Speaker 1: Welcome back to the classics. Fellow conspiracy realist. If you
Speaker 1: are a longtime listener, there is a name that you
Speaker 1: know and know very well. No, not Intern Steve, although
Speaker 1: shout out to him. Instead, we're talking about Gary Webb.
Speaker 1: Who is Gary Webb? Or who was he?
Speaker 2: Yeah? How is he connected to Freeway? What is it Rick?
Speaker 2: Not the Rick Ross rapper, but Freeway Rick Ross?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the guy who was actually moving lots and lots
Speaker 2: of drugs allegedly according to his story for the government.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Gary Webb's an investigative journalist who for a long
Speaker 1: time worked for an outfit called the Mercury News. And
Speaker 1: he is the guy who brought to the American public
Speaker 1: the idea that the CIA was fueling the crack cocaine
Speaker 1: epidemic in the United States. Ultimately, Gary Webb died from
Speaker 1: two gunshots to the heads.
Speaker 2: Deemed a suicide, well officially, but come on now, well
Speaker 2: this feels weird to me. Let's look into it. By
Speaker 2: the way, when every time I see the phrase Dark Alliance,
Speaker 2: thankfully now I have this association to Gary Webb. But
Speaker 2: it was a Balder's Gate video game that came out
Speaker 2: a long time ago. That's right, called Balder's Gate Dark Alliance.
Speaker 2: So then I imagined an isometric action adventure RPG. But
Speaker 2: thankfully again Gary Webb is here to help us.
Speaker 1: Now I'm imagining both of them. What is Dark Alliance
Speaker 1: really trying to tell us?
Speaker 3: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
Speaker 3: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 3: learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: Hey, guys, I love the podcast and I'm usually a
Speaker 2: huge fan of your work, but I have to say
Speaker 2: I just listened to the Cryptids of Australia episode and
Speaker 2: I was very disappointed. At the beginning you mentioned that
Speaker 2: you did the Cryptid math. I can't believe no one
Speaker 2: took this opportunity to say you did the monster math.
Speaker 2: I expect better.
Speaker 4: That wasn't dad joke, missed opportunity.
Speaker 1: That was from Devin.
Speaker 2: My name's Matt, my name's Nol.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We are joined with our super
Speaker 1: producer Paul Decktt. Most importantly, you are you. You are
Speaker 1: here that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 4: Matt.
Speaker 2: That was new was that you're trying something out, just
Speaker 2: messing around.
Speaker 4: It's like a cold open kind of in a weird way,
Speaker 4: unrelated entirely.
Speaker 2: Just you know, calling us out for not doing the
Speaker 2: monster math. It's cool.
Speaker 1: Well, also calling us out for maybe not doing our
Speaker 1: due diligence, which is something that's going to come up
Speaker 1: a lot in this episode in particular. Right, you can
Speaker 1: say all sorts of things, but can you prove them?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe let's start this way. So the
Speaker 1: four of us live and record in the Atlanta area,
Speaker 1: and Atlanta, in a huge burst of good news, has
Speaker 1: a tremendous drug problem. Yeah, Like, as we're recording and
Speaker 1: be sarcastic, but as we're recording this, not more than
Speaker 1: three or four hundred yards away from the studio we're
Speaker 1: in right now, there is more than likely someone on
Speaker 1: a backstreet doing a hard drug of some sort, and
Speaker 1: maybe on a main street. There are also probably several
Speaker 1: people on street corners in the same vicinity selling these drugs.
Speaker 1: And if you live in a large American city, areas
Speaker 1: of your local metropolis almost definitely have areas where drug
Speaker 1: problems are endemic and there are huge issues with trying
Speaker 1: to address it. But here's the big question, where does
Speaker 1: all of this come from? You know what I mean,
Speaker 1: The local corner drug dealer is almost certainly not flying
Speaker 1: to the Golden Triangle or flying to South America on
Speaker 1: a weekly basis to sell somebody like heroin or cocaine
Speaker 1: at ten bucks a pop. It's just the plane tickets
Speaker 1: too expensive. It economically doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that person or group of people selling drugs
Speaker 2: on the corner aren't also on those flights purchasing the
Speaker 2: large quantities of cocaine or whatever, then flying all of
Speaker 2: that stuff back to the United States, then processing it
Speaker 2: into let's say, crack cocaine, which is a process, and
Speaker 2: then like you said, selling it for that low amount
Speaker 2: of money.
Speaker 1: Right. And there's an excellent study that Freakonomics did a
Speaker 1: while back. We're big fans of Freakonomics that busted the
Speaker 1: myth the drug dealers make tons and tons of cash.
Speaker 1: Actually you would be. You might be incredibly surprised by
Speaker 1: how little drug dealers, most drug dealers actually make.
Speaker 4: It kind of reminds me of that thing we talked
Speaker 4: about ben off Mic about how little money bank robbers
Speaker 4: probably make. You know, it's this notion that they're just
Speaker 4: cleaning it up, but in fact, banks don't keep that
Speaker 4: much money on hand, and to make a decent living,
Speaker 4: like even like a relatively decent living, you would have
Speaker 4: to your success rate would have to be one hundred percent,
Speaker 4: and you would have to, you know, do a certain
Speaker 4: amount of heists every.
Speaker 1: Year with a certain amount of people, a certain amount
Speaker 1: of people.
Speaker 4: Not that it's related one to one, but you'd think
Speaker 4: that drug dealers, you know, there's this cliche notion that
Speaker 4: they're raking in the cash. But I'm interested in your stats, Ben, Oh.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, there's there's the article from La Times that
Speaker 2: it's literally titled why drug dealers live with their moms,
Speaker 2: and it goes into what you're talking about here, how
Speaker 2: very little most of the people actually selling the drugs make.
Speaker 1: Now I don't want to. I can toot my own
Speaker 1: horn a little bit on the bank heist thing too,
Speaker 1: which I think they are related, mainly because I wrote
Speaker 1: the video, but I think someone else appeared in it.
Speaker 1: We did a brain stuff video way back in the
Speaker 1: day about why you shouldn't rob a bank and you
Speaker 1: can find the bank stats there, but they're they're sobering
Speaker 1: and somber, and we see the same thing with drug dealers.
Speaker 1: There's a quick excerpt we could read here the top
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty men on the Black Disciples pyramid.
Speaker 1: That's the hierarchy of the gang. Right, we're paid very well,
Speaker 1: but the pyramid they sat at top was gigantic. So
Speaker 1: if you use this franchise from a guy named JT.
