WEBVTT - Revisionist History Riverboat Cruise: Curtis Maynard, Pt .1 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:02.880 Col Zone Media. 0:00:08.400 --> 0:00:10.800 On the Saturday night before Labor Day in two thousand 0:00:10.800 --> 0:00:14.560 and three, charter buses pulled into the lot at Cincinnati's 0:00:14.600 --> 0:00:19.560 public landing. Passengers streamed out of the buses, one hundred 0:00:19.560 --> 0:00:23.080 and fifty or so, mostly older white men in suits, 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:27.400 and they boarded the Delta Queen. It was a beautiful 0:00:27.480 --> 0:00:30.120 late summer evening for a dinner cruise down the Ohio River, 0:00:30.720 --> 0:00:32.960 and they'd spent all day cooped up inside in a 0:00:33.000 --> 0:00:36.920 rented ballroom at the Marriotte near the airport. They'd paid 0:00:36.960 --> 0:00:39.680 three hundred and seventy five dollars apiece to attend a 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:45.000 weekend long conference called Real History USA. But the history 0:00:45.040 --> 0:00:49.120 they were interested in wasn't what any real historian would 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:53.440 call real history at all. This was the fifth year 0:00:53.440 --> 0:00:56.960 in a row that disgraced historian and infamous Holocaust denier 0:00:57.080 --> 0:01:00.360 David Irving had brought anti Semites from around the world 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:08.000 to Cincinnati. Over the years, he's been banned from entering Canada, Germany, Austria, Australia, 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:12.000 New Zealand, and Lithuania, but he seemed to enjoy the 0:01:12.040 --> 0:01:15.440 Ohio River, and he came back to Cincinnati year after 0:01:15.520 --> 0:01:22.480 year that weekend speakers ranged from notorious to obscure, but 0:01:22.520 --> 0:01:27.160 they all shared a passion for Nazi Germany. Brigham Young 0:01:27.280 --> 0:01:31.280 University professor Tom Catherall had to cancel at the last 0:01:31.280 --> 0:01:33.800 minute due to a health concern, and I'm sure the 0:01:33.840 --> 0:01:37.600 attendees were devastated to miss his presentation on Hermann Goering's 0:01:37.680 --> 0:01:41.960 love of model Trains. Over lunch at the Marriotte on Saturday, 0:01:42.160 --> 0:01:45.960 they watched Lenny Riefenstahl's Victory of the Faith, the less 0:01:46.000 --> 0:01:49.680 famous predecessor to her infamous Nazi propaganda film Triumph of 0:01:49.680 --> 0:01:54.520 the Will. The conference program notes that Reefenstahl is quote 0:01:54.960 --> 0:01:59.040 still going strong at over one hundred and Irving said 0:01:59.040 --> 0:02:04.080 that Reefenstahal sends her greetings to the conference's attendees. David 0:02:04.080 --> 0:02:06.720 Irving couldn't have known then that his friend would actually 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:11.560 die later that week. On Sunday morning, the conference resumed 0:02:11.560 --> 0:02:15.200 with presentations from Donald Bustian, an adjunct professor at Southern 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:19.560 Arkansas University and founding member of a group called Scholars 0:02:19.600 --> 0:02:24.440 for Nine to eleven Truth. Before lunch, Charles Pravaan, a 0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:28.520 theologian whose anti contraception writing is highly regarded by adherents 0:02:28.560 --> 0:02:32.160 of the Quiverful movement opined on the possibility that a 0:02:32.280 --> 0:02:35.440 self published book by an American Jew was actually to 0:02:35.520 --> 0:02:41.000 blame for Hitler's policies in Germany. And that afternoon, David 0:02:41.000 --> 0:02:44.560 Irving gave the stage to a young protege, an up 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:48.040 and coming white nationalist blogger who'd recently finished his master's 0:02:48.080 --> 0:02:52.440 degree at Texas A and M University, Curtis Maynard presented 0:02:52.480 --> 0:02:55.399 his master's thesis on a lesser known incident from World 0:02:55.400 --> 0:02:59.680 War II. The one hundred and four page thesis doesn't 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:03.760 actually mentioned the Holocaust a single time. It's not about that. 0:03:04.840 --> 0:03:07.440 It's about a nineteen forty three German air raid on 0:03:07.600 --> 0:03:11.679 US naval vessels docked at Bari, Italy. But the old 0:03:11.720 --> 0:03:14.480 man in the Marriott conference room probably spent most of 0:03:14.520 --> 0:03:17.799 their Sunday afternoons watching the History Channel, so I'm sure 0:03:17.840 --> 0:03:21.600 they enjoyed hearing a dry resitation of facts about planes 0:03:21.680 --> 0:03:27.000 and ships. Either way, in two thousand and three, Curtis 0:03:27.040 --> 0:03:30.400 Maynard was a rising star in the revisionist history community. 