Speaker 1: Trey Quinn, the black nationalist who is among the organizers
Speaker 1: of Denver's racial justice protests, is the first to suspect
Speaker 1: that Mickey Windecker isn't a badass ANTIFA warrior. Trey doesn't
Speaker 1: have any concrete evidence, always got as a hunch there's
Speaker 1: just something off about Mickey. And so I am told
Speaker 1: by a couple of friends that Mickey's got some suspicious
Speaker 1: connections and ties that they're unsure of. They don't know
Speaker 1: if we should be doing any actions with them specifically.
Speaker 1: So Trey comes up with a test for Mickey. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call Mickey and I'm gonna propose something, and then
Speaker 1: I'm gonna see what happens. Trey meets up with Mickey
Speaker 1: at one of the demonstrations and tells him that he
Speaker 1: has concerns the protesters aren't being radical enough. This peaceful
Speaker 1: protest stuff, it ain't working. What if we did more?
Speaker 1: And so I start speaking in hypothetical and like, hypothetically,
Speaker 1: what if this happened? What if an enclave was lit
Speaker 1: on fire in the middle of the night. And he
Speaker 1: was like, oh, yeah, I got some guys who could
Speaker 1: probably do that. You know what, I'm saying, who were
Speaker 1: probably down? And so at this point I recognize my
Speaker 1: vague language in his specific language, and so he's trying
Speaker 1: to lead me to say specific things, and so I
Speaker 1: just still keep in a vague I'm like, well, hypothetically,
Speaker 1: if you were down to do something like that, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, like, could we get it done?
Speaker 1: And he was like, oh yeah, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I got the right guy for the job. This is
Speaker 1: how he's talking. So once we're done, I'm like, I
Speaker 1: think he's I think he's fucking suspicious. I knew during
Speaker 1: that in the middle of that conversation. I knew because
Speaker 1: he was he was trying to get it to happen.
Speaker 1: He was just waiting for me to set the date,
Speaker 1: the time that meeting spot. And then for sure he
Speaker 1: was trying to get it to happen. I'm Trevor Aaronson
Speaker 1: from Western Sound and I Heart Podcasts. This is Alphabet Boys,
Speaker 1: episode five. Give him hell. If you're willing to accept
Speaker 1: the FBI's internal reports as accurate. Then Mickey didn't appear
Speaker 1: to realize that he'd failed tray Quinn's test. In fact,
Speaker 1: Mickey and the FBI seemed to take Tray seriously. In
Speaker 1: an internal FBI report, Scott Dahlstrom, the agent who was
Speaker 1: Mickey's handler, describes Tray's hypothetical question to Mickey, what if
Speaker 1: an enclave was lit on fire in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night as and I quote a fire bomb plan
Speaker 1: as if it were an actual plan. So Mickey's primary
Speaker 1: goal as an FBI informant is to gather evidence that
Speaker 1: demonstrators are about to or are willing to commit violence,
Speaker 1: and a way to push people in that direction is
Speaker 1: by subtly encouraging violence while sewing distrust. This stuff with
Speaker 1: Trey and the fire bomb plot is happening. In late
Speaker 1: August twenty twenty, about three months after Mickey first arrived
Speaker 1: on the scene in Denver, Mickey had by now sidled
Speaker 1: up to activists with the Young Democratic Socialists of America
Speaker 1: or y DSA. Mickey's association with the y DSA activists
Speaker 1: was critical to his ability to infiltrate the protesters. His
Speaker 1: new y DSA friends had given him credibility, which he
Speaker 1: badly needed in order to maintain his cover as an
Speaker 1: ANTIFA warrior. Because let's be clear, this Mickey dude, he
Speaker 1: was suspicious Mickey dressed like a biker. He often used
Speaker 1: crude language that isn't tolerated within the activist groups, including racist, homophobic,
Speaker 1: and transphobic splurs. Plus, Mickey was old, a guy approaching
Speaker 1: fifty in a crowd of protesters who were mostly teens
Speaker 1: and twenty somethings. But Mickey's association with his y DSA
Speaker 1: friends acted as a kind of shield against suspicion. The
Speaker 1: other activist would see Micky hanging around with these young allies,
Speaker 1: and so the thinking went, if they trusted him, then
Speaker 1: Mickey must be legit right. As a part of Mickey's
Speaker 1: ploy to entrap protesters, he participates in a group on
Speaker 1: an encrypted messaging app that includes his new y DSA friends.
