True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 252: Fed Files
Aired: 2022-11-03
Duration: 01:18:10


=== Philadelphia Smiles and Tens (12:08) ===

[00:00:00]  Don't say Philadelphia.
[00:00:01]  Welcome to Philadelphia.
[00:00:08]  The sounds of Silly-delfia.
[00:00:12]  You don't like it here, Liz?
[00:00:13]  It's the land of the smile.
[00:00:15]  Is it?
[00:00:16]  Yeah, that's what they call Philadelphia.
[00:00:18]  The land of the smile.
[00:00:19]  I don't know much about this place, I gotta say.
[00:00:21]  Yeah, yeah, Young Chomsky, give me a word or two about.
[00:00:26]  All right.
[00:00:27]  Is Philadelphia fun?
[00:00:29]  Yeah.
[00:00:30]  Is it beautiful?
[00:00:32]  So beautiful.
[00:00:33]  Filled with perfect tens.
[00:00:35]  100%.
[00:00:37]  Is the.
[00:00:38]  Do you love eating it?
[00:00:39]  What?
[00:00:39]  You don't like that, Liz?
[00:00:41]  No, I just.
[00:00:42]  Wait, for real?
[00:00:43]  Are there tens here?
[00:00:45]  Yeah, I've got one of the real.
[00:00:47]  Wait, have you run up the steps?
[00:00:48]  Oh, yeah.
[00:00:50]  How often?
[00:00:51]  Every day.
[00:00:53]  No, see, he's lying.
[00:00:54]  I've run up the steps.
[00:00:55]  How do you run up the statue?
[00:00:56]  Yeah, it's at the art museum.
[00:00:57]  It's a Rocky statue.
[00:00:58]  Yeah, do you do the Rocky thing?
[00:00:59]  Yeah.
[00:01:00]  Didn't I do that with you?
[00:01:02]  Oh, yeah.
[00:01:05]  Wait, when did you guys do the Rocky run?
[00:01:07]  I think you were asleep.
[00:01:08]  You guys ran.
[00:01:09]  Last time we were in Philadelphia, you guys went from our hotel to the fucking Rocky steps.
[00:01:13]  Yeah, and then we went to the diner.
[00:01:15]  I ran so fast.
[00:01:16]  Yeah.
[00:01:16]  Everybody was cheering.
[00:01:18]  And I run.
[00:01:20]  You guys didn't even tell me.
[00:01:21]  No, you guys are fucking gaslighting me right now.
[00:01:23]  No, we literally did that.
[00:01:25]  I have a video of it.
[00:01:26]  Why wouldn't you even tell me that you did that?
[00:01:27]  I think you were asleep.
[00:01:28]  We got scrapple at the diner.
[00:01:30]  Yeah, we got scrapple.
[00:01:33]  I quit.
[00:01:58]  I'm trying to do a Philly accent.
[00:02:00]  Oh my God, I want to hear it.
[00:02:03]  Wait, Young Chomsky, can you do one real quick?
[00:02:05]  Yeah, you gotta be like, yo, you're stupid.
[00:02:07]  Let's go to Rita's.
[00:02:08]  Get some water ice and a hoagie.
[00:02:11]  What the fuck kind of accent is that?
[00:02:13]  I'll just do a British one.
[00:02:16]  No, that's not a fair.
[00:02:20]  No.
[00:02:21]  Wait, say scrapple.
[00:02:22]  Scrapple?
[00:02:23]  Scrapple?
[00:02:24]  Fancy a game of scrapple?
[00:02:26]  No, no, it's something you eat, not a game.
[00:02:28]  Fancy access.
[00:02:30]  I'm trying to think of what that would be.
[00:02:32]  I'm guessing an omelette with apples in it.
[00:02:35]  Rapples?
[00:02:36]  Apples in it.
[00:02:37]  No.
[00:02:37]  What is a scrapple?
[00:02:39]  It's, I don't know.
[00:02:40]  It's like a pork fat thing.
[00:02:42]  It's like an awful product.
[00:02:44]  It's like a.
[00:02:45]  You mean like awful?
[00:02:47]  I think it's offal.
[00:02:48]  I think it's offal.
[00:02:49]  It's like spam.
[00:02:49]  It's like spam.
[00:02:50]  Oh, it sounds delicious.
[00:02:51]  Oh, so it's just like congealed.
[00:02:53]  Yeah, you can spread it on the toast.
[00:02:57]  Not me getting that immediately after we finished recording this podcast episode.
[00:03:01]  Not me spreading my scrapple.
[00:03:03]  Yeah, not me putting a bunch of scrapple in my palm and spreading it across the crust of an entire loaf of bread and then eating it like a taco over the windshield, just smearing the scrapple.
[00:03:16]  Well, you guessed it.
[00:03:18]  We're here.
[00:03:18]  My name is Brace.
[00:03:19]  Hello, everyone.
[00:03:20]  I'm Liz.
[00:03:21]  And we are here, of course, with Philadelphia Chomsky.
[00:03:24]  Excuse me, that wasn't as clever as I thought it would be.
[00:03:27]  With young Chomsky, our ever-loving and Philadelphia, born and bred on the streets of South Philly, producer.
[00:03:35]  Wait, is it the brotherly love?
[00:03:37]  Yeah.
[00:03:37]  What's up with that?
[00:03:38]  Pause.
[00:03:39]  Pause.
[00:03:40]  What do you mean?
[00:03:41]  What does that refer to?
[00:03:42]  I mean, she's just a little.
[00:03:44]  Okay.
[00:03:44]  No, no, but actually.
[00:03:45]  It's just about kissing the homies.
[00:03:46]  No, no, but really.
[00:03:48]  It's just the city of the hug.
[00:03:50]  No.
[00:03:50]  No, but the city of hug?
[00:03:52]  Yeah.
[00:03:52]  So, you know, brotherly love.
[00:03:54]  This actually, I did read on the Wikipedia.
[00:03:56]  Wait, but what does it mean, though, for real?
[00:03:58]  Jokes aside.
[00:03:58]  I feel like it's self-explanatory.
[00:04:00]  Yes, yeah, yeah.
[00:04:01]  Do you know what I mean?
[00:04:01]  What about the sisters?
[00:04:03]  Well, what's that?
[00:04:05]  What's the sister city?
[00:04:06]  The Isle of Lesbos.
[00:04:08]  It's a Greek.
[00:04:08]  It's another Greek.
[00:04:10]  Greeks actually don't call it that, which is really funny.
[00:04:12]  No, but in America.
[00:04:13]  Pittsburgh.
[00:04:14]  Pittsburgh, I would say, sister.
[00:04:16]  No, Pittsburgh isn't for the ladies.
[00:04:18]  Yeah, have you been there?
[00:04:20]  No.
[00:04:20]  I have.
[00:04:21]  All right.
[00:04:23]  Well, the podcast is called True Not.
[00:04:25]  It's called True Anon.
[00:04:25]  Hello, everyone.
[00:04:26]  Welcome.
[00:04:26]  Hello.
[00:04:28]  We're on the fucking road.
[00:04:29]  We've been out here with, we've been opening for Iron Maiden on their tour.
[00:04:34]  It's us, Merciful Fate, and Iron Maiden.
[00:04:37]  We've been doing Liz Full Corpse Paint.
[00:04:40]  Unfortunately, the podcast has transitioned into becoming a sort of Prague metal band, and this will be the final episode.
[00:04:49]  What's our Prague metal band name?
[00:04:50]  Erudite.
[00:04:52]  No, that's the backpack rapper.
[00:04:55]  Fine.
[00:04:55]  Erudite's Nightmare.
[00:04:57]  All right.
[00:04:58]  You like that?
[00:04:58]  Erudite's Nightmare?
[00:04:59]  No, it's not good.
[00:05:00]  Okay.
[00:05:01]  But we're not very good.
[00:05:03]  No, we are.
[00:05:04]  But we're feeling a little jazzy right now.
[00:05:06]  Yeah, we're here in the Hyatt.
[00:05:09]  Hyatt.
[00:05:10]  I'm feeling a little Hyatt-centric.
[00:05:13]  I don't like the way you talk about that.
[00:05:14]  I think it's a bit Hyatt-centric.
[00:05:16]  You know, I feel like this whole thing you guys are doing here is a little Hyatt centric.
[00:05:20]  I think you need to reframe it.
[00:05:21]  Reframe it, Mary.
[00:05:22]  Can we reframe it to move it away from being so Hyatt-centric?
[00:05:25]  I'm just like, where do Marriott's come in?
[00:05:27]  Where's the Hilton?
[00:05:28]  Where's the Radisson?
[00:05:30]  Double Tree.
[00:05:32]  Not my ass in the Double Tree.
[00:05:34]  Not my ass.
[00:05:34]  Not my ass in the Double Tree.
[00:05:36]  Isn't Double Tree really nice?
[00:05:37]  You know, someone, wait, what's his name?
[00:05:38]  Mitch Hedberg had a great bit about the Double Tree.
[00:05:41]  What was it?