0:03:31.320 --> 0:03:33.799 Sharing the stage with David Irving was a great honor 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:38.640 for an aspiring white supremacist writer, and in certain circles 0:03:38.800 --> 0:03:42.800 his writing was well regarded and is sometimes still remembered, 0:03:44.200 --> 0:03:48.320 but Curtis Maynard is best remembered for how his story 0:03:48.440 --> 0:03:51.920 ends at the wheel of a nineteen ninety four Lincoln 0:03:51.960 --> 0:03:55.920 sedan crash in a ditch with a bullet hole in 0:03:55.960 --> 0:04:02.680 his head. I'm Molly Counger, and this is where the 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:22.840 little guys. When I started writing this episode, I thought 0:04:22.880 --> 0:04:26.040 the story of Curtis Maynard would revolve around the revisionist 0:04:26.120 --> 0:04:32.040 historians and pseudo intellectuals he admired, But instead I spent 0:04:32.120 --> 0:04:36.279 most of this week reconstructing one man's disastrous downward spiral 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:38.760 after getting into a flame war on a form thread 0:04:38.800 --> 0:04:43.520 about Ron Paul. I think, at its core, this is 0:04:43.560 --> 0:04:48.640 a story about lies, not just the lies of dishonest scholarship. 0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:51.760 No listener to this show needs to be told this, 0:04:51.960 --> 0:04:58.800 But the Holocaust did happen. Millions of Jews, roma queer people, communists, 0:04:58.839 --> 0:05:02.360 and political dissidents or shot, gassed and starved to death 0:05:02.400 --> 0:05:06.400 by Nazi Germany. I have no interest at all in 0:05:06.480 --> 0:05:09.640 engaging with the revisionist history of David Irving and his ilk. 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:13.680 There's no debate to be had there, Although we will 0:05:13.920 --> 0:05:18.080 wade through a bit of the swamp they inhabit. No, 0:05:18.680 --> 0:05:23.200 this is a story about smaller lies, about the gossip 0:05:23.320 --> 0:05:25.640 and rumors that live in the comments on twenty year 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:30.440 old blog posts and ancient threads on hateful online forums, 0:05:30.480 --> 0:05:34.080 about interna scene, squabbles for clout on Nazi message boards, 0:05:34.080 --> 0:05:36.640 and debate within the white power movement about what kind 0:05:36.680 --> 0:05:40.760 of messaging will actually advance their cause. And it's a 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:45.360 story that ends in a despicable, tragic act of domestic violence. 0:05:47.360 --> 0:05:52.560 A woman was murdered, a child was shot, and children 0:05:52.600 --> 0:05:57.680 lost their parents. It's a story about the violent speech 0:05:57.920 --> 0:06:02.600 of violent men, men who talk about mass murder and genocide, 0:06:03.440 --> 0:06:07.040 and how sometimes those men cross the threshold into real 0:06:07.080 --> 0:06:11.039 world violence. This is something I spend a lot of 0:06:11.080 --> 0:06:16.200 time thinking about. It's unavoidable, really, I spend a lot 0:06:16.240 --> 0:06:20.000 of time studying the digital debris left behind after the fact, 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:24.520 after a man like this stops posting and starts loading 0:06:24.560 --> 0:06:29.000 his gun. But that's almost always where I start reading. 0:06:30.480 --> 0:06:34.880 I'm looking back in time. I already know what he did. 0:06:36.480 --> 0:06:39.360 A few months ago, I started researching for an episode 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:44.479 about a different man, a different murderer. I realized something 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:47.880 that seems obvious now. I just never really thought about 0:06:47.880 --> 0:06:52.760 it this way before. When I study the internet footprint 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:56.719 of a killer, I'm looking at a fossil of sorts, 0:06:57.640 --> 0:07:02.040 these posts preserved in stone, evidence of where he once was. 