Speaker 1: Mickey tells everyone in the chat about how Trey is
Speaker 1: planning some sort of fire bomb plot, and Mickey suggests
Speaker 1: that they all meet for dinner to talk it out.
Speaker 1: I think it was at a Chili's or Applebee's. This
Speaker 1: is zeb Hal and for the record, it's a Chili's
Speaker 1: according to the FBI's internal files. So zeb drives the chilies.
Speaker 1: Then you know, I meet him at this restaurant, and
Speaker 1: you know, they say, hey, just talked to Trey and
Speaker 1: he said he wanted to go blow up a white
Speaker 1: supremacist bar and he wanted us to help him out.
Speaker 1: And you know, I was like, holy fucking shit. Just
Speaker 1: to be crystal clear about this, Trey didn't mention the
Speaker 1: fire bomb plot to any of the y DSA kids,
Speaker 1: as far as I could corroborate, only to Mickey as
Speaker 1: part of the test. Mickey then, and I'm connecting dots here,
Speaker 1: but I believe this is the accurate course of events.
Speaker 1: Mickey tells the y DSA activists about what Trey is
Speaker 1: supposedly planning, the white supremacist bar as a target that
Speaker 1: appears to be Mickey's invention. The FBI claims in its
Speaker 1: internal report that Mickey tells zeb and the y DSA
Speaker 1: activists to stay away from Trey. Although it's not stated
Speaker 1: specifically in the report, the way it's written suggest that
Speaker 1: Mickey did this out of concern that Trey is violent,
Speaker 1: that the fire bomb plot is real, and so stay
Speaker 1: away kids, that kind of thing. But that's not the
Speaker 1: way Mickey frames is warning about trade to this group
Speaker 1: he's gathered at Chili's. Instead, Mickey invent something out of
Speaker 1: thin air. He tells them that they thinks Trey might
Speaker 1: be working for the FBI. Mickey seemed like super concerned,
Speaker 1: like Trey was an informant. Mickey reminds everyone that Trey
Speaker 1: is a felon, and as a felon, Mickey claims he's
Speaker 1: gotten incentive to be an informant. And just look here
Speaker 1: he is talking about a fire bomb plot. The gagulet
Speaker 1: Chili's seems to agree. Trey this leader of the demonstrations
Speaker 1: in Denver, The guy must be a snitch. Then I
Speaker 1: started getting concerns about it. Mickey is trying to discredit Trey.
Speaker 1: Trey had always been upfront with activists that he had
Speaker 1: a criminal record. He had even told Mickey about it.
Speaker 1: Here's Tray again, home a felon, so I don't keep
Speaker 1: my identity secret. Back when Trey was a college student,
Speaker 1: he was into the rave scene and into drugs. He
Speaker 1: sold drugs too, and participated in some robberies, but by
Speaker 1: twenty ten he'd stopped using and he was trying to
Speaker 1: go straight. That's about when a friend of his was
Speaker 1: short on cash and face eviction. Trey wanted to help,
Speaker 1: so we called one of his old contacts and so
Speaker 1: I called up my homie and I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, we're short on some money. If you can
Speaker 1: spot us some then I'll get you back. And he
Speaker 1: was like, hold on, let me call my homie. He's like,
Speaker 1: this dude got me. If you can get him for me,
Speaker 1: you just keep whatever whatever he gets. I just want
Speaker 1: to get backs, and so I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: I'll do it. So basically, Tray's friend gives him the
Speaker 1: name of a guy who had ripped him off. Trey's
Speaker 1: friend just wants revenge. Rob that guy, he tells Trey,
Speaker 1: and you can keep all the money. We didn't have
Speaker 1: any guns, and so I brought my axes. I had
Speaker 1: two axes, and so my friend had one and I
Speaker 1: had one like a wood chopping axe. We get into
Speaker 1: this to this dorm room and I end up breaking
Speaker 1: through this kid's door and I hit him in the
Speaker 1: head with the flat side of the axe. It still
Speaker 1: cuts them, still fucking gashes open his head and there's
Speaker 1: blood everywhere. I get in a fight with his roommate,
Speaker 1: end up breaking his eye socket in the fight, and
Speaker 1: his friend had a big old gash in his head
Speaker 1: and we didn't get anything, and he was calling for
Speaker 1: people who weren't in the dorm. I stayed in that
Speaker 1: donor before, so I know the walls are paper thing
Speaker 1: he's calling down the hallway, and so this is a
Speaker 1: whole mass. Trey ended up getting fourteen years in prison,
Speaker 1: but he was granted parole after serving five and a half. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was it was a trying time, but it definitely
Speaker 1: needed to happen. Tray says the felony conviction in the
Speaker 1: prison time helped him straighten out his life. He's married
Speaker 1: now with a young child, and he's running a painting business.
