Speaker 1: Travel with us, fellow conspiracy realist, back to October of
Speaker 1: twenty twelve. In tonight's classic episode, there's a little known
Speaker 1: government compounds out there in Louisiana. It's called Camp Minden.
Speaker 1: Do you guys remember this one?
Speaker 2: I remember it got rocked by an explosion. Ooh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: There were a lot of questions. This is one of
Speaker 3: those episodes where sometimes something will pop up in the
Speaker 3: news or people be talking about a very specific incident
Speaker 3: on social.
Speaker 2: We'll be talking.
Speaker 3: They always be talking. Well, yeah, and theories start popping
Speaker 3: up just as fast as they can possibly be generated.
Speaker 3: I remember this being one of those things. There was
Speaker 3: a lot of uncertainty. And what do we say about uncertainty.
Speaker 1: Oh, in the absence of transparency, speculation thrives.
Speaker 2: Indeed it does. So let's let's get our speculation on
Speaker 2: with this classic episode about the Camp Menden conspiracy.
Speaker 4: From UFOs to psychic powers and government into conspiracies. History
Speaker 4: is riddled with unexplained defense. You can turn back now
Speaker 4: or learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to the show. My name is MaTx.
Speaker 2: My name is noa.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
Speaker 1: our super producer Paul. Mission control decands. Most importantly, you
Speaker 1: are you, and you are here that makes this stuff.
Speaker 1: They don't want you to know. A quick check in, Matt,
Speaker 1: how's it going, How you doing? Hey?
Speaker 3: Doing well?
Speaker 4: Hey?
Speaker 2: You like the fons over here?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Things? Yeah, things are going well. I had this
Speaker 3: weird hair last night where I noticed on the back
Speaker 3: fence and my property there's just a ton of junk
Speaker 3: growing up around the fence and through the fence and
Speaker 3: on its old chain link fence, and it's mostly like
Speaker 3: vines of some sort, and I just I couldn't help it.
Speaker 3: I just started destroying all the vines and just clasping
Speaker 3: them out.
Speaker 1: Did you show the earth with salt? Oh?
Speaker 2: I did?
Speaker 1: Nice?
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 1: I've always wanted literally to literally do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Is that where the expression salt of the earth comes from?
Speaker 2: Or is that different?
Speaker 1: I'm not familiar with the etymology there. Yeah.
Speaker 3: In this case, it's killing all this stuff that's trying
Speaker 3: to grow out.
Speaker 2: You're doing more of a scorched earth approach.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what about you? Noel? Checking in? How's it going?
Speaker 2: Doing well? Thanks? Ben? I got to piggyback a business
Speaker 2: trip with family vacation. I brought my kid with me
Speaker 2: to New York City and she hung out with her
Speaker 2: godmother for a couple ds while I worked and we
Speaker 2: had adventures and it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Awesome, And the check in that we liked institute applies
Speaker 1: to you as well listening. So if you have an
Speaker 1: event in your life that you would like to to
Speaker 1: tell us and your fellow listeners about, feel free. You
Speaker 1: don't have to wait till the episode is over. You
Speaker 1: could just pause it and give us a call.
Speaker 3: Now we are one eight STDWITK.
Speaker 1: And today we are off to camp. No, not a
Speaker 1: summer camp, not a religious camp, none of those sorts
Speaker 1: of camps. We're going to a camp that is much
Speaker 1: more dangerous. We're exploring a genuine, literally explosive conspiracy as
Speaker 1: well as a conspiracy theory. How can both of those
Speaker 1: exist concurrently? Well, we will tell you ter Camp Menden.
Speaker 1: Here are the facts. So there's a place called Webster Parish.
Speaker 1: It's off of US Highway eighty near Doyline, Louisiana, between Minden,
Speaker 1: Louisiana and Bossier or Bossier City, probably Bossier City. Louisiana.
Speaker 1: This thing, Camp Minden is part of a larger compound
Speaker 1: called the Louisiana Army Ammunition Plant or LAP LAAP.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the history of this place goes all the
Speaker 2: way back to the beginning of nineteen thirty nine and
Speaker 2: the government. That is, when the government used eminent domain,
Speaker 2: which you were mentioning off air Ben. We have yet
Speaker 2: to do an episode on. I think we might need
Speaker 2: to correct that they used this concept of eminent domain
Speaker 2: to acquire the land before the United States entered World
Speaker 2: War Two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this compound is just under fifteen thousand acres. Originally
Speaker 1: it had a couple of different names. It was the
Speaker 1: Louisiana Ordnance Plant or it was called the Shell Plant,
Speaker 1: alluding to of course, artillery shells. And for the entirety
Speaker 1: of its time, since it was fully acquired beginning in
Speaker 1: thirty nine, going to forty one, it has been owned
Speaker 1: by Uncle Sam. But this is an important distinction, it
Speaker 1: has been operated by private contractors. So back to this history, right.
Speaker 1: LAAP was completed in just eleven months under the direction
Speaker 1: of a contractor, Silas Mason. At the time, this was
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere country.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 1: Well, we're a Family Show. It was just east of
Speaker 1: bumble F, if you know what I mean. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there were very few people here. So from a congressional
Speaker 1: or state pork budget kind of perspective, it makes sense
Speaker 1: to have this kind of operation there, especially if you're
Speaker 1: dealing with ordnance or something that might be dangerous. You
Speaker 1: don't want that in downtown New Orleans, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: And it also makes sense. The time that they needed
Speaker 3: a lot of ammunition was right around World War Two. Right,
Speaker 3: So in May nineteen forty two, there were a total
Speaker 3: of eight production lines that were opened, and then by
Speaker 3: December nineteen forty four, the number of employees hit its
Speaker 3: peak at just under eleven thousand, ten thousand, seven hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty four. And that was in the month of
Speaker 3: the Battle of the Bulge.
