0:00

From UFOs to psychic powers

0:02

and government conspiracies. History

0:04

is riddled with unexplained events. You

0:07

can turn back now or learn

0:09

this stuff they don't want you to know. A

0:12

production of iHeartRadio.

0:24

Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,

0:26

my name is Nolan.

0:28

They called me Ben. We're joined as always

0:30

with our super producer Paul Mission

0:32

Control Decat most importantly,

0:34

you are you. You are here. That

0:37

makes this the stuff they don't

0:39

want you to know. An episode long

0:41

time and coming. Gentlemen, this

0:44

is a bit stuff they want you to know and

0:46

a bit ridiculous history. I guess because

0:49

any student of war can tell you

0:52

a lot of stuff doesn't make

0:54

it off the drawing board. Remember

0:56

all those episodes we did on both shows

0:58

about like wrapping bombs

1:01

to bats and using cats as

1:03

spies.

1:04

Sure, I mean, no matter

1:07

what weird stuff do you throw at them, Ben,

1:09

war, war never changes,

1:12

right.

1:13

And that one time the US, absolutely

1:17

in seriousness, said I

1:20

don't know what if there's like a bomb that can

1:22

make people gay, And

1:25

they put money into this ideation

1:27

until eventually a voice of reason said,

1:30

that's kind of wild. I don't think it'll work.

1:33

Can you imagine if it did, how much happier

1:35

everyone would be, how much less conflict

1:37

there would be. I mean, Jesus, what an

1:40

idea.

1:41

We see all these wild ideas, right, and

1:44

the majority of them, the rate of attrition is

1:46

very high. They don't make it off the drawing

1:48

board. And so we can look back

1:50

at a lot of those things, and with

1:52

the benefit of retrospect, we can call them hilarious.

1:55

But when they do make it into

1:57

real world deployment, the result

2:00

can be terrifying. And please, fellow

2:02

conspiracy realist, keep that

2:04

last new in mind. Toward the

2:06

end of today's exploration.

2:09

I don't want to be a weirdo here, guys, Bob, I'm

2:12

coming to this episode way more serious, Like

2:14

this is serious stuff we need to talk about.

2:18

Yeah, That's what I'm saying. Like, keep in mind, like there's

2:22

a reason we're talking about this, right.

2:23

God, I got it.

2:24

Yeah, man, Sometimes the serious stuff

2:26

you got a temper with a little bit of lighthearted

2:29

as lest we drive ourselves insane

2:31

with worry.

2:39

Here are the.

2:40

Facts, you know, for most

2:42

of its recent history, the United

2:44

States has been in a really

2:47

weird adversarial relationship

2:49

with its nearby sovereign

2:52

nation, Cuba. This wasn't always

2:54

the case. The US used to have a huge

2:56

crush on Cuba, and I would argue still

2:58

sort of does, but it's like an in cell

3:00

level love hate thing.

3:04

Well back in the day, they loved the

3:06

money. The United States loved the money they can

3:09

make off of Cuba and Cubans.

3:12

Yeah, Cuba is There's a reason Cuba

3:14

is the largest island in the entirety of the

3:16

Caribbean. It's perfect for cultivating

3:19

historically profitable crops. One

3:22

great quote to illustrate this

3:25

founding, Father Thomas Jefferson once

3:27

called Cuba the most interesting

3:29

addition which could ever be made to

3:31

our system of states.

3:34

But they couldn't get it. The Spanish

3:36

controlled Cuba since the days of Columbus

3:39

geopolitical version of crushing

3:41

on a person who's already in a

3:43

terrible relationship.

3:45

Wow. In eighteen ninety five, the

3:47

United States joined forces with Cuba

3:49

to drive out Spain, and taking

3:52

advantage of this situation, the US transformed

3:54

Cuba into essentially a vassal

3:57

state, and for the next sixty years, American

3:59

influence in Cuban politics and

4:02

day to day life was massive. Yeah,

4:04

obviously, we know things changed after

4:06

a time, but there was a point

4:09

where we essentially could kind of wheeld control

4:11

over the way things went down in Cuba. Americans

4:13

controlled more than forty percent of the sugar industry,

4:16

fifty percent of the railways, and ninety percent of

4:18

telecom and you utilities.

4:20

Yeah, and there was also a crap

4:23

ton of black market gambling and all

4:25

kinds of underground stuff that was run

4:27

by let's say heavily

4:30

American influenced mafia

4:32

style groups.

4:33

The way they

4:35

do show up later in tonight's episode,

4:38

and I think the way they're referred to is a

4:40

certain demographic of aristocratic

4:42

businessmen in Miami.

4:44

We'll give me because it was a destination

4:47

place for wealthy people to go

4:49

spend some money and do some things they're not really

4:51

supposed to do away from home.

4:53

A lot of trafficking as well, sex trafficking,

4:56

drug trafficking, et cetera. And most Cubans,

4:59

most Cuban nationals in this time

5:01

were landless, We're poor,

5:04

were oppressed. From the US

5:06

perspective, this is great in

5:09

the US for a while, is saying we get

5:11

on fantastically with

5:14

Cuba and then kind of a one sided

5:16

relationship.

5:17

Though I would argue. Yeah, yeah,

5:19

yeah, a.

5:19

Lot of people in the upper echelons of.

5:22

A certain demographic of

5:25

aristocratic business been

5:27

now relocated to Miami and

5:29

points abroad. Yeah, things

5:32

don't go well for the US because

5:34

in nineteen fifty nine, reil

5:36

up and comer named Fidel Castro sees

5:39

his power and the powers that be

5:42

previously, I guess we should say the powers

5:44

that were hated this Castro

5:46

guy. He ruined this abusive relationship.

5:49

The US was making tons of money exploiting

5:51

the Cuban public and practicing

5:54

resource extraction, and worse

5:56

come to worse for Uncle Sam. Along

5:59

with Fidel Castro eventually comes

6:01

the Soviets.

6:02

So in nineteen fifty nine, kind

6:05

of riding high off of the

6:07

big win World War two, the

6:10

Russians were the number one threat to

6:13

the United States dream of kind

6:15

of getting their arms around the

6:17

entire globe edgemonically

6:19

speaking.

6:21

Yeah, peak cold war stuff.

6:23

Sorry. By the way, the big win for World War two

6:25

came from the United States, not from the Russians.

6:28

Open right, the convolution.

6:30

The Russians won. They paid a much higher toll,

6:32

but they won.

6:33

That's yeah, the Allies

6:35

were victorious. I suppose in that

6:37

but it is just we

6:39

got to remember the atomic bomb happened,

6:42

you know, in between these years. This

6:44

is, as you said, been real Cold War stuff.

6:47

The tensions were crazy high, and the ideological

6:51

solidification it

6:53

was like at its peak.

6:55

Yeah, let's let's define

6:57

ideology in a way we quite we

6:59

haven't quite yet in the history of this

7:01

show, and for our purposes, this

7:04

is the best definition. The

7:06

ideology of communism and the ideology

7:09

of capitalism are conflicting

7:12

frameworks to justify control

7:15

over an extraction of resources.

