Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, it's Behind the Bastard's the podcast that you
Speaker 2: listen to if you're listening to it. If you don't
Speaker 2: listen to it, then you don't know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: So you know what, I hate you, but I don't
Speaker 2: hate my guest for this episode, Courtney Kosak.
Speaker 3: Courtney, Hello, so good to see you again.
Speaker 2: Good to see you again. Have you been since last
Speaker 2: we uh last we talked about somebody who was really bad?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, lots of bad people that I hear about
Speaker 4: every day in the news.
Speaker 3: But I have been like.
Speaker 4: Deep into working on my book, which is just full
Speaker 4: of people from my past.
Speaker 3: Oh That's what I've.
Speaker 2: Been working hopefully not the worst people in all of history.
Speaker 2: I have you only Yeah, I mean you did have
Speaker 2: that longtime friendship with momark Adaffi, but you know, tragically
Speaker 2: that ended badly. We all did. Look, he was cool
Speaker 2: at one point in time, he was not. So Courtney,
Speaker 2: you got something to plug you want to you want
Speaker 2: to drop that before we get into our our bastard
Speaker 2: for this episode, because we got a weird one for
Speaker 2: you this week.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I.
Speaker 4: Just wanna My My book is called Girl Gone Wild.
Speaker 4: It is my coming of age memoir. It's my debut.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I'm so tempted to just ask you a million questions
Speaker 4: about your book writing process, but we'll save that for
Speaker 4: another podcast.
Speaker 2: It's bad.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm just so excited that it's going to be
Speaker 4: out in March.
Speaker 3: It's available for pre order and it's all thrilling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Courtney. Uh So, speaking of my process, my process
Speaker 2: for writing a book is mostly to get delayed writing
Speaker 2: that book so I can continue writing podcasts. And this week,
Speaker 2: the podcast that I have written in lieu of finishing
Speaker 2: my book, uh is about is a weird one, right,
Speaker 2: This is normally a podcast but the worst people in
Speaker 2: all of history, And we have a bastard for this week,
Speaker 2: and our bastard for this week is a really interesting guy.
Speaker 2: His name is Steve Hatville, and he was recently made
Speaker 2: Special Advisor to the Trump Administration for Pandemic Preparedness. He
Speaker 2: has some relevant background here. He spent most of his
Speaker 2: career as a pathologist and a biological weapons expert, training
Speaker 2: US soldiers and how to deal with biological weapons, specifically
Speaker 2: weaponized viruses, And like a lot of people in Trump world,
Speaker 2: he's recently gotten into what we might call the alt
Speaker 2: science side of medicine. In twenty twenty, he advised the
Speaker 2: first Trump administration on COVID nineteen and became a major
Speaker 2: advocate of hydroxychloroquin as a treatment. Yeah, he's one of
Speaker 2: those guys. And in an article a couple of years ago,
Speaker 2: The Washington Post cited his statements as evidence supporting the
Speaker 2: idea that the Trump administration neglected pandemic response after losing
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty election. Quote Stephen Hatfield, a virologist who
Speaker 2: advised White House Trade advisor Peter Navarro, said he was
Speaker 2: intimately involved in the pandemic response, repeatedly described in the
Speaker 2: emails how stuff took precedence over a coronavirus even as
Speaker 2: the outbreak surged more than two hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 2: new coronavirus cases per day in January. Now, with the
Speaker 2: election so close, COVID is taking a back seat, yet
Speaker 2: the disease is rearing its ugly head again, Hatfill wrote
Speaker 2: to an outside colleague in October of twenty twenty, following
Speaker 2: the election, which was disputed by Trump. Hatfel wrote another
Speaker 2: email that he personally shifted over to the election fraud
Speaker 2: investigation in November, which says a lot about like the
Speaker 2: how the people close to Trump viewed themselves was like, well,
Speaker 2: I'm a virologist and a pathologist, but I'll get involved
Speaker 2: in the election frauds. I guess that makes sense for
Speaker 2: me to be working on during a pandemic more than
Speaker 2: the pandemic, right.
Speaker 3: The priority. I can't believe that's the priority.
Speaker 2: No, everybody's focusing on the election. Now. I don't care
Speaker 2: that you're the virus guy and there's a virus. Get
Speaker 2: on the elections.
Speaker 3: Hit all hands on tech, yeah.
Speaker 2: And true true to form. During that brief window, Hatfield
Speaker 2: traveled to Arizona to help organize a plan B for
Speaker 2: Trump's legal fight to retain the presidency. When a colleague
Speaker 2: email him on January fifth, task why he wasn't fixing
Speaker 2: the virus, he replied that the election thing had gotten
Speaker 2: out of control, and I go where my team goes,
Speaker 2: which at that point was to contest results in Nevada. Now,
Speaker 2: when it comes to this stuff, I have no trouble
Speaker 2: condemning hat Phil. I don't like him. I think he's
Speaker 2: a bad person. I think he's done bad things for
Speaker 2: the world. Here's where it gets weird. He's kind of
Speaker 2: the protagonist of our story this week, right, because this
Speaker 2: is we're going to be telling a story, and we're
Speaker 2: gonna be telling two stories, really, and in both of
Speaker 2: these stories, the bad guy is the FBI, and in
Speaker 2: more broadly, our entire justice system, right, and the media
Speaker 2: and how the media interacts with the justice system around
Speaker 2: high profile cases, you know, when people are desperately trying
Speaker 2: to figure out who did it and at a point
Speaker 2: at which you know, the cops decide literally we need
Speaker 2: to throw some name out there, and the media decides content, content, content, right,
Speaker 2: Like that's the evil here. We're talking about two different
Speaker 2: tear attacks where innocent people were accused by both law
Speaker 2: enforcement and journalists of having done terrible things. And hat
Speaker 2: Phil is one of those innocent people. So he's like
Speaker 2: a bad person, but he's also really unique among members
Speaker 2: of the Trump administration and that all of them hate
Speaker 2: the media. Hatfil is a really good reason to hate
Speaker 2: the mainstream media. They did him so fucking dirty, and
Speaker 2: it's a very weird story for that reason.
Speaker 3: In situation, they did him so dirty that.
Speaker 2: We're about absolutely absolutely completely destroyed his life for years
Speaker 2: for no reason, like just based purely on bad police
Speaker 2: work and lazy reporting, like that's what happened here, and
Speaker 2: so kind of what we're talking about. In addition to
Speaker 2: the justice system sure doesn't work very well, does it.
Speaker 2: Cops aren't very good at their jobs, are they. We're
Speaker 2: also telling a story of this is how law enforcement
Speaker 2: and the media kind of feeding off of each other
Speaker 2: created a month because the present day Steven hat Phil
Speaker 2: who was a member of the Trump administration, is created
Speaker 2: to a significant extent by how much this destroys his
Speaker 2: life and pisses him off, Like this really radicalizes him
Speaker 2: in a major way. And so it's interesting to understand
Speaker 2: for that perspective too, because we are talking about a
Speaker 2: bad guy, but he's not the bad guy in the
Speaker 2: story we're telling, which I haven't done before. So I'm
Speaker 2: excited for this kind of episode.
Speaker 3: I am so conflicted. I feel like you're doing me
Speaker 3: dirty a little bit. You're like, no, the Trump guy
Speaker 3: is the good guy.
Speaker 2: Well he's not the good guy. Let's be really clear.
Speaker 2: Protagonist rightist is not mean good guy. Okay, yeah, but
Speaker 2: he's not. He's not the wronged person in his story.
Speaker 2: But we are telling two stories, and basically this week
Speaker 2: we're going to be talking about first the Olympic Park
Speaker 2: bombing which occurred at the nineteen ninety six Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. Uh,
Speaker 2: and we're talking about the man who was wrong blamed
Speaker 2: for that attack and how that happened. And then and
Speaker 2: this is where hatfil comes in, we're going to be
Speaker 2: talking about the two thousand and one anthrax attacks in
Speaker 2: the United States after nine to eleven, because hat Phil
Speaker 2: is the guy who gets blamed for that, right, And
Speaker 2: so that's what we're talking about this week, is how
Speaker 2: both of you because these are with similar cases and
Speaker 2: they are emblematic of similar problems that still exist within
Speaker 2: law enforcement in the media to this day. Right, So
Speaker 2: that's what we're talking about.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm on the edge of my seat. Let's do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, this'll be fun. So for our first again,
Speaker 2: I just started. If I talking about hat Phil, we're
Speaker 2: not going to talk about him anymore in this episode
Speaker 2: because the guy who gets wrongfully accused of the Olympic
Speaker 2: Park bombings is not Steve hat Phil. He is a
Speaker 2: guy who was a cop for a brief span of time,
Speaker 2: although not he was not really a cop either, Like
Speaker 2: he's we'll talk. He's a wanna bee cop who gets
Speaker 2: to be it briefly and then is a secure, ready
Speaker 2: guard at the time. All this happens when he actually
Speaker 2: does some an act of legitimate heroism. And his name
Speaker 2: was Richard Jewel. Richard Allensworth Jewel was born Richard White
Speaker 2: on December seventeenth, nineteen sixty two, in Danville, Virginia. His
Speaker 2: father worked at Chevy and his mom helped. She was
Speaker 2: like an insurance claim adjuster type pursuit. She had some
Speaker 2: job in that hole. But I don't think she was
Speaker 2: an adjuster, but she was involved in the whole insurance
Speaker 2: claim thing. Something to do with insurance. I don't know.
Speaker 2: You don't come to this to hear about what people's
Speaker 2: moms did for the insurance industry. They divorced when he
Speaker 2: was four, and she remarried a guy named John Jewell
Speaker 2: who adopted Richard, and that's why he's known as Richard Jewel.
Speaker 2: Most of his life is not very interesting. The most
Speaker 2: important thing to know about Richard Jewel, Sophie will pull
Speaker 2: up a picture of him. This guy is like his
Speaker 2: phenotype is cop right, like he was born with cop
Speaker 2: in his blood. Like you just take one look at
Speaker 2: this man. He grows the kind of mustache that if
Speaker 2: you were, like, if you're biologically a cop, your body
Speaker 2: just produces that mustache, right, Like, I don't know that
Speaker 2: he ever had a choice in not wanting to be
Speaker 2: a cop, Like in terms of his character and personality,
Speaker 2: that's what he always wanted to be for the time
Speaker 2: he's a child. Richard idolizes the police. This is the
Speaker 2: only job he wants to do. Right, You're looking at
Speaker 2: the picture like that, that is a cop mustache, right,
Speaker 2: There's just simply no other way to describe it.
Speaker 3: He's like a Chicago cop.
Speaker 2: He's like a yes, yes, strong Chicago cop vibes. That's
Speaker 2: what he was born to do, and he's never gonna
Speaker 2: quite get there, tragically for Richard, so he idolizes the police.
