Today, to supplement their coverage of Alex Jones, Dan and Jordan begin an exploration of how things played out on Bill Cooper's radio show The Hour of the Time on the days immediately following the bombing of the Murrah building in Oklahoma City. This installment covers the day of the bombing, April 19, 1995, as well as April 20-21.
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| It's time to pray. | ||
|
unidentified
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I have great respect for knowledge fight. | |
| Knowledge fight. | ||
| I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys saying we are the bad guys. | ||
| Knowledge fight. | ||
|
unidentified
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Dan and Jordan. | |
| Knowledge fight. | ||
| Need money. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Andy in Kansas. | |
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| Stop it. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| It's time to pray. | ||
| Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. | ||
| Thanks for holding us. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hello, Alex. | |
| I'm a Christian. | ||
| I'm a huge fan. | ||
| I love your world. | ||
|
unidentified
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Knowledge Fight. | |
| KnowledgeFight.com I love you. | ||
| Hey everybody, welcome back to Knowledge Fight. | ||
| I'm Dan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm Jordan. | |
| We're a couple dudes who like to sit around, drink novelty beverages, and talk a little bit about Alex Jones. | ||
| Indeed we are, Dan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jordan. | |
| Jordan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Quick question. | |
| What up? | ||
| What's your bright spot for today? | ||
| Well, interestingly, I found a cheap copy of the... | ||
| I really like Assassin's Creed games, right? | ||
| Like, Assassin's Creed Odyssey was fantastic. | ||
| I loved some of the other ones I played. | ||
| But I was a Nintendo guy. | ||
| Died in the wolf through pretty much most of my life. | ||
| And so I never had the capability to play a lot of the early ones that weren't on Nintendo systems. | ||
| Right, right, right, right. | ||
| So when, like, I had the GameCube... | ||
| No, it wasn't the GameCube. | ||
| Like, the Wii U, maybe? | ||
| Okay, okay. | ||
| They had 3 and the Black Flag. | ||
| They had those two that came out on Nintendo systems. | ||
| So you've never played my boy Ezio Auditore? | ||
| No, but I found a cheap copy of the Ezio collection. | ||
| Love it. | ||
| And so that's got Assassin's Creed 2 and then two other ones. | ||
| Three games. | ||
| Brotherhood as well as... | ||
| Oh man, I've played those 300 million times. | ||
| And so I decided, I like this style of game, but I've tried to do other ones that are just too linear. | ||
| The one in England. | ||
| I found it way too linear. | ||
|
unidentified
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I loved that one. | |
| I couldn't stand it. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| The grappling hook is my jam. | ||
| I might give it another try eventually. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| But I started playing this one, Assassin's Creed 2. Started with that, because I'm going to go through all of them, apparently. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I'm blown away by how fun it is. | ||
| How good it is, given how old it is. | ||
| I remember watching my roommate Swearengin play this back when I lived in Missouri. | ||
|
unidentified
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And I'm not sure it was new at that point. | |
| It's really uplifting, I guess, to find this really reasonably priced game in a series that I like, but I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy. | ||
| And then it turns out, it's just super fun, and you can run around in this Italian city. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| I'm blown away because those three are the only reason that I played any of the other Assassin's Creed games. | ||
| So you missed out on the three best games. | ||
| Well, I like the American one, even though most people say that one was the worst. | ||
| Of course, of course. | ||
| I understand, but I know why you like it. | ||
| I like the homesteading aspect, which is why I love the villa. | ||
| Yeah, you're going to... | ||
| Oh, it gets so much better. | ||
| You're going to get to recruit other assassins. | ||
| It's going to be amazing. | ||
| That's all I care about. | ||
| It's incredible. | ||
| What about you? | ||
| What do you got? | ||
| I have been filled with a lot of pent-up frustration recently because the world sucks. | ||
| Maybe some denial. | ||
| A lot of denial. | ||
| Oh, for sure. | ||
| I don't know what your bright spot is. | ||
| You know what it is. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I had a hunch. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| But I got to get all of it out. | ||
| I've made it a very public hobby to hate Connor Friedersdorf. | ||
| Yes, you have. | ||
| And he wrote such dumb shit, I got to get all of that frustration out. | ||
|
unidentified
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I feel so good. | |
| I saw you tweeting a bit about this. | ||
| I'm so grateful for him being such a dumbass. | ||
| For those listening who weren't privy to our private conversations. | ||
| A couple days ago, Jordan literally said, I don't really hate Connor Friedrichsdorf. | ||
| It's no big deal. | ||
| And then, like, two days later, you're on Twitter just railing on him. | ||
| He hadn't done anything interesting for, like, a few months, so I was like, maybe I'm over it. | ||
| And then he wrote that yesterday, and it was just like, ah! | ||
| You forgot about your burning seething hatred for the man. | ||
| It was so fun. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, I hate him so much. | ||
| I'm glad you got to enjoy that. | ||
| It was a delight. | ||
| So, Jordan, today we've got an interesting episode to go over. | ||
| I have come to a conclusion that I think we need to get rid of Wacky Wednesday, but not in the way you think. | ||
| Aha. | ||
|
unidentified
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I love the alliteration of it, and that's why we have that name. | |
| Naturally. | ||
|
unidentified
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And back in the past, when we were doing our show, the structure was such that we weren't focusing on the present day of Alex Jones. | |
| Yes, absolutely. | ||
| A lot. | ||
| Protracted situation going on. | ||
| He's lying about all sorts of stuff that is relevant. | ||
| And we're also seeing him completely break down and constantly talk about wanting to quit in the middle of the show. | ||
| Drop the mic and leave. | ||
| Sometimes quitting, kind of. | ||
| I'm going to go to this special report. | ||
| I might be back. | ||
| That kind of thing. | ||
| It's the sort of thing where we've been focusing on that a lot more. | ||
| And I realize that in terms of my workflow and the way things go, it doesn't make sense to have a Wednesday episode that's dedicated to something else. | ||
| And as such, we've kind of just like, there'll be long stretches of episodes where we don't have anything other than Alex Jones. | ||
| And that's not really the template of what this show should be, I don't think. | ||
| I think that, you know, mostly Alex Jones? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Almost all Alex Jones? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Terrifying. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But if we've gone back to three episodes a week, it kind of would be... | |
| In everyone's best interest to probably try to do something else. | ||
| Now, what I mean by getting rid of Wacky Wednesday is I just don't think Wednesday works very well for that. | ||
| Monday works much better. | ||
| And here's why. | ||
| When we do our episodes that come out on Friday, generally speaking, we can have up to Thursday covered from Alex's show, which only leaves us Friday's show to cover on Monday. | ||
| So it leaves us in a lurch, in a situation where we'd be much better served, trying to do something off the beaten path for Monday, and then Wednesday and Friday, Alex. | ||
| So I'm going to generally do that, but some Mondays might also still be Alex. | ||
| But anyway, the point is, this isn't an Alex episode. | ||
| Yeah, I like it. | ||
| Now that we're not doing Maudlin Mondays every week, I'm happy. | ||
| I think that's great, yeah. | ||
| So, we have that, and we'll get into it, and this will be the beginning of something. | ||
| It might take a little while, so that'll be fun. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Before we get into it, let's take a moment to say thank you to some folks who have signed up and are supporting the show. | ||
| So, first, Darnell, thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thanks, Darnell. | ||
| Next, Greg, thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thanks, Greg. | ||
| Thanks, Greg. | ||
| Next, Joseph, thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thanks, Joseph. | ||
| Thanks, Joseph. | ||
| Next, Myronda. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you, Myronda or Miranda or Myronda. | ||
| Myronda. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Myronda. | |
| M-Y-R-O-N-D-A. | ||
| Like it. | ||
| Next, Paul. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thanks, Paul. | ||
| Thank you, Paul. | ||
| Next, Hayden. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you, Hayden. | ||
| Thank you, Hayden. | ||
| And next, great name, Daniel. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks, Daniel. | |
| Thank you, Daniel. | ||
| And finally, I'd like to say thank you to a couple people who donated on an elevated level. | ||
| Appreciate that very much. | ||
| So Vince S., thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a technocrat. | ||
| And Oliver, thank you. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Crikey, mate, that's fantastic. | ||
| Have yourself a brew. | ||
| How's your 401k doing, bro? | ||
| All right, we gotta go full tilt boogie on this, Watson, all right? | ||
| Let's just get down to business. | ||
| We ain't making that money off that heroin. | ||
| Why are you pimp so good? | ||
| My neck is freakishly large. | ||
| I declare Infowar on you. | ||
| Thank you so much, Vince S., and thank you so much, Oliver. | ||
| S., thank you very much to the both of you. | ||
| If you're out there listening and you're thinking, hey, I enjoy this show, I'd like to support what these gents do, you can do that by going to our website, knowledgefight.com, clicking the button to support the show, or if you'd like to, you can take that generosity and throw it at a charity in your area that helps folks who are in need. | ||
| We would appreciate either very much. | ||
| Indeed, Jordan. | ||
| So, like I said, today we are going to do a non-Alex Jones episode, and here's what I decided to do. | ||
| And I almost had everything blow up in my face and not be able to do this. | ||
| So what I decided is, I think that we've maybe given too rosy a view of Bill Cooper. | ||
| I think that's probably true. | ||
| And I think part of that is because we're dunking on Alex and we're making fun of him in juxtaposition with this guy who he looked up to. | ||
| And so maybe there's a little bit of a vested interest in not treating him as roughly as we treat Alex because it's like, hey Alex, this guy is your hero. | ||
| You suck compared to him. | ||
| And that's maybe an irresponsible way for us to present the source material and who this guy is. | ||
| I had avoided it a little bit, as we've done a couple of Bill Cooper episodes, because I felt like there was stuff that was more fun. | ||
| Like, the idea that he wanted to buy Gannett is hilarious. | ||
|
unidentified
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Absolutely delightful. | |
| That is a lot of fun. | ||
| Delightful. | ||
| When he does these call-in shows that end up being tech support, fucking hilarious. | ||
| Very good. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Very good. | ||
| But ultimately, that is not a fair picture of Bill Cooper. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So I felt like one of the things that I've gotten a lot of requests from people to do is get into the Oklahoma City bombing and Bill Cooper's coverage of it. | ||
| Gotcha. | ||
| So today we are going to embark on a journey. | ||
| of going over Bill Cooper and his broadcast, The Hour of the Time, and how conspiracy theories about the Oklahoma City bombing developed over the course of it. | ||
| Gotcha. | ||
| Today we're going to be listening to The Hour of the Time episodes from April 19th to 1995, the day of the bombing, April 20th and April 21st. | ||
| And we will see... | ||
| How things went on the old Patriot militia. | ||
| I'm sure it's great. | ||
| I'm sure it's great. | ||
| Hey, look, I said we weren't talking about Alex Jones. | ||
| I didn't say it wasn't going to be unpleasant. | ||
| And as I like to do, when we talked about the Boston bombing, I wanted to make sure that we try and stay as respectful as possible of the fact that this was a gigantic tragedy that affected so many people's lives. | ||
| And, you know, 168 people lost their lives. | ||
| And, you know, you just sort of umbrella that out to family and friends, co-workers. | ||
| The number of people who are severely traumatized by the events of April 19th are not something that I feel comfortable making jokes about. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But at the same time, we are going to make jokes about Bill Cooper and none of it is meant to disrespect the people. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And all that. | ||
| So that's my boilerplate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Gotcha. | |
| A little bit. | ||
| So, here we go. | ||
| We're going to start on the 19th, and Bill gets on his show, and it's really weird the way he begins his broadcast on April 19th. | ||
| His show is the evening. | ||
| Like, it's a night shift. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, he's had plenty of time to gather his thoughts about the bombing, and here's what he does. | ||
| You're listening to the Hour of the Time. | ||
| I'm William Cooper. | ||
| Today is the second anniversary. | ||
| Of the Waco Massacre. | ||
| And I don't want anyone out there to forget it. | ||
| Ever. | ||
| A thousand years from now, I want patriots somewhere, and I mean patriots to principles and ideals of liberty and freedom, to remember the Waco Massacre. | ||
| Unfortunately, it appears that someone is using this anniversary to promote An agenda. | ||
| We will be discussing that. | ||
| But for right now, there's a vote coming up on the Conference of States in Minnesota. | ||
| In Minnesota. | ||
| That's the big news. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| This is important. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yep. | |
| Yep. | ||
| Perfect. | ||
| The Council of States resolution has passed in the Minnesota House. | ||
| We must... | ||
| Stop it in the Senate. | ||
| So when I went back to listen to the period of time on Bill Cooper's show after this bombing, the one thing I didn't expect was for him to get on air on April 19th, mention the bombing, insinuate that it's a false flag, and then completely sideline it to talk about something else entirely that's more pressing to him. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| That's wild. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| He might as well have been like, it seems like somebody set this bomb with an agenda, and it's my agenda. | ||
| It has the same agenda that I do. | ||
| It's my agenda. | ||
| A lot of that is unknown on the day of. | ||
| Yeah, that's fair. | ||
| So here we have Bill warning his audience about a vote in Minnesota about a conference of states. | ||
| This is absolutely not a situation where it's a vote of the public. | ||
| It's something that's being done in the Minnesota legislature, since Bill says it passed the state house and it's going to the Senate. | ||
| One essential problem is that Bill doesn't ever give a bill number or name on this, so it left me in a little bit of a pickle. | ||
| When you just Google Minnesota and Conference of States, nothing really helpful comes up, which basically meant that I got to go to the Minnesota State Legislature's website and go over all the bills passed by the House and Senate in Minnesota 1995. | ||
| There were 265 total, and thanks to this exercise, I learned some interesting things. | ||
| That is an instance of me lying. | ||
| This was not fun or interesting as a path of exploration, because you know what? | ||
| Pretty much all these legislative bodies do is allocate funds for projects like fixing roads and slightly adjusting wording in bills about rules regarding things like building codes. | ||
| In 1995, it seemed like there was a fair amount of bridge naming related business in the Minnesota legislature. | ||
| At least a couple bridges needed some votes. | ||
| One of them was about a former state legislature person who the bridge was named after her. | ||
| And the other one I think was called, like, Hope Bridge or something. | ||
| Hey, that's great! | ||
| Good work, guys. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There is this one piece of interesting information that I did come across, thanks to Senate Bill 1112, which was about the rights... | ||
| That's the mark of the beast. | ||
| That is. | ||
| It's about the rights to ditches. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| Which I didn't know was a thing that needed to be allocated. | ||
| All right, all right, all right. | ||
| That part isn't interesting. | ||
| But what it is, is that it had to do with a town called Embarrass. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| There is a town in Minnesota called Embarrass. | ||
|
unidentified
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All right. | |
| And they're proud of it, goddammit! | ||
| I understand things like truth and consequences in New Mexico, but Embarrass? | ||
| All right. | ||
| So there was absolutely no bill, even close to what Bill is talking about, that passed the Minnesota House or Senate in 1995. | ||
| What Bill is talking about is the idea of states calling for a constitutional convention, where they would invoke Article 5 of the Constitution, which allows a convention of states to ratify new amendments with a three-fourths vote of the states. | ||
| This has never been done in the history of the country, and no one really knows how it would play out if states were to actually go down this road, but it's been a fear and rallying cry for folks on the extreme right for years, depending on... | ||
| You know, what point they want to try and make. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Bill is super worried about the liberals adding things to the Constitution here, so he's staunchly against the idea. | ||
| But later in the 2009 time frame, Alex will be strongly pushing for these sorts of things as a way for the states to fight back against Barack Obama. | ||
| Oh man, can you imagine three quarters of the states agreeing on fucking anything? | ||
| Not anymore. | ||
| Oh man. | ||
| They wouldn't even agree on abolishing slavery in 2020. | ||
| It seems like it would become a political football. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| So obscure ways that people can change or affect the Constitution are a preoccupation of people in the militia, patriot, constitutionalist world, so you can kind of understand where this drive comes from to paint things this way. | ||
| According to Article 5, state legislatures initiate this process, if they were to go down this road, by introducing resolutions. | ||
| In 1995, only three resolutions passed the Minnesota House or Senate. | ||
| One, SF-66, was about deficit reduction. | ||
| Another, HF957, was about abandoning the sale of the administration of power services for the western area of the state. | ||
| The last, HF821, was about the funding for Amtrak. | ||
| Interestingly, there was a big piece scaremongering about this very thing, the rising tide of Conference of States bills and state legislatures, in the April 1995 issue of the Phyllis Schlafly Report. | ||
| Oh, great, great, great, great, great. | ||
| So the reality behind what's going on is that the National Governors Association had been trying to organize what you might call a town hall-style gathering of representatives from state legislatures called a Conference of States, which was twisted by conspiracy theorists into being a plan to stage a constitutional convention. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| This wasn't really, strictly speaking, true, but folks like Schlafly and Bill Cooper were able to convince enough people this was part of the plot to turn the U.S. into a communist hellhole. | ||
