WEBVTT - Disorganized Crime, Pt. 2 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:10.160 Col Zone Media. Just after midnight on March fifteenth, nineteen 0:00:10.240 --> 0:00:14.320 sixty five, Frank Smith was dropping off his girlfriend after 0:00:14.360 --> 0:00:17.880 a night out in Boston. The pair were sitting in 0:00:17.920 --> 0:00:21.320 his car outside of her apartment when two men emerged 0:00:21.360 --> 0:00:25.919 from the shadows. They walked up to the driver's side window, and, 0:00:25.960 --> 0:00:29.200 without saying a word, fired eight times into the car. 0:00:30.920 --> 0:00:35.760 Marilyn Marx was miraculously unhurt, and she ran for help. 0:00:37.240 --> 0:00:40.879 Frank was not so lucky. He'd been hit five times 0:00:40.920 --> 0:00:45.839 in the neck, chest, and shoulder. His glasses were shattered 0:00:45.880 --> 0:00:49.080 in the attack, sending shards of glass into his one 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:53.640 good eye. When the Monday morning edition of The Boston 0:00:53.680 --> 0:00:56.640 Globe came off the presses a few hours later, it 0:00:56.760 --> 0:00:59.800 was reported that he'd been rushed into emergency surgery overnight 0:01:00.280 --> 0:01:03.120 to save his life, and he was now headed back 0:01:03.120 --> 0:01:05.679 into the operating room where surgeons would attempt to save 0:01:05.720 --> 0:01:10.280 his eyesight. When he woke up in the hospital that afternoon, 0:01:10.840 --> 0:01:13.640 the chief of the Somerville Police Department was waiting outside 0:01:13.640 --> 0:01:17.000 his room with a warrant for his arrest. They'd found 0:01:17.000 --> 0:01:20.240 a loaded revolver with one bullet missing in the back 0:01:20.240 --> 0:01:23.520 seat of his car. Something he wasn't supposed to have. 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:26.360 Just five months after his release from prison for blowing 0:01:26.400 --> 0:01:30.840 up a man's house, he told police he had no 0:01:30.959 --> 0:01:35.200 idea who would want to shoot him, saying only I've 0:01:35.240 --> 0:01:38.440 been a good boy since I got out, and then 0:01:38.440 --> 0:01:41.920 he hummed a tune as he ignored their follow up questions. 0:01:42.800 --> 0:01:46.039 His girl friend, the same woman who'd provided his alibi 0:01:46.120 --> 0:01:48.120 on the night of that bombing in nineteen fifty seven, 0:01:48.920 --> 0:01:51.840 refused to even look at photos of possible suspects in 0:01:51.880 --> 0:01:58.000 this shooting, telling police she hadn't seen a thing. The 0:01:58.040 --> 0:02:01.920 discovery of Nazi books in PAMs in his car raised 0:02:01.960 --> 0:02:04.320 the possibility that the shooting had something to do with 0:02:04.360 --> 0:02:07.960 Frank's membership in the American Nazi Party, and they even 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:10.880 sent a detective down to Virginia to question George Lincoln 0:02:10.960 --> 0:02:16.600 Rockwell about their relationship. The more likely explanation, though, was 0:02:16.639 --> 0:02:18.840 that the shooting had been part of the ongoing gang 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:23.040 wars in Boston, and one detective speculated to the press 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:27.800 that perhaps it was retaliation from the intended target of 0:02:27.840 --> 0:02:33.760 Frank's bosched bombing in nineteen fifty seven. The FBI doesn't 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:36.919 seem to have volunteered that they already had a pretty 0:02:36.919 --> 0:02:41.360 good idea why Frank Smith got shot. He just wasn't 0:02:41.400 --> 0:02:45.120 important enough to anyone for them to be willing to 0:02:45.200 --> 0:02:48.960 jeopardize their ongoing illegal wire tap on the head of 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:58.239 the patriarchal crime family. I'm Molly Conger and this was 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:18.080 more little guys. When we left off last week, Frank 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:22.480 Smith was on his way to prison. He was, by 0:03:22.520 --> 0:03:26.880 his own account, a boxing promoter. That's what he always 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:28.880 told the police when he was getting booked into some 0:03:29.000 --> 0:03:32.919 jail or another anyway, and he's spent much of the 