Speaker 2: This is the only job he ever wants. He's one
Speaker 2: of these people who grows up believing the police are
Speaker 2: heroes surrounded on all sides by dangerous criminals, holding up
Speaker 2: society and protecting the innocence through sheer force of will
Speaker 2: and commitment to the law. So you know, he's pretty propagandaist, right,
Speaker 2: Like a lot of us were his kids. And when
Speaker 2: he grows up. You know, he doesn't immediately get into
Speaker 2: law enforcement. His first job, I think is working at
Speaker 2: and eventually managing a Tcby yogurt shop. But he shows
Speaker 2: some promise that like, oh, maybe this guy, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe this law enforcements what he's actually going to do,
Speaker 2: because while a manager of the store, he stops a
Speaker 2: robbery in progress, which you're not supposed to do when
Speaker 2: managing a retail store or a food store. You're not
Speaker 2: supposed to do that in any store, stop a robbery.
Speaker 2: But he does. I don't have any more details than that,
Speaker 2: but it gets him written up in local papers and
Speaker 2: it fuels his desire to get behind a badge. He's like,
Speaker 2: oh man, this is what I made for, Like, look
Speaker 2: at what I was able to do behind the desk
Speaker 2: at a Tcby treaty shop. Give me a gun and
Speaker 2: a badge. I'll really fox some shit up.
Speaker 3: If I can do this with ice cream. You gotta
Speaker 3: wait and see what I got.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. It's amazing. They didn't just hand him a
Speaker 2: gun and a badge right then and there.
Speaker 1: And Dan Clint East would make a movie about this guy.
Speaker 2: Yes he did, Yes he did. Okay, and we'll talk
Speaker 2: about that because it's gross.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: When he's twenty two, Jewel got hired to Claire for
Speaker 2: the Small Business Association, where he met and befriended a
Speaker 2: lawyer named Watson Bryant. He's good at the job, and
Speaker 2: he earns a reputation for being always on the ball.
Speaker 2: He's very on time, he's very outgoing, always puts in
Speaker 2: one hundred and ten percent. But he got placed there
Speaker 2: through a temp agency, and when the contract ran up,
Speaker 2: he took a job that brought him closer to his
Speaker 2: dream career, working as a detective for the Marriott hotel chain.
Speaker 2: I did not realize. I thought that was a joke
Speaker 2: in American Dad. I didn't know hotels had detectives, but
Speaker 2: apparently they do.
Speaker 3: That's the perfect job really for him. He should have
Speaker 3: kind of stopped there.
Speaker 2: I think, I don't want to be mean to the
Speaker 2: hotel detectives at the world, But imagine going on on
Speaker 2: a date and like, so what are you hear? Like, well,
Speaker 2: I'm a hotel detective. A hotel detective, huh are you
Speaker 2: like trying to figure out like what the stain was
Speaker 2: on the mattress? Was like it's come with the yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: just looking at up, just walking into everyone with a
Speaker 2: black light going yep, yeah, huh, yep. More people coming
Speaker 2: every day. I think somebody did cocaine off that table.
Speaker 2: Maybe I don't know, it could be more. Come In
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety, he gets hired as a jailer for the
Speaker 2: Habersham County Sheriff's Office. Right now, this is kind of
Speaker 2: a do nothing job. You're sitting in a small, smoke
Speaker 2: filled room occasionally dealing with the restees. It's not what
Speaker 2: he wants to be doing. He doesn't like it, but
Speaker 2: it's his foot in the door. And I guess in
Speaker 2: the nineties it was maybe there were enough the cops
Speaker 2: weren't like today, he would just find some police department
Speaker 2: in a big city that is offering like twenty thousand
Speaker 2: dollars signing bonuses because there's not enough cops because people
Speaker 2: don't want to do that job anyway. But I guess
Speaker 2: back then you had to really like work your way
Speaker 2: up to being a cop, right like, for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe it's just where he lives in Georgia,
Speaker 2: or maybe he's just not doesn't I don't know what.
Speaker 2: Maybe he doesn't go at Maybe there was an easier
Speaker 2: way to do it than he just didn't do I
Speaker 2: don't know yet, but yeah, he becomes a cop through
Speaker 2: working at the jail, right. Like, he does this for
Speaker 2: like a year or so, and it's one of the
Speaker 2: you can tell it's frustrating him because like working at
Speaker 2: the jail, he's almost a real cop. He could like,
Speaker 2: he could taste it, right, he could taste the authority,
Speaker 2: and so he starts to get over eager. One of
Speaker 2: my sources for this episode is an epic long form
Speaker 2: article in Vanity Fair by Marie Britter, and she writes,
Speaker 2: this is while he's still a jailer. Quote. He arrested
Speaker 2: a couple making too much noise in a hot tub
Speaker 2: in an apartment building where he did part time security work.
Speaker 2: He was arrested for impersonating an officer, and after pleading
Speaker 2: guilty to a lesser charge, was placed on probation on
Speaker 2: the condition that he seeks psychological counseling. You get to like,
Speaker 2: this guy wants to be a cop so bad it's
Speaker 2: kind of a problem, like man.
Speaker 3: Turning him into a peeping tom.
Speaker 2: First off, cops generally don't arrest people for being noisy
Speaker 2: in a hot tub. Even a cop is usually going
Speaker 2: to be like, hey, we got a noise complaint. Chill
Speaker 2: out right like this guy or just like busting in
Speaker 2: and arresting people. You have to imagine he had an
Speaker 2: illegally carried gun on him that he was just like
Speaker 2: these hot tub guys pull something on me. I'm just
Speaker 2: gonna blast him. We're being a little mean to Richard here.
Speaker 2: He is legitimately a hero in the end, but like,
Speaker 2: this is funny. I'm sorry, this is just this is
Speaker 2: just funny, Richard. This is a stupid thing that you did.
Speaker 2: He's dead now, it's fine. It doesn't care. So if
Speaker 2: a guy is so eager to be a cop that
Speaker 2: the instant he gets a job, sitting in the same
Speaker 2: room as a cop, he illegally arrests a couple for
Speaker 2: a noise complaint. That might be a warning sign not
Speaker 2: to give that person a badge and gun. But somehow
Speaker 2: Jewel worked his way up to being hired as a deputy.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety one, he goes to the North in America.
Speaker 2: I love it. Let's go and it's one of those yeah. Well,
Speaker 2: he goes to Northeast Georgia political Academy. He does well.
Speaker 2: He graduates in the upper twenty five percent of the class.
Speaker 2: He said that he read the Georgia Legal Code for fun,
Speaker 2: like he's obsessed with cop stuff. So I have no
Speaker 2: doubt that when it came to the in class portions
Speaker 2: of it, he aced everything right, like he's been prepped
Speaker 2: for this forever.
Speaker 3: I don't know how he did the obstacle.
Speaker 2: Course that might have been harder for him. Although this
Speaker 2: is Georgia, you know, we're not talking about a lot
Speaker 2: of cops who are like fucking superstar athletes in a
Speaker 2: rural Georgia sheriff's department. So he becomes a real cop.
Speaker 2: He now has a real badge and a real gun,
Speaker 2: and he is ready to get out there and fight
Speaker 2: crime a las. Poor Richard is about to run face
Speaker 2: to face into a reality that it's I don't know
Speaker 2: if he ever really fully accepts it, right, But this
Speaker 2: is like the great tragedy of Richard jules life, which
Speaker 2: is that he wants to be a cop. And I say,
Speaker 2: this is a guy who doesn't want there to be cops.
Speaker 2: He wants to be a cop for what you would
Speaker 2: say are the right reasons. He cares deeply about the law.
Speaker 2: He thinks it is important to abide by the law,
Speaker 2: and he wants to protect people. Check right, that's why
Speaker 2: he wants to become a cop. Police And this is
Speaker 2: not me the left wing radical saying this. The Supreme
Speaker 2: Court has ruled police have no duty to protect people,
Speaker 2: and it is a fact, an undeniable fact, that police
Speaker 2: all over the country break the law regularly, both in
Speaker 2: pursuing suspects and lying on the stand about them and
Speaker 2: falsifying evidence and planting evidence and using physical force that
Speaker 2: they are not legally supposed to be using. Cops break
Speaker 2: the law constantly. They are not there to protect people,
Speaker 2: and they do not uphold the law. These are facts, right, Robert.
Speaker 4: Did you ever have in your young Republican days did
Speaker 4: you ever did you think ops were good?
Speaker 2: I'm just curious, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I wanted
Speaker 2: to be a cop when I was a kid, right,
Speaker 2: And I wanted to be a cop for the worst
Speaker 2: possible reason, because at eighteen, if you become a cop,
Speaker 2: you get to carry a gun while off duty, and
Speaker 2: normally take you have to wait until you're twenty one
Speaker 2: to carry a gun, which is the wrong reason to
Speaker 2: become a cop, right, that's why you shouldn't let eighteen
Speaker 2: year olds become cops, which they almost did.
Speaker 1: You'd be the biggest crime committing cop we know.
Speaker 2: And when I was when I wanted to be a cop,
Speaker 2: which is again when I was like eighteen nineteen, part
Speaker 2: of why it was possible for me to have become
Speaker 2: one is that Dallas had just had to can a
Speaker 2: shitload of officers over a massive fake drug scandal, so
Speaker 2: like recruitment was down and they were desperate for Peter right,
Speaker 2: you could not reason. Yeah, I don't think I would
Speaker 2: have made it long. Like literally, within like a month
Speaker 2: or two of making my first calls for the police
Speaker 2: and like setting up that starting that process, I started
Speaker 2: experimenting with drugs. And as soon as I took two CI,
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, I'm not going to be a cop.
Speaker 2: Oh what the fuck? Was I thinking? Absolutely not? Are
Speaker 2: you kidding me?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no no. I want to do drugs.
Speaker 2: That sounds way better than being a cop. And it
Speaker 2: was for about ten years, and then at a certain
Speaker 2: point you have to do less drugs.
Speaker 3: Heard, Yeah, that's.
Speaker 2: My that's my my dare class for kids.
Speaker 4: Kids.
Speaker 2: I'm looking I'm looking at this room, I'm seeing a
Speaker 2: lot of seventeen and eighteen year old You guys got
Speaker 2: a solid twelve years before you got to curtail your
Speaker 2: drug use, you know, so really enjoy this time. You know,
Speaker 2: test everything for fitanyl, but other than that, go wild.
Speaker 2: You know, whatever you can fit in your body, throw
Speaker 2: it in there. Don't ask questions, Just do it and
Speaker 2: run off into the sunset. It'll be great when you're
Speaker 2: twenty nine, and maybe start to start pulling back on
Speaker 2: that throttle, you know, hit the brakes.
Speaker 3: What Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: I always give our child listeners good advice.
Speaker 3: Nonk, no fintanyl, no trink.