Speaker 1: The criminal life it's in the past for Trey, but
Speaker 1: it's Tray passed that allows Mickey to construct his lie.
Speaker 1: Mickey tells his allies among the activists, the trade must
Speaker 1: be an informant. Why else would a former felon be
Speaker 1: talking about a fire bomb plot. The rumor about Trey
Speaker 1: starts circulating online, then in person among the demonstrators, you
Speaker 1: see people accusing me of being an aide, and you
Speaker 1: start seeing people saying, well, this is what Mickey said,
Speaker 1: or this is what X said. Who also would hear
Speaker 1: from either this person or that person? Who would hear
Speaker 1: from Mickey? Right? And so I was like, I think
Speaker 1: Mickey's called I think Mickey's trying to set me up
Speaker 1: here as a FED. It's a classic move for an
Speaker 1: informant to pull. Trey has been snitch jacketed more after
Speaker 1: the break. I can't say this with absolute certainty since
Speaker 1: Mickey won't talk to me, but I don't think Mickey
Speaker 1: really thought Trey was interested in any sort of fire
Speaker 1: bomb plot. I think Mickey realized that he'd fallen for
Speaker 1: Trey's trap By so eagerly suggesting he could make Trey's
Speaker 1: hypothetical fire bomb plot happen. Mickey had revealed himself as
Speaker 1: an informant, or at least had given Tray plenty of
Speaker 1: reason to be suspicious, and that's why Mickey says Tray
Speaker 1: is an informant. Mickey has a lot to lose if
Speaker 1: Trey outs him as a snitch, specifically the thousands of
Speaker 1: dollars in cash the FBI is paying him regularly about
Speaker 1: every two or three weeks. If too many activists in
Speaker 1: Denver think Mickey is cooperating with the cops, then he's
Speaker 1: no longer useful to the FBI. The FBI, of course,
Speaker 1: only pays informants when they're useful By raising suspicions that
Speaker 1: Trey is an informant, Mickey can protect his cover and
Speaker 1: his income. If everyone suspects Treys a snitch, this thinking goes,
Speaker 1: then they'll be focused on him and no one will
Speaker 1: be suspecting Mickey's the real informant. This is a time
Speaker 1: tested tactic called snitch jacketing, and snitch jacketing has a
Speaker 1: long troubling history in the FBI. From his office, j
Speaker 1: Edgar Hoover has placed on the entire organization's own rigid
Speaker 1: code of service, integrity, and morality in a way that
Speaker 1: is true a few organizations. J Edgar Hoover is the FBI,
Speaker 1: and that is our story. The practice of snitch jacketing
Speaker 1: goes way back to the infamous days of the first
Speaker 1: FBI Director, j. Gar Hoover. Remember always at the spy
Speaker 1: and the Sabbata all the destroyer carrignal badge he hides
Speaker 1: behind a hundred fronts, he pretends innocence. In nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: Hoover secretly launched a program too. And these are the
Speaker 1: words Hoover used in its directive quote expose, disrupts, misdirect, discredit,
Speaker 1: or otherwise neutralize political groups that Hoover and his FBI
Speaker 1: agents considered quote subversive to American society. Hoover secret operation
Speaker 1: was called the counter Intelligence Program or co intel Pro.