[00:05:43]  You know, I'm not going to do, I'm not going to do like a Mitch Hedberg.
[00:05:45]  I think you should do it.
[00:05:46]  I think you should do it.
[00:05:47]  No, but it was like it was, it was just something about like, you know, a bunch of guys sitting around being like, what do we name the hotel?
[00:05:54]  And one guy's like, what about tree?
[00:05:56]  And they're like, no.
[00:05:57]  And then another guy's like, double tree.
[00:05:59]  And they're like, hell yeah.
[00:06:00]  See, everyone these days in their jokes is always like, I've been back on the apps lately.
[00:06:04]  But back then, whenever that guy you mentioned was alive.
[00:06:07]  That guy?
[00:06:07]  You don't know, Mitch Hedborough?
[00:06:09]  What kind of fucking podcaster are you?
[00:06:12]  This kind?
[00:06:13]  Me and me.
[00:06:14]  Man, you gotta, we need to get you a garage in Atwater.
[00:06:18]  No, Eagle Rock.
[00:06:19]  Not my ass in a garage in Eagle Rock.
[00:06:22]  Your ass literally was in a garage in Highland Park for like a year.
[00:06:25]  That's true.
[00:06:26]  Yeah.
[00:06:27]  And you don't know what went on in there.
[00:06:29]  Nothing funny.
[00:06:30]  Nothing good.
[00:06:31]  Hello, everyone.
[00:06:32]  Hello.
[00:06:34]  Not my ass podcasting again.
[00:06:36]  Oh, you know what?
[00:06:37]  After, after there's, we're having a little bounce here, but we actually have a pretty important and like I don't want you to do this.
[00:06:45]  Don't finger me like that.
[00:06:47]  Excuse me.
[00:06:47]  Bernie Sanders style.
[00:06:48]  Put it out like that.
[00:06:50]  Can you rephrase that, please?
[00:06:51]  Okay, fine.
[00:06:52]  Do not finger me like that, Bernie Sanders style.
[00:06:55]  Don't put out your finger to me Jewish like.
[00:06:58]  Okay?
[00:07:00]  Do it.
[00:07:00]  This is the goyish way to do it.
[00:07:04]  We have such a cool announcement for you guys.
[00:07:09]  Liz?
[00:07:11]  We have a very cool announcement for you guys.
[00:07:15]  I wasn't prepared to do this.
[00:07:16]  Oh, you weren't prepared to do this?
[00:07:18]  No problem.
[00:07:19]  I am.
[00:07:20]  No.
[00:07:21]  Guys, we added more tour dates.
[00:07:27]  Guys, we added more tour dates.
[00:07:29]  We're going on tour.
[00:07:30]  Yeah, again.
[00:07:32]  We're already on tour right now.
[00:07:33]  We're on tour right now, but soon we will be back on tour.
[00:07:38]  Not so fucking easy, is it?
[00:07:41]  It isn't.
[00:07:42]  You know what?
[00:07:43]  Maya Culpa.
[00:07:44]  Maya culpable.
[00:07:45]  You are a culpable.
[00:07:47]  Here's my thing.
[00:07:48]  I don't like the way you read the tour dates, which is the part that I wanted to read.
[00:07:51]  Let me just read the first, the two tour dates of this tour we have left.
[00:07:55]  Okay.
[00:07:56]  Okay, so you might be like, oh, aren't you guys already on tour?
[00:07:59]  So true.
[00:08:00]  I'm so glad you brought that up.
[00:08:02]  But we're going to keep being on tour for quite a little bit less more time.
[00:08:06]  So you might be like, I didn't get tickets to your LA show.
[00:08:09]  It sold out.
[00:08:10]  And there's actually a second one.
[00:08:12]  So the November 15th LA show, yes, that sold out.
[00:08:15]  So popular.
[00:08:16]  The November 16th LA show at the Terrogram Ballroom still has tickets available.
[00:08:21]  Please come.
[00:08:23]  And I feel like it's a fair thing to say.
[00:08:26]  What is this?
[00:08:26]  My garage in Highland Park?
[00:08:29]  And then on November 25th in San Francisco, Great American Music Hall.
[00:08:33]  Oh, Great American, wish you bought tickets because you didn't.
[00:08:36]  That sold out.
[00:08:36]  But wait, there's a second show with tickets still available.
[00:08:40]  The final show of the tour.
[00:08:42]  So fucking rad.
[00:08:45]  November 26th at the Great American Music Hall.
[00:08:48]  Still tickets available.
[00:08:49]  November 26th at the Great American Music Hall.
[00:08:51]  Please buy.
[00:08:52]  I was planning that night to do something really crazy to Brace because I was like, damn, last night of tour, perfect.
[00:08:59]  Time to.
[00:09:00]  Oh, you want to actually do it?
[00:09:02]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:09:04]  Unfortunately, however, I can't now.
[00:09:07]  My plan has been foiled because we're going back on tour in February.
[00:09:15]  Such a bad idea.
[00:09:16]  So it's going to be very cold and I don't know why.
[00:09:20]  Anyway, we're doing something that we said we would never do.
[00:09:23]  And I think we all need to Maya Culpa on this one.
[00:09:27]  All right.
[00:09:28]  Because should we do it all together?
[00:09:29]  Yeah, follow me.
[00:09:30]  One, two, three.
[00:09:32]  Maya Culpa.
[00:09:35]  We're going to Boston.
[00:09:36]  Fuck!
[00:09:39]  Cocksucker!
[00:09:40]  Fucking hate this.
[00:09:41]  I hate doing this isn't.
[00:09:42]  If you think for a second out there, any of you listeners, you're like, I should do a podcast.
[00:09:46]  Seems like a cool job.
[00:09:48]  Liz, say that again.
[00:09:50]  We're going to Boston.
[00:09:54]  Enough said.
[00:09:56]  Well, guess what, Brace?
[00:09:58]  Technically, we're going to Cambridge, Massachusetts, because on Thursday, February 2nd and Friday, February 3rd, we are playing the Sinclair.
[00:10:12]  No thing after that.
[00:10:14]  No theater or hall, whatever it is.
[00:10:15]  It's called the Sinclair.
[00:10:16]  The Sinclair of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
[00:10:20]  So we'll see you there at the Sinclair.
[00:10:23]  Oh, what days is it?
[00:10:25]  That would be Thursday, February 2nd, and Friday, February 3rd.
[00:10:29]  But for all of our even greater northern listeners.
[00:10:34]  So much colder even.
[00:10:36]  Our little chili mooses up north.
[00:10:39]  We've got two shows in great old Canada.
[00:10:45]  Excuse me.
[00:10:46]  First in Quebec.
[00:10:48]  That's not Canada.
[00:10:50]  Yeah.
[00:10:50]  That's why it does.
[00:10:51]  Excuse me.
[00:10:52]  Saturday, February 4th, Montreal.
[00:10:54]  We're playing at Theater Fairmont, which is spelled with an RE.
[00:11:00]  I think it's Fadamounta.
[00:11:01]  Well, French-speaking, French-Canadian.
[00:11:03]  And then Sunday, February 5th, in Toronto, we're at the Horseshoe Tavern.
[00:11:08]  Oh, we are playing there.
[00:11:09]  Cool.
[00:11:12]  But yet, there's more.
[00:11:14]  On Thursday, February 16th, we're going to Denver, Colorado.
[00:11:20]  Do we have, if you're a listener from Denver, Colorado, please check in.
[00:11:24]  At the Bluebird Theater.
[00:11:27]  And Friday, February 17th, Minneapolis at the Fine Line.
[00:11:33]  And then Saturday, February 18th, which will be actually the last time we do this.
[00:11:40]  Yeah, that will probably be the, well, we, yeah, maybe.
[00:11:45]  So let's all plan on me doing something real fun to brace that night.
[00:11:49]  We're going to be in Austin, Texas in Tejas at the Far Out Lounge.
[00:11:54]  So wait, we're doing, we're flying all these?
[00:11:57]  Let's hope the weather's good.
[00:12:01]  I'm just saying.
[00:12:02]  Yeah, you can walk if you want.
[00:12:04]  I'm not walking.
[00:12:05]  I'm just saying that's in February.
[00:12:07]  No other way to go.