Speaker 2: No finanyl, no trank. Maybe try crocodile. If you get
Speaker 2: a chance to try that weird Russian drug that melts
Speaker 2: your skin, try that shit. You know it sounds dope.
Speaker 2: I never got to do crocodile. I regret it now
Speaker 2: that I'm in my sober era. Gas station sober and
Speaker 2: maybe they'll by gas station crocodile. Anyway, we were talking
Speaker 2: about how cops break the law lot and anyway, again,
Speaker 2: I have my opinions on this that are grounded in fact,
Speaker 2: but I also want to like cite facts and if
Speaker 2: I make a statement like cops break the law constantly. So.
Speaker 2: A twenty sixteen study by researchers at Bowling Green University
Speaker 2: looked into nearly six seven thousand cases of police officers
Speaker 2: being arrested and charged with crimes between two thousand and
Speaker 2: five and twenty eleven. They concluded, quote, police crimes are
Speaker 2: not uncommon now. One of the things this study notes
Speaker 2: is that only about a thousand officers are arrested each
Speaker 2: year in charge with crimes. But there are a lot
Speaker 2: more cops than that. Commit number one cops, it's very
Speaker 2: easy for them to get away with crimes. The number
Speaker 2: of cops who could break the law and don't get
Speaker 2: caught because they're cops is exponentially higher than a thousand.
Speaker 2: But there's also a lot of cases, and there's documentation
Speaker 2: of how often there's interviews with other cops that'll talk
Speaker 2: about this, of police breaking the law and having it
Speaker 2: swept under the rug. Right. Well, they'll get a warning
Speaker 2: from you know, maybe someone above them or something, but like, look,
Speaker 2: you know, just get your car home. I know you're
Speaker 2: drunk tonight. Because you're another officer, I'll let you off
Speaker 2: you as a professional courtesy you know, protector own again,
Speaker 2: there's data on this. It happens constantly. That said, the
Speaker 2: data on win cops do actually fuck up enough to
Speaker 2: get charged with crimes, the data on what crimes they
Speaker 2: commit is really interesting. From a summary in a Huffington
Speaker 2: Post article by Matt Ferner, quote, the alleged crimes cops
Speaker 2: whore arrested fore most frequently were simple assault, driving under
Speaker 2: the influence, and aggravated assault. Altogether, those crimes made up
Speaker 2: one third of the total cases. There were also a
Speaker 2: considerable number of sex crime cases, including forcible fondling and
Speaker 2: forcible rape, about ten percent of all cases, and disturbingly,
Speaker 2: the sex crimes included some victims under the age of eighteen.
Speaker 2: If you are looking at the vast majority of child
Speaker 2: sex abuse is people who are related to the child.
Speaker 2: When you move out from people who are directly related
Speaker 2: to the child, the most common people who abuse kids
Speaker 2: are like members of the clergy, medical professionals, and police officers,
Speaker 2: not in that order necessarily, but yes, because they have
Speaker 2: access and because they have plug you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so wait, sex crimes and what was the first
Speaker 4: thing you said.
Speaker 2: Oh, driving under the influence, cops drive drunk all the
Speaker 2: fuck of time, and some assault just hitting, beating people,
Speaker 2: beating spouses. You know, fifty percent of police officer homes
Speaker 2: have domestic violence in them.
Speaker 3: Do you remember that South Dakota? Was he a cop
Speaker 3: or a politician.
Speaker 2: Or sin something like that, which one.
Speaker 3: Just a couple of years ago.
Speaker 4: But he fucking killed a guy and then drove home,
Speaker 4: and that they I mean, I think he got away
Speaker 4: with it.
Speaker 2: Well good for him. You know we all, we all
Speaker 2: would hope to be able to get away with at
Speaker 2: least one murder in our lives. I can't blame a
Speaker 2: man for that, for just wanting to kill a guy
Speaker 2: and get away with its most normal thing to want.
Speaker 2: I don't know why I said that. So, the most
Speaker 2: common crime committed by police is also the one they
Speaker 2: get arrested for the least often, which is lying under oath.
Speaker 2: This is so common that cops have a term for
Speaker 2: it called testa lying. And if you know, I have
Speaker 2: a friend who became a lawyer and was briefly a
Speaker 2: prosecutor and stopped being a prosecutor because he was like,
Speaker 2: I just kept going. I kept sitting down with police
Speaker 2: officers and saying, are you sure this is accurate, and
Speaker 2: then when it came to trial it would be like
Speaker 2: they lied, right, Like that happened. That happened so many
Speaker 2: times that I put my ass out there as a
Speaker 2: prosecutor because a cop told me no, this is definitely
Speaker 2: what happened, and they were fucking lying. It happens all
Speaker 2: the goddamn time. And again there's documentation about this. This
Speaker 2: is such a problem that in New York City prosecutors
Speaker 2: have a secret database of untrustworthy cops. Again, a secret
Speaker 2: database of cops that like, yeah, we if you're a prosecutor,
Speaker 2: don't let this guy up on the stand if he's
Speaker 2: telling you something it's like full of shit. But also,
Speaker 2: we're not going to report this anywhere. More broadly, in
Speaker 2: the nineteen nineties, the Malin Commission carried out a sweeping
Speaker 2: investigation of the NYPD, and it found that perjury and
Speaker 2: falsification of records were routine by police and quote the
Speaker 2: most common form of police corruption. You might want to
Speaker 2: note that those two crimes tend to be committed in
Speaker 2: order to get a conviction against a defendant. Right, if
Speaker 2: you are lying under oath and falsifying records, the most
Speaker 2: likely reason you were doing that is because there was
Speaker 2: a crime and you're pretty sure the guy you got
Speaker 2: did it, but you can't prove it, so you're lying
Speaker 2: to make it easier to secure a conviction. Right, Or
Speaker 2: you don't know the guy did it, or think the
Speaker 2: guy did it, you just hate him because you're a bigot,
Speaker 2: or you want to fuck his wife or whatever. Right,
Speaker 2: and you're doing that, you know. But the most common
Speaker 2: crime committed by cops all over is lying under oath
Speaker 2: and falsifying records, and that those two things are generally
Speaker 2: done to get people convicted, right, Cops lie to get convictions.
Speaker 4: I love how we go around saying like lying under
Speaker 4: oath is a felony, like your mail is a felony.
Speaker 3: It's like, no, you can totally do those things.
Speaker 2: I steal mail all the time, baby, but I don't
Speaker 2: keep it for myself. I hand it out to other
Speaker 2: people who don't have it off. Yeah yeah, yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: I take mail from those It's like it's me living
Speaker 2: out my Marxist praxis, you know, from each according to
Speaker 2: their ability to have a lot of mail in their
Speaker 2: mailbox to those without as much mail in their mailbox.
Speaker 2: I think that's what Marx was talking about, I didn't
Speaker 2: make it all the way through capital. I go through
Speaker 2: all this. This is a bit of a digression from
Speaker 2: Richard Jewel, but it's important to note that the vast
Speaker 2: majority of criminal behavior inside our justice system is perpetrated
Speaker 2: by police officers, and not just police officers, but by
Speaker 2: people who are in the justice system who are attempting
Speaker 2: to get convictions and have to futz with the truth
Speaker 2: in order to secure conviction because the actual evidence isn't
Speaker 2: strong enough. Right. That's an important point. And I know
Speaker 2: this has been a long digression, but I need to
Speaker 2: emphasize it a little further. So I'm going to read
Speaker 2: one quote from a very good Slate article by Mark
Speaker 2: Stern titled the police lie all the time? Can anything
Speaker 2: stop them? Quote? When NYPD officers are accused of illegal behavior,
Speaker 2: the department itself usually investigates, then conceals its findings in
Speaker 2: imposes at worst a slap on the risk like brief
Speaker 2: paid leave. Prosecutors could separately investigate, but they have little
Speaker 2: incentive to question an officer's story. If they know an
Speaker 2: officer is lying, they cannot legally rely on his testimony.
Speaker 2: If they remain in the dark, they can still use
Speaker 2: his perjury to clinch a conviction. Moreover, prosecutors and police
Speaker 2: work together to put defendants behind bars, developing a team
Speaker 2: mentality that prevents prosecutors from scrutinizing officers testimony with appropriate skepticism.
Speaker 2: As long as officers lies cannot be proved false, prosecutors
Speaker 2: have little reason to question their account of events. As
Speaker 2: a New York assistant district attorney told the Maulin Commission,
Speaker 2: taking money is considered dirty, but perjury for the sake
Speaker 2: of an arrest is accepted. It's become more casual. Great,
Speaker 2: this takes us to Richard Jewel. But first, you know
Speaker 2: what Richard Jewel would have loved if he were alive
Speaker 2: to see this.
Speaker 3: Ads.
Speaker 2: He would have loved ads supporting podcasts. That would have
Speaker 2: been Richard Jewele's favorite thing. Ah tragic. We're back and
Speaker 2: we're talking about police officers lying under oath in order
Speaker 2: to secure arrests and convictions. Right, and Richard Jewel, I tell,
Speaker 2: I've just told you this guy wants to be a
Speaker 2: cop more than anything. He idolizes cops. He is not
Speaker 2: the kind of guy I don't think who would have
Speaker 2: lied to get an arrest. Or to get a conviction.
Speaker 2: He does. He is a true believer, right, and that's
Speaker 2: gonna cause him problems, right, because I'm not saying this
Speaker 2: to like, I don't think he's a he's not a
Speaker 2: person I would consider. I don't consider his ethics to
Speaker 2: be ethical, right, Like, I don't think it's ethical to
Speaker 2: arrest people for making noise in a hot tub, right.
Speaker 2: And he's very serious about a lot of stuff that
Speaker 2: I don't agree with. But he's consistent. He's internally consistent.
Speaker 2: He does believe in the law, and he's not a liar.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: He's a very He described himself as a very methodical person.
Speaker 2: He liked to plan out everything. He read the Georgia
Speaker 2: Legal Code for fun. And he's not gonna fit in
Speaker 2: with the Sheriff's department because he wants to be a
Speaker 2: good cop and they have a very different idea about
Speaker 2: what a good cop is. Right. He described the rural
Speaker 2: county he worked in as like going back into the
Speaker 2: seventies in terms of law enforcement. In other words, this
Speaker 2: is a place where there's good old boys who enjoy
Speaker 2: limited immunity to crimes, and there's other people, skin color
Speaker 2: dependent who are You're much more free to harass or hassle, right,
Speaker 2: and that's not the kind of cop Jewel wants to be,
Speaker 2: right if this were. He's kind of like Sergeant Nicholas
Speaker 2: Angel in Hot Fuzz, right, where he's like he's too
Speaker 2: good for the rest of the department, Except he's not
Speaker 2: very good at the job either, right, Like, he has
Speaker 2: really good and very strict intentions, but he's not like
Speaker 2: the most competent at police work. And he's also pissing
Speaker 2: everyone off because he takes a lot of stuff seriously
Speaker 2: that they don't take seriously, and he doesn't like it
Speaker 2: when other people are kind of more loosey goosey with
Speaker 2: the rules. So he gets sidelined mostly into dealing with
Speaker 2: car accidents, right, because that's the part of the job
Speaker 2: he does well and nobody else really wants to do it.