Speaker 2: That is a major operation.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I mean, think about all the ammunition that
Speaker 3: was deployed during that conflict during World War Two. You
Speaker 3: needed a lot of it. They were not they were
Speaker 3: certainly not creating all of the ammunition, but a good
Speaker 3: portion of it.
Speaker 1: And then the plant was deactivated after the summer of
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five, right with VJ Day. But here is
Speaker 1: a spooky fact. This is one of my favorite things
Speaker 1: from the research this place. Camp Minden and laap are
Speaker 1: used interchangeably, so let's just call it Camp Minden. Camp
Speaker 1: Minden is built on not one, but nine cemeteries.
Speaker 2: Are any of those Native American burial grounds?
Speaker 1: No, No, there may be some people from Native American
Speaker 1: populations buried there, but they were rural cemeteries that date
Speaker 1: through different time periods and they are now. You know,
Speaker 1: they got a little bit better treatment than the stories
Speaker 1: we hear about things like Poultergeist. Right, they weren't just
Speaker 1: paved over. They are under the care of the US government,
Speaker 1: so you can see existing grave markers they took out.
Speaker 1: There were these wooden grave markers, right, which you're not
Speaker 1: going to hold up very well in the human environment
Speaker 1: of Louisiana, and they were replaced with small concrete slabs.
Speaker 1: But the thing is the slabs don't have the names
Speaker 1: of the deceased listed on the markers. They're just slabs,
Speaker 1: which is pretty sad. Right. The cemeteries are Allentown, Crow,
Speaker 1: Jim Davis, Keene, Nottingham, Rain, Richardson, Van Oorsdell, and Walker,
Speaker 1: and the people who are buried there have their dates
Speaker 1: of birth and death and maybe a little bit of
Speaker 1: other information. But the problem is, even if you are
Speaker 1: a descendant and you know where your ancestor is buried there,
Speaker 1: you can't visit the grounds to look for the grave
Speaker 1: cat You can't find them by the name, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. So it is the it is the
Speaker 1: site of nine cemeteries that the public is largely prohibited
Speaker 1: from visiting. That doesn't have a ton of stuff to
Speaker 1: do ostensibly with today's episode. But it's weird.
Speaker 3: It is very weird that somehow, through eminent Domain, the
Speaker 3: government just purchased without really realizing it, nine cemeteries.
Speaker 1: Stole the dead. They stole your dead. If you if
Speaker 1: you are descended from someone buried in those cemeteries.
Speaker 3: And they're manufacturing ammunition that steals life.
Speaker 1: That's wow. Yeah, maybe maybe we have an episode in
Speaker 1: the future on the strangest cemeteries. We've never done that.
Speaker 3: Let's do it.
Speaker 1: Let's do it.
Speaker 3: I like it.
Speaker 1: I'm keeping count Eminent Domain strangest cemeteries. But anyway that
Speaker 1: that's a little bit of a side note. We do
Speaker 1: know that to your point, Matt, we see we see
Speaker 1: production wax and wane with this uh with global conflict, right,
Speaker 1: the thing is not always open and pumping out bullets
Speaker 1: twenty four to seven.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was restored after World War two during the
Speaker 3: Korean conflict, and this was under Remington Rand I'm assuming
Speaker 3: the company that actually was there producing the stuff at
Speaker 3: the facility, and that was in nineteen fifty one. Then
Speaker 3: employment at that time went from roughly zero to five
Speaker 3: thousand in nineteen fifty three, I guess, from zero before
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty one then up to five thousand and nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty three. Now at Campmndon there was a metal forging
Speaker 3: and machining plant area and it was known as the
Speaker 3: y Line Chromic Acid Etching Facility, the y Line Chromic
Speaker 3: Acid Etching.
Speaker 1: Facility, Oh y'ld cave.
Speaker 3: And it's fun to say even just in full, but
Speaker 3: it manufactured these specific one fifty five millimeter projectiles.
Speaker 2: Would that be? What kind of weapon?
Speaker 3: Would this?
Speaker 2: Is that just like a specific caliber of bullet or
Speaker 2: is this like almost like a large.
Speaker 3: That seems like they're certainly projectiles, my friend, And there
Speaker 3: are one hundred and fifty five millimeters, Okay.
Speaker 2: A quick Google search indicated that these would have fed
Speaker 2: an M seven to seven seven howitzer, which is one
Speaker 2: of those cannon looking things that are on wheels.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they're also I think they're kind of an
Speaker 1: all purpose standard, at least in NATO. I don't know
Speaker 1: about on the other side of the curtain at this
Speaker 1: time as they called it, but yeah, these are yeah,
Speaker 1: these are not for handguns or not not for handguns
Speaker 1: that you could actually use.
Speaker 2: These howitzers are the ones that you have to click, click,
Speaker 2: click and get them to go up at an angle
Speaker 2: and they shoot. They kind of lobb these this ordinance
Speaker 2: and has a nice arc trajectory and then comes down
Speaker 2: almost like a mortar round. I don't think it's quite
Speaker 2: a more round, but it's definitely not something you would
Speaker 2: fire point blanket something you would shoot it and have.