Speaker 1: They mentioned earlier in the article, the franchise had three
Speaker 1: officers and fifty foot soldiers. There were about five three
Speaker 1: hundred people working for those one hundred and twenty bosses
Speaker 1: at the top of the pyramid. And then there were
Speaker 1: twenty thousand unpaid rank and file members, most of them
Speaker 1: who were just vuying to become a foot soldier. And
Speaker 1: how well did that foot soldier dream job pay when just.
Speaker 2: Foot soldier job that these twenty thousand people.
Speaker 1: Want, right, three dollars and thirty cents an hour, but
Speaker 1: you don't have to pay taxes.
Speaker 2: And again this is written in two thousand and five,
Speaker 2: and this is I believe that's when they were out
Speaker 2: actually speaking with these people.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So two thousand and five dollars.
Speaker 1: So clearly not enough for regular international travel. Where does
Speaker 1: this stuff actually come from? How does cocaine enter the US?
Speaker 1: How does heroin into the US and on and on
Speaker 1: with these other drugs, especially when Uncle Sam ostensibly spends
Speaker 1: billions and billions of dollars just trying to stop the
Speaker 1: drug trade. How does it get here? One person thought
Speaker 1: he found the answer, and he was an investigative journalist
Speaker 1: named Gary Webb.
Speaker 5: So.
Speaker 4: Gary Webb was born on August thirty first, nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 4: in Corona, California, and he wanted to be a writer
Speaker 4: from a very early age, where for the student newspaper
Speaker 4: at his college in Indianapolis. He ended up getting married
Speaker 4: to him and named Susan Bell, and they went on
Speaker 4: to have three kids together. And he first started getting
Speaker 4: into investigative reporting when a piece appeared in the Kentucky
Speaker 4: Post in nineteen eighty called The Coal Connection. It was
Speaker 4: a massive series, a seventeen part series that he collabed
Speaker 4: on with a guy named Thomas Sheffey that looked at
Speaker 4: ben you might know more about this the conspiracy surrounding
Speaker 4: a coal company. So he was already kind of early
Speaker 4: on into whistleblowing and kind of like this sort of
Speaker 4: deep dive truth telling, trying to expose the ills of society.
Speaker 1: Right right, similar to that wonderful journalist we interviewed a
Speaker 1: while back, Mark Periskia I believe his name was correct, Yeah,
Speaker 1: who did some fantastic work on the US government's arrangements
Speaker 1: with spies in the era of civil rights. This guy
Speaker 1: was a small town reporter who was breaking big stories,
Speaker 1: and that.
Speaker 2: Was a big deal, specifically about the assassination or the
Speaker 2: murder of a president of this coal company, and how
Speaker 2: this guy perhaps had some or he did have ties
Speaker 2: to organized crime. Like that's no small thing. You don't
Speaker 2: write about that and then not worry about writing about that.
Speaker 1: And as our friend Mark established earlier, the thing about
Speaker 1: being an investigative journalist that's worth your salt is that
Speaker 1: so much of the actual work is just verifying and
Speaker 1: triple checking every single syllable of every single sentence that
Speaker 1: is fit to print, and you have to do it
Speaker 1: before it goes out to the masses. It turned out
Speaker 1: that Gary Webb seemed to have a gift for this,
Speaker 1: and that was just the beginning. His major work, the
Speaker 1: one that most of us listening and probably familiar with,
Speaker 1: is something called The Dark Alliance, And over the years,
Speaker 1: several people have kind of muddied the water of his
Speaker 1: research and what he actually claimed. So it's very important
Speaker 1: for us to look at what he did do and
Speaker 1: then also look at what he did not do precisely.
Speaker 1: So here's here's the gist. In nineteen ninety six, Gary
Speaker 1: Webb writes a series of three articles for The Mercury News,
Speaker 1: which I believe was out in San Jose, San Jose.
Speaker 1: So in these these three articles are pretty lengthy, and
Speaker 1: later they're all collected into a book named The Dark Alliance.
Speaker 1: This it's difficult to explain how much of an impact
Speaker 1: this made, so let's just go with what he says.
Speaker 1: In this series of articles. Gary Webb alleges and claims
Speaker 1: that Nicaraguan contras are responsible for the Los Angeles crack
Speaker 1: cocaine epidemic of the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 4: It's a bold claim.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah and yeah, that they're responsible, but they're a
Speaker 2: bunch of other hands.
Speaker 1: Involved too, right, They're not working alone. He claims that
Speaker 1: the US's Central Intelligence Agency, your CIA, knew this was
Speaker 1: going on, knew there was an active and elaborate and
Speaker 1: very very robe bust drug trafficking network there, and at
Speaker 1: the very least, he says, the CIA ignored it. At worst,
Speaker 1: he says they may have helped them actively covered up
Speaker 1: the crimes, met with the drug.
Speaker 2: Lords, provided transportation.
Speaker 1: Provided transportation. Shout out to what Air America, that's the one.
Speaker 1: So these allegations were pretty harsh, as you said, a
Speaker 1: bold claim, But the thing is they weren't far fetched.
Speaker 1: In South and Central America, it's not unusual for these
Speaker 1: separatist or revolutionary groups to turn to the drug trade
Speaker 1: as a way to raise some cash. Other groups have
Speaker 1: done it too, like FARC or the Shining Path and
Speaker 1: actually met FARK representatives who were very much against that process.
Speaker 1: So all goes back to documentation, right, Gary Webb builds
Speaker 1: this case and he argues, somehow, as opposed to all
Speaker 1: the other drug running operations on that continent, somehow the
Speaker 1: contras are able to get cocaine into the US and
Speaker 1: then most importantly get cash out with a lot less
Speaker 1: of a hassle than other cartels or drug runners.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, so they're saving a ton of money somehow
Speaker 2: in this whole process, in the transportation, right hm. And
Speaker 2: what that's allowing them to do, and this is where
Speaker 2: it gets really bad for people who live in the
Speaker 2: United States. This allows these groups to sell their product
Speaker 2: at a much much lower price than their competitors.
Speaker 1: Right, so you can't. It's like what a mom and
Speaker 1: pop store is trying to compete with a huge, big
Speaker 1: box chain grocery store. They have the economy of scale
Speaker 1: that allows them to sell an apple for fifty cents,
Speaker 1: whereas the mom and pop stores to sell it for
Speaker 1: a dollar.
Speaker 2: And why would you buy your apple for a dollar
Speaker 2: when you know you can get it for fifty cents.
Speaker 4: Maybe it's some more delicious apple.
Speaker 2: It's the exact same apple, my friend.
Speaker 4: I don't know. Maybe if you pay more for it,
Speaker 4: it tastes better.
Speaker 1: There's a study with wine that absolutely proves that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is true, calling out all samall yea's we'll go
Speaker 1: ahead and maybe publish that study on wine on Here's
Speaker 1: where it gets crazy later.
