Speaker 1: Fellow conspiracy realist, have you ever suspected there was some
Speaker 1: sort of shadowy cabal? What a softball question?
Speaker 2: Isn't that start of the whole basis of this show.
Speaker 2: I think it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we've all suspected.
Speaker 2: It's entirely like, Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is a fun one for us. Back in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: we looked at the hectic news cycle of twenty fifteen
Speaker 1: with the benefit of retrospect, and we noticed that there
Speaker 1: was a particular investigation from the FBI into the Clinton
Speaker 1: administration where they said.
Speaker 2: Quote, there was a powerful group of very high ranking
Speaker 2: state officials that some referred to as the seventh Floor
Speaker 2: Group or the shadow government.
Speaker 1: But what does that mean? Well, let's jump into the
Speaker 1: episode and find out.
Speaker 3: From UFOs to psychic powers and government can bises, history
Speaker 3: is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now
Speaker 3: or learn this stuff they don't want.
Speaker 1: You to know. A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt Noel
Speaker 2: is on an adventure. But wait, who are you?
Speaker 1: That's right, they call me Ben. We are joined with
Speaker 1: our super producer Paul, Mission Control decand most importantly, you
Speaker 1: are you, you are here, and that makes this stuff
Speaker 1: they don't want you to know. This is a weird one, Matt.
Speaker 1: This is an episode that a lot of our fellow
Speaker 1: and listeners had asked us to cover in years past.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's it's a callback.
Speaker 1: It's a callback, it really is, and we did. We
Speaker 1: did an episode related to this topic way back in
Speaker 1: what twenty sixteen, So looking back, it's strange to recall
Speaker 1: that the twenty sixteen presidential campaign happened three years ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it certainly doesn't seem as though that much time
Speaker 2: has passed, but in fact it has a three ish years. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we're not quite there, We're not quite the novembery yet.
Speaker 2: But still, Hey, it's crazy that much time has passed.
Speaker 2: And you know, elections, especially presidential elections in this country,
Speaker 2: they bring out the best and the worst of us.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: I think that's incredibly optimistic, and I appreciate that I
Speaker 1: needed to hear some good news today. You're absolutely right,
Speaker 1: my friend. I agree with you. Way back in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: when we first did some episodes on elections, we figured
Speaker 1: that the most fact based and the fairest way for
Speaker 1: us to sum up all the allegations and conspiratorial accusations
Speaker 1: that we had heard of was to do one episode
Speaker 1: for each of the political party front runners. So we
Speaker 1: did one episode on conspiracies about the Trump campaign, and
Speaker 1: we did one episode on conspiracies about the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Speaker 2: Yes, and Bernie didn't even make it in there. Actually,
Speaker 2: that's not true. Bernie made an appearance in the Clinton episode.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, along with your pal Wasserman Schultz, right.
Speaker 2: Oh, everyone's pal Wasserman Schultz.
Speaker 1: It was like this. Both of those episodes together were
Speaker 1: like this Avengers Infinity War team up of horrible people
Speaker 1: doing horrible thing.
Speaker 2: It really was, and whether we like it or not,
Speaker 2: we contributed to whatever it is that we are in
Speaker 2: right now, whatever this is. We just gave a little
Speaker 2: bit because everyone involved, like you said, was all there.
Speaker 2: Everybody goes up to no good and there really wasn't
Speaker 2: a great choice, it seemed, at least in my opinion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because we had we had a situation wherein mass
Speaker 1: media was being leveraged so effectively. Mass media was around
Speaker 1: in other elections, but it hadn't quite reached the fever
Speaker 1: pitch that it reached in the twenty sixteen presidential campaign,
Speaker 1: and like most presidential campaigns here in the States, the
Speaker 1: one in twenty sixteen saw the rise and fall of
Speaker 1: multitudes of politicians, as well as the sudden rise and
Speaker 1: candidly the disappearance of various scandals. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2: That's correct, absolutely.
Speaker 1: So today's story starts with one of the famous controversies,
Speaker 1: or should we say infamous controversies in that election. It's
Speaker 1: known as the Hillary Clinton email scandal or email controversy.
Speaker 1: The word choice there depends upon which side of the
Speaker 1: aisle you fall on. For a lot of.
Speaker 2: People, how much do you want to downplay this?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: So for some people this was a case study in
Speaker 1: out of control media grasping its straws, right yeah. And
Speaker 1: those were generally people who were supporters of the Clinton campaign.
Speaker 1: For others, generally opponents of that campaign, it was a
Speaker 1: case study and how the powerful can sweep their political
Speaker 1: dirt under the figurative rug.
Speaker 2: But reality, yeah, it was somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 1: Right right, right, And and nowadays people still use the phrase
Speaker 1: but the emails, So first things first, what are we
Speaker 1: talking about here?
Speaker 2: Well, that that a phrase, but the emails it's kind
Speaker 2: of shorthand really and it's a bit of a joke
Speaker 2: and it's uh, I don't know, it's it's pretty crazy.
Speaker 2: It goes back to this series of really security violations
Speaker 2: that were undertaken. I don't know how you how you
Speaker 2: put that that they were There were violations that the
Speaker 2: Clinton campaign did while she was in office as Secretary
Speaker 2: of Date and it had to do with putting emails
Speaker 2: on a private server, or putting emails that should not
Speaker 2: be on a private server on a private server right
Speaker 2: in the big major scheme of things. That's what it is.
Speaker 2: And ultimately you're talking about the classification of certain email
Speaker 2: and information within emails that maybe shouldn't have been on
Speaker 2: a private server.
Speaker 1: And I know that for many of us listening today,
Speaker 1: this is something that you may feel that you heard
Speaker 1: ad nauseum three years ago and you're thinking, well, why
Speaker 1: should I should listen to this? We have a plot
Speaker 1: twist coming up for you. This is not just an
Speaker 1: episode about emails. The plot thickens pretty quickly, but to
Speaker 1: get there, we need to walk through the email scandal,
Speaker 1: the email controversy. It is exactly as you described it, Matt,
Speaker 1: a series of security violations. Think of it as you
Speaker 1: know what. Think of one server as an old school
Speaker 1: filing cabinet, right, and then another server right next to it,
Speaker 1: another old school filing cabinet. And in the server to
Speaker 1: your right, that's where all the classified stuff goes. What's
Speaker 1: up with North Korea? What are Iran and various other
Speaker 1: Middle Eastern powers angry or cranky about today? That goes
Speaker 1: into this one file cabinet.
Speaker 2: In that file cabinet has a crazy amount of locks
Speaker 2: on it and biometric scanning in order to get into it.
Speaker 2: It's intense stuff.