Speaker 1: For fifteen years, FBI agents and informants infiltrated political movement
Speaker 1: and disrupted them from within. Well. The targets of co
Speaker 1: intel Pro did include some far right groups, such as
Speaker 1: the Ku Klux Klan, Hoover's FBI focus its efforts primarily
Speaker 1: on left wing political and civil rights movements, including communist groups,
Speaker 1: anti war advocates, the American Indian Movement, the Black Panther Party,
Speaker 1: and even doctor Martin Luther King Junior's organization. Snitch Jacketing
Speaker 1: was a common tactic of co intel Pro, particularly in
Speaker 1: the bureau's infiltration of black political groups such as the Panthers,
Speaker 1: whose leaders were very aware that they were being spied
Speaker 1: on by government informants. I'm the depth chairman of the
Speaker 1: State of Illinois Blackcap Party. Him and a lot of
Speaker 1: people are on the fan Black Panther Party relationship with
Speaker 1: white Muther Country Rata. Here's Fred Hampton, a senior Black
Speaker 1: Panther official, speaking eight months before he was shot and
Speaker 1: killed in his bed during a pre dawn raid in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine. Informants and agents would accuse other members,
Speaker 1: even leaders, of being informants. This would so mistrust, create
Speaker 1: interpersonal suspicion, lead to dysfunction, and in some cases, wholesale
Speaker 1: collapse of these political and civil rights groups. Some informants
Speaker 1: even took on leadership roles in the very organizations the
Speaker 1: FBI was infiltrated. In nineteen seventy five, the US Senate
Speaker 1: formed a committee to investigate and reveal the extent of
Speaker 1: the FBI's abuses during co Intel pro. Today, we are
Speaker 1: here to review the major findings of our full investigation
Speaker 1: of FBI domestic intelligence, including the Cointel program and other
Speaker 1: programs aimed at domestic targets. The committee is commonly known
Speaker 1: as the Church Committee after its chairman, the late Senator
Speaker 1: Frank Church of Idaho. As one example of the FBI's egregious,
Speaker 1: politically motivated actions during Hoover's co Intel pro Frederick Shores,
Speaker 1: the Chief Council of the Church Committee, described how agents
Speaker 1: sent letters to America's most prominent civil rights activist. The
Speaker 1: bureau went so far as to male anonymous letters to
Speaker 1: doctor King and his wife, which finishes with this suggestion, King,
Speaker 1: there is only one thing left for you to do.
Speaker 1: You know what it is. You have just thirty four
Speaker 1: days in which to do it. You were done. You
Speaker 1: are done. The FBI under Hoover, sent an anonymous letter
Speaker 1: to King strongly suggesting that he kill himself before accepting
Speaker 1: the Nobel Peace Prize, because the US government was concerned
Speaker 1: that the award would lend global legitimacy to King's civil
Speaker 1: rights movement. That was the pretext for all of this was,
Speaker 1: you know, threat of external and internal subversion. This is
Speaker 1: Mark Peiskia, an investigative reporter who has spent most of
Speaker 1: his career in Memphis, where Martin Luther King was assassinated
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty eight. And of course, you know, at
Speaker 1: that time there was a great paranoia still in this
Speaker 1: country the nineteen fifties nineteen sixties of the communists, the
Speaker 1: Soviets had infiltrated all of our institutions, and that there
Speaker 1: was this massive conspiracy. That's certainly what j Edgar Hoover
Speaker 1: was selling that to the public. And there was a
Speaker 1: lot of people believed that Hoover believed that black America
Speaker 1: was particularly susceptible to subversion because of the history of
Speaker 1: oppression in this country and disadvantage, so they were constantly
Speaker 1: under watch. While the Church Committee revealed many of co
Speaker 1: intel pros abuses, it's taken journalists and researchers up until
Speaker 1: more recently to reveal who was spying on black civil
Speaker 1: rights groups for Hoover's FBI. In twenty ten, Mark Pereskia
Speaker 1: brought to light that Ernest Withers, a celebrated Civil rights
Speaker 1: era photographer who was particularly close to Martin Luther King,
Speaker 1: had been a paid FBI informant for eighteen years. He
Speaker 1: was an informant. There's no question that records are mean
Speaker 1: several feet thick of everything they did. But it might
Speaker 1: be even more helpful to think of him as an asset,
Speaker 1: because it wasn't. When you think of an informant, you
Speaker 1: think of somebody undercover playing a role. Ernest wasn't playing
Speaker 1: any role. He didn't have to. He was who he was,
Speaker 1: and he could go any place he wanted. And so
Speaker 1: if it's helpful to think of him more as an asset,
Speaker 1: I guess you could. But it's the same thing. He
Speaker 1: was getting paid for information, and he was supplying it,
Speaker 1: and it was harmful. We've come to view this era
Speaker 1: of FBI infiltration as a dark chapter in American history,
Speaker 1: as something that's over, never to be repeated. But while
Speaker 1: co intel pro no longer exists, its methods and tactics
Speaker 1: have survived in various ways inside the FBI and then Denver.