Speaker 3: It arc sounds terrifying, it does. So the plant is
Speaker 3: again reactivated during the Vietnam conflict, the Vietnam War that
Speaker 3: was September nineteen six sixty one, and this time by
Speaker 3: a different Rand Sperry Rand, and this contractor held it
Speaker 3: until nineteen seventy five as that conflict was continuing. It
Speaker 3: produced all kinds of things mines, fuses, shaped charges, bombs, boosters,
Speaker 3: demolition blocks, projectiles, really all the hits, all the things
Speaker 3: that make humans no longer humans. And during this time,
Speaker 3: there were a couple of things that went wrong in
Speaker 3: the facility, a couple of tragic accidental explosions in nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty two and then again in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1: But the show must go on, whether we're talking war
Speaker 1: or Broadway musical, right, So over the next few decades,
Speaker 1: employment waxed waned in this facility, as we said, depending
Speaker 1: upon the ammunition needs of the military. This, by the way,
Speaker 1: played economic havoc with the local community because this was
Speaker 1: one of the primary sources of employment for the surrounding area.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of towns in Mississippi, in Louisiana
Speaker 1: and even in Alabama as well where the primary employer
Speaker 1: is a contractor or a federal agency of some sort.
Speaker 1: I used to in another life being close contact with
Speaker 1: people who would role play for military training in Louisiana,
Speaker 1: and their job was to act either as you know,
Speaker 1: terrified civilians or belligerent civilians in case of urban warfare reenactments.
Speaker 1: And it was terrible. They were paid like six bucks
Speaker 1: an hour.
Speaker 2: Well, and that's a really important skill because after the
Speaker 2: war ends you've got a pretty lucrative career as a
Speaker 2: reenactor on your hands.
Speaker 1: There you go.
Speaker 3: It does remind me of the Lake City Quiet Pills
Speaker 3: episode that we did.
Speaker 1: Yes, Yes, which I was thinking of earlier. That that's
Speaker 1: a real thing and that we did. Okay, that was
Speaker 1: pretty well done. Yeah, thanks for everyone who wrote in
Speaker 1: to check on that, because that while that particular team,
Speaker 1: we don't want to spoil this for you. But while
Speaker 1: that particular team associated with Lake City Quiet Pills is
Speaker 1: largely out of the running now, from what we understand,
Speaker 1: there are multiple other let's call them independent operatives, independent
Speaker 1: post military operatives out there with surprisingly affordable rates. This
Speaker 1: is not a recommendation to hire them. Just want you
Speaker 1: to know that it's a real thing. So anyway, the
Speaker 1: whole roleplane thing that I'm mentioning is just to show
Speaker 1: how reliant many rural communities can become on these things.
Speaker 1: So imagine that the only solid job you can get
Speaker 1: in your town is making ammunition for the army, and
Speaker 1: then the war stops and your job stops. What are
Speaker 1: you gonna do?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: So let's fast forward to the present. This pattern exists right,
Speaker 1: this waxing, this waning this up and down frequency and
Speaker 1: explosions aren't going to stop the show. On August twenty fourth,
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, there's another explosion, and this is
Speaker 1: during a time where the areas run by Enough It
Speaker 1: creatively named Explode Systems Incorporated. They had a site that
Speaker 1: was leased, a Camp Mendon, and bombs there were disassembled
Speaker 1: and recycled in theory. This explosion in two thousand and
Speaker 1: six led to the evacuation of six hundred school children nearby. Luckily,
Speaker 1: there were no injuries or fatalities that time around. However,
Speaker 1: this was still not the last explosion. Maybe we can
Speaker 1: hate mission control. Can we throw to a clip here?
Speaker 5: First I saw the sky light up in the west,
Speaker 5: just allowed and I wasn't no noise now, just lit up.
Speaker 1: And I caught my eye.
Speaker 5: I loved and out to the west, and then the
Speaker 5: light died down.
Speaker 1: Looked boys, hey, what was that?
Speaker 2: He looked up?
Speaker 5: Now, I saw that and it lit up again. And
Speaker 5: then next time we heard the lyle boom. It was
Speaker 5: like a sun set, it was so bright.
Speaker 1: So what's that guy describing in that clip.
Speaker 2: Well, he is describing a massive explosion that he saw
Speaker 2: take place at the plant.
Speaker 3: But yeah, and this is the one in twenty twelve,
Speaker 3: or is that this and this is the one that
Speaker 3: was It was huge, just fifteen million pounds of this
Speaker 3: stuff called M six propellant. And this is again that
Speaker 3: Explode Systems Incorporated, the company that's operating it. It was.
Speaker 2: Huge.
Speaker 3: I mean the way he's talking about it, it sounds like
Speaker 3: a nuclear explosion. When you see the old footage of
Speaker 3: those or maybe one of the ones at a chemical
Speaker 3: plant in China that I think many of us have
Speaker 3: probably seen videos of, it sounds massive it and it was.
Speaker 3: It just just rocked Camp Mendon. It shattered windows up
Speaker 3: to four miles away, and it created a seven thousand
Speaker 3: foot mushroom cloud that ended up like the stuff that's
Speaker 3: in that cloud ended up contaminating much of the surrounding area.
Speaker 2: We were talking a little bit about this off air,
Speaker 2: and I'm no spoilers for anyone, but this is something
Speaker 2: that really happened. Reminds me of the Chrene incident when
Speaker 2: which is Fantastic series on HBO right now. When that
Speaker 2: explosion took place, people could see it from miles away
Speaker 2: in the city and it didn't create a mushroom cloud,
Speaker 2: but it created this crazy like light shining up in
Speaker 2: the sky and people were just remarking upon it about
Speaker 2: how beautiful it was, very upsetting the way it's portrayed
Speaker 2: in the show.
