochran did.
And it was duplicitous on his part.
It went right over the head of Darden, who's a black.
It went right over his head.
Cochrane argued to this jury a police frame-up from their experience of police brutality.
Police brutality and frame-up are two completely different types of misconduct.
Darden never distinguished these two types in the jury's mind.
What the black community has been experiencing throughout the years from a small segment of the LAPD and other major forces around the country, maybe 2%, 3%, 4% that stain the blue uniform of the other officers, what they've been experiencing is excessive force, police brutality, and then of course the police lie to cover it up.
That's what they've been experiencing.
Frame-ups?
Frame-ups by the police for burglaries, robberies, rapes, murders, virtually, virtually unheard of.
It's not done.
It's not common.
I know this.
I've talked to enough blacks.
I've talked to people who work in the black community.
That's almost unheard of.
And yet Darden did not see this issue.
Time magazine did not see the issue.
Time said, well, obviously it was easy for this jury to buy the frame-up argument.
All the jury had to replay in their mind is the tape of Rodney King getting beaten by the LAPD, as if Rodney King getting beaten by the LAPD is the same thing as the LAPD.
In other words, as if the LAPD beating Rodney King is essentially the same as they're framing O.J. Simpson.
Two totally, completely different types of police misconduct.
And it's my belief, without knowing, that this jury back in the jury room was thinking, this is the LAPD.
We know we can't trust them.
There's a reasonable doubt here they may have framed O.J. instead of thinking to themselves, wait a while, yeah, maybe we can't trust the LAPD for certain things, but frame-ups?
That's absurd.
I was on San Diego radio last week, and a 55-year-old black woman called in, and she was tearing into me, you know, about the LAPD and the San Diego Police Department, the way they mistreat blacks.
And I said, no, ma'am.
And she believed there was a frame-up and all that.
I said, ma'am, I'm going to ask you a question now, and I want you to think about it, and I want you to answer it right away.
Think about it before you answer.
You're 55 years of age.
I want you to look back into your past.
Has it ever happened to you or any member of your family, any relative, any close friend?
Have they ever been framed?
In other words, they're completely innocent.
The police come along.
Have they ever been framed for a burglary, a robbery, a rape, an arson, or a murder?
I'm not exaggerating, Arch.
She paused for five, ten seconds, and these were her words.
It's called a peremptory challenge where you don't have to give any reason whatsoever.
If you don't like the way someone looks at you, the color of their tie...
Oh, once the trial was underway.
Yeah, there was a little bit of that, but it wasn't too successful because Ito was not discharging people, jurors, unless he came up with some evidence of possible impropriety.
Yeah, right.
But, I mean, he was under the impression that perhaps this woman was going to write a book.
Now, whether she was or not, I don't know, but there was some evidence that went in that direction.
And yes, the defense wanted to get rid of her, of course, because she was perceived to be pro-prosecution.
Was there anything in Clark's or Darden's track record or background that should have set off warning bells to Gil Garcetti before selecting them to do the prosecution?
Well, I had never heard of either one of them before, but that really doesn't mean anything because we have 1,000 prosecutors at the DA's office here in L.A., and there's one central office and about 18 outlying offices.
I have since learned that Clark was perceived to be among the top prosecutors down at the DA's office.
No one that I know has said that Chris Darden was perceived to be a top prosecutor.
Why he was brought on the case, I don't know.
He did handle the A.C. Collins situation in front of the grand jury when the DA was contemplating seeking an indictment against Collins.
So he had a little background there, because that was an ancillary part of this case, whether Collins would be indicted for being an accessory after the fact murder.
And then there was also the argument of whether he was a token black.
But I can tell you a little bit about his background because I've checked into it at least the seven years prior to the trial.
He told the jury, I'm talking about Darden, I've been prosecuting bad cops for seven years.
Well, I happen to know that the DA doesn't prosecute bad cops here in LA.
It's extremely rare.
And the Rodney King situation was no exception.
I can just about guarantee you, Art, that if there hadn't been a tape there by that George Holiday, the 81-second tape, private citizens, no one would have ever heard the name Rodney King.
In fact, Rodney King's brother went up to the foothill division of the LAPD the day after the beating.
And this was before the LAPD knew about the tape.
And he wanted to file a complaint against these officers.
And the desk sergeant said, look, your brother is in a lot of trouble.
There wasn't going to be any filing against these four officers.
In any event, when Darden said, I've been prosecuting bad cops for seven years, I started thinking, well, wait a while, is this in the middle of the night with the goblins out?
I mean, how come I haven't heard about this?
So I called down the office and spoke to two fellow deputy DAs down there who worked alongside Darden in the Special Investigations Division of the DA's office, which is responsible for prosecuting police misconduct cases.
Here's what they told me.
That in the seven years leading up to this trial, 1987 to 1994, Darden tried one case and one case only.
It was a misdemeanor case.
It wasn't even a felony case, and he lost it.
It's the 39th and Dalton Street case.
39th and Dalton, there was a duplex there that was believed to be a crack house.
And the police went in there and trashed it, looking for crack, and they were prosecuted for vandalism, and Darden handled it and lost that case.
And if you look at his book, he mentions a lot of cases in SID, but the only case that he mentions taking the trial, if you read very closely, is the 39th and Dalton Street case.