Speaker 1: And then you have the other file cabinet on your left,
Speaker 1: no locks. It's kind of a junk drawer. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: are you know, there are like old recipes, maybe some
Speaker 1: Pinterest things in there. But then one way or another,
Speaker 1: through accident or through intentional action, the stuff that's top
Speaker 1: secret or just secret ends up there with the recipes
Speaker 1: and the Hey, what are you doing on Saturday? Let's
Speaker 1: go to what's a chain restaurant?
Speaker 2: Oh? Charlie's.
Speaker 1: Oh, Paul's gonna kill us if we don't shout.
Speaker 2: Out apple be sorry, sorry Paul Applebee's. Jeez, that was close.
Speaker 2: Here's another major distinction we have to make. Yes, the
Speaker 2: server on your right, the one that has all those
Speaker 2: locks on it, with all the class wide information. That
Speaker 2: one can be seen by the State Department, by a
Speaker 2: lot of other intelligence agencies. There's there's accountability on that
Speaker 2: one right to the government. On the private one. That one,
Speaker 2: the one on your left, it's completely controlled by the
Speaker 2: Clinton campaign and people who are contracted to work with
Speaker 2: the Clinton campaign on that email server. That's a huge
Speaker 2: thing that we have to just remember.
Speaker 1: Absolutely great point. There is a chain of custody and
Speaker 1: theory for everything in that right hand filing cabinet. This
Speaker 1: controversy is a series of security violations, misfiled emails, deleted emails, and.
Speaker 2: That's another big thing, deleted emails.
Speaker 1: Deleted emails. Yeah, and this started before Clinton became the
Speaker 1: Democratic candidate in the twenty sixteen campaign, but it continued
Speaker 1: during the campaign. This didn't really become a national story
Speaker 1: until March of twenty fifteen, when The New York Times
Speaker 1: ran a front page article on the subject. The article
Speaker 1: said that the system quote may have violated federal requirements
Speaker 1: and was quote alarming unquote to current and former government
Speaker 1: archive officials. So that's what the Clinton campaign was found doing.
Speaker 1: Clinton was found to have used her family's private server
Speaker 1: for official communications instead of official State Department email accounts.
Speaker 1: This happens to a lot of people on a much
Speaker 1: smaller scale. Let's say that you have multiple social media accounts.
Speaker 1: Let's say that, like our good friend Mission Control, you
Speaker 1: have one account that's Paul something or other, and then
Speaker 1: you have another account that is Applebee's Facts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and.
Speaker 1: You forget to you know, you forget to switch your
Speaker 1: profile over, and so it sounds more like a Reddit user,
Speaker 1: it does. It sounds like a great Reddit user name.
Speaker 1: And then you know, all of a sudden, things that
Speaker 1: should be said by Paul are being said by apple
Speaker 1: Bee's Facts, and vice versa. That's that's a much smaller
Speaker 1: level because Applebee's Facts, and this is not a knock
Speaker 1: on apple Bee's Facts at all, usually doesn't deal with
Speaker 1: things like geopolitical tensions in the Middle East yet not yet.
Speaker 1: I mean those apps are coming, yeah.
Speaker 2: Or you know, quid pro quo things having to do
Speaker 2: with the classification of emails.
Speaker 1: Whenever that whenever I hear quid pro quo, I cannot
Speaker 1: help but think of silence of the lambs.
Speaker 2: Oh, really, a little quid pro quote. Clarie what's her name?
Speaker 1: Which broke qho Clarie?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, did you know? Completely off topic, mattuh. The
Speaker 1: renowned actor Anthony Hopps, his character Hannibal Lecter that's not
Speaker 1: a spoiler, is only actually on camera for like a
Speaker 1: ridiculously small amount of time, like fifteen minutes or something.
Speaker 2: All told, Yeah, and he won, didn't he win? Oscars
Speaker 2: Glora that year? We in The Monster of the Zodiac Killer.
Speaker 2: We actually mentioned that that year that that movie came out.
Speaker 2: They tailored the entire Oscar ceremony around his character essentially
Speaker 2: in that movie.
Speaker 1: It's insane the US does glorify serial killers. Also, I
Speaker 1: found another ancient serial killer. I think I'm building a
Speaker 1: pretty good argument I'd like to pitch to you later. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll do it now. Why don't we do an episode
Speaker 1: on serial killers before the eighteen hundreds or ancient serial killers?
Speaker 2: Whoa, I have a treasure trove, really.
Speaker 1: A lot that will be new to people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, documented serial killer? Yeah, Okay, that sounds like a
Speaker 2: holy podcast.
Speaker 1: We'll see. We'll give it a go. So before we
Speaker 1: explode the lives of those ancient serial kill let's continue
Speaker 1: exploring this strange story of emails. Right now, we've outlined
Speaker 1: the gist, right, let's walk through a little bit more
Speaker 1: of it. So shortly before she was sworn in as
Speaker 1: Secretary of State in two thousand and nine, Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: had set up an email server at her home in
Speaker 1: New York. This was home to an email address HDR
Speaker 1: twenty two at clintonmail dot com, and this was for
Speaker 1: all of her email correspondence, work related personal stuff during
Speaker 1: her four years in office. She also set up email
Speaker 1: addresses on the server for her longtime AID State Department
Speaker 1: Chief of Staff one Cheryl.
Speaker 2: Mills, as well Huma Abodeen.
Speaker 1: Huma Abodeen Yes, yes, was the longtime AID. She did
Speaker 1: not use or even activate a state dot gov email account,
Speaker 1: which was a big deal. It would have been hosted
Speaker 1: on servers owned and managed by the US government. The
Speaker 1: reason that's an important detail is not necessarily because people
Speaker 1: thought the Secretary of State was a criminal or doing
Speaker 1: criminal acts. It's more for operational security or opseca, because
Speaker 1: other countries, no matter how friendly they are, would love
Speaker 1: to know what's going on in the US when the
Speaker 1: doors to the halls of power are closed.
Speaker 2: Oh, of course, and if you're perhaps someone like Hillary
Speaker 2: Rodham Clinton, and you stand out that you know that
Speaker 2: much as a name, as a powerful person within the
Speaker 2: halls of that power, your private email server is a
Speaker 2: major target for anyone and everyone who may be looking
Speaker 2: to find some information. Heck. Yeah. So the FBI ends
Speaker 2: up getting involved a little later on, and what they
Speaker 2: found was that over one hundred emails containing some version
Speaker 2: of classified information were found on her private servers. There
Speaker 2: were sixty five emails that were considered a secret, classified secret,
Speaker 2: twenty two were classified top secret, and it doesn't get
Speaker 2: much more secret than that. Another two thousand, two thousand
Speaker 2: and ninety three emails were not initially classified, but then
Speaker 2: they were retroactively classified by the State Department itself.
