Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noah.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 1: super producer Alexis code named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly,
Speaker 1: you are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know. It is the top of the
Speaker 1: week as we hurdle headlong toward December, and oh gosh,
Speaker 1: fellow conspiracy realists, there is so much strange news. Guys,
Speaker 1: before we get into it. Kim Jongoon just got some
Speaker 1: more international attention. He is begging the He's begging the
Speaker 1: families and the women of the DPRK to have more children.
Speaker 3: That's interesting. Isn't it better to have less children and
Speaker 3: overpopulated parts of the world.
Speaker 1: Well, Kim seems very very upset about it. He was
Speaker 1: speaking at the fifth National Congress of Mothers and no
Speaker 1: statement from the Kim dynasty regarding the quality of life
Speaker 1: and the Democratic Republic is AI taking jobs from clergy.
Speaker 1: The United Kingdom believes that your favorite spiritual guides may
Speaker 1: soon be replaced by computers. But that's all just mentions.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about spying. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about the QAnon queen and Discordianism. What I would say,
Speaker 1: social hacking for chaotic good purposes before we do any
Speaker 1: of that. As many of us have probably heard recently,
Speaker 1: for anybody who submitted their DNA to submitted their DNA
Speaker 1: to learn more about themselves, you may have gotten some
Speaker 1: troubling news quite recently.
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, very troubling news. There's an incident that we
Speaker 2: will speak of shortly before we even get into it,
Speaker 2: Guys ran into a thing with this story that we've
Speaker 2: run into before, and we've made a whole I think
Speaker 2: we made a whole episode about it. Twenty three and
Speaker 2: meters Holding Company is incorporated in guess where do you
Speaker 2: think I have to accuse myself? Oh, you already know, Delaware,
Speaker 2: But the address of their principal offices are in South
Speaker 2: San Francisco, California. I've actually been to those offices with
Speaker 2: my team and I've gotten the sales pitch directly from
Speaker 2: high up people there about how safe everyone's personal information
Speaker 2: is when you give something as you know, personal as
Speaker 2: literally the stuff that makes up who you are and
Speaker 2: what you are. Yeah, they were very adamant about that,
Speaker 2: as any company collecting that kind of data was and
Speaker 2: currently is would state that they are now and will
Speaker 2: be in the future.
Speaker 3: At least they will continue.
Speaker 2: Saying that until something like this happens. Here's a news
Speaker 2: story from tech Crunch on December first, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: Quote twenty three and me says hackers accessed quote significant
Speaker 2: number unquote of files about users ancestry. Okay, what does
Speaker 2: that mean? Well, twenty three and me apparently on Friday,
Speaker 2: December first, stated that hackers had accessed around fourteen thousand
Speaker 2: customer accounts in a data breach of their I guess
Speaker 2: their servers now. Fourteen thousand is roughly zero point one
Speaker 2: percent of its nearly fourteen million customers worldwide. People who
Speaker 2: have actually spit into one of those things and sent
Speaker 2: it in to twenty three and meters. That seems like
Speaker 2: not that many people. You know, that's teen thousand individuals
Speaker 2: and potentially data about everything from their login information, their birthdays,
Speaker 2: you know, user names, all that normal stuff, that normal
Speaker 2: private information that you share with all the companies you
Speaker 2: share it with. But this is again also potentially super
Speaker 2: specific information about you and your DNA. Here's the weird thing, guys.
Speaker 2: The only reason we know about this is because twenty
Speaker 2: three and meters as a publicly traded company, has to
Speaker 2: put forward these what do you call them reports about
Speaker 2: all kinds of things, and one of the things they
Speaker 2: have to report on are instances of hacking, right, or
Speaker 2: weird stuff that's going on that might affect the price
Speaker 2: of their stock, right, or.
Speaker 3: The kind of stuff that comes out like in shareholders
Speaker 3: meetings or like.
Speaker 2: When this is like that, it's like yes, But this
Speaker 2: one in particular is like, hey, here's a heads up
Speaker 2: to the sec and it has to get published basically,
Speaker 2: so everybody has to get access to that information because
Speaker 2: it could again mess with share price or how the
Speaker 2: company performs on like quarterly earnings or something.
Speaker 1: It's weird. How informed consent does imply to investors?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, just to investors. But hey, if you
Speaker 2: want to read it, you can find Form eight h
Speaker 2: KA Amendment number one. It's the current report pursuant to
Speaker 2: Section thirteen or fifteen D of the Securities Exchange Act
Speaker 2: of nineteen thirty four. The date of the report is
Speaker 2: October tenth, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: That's a banger, stem to stern, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, and it's great too, because you know, it's
Speaker 2: a report on something pretty serious that happened, right, a
Speaker 2: data breach. But the way it's written, because it is
Speaker 2: these official forums, you know, and the way it's written,
Speaker 2: and it's just, oh, it's beautiful. I highly recommend you
Speaker 2: read it. You get stuff like this. The information accessed
Speaker 2: by the threat actor in the credential stuffed accounts varied
Speaker 2: by user account and generally included ancestry information and for
Speaker 2: a subset of those accounts, health related information based upon
Speaker 2: the user's genetics. Okay, which is again scary, like that's
Speaker 2: your super protected health information, right.
Speaker 1: Hippa could never no, no.
Speaker 2: No, and health information could be a lot of things.
Speaker 2: Let's get to why this became a much bigger story. Initially,
Speaker 2: it's reported by twenty three and me it's about fourteen
Speaker 2: thousand users that get affected. Then three days later, on
Speaker 2: December fourth, there's another tech Crunch article and I'm just
Speaker 2: going to read you the headline ready, so stoked twenty
Speaker 2: three and meters confirms hackers stole Ancestry data on six
Speaker 2: point nine million users. Six point nine million. That's a
Speaker 2: little bit bigger than fourteen thousand.