So he didn't really have a sufficient background for this.
Normally, you collect blood from a suspect in a homicide case.
It's a couple days later, a week later, a month later, sometimes even a couple years later, because there's no statute limitations for the crime of murder.
And so it's not within hours after the murders, as was the case here.
Now, the defense argued that he should have booked that vial of blood immediately.
And he could have done that.
However, normally you do not get a DR number, which you need to book items of evidence, until the evidence at the crime scene has been collected by the criminalists pursuant to the search warrant.
Here that hadn't been done yet.
Fung was still at Rockingham, first he had been at Bundy, collecting the evidence.
And evidence is booked sequentially by number.
So if he had booked that vial, it would have been item number one.
But the reason he didn't do that is he had no way of knowing what number Fung was giving to the items of evidence that he was collecting at Bundy and Rockingham.
It would have messed up the whole numbering system.
But yes, so it was inadvisable, but I mean, how could he ever dream that people like Shaq and Cochran are out there accusing him of framing someone for murder?
I mean, here's a guy, 28 years on the forest, not one citizen complained against him in 28 years.
He's about to retire in a few months with his wife, Rita, to his farm in Indiana, and he's going to frame O.J. Simpson.
It's mind-boggling.
You plant evidence in a capital case in California and testify falsely.
You can get the death penalty yourself under 128 of the California Penal Code.
The prosecutors never even made that argument.
In any event, Fong had already given item number one to the spot of blood above the door handle.
And so Van Adder brings the vile blood back to Fung, and any detective will tell you that when they turn over items of evidence to the criminalist, in their mind, that's the equivalent of booking.
Now, I'm giving you the background as to why he brought it back here.
Why he brought it back to Rockingham at 5.20 p.m. on the day after the murders.
But here's the point that I want to get into.
The defense argument of police frame-up and conspiracy and all that, at the heart of that very argument was Van Natter bringing the vial of blood back, and what they claimed is that Van Natter and his evil co-conspirators took blood out of that vial and planted it at Rockingham and Bundy.
It was a major, major, major issue at the trial.
Post-trial, post-trial, several of the jurors said that it was the most suspicious thing that the LAPD did during the entire case.
Now, there are several arguments that the prosecution could have made to knock down this core defense argument about Van Ader bringing the vial blood back to Rockingham.
I mentioned several in the book.
I'll just give you two very brief ones right here.
If he was going to bring the vile blood back to Rockingham, obviously he put it in his suit pocket.
He wouldn't put it in a large envelope, thereby advertising to everyone that he was bringing something onto the premises.
Number two, Van Adder already knew that hundreds upon hundreds of reporters and other members of the media had already congregated at Rockingham and Bundy, their cameras blanketing the premises, picking up for the evening news, all the movements of everyone on the estate.
There were helicopters up above filming everything down below.
Obviously, planting would have been absolutely impossible.
There are many, many other arguments.
Now, what if I told you, what if I told you, listen to this because it's unbelievable, there's no other adjective, that in the eight hours of summation that these two prosecutors gave, neither Clark nor Darden said one single word to try to knock down this core defense argument about Van Adder bringing the vile blood back to Rockingham.
They never once even touched on the issue.
I checked the transcript three times.
I had my wife check it because it's unbelievable.
I said, there's got to be some attempt to knock this down because it goes to the heart of the defense case.
Art, when you get to the point when you don't even open up your mouth and utter one single solitary word on an absolutely critical issue, the question is, how does it get any worse?
We're not talking incompetence here.
We're talking beyond incompetence.
If you didn't show up for work, Art, I wouldn't say that you were incompetent.
Incompetence is showing up for work and doing a bad job.
unidentified
Right, well, when these people didn't even argue, they're not even showing up for work.
These murders happened around, oh, well, there's a division.
Correct.
The first officer arrives right after midnight.
Okay, there were 18 uniformed officers that arrived there before Furman.
All of them saw only one glove.
So there was no second glove there for Furman to pick up and deposit at Rockingham.
Even if he wanted to, even if he wanted to frame Simpson by planning the glove, there was no second glove there.
Unless 18 officers would have been willing to take the stand and commit perjury for Furman.
Now, mind you, 18 officers, they all made this statement in front of internal affairs, but Clark only called two out of the 18 to the witness stand instead of calling the other 16.
She had the other 16 there.
She knew their names.
She didn't bother calling all 18.
The more you call to that stand, the greater the unlikelihood that all 18 are going to commit perjury in a capital case just to help someone most of whom they didn't even know for a minute.
I'm doing my best, by the way, in the book, not intentionally, but to help Mark Fuhrman.
In fact, Mark Fuhrman's mother called me today down at the office, and I called her back.
She wasn't home, but she wants to thank me for what I've said in the book about Fuhrman.
You see, here's another area.
On the Fuhrman situation, when it came out, in the first place, the prosecution themselves should have made Furman cough up that he's used the N-word.
They knew he had.
They should have known that.
They had been given two statements by the defense from credible people, no axe to grind, that he'd used the N-word.
Also, his disability pension hearings, he used the N-word several years earlier.
So what you do in a case like that, you preempt, that's the exact word.
You put it on yourself.
You put it behind you.
It becomes a debt issue.