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:09.400 But those online ecosystems are thriving, busy places, full of 0:07:09.400 --> 0:07:13.920 people who read those posts the day they were made, 0:07:14.080 --> 0:07:18.720 people who responded to them. So what is for me 0:07:19.000 --> 0:07:24.840 some kind of artifact was once an actual conversation between 0:07:24.840 --> 0:07:29.200 real people who really knew each other, And when one 0:07:29.200 --> 0:07:32.640 of them logs off for the last time, the ones 0:07:32.720 --> 0:07:37.560 left behind processed that violence right there in the same 0:07:37.640 --> 0:07:43.760 digital forum they'd spent years chatting. The story they got 0:07:43.760 --> 0:07:48.200 me thinking about this particular genre of online conversation is 0:07:48.240 --> 0:07:52.480 when I haven't finished. Fraser Glenn Miller murdered three people 0:07:52.520 --> 0:07:57.440 in Kansas in twenty fourteen. He died in prison, convicted 0:07:57.480 --> 0:08:00.440 of those murders, but he was He was also a 0:08:00.440 --> 0:08:03.480 suspect in three other murders in nineteen eighty seven, and 0:08:03.680 --> 0:08:07.160 was a central figure in the Greensboro massacre, where Nazis 0:08:07.160 --> 0:08:10.640 and klansmen murdered five communist organizers in nineteen seventy nine. 0:08:11.960 --> 0:08:14.880 He didn't pull the trigger in nineteen seventy nine, and 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:17.920 nobody ever proved he did in eighty seven, but he 0:08:17.920 --> 0:08:21.640 played a part in those deaths. His hands were unclean 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:26.200 long before he opened fire in Overland Park. It's a 0:08:26.240 --> 0:08:30.240 long and complicated story, with mountains of archival material left 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:33.440 to consume before I'm ready to write it. But on 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:36.440 the day Miller started shooting outside a Jewish community center 0:08:36.480 --> 0:08:42.120 in Kansas, his peers saw the news. Within an hour 0:08:42.160 --> 0:08:45.880 of the shooting. There were threads on Stormfront and Vanguard News, 0:08:46.160 --> 0:08:50.040 the two most popular Nazi message boards of the day, 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:53.880 and in the immediate aftermath, a lot of the posters 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:58.120 were celebrating. They thought there were some dead Jews, in 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:03.040 their words, but others were skeptical about initial reports that 0:09:03.080 --> 0:09:07.000 the shooter had yelled Hyle Hitler as officers handcuffed him, 0:09:08.040 --> 0:09:11.680 and then someone posted the news footage of that moment 0:09:11.920 --> 0:09:16.559 of the shooter yelling Hyle Hitler, and the shooter's face 0:09:16.760 --> 0:09:20.240 isn't terribly clear, as he's being shoved into the back 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:24.240 of a police car. If you didn't know him, that blurry, 0:09:24.400 --> 0:09:27.439 poorly lit image wouldn't really look like anything at all. 0:09:29.200 --> 0:09:33.319 But they did know him. It was Brad Griffin, a 0:09:33.320 --> 0:09:36.240 prominent member of the secessionist group the League of the South, 0:09:36.320 --> 0:09:39.080 and a man I have my own history with who 0:09:39.120 --> 0:09:44.000 recognized Miller first. The shooter wasn't just one of their own. 0:09:44.280 --> 0:09:48.200 He was a prolific poster in their online community. He 0:09:48.320 --> 0:09:51.560 was someone they talked to every day, someone who'd been 0:09:51.559 --> 0:09:56.040 a significant figure in their movement for decades. And on 0:09:56.080 --> 0:10:01.280 both sides, users were searching for meaning, and some said 0:10:01.679 --> 0:10:04.080 they always knew this would happen, that he was going 0:10:04.120 --> 0:10:06.760 to crack one of these days and do something like this. 