Behind the Bastards - Cracktoberfest Part Five: How the CIA and the L.A. Times Killed Gary Webb
Aired: 2022-10-07
Duration: 01:07:45


=== Guaranteed Human Intro (02:08) ===

[00:00:00]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[00:00:02]  Guaranteed human.
[00:00:04]  What's up, everyone?
[00:00:05]  I'm Ego Modem.
[00:00:06]  My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
[00:00:10]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:00:13]  He goes, just give it a shot.
[00:00:15]  But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:00:22]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:00:24]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hanging in there.
[00:00:31]  Yeah, it would not be right.
[00:00:33]  It wouldn't be that.
[00:00:34]  There's a lot of life.
[00:00:36]  Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:00:43]  In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
[00:00:50]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[00:00:54]  I doctored the test once.
[00:00:56]  It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
[00:01:01]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[00:01:03]  Greg Gillespie and Michael Marcini.
[00:01:05]  My mind was blown.
[00:01:06]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[00:01:08]  This is Love Trapped.
[00:01:09]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[00:01:11]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[00:01:16]  Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:01:23]  10-10 shots fired, City Hall building.
[00:01:26]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[00:01:28]  Somebody tell me that.
[00:01:29]  A shocking public murder.
[00:01:31]  This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
[00:01:37]  They screamed, get down, get down.
[00:01:39]  Those are shots.
[00:01:41]  A tragedy that's now forgotten.
[00:01:44]  And a mystery that may or may not have been political.
[00:01:46]  That may have been about sex.
[00:01:48]  Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:01:57]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[00:02:05]  I vowed I will be his last target.