Speaker 1: Kind of like upon further consideration, this is sensitive information.
Speaker 2: And it's important to know that that is the State
Speaker 2: Department that is doing that. That will come into play
Speaker 2: a little later.
Speaker 1: And there's a side note. There are things above top secret,
Speaker 1: like compartmentalized access your eyes only, yes, but that as
Speaker 1: far as we know, these emails just went up to
Speaker 1: top secret, which is still a big deal.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: That shouldn't you know, be sitting around on your Yahoo
Speaker 1: account or something, but you're absolutely right. So something is
Speaker 1: amiss here. It doesn't matter where you fall politically. Various critics,
Speaker 1: including Republican members of Congress, are argued that using a
Speaker 1: private messaging system and server violated State Department protocols, and furthermore,
Speaker 1: they said this violates federal laws and regulations. The FBI
Speaker 1: is on the case. As early as two thousand and nine,
Speaker 1: officials with the NARA, the National Archives and Records Administration,
Speaker 1: expressed concerns over these possible violations of the standard operating
Speaker 1: procedure of record keeping at the State Department. December of
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, near the end of Clinton's tenure as Secretary
Speaker 1: of State, a nonprofit group with a pretty neat name,
Speaker 1: Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington or crew Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: they filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get
Speaker 1: the records of the departing Secretary of State's emails. They
Speaker 1: received a response in May of twenty thirteen that said,
Speaker 1: no records responsive to your request were located. That's government
Speaker 1: ease for four oh four.
Speaker 2: Yes, surch error, nothing found. Yeah, and then you you
Speaker 2: got to look at the certain emails that were sent
Speaker 2: to that whole clintonmail dot com address, which is terrible
Speaker 2: to read, by the way, because it looks like Clinton mail.
Speaker 2: It just doesn't look great. But they were discovered in
Speaker 2: March twenty thirteen when a hacker who called himself or
Speaker 2: herself whoever, was Gusifer, and they distributed these emails that
Speaker 2: were sent to Clinton from Sidney Blumenthal. And this dude, Gusifer,
Speaker 2: obtained them by illegally accessing Bluomenthal's email account. So this hacker,
Speaker 2: essentially Gusifer broke into Sidney Bloomenthal's email found all of
Speaker 2: these private Clinton emails.
Speaker 1: And Gusifer is a portmanteau of Gucci and Lucifer.
Speaker 2: So is Guccifer Guccifer. It's Gusifer. I've always heard Goosifer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I just I like the wordplay. Guys a
Speaker 1: criminal though. In the summer of twenty four teen, lawyers
Speaker 1: from the State Department noticed several emails from Clinton's personal
Speaker 1: account while reviewing documents requested by the House Select Committee
Speaker 1: on Bengazi, which is a whole other bag of badgers.
Speaker 2: Oh boy.
Speaker 1: And then, as we said earlier, at twenty fifteen, New
Speaker 1: York Times piece comes out it breaks the story that
Speaker 1: the Bengazi panel had discovered Clinton exclusively used her own
Speaker 1: private server rather than the government issued one throughout her
Speaker 1: time as SOS Secretary of State, and that furthermore, her
Speaker 1: aids took no action to preserve emails that she sent
Speaker 1: or received from those personal accounts. The State Department and
Speaker 1: the Intelligence Community Inspector General discovered four emails that had
Speaker 1: classified information. And this was out, This was a spot check.
Speaker 1: It was out of a random sample of forty and
Speaker 1: when they saw that, they said, okay, four out of forty,
Speaker 1: that's one out of ten. We need to refer this
Speaker 1: to the FBI, their counterintelligence office. And so they alerted
Speaker 1: the authorities that this classified intel was kept on the
Speaker 1: Clinton server and by her lawyer on a thumb drive.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 1: Then The New York Times runs a story on July
Speaker 1: twenty fourth, twenty fifteen, with the headline criminal inquiry sought
Speaker 1: in Clinton's use of email.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the lead sentence from that story was two
Speaker 2: Inspectors General have asked the Justice Department to open a
Speaker 2: criminal investigation into whether Hillary Rodham Clinton mishandled sensitive government
Speaker 2: information on a private email account she used as Secretary
Speaker 2: of State. Senior government officials said Thursday, So that's the again,
Speaker 2: that's the New York Times. You've got them citing senior
Speaker 2: government officials saying that Hillary Clinton mishandled sensitive information on
Speaker 2: her private email. That's really all you need to know.
Speaker 2: That's a big deal. Then, of course you have all
Speaker 2: of these large US organizations who you know, they jump
Speaker 2: on and they correct, they correct, the New York Times
Speaker 2: stating that quote. An important distinction is that the ICIG.
Speaker 2: The ICIG did not make a criminal referral. It was
Speaker 2: a security referral made for counterintelligence purposes.
Speaker 1: So to get back through that government ease, what they
Speaker 1: are saying is that we were not we were not
Speaker 1: giving an order to book them Dano. We were saying
Speaker 1: this could be leveraged by unfriendly foreign powers. Yes, and
Speaker 1: the Times made two other corrections right, first that Clinton
Speaker 1: was not the specific target of the referral, and then
Speaker 1: that it was not criminal in nature. But the funny
Speaker 1: thing is with redactions, corrections things like that, even in
Speaker 1: large papers of note, they legally correct the record, but
Speaker 1: they do nothing for the court of public opinion. You
Speaker 1: know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, remember the first thing, especially the first headline.
Speaker 2: If you see Clinton email scandal in a headline, somewhere,
Speaker 2: or Clinton email referral, or just some other combination in
Speaker 2: that where you've got a person, a bad thing, and
Speaker 2: an object, that's what you remember and doesn't matter if
Speaker 2: a week later, two days later, there's a correction on
Speaker 2: the original article, even if they tweet out correction, this
Speaker 2: was not what it was. Nobody gives a crap.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Typically, typically, and that's not a ding on anyone's intelligence.
Speaker 1: That's just the nature of psychology for most people. Precisely, So,
Speaker 1: how did this initial investigation, how did this all shake out?
Speaker 1: Will tell you after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2: All right, we're back. So let's jump to July fifth
Speaker 2: of twenty sixteen. There's this gentleman named Comy, James Comy.
Speaker 2: He was the director of the FBI. You may remember this.
