Speaker 1: Also media Ah, welcome back yet again to Behind the Bastards,
Speaker 1: a podcast about g Gordon Lidty.
Speaker 2: You know, we initially did four parts, and I was like,
Speaker 2: that's probably about as much g Gordon Liddy. I had
Speaker 2: hoped to cover his whole life in full part four parts,
Speaker 2: and I just I couldn't stop. I couldn't stop getting
Speaker 2: into these little rabbit holes, kept getting pulled into things.
Speaker 2: He's just too interesting, and I'm always, you know, whenever
Speaker 2: we have an episode that runs into the multi parts,
Speaker 2: I get kind of anxious because I'm afraid that, like
Speaker 2: you know, no episode is everybody's favorite, right, and so
Speaker 2: we try to we try to have variety. We try
Speaker 2: to go back and forth between you know, we got
Speaker 2: cult leaders, business monsters, Nazis, you know, quack doctors, all
Speaker 2: that sort of stuff, so everybody gets someone what they like.
Speaker 2: So I get worried whenever we start going too long
Speaker 2: on one guy. But I listened to the first four
Speaker 2: episodes and I kept feeling like we were we were
Speaker 2: doing a disservice to the audience by not finishing the G.
Speaker 2: Gordon Liddy story.
Speaker 3: You know, I I will admit it didn't feel like
Speaker 3: there was like plenty more to do. There's so much more,
Speaker 3: I think to your to your point, you know, it
Speaker 3: does he does cover. He's like a real like multi
Speaker 3: hyphen it in terms of yeah fuck yeah, true true
Speaker 3: fuck faces in the twentieth century.
Speaker 2: And we're missing still. You know, Watergate is quite a thing,
Speaker 2: and his just his his fascinating brain is worth studying.
Speaker 2: But we're missing a whole chunk of his career, which
Speaker 2: is where he kind of invents the modern concept of
Speaker 2: a right wing influencer in a lot of ways. So Andrew,
Speaker 2: welcome back to the show. Now, folks you you may
Speaker 2: have noticed the absence of a of a certain voice
Speaker 2: in the audience today. Sophie is not here. She was
Speaker 2: taken into custody by Nicaraguan authorities after a brief gun
Speaker 2: battle last weekend. She's fine. We're working on on on
Speaker 2: getting her out.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: You know, it's just a misunderstanding to do with some just.
Speaker 4: Some paperwork that needs to be foed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, paperwork, paperwork, Yes, that's it, that's right. Sorry,
Speaker 2: I yes, paperwork, not kidnappings. So Ian Ian Johnson are
Speaker 2: our inimitable editor is sitting in for her today. How
Speaker 2: are you doing?
Speaker 4: Ian I'm doing pretty good. Excited to learn more about
Speaker 4: the g man you know, is burning himself, lighting his
Speaker 4: hands on fire. Yes, I love it, so let's keep
Speaker 4: it coming.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm kind of low key glad that that
Speaker 2: Sophie wound up trying to overthrow the Nicaraguan government last weekend,
Speaker 2: because this is an episode that does need a little
Speaker 2: bit of a boys club, because we're going to not
Speaker 2: just be talking about g Gordon Liddy, but a lot
Speaker 2: of concepts of masculinity in our society, and I think
Speaker 2: he kind of embodies pretty well. So this will be good.
Speaker 2: This will be a good, good time for the bro squad.
Speaker 4: Okay, we're gonna brow down.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, oh yeah, we're gonna brow down hard everybody. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, Ian, when when I was trying to come
Speaker 2: up with ways to introduce this show last night, I
Speaker 2: was thinking of nicknames for you in my head. Since
Speaker 2: I haven't gotten to do that much, I'd.
Speaker 4: Love to hear well.
Speaker 2: I was gonna go with Ebao the Letter, which is
Speaker 2: a reference to an r EM song about Ripper Phoenix
Speaker 2: that that like four people know today. All of the
Speaker 2: people who listen to that song back in the nineties
Speaker 2: are dead now except for like me, and I'm going
Speaker 2: to guess dan Aykroyd he was one of Ripper Phoenix's friends, right.
Speaker 4: No, maybe one of the guys in or they don't
Speaker 4: even know it anymore.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, there's no way Michael Stipe remembers this,
Speaker 2: not with all of the Michael Stipe induced brain damage
Speaker 2: he has. Are we are we ready for the last
Speaker 2: of Lyddy?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: Oh my god?
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, okay. When we left off with the g Man,
Speaker 2: he had just been convicted and sentenced to like twenty
Speaker 2: years in prison for his many crimes, many incompetent crimes.
Speaker 2: And obviously Lyddy does not do close to twenty years
Speaker 2: in prison, but he and his family don't know that
Speaker 2: where he goes inside and to all. For everything I
Speaker 2: can tell, I believe he was fully willing to serve
Speaker 2: that amount of time. Right. One thing you can't take
Speaker 2: away from the guy is his commitment to the BIT.
Speaker 2: And the BIT, of course, is fascism, so I don't
Speaker 2: really respect it, but I do respect the commitment, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you just kind of have to pass a certain point.
Speaker 3: Look, I'm worried that I have said made this analogy
Speaker 3: or repeated this analogy before on this very show. But
Speaker 3: it's a little bit the same as like the like
Speaker 3: nine to eleven hijackers. Everyone constantly the calls those attacks cowardly.
Speaker 2: Absolutely not.
Speaker 3: The one thing they absolutely were not is cowardly.
Speaker 2: Look, it wasn't a good thing to do, but it
Speaker 2: was not cowardly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was very brave.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well that I think this goes into actually something
Speaker 2: that's very relevant to these episodes, which is that our
Speaker 2: culture places a moral value on concepts like courage and courage.
Speaker 2: Physical courage is an absolutely a moral value. The SS.
Speaker 2: A lot of guys with physical courage in the SS
Speaker 2: doesn't matter, doesn't make them good. Is not like a
Speaker 2: redeeming trait. And it's the same. Yeah, you know, when
Speaker 2: I say something is respectable, respect does not imply morality.
Speaker 2: It's like, if somebody is incredibly good at breaking and
Speaker 2: entering into houses in order to like take people's valuables,
Speaker 2: that may not be a good thing. He's probably hurting
Speaker 2: a lot of people, but you have to respect the
Speaker 2: degree of skill in busting through a lock, you know.
Speaker 3: Ye. Also that one isn't as ambiguous, unambiguously.
Speaker 2: Bads, No, it's not. I don't know.
Speaker 3: We've been a breaking an entering. It's all where it
Speaker 3: goes a little.
Speaker 2: Bit of B and A yeah. I guess it depends
Speaker 2: on the B and the E.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So back to Lyddy. So he he goes inside and
Speaker 2: his wife takes a job. I thinks he's a sixth
Speaker 2: grade teacher and is completely the one taking care of
Speaker 2: the family while he is at She has some help
Speaker 2: from Gordon's parents, but his father, Sylvester is going to
Speaker 2: die about halfway through his time in prison, which I
Speaker 2: think seriously reduces the ability of the in laws to
Speaker 2: kind of take care of them. This also means that
Speaker 2: Lyddy is going to be left without the let's say
Speaker 2: questionable moral support that his dad was able to That
Speaker 2: was like the one thing holding him back though right.
Speaker 2: I think if his dad had been alive, he probably
Speaker 2: would have given his dad a copy of the autobiography
Speaker 2: before what published, and his dad would have been like,
Speaker 2: you got a D. D. Hitler This thing by about
Speaker 2: fifty percent.
Speaker 3: Everyone needs that person in your life to just say
Speaker 3: just a less Hitler, less Hitler. I know we all
Speaker 3: want to Hitler a time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, count up, the Hitler references in your book. Cut
Speaker 2: him in half, you know what, cut him in half?
Speaker 2: Half as much Hitler? Fair enough.
Speaker 3: It's like Coco Chanel for Coco Chanell.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, that's right. You just just the Chanel, leave
Speaker 2: the Coco out. I think the problems are in the
Speaker 2: co co So Lyddy's lawyer during this period is a
Speaker 2: guy named Peter Marulis. And if you comb through old
Speaker 2: New York Times articles or their contemporary Watergate coverage, you'll
Speaker 2: see Marulus mentioned a lot. He had a reputation for
Speaker 2: being mild mannered but persistent. He was apparently pretty good looking.
