1
00:00:03,080 --> 00:00:08,600
Speaker 1: It's podcast and time podcast Sno's damn it. I am

2
00:00:08,760 --> 00:00:11,440
Speaker 1: Robert Evans hosted Behind the Bastards, trying to find a

3
00:00:11,440 --> 00:00:14,200
Speaker 1: new UH strategy for introducing the show because I got

4
00:00:14,200 --> 00:00:16,959
Speaker 1: tired of the old ways and I that was not

5
00:00:17,040 --> 00:00:22,799
Speaker 1: a success. It was a miserable failure. UM and UH today, though,

6
00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:25,840
Speaker 1: my guest is not a miserable failure. It's Mr Billy

7
00:00:25,840 --> 00:00:31,639
Speaker 1: Wayne hon Airhorn Airhorn, How you doing, Billy? Good? Was

8
00:00:31,680 --> 00:00:36,839
Speaker 1: that good? I liked? That was fine. I think a

9
00:00:36,840 --> 00:00:39,440
Speaker 1: lot of people who have their their car stereos up

10
00:00:39,520 --> 00:00:41,600
Speaker 1: high in the early part of the show are maybe

11
00:00:41,600 --> 00:00:43,560
Speaker 1: frustrated with you. You might have caused a car record

12
00:00:43,560 --> 00:00:50,120
Speaker 1: to aggressive apologize. I was just excited. Yeah, it's okay.

13
00:00:50,920 --> 00:00:52,880
Speaker 1: I'm trying to find a new way to introduce my show,

14
00:00:53,080 --> 00:00:56,560
Speaker 1: and I'm clearly terrible at it. Uh. Notes. You know

15
00:00:56,600 --> 00:01:01,760
Speaker 1: you're a professional introducer. I know. I'm mean, it's basically

16
00:01:01,800 --> 00:01:04,360
Speaker 1: I like the way you were doing it before because

17
00:01:04,360 --> 00:01:07,920
Speaker 1: it was like the what's X in my wise? Yeah, yeah,

18
00:01:08,120 --> 00:01:12,240
Speaker 1: it's catchy, and I mean it's exhausting to come up

19
00:01:12,280 --> 00:01:15,560
Speaker 1: with a new one every time, but it is I

20
00:01:15,640 --> 00:01:18,720
Speaker 1: do like when I feel it My favorite part is

21
00:01:18,760 --> 00:01:21,240
Speaker 1: when you can feel you making it up as you go.

22
00:01:22,200 --> 00:01:26,120
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah, that's definitely the case. Every time

23
00:01:26,360 --> 00:01:28,319
Speaker 1: I was I'm debating as to whether or not to

24
00:01:28,400 --> 00:01:32,400
Speaker 1: stick to a format though, but one he won't use

25
00:01:32,440 --> 00:01:34,960
Speaker 1: the one I wrote as a format. You wrote one? Yeah,

26
00:01:35,319 --> 00:01:39,360
Speaker 1: what did you write? I said, what's salty my ex boyfriends?

27
00:01:39,480 --> 00:01:42,640
Speaker 1: It's great? Right, no, nobody, all right, continue with your show.

28
00:01:43,520 --> 00:01:51,080
Speaker 1: What's the salting your Okay? What's salt peppers? Already takes

29
00:01:51,120 --> 00:01:52,960
Speaker 1: you in a direction you do not want to go

30
00:01:53,280 --> 00:01:57,800
Speaker 1: off the bat. We're like, wait, what is that issue? Okay,

31
00:01:57,800 --> 00:02:01,000
Speaker 1: because I don't I don't know what salting your ex boyfriends.

32
00:02:01,000 --> 00:02:04,000
Speaker 1: I do know what's cracking my peppers. It's the pepper

33
00:02:04,200 --> 00:02:08,240
Speaker 1: cracker that I have. Also, buy that shirt on t public.

34
00:02:08,280 --> 00:02:11,519
Speaker 1: It's cute. Okay. Yeah, So we have some old business

35
00:02:11,560 --> 00:02:13,840
Speaker 1: before we get into the episode today, Billy Uh. One

36
00:02:13,840 --> 00:02:16,160
Speaker 1: of those pieces of old business is that a couple

37
00:02:16,360 --> 00:02:19,000
Speaker 1: of of our fans found you at a comedy show

38
00:02:19,080 --> 00:02:23,000
Speaker 1: and gave you a wonderful gift for me. It's in

39
00:02:23,040 --> 00:02:26,560
Speaker 1: an odd gift. They did contact me and us before

40
00:02:26,840 --> 00:02:31,480
Speaker 1: on Twitter, which was nice and very thoughtful because it

41
00:02:31,639 --> 00:02:35,800
Speaker 1: is nice to know to expect this gift. And yeah,

42
00:02:35,840 --> 00:02:37,519
Speaker 1: it's not a kind of gift you'd want to receive

43
00:02:37,560 --> 00:02:40,920
Speaker 1: at random, no God, and especially at this show was

44
00:02:40,960 --> 00:02:46,560
Speaker 1: like in a house basement in Louisville, So like, the

45
00:02:46,600 --> 00:02:48,959
Speaker 1: show is in this guy's these people's basement. And then

46
00:02:49,639 --> 00:02:53,880
Speaker 1: I was selling T shirts and just meeting people afterwards

47
00:02:54,000 --> 00:02:58,239
Speaker 1: in their living room basically. And then yeah, these people

48
00:02:58,360 --> 00:03:00,440
Speaker 1: stood in line very patiently and there like, hey, we

49
00:03:00,480 --> 00:03:02,160
Speaker 1: like about a T shirt. That was cool, and then

50
00:03:02,200 --> 00:03:05,119
Speaker 1: they're also here you go, and I was like, it's

51
00:03:05,200 --> 00:03:09,639
Speaker 1: real and and what what what was this gift? Billy?

52
00:03:09,680 --> 00:03:16,560
Speaker 1: It was it's a brown shirt, Uh, Nazi dagger and

53
00:03:16,639 --> 00:03:22,080
Speaker 1: it's it's legit and uh. They reached out to us

54
00:03:22,120 --> 00:03:24,160
Speaker 1: on Twitter beforehand and explained that it was like a

55
00:03:24,200 --> 00:03:26,760
Speaker 1: family heirloom they didn't want to have anymore. And he

56
00:03:26,800 --> 00:03:30,280
Speaker 1: was a brother and sister. Um that was so happy

57
00:03:30,360 --> 00:03:34,359
Speaker 1: to give it to me. And I don't really know

58
00:03:34,400 --> 00:03:36,920
Speaker 1: what to do with such a thing. Um, it is

59
00:03:36,960 --> 00:03:40,760
Speaker 1: a piece of history, uh, and and an interesting one

60
00:03:40,800 --> 00:03:44,880
Speaker 1: at that. Um. Definitely not the kind of thing you

61
00:03:44,880 --> 00:03:47,000
Speaker 1: want to have out just in your living room because

62
00:03:47,040 --> 00:03:50,040
Speaker 1: people will make the wrong conclusions. About it, and my

63
00:03:50,120 --> 00:03:52,960
Speaker 1: wife and mother in law we're at my house when

64
00:03:52,960 --> 00:03:55,800
Speaker 1: I opened it because I shipped it because I didn't

65
00:03:55,840 --> 00:03:58,120
Speaker 1: want to fly with it. Yeah. Also I have blonde

66
00:03:58,120 --> 00:04:00,080
Speaker 1: hair and blue eyes and I just family with it

67
00:03:59,760 --> 00:04:05,080
Speaker 1: the yea. Yeah. So yeah, well, and it's the fact

68
00:04:05,160 --> 00:04:07,040
Speaker 1: that it's a family heirloo of there's reminds me of

69
00:04:07,080 --> 00:04:10,440
Speaker 1: one of my weird family moments. But my my dad's

70
00:04:10,520 --> 00:04:15,120
Speaker 1: dad did something spooky for the US government, Like he

71
00:04:15,200 --> 00:04:17,880
Speaker 1: was doing he was always over in Vietnam during the war,

72
00:04:18,000 --> 00:04:20,880
Speaker 1: and nobody seems to know precisely what he was up to,

73
00:04:21,000 --> 00:04:22,880
Speaker 1: Like there's like the thing that he said he was doing,

74
00:04:22,920 --> 00:04:25,560
Speaker 1: but everybody in the families like, yeah, but it was anyway,

75
00:04:25,920 --> 00:04:30,279
Speaker 1: and he was never dirty, do you know what I mean? No, no,

76
00:04:30,400 --> 00:04:32,440
Speaker 1: I mean it was it was so like that was

77
00:04:32,560 --> 00:04:35,200
Speaker 1: what he did in like the sixties. But he was

78
00:04:35,279 --> 00:04:39,239
Speaker 1: in Germany right after the war. Um. And years after

79
00:04:39,320 --> 00:04:41,880
Speaker 1: he died, we found like a little box that was

80
00:04:41,920 --> 00:04:45,400
Speaker 1: just full to the brim with like Hitler youth arm

81
00:04:45,480 --> 00:04:48,000
Speaker 1: bands and like penance and stuff like that, like a

82
00:04:48,080 --> 00:04:51,200
Speaker 1: whole lot of them. Um. And it was always like,

83
00:04:51,480 --> 00:04:53,880
Speaker 1: what the what's the story here? Like I'm certain it was.

84
00:04:53,960 --> 00:04:55,600
Speaker 1: Just like he was in Germany after the war, they

85
00:04:55,600 --> 00:04:57,920
Speaker 1: found a bunch of knots. He was like, oh, we

86
00:04:57,960 --> 00:05:00,720
Speaker 1: should put this in a box. But it's weird. It's

87
00:05:00,720 --> 00:05:03,479
Speaker 1: a weird thing to like find, right, like to find

88
00:05:03,520 --> 00:05:06,719
Speaker 1: a bunch of them. Yeah, like fund and one. You're like,

89
00:05:06,720 --> 00:05:08,800
Speaker 1: I could see about someone just I won't take that.

90
00:05:08,800 --> 00:05:11,760
Speaker 1: That's pretty weird. But fund a bunch of them, Like

91
00:05:12,080 --> 00:05:15,919
Speaker 1: did you do something with a bunch of them? And

92
00:05:16,040 --> 00:05:19,000
Speaker 1: I don't think so, but it was. It's a strange.

93
00:05:19,120 --> 00:05:21,640
Speaker 1: It's a strange thing to come across um. And I'm

94
00:05:21,640 --> 00:05:24,200
Speaker 1: gonna guess it was something like that for our fans

95
00:05:24,279 --> 00:05:28,760
Speaker 1: where that some somebody's grandpa was over in Germany and

96
00:05:28,920 --> 00:05:31,599
Speaker 1: shoot some guy or is in some house. They're like, okay,

97
00:05:31,640 --> 00:05:35,599
Speaker 1: I guess this is what I'm taking back it. Yeah,

98
00:05:35,680 --> 00:05:42,599
Speaker 1: it was, I mean, I uh yeah, it's haunted for sure. Well, Billy,

99
00:05:42,960 --> 00:05:47,240
Speaker 1: speaking of Nazis and speaking of racists, today's episode is

100
00:05:47,279 --> 00:05:50,920
Speaker 1: about the racist chemical weapons engineer who probably cooked up

101
00:05:50,920 --> 00:05:53,040
Speaker 1: the M D M A that you've used if you've

102
00:05:53,080 --> 00:05:59,760
Speaker 1: done him. Yeah, So, I mean it's it's a fun one.

103
00:05:59,800 --> 00:06:03,159
Speaker 1: He's doctor, so it's on brand for us. But I mean, yeah,

104
00:06:03,200 --> 00:06:07,599
Speaker 1: I'm sure he is a doctor. But I mean I

105
00:06:07,680 --> 00:06:11,200
Speaker 1: always assume when you're doing certain types of drugs, like

106
00:06:11,240 --> 00:06:15,520
Speaker 1: there's just there's bad people who have touched this, like

107
00:06:15,560 --> 00:06:19,520
Speaker 1: cocaine for sure. Um, like m d M A is

108
00:06:19,560 --> 00:06:21,520
Speaker 1: made in a lot of different places. Like I've known

109
00:06:21,600 --> 00:06:24,520
Speaker 1: some people who were, like what mad cooked m d

110
00:06:24,640 --> 00:06:27,000
Speaker 1: M A in their like college lab while they were

111
00:06:27,040 --> 00:06:30,920
Speaker 1: getting their PhD. Um and like I feel fine about that,

112
00:06:31,040 --> 00:06:34,360
Speaker 1: you know, uh yeah, but I mean I just mean

113
00:06:34,440 --> 00:06:38,520
Speaker 1: on the black market period, Yeah, there's always there's when

114
00:06:38,560 --> 00:06:40,560
Speaker 1: you go to the black market, you're like, there's just

115
00:06:41,600 --> 00:06:44,200
Speaker 1: that you have to accept. There's a persuage of like

116
00:06:44,400 --> 00:06:49,440
Speaker 1: bad is involved in this, yeah, and bad people. You know.

117
00:06:49,520 --> 00:06:53,799
Speaker 1: It's how like most good people accidentally do bad stuff.

118
00:06:53,839 --> 00:06:59,760
Speaker 1: It sounds like this bad guy accidentally did some good stuff. Yeah. Yeah,

119
00:07:00,000 --> 00:07:03,760
Speaker 1: And it's like, so the extent to which this guy

120
00:07:04,160 --> 00:07:06,440
Speaker 1: was selling m d m A is such that if

121
00:07:06,520 --> 00:07:11,080
Speaker 1: you did ecstasy in the nineteen nineties during the height

122
00:07:11,120 --> 00:07:13,600
Speaker 1: of the rave scene, or probably in the early two thousands,

123
00:07:14,000 --> 00:07:17,440
Speaker 1: there's a very good chance you did this guy's ecstasy.

124
00:07:17,480 --> 00:07:19,760
Speaker 1: Like if if you were if you were raving in like,

125
00:07:19,880 --> 00:07:23,680
Speaker 1: n uh and you did. You came across a batch

126
00:07:23,720 --> 00:07:27,120
Speaker 1: of fucking awesome e Like, there's like the odds are

127
00:07:27,160 --> 00:07:29,880
Speaker 1: really good that it was cooked by this dude, Walter Bassan.

128
00:07:30,120 --> 00:07:34,240
Speaker 1: So that's the guy we're talking about today. Um, and

129
00:07:34,280 --> 00:07:37,640
Speaker 1: we're not talking about his mostly about his career making ecstasy.

130
00:07:37,720 --> 00:07:40,560
Speaker 1: We're talking about his career as a chemical weapons engineer

131
00:07:40,600 --> 00:07:47,880
Speaker 1: trying to exterminate the black race. Always boy. Yeah, I

132
00:07:47,920 --> 00:07:54,000
Speaker 1: was like, I don't know, he sounds pretty fun. Okay, okay, okay,

133
00:07:54,120 --> 00:08:00,400
Speaker 1: he's he's he's a genocider attempted genocider. Yeah. Um, So

134
00:08:00,680 --> 00:08:03,520
Speaker 1: it's the story of Walter Basson is a really fucked up,

135
00:08:03,520 --> 00:08:06,880
Speaker 1: an interesting one. But but to actually like tell it, Uh,

136
00:08:06,920 --> 00:08:09,040
Speaker 1: there's a lot of background that I think people need

137
00:08:09,120 --> 00:08:11,280
Speaker 1: about the history of chemical weapons. So we're going to

138
00:08:11,360 --> 00:08:13,120
Speaker 1: talk about that a little bit. First. Do you a

139
00:08:13,200 --> 00:08:17,960
Speaker 1: chemical weapons fan, Billy? No, I mean I understand them.

140
00:08:19,120 --> 00:08:21,880
Speaker 1: You know, I've like all military stuff on some levels

141
00:08:21,920 --> 00:08:25,360
Speaker 1: of right into it, but some of it gets real

142
00:08:26,400 --> 00:08:31,560
Speaker 1: horrific so quick. Yeah, like in the yeah, torture kind

143
00:08:31,600 --> 00:08:34,920
Speaker 1: of way, do you know what I mean? Yeah, Like

144
00:08:35,040 --> 00:08:37,959
Speaker 1: it's like I can enjoy, like I can I can

145
00:08:38,000 --> 00:08:41,000
Speaker 1: both understand, like the horror of trench warfare in World

146
00:08:41,000 --> 00:08:44,400
Speaker 1: War One and how much artillery played into that and appreciate,

147
00:08:44,520 --> 00:08:46,640
Speaker 1: like looking at a piece of artillery and how it

148
00:08:46,720 --> 00:08:49,600
Speaker 1: functions in the way the mechanics work. And part of

149
00:08:49,640 --> 00:08:51,719
Speaker 1: that is because like you can see, like you can

150
00:08:51,720 --> 00:08:53,880
Speaker 1: go to a war reenactment, you can see canons being

151
00:08:53,960 --> 00:08:56,560
Speaker 1: used and they're not hurting anybody. There's there's none of

152
00:08:56,559 --> 00:08:59,679
Speaker 1: that with chemical weapons like that, there's no like displaying them,

153
00:08:59,679 --> 00:09:03,319
Speaker 1: there's no appreciating the mechanics of it, Like it's purely

154
00:09:03,880 --> 00:09:08,559
Speaker 1: designed to not just kill people, but to do it horribly, horribly,

155
00:09:09,200 --> 00:09:12,200
Speaker 1: Like with firearms they do horrible things too, but we

156
00:09:12,280 --> 00:09:15,320
Speaker 1: also get like fireworks out of that genealogy, Like there's

157
00:09:15,360 --> 00:09:20,920
Speaker 1: fun things associated with Yeah, not with chemical weapons, Like

158
00:09:20,960 --> 00:09:23,679
Speaker 1: this makes your insides be on your outside and you're

159
00:09:23,920 --> 00:09:27,960
Speaker 1: just yeah, blow somebody up, man, come on, yeah, honest

160
00:09:28,080 --> 00:09:35,439
Speaker 1: god fearing how it's er. Yes, there's just an instant death. Yeah, yeah,

161
00:09:35,520 --> 00:09:38,679
Speaker 1: instant death, and like death in a way that you know,

162
00:09:38,720 --> 00:09:41,000
Speaker 1: we've been doing for a lot, Like people have always

163
00:09:41,360 --> 00:09:44,520
Speaker 1: blown each other up in war and they've kept different

164
00:09:44,520 --> 00:09:48,640
Speaker 1: ways of doing it. Yeah, but this chemical weapons are

165
00:09:48,679 --> 00:09:51,120
Speaker 1: like pretty new. Um, and this is actually something like

166
00:09:51,160 --> 00:09:54,080
Speaker 1: we talked about in the Fritz Haber episodes, And whenever

167
00:09:54,120 --> 00:09:56,040
Speaker 1: I talk about like the birth of chemical weapons, like

168
00:09:56,080 --> 00:09:57,440
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of people are gonna hit me up

169
00:09:57,440 --> 00:09:59,280
Speaker 1: on Twitter and be like, no, the first use was this,

170
00:09:59,360 --> 00:10:01,040
Speaker 1: and the first use is that. And at those stories

171
00:10:01,080 --> 00:10:04,880
Speaker 1: about like mongols catapulting plague victims over walls or like

172
00:10:05,000 --> 00:10:08,520
Speaker 1: something like that, and I get what they're saying. I

173
00:10:08,559 --> 00:10:12,240
Speaker 1: don't think that stuff really counts, um, because like sickness

174
00:10:12,280 --> 00:10:14,520
Speaker 1: has always been a part of war, and like cunning

175
00:10:14,559 --> 00:10:17,760
Speaker 1: commanders have always found ways to spread illness among their enemies,

176
00:10:17,760 --> 00:10:21,800
Speaker 1: because it makes sense. Chemical weapons in the modern sense

177
00:10:21,840 --> 00:10:26,079
Speaker 1: are something really different. I think, um, just one immune

178
00:10:26,160 --> 00:10:33,079
Speaker 1: mongol just running with the plague, so the first forefare

179
00:10:33,200 --> 00:10:36,760
Speaker 1: over there. Yeah, there's a difference between that and like

180
00:10:36,880 --> 00:10:41,360
Speaker 1: gassing a town with Sara in my view, Um, yes, yeah,

181
00:10:41,360 --> 00:10:43,720
Speaker 1: because yeah, that's just more of like, hey, this is

182
00:10:43,880 --> 00:10:47,600
Speaker 1: wish works. But being like yeah, someone in that their

183
00:10:47,720 --> 00:10:49,720
Speaker 1: army being like we're going to gas them. You're like

184
00:10:49,760 --> 00:10:54,439
Speaker 1: wait what, no, what Yeah, it's it's it's I mean,

185
00:10:54,520 --> 00:10:56,560
Speaker 1: and this is like a personal line for everybody. So

186
00:10:56,600 --> 00:10:59,160
Speaker 1: people may disagree with me, but I can we It's

187
00:10:59,200 --> 00:11:03,839
Speaker 1: like it's complicated when you tried to talk about like

188
00:11:03,880 --> 00:11:06,040
Speaker 1: where it all started. Like the first formal treaty that

189
00:11:06,080 --> 00:11:09,160
Speaker 1: forbade something that you could call chemical warfare was probably

190
00:11:09,160 --> 00:11:12,400
Speaker 1: the Franco German Treaty of sixteen seventy five, But that

191
00:11:12,480 --> 00:11:14,720
Speaker 1: just banned the use of poison in war. So it

192
00:11:14,760 --> 00:11:18,200
Speaker 1: wasn't really like like chemical weapons. It was more like

193
00:11:18,320 --> 00:11:21,240
Speaker 1: you can't rub shit on your bullets and the shoot people.

194
00:11:21,480 --> 00:11:25,560
Speaker 1: That's bad, you know. I's like that sort of thing. Yeah.