Speaker 2: I haven't said that name in a long time. I
Speaker 2: used to say it a lot. But he announced that
Speaker 2: the FBI completed its investigation and he was gonna, you know,
Speaker 2: they were going to talk to the State Department with
Speaker 2: a certain recommendation, and that recommendation was that no charges
Speaker 2: are appropriate in this case. That's great news for the
Speaker 2: Clinton campaign and all of the supporters. He went on
Speaker 2: to say, that although there is evidence of potential violations
Speaker 2: of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our
Speaker 2: judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Now,
Speaker 2: in this initial messaging that's coming from the FBI from
Speaker 2: Comey the Director.
Speaker 1: Again July twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly July. They just it seems like, hey, this
Speaker 2: email thing happened. It's a little bit of carelessness. But
Speaker 2: you know what, We're okay. Nobody did anything on purpose
Speaker 2: to hurt anybody else. It was just they used a
Speaker 2: private server. Slap the hand, let's move on.
Speaker 1: Sloppy but not sinister.
Speaker 2: There you go, right, So but that changed.
Speaker 1: The thing is that changes? There's another there's another investigation.
Speaker 1: On October twenty eighth, twenty sixteen, Comy tells Congress that,
Speaker 1: in connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned
Speaker 1: of the existence of emails that appear pertinent to the investigation.
Speaker 1: We're going through a lot of context here, so but
Speaker 1: we'll get through it. It'll be worth it at the end.
Speaker 1: This unrelated case to which they referred was the FBI
Speaker 1: investigation of the famously and hilariously tragically named Anthony Weener.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, from The Daily Show.
Speaker 1: Famously from the famously from The Daily Show. This guy,
Speaker 1: despite you know his name, might make you think he
Speaker 1: has a sense of humor, but he had busted sending
Speaker 1: sexually explicit text to a child, a fifteen year old girl.
Speaker 1: The FBI discovered emails from his estranged wife, who was
Speaker 1: what was her name again.
Speaker 2: The aforementioned Huma Aberdeen.
Speaker 1: Huma Aberdeen the vice chair of the Clinton presidential campaign,
Speaker 1: and because of this, they considered these emails might be
Speaker 1: relevant to the investigation. At the time, Comy said the
Speaker 1: FBI would take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators
Speaker 1: to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified
Speaker 1: information as well as to assess their importance to the investigation. Now,
Speaker 1: anytime we talk about government procedure, I know it can
Speaker 1: feel increasingly like a snoozefest. Yeah, acronyms and initialisms flying
Speaker 1: willy nilly. Everybody is talking like someone from the DMV
Speaker 1: wrote their speech.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's talking around things a lot of the time,
Speaker 2: or of the procedures and the procedural nature. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: pretty crazy.
Speaker 1: Well, and there's a reason for that, right because you
Speaker 1: want to make sure you get every letter, every syllable, perfect, Just.
Speaker 2: To jump in before we're going to such a good idea.
Speaker 2: We were joking as we were going through the hum
Speaker 2: abadeen stuff with Anthony Wiener. Just let's just take a
Speaker 2: moment to say how disgusting that is that he was
Speaker 2: sending inappropriate pictures to a fifteen year old. Yeah, really awful.
Speaker 2: We are not making light of that. It kind of
Speaker 2: slid past us as we were joking through this disgusting right, Okay,
Speaker 2: I think, okay, we can move on.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I hope that was never a question for anybody,
Speaker 1: but yes, just to be crystal clear, bold it, underline it,
Speaker 1: stamp that gross perfect.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So on November sixth, twenty sixteen, mere days before the election,
Speaker 1: Comy sends a letter to Congress, and he says, look,
Speaker 1: we worked around the clock and we're sticking with our
Speaker 1: guns from July. Sorry everybody, this was careless, but we
Speaker 1: do not believe it was a crime.
Speaker 2: Literally days before the election, as you said.
Speaker 1: And furthermore, despite criticisms that this was a superbly time
Speaker 1: October surprise, one of those last minute things that can
Speaker 1: happen that can swing the needle towards one candidate or
Speaker 1: another comy claimed that both the investigation and its conclusions
Speaker 1: were a political They had nothing to do with politics.
Speaker 1: Where the FBI, we have a job. We do our job.
Speaker 1: Their job is to try to get elected. Our job
Speaker 1: is counterintelligence and fighting crime. And we did it. No
Speaker 1: surprise spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't caught up with
Speaker 1: the news. Since the Clinton campaign was unsuccessful, Donald Trump
Speaker 1: became the President of the United States, and people who
Speaker 1: opposed the Clinton campaign or thought there was something rotten
Speaker 1: in Washington were not persuaded by the FBI's two investigations.
Speaker 1: They said, it was like it's cover up. It's rotten,
Speaker 1: from its fat cats at the top all the way
Speaker 1: to fat cats. Given reports in Congress, these cats are.
Speaker 2: Just ob yeah, too many and too fat.
Speaker 1: Too many and too fat, they said, yes, that's a quote.
Speaker 1: It seemed that despite the FBI's claims that there there
Speaker 1: was nothing wonky about their timing, it seemed that whomever
Speaker 1: had managed to orchestrate this story and narrative of private
Speaker 1: versus government emails, who had managed to turn it into
Speaker 1: a chant and a rallying point for oppositional media, had
Speaker 1: done this masterful job. Hillary Clinton herself cited this as
Speaker 1: one of the factors in losing the election.
Speaker 2: I would one thousand percent agree that this was a
Speaker 2: huge factor. It is what everybody was talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it couldn't have been the only factor, no, but.
Speaker 2: It was still the thing that if you thought about
Speaker 2: Hillary Clinton right around that time, like October, late October,
Speaker 2: early November, it was Clinton email.
Speaker 1: It was the you mean like, it was the first
Speaker 1: keyword that popped up in everybody's mental Google.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even if you were a supporter or something, I
Speaker 2: guarantee you that was happening, even if it was like Clinton,
Speaker 2: oh gosh, emails whatever.
Speaker 1: Well, the calls for investigation into this matter did not cease.