=== Cocaine Financing Contras (15:27) ===

[00:02:08]  He is not going to get away with this.
[00:02:10]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:02:12]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:02:17]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:02:18]  Trust me, babe.
[00:02:19]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:02:31]  What's five in my parts?
[00:02:34]  It's part five of five.
[00:02:38]  That's right.
[00:02:38]  Which is actually gang talk, which is quite a stretch, but anyway, a little bit.
[00:02:43]  But this is our fifth part of what I am now calling rack week.
[00:02:49]  CIA week.
[00:02:50]  I don't know.
[00:02:51]  None of them are quite perfect, but that's what we're calling it in this episode.
[00:02:54]  We'll see what titles we come up with.
[00:02:56]  That's very cash money of you, Robert.
[00:02:59]  Thank you, Sophie.
[00:03:01]  Yes.
[00:03:01]  It's quite cash money of you to recognize that.
[00:03:05]  So, while all so embarrassing again, Robert, we just got through with Iran-Contra.
[00:03:13]  But while kind of while Iran Contra was spinning up, I want to get to another thing that's happening.
[00:03:18]  Also, if you're on here and you're listening to this thinking it's part three, this is actually part five, and you need to go over to the, you need to go listen to the hood politics episodes, which you can find in this feed and the hood politics feed.
[00:03:32]  So if you're not finding it, then you're wrong.
[00:03:36]  So while all of the shit we just talked about on your show was happening, Ollie North is also doing more shit of his own.
[00:03:43]  And he has moved on from Iranian money to finding a new way to fund his contra buddies, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.
[00:03:52]  Now, Manuel had been a friend of the CIA's for a while.
[00:03:56]  He and George H.W. Bush are good buddies.
[00:04:00]  He had been running cocaine through his, obviously, Panama.
[00:04:03]  Pretty good port, right?
[00:04:04]  Pretty good port.
[00:04:05]  Yes.
[00:04:06]  Now, another cultural touch point here.
[00:04:12]  You guys know the Drink Champs podcast with DJ Envy and Nori, who is a legendary Queens rapper, right?
[00:04:21]  Nori's name is...
[00:04:25]  Noriega.
[00:04:27]  Right.
[00:04:27]  Referring to this dude.
[00:04:29]  Yeah.
[00:04:30]  Okay.
[00:04:30]  Yes.
[00:04:30]  So another little touch point here.
[00:04:35]  Also, I think it's important as the listeners, if this feels a little like the way that this series went a little like chaotic and kind of, you know, not very linear and you're hearing parts and pieces here and there.
[00:04:49]  Imagine living it.
[00:04:50]  This is exactly how it felt.
[00:04:52]  Because all of this shit is breaking at different times.
[00:04:56]  For example, in 1986, June of 1986, the Times publishes an expose on the dictators' illicit money laundering and drug activities.
[00:05:04]  They cite an unnamed White House source who claims, quote, the most significant drug running in Panama was being directed by General Noriega.
[00:05:12]  Now, Manuel starts to face legal consequences after this point, including a ban on selling arms to the Panamanian defense forces, like an international ban.
[00:05:20]  So while Iran-Contra is breaking and all of this shit's going nuts and the Reagan administration is battening down, he sends a guy into Washington to try to get help.
[00:05:30]  And I'm going to quote next from a write-up in the National Security Archive.
[00:05:33]  Oliver North, who met with Noriega's representative, described the meeting in an August 23rd, 1986 email message to Reagan National Security Advisor John Poindexter.
[00:05:43]  You will recall that over the years, Manuel Noriega in Panama and I have developed a fairly good relationship, North writes before explaining Noriega's proposal.
[00:05:51]  If U.S. officials can help clean up his image and lift the ban on arms sales to the Panamanian Defense Force, Noriega will take care of the Sandinista leadership for us.
[00:06:00]  So North is telling Poindexter that Noriega can assist with sabotaging the Sandinistas and carrying out assassination operations.
[00:06:08]  And his suggestion is we should pay Noriega, who's under an arms embargo by us, a million dollars from those Project Democracy funds raised by the sale of U.S. arms for Iran to get the Panamanian dictators' help in destroying Nicaraguan economic installations.
[00:06:25]  So this causes a big old debate within the Reagan inner circle.
[00:06:29]  Highlights include Poindexter saying he has nothing against Noriega other than his illegal activities.
[00:06:35]  Poindexter's like, well, aside from the crimes, he's great.
[00:06:38]  If he weren't doing all those crimes, we'd love him.
[00:06:40]  I mean, he's pretty cool except for the fact that he's a criminal.
[00:06:43]  But besides that, I mean, cool.
[00:06:45]  Now, Alan Fears, who is one of the CIA agents who's heavily involved in everything happening in Latin America, is against the idea of arming one of the biggest drug lords in the area with a legal arms deal cash.
[00:06:57]  And Fears actually may be one of these guys who's kind of kept in the dark specifically so he'll say the right thing when he gets questioned later and seem honest, right?
[00:07:05]  Like that's one of the guys Fears is, I think.
[00:07:08]  But everyone ignores.
[00:07:09]  So Fears does say, like, I don't think giving Noriega a million dollars is good.
[00:07:14]  He is ignored.
[00:07:15]  Nobody follows his advice.
[00:07:16]  North meets with Noriega in London with the support of Elliot Abrams, John Poindexter, and George Schultz.
[00:07:23]  So Schultzy, who's not on board Iran-Contra so much, is like, but giving a million dollars to Manuel Noriega sounds like a great plan.
[00:07:30]  Seems a little cleaner.
[00:07:32]  I'm going to go do this.
[00:07:33]  Yeah, Schultz is like, this is a little cleaner.
[00:07:35]  Like, this is what got two little moving parts.
[00:07:38]  I'm not against paying foreign people to murder and get drugs.
[00:07:42]  I'm not against that.
[00:07:43]  I'm just saying you'll be.
[00:07:44]  Let's be smarter about it.
[00:07:46]  I am George Schultz.
[00:07:48]  Yeah, this is the call that Schultz makes right before deciding to one day become the board of directors for a fake blood testing company.
[00:07:56]  Fucking George Schultz.
[00:07:59]  Noriega.
[00:08:00]  You're fizzling out, man.
[00:08:01]  Yeah.
[00:08:01]  Like you were running, you're running contraband across multiple continents.
[00:08:06]  Bro, come on, man.
[00:08:08]  You should have retired in a blaze of glory.
[00:08:10]  So Noriega agrees to attack airports, electric, and telephone systems in Nicaragua on the Contra's behalf.
[00:08:17]  And again, part of the deal is that he's going to get some cash money.
[00:08:21]  Part of the deal is that everyone's going to be chill about his continuing moving cocaine through his ports, right?
[00:08:27]  So, but then things are going great for all of this until in November of 1986, we get the actual Iran-Contra story breaks, right?
[00:08:35]  And, you know, everything that we talked about at the end there happens.
[00:08:41]  And one of the things that's happening, like kind of in the wake of this, obviously the big deal, as we've talked about earlier, the big deal is that the United States was illegally selling missiles to Iran in exchange for hostages and then lied about it, right?
[00:08:53]  That's the big deal, right?
[00:08:55]  That's what people get in fucking trouble for.
[00:08:57]  But the other thing that's happening is the Iran-Contra deal is tied to everything else that Ali and the CIA and the NSC are doing in Nicaragua and all this cocaine that keeps getting into the fucking United States.
[00:09:08]  And I don't know if you're aware of this, but Ronald Reagan makes a bit of an impact for himself as an anti-drug crusade.
[00:09:14]  That's right.
[00:09:14]  That's kind of his thing.
[00:09:15]  So there are some people you would think that this would have been a bigger deal, but the fact that missiles are involved, that's the sexier thing.
[00:09:22]  The Ayatollah is involved, right?
[00:09:24]  So that's what gets all the attention.
[00:09:26]  But there is a little bit of understanding at the time from some people in the media that, like, kind of seems like the bigger story here is all the fucking cocaine you guys were letting into the country, right?
[00:09:35]  Kind of seems like that might be a real big goddamn deal.
[00:09:37]  Kind of like, there's a lot of leads here.
[00:09:39]  I feel like you might be burying one of them.
[00:09:41]  Yeah.
[00:09:41]  You guys, the missiles and stuff is important.
[00:09:43]  You guys work on that.
[00:09:44]  I'm going to ask these questions.
[00:09:44]  And there's a guy, a journalist, who does decide during a press conference to ask, like, hey, are there any connections between these Contras that you were apparently funding with missile money and drug smuggling?
[00:09:55]  People bringing cocaine to the United States.
[00:09:57]  And this guy gets screamed down, not by the press secretary, but by the New York Times correspondent standing next to him who says, why don't you ask a serious question?
[00:10:07]  Bro, bro, if you're on the- I love that the New York Times keeps coming up in this.
[00:10:12]  Yo, if you're on the lectern and the New York Times, and that somebody lobs that question, and then someone else in the audience shuts it down like that, the relief that must shoot over your body at that moment.
[00:10:27]  Like, oh my God, that's that is.
[00:10:30]  I don't know if there's a better example of dodging a bullet, you know?
[00:10:34]  Yeah.
[00:10:34]  And like, you're just thinking, bro, if this fool knew, I would, I would buy him whatever he wanted tonight.
[00:10:42]  Boy, New York Times really got me out of a sticky.
[00:10:45]  You really got me out of this one, dog.
[00:10:46]  I owe you a Rolex and homie.
[00:10:49]  Yeah.
[00:10:50]  They're going to help out a lot with the moral panic over the crack epidemic, too.
[00:10:54]  So they really, they really just work in hand in glove with our friends in the CIA.
[00:10:59]  Well, kind of.
[00:11:00]  So obviously, there are some criticisms at the time about the fact that there are very clearly, and this is revealed by the stuff that comes out during Iran-Contra.
[00:11:10]  One of the things that we get because of Iran-Contra is Ollie North's diary where he's like, helped some cocaine get into the U.S. today.
[00:11:17]  Hoop-do-doo.
[00:11:20]  Yeah.
[00:11:20]  So I found a wonderful 1988 write-up in the Middle East report by Jonathan Marshall, which is a contemporary.
[00:11:26]  88 is kind of the year a lot of this is blowing up, which summarizes, you know, we have the committee that investigates Iran-Contra.
[00:11:33]  Marshall in this is summarizing what the committee found and what it didn't.
[00:11:37]  Quote: The most glaring operational embarrassment neglected by the report is the role of drug trafficking in financing the Contras and the logistic operation that supplied them.
[00:11:46]  The only mention of drugs comes in a staff memo reprinted in a report appendix that rejects media-exploited allegations of Contra drug trafficking as improbable and unverifiable.
[00:11:57]  Yet other congressional investigators have condemned the memo as a fraudulent misrepresentation of the facts.
[00:12:02]  Ample and convincing evidence points to the existence of a guns for drugs network that brought cocaine and marijuana into the United States as the price of running arms down to Central America.
[00:12:11]  The joint committee itself heard testimony from three government witnesses that high-ranking Iran-Contra leaders trafficked in cocaine.
[00:12:18]  Indeed, the committee introduced into evidence a letter from Rob Owen, North's emissary to Central America, mentioning a Contra supply chain used at one time to run drugs and part of the crew that had criminal records.
[00:12:29]  Nice group of boys, the CIA chose.
[00:12:33]  I love it.
[00:12:35]  The report's silence on the involvement of terrorists in North's Project Democracy is no less deafening.
[00:12:40]  One of the logistics agents employed in the Contra cause was the Cuban exile and career CIA officer Luis Posada.
[00:12:47]  He came to Central America in 1985 after breaking out of a Venezuelan jail where he had been held for conspiring to bomb a civilian Cuban jet in 1976.
[00:12:57]  That act, the worst terrorist crime ever committed in the Western hemisphere, killed all 73 passengers, including Cuba's national fencing team.
[00:13:05]  Yet the report mentions Posada only in passing, and then by his operational code name, Ramon Medina.
[00:13:10]  Just to give you an idea, the kind of folks who's all he's running drugs with.
[00:13:14]  Yeah, this guy who blew up a civilian airliner.
[00:13:16]  Cool dude.
[00:13:17]  Yeah.
[00:13:18]  Now, the Iran-Contra investigation and report plunges the Reagan White House into its darkest hours.
[00:13:24]  Public opinion falls through the fucking floor.
[00:13:26]  And again, we talked about this a little bit, but like, yeah, this is the first time he's dealing with like some serious shit.
[00:13:33]  And a bunch of different stuff comes out of the fallout, which we've talked about in your episodes.
[00:13:38]  But one of the things that happens is that while the Reagan White House is in disarray, his opponents in Congress start digging up other stuff too that's been going on during his two terms in office.
[00:13:48]  And one of the things they start to look at increasingly is this connection between CIA operations in Latin America and drugs.
[00:13:54]  And one thing people who are interested in this find is a 1985 article by Associated Press journalists Robert Perry and Brian Barger.
[00:14:04]  Perry and Barger had published an investigation.
[00:14:06]  This is the very first public evidence that the Contras and the CIA were moving fucking drugs into the United States, which found that Contra groups had, quote, engaged in cocaine trafficking in part to help finance their war against Nicaragua.
[00:14:19]  The article hadn't made much of a splash because, according to the Columbia Journalism Review, Reagan's people carried out a behind-the-scenes campaign to attack the professionalism of the AP reporters and quote, discredit all reporting on the Contras and drugs.
[00:14:33]  That's what the CIA wrote at the time.
[00:14:35]  Peter Kornblue, writing for the Columbia Journalism Review, notes that whether the campaign was the cause or not, coverage was minimal.
[00:14:42]  So the fact that all this is happening is not like, pay attention to that.
[00:14:47]  The way they go after these journalists and the way their goal is we have to discredit reporting on this.
[00:14:51]  And also pay attention to the fact that when this first comes up in public in 88, it's a New York Times journalist who, as far as we know, without Any CIA advocacy shuts down a line of questioning on it.
[00:15:02]  Yes.
[00:15:02]  That's going to be relevant later.
[00:15:04]  Yes.
[00:15:05]  So in 1988, the last year of the Reagan administration, Senator John Kerry does a Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee report.
[00:15:14]  He's the guy running it.
[00:15:15]  They published a report on specifically how covert support for the Contras undermined the war on drugs, right?
[00:15:20]  So this does get looked into.
[00:15:22]  And I'm going to quote from the National Security Archive.
[00:15:25]  The Kerry subcommittee did not report that U.S. government officials ran drugs, but rather that Mr. North, then on the National Security Council staff at the White House and other senior officials, created a privatized Contra network that attracted drug traffickers looking for cover for their operations, then turned a blind eye to repeated reports of drug smuggling related to the Contras and actively worked with known drug smugglers such as the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega to assist the Contras.
[00:15:49]  The report cited former Drug Enforcement Administration head John Lawn as testifying that Mr. North himself had prematurely leaked the DEA undercover operation, jeopardizing agents' lives for political advantage in an upcoming congressional vote on aid to the Contras.
[00:16:05]  Yeah.
[00:16:06]  Awesome, all this shit.
[00:16:07]  Awesome.
[00:16:07]  All of this.
[00:16:08]  All of this stuff.
[00:16:09]  It would be such a different story if the Reagan administration didn't go so hard on violence, gangs, and drugs.
[00:16:18]  Like if y'all didn't go so hard about it, it wouldn't be such a gotcha.
[00:16:22]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:16:23]  But I'm like, like, you didn't have to.
[00:16:27]  You didn't have to create.
[00:16:27]  I mean, you didn't have to create the DARE program and like three strikes.
[00:16:31]  Well, they didn't create three strikes, but just all these different, just very punitive laws around drugs.
[00:16:36]  Like, you ain't have to do that.
[00:16:38]  And we wouldn't even thought it wouldn't have been so like salacious.
[00:16:43]  Yeah, if the, if the fucking, if Congress had not been destroying huge numbers of people because they were caught with crack cocaine at the same time as they were bringing in the raw cocaine that gets turned into crack in order to fund right-wing death squads in other parts of the world, if that all wasn't happening at the same time, it wouldn't seem like such a goddamn conspiracy.
[00:17:04]  Exactly.
[00:17:05]  Because it's like, it's, yeah, if this didn't happen, we would be like, this is, yeah, we would be like oil on our head.
[00:17:15]  Like, because of the amount of like, how many countries have gotten when you add all if this part five?
[00:17:21]  So we, okay, add the countries together.
[00:17:24]  The amount of countries involved in this, the amount of governments, street dudes, bureaucracies, there's like nine countries involved.
[00:17:34]  Yep.