The Furman tapes don't even surface.
If they did, they wouldn't have even been admissible because they wouldn't be impeaching anything.
Not only did the prosecutors do that art, but then they compounded the problem.
When the defense brought in all of this evidence, instead of trying to mitigate the damage, they joined in the vilification of Furman.
Here's Marcia Clark talking to the jury in final situations.
He said, do we wish this man did not exist on the face of this planet?
Answer yes.
Now, here's why Furman's mother called me and why people are learning a little bit more about Furman because it's all in the book.
It didn't come out at the trial.
Mark Fuhrman used to be a racist, no question about it, but he's not that bad a guy.
In 1994, that's when the Furman tapes ended, the last time in those Furman tapes he had used the N-word was in 1988, six years earlier.
In 1994, Mark Furman had black friends.
He was getting up two, three mornings a week, playing basketball at five in the morning with fellow black officers, more importantly, Art.
I've confirmed this.
Mark Fuhrman in 1994 worked very hard to free a black man by the name of Eric Harris who was charged with the murder of a white man, Sean Stewart, when he came upon evidence favorable to Harris.
In fact, he got the BA's office to dismiss the charges against Harris.
Now, when you have the Fuhrm tapes being perceived by everyone to be very devastating to the prosecution, don't you automatically offer art to this predominantly black jury the fact that Furman worked hard to free a black man who was charged with the murder of a white man?
Well, really, in a lot of ways, almost everybody's around the trial is ruined, one way or the other, or tarnished at the very least.
Listen, I want to switch gears on you because we've got such little time.
I want you to hear something.
You wrote Help Your Skelter, another absolute bestseller, number one bestseller.
I've always thought Manson was the most evil thing I've ever seen or heard.
I think it was 60 Minutes did an interview that just sent a chill down my spine.
And I got this facts last night, and I'd like you to respond to it.
Dear Art, I just heard you say that you believe Charles Manson to be an evil person based on television appearances you might have seen.
Try to consider that all televised interviews with Manson are carefully edited to make him appear to be crazy, evil, etc.
I've spoken to Manson one-on-one for hours and hours, found him to be friendly, interesting, and even respectful.
Vincent T. Bugliosi has a vested interest in supporting the idea that Manson is a man to be feared.
He has a book to sell, Helter Skelter.
Truth is, Manson is a human being, like any other.
And the false idea of him as a crazy, evil monster is nothing more than a myth.
This myth was largely created by Vincent Bugliosi and is perpetrated by the media, yourself included.
You and Bugliosi have too much to lose by allowing the actual truth regarding Manson to be known.
If the truth about him and his actual lack of participation in the infamous Pate LaBianca murders became public knowledge, Bugiosi and countless media vampires would lose the best thing they've ever had, a symbol of evil, and you would be left unable to spend an evening of gladhanding with Vincent Bugliosi.
Well, there was a little editing of the interview that he had with Geraldo and with Tom Snyder years ago.
But Manson himself has said, you know, that he'd murder as many people as he could have.
He denies complicity in these murders, obviously, because he wants to be set free.
But he has said more than once, if he had an opportunity, he'd murder 50 million people.
So apparently this guy doesn't know what's coming out of Manson's mouth.
Manson can charm people, just like O.J. Simpson can.
But he's an evil, sophisticated con man.
Who was his hero?
Who was his hero?
Manson?
Adolf Hitler.
Adolf Hitler.
He said that Hitler was a tuned-in guy who had leveled the karm of the Jews, that Hitler had the right answer for everything.
So this James, I don't think he knows what he's talking about.
Yes, Manson did not participate in these murders, which made it a little bit more difficult to convict him.
I had to bring him in by way of circumstantial evidence by showing that only he had the motive for these murders, that he controlled these people, that they never would have committed these murders without his direction and guidance.
I would like to ask, says Rick and Reno, why you consistently, you Vincent, oppose the release of Leslie Van Houten, one of the three girls I'm acquainted with Leslie, old friend of my wife's.
I also know her parents, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And apparently her father, now in his 70s, tells me he's vowed to live to see his daughter free, even if he has to make it to 120.
Well, if anyone gets out, obviously it should be Leslie for the simple reason that she was not involved in the five Tate murders.
She's been convicted of two murders, but not the seven murders at the others.
And Manson, of course, has been convicted of nine.
Leslie Van Houten may be rehabilitated.
I don't know.
You know, I forget the girl's name, the lady's name, Diane Sawyer had a special on the girls in 1995, I think, or 1994.
And they made a good impression because millions around the country saw them and they formed the conclusion that these female defendants had been rehabilitated.
Let's assume, Art, for the sake of argument, that these girls are rehabilitated, that they'll never do it again.
I'm not in any position to make any assessment of that.
I haven't seen them personally since 1971.
Where people are not thinking clearly here is that they're assuming that when you're rehabilitated, you're entitled to be set free, is that that's the only reason why we incarcerate people.
Certainly that's one of the reasons we put people behind bars.
Well, we just spent an hour and a half with Vincent T. Pulielsi and his number one bestseller, Outrage, the five reasons why O.J. Simpson got away with murder.
All right, well, we're going to go to open lines in a moment.
The TWA-800 crash continues to be the central focus of current events.