Speaker 1: This association was prominent in people's minds even after the election,
Speaker 1: and furthermore, they felt that justice had not been done
Speaker 1: or something was a miss. And these calls for investigation
Speaker 1: continued even as the Trump administration floundered. Several times, both
Speaker 1: on the domestic and international stage, the White House itself
Speaker 1: increasingly called for more investigation into the Clinton campaign's classification
Speaker 1: of emails. They went so far as to fire James
Speaker 1: Comy for this and some other and fired him for
Speaker 1: some other reasons which could be episode all their own
Speaker 1: one day. Today, this subject remains a rallying call for
Speaker 1: some voters on the right. Foreign intelligence agencies who pretend
Speaker 1: to be voters are also very ardent about this, and
Speaker 1: politicians who will go on record today saying that they
Speaker 1: feel there was a cover up. Now, let's get to
Speaker 1: the rumors, right, it's correct, Just like the ongoing arguments
Speaker 1: about the release of the Muller Report, the FBI's conclusion
Speaker 1: on the Clinton emails, let a lot of people feeling like,
Speaker 1: this is not this is the this is the edited version,
Speaker 1: the redacted version. I want the director's cut, I want
Speaker 1: the theatrical production. Tell me what actually happened. Because for
Speaker 1: supporters of the FBI's conclusions, and again typically these would
Speaker 1: be supporters of the Clinton campaign, this was all pr
Speaker 1: sound and fake news, fury smoke with no fire, mirrors,
Speaker 1: with no reflection, a manufactured crisis that accomplished exactly what
Speaker 1: it was created to do to remove Clinton and therefore
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party from the election game.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But of course, for the people who are opponents
Speaker 2: of Hillary sometimes generally supporters of the Trump campaign. In
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, people thought that this story was itself swept
Speaker 2: under the rug after she lost the election, like perhaps
Speaker 2: something else should have happened. You may remember chance from
Speaker 2: rallies that you would see on television of lock her up.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It was because some people truly believed that there was
Speaker 2: such a mishandling of this stuff that it was criminal.
Speaker 2: You know, whether they believe that because some pundit was
Speaker 2: talking about it, or because you know, some news story
Speaker 2: came out that was read incorrectly. Who knows, but people
Speaker 2: certainly felt that way. But they were, and that's because
Speaker 2: they thought there was even more to the story than
Speaker 2: what was being represented by the FBI's conclusions within their reports.
Speaker 2: They thought that maybe it was a bigger cover up
Speaker 2: of some big thing, of perhaps further corruption than just
Speaker 2: using an email server. Perhaps there was something deeper, as
Speaker 2: in a deep state within the US government that was
Speaker 2: operating outside of the control of elected officials.
Speaker 1: A shadow government. Here's where it gets crazy. First, let's
Speaker 1: define what a shadow government actually is. It's not always bad.
Speaker 1: In the world of British politics, there's the shadow cabinet.
Speaker 1: All that is is a group of people from the
Speaker 1: opposition party who form a different cabinet mirroring or wait
Speaker 1: for it, shadowing the positions of each member of the
Speaker 1: real cabinet. So there's a person from the opposition side
Speaker 1: who will scrutinize the policies and actions of their counterpart
Speaker 1: in the real cabinet, and they will present alternatives. Vote
Speaker 1: for us, they say, because this is what we would
Speaker 1: have done.
Speaker 2: I get it, like a Teresa May and then a
Speaker 2: shadow Reason May with a mustache and like a black
Speaker 2: hat or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, so you've seen you've seen it.
Speaker 2: I've seen it.
Speaker 1: So in this case, people are talking about the other,
Speaker 1: the other definition of a shadow government. It's not near
Speaker 1: as neat nor as helpful as the British shadow government.
Speaker 1: In the US, the term shadow government refers to two
Speaker 1: or three things. The first one is absolutely legal, we
Speaker 1: need it. It's the continuity of government, the pre planned
Speaker 1: order of secession in the event of one or more
Speaker 1: deaths in the executive branch and Congress. The president dies,
Speaker 1: who's in charge now? When's the vice president? The vice
Speaker 1: president dies, who's in charge now? And on and on
Speaker 1: and on and one of the one of the most
Speaker 1: interesting questions to me when I was when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, it was a very, very strange answer. You know,
Speaker 1: I asked that question. A lot of children asked, uh,
Speaker 1: do you think I could be president? And family member
Speaker 1: can reveal who, and their associates said, well, sure, you
Speaker 1: might be president tomorrow. It depends on what happens tonight.
Speaker 1: And that's how I learned about the line of secession.
Speaker 2: WHOA are you up there? Are you in the like thousands?
Speaker 1: No, it would have to be like millions, hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions of people would have to die.
Speaker 2: We got to change that. We need to get you
Speaker 2: higher upon that list.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that, but I would nominate you instead.
Speaker 2: Uh, nope, but Paul Paul, Yeah, yeah, it's Paul. I
Speaker 2: seem he's nodding. He would take that on.
Speaker 1: He would take that on. So that's that's the legal one.
Speaker 1: But then there's what you mentioned earlier, Matt, the deep state.
Speaker 1: This is an entrenched, allegedly entrenched network of unelected bureaucrats.
Speaker 1: They're thought to wield the purse strings, the influence and
Speaker 1: the power needed to actually run the US and therefore
Speaker 1: a lot of the world behind the scenes. So haha,
Speaker 1: they say, you've been elected.
Speaker 2: For what four years. Yeah, you are a flicker glimmer
Speaker 2: in the eye of some of these people. And there
Speaker 2: really are positions like that that exist within Washington and
Speaker 2: the structure. It doesn't necessarily necessarily mean that they're all
Speaker 2: working together for one big thing, sure, but they exist
Speaker 2: and they are arguably more powerful in a way than
Speaker 2: anyone that holds any office for four years.
Speaker 1: Think the president, even in any large organization in the
Speaker 1: US government is huge, most governments are. In any large organization,
Speaker 1: we see that communication tends to break down and people
Speaker 1: become gatekeepers of information. They run their own fiefdoms.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the third, just for the sake of argument, the
Speaker 1: third possibility is the massive amount of private influence wielded
Speaker 1: by billionaires or other governments or foreign businesses that want
Speaker 1: to push their interests domestically and abroad. You know, like
Speaker 1: a foreign trade consortium puts in hundreds of millions of
Speaker 1: dollars toward US lobbying to get more favorable trade arrangements. Right,
Speaker 1: let's let's kick off the tariffs on these plush garfield cooozies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that are that we're pushing. I don't know why. Look,
Speaker 1: that's not my best example, but you know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. I dig it exam. Another example of this
Speaker 1: on the domestic end would be the Koch brothers, who
Speaker 1: have for decades been making inroads to push the US
Speaker 1: more toward the kind of governance that they would like
Speaker 1: to see, which is alternately described as more libertarian government
Speaker 1: and neo feudalism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the money, we're really we're talking about the power
Speaker 2: if you're talking about the entrenched deep state, and then
Speaker 2: with these private influencers, we're really talking.
Speaker 1: About the money, right, right, and these things can all
Speaker 1: happen concurrently. That's the messed up part. Yeah, it gets complicated.
