Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Ah, that's probably a bad way to open the nineteenth
Speaker 2: most popular podcast on the Internet.
Speaker 1: I wanted to say that.
Speaker 2: Today I did, I did. I did ever since you
Speaker 2: sent me that thing, So if you have been trying,
Speaker 2: I wanted to work it in organically though, right. Otherwise
Speaker 2: people would think that we're you know, we're losing our
Speaker 2: minds from the fat Yeah.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, but we are number nine to Andrew.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, congratulngratulations to us. Yeah from us.
Speaker 1: We're not lying.
Speaker 2: This is like when I buy myself a Christmas present.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just like a little treat. It's like it's like
Speaker 3: getting an extra extra donut. Yeah, yeah, an extra donut something.
Speaker 2: Andrew t what how goes? How goes the strike? Andrew? Uh,
Speaker 2: still striking?
Speaker 3: I brought a a second dog to the picket line
Speaker 3: on Friday.
Speaker 2: A second dog has hit the picket line. She was
Speaker 2: a huge hit. That's good. That's good. That's good. That's
Speaker 2: all I mean.
Speaker 3: As of this episode coming out, we're closer to Its
Speaker 3: potentially possible that the strike is.
Speaker 2: Over by the time you hear this. I would give
Speaker 2: it fifteen percent chance the strike is over. And this
Speaker 2: is all silly. This intro but again, if the strike
Speaker 2: is over, we will cut in an ad for a
Speaker 2: random television show you know exactly. Y. Yeah, it'll be good. Andrew.
Speaker 2: As we speak this to great Hollywood celebrities, real like
Speaker 2: titans of the industry, just announced that they were bringing
Speaker 2: their shows back and then got curb stopped the verbal
Speaker 2: equivalent of curb stopped. Yes, yeah, Is that funny or not?
Speaker 2: How are you Where are you landing on that? I
Speaker 2: because where I'm sitting, I think it was pretty funny.
Speaker 2: I the the about face came so quickly that it
Speaker 2: was really like two days yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so so that that kind of like the whiplash
Speaker 3: of it. I think the the equally funny part is
Speaker 3: everyone having to kind of walk back congratulations or walk
Speaker 3: back the things they said to Drew Barrymore, who I
Speaker 3: think people largely still kind of like, and then also
Speaker 3: not really doing the equivalent for Bill Maher.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know. The not funny side of it is
Speaker 1: the telling people that they can start working again when
Speaker 1: they actually can't and yes, and like that's that's the
Speaker 1: people that are not you know, sagger wga that work
Speaker 1: on sets, and being like, oh, you're gonna get to
Speaker 1: come back to work and the answer is no, you're not,
Speaker 1: and I'm just a selfless narcissist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there there was no good reason for any of this.
Speaker 3: I mean, the the Drew Barrymore of it. It's I'm
Speaker 3: just going to give I guess her the benefit of
Speaker 3: the doubt and say she was probably deceived over what
Speaker 3: the rules are. And I will equally assume that Bill Maher,
Speaker 3: given his personal politics, he would have scabbed sooner. He
Speaker 3: just didn't have the opportunity his seeson.
Speaker 1: Is there anybody else that would have loved to have
Speaker 1: scabbed more than Bill Maher, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So whatever they have on him, it's very legit.
Speaker 3: But yeah, no, I mean because he would have been
Speaker 3: just straight up openly scabbing, whereas Drew Barrymore would have
Speaker 3: been like functionally almost certainly scabbing on some level, but
Speaker 3: in a much more difficult to prove way. But you know,
Speaker 3: Bill Maher is a member of the Writers Guild.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, fuck. Bill Maher is more or less
Speaker 2: where we're heading here. You know, like Bill Maher, you know,
Speaker 2: you know who has been consistent in their principles all
Speaker 2: of their lives is g Gordon Lyddy, the g Man Liddy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he never uh, he's always been been honest about who
Speaker 2: he is. Yeah, that's not a great thing, you know,
Speaker 2: it's like, but it is a thing. Yeah, you gotta
Speaker 2: you gotta acknowledge that. So when we when we last
Speaker 2: left off the g Man, uh, he had joined the
Speaker 2: FBI compared it directly to the s S in a
Speaker 2: positive sense, favorably, Yeah, favorably. Yeah, as America's protective echelon.
Speaker 2: So he's in Indiana a while, he learns how to
Speaker 2: cowboy gun fight from these great cowboy gunfighters and then
Speaker 2: the uh and then he totally gets super close to
Speaker 2: needing to use his handgun, but he never quite has to.
Speaker 2: But what he does have like multiple stories where he like,
Speaker 2: it's everything up to and then like but then before
Speaker 2: I I could pull my gun, you know, the situation ended,
Speaker 2: so everything was fine. Well, maybe we don't need to
Speaker 2: hear about that. Then that's not very interesting. G Gordon Liddy.
Speaker 2: So he gets transferred to Denver. After that, he's involved
Speaker 2: in he is involved in the arrest of at least
Speaker 2: one major criminal. One of these guys that's on the
Speaker 2: FBI's most wanted list, and then based according to his
Speaker 2: recitation of events, he gets transferred to FBI headquarters in DC,
Speaker 2: and he becomes incredibly close with j Edgar Hoover, so
Speaker 2: close that all of the older agents are jealous because
Speaker 2: Hoover wants to spend a lot of time with Lyddy
Speaker 2: and not them. So that's not what happened. And again
Speaker 2: this is thankfully, this is what I'm not going into
Speaker 2: as much detail about what Liddy claims because we have
Speaker 2: other sources on his time in the FBI and they
Speaker 2: are very different than what he claims. So he is
Speaker 2: involved in one high profile arrest, but there's evidence that
Speaker 2: his superiors like they had issues with his errat and
Speaker 2: irrational behavior. One of his supervisors described him as a
Speaker 2: wild man and a super klutz basically just like, yeah,
Speaker 2: this guy is kind of out of his mind. And
Speaker 2: he's also like he fucks up constantly, Like whenever he's
Speaker 2: given a chance to do something, he's going to make
Speaker 2: some stupid mistake. He's like a Nazi Elmer. That is
Speaker 2: like really, it's a great comparison. And so the kind
Speaker 2: of attitude that like some of these people who like
Speaker 2: supervise him is is like, yeah, he just he couldn't
Speaker 2: be relied on. And because it's you know, this is
Speaker 2: the FBI. Right, one thing the FBI, especially under Hoover,
Speaker 2: was good at was not leaking shit. So we don't
Speaker 2: have as much detail as I'd like on what specifically
Speaker 2: he fucked up, But given that this is consistent with
Speaker 2: his performance later in life, I'm going to choose to
Speaker 2: side with his superiors here rather than claim that he
Speaker 2: was just super good at the FBI. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: this makes if he's if he really is just like
Speaker 2: kind of incompetent, it makes his transfer to DC makes
Speaker 2: sense because like that is kind of what they did
Speaker 2: a lot to guys who were bad at being in
Speaker 2: the field, Like you move from a place where you
Speaker 2: can kind of you can keep track of them. Like
Speaker 2: he gets he gets transferred to the record division, which
Speaker 2: is like that's where you put a dude you can't
Speaker 2: fire for some reason, but who like can't be trusted
Speaker 2: out with a gun.