| And get letter-writing campaigns going. | ||
| And so they just abandoned this plan. | ||
|
unidentified
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Of course. | |
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Nuts does not do it. | ||
| Fuck off, guys! | ||
| We just wanted to get together and now Schlafly's on the fucking case? | ||
| That lady is crazy! | ||
| She's hitting up her phone trees. | ||
| She's horrific! | ||
| So the plan was absolutely an effort to assert states' rights that almost paradoxically was torpedoed in part by the conspiracy theories of people who yell states' rights the loudest. | ||
| Michael Levitt, then governor of Utah and one of the primary proponents of the plan, looked back on the effort as a bold vision that adapted to the times. | ||
| In the 1994 midterms, Republicans had a really good showing and ended up in control of all of Congress, a majority of the state governorships, and control of many state legislatures. | ||
| After that point, people like Levitt, who were previously calling for this Conference of States to assert states' rights, felt like they didn't need to go that route anymore. | ||
| And with the mechanisms of government in Republican hands, they could try that approach. | ||
| Levitt literally said himself, As the new legislative agenda unfolded, those of us who had organized the Conference of States could see momentum had shifted in a direction we approved of, but in a fashion different than we had anticipated. | ||
| We recalibrated the Conference of States effort into a far less grand vision, wrapped it up, and focused our energies on legislative proposals which would return more control of the nation's welfare system and Medicaid to state control. | ||
| By April 1995, Bill Cooper is fighting against a fake version of an idea that really isn't in play in any meaningful way. | ||
| The people who were pushing for it as a last resort against Bill Clinton got the power they wanted inside government, so this move wasn't really important to them anymore. | ||
| I can find no solid evidence that a resolution like this passed the Minnesota House in 1995, but even if it did, the idea of a conference of states was already pretty much dead in the water by this point. | ||
| It was only really being kept alive by conspiracy theorists who wanted to use it to stoke fears of the destruction of the Constitution. | ||
| Sure. | ||
|
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The GOP had taken power in the federal government, so they weren't really interested in that play anymore, at least not until the next time Democrats get in control of Congress, which was, hold on, let me check my notes. | |
| The 110th Congress, beginning in 2007. | ||
| Weird how the Tea Party popped up just a little bit after that. | ||
| It is strange how when they want power, they try and subvert democracy, and then when they get power, they try and end democracy. | ||
| And how, like, these sweeping groundswells of... | ||
|
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Totally, no, completely ground... | |
| Oh, man, these are grassroots organizations. | ||
| So this is the priority for Bill. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Minnesota Council of States Bill. | ||
| What else is going on? | ||
| He's in Texas. | ||
| Minnesota people are doing... | ||
| You gotta get on it. | ||
| This is a ludicrous thing to happen. | ||
| He spends the first, like, six minutes of the show reading off the phone numbers of Minnesota legislature people that you should call. | ||
| It's like, hey, we have big issues here, man. | ||
| That's kind of a good strategy if you don't want to deal with what's going on. | ||
| I don't think that he doesn't want to deal with it. | ||
| I get the sense that he sincerely thinks that that's a bigger issue. | ||
| Which is weird. | ||
| That is weird. | ||
| He's a weirdo. | ||
| Yeah, he is. | ||
| So Bill gets down to the main news of the day for everyone else, which, of course, is the bombing. | ||
| This morning, just after most of the workers had entered the federal office building in Oklahoma City and prepared for their daily routine, an explosion occurred. | ||
|
unidentified
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Respectful Respectful Respectful. | |
| No one was prepared for this, ladies and gentlemen, least of all those inside the building who found themselves suddenly falling, tumbling through the air. | ||
| Many of them were buried beneath tons of debris. | ||
| As usual, The intelligence service has all of the facts that are available at this time, and you will find these facts have not been reported in their entirety anywhere else in the world, including the major media in the United States, including even the media in Oklahoma City. | ||
| So you can see here this anti-media tendency that's so common among the right wing these days, alive and well in the mid-90s in the militia patriot community. | ||
| It's of note that the way Bill is expressing these things isn't fully saying that the media is evil, just that his intelligence-gathering team is far more competent and have dug up the real story. | ||
| This is part of the trend that's very universal among people like Bill or Alex Jones. | ||
| It's key for them to invalidate all other sources of information than themselves, particularly things that could potentially contradict their version of reality. | ||
| Well, you don't want that out there. | ||
| And you also want to call your listeners who send you messages an intelligence service. | ||
| It doesn't get any better than random strangers sending you nonsense. | ||
| Yeah, see, this is... | ||
| Yeah, that's a little much. | ||
| Yeah, that's probably an issue. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, in this next clip, Bill tells us that he's got people on the scene and that there's a lot of rumors out there, and you've got to separate those from the truth. | ||
| As usual, we have our people on scene with press passes in hand, and they have given us a preliminary report, which I will now relay to you. | ||
| It is important that you listen carefully, ladies and gentlemen, because rumors, as always, abound. | ||
| And we have heard every rumor and every possible solution to this. | ||
| What you are going to get now are the facts. | ||
| So there's rumors, but this is not rumors. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is not rumors, this is hard facts. | |
| But we'll get to the rumors later. | ||
| And maybe some of these things are rumors. | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| Anyway, someone sent him a fucking email or something. | ||
| So now he's got the goods. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| There's one thing that Bill takes particular issue with, and actually he complains about on the 20th, and I think again on the 21st, and that is reporting of death tolls and estimates about death tolls. | ||
| He seems to really be staking a claim on this hill as, like, this is the proof of the media lying or something. | ||
| And I don't think it's very good. | ||
| I don't think it's responsible. | ||
| The national news reports, especially on ABC, are completely... | ||
| Off base and out of line. | ||
| As you might expect, the body count keeps going up, but as far as actual on-the-scenes reporting goes, at 4.30 p.m. this afternoon, Oklahoma time, only 22 confirmed dead, 17 of them children from the daycare center. | ||
| Washington was reporting 81 dead, but no one on the scene can confirm any numbers yet. | ||
| That even approach that number. | ||
| This is kind of an unfair game, I think, that Bill's playing. | ||
| I don't understand what his point is. | ||
| He's saying that they're exaggerating the death tolls, basically. | ||
| Or it's loose reporting. | ||
| I think it might be more like... | ||
| Do you feel like it's not that big a deal? | ||
| Well, I think that if people were maliciously lying about stuff. | ||
|
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Sure. | |
| Maybe that would be bad. | ||
|
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|
Sure. | |
| But the idea of estimated death tolls being possibly inaccurate in the immediate aftermath of a giant terrorist attack. | ||
| Yeah, that's supposed to be normal. | ||
| I don't know if he can really call someone. | ||
| As long as they qualify things with, like, nothing's confirmed yet. | ||
|
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Right, right, right, right. | |
| I don't know if he can fault people. | ||
| I'm going to call that at worst. | ||
| A mistake based on trying to report too fast. | ||
| Perhaps, yeah. | ||
| You know, whenever there's a mass casualty event, there's inevitably estimates that go around about the death toll, which almost always end up being higher than the eventual concrete number. | ||
| Like, I remember people throwing around numbers in the tens of thousands about 9-11 on that day, which sounded possible, given that two gigantic buildings in the middle of New York City had just fallen. | ||
| If you want to take preliminary estimates of death as being some kind of conspiracy, I guess you can, but that's some weak shit. | ||
| The bombing of the Murrah building resulted in 168 deaths, so it's not like the number he's citing from what he appears to have heard on ABC News is actually high. | ||
| Bill doesn't cite where his number of 22 dead comes from, and based on how his reporting generally goes, it's probably just something one of his listeners told him, which he then gets to call his intelligence service. | ||
| An article from April 19th in the United Press International says the bombing killed, quote, an undetermined number of people. | ||
| And the article goes on to say, quote, dozens, perhaps hundreds of people died in the blast. | ||
| The governor's office put the confirmed death toll at 26 late Wednesday, but the number was expected to rise as rescuers searched the wreckage. | ||
| This same article quotes the then-governor Frank Keating, saying that, quote, he had heard as many as 40 people were dead, but said that had not been confirmed. | ||
| They also quote a doctor at one of the triage centers who told UPI, quote, they have found 80 people, but only two were alive, so they told us to go home. | ||
| That would put the death estimate at 78, but the article also is clear that, quote, the medical workers' report could not be confirmed. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So there's caveats all over the place. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I don't know what precise reporting it is that Bill Cooper is mad about in terms of death estimates, but it seems entirely likely to me that when he says Washington was reporting 81 dead, It could have been media reports like things about that triage doctor, where responsible media qualify it as not being confirmed and it's an estimate. | ||
| Either way, this feels like a cheap way for him to play games that surround the idea that he's more careful than other media, and thus more trustworthy, which is kind of dishonest. | ||
| Anyone reporting on this story as it unfolded on April 19th would obviously know that it would be impossible to have a concrete number of fatalities for quite a while. | ||
| And even Bill's 22 number of confirmed deaths contradicts the UPI reporting of 26. Yeah. | ||
| When Bill says 4.30 p.m., that makes me think that what he's talking about is a press conference that Bill Clinton and Janet Reno held to brief reporters on the status of things. | ||
| Because that was the time that they had that presser. | ||
| Oh, well, that'll make him mad. | ||
| And he mentions Washington. | ||
| You know, Washington and 4.30. | ||
|
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Yeah, he's not a huge fan of those two. | |
| In this conference, Clinton gives a very brief statement and doesn't take any questions. | ||
| Then Reno gets up and discusses the police response and investigation, though she will not comment on things that would hinder the investigation itself, so discussion of suspects or methods of the attack are off limits. | ||
| As Reno is taking questions, this exchange happens. | ||
|
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|
We have some statistics on the casualties, but they are increasing every moment. | |
| What we are trying to do is to make sure that we pursue every lead. | ||
| What we have been told is that there were 550 people assigned in the building. | ||
| Only 250 had been accounted for before I came in. | ||
| There may be as many as 100 to 250 more people to account for. | ||
| The casualty figures are climbing. | ||
| 100 victims have been treated. | ||
| Six children who were in the daycare center have been confirmed as dead. | ||
| And we are just pursuing absolutely every lead that we can. | ||
| That was the statement from Washington as of 4.30 p.m. on April 19th. | ||
| And it doesn't sound anything like what Bill is saying. | ||
| Janet Reno didn't say that 81 people were dead. | ||
| There's just an acknowledgement that the number is going up, there's no commitment to a specific figure, and there's a recognition that a lot of people are unaccounted for as of that time. | ||
| That's not her saying that those people are dead, just that with the work of tracking down all the folks who could have been in the building had not been completed yet. | ||
| I find very little credibility or credence to what Bill is reporting, based on contemporary public reports. | ||
| It really feels like he's creating a straw man of bad reporting to compare himself to in order to make himself look like good reporting. | ||
| Yeah, responsible reporting is willingness to say we don't know yet, and that is anathema to what the right-wing propagandists do. | ||
| They know now, immediately, and they know it perfectly, and whatever it is that they say is going to be a lie. | ||
| More than likely. | ||
| So, we get to his reportage, and it turns out that there's a shopping mall that got closed. | ||
| Immediately after the explosion, ladies and gentlemen, the shopping mall at Northwest 50th and 10 was evacuated because it houses a smaller office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. | ||
| No mention was made of sealing off any areas in Norman, which is 17 miles south of Oklahoma City. | ||
| In particular, the office of the FBI, which is located about four blocks from the front door of one of our operatives. | ||
| So the problem with the information Bill is presenting is that there are two different malls at the intersection of Northwest 50th and Pennsylvania Avenue in Oklahoma City. | ||
| One is the Penn Square Mall, which is a mall like you might conceive of a shopping mall. | ||
| It's indoors and it's home to stores like JCPenney and Dillard's. | ||
| The other is a big office complex called 50 Penn Place right across the street. | ||
| In the aftermath of the bombing, both of these malls were evacuated because there are some FBI offices on the top couple floors of 50 Penn Place, the office building, not the shopping mall. | ||
| This was done as a precaution, and it may look like it's suspicious if you want it to, but the same person making that argument about suspicion would probably scream about the malls not being evacuated if, God forbid, there had been another bombing. | ||
| The way Bill's presenting this, it almost sounds like there's a shopping mall where you have an Orange Julius next to an FBI substation. | ||
| And that's not the case. | ||
| The FBI needs Orange Julius, too, Dan. | ||
| I don't disagree with that. | ||
|
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It's delicious. | |
| I'm not sure if it's delicious. | ||
| I don't think it's any good. | ||
| I don't even know what food they make. | ||
| Do they have food? | ||
| I don't think they have food. | ||
| They just make oranges. | ||
| I'm not exactly sure what Bill thinks he's proving by saying that there were some things closed in Norman. | ||
| That's not really suspicious. | ||
| A giant terrorist attack had just gone down. | ||
| You'd expect people less than 20 miles away might be cautious. | ||
| I can't find any confirmation that the FBI satellite office in Norman was evacuated or closed, but the office itself is real. | ||
| I would guess that if it was closed, it was another good precaution after a gigantic terrorist attack. | ||
| Conspiracy. | ||
| Norman is like a 25 minute drive away from Oklahoma City and the satellite office is in a strip mall that has a bunch of other tenants. | ||
| If you were operating off an assumption that the target might be, but not definitely was, but might be someone attacking federal authorities, you would be putting lives at risk unnecessarily if you didn't cover your bases. | ||
| I don't see anything weird about the things Bill is pointing to as weird so far. | ||
| And honestly, this section of the show revealed something to me that I've already touched on a little bit, but I didn't realize until this point in the episode. | ||
| It's Minnesota's fault. | ||
| No. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| When Bill is reporting this stuff about there being a closure in Norman, he says it's near one of his intelligence gathering people's houses. | ||
| And that made it clear that I should have realized this already, but... | ||
| A lot of the times, Bill, like, he sounds like he's reading a large passage from a book or, like, a newspaper article. | ||
| He's actually reading an email from one of his listeners. | ||
| That's all it is. | ||
| He speaks in this authoritative voice because he believes that everything one of his listeners tells him is intel as opposed to just being possibly inaccurate gossip. | ||
| This little wrinkle is something that makes Bill's show harder to decipher for me. | ||
| When I'm listening to him make a claim that sounds absurd, should I even try to track down where it comes from? | ||
| It's possibly based on some news item, but it might also just be a listener email, in which case there's nothing I can do with that. | ||
| It's a bad way to operate, mostly because Bill doesn't differentiate concrete reporting from listener emails explicitly, which introduces confusion. | ||
| When UPI reported on the triage doctor's claim that there were 78 people dead that they had seen, they were clear to point out that this number... | ||
| You know, it hasn't been confirmed. | ||
| So the reader has the ability to hear the perspective of the doctor that had been interviewed, while at the same time understanding that the specifics weren't verified and should not be taken as such. | ||
| Reputable media outlets operate in such a way as to help the audience make more informed decisions. | ||
| And one of the important aspects of that is being upfront about, you know, how solid some of your information is. | ||
| I suspect that Bill doesn't call out the fact a lot on his show that his shit is mostly listener emails, because he doesn't kind of expose that his journalistic endeavor is more theater than journalism. | ||
| It's more fun to imagine that he has people observing, you know, like, my guy who's only four blocks away from the FBI office, you're like, ooh, is somebody always watching the FBI office? | ||
| Does he have people watching every FBI office? | ||
|
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He must. | |
| No, it's just some guy. | ||
| It's just some guy who lives there. | ||
| Certainly. | ||
| So we get some more reports from weirdo listeners. | ||
| Tinker Air Force Base was put on emergency alert, and for several hours, no one was admitted on or off the base. | ||
| Later in the day, base personnel were allowed onto the base, but everyone entering was subjected to a total identification check, and some were searched. | ||
| So what? | ||
| Yeah, I'm struggling here. | ||
| So? | ||
| More than 1,000 people from Tinker Air Force Base assisted in search and rescue in the aftermath of the bombing. | ||
| It's not just fighter jet pilots who are stationed there. | ||
| And one of the most important things was they had their own fire department who were able to be deployed to the bomb site. | ||
|
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Oh, man. | |
| The idea that this base would ramp up security after a massive terrorist attack, again, is nothing suspicious. | ||
| I don't understand. | ||
| I'm getting serious. | ||
| The Arkansas Department of Transportation is on the road kind of vibes out of this thing. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, Bill complains that FEMA is getting involved in the National Guard and stuff, but the National Guard can be... | ||