Speaker 2: It's hard to judge his actual competence from this case
Speaker 2: because Lydia doesn't really give him a chance to be
Speaker 2: a great defense lawyer. Right Lyddy is like, I am
Speaker 2: guilty and I will say nothing else, which is, to
Speaker 2: be fair to Peter, a difficult position to be in
Speaker 2: as a defense attorney. You don't have a lot of
Speaker 2: wiggle room there. It is really funny the way in
Speaker 2: which the g Man describes his for because Marulus is
Speaker 2: his former law partner and his best friend. Quote a tall,
Speaker 2: powerfully built man with a Clark Kent face. And glasses
Speaker 2: under thinning sandy hair. Peter Marulis will correct anyone who
Speaker 2: refers to his ethnic extraction as Greek by advising sternly
Speaker 2: that he has a Spartan. He was my best friend.
Speaker 2: I wasn't sure we were going to get a Sparta
Speaker 2: reference in here, but there we go, there we go,
Speaker 2: We got it. We did it everyone.
Speaker 3: It's good to know. And this five goes back literally
Speaker 3: as to Herodotus, people who call themselves a Spartan are
Speaker 3: the fucking worst.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, anyone who because like they weren't good at
Speaker 2: like their period of time, as like it like objectively
Speaker 2: dominant in the Greek peninsula was like roughly the period
Speaker 2: of time Martin Scorsese has been making movies right like
Speaker 2: it's it's not like that long a span of time.
Speaker 2: And I think Scorsese is more impressive as like a
Speaker 2: force in culture. But Marulus is not a Spartan. Of course,
Speaker 2: he is from Poughkeepsie, which is the opposite of Sparta.
Speaker 2: I think, probably in a good way. But whatever, when
Speaker 2: he first went away, when Liddy first goes away gets
Speaker 2: locked up, he's sent in a local jail kind of
Speaker 2: as his case is winding its way to completion. He
Speaker 2: gets a period where he's like he's convict did but
Speaker 2: he's not like permanently sentenced in everything here, everyone, Robert here,
Speaker 2: I actually got this wrong. I double checked, and Sparta's
Speaker 2: period of military dominance in Greece was something like a
Speaker 2: little over thirty years, whereas Carsese's been directing for like
Speaker 2: fifty something years. It would have been better if I
Speaker 2: had compared the length of time that Sparta was the
Speaker 2: dominant military power in Greece to like the run of
Speaker 2: the Simpsons at present, although they'll eat it soon. And
Speaker 2: he describes himself during this early period of incarceration as
Speaker 2: totally at peace because while he had abandoned his family
Speaker 2: and left his wife defend for their five children completely alone,
Speaker 2: it was all in service of a greater cause, and
Speaker 2: that greater cause was Richard Nixon. Now, Lyddy was not
Speaker 2: unaware of the fact this is an unfair thing to
Speaker 2: do to your wife, right to abandon her for half
Speaker 2: a decade in order to protect Dick Nixon, the man
Speaker 2: least deserving of loyalty of anyone who has ever lived.
Speaker 2: But yeah, at one point he seems to have been
Speaker 2: somewhat aware dimly at least that this was not a
Speaker 2: morally clean thing for him to be doing. And so
Speaker 2: at one point this is one of the things that's
Speaker 2: interesting about it. But at one point he sits down
Speaker 2: with her on a visitation day and is like, look,
Speaker 2: I know this is not what you signed up for.
Speaker 2: This is not fair. If you want to leave me,
Speaker 2: get a divorce, find someone new, you know, that's totally
Speaker 2: fine with me. I'll sign the papers, I'll do whatever.
Speaker 2: And fran opts to stick by him, which is I guess,
Speaker 2: at least proof that even the sickest weirdhouse on this
Speaker 2: planet can find true love. I don't know what you
Speaker 2: want to like interpret from that. I don't find it optimistic,
Speaker 2: but it is a thing way. It's pretty sweet, but
Speaker 2: it's true. It's a deeply sweet thing to do. Again,
Speaker 2: I hate that this incredible gesture of love is on
Speaker 2: behalf of Richard Nixon, at least partly, so like, that's
Speaker 2: not great, but it is what it is. It is so.
Speaker 2: Gordon does not describe his experience in prison as bad.
Speaker 2: He does, however, describe it like a white guy raised
Speaker 2: on Clint Eastwood movies from the seventies. Right, this is like,
Speaker 2: I don't know the degree to which I know that
Speaker 2: he's not telling the full truth. I suspect he is
Speaker 2: censoring his true feelings about his time behind bars significantly
Speaker 2: and consciously aping movies from the nineteen seventies in this
Speaker 2: book that he writes because he knows that that'll sell
Speaker 2: with conservatives. Right, there's a lot of dirty Harry in
Speaker 2: a number of chunks of this book. Here's one line
Speaker 2: where he talks about his early days in jail. In here,
Speaker 2: people wore all neighbors and it was like old Home Week.
Speaker 2: I couldn't understand most of what was being said. It
Speaker 2: was all in black dialect, and I didn't speak it.
Speaker 2: I have sense of necessity become fluent. I don't think
Speaker 2: that's the case because he writes, and I'm not going
Speaker 2: to I'm not going to read him writing what he
Speaker 2: calls black dialect. But he does attempt to at several times,
Speaker 2: and I do not him credible.
Speaker 3: I'll say that, yeah, this is surreal. I speak jive.
Speaker 3: It is come up before Airplane.
Speaker 2: I actually don't know that. I'm not exactly shore when
Speaker 2: that movie came out. It's pretty embarrassing to read. Again,
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna like go too much into it because
Speaker 2: of how embarrassing it is. But you should know that
Speaker 2: this is not just not just the thing he does once,
Speaker 2: but a thing that is like repeatedly a part of
Speaker 2: this chunk of his narrative. So, because Lyddy and McCord
Speaker 2: and Hunt all got caught and charged so far ahead
Speaker 2: of the bulk of the Watergate scandal breaking out, there's
Speaker 2: this long lag time. And this is one of the
Speaker 2: things that the two different TV shows we've talked about
Speaker 2: really fuck up. I mean, I don't think they fuck
Speaker 2: it up. I think it's a narrative choice they make,
Speaker 2: but they really mess with the timeline for the purposes
Speaker 2: of making it seem like guys like John Dean and
Speaker 2: Erlikman and whatnot getting in trouble times up with the
Speaker 2: break in, and with guys like Hunt and Liddy getting
Speaker 2: in trouble much better than it does. In reality. The
Speaker 2: shit with Hunt and LIDDI happens well ahead of the
Speaker 2: rest of the scandal breaking and so these guys are
Speaker 2: all kind of in jail while the Nixon administration is
Speaker 2: falling apart. Lyddy is determined to prevent this, to prevent
Speaker 2: Nixon from getting forced out of office again. The whole
Speaker 2: thing that was kind of like keeping him together was
Speaker 2: the idea that by sacrificing himself and his family, he
Speaker 2: could keep Nixon in office, that like the chain of
Speaker 2: custody would stop with him, and that Nixon wouldn't get
Speaker 2: in trouble if he went away. And he kind of
Speaker 2: comes to the conclusion that if McCord or Hunt in
Speaker 2: particular break, that's such a danger to the administration that
Speaker 2: he would have to murder them, you know. So he
Speaker 2: claims that, you know, he says that he makes because
Speaker 2: he claims he's very popular with some of these other
Speaker 2: prison guys, and he claims that one of these dudes,
Speaker 2: and he always tells you that these are black men,
Speaker 2: tells him that the price of a murder is two
Speaker 2: cartons of cigarettes. He works out like a plan basically
Speaker 2: where he'll assaulted guard to get sent to solitary for
Speaker 2: a few days, and then this friend of his, who's
Speaker 2: totally his buddy, will murder whichever one of his co
Speaker 2: conspirators that he needed dead. Knowing Lyddy, knowing his general
Speaker 2: level of competence, I wouldn't be surprised if he got
Speaker 2: a dude to say, yeah, man, give me cigarettes and
Speaker 2: I'll totally murder a dude with you. Send yourself to solitary,
Speaker 2: and I'll make it happen, right, Like, I would not
Speaker 2: be surprised if someone scammed him as a spoiler. He
Speaker 2: never comes close to hurting anyone in prison that we
Speaker 2: can prove in any way, shape or form. I think
Speaker 2: a lot of this is just bluster, and this dude,
Speaker 2: having watched a lot of prison movies.
Speaker 3: Really look, I just back of the enveloping a little
Speaker 3: bit of even with inflation, how the fuck you gotta
Speaker 3: try to get away with two cartons of cigarettes? Is
Speaker 3: the price? Like, get the fuck out of here.
Speaker 2: I think the idea is that, like, well, if you're
Speaker 2: if you're a lifer or whatever, it doesn't really matter
Speaker 2: either way, whether the cigarettes or whatever. But like, I
Speaker 2: think they're gonna take your cigarettes, right, Like, if you
Speaker 2: murder a guy, they're gonna throw you in side. I
Speaker 2: don't know, it doesn't seem that that, especially since we're
Speaker 2: talking about like very high profile prisoners. Yeah, it's one
Speaker 2: thing if it's like, yeah, if you murder this other
Speaker 2: dude who's a lifer and who nobody on the outside
Speaker 2: cares about and you can probably get away with it
Speaker 2: because the prison authorities aren't going to investigate if you
Speaker 2: murder e. Howard Hunt, Like yeah, they're not just gonna
Speaker 2: pretend that didn't happen, you know.