Speaker 1: But usually when you hear about a shadow government here
Speaker 1: in the States, it will come from It'll often come
Speaker 1: from the political right. It used to be, it used
Speaker 1: to be in times past, a phrase used by the
Speaker 1: far far left and the far far right, who often
Speaker 1: agree on things, and more so than perhaps the media
Speaker 1: would have you believe.
Speaker 2: Right, But.
Speaker 1: This argument always hinges on that notion of the deep state.
Speaker 1: For people who believed in this kind of shadow government,
Speaker 1: the Seventh Floor Group was proof positive that something was
Speaker 1: wrong in the Beltway.
Speaker 2: And what the heck is the Seventh Floor Group, Well,
Speaker 2: we'll talk about it right after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: So the seventh Floor Group or the Shadow Government, and
Speaker 1: we promised that this femail stuff would pay off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in the third the last thirty episode. But a
Speaker 2: lot of the stuff we've been talking about, really you
Speaker 2: have to remember that and know that stuff before we
Speaker 2: get here.
Speaker 1: Yes, a bit of a secuitous route, but we went
Speaker 1: the most direct way possible. So we mentioned that the
Speaker 1: FBI investigation, both of them found what they saw is
Speaker 1: no evidence of crime, right sure, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people really took that on the chin because they were
Speaker 1: certain that this would be hard evidence, smoking gun of
Speaker 1: a crime. However, they did find some stuff because they
Speaker 1: dug deep. In October twenty sixteen, the FBI released four
Speaker 1: sets of documents, including notes and interview summaries, and in
Speaker 1: this summary, in the fourth part of the release, they
Speaker 1: found a revelation.
Speaker 2: Okay, so just to set this up so you understand
Speaker 2: what it is, through the FBI's vault. The vault that's
Speaker 2: where you can find these things. However, they've been removed.
Speaker 2: These specific ones relating to the Hillary Clinton campaign have
Speaker 2: been removed from the vault the FBI's website, but if
Speaker 2: you go to the archive dot org wayback machine and
Speaker 2: you put in the URL, you can find this. It's
Speaker 2: difficult to find there a couple of players. You can
Speaker 2: get to it, but it's called Hillary R. Clinton, Part
Speaker 2: four of six. That's what it's called. You can find it.
Speaker 2: And essentially, these are just, as Ben said, summations of
Speaker 2: interviews that they that they had with people, just individuals
Speaker 2: regarding the Hillary Clinton email campaign scandal or whatever it was,
Speaker 2: talking about the private servers, what they knew, when they
Speaker 2: knew it, and all of that. And inside here you
Speaker 2: find one specific or there are several specific things. But
Speaker 2: in one of these, one of the documents came from
Speaker 2: an interview with an unidentified person who suggested that the FOIA,
Speaker 2: the Freedom of Information Act requests related to the Clinton
Speaker 2: to Clinton, anything related to Clinton, went through a group
Speaker 2: that was some kind sometimes referred to at least internally
Speaker 2: as the shadow government.
Speaker 1: As literally the shadow government.
Speaker 2: So you know, first of all, we have to say,
Speaker 2: maybe this was maybe that's kind of an inside joke, right, maybe,
Speaker 2: but let's keep listening in here, because according to this
Speaker 2: anonymous person quote, there was a powerful group of very
Speaker 2: high ranking state and that state Department officials that some
Speaker 2: referred to as the Seventh Floor Group or the shadow Government,
Speaker 2: met every Wednesday afternoon to discuss the Freedom of Information
Speaker 2: Act process with regards to Clinton. We're talking congressional records
Speaker 2: and everything related to Clinton and Freedom of Information Act
Speaker 2: and congressional inquiries. So this group, literally they were the
Speaker 2: gatekeepers for everything Clinton related.
Speaker 1: And they were a powerful filter. Right, yes, so this,
Speaker 1: oddly enough, it sounds pretty crazy. Oddly enough, this was
Speaker 1: not a primary focus of mainstream media coverage. It did
Speaker 1: receive mention across the board, and those opposed to the
Speaker 1: Clinton campaign quickly took this and ran with it. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can't you can't blame those people because if you
Speaker 1: if you object to a politician or a group, what
Speaker 1: a what a gift to have this, to have somebody
Speaker 1: and they're foolish enough to call themselves the shadow government.
Speaker 2: My very own State Department shadow government.
Speaker 1: That's like, like, I don't care who you are in
Speaker 1: politics or who you wish to be. That's up there
Speaker 1: with opening a golf club called Illuminati. Only you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Even if you say it's a joke, no,
Speaker 1: not everyone is going to be on board. So here's
Speaker 1: what we know according to the FBI summary, and again
Speaker 1: these are not actual transcripts. The group argued for a
Speaker 1: Clinton document release to be conducted all at once for
Speaker 1: what they called coordination purposes instead of on a rolling basis,
Speaker 1: and that would normally be the case. That again, to
Speaker 1: your point, Matt, sounds like more procedural than a super
Speaker 1: big deal. A spokesperson for the State Department said, we
Speaker 1: categorically deny this claim, these related claims. There's a big
Speaker 1: one coming up. And they said these allegations are inaccurate,
Speaker 1: they don't align with the facts. To be clear, the
Speaker 1: State Department did upgrade the document at the request of
Speaker 1: the FBI. We released it. He's speaking of a specific document.
Speaker 1: We'll get to. But let's look at the players. So
Speaker 1: the seventh Floor Group was believed to meet on Wednesdays
Speaker 1: on the seventh floor right of their building, and the
Speaker 1: meetings were attended by some real internal power players Under
Speaker 1: Secretary of State Patrick Kennedy, Secretary of State at that point,
Speaker 1: John Carey, Deputy Chief of Staff Jennifer Stout, Deputy Secretary
Speaker 1: of State for Management Resources, Assistant Secretary Julia frith Field,
Speaker 1: and unnamed members of the office of the Legal Advisorice,
Speaker 1: Notice how the lawyers got away?
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, and just it's a bunch of attorneys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which, you know, if we were going to be
Speaker 1: wildly speculative, can't you can't you easily imagine someone saying,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you about the seventh Floor, but I want
Speaker 1: full immunity, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I can actually see that very much.
Speaker 1: So well, is it a big deal? What? What's the
Speaker 1: big deal here? The big deal here is apparently that
Speaker 1: the shadow government or the Seventh Floor group asked the
Speaker 1: FBI to declassify some emails so they wouldn't be thought
Speaker 1: of as security leaks. And the smoking gun for four
Speaker 1: people who believe that this was sinister was the alleged
Speaker 1: action of Under Secretary of State Patrick Kennedy. According to
Speaker 1: the claims in the interview, he contacted the FBI to
Speaker 1: ask for the change in classification in exchange for a
Speaker 1: quid pro quote.