=== Nine Countries Involved (04:47) ===

[00:17:36]  It's a big deal.
[00:17:37]  It's, as we've tried to unravel, quite complicated.
[00:17:40]  Yes.
[00:17:41]  So this report that Kerry is kind of the guy running does not establish that the CIA is responsible for bringing crack to the inner cities, nor does it connect U.S. officials directly to drug dealers in the United States.
[00:17:54]  However, as the report concluded, it is clear that individuals who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking.
[00:18:00]  The supply network of the Contras was used by drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers.
[00:18:10]  In each case, one or another agency of the U.S. government had information regarding the involvement, either while it was occurring or immediately thereafter.
[00:18:20]  So the report also quoted the chief of the CIA's Central America Task Force, who said, with respect to drug trafficking by the resistance forces, it is not a couple of people.
[00:18:30]  It is a lot of people.
[00:18:32]  Now, you can't do the bad apple, man.
[00:18:35]  It's all y'all.
[00:18:36]  This is all damning because we have talked about this in the context of Iran-Contra and in the context of a bunch of other shit, years of shady dealings that we know now.
[00:18:46]  But at the time, a lot of this was breaking.
[00:18:48]  And at the time that report comes out, a lot of that outside information is missing, right?
[00:18:53]  So, most Americans who see the headlines around this, the reasonable assumption to make is like, oh, some people we armed in an unpopular conflict were also moving cocaine, whatever.
[00:19:02]  The subcommittee report is not big news.
[00:19:05]  People, that sounds pretty damning.
[00:19:07]  People could not give less of a shit at the time when it comes up.
[00:19:11]  That's 1988.
[00:19:13]  Seven-ish years later, Gary Webb picks that thread back up and he does about a year of digging.
[00:19:19]  And he puts together this three-part article series for the Mercury, which blows the fucking lid off the world.
[00:19:25]  In like a couple of days after this thing drops, it becomes the biggest story in the country.
[00:19:31]  And it's the first massive news story that's gone out primarily over the internet.
[00:19:37]  That's where this thing spreads.
[00:19:39]  And in order to kind of talk about how that happens, I want to quote now from an article in the Columbia Journalism Review.
[00:19:45]  The demographics of web traffic are unknown, but some media specialists believe that the rising numbers at Mercury Center in part reflect what the Chicago Tribune syndicated columnist Clarence Page calls an emerging black cyber consciousness.
[00:19:58]  Online newsletters and other net services made the series readily available to African American students, newspapers, radio stations, and community organizations.
[00:20:06]  Patricia Turner, author of I Heard It Through the Grapevine, the definitive study on how information travels through Black America, suggests that this marked the, quote, first time the internet has electrified African Americans in this way.
[00:20:19]  The Black Telegraph, noted Jack Weil, a Time magazine columnist, referring to the informal word of mouth network used since the days of slavery, has moved into cyberspace.
[00:20:30]  There is, I like, I didn't know the specifics of what you're saying, but it is true.
[00:20:37]  Like, like, I don't know how we get information that we get.
[00:20:41]  You just find out through the homies or your auntie.
[00:20:44]  I don't know how it happens.
[00:20:45]  It just does.
[00:20:46]  But I will say when this broke, this was our uncles who were like, see there, I tried to tell y'all.
[00:20:59]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:21:00]  That we thought was like, all right, man, like, you know, they didn't been to jail a few times.
[00:21:04]  You know, you done read a couple books.
[00:21:05]  You know, you come back and you prison smart.
[00:21:07]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:21:08]  So like, and prison smart is a very specific type of smart, you know?
[00:21:13]  And so they got all kind of information about the government and the CIA conspired against us.
[00:21:19]  And we're thinking, okay, maybe, you know, but like you said, it wasn't really big news.
[00:21:25]  And it seems so far-fetched, but I have no reason to not believe my uncle.
[00:21:33]  And then this happens and it was like, that's a fact, Jack.
[00:21:36]  We done tried to tell y'all, you know, and all that started happening.
[00:21:39]  And it was like, damn, it turns out Unc ain't crazy.
[00:21:44]  Like, he, oh my God, it really.
[00:21:47]  Yeah.
[00:21:47]  You wasn't lying, was you, Uncle?
[00:21:49]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:21:49]  We believed you, but it was like, I don't know, man.
[00:21:52]  Yeah, he's probably, well, and it's, you know, again, one of the things people can use to discredit this is pick it like the edges of, because it is not literally the CIA was not shipping crack directly into the city.
[00:22:03]  Cause that's not a very sensible way to go about doing Doing that, right?
[00:22:06]  Just like Apple doesn't directly turn rare earth minerals into phones, right?
[00:22:11]  Because there's a distribution network shit.
[00:22:13]  But if you be like, yo, who the plug?
[00:22:15]  Who's your plug?
[00:22:16]  You'd be like, CIA.
[00:22:17]  Yeah.
[00:22:18]  Like, no, they, the government, the government, I get to, I get the way from the government.
[00:22:22]  Like, no, you don't.

=== Damming Conspiracy Facts (04:39) ===

[00:22:23]  It's like, oh, wait, yes, you do.
[00:22:26]  It's easy to see why people see this as a very concerted conspiracy.
[00:22:30]  Honestly, there's a way in which it's much more, and I'm not going to say what happened or not, because I'm sure there's more we don't.
[00:22:37]  What we know is damning.
[00:22:39]  Yeah.
[00:22:40]  If it is as simple as the left-hand didn't know what the right was doing, and nobody gave a shit about the impacts of these agencies and what they were doing in Latin America and how it might affect people, and nobody was watching them while people were like responding to this media circus that time created violently by destroying huge numbers of people's lives.
[00:22:58]  And that's why all this happened, which is what the facts directly suggest.
[00:23:02]  That's like, that's enough to revolt over.
[00:23:05]  That's already.
[00:23:06]  Yes, that's that's enough to, yeah.
[00:23:10]  I don't feel like.
[00:23:11]  Anyway, let's keep telling the story because there's more to revolt over.
[00:23:15]  Yes.
[00:23:19]  What's up, everyone?
[00:23:20]  I'm Ago Modem.
[00:23:21]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:23:29]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:23:32]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:23:36]  I went and had lunch with him one day and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:23:41]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:23:43]  I'm working my way up through it.
[00:23:44]  I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
[00:23:47]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:23:52]  Yeah.
[00:23:53]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:23:55]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:23:57]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:24:05]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:24:08]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:24:15]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:24:17]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:24:18]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:24:20]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:24:30]  10-10 shots fired in the City Hall building.
[00:24:33]  A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
[00:24:37]  From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach: murder at City Hall.
[00:24:43]  How did this ever happen in City Hall?
[00:24:45]  Somebody tell me that, Jeffrey Hood did.
[00:24:47]  July 2003, Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
[00:24:54]  Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
[00:24:57]  And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
[00:25:05]  Everybody in the chambers ducks.
[00:25:08]  A shocking public murder.
[00:25:09]  I screamed, get down, get down.
[00:25:11]  Those are shots.
[00:25:12]  Those are shots.
[00:25:13]  Get down.
[00:25:13]  A charismatic politician.
[00:25:15]  You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
[00:25:17]  I still have a weapon and I could shoot you.
[00:25:23]  And an outsider with a secret.
[00:25:25]  He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
[00:25:27]  That may or may not have been political.
[00:25:29]  That may have been about sex.
[00:25:31]  Listening to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.
[00:25:35]  Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:25:44]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:25:48]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:25:51]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:25:54]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:25:58]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:26:02]  I'm Anna Sinfield.
[00:26:03]  And in this new season of The Girlfriends...
[00:26:05]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:26:07]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:26:12]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:26:14]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:26:16]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:26:18]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:26:21]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:26:23]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:26:25]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:26:29]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:26:31]  Trust me, babe.
[00:26:32]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:26:42]  I'm Lori Siegel, and on Mostly Human, I go beyond the headlines with the people building our future.
[00:26:48]  This week, an interview with one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
[00:26:55]  I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to products we put out in the world.
[00:27:01]  From power to parenthood.