Speaker 2: But what if you're addicted to apples? Like, addicted to apples?
Speaker 2: Are you still going to pay a dollar?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 4: I don't know, I mean it depends right, Like are
Speaker 4: you a connoisseur.
Speaker 1: Of apples or are you just eating like any old
Speaker 1: crab apple to scratch that unscratchable itch.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's different layers, there's different there's a hierarchy of addiction.
Speaker 2: Right, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say
Speaker 2: the crack epidemic probably was going more towards.
Speaker 4: The crab apples.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, crack apples also just an unnecessary point here.
Speaker 1: I feel like red Delicious Apple is like a terribly
Speaker 1: ironic name because those are terrible apples.
Speaker 2: I don't like them either.
Speaker 1: They're kind of mushy. Yeah, you know, I don't get it.
Speaker 1: Fuji apples all day.
Speaker 2: For me, it's Granny Smith.
Speaker 1: Andy Smith. I would not have figured you for a
Speaker 1: fan of tartness.
Speaker 2: It's my favorite.
Speaker 1: What about that? Mean, man, it's a it's a tart apple.
Speaker 4: No, I know, but why would you? Why would you
Speaker 4: not think that Matt was a fan of tartness.
Speaker 1: Because Matt's Matt's palette runs more toward spicy. He's exploring extremes.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what it is.
Speaker 4: Interesting.
Speaker 2: My favorite tart is a Carl tart.
Speaker 1: Though it's well done, well done, but uh but the
Speaker 1: character the argument still stays the same, right, Like he says,
Speaker 1: obviously this, obviously someone is influencing the game that the
Speaker 1: cartels are playing down there, and I have he says
Speaker 1: proof that the CIA is either again either ignoring it,
Speaker 1: maybe helping it, has met with cartel leaders and so on.
Speaker 1: But what before we get too far, let's ask her
Speaker 1: ourselves what he actually did not do After a word
Speaker 1: from our sponsors.
Speaker 2: And we're back. So, the one thing that Gary Webb
Speaker 2: did not do by discussing these things in his three
Speaker 2: part series that would become The Dark Alliance, what he
Speaker 2: didn't do is break this story. He wasn't the first
Speaker 2: person to talk about America's crack coming from other places,
Speaker 2: perhaps the contras, like specifically the Nicaraguan Contras, with perhaps
Speaker 2: the CIA's approval. This was something that had already been
Speaker 2: kind of floating around. It was a theory in a way.
Speaker 2: He was just backing up these beliefs with some facts,
Speaker 2: or at least with as close to facts as he could.
Speaker 1: Get, kind of fleshing out the picture.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, he's given you the details. He's zooming in
Speaker 2: with the camera a little bit.
Speaker 1: There we go. I like that he never claimed to
Speaker 1: have evidence that the CIA engineered the entire thing correct,
Speaker 1: only that they knew something was going on, they tacitly
Speaker 1: approved of it, and that they met with contra leaders
Speaker 1: and funders to talk about the money.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the fact of the matter is that there were
Speaker 4: a lot of kind of wild theories that shot off
Speaker 4: from this reporting. And I know we'll get into some
Speaker 4: of this little bit more, but Web was sort of
Speaker 4: discredited and then sort of indicated, and he's been a
Speaker 4: very divisive figure in terms of like how rigorous his
Speaker 4: fact checking was for some of this stuff. There's a
Speaker 4: piece an op ed in the Washington Post by they
Speaker 4: named Jeff Lean from twenty fourteen, who was their assistant
Speaker 4: managing editor, and he basically you should read it for yourself.
Speaker 4: It's very interesting, but he kind of goes through in
Speaker 4: shreds Web in terms of his abilities as a investigative
Speaker 4: reporter and said that he makes all of these incredible
Speaker 4: claims and that in order to make incredible claims like that,
Speaker 4: as a journalist, you have to have incredible evidence, right,
Speaker 4: and he doesn't exist well.
Speaker 1: And then also what role do the editors play in that.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you mentioned twenty fourteen because that's an important year.
Speaker 1: But let's let's get to the reaction of the initial
Speaker 1: publication too. So the media does conflate what Web is saying,
Speaker 1: as as we mentioned, they say that Web is saying
Speaker 1: the CIA did it. Did it all smoking gun caught
Speaker 1: red handed. It was the CIA with the crack cocaine
Speaker 1: in the living room.
Speaker 4: As though they invented the substance for some nefarious purpose,
Speaker 4: to try to manipulate in the population into behaving a
Speaker 4: certain way, or to incarcerate black men unfairly.
Speaker 2: Right, the biggest thing is that they were saying that
Speaker 2: Web was saying. The news is saying that Web is
Speaker 2: saying that the CIA is literally the drug dealer, which
Speaker 2: he did not. He did not say that. I totally
Speaker 2: get that.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's and you know, it's kind of what
Speaker 4: we're experiencing now with the quick turnaround of like internet reporting,
Speaker 4: where it's very easy to conflate something in a properly
Speaker 4: research story and turn it into something else for your
Speaker 4: own purposes. Wouldn't have thought that would have been happening
Speaker 4: quite to this degree back then, But yet here we are.
Speaker 1: This is back when the news was all made by
Speaker 1: like organic meatbags called humans rather than bots and botnets,
Speaker 1: you know what I.
Speaker 6: Mean, and the day but then the days before deep fakes,
Speaker 6: which is a scary thing, right, Yes, so you're absolutely right, guys.
Speaker 6: He he did get conflated.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Well, and there's a whole other thing we're gonna talk
Speaker 2: about in there about Gary web sources, right, and the
Speaker 2: people he was talking to that he couldn't actually cite
Speaker 2: as being the source.
Speaker 1: Because they were so off the record. And then also
Speaker 1: on a related thing that we have to get to
Speaker 1: maybe in a future episode, it's pretty easy to prove
Speaker 1: that on some level, the federal government, through multiple agencies,
Speaker 1: has been targeting the black community for a long time.
Speaker 1: I mean, the same amount of cocaine and the same
Speaker 1: amount of crack cocaine carry wildly different minimum mandatory incarceration terms, right,
Speaker 1: Why would that.
Speaker 4: Be Hmmm, Matt's making sort of a smushed up face
Speaker 4: right now.
Speaker 1: It's very Hollywood. That's your Charlie Day in front of
Speaker 1: the conspiracy law chain smoking accusation. I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: good question though, and the reaction is immense. This is
Speaker 1: actually one of the first national security stories to really
Speaker 1: blow up online to get people in the normal mainstream
Speaker 1: America intensely interested. It's twenty thousand words long. It enrages
Speaker 1: black communities who are wondering, why are these epidemics happening?