Speaker 3: That's like the punishment in like the second act of
Speaker 3: a loose cannon cop movie.
Speaker 2: Right, Like that is, yes, go file some papers, g
Speaker 2: Gordon Lyddy, get them, stay the fuck away from from
Speaker 2: the world. Lyddy would go on to claim that he
Speaker 2: was the youngest bureau supervisor in agency history. You'll see
Speaker 2: this sighted in like write ups of his career periodically,
Speaker 2: but they only ever cite him. So I'm gonna go
Speaker 2: ahead and say that's probably either not true or not impressive. Right,
Speaker 2: he did get a couple of like commendations from Hoover,
Speaker 2: but like, that's not it doesn't appear to be that
Speaker 2: big a deal. Wikipedia also lists those claims as citations needed,
Speaker 2: So again, not gonna go out on a limb and
Speaker 2: say he was definitely awarded by Hoover. Former FBI officials
Speaker 2: interviewed by journalist Anthony Lucas later would claim that Liddy
Speaker 2: got pushed out of the FBI because he was seen
Speaker 2: as dangerous and unreliable. You know, we don't get tons
Speaker 2: of detail on what exactly caused him to get pushed out,
Speaker 2: but there are some pieces from Lyddy's autobiography that may
Speaker 2: suggest why. For example, this line, my son Jim was
Speaker 2: born in April of nineteen sixty one, and I was
Speaker 2: so elated at finally having a boy that when I
Speaker 2: thought about it the next day, driving through an unpopulated area,
Speaker 2: I stopped the car and fired three rounds into the
Speaker 2: air and a private ceremony of celebration, just firing his
Speaker 2: service weapon randomly into the sky to celebrate. Yeah, unpopulated area.
Speaker 3: Okay, lyddy man, it is it is wild. Having done
Speaker 3: the show a few times now, how much of history's
Speaker 3: damage has been done by huge nerds?
Speaker 2: Yeah, just a big old dork.
Speaker 3: It's really like they Yeah, I mean I guess that's why.
Speaker 3: But it's you know, we're not We're not cruel enough
Speaker 3: to nerds.
Speaker 2: I'm realizing. No, that's yeah. I think we need like
Speaker 2: a national conversation about how to be crueler to them. Though, yes, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 2: what's the what's the actual appropriate way to handle this? Right?
Speaker 2: That's the problem is the wrong people are bullies? Yeah,
Speaker 2: the wrong because you, like, somebody needed to g Gordon
Speaker 2: Liddy needed more shame of the things that were going
Speaker 2: on in his head. He needed to feel worse in
Speaker 2: a specific way about himself. But like if you just
Speaker 2: had again, like a kid, just like shoving him into
Speaker 2: a locker at school, that's not going to work on
Speaker 2: this guy. You need there needs to be some more
Speaker 2: like art to it, you know. But really his dad,
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know how you like get
Speaker 2: Like I think if his dad had been more aware
Speaker 2: of the kind of shit going on in his brain,
Speaker 2: he could have like shamed it out of him, Like, right,
Speaker 2: what are you doing shooting your handgun in the air
Speaker 2: to celebrate having a kid? Give me that gun? Give
Speaker 2: me that gun? Gordon like, I'm keeping.
Speaker 4: This no gun privileges until you're not allowed to have this,
Speaker 4: it's pretty cool, and he like he goes on this
Speaker 4: rant in his book about how like at the FBI,
Speaker 4: you know, you're allowed to carry a gun off duty
Speaker 4: and you don't have to, but if you're in a
Speaker 4: bad situation, if something happens around you and you're not
Speaker 4: able to stop it because you don't have a gun,
Speaker 4: you get in trouble.
Speaker 2: So I always had my gun. He just he needs you.
Speaker 2: And again, there's never any like it's one of those
Speaker 2: like it feels almost like he's setting up something that's
Speaker 2: gonna happen later. But g Gordon Liddy never had any
Speaker 2: cause to use a firearm in his entire life, Like,
Speaker 2: at no point was this even remotely necessary for him.
Speaker 2: So he's this is all just pointless. He just needs
Speaker 2: you to know that he carried a gun around for
Speaker 2: several years.
Speaker 3: God, I know the the like they like, oh no, no,
Speaker 3: I need this because if I don't fucking save the day,
Speaker 3: I'm going to get in trouble. It's like, yeah, still
Speaker 3: somehow Weasley, which is amazing.
Speaker 2: It's just like, yeah, it's so funny. So Lyddy claims
Speaker 2: that everyone at the FBI loved him, but he just
Speaker 2: wasn't making enough money to support his growing family because
Speaker 2: his wife. His wife is popping out kids at an
Speaker 2: alarming rate, right, she is like putting out new liddies
Speaker 2: at the same speed with which he is firing bullets wildly,
Speaker 2: and this becomes a problem, he says, for their for
Speaker 2: their bottom line, and so you know, he decides to quit,
Speaker 2: and the FBI is like, we love you. Letty, you know,
Speaker 2: come back anytime. We'd love to have you again. We've
Speaker 2: we've stamped your paperwork with a special thing that means
Speaker 2: you can come back anytime you want. People within the
Speaker 2: FBI are like, yeah, we were doing everything we could
Speaker 2: to force him to leave. So you know that said,
Speaker 2: I do think there's probably a good chance his family
Speaker 2: financial situation is not great one of these reasons might
Speaker 2: be and again this is a reading between the lines,
Speaker 2: but every time he talks about his gun collection, it's
Speaker 2: like very large. So part of this may just be
Speaker 2: that he's spending all of his child money on new handguns. Now,
Speaker 2: the central issue is that Lyddy and his wife are
Speaker 2: devout Catholics. Now, I don't know if you know much
Speaker 2: about Catholics, but Catholics, like all humans, like to fuck,
Speaker 2: and Catholics, unlike most humans, are not allowed to use
Speaker 2: birth control. Right, So this is part of why there's
Speaker 2: a round a billion of Catholics, you know. So Lyddy
Speaker 2: and his wife they try to use the rhythm method
Speaker 2: to avoid having more kids, and he can't write that like, well,
Speaker 2: the rhythm method's clearly bullshit, So he just writes that, like, well,
Speaker 2: it didn't work for us, you know, we had after
Speaker 2: four children, it had become clear that the rhythm method
Speaker 2: does not work for my Maybe it just doesn't work,
Speaker 2: g Gordon Liddy. Maybe it's a bad method of birth. God,
Speaker 2: hey everyone, my phrasing hair was not great. I didn't
Speaker 2: mean to say that the rhythm method like can't work.