Speaker 3: But also people know what kind of money you have
Speaker 3: access to and what you're trying to do. You don't
Speaker 3: think the price is going to be one hundred K
Speaker 3: to my family on the outside.
Speaker 2: You don't think anyone's going to like foya to see, like, hey,
Speaker 2: this guy got murdered right after g Gordon Lyddy gets
Speaker 2: put in solitary. Did he buy anything for another prisoner
Speaker 2: right before?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: Is that documented? Like every journalist in the country would
Speaker 2: have poured over this anyway, whatever, But again Lyddy never
Speaker 2: does anything. Gordon claims that during the of his time
Speaker 2: in prison, he is because he's a white man in
Speaker 2: a jail, the subject of numerous racial epithets. During the
Speaker 2: start of his time behind bars, he says his new
Speaker 2: neighbors were particularly angry because, and this is his fault,
Speaker 2: he would walk naked to and from the shower, which
Speaker 2: he thought was fine because of his experiences in high
Speaker 2: school gym. But like it's apparently rude in a prison
Speaker 2: now again. Prison mores change regularly and differ from region
Speaker 2: to region. But this seems like a pretty easy thing
Speaker 2: to know. If it's like getting a bad reaction to people,
Speaker 2: just don't walk naked around it. Put a towel on,
Speaker 2: man like, it's not that art anyway. His decision is
Speaker 2: not to just put a towel on. He says that
Speaker 2: after a week or so being basically being called honky,
Speaker 2: he decides to fight back. And I'm going to give
Speaker 2: you one guess as to how he decides to fight
Speaker 2: back against anti white racism. What he describes is.
Speaker 4: That did he light himself on fire?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Oh, that was the other likely No Ian, No, it's Nazi,
Speaker 2: it's Nazi stuff. He does a Nazi again.
Speaker 3: He's got one play, and he loves the play.
Speaker 2: He's right, he's got two he has bringing up the
Speaker 2: SS and lighting himself on fire, Like those aren't the
Speaker 2: only two plays he ever developed.
Speaker 3: Well at that point that was also the kiing Nazi move.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, let yourself Yeah yeah, that's what Hitler did
Speaker 2: to the whole country. Yeah, so quote I seethed then
Speaker 2: an idea he seethed after getting you know, yelled at yeah.
Speaker 2: Then an idea hit me. They wanted race, I'd give
Speaker 2: them race. My mind reached back thirty five years deep
Speaker 2: into my childhood. In my head, the shortwave of my
Speaker 2: mother's old Emerson snapped on. The music started and I
Speaker 2: started to sing, sing as I hadn't in years. I
Speaker 2: roared out into the chaos about me, the anthem of
Speaker 2: the nation whose psychotic obsession with race sent millions of
Speaker 2: those believed inferior to their graves. And then he starts
Speaker 2: singing the horse wessel Ride.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, by the time, even as far as
Speaker 3: Nazi shit you could do in prison, that is impressively.
Speaker 2: And He's like, there was something so powerful about the
Speaker 2: music that they all stopped yelling at me as soon
Speaker 2: as they heard it, even though they didn't speak German.
Speaker 2: And it's like, no, they look, I'm gonna yeah, of course,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna guess most people in the DC jail did
Speaker 2: not speak German, but like they knew this was Nazi shit.
Speaker 2: It's not that hard when a guy starts singing a
Speaker 2: Marshall Germans song, you get what's going on?
Speaker 3: Yeah in a jail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like so this is where I Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 2: it's pretty fun. So after some time in the DC jail,
Speaker 2: he gets sent to a larger facility, dan Berry, and
Speaker 2: he's he's still kept out. He's in a bigger facility now,
Speaker 2: but he's kept out of the general population because he
Speaker 2: still hasn't been sentenced. He claims that during this time
Speaker 2: he met another Nazi, the son of the s SH
Speaker 2: Gestapo commander of Brussels, who became his chess partner. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I met the son of this SS Gestapo commander in Brussels,
Speaker 2: and we started becoming like, you know, chess buddies.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we get on famously. He knows more songs than
Speaker 2: I do. And shower time sounds like the invasion of Poland.
Speaker 2: My god, that's the sins you should not ever write now.
Speaker 3: These two naked Nazis belting out fucking Wagner there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, first off, comparing your shower time to the invasion
Speaker 2: of Poland. Let me remind you all three million Jewish
Speaker 2: Poles are murdered during the Nazi occupation, along with at
Speaker 2: least one point eight million non Jewish Polish citizens. That's
Speaker 2: a little bit political, right, Like the Polish state will
Speaker 2: say it's about three million Polish citizens. Honestly, that doesn't
Speaker 2: really sound impossible to me, Like a lot so many
Speaker 2: Polish people die as a result of the occupation. More importantly, though,
Speaker 2: we can actually drill into the accuracy of this Claims
Speaker 2: claimed that he was buddies with the son of the
Speaker 2: s S Gestapo commander in Brussels, because that's a job.
Speaker 2: We know who did that gig right, The head of
Speaker 2: this Gestapo in Belgium was a dude named Constantine Kanaris.
Speaker 2: Now you may have heard of a guy named Admiral
Speaker 2: Wilhelm Canaris. Canaris was a Nazi who was one of
Speaker 2: the guys that was kind of part of the plot
Speaker 2: against Hitler. That's in that Tom Cruise movie. He gets
Speaker 2: a little rehabilitated for this. That should not be the case.
Speaker 2: Wilhelm Canaris is like not one of the worst Nazis,
Speaker 2: but was definitely definitely a Nazi. He worked very closely
Speaker 2: with Ryan hart Heidrich, architect of the Holocaust. He's one
Speaker 2: of these dudes who doesn't like Hitler at the end
Speaker 2: because he thinks Hitler's losing the war, and he gets executed,
Speaker 2: by the way should have been executed and was fucking executed.
Speaker 2: His nephew is a Constantine Canaris, who is the head
Speaker 2: of the Gestapo in Brussels during when Brussels is occupied
Speaker 2: by the Nazis. Constantine is also a fucking war criminal.
Speaker 2: He gets sentenced to twenty years hard labor for a
Speaker 2: number of things. He's responsible for the execution of a
Speaker 2: number of political prisoners. He's also he plays a significant
Speaker 2: role in the roundup and deportation of Belgian Jews. He
Speaker 2: is one of the guys who helps do the Holocaust,
Speaker 2: right Constantine Canaris. Obviously, he's the gestapohead in Belgium. He's
Speaker 2: not a good person. Constantine serves half of his sentence
Speaker 2: and then dies in nineteen eighty three, which is three
Speaker 2: years after Liddy's book was published. I have a little
Speaker 2: trouble nailing this down entirely, but his German Wikipedia entry
Speaker 2: says that he has multiple sons, but it only names
Speaker 2: two of them, and of the sons that I know
Speaker 2: he had, neither of them ever spent any time in
Speaker 2: a US prison. Klaus Wilhelm was a legal scholar and
Speaker 2: a professor who spent his entire life living and working
Speaker 2: in Germany. Volker Canaris became a director and produced a
Speaker 2: famous movie about the Commandant of Auschwitz. He also spent
Speaker 2: his life in Germany. I can find absolutely no evidence
Speaker 2: that Constantine Canaris had a son who went to the
Speaker 2: United States and was put in a DC area jail
Speaker 2: or prison. No evidence whatsoever that this happened. I believe,
Speaker 2: based on what I can confirm, that G. Gordon Liddy
Speaker 2: is lying about this, or that's some random deald like
Speaker 2: about being this guy's son.
Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, it feels like at this point it's
Speaker 3: you know, hey, the guy that was singing fucking Nazi
Speaker 3: songs in the other prison before I got transferred over.