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:11.800 Others insisted that the man they knew would never do 0:10:11.920 --> 0:10:16.439 this and he must have been set up. Some celebrated, 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:21.160 some were disappointed, but no one grieved for his victims. 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:27.120 And those conversations seemed so unique to me. What a 0:10:27.240 --> 0:10:33.920 strange window into this terrible world. They're deeply troubling, of course, 0:10:34.000 --> 0:10:40.120 but surely those were an anomaly, I thought. But while 0:10:40.160 --> 0:10:43.520 I was researching for this episode, the story I'm circling 0:10:43.559 --> 0:10:48.720 around getting to this week, I saw it again because 0:10:48.760 --> 0:10:52.000 four years before Fraser Glenn Miller made his last post, 0:10:52.840 --> 0:10:55.840 that same online community reacted to the news that Curtis 0:10:55.840 --> 0:10:59.679 Maynard had murdered his ex wife and then taken his 0:10:59.679 --> 0:11:06.520 own life. But I suppose we should start at the end. 0:11:07.559 --> 0:11:12.680 On April twenty first, twenty ten, Curtis Boon Maynard was 0:11:12.760 --> 0:11:18.400 harassing his ex wife. It wasn't the first time they'd 0:11:18.440 --> 0:11:20.760 been divorced for a little over a year, and he 0:11:20.880 --> 0:11:23.920 hadn't reacted well to losing custody of their two daughters. 0:11:25.640 --> 0:11:28.680 I couldn't find any coverage that included the contents of 0:11:28.679 --> 0:11:31.280 any of those texts he sent Melissa Masa that day, 0:11:32.120 --> 0:11:34.880 but whatever it was, she was upset enough about the 0:11:34.920 --> 0:11:37.960 texts that she'd discussed them with a friend. That afternoon, 0:11:39.840 --> 0:11:46.200 at eight twenty pm, Melissa's neighbors heard gunshots. Her middle daughter, 0:11:46.440 --> 0:11:48.680 just twelve years old, ran to a neighbor's house with 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:52.560 her two year old sister in her arms. A neighbor 0:11:52.600 --> 0:11:56.000 heard the commotion and came outside and saw Melissa, a 0:11:56.120 --> 0:11:58.880 thirty four year old mother of three, dead in her 0:11:58.880 --> 0:12:02.640 front yard. He was still taking in the sight of 0:12:02.679 --> 0:12:05.480 his neighbor's body there on the lawn when he noticed 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:08.240 her ex husband, Curtis Maynard, pulling out of the driveway. 0:12:09.880 --> 0:12:12.040 The neighbor dialed nine when one as he started his 0:12:12.080 --> 0:12:15.800 own car following Maynard and providing his location to the dispatcher. 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:20.880 Officers who arrived at the house found Melissa's oldest child, 0:12:20.920 --> 0:12:25.120 a sixteen year old daughter from a prior marriage inside. 0:12:25.160 --> 0:12:27.960 She survived, but she had been shot in the face 0:12:28.080 --> 0:12:30.200 by the man who had been her stepfather since she 0:12:30.240 --> 0:12:35.160 was a toddler. Curtis Maynard was driving seventy miles an 0:12:35.200 --> 0:12:37.040 hour down the highway when police caught. 0:12:36.880 --> 0:12:37.959 Up to him. 0:12:38.960 --> 0:12:41.960 He ended the chase without ever even stepping on the brakes. 0:12:43.440 --> 0:12:45.120 He shot himself in the head while he was still 0:12:45.160 --> 0:12:48.720 speeding down the dark road. With the driver dead at 0:12:48.720 --> 0:12:51.160 the wheel, his car slammed into an SUV that had 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:52.920 pulled over on to the shoulder to get out of 0:12:52.960 --> 0:12:56.280 the way of the high speed chase. The mother and 0:12:56.360 --> 0:13:03.160 her two children inside were thankfully uninjured. The irresistible and 0:13:03.480 --> 0:13:06.640 unanswerable question in the aftermath of a tragedy like this 0:13:06.880 --> 0:13:11.880 is always why Why did he murder his ex wife? 0:13:11.920 --> 0:13:14.400 Why did he shoot his stepdaughter in the face? Why 0:13:14.440 --> 0:13:15.640 did he take his own life? 0:13:16.120 --> 0:13:21.400 Why? Today? Why like this? And there are no answers. 