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Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.

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Speaker 2: Hello everyone, Molly here, Welcome back to the third of

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Speaker 2: four installments of the holiday reruns here on Weird Little Guys.

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Speaker 2: Since Christmas and New Year's Day are both Thursdays this year,

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Speaker 2: I was going to have to run two reruns in

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Speaker 2: a row. So instead of picking two random reruns, I'm

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Speaker 2: using this opportunity to run my favorite mini series of

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Speaker 2: the year, the eight episodes I wrote back in the

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Speaker 2: spring about the international networks of writeing extremists who were

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Speaker 2: trying to hold on to apartheid.

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Speaker 3: At South Africa.

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Speaker 2: Last week, episodes one and two round Tuesday, and episodes

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Speaker 2: three and four ran on Thursday. That makes this episodes

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Speaker 2: five and six of the series. The episode The Whites

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Speaker 2: Last Stand originally aired on April third, and Jemboree and

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Speaker 2: Jamba came out a week later on April tenth. Listening

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Speaker 2: back to these episodes now, it's very funny that I

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Speaker 2: kept apologizing for how long the series was and promising

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Speaker 2: that it was almost over. I know you're listening for

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Speaker 2: the story and not my little personal asides, but they

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Speaker 2: do make for a strange sort of time capsule. I

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Speaker 2: was in a rush this week because I'd spent a

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Speaker 2: couple of days in court, and I realize now I

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Speaker 2: never did get back around to telling you about that trial,

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Speaker 2: But it was one of the trials in the Unite

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Speaker 2: the Right Torch March prosecutions that I was talking about

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Speaker 2: a few weeks ago. The episodes recently about Tyler Dykes

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Speaker 2: and Augustus and Victus, two of the other men charged

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Speaker 2: for that march, but that trial back in April was

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Speaker 2: for Vasilios Pistolis.

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Speaker 3: I do still think we'll.

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Speaker 2: Circle back around to that one of these days, but

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Speaker 2: for these next two episodes in this series, first, I

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Speaker 2: want to make a correction and an apology. In the

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Speaker 2: episode The Jamboree and Jamba, I used the term bushman

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Speaker 2: to refer to a member of the Komani clan of

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Speaker 2: the San people. I saw the term used a lot

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Speaker 2: in sources, and I believed it to be a catch

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Speaker 2: all term that referred to various cultures of hunter gatherer

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Speaker 2: people's indigenous to Southern Africa. It does mean that, but

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Speaker 2: it's widely considered to be derogatory, and I should have

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Speaker 2: read enough about the subject to know that before.

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Speaker 3: I said it.

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Speaker 2: It is the Dutch colonizer's word for those indigenous groups,

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Speaker 2: and it is not considered a respectful or appropriate term

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Speaker 2: to use in English today. Just because a lot of

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Speaker 2: people in my source material are using the word, does

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Speaker 2: it mean that I should say it? And considering the

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Speaker 2: kind of source material I'm used to working with, I

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Speaker 2: should have known better than to assume a white author

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Speaker 2: of material about indigenous African people was using a word

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Speaker 2: that I should repeat. I am genuinely sorry, and I

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Speaker 2: appreciate those of you who contacted me with additional reading

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Speaker 2: about the cultural context here. But aside from that, I

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Speaker 2: do have a couple of loose ends to revisit from

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Speaker 2: the White's last stand. In that episode, you'll hear about

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Speaker 2: a right wing extremist from Poland who shot and killed

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Speaker 2: Chris Hani, a black South African politician and anti apartheid activist.

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Speaker 2: In that episode, I chose a pronunciation of this Polish

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Speaker 2: name that seemed to be the one most commonly used

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Speaker 2: by South African news broadcasters, which of course upset listeners

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Speaker 2: with any knowledge of Polish. But I can't pronounce Polish

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Speaker 2: or Afrikaans, so I was never going to say it

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Speaker 2: in a way that made anyone happy. But whatever you

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Speaker 2: want to call him Yanushwalos was released on parole in

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Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, and he was deported back to Poland

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Speaker 2: in December of twenty twenty four. He is to this

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Speaker 2: day a popular symbol for white nationalist groups in Poland,

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Speaker 2: and if you listen to the last installment of this series,

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Speaker 2: you heard what I think is a pretty well supported

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Speaker 2: theory about how the German mercenaries at the heart of

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Speaker 2: this story connected how they were communicating in nineteen ninety

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Speaker 2: three before some of them left Bosnia.

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Speaker 3: For South Africa.

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Speaker 2: One of those mercenaries, Stefan Rai's, took leave from the

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Speaker 2: Convict's battalion in Bosnia in late nineteen ninety three and

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Speaker 2: traveled to Hamburg. I can't produce any proof that they met,

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Speaker 2: but I know Horse Cleans was in Hamburg at the

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Speaker 2: same time, and it seems very likely that that's where

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Speaker 2: they met up. That was in the episode, But what

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Speaker 2: it did not include in that episode is that Horst

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Speaker 2: Cleans also traveled to Munich during that same trip, and

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Speaker 2: South African authorities believe that while he was there, he

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Speaker 2: met with Colonel Eugene Decoq of the South African Police

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Speaker 2: Force DACOQ now known to have been deeply involved in

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Speaker 2: those government funded death squads, was in Munich on his

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Speaker 2: way to Bosnia. So maybe those German mercenaries in Bosnia

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Speaker 2: weren't getting their recruitment pitched third hand from Stephen Rays,

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Speaker 2: who got it from Horse Cleans, who got it from

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Speaker 2: Eugene to Cock. Maybe they got it from Eugene de

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Speaker 2: Cock directly. Hard to say, but it does raise a

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Speaker 2: lot more questions about the bullet that gets dug out

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Speaker 2: of a police officer in the episode You're About to Hear.

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Speaker 2: September twenty second, twenty twelve may have been the first

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Speaker 2: day of autumn, but it was a warm afternoon in Washington, DC.

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Speaker 2: A charter bus pulled to the curb at the edge

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Speaker 2: of Lincoln Park and its passengers piled out, all fourteen

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Speaker 2: of them. Most of the attendees of that day's rally

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Speaker 2: were dressed alike, black pants and a blue button up

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Speaker 2: shirt with a black tie, the uniform of the Arian nation.

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Speaker 2: They'd denounced the rally months ahead of time, giving DC

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Speaker 2: locals ample time to plan their counter protest. Hundreds of

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Speaker 2: people showed up to see what turned out to be

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Speaker 2: barely a dozen Neo Nazis. The tiny group marched the

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Speaker 2: mile and a half from the park to the Capital

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Speaker 2: Reflecting Pool, safely escorted by hundreds of police officers from

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Speaker 2: the DC Metropolitan Police, US Park Police, and the US

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Speaker 2: Capitol Police. Dozens of officers on bicycles and on horseback

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Speaker 2: flanked the little march, keeping counter protesters at bay. A

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Speaker 2: fee leanx of Capitol police in riot year marched alongside them,

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Speaker 2: far outnumbering the actual marchers. When they reached their destination,

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Speaker 2: they were escorted into a little pen surrounded by barricades,

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Speaker 2: with the Capitol building in the background, surrounded by angry

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Speaker 2: counter protesters and curious tourists. Rian Nations member Ryan Mullins

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Speaker 2: tried to address the crowd with a megaphone, but he

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Speaker 2: was almost completely drowned out by chance of Nazi scum.

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Speaker 2: If he did manage to give a speech about the

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Speaker 2: plight of the white South African farmer, it's almost certain

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Speaker 2: no one actually heard it. But just behind him the

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Speaker 2: rally goers were holding a banner that read stop White

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Speaker 2: Genocide in South Africa, and standing between the two nearly

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Speaker 2: identical bald men dressed all in black holding either end

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Speaker 2: of that banner was an old woman. She stood out

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Speaker 2: in the small crowd not only as the only woman,

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Speaker 2: but because she was wearing a neatly pressed khaki uniform.

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Speaker 2: It had been nearly twenty years since the fall of

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Speaker 2: the apartheid regime, and over a decade since she'd married

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Speaker 2: an American and moved to Louisiana, but it seems Monica

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Speaker 2: huggets Stone still had her Africaner Resistance Movement uniform in

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Speaker 2: the back.

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Speaker 3: Of her closet.

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Speaker 2: I'm Molly conger, this swear, little guys. We are nearing

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Speaker 2: the end of the story of Monica hugget Stone. Not

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Speaker 2: because I'm done digging. I could write half a dozen

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Speaker 2: more episodes, but because I think you'll start to get

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Speaker 2: restless if I keep trying to tell the same story

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Speaker 2: for months at a time. I know I keep saying this,

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Speaker 2: but it's always true. I really thought this was going

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Speaker 2: to be a two parter, starting with those rallies in

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Speaker 2: twenty twelve talking about the modern resurgence of the white

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Speaker 2: genocide conspiracy theory rhetoric couched in this concern for the

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Speaker 2: largely imaginary murders of South African farmers, and then just

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Speaker 2: a brief retrospective on the woman behind those rallies. I

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Speaker 2: could not possibly have predicted that there would be so

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Speaker 2: much international intrigue buried in her past. I certainly didn't

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Speaker 2: expect to spend the last month translating fifty year old

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Speaker 2: white supremacist newspapers from Afrikaans, or pouring over thirty year

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Speaker 2: old memos in Croatian tapped out on typewriters by dead

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Speaker 2: war criminals. I had no idea that a German neo

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Speaker 2: Nazi blew up a United Nations office in Namibia, or

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Speaker 2: that his South African accomplice still coaches rugby in Cambridgeshire

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Speaker 2: evading an international arrest warrant.

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Speaker 3: How could I have known? But now we do.

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Speaker 2: History is a strange and messy thing, and I suppose

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Speaker 2: it's only fair to give you a brief recap here

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Speaker 2: at the top before we start approaching the end. You

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Speaker 2: might need a reminder of where we've been. The first

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Speaker 2: episode in this series was about an event that took

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Speaker 2: place in February of twenty twelve, a dozen or so

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Speaker 2: rallies across the country that all took place on the

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Speaker 2: same day. Only the one in Sacramento was attended by

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Speaker 2: more than a handful of people, and it was the

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Speaker 2: only one that made it into the newspaper. It has

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Speaker 2: counter protesters from the nearby occupy encampment showed up to

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Speaker 2: heckle the Neo Nazis and ended up getting into a

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Speaker 2: bit of a scuffle with the police. In that episode,

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Speaker 2: I talked a bit about what the event claimed to

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Speaker 2: be doing, raising awareness about white genocide and South Africa, which,

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Speaker 2: if you don't remember the episode, is not a real thing.

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Speaker 2: It is not happening at all.

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Speaker 3: But it is a.

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Speaker 2: Conspiracy theory of some importance to white supremacists around the world,

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Speaker 2: and it was something of a fringe idea. But unfortunately

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Speaker 2: now the President of the United States has gotten hold

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Speaker 2: of it and decided that white South Africans qualify for

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Speaker 2: refugee resettlement in the United States. In the second episode,

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Speaker 2: the one I really thought was going to be the

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Speaker 2: end of the story, I only managed to get through

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Speaker 2: a single incident. The first time Monica Huggett's name showed

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Speaker 2: up in the historical record alongside a bombing in nineteen

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Speaker 2: eighty she was a member of a small African or

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Speaker 2: nationalist terrorist cell calling itself the vitt Commando or the

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Speaker 2: White Commandos. After a brief bombing campaign targeting anti apartheid

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Speaker 2: activists and academics, they were all arrested. Most of the

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Speaker 2: members of the VIT Commando turned out to be Italian fascists,

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Speaker 2: and Monica Hugget's charges were dropped after she testified against them.

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Speaker 2: In her testimony, she claimed to be a member of

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Speaker 2: the American Ku Klux Klan. She wasn't, even in the

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Speaker 2: next chapter of her own story. I lost track of

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Speaker 2: her for most of the nineteen eighties, but one of

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Speaker 2: the men who would be connected to her later on

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Speaker 2: had a very strange past of his own. In the

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Speaker 2: third episode of the series, we followed German neo Nazi

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Speaker 2: Horst Cleans and his South African accomplices. They carried out

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Speaker 2: an attack on a UN office in Namibia in nineteen

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Speaker 2: eighty nine, killing a security guard and later murdering a

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Speaker 2: police officer In their escape from custody, The men involved

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Speaker 2: in the attack fled back to South Africa, joining a

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Speaker 2: new africaner Neo Nazi organization called the Order Borofolk. After

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Speaker 2: another series of bombings and arrests, they all somehow ended

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Speaker 2: up no longer in jail. That group, the Order Borafolk

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Speaker 2: also pulled off a high profile heist of a massive

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Speaker 2: cache of weapons from a South African Air Force base.

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Speaker 2: Remember I asked you to keep those guns in the

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Speaker 2: back of your mind. One of them shows up again

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Speaker 2: in this story. And by this point we're up to

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Speaker 2: the early nineteen nineties and it's clear to everyone who

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Speaker 2: is paying attention that the apartheid regime is unsustainable. Multi

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Speaker 2: party negotiations had begun. The African National Congress and the

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Speaker 2: ruling National Party were slowly working their way through the

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Speaker 2: process of coming to an agreement about how the nation

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Speaker 2: would move forward. And as you might expect, most of

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Speaker 2: the characters in this story weren't ready to give up

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Speaker 2: the fight. And that's where our international network of mercenaries

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Speaker 2: comes in, the subject of last week's episode. In the

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Speaker 2: summer of nineteen ninety three, at an international fascist rally

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Speaker 2: in Belgium, leaders of European neo Nazi groups met to

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Speaker 2: discuss sending mercenaries to South Africa to cause chaos. A

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Speaker 2: date had been set for the election. They only had

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Speaker 2: a few months left to either overthrow the government and

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Speaker 2: cancel that election, or convince enough white South Africans to

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Speaker 2: secede and form their own white Ethno state, and in

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Speaker 2: that episode last week, I got a little lost sifting

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Speaker 2: through old documents from the Bosnian War, trying to nail

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Speaker 2: down exactly how our German mercenaries got from one conflict

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Speaker 2: to another. So that brings us all back up to speed.

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Speaker 2: More or less. I spent most of last week's episodes

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Speaker 2: sifting through the distant past, looking at the history of

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Speaker 2: the clan in South Africa and looking at distant places

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Speaker 2: tracing the paths of those mercenaries. But there is some

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Speaker 2: context at the heart of this story that we need

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Speaker 2: to sketch out before we move on, because, like I said,

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Speaker 2: the end of apartheid wasn't a single moment. There were

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Speaker 2: years of political negotiations before that election in April of

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Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four. The election of Nelson Mandela marked the

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Speaker 2: official end, but it had been all but over for months,

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Speaker 2: and the end had been in sight for nearly a year.

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Speaker 2: Here's AWB's leader Eugene terre Blanche offering his thoughts on

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Speaker 2: the negotiation process to a reporter in May of nineteen

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Speaker 2: ninety three.

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Speaker 4: I believe that they can can negotiate before our five

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Speaker 4: and get it back and let them try by preparing

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Speaker 4: myself for the war.

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Speaker 2: An increasingly desperate and fractured extreme right wing was doubling

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Speaker 2: down on violence, but the political process was proceeding without them,

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Speaker 2: and everything they did to try to stop that process

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Speaker 2: only seemed to accelerate it. On April tenth, nineteen ninety three,

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Speaker 2: the Saturday before Easter, Chris Hani was assassinated. Hani was

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Speaker 2: the General Secretary of the South African Communist Party and

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Speaker 2: the chief of staff of the a n c's armed wing,

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Speaker 2: Mukanto with Sizway. He was a beloved and immensely popular

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Speaker 2: leader within the African National Congress, particularly among young anti

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Speaker 2: apartheid activists. He'd given his bodyguard the day off, and

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Speaker 2: he was supposed to be at home. His killer hadn't

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Speaker 2: actually intended to carry out the plan that day. In particular,

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Speaker 2: he would later claim he'd only been in the area

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Speaker 2: conducting one last reconmission, but when he spotted Hani returning

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Speaker 2: home from buying a newspaper, accompanied only by his fifteen

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Speaker 2: year old daughter, he knew he'd never get a better shot.

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Speaker 2: As Hani stepped out of his car, the killer shouted

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Speaker 2: his name, and as Hani turned around, to see where

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Speaker 2: the voice had come from. His killer fired, hitting him

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Speaker 2: four times in the chest and head. The assassin was

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Speaker 2: arrested almost immediately. One of Hani's neighbors, a white woman,

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Speaker 2: called the police and was able to give them the

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Speaker 2: killer's license plate. When police found him that afternoon, the

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Speaker 2: murder weapon was still sitting on the back seat of

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Speaker 2: his car. By Monday, Eugene taire Blanche had publicly confirmed

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Speaker 2: that the killer, a Polish immigrant named Yanushwalus, had been

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Speaker 2: a member of the Africaner Resistance movement. Once in custody,

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Speaker 2: Walous confessed to a police officer he had incorrectly assumed

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Speaker 2: was a fellow traveler. There were plenty of police officers

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Speaker 2: who would have been on his side he murdered a

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Speaker 2: black communist, after all, but this turned out not to

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Speaker 2: be one of them. He told the officer that the

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Speaker 2: gun had been given to him by Clive Derby Lewis,

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Speaker 2: a sitting member of Parliament in the Conservative Party. It

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Speaker 2: had also been one of the guns the Ordoboro folk

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Speaker 2: had stolen from an Air Force base three years earlier.

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Speaker 2: When Walous's apartment was searched, officers found a printed list

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Speaker 2: of names given that Chris Hani's name was on that list,

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Speaker 2: and he'd just been shot to death. It appears to

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Speaker 2: have been a hit list, but Walous almost certainly didn't

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Speaker 2: write that list himself. It was mostly high profile political

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Speaker 2: figures like Nelson Mandela, Chris Hani, and Communist Party chair

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Speaker 2: Jo Slovo, but there were also the names of several journalists,

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Speaker 2: most of whom published only in Afrikaans, which Walouse could

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Speaker 2: not read. The same list of names was later found

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Speaker 2: in the personal papers of Clive Derby Lewis's wife, Gay

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Speaker 2: but white supremacist journalist Arthur Kemp would later testify that

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Speaker 2: he'd been the original author of the list. As far

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Speaker 2: as the official record goes, Kemp was not involved, he

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Speaker 2: was not charged, and he claimed he'd had no idea

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Speaker 2: the list would be used in any murders. Within hours

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Speaker 2: of Hani's murder, Nelson Mandela gave a televised address urging.

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Speaker 1: Con Chris Haney chanponder the cause of peace, judging to

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Speaker 1: every corner of South Africa, calling for a spirit of

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Speaker 1: tolerance among all our people, a nation in mourning, how

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Speaker 1: our pain and anger is rare, Yet we must not

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Speaker 1: permit ourselves to be provoked by those who said to

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Speaker 1: deny us, they're very fatal. Chris Hanne gave his life.

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Speaker 2: For Hani's murder didn't have the desired effect. It didn't

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Speaker 2: provoke violent reprisals from anti apartheid groups. It didn't disrupt

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Speaker 2: the ongoing negotiations. It didn't make the African National Congress

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Speaker 2: less willing to compromise during those negotiations. If anything, it

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Speaker 2: had the opposite effect. Mendela's public addresses in the days

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Speaker 2: that followed were calm, reasonable and committed to peace, and

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Speaker 2: the ruling National Party had nothing to celebrate in Hani's

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Speaker 2: death either. It only served to demonstrate the extreme right

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Speaker 2: wing's willingness to disrupt the process by any means necessary.

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Speaker 2: They understood that they were just as likely to find

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Speaker 2: themselves in a Nazi's crosshairs as the men on the

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Speaker 2: other side of the negotiating table. It wasn't long after

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Speaker 2: Hani's murder that it was announced that they'd set a

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Speaker 2: date the elections would go forward, taking place in April

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Speaker 2: of nineteen ninety four. In June of nineteen ninety three,

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Speaker 2: around the time the election date was announced, negotiations about

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Speaker 2: what that government would look like were still ongoing, and

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Speaker 2: they were held at the Kempton Park World Trade Center.

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Speaker 2: On June twenty fifth, nineteen ninety three, thousands of armed

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Speaker 2: africaner nationalists showed up outside the World Trade Center. A

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Speaker 2: newly formed africannor Folks Front, an umbrella organization of right

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Speaker 2: wing groups, staged a protest outside earlier in the morning,

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Speaker 2: grassing delegates as they arrived. As the day wore on,

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Speaker 2: the crowd began to grow restless, particularly among the ranks

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Speaker 2: of the AWB. On orders from Eugene Tareblanche, an AWB

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Speaker 2: member drove an armored car through the front of the

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Speaker 2: building and the crowd easily overcame the police and swarmed inside.