195
00:11:26,160 --> 00:11:29,880
Speaker 1: Uh in eighteen seventy four, bunch of I mean you

196
00:11:29,960 --> 00:11:32,960
Speaker 1: can and ship's gonna get in your bullet wounds anyway,

197
00:11:33,120 --> 00:11:35,360
Speaker 1: because there's poop everywhere and war. That's one of the

198
00:11:35,360 --> 00:11:39,400
Speaker 1: eternal truths of war is all the poop. Um. Yeah.

199
00:11:41,120 --> 00:11:44,440
Speaker 1: And the what in a festival like a music festival, Yes,

200
00:11:44,520 --> 00:11:48,439
Speaker 1: yet music festivals in warfare have a lot in common. Um.

201
00:11:48,480 --> 00:11:51,160
Speaker 1: I'm actually more okay with the use of chemical warfare

202
00:11:51,200 --> 00:11:53,840
Speaker 1: on music festivals, but I'm not a big fan of

203
00:11:53,880 --> 00:12:02,000
Speaker 1: bonaru so no, it's la nation um so. In eighteen

204
00:12:02,040 --> 00:12:05,199
Speaker 1: seventy four, about a dozen European states signed the Brussels Declaration,

205
00:12:05,240 --> 00:12:07,880
Speaker 1: which banned poison gas and other poisons as weapons of force.

206
00:12:07,960 --> 00:12:09,920
Speaker 1: It was the first time like a modern chemical weapon

207
00:12:10,000 --> 00:12:13,120
Speaker 1: was banned. As eighteen seventy four UM and the Brussels

208
00:12:13,160 --> 00:12:16,319
Speaker 1: Declaration was never ratified, But in eighteen nine the Hague

209
00:12:16,320 --> 00:12:18,520
Speaker 1: Convention on the Laws of War was signed by every

210
00:12:18,559 --> 00:12:21,760
Speaker 1: major European power and they agreed universally to avoid the

211
00:12:21,840 --> 00:12:25,640
Speaker 1: use of poison. The convention included a declaration on asphyxiating

212
00:12:25,720 --> 00:12:30,000
Speaker 1: gases and explicitly forbade the use of projectiles designed solely

213
00:12:30,040 --> 00:12:33,840
Speaker 1: for gas warfare. Now, the first modern chemical weapons attack

214
00:12:34,240 --> 00:12:37,040
Speaker 1: on a huge scale occurred at Ipra in Belgium on

215
00:12:37,160 --> 00:12:41,000
Speaker 1: eighteen April nineteen fourteen. We talked about this on the

216
00:12:41,000 --> 00:12:44,120
Speaker 1: Fritz Hyper episode. German soldiers emptied cans of chlorine gas

217
00:12:44,160 --> 00:12:46,040
Speaker 1: and trusted the wind to carry them into the foe

218
00:12:46,600 --> 00:12:51,400
Speaker 1: um and there were similar experiments wrong on that day.

219
00:12:51,400 --> 00:12:54,959
Speaker 1: It was great, yeah, but afterwards it didn't work out

220
00:12:55,000 --> 00:12:59,760
Speaker 1: so well for anybody. UM, So yeah, it's um. That

221
00:12:59,880 --> 00:13:03,160
Speaker 1: was like the first kind of like modern chemical weapon attack,

222
00:13:03,200 --> 00:13:04,600
Speaker 1: and by the end of World War One there's been

223
00:13:04,600 --> 00:13:07,560
Speaker 1: a grand total of three thousand different chemical agents tested

224
00:13:07,600 --> 00:13:10,520
Speaker 1: as potential weapons, so every side was guilty of this,

225
00:13:10,600 --> 00:13:12,600
Speaker 1: even though they had signed a thing saying they wouldn't

226
00:13:12,600 --> 00:13:15,320
Speaker 1: do it. Um. Something like a hundred and twenty four

227
00:13:15,400 --> 00:13:18,080
Speaker 1: thousand metric tons of chemical weapons were delivered via sixty

228
00:13:18,080 --> 00:13:20,240
Speaker 1: six million artillery shells over the course of the war,

229
00:13:20,360 --> 00:13:23,640
Speaker 1: causing around a million casualties, and as you might notice,

230
00:13:23,720 --> 00:13:27,000
Speaker 1: this clearly violates the letter and spirit of the Hague

231
00:13:27,000 --> 00:13:30,120
Speaker 1: Convention Um. The way all the powers got around this

232
00:13:30,240 --> 00:13:33,360
Speaker 1: was by arguing that their poison gas shells didn't violate

233
00:13:33,400 --> 00:13:36,640
Speaker 1: the letter of the Hague convention Um because the the

234
00:13:37,000 --> 00:13:40,559
Speaker 1: explosive shells they delivered them in didn't just kill people

235
00:13:40,559 --> 00:13:43,760
Speaker 1: with gas since they exploded. They still killed people through

236
00:13:43,800 --> 00:13:46,000
Speaker 1: explosions too, So their argument was like, well, the Hague

237
00:13:46,000 --> 00:13:50,000
Speaker 1: Convention just banned shells that only dispersed chemical weapons, since

238
00:13:50,000 --> 00:13:56,960
Speaker 1: our shells explode to technically technically we also, yeah, I

239
00:13:57,000 --> 00:14:00,880
Speaker 1: hate you guys so much. It's so fucking shit. Yeah,

240
00:14:01,080 --> 00:14:02,920
Speaker 1: And it reminds me like, as a kid, I was

241
00:14:02,960 --> 00:14:04,600
Speaker 1: a war gamer, Like I played a lot of those

242
00:14:04,600 --> 00:14:07,480
Speaker 1: little games with models, and like the rules lawyering that

243
00:14:07,520 --> 00:14:10,360
Speaker 1: you encounter in that hobby. It's just weird to realize, like, oh,

244
00:14:10,400 --> 00:14:12,480
Speaker 1: the same thing happens in real war. Like there were

245
00:14:12,520 --> 00:14:15,959
Speaker 1: a bunch of like overweight, shitty assholes standing around a

246
00:14:16,040 --> 00:14:18,480
Speaker 1: table being like, no, it doesn't break the rules, because

247
00:14:18,640 --> 00:14:22,240
Speaker 1: this is amazing. Just a just a bunch of bearded

248
00:14:23,000 --> 00:14:25,440
Speaker 1: dudes who have never been near a battlefield yelling about

249
00:14:25,520 --> 00:14:27,920
Speaker 1: like what doesn't break the letter of the law, will

250
00:14:28,040 --> 00:14:30,400
Speaker 1: like actual soldiers get gassed. It's amazing. That's what I

251
00:14:30,400 --> 00:14:33,120
Speaker 1: was thinking, Like while you were saying that there's every war,

252
00:14:33,240 --> 00:14:35,840
Speaker 1: it sounds like there comes to a point where like, okay, okay,

253
00:14:35,880 --> 00:14:39,440
Speaker 1: you can't do that anymore, God damn stop doing that.

254
00:14:40,320 --> 00:14:43,640
Speaker 1: Like every war there's like something like wait, humans just

255
00:14:43,680 --> 00:14:46,560
Speaker 1: figure out like okay, okay, what about this? And then

256
00:14:46,760 --> 00:14:48,680
Speaker 1: it comes to the point where but it's like all right,

257
00:14:48,800 --> 00:14:51,680
Speaker 1: it's just we gotta stop. You can't do that. Oh God,

258
00:14:52,160 --> 00:14:56,880
Speaker 1: what what is that? Stop that? Every time? It's fun?

259
00:14:59,800 --> 00:15:03,600
Speaker 1: So yeah, it it. World War one was ship chemical

260
00:15:03,640 --> 00:15:06,560
Speaker 1: weapons made it worse. In the nine the Great Powers

261
00:15:06,600 --> 00:15:10,840
Speaker 1: signed the Geneva Protocol and Asphyxiating, Poisonous and Other Gases UM,

262
00:15:10,920 --> 00:15:13,840
Speaker 1: which would have banned all chemical weapons in warfare, like

263
00:15:13,920 --> 00:15:17,520
Speaker 1: without any sort of exceptions in it um. The only

264
00:15:17,600 --> 00:15:21,160
Speaker 1: two major powers who did not ratify the proposal where

265
00:15:21,200 --> 00:15:24,160
Speaker 1: the United States in Japan, which is interesting. The US

266
00:15:24,200 --> 00:15:26,880
Speaker 1: has a long history of advocating for rules in warfare,

267
00:15:26,920 --> 00:15:29,800
Speaker 1: but then forbidding or refusing to sign onto them because

268
00:15:29,800 --> 00:15:33,800
Speaker 1: it will limit what we can do with war. Um. Yeah, yeah,

269
00:15:33,840 --> 00:15:37,880
Speaker 1: we should. We it's probably a good thing to sign. Um.

270
00:15:38,000 --> 00:15:41,120
Speaker 1: I should say that, Like, the Geneva Convention was kind

271
00:15:41,160 --> 00:15:43,960
Speaker 1: of bullshit um in some ways, just because like there

272
00:15:44,000 --> 00:15:46,200
Speaker 1: was an exemption in it that if you were attacked

273
00:15:46,200 --> 00:15:48,880
Speaker 1: with chemical weapons by a state, you could use chemical

274
00:15:48,920 --> 00:15:51,880
Speaker 1: weapons in defense of your country. And there was another

275
00:15:51,960 --> 00:15:54,840
Speaker 1: provision that allowed chemical weapons to be used on any

276
00:15:55,040 --> 00:15:58,720
Speaker 1: states or groups that had not signed the Geneva Protocol um,

277
00:15:58,800 --> 00:16:01,800
Speaker 1: which meant that colonial hours could continue to deploy mustard

278
00:16:01,800 --> 00:16:04,680
Speaker 1: gas against their tribal enemies. So it was like, we

279
00:16:04,720 --> 00:16:09,920
Speaker 1: can't use chemical weapons on other white people. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

280
00:16:10,000 --> 00:16:12,480
Speaker 1: that's that's that's basically the law that they agree on

281
00:16:12,520 --> 00:16:17,480
Speaker 1: after World War One. We're not barbarians, but we're going

282
00:16:17,520 --> 00:16:20,240
Speaker 1: to keep doing this to the people we call barbarias.

283
00:16:20,280 --> 00:16:24,160
Speaker 1: We do need to keep some order because yeah, the

284
00:16:24,240 --> 00:16:27,880
Speaker 1: Geneva protocols also made it legal to stockpile chemical weapons,

285
00:16:27,920 --> 00:16:31,920
Speaker 1: so it's like you can't use them, but you can

286
00:16:32,000 --> 00:16:34,720
Speaker 1: build up an arsenal of them, and you can use

287
00:16:34,760 --> 00:16:36,760
Speaker 1: it if you're attacked or if you need to suppress

288
00:16:36,800 --> 00:16:40,840
Speaker 1: people who don't have a country. So that's cool. That's

289
00:16:40,840 --> 00:16:43,680
Speaker 1: like they've just given people like poker chips or you

290
00:16:43,720 --> 00:16:47,360
Speaker 1: can't spend them unless you like really need it, unless

291
00:16:47,360 --> 00:16:50,360
Speaker 1: you really want to. You kind of that's kind of

292
00:16:50,360 --> 00:16:54,640
Speaker 1: always how rules about warfare are. Like nobody, it's it's

293
00:16:55,240 --> 00:16:57,360
Speaker 1: I guess in part because it's usually not people who

294
00:16:57,360 --> 00:17:00,840
Speaker 1: have are faced those weapons who are like signing onto

295
00:17:00,840 --> 00:17:03,280
Speaker 1: the conventions about them at a bunch of politicians being

296
00:17:03,320 --> 00:17:06,680
Speaker 1: like yeah, in generals, all sort of like debate, but well, okay,

297
00:17:06,680 --> 00:17:08,719
Speaker 1: but what if we need to well then we'll have

298
00:17:08,760 --> 00:17:10,679
Speaker 1: this exception and that we can still use them if

299
00:17:10,720 --> 00:17:14,600
Speaker 1: we need to. Um. Yeah, but it is that, I mean,

300
00:17:14,640 --> 00:17:16,439
Speaker 1: that is their job is to think like that. So

301
00:17:16,600 --> 00:17:19,440
Speaker 1: so it's like that weird, yeah, yeah, and yeah they're

302
00:17:19,440 --> 00:17:22,679
Speaker 1: all a bunch of lawyers. Now. The first nation to

303
00:17:22,760 --> 00:17:25,680
Speaker 1: break with the protocols was fascist Italy and their colonial

304
00:17:25,720 --> 00:17:28,800
Speaker 1: war with Ethiopia UM, which was a state at that

305
00:17:28,840 --> 00:17:32,639
Speaker 1: point in time, Mussolini's troops dropped mustard gas bombs and

306
00:17:32,680 --> 00:17:36,119
Speaker 1: mass on Ethiopian villagers and thirty six, killing and wounding

307
00:17:36,160 --> 00:17:39,280
Speaker 1: more than fifteen thousand people. Mussolini's actions were a clear

308
00:17:39,359 --> 00:17:41,960
Speaker 1: violation of the protocol, but the League of Nations refused

309
00:17:41,960 --> 00:17:44,080
Speaker 1: to do anything. This would prove to be the last

310
00:17:44,119 --> 00:17:47,000
Speaker 1: time an international organization failed to take action against a

311
00:17:47,040 --> 00:17:51,480
Speaker 1: fascist gassing civilians. So that's good. It's never happened again, never,

312
00:17:51,760 --> 00:18:00,160
Speaker 1: not not not once. Now. No, that's what's great out

313
00:18:00,200 --> 00:18:04,639
Speaker 1: international governance is that it's a thing that really happens.

314
00:18:03,480 --> 00:18:08,040
Speaker 1: It's not theater. Yeah, it's not at not at all theater,

315
00:18:08,600 --> 00:18:14,320
Speaker 1: totally a real thing. Um. So, World War two wasn't

316
00:18:14,320 --> 00:18:16,640
Speaker 1: a great time for anybody, um But one of its

317
00:18:16,640 --> 00:18:18,919
Speaker 1: few bright spots is that in the European theater, at

318
00:18:18,960 --> 00:18:21,679
Speaker 1: least chemical weapons were not deployed. Uh. This did not

319
00:18:21,880 --> 00:18:24,560
Speaker 1: stop both the Axis and the Allies from manufacturing huge

320
00:18:24,640 --> 00:18:27,400
Speaker 1: quantities of them um. And the failure of either side

321
00:18:27,400 --> 00:18:29,879
Speaker 1: to use chemical weapons was not due to high minded

322
00:18:29,880 --> 00:18:32,640
Speaker 1: ideals on anyone's part, but more due to a balance

323
00:18:32,680 --> 00:18:35,520
Speaker 1: of terror that kept bare minimums of human decency in

324
00:18:35,600 --> 00:18:39,120
Speaker 1: place in this one specific field of war. Um I'd

325
00:18:39,119 --> 00:18:41,000
Speaker 1: like to quote from a Carnegie Council paper on the

326
00:18:41,080 --> 00:18:44,000
Speaker 1: Rise and Fall of Chemical weapons about this quote. While

327
00:18:44,040 --> 00:18:47,280
Speaker 1: the Allies refined older model gases like false gene and mustard,

328
00:18:47,480 --> 00:18:50,800
Speaker 1: the Germans invented a new, far deadlier category of chemical weapons,

329
00:18:51,040 --> 00:18:53,720
Speaker 1: nerve agents, in one of the greatest intelligence coups of

330
00:18:53,760 --> 00:18:56,359
Speaker 1: the war. The Nazis successfully kept this development secret from

331
00:18:56,359 --> 00:18:58,760
Speaker 1: the Allies until their surrender. If they had chosen to

332
00:18:58,840 --> 00:19:00,920
Speaker 1: use these weapons on Allied true they might have altered

333
00:19:00,960 --> 00:19:03,760
Speaker 1: the course of history once again. Germany had its superior

334
00:19:03,800 --> 00:19:06,600
Speaker 1: chemical industry to thank. Chemists from I. G. Farban, then

335
00:19:06,600 --> 00:19:09,159
Speaker 1: one of the world's largest corporations, stumbled on compounds of

336
00:19:09,200 --> 00:19:13,200
Speaker 1: extraordinary potency while trying to develop potential insecticides for commercial use.

337
00:19:13,480 --> 00:19:16,479
Speaker 1: What became Sarah Taboon and so Man All nerve gases

338
00:19:16,480 --> 00:19:19,639
Speaker 1: which caused the cascading failure of body functions, including the

339
00:19:19,640 --> 00:19:22,679
Speaker 1: body forgetting to breathe and then rapid death, were developed

340
00:19:22,680 --> 00:19:26,560
Speaker 1: by German scientists working with their very mocked counterparts I. G. Farban.

341
00:19:26,640 --> 00:19:30,800
Speaker 1: By the way, it's bear today, So that's cool. That's cool. Yeah,

342
00:19:30,840 --> 00:19:33,520
Speaker 1: you're aspirin is made by the people who invented saren cool.

343
00:19:33,640 --> 00:19:38,399
Speaker 1: I mean they know what they're doing. They do, you know,

344
00:19:38,800 --> 00:19:41,199
Speaker 1: I would I would argue that Sarah works better at

345
00:19:41,240 --> 00:19:45,440
Speaker 1: its intended application than aspirin. Yes, yeah, I can attest

346
00:19:45,480 --> 00:19:50,600
Speaker 1: to that from what I've seen and experience. But aspirin

347
00:19:50,680 --> 00:19:54,760
Speaker 1: doesn't do like when you're worth like as you develop that,

348
00:19:55,280 --> 00:19:57,680
Speaker 1: did you just go home and your wife's like, how

349
00:19:57,760 --> 00:20:03,240
Speaker 1: was today? You're like it was in chance. Yeah. I

350
00:20:03,080 --> 00:20:05,840
Speaker 1: imagine a lot of scientists like sitting out with a

351
00:20:05,880 --> 00:20:08,920
Speaker 1: beer watching the sunset, like staring at their kids playing

352
00:20:08,960 --> 00:20:14,159
Speaker 1: in the yard, and just like shaking their heads. I

353
00:20:14,200 --> 00:20:18,720
Speaker 1: don't think we should have done that. This might go

354
00:20:18,880 --> 00:20:22,679
Speaker 1: bad places just gonna buy us in the ass. I

355
00:20:22,720 --> 00:20:26,080
Speaker 1: feel like there's all the best scientists wind up feeling

356
00:20:26,119 --> 00:20:27,960
Speaker 1: like that at some point, Like we had a whole

357
00:20:28,000 --> 00:20:30,480
Speaker 1: generation of them on the Manhattan Project who must have

358
00:20:30,520 --> 00:20:33,000
Speaker 1: just gone home. You get this reading them where they're

359
00:20:33,000 --> 00:20:35,720
Speaker 1: just sitting around being like, oh boy, maybe I shouldn't

360
00:20:35,720 --> 00:20:40,400
Speaker 1: have done that, Probably shouldn't be doing this job. Yeah,

361
00:20:40,480 --> 00:20:43,920
Speaker 1: they just know just enough of the I don't I

362
00:20:44,320 --> 00:20:47,720
Speaker 1: think we should do this? You get okay, all right,

363
00:20:47,760 --> 00:20:53,280
Speaker 1: I'm just not Okay, Yeah, it's like everybody spreads that

364
00:20:53,359 --> 00:20:57,000
Speaker 1: Oppenheimer like that that anecdote about him reciting that line

365
00:20:57,040 --> 00:20:59,000
Speaker 1: from the Bog of a Gida, I become Death, the

366
00:20:59,040 --> 00:21:02,080
Speaker 1: destroyer of world. And I feel like, when you're talking

367
00:21:02,080 --> 00:21:04,280
Speaker 1: about when you need to change your career, if you

368
00:21:04,400 --> 00:21:07,239
Speaker 1: feel the need to quote that un ironically about what

369
00:21:07,280 --> 00:21:11,560
Speaker 1: you're doing, maybe you need a new job. Yeah, maybe

370
00:21:11,600 --> 00:21:13,879
Speaker 1: you're not in the right field. I'm like, I'm in

371
00:21:13,960 --> 00:21:16,880
Speaker 1: over my head. I'm in over your head now. I'm

372
00:21:16,920 --> 00:21:21,800
Speaker 1: gonna I just like science, that's all. I just like science.

373
00:21:23,320 --> 00:21:26,120
Speaker 1: I bet his resume was fun, just like nineteen forty

374
00:21:26,160 --> 00:21:28,960
Speaker 1: three to nineteen forty five. I became Death, destroyer of

375
00:21:29,000 --> 00:21:35,080
Speaker 1: World's nine about me. You may have heard about me,

376
00:21:37,000 --> 00:21:39,320
Speaker 1: you know, the guy who will ultimately be responsible for

377
00:21:39,359 --> 00:21:42,080
Speaker 1: the end of human civilization. That was my day jobs.

378
00:21:42,200 --> 00:21:47,000
Speaker 1: I figured it out. It was a problem, and I

379
00:21:47,040 --> 00:21:53,760
Speaker 1: got it first. I got it right. Ah damn it.