0:13:22.800 --> 0:13:26.400 Nothing I can tell you will explain this, not for 0:13:26.520 --> 0:13:31.400 lack of trying, But I can try to understand who 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:34.240 he was before the last day of his life, and 0:13:34.360 --> 0:13:37.400 piece together the fragments of an online argument that seems 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:39.880 to have been the beginning of the end of Curtis 0:13:39.960 --> 0:13:42.200 Maynard's dream of making a career out of being a 0:13:42.280 --> 0:13:49.040 racist blogger. I don't know exactly when Curtis Maynard decided 0:13:49.080 --> 0:13:50.000 he wanted to be a writer. 0:13:51.960 --> 0:13:53.400 He served briefly in the US. 0:13:53.400 --> 0:13:56.560 Army after high school. In nineteen ninety two, at the 0:13:56.559 --> 0:13:59.400 age of twenty five, he got his associate's degree in 0:13:59.480 --> 0:14:04.200 nursing began working as a registered nurse. In nineteen ninety six, 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:07.200 while he was still married to his first wife, he 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:09.840 started seeing the woman who had become his second wife 0:14:09.880 --> 0:14:15.720 and only murder victim, Melissa Mesa was actually still married 0:14:15.760 --> 0:14:19.120 to her first husband at the time, but they were separated, 0:14:19.160 --> 0:14:22.040 and Maynard would later say he'd believed she was already divorced. 0:14:23.760 --> 0:14:26.400 It's hard to piece together the particulars. 0:14:25.720 --> 0:14:28.240 Of a man's personal life so many years before he 0:14:28.280 --> 0:14:32.080 got online, but things were not going well. 0:14:32.560 --> 0:14:34.080 In nineteen ninety seven. 0:14:35.560 --> 0:14:38.160 Just as his divorce from his first wife was finalized, 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:40.600 a judge in Texas issued a bench. 0:14:40.440 --> 0:14:41.520 Warn't for him. 0:14:42.080 --> 0:14:44.840 He'd pled guilty to a dui in nineteen ninety four, 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:45.560 and he. 0:14:45.600 --> 0:14:48.440 Got off easy. He didn't have to go to jail. 0:14:48.480 --> 0:14:52.120 All he had to do was complete the DUI education program. 0:14:52.680 --> 0:14:53.520 But he never did it. 0:14:55.080 --> 0:14:59.280 So maybe he skipped town to avoid the benchwarn't maybe 0:14:59.280 --> 0:15:01.760 he was just looking for a fresh start after his divorce. 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:07.120 But just as he was doing court in Corpus Christi, Texas, 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:11.600 he got a job at a hospital in Idaho in 0:15:11.680 --> 0:15:14.960 June of nineteen ninety seven, right around the time Melissa 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:18.160 probably would have been realizing she was pregnant with Maynard's daughter. 0:15:19.360 --> 0:15:22.080 He did something he should not have done. 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:25.080 And I don't mean impregnating a woman who was still 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:25.960 married to another man. 0:15:26.040 --> 0:15:27.120 I don't care about that. 0:15:28.560 --> 0:15:31.120 But according to a decision from the Idaho Board of Nursing, 0:15:32.000 --> 0:15:36.040 one vial of demarole and one vial of morphine went 0:15:36.120 --> 0:15:40.480 missing from the locked narcotics cabinet at Boundary County Community 0:15:40.480 --> 0:15:45.760 Hospital on June twenty eighth, nineteen ninety seven. Missing opiates 0:15:45.800 --> 0:15:50.360 are a big deal in a hospital. They're not something 0:15:50.360 --> 0:15:53.840 that just gets misplaced and shrugged off. It's not a 0:15:53.880 --> 0:15:57.240 lost pen. These things are carefully accounted for. 0:15:59.000 --> 0:15:59.640 These days. 0:15:59.720 --> 0:16:03.160 Every things tracked in a computer system, but even in 0:16:03.200 --> 0:16:06.320 the dark ages of the nineteen nineties, every dose of 0:16:06.320 --> 0:16:09.120 an opiate had to be signed for. There was a 0:16:09.160 --> 0:16:13.520 record where every drop of this was supposed to be. 0:16:14.880 --> 0:16:20.280 If those vials were missing, someone had to have taken them. 0:16:20.360 --> 0:16:23.360 An inventory was done to determine if anything else was missing, 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:27.000 and a few days later it was discovered that two boxes, 0:16:27.360 --> 0:16:31.120 each containing ten vials of morphine, had been tampered with. 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:35.280 The evidence was turned over to the Bonners Ferry Police department. 