Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey Leon here, before we get to this episode,
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Speaker 1: dot Fm Slash Plus now onto the show. On the
Speaker 1: night of September eleventh, twenty twelve, four Americans were killed
Speaker 1: in Benghazi, a city in Libya on the Mediterranean Sea.
Speaker 2: What potentially happened in Libya in the city of Benghazi.
Speaker 2: Not only did the attackers storm the building in Benghazi.
Speaker 1: The attack began when a group of armed assailants broke
Speaker 1: into a diplomatic compound operated by the State Department. Would
Speaker 1: mean that it ended nearly eight hours later with the
Speaker 1: bombing of a secret CIA base nearby.
Speaker 2: First they attacked it with RPG rifles, then they opened
Speaker 2: fire on it with machine guns.
Speaker 1: Among the victims was the American ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens.
Speaker 3: And again.
Speaker 2: His name is John Christopher Stevens, and he was born
Speaker 2: in Northern California in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 1: Stevens had been posted in Libya on and off for
Speaker 1: the better part of five years. On the night of
Speaker 1: the attack, he died of smoke in elation after the
Speaker 1: assailants set fire to the villa where he was hiding
Speaker 1: from them. Afterwards, it seemed like all anyone in the
Speaker 1: United States wanted to talk about was whose fault it was.
Speaker 4: The Obama administration resisting responsibility.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of dispute when the administration knew how
Speaker 5: dangerous the situation with Lizim ben Ghazi, the situation.
Speaker 1: Who had let it happen, Who had failed to stop
Speaker 1: it once it started, Whose lack of vigilance had allowed
Speaker 1: the attackers to do as much damage as they did.
Speaker 1: Should they have had more advanced warning, should they have
Speaker 1: set more security. A question that usually got skipped over
Speaker 1: as if the answer were self evident, was what Ambassador
Speaker 1: Stevens was doing in Benghazi to begin with. All anyone
Speaker 1: seemed interested in was that the American mission in Libya
Speaker 1: had failed, not what the mission had actually been.
Speaker 5: My name is Chris Stevens, and I'm excited to continue
Speaker 5: the great work we've started building a solid partnership between
Speaker 5: the United States and Libya to help you, the Libyan people,
Speaker 5: achieve your goals.
Speaker 1: For more than forty years, Libya had been ruled by
Speaker 1: a violent and eccentric dictator, Mumar Gadafi.
Speaker 6: We read that you are mad.
Speaker 7: You know that those things had been invented.
Speaker 1: Gaddafi had long been regarded in the West as an
Speaker 1: unparalleled menace. Before bin Laden, Kaddafi was the face of
Speaker 1: international terrorism.
Speaker 4: He's been called the world number one terrorist, a madman
Speaker 4: who exports terrorists them around the world.
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan once memorably called Kadafi the mad dog of
Speaker 1: the Middle East. What I had forgotten, or never really
Speaker 1: absorbed in the first place, was that during the early
Speaker 1: two thousands, under the Bush administration, the United States had
Speaker 1: reconciled with Kadafi. We lifted sanctions, we established diplomatic relations.
Speaker 1: We even accepted his help in pursuing suspected terrorists.
Speaker 8: The United States may have a new ally in the
Speaker 8: war on terror, Libya's Momar Kadafi says.
Speaker 1: American oil companies were doing business with Libya for the
Speaker 1: first time in decades. In Tripoli, Libya's capital city, the
Speaker 1: State Department opened a new American embassy. As you'll hear,
Speaker 1: that was why Chris Stevens first came to Libya back
Speaker 1: in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 8: Moamar Kadafi's regime has shown excellent cooperation against terrorism and
Speaker 8: dismantled its nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1: Back then, I wasn't paying much attention to international news,
Speaker 1: and I certainly wasn't paying attention to Libya. I was
Speaker 1: just graduating from college in two thousand and seven. I
Speaker 1: had heard of Gaddafi, but that was about it. I
Speaker 1: was only slightly more tuned in in twenty eleven when
Speaker 1: the Arab Spring swept into Libya and forced Gadafi out
Speaker 1: of power as part of a US backed revolution.
Speaker 9: The uprising against Gaddafi broke out in mid February, and
Speaker 9: an anti regime protests quickly spread across the vast desert
Speaker 9: country of six million people.
Speaker 1: But even then I just wasn't that invested or informed.
Speaker 1: So when I saw reports in September of twenty twelve
Speaker 1: about an attack on a diplomatic compound in Benghazi, I
Speaker 1: had no context for it, to be honest, I didn't
Speaker 1: even really think of benng Ghazi as a place. Instead,
Speaker 1: I experienced it as an American political scandal. I associated
Speaker 1: the word Benghazi with a drawn out controversy that it
Speaker 1: spawned endless conspiracy theories and captivated the Republican Party. Ben
Speaker 1: Ghazi gaate the political cover up of some kind.
Speaker 10: Of regime gigs lying about it.
Speaker 4: I think it could be as bad as Watergate, but
Speaker 4: nobody died in water Gate.
Speaker 11: The White House can sign those people to death.
Speaker 12: We kill the ambassador just to cover something up. You
Speaker 12: put two and two together.
Speaker 1: I wanted to make this podcast because I had a
Speaker 1: strong suspicion that I was missing something that by not
Speaker 1: knowing what really happened in Benghazi or who it had
Speaker 1: happened to, I was checked out on something really important,
Speaker 1: because in retrospect, the Benghazi attack looks incredibly consequential for
Speaker 1: Libya certainly, but also for the United States. Even though
Speaker 1: the scandal has a reputation, especially among liberals, as a
Speaker 1: nuisance and a distraction, it really changed history. Among other things,
Speaker 1: it led directly to Hillary Clinton's email scandal. So if
Speaker 1: you're someone who thinks Quinton's emails cost her the twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen election, you could make the case that Benghazi took
Speaker 1: down a presidency no less than Watergate did. What I've
Speaker 1: realized after dozens of interviews with people who watched the
Speaker 1: Benghazi story unfold up close, is that there are very
Speaker 1: specific reasons why the scandal had such longevity. Together, they
Speaker 1: tell a story about political warfare in America, how it
Speaker 1: was waged in the pre Trump era through the media
Speaker 1: and the justice system in Congress, and how it laid
Speaker 1: the groundwork for the politics we live with today. But
Speaker 1: Benghazi is not just an American story. It's also about
Speaker 1: America's place in the world, and how, after eight years
Speaker 1: of George W. Bush and the War on Terror, the
Speaker 1: Obama administration set out to change the country's image abroad.