=== Warm Eastern Notes (03:00) ===

[00:12:08]  You know what?
[00:12:08]  Life's a gamble and you always win.
[00:12:10]  So we'll see you there in February.
[00:12:13]  Okay, you're worse at this than me.
[00:12:15]  I don't think so.
[00:12:16]  Much worse at this.
[00:12:17]  No, sound off in the comments.
[00:12:19]  Do we like a brace reading?
[00:12:21]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:12:22]  Do we like a Lance reading?
[00:12:23]  Bro, you go back.
[00:12:24]  We're going to have to insert.
[00:12:25]  No, do not confuse this by inserting old readings of our tour dates.
[00:12:31]  Well, I will say, based on the comments from those episodes.
[00:12:36]  People loved it.
[00:12:38]  I receive a lot of private personal letters from people saying that they really enjoyed it, but they feel bad saying that in the comment section because they'll, they think that you'll be rude to them.
[00:12:47]  Check this transition.
[00:12:48]  You know what other kind of letters you receive?
[00:12:50]  What?
[00:12:50]  One's telling me to kill myself?
[00:12:52]  Yes.
[00:12:52]  And who are those from?
[00:12:54]  Well, actually, a lot of ex-girlfriends.
[00:12:57]  And the FBI.
[00:12:59]  Wow.
[00:13:00]  Brace.
[00:13:00]  Are you a victim of a COINTEL program, perhaps?
[00:13:04]  Co-Intel program?
[00:13:06]  Yes, I am, Liz.
[00:13:08]  So great of you to bring that.
[00:13:09]  Thank you for bringing it.
[00:13:10]  Oh, my God.
[00:13:11]  Thank you.
[00:13:12]  Thank you.
[00:13:15]  Don't tell us to stop anything.
[00:13:17]  Don't stop.
[00:13:18]  It's yes and.
[00:13:20]  Oh, wait.
[00:13:20]  Oh, yeah.
[00:13:21]  Young Chomsky's listening to this in headphones, but me and Liz don't have any.
[00:13:24]  Young Chomsky.
[00:13:26]  Can you hear that?
[00:13:27]  Can you hear that?
[00:13:28]  Wait, whatever.
[00:13:29]  No one's going to like that.
[00:13:31]  But you will.
[00:13:33]  But you'll like it.
[00:13:34]  He's smiling right now.
[00:13:35]  So great of you to mention that.
[00:13:37]  We are in a very warm.
[00:13:39]  Please put your shirt down.
[00:13:41]  Okay.
[00:13:41]  I was kind of just unbuttoning it.
[00:13:42]  It's not up.
[00:13:43]  Yeah, it's warm in here.
[00:13:44]  You keep it roaming.
[00:13:45]  It's hot in Young Chomsky's hotel room.
[00:13:47]  Also, I got to be real.
[00:13:49]  What's up with all these dudes here?
[00:13:50]  Because this has been weird to record with.
[00:13:52]  City of Brotherly Love.
[00:13:54]  City Brotherly Love.
[00:13:55]  I know, but I mean, there's a lot here.
[00:13:58]  But no, we are here to record.
[00:14:00]  I'm shirtless.
[00:14:01]  We have Robert.
[00:14:03]  I'm going to fuck his name up now, even though I got to write every other time.
[00:14:05]  We have Robert with us.
[00:14:07]  Robert Scavalera.
[00:14:11]  Scavarla.
[00:14:12]  Scavarla.
[00:14:12]  God fucking damn it.
[00:14:13]  Anyways, this was a really fun interview.
[00:14:15]  Very informative.
[00:14:17]  He's cool as hell.
[00:14:19]  Also, if he's listening to this, Robert, you're pretty cool.
[00:14:22]  Yeah, after you left, we were like, what a great guest.
[00:14:24]  But also, classic, he was like, oh, I got to bring my notes, brought his notes, and then just did all that shit he said, every single letter and number and stuff off top.
[00:14:33]  Well, he had the European.
[00:14:34]  From the dome.
[00:14:36]  But here is the interview and FBI conversation, the movie, The Conversation Style.
[00:14:40]  Put on those headphones and press play on the Real to Real.
[00:14:44]  And conversation style, little sacks at the end.
[00:14:48]  Hello everyone, Jung Chomsky here with a quick addendum.
[00:14:52]  It seems that in our earlier recording session my colleagues neglected to include some important information, namely that the tickets for our just announced tour dates will be available for patrons only on Friday, November 4th at 12 p.m.