Speaker 2: He works really hard, he puts in fourteen hour days.
Speaker 2: He volunteers to host community events. He's the cop that
Speaker 2: they'll he'll go talk to a school or whatever. He
Speaker 2: loves doing that kind of shit, But his fellow officers
Speaker 2: are kind of just after they get to know him,
Speaker 2: waiting for an excuse to shitcan him and get him
Speaker 2: off of the force, right, because again he's kind of
Speaker 2: cramping their style and he's attempting to the story. He
Speaker 2: tells us that he was trying to pursue someone and
Speaker 2: he crashes his police car in nineteen ninety five, and
Speaker 2: that's the chance these people had been waiting for, right,
Speaker 2: So he is demoted, he loses his badge. He's offered
Speaker 2: to stay working at the jail, but Richard is unwilling
Speaker 2: to return to that kind of life, so he resigns
Speaker 2: from the force and he gets the kind of job
Speaker 2: that you get when you're a failed cop. He becomes
Speaker 2: a campus cop, right, perfect, Yeah, that's the it's the
Speaker 2: circle of cop. So Piedmont College hires him and he
Speaker 2: immediately gets a reputation. Again, he's super diligent, like he
Speaker 2: will absolutely write people up for every infraction he sees,
Speaker 2: and he will pursue the kind of infractions you know.
Speaker 2: College campus cops generally you understand like it at certain
Speaker 2: times and stuff. People are going to party, there's going
Speaker 2: to be underage drinking, and you don't always go after that,
Speaker 2: right because, like for what they it's kind of impossible
Speaker 2: to police it all. So you kind of triage that
Speaker 2: sort of shit. Right, Richard can't stand any kind of
Speaker 2: violation of the rules, and so he goes after kids
Speaker 2: whenever he sees any kind of infraction. He's issuing tickets,
Speaker 2: he's trying to arrest people. He is very aggressive about this,
Speaker 2: to the point that the president of the college gets
Speaker 2: calls three or four times a week from different people
Speaker 2: complaining to him about Jeweles behavior. Right, Like, he thinks,
Speaker 2: my job is to be a cop, and the real
Speaker 2: job is to basically be a babysitter and make sure
Speaker 2: kids don't.
Speaker 3: Die, right, Yeah, that they don't hurt themselves.
Speaker 4: I'm sure they love to fuck with him, though, Oh
Speaker 4: my god, he's like the.
Speaker 2: Dream absolutely And he again he does sound like the
Speaker 2: most annoying campus cop. And it was during them, his
Speaker 2: campus cop days, that Richard would notch his one real
Speaker 2: victory in the war on crime. During a manhunt for
Speaker 2: a suspected burglar, he spotted the culprit hiding near the
Speaker 2: top of a tree. Writing for Vanity Fair, Marie Brynner
Speaker 2: notes that Jewel had arguments over turf with other officers.
Speaker 2: He described himself as the kind of cop who is
Speaker 2: eager to track down people partying after hours and call
Speaker 2: their parents. Oh and this obsession, yeah, this all clashes
Speaker 2: with what his employers want him to do. The president
Speaker 2: of the university repeatedly begs him, hey man, calm the
Speaker 2: fuck down, like he's up. This is not what we
Speaker 2: want you doing, and Richard refuses to bend, so he
Speaker 2: resigns rather than accept that some kids are going to
Speaker 2: drink on campus and maybe you need to chill out.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: So, once this job falls through, he finds himself back
Speaker 2: in Atlanta, looking for a new job and living with
Speaker 2: his mother. Now, because of the way this all timed out,
Speaker 2: the Olympics is coming to town, right, this is the
Speaker 2: Atlanta Olympics. I don't know why the fuck you'd want
Speaker 2: to hold an Olympics in a city that has such
Speaker 2: nightmarish summer weather and horrible traffic. But they only host
Speaker 2: cities in places with horrible traffic, or host Olympics in
Speaker 2: places with horrible traffic, which is why they're doing it
Speaker 2: in La next maybe the only city worse than Atlanta
Speaker 2: to do the Olympics in the good fucking lucky Olympic
Speaker 2: dick shits. I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 3: I remember watching this one.
Speaker 2: Great gymnastics, Yeah, great gymnastics, great terrorism, all sorts of
Speaker 2: good stuff in this Olympics. So Richard is excited for
Speaker 2: the Olympics because you know, they're a disaster for any
Speaker 2: city's economy.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: They never really work out very well in the long run,
Speaker 2: But in the short term they work out really well
Speaker 2: for one group of people, which is security guards, because
Speaker 2: you need a shitload of security guards standing around all
Speaker 2: of these different venues and you know areas of the
Speaker 2: city that have been like walled off for the event
Speaker 2: to tell people, hey, you can't be here, or to
Speaker 2: help generally, to help people like figure out where they're
Speaker 2: supposed to go, right, You're kind of glorified like maths.
Speaker 2: A lot of the time. I helped desk as a
Speaker 2: security guard in the situation. But you need a lot
Speaker 2: of those guys, right, because it's the fucking Olympics. So
Speaker 2: Jewele later recalled thinking, I thought working at the Centennial
Speaker 2: Olympic Park will look really good on my resume. I
Speaker 2: don't know that that's the case. That's the kind of
Speaker 2: man Richard was. He gets the job easily enough, and
Speaker 2: he brings the same attitude to this next gig that
Speaker 2: he brought to his previous career as a real cop.
Speaker 2: It was actual job, as best as I can put
Speaker 2: it together, was to stand overnight by a sound and
Speaker 2: light tower near the main stage area. The people who'd
Speaker 2: planned for the Olympic Atlanta Olympics did a terrible job,
Speaker 2: as is always the case when people planned for an Olympics,
Speaker 2: and so the whole downtown area, the whole Olympic Park downtown,
Speaker 2: which is like twenty one acres, was constantly claught. It
Speaker 2: was a nightmare. Athletes are regularly late for their events
Speaker 2: because they just like can't get through this shit. Almost
Speaker 2: nobody who's in this park is from Atlantis. They don't
Speaker 2: know where they're going anyway, and everything's like walled off
Speaker 2: and fenced off in a weird way. It's just a
Speaker 2: fucking Titanic mess. So his job is helping to manage
Speaker 2: foot traffic and help lost people get where they're going. Now.
Speaker 2: Marie Brynner talked extensively with Richard Jewel for her piece,
Speaker 2: and he gives us in some of these interviews, we
Speaker 2: get clips, like pieces of his day to day life
Speaker 2: that do not make this sound like a demanding job.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: This is on paper supposed to be kind of a
Speaker 2: do nothing gig quote. Jewel had a routine he would
Speaker 2: check in and fill the ice chest he kept by
Speaker 2: a bench at his station. Jewel liked to offer water
Speaker 2: and cokes to pregnant women or policemen who stop to rest.
Speaker 2: Those are the two guys who deserve cokes. Pregnant women
Speaker 2: and cops.
Speaker 3: One of them probably shouldn't have cokes.
Speaker 2: But that's one of them. Probably shouldn't have a coke.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Fuck it, yeah, a little bit of
Speaker 2: a little bit of caffee. I think we get too
Speaker 2: we're too protective of fetuses these days.
Speaker 3: I agree. I agree. Eat sushi whatever, it doesn't matter,
Speaker 3: eat sush.
Speaker 2: She have some coffee, A little bit of crack cocaine
Speaker 2: probably not bad for you. What just a little bit,
Speaker 2: a little bit. It's cleaner as a hunter. Biden reminded us,
Speaker 2: all it's cleaner than it's basically like an apple. So
Speaker 2: very little is expected of Richard Jewel in his job
Speaker 2: as security guard, but as usual, he takes the job
Speaker 2: very seriously. This is one thing I'll say for him.
Speaker 2: He doesn't consider in a normal instance, maybe we'd call
Speaker 2: this sad, but he doesn't consider being a security guard
Speaker 2: to be any less serious than being a police officer. Right.
Speaker 2: He treats the job the same way, and thank god
Speaker 2: he did, because he's going to save a shitload of
Speaker 2: people's lives. This is really like a wild moment of
Speaker 2: like this guy. Every other thing else I've said about
Speaker 2: him is this is like the fucking set up to
Speaker 2: a very depressing not Adam Sandler Rob Schneider movie, right,
Speaker 2: or I guess Paul Blart Malcot might be a better
Speaker 2: fucking comparison or whatever. But like, it doesn't sound like
Speaker 2: we're setting up for this guy to have be very impressive,
Speaker 2: but he is, because again, he treats this job like
Speaker 2: it's life and death and it's about to be a
Speaker 2: bit after midnight on July twenty seventh, nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 2: jul is doing his rounds and he notices that the
Speaker 2: people at Budworld, which I'm assuming was a pop up
Speaker 2: bar sponsored by Budweiser, we're getting kind of rowdy and loud. Now.
Speaker 2: I wanted to know what bud World was, so in
Speaker 2: order in an effort to do my due diligence, I
Speaker 2: googled bud World Olympics, which brought up this television ad
Speaker 2: which I'm just gonna get everybody so weaken before we
Speaker 2: move on here. Everyone just needs a little hit of
Speaker 2: the nineteen nineties, just like just like one quick dose,
Speaker 2: you know, just a little bump to get us through.
Speaker 3: Oh, I can't wait.
Speaker 2: Okay, World, everyone's got to add something to the party.
Speaker 2: In Mexico. You've got this awfu Saiti sunset. How about
Speaker 2: two weeks were France La We'll get back to your France,
Speaker 2: gree the hook he started the whole thing.
Speaker 3: Malaysia, Yeah, some of those Norway, you're in charge.
Speaker 4: Of the ice.
Speaker 2: Uh. We got the Fudd the Bud World party during
Speaker 2: the ninety six Summer Games.
Speaker 3: Now everybody else has culture. We got beer.
Speaker 2: That was my question, like who is this most racist
Speaker 2: to because it, weirdly enough, I think it's Americans. Yes,
Speaker 2: where it's like, oh yeah, all these other cultures got there.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess Norway is just being like Ice.
Speaker 2: That's kind of fucked up too. Oh the nineties. Okay,
Speaker 2: now that we've all gotten that, that that quick, quick,
Speaker 2: hot hit of the nineties, let's get let's get back
Speaker 2: to the terrorist attack that we're talking about. So Jewel
Speaker 2: Richard jewel here's people getting drunken rowdy at the bud
Speaker 2: World event where you're supposed to get drunken rowdy, right,
Speaker 2: and worse, he sees that people have spilled out of
Speaker 2: the event itself and there's like leaving beers on the
Speaker 2: ground and wandering around and you know, being a problem.