0:03:33.000 --> 0:03:36.560 nineteen fifties doing just that. He was arrested for bank 0:03:36.640 --> 0:03:39.440 robbery at least twice, he was accused of murder for 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:41.600 hire and the daylight shooting of an attorney in New 0:03:41.680 --> 0:03:44.400 York City, and by the time he was convicted for 0:03:44.480 --> 0:03:47.120 bombing a home in the Boston suburbs in nineteen fifty seven, 0:03:48.040 --> 0:03:51.240 police strongly suspected that he'd been behind a string of 0:03:51.280 --> 0:03:56.800 similar bombings. The common thread connecting all of the crimes 0:03:56.840 --> 0:04:00.360 Frank Smith was believed to have been involved in was 0:04:00.520 --> 0:04:05.120 organized crime. He managed to wiggle his way out of 0:04:05.160 --> 0:04:09.000 a surprising number of criminal charges, but at the end 0:04:09.040 --> 0:04:12.320 of nineteen fifty seven, he was sentenced to fifteen years 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:15.680 in prison, and he'd serve seven of those before he 0:04:15.760 --> 0:04:20.599 was paroled in November of nineteen sixty four. After his release, 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:24.400 Frank went to live with his sister in Tewkesbury, Massachusetts. 0:04:25.320 --> 0:04:28.200 He spent the holidays with family, but then it was 0:04:28.200 --> 0:04:31.599 time to get back to business. He wanted to meet 0:04:31.640 --> 0:04:34.360 the man whose Nazi newsletters he'd been reading in prison. 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:37.680 In the first few days of the new year in 0:04:37.760 --> 0:04:42.240 nineteen sixty five, he drove down to Arlington, Virginia to 0:04:42.240 --> 0:04:46.640 meet George Lincoln Rockwell. He'd had a lot of time 0:04:46.720 --> 0:04:49.680 to think over the past couple of years, and he 0:04:49.720 --> 0:04:53.520 had a proposition for the commander of the American Nazi Party. 0:04:54.160 --> 0:04:57.640 He arrived in Arlington on January third, and he was 0:04:57.680 --> 0:05:00.760 invited to accompany Rockwell and his storm Troopers to Washington, 0:05:00.839 --> 0:05:03.600 d c. The following morning, where he would witness one 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:10.120 of Rockwell's more outrageous publicity stunts. Most of the Stormtroopers 0:05:10.120 --> 0:05:12.920 who usually hung around the Nazi Party barracks had gone 0:05:12.920 --> 0:05:15.960 home to see their families for the holidays, so there 0:05:16.080 --> 0:05:19.719 wasn't much of an entourage for this trip. It looks 0:05:19.760 --> 0:05:25.040 like it was just Rockwell, John Patler, Robert Lloyd, and 0:05:25.120 --> 0:05:30.760 Frank Rockwell was no stranger to pulling some ugly little 0:05:30.760 --> 0:05:34.320 stunt for attention. He'd done it in Washington, d C. 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:37.520 So many times that most of the police officers at 0:05:37.520 --> 0:05:40.840 the Capitol knew him by sight, with or without a 0:05:40.920 --> 0:05:46.080 Nazi entourage. But this one in January of nineteen sixty 0:05:46.120 --> 0:05:54.560 five is particularly egregious. January fourth, nineteen sixty five, was 0:05:54.600 --> 0:05:57.960 the first day of the congressional session, the day new 0:05:58.000 --> 0:06:02.600 members of Congress are sworn in. The Mississippi Democratic Freedom 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:05.080 Party had announced ahead of time that they intended to 0:06:05.200 --> 0:06:08.760 challenge the seating of the all white delegation from Mississippi 0:06:09.520 --> 0:06:15.200 because the state had unconstitutionally disenfranchised black voters. Just to 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:18.960 sort of position us in history here. The Voting Rights 0:06:19.000 --> 0:06:23.680 Act wasn't signed until later in nineteen sixty five, so 0:06:23.720 --> 0:06:27.040 in nineteen sixty four, the year these white congressmen were 0:06:27.080 --> 0:06:31.000 elected in Mississippi, the state still levied a poll tax 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:35.120 and used literacy tests to selectively deny people the right 0:06:35.160 --> 0:06:40.320 to vote. As I was writing this, I thought to 0:06:40.400 --> 0:06:43.479 actually try to find a copy of a literacy test 0:06:44.279 --> 0:06:47.320 One that was actually in