0:16:35.840 --> 0:16:39.800 The hospital had their own investigation to conduct. They drug 0:16:39.840 --> 0:16:44.720 tested every hospital employee who had access to that cabinet. Sure, 0:16:44.800 --> 0:16:48.680 it's possible that a nurse who steals pain medication is 0:16:48.800 --> 0:16:52.560 just selling it, but there's a really good chance that 0:16:52.600 --> 0:16:56.440 whoever took that morphine was going to test positive for it. 0:16:58.160 --> 0:17:03.960 Everyone tested negative, well, everyone except for Curtis Maynard, who 0:17:04.040 --> 0:17:05.760 didn't show up for his shift on the day of 0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:10.200 the drug test. In fact, he never came back. 0:17:10.119 --> 0:17:27.200 To work at all. The police investigation. 0:17:26.640 --> 0:17:30.280 Would eventually determine that Maynard's fingerprints were on the boxes 0:17:30.320 --> 0:17:33.720 that had been tampered with. The morphine that should have 0:17:33.800 --> 0:17:36.920 been in those vials in that box had all been 0:17:36.960 --> 0:17:39.639 replaced with what the Board of Nursing decision only calls 0:17:39.720 --> 0:17:44.880 quote a benign substance, which I assume is a saline 0:17:44.960 --> 0:17:49.880 solution or something like that. So the investigation was kicked 0:17:49.920 --> 0:17:53.920 off because two vials were physically missing from the cabinet, 0:17:54.880 --> 0:17:57.760 But in the end, it looks like a significant amount 0:17:57.760 --> 0:18:01.439 of morphine was actually missing, having been taken from the 0:18:01.520 --> 0:18:04.520 vials and replaced with something else. 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:07.040 And so if he. 0:18:07.080 --> 0:18:11.719 Hadn't slipped up and stolen the vial of demarole, they 0:18:11.800 --> 0:18:16.119 might never have noticed that he'd been replacing morphine with 0:18:16.280 --> 0:18:20.280 salt water, and hospital patients may have been administered an 0:18:20.400 --> 0:18:26.000 unknown substance instead of their pain medication. By the time 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:29.120 those lab results came back, though Maynard had already moved 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:33.919 back to Texas, he was technically still a registered nurse 0:18:33.960 --> 0:18:37.960 with a valid license in Texas. When his oldest daughter 0:18:38.040 --> 0:18:40.320 was born in March of nineteen ninety eight, he was 0:18:40.359 --> 0:18:42.560 working as a nurse at a hospital in Corpus Christi. 0:18:43.600 --> 0:18:46.560 The Idaho Board of Nursing filed their formal complaint against 0:18:46.600 --> 0:18:49.960 him that summer, a year after the morphine first went missing. 0:18:51.359 --> 0:18:56.480 Maynard never responded. After months of getting no response from Maynard, 0:18:56.560 --> 0:18:59.040 the Idaho Board of Nursing got a default order against 0:18:59.119 --> 0:19:03.680 him suspend his nursing license, and before the Texas Board 0:19:03.680 --> 0:19:06.639 of Nursing had a chance to suspend him, a standard 0:19:06.640 --> 0:19:09.840 practice in most professions where if you're disciplined by a 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:13.359 board in one state, there is what's called reciprocal discipline 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:17.719 in most other states. But before Texas could do anything 0:19:17.840 --> 0:19:21.159 like that, he mailed them a letter saying I no 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:25.320 longer desire to be licensed as a professional nurse, and 0:19:25.359 --> 0:19:28.679 he voluntarily relinquished his nursing license before it could be taken. 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:34.280 The bonners Ferry Herald, a newspaper in bonners Ferry, Idaho, 0:19:35.040 --> 0:19:38.560 ran several announcements in the summer of two thousand that 0:19:39.119 --> 0:19:42.160 Curtis Maynard was wanted on a felony warrant for possession 0:19:42.160 --> 0:19:46.560 of controlled substance and theft, but Idaho court records don't 0:19:46.600 --> 0:19:48.680 show that any criminal case was ever filed. 