Speaker 1: Why does it seem like there's more government punishment or
Speaker 1: harassment of the community rather than government assistance of a
Speaker 1: community in trouble. And then there are congressional investigations excuse me,
Speaker 1: congressional hearings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, congressional hearings. But some of the biggest, at least
Speaker 2: most widely seen hearings or seen on television occur just
Speaker 2: within smaller communities within LA and other cities like that,
Speaker 2: where there are people filling a room, a huge room,
Speaker 2: and they are just asking people how long have you
Speaker 2: known about the CIA dealing drugs? Like did you know
Speaker 2: that CIA was dealing drugs? And they're asking their city officials,
Speaker 2: and they're asking big names who are supposed to be
Speaker 2: in charge of things.
Speaker 1: And again, Webb is in his you can see interviews
Speaker 1: with him as well, where he essentially says that he
Speaker 1: doesn't think the CIA was like wringing its hands Monty
Speaker 1: Burn's style and saying, oh you know what I mean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: He says, instead, they just really wanted money, and they
Speaker 1: wanted off the books money anyway, Like if it hadn't
Speaker 1: been this, it would have been something else.
Speaker 2: They couldn't officially use the government's money to pay for
Speaker 2: what they were trying to do.
Speaker 1: Because that's back when that kind of policy or law
Speaker 1: actually stopped people from doing that sort of thing.
Speaker 4: Have we talked much about what the Contra affair was
Speaker 4: and why they were interacting with these militants who were
Speaker 4: like they were kind of like rogue militants. Basically, what
Speaker 4: was the benefit there?
Speaker 1: Mentioned in a previous episode, But I think you're right,
Speaker 1: we should go ahead and just just give you the
Speaker 1: quick and dirty.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's also called Iran Gate, which is interesting, but here
Speaker 1: in the US we usually call it.
Speaker 4: The Iran Contra affair at the Thomas Crown affair.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So essentially, what are the contras.
Speaker 2: Men, Well, they were a group in Nicaragua and their
Speaker 2: whole point, or at least for the United States purposes,
Speaker 2: they were going to at least attempt to throw the
Speaker 2: Sandinista government.
Speaker 1: Which were socialist exactly. These are right wing rebel groups.
Speaker 1: So the US government tends to support right wing insurgents
Speaker 1: much more often than say left wing or anti capitalist insurgents. Basically,
Speaker 1: people are pro resource extraction tend to historically, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying now, but tend to historically get more support from
Speaker 1: the US government.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's one of those things if everyone, if
Speaker 2: everyone in a country is getting to kind of share
Speaker 2: the wealth in a more you know, sometimes communists, sometimes
Speaker 2: socialists structures that occurs where everyone gets a little peace.
Speaker 2: It's not so great when you could just control it
Speaker 2: from top.
Speaker 4: Down, oh man. Of course, the top down approach.
Speaker 1: Of course, the infamous top down. So that sounds weird
Speaker 1: when you see it that way. Yeah, sorry, miss top down,
Speaker 1: But all right. So the Iran contra affair occurs when
Speaker 1: the National Security Council of the US gets involved in
Speaker 1: secret weapon transactions and other activities that are prohibited by Congress.
Speaker 1: So Ronald Reagan, the Reagan administration, that's probably a better
Speaker 1: way to say it. The Reagan administration at the time
Speaker 1: is very concerned that communism will spread throughout Central America
Speaker 1: and challenge the capitalists or liberal hierarchy, that is, you know,
Speaker 1: challenge the hegemonic status. So the people of Nicaragua were
Speaker 1: particularly the Satinista Liberation movement they mentioned earlier in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, they overthrow the president who is actually a dictator.
Speaker 1: And now the Reagan administration is having there come to
Speaker 1: Jesus moment, as they would say in the South. So
Speaker 1: he thought this would eventually threaten the security of the
Speaker 1: United States. Remember we're still in the Cold War era
Speaker 1: at this time, and so the Reagan administration pushed huge
Speaker 1: amount of some military aid into not just Nicaragua, but
Speaker 1: other governments and other places that have civil wars and
Speaker 1: gorilla fighting in hopes of preventing a left wing government.
Speaker 1: And in the case of Nicaragua, they wanted to destabilize
Speaker 1: that government and engineer and overthrow. So why is Iran
Speaker 1: in there, right?
Speaker 2: Iran? I don't understand.
Speaker 1: So they sold anti tank and anti aircraft missiles to Iran,
Speaker 1: believing that if they sold the missiles to Iran, Iran,
Speaker 1: through its PROXYHBLAH, would allow hostages in Lebanon to be released.
Speaker 1: This is already very rupe. Goldberg sat so much, and
Speaker 1: so a portion of the money that Iran paid for
Speaker 1: was diverted and then given to the contrast. A lot
Speaker 1: of this occurred under the supervision of a man who's
Speaker 1: very familiar to everyone, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North.
Speaker 2: You may remember him from that famous hearing. Yeah it
Speaker 2: wasn't a hearing. I don't even know exactly what it was,
Speaker 2: but you can see video of him just admitting to
Speaker 2: this stuff.
Speaker 1: And feels like he did the right thing to stop
Speaker 1: the the ultimate war of ideology between the West and
Speaker 1: the communist countries. So the problem with this stuff is
Speaker 1: that while they're raising this money for the Contras, they're
Speaker 1: violating something called the Bowland Amendment BOLA and D, a
Speaker 1: law that was passed in nineteen eighty four that banned
Speaker 1: direct or indirect military aid to the contrast. So they're
Speaker 1: moving money in a sleazy way, yep, but they think
Speaker 1: they're doing the right thing.
Speaker 2: It's just a different kind of shell game.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like, Yeah, it's kind of like the
Speaker 1: idea that the ends justify the means, or that there
Speaker 1: is a difference between what is legal and what is
Speaker 1: morally correct, and they felt like they were doing the
Speaker 1: moral thing. Okay, so that's around. Does that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, man, Yeah it does. And I knew some of
Speaker 4: that but not all of that. But it sounds to
Speaker 4: me like the accusation here is that they would go
Speaker 4: to any means necessary to prop up this militant group
Speaker 4: that was potentially going to do good for our government
Speaker 4: in deposing this kind of pesky regime that was in
Speaker 4: place that was inconvenient regime, right, absolutely, and that would
Speaker 4: extend as far as Web's concern to funneling drugs in
Speaker 4: the United States knowingly in order to funnel some of
Speaker 4: that money into this cause that needed to be off
Speaker 4: books money, right, great.