=== Legacy Editorial Weirdness (15:56) ===

[00:27:03]  Kids, teenagers, I think they will need a lot of guardrails around AI.
[00:27:07]  This is such a powerful and such a new thing.
[00:27:09]  From addiction to acceleration.
[00:27:11]  The world we live in is a competitive world, and I don't think that's going to stop.
[00:27:14]  Even if you did a lot of redistribution, you know, we have a deep desire to excel and be competitive and gain status and be useful to others.
[00:27:22]  And it's a multiplayer game.
[00:27:25]  What does the man who has extraordinary influence over our lives have to say about the weight of that responsibility?
[00:27:31]  Find out on Mostly Human.
[00:27:33]  My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
[00:27:36]  Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
[00:27:47]  So Gary Webb puts out this article.
[00:27:50]  It moves through the black community by way of the internet.
[00:27:53]  It also, a big part of this is black-oriented radio talk shows, which are huge today and really coming into their own in this period, the mid to late 90s, boost this phenomenon.
[00:28:03]  And the way in which they spread the story is by reading out the website address on the air.
[00:28:08]  Never happened before.
[00:28:09]  Not a thing.
[00:28:10]  Not a thing in mainstream that like these big mainstream radio shows drive time shit as like reading out a way is being like, you need to read this story.
[00:28:18]  Here's a fucking web link, right?
[00:28:20]  That's not how journalism got spread before, but it is now.
[00:28:24]  These call-in programs also become a focal point of information and debate.
[00:28:28]  African-American talk show hosts use their programs to address the allegations of CIA complicity in the crack epidemic.
[00:28:35]  And the public response is forceful.
[00:28:38]  The power of talk radio is probably like one of the best examples of like how big this is.
[00:28:43]  Is Congresswoman Maxine Waters goes on a show in Baltimore in September?
[00:28:48]  And she says that the Congressional Black Caucus is going to look into this shit, right?
[00:28:53]  We're going to like do a fucking thing on this.
[00:28:55]  And it's, it's fucking massive.
[00:28:58]  And like the fact that Maxine Waters takes this up is like a big part of why this story blows out into the mainstream in a big way.
[00:29:06]  Now, the CIA and the NSC, they're watching this shit happen, right?
[00:29:11]  They are like everyone is on this, right?
[00:29:14]  This is a massive problem.
[00:29:16]  And the agency, the first public thing they do when this starts to go viral is they announce we're doing an internal investigation.
[00:29:22]  We're going to look into whether or not we did anything wrong.
[00:29:25]  Don't worry.
[00:29:26]  Like Bruce Way is on the meeting.
[00:29:28]  Like, you was the vice president because you were there.
[00:29:31]  Vice ass president.
[00:29:33]  You were there.
[00:29:36]  It's awesome.
[00:29:37]  Yeah.
[00:29:38]  So the CIA is like, we're going to look into ourselves and see if we're bad people.
[00:29:42]  Don't worry.
[00:29:43]  You can trust us. We're good people.
[00:29:44]  Um, obviously me.
[00:29:47]  Me?
[00:29:48]  Did I smuggle drugs?
[00:29:50]  Yeah.
[00:29:50]  Well, no.
[00:29:52]  Look, I don't want to speak for black America here, but the evidence that I have suggests that this was not taken as overly comforting.
[00:30:02]  No.
[00:30:02]  I don't think I believe you, CIA.
[00:30:04]  There's a whole lot of like gas faces and just like side eyes, like, you're going to be able to do you already know, though.
[00:30:13]  So the Justice Department also launches an investigation.
[00:30:16]  John Deutsch, who's the director of the CIA at this point, has to go down to Watts and do a town meeting with concerned citizens to promise that his organization hadn't smuggled crack into inner cities to destroy the black community.
[00:30:29]  Like he has to actually sit down and go to Watts, talk him out of this.
[00:30:33]  Now, that is not precisely what Gary Webb's article had said, right?
[00:30:37]  Gary Webb had not made those exact claims, right?
[00:30:39]  Because what he was saying is that what we've talked about, that the CIA is making things easier for these guys who are moving cocaine into the country.
[00:30:46]  And then separately, Webb's articles dealt with how the crack epidemic and things like mandatory minimums had hurt the black community, right?
[00:30:53]  Yeah.
[00:30:54]  And how racially disparate the charging was.
[00:30:57]  But a lot of people interpret it as, oh, the CIA, there's allegations that the CIA smuggled crack into the black community.
[00:31:04]  And that becomes kind of the popular shorthand for the revelations.
[00:31:07]  Representative Cynthia McKinney calls the CIA the central intoxication agency on the floor of Congress.
[00:31:14]  This is a PR disaster.
[00:31:15]  It is a real threat to the agency's funding.
[00:31:17]  They're worried about another church committee, right?
[00:31:19]  They're worried that like Congress is going to really fuck them up over this.
[00:31:23]  And there's also a possibility that some people might get criminal charges who had worked for the agency.
[00:31:27]  That's a thing they're concerned about because of how big a brushfire this starts.
[00:31:30]  I don't know, man.
[00:31:31]  Do you think they should get some criminal charges?
[00:31:34]  I might suggest if anyone belongs in prison, there's a lot of these CIA guys in this.
[00:31:40]  I was like, dang, hold up.
[00:31:41]  You should sit right next to the other drug smugglers.
[00:31:44]  So that's what you did.
[00:31:46]  The agency spins up a reaction to what they internally call a crisis.
[00:31:51]  But before they can really do anything, a savior appeared.
[00:31:54]  You want to know who the savior is?
[00:31:56]  You want to who pulls the CIA's fat out of the fire?
[00:31:59]  I'll give you a hint.
[00:31:59]  It's the same people who did it in 88.
[00:32:01]  It's the legacy news media.
[00:32:04]  See, as we've talked about.
[00:32:06]  A surprise villain here.
[00:32:07]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:32:08]  Well, this villain comes.
[00:32:11]  Is it a surprise?
[00:32:12]  Is it a surprise given the rest of these episodes?
[00:32:15]  Or maybe it's the one we didn't expect.
[00:32:17]  Yeah.
[00:32:18]  It's John Cena.
[00:32:20]  Not John Cena.
[00:32:21]  It's Stone Cold coming out from the back.
[00:32:24]  Oh my God.
[00:32:24]  The New York Times has a fooling chair.
[00:32:27]  Yes.
[00:32:27]  Yeah.
[00:32:28]  And that's who wrote, well, it's actually the Los Angeles Times is a big part of this too.
[00:32:32]  Anyway, Webb's, as I've talked about a bunch, Webb's story, it's the first earth-shattering piece of investigative journalism in the U.S. that came from something that wasn't a major paper of record, right?
[00:32:42]  This isn't blowing up in any, in like this period of time, at least.
[00:32:45]  This isn't blowing up in the places it's supposed to come out of.
[00:32:48]  So the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and the New York Times, three of the really the biggest legacy.
[00:32:55]  Yeah.
[00:32:55]  They're fucking angry.
[00:32:56]  They're not angry because they don't want this information out.
[00:32:59]  They're angry that they got fucking scooped.
[00:33:01]  They got scooped.
[00:33:02]  And they're angry that in interviews, Gary Webb is saying stuff like, you don't have to be the New York Times or the Washington Post to bust a national story anymore.
[00:33:10]  Now, Gary was well ahead of the time because we know he's right, right?
[00:33:14]  That's what happens.
[00:33:15]  Washington Post and the New York Times, big as they are, not where a lot of shit busts anymore.
[00:33:20]  A whole lot of stuff comes up from the ground these days.
[00:33:23]  And oftentimes, the New York Times and the Post these days make their money kind of paying editorial writers to comment on shit.
[00:33:30]  This is the start of that.
[00:33:32]  And so the people who are going to like go after them, who are going to go ape shit, a lot of them are kind of editorial writers.
[00:33:39]  But The Intercept does a good job of kind of summing up what happens next here in an article they wrote.
[00:33:44]  Quote, newspapers like the Times and the Post seem to spend far more time trying to poke holes in the series than in following up on the underreported scandal at its heart, the involvement of a U.S.-backed proxy forces in international drug trafficking.
[00:33:56]  The Los Angeles Times was especially aggressive.
[00:33:58]  Scooped in its own backyard, the California paper assigned no fewer than 17 reporters to pick apart Webb's reporting.
[00:34:04]  While employees denied an outright effort to attack the Mercury News, one of the 17 referred to it as the get Gary Webb team.
[00:34:12]  Another said at the time, we're going to take away that guy's Pulitzer, according to Kornblu's CIJR piece.
[00:34:18]  Within two weeks of the publication of Dark Alliance, the LA Times devoted more words to dismantling its competitors' breakout hit than comprised the series itself.
[00:34:28]  It's just so they throw down.
[00:34:30]  It's like you're guys, you're totally missing the point here, man.
[00:34:35]  You're missing the bigger story.
[00:34:36]  You're missing the bigger story here, dude.
[00:34:38]  And it is true.
[00:34:39]  It's salty somebody got there first.
[00:34:41]  We have to acknowledge.
[00:34:42]  Gary Webb's reporting is imperfect.
[00:34:44]  Number one, any story this big, there's going to be some errors.
[00:34:46]  Of course.
[00:34:47]  But especially, Gary doesn't have a big editorial team.
[00:34:49]  There's not a huge team of fact checkers.
[00:34:51]  It is not, it is, it is a newer reporter.
[00:34:54]  It is a newer outlet.
[00:34:55]  And there are some problems with it, right?
[00:34:58]  And some of them are pretty basic errors.
[00:34:59]  And these errors are not the result of him trying to cook something up or lie.
[00:35:03]  They're the result of writing for a small publisher without a strong editorial team.
[00:35:07]  One of the examples of a fuck up that Webb did make is he never called the CIA for comment.
[00:35:12]  That may sound silly, but that is a thing that you do.
[00:35:14]  When you are writing an article like this, after you've got things nailed down, you go for comment.
[00:35:19]  That is when I would write articles about militias and shit.
[00:35:22]  Like Jason Wilson and I would wind up ringing up these fucking militia leaders and shit to ask them questions about things they'd said online.
[00:35:28]  It's what you do.
[00:35:29]  You give people a chance to respond when possible.
[00:35:32]  You don't have to wait for them to respond to publish the article, but you do have to give them a chance to respond.
[00:35:38]  Webb claims that he did reach out and they never responded.
[00:35:41]  The CIA denies that he ever reached out.
[00:35:44]  We just actually don't know who's telling the truth here.
[00:35:46]  But the thing that he fucks up is he never writes in the story.
[00:35:50]  I reached out to the CIA for comment and they didn't give it, right?
[00:35:53]  Yeah.
[00:35:54]  That is an issue.
[00:35:55]  Now, a fair-minded person would say, well, that doesn't mean anything about the veracity of his reporting.
[00:36:00]  Yeah, it has nothing to do with the rest of it.
[00:36:01]  Yeah.
[00:36:02]  But the legacy papers pounce on this shit.
[00:36:05]  That's there are other issues as well.
[00:36:08]  The specific drug dealers Webb had hung his story on absolutely did sell Coke and absolutely did use proceeds from these sales to fund the Contras, but they were tiny.
[00:36:18]  We're talking the guys who are directly tied to the Contras that he talks about in a story, $50,000, $60,000.
[00:36:23]  They got the Contras, something like that, right?
[00:36:25]  Not a lot of money.
[00:36:26]  So from the guys he's focusing on in his article, there's not enough to say that the CIA or that the funding of the Contras is making a big dent on the Contras or on the Cracker, right?
[00:36:37]  Like there's, he's, he's, he's using this small case and he's assuming there's more.
[00:36:42]  And he is right.
[00:36:43]  There was a shitload more.
[00:36:45]  But he is also kind of quoting some stuff out of context that makes his case seem stronger than it is.
[00:36:50]  What he actually has is evidence that like there is something really damning here to look at.
[00:36:54]  And it ties into these other fucked up things that have been done around sentencing and these other disparities.
[00:36:59]  And it's possible there's a real, like, if he had, like, it's one of those things.
[00:37:03]  If it were a better article, there would have been some softening of the language.
[00:37:07]  A good editor would have softened some of the language.
[00:37:10]  And good legacy media journalists in a responsible media environment would have seen what he was saying.
[00:37:16]  Even if they'd seen in a responsible environment, even seeing the articles that went out, they would have been like, well, what he's claiming that the CIA brought was responsible for helping to bring cocaine during the crack epidemic into the United States.
[00:37:27]  What he's saying isn't entirely supported by the case of these two guys, because these guys are kind of small fry, but it's interesting that there's that much evidence.
[00:37:34]  And I wonder if there's more.
[00:37:36]  And they would have looked into that article that came out in 1985 and got clamped down on by the CIA, right?
[00:37:40]  They would have found other stuff, including shit in that 1988 report.
[00:37:44]  There was stuff they could have just found that would have been, that was already out, already reported, already something that the government had said was true, and put that with what Webb had and been like, oh shit, there's a lot here.
[00:37:56]  And then they would have looked in the more and then they would have fucking found more.
[00:37:59]  That's not what the legacy media does.
[00:38:01]  Instead, they pounce on the shortcomings in Web series.
[00:38:05]  And when they start trying to tell the other side of the story, which is how it gets framed, the CIA, not available for comment earlier, suddenly, yeah, we'll talk to you about this.
[00:38:16]  Sure.
[00:38:16]  Come on in, New York Times.
[00:38:17]  You know, we love giving people access.
[00:38:19]  We're the CIA.
[00:38:21]  So we know about their efforts and their surprised elation at the willingness of mainstream news outlets to attack Webb out of spite because they wrote about all of this in internal documents that are now declassified.
[00:38:32]  Yeah, they wrote shit down.
[00:38:33]  There it is.
[00:38:34]  Yeah.
[00:38:34]  They wrote about how happy they were about what fucking the LA Times and shit were doing in a piece called Managing a Nightmare, written by a CIA fellow named Jumovic.
[00:38:45]  And I'm going to quote from the intercept again here.
[00:38:47]  The CIA watched these developments closely, collaborating where it could with outlets who wanted to challenge Webb's reporting.
[00:38:53]  Media inquiries had started almost immediately following the publication of Dark Alliance.
[00:38:58]  And Jomovic in Managing a Nightmare cites the CIA's success in discouraging one major news affiliate from covering the story.
[00:39:04]  He also boasts that the agency effectively departed from its own long-standing policies in order to discredit the series.
[00:39:10]  For example, in order to help a journalist working on a story that would undermine the Mercury News allegations, public affairs was able to deny any affiliation of a particular individual, which is a rare exception to the general policy that the CIA does not comment on any individual's alleged CIA ties.
[00:39:26]  Word.
[00:39:27]  Now, the document chronicles the shift in public opinion as it moves from like, oh my God, what has the government been doing? to in favor of the CIA's angle, which is like, nah, Gary Webb's full of shit.
[00:39:38]  Yeah.
[00:39:39]  This trend starts about a month and a half after the series is published.
[00:39:43]  Quote, that third week in September was a turning point in media coverage of this story, Jumavik wrote.
[00:39:49]  And he cites respected columnists, including prominent blacks, along with the New York Daily News, the Baltimore Sun, the Weekly Standard, and the Washington Post.
[00:39:59]  So that's pretty cool, huh?
[00:40:00]  Yeah.
[00:40:01]  Yeah, it's pretty perfect.
[00:40:03]  Yeah.
[00:40:04]  Yeah.
[00:40:05]  Didn't even need to do anything.
[00:40:07]  They got it.
[00:40:07]  They got the CIA's back again.
[00:40:09]  They got us.
[00:40:10]  Don't even worry about it.
[00:40:11]  Again, if you're on the lectern, the collective sigh of like, oh, oh, oh, yeah.
[00:40:16]  Again, no, yeah, yeah, nah, that's what these fools said.
[00:40:18]  Nah.
[00:40:19]  There's a grand conspiracy, and everything is connected.
[00:40:22]  Being like, well, okay, the CIA is doing all this shady shit to bring cocaine in.
[00:40:25]  And then the New York Times plays a major role in hyping up fears of a crack epidemic, which is used to justify arresting a shitload of black men and breaking up a bunch of families.
[00:40:34]  And then as soon as the allegations come out that the CIA was the one that brought in the cocaine, well, all of these same media organizations who had pushed up the crack epidemic act to crack down on the story and the journalist who had like broken the story that they'd done this.
[00:40:49]  Well, yeah, that does kind of seem like a fucking conspiracy.
[00:40:51]  It Does again, all of this actually, what I think all of this is, is a mix of different conspiracies, reckless and callous disregard for what is happening in black America and for who gets hurt by this, racist policing and racist trends in law enforcement, and the fact that the media is also pretty racist, always searching for like a story and do not care as much about whether or not the story is true as whether or not you can scare people.
[00:41:19]  Yeah.
[00:41:20]  And just, yeah, the fact that they mostly hire a bunch of fucking upper class white people from fancy schools who don't know anything about what's going on in the black community, who get scared by this kind of coverage and write racist bullshit and who are always going to act to defend other dudes who went to Yale and just happened to wind up in the CIA instead of the New York Times fucking editorial desk for sure.
[00:41:41]  Cool stuff.
[00:41:42]  Good.
[00:41:43]  Wonderful.
[00:41:43]  Great system.
[00:41:44]  Yeah, I think you nailed it in the sense that you have all these sort of concentric circles, these forces, you know, pressing down on the community that whether it's police, law, you know, law enforcement, you know, unfair sentencing, war on drugs, the drugs coming in, the CIA, the DA, all these things all falling,
[00:42:11]  not to mention like, you know, discriminatory housing and just all these things all happening.
[00:42:19]  It's like you're, you're, anybody would think, are, are all these people sitting around one table and kind of deciding, you know what I'm saying?
[00:42:29]  And that's, that's when you get into the crazy because is this like a plan?
[00:42:33]  And like, it doesn't, no, it doesn't have to be a bunch of shit that's really bad as the result of a bunch of different gnarly trends and conspiracy.
[00:42:40]  Again, it's not that there's no conspiracies.
[00:42:43]  All we've been talking about this week are conspiracies.
[00:42:45]  Yeah.
[00:42:46]  They're just not the Illuminati.
[00:42:48]  They're not, yeah, it's not one big thing that all sprout from.
[00:42:52]  It's all these little dudes that just happen to have overlapping interests.
[00:42:58]  And people.