Speaker 1: So the vast majority of people in twenty twelve and today,
Speaker 1: and if we're being honest, anytime after World War two
Speaker 1: are going to equate a mushroom cloud with what a
Speaker 1: nuclear detonation? So the question immediately becomes, what the hell
Speaker 1: happened in camp menton? We'll explore the answers after a
Speaker 1: word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. So
Speaker 1: remember those contractors we mentioned earlier. That's probably one of
Speaker 1: the most important points of the first part of our
Speaker 1: show is that while this is an Uncle Sam production,
Speaker 1: well Uncle Sam is you know the studio or whatever.
Speaker 1: The people doing the work are these private contractors, you know,
Speaker 1: a panopoly of rans, a number of any other contractors.
Speaker 1: Explo Systems was one of the most prominent. So those
Speaker 1: of us are hearing this name are starting to put
Speaker 1: the pieces together. Right Explo Systems. Yeah, not the most brilliant,
Speaker 1: the most brilliant or creative naming, but like Explo short
Speaker 1: for explosion, right or maybe exploration. Maybe I'm profiling. But
Speaker 1: what is SLASH was explo Systems.
Speaker 3: They were a private company whose primary business operations evolved
Speaker 3: the demilitarization of military munitions and then of course selling
Speaker 3: those things again like the recovered explosive materials that you'll
Speaker 3: find and operate, Well, you'll find it, Okay. Let's put
Speaker 3: it this way. You find munitions that were used in
Speaker 3: war or meant for war, and then you're gonna resell
Speaker 3: or repurpose those for mining.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, all right, so maybe mining, maybe also construction
Speaker 1: such as the creation of roadways that cut through mountains
Speaker 1: where you have to blast rock or through or tunnel
Speaker 1: through rock.
Speaker 3: Exactly for mining like that. You can even imagine using
Speaker 3: it for demolition of something that you need for a
Speaker 3: house or for a big facility something like that.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you have you guys seen
Speaker 1: actual demolition in real life?
Speaker 3: I yeah, you have.
Speaker 2: We had a big one here in town recently. That
Speaker 2: was an old archive building that they took down, and
Speaker 2: that's they kind of do it from the bottom down.
Speaker 3: I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I went to see that and one of our friends
Speaker 1: of the show, a producer here named Ramsey Yunt, was
Speaker 1: filming it. It was weird. We've met the governor who
Speaker 1: is dressed like a leather cowboy at the time, is
Speaker 1: very very strange. Also very early in the morning, because
Speaker 1: they don't want to mess up traffic.
Speaker 2: So he was wearing his demolition outfit.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, perhaps that was it. Perhaps that was it.
Speaker 1: But I asked that I mentioned that just because you know,
Speaker 1: these are legitimate uses for this kind of substance, right,
Speaker 1: you know, there's nothing against law about demolition building. There
Speaker 1: are actually quite a few laws about how to do
Speaker 1: it correctly.
Speaker 2: And just a little background on the substance in question.
Speaker 2: This M six propellant. It's a military grade explosive propellant
Speaker 2: that's used for triggering firing off this heavy artillery like
Speaker 2: those howitzers and we were talking about, And it actually
Speaker 2: comes in bags and these grains that are different shapes
Speaker 2: and sizes, and they're very large. They could be up
Speaker 2: to an inch long, and the bags almost picture it
Speaker 2: as like an explosive bean bag that's packed into the
Speaker 2: bottom of the gun. Depending on how far the projectile
Speaker 2: needs to go, so there's different they're graded differently for distance.
Speaker 1: Right right, right, And there are different formulations of propellant. Right,
Speaker 1: M six is only one of these. But the thing
Speaker 1: about it is that this is one of the most
Speaker 1: common you know, because it's it's easier when you manufacture
Speaker 1: its scale. It's easier to manufacture the same thing repeatedly, right,
Speaker 1: rather than a mixed fruit cup, I should probably launch itself.
Speaker 1: So so, yes, the US Army wanted Explode to take
Speaker 1: all of this unused propellant and to store it and
Speaker 1: then resell it. And they're already kind of sitting pretty right.
Speaker 1: We're paying you, We're paying you millions of dollars for
Speaker 1: this stuff that we're giving you. You just have to
Speaker 1: pay to store it. But then you resell it. And
Speaker 1: the Explode says, Okay, here's what we're gonna do. We're
Speaker 1: gonna sell it to to you know, like that Chicago
Speaker 1: poem by Carl Samberg. We're gonna we're gonna sell it
Speaker 1: to the construction workers. We're gonna sell it to the butcher's,
Speaker 1: the hogstackers, or whatever of the world.
Speaker 3: Anybody needs to blow something up.
Speaker 1: Anyone who needs to blow something up in a lawful
Speaker 1: way get some of this. In six everything must go.
Speaker 1: So the contract had all the basic requirements right Xplode
Speaker 1: needed to document the sale of everything, they needed to
Speaker 1: certify its compliance with federal law and submit official certificates
Speaker 1: to the Army, just by the book, the way you
Speaker 1: would have to handle any transaction with any hazardous material.
Speaker 1: Right spoiler alert. They did not do that, not once,
Speaker 1: not never.