Speaker 1: Black budget stuff. Yeah, And so this accusation lights a
Speaker 1: flame under the American public and in a strange, not unprecedented,
Speaker 1: let's call it that not unprecedented show of solidarity. Various
Speaker 1: papers of note excoriate Web, the Washington Post before twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: Like back when this was released, the Washington Post is saying,
Speaker 1: there are huge problems with the reporting, there's huge errors.
Speaker 1: Why can't you cite who said that? Why can't you
Speaker 1: prove this claim that you're making? And then Web would
Speaker 1: go back and say, why I didn't make that claim?
Speaker 1: But he can't compete with New York Times.
Speaker 4: And in turn, Jerry sepos chepos I believe, who was
Speaker 4: the executive editor of The Mercury News, the paper that
Speaker 4: this piece was, the series of pieces were published in
Speaker 4: kind of threw Web under the bus, and he said, quote,
Speaker 4: we oversimplified the complex issue of how the crack epidemic
Speaker 4: in America grew through imprecise language and graphics because there
Speaker 4: are a lot of infographics in this piece as well,
Speaker 4: we created impressions that were open to misinterpretation. And that's
Speaker 4: the kicker, because it was that misinterpretation. Maybe Web didn't
Speaker 4: go quite as far as as some people might think
Speaker 4: if you actually read the work. But there's some quotes
Speaker 4: in here I I want to throw out too, to
Speaker 4: see what you guys think. But it was those other
Speaker 4: more quick to jump on a hot story, news outlets
Speaker 4: that kind of really just kind of made stuff up
Speaker 4: from whole cloth.
Speaker 1: Right, you can't defend yourself against the claim that you
Speaker 1: did not make other than saying you did not make that.
Speaker 1: And if you don't have a large enough microphone or platform,
Speaker 1: you're just not going to get your rebuttal out there.
Speaker 1: I mean, rebuttals and corrections are some of the most
Speaker 1: seldom read parts of any newspaper, and this a lot
Speaker 1: most of this is occurring in newspapers at the time.
Speaker 1: Although Web was prescient enough to put his work online
Speaker 1: real quick.
Speaker 4: He made a website. He did the surrounds these pieces
Speaker 4: like early On, which was which is not as much
Speaker 4: of a thing back then.
Speaker 1: Right, it was very as I say, he's very much
Speaker 1: an early adopter, and the communities that needed to find
Speaker 1: out about this, he actually drove a lot of them online.
Speaker 1: People who ordinarily wouldn't have cared about this found it
Speaker 1: as a safe way to arrive at information they felt
Speaker 1: the government was trying to hide. It turns out. I
Speaker 1: want to go just quick to back to twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: where the Washing Post republished or they published another criticism,
Speaker 1: which I I think is the op ed you're going
Speaker 1: to read from NOL. The CIA at the same year,
Speaker 1: on September eighteenth, released a ton of documents spanning thirty years,
Speaker 1: three decades, and a lot of it confirmed confirmed stuff
Speaker 1: Gary Webb had argued. They show at least that there
Speaker 1: was collusion to in backstage, smoky room style collusion to
Speaker 1: try to suppress the story. One of the things that
Speaker 1: was released.
Speaker 2: This is in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: M One of the things that was released was an
Speaker 1: article that was six pages long titled Managing a Nightmare,
Speaker 1: CIA Public Affairs and the Drug Conspiracy Story. So this
Speaker 1: you can find this online. This looks at how the
Speaker 1: CIA reacted to what it saw as a huge public
Speaker 1: relations crisis or catastrophe and then showing that the agency
Speaker 1: actually didn't have to do much to extinguish the public
Speaker 1: outcry press the story, because you see, as we said,
Speaker 1: as I said, there are moments of not unprecedented solidarity
Speaker 1: among papers of note, at least here in the US,
Speaker 1: probably in your country as well. Sometimes that happen, not
Speaker 1: all the time, but sometimes that happens because they have
Speaker 1: a relationship behind the scenes that you as the public,
Speaker 1: will never see with intelligence agencies in that country. So
Speaker 1: the CIA essentially contacts their higher ups in the world
Speaker 1: of media and publishing and they say, look, let's all
Speaker 1: vultroun up together.
Speaker 2: On get on the same page everybody.
Speaker 1: Like in jfk Assassination.
Speaker 4: Can I read a quote from yeah, web Pieces.
Speaker 2: Before you do that? Just noting in that same year,
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen, that's when the Jeremy Renner movie Kill the
Speaker 2: Messenger comes out. That's right, that's all about the Gary Webster.
Speaker 4: Do you guys see that. Yes, I hadn't even heard
Speaker 4: of it. Oh, it's is again.
Speaker 2: I really liked it, but only because we had done
Speaker 2: a video on it in the past. I knew the story.
Speaker 4: We're getting a lot of push I mean, it's I really.
Speaker 1: Enjoyed it had a built in audience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 4: I just want to play out a couple of these
Speaker 4: some of these claims that I think are interesting when
Speaker 4: you read them. In one place from Gary Webb's Dark
Speaker 4: Alliance trilogy of articles that ultimately became a book. Quote,
Speaker 4: thousands of young black men are serving long prison sentences
Speaker 4: for selling cocaine, a drug that was virtually unobtainable in
Speaker 4: black neighborhoods before members of the CIA's army started bringing
Speaker 4: it into South Central in the nineteen eighties at bargain
Speaker 4: basement prices. So, I mean, it is hyperbolic as hell.
Speaker 4: And the guy who wrote this op ed. The guy
Speaker 4: was talking about earlier, the twenty fourteen anyway, Jeff Leen,
Speaker 4: who was the assistant managing editor for The Washington Post.
Speaker 4: He calls that a nut graph, which I had never
Speaker 4: heard of. And I love this. And this is how
Speaker 4: he sums that up. What a nut graph is. He says,
Speaker 4: this was one of the most difficult things for a
Speaker 4: reporter to write, because you have to summarize some very
Speaker 4: out landish, outrageous facts and synthesize you know, the truth
Speaker 4: behind it, and somehow you know paint in the often
Speaker 4: contradicting notions behind it.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like writing a blurb before the story's
Speaker 1: telling the audience why should I read this exactly?