use in Mississippi in the 0:06:47.360 --> 0:06:53.680 nineteen sixties. I mean, I understand the concept. I learned 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:58.440 about it in school, and it doesn't really matter in 0:06:58.480 --> 0:07:02.000 the end what the questions were, because it's unfair and 0:07:02.160 --> 0:07:06.120 unconstitutional for it to exist at all. And even if 0:07:06.120 --> 0:07:09.080 you've got all the questions right, the klansmen at the 0:07:09.120 --> 0:07:14.640 registrar's office could just say you didn't. But I found one, 0:07:16.000 --> 0:07:20.360 and honestly, I was kind of surprised. I think most 0:07:20.400 --> 0:07:25.080 people would struggle with this. The test I found required 0:07:25.120 --> 0:07:28.320 the voter to copy down a section of the state constitution, 0:07:29.480 --> 0:07:32.880 followed by the instruction to quote, write in the space 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:36.920 below a reasonable interpretation of the section of the Mississippi 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:41.840 State Constitution which you have just copied. The next question 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:45.280 asks the voter to write in the space below a 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:49.320 statement setting forth your understanding of the duties and obligations 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:54.600 of citizenship under a constitutional form of government. And there's 0:07:54.600 --> 0:07:57.320 not really very much room to write anything at all. 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:02.440 And then, of course to even get to the polls 0:08:02.440 --> 0:08:05.640 on election day to then be subjected to an illegal 0:08:05.720 --> 0:08:10.120 tax and an unconstitutional written exam. You had to register 0:08:10.200 --> 0:08:15.000 to vote in the summer of nineteen sixty four. In 0:08:15.080 --> 0:08:20.360 the lead up to this contested election, James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, 0:08:21.120 --> 0:08:25.760 and Michael Schwerner were brutally murdered by a gang of 0:08:25.840 --> 0:08:31.520 klansmen that included the local sheriff and his deputies. The 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:37.320 cops and the clan beat shot and mutilated those men 0:08:38.320 --> 0:08:46.000 to stop them from registering black voters in Mississippi. So 0:08:46.320 --> 0:08:50.240 the surface level narrative of what happened on January fourth, 0:08:50.280 --> 0:08:53.840 nineteen sixty five is a group of black women showed 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:56.360 up at the capitol to say that these white men 0:08:56.440 --> 0:09:01.320 weren't elected legitimately, and I don't think that does it justice. 0:09:02.920 --> 0:09:05.679 There was no free and fair election in Mississippi in 0:09:05.760 --> 0:09:11.360 nineteen sixty four. In August of nineteen sixty four, not 0:09:11.520 --> 0:09:15.440 two months after those murders, members of the Mississippi Democratic 0:09:15.480 --> 0:09:19.239 Freedom Party held their own state convention to elect delegates 0:09:19.240 --> 0:09:23.360 to send to the Democratic National Convention, And when they 0:09:23.400 --> 0:09:27.439 got to the DNC, the Democratic Party challenged their credentials. 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:33.080 They didn't refuse outright to seat the delegation, but a 0:09:33.120 --> 0:09:37.400 hearing was held before the credentials committee, and at this 0:09:37.559 --> 0:09:42.320 televised hearing, Fanny lou Hamer testified about her own struggle 0:09:42.600 --> 0:09:45.920 to register to vote in Mississippi and the violence she'd 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:50.480 faced trying to register other black voters. She'd been forced 0:09:50.480 --> 0:09:54.040 to take literacy tests, she was retaliated against by the 0:09:54.080 --> 0:09:58.360 plantation owner whose land she worked as a sharecropper. She 0:09:58.480 --> 0:10:04.160 was threatened, asked, and shot at, and during this hearing, 0:10:04.960 --> 0:10:09.640 her voice is strong and clear as she testified about 0:10:09.640 --> 0:10:13.400 the four days she spent in a Mississippi jail where 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:17.960 she was beaten almost to death. She did