Speaker 1: In the summer of twenty twenty, Mickey started snitch jacketing,
Speaker 1: just as FBI agents and informants had done during the
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, and just as happened back then, snitch
Speaker 1: jacketing undermined political organizers like Trey Quinn. He goes back
Speaker 1: and tells his group, He's like, oh, he's a fit.
Speaker 1: He's fit for Tray. The effects of this FBI subversion
Speaker 1: are subtle at first. The hy dsa activist who'd gotten
Speaker 1: close to Mickey, they stopped communicating with Tray and now
Speaker 1: I'm like, what's going on here? And so that kind
Speaker 1: of clues me, and it's like, all right, they were
Speaker 1: obviously scared of me for some reason. Later, Zeb Hall,
Speaker 1: who's fully enamored with Mickey, confirms tray suspicions. Zeb confides
Speaker 1: in his old friend Mickey and the wy DSA activists,
Speaker 1: they think you're a FED, and so that's kind of
Speaker 1: when my ears started to perk up. But remember Mickey
Speaker 1: failed Tray's test. Tray is pretty sure that Mickey is
Speaker 1: a FED, but Trey chooses not to respond in kind
Speaker 1: and snitch jacket Mickey to the Denver activists. Instead, Trey
Speaker 1: actively tries not to let Mickey know about his suspicions.
Speaker 1: When you suspect someone of being a cop in your group,
Speaker 1: you don't kick him out of the group. That's the
Speaker 1: last thing you do, because now you don't know what
Speaker 1: they're going to do. You keep them around. So Trey
Speaker 1: plays his own game of deception. He continues to exchange
Speaker 1: messages and coordinate with Mickey and to invite him to
Speaker 1: meetings and events. So he shows up to those and
Speaker 1: acts quote unquote friendly. But then there's a couple he
Speaker 1: does a couple of suspicious things even then, and that's
Speaker 1: when the like, the narrative just progresses even more and
Speaker 1: more and more afterwards, because yeah, like one night we
Speaker 1: were supposed to meet up for an assembly, he was
Speaker 1: supposed to be there, he didn't show up, and so
Speaker 1: as we're doing our group meeting, it's a small general assembly,
Speaker 1: and it just everything seems strange. And then he calls
Speaker 1: and he's like, the cops are the cops are circling around,
Speaker 1: there's some suspicious activity. He calls in. He doesn't show up,
Speaker 1: but he calls in. Cops around. There's some suspicious activity
Speaker 1: around there. You guys are got to get out of there.
Speaker 1: I got a guy who's down there, just give me
Speaker 1: a call. And so we're all like, well, who is he?
Speaker 1: Because he's not with us, So you just got a
Speaker 1: guy watching us. And so at that point, you know,
Speaker 1: it became super wild. Tray is onto Mickey. He doesn't
Speaker 1: trust him. Dude's are fed, but keep your enemies close.