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Speaker 5: All of a sudden, I saw the security people running out,

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Speaker 5: and I said, what's up, And they said they've broken

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Speaker 5: through and thy coming. And then my own security man

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Speaker 5: simply grabbed hold of me and ran.

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Speaker 6: Pandemonium just broke out in the entire building. Many people

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Speaker 6: on the AMC side from the government side all huddled

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Speaker 6: into the government offices.

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Speaker 2: Officials on both sides of the negotiating table fled, fearing

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Speaker 2: they'd be shot and killed by the armed men. For

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Speaker 2: two hours, the AWB occupied the World Trade Center smashing

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Speaker 2: windows and furniture. They took over the conference room where

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Speaker 2: the negotiations had been going on and spray painted separate

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Speaker 2: as slogans on the walls.

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Speaker 3: Now, the only.

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Speaker 2: Photos I have that I know are of Monica Huggett

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Speaker 2: were taken in twenty twelve, and she was nearly seventy

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Speaker 2: years old then, so it was impossible for me to

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Speaker 2: try to find her in old photos. But I do

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Speaker 2: know she was there. She said so herself in this

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Speaker 2: wistful reminiscence about that day in an interview she did

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Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen.

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Speaker 7: They did the negotiations at the World Trade Center at

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Speaker 7: the airport in Jinaslook, it's not far from where I live,

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Speaker 7: and we went there one day when the awb AT

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Speaker 7: made a sort of a ponsard argon and went through

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Speaker 7: the glass, they really smashed the glass. Oh my goodness,

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Speaker 7: it just came down like diamonds. And then there we

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Speaker 7: were about maybe two thousand and three thousand people they're protesting.

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Speaker 2: There's quite a bit of actual video of this event,

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Speaker 2: and it looks really familiar. It looks unsettlingly like footage

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Speaker 2: of the protesters storming the congressional chambers at the US

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Speaker 2: Capitol on January sixth, and I don't just mean visually,

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Speaker 2: although the visual similarities are striking, but there's that same

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Speaker 2: sort of unnerving mix of bloodlust and light hearted adventurism.

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Speaker 2: In both cases. There were reports of protesters pissing and

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Speaker 2: shitting on office furniture and on the floors. And some

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Speaker 2: of the protesters just look like they're along for the ride,

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Speaker 2: they're just enjoying the chaos. They're just smashing things and

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Speaker 2: wandering around. But there are also clear leaders and more

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Speaker 2: militant elements that are obviously focused on a mission. History

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Speaker 2: really does rhyme, I guess. But just like the assassination

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Speaker 2: of Chris Hani, this attempt to derail the negotiations backfired badly.

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Speaker 2: Here's a and C negotiator and present day South African

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Speaker 2: President Cyril Ramaposa in an interview in nineteen ninety five.

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Speaker 6: I was able to discuss the events with some of

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Speaker 6: them National Party ministers, and they, in the end, I think,

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Speaker 6: drove them more and more away from having any form

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Speaker 6: of understanding or even sympathy with the right wingers.

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Speaker 2: This kind of stunt only made the far right look

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Speaker 2: more unreasonable, more unstable, and less viable as any kind

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Speaker 2: of political partner. The adults were at the negotiating table,

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Speaker 2: and these hooligans were driving trucks through windows and pissing

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Speaker 2: on the floor. Any remaining hope of effectively disrupting the

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Speaker 2: political process was fading quickly, and while opinions on the

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Speaker 2: extreme right varied widely as to what the most effective

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Speaker 2: course of action might be, most extremists had their sights

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Speaker 2: set on a folk shot a white South African state.

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Speaker 2: If they couldn't stop what was coming for the nation

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Speaker 2: of Some Africa, they'd have to find a way to

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Speaker 2: secure a nation of their own, and to do that well,

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Speaker 2: they'd need an army. Something very strange happened in March

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Speaker 2: of nineteen ninety four, a white Africaner nationalist militia took

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Speaker 2: up arms to keep a black man in power.

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Speaker 3: Let's back up for a second.

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Speaker 2: This is a bit of history I was admittedly unfamiliar with,

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Speaker 2: so maybe you'd also benefit from a brief explanation of

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Speaker 2: apartheid South Africa's semi sovereign Bantustans. Under apartheid, South Africa

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Speaker 2: established what they called native reserves. These were territories set

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Speaker 2: aside for the forcible resettlement of black South Africans. They

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Speaker 2: were allegedly meant to be homelands for particular ethnic groups,

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Speaker 2: So the Bantustan of Quasulu was meant for the Zulu people,

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Speaker 2: Transkay and Siskey were for the Kosa people, Bothaotswana for

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Speaker 2: the Swana people, and so on.

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Speaker 3: In practice, though, it.

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Speaker 2: Was pretty arbitrary, and more importantly, they functioned to strip

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Speaker 2: black South Africans of their citizenship. Laws passed in the

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Speaker 2: nineteen seventies designated all black South Africans as citizens only

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Speaker 2: of their homeland, that is, the Bantustan they'd been assigned to,

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Speaker 2: and not a citizen of the country of South Africa.

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Speaker 2: Of the ten Bantustans, four were recognized as independent states

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Speaker 2: by the Government of South Africa. No one else in

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Speaker 2: the world recognized these as sovereign nations, but in nineteen

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Speaker 2: ninety four, Lucas Mangope was the president of Bofu Tatswana

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Speaker 2: and he wanted to remain the president after the upcoming elections, though,

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Speaker 2: all of the Bantustans would be reincorporated into South Africa

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Speaker 2: and all South Africans black and white, would be full

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Speaker 2: citizens of the nation of South Africa. Black South Africans

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Speaker 2: were preparing to cast their ballots in a national election

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Speaker 2: for the first time, and that would mean an end

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Speaker 2: to the Mangope presidency because his country wouldn't exist anymore.

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Speaker 2: In early March of nineteen ninety four, Mangope announced that

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Speaker 2: both with Tatswana were BOP for short. That's not just

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Speaker 2: me shortening it, that is apparently what people call it.

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Speaker 2: But he announced that Bob would not be participating in

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Speaker 2: the election at all. But with the potential disestablishment of

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Speaker 2: their country on the horizon, civil servants wanted assurances that

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Speaker 2: their pensions would be paid, and the president ignored them.

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Speaker 2: Strikes and civil unrest quickly devolved in to a bit

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Speaker 2: of a situation when the police joined the protest. This

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Speaker 2: is an incredibly strange bit of history, and I'm speeding

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Speaker 2: through it here because we've got other places to go today.

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Speaker 2: But if you're interested in a bit more about the

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Speaker 2: bouf U Tatswana crisis, the podcast Lions Led by Donkeys

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Speaker 2: did an episode about it in December of twenty twenty one,

433
00:30:25,440 --> 00:30:31,640
Speaker 2: and it's a fun listen. Mengobe was no stranger to unrest.

434
00:30:32,720 --> 00:30:36,400
Speaker 2: This wasn't even his first coup. He'd put down an

435
00:30:36,400 --> 00:30:39,400
Speaker 2: attempted coup in nineteen ninety, and he was briefly deposed

436
00:30:39,440 --> 00:30:43,080
Speaker 2: by his own military in nineteen eighty eight, but the

437
00:30:43,120 --> 00:30:47,360
Speaker 2: South African government intervened, sending in troops to restore him

438
00:30:47,360 --> 00:30:51,960
Speaker 2: to power. This time, though it wasn't the South African

439
00:30:52,000 --> 00:30:55,720
Speaker 2: government he turned to for help. It was a man

440
00:30:55,800 --> 00:31:01,640
Speaker 2: named Constant Villiun. Villiune had retired as a general nearly

441
00:31:01,680 --> 00:31:05,280
Speaker 2: a decade earlier, and in nineteen ninety three he and

442
00:31:05,400 --> 00:31:09,560
Speaker 2: three other retired generals formed the Africaner Folks Front, an

443
00:31:09,600 --> 00:31:13,080
Speaker 2: attempt to unite the disparate elements of the white extreme

444
00:31:13,160 --> 00:31:18,480
Speaker 2: right wing. As a former general, Villiune was confident that

445
00:31:18,560 --> 00:31:21,320
Speaker 2: if he ever went to war, a good chunk of

446
00:31:21,360 --> 00:31:22,760
Speaker 2: the military would follow him.

447
00:31:25,160 --> 00:31:28,520
Speaker 8: I also had forces available, I would say from what

448
00:31:28,560 --> 00:31:30,880
Speaker 8: would split off from the Defense Force, Because had I

449
00:31:31,160 --> 00:31:33,920
Speaker 8: really taken a military action, there was a real danger

450
00:31:33,920 --> 00:31:37,000
Speaker 8: of polarization within the Defense Force. It would certainly have

451
00:31:37,080 --> 00:31:40,320
Speaker 8: been a substantial number of people that would have split

452
00:31:40,400 --> 00:31:43,880
Speaker 8: it from the Defense Force and would have joined me

453
00:31:44,080 --> 00:31:47,400
Speaker 8: in fighting for the liberation of the Africana people.

454
00:31:51,400 --> 00:31:54,320
Speaker 2: By nineteen ninety four, vill June claimed to have over

455
00:31:54,400 --> 00:32:00,800
Speaker 2: fifty thousand men under his command, trained paramilitaries, military reservists,

456
00:32:00,840 --> 00:32:04,840
Speaker 2: and sympathetic members of the military who would follow his orders.

457
00:32:06,240 --> 00:32:08,040
Speaker 3: It all sounds a.

458
00:32:07,920 --> 00:32:13,400
Speaker 2: Bit odd, why would africaner nationalists lift a finger to

459
00:32:13,480 --> 00:32:18,320
Speaker 2: help any black person. But it's a little more complicated

460
00:32:18,680 --> 00:32:22,960
Speaker 2: than black and white. If Bob could successfully refuse to

461
00:32:23,040 --> 00:32:26,840
Speaker 2: participate in the election, maybe other Bantustans would follow suit,

462
00:32:27,560 --> 00:32:32,440
Speaker 2: making the election less legitimate and weakening the state. And

463
00:32:32,560 --> 00:32:36,320
Speaker 2: if this African or militia could keep Mangope in power,

464
00:32:37,160 --> 00:32:40,360
Speaker 2: they would have access to land and weapons in a

465
00:32:40,480 --> 00:32:45,120
Speaker 2: sovereign nation within South Africa's borders. It could be a

466
00:32:45,160 --> 00:32:49,760
Speaker 2: stronghold from which to launch more attacks. And perhaps they

467
00:32:49,800 --> 00:32:53,000
Speaker 2: hoped to eventually negotiate with Mangope for a bit of

468
00:32:53,080 --> 00:32:56,760
Speaker 2: land of their own within his territory so they could

469
00:32:56,760 --> 00:33:01,920
Speaker 2: start their own white ethno state. But perhaps most importantly,

470
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:07,480
Speaker 2: Villiun was taking a calculated risk. If his Folks Front

471
00:33:07,520 --> 00:33:12,160
Speaker 2: militia came to Mangope's aid, the South African government might

472
00:33:12,240 --> 00:33:14,200
Speaker 2: send in the military to restore order.

473
00:33:15,680 --> 00:33:16,240
Speaker 3: And there was a.

474
00:33:16,240 --> 00:33:21,080
Speaker 2: Widespread belief on the right and a profound fear within

475
00:33:21,160 --> 00:33:26,520
Speaker 2: the government that the military would refuse those orders that

476
00:33:26,600 --> 00:33:31,640
Speaker 2: they would not fire on a white militia. If the

477
00:33:31,640 --> 00:33:35,800
Speaker 2: military were to refuse those orders, it would embold in

478
00:33:35,920 --> 00:33:39,360
Speaker 2: white right wingers around the country to take up arms.

479
00:33:39,920 --> 00:33:44,080
Speaker 2: After all, who was going to stop them? And if

480
00:33:44,120 --> 00:33:48,560
Speaker 2: the military refused orders to fire on his militia, villiun

481
00:33:48,680 --> 00:33:53,200
Speaker 2: could potentially take control of a significant portion of the military,

482
00:33:53,320 --> 00:33:57,360
Speaker 2: and maybe they could topple the entire government. Here is

483
00:33:57,440 --> 00:34:01,160
Speaker 2: South African Communist Party chair and a ands negotiator, Joe

484
00:34:01,160 --> 00:34:02,960
Speaker 2: Slovo describing that fear.

485
00:34:05,840 --> 00:34:09,120
Speaker 9: Some of my colleagues and I feared very much that

486
00:34:09,680 --> 00:34:13,920
Speaker 9: the echelons of the army might see this as the

487
00:34:13,960 --> 00:34:19,800
Speaker 9: opportunity to try to prevent the transformation. We weren't certain

488
00:34:20,120 --> 00:34:25,480
Speaker 9: of the degree of loyalty that we could attract from

489
00:34:25,520 --> 00:34:29,600
Speaker 9: the upper echelons of the army.

490
00:34:30,520 --> 00:34:33,520
Speaker 2: So in March of nineteen ninety four, the government took

491
00:34:33,520 --> 00:34:37,120
Speaker 2: a sort of wait and see approach to the whole

492
00:34:37,160 --> 00:34:41,319
Speaker 2: affair and bop. They couldn't risk a massed affection within

493
00:34:41,360 --> 00:34:46,680
Speaker 2: the military. And maybe things would have been different if

494
00:34:46,719 --> 00:34:49,720
Speaker 2: Eugene tare Blanche was more of a team player.

495
00:34:50,719 --> 00:34:51,279
Speaker 3: We'll never know.

496
00:34:53,120 --> 00:34:58,839
Speaker 2: When the dust finally settled, everyone else involved agreed that

497
00:34:58,920 --> 00:35:02,480
Speaker 2: no one had in Eugene terre Blanche to the Autogo Pey,

498
00:35:03,840 --> 00:35:07,359
Speaker 2: but the AWB refused to be left out, and they

499
00:35:07,360 --> 00:35:10,920
Speaker 2: showed up anyway. Terre Blanche had put out a call

500
00:35:11,160 --> 00:35:16,080
Speaker 2: to AWB members in an address on Radio Pretoria, that

501
00:35:16,280 --> 00:35:19,440
Speaker 2: pirate radio station where our German mercenaries had been assigned

502
00:35:19,440 --> 00:35:25,200
Speaker 2: card duty. On March eleventh, nineteen ninety four, Eugene terre

503
00:35:25,239 --> 00:35:27,920
Speaker 2: Blanche and a few hundred men under his command arrived

504
00:35:27,920 --> 00:35:33,240
Speaker 2: in Bob Jack Turner, leader of the soldiers loyal to Mangope,

505
00:35:33,960 --> 00:35:39,680
Speaker 2: did not want AWB there. Their reputation for uncontrollable racist

506
00:35:39,719 --> 00:35:43,080
Speaker 2: violence preceded them, and Turner was worried that the black

507
00:35:43,120 --> 00:35:46,400
Speaker 2: soldiers under his command would panic at the sight of

508
00:35:46,480 --> 00:35:52,600
Speaker 2: terre Blanche's neo Nazis. What they actually did, though, was mutiny.

509
00:35:55,520 --> 00:35:59,120
Speaker 10: When my own troops heard that some of the weapons

510
00:36:00,080 --> 00:36:05,200
Speaker 10: were being earmarked for the Folks Front, they didn't like

511
00:36:05,239 --> 00:36:08,760
Speaker 10: it very much. In extual fact, they refused to load

512
00:36:08,800 --> 00:36:12,440
Speaker 10: any weapons onto vehicles and that that any of the

513
00:36:13,200 --> 00:36:15,879
Speaker 10: weapons were to be given to the folks flow.

514
00:36:19,640 --> 00:36:22,239
Speaker 2: When the BOP soldiers saw AWB men were part of

515
00:36:22,239 --> 00:36:27,279
Speaker 2: the Folks front contingent, they refused. They refused to participate.

516
00:36:28,360 --> 00:36:32,520
Speaker 2: They wouldn't arm any of the white paramilitary men AWB

517
00:36:32,800 --> 00:36:37,160
Speaker 2: or otherwise, and maybe they would have happily collaborated with

518
00:36:37,880 --> 00:36:42,400
Speaker 2: just the folks front, But when AWB arrived, they no

519
00:36:42,480 --> 00:36:46,640
Speaker 2: longer made any distinction between the two. Anyone willing to

520
00:36:46,680 --> 00:36:50,239
Speaker 2: stand with AWB was just as bad as they were,

521
00:36:50,840 --> 00:36:52,879
Speaker 2: and the BOP soldiers wouldn't have any part in it.

522
00:36:54,440 --> 00:36:57,719
Speaker 2: When the soldiers threatened to attack the AWB men if

523
00:36:57,719 --> 00:37:03,000
Speaker 2: they didn't leave, terre Blanche's convoy begrudgingly packed up and

524
00:37:03,080 --> 00:37:07,320
Speaker 2: started to leave. On the way out of town, though,

525
00:37:08,400 --> 00:37:13,120
Speaker 2: they started shooting black civilians at random. As the convoy

526
00:37:13,239 --> 00:37:16,600
Speaker 2: rolled through a town, picking off passers by from their

527
00:37:16,640 --> 00:37:23,080
Speaker 2: car windows, an angry mob formed blocking their path. One

528
00:37:23,080 --> 00:37:26,279
Speaker 2: of the AWB vehicles fired into the crowd, and that

529
00:37:26,360 --> 00:37:30,520
Speaker 2: sent everyone running, and this was the last straw for

530
00:37:30,600 --> 00:37:36,120
Speaker 2: the police. These neo Nazis had felt quite brave when

531
00:37:36,160 --> 00:37:39,680
Speaker 2: they were shooting at unarmed civilians, but it was a

532
00:37:39,760 --> 00:37:43,560
Speaker 2: very different story when someone in an armored vehicle started

533
00:37:43,560 --> 00:37:49,239
Speaker 2: shooting back. Several people in the convoy were hit, but

534
00:37:49,280 --> 00:37:54,880
Speaker 2: they all managed to escape, except the last car. At

535
00:37:54,920 --> 00:37:57,040
Speaker 2: the very end of the line, the driver of a

536
00:37:57,040 --> 00:38:01,040
Speaker 2: blue Mercedes was shot and killed, leaving his passengers two

537
00:38:01,080 --> 00:38:09,080
Speaker 2: other AWB members stranded. The video of this moment is surreal.

538
00:38:10,239 --> 00:38:13,440
Speaker 2: I mean, it's bizarre that there's even video of this

539
00:38:13,560 --> 00:38:17,640
Speaker 2: moment to watch. And it shows three men in their

540
00:38:17,719 --> 00:38:20,600
Speaker 2: khaki uniforms and they've sort of spilled out of this

541
00:38:20,680 --> 00:38:24,520
Speaker 2: bloo Mercedes and they're lying on the ground and one

542
00:38:24,520 --> 00:38:28,200
Speaker 2: of them appears to be already dead, and the other

543
00:38:28,280 --> 00:38:34,480
Speaker 2: two are wounded, lying on the ground, surrounded by photojournalists

544
00:38:34,520 --> 00:38:42,280
Speaker 2: snapping Pictures's.

545
00:38:38,719 --> 00:38:44,560
Speaker 8: Just get us some outplines, please, he's just wounded.

546
00:38:45,600 --> 00:38:46,640
Speaker 11: Are you finished with your.

547
00:38:51,000 --> 00:38:53,480
Speaker 10: We need the ambulance guy that's wounded.