Speaker 2: Isn't that crazy? An old quid pro quote? Clarice, And again,
Speaker 2: this this guy is important. He's also a Kennedy. Do
Speaker 2: we know if he's a Kennedy? Kennedy, Patrick Kennedy, I
Speaker 2: honestly don't know who cares check this out, so if
Speaker 2: he go, he probably cares. Okay. So on page four
Speaker 2: of that FBI vault document that you can find on
Speaker 2: the web dot archive dot org, it says that there
Speaker 2: was this big meeting they're talking about with the State
Speaker 2: Department with They called it an all agency meeting, and
Speaker 2: this person, Patrick Kennedy that we're speaking about, he presided
Speaker 2: over the meeting, and during the conversation, one of the
Speaker 2: people specifically asked whether any member of the emails in
Speaker 2: question were classified. Making eye contact with predacted, Kennedy remarked, well,
Speaker 2: we'll see. And this is apparently while he was making
Speaker 2: again making eye contact with somebody as in like a hey,
Speaker 2: maybe we'll find out what's going on. And then he
Speaker 2: went on to discuss essentially a quid pro quo about
Speaker 2: perhaps putting FBI agents in countries where FBI agents are
Speaker 2: generally not allowed to be, Like maybe if you can
Speaker 2: change the classification, we'll do something for you, something beyond
Speaker 2: what anyone would imagine it would be possible.
Speaker 1: Scratch a mat back, scratch a yo back.
Speaker 2: Guy, Yeah, we'll get We'll get FBI agents in this
Speaker 2: country where they're not supposed to be. That's a huge deal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So the FBI, the FBI said, okay, what
Speaker 1: happened was, yeah, you know, what had happened was that
Speaker 1: the FBI determined that there was an email senior State
Speaker 1: Department official request of the FBI to quote re review
Speaker 1: this and look at it again. Just make sure that
Speaker 1: you know, do your job, but do it again. Is
Speaker 1: it classified? Are you sure? Yeah, but you'd have to
Speaker 1: look at it again to be sure. Right. That's basically
Speaker 1: won went down. And then they say that an FBI
Speaker 1: official who was not part of the later Clinton investigation
Speaker 1: told the State's apartment, the guy at the State's Department, well,
Speaker 1: you know, now that you mention it, I guess I
Speaker 1: could look at it again. You know, would really helped
Speaker 1: me look at it. If if we could maybe also
Speaker 1: address just while I've got you on the line, Yeah,
Speaker 1: while I got you on the line, here, pat, if
Speaker 1: we could also address our risk that request they keep
Speaker 1: putting in for space for additional FBI employees assigned abroad,
Speaker 1: because you know, I've sent you several emails and tried
Speaker 1: to call them multiple times. Now you answer the phone.
Speaker 2: Well, you know what, I think maybe we can take
Speaker 2: care of it. If some of those emails, you know,
Speaker 2: ended up being unclassified, right, that sounds like a pretty
Speaker 2: good deal to me.
Speaker 1: Sort of a cool.
Speaker 2: Pro quote.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm hanging out. No, no, you hang up? You
Speaker 1: hang up?
Speaker 2: Are you still there?
Speaker 1: Are you still there?
Speaker 2: Going to hang up?
Speaker 1: That's how they that's how they had this conversation shortly,
Speaker 1: oh man, And.
Speaker 2: They were both recording the whole time, and they were.
Speaker 1: Both recording the whole time. We're being a little bit glib,
Speaker 1: but you can see it's it's somewhat the FBI is
Speaker 1: making valid distinctions, right, Yes, But of course people would
Speaker 1: deny this kind of one hand washes the other sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. So, following this call, the FBI officials, now retired,
Speaker 1: got with a senior FBI executive who was responsible for
Speaker 1: determining classification, and they decided that it was in fact
Speaker 1: classified secret the way it was supposed to be. So
Speaker 1: FBI guy goes back to the State Department contact he
Speaker 1: has and he says, look, it's classified. We looked at
Speaker 1: it twice and it's supposed to stay secret, and we
Speaker 1: can't change it. And it wasn't changed. It remains classified today.
Speaker 1: The FBI concludes, and you can see this on their
Speaker 1: own website. Although there was never a quid pro quo,
Speaker 1: these allegations were nonetheless referred to the appropriate officials for review.
Speaker 1: So they said, look, we know nothing went down, but
Speaker 1: just to keep our nose clean, we asked some other
Speaker 1: people to look at it, because with the FBI, we're apolitical.
Speaker 1: We do our job, they do their job.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and to be fair, there was no quid pro
Speaker 2: quo in this instance of these you know exchanges that
Speaker 2: we that became public.
Speaker 1: Being very careful with that. Matt, I admire you.
Speaker 2: Right, but no, but come on, that's that's all we've proven, right,
Speaker 2: or at least that's all the FBI says. Right.
Speaker 1: There are other alleged activities, other allegations. This same group,
Speaker 1: the Seventh Floor Group, or quote unquote shadow government, has
Speaker 1: been accused of censoring official reports, of interfering with special investigations,
Speaker 1: of providing diplomatic security or protection for certain individuals, shielding
Speaker 1: them from criminal charges, and a lot of that stuff.
Speaker 1: Once you get into the providing protection and diplomatic security
Speaker 1: and stuff for controversial people, often those are going to
Speaker 1: come from biased sources.
Speaker 2: Correct. See the Washington Examiner. If you wish, you can
Speaker 2: find something on that. And if you search for Hillary's
Speaker 2: officials cut criticisms out of State Department reports, you will
Speaker 2: find it and you can read all about it.
Speaker 1: You can also while you're reading those reports, you can
Speaker 1: go back to what we have kept going back to,
Speaker 1: which is the FBI confirming at least maybe not saying
Speaker 1: that they believe this exists, but confirming that they spoke
Speaker 1: with people who did think it exists.
Speaker 2: He who casually mentioned that it's the seventh Floor Group. No,
Speaker 2: it's the Shadow, It's fine, it's fine. What is the
Speaker 2: Irish now? I don't know what happened. That's what they're
Speaker 2: talking about.
Speaker 1: So this is this is not quite where it ends.
Speaker 1: But we do have some conclusions.
Speaker 2: First, Gusifer, are you speaking directly to Gusifer Gucchifer.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe if you tune into the podcast, we'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you. According to The New York Times,
Speaker 1: the hacker who used this name Guccifer, coined the Moniker
Speaker 1: to combine the style of Gucci in the light of Lucifer.
Speaker 1: He turned out to be a guide named marcel lejal Lazare,
Speaker 1: a forty three year old former taxi driver is at
Speaker 1: the time unemployed. He did not have expertise in computers.