Speaker 1: That's Trade strategy. On the other hand, there's Zeb. Then
Speaker 1: I started getting concerns about it because I didn't talk
Speaker 1: to Trade myself, and I got to own that, you know,
Speaker 1: and I was just too afraid of it after everything
Speaker 1: I had been through. His will. Zeb doesn't know what
Speaker 1: to think. Mickey says, Trades an informant, and maybe he's right. Besides,
Speaker 1: Zeb's naive. He doesn't think there's any way Mickey could
Speaker 1: be an informant. He's trying to dial up the violence,
Speaker 1: which to zeb at the time. Doesn't seem like something
Speaker 1: a government agent would do. Why would you, as a
Speaker 1: law enforcement informant, want people and push people to go
Speaker 1: to a potentially violent protest? And once again Mickey is
Speaker 1: about to take things up a notch, a full on
Speaker 1: assault against the police station. That's after the break. So
Speaker 1: Mickey arrived on the protest scene in May twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: By late August, he's become a legitimate leader. The snitch
Speaker 1: jacketing has played no small part as Mickey and as
Speaker 1: loyalists spread rumors that Trey Quinn is an informant turning
Speaker 1: people against Trey, Mickey is ascendant among the protesters, and
Speaker 1: Denver activists have even given him a nickname, the drill
Speaker 1: Sergeant can I J. S. Jackin here Yo, Mickey keeps
Speaker 1: telling the protesters that they need to do more, they
Speaker 1: need to get more aggressive, they need to get militant.
Speaker 1: In late August twenty twenty, Mickey is with his two
Speaker 1: allies on the y DSA Honor and Aiden. Honor and
Speaker 1: Aiden were the pair I'd mentioned before, young activists whom
Speaker 1: Mickey had turned into soldiers. They fan out during demonstrations
Speaker 1: and report back to him what was happening. Acting as
Speaker 1: a kind of surveillance network for Mickey. ZEB goes to
Speaker 1: meet Mickey and his two unwitting allies at an apartment.
Speaker 1: The apartment is decked out with flags for the PKK,
Speaker 1: the Kurdistan Workers Party, a socialist political party that the
Speaker 1: U State Department has designated a foreign terrorist organization. With
Speaker 1: his claims of fighting for the Peshmerga, Mickey had said
Speaker 1: he was aligned with the PKK, which had given him
Speaker 1: additional credibility. With the activists brothers and sisters and socialism
Speaker 1: or something. They had like a lot of that PKK
Speaker 1: stuff with their house. I didn't know what the fuck
Speaker 1: that was until I met Mickey. Zeb looks over at
Speaker 1: a table in the apartment. It's covered with guns and
Speaker 1: other weapons, and holy fuck, so yeah, they had guns.
Speaker 1: Another activist there sees what Zeb sees, Mickey and a
Speaker 1: table full of guns. I walk in, mix guns, weapon
Speaker 1: like medical supplies, literally king like they're preparing for a
Speaker 1: genuine battle. But this activist is fearful of Mickey, so
Speaker 1: she agrees to let me record an interview with her
Speaker 1: as long as I agree not to use her name.
Speaker 1: We're sitting on her front porch in Denver, and I
Speaker 1: just it was insane. What kind of we're like handguns
Speaker 1: rifles and everything military. Yeah, I don't even remember, like
Speaker 1: I can, like I have this like vague mental image
Speaker 1: of what that apartment looked like, but it feels like
Speaker 1: a dream. But she reluctantly takes on a role in
Speaker 1: what Mickey and the group are planning. She agrees to
Speaker 1: tag along because she's worried about what her friends are
Speaker 1: about to do, because I was like, this is going
Speaker 1: to go really badly, Like I don't feel comfortable with
Speaker 1: them doing this alone, because I was like, the fuck
Speaker 1: am I going to do? Let these like teenagers who
Speaker 1: I have cared about for like multiple years, just get
Speaker 1: into these situations and not look out for them. Okay,
Speaker 1: So here's some context as to what's happening here. Starting
Speaker 1: in late August twenty twenty, the Denver protesters begin to
Speaker 1: get more aggressive. According to about a dozen people I
Speaker 1: spoke to, Mickey is the one responsible for organizing and encouraging,
Speaker 1: at least in part, what morphed into coordinated attacks against
Speaker 1: Denver police stations. We are following some breaking news in
Speaker 1: downtown Denver right now. A protest calling for the end
Speaker 1: of the Denver Police Department has led to violence and
Speaker 1: property damage, with fireworks shot at police, trees set on fire,
Speaker 1: and a standoff with officers growing more tense by the
Speaker 1: minute before Mickey's arrival on the scene. The demonstrations in
Speaker 1: the Denver area were mostly peaceful, organizing events like the
Speaker 1: violinvigil for Elijah McClean and Aurora. The police response to
Speaker 1: the peaceful protests had been brutal, riot gear, bullhorns, pepper spray,
Speaker 1: and lines of cops coming in like stormtroopers. The heavy
Speaker 1: handed police response had inspired something of an arms race.