548
00:38:57,040 --> 00:39:02,239
Speaker 2: They're just lying there in the dirt, bleeding, and reporters

549
00:39:02,280 --> 00:39:07,080
Speaker 2: are asking them questions. One reporter asked them if they're

550
00:39:07,120 --> 00:39:10,480
Speaker 2: members of a w B, and one of the bleeding

551
00:39:10,520 --> 00:39:17,520
Speaker 2: men says yes, and then, with the journalist's cameras still rolling,

552
00:39:18,760 --> 00:39:23,839
Speaker 2: Abot police officer calmly walked over and shot all three

553
00:39:23,880 --> 00:39:30,720
Speaker 2: men at point blank range. That officer, un Vlamitza Bernstein Mignazzo,

554
00:39:31,160 --> 00:39:35,040
Speaker 2: would eventually be granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

555
00:39:36,600 --> 00:39:38,959
Speaker 2: When he appeared before the Commission in nineteen ninety eight,

556
00:39:39,719 --> 00:39:45,720
Speaker 2: Eugene Terreblanche himself cross examined him about the incident. After

557
00:39:45,760 --> 00:39:49,880
Speaker 2: some extensive back and forth, with terre Blanche really taking

558
00:39:49,880 --> 00:39:53,920
Speaker 2: advantage of this opportunity to spin his version of events,

559
00:39:54,440 --> 00:39:58,880
Speaker 2: Manatto again explained that he shot those men because he

560
00:39:58,920 --> 00:40:04,640
Speaker 2: had witnessed them shooting civilians, saying, quote, it was quite

561
00:40:04,680 --> 00:40:07,840
Speaker 2: clear that the killings were going to continue, and I

562
00:40:07,960 --> 00:40:10,800
Speaker 2: decided that rather than to leave those people to destroy

563
00:40:10,840 --> 00:40:14,080
Speaker 2: the black people who won't do me any good, but

564
00:40:14,120 --> 00:40:17,960
Speaker 2: the only alternative is to do away with them, and

565
00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:22,360
Speaker 2: that is exactly what I did. Within hours of the

566
00:40:22,360 --> 00:40:25,279
Speaker 2: shooting at the convoy, the BOP soldiers had run the

567
00:40:25,440 --> 00:40:29,319
Speaker 2: entire folks front out, and once all the white paramilitary

568
00:40:29,360 --> 00:40:33,560
Speaker 2: forces had withdrawn, the South African Defense Forces moved in

569
00:40:34,400 --> 00:40:38,360
Speaker 2: and the mutinying soldiers quickly surrendered and Mengobe was removed

570
00:40:38,360 --> 00:40:43,200
Speaker 2: from power. The government of Bofu Tatswana was dissolved by

571
00:40:43,239 --> 00:40:48,160
Speaker 2: the end of the day. The whole disastrous affair was

572
00:40:48,200 --> 00:40:51,799
Speaker 2: the end of Constant Villyun's dreams of a Boor folkstot

573
00:40:52,920 --> 00:40:55,840
Speaker 2: as the leader of the Afrikaner Folksfront. He'd been loudly

574
00:40:55,880 --> 00:40:59,719
Speaker 2: calling for a boycott of the elections. The day after

575
00:40:59,760 --> 00:41:02,960
Speaker 2: his troops were run out of Bob, he announced that

576
00:41:03,400 --> 00:41:06,600
Speaker 2: not only was he no longer opposing the election, he

577
00:41:06,680 --> 00:41:10,439
Speaker 2: had in fact decided to run in the election under

578
00:41:10,480 --> 00:41:14,279
Speaker 2: the banner of his newly formed Freedom Front Party, a

579
00:41:14,480 --> 00:41:21,879
Speaker 2: conservative party representing white interests. So this is the context

580
00:41:22,120 --> 00:41:26,520
Speaker 2: the subject of our story finds herself in Monica. Hugget

581
00:41:26,680 --> 00:41:29,840
Speaker 2: was hosting these German mercenaries in her home as a

582
00:41:29,880 --> 00:41:33,080
Speaker 2: part of this larger effort to disrupt the upcoming election,

583
00:41:34,880 --> 00:41:37,719
Speaker 2: and with the failure in Bob, the Folks Front not

584
00:41:37,760 --> 00:41:42,080
Speaker 2: only lost its leader when Villeyun abandoned the plan, but

585
00:41:42,120 --> 00:41:46,560
Speaker 2: they'd suffered a pretty serious blow to morale. Seeing your

586
00:41:46,800 --> 00:41:49,800
Speaker 2: brothers in arms shot like stray dogs in the street

587
00:41:49,840 --> 00:41:53,200
Speaker 2: on the evening news might lead you to ask yourself

588
00:41:53,239 --> 00:41:55,920
Speaker 2: some hard questions about your commitment and to the cause.

589
00:41:58,160 --> 00:42:02,080
Speaker 2: Those three AWB members were shot on March eleventh. On

590
00:42:02,120 --> 00:42:05,320
Speaker 2: March twelfth, Constantin Villyun announced that he was on board

591
00:42:05,320 --> 00:42:08,360
Speaker 2: with the elections and was in fact running for office,

592
00:42:09,920 --> 00:42:15,480
Speaker 2: and on Monday, March fourteenth, nineteen ninety four, three German

593
00:42:15,520 --> 00:42:19,680
Speaker 2: mercenaries opened fire on South African police officers in Tyerport,

594
00:42:20,480 --> 00:42:28,160
Speaker 2: outside of Pretoria. Exactly what happened is impossible to say.

595
00:42:28,680 --> 00:42:33,520
Speaker 2: Even reporting from the time just isn't consistent. Some reports

596
00:42:33,560 --> 00:42:37,400
Speaker 2: say police simply happened to notice several men in combat

597
00:42:37,400 --> 00:42:39,960
Speaker 2: fatigues in a car and tried to pull them over.

598
00:42:41,680 --> 00:42:45,400
Speaker 2: Other reports say the men intentionally led officers into a trap,

599
00:42:47,360 --> 00:42:51,760
Speaker 2: but either way, at some point those Germans started firing

600
00:42:51,840 --> 00:42:56,240
Speaker 2: their AK forty sevens at the two police officers, wounding

601
00:42:56,400 --> 00:43:01,040
Speaker 2: but not killing them. When the shooting stopped, police found

602
00:43:01,040 --> 00:43:04,440
Speaker 2: the body of Thomas Konst in the brush nearby. He

603
00:43:04,520 --> 00:43:06,600
Speaker 2: had a pair of night vision goggles on and several

604
00:43:06,719 --> 00:43:11,359
Speaker 2: hundred rounds of ammunitions trapped to his body. Stephen Rays

605
00:43:11,440 --> 00:43:17,040
Speaker 2: was apprehended alive. The third man, Horse Cleans, managed to

606
00:43:17,080 --> 00:43:20,520
Speaker 2: flee the scene, but he was arrested several days later,

607
00:43:20,560 --> 00:43:26,080
Speaker 2: along with a fourth mercenary, Alexander Nydline. That much we

608
00:43:26,160 --> 00:43:31,400
Speaker 2: know for sure, Thomas Coonst died, Stephen Rays was arrested

609
00:43:31,440 --> 00:43:35,360
Speaker 2: that night, and Klen's and Nydeline were picked up that weekend.

610
00:43:37,000 --> 00:43:41,400
Speaker 2: Everything else is a little bit Fuzzy. In the last episode,

611
00:43:41,440 --> 00:43:43,640
Speaker 2: I mentioned that Monica Huggett was in charge of picking

612
00:43:43,640 --> 00:43:46,960
Speaker 2: the mercenaries up from the airport. She was the first

613
00:43:47,000 --> 00:43:50,759
Speaker 2: point of contact for each batch of foreign fighters. When

614
00:43:50,840 --> 00:43:53,960
Speaker 2: Raised Nydeline and Coons arrived in South Africa in January

615
00:43:54,000 --> 00:43:56,520
Speaker 2: of nineteen ninety four, she set them up with their

616
00:43:56,560 --> 00:43:59,839
Speaker 2: first assignment, serving as armed guards for the right wing

617
00:44:00,080 --> 00:44:07,280
Speaker 2: pirate radio station Radio Pretorio. Now this is absolutely.

618
00:44:06,680 --> 00:44:07,600
Speaker 3: Just me spitballing.

619
00:44:08,040 --> 00:44:11,560
Speaker 2: I'm just guessing here, but I have to wonder if

620
00:44:11,560 --> 00:44:16,400
Speaker 2: this confrontation had something to do with the radio station. Remember,

621
00:44:17,080 --> 00:44:20,400
Speaker 2: this shootout is happening just days after the internationally televised

622
00:44:20,480 --> 00:44:23,959
Speaker 2: violence in bob and when Eugene terre Blanche was trying

623
00:44:23,960 --> 00:44:26,720
Speaker 2: to recruit ADVB members to go there in the first place,

624
00:44:27,680 --> 00:44:32,960
Speaker 2: he made the announcement on Radio Pretoria. The radio station

625
00:44:33,040 --> 00:44:35,600
Speaker 2: isn't mentioned in any of the reporting about the shootout,

626
00:44:35,640 --> 00:44:39,680
Speaker 2: but I wonder if this alleged trap they led police

627
00:44:39,680 --> 00:44:43,840
Speaker 2: into was connected to their job protecting the station, or

628
00:44:43,920 --> 00:44:47,200
Speaker 2: if police were patrolling the area near the station specifically

629
00:44:47,200 --> 00:44:51,080
Speaker 2: because of the recent events in Bop. Maybe they expected

630
00:44:51,120 --> 00:44:53,920
Speaker 2: tare Blanche to show back up and announce a new

631
00:44:53,920 --> 00:44:59,719
Speaker 2: hair brain scheme. An article published in a Berlin newspaper

632
00:44:59,719 --> 00:45:03,760
Speaker 2: that month, though, says that they'd grown bored of standing

633
00:45:03,800 --> 00:45:07,160
Speaker 2: around guarding the station and had struck off on their own.

634
00:45:08,920 --> 00:45:11,440
Speaker 2: Maybe they saw footage of civilians being shot by the

635
00:45:11,480 --> 00:45:16,799
Speaker 2: AWB convoy and instead of feeling disgusted, they felt left

636
00:45:16,840 --> 00:45:20,960
Speaker 2: out and they wanted to find their own adventure. I

637
00:45:20,960 --> 00:45:25,560
Speaker 2: guess we can't really know. I have a lot of

638
00:45:25,719 --> 00:45:30,720
Speaker 2: unanswered questions about this incident, but one of them stands

639
00:45:30,760 --> 00:45:35,239
Speaker 2: out above the rest. When doctors removed the bullets that

640
00:45:35,320 --> 00:45:39,960
Speaker 2: had struck those police officers, one of them didn't match.

641
00:45:41,120 --> 00:45:45,319
Speaker 2: It hadn't come from any of our German mercenaries. That

642
00:45:45,400 --> 00:45:51,480
Speaker 2: bullet had been fired by. Eugene d'coc. Decoc was a

643
00:45:51,520 --> 00:45:54,680
Speaker 2: death squad leader. He had been a colonel in the

644
00:45:54,719 --> 00:45:57,760
Speaker 2: South African Police Force, but he was relieved of duty

645
00:45:57,760 --> 00:46:00,560
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety three as part of the National Party's

646
00:46:00,640 --> 00:46:04,720
Speaker 2: last ditch efforts at damage control after public revelations about

647
00:46:04,719 --> 00:46:09,879
Speaker 2: state sponsored terror. As the commander of the Counterinsurgency Unit

648
00:46:10,239 --> 00:46:17,120
Speaker 2: C ten, Decoq oversaw the kidnapping, torture and murder of

649
00:46:17,200 --> 00:46:22,480
Speaker 2: countless anti apartheid activists. Later testimony before the Truth and

650
00:46:22,520 --> 00:46:27,560
Speaker 2: Reconciliation Commission would connect Dacoq's C ten unit to the

651
00:46:27,640 --> 00:46:32,360
Speaker 2: violent attacks in Namibia in nineteen eighty nine, the ones

652
00:46:32,360 --> 00:46:38,120
Speaker 2: intended to undermine Namibian independence. After his bullet was discovered

653
00:46:38,120 --> 00:46:42,719
Speaker 2: inside that policeman in nineteen ninety four, a police spokesman said, quote,

654
00:46:43,360 --> 00:46:46,279
Speaker 2: he told investigators he was on a neighboring property when

655
00:46:46,280 --> 00:46:49,960
Speaker 2: he heard shooting. Fearing for his life, he fired in

656
00:46:50,000 --> 00:46:54,040
Speaker 2: the general direction of the muzzle fire. I know it's

657
00:46:54,719 --> 00:46:57,799
Speaker 2: a mess of a story, but that bit about Namibia

658
00:46:58,920 --> 00:47:02,680
Speaker 2: might be jumping out at you. Those violent attacks in

659
00:47:02,719 --> 00:47:08,000
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine intended to undermine Namibian independence. Two weeks

660
00:47:08,000 --> 00:47:10,560
Speaker 2: ago we discussed one of those attacks in great detail,

661
00:47:11,360 --> 00:47:14,920
Speaker 2: the murder of a UN security guard in aut Yo.

662
00:47:15,200 --> 00:47:18,680
Speaker 2: That operation was later revealed to have been funded by

663
00:47:18,719 --> 00:47:22,120
Speaker 2: the South African government, But one of the men who

664
00:47:22,200 --> 00:47:26,000
Speaker 2: actually threw a grenade at the UN office was German

665
00:47:26,040 --> 00:47:31,239
Speaker 2: mercenary horse to cleanse. So what are the odds that

666
00:47:31,320 --> 00:47:35,799
Speaker 2: two men who'd participated in the same state backed terrorism

667
00:47:35,960 --> 00:47:41,400
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty nine would just completely accidentally cross paths

668
00:47:41,440 --> 00:47:45,120
Speaker 2: again five years later? While one of them was in

669
00:47:45,160 --> 00:47:49,520
Speaker 2: the middle of a shootout with the police. It's possible

670
00:47:49,560 --> 00:47:52,359
Speaker 2: that the answers are buried somewhere in the case file

671
00:47:52,440 --> 00:47:57,160
Speaker 2: for Decoc's later conviction for crimes against humanity, but a

672
00:47:57,200 --> 00:48:13,200
Speaker 2: quick search didn't seem promising a coincidence for the ages. Maybe,

673
00:48:16,040 --> 00:48:20,200
Speaker 2: but back to our Germans. A later report in Searchlight

674
00:48:20,239 --> 00:48:23,960
Speaker 2: magazine says that after they were arrested, one of the

675
00:48:24,000 --> 00:48:28,080
Speaker 2: Germans talked, telling police that it had been Monica Huggett

676
00:48:28,280 --> 00:48:32,120
Speaker 2: who'd introduced them to Klent's, and based on the timeline

677
00:48:32,160 --> 00:48:33,960
Speaker 2: of events and the fact that one of them was

678
00:48:33,960 --> 00:48:37,160
Speaker 2: already dead, it had to have been Stephen Ray's who

679
00:48:37,200 --> 00:48:41,200
Speaker 2: ratted Monica out. Nideline and Cleanse weren't taken into custody

680
00:48:41,280 --> 00:48:44,399
Speaker 2: until Sunday, and Monica had already been arrested by then.

681
00:48:46,080 --> 00:48:49,120
Speaker 2: When the next round of mercenaries arrived from Europe just

682
00:48:49,160 --> 00:48:52,239
Speaker 2: a few days after the shootout, there was no one

683
00:48:52,280 --> 00:48:56,600
Speaker 2: waiting for them at the airport. Ronald Douster, Ralph Morajaz,

684
00:48:56,680 --> 00:48:59,600
Speaker 2: and falk Zemeng waited at the airport for nearly an

685
00:48:59,640 --> 00:49:02,600
Speaker 2: hour before they tried calling the number they'd been given

686
00:49:02,640 --> 00:49:07,160
Speaker 2: by their European contacts at Monica Hugget's house. A woman

687
00:49:07,239 --> 00:49:10,799
Speaker 2: answered and told them she had no idea where Monica was,

688
00:49:11,600 --> 00:49:13,319
Speaker 2: but she gave them the address so they could take

689
00:49:13,360 --> 00:49:14,440
Speaker 2: a taxi and wait for her.

690
00:49:14,480 --> 00:49:14,680
Speaker 7: There.

691
00:49:16,360 --> 00:49:18,319
Speaker 2: They were sitting in Monica's living room when they found

692
00:49:18,360 --> 00:49:22,560
Speaker 2: out she'd been arrested on a weapons charge. So she

693
00:49:22,680 --> 00:49:27,000
Speaker 2: was certainly in police custody on March seventeenth, nineteen ninety four,

694
00:49:28,120 --> 00:49:32,600
Speaker 2: but she pretty quickly made bail. An Associated Press report

695
00:49:32,600 --> 00:49:35,800
Speaker 2: published a week after the incident quotes from a German

696
00:49:35,840 --> 00:49:41,799
Speaker 2: television news broadcast. I searched desperately for actual video of

697
00:49:41,840 --> 00:49:45,880
Speaker 2: this segment, but to no avail. I did find a

698
00:49:45,920 --> 00:49:49,640
Speaker 2: copy of the TV guide for ard that German TV

699
00:49:49,719 --> 00:49:53,319
Speaker 2: network for this date, March twenty second, nineteen ninety four,

700
00:49:54,280 --> 00:49:57,920
Speaker 2: But unfortunately, it does us absolutely no good to know

701
00:49:58,040 --> 00:50:02,080
Speaker 2: that this segment probably air after a German dubbed rerun

702
00:50:02,640 --> 00:50:07,480
Speaker 2: of the American police drama Lady Blue. But the AP

703
00:50:07,640 --> 00:50:12,240
Speaker 2: write up says an anonymous South African woman with knowledge

704
00:50:12,280 --> 00:50:17,160
Speaker 2: of the German mercenary cell appeared on the broadcast, and

705
00:50:17,200 --> 00:50:19,799
Speaker 2: the woman said that Horst Glens had stayed in her

706
00:50:19,840 --> 00:50:22,719
Speaker 2: home for some time and that the group he was

707
00:50:22,800 --> 00:50:30,600
Speaker 2: operating with had come to South Africa to assassinate Nelson Mandela.

708
00:50:31,120 --> 00:50:33,759
Speaker 2: Reporting from the same time period in the Johannesburg City

709
00:50:33,800 --> 00:50:37,160
Speaker 2: Press says that upon arrival in the country, the German

710
00:50:37,200 --> 00:50:42,319
Speaker 2: mercenary stay in a private home in Kempton Park, where

711
00:50:42,320 --> 00:50:45,040
Speaker 2: they were given money and documents before being dispatched to

712
00:50:45,080 --> 00:50:49,880
Speaker 2: their assignments. Given that we know for certain that Monica's

713
00:50:49,920 --> 00:50:54,319
Speaker 2: Kempton Park home was Douyster's destination, it seems likely that

714
00:50:54,360 --> 00:50:59,600
Speaker 2: she is this unnamed woman from Kempton Park. With the

715
00:50:59,640 --> 00:51:05,520
Speaker 2: election just weeks away, the plan was unraveling. Our Dutch mercenary,

716
00:51:05,600 --> 00:51:09,160
Speaker 2: Ronald Douster was unable to make contact with Monica Huggett.

717
00:51:10,360 --> 00:51:13,680
Speaker 2: He was redirected to a farm owned by another AWB member.

718
00:51:15,000 --> 00:51:18,080
Speaker 2: With his vast experience as a soldier for hire, he

719
00:51:18,160 --> 00:51:20,359
Speaker 2: was put to work teaching the group how to make

720
00:51:20,440 --> 00:51:25,239
Speaker 2: car bombs. In a later confession, Deyster explained that he

721
00:51:25,320 --> 00:51:29,080
Speaker 2: was quite good at making car bombs, having successfully detonated

722
00:51:29,160 --> 00:51:33,960
Speaker 2: several in Bosnia, but he found the whole operation here

723
00:51:34,080 --> 00:51:37,560
Speaker 2: just embarrassingly amateurish.

724
00:51:38,000 --> 00:51:38,319
Speaker 12: He said.

725
00:51:38,320 --> 00:51:42,560
Speaker 2: The people on the farm were ridiculous and pathetic and

726
00:51:42,560 --> 00:51:47,000
Speaker 2: that quote. The whole camp was in chaos. They couldn't

727
00:51:47,000 --> 00:51:50,720
Speaker 2: even source the materials he'd asked for to make nail bombs,

728
00:51:51,719 --> 00:51:54,080
Speaker 2: and the guy he was trying to explain car bombs

729
00:51:54,120 --> 00:51:57,720
Speaker 2: to didn't know anything about explosives.

730
00:51:58,719 --> 00:51:59,440
Speaker 3: He was, of.

731
00:51:59,440 --> 00:52:05,200
Speaker 2: Course personally and ideologically interested in participating in a white revolution,

732
00:52:06,680 --> 00:52:09,960
Speaker 2: but he was a career mercenary and his top priority

733
00:52:10,520 --> 00:52:16,000
Speaker 2: is always his own survival, and this obviously wasn't going

734
00:52:16,040 --> 00:52:20,360
Speaker 2: to work, so he went to the police. He was

735
00:52:20,400 --> 00:52:24,360
Speaker 2: willing to exchange information about this operation in exchange for

736
00:52:24,400 --> 00:52:28,320
Speaker 2: his own freedom, and when his information proved to be valuable,

737
00:52:29,360 --> 00:52:32,480
Speaker 2: he was hired by South African intelligence to assist them

738
00:52:32,480 --> 00:52:37,200
Speaker 2: in taking down the network. Searchlight Magazines nineteen ninety six

739
00:52:37,239 --> 00:52:41,520
Speaker 2: series of articles about this whole operation mentions only in

740
00:52:41,600 --> 00:52:44,600
Speaker 2: passing that Monica Huggett went right back to her old

741
00:52:44,600 --> 00:52:48,799
Speaker 2: ways after being released, placing more ads for soldiers in

742
00:52:48,880 --> 00:52:53,759
Speaker 2: Eastern European newspapers, But there's no date attached to that

743
00:52:53,880 --> 00:53:00,640
Speaker 2: in the article, because at some point she left. Sometime

744
00:53:00,680 --> 00:53:05,720
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety four, Monica Huggett left South Africa. Nelson

745
00:53:05,719 --> 00:53:12,319
Speaker 2: Mandela was elected president in April, apartheid was over. The

746
00:53:12,360 --> 00:53:15,560
Speaker 2: Truth and Reconciliation Commission wouldn't be formed for another year

747
00:53:15,560 --> 00:53:18,360
Speaker 2: and a half, so there was no promise of amnesty

748
00:53:18,360 --> 00:53:19,160
Speaker 2: on the table.