There is no forensic evidence to support the theory at this point, but FBI Assistant Director James Hallstrom says there is, quoting, circumstantial evidence that TWA Flight 800 was, listen now, brought down by a bomb or missile.
As a matter of fact, at the very highest level now, there is nothing but utter confusion.
Nobody seems to know what's going on.
Leon Panetta came out earlier in the day and said they found residue indicating there was an explosive device of some kind.
About an hour later, FBI came out, and as a matter of fact, Panetta had to say, well, not yet.
So, nobody seems to know what the hell's going on.
The FBI has been busily interviewing boat rental joints on Long Island.
That would indicate they think that, do you remember the first night I said somebody with a stinger from a boat in the water?
100, 100 eyewitnesses, including two military pilots on a commercial flight, said they saw a missile.
Two military pilots on a commercial flight, according to ABC, said they saw a missile.
Now, you think about that.
You think very hard about that.
And now, of course, the pinging is gone, so they've not come up with the black boxes.
There again, they had found a black box, and then later information that they don't have the black box, that it's no longer pinging.
What the hell's going on here?
And that is the tenor of Lewis in San Diego says, Dear Art, what's really going on with Flight 800?
This isn't meant to be funny, but there seems to be some kind of Roswell mentality at work here.
One government agency says they found traces of a possible explosive device.
A little while later, another agency says, no, there's no evidence of a bomb.
We're told they're tracking the ping of the black boxes.
Then, it's reported they've recovered one of them.
Still later, we're told, well, they lost it.
The FBI claims that about 100 eyewitnesses reported seeing something resembling a flare, but of course someone else says no, there's no indication a missile was involved.
For every major air disaster I recall in the last 30 years or so, no official information was released until they were positive they had the facts straight.
Is Flight 800 a case of no one having the facts straight?
Is one agency trying to cover up something without being able to let the other agencies involved know what they're covering up?
Or is it simply right-hand not knowing what the left-hand's doing?
It doesn't even know the left-hand exists.
Please, don't let them hit a weather balloon here.
Is it just one case will never really be told what really occurred, or is it too soon to tell with all respect to those involved?
I can't help but wonder, Lewis in San Diego.
I'm with you, Lewis.
This whole thing gets stranger by the moment.
What seemed to be a straight-on investigation, I just, I don't know what to make of it.
I just don't know what to make of it.
All right, I've got an awful lot more stuff here, and I'll kind of hold on to some of it.
Yesterday we were asking you, what is it that you now know with the wisdom of your age, that you now know about life, that you wish you had known 20 years ago, and somebody sent me some emails and said, hey, Art, my wife got a great answer to that question.
She said she wished she knew about all the things that don't matter at all.
It seems to me that if it really was a terrorist or someone who planted a bomb, they wouldn't have set this timer, so to speak, so it would have gone off over the water.
And I think that someone who was trying to blow the plane out to make some sort of a statement would have had that happen either on the ground or in front of witnesses.
The testimony that I find most credible of all are two military pilots, according to ABC, who were on a commercial flight and watched a missile rise to Flight 800.
Now, that's tough testimony to refute.
Now, where did the missile come from?
I don't know.
A terrorist in a boat?
A U.S. live fire exercise of some kind?
You would think we'd certainly know about that by now.
After all, the Pentagon should know where and when they fired missiles.
That should not be a mystery at this juncture, should it?
Some say it was 8,000, and I'm hearing figures up to 13,000.
Now, which is it?
unidentified
Well, I heard that explained last night that radar, the icon went off with the number in it, and then they replayed the radar thing, and the initial blast was at 8,000.
Then they watched four pieces of wreckage fall for 25 seconds.
They claimed they saw that the plane was dropped from 13,000 to 8,000 some feet, because they can measure it on radar.
And the plane was trying to be recovered, they said.
I don't know, except that they don't have any voice recorder unless they do have and they're not telling us.
And the plane then came apart at 8,000 feet, and the other four, the four sections still seen on the enhanced radar when they replayed the tapes, showed it crashing into the ocean 25 seconds later.
They have almost made it impossible to intelligently discuss the facts of this case.
They have so muddied the waters with regard to the altitude of the airplane, with regard to the descriptions of the explosion, with regard to 100 witnesses talking about something headed up toward that airplane, with regard to there is forensic evidence regarding a chemical trace, or there isn't, there is pinging, or there isn't, there's a major find with 100 bodies trapped inside, or there isn't.
That it's almost impossible.
They have so fogged up this whole case with indiscernible facts that it's almost getting hard to talk about.
But again, I come back to two military pilots who were on a commercial aircraft and testified it was a missile.
Now, that's professional, high quality, eyewitness testimony.
unidentified
And you may recall that a day afterwards we were talking about a missile.
In other words, at this point, is a missile a possibility, a probability, or not?
And we get both answers.
I don't know what to make of that.
unidentified
I don't know what to make of that.
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You know, in the days of our parents, they never would have questioned government.
Nowadays, people are beginning to say, you know what, something's wrong.
I'm not happy with this.
I mean, what's going on here?
Why are they so obsessed with trying to control us?
Well, I personally think there are tremendous numbers of people out there who know they're not being told the truth and no one is talking to us that we need to help each other.
Now, we take you back to the past on Art Bell Somewhere in Time.