380
00:21:55,600 --> 00:21:57,920
Speaker 1: That is I mean when most scientists, I know, it's

381
00:21:57,960 --> 00:21:59,800
Speaker 1: that the whole thing is like we don't know, so

382
00:22:00,000 --> 00:22:03,760
Speaker 1: we're just honestly trying to figure out everything. Is like, oh,

383
00:22:03,840 --> 00:22:06,800
Speaker 1: we don't really know, and that's what happens is like

384
00:22:06,920 --> 00:22:10,960
Speaker 1: you guys keep asking questions. Man, Yeah, it's like doing

385
00:22:11,000 --> 00:22:15,880
Speaker 1: too many drugs. Sometimes I don't go down that Hallwaite man. Yeah,

386
00:22:15,920 --> 00:22:17,520
Speaker 1: you're gonna go too far and you're not gonna be

387
00:22:17,560 --> 00:22:21,479
Speaker 1: able to come back. But at least when people do

388
00:22:21,560 --> 00:22:24,400
Speaker 1: that on acid, like it just leads to them following

389
00:22:24,440 --> 00:22:29,840
Speaker 1: fish around for seven years when the military doesn't weaponize it. Yeah,

390
00:22:30,080 --> 00:22:34,600
Speaker 1: not yet tried, That's for sure. They have tried. It's

391
00:22:34,680 --> 00:22:38,040
Speaker 1: just hard to so. After World War Two, the US

392
00:22:38,080 --> 00:22:40,320
Speaker 1: and the Soviet Union embarked on a dark and secret

393
00:22:40,400 --> 00:22:43,480
Speaker 1: arms race to build more varied stockpiles of chemical weapons.

394
00:22:43,840 --> 00:22:46,919
Speaker 1: In By seven, the U s stockpile of saren was

395
00:22:46,960 --> 00:22:49,359
Speaker 1: so vast that we started developing a new series of

396
00:22:49,400 --> 00:22:53,639
Speaker 1: nerve gases. The V for Venomous Agents VX nerve gas

397
00:22:53,760 --> 00:22:56,160
Speaker 1: is probably the most famous of these. It's three times

398
00:22:56,160 --> 00:22:58,720
Speaker 1: as toxic as saren when inhaled, and a thousand times

399
00:22:58,720 --> 00:23:02,240
Speaker 1: as toxic when absorbed through the skin or the other.

400
00:23:02,320 --> 00:23:06,479
Speaker 1: We gotta make it worse. I just make sure, and

401
00:23:06,480 --> 00:23:09,000
Speaker 1: this isn't I forget, this isn't TV. I just threw

402
00:23:09,040 --> 00:23:11,679
Speaker 1: my hands up and I was like, just Jesus, like,

403
00:23:11,760 --> 00:23:14,960
Speaker 1: we have too much. Let's just makes some moment. Well,

404
00:23:14,960 --> 00:23:17,160
Speaker 1: and if you follow the line of thinking there, it's

405
00:23:17,200 --> 00:23:19,840
Speaker 1: remarkable because like in ninety five, like we see that

406
00:23:19,840 --> 00:23:22,879
Speaker 1: the Nazis have like operated the most brutal regime in history,

407
00:23:23,080 --> 00:23:26,159
Speaker 1: have gassed eleven million people to death and like the

408
00:23:26,560 --> 00:23:30,760
Speaker 1: fastest massacre in the history of human murder. And when

409
00:23:30,840 --> 00:23:33,120
Speaker 1: were like, oh, and these same people developed the deadliest

410
00:23:33,119 --> 00:23:36,320
Speaker 1: poison anyone's ever developed. I guess let's take it and

411
00:23:36,359 --> 00:23:42,840
Speaker 1: make more. That's the uh, we are so shitty, like

412
00:23:42,920 --> 00:23:47,760
Speaker 1: everyone is, but even specifically the US post World War Two. Yoh,

413
00:23:48,600 --> 00:23:53,560
Speaker 1: we won. We're gonna take everything. We won. The worst

414
00:23:53,560 --> 00:23:56,959
Speaker 1: people ever designed the worst poison ever. Let's make it. Oh,

415
00:23:57,040 --> 00:23:58,960
Speaker 1: we've made so much of it that there's no point

416
00:23:58,960 --> 00:24:01,560
Speaker 1: in that's having more. Let's make a deadlier version of it,

417
00:24:02,040 --> 00:24:08,800
Speaker 1: just in case somebody finds all ours. Yeah, now, Billy,

418
00:24:09,119 --> 00:24:11,520
Speaker 1: you know what isn't a thousand times deadlier than Sarah

419
00:24:11,520 --> 00:24:16,879
Speaker 1: and gas. No, the products and services that support this podcast,

420
00:24:16,960 --> 00:24:19,960
Speaker 1: we don't know that I do. I do. I can

421
00:24:20,040 --> 00:24:23,080
Speaker 1: guarantee you that if you if you deploy the products

422
00:24:23,080 --> 00:24:27,359
Speaker 1: and services that support this podcast against say, a recalcitrant

423
00:24:27,440 --> 00:24:35,160
Speaker 1: rebel village. Uh, it won't suffocate them. I hope you're right.

424
00:24:35,440 --> 00:24:42,680
Speaker 1: I hope you're right. I suspect I am in this case. Anyway,

425
00:24:42,760 --> 00:24:54,680
Speaker 1: here is our non weaponizable products. We're back. Okay, So Billy,

426
00:24:54,720 --> 00:24:57,439
Speaker 1: we've been talking about poison gas a little bit this morning,

427
00:24:57,560 --> 00:25:00,080
Speaker 1: and that's been fun um, and I should probably to

428
00:25:00,080 --> 00:25:02,400
Speaker 1: talk a little bit here about what these chemicals we're

429
00:25:02,440 --> 00:25:06,840
Speaker 1: talking about do. So saren nerve gas basically turns off

430
00:25:06,960 --> 00:25:10,080
Speaker 1: the off switch for your muscles and nerves, which leads

431
00:25:10,119 --> 00:25:15,080
Speaker 1: to constant muscle contractions, seizures, uncontrollable convulsion, and exhaustion that

432
00:25:15,119 --> 00:25:18,080
Speaker 1: can cause respiratory paralysis, which is when your lungs forget

433
00:25:18,119 --> 00:25:20,720
Speaker 1: to work, and of course death. But it doesn't turn

434
00:25:20,760 --> 00:25:23,080
Speaker 1: off your nerves, so you get to feel No, it's

435
00:25:23,200 --> 00:25:26,880
Speaker 1: you're in a horrible pain. Oh, it's terrible. One. That's fun. Yeah,

436
00:25:26,920 --> 00:25:31,000
Speaker 1: it's it's it's good. V X nerve gas works the

437
00:25:31,040 --> 00:25:33,760
Speaker 1: same way, but at lower doses and it's much faster.

438
00:25:34,240 --> 00:25:37,639
Speaker 1: One leader of VX nerve gas contains enough individual doses

439
00:25:37,680 --> 00:25:41,359
Speaker 1: to kill a million human beings. WHOA, that's yeah, that's

440
00:25:41,400 --> 00:25:49,399
Speaker 1: that's cool. That's helpful. Good much you can give a

441
00:25:49,480 --> 00:25:55,360
Speaker 1: million people with this much. And again the dudes who

442
00:25:55,400 --> 00:25:59,560
Speaker 1: did that went home and like watched fireworks with their families.

443
00:26:00,720 --> 00:26:05,840
Speaker 1: It's amazing. Yeah, well, guys, we made a leader of

444
00:26:05,840 --> 00:26:08,240
Speaker 1: this ship time to go home for the day. A

445
00:26:08,280 --> 00:26:14,679
Speaker 1: million people. So, by the late nineteen fifties, the Soviet

446
00:26:14,760 --> 00:26:17,080
Speaker 1: Union had also learned how to produce v X nerve gas,

447
00:26:17,160 --> 00:26:20,520
Speaker 1: and they started making it too. Now, the USSR was

448
00:26:20,600 --> 00:26:24,080
Speaker 1: in general a major distributor of horrific poisons throughout the

449
00:26:24,080 --> 00:26:26,920
Speaker 1: Cold War. They sent a shipload of chemical weapons to Egypt,

450
00:26:26,920 --> 00:26:29,439
Speaker 1: a nation who today still refuses to sign the Chemical

451
00:26:29,440 --> 00:26:33,160
Speaker 1: Weapons Convention. In nineteen sixty three, Egypt deployed false gene

452
00:26:33,160 --> 00:26:36,639
Speaker 1: and mustard gas against Yemeni forces. In nineteen sixty seven,

453
00:26:36,680 --> 00:26:39,200
Speaker 1: they again used nerve gas and Yemen. Many of these

454
00:26:39,200 --> 00:26:42,720
Speaker 1: weapons were likely supplied directly by the Soviet Union. In

455
00:26:42,720 --> 00:26:47,560
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen eighties, Saddam Hussein's Iraq began producing its Yeah,

456
00:26:47,600 --> 00:26:50,760
Speaker 1: it was deployed extensively throughout the Iran Iraq War. Now,

457
00:26:50,880 --> 00:26:53,800
Speaker 1: the US did not approve of any of this directly,

458
00:26:54,280 --> 00:26:57,800
Speaker 1: nor did we directly hand the Iraqi regime v X

459
00:26:57,880 --> 00:27:01,199
Speaker 1: nerve gas, but we did use our intelligence apparatus to

460
00:27:01,240 --> 00:27:04,440
Speaker 1: inform Iraq of the position of Iranian military units, knowing

461
00:27:04,480 --> 00:27:08,119
Speaker 1: full well that Iraq would deploy chemical weapons against them. Um,

462
00:27:08,200 --> 00:27:10,960
Speaker 1: and then we later use this as a justification for

463
00:27:11,000 --> 00:27:13,680
Speaker 1: invading them. Um. I'm gonna quote from a great article

464
00:27:13,680 --> 00:27:18,240
Speaker 1: in Foreign Policy quote. US officials have long denied acquiescing

465
00:27:18,280 --> 00:27:21,880
Speaker 1: to Iraqi chemical attacks, insisting that Hussein's government never announced

466
00:27:21,880 --> 00:27:23,919
Speaker 1: he was going to use the weapons. But retired Air

467
00:27:23,920 --> 00:27:26,800
Speaker 1: Force Colonel Rick Francona, who was a military attache in

468
00:27:26,800 --> 00:27:31,000
Speaker 1: Baghdad during the strikes, paints a different picture. The Iraqis

469
00:27:31,040 --> 00:27:33,240
Speaker 1: never told us that they intended to use nerve gas.

470
00:27:33,440 --> 00:27:38,280
Speaker 1: They didn't have to. We already knew. So that's cool. Yeah,

471
00:27:38,600 --> 00:27:41,800
Speaker 1: So everybody's fine in the Cold War with using chemical weapons.

472
00:27:42,200 --> 00:27:47,439
Speaker 1: Point cold chemicals warm people up. It's a cold war.

473
00:27:49,480 --> 00:27:53,200
Speaker 1: We're not having a real war. We're just having a like, Hey,

474
00:27:55,000 --> 00:28:00,240
Speaker 1: come on, it's chili. Warm up with this VX. It

475
00:28:00,240 --> 00:28:03,520
Speaker 1: will make your muscles contract and that'll warm you up.

476
00:28:05,800 --> 00:28:09,640
Speaker 1: You know what they say to people having fatal seizures

477
00:28:09,640 --> 00:28:13,800
Speaker 1: are never chili. Hm. They sweat a lot. They sweat

478
00:28:13,840 --> 00:28:17,080
Speaker 1: a lot. Uh. So I brought all of this up

479
00:28:17,119 --> 00:28:20,320
Speaker 1: as background because the stuff we're about to talk about today, Uh,

480
00:28:20,359 --> 00:28:23,560
Speaker 1: Walter Basson and South Africa is horrific. But it's important

481
00:28:23,600 --> 00:28:27,320
Speaker 1: to understand the context of the global chemical warfare industry

482
00:28:27,440 --> 00:28:30,280
Speaker 1: and its use in the nineteen seventies and eighties. UM.

483
00:28:30,440 --> 00:28:33,080
Speaker 1: When we start talking about chemical weapons and the nations

484
00:28:33,119 --> 00:28:35,400
Speaker 1: that use them, it's not a story that has any

485
00:28:35,440 --> 00:28:39,000
Speaker 1: good guys, but there's definitely bad guys, and Walter Basson

486
00:28:39,120 --> 00:28:42,320
Speaker 1: is one of the worst. UM. Mr Basson was born

487
00:28:42,360 --> 00:28:45,320
Speaker 1: on July six, nineteen fifty seven years before the birth

488
00:28:45,320 --> 00:28:47,560
Speaker 1: of the V series of nerve gases, and we don't

489
00:28:47,560 --> 00:28:49,520
Speaker 1: know much about his early life. He grew up around

490
00:28:49,520 --> 00:28:51,880
Speaker 1: Cape Town and became a cardiologist, and he seems to

491
00:28:51,880 --> 00:28:54,320
Speaker 1: have excelled in his career. He practiced medicine in the

492
00:28:54,360 --> 00:28:56,400
Speaker 1: suburbs of that city and the employee of the South

493
00:28:56,440 --> 00:28:59,320
Speaker 1: African Defense Forces. He eventually rose to the rank of

494
00:28:59,320 --> 00:29:04,760
Speaker 1: brigadier and became a trusted part of the military medical establishment. UM.

495
00:29:04,800 --> 00:29:10,280
Speaker 1: So have you ever heard of Rhodesia, Billy Wayne or

496
00:29:10,360 --> 00:29:14,160
Speaker 1: is it an herb? It's a it's a place. UM,

497
00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:18,360
Speaker 1: it was a place. Rhodesia was essentially a call. It's

498
00:29:18,360 --> 00:29:21,760
Speaker 1: like modern day Zimbabwe UM, but back when white people

499
00:29:21,800 --> 00:29:25,640
Speaker 1: were in charge of it, it was called Rhodesia UM. Now,

500
00:29:25,680 --> 00:29:28,480
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties and seventies, the European powers started

501
00:29:28,520 --> 00:29:31,440
Speaker 1: to increasingly pull out of their African colonies, and this

502
00:29:31,480 --> 00:29:33,719
Speaker 1: posed a problem for the parts of Africa that had

503
00:29:33,760 --> 00:29:37,320
Speaker 1: sizeable white populations who had grown up basically controlling large

504
00:29:37,400 --> 00:29:41,040
Speaker 1: chunks of land and ruling over large numbers of black people.

505
00:29:42,080 --> 00:29:45,600
Speaker 1: Rhodesia was named after the arch colonialist Cecil Rhodes who

506
00:29:45,600 --> 00:29:47,280
Speaker 1: will certainly have an episode of his own one of

507
00:29:47,320 --> 00:29:50,280
Speaker 1: these days, UM. And so for years there was like

508
00:29:50,320 --> 00:29:54,760
Speaker 1: this big conflict over Rhodesia UM. And basically like actually

509
00:29:54,760 --> 00:29:57,440
Speaker 1: a lot of ore, like the modern military tactics that

510
00:29:57,480 --> 00:30:00,120
Speaker 1: the U. S Military uses in Afghanistan and Iraq, like

511
00:30:00,160 --> 00:30:04,120
Speaker 1: counterinsurgency tactics were invented by the white Rhodesian military to

512
00:30:04,160 --> 00:30:09,320
Speaker 1: suppress the black population. Well, we're just you know, taking

513
00:30:09,320 --> 00:30:15,840
Speaker 1: feeling good and keep doing the good, you know, yeah, exactly. UM.

514
00:30:16,320 --> 00:30:18,680
Speaker 1: If you ever heard a soldier of Fortune magazine, I have.

515
00:30:19,040 --> 00:30:20,640
Speaker 1: I used to read it when I was little, you know,

516
00:30:20,760 --> 00:30:24,280
Speaker 1: I didn't know, Yeah, it was well, during like the seventies,

517
00:30:24,320 --> 00:30:26,800
Speaker 1: they would put in ads for the Rhodesian military because

518
00:30:26,880 --> 00:30:30,800
Speaker 1: Rhodesia would like solicit white people from America and Europe

519
00:30:30,840 --> 00:30:35,360
Speaker 1: to come and fight as and become like colonial warriors,

520
00:30:35,360 --> 00:30:38,480
Speaker 1: suppressing like the black population. It's super fucked up. The

521
00:30:38,480 --> 00:30:42,120
Speaker 1: story of Rhodesia is incredibly fucked up. But they know

522
00:30:42,280 --> 00:30:46,120
Speaker 1: where we grew up. People were like, y'all, you can

523
00:30:46,160 --> 00:30:49,400
Speaker 1: go over you can go over there and get to

524
00:30:49,400 --> 00:30:55,680
Speaker 1: shoot people. You can kill them and not racist there. Fine,

525
00:30:55,720 --> 00:30:59,440
Speaker 1: it was I saw it in an ad. It was

526
00:30:59,520 --> 00:31:03,000
Speaker 1: then sold you're a Fortune magazine. In the back of

527
00:31:03,000 --> 00:31:05,400
Speaker 1: a magazine, you can go over and kill people and

528
00:31:05,600 --> 00:31:09,600
Speaker 1: it's okay. All the best militaries advertised in the back

529
00:31:09,640 --> 00:31:18,040
Speaker 1: of a magazine. Um So, the Rhodesian struggle for I

530
00:31:18,040 --> 00:31:21,280
Speaker 1: don't know, colonial domination um ended in the early nineteen

531
00:31:21,360 --> 00:31:24,320
Speaker 1: seventies in defeat and with the establishment of the nation

532
00:31:24,320 --> 00:31:29,560
Speaker 1: of Zimbabwe racist Americans that we did. We ran out

533
00:31:29,560 --> 00:31:37,800
Speaker 1: our racist I guess yeah. So that left just one

534
00:31:37,880 --> 00:31:42,840
Speaker 1: power in Africa fighting for white supremacy, obviously South Africa.

535
00:31:43,520 --> 00:31:46,760
Speaker 1: UM Now, the badly outnumbered white population of South Africa

536
00:31:46,840 --> 00:31:49,600
Speaker 1: managed to maintain power via a brutal police state and

537
00:31:49,640 --> 00:31:53,560
Speaker 1: oppressive laws that made Jim Crow look still pretty bad,

538
00:31:53,760 --> 00:31:57,840
Speaker 1: but less bad. Uh, that's not the best way to

539
00:31:57,880 --> 00:32:00,120
Speaker 1: frame it. It was even worse than Jim Crow, is

540
00:32:00,160 --> 00:32:02,280
Speaker 1: what I'm saying about the apartheid state. You don't want

541
00:32:02,320 --> 00:32:05,840
Speaker 1: to be You don't have that argument either way, we're like, hey,

542
00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:09,840
Speaker 1: we're not. It was like you you take the most

543
00:32:09,960 --> 00:32:13,200
Speaker 1: racist people in America and you make them more racist,

544
00:32:13,240 --> 00:32:15,200
Speaker 1: and that was the government of South Africa in the

545
00:32:15,200 --> 00:32:18,960
Speaker 1: mid nineteen seventies. Like, or maybe not more racist, but

546
00:32:19,000 --> 00:32:21,400
Speaker 1: with more power to be racist is probably a better

547
00:32:21,400 --> 00:32:23,040
Speaker 1: way to frame it, because I suspect a lot of

548
00:32:23,120 --> 00:32:25,640
Speaker 1: racists in America in this period would have done what

549
00:32:25,680 --> 00:32:28,920
Speaker 1: the South African government did, but they just weren't allowed to.

550
00:32:29,160 --> 00:32:31,959
Speaker 1: They didn't they didn't have the Internet to like, you know,

551
00:32:32,120 --> 00:32:34,880
Speaker 1: motivate them like, oh, they're getting it done down there.

552
00:32:35,240 --> 00:32:38,800
Speaker 1: We could be more racist, I know, we wouldn't do

553
00:32:38,880 --> 00:32:42,960
Speaker 1: it enough. So, Uh. In the mid nineteen seventies, South

554
00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:46,240
Speaker 1: Africa got involved in a civil war and Angola fighting

555
00:32:46,280 --> 00:32:49,080
Speaker 1: on the side of anti communist rebels. And this was

556
00:32:49,120 --> 00:32:51,560
Speaker 1: a very complicated conflict, but the gist of the story

557
00:32:51,640 --> 00:32:53,840
Speaker 1: is that South Africa believed that the cause of white

558
00:32:53,840 --> 00:32:56,600
Speaker 1: supremacy was best served by supporting the United States and

559
00:32:56,600 --> 00:32:59,200
Speaker 1: its allies in the Cold War, so they backed the

560
00:32:59,240 --> 00:33:02,400
Speaker 1: anti community side in the civil war in Angola. Yeah,

561
00:33:02,640 --> 00:33:06,120
Speaker 1: you can make of that what you will. So Cuba

562
00:33:06,200 --> 00:33:08,040
Speaker 1: came out on the side of the pro communist and

563
00:33:08,120 --> 00:33:11,240
Speaker 1: Golan government, and in short order South African soldiers found

564
00:33:11,280 --> 00:33:14,920
Speaker 1: themselves wildly outnumbered and outmaneuvered by the Cuban Army UM

565
00:33:14,960 --> 00:33:18,360
Speaker 1: and their forces in the Angolan Army. Uh. They were

566
00:33:18,400 --> 00:33:20,840
Speaker 1: forced to withdraw from the country, But before that happened,

567
00:33:20,840 --> 00:33:24,600
Speaker 1: they captured a handful of Cuban military vehicles. Inside them,

568
00:33:24,600 --> 00:33:27,600
Speaker 1: they found a variety of gas antidotes and gas masks.