749
00:53:18,880 --> 00:53:19,839
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety four.

750
00:53:21,920 --> 00:53:25,800
Speaker 2: I don't know if she left to avoid prosecution, or

751
00:53:25,840 --> 00:53:28,880
Speaker 2: if she left because she couldn't bear the torment of

752
00:53:28,960 --> 00:53:34,000
Speaker 2: living in an integrated society, or for some other reason,

753
00:53:35,239 --> 00:53:36,040
Speaker 2: but she did leave.

754
00:53:39,360 --> 00:53:42,920
Speaker 12: When I tried to go over to the United States

755
00:53:42,960 --> 00:53:46,120
Speaker 12: the first time, I had to go for three interviews,

756
00:53:46,440 --> 00:53:50,600
Speaker 12: and I even knew my mother was a farmer and

757
00:53:50,920 --> 00:53:53,520
Speaker 12: asked me when I go to the States for three months,

758
00:53:53,719 --> 00:53:56,799
Speaker 12: was going to take off the cows. They asked me

759
00:53:56,840 --> 00:54:02,200
Speaker 12: that the consul not yet, so eventually I'm not going

760
00:54:02,239 --> 00:54:05,640
Speaker 12: into detail, but anyway, I got the visa and I

761
00:54:05,680 --> 00:54:09,120
Speaker 12: went to the United States in nineteen ninety four. I

762
00:54:09,239 --> 00:54:14,320
Speaker 12: came back in ninety six, and then I got married

763
00:54:14,360 --> 00:54:20,360
Speaker 12: in two thousand to an American citizen, Jimstowne.

764
00:54:21,719 --> 00:54:27,279
Speaker 2: I wish she would go into detail, how exactly did

765
00:54:27,320 --> 00:54:30,120
Speaker 2: she manage to spend two years in the United States

766
00:54:30,760 --> 00:54:34,200
Speaker 2: on a three month visa and why was she granted

767
00:54:34,200 --> 00:54:39,480
Speaker 2: a visa at all. Over the course of those three interviews.

768
00:54:40,280 --> 00:54:44,200
Speaker 2: Did they just talk about her mother's cows or did

769
00:54:44,200 --> 00:54:47,960
Speaker 2: they ask about the terrorism because they obviously knew some

770
00:54:48,120 --> 00:54:52,399
Speaker 2: information about her. If they knew about the cows, did

771
00:54:52,440 --> 00:54:54,720
Speaker 2: they ask her if she planned to visit the American

772
00:54:54,800 --> 00:54:57,799
Speaker 2: clansmen who'd sent her the bomb making manual the VIC

773
00:54:57,880 --> 00:55:00,600
Speaker 2: Commando had relied on when they made those that they

774
00:55:00,600 --> 00:55:04,560
Speaker 2: set off in Professor's offices in nineteen eighty Did they

775
00:55:04,560 --> 00:55:06,839
Speaker 2: ask her about the weapons charge she was still out

776
00:55:06,880 --> 00:55:10,200
Speaker 2: on bond for, or the dead mercenary who'd been staying

777
00:55:10,200 --> 00:55:13,879
Speaker 2: in her guest room. I really would love to know

778
00:55:14,000 --> 00:55:19,360
Speaker 2: how those interviews went, because somehow she gained legal entry

779
00:55:19,680 --> 00:55:23,840
Speaker 2: into the United States. She spent two years here on

780
00:55:23,880 --> 00:55:26,440
Speaker 2: that three month visa before returning to South Africa in

781
00:55:26,480 --> 00:55:30,680
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety six. In this hour of two thousand, she

782
00:55:30,800 --> 00:55:35,080
Speaker 2: married a retired sports broadcaster from Louisiana at a ceremony

783
00:55:35,120 --> 00:55:38,480
Speaker 2: in her hometown of Kempton Park, and the couple returned

784
00:55:38,480 --> 00:55:44,840
Speaker 2: to Mandeville, Louisiana together. I know I promised this story

785
00:55:44,960 --> 00:55:48,759
Speaker 2: was over, and it seems absolutely criminal of me to

786
00:55:48,840 --> 00:55:52,760
Speaker 2: stretch this out over so many episodes, But in my defense,

787
00:55:53,520 --> 00:55:55,360
Speaker 2: I did warn you that there might not be an

788
00:55:55,400 --> 00:55:58,520
Speaker 2: episode this week at all. I lost most of my

789
00:55:58,640 --> 00:56:01,560
Speaker 2: workdays this week cover a trial here in Charlottesville.

790
00:56:02,600 --> 00:56:03,880
Speaker 3: I'll tell you about that soon.

791
00:56:03,719 --> 00:56:07,279
Speaker 2: Too, But I don't want to rush the ending of

792
00:56:07,280 --> 00:56:10,200
Speaker 2: this story. I mean, I didn't even have time to

793
00:56:10,239 --> 00:56:13,680
Speaker 2: tell you about Monica's belief in the prophecies.

794
00:56:13,000 --> 00:56:14,920
Speaker 3: Of a long dead boor mystic.

795
00:56:16,480 --> 00:56:20,000
Speaker 2: And in the weeks I've spent putting this together, history

796
00:56:20,000 --> 00:56:24,720
Speaker 2: has marched on. It was the President's bizarre executive order

797
00:56:24,880 --> 00:56:28,400
Speaker 2: condemning South African land reform that sent me down this

798
00:56:28,440 --> 00:56:31,919
Speaker 2: path in the first place, and he's only doubled down

799
00:56:31,960 --> 00:56:36,840
Speaker 2: on his commitment to the white genocide conspiracy theory since then. No,

800
00:56:37,000 --> 00:56:40,160
Speaker 2: I think there is a whole episode's worth of story

801
00:56:40,239 --> 00:56:45,640
Speaker 2: left to tell. But if I've somehow misjudged how much

802
00:56:45,680 --> 00:56:49,080
Speaker 2: of the story is actually left, I can always feel

803
00:56:49,080 --> 00:56:55,360
Speaker 2: some time by reading you the absolutely dreadful poems written

804
00:56:55,400 --> 00:57:13,439
Speaker 2: by one of those mercenaries. A very strange meeting took

805
00:57:13,480 --> 00:57:17,439
Speaker 2: place in June of nineteen eighty five. This was long

806
00:57:17,480 --> 00:57:21,400
Speaker 2: before the days of email and video conferencing. If you

807
00:57:21,440 --> 00:57:23,920
Speaker 2: wanted to hammer out an agreement, you had to get

808
00:57:23,960 --> 00:57:28,080
Speaker 2: everyone in the same room perhaps you could invite everyone

809
00:57:28,160 --> 00:57:31,320
Speaker 2: to your office or rent a conference room at the Marriott,

810
00:57:32,840 --> 00:57:36,120
Speaker 2: But the attendees at this meeting would have had a

811
00:57:36,120 --> 00:57:40,600
Speaker 2: hard time booking flights to Washington, DC. So they settled

812
00:57:40,600 --> 00:57:44,480
Speaker 2: on something a little less orthodox, And they couldn't exactly

813
00:57:44,600 --> 00:57:46,920
Speaker 2: just call up the men on their invite list either.

814
00:57:47,920 --> 00:57:52,680
Speaker 2: The logistics were going to be a nightmare. Dana Rohrabacher,

815
00:57:53,040 --> 00:57:56,840
Speaker 2: President Ronald Reagan's speechwriter, personally flew to a safe house

816
00:57:56,880 --> 00:58:00,760
Speaker 2: into Gusagalpa to hand deliver an invitation to Ado Kallero,

817
00:58:01,600 --> 00:58:06,320
Speaker 2: leader of the Nicaraguan Contrast. Anti communist activist Jack Wheeler

818
00:58:06,360 --> 00:58:09,520
Speaker 2: was in touch with the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan and Laotian

819
00:58:09,520 --> 00:58:13,880
Speaker 2: rebel leader Pauka Here, and Grover Norquist had plenty of

820
00:58:13,880 --> 00:58:16,360
Speaker 2: contacts who could get him in touch with Jonas Savimbi,

821
00:58:16,960 --> 00:58:21,960
Speaker 2: leader of the Angolan Insurgent Force UNIDA. Given the guest list,

822
00:58:22,440 --> 00:58:25,040
Speaker 2: they had pretty limited options when it came to finding

823
00:58:25,080 --> 00:58:32,280
Speaker 2: a venue. State Department officials made calls. Only two governments

824
00:58:32,280 --> 00:58:35,800
Speaker 2: were willing to offer their public support for such a summit,

825
00:58:37,160 --> 00:58:43,960
Speaker 2: Israel and South Africa. Politically, that was a minefield, so

826
00:58:44,040 --> 00:58:47,479
Speaker 2: one of the attendees offered to host they could hold

827
00:58:47,480 --> 00:58:50,200
Speaker 2: the meeting at the UNITA base camp in the Angolan

828
00:58:50,280 --> 00:58:55,680
Speaker 2: town of Jamba. American Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs,

829
00:58:55,760 --> 00:59:00,000
Speaker 2: Chester Crocker arranged for the South African military to handle Sekis.

830
00:59:02,000 --> 00:59:06,120
Speaker 2: It was all coming together. With funding from the President

831
00:59:06,200 --> 00:59:09,400
Speaker 2: of Right Aid, Jack Abramoff was going to get the

832
00:59:09,400 --> 00:59:15,520
Speaker 2: world's leading anti communists into one room. I'm not sure

833
00:59:15,560 --> 00:59:20,040
Speaker 2: this meeting accomplished much in terms of advancing the Reagan doctrine.

834
00:59:20,440 --> 00:59:23,880
Speaker 2: But at that rebel base in southern Angola, Jack Abramoff

835
00:59:23,920 --> 00:59:27,920
Speaker 2: reconnected with an old friend, a South African military intelligence

836
00:59:27,960 --> 00:59:30,480
Speaker 2: operative he'd first met on a visit to Johannesburg in

837
00:59:30,560 --> 00:59:34,920
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty three, and while Oliver North met with armed

838
00:59:34,920 --> 00:59:38,960
Speaker 2: men in the sweltering heat, Abramoff was brainstorming his next

839
00:59:38,960 --> 00:59:42,160
Speaker 2: project and meeting with the man who would fund it.

840
00:59:44,200 --> 00:59:47,680
Speaker 2: Whether or not Jack Abramoff's strange summit had any impact

841
00:59:47,760 --> 00:59:50,560
Speaker 2: on the course of the Cold Wars a question for

842
00:59:50,640 --> 00:59:54,000
Speaker 2: someone else. I can only tell you about the time

843
00:59:54,120 --> 00:59:57,880
Speaker 2: the South African government secretly paid an ambitious young American

844
00:59:57,920 --> 01:00:02,600
Speaker 2: lobbyist to make one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

845
01:00:05,600 --> 01:00:26,680
Speaker 2: I'm Molly Conger, and this is Weird Little Guys. This

846
01:00:26,840 --> 01:00:30,640
Speaker 2: is a side story. I really couldn't resist it. I

847
01:00:30,680 --> 01:00:35,680
Speaker 2: think you'll understand. I've been writing this story, this story

848
01:00:35,680 --> 01:00:39,680
Speaker 2: about Monica Huggett, about South Africa, about the Apartheid International.

849
01:00:39,720 --> 01:00:42,439
Speaker 2: I've been writing it for so long that I'm having

850
01:00:42,440 --> 01:00:45,919
Speaker 2: trouble letting it go, so I will try to wrap

851
01:00:45,920 --> 01:00:48,920
Speaker 2: it up next week. I know there are so many

852
01:00:49,000 --> 01:00:51,440
Speaker 2: other weird little guys I've promised to tell you about,

853
01:00:51,480 --> 01:00:55,240
Speaker 2: and we'll get to them, but I've invested so much

854
01:00:55,280 --> 01:00:57,280
Speaker 2: in this story that I want to make sure I

855
01:00:57,400 --> 01:01:01,320
Speaker 2: end it properly. And I could tell I just didn't

856
01:01:01,360 --> 01:01:05,000
Speaker 2: have that this week. I don't talk a lot about

857
01:01:05,040 --> 01:01:09,680
Speaker 2: my personal life in public online because as an expert

858
01:01:09,680 --> 01:01:12,280
Speaker 2: on weird Little Guys, I really hate to think about

859
01:01:12,320 --> 01:01:16,600
Speaker 2: them thinking about my personal life. But I guess I'm

860
01:01:16,600 --> 01:01:17,880
Speaker 2: going to have to let you all in on this

861
01:01:17,960 --> 01:01:21,600
Speaker 2: one eventually. Anyway, I'm actually getting married in a couple

862
01:01:21,680 --> 01:01:24,080
Speaker 2: of weeks, and it turns out that having a wedding

863
01:01:24,160 --> 01:01:27,600
Speaker 2: is kind of a whole ordeal. I'm not really the

864
01:01:27,760 --> 01:01:31,000
Speaker 2: arts and crafts type. I really would rather be watching

865
01:01:31,080 --> 01:01:34,960
Speaker 2: grainy videos of old Area Nations World Congress meetings than

866
01:01:35,520 --> 01:01:39,280
Speaker 2: making place cards and seating charts and trying to figure

867
01:01:39,280 --> 01:01:41,480
Speaker 2: out how to do floral arrangements.

868
01:01:42,120 --> 01:01:42,800
Speaker 3: But here we are.

869
01:01:43,360 --> 01:01:47,919
Speaker 2: Nevertheless, honestly, I'm really lucky that I have a job

870
01:01:47,920 --> 01:01:50,240
Speaker 2: where I can just follow my heart and let my

871
01:01:50,320 --> 01:01:54,240
Speaker 2: curiosity lead me wherever we happen to end up. Because

872
01:01:54,240 --> 01:01:56,400
Speaker 2: if I have to write a seven thousand word research

873
01:01:56,480 --> 01:01:59,280
Speaker 2: project every week, my heart's got.

874
01:01:59,160 --> 01:01:59,600
Speaker 3: To be in it.

875
01:02:00,480 --> 01:02:04,240
Speaker 2: And this week I could not resist the siren song

876
01:02:04,760 --> 01:02:06,280
Speaker 2: of a bad eighties action movie.

877
01:02:07,280 --> 01:02:09,000
Speaker 3: It was just too.

878
01:02:08,840 --> 01:02:11,760
Speaker 2: Weird to only mention in passing. It had to be

879
01:02:11,800 --> 01:02:15,720
Speaker 2: its own episode. Because as I was writing the conclusion

880
01:02:15,880 --> 01:02:20,520
Speaker 2: to this long, strange saga of Monica Huggetts Stone, I

881
01:02:20,560 --> 01:02:22,640
Speaker 2: had originally planned to devote just a little bit of

882
01:02:22,680 --> 01:02:25,080
Speaker 2: time to the political connections of the far right in

883
01:02:25,120 --> 01:02:29,040
Speaker 2: the United States and the pro apartheid activist.

884
01:02:28,560 --> 01:02:29,800
Speaker 3: Movements in South Africa.

885
01:02:30,920 --> 01:02:33,680
Speaker 2: But I was wrapping up my research connecting Monica to

886
01:02:33,960 --> 01:02:37,760
Speaker 2: David Duke's nineteen ninety six Senate run when I realized

887
01:02:38,520 --> 01:02:41,120
Speaker 2: I'd overlooked something massive.

888
01:02:42,480 --> 01:02:43,280
Speaker 3: It wasn't just.

889
01:02:43,280 --> 01:02:46,600
Speaker 2: The likes of David Duke, who were terribly interested in

890
01:02:46,640 --> 01:02:51,160
Speaker 2: the continuing success of apartheid. No, it wasn't just the

891
01:02:51,280 --> 01:02:55,400
Speaker 2: extreme fringes at all. There were large swaths of Reagan

892
01:02:55,480 --> 01:03:00,760
Speaker 2: Conservatives who were deeply embedded in this. The deeper I dug,

893
01:03:00,840 --> 01:03:03,680
Speaker 2: the more obvious it became that a lot of the

894
01:03:03,800 --> 01:03:08,000
Speaker 2: very big names in American conservative politics are tied up

895
01:03:08,000 --> 01:03:13,680
Speaker 2: in this story. Not with Monica, not directly, Like I said,

896
01:03:13,680 --> 01:03:17,520
Speaker 2: this is a side story. But in the nineteen eighties,

897
01:03:18,200 --> 01:03:20,960
Speaker 2: Sub Saharan Africa was a battleground in the Cold War,

898
01:03:21,840 --> 01:03:24,080
Speaker 2: and the South African government was a big player in

899
01:03:24,120 --> 01:03:28,760
Speaker 2: this perceived fight against Soviet influence on the continent. So

900
01:03:28,840 --> 01:03:33,360
Speaker 2: even as public discussed with apartheid complicated having open dealings

901
01:03:33,400 --> 01:03:37,680
Speaker 2: with the country, American conservatives saw South Africa as a

902
01:03:37,680 --> 01:03:43,920
Speaker 2: critical partner in the ideological struggle against communism. And we'll

903
01:03:43,960 --> 01:03:46,880
Speaker 2: get into some more about those connections in the next episode,

904
01:03:46,920 --> 01:03:50,520
Speaker 2: because they continue into present day politics. In the time

905
01:03:50,560 --> 01:03:53,280
Speaker 2: it's taken me to write these episodes, that situation has

906
01:03:53,520 --> 01:03:57,120
Speaker 2: continued to evolve, and there's certainly some strange connections to

907
01:03:57,200 --> 01:04:00,440
Speaker 2: the past. In the story of South African Ambassador Ibrahim

908
01:04:00,480 --> 01:04:06,520
Speaker 2: Razul's recent expulsion from the United States. But today we're

909
01:04:06,520 --> 01:04:11,680
Speaker 2: not talking about Ibrahim Razul. We're talking about Red Scorpion,

910
01:04:12,840 --> 01:04:18,920
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighty eight action movie starring Dolph Lundgren. I

911
01:04:18,920 --> 01:04:22,200
Speaker 2: guess we have to do a little background first. I'm

912
01:04:22,200 --> 01:04:24,600
Speaker 2: not too proud to admit that when I started poking

913
01:04:24,600 --> 01:04:27,600
Speaker 2: around the edges of this story, I only knew enough

914
01:04:27,600 --> 01:04:31,840
Speaker 2: about Jack Abramoff to tell you that's that lobbyist who

915
01:04:31,880 --> 01:04:35,200
Speaker 2: got into trouble when I was in high school, I think,

916
01:04:36,640 --> 01:04:38,280
Speaker 2: and we don't really have to get into the thing.

917
01:04:38,400 --> 01:04:42,200
Speaker 2: Abramoff is most famous for his two thousand and six

918
01:04:42,280 --> 01:04:45,800
Speaker 2: conviction for mail fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy to bribe

919
01:04:45,800 --> 01:04:49,800
Speaker 2: public officials. He did a little time in federal prison

920
01:04:49,880 --> 01:04:52,120
Speaker 2: for crimes he committed in connection to his work as

921
01:04:52,120 --> 01:04:55,800
Speaker 2: a lobbyist for Native American tribes seeking to influence legislation

922
01:04:55,840 --> 01:04:59,680
Speaker 2: on gambling. That happened later in his life. But I

923
01:04:59,680 --> 01:05:02,320
Speaker 2: did to mention it because that's the only thing I

924
01:05:02,360 --> 01:05:04,959
Speaker 2: knew about him, And I just want to reassure you, yes,

925
01:05:05,800 --> 01:05:10,960
Speaker 2: that Jack Abramoff. And obviously you have to start somewhere

926
01:05:11,120 --> 01:05:14,160
Speaker 2: in politics. You don't just find yourself in the center

927
01:05:14,200 --> 01:05:17,200
Speaker 2: of a web of corruption. Involving multiple sitting congressmen right

928
01:05:17,200 --> 01:05:20,640
Speaker 2: out of the gate, and Abramoff got his start in

929
01:05:20,680 --> 01:05:24,160
Speaker 2: politics in college, working as a volunteer on Ronald Reagan's

930
01:05:24,200 --> 01:05:26,920
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty presidential campaign and serving as the chairman of

931
01:05:26,960 --> 01:05:31,680
Speaker 2: the Massachusetts Alliance of College Republicans. After graduation, he was

932
01:05:31,680 --> 01:05:34,600
Speaker 2: elected as the chair of the College Republican National Committee

933
01:05:35,080 --> 01:05:36,680
Speaker 2: with the help of a man who had become his

934
01:05:37,000 --> 01:05:43,160
Speaker 2: close friend and longtime collaborator, Rover Norquist. Together the pair

935
01:05:43,200 --> 01:05:46,360
Speaker 2: made it their mission to transform the College Republicans from

936
01:05:46,400 --> 01:05:52,880
Speaker 2: a resume padding social club into a vicious, militant political tool.