Speaker 2: You know, obviously biologically it does it's just that realistically,
Speaker 2: I don't think it is an effective method of birth control,
Speaker 2: particularly for people in long term relationships. I think G
Speaker 2: Gordon Liddie's case is a pretty good example of this.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of others, but obviously, like biologically,
Speaker 2: if you were to do it perfectly, it would work.
Speaker 2: It's just not a very good idea compared to modern
Speaker 2: forms of contraception.
Speaker 3: And what are most opportunity to talk about what amazing
Speaker 3: sperm he has. You know, he could have just claimed
Speaker 3: he was unbelievably fertile.
Speaker 2: He's just too potent. Yeah. No, the fact that the
Speaker 2: rhythm method doesn't work is not really This is not
Speaker 2: really a problem for g Gordon Liddy because he wanted
Speaker 2: six children and he claims that fran did two, and
Speaker 2: in true g Gordon Liddy fashion, his reasoning for wanting
Speaker 2: six kids is some of the craziest shit I've ever read. Quote.
Speaker 2: She had grown up as a lonely only child. I
Speaker 2: had a sister and a cousin who was a de
Speaker 2: facto brother, and I missed a large number of people
Speaker 2: always present at home. I was also aware that children
Speaker 2: can be lost to sickness, accident, or war. And six
Speaker 2: would raise substantially the probability that at least some offspring
Speaker 2: would survive. Just as important, I recognize that a child
Speaker 2: can lose itself through failure of the will to achieve,
Speaker 2: and that having six would make it easier to accept
Speaker 2: and write off such a living death as well. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you need more kids so you can write them off
Speaker 2: if one of them is a dead person while alive still, well,
Speaker 2: I think he just caught on some level.
Speaker 3: Those he's bringing real loser jenes to the table, So
Speaker 3: he's really hatging his bets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you gotta be careful if you're like bringing liddly
Speaker 2: grad genetics to the table, because it's that kid's just
Speaker 2: got to be a fuck up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just tough's he brings fuck up to the table.
Speaker 3: So you like, you know, you break out the Punnett
Speaker 3: square a little bit of the recessive traits. Yeah, the
Speaker 3: math that got him personally to six.
Speaker 2: I would love to see.
Speaker 3: I'd love to see his little scroll notebook, like one
Speaker 3: loser one he dead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are one. At least one of them is
Speaker 2: gonna you know, lose them, lose their mind, So we
Speaker 2: gotta we write one off and being liddy's a good
Speaker 2: at three of them are going to die in a war,
Speaker 2: so that gives us two that make it to yeah two,
Speaker 2: and then one of them is a natural loser. So yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: this is just the minimum we need, you know, just
Speaker 2: given given my worthless genes, this is the only way
Speaker 2: to share enough liddies survive. Oh yes, it's it's it's
Speaker 2: a logic like this that has ensured that we still
Speaker 2: have g Gordon liddies today everybody. So yeah, Now, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: Fran's body does not handle multiple pregnancies in quick succession
Speaker 2: very well, right, And yeah, I don't say that to
Speaker 2: like make what four kids. I think eventually five in
Speaker 2: you know the space of like five years is too
Speaker 2: many kids, maybe, like maybe you shouldn't have that many
Speaker 2: kids that quickly. That's a lot to deal with. She
Speaker 2: dealt with increasing pain each time, and eventually their doctor
Speaker 2: sits them down and is like she could die, right,
Speaker 2: like this is like she can't have any more kids,
Speaker 2: you know, like this is we need to stop here.
Speaker 2: So you know, eventually they shop around for a Catholic
Speaker 2: priest because they want a priest who will advise them
Speaker 2: that it's okay for her to take birth control, because
Speaker 2: you know, these things go. They have one more kid
Speaker 2: during this process, but Lyddy decides to give up after that.
Speaker 2: And this may be the most like Moonman ass piece
Speaker 2: of reasoning that I have encountered in his book. Although
Speaker 2: one of the reasons I had chosen Francis to be
Speaker 2: the mother of my children was her size and strength,
Speaker 2: which should have enabled her to bear half a dozen
Speaker 2: hyperform Orman's children, I certainly had not intended to risk
Speaker 2: damage by pushing her to her design limit. Oh no,
Speaker 2: you're not to talk that way about their wives, g
Speaker 2: Gordon Lyddy. He's like actual Marvin the Martian m He's
Speaker 2: talking like about his his his ill wife and his
Speaker 2: children as if he's like a fucking GM factory.
Speaker 3: Yeah, designs limitation, their design limit.
Speaker 2: She should have been putting out six high performance children
Speaker 2: by this period.
Speaker 3: So high performance asterisk Lyddy failure rate exactly all.
Speaker 2: Of these kids should already be shooting handguns into the
Speaker 2: air at random. They haven't hurted any squirrels. So he
Speaker 2: quits the FBI and takes a gig with his dad's firm,
Speaker 2: where he immediately gets a huge raise. So this is
Speaker 2: again the only job that would take him, I think,
Speaker 2: is how I interpret this. He says his day was
Speaker 2: desperate for him to come work for them, and like
Speaker 2: had been just trying for years and was so happy.
Speaker 2: But he also writes that, like as soon as he
Speaker 2: gets to work there, they start fighting every It destroys
Speaker 2: their relationship because his dad like cannot stand him as
Speaker 2: like a business partner. And my guess is going to
Speaker 2: be because he keeps suggesting crazy shit that would get
Speaker 2: them both thrown in prison, and like his dad has
Speaker 2: constantly no, you have to not do that. Seems likely, Yeah,
Speaker 2: seems like good direction. She was like the g man. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So his description is that despite the fact that he's
Speaker 2: very good at this job, he has to quit this
Speaker 2: as well to save his relationship with his father and
Speaker 2: go into public practice as a for a DA's office
Speaker 2: in New York State in order to preserve their relationship. Now,
Speaker 2: by the point that he does this, this is like
Speaker 2: sixty two or sixty three something like that, the swing
Speaker 2: in sixties are well underway, and our boy is starting
Speaker 2: to pay attention to the resistance that has built in
Speaker 2: the country to the involvement of US troops in a
Speaker 2: little country I might have heard of called Vietnam. You know,
Speaker 2: if you're unaware, Vietnam is a country in Southeast Asia
Speaker 2: that we had a disagreement with and they want Yeah,
Speaker 2: so this had started. The whole kerfuffle in Vietnam had
Speaker 2: started due to the failure of French forces to maintain
Speaker 2: control of Indo China and a bunch of unhinged fears
Speaker 2: among US policymakers that the spread of communism in Vietnam
Speaker 2: would lead to a series of falling dominoes that ended
Speaker 2: with a unified communist Asia under China. Now, if you
Speaker 2: read Po Chi Minh, if you're aware at all of
Speaker 2: like Vietnamese history, that was never in the carts, right,
Speaker 2: The last thing anyone in Vietnam ever wanted was to
Speaker 2: be part of like a Chinese dominated block. And they
Speaker 2: immediately go to war with China as soon as they
Speaker 2: kick us out, right, Like, that's the first thing that
Speaker 2: Vietnam does after finishing us off is fight with China
Speaker 2: and Cambodia.