Speaker 1: Now I'm not a math surgeon, but I am attempted
Speaker 1: to agree with you. This is something we were talking
Speaker 1: of air a little bit about as well, Like that's
Speaker 1: a jump, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So twenty three and meters initially said the hackers
Speaker 2: stole zero point one percent of customers information about fourteen
Speaker 2: thousand individuals. They also said that they're assessing all of that, right,
Speaker 2: And they said hackers were also able to access quote
Speaker 2: a significant number of files containing profile information about other
Speaker 2: users Ancestry unquote, but it didn't say anything about how many.
Speaker 1: That's a problem with family trees, right, Yeah, that's part
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 2: Well, it also goes back you guys, remember those conversations
Speaker 2: we're having about metadata and Facebook and how the connection
Speaker 2: of just you and then imagine one user on Facebook.
Speaker 2: You now imagine all the people you're friends with. Now
Speaker 2: imagine all the people each one of those individuals as
Speaker 2: friends with.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: That's funny because I was even thinking about a family
Speaker 3: tree being a form of metadata.
Speaker 2: In a way. Yeah, sure, it's connections to other individuals
Speaker 2: that also have very private personal information on twenty three
Speaker 2: and meters, and that information can get shared amongst users
Speaker 2: with a special thing called the DNA Relatives feature.
Speaker 1: Oh finally great, Yeah cool.
Speaker 3: Is this an opt in opt out kind of scenario? Okay, okay,
Speaker 3: it is.
Speaker 1: I'm clocking you have to opt out, of course.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's when I said opt in opt out. I
Speaker 3: mainly met out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an optional thing that you can you can
Speaker 2: choose to do. And within this it shares with other
Speaker 2: people you connect with or match with. I guess it
Speaker 2: shares your DNA relatives display name. So your display name, right,
Speaker 2: how recently you logged into your account, your relationship labels
Speaker 2: such as masculine, feminine, or neutral, your predicted relationship and
Speaker 2: percentage of DNA shared with your match.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Your ancestry reports your matching DNA segments, which is another
Speaker 2: option within the optional thing. Your location another option your
Speaker 2: birth location and family names. Oh, it feels like you
Speaker 2: could have some identity problems going on. Your profile picture,
Speaker 2: your birth year, your entire family tree can be linked
Speaker 2: in this section.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this goes to so first off, for a
Speaker 1: lot of people in the audience. You might be wondering tonight.
Speaker 1: You might be saying, well, why do I care? Because
Speaker 1: that is not, for instance, a credit card number, a
Speaker 1: routing number, or account number, et cetera. The issue is
Speaker 1: social engineering. Yes, now you get a much more effective
Speaker 1: call from your great grand uncle Lucifius name I made up.
Speaker 1: Apologize to Lucifius who you know. Maybe it's not Lucifius
Speaker 1: calling you directly because he's quote unquote he's probably really dead.
Speaker 1: And then it's no, it's his step kid.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I know, you're right. And as messed up
Speaker 2: as it sounds, social engineering used on other companies just
Speaker 2: trying to extract little bits of information about you by
Speaker 2: having a certain amount. Let's say you've got sixty eight
Speaker 2: percent of the information you would need to really impersonate somebody.
Speaker 2: Call a company. Now you've got some of that information,
Speaker 2: and there maybe the person's really nice and feels for you.
Speaker 2: Then they give you, oh, maybe an extra you know,
Speaker 2: a birth date or a current address or an email.
Speaker 2: It's just it's really scary.
Speaker 1: You're right, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, it's just a thing that cannon does happen.
Speaker 2: And Okay, so the big question is, how in the
Speaker 2: heck did twenty three and meters get hacked? This significantly
Speaker 2: if you go on their website, guys, oh my god,
Speaker 2: there's so much on their website about data protection and
Speaker 2: GDPR compliance stuff within the terms of service and the
Speaker 2: India Ual Data Sharing consent forms and the research consent
Speaker 2: documents that they've got on their website, all about how
Speaker 2: protected your information is, specifically because users feel a certain
Speaker 2: type of way about their DNA information.
Speaker 3: Right, Sure, I think maybe you should.
Speaker 2: But it's it's it's priority one, right. But the way
Speaker 2: the hackers got in, you guys, it sounds awful. But
Speaker 2: the way people got in, whoever this person or persons were,
Speaker 2: it was a thing called credential stuffing, which is when
Speaker 2: you use the same let's say, email and password for
Speaker 2: multiple accounts. So let's say you're MySpace that you love
Speaker 2: into years in.
Speaker 3: Years racing hand here, just for the record, I'm definitely
Speaker 3: that guy.
Speaker 2: Well, what if you're using that same password on twenty
Speaker 2: three and meters and that same email. Well, hey, that's
Speaker 2: easy because your MySpace thing got hacked for two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight, So like it's.
Speaker 1: Just no, what what'll guess? One two three five.
Speaker 2: Well, it doesn't even matter even even if that password
Speaker 2: is like super strong. If it's the exact same password, yes, god.
Speaker 3: And they've already got it, then it's just a matter
Speaker 3: of it's a numbers game. It's just like, let's try
Speaker 3: We know these things exist, let's just try it out.
Speaker 3: For however, many instances there are accounts associated with this email, right.
Speaker 2: So yes, So basically these hackers got access to fourteen
Speaker 2: thousand individual accounts and then through that little family tree
Speaker 2: of other information, just got six point nine million exponentials.
Speaker 3: What that is?
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure they Kevin baconed it.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what they did. Oh and here's the other
Speaker 2: thing after this. Guess what twenty three and meter is
Speaker 2: requiring all users to use?
Speaker 1: Oh, I know, you have to opt out of the
Speaker 1: new arbitration agreement they came. Oh yeah, terms of service?
Speaker 3: Are they probably requiring you to use a strong ass
Speaker 3: word they create for you?