937
01:05:53,080 --> 01:05:56,920
Speaker 2: They pushed out the old car the men they considered wishy,

938
01:05:57,080 --> 01:06:01,720
Speaker 2: washy country clubbers, and they remade the organization into what

939
01:06:01,760 --> 01:06:05,840
Speaker 2: Abramoff called the sword and the Shield of the Reagan Revolution.

940
01:06:07,920 --> 01:06:10,280
Speaker 2: And he was a busy man in the early eighties.

941
01:06:11,240 --> 01:06:13,040
Speaker 2: In addition to his duties as the chair of the

942
01:06:13,040 --> 01:06:16,440
Speaker 2: College Republicans, he was the frontman of a group called

943
01:06:16,920 --> 01:06:21,880
Speaker 2: the USA Foundation, and that group mainly appears in a

944
01:06:21,880 --> 01:06:24,960
Speaker 2: couple of news stories in nineteen eighty four in connection

945
01:06:25,040 --> 01:06:27,600
Speaker 2: to a series of rallies that he organized celebrating the

946
01:06:27,640 --> 01:06:32,720
Speaker 2: anniversary of the US Invasion of Granada. And maybe it's

947
01:06:32,760 --> 01:06:36,120
Speaker 2: because the name is so generic, but it's hard to

948
01:06:36,120 --> 01:06:40,800
Speaker 2: find old news articles about the USA Foundation. They don't

949
01:06:40,840 --> 01:06:44,560
Speaker 2: really seem to have done much public facing work that

950
01:06:44,840 --> 01:06:49,560
Speaker 2: was perhaps by design. The foundation seems to have mostly

951
01:06:49,600 --> 01:06:54,520
Speaker 2: existed to raise money. Traditionally, the College Republicans had relied

952
01:06:54,560 --> 01:06:57,960
Speaker 2: almost exclusively on their Republican National Committee for their budget.

953
01:06:59,080 --> 01:07:01,240
Speaker 3: But Abramoff had some thing bigger in mind.

954
01:07:02,240 --> 01:07:05,480
Speaker 2: He wanted autonomy, and he wanted an immunity from the

955
01:07:05,560 --> 01:07:09,640
Speaker 2: nagging oversight of the old guard, so he made his

956
01:07:09,680 --> 01:07:15,960
Speaker 2: own money. I once again find myself appreciating the work

957
01:07:16,040 --> 01:07:20,640
Speaker 2: of an unsavory source. The archivists at the Liberty University

958
01:07:20,760 --> 01:07:25,560
Speaker 2: Jerry Folwell Library have done a really phenomenal job of

959
01:07:25,640 --> 01:07:29,760
Speaker 2: digitizing their collection of old documents related to the Conservative Caucus,

960
01:07:30,480 --> 01:07:34,800
Speaker 2: a lobbying group whose board Abramof served on. And one

961
01:07:34,800 --> 01:07:37,240
Speaker 2: of the documents in that collection is a memo that

962
01:07:37,280 --> 01:07:40,840
Speaker 2: Abramoff sent to a big donor listing off his accomplishments

963
01:07:40,880 --> 01:07:43,360
Speaker 2: as chair of the College Republicans in nineteen eighty four

964
01:07:44,080 --> 01:07:47,479
Speaker 2: in hopes of securing a big check, and he says

965
01:07:47,560 --> 01:07:51,000
Speaker 2: the USA Foundation, under his leadership had hosted a delegation

966
01:07:51,080 --> 01:07:54,480
Speaker 2: of South African student leaders on a trip to Washington

967
01:07:54,520 --> 01:07:58,080
Speaker 2: in January of nineteen eighty four, and at that meeting,

968
01:07:58,120 --> 01:08:00,960
Speaker 2: they'd made plans with those South Africa students from a

969
01:08:00,960 --> 01:08:05,120
Speaker 2: group called the Student's Moderate Alliance to co host an

970
01:08:05,160 --> 01:08:09,280
Speaker 2: international student conference later that year at a resort in

971
01:08:09,320 --> 01:08:14,560
Speaker 2: the South African Bantustan of both with the Swana. That

972
01:08:14,640 --> 01:08:17,639
Speaker 2: same archive contains a nineteen eighty four letter from one

973
01:08:17,640 --> 01:08:20,679
Speaker 2: of Abramoff's colleagues, a right wing think take veteran named

974
01:08:20,720 --> 01:08:23,800
Speaker 2: Amy Moritz, and it's a letter to William F.

975
01:08:23,880 --> 01:08:25,200
Speaker 3: Buckley.

976
01:08:25,520 --> 01:08:30,000
Speaker 2: And in that letter, Moritz openly admits to operating multiple

977
01:08:30,000 --> 01:08:33,640
Speaker 2: front groups, and then she opines on the effectiveness of

978
01:08:33,760 --> 01:08:37,559
Speaker 2: various other right wing groups operating around the country. And

979
01:08:37,600 --> 01:08:39,519
Speaker 2: one of the groups she offers an opinion on is

980
01:08:39,600 --> 01:08:45,240
Speaker 2: Abramoff's USA Foundation, and she describes it as operating out

981
01:08:45,280 --> 01:08:49,400
Speaker 2: of the Heritage Foundation, which is an intriguing aside that

982
01:08:50,080 --> 01:08:54,360
Speaker 2: I can't offer you any explanation for. But through his

983
01:08:54,479 --> 01:08:57,680
Speaker 2: USA Foundation, it seems that Abramoff had finally found a

984
01:08:57,680 --> 01:09:03,120
Speaker 2: way to pair his ideological inclinations with personal profit. The

985
01:09:03,200 --> 01:09:08,640
Speaker 2: USA Foundation took in hefty donations from corporations in exchange

986
01:09:08,760 --> 01:09:12,040
Speaker 2: for seking the College Republicans on student groups that were

987
01:09:12,040 --> 01:09:16,479
Speaker 2: bad for business. So landlords in San Francisco paid to

988
01:09:16,479 --> 01:09:20,760
Speaker 2: have student groups organizing for rent control pushed off California campuses.

989
01:09:22,000 --> 01:09:25,799
Speaker 2: Campbell's Soup paid them to undermine student support from migrant

990
01:09:25,840 --> 01:09:31,240
Speaker 2: farm workers unions. It was, I guess, another front group

991
01:09:32,320 --> 01:09:34,920
Speaker 2: with the added bonus of being able to solicit tax

992
01:09:34,960 --> 01:09:38,400
Speaker 2: exempt contributions which he could then use to fund the

993
01:09:38,400 --> 01:09:43,320
Speaker 2: political activities of the College Republicans. So these companies, they're

994
01:09:43,320 --> 01:09:46,960
Speaker 2: not just donating to some think tank, They're not donating

995
01:09:47,040 --> 01:09:50,520
Speaker 2: to awareness raising or policy papers.

996
01:09:51,320 --> 01:09:52,120
Speaker 3: They're investing.

997
01:09:53,280 --> 01:09:57,360
Speaker 2: They were buying fake grassroots organizing to compete in the

998
01:09:57,360 --> 01:10:03,160
Speaker 2: marketplace of ideas on their behalf. But Jack Abramoff wasn't

999
01:10:03,160 --> 01:10:07,080
Speaker 2: content to sit in Washington and hold fundraisers. He was,

1000
01:10:07,120 --> 01:10:10,400
Speaker 2: after all, the sword and shield of the Reagan Revolution,

1001
01:10:12,160 --> 01:10:14,800
Speaker 2: and in the early eighties that meant getting out there

1002
01:10:14,800 --> 01:10:19,240
Speaker 2: and fighting Soviet influence wherever it existed or wherever it

1003
01:10:19,320 --> 01:10:24,320
Speaker 2: was imagined to exist. For some conservatives, the growing bad

1004
01:10:24,400 --> 01:10:29,439
Speaker 2: press about apartheid was just a highly effective KGB propaganda operation,

1005
01:10:30,880 --> 01:10:32,919
Speaker 2: and so it was as chair of the College Republican

1006
01:10:32,920 --> 01:10:37,599
Speaker 2: Committee that Jack Abramoff first visited South Africa in nineteen

1007
01:10:37,640 --> 01:10:41,960
Speaker 2: eighty three. The trip was an effort to strengthen ties

1008
01:10:42,000 --> 01:10:45,759
Speaker 2: between student groups internationally, and as part of that mission,

1009
01:10:45,880 --> 01:10:48,920
Speaker 2: he met with Russell Kristel, the leader of a group

1010
01:10:48,960 --> 01:10:54,839
Speaker 2: calling itself the Student's Moderate Alliance. It wouldn't be officially

1011
01:10:54,880 --> 01:10:58,920
Speaker 2: revealed until nineteen ninety two, so nine years after this

1012
01:10:59,040 --> 01:11:02,840
Speaker 2: meeting that the Student's Moderate Alliance had been entirely a

1013
01:11:02,880 --> 01:11:06,960
Speaker 2: project of the South African Security Police designed to discredit

1014
01:11:07,040 --> 01:11:10,360
Speaker 2: and disrupt student organizing by groups like the National Union

1015
01:11:10,360 --> 01:11:15,000
Speaker 2: of South African Students or NUSAS, a primarily English speaking

1016
01:11:15,040 --> 01:11:20,160
Speaker 2: anti apartheid group on university campuses. But even more than

1017
01:11:20,160 --> 01:11:24,000
Speaker 2: a decade before the truth was exposed, student groups in

1018
01:11:24,040 --> 01:11:28,960
Speaker 2: South Africa saw right through Russell Crystal. I found newspapers

1019
01:11:28,960 --> 01:11:31,360
Speaker 2: and zines put out by college students dating as far

1020
01:11:31,400 --> 01:11:35,439
Speaker 2: back as the organization's founding in nineteen eighty mocking the

1021
01:11:35,560 --> 01:11:41,120
Speaker 2: obvious charade of this organization calling itself moderate. They immediately

1022
01:11:41,200 --> 01:11:46,840
Speaker 2: spotted what was obvious National Party propaganda, old issues of

1023
01:11:46,880 --> 01:11:50,200
Speaker 2: a NUSAS aligned student newspaper published by the South African

1024
01:11:50,280 --> 01:11:55,240
Speaker 2: Students Press Union Don't Hold Back. A nineteen eighty issue

1025
01:11:55,240 --> 01:11:58,600
Speaker 2: covering the student council election at the University of witwatersrund

1026
01:11:58,680 --> 01:12:03,600
Speaker 2: and Johannesburg usually just shortened to Vits University, calls the

1027
01:12:03,640 --> 01:12:07,840
Speaker 2: Student's Moderate Alliance a neo fascist group and it dismisses

1028
01:12:07,880 --> 01:12:12,840
Speaker 2: them as joke candidates, although one of those joke candidates

1029
01:12:12,840 --> 01:12:18,200
Speaker 2: did win, Russell Cristel's brother Lance. By nineteen eighty three,

1030
01:12:18,240 --> 01:12:21,000
Speaker 2: the same paper reported that Russell Crystal, also a student

1031
01:12:21,040 --> 01:12:24,360
Speaker 2: at Fitfadder's Front, had offered to help right wing student

1032
01:12:24,400 --> 01:12:28,000
Speaker 2: groups at other schools pay the cost of printing their

1033
01:12:28,040 --> 01:12:33,680
Speaker 2: anti NUSUS pamphlets. It was also widely believed that Cristel's

1034
01:12:33,720 --> 01:12:38,120
Speaker 2: Student's Moderate Alliance was behind some mysterious pamphlets that had

1035
01:12:38,160 --> 01:12:41,519
Speaker 2: been popping up at campuses all over the country. The

1036
01:12:41,560 --> 01:12:45,639
Speaker 2: pamphlets were made to appear as though NUSUS had authored them.

1037
01:12:45,960 --> 01:12:48,519
Speaker 2: They bore the organization's name at the bottom, and they

1038
01:12:48,560 --> 01:12:53,040
Speaker 2: mimicked the style of real NUSIS flyers, but they misrepresented

1039
01:12:53,080 --> 01:12:55,960
Speaker 2: the group's views and attempted to link the group to

1040
01:12:56,040 --> 01:13:00,880
Speaker 2: illegal activity. They were such an obvious attempt to discredit

1041
01:13:00,920 --> 01:13:04,719
Speaker 2: the group that the Vice chancellor at vis University issued

1042
01:13:04,720 --> 01:13:08,800
Speaker 2: a statement that whoever had created the flyers quote does

1043
01:13:08,840 --> 01:13:11,600
Speaker 2: not have the best interest of students or of the

1044
01:13:11,680 --> 01:13:16,759
Speaker 2: country at heart. The university administration also noted that quote

1045
01:13:17,640 --> 01:13:21,880
Speaker 2: the nature and country wide method of their distribution suggests

1046
01:13:21,880 --> 01:13:26,840
Speaker 2: that the persons responsible for them command resources beyond those

1047
01:13:26,920 --> 01:13:32,839
Speaker 2: typically available to student organizations. And throughout the nineteen eighties,

1048
01:13:33,400 --> 01:13:37,920
Speaker 2: student newspapers in South Africa ran stories about the impossible

1049
01:13:38,200 --> 01:13:41,120
Speaker 2: level of funding the Student's Moderate Alliance seemed to have

1050
01:13:41,200 --> 01:13:46,400
Speaker 2: access to. They had unlimited numbers of these glossy, expensive looking,

1051
01:13:46,520 --> 01:13:50,599
Speaker 2: professionally made pamphlets, and in one case there was even

1052
01:13:50,720 --> 01:13:53,599
Speaker 2: proof that the pamphlets had been printed in a National

1053
01:13:53,680 --> 01:13:59,160
Speaker 2: Party office. In nineteen eighty two, a student newspaper obtained

1054
01:13:59,160 --> 01:14:02,160
Speaker 2: a sworn state from someone who had been detained under

1055
01:14:02,200 --> 01:14:06,600
Speaker 2: Section twenty two. That's the provision that allowed for preventive

1056
01:14:06,800 --> 01:14:11,000
Speaker 2: detention without charges, largely a tool used to harass and

1057
01:14:11,040 --> 01:14:15,479
Speaker 2: intimidate anti apartheid activists, and on this particular occasion, this

1058
01:14:15,560 --> 01:14:18,479
Speaker 2: detainee was taken up to the tenth floor of the

1059
01:14:18,560 --> 01:14:23,040
Speaker 2: Johannesburg police station to be questioned. The tenth floor was

1060
01:14:23,080 --> 01:14:27,160
Speaker 2: occupied by the security branch of the police, the police

1061
01:14:27,160 --> 01:14:31,559
Speaker 2: who were tasked with intelligence gathering, handling informants, and running

1062
01:14:31,600 --> 01:14:36,440
Speaker 2: death squads. And there on the tenth floor, this detainee

1063
01:14:37,000 --> 01:14:42,320
Speaker 2: saw a familiar face. It was Russell Cristel, and this

1064
01:14:42,400 --> 01:14:46,960
Speaker 2: worn statement read, in part quote I saw Crystal on

1065
01:14:47,040 --> 01:14:51,080
Speaker 2: the tenth floor of John Forster Square. He was neither

1066
01:14:51,120 --> 01:14:52,960
Speaker 2: handcuffed nor accompanied.

1067
01:14:52,400 --> 01:14:53,640
Speaker 3: By the security police.

1068
01:14:54,360 --> 01:14:59,519
Speaker 2: He appeared calm and under no duress. When his brother

1069
01:14:59,640 --> 01:15:02,120
Speaker 2: Lands Crystal, was elected to the Vitt Student Council in

1070
01:15:02,160 --> 01:15:06,200
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty, he refused to sign a statement that all

1071
01:15:06,200 --> 01:15:09,840
Speaker 2: student representatives were asked to agree to that they would

1072
01:15:09,880 --> 01:15:17,160
Speaker 2: not involve themselves in espionage on campus. Lance Cristal reportedly said, quote,

1073
01:15:17,680 --> 01:15:20,400
Speaker 2: I do not want to be held responsible for any

1074
01:15:20,439 --> 01:15:23,400
Speaker 2: patriotic urge that might occur during my term of office.

1075
01:15:25,400 --> 01:15:28,360
Speaker 2: An official university inquiry from the mid eighties determined that

1076
01:15:28,400 --> 01:15:32,880
Speaker 2: the Student's Moderate Alliance clearly had quote lavish funding from

1077
01:15:32,920 --> 01:15:37,960
Speaker 2: anonymous sources. In addition to his Student's Moderate Alliance, Russell

1078
01:15:38,000 --> 01:15:42,559
Speaker 2: Cristal also founded the National Students Federation. The Vitt student

1079
01:15:42,600 --> 01:15:45,200
Speaker 2: newspaper sent a reporter to the group's conference in nineteen

1080
01:15:45,240 --> 01:15:48,600
Speaker 2: eighty four. It was held at a luxury hotel in

1081
01:15:48,640 --> 01:15:53,240
Speaker 2: downtown Johannesburg, with Little Finger sandwiches served on silver planters.

1082
01:15:54,600 --> 01:15:58,160
Speaker 2: Russell Cristal was elected as the group's president and the

1083
01:15:58,240 --> 01:16:00,879
Speaker 2: leader of the student's Moderate Alliance chapter at the University

1084
01:16:00,920 --> 01:16:03,599
Speaker 2: of Cape Town, was elected to the group's executive board

1085
01:16:03,960 --> 01:16:09,320
Speaker 2: and named its media officer. That student, a young Arthur

1086
01:16:09,439 --> 01:16:13,479
Speaker 2: Kemp is someone whose name might sound familiar if you

1087
01:16:13,520 --> 01:16:17,719
Speaker 2: listen carefully. He would later author the hit list found

1088
01:16:17,720 --> 01:16:20,479
Speaker 2: in the Possession of Chris Hani's assassin in nineteen ninety three.

1089
01:16:22,560 --> 01:16:25,960
Speaker 2: That student newspaper reporter in nineteen eighty four concluded the

1090
01:16:26,080 --> 01:16:28,839
Speaker 2: article about the conference with a quote from a nusa's

1091
01:16:28,840 --> 01:16:33,640
Speaker 2: student leader. They aren't just making wild accusations when they

1092
01:16:33,680 --> 01:16:38,519
Speaker 2: speculate about possible state funding for crystal student groups. Just

1093
01:16:38,600 --> 01:16:42,800
Speaker 2: a few years earlier, something called the Information Scandal had

1094
01:16:42,840 --> 01:16:46,559
Speaker 2: broken and the government had been forced to admit to

1095
01:16:46,640 --> 01:16:51,120
Speaker 2: the existence of something called Project Anne Marie, a year's

1096
01:16:51,160 --> 01:16:55,120
Speaker 2: long propaganda campaign aimed at undermining anti apartheid activism at

1097
01:16:55,120 --> 01:17:00,200
Speaker 2: home and anti apartheid opinion abroad. Four high rise thinking

1098
01:17:00,240 --> 01:17:04,719
Speaker 2: government officials were forced to resign in disgrace, including Prime

1099
01:17:04,760 --> 01:17:10,000
Speaker 2: Minister Forster. The Secretary of Information not only resigned but

1100
01:17:10,120 --> 01:17:13,920
Speaker 2: fled the country, only to be extradited back from France

1101
01:17:14,000 --> 01:17:18,640
Speaker 2: to face fraud charges. It turned out that throughout the seventies,

1102
01:17:19,439 --> 01:17:22,479
Speaker 2: millions of dollars had been spent from the defense budget

1103
01:17:23,120 --> 01:17:26,600
Speaker 2: to do, in part, exactly what these students feared was

1104
01:17:26,600 --> 01:17:32,520
Speaker 2: happening again, form front groups to disseminate propaganda and disrupt

1105
01:17:32,640 --> 01:17:38,720
Speaker 2: and discredit anti apartheid groups like NUSUS and so that

1106
01:17:38,760 --> 01:17:43,120
Speaker 2: student organizer told the paper quote, while we would want

1107
01:17:43,160 --> 01:17:47,400
Speaker 2: to shy away from individualizing political differences where the true

1108
01:17:47,439 --> 01:17:50,080
Speaker 2: motives of people are being obscured, it has at times

1109
01:17:50,120 --> 01:17:54,479
Speaker 2: been necessary to draw the links between such individuals and

1110
01:17:54,600 --> 01:17:58,479
Speaker 2: the National Party and Security Police. We believe that the

1111
01:17:58,560 --> 01:18:03,680
Speaker 2: NSF represents a growth attempt to stifle opposition to apartheid.