0:19:49.760 --> 0:19:50.320 I have to. 0:19:50.320 --> 0:19:52.760 Assume that's in relation to the theft of the morphine 0:19:52.760 --> 0:19:55.679 three years earlier, but I don't know how those pieces 0:19:55.720 --> 0:20:00.600 fit together. He did move back to Idaho years later, 0:20:00.680 --> 0:20:03.520 but the five year statute of limitations had already passed, 0:20:03.560 --> 0:20:06.879 so he was never actually criminally charged in connection with 0:20:06.920 --> 0:20:12.000 the missing morphine. But in nineteen ninety nine, Curtis Maynard 0:20:12.040 --> 0:20:15.199 had lost his nursing license in Idaho and given it 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:18.600 up in Texas. He was unable to work in the 0:20:18.640 --> 0:20:22.239 only field he had any real experience in. He had 0:20:22.240 --> 0:20:24.439 a baby and a common law wife to support, and 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:29.000 he had a pretty serious addiction to alcohol and opiates. 0:20:30.040 --> 0:20:33.240 After twenty eight days of residential treatment for substance abuse, 0:20:34.240 --> 0:20:35.679 he did what a lot of people do when they 0:20:35.760 --> 0:20:38.639 have no idea what to do with their lives. He 0:20:38.680 --> 0:20:42.080 went to graduate school, enrolling in a master's program in 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:47.480 history at Texas A and M University. I wish I 0:20:47.520 --> 0:20:51.680 could tell you which came first. Did Curtis Maynard set 0:20:51.720 --> 0:20:54.359 out to write his master's thesis about a German air 0:20:54.440 --> 0:20:57.560 raid on US naval vessels in Italy because he had 0:20:57.560 --> 0:21:01.120 a genuine interest in this lesser known chapter of World 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:05.560 War II history, and he accidentally stumbled upon David Irvings's 0:21:05.600 --> 0:21:09.800 work while he was researching or was he already familiar 0:21:09.960 --> 0:21:13.560 with the work of revisionist historians and hoping to add 0:21:13.560 --> 0:21:14.280 his voice. 0:21:14.040 --> 0:21:14.560 To the choir. 0:21:16.040 --> 0:21:19.760 I'm not sure there's anyone left to ask, but whichever 0:21:19.840 --> 0:21:22.720 it was. By the time Maynard finished his thesis in 0:21:22.760 --> 0:21:25.639 the spring of two thousand and three, he wasn't just 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:32.480 reading David Irvings's Holocaust denial works. They were corresponding. The 0:21:32.480 --> 0:21:35.720 thesis not only lists three of Irving's books in its bibliography, 0:21:36.520 --> 0:21:39.760 there are several footnotes indicating the source for a particular 0:21:39.800 --> 0:21:45.040 claim is an email exchange between Curtis Maynard and David Irving. 0:21:46.840 --> 0:21:51.400 Maynard's thesis isn't about the Holocaust. The word doesn't even 0:21:51.440 --> 0:21:55.119 appear in the paper. There's no mention of Jews, camps, 0:21:55.200 --> 0:22:01.080 gas chambers, nothing like that. The writing isn't great, in 0:22:01.119 --> 0:22:04.080 my opinion, but I think he could have produced a 0:22:04.920 --> 0:22:10.560 serviceable paper about a real historical event. I dropped out 0:22:10.560 --> 0:22:13.119 of college, so to be honest, I have no idea 0:22:13.160 --> 0:22:17.080 how the thesis writing process works. Maybe there was no 0:22:17.240 --> 0:22:20.840 point at which someone read any of this in draft 0:22:20.960 --> 0:22:26.240 form and asked him, hey, why did you write quote 0:22:26.640 --> 0:22:29.959 Without the works of historians like Elkafrolic and David Irving, 0:22:30.000 --> 0:22:32.880 who conducted research in the former Soviet archives in Moscow, 0:22:33.240 --> 0:22:35.399 there is a distinct possibility that we would not be 0:22:35.480 --> 0:22:39.880 privy to the uncensored and unedited thoughts, ideas, and words 0:22:39.880 --> 0:22:41.920 of doctor Joseph Gerbels today. 0:22:43.240 --> 0:22:44.680 End quote. 0:22:45.280 --> 0:22:49.400 Because not only is that not true, David Irving is 0:22:49.680 --> 0:22:53.359 not solely responsible for existing works of scholarship on the 0:22:53.359 --> 0:22:57.240 diaries of Joseph Gerbels, but it's also just a really 0:22:57.320 --> 0:23:02.520 weird thing to say. There must not be any feedback 0:23:02.640 --> 0:23:07.560 provided in the process, because surely someone in the history 0:23:07.720 --> 0:23:11.840 department would have clocked it as very inappropriate to drop 0:23:11.880 --> 0:23:12.480 this line. 0:23:13.720 --> 0:23:14.120 Quote. 