7:18

Yeah, I've always kind of wondered, like, what's

7:21

the big deal with communism? You know,

7:23

like it seems so harmless, you

7:25

know, on the one handley as just a thing you study

7:28

and maybe learn a little bit about,

7:30

and then maybe you go to some meetings and the first

7:32

it is treated that way. But then before you know it,

7:34

it becomes this insidious

7:36

threat that is in danger of toppling

7:39

the prevailing you know, mode of thought,

7:41

and that could essentially ruin everything.

7:43

I don't know, like, do you think it was there was a

7:45

real worry there or was it much to do

7:48

much to do about nothing?

7:49

Kind of yes, in offices,

7:52

right, and maybe individuals

7:54

contemplating alone like general's

7:56

chiefs of staff of sitting alone

7:59

on either side, they're imagining, Oh, what happens

8:01

if our thing becomes

8:03

not the thing? Because another way to

8:06

think about these ideological basis

8:10

bases basis for like reasoning

8:14

to have a government. It makes me think about the

8:16

individual reasoning of a person of

8:18

why am I a cog in

8:20

this specific economic machine?

8:23

Why am I willingly a worker that

8:25

goes in forty hours a week and

8:27

does my thing? What is the

8:29

greater good here that I'm a part of? Right?

8:33

And they're very opposed to each other.

8:36

Well, yeah, because it depends upon

8:39

who, like your cognitive

8:43

position. The ideology depends

8:45

upon what you see as gathering

8:48

the most resource resource

8:50

advantages for you on a microcosmic

8:53

scale.

8:53

Well is it for me?

8:54

Dilemma?

8:56

Is it for me? Or is it for the greater good? And

8:58

how do you picture those two things in your own

9:01

mind? Right?

9:02

People, I would argue you have an historic

9:04

problem or dilemma with

9:06

that, which is, if

9:08

this stuff is good for me, it

9:11

must mean the thing is great for everything.

9:13

That's right, That's how people are

9:15

thinking.

9:16

Or am I satisfied with not

9:18

having a bunch because I feel like I'm doing

9:21

it for the right reason, right if you if you

9:23

go through all of these things, like

9:25

if you're getting stamps

9:27

to buy to get certain amounts of

9:29

food because you're own rations for whatever through

9:31

a state program, is that the same

9:34

as getting more money

9:36

because I got a promotion?

9:37

I mean, but aren't people in communist societies

9:40

also cogs in a machine. It's just a

9:42

different flavor of machine that they sort

9:44

of own a little bit, you

9:46

know what. One could argue you own the machine

9:48

by virtue of working for it. Like it's it's

9:51

this ideological twist is so fascinating

9:53

to me.

9:53

If there were and I don't want to derail us too

9:55

far, but if there were uh

9:59

functioning communist society

10:02

and modern history there never has been,

10:04

the argument would be very different.

10:06

Yeah.

10:06

Unfortunately, they quickly descend into

10:08

autocracy and kleptocracy, which

10:11

are just fancy words for saying authoritarian

10:13

governments and thieves.

10:17

Yes, I didn't say

10:19

it wasn't.

10:21

Well, like, what's been the functioning

10:23

democracy that really works? You know what I mean? I

10:25

don't know, man, what is.

10:27

The difference between the current US government

10:29

and a monarchy or an aristocracy

10:31

in all but name anyway? This is

10:34

so, this is important discourse

10:37

for these folks. When Castro takes

10:39

power in fifty nine, they're freaking

10:41

out. With the Cold War, the world is

10:43

growing smaller that for

10:47

people in twenty twenty four maybe difficult

10:49

to imagine the calculus here. So

10:51

think about like living in a small town.

10:53

There's a guy on the other side

10:56

of the city and you hate him. He's

10:58

the worst, And all of a sudden, he's living

11:01

part time in another house.

11:03

It's your neighbor's house, and

11:05

he's right over the fence. Castro vibed

11:08

with the Soviets. Cuba went communists.

11:10

The US did a lot of

11:13

dumb stuff trying to oust

11:16

the new Cuban government. They didn't

11:18

recognize it at all. They treated

11:20

it as a regime or an occupying

11:23

force. And they,

11:26

you know, they tried to like drug his cigars.

11:29

They tried, didn't They try to like exploding.

11:31

Wasn't the dynamite explosives,

11:34

I believe, like a rigged scuba

11:36

suit.

11:37

They tried to assassinate

11:39

his character, if not the man himself,

11:41

by piping in hallucinogens

11:44

at one point and.

11:45

During a speech, so he like sounded like totally

11:48

was the word incompetent.

11:50

That was their idea. You know, they

11:53

had the pigs invasion spoiler

11:55

didn't work.

11:56

From this was April seventeenth

11:59

to the twentieth, nineteen sixty one, so

12:01

like right around this time as we're recording

12:03

this episode on the twenty second of April.

12:05

History is way closer than it looks

12:07

in the rear view mirror. I love that you're pointing

12:10

that out. I mean from that point from

12:12

nineteen well, actually from like nineteen

12:14

forty eight to now, the

12:17

US has always held Cuba

12:19

in a particular species of

12:21

disdain, so much so that various

12:24

world powers in the international community

12:26

have increasingly been saying, hey, come

12:29

on, man, come

12:31

on, what's your deal.

12:33

Well, and nukes made that significantly more

12:36

scary, right, just the concept of

12:38

nukes.

12:39

Right, Yeah, the US was

12:42

asking itself, you know, if we're the world's most

12:44

powerful country or

12:46

company, good argument, why do

12:48

our enemies hang out next door? What happens

12:51

if they decide to lob some dangerous

12:53

party favors over our backyard

12:56

fence?

12:56

This is Matt.

12:57

I think you're also referring in specific

12:59

to the Cuban missile crisis, when

13:02

the US was convinced with

13:05

serious validity that the USSR

13:08

would deploy nuclear weapons stationed

13:10

in Cuba. And at that point

13:12

during the missile crisis, the

13:15

US had no way to

13:17

prevent disaster. They

13:19

had nothing that could stop those missiles.

13:22

Uh yeah, And that is late

13:24

October nineteen sixty two, by

13:27

the way, And if we're looking at timelines

13:29

as we get further, to keep that in mind,

13:31

late in the year nineteen sixty

13:34

two, Cuban missile crisis.

13:36

And the Cuban Revolution did

13:38

succeed. It's always

13:40

struck me as somewhat hypocritical

13:43

in the larger frame that the US

13:45

itself was founded upon revolution

13:48

and saw a revolution in its

13:50

own backyard and then got pissed

13:52

that other people were trying to do the same thing

13:55

with just a different flavor of ideology.

13:58

So the US sought to

14:00

cripple this new government at the route.

14:02

They failed, and with every single

14:05

failure, the American

14:07

regime took a step closer to extremism,

14:10

and through that extremism, they

14:12

reached conspiracy. And this

14:15

is why we're recording tonight. We're asking

14:17

what was Operation Northwoods,

14:20

why should we remember it now, and

14:22

what does it mean for the future. We'll

14:25

tell you after a word from our sponsors.

14:27

Let's all duck under our public school

14:29

desk.