Speaker 3: You know, the this is this is a thing that
Speaker 3: happens on Jos's racist all the time. Is that you know,
Speaker 3: if these motherfuckers were less racist, they would be able
Speaker 3: to achieve their imperialism gains better. They would have realized
Speaker 3: not all these chinks love each other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a there's a there's a joke that I
Speaker 2: saw going around Twitter recently, which is like, if somebody
Speaker 2: could have explained, had explained to like the leaders of
Speaker 2: Northern Vietnam right at the start of the war with
Speaker 2: the US, that like in fifty years they'd be allied
Speaker 2: with the US against China, they would have said, yeah,
Speaker 2: sounds about right, Yeah, totally possible, absolutely could happen. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is their assholes. Yeah, this goes into we just
Speaker 2: talked about this a little on our episodes about Scott
Speaker 2: Adams's terrible books and his beliefs about the Muslim world.
Speaker 2: But like, one of the things you need to keep
Speaker 2: in mind, no matter what fucked up shit like a
Speaker 2: foreign country far away is doing to a group of people,
Speaker 2: those people are always in their hearts going to be
Speaker 2: angrier at somebody who lives next door to them. That's
Speaker 2: just the way human being. It's like the United States,
Speaker 2: like we get we have our Panics over like Islam,
Speaker 2: or our Panics over China, but like fucking people in
Speaker 2: Texas always hate people in Oklahoma more than anyone else
Speaker 2: on this planet. Like that's just the way it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, no, or their neighbors or their neighbors city.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah yeah, those people are actually murdering or whatever. Yes,
Speaker 2: this is just how humans work. So this is patent nonsense,
Speaker 2: this whole domino theory. But arch warriors, like cold warriors
Speaker 2: like G. Gordon Liddy, absolutely believed it. Here are some
Speaker 2: other things that G. Gordon Liddy believed about Vietnam. This
Speaker 2: is this is him summarizing the situation with France following
Speaker 2: the close of World War Two, when the French were
Speaker 2: fighting the viet Men and Indo China. They were at
Speaker 2: first highly successful. That was because they were using the
Speaker 2: foreign legion then manned almost completely by veterans from the
Speaker 2: most disciplined, ruthlessly efficient practitioners of all that warfare and history,
Speaker 2: the Waffen SS. It was only was made public and
Speaker 2: political pressure forced their removal that the French began to lose.
Speaker 2: He cannot, he cannot stop bringing up the SS. Like
Speaker 2: almost every chapter, the SS comes up, and there's never
Speaker 2: a good reason for it. And it's like, this is
Speaker 2: the eighties, this is the eighties.
Speaker 3: It's pretty I mean, this is kind of the last
Speaker 3: time Nazis were basically universally froud upod. I would have thought,
Speaker 3: amongst like Gordon Lyddy, Yeah, what do I.
Speaker 2: Know this is? I should start by saying nonsense. It
Speaker 2: is true. There were some members of the Waffen SS.
Speaker 2: So the SS is like a state within a state
Speaker 2: in Nazi Germany, right, They are this racial elite. They
Speaker 2: have a huge amount of power in the political system.
Speaker 2: They do a lot of like a lot of the
Speaker 2: guys individual like people who are managing all of the
Speaker 2: different police departments and stuff in Nazi Germany are members
Speaker 2: of the SS. They also have, you know, they exercise
Speaker 2: a lot of control over the industrial apparatus that was
Speaker 2: kind of the goal that Himmler was building towards. And
Speaker 2: in addition to using them to like breed more Arians,
Speaker 2: there are divisions of the SS that also fight as
Speaker 2: regular military units or kind of in a fashion similar
Speaker 2: to and these guys are called the waffen SS. Waffen
Speaker 2: just means weapons, right, So the Waffen SS is the
Speaker 2: weapons SS. Right now, there are a lot of like
Speaker 2: lies and myths. As we're about to talk about about
Speaker 2: how well, the Waffen SS functions. The fact that the
Speaker 2: foreign legions, some of these guys after the war wind
Speaker 2: up in the foreign legion is not really weird, nor
Speaker 2: is it out. It's not specifically even because of World
Speaker 2: War Two, right, it's not because historically, if you look
Speaker 2: at the foreign legion, it's usually like half or more
Speaker 2: German guys. This is just like a thing about the
Speaker 2: way it has always been constructed. The French foreign legion
Speaker 2: has always been heavily Germanic. About sixty percent of it
Speaker 2: in the post war period were Dutch, Austrian, Swiss, Belgian
Speaker 2: or most commonly German. And there's a good chance that
Speaker 2: about fifty thousand Germans cycled through French Indo China during
Speaker 2: the post war stages of the conflict there, but that
Speaker 2: doesn't tell the whole story. The Vietmen did like to
Speaker 2: claim that all of their captive French soldiers were SS veterans,
Speaker 2: but like that was a propaganda claim because no evidence
Speaker 2: was ever provided of this. We do know that the
Speaker 2: French military scanned for SS veterans, particularly after nineteen forty seven,
Speaker 2: and since SS members had all had a tattoo, their
Speaker 2: blood group was tattooed on them, it was easy to
Speaker 2: find and deny them. Thus, the first wave of Legion
Speaker 2: volunteers in Indo China would have included a lot of
Speaker 2: Germans who had served who had been Nazi soldiers, right,
Speaker 2: But very few of these guys would have been SS.
Speaker 2: Much more of them are Wehrmacht Nazis. Right, As this
Speaker 2: historian from the asked Historian subreddit noted, the Legion was
Speaker 2: recruiting about ten thousand many a year, many of them
Speaker 2: certainly Germans, but by the nineteen fifties, with the average
Speaker 2: age of a legionnaire in the very early twenties, most
Speaker 2: German recruits were young men simply trying to escape the
Speaker 2: bleak situation in their home country, and the extent of
Speaker 2: their involvement with the Nazi Party was their membership in
Speaker 2: the Hitler Youth as children. Now, I'm not doing this
Speaker 2: to defend the reputation of the Foreign Legion, right, because
Speaker 2: there's a lot that's messed up about that unit. This
Speaker 2: is more important because of the specific way in which
Speaker 2: Liddy is wrong about like both the presence that like
Speaker 2: all of the guys fighting in French Indo China in
Speaker 2: the late forties were SS veterans and they were really good.