| Look, all of the agencies whose job it is specifically to respond to something like this are doing their jobs. | ||
| Better evidence of a conspiracy could there be, Dan? | ||
| The bomb went off at 9.02 a.m., and at 9.15 a.m., the Oklahoma Department of Civil Emergency Management was fully activated. | ||
| And that is triggering of certain things. | ||
| Like the governor can call in the National Guard to assist. | ||
| You can call in FEMA and start coordinating with a federal assistance response. | ||
| None of that stuff is suspicious at all. | ||
| It's exactly what you would think. | ||
| Yeah, it's their job. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's their job. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| Reporting on that is like... | ||
| Oh, look, this guy who works at a car factory is helping build cars today. | ||
| And there's more security at the Air Force Base. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| Terrorist. | ||
| FBI substation in Norman might have been evacuated. | ||
| Terrorist. | ||
| I don't know what picture's being painted here, but it's not compelling. | ||
| No, this is weak. | ||
| So Bill's got someone on the scene. | ||
| But he might actually have two people on the scene. | ||
| Our station treats chief. | ||
| Drove south on Walker from Northwest 23rd Street, trying to get closer, but was turned aside by guarded roadblocks. | ||
| Yeah, terrorist. | ||
| She tried, entering the area from several different possible back roads, routes, but there were simply too many police, National Guard, Highway Patrol, and Sheriff's deputies to get anywhere near the scene, despite the fact that she possesses a valid press pass and credentials. | ||
| representing the Cajie News Service and Veritas newspaper. | ||
|
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|
Every little alleyway and gravel half-road that she tried to access was fully guarded and sealed. | |
| The parameter is solid. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good. | |
| To get on the scene, our people... | ||
| Would have done it. | ||
| And in fact, one has, but until that person comes out again, we cannot get a report. | ||
| For there is no communications out of the area unless you have access to the emergency communications equipment of the officials on the scene. | ||
| So, first of all, I don't believe this listener that Bill has actually possesses a valid press pass. | ||
| I don't know what the standards are for getting universal press passes, but it seems like I provide information for a conspiracy show on shortwave radio and the host's zine might not make the cut. | ||
| Seems like that might be like, I don't know about that. | ||
| You know, you write down I am press on some three-rule paper, and you are press. | ||
| That's how it works. | ||
| That's a press pass. | ||
| Even if they did have a press pass, there's obviously reasons why they couldn't get into restricted areas. | ||
|
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|
Like what? | |
| This was an active crime scene where hundreds of people were engaging in a desperate search and rescue mission. | ||
| There's no need for bloggers' assistance to be getting in the way. | ||
|
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|
All right. | |
| I can see where you're coming from here. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| By 9.14 a.m., aerial shots of the building were being transmitted on TV, and coverage was continuous. | ||
| But it totally makes sense that the police and other groups who were making a perimeter would do whatever they could to make sure there weren't just hundreds of reporters of ranging credibility wanting to be a person. | ||
| Yeah, that's probably bad whenever you're investigating something. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We've got a lot of footprints here. | ||
| Let me investigate. | ||
| Oh, no, we just have thousands of press here. | ||
| We want to keep that to a minimum. | ||
|
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| I found some DNA evidence that it was everyone. | ||
| Also, this is an interesting tale that Bill has about one of his people infiltrating the bomb site. | ||
| Obviously cell phones weren't to the level that they are today back in 1995, but there were cell phones. | ||
| This person who had gotten into the site probably would be able to call Bill at any point if they had a cell phone, presuming that there wasn't just the normal lack of signal problem that comes from any time that there are lots of people trying to make calls in the same area simultaneously. | ||
| That's not the government jamming signals like Bill is trying to insinuate. | ||
| At 10 a.m., Southwestern Bell began adding channel capacity to their cell capabilities, particularly for the area of downtown Oklahoma City. | ||
| To make the problem of not getting a signal less likely to occur for people trying to find their loved ones or just trying to make a call. | ||
| And this work was completed by 2.15pm. | ||
| To get some idea of the overloading that was going on at the time, between 9.02 and 11 a.m., Southwestern Bell recorded over 12 million calls attempted in the city. | ||
| Goddamn. | ||
| I'm sure there were some bans of frequency that were dedicated to emergency responders, but that really has no bearing on whether or not a guy Bill knows who snuck into the Murrah building site would be able to call Bill and then tell him what he saw. | ||
| That story does not make sense, and also it kind of leads me to believe that Bill, whether intentionally or just instinctually, is trying to craft more conspiracy into this story than a straight-up reporter might. | ||
| Yeah, I'm confused how that guy, that person got in there. | ||
| I would like to know. | ||
| Cross-country trip, was it snowing at the time? | ||
| Was he skiing all the way over there? | ||
| False nose and glasses. | ||
| Always a false nose and glasses. | ||
| Press pass. | ||
| I'm FBI with the press. | ||
| I'm the FBI press. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| So we get here an indication that only medical people get through. | ||
| The only other people being allowed through the roadblocks are medical personnel who can flash medical cards. | ||
| No one else is being allowed into the area regardless of... | ||
| So real quick, when he says the only other people are medical folks, the people he was talking about before this... | ||
| Are people who work for, like, utility companies, like gas companies, because they've got to shut off gas to the surrounding area in order to make sure there isn't a gigantic explosion. | ||
| Of the reason, no members of the local press who were not on the scene within the first hour have been allowed in since the rumor spread of a first, of a second, and then a third possible bomb. | ||
| These rumors are not true. | ||
| At that time, everyone in the downtown area who did not have a medical fire or police function was moved back away from the federal building area a distance of five blocks. | ||
| So, first of all, there's no legitimate reason for non-essential people to be allowed anywhere near that building. | ||
| It might be too much possibly to say absolutely no press, but in the circumstances that were going on where people were trapped in the rubble and search and rescue triage work was going on to the level it was, it makes complete sense to really only let in a few members of the media. | ||
| Uh, excuse me, sir. | ||
| I am a citizen sleuth. | ||
| Please allow me in. | ||
| Beat it. | ||
| Oh, goddamn. | ||
| I'm pretty sure that more than just medical personnel were allowed in, like people who had a good reason to be there. | ||
| But here's what I'm guessing happened. | ||
| Bill's listener tried to get in, and the guard wouldn't let them. | ||
| The guard said something like, unless you have a medical card, you're not getting through, which gets translated to reporting that only people with medical cards are allowed in. | ||
| That seems like the game of telephone that's being played here. | ||
| Either way, I really do appreciate that Bill is on the side of saying that the bomb scares that happened after the initial explosion were not real bombs. | ||
| I'm sure he's going to have a terrible take on this, but at least at this point he doesn't seem to think there were actually more bombs, which is not the case with some Oklahoma City conspiracy theorists. | ||
| At 10.28am, there was a rumor of a possible explosive in the building, and everyone fell back. | ||
| Obviously, even if you think the odds are unlikely, you have to take it seriously when there's the possibility of another bomb. | ||
| The all-clear went out at 11.22am, and rescue efforts continued. | ||
| Then, at 1.30pm, searchers found a suspicious crate, and the building was once again evacuated at 1.48pm. | ||
| The bomb squad showed up and determined that it wasn't an explosive, so the all-clear came quicker this time and rescue efforts were back on track by 2.02pm. | ||
| It's just tragic and terrible the valuable time was lost in these rescue efforts, but the possible damage of not taking all precautions in a situation like that is almost unimaginable. | ||
| If you have tons of first responders and rescue teams in the building trying to help people and then a second bomb goes off, the physical and psychological blow that would cause would be staggering. | ||
| If I understand Bill's insinuation here, though, which he doesn't really spell out, but it definitely seems like this is what he's hinting at. | ||
| He seems to be saying that the bomb scares were fake, but not in the way that I think they were. | ||
| I think that they were fake in the sense that there weren't actual bombs, but the teams on the site didn't know whether they were real bombs or not and had to operate under the assumption that they might be. | ||
| Bill seems to believe that the bomb scares were fake in the sense that they were made up by the officials as a pretext to form a perimeter five blocks away from the building to keep the media out. | ||
| Sure, sure, sure. | ||
| Again, he doesn't explicitly say that, but it's a strong impression that I get when I was listening to him spell this out. | ||
| Yeah, the way that he's connected certain ideas to each other makes you look behind and you're like, I don't think you are disagreeing with me the way that I'm... | ||
| Yeah, because he's explaining this in the context of why his... | ||
| The Kaji member couldn't get into the site. | ||
| So it seems to be from the tracking of thoughts that it's related. | ||
| But I can't say that he says that explicitly. | ||
| Can you imagine somebody in law enforcement where after a bomb goes off and they get a report of a possible second bomb, they're just like, Nah, my gut says this guy can only make one bomb. | ||
| Let's just keep on going. | ||
| Ignore that shit. | ||
| Like, that's insane. | ||
| That is insane. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So initially there were some reports of suspects who are of Middle Eastern heritage. | ||
|
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Naturally. | |
| And to Bill's credit, he does reject this. | ||
| Earlier reports were made of three possible suspects in a blue pickup truck with tinted windows, two of Middle Eastern appearance between the age of 25 and 35, and a third male, no description given. | ||
| Who supposedly was driving this pickup truck? | ||
| Nothing was said about why they were suspects. | ||
| But I question this, and so do our agents on the scene, for there is a large population of Middle Eastern Muslims in Oklahoma City, Edmond and Norman, and the University of Oklahoma has several large Islamic student community groups. | ||
| Unless the three men actually did something suspicious, There should have been nothing out of the ordinary about their presence. | ||
| Many such individuals live and work in this area, especially in that part of downtown Oklahoma City, which houses so many offices for Middle Eastern businesses. | ||
| Good on you, Bill! | ||
| Yeah, man! | ||
| Can't really take fault with that assessment. | ||
| No, considering Alex Jones had 40 different bomb suspects on the day of the Boston bombing, he was just throwing pictures up left and right. | ||
| True, true. | ||
| I do appreciate this. | ||
| I think by the time we get through... | ||
| This episode, you won't have a positive view of Bill. | ||
|
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|
Naturally. | |
| But at least there are little moments like that where, I mean, I wish he would recognize or make more explicit the fact that, like, the reason for why they were... | ||
| It shouldn't be viewed as anything out of the ordinary, and I can't think of any reason why a certain group of people would be chosen as scapegoats. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That would make no sense to me. | ||
| He doesn't take the second step in terms of making a critique of why this would be the first thing that people's minds go to. | ||
| But he does say that if they didn't do anything, there should be no reason why they would be considered suspects, which is halfway there. | ||
| And for someone in the world that Bill is in and that we cover, it's kind of amazing, almost. | ||
| But in a certain way, not putting that second step together is like, yeah, yeah, no, no, no, of course you should be racist towards these people, but it doesn't make any sense to do it now. | ||
| That's stupid. | ||
| Like, there's a certain part of, like, this is bad investigation on your part. | ||
| Not a criticism of why you're choosing it. | ||
| Maybe, maybe not. | ||
| But I think you're assuming a motivation. | ||
| I'm not positive what it is, so I'm not going to sign off on... | ||
| On what you're saying, but maybe. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I'm not assuming a motivation. | ||
| I think it's just like the way that thought process... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right. | |
| You're assuming the thought process. | ||
| Yeah, that's fair. | ||
| And I'm not certain that is the case. | ||
| I will say that this clip so far has given me a very like, Bill, what the fuck is your deal vibe? | ||
| We're going to find out a little bit about his deal. | ||
| What are you doing, man? | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| What's going on here? | ||
| Bill does not handle crises well. | ||
| Okay, good. | ||
| Great. | ||
| Not like slipping into anger like Alex might, but he does a terrible job. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh boy. | |
| So Bill has been going over this report from one of his intelligence sources. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And now he's going to get into some rumors. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Some rumors that are going around. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's hear some rumors. | |
| I like rumors. | ||
| These are some of the rumors and erroneous reports and guesses and speculations that have been broadcast around the world. | ||
| Today. | ||
| So real quick, when he said that these are some of the rumors and speculations, I found it incredibly confusing at first, because he's just done this part where he's like, the Air Force base has heightened security. | ||
| Is he talking about those rumors? | ||
| Yeah, are those the rumors, or are you about to say the rumors? | ||
| And I had to go back and listen to it a couple times, and I'm very certain. | ||
| He's saying that the things that were reported before, the Air Force Base, the FBI substation, all that stuff, that is not rumor. | ||
| Those are true. | ||
| What he's about to talk about is rumors. | ||
| It was just a rabbit. | ||
| Remember, these are rumors. | ||
|
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|
Speculations. | |
| A local television station in Oklahoma City received a call from an unidentified male, reportedly speaking with a foreign accent, who stated that the Nation of Islam claimed responsibility for the bombing. | ||
| So, I kind of wonder how much utility there is in coming on a conspiracy paranoia-themed broadcast and just repeating random rumors about the bombing. | ||
| Hey, these are rumors! | ||
| Even if you preface them by saying they're just rumors and they aren't proven, like, it feels irresponsible. | ||
| Even if it appears to be, like, him really trying not to be, I just don't know what value it has to be, like, well, here's something that people have said. | ||
| Yeah, that is strange. | ||
| Also, how silly is it that he is rejecting that caller, but is willing to accept his caller's bullshit instantaneously? | ||
| Well, he's presumably talked to these callers a couple of times. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And they pay him dues. | ||
|
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|
Fair enough. | |
| I forgot about that part. | ||
| They pay him dues? | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Well, then I would believe people who paid him. | ||
| You gotta pay to be in Kedji. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So, Bill is reporting that this local station did receive this call, claiming that the Nation of Islam took responsibility, but he's not being precise with his own reporting. | ||
| This station in Oklahoma was KFOR, and after this anchor said that they'd received this call, another anchor said, quote, it could be a crank call. | ||
| They were not even reporting this as anything real themselves, but while we're on the subject... | ||
| Fuck them for saying that on air. | ||
| Even if they pointed out that it might be a crank call, go fuck yourself. | ||
| That doesn't bring anything to anybody. | ||
| That's some pretty irresponsible stuff. | ||
| And if Bill's only point was that some media outlets were putting out sloppy work, I'd probably be on very similar pages. | ||
| If that was it. | ||
| But even this discussion of the... | ||
| The report on KFOR isn't even done right. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Everybody's making the same mistake. | ||
| I expect it from a shortwave conspiracy theorist. | ||
| You know, not just like, hey, I got a call that says I can refinance my mortgage, and also it could have been Middle Eastern's who did the bombing. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
|
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|
I just get calls. | |
| Hooray! | ||
| Well, it wasn't just some weird caller to this local station. | ||
| There were also other people repeating this. | ||
| On another broadcast, Dave McCurdy, former Democratic congressman, promptly came on television and repeated the same unsubstantiated rumors. | ||
| So this isn't accurate. | ||
| Dave McCurdy was a former Oklahoma congressman, and he did get on air, and he connected the bombing to Hamas, not to the Nation of Islam. | ||
| UPI reported on his comments, quote, My first reaction was there could be a very real connection to some of the fundamentalist groups operating around the city, the former congressman said. | ||
| He said a number of Muslim fundamentalist groups, some with links to Hamas, had recently held a convention in the area. | ||
| You begin to think that maybe Keiji is not good at detail work. | ||
| Nah, not there. | ||
| Not there. | ||
| I mean, this has got to just be Bill reading more stuff that his listeners have prepared. | ||
| I start to wonder if he does anything. | ||
| You could just go get the quote yourself. | ||
| True. | ||
| You know, it's there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| By the time he's doing this broadcast, he could just go look at... | ||
| Conceivably, he could even go cut it out of the show. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| It would be a little bit more difficult than it is today, but he could still do it. | ||
| If he wanted to do any work. | ||
| Well, I mean... | ||
| It's just Kaji people doing it. | ||
| It's just Kaji people. | ||
| I'm pretty sure. | ||
| It's wild. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So here's another little bit of a rumor that's going around. | ||
| Another report from the scene stated that firefighters going through the rubble of the federal building discovered other explosive devices and plastic which had been allegedly kept in the offices of the ATF located in the federal building. | ||
| That's the alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. | ||
| That particular report, unlike all of the others heard today, was never reported again. | ||
| We've also not heard it mentioned further on the scanner. | ||
| It was an untrue rumor, or if it was true, was quickly squashed. | ||
| So this again is something that Bill is talking about in the context of this list of rumors, but you can hear the insinuation in his tone. | ||
| He's not reporting this as a rumor, and honestly, as far as rumors go, you shouldn't report them, unless you're explicitly debunking them and you make that very clear. | ||