14:36

Here's where it gets crazy,

14:39

Operation Northwoods Soviet

14:42

in its brutality. The

14:45

question is would we sacrifice innocent

14:48

people then lie to the

14:50

public about how those people died

14:52

all to launch a war that

14:55

the US public would ordinarily never

14:57

support. Long story short, yeah,

15:01

given Fallout vibes, sorry,

15:05

yes, without any spoilers.

15:07

Watch this show. By the way, even if you played the game,

15:09

it's such a it's excellent.

15:11

Bring that back up towards the end here, because

15:14

I want to have a discussion about fiduciary responsibility,

15:16

which is something that's brought up by one of the characters

15:19

in Fallout.

15:19

Yep, agree, Okay, the

15:23

US got and this is not video

15:25

game, this is real. The US got very close

15:27

to launching a comprehensive false

15:30

flag campaign, sacrificing

15:33

it so in citizens to create what war

15:35

nerds would call causes belly, which

15:37

is just a fancy term for

15:39

an actor series of events justifying

15:42

a conflict, a hot conflict. The

15:44

best example of this probably the

15:47

Gulf of Tonkin is a great example,

15:49

right, and you'll see a lot of people arguing nine

15:52

to eleven is another example. We

15:54

do talk about the Gulf of Tonkin at length

15:57

in our book. Check that out.

15:59

The book about Northwoods is by

16:01

a guy named James Bamford. It's called

16:04

Body of Secrets, an intensely

16:06

researched expos in the

16:08

NSA, the National Security Agency,

16:11

and uh, mister b published

16:13

this in two thousand and one.

16:15

Isn't it basically just like a manufactured

16:17

pr moment that allows them

16:20

to make the argument because it sways

16:22

public support in such a way that

16:24

there's no other choice other than to wage

16:26

the war they want to wage.

16:27

It can be that way. What they were talking about

16:30

is actually killing innocent people.

16:32

Right, but they're creative making

16:35

it. Yeah, yeah,

16:37

yeah, the moment that the engenders the

16:39

support.

16:40

I think the great deal of the declassified

16:42

memos that we've been through are more

16:45

about falsifying killing

16:48

or falsifying the deaths of American

16:51

civilians or naval personnel

16:53

or you know, civilians in an

16:55

aircraft, or making

16:58

it look as though Cuba has a attacked

17:01

American citizens and military

17:03

personnel, even though they did not, and even

17:05

though there were no military or civilian

17:08

personnel who died.

17:09

Right, however that was it

17:12

was still all up for grabs, this was

17:14

a brainstorm thing. It was a memorandum.

17:17

Uh. They also were totally fine

17:19

with killing innocent Cuban people and

17:22

not making them up. That's what I mean

17:24

when I'm saying real people as.

17:27

Collateral damage, right, I mean, it's not quite

17:29

to the level of sci fi malevolence

17:32

of like murdering your own people to create

17:34

so saying the other guys did it so you could go

17:36

in and have your way, But it's also not that far from

17:38

that.

17:39

They also said they would do.

17:40

That, yeah, in their their

17:42

plans in there for everything from like

17:45

strategically deploying plastic explosives

17:47

that may very well kill human beings

17:49

to blowing up a drone aircraft that

17:52

looks like an American plane

17:55

that is not that nobody is actually on and

17:57

then making up a list of human beings

17:59

that would be published in papers that

18:01

supposedly died in that aircraft.

18:03

Am I a dumb dumb that I didn't really realize they

18:06

had drone aircrafts in the sixties, So

18:08

what did those look like?

18:09

They did?

18:09

This was just kind of radio controlled, I imagine,

18:12

right exactly.

18:13

They weren't as cool as the modern UAVs.

18:15

But yeah, they were definitely they

18:17

were around. Operation Northwoods

18:20

is first ide eated in nineteen

18:22

sixty two. You can read

18:24

the initial document and

18:27

all of the appendices and

18:29

at the annex on this

18:32

also for free online now in US

18:34

government websites. The first title was

18:37

Justification for US Military Intervention

18:39

in Cuba parentheses, ts

18:42

and parentheses, which means top secret.

18:45

And this is under

18:47

something we'll get to in a second called Mongoose,

18:50

which was actually a little bit scarier, and

18:52

they did a lot of this. They proposed

18:55

a lot of the stuff that you're

18:58

mentioning, Matt, you know, assass nation

19:00

of Cuban immigrats or migrants,

19:03

sinking boats of people from

19:06

Cuba, trying to get to the US, hiji

19:08

on Cuba, and blaming it all on Cuba.

19:11

Obviously everything we're about to say, the US

19:13

wanted their hand hidden, blowing up US

19:16

naval ship or a civilian

19:19

ship, orchestrating terrorism

19:22

in US cities, on US

19:24

soil, attacks,

19:26

having riots in both

19:29

countries, and.

19:31

They specifically using Guantanamo Bay

19:33

as a staging ground for a lot of the military

19:35

action that the US would take under

19:38

the false flag of Cuba.

19:41

And the US has controversially

19:43

controlled Guantanamo since the

19:45

days of the Spanish War, right, so

19:48

they already had a footho, a beachhead

19:50

basically, and they did say

19:53

some of these attacks can be staged, some

19:55

can be real. Very much when

19:57

you read it, it very much has the

20:00

feel of people

20:02

sitting around freestyling in a writer's

20:05

room, like, well, what if we did this? But

20:07

what if we did this? Well, they don't all

20:10

have to die, Yeah, we could just meet people

20:12

up, right, or we could kill some people.

20:15

Yeah, I don't know.

20:16

Type it all, put it all in. There

20:18

wasn't a lot of self editing.

20:20

Yeah. But have we said who

20:22

is actually coming up with these ideas

20:24

yet?

20:25

Well, this is largely the brainchild

20:28

or under the guidance of General

20:30

Lyman Luis Lemnitzer,

20:32

who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

20:35

Yes, but he's at least

20:37

proposing it, right, he's signed it. You can read his signature

20:40

and scene in the documentation that we're.

20:42

Talking to Landyerdale as well.

20:44

Yeah, but then it's something that ends up

20:46

in front of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who

20:48

then have like a response to it, which

20:51

is where a lot of the some of the main

20:53

ideas are generated. If

20:55

you imagine a group of people sitting around a large

20:57

table in a war room discussing,

21:00

well, what could we do here? Guys, Well, you got an

21:02

idea, You got an idea, Johnson, and then they write

21:04

it down. That's where this is coming from.

21:06

Yeah, that's like committee,

21:09

that's what it is.

21:10

Because it's movie level

21:13

stuff. Some of the things.

21:14

Is just that flabbergasted by how

21:16

accurate that assessment is because

21:18

it's just a remarkably banal.

21:22

It's a little casually, right, it's a

21:24

little bit casual.