Speaker 4: But it's also you know, he says, this is kind
Speaker 4: of where web went off the rails and went a
Speaker 4: little too far, and he ultimately resigned from his position
Speaker 4: and was never hired again by any mainstream newspapers of
Speaker 4: note rights. And he just kind of went rogue and
Speaker 4: did his own thing. But he already kind of set
Speaker 4: the tone for doing that by making that website. Now
Speaker 4: he had this book, and he obviously had people that
Speaker 4: believed him and probably had a following outside of the
Speaker 4: mainstream press.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also, you know, if the Internet had been
Speaker 1: more prominent at the time, things might have gone differently
Speaker 1: for him. He was also notoriously stubborn and at times
Speaker 1: difficult to work with. He started blaming his editors pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: so things became acrimonious between the Mercury editors and himself,
Speaker 1: but it did lead directly to a Senate subcommittee hearing
Speaker 1: where John Kerry was a senator at the time, investigated
Speaker 1: the AP's findings from the Associated Press, and they released
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty nine, a report that was more than
Speaker 1: one thousand pages. It said it found quote considerable evidence
Speaker 1: that the Contras were linked to running drugs and guns
Speaker 1: and the US government knew about it. So that would
Speaker 1: mean that on that base level, some of what Web
Speaker 1: is saying is true. But the way that he's using
Speaker 1: these very highly dramatic phrases like calling the Contras the
Speaker 1: CIA's army, you know what I mean, that's that for
Speaker 1: a lot of investigators, that makes it tougher to believe
Speaker 1: these other claims. So you're probably wondering why we're speaking
Speaker 1: about Gary Web in the past tense. And I know
Speaker 1: we're jumping around a lot right now. I guarantee you
Speaker 1: that previously we had a nice little timeline for painting
Speaker 1: the story. We've got a picture here. We're talking about
Speaker 1: Gary Webb in past tense because after all this stuff
Speaker 1: is occurring, he is largely considered to have failed his profession.
Speaker 1: He's essentially blacklisted from any job that he would want,
Speaker 1: and he's dire need of money. His characters being attacked
Speaker 1: and stuff. On December tenth of two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: he was found dead with two thirty eight caliber gunshot
Speaker 1: wounds to his head in his home in Carmichael, California,
Speaker 1: which he had just had to put on the market.
Speaker 2: Because he couldn't afford the mortgage.
Speaker 1: Right, because he couldn't afford the mortgage. Now, the coroner
Speaker 1: ruled that this death was a suicide. And Webb's ex wife,
Speaker 1: remember we noted her earlier, Susan Bell, She said that
Speaker 1: he had been very depressed after a falling out with
Speaker 1: his former employers at the Mercury, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people believe that being professionally discredited drove him to suicide
Speaker 1: and that his claims in the Dark Alliance were at
Speaker 1: the very least exaggerated, if not made up. So the
Speaker 1: question is, you know what happened. Did he break ethical boundaries?
Speaker 1: Did he false fi information in order to sell a
Speaker 1: juicy story, could he not prove his claims his professional
Speaker 1: failure lead him to take his own life? Or is
Speaker 1: there more to the story.
Speaker 2: And we're going to talk about that right after a
Speaker 2: quick word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy, Olhthough not really, because.
Speaker 2: We kind of jumped ahead. It's okay, it's okay.
Speaker 1: But so Gary Webb was right, he was correct, at
Speaker 1: least partially but probably but probably not all the way correct, because,
Speaker 1: as Lean says in that post op ed, you have
Speaker 1: mentioned nol Gary Webb was no journalism hero. Despite what
Speaker 1: kill the Messenger says, as Lean pointed out, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of things that are hyper, a lot of
Speaker 1: things he can't support. But we have to mention not
Speaker 1: only was he at least partially right, but despite the
Speaker 1: hooplah and the controversy and character assassination, everybody knew that
Speaker 1: he was right beforehand because two other journalists had figured
Speaker 1: this out in nineteen eighty five, more than a decade
Speaker 1: before the Dark Alliance, journalists Robert Perry and Brian Barger
Speaker 1: or Barker, found and proved that Contra groups were trafficking
Speaker 1: cocaine to help finance their war in Nicaragua, which the
Speaker 1: US also wanted to happen. And then after they came
Speaker 1: out with that, the Reagan administration launched a behind the
Speaker 1: scenes campaign to assassinate their character, remove their credibility as journalists.
Speaker 1: And it was an attempt to discredit any reporting on
Speaker 1: Contras and drugs. And there's an article by guy named
Speaker 1: Peter Kornblow who was writing for the Columbia Journalism review
Speaker 1: from nineteen ninety seven, who says whether the campaign was
Speaker 1: the cause of this suppression or not. Coverage of the
Speaker 1: story was minimal, but it did happen.
Speaker 2: Proved and it's crazy to think about this now, But
Speaker 2: on March fourth, nineteen eighty seven, the then President Reagan
Speaker 2: came out after not speaking to the American people for
Speaker 2: a long time during this whole Iran contra just scandal,
Speaker 2: I guess, is what you would call it. He came out,
Speaker 2: and he gave a speech, and let's just listen to
Speaker 2: one tiny little piece of that.
Speaker 5: First, let me say I take full responsibility from my
Speaker 5: own actions and for those of my administration. As angry
Speaker 5: as I may be about activities undertaken without my knowledge,
Speaker 5: I am still accountable for those activities. As disappointed as
Speaker 5: I may be and some who served me, I am
Speaker 5: still the one who must answer to the American people
Speaker 5: for this behavior. And as personally distasteful as I find
Speaker 5: secret bank accounts and to funds, and as the Navy
Speaker 5: would say, this happened on my watch. Let's start with
Speaker 5: the part that is the most controversial. A few months ago,
Speaker 5: I told the American people I did not trade arms
Speaker 5: for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell
Speaker 5: me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell
Speaker 5: me it is not.
Speaker 2: So this was a big deal in Americans' minds. People
Speaker 2: knew about it. The President is going on television and saying, hey,
Speaker 2: I didn't know this was happening. It was happening, but
Speaker 2: I didn't know what was happening. Everybody's cool, Okay, we'll just.
Speaker 1: Move forward, like plausible deniability or genuinely sincerely saying this
Speaker 1: occurred without my knowledge.
Speaker 2: Either way, he is already telling you in nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 2: this is happening, and.
Speaker 1: It's kind of It's interesting. I really appreciate you play
Speaker 1: that clip because it's something that is somewhat plausible, because
Speaker 1: if you are at that high level, if you're the president,
Speaker 1: then a lot of things that you say are directives
Speaker 1: that are well what sometimes in corporate jargon we refer
Speaker 1: to as the forty thousand foot view. Yeah, it's like saying, well,
Speaker 1: make sure that communism doesn't spread in South and Central America. Okay,
Speaker 1: that sounds good, but you haven't. If you leave all
Speaker 1: the details up to other people, you have no idea
Speaker 1: what they're going to do. You have maybe a reasonable
Speaker 1: expectation that they will obey the law, but other than that,
Speaker 1: it's give me results.
Speaker 2: How badly does that person want to prove, like, do
Speaker 2: what you want them to do and make themselves look
Speaker 2: good in your eyes as the president? Because you just
Speaker 2: you don't know where that line is for everybody. It's
Speaker 2: different for everyone.