Speaker 1: At the height of the scandal, a lot of people
Speaker 1: were asking, sometimes earnestly, often performatively, why did Ambassador Chris
Speaker 1: Stevens die that night in Benghazi? And what I've learned
Speaker 1: is there is an answer to that question, but all
Speaker 1: the noise around the scandal made it incredibly hard to
Speaker 1: see it clearly in real time. It turns out, to
Speaker 1: understand the truth about Benghazi, you have to understand what
Speaker 1: America was trying to achieved there. You have to know
Speaker 1: what was supposed to happen in Benghazi in a perfect world,
Speaker 1: instead of what did I'm Leon Napok from Prologue Projects
Speaker 1: and Pushkin Industries. This is fiasco Benghazi.
Speaker 13: Obama, who have four Americans to die in Benghazi?
Speaker 1: There is a certain self fulfilling prophecy to outrage.
Speaker 11: Wild conspiracy theory.
Speaker 7: Intelligence officials acknowledged they originally got it wrong.
Speaker 3: It was a fucking mess.
Speaker 1: It's really hard to figure out what's going on.
Speaker 10: They're shooting through the door.
Speaker 6: I turned to the ambassador and said, if they blow
Speaker 6: the locks, I'm gonna start shooting.
Speaker 7: And when I die, I want you to keep on fighting.
Speaker 3: You can't understand the story of Libya if you don't
Speaker 3: know what's going on in Benghazi.
Speaker 12: Omar Ghadavi is not leaving without a flight.
Speaker 1: Episode one The Dictator, in which Muamar Gadafi and the
Speaker 1: United States, after decades of hostility, discover they have a
Speaker 1: common enemy. We'll be right back. Hussein el Shafi was
Speaker 1: twenty years old when he was arrested in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: nine for criticizing Muammar Gadafi.
Speaker 9: I was in the fourth semester, like a second year
Speaker 9: at that time, and they just knock on my door.
Speaker 9: They put my hands in a handcuffs.
Speaker 1: El Shafi was born and raised in Benghazi. At the
Speaker 1: time of his arrest, he was studying engineering at a
Speaker 1: local university.
Speaker 9: They took me to one of those They call it
Speaker 9: like Mora Bamni, which means the security district for the area.
Speaker 1: El Shafi's crime was that he spoke up against the
Speaker 1: regime during a student forum on the Green Book, Kadafi's
Speaker 1: rambling manifesto.
Speaker 11: He has compiled his thinking into a green book, a
Speaker 11: blending of the Koran and Kadafi's own brooding thoughts.
Speaker 9: He called the Anovaria Tarita means the third solution for
Speaker 9: the world. You know, as a capitalism is dying and
Speaker 9: the socialism is dying, I am the solution for the world.
Speaker 1: El Shafi was required to attend the Green Book forum
Speaker 1: in order to receive his degree, but he was tired
Speaker 1: of having to pretend to take Gadafi seriously as a thinker,
Speaker 1: and he was tired of the regime having control over
Speaker 1: his mind.
Speaker 9: There is no library in none of our Libyan cities.
Speaker 9: If you want to read, the only books was brought
Speaker 9: by Godavi's authority and put on the shelves.
Speaker 10: No voice above Godav's voice, you know.
Speaker 1: And so el Shafi stood up in front of his
Speaker 1: classmates and denounced Gaddafi for closing Libya off from the
Speaker 1: rest of the world, even the Soviet Union was starting
Speaker 1: to open up. He said it was time for Libya
Speaker 1: to change too. El Shafi was arrested at his home
Speaker 1: a few days later. He was taken first by bus,
Speaker 1: then by plane to Tripoli, about four hundred miles west
Speaker 1: of Bengui. Zi Alshafi was blindfolded and handcuffed throughout the journey,
Speaker 1: so when he was led into a prison cell, he
Speaker 1: didn't know where he was.
Speaker 9: There were small holes in the walls between cells, so
Speaker 9: I was able to talk to one of those people
Speaker 9: he was before us. At where we are, said Unibuslim body,
Speaker 9: welcome to Buslim.
Speaker 1: Abu Salim was an infamous detention facility known for housing
Speaker 1: political prisoners.
Speaker 14: The dark heart of Gaddafi's oppression, Abu Salim prison the.
Speaker 12: Name itself so frightening that Libyans avoid saying it.
Speaker 1: Abu Salim was full of people the Gadafi regime considered enemies. Historically,
Speaker 1: opposition to Gaddafi and Libya had been tied up with religion.
Speaker 1: Although Gaddafi identified as Muslim, many Libyans came to see
Speaker 1: him as an apostate advancing a secular ideology. These critics
Speaker 1: included hardline Islamists who belonged to groups like the Libyan
Speaker 1: Islamic Fighting Group, which supported the violent overthrow of the regime.
Speaker 1: But there were also people like husay In El Shafi,
Speaker 1: who opposed political violence and were unaffiliated with any organization.
Speaker 9: He claims those are Islamists, but I was, yeah, I
Speaker 9: was going to the mosque. I was very con conservative
Speaker 9: at that time, but I did not belong to any group,
Speaker 9: like an armed group or anything like this.
Speaker 1: El Shafi says the Gaddafi regime branded anyone they didn't
Speaker 1: like a radical Islamist and that many ordinary devout Muslims
Speaker 1: like him were swept up in the dragnet.
Speaker 9: He doesn't say I'm against Muslim, because he claims too
Speaker 9: that he is a Muslim, but he claims that his
Speaker 9: problem with the Islamic parties that was a pretext means
Speaker 9: that he taken as a reason to kill or to
Speaker 9: demolish his opponents.