569
00:33:27,960 --> 00:33:31,200
Speaker 1: This convinced the South African defense forces that Cuban soldiers

570
00:33:31,240 --> 00:33:34,760
Speaker 1: were preparing to use chemical weapons against them. Now, it's

571
00:33:34,800 --> 00:33:37,320
Speaker 1: possible that this never happened. Everything I'm telling you now

572
00:33:37,400 --> 00:33:39,479
Speaker 1: is based on war crimes trials conducted in the mid

573
00:33:39,600 --> 00:33:43,280
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, but the South African military establishment claims that

574
00:33:43,360 --> 00:33:45,800
Speaker 1: fears of Cuban chemical weapons is what drove them to

575
00:33:45,800 --> 00:33:51,440
Speaker 1: start developing their own chemical weapons program. So yeah, now,

576
00:33:52,360 --> 00:33:54,600
Speaker 1: one thing I should note in terms of like determining

577
00:33:54,600 --> 00:33:56,280
Speaker 1: whether or not this is true and whether or not

578
00:33:56,280 --> 00:33:58,480
Speaker 1: they thought there was a really real military threat that

579
00:33:58,480 --> 00:34:01,280
Speaker 1: inspired them to make chemical weapons, is that right around

580
00:34:01,280 --> 00:34:03,400
Speaker 1: the same time their war worth Angola went to ship,

581
00:34:03,720 --> 00:34:06,560
Speaker 1: the powers that be in South Africa also felt control

582
00:34:06,560 --> 00:34:09,200
Speaker 1: of the domestic situation in their country slipping through their

583
00:34:09,239 --> 00:34:12,839
Speaker 1: hands um see. At this point in South Africa, white

584
00:34:12,880 --> 00:34:16,120
Speaker 1: South Africans basically held all political power in the country,

585
00:34:16,480 --> 00:34:19,080
Speaker 1: despite making up only a small percentage of the population.

586
00:34:19,440 --> 00:34:22,840
Speaker 1: Under Prime Minister B. J. Worcester. Throughout the mid nineteen seventies,

587
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:25,920
Speaker 1: economic growth plummeted, urban and crowding grew worse, and it

588
00:34:25,920 --> 00:34:28,440
Speaker 1: became increasingly clear to everyone that the black majority of

589
00:34:28,440 --> 00:34:31,239
Speaker 1: the country was increasingly less willing to take this kind

590
00:34:31,239 --> 00:34:34,520
Speaker 1: of ship. In nineteen seventy six, after the last South

591
00:34:34,520 --> 00:34:37,840
Speaker 1: African troops left Angola, students in the Soetto township of

592
00:34:37,920 --> 00:34:43,040
Speaker 1: Johannesburg protested against the mandatory teaching of Afrikaans and school. Now,

593
00:34:43,360 --> 00:34:46,239
Speaker 1: Afrikaans is like a white kind of like I think

594
00:34:46,280 --> 00:34:48,440
Speaker 1: it's a descendant of like German or in Dutch and

595
00:34:48,520 --> 00:34:50,640
Speaker 1: stuff like it's it's the language that the white people

596
00:34:50,640 --> 00:34:54,440
Speaker 1: in South Africa speak and black people in South Africa

597
00:34:54,480 --> 00:34:57,400
Speaker 1: were not happy at being forced to learn a foreign

598
00:34:57,440 --> 00:35:04,320
Speaker 1: occupier language. Um one not imagine. Yeah, it's truly mystifying, Billy.

599
00:35:05,040 --> 00:35:08,319
Speaker 1: Normally people love being forced to learn the language that

600
00:35:08,360 --> 00:35:12,400
Speaker 1: the people who regularly shoot them speaks. Gonna be a

601
00:35:12,440 --> 00:35:17,000
Speaker 1: fun episode. Just learn our language. Why don't you want

602
00:35:17,000 --> 00:35:19,879
Speaker 1: to learn? Is it the shooting you? Is that way?

603
00:35:19,920 --> 00:35:22,680
Speaker 1: You don't want to learn our language because it's because

604
00:35:22,719 --> 00:35:25,000
Speaker 1: this is your country and we came here? Is that?

605
00:35:25,000 --> 00:35:28,280
Speaker 1: Why are you gotta let it go? Dude? You gotta

606
00:35:28,360 --> 00:35:34,960
Speaker 1: let ye so? Um. The Sotto uprisings were put down

607
00:35:35,000 --> 00:35:38,160
Speaker 1: by white police with live rounds. They killed a number

608
00:35:38,160 --> 00:35:43,120
Speaker 1: of school children and it sparked an international incident. Um. So. Obviously,

609
00:35:43,280 --> 00:35:45,360
Speaker 1: the late nineteen seventies was not a great time for

610
00:35:45,480 --> 00:35:48,960
Speaker 1: racial awareness UH in the West, but things had progressed

611
00:35:49,040 --> 00:35:51,399
Speaker 1: enough that black school children being mowed down by white

612
00:35:51,480 --> 00:35:54,720
Speaker 1: cops did not play well, and since South Africa's political

613
00:35:54,920 --> 00:35:57,560
Speaker 1: position was precarious at best, they really needed the support

614
00:35:57,600 --> 00:36:00,719
Speaker 1: of western nations. Um. The head of the Defense Force,

615
00:36:00,840 --> 00:36:04,600
Speaker 1: General Constant Ville Jean, later testified that the diplomatic backlash

616
00:36:04,640 --> 00:36:07,360
Speaker 1: convinced the government that such bloodshed had to be prevented.

617
00:36:07,680 --> 00:36:10,200
Speaker 1: So it all quote focus the attention of the military

618
00:36:10,280 --> 00:36:14,000
Speaker 1: on the need to develop alternative crowd control agents. So

619
00:36:14,040 --> 00:36:15,920
Speaker 1: this is what starts them on the road to developing

620
00:36:15,960 --> 00:36:18,120
Speaker 1: chemical weapons. As they're like, boy, it looks bad when

621
00:36:18,120 --> 00:36:22,000
Speaker 1: we just shoot people. We need an alternative. We need

622
00:36:22,040 --> 00:36:26,080
Speaker 1: an alternative to shooting people. It's just democratis those were

623
00:36:26,200 --> 00:36:30,080
Speaker 1: alternative crowd control. What's that mean? We can't shoot him anymore.

624
00:36:31,080 --> 00:36:33,439
Speaker 1: So gases seem like a good call because you can't

625
00:36:33,480 --> 00:36:35,880
Speaker 1: see those so well on a camera. What if we

626
00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:39,800
Speaker 1: just put like invisible stuff that gets in their bodies

627
00:36:39,840 --> 00:36:43,480
Speaker 1: and kills them that way. M hmm, Yeah, that's basically

628
00:36:43,520 --> 00:36:47,000
Speaker 1: the thinking. So after so at, the South African Defense

629
00:36:47,080 --> 00:36:50,600
Speaker 1: establishment becomes convinced that a total strategy is necessary in

630
00:36:50,680 --> 00:36:53,239
Speaker 1: order to defend the country from the unrest that was

631
00:36:53,600 --> 00:36:56,320
Speaker 1: increasingly sweeping the nation. And I feel like a r

632
00:36:56,400 --> 00:36:58,680
Speaker 1: fault to start with, but we're going to have to

633
00:36:58,880 --> 00:37:02,000
Speaker 1: do something awful about it. Now there's all this unrest.

634
00:37:02,040 --> 00:37:04,480
Speaker 1: We gotta do something about it. Let's let's try to

635
00:37:04,520 --> 00:37:08,680
Speaker 1: be the worst thing imaginable about it. Yeah, that's basically

636
00:37:08,680 --> 00:37:12,640
Speaker 1: where this goes. So in nineteen eighty one, the South

637
00:37:12,640 --> 00:37:18,160
Speaker 1: African government orders Brigadair Walter Basson, a young military cardiologist,

638
00:37:18,239 --> 00:37:21,359
Speaker 1: to travel abroad and learn about the chemical and biological

639
00:37:21,360 --> 00:37:27,520
Speaker 1: weapons programs of the Western world. Why a cardiologist, Yeah,

640
00:37:27,600 --> 00:37:30,960
Speaker 1: I guess because he was just the best evil doctor

641
00:37:31,040 --> 00:37:33,480
Speaker 1: they had. Like they looked at all the doctors in

642
00:37:33,520 --> 00:37:37,160
Speaker 1: the military and we're like, you're the evilist. That's my guest.

643
00:37:37,200 --> 00:37:41,640
Speaker 1: I don't know how this motherfucker is hollow and side.

644
00:37:41,719 --> 00:37:47,520
Speaker 1: Let's get him. There is nothing behind this man's He's

645
00:37:47,560 --> 00:37:52,439
Speaker 1: good at stuff, but I don't like it. Yeah, so

646
00:37:52,640 --> 00:37:54,680
Speaker 1: um Woter and his name is I think w O

647
00:37:54,920 --> 00:37:59,560
Speaker 1: T E r Um. So I'm not Wooter. It seems

648
00:37:59,600 --> 00:38:01,440
Speaker 1: more like alter, which is why I think I've called

649
00:38:01,520 --> 00:38:04,000
Speaker 1: him that a couple of times. But but Wood, we'll

650
00:38:04,000 --> 00:38:07,160
Speaker 1: call him Wood. Wutta was a thirty years old at

651
00:38:07,200 --> 00:38:09,000
Speaker 1: this point, and he took to his task with all

652
00:38:09,040 --> 00:38:11,960
Speaker 1: the enthusiasm you'd expect of a young wunderkind. Given the

653
00:38:12,040 --> 00:38:15,799
Speaker 1: chance to embark on an unprecedented project, Project Coast, as

654
00:38:15,800 --> 00:38:17,800
Speaker 1: it was named, grew into one of the most ambitious

655
00:38:17,800 --> 00:38:21,160
Speaker 1: and sinister weapons projects in human history. Its goals, if

656
00:38:21,160 --> 00:38:23,720
Speaker 1: not its ends, may have even eclipsed the Manhattan Project

657
00:38:23,719 --> 00:38:27,480
Speaker 1: and horrifying scale. So we don't fully know where Bassin

658
00:38:27,600 --> 00:38:29,680
Speaker 1: traveled in order to learn the tools of his new

659
00:38:29,719 --> 00:38:32,920
Speaker 1: deadly trade. The evidence we have shows he visited a

660
00:38:32,960 --> 00:38:36,680
Speaker 1: dizzying variety of different destinations. A congress on Chemical and

661
00:38:36,680 --> 00:38:39,759
Speaker 1: Biological Weapons in San Antonio in May of nineteen eighty one,

662
00:38:40,040 --> 00:38:42,920
Speaker 1: a visit to Taiwan to see their chemical weapons factories.

663
00:38:42,960 --> 00:38:45,960
Speaker 1: That same year, he made trips to Denmark, Switzerland, and

664
00:38:45,960 --> 00:38:48,280
Speaker 1: he spent more than four weeks in the Russian Academy

665
00:38:48,320 --> 00:38:51,120
Speaker 1: of Sciences in Moscow. We know he spent time working

666
00:38:51,160 --> 00:38:53,839
Speaker 1: with British intelligence, and it's impossible for us to say

667
00:38:53,920 --> 00:38:56,640
Speaker 1: exactly how much help or what precise sort of help

668
00:38:56,880 --> 00:39:00,839
Speaker 1: these different nations provided, but it's fair to say that

669
00:39:01,080 --> 00:39:04,759
Speaker 1: both sides of the chemical weapons industry, Soviet and UH

670
00:39:04,800 --> 00:39:09,320
Speaker 1: and Western um contributed knowledge to voters like later development.

671
00:39:09,400 --> 00:39:12,839
Speaker 1: So that's cool, right, everybody came together. Yeah, it's like

672
00:39:12,880 --> 00:39:15,319
Speaker 1: how if you don't know, if you've ever been to

673
00:39:15,360 --> 00:39:18,759
Speaker 1: a gun show, like like the fair ground, it is

674
00:39:18,800 --> 00:39:21,840
Speaker 1: like all the time, I know you have this is

675
00:39:21,880 --> 00:39:25,040
Speaker 1: more further people. But what always makes me laugh is

676
00:39:25,080 --> 00:39:27,320
Speaker 1: like it's people that hate each other it's like base

677
00:39:29,080 --> 00:39:31,200
Speaker 1: a gun shows like basse where they go get their

678
00:39:31,239 --> 00:39:34,480
Speaker 1: weapons and then they go fight each other outside. Yeah,

679
00:39:34,520 --> 00:39:38,120
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty fun. Actually, it's the same thing going

680
00:39:38,200 --> 00:39:41,440
Speaker 1: to gun rages and like seeing the different political patches

681
00:39:41,560 --> 00:39:44,280
Speaker 1: on people's like bags and stuff and being like, ah,

682
00:39:44,320 --> 00:39:47,879
Speaker 1: you all like a couple of bad years and you'll

683
00:39:47,920 --> 00:39:50,560
Speaker 1: be using those on each other. Yeah, but you can't

684
00:39:50,560 --> 00:39:54,239
Speaker 1: do it here yet, not yet, not yet. We know

685
00:39:54,280 --> 00:39:56,319
Speaker 1: who your picture and when you put those targets up.

686
00:39:59,760 --> 00:40:02,400
Speaker 1: So throughout the late nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties,

687
00:40:02,440 --> 00:40:06,160
Speaker 1: Basson developed a shocking array of conventional, chemical and biological

688
00:40:06,160 --> 00:40:10,000
Speaker 1: weapons for South Africa. He designed rifle grenades, mortar bombs,

689
00:40:10,000 --> 00:40:13,799
Speaker 1: and artillery shells with biological weapons capacity. Now, this was

690
00:40:13,840 --> 00:40:16,480
Speaker 1: all pretty conventional within the dark standards of the arms

691
00:40:16,520 --> 00:40:19,560
Speaker 1: industry at the time, but Basson quickly went beyond preparing

692
00:40:19,600 --> 00:40:22,400
Speaker 1: South Africa's conventional forces for a shooting war that just

693
00:40:22,520 --> 00:40:27,160
Speaker 1: involved chemical weapons. See Around the same time Project Coast started,

694
00:40:27,239 --> 00:40:31,480
Speaker 1: the South African Special Forces launched Operation Barnacle. This was

695
00:40:31,520 --> 00:40:35,600
Speaker 1: an action spearheaded by white former Rhodesian security operators to

696
00:40:35,680 --> 00:40:39,320
Speaker 1: assassinate enemies of the apartheid government. Wood or Basson wound

697
00:40:39,400 --> 00:40:41,960
Speaker 1: up at the heart of this enterprise to his goal

698
00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:44,280
Speaker 1: in it was to clamp down on the Southwest African

699
00:40:44,320 --> 00:40:47,760
Speaker 1: People's Organization in Namibia, a group the South African government

700
00:40:47,800 --> 00:40:51,320
Speaker 1: considered terrorists but most people would probably call freedom fighters.

701
00:40:51,840 --> 00:40:54,319
Speaker 1: Here's how The Guardian described what wood or Basson helped

702
00:40:54,360 --> 00:40:58,120
Speaker 1: his government due to the SWAPO is the acronym the

703
00:40:58,120 --> 00:41:03,680
Speaker 1: South African Southwest African PS Organization. I think SWAPO is fun. Quote.

704
00:41:04,320 --> 00:41:07,279
Speaker 1: Particular favorites of his were muscle relaxings, which, when given

705
00:41:07,280 --> 00:41:09,840
Speaker 1: to victims and large doses, caused their lungs to collapse

706
00:41:09,840 --> 00:41:12,880
Speaker 1: and induced suffocation. The charge sheet alleges that are around

707
00:41:12,960 --> 00:41:15,880
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty Basson provided the toxins to kill two hundred

708
00:41:15,880 --> 00:41:19,000
Speaker 1: and Namibians SWAPO gorillas fighting for independence from South Africa.

709
00:41:19,360 --> 00:41:22,040
Speaker 1: An aircraft was purchased for the purpose of disposing bodies

710
00:41:22,080 --> 00:41:27,200
Speaker 1: in the sea. Yeah, it's it's fun stuff. Like he's

711
00:41:27,280 --> 00:41:30,239
Speaker 1: just like, oh you think, like he watches people be

712
00:41:30,320 --> 00:41:32,920
Speaker 1: like okay, man, that's terrible. He's like just white. He

713
00:41:33,080 --> 00:41:36,000
Speaker 1: gets good. They're like no, no, we're good, and he's

714
00:41:36,040 --> 00:41:39,120
Speaker 1: like no, no, I just cracked my knuckles. We're just now.

715
00:41:39,680 --> 00:41:42,160
Speaker 1: Then we get an airplane and we dumped their bodies

716
00:41:42,520 --> 00:41:51,920
Speaker 1: in the ocean, right, Billy. You know who won't poison

717
00:41:52,040 --> 00:41:54,240
Speaker 1: freedom fighters to death and dump their bodies in the ocean.

718
00:41:55,320 --> 00:41:59,560
Speaker 1: Derritos the probably Well actually they they're they're owned by

719
00:41:59,600 --> 00:42:01,680
Speaker 1: I think Friedo La and I suspect fried to Lay

720
00:42:01,760 --> 00:42:06,000
Speaker 1: absolutely would do that. Um, you're right, I'm with you

721
00:42:06,080 --> 00:42:08,719
Speaker 1: on that. Yeah, but you know who won't are the

722
00:42:08,800 --> 00:42:18,319
Speaker 1: products and services that support this show. Yes, we're back,

723
00:42:18,719 --> 00:42:21,319
Speaker 1: so Billy. When we when we left off, we talked

724
00:42:21,360 --> 00:42:25,720
Speaker 1: about how Bassin provided toxins that shut down the lungs

725
00:42:26,600 --> 00:42:28,839
Speaker 1: of of swap O guerrillas and then they would throw

726
00:42:28,880 --> 00:42:31,479
Speaker 1: them into the sea from helicopters. Um, and I'm gonna

727
00:42:31,480 --> 00:42:34,160
Speaker 1: continue quoting from that Guardian article. It just sort of

728
00:42:34,360 --> 00:42:37,960
Speaker 1: what things WoT Bassin got involved with as part of

729
00:42:38,040 --> 00:42:42,480
Speaker 1: this operation to clamp down on an independence movement. Quote,

730
00:42:43,080 --> 00:42:46,440
Speaker 1: bass and supplied quantities of tuberine and skoline muscle relaxans,

731
00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:49,839
Speaker 1: which an overdose would cause suffocation. Basson requested feedback about

732
00:42:49,840 --> 00:42:53,800
Speaker 1: the effectivity of these substances. The indictment reads Dr Jack Bothma,

733
00:42:53,800 --> 00:42:56,200
Speaker 1: an orthopedic surgeon, who fled to Canada, is expected to

734
00:42:56,239 --> 00:42:58,800
Speaker 1: testify that he handcuffed five minted trees and rubbed a

735
00:42:58,840 --> 00:43:01,160
Speaker 1: poison gel into their body. He's on the orders of Basson,

736
00:43:01,480 --> 00:43:04,080
Speaker 1: who is allegedly experimenting with new means of killing people.

737
00:43:04,320 --> 00:43:06,239
Speaker 1: When it failed to have the desired result, the men

738
00:43:06,280 --> 00:43:09,520
Speaker 1: were murdered with muscle relaxants. Botham has turned state's evidence

739
00:43:09,560 --> 00:43:12,080
Speaker 1: in return for immunity from prosecution for the murders. His

740
00:43:12,200 --> 00:43:14,520
Speaker 1: license to practice in Canada was recently revoked after he

741
00:43:14,560 --> 00:43:17,840
Speaker 1: failed a qualification exam. In many cases, the naked bodies

742
00:43:17,880 --> 00:43:19,600
Speaker 1: of the victims were dumped at sea from a plane.

743
00:43:19,760 --> 00:43:22,279
Speaker 1: Basson is alleged to have sometimes gone along for the ride.

744
00:43:22,520 --> 00:43:24,840
Speaker 1: On other occasions, the corpses were disposed of in blast

745
00:43:24,920 --> 00:43:31,800
Speaker 1: furnaces or shallow graves. So that's great, good, Yeah, So

746
00:43:31,920 --> 00:43:33,759
Speaker 1: what you get from that this is obviously there were

747
00:43:33,800 --> 00:43:36,640
Speaker 1: trials about this later which we'll talk about. But this

748
00:43:36,800 --> 00:43:39,400
Speaker 1: is a guy who number one, he's charged with helping

749
00:43:39,880 --> 00:43:43,120
Speaker 1: South African special forces clamped down on this this black

750
00:43:43,200 --> 00:43:47,319
Speaker 1: liberation movement basically, and he it's not enough for him

751
00:43:47,360 --> 00:43:50,240
Speaker 1: to just help them kill people like he's he's a scientist.

752
00:43:50,320 --> 00:43:53,520
Speaker 1: He's always experimenting. So he's testing out new drugs on

753
00:43:53,600 --> 00:43:56,879
Speaker 1: these people to like see what works well. And there's

754
00:43:56,920 --> 00:43:59,480
Speaker 1: like a kind of a perverse like like that I

755
00:43:59,560 --> 00:44:01,919
Speaker 1: guess I and understand is sort of like a sociopathic

756
00:44:02,000 --> 00:44:04,359
Speaker 1: Like he's a scientist. He's going to experiment with ship

757
00:44:04,960 --> 00:44:07,799
Speaker 1: the writing along to watch the corpses get thrown into

758
00:44:07,840 --> 00:44:10,520
Speaker 1: the sea. That is like, okay, this is beyond just

759
00:44:10,800 --> 00:44:14,319
Speaker 1: like a soulless monster like this guy gets some sort

760
00:44:14,360 --> 00:44:18,919
Speaker 1: of enjoyment. There is a yeah, well to me, Yeah,

761
00:44:19,480 --> 00:44:25,520
Speaker 1: to me, what made it seem pleasurable is the lungs collapsing. Yeah,

762
00:44:25,800 --> 00:44:29,000
Speaker 1: that he's really focused on that. That is a that

763
00:44:29,239 --> 00:44:31,600
Speaker 1: is a thing where it's like, oh, you're gonna live

764
00:44:31,760 --> 00:44:34,600
Speaker 1: and know you're gonna know you're dying, You're gonna it's

765
00:44:34,640 --> 00:44:39,640
Speaker 1: like you're drowned in in the like you're just drowning

766
00:44:40,560 --> 00:44:45,839
Speaker 1: outside the water, which is awful. And it's like there's

767
00:44:45,840 --> 00:44:47,880
Speaker 1: also clearly um like you think about it from a

768
00:44:47,960 --> 00:44:50,800
Speaker 1: tactical standpoint, and the only reason to use chemical weapons

769
00:44:50,880 --> 00:44:54,880
Speaker 1: for this is to freak people out. Is like the

770
00:44:55,000 --> 00:44:58,120
Speaker 1: fear is to like scare them away from rebelling, because

771
00:44:58,160 --> 00:45:00,480
Speaker 1: like you could you if you just are trying to

772
00:45:00,600 --> 00:45:05,720
Speaker 1: kill insurgents, you can shoot them like you can execute people.