=== Palmer Raids and Comm Fab (16:14) ===

[00:15:09]  That's noon Eastern Time.
[00:15:11]  And that will be at patreon.com slash truanon pod.
[00:15:15]  Now tickets will be available for non-patrons on Tuesday, November 8th at 10 a.m. local time.
[00:15:23]  That means local to the venue where the show is being held.
[00:15:27]  And now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
[00:15:47]  Dong!
[00:15:54]  Do you hear that, listener?
[00:15:56]  Dong!
[00:15:58]  The Liberty Bell.
[00:16:00]  It rings.
[00:16:02]  But hark!
[00:16:03]  Look closer.
[00:16:04]  Squint your eyes.
[00:16:06]  A crack runs down the center.
[00:16:11]  And so too does a crack run down the center of America itself.
[00:16:16]  A crack that has seemed to grow and grow since the very founding of this country in 1776 in this very place we're in right now, the Hyatt of Philadelphia.
[00:16:31]  And that crack growed so big that sometimes I felt like the whole country would fall in.
[00:16:38]  But one agency stood athwart that crack with its hand outstretched in a gesture of an ancient policeman yelling, stop!
[00:16:48]  That agency was the FBI.
[00:16:50]  And here to help us talk about the FBI and one of its most famous programs is Robert Scavarla.
[00:17:00]  I did that wrong, didn't I?
[00:17:02]  No, you got it right.
[00:17:03]  Fuck.
[00:17:04]  Okay, well, I'll try it again.
[00:17:05]  Robert Scavarla.
[00:17:07]  Close.
[00:17:08]  We do it wrong, though.
[00:17:10]  Robert.
[00:17:12]  Robert Ska band.
[00:17:15]  No.
[00:17:15]  Okay.
[00:17:18]  Robert Skvarla, a independent parapolitics researcher from here in Philadelphia, here to talk with us about some COINTELPRO.
[00:17:28]  How you doing, Robert?
[00:17:29]  I am doing well.
[00:17:29]  How are you doing?
[00:17:31]  I mean, obviously pretty poorly, if that intro was any indication.
[00:17:34]  I thought it was very creative.
[00:17:36]  Thank you.
[00:17:36]  It was something.
[00:17:38]  Thank you.
[00:17:39]  It was something good.
[00:17:40]  Yeah.
[00:17:42]  Robert, we have brought you onto the show because Well, you are a guy that is very interested in COINTELPRO.
[00:17:50]  And I think COINTELPRO is something that, I mean, I have known about for quite a long time.
[00:17:55]  I was introduced.
[00:17:57]  I remember actually where I learned about it, which was at the Freedom Archives in San Francisco.
[00:18:03]  My dad took me to a poetry reading that was like, it was like a benefit for them when I was a really little kid.
[00:18:10]  And he introduced me to some friends of his who had been imprisoned for a long time and had gotten out and helped start the Freedom Archive.
[00:18:17]  And I learned about COINTELPRO at this thing.
[00:18:20]  And I was like, damn, that's so fucking crazy.
[00:18:23]  And it is something that I've encountered, you know, constantly basically since, especially being on the left.
[00:18:27]  It's something that looms very large over the history of the 20th century left, but really over the, it looms large over 20th century American history in and of itself.
[00:18:36]  So brought you on to shed a little light on this.
[00:18:39]  Yeah, I mean, COINTELPRO is one of those things that I think a lot of people have heard of.
[00:18:43]  You see a lot of people talk about it online on Twitter, especially, where, you know, it's all feds, this, infiltration, that.
[00:18:49]  But I don't think people have a great idea of what it is.
[00:18:52]  When you get, especially into the media, a lot of journalists will simply call it a surveillance program where it was just we were spying on civil rights leaders.
[00:18:59]  We were spying on activists when that really doesn't get into the nitty-gritty of it, where it encompassed everything from spying all the way, possibly depending on what you believe, up to maybe assassination.
[00:19:11]  And so let's start from the basics, I feel like.
[00:19:13]  What does COINTELPRO stand for?
[00:19:15]  COINTELPRO stands for counterintelligence program.
[00:19:19]  So one of the things that people tend to get wrong is they think it's just COINTELPRO is this thing, this one big operation when it was a lot of different counterintelligence programs against groups on the left.
[00:19:31]  There was one group against one COINTELPRO against white hate groups.
[00:19:36]  It was actually called White Hate, but there was all kinds of stuff, the Puerto Rican National Movement.
[00:19:40]  And I think there was something like between seven to 10 official counterintelligence programs and then a bunch of unofficial ones that sort of came around the same time.
[00:19:49]  Maybe they were a part of it.
[00:19:50]  Maybe they weren't.
[00:19:52]  And what years are we talking about here?
[00:19:54]  Well, so that's the other thing.
[00:19:55]  Officially, it started in 1956.
[00:19:57]  So the first actual counterintelligence program started with CPUSA, the Communist Party.
[00:20:03]  But it technically stretches back all the way to the beginning of the FBI when it first formed.
[00:20:07]  The FBI formed in 1908 as the Bureau of Investigation, mostly to focus on like prostitution, the Man Act, white slavery, things like that.
[00:20:16]  But quickly, it turned into a radical hunting group.
[00:20:21]  It focused on communists and anarchists specifically beginning in 1917 and 1919 with the Palmer Raids.
[00:20:29]  And then from there, it just kept getting worse.
[00:20:31]  So out of the Palmer Raids, J. Edgar Hoover, who was then head of the General Intelligence Division, began making security indexes, these lists for detention.
[00:20:42]  Like you always hear that right-wing meme about FEMA camps.
[00:20:44]  And technically it's true because they were actually going to round people up, but it was communists that they were worried about.
[00:20:50]  There were actually programs like the Emergency Detention Act, I think, where they actually had something listed as ComFab for ComSab, sorry, for communist sabotage.
[00:21:03]  And then there was DETCOM, which is detain as socialists.
[00:21:06]  So in the event of martial law, they could round up the socialists and throw them into concentration camps.
[00:21:11]  Well, we don't love that.
[00:21:13]  Yeah, that was a crazy period in the U.S.
[00:21:15]  I mean, there are a lot of crazy periods in U.S. history.
[00:21:18]  Yeah, that was even before COINTELPRO was official because that stuff was happening in like the 30s, 40s, and 50s before CPUSA really had their first COINTELPRO.
[00:21:27]  And to be clear to listeners, too, those security indexes with names of people to be detained in case of emergency, they did actually.
[00:21:34]  And a lot of, they did not stop being a lot of socialists on this, but those did actually continue for quite a long time.
[00:21:41]  Yeah.
[00:21:41]  So one of the things about that is that technically it would stop, but then Hoover would just rename the list and then it would keep going.
[00:21:48]  Classic move.
[00:21:49]  Yeah.
[00:21:50]  That's actually one of the places where they got the list for internment of Japanese Americans.
[00:21:54]  I believe it was Executive Order 9066, which was what was put down to inter them.
[00:22:01]  Yeah.
[00:22:01]  And it's, you know, it's interesting seeing, especially in light of COINTELPRO, the stuff with the Palmer raids, right?
[00:22:07]  Because Palmer raids were really, I mean, the main thing that like you kind of like, you know, back of the, back of the book reading on that is like the FBI would sort of raid these, I mean, Communist Party, I think, was it 1919 that the Communist Party officially formed, but like beyond that, there was all these, especially ethnic worker associations, right?
[00:22:25]  Because there'd be all these immigrants coming over from Europe and starting like, you know, all of these either like small unions or just like kind of like associations of Russian workers or whatever.
[00:22:35]  And, you know, the Palmer raids would basically have all these policemen and federal officials like coming into their meeting halls or going to their homes and like straight up just deporting them back to Europe.
[00:22:46]  Yeah.
[00:22:46]  And I mean, this was in the period where legitimately there were actual battles between police, the federal government, and radical activists.
[00:22:54]  Yeah.
[00:22:54]  So the Palmer raids kicked off because of bombing attacks on Attorney General Palmer and other people by anarchists.
[00:23:01]  And then later there was the Sacco and Vanzetti bombing.
[00:23:04]  All of that stuff was happening in this period.
[00:23:06]  On top of that, we were getting some of our first like race riots.
[00:23:09]  In 1919, there was something known as the Red Summer, where there were lynchings and there were race riots in Chicago and Washington, D.C.
[00:23:17]  So all of this stuff was kicking off and frequently communists became a good excuse.
[00:23:23]  So like the Red Summer, they said it was Bolshevik infiltration in African-American communities.
[00:23:29]  It was always communists who they were worried about.
[00:23:31]  So quickly, after the formation of the FBI, within like 10 to 12 years, they were already focused almost exclusively on hunting communists.
[00:23:40]  And then that would grow in intensity as the years went on.
[00:23:43]  They built informant programs during World War II using the American Legion.
[00:23:47]  So you see things like Today with the Proud Boys, where they pay members of the Proud Boys to give them information.
[00:23:52]  That's something they've done historically with right-wing groups to surveil and follow left-wing activists, starting with groups like the American Legion.
[00:24:00]  Yeah, I feel like that's something that comes up a lot is they'll like get these guys who are like ideologically right-wing and then pay them essentially to join these left-wing groups or to like basically or even just like American Legion like halls, like a bunch of people to basically work as like physical auxiliaries to either federal or local police.
[00:24:18]  No, absolutely.
[00:24:19]  I mean, this is something I can't prove, but it's something I'm working towards hopefully doing.
[00:24:23]  But with the American Legion program, it first started as the wartime contact program.
[00:24:29]  I believe the guy who found this was Ethan Theo Harris, a great scholar on the FBI's history.
[00:24:36]  But they were using them to just either get information or fee propaganda out publicly.
[00:24:42]  They were also doing it, I think, for young Americans against socialism, where like a lot of those right-wing groups were just getting right-wing propaganda.
[00:24:49]  But eventually it turned into the American Legion Contact Program.
[00:24:52]  And they would protest against professors, left-wing activists, try to get them fired, government employees.
[00:24:59]  And this happened in the same milieu that Hoover was stirring up the lavender scare and the red scare, getting public officials fired from their jobs for being gay, being communist, what have you.
[00:25:09]  So I feel like they were using surrogates in that period.
[00:25:11]  It's something I want to prove.
[00:25:13]  It just haven't gotten there yet.
[00:25:15]  So how do we get from this to then the like quote-unquote official start of COINTELPRO?
[00:25:21]  So around 56, Hoover was very concerned about the Communist Party, which is strange because I think the Communist Party, their peak membership was in like the late 30s and it was only 83,000.
[00:25:31]  So he was on paper very concerned with the Communist Party.
[00:25:35]  No, I mean, he was absolutely obsessed with them.
[00:25:37]  Yeah, I mean, he wrote two books, one, Masters of Deception, I think it was called, and then there was another one.
[00:25:42]  They were ghost-ridden.
[00:25:43]  It wasn't actually him, but he was obsessed with communism.
[00:25:47]  When you think of J. Edgar Hoover, he's just this really insane, cartoonish right-wing.
[00:25:51]  Right, of course.
[00:25:53]  So around 56, he was just concerned about the growing threat of communism.
[00:25:57]  And they kicked off the official COINTELPRO with CPUSA.
[00:26:01]  They followed that shortly after with the SWP, Socialist Workers' Party, in 61.
[00:26:06]  So they were really concerned about fighting communism any way they could.
[00:26:09]  It's funny because 55 to me is always sort of the year that I've like been like, that's basically the year that the Communist Party was toast.
[00:26:17]  I don't know why.
[00:26:18]  Maybe I arbitrarily choose that, but like just in all of like my reading of history and stuff, I've always kind of like put that as a line as like, that was basically it for them.
[00:26:26]  You know what I mean?
[00:26:27]  As like a real big organized force.
[00:26:29]  Like that was really when like the worm fully turned.
[00:26:32]  Yeah.
[00:26:32]  I mean, if you look at it even a little bit earlier during World War II, they had to do the patriotic pivot.
[00:26:36]  Like patriotic socialism as a concept doesn't really work when you think about it.
[00:26:40]  I mean, it's good to explain that really quickly.
[00:26:43]  Patriotic socialism.
[00:26:44]  Yeah, like that, that bizarre turn that they took.
[00:26:47]  Yeah, so during World War II, they were very, so I believe CPUSA initially was against the war, but they quickly realized that it wasn't going to be good for them if they were against something in an era where the country was ginning up war, trying to get into a conflict.
[00:27:07]  So they pivoted.
[00:27:08]  They adopted Abraham Lincoln as a symbol of their organization.
[00:27:13]  And it was William Z. Foster, I think, who was the leader of the group along with Earl Browder.
[00:27:18]  Yeah.
[00:27:19]  And they just tried to be as patriotic as they could be.
[00:27:22]  But even by the end of World War II, the FBI was already looking for ways to undercut them.
[00:27:27]  And they still had links to the Soviet Union who were not on our friends list, even though we were allies.
[00:27:35]  So it was one of those things where they tried to do patriotic displays to recruit and align themselves with the Zeitgeist of the time.
[00:27:42]  Sure.
[00:27:44]  But it wasn't something that was ever going to work because you can't really rely on a nationalist sentiment, at least in America.
[00:27:51]  And it's funny, too, because during that period, I feel like a lot of, especially veterans of the war in Spain, actually ended up joining the OSS, which was, for listeners, the precursor to the CIA.
[00:28:03]  However, almost none of them were actually able to be deployed anywhere because they were seen as unreliable, which was probably, you know, fair enough, you know.
[00:28:13]  But yeah, I mean, that was, it was really like, I feel like by the mid-50s, you know, any semblance, any even memory of the wartime friendship or wartime alliance with the Soviet Union, very much out the window.
[00:28:29]  And the Communist Party was shrinking every year.
[00:28:31]  And it's interesting, like, yeah, they start this program then, and especially with the SWP, which was, I mean, SWP has been very kind to the right wing in America, producing some of its most, you know, celebrated intellectuals.
[00:28:46]  But some of them informants.
[00:28:48]  Yes.
[00:28:48]  And leading, in fact, in some ways to the Iraq war, but indirectly.
[00:28:53]  But yeah, I mean, it's interesting that this starts in 56.
[00:28:58]  And, you know, the left is pretty much fallow until the early 60s in a lot of ways.
[00:29:03]  Right.
[00:29:03]  Well, so one of the things that I think, one of the reasons it kicked off in 56 is from 50 to 54, you were having the McCarthy scare.
[00:29:10]  Right.
[00:29:10]  Hoover was connected to that.
[00:29:12]  He was feeding political intelligence to Joseph McCarthy.
[00:29:15]  So once that ended, he needed something to keep that moving along.
[00:29:18]  So COINTELPRO was a great program for that.
[00:29:20]  Concurrently, you were getting a rising sentiment on the left that was moving towards socialism, if not overtly in the early 60s, certainly by the end as you started getting groups like the Weathermen and other overtly Maoist groups.
[00:29:34]  Yeah.
[00:29:35]  Yeah.
[00:29:35]  And especially groups that would, you know, started blowing stuff up.
[00:29:39]  Right.
[00:29:40]  I mean, so I mean, if you want to get into like that aspect of it, I mean, the FBI did push people to do stuff like that.
[00:29:47]  It's not that that sentiment wasn't there.
[00:29:50]  Yeah.
[00:29:51]  There was the Catholic peace movement led by the Berrigans, who were definitely into burglaries, and that would play ultimately into the downfall of COINTELPRO by the end of the 70s, sorry, early 70s.
[00:30:04]  But with the provocation that was happening, it was something that you were seeing increasingly as the 60s wore on, because one of the things that, at least in my opinion, occurred was COINTELPRO slowly moved out of the hands of Hoover into the hands of field agents and specifically a man named William Sullivan, who was one of, I think, like the third in charge, but definitely one of the higher ups in the chain of command in COINTELPRO.
[00:30:30]  And these were people who were absolutely willing to push people to violence.
[00:30:35]  So by the end of the 60s, you see them using informants to boost violent organizations like the Weathermen, eventually the Weather Underground.
[00:30:43]  You see them using informants to provoke violent acts against activists or in protests.
[00:30:49]  It's something that eventually the FBI did push people towards.
[00:30:53]  Yeah, I mean, we started this off where you were saying that, you know, there's the popular conception in the media or whatever, you know, kind of like liberal mainstream media of, okay, we know there was a surveillance program or whatever.
[00:31:05]  But the activities undertaken by the agents, field agents, and, you know, whoever else is monitoring, you know, people, figures, activists, organizations was like much more than, I think, what you would just call like surveillance, which gives it a kind of like, oh, they're just watching to make sure.