Speaker 1: It's worth saying here that the meaning of the term
Speaker 1: Islamist depends on who you're talking to. At its most basic,
Speaker 1: it refers to someone who subscribes to a political ideology
Speaker 1: based on Islamic principles, and under that umbrella you can
Speaker 1: find both avowed hardliners and moderates. The word Islamism was
Speaker 1: introduced to English back in the nineteen eighties as a
Speaker 1: less pejorative alternative to Islamic fundamentalism. Some people still use
Speaker 1: it that way, as a neutral word that imagines Islamism
Speaker 1: as just another political orientation. Others associate Islamism with violence
Speaker 1: and intolerance. For them, an Islamist government based on any
Speaker 1: form of Sharia or Islamic law is inherently undemocratic. At
Speaker 1: Abu Salim, Hussein el Shafi was lucky to be classified
Speaker 1: as a low risk inmate and kept separate from those
Speaker 1: suspected of being violent extremists. Still, he was beaten and
Speaker 1: tortured and never given any indication of when he would
Speaker 1: be released. Other former inmates from Abu Sulim have reported
Speaker 1: being attacked by dog, subjected to deafening nightly broadcasts of
Speaker 1: Gaddafi's speeches, and prodded with electric cables. When I interviewed
Speaker 1: El Shafi, he had to take a break because the
Speaker 1: phone was hurting his ear. It had been mutilated at
Speaker 1: Abu Sulim.
Speaker 9: I'll try to use this ear, not that ear, because
Speaker 9: this one cut in the jail oh my god, have
Speaker 9: did you see my ear?
Speaker 11: Yeah?
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, it's touching the thing, you know. Sorry by that.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety five, about six years into El Shafi's imprisonment,
Speaker 1: life at Abu Sulim became more cruel and more isolating.
Speaker 1: It happened following a jail break, after which inmates were
Speaker 1: forbidden from going outside and medical care was withheld from
Speaker 1: those who needed it.
Speaker 9: Things getting worse and worse and worse. Some people died,
Speaker 9: Some people has cancers, you name it, heart pressure, and
Speaker 9: some people has like stomach issues.
Speaker 10: Some of them, they said, were dying slowly guys.
Speaker 1: As conditions worsened, a group of inmates planned a protest,
Speaker 1: and on June twenty eighth, nineteen ninety six, they overpowered
Speaker 1: a guard, took his keys, and started letting people out
Speaker 1: of their cells. In the ensuing chaos, the prison guards
Speaker 1: reportedly killed seven inmates. Later that day, Gaddafi's intelligence chief
Speaker 1: arrived at the prison to survey the situation. Before leaving,
Speaker 1: he promised a delegation of inmates that conditions at Abu
Speaker 1: Sulim would improve and that those who needed medical attention
Speaker 1: would receive it instead. The following morning, the prisoners of
Speaker 1: Abu Sulim, More than a thousand of them were marched
Speaker 1: into the courtyards adjacent to their cell blocks. Elshafi remembers
Speaker 1: being taken outside and being ordered to lie face down
Speaker 1: on the ground.
Speaker 9: They came in the morning, they said okay, room by rum,
Speaker 9: they take them out.
Speaker 10: They tied their hands and the turn around facing the
Speaker 10: wall in the yard.
Speaker 1: El Shaffie estimates that there were about thirteen hundred men
Speaker 1: lined up in the prison yards when he started to
Speaker 1: hear shooting.
Speaker 9: My friend is Cardiolois now in Ireland, his named Sab.
Speaker 9: He was holding my hand tight. I said no, I said,
Speaker 9: the care.
Speaker 10: Us, that's all.
Speaker 9: They're not gonna kill them all. They want to scare us.
Speaker 9: They try to teach us a lesson, you know. He said,
Speaker 9: three for our friends, their souls raising up the gun.
Speaker 1: Al Shaffie and his friend, whom I also interviewed, didn't
Speaker 1: know if they were next, but from the sound of
Speaker 1: the gunfire they could tell the guards were moving from
Speaker 1: one section of the prison to another.
Speaker 9: The shootings continued for at least three and a half hours.
Speaker 10: The last shot was individuals like they're finishing up, you know.
Speaker 1: El Shaffie thinks he and the other men in his
Speaker 1: cell block were spared because of their low risk classification.
Speaker 1: He says there were only about three hundred survivors. After
Speaker 1: the shooting ended, prison guards enlisted some of them to
Speaker 1: help clean the watches and rings. They were taking off
Speaker 1: the bodies.
Speaker 9: And they have plots info the wear on them. And
Speaker 9: I said, oh my gosh, they're sitting. They have rings
Speaker 9: and they watches, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: For years, the massacre at Abu Salim was kept secret
Speaker 1: from the world, even in Libya. It was nothing more
Speaker 1: than a rumor.
Speaker 10: No one knows nothing.
Speaker 9: All well, they know people heard shooting and they hit
Speaker 9: sirens that night. And some of them they said they
Speaker 9: kill him. Some of them they said, no, he just
Speaker 9: killed some of them. No one knows anything.
Speaker 1: The families of those who had been killed were not
Speaker 1: informed that their loved ones were dead. Instead, they were
Speaker 1: merely told that they could no longer be at them.
Speaker 1: In many cases, family members continued bringing letters and food
Speaker 1: to the prison and leaving them with the guards, who
Speaker 1: said nothing. According to al Shafi, new inmates who arrived
Speaker 1: at Abu Sulim in the years after the massacre would
Speaker 1: find bullets lodged in the prison yard walls.
Speaker 9: There is a.
Speaker 15: Figure emerging in the Middle East. He is Colonel Muammar
Speaker 15: El Kadafi, and he wants to unify the Arabs and
Speaker 15: restore the Arab Crescent of Nations to their ancient prestige
Speaker 15: and power.
Speaker 10: In the Shaving.
Speaker 1: Before Mumar Gadafi built prisons for his domestic enemies, he
Speaker 1: made a name for himself by standing up to his
Speaker 1: foreign ones. Gaddafi came to power in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: replacing the Western backed king Idris by staging a military
Speaker 1: coup in Benghazi. Gaddafi was just twenty seven years old,
Speaker 1: a handsome young army officer who projected strength and vigor,
Speaker 1: and who was embraced by many Libyans.
Speaker 14: Olibya was an obscure desert kingdom. Today it is on
Speaker 14: the center stage of Middle East politics, and the matter
Speaker 14: responsible is under thirty.
Speaker 11: A strong and asymmetric cancerness like the anti hero movie
Speaker 11: stars of the.
Speaker 1: Sixties, Kaddafi, who was born in a Bedouin tent off
Speaker 1: the Mediterranean coast, positioned himself as a representative of the
Speaker 1: Arab world and a challenger to Western imperialism.
Speaker 13: A revolutionary who believes people should rule themselves, not be
Speaker 13: ruled by government.