0:23:14.760 --> 0:23:18.040 David Irving's opinion cannot be dismissed easily, as he is 0:23:18.080 --> 0:23:24.600 a recognized expert on the third Reich end quote. I 0:23:24.640 --> 0:23:28.520 don't know how to convey to you how not true 0:23:28.600 --> 0:23:32.199 that is. That is the not truest thing that you 0:23:32.240 --> 0:23:39.119 could write in your master's thesis or history. Now you 0:23:39.280 --> 0:23:41.200 might have been able to say it with a straight 0:23:41.240 --> 0:23:45.120 face in the nineteen sixties. Maybe in the nineteen sixties 0:23:45.119 --> 0:23:48.439 you could say David Irving is a recognized expert on 0:23:48.520 --> 0:23:49.280 the third Reich. 0:23:50.520 --> 0:23:53.160 Maybe maybe you could still say it in the seventies 0:23:54.160 --> 0:23:57.239 into the eighties. If you're reckless, if you're careless, if 0:23:57.280 --> 0:23:59.360 you're not keeping up with current events, maybe you could 0:23:59.359 --> 0:24:02.439 still say it in the eighties, but by two thousand 0:24:03.400 --> 0:24:07.719 everyone in the world knew that David Irving was not 0:24:07.760 --> 0:24:12.560 a historian. In nineteen ninety three, Jewish history professor Deborah 0:24:12.560 --> 0:24:16.399 Lipstadt wrote a book called Denying the Holocaust, The Growing 0:24:16.400 --> 0:24:21.040 Assault on Truth and Memory, and in the book, David 0:24:21.080 --> 0:24:24.280 Irving was just one of a variety of figures within 0:24:24.359 --> 0:24:29.600 the Holocaust denial movement that Lipstat discusses, but he in 0:24:29.640 --> 0:24:33.959 particular took issue with her criticism of his work, and 0:24:33.960 --> 0:24:36.639 so in nineteen ninety six he filed a libel suit 0:24:36.680 --> 0:24:42.600 against Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher. David Irving is British, 0:24:42.800 --> 0:24:46.760 so he filed this lawsuit in the United Kingdom, and 0:24:46.840 --> 0:24:51.440 libel laws are different in the UK. I don't want 0:24:51.440 --> 0:24:52.480 to get into the weeds there. 0:24:53.040 --> 0:24:53.640 They just are. 0:24:54.960 --> 0:24:58.840 But even in England, the truth is the best defense 0:24:59.359 --> 0:25:02.960 against an act acusation like this. It can't be liable 0:25:03.000 --> 0:25:08.640 if it's true, and so Lipstot's lawyers hired Sir Richard Evans, 0:25:08.680 --> 0:25:13.320 a Cambridge University history professor who is an actual historian 0:25:13.680 --> 0:25:20.840 of modern Germany, and Evans spent two full years, with 0:25:20.960 --> 0:25:25.040 the help of full time research assistance producing a seven 0:25:25.119 --> 0:25:30.480 hundred and forty page report on his findings. He read 0:25:30.600 --> 0:25:36.280 everything David Irving ever wrote, everything David Irving ever said 0:25:36.560 --> 0:25:42.040 about the things that he wrote, and ultimately Evans concluded that, 0:25:42.520 --> 0:25:48.080 in his expert opinion, everything David Irving had ever written 0:25:49.280 --> 0:25:54.040 was quote completely worthless as history, because Irving cannot be 0:25:54.119 --> 0:25:57.000 trusted anywhere in any of them to give a reliable 0:25:57.040 --> 0:26:00.640 account of what he is talking or writing about. If 0:26:00.680 --> 0:26:04.000 we mean by historian someone who is concerned to discover 0:26:04.080 --> 0:26:07.040 the truth about the past and to give as accurate 0:26:07.119 --> 0:26:11.520 representation of it as possible, then Irving is not a historian. 0:26:13.200 --> 0:26:15.440 And at the end of the trial, a judge agreed, 0:26:16.000 --> 0:26:21.080 writing that Irving had quote persistently and deliberately misrepresented and 0:26:21.160 --> 0:26:27.760 manipulated historical evidence end quote because he was ideologically motivated 0:26:27.800 --> 0:26:30.439 to portray Hitler in a positive light and. 0:26:30.800 --> 0:26:31.840 Deny the Holocaust. 0:26:33.480 --> 0:26:37.000 So he sued Deborah Lipstadt for calling him a Holocaust denier, 0:26:37.080 --> 0:26:40.560 saying that was libel, and the judge said, it's not 0:26:40.920 --> 0:26:46.719 libel because legally you're a Holocaust denier. So we lost 0:26:46.800 --> 0:26:52.199 the libel lawsuit. But even worse for David Irving than 0:26:52.320 --> 0:26:55.320 losing the lawsuit and having to pay quite a large 0:26:55.359 --> 0:26:58.919 sum of money. Was the fact that a small army 0:26:59.040 --> 0:27:03.800 of historians had spent years going over his work with 0:27:03.840 --> 0:27:08.480