773
00:45:06,320 --> 00:45:10,719
Speaker 1: That works very well and it's less horrible. Um. So,

774
00:45:11,640 --> 00:45:15,080
Speaker 1: like there's an element of sadism present, and like the

775
00:45:15,200 --> 00:45:19,239
Speaker 1: whole South African military establishment where it's like where these

776
00:45:19,320 --> 00:45:22,440
Speaker 1: black people are not happy being ruled by us and

777
00:45:22,640 --> 00:45:24,640
Speaker 1: we have to make we have to scare the ship

778
00:45:24,760 --> 00:45:28,319
Speaker 1: out of them while we kill them. Um. Yeah, it's

779
00:45:28,360 --> 00:45:37,040
Speaker 1: fun stuff, fun story. Thanks for nice It's always a pleasure.

780
00:45:37,440 --> 00:45:39,759
Speaker 1: But it is important that we talk about stuff like

781
00:45:39,840 --> 00:45:45,320
Speaker 1: this because it's like Jesus, Yeah, it's it's wild. Yeah,

782
00:45:45,920 --> 00:45:48,759
Speaker 1: and where where this story goes is pretty wild. So

783
00:45:49,360 --> 00:45:55,640
Speaker 1: under bass direction, under Baston's direction, South African operators use

784
00:45:55,719 --> 00:45:58,160
Speaker 1: poison to kill several hundred people all over the world.

785
00:45:58,640 --> 00:46:01,040
Speaker 1: Not all of his victims were in surgeons in Africa,

786
00:46:01,360 --> 00:46:03,480
Speaker 1: some of them were murdered in the UK and m

787
00:46:03,520 --> 00:46:06,239
Speaker 1: I five later investigated at least six people who died

788
00:46:06,280 --> 00:46:09,480
Speaker 1: of suspicious strokes and heart attacks, possibly as a result

789
00:46:09,520 --> 00:46:12,759
Speaker 1: of Project Barnacle. So they're not just murdering like people

790
00:46:12,800 --> 00:46:14,719
Speaker 1: who have taken up arms against them. They're killing like

791
00:46:14,800 --> 00:46:17,600
Speaker 1: activists around the world, people who are like a danger

792
00:46:17,680 --> 00:46:22,279
Speaker 1: to the apartheid regime. So that's cool. Well they've learned

793
00:46:22,320 --> 00:46:29,239
Speaker 1: from other regimes. I mean we did empires and yeah,

794
00:46:29,800 --> 00:46:32,080
Speaker 1: and they all do it. Yeah, we all do it.

795
00:46:33,080 --> 00:46:35,520
Speaker 1: Um now. Bass And traveled over the world throughout the

796
00:46:35,600 --> 00:46:38,560
Speaker 1: late nineteen eighties and early nineties, seemingly irrespective of the

797
00:46:38,640 --> 00:46:42,160
Speaker 1: sanctions leveled against his nation. He attended conferences and spoke

798
00:46:42,200 --> 00:46:44,719
Speaker 1: to chemical weapons experts in the US, Israel, and all

799
00:46:44,760 --> 00:46:47,560
Speaker 1: across Western Europe, often while his agents were using his

800
00:46:47,640 --> 00:46:51,799
Speaker 1: weapons to kill people in those countries. So that's really neat. Uh,

801
00:46:51,920 --> 00:46:54,080
Speaker 1: nobody stopped this guy from traveling around to learn how

802
00:46:54,120 --> 00:46:56,920
Speaker 1: to make better chemical weapons, even though like multiple nations

803
00:46:57,040 --> 00:46:59,520
Speaker 1: that he traveled to had sanctions against South Africa for

804
00:46:59,600 --> 00:47:04,359
Speaker 1: its race. Is hum well they wanted Yeah, you think

805
00:47:04,360 --> 00:47:06,680
Speaker 1: it might have been a two way street. Yeah, yeah,

806
00:47:07,280 --> 00:47:10,239
Speaker 1: I think it was like, oh, without a doubt. They're like,

807
00:47:10,320 --> 00:47:14,480
Speaker 1: all right, we'll tell you some ship, but you've been

808
00:47:14,560 --> 00:47:16,600
Speaker 1: practicing a lot and we want to learn some things

809
00:47:16,680 --> 00:47:20,800
Speaker 1: from you that you get. Yeah, you get that feeling.

810
00:47:21,400 --> 00:47:23,360
Speaker 1: And again like there's no way for there to be

811
00:47:23,400 --> 00:47:25,319
Speaker 1: any evidence of that for me, Like, I can't say

812
00:47:25,360 --> 00:47:28,200
Speaker 1: that happened, but like, fuck you look into this guy's story,

813
00:47:28,320 --> 00:47:31,279
Speaker 1: and I am certain there were some sketchy motherfucker's and

814
00:47:31,400 --> 00:47:34,479
Speaker 1: like the CIA and the Massad and m I five

815
00:47:34,560 --> 00:47:36,680
Speaker 1: probably even who are like, yeah, well let him out

816
00:47:36,680 --> 00:47:39,320
Speaker 1: of the country. Wudn't hear what he's gotta say? What

817
00:47:39,520 --> 00:47:42,080
Speaker 1: does what kind of is he like? Vegan? What's he like?

818
00:47:44,560 --> 00:47:46,840
Speaker 1: What does he want for lunch? Yeah? Yeah, no, I

819
00:47:47,040 --> 00:47:49,640
Speaker 1: I assume that's how all that works, where at some

820
00:47:49,800 --> 00:47:53,440
Speaker 1: point everything gets so confusing you're just like, yeah, I

821
00:47:53,480 --> 00:47:57,440
Speaker 1: mean we're just learning how to do stuff. Yeah for him?

822
00:47:57,520 --> 00:48:01,560
Speaker 1: And who's not. There's a great musician named Tom Lair

823
00:48:01,640 --> 00:48:03,759
Speaker 1: who was like the weird Al Yankovic of like the

824
00:48:03,840 --> 00:48:06,440
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties. I think he's a math professor at

825
00:48:06,480 --> 00:48:10,360
Speaker 1: Harvard now, um, but he was like an early musical

826
00:48:10,480 --> 00:48:13,040
Speaker 1: funny man. And he wrote a song about Verner von Brown,

827
00:48:13,120 --> 00:48:15,640
Speaker 1: who designed V two rockets for the Nazis and then

828
00:48:15,760 --> 00:48:18,640
Speaker 1: was instrumental in the U. S Space program. And there's

829
00:48:18,640 --> 00:48:21,600
Speaker 1: a line in it that I think really sums up

830
00:48:21,760 --> 00:48:25,160
Speaker 1: all of these people very well. Um, when the rockets

831
00:48:25,200 --> 00:48:27,640
Speaker 1: go up, who knows where they come down? That's not

832
00:48:27,800 --> 00:48:33,520
Speaker 1: my Department, says Verner von Brown. Um, it's just like

833
00:48:33,680 --> 00:48:35,320
Speaker 1: I think a lot of these people are like that.

834
00:48:35,400 --> 00:48:37,440
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, he's killing people in our country too,

835
00:48:37,520 --> 00:48:41,480
Speaker 1: but like that's not my problem. My problem is developing

836
00:48:41,520 --> 00:48:45,080
Speaker 1: better chemical weapons. And he's good at it. So he's

837
00:48:45,200 --> 00:48:49,560
Speaker 1: really good at this ship. Yeah. So, under Basin's direction,

838
00:48:49,680 --> 00:48:52,799
Speaker 1: the apartheid government of South Africa developed a dizzying array

839
00:48:52,880 --> 00:48:59,560
Speaker 1: of biological weapons Ebola ekoli, necrotizing fasciitis, and tracks and botulinum.

840
00:49:00,080 --> 00:49:03,839
Speaker 1: That last one deserves a bit of special discussion. See bachulenum,

841
00:49:03,880 --> 00:49:05,520
Speaker 1: which is like if you have if you have like

842
00:49:05,600 --> 00:49:08,799
Speaker 1: a can that starts puffing up, like you gotta get

843
00:49:08,880 --> 00:49:11,120
Speaker 1: rid of that thing very carefully because it has bachulin

844
00:49:11,280 --> 00:49:13,719
Speaker 1: in it um. And bachulen um is like one of

845
00:49:13,800 --> 00:49:16,879
Speaker 1: the deadliest things by weight in this planet. Um. It's

846
00:49:16,880 --> 00:49:21,640
Speaker 1: what we use in botox treatments and very deluded measures, um,

847
00:49:21,920 --> 00:49:24,880
Speaker 1: but in slightly less deluded form. It can kill people

848
00:49:24,960 --> 00:49:28,839
Speaker 1: by the thousands. Basin's team is alleged to have synthesized

849
00:49:28,920 --> 00:49:31,520
Speaker 1: roughly five grams have bauchu lenum, which is enough to

850
00:49:31,600 --> 00:49:35,879
Speaker 1: murder five million people. So that's cool. You can see,

851
00:49:35,960 --> 00:49:38,239
Speaker 1: like the scale of deadliness. No, though, you develop this

852
00:49:38,360 --> 00:49:41,960
Speaker 1: like VX nerve gas, which a leader can kill a

853
00:49:42,040 --> 00:49:46,239
Speaker 1: million people, and Bassin develops this bachulenum toxin that like

854
00:49:46,360 --> 00:49:51,160
Speaker 1: the five grams can kill five million people. Um, cool,

855
00:49:51,200 --> 00:49:56,200
Speaker 1: how science works like that? And it's like yeah, yeah,

856
00:49:56,200 --> 00:49:58,200
Speaker 1: everyone's trying to beat each other's like, oh they've got

857
00:49:58,239 --> 00:50:00,359
Speaker 1: a million people with a leader, we can we could

858
00:50:00,400 --> 00:50:04,480
Speaker 1: kill more people with less than that man. And it's

859
00:50:04,760 --> 00:50:07,040
Speaker 1: it's the same thing like with your phones, where it's

860
00:50:07,080 --> 00:50:09,359
Speaker 1: like we were all marveled at how quickly phones got

861
00:50:09,440 --> 00:50:12,080
Speaker 1: smaller and faster, but like the same thing happens with

862
00:50:12,200 --> 00:50:19,440
Speaker 1: murder poison. Yeah. Uh so Basson helped to direct the

863
00:50:19,520 --> 00:50:24,080
Speaker 1: assassin Yeah, it is wild that we have. We're way

864
00:50:24,200 --> 00:50:30,160
Speaker 1: slower on that ship. Uh So. Basson helped to direct

865
00:50:30,160 --> 00:50:33,920
Speaker 1: assassination attempts against a number of African National Congress activists

866
00:50:34,000 --> 00:50:37,040
Speaker 1: in London, which was like a group you know, advocating

867
00:50:37,080 --> 00:50:39,400
Speaker 1: for like more racial justice and reform of the apartheid

868
00:50:39,440 --> 00:50:42,719
Speaker 1: system in South Africa. He was behind the assault of

869
00:50:42,719 --> 00:50:44,560
Speaker 1: at least two members of the a n C in London.

870
00:50:44,760 --> 00:50:47,000
Speaker 1: He developed a special poison that was launched via a

871
00:50:47,160 --> 00:50:50,400
Speaker 1: syringe described as a screwdriver. The only reason that the

872
00:50:50,400 --> 00:50:52,600
Speaker 1: plot to kill these guys failed is that the scientists

873
00:50:52,600 --> 00:50:54,560
Speaker 1: who tried to do the deed fucked up and almost

874
00:50:54,600 --> 00:50:57,759
Speaker 1: stabbed himself instead. Then he panicked and threw the screwdriver

875
00:50:57,880 --> 00:51:02,640
Speaker 1: into the Thames, so that one didn't work. Yeah. Basson

876
00:51:02,760 --> 00:51:04,640
Speaker 1: was involved in at least one attempt on the life

877
00:51:04,680 --> 00:51:07,440
Speaker 1: of Nelson Mandela. While he was a prisoner. Uh Wootoo

878
00:51:07,520 --> 00:51:10,600
Speaker 1: developed a way to slip thallium, a toxic heavy metal

879
00:51:10,680 --> 00:51:14,400
Speaker 1: that basically melts your brain in the Mandela's medication. Uh.

880
00:51:14,480 --> 00:51:17,520
Speaker 1: These attempts failed, but for his gallantry, Wootoo Basson was

881
00:51:17,560 --> 00:51:20,840
Speaker 1: awarded the Order of the Southern Cross, which even sounds

882
00:51:20,880 --> 00:51:22,840
Speaker 1: like a racist And I was gonna say it was

883
00:51:22,880 --> 00:51:24,880
Speaker 1: just like that sounds like the most It's it's like

884
00:51:25,000 --> 00:51:30,320
Speaker 1: the most racist. It's the Cross. And you're like, go,

885
00:51:30,960 --> 00:51:33,600
Speaker 1: I don't like it. Yeah, it's like what we we

886
00:51:33,640 --> 00:51:36,279
Speaker 1: got to come up with an award for racists, but

887
00:51:36,400 --> 00:51:38,080
Speaker 1: we want to make it sound even more racist than

888
00:51:38,120 --> 00:51:42,160
Speaker 1: the Iron Cross. Anybody got suggestions? I got one. What

889
00:51:42,280 --> 00:51:44,480
Speaker 1: do we just call it Southern? What do we call

890
00:51:44,560 --> 00:51:53,640
Speaker 1: it the Southern Iron Cross? Now, Nelson Mandela was released

891
00:51:53,680 --> 00:51:56,800
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety nine two, the A and C was

892
00:51:56,840 --> 00:51:59,759
Speaker 1: an unbanned in the face of massive unrest. Suddenly the

893
00:51:59,800 --> 00:52:02,320
Speaker 1: call as a black people having basic rights was legally

894
00:52:02,440 --> 00:52:07,800
Speaker 1: legitimate in South Africa got hit. Yeah. Yeah, So basically

895
00:52:07,840 --> 00:52:09,919
Speaker 1: the A n C had been like a terrorist group

896
00:52:10,520 --> 00:52:12,520
Speaker 1: um prior to this, and like A and C members

897
00:52:12,560 --> 00:52:15,680
Speaker 1: have definitely done some terrorism in South Africa, although it's

898
00:52:15,800 --> 00:52:20,080
Speaker 1: terrorism in a pretty fundamentally justifiable cause, I would argue.

899
00:52:20,600 --> 00:52:23,239
Speaker 1: But yeah, and after the A n C is like

900
00:52:23,280 --> 00:52:26,160
Speaker 1: a legal political party and the cause of black people

901
00:52:26,239 --> 00:52:29,120
Speaker 1: having basic rights was like legally legitimate to fight for

902
00:52:29,320 --> 00:52:32,520
Speaker 1: in South Africa. Now, as you might imagine, Wouter Basson

903
00:52:32,719 --> 00:52:35,239
Speaker 1: was not happy with this, uh, and he responded by

904
00:52:35,280 --> 00:52:38,160
Speaker 1: spearheading a plan to distribute poisoned beer to black people

905
00:52:38,200 --> 00:52:42,759
Speaker 1: at bus stops. So that's good, stop stopping from voting

906
00:52:42,800 --> 00:52:46,439
Speaker 1: if you poison their beer. Fuck he's a real piece

907
00:52:46,480 --> 00:52:51,800
Speaker 1: of shit. Yeah. Now, as I relate these stories, I

908
00:52:51,880 --> 00:52:54,040
Speaker 1: don't want to discount the role of the South African

909
00:52:54,120 --> 00:52:56,799
Speaker 1: government or military establishment in any of this, just because

910
00:52:56,840 --> 00:53:00,120
Speaker 1: we're focusing on Wooter. His work enjoyed a broad base

911
00:53:00,200 --> 00:53:02,799
Speaker 1: of support among the powers that be in his unspeakably

912
00:53:02,840 --> 00:53:05,960
Speaker 1: shitty government. His work was directed and approved at high

913
00:53:06,040 --> 00:53:09,239
Speaker 1: levels and supported by a variety of less technically sophisticated

914
00:53:09,280 --> 00:53:13,120
Speaker 1: methods of repression. Some assemblages guys with Trunchean's beating protesters,

915
00:53:13,800 --> 00:53:16,279
Speaker 1: but Wooter Basson was a unique man within the South

916
00:53:16,320 --> 00:53:20,239
Speaker 1: African military and medical establishments. He did eventually go to

917
00:53:20,360 --> 00:53:22,520
Speaker 1: trial for his many, many crimes, and because of that

918
00:53:22,600 --> 00:53:25,120
Speaker 1: trial we have some knowledge of the extent of those crimes.

919
00:53:25,600 --> 00:53:28,520
Speaker 1: Johan Thron, one of the operators who worked for Basson,

920
00:53:28,560 --> 00:53:31,720
Speaker 1: admitted personally to the murder of several hundred SWAPO prisoners

921
00:53:31,920 --> 00:53:35,520
Speaker 1: along with South African Defense soldiers identified as security risks,

922
00:53:35,560 --> 00:53:38,880
Speaker 1: so they even killed soldiers in their own military. Multiple

923
00:53:38,880 --> 00:53:42,279
Speaker 1: different government agencies managed Basson's chemical weapons project over the

924
00:53:42,360 --> 00:53:44,279
Speaker 1: decade or so that he was active. In the late

925
00:53:44,400 --> 00:53:47,080
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, as resistance to the apartheid regime picked up,

926
00:53:47,120 --> 00:53:50,200
Speaker 1: Basson's work increasingly focused on poisoning members of the African

927
00:53:50,320 --> 00:53:53,640
Speaker 1: National Congress, the South African Communist Party, and the South

928
00:53:53,680 --> 00:53:57,560
Speaker 1: African Council for Churches. Anyone who voiced displeasure with apartheid

929
00:53:57,640 --> 00:54:01,040
Speaker 1: was subject to poisoning. The testing process for these poisons

930
00:54:01,120 --> 00:54:03,760
Speaker 1: was as horrific as you'd imagine. The rude Plat Research

931
00:54:03,840 --> 00:54:06,520
Speaker 1: Laboratory where most of this work was done, conducted numerous

932
00:54:06,560 --> 00:54:09,560
Speaker 1: experiments on dogs and horses. In one study, they poisoned

933
00:54:09,600 --> 00:54:13,919
Speaker 1: baboons to death over the course of several days. That. Yeah,

934
00:54:14,640 --> 00:54:17,080
Speaker 1: but of course the killing of individuals could only go

935
00:54:17,280 --> 00:54:19,759
Speaker 1: so far, and Wood or Bassin knew that. By the

936
00:54:19,880 --> 00:54:22,800
Speaker 1: late nineteen eighties, the situation was dire enough for the

937
00:54:22,840 --> 00:54:25,279
Speaker 1: government that they knew some sort of mass solution to

938
00:54:25,320 --> 00:54:28,359
Speaker 1: the problem of black people wanting rights was necessary. Now

939
00:54:28,440 --> 00:54:30,480
Speaker 1: it was accepted that there were too many black people

940
00:54:30,520 --> 00:54:33,320
Speaker 1: in South Africa to kill. This was not a moral question.

941
00:54:33,480 --> 00:54:36,120
Speaker 1: Many people in the government likely would have supported mass murder,

942
00:54:36,320 --> 00:54:39,239
Speaker 1: but they simply did not have the technical capacity to

943
00:54:39,400 --> 00:54:43,240
Speaker 1: do so. We logistically, it'll be a not marry you guys.

944
00:54:43,520 --> 00:54:46,720
Speaker 1: We just can't. We just we don't have enough boats.

945
00:54:46,800 --> 00:54:56,520
Speaker 1: We just can't make it work. Well, like we're sitting, Yeah,

946
00:54:57,120 --> 00:55:00,400
Speaker 1: we we have to let most of them live. But Billy,

947
00:55:00,920 --> 00:55:03,440
Speaker 1: they didn't have to let most of them continue to

948
00:55:03,560 --> 00:55:08,319
Speaker 1: have babies. And this is where Woo tour Bassin. Yeah,

949
00:55:09,120 --> 00:55:12,480
Speaker 1: so under Bassin, the South African military establishment embarked on

950
00:55:12,560 --> 00:55:20,560
Speaker 1: a different scheme, an anti fertility vaccine. Oh god, yeah,

951
00:55:21,239 --> 00:55:23,560
Speaker 1: I mean, can't you just see some bats in the

952
00:55:23,680 --> 00:55:27,640
Speaker 1: United States want abortions? Is that what you want? We'll

953
00:55:27,719 --> 00:55:36,359
Speaker 1: give you abortion. We'll give you one for laughs. Just what? No? Yeah, yeah,

954
00:55:36,560 --> 00:55:40,239
Speaker 1: so fully eighteen percent of the projects Basson masterminded during

955
00:55:40,320 --> 00:55:42,640
Speaker 1: his time in the military were focused on what we're

956
00:55:42,640 --> 00:55:47,160
Speaker 1: referred to as fertility and fertility control studies. Scientists under

957
00:55:47,200 --> 00:55:49,840
Speaker 1: Bassin later testify that they understood they were developing a

958
00:55:49,920 --> 00:55:52,560
Speaker 1: vaccine which would be administered to black women without their

959
00:55:52,640 --> 00:55:57,399
Speaker 1: knowledge or consent, in order to render them infertile. Damn it. Yes, Now,

960
00:55:57,880 --> 00:56:00,120
Speaker 1: the initial goal of Basson and his fellow science this

961
00:56:00,280 --> 00:56:02,400
Speaker 1: was to develop a vaccine that would only work on

962
00:56:02,600 --> 00:56:05,799
Speaker 1: black women. This obviously proved to be impossible because black

963
00:56:05,840 --> 00:56:08,160
Speaker 1: women are genetically the same as any other kind of women,

964
00:56:08,520 --> 00:56:11,120
Speaker 1: and it just doesn't things don't work that way. It's

965
00:56:11,120 --> 00:56:13,799
Speaker 1: impossible to target people by skin color in that way.