Speaker 3: I'll just tell of as a regular as American Nazi
Speaker 3: that I'm a special match.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that I'm Constantine Kenaris's son. Anyway, Yeah, again, he's
Speaker 2: lying here or I think that, like, there's a pretty
Speaker 2: good chance that Liddy is lying, because he does lie
Speaker 2: regularly in his memoir, and I hope that keeps in
Speaker 2: your head as we investigate the wackier claims he makes
Speaker 2: on his journey. Anyway, moving on, Liddy says that due
Speaker 2: to his familiarity with FBI studies on interrogation, he knew
Speaker 2: that the ideal time to interrogate and break a person
Speaker 2: who has been locked up is after six weeks. That
Speaker 2: the FBI likes to leave people in custody for about
Speaker 2: six weeks because there's this kind of initial period you
Speaker 2: get when you move into incarceration where you get like
Speaker 2: extra resilient and like tough and like I can take this,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna and that After about six weeks, the kind
Speaker 2: of natural boost you get from that wears down and
Speaker 2: you're at the lowest point in your psychological defenses. So
Speaker 2: he figured that they were going to wait until he'd
Speaker 2: been in there a couple of months, and then they
Speaker 2: were going to try to break him right and get
Speaker 2: him to talk, because that's when he would be at
Speaker 2: his most vulnerable. So he decides that he has to
Speaker 2: build up his willpower to fight back, and the first
Speaker 2: move he takes to do this is to become honestly,
Speaker 2: you know, I hope you know. If you've got an
Speaker 2: eating disorder, we're going to talk about that a bit here.
Speaker 2: He decides to cut his food intake to six hundred
Speaker 2: calories a day and starve himself while doubling his daily
Speaker 2: exercise routine, and like he describes this as a mental
Speaker 2: exercise to increase his willpower. As someone who has had
Speaker 2: an eating disorder, this all reads to me like a
Speaker 2: guy describing his descent into anirexig mania in order to
Speaker 2: have more control over his situation after being locked up
Speaker 2: like that. That is how this reads to me. And
Speaker 2: I'm going I'm gonna read you a segment from that quote.
Speaker 2: My mood remained steady. I was getting along with all
Speaker 2: the other prisoners. Things were going very well, too well.
Speaker 2: I decided I needed more stress to bring my will
Speaker 2: to maximum power. I turned to my old reliable method
Speaker 2: of ordeal by fire. This test would have to exceed
Speaker 2: all others in destruction of tissue and time of severe pain.
Speaker 2: I selected a particularly strong willed black bank robber and
Speaker 2: named texts with whom to engage in a battle of wills.
Speaker 2: Ready with a box of wooden matches, I got him
Speaker 2: into a discussion of the subject and pressed him to
Speaker 2: the point where he expressed disbelief and challenged me. Because
Speaker 2: I had been warned never again to indulge in that
Speaker 2: practice near or on finger joints, and my palm was
Speaker 2: already burned out Jesus Christ Gordon, I had to go
Speaker 2: back to where I started years before. My forearm. The
Speaker 2: scars there were light strike a match, I said to text,
Speaker 2: and locked my eyes onto his. He struck it and
Speaker 2: held it out, not knowing what to do next. I
Speaker 2: put the unburned outside of my left forearm directly over
Speaker 2: the flame. As the fire burned through my flesh and
Speaker 2: melted it back into a black and depression. A look
Speaker 2: of horror came over Tex, but he stayed with it.
Speaker 2: The match burned down and scorched his fingers before he
Speaker 2: dropped it. I grinned his him as he looked at
Speaker 2: the burn unbelievingly, then looked ill, got up and left.
Speaker 3: So I know this is somewhat you're excerpting of this book,
Speaker 3: but it is a little telling that I feel like,
Speaker 3: over about four some hours now, the only moments of
Speaker 3: human intimacy he seems to have is while he's burning himself.
Speaker 2: Well, he's laying himself on fire.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, it's really shocking.
Speaker 2: This is both the kind of and well, I'm going
Speaker 2: to starve myself to damage my body by by starving myself,
Speaker 2: and I am going to engage in these kind of
Speaker 2: self like this is the same as cutting I think yeah,
Speaker 2: I think there's a lot of that going on here.
Speaker 2: He has to frame it as this, like this is
Speaker 2: wheel power.
Speaker 3: I mean, or you know, it's like in as clearly
Speaker 3: this is a very like you know, this autobiography is unedited. Essentially,
Speaker 3: this is clearly what he's telling.
Speaker 2: This is what he has to believe about it, right,
Speaker 2: But like this is also something he pretty consistently goes
Speaker 2: back to in times of like stress and anxiety. Speaking
Speaker 2: of self harm, you know what, and human intimacy and
Speaker 2: human intimacy you know what's fundamentally well, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Self harm is much more complicated than that. But what's
Speaker 2: not complicated is these ads, Oh we're back, We're back,
Speaker 2: and we're talking about g Gordon Liddy, who you know.
Speaker 2: I will say this, I bet one of the things
Speaker 2: that will stop people from fucking with you in jail
Speaker 2: is lighting yourself on fire while staring at them. That
Speaker 2: does seem like an effective way to make someone be
Speaker 2: like this guy's not worth it.
Speaker 3: Like that's that is The weird thing is it's like
Speaker 3: like he has he has this desire to cultivate this
Speaker 3: like I survived prison, tough guy shit and the shit
Speaker 3: that he's actually doing. He just like it's it's so
Speaker 3: weird what he chooses to frame in which way, because
Speaker 3: I just feel like this was how I chose to.
Speaker 2: If he had really like, yeah, yeah, I wanted to
Speaker 2: scare people, so I lit my I it permanently damaged
Speaker 2: my skin without breaking eye contact. Because I thought the end,
Speaker 2: like I would believe that I would be like, yeah, man,
Speaker 2: does sound like something does sound like people would probably
Speaker 2: give you a a little bit of space. Lyddy also
Speaker 2: tells several stories of fights that he got in and
Speaker 2: I don't really believe. Yeah, I will say I believe
Speaker 2: he got in some fights because most people who spend
Speaker 2: years in prison wind up having an altercation or to
Speaker 2: a very least right, Yeah, these are never particularly glorious stories.
Speaker 2: He tries to punch them up, like there's one where
Speaker 2: somebody steals something and so we used to go and
Speaker 2: like fight that guy is that other people weren't messed
Speaker 2: with him, and he describes it as like a fair fight.
Speaker 2: But he gets cut up hard prob Because this dude
Speaker 2: has a fighting ring, which is a cheap ring with
Speaker 2: the stone remove that will cut an opponent if you
Speaker 2: punch them with it, and so he goes into loving
Speaker 2: detail about how he like talks his way into buying
Speaker 2: a fighting ring. He spends like a meaningful amount of
Speaker 2: time telling us about how he gets this fighting ring
Speaker 2: for himself, but he never uses it. Like he talks
Speaker 2: a lot about all the weapons he acquires in prison,
Speaker 2: and he doesn't he doesn't ever do anything with him.
Speaker 3: He just needs tok in.
Speaker 2: He needs you to know he has him knife catalog guy,
Speaker 2: knife cat very very strong knife catalog guy energy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this dude has a knife shaped like an eagle with
Speaker 2: an American flag. Absolutely yeah. So while his skill at
Speaker 2: letting himself be severely burned for no reason convinced Liddy
Speaker 2: that his will was inviolate, E Howard Hunt is not
Speaker 2: doing so well right. Hunt is notably less satisfied spending
Speaker 2: the rest of his life behind bars. He's got several kids.
Speaker 2: And you know Hunt, you'll know this, at least if
Speaker 2: you watch the White House Plumber show. His wife dies
Speaker 2: in a mysterious plane crash, like while she's taking money
Speaker 2: in between a member of these Watergate convicted guys. It's
Speaker 2: very shady.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Hunt kind of made some statements about having knowledge of
Speaker 2: the JFK thing. It's all a messy story. Hunt's also
Speaker 2: a famous liar and fabulous, so I don't know how
Speaker 2: much you want to read into that, but he is
Speaker 2: in a bad position here, right, and he starts to
Speaker 2: unravel pretty soon after they all go behind bars. Now,
Speaker 2: Gordon becomes convinced that Hunt's betrayal would destroy his beloved Nixon,
Speaker 2: so he starts preparing to carry out an assassination against
Speaker 2: his old friend. Because Liddy is starving and deranged by
Speaker 2: this point, she starts looking for hidden messages in his
Speaker 2: limited communications with the Nixon people and mostly in newspaper articles.
Speaker 2: He's sure that the Nixon campaign is going to send
Speaker 2: him a message to kill e Howard Hunt via like
Speaker 2: statements made to the papers and shit. Yeah, So he
Speaker 2: sits down with his friend, this gangland figure who told
Speaker 2: him that you can kill a guy with the price
Speaker 2: of two cartons of cigarettes. He tells the dude, Nixon
Speaker 2: hasn't told me through like the fucking Washington Post to
Speaker 2: murder E Howard Hunt yet, but it's surely coming.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's get it on the schedule.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's get it on the schedule. Quote that precaution
Speaker 2: out of the way. We decided quickly upon the method.
Speaker 2: Hunt received special meals because of his history of ulcers.