Speaker 1: He didn't have any fancy equipment or tech. He just
Speaker 1: had an old Samsung cell phone and ANNC desktop and
Speaker 1: all the skills he used in hacking. According to the
Speaker 1: official reports, he picked up on the web. So he
Speaker 1: was not, as far as we know, some high level
Speaker 1: secret state actor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, according to the official sources.
Speaker 1: Well he's not a botnet king or whatever. But most
Speaker 1: of the emails providing the impetus for that second investigation
Speaker 1: turned out to be duplicates of stuff they found the
Speaker 1: first time around, So in that second investigation there wasn't
Speaker 1: apparently that much new stuff. And that lends a little
Speaker 1: bit of credence to that October surprise theory, because again,
Speaker 1: the timing, you couldn't have planned it better, right, But
Speaker 1: the group appears to have been disbanded by Donald Trump's administration,
Speaker 1: the syfamous Seventh Floor Shadow Government group. On February seventeenth,
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, CBS reported that much of the Seventh Floor
Speaker 1: staff who worked for the Deputy Secretary of State for
Speaker 1: Management and Resources these titles Man and the Counselor Offices
Speaker 1: were told today that their services were no longer needed.
Speaker 1: So if you can read it in other articles of
Speaker 1: the time where the headline something like Rex Tillerson kicks
Speaker 1: out seventh floor group or fires a bunch of diplomats,
Speaker 1: and the State Department did encounter a purge at that time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but who knows if they're the the seventh floor group, right,
Speaker 2: or maybe the people just met up on the seventh floor.
Speaker 2: Maybe they lived on the fourth floor. Right.
Speaker 1: It's weird because some of us listening are convinced there's
Speaker 1: much more to the stories. Some of us listening or
Speaker 1: convinced it's it's just media theater solely meant to discredit someone.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It was a very divisive issue then, and to a degree,
Speaker 1: it's still a divisive issue today. But oddly enough, several
Speaker 1: of the original media reports have been deleted.
Speaker 2: The FBI vault files literally don't exist unless you go
Speaker 2: to the wayback machine.
Speaker 1: Right, But not to be too much of a devil's advocate,
Speaker 1: but couldn't the FBI clean out the wayback machine if
Speaker 1: they wanted to?
Speaker 2: Maybe? I don't know if they.
Speaker 1: The NSA could do it, probably because Gucci f could
Speaker 1: do Uh. The Wikipedia page was also scrupped. If you
Speaker 1: go into the talk, it's a really interesting thing about Wikipedia, uh,
Speaker 1: which is maybe not so much the articles themselves. But
Speaker 1: if you look at Wikipedia, you're gonna see two taps.
Speaker 1: Let's see a tab at the top left with the article,
Speaker 1: and a tab just to the right of that called
Speaker 1: talk right and talk is where the editors of Wikipedia
Speaker 1: and the contributors of Wikipedia argue about whether or not
Speaker 1: something should be an article, or something should be included
Speaker 1: in that article. Wikipedia is a world at war because
Speaker 1: numerous numerous debates of geopolitical sandwiches, you know, tragedies, all
Speaker 1: sorts of things are currently being furiously edited by one
Speaker 1: person or another with differing views. In the case of
Speaker 1: the Wikipedia page, from what we found, the reason given
Speaker 1: for its deletion was that there were not multiple primary sources,
Speaker 1: so they said, you need you need more than one
Speaker 1: source for this to even be entertained as the truth.
Speaker 1: But you can still find it in Matt Frederick's trusty
Speaker 1: wayback machine. I think that's a great T shirt idea.
Speaker 2: By the way, it's not mine, it's archive dot org.
Speaker 1: That's true. That's true. So the FBI does appear to
Speaker 1: confirm the existence of this group, while not confirming that
Speaker 1: they cooperated with them. There is a real there was
Speaker 1: a real shadow government, or at least a real group
Speaker 1: referred to as the Shadow Government, and they apparently no
Speaker 1: longer work for the state to apartment. But it leads
Speaker 1: us to the end of today's episode and a question,
Speaker 1: a disturbing question.
Speaker 2: Even if this wasn't that big of a deal, there's
Speaker 2: still a group of people that were not elected officials
Speaker 2: that were hanging out in you know, someplace making decisions
Speaker 2: about what you and I and everyone listening as the
Speaker 2: public get to hear or know about an elected official.
Speaker 2: How many other groups like that exist that are gatekeepers
Speaker 2: of information for the public, that are maybe making bigger
Speaker 2: decisions even than that, about geopolitics, about foods we eat,
Speaker 2: about the types of polyester mixed clothing we get.
Speaker 1: To wear, how much your dollar is worth.
Speaker 2: Ooh, that's a big one. That's more important than the
Speaker 2: type of clothing we get to wear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. These all seem pretty important, right.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for checking out this episode. We
Speaker 1: know this would be a little divisive for people who
Speaker 1: have really dug deep into this. We did give a
Speaker 1: high level. Look, because we wanted to provide enough of
Speaker 1: a view of the forest for us to understand what
Speaker 1: the seventh floor group is. Yeah, why it matters. And again,
Speaker 1: why would you why would you call yourself the shadow
Speaker 1: government just.
Speaker 2: Even for funzis? I don't know, that seems that seems
Speaker 2: a little dangerous.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess we could do it, but everybody
Speaker 1: would probably know that we're not We're not making moves
Speaker 1: as representatives of Uncle Sam or a foreign power exactly.
Speaker 2: And I would say, if you want to keep going
Speaker 2: down this rabbit hole, a great and exciting fun thing
Speaker 2: to do is to go to the Wikipedia page for
Speaker 2: the Hillary Clinton email controversy and then go all the
Speaker 2: way down to the bottom and just you know, after
Speaker 2: looking at the talk thing and all the other stuff,
Speaker 2: go all the way down the bottom and just start
Speaker 2: clicking through sources down there. Cuz it's crazy just the
Speaker 2: amount of media that was generated through this scandal, the
Speaker 2: amount of sourcing that exists on that one Wiki page.
Speaker 2: It's an intense slog. Good luck to you, enjoy yourself,
Speaker 2: make sure you got a drink, and.
Speaker 1: Let us know what other examples of shadow governments you
Speaker 1: have found, not just here in the US, but in
Speaker 1: other countries or in other groups of countries. Right we
Speaker 1: want to hear those stories that you think your fellow
Speaker 1: listeners would enjoy about what goes on behind the curtain.
Speaker 1: You can tell and that's our classic episode for this evening.
Speaker 1: We can't wait to hear your thoughts. We try to
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