Speaker 1: The protesters were becoming increasingly aggressive and they were arriving
Speaker 1: at events ready for violence. They were wearing makeshift body
Speaker 1: armor and holding homemade shields. And it wasn't just the
Speaker 1: cops who were potential targets of aggression. Anyone seen as
Speaker 1: part of the establishment. They appeared to be fair game.
Speaker 1: A dangerous mob mentality had developed. Zeb starts to see
Speaker 1: this transformation, and it concerns him. I mean, he was
Speaker 1: having people go out there and do surveillance. He was
Speaker 1: talking about people getting fucked up. It's like one night
Speaker 1: at the police station, I had to save this fucking rapport.
Speaker 1: I think her name is Addie something I can't remember.
Speaker 1: In downtown Denver, near the police headquarters, zeb observes a
Speaker 1: young local TV news reporter named Addie Guahardo trying to
Speaker 1: do a live shot during a protest that demonstrators have
Speaker 1: been calling give 'em Hell. Diverson's Addie Guahardo has been
Speaker 1: following those protests all night. Addie, you seeing right now?
Speaker 1: As the TV anchor throws it to Addie, she's backing
Speaker 1: up as the camera follows her. She's visibly frightened. Her
Speaker 1: eyes are darting around as if she's waiting for someone
Speaker 1: to attack her little bit. Right now, we're going to
Speaker 1: try to get away from these protesters getting a little
Speaker 1: too close for comfort, and they were going to fuck
Speaker 1: this lady h and a few other other reporters, and
Speaker 1: I had to keep them away from her. Zeb is
Speaker 1: also on camera. He's dressed in jeans, wearing a flack
Speaker 1: jacket and a military style helmet. He pushes back several
Speaker 1: demonstrators who seem to be trying to intimidate the reporter
Speaker 1: and possibly even assaulter. They're right here on thirteenth and Cherokee.
Speaker 1: There is a business owner right across the street they
Speaker 1: just started an argument with. Right now, they're right outside
Speaker 1: the police department where there is CPD and full of
Speaker 1: riot gear. One sorry. As the reporter is doing her
Speaker 1: live shot, you can hear zeb yell get back, get away.
Speaker 1: He's trying to protect her from a mob that is
Speaker 1: growing increasingly violent and unpredictable. We're gonna, we're gonna send
Speaker 1: back to you because we don't feel comfortable right now,
Speaker 1: Jason and Jacqueline, So we're gonna we're gonna get back
Speaker 1: out of this right now. Ze begins to realize that
Speaker 1: with his rhetoric and Mickey's organizing, it's all having a
Speaker 1: real effect. Things are changing, but it's also getting out
Speaker 1: of control. It's getting scary. Zeb wanted to move things
Speaker 1: to the next level, that's true, but Mickey, he's beginning
Speaker 1: to realize, is a blunt instrument. He's taken things too far.
Speaker 1: It's like, you don't send the fucking line to go
Speaker 1: get any one of flowers, you know, you don't send
Speaker 1: the serial killer and to go fucking hang out with
Speaker 1: your mom. You know, yeah, you don't do that. And
Speaker 1: then things get really bad, and not just in Denver,
Speaker 1: the whole nation is reeling from political violence. In Kenosha, Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: in August twenty five, twenty a demonstration over the police
Speaker 1: shooting of a black man, Jacob Blake, results in a
Speaker 1: street brawl in which a seventeen year old white kid,
Speaker 1: Kyle Rittenhouse, shoots and kills two men and wounds a third.
Speaker 1: Two people were killed during another night of Black Lives
Speaker 1: Matter protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Investigators say it may have
Speaker 1: been a vigilante attempt carried out by a young white man.