=== Overlapping Interests Explained (06:03) ===

[00:42:59]  And whether it's, and it's, it's this weird, like, this weird power thing to where it's like, it's not so much I'm doing everything in my power to make sure you suffer.
[00:43:12]  It's more your success don't matter to me.
[00:43:16]  Yeah.
[00:43:16]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:43:17]  And that's like, and that's the thing that like is, it's, it's, it's what as as a, I mean, sometimes it is when you're just an out and out neo, you know, Nazi white supremacist to where you're like, I am doing everything in my power to make you suffer versus you're just inconsequential and your success doesn't matter to me.
[00:43:35]  You're not a part of the country I think of.
[00:43:37]  And there are some people who are like, no, I'm actually just super racist.
[00:43:40]  And I run a police union that funds, you know, a number of campaigns.
[00:43:44]  And I want to push for mandatory minimums because I'm racist.
[00:43:46]  But other people are pushing for mandatory minimums because their voters got scared by the New York Times who did it because it was a good story and they're not very credible.
[00:43:55]  And they're kind of racist too.
[00:43:57]  And all of this, all of this feeds together.
[00:44:00]  Anyway, let's continue.
[00:44:01]  But first, you know what isn't a conspiracy, prop.
[00:44:05]  Sho, straight up plans, baby.
[00:44:08]  That's right.
[00:44:09]  Not a conspiracy is the products and services that support this podcast.
[00:44:14]  The products and services that support this podcast do meet around a big table and they do secretly run the world, but they're cool.
[00:44:22]  So it's fine.
[00:44:24]  They got nice shoes.
[00:44:25]  They got great shoes.
[00:44:26]  Incredible shoes.
[00:44:28]  Anyway.
[00:44:29]  What's up, everyone?
[00:44:30]  I'm Anko Voda.
[00:44:31]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:44:39]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:44:42]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:44:45]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:44:50]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:44:53]  I'm working my way up through it.
[00:44:54]  I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
[00:44:57]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:45:02]  Yeah.
[00:45:02]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:45:05]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:45:07]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:45:15]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:45:17]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.
[00:45:24]  Just hang in there.
[00:45:25]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:45:27]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:45:28]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:45:29]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:45:39]  10-10 shots fired in the City Hall building.
[00:45:42]  A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
[00:45:47]  From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
[00:45:53]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[00:45:54]  Somebody tell me that!
[00:45:55]  Jeffrey Hood did.
[00:45:57]  July 2003, Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
[00:46:03]  Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
[00:46:06]  And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
[00:46:15]  Everybody in the chamber's ducks.
[00:46:18]  A shocking public murder.
[00:46:19]  I screamed, get down, get down.
[00:46:21]  Those are shots.
[00:46:22]  Those are shots.
[00:46:23]  Get down.
[00:46:23]  A charismatic politician.
[00:46:25]  You know, he just bent the rules all the time.
[00:46:27]  I still have a weapon.
[00:46:29]  And I could shoot you.
[00:46:32]  And an outsider with a secret.
[00:46:34]  He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
[00:46:37]  That may or may not have been political.
[00:46:39]  That may have been about sex.
[00:46:41]  Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.
[00:46:45]  Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:46:54]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:46:58]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:47:01]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:47:04]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:47:08]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:47:11]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
[00:47:15]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:47:17]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:47:22]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:47:24]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:47:26]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:47:28]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:47:31]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:47:32]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:47:35]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:47:39]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:47:41]  Trust me, babe.
[00:47:42]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:47:51]  Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
[00:47:57]  I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
[00:48:02]  Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
[00:48:08]  Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
[00:48:17]  And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
[00:48:22]  Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:48:25]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:48:28]  Yeah, it was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:48:30]  That's so funny.
[00:48:32]  Share each day with me each night, each morning.
[00:48:40]  Say you love me.
[00:48:43]  You know I.
[00:48:44]  So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to playing along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:48:58]  We're back.
[00:48:59]  We just got back from the secret table where our sponsors run the world.