| It's unhealthy to shruggingly report rumors and entertain the possibility that maybe they're true. | ||
| When you operate like this, the only real outcome that comes of it is the dumber elements of an audience. | ||
| Ignore the part where you say it's just a rumor and they come to accept the rumor is true. | ||
| Anyone listening has probably already heard these rumors somewhere already, so what's the value in repeating them and saying these are just rumors, they may or may not be true? | ||
| It's just lazy as hell and it doesn't bring it to you. | ||
| And it definitely makes it so a year or two later, somebody can just be like... | ||
| I'm pretty sure I remember that there was something about the ATF Hayden stuff. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Yeah, you completely forget the part where it's like, oh yeah, Bill said that was a rumor. | ||
| Yeah, no, it's just... | ||
| Data point now, or whatever they call it. | ||
| So the quote-unquote report of finding explosive parts in the rubble did not disappear, as Bill is imagining, and it actually dogged the ATF for quite a while. | ||
| In September 1995, they released a statement saying that they were, quote, absolutely no explosives in their office, and that there were a few things in the office that could be mistaken for explosives. | ||
| According to a 1996 article in the Washington Post, citing a Dallas ATF spokesman, quote, These items were not explosives, but rather devices designed for training purposes that never contained explosive materials. | ||
| He said these types of items are used as explanative props in court cases. | ||
| Obviously, you don't want to bring a fucking pipe bomb to court. | ||
| You're trying to demonstrate it. | ||
| And then he ripped both sleeves off and he's like, these are the only explosives in the ATF! | ||
|
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|
Woo! | |
| In Timothy McVeigh's trial, one of the bombs that was supposedly found was explained by Mike Shannon, the Special Operations Chief of the Oklahoma City Fire Department, as being, quote, A desk ornament from an ATF agent that was knocked into the stairwell. | ||
| A desk clock that had the appearance of a very typical type of what you'd see in a TV or comic strip of a bomb. | ||
| And it was in the stairwell and people were really nervous at the time. | ||
| There was a burlap sack with a big money sign printed on it. | ||
| These were the sort of things that were mistaken for possible bombs and then reported by media outlets that were eager to get out any possible news. | ||
| When you hear things like in the police scanner, the report of a possible second device found, you don't really know what all the details are, and it's easy to get the wrong impression. | ||
| Now, here's the thing. | ||
| Bill Cooper repeating a rumor about the ATF is not just a guy repeating a rumor for the sake of bringing erroneous news to the audience's awareness. | ||
| Oh, does he have a history with the ATF? | ||
| Bill and all the militia patriot community fucking hate the ATF. | ||
| So the repeating of a rumor about them having bombs in their office has a heavy suggestiveness to it. | ||
| I refuse to believe that Bill wouldn't be aware of that. | ||
| He can pretend he's just discussing rumors, but that's bullshit. | ||
| That is not what this is. | ||
| There's a rumor going around that the organization that I hate most in the entire world has got bomb pieces around. | ||
| I'm not saying that they're doing it, but if you don't hear about it again, that's because they fucking covered it up and you know it. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| So one more little piece of rumor here before I start to hate Bill. | ||
| Maybe I think I hate him. | ||
| We'll see. | ||
| A later radio report made mention of a rocket launcher being found in the debris, which was supposed to have also been in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms office. | ||
| That report also has never been repeated, substantiated, or denied. | ||
| You ended with denied. | ||
| It hasn't been denied. | ||
| I understand that. | ||
| The ominous music. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So this one's actually true. | ||
| No shit. | ||
| They had a rocket launcher? | ||
| Yep. | ||
| That's fun. | ||
| The folks who were going through the debris did actually find a rocket launcher in the wreckage of the building. | ||
| There's even a picture of it in the final action report about the bombing. | ||
| It sounds completely outlandish that there would be a rocket launcher in the debris of a building, but it's important to remember there were multiple different law enforcement agencies that had offices there. | ||
| The DEA, Secret Service, and ATF all had regional offices in the building, so some of the stuff that would end up being found would obviously not be what you'd expect in a normal pile of debris. | ||
| Bill is exploiting the normal reaction a person would have to hearing about a rocket launcher being found in order to insinuate that something nefarious is going on. | ||
| He doesn't offer any explanation for why this find might not be as weird as it sounds. | ||
| He just repeats it as gossip that may be true and is being covered up, maybe! | ||
| Or maybe it's just bad intel. | ||
| It was true, and it's not that weird. | ||
| And no one was covering it up. | ||
| It was reported in the AP the next day, April 20th. | ||
| Check out this fucking rocket launcher, right guys? | ||
| Hey, that's weird. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't. | ||
| I just don't. | ||
| So, I mentioned I might be starting to hate Bill. | ||
| And I think this is where it all... | ||
| Like, all that so far was just like, this is irresponsible. | ||
| I mean, it's bad. | ||
| It's bad work the day of a national tragedy, but what do you expect? | ||
| This is where I was like, I think I fucking hate you. | ||
| The hour of the time is brought to you, ladies and gentlemen, by Swiss America Trading. | ||
| We suggest that if you want protection of your assets against what is sure to come, and this is just a taste, those of you who have been listening to this broadcast for a long period of time, you know, many of you have already prepared. | ||
| As prediction after prediction comes true right on schedule, not because Oh, boy. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| Not because I'm in contact with extraterrestrial beings or channel the ascended masters, but because I've studied for the last 25 years. | ||
| Listening to that clip, you can almost see Alex doing a Bill Cooper impression. | ||
| Yeah, no kidding. | ||
| He talks all the time about how he doesn't know what the globalists are doing because of magic powers, but because he's studied them. | ||
| This is Alex's shtick to a T, down to the paranoia-fueled sales pitch for gold. | ||
| He brings up his gold sponsor and then starts talking pretty paranoid-ish. | ||
| And it descends even further into a deep paranoia about how shit's going down. | ||
| The incidents of terrorism will escalate. | ||
| The power of the police state will escalate exponentially. | ||
| Alright. | ||
| Calm it down. | ||
| Freedoms, liberty will disappear. | ||
| All nations and all people will be disarmed. | ||
| There are Russian agents in this country now supervising the disarmament of the United States of America, and we have people in Russia supervising supposedly their disarmament also. | ||
| So, Russian agents are disarming us and we're disarming Russia or whatever. | ||
| Terrorism's going to escalate exponentially. | ||
| It's bad news. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's bad news, but it gets worse. | ||
| It's the summer of rage. | ||
| This is going to affect you on the local level, too. | ||
| Oh, no, not on my local level. | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| I'll say this again so that there is no misunderstanding. | ||
| As this state of chaos develops, as local anarchy takes form, food will disappear from the supermarket shelves. | ||
| The economy will collapse. | ||
| Those who have not prepared are going to find themselves in a ditch. | ||
| Whoa! | ||
| Minnesota has love. | ||
| Embarrassed. | ||
| These are harsh warnings, but they are real, true warnings, and they come from my heart, from a position... | ||
| Of knowledge. | ||
| This is not conjecture. | ||
| This is what is planned for America. | ||
| So, you're going to be in a ditch. | ||
| Sure, that's the plan. | ||
| But... | ||
| Those who will not take sides, either with the New World Order or with patriots in this country, will be the flotsam and jetsam upon the tides of war. | ||
| And will be at the mercy of the victor. | ||
| I gotta pause right there just really quick before he gets through this. | ||
| I would assume that should the patriots win, You shouldn't say that we're going to enslave... | ||
| I really think that's kind of what he said. | ||
| I'm pretty sure that's kind of what he said. | ||
| I feel like your bad guys, if they win, they should enslave the people who stayed out of it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You're supposed to be the good guys. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You're not supposed to take it out on people who sat out. | ||
| This is a bad binary. | ||
| I don't like this choice. | ||
| No shit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That might be a little bit... | ||
| I prefer neither. | ||
| Can we pick neither? | ||
| Nope. | ||
| You're going to be flotsam and jetsam. | ||
| Damn it! | ||
| One gold or silver coin could save your life. | ||
| Really? | ||
| No one during that period of time will accept paper money under any circumstances. | ||
| Why? | ||
| If you do not have something useful or real money to trade on a black market, you will be helpless. | ||
| You will be hungry and you will be without shelter. | ||
| They're stealing your house? | ||
| I suggest you call 1-800-284-6. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I suggest you watch my predictions. | |
| So, that's some real Alex shit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| This is just a gold sales pitch masquerading as coverage of what Bill thinks is coming in response to the Oklahoma City bombing. | ||
| And make no mistake about this, this is from the night of the bombing. | ||
| He's on air saying that there will be escalating terrorism, local anarchy, food shortages, and a financial collapse, and if you and your family don't have gold or silver to barter with, you're fucked. | ||
| This is as manipulative and evil as pretty much anything I've ever heard from Alex in terms of sales pitches, and I fucking hope Bill's gold sponsor paid well, because hearing that really put Bill into a different category for me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that's... | |
| I would like to think that Bill was above something like that, but clearly he's not. | ||
| He's willing to let his sensationalism run wild in a time when his audience is particularly confused and scared while trying to sell them gold, which is going to save them in the coming dark times. | ||
| Bill did call out that his show is sponsored by this gold sales operation, so at least it's a little more above board than Alex in terms of disclosure. | ||
| But that really doesn't matter in a context like this. | ||
| What he's doing is abusive sales practices. | ||
| And if that's in your moveset... | ||
| Every other move you have becomes very suspicious. | ||
| That's the same thing as Alex being like, zinc will save your life. | ||
| He's literally saying that gold will save your life. | ||
| One piece of gold could save your life. | ||
| He literally said that. | ||
| You will die. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| You will be in a ditch unless you have at least one piece of gold. | ||
| And... | ||
| So kidnap a leprechaun or call this number. | ||
| I'm not fully convinced that he doesn't also really love gold, right? | ||
| But... | ||
| When you're in the middle of a plug for your gold sponsor, you can't act like that. | ||
| If you say things like that and you don't have a gold sponsor, then it's like, well, you're a little bit sensational, whatever. | ||
| But there's clearly a financial tie to this. | ||
| And that's really, really, really fucked up. | ||
| And I just can't allow it. | ||
| Yeah, that's almost the FDA should send a letter. | ||
| Gold cannot save your life. | ||
| It is not a prescription. | ||
| Unless you have a... | ||
| Full-on doctor's note. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, Bill gets into talking about how he's been right about every prediction of future events. | ||
| They always have. | ||
| Except for one. | ||
| And that is the trial of Manuel Noriega. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| He got that one wrong. | ||
| That'll happen. | ||
| Every other one. | ||
| That'll happen. | ||
| You can't get them all right. | ||
| And the reason that he got the Manuel Noriega one wrong is because he thought that Manuel Noriega would have sovereign immunity and so the U.S. couldn't try it. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| The U.S. doesn't usually go into other countries and fuck them up. | ||
| That'd be crazy. | ||
| For under international law, they have immunity. | ||
| So do all diplomats. | ||
| You're going to see that disappear also. | ||
| The sovereignty of nations is no more, including the sovereignty of the United States of America. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| The military forces, the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines are functioning as the police force of the United Nations under publication 7277. | ||
| So Bill was in the, you know, like he's in the middle of this rant about how he's never been wrong about any prediction other than the Noriega one, which is meant to give credibility to his prediction of all the horrible stuff that's coming, which was only in order to strengthen his gold pitch. | ||
| He starts there saying that people other than heads of state who have sovereign immunity are diplomats, but that's going away. | ||
| Now, 25 years later... | ||
| I think Die Hard 2 came out just around this time, too. | ||
| So diplomatic immunity was a very popular thing. | ||
| Yeah, maybe. | ||
| But that prediction was wrong. | ||
| Anyway, also, that document 7277 is a favorite of Alex's. | ||
| It's the thing he claims proves that the UN plans to disarm the United States. | ||
| We've talked about it a ton in the past, so just as a reminder, it was a plan that was proposed but never enacted in any way. | ||
| It was released in 1961 during a period of severe tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, where people felt that a nuclear war could arrive any day, and thus plans for peaceful de-escalation were sometimes a bit idealistic in conception. | ||
| And that was definitely the case with 7277. | ||
| The first stage of that proposed plan involves limiting the United States and Soviet armed forces to 2.1 million persons each, which definitely has not been done. | ||
| We're a little bit over that benchmark, but Russia's army is currently at about 3.5 million, so clearly that stage has not been met. | ||
| It's a plan that's a bit utopian, but it was proposed by us, has never been enacted, and was the product of Cold War desperation. | ||
| It's basically just lived on as a boogeyman of the hard right folks and the Minutemen and the John Birch Society as proof that the globalists want to take their guns when it wasn't even about individual disarmament to begin with had to do with states. | ||
| Yeah, that's great. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| Good work, guys. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So that's another little direct parallel of a document that Bill and Alex both use. | ||
| So at the beginning of the show, you know, within a minute of it starting, Bill was insinuating that this was a false flag. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And that insinuation becomes more explicit as we go along. | ||
| What happened today in Oklahoma City was a part of the agenda to bring about the new world order. | ||
| You watch as the stories continue to unfold. | ||
| It is no accident that this occurred on the second anniversary of the Waco massacre. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| So this is where Bill's whole shtick completely falls apart, or at least it should for anyone who's paying attention. | ||
| Earlier, he was complaining about rumors flying around and seems to be particularly put off by people speculating about estimated death tolls. | ||
| But now, before his show is even over, he's clearly staking a claim that this was a false flag, which he has in no way proven. | ||
| Bill is comfortable deciding on the entire narrative and the overarching truth of the event with no proof at all, but demands someone prove exactly how many people died by 4.30pm or else they're out of line and being irresponsible. | ||
| There's a very serious disconnect here, and it's a problem. | ||
| The fact that Bill has clearly already decided on the day of the bombing that it was a false flag, you know, that's going to affect how he processes new information about it. | ||
| He has a predetermined conclusion already, and he's publicly declared where he's planting his flag. | ||
| Do you think he's going to go out of his way to debunk the claim he's already committed to based on years of supposed research that he's done? | ||
| This is a massive problem for me. | ||
| Bill presents himself as the guy who insists you do your research. | ||
| He's the guy who scolds his callers for repeating things they just heard somewhere. | ||
| He's the guy who complains about rumors in the aftermath of a tragedy, and yet here he is deciding with zero proof that this bombing was done to advance the New World Order. | ||
| It's just a really sad betrayal of what's supposed to be his brand. | ||
| Between this and the gold sales thing, you really start to see a different picture of Bill. | ||
| He's kind of the same piece of shit that all these guys are. | ||
| He's just a little bit more serious about himself. | ||
| Yeah, it's a real bummer. | ||
| Yeah, but, you know, it is what it is. | ||
| Yeah, that's true. | ||
| So, Bill is clearly mad about Waco. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Like, it's very clear. | ||
| Somebody else was that day, too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know what you're talking about. | |
| Yep. | ||
| That is true. | ||
| Maybe two others, if you count Timothy McVeigh and Alex Jones. | ||
| Yeah, there's that, yeah. | ||
| So Bill's mad at the FBI about that, and because of that, he thinks that any involvement of the FBI in investigating the Murrow Building bombing is no good. | ||
| Around 5.30 p.m., our Washington people began meeting with the governor in the governor's mansion supposedly to get coordinated with the federal investigators sent in. | ||
| by Waco Reno, and the governor has announced that the entire investigation is now in the hands of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. | ||
| Should we cheer? | ||
| The last time anyone's lives were in the hands of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, they were burnt. | ||
| Well, it's not the last time. | ||
| More t-shirts. | ||
| There's been a few more since then. | ||
| Hailing their Texas barbecue. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That is definitely a selection problem. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| So, I mean, you can clearly tell that he's not coming from an unbiased place. | ||
| Whatever resentments and feelings that he has are definitely a big part of how he's interpreting events before he has any reason to think those things. | ||
| And that's pretty essential to understand. | ||
| And it really leads him to be sloppy as hell. | ||
| And it's really embarrassing when you start to look at some of the things that he's taking the time to make a point of, like this. | ||
| At 7 p.m., Oklahoma time, a call over the scanner reported packages discovered at the Medallion Hotel. | ||
| A request was made for a bomb dog to be taken to the hotel, but a search of the phone directory shows that there is no such hotel listed in the Oklahoma City phone book. | ||
| If anything transpires on that, we will, of course, let you know. | ||
| So I can't speak to whether or not Bill or his listeners were able to find the Medallion Hotel on the phone book, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that there is a Medallion Hotel in Oklahoma City at this point. | ||
| An article in The Oklahoman from October 29, 1996, discusses its reopening, its full reopening. | ||
| Some parts were shut down because they were in the middle of an $8 million renovation project. | ||