Speaker 2: So what did they do? Okay, So let's just recap.
Speaker 2: The US Army actually spent eight points say they awarded
Speaker 2: Explow when to right here, explo what's the what's the
Speaker 2: second part, explo systems. I think of that Tenacious D
Speaker 2: song Explocivo nice every time, So I'm just gonna call
Speaker 2: it Explosivo from now on. Yeah, they gave they awarded
Speaker 2: explow eight point six million dollars in contract funds to
Speaker 2: demilitarize one point three to five million propelling charges that
Speaker 2: contained this M six propeller. Okay, just to recap. So
Speaker 2: they didn't do that. What did they do? Okay? It
Speaker 2: turns out they entered into a very very real life conspiracy,
Speaker 2: which we love here on stuff they don't want you
Speaker 2: to know. Uh, the management of Explode didn't even make
Speaker 2: an attempt at reselling any of these explosives. Instead, they
Speaker 2: stockpiled them super weirdly.
Speaker 1: Stockpiling, and I would say is a very generous term. Yeah,
Speaker 1: stockpiling makes it sound orderly or labeled.
Speaker 2: Let's call it hoarded.
Speaker 1: The yes, that's it. Yeah, very unsafely, right, because the
Speaker 1: bags we mentioned that containing the M six are opened,
Speaker 1: they're opened to the air. They're laying around in corners,
Speaker 1: and they're intentionally hidden, you know, like in episodes of
Speaker 1: Hoarders where someone says, all right, this pile of papers,
Speaker 1: this pile of entertainment weeklies from the early nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: is fine, but I don't want them to know how
Speaker 1: many dead cats I have. So I'm going to put
Speaker 1: those in a corner behind the used diapers, which are
Speaker 1: perfectly respectable things to hoard. So they treat these things
Speaker 1: like dead cats, right. They hide them in these various corners,
Speaker 1: They hide them away from the places where they would
Speaker 1: legally be required to put them because officially now these
Speaker 1: stockpiles do not exist. From January twenty ten to November
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, Explode ran a con game on the United
Speaker 1: States of America. They submitted false certificates to the US Army.
Speaker 1: They were supposed to submit real certificates. They under cover
Speaker 1: of night, if we want to be dramatic. They transported
Speaker 1: hazardous waste to facilities where it was illegal to store them,
Speaker 1: and then they stored them, you know, like just tossing
Speaker 1: bags around into the corner and some If anything, it's
Speaker 1: a surprise that this stuff didn't explode earlier. And the
Speaker 1: reason they did it this way is because they were
Speaker 1: able to continue milking the government for money by by saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: we've sold this to these people, or but you know,
Speaker 1: just keep paying these invisible things that we have set up.
Speaker 1: They even said that they even made up sales. They
Speaker 1: just completely said, okay, we sold this to this other
Speaker 1: company that may or may not exist.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, Ben, are you telling me that a
Speaker 2: company that has like a name that sounds like it's
Speaker 2: straight out of like idiocrasy was not only up and
Speaker 2: up and then a company called XPLO Court or whatever
Speaker 2: systems systems was gonna make stuff that would go boom?
Speaker 1: Is that what you're telling me? And on it they
Speaker 1: were not going to let that stuff go. It makes
Speaker 1: you wonder who they were really going to sell it to,
Speaker 1: what they were actually going to do with it.
Speaker 2: Possibly some sort of strange foreign deal with military militant groups, right,
Speaker 2: I'm just conjecture.
Speaker 3: Well, we're gonna look into some of that, and it
Speaker 3: definitely feels like they wanted to make more money on it,
Speaker 3: or they at least should have, because that's just more
Speaker 3: money on top if you're you're already got a contract
Speaker 3: to sell it and now you're selling it. But that's
Speaker 3: officially what those false certificates are doing, right, They're getting
Speaker 3: paid for nothing.
Speaker 2: Weren't they supposed to decommission it though? Am I misunderstanding here?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: Weren't they supposed to render it inert or get rid
Speaker 2: of it?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: I don't understand why were they holding onto it?
Speaker 1: Capitalism, baby, Kip the Turkey, go straight for the gravy.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Demilitarizing it would mean that they remove the propellant from
Speaker 1: any associated paraphernalia equipment. That would make it a weapon
Speaker 1: of war, right, pet. So it's like it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe it's illegal to sell cars, but it's legal to
Speaker 1: sell gasoline, right, That's what makes a car go. So
Speaker 1: their job is to take the gasoline out of the
Speaker 1: car and just sell the gas there you go. And
Speaker 1: what they did instead they took the casts out and
Speaker 1: then you know again, they put it in open bags
Speaker 1: and threw it in the corner on top of it,
Speaker 1: and then they said they sold it. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's and laughing because it's ridiculous. It's catch twenty two
Speaker 1: level or idiocracy level, to your point, no kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So the explo officials, including vice president of operations, a
Speaker 1: guy named William Terry Wright, in addition to making up
Speaker 1: these sales, they also did not tell the people in
Speaker 1: these third parties that they were allegedly buying this stuff,
Speaker 1: so these other companies have no idea what the hell's
Speaker 1: going on. They also had their signatures forged or fabricated,
Speaker 1: and then the people at the top of the chain,
Speaker 1: the executives, order lower level employees to not only move
Speaker 1: this stuff once, but to move it multiple times whenever
Speaker 1: government officials come around to check in on things. Imagine
Speaker 1: you get the call and say, okay, we need to
Speaker 1: move again. Like to your point, Matt, it's millions of
Speaker 1: pounds of explosives or propellants.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and highly dangerous and just continually moving it around
Speaker 3: in this big facility. It just seems like a recipe
Speaker 3: for disaster totally. And the.