=== Flawed Article Excuses (15:46) ===

[00:49:03]  Yeah, and can't confirm sneaker game.
[00:49:05]  Next level.
[00:49:06]  And yeah, now I want to say don't revolt and burn things down.
[00:49:11]  Don't do that.
[00:49:13]  Prop, you want to take the jet skis out?
[00:49:15]  I want to see if the ones that are plated gold work as well as the ones with a platinum coating on them.
[00:49:19]  Man, I think in Aspen they work best.
[00:49:22]  Well, of course.
[00:49:23]  Swiss Alps.
[00:49:24]  But not the Aspen our listeners know, the secret aspen that exists on Mars for members of the conspiracy.
[00:49:32]  There's a Europa.
[00:49:33]  Space Aspen.
[00:49:34]  Yeah, there's a Europa Aspen that y'all don't know.
[00:49:36]  Oh, that's even nicer.
[00:49:37]  So dope.
[00:49:38]  It's incredible.
[00:49:39]  The fucking shrimp cocktails.
[00:49:41]  Also, better shrimp than you get.
[00:49:42]  You would even vein that.
[00:49:44]  Like the vein of poop in the shrimp that we eat, it's just gold.
[00:49:48]  It's just gold instead of poop.
[00:49:49]  But yeah, you know, burn down the system.
[00:49:51]  Anyway.
[00:49:52]  Anyway.
[00:49:54]  So we're talking about the media response to all of this shit and how they shut it down.
[00:50:00]  One of the most useful papers in terms of putting the kibosh on people getting angry about Dark Alliance was the Washington Post.
[00:50:08]  And I want to quote now again from the CIA.
[00:50:12]  Because of the Post's national reputation, its articles especially were picked up by other papers, helping to create what the Associated Press called a firestorm of reaction against the San Jose Mercury News.
[00:50:22]  Now, about a month or so after of this follows kind of of critical media coverage of the series, and by the end of that first month, the quote-unquote balanced reporting just attacking Gary Webb and his article outnumbers the stories that are actually taking what he's talking about seriously.
[00:50:38]  And in their write-up of this, the CIA credits all of this to the Washington Post, the New York Times, quote, and especially the Los Angeles Times.
[00:50:48]  Webb's editors start to distance themselves and abandon their reporter.
[00:50:51]  By the end of October, two months after the publication of Dark Alliance, quote, the tone of the entire CIA drug story had changed.
[00:50:58]  Jumavik was pleased to report, quote, most press coverage included as a routine matter, the now widespread criticism of the Mercury News allegations.
[00:51:07]  I can bet, now, I don't, I'm not, I wasn't an adult during this time, but I can bet that the tone among whatever plugged in or tapped in, like, black people in this professional space that would be knowing all this stuff is like, you know, this is all the confirmation we need.
[00:51:28]  The fact that you're going after this man so much, it makes us be like, oh, so he's, so he's right.
[00:51:33]  Okay.
[00:51:34]  Yeah, I got it.
[00:51:34]  Thanks, guys.
[00:51:35]  Okay.
[00:51:36]  I got like, yeah.
[00:51:37]  Yeah.
[00:51:38]  Thank you for clarifying.
[00:51:39]  I was wondering, but now that y'all going through all this to stop him, now I know.
[00:51:43]  Yeah.
[00:51:44]  Yeah.
[00:51:44]  And that is how a lot of people react.
[00:51:46]  And we have now learned to a point of certainty with all of the stuff that's come out since that's been declassified, that's been reported on.
[00:51:52]  Gary Webb was right.
[00:51:54]  The claim that he made was that the CIA deliberately enabled the cocaine trade to fund the Contras.
[00:51:59]  That was absolutely true.
[00:52:01]  His central thesis, his central thing that he was trying to show was real.
[00:52:05]  Now, he didn't have all of the information that we have in order to prove it.
[00:52:08]  And that is a flaw in the article.
[00:52:11]  But all of the journalism, quote-unquote, journalism that was done to attack Webb's work was deeply flawed itself, as the Columbia Journalism Review makes clear.
[00:52:21]  All three papers ignored evidence from declassified National Security Council email messages, and the New York Times and the Washington Post ignored evidence from Oliver North's notebooks, which lends support to the underlying premise of the Mercury News series that U.S. officials would both condone and protect drug traffickers if doing so advanced the Contra cause.
[00:52:39]  The October 21st New York Times piece didn't even mention the Kerry Committee report.
[00:52:43]  A decade ago, the national media lowballed the Contra drug story, David Corn observed in the nation.
[00:52:48]  Now it's been there, done that.
[00:52:52]  On October 23rd, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence held its first hearing on the controversies surrounding the new Contra-drug allegations.
[00:53:00]  Jack Bloom, former lead investigator for the Kerry Committee, was lead witness.
[00:53:04]  Bloom testified that his investigators had found no evidence whatsoever that the African-American community was a particular target of a plot to sell crack cocaine or that high U.S. officials had a policy of supporting the Contras through drug sales, which is not what Webb had alleged, right?
[00:53:20]  Webb does not allege a plot.
[00:53:21]  Webb says that the CIA is helping Koch move into the country, which is true.
[00:53:25]  Yes.
[00:53:25]  And Bloom testifies further: quote: If you ask whether the United States government ignored the drug problem and subverted law enforcement to prevent embarrassment and to reward our allies in the Contra war, the answer is yes.
[00:53:37]  Which you might recognize as saying Gary Webb was right.
[00:53:40]  Yes, right, exactly.
[00:53:41]  Exactly.
[00:53:42]  Now, the CIA found, of course, no intent to smuggle cocaine into the United States or to enable drug smugglers to do the same.
[00:53:48]  Instead, they blamed all the extremely documented cases of Contras smuggling Coke into the U.S. as something their agents had just missed because, like, gee shucks, the CIA forgot to mandate that CIA agents had to report evidence of drug smuggling by their contacts, right?
[00:54:04]  That's literally the excuse.
[00:54:06]  Like, well, they missed it because they weren't told to report it.
[00:54:08]  So they just didn't notice it.
[00:54:09]  They just missed all this blow, right?
[00:54:11]  Because it wasn't their job to spot it, right?
[00:54:13]  Listen, like I said, I'm here for the lobsters.
[00:54:17]  I'm not here for the beef.
[00:54:21]  Yeah, I don't even see those cows.
[00:54:22]  I don't even see those.
[00:54:24]  I don't even see what you're talking about.
[00:54:25]  I don't even know what you're talking about.
[00:54:26]  I'm here for this.
[00:54:27]  Yeah.
[00:54:28]  I'm going to quote from PBS again.
[00:54:30]  In the winter of 1982, as the United States was plotting how to overthrow the Sandinista government that came to power in Nicaragua, a letter, a Memorandum of Understanding, M-O-U, was being drafted in Washington, D.C.
[00:54:41]  The presumptive author was the U.S. Attorney General, the late William French Smith.
[00:54:45]  The recipient was the Central Intelligence Agency Director William Casey.
[00:54:49]  The subject was a list of offenses that CIA field officers in the field were required to report if they witnessed or became aware of a crime, particularly if it involved an informant or someone the CIA officer wanted to recruit as an agent.
[00:55:01]  The letter of understanding listed all kinds of crimes from murder to passport fraud, but it omitted narcotics violations.
[00:55:09]  Because we know.
[00:55:10]  Yeah, if he's killing people, we want to know.
[00:55:11]  But if he's moving blow into the country, we don't really give a shit.
[00:55:14]  That's literally, that's what it's saying, right?
[00:55:16]  Yeah.
[00:55:16]  Now, this is too glaring of an oversight to have left without comment.
[00:55:20]  And weeks later, there's a follow-up letter based on internal discussion in the Justice Department that gets sent to the CIA.
[00:55:26]  Quote, I have been advised that a question arose regarding the need to add all narcotics violations to the list of non-employee claims.
[00:55:33]  This is something Smith writes to Casey in 1982, February.
[00:55:37]  So, you know, that sounds good, but this actually doesn't add drugs to the list of things that have to be reported.
[00:55:43]  Because Smith, instead of adding it to the list, just cites existing federal policy on narcotics enforcement and writes, quote, in light of these provisions and in view of the fine cooperation of the Drug Enforcement Administration has received from the CIA, no formal requirement regarding the reporting of narcotics violations has been included in these procedures.
[00:56:02]  So basically, we're already working so good together.
[00:56:05]  Federal employees are already required to talk about this stuff.
[00:56:09]  So we don't need to add, we can keep narcotics exempted from the things CIA agents have to report because we know they will, right?
[00:56:17]  Which we know they weren't.
[00:56:19]  Yeah.
[00:56:19]  Now, CIA Inspector General Fred Hitts tells the PBS when he's questioned that, because they're asking, like, what do you make of this, CIA Inspector General?
[00:56:31]  It seems shady.
[00:56:32]  And he's like, well, it's at best a mixed message, right?
[00:56:35]  Now, listen.
[00:56:36]  That's a mixed message.
[00:56:38]  Yeah, it's mixed.
[00:56:39]  These dudes may not be good at criming, but they are good at excuses.
[00:56:42]  They're incredible at excuses.
[00:56:44]  Yeah.
[00:56:44]  And Hits.
[00:56:45]  Their what had happened been was game is ridiculous.
[00:56:50]  Hits very, this is very funny, claims that he, to PBS, he doesn't believe CIA agents would have enabled drug traffic to allow the Contras to fund themselves because that would have been bad PR.