Speaker 2: In the parlance of the DC jail, it was a
Speaker 2: diet tray. It was served to him in his cell
Speaker 2: rather than in the CB four mess hall on the
Speaker 2: first floor. Should I have ordered to kill Hunt, he
Speaker 2: would be served a special meal. Indeed, it would contain
Speaker 2: a legal poison. It's like nicotine, right, they're gonna like
Speaker 2: because you can if you have cigarettes, you could like
Speaker 2: basically concentrate the nicotine oil and pure nicotine. It's pretty
Speaker 2: easy to kill someone with. That's his plan. Again, I
Speaker 2: don't actually know that he knew anybody who had the
Speaker 2: capacity to do that. Yeah, this is more bluster for
Speaker 2: the book. The reality is that Hunt told Liddy, like
Speaker 2: what actually happens. He talks a lot about how ready
Speaker 2: he was to kill this guy, all the plans he had.
Speaker 2: What really happen spens his Hunt tells Liddy, hey, man,
Speaker 2: fuck Nixon, I'm gonna rat. You know, I'm gonna rat
Speaker 2: for a better deal, And Lyddy pouts and refuses to
Speaker 2: ever talk to him again. But he doesn't do anything else.
Speaker 2: Nothing happens again, all hat no fucking cattle is the
Speaker 2: way to summarize this guy's whole life. The most important
Speaker 2: thing to know about Liddy's time behind bars is that
Speaker 2: it served as a surrogate combat experience for him. That's
Speaker 2: why he's so dedicated to this. Right, he never gets
Speaker 2: to go to Korea, he never gets to fight anybody,
Speaker 2: he never gets to kill anybody, but he has this
Speaker 2: public chance where all he has to do is sit
Speaker 2: and be quiet, and he will build the reputation he's
Speaker 2: always wanted as a hard, dangerous tough man.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: It's really, it's quite easy. His wife has to go
Speaker 2: through hell, right, his kids have to go through hell.
Speaker 2: All he has to do is sit quietly in a
Speaker 2: room for several years, and then he gets this thing
Speaker 2: that means more than anything to him, proof that he's
Speaker 2: a hero. Right, That's all he has to do. Is really,
Speaker 2: in a lot of ways, the fact that he gets
Speaker 2: caught and charged for Watergate is the best thing that
Speaker 2: ever happens to him. Right, Yeah, Like somebody wants.
Speaker 3: A psychological twist in that, Like, yeah, this is definitely
Speaker 3: the best shit that's ever happened to him.
Speaker 2: There's this, there's this, do you guys ever you guys
Speaker 2: ever listen to the band DAWs.
Speaker 4: Nope, not familiar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a I don't know, kind of a folk,
Speaker 2: bluegrassy outfit. They got a song called When My Time
Speaker 2: Comes that I think there's a line in it that
Speaker 2: really well sums up kind of the young male attitude
Speaker 2: about bravery, the attitude about like courage and heroism that
Speaker 2: you have as a kid, as a dumb kid, that
Speaker 2: I think leads a lot of people to like, you know,
Speaker 2: joining the military and stuff like that. It inspires a
Speaker 2: lot of Actually some of our worst behavior, there were
Speaker 2: moments of dreams I was offered to save. I lived
Speaker 2: less like a workhorse more like a slave. I thought
Speaker 2: that one quick moment that was noble or brave would
Speaker 2: be worth the most of my life. This thing that like,
Speaker 2: and what's going on what they're talking about here is
Speaker 2: this like this realization you get in as an adult
Speaker 2: how complicated and difficult and messy and gray the world is,
Speaker 2: and how nice it is to feel like you can
Speaker 2: do just one thing. Yeah, if it's the right thing
Speaker 2: at the right time, and then you've you've succeeded it
Speaker 2: being a person, right, like, even if you die doing it.
Speaker 2: At least you don't have to think anymore. Like, and
Speaker 2: the reality is that like doing good is hard and complicated,
Speaker 2: and like what his wife does, what Liddy's wife does
Speaker 2: is by every measure, much more impressive, right yeah, Like
Speaker 2: it's it's not fancy, it doesn't get you a career
Speaker 2: as a media influencer, but like committing to care for
Speaker 2: children for four and a half years alone, five kids
Speaker 2: is so much more braver than sitting in a cell alone.
Speaker 3: Right well, I think it's like the like thenita shortcut
Speaker 3: silver bullet, like shoot the moon, of having a worthwhile life,
Speaker 3: Like these fucking clouds are not even clouds. Lots of
Speaker 3: people feel despair, and it's just like, well, this thing
Speaker 3: will make me a person, This will do it. Just
Speaker 3: get the lottery, Just get the right meaning of life
Speaker 3: lottery ticket.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, that's it. And he's gotten his lottery ticket,
Speaker 2: So that's I do believe to an extent that he's
Speaker 2: he's got morale behind him in this because he's he's
Speaker 2: getting everything he wants from it. So I do suspect
Speaker 2: that eventually, though, like like with anyone, like just being
Speaker 2: locked up, being behind bars, being this situation, he does
Speaker 2: start to grow deranged. And some of this is probably
Speaker 2: because he's starving himself, which is not great for your
Speaker 2: mental health. And Lily doesn't have the self awareness to
Speaker 2: recognize this, but you see pieces of it in stories
Speaker 2: he tells. Probably the best one that best embodies this
Speaker 2: is he he tells one story of a time when
Speaker 2: he's out, he's jogging in the yard. They've got wreck time,
Speaker 2: so they're kind of outside. He's doing laps, and he
Speaker 2: sees a dead rat on the ground right, this huge, nasty,
Speaker 2: decompo dead rat, and he becomes instantly convinced that there's
Speaker 2: another prisoner who's like kind of sitting nearby, and that
Speaker 2: this guy picked up the rat from somewhere else and
Speaker 2: put it down where Liddy would see it to fuck
Speaker 2: with him, which is insane, Like, it is a prison,
Speaker 2: there's rats, rats die, there's no reason for him to
Speaker 2: think that another prisoner stuck the rat there. And also
Speaker 2: it's like, so he just placed the rat kind of
Speaker 2: vaguely near a chunk of the running path that you
Speaker 2: might pass, Like, yeah, that doesn't seem likely, g Gordon Liddy,
Speaker 2: that doesn't really seem like a taunt, even what.
Speaker 3: From like putting yourself in their shoes, Like, what the
Speaker 3: fuck was the plan? Dog?
Speaker 2: So he gets so angry at this that he he
Speaker 2: steps on the rotting rat to squish it and like
Speaker 2: mash it up. And he picks up this like rancid, decomposing,
Speaker 2: fetid carcass and he walks over to the guy with
Speaker 2: it and he's like, here's a rat. And the guy's like,
Speaker 2: what the fuck, I'm just trying to get some what
Speaker 2: are you doing. And he's like, oh, the guard did it,
Speaker 2: you're saying, And the guy is again like I don't
Speaker 2: know what the fuck you're talking about.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: Like it is again, even from Lyddy's pros, it's very
Speaker 2: clear that everyone else is like, oh, this guy's fucking
Speaker 2: lost it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and telling this story after the fact is what
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's something you keep to yourself.
Speaker 2: I think that is that's something you never tell anybody. Yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe if you're like having an emotional conversation with your
Speaker 2: loved ones afterwards, to tell them how bad it got. Anyway, whatever.
Speaker 2: Lyddy is also peculiar in his time behind bars because
Speaker 2: he is not just an unrepentant fascist, he's also a lawyer,
Speaker 2: and he he does care to one extent about the
Speaker 2: letter of the law, even though he's always even behind bars,
Speaker 2: a strong supporter of mass incarceration. He's livid every time
Speaker 2: his fellow inmates have their rights abused because he knows
Speaker 2: what the jails and prisons are supposed to provide, and
Speaker 2: he knows when they're falling short, and he can't stand
Speaker 2: for it, and so he becomes a jail house lawyer
Speaker 2: for everyone inside. And from everything I've read, he really
Speaker 2: does quite a lot. He helps a number of these guys.
Speaker 2: This is probably more than anything why he doesn't get
Speaker 2: fucked with much, because like he really does provide a
Speaker 2: service after a while to a lot of dudes. You know.
Speaker 2: He helps them work through their cases. He gives them
Speaker 2: advice on how to appear in court, he helps them
Speaker 2: file motions and stuff to get things that they need.