Speaker 2: Well, first they made everybody update their passwords, but I like,
Speaker 2: where you're going ben update your password? And now everybody
Speaker 2: has to use two factor authentications. Oh finally, which is
Speaker 2: like why anyone doesn't use that nowadays? Is kind of
Speaker 2: a wonder but I guess it is a real pain
Speaker 2: in the neck often for users and then also probably
Speaker 2: for the company itself.
Speaker 1: And consider the demographic. Not it's a profile, but what
Speaker 1: we see in the human experience is that people largely
Speaker 1: tend to become more invested in their past as they
Speaker 1: are more confronted by their mortality. What I'm saying in
Speaker 1: a very diplomatic way is that there is a large
Speaker 1: proportion of biologically older users right who may not have
Speaker 1: the same digital savvy that a lot of people enjoy
Speaker 1: right benefit from.
Speaker 2: Very very true, dude.
Speaker 3: I mean, when you get into this kind of convo,
Speaker 3: looted levels of like change your password every periodically or whatever,
Speaker 3: and two factor, even the tech savvyest of us can
Speaker 3: get overwhelmed by this stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, for sure. For sure. It's not easy by
Speaker 2: any means. There's so much more to talk about here, guys.
Speaker 2: We went on a pretty deep dive into the story
Speaker 2: as we were all reading about today and just going
Speaker 2: back to the twenty three and meters like origin story
Speaker 2: and looking at what the what the original reasoning for
Speaker 2: creating the company was, and like how they were going
Speaker 2: to make money and how important it was going to
Speaker 2: be to get everybody's DNA voluntarily, because we're going to
Speaker 2: provide a service to let you know who you are,
Speaker 2: what's going on with your body, the you know, things
Speaker 2: you might need to be thinking about or worrying about
Speaker 2: in the future because you've got these genes. If there's
Speaker 2: a big enough pool, we can learn enough about humanity
Speaker 2: that then we can predict things, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we could. We could save the world or save
Speaker 1: more people from terrible diseases.
Speaker 2: We could. We can even drugs specifically based on you know,
Speaker 2: small pockets of people within that population, like guys, I
Speaker 2: didn't know this. One of the main reasons that twenty
Speaker 2: three and meters has had problems is because the FDA
Speaker 2: won't allow them to share a ton of information about
Speaker 2: you that is found in your DNA. They won't let them.
Speaker 2: They're like, no, no, no, yeah, I know that's that
Speaker 2: person's spit and that is that individual's you know, genetic makeup.
Speaker 2: But you cannot tell them the stuff you found in there.
Speaker 1: Why because it violates it violates earlier existing legislation and
Speaker 1: also the.
Speaker 3: Hippas for others liked why would you not be able
Speaker 3: to find out your own stuff? I don't understand right.
Speaker 1: It's again it's earlier existing legislation regarding the role of
Speaker 1: a private company as it intersects with your rights as
Speaker 1: a person, at least in the United States and granted
Speaker 1: in the EU and other regions or other countries. These
Speaker 1: laws may differ your genetic mileage, may vary or at
Speaker 1: least your rights.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and one of the FDA's main points is that
Speaker 2: if you get that genetic information back and then twenty
Speaker 2: three and meters as a company says, hey, cervical cancer,
Speaker 2: you may have like a seventeen percent higher chance of
Speaker 2: getting that because of the way your DNA makeup is.
Speaker 2: The FDA is worried that you would make choices about
Speaker 2: your own healthcare or get operations done, or you know,
Speaker 2: seek whatever treatment that isn't necessary, right, because they're not
Speaker 2: a doctor diagnosing you with something. They're just a company saying, hey,
Speaker 2: here's a percentage chance that you are whatever.
Speaker 3: So it's sort of like a more elaborate version of
Speaker 3: like WebMD, you know, just like obsessively like looking up
Speaker 3: things on WebMD.
Speaker 2: Kind of what is your DNA?
Speaker 3: What the heck?
Speaker 2: All right, guys, let's talk about this more one day
Speaker 2: for now, let's hear a word from our sponsor and
Speaker 2: we'll be right back with more strange news.
Speaker 1: And we have returned. One important note for everyone who
Speaker 1: has messed around with twenty three and Me, please know
Speaker 1: that the arbitration thing is happening now. You have a
Speaker 1: limited amount of time to contact them and opt out
Speaker 1: of the arbitration policy, which will remove your rights immediately.
Speaker 1: If you are concerned, contact all one word arbitration opt
Speaker 1: out at twenty three and me dot com. And best
Speaker 1: of luck to everyone involved.
Speaker 2: Thanks for mentioning, Evan.
Speaker 1: You're right, though, Matt. We need more people to know
Speaker 1: about this, and it is an episode in the future.
Speaker 1: Speaking of things people know and speaking of the moment
Speaker 1: when they know them, I have some questions for our
Speaker 1: fellow conspiracy realist and for you guys. The news broke
Speaker 1: recently amid some ongoing chaos in the Latin American theater
Speaker 1: that a guy named Victor Manuel Rocca, now retired from
Speaker 1: decades of service as a diplomat in the National Security Council.
Speaker 1: The Department of Justice DOJ were just broke that this
Speaker 1: retired guy was moonlighting. He had a second job, and
Speaker 1: it's not uncommon for public figures to have a second job, right,
Speaker 1: like presidents do speeches and your local law enforcement named
Speaker 1: moonlight at clubs, right, stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Sure, but oftentimes there are clauses and employment agreements that
Speaker 3: do prevent you from certain types of moonlighting that could
Speaker 3: be conflicts of interest.
Speaker 1: Right, Uh, nailed it. Yeah, that's what happened, because Uncle
Speaker 1: Sam came out and said that this guy again, his
Speaker 1: name is like Victor Manuel Rocca, has been charged and
Speaker 1: arrested on suspicion of serving as a top spy an
Speaker 1: infiltrator for the Cuban government for more than four decades,
Speaker 1: forty years.