[00:57:00]  Now, you and I know, prop, that the Reagan administration and the CIA actively work to discredit journalists reporting on the CIA for doing just that.
[00:57:10]  Yes.
[00:57:10]  When the agency took any action to crack down on the drug trade, it was purely for show.
[00:57:14]  In 1987, acting CIA director Robert Gates sent a memorandum to the CIA deputy director demanding that CIA officers cease relationships with Contras, even suspected of trafficking narcotics.
[00:57:26]  Here's PBS again.
[00:57:27]  Gates' memorandum instructed George to vet names of air crews, air services companies, and subcontractors with the DEA, U.S. Customs, and the FBI to ensure that none of the contractors used by the CIA were involved in narcotics.
[00:57:40]  For some reason, this memorandum, quote, was not issued in any form that would advise agency employees generally of this policy.
[00:57:47]  Hits stated in his report.
[00:57:49]  It never got to the field agents who were supposed to use it as a guide.
[00:57:52]  So it's just like, look, we recognize the problem and we made it a rule that they had to run everything by the FBI and the DA.
[00:57:59]  They had to check on these guys and vet them to make sure they're not moving drugs.
[00:58:02]  We noticed there was a problem and we took action.
[00:58:04]  Well, did you tell anyone whose job it was to vet these people that they had to do that?
[00:58:08]  Well, no, we forgot to.
[00:58:10]  We fucked that one up.
[00:58:10]  We really fucked that one up.
[00:58:12]  Oopsie doodles.
[00:58:13]  You know?
[00:58:13]  Hey, homie, that's clerical, bro.
[00:58:15]  Listen, listen.
[00:58:16]  Charges to my head, not my heart.
[00:58:18]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:58:18]  Not a big deal.
[00:58:19]  We tried to do the right thing.
[00:58:20]  It just got fucked up for reasons that were completely unavoidable.
[00:58:24]  Guys, guys, you're looking at the locker room.
[00:58:27]  Guys, listen.
[00:58:30]  When the team comes in, just make sure they know that they got to stop grabbing asses.
[00:58:37]  Okay.
[00:58:37]  Yeah.
[00:58:37]  You got to stop grabbing asses, guys.
[00:58:39]  Look, everybody's mad at us.
[00:58:41]  So when you see a juicy ass, you can't grab it.
[00:58:44]  Okay.
[00:58:45]  All right.
[00:58:45]  All right.
[00:58:46]  Here come the guys.
[00:58:50]  It's just silence.
[00:58:51]  Yeah.
[00:58:53]  Yeah.
[00:58:53]  We don't need to say any more than that.
[00:58:55]  I said it.
[00:58:56]  Yeah.
[00:58:57]  I said it at some point.
[00:58:58]  You said the ball.
[00:58:59]  You guys saw me say it.
[00:59:01]  We put it in the rule book.
[00:59:03]  Now, they're not required to read the rulebook.
[00:59:06]  In fact, they're not allowed to.
[00:59:07]  We didn't give it to them.
[00:59:08]  The rule books are held on the top of a mountain in eastern fucking Turkmenistan and none of them can get to it.
[00:59:14]  But it's in the rule books, you know?
[00:59:16]  Yes.
[00:59:16]  What else do you want for us?
[00:59:17]  You want me to track down these agents and put a paper in their hands?
[00:59:21]  Yeah.
[00:59:21]  I told them they can't do it, man.
[00:59:23]  Yeah.
[00:59:24]  They're honorable men, you know?
[00:59:26]  They won't do it.
[00:59:26]  You're going to do it anyway.
[00:59:28]  Yeah.
[00:59:29]  So as the years have gone on and all this has come out, it has become clear that Gary Webb was guilty of being sloppy, right?
[00:59:35]  It's not perfect or even ideal reporting.
[00:59:37]  There's issues with it.
[00:59:39]  His conclusions and allegations, while not supported by the text of his article, though, are supported by the facts that we know now and the facts that have emerged since and a number of the facts that Gary didn't bring up, but were available then and that the Washington Post and the New York Times and the LA Times should have brought up, like the shit from the Kerry report, like the shit from the AP report in 85.
[00:59:57]  Yes.
[00:59:58]  Of course, the fact that Gary has been vindicated by time did not mean anything for Gary Webb.
[01:00:04]  The damage had been done to his career.
[01:00:06]  He was disgraced and the CIA crack epidemic story had gone from a mainstream outrage to a conspiracy theory that was widely mocked.
[01:00:13]  The Washington Post even published one of the things they do in this period is they put out an article like a warning about the black community's susceptibility to conspiracy theories.
[01:00:23]  Where's the Washington Post?
[01:00:25]  We got to let you know.
[01:00:26]  We've noticed a troubling trend, which is black people are sharing conspiracy theories.
[01:00:30]  Luke, you got to do it.
[01:00:30]  That's not a good look.
[01:00:32]  You got to watch you say around them because, you know, they kind of believe anything.
[01:00:36]  They really think the whole government's out to get them and the media.
[01:00:39]  What a silly group of people.
[01:00:40]  Yeah.
[01:00:41]  Can you believe it?
[01:00:42]  Yeah.
[01:00:42]  I mean, what evidence do they have that that might be happening?
[01:00:45]  Yeah.
[01:00:46]  It's like, yeah, it's like fucking hitting your friend in the head with a hammer and being like, yeah, he's real susceptible to getting hit in the head with a hammer.
[01:00:53]  Boy, that guy's head can't stop catching hammers.
[01:00:55]  Am I right?
[01:00:56]  Amen.
[01:00:56]  Jesus.
[01:00:57]  Jeez.
[01:00:57]  Can't do anything around this guy, man.
[01:00:59]  Might get a hammer to his head.
[01:01:00]  Can't bring a hammer out.
[01:01:01]  He keeps getting hit with him.
[01:01:02]  Yeah.
[01:01:03]  Webb's career never recovered.
[01:01:05]  On December 10th, 2004, he shot himself in the head with a 38.
[01:01:09]  Oh my God.
[01:01:10]  10 years later, David Carr, writing for the New York Times, wrote an article that serves as the closest we'll get to an apology from the gray lady.
[01:01:17]  We've quoted from it a couple of times here.
[01:01:19]  There's widespread recognition that it was pretty fucked up.
[01:01:23]  Although you can still find articles in mainstream says, Gary Webb was, you know, really fucked up.
[01:01:27]  And like, we weren't wrong to go after him and to ignore all of these problems and act as cover for the CIA.
[01:01:34]  Like, it's, it's all fucked up, prop, but that's the story.
[01:01:37]  That's all the story.
[01:01:39]  Oh, man.
[01:01:40]  So it was like seven, seven countries involved, mad moving parts, people at the highest level of government.
[01:01:48]  A journalist breaks it, tells the truth, pokes his head up.
[01:01:54]  The rest of the journalism community goes to the side.
[01:01:58]  And then the dude.
[01:01:59]  Yeah.
[01:01:59]  And then the dude kills himself because it makes him feel like he's taking crazy pills.
[01:02:03]  It's one of those things.
[01:02:04]  There's a meme spreading around that's like the award for the CIA award for excellence and journalism, and it's a bullet.
[01:02:12]  And that is an accurate joke in like parts of Latin America, right?
[01:02:15]  Because in Latin America, the CIA assassin was either directly did or through there.
[01:02:20]  And in other parts of the world, the CIA has assassinated a lot of journalists.
[01:02:24]  They don't have to do that.
[01:02:25]  You don't have to send a guy with a silenced weapon to kill Gary Webb.
[01:02:28]  New York Times has got your back.
[01:02:30]  They're just gonna hound him to suicide because they got scooped.
[01:02:32]  We're good, baby damn Saves us the bullet money.
[01:02:36]  That's that's see.
[01:02:37]  I didn't know that one because Bud McFarland killed himself too.
[01:02:41]  He sure did.
[01:02:42]  And I'm sure there's.
[01:02:43]  Yeah.
[01:02:45]  Boy, yeah.
[01:02:45]  I don't want to get into other.
[01:02:48]  It's totally understandable if you're feeling conspiratorial after this.
[01:02:52]  And I'm not going to say much more than that because it's cool and fine.
[01:02:55]  Yeah.
[01:02:56]  Prop, you got anything to plug?
[01:02:58]  Well, this has been a phenomenal piece of art we've put together that, yeah.
[01:03:07]  So hop over to Hood Politics pod, man.
[01:03:10]  You know, where hopefully if you had part five of this one, you know that the pieces that this was all together was, how come I can't talk?
[01:03:19]  You done wore me out.
[01:03:20]  And I, and this was my, and this was my idea to do to do this series.
[01:03:26]  You done wore me out.
[01:03:29]  But yeah, nah, hood politics pod.
[01:03:32]  And what upcoming topics do you have on hood politics?
[01:03:36]  Oh, man.
[01:03:37]  Besides the other parts of this, I have, did we talk about the queen already?
[01:03:42]  We already talked about the queen.
[01:03:44]  We got tapping in or it's up, like lessons on how you need to tap in before you talk to people.
[01:03:50]  I got a book reading list where you can get your weight up, talk about a little bit of things like that.
[01:03:56]  Yeah, it's a lot going on over there.
[01:04:00]  Check out Hood Politics and get Prop's Cold Brew, Terraform.
[01:04:06]  Get my Cold Brew.
[01:04:07]  And his book, Terraform.
[01:04:09]  Yes, it's all pattern.
[01:04:11]  Yeah.
[01:04:11]  And the music.
[01:04:15]  Yeah, there's new music.
[01:04:16]  Yeah.
[01:04:17]  All named Terraform.
[01:04:20]  What's your website again?
[01:04:21]  Is it prophiphop.com?
[01:04:22]  Yes, it is.
[01:04:23]  Thank you, Sophie.
[01:04:24]  Prophiphop.com for all the things.
[01:04:26]  Prophip.com.
[01:04:29]  Terraform.
[01:04:30]  Check it all out.
[01:04:32]  You can find me with my novel, which you should read called After the Revolution.
[01:04:37]  You go to any place that sells books, any website that sells books, type it in After the Revolution, you can buy a copy.
[01:04:43]  The homie e-books, paperback, all that.
[01:04:45]  You can also type in after the revolution, aka books, and you'll find it there.