If one of our intelligence agencies had received a written threat just prior to the downing of this aircraft that said this could have been or could be Air Force One or may be Air Force One, unless the following, would such a threat be relayed to the general public?
I would like to think that we have an open government that would tell us about such a thing, but frankly, I don't believe that.
And I'm not altogether sure that they should tell us about such a threat.
Backed up with the obvious reality of the downing of Flight 800.
If it was brought down by a missile, you can be damn sure there's more missiles.
We injected, good proper word, a lot of missiles into Afghanistan.
A lot of stingers, which we then, in recent years, last couple of years, we had been trying to buy back from the Mujahideen.
Of course, many of these missiles no doubt made their way to Iran.
All right, we're talking about TWA Flight 800 once again for a lot of good reasons.
And I've got another good response.
I'm going to read it to you.
It's from John.
You make up your own mind.
Dear Art, in answer to your question, the reason that there's been no claim of responsibility by a group, nation, or organization is because they got the wrong plane.
The answer to your other two questions are yes to the first, no to the second.
I believe that Flight 800 was mistaken for an Israeli flight and shot out of the sky with a high-explosive surface-to-air missile.
You'll notice that the CIA was brought into the case early on.
I believe that not only do the FBI and CIA know how the 747 was taken down, but who did it, and that the Clinton administration doesn't want you to know that they know.
The reason they don't want you to know is because they know the public will demand retaliation, and that is something that this president cannot do.
Bill Clinton has very serious character flaws.
His modus operandi is to stall until the heat dies, so he'll not be forced to take any overt action.
When the story is finally revealed, Bill Clinton will order sanctions.
That'll be about the extent of the reprisal.
Bill Clinton is the consummate pacifist.
That is his nature.
When asked to serve in Vietnam, he pleaded not to go.
In fact, he fled the country to keep from going.
Partially true.
Would Bill Clinton order a retaliatory attack against a nation or group outside of the U.S. if it were proven who shot down this plane?
The answer is obvious.
Bill Clinton is incapable of any overt military action.
So this person says they got the wrong plane, maybe.
I think the evidence is mounting that it was or might have been a missile.
The very first night this occurred, I said on the air, and I'll say it again right now, that in my opinion, it could easily have been a missile, not from land, but from offshore, fired from a boat.
The FBI is crawling all over the eastern shore of Long Island, talking to people red boats, that kind of thing.
They're all over the place.
So obviously, they think it possible, too.
ABC last night had testimony of two pilots, military pilots, military pilots, who were on a commercial flight and watched the missile rise.
They said without equivocation, it was a missile.
We are getting confusion from the highest places.
Leon Panetta first says one thing, then another.
They picked one up, then they haven't.
They've detected explosives, then they haven't.
The whole thing is turning into a zoo.
Could it be they were actually after an Israeli plane?
Then a lady called before this last hour and dumped one on us, too.
Here's a little more speculation for you.
She called and said virtually, suppose somebody had given a warning to some intelligence agency in our government about what was about to occur and simply said next time it could be Air Force One.
And it sure as hell could have been.
Air Force One is also a 747.
If they can take down a 747 at 8, well there's another thing.
13,000 feet or 8,000 feet, we don't know.
But if they can take it down, they can take down Air Force One.
So something's rotten off the shore of Long Island.
And I don't know what.
Wildcard line, you're on the air.
Hi.
unidentified
I don't know.
I got turned down Channel 9 while watching Rush.
Turn off the radio while I'm listening to you at the same time.
Well, just Democrats and their general, because what they're saying is that we don't want to hurt the children.
Every political argument, it's about the children.
And on Clinton's airplane on the 800 airplane, you're going to start seeing the president's plane using, they're going to be dropping flares on takeoff from now on.
Well, if it gets to the point where they've got to start dropping chaff and flares when the president takes off in Air Force One, well, then we've turned a corner in this country.
Sharp corner.
Hey, listen, I just got a very interesting call from James at KFAB, our monster of an affiliate in Omaha.
And he played me a report, a most remarkable report, about something going on down in Florida.
Police in South Florida are now, at this hour, hunting for, and brace yourself, an animal that is killing pets and clawing cars.
I'm serious.
Killing pets and clawing cars.
Something out there put deep claw marks in a 94 Lexus, deep scratches.
They've recovered footprints, large claw footprints, and they've got hair samples and they're presently testing them.
And I thought I would let you know.
And so I want to talk to somebody in South Florida.
I want to get an update on this.
What the hell is going on in South Florida?
So would everybody on my east of the Rockies line please leave it alone for a minute?
I want the people in South Florida.
I want to get an update on this.
What could put deep claw marks in the 94 Lexus?
No kitty cat, big or little, that I know about.
I'm serious about this.
Just cleared.
CBS story.
I heard the actuality myself.
So I'm telling you, I'm telling you, this really is going on.
And I want to thank James at KFAB, our Magungus affiliate in Omaha, for calling this to my attention.
So please, the East of our Iraqis line, South Florida only at 1-800-825-5033.
South Florida only.
With so many listeners out there, it's getting very hard to restrict lines, but I still am compelled to try.
South Florida only.
1-800-825-5033.