Speaker 2: He really just did a bang up job. He got
Speaker 2: him all that juicy info and now wait, hold on, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so who's slapping his wrist? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Probably somebody else in the cell pretty soon is going
Speaker 1: to be slapping more than his risk slapping his wrist.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this guy, uh, this guy, up until quite recently,
Speaker 1: he was perceived to have a very strident, spotless public record,
Speaker 1: both as a civilian and as a public servant. He
Speaker 1: leaned in really hard, apparently into Trump support in his
Speaker 1: later years because he retired fairly recently, and he got
Speaker 1: to the point where people were saying, Hey, this guy's
Speaker 1: little cartoonish about this, you know. And you can read
Speaker 1: the full criminal complaint against him at Justice dot gov.
Speaker 1: I'd like to go to some great work by Tim
Speaker 1: Paget over at wlr INN in Miami and Tim Wrights,
Speaker 1: the Tim Rights. The following This is the headline Tim Rights,
Speaker 1: or the beginning paragraph. He says, a former US ambassador
Speaker 1: in Latin America who lives in Miami was charged this
Speaker 1: week for being a covert agent for Cuba for decades.
Speaker 1: The mystery is what led him in that direction and
Speaker 1: how much damage he may have done in the US.
Speaker 1: And that's I don't know. I think before we go
Speaker 1: any further, we have to acknowledge that post Cold War,
Speaker 1: especially the United States has kind of been the bad
Speaker 1: guy to Cuba, right Can we say that on a yeah?
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, in terms of the embargoes and all of
Speaker 3: that stuff.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, yeah, I mean the influence in Cuba before
Speaker 2: the revolution.
Speaker 3: I mean the perception is strong, yes, is that the
Speaker 3: US is the bad guy?
Speaker 2: I got you, Well, we haven't been friends. How about
Speaker 2: that we haven't been good to them?
Speaker 3: And I think I mentioned that there was a brief
Speaker 3: moment where the borders opened up, and you know, Americans
Speaker 3: were welcomed back into Cuba, and in that tiny amount
Speaker 3: of time, my kid and their mom and stepdad visited
Speaker 3: Cuba and then right after that trip shut right back up.
Speaker 3: Just goes to show the tenuous nature of these types
Speaker 3: of agreements.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I had several close friends who also took advantage
Speaker 1: of that, And I think during even during the official
Speaker 1: closed down or before the brief opening of that civilian window,
Speaker 1: there was still nonprofit travel. There's still military travel to Guantanamo.
Speaker 1: When specific this guy was ambassador to Bolivia in two
Speaker 1: thousand and two, like he was in the upper echelons,
Speaker 1: he wasn't just some crooked consular officer sometimes stamping things
Speaker 1: he should not have stamped. And yes, for any student
Speaker 1: of presidential history here in the US, being ambassador Oblivion
Speaker 1: two thousand and two means that he was active under
Speaker 1: the George W. Bush administration. Again, super weird that that
Speaker 1: guy's father was president and then he was in a
Speaker 1: apparent democracy. So Rocca is leaning in hard to the
Speaker 1: right wing area of American ideology as it sold to
Speaker 1: the public. This means that if you have if you
Speaker 1: have a Latin American leader who appears leftist, people like
Speaker 1: Evomo rallies in Bolivia, or people like and I'm not
Speaker 1: supporting these guys, but people who are you know, former
Speaker 1: leaders of Venezuela like Ugo Chavez. Check out clips of
Speaker 1: his morning show, which he did for quite some time.
Speaker 1: This guy was all gased, no breaks against them. But
Speaker 1: it appears the entire time, at least per the FBI
Speaker 1: and per US authorities, he was maintaining some sort of ratline,
Speaker 1: some sort of backdoor communication with Cuba. And what they're
Speaker 1: saying in these complaints is that he purposely put himself
Speaker 1: in a situation where he had access to non public information,
Speaker 1: so not necessarily classified, not the stuff you can't know about,
Speaker 1: but the stuff they don't want out yet, and he
Speaker 1: was sharing that with Cuban intelligence, which means that they
Speaker 1: were sharing that with their allies across the globe. Now
Speaker 1: you might say, okay, look, I'm familiar with the United States.
Speaker 1: I know that there have been quite a few public
Speaker 1: figures of late who have clearly been compromised by foreign intelligence,
Speaker 1: one of them, most notably being a former president of
Speaker 1: the United States who is currently running for office again.
Speaker 1: That is true, That entire statement is true. But the
Speaker 1: question I have to ask here, the most immediate question,
Speaker 1: Love you guys thoughts on this? What is like, what
Speaker 1: are we defining as spying here? And what are we
Speaker 1: defining as information? Was this guy damaging? Why did the
Speaker 1: CIA call it? Or a former CIA case officer call
Speaker 1: it the most damaging spy scandal in US history? Are
Speaker 1: they making a mountain out of a molehill? Is there
Speaker 1: more information we need?
Speaker 2: I guess it's just a bit weird if it actually
Speaker 2: did begin in nineteen seventy three, I think that's the
Speaker 2: year right when he like allegedly made some trip and
Speaker 2: became a quote good friend of the Cuban intelligence of
Speaker 2: whatever Cuban intelligence apparatus. I mean, that's a lot of
Speaker 2: time to be in like working through public offices in
Speaker 2: the State Department, gathering intell at you know, all of
Speaker 2: these different embassies, because he's how many embassies has he
Speaker 2: worked out? Like, I don't even know it's it's it's
Speaker 2: probably less than a dozen, but it's a lot.