=== FBI And Violent Provocation (15:26) ===

[00:31:23]  I mean, they're creating new groups, they're creating zines, they're publishing things there.
[00:31:27]  Yes.
[00:31:28]  You know, pushing people to do, like you're saying, like violent acts or starting wars between factions.
[00:31:37]  But it continues and continues and goes from there.
[00:31:40]  Right.
[00:31:40]  And I mean, so when we say the left, it wasn't just the left that they were doing it with, specifically informants that would provoke violent acts.
[00:31:48]  It was very common on the right as well.
[00:31:50]  So the FBI historically was a very racist and anti-Semitic institution.
[00:31:55]  Hoover.
[00:31:56]  You don't say.
[00:31:57]  Of America, the FBI?
[00:31:58]  Right.
[00:31:58]  But Hoover specifically would recruit lawyers and accountants.
[00:32:03]  And I don't think they had Jewish agents until like the early 60s.
[00:32:07]  And they definitely didn't have African-American agents until Robert Kennedy started pushing them towards the mid-60s.
[00:32:13]  So it was one of those things where once they started doing COINTELPRO, it wasn't something they were necessarily concerned about on the right until they had to be with the Freedom Riders and the attacks that were happening there.
[00:32:25]  The FBI didn't even have a field office in Mississippi until the famous attacks on the Freedom Riders.
[00:32:32]  They then set up an office, but by the end of the 60s, it became more about using right-wing informants to provoke violent acts.
[00:32:39]  Like the famous attack on the Freedom Riders on the bus, where I believe later an informant, Gary Thomas Rowe, said they are given like 15 minutes to attack the riders on the bus.
[00:32:51]  His famous testimony in a white hood.
[00:32:53]  Yeah, before the church committee, which eventually was brought together because of the abuses under Coen Telpro.
[00:32:58]  Yeah, it's funny.
[00:33:00]  You know, from what I've always understood about Cohen Telborough, I'm certainly no expert on it, but the white hate groups, as they called it, that kind of came later.
[00:33:10]  Like that, that came and they were pushed into basically doing it by the federal government.
[00:33:15]  I was sort of always under the impression that that was the case, like with the Freedom Riders stuff.
[00:33:19]  Absolutely.
[00:33:21]  But that was a sort of different relationship than they had with the other groups that they were not only surveilling, but harassing, attacking, and trying to destroy.
[00:33:32]  In that they had sort of like a love-hate relationship with a lot of those groups.
[00:33:36]  I mean, as exemplified in giving them 15 minutes to beat the shit out of people, the Freedom Riders.
[00:33:41]  Right.
[00:33:41]  One of the things with it that's interesting is when that happened, it happened shortly before an ex-FBI agent was running for mayor in that town.
[00:33:50]  So I don't know if anyone's ever made this argument, but it's possible the FBI may have eventually come to the idea that it would be better for them if he was in office locally.
[00:34:01]  In a weird coincidence, he ended up being a lawyer very briefly for James Earl Ray.
[00:34:05]  You're kidding me.
[00:34:07]  No.
[00:34:08]  Yeah, I forget his name offhand, but he was running for mayor or some local office in that area, and it was happening around that time.
[00:34:15]  And one of the things that was argued roughly in the 60s and 70s is the violence that happened there may have helped swing him in the election.
[00:34:24]  But later, he ended up becoming the attorney briefly for James Earl Ray.
[00:34:28]  I believe his son still claims James Earl Ray wasn't the lone shooter, which is a weird thing to think when your dad's a Fed.
[00:34:35]  Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, speaking of Martin Luther King, really, you know, the FBI's campaign of harassment against him is very well known at this point.
[00:34:44]  I mean, especially the letters that were sent, you know, trying to get him to kill himself, but really much more of a campaign of like surveillance and harassment.
[00:34:53]  And, you know, there was all those, a lot of the talk of him being like a philanderer and like a whoremonger or whatever they called him.
[00:35:02]  I mean, a lot of that really seems to stem from this same campaign.
[00:35:07]  Right.
[00:35:07]  So because Hoover was a virulent racist and he recruited virulent racists, like it trickled down into how they interacted with people in this program.
[00:35:16]  With King specifically, they were looking for ways to discredit him.
[00:35:20]  And King was someone who loved people.
[00:35:24]  Like he loved people, but he also loved people.
[00:35:27]  So he did have affairs.
[00:35:29]  There were orgies.
[00:35:30]  were things like that that they had audio of that they recorded.
[00:35:33]  It's not something that's anybody's business, though, because what people do in private is their own.
[00:35:39]  The problem becomes then Hoover and other agents kept escalating it.
[00:35:44]  So there's this famous suicide letter, which was likely written by William Sullivan, or at least he oversaw that.
[00:35:51]  In it, it was basically provoking King to kill himself because they were essentially saying, we will go public and let people know you're a philanderer.
[00:35:59]  We will destroy you.
[00:36:00]  And it wasn't phrased literally, you must kill yourself, but I think the way it was phrased was, you know what you must do.
[00:36:07]  Even after King was assassinated by James Earl Ray or by someone else, depending on who you believe, and I probably fall into that latter camp, the FBI was still manipulating how the investigation was going.
[00:36:20]  There's the famous Washington journalist, Jack Anderson, who did the Washington merry-go-round.
[00:36:25]  Allegedly, in a memoir that he was going to publish, I don't think it was ever released, but he stated that Hoover sent Kartha DeLoach, who was a high-ranking FBI agent, to him to state that King was assassinated by one of the husbands of the women he was sleeping with.
[00:36:42]  Now, Anderson never went public with this because he sort of, you know, divined that this was bullshit.
[00:36:47]  But Hoover was even trying to, you know, ruin King after his death.
[00:36:52]  So if you fall into that latter camp and you're, you have questions about James Earl Ray, it's weird that Hoover would do something like that, try and push somebody in a direction where they would name someone else publicly.
[00:37:04]  Yeah, I mean, you know, something that that brings to mind is also sort of another famous casualty of COINTELPRO, which would be Gene Seaberg, the actress.
[00:37:15]  Yeah, and that's another famous one where it's literally they did drive someone to suicide.
[00:37:19]  Yeah, and like that's been like, I mean, I believe they even admitted that they engaged in the campaign against it.
[00:37:24]  Yeah, can we tell that story to our listeners who don't know it?
[00:37:26]  Yeah, so allegedly, or possibly true, I'm not totally sure if Seaberg was having an affair with a member of the Black Panther Party in Los Angeles.
[00:37:36]  The Bureau got wind of this because she definitely was promoting the Black Panther Party publicly and providing funding to them.
[00:37:42]  It was in that era of, I believe Tom Wolf wrote about radical chic and things like that.
[00:37:47]  So she was providing material support and public support to the Panthers.
[00:37:50]  So they decided to put it out there that she was having an affair and that her child, who she was recently pregnant with, was black, which in that period would have been a problem for her because of how racist people were publicly.
[00:38:06]  Not that they aren't now, but it would have caused problems for her.
[00:38:09]  It was culturally still.
[00:38:11]  It's actually pretty.
[00:38:13]  Yeah.
[00:38:14]  So the stress of this eventually drove her to suicide.
[00:38:18]  And I believe it was a decade before it publicly came out.
[00:38:21]  I don't know if the FBI has admitted it because they still haven't admitted a lot with COINTELPRO.
[00:38:26]  more they release the documents people find things and then it's like well they can't say no but they generally just don't answer the questions understandable yeah wait let's talk about that for a second because i think that that's also something that um is maybe lost in the i'm gonna say it and it's brace's favorite thing that i say the popular imaginary which is imaginary yeah um No,
[00:38:52]  just that, you know, that there is a kind of, you know, record of like public record of all of the kind of activities that the FBI was involved and probably other agencies involved, you know, involved with under this umbrella, right?
[00:39:08]  Or even like tangentially related.
[00:39:12]  Or that so much came out with the church committee and, you know, there's this kind of, you know, great awakening.
[00:39:17]  We understood everything.
[00:39:18]  And then it kind of, yeah, you like that?
[00:39:20]  What?
[00:39:20]  And then it would not be like that anymore.
[00:39:23]  No, but I, you know, we were talking about this before we started recording, but, you know, we've had Aaron Leonard on the podcast and he and, you know, and others have done and yourself, you know, so much research into just what the FBI has released and are continually like continuing to find new stuff and put stuff, you know, more and more together to kind of understand the scope and detail of this program, which is basically still just like a sketch.
[00:39:52]  Like we really don't have a proper architecture for how this all operated.
[00:39:56]  No, absolutely.
[00:39:57]  Aaron Leonard's a great person to reference to because of the work that he's done and he is doing.
[00:40:02]  His books, Heavy Radicals, which I think there's a new version of.
[00:40:05]  Revised edition.
[00:40:06]  Got the email today for some sort of Zoom thing about it.
[00:40:09]  A revised edition is coming out.
[00:40:11]  There's that out.
[00:40:11]  And a threat of the first magnitude are both great because specifically a threat of the first magnitude, he goes into like a fake Maoist work that was created by the FBI, among other things.
[00:40:21]  And apparently there's like 20,000 documents and he's still trying to get more.
[00:40:25]  He, I believe, was involved in the foying of the Fred Hampton assassination.
[00:40:29]  Yes, he was.
[00:40:29]  And got more documents last year, the year before.
[00:40:32]  So there's all this stuff that we know that happened.
[00:40:34]  Like there isn't a question of if the FBI was involved in the Fred Hampton assassination.
[00:40:38]  We know it.
[00:40:39]  100%.
[00:40:40]  Yeah, it's just they won't admit it.
[00:40:41]  And we only know a portion of the extent to which they did.
[00:40:44]  We know an FBI informant, William O'Neill, gave a map to the FBI, which passed on to the Chicago police.
[00:40:51]  And he very likely drugged Fred Hampton that night with fentanyl.
[00:40:55]  But that's kind of the extent to what we know.
[00:40:57]  And there's so much out there that we don't know, specifically because the FBI stops it.
[00:41:02]  One of the things that happened in the late 70s and early 80s is families of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, the other man killed that night in the assassination, their families and the Black Panther Party sued the FBI and they actually won a conspiracy trial.
[00:41:18]  But the FBI decided not to pursue it any further up.
[00:41:21]  They didn't appeal it because they didn't want more information coming out.
[00:41:25]  Because in discovery, that probably would have happened.
[00:41:28]  So it's something that it continues to linger on and on.
[00:41:32]  Black Panther Party members are still in prison for wrongful convictions.
[00:41:37]  There was a member of the LA branch of the Black Panther Party, Geronimo Pratt, I believe was the name.
[00:41:42]  He was framed for murder in the early 70s, and he only got out in 98 because an FBI agent Wesley Swearingen admitted the FBI framed him.
[00:41:53]  There are still people in prison because of the campaign against the Black Panther Party.
[00:41:58]  There were assassinations of members of the Black Panther Party in San Diego, Alprentice Carter and John Huggins.
[00:42:04]  The way it's phrased in the Church Committee's documents is that the FBI escalated a gang war.
[00:42:11]  They called it a gang war between the Black Panther Party and a rival group, the United Slaves.
[00:42:15]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:42:16]  But there's questions about if the United Slaves members who killed the BPP members were informants.
[00:42:22]  And it looks like it's possible.
[00:42:23]  The leader of the group, Ron Karenga, was possibly working with the California Bureau of Investigation and their criminal conspiracy unit.
[00:42:32]  There's a huge, there's still a pretty big controversy around that today.
[00:42:36]  Right.
[00:42:36]  And he created Kwanzo, which is the funniest part.
[00:42:39]  I know.
[00:42:41]  So it's this thing that just continues on and on.
[00:42:44]  There's things we know, and then there's things we know we know, but we can't prove.
[00:42:49]  Like earlier when I was saying, I have this idea of something, I just can't prove it.
[00:42:53]  There's so much I have ideas with this that I'm just trying to find a way through the darkness into light.
[00:42:59]  I mean, what would you say, like, like, you know, speaking in sort of broad strokes here, like the main tactics used in this campaign, because, you know, we said it's not, it was not just the FBI surveilling radical groups.
[00:43:11]  It was, like we were talking about before we started recording, it was a war.
[00:43:14]  And it was a war that was a war that the FBI, I think it is uncontroversial to say absolutely won.
[00:43:22]  So I think they won it in places, in other spots, you know, like a Fannie Shakur, where she was able to beat a conviction.
[00:43:31]  There were people who in like limited instances in specific places were able to overcome the struggle that they were faced with.
[00:43:38]  But broadly speaking, yeah, I think it's true that the FBI generally won.
[00:43:42]  I mean, the church committee was shut down at a certain point because you can only go so far with reform.
[00:43:49]  You know, you're not going to be able to change the system because the system will not allow it.
[00:43:53]  But like, what would you say?
[00:43:54]  Like, so we're talking about like poison pen letters.
[00:43:56]  We're talking about trying to like get between these groups, these assassinations.
[00:43:59]  Right.
[00:44:00]  These tactics, I mean, they, they obviously existed before Cohen Telpro and they existed after Cohen Telpro because Coin Telpro was officially shut down or it was discovered in what, 1971, here in Pennsylvania.
[00:44:13]  Correct.
[00:44:14]  So with that, what happened was, you know, the way people talk about feds today, you know, everyone thinks everyone else is a fed.
[00:44:20]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:44:21]  That idea was prevalent at that time too, but there were people who they knew they were being watched and they knew things were happening and they just couldn't prove it.
[00:44:29]  So when you talk about conspiracy, it's this idea where you frequently seem crazy because you're paranoid.
[00:44:35]  You know, that old Manson quote, total paranoia, total, yeah, total paranoia is total awareness.
[00:44:40]  But that's not healthy in a way.
[00:44:41]  So they had to find ways to work through that to accomplish things.
[00:44:45]  So there was a professor at Haverford College, William Davidon, and he was connecting with the Catholic peace movement, the Berrigans specifically.
[00:44:54]  He was seeing what they were doing with burglaries of draft boards in places like Cadensville.
[00:44:59]  And he saw this was successful.
[00:45:00]  And eventually he decided recruiting a number of people in Philadelphia.
[00:45:05]  I believe one was a temple professor and his wife.
[00:45:08]  They decided they were going to break into an office in Media, Pennsylvania, a field office.
[00:45:12]  And they did it in March of 1971.
[00:45:14]  Didn't they do it the night of the Fraser fight?
[00:45:19]  Yeah.
[00:45:19]  So that was the one night that they knew no one would be around so they could break in.
[00:45:24]  They stole files, but it wasn't just that they stole files.
[00:45:27]  They stole every file they could because they didn't know what they were looking for.
[00:45:31]  Shortly after they started releasing information, I believe only the Washington Post published a small story.
[00:45:37]  It was a full year before Wynn Magazine published the first really big expose.
[00:45:41]  The New York Times actually sent the documents that they were given back to the FBI instead of publishing them.
[00:45:49]  Yeah.
[00:45:49]  So this was like when you talk about the media aspect of COINTELPRO, the FBI had plants in all kinds of media institutions, just like the CIA.
[00:45:59]  So it wasn't unusual for Hoover to send, I don't want to say a command, but some kind of directive suggestion to a local journalist, and he would write a story, usually attacking Martin Luther King or something like that.
[00:46:12]  Many of the largest newspapers had relationships with the FBI, so they didn't write about it.
[00:46:18]  But after it came out, because of that Washington Post story, Hoover officially shut it down in April of 71.
[00:46:24]  So when we say officially shut it down, what do we really mean?
[00:46:27]  Like, I mean, that's a really open question, right?
[00:46:30]  So when you say shut down, it's like when Hoover was told to stop doing a security index.
[00:46:35]  He just changed the name.
[00:46:36]  So initially, that security index, I think, was like the custodial security index.
[00:46:39]  And then Francis Biddle, who was attorney general in that period, was like, you can't do this.
[00:46:44]  So Hoover's like, okay, this is the security index now.
[00:46:46]  So COINTELPRO ended in 71, but they kept doing shit.