Speaker 1: Forgery doesn't stop there. This con game, like a lot
Speaker 1: of con games, is not sustainable over the long term,
Speaker 1: so it quickly kind of spirals downward and they have
Speaker 1: to create more and more false documents to try to
Speaker 1: cover up their original lie or their mistake or their
Speaker 1: oversight or whatever you want to call it, depending on
Speaker 1: how charitable you feel about the human condition as you
Speaker 1: hear this today. So one other example would be that
Speaker 1: they started making fake paperwork for landfills in Louisiana and
Speaker 1: Arkansas to say that the stuff they did they did
Speaker 1: actually ship two landfills, was not hazardous. It was spoiler alert.
Speaker 1: So all of this added up to you said, millions
Speaker 1: of pounds, that's literally seven eight hundred something tons of
Speaker 1: M six propellant that is just hidden at Camp Minden,
Speaker 1: and eventually they get discovered because of that enormous explosion.
Speaker 1: And we played that clip to take to take us
Speaker 1: all back in that in that time and space, you know,
Speaker 1: imagine where you live, whatever when you hear the word home,
Speaker 1: whatever you think of when you hear the word home,
Speaker 1: Imagine that one one afternoon, you know, one night, whatever
Speaker 1: you hear this, you don't even hear a sound the
Speaker 1: ground beneath you, shakes, the windows shatter, You hear ten
Speaker 1: thousand car alarms go off at once. Right, dogs and
Speaker 1: cats are going crazy, and then the sky lights up
Speaker 1: and you see things flying through the sky, which is
Speaker 1: a detail that becomes very important later. Of course, you
Speaker 1: think that it's an act of violence, right, It doesn't
Speaker 1: feel like an accident.
Speaker 3: It's a violent act that feels like an act of violence.
Speaker 1: Hey, that was very well done, man. A violent act
Speaker 1: that feels like an act of violence. Yes, Just so,
Speaker 1: so the news goes crazy, right, they're trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what happened. They're asking all these questions. We'll bracket
Speaker 1: that for a second, so let's just go to what
Speaker 1: the authorities initially said. Captain Doug Kane, who was a
Speaker 1: spokesman for the State Police, said that the surprise, surprise,
Speaker 1: the cause of this massive explosion was all this M
Speaker 1: six propellant used as as you had noted nol in
Speaker 1: Howitzer's and other artillery. The pellets are mainly this compressed
Speaker 1: substance called nitro cellulose. It's also sometimes called guncotton. Authorities
Speaker 1: initially said there was a total four hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: tons after an investigator looking into that October fifteenth explosion
Speaker 1: saw cardboard boxes and rows and rows of pallets just
Speaker 1: chilling behind a building. But then they found more stacked
Speaker 1: in sheds and warehouses, and they started trying to move.
Speaker 1: They started trying to move it, and it wasn't. The
Speaker 1: problem they had was that, for a minute, this hoarding
Speaker 1: or hiding away of the stuff actually worked legally. They
Speaker 1: were supposed to put this in a thing called a
Speaker 1: storage magazine, and they had instead hidden it away because
Speaker 1: they wanted it to look like they were selling this stuff.
Speaker 2: This stuff is also known as flash paper. You might
Speaker 2: have heard it referred to as such.
Speaker 1: So they had to move it back and forth. The
Speaker 1: authorities are trying to move the stuff that hadn't exploded,
Speaker 1: and that is the official narrative so far. That's the
Speaker 1: official That's what you will hear on the news. That's
Speaker 1: what you will hear when you read about the later
Speaker 1: court cases and stuff that come about because of this. However,
Speaker 1: there is more to the story. Some people you see
Speaker 1: allege that a cover up exists. What are we talking about.
Speaker 1: We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor, and
Speaker 1: we're back.
Speaker 3: So as we said, what we've explored thus far is
Speaker 3: the official story. That's the thing that comes across the
Speaker 3: news waves to you, the pr documentation. Let's you know,
Speaker 3: that's what's going on, and that's what goes down in
Speaker 3: the history books. But guess what, there are other explanations
Speaker 3: out there, some a little more odd than others, but
Speaker 3: almost all of them reek of some kind of cover
Speaker 3: up that was a foot here.
Speaker 1: Right, Like we said before, given that massive Bushroom cloud,
Speaker 1: it's completely understandable that some people with fear a nuclear detonation, right, or.
Speaker 3: Some kind of attack at least, or you know, something
Speaker 3: went wrong other than an.
Speaker 1: Accident, right. And the idea of nuclear powered terrorism is
Speaker 1: at the forefront of a lot of people's minds due
Speaker 1: to active negotiations with the DPRK and the attempt to
Speaker 1: verify or just armed nukes, the concerns of quote unquote
Speaker 1: rogue nukes or suitcase nukes, the dirty bombs, dirty bombs,
Speaker 1: the dirty bombs, not to be confused with our local
Speaker 1: dirty birds. Well also sometimes bomb sports jokes. So it's
Speaker 1: interesting because the Shreveport Times shortly after this report a
Speaker 1: number of what you could call conspiracy theories or alternative
Speaker 1: theories or at the very least contrad eyewitness reports that
Speaker 1: contradict the official narrative. But that article and subsequent related
Speaker 1: articles appear to have been scrubbed from the Internet. It
Speaker 1: could not find them even using one of our favorite tools,
Speaker 1: the way back machine.