Speaker 1: Well that's still more than the average person, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: But I mean, what actions do you think could have
Speaker 2: been taken from that stuff? Like if he's just assisting
Speaker 2: the Republic of Cuba, what does that mean, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's a great question, Matt. What it means is that
Speaker 1: it gives the Cuban government visibility on future plans. God,
Speaker 1: it gives the government of Cuba the context of in
Speaker 1: which those plans are germinated, in which they occur. And
Speaker 1: so when he is arrested, the first time this is
Speaker 1: reported in the West is by the Associated Press. When
Speaker 1: he is arrested, we hear multiple diplomats, former peers of
Speaker 1: his intelligence circles saying that they had no idea. They're
Speaker 1: all saying he had the keys to the kingdom, he
Speaker 1: had the crown jewels. If it's something had to do
Speaker 1: with Cuba, this guy saw it. And I would also
Speaker 1: shout out great work by four journalists over at the
Speaker 1: New York Times, Glenn Thrush, Ernesto Londono, David c Adams,
Speaker 1: and Francis Roebliz. You can read a great story about
Speaker 1: this retired US diplomat accused of working as a secret
Speaker 1: agent for Cuba. Attorney General Merrick Garland may be familiar
Speaker 1: name to some people.
Speaker 3: Merrick B.
Speaker 1: Garland, excuse me, says that this is one of the
Speaker 1: highest reaching, longest lasting infiltrations of the US government by
Speaker 1: a foreign agent. So sorry, Russia, good hustle. You know
Speaker 1: I love the Americans too, you guys. I get the
Speaker 1: Mordecai Venanu stuff. This Roca has you guys. Uh, he
Speaker 1: lapped you. He's got you at a loss.
Speaker 2: I don't understand this spin. This guy who made it
Speaker 2: this far undercover, like completely nobody knows, right, he tells
Speaker 2: some undercover FBI.
Speaker 1: A channels, Right, yeah, he says, I got some real
Speaker 1: grand slams.
Speaker 3: Isn't that the.
Speaker 2: Quote something like that?
Speaker 3: But that's that's like a perfect storm like conditions, right,
Speaker 3: Like it seems a little suspects that that was just random.
Speaker 2: Well, I just don't understand how you go through all
Speaker 2: of what he's gone through, right, and then you just decide,
Speaker 2: you know what, this looks like a good place for beans.
Speaker 3: Still, he knew who he was talking to. It wasn't
Speaker 3: like accidental, like well, well, no, it was an undercover
Speaker 3: undercover you're saying that with all his training, you would
Speaker 3: think he would have been able to sniff that out,
Speaker 3: and then he wouldn't have been so loose lipped, therefore
Speaker 3: sinking ships or just not tell anyone ever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just don't make it to the coffee shop, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. But that's what this is what
Speaker 1: appears to have happened. To your point, Matt, he is
Speaker 1: on record speaking with undercover FBI working in concert with
Speaker 1: the CIA. There's a lot of alphabet soup here wherein
Speaker 1: he is saying stuff like this was a real grand
Speaker 1: slam for me. He's alluding to some of his activities
Speaker 1: not just in not just in the Caribbean, Central and
Speaker 1: South America, but also as far as far east as Italy.
Speaker 1: The Department has brought more and more charges here. Here's
Speaker 1: what I think, Here's what I pause, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be again, this is absolutely honest. We have no proof
Speaker 1: of this. I highly suspect that the US government knew
Speaker 1: this guy was shaky far before the FBI said, oh,
Speaker 1: we just found out about it a year ago. Because
Speaker 1: if you are, if you are actually playing that kind
Speaker 1: of reindeer game, then you're not going to expose a
Speaker 1: vulnerability that you have caught. You're going to turn it
Speaker 1: into an opportunity. And I posit to you also that
Speaker 1: we see indeed a larger pattern of snapping down on
Speaker 1: people that ordinarily would have been allowed to You know what,
Speaker 1: It's like, this is so weird. It's like, it's like
Speaker 1: tagging wild animals. It's like when biologists tag a bird
Speaker 1: or you know, a tiger or something like.
Speaker 3: You to check for radiation and environments and things.
Speaker 1: You're still wild. Go do your thing, bro, you know,
Speaker 1: and don't worry. Don't worry about that. Don't worry about
Speaker 1: that black what is it usually like? Don't worry about
Speaker 1: that black suv that's kind of lingering behind you at
Speaker 1: the airport, right, because you're on your own.
Speaker 3: You're wild.
Speaker 1: You're so smart, bro, And we see a larger pattern.
Speaker 1: I want to thank the New York Times for pointing
Speaker 1: this out, because not as many sources are pointing this
Speaker 1: out as they should. This comes on the heels of
Speaker 1: other accusations of other charges. In October of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: a New Jersey Senator, Robert Menendez, was charged with conspiring
Speaker 1: to act as an agent of the Egyptian government. There
Speaker 1: are foxes in the henhouse, right, But the question is
Speaker 1: how long did Uncle Sam know about these conflicts of interest?
Speaker 1: Your earlier phrase, and why, perhaps most importantly, why is
Speaker 1: now the time to clamp down on these. That's the question.
Speaker 2: It's a good one, do. I don't know why.
Speaker 1: I think Matt put the word out. I think Matt,
Speaker 1: I think you've got my eye on the spy.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying, Ben can I really quickly?
Speaker 2: And you shared an ABC News article for this story. Man,
Speaker 2: I've was seeing this all the time, this kind of
Speaker 2: thing in news stories. I'm just going to read a
Speaker 2: quote here ready dot dot that later led to assignments
Speaker 2: in Havana, Cuba between nineteen ninety five and nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 3: What yeah, what?
Speaker 2: Who wrote?
Speaker 1: It's Mandela effect. It's a multiversal thing. It was a
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five in a different universe versus nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: five in the current timeline. Everybody please check out the
Speaker 1: amazing sci fi show Fringe.
Speaker 3: It's been rewatching it lately. Holds up?
Speaker 1: Wait really, I like I think too till the end
Speaker 1: of the season.
Speaker 3: But I have been watching them. The beginning is as
Speaker 3: good as I remember it, being the one on the
Speaker 3: air plane, in particular with the weird melty like people pilot. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I know, the whole airplane's full of like weird corpses
Speaker 3: that their skin is melted off and gone trans That
Speaker 3: very first couple of episodes are great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my favorite is the flower based episode. I think
Speaker 1: white tum, I think it's white to something like that.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful, it's poetry on screen.