21:25

And it's insane. We talked about hijacking

21:28

planes. This is April or March

21:30

nineteen sixty two. This is early

21:32

in the year nineteen sixty two. They're sitting around talking

21:35

about hijacking planes and falsely

21:38

showing that a plane got lost or shot

21:41

down. A plane full of like college

21:43

students, right that are going on vacation get

21:45

shot down over Cuba. But it's

21:48

not actually a plane full of college students. It's

21:50

a again, one of these remote planes. But then

21:52

in the papers there'd be a list of all these students,

21:55

so that the American public would go, oh

21:57

my god, Cuba shot down a bunch

21:59

of call kids. We got

22:01

to go to war.

22:03

Yeah, exactly. It's manufacturing

22:06

the righteous indignation of

22:08

the people that then allows you to make whatever

22:11

to say. We see it all the time, weapons

22:13

of mass destruction, all these moments that turn

22:15

out to be bullsh you know. It's

22:17

just to sway the public and get them to not

22:19

complain because everyone's trying to defend their political

22:22

base. It's the most casual caddy.

22:25

Just cha canary, utter

22:28

cha canary.

22:29

If this is nineteen sixty two and

22:31

we've been alive since the eighties, guys,

22:33

just how many times has this kind

22:35

of thing happened and we just were

22:38

none the wiser.

22:39

Yeah, that's gonna be the ending question of

22:41

tonight's exploration too. I mean,

22:44

we got to remember at the time.

22:45

To be fair.

22:46

First off, Noel, to your point,

22:48

I wanna name check

22:50

a book. Would you say they were manufacturing

22:53

consent Bernez, Oh,

22:56

well.

22:56

Yes, of course, because it's you know,

22:58

people just buy into this whole scenario

23:01

and then they're like, well, yes, of course,

23:03

we would not be good Americans if we

23:05

did not support this, because these evil

23:07

people have now been identified as our true enemies,

23:10

and we have to be on board, you know.

23:13

And let's Remember, the US government

23:15

is not a monolith, has never

23:17

been really, and some factions

23:20

of the state who are aware of these plans

23:23

absolutely opposed them bluntly, so

23:25

one president in particular.

23:27

Well, the civilian side of the government

23:30

right versus the

23:32

military side of the government m h.

23:34

Yeah, and for others for the military

23:37

side of the government, this became a

23:39

myopic focus. We could

23:41

argue that the CIA

23:43

and factions of the military had

23:45

a sunk cost fallacy in many

23:48

ways. They were like ahab

23:50

and Cuba and

23:53

Castro became their white whale that

23:55

they wanted to pursue, and they

23:58

were thinking, again, with some validity

24:01

of the possibility of a nuclear first strike,

24:03

America would once again be absolutely

24:06

defenseless against armament

24:08

like this deployed so close to home.

24:11

The Eastern seaboard would be

24:13

no more possibly, And

24:16

then it becomes a greater good calculus.

24:18

Like if you had the choice between losing

24:21

an appendage or a limb or a finger

24:24

or dying, You're

24:26

not gonna choose to die. It just becomes

24:28

a question of which limb would you prefer

24:30

to lose. So if you sacrifice

24:32

a finger to save your body, that's

24:35

an easy choice, and Jaysok.

24:37

The military complex saw

24:39

this kind of in the same philosophical light,

24:41

not my Apia went on to I

24:43

would argue and form later aberrant

24:46

actions in Southeast Asia. We

24:48

know the Gulf of Tonkin was a false

24:51

flag.

24:52

I mean we're talking about the Vietnam War here, Yesody.

24:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and the top

24:58

brass over a the

25:00

Uncle Sam's side. They did

25:02

say we could cause US

25:04

military casualties, would

25:07

they you know, to them like the list

25:09

of actual people or fake

25:12

people. It didn't matter. They

25:14

just said, we need a list. It'll cause

25:16

a quote, it's a real quote casualty

25:20

list in US newspapers. Would cause

25:22

a helpful wave of national indignation.

25:25

Here, it's the word indignation.

25:27

Let's talk about that that as

25:30

as defined by Miriam Webster, that is

25:32

anger aroused by something unjust,

25:34

unworthy, or mean, indignation,

25:37

indignation. But if you go to righteous

25:39

igdignation, which is something that is thrown

25:41

around I think quite a bit in at

25:44

least in American fiction. This

25:47

is the belief in your right to be angry

25:49

about something, even though the people around

25:51

you perhaps don't agree with

25:53

why you're angry.

25:56

To it like there's a certain tunnel

25:58

vision associated with it, and that's if

26:00

you can get people to that place. You

26:03

got them, you know what I mean. And

26:05

it's rattling around your particular

26:07

cause, you know.

26:08

So it's to get the American people

26:10

to feel that indignation, and then to

26:12

make sure that you can strategically get

26:15

the United Nations assemblies to

26:17

feel the same way, because

26:19

you need the support of other countries,

26:21

not just your internal civilians

26:24

to support, like full on hot

26:26

war.

26:26

What's that thing you say, Ben rabble,

26:29

This something must change.

26:31

This will not stay. Yeah, the the.

26:34

United Nations, Thank you, the United

26:36

Nations. At this point, they've

26:38

still got that new car smell. Think of them

26:40

a little bit like the world's most

26:42

ineffective hoa oh

26:45

yeah in the in the neighborhood metaphor

26:47

from analogy from earlier. If

26:50

Northwood, if Northwoods

26:52

is deployed, if it works any

26:55

aspect of it, the end result

26:57

is full military invasion

27:01

with the tacit support or

27:03

approval of the majority

27:06

of other nations on the planet. And

27:08

then they would acquire full possession

27:10

of Cuba, possibly annexing it or

27:13

making a puppet government, remove the

27:15

Soviets from that part of the board and

27:17

at the same time, to

27:19

be completely honest, repair some

27:22

long standing relationships with

27:24

a certain demographic of aristocratic

27:26

businessmen in Miami.

27:28

Oh right, and get them back to their villas

27:31

and you know, in their homes, right, you

27:33

know, taking them control?

27:35

Yeah, retain control or take control,

27:37

I guess, take possession of nationalized

27:40

assets, many of which were like private

27:42

company things.

27:44

I know we're going to get to a disentergree, but I just

27:46

can't help but take a beat to say, like, how

27:49

is it that we can know this stuff happened

27:51

this time, but that some people convince themselves

27:54

that this doesn't happen all the time. I feel

27:56

like it's the name of the game. It

27:58

is this kind of back dealing,

28:01

two facedness. This is it writ

28:03

large. We can see it down to every detail.

28:05

Who are we kidding when we try to convince

28:08

ourselves there's still some shred

28:10

of like truth telling and goodness

28:12

and magnanimity in government. I just

28:15

don't buy it, man, Or.

28:17

Why did Taran and Tel Aviv

28:19

have such a limited exchange

28:22

of attacks quite recently, dude?

28:25

And who fired first? And why?

28:27

And or be sure it was them?

28:29

Of course?

28:30

Like it it makes you question everything

28:32

guys, can I just quickly read just a little

28:34

bit of a fuller quote from the indignation

28:37

quote you gave there, Ben, just because

28:40

it speaks a writer's room thing we're talking

28:42

about, where you're just like, what

28:45

you really thought? This this comes

28:47

from page eleven. If you find the pdf

28:49

online, you'll be able to find it. And so this is page

28:52

eleven pdf, not page eleven in

28:54

the actual memo. That makes sense here

28:56

it is it's listed under B. We

28:59

could blow up a drone or unmanned

29:01

vessel anywhere in the Cuban waters.