not falter 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:22.080 as she described listening helplessly to the screams of a 0:10:22.160 --> 0:10:25.280 fifteen year old girl who'd been stripped naked and was 0:10:25.320 --> 0:10:30.080 being beaten in an adjacent cell. She sat in front 0:10:30.080 --> 0:10:34.559 of that committee, in front of this nation, and described 0:10:34.600 --> 0:10:38.240 the way those white police officers had groped her during 0:10:38.280 --> 0:10:43.839 those beatings, and her voice was still strong even as 0:10:43.840 --> 0:10:46.679 the tears ran down her face when she concluded her 0:10:46.679 --> 0:10:52.000 remarks with this question, I. 0:10:52.040 --> 0:10:57.680 Question, Americans, it's this American, the line of the free 0:10:57.720 --> 0:10:58.880 in the home of the brain. 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:00.520 Wow. 0:11:00.640 --> 0:11:05.040 We have to sleep with our telephones out for the hook, 0:11:05.920 --> 0:11:10.960 because our lives we threatened daily, because we want to live. 0:11:11.600 --> 0:11:15.560 It did some human beings in America thank you. 0:11:22.800 --> 0:11:26.600 President Johnson called an emergency press conference while she was speaking, 0:11:28.080 --> 0:11:31.440 not to announce that he was doing something about this 0:11:31.840 --> 0:11:37.200 absolute outrage in Mississippi, but because he feared the impact 0:11:37.360 --> 0:11:40.760 her words would have on the nation, and a presidential 0:11:40.800 --> 0:11:44.360 press conference would preempt anything else that was on TV. 0:11:46.520 --> 0:11:51.040 Most accounts of President Johnson's thought process here is that 0:11:51.120 --> 0:11:54.720 he was between a rock and a hard place. He 0:11:54.800 --> 0:11:58.760 had only just signed the Civil Rights Act. He knew 0:11:59.200 --> 0:12:04.560 damn well that Mississippi was flouting that law, but he 0:12:04.600 --> 0:12:07.200 couldn't afford to risk Southern states walking out of the 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:11.480 convention and losing Southern support in the upcoming presidential election. 0:12:13.360 --> 0:12:21.520 So he proposed an ugly, half assed, insulting compromise two 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:28.080 of the group's sixty four delegates could be seated. They 0:12:28.120 --> 0:12:31.600 responded by saying, all sixty four of them spent way 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:34.440 too long on that bus from Mississippi for only two 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:37.840 of them to get seats. If they couldn't run as 0:12:37.920 --> 0:12:43.160 Democrats in Mississippi, they would run as independents. But Mississippi 0:12:43.160 --> 0:12:46.640 Democratic Freedom Party candidates Fannie lou Hamer, Victoria Gray, and 0:12:46.679 --> 0:12:49.920 Annie Divine were all denied ballot access In the nineteen 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:54.319 sixty four election. So when Congress convened in January of 0:12:54.400 --> 0:12:58.199 nineteen sixty five, they planned to be present in person 0:12:58.840 --> 0:13:01.840 to make their case to Congress that they were the 0:13:01.920 --> 0:13:08.319 rightful representatives of the people of Mississippi, and George Lincoln 0:13:08.400 --> 0:13:15.080 Rockwell planned to be there too. Those three black women 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:19.120 from Mississippi were not even allowed to enter the Capitol Building, 0:13:19.520 --> 0:13:23.000 let alone the House chambers. They were stopped at the 0:13:23.040 --> 0:13:26.920 door by the chief of the Capitol Police. They left 0:13:27.000 --> 0:13:30.560 quietly and stood outside with their hundreds of supporters who 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:36.800 were lining the sidewalks. But for some reason, this crack 0:13:36.880 --> 0:13:41.920 security team at the Capitol Building couldn't explain how somebody 0:13:41.960 --> 0:13:47.839 else did manage to get inside. During the roll call 0:13:47.920 --> 0:13:49.760 vote for the election of the Speaker of the House, 0:13:50.840 --> 0:13:56.559 a man in blackface, a rumpled top hat, a furry loincloth, 0:13:57.320 --> 0:14:02.040 and no pants came crashing onto the House floor, pushing 0:14:02.120 --> 0:14:04.520 Congressman out of his way as he sprinted to the 0:14:04.559 --> 0:14:08.120 center of the room. And he was shouting something that 0:14:08.880 --> 0:14:11.439 I don't care to repeat in the way that he 0:14:11.480 --> 0:14:16.439 said it. What he was saying was I'm the Mississippi 0:14:16.440 --> 0:14:20.280 delegation and I want to be seated, But he was 0:14:20.360 --> 0:14:24.800 using an extremely exaggerated affect that was meant to mock 0:14:24.920 --> 0:14:29.880 black Southern vernacular. As the police dragged him from the 0:14:29.920 --> 0:14:37.360 Congressional chambers, he yelled, long Live Rockwell. It should have 0:14:37.400 --> 0:14:41.320 been impossible for Robert Lloyd to gain entry into the 0:14:41.320 --> 0:14:46.320 Capitol Building on January fourth, nineteen sixty five, the President 0:14:46.720 --> 0:14:50.880 was about to arrive to address Congress. Security at that 0:14:50.960 --> 0:14:55.000 building was as tight as the United States Government can 0:14:55.040 --> 0:14:59.720 get it, but somehow a Nazi in blackface with no 0:14:59.760 --> 0:15:03.320 pay hands on managed to make it past multiple lock 0:15:03.400 --> 0:15:09.440 doors and entrances guarded by police officers. He was charged 0:15:09.480 --> 0:15:13.080 only with disorderly conduct, and he was released that same 0:15:13.160 --> 0:15:18.920 day on a twenty dollars bond. This was Frank Smith's 0:15:19.000 --> 0:15:24.160 introduction to the American Nazi Party, and he loved it. 0:15:27.320 --> 0:15:29.040 I got a kick out of this. Now this is 0:15:29.080 --> 0:15:32.480 becoming very interesting, his first meeting with the commander. I 0:15:32.480 --> 0:15:34.400 had met Aim the night before and talked briefly with him, 0:15:34.400 --> 0:15:38.480 But now this little escape very interesting, and I had 0:15:38.480 --> 0:15:39.080 the chuck away. 0:15:43.320 --> 0:15:47.480 The stunt had been fun and exciting, and Rockwell's cool 0:15:47.600 --> 0:15:52.520 demeanor throughout had really impressed him. But this wasn't why 0:15:52.560 --> 0:15:57.160 he drove all the way down to Virginia from Massachusetts. 0:15:58.760 --> 0:16:01.200 He was really only on this racist field trip to 0:16:01.240 --> 0:16:07.440 the capitol. By coincidence, he'd come down to Virginia to 0:16:07.520 --> 0:16:09.000 talk business. 0:16:11.120 --> 0:16:14.240 Well, we did have the night before this demonstration. We 0:16:14.280 --> 0:16:17.680 had a lengthy discussion. We talked with various topics. One 0:16:17.680 --> 0:16:23.200 of them was the need for a church. The Muslims 0:16:23.720 --> 0:16:31.160 were creating a successful movement on the black strictly the 0:16:31.240 --> 0:16:35.280 black separate from the white, and they had their church, 0:16:37.000 --> 0:16:40.240 and there was a need because of the integration of 0:16:40.280 --> 0:16:43.000 schools and something. There seemed to be a need for 0:16:43.040 --> 0:16:46.920 the whites for a church that could be farmed where 0:16:46.960 --> 0:16:49.560 the whites could Because of religious. 0:16:49.080 --> 0:16:56.400 Conviction back in the nineteen fifties, around the time he 0:16:56.480 --> 0:17:00.240 managed to escape conviction for those two separate bank robberies, 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:08.080 Frank Smith bought some land. He bought a lot of land. Actually, 0:17:08.119 --> 0:17:12.119 he bought close to six hundred acres of mostly undeveloped 0:17:12.200 --> 0:17:16.880 land in a small town in coastal Maine. Now six 0:17:16.960 --> 0:17:21.920 hundred acres sounds big, and it is, but I don't 0:17:21.920 --> 0:17:25.399 actually know how big because I don't totally know what 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:28.639 an acre is. So if you're in the same boat, 0:17:29.280 --> 0:17:34.440 you're not alone. A football field minus the end zones 0:17:35.040 --> 0:17:38.600 is just a little bit more than one acre, and 0:17:39.200 --> 0:17:43.879 one square mile is six hundred and forty acres, So 0:17:45.280 --> 0:17:49.800 he's got five hundred and fifty football fields, or about 0:17:49.880 --> 0:17:53.679 ninety four percent of a square mile, If that helps. 