Speaker 2: He makes complaints, like on behalf of this, there's this
Speaker 2: Jewish prisoner who's not getting kosher meals. He like gets
Speaker 2: forces the prison to give this guy kosher meals. He
Speaker 2: develops feuds with a couple of different prison officials. He's
Speaker 2: in like eight different facilities, and I think his reasons
Speaker 2: are genuine. Some of these prisons, like people get killed
Speaker 2: doing dangerous work, and he's angry about that the food
Speaker 2: is not of sufficient qualities, stuff like faucets and shit
Speaker 2: in prison facilities aren't being maintained. And he understands who
Speaker 2: to send letters to, what kind of letters to send,
Speaker 2: who to threaten in order to force the system to
Speaker 2: take action. And I think he's actually quite good at this,
Speaker 2: And it's evidence that, like again, had he been a
Speaker 2: better person, a guy like Lyddy with these skills could
Speaker 2: have helped a lot of people in his life.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like so close, and it's so telling
Speaker 3: that his own autobiography doesn't see what could be good
Speaker 3: about him and what could be redeeming about him.
Speaker 2: I think he's so weird. Yeah, he sees this as
Speaker 2: good because it's bad for the system not to be consistent.
Speaker 2: And he sees this as good because these people deserve anything.
Speaker 2: But you know, maybe I'm being too negative. Probably the
Speaker 2: height of this behavior is when Gordon and more than
Speaker 2: five hundred fellow inmates, he basically helps forces like a
Speaker 2: hunger strike at a facility he's at. He gets five
Speaker 2: hundred fellow inmates to refuse to eat food for several days.
Speaker 2: It's the longest of three strikes at that facility that year,
Speaker 2: and Liddy's leadership seems to be why the prison officials
Speaker 2: are so frustrated with him that he gets transferred to
Speaker 2: a maximum security facility afterwards. This is like, when he's
Speaker 2: at a minimum security place, he does spend a period
Speaker 2: of his bid behind bars in California because you know,
Speaker 2: you remember he broke into that psychiatrist's office, Daniels. So
Speaker 2: at a point in time he gets like sent over
Speaker 2: to California because you got to do some time there
Speaker 2: because some of your crimes are over there. He claims
Speaker 2: that by this point he was famous in the prison system,
Speaker 2: and he gets gifted with treats by his new neighbors
Speaker 2: when he arrives. I don't disbelieve that necessarily. Number one,
Speaker 2: he's probably got a good reputation. He helps people. He's
Speaker 2: also famous, so like yeah, you know, straight up, yeah,
Speaker 2: just straight up, like fame gets you places, right, But
Speaker 2: then he goes into what is definitely a lie. He
Speaker 2: tells an elaborate story about how one of the fellow
Speaker 2: inmates in California is a kung fu master who just
Speaker 2: happened to be locked up to and this guy is
Speaker 2: from like you know, this guy is from China. He's
Speaker 2: like traveled to the US and mysterious circumstances. But then
Speaker 2: he gets locked up and like we become friends, and
Speaker 2: Lyddy writes one of the most embarrassing paragraphs I've ever
Speaker 2: read in my life. We worked out at the weights
Speaker 2: together and finally at his side, and it might be
Speaker 2: mutually advantageous to exchange instruction. He hesitated, then took me
Speaker 2: aside and told me that he had never imparted such
Speaker 2: knowledge to an occidental and friendship, was not sure he
Speaker 2: ever should. He paused and studied me quietly. Finally he spoke,
Speaker 2: you are a very violent man. I can see it
Speaker 2: in your eyes. I control it, Lyddy said, you must.
Speaker 2: If you ever use when I teach you to take
Speaker 2: advantage of the week, I'll find you wherever you are
Speaker 2: and kill you myself. Of all the things that have
Speaker 2: never happened, this is the thing that's least happened in
Speaker 2: the history of things that did.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, it is like a cut scene from
Speaker 3: Mortal Combat.
Speaker 2: Embarrassing. That is embarrassing. G Gordon Liddy under no way
Speaker 2: did any of this now, it's not impossible that he
Speaker 2: just met a Chinese American man who got locked up
Speaker 2: and was like, yeah, light of this guy, Like, yes,
Speaker 2: am I going to do Prison's boring? Right? Who believe
Speaker 2: anything I say? Not a zero percent chance. Also, I
Speaker 2: love the like you're a very violent man. No evidence
Speaker 2: that g. Gordon Liddy successfully did violence on anyone in
Speaker 2: his entire life, not one piece of evidence for this. God,
Speaker 2: it's so funny. A sad thing to say. Yeah, speaking
Speaker 2: of sad, you know what isn't sad the value that
Speaker 2: our sponsors bring to our listeners' lives. In fact, I
Speaker 2: don't know, Ian, would you say that our listeners' lives
Speaker 2: actually have no value whatsoever if they don't purchase the
Speaker 2: products that sponsor our show?
Speaker 4: I think legally I have to say yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you do, based on the contract you
Speaker 2: had designed to get healthcare. Yeah. Anyway, here's a here's ads.
Speaker 2: Oh what a good time? Feeling good, feeling fine? Has
Speaker 2: everybody else great? This is amazing.
Speaker 4: This is like one of the funniest things I've heard
Speaker 4: all week.
Speaker 2: So good good stuff. So, after meeting a kung fu
Speaker 2: master and learning the secrets of the orients, Lydia round
Speaker 2: up back on the East Coast. He was briefly released
Speaker 2: due to like there's some court motions. I think this
Speaker 2: is evidence that Peter Marulas is a pretty good lawyer.
Speaker 2: He basically gets him a few weeks out of prison
Speaker 2: to like be with his family based on the technicality
Speaker 2: and like they know this isn't gonna last like this,
Speaker 2: this is the kind of stuff a really good lawyer
Speaker 2: can do for you, right.
Speaker 3: Right, So spring break from prison.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you get a little spring break from prison. Then
Speaker 2: he goes back in and he serves another two years.
Speaker 2: He does fifty two months in total. On April twelfth,
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy seven, President Jimmy Carter, History's greatest monster, commutes
Speaker 2: his sentence from twenty years to eight quote in the
Speaker 2: interests of justice. Now, this is one of those moves
Speaker 2: that I never understood, right when my knowledge of Woody
Speaker 2: and Watergate was a little more casuals, Like, what the
Speaker 2: fuck was Carter? Why would he do that? Like he's
Speaker 2: not an idiot? Why would he Why would he pardoned
Speaker 2: this very unbelievably guilty man. Hey, guys, Robert, here I misspeak.
Speaker 2: The sentence was commuted, as I noted just a second ago,
Speaker 2: I use the word pardon here. That's incorrect. A commutation
Speaker 2: basically means that you're not questioning whether or not they
Speaker 2: were guilty. They're still guilty, they're just out of incarceration
Speaker 2: or whatever. This is significant in part because Wddy was
Speaker 2: not legally able to own firearms for the rest of
Speaker 2: his life. Although he still kept owning guns, he just
Speaker 2: said they belonged to his wife. He shouldn't have been
Speaker 2: able to like use them. But people don't come after
Speaker 2: conservatives who get in trouble or hold them to any
Speaker 2: of the standards of their bail or whatever. But Carter,
Speaker 2: that always surprised me. Right Why Jimmy Carter, Why would
Speaker 2: he get this guy out of there? The White House
Speaker 2: spokesman said that the decision was made quote based on
Speaker 2: a comparison of mister Liddy's sentence with all of those
Speaker 2: others convicted in Watergate prosecutions. In other words, I think
Speaker 2: it was Carter's personal sense of fairness. I believe this
Speaker 2: is a bad call, but I get where he's coming from.
Speaker 2: Right Lyddy, despite being in a repentant fascist, is the
Speaker 2: most respectable of the White House people who go away
Speaker 2: because he doesn't lie or obviously he's like, yeah, I'm guilty,
Speaker 2: put me away. I will say nothing else. I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna roll on anybody. And the fact that all of
Speaker 2: these guys who I think are kind of worse in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways, you know, right Dean. Maybe Dean
Speaker 2: is pretty consistent after Watergate of speaking out against the
Speaker 2: extremism for up to the present day. Right, he's a
Speaker 2: major figure of sort of being anti the modern Republican Party.
Speaker 2: I think he might actually have eventually had kind of
Speaker 2: a real change due to his conscience. Possibly, I'm not
Speaker 2: certain of that. But all these other guys Erlickman and
Speaker 2: Magruder and fucking E Howard Hunt, these people are fucking trash.
Speaker 2: Haldomen And the fact that Lyddy does more time than them,
Speaker 2: I think it may have just kind of frustrated Carter
Speaker 2: because he was aware of that, and so he weirdly
Speaker 2: thought it was unfair for Lyddy to stay. And I
Speaker 2: don't think that's a good call, but I think that's
Speaker 2: from everything I've read, I think that's why Carter made it.