1112
01:18:05,160 --> 01:18:07,599
Speaker 2: It would take almost a decade to get.

1113
01:18:07,400 --> 01:18:10,160
Speaker 3: The government to admit it. But she was right.

1114
01:18:11,400 --> 01:18:15,280
Speaker 2: Russell Crystal's National Student Federation and Student's Moderate Alliance were

1115
01:18:15,320 --> 01:18:18,880
Speaker 2: both entirely the creation of the apartheid government.

1116
01:18:24,560 --> 01:18:25,040
Speaker 3: While I was.

1117
01:18:25,000 --> 01:18:27,880
Speaker 2: Researching this segment, I found a small collection of old

1118
01:18:27,920 --> 01:18:31,959
Speaker 2: issues of the Student That Student newspaper at the University

1119
01:18:32,000 --> 01:18:36,360
Speaker 2: of the Vittvadders run. It's such a fascinating window into

1120
01:18:36,360 --> 01:18:41,000
Speaker 2: the past. It's just a college newspaper. It's written by

1121
01:18:41,000 --> 01:18:44,720
Speaker 2: twenty year olds, and there are articles about how to

1122
01:18:44,720 --> 01:18:48,879
Speaker 2: get more information about university sponsored insurance. There are articles

1123
01:18:48,880 --> 01:18:52,799
Speaker 2: about the tennis team's latest matchups and reviews of David

1124
01:18:52,800 --> 01:18:56,759
Speaker 2: Bowie albums and John Irving novels. There's gossip about student

1125
01:18:56,840 --> 01:19:01,640
Speaker 2: groups and classified ads for bicycles and piano lessons. But

1126
01:19:01,720 --> 01:19:05,840
Speaker 2: in those same pages, those same student journalists are writing

1127
01:19:05,880 --> 01:19:10,120
Speaker 2: stories about the editor of another student paper disappearing at

1128
01:19:10,120 --> 01:19:14,240
Speaker 2: the hands of the security police, held in detention without charges.

1129
01:19:15,880 --> 01:19:20,479
Speaker 2: There are headlines like twentieth vis student detained and the

1130
01:19:20,520 --> 01:19:23,360
Speaker 2: police won't say why and they don't know when they'll

1131
01:19:23,360 --> 01:19:27,639
Speaker 2: be back. Mixed in with these write ups about student

1132
01:19:27,680 --> 01:19:31,519
Speaker 2: theater productions that are images of riot police with dogs

1133
01:19:31,800 --> 01:19:37,439
Speaker 2: and shotguns marching through campus. Anyway, all that to say,

1134
01:19:38,200 --> 01:19:42,400
Speaker 2: it's possible that Jack Abramoff didn't know he was meeting

1135
01:19:42,400 --> 01:19:45,040
Speaker 2: with a government funded front group led by an intelligence

1136
01:19:45,080 --> 01:19:49,599
Speaker 2: asset when he visited Johannesburg in nineteen eighty three. Again,

1137
01:19:49,640 --> 01:19:53,080
Speaker 2: the actual facts wouldn't come out until nineteen ninety two.

1138
01:19:53,120 --> 01:19:58,240
Speaker 2: Maybe he didn't know. It was sort of an open secret, though,

1139
01:19:58,920 --> 01:20:00,599
Speaker 2: and he would have been able to figure it out

1140
01:20:00,600 --> 01:20:04,760
Speaker 2: had he spent five minutes doing his due diligence. But

1141
01:20:04,800 --> 01:20:07,120
Speaker 2: if we take his word for it, he never had

1142
01:20:07,160 --> 01:20:11,640
Speaker 2: any idea. It was obvious to those teenagers in Johannesburg

1143
01:20:11,720 --> 01:20:16,760
Speaker 2: and to the university administrators. Crystal himself never refuted allegations

1144
01:20:16,760 --> 01:20:20,680
Speaker 2: that he was connected to the security police, even allegations

1145
01:20:20,680 --> 01:20:27,120
Speaker 2: that surfaced in nineteen eighty two. But maybe Abramoff never asked.

1146
01:20:28,040 --> 01:20:31,800
Speaker 2: Maybe he's just an idiot. But despite his later insistence

1147
01:20:31,840 --> 01:20:36,120
Speaker 2: to the contrary, there are some clues here that might

1148
01:20:36,240 --> 01:20:41,519
Speaker 2: lead you to suspect that he did know. Not long

1149
01:20:41,560 --> 01:20:44,959
Speaker 2: after returning from this trip, the National College Republican Committee

1150
01:20:44,960 --> 01:20:48,639
Speaker 2: formally adopted a resolution pledging their support to the student's

1151
01:20:48,640 --> 01:20:53,760
Speaker 2: Moderate alliance in their fight against communism. The resolution condemned

1152
01:20:54,080 --> 01:20:58,320
Speaker 2: Soviet aggression and claimed that South Africa was plagued by

1153
01:20:58,439 --> 01:21:06,880
Speaker 2: deliberate KGP propaganda, but it didn't actually mention apartheid at all.

1154
01:21:07,040 --> 01:21:09,759
Speaker 2: When Abramoff gave a speech at the Republican National Convention

1155
01:21:09,840 --> 01:21:13,000
Speaker 2: in August of nineteen eighty four. That was his parting

1156
01:21:13,000 --> 01:21:17,759
Speaker 2: message that he's mobilizing college age voters to reelect Ronald

1157
01:21:17,800 --> 01:21:22,120
Speaker 2: Reagan because America can only be free if Ronald Reagan

1158
01:21:22,200 --> 01:21:24,679
Speaker 2: is free to fund the anti communist death squads.

1159
01:21:27,600 --> 01:21:31,240
Speaker 11: And any students know that support of anti Soviet freedom

1160
01:21:31,240 --> 01:21:36,400
Speaker 11: fighters and victory over communism guarantees us security for our nation,

1161
01:21:41,960 --> 01:21:44,280
Speaker 11: and so it is to our party that they come.

1162
01:21:45,360 --> 01:21:48,360
Speaker 11: It is with us that they trust our dreams, and

1163
01:21:48,400 --> 01:21:51,080
Speaker 11: it is in us that they place their hopes, and

1164
01:21:51,160 --> 01:21:53,560
Speaker 11: so it is for them that we must win in November.

1165
01:21:54,120 --> 01:21:56,559
Speaker 11: It is for them that we must re elect Ronald Reagan,

1166
01:21:57,200 --> 01:21:59,439
Speaker 11: and it is for them that we must restore liberty

1167
01:21:59,760 --> 01:22:01,519
Speaker 11: and righteousness throughout the world.

1168
01:22:02,000 --> 01:22:02,360
Speaker 7: Thank you.

1169
01:22:10,439 --> 01:22:13,240
Speaker 2: By nineteen eighty five, Jack Abramoff had a new gig.

1170
01:22:14,160 --> 01:22:17,960
Speaker 2: He was the executive director of Citizens for America, a

1171
01:22:18,000 --> 01:22:22,640
Speaker 2: lobbying group funded by Write eight heir Lewis Lahirman. This

1172
01:22:22,800 --> 01:22:27,759
Speaker 2: was very explicitly just a privately funded mouthpiece for Ronald Reagan.

1173
01:22:29,400 --> 01:22:33,360
Speaker 2: Lahirman was the founder, funder, and leader of CFA, but

1174
01:22:34,479 --> 01:22:38,160
Speaker 2: it hadn't actually been his idea. It was Reagan, mega

1175
01:22:38,200 --> 01:22:41,840
Speaker 2: donor and producer of most of the world's instant mashed potatoes.

1176
01:22:42,320 --> 01:22:45,360
Speaker 2: A man named Jack Hume who approached Reagan in nineteen

1177
01:22:45,400 --> 01:22:48,000
Speaker 2: eighty three with the idea of forming a group that

1178
01:22:48,040 --> 01:22:52,120
Speaker 2: could shape the public opinion in his favor. But they

1179
01:22:52,200 --> 01:22:55,960
Speaker 2: needed the right man for the job. It was President

1180
01:22:56,000 --> 01:22:58,439
Speaker 2: Reagan himself who called up Lherman and sold him on

1181
01:22:58,479 --> 01:23:03,360
Speaker 2: the idea. Lehman later described the call saying, quote, our

1182
01:23:03,439 --> 01:23:07,040
Speaker 2: first purpose is to induce a mutation in the climate

1183
01:23:07,080 --> 01:23:12,519
Speaker 2: of opinion in America among opinion leaders. So about a

1184
01:23:12,600 --> 01:23:16,240
Speaker 2: year and a half into the existence of CFA, Lehman

1185
01:23:16,360 --> 01:23:20,880
Speaker 2: hired Jack Abramoff as its executive director, and in that role,

1186
01:23:21,360 --> 01:23:28,120
Speaker 2: Jack Abramoff was meeting almost daily with Oliver North. You see,

1187
01:23:28,360 --> 01:23:32,480
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan very much wanted to fund the anti communist

1188
01:23:32,520 --> 01:23:37,440
Speaker 2: forces in Nicaragua, but because of their horrific and ongoing

1189
01:23:37,520 --> 01:23:41,120
Speaker 2: human rights abuses, Congress had passed a series of ever

1190
01:23:41,200 --> 01:23:44,160
Speaker 2: tightening restrictions on the kind of US aid that they

1191
01:23:44,200 --> 01:23:48,639
Speaker 2: could receive, and by nineteen eighty five, Ronald Reagan couldn't

1192
01:23:48,680 --> 01:23:53,920
Speaker 2: legally send the contras any US money at all. So

1193
01:23:53,960 --> 01:23:56,320
Speaker 2: they put their heads together and they found what they

1194
01:23:56,400 --> 01:24:01,880
Speaker 2: thought was a creative little loophole Congress didn't actually say

1195
01:24:01,920 --> 01:24:06,479
Speaker 2: that they couldn't send the Contrasts any money. They said

1196
01:24:06,479 --> 01:24:10,040
Speaker 2: that they couldn't send them any US government money, money

1197
01:24:10,040 --> 01:24:13,280
Speaker 2: that had been appropriated by Congress, money from the budget

1198
01:24:13,280 --> 01:24:17,440
Speaker 2: of a US agency. There are other kinds of money,

1199
01:24:18,280 --> 01:24:22,559
Speaker 2: and so the Reagan administration illegally sold weapons to Iran,

1200
01:24:23,280 --> 01:24:25,760
Speaker 2: and they used that money, money that had never been

1201
01:24:25,760 --> 01:24:31,679
Speaker 2: appropriated by Congress, to fund the contrast It's a lot

1202
01:24:31,720 --> 01:24:35,200
Speaker 2: more complicated than that. Don't email me to explain it.

1203
01:24:35,280 --> 01:24:37,240
Speaker 2: I know, I just don't want to write a thousand

1204
01:24:37,240 --> 01:24:41,080
Speaker 2: words about the Iran contra affair. But I don't think

1205
01:24:41,080 --> 01:24:43,799
Speaker 2: anyone wants to hear that anyway. So if this story

1206
01:24:43,920 --> 01:24:46,280
Speaker 2: is new to you, all you need to know right

1207
01:24:46,320 --> 01:24:50,639
Speaker 2: now is that Ronald Reagan was absolutely unwilling to let

1208
01:24:50,680 --> 01:24:53,439
Speaker 2: Congress stand in the way of his desire to overthrow

1209
01:24:53,479 --> 01:24:57,000
Speaker 2: the Nicaraguan government. And a lot of people eventually got

1210
01:24:57,000 --> 01:25:01,120
Speaker 2: into some trouble when that loophole idea turned out to

1211
01:25:01,120 --> 01:25:06,599
Speaker 2: be pretty illegal. And here's where we finally picked back

1212
01:25:06,680 --> 01:25:11,679
Speaker 2: up with that strange story we opened with. As director

1213
01:25:11,720 --> 01:25:16,120
Speaker 2: of the CFA, Abramoff convinced his boss, Lewis Lherman that

1214
01:25:16,200 --> 01:25:19,439
Speaker 2: this summit of anti communist rebel leaders would be a

1215
01:25:19,479 --> 01:25:24,400
Speaker 2: public relations victory for Ronald Reagan. Congress had just shut

1216
01:25:24,479 --> 01:25:27,560
Speaker 2: down the last bit of USA to the Contras in Nicaragua,

1217
01:25:28,080 --> 01:25:30,120
Speaker 2: and they'd soon be hearing a bill on aid to

1218
01:25:30,320 --> 01:25:36,240
Speaker 2: Jonas Savimbi's United Forces in Angola. Reagan insisted that arming

1219
01:25:36,280 --> 01:25:40,080
Speaker 2: what he called freedom fighters was actually self defense for

1220
01:25:40,160 --> 01:25:44,040
Speaker 2: the United States. The idea is that these rebel groups

1221
01:25:44,040 --> 01:25:47,720
Speaker 2: are fighting Soviet influence abroad, and that's a necessary thing

1222
01:25:47,760 --> 01:25:51,640
Speaker 2: in these last days of the Cold War. So Abramov's

1223
01:25:51,680 --> 01:25:54,080
Speaker 2: plan was to get them all in one room and

1224
01:25:54,200 --> 01:25:58,480
Speaker 2: brainstorm a strategy for convincing the world that these notorious

1225
01:25:58,560 --> 01:26:02,479
Speaker 2: human rights of users are in indeed Reagan's freedom fighters.

1226
01:26:04,080 --> 01:26:07,880
Speaker 2: And that's how Jack Abramoff ended up on a South

1227
01:26:07,920 --> 01:26:11,320
Speaker 2: African charter plane to Angola to spend four days in

1228
01:26:11,360 --> 01:26:16,040
Speaker 2: a tent with Oliver North, Grover Norquist, and the leaders

1229
01:26:16,040 --> 01:26:20,880
Speaker 2: of the Contras and the Mujahadeen. The whole affair sounds

1230
01:26:20,920 --> 01:26:24,200
Speaker 2: like it would make for a darkly funny comedy, and

1231
01:26:24,800 --> 01:26:28,080
Speaker 2: apparently someone did make a movie about Jack Abramoff in

1232
01:26:28,120 --> 01:26:32,320
Speaker 2: twenty ten. It's called Casino Jack. I think Kevin Spacey

1233
01:26:32,360 --> 01:26:35,080
Speaker 2: plays Jack Abramoff. I didn't watch it, but apparently there

1234
01:26:35,160 --> 01:26:40,080
Speaker 2: is a scene in that movie depicting this event. On

1235
01:26:40,120 --> 01:26:43,439
Speaker 2: their flight from Johannesburg to Angola, the plane they took

1236
01:26:43,479 --> 01:26:46,840
Speaker 2: had to fly very low and changed course frequently to

1237
01:26:46,880 --> 01:26:50,960
Speaker 2: avoid detection by the Cubans who were in Angola, and

1238
01:26:51,000 --> 01:26:53,000
Speaker 2: this left the entire delegation.

1239
01:26:52,840 --> 01:26:55,000
Speaker 3: Just miserably airsick.

1240
01:26:55,840 --> 01:26:58,439
Speaker 2: There were several reporters along for the ride, and I

1241
01:26:58,520 --> 01:27:01,920
Speaker 2: found multiple accounts that almost everyone on the plane spent

1242
01:27:01,960 --> 01:27:05,719
Speaker 2: the entire flight taking turns vomiting in the plane's filthy toilet.

1243
01:27:07,160 --> 01:27:09,680
Speaker 2: And after they landed on a makeshift airstrip somewhere in

1244
01:27:09,720 --> 01:27:12,800
Speaker 2: the bush and southern Angola, they endured a two hour

1245
01:27:12,880 --> 01:27:16,439
Speaker 2: car ride in old jeeps over unpaved rows before arriving

1246
01:27:16,479 --> 01:27:21,599
Speaker 2: at the secret location of the United base camp. Jack

1247
01:27:21,640 --> 01:27:25,000
Speaker 2: Abramoff later wrote that because he couldn't travel on the Sabbath,

1248
01:27:25,479 --> 01:27:28,080
Speaker 2: he had actually departed for Jumba a day earlier than

1249
01:27:28,080 --> 01:27:31,160
Speaker 2: the rest of the delegation, and so he wouldn't have

1250
01:27:31,200 --> 01:27:35,720
Speaker 2: to travel alone. Adolfo Colero volunteered to go with him,

1251
01:27:36,360 --> 01:27:39,400
Speaker 2: And that just seems so thoughtful, doesn't it. I'm sure

1252
01:27:39,479 --> 01:27:42,880
Speaker 2: he was just being polite. He was just trying to

1253
01:27:42,920 --> 01:27:47,200
Speaker 2: make a new friend. There's no source that indicates a

1254
01:27:47,280 --> 01:27:51,439
Speaker 2: reporter was on that flight. I can't find anything written

1255
01:27:51,439 --> 01:27:54,360
Speaker 2: about what they might have talked about, So we can

1256
01:27:54,400 --> 01:27:57,360
Speaker 2: only guess what a rabid Reaganite and the leader of

1257
01:27:57,360 --> 01:28:02,200
Speaker 2: the Nicaraguan contras might have talked during five hours alone

1258
01:28:02,680 --> 01:28:07,760
Speaker 2: in May of nineteen eighty five. As bad as the

1259
01:28:07,840 --> 01:28:12,400
Speaker 2: journey was, it wasn't much better after they'd arrived. This

1260
01:28:12,560 --> 01:28:17,679
Speaker 2: was Jamba, not DC. There was no Ritz Carlton. There

1261
01:28:17,760 --> 01:28:21,439
Speaker 2: was no plumbing, there was no air conditioning. They slept

1262
01:28:21,439 --> 01:28:25,920
Speaker 2: on cots and thatched huts. The delegation from the Mujahadeen

1263
01:28:26,080 --> 01:28:29,200
Speaker 2: was using Abdul Rahim Mardak's son as a translator, and

1264
01:28:29,439 --> 01:28:32,520
Speaker 2: Abramoff would later claim that he seemed to be struggling,

1265
01:28:32,680 --> 01:28:35,920
Speaker 2: often offering only a few words in translation for very

1266
01:28:35,920 --> 01:28:39,880
Speaker 2: long statements. Write up in The New York Times says

1267
01:28:39,920 --> 01:28:44,240
Speaker 2: the Laotian translator kept referring to their Angolan host, Jonas

1268
01:28:44,280 --> 01:28:50,719
Speaker 2: Savimbi as mister Zimbabwe, and when the group's wealthy patron,

1269
01:28:50,800 --> 01:28:54,559
Speaker 2: Lewis Lherman, presented these rebel leaders, each with their own

1270
01:28:55,040 --> 01:28:59,840
Speaker 2: framed copy of the United States Constitution. They didn't even

1271
01:29:00,120 --> 01:29:03,920
Speaker 2: tend to be impressed. When the group was sat down

1272
01:29:04,000 --> 01:29:07,240
Speaker 2: to get to business, Lherman read them a letter from

1273
01:29:07,280 --> 01:29:11,920
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan appearing to endorse the summit, and it read,

1274
01:29:11,920 --> 01:29:15,479
Speaker 2: in part, we have to be moved by the example

1275
01:29:15,520 --> 01:29:18,479
Speaker 2: of men and women who struggle every day at great

1276
01:29:18,520 --> 01:29:21,000
Speaker 2: personal risk, for rights that we have.

1277
01:29:21,040 --> 01:29:22,000
Speaker 3: Enjoyed since birth.

1278
01:29:23,080 --> 01:29:28,679
Speaker 2: Their goals are our goals. But in reading this letter aloud,

1279
01:29:29,200 --> 01:29:33,719
Speaker 2: Lherman omitted a pretty important line. In the President's letter,

1280
01:29:35,160 --> 01:29:39,640
Speaker 2: it wasn't addressed to this group. It was addressed to

1281
01:29:39,720 --> 01:29:43,000
Speaker 2: Lahirman alone, and it was not intended to convey the

1282
01:29:43,040 --> 01:29:47,760
Speaker 2: President's endorsement of or promised of aid to anyone there.

1283
01:29:49,800 --> 01:29:53,120
Speaker 2: In Jack Abramoff's memoirs, though he claims quote.

1284
01:29:53,240 --> 01:29:54,840
Speaker 3: There wasn't a dry eye in the house.

1285
01:29:55,520 --> 01:29:58,880
Speaker 2: At the end of the letter, he goes on to say,

1286
01:29:59,479 --> 01:30:02,639
Speaker 2: the words of Ronald Reagan meant the world to this group.