Speaker 15: If those ambitions seem grandiose for the young leader of
Speaker 15: a desert land of a mere two million people, it
Speaker 15: should be quickly pointed out that Kadafi has one powerful asset.
Speaker 14: Money Oil money makes Libya's young leftist strong man a
Speaker 14: power in the Arab world.
Speaker 1: In a move that defined his early years in power,
Speaker 1: Kaddafi forced Western oil companies to renegotiate their export agreements
Speaker 1: with Libya.
Speaker 14: In March, Kaddafi's deputy prime minister negotiated a new agreement
Speaker 14: with Western oil companies. Libya is now making twice as
Speaker 14: much money from oil as when Gadaffi and his young
Speaker 14: officers overthrow King DRIs two years ago.
Speaker 1: The standoff ended up shifting the balance of power towards
Speaker 1: Arab countries like Libya that possessed huge amounts of oil,
Speaker 1: and away from Western countries that depended on it.
Speaker 14: Now, Libya is the world's sixth largest producer of oil
Speaker 14: the fourth largest exporter. Enough oil will be shipped this
Speaker 14: year to earn Libya more than two billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Starting in the nineteen seventies, Gaddafi put his oil money
Speaker 1: to work, providing training and weapons for rebel groups around
Speaker 1: the world. He supported Latin American leftists like the Sandinistas,
Speaker 1: the PLO, South African Anti apartheid movement, and the IRA
Speaker 1: in Northern Ireland.
Speaker 15: Each year, the IRA collects a check for two million
Speaker 15: dollars from one of Gadaf's money managers in Tripoli.
Speaker 10: Round the globe, dozens of scenes like.
Speaker 15: This are being enacted for the benefit of Gadaf's crusade.
Speaker 1: According to one estimate, more than thirty different organizations sent
Speaker 1: fighters to train in Libya at various points.
Speaker 15: Libya's strong man leader Mumar Khadaffi, spends an estimated two
Speaker 15: hundred million dollars a year arming and training terrorists and insurgents.
Speaker 1: Gaddafi also spent a lot of money building up his
Speaker 1: own Arsenal her capital.
Speaker 16: Libya under Gaddaffi in the seven sies was the biggest
Speaker 16: purchaser of weapons in the world. He was like a
Speaker 16: compulsive shopper.
Speaker 1: This is Lindsay Hilsom, a reporter for Channel four News
Speaker 1: in the UK who has covered Libya extensively. In her
Speaker 1: book Sandstorm, Hilsomon describes how Mumar Gadafi came to loom
Speaker 1: over the American imagination as a symbol of violence and chaos.
Speaker 13: He's the ultimate villain, the godfather of international terrorism, a
Speaker 13: one dimensional, erratic, irrational, unbalanced two bit dictate.
Speaker 5: A central character in real world acts of terror, as well.
Speaker 8: As the star of a number of best selling thrillers
Speaker 8: based on the premise that one day he would get
Speaker 8: the bomb.
Speaker 15: He's very volatile, an opportunistic.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty one, Newsweek put Gadafi on its cover
Speaker 1: under the headline the most dangerous man in the World.
Speaker 1: Technically there was a question mark in the headline, and
Speaker 1: if you read the article, the answer was maybe. But
Speaker 1: the cover accurately captured Gaddafi's reputation in America.
Speaker 13: He has three obsessions. Hatred of Israel, hatred of the
Speaker 13: United States for supporting Israel, and a dream of a
Speaker 13: united Arab world.
Speaker 1: Libya became synonymous with terrorism. If you remember Back to
Speaker 1: the Future, which came out in nineteen eighty five, Doc
Speaker 1: Brown is pursued by crazed terrorists from Libya who want
Speaker 1: to kill him for selling them a phony nuclear bomb.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, they found me.
Speaker 3: I don't know how they found who?
Speaker 2: Who?
Speaker 8: What do you think?
Speaker 1: Gaddafi became even more closely associated with terrorism in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six, when his regime was implicated in a bombing
Speaker 1: in Berlin. Reporter Lindsay Hilsome.
Speaker 16: Again in nineteen eighty six, he provided the weapons, training
Speaker 16: and his agents attacked a belgiscotheque in Berlin.
Speaker 17: For the second time.
Speaker 13: This week, Americans had been the victims of a terrorist
Speaker 13: attack in Europe.
Speaker 17: This time the target was a nightclub in West Berlin,
Speaker 17: a favorite of American soldiers. Little was left of the
Speaker 17: West Berlin Disco.
Speaker 15: Over one hundred and fifty were injured, about seventy of
Speaker 15: them American.
Speaker 16: Servicemen, and it was quite clear from very early on
Speaker 16: that it was the Libyans behind that attack.
Speaker 8: Police are looking for a pattern to support their belief
Speaker 8: that Libyan leader Colonel Muamar Kadaffi sponsored the attack.
Speaker 1: Two Americans were killed and seventy nine were injured in
Speaker 1: the Berlin attack. Ronald Reagan responded with air strikes on
Speaker 1: Tripoli and Benghazi.
Speaker 4: At seven o'clock this evening Eastern time, air and naval
Speaker 4: forces of the United States launched a series of strikes
Speaker 4: against the headquarters, terrorist facilities and military assets that support
Speaker 4: Muhama Kadafi's subversive activities.
Speaker 1: The bombs were not enough to convince Gaddafi to retreat,
Speaker 1: Neither were the economic sanctions that Reagan had imposed on him.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty eight, Gaddafi was accused of another major
Speaker 1: terrorist attack, this one targeting a passenger jet flying from
Speaker 1: London to New York. As PanAm Flight one oh three
Speaker 1: passed over the town of Lockerby, Scotland, a bomb exploded
Speaker 1: and the plane went down.
Speaker 6: In a few short, violent moments, two hundred and seventy
Speaker 6: people died. People from twenty one countries filled these coffins,
Speaker 6: one hundred and eighty nine of them were American.
Speaker 1: Gaddafi denied having anything to do with the Lockerby bombing,
Speaker 1: but when evidence of Libyan involvement was uncovered, the attack
Speaker 1: came to define him in the eyes of the West.
Speaker 13: Is an egomaniac who would trigger World War three to
Speaker 13: make the headlines, is the world's principal terrorist and trainer
Speaker 13: of terrorists, and dangerous to peace.
Speaker 1: As Gaddafi's profile rose around the world, the violence he
Speaker 1: perpetrated against foreign targets overshadowed his brutal repression of the
Speaker 1: Libyan people.