Speaker 3: And the guy that plays the crazy scientist he eats
Speaker 3: tomatoes very aggressively in the Lord of the Rings movie.
Speaker 3: Just putting that out there.
Speaker 1: Right, And so this guy broke up. He is not again,
Speaker 1: he is not a low visibility figure to these authorities
Speaker 1: that are now cracking down on him, just like the
Speaker 1: senator who is charged for working with Egypt. This indictment
Speaker 1: says that Roca unlawfully enriched himself or attempted to do
Speaker 1: so while furthering the intelligence interest of Cuba. So does
Speaker 1: that mean that he was spouting ideology to both sides
Speaker 1: of the game and then making a pretty penny off
Speaker 1: the like off the discrepancy. Probably. The indictments thirty eight pages,
Speaker 1: you can read it online. We'll save you some time
Speaker 1: because we're going to move on here. But what you
Speaker 1: need to know, folks, is that there is no law
Speaker 1: against your public officials making a lot of money by
Speaker 1: breaking the same rules you were expected to follow Congress
Speaker 1: is never going to have a substantive insider trading bill.
Speaker 1: They're never going to apply it to themselves. And with this,
Speaker 1: before we go to the break, I want to leave
Speaker 1: you with a question, how many other folks are out there?
Speaker 1: How long have they been operating, and why is the
Speaker 1: US government choosing to point them out today? One A
Speaker 1: three three STDWYTK Conspiracydiheartradio dot Com will be right back.
Speaker 3: And we have returned with one final piece of strange news. Uh.
Speaker 3: In the way of an update, We've We've done a
Speaker 3: couple of updates on this topic, recently the QAnon Queen.
Speaker 3: You all remember the q Andon Queen? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah?
Speaker 3: Uh? Did did Dolo? Romana? Did Dolo? Have you guys
Speaker 3: seen that a movie or read the book Doctor Sleep.
Speaker 3: It's a it's sort of a I guess a sequel
Speaker 3: to The Shining. I think it's one of Stephen King's
Speaker 3: better Latter day books. And he does a good job
Speaker 3: of incorporating a lot of the things about The Shining.
Speaker 3: And it's nice to see where Danny ends up, and
Speaker 3: he ends up a lot like Jack, but you know,
Speaker 3: a little more of a benevolent version of Jack played
Speaker 3: by Ewan McGregor in the film, which is directed by
Speaker 3: Mike Flanagan, who has kind of become the you know,
Speaker 3: more modern day torch bearer of like good Stephen King adaptations.
Speaker 3: There in that book and in that movie, there's a
Speaker 3: roving band of psychic vampires that live in caravans and
Speaker 3: they rove around the United States looking for people that
Speaker 3: possess the shining, you know that that ability, and they
Speaker 3: sucked them dryer of their they seem the steam is
Speaker 3: what they call it, right, so Didulo in her whole posse,
Speaker 3: And they're weird like intimidation of Canada roving around in
Speaker 3: these like motor homes. For some reason, in my mind,
Speaker 3: I connect it to that in terms of just like, oh,
Speaker 3: you don't want to see them rolling into your town.
Speaker 3: And that was certainly the case when this group occupied
Speaker 3: an abandoned school in a small town in Saskatchewan. Is
Speaker 3: it Saskatoon? Do people say that? Is that just sort
Speaker 3: of being funny or I think it's Saskatchewan. But we've
Speaker 3: talked about that was the last thing we talked about,
Speaker 3: where they essentially occupied an abandoned school in this very
Speaker 3: very small town, like in the you know, numbering in
Speaker 3: the thousands, like in terms of population, and we're you know,
Speaker 3: using some really crazy intimidation tactics that were just kind
Speaker 3: of spooky, like videoing the people of the town that
Speaker 3: were watching them, you know, from the rooftops and like
Speaker 3: setting out this like like do not cross this like
Speaker 3: rope line kind of and just weird stuff. And just
Speaker 3: for you know, by way of a quick reminder, this
Speaker 3: whole posse led by Dodulo. They are QAnon believers, whatever
Speaker 3: that means. That can be a lot of different things.
Speaker 3: But Dedulo has convinced her followers that she is the
Speaker 3: legitimate Queen of Canada and caused a lot of people
Speaker 3: that have you know, fallen into her ranks to quit
Speaker 3: their jobs. She was convinced convincing them that they would
Speaker 3: you know, didn't have to pay their bills, and subsequently
Speaker 3: a lot of them like lost their homes and had
Speaker 3: their power turned off and their utilities turned off and
Speaker 3: all of that. But as is often the case with
Speaker 3: people that really go down the rabbit hole with cult leaders,
Speaker 3: they still were in her corner, you know, even when
Speaker 3: things went completely pear shaped in terms of their actual lives.
Speaker 3: But it turns out that there are some people out there.
Speaker 3: You maybe will recall that Dodula was using Telegram, which
Speaker 3: is an app that's like an encrypted kind of chat
Speaker 3: sort of app often used by drug dealers and folks
Speaker 3: that don't want people to be able to access the
Speaker 3: information that they're putting out there. Because it's encrypted, you
Speaker 3: have to be invited to these private channels. And Dodulo
Speaker 3: was using Telegram in order to spread her doctrine, whatever
Speaker 3: it might be. And let's be honest, it's very vague
Speaker 3: what her whole, you know, thing is. And there are
Speaker 3: some I guess you could call them benevolent trolls out
Speaker 3: there that are trying to shut her down by infiltrating
Speaker 3: her telegram exchanges. And I think that's pretty interesting. So
Speaker 3: Vice mac Lemoreux reports in Vice, I'll just read the headline,
Speaker 3: trolls tricked the QAnon queen's followers into volunteering to kill
Speaker 3: So a lot of times, these types of leaders, they'll
Speaker 3: really just straddle the boundary between legal and illegal. You know,
Speaker 3: they'll invite people to make up their own minds, but
Speaker 3: they won't outright say do this illegal thing. But if
Speaker 3: you are able to kind of game the system, like
Speaker 3: these benevolent trolls have been able to do. You can
Speaker 3: get folks following these types of people to basically admit to, yeah,
Speaker 3: I will do this absolutely illegal thing that could cause
Speaker 3: a kind of sea change in terms of like the
Speaker 3: way the authorities are viewing these types of folks. So
Speaker 3: shortly after Romana Dedulo set up a new group on
Speaker 3: telegram that she titled Volunteer, Peace, Prosperity and Love Officers.