Speaker 3: It's the rest of the justice system is so fucked
Speaker 3: that those people didn't go away for longer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I still think Carter perfectly fine to be critical
Speaker 2: of him for this choice, but I think that's why
Speaker 2: it was made.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Lyddy gets paroled and his wife picks him
Speaker 2: up from jail. He had had plenty of time to
Speaker 2: think while in prison, and I think he had developed
Speaker 2: a pretty new wants to understanding that his future was
Speaker 2: in media. He's watching TV and stuff, He's getting letters
Speaker 2: from his family. All of these other Watergate guys are
Speaker 2: putting out books that are often best sellers. So he's
Speaker 2: wearing number one. Probably I need to write a book
Speaker 2: about this. There's probably a lot of money in that.
Speaker 2: And number two, I can't work for a campaign anymore.
Speaker 2: I certainly can't be a lawyer anymore. But I can
Speaker 2: charlay my fame and my fame, particularly for being this
Speaker 2: like hard headed, unbreakable soldier of the far right into
Speaker 2: a career. He understands, as long as I stay consistent,
Speaker 2: this can keep me fed forever. Right, And you know,
Speaker 2: he is very famous. There's a crowd that gathers at
Speaker 2: the prison on the day of his release, and when
Speaker 2: he does like a press conference, when his wife picks
Speaker 2: him up and reporters her questions at him. Everyone wants
Speaker 2: to know where he's headed. Liddy gives a cryptic answer
Speaker 2: to that one. He says east of the sun and
Speaker 2: west of the moon. Now, any time he says anything
Speaker 2: that he clearly didn't write it, I'm like, gotta know
Speaker 2: if that's some Nazi shit it is not. This comes
Speaker 2: from a Norwegian folk tale. I went in and read
Speaker 2: it just to be like, is there any like racist
Speaker 2: stuff in there? Not that I saw. It's seems to
Speaker 2: be an adaptation of an older Greek myth. One of
Speaker 2: the things I learned looking into this is that researchers, scientists,
Speaker 2: or whatever who study folk tales, I guess anthropologists have
Speaker 2: a classification system where they like group different kinds of
Speaker 2: folk tales by their type, and this one qualifies as
Speaker 2: type ATU for twenty five A. The Search for the
Speaker 2: Lost Husband or the Animal as Bridegroom. The gist of
Speaker 2: it's a little bit of a Beauty and the Beast
Speaker 2: kind of story. The gist of it is that there's
Speaker 2: this white bear that comes to a poor family and
Speaker 2: it's like, if you give me your your daughter's hand
Speaker 2: in marriage, I'll make you rich. The bear is secretly
Speaker 2: like a cursed prince, right, and when she finds out,
Speaker 2: he's like, look, if you as long as you if
Speaker 2: you don't follow these very specific rules, I'll be sent
Speaker 2: to live with an evil witch and she lives east
Speaker 2: of the on and west of the moon. Anyway, that's
Speaker 2: where the line comes from. Nothing Nazi that I found
Speaker 2: in it.
Speaker 3: But it feels like, given the way his brain works,
Speaker 3: that was supposed to be some kind of code to
Speaker 3: the true you know someone's and it just will never
Speaker 3: know whatever the fuck his trade of thought was impossible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he doesn't give a good explanation as to why
Speaker 2: he picked that one to reference. It is a pretty
Speaker 2: good cryptic sounding thing to say. I'll give him that.
Speaker 2: The other question he gets asked is how it feels
Speaker 2: to be out of prison, and Lyddy replies in German,
Speaker 2: what does not kill me makes me stronger. And it
Speaker 2: is true that, like Hitler, Liddy seems to mostly have
Speaker 2: benefited from his time behind bars. This seems to work
Speaker 2: out a lot of times for fascists, especially when you
Speaker 2: cut their sentence in half and don't just really put
Speaker 2: the screws to the fuckers. Maybe a lesson for other folks.
Speaker 2: The Washington Post sat down with his family right around then,
Speaker 2: and they published an article that gives us some fascinating
Speaker 2: glimpses of their lives. While Gordon was away at the
Speaker 2: house in Oxen Hill, the color television was on yesterday
Speaker 2: and a sound tape recorder was nearby so the boys
Speaker 2: could capture any reports concerning their father's release. Two dogs
Speaker 2: relaxed on the living room couch outside the famili's fifteen
Speaker 2: or twenty cats minded their own business. Just had to
Speaker 2: tell you that last bit there. The ladies have fifteen
Speaker 2: to twenty cats.
Speaker 3: That's too many cats.
Speaker 2: I love cats. That's too many cats.
Speaker 3: That's hard.
Speaker 2: That's a crazy amount of cats. Yeah, anyway, good to know, though,
Speaker 2: interesting color on the family here. So this piece reveals
Speaker 2: that the Liddies had purchased copies of every other Watergate
Speaker 2: memoir they could get their hands on. I think this
Speaker 2: is so that they can help their dad when he
Speaker 2: has to write his own memoir. And you know, I'll
Speaker 2: give him credit. I've read a number of Watergate memoirs.
Speaker 2: His is the best. Not in terms of its accuracy,
Speaker 2: none of them are trustworthy, but it's it's the most readable.
Speaker 2: You can't put it down. He is actually this is
Speaker 2: one of the things he is actually good at, one
Speaker 2: of the only things that he's legitimately a skilled with.
Speaker 2: He's a pretty good writer. Like he's he's effective. He's
Speaker 2: not like an artistic writers, like he's not fucking you know,
Speaker 2: Cormack McCarthy or whatever, but he is. He's extremely effective.
Speaker 2: He's very clear, he understands how to pace things. You're
Speaker 2: never bored, you know you. I read the whole book
Speaker 2: through cover to cover, and I was at a pretty
Speaker 2: consistent level of interest the whole time, partly because it's
Speaker 2: so crazy. But he doesn't get in his own way
Speaker 2: right with his pros, So I'll give him credit for that.
Speaker 2: He's not a bad writer. The most interesting thing that
Speaker 2: Washington Post Piece gives us as a snapshot is an
Speaker 2: understanding of how deep the Liddy family's Nixon derangement went.
Speaker 2: Quote Jim and Tom Liddy said they had watched the
Speaker 2: end of the first episode of Washington Behind Closed Doors.
Speaker 2: They said they are not angry at Nixon for referring
Speaker 2: in the Frost interview to those involved in the Watergate
Speaker 2: operation as nuts. I don't blame him for anything. He's
Speaker 2: gone through so much, said Dom poor Dick Nixon, the
Speaker 2: real victim of Watergate.
Speaker 3: Oh, just the ultimate, the ultimate fascist since.
Speaker 2: These people, yeah, it is. It is remarkable. I didn't
Speaker 2: know people could be that fascist, But by God, now
Speaker 2: the most important thing you get here is an understanding
Speaker 2: of what a nightmare this whole period behind bars is
Speaker 2: for missus Liddy. In addition to being the breadwinner, she
Speaker 2: has to raise their adolescent children alone. Quote their mother,
Speaker 2: Tom Liddy said, is having it harder than we are
Speaker 2: holding the place financially together, Jim said, finishing his brother's sentence.
Speaker 2: There were ups and downs, but she went through all
Speaker 2: of them. And then the mentions of the Liddy marriage
Speaker 2: have always been kind of confusing to me. They are
Speaker 2: together for fifty four years. I have heard speculation that
Speaker 2: he cheated on her at one or more points. It's
Speaker 2: common enough that I think there might be something to it,
Speaker 2: but I don't know. I haven't seen any evidence of
Speaker 2: it either, certainly nothing that's like conclusive. Some of what
Speaker 2: he writes about her does seem to me to be
Speaker 2: borderline abuse. Of the clearest example of that comes right
Speaker 2: after his release, when she picks him up from prison.
Speaker 2: Lyddy saw what, he claims, as she's driving away from
Speaker 2: the prison, he sees four he calls them, four cream
Speaker 2: colored Ford Grenadas with New York license plates that identify
Speaker 2: them as press cars that start following him, tracking him
Speaker 2: as they're leaving the jail. Now I looked into it.
Speaker 2: New York does issue special marked plates for journalists. You know,
Speaker 2: you have to be with a pretty big outlet to
Speaker 2: get them, but that is a thing that they do.
Speaker 2: Lyddy claims that he had Fran drive slowly at first
Speaker 2: so they could all get a shot of him, and
Speaker 2: he hoped they would leave, but they keep following him.
Speaker 2: Fran tries to lose them, but Lyddy writes, quote, she's
Speaker 2: just not cut out for that sort of thing. So
Speaker 2: Lyddy the man has to take charge and save them
Speaker 2: from these these journalist cars that are tracking them, because
Speaker 2: obviously he's got the FBI. We're gonna talk in part
Speaker 2: two about his FBI driving. We get a chance to
Speaker 2: test him when he's on fear Factor. As a spoiler
Speaker 2: for a where this whole episode is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: We come to a Joe Rogan point at the end here,
Speaker 2: panning off the fat but anyway, so Lyddy the man
Speaker 2: has to take charge. Pull over? What you heard me?