=== Republican National Convention Controversy (07:05) ===

[00:46:50]  You know, they kept pushing people, provoking people, the SWP, definitely, because they were one of the groups that caught them doing it.
[00:46:57]  They were provoking groups in San Diego around the Republican National Convention.
[00:47:01]  There was all kinds of stuff that was happening, at least through the mid-70s.
[00:47:04]  The LaRoucheites?
[00:47:05]  The LaRoucheites.
[00:47:06]  Operation mop-up.
[00:47:07]  Yeah.
[00:47:07]  Are you saying the LaRoucheites are FBI agents?
[00:47:10]  There are documents from the FBI talking about exploiting the LaRoucheites' attacks on CPSC, CPUSA members.
[00:47:19]  Yep.
[00:47:19]  The Larishites have many intelligence connections.
[00:47:22]  It's very strange.
[00:47:23]  Yes, yes, yes, yes.
[00:47:24]  But that's one of the earliest ones we know about.
[00:47:26]  Yeah.
[00:47:27]  But the FBI kept doing this.
[00:47:29]  Absolutely.
[00:47:29]  Yeah.
[00:47:30]  Yeah.
[00:47:30]  And it's, it's, it's, it's, um, you know, it's interesting because, like, okay, 71, like we, you know, most, I think sort of in the, in the, in the, I don't know why I keep saying broad, but in the broad history of this, right?
[00:47:43]  Like 72 is really where like a lot of the new left stuff really starts to fizzle out.
[00:47:48]  And like that whole like radical energy of the 60s is like transforming into, um, I mean, we're going Esalen or whatever, or just like, we're getting, you're either if you're in California, you're going Esalen.
[00:47:59]  Or into porn.
[00:48:01]  Or and you're doing porn or you're making James Taylor records.
[00:48:05]  Exactly.
[00:48:05]  Sweet baby James.
[00:48:07]  You know, you're, but you're, you're going straight in most of these guys, a lot of these people.
[00:48:12]  Or Reagan Revolution was about to start, you know.
[00:48:15]  Yeah.
[00:48:16]  I mean, I think some of that, wasn't that around the time they announced they were stopping the draft?
[00:48:21]  Yeah.
[00:48:22]  Yeah.
[00:48:22]  So one of the problems with the 60s, the revolutionary movements that were happening there is they were very focused on like two really big issues, yeah race, civil rights and anti-war.
[00:48:36]  And once they started assassinating the civil rights leaders and once they finally decided well, we're not going to do the draft anymore, they took the wind out of the sails absolutely of both of those movements.
[00:48:46]  And then obviously there were other issues starting to take off, drugs was, drug scene was taking off, both in the new left and in cities, so that was really peaking.
[00:48:54]  So there were a lot of things happening in that period which really killed that movement.
[00:48:58]  I know I just noticed Liz looked over me when you said draft and you know what.
[00:49:02]  That brings me to one of my pet issues, which I get to mention two episodes in a row.
[00:49:06]  I was gonna say we just talked about this.
[00:49:07]  Bring back that motherfucker right, the draft.
[00:49:10]  No, we need a new draft because that creates a base of people in the army that didn't want to join the army and that makes people actually think about war instead of being like, well, that's kind of for something for guys who didn't do good in high school.
[00:49:26]  I mean that that sentiment isn't wrong sure I mean, like the reason there were so many people who were opposed to what was happening at that time and protesting was because the Vietnam War um.
[00:49:37]  One of the um Citizens, Commission members who eventually stole the files uh, William Davidon.
[00:49:43]  He started off as an anti-war activist.
[00:49:46]  That's what drew him to the Catholic peace movement and the Berrigans, who were also, you know, they came from Catholicism, a notoriously right-wing, crazy movement where like they helped killers escape through the rat lines in the 40s.
[00:49:58]  And then 20 years later, you have these priests who are actively burning draft cards to prevent kids from becoming killers.
[00:50:04]  Yeah.
[00:50:05]  So it was this weird energy that was happening at that time where like everything got flipped.
[00:50:09]  And it was because you had this like urging, pressing need, the Vietnam War.
[00:50:14]  Yeah.
[00:50:14]  And it wasn't even that.
[00:50:15]  I mean, we had Cambodia.
[00:50:17]  We had all of this escalation happening too.
[00:50:19]  So it wasn't just like Vietnam alone.
[00:50:21]  But, you know, we say, so 72 is like kind of where like a lot of that stuff ends.
[00:50:26]  Like a lot of that sort of radical energy disappears.
[00:50:31]  And, you know, the FBI obviously does not stop these programs, but these groups sort of splinter more and more and more and more.
[00:50:39]  And like, you know, there's a lot of people who at this point are basically forced to live on the lamb.
[00:50:44]  I mean, you know, you have like, and then you have basically like old weathermen linking up with like, you know, black guerrilla army people and stuff like that, because basically they have to live outside the law and like, you know, are essentially bandits at this point or engage in banditry.
[00:51:02]  And so the FBI, though, has this like, these techniques that they've really honed throughout the past decades, like this technology.
[00:51:09]  And they kind of continue to hone it.
[00:51:11]  And I think really the thing that a lot of people are that really kind of comes to the fore when I think of COINTELPRO post-70s at least is the environmental movement.
[00:51:21]  Yeah.
[00:51:22]  Well, so I mean, touching on that for a moment, in that period, like that decade that they've been building this in 72 specifically, you had the Republican National Convention where you had the Red Star Cadre, which was a fake Maoist group that it wasn't that the FBI created it, but they paid a guy, Joseph Burden, to create this group so that he could monitor communists.
[00:51:42]  And he infiltrated another group in Florida, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
[00:51:46]  This was part of a broader effort by the FBI to provoke the Vietnam Veterans Against the War into committing a terrorist attack.
[00:51:53]  Because ultimately what happened is between 1967 and 72, the FBI was very intensely monitoring this group.
[00:52:00]  It's not something I think is ever really discussed in the context of COINTELPRO, but it happened adjacent to it.
[00:52:05]  And ultimately, it led to this group of veterans who are on the left.
[00:52:10]  Essentially, they were planning to go to the Republican National Convention initially scheduled in San Diego, then moved to Miami.
[00:52:17]  And they were going to defend against right-wing terrorist acts, which there's some evidence to suggest the FBI was provoking right-wing groups to do the same.
[00:52:25]  But this resulted in the FBI doing a conspiracy charge against a group of veterans who became known as the Gainesville Eight, where they essentially charged that they were going to shoot up the convention.
[00:52:37]  So the FBI was actively using this to provoke people.
[00:52:40]  And then you get into the 80s, you get into Latin American activists like Sispas and El Salvador and those countries.
[00:52:46]  You get into Judy, is it Judy Berry in 1990?
[00:52:51]  Yeah, the car.
[00:52:52]  Yeah, the activist who was bombed, where it's likely that it was the FBI involved or at least an FBI informant.
[00:52:59]  Because one of the things we find with COINTELPRO is that the FBI never really did this stuff directly.
[00:53:03]  They worked with outside agencies or outside groups.
[00:53:07]  There was a right-wing terrorist group in San Diego, the secret army organization.
[00:53:10]  It was run by an FBI informant.
[00:53:12]  He wasn't a Fed, but he was an informant.
[00:53:15]  The American Legion Contact Program.
[00:53:17]  They used the American Legion indirectly.
[00:53:20]  So they had this habit of using surrogates.
[00:53:23]  And that allowed them to get around actually ever getting caught directly.
[00:53:27]  So something like the Judy Berry case, it's likely that it was probably an informant who planted the bomb in her car.
[00:53:34]  I used to volunteer at the Tenants Union SF and they had a big Judy Berry.
[00:53:37]  It was crazy because it's just like it's the tenants' union.
[00:53:39]  So it's a lot of like you're meeting to like talk with a lawyer they have about your lease or whatever.
[00:53:44]  But if you go in the back and like you, you know, do like volunteer on the computers, there's just a giant COINTELPRO mural with Judy Berry on it.
[00:53:51]  But it's a mural that says COINTELPRO and has like victims of it on it.