| I was even able to find a February 1995 article about the beginning of the renovation project, like that hotel exists. | ||
| There's a New York Daily News story from May 7, 1995, about how Tom Brokaw apparently got really mad at someone at the Medallion Hotel because they'd lost his reservations when he was there covering the bombing. | ||
| God damn it. | ||
| The petty image of that aside, this article also points out how the medallion stepped up in a major way and offered rooms to people who were injured in the bombing as well as rescue workers who really needed a place to stay. | ||
| So good for you, medallion. | ||
| In 1998, the medallion was bought by Capstar and it was renamed the West End Oklahoma City and it has since been renamed again in 2004 to the Sheridan. | ||
| Anyway, the point here is that Bill is reporting this news as if it's a gotcha moment. | ||
| They heard on the scanner that a bomb-sniffing dog was sent to the medallion, but they can't find it in the phone book. | ||
| And this is worth bringing up on the show? | ||
| All this proves is that his investigative team couldn't find a hotel that definitely exists in the phone book. | ||
| Did they not think to take a second step to figure out if the hotel was real? | ||
| Or did they just flip through a few pages and decide Bill needed to know about this? | ||
| Did you guys check the yellow pages as well? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Uh-oh. | |
| Oh, no. | ||
| You missed it! | ||
| It's only four blocks away from the Murrah building, so this doesn't seem like something that would be the hardest thing to get to the bottom of. | ||
| Did they literally not ask anyone, hey, do you know where the medallion is? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What do they think this proves? | |
| Do you think the medallion isn't real? | ||
| Also, supposedly you've got a guy in there. | ||
| You could just have him walk to the medallion. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's two people. | |
| Yeah, there's two people in there. | ||
| Come on, man. | ||
| I don't know what they're... | ||
| I guess the theory is that they're speaking in code, like the Medallion Hotel means something else. | ||
| Because why the fuck else are you bringing this up on the show? | ||
| It's meaningless. | ||
| Yeah, that's real weird. | ||
| This is a dud of a scoop from Bill and Kaji. | ||
| Also, don't fucking hold your breath on them giving any updates on this when they realize it's a real hotel. | ||
| We looked into the Red Roof Inn and it seems as no such company exists. | ||
| Ridiculous nonsense. | ||
| So that makes this a little harder to swallow. | ||
| As you have heard tonight, this is the only complete and actual report that has occurred through any media all day long. | ||
| That is due to the people who have dedicated their resources and their lives and have taken an oath as officers and men and women So, | ||
| really factual show. | ||
| I mean, I will say that, like, there are parts that I'm not playing that are just like, you know, the Red Cross set up a blood drive center. | ||
| He's saying stuff like that. | ||
| It's like uncontroversial and like, yes, that did happen. | ||
| So there are some factual pieces of it, but... | ||
| I mean, the overall picture that you get from listening to this is not a thorough and factual reporting. | ||
| It's very clearly stilted in one direction. | ||
| Yeah, it's a factual reporting with little bits that I really want to put in there just so you know what I'm saying. | ||
| You know what I'm saying. | ||
| And so Bill has a more solid prediction of what's going to happen. | ||
| And then after this, he starts playing the audio of the bomb repeatedly. | ||
| Oh, that's not good. | ||
| Almost like it's a trance. | ||
| You know, like, he'll play it and then he'll say something and then play it again and then say something. | ||
| It's very weird. | ||
| That's really fucked up. | ||
| Yeah, it is. | ||
| I don't want to listen to that. | ||
| It was unnerving. | ||
| We're not going to listen to it, like, in its entirety. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But we'll listen to, like, a tiny bit of the end of the sound and then him saying something. | ||
| I just wanted to give you a sense of like what the structure of this like couple of minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Memorize that sound, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| You will hear it more and more in America. | ||
| Not because I want it, and believe me, I have nothing whatsoever to do with it. | ||
| I didn't think you did until just now. | ||
| ...of the emerging one-world totalitarian socialist state. | ||
| It is furthering the agenda of the disarmament of the American people, and indeed the peoples and the nations of the world. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is a deceit. | |
| It is a lie. | ||
| It is a manipulation. | ||
| So, you know, he's predicting that there's going to be more bombings, and it's going to bring in the New World Order, and then he goes to playing the bomb sound effect more. | ||
| Hezbollah. | ||
| has no truck with April the 19th. | ||
| No patriot in this country would ever attack our government without being attacked by this government first. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I can assure you. | |
| No fundamentalist religious organization has any reason To bomb any building in Oklahoma City. | ||
| We all know in our hearts why this was done and whose agenda it furthers. | ||
| So we all know who did this. | ||
| Also, I'm sorry, the repeated playing of the bomb sound. | ||
| Is a little bit after this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| It got mixed up because the first one. | ||
| The first time... | ||
| The first... | ||
| The first... | ||
| The first time in this stretch that he plays the bomb, there's a little bit more of him talking before he gets into the... | ||
| Over and over again. | ||
| Sure, sure, sure, sure. | ||
| So yeah, we all know in our hearts, though. | ||
| I don't think we do. | ||
| I think I do. | ||
| I don't think he and I agree heart-wise. | ||
| Well, when you're a guy who's on the radio and your whole big thing is like, prove it, you don't get to say, we know in our hearts who did this. | ||
| No, I'm pretty sure that we know in our hearts is proof. | ||
| You don't really get to do that and just keep the facade up that you're some kind of a like... | ||
| A researcher. | ||
| All of those other media outlets are lying about the death count. | ||
| You don't know if there's 100 or 22. That's all we know right now. | ||
| Obviously, this was a false flag attack, naturally. | ||
| It's a little much. | ||
| So in this next clip, he's already predicted that there's going to be more bombs. | ||
| And he repeats this prediction again really, really quickly after. | ||
| Remember that sound. | ||
| You will hear it again in America and again and again until they realize their goal of their utopian totalitarian socialist world government. | ||
| What is happening furthers an agenda. | ||
| So it's really hard to capture something like this by just playing clips, but I want to stress to you that at the end of this episode, Bill is making a very serious point of predicting that there will be more bombings as the New World Order brings in their utopian socialist tyranny. | ||
| This is an important point of the conspiracy that Bill is spinning about the event being a false flag. | ||
| This prediction essentially sets a condition where, if you see more bombings, Bill's credibility goes up. | ||
| This is a pretty common trick that scam folks and propagandists use, like when Alex says that there's going to be more mass shootings and somehow this prediction proves his assertion that the current mass shooting is a false flag. | ||
| I'll give Bill some points for difficulty, though. | ||
| Bombings are a bit less common than mass shootings in the Alex Jones time period, but it's the same behavior. | ||
| I don't understand. | ||
| Does he believe that... | ||
| Because he's in those circles. | ||
| He knows people. | ||
| He knows the hard right people. | ||
| I'm not saying he knew Timothy McVeigh. | ||
| No, no, probably not. | ||
| But, you know, he knows people like Timothy McVeigh. | ||
| He knows a lot of people in the militia patriot world. | ||
| I think that he thinks himself to be a leader of the patriots and the militias. | ||
| The Second Continental Army. | ||
| So he thinks that because he says we would never do this. | ||
| Unless it was quote-unquote self-defense. | ||
| That means all of the militia people believe that same thing. | ||
| Well, I mean, isn't that there's the no true Scotsman kind of thing? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| You know, like you define who is and who is not a militia patriot by, well, if they killed a person, they couldn't possibly. | ||
| Not in our group. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think that there's some of that. | ||
| And then I also think that maybe, you know, Bill has some idealistic ideas about the group of people that actually do believe the same things as him. | ||
| I think there's a, whether it's Sincere or performance-based, there's a naivete to the world that he swims in. | ||
| I guess, but I mean, you gotta know some of those people are chomping at the bit. | ||
| Right. | ||
| How would that serve his interest to be aware of that? | ||
| For sure. | ||
| You can't get on the radio and be like, hey, let's be honest. | ||
| We are surrounded by angry racists. | ||
| There's a lot of them around. | ||
| Some of them are crypto in nature, but hey, look, there's some dangerous fucking people. | ||
| Hey, I love the Constitution. | ||
| I'd love to protect it again. | ||
| But guess what? | ||
| A bunch of my friends are fucking scary. | ||
| That wouldn't be good. | ||
| That does seem like the head of the police unit coming out and being like, did you guys know cops are crazy, man? | ||
| These people are murderers. | ||
| I think it doesn't work. | ||
| I think it doesn't work for your ends. | ||
| I think that might be against the rules. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| So this is where he's just like coming in and out of the bomb sound effect. | ||
| It's just, this is ridiculous. | ||
| This is unacceptable. | ||
|
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|
*music* | |
| It is not our agenda. | ||
| Jesus! | ||
| Yeah, it's... | ||
| Jesus! | ||
| It's a presentation that is deeply fucked up. | ||
| I felt very weird listening to that. | ||
| This is a 1960s Cold War, like, get under your fucking desk if the big one drops kind of thing. | ||
| There are shades of that, yeah. | ||
| Jesus Christ! | ||
| So as the episode closes, Bill is trying to ram into his audience's head that this was a false flag. | ||
| Can't be. | ||
| It is the agenda, ladies and gentlemen, of world totalitarian socialism. | ||
| And don't you ever, in your wildest dreams, forget it. | ||
| It will come again. | ||
| Good night. | ||
| And God bless you all. | ||
|
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God bless you all. | |
| Everybody knows the world at Oprah. | ||
| Everybody knows the world at Oprah. | ||
| We just doing this, man? | ||
| Everybody. | ||
| Jordan, that song is a song that Alex plays all the time. | ||
| He plays the Leonard Cohen version of it, though. | ||
| But he plays that all the time. | ||
| It's a very interesting thing. | ||
| I've never heard that on any other radio show. | ||
| It's the song that Bill ends his Oklahoma City show with. | ||
| Is a common bumper music from Alex's show. | ||
|
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Man. | |
| Not necessarily a concrete connection, but it's very interesting. | ||
| It's very weird to me. | ||
| When I was listening to that, like the April 19th episode, the fact that he started by talking about the fucking Minnesota Bill. | ||
| Hey, come on. | ||
| Like, that blew my mind. | ||
| That's scary shit. | ||
| And then when I listened and it got to the end, and that was the song that he went out with, I was just like, that's weird. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I only know that song from Alex. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Alex probably stole literally everything from Bill. | ||
| I mean, look at it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The paranoid sensationalism in service of a gold sale. | ||
| There's so much here that is just very Alex-y. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Very, very. | ||
| Man. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So we get to the 20th, and we see things continuing in a weird way. | ||
| One of the things that I think is the most important is you see the way that Bill is kind of playing volleyball by himself. | ||
| He sets himself up and then he spikes a ball. | ||
| And he starts out the show with something that he believes is a spike. | ||
| And I hate to tell you this, ladies and gentlemen, because I just can't stand being right when I'm right about these things. | ||
| A pipe bomb located under a wheelchair access ramp exploded around 2.15 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. | ||
| At the Provincial Legislature Building in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada. | ||
| The legislature was in session. | ||
| The bomb blew out the windows on three floors. | ||
| The glass came in on the legislators. | ||
| One person sitting on a bench outside the building was injured. | ||
| No suspects have been found. | ||
| Security has been beefed up. | ||
| I told you this will escalate. | ||
| Joking, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| This is not funny. | ||
| They will do anything. | ||
| The end justifies the means is their philosophy. | ||
| You read my book. | ||
| You know what I'm talking about. | ||
| You know what they're prepared to do. | ||
| Anything. | ||
| Anything and everything to get their utopian world government. | ||
| So, this is a really good example of how conspiracy theory works, and how it leads people astray, even if they think that they're operating as critical actors. | ||
| On his April 19th show, Bill announced his prediction that there would be more bombings, as the utopian socialists tried to bring in their authoritarian state. | ||
| And then, the next day, he finds a piece of news about another bombing, and this is enough to prove to him that his prediction was right, and thus he must be on the right track about the bigger picture, namely that the bombing was not the act of organic terrorism. | ||
| How could it possibly be a solitary terrorist attack if there was another bombing the next day? | ||
| You can easily see how if you didn't take a step back, this can be an attractive thinking pattern, but ultimately, it's a bad one. | ||
| The bombing in Prince Edward Island was done by a man named Roger Charles Bell, who wasn't actually arrested until December 1996, so Bill would have no idea who he was at this point at all when he's on air. | ||
| Bell was a disgruntled former teacher who decided to lash out in society by carrying out bombings. | ||
| He struck first in 1988 when he set off a pipe bomb in front of the provincial law court's building. | ||
| He laid low for six years, then bombed again, leaving a pipe bomb in a trash can in a Halifax park. | ||
| From this point, he seemed to escalate his pattern with this legislature bombing in April 1995, and then an attempted attack on a propane plant in Charlottetown in June 1996. | ||
| Holy shit! | ||
| Yeah, that would have been bad. | ||
| Luckily, that one did not work out. | ||
| Yeah, that guy's a serial bomber who went after a fucking damn! | ||
| Yep. | ||
| After his 1995 bombing, he began sending messages to the police using the alias Loki-7. | ||
| One of these messages that has been published since had a swastika as the header and the title, quote, toward a final solution. | ||
| The body of his message said, quote, the latest attack by Loki 7 was directed at the corporate welfare bums who are the masters of the thieving scoundrels in Canada's bought and paid for legislature in courts. | ||
| greedy businessmen, thieving politicians, and venal injustice officials may run, but they cannot hide. | ||
| Operations against these and other enemies of the people will be continued by Loki VII, Hyl Thor. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| You know, one of my big issues with a lot of these manifestos and threatening letters and the like is too many adjectives. | ||
| Too many adjectives. | ||
| If I was editing it, I would just say cut a little bit of it out. | ||
| Just saying. | ||
| And using troika is a little bit showy. | ||
| Come on. | ||
| Get the fuck out of here. | ||
| So after his botched 1996 propane plant bombing, police had narrowed down the list of suspects down to basically just him and had him under surveillance around the clock. | ||
| Bell would plead guilty to the bombings and be sentenced to 10 years in prison. | ||
| That's it? | ||
| I don't think he killed anybody. | ||
| I'm not advocating for more... | ||
| It's also Canada. | ||
| Well, that's fair. | ||
| It's not the U.S. That's fair. | ||
| So yeah, this story is pretty well fleshed out, and it definitely wasn't on April 20th, 1995. | ||
| When Bill Cooper is on air making connections between the Oklahoma City bombing and this bombing in Prince Edward Island, he has absolutely no reason to do so, except that he wants to. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| What was it? | ||
| There was one thing he did that with the Boston bombing. | ||
| The Rison letters. | ||
|
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|
Oh, yeah. | |
| It was actually the eldest impersonator of the guy who hated him. | ||
|
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|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| The connecting of that makes sense to Alex on that day, but it's ultimately completely not true. | ||
| And so now, because Bill on the 19th predicted more bombings, he's going whole hog into this, and it's wrong. | ||
| It's absolutely wrong. | ||
| And as we find out... | ||
| Only after all the details are in, the only connection to them is that Nazis like bombing things. | ||
| I don't know if that dude was a Nazi. | ||
| I mean, he did have a swastika on there. | ||
| Yeah, but it did seem like it fucked up, kind of, you know, I don't know. | ||
| I feel like you get a swastika, you get a Nazi. | ||
| That's my feeling. | ||
| You're right. | ||
| I'm just gonna go there. | ||
| You're right. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's not like you can weasel your way out of the swastika. | ||
| Yeah, I just, you know how it's like an old Hindu symbol? | ||
|
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|
Sure, sure. | |
| I was thinking, like, maybe it's a Norse symbol, too, and I just don't understand it, because there's such heavy Norse shit in there. | ||
| Also, Thor, the white supremacist. | ||
| But he calls himself Loki. | ||
| Yeah, I know, but that's the master race. | ||
| That's the type of shit going on there. | ||
| There's a possible connection there. | ||
| Anyway, maybe it is much more certain that that dude was Nazi-ish. | ||
| He probably was. | ||
| I just don't know enough about a lot of that part of the case. | ||
| You want to confirm it, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say if you throw a swastika up, I'm going to call you a Nazi. | ||
| I'm comfortable with that. | ||
| So in this next clip, Bill gets to speculating about what the motive might be for them bombing. | ||
| Ooh, I have an idea. | ||
| No, no, no, no, no. | ||
| You have the wrong... | ||
| I have the wrong idea? | ||
|
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|
Okay. | |
| Damn it. | ||
| Because I got an idea. | ||
| Hold on to it. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Remember every time a piece of gun legislation was coming up in Congress, somebody would walk into a McDonald's somewhere and blow away a whole bunch of people? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Connect those dots. | ||
| I said it would happen. | ||
| I told you it was going to happen. | ||
| I told you who these people would be. | ||
| And I told you that this was going to happen, too. | ||
| And unfortunately, I'm right. | ||
| You see, the omnibus counterterrorism bill is sitting in Congress and has all kinds of opposition up until now. | ||
| Watch it! | ||
| Watch it be put on a freight train and pass through Congress and the President will sign it before you can blink your eyes. | ||
| The omnibus counterterrorism bill. | ||
| It and other similar bills, which will implement a heavier, tighter police state. | ||
| So you see almost identical thinking patterns to Alex. | ||