You might want to confirm for me that I've got the details of this story roughly correct.
you know it very racist down there and i have a feeling what is what what why would a racist Yeah, all I can say is if that's true, if that speculation turns out to be true, and God help us, I really mean it, God help us.
If it's turned out that we are going to blow up federal buildings in Oklahoma, we're going to blow up airplanes and blow innocent people out of the sky because we're dissatisfied with the processes of our own federal government, then just God help us, we're done.
Stick a fork in us, we're done.
You know, we've got this thing called the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and all that.
And if people have given up on it and they have come to embrace the Maoism that the only power worth a damn flows from the end of a barrel of a gun or a Stinger missile, if that's what America has become, then we don't have America anymore.
But I think that they think that it was a stinger.
That's why they're swarming over the whole place right now.
Also, by the way, was a report that there were two men who rented a boat that same night Flight 800 went down and surprise surprise the boat was returned but the two men didn't even bother to retain to return to get their $66 deposit back.
Hmm They wouldn't have gone back to get their deposit back you'd rented a boat wouldn't you go back to to get your deposit back you bet I would anyway we'll be right back Coast to Coast AM sure sounds great in the middle of the night.
unidentified
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First of all, I want to just thank you for bringing everyone out here to Cornucopia.
This phenomenal knowledge.
I don't know of anyone else that I've ever listened to at radio, and that just fills my brain and stimulates me.
You know, I was listening to the show and I thought to myself, do you think, George, the common citizen such as you or I, really has any hope towards the future of any privacy or anything else?
I think we do.
I think eventually so many people will see the light, see what you see, see what I see, that eventually they're going to say enough is enough.
And I think that we do have a future and we're going to win in the long run.
It's going to be bumpy along the way.
It's not going to be easy, but we will get there.
That's my take.
And you know what?
As long as I can continue on the airwaves and tell people this, I shall.
You are listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from July 23rd, 1996.
It's a creature that they believe they first detected on the island of Puerto Rico.
And then they began to get reports of its presence in South America, Central America, Mexico particularly, and now even here in the continental United States.
Now, Hawaii doesn't even have snakes.
If we manage to get a chupacabra, maybe we'll send one over to you.
A chupacabra.
unidentified
You keep saying it moved at like 70 miles per hour.
I don't know if it's a little bit of a Tasmanian devil.
Art, I just called my friend Chrissy in Lantana, Florida.
Her husband is a sheriff in Broward County.
They are looking for a chupa.
She's trying to call you now.
As a matter of fact, Chrissy's on her way to tell to her friend's house now who has a devil dialer to try to get through.
So once again, I'm going to leave the line open for Florida.
Holy mackerel!
Maybe this will turn out to be something else, but they apparently are actually looking for a chupacabra in Florida.
So I'm holding my line open for Florida again.
The number is Southern Florida, 1-800-825-5033.
If you want to know what a chupacabra might look like, go to my webpage.
We've got Chupi up there.
Now there are two alleged chupacabra pictures.
I consider only one of them to be possibly a chupacabra.
You take a look, decide for yourself.
It's the one with the fangs.
Hard to miss.
It is the ugliest looking thing you've ever seen.
Somebody downloaded that photograph, put it up in a 7-Eleven.
Some guy about half-tank came in, took a look at it.
The guy had marked it as a lost dog, and the guy did a double take and looked at the picture again and said, well, did that dog run away from you, or did you run away from him?
It is one ugly sucker.
But I'm serious about what's going on down in Florida.
I'm serious.
East of the Rockies on our Florida line, you're on the air.
This is from Paul in Odessa, Texas, listening to KRIL there.
Dear Art, not only did they get the wrong airliner, but they know in their hearts that we will indeed blow the hell out of whomever is responsible, despite the Clinton administration.
You know, quote, I hit the button by accident, sir.
The only thing I've really, the criticism I've heard of it is that anybody who would get that close to whatever in the hell that was would have to be out of their mind because that is a close-up photo yeah it sure is so I don't know I don't don't ask me I didn't take the picture let me go further than that I wouldn't have taken that picture would you no after hearing about the Lexus and so forth the Lexus oh you haven't been hearing about the Lexus
And if it's somebody who has adopted a baby chupacabra and allowed this sucker to grow up, and then, because of the disagreeable nature of the chupacabra's personality, let it loose.
Well, we know there were live fire exercises going on.
unidentified
Well, let me just say this, that anybody who's from Long Island will tell you that there's normally a large amount of black helicopters flying around the eastern tip.
Look, I appreciate all the good black helicopter inside info.
But the fact of the matter is, I don't believe for one second that our own military, black helicopters or whatever, shot down this airplane.
Had they done so, I believe they would have owned up to it, one.
Two, even if they hadn't, the missile would have...
I mean, they watch these things very, very carefully.
And the missile would be reported as having been fired.
And they keep very...
You know, I was in the Air Force now.
That doesn't mean I know everything about the Air Force, but I know they keep track of these things very carefully.
And we should know about that by now.
unidentified
Change times we're in, folks.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in...
in time tonight featuring coast to coast a.m from july 23rd 1996 east of the rockies you're on me or hi yes sir yes sir uh this is ron i'm in jacksonville north carolina yes hi ron how you doing pretty good okay uh two things
Okay, first thing, I'm a security officer, so I don't get to listen to you every night.