Speaker 2: And him being the campus cop who got fired for
Speaker 2: being too angry at people partying, he leaps into action
Speaker 2: and he goes off to report the trash and the
Speaker 2: quote carousing. And this may be the only time in
Speaker 2: history where a rent a cop being overly a buzzkill
Speaker 2: works out because on his way to report the not
Speaker 2: really a crime in progress, he notices something. Someone has
Speaker 2: left a green military style backpack lying on the ground unattended.
Speaker 2: So Richard reports the bag and a small team of
Speaker 2: law enforcement bears down on the area and they start
Speaker 2: looking around to try to find the bag's owner. And
Speaker 2: interviews after the fact, Jewelry recalled that he didn't take
Speaker 2: this seriously at first. They'd found a similar unattended bag
Speaker 2: a few days ago, and he expected this to end
Speaker 2: like that had, right, So as soon as he calls
Speaker 2: out the bag and you cops start trying to figure
Speaker 2: out who the bag belongs to. He winds up in
Speaker 2: an argument with a group of drunk people who like
Speaker 2: smudge a camer lens, and then he kind of realizes
Speaker 2: like they're not finding the owner of the bag. So
Speaker 2: he walks over to this GBI, the Georgia's Bureau of Investigation,
Speaker 2: it's like the state FBI for Georgia, and he asked
Speaker 2: the guy, are you going to open it? And then
Speaker 2: here's Jewell quote. At that point, it was not a concern.
Speaker 2: I was thinking to myself, well, I'm sure one of
Speaker 2: these people left it on the ground. When Davis, that
Speaker 2: the GBI agent, came back and said nobody said it
Speaker 2: was theirs, that's when the little hairs on the back
Speaker 2: of my head began to stand up. I thought, uh, oh,
Speaker 2: this is not good. So he and that agent clear
Speaker 2: a twenty five foot square. They start getting people away.
Speaker 2: They're like, everyone needs to clear the area. Clear the area,
Speaker 2: and they clear a twenty five foot square around the bag.
Speaker 3: Nobody looks in the bag or like that's no, you.
Speaker 2: You really, because who knows if that's what triggers it, right,
Speaker 2: if like opening it or whatever would set it off
Speaker 2: or something you you as a security guard, and some
Speaker 2: random guy from the GBI shouldn't like obviously bomb people,
Speaker 2: but like you don't. You don't want some guy who
Speaker 2: has no fucking idea what he's doing with explosives to
Speaker 2: look into that.
Speaker 4: Bag, right, I just don't look at a I totally agree,
Speaker 4: but I don't look at a backpack, and I'm like, bomb.
Speaker 3: But I guess in this situation you have to Yes.
Speaker 2: Thank god he did, right, Like yeah, it is like,
Speaker 2: this is one of those things where I have to say,
Speaker 2: nearly everyone would have just been just a fucking bag,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't. And Richard was in there, right, you know,
Speaker 2: he was waiting his whole life of being like overly
Speaker 2: paranoid and fucking serious about shit for the one time
Speaker 2: in which it mattered and saved a shitload of people's lives.
Speaker 2: So he does a circle while they're clearing people where
Speaker 2: he starts sticking his head in different structures in the
Speaker 2: park and basically saying, hey, get out of whatever, cause
Speaker 2: there's you know, there's different Like you've got these like
Speaker 2: booths where people are like filming for different day and
Speaker 2: like yelling at people, get the fuck out now, get
Speaker 2: the fuck out now, right, And he deserves a lot
Speaker 2: of credit here. He flips from normal day wandering around
Speaker 2: angry at drunk people too. I have to clear this area,
Speaker 2: something really bad could be happening. And he does this
Speaker 2: before he knows there's a bomb there. He just I
Speaker 2: think that it must just be instinct or whatever. But
Speaker 2: as a result, because of how many people he and
Speaker 2: this other guy Davis clear away. When the bomb goes off,
Speaker 2: and it's sometime after one in the morning, it's like
Speaker 2: a little after one am, it doesn't harm nobody, right,
Speaker 2: but it harms only a fraction of the people who
Speaker 2: might otherwise have been present. Like the if the pipe bob,
Speaker 2: if the area had been as crowded as it was
Speaker 2: supposed to be, I mean, it could have been a
Speaker 2: dozen or more people dead, like potentially dozens and dozens injured,
Speaker 2: you know, and like.
Speaker 3: How many people died.
Speaker 2: Two deaths, one directly and one indirectly, and like one
Speaker 2: hundred eleven injuries. So if they hadn't cleared the area,
Speaker 2: it killed two people and injured more than one hundred
Speaker 2: after they had cleared the area. If they hadn't cleared
Speaker 2: the area, if it was still full of drunk people
Speaker 2: and camera crews and the like, like just a nightmare.
Speaker 2: Like it would have been much worse. They saved a
Speaker 2: lot of people's lives, right, I mean, easily more than
Speaker 2: a dozen lives. I don't know how. It's impossible to
Speaker 2: say how many, but I would have been shocked if
Speaker 2: it had been if it was any less than that, right,
Speaker 2: they This really is a significant thing that Jewel does,
Speaker 2: and Jewel and this other guy Davis do, But Jewel
Speaker 2: is the guy who notices at first. Probably nobody would
Speaker 2: have picked it out if he hadn't, right, because this
Speaker 2: was his area and it was his job to be
Speaker 2: on guard. And he was right, which kind of justifies
Speaker 2: his entire life up to this point, right, you know,
Speaker 2: And that should be a happy story, right, this kind
Speaker 2: of happy hapless you know, guy who couldn't hack it
Speaker 2: as a cop, rent a cop, never got respect. He's
Speaker 2: finally a hero, He's legitimately a hero.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: They cleared and estimated seventy five to one hundred, one
Speaker 2: hundred people away from the area, So again, at least
Speaker 2: another seventy five to one hundred people would have been
Speaker 2: in the blast radius if they had not done what
Speaker 2: they did Nancy Coleman for The New York Times rites quote.
Speaker 2: The pipe bomb inside the bag exploded minutes later. Alice
Speaker 2: s Hawthorne, a spectator from Albany, Georgia, died in the blast.
Speaker 2: Millie Uzannel, a Turkish cameraman running to cover the explosion,
Speaker 2: died of a heart attack soon after. Right, so again,
Speaker 2: and that's, you know, a death from a heart attack,
Speaker 2: so potentially, assuming that hadn't happened, Like you're talking one
Speaker 2: death directly from the explosion as opposed to an additional
Speaker 2: seventy five to one hundred people being in the blast.
Speaker 2: Ratis right, not not hard to imagine how much worse
Speaker 2: it could have been. Jewel kind of becomes a hero immediately,
Speaker 2: like he it's very clear from the jump that he's
Speaker 2: the guy who spotted this and what he had done.
Speaker 2: And he gets interviewed by local and national news later
Speaker 2: that day, he tells CNN, the only thing I wish
Speaker 2: we could have done is got everybody out of the area.
Speaker 2: I feel for the victims and their families, and I mean,
Speaker 2: it's the Olympics. It's supposed to be a time of
Speaker 2: joy for the world, and it's a very very bad thing.
Speaker 2: And obviously he's traumatized by the explosion. He's there, he's
Speaker 2: at ground zero, he sees the injuries, he sees the
Speaker 2: person who's killed, so that he's fucked up by this, obviously,
Speaker 2: but he's also undeniably the hero. And in a better world,
Speaker 2: he would have gotten the validation he'd always sought and
Speaker 2: it probably would have been good for his career. Right.
Speaker 2: I have trouble if this had been where the story ended.
Speaker 2: I have trouble imagining him not getting hired by a
Speaker 2: police department somewhere only to get the good pr of
Speaker 2: bringing on this hero security guard. Right.
Speaker 3: He could definitely work for ICE now for sure.
Speaker 4: Right? Well?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Unfortunately, the world is not a just place and
Speaker 2: instead of you know, this leading to him actually having
Speaker 2: a career, you know, in law enforcement, this nearly ruins
Speaker 2: his life, right, Like, this absolutely shatters him for quite
Speaker 2: some time.
Speaker 3: So from the trust are you about to know? Okay?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So as soon as the blast happens, Jules old
Speaker 2: boss at Piedmont College, Ray Clear, sees his former employee
Speaker 2: on TV and he gets pissed because he didn't like
Speaker 2: they'd fallen out when Richard caught a kid's smoking pot
Speaker 2: and insisted on arresting and charging the boy, and Clear
Speaker 2: was like, no, just like cite him, you don't. We
Speaker 2: don't need any arrests of students over marijuana. That's like, don't,
Speaker 2: don't do that, right, And obviously Clear is in the
Speaker 2: right here. But because he doesn't like Richard Jewel, he
Speaker 2: doesn't trust him, and he thinks that he's because he's
Speaker 2: kind of been He's this weird guy, right, he's like
Speaker 2: weirdly into being a cop. He's just had rubbed Clear
Speaker 2: the wrong way. And so Clear calls the Georgia Buer
Speaker 2: of Investigation and he reports, Hey, this guy who everyone
Speaker 2: is saying is the hero, I think he's got a
Speaker 2: lot of attension seeking behavior and bad judgment and maybe
Speaker 2: you should take another look into him, right, basically saying,
Speaker 2: maybe maybe he's set it up right, and you could
Speaker 2: almost see you can see it a logic there. Okay,
Speaker 2: sure this guy had failed out of being a cop.
Speaker 2: He wants to be a hero. Maybe he planted a
Speaker 2: bomb so that he could get everyone away from it.
Speaker 2: Right now, that's a stretch, and the there is not
Speaker 2: any evidence ever that this was the case. So again,
Speaker 2: I think this is just a guy who didn't like
Speaker 2: Richard calling the GBI and trying to, like, out of
Speaker 2: jealousy or something, fuck up his former employee. But the
Speaker 2: tip gets passed along to the FBI, and the FBI
Speaker 2: takes it seriously and they send out investigators to look
Speaker 2: and do every aspect of Jules life.
Speaker 1: Robert, I would never out you to the FBI, I promise.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Sophie, that that is absolutely doesn't sound like
Speaker 2: something someone who just outed me to the FBI would say.
Speaker 1: I would never do that. I would never do that.
Speaker 2: What if I arrested a kid for smoking pot?
Speaker 3: Poor form? Even with enemies, I think, don't go out
Speaker 3: of your way to fuck with someone's life like you
Speaker 3: should be evidence.
Speaker 2: This guy was just like, hmmm, I don't know, he's
Speaker 2: got to use an attention seeker. I don't trust him, even.
Speaker 3: A weird guy. I didn't like him.
Speaker 1: Let me call sir.