=== DHS and 2020 Protests (15:27) ===

[00:53:55]  I mean, that brings us, I mean, it doesn't bring us up because now we're in the 90s, but I do want to kind of like touch on something you mentioned just a little bit ago, which is you were saying that, you know, there's this kind of sentiment.
[00:54:08]  You see it a lot online.
[00:54:09]  You see it just kind of in like left-wing circles or whatever about this kind of paranoia of everyone being a Fed.
[00:54:17]  And we've, you know, Brace and I, we've talked about this in the podcast.
[00:54:21]  And you guys aren't feds?
[00:54:23]  Well, look, we're trying out.
[00:54:24]  What do you think we're doing here?
[00:54:26]  Yeah.
[00:54:26]  This is part of our portfolio work.
[00:54:28]  Yeah.
[00:54:28]  I mean, listen, my PayPal is in the bio, right?
[00:54:33]  You give me $50 no matter what government you're in, I'll say it.
[00:54:38]  No, but I mean, we talk, I mean, we talk and I don't know, I think about this a lot, right?
[00:54:42]  This kind of like sentient you see.
[00:54:44]  It's like, you know, everything is an op or I'm an op, you're an op, they're an op, this is an op or whatever.
[00:54:50]  This kind of, you know, some of it's like jokes and it kind of memes itself into being real in some way.
[00:54:56]  And then some of it is, you know, I think some real like schizoparano kind of feeling, especially online, right?
[00:55:03]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:55:05]  And, you know, we've talked about how that is, you know, and you said it, like not really a healthy way, or maybe it's like a productive way of kind of understanding things.
[00:55:14]  And yet at the same time, like there's this kind of funny tension that I have at least, right?
[00:55:19]  Which is like, yeah, okay, that's not really right, except, well, some of it is, you know what I'm saying?
[00:55:27]  And so it's like, how do you find that?
[00:55:30]  Like, what's the balance there, right?
[00:55:31]  Because we were talking before we kind of started recording.
[00:55:34]  were saying like, you know, one of the things with trying to understand the scope and detail of these kinds of operations in the past is obviously the like the first question is, well, is it still going on?
[00:55:48]  Right.
[00:55:48]  And because that's really where your brain is always going.
[00:55:51]  You're not just looking at stuff that happened in, you know, the 50s or the 60s or whatever.
[00:55:57]  It's always, well, what can that tell us about what's happening today, you know?
[00:56:01]  And so it's difficult basically to like what to, you know, walk the tightrope of not becoming a super crazy, like schizo paranoid person while still being able to look at, like we were saying,
[00:56:16]  what the fuck was going on in Portland for the past five, six years and understanding like and trying to kind of dissect what the fuck was going on there with, you know, right-wing groups, with anarchist groups, black bloc, whatever, with whatever the fucking cops were rolling out there as like a testing ground or something while not going totally schizo crazy.
[00:56:41]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:56:42]  Yeah, I mean, so the reason I started getting into this stuff, I always knew what it was.
[00:56:45]  Like you were saying, you knew growing up.
[00:56:46]  I always heard it.
[00:56:47]  You know, I watched documentaries on TV, but in 2020, there were the George Floyd protests.
[00:56:52]  I was here at Philly, here in Philly for like the first two weeks of protests.
[00:56:56]  So I was at the first protest when things started going up in flames.
[00:57:00]  And as I was watching it unfold, I was like, well, the way this was set up, it was intended to become violent.
[00:57:06]  I was there when the cops, you know, were trapping people on the embankment and pelting them with canisters of tear gas.
[00:57:12]  I've ever seen videos of that.
[00:57:13]  Yeah.
[00:57:13]  And like the entire time I'm watching this, the city denied it happened.
[00:57:17]  The cops denied it happened.
[00:57:18]  And I was like, bullshit, you know, like I saw with my eyes what happened.
[00:57:22]  You can't tell me reality doesn't exist.
[00:57:24]  So they'll do that, though.
[00:57:26]  They will.
[00:57:26]  And I began thinking, I was like, well, I can't necessarily prove what's happening now.
[00:57:30]  I can't, you know, confirm my most paranoid delusions, but I know this stuff happened in the past.
[00:57:36]  And, you know, we look to the past so we understand what's happening now.
[00:57:39]  Absolutely.
[00:57:40]  So I began looking through old FBI case files for the new left, began expanding into other stuff.
[00:57:47]  The Weisberg archives, which is connected to the JFK assassination archives.
[00:57:51]  All of this information is out there that you can learn from.
[00:57:54]  And it's stuff that you can use.
[00:57:56]  Eventually, we did learn that at least a couple of government agencies were monitoring the Philly protests, the Portland protest here in Philly.
[00:58:04]  The DEA had infiltrated the protest with officers in Portland.
[00:58:08]  They had DHS just literally kidnapping people in unmarked vans.
[00:58:11]  Yeah, I mean, that was one of the craziest and sort of like should be looked back upon moments.
[00:58:17]  Like, yeah, they were like going around and snatching people.
[00:58:20]  But like, if you want to talk about like where it's happening now, it's DHS.
[00:58:23]  It's agencies like that, specifically where a lot of that stuff is coordinated through fusion centers.
[00:58:28]  Like I was saying before, the FBI worked through intermediaries.
[00:58:31]  So like the Fred Hampton assassination, they passed information along and had an informant set it up, but it was the Chicago police who carried out the hit.
[00:58:39]  Today, you look at things like the protests and fusion centers are sending all kinds of information out there.
[00:58:46]  There was recently something you mentioned before we started in the intercept about DHS, an undersecretary, Brian Murphy, who was there briefly, ex-FBI guy, who was actively spreading Antifa disinformation, sending it to cities, either because the local police departments needed some excuse to kick heads in or because they wanted to, you know, provoke the police into committing violent acts, which admittedly isn't hard, but it's still something that maybe they needed a little push to do.
[00:59:13]  Yeah, I mean, God, I remember also the Antifa Caravan sort of like Facebook stories going around.
[00:59:20]  But I mean, 2020, I think really, really stands out to me in the context of this stuff, right?
[00:59:26]  Because of the extreme, extreme paranoia that a lot of people were feeling for a lot of reasons, right?
[00:59:32]  I mean, obviously you had, you had these sort of like things that happened in quick succession.
[00:59:36]  You had like Bernie Sanders and then sort of the funky stuff that went on with that.
[00:59:40]  Him getting rat fucked.
[00:59:41]  Him getting rat fucked in a lot of different ways.
[00:59:44]  But then like you also had immediately after that, COVID, right?
[00:59:48]  And then sort of the first time that people like really kind of started coming back out and coming together again was during these protests.
[00:59:55]  And then all this pent up energy happened.
[00:59:58]  And it wasn't, it almost felt like it wasn't just pent up energy from people.
[01:00:01]  It was like pent up energy from the government too, to like come down on people.
[01:00:05]  And so it was this, like, it created this like heightened state.
[01:00:08]  And like, I feel, I mean, memory, maybe my memory is bad on this, but I feel like the majority of the protests were from basically the beginning to the end of June.
[01:00:16]  Like, yeah.
[01:00:17]  By July, they had sort of like, except for in Portland and of course, in my former home, Chaz, really had fizzled out.
[01:00:28]  But the fireworks thing we were talking about earlier is such a good example of this thing that's like, you know, I don't think that the FBI was, obviously, I do not think that the police and FBI were shooting up fireworks in the sky because I feel like they have a more.
[01:00:44]  Which is what people, can you explain to us?
[01:00:46]  Yeah.
[01:00:46]  So for those of you who don't remember, there was a lot of talk in chatter in around 4th of July.
[01:00:55]  A lot of tweeting, yes, around 4th of July, but really all social media was everywhere about how like, don't you notice that there's like way more fireworks this year and like, you know, people are setting them off like late at night.
[01:01:07]  And it's like they're doing these in low income and black neighborhoods in order to like harass people.
[01:01:12]  And it was sort of like the thing, it was like, it was the police doing this.
[01:01:15]  And it mirrored in a lot of ways the fact that there was like all these people would take pictures of pallets of bricks, which is a pretty normal thing for a brick to be in near a construction site.
[01:01:24]  Like if you're ever paving like a, you know, like a cobblestone thing, like you'll definitely see pallets of bricks near there.
[01:01:29]  But it mirrored in a lot of ways people being like, the police are leaving these pallets of bricks, which could be true.
[01:01:33]  I don't know.
[01:01:34]  The fireworks thing does not seem true to me.
[01:01:36]  But it was like all of this ramp up during that June, a lot of that ramp up coming from the government and, you know, federal, but also police departments leading into this general sense of paranoia.
[01:01:49]  And like, you know, now that I think about it, when was the Wayfair thing?
[01:01:54]  I think that was later that year too.
[01:01:56]  And so it was like 2020.
[01:01:57]  I mean, a lot of people just like got sucked into this like loop of paranoia, especially by the end of the summer.
[01:02:03]  And it's this sort of perfect thing because it's almost like this new technology has been made available, right?
[01:02:13]  To where like a lot of the COINTELPRO stuff, and we talked about this on episode about Crimo, the scene in court.
[01:02:21]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:02:22]  Yeah, yeah, but this sort of like, just like general sense of paranoia that would be like, would make the FBI of the 60s blush to, or not blush, I don't know why I chose that word, but would make them salivate to be able to get their hands on, where all these people are sort of just like, you have this like sense of impending doom and like someone's sort of watching the back of your neck, even if you're just like some guy who hangs out in his apartment all day.
[01:02:48]  Right.
[01:02:49]  And so that has like really shown us like what, I mean, obviously some of those things like coronavirus, you know, not exactly easily replicable.
[01:03:00]  Well, that's who knows, you know?
[01:03:02]  I think actually that's actually the opposite.
[01:03:04]  I could easily make a new coronavirus myself.
[01:03:06]  Yeah, I mean.
[01:03:08]  But no, but like, you know what I mean?
[01:03:09]  Like that, that's especially that phenomenon, the way that went down, in conjunction with all this other stuff, really breeds this like paranoia that leads a lot of people to paralysis.
[01:03:19]  And I think that's perfectly in line with like what I would see as like DHS, FBI, all these fusion centers goal, especially for like radical activists.
[01:03:29]  Yeah, I mean, in that period, specifically in Philly, we had preceding the fireworks, we had the Philly booms, which people were saying that there were police using LRADs and long-range acoustic devices for anyone who doesn't know what that means.
[01:03:43]  It's a kind of sonic weapon.
[01:03:45]  And they had been deployed in places like Seattle and some other states.
[01:03:48]  But to my knowledge, they were never used in Philly.
[01:03:50]  But there was this belief that over the night, you know, people couldn't sleep.
[01:03:53]  And it was probably because of stress from being at these protests every day and getting your head kicked in, watching people you care about getting their head kicked in.
[01:04:01]  They just became intensely paranoid around this.
[01:04:04]  And then it turned into like the booms and stuff like that.
[01:04:06]  So it's like it was this crippling sense of paranoia where by July, August, protests were no longer happening here in Philly.
[01:04:13]  A lot of the protests weren't happening elsewhere.
[01:04:16]  There were gains that were made.
[01:04:17]  It's just that by and large, like Philly didn't defund the police.
[01:04:21]  They just moved money around.
[01:04:22]  No one did.
[01:04:23]  No one did.
[01:04:24]  It was literally something that, you know, it was this brief moment where it seemed like there was this intense chance for possibility.
[01:04:32]  Like there was this energy that was surging up and we might get something beautiful to come out of it.
[01:04:37]  But it, you know, got stomped down because of the police, the paranoia, the schisming of all of these groups that were working towards something, but couldn't find a central organization to work through because the Democratic Party didn't give a shit.
[01:04:52]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:04:53]  They, you know, they, they, what did they do when they, um, it was that picture where they're dressed in so good.
[01:04:59]  I know exactly.
[01:05:00]  You just have to say picture.
[01:05:01]  I know exactly.
[01:05:02]  Yeah, they were wearing, I forget what it was.
[01:05:04]  It was like a Kente Kloss.
[01:05:06]  Kente Kloss and taking knees.
[01:05:07]  Damchomski's wearing one right now.
[01:05:10]  And that was the extent of like their support for Black Lives Matter in that period.
[01:05:14]  Like literally that movement that had been building for six or seven years from the Ferguson protests to this, you know, these, I don't know if you want to call them protests because they became more violent.
[01:05:26]  But, you know, this was the extent of what the Democratic Party was going to do with it.
[01:05:30]  So where else do you go?
[01:05:32]  You know, that does, I feel like we would be remiss not to mention because this is something that is actually often gets brought up in the context of like COINTELPRO in the modern day is Ferguson.
[01:05:43]  Yeah.
[01:05:43]  Right.
[01:05:43]  Absolutely.
[01:05:44]  Because that became the scene of a lot of federal agencies that had a very active and violent police department.
[01:05:51]  And then almost every single one of these sort of central protest leaders, most notably Darren Seals, was killed.
[01:05:59]  Several of them killed in ways that would be, I think, safely termed unorthodox.
[01:06:04]  I believe he was shot and then his car set on fire.
[01:06:06]  I mean, being shot isn't exactly unorthodox, but like, you know, the timing that it was done in, you know, it was just several committed suicide.
[01:06:15]  You know, it, that's something that gets brought up quite often.
[01:06:19]  Well, so it's great you bring up the suicide aspect.
[01:06:22]  I don't know how it happened.
[01:06:23]  A local reporter, I replied to her one day about, she's like, who should I write a story about here in Philly?
[01:06:30]  And jokingly, I retweeted it or like quote tweeted it and said, you should write about the Black Panther Party here in Philly in 1970 when Frank Rizzo stripped them out, stripped them in the streets.
[01:06:40]  She actually went out and found one of these guys and interviewed him in 2020 or 2021.
[01:06:46]  I forget the exact date.
[01:06:47]  She took you seriously in this.
[01:06:48]  She took me seriously in that.
[01:06:49]  She was so earnest and gentle.
[01:06:51]  I was surprised.
[01:06:52]  Like she's a fantastic human being for doing it.
[01:06:54]  But one of the things he talked about, it didn't make it into the full article, but she did a wonderful Twitter thread where he mentioned in that period, there was a rash of black activists who, when they were arrested, somehow ended up with broken necks.
[01:07:06]  You know, they killed themselves.
[01:07:08]  They hung themselves.
[01:07:09]  Yeah.
[01:07:09]  Which very unlikely.
[01:07:11]  So with stuff like the Ferguson protests, where I firmly believe they were assassinations.
[01:07:17]  100%.
[01:07:17]  Yeah.
[01:07:17]  It's one of those things where I don't think the FBI did it directly because I don't think they directly assassinated Malcolm X.
[01:07:23]  I don't think they directly assassinated Martin Luther King.
[01:07:25]  I think they used other agencies like the CIA or other parties.
[01:07:29]  No, yeah, the case.
[01:07:32]  I mean, especially in St. Louis, like Ferguson specifically.
[01:07:36]  Yeah, if you know the local cops there or, yeah, the state agencies were working with, I mean, a lot from people I've talked to, whatever.
[01:07:45]  I mean, there's a lot of, you know, like white nationalist groups affiliated with a lot of local cops in those cities, in those towns.
[01:07:52]  I mean, all you need to get to is like to get a CI, like a confidential informant who's willing to like, you know, do something to either get their charges dropped or for some money or for some drugs or something.
[01:08:03]  And you can fucking get somebody shot in a poor neighborhood.
[01:08:05]  Yeah, I forget the name of one of the activists who unfortunately died recently.
[01:08:09]  One of the local papers was able to get his FBI file and it was like 900 pages long.
[01:08:14]  So it's likely that there was something more going on there because even if it wasn't informants, this is again something I believe Theo Harris mentioned is the FBI would have informants and then they would have sources of information.
[01:08:28]  There were people who at least initially weren't eligible for the informant program.
[01:08:33]  They were unstable mentally or they had affiliations that were a little uncouth.
[01:08:38]  Guy here in Pennsylvania, Roy Frankhauser, who was grandmaster of the KKK, Grand Dragon, whatever you phrase that, he initially would proffer information to the FBI.
[01:08:48]  You can see it in his FBI files.
[01:08:50]  But they would have people that they would use as sources of information who they were still functionally doing the work of an informant, but they weren't on the books.
[01:08:58]  So it's entirely possible there's someone there who may have gone above and beyond because there were lots of them that did it.
[01:09:04]  Roy Frankhauser, of course, later a close ally of the LaRouche organization.
[01:09:08]  Yes, after admitting he had worked for the FBI to infiltrate the Minutemen.
[01:09:13]  That one hasn't been proven, but he did work for the ATF infiltrating, I think, what was it, Black Sun or one of those groups, something like that, Operation Black Sun.