Speaker 3: Ow man, I love that thing.
Speaker 1: One article that did survive is pretty fascinating. If not, well,
Speaker 1: let's present it first for everyone's consideration without commentary, and
Speaker 1: then maybe we can go back and pick it apart
Speaker 1: a little. This comes to us from Joe Quinn, who
Speaker 1: was writing at op EdNews dot com.
Speaker 2: So in op EdNews dot com, Joe Quinn reports that
Speaker 2: folks across Texas, Louisiana, Amsissippi saw bright flashes in the sky,
Speaker 2: and he described them having seen fireball trails as well.
Speaker 1: And then in.
Speaker 2: Shreaveport, the Shreeport area of northwest Louisiana, a lot of
Speaker 2: folks heard earth shaking booms that caused houses to rattle
Speaker 2: in their foundations and windows were broken all throughout Minden.
Speaker 2: And so here's a quote from Amy Meely, who was
Speaker 2: one of the residents who lived just a couple of
Speaker 2: miles from Camp Mendon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she genuinely thought that she was being bombed. That's
Speaker 3: that's what she said. I honestly thought we were being bombed.
Speaker 3: And she said it was one of the scariest things
Speaker 3: that she's ever been through. And you know, she was like,
Speaker 3: she describes how she's checking some emails, right, she's about
Speaker 3: to go to bed. You look at your phone or
Speaker 3: whatever you can do your check your email, make sure
Speaker 3: everything's okay. And she said she had an odd feeling
Speaker 3: in the pit of her stomach. She said it was
Speaker 3: quote like a rolling thunder in the distance. And then
Speaker 3: she said it was getting closer and closer, and she
Speaker 3: said she felt everything moving with me. I could literally
Speaker 3: feel it moving toward me. That's a that's pretty crazy, right,
Speaker 3: And and that's right before the actual explosion hit.
Speaker 1: Ah See, the chronology becomes interesting here yet, because dozens
Speaker 1: of people this still from op ed News. Dozens of
Speaker 1: people Quinn Wrights, called the Webster Parish Sheriff's office, as
Speaker 1: well as the local news station KSLA News twelve, and
Speaker 1: they reported seeing flashes of light in the sky and
Speaker 1: hearing multiple loud booms that shook houses. The sheriff's office
Speaker 1: initially stated that there was a quote possibility that a
Speaker 1: meteor hit the ground in the area. The following morning, however,
Speaker 1: they recanted, and the parish sheriff at the time, Gary Sexton,
Speaker 1: said that has Matt experts told him what people had
Speaker 1: seen and heard was an underground bunker containing explosives that
Speaker 1: blew up that late night on October fifteenth. Not only
Speaker 1: was there nothing to see here, but the explosion quote
Speaker 1: worked exactly as it was designed to do, and the
Speaker 1: use of the phrase designed was somewhat unfortunate for the
Speaker 1: sheriff's department at that time because it left the door
Speaker 1: open for conjecture. Quinn and other people who doubt the
Speaker 1: official narratives still have questions. Quinn puts it this way beautifully.
Speaker 1: He says, what are the odds that, at around the
Speaker 1: same time, as people across three states Mississippi, Texas, and
Speaker 1: Louisiana and hundreds of miles apart, we're seeing what was
Speaker 1: clearly a meteorite comet fragment burning up in the lower
Speaker 1: earth atmosphere, a munitions dump would explode at the same time.
Speaker 1: More to the point, if a munition's dump did explode,
Speaker 1: what are the odds that a meteorite or comet fragment
Speaker 1: that many eyewitnesses believe hit the ground in the area
Speaker 1: would be in no way connected to the explosion. So enticing, tantalizing, tempting, right,
Speaker 1: But we also have to we also have to think
Speaker 1: about how close the timeline can become. Here, it could
Speaker 1: seem like a meteor, right, depend on some where someone's
Speaker 1: standing and what they're seeing at the time. We talked
Speaker 1: about this before with Moufon and different UFO observations.
Speaker 3: Right. Light, Yeah, light in the atmosphere can be tricky.
Speaker 4: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The whole thing is one big shyamalant and the the
Speaker 1: problem is that someone could be far enough away that
Speaker 1: they see a light, but they don't hear a sound
Speaker 1: or necessarily feel a tremor. Right, Yes, so they could
Speaker 1: see debris from an explosion launched so high that they
Speaker 1: feel they're watching a meteor crash. So it could just
Speaker 1: be the explosion. But but that hasn't prevented people from saying, no,
Speaker 1: there is a cover up a meteor hit, and then
Speaker 1: they that's the thing for me, they blew up a
Speaker 1: military base.
Speaker 3: The meteor did cover it up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of like the Titanic conspiracy, and they're
Speaker 1: like the best way to kill the people who don't
Speaker 1: like the Federal Reserve is to get them on this
Speaker 1: massive boat under false pretenses.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it seems that if we're exercising Occam's razor here,
Speaker 1: the idea between the two conspiracies, the idea that there's
Speaker 1: a cover up of a cover up. Right, it seems
Speaker 1: that maybe the mundane answer is the more accurate one,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't make it any less disgusting in terms
Speaker 1: of corruption. Luckily, there are two pieces of good news here. First, thankfully,
Speaker 1: no one that we know of was actually injured in
Speaker 1: this in this debacle. And second, in a rare example
Speaker 1: of corporate justice, the higher ups and Explode did end
Speaker 1: up going to court. So it wasn't just, you know,
Speaker 1: the way it happens with banks. It wasn't just that
Speaker 1: the bank was fined some portion of their profits and
Speaker 1: was able to write it off as a cost of
Speaker 1: doing business. The individuals involved actually had legal consequences.