Speaker 2: You were being I was on your back for the
Speaker 2: pot thing. But you are the dick here now, right, Yeah?
Speaker 2: And you know the initial investigation and honestly, any responsible
Speaker 2: investigation would have looked into Jewel a little, right because
Speaker 2: he was there, and you always like, that's not unreasonable
Speaker 2: to look into the guy, right, But being the FBI,
Speaker 2: they pursue this in the most fucked up and scummy
Speaker 2: way possible. So two days after the bombing, Jewel gets
Speaker 2: a phone call from a friend of his with the
Speaker 2: Georgia Bureau of Investigation. This is like somebody that he
Speaker 2: had been social with. I think somebody that he idolized,
Speaker 2: because this guy is a real, you know, special agent, right,
Speaker 2: that's kind of what I want to do, right. And
Speaker 2: so the FBI when they find out that there's someone
Speaker 2: and the jerge of Bureau of Investigation who knows Jewel,
Speaker 2: they're like, hey, he likes you, right, he thinks you're
Speaker 2: his friend, gets some info out of him, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: So this guy at the GBI calls Jewel and he's like, hey, buddy,
Speaker 2: who I probably hadn't talked to in weeks. I was
Speaker 2: out of work the day the bombing happened. Mind if
Speaker 2: I come over to your house and you tell me
Speaker 2: what happened. I'm just really curious about how you were
Speaker 2: such a hero. Obviously, this guy's wearing a wire the
Speaker 2: whole time, right. So Jewel is unaware, though he thinks
Speaker 2: that his cool friend in the GBI is proud of
Speaker 2: him and just wants to hear about his triumph and Mayami,
Speaker 2: who knows, maybe I could get a job at the
Speaker 2: GBI after this, right, you know, having just saved all
Speaker 2: these people's lives. Now again, Jewel does not catch on.
Speaker 2: But what's happened here is at this early stage, the
Speaker 2: FEDS have gone from considering Richard Jeul a hero to
Speaker 2: within days suspecting him of being the bomber. Right almost immediately,
Speaker 2: he becomes their prime Like there's a couple of guys earlier,
Speaker 2: as we'll talk about who they'd seen, but very quickly
Speaker 2: he becomes the primary focus of the investigator, and the
Speaker 2: reasoning why they focus on him boils mostly down to laziness.
Speaker 2: And this is my opinion here, but I think there's
Speaker 2: some professional jealousy going on here too. Because the fbis
Speaker 2: out in at every Olympics in the US. Obviously, the
Speaker 2: GBI is there because it's in Georgia. These are the
Speaker 2: premier law enforcement agencies in the region that are supposed
Speaker 2: to be making sure a bombing doesn't happen. They both
Speaker 2: fuck up. A bomber gets through security with a bomb,
Speaker 2: enters the Olympic park area and sets off the bomb
Speaker 2: without being caught. And the only reason it wasn't worse
Speaker 2: and that dozens of people aren't dead is that a
Speaker 2: rent a cop outperformed the entire federal law enforcement apparatus,
Speaker 2: all of the millions of dollars in gear, the bomb
Speaker 2: sniffing dogs, the metal detectors, None of that did any shit.
Speaker 2: None of these highly paid special agents figured out fuck
Speaker 2: none of them caught anyone anything one Before this happened.
Speaker 2: It was a rent a cop walking back to complain
Speaker 2: about some drunk kids who spotted the bomb and saved
Speaker 2: the day. Right, And I think that pisses off and
Speaker 2: embarrasses the FBI. I think the attitude for a lot
Speaker 2: of people in the bureau is like and it particularly
Speaker 2: is we'll talk about the guy who's the director of
Speaker 2: the BEAU at the time, is like, well, this looks
Speaker 2: really bad for us, unless that fucker was the bomber.
Speaker 2: Then then then the FBI gets to be the hero again,
Speaker 2: right once we once we take this guy down, Right now,
Speaker 2: you know who would never sell you out to the FBI?
Speaker 1: The product, Yeah, the products and services that support me.
Speaker 2: Honestly, several of our sponsors would sell you out to
Speaker 2: the FBI. Anyway, here's a ans we're back. So the
Speaker 2: FBI is embarrassed, and this embarrassment also, it's not just
Speaker 2: that like they'd fucked up and let a bomb go
Speaker 2: off at the Olympic Park and the rent a cop
Speaker 2: was the guy who caught it. But this has been
Speaker 2: a bad This is we're talking ninety six. This has
Speaker 2: been a bad decade so far for the FBI and
Speaker 2: for federal law enforcement as a whole. Couple of years
Speaker 2: ago you had Ruby Ridge and then Waco, and Waco
Speaker 2: is still very fresh in the public mind. And then
Speaker 2: obviously the Oklahoma City bombing happens a year before this bombing, right,
Speaker 2: and the FBI fails to stop it.
Speaker 1: That's literally the trifecta.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, they don't look good right now. And the
Speaker 2: fact that yet another bomber bombed yet another high profile
Speaker 2: place that the FBI is supposed to be protecting does
Speaker 2: not make them look.
Speaker 3: Good, right unless this guy did it.
Speaker 2: Unless this guy did it and then we catch him
Speaker 2: and then we're heroes again, right, And Yeah, the more
Speaker 2: investigators looked into it, the more it looked like there
Speaker 2: might be a case here. Because everyone they talk to
Speaker 2: is they reach out to the guys. Number one. A
Speaker 2: lot of Jeweles former co workers don't like him, and
Speaker 2: they don't like him because they were I think, as
Speaker 2: a general rule, shadier cops than he was, right, and
Speaker 2: because he's legitimately seems to have been kind of annoying, right, Like,
Speaker 2: he was very over zealous. But none of those things
Speaker 2: are like crime or terrorism adjacent.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: But they start putting together this because they're only looking
Speaker 2: at a narrow and this is this kind of myopic
Speaker 2: detective blindness you get if you're only looking at a
Speaker 2: really narrow subset of the facts, it can look well, okay,
Speaker 2: we're just looking at jewel Oh, he's over zealous. He
Speaker 2: really badly wants to be a cop. He do anything
Speaker 2: to be a cop. Maybe he cooked all this up
Speaker 2: for the benefit of his career, and it really does
Speaker 2: seem like he's making the most of his fifteen minutes
Speaker 2: of fame. He gets interviewed by CNN. The AT and
Speaker 2: T's publicity team basically works up an appearance and makes
Speaker 2: him wear a company shirt because he'd been a security
Speaker 2: guard for AT and T. I guess because AT and
Speaker 2: T wanted Americans to associate their favorite phone company with
Speaker 2: a terroristic bombing that killed and named people. I don't
Speaker 2: know why. It's a weird call at and D.
Speaker 3: That is weird.
Speaker 2: Marriott for sure, Yeah, that would make sense. Richard would
Speaker 2: later claim the idea of going on TV made me nervous.
Speaker 2: I was not the hero. There were so many others
Speaker 2: who saved lives, and perhaps the FBI would have concluded
Speaker 2: its investigation without Jewel catching on. Right again, some degree
Speaker 2: of looking into this guy is reasonable, but given what
Speaker 2: happens next here, that winds up being impossible. And the
Speaker 2: reason why there's no chance to keep this under wraps,
Speaker 2: and the reason why everything blows up and Jewel's life
Speaker 2: blows up is that the Atlanta Journal Constitution, which is
Speaker 2: a local paper of record in Atlanta, publishes an article
Speaker 2: on July thirtieth in which they announced that the FBI
Speaker 2: had a suspect for the bombing security guard Richard Jewel. Now,
Speaker 2: the Journal was owned by Cox Newspapers, who had flown
Speaker 2: something like three hundred people in from other papers to
Speaker 2: report out of the Journal's office. They had like sent
Speaker 2: reporters around, flown them all around the world to like
Speaker 2: study up on different sports that they could report well
Speaker 2: on the Olympics, because they're putting out a daily special
Speaker 2: Olympics edition and the expense they've spent millions preparing to
Speaker 2: cover the Olympics. Right now, this is a time in
Speaker 2: which there's more money in the newspaper biz. But you
Speaker 2: got to remember whenever you're investing that kind of capital
Speaker 2: into an endeavor, you have to make a return, right.
Speaker 2: And so the new editor of the paper, John Walter,
Speaker 2: is expecting the fact that there's been a bombing that's
Speaker 2: like a huge boon potentially to the media, right, Like,
Speaker 2: this is something people are going to read about. And
Speaker 2: we're the paper of record for Atlanta. We've got to
Speaker 2: be the ones breaking the scoops. We can't get scooped
Speaker 2: by the big national papers. We can't let the New
Speaker 2: York Times take this from us, right, get something out
Speaker 2: about this, you know. And the editor is this guy,
Speaker 2: John Walter, who is he had replaced a more traditional
Speaker 2: ethical newsman. Walter is of this kind of generation of
Speaker 2: guys who's trying to find more exciting and profitable ways
Speaker 2: to package news content as opposed to doing good journalism,
Speaker 2: pro vanity fair quote more and more, the paper's influence
Speaker 2: was on what John Walter called chunklets, short bits, and
Speaker 2: soft news style known as eye candy, published features on
Speaker 2: couple's massage and how mushrooms grow in the rain. Walter
Speaker 2: had fired off several terse memos to ensure that there
Speaker 2: would be no more jumps of news stories to back
Speaker 2: pages and no more unsourced news stories except on rare occasions.
Speaker 2: I don't see any reason why you can't report hard
Speaker 2: news in a short form, one editor told me. The
Speaker 2: AJAC style of reporting and declarative sentences had a name too,
Speaker 2: the Voice of God. It was omniscient because it allowed
Speaker 2: no references to unattributed sources. Subjects such as aids, which
Speaker 2: often required confidentiality, could not be covered properly in the paper.
Speaker 2: In the opinion of several reporters, the AJAC picked up
Speaker 2: news stories with unnamed sources from the New York Times, however,
Speaker 2: and reporters groused about the hypocrisy of the double standard. Now,
Speaker 2: all this was going to cause problems because the journal
Speaker 2: can't let themselves be scooped in their hometown, but they
Speaker 2: get reached out to They get basically a leak from
Speaker 2: the FBI, who leaks them documents that make it clear
Speaker 2: that Richard Jewel is their chief suspect, right. That's what
Speaker 2: happens is someone from the FBI talks to them. And
Speaker 2: this is a really ethically questionable thing because a person
Speaker 2: who is suspected of a crime has not been charged
Speaker 2: with it. They certainly haven't been convicted. Is it ethical
Speaker 2: at all to report that this guy is under suspicion
Speaker 2: right now, because you're going to nuke his life and
Speaker 2: make a huge number of people think he murdered someone
Speaker 2: and tried to murder dozens more people. Right, But on
Speaker 2: the other hand, it's going to sell papers, so obviously
Speaker 2: print that shit, right And so General reporter Mary Scruggs
Speaker 2: writes an article titled FBI suspects hero guard may have
Speaker 2: planted bomb, and again it uses this kind of voice
Speaker 2: of God phrasings to where like they did they had
Speaker 2: a source that they couldn't admit that it had reached out
Speaker 2: to them, But they don't say that, right, Like, they
Speaker 2: don't address that at all. And I'm going to read
Speaker 2: a quote from the article. Richard Jewell, thirty three, a
Speaker 2: former law enforcement officer, I fits the profile of the
Speaker 2: lone bomber. This profile generally includes a frustrated white man
Speaker 2: who is a former police officer, member of the military,
Speaker 2: or police wannabe who seeks to become a hero.