I don't want to be redundant on something, but last Wednesday is USA Today.
On page three, there's a small paragraph on there that said at JFK, Tuesday morning, they received a bomb threat on a plane that was bound from Moscow.
Okay, it got all of a paragraph, nothing much.
And I haven't heard anybody bring anything else up about this.
Less than 24 hours later, a plane blows up coming out of JFK.
Yep.
Okay, on the military angle, I'm also an ex-Marine, but not quite as paranoid, I think, or self-delusioned as the last one they called.
The thing with this is, anybody that's spending any time in the military knows that sometimes word does not get disseminated quickly.
If the plane was delayed for for an hour now uh maybe they didn't get that word maybe somebody mistook it as a drone possibility and they did fire it off if the Pentagon or at least the Department of the Navy is going to try to cover up a little butt pension at Tailhook, why are they going to come out immediately and say, hey, yeah, we screwed up and shot down a plane load of good U.S. Maybe not immediately, but by now.
Maybe so.
Maybe they're trying to figure out how they're going to do it.
Frankly, I kind of liked the lady who called before 1 a.m. Pacific time who said, look, what if, and I really think this is a good what if, what if somebody did issue a threat ahead of time and said, what is about to occur could next occur to Air Force One, which is also a 747.
Right.
Now, would they make public such a threat?
I think the answer to that is not only no, but hell no.
unidentified
Right.
But along those same lines as far as Mr. Clinton being nervous or looking haggard or however she put it, I want to misquote her.
Maybe someone, General Shelley Kashville or someone else, came to him and told him, hey, we accidentally knocked down our own guy.
We accidentally knocked some of our own people out of the air.
If you want to call me and have an intelligent conversation with me, which she could have had, with regard to the difference in philosophy between defense dollars, a priority is fine.
We'll do that.
But don't you dare call up and tell me that my being in favor of a good defense translates to I want to have a war and I want to spend all my money on weapons because you're full of crap.
Well, I've never heard that expression before, but I can picture that since I have a wild feral cat that I'm taming right now who shredded me at one point.
It's like he was on steroids.
So yes, I can picture that, but what I can't picture is it tearing up a Lexus.
unidentified
Oh, he's probably trying to get, he was probably very hungry and trying to get one of those pets that he was trying to eat and that was hiding underneath the car.
And trying to get to it, he probably scratched it.
I mean, a hungry animal would probably do just about anything to get its food.
Not that I'm an environmentalist or anything, but there are a lot of people moving down in the Everglades area, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was one of those.
Yes, we can imagine that moving in On the Everglades, moving in on the rainforest, moving in on areas where we've not previously been, laying of concrete, downing of trees, clearing of forests, that eventually we're going to begin to meet up with things that aren't going to be real happy about that.
So, yeah, I'm sure I suppose it could turn out to be something like that.
Of course, the chupacabra.
unidentified
The chupacabra.
Coast to Coast AM sure sounds great in the middle of the night.
But you know, you don't have to be nocturnal to enjoy this amazing show.
The Coast Insider is your key to a normal life.
For 15 cents a day, you can wake up refreshed knowing that last night's show is waiting for you with podcasting.
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Get a new view of the world with Coast to Coast AM.
First of all, I want to just thank you for bringing everyone out here to Corneacopia this phenomenal knowledge.
I don't know of anyone else that I've ever listened to at radio, and that just fills my brain and stimulates me.
You know, I was listening to the show and I thought to myself, do you think, George, the common citizen such as you or I, really has any hope towards the future of any privacy or anything else?
I think we do.
I think eventually so many people will see the light, see what you see, see what I see, that eventually they're going to say enough is enough.
And I think that we do have a future, and we're going to win in the long run.
It's going to be bumpy along the way.
It's not going to be easy, but we will get there.
That's my take.
And you know what?
As long as I can continue on the earwaves and tell people this, I shall.
Somewhere in Time with Art Bell continues, courtesy of Premier Networks.
You know, as I get older, I'm fairly even-tempered.
I try to be most of the time.
But the one thing that can really get to me is people telling me what I'm saying.
I refuse to put up with that.
I refuse to put up with that.
I will speak for myself, you callers, you speak for yourselves.
And we can have fights, we can have discussions, we can do whatever you want.
But I will not allow people to put words that I did not say into my mouth.
Period.
That's all there is to it.
And I will not allow that woman or any other to translate for me my meaning when I say that the strong survive and the weak inevitably are trampled upon.
I will not allow her to twist that into a meaning, I want a war.
I'm a warmonger.
I want to build weapons and go kill people.
I will not allow it to be translated to that.
If you want to have a discussion about it, fine.
If you want to try to put words in my mouth, you're going to have yourself a real tangle, you know, and you're not going to be on the air very long.
Because I got control of the buttons.
So there you are.
First time caller line, you're on the air.
unidentified
All right, this is Steve from Selma, California.
Yes, sir.
Listening to you on KMJ.
I wanted to tell you Friday's show with Courtney Brown.
It really had a strong influence around here because I went Saturday morning to buy the book and it was sold out everywhere.
So I had to order it.
But I'm looking forward to getting that book.
I wanted to know if after I get off of here, sometime tonight, you could give me the number for ordering past shows.