Speaker 1: And this leads to a question that I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people are still debated. We said, we said
Speaker 1: that his death was ruled as suicide, right, Yeah, we
Speaker 1: know that. We know that he died from two gunshot
Speaker 1: wounds to the head. A lot of people even today
Speaker 1: believe that Gary Webb was actually murdered and then his
Speaker 1: death was portrayed as a suicide to cover up further
Speaker 1: research you might have published. I mean, what do you
Speaker 1: guys think about that? Ever you've been reading.
Speaker 2: This, Yeah, there were a lot of rumors that he
Speaker 2: was perhaps working on another piece, another story, something bigger.
Speaker 2: Those are almost all rumors, almost all of them. And
Speaker 2: then everything you hear from his wife, and specifically from
Speaker 2: his wife at the time, just about the deep depression
Speaker 2: that he was suffering from in those moments right before
Speaker 2: he died. Hm, it does make you think perhaps this
Speaker 2: was a suicide. It just points to it, right, But
Speaker 2: let's just take a moment and put ourselves in his shoes.
Speaker 2: Imagine that you're a journalist. You're being contacted by people
Speaker 2: varying people of varying levels of involvement within the United
Speaker 2: States government and or clandestine organizations. They are telling you
Speaker 2: stories about things that have occurred. They're giving you specifics
Speaker 2: about stuff that's already in the public domain. It's stuff
Speaker 2: that's known, but they're giving you the full story. And
Speaker 2: simultaneously they're telling you you cannot publish my name you.
Speaker 2: No one can ever know that I'm talking to you.
Speaker 2: This cannot happen. And you are publishing these stories out
Speaker 2: because this is your big break. This is something that
Speaker 2: feels very important. There are thousands and thousands of lives
Speaker 2: being affected by what these people are telling you, right,
Speaker 2: It is an important story to tell. The pressure that
Speaker 2: Gary Webb was feeling and must have been feeling to
Speaker 2: put those stories out that would become dark Alliance. I
Speaker 2: cannot fathom what that must have felt like, but I
Speaker 2: know for sure that it was heavy. It was a
Speaker 2: heavy burden to bear for him, and it affected his
Speaker 2: family life and it affected his mental health in some way.
Speaker 4: Are there any indications that he got death threats and things?
Speaker 4: I mean, I would just assume so with being that
Speaker 4: public and such a divisive anti government story.
Speaker 1: That's a good question depending on who you believe.
Speaker 2: Right if you watch the movie, is definitely portrayed a lot.
Speaker 1: But well also in the movie, in the film Killing
Speaker 1: the Messengers, I heard it described in a review as
Speaker 1: it's a retelling of the Gary Web story in a
Speaker 1: place where everyone in a universe where everyone in the
Speaker 1: world is wrong except for Gary Web.
Speaker 2: Everybody believes Gary. Yeah, exactly exactly where Gary Web is right.
Speaker 2: But just from in I just I'm trying to identify
Speaker 2: with him, maybe a little more than I should, But
Speaker 2: I can imagine a place where being discredited after having
Speaker 2: such strong feelings about it being real and being important,
Speaker 2: would take a huge toll on not only your self
Speaker 2: esteem and self worth, but your ability to continue on.
Speaker 1: And one thing that a lot of people see as
Speaker 1: a smoking gun here is the fact that he died
Speaker 1: from not one, but two yes shots to the head.
Speaker 1: You might be surprised by how many people who attempt
Speaker 1: that sort of process do end up giving themselves ultimately
Speaker 1: a non fatal injury. But you know, it's never it's
Speaker 1: never going to be pretty. But one of one of
Speaker 1: the gunshots was through his cheek. Yeah, so they believe
Speaker 1: that maybe he missed and then went for a second shot.
Speaker 1: But because of that, because of the idea that two
Speaker 1: gunshot wounds the head, seemed unusual to a lot of people,
Speaker 1: the majority of whom are not forensic investigators. Obviously, there's
Speaker 1: this huge outcry and local reporters end up going to
Speaker 1: Sacramento County and they say, okay, what go on record,
Speaker 1: tell us what is this? And the coroner at the time,
Speaker 1: a guy named Robert Lyons, said, it is unusual. It
Speaker 1: is a suicide. It's unusual in a suicide case to
Speaker 1: have two shots, but it's been done in the past.
Speaker 1: It's in fact a distinct possibility. So he's saying it's
Speaker 1: definitely suicide. This has happened before, and that explanation is
Speaker 1: not good enough for people who thought there was more
Speaker 1: to the story, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, there are you can hear versions of this
Speaker 2: story or read them online. Where he was attempting to leave,
Speaker 2: he was trying to get away, he was trying to
Speaker 2: sell his house. He was trying to leave and he
Speaker 2: was cocked before he could leave by whatever in nefarious forces.
Speaker 2: These claims have a zero evidence to back them up,
Speaker 2: but it you know, it's tough for me to completely
Speaker 2: discount them. But at the same time, it seems a
Speaker 2: lot less plausible than the official story.
Speaker 1: So here's yeah, and here's another question, just to show
Speaker 1: both sides here. If it was some sort of murder
Speaker 1: and if it was related to his investigations in the
Speaker 1: Dark Alliance, then why did they wait eight years after
Speaker 1: the publication of the book for him to take him
Speaker 1: out of the picture. The timeline is just strange.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the claims I've seen were that he was working
Speaker 2: on something else outside of the Dark Alliance, which is
Speaker 2: why it got him killed.
Speaker 1: And this argument in this discussion, this controversy continues in
Speaker 1: the modern day in twenty eighteen, as we record this
Speaker 1: in one of many of the American cities that still
Speaker 1: battle drug problems. Where's it all coming from? Is someone
Speaker 1: helping them out? Both sides of the argument. A lot
Speaker 1: of prominent papers do continue to attack Gary Webb's claims,
Speaker 1: or attack is a strong word, they take it apart
Speaker 1: piece by piece and say it didn't prove this. This
Speaker 1: is as you said earlier in old hyperbolic statement. And
Speaker 1: on the other side of this, and these are great
Speaker 1: valid points too, but on the other side, continuing releases
Speaker 1: of government documents keep supporting aspects of what he has said.
Speaker 2: Yeah, small little pieces.
Speaker 1: So it's there's no two ways about it, no bones
Speaker 1: about it. It's old beans to say it, but we
Speaker 1: should admit the Dark Alliance does have several several prominent
Speaker 1: errors that could be critical to you know, like a
Speaker 1: critical wound to the argument in the book. But CIA
Speaker 1: documents released from the agency at least confirmed chunks of it.