| Like the shootings in the McDonald's are in order to facilitate those gun bills being passed, which must mean that they're orchestrated somehow by the globalist New World Order or whatever. | ||
| In the same way, this omnibus terrorism bill is sitting there, they do this, they bomb Oklahoma City in order to get this through. | ||
| Bill, who has said that he has never been wrong about predictions of future things, says that there's nothing that can be done to stop this bill. | ||
| You better not let it pass, but I'm telling you right now, after that bombing yesterday, there's nothing you can do to stop it. | ||
| It will pass. | ||
| I don't care if the whole country got up and screamed to stop it. | ||
| It will pass. | ||
| I'm telling you now, it will pass. | ||
| I'm telling you to do anything you can to stop it, but I'm telling you you won't be able to. | ||
| The omnibus bill that Bill is talking about here is actually two bills, S-390 and S-761, and neither of them passed. | ||
| A watered-down compromise bill, the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, was passed the next year, but it's pretty hard to make the case that this omnibus bill was fast-tracked and immediately passed thanks to the fervor surrounding the Oklahoma City bombing. | ||
| This is how conspiracy thinking works. | ||
| There was a big bombing, and there was also an anti-terrorism bill being considered in Congress, and thus the two must be connected. | ||
| The bombing was done in order to guarantee the passage of the bill, which will give the globalists more control and ability to crush the militia patriots. | ||
| But then, the bill doesn't pass. | ||
| And that's the part that seems to never really be considered when crafting these theories. | ||
| I don't need to worry about it. | ||
| The globalists have the power and ability to orchestrate an insanely elaborate bombing of a federal building and pull off a cover-up that would necessitate hundreds, if not thousands of people lying, many of them under oath. | ||
| But they can't rig the vote or pressure a few congresspeople into getting this bill passed? | ||
| Well, that's really hard. | ||
| Comparatively? | ||
| I'm not sure it is. | ||
| The thing I hate about the right-wing terrorists in this country, like, terrorists in other countries claim shit that they didn't do, but all the right-wing terrorists in America are a bunch of fucking craven cowards, not even willing to accept responsibility for the terrorism that they love. | ||
| Well, it's even, like, spelled out by Bill, and Alex says the same things, too. | ||
| It's like, whoever shoots the first shot ends up losing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| In the information war or whatever. | ||
| And so, like, of course they could never take responsibility for something. | ||
| No, they just love committing terrorist acts. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it also leads to the insistence that must be given that no one in our community could possibly have done this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right, right. | |
| Because they're afraid of the appearance of the first shot. | ||
| Instead of being like... | ||
| Yes, there are elements within the community of acceptable beliefs that I might hold, like I like the Constitution, right? | ||
| There are elements of people who are attracted to the same thing who might do things that are really unacceptable, and we should take an audit of that, and we should try and find ways to do this better. | ||
| They could do that, or they could raise a collective shriek so loud that no one can even be allowed to talk about whether or not right-wing terrorism is real. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So these enemies they have are capable of pulling off a gigantic bombing. | ||
| Yeah, they have infinite power. | ||
| And also can't pass a bill. | ||
| Well, they can't do anything right. | ||
| The insistence on creating an enemy to be against who is simultaneously all-powerful and incompetent, depending on what your narrative requires, creates inherently incoherent storylines. | ||
| But it doesn't matter. | ||
| By the time these two omnibus bills that Bill is using as proof that the New World Order did the Oklahoma City bombing die in committee, they aren't essential to the narrative anymore. | ||
| By that point, there will be tons of other stories. | ||
| Tons of other plates that are spinning so you don't notice when one drops. | ||
| And it's one of the essential pieces of why we're creating this suspicion. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's bad. | ||
| It's bad work. | ||
|
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|
Bill, when the bills didn't pass, what happened? | |
| Uh... | ||
| New problem! | ||
| Goodbye! | ||
| Right. | ||
| So we start to realize, like, first of all, Bill's got all these, like, I don't know, listeners who are writing stuff for him. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And that's a bad source. | ||
| But it turns out he has other bad sources. | ||
| And in that counter-terrorism, Bill, it gives the President of the United States, old Willie Clinton. | ||
| You got him. | ||
| Nice. | ||
| All around him, dead bodies are lying. | ||
| What's the count now, way up in the 30s, I think? | ||
| Linda Thompson can tell you. | ||
| She's keeping an exact count. | ||
| So Linda Thompson's the Clinton body count person. | ||
| Hey, Linda Thompson, good to hear from you again. | ||
| Yeah, Bill's a fan. | ||
| Been a while since I've heard about how many people the Clintons have just murdered. | ||
| Yep, and it's strongly attached to Bill at this point, as opposed to later when it'll be Hillary. | ||
| Well, we don't need to worry about the details. | ||
| So there are tons of military that are coming in to help. | ||
| Like, whether active duty or reservists come again, a lot of them may be doctors, maybe logistics people who can be of... | ||
| Only soldiers. | ||
| The military only employs soldiers. | ||
| Bill sees this as proof of something. | ||
| Namely, that this is a drill. | ||
| But why have tens of thousands of military personnel, police officers, prison guards, reservists, National Guard, and Air Force personnel taken over the entire city of Oklahoma City? | ||
| Because there is a bomb? | ||
|
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|
Could this be some kind of drill? | |
| No. | ||
| I don't know the answer to that. | ||
| I do. | ||
| I know that what is happening is way beyond what is called for. | ||
| Bill can't do shit like this. | ||
| He can't lead his audience to a conclusion, then deliver the conclusion is speculation and then just pretend I'm just saying this. | ||
| Like, I get I get this kind of thing. | ||
| And honestly, it's totally fine under normal circumstances. | ||
| If he wants to use this thin speculative insinuation to prove that some guy he doesn't like is evil, that's part of it. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Search and rescue operations are still going on as Bill speaks, and for some reason, he thinks it's appropriate to bat around ideas that this whole thing is a drill, while safely hiding behind a cowardly mask of feigned inquisitiveness. | ||
| Like, fuck this dude. | ||
| We've kind of gone light on him in the past, but the kid gloves are really off for me. | ||
| This isn't just some weird idiot who believes fake documents, loves the Beach Boys, and gets mad when he can't buy USA Today. | ||
| He's a real shithead and a very similarly tragedy-exploiting monster like Alex. | ||
| And I think it's really pretty clear when you start to look at these flashpoints. | ||
| Alex is such a piece of shit that we can give Bill Cooper a glowing review and comparison. | ||
| And then you come back to Bill Cooper and you're like, okay, well they're both huge pieces of shit. | ||
| When we isolate our focus down to kind of things that are goofy, you can make a case for like... | ||
| Ah, Bill's fun. | ||
| He's better at broadcasting. | ||
| He throws music in. | ||
| Yeah, there are elements that you can take away, but we should make it clear. | ||
| He's a big pile of shit. | ||
| So we get to some more conspiracies here. | ||
| It was also mentioned that the FBI had collected film or tape from several surveillance cameras mounted in parking lots of other surrounding buildings. | ||
| Sounds like what I would do. | ||
| specifically mentioned. | ||
|
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|
These will be checked to see if they can spot the bomb vehicle and possibly any suspects. | |
| The question is, if they do, will the FBI tell the public? | ||
| Will the public be able to examine these tapes and films? | ||
| So that's the same guided speculation shit that Bill's been doing constantly. | ||
|
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|
Wow. | |
| Why is he speculating about whether or not the public will see those surveillance tapes? | ||
| The only reason to do that is to implant in your audience the suggestion that the public will, in fact, not ever see those tapes. | ||
| In 2009, the FBI released some raw video of the day of the bombing, and other surveillance tapes have come out. | ||
| The key video that everyone would want, however, has been said to not actually exist. | ||
| In court, Richard Williams, the then-assistant building manager, testified that the cameras outside the Murrah building, quote, had not been operational for at least two years before the bombing. | ||
| That sounds pretty wild, but from my experience, a not insignificant number of security cameras you may see in places are props. | ||
| The movie theater where I used to work was one such place, and I've definitely heard stories about this from other folks. | ||
| Yeah, totally. | ||
| This is a whole strategy a lot of businesses employ called dummy surveillance systems. | ||
| The goal is to put up expensive-looking cameras, which will have the same effect as real cameras in terms of deterring a criminal from robbing you. | ||
| If you appear to have a high-tech security system, oftentimes a would-be criminal just decides it's not worth the risk, and they choose another target. | ||
| You get the desired result, and you save a bunch of money. | ||
| This is actually a really bad plan because good criminals know the difference between a fake camera and a real one. | ||
| They can kind of tell. | ||
| There are little indications that can tell. | ||
| And then second, one of the things that I kept finding in articles was like, if you put up fake cameras, you might introduce a liability that you could get sued for. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Because you don't actually have footage. | ||
| Right, right, right, right. | ||
| Because it implies a level of security. | ||
| take a risk that they wouldn't do otherwise. | ||
| Like if it's outside a building, they might feel safer walking by it. | ||
| That was one example I heard. | ||
| I'm not positive that that one actually makes much sense to me. | ||
| But there are like civil liabilities you could get into. | ||
| So just to be clear, if you're out there, don't put up a fake camera. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
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|
It's not worth it. | |
| It's a bad idea. | ||
| But there are businesses that do do that. | ||
| It's I mean, not everybody does good practice, you know, like. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Hey, that's great news for America. | ||
| But this isn't to say that that's what the Murrah Building was doing. | ||
| But it is, you know, conceivable that these cameras stopped working and they were never replaced because it wasn't a high priority until it suddenly became the highest priority. | ||
| I get how this detail would seem incredibly suspicious to conspiracy theorists, but it isn't a giant red flag to me. | ||
| It makes sense. | ||
| Yeah, no, cameras being old and not working at a government building makes perfect sense. | ||
| And, like, a... | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Our nuclear stockpile is still run on computers with punch cards. | ||
| Like, nobody's changing anything. | ||
| And these are the sorts of things that unfortunately never seem like that big a deal until we realize it's a huge deal. | ||
| Look, why would you even worry about replacing a computer that controls a nuclear weapon? | ||
| There's no reason to do that. | ||
| If it works now, it's going to work forever. | ||
| Undoubtedly. | ||
|
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|
Yeah. | |
| There were some rumors going around that FBI agents were trying to sell surveillance video of the actual bomb going off to TV stations for $1 million. | ||
| But retired FBI agent Stephen Brannon testified that he investigated those claims and found them to be a hoax. | ||
| In addition, there was a Secret Service log from April 24th that contained a mention of a video showing multiple people exiting the Ryder truck before the bombing. | ||
| This has caused a widespread belief that the government is covering up the existence of this tape, but when a lawsuit was filed to force the release of it, it went nowhere. | ||
| Stacy Bauer Schmidt, the then assistant to the special agent in charge of the Secret Service Intelligence Division, explained that the log in question was a detailing of unconfirmed reports from the days at the beginning of the investigation. | ||
| This is a lot less concrete than it's made out to be. | ||
| There's a log of things that maybe had been discussed or heard, but many people who were actually involved in the investigation have testified that they have never seen such a tape. | ||
| It's possible that what's in that log is being misrepresented. | ||
| The rumors are always so transparent whenever they give you a dollar number, where it's like, they've been trying to sell it for one million dollars. | ||
| And you're like, it's 1995 money, so one million dollars might as well be 400. | ||
| Like, it's nonsense. | ||
| Back then, if they were doing that, it'd be like, if you were trying to sell it to a magazine or something like that, you'd be like, 200k. | ||
| Get in, get out, let me get out of here. | ||
| Yeah, probably. | ||
| A million dollars is a lot. | ||
| It's a lot. | ||
| It's a lot to be asking. | ||
| For an FBI agent, like, no one's gonna investigate the FBI agent who's suddenly a millionaire? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You need enough to get out of the country and have a decent life for a bit or something. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| Whenever it's a round number like that, it's weird. | ||
| So the function of Bill speculating like this is to make his audience predisposed to distrust whatever happens. | ||
| If no tapes are produced, that's not the result of there being no tapes or investigators keeping them as evidence for trial, because that, you know, obviously a reason that no tapes would be released for. | ||
| a long time from here. | ||
| It's not that. | ||
| It's proof that there's a cover-up. | ||
| Obviously. | ||
|
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|
If some tapes are produced, they're most certainly part of the cover-up. | |
| There's basically no win here unless the, you know, like once Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So in this next clip, Bill has decided that the reports that are going around that it's a fertilizer bomb are not true. | ||
| I can tell you from looking at the damage of that building and the great crater in front of the building that that was not made with a fertilizer soaked in diesel fuel bomb. | ||
| In fact, it's impossible. | ||
| Whatever did that damage was a fast-burning, high-explosive... | ||
| Of the type used only in military weapons. | ||
| And I have extensive experience with that kind of explosive from my time in Vietnam. | ||
| Any explosive expert can tell you this, ladies and gentlemen, and they'll tell you that I have just told you right on the truth. | ||
| This is meaningless. | ||
| Bill is just saying that he's looked at pictures and determined that this couldn't be a bomb made of fertilizer and fuel oil, which literally means nothing. | ||
| This is the exact same thing as Alex Jones looking at pictures from the Boston bombing and determining that some people he sees in them must be secret CIA agents because he knows a lot about secret CIA agent posture. | ||
| At this point, Bill has no information to go on to either support or reject the then-theory that the bomb was a fertilizer bomb. | ||
| He has no idea if the actual bomb had supplementary explosives added to them to make the blast larger. | ||
| There's a lot of possibilities. | ||
| This is legitimately just a knee-jerk reaction of denialism with no proof behind it. | ||
| He can't prove that this wasn't a fertilizer bomb, and yet he is. | ||
| Here he is, making a definitive statement about it to his audience. | ||
| If someone else did this about a conclusion Bill didn't like, he'd probably rant about how everyone believes unproven things and it's the death of common sense or some shit. | ||
| He allows himself to play the games that he critiques. | ||
| Makes his primary brand, basically. | ||
| And that's so fucking stupid. | ||
| You can't tell what type of bomb went off just by looking at a few pictures if you're Bill Cooper. | ||
| The fire investigators, they've done so many investigations of their investigations and they're like, those guys have no fucking clue what they're talking about. | ||
| It's practically made up nonsense. | ||
| There's no way that you know what bomb it was. | ||
| Fuck off. | ||
| So here's more sloppiness. | ||
| Our station chief penned a little note to me. | ||
| She says, I get it, but I don't. | ||
| What stupid ways for all of those guys to get arrested. | ||
| Nobody is really that stupid. | ||
| Maybe they wanted to be arrested, or maybe they were somehow set up with the FBI running the show. | ||
| We'll probably hear the real story. | ||
| Then she sent me another fax and said she was real sleepy when she wrote that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We'll probably never hear the real story. | |
| laughter As he says, this one doesn't pass. | ||
| Muster. | ||
| Even the local newscasters are reporting this latest episode with slightly raised eyebrows. | ||
| There's not something right here. | ||
| I'm going to take a short nap, Bill. | ||
| My engine has temporarily run out of steam. | ||
| God bless all. | ||
| High quality. | ||
| High quality reportage. | ||
| That's a good missive from the front lines. | ||
| No speculation in there. | ||
| So yeah, I think I forgot to cut out this clip, but there's a point where Bill says that he knows what the bomb was, and it's fulminite of mercury. | ||
| And he knows that because fulminite of mercury was taken out of the building because there were unexploded fulminite of mercury. | ||
| So there's no evidence of that. | ||
| Later, it would be alleged on a website called Relevance that the Oklahoma City... | ||
| Police Lieutenant Bill Martin had told them that additional explosives composed of fulminate of mercury were found on the scene. | ||
| In a grand jury testimony, Martin said, And then just generally, this is a little bit hard to swallow as a theory. | ||
| It seems hard to believe that these explosives... | ||
| Fulminite of Mercury would have survived a giant explosion, so I would need some pretty compelling proof of that claim. | ||
| In an absence of proof and just the presence of speculation, I cannot get on board with that. | ||
| Bill can, though. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Bill does. | ||
| He reports it on a show. | ||
| To us, they are irrelevant. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But apparently to Bill, they have a great deal of relevance. | |
| Strong relevancy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So Bill's got another report from a cadgy member. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| About what it's like on the ground. | ||
| A sleepy one? | ||
| No, no. | ||
| This one's awake. | ||
| This one's sneezy. | ||
| This one's awake. | ||
| This is a sneezy, cadgy member. | ||
| This guy's grumpy. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And here's a report from David in Oklahoma City. | ||
| Today, this is him talking. | ||
| Today I have the unfortunate task of visiting the most physically and spiritually intense place I have ever been in my entire life. | ||
| Disneyland? | ||
| That place is downtown Oklahoma City, which is now literally under martial law. | ||
| If that was a letter from a friend, fine. | ||
| If you're treating it as like reporting, what are you doing? | ||
| Jesus. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| So this guy, I love this guy's writing style, I gotta say. | ||
| He's got Civil War feelings to him. | ||