Speaker 16: The violence was very visible to ordinary Libyans because they
Speaker 16: did see people hanging in the streets, and everybody knew
Speaker 16: somebody who had a relative who had been hanged or
Speaker 16: who had been imprisoned. But it didn't seem to be
Speaker 16: very obvious to people outside Libya because Libya was a
Speaker 16: closed country and very few people were allowed into Libya
Speaker 16: from the outside.
Speaker 1: The regime's secrecy makes it difficult to know exactly how
Speaker 1: common public executions were, but there are documented instances of
Speaker 1: dissidence in Libya being hanged or executed by firing squad
Speaker 1: in the seventies, eighties and nineties. Hussein al Shafi told
Speaker 1: me he remembers hearing about hangings before he was sent
Speaker 1: to Abu Salim.
Speaker 9: I remember in nineteen eighty four, Ladafi Wah used to
Speaker 9: hang any opposition groups, you know, on the like a
Speaker 9: basketball stadium, you know, like arena we have here, like
Speaker 9: Spectrum center, you know. Can you imagine you wake up
Speaker 9: in the morning, your governor taking people, hang them in
Speaker 9: the stadium in front of everybody. He did this before
Speaker 9: many times in the college in the university Libia university,
Speaker 9: like in Trebly or Benghazi.
Speaker 10: He takes them and.
Speaker 9: They hang them and he kills the students because they
Speaker 9: are a part of the opposition group.
Speaker 1: Alshafi never attended an execution in person, but he did
Speaker 1: see it happen on TV.
Speaker 9: I see this once and then I go cry. You know,
Speaker 9: I go hiding some in a room cry. I see look,
Speaker 9: he's hanging people, and the crowd, the crowd supporting this.
Speaker 10: Oh, Gadaffi, yeah, your them, call them.
Speaker 1: The nineteen ninety six massacre at Abu Salim is now
Speaker 1: considered Gaddafi's most brutal act, the pinnacle of his campaign
Speaker 1: of violence against the Libyan people, but when it first happened,
Speaker 1: there was so little information about it that few took notice.
Speaker 1: Reuters did report that some kind of deadly clash between
Speaker 1: inmates and guards had taken place at the prison. An
Speaker 1: Amnesty International called on Gadafi to order an investigation, but
Speaker 1: that effort didn't go anywhere. Kadafi did not even acknowledge
Speaker 1: the massacre, and the bodies of the dead were reportedly
Speaker 1: dumped in a mass grave that has never been found.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until four years later that el Shafi was
Speaker 1: released from Abu Salim. It happened on June first, two thousand,
Speaker 1: more than a decade after his arrest. He was never
Speaker 1: told why, just as he was never formally charged or
Speaker 1: convicted of anything in the first place. Elshafi went home
Speaker 1: to Benghazi and started trying to get a passport. He
Speaker 1: wanted to leave Libya and escape the Gadafi regime for good.
Speaker 1: The passport still hadn't come when Elshafi started seeing reports
Speaker 1: that world leaders, including from the United States, were changing
Speaker 1: their stance on Gadafi and inviting him in from the cold.
Speaker 17: The orchestrated announcements of the deal in Britain and Washington
Speaker 17: portrayed Gaddafi's change of heart as the result of President
Speaker 17: Bush's get them before they get you doctrine.
Speaker 1: The man who had imprisoned El Shafi and killed so
Speaker 1: many of his fellow inmates was being officially rehabilitated. After
Speaker 1: decades of railing against the imperialist powers of Europe and
Speaker 1: the United States, Gaddafi was finding common cause with the West.
Speaker 8: American oil companies and the Libyan government could benefit from
Speaker 8: Libya's newly announced plan to give up trying to develop
Speaker 8: weapons of mass destruction.
Speaker 1: El Shafi remembers being enraged when he heard that one
Speaker 1: of Gaddafi's sons was coming to the United States for
Speaker 1: meetings at the State Department. Alshafi assumed that it meant
Speaker 1: the US was going to start selling Gaddafi weapons.
Speaker 10: I said, fuck politics, fuck the money people.
Speaker 9: First, if you Invagadavi sons and you give him whapons,
Speaker 9: US administration as a color seem freaking Goadavi.
Speaker 1: The process of normalizing relations between Gaddafi's Libya and the
Speaker 1: United States began towards the end of the Clinton administration.
Speaker 1: Gaddafi was desperate to have sanctions against Libya lifted, and
Speaker 1: as a first step, he agreed in nineteen ninety nine
Speaker 1: to surrender two Libyans who were suspected of carrying out
Speaker 1: the Locker bebombing. But it wasn't until the Bush years
Speaker 1: and the start of the War on Terror that the
Speaker 1: relationship between the US and Libya really started to improve.
Speaker 1: In the wake of the invasion of Iraq in the
Speaker 1: fall of Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi was spooked. He became convinced
Speaker 1: that if he didn't make certain concessions, he would be next,
Speaker 1: and so after months of secret talks with the Bush
Speaker 1: White House, Kadafi agreed to give up his nascent nuclear
Speaker 1: program and to allow weapons inspectors into Libya.
Speaker 4: Libya's surprise announcement that it will give up its weapons
Speaker 4: of mass destruction is reverberating worldwide.
Speaker 1: The Bush administration hailed it as a diplomatic triumph.
Speaker 4: Today in Tripoli, Libya has begun the process of rejoining
Speaker 4: the Community of Nations. Its good faith will be returned.
Speaker 18: Without the Iraq War, the trajectory of the US Libya
Speaker 18: relationship would have been much much different.
Speaker 1: This is Ethan Chorin. He was sent to Tripoli by
Speaker 1: the State Department in two thousand and four, who was
Speaker 1: his first posting as a member of the Foreign Service.
Speaker 18: I had a great privilege of being one of the
Speaker 18: few diplomats who was sent to Libya to help open
Speaker 18: up what would eventually become the Embassy.
Speaker 1: Chorin, the author of a book about Libya called Exit.
Speaker 1: The colonel explained to me that making a deal with
Speaker 1: Kaddafi was specifically attractive to the Bush White House as
Speaker 1: a follow up to the invasion of Iraq.