Speaker 2: You know, if they just stayed in there, they would
Speaker 2: have won that war. The fact that he believes that
Speaker 2: in states that says a lot, right because this recitation
Speaker 2: that like the first Foreign Legion Units and Indo China
Speaker 2: URLSS veterans and they were masters of counterinsurgency is based
Speaker 2: upon one specific novel. I have actually traced back where
Speaker 2: Liddy gets this belief, and it's from a fiction book
Speaker 2: called The Devil's Guard. Now, I actually have not seen
Speaker 2: this written anywhere else. I think I may be like
Speaker 2: the first person to note this publicly, but it's extremely
Speaker 2: obvious if you are familiar with the book The Devil's Guard.
Speaker 2: And I'll go into why I am in a little bit.
Speaker 2: But The Devil's Guard was a novel published by a
Speaker 2: guy named George Elford in nineteen seventy one. This is
Speaker 2: about nine years before Liddy writes his autobiography. The Devil's
Speaker 2: Guard is based on the experience of a former wafeness
Speaker 2: officer who it starts with him like he's fighting in
Speaker 2: Eastern Europe, He's fighting in Russia, and then as the
Speaker 2: war ends, he kind of like fights and sneaks his
Speaker 2: way across Europe, eventually escaping the Allies and traveling to Indo, China,
Speaker 2: where he fights in a nine hundred man unit of
Speaker 2: all former SS men. And they're just the best encounter
Speaker 2: and they're running circles around the Viet Minh using all
Speaker 2: these different they're combat skills, and they're so sneaky, and
Speaker 2: they have all these different plans and stuff. And because
Speaker 2: of how ruthless they are, the VIETMN just you know,
Speaker 2: can't do anything about them. Right now, Elford presents this
Speaker 2: this is a non fiction novel. It's supposed to be,
Speaker 2: but he claims that it's the result of an interview
Speaker 2: with an anonymous, totally real Nazi. Historians now universally agree
Speaker 2: that this is a lie. There were no there were
Speaker 2: definitely SS men who served in the Foreign Legion. There
Speaker 2: was at no point a nine hundred man unit of
Speaker 2: former SS veterans. Right, that just did not happen. Right,
Speaker 2: that's from an Indiana Jones's sequel. That's from an Indiana
Speaker 2: Jones book. Like, right, yeah, it's also like another one
Speaker 2: of the reasons we know this book is full of
Speaker 2: shit is that he has these loving descriptions this is
Speaker 2: like a Soldier of Fortune. As books, there's loving descriptions
Speaker 2: of all the different guns they use and how, and
Speaker 2: a bunch of the weapons he describes them using in
Speaker 2: detail did not exist at the time or were not
Speaker 2: in use by Legion troops at the time, right, They
Speaker 2: simply were not present in that conflict. He just thought
Speaker 2: they were cool guns, so he wanted to put them
Speaker 2: in his novel. Meanwhile, and there's also you know, a
Speaker 2: bunch of different genius count insurgency tactics shown in the book.
Speaker 2: Like at one point, these SS guys kidnapped the family
Speaker 2: members of a bunch of Vietmen fighters and like stick
Speaker 2: them in vehicles that they're driving through a part of
Speaker 2: the jungle, so that if the Vietmen attack a convoy,
Speaker 2: they'll kill their family members, right, which is would be
Speaker 2: a war crime if they'd done it, But it's supposed
Speaker 2: to be like, you know, this is the kind of
Speaker 2: heart you can't you can't follow the law if you're
Speaker 2: going to win an insurgency. That and a bunch of
Speaker 2: other tactics that are like that in the book are
Speaker 2: all taken directly from a different book about British commandos
Speaker 2: fighting the Japanese in World War Two, like they're lifted
Speaker 2: directly from this other book. Now, The Devil's Guard is
Speaker 2: also it's one of the fact that it shows, the
Speaker 2: whole premise of it is that the SS could have
Speaker 2: won the war in Vietnam if we'd let them. It's
Speaker 2: one of the most fascist books of military fiction and existence.
Speaker 2: And again I have to I have to, I have
Speaker 2: to really emphasize fiction. It's claims too that it was
Speaker 2: real have spread myths about the incredible brilliance of the
Speaker 2: SS as a counter insurgence for generations in two thousand
Speaker 2: and six, and this is why I know about it.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and six, online bookstore A Books noted
Speaker 2: that it was one of the top ten novels sold
Speaker 2: to US soldiers heading over to Iraq, and the only
Speaker 2: piece of war fiction on that list. Because again, you've
Speaker 2: got all these kids, they haven't actually been to combat yet,
Speaker 2: they're trying to know what it's like. They want, like,
Speaker 2: you know, advice, so they read this book about supposedly
Speaker 2: the best counterinsurgency experts who ever existed, the fucking SS. Right,
Speaker 2: it's just this very popular book of lies, and Lyddy
Speaker 2: is kind of the first pop prominent guy who gets
Speaker 2: taken in by it, right, which is why everything he
Speaker 2: writes about Vietnam is very clearly just taken from this,
Speaker 2: this book of fiction. Now, I think it's worth spending
Speaker 2: a little bit more time discussing exactly why Liddy's conception
Speaker 2: of the Wathen SS is a historical First off, the
Speaker 2: SS were dogshit at counterinsurgency. There is no evidence that
Speaker 2: has ever existed in history that these guys had any
Speaker 2: competence at defeating insurgencies. They are involved in one insurgent
Speaker 2: campaign in the history of the organization and they lose it, right, Like,
Speaker 2: they don't win at all. It's like saying the US
Speaker 2: is the best counterinsurgency army in the world. It's like, well,
Speaker 2: what the fuck are you basing that on?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: How cool the Navy Seals are in a movie you watched.
Speaker 2: They've lost every war they've been involved in. I don't
Speaker 2: understand why you think they're good at this. That's the
Speaker 2: power of culture, baby. Now, the SS are repeatedly noted
Speaker 2: by their colleagues and Wehrmacht officers for inciting violence from
Speaker 2: captive populations due to their brutality. Right, the SS comes
Speaker 2: into all these areas like Ukraine right in eastern Europe,
Speaker 2: where because of sort of the relationship that area had
Speaker 2: had to the Soviet Union before the Nazis come in,
Speaker 2: there was a good possibility of like them taking over
Speaker 2: and being relatively popular, and they just massacre so many
Speaker 2: people pointlessly that they inspire like account like an insurgent
Speaker 2: campaign against themselves because they're Nazis. They're terrible. That said,
Speaker 2: even outside of like if you're kind of taking it
Speaker 2: outside of their performance as a counterinsurgency force, there's this
Speaker 2: idea that's still pretty common even among people who don't
Speaker 2: like Nazis, that the SS were an elite combat unit
Speaker 2: that performed well above like the levels shown by their
Speaker 2: Verhrmacht counterparts. This is a lie as well. There were
Speaker 2: certainly specific SS combat units that performed well, right, you
Speaker 2: know that exists. You can find some some SS military
Speaker 2: units that had very good battle records, right, But even
Speaker 2: that does not mean what you might think it means.