29:03

So they're talking about a boat, a ship we

29:05

could arrange to cause such an incident in the vicinity

29:08

of Havana or Santiago as a spectacular

29:11

result of Cuban attack from the air

29:13

or sea, or both. The presence

29:15

of Cuban planes or ships merely investigating

29:18

the intent of the vessel could be fairly

29:20

compelling evidence that the ship was taken under

29:23

attack. The nearness to Havana

29:25

or Santiogo would add credibility,

29:27

especially to those people that might have heard

29:29

the blast, or have seen.

29:30

The fires, or lost a family member.

29:33

Well, well, again, this is

29:35

an unmanned drone ship that

29:37

they're talking about so nobody would be

29:39

well, but that's what they're saying. That's this

29:42

in this theoretical idea, it's

29:44

just a ship that serves as the

29:47

fire and the thing that then

29:49

Cuban actual planes are like,

29:51

what the hell's going on over here? And those

29:53

planes are the evidence that Cuba

29:56

was involved. That's what they're saying. It

29:58

says the US could follow up with an

30:00

air sea rescue operation again

30:03

to save the fake people covered

30:06

by US fighters to

30:08

quote evacuate remaining

30:10

members of the non existent crew casualty

30:13

lists in US newspapers. That's where it

30:16

goes to. Your quote would give that indignation. So

30:18

it's fake people that would cause the

30:21

American public to revolt.

30:23

Again, they're not they they are considering

30:26

fabricating a manifest right, fabricating

30:29

the identities. But they're also, to be

30:31

clear, super cool

30:34

with killing Americans if.

30:35

They have to.

30:36

Oh yeah, the first the first one, like

30:38

the A that was b A is just

30:40

we just blow up a ship.

30:41

In Guanta writes they were

30:43

just spitballing here, guys, you know.

30:45

And just one more quick thing here from page eleven.

30:48

This is title eleven or a heading

30:50

eleven. It says one

30:52

idea is to quote sink ship

30:55

near harbor entrance, this is near

30:57

Guantanamo Bay, conduct funerals

31:00

four mock victims. That

31:02

just is insane to me that there would they would

31:04

have full funerals as again like a

31:07

film production or something.

31:08

Well, you got to follow through with the grift. Yeah.

31:11

And also, let's know another

31:13

word, since we're doing a little etymology today.

31:15

In the b part that

31:17

that you shared, Matt, they use the phrase

31:20

spectacular. Spectacular is

31:22

meant to be theatrical. That's what it

31:24

means, right, So they want it to

31:26

be seen. And it might surprise

31:28

some of US American patriots in particular

31:31

to learn this was the extension of

31:33

a larger, ongoing older

31:36

conspiracy something in the

31:38

holes of Langley in DC that was

31:40

referred to as the Cuban Project.

31:43

It had another name, Operation Mongoose.

31:46

And the etymology

31:48

okay, Operation Mongoose very

31:51

unclean thing. It comes

31:53

from the historic

31:56

rivalry and conflict between the mongoose

31:58

and the cobra enemies,

32:01

and the mongoose relies on a

32:03

microcosmic version of asymmetrical

32:05

warfare to kill the cobra.

32:08

Because it can't bite

32:10

like a cobra. It uses agility,

32:12

speed, and unexpected vectors

32:14

of attack to compromise the

32:16

snake. But it doesn't just run full

32:19

steam at its opponent. Its

32:21

feints and its false moves and above

32:23

all, its timing of these motions

32:26

are all meant to drain the snake

32:28

of energy and resources. So

32:31

mongoose echoes the lessons

32:34

of the natural world. One of the big

32:36

things they want to do is remove

32:40

or force the Cuban government

32:42

to expend resources.

32:45

They want to drain it of its

32:47

ability to fight. They want

32:49

to remove offensive capability and

32:51

make it focus, you know, whatever

32:53

armament or manpower it has on

32:56

defensive capabilities. And they

32:58

also want the boffit on the

33:00

Cuban side and the Soviet

33:02

side to spend most of their time thinking

33:05

about how to correct

33:07

the narrative.

33:08

Oh yeah, it's It's like a

33:10

really good boxer, right you

33:13

in about you're teaching your opponent to

33:15

respond to the way your shoulder moves.

33:18

Your left shoulder moves at a certain angle

33:20

right when you're preparing to throw a jab or

33:22

a cross or something, and once

33:24

your opponent is aware of that

33:26

and is reacting to that shoulder movement,

33:29

you do something different with your shoulder right

33:32

but or you or you feign that move

33:34

with your shoulder and you throw a different strike and

33:37

it is so sorry, guys, I'm getting a little lost

33:39

here, but it's so interesting the way this

33:41

this played out then with the USSR,

33:44

because it's they're not just going after Cuba, right,

33:46

they're going after communists

33:49

and putting that in quotes or the

33:51

Soviets in general at as.

33:53

Like as a concept, like

33:55

you know, which we

33:58

know it's really hard to kill a concept.

34:00

Well, and I would say overall, I think this strategy

34:02

is kind of what worked, right

34:04

if we pull out a little bit,

34:06

we look at the fall of the USSR and we look

34:09

at what occurred there and expending

34:11

resources in places like Afghanistan,

34:13

like it kind of worked right.

34:17

Yeah.

34:17

And we also we've got to give

34:19

an honorable mention or dishonorable

34:22

mention to the University of

34:24

Miami because they were

34:28

they were deep with something called JM

34:30

Wave, which is sort of the

34:33

operation station or origin

34:35

point for a lot of this stuff if

34:37

it were to be enacted. This was

34:39

under the ownership of USAF

34:43

General Edward Lansdale and

34:45

then a guy named William King Harvey

34:47

out of the Agency of the CIA.

34:50

They were the sunk cost fallacy

34:53

dudes or some of them in this story

34:55

because they lost the Bay of Pigs invasion.

34:58

That was just poor

35:00

Lee. From a production standpoint,

35:02

it was not a not a good

35:04

series of operations. They wanted

35:07

blood, they wanted castro gone. They had made

35:09

certain promises regarding

35:11

the economic state of the

35:14

Caribbean and Cuban particular. They

35:16

wanted stuff to go back to the resource

35:18

extraction of your You know,

35:20

if we want to be cliche about it.

35:23

They're omelet guys.

35:24

They like omelets, which means they're

35:26

on board with breaking eggs.

35:28

Well, according to JM. Wave, it's

35:30

the same people we keep talking about. We just

35:32

brought up that same dude in the last episode

35:34

in Herehan's episode, the guy who was

35:36

at the Ambassador Hotel,

35:39

George Joannides. These are the same people we talked

35:41

about with Rob Rob

35:43

Reiner when we did the Who Killed JFK.

35:45

Episode. It's the same crew of

35:48

Cuban exiles who were working directly with the

35:51

United States government to carry out

35:53

operations that carried out the

35:55

Bay of Pigs and failed in nineteen sixty

35:57

one. Then here in nineteen sixty two,

35:59

we're talking about doing more stuff like that.