Speaker 3: That's so fucked up.
Speaker 2: That's so fucked up. Like, that's not even a that's
Speaker 2: not a real profile. That's not the lone bomber. How
Speaker 2: many loan bombers have fit this profile?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: Also, yes, he's eager and like wants to be liked.
Speaker 2: I mean that's I'm sorry. I don't think the standard
Speaker 2: Loane bomber is a wannabe cop who wants to be
Speaker 2: a hero, in part because the guy who actually did
Speaker 2: the bombings, who will talk about later, was an anti
Speaker 2: abortion activist who was bombing people because he thinks abortion's murder.
Speaker 2: He's a Christian extremist, supremacist, special Forces veteran, but.
Speaker 1: Somehow doesn't think murder is murder.
Speaker 2: I think he's fine with murder. Oh, like they're all
Speaker 2: fine with murder, just not fine with women having choices.
Speaker 2: We understand what this is about. We don't have to
Speaker 2: play around with their semantics games.
Speaker 4: There was definitely gonna be a manifesto though, that was
Speaker 4: really involved in this, and thank you. I was worried
Speaker 4: that this was still unsolved, so I'm so no, no, no, they.
Speaker 1: Figured it out.
Speaker 2: It gets solved as shit. Okay, I'm just bringing it
Speaker 2: up to point out, like their compl profile is completely wrong, right, yes,
Speaker 2: Now as to how this all happen, because we don't
Speaker 2: exactly know how they got their source, It's very likely
Speaker 2: they get leaked by someone in the FBI, but I
Speaker 2: don't think that that's been proven to a point of certainty.
Speaker 2: The director of the FBI at this point was a
Speaker 2: toad named Lewis free fr e H. He came into
Speaker 2: the bombing prime to make bad decisions. One of his
Speaker 2: closest advisors was former Deputy director of the FBI Larry Potts,
Speaker 2: who tried to cover up FBI incompetence at Ruby Ridge three,
Speaker 2: made himself responsible for the oversight of the bureau's efforts
Speaker 2: in this high profile case. He comes in and as
Speaker 2: immediately like I am, I am, like where the buck
Speaker 2: stops with this case. I'm directly overseeing this as director
Speaker 2: of the FBI, because this is like obviously, given everything
Speaker 2: that's happen, and nothing matters more than us quickly finding
Speaker 2: a culprit, right, and they don't, you know, initially there
Speaker 2: had been like a suspect, a suspect who was like
Speaker 2: a drunk at a bar who the night before and
Speaker 2: made some threatening comments. So he's their first suspect. But
Speaker 2: it turns out he's got an alibi. And this happens
Speaker 2: a couple of times, right where they'll find someone and
Speaker 2: he'll seem like it might this guy might have been
Speaker 2: the one who did it, and then it'll become clear
Speaker 2: that he could not have been the bomber, and Free
Speaker 2: flips out at his subordinates each time. He becomes, in
Speaker 2: their words, abusive, condescending, and dismissive every time they tell him, no,
Speaker 2: it couldn't have been that guy. And whenever they start
Speaker 2: to suspect a new person, Free will declare, we have
Speaker 2: our man. He does that every time. And so when
Speaker 2: they settle on and they get this leak and they
Speaker 2: start looking in to Richard Jewel, Free is like, we've
Speaker 2: got our guy. This is him, this has to be him.
Speaker 2: Make sure it's him, right, and that there is some
Speaker 2: evidence that suggests that Free orchestrated the leaking of information
Speaker 2: hours after the bombing. Right because he does this seems possible.
Speaker 2: We know he does this with the first time they
Speaker 2: have a suspect that drunk at the bar, like there's
Speaker 2: a leak, so the papers know the FBI's got someone,
Speaker 2: and then it's really embarrassing to him because that guy
Speaker 2: wound up not having done it right, So it's just
Speaker 2: very likely that he did the same thing with Jewel, Right, are.
Speaker 4: The Olympics like going on the whole Like, yeah, yet.
Speaker 2: Slow shit down a bit, but okay, it's more just
Speaker 2: a matter of there is this high profile bombing at
Speaker 2: the Olympics. The FBI still hasn't caught the guy. The
Speaker 2: Oklahoma City bombing happened a year ago and they didn't
Speaker 2: stop that. It's just this like, we have to prove
Speaker 2: that we're worth all the money that the country spends
Speaker 2: on us, because it really doesn't look like it right now. Right,
Speaker 2: we're fucking we're taking a massive l in public and
Speaker 2: I can't accept that, you know. So, for their part,
Speaker 2: the journal avoids telling anyone how they got because it's
Speaker 2: like a memo that they get that that lists Jewel
Speaker 2: is the suspect, and they don't. Oh again, it's this
Speaker 2: whole voice of God thing. They give no attribution and
Speaker 2: they don't cite a source Atlanta Magazine describes their reporting
Speaker 2: as quote, leaving the reader to wonder whether the claims
Speaker 2: came from a legitimate law enforcement enforcement official or from
Speaker 2: a proclamation of God. It's this And I have so
Speaker 2: many issues with like the way a lot of media
Speaker 2: works with like objectivity in this book, and this is
Speaker 2: another example of that of like, no, this is the
Speaker 2: way our paper sounds.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: We don't cite anonymous sources. We don't say that we've
Speaker 2: been leaked something because that would be kind of that
Speaker 2: would be breaking this voice of God that is so
Speaker 2: important to us. Otherwise people aren't going to trust the journal.
Speaker 2: And so what that does here is the FBI leaks
Speaker 2: to them instead of saying, yeah, the same guy who
Speaker 2: leaked to us, the same people who leak to us
Speaker 2: the name or a suspect who was exonerated have leaked
Speaker 2: again a suspect, but this guy one's totally it. Guys,
Speaker 2: but we're not going to tell you where it came from. Right,
Speaker 2: nobody's doing well here, you see it like it's the Meatia. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and particularly this one publication are being slimy as shit
Speaker 2: because it's good for business and because they've made a
Speaker 2: series of bad decisions editorially, and the FBI is just
Speaker 2: desperate to have to make it clear, No, we're doing
Speaker 2: our jobs, We're on the ball, you're safe, we know
Speaker 2: what we're doing. We know we fucked up and let
Speaker 2: a bombing happen, but you know it's really not our
Speaker 2: fault because it's probably the security guard. How could we
Speaker 2: have known?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 2: Right, Like that's that's what they're trying to do.
Speaker 4: It's like the headlines where it's like the people in
Speaker 4: Gaza were bombed, but it's like.
Speaker 3: By who exactly? Yeah right, yeah, I don't mean to
Speaker 3: bring down the vibe.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, but like it is this all of
Speaker 2: these are like continuing problems for a lot of legacy media,
Speaker 2: right like this, like the the paper's brand and reputation
Speaker 2: is what matters more than like making sure that we're
Speaker 2: doing things ethically, and obviously traffic money, make sure that
Speaker 2: makes me more than making sure we're doing things ethically. Right,
Speaker 2: these these articles will sell, People will buy our paper
Speaker 2: if we're covering this case. So let's just if that
Speaker 2: means destroying Richard Jewel's life, fuck him. Right, So you've
Speaker 2: gotten the FBI, you've got the director pressuring every lead
Speaker 2: to be the guy, and Jewel, you know, seems like
Speaker 2: their best bet. So that article drops on the thirtieth,
Speaker 2: the same day that two FBI agents show up at
Speaker 2: Richard Jewel's house and ask him if he wants to
Speaker 2: make a training film for them, So he doesn't actually
Speaker 2: get to see this article that the journal's published saying
Speaker 2: that he's the FBI's main suspect. But on the same
Speaker 2: day they show up early at his house and like, Hey,
Speaker 2: you did such a good job. Would you make a
Speaker 2: training video for us about how spotted the bomb? Yeah,
Speaker 2: why don't you come in the station? And because we
Speaker 2: just we're such big fancy maybe you've got a career
Speaker 2: in the bureau Richard, right, Obviously there's no training film.
Speaker 2: They want to in to review him, to see if
Speaker 2: he will slip up or be inconsistent or lie under
Speaker 2: the guise of recording his wisdom as a training video
Speaker 2: for new agents. Jewell started to realize something was up
Speaker 2: when his car was tailed by four other FBI cars
Speaker 2: on the way to the office and they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't worry about it, it's fine, and he's like,
Speaker 2: that seems weird. I feel like you don't need four
Speaker 2: or five cars to take a guy to do a
Speaker 2: fucking interview. And then they end the interview this this
Speaker 2: training video, by asking him to sign a waiver of
Speaker 2: his rights, and then he's like, wait a second, that's
Speaker 2: no Actually, I think I want a lawyer now, And
Speaker 2: as soon as he does that, they pull the standard
Speaker 2: cop Why do you need a lawyer, Richard? You didn't
Speaker 2: do anything right.
Speaker 3: You know, Like, oh my fucking guy, he's just.
Speaker 2: So shitty, and this is he's this guy. It takes
Speaker 2: him so long to realize what's happening because he trusts
Speaker 2: the system, he trusts cops, he likes, He idolizes these feds,
Speaker 2: and I'm actually surprised that he even got it then.
Speaker 2: But you have to imagine the dawn horror as he realizes, like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, they were lying to me about all
Speaker 2: of this. They think I did it, and they want
Speaker 2: they're trying to trap me, Like it's it's it's pretty
Speaker 2: fucked up. Like I don't have a lot of inherent
Speaker 2: sympathy for the whole desperately wanting to be a cop thing,
Speaker 2: but you have to be sympathetic to a guy like
Speaker 2: Jewel who believes so strongly in this just saves a
Speaker 2: bunch of lives. And then his reward is this system
Speaker 2: he idolizes, absolutely turning on him.
Speaker 3: How long does this go on?
Speaker 2: For about three months?
Speaker 4: Oh my?
Speaker 2: So for three months Jewel's life is turned upside down.
Speaker 2: FBI agents stake out his house. His house is searched,
Speaker 2: Everything related to him is searched. Right like they tear
Speaker 2: up his home. They tear up like they're searching the
Speaker 2: houses of people who are like close to him.