Speaker 18: The neo conservative cabel in Washington looking for the next move, essentially,
Speaker 18: and they were weren't interested in Kadafi until essentially it
Speaker 18: dawned on a few people that the relationship with Kadafi
Speaker 18: could actually solve several of the problems that the Iraq
Speaker 18: War was not solving, as in, there were no weapons
Speaker 18: of mass destruction found in Iraq, but Kadafi ostensibly had
Speaker 18: something that you could call such a program, and he
Speaker 18: was willing to give it up.
Speaker 1: Chorn's point here was that Kadafi's weapons program was extremely
Speaker 1: rudimentary and that sacrificing it was mostly a symbolic gesture
Speaker 1: for the Bush White House. The more practical benefits of
Speaker 1: reconciling with Kadafi were one that American companies could start
Speaker 1: doing business in Libya, and two that the Kadafi regime
Speaker 1: could be helpful in the war on terror.
Speaker 8: Kadafi says, intelligence agencies in Libya and the US are
Speaker 8: exchanging information.
Speaker 1: The terrorists America was now hunting in the Middle East
Speaker 1: and North Africa. Daffi's longtime enemies too. All through the nineties,
Speaker 1: he had been at war with Islamist groups suspected of
Speaker 1: having connections to Al Qaida. In fact, in nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: the Gaddafi regime had issued an Interpol arrest warrant for
Speaker 1: Oslam Bin Laden on the basis that al Qaeda had
Speaker 1: been working with radicals in Libya. Reporter Lindsay Hilsom.
Speaker 16: Again, Gaddaffi became afraid of the Islamists, and a lot
Speaker 16: of Islamists went to Afghanistan and they joined al Qaeda,
Speaker 16: and they became very senior in al Qaeda. Their aim
Speaker 16: was to overthrow Gadaffi. But they were part of this
Speaker 16: international Jihat, and of course that was the international Gia
Speaker 16: had which you know on nine to eleven flew into
Speaker 16: the Twin Towers and murdered all the Americans.
Speaker 1: It was a convenient alliance. The United States got access
Speaker 1: to intelligence from a government operating in close proximity to
Speaker 1: many extremist groups, and Gaddafi got an ally in his
Speaker 1: quest to eliminate one of the only major threats to
Speaker 1: his power.
Speaker 2: Kalybean leader Mamar al Kadafi is now being called an
Speaker 2: enemy of Islam by al Qaeda.
Speaker 1: Between all that and the oil contracts, it was enough
Speaker 1: to convince the White House that Kaddafi was worth the baggage.
Speaker 4: The first time in almost a quarter century, the US
Speaker 4: has diplomatic ties with Libya.
Speaker 1: The US mission and Tripoli had been abandoned in nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: shortly after a crowd of demonstrators set the embassy on fire.
Speaker 1: Now American diplomats would be returning to Libya to build
Speaker 1: a new one. We'll be right back for a certain
Speaker 1: kind of diplomat. Libya was a dream assignment, a country
Speaker 1: everyone knew had been warped by decades of dictatorship, but
Speaker 1: which remained a black box. Ethan Chorin arrived in Libya
Speaker 1: in two thousand and four, and he was excited.
Speaker 18: I was very eager. This was, like, you know, exactly
Speaker 18: what I had joined the Foreign Service to do, to
Speaker 18: have a crazy experience where I felt like I could
Speaker 18: make an impact.
Speaker 1: It was up to choren and his State Department colleagues
Speaker 1: to figure out what was going on in Libya, how
Speaker 1: the Goadathi regime was running things, and what they wanted
Speaker 1: from their new relationship with America. Chorin was also tasked
Speaker 1: with briefing American companies on the Libyan market and writing
Speaker 1: an official State Department guide to doing business in the country.
Speaker 18: And effectively, we were sent out there and told just
Speaker 18: to you know, go find what you can find. We
Speaker 18: don't know much about this place, so see what you
Speaker 18: can do.
Speaker 1: As Chorin was finding his feet in Tripoli, he was
Speaker 1: introduced over email to another diplomat who was also interested
Speaker 1: in Libya. Chris Stevens was working out of Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: At the time, but he had made it known to
Speaker 1: his superiors of the State Department that he wanted to
Speaker 1: be posted in Libya at the next available opportunity.
Speaker 18: He was bidding on a position after me in Libya,
Speaker 18: and he had just had this sort of enthusiasm. This
Speaker 18: is like one of the last places in the Middle
Speaker 18: East that sort of completely off limits to Americans and unknown,
Speaker 18: and that clearly excited him, and it's excited me.
Speaker 1: Stevens had been in the Foreign Service for about twenty
Speaker 1: years after starting and abandoning a career as an international
Speaker 1: trade lawyer.
Speaker 3: They could have led a comfortable life in Washington, DC,
Speaker 3: making a lot of money as a trade lawyer, but
Speaker 3: it wasn't enough for him.
Speaker 1: This is journalist Paul Richter. He's the author of the
Speaker 1: book The Ambassadors, in which he details Chris Stevens's tenure
Speaker 1: at the State Department.
Speaker 3: So at a rather old age he went into the
Speaker 3: Foreign Service. It was basically kind of a second career
Speaker 3: for him.
Speaker 1: From the start, Stevens was particularly interested in the Middle
Speaker 1: East and North Africa. Before he put in his bid
Speaker 1: for a post in Libya. He had worked in Egypt,
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia and Jerusalem. He told friends he possessed a
Speaker 1: gene that drew him to the Arab world, a trait
Speaker 1: apparently shared with a long line of Western diplomats.
Speaker 3: There's been a certain romance about the Middle East that
Speaker 3: goes back to T. E. Lawrence and other British and
Speaker 3: Europeans who saw some mystery, some fascination that they didn't
Speaker 3: see in other parts of the world.
Speaker 1: One of Stephens's chief influences was a book called The Arabists,
Speaker 1: which traces the history of American diplomacy in the Middle
Speaker 1: East from its roots in missionary work and British imperialism.
Speaker 1: This earlier generation of Middle East specialists was part of
Speaker 1: a long colonial history of Westerners romanticizing the Arab world
Speaker 1: starting in the nineteenth century. These diplomats and adventurers often
Speaker 1: wrote about the region as ancient, otherworldly, and almost mystical.
Speaker 3: There is probably a colonialist dimension to it in their attitude,
Speaker 3: and some of that. There's something about the serenity. There's
Speaker 3: something about the harshness of the atmosphere and the beauty
Speaker 3: of the vironment that draws them, and there is something
Speaker 3: about the exotic nature of the Arab world that they
Speaker 3: just can't find in other places, and they keep going
Speaker 3: back to it.