Speaker 3: This is sort of a way to organize followers by region.
Speaker 3: Another little subgroup popped up that had a very specifically
Speaker 3: violent bent, and it was intended to recruit what the
Speaker 3: thread or the group referred to as military tribunal officers
Speaker 3: who would essentially act as judge, jury, and executioner for
Speaker 3: Dedulo and her aims, you know, her goals, because one
Speaker 3: thing that we maybe remember is that she was very
Speaker 3: much saying that we need to take down anyone that
Speaker 3: opposes us. So what this group is essentially done is
Speaker 3: get people to come out of the woodwork and say, yes, yes,
Speaker 3: I will absolutely murder people for this cause, which you know,
Speaker 3: as you can imagine, especially if you've got someone that's
Speaker 3: you know, benevolent, they will share this information via screenshots
Speaker 3: which you can find on the Vice article, and show
Speaker 3: that there are people within this group that intend to
Speaker 3: do harm to officials, to people that you know would
Speaker 3: oppose this group. So within this new subgroup that was
Speaker 3: and you have folks responding with things like I would
Speaker 3: like to get the show on the road as much
Speaker 3: as the next person, but I am not sure that
Speaker 3: this is something I want to have on my conscience.
Speaker 3: That being said, I also know this needs to be done.
Speaker 1: Oh shout out Clyde barrowly.
Speaker 3: Great, great, very good handle Clyde Barrow being a bonnie
Speaker 3: and Clyde very famous mass murderer, right and criminal. So
Speaker 3: within this group, at this point, people start bandying back
Speaker 3: and forth. How can we kill our enemies without being
Speaker 3: too obvious about it? And this is maybe my favorite
Speaker 3: part is one of the popular methods was taking people
Speaker 3: out into the Alaskan wilderness and leaving them to be
Speaker 3: devoured by polar bears.
Speaker 2: See here's my problem. How can you differentiate someone who
Speaker 2: is actually a part of the group from someone who
Speaker 2: was on their toatrol because that quotation could be from
Speaker 2: an uber control on there.
Speaker 3: Right, Absolutely, it's a good point, but at the end
Speaker 3: of the day, this effort is still kind of interesting, right,
Speaker 3: can we at least agree with that?
Speaker 2: I guess what I mean is like, once you begin
Speaker 2: the troll in mass like you've got.
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially when you're hiding behind a you know, a
Speaker 3: non discreen like, there's really no way to determine who
Speaker 3: you actually are and how serious you actually are. And honestly,
Speaker 3: it's not like, short of cyber let's say, forensic techniques,
Speaker 3: can you actually trace this stuff down to an individual.
Speaker 3: And part of the whole deal with telegram is that
Speaker 3: you kind of can't do that unless there are methods
Speaker 3: that I'm not aware of. The whole deal is that
Speaker 3: it's you know, encrypted, But.
Speaker 1: Add to by the way the just interjector add to
Speaker 1: the fact that by the nature of what you're describing
Speaker 1: there with Telegram, with any encrypted or encrypted app, there's
Speaker 1: also no kind of there's no real barrier to infiltration. Sure,
Speaker 1: so it's super easy to it's super easy to even
Speaker 1: if you agree with the cause, it's super easy to
Speaker 1: be an armchair warrior. There are probably a lot more
Speaker 1: people online who see themselves as a supporter, loyal subject
Speaker 1: of the q Aton queen who had never visited even Canada.
Speaker 3: That's very true. And this reminds me of the Riddler
Speaker 3: character in the Batman movie and how that person used
Speaker 3: social media, and you know, probably it's I think it
Speaker 3: was sort of an encrypted kind of like you know,
Speaker 3: peer to peer kind of chat that he used to
Speaker 3: coordinate what ultimately was a terrorist attack. But you can't
Speaker 3: to your point, Matt, you can't really differentiate between bluster
Speaker 3: and actual action until you do the action. You just
Speaker 3: can't write. But this person, Dogwood, who I think is
Speaker 3: the sort of brains behind this whole, you know, attempt
Speaker 3: to expose some of these members. This is what Dogwood
Speaker 3: had to say. And Dogwood used their screen name to
Speaker 3: protect themselves from any you know, fallout or damage to
Speaker 3: their career. It did expose some of the bloodthirsty nature
Speaker 3: of the followers. It showed how dangerous these people really are.
Speaker 3: They can be told anything by the cult leader and
Speaker 3: they believe her and act on her orders.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And it would seem that this is something that this
Speaker 3: Dogwood and their ilk or they're like do kind of
Speaker 3: on a regular basis. It's sort of like a white
Speaker 3: hat kind of hacker kind of mentality, I guess where
Speaker 3: you were, you know, again, to your point, like infiltrate
Speaker 3: is maybe a strong word, because all you have to
Speaker 3: do is just join the group or get an invite
Speaker 3: or whatever. I mean, it's not that hard to get
Speaker 3: an invite to a telegram channel, because what do cult
Speaker 3: leaders want to do. They want to recruit people, so
Speaker 3: they're not always vetting people that are like becoming members
Speaker 3: of their channel. They want to have as many people
Speaker 3: as they as they can, and as long as you're
Speaker 3: seeming to be, you know, of their way of thinking,
Speaker 3: then they're probably going to welcome you in. But Ben,
Speaker 3: you you found a really good quote I believe also
Speaker 3: in the Vice article that sort of you know, spells
Speaker 3: out this Dogwood's mentality.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Well, to your point, from the idea of
Speaker 1: recreational discordianism, right acting as an agent of chaotic good,
Speaker 1: Dogwood points out that they are doing this somewhat recreationally,
Speaker 1: they're not being paid to do so. I think the
Speaker 1: quote you're referring to is specifically where Dogwood says, who
Speaker 1: is identified as male in this Vice article says, quote,
Speaker 1: some people play video games, we infiltrate cults, which is
Speaker 1: kind of cool. It's something to think about the next time,
Speaker 1: you know, like Doc and me or deep in Starfield logistics.