1287
01:30:04,479 --> 01:30:09,439
Speaker 2: That particular characterization of this moment is notably absent from

1288
01:30:10,040 --> 01:30:14,519
Speaker 2: every other account I read. One account published in the

1289
01:30:14,600 --> 01:30:18,439
Speaker 2: Conservative Washington Examiner says there wasn't even enough food for

1290
01:30:18,479 --> 01:30:22,800
Speaker 2: everyone there. Jack Abramoff keeps kosher so he packed an

1291
01:30:22,880 --> 01:30:25,960
Speaker 2: entire suitcase with his own provisions for the trip, and

1292
01:30:26,000 --> 01:30:28,240
Speaker 2: he departed from Angola a little bit early before the

1293
01:30:28,280 --> 01:30:32,240
Speaker 2: event was entirely over, and The Washington Examiner reports that

1294
01:30:32,640 --> 01:30:37,120
Speaker 2: as he's leaving, he's auctioning off his remaining cans of

1295
01:30:37,160 --> 01:30:42,560
Speaker 2: tuna fish, reportedly for as much as twenty dollars a can.

1296
01:30:43,720 --> 01:30:49,280
Speaker 2: Grover Norquis dubbed the event the Democratic International. The press

1297
01:30:49,360 --> 01:30:53,719
Speaker 2: called it the Jamboree in Jamba, and the attendees signed

1298
01:30:53,720 --> 01:30:57,760
Speaker 2: a pact that read, we free peoples fighting for our

1299
01:30:57,880 --> 01:31:01,679
Speaker 2: national independence and human rights a dumbled at Jamba declare

1300
01:31:01,720 --> 01:31:04,280
Speaker 2: our solidarity with all freedom movements in the world and

1301
01:31:04,320 --> 01:31:07,559
Speaker 2: state our commitment to cooperate to liberate our nations from

1302
01:31:07,600 --> 01:31:12,559
Speaker 2: these Soviet imperialists. In a later piece in Harper's Magazine,

1303
01:31:12,760 --> 01:31:16,679
Speaker 2: columnist Thomas Frank called the declaration a bit of high

1304
01:31:16,680 --> 01:31:20,960
Speaker 2: flown folderol written by Grover Norquist that aimed for solemnity

1305
01:31:21,439 --> 01:31:23,280
Speaker 2: but sounded more like the work of a fifth grader

1306
01:31:23,280 --> 01:31:25,800
Speaker 2: who'd been forced to memorize the Gettysburg Address and the

1307
01:31:25,840 --> 01:31:29,679
Speaker 2: Declaration of Independence and has gotten them all jumbled up somehow,

1308
01:31:31,040 --> 01:31:35,799
Speaker 2: I mean, honestly sick burn On, Grover Norquist. Padolfo Kolero,

1309
01:31:36,040 --> 01:31:39,960
Speaker 2: the representative from the Contras, clarified to reporters that the

1310
01:31:40,080 --> 01:31:44,680
Speaker 2: pact didn't call for any exchanges of troops or weapons.

1311
01:31:45,680 --> 01:31:49,839
Speaker 2: It was kind of just vibes. When the American delegation

1312
01:31:49,920 --> 01:31:53,519
Speaker 2: got home, Lewis Lherman discovered that Abramoff and Norquist had

1313
01:31:53,560 --> 01:31:57,559
Speaker 2: been blowing through money with reckless abandon and they'd spent

1314
01:31:57,640 --> 01:32:00,839
Speaker 2: nearly three million dollars out of the budget of Citizens

1315
01:32:00,880 --> 01:32:06,760
Speaker 2: for America. Lhermann claims he fired them. Abramoff says he quit.

1316
01:32:07,840 --> 01:32:10,519
Speaker 2: Who knows, But by the end of the summer of

1317
01:32:10,600 --> 01:32:14,519
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five, Jack Abramoff and Grover Norquist no longer

1318
01:32:14,600 --> 01:32:19,240
Speaker 2: worked at Citizens for America But luckily for Abramoff, he'd

1319
01:32:19,320 --> 01:32:22,320
Speaker 2: used his time in Angola to reconnect with an old friend.

1320
01:32:23,240 --> 01:32:26,080
Speaker 2: That summit had also been attended by representatives from right

1321
01:32:26,080 --> 01:32:29,960
Speaker 2: wing student groups from South Africa, led by none other

1322
01:32:30,040 --> 01:32:38,760
Speaker 2: than Russell Crystal. Abramoff soon found himself as the head

1323
01:32:38,800 --> 01:32:42,080
Speaker 2: of a newly founded DC based think tank called the

1324
01:32:42,200 --> 01:32:43,919
Speaker 2: International Freedom Foundation.

1325
01:32:45,360 --> 01:32:46,160
Speaker 3: It has the same.

1326
01:32:46,000 --> 01:32:49,320
Speaker 2: Sort of nebulous, meaningless mission statement as any number of

1327
01:32:49,320 --> 01:32:54,640
Speaker 2: think tanks they promoted freedom and democracy and the free market.

1328
01:32:55,120 --> 01:32:58,240
Speaker 2: It looked like just another slick lobbying organization designed to

1329
01:32:58,240 --> 01:33:01,639
Speaker 2: bring in high dollar donations for newsletters about the evils

1330
01:33:01,640 --> 01:33:05,000
Speaker 2: of communism, and I guess that's kind of what it was,

1331
01:33:06,320 --> 01:33:09,160
Speaker 2: except almost all of the money came directly from the

1332
01:33:09,240 --> 01:33:13,800
Speaker 2: South African government. It was given the code name Project

1333
01:33:13,880 --> 01:33:18,720
Speaker 2: pac Man by South African military intelligence, and Abramoff's new

1334
01:33:18,720 --> 01:33:21,880
Speaker 2: think tank received one point five million dollars per year

1335
01:33:22,479 --> 01:33:26,080
Speaker 2: every year from nineteen eighty six through nineteen ninety two

1336
01:33:26,600 --> 01:33:30,600
Speaker 2: to fund Operation Babushka, the code name given to this

1337
01:33:30,760 --> 01:33:35,960
Speaker 2: propaganda campaign aimed at undermining the African National Congress, shaping

1338
01:33:35,960 --> 01:33:41,680
Speaker 2: international opinion about apartheid, and combating efforts by American politicians

1339
01:33:42,360 --> 01:33:47,400
Speaker 2: to impose sanctions on South Africa. The truth didn't come

1340
01:33:47,439 --> 01:33:51,080
Speaker 2: out until nineteen ninety five. That's when former South African

1341
01:33:51,120 --> 01:33:54,960
Speaker 2: security policeman Paul Erasmus testified before the Truth and Reconciliation

1342
01:33:55,000 --> 01:34:01,400
Speaker 2: Commission about the existence of the stratcom Unit short Forrategic Communications,

1343
01:34:01,560 --> 01:34:03,880
Speaker 2: which I guess is kind of a cute name for

1344
01:34:04,040 --> 01:34:08,840
Speaker 2: propaganda and disinformation. Erasmus admitted to his own role and

1345
01:34:08,920 --> 01:34:13,360
Speaker 2: a year's long disinformation campaign smearing Winnie Mandela, and he's

1346
01:34:13,360 --> 01:34:16,960
Speaker 2: spoken publicly over the years about the close relationships Traccom

1347
01:34:16,960 --> 01:34:22,360
Speaker 2: had with US based Conservatives, people like Edwin Fulner, one

1348
01:34:22,360 --> 01:34:25,960
Speaker 2: of the founders of the Heritage Foundation, and people like

1349
01:34:26,040 --> 01:34:32,439
Speaker 2: prominent Council of Conservative Citizens member Robert Slim. Slim, interestingly enough,

1350
01:34:32,600 --> 01:34:36,479
Speaker 2: is someone whose name I found twice, once in the

1351
01:34:36,560 --> 01:34:39,360
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties when he was sending faxes to leaders of

1352
01:34:39,400 --> 01:34:42,719
Speaker 2: the Conservative Caucus offering to set up meetings for them

1353
01:34:42,760 --> 01:34:46,599
Speaker 2: with Eugene terre Blanche on their next trip to South Africa,

1354
01:34:47,720 --> 01:34:50,479
Speaker 2: and then again in twenty twelve. His name comes up

1355
01:34:50,520 --> 01:34:56,640
Speaker 2: in connection with Monica Stone's South Africa Project rallies. So

1356
01:34:56,720 --> 01:35:02,160
Speaker 2: now I wonder how far back those two go. But

1357
01:35:02,200 --> 01:35:05,719
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety five, a spokesman for the South African

1358
01:35:05,760 --> 01:35:10,560
Speaker 2: military did confirm in a statement that quote the International

1359
01:35:10,560 --> 01:35:16,080
Speaker 2: Freedom Foundation was a former South African Defense Force project.

1360
01:35:16,560 --> 01:35:19,719
Speaker 2: Former South African spy Craig Williamson explained to a reporter

1361
01:35:19,760 --> 01:35:22,679
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety five that the IFF was a tool

1362
01:35:22,720 --> 01:35:27,400
Speaker 2: of political warfare meant to undermine the African National Congress,

1363
01:35:27,960 --> 01:35:30,720
Speaker 2: but that they'd taken care to run the operation to

1364
01:35:30,800 --> 01:35:34,320
Speaker 2: prevent the people they dealt with from realizing that quote.

1365
01:35:34,800 --> 01:35:39,520
Speaker 2: They were involved with a foreign government. They ran their organization,

1366
01:35:40,479 --> 01:35:46,639
Speaker 2: but we steered them. Craig Williamson is not a good man.

1367
01:35:47,840 --> 01:35:52,240
Speaker 2: He personally murdered several prominent anti apartheid activists, and he

1368
01:35:52,400 --> 01:35:56,800
Speaker 2: ordered the killings of many others. One bomb he sent

1369
01:35:57,000 --> 01:35:59,960
Speaker 2: was meant for a married couple critical of the apartheid regime,

1370
01:36:01,400 --> 01:36:04,719
Speaker 2: but it only did have the job. It killed Jeannette

1371
01:36:04,720 --> 01:36:08,920
Speaker 2: Shun and her six year old daughter. Her husband, Marius Shun,

1372
01:36:09,000 --> 01:36:12,320
Speaker 2: returned home to find their two year old son had

1373
01:36:12,360 --> 01:36:17,280
Speaker 2: been alone in the house with their bodies for hours. No,

1374
01:36:17,400 --> 01:36:22,360
Speaker 2: Craig Williamson is not an honorable man, but I do

1375
01:36:22,439 --> 01:36:26,720
Speaker 2: think he's telling something close to the truth here. He

1376
01:36:26,800 --> 01:36:29,439
Speaker 2: had to if he wanted amnesty for all those murders,

1377
01:36:30,960 --> 01:36:34,080
Speaker 2: and he did have a rather astute observation about the

1378
01:36:34,120 --> 01:36:39,280
Speaker 2: particular gullibility of American conservatives, saying to a reporter in

1379
01:36:39,320 --> 01:36:42,960
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five, we decided that the only level we

1380
01:36:42,960 --> 01:36:44,960
Speaker 2: were going to be accepted was when it came to

1381
01:36:44,960 --> 01:36:48,720
Speaker 2: the Soviets and their surrogates. So our strategy was to

1382
01:36:48,760 --> 01:36:52,519
Speaker 2: paint the A and C as Communist surrogates. The more

1383
01:36:52,560 --> 01:36:56,479
Speaker 2: we could present ourselves as anti communist, the more people

1384
01:36:56,520 --> 01:37:00,440
Speaker 2: looked at us with respect. People you could hardly believe

1385
01:37:00,880 --> 01:37:04,600
Speaker 2: cooperated with us politically. When it came to the Soviets,

1386
01:37:05,600 --> 01:37:08,439
Speaker 2: all they had to do was slap anti communism on

1387
01:37:08,479 --> 01:37:11,400
Speaker 2: the top of the page, and Republican leaders would sign

1388
01:37:11,439 --> 01:37:15,559
Speaker 2: on to a project without any follow up questions. Senator

1389
01:37:15,600 --> 01:37:19,080
Speaker 2: Jesse Helms served as chairman of the iff's advisory board,

1390
01:37:20,200 --> 01:37:23,080
Speaker 2: but when this news came out, his spokesman claimed that

1391
01:37:23,120 --> 01:37:26,400
Speaker 2: Helms had never even heard of such an organization and

1392
01:37:26,600 --> 01:37:31,680
Speaker 2: certainly wasn't involved in it. Congressman Dan Burton led a

1393
01:37:31,720 --> 01:37:35,200
Speaker 2: delegation to observe the nineteen eighty nine elections in Namibia,

1394
01:37:36,040 --> 01:37:40,040
Speaker 2: and that trip was paid for by the IFF. Both

1395
01:37:40,080 --> 01:37:44,960
Speaker 2: Burton and Congressman Robert Dornan frequently attended and spoke at

1396
01:37:45,000 --> 01:37:50,719
Speaker 2: and wrote for IFF events in publications. They too, denied

1397
01:37:51,160 --> 01:37:53,479
Speaker 2: having any idea that their tabs had been paid by

1398
01:37:53,479 --> 01:37:58,000
Speaker 2: the South African government. Congressman Philip Crane served on the

1399
01:37:58,040 --> 01:38:02,080
Speaker 2: organization's board for three years, but when the news broke

1400
01:38:02,120 --> 01:38:05,360
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety five, his spokesman claimed that he'd never

1401
01:38:05,439 --> 01:38:13,120
Speaker 2: actually attended any meetings, And honestly, it is kind of

1402
01:38:13,200 --> 01:38:18,200
Speaker 2: possible that those congressmen just never asked where the money

1403
01:38:18,200 --> 01:38:21,040
Speaker 2: came from. Maybe they had a feeling they didn't want

1404
01:38:21,080 --> 01:38:24,519
Speaker 2: to know the answer. They probably could have figured it

1405
01:38:24,520 --> 01:38:27,880
Speaker 2: out if they tried. An article written in nineteen eighty

1406
01:38:27,920 --> 01:38:31,120
Speaker 2: nine in Covert Affairs, a magazine founded by a former

1407
01:38:31,120 --> 01:38:34,880
Speaker 2: CIA officer turned critic of the agency, noted that the

1408
01:38:34,880 --> 01:38:40,920
Speaker 2: International Freedom Foundation managed to establish itself very quickly, and

1409
01:38:41,000 --> 01:38:44,519
Speaker 2: in under two years. They were very clearly well funded

1410
01:38:44,960 --> 01:38:47,920
Speaker 2: and had well established ties to both the international extreme

1411
01:38:48,000 --> 01:38:52,799
Speaker 2: right wing and to the intelligence communities in multiple countries.

1412
01:38:54,479 --> 01:38:57,479
Speaker 2: The group's support for both the South African government and

1413
01:38:57,600 --> 01:39:02,360
Speaker 2: the Nicaraguan contras earned them the designation of quote an

1414
01:39:02,479 --> 01:39:08,080
Speaker 2: organization to watch from the magazine's editors, And the author

1415
01:39:08,120 --> 01:39:11,439
Speaker 2: is careful here. He doesn't make any outright allegations, but

1416
01:39:11,479 --> 01:39:15,320
Speaker 2: the implication is very strong that this isn't a grass

1417
01:39:15,360 --> 01:39:16,240
Speaker 2: roots organization.

1418
01:39:18,320 --> 01:39:19,360
Speaker 3: But maybe they didn't know.

1419
01:39:20,400 --> 01:39:25,840
Speaker 2: I can accept that that's possible, but Jack Abramoff would

1420
01:39:25,880 --> 01:39:29,040
Speaker 2: also vehemently deny that he'd had any clue that money

1421
01:39:29,080 --> 01:39:32,439
Speaker 2: wasn't clean, And I find that a lot harder to

1422
01:39:32,479 --> 01:39:38,280
Speaker 2: believe Russell Kristel, the South African intelligence asset who'd helped

1423
01:39:38,280 --> 01:39:41,600
Speaker 2: Abramov start the IFF in the first place, ran the

1424
01:39:41,720 --> 01:39:46,120
Speaker 2: organization's branch office in Johannesburg, and Kristel would later admit

1425
01:39:46,200 --> 01:39:49,720
Speaker 2: that the Johannesburg office was less of a branch and

1426
01:39:50,520 --> 01:39:53,719
Speaker 2: more of a nerve center. It was really the center

1427
01:39:53,800 --> 01:39:56,080
Speaker 2: of the operation, and he was the one deciding how

1428
01:39:56,120 --> 01:39:59,640
Speaker 2: much money would get sent to DC, and sometimes when

1429
01:39:59,640 --> 01:40:01,800
Speaker 2: the book keeping got a little sloppy, he would just

1430
01:40:01,880 --> 01:40:06,240
Speaker 2: have the Military Intelligence Office make those wire transfers directly.

1431
01:40:08,080 --> 01:40:10,280
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty nine, the state of New York asked

1432
01:40:10,320 --> 01:40:14,240
Speaker 2: the nonprofit to just provide an accountant statement that their

1433
01:40:14,280 --> 01:40:19,000
Speaker 2: financial records were accurate. That's not terribly unusual for a

1434
01:40:19,000 --> 01:40:22,320
Speaker 2: nonprofit bringing in a lot of money, but they couldn't

1435
01:40:22,320 --> 01:40:27,639
Speaker 2: do it or wouldn't, and they were subsequently legally barred

1436
01:40:27,640 --> 01:40:31,479
Speaker 2: from soliciting donations in the state of New York. Financial

1437
01:40:31,520 --> 01:40:34,960
Speaker 2: records that were produced later show that in nineteen ninety two,

1438
01:40:35,560 --> 01:40:39,040
Speaker 2: the organization's revenue dropped to half of the level in

1439
01:40:39,080 --> 01:40:44,920
Speaker 2: prior years. That was not coincidentally the year that South

1440
01:40:44,960 --> 01:40:49,040
Speaker 2: African President to Clerk ended funding for such programs as

1441
01:40:49,080 --> 01:40:51,559
Speaker 2: a show of good faith during negotiations with the African

1442
01:40:51,640 --> 01:40:56,240
Speaker 2: National Congress. The end of that official funding didn't end

1443
01:40:56,280 --> 01:41:00,839
Speaker 2: the IFF right away. In nineteen ninety three, the IFF

1444
01:41:00,880 --> 01:41:03,599
Speaker 2: commissioned a report that was designed to paint the ANC

1445
01:41:03,840 --> 01:41:07,439
Speaker 2: as the true villains. You know, things are really almost

1446
01:41:07,479 --> 01:41:11,080
Speaker 2: over in nineteen ninety three, the election is coming, Apartheid

1447
01:41:11,200 --> 01:41:14,800
Speaker 2: is falling, but they commissioned this report to say, well,

1448
01:41:15,640 --> 01:41:18,880
Speaker 2: aren't those the bad guys? Should we really be compromising

1449
01:41:18,920 --> 01:41:22,519
Speaker 2: with these people who are doing these terrible things? And

1450
01:41:22,560 --> 01:41:25,479
Speaker 2: the funding for that report was funneled through a slush

1451
01:41:25,520 --> 01:41:31,280
Speaker 2: fund operated by Lucas Manngope the apartheid Collaboration as president

1452
01:41:31,360 --> 01:41:36,240
Speaker 2: of the semi sovereign Bantustan of Bofu Tatswana. The IFF

1453
01:41:36,320 --> 01:41:41,800
Speaker 2: would close its doors for good later that year. But

1454
01:41:41,880 --> 01:41:44,920
Speaker 2: that's really quite enough about old memos buried in the

1455
01:41:45,040 --> 01:41:48,519
Speaker 2: archives of conservative think tanks. I promised you I was

1456
01:41:48,560 --> 01:41:51,000
Speaker 2: going to tell you about the nineteen eighty eight cinematic

1457
01:41:51,040 --> 01:41:56,560
Speaker 2: abomination Red Scorpion to give you a brief idea of

1458
01:41:56,600 --> 01:41:59,640
Speaker 2: what the movie is about. It's stars Dolph Lundgren as

1459
01:41:59,640 --> 01:42:02,720
Speaker 2: a so IT Special Forces operative assigned to assassinate the

1460
01:42:02,800 --> 01:42:06,760
Speaker 2: leader of an anti communist gorilla force in the fictional

1461
01:42:06,800 --> 01:42:11,360
Speaker 2: African country of Mombaka, and the movie opens with Lundgren

1462
01:42:11,720 --> 01:42:15,880
Speaker 2: called before this sinister cabal of communist military leaders from

1463
01:42:15,960 --> 01:42:18,080
Speaker 2: Cuba and the Soviet Union, and they show him this

1464
01:42:18,560 --> 01:42:23,759
Speaker 2: slide show of these evil freedom fighters. It's tonally very

1465
01:42:23,800 --> 01:42:27,559
Speaker 2: odd because the movie is from the perspective of Dolph

1466
01:42:27,640 --> 01:42:31,360
Speaker 2: Lundgren's character, a Soviet Special Forces soldier, and he is

1467
01:42:31,400 --> 01:42:34,040
Speaker 2: a Communist, and he is our protagonist, and he is

1468
01:42:34,080 --> 01:42:36,360
Speaker 2: going to kill these anti communists.