| Dearest Bill, it is with great sadness that I come to speak to you today. | ||
| So I don't know if the literal definition of martial law was achieved, but this demonstration of it being martial law really makes me laugh. | ||
| After he found a parking place, which was a genuine miracle, he was putting money in the parking meter and a civilian in a business suit walked past and said, quote, You don't have to put any money in there. | ||
| It's martial law in Oklahoma City. | ||
| One of the primary characteristics of martial law, free parking. | ||
| The moment he said he was going to put money in the parking meter, I was like, there's no way it can just be about the parking meter. | ||
| There's no way. | ||
| Free parking in martial law. | ||
| Free parking is martial law. | ||
| That's how they get you. | ||
| That's how they get you to accept the martial law. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| I accept it. | ||
| I'm fine with it. | ||
| We're getting charged too much for parking in Chicago. | ||
| It's just really interesting once you start to listen to this stuff and you're like, these are what he's bringing to the table. | ||
| There are things that his weirdo callers, or they would be callers, I guess, his listeners are just faxing him these weird letters from the front line. | ||
| It's a mess. | ||
| But because he is Bill Cooper and he is a conspiracy-minded militia dude, it's all leading towards this conclusion. | ||
| This is a full-drill takeover of an American city after a staged incident. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| If you were listening last night, you know why I say that. | ||
| I've predicted it for a long time. | ||
| And I'm going to tell you it's going to escalate. | ||
| And it's all about more control of your lives by the government and eventually the United Nations. | ||
| One world, totalitarian, socialist state. | ||
| So he feels pretty confident, probably, because the Prince Edward Island bombing seems to make him look like a prophet of some sort. | ||
| Anyway, he starts yelling about Janet Reno. | ||
| Naturally. | ||
| It's going to get worse fast. | ||
| The United States Attorney General is a murderess. | ||
| She murdered men, women, and little children in Waco, Texas. | ||
| And now today on television, she has a team effort to offer a $2 million reward for the instigators of the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. | ||
| And she said she was worried about our women and children. | ||
| Call now. | ||
| Get your hands on some real money. | ||
| You're going to need it. | ||
| It might save your life one of these days. | ||
| 1-800-289-2646. | ||
| Eight hundred. | ||
| Two-eight-nine. | ||
| Two-six-four-six. | ||
| Have you counted the bodies surrounding Clinton yet? | ||
| Jesus! | ||
| It's well over thirty. | ||
| One of these nights I'll have Linda Thompson on and we'll give you a count name by name and circumstance by circumstance. | ||
| You don't want to know Clinton very well. | ||
| You might end up dead. | ||
| You can almost imagine Alex listening to that and ingraining some of these patterns. | ||
| The way that Bill is implanting his plug into really intense, emotionally driven content is the same thing that Alex does. | ||
| I don't know if it's like, hey, every radio host does this. | ||
| It certainly feels... | ||
| I haven't listened to radio in a long time, so it's entirely possible that we could be the ones who are acting crazy here. | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I mean, I listen to a lot of, let's say, Loveline growing up. | ||
| I certainly don't remember them breaking out into really overly dramatic ads. | ||
| But, I don't know. | ||
| Anyway, Bill gets back to some of his intel. | ||
| It's coming in from Kaji. | ||
| Man, this is just like, why are you doing this? | ||
| What is the point? | ||
| I met a nice lady from Norway who was with the press. | ||
| She got nowhere trying to get inside the perimeter. | ||
| She was accompanied by a sound man and cameraman who seemed surprised that I knew what a Shure mic mixer was. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I met a man from Los Angeles. | |
| I was very angry that he was going to have to walk all the way to the Civic Center to find out anything. | ||
| You got him. | ||
| Well, if you ever lived in Los Angeles, you'd understand that. | ||
| No one in Los Angeles walks except the poor. | ||
| The very poor. | ||
| Los Angeles is an automobile-oriented city. | ||
| Why are we doing this? | ||
| It's a waste of time, pal. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| That's wild. | ||
| Yes, I met a nice Norwegian lady who's a reporter, and they were impressed with my knowledge of sound. | ||
| Is that what it was, or was he trying to insinuate that they weren't actually... | ||
| No, I think he was trying to brag about knowing about sound. | ||
| Was that what he was doing? | ||
| I thought it was supposed to be something suspicious where it's like, they never would have guessed that I would be on to them. | ||
| No, I thought it sounded like someone's mom writing them a letter from vacation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was at the Grand Canyon and I met a very wonderful couple. | |
| They were surprised by how much I knew about pie baking. | ||
| This was a postcard. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| You're totally right. | ||
| Such a waste of time. | ||
| That is so right. | ||
| He had all day. | ||
| So, I'm going to skip this clip because it's Bill just being a stickler again about the death tolls. | ||
| That really seems to be one of the things that he's trying to use as a... | ||
| Like a fulcrum. | ||
| Yeah, take something minor that I have control over and use it as a stick to bludgeon people that I don't like with. | ||
| It's not minor, but the complaint he has about estimates is minor. | ||
| Relatively petty. | ||
| Yeah, it's petty. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So we're going to skip to where he starts taking phone calls. | ||
| And he gets a call from a guy who wants to know what agencies were in the building. | ||
|
unidentified
|
One thing I just wanted to put out there is that when we get a list of the number of judges and FBI agents, Secret Service agents, and other officers that were in that building, Perhaps how many have died and we'll get a better handle on exactly who might have been the perpetrators in this activity. | |
| The perpetrators are in Langley, Virginia, my friend. | ||
| This is a guy who's made his name by saying you gotta prove everything, and he is making direct accusations of a gigantic conspiracy theory without any proof. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep, yep. | |
| That's a big claim. | ||
| It's almost like his scolding of his callers is really about protecting the appearance of his own credibility. | ||
| Yeah, that sounds right. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| So he gets another caller who brings up a conspiracy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Had you heard... | |
| You said that the University of Oklahoma recorded two blasts on their seismometer. | ||
| No, I had not heard that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Something that could be checked out. | |
| I have no idea if it's true. | ||
| Well, we'll certainly find out. | ||
| This is the first that I've heard of it. | ||
| It was not announced on any of the local stations in Oklahoma City. | ||
| Where did you hear that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I can believe that. | |
| Sure you can. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I can't tell you now. | |
| Somewhere on the Patriot Networks, I just picked it up. | ||
| But it would be simple enough to find out. | ||
| Oh, very easy to find out. | ||
| We have people right in Norman, Oklahoma, where the University of Oklahoma is at. | ||
| And we will send somebody right over there. | ||
| In fact, probably somebody listening is on their way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right now. | |
| To the Coopmobile! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks a lot for the sanity. | |
| I've been away from my shortwave, and I've been having to watch this stuff and try to interpret between the lines, and your take on it sounds a hell of a lot more reasonable to me than anything I've heard in the last few days. | ||
| Oh, it's right on the money. | ||
| Thanks for the sanity, guy who thinks the medallion hotel might not exist. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Woof! | |
| Yeah. | ||
| So, that is actually true. | ||
| That seismograph. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And we'll get to that later. | ||
| And it's nice that Bill is hearing that and not being like, yeah, yeah, that is true. | ||
| Like, Alex has that compulsion to know everything. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I do at least appreciate that Bill's response to this guy is like, I don't know. | ||
| I hadn't heard that. | ||
| We'll look into it. | ||
| I do. | ||
| Yeah, it is a breath of fresh air whenever a host says, I don't know. | ||
| There's a mild restraint there that I can applaud a little bit. | ||
| But it goes completely out the window because of everything else he does. | ||
| We have a report from people on the scene from a United States Navy super top secret installation that the day before, which was Tuesday, they held a bomb drill in one of their major installation buildings, and the drill involved an explosive in a car in the front of the building. | ||
| Exactly the day before. | ||
| That doesn't mean anything. | ||
| This is probably erroneous gossip or something, but it doesn't mean anything. | ||
| Show the document. | ||
| There was a full moon. | ||
| Show the proof of the drill. | ||
| You're not even saying where this was. | ||
| Where was this? | ||
| Alaska? | ||
| Some secret military installation? | ||
| Doesn't matter where it is. | ||
| The New World Order is everywhere, Dan. | ||
| That's bullshit. | ||
| That is some irresponsible, lame nonsense. | ||
| Nah, it's totally true. | ||
| So, a large part of the focus of the stuff that I sort of experience when I'm listening to these shows is imagining what it would be like if you were someone who listens to it and believes it. | ||
| Which is why the things about, like, Bill's reporting on rumors for no reason. | ||
| Like, obviously, that is something that will have an effect on his listeners, whether or not it's his intended effect or not, or his stated intent. | ||
| And the reason is because you do hear things like this sometimes. | ||
| And it's really important to recognize that content like this does have an effect on people. | ||
| Like, if you're not careful with stuff like this, it will change some of your perceptions. | ||
| And maybe not in ways that are very popular. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'll tell you what, I'm really watching close, and I'm really seeing the things I wouldn't have seen probably a couple years ago before I started. | |
| Listening to your show and, you know, looking at the world in a different way. | ||
| This caller is very clearly expressing, I mean, he perceives it and experiences it as a positive, but it's not. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Bill has changed the way he looks at the world. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Which is to say that he's created a context. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| He's created an overarching narrative that allows you to contextualize situations, draw connections between things. | ||
| That you wouldn't have otherwise because there isn't a connection? | ||
| When you have a guy like Bill who's preaching essentially this, I guarantee there will be more bombs after this bombing because it was a false flag, and then the Prince Edward Island bombing happens and he's like, aha, I was right. | ||
| When you are setting that kind of an example for your audience, you're going to end up... | ||
| having the effect that is not positive because it allows your listener to then do that. | ||
| And that's bad. | ||
| That just is not good. | ||
| Yeah, there's nothing inherently wrong. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| if you use that power irresponsibly and like an asshole, then it's not going to put better viewpoints in people's eyes. | ||
| It's going to be just like that guy who's like, I've been away from my shortwave for a few days, and I've had to consume and read between the lines. | ||
| Thanks for the sanity, Bill. | ||
| Yeah, I have to read between the lines. | ||
| No, just watch. | ||
| Just read. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, it's tough. | ||
| It's tough. | ||
| Maybe we should get people to read the lines first, and then you can try reading between the lines. | ||
| Yeah, you can't. | ||
| These guys are just reading between the lines before ever bothering with the lines. | ||
| You can't do a kickflip until you can all wait. | ||
| I think that's a good call. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, this last clip here from the April 20th show. | ||
| I mean, Bill's just making stuff up. | ||
| There is more movement of military equipment, material, and vehicles in this country today than there ever was in World War II or Vietnam. | ||
| Now, you'd better start asking yourself, why? | ||
| And what's it leading to? | ||
| I know the answer to that, and so do some of you. | ||
| He's just making that up. | ||
| There's absolutely no way for him to know that. | ||
| He can't pack that up at all. | ||
| And I guarantee that's not true. | ||
| During World War II in Vietnam, more movement of military stuff in the Oklahoma City bombing than during the Vietnam War. | ||
| I find that very hard to believe. | ||
| The only way that he could know that is if he was privy to a series of orders and shit like that. | ||
| Because no matter what, like... | ||
| Singular anecdotal evidence you can find, that's still not going to be enough to measure the entirety of... | ||
| I'm guessing if you're a student of history and military history, you could probably determine some sort of quantification for troop movement, military movement during Vietnam and World War II. | ||
| Now, I don't believe that on April 20th, Bill would have any reliable way to quantify the movement that was happening regarding Oklahoma City. | ||
| And for someone like him... | ||
| Who tries to present himself as just the fact, ma 'am. | ||
| That kind of guy. | ||
| You can't do stuff like that. | ||
| You can't just make up shit. | ||
| No, that's bullshit. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| I don't like that. | ||
| I don't like it when Bill's mean to me like that. | ||
| So April 21st comes around, and at this point, it's become clear that Timothy McVeigh is the suspect. | ||
| Do you mean, is the false flag Patsy? | ||
| According to Bill. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yes, so the discussion of Timothy McVeigh and the connections to militias and that kind of thing has come up, and it's clear. | ||
| And I'm going to be honest with you, the 21st is not nearly as interesting of an episode. | ||
| It's kind of uninspired in many ways. | ||
| And the only reason I included it in this is because there is a continuation of something from the 20th, and because these are part of a three-part series. | ||
| That Bill did about Oklahoma City. | ||
| They're packaged together on the Hour of the Times episode titling scheme. | ||
| I'm a completist. | ||
| But this is not a good episode. | ||
| You've got all of Radiohead's discography. | ||
| I know you. | ||
| In terms of things that are interesting, there was much more in the 19th and 20th. | ||
| But Bill starts out on an alarming tone. | ||
| First I have an order. | ||
| Don't like that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think that's kind of your deal. | |
| The commanders are to maintain discipline of their units. | ||
| Every unit is to protect their leadership, and under no circumstances are you to allow the militia to be broken. | ||
| As a result of the propaganda campaign being raged against the legitimate legal militia of the several states and of the United States of America. | ||
| That doesn't sound like him reading something. | ||
| That sounds like him coming up with this on the fly. | ||
| So when he's saying that this is a dispatch from the commanding general of the Second Continental Army of the Republic. | ||
| I think that's him. | ||
| I'm pretty sure it is him. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Who else would it be? | ||
| I think it's him. | ||
| What is this, the Witchfinder General on top of everything? | ||
| What is happening? | ||
| It seems to me that that might be Bill's title for himself, but I don't know enough. | ||
| I tried to look into this. | ||
| I can't make heads or tails of it. | ||
| It's something that I'm going to... | ||
| We'll consider this an open question. | ||
| I don't know who the commanding general is, but I have a strong suspicion his middle name is Milton. | ||
| Could be. | ||
| Here's my pitch to you. | ||
| Janet Reno. | ||
| Oh, shit. | ||
| Yeah, that's right. | ||
| She's working both sides. | ||
| Mind blown. | ||
| Everybody knew it. | ||
| So Bill's pretty mad that the militia element of this story has come up. | ||
| And it leads him to be in pretty strong denial. | ||
| Bad mood. | ||
| Well, no. | ||
| I mean, yeah, obviously. | ||
| He's in a bad mood a lot. | ||
| But he's in a bit of denial. | ||
| And this is where I get some of that. | ||
| It's unclear if it's sincere or performance-based naivete. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because he says some things that he... | ||
| There's no way you could believe this is true. | ||
| The only way the national rumor mongers are going to be able to promote the militia involvement rumor is by simultaneously tying it to a racist group, and you heard that all day long. | ||
| White supremacists. | ||
| Religious fundamentalists. | ||
| Constitutionists. | ||
| Patriot groups. | ||
| The truth is, even in the backwoods-hit country of Oklahoma, investigators are not likely to find too many groups which are both racist and patriotic. | ||
| In my investigations, in this entire nation, there are probably 500 total white supremacists. | ||
| Period. | ||
| Keep looking, Bill. | ||
| Keep looking. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| Does that mean he knows 500 people? | ||
| He's investigated 501. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And one of them's himself, and he deems himself to not be a racist. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I guess. | |
| Yeah, man. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| That's the kind of thing that's like, okay, again, it's that no true Scotsman kind of thing. | ||
| You can't have a group that's racist and patriotic, because if you do, then you're racist and not patriotic. | ||
| So by definition, you're not patriotic in Bill's eyes. | ||
| I think that that's how he's operating, and it's not really fair. | ||
| The idea that you would go on, that you would say out loud, I think there are only... | ||
| Maybe 500 white supremacists in the entire country. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There are 500 within a stone's throw of our place in Chicago. | ||
| I don't think. | ||
| I mean, how far can you throw a stone? | ||
| Pretty far. | ||
| I was a pretty good baseball player. | ||
| Okay, then maybe. | ||
| So I would say for me, no. | ||
| You, maybe. | ||
| Yeah, I think that's really... | ||
| The absurdly denial-ist. | ||
| Yeah, that's bad. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So Bill makes a prediction about the nature of the person that will be arrested for this crime. | ||
| You can be certain that whoever is arrested will be first proclaimed a racist, and later a militia connection will be fabricated. | ||
| Or, what if they're a racist and they have militia connections? | ||
| I don't think that's possible, obviously. | ||
| Now, but in the world where that is the case... | ||
| Now, Bill has said to his audience that the scripting of it will be that they're a racist, and then they'll make up some militia connections. | ||
| So, on the off chance that someone does get arrested who fits that mold, you know that it's just the fucking New World Order scripting this in order to make the Patriots look bad. | ||
| It's very identical to Alex's sort of methods and narratives surrounding people who do really terrible things, who happen to be a part of the self-selected group. | ||
| For Bill, it's very much heavily militia. | ||
| For Alex, it's white and Western, that sort of thing. | ||
| But it's the same sort of defensiveness behavior. | ||