0:17:55.600 --> 0:17:57.560 I tried to find some examples that will be easier 0:17:57.560 --> 0:18:00.359 for me to visualize, but one of the top Google 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:03.159 results for this is an article that had to have 0:18:03.200 --> 0:18:08.600 been written by AI. It helpfully offers examples like ten 0:18:08.680 --> 0:18:14.879 acres is fifteen eight hundred and forty potatoes, potatoes in 0:18:14.880 --> 0:18:19.879 what direction? I think this is a garbled regurgitation of 0:18:19.920 --> 0:18:23.800 an old meme claiming that one five hundred eighty four 0:18:23.800 --> 0:18:27.200 potatoes lined up end to end would span the width 0:18:27.280 --> 0:18:31.760 of one acre. But this claim requires you to believe 0:18:31.760 --> 0:18:34.840 that the average potato is five inches long, and according 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:38.399 to doctor Potato, the cartoon scientist mascot on the Q 0:18:38.520 --> 0:18:41.959 and a section of the Idaho Potato Commission's website, there 0:18:42.080 --> 0:18:46.840 is no standard measurement for any potato. Anyway, if you're 0:18:46.840 --> 0:18:50.399 an American trying to imagine what six hundred acres looks like, 0:18:51.440 --> 0:18:56.000 just visualize a parking lot with room for ninety thousand cars. 0:18:57.520 --> 0:19:00.639 This one's not actually AI. I found a paper written 0:19:00.680 --> 0:19:04.320 by the director of the Center for Profitable Agriculture at 0:19:04.359 --> 0:19:08.640 the University of Tennessee's Institute of Agriculture, So this one's real. 0:19:09.320 --> 0:19:14.480 There's math either way. That's a lot of land for 0:19:14.560 --> 0:19:17.199 a guy who's never had a legitimate form of income. 0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:21.360 I guess robbing banks leaves you with a lot of 0:19:21.400 --> 0:19:24.720 cash and you have to offload it somewhere, and buying 0:19:24.800 --> 0:19:30.960 land isn't the worst idea. So he's been sitting on 0:19:31.119 --> 0:19:34.600 six hundred acres of undeveloped land up in Maine for 0:19:34.680 --> 0:19:38.600 a decade already, and in January of nineteen sixty five, 0:19:39.119 --> 0:19:42.879 Frank Smith proposed to George Lincoln Rockwell that they could 0:19:42.960 --> 0:19:46.120 use this property that he had up in Maine as 0:19:46.160 --> 0:19:50.840 the home base for a church, a new religion that 0:19:50.920 --> 0:19:55.920 he envisioned as a sort of whites only Nazi version 0:19:56.920 --> 0:19:59.000 I guess of the Nation of Islam. I think that's 0:19:59.040 --> 0:20:03.240 what he's describing. It would provide them with some kind 0:20:03.280 --> 0:20:09.159 of institutional legitimacy to do things like fight school integration. 0:20:11.080 --> 0:20:14.920 And it's easy to imagine that this is probably very cynical, 0:20:16.440 --> 0:20:19.159 but I'm always saying, you can't know what's in a 0:20:19.200 --> 0:20:23.399 man's heart. Maybe he does have some kind of hideous, 0:20:23.840 --> 0:20:30.720 warped religious conviction. He doesn't. He helpfully explained the whole 0:20:30.760 --> 0:20:33.040 idea in an interview he did with a reporter in 0:20:33.119 --> 0:20:38.840 nineteen sixty eight. He wasn't bothering with any kind of complicated, 0:20:39.000 --> 0:20:44.720 reverse engineered religious justification for racism. He just wanted to 0:20:44.760 --> 0:20:47.760 take advantage of the legal and social benefits of being 0:20:47.800 --> 0:20:52.880 a church by making racism itself his religion. 0:20:55.400 --> 0:20:57.480 And I want to say religion. We're not talking about 0:20:57.560 --> 0:21:01.440 DoD mare any particular creed, but it depends on your 0:21:01.440 --> 0:21:04.840 interpretation of the word religion. But a trech that one 0:21:04.880 --> 0:21:09.840 of the beliefs of the tresch would be that you 0:21:09.880 --> 0:21:13.760 would have to be of the right race. And then 0:21:13.880 --> 0:21:17.800 other than that, we were keeping it open. 0:21:21.960 --> 0:21:25.880 I couldn't find any primary source documentation that sheds light 0:21:25.960 --> 0:21:31.720 on how Rockwell responded to Frank's proposal specifically, but there 0:21:31.800 --> 0:21:34.199 is a lot of evidence that this is something Rockwell 0:21:34.240 --> 0:21:39.080 had been thinking about for years. Rockwell was not religious 0:21:39.680 --> 0:21:42.840 at all, but he'd been toying with the idea of 0:21:43.040 --> 0:21:46.280 using Christianity as a sort of front for the movement 0:21:47.160 --> 0:21:51.800 since the late fifties. In the early sixties, he met 0:21:51.880 --> 0:21:56.040 Richard Butler, the man whose passion for this warped Nazi 0:21:56.080 --> 0:21:59.959 religion of Christian identity led him to found the Aryan Nations, 0:22:00.800 --> 0:22:05.959 although that came later. And around that same time, in 0:22:06.000 --> 0:22:09.760 the early nineteen sixties, Rockwell was corresponding with a friend 0:22:09.800 --> 0:22:15.080 of his, a German Nazi named Bruno Ludke. Didke had 0:22:15.119 --> 0:22:19.560 recently translated Rockwell's memoir into German, and he suggested that 0:22:19.640 --> 0:22:23.800 Rockwell should rewrite some of the passages to tone down 0:22:23.840 --> 0:22:28.479 the anti Christian rhetoric a little bit. Not because he 0:22:28.560 --> 0:22:32.720 was offended by that, absolutely not. Both men shared the 0:22:32.800 --> 0:22:39.800 belief that Christianity was Jewish and communist. Jesus was, after 0:22:39.880 --> 0:22:46.040 all a Jewish man, and if your worldview centers around 0:22:46.160 --> 0:22:51.679 destroying your enemies and exterminating the weak, it's hard to 0:22:51.720 --> 0:22:56.399 get much out of the Gospels. In their private correspondence, 0:22:56.800 --> 0:23:02.159 they agreed that Christianity was merely a useful rapper. There 0:23:02.200 --> 0:23:07.000 would be no Christ in this Christian Church, just a 0:23:07.040 --> 0:23:11.000 man trying to, as Lutka put it, speak with the 0:23:11.040 --> 0:23:15.520 political authority of the feurior and the moral authority of 0:23:15.600 --> 0:23:22.359 the Pope. In their letters, Rockwell was very open about 0:23:22.359 --> 0:23:27.720 his intentions. His commitment to Hitler was his only religion. 0:23:29.080 --> 0:23:34.199 But Americans, with their quote peanut brains, would be lured 0:23:34.240 --> 0:23:39.600 in by this set dressing of Christianity. In correspondence with 0:23:39.640 --> 0:23:43.040 British Nazi Colin Jordan, he argued that there is a 0:23:43.200 --> 0:23:48.439 clear tactical advantage deciding with Christians on political matters like 0:23:48.760 --> 0:23:53.119 prayer in school. You don't have to mean it for 0:23:53.160 --> 0:23:59.080 it to be an effective recruitment and propaganda tool. By 0:23:59.160 --> 0:24:02.960 nineteen sixty four, Rockwell had a close working relationship with 0:24:03.000 --> 0:24:08.560 Wesley Swift, the father of the Christian Identity movement. He 0:24:08.600 --> 0:24:11.840 wouldn't live to see it come to fruition, but the 0:24:11.840 --> 0:24:15.680 groundwork he laid in the years before his death paved 0:24:15.760 --> 0:24:21.240 the way for this complete fusion of Christian identity theology 0:24:22.160 --> 0:24:40.879 and militant neo Nazi activism. So forming a Nazi church 0:24:41.480 --> 0:24:43.960 is something he'd already been thinking about for a decade 0:24:44.000 --> 0:24:48.040 when Frank Smith approached him in nineteen sixty five. And 0:24:48.119 --> 0:24:52.720 I have to believe Frank knew that right. I don't 0:24:52.800 --> 0:24:55.840 know how he would have known it, but it's a 0:24:55.880 --> 0:24:58.400 strange thing to say to someone if you didn't know 0:24:59.040 --> 0:25:03.280 they were already consisted it. I couldn't track down anything 0:25:03.400 --> 0:25:06.400 concrete that would point to who would have made that introduction. 0:25:06.520 --> 0:25:12.240 Though after his meeting with Rockwell, Frank drove back to 0:25:12.280 --> 0:25:16.800 New England, news of his trip to Virginia got home 0:25:16.840 --> 0:25:21.800 before he did. On January fourth, the day after Frank 0:25:21.880 --> 0:25:25.560 arrived at the American Nazi Party barracks in Virginia, the 0:25:25.600 --> 0:25:28.280 head of the New England mafia already knew about it, 0:25:29.600 --> 0:25:34.600 and so did j Edgar Hoover. The illegal recording device 0:25:34.640 --> 0:25:37.719 the FBI had installed in Raymond Patriarca's office in nineteen 0:25:37.800 --> 0:25:43.720 sixty two recorded several conversations that day. There was some 0:25:44.320 --> 0:25:48.200 idle chat about some recent hits, some vague talk about 0:25:48.200 --> 0:25:52.040 a stolen diamond, and on the topic of Frank Smith. 0:25:53.119 --> 0:25:56.320 Patriarca was told that Frank had gone down to Virginia 0:25:56.400 --> 0:25:59.960 to visit George Lincoln Rockwell, having become an avowed follow 0:26:00.280 --> 0:26:04.560 while he was in prison. A few days later, on 0:26:04.680 --> 0:26:08.399 January seventh, Frank Smith arrived in Providence, Rhode Island, for 0:26:08.440 --> 0:26:13.280 a face to face meeting with Raymond Patriarca. Later that evening. 