Speaker 1: As Richter described it to me, Stevens was attracted to
Speaker 1: the lifestyle Libya offered and the feeling of timelessness he
Speaker 1: found there.
Speaker 3: He liked going out and enjoying goat met cooked over
Speaker 3: a Bedouin campfire in the desert. He enjoyed talking to
Speaker 3: these Arabs who could tell you the history of their
Speaker 3: families going back many generations. These Arabs would talk about
Speaker 3: their distant relatives as if they died only a few
Speaker 3: years ago, and then later Stephens would discover that they
Speaker 3: were talking about people who died centuries ago.
Speaker 1: For Stevens, the US opening to Gaddafi was an opportunity
Speaker 1: to discover a place that had been closed off from
Speaker 1: the West for decades. In emails to Ethan Schorin, Stevens
Speaker 1: made clear how excited he was at the prospect of
Speaker 1: being posted there.
Speaker 18: Chris would write and ask something along lines of should
Speaker 18: I tay you know, as interesting as I think it is.
Speaker 18: I would describe what I was experiencing there and the
Speaker 18: positives and negatives and I have just had a sense
Speaker 18: that he understood and he too was willing to take
Speaker 18: some risks to have that kind of an experience.
Speaker 1: In many ways, Stevens's defining feature as a diplomat was
Speaker 1: his openness to risk and his willingness to sit down
Speaker 1: and talk to people whom others might have considered enemies.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and six, when he was posted in Jerusalem,
Speaker 1: Stephens served as a liaison to the PLO, the Palestine
Speaker 1: Liberation Organization.
Speaker 4: The Palestinian elections had a stunning outcome, a landslide victory
Speaker 4: for harmas official results today showed the aslam.
Speaker 1: That same year, when the militant group Hamas was elected
Speaker 1: to a majority in the Palestinian legislature, Stevens expressed hope
Speaker 1: that the United States would engage with them instead of
Speaker 1: writing them off as terrorists.
Speaker 3: After Hamas had won that election, Stephens wrote his closest friends,
Speaker 3: family and said, I hope the American side doesn't misinterpret this.
Speaker 3: I hope they understand that Islamists are not always villainous
Speaker 3: and maybe we can work, Maybe we can find a
Speaker 3: way to deal with them.
Speaker 1: In this respect, Stevens represented one side of a long
Speaker 1: standing debate in the world of American foreign policy about
Speaker 1: whether the United States should give the benefit of the
Speaker 1: doubt Islamist political leaders in the Arab world. Stevens believed
Speaker 1: there were different kinds of Islamists. He once wrote that
Speaker 1: Islamist doesn't necessarily translate to extremist.
Speaker 3: I think he was always willing to open a conversation
Speaker 3: with people from pretty scary Islamist backgrounds. I tell a
Speaker 3: story about his meetings with one militia leader where he
Speaker 3: stayed up way into the night to debate East German
Speaker 3: political theory with this guy who had been fighting as
Speaker 3: a jihadist in Afghanistan couple of years before.
Speaker 1: Stevens's friend posture towards Islamist groups distinguished him from some
Speaker 1: of his colleagues, including Ethan Chorin. Chorin believed then as
Speaker 1: now that America must be supremely careful when dealing with Islamists,
Speaker 1: whether they're hardliners or moderates. When I spoke to Chorin,
Speaker 1: it was clear he was troubled by Stevens's outlook on
Speaker 1: the Arab world, and more specifically his approach to diplomacy
Speaker 1: in Libya. For Chorin, the tragedy of the Bengazi attack
Speaker 1: is that it might have been prevented if Stevens and
Speaker 1: his State Department colleagues back in Washington had taken the
Speaker 1: Islamist threat more seriously.
Speaker 18: But this is the heart of the Libya problem, is
Speaker 18: that there was this sort of long, disjointed or absent
Speaker 18: period of uh in many decades where the US Libya
Speaker 18: relationship with either non existent or very stressed. We didn't
Speaker 18: know who all the parties were. There were certainly clues,
Speaker 18: but we didn't know whom to trust. And there were
Speaker 18: people in Libya at the time, you know, before the
Speaker 18: attack who were basically saying, look, you Americans need to
Speaker 18: watch out because the people who you're dealing with are
Speaker 18: not your friends.
Speaker 1: Knowing the difference between friends and enemies had always been
Speaker 1: a problem for the American mission in Libya. Two weeks
Speaker 1: after Chris Stevens first arrived in Tripoli in the summer
Speaker 1: of two thousand and seven, he was invited to Mulmar
Speaker 1: Gadaffi's fortress for a banquet in honor of the French
Speaker 1: president Nicholas Sarkozi. Stevens was introduced to Gaddafi briefly on
Speaker 1: a receiving line journalist Paul Richter again.
Speaker 3: And he saw at this event Kadafi's ambivalence toward the US.
Speaker 3: Kadafi was hoping for a new relationship, and he was
Speaker 3: hoping for trade deals, for weapons deals, for a new
Speaker 3: opening with the world provided by his new friends, the Americans,
Speaker 3: and yet his antipathy for the Americans still remained.
Speaker 1: Gaddafi did not try to hide this antipathy, as Stevens
Speaker 1: observed in letters to his family. The dinner for Sarkosi
Speaker 1: was staged directly in view of a building that had
Speaker 1: been destroyed by American air strikes in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 1: Gaddafi had commemorated it with a plaque recalling the failed
Speaker 1: American aggression. Near where Gadaffi and Sarkozi were sitting was
Speaker 1: a massive gold sculpture of a fist crushing an American
Speaker 1: fighter jet.
Speaker 3: And there was a music played at the event, a
Speaker 3: patriotic song about fighting off the enemies of Libya. And
Speaker 3: this old anti American feeling that had sustained his regime
Speaker 3: for so many decades was still there.
Speaker 1: Despite this apparent tension, Chris Stevens and his colleagues in
Speaker 1: Tripoli tried to build relationships with Gaddafi's inner circle, most
Speaker 1: importantly his sons, who were widely regarded as the future
Speaker 1: of the country.
Speaker 12: Lu Mahgadafi has been married twice and has eight biological
Speaker 12: children and to adopted.