966
00:56:13,960 --> 00:56:17,120
Speaker 1: So it's interesting to me, Billy that like these incredibly

967
00:56:17,200 --> 00:56:19,760
Speaker 1: racist scientists start out by wanting to make a vaccine

968
00:56:19,800 --> 00:56:22,160
Speaker 1: that will render black women infertile, and they realized that

969
00:56:22,200 --> 00:56:25,120
Speaker 1: because black women are the same as every other kind

970
00:56:25,160 --> 00:56:28,319
Speaker 1: of woman. They can't do it, and this doesn't lead

971
00:56:28,360 --> 00:56:31,080
Speaker 1: them to like realize, like, oh, maybe this racism is

972
00:56:31,120 --> 00:56:36,360
Speaker 1: based on nothing. Science says we're stupid. Science says what

973
00:56:36,480 --> 00:56:39,879
Speaker 1: we're doing is idiotic. But no, they never at any

974
00:56:39,960 --> 00:56:46,000
Speaker 1: point so they were rational enough to accept that their

975
00:56:46,040 --> 00:56:48,520
Speaker 1: plan of a vaccine to render black women infertile would

976
00:56:48,560 --> 00:56:50,920
Speaker 1: not do anything. But they refuse to give up on

977
00:56:51,000 --> 00:56:53,520
Speaker 1: their plan of stopping black people from having sex while

978
00:56:53,520 --> 00:56:57,920
Speaker 1: at least from having babies, and so things evolved. Uh So,

979
00:56:58,760 --> 00:57:01,000
Speaker 1: one of like the scientists do worked under Bassin later

980
00:57:01,040 --> 00:57:03,040
Speaker 1: testify it, as I've alluded to a few times, and

981
00:57:03,160 --> 00:57:05,600
Speaker 1: one of them, a dude named Van Rindsberg, claimed the

982
00:57:05,600 --> 00:57:08,719
Speaker 1: effort started back in nine um and he said he

983
00:57:08,880 --> 00:57:11,520
Speaker 1: was told that the project initially existed at the request

984
00:57:11,600 --> 00:57:15,239
Speaker 1: of Jonas Savimbi, the Engolan anti communist rebel leader and

985
00:57:15,320 --> 00:57:18,840
Speaker 1: Paul Manafort client who was allied with South Africa. The

986
00:57:18,920 --> 00:57:22,240
Speaker 1: story goes that Savimbi was concerned that his female fighters

987
00:57:22,240 --> 00:57:25,320
Speaker 1: would get pregnant and wanted an anti fertility vaccine. This

988
00:57:25,480 --> 00:57:28,120
Speaker 1: is widely believed to be complete horse ship designed to

989
00:57:28,280 --> 00:57:32,240
Speaker 1: provide plausible deniability to the scientists. So basically scientists were like,

990
00:57:32,320 --> 00:57:34,520
Speaker 1: it seems maybe like fucked up that we're trying to

991
00:57:34,720 --> 00:57:37,160
Speaker 1: render all black people infertile, and if there's ever a

992
00:57:37,240 --> 00:57:40,480
Speaker 1: war crimes trial, we're getting trouble. And so their leadership

993
00:57:40,600 --> 00:57:43,200
Speaker 1: was like, no, it's not to it's it's for this

994
00:57:43,280 --> 00:57:45,920
Speaker 1: guy's female soldiers. He just doesn't want him getting pregnant

995
00:57:45,960 --> 00:57:48,520
Speaker 1: in battle. He needs him to because when they get pregnant,

996
00:57:48,560 --> 00:57:53,680
Speaker 1: they can't do murder. Is good? Exactly better excuse Yeah,

997
00:57:53,920 --> 00:57:56,160
Speaker 1: And it's like most of the scientists that were like

998
00:57:56,240 --> 00:57:58,320
Speaker 1: talked to her like, yeah, we knew that was horseshit,

999
00:57:58,520 --> 00:58:00,560
Speaker 1: Like it was you give people a little bit of

1000
00:58:00,600 --> 00:58:04,480
Speaker 1: plausible deniability and that that's all it was. So the

1001
00:58:04,560 --> 00:58:06,920
Speaker 1: Non Proliferation Organization has a good write up of the

1002
00:58:07,040 --> 00:58:09,320
Speaker 1: ensuing court case that includes an interview with one of

1003
00:58:09,560 --> 00:58:12,800
Speaker 1: Basson's men, and I'm gonna quote from it now. Of course,

1004
00:58:12,880 --> 00:58:15,200
Speaker 1: the scientists did not believe the cover story. Van Rindsburg

1005
00:58:15,280 --> 00:58:17,440
Speaker 1: testified that he could not think that an intelligent man

1006
00:58:17,520 --> 00:58:19,160
Speaker 1: could think we would spend a couple million on a

1007
00:58:19,240 --> 00:58:21,320
Speaker 1: project like this to control pregnancy, and a few of

1008
00:58:21,360 --> 00:58:25,000
Speaker 1: Savimbi's female soldiers Nonetheless, the project got underway and became

1009
00:58:25,080 --> 00:58:28,160
Speaker 1: central to work at the research laboratories. After the fall

1010
00:58:28,240 --> 00:58:31,120
Speaker 1: of the apartheid government, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was

1011
00:58:31,160 --> 00:58:34,000
Speaker 1: convened to investigate the unspeakable crimes the white government had

1012
00:58:34,000 --> 00:58:36,840
Speaker 1: committed against its black citizens. And this is where, like

1013
00:58:36,960 --> 00:58:38,800
Speaker 1: all of our interviews from this come from one of

1014
00:58:38,840 --> 00:58:42,320
Speaker 1: Basson's employees, a guy named Gooson, gave fascinating detail into

1015
00:58:42,360 --> 00:58:45,520
Speaker 1: the plan. The interviewer was a fellow named Jerome Chas Killton.

1016
00:58:45,840 --> 00:58:48,520
Speaker 1: So Chas Colton said, Uh, it was decided that a

1017
00:58:48,560 --> 00:58:50,880
Speaker 1: front company would be formed. Uh. And he was asked,

1018
00:58:50,920 --> 00:58:52,439
Speaker 1: can you tell us what brief that you were given

1019
00:58:52,520 --> 00:58:55,400
Speaker 1: for what this front company was? Uh? And Goosen said,

1020
00:58:55,440 --> 00:58:57,360
Speaker 1: our final brief, or the other brief, was a very

1021
00:58:57,400 --> 00:58:59,880
Speaker 1: important one was to develop a project to curtail the

1022
00:59:00,000 --> 00:59:02,520
Speaker 1: earth rate of the black population in the country. So

1023
00:59:02,720 --> 00:59:04,600
Speaker 1: Goosen was asked to give more detail on this, and

1024
00:59:04,640 --> 00:59:06,560
Speaker 1: he said, the person who instructed us or asked it

1025
00:59:06,680 --> 00:59:08,880
Speaker 1: to do this was Dr Basson. Um. There was a

1026
00:59:08,920 --> 00:59:10,720
Speaker 1: lot of talk on the ethics of this, and Basson

1027
00:59:10,760 --> 00:59:12,760
Speaker 1: spent some time quoting to us the census figures of

1028
00:59:12,800 --> 00:59:15,360
Speaker 1: nineteen two or eighty one or whenever the census was.

1029
00:59:15,720 --> 00:59:18,400
Speaker 1: I can't remember exactly that the Census office stopped counting

1030
00:59:18,400 --> 00:59:20,600
Speaker 1: the black people when they reached forty five million, and

1031
00:59:20,640 --> 00:59:22,760
Speaker 1: the government decided that it was not feasible to make

1032
00:59:22,800 --> 00:59:24,600
Speaker 1: it known to the public that there were forty five

1033
00:59:24,640 --> 00:59:26,800
Speaker 1: million blacks. It was just too many. And this was

1034
00:59:26,840 --> 00:59:28,720
Speaker 1: mainly one of our big threats. And I think the

1035
00:59:28,760 --> 00:59:30,800
Speaker 1: figure of twenty eight million was made known. Now, if

1036
00:59:30,800 --> 00:59:32,800
Speaker 1: those were true facts, I wouldn't know up till today,

1037
00:59:32,840 --> 00:59:34,440
Speaker 1: I don't know, but that was presented to us by

1038
00:59:34,520 --> 00:59:40,200
Speaker 1: Dr Basson. So basically Basson's scientists are like, we feel

1039
00:59:40,200 --> 00:59:42,800
Speaker 1: a little bit questionable about this. And one of the

1040
00:59:42,880 --> 00:59:46,080
Speaker 1: things they're told is that you're working to sterilize these guerrillas.

1041
00:59:46,120 --> 00:59:48,480
Speaker 1: But they're also told that, like, there's twice as many

1042
00:59:48,520 --> 00:59:50,640
Speaker 1: black people in the country as the government's willing to

1043
00:59:50,680 --> 00:59:53,360
Speaker 1: admit on the official census forms, So like, if we

1044
00:59:53,440 --> 00:59:56,520
Speaker 1: don't solve this problem with black people breeding soon, we're

1045
00:59:56,560 --> 00:59:59,880
Speaker 1: going to be outnumbered and overwhelmed um or like com

1046
01:00:00,040 --> 01:00:03,320
Speaker 1: letely overwhelmed. So like this is like the scientists being

1047
01:00:03,400 --> 01:00:06,360
Speaker 1: told this are both simultaneously being told you're not trying

1048
01:00:06,400 --> 01:00:09,480
Speaker 1: to sterilize all the black people and also given evidence

1049
01:00:09,520 --> 01:00:12,240
Speaker 1: that like, we have to sterilize all the black people

1050
01:00:12,360 --> 01:00:15,800
Speaker 1: right away or we're fucked. So it's yeah, wild, I

1051
01:00:15,920 --> 01:00:22,520
Speaker 1: like the arbitrary numbers. To stop counting, that's to stop stop. Yeah,

1052
01:00:22,840 --> 01:00:30,400
Speaker 1: don't count anymore. We can't tell Yeah. And Goosen later testified,

1053
01:00:30,440 --> 01:00:33,600
Speaker 1: based on conversations he had with different South African generals,

1054
01:00:33,960 --> 01:00:36,520
Speaker 1: that he thought the anti fertility project was considered by

1055
01:00:36,520 --> 01:00:39,200
Speaker 1: the government to be the most important project for the country.

1056
01:00:40,200 --> 01:00:45,880
Speaker 1: So like, as a general rule, UM like the Anti

1057
01:00:45,920 --> 01:00:48,480
Speaker 1: Fertility Project when you like read stories about basting in

1058
01:00:48,560 --> 01:00:52,040
Speaker 1: his work is portrayed as like one horrible project among others.

1059
01:00:52,280 --> 01:00:54,840
Speaker 1: Um and generally like less awful than the nerve gases

1060
01:00:54,880 --> 01:00:57,880
Speaker 1: and assassination drugs he made. Um. And I don't think

1061
01:00:57,960 --> 01:01:00,920
Speaker 1: that's fair because the reality, once you like dig into

1062
01:01:00,960 --> 01:01:04,520
Speaker 1: the documents is that um Basson and his colleagues, like

1063
01:01:04,960 --> 01:01:06,440
Speaker 1: what they were trying to do with these drugs was

1064
01:01:06,480 --> 01:01:10,360
Speaker 1: attempted genocide. UM. Like, their their goal here was to

1065
01:01:10,520 --> 01:01:12,920
Speaker 1: wipe out the black population of South Africa. They just

1066
01:01:13,000 --> 01:01:16,000
Speaker 1: wanted to do it more peacefully than with gunfire. Um.

1067
01:01:16,600 --> 01:01:21,720
Speaker 1: It's like it's pretty staggering and do it silently, Yeah, silently,

1068
01:01:21,880 --> 01:01:23,680
Speaker 1: and like in a way that people don't realize it's

1069
01:01:23,720 --> 01:01:26,919
Speaker 1: happening because you're secretly dosing people with this anti fertility drug.

1070
01:01:27,520 --> 01:01:30,560
Speaker 1: Like that's that's the plan that's being made here, um

1071
01:01:30,800 --> 01:01:35,680
Speaker 1: gooson later testified by the government by the government, Yeah,

1072
01:01:35,760 --> 01:01:42,160
Speaker 1: to sterilize million people or so. Yeah. Uh. One thing

1073
01:01:42,200 --> 01:01:44,680
Speaker 1: I can remember which we spoke about was the effectivity

1074
01:01:44,720 --> 01:01:46,720
Speaker 1: then of the product which needed to be developed, whether

1075
01:01:46,760 --> 01:01:50,240
Speaker 1: it is permanent sterilization or whether it's temporary, or whether

1076
01:01:50,280 --> 01:01:53,439
Speaker 1: it's effective. You know how these things work. In fact,

1077
01:01:53,520 --> 01:01:56,920
Speaker 1: we discussed involving with statutions from the university, and we

1078
01:01:57,160 --> 01:01:59,360
Speaker 1: discussed getting them secret clearance that they can work on

1079
01:01:59,400 --> 01:02:01,640
Speaker 1: the project for us to work out models what will

1080
01:02:01,640 --> 01:02:03,800
Speaker 1: be the influence on population rate if the project was

1081
01:02:03,880 --> 01:02:07,560
Speaker 1: fifty effective for one year, sixty seventy whatever. So we

1082
01:02:07,680 --> 01:02:09,840
Speaker 1: realized that you cannot really you might not achieve a

1083
01:02:09,960 --> 01:02:12,520
Speaker 1: hundred percent effective sterilization, and it was not thought to

1084
01:02:12,560 --> 01:02:15,840
Speaker 1: be necessary. So he's they're they're saying, like, maybe we

1085
01:02:15,920 --> 01:02:18,360
Speaker 1: only stop seventy percent of them from breeding, is what

1086
01:02:18,480 --> 01:02:22,760
Speaker 1: he's saying. Like, uh, like that they they it's but

1087
01:02:22,840 --> 01:02:24,640
Speaker 1: like those are the numbers they're looking at, Like, this

1088
01:02:24,760 --> 01:02:27,480
Speaker 1: is a real effort to stop two thirds or more

1089
01:02:27,640 --> 01:02:29,960
Speaker 1: as many people as possible from breeding, as many black

1090
01:02:30,000 --> 01:02:33,000
Speaker 1: people as possible from breeding. And I think that that

1091
01:02:33,240 --> 01:02:37,880
Speaker 1: rises to the level of an attempted genocide like se sterilization.

1092
01:02:38,080 --> 01:02:41,160
Speaker 1: Like you know, the Holocaust wiped out like roughly half

1093
01:02:41,200 --> 01:02:44,200
Speaker 1: of the world's Jewish population, so you're talking about the

1094
01:02:44,400 --> 01:02:47,040
Speaker 1: goal was something that would have led to an even

1095
01:02:47,120 --> 01:02:50,560
Speaker 1: sharper decline in the population of South African black people.

1096
01:02:50,760 --> 01:02:52,360
Speaker 1: Like that was the end goal of this. It was

1097
01:02:52,400 --> 01:02:54,760
Speaker 1: a much slower project, but like that's what they're shooting for.

1098
01:02:56,760 --> 01:03:01,000
Speaker 1: It's pretty wild. Yeah, it's like they're they're they had

1099
01:03:01,040 --> 01:03:03,440
Speaker 1: a discussion over that. Well, I mean the Nazis were

1100
01:03:03,520 --> 01:03:08,080
Speaker 1: just like two loud and efficient about it. Yeah, exactly.

1101
01:03:08,880 --> 01:03:11,360
Speaker 1: You can't kill him as fast as they did. That'll

1102
01:03:11,360 --> 01:03:14,280
Speaker 1: get you in trouble. Yeah, people get like real mouthy

1103
01:03:14,360 --> 01:03:15,840
Speaker 1: when you do it like that, So you gotta just

1104
01:03:15,920 --> 01:03:18,840
Speaker 1: do it. We'll get invaded. But if we can stop

1105
01:03:18,920 --> 01:03:24,880
Speaker 1: eight of them from having babies, well then yeah, pretty wild. Yeah.

1106
01:03:25,120 --> 01:03:29,240
Speaker 1: So thankfully the anti fertility vaccine was never distributed in

1107
01:03:29,400 --> 01:03:31,560
Speaker 1: mass uh and We have very little data on how

1108
01:03:31,600 --> 01:03:33,640
Speaker 1: it was tested, but we do know that the program

1109
01:03:33,720 --> 01:03:36,920
Speaker 1: was wound down in the early nineteen nineties when President F. W.

1110
01:03:37,160 --> 01:03:39,360
Speaker 1: Tw Clerk was elected and the death knell of apartheid

1111
01:03:39,480 --> 01:03:41,720
Speaker 1: was obvious enough for even people like bass into here.

1112
01:03:42,200 --> 01:03:45,320
Speaker 1: The new president ordered Project Coast to be gradually killed off,

1113
01:03:45,480 --> 01:03:47,040
Speaker 1: but he was not willing to give up on the

1114
01:03:47,120 --> 01:03:50,320
Speaker 1: dream of pacifying South Africa's black masses for domination by

1115
01:03:50,360 --> 01:03:53,840
Speaker 1: the white minority instead of sterilization or mass poisoning. Though

1116
01:03:54,080 --> 01:03:57,360
Speaker 1: President to Clerk started funding a kinder and gentler method

1117
01:03:57,440 --> 01:04:00,480
Speaker 1: of social control, he wanted Basson to test the use

1118
01:04:00,520 --> 01:04:02,800
Speaker 1: of quaaludes and m D m A to pacify the

1119
01:04:02,880 --> 01:04:08,640
Speaker 1: restless population. Uh so that's that's nice? Is it is better?

1120
01:04:09,160 --> 01:04:15,360
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, yeah, yeah, howe's gonna get along be

1121
01:04:15,400 --> 01:04:19,000
Speaker 1: a little looser. If it was for everyone in the country,

1122
01:04:19,120 --> 01:04:22,280
Speaker 1: I would say that's a great plan. Um, the racism

1123
01:04:22,520 --> 01:04:27,360
Speaker 1: is what ruins. Okay, I missed that part. They were

1124
01:04:27,480 --> 01:04:30,080
Speaker 1: just giving them to black people to stop them from

1125
01:04:30,480 --> 01:04:32,520
Speaker 1: wanting their rights. No, no, you thought they were just

1126
01:04:32,560 --> 01:04:37,400
Speaker 1: giving luds to everybody. Unfortunately. Yeah, if it was just

1127
01:04:37,520 --> 01:04:40,720
Speaker 1: like the army helicoptering kludes and m d m A

1128
01:04:40,840 --> 01:04:43,560
Speaker 1: to everybody, like, I'm fine with that project. That's a

1129
01:04:43,640 --> 01:04:46,360
Speaker 1: good use of the military. But no, this was racist,

1130
01:04:46,680 --> 01:04:52,240
Speaker 1: very racist. They always is always catch Yeah. So a

1131
01:04:52,320 --> 01:04:55,320
Speaker 1: scientist named Henny Jordan's um at, a company that acts

1132
01:04:55,320 --> 01:04:58,200
Speaker 1: as a front for Project Coast, is generally credited as

1133
01:04:58,240 --> 01:05:00,200
Speaker 1: the person who came up with the formula for what

1134
01:05:00,400 --> 01:05:02,160
Speaker 1: may have been the very best M d m A

1135
01:05:02,280 --> 01:05:06,640
Speaker 1: ever synthesized. Most sources suggest that it was over purity,

1136
01:05:06,680 --> 01:05:09,600
Speaker 1: which is pretty exceptional. Now, I can't say for certain

1137
01:05:09,640 --> 01:05:12,360
Speaker 1: whether or not I or you ever took this particular

1138
01:05:12,440 --> 01:05:16,240
Speaker 1: strain of ecstasy um, but like it's one of those

1139
01:05:16,280 --> 01:05:18,720
Speaker 1: things I started going through like my memories of the

1140
01:05:18,800 --> 01:05:22,040
Speaker 1: best ecstasy experiences I had in the early two thousands,

1141
01:05:22,600 --> 01:05:25,040
Speaker 1: and like wondering, like, yeah, that was a really good batch.

1142
01:05:25,240 --> 01:05:29,880
Speaker 1: Was that? Was that the genocide ecstasy um? Because this

1143
01:05:29,960 --> 01:05:32,720
Speaker 1: stuff was initially cooked up as a crowd control drug

1144
01:05:32,800 --> 01:05:37,440
Speaker 1: they wanted to do really sad, really fast. Yeah, it's

1145
01:05:37,480 --> 01:05:42,120
Speaker 1: real bad. Um. This was initially cooked up. They wanted

1146
01:05:42,160 --> 01:05:44,200
Speaker 1: to basically dose millions of black people with m d

1147
01:05:44,320 --> 01:05:47,240
Speaker 1: m A to like stop them from revolting and stuff.