=== Be Cool Before You Rule (05:15) ===

[01:09:22]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:09:23]  He was in the KKK at one point.
[01:09:25]  I mean, yeah.
[01:09:25]  So he was Minuteman, KKK.
[01:09:27]  He was in all of these different groups, but he eventually did something in Canada with the ATF, infiltrating a Palestinian group.
[01:09:34]  That's the lowest you can go.
[01:09:36]  The ATF, my most hated agency.
[01:09:40]  I thought that was the FDA.
[01:09:42]  Oh, you're right.
[01:09:43]  The FDA, my most hated agency.
[01:09:45]  They need to make lactose illegal.
[01:09:47]  First of all, they need to recognize lactose intolerance as a disability, by the way.
[01:09:52]  But second of all, I think they do.
[01:09:55]  I get disabled if I eat a piece of pizza.
[01:09:57]  But yes, they do.
[01:09:59]  Not my lactose intolerant ass.
[01:10:01]  Not my lactose intolerant ass munching down this Chuck E. Jesus slice.
[01:10:06]  Sometimes when I'm asleep, Young Chomsky comes into my room and unrolls the cheese rounds and puts them in my mouth and I eat them like people eat a spider.
[01:10:14]  And then I wake up and I go, oh, my dummy hurts.
[01:10:16]  And he's like, I don't know what happened.
[01:10:19]  But yes, I like, yeah, I mean, that's the thing.
[01:10:23]  And that's another true and on rule here is if you get busted, right?
[01:10:28]  And the police are like, well, I think we could maybe do something about these charges if you just like, you know, tell me about your friend Lily Pad, who seems to be really against pipelines.
[01:10:40]  Yeah.
[01:10:41]  Serve your time.
[01:10:42]  Do the fucking time, dude.
[01:10:44]  Yep.
[01:10:44]  Yeah.
[01:10:44]  Do the time.
[01:10:45]  You did the crime.
[01:10:46]  Now you got to do the time.
[01:10:47]  Exactly.
[01:10:47]  Don't wrap up.
[01:10:48]  Don't bring all your friends into it.
[01:10:50]  Exactly.
[01:10:51]  Listen.
[01:10:51]  Be a man or woman.
[01:10:53]  Friend of the pod.
[01:10:53]  Nico, he wrote a novel in prison.
[01:10:55]  You know, you're not writing a novel out here.
[01:10:57]  You're thinking about it, but you're not doing it.
[01:10:59]  Just do your time.
[01:11:00]  Yeah.
[01:11:01]  Or you know what?
[01:11:02]  Get a lawyer.
[01:11:04]  Yes.
[01:11:05]  Yes.
[01:11:05]  I think that you have one.
[01:11:06]  Yeah.
[01:11:07]  You know what?
[01:11:07]  Get a lawyer.
[01:11:08]  Or how about this one?
[01:11:09]  Get a better lawyer.
[01:11:10]  Exactly.
[01:11:11]  You know what?
[01:11:11]  This one, become a lawyer.
[01:11:12]  How about this?
[01:11:13]  Truanon rule.
[01:11:14]  Get a better lawyer.
[01:11:15]  Get a better.
[01:11:15]  You always want to get a better lawyer.
[01:11:17]  You always got to get better.
[01:11:19]  Do you want to talk to your guy?
[01:11:20]  You think you got the better lawyer?
[01:11:21]  You don't have the better lawyer.
[01:11:22]  You do not.
[01:11:23]  There's always a better lawyer.
[01:11:24]  There's always a better lawyer.
[01:11:25]  Get the better lawyer.
[01:11:26]  You know what?
[01:11:26]  Real Truanon, third rule here, get a former prosecutor.
[01:11:31]  Oh, wow.
[01:11:32]  You got a former prosecutor.
[01:11:34]  How about this?
[01:11:35]  Get one who's friends with the judge.
[01:11:37]  There we go.
[01:11:38]  You're off.
[01:11:38]  So you never have to become a confidential informant.
[01:11:41]  Robert, we have to wrap up here pretty soon.
[01:11:44]  What would you say?
[01:11:44]  Like, I don't know why I'm standing up now, but I am.
[01:11:48]  And I feel like.
[01:11:49]  Because you were crouched under the TV.
[01:11:50]  I have been.
[01:11:51]  I have been in a crouch this entire episode.
[01:11:53]  You were like in credenza shape.
[01:11:55]  But you know what?
[01:11:56]  I'm ranting here a little bit.
[01:11:57]  No, but Robert, what would you say?
[01:12:00]  You know, we're kind of touching on this subject.
[01:12:02]  Like, Co-InTelpro is something that I think a lot of modern left-wing people are very aware of, even if they're not that aware of a lot of, you know, 20th century left-wing history at all.
[01:12:11]  Or just general history.
[01:12:13]  Or history whatsoever, or even really the present.
[01:12:15]  But like, what would you say are some pretty important lessons that we can learn from this?
[01:12:19]  And we can learn from other people's experience with these programs.
[01:12:24]  Fed jacketing is bad for the most part.
[01:12:26]  There are feds, but calling everybody a fed is not helpful because doing that ultimately undercuts like the goal of any kind of mass movement.
[01:12:36]  And you need to build a mass movement if you want any kind of change in this country.
[01:12:39]  So don't, you know, atomize yourself into like this individual unit staring at a computer screen all the time, attacking people.
[01:12:47]  It doesn't help change things.
[01:12:50]  It's just, you know, I get it's good for clicks.
[01:12:52]  It's good for all of that, but don't do it.
[01:12:55]  Yeah, I would, I would, I would agree with that.
[01:12:57]  And I, I, I would say I've known people who for sort of like in real life who've like sort of succumbed to like being really paranoid and be like, do you think these are like in like local political organization and be like, do you think these are feds?
[01:13:08]  It's like, a lot of times it's just, you're dealing with a really stupid person.
[01:13:11]  Not that person who's like paranoid, but like the people that they're talking about.
[01:13:15]  We saw this a lot with like all these fucking identity politics, people are feds.
[01:13:19]  It's like, no, a lot of times people just wrong.
[01:13:21]  Yeah.
[01:13:22]  You know, or like whatever.
[01:13:23]  People are just like, have bad politics or something.
[01:13:25]  Well, a lot of times it's an easy excuse for actually sitting down and thinking through, well, what does it mean then if all of these people in the room with me like are you know have that set of politics that's not helpful for a kind of like larger mass movement?
[01:13:40]  Yeah.
[01:13:41]  Maybe there's bigger issues that then need to be dealt with that are more difficult and you know like more complicated, right?
[01:13:49]  It's also just an excuse not to get involved.
[01:13:51]  Like yeah, absolutely.
[01:13:52]  Lots of people, yeah, like DSA, like, okay, maybe like there's some shitty people there, but I don't think the institution as a whole is probably like a fed institution.
[01:14:01]  I don't think all the socialist groups in this country are all feds.
[01:14:04]  You have to get involved with someone, some group somewhere if you want to affect any kind of change.
[01:14:09]  Yeah.
[01:14:09]  So get involved, but don't necessarily be paranoid of everyone you interact with.
[01:14:14]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:14:15]  Which really, you know what, Robert?
[01:14:17]  That goes back to True and On rule number one.
[01:14:19]  Just be cool, man.
[01:14:20]  Just be cool.
[01:14:20]  Yeah, don't be all cool.
[01:14:22]  Just be just be cool.
[01:14:24]  Just don't be so like crazy or whatever, you know?
[01:14:27]  It's not, yeah, that's S tier rule.
[01:14:32]  Yeah.
[01:14:33]  So it's like above Metal Gear Liz over here.

=== S Tier Rule Talk (02:57) ===

[01:14:38]  What?
[01:14:38]  No, Isn't S tier as I believe a reference to the classic actual paranoid video game, Metal Gear Solid, right?
[01:14:48]  Didn't you get S if you're good at sneaking?
[01:14:50]  I think that's, yes, that's like just all Japanese games.
[01:14:53]  I don't know where it originates.
[01:14:54]  Oh, okay.
[01:14:55]  It's the tier system.
[01:14:56]  It's the tier system.
[01:14:57]  Okay, you're right.
[01:14:58]  Well, I know of it from anyway.
[01:14:59]  What I'm saying is, if you've got the tier system, the highest rule of the tier system before we get to any of the other rules is just be cool.
[01:15:12]  Well, Robert, I hate to inform you of this.
[01:15:17]  I hate to be the one that does it, but unfortunately, these microphones are not hooked up to a Zoom recorder, which is going to onto a podcast.
[01:15:26]  You are being recorded for our special file that we're turning over to the Philadelphia division of the FBI.
[01:15:32]  And congratulations, you, in exchange for just telling us a couple things about some of your friends, maybe, can totally walk out of this room.
[01:15:40]  But if not, unfortunately, you are going to go to prison.
[01:15:43]  So thank you for joining us.
[01:15:47]  Do you have any last thoughts?
[01:15:48]  Go Phils.
[01:16:08]  Prior to recording this episode, I went to a smoke shop because you can't get menthol jewel pots in Chicago because it's a fucking police state unchanged forever.
[01:16:17]  Um, but I got to smoking stogies and things, and the guy made me pay with cash.
[01:16:23]  And then he said, Go, Phillies, and give me a fist bump.
[01:16:26]  And I want to say right here, we are in deep danger of if the Phillies do win tonight, that means tomorrow night on our actual show in Philadelphia, they will be in the fine, they could win the World Series, uh, and we might not live.
[01:16:41]  Well, we'll definitely live.
[01:16:43]  Well, oh, I'm going, I'm, I'm greasing up the polls.
[01:16:47]  Yeah, you got your gritty, you're getting gritty on.
[01:16:49]  I'm getting, I got my gritty on, I'm getting my gritty on.
[01:16:54]  Um, but uh, but I'm just saying here's the thing: you keep first of all, you can't stop talking about this.
[01:17:00]  Because it's literally no one will go to our show.
[01:17:03]  That's not what you're concerned about.
[01:17:04]  What you love is the festivity of chaos, which you cannot wait to be in the midst of and take part in the devilish atmosphere of sportif celebration.
[01:17:17]  I am a Bane-like figure.
[01:17:19]  Yeah, I see your little, I see your little ways, the way your little brain works.
[01:17:23]  I see you, you just hide from me.
[01:17:26]  Yeah, yeah, no, I plan on, I plan on being one of those guys, like the only guy that's clearly photographed doing something illegal, going, oh, while like setting fire to a city bus.

=== Gritty On Chaos (00:34) ===

[01:17:35]  That's what I'm going to do.
[01:17:37]  And I'll be like, oh, I don't know.
[01:17:38]  This woman, Liz Franzak, made me do it.
[01:17:41]  I'm hungry.
[01:17:42]  We got to stop recording.
[01:17:43]  Yeah, I hate when you got hungry.
[01:17:47]  I'm Liz.
[01:17:48]  My name is Brace.
[01:17:50]  And of course, we're joined by my esteemed brother-in-law, Young Chomsky.
[01:17:56]  Brother-in-law.
[01:17:58]  And the podcast of brotherly love is called Truanon.
[01:18:02]  It's so funny to be like, This is my brother-in-law.
[01:18:05]  This is my brother-in-law.
[01:18:07]  We'll see you next time.
[01:18:09]  Bye-bye!