Speaker 2: Because SS divisions consistently received better gear and more of it.
Speaker 2: They were much more mechanized than their regular army counterparts.
Speaker 2: Because of the clout that they had with the Nazi system.
Speaker 2: And SS divisions were also larger than normal Wehrmacht Army divisions.
Speaker 2: A Waffen SS division has ad had a standard size
Speaker 2: of about twenty thousand men, compared to sixteen thousand, five
Speaker 2: hundred in the regular army. So if you're saying, well,
Speaker 2: these WAFT and SS divisions performed better than these Fairmaut divisions,
Speaker 2: it's like, well, they were an extra like thirty hundred guys,
Speaker 2: and yeah, I mean it makes sense. Yeah, better take Well,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: That's that's just the power of airy inness. You know,
Speaker 3: that's it's like if you weren't, you wouldn't have all
Speaker 3: those extra dudes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how did they fight so much better? Well, there
Speaker 2: were like three thousand extra dudes. Yeah, that'll that that
Speaker 2: can matter sometimes that's so much extra area and blood.
Speaker 2: Of course, it's also worth noting that even if you
Speaker 2: take this into account, they don't actually have across the
Speaker 2: board a good like a better combat record than regular units.
Speaker 2: It is worth noting SS men were picked both for
Speaker 2: racial and ideological purity.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Part of what this meant is that regular enlisted soldiers
Speaker 2: in the WAFT and SS were often healthier and in
Speaker 2: better physical shape than regular army soldiers. But it also
Speaker 2: means that their officers were pipped not on based on
Speaker 2: their performance right, their competence, but based on their adherence
Speaker 2: to propaganda right, which meant that the most important thing
Speaker 2: for an SS officer was not what do they know,
Speaker 2: how well are they trained? How well have they performed?
Speaker 2: But like, do they fit this sort of vision we
Speaker 2: have for how they should look? And I found another
Speaker 2: really good asque historians post on this matter, which quotes
Speaker 2: a February nineteen forty three inspection of an SS division
Speaker 2: by a Wehrmacht Army major quote. The commanders of this
Speaker 2: wap of an SS division did not seem to realize
Speaker 2: that brave and ideologically misguided young men were being selflessly
Speaker 2: sacrificed through insane arrogance and a lofty disdain for sound training.
Speaker 2: Belief in the Fuerer was more important to them than
Speaker 2: professional ability. Shocked and sobered by the experience, I returned
Speaker 2: to headquarters, where I was given an opportunity to report
Speaker 2: my impressions to the chief of the general staff. In
Speaker 2: other words, officers in the Waffenss were often young men, likelyddy,
Speaker 2: filled with very irrational beliefs about combat and their own
Speaker 2: racial purity. The fact that they were brainwashed meant that
Speaker 2: they were incapable of judging threats adequately.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: They could not accurately judge the situations that they were
Speaker 2: in and what was a necessary response, and as a result,
Speaker 2: they got a lot of their men killed unnecessarily. Right.
Speaker 2: In other words, these were all the guys who became
Speaker 2: SS officers were the kind of men who might say,
Speaker 2: disobey orders to crawl through mud with an open surgical wound,
Speaker 2: and you don't want that guy making calls and combats.
Speaker 2: It's really a two way street.
Speaker 3: The love for that, like the SS would have loved
Speaker 3: and yeah.
Speaker 2: He would have immediately made it into the SS. Like
Speaker 2: the Wehrmacht would have been like, no, get this guy
Speaker 2: the fuck out of here. He's like, he's not rational,
Speaker 2: But the SSS would have been like, he's a rational
Speaker 2: make him an officer, right.
Speaker 3: He just yeah, right, you know, at least he knows
Speaker 3: where he would have fit in. Yeah's a lot of people, don't,
Speaker 3: you know, a lot of people don't. Yeah, this was
Speaker 3: his ideal life situation and he just missed it.
Speaker 2: Anyway. That was a long digression, but like I felt
Speaker 2: it was necessary anyway. You know what else is a
Speaker 2: fascist paramilitary organization? Mmmm, we'll find out the sponsors of
Speaker 2: our podcast. Oh ah, we are back. And boy, I
Speaker 2: really loved those ads for the Waffen SS. You know.
Speaker 2: I hope, I hope a lot of a lot of
Speaker 2: our listeners join so that they can win the war
Speaker 2: in French, Indo, China. You got it. It's like just
Speaker 2: as if only there were a few more Nazis there,
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, a couple more Nazis gonna put that
Speaker 2: whole house in order, like like we always say, that's
Speaker 2: all we need. Yeah. I do love the idea that,
Speaker 2: like the ss IS experience getting their asses handed to
Speaker 2: them and the steps of Eastern Europe would have prepared
Speaker 2: them for a jungle war Inva. Yeah, they were really
Speaker 2: ready for that. So by the nineteen sixties the mid sixties,
Speaker 2: the anti war movement has started to pick up serious
Speaker 2: steam and Lyddy is horrified by this. Young people, as
Speaker 2: he writes, were quote eroding the national will and respect
Speaker 2: for authority. They were sinking into a nether world of
Speaker 2: drug culture. Also, you want to hear G. Gordon Liddy's
Speaker 2: take on the civil rights movement Andrew, Oh, I'm sure
Speaker 2: it's very measured. Yes, solid, it's gonna be good. Valid
Speaker 2: demands by blacks for civil rights were often resisted violently
Speaker 2: by whites, and in response, many blacks were adopting violence
Speaker 2: as an offensive rather than defensive tactic. This is his
Speaker 2: you know, that's not all wrong, and that like, well,
Speaker 2: the fact that they were getting murdered led to like
Speaker 2: embrace of more radical use. I still would call that
Speaker 2: defensive violence, right.
Speaker 3: I will admit that was much more measured that I
Speaker 3: thought it was going to be.
Speaker 2: He is his racism is never like straight up like
Speaker 2: he's never going to be the guy who says, I think,
Speaker 2: you know, we should go back to slavery, or I
Speaker 2: don't think these people Like he's always going to be
Speaker 2: the guy who his racism is more obvious and like
Speaker 2: the only ways he ever talks about black people right right,
Speaker 2: where like any time he deals with a violent criminal,
Speaker 2: he's going to let you know that it's a black man,
Speaker 2: right like, like that's that's how that's that's where you
Speaker 2: kind of catch it here right now. Given his anger
Speaker 2: at the way things are going in the United States,
Speaker 2: Lyddy has come to feel that his only option is
Speaker 2: to get a job at the District Attorney's office in Poughkeepsie,
Speaker 2: New York in nineteen sixty six. And I hate typing
Speaker 2: the word Poughkeepsie, so I'm very unhappy that this is
Speaker 2: such a part of the story. But he points out
Speaker 2: that like part of what he moves there is it's
Speaker 2: his wife's hometown, right, So he goes there and he
Speaker 2: becomes He describes himself as like an unorthodox but dedicated
Speaker 2: law man, respected by the local police and liked by
Speaker 2: the judges. And that is, to at least some extint true.