1148
01:05:47,720 --> 01:05:50,800
Speaker 1: But how were what was their delivery device? Well, I

1149
01:05:50,880 --> 01:05:53,640
Speaker 1: don't think they ever got that far because, like they started,

1150
01:05:53,680 --> 01:05:55,640
Speaker 1: they cook up a huge amount of m d M A,

1151
01:05:55,880 --> 01:05:57,960
Speaker 1: but I don't think they ever really figure out like

1152
01:05:58,040 --> 01:06:00,800
Speaker 1: how to distribute it to people. Um, And then the

1153
01:06:00,880 --> 01:06:03,520
Speaker 1: government shuts down the project before they can dose anyone

1154
01:06:03,600 --> 01:06:06,160
Speaker 1: with it. So there's such a big old tank of

1155
01:06:06,440 --> 01:06:09,440
Speaker 1: m d NA. Yeah. Yeah, So they have millions of

1156
01:06:09,560 --> 01:06:12,840
Speaker 1: doses of m d M A and no longer a

1157
01:06:12,920 --> 01:06:16,720
Speaker 1: government who's willing to like let them use it for anything. Um,

1158
01:06:17,080 --> 01:06:19,720
Speaker 1: And they kind of Basten in his colleagues all kind

1159
01:06:19,760 --> 01:06:22,760
Speaker 1: of aside that they should use it to fund their retirements.

1160
01:06:28,600 --> 01:06:33,360
Speaker 1: It's not the worst thing they've ever done. Yeah, it's

1161
01:06:33,400 --> 01:06:37,200
Speaker 1: definitely not. Like I prefer them selling ecstasy to people

1162
01:06:37,280 --> 01:06:43,160
Speaker 1: to have for fun than murdering people doing a quiet

1163
01:06:43,200 --> 01:06:49,880
Speaker 1: genocide is not. Yeah. Yeah. So the data we have

1164
01:06:50,040 --> 01:06:54,440
Speaker 1: suggests that like at some point the priority like before

1165
01:06:54,480 --> 01:06:56,760
Speaker 1: the program got shut down entirely. But when they knew

1166
01:06:56,800 --> 01:06:59,480
Speaker 1: that Project Coast was going to get shut down completely,

1167
01:07:00,000 --> 01:07:03,400
Speaker 1: Assin and his colleagues stopped producing drugs for like crowd

1168
01:07:03,480 --> 01:07:06,520
Speaker 1: control purposes and started producing drugs to sell on the

1169
01:07:06,600 --> 01:07:10,280
Speaker 1: black market. Um, and what we know is that the

1170
01:07:10,360 --> 01:07:12,200
Speaker 1: bulk of the millions of doses of m d m

1171
01:07:12,240 --> 01:07:15,320
Speaker 1: A that Basson's labs cooked up wound up sold in Europe, India,

1172
01:07:15,440 --> 01:07:19,560
Speaker 1: in the United States. Um. So they just are like,

1173
01:07:19,640 --> 01:07:21,120
Speaker 1: we only got a year or two left before the

1174
01:07:21,160 --> 01:07:24,400
Speaker 1: government shuts this lab down completely. Let's manufacture and sell

1175
01:07:24,440 --> 01:07:26,480
Speaker 1: as much ecstasy as we possibly can so that we

1176
01:07:26,560 --> 01:07:30,720
Speaker 1: can retire, which is cool. What were they supposed to

1177
01:07:30,760 --> 01:07:34,240
Speaker 1: be doing in that lab, I don't I think it was.

1178
01:07:34,280 --> 01:07:36,160
Speaker 1: You know, it's a government project, so I think that,

1179
01:07:36,320 --> 01:07:38,600
Speaker 1: like it became clear that they weren't going to do

1180
01:07:38,680 --> 01:07:42,200
Speaker 1: anything with their research before the project actually got shut down,

1181
01:07:42,800 --> 01:07:44,440
Speaker 1: so no one was why. They were just like, we're

1182
01:07:44,480 --> 01:07:48,120
Speaker 1: just here for like seven more months. Yeah, how much

1183
01:07:48,400 --> 01:07:52,080
Speaker 1: can we make? Yeah, that's why when we yeah, where

1184
01:07:52,440 --> 01:07:56,000
Speaker 1: usually when government workers are like, all right, vacation starts now,

1185
01:07:56,080 --> 01:07:58,440
Speaker 1: but well, now we can finally get to work and

1186
01:07:58,600 --> 01:08:02,520
Speaker 1: makes them Yeah we can get paid now. We didn't

1187
01:08:02,520 --> 01:08:05,600
Speaker 1: succeed in genocide, but we can sell a lot of ecstasy.

1188
01:08:10,120 --> 01:08:15,400
Speaker 1: So um yeah. Obviously, like this is not the kind

1189
01:08:15,440 --> 01:08:17,439
Speaker 1: of thing you would ever have expected to have much

1190
01:08:17,520 --> 01:08:20,720
Speaker 1: detail about, and I do wish we had more, but like,

1191
01:08:20,840 --> 01:08:22,840
Speaker 1: we have a lot of information about like all the

1192
01:08:22,880 --> 01:08:25,400
Speaker 1: different things this project was trying to do, which is weird, right.

1193
01:08:25,439 --> 01:08:29,360
Speaker 1: It's a special like a secret special Forces plan for genocide.

1194
01:08:29,680 --> 01:08:32,160
Speaker 1: You wouldn't expect the South African government to have kept

1195
01:08:32,200 --> 01:08:36,519
Speaker 1: any files on this ship. Um, And in fact they didn't.

1196
01:08:36,720 --> 01:08:40,439
Speaker 1: So are you're wondering how all this information got out? Yeah,

1197
01:08:41,880 --> 01:08:46,240
Speaker 1: it's because Dr Basson was a dumb shit. Um. Yeah,

1198
01:08:47,120 --> 01:08:50,559
Speaker 1: So the government when the Aparthei regime fell, the government

1199
01:08:50,640 --> 01:08:52,439
Speaker 1: ordered all of the drugs cooked up as a result

1200
01:08:52,479 --> 01:08:55,160
Speaker 1: of these schemes and all the evidence of what they've

1201
01:08:55,160 --> 01:08:59,040
Speaker 1: done in Project Coast destroyed. But Dr Basson didn't do this,

1202
01:08:59,160 --> 01:09:03,720
Speaker 1: so obviously they can and you'd like manufacturing narcotics for profit. Um.

1203
01:09:04,000 --> 01:09:06,799
Speaker 1: But he also kept all of his files on the project,

1204
01:09:06,960 --> 01:09:10,280
Speaker 1: probably as like an insurance scheme because he was afraid

1205
01:09:10,320 --> 01:09:11,880
Speaker 1: that the government was going to betray him and he

1206
01:09:11,920 --> 01:09:14,320
Speaker 1: wanted to have evidence that other people had been involved

1207
01:09:16,200 --> 01:09:18,040
Speaker 1: because at that time, you made me try to kill

1208
01:09:18,080 --> 01:09:22,960
Speaker 1: all the black people. You guys are genociders. I don't

1209
01:09:23,040 --> 01:09:27,200
Speaker 1: like I feel like he'd killed me pretty easy. So

1210
01:09:27,880 --> 01:09:31,120
Speaker 1: Bassin keeps all of the private files for this genocide

1211
01:09:31,160 --> 01:09:36,599
Speaker 1: scheme in his house. And while he's keeping the ship

1212
01:09:36,720 --> 01:09:40,559
Speaker 1: in his house, he's hit personally, like hand to hand,

1213
01:09:41,040 --> 01:09:46,400
Speaker 1: selling millions of doses of ecstasy to drugs, doing a

1214
01:09:46,520 --> 01:09:49,360
Speaker 1: lot of the sales. Yeah, he's a he's a hands

1215
01:09:49,400 --> 01:09:56,479
Speaker 1: on fella. So one of the guys buying drugs from

1216
01:09:56,520 --> 01:09:59,920
Speaker 1: Basson in this period is Grant Wentzel, who's a commodity's

1217
01:10:00,000 --> 01:10:03,240
Speaker 1: broker from Johannesburg who also sold ecstasy on the side,

1218
01:10:03,360 --> 01:10:06,040
Speaker 1: and he's one of the guys that Basson is selling to.

1219
01:10:06,640 --> 01:10:10,000
Speaker 1: And in n seven, went Zell is busted by the cops,

1220
01:10:10,320 --> 01:10:12,720
Speaker 1: and you know, he agrees to roll over on his

1221
01:10:12,840 --> 01:10:15,320
Speaker 1: source and they set him up with a wire and

1222
01:10:15,439 --> 01:10:17,960
Speaker 1: run him through a couple of deals to test his connections.

1223
01:10:18,560 --> 01:10:21,599
Speaker 1: And then they realize, like, as they're like studying this guy,

1224
01:10:21,640 --> 01:10:24,240
Speaker 1: they realized that one of his connections is a kind

1225
01:10:24,280 --> 01:10:28,280
Speaker 1: of inexplicably wealthy cardiologist who lives in the city um

1226
01:10:28,439 --> 01:10:30,360
Speaker 1: and who seems to be the source of his drugs

1227
01:10:31,080 --> 01:10:33,560
Speaker 1: um And of course it turns out that this cardiologist

1228
01:10:33,720 --> 01:10:40,800
Speaker 1: is Wooter Basson. Is he still practicing cardiology too? Yeah, yeah, yeah,

1229
01:10:40,840 --> 01:10:44,639
Speaker 1: you gotta have a cover man. I guess, so maybe

1230
01:10:44,680 --> 01:10:50,679
Speaker 1: he likes it. Yeah, I mean into originally, Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly,

1231
01:10:50,800 --> 01:10:52,960
Speaker 1: go back to go back to basics. You know, it's

1232
01:10:53,000 --> 01:10:55,320
Speaker 1: the one of those things, you know, your career falls apart.

1233
01:10:55,479 --> 01:10:58,200
Speaker 1: You know, for most of us, it's because the industry

1234
01:10:58,360 --> 01:11:01,320
Speaker 1: changed or you know, some like that, rather than a

1235
01:11:01,439 --> 01:11:04,720
Speaker 1: genocide plan failing. But you go back to basics, you know,

1236
01:11:05,640 --> 01:11:10,599
Speaker 1: and you also start selling a I feel like that's identifiable. Yeah,

1237
01:11:10,680 --> 01:11:15,760
Speaker 1: that's smart. Actually yeah yeah. The Vice has a fun

1238
01:11:15,880 --> 01:11:18,360
Speaker 1: article on the bust that caught Basson, and I'm gonna

1239
01:11:18,400 --> 01:11:21,720
Speaker 1: quote from that now. A white Nissan CenTra pulls up

1240
01:11:21,720 --> 01:11:24,479
Speaker 1: to Wintzell's car. Its occupant gets out and pops the trunk,

1241
01:11:24,600 --> 01:11:27,439
Speaker 1: pulling out a trash bag. Ellerson three other officers. These

1242
01:11:27,439 --> 01:11:30,519
Speaker 1: are South African police officers who recognize him immediately Dr

1243
01:11:30,560 --> 01:11:33,240
Speaker 1: Wooter Basson, the man the media would later dub doctor

1244
01:11:33,360 --> 01:11:36,160
Speaker 1: death for his alleged crimes and apartheid era South Africa.

1245
01:11:36,439 --> 01:11:38,760
Speaker 1: Basson gives the bag to Winzell, who hands him an

1246
01:11:38,800 --> 01:11:43,000
Speaker 1: envelope containing sixty thousand about fifty five thousand U S dollars.

1247
01:11:43,400 --> 01:11:46,280
Speaker 1: Basson's cut of the deal had gone down five days earlier,

1248
01:11:46,320 --> 01:11:50,320
Speaker 1: when Winzel had been arrested. So at this point Ellers

1249
01:11:50,400 --> 01:11:52,639
Speaker 1: makes his move. Basson tries to flee by ducking tops

1250
01:11:52,640 --> 01:11:54,800
Speaker 1: through the pond, a tactic that ends up slowing him

1251
01:11:54,800 --> 01:11:56,439
Speaker 1: down enough for the cops to catch up and make

1252
01:11:56,479 --> 01:11:59,479
Speaker 1: an arrest. The trash bag contained red and black capsule

1253
01:11:59,520 --> 01:12:01,479
Speaker 1: filled with d M A M d M A that

1254
01:12:01,560 --> 01:12:04,400
Speaker 1: research chemist Tim McGibbon would testify at Baston's trial was

1255
01:12:04,439 --> 01:12:07,719
Speaker 1: created by a unique synthesis and it was more than pure.

1256
01:12:08,400 --> 01:12:10,800
Speaker 1: So he's not a good drug dealer. He just has

1257
01:12:10,840 --> 01:12:13,000
Speaker 1: a sack of his ship in his trunk that he

1258
01:12:13,160 --> 01:12:17,719
Speaker 1: delivers by hand to a source. Um in a sack

1259
01:12:18,479 --> 01:12:21,880
Speaker 1: and in a s a trash bag. Yeah, because he's like,

1260
01:12:21,960 --> 01:12:29,120
Speaker 1: here's that ship, you know, going crazy about Yeah, yeah

1261
01:12:29,200 --> 01:12:31,880
Speaker 1: it is, but like dumber like white at least gets

1262
01:12:31,960 --> 01:12:35,080
Speaker 1: his gets like tries to remove himself from the hand

1263
01:12:35,160 --> 01:12:39,840
Speaker 1: to hand dealing. H he read some books about the

1264
01:12:40,000 --> 01:12:44,439
Speaker 1: business of drugs. Yeah, homeboy was just like, no here,

1265
01:12:44,479 --> 01:12:49,000
Speaker 1: it is not give me that monthy, Why would I care? Um?

1266
01:12:49,280 --> 01:12:51,439
Speaker 1: So he gets arrested. Baston gets arrested in this bus,

1267
01:12:51,560 --> 01:12:53,400
Speaker 1: and of course the cops searches home which is what

1268
01:12:53,479 --> 01:12:55,240
Speaker 1: the cops are gonna do when they catch you trying

1269
01:12:55,280 --> 01:12:58,479
Speaker 1: to sell a full trash bag of ecstasy um, And

1270
01:12:58,560 --> 01:13:01,040
Speaker 1: the police find more drugs in his house, but they

1271
01:13:01,080 --> 01:13:03,840
Speaker 1: also find his insurance policy against the old government, the

1272
01:13:03,920 --> 01:13:06,760
Speaker 1: boxes of folders containing the details of his plan to

1273
01:13:06,800 --> 01:13:11,840
Speaker 1: commit genocide. And I knew that will come in handy,

1274
01:13:13,360 --> 01:13:18,200
Speaker 1: I didn't think it was for this. So, Billy, I'm

1275
01:13:18,240 --> 01:13:21,040
Speaker 1: gonna guess. We've both had friends arrested for like simple

1276
01:13:21,120 --> 01:13:25,000
Speaker 1: marijuana possession, um, some of whom have done time. You

1277
01:13:25,040 --> 01:13:28,600
Speaker 1: would probably expect that when Wood Bassin gets caught with

1278
01:13:28,720 --> 01:13:31,840
Speaker 1: a trash bag of ecstasy and files in his house

1279
01:13:32,320 --> 01:13:36,080
Speaker 1: like going into detail about his complicity and hundreds of

1280
01:13:36,160 --> 01:13:39,400
Speaker 1: poison murders and an attempt at genocide, you would guess

1281
01:13:39,479 --> 01:13:46,040
Speaker 1: that would come with sizeable jail time, right Ah, No, yeah, yeah,

1282
01:13:46,120 --> 01:13:55,040
Speaker 1: You've done enough of these shows. So in the South

1283
01:13:55,040 --> 01:13:58,720
Speaker 1: African Truth and Reconciliation Committee held a commission held a

1284
01:13:58,760 --> 01:14:01,680
Speaker 1: public hearing into the chemical and biological warfare program that

1285
01:14:01,720 --> 01:14:04,559
Speaker 1: Basson had spearheaded. This was the first trial of its

1286
01:14:04,640 --> 01:14:06,599
Speaker 1: kind in history, and it brought out all the information

1287
01:14:06,680 --> 01:14:09,120
Speaker 1: we've discussed in this episode. It was heavily based on

1288
01:14:09,160 --> 01:14:12,080
Speaker 1: the files they'd taken from Basson's house, but it failed

1289
01:14:12,120 --> 01:14:14,720
Speaker 1: to actually punish him for any of his crimes. His

1290
01:14:14,840 --> 01:14:18,160
Speaker 1: official trial started in October of nine, where he was

1291
01:14:18,240 --> 01:14:20,880
Speaker 1: charged with sixty seven counts, ranging from drug possession and

1292
01:14:20,960 --> 01:14:25,360
Speaker 1: embezzlement to murdering two nine people. Basson called as the

1293
01:14:25,479 --> 01:14:28,880
Speaker 1: only witness in his defense himself. He claimed he had

1294
01:14:28,960 --> 01:14:32,000
Speaker 1: learned the secrets of chemical warfare from Saddam Hussein's government

1295
01:14:32,040 --> 01:14:34,720
Speaker 1: in Iraq, which was at that point backed up by

1296
01:14:34,760 --> 01:14:37,200
Speaker 1: the U. S Defense Establishment back in like the eighties

1297
01:14:37,200 --> 01:14:40,040
Speaker 1: when he was working there. He admitted basically everything we'd

1298
01:14:40,080 --> 01:14:42,840
Speaker 1: talked about today save the attempt at genocide, and was

1299
01:14:42,920 --> 01:14:45,479
Speaker 1: found not guilty on the ground that nothing he'd done

1300
01:14:45,520 --> 01:14:53,599
Speaker 1: had been illegal at the time. So that's cool, he's not. Yeah,

1301
01:14:54,560 --> 01:15:01,200
Speaker 1: he's not wrong, but also like fuck that, like so

1302
01:15:01,760 --> 01:15:04,720
Speaker 1: now a freeman. Basson became a popular speaker on the

1303
01:15:04,800 --> 01:15:08,240
Speaker 1: international circuit. He was paid to deliver such headline events

1304
01:15:08,320 --> 01:15:12,200
Speaker 1: as Dr Wooter Basson a motivational talk from groups like

1305
01:15:12,280 --> 01:15:15,360
Speaker 1: the Kelvin Grove Club, an organization in South Africa that

1306
01:15:15,439 --> 01:15:19,720
Speaker 1: banns Jewish membership. So he's he's he's a hero to

1307
01:15:19,800 --> 01:15:23,559
Speaker 1: some people. I bet he. Yes. There have been numerous

1308
01:15:23,600 --> 01:15:27,160
Speaker 1: hearings in the years since as the some members of

1309
01:15:27,200 --> 01:15:30,200
Speaker 1: the government in South Africa have attempted to punish Wooter

1310
01:15:30,320 --> 01:15:33,679
Speaker 1: Basson for his numerous crimes. Uh, and he was eventually

1311
01:15:33,760 --> 01:15:37,519
Speaker 1: found guilty of professional misconduct um. But none of these

1312
01:15:37,600 --> 01:15:40,479
Speaker 1: trials have resulted in long term charges. In March of

1313
01:15:40,600 --> 01:15:44,080
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen, a high court in South Africa found

1314
01:15:44,160 --> 01:15:46,120
Speaker 1: that even those charges were had been made by a

1315
01:15:46,200 --> 01:15:49,360
Speaker 1: biased court and the results were set aside. Dr Wooter

1316
01:15:49,439 --> 01:15:55,200
Speaker 1: Basson remains a free and unpunished man to this day. Okay, yeah,

1317
01:15:55,320 --> 01:15:58,040
Speaker 1: it's super cool that he's just out there because you know,

1318
01:15:58,240 --> 01:16:02,000
Speaker 1: he's just chilling. You know, he's not doing anything bad. Um. No,

1319
01:16:02,920 --> 01:16:07,120
Speaker 1: not at all. It's not in his nature. But here's

1320
01:16:07,200 --> 01:16:11,320
Speaker 1: my question, as someone that's read history and keeps up

1321
01:16:11,400 --> 01:16:14,720
Speaker 1: with how laws and politics and all that works. Uh,

1322
01:16:15,880 --> 01:16:19,479
Speaker 1: what files are they not talking about that he probably

1323
01:16:19,680 --> 01:16:24,559
Speaker 1: had that keeps getting him out off Like they were

1324
01:16:24,640 --> 01:16:29,360
Speaker 1: willing to admit the attempted genocide on South Africa's black population.

1325
01:16:29,640 --> 01:16:33,920
Speaker 1: What did they keep under wrap? That's the Yeah, that's

1326
01:16:33,960 --> 01:16:35,840
Speaker 1: my But when you're saying all that. I'm like, there's

1327
01:16:35,880 --> 01:16:40,800
Speaker 1: stuff in there they're not because that's my friend. Yeah. Yeah,

1328
01:16:40,880 --> 01:16:43,559
Speaker 1: we did try to kill all the black people. Yes,

1329
01:16:43,880 --> 01:16:45,840
Speaker 1: we didn't try to. We tried to stop them all

1330
01:16:45,960 --> 01:16:49,200
Speaker 1: from breeding because we couldn't kill them. All that was

1331
01:16:49,560 --> 01:16:51,439
Speaker 1: we're this guy was trying to help us do that.