36:01

Nineteen sixty three, JFK gets assassinated

36:05

and allegedly, according to that

36:07

show, who killed JFK? Jmwave,

36:09

Joeanides and all these guys were directly

36:11

involved in that assassination and.

36:14

Jmwave not a person. Jabwave is the

36:16

station. So Mongoose

36:18

allows the CIA to conduct

36:21

asymmetrical terrorist attacks against

36:23

civilians, against members

36:25

of the Cuban military and

36:28

Russian military folks

36:30

stationed in the area, and they

36:32

wanted to rack up blood, they wanted to injure

36:34

the public, compromise the military.

36:37

Doing all this causes the legitimacy

36:40

of the government to fall into question, and

36:42

then force resource

36:44

allocation right in a way that is

36:46

advantageous to the

36:49

US. North Woods is just

36:51

a logical escalation of this strategy.

36:54

And we have to remember the context, right, We're

36:56

talking a lot about context. The US

36:58

has kind of done this already

37:00

in Guatemala in nineteen fifty

37:03

four, you know what I mean. They had

37:05

They had several successful test runs

37:08

of this kind of stuff. And now the question is

37:11

if the greater good of our ideology

37:13

is this important, does it justify

37:16

putting our own blood in the game to

37:18

win the larger war, will

37:21

we risk sacrificing our own.

37:23

Yeah, and they thought they were on a timeline.

37:26

Guys. They were talking about

37:28

how the USSR was not fully

37:30

invested in Cuba at this time, Like

37:33

they're talking about the Warsaw Pact. Cuba

37:36

is not a member of that yet. They are

37:38

not established full Soviet bases

37:41

on Cuban land at this time. Yet, the

37:43

same way the US has bases in Western

37:45

Europe that are basically you know, they would be

37:47

the same thing, right, they would be very similar.

37:51

So at least the creators of this

37:53

document, this Northwoods document, they're

37:55

saying that in this time, in nineteen

37:58

sixty two, we have to act

38:00

within quote the next couple of months.

38:03

All right, guys, why don't we take a quick pause here

38:05

to digest what we've learned,

38:07

hear a word from our sponsor, and then come back

38:10

with the rest of this sordid

38:12

tale.

38:20

We've returned, and we

38:22

will never know how north Woods

38:24

would have played out, the specific

38:27

Northwoods, the larger strategy, that's

38:29

what we've been teasing. We'll get to at the end. Jaysok

38:32

did approve this, They drafted

38:34

it, they presented it to the Secretary

38:37

of Defense, at the time Robert mcmaara

38:39

on March thirteenth, nineteen sixty two,

38:42

It was never officially accepted or implemented

38:45

because largely because then

38:47

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy

38:50

bluntly rejected it, said

38:52

it was a dumb idea, and

38:55

maybe not for the reasons we might assume. An

38:58

also spoiler this may have been factor

39:00

in his untimely demise.

39:02

Well, yeah, that's exactly what I want to talk about,

39:04

because again, going back to the discussion with

39:06

Rob Reiner, according to him, and according

39:08

to official documentation that's come out, JFK

39:11

was talking directly to castro Via

39:13

letters trying to calm everything

39:15

down at this time, at this exact

39:18

time he and he's also talking

39:20

with members of like high ranked

39:22

members of the Soviet Union at this time, trying

39:24

to calm down tensions. And

39:27

this doesn't seem like a calm down tensions

39:30

kind of plan, right, This is a raise tensions

39:32

as high as we can so that we can take full

39:34

direct action.

39:35

Yep.

39:37

And the question becomes, how do we know

39:39

about north Woods this evening?

39:41

Why are we talking about it here in twenty twenty

39:43

four, Well, it might surprise

39:46

a lot of us, a lot of our younger folks

39:49

in the audience tonight to learn

39:51

that the American public was

39:53

not aware of this in an

39:55

open way until the late nineteen

39:58

nineties because.

40:00

Because of declassification, or was

40:02

it because of a leak or what happened?

40:05

In November of nineteen ninety seven, the

40:07

John F. Kennedy Assassination Records

40:09

Review Board said, oh

40:11

yeah, they released like over

40:14

fifteen hundred pages of classified

40:16

stuff that some

40:19

of which was directly related to the assassination,

40:21

but all of which got collected over

40:24

time because it was related to Kennedy.

40:27

And what they found in this vast

40:29

swath of documents was that, yeah, Northwoods,

40:33

Uncle Sam thought of killing some of

40:35

us because they

40:37

were super pisted Cuba.

40:39

They would argue likely, and I, by

40:41

the way, the reason I think that they decided not to

40:43

attempt this plan was they had a bigger fish

40:46

to fry right in Berlin or in

40:48

Germany, but they would just but we didn't

40:50

do it. What's the problem, you

40:52

know, like kind of yeah,

40:56

we got to look at all the possibilities, guys.

40:58

I mean, you know, it's a complex world out there.

41:01

I'm really glad you said that, because we'll

41:04

see. But you're you're absolutely right, because

41:06

in a March sixteenth,

41:08

nineteen sixty two memo by

41:11

Lansdale, whom we've mentioned earlier,

41:13

Kennedy rejects Northwoods out

41:15

of hand entirely. And I love that you're pointing

41:18

out Berlin because he said, look

41:21

to the General Lemnitzer,

41:24

who is kind of the point

41:26

of the spear here. Ideologically,

41:29

he says, the tensions

41:31

growing in Berlin are such

41:33

that we may not have those four divisions

41:36

that you want to send a Cuba. They

41:38

might have to go out to the European theater.

41:41

Oh and also, General you're

41:43

fired.

41:46

Okay, goodbye. I'm sure I'll get a book dealer

41:48

or something.

41:49

Oh well, firing. See, that's the

41:52

thing, you know, if you cut the point of

41:54

a spear off, it's still a spear. It's

41:56

just maybe less least

41:59

still, it's still there. So Jasok

42:01

continued to follow

42:04

the ideology. They mapped false

42:06

flag opportunities against

42:08

Cuba until at least nineteen

42:11

sixty three, the shadow of Mongoose

42:13

loomed well.

42:15

Ben to that point, I have often

42:17

wondered, like, what does happen when a high up

42:19

military official behind something like this

42:22

gets let go? Did they not send

42:24

a memo to the underlings to stop

42:26

with that guy's plan, Like,

42:28

how does that work?

42:30

Well, these are just plans to be presented

42:32

to get comments from the rest

42:35

of the Joint chiefs of Staff, because

42:37

I got it. What's his name, Limititzer

42:39

was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

42:42

at the time when this was written. So this is like giving

42:44

it to everybody else to get their ideas,

42:46

which then went all the way up to the president and

42:49

the the who

42:51

did you say?

42:52

It was Secretary of Defense.

42:53

Secretary of Defense to be like, all right, guys,

42:56

this is our plan. What you think and they said

42:58

no, that dude was out. Then Lemnitz

43:01

are this.

43:02

Is just it's a vibe check.