1469
01:42:37,160 --> 01:42:38,599
Speaker 3: But Abrarov has trouble sort of.

1470
01:42:38,640 --> 01:42:44,280
Speaker 2: Settling into a perspective because he's writing this derisively. It's

1471
01:42:44,320 --> 01:42:48,720
Speaker 2: satirically right, because the anti communists are the heroes in

1472
01:42:48,760 --> 01:42:52,240
Speaker 2: his world. So it's a little difficult to tell what

1473
01:42:52,280 --> 01:42:55,480
Speaker 2: the movie is trying to achieve because he doesn't successfully

1474
01:42:55,600 --> 01:42:59,800
Speaker 2: write satire. For much of the movie, Dulph Lunngren is

1475
01:42:59,800 --> 01:43:03,840
Speaker 2: just of roaming the African bush dressed in a rather

1476
01:43:03,920 --> 01:43:08,080
Speaker 2: striking manner. He's removed his outer shirt and he's ripped

1477
01:43:08,120 --> 01:43:12,640
Speaker 2: his khaki pants into these tiny little shorts, and on

1478
01:43:12,680 --> 01:43:15,400
Speaker 2: the surface level, this is just that sort of eighties

1479
01:43:15,439 --> 01:43:18,840
Speaker 2: action movie aesthetic where you're seeing the sort of shining,

1480
01:43:19,040 --> 01:43:23,479
Speaker 2: sweaty pecks of this enormous muscle man. But I think

1481
01:43:23,479 --> 01:43:28,040
Speaker 2: there's more to this particular choice. We have this gigantic

1482
01:43:28,160 --> 01:43:31,400
Speaker 2: blonde Swede, and he's been outfitted in what I have

1483
01:43:31,520 --> 01:43:36,000
Speaker 2: to assume as a very intentional recreation of the iconic

1484
01:43:36,120 --> 01:43:42,240
Speaker 2: uniform of the Selou Scouts, the notoriously brutal Rhodesian Special Forces.

1485
01:43:43,800 --> 01:43:46,280
Speaker 2: And when I sat down to watch this movie, I

1486
01:43:46,360 --> 01:43:50,720
Speaker 2: realized almost immediately that Abramov had based the film on

1487
01:43:50,800 --> 01:43:57,840
Speaker 2: his own experience in Angola, just backwards right the men

1488
01:43:57,880 --> 01:44:00,799
Speaker 2: he paid to write the actual screenplay based on his notes,

1489
01:44:00,840 --> 01:44:04,880
Speaker 2: A man named arn Olsen, later said that Abramov explicitly

1490
01:44:04,920 --> 01:44:09,000
Speaker 2: told him that Mambaka is supposed to be Angola, and

1491
01:44:09,040 --> 01:44:12,160
Speaker 2: he'd written the character of the rebel leader Sundata to

1492
01:44:12,240 --> 01:44:17,200
Speaker 2: represent Jonas Savimbi. So Abramoff obviously came up with the

1493
01:44:17,240 --> 01:44:20,240
Speaker 2: plot of this movie in nineteen eighty five when he

1494
01:44:20,280 --> 01:44:24,240
Speaker 2: met with those anti communist leaders. So he just took

1495
01:44:24,320 --> 01:44:26,479
Speaker 2: that story and he inverted it.

1496
01:44:27,720 --> 01:44:28,360
Speaker 3: Because we know.

1497
01:44:28,439 --> 01:44:32,879
Speaker 2: Now for a fact that South African operatives assassinated leaders

1498
01:44:32,880 --> 01:44:36,320
Speaker 2: of the Soviet supported Social Estate of the People's Republic

1499
01:44:36,320 --> 01:44:40,640
Speaker 2: of Angola throughout that conflict. So he just took what

1500
01:44:40,720 --> 01:44:43,599
Speaker 2: he knew and he reversed it to make the bad

1501
01:44:43,640 --> 01:44:47,040
Speaker 2: guys in his mind the bad guys of his movie,

1502
01:44:47,840 --> 01:44:51,640
Speaker 2: regardless of who the bad guy was in real life.

1503
01:44:51,680 --> 01:44:54,000
Speaker 2: Some of the actions taken in the film by these

1504
01:44:54,400 --> 01:44:57,599
Speaker 2: villainous Cuban soldiers are things that we know South African

1505
01:44:57,640 --> 01:45:02,879
Speaker 2: special forces did in multiple content throughout the region. Russian

1506
01:45:02,920 --> 01:45:05,679
Speaker 2: soldiers in the movie drop some sort of toxic chemical

1507
01:45:05,760 --> 01:45:10,040
Speaker 2: from a plane on innocent civilians of Mombaka, and in

1508
01:45:10,080 --> 01:45:14,320
Speaker 2: real life there were later revelations about something called Project

1509
01:45:14,400 --> 01:45:20,320
Speaker 2: Coast South Africa's chemical and biological warfare program. There were

1510
01:45:20,320 --> 01:45:25,720
Speaker 2: horrific tales of chemical agents being tested on detainees, specifically

1511
01:45:25,840 --> 01:45:30,000
Speaker 2: detainees from the Ankle and conflict, and they use biological

1512
01:45:30,040 --> 01:45:34,040
Speaker 2: weapons to wipe out villages in Mozambique, Angola, and Namibia

1513
01:45:34,360 --> 01:45:39,280
Speaker 2: spanning years. But in the movie, these anti communist rebels

1514
01:45:39,360 --> 01:45:43,960
Speaker 2: led by this Savimbi stand in are noble freedom fighters

1515
01:45:44,160 --> 01:45:47,360
Speaker 2: and this Soviet killing machine has been sent to destroy them,

1516
01:45:47,439 --> 01:45:52,560
Speaker 2: but he has second thoughts and etc. I don't know

1517
01:45:52,600 --> 01:45:55,040
Speaker 2: why it's an hour and forty minutes long. There is

1518
01:45:55,080 --> 01:45:59,839
Speaker 2: an extended sequence with no dialogue where a Kalahari bushman

1519
01:46:00,160 --> 01:46:02,720
Speaker 2: is teaching Dolph Lundgren to hunt warthogs.

1520
01:46:03,920 --> 01:46:04,240
Speaker 3: I don't know.

1521
01:46:04,280 --> 01:46:05,920
Speaker 2: I was kind of looking at my phone at that point.

1522
01:46:07,920 --> 01:46:11,960
Speaker 2: Dolph Lunngren is basically just playing Ivan Drego again. He's

1523
01:46:12,000 --> 01:46:15,840
Speaker 2: fresh off playing that Russian boxer in Rocky four. I

1524
01:46:15,840 --> 01:46:19,040
Speaker 2: guess he's just kind of a one note guy. The

1525
01:46:19,120 --> 01:46:21,960
Speaker 2: only interesting character in the whole movie is that Kalahari

1526
01:46:22,040 --> 01:46:25,439
Speaker 2: bushman who rescues our protagonists from certain death in the desert.

1527
01:46:27,040 --> 01:46:29,960
Speaker 2: He's played by a Rakhabstan, an elder in the Komani

1528
01:46:30,040 --> 01:46:33,679
Speaker 2: clan of the San people. He was ninety five years

1529
01:46:33,720 --> 01:46:36,920
Speaker 2: old when the movie was filmed, and I was kind

1530
01:46:36,920 --> 01:46:39,679
Speaker 2: of curious about who they got to play this role,

1531
01:46:39,720 --> 01:46:42,439
Speaker 2: and so I looked him up and Khobe's son's son

1532
01:46:42,560 --> 01:46:46,840
Speaker 2: David would years later, after the fall of apartheid, successfully

1533
01:46:46,840 --> 01:46:49,920
Speaker 2: win a legal battle for the return of their ancestral lands.

1534
01:46:50,880 --> 01:46:53,600
Speaker 2: So the movie sucked, but at least it gave me

1535
01:46:53,600 --> 01:46:56,639
Speaker 2: the opportunity to read a little bit about this rightful

1536
01:46:56,680 --> 01:47:00,200
Speaker 2: restoration of the Komani lands, which are now protect did

1537
01:47:00,200 --> 01:47:06,400
Speaker 2: as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is hard to

1538
01:47:06,439 --> 01:47:11,320
Speaker 2: say exactly how Red Scorpion came to be. Abramof's version

1539
01:47:11,320 --> 01:47:16,120
Speaker 2: of events doesn't pass the smell test. He was outraged

1540
01:47:16,360 --> 01:47:20,000
Speaker 2: at the allegation that the South African government had played

1541
01:47:20,000 --> 01:47:24,559
Speaker 2: any part in his movie, but Craig Williamson that South

1542
01:47:24,600 --> 01:47:28,560
Speaker 2: African spy is on record claiming the film was absolutely

1543
01:47:28,920 --> 01:47:33,880
Speaker 2: quote funded by our guys, and it would certainly be

1544
01:47:34,000 --> 01:47:39,120
Speaker 2: hard to explain away everything about the film if that's

1545
01:47:39,200 --> 01:47:45,120
Speaker 2: not true. Extras are played by South African soldiers. South

1546
01:47:45,120 --> 01:47:49,400
Speaker 2: African military hardware is used for props. Vehicles with South

1547
01:47:49,439 --> 01:47:53,439
Speaker 2: African military license plates were seen on set by cast

1548
01:47:53,600 --> 01:47:57,680
Speaker 2: and crew and reporters. The South African military provided the

1549
01:47:57,680 --> 01:48:01,200
Speaker 2: production with an old Soviet tank that they'd captured earlier

1550
01:48:01,240 --> 01:48:05,559
Speaker 2: in the Angolan conflict, and South Africa allowed Abramoff to

1551
01:48:05,600 --> 01:48:10,080
Speaker 2: film the entire movie in Namibia in nineteen eighty eight,

1552
01:48:11,080 --> 01:48:13,320
Speaker 2: and nineteen eighty eight was the last year that the

1553
01:48:13,320 --> 01:48:18,000
Speaker 2: South African military was actively occupying much of Namibia before

1554
01:48:18,000 --> 01:48:20,479
Speaker 2: the UN arrived in nineteen eighty nine to facilitate the

1555
01:48:20,520 --> 01:48:26,880
Speaker 2: ceasefire and the transition to Namibian independence. Carmen Argenziano, the

1556
01:48:26,880 --> 01:48:31,040
Speaker 2: American actor cast as the Cuban colonel later told reporters

1557
01:48:31,080 --> 01:48:35,760
Speaker 2: that actors knew during filming that most of the extras

1558
01:48:35,760 --> 01:48:39,879
Speaker 2: in the movie were South African soldiers, and during filming

1559
01:48:39,920 --> 01:48:42,800
Speaker 2: there were rumors on set that there was some kind

1560
01:48:42,840 --> 01:48:49,400
Speaker 2: of intelligence operation. Argenziano called it very fishy. Quote We

1561
01:48:49,479 --> 01:48:52,439
Speaker 2: heard that very right wing South African money was helping

1562
01:48:52,439 --> 01:48:56,360
Speaker 2: fund the movie. It wasn't very clear. We were pretty

1563
01:48:56,400 --> 01:48:58,880
Speaker 2: upset about the source of the money. We thought we

1564
01:48:58,880 --> 01:49:02,120
Speaker 2: were misled. We were shocked that these brothers, who we

1565
01:49:02,160 --> 01:49:06,200
Speaker 2: thought were showbiz liberals, Beverly Hill's Jewish kids were doing this.

1566
01:49:07,880 --> 01:49:10,800
Speaker 2: Argenziano recounted one incident at the hotel where all the

1567
01:49:10,840 --> 01:49:15,080
Speaker 2: actors were staying. Some black Namibian children were playing on

1568
01:49:15,120 --> 01:49:18,240
Speaker 2: the escalator and the South African soldiers working for the

1569
01:49:18,240 --> 01:49:22,479
Speaker 2: production were shouting racial slurs of the children, chasing them away.

1570
01:49:24,360 --> 01:49:27,640
Speaker 2: Unnamed sources close to Abramoff told Ken Silverstein, writing for

1571
01:49:27,680 --> 01:49:32,759
Speaker 2: Harper's in two thousand and six, quote, Yes, some people

1572
01:49:32,840 --> 01:49:36,639
Speaker 2: were duped by the iff, but Jack wasn't one of them.

1573
01:49:37,760 --> 01:49:41,120
Speaker 2: As chairman, he understood where the money was coming from.

1574
01:49:42,040 --> 01:49:46,240
Speaker 2: He knew exactly who he was playing with. Another source

1575
01:49:46,240 --> 01:49:50,040
Speaker 2: told Silverstein that Red Scorpion had absolutely been a propaganda project,

1576
01:49:50,560 --> 01:49:54,800
Speaker 2: and Abramoff certainly knew it. Asked in nineteen eighty seven

1577
01:49:54,840 --> 01:49:56,640
Speaker 2: by The New York Times if the film, which was

1578
01:49:56,640 --> 01:49:59,200
Speaker 2: still in production at that point, was being financed by

1579
01:49:59,200 --> 01:50:03,759
Speaker 2: the South African gouvern government, Abramoff gave the incredibly normal

1580
01:50:03,880 --> 01:50:07,120
Speaker 2: sounding answer that he had raised the money from quote

1581
01:50:07,640 --> 01:50:13,080
Speaker 2: normal film investors. In his own memoirs, Abramoff repeats his

1582
01:50:13,080 --> 01:50:15,680
Speaker 2: claim that the film had been financed by private investors,

1583
01:50:16,840 --> 01:50:20,280
Speaker 2: but the only investor he names is quoting from the book,

1584
01:50:21,439 --> 01:50:24,640
Speaker 2: Robert Hall, a retired physician turned investor who owned a

1585
01:50:24,720 --> 01:50:29,679
Speaker 2: vineyard on the cape of South Africa. And that's true.

1586
01:50:29,880 --> 01:50:33,960
Speaker 2: Robert Hall was a retired doctor of sorts who was

1587
01:50:34,000 --> 01:50:37,519
Speaker 2: now an investor of sorts, and did own a vineyard

1588
01:50:37,640 --> 01:50:41,480
Speaker 2: on the cape of South Africa. That's true, But Abramoff

1589
01:50:41,800 --> 01:50:45,240
Speaker 2: neglects to include that Robert Hall was actually an American

1590
01:50:45,320 --> 01:50:48,679
Speaker 2: oral surgeon. He'd invented a variety of high speed drills

1591
01:50:48,760 --> 01:50:53,000
Speaker 2: used in dental and orthopedic surgical procedures, but he fled

1592
01:50:53,040 --> 01:50:56,559
Speaker 2: the United States in the late nineteen seventies to avoid

1593
01:50:56,560 --> 01:51:01,160
Speaker 2: paying millions of dollars to the irs. It's a little

1594
01:51:01,200 --> 01:51:04,759
Speaker 2: hard to google a generic sounding name like Robert Hall.

1595
01:51:04,880 --> 01:51:07,000
Speaker 2: There are a lot of guys called Robert Hall who

1596
01:51:07,160 --> 01:51:09,479
Speaker 2: might be a doctor and might live in South Africa.

1597
01:51:10,439 --> 01:51:14,840
Speaker 2: But luckily for us this Robert Hall unsuccessfully sued a

1598
01:51:14,840 --> 01:51:18,960
Speaker 2: South African magazine in the nineteen nineties. A judge in

1599
01:51:19,000 --> 01:51:21,120
Speaker 2: the Cape of Good Hope ruled that the magazine had

1600
01:51:21,120 --> 01:51:25,080
Speaker 2: in fact only been reporting the facts, not to faming Hall,

1601
01:51:25,760 --> 01:51:29,400
Speaker 2: when they reported, among other things, that he'd pressured a

1602
01:51:29,400 --> 01:51:32,800
Speaker 2: South African bank in nineteen eighty three to allow him

1603
01:51:32,800 --> 01:51:36,360
Speaker 2: to engage in currency exchange transactions that would be illegal

1604
01:51:36,400 --> 01:51:39,919
Speaker 2: for someone who is a permanent resident of South Africa,

1605
01:51:40,400 --> 01:51:42,599
Speaker 2: and as part of his strategy to convince the bank

1606
01:51:42,680 --> 01:51:46,040
Speaker 2: to let him keep doing these transactions, he told the

1607
01:51:46,080 --> 01:51:49,719
Speaker 2: bank manager that he was a personal friend of President

1608
01:51:49,840 --> 01:51:55,920
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan. So yeah, just normal investors. He raised money

1609
01:51:56,280 --> 01:52:01,240
Speaker 2: the normal way. Jeff Pandon, who worked under Abramoff at

1610
01:52:01,240 --> 01:52:06,280
Speaker 2: the International Freedom Foundation, says that Abramoff hired Russell Kristel

1611
01:52:06,360 --> 01:52:10,280
Speaker 2: as an executive producer on the film and Cristal in

1612
01:52:10,320 --> 01:52:13,599
Speaker 2: addition to being a state intelligence asset running front groups

1613
01:52:13,600 --> 01:52:17,120
Speaker 2: throughout the nineteen eighties was at this time serving on

1614
01:52:17,200 --> 01:52:22,320
Speaker 2: President de Clerk's Presidential Council, and Abramoff absolutely would have

1615
01:52:22,360 --> 01:52:25,960
Speaker 2: known that there's just no good faith explanation that can

1616
01:52:26,200 --> 01:52:30,080
Speaker 2: possibly leave you believing that Jack Abramoff had no idea

1617
01:52:30,640 --> 01:52:36,280
Speaker 2: that his movie was South African state propaganda. The film flopped.

1618
01:52:37,240 --> 01:52:39,640
Speaker 2: Warner Brothers pulled out of the agreement to distribute it

1619
01:52:39,680 --> 01:52:43,479
Speaker 2: after pressure from anti apartheid activists, led mainly by Tennis

1620
01:52:43,560 --> 01:52:48,960
Speaker 2: Legend Arthur Ashe. Shooting delays left the movie wildly over budget,

1621
01:52:49,080 --> 01:52:54,320
Speaker 2: and several actors claim they never got paid. The International

1622
01:52:54,400 --> 01:52:57,559
Speaker 2: Freedom Foundation folded in nineteen ninety three when the South

1623
01:52:57,600 --> 01:53:03,439
Speaker 2: African funding dried up, apartheid ended, and by nineteen ninety five,

1624
01:53:03,960 --> 01:53:07,000
Speaker 2: Jack Abramoff was working as a lobbyist for the Mississippi

1625
01:53:07,040 --> 01:53:10,040
Speaker 2: Band of Choctaw Indians, one of the clients that he

1626
01:53:10,080 --> 01:53:12,799
Speaker 2: would eventually go to prison for defrauding out of millions

1627
01:53:12,840 --> 01:53:18,519
Speaker 2: of dollars. And that, I guess is the story of

1628
01:53:18,560 --> 01:53:22,400
Speaker 2: how apartheid funded a bad action movie and Jack Abramoff

1629
01:53:22,560 --> 01:53:26,880
Speaker 2: ate cantuna at the Mujahideen and half the conservative think

1630
01:53:26,920 --> 01:53:31,360
Speaker 2: tags in Washington, d C. Secretly collaborated with South African

1631
01:53:31,400 --> 01:53:42,080
Speaker 2: military intelligence. Weird Little Guys is a production of Koso

1632
01:53:42,240 --> 01:53:46,120
Speaker 2: Media and iHeartRadio. It's researched, written and recorded by me

1633
01:53:46,479 --> 01:53:50,879
Speaker 2: Nelly Kunger. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtermann and Robert Evans.

1634
01:53:51,680 --> 01:53:54,519
Speaker 2: The show is edited by the wildly talented Rory Gagan.

1635
01:53:55,200 --> 01:53:58,360
Speaker 2: The theme music was composed by Brad Dickert. You can

1636
01:53:58,400 --> 01:54:01,040
Speaker 2: email me at Weird Little Guys pots podcast at gmail

1637
01:54:01,080 --> 01:54:01,960
Speaker 2: dot com.

1638
01:54:02,040 --> 01:54:03,439
Speaker 3: I will definitely.

1639
01:54:03,000 --> 01:54:06,560
Speaker 2: Read it, but I almost certainly will not answer it.

1640
01:54:06,560 --> 01:54:09,120
Speaker 3: It's nothing personal. I don't answer any of my emails.

1641
01:54:10,000 --> 01:54:12,240
Speaker 2: You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show with other

1642
01:54:12,360 --> 01:54:15,960
Speaker 2: listeners on the Weird Little Guys subreddit. Just don't post

1643
01:54:16,000 --> 01:54:17,559
Speaker 2: anything that's going to make you one of my Weird

1644
01:54:17,560 --> 01:54:18,160
Speaker 2: Little Guys