Speaker 3: Yes, The co owner, a man named David Alan Smith,
Speaker 3: who was sixty three years old at the time. He
Speaker 3: was sentenced to fifty five months in prison because of
Speaker 3: all this yiche. Yeah and uh, and also three years
Speaker 3: of supervised I guess what is that super supervisor essentially. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and after he was released and he was also fined
Speaker 3: thirty four million dollars what yeah, almost.
Speaker 2: Like almost like fine, well this guy a super rich man.
Speaker 3: Well it was almost thirty five million. Again, he's he's
Speaker 3: the co owner of this company, right, and he was
Speaker 3: taking part in that conspiracy we were talking about, right
Speaker 3: of bilking the billion government.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of rings of chernobyl in this story.
Speaker 2: You know, not to spoil anything, but it's like it's
Speaker 2: it's corruption, it's cover up, it's failure to do the
Speaker 2: right thing to protect the people that live in the
Speaker 2: vicinity of your facility with.
Speaker 3: Very dangerous things. Products at the center, product at the
Speaker 3: center of it. Yeah. Well yeah, And here's the thing,
Speaker 3: Dave Allen Smith. He's not the only guy that went.
Speaker 1: To prison, right. There was William Terry Wright. We mentioned
Speaker 1: him earlier. He was sentenced to sixty months in prison
Speaker 1: three years of supervised release. And he because he wasn't
Speaker 1: an owner, I guess.
Speaker 2: He was the VP of operations right, right.
Speaker 1: He had to pay just under one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand in restitution for participating in the criminal conspiracy and
Speaker 1: There were three other big names that also had to
Speaker 1: take a dive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was the director of Support Technology, a man
Speaker 2: with Charles Ferris Callahan who was sixty nine from Shreveport.
Speaker 2: He got twenty four months in the clink, one year
Speaker 2: of supervised probation, and had to pay two hundred and
Speaker 2: seven five hundred ninety nine bucks in restitution for falsely
Speaker 2: representing facts in various documents.
Speaker 3: Then, of course you get over to Kenneth Wayne Lambkin.
Speaker 3: He was the this is his title, M six demil
Speaker 3: like as in demolition program manager.
Speaker 2: They're all about the little snappy you know, short shortenings.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and he got himself forty five months in
Speaker 3: prison and three years of that old fun thing supervised
Speaker 3: release or probation, and he was fined and you know
Speaker 3: again similarly to William Terry Wright, one hundred and forty
Speaker 3: nine thousand dollars in restitution, and his was for specifically
Speaker 3: making false statements.
Speaker 1: And last, but not least, there was Traffic and Inventory
Speaker 1: Control manager Lionel Wayne Coons with a K, who had
Speaker 1: to go with forty one months in prison, three years
Speaker 1: of supervised release, and he got off relatively easily in
Speaker 1: terms of restitution. He only had to pay ninety two
Speaker 1: nine and twenty one dollars only.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't have that sitting around. Don't know
Speaker 2: about you guys, but.
Speaker 1: Well, it's kind of it's kind of like anchoring on menus,
Speaker 1: you know, the psychological thing where you show people a
Speaker 1: larger price first and then you get them to forget
Speaker 1: how high the lowest price. Thing is, Sure, we could,
Speaker 1: we should go into psychology menus one day.
Speaker 2: That's smart.
Speaker 1: So these people did actually go, they did go to court,
Speaker 1: they did get found guilty. It was a real conspiracy.
Speaker 1: The question for people who are out there a little
Speaker 1: more in the fringe of the reporting is whether or
Speaker 1: not there was a that was, whether or not this
Speaker 1: conspiracy is a cover up for something else at play.
Speaker 1: We did not find a ton of evidence for that.
Speaker 1: It seemed more like the fog of war and the
Speaker 1: panic of trying to report things as they're happening. But hey,
Speaker 1: if you are from the area and you know something
Speaker 1: else that was a miss at the time, we would
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. And also, if you're not
Speaker 1: from the area, can you recall any other strange cases
Speaker 1: like this in your neck of the global woods. What
Speaker 1: popped up in the news only to disappear a few
Speaker 1: days later like one day true story. Long time listeners,
Speaker 1: remember this. One day here in our fair semi metropolis
Speaker 1: of Atlanta, a piece of the highway just collapsed Interstate
Speaker 1: eighty five, And for several months afterwards, the story that
Speaker 1: the local government was pushing was that a homeless person
Speaker 1: who struggled with substance abuse problems had set a fire
Speaker 1: in a shopping cart and that that resulted in the
Speaker 1: bridge collapsing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because stone totally melts, you know, with garbage can fires.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, I mean, you know, there was supposedly some
Speaker 3: other propellant down there, things that were used to bird.
Speaker 2: Yeah under the bridge yet recently started an LLC.
Speaker 3: He was a very explode party incorporated.
Speaker 2: Well, they had to figure out some way to use
Speaker 2: all those demilitarized ordinance. You know, let's use it for
Speaker 2: a nice fireworks display on the downtown Atlanta skyline.
Speaker 1: It is alias, of course, was bridge Blowington? Yes, yep,
Speaker 1: And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't
Speaker 1: wait to hear your thoughts. We try to be easy
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