43:05

It's that's exactly You're right. It

43:07

was a huge vibe check. And they were like,

43:09

nah, not vibes, not vibes.

43:12

Too far, too far.

43:14

Kennedy said, not vibes, and then he got

43:16

one of the worst vibes a president could get.

43:18

Sh yeah, magic bullet.

43:20

Yeah.

43:21

So in the wake of or I

43:24

guess we should say, in the spirit of asymmetrical

43:26

warfare, Jaysak continued

43:28

to ask themselves post Lemnitzer

43:31

about waging terrorism in their neighbor's

43:33

yard, they said, And

43:36

this is all proven. They said, well, okay,

43:38

if an attack on our own, even

43:40

a fake attack like a drone

43:43

or a manifest of people who don't exist,

43:45

even if that empty ship strategy is

43:48

out of bounce, then what if

43:50

we attack another member of

43:52

the Organization of American States.

43:54

What if we just hit another Caribbean

43:57

country and blame it on Cuba,

44:00

meaning we blame it on the Russians. And someone's

44:02

like, oh, yeah, yeah, I know some countries

44:04

in the Caribbean. What about you guys

44:07

like Jamaica, And they said, put it on the list,

44:09

And they said, oh, Trinidad and Tobago

44:11

maybe, and they're like, never heard of it, put it

44:13

on the list.

44:15

They put the Dominican Republic

44:17

and Haiti all on that list too,

44:19

And it was all again to try

44:21

and pretend that maybe we could even

44:24

do small things with Cuban quote

44:26

Cuban shipments that we've doctored

44:28

to make it look like they're Cuban of specific

44:31

arms or something that are found or intercepted

44:33

that look like there's about to be an invasion. But

44:36

even though there's not, like.

44:38

It's just could we yellow

44:40

cake this a little bit. Oh that's god,

44:42

you know what I mean?

44:43

Like, yes, yeah, Can

44:46

I give you another one? This is this

44:48

is from page twelve in this is

44:51

the This is under

44:53

a heading six the use

44:55

of Meg type aircraft. Ben,

44:58

you want to tell everybody what a MiG type aircraft

45:00

is.

45:01

Yeah, A big type aircraft

45:03

is a fighter plane that

45:06

is Russian.

45:07

That's really all you need. Was Soviet at the time.

45:09

It was the front one of their primary fighter

45:12

jets. So use of a Meg

45:14

type aircraft by US pilots

45:17

could provide additional provocation, harassment

45:20

of civil air attacks on surface

45:22

shipping, and destruction of US

45:25

military drone aircraft.

45:27

Again, drone aircraft

45:30

by Meg type planes would

45:32

be useful as complementary actions

45:34

to this concept of

45:36

using false shipments in something like a

45:38

place like Trinidad or in the Dominican

45:41

Republic. And this

45:43

is what really got me, guys, they said,

45:45

an American made American military

45:48

F eighty six that is quote properly

45:51

painted would convince air passengers

45:54

that they saw a Cuban MiG aircraft,

45:57

especially if the pilot of the transport

46:00

we're to announce such a fact.

46:02

So like, imagine you're just on a delta

46:04

flight, and the pilot says,

46:07

h oh, that appears to be a Meg aircraft.

46:10

What is that doing outside? And

46:13

now you've got a false story that everybody

46:15

on the aircraft gets to talk about. And

46:17

it says, it says reasonable

46:20

copies of the Meg could

46:22

be produced from US resources

46:25

in about three months.

46:27

And that was probably a better idea

46:30

than just trying to sort

46:32

of tart up tart

46:34

up a saber, because if you look at the picture

46:36

of an F eighty six and you look at

46:38

the picture of a Meg, they

46:41

have very they're very different. You know,

46:43

it's like a dog with a longer versus a

46:46

shorter snout, and the wing shape

46:48

is different. However, again, sy

46:50

up style, the average

46:53

passenger on a commercial airline

46:55

is not going to know the difference. What

46:57

they're going to be looking for is insignia

47:00

yep.

47:00

Colored.

47:01

Yeah.

47:01

And so there's one

47:03

thing before we move on that I want to get back to. The Machavelian

47:07

brilliance of attacking Trinidad

47:10

and Tobago and Jamaican in particular,

47:12

is that they're Commonwealth countries,

47:15

which means that the United Kingdom

47:18

would be by treaty

47:21

bound to be drawn into the conflict.

47:23

Wow I mean, thank

47:25

god they didn't you do it?

47:27

Yeah, you got to get that coalition of the willing

47:30

right guys. Cough cough nine to eleven

47:32

cough cough, we shout out Pearl

47:34

Harbor right cough.

47:37

Oh oh man, a New American

47:39

Century. What if there was a project for that?

47:41

Wow, the last time we did something

47:44

something spontaneous and fun,

47:46

guys.

47:46

Jeez man, I said the most

47:48

literal name possible to an organization.

47:51

Guys.

47:51

I want to be a rational human being who

47:53

is not this crazy conspiracy

47:55

theorist or someone would call that. But I

47:57

swear it feels like the are

48:00

so strong and so direct, But

48:03

there's no the smoking gun

48:05

thing just doesn't exist, and I don't think we

48:07

would ever see it because, as

48:09

you said before, we didn't learn about this until

48:11

the nineties, and all of these

48:14

were marked top secret, special

48:16

handling, and this thing that we've talked

48:18

about in the past. No foreign guys,

48:22

remember what that means.

48:23

Yeah, no, not for

48:25

any foreign to zero nationals.

48:28

Right, foreignationals.

48:29

Not releasable to foreign nationals. And

48:31

inside the recommendations here from the Joint

48:33

Chiefs of Staff, it's stuff like, guys,

48:36

do not share this or forward it to any

48:38

commanders of unified or specified

48:40

commands. Don't let anybody see

48:43

this that are US officers

48:45

assigned to NATO activities whatsoever.

48:47

Do not show this to anyone to

48:51

the chairman US delegation United

48:53

Nations, do not let that person

48:56

see this.

48:57

Yeah, and certain folks

48:59

in what we call academia got similar

49:02

warnings because of the way research

49:04

interacts.

49:05

It's just not it was like, nobody

49:07

can know that this is what we're doing. This

49:09

is the secret plans, is the ausi mandiis

49:11

stuff.

49:12

This is totally right and ethical, by

49:14

the way, and that's why we can't tell anybody

49:17

nothing weird. Also,

49:20

I would argue this is a parable there's

49:22

a reason we're talking about this. I

49:24

don't think it's crazy to note that

49:26

this teaches us profoundly important

49:28

lessons. They're surprising and uncomfortable.

49:31

Nobody in this exploration at

49:34

any point saw themselves as the bad

49:36

guys. They conspire to create

49:39

bad guys for a greater good.

49:42

And honestly, like, I

49:44

know this is a hot take, but the US

49:46

was not necessarily unreasonable

49:48

in its assumptions here. We have

49:50

to remember that we're foreign

49:54

nuclear weapons deployed this close

49:56

to home again, there would be no

49:59

countermeasure. There would be a second

50:01

strike capability, but it wouldn't save

50:03

places like DC or New York

50:05

or Philadelphia or you

50:07

know, Miami. I'm sure they would go. Well,

50:09

Miami's kind of close. Maybe Atlanta.