Speaker 1: In particular, Gaddafi's son Safe al Islam, emerged as his
Speaker 1: father's heir apparent and made great efforts to present himself
Speaker 1: to the West as a reasonable, moderated influence on the regime.
Speaker 12: Say Al Islam may be the most recognized and out
Speaker 12: spoken of those offspring. He attended the London School of Economics,
Speaker 12: saying as an advocate of reform.
Speaker 1: By this point, Hussain al Shafi, the former prisoner at
Speaker 1: Abu Sulim, had finally gotten his passport. At one point
Speaker 1: during the three year process, he had to submit a
Speaker 1: letter addressing Gaddafi personally. In it, Alshafi said he needed
Speaker 1: to get to Egypt or Tunisia to seek medical help
Speaker 1: for his wife.
Speaker 10: I wrote a big petition.
Speaker 9: Man, you'll be laughing if you see it like this,
Speaker 9: Wamar Ghadafi, my presidents, my leader, my God. I am
Speaker 9: the former prisoners with no charge applying for the nest.
Speaker 9: I promise I will defend liberal revolution. I would defend Bukadafi.
Speaker 9: I love you Ghadafi. I would be a good person,
Speaker 9: a good citizens. I'll protect the greenpook in my heart.
Speaker 9: I love green Pook. Please you follower your lover, Hossin
Speaker 9: o Sofi.
Speaker 1: For all that, El Shafi finally got his passport. Once
Speaker 1: he did, he and his wife were able to fly
Speaker 1: to Switzerland, and from there they boarded a flight to
Speaker 1: the United States. When I interviewed El Shaffie in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, he was living in Charlotte, North Carolina, with
Speaker 1: his family and operating a luxury car service. By this point,
Speaker 1: he was used to telling the story of the Abu
Speaker 1: Salim massacre. One of the first things he did when
Speaker 1: he arrived in the US was recount what he had
Speaker 1: witnessed to a group of activists working with Human Rights Watch.
Speaker 1: Back in Libya, Elshafi had kept his story to himself
Speaker 1: out of fear that the regime would kill him for
Speaker 1: spreading it. Remember, Gaddafi had barely acknowledged the massacre, and
Speaker 1: the government had not even informed the victim's families that
Speaker 1: their loved ones were dead. Lindsay Hilsome again, Bit by.
Speaker 16: Bit, some people were released, and so they went to
Speaker 16: see the families of the men who had been killed
Speaker 16: and gave them the bad news. And then the government
Speaker 16: started to issue some death certificates which didn't say what
Speaker 16: had happened. They just said, you know, your relative, your husband,
Speaker 16: your son, your father died, and so they had some
Speaker 16: kind of official.
Speaker 7: Word of it.
Speaker 16: And then the families began to join together because it
Speaker 16: became clear that these weren't just deaths, these were murders.
Speaker 7: Nobody knew anything about that fateful day for many years,
Speaker 7: until the relatives of the victims began to protest the
Speaker 7: killings and demand an explanation.
Speaker 1: Human rights lawyers in Benghazi took on the family members
Speaker 1: as clients and filed the legal claim demanding information from
Speaker 1: the government. In two thousand and seven. The lawsuit gave
Speaker 1: rise to the first public protest movement in modern Libyan history.
Speaker 7: The relatives held protest rallies outside the Justice Department in
Speaker 7: Benghazi after they heard about what came to be known
Speaker 7: as Bloody Saturday at Abusli in prison.
Speaker 16: Now, this was a very bold move. Nobody demonstrated or
Speaker 16: protested in Gaddafi's Libya. But they didn't really care anymore.
Speaker 16: They'd lost everything, and so they started to do this,
Speaker 16: demanding justice, demanding compensation, and they were really a new
Speaker 16: group of opponents to the regime with an emotional power,
Speaker 16: and it was quite hard for the authorities just to
Speaker 16: lock them up and kill them because most of them
Speaker 16: were old ladies.
Speaker 1: The regime found the protesters impossible to ignore, and at
Speaker 1: the urging of Safe al Islam, Gaddafi's ostensibly moderate son,
Speaker 1: the government started sending out death notices to hundreds of families,
Speaker 1: finally confirming after more than twenty years, that their loved
Speaker 1: ones had been killed. Still, the protest continued. Every Saturday,
Speaker 1: the families would gather at the Benghazi courthouse, holding up
Speaker 1: photos of the people they had lost and.
Speaker 7: Praying, demanding the bodies of the loved ones from the
Speaker 7: Gaddafi regime.
Speaker 1: For a while, it was just about the only visible
Speaker 1: form of descent in Gaddafi's Libya. But that was about
Speaker 1: to change, and for the second time in less than
Speaker 1: a decade, the United States government would be reevaluating its
Speaker 1: relationship with Muamar Gadafi. On the next episode of Fiasco,
Speaker 1: Libya erupts in revolution, Gaddafi threatens to destroy Benghazi, and
Speaker 1: America decides to get involved. Did you feel relieved when
Speaker 1: you heard that the intervention had happened.
Speaker 18: Did it lifts the pressure?
Speaker 7: Yes, all of us.
Speaker 11: You know he would have destroyed Binghazi.
Speaker 10: He didn't want Benghazi anymore.
Speaker 1: For a list of books, articles and documentaries we used
Speaker 1: in our research, follow the link in our show notes.
Speaker 1: Fiasco is a production of Prolog Projects, and it's distributed
Speaker 1: by Pushkin Industries. The show is produced by Andrew Parsons,
Speaker 1: Ula Culpa, Sam Lee and me Leon Mayfock, with editorial
Speaker 1: support from Sam Graham Felsen and Madeline Kaplan. Our researcher
Speaker 1: was Francis Carr. Our score was composed by Dan English,
Speaker 1: Joe Valley and Noah Hecht. Additional music by Nick Selevester
Speaker 1: and Joel Saint Julian. Our theme song is by Spatial
Speaker 1: Relations Audio mixed by Rob Buyers, Michael Raphael and Johnny
Speaker 1: Vince Evans. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at Chips
Speaker 1: and y Copyright Council provided by Peter Yassi at Yass
Speaker 1: Butler PLLC. Thanks to Archive dot Org, muraud Idris, Nina,
Speaker 1: Ernest tay Glass, Kerry Baker, Ismael Swea ellen Horn, Ben Ryder,
Speaker 1: James Brandt, and Rachel Ward Special Thanks to Lubnary, and
Speaker 1: thank you for listen