Speaker 3: Embarrassing porn came up, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he can't go anywhere without being surrounded. He becomes
Speaker 2: an object of obsession for reporters at the Journal. Not
Speaker 2: only is the FBI always outside of his house, dozens and
Speaker 2: dozens of journalists and cameras. They're always staking out his house,
Speaker 2: waiting for him to leave, waiting for any chance to
Speaker 2: shout questions at him, and the journal but turns themselves
Speaker 2: into the paper of Richard Jewel. They are publishing multiple
Speaker 2: articles a day about this one guy. On August first,
Speaker 2: so that's the day after he has his That first
Speaker 2: article drops in the day after he goes to the
Speaker 2: FBI office on August first, the same day he's rated
Speaker 2: by the FBI. The journal publishes a piece on Richard
Speaker 2: Jewel's history as a campus cop titled a bad Man
Speaker 2: to Cross on the Beat. Here's Atlanta Magazine. Students were
Speaker 2: also quoted as saying that Jewel went to extremes. He
Speaker 2: was very macho, and he could get very belligerate. Piedmont
Speaker 2: College junior Nikki Lane said, I've seen him go from
Speaker 2: calm to angry, back to calm, back to angry in
Speaker 2: a matter of seconds. And like, I get that he's
Speaker 2: a dick and he like tried to bust people for
Speaker 2: smoking pot, But like that doesn't that doesn't mean he's
Speaker 2: a bomber, Like you're going in fact, like he was
Speaker 2: a bad man to cross. He tried to arrest a
Speaker 2: kid for weed. That's pretty far from pipe bomb.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: Another paragraph from that article with Atlanta Magazine gives you
Speaker 2: a good idea of how insane the coverage win. This
Speaker 2: is all AJC AJC columnist David Kindred, in his second
Speaker 2: column on Jewel in Two Days, compared the scene to
Speaker 2: the time law enforcement officers sought evidence against Wayne Williams,
Speaker 2: the man convicted of two murders in Atlanta's Missing Children case.
Speaker 2: When federal agents came to this town to deal with
Speaker 2: another suspect who lived with his mother like this one.
Speaker 2: That subject was drawn to the blue lights and sirens
Speaker 2: of police work like this one. He became famous in
Speaker 2: the aftermath of murder and like, yeah, it's just it's
Speaker 2: the yellowest journalism you could possibly do. Like they are,
Speaker 2: they are basically they're turning their whole paper into this guy,
Speaker 2: like in his life is just hell. For three straight months,
Speaker 2: every day there's articles not just in the AJAC but
Speaker 2: in national pape Popers digging into his backstory, talking about
Speaker 2: every embarrassing thing he ever did, talking to everyone who
Speaker 2: worked with him, who didn't like him. The whole country
Speaker 2: reviles him. He is a subject of mockery and costs.
Speaker 2: On The Tonight Joe Jay Leno gives him a nickname,
Speaker 2: The Una dufis right again, this man's crime was saving
Speaker 2: a bunch of people's lives from a bomb, like the
Speaker 2: und this the unidufis like Per The New York Times,
Speaker 2: government officials and news organizations descended on the apartment Jewel
Speaker 2: shared with his mother. Dozens of FBI agents scoured the
Speaker 2: home and totaway jewels truck in an apartment complex overlooking
Speaker 2: his building. Four stations ABC, CBSCN AND and NBC paid a
Speaker 2: tenant one thousand dollars a day to set up a
Speaker 2: command post in her unit. Yet he was never charged.
Speaker 2: Inside jewel Watch TV, he read, he played video games.
Speaker 2: He couldn't go outside, not without setting off a high
Speaker 2: speed car chase if government vehicles and media vans anyway,
Speaker 2: And that's just so fucked up, Like he did nothing.
Speaker 2: You didn't do that that he saved people's lives and
Speaker 2: everyone in the country hates him.
Speaker 4: Now I feel kind of conflicted because you know, like
Speaker 4: that murder in Washington who killed those four college girls.
Speaker 2: God, yeah, yeah, yeah, Colburger.
Speaker 1: Right his name, so the Idaho guy.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah it was Idaho.
Speaker 4: You're right.
Speaker 3: But like they're doing these things.
Speaker 4: You know, like I read articles where it was like
Speaker 4: a teaching assistant that was like, yeah, he was creepy
Speaker 4: as fuck, and in his case, I think that's correct,
Speaker 4: but like, yes, all those tactics turned on an innocent person.
Speaker 2: That's horrible, and that's the thing and you don't have
Speaker 2: and I I never like it when they do this
Speaker 2: with someone who hasn't again, at least Coburger. I think
Speaker 2: by the point most that came out had been charged
Speaker 2: and arrested. You have to remember Jewel has not been charged.
Speaker 2: She he's never charged, right, And it's one thing, and
Speaker 2: we can there is I still have a lot of
Speaker 2: issues with reporting on people who have been charged with
Speaker 2: crimes like this in the breathless way the media does
Speaker 2: when they have not been convicted, have not had their
Speaker 2: day in court, because they're still legally innocent. But this
Speaker 2: guy hasn't even been charged with shit, you shouldn't be
Speaker 2: doing this at all when someone's just a suspect like
Speaker 2: that is so that is so that such fucking malpractice. Yeah, agreed,
Speaker 2: it's just really vile. On October twenty seventh, prosecutors send
Speaker 2: a letter to Jeles lawyer, not to Jewel, not to
Speaker 2: the public. They just send his lawyer your letter saying, hey,
Speaker 2: he's not a suspect anymore. By the way, we're done.
Speaker 3: No, sorry, Yeah.
Speaker 2: The FBI makes eventually they give kind of like a
Speaker 2: half hearted apology. They admit some wrongdoing, right, but they
Speaker 2: don't they take no effort to be like, again, the
Speaker 2: responsible thing to do would be like oh shit, we
Speaker 2: really got it. We got to do a full court
Speaker 2: media press so let people know this guy is not suspected.
Speaker 2: They're just like fuck itt, they'll figure it out.
Speaker 3: They're like mean girls in high school. Yeah, terrorists.
Speaker 2: Now Jewel does sue them, He wins, sues the Justice Department,
Speaker 2: He wins a bunch of money. He sues several papers,
Speaker 2: including the AJAC, and he settles out of court. He
Speaker 2: does well off of this, right like he does like
Speaker 2: and you know, he lives out his life and I'm
Speaker 2: not gonna talk about the rest of his life because
Speaker 2: the man deserves fucking privacy after that. But he, uh,
Speaker 2: he does get some degree of vengeance for what they do.
Speaker 2: But like, man, you have the trauma of of this,
Speaker 2: like because who can imagine unless you have been unless
Speaker 2: the entire country has suspected you of being a mass
Speaker 2: murdering terrorist for three or four months, Like, you can't
Speaker 2: know what that's like, you know what kind of damage
Speaker 2: that does do?
Speaker 1: And then and then Clint Eastwood made that fucking movie.
Speaker 2: And then yes, Clint Eastwood, so fairly recently Clint Eastwood
Speaker 2: made a movie about.
Speaker 3: This literally called Richard Jewel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's called Richard Jewel. Clint makes a movie in
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen about this whole case, right, because, I mean,
Speaker 2: conservatives are like this story because they hate the media,
Speaker 2: and this is a great example of the media being
Speaker 2: just as bad as they like to act, like it
Speaker 2: always is.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: They didn't go to the media, didn't go after Jewel
Speaker 2: because he was a conservative. They went after Jewel because
Speaker 2: the FBI sent them on his case. And yeah, they
Speaker 2: were feckless and only cared about money. But Clint's what's
Speaker 2: really interesting to me about Clint's movie is that it
Speaker 2: does kind of the same thing to one of the
Speaker 2: journalists at the Atlanta Journal Constitution that they had done
Speaker 2: to Richard Jewel, which is like defame him or her.
Speaker 2: So the author of the first article that listed him
Speaker 2: as the suspect was written by Kathy Scruggs. She's the
Speaker 2: reporter who did this, and as far as we know,
Speaker 2: she just got it or she and the I think
Speaker 2: she worked with a colleague, got like a tip that
Speaker 2: probably traced back to an FBI person who had been
Speaker 2: directed by Free to put the tip out there. Right,
Speaker 2: That's probably what happened. In the film. Kathy Scruggs is
Speaker 2: shown as going up to an FBI agent at a
Speaker 2: bar a couple of days after the bombing and saying,
Speaker 2: give me something I can print. She's played by Olivia Wilde.
Speaker 2: By the way, the FBI agent played by John Ham
Speaker 2: says basically, I'll give you the name if you fuck me,
Speaker 2: and so yeah, she starts like touching him, and he
Speaker 2: says Richard Jewel, right, and then they go fuck right.
Speaker 2: So basically it shows Kathy Scruggs, a real woman has
Speaker 2: played by Olivia Wilde, sleeping with a source in order
Speaker 2: to get Richard Jewele's name, which is not what happened.
Speaker 2: No one's ever alleged that being what happened. That was
Speaker 2: invented by our old friend Clint Eastwood or whoever wrote
Speaker 2: the fucking movie, just because the the story didn't seem
Speaker 2: bad enough as it was, and because I guess if
Speaker 2: you talk about what actually happened, then you have to
Speaker 2: be deeply critical about the FBI because this is ultimately
Speaker 2: their fault as much as anything else, and fundamentally the
Speaker 2: profit motive in journalism, right, Like, both of those things
Speaker 2: are the bastards here. But Clint's not interested in that.
Speaker 3: Let's make it a woman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a woman. It's this woman who couldn't keep
Speaker 2: it in her parts.
Speaker 3: Slutty journalists ruining the world.
Speaker 2: Classic bloody journalists sleeping with the FBI to get a name.
Speaker 1: Oh s, floody journalists my favorite kind.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Anyway, that's the first part of these this story.
Speaker 2: You know, we'll be talking about Steve Hatville and the
Speaker 2: anthrax attacks next episode. But yeah, how are you feeling?
Speaker 2: You're happy?
Speaker 3: I've totally forgot about this Steve guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I know. It's wild. We haven't even
Speaker 2: gotten to him yet. But this story is like the precursor.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, oh yes, go out kind of.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, I feel like we just went on
Speaker 4: a wild ride.
Speaker 3: I'm ready for the next part.
Speaker 2: Who excellent, Well, we'll get to that on Thursday.
Speaker 1: Do you want to plug your pluggables one more time
Speaker 1: for everybody?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Uh, I just my book, you guys. Maybe check
Speaker 4: out my book. It's called Girl Gone Wild. I tell
Speaker 4: all my secrets of the last decades that I've been
Speaker 4: on this planet.
Speaker 3: So it's available for pre order.
Speaker 2: Heck yeah, check that book out. And uh, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: go don't go to the Olympics.
Speaker 3: Watch it at home.
Speaker 2: Safer Yeah, or steal it off of the Internet. Either way, they.
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