50:12

But the thing is to your

50:14

earlier point, Nol, this is one

50:17

thing the public knows about now.

50:20

At some point many other

50:22

sinister options equally,

50:25

if not more, sinister options had

50:27

to be considered. You have to think through it because

50:29

you have to understand, you know, like you said,

50:31

Matt, the shoulder dropping, what is your

50:33

enemy trying to signal? What are you trying to

50:35

signal to them? It becomes

50:38

a double blind game in the worst

50:40

way. And if they didn't

50:42

consider this kind of stuff, somebody

50:46

else was going to And maybe that was part

50:48

of their rationale, but it doesn't

50:50

make it right. It shows us. It

50:53

shows us that any country or

50:55

any power structure in general will

50:58

actively consider these kind of things

51:00

if they feel it is to the larger

51:03

advantage.

51:04

Yeah, but it's the kind

51:06

of thing that makes at least me personally.

51:08

I can't speak for everyone. I can't speak for you guys. It

51:10

makes me doubt the

51:13

anything that comes after

51:15

this, anything that comes after nineteen

51:17

sixty two as like, oh did was

51:19

that real? Nore

51:21

it? This is just them getting caught.

51:24

Like I just feel like this this has just been the.

51:25

Name of the game as long as governments

51:27

have governmented, you know, these types

51:30

of exploits and behind the scenes

51:32

double deals, like back to the look at the

51:34

Romans.

51:35

I mean they were double.

51:36

Crossing each other left, right, and center. I mean

51:38

it's just when you get to a certain level of power

51:40

and control, corruption

51:43

just kind of sets in and like you just want

51:45

I don't know, it's it's bizarre, but let's

51:47

talk.

51:47

About getting caught. This is thirty

51:49

five years later that we learn about this, right

51:52

and.

51:52

Oh, which makes even more galling because they don't even

51:55

look at it as getting caught barely. It's

51:57

just like, you, guys are.

51:59

Maybe the wrong people to ask, but when's the last

52:01

time you had a casual conversation with

52:03

somebody unrelated to this show about Operation

52:05

Northwoods. When's the last time you heard

52:07

about it?

52:08

Guys, I didn't know about it. I mean, this

52:10

is very new to me. I mean it doesn't surprise

52:13

me, though, I'm just I.

52:14

Guess what I'm saying is getting caught. It's they

52:16

didn't really get caught. It then

52:19

got discussed. You know, a couple of

52:21

times.

52:22

They got identified, which is not the

52:24

same thing as being apprehended nor

52:27

encountering consequences there, you know

52:29

what I mean. And this is another

52:31

thing too, like, yes, this

52:33

is the this is the dirty

52:35

business of state craft. It's

52:37

kind of the reason why you might enjoy a

52:40

stake and you don't want to watch

52:42

a documentary about factory farms

52:44

while you're eating that stake.

52:46

Or even kill a cow, right right.

52:48

You're never going to hear a politician

52:51

running for election on the idea

52:53

of staging a terrorist attack. It

52:56

does not matter who the US president is.

52:58

They're not going to come out and say, hey,

53:00

guys, stuff with Ukraine Rush

53:03

is getting kind of complicated. So we're thinking,

53:05

you know, we could dress a bunch of people up, you

53:08

know, in Balaklava's and have them run

53:10

out at a theater or something. You're never

53:12

gonna hear Putin saying yeah, bomb

53:15

some apartments in the nineties, because you

53:17

know, election season, you're

53:19

never gonna hear that.

53:20

There was a great line I can't remember. There's

53:22

a lot of lines in this movie in Oppenheimer. But

53:24

the character the Robert Downey Junior played

53:27

has something very poignant to say about the

53:29

nature of politics. He's like the ones that are out

53:31

in the light governing openly, or like

53:33

they're not the ones you have to worry about or that's not even how you

53:35

do. He says something about like you have to do it from the shadows,

53:38

and that's those are the ones that are that's when

53:40

the job is really getting

53:42

done. It is like the time spent

53:44

in the shadows.

53:46

Okay, and I don't want to spoil too

53:48

much here, guys, but I do want to quickly talk about

53:50

something that was stated in one of the episodes

53:53

of the Fallout series that's on Amazon

53:55

Prime right now. So without spoiling, let's

53:59

if you know any thing about the Fallout series,

54:01

then you know there's a company called vault

54:04

Tech or Robeco, Roboco

54:07

something like that.

54:07

Vltech's vault Tech and rob Co's rob Co. But I

54:10

think at some point they may be bought rob Co. Yeah,

54:12

I think that's right.

54:13

So there's a discussion about how

54:15

vault Tech before the Great

54:17

War, before the bombs fell, vault

54:20

Tech has a quote fiduciary

54:22

responsibility to ensure

54:25

that there is a nuclear there,

54:28

that there is uh a disaster

54:31

and end of the world nuclear fallout situation,

54:34

because if they don't, if

54:36

that doesn't occur, then all

54:38

of their investments.

54:40

Investors, investors right

54:43

the day have a fiduciary responsibility to their investors

54:45

to ensure that the vaults

54:47

are used right and that

54:50

there's a there's a reason that

54:52

these people have spent so much money and invested

54:54

so much money in these vaults.

54:56

We have that same fiduciary responsibility to all these

54:58

war profiteers and companies that we're in business

55:00

with making all of this stuff, that

55:02

it gets used and there continues to be in

55:05

need to be fed by these.

55:07

Products, yes, which in

55:09

my opinion, then goes directly to the lobbying

55:12

groups that work directly for those companies.

55:14

That then goes directly to the senators and lawmakers

55:16

and people in the White House. So

55:19

it really does feel like we're in this situation,

55:21

in this weird situation where there

55:23

is a fduciary responsibility

55:26

to be at war as much as

55:28

possible.

55:29

Yeah, it's all spelled out in nineteen

55:31

eighty four, the documentary, and

55:34

just really quickly then I'm done the

55:37

quote was the character he plays is Lewis

55:40

Strauss, and the quote is amateurs seek the

55:42

sun and get burned. Power stays

55:44

in the shadows.

55:46

Love it and outside of Spentley

55:48

Butler, maybe you will never

55:50

hear a top level military official

55:52

speak of the US and anything but glowing

55:55

terms. Make no mistake, folks. There's

55:57

a lot out there behind and beyond those

56:00

bright, pretty phrases. So

56:02

who is to say something like Northwoods couldn't

56:05

happen this decade, this

56:07

year, two thousand and one, this evening.

56:10

That's the stuff they don't want you to know. We

56:12

will return later this week with

56:15

more deep dives into the shadows.

56:17

In the meantime, we can't wait to hear

56:19

from you, folks. Let us know your

56:21

thoughts, let us know if you have firsthand

56:24

experience with north Woods or something

56:26

like it. We try to be easy to find online.

56:29

Find us on the Internet at the handle Conspiracy

56:31

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where you can join our Facebook group. Here's where it gets

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56:38

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56:42

Now, sorry, I sound like good Grandpapa face two Lee

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