Speaker 2: A New York Times reporter who visited in nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: three and asked a round about Liddy got this description
Speaker 2: of him. Lyddy led an unusual, even bizarre life. He
Speaker 2: liked to drive around town in a jeep, He cared
Speaker 2: a revolver at all times, even when prosecuting a case,
Speaker 2: and seemed to enjoy the kidding by the sheriff's deputies
Speaker 2: who would outdraw him. He would spend his off hours
Speaker 2: cruising the city with policemen. He's like always hanging out
Speaker 2: with them, and shit, not for because it's his job,
Speaker 2: just because he thinks it's fun. Oh my god, what
Speaker 2: a freak.
Speaker 3: I love the mental image of a fucking Poughkeepsie PD
Speaker 3: and G.
Speaker 2: Gordon Liddy drawing their guns at each other. Yeah, yeah, wonderrect.
Speaker 2: I also loved that little mention that like, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: he wasn't very good at it, right, like he always lost,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'm genuinely surprised he didn't accidentally shoot someone
Speaker 3: in that moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't. One hundred percent. No he didn't. You know,
Speaker 2: that's true. That's the Yeah. So that article also provides
Speaker 2: us with an amusing summary of some of Liddy's greatest
Speaker 2: hits in the courtroom. Lyddy's courtroom activities as prosecutor were
Speaker 2: occasionally a bit unsettling. On one occasion, he waved a
Speaker 2: knife under the noses of startled jurors, later overturned on
Speaker 2: the basis of that stunt and opposing lawyer procalled. And
Speaker 2: another time he smashed a piece of wood over the
Speaker 2: jury rail while prosecuting an assault case involving the use
Speaker 2: of the plank. Lyddy paid for the repair to the
Speaker 2: jury rail. God, I love that. Yeah, he loses a
Speaker 2: case because he pulls a knife on the jury. What
Speaker 2: a clown. So funny, It's so funny.
Speaker 3: Yeah, here's here's the thing I was gonna say about him,
Speaker 3: that is, I realized I'm just trying to parse the difference,
Speaker 3: which is he has humongous like middle school knife catalog
Speaker 3: guy energy.
Speaker 2: This guy, this guy like g Gordon Liddy, never was
Speaker 2: seen without a Budka catalog.
Speaker 3: Right, absolutely, But I will just throw this out there,
Speaker 3: at least of the people I am friendly with, you
Speaker 3: might be the person who's closest in my sphere to
Speaker 3: knife catalog and middle school guy. So that's why I
Speaker 3: was trying to parse the difference between you and recordedly.
Speaker 3: And I think it might just be not being a
Speaker 3: huge dork.
Speaker 2: But you know what I'm saying, I'm a huge dork
Speaker 2: and I own way way more knives than are strictly
Speaker 2: necessary for any of my purposes. I think one of
Speaker 2: the big differences is that I've never lost a court
Speaker 2: case because I pulled a knife on the Jerry. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 2: my knives are more like, you know, used for processing
Speaker 2: animals and stuff, like, I mean roadkill with my knives. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, it's like, I guess it's competence or something.
Speaker 2: I can't mild competence, right, That's all it takes. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's the difference, I guess and not being a Nazi.
Speaker 2: Not being a Nazi, yeah, not using them to threaten
Speaker 2: people for no good reason. There's a lot of a
Speaker 2: lot of things, right, that you can do to not
Speaker 2: be like G. Gordon Liddy. You know, I also have
Speaker 2: read books about the SS that are not like strictly
Speaker 2: historically accurate, largely because I needed to understand aspects of
Speaker 2: like the growth of the fascist movement among you as
Speaker 2: soldiers in the early parts of the global War on terror. Right. So,
Speaker 2: one of the most influent infamous stories about G. Gordon
Speaker 2: Liddy is that during one of his court cases, he
Speaker 2: drew and fired his revolver in court in order to
Speaker 2: like make a point. This you'll hear this summarized, like, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he fired a loaded handgun in a courtroom in order
Speaker 2: to like make an art, like emphasize an argument the
Speaker 2: court case. And it didn't quite go down that way, right.
Speaker 2: So the court case that he's involved in, he's prosecuting
Speaker 2: a dude whose defense claimed that the revolver he'd been
Speaker 2: accused of using by the police was inoperable. So he
Speaker 2: couldn't have fired it because it didn't work. So Lyddy
Speaker 2: wanted to prove that it did work, and in order
Speaker 2: to do that, he loaded it with blanks, and he
Speaker 2: fired it during the climax of his argument.
Speaker 1: This.
Speaker 2: You know, the judge was startled by this, But like,
Speaker 2: it doesn't seem to have been an ineffective tactic, right,
Speaker 2: Like it's a little showmanship, but he's not actually just
Speaker 2: like firing a normal right right, Like he's shooting a blank.
Speaker 2: It is kind of it is technically relevant to the case,
Speaker 2: So there you go. I think if he was a
Speaker 2: different guy who had not gotten in trouble for committing
Speaker 2: a series of crimes, this would be like, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: look at it, he's like this, you know, this would
Speaker 2: be kind of celebrated, right, I do think this is
Speaker 2: the kind of thing that would be celebrated if he
Speaker 2: was a normal dude, right.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, just don't be a freak and you can
Speaker 3: get to do your idiosyncratic things.
Speaker 2: Yeah we all like a weirdo, right, Yeah, you just
Speaker 2: went too far to Gordon Lyddy. In general, he was
Speaker 2: seen as an eccentric but decent lawyer, one of the
Speaker 2: defense lawyers who worked opposite of Litty told The Times
Speaker 2: later he was fun in court. You could ridicule him
Speaker 2: in front of the jury, and he never carried a
Speaker 2: grin outside the courtroom. He also worked hard, prepared his
Speaker 2: case as well, and presented them with a lot of ego.
Speaker 2: He just didn't seem to have the anxieties, fear, insecurities
Speaker 2: and uncertainties that the rest of us have. It was
Speaker 2: hard to visualize him sweating.