Speaker 2: Pull over? We're putting in the first team, but you're
Speaker 2: not even ensured. Don't argue with me. Goddamn it. Pull over.
Speaker 3: God.
Speaker 2: So he takes over behind the wheel, but he can't
Speaker 2: lose the tail, right. It doesn't matter that he's taken over,
Speaker 2: because he's no better at this than her. And an
Speaker 2: honest observer might conclude from this that, like, maybe you
Speaker 2: don't actually know anything about losing a tail, ge Gordon Liddy,
Speaker 2: maybe you have absolutely no skills driving in this manner.
Speaker 2: But he can't admit this, and he writes that he
Speaker 2: told his wife, I know they've got more cylinders and radios,
Speaker 2: but nobody stays with me when I don't want him to.
Speaker 2: There's something wrong here. I know, I guess they do.
Speaker 2: His solution to this problem is to drive like even
Speaker 2: more of a maniac. He like does a one point
Speaker 2: eighty in the middle of like a busy.
Speaker 3: Street, like and shit.
Speaker 2: This terrifies his wife. She has spent close to half
Speaker 2: a decade dealing with all of this unimaginable stress on
Speaker 2: his behalf. She picks him up, probably not entirely certain
Speaker 2: how the man that she married is going to be
Speaker 2: different after five almost five years a prison, and then
Speaker 2: he immediately goes insane on the highway, shouting about imaginary
Speaker 2: people following them.
Speaker 3: I mean, to her comfort, it's nice that he hasn't
Speaker 3: changed in prison.
Speaker 2: I guess maybe quote it was a challenge. I couldn't resist,
Speaker 2: and I took off, hitting over seventy miles per hour
Speaker 2: through city streets, going through red lights deliberately and taking
Speaker 2: turns at the limit of adhesion. By the time I
Speaker 2: got into Jersey, there were only two tails left, and Franz,
Speaker 2: scared at her wits, was crying uncontrollably.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: So's his wife is just sobbing, and he's like, no,
Speaker 2: I did a good job. Only two guys are still
Speaker 2: following us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, two out of four. You know that radio exist.
Speaker 2: You are still being tailed ge Gordon Lyddy. Lyddy eventually
Speaker 2: claims he lost the tale. I don't think he relieved.
Speaker 2: I don't believe that at all. Maybe they lived in
Speaker 2: Jersey and we're glad like yeah. After an extremely long journey,
Speaker 2: which he says that his basically him failing to lose
Speaker 2: this tale, and traumatizing his wife is a victory, a
Speaker 2: symbolic victory of his triumph over Judd Sri Rika Quote
Speaker 2: and his allies in the press. And I love that
Speaker 2: he sees it that way because it's like, man, the
Speaker 2: New York Times argued, you should be released. The press
Speaker 2: are your only real friends. Yeah, like Nixon threw you
Speaker 2: under the bus. The media held you up because they
Speaker 2: wanted to like make money writing stories about you. Your
Speaker 2: whole career came from the fact that the press were
Speaker 2: your allies. Anyway.
Speaker 3: Whatever, Although that's classic, I mean that playbook gets repeated
Speaker 3: so much more in the people who he influenced.
Speaker 2: Lyddy is so overjoyed at his victory over this tale
Speaker 2: that he starts singing the lyrics from his favorite song,
Speaker 2: which comes from the play. Now this comes from I
Speaker 2: expected him to like sing, I don't know my country
Speaker 2: tis the He picks a song from the musical Cabaret,
Speaker 2: which he had and it's a song that he modified
Speaker 2: quote to suit myself. The lyrics go America, America, show
Speaker 2: us the sign your children have waited to see. The
Speaker 2: morning will come when the world is thine. Tomorrow belongs
Speaker 2: to thee. Now that could be kind of innocuous, right,
Speaker 2: But when I saw that line, especially the part about
Speaker 2: how he had reworked the lyrics of the song to
Speaker 2: see himself, I had to look into it a little deeper.
Speaker 2: The song he was singing that he had modified is
Speaker 2: called Tomorrow Belongs to Me, which could be fascy, and
Speaker 2: in fact is because it's from a nineteen sixty six Cabarets,
Speaker 2: a nineteen sixty six musical, and it's written by two
Speaker 2: Jewish musicians right, who are lampooning at the fascist qualities
Speaker 2: that they and American nationalism. The specific song Tomorrow Belongs
Speaker 2: to Me is sung by a Nazi in the play.
Speaker 2: It is specifically a Nazi song about his view of
Speaker 2: patriotism that Lee has modified and is kind of like
Speaker 2: unronically singing because he is such a fucking fascist, and
Speaker 2: in fact he's not the only to do this. Nazis
Speaker 2: love this is an example of like kind of failed satire,
Speaker 2: because Nazis love the song Tomorrow Belongs to Me. They
Speaker 2: love it so much that they have been adapting it
Speaker 2: for their own albums and pre printing lines from it
Speaker 2: in their propaganda since the nineteen seventies. The first use
Speaker 2: of the song by a white power band that we
Speaker 2: have documentation of was the year before Liddy published his
Speaker 2: autobiography Will nineteen seventy nine, when British Nazi band Screwdriver
Speaker 2: does a cover of it. Screwdriver are like hardcore fucking
Speaker 2: fascist musicians. Swedish Nazi singer Saga also records the cover
Speaker 2: of this song, which is cited by Norwegian mass shooter
Speaker 2: Anders Brevik as one of the things that inspired him
Speaker 2: to gun down like seventy children. So yeah, great love
Speaker 2: that she Gordon Lyddy is singing this.
Speaker 3: I mean, so unsurprising, but.
Speaker 2: Very very This might be the most direct Nazi thing
Speaker 2: that I've seen him do.
Speaker 3: Right, And that's pretty impressive, pretty.
Speaker 2: And that he's said a lot. Lyddy claims at the
Speaker 2: end that after belting out this fascist anthem, his wife
Speaker 2: looks over at him with tears in her eyes and says, God,
Speaker 2: after all these years, you haven't changed at all. She
Speaker 2: blew her nose lustily than side. I don't suppose you
Speaker 2: ever will. I grinned over at her. Bet your ass, kid,
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 4: How does someone blow their nose lustily?
Speaker 2: That's a great question, Ian, I don't think they do,
Speaker 2: but maybe snot perverts right those have Yeah, there's gotta
Speaker 2: be there's there has to be a thriving online snot
Speaker 2: pervert community definitely, like that has a larger GDP than Liechtenstein, right,
Speaker 2: the number of the amount of money and snot pervert stuff.
Speaker 2: You can you could start your own city outside of
Speaker 2: Sicton Valley. That's where we're going to close things out
Speaker 2: for today because this is basically where his book ends.
Speaker 2: Don't worry, we have a lot more to say about
Speaker 2: g Gordon Liddy, but this is kind of the endpoint
Speaker 2: of his his autobiography. Will so Andrew you anything to plug?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, since the last episode, we triumphed over the
Speaker 3: fucking AMPTP asterisk.
Speaker 2: You know, eat their asses?
Speaker 3: Yeah, better better than anyone ever thought labor fucking works. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Strike is over. I don't know. I'm not going back
Speaker 3: to a writer's room, so I'm back to just the hustle.
Speaker 3: But I don't know. Still still Jos, this racist still
Speaker 3: got premium shows. We did a little Strike wrap up
Speaker 3: that I think people found informative, So I don't know,
Speaker 3: check it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Hi, hire Andrew put him in a room. I
Speaker 2: know David S. Goyer always listens to the podcast, so
Speaker 2: you know, bring him on.
Speaker 3: Well we still got, we still got you know, if
Speaker 3: we can just get someone to see the vision of
Speaker 3: super Soaker full of piss, there's two options. A lot
Speaker 3: of irons of the fire, a lot.
Speaker 2: Of irons in the fire. I'm pushing Goyer specifically because
Speaker 2: it's my dream that you'll get You'll get staffed on
Speaker 2: Foundation and then I can parlay that into having lunch
Speaker 2: with Lee Pace, which is my life.
Speaker 3: Said well, yeah, that my promise to you. I guess
Speaker 3: we'll do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there, there we go, just a minute out Burg.
Speaker 2: It doesn't have to be anything fancy, you know, it
Speaker 2: can be fancy Lee if you want it to be
Speaker 2: ye any to you. This has been behind the Bastards.
Speaker 2: If you want to listen to this show and all
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Speaker 2: amount about g Gordon Liddi.
Speaker 4: You can do that.
Speaker 3: Without ads, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyway, so it's fifty cooler, all right, Everybody go
Speaker 2: to Hell. I Love You.
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