| It is annoying to me that they preach this rhetoric that comes down to the government is always attacking you. | ||
| So self-defense measures would be basically whatever it is you want to do. | ||
| And then at the same time being like... | ||
| But we would never take offensive action, even though you've already said that any action is functionally self-defense. | ||
| So you should just take credit and be like, this guy, we're under attack from the government, but then you don't want to be... | ||
| I think there's a recognition that most people wouldn't agree with that argument, and you'd have a really tough time making it. | ||
| But at the same time, the narrative and that sort of mentality has the effect that's desired, and that is that some people... | ||
| Follow through with it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And then end up becoming proof that the man is trying to make the Patriots look bad. | ||
| And it becomes this self-perpetuating image game. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Which is lame. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So on the day before, on the 20th, the caller called in who said that the seismograph registered two little things. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| And so apparently one of the Kaji, one of the intelligence sources, went to the university over in Norman. | ||
| And has looked into this. | ||
| Here's the report from Dave. | ||
| The report of two seismological events consistent with large explosions on the morning of April 19, 1995 is confirmed. | ||
| At 1.20 p.m. today, 4-21-95, I spoke with Dr. Luzza of the Oklahoma Geological Survey, which is located in the Sarky Energy Building at the University of Oklahoma campus. | ||
| Dr. Lusa showed me the seismograph recordings made on that morning, showing two separate seismological disturbances. | ||
| The first occurring at 9.02.04 a.m. and the second occurring at 9.02.14 a.m. | ||
| So this is interesting, because like I mentioned earlier, what he's talking about is a real thing. | ||
| But Bill's jumping to wild conclusions with it, and he doesn't end up earning this narrative at all. | ||
| The way he's presenting things, there were two events registered on the seismograph, and as such, this is proof that there were two explosions at the Murrah building. | ||
| This is a simple conclusion to reach if you have a habit of not considering other possibilities, which it seems like Bill might not do a lot. | ||
| The fact that there were two waves registered on the seismograph was of interest to researchers, so they studied the phenomenon further. | ||
| What they ended up figuring out is that this was the result of low and high frequency signals traveling at slightly different rates. | ||
| The low-frequency signal made it the 16 miles from the bomb site to the seismograph in Norman a few seconds prior to the high-frequency signal. | ||
| It's fascinating. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| When the Murrah building was demolished on May 23rd, researchers set up additional seismographs and found a similar pattern with the two wave signals, despite there being only one controlled explosion. | ||
| Further study has demonstrated clearly that this wave signal pattern is not proof of two explosions, but Bill doesn't know that when he's on air jumping to conclusions about this. | ||
| He's breaking one of his own cardinal rules because it's important to him that this not be the work of someone who believes the same things as him. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So he takes this and he doesn't know what it means. | ||
| There's no explanation that he can really provide two things, two bombs. | ||
| You know it. | ||
| And I understand. | ||
| I understand why you would look at that and say that. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| But you just don't know it. | ||
| No. | ||
| So it's come out that Terry Nichols was involved in some capacity. | ||
| And apparently... | ||
| If we are found, you know what's going to be left on our shirts. | ||
| Not that. | ||
| Call Terry Nichols. | ||
| No, don't do that. | ||
| He is, apparently, at this point, there had also been some discussion that he has some connection with the militia of Michigan. | ||
| Now, Bill has an easy answer for this. | ||
| I've told you all along that the militia of Montana and others are agent provocateurs. | ||
| They would fuel the flames and provide the ammunition that would be used against the legitimate militias across this nation. | ||
| And I was absolutely correct. | ||
| They are reading militia of Montana material and all the other BS that some militias deal with, such as racism. | ||
| Again, there's that naivete that seems to be popping up there. | ||
| Man. | ||
|
unidentified
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And I understand. | |
| I mean, there are certain... | ||
| There are some people who are into malicious stuff and some people who are into some patriot stuff who don't have that racism that's attached. | ||
| I'm sure it's not universal. | ||
| Maybe there's an idealistic version of it that Bill feels he subscribes to and he can't imagine that anybody else does. | ||
| But I find this ludicrous. | ||
| Yeah, I would be shocked. | ||
| I would be shocked if Bill wasn't even... | ||
| Bill has to know if he's ever been to a militia meeting, he has to know at least one guy there who's got a Nazi flag. | ||
| Like, it doesn't matter. | ||
| They're history buffs. | ||
| Yeah, sure, sure. | ||
| It also raises the issue that maybe he never went to a militia. | ||
| Oh, isn't that possible? | ||
| Maybe he's just the worst cosplayer ever. | ||
| I don't think that's possible. | ||
| Also, I'm pretty mad at the militia of Michigan because it should be the militia again, and they really wasted an opportunity. | ||
| Yeah, that is unfortunate. | ||
| Nazis don't have fun, Dan. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| So, Bill has suggested that the motive for the bombing was to get this omnibus terror bill through. | ||
| But there's a reason that Oklahoma was chosen. | ||
| On May 17, 1994, the state of Oklahoma, ladies and gentlemen, in their legislature, passed H.R. 1047. | ||
| H.R. 1047 made Oklahoma the very first state in the United States to actually go on record as opposing the approaching new world order. | ||
| It called for the United States not to lend military personnel. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Oh, boy. | ||
| So there are a few problems with this narrative that Bill's presenting here with this bill that was supposed to have been passed by the Oklahoma legislature, which would effectively give militia a patriot explanation for why the New World Order decided to attack Oklahoma, of all places. | ||
| The first thing that's important to understand is that H.R. 1047 that he's talking about is not a bill. | ||
| It's a House resolution. | ||
| Resolutions that are passed are not legally binding at all, and they're really just things that people introduce to express a sentiment. | ||
| It's like the recent thing we talked about where the San Antonio City Council passed a resolution denouncing the use of the term China virus. | ||
| This resolution was introduced on March 8, 1994, not May 17, and it was put forth by a state rep named John Monks. | ||
| It's a completely absurd proclamation about how the U.S. needs to, quote, cease any support for the establishment of a new world order or any form of global government. | ||
| Can do. | ||
| It's definitely paranoid and just a very weird resolution. | ||
| But honestly, if I were Bill, H.R. 1056 works better. | ||
| That was a, quote, resolution claiming sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over certain powers, serving notice to the federal government to cease and desist certain mandates and directing distribution. | ||
| That one's closer to Bill's introduction date, since that was introed May 12th, 1994, and it kind of... | ||
| Works better for his narratives. | ||
| I kind of suspect that Bill is just combining or confusing these two resolutions. | ||
| Or maybe he doesn't know what he's talking about. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| There's no reason to blow up a federal building because of those non-binding, non-legally actionable sentiments of we don't like the New World Order. | ||
| Those are always written in such a lunatic idea. | ||
| I thought you were going to say they're written in crayon. | ||
| They might as well be, but at the end of them you halfway expect it to be like, and we don't want funding for the UN and I hate my... | ||
| My wife, Angela! | ||
| I hate you, Angela! | ||
| And we need to get rid of the New World Order, and the UN is evil and gone! | ||
| Angela, take me back! | ||
| Like it's that kind of lunacy. | ||
| There is something very weird. | ||
| You do suspect that there's something else behind it. | ||
| Maybe it's not marital strife, but there's something driving. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Anyway, in this next clip, Bill gets to bragging about how right he is about everything. | ||
| Fake, fake, fake, fake, fake, fake! | ||
| I'm right. | ||
| I've studied these socialist pukes for years and I'm right on the target. | ||
| I'm the only one who has consistently and with absolute accuracy predicted every step that they're going to take. | ||
| Listen to this. | ||
| Anti-terrorism bill now on fast track. | ||
| On Tuesday, the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995 was a proposal on a low track in Congress and the object of a lively debate as to whether it would violate some fundamental civil liberties, including the right to confront one's accuser. | ||
| Now, after the Oklahoma City bombing, there are few sure legislative bets in Washington. | ||
| Democrats and Republicans Issue a blizzard of news releases Thursday calling for the bill's quick passage. | ||
| The gutless wonders are at it again. | ||
| So in his discussion about how right he is about everything, he's talking about how certain of Bill's passage is that doesn't end up getting passed. | ||
| Well, don't worry about that. | ||
| He's right about everything. | ||
| I will not worry about that. | ||
| I don't like these guys who say that they can predict every move with perfect accuracy. | ||
| It's very Alex-like. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Very Alex-like. | ||
| But that's just, that suggests that you're, like, that's boring. | ||
| Nobody wants to play chess with somebody who knows everything that you're going to do. | ||
| That sucks! | ||
| Why would you play against that? | ||
| It also introduces a really interesting layer, and that is maybe they're right. | ||
| If they're right, that they're correct about everything and know all this stuff that's going to happen. | ||
| The only explanation for them being wrong a bunch is because they're lying. | ||
| Maybe they're lying to their audience. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| I do actually know everything that's going to happen. | ||
| But when I'm wrong, I was lying. | ||
| I was lying to you. | ||
| And I was lying to you for a reason. | ||
| On purpose. | ||
| Good reason. | ||
| Look, I know why Trump is doing it. | ||
| And maybe I agree with him. | ||
| But I do think it's wrong to suspend habeas corpus. | ||
| That's all I'm saying. | ||
| So around the time of the bombing, and this is the case with just about every high-profile thing, there will end up being copycat threats that are made. | ||
|
unidentified
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Sure, sure. | |
| This is a phenomenon that is unfortunate in humans, but whenever there is something like this, there will be people who make prank calls, there will be people who are trying to sow more chaos, and Bill thinks that that's the New World Order doing that. | ||
| Phoned in bomb threats forced temporary evacuations of federal office buildings in several cities, including Boston, Miami, Santa Ana, California, Birmingham, Alabama, Wilmington, Delaware, Portland, Oregon, Boise, Idaho, and Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth, Texas. | ||
| A bomb scare also forced the evacuation of Boston's City Hall. | ||
| What did they do? | ||
| Let all the inmates out of the nut house? | ||
| Not on your life. | ||
| This is all planned. | ||
| To terrorize the American people. | ||
| To give up the Bill of Rights. | ||
| You can't prove any of that. | ||
| You're the guy who's Mr. Proof. | ||
| You can't prove that. | ||
| You're just saying that you would think that all of these bomb threats were done by the globalists. | ||
| That's nonsense. | ||
| Did you think that maybe they did let all of the people out of the asylum? | ||
| Or do you think that it's possible that that's not necessary for one to make a threat like this? | ||
| Maybe it's fucking teenagers who don't know any better? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yep. | |
| Like, 1995 is prime prank call territory. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| It was before, like, the internet was as good as it is now for harassing people. | ||
| Like, real shithead youths had, like, the phone was still something they, was part of the arsenal. | ||
| So, I don't know. | ||
| Anyway, we have one last clip here, and it's very similar to Alex, but his call to action is a little bit different. | ||
| But I think you'll see some fairly large similarities. | ||
| Are you going to continue to say, oh, nothing's going on, the government wouldn't hurt us. | ||
| Are you going to continue until you're rounded up and sent to some socialist labor camp because you don't fit in with their concept of how your mind is supposed to work in the New World Order? | ||
| Is that what it's going to take before you wake up? | ||
| Look around you. | ||
| This is not the United States of America. | ||
| Not at all. | ||
| And that is not a constitutional Republican government in Washington, D.C., nor in most states of the several states. | ||
| How many states? | ||
| There's not much time left. | ||
| Continue to recruit for your militias. | ||
| Continue to prepare. | ||
| Continue to arm yourselves. | ||
| Continue to teach your children and your neighbors the truth about the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. | ||
| So, I mean, you know, the illegitimate government kind of thing sounds a lot like... | ||
| The beliefs of people who might attack the government. | ||
| Well, I mean, sure, it is an illegitimate government, but no patriot would attack an illegitimate government. | ||
| You've satisfied all of my curiosities. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| See, I mean, like, the socialists are going to take you off to a camp. | ||
| It's just the FEMA camp stuff. | ||
| It's all very similar. | ||
| But again, it only makes sense if you're saying to me that the socialists are going to take me to a camp. | ||
| That is going to happen. | ||
| I don't understand how I wouldn't get the idea that well, either I can be in a camp or I can fight back. | ||
| Like, there's no other way to view it. | ||
| Even further, if this isn't a legitimate government that we have in place, why not overthrow it? | ||
| Exactly! | ||
| Isn't it your duty to, according to your belief system? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Yeah, it's, like, Alex and him are both the same way. | ||
| They want this half measure. | ||
| They want you to believe this to get in until, I guess, the power shifts or something like that? | ||
| I don't know what the point is. | ||
| Like, for Alex, it's clearly making a ton of money. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| For Bill, it doesn't seem like that's his primary thing, but, like, the gold sales stuff you see in this episode is very much, like, exploitative. | ||
| It's manipulative. | ||
| Yeah, but he does only do one of those per episode, as opposed to Alex. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| We'll go a little nuts. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, like... | ||
| You know, it's not like it's taking over his show. | ||
| Right, right, right, right. | ||
| So I don't know. | ||
| I'm a bit confused as to, like, what exactly the point is if it's not to create some sort of a threat to the government, quite frankly. | ||
| Yeah, it has to be. | ||
| Well, I mean, you can see how successful it is even with a small-scale threat. | ||
| You can shut down government if you just have 20 guys wearing fake body armor and fake guns. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We're fucked. | ||
| So, I took a look at this, and I think it's really interesting. | ||
| I'm interested to see how this develops. | ||
| But I would say that over these three days, bad job. | ||
| Just did a bad job. | ||
| Not good. | ||
| A lot of rumors. | ||
| Two thumbs down. | ||
| That's my review. | ||
| And, like, there could be no worse time for you to fuck up like this than, like, in the immediate aftermath of a gigantic terrorist attack that traumatized the country. | ||
| It's really, really terrible. | ||
| And I think that through this prism, you do see a lot more of Alex in him. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| In terms of these patterns, these trends, these behaviors. | ||
| I think the picture becomes a bit clear as to why I think that probably some of the other episodes we did about him didn't really necessarily make the connection strongly enough as to why he is an important figure within the context of our show. | ||
| And I hope that some of those things were better clarified here and better clarified that this dude sucks. | ||
| I just hate the cowardice so much. | ||
| I hate how cowardly they are. | ||
| In one sense, you can have the courage to step up and say, this is an illegitimate government and I support this terrorist attack. | ||
| Or another instance of courage is you could step up and say... | ||
| I don't believe this is part of the militia movement. | ||
| We need to find out where this is coming from and root it out. | ||
| We need to do that. | ||
| And instead, the cowardice comes in. | ||
| I want to be the leader of fake militia, and at the same time, I don't want any consequences for the bullshit that I say. | ||
| It's fucking cowardice. | ||
| Very similar to Alex. | ||
| I hate it. | ||
| They're such cowards. | ||
| Yeah, it's a mess. | ||
| So as I realized that I said something at the beginning of this episode that I didn't really... | ||
| And that is that this almost completely got derailed. | ||
| And it's because I was preparing this episode and I got to last night and I was pretty deep into this to the point where it's like, well, it's going to be tough to make another episode for when we need to get together to record. | ||
| And there was that gigantic fire in LA. | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| I was so... | ||
| I was almost done getting ready. | ||
| And then I go on Twitter and I see that and I'm like... | ||
| Oh, no, no. | ||
| That was my first thought, too. | ||
| I thought I was a witch. | ||
| Like, I had somehow willed that into existence by focusing on Bill's response to... | ||
| And I was like, you've got to go to bed. | ||
| Oh, you've got too much power, Dan. | ||
| You've got too much power. | ||
| Terrifying. | ||
| And the other thing I want to say, just really quick before we get out of here, is that... | ||
| This so far has not been an all-encompassing approach or coverage of the conspiracies about Oklahoma City. | ||
| And one of the reasons is that that would be impossible, number one. | ||
| And number two, I'm trying to take the same approach to this that I take with Alex, which is as he brings things up, go to them. | ||
| And so as the conspiracy gets denser, there will be more of the elements. | ||
| Because I can see somebody listening to this and being like, what about blank? | ||
| I assure you, as time goes along, we'll experience it as Bill's audience might. | ||
| I think that's the way to do it. | ||
| Yeah, I think so. | ||
| So, we'll be back with an Alex episode next time, but until then, Jordan, we have a website. | ||
| We do have a website. | ||
| It's knowledgefight.com. | ||
| Yep, we're also on Twitter. | ||
| We are on Twitter. | ||
| It's at knowledge underscore fight and I go to bed Jordan. | ||
| Yep, we're also on Facebook. | ||
| We are on Facebook. | ||
| We're on the show. | ||
| iTunes, Patreon, leave a review, or you could please donate to a local charity in your area. | ||
| Yes, absolutely. | ||
| We'll be back, but until then, I'm Neo. | ||
| I'm Leo. | ||
| I'm DZX Clark. | ||
| I'm the concierge at the Medallion Hotel. | ||
| That means I'm a ghost. | ||
| Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. | ||
| Thanks for holding. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hello, Alex. | |
| I'm a first-time caller. | ||
| I'm a huge fan. | ||
| I love your work. |