0:26:13.320 --> 0:26:16.680 A memo was sent directly to j Edgar Hoover summarizing 0:26:16.680 --> 0:26:19.640 the recordings of the conversation in Patriarca's office that day, 0:26:21.200 --> 0:26:24.600 and it says that Frank's primary reason for making contact 0:26:24.600 --> 0:26:28.320 with Patriarca that day was to get his blessing to 0:26:28.359 --> 0:26:32.199 do a little loan sharking. He's fresh out of prison 0:26:32.280 --> 0:26:36.679 and trying to get back to work. Patriarca gave him 0:26:36.720 --> 0:26:38.760 permission to put a few thousand dollars out on the 0:26:38.760 --> 0:26:41.639 street in Boston, as long as it didn't interfere with 0:26:41.680 --> 0:26:45.880 any existing business. But with that out of the way, 0:26:47.119 --> 0:26:51.200 Frank kept talking. He's the one who brought up George 0:26:51.240 --> 0:26:55.840 Lincoln Rockwell, telling the mob boss that they were close associates, 0:26:56.640 --> 0:27:00.800 and that does end up being true in the future. 0:27:01.920 --> 0:27:06.359 But when he's saying this on a Thursday, he just 0:27:06.680 --> 0:27:11.359 met Rockwell for the first time on Sunday. And then 0:27:11.400 --> 0:27:13.480 he rambles for a little bit about how the army 0:27:13.520 --> 0:27:15.560 has too many black people in it and if black 0:27:15.600 --> 0:27:18.080 people outnumber white people in the army, they'll take over 0:27:18.160 --> 0:27:22.280 the country. He doesn't say black people, he uses different words, 0:27:23.440 --> 0:27:25.840 and he told Patriarca that he just returned from a 0:27:25.880 --> 0:27:30.480 visit to the Nazi Party headquarters, and the memo is 0:27:30.600 --> 0:27:34.560 just a narrative. It's not actually a transcription of the recording, 0:27:35.960 --> 0:27:39.520 but it says he described the physical layout of the property, 0:27:40.040 --> 0:27:43.840 including how many stormtroopers were there and how they were dressed. 0:27:45.119 --> 0:27:48.760 He shares his upcoming travel plans, which includes trips to 0:27:48.840 --> 0:27:51.320 Dallas and Los Angeles to meet with more members of 0:27:51.320 --> 0:27:55.879 the American Nazi Party, and then he let Patriarca in 0:27:55.920 --> 0:27:59.800 on his big plan. He wanted to pour a bunch 0:27:59.840 --> 0:28:04.760 of money into Rockwell's operation, and the best way to 0:28:04.840 --> 0:28:08.760 do that without causing any legal or tax issues for 0:28:08.840 --> 0:28:13.000 anyone involved, would be to make a Nazi church on 0:28:13.080 --> 0:28:17.240 that land he has up in Maine. At some point 0:28:17.320 --> 0:28:19.879 during the meeting, he shows off his machine gun to 0:28:19.920 --> 0:28:23.560 one of the underbosses who's also there, and he says 0:28:23.560 --> 0:28:26.440 the church would be called the White Church of America 0:28:26.680 --> 0:28:31.439 of Maine. He also told Patriarca that Rockwell is planning 0:28:31.440 --> 0:28:33.880 to run for governor of Virginia in the election later 0:28:33.960 --> 0:28:39.479 that year. Later in this same memo, there's a brief 0:28:39.520 --> 0:28:43.360 mention that Frank told Patriarca that once the Nazis are 0:28:43.480 --> 0:28:48.640 established in New England. Presumably at this Nazi church in Maine, 0:28:49.080 --> 0:28:53.880 they'll be in a good position to infiltrate Massachusetts when 0:28:54.040 --> 0:28:59.520 Ed Brooke runs for governor. Edbrooke never ran for governor 0:28:59.560 --> 0:29:02.680 of Massage Chosets, but he did become the first black 0:29:02.720 --> 0:29:05.640 Senator since reconstruction when he was elected to the US 0:29:05.720 --> 0:29:10.440 Senate in nineteen sixty six. In nineteen sixty five, though 0:29:11.120 --> 0:29:16.120 he was the Massachusetts state Attorney General, and as Attorney General, 0:29:16.880 --> 0:29:21.400 he had opened an investigation into the Massachusetts State Racing Commission. 0:29:22.880 --> 0:29:28.400 The Racing Commission allocates what are called racing days. There's 0:29:28.480 --> 0:29:31.400 only a certain number of days per year where horse 0:29:31.480 --> 0:29:34.920 racing can occur and bets can be placed, so the 0:29:35.000 --> 0:29:39.360 Racing Commission decides which tracks have horse races on which days. 0:29:41.400 --> 0:29:44.600 Shortly after he took office in nineteen sixty three, Brooke 0:29:44.640 --> 0:29:50.320