=== Skull Fucker Side Story (02:55) ===

[01:04:49]  Talk to the homie skull fucker Mike.
[01:04:52]  Yeah, you can learn the ballad of skull fucker Mike and more to come in the sequel.
[01:04:57]  He needs a skull fucker needs his own side story.
[01:05:01]  We're going to learn a lot more about Skull Fucker Mike.
[01:05:04]  But let's all fuck our own skulls right now to chill out after being sad.
[01:05:10]  Thank you, Franc.
[01:05:11]  What a great week.
[01:05:12]  Yes.
[01:05:17]  What's up, everyone?
[01:05:18]  I'm Ago Moda.
[01:05:19]  My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
[01:05:23]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[01:05:26]  He goes, just give it a shot.
[01:05:28]  But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[01:05:35]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[01:05:37]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hanging in there.
[01:05:44]  Yeah, it would not be.
[01:05:46]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[01:05:47]  There's a lot of life.
[01:05:49]  Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:05:56]  In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
[01:06:04]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[01:06:07]  I doctored the test once.
[01:06:09]  It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
[01:06:14]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[01:06:16]  Greg Gillespie and Michael Manchini.
[01:06:18]  My mind was blown.
[01:06:19]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[01:06:21]  This is Love Trapped.
[01:06:22]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[01:06:24]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[01:06:29]  Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:06:36]  10-10 shots five, City Hall building.
[01:06:39]  How did this ever happen in City Hall?
[01:06:41]  Somebody tell me that.
[01:06:42]  A shocking public murder.
[01:06:44]  This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
[01:06:50]  They screamed, get down, get down.
[01:06:52]  Those are shots.
[01:06:54]  A tragedy that's now forgotten.
[01:06:57]  And a mystery that may or may not have been political.
[01:06:59]  That may have been about sex.
[01:07:01]  Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:07:10]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[01:07:18]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[01:07:21]  He is not going to get away with this.
[01:07:23]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[01:07:25]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[01:07:30]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[01:07:31]  Trust me, babe.
[01:07:32]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:07:41]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[01:07:44]  Guaranteed human.