1332
01:16:51,720 --> 01:16:57,439
Speaker 1: But just nothing else. We didn't do anything else, nothing else,

1333
01:16:57,640 --> 01:17:02,880
Speaker 1: nothing else. There's nothing that's unspeakably and almost unimaginably evil

1334
01:17:03,200 --> 01:17:05,720
Speaker 1: waiting buried in a bunker somewhere in South Africa that

1335
01:17:05,760 --> 01:17:14,160
Speaker 1: WoT Basson invented. Trust us him anything else? Ye ah,

1336
01:17:15,600 --> 01:17:17,600
Speaker 1: it is you kind of do think like I'm not

1337
01:17:17,760 --> 01:17:20,800
Speaker 1: obviously familiar with the intricacies of South African law, so

1338
01:17:21,000 --> 01:17:24,320
Speaker 1: maybe it is just an understandable technicality and a necessary

1339
01:17:24,400 --> 01:17:30,280
Speaker 1: part of the reconciliation effort that like he wasn't Yeah,

1340
01:17:30,320 --> 01:17:31,960
Speaker 1: that's not what my heart, My heart says, they were

1341
01:17:32,040 --> 01:17:35,240
Speaker 1: like this guy has an other insurance policies waiting and

1342
01:17:35,320 --> 01:17:39,120
Speaker 1: if he does time, something unspeakable will be revealed. And

1343
01:17:39,240 --> 01:17:44,880
Speaker 1: he's so yeah, he's very smart. He got a dumb man.

1344
01:17:45,880 --> 01:17:51,400
Speaker 1: So if you did great ecstasy, like unbelievably good ecstasy

1345
01:17:51,560 --> 01:17:57,640
Speaker 1: in the late nineties early two thousand's. Uh, maybe like

1346
01:17:57,800 --> 01:18:00,679
Speaker 1: he made enough that it's circulated for a while after

1347
01:18:00,800 --> 01:18:03,680
Speaker 1: he got busted. I mean he is like a metaphor

1348
01:18:03,840 --> 01:18:06,559
Speaker 1: for every drug dealer, do you know what I mean?

1349
01:18:06,680 --> 01:18:10,760
Speaker 1: Like they're like, yeah, I mean, we know, we know

1350
01:18:10,920 --> 01:18:14,760
Speaker 1: what he does, but have you have you tried his

1351
01:18:15,000 --> 01:18:19,200
Speaker 1: have you have you tried his ship? It's crazy, I know,

1352
01:18:19,680 --> 01:18:23,240
Speaker 1: I know, And don't bring your sister around it. But yeah,

1353
01:18:23,720 --> 01:18:25,920
Speaker 1: because he does that thing. Yeah, but he's the only

1354
01:18:26,000 --> 01:18:29,840
Speaker 1: got in three counties that can Yeah, yeah, I mean

1355
01:18:29,920 --> 01:18:32,120
Speaker 1: it is one of those things. On like a personal scale,

1356
01:18:32,280 --> 01:18:35,120
Speaker 1: you'll accept the fact that your your drug dealer is

1357
01:18:35,200 --> 01:18:38,320
Speaker 1: like creepy and like says some like weird things every

1358
01:18:38,400 --> 01:18:40,240
Speaker 1: now and then, and like you don't you wouldn't want

1359
01:18:40,280 --> 01:18:42,200
Speaker 1: to be alone with him or let other friends be

1360
01:18:42,240 --> 01:18:43,760
Speaker 1: alone with him. You like traveling a group to go

1361
01:18:43,880 --> 01:18:46,000
Speaker 1: pick up your ship from his place. Do not meet

1362
01:18:47,400 --> 01:18:52,040
Speaker 1: him that guy? Yeah. Um, But like on a on

1363
01:18:52,160 --> 01:18:55,600
Speaker 1: a larger scale, I guess we're willing to accept genocide.

1364
01:18:55,600 --> 01:18:57,719
Speaker 1: I mean, nobody, none of the people buying that ecstasy

1365
01:18:57,760 --> 01:19:01,960
Speaker 1: knew it was genocide ecstasy. Um. I think probably there's

1366
01:19:02,000 --> 01:19:06,840
Speaker 1: some there's some traffickers or distributors that had a clue. Yeah,

1367
01:19:06,960 --> 01:19:08,840
Speaker 1: someone being like, where's this ship coming from? I don't know,

1368
01:19:08,960 --> 01:19:16,120
Speaker 1: South Africa. Oh god, it's probably not a good story. Yeah.

1369
01:19:16,280 --> 01:19:18,679
Speaker 1: It's kind of like every time I've done cocaine, it's

1370
01:19:18,720 --> 01:19:24,479
Speaker 1: been like I wonder if someone was shot for this? Yes, yes,

1371
01:19:25,600 --> 01:19:28,800
Speaker 1: and not even like maybe where you think it's like

1372
01:19:28,920 --> 01:19:32,040
Speaker 1: I do I talk about that like with Heroin. Listen,

1373
01:19:32,120 --> 01:19:35,560
Speaker 1: it's awful, but it's also responsible for most of the

1374
01:19:35,720 --> 01:19:39,040
Speaker 1: most amazing music we've ever we've had, and people are

1375
01:19:39,160 --> 01:19:41,240
Speaker 1: not I'm like, no, I'm not saying that the singer

1376
01:19:41,439 --> 01:19:45,519
Speaker 1: of your favorite song, but someone that was working on

1377
01:19:45,600 --> 01:19:51,720
Speaker 1: that album, Yes, was on Heroin. Someone. It's someone it

1378
01:19:51,880 --> 01:19:56,360
Speaker 1: helps with music. It's not good, but it does. So

1379
01:19:56,640 --> 01:19:59,559
Speaker 1: if you're a musician, Billy's official advice is to pick

1380
01:19:59,640 --> 01:20:03,040
Speaker 1: up some Heroin. Uh, Sophie, are we sponsored by No?

1381
01:20:03,520 --> 01:20:08,800
Speaker 1: Not just a musician, a incredibly talented musician that has

1382
01:20:08,880 --> 01:20:12,920
Speaker 1: not broken through yet. But don't get addicted. No, and

1383
01:20:13,280 --> 01:20:16,160
Speaker 1: no should we edit that last? I don't know. I'll

1384
01:20:16,200 --> 01:20:18,200
Speaker 1: do it on live shows sometimes I do say that,

1385
01:20:18,360 --> 01:20:23,400
Speaker 1: but it's a live show, so they can't. You know

1386
01:20:23,520 --> 01:20:26,560
Speaker 1: what though, we can say about heroin. It was not

1387
01:20:26,760 --> 01:20:30,120
Speaker 1: manufactured by Wooter Basson that we know about. I don't

1388
01:20:30,160 --> 01:20:32,960
Speaker 1: know that we that we know about that. In fact,

1389
01:20:33,000 --> 01:20:36,320
Speaker 1: it very like I mean, I guess it's easier, like

1390
01:20:36,479 --> 01:20:39,880
Speaker 1: I think Bassin like, you don't need a doctor to

1391
01:20:40,400 --> 01:20:44,320
Speaker 1: make your heroin, right, No, No, you just need I

1392
01:20:44,400 --> 01:20:47,080
Speaker 1: think people hook cook it in their living rooms pretty

1393
01:20:47,120 --> 01:20:51,800
Speaker 1: regularly from what I've seen on that GEO channel. That's

1394
01:20:51,800 --> 01:20:55,559
Speaker 1: where that's where it comes from. Yeah, so yeah, he's

1395
01:20:55,560 --> 01:21:04,120
Speaker 1: sixty nine years old. Uh, he's probably I just I

1396
01:21:04,240 --> 01:21:07,280
Speaker 1: just think that's I like to imagine that's how he's

1397
01:21:07,320 --> 01:21:11,639
Speaker 1: just living just the six raven day and night. Yeah.

1398
01:21:11,840 --> 01:21:14,760
Speaker 1: I think he has like a pet gerbil and it

1399
01:21:14,840 --> 01:21:17,760
Speaker 1: also does that dance all day, but definitely has a

1400
01:21:17,840 --> 01:21:20,320
Speaker 1: pet gerbil. I think he gives to as a couple

1401
01:21:20,320 --> 01:21:24,639
Speaker 1: of times a year with his pet gerbil. I don't

1402
01:21:24,640 --> 01:21:29,160
Speaker 1: know why you feel good that's because of me. If

1403
01:21:29,200 --> 01:21:33,519
Speaker 1: you've danced with a racist, racist South African cardiologist at Abiza,

1404
01:21:34,120 --> 01:21:38,040
Speaker 1: Uh it was it was Wood or Bassin. I mean,

1405
01:21:38,080 --> 01:21:41,439
Speaker 1: I wonder if he ever did ecstasy. I don't like

1406
01:21:42,040 --> 01:21:44,800
Speaker 1: the way he was delivering it in the bag is

1407
01:21:45,080 --> 01:21:50,120
Speaker 1: hilarious to show should I show what he looks like.

1408
01:21:50,760 --> 01:21:54,639
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he because he looks like the lobotomy doctor. Actually,

1409
01:21:55,080 --> 01:21:56,680
Speaker 1: this is why I said, I think he has a

1410
01:21:56,760 --> 01:22:04,000
Speaker 1: pet gerbil based on his face. Yeah, you can't see it, right, Yeah,

1411
01:22:04,520 --> 01:22:07,960
Speaker 1: see he's got a pet jerbil. He looked way cooler

1412
01:22:08,040 --> 01:22:11,720
Speaker 1: in my head. He's not cool. No, he's not that cool. No,

1413
01:22:12,560 --> 01:22:16,760
Speaker 1: he looks like he you know what, he looks like.

1414
01:22:16,920 --> 01:22:21,760
Speaker 1: He makes syan gas and ship he does, right, yeah

1415
01:22:21,800 --> 01:22:24,600
Speaker 1: he does. He doesn't look like and he looks like

1416
01:22:24,680 --> 01:22:27,040
Speaker 1: he makes m D M A out of spite. I

1417
01:22:27,080 --> 01:22:28,920
Speaker 1: don't like his face. I'm just gonna put it out

1418
01:22:28,920 --> 01:22:33,599
Speaker 1: there if that makes sense. Yeah, Like he's not trying

1419
01:22:33,680 --> 01:22:40,280
Speaker 1: to get laid maybe by his gerbil. Yeah that's true everything. Yeah,

1420
01:22:40,439 --> 01:22:44,840
Speaker 1: and he looks like some on that young photo winking. Yeah,

1421
01:22:44,960 --> 01:22:47,120
Speaker 1: he rides in the plane to watch the bodies get

1422
01:22:47,360 --> 01:22:50,439
Speaker 1: jumped out. Yeah he's that guy. Yeah he does. Look

1423
01:22:50,840 --> 01:22:54,000
Speaker 1: I don't I don't enjoy his I like that. My

1424
01:22:54,120 --> 01:22:57,519
Speaker 1: mind goes to like a softer person, but it's not

1425
01:22:57,680 --> 01:23:01,080
Speaker 1: what he is. Just trying to give him a bit

1426
01:23:01,120 --> 01:23:05,599
Speaker 1: from a doubt. I do like that. I would love

1427
01:23:05,960 --> 01:23:09,360
Speaker 1: to see the footage of him getting busted though with

1428
01:23:09,520 --> 01:23:14,040
Speaker 1: that sack of peels. Yeah, yeah, that would be fun.

1429
01:23:14,160 --> 01:23:16,200
Speaker 1: I want to see him like running from the cops

1430
01:23:16,320 --> 01:23:18,360
Speaker 1: because you know, it was hilarious and he was really

1431
01:23:18,439 --> 01:23:23,879
Speaker 1: bad at Yeah, there's not in him, Like it's amazing

1432
01:23:24,000 --> 01:23:26,479
Speaker 1: for how smart this guy is that he would be like, well,

1433
01:23:26,520 --> 01:23:29,880
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna keep all of my genocide files unprotected

1434
01:23:29,920 --> 01:23:33,120
Speaker 1: in my in my home along with piles of illegal drugs.

1435
01:23:33,240 --> 01:23:35,880
Speaker 1: This seems like a good idea. Well, he does seem

1436
01:23:36,040 --> 01:23:40,320
Speaker 1: very unfamiliar with drug culture and with crime. Yeah. I

1437
01:23:40,360 --> 01:23:42,960
Speaker 1: think it's because he was doing all these horrible things

1438
01:23:43,080 --> 01:23:46,479
Speaker 1: for years and he was being supported by the government,

1439
01:23:46,520 --> 01:23:50,800
Speaker 1: so he never worried about it. And there's like an

1440
01:23:50,880 --> 01:23:53,600
Speaker 1: email and memos involved. It's not like, Hey, meet me

1441
01:23:53,640 --> 01:23:57,240
Speaker 1: in a park and we're going to make a rocket. Yeah.

1442
01:23:57,560 --> 01:24:01,880
Speaker 1: There's a real learning curve to to to crime. And

1443
01:24:02,400 --> 01:24:04,439
Speaker 1: while he was good at committing the kind of crimes

1444
01:24:04,479 --> 01:24:07,080
Speaker 1: that aren't crimes because a government tells you to do them,

1445
01:24:07,439 --> 01:24:10,400
Speaker 1: he was bad at committing crimes that are crimes because

1446
01:24:10,400 --> 01:24:17,479
Speaker 1: the government tells you not to do Yeah. Amazing Wouter Bassin.

1447
01:24:18,360 --> 01:24:20,760
Speaker 1: So you can go find him in South Africa, say hi,

1448
01:24:21,000 --> 01:24:23,360
Speaker 1: see if he's gotten the e hanging around. I bet

1449
01:24:23,439 --> 01:24:27,200
Speaker 1: he's friendly, you guys, I bet he's very nice if

1450
01:24:27,280 --> 01:24:33,680
Speaker 1: you have a certain complexion. Yeah, I'm gonna guess he's

1451
01:24:33,680 --> 01:24:38,840
Speaker 1: not not nice to everyone. Um. There was like a

1452
01:24:38,920 --> 01:24:40,720
Speaker 1: weird story that like one of the people who was

1453
01:24:40,800 --> 01:24:44,200
Speaker 1: part of the prosecution against him, he gave heart surgery

1454
01:24:44,280 --> 01:24:48,479
Speaker 1: to like before the trial. Uh, and it was fine. Uh.

1455
01:24:49,160 --> 01:24:52,240
Speaker 1: But it's like, it's pretty weird. That is so weird.

1456
01:24:53,160 --> 01:24:59,840
Speaker 1: What has like what their boundaries are very strange? Yeah,

1457
01:24:59,880 --> 01:25:01,720
Speaker 1: the compartmental is it? I guess it's kind of like

1458
01:25:02,680 --> 01:25:06,599
Speaker 1: like Ben Carson obviously hasn't committed crimes on this scale,

1459
01:25:07,200 --> 01:25:09,519
Speaker 1: but he's not someone I like or think is a

1460
01:25:09,600 --> 01:25:13,679
Speaker 1: particularly good person. But if I needed brain surgery, I'm

1461
01:25:13,720 --> 01:25:15,760
Speaker 1: sure he's like everything I hear is he's great at it.

1462
01:25:15,920 --> 01:25:18,840
Speaker 1: So what do you do, well, Billy, this has been

1463
01:25:18,880 --> 01:25:21,080
Speaker 1: a fun story about a guy who tried to commit

1464
01:25:21,160 --> 01:25:23,960
Speaker 1: genocide and who did make a lot of people drown

1465
01:25:24,040 --> 01:25:27,519
Speaker 1: in their own lung fluid, uh, and then sold ecstasy

1466
01:25:27,560 --> 01:25:31,120
Speaker 1: and got off scot free. I would if we're doing

1467
01:25:31,200 --> 01:25:35,320
Speaker 1: silver linings, someone try and fail at genocide and end

1468
01:25:35,439 --> 01:25:40,320
Speaker 1: up making ecstasy for everyone then someone trying to make

1469
01:25:41,000 --> 01:25:45,080
Speaker 1: fun drugs and end up committing genocide on accident. I

1470
01:25:45,120 --> 01:25:48,200
Speaker 1: guess you could say that Wood or Basson is actually

1471
01:25:48,280 --> 01:25:51,320
Speaker 1: the best case scenario for someone who attempts to commit genocide,

1472
01:25:51,960 --> 01:25:57,760
Speaker 1: like failing to commit gent That did not make Anderson happy. No,

1473
01:25:58,680 --> 01:26:04,200
Speaker 1: it's a good dog, is a good jog. Yeah, Well,

1474
01:26:04,280 --> 01:26:07,320
Speaker 1: but I mean, like, normally, when people try to commit genocide,

1475
01:26:07,439 --> 01:26:09,439
Speaker 1: they kill a lot of people, and he failed to

1476
01:26:09,520 --> 01:26:11,360
Speaker 1: kill a lot of Well, he killed a lot of people,

1477
01:26:11,640 --> 01:26:13,920
Speaker 1: but then he made ecstasy, So I guess that's better

1478
01:26:14,040 --> 01:26:16,559
Speaker 1: than killing a lot of people and not. I don't

1479
01:26:16,600 --> 01:26:18,479
Speaker 1: really know where I'm going with this. I think it

1480
01:26:18,680 --> 01:26:20,320
Speaker 1: is going to be one of those like if there's

1481
01:26:20,360 --> 01:26:22,960
Speaker 1: an afterlife, and it's like what your grandma thinks. Saint

1482
01:26:22,960 --> 01:26:24,960
Speaker 1: Peter's up there, He's like, Ah, you got a lot.

1483
01:26:25,040 --> 01:26:26,760
Speaker 1: He made a lot of people really fucked up. I'm

1484
01:26:26,800 --> 01:26:32,360
Speaker 1: happy that you did some killing. I mean a lot

1485
01:26:32,439 --> 01:26:39,000
Speaker 1: of killing. I think attempted genocide outweighs the ecstasy. But yeah,

1486
01:26:39,320 --> 01:26:42,120
Speaker 1: who boy. Maybe there's not anything to learn from the

1487
01:26:42,160 --> 01:26:45,800
Speaker 1: story of Wood or bassin Um other than that apartheid

1488
01:26:46,240 --> 01:26:49,880
Speaker 1: was garbage and the South African nation under apartheid was

1489
01:26:50,000 --> 01:26:52,600
Speaker 1: one of the worst countries that ever existed. And I

1490
01:26:52,680 --> 01:26:56,400
Speaker 1: hope Wood or Bassin gets hit by a car soon. Yeah,

1491
01:26:56,960 --> 01:26:59,599
Speaker 1: with a bag appeals in his hand, with a bag

1492
01:26:59,680 --> 01:27:01,679
Speaker 1: of pill in his hand, trying to sell a trash

1493
01:27:01,760 --> 01:27:03,759
Speaker 1: bag of drugs and they just go everywhere and everyone

1494
01:27:03,800 --> 01:27:08,120
Speaker 1: gets them for free. Yeah, it's kind of the best

1495
01:27:08,200 --> 01:27:12,680
Speaker 1: case scenario. Well, Billy get any plug to plug uh not?

1496
01:27:13,200 --> 01:27:16,479
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, I'll be on tour coming up soon. Um,

1497
01:27:17,320 --> 01:27:20,280
Speaker 1: we're booking all that right now. But just at Billy

1498
01:27:20,320 --> 01:27:23,639
Speaker 1: Wayne Davis is my Twitter and I'm on the new

1499
01:27:23,800 --> 01:27:26,680
Speaker 1: season as with Billies, so check that out. And at

1500
01:27:26,720 --> 01:27:30,960
Speaker 1: Billy Wayne Davis is my Instagram. So well, you can

1501
01:27:31,040 --> 01:27:33,560
Speaker 1: find me on Twitter too, and I'm not going to

1502
01:27:33,640 --> 01:27:36,760
Speaker 1: tell you where, but you can. I'm there, seek me

1503
01:27:36,840 --> 01:27:39,080
Speaker 1: out and if you're meant to find me, you will.

1504
01:27:39,479 --> 01:27:41,599
Speaker 1: You can also find this podcast on Twitter, at Instagram

1505
01:27:41,680 --> 01:27:44,000
Speaker 1: and at Bastard's pot. You can find our sources at

1506
01:27:44,040 --> 01:27:50,000
Speaker 1: behind the Bastards dot com. Uh and you can hopefully

1507
01:27:50,360 --> 01:27:53,400
Speaker 1: not attempt to commit genocide. That's all I ask of

1508
01:27:53,520 --> 01:27:56,920
Speaker 1: my Audi. Don't do it. Don't don't even try, not

1509
01:27:57,080 --> 01:27:59,839
Speaker 1: even once. Don't you get an attempt to make excess.

1510
01:28:00,200 --> 01:28:03,559
Speaker 1: H Yeah, as much as you want. Really, I'm fine

1511
01:28:03,640 --> 01:28:07,599
Speaker 1: with that. This is a very pro amateur chemistry podcast.

1512
01:28:07,760 --> 01:28:11,360
Speaker 1: Unless it's genocide chemistry. Don't let me June. Try to

1513
01:28:11,439 --> 01:28:15,080
Speaker 1: help your parents marriage, and don't be racist about who

1514
01:28:15,120 --> 01:28:17,639
Speaker 1: you give your ecstasy. To give it to everybody otherwise

1515
01:28:17,680 --> 01:28:25,200
Speaker 1: it's a problem that is funning. I did. Yeah, this

1516
01:28:25,360 --> 01:28:28,519
Speaker 1: one puzzled me. There's some science puzzles here in this

1517
01:28:28,680 --> 01:28:32,800
Speaker 1: one that I was Yeah, it's a thinker, It's it's

1518
01:28:32,840 --> 01:28:35,160
Speaker 1: a real thinker. It's a motherfucker, is what that is.

1519
01:28:35,320 --> 01:28:36,920
Speaker 1: Where you're just like, oh, you figured out that we're

1520
01:28:36,920 --> 01:28:41,360
Speaker 1: all the same, so you can't Okay, I'm gonna hear yep.

1521
01:28:41,920 --> 01:28:45,640
Speaker 1: All right, everybody have fun with this one. Enjoy your holidays.

1522
01:28:47,479 --> 01:28:50,519
Speaker 1: If this comes out before the holidays. Bye. B