Speaker 1: Three days later, in Denver, demonstrators gather at a police
Speaker 1: building in the city's Capitol Hill neighborhood. Mickey had helped
Speaker 1: organize and hype up the protest. He was really promoting
Speaker 1: the CV. This is ZEB. He was trying to say, Hey,
Speaker 1: get as many people as you can to go to
Speaker 1: the CV, Get as many people as you can to go.
Speaker 1: It was to get more people to go there and
Speaker 1: Kyle's having That's what I truly believe. But Mickey's event
Speaker 1: isn't a demonstration. It's an all out assault and the
Speaker 1: fighting begins to rage before ZEB can even get there.
Speaker 1: The DSA kids and I were supposed to go out
Speaker 1: take photos and everything. I was going to take photos
Speaker 1: and be a medic if need be. We had just
Speaker 1: recently got a CPR certified, you know, and that's what
Speaker 1: we're supposed to do. But we never really really really
Speaker 1: made it. By that police station or about the crowd.
Speaker 1: The protesters, ducking behind homemade shields, throw rocks and shoot
Speaker 1: fireworks at a line of police officers standing in riot gear.
Speaker 1: A metal fence separates the protesters from the line of cops.
Speaker 1: A few of the protesters take hold of a dumpster
Speaker 1: on wheels and together push it as hard as they
Speaker 1: can until the police fence like a battering ram against
Speaker 1: the castle gate. The fence bows but stays up. The
Speaker 1: police then start firing gas canisters at the rioters. The
Speaker 1: cops storm into the streets in riot gear and gas
Speaker 1: masks and holding rifles that fire pepperballs. The police are aggressive,
Speaker 1: like a riot squad unleashed. It was like they had
Speaker 1: been preparing for this moment. A local cop had posted
Speaker 1: a photo on social media of himself and other officers
Speaker 1: dressed in tactical gear. Let's start a riot, he wrote.
Speaker 1: Dozens of protesters are injured in the police response. The
Speaker 1: cops fire pepperballs, they break bones. Protesters are rushed to
Speaker 1: the hospital. One man is hit in the head by
Speaker 1: a kevlar bag filled with lead fired from a police shotgun.
Speaker 1: A stingball grenade explodes next to one woman that knocks
Speaker 1: out her teeth, but the violence works. The cops effectively
Speaker 1: dispersed the protesters. Mickey played a large part in the
Speaker 1: attack on the police building. He helped organize and promote
Speaker 1: the event, but he wasn't a lone actor. The violence
Speaker 1: broke out spontaneously. Dozens, if not hundreds of people were
Speaker 1: her rocks and other objects of police officers, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't just protesters who were injured. Denver police reported injuries
Speaker 1: among more than seventy officers during that week of violence.
Speaker 1: Mickey wasn't responsible for the fire, but he and the
Speaker 1: FBI helped create the initial spark, and in Denver, the
Speaker 1: FBI's just getting started. Okay, so nobody can hear us.
Speaker 1: So here I'll talk. Okay, So I talked to my dude.
Speaker 1: He's on board. What he's gonna do. He's coming in tuesday.
Speaker 1: So what Fairwell met at nowhere like this on Tuesday.
Speaker 1: He'll walk to through what the game plan is that's
Speaker 1: in the next episode. This is Trojan Hearse, Season one
Speaker 1: of Alphabet Boys. Alphabet Boys is a production of Western
Speaker 1: Sound and I Podcasts. The show is reported, written, and
Speaker 1: hosted by me, Trevor Aaronson. For more information about the
Speaker 1: series or to drop us a tip, enter our website
Speaker 1: alphabet Boys dot xyz. You can contact me on Twitter
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Trevor Aaronson. We believe this story is
Speaker 1: important and could result in changes to FBI oversight and
Speaker 1: public policy. But to have impact, people need to hear
Speaker 1: the story, so we need your help. First, tell your
Speaker 1: friends about the show. Personal recommendations are the best recommendations. Second,
Speaker 1: spread the word on social media. At alphabet Boys dot xyz.
Speaker 1: You'll find FBI undercover recordings and secret documents. You can
Speaker 1: share stuff the government never wanted public. Third, help us
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Speaker 1: And thanks for listening.