Well, I'll tell you what I would suggest, and I rarely suggest this, but very politely, we don't need another station there.
We have Cam J. Give Cam J a call and ask them if they would not consider carrying the show at an earlier hour.
I can tell you the surveys, the radio surveys are coming out, and we're coming up number one everywhere.
Los Angeles, San Diego, the early big cities are coming in now.
Dreamland, number one in San Francisco, and on and on and on and on.
It'll come out same in Portland, Seattle, etc., etc., etc.
So the ratings are there, and I suspect they're there for KMJ as well.
And so if the ratings are there and you and other people in Fresno call KMJ and request an earlier start for the show, because we do begin at 11, my guess is that KMJ would favorably consider such a thing.
Women like that art seem to take for granted that they're able to call a show like yours and voice an opinion like hers because we've kept the defense strong over the years.
We're not making the rules.
We're playing by them that were already established here when we got here.
Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.
And the reason that that lady and others are free enough to have their First Amendment privileges to call talk shows and blah, blah, blah, is because we are strong.
We have not fought wars on our shore because we are strong.
We remain free today to have all these wonderful arguments and disagreements because we are strong.
This is a basic fact of life.
It's not even debatable as far as I'm concerned.
And to twist that into the wish for war or warmongering is crazy.
However, to put those words in my mouth will get you.
Well, you heard what happened to her.
My goodness, I don't know what has happened at the time.
This whole night has just flat flown by.
I want to remind everybody that this Friday night, Saturday morning, what is today anyway?
It's already Wednesday, isn't it?
Friday night, Saturday morning, Richard Hoagland is going to be here.
And for those of you who have never heard Richard Hoagland, man, are you ever in for a treat after Graham Hancock and all the rest of the people we've had on?
Hoagland is going to come roaring back.
After a lot of what he said has been absolutely substantiated.
We will be right back.
unidentified
You are listening to Art Bell somewhere in time.
Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from July 23rd, 1996.
Music Get it on, get it on, get it on.
Get it on, get it on, get it on.
Get it on, get it on.
When you build that call, you got a hug cap downstairs.
You like a cow, yeah.
We're gonna huntin'.
We're gonna huntin'.
Thank you.
Somewhere in Time with Art Bell continues courtesy of Premier Network.
five you think of the song from the point of view of the chupacabra and you listen to the words you'll get a serious chuckle out of it all Oh, well.
Listen to this.
Art, whenever you discuss a little critter or describe it to a new listener, you tend to be fixated on the tooth marks the creature leaves on its customers.
Is it possible that teeth work actually like a barb on a fish hook?
The extra set of punctures on the inside of a wound serve as an anchor, so the creature can't be shook loose by its live and conscious victim.
Now, hold on, it gets better.
Have you ever seen how a moray eel holds on to its lucky prey, or maybe a pit bull?
Piano break.
Well, not yet.
The jaw locks in a way that can't be released.
Maybe the chupacabra locks onto its victim with an anchor or bar bond, its teeth, and then drains its victim while they kick and holler.
Human victim, use as an example.
unidentified
what do you think art My friend, what beautiful teeth you have.
Smile a bit, smile.
Love you, feel you, wake up around you.
I won't squeeze you, see you, smile and think you.
About 100 people, including two ABC News last night, reported on a commercial airliner there were two military pilots who saw their words, a missile go toward that plane.
unidentified
Right.
Well, what I'm suggesting is perhaps the plane was hit by a meteor.
Well, it's true, but at night and with the going across the sky, it's possible they might have seen this look like a flare, you have to admit, when they're red and glowing.
Okay, well, I appreciate your call and your theory, but I don't think so.
I mean, of all the ones that we do or are going to consider, I don't think that a meteor would be in the group that I would give active consideration to.
All the eyewitness testimony, there's a substantial body of it, says whatever it was came from the ground.
Now, there were exercises going on in the air.
It could have been a military flare.
But when you have testimony from two military pilots who ought to know what the hell they're looking at, and they say it was a missile fired from the ground, then I'm inclined to work that angle before I begin to think about meteors.
If you listen while I go on vacation, we have pulled what I consider to be, and many people consider to be, the definitive interview ever done, ever, with Al Belick.
A long, extensive, very careful, technical explanation of what occurred in the Philadelphia experiment.
And we are going to run that show.
I'm not going to tell you when, but it's going to be while I'm on vacation.
And it will be a show that 99.9% of this audience, you included, has never heard.
So I recommend you listen for it while I'm off flying off to Europe.
Well, it may be that you misheard it somehow because B-52s weren't around that long ago for starters.
unidentified
Well, it was supposed to have gone down during World War II, and they went into the fact that the crew was in it, the skeletons of the crew, and their dog tags and everything.
Would they have announced something like that and then covered it up?
all right sir thank you arm i know of the fifty two is old and i know that they And besides, the B-52 is so damn big that I don't see how it could be hidden anywhere.
It must have been another aircraft.
A B-52 has been our standby bomber for a very, very long time, and they're really quite ancient.
But I don't think they're that ancient.
World War II.
Because we, no, they certainly weren't.
We delivered the atomic bombs to Japan at the end of World War II, not in a B-52.
And had we had a B-52 then, that would have been the aircraft of choice without question.