Speaker 1: No one is arguing that the CIA showed often a
Speaker 1: very strange disinterest in the drug trade. Yeah, but how
Speaker 1: involved or not involved were they will future declassified documents
Speaker 1: vindicate web from Beyond the Grave? Did the was the
Speaker 1: murder something more indirect by ending his career? You know,
Speaker 1: it's like, did the CIA commit the murder and it
Speaker 1: was Gary Webb that pulled the trigger? M M it's
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a different way you look at it.
Speaker 2: But well, something you think about because that strategy of
Speaker 2: disinformation by giving a lot a lot of information to
Speaker 2: someone where almost all of it is true but a
Speaker 2: couple are not true, or almost all of it is untrue,
Speaker 2: but a couple of things are true, right that, And
Speaker 2: it makes you wonder if the way, especially if you
Speaker 2: look at it with the large chunks of unsupported claims
Speaker 2: that are in there, it makes you wonder if he's
Speaker 2: speaking to one or two people out of the groups
Speaker 2: of people, who is giving him incorrect information on purpose
Speaker 2: in order to in the future discredit him, which, like
Speaker 2: you said, Ben would then eventually lead to two gunshots
Speaker 2: to the head self inflicted.
Speaker 1: What do you what do you think?
Speaker 4: It's very suspicious circumstances. I really, you know, it's like
Speaker 4: cobaine level suspicious circumstances. You know, I don't know. I
Speaker 4: don't care for it.
Speaker 1: It's definitely it definitely has something something off about it.
Speaker 1: But the thing is as well, if you are the
Speaker 1: central intelligence agency, wouldn't you have the wherewithal to make
Speaker 1: a death look like an accident?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Well maybe, And here's the other thing. If you're taken
Speaker 2: out by let's say, portions of the narcotics world, so
Speaker 2: higher ups in the drug you know, the drug I
Speaker 2: don't want to call them companies. What do you call organizations? Sure,
Speaker 2: these narcotics organizations. It's probably also not going to be
Speaker 2: that clean of a murder.
Speaker 1: Perhaps there's that it could be maybe sending a message,
Speaker 1: but it could have just been a suicide. I again,
Speaker 1: going back to this, make it look like an accident thing.
Speaker 1: It's a tragic truth that fatal car accidents happen multiple
Speaker 1: times every single day in this country. Yeah, and in
Speaker 1: most countries with dense populations and pedestrians and vehicles. So
Speaker 1: I'm still undecided. I know that the official story says
Speaker 1: that it was a suicide. His ex spouse said it
Speaker 1: was a suicide. It is possible to shoot yourself twice
Speaker 1: in the act of committing this, But don't I want
Speaker 1: to Let's what do you think, fellow conspiracy realist, to
Speaker 1: tell us, tell us your take on this.
Speaker 2: It just makes you Here's my plea to anyone listening
Speaker 2: to this who wants to be an investigative journalist or
Speaker 2: is an investigative journalist. If if you are working on
Speaker 2: anything that becomes highly important ever in your life, please
Speaker 2: whatever the circumstances are, No, it's never bad enough to
Speaker 2: where you need to take your own life. Just know
Speaker 2: that it's never going to get that dark. It cannot.
Speaker 2: You are worth it, stick around and these kind of
Speaker 2: claims won't have to be looked at in the future.
Speaker 4: And of course, I mean if you are feeling even
Speaker 4: remotely in that way, there are people that can help.
Speaker 4: I mean, there's the suicide Prevention Hotline, and you can
Speaker 4: find a social worker or some kind of group where
Speaker 4: you can talk to people that are going through similar
Speaker 4: things than you. I mean, at the risk of sounding
Speaker 4: cheesy and hyperbolic, I mean, you're never as alone as
Speaker 4: you might think. And I say that as someone who's
Speaker 4: dealt with suicide in my life and people with suicidal aviations,
Speaker 4: and it's absolutely not the end all be all, even
Speaker 4: if it feels that way.
Speaker 1: Well said, and I don't think that's hyperbolic or cheesy
Speaker 1: at all. I think that was very well said. And
Speaker 1: if you ever feel like reaching out, if you ever
Speaker 1: just want someone to chat to, we are all over
Speaker 1: the internet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can find us Conspiracy Stuff on Twitter, Conspiracy
Speaker 2: Stuff show on Instagram, Facebook, Conspiracy Stuff. You can find
Speaker 2: us there. Join our Facebook group if you're interested in
Speaker 2: you like the show, you want to talk to other
Speaker 2: like minded people who can have just fantastic discussions. We've
Speaker 2: been having a lot this past week with everyone there.
Speaker 2: It's called Here's Where It Gets Crazy. That's our Facebook
Speaker 2: group Find It and.
Speaker 4: All you have to do to be a member is
Speaker 4: name the three hosts of the show, and occasionally our
Speaker 4: amazing moderators will send us screenshots of some really funny ones.
Speaker 4: And here's here's the latest. So who are the hosts
Speaker 4: of the podcast? Stuff they don't want you to know? Answer?
Speaker 4: Benjamin Bowtie bowling for soup, bowling matteas Fred Trump was
Speaker 4: the Lizard King Frederick Noel take me down to Funky
Speaker 4: Town Brown.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's great.
Speaker 4: Who was a guy named Tristan?
Speaker 2: Tristan McNeill, No different Tristan?
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, I mean that's true, isn't it? Like Noel Matt. Honestly,
Speaker 1: if we think an answer is funny enough the Mouds.
Speaker 1: While you're listening, I apologize, Cat Zach Sam Coop. If
Speaker 1: if we think there's something funny enough that we'll probably
Speaker 1: let it in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's definitely my policy.
Speaker 1: And while we're on the while we're on the feel
Speaker 1: good train here, we would like to give a big
Speaker 1: shout out to our youngest fan, I believe Eliza and Ray,
Speaker 1: who was born to Nicholas Ray and his wife just
Speaker 1: a few days ago as we record this. Wow, and
Speaker 1: so congratulations Ray family. You asked us for a shout out.
Speaker 1: And remember you promised the one day you would play
Speaker 1: this episode for your kid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the whole Gary web story. Why do I have
Speaker 2: to do that?
Speaker 1: Why did I play?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Yeah, just player the end. Just wait until she's wait
Speaker 1: until she's an adult or if people still listen to
Speaker 1: podcast at that time, then no. I mean, we're finne
Speaker 1: with you. You don't have to absolutely, absolutely do not
Speaker 1: feel obligated to play this for but we just wanted
Speaker 1: to say congratulations.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and that's the end of this classic episode. If
Speaker 2: you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you
Speaker 2: can get into contact with us in a number of
Speaker 2: different ways. One of the best is to give us
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