Speaker 1: Maybe if the game gets too complicated or whatever, Dark
Speaker 1: Souls or whatever, No Man's Sky or playing guys, maybe
Speaker 1: we should all just team up and infiltrate Occult's telegram.
Speaker 3: Parlay that energy into like something that could potentially, you know,
Speaker 3: yield dividends.
Speaker 1: Let's work for Cuba. You know, surely they've got to telegram.
Speaker 1: We'll never get caught.
Speaker 3: Well, And there's another interesting quote from Dogwood is they
Speaker 3: prey on vulnerable people. We are vastly smarter than this cult,
Speaker 3: especially on a ridiculous, childish platform like telegram. They're always
Speaker 3: there to expose them, point out their falsehoods, and track
Speaker 3: their locations. It's to take our nations of Canada and
Speaker 3: the US back from the pandemic vultures of the Internet.
Speaker 1: I love that frame itself. Vultures so good, perfectly poetically
Speaker 1: encapsulates so many grifts that occurred during the COVID shutdown.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I think it's important for everybody
Speaker 1: realize COVID continues. Mass media minds it continues, but also
Speaker 1: mass media is severely downplaying it.
Speaker 3: You're saying the reality of COVID, the virus, but also
Speaker 3: the fallout psychologically of COVID continues. That is what QAnon is,
Speaker 3: I would argue, is what allowed it to flourish was
Speaker 3: people being pent up and having nowhere to funnel this
Speaker 3: aggression and this anxiety.
Speaker 1: You know, there's definitely some gas, some high octane gas
Speaker 1: in the tank, right. No, as you guys know, we've
Speaker 1: also received some updates from our Canadian conspiracy realist, some
Speaker 1: of whom do live around Saskatoon, which I think is
Speaker 1: that is that the biggest city in Saskatchewan. Is that correct?
Speaker 3: It is in Saskatchewan. It is in Richmond. Uh, Saskatchewan
Speaker 3: is the province Richmond, Yeah, and Saskatoon is something else.
Speaker 1: That's why is the largest city in the province of Saskatchewan.
Speaker 1: But I think we're all grateful right to the to
Speaker 1: our neighbors to the north who have been given you know,
Speaker 1: these updates sometimes that don't make the don't make the
Speaker 1: mass media news.
Speaker 3: And absolutely not. Honestly, it's this person advice that's that's
Speaker 3: largely if you look up the story about the QAnon queen,
Speaker 3: it's this one person, Mark Lemaru, who's been like, you know,
Speaker 3: really leading the charge into this research. Absolutely, and I
Speaker 3: think this is a this is endemic of something that
Speaker 3: maybe we have given a pass to, or at the
Speaker 3: very least sort of brushed aside because we don't take
Speaker 3: it that seriously. And maybe you know, this is a
Speaker 3: niche kind of thing, but what do niche things do.
Speaker 3: They blossom and they metastasize if left unchecked. So I
Speaker 3: think it's something that's very important to keep an eye on,
Speaker 3: and and just to to go back really quickly for
Speaker 3: one more update. The occupation of that school in Richmond.
Speaker 3: I think due to a fire code violation, they were
Speaker 3: kind of chased out. It was something like there was
Speaker 3: a video that showed a like a heater or something
Speaker 3: leading against some sort of propane tank, and an inspector
Speaker 3: came and said, y'all got to go because I think
Speaker 3: they were exercising squatters' rights. I think that was sort
Speaker 3: of what it was that sort of allowed them to
Speaker 3: be quote unquote legitimate in their occupation of that that
Speaker 3: space because it had been abandoned for so long and
Speaker 3: they weren't actually hurting anybody or threatening anybody directly. It
Speaker 3: was more like they were menacing people with their camera
Speaker 3: phones and stuff.
Speaker 1: But similar to Waco, right, it is. Yes, there were
Speaker 1: outward threatening people at first, but internally an apocalyptic narrative
Speaker 1: that's exactly right.
Speaker 3: And apparently they have left this school in Richmond, but
Speaker 3: they haven't gone far. There is a farm, another abandoned space,
Speaker 3: I believe, nearby, and a lot of the locals there
Speaker 3: in Richmond are concerned they're going to come back. So
Speaker 3: I think we end this one there. It's very interesting
Speaker 3: stuff and very eerie and again a huge shot out
Speaker 3: to mac lemerou Lemereau. Forgive me if I'm mispronouncing your name,
Speaker 3: but because I think this is a very important work,
Speaker 3: and whether or not this person is going to take
Speaker 3: over the whole of Canada or the world, there are
Speaker 3: people that think this person has something of value to say,
Speaker 3: and that's kind of scary. Agreed.
Speaker 1: Adding some more frightening frightening yule to the log here,
Speaker 1: How we have to wonder how many cultic organizations don't
Speaker 1: get mass media attention because they are not attached to
Speaker 1: viral headlines like QAnon or other buzzwords. Let us know
Speaker 1: what's going on in your neck of the woods. Let
Speaker 1: us know your experience with twenty three and me, and
Speaker 1: you know, if you are currently spying for a government
Speaker 1: while working as a US official, why not give us
Speaker 1: a shout.
Speaker 3: We'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: We promised not to snitch. Fingers crossed. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of ways to find us online.
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