Speaker 3: That's such an interesting thing I up to this point,
Speaker 3: it's actually really hard to not visualize him in anything
Speaker 3: but flop sweat constantly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he seems to I think you know. There's again,
Speaker 2: there's two TV shows that recently came out, both of
Speaker 2: which have g Gordon Lyddie as a character. There's the
Speaker 2: one that has one of the one show that starred
Speaker 2: Justin Throw playing him, and then I get the actor
Speaker 2: for the other show that features him. But like one
Speaker 2: of them shows him as flipping out and screaming and
Speaker 2: like physically threatening people in a kind of unhinged way
Speaker 2: on a number of occasions. And one of them shows
Speaker 2: him as like this this very like emotionally cool, calm,
Speaker 2: like idiot maniac, right, who is like like constantly is
Speaker 2: always in this sort of and I think that that's
Speaker 2: the justin throw version. I think that's closer to how
Speaker 2: Liddy actually behaved. Right. I do think he he is
Speaker 2: very good at maintaining this like pool outside look right
Speaker 2: to other people generally speaking, even though he is it
Speaker 2: is very obvious a lot of the time that he's
Speaker 2: in over his head and incompetent, like he's always he
Speaker 2: always has this sense of confidence about him. Right. The
Speaker 2: most noteworthy moment of Lyddy's time and how Kipsie was
Speaker 2: his run in with doctor Timothy Leary during a raid.
Speaker 2: And these two guys are really tied together. There's they
Speaker 2: will they will wind up touring the country doing a
Speaker 2: floor show together. Yeah, cam Lee here, And like Timothy
Speaker 2: Leary is kind of a left wing version of g
Speaker 2: Gordon Liddy. A lot of what Leary says and gets
Speaker 2: famous for is bullshit. He is a significant like Fabuloust, right,
Speaker 2: he is a little bit of a con man, you know,
Speaker 2: but he's also at the core of him he believes
Speaker 2: some things very genuine as an and is extremely committed
Speaker 2: to those things. And obviously those are better because he's
Speaker 2: not a Nazi, right, so, but he is you do
Speaker 2: kind of get an element of like Leary's fundamental, like
Speaker 2: the fact that he's willing to tour around with Leary,
Speaker 2: this unrepentant fascist after both of them have gotten out
Speaker 2: of prison, says a lot about tim Leary. But their
Speaker 2: first run in is so there's this raid in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty six on tim Leary's the place that he's living
Speaker 2: at the time that a lot of people consider like
Speaker 2: the inciting incident of the acid era. Right, Like this
Speaker 2: is the if you're making a movie, right, if you
Speaker 2: decided to do a mini series about like the birth
Speaker 2: of the psychedelic drug movement of acid of like a
Speaker 2: lot of the things we consider core to like the
Speaker 2: hippie movement, you started at this raid in nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 2: right tim Leary. And the background of this is that
Speaker 2: like Tim Leary and a bunch of he was, you know,
Speaker 2: a professor at I think it was Harvard. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 2: I'm wrong about I think it was Harvard, and he
Speaker 2: like becomes a way of LSD. He starts taking it,
Speaker 2: he starts doing studies with it. This is during a
Speaker 2: period where it's legal, right, it gets illegal eventually, which
Speaker 2: is why some other stuff happens. But after he gets
Speaker 2: kind of like pushed out at his college and is
Speaker 2: no longer working there, he and a bunch of his
Speaker 2: associates move into a mansion in Millbrook, New York. And
Speaker 2: this mansion has bought. There's this like rich kid stockbroker
Speaker 2: who like continues to make a lot of money doing stockshit,
Speaker 2: Like he's never interested in anything but getting better at
Speaker 2: being a stockbroker. But he loves acid, right, so he's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you can. I bought this mansion. You can all move
Speaker 2: in here and do your drug experiments in my mansion.
Speaker 2: Remember when the rich used to be cool? This guy
Speaker 2: does sound as cool as a stockbroker could be. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: It's interesting. Leary's always kind of like baffled at the
Speaker 2: fact that, like this guy is so on board with
Speaker 2: the movement but also very comfortable and happy being like
Speaker 2: absolutely a part of the establishment. Like yeah, being this
Speaker 2: like soulless business guy. So this the leer in between
Speaker 2: thirty and sixty at any given point. Hippie dropout types
Speaker 2: live in this mansion and do hella drugs, right, mostly
Speaker 2: acid and wheat. From what we can tell, I assume
Speaker 2: there's other stuff that gets thrown into the mix. So
Speaker 2: this is all well and good, except for Millbrook is
Speaker 2: kind of a small town. I think it's a little
Speaker 2: more affluent than your average small town. You know. It's
Speaker 2: in upstate New York. And the citizens of Millbrook are like,
Speaker 2: once they realize this famous drug wizard is living in
Speaker 2: their town, they're like, well, we're not really thrilled about this.
Speaker 2: We don't want Tim Leary living here with a bunch
Speaker 2: of hippies, you know. And he's he is kind of
Speaker 2: he is by this point already gotten this reputation is
Speaker 2: like the devil to a lot of conservatives, right, he
Speaker 2: is the absolute worst person on earth. He's corrupting the youth.
Speaker 2: And so because he's got this, you know, reputation of
Speaker 2: spreading the gospel of acid, action is demanded by the
Speaker 2: citizens of Millbrook, And since g. Gordon Lyddiy is at
Speaker 2: this point a well known anti drug crusader, he winds
Speaker 2: up helping to organize the raid on Millbrook.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: He's there during it, theoretically in order to ensure that
Speaker 2: proper legal procedure is followed, right, because he works in
Speaker 2: the DA's office. So the most notable part of this
Speaker 2: story is that when the police bust into the mansion
Speaker 2: late at night after Leary and his like cohorts have
Speaker 2: gone to bed, Leary is like wearing a shirt and nothing.
Speaker 2: He's shirt cocking it right, like his disk just swinging
Speaker 2: in the breeze. And well, all there's this whole argument
Speaker 2: over like is this raid legal? What are they doing?
Speaker 2: Like where you know? Well, while this is all going on,
Speaker 2: and it seems to go on for quite some time,
Speaker 2: Leary repeated that, like the cops are constantly like, hey man,
Speaker 2: would you put on some pants? Hey man? Like and Leary,
Speaker 2: this is one thing I will give him. I love
Speaker 2: this about him. He's like absolutely not, Like you are
Speaker 2: in my home. I will have my dick out if
Speaker 2: I want to, just repeatedly refuses to not have his
Speaker 2: wig hanging out, which is honorable, I think. Yeah. It's
Speaker 2: also worth noting that Lyddy, who volunteers, he's not asked,
Speaker 2: like the only thing he's needed therefore is to make
Speaker 2: sure that like legal procedure, But he volunteers to help
Speaker 2: the cops survey the hippies beforehand for no reason and
Speaker 2: nearly blows the whole op as a result of this,
Speaker 2: because he's bad at everything. Quote, and this is from
Speaker 2: the New York Times. It seems that Lyddy and some
Speaker 2: policemen complete with binoculars and walkie talkie, were staked out
Speaker 2: in the bushes of the estate when a young woman
Speaker 2: stepped completely nude from one of the tints on the grounds.
Speaker 2: A lot of funny things were going on at that place,
Speaker 2: a deputy explained. Anyway, they became so preoccupied with this
Speaker 2: girl that they gave their height out away and blew
Speaker 2: the whole bit. They nearly exposed the whole operation because
Speaker 2: like he and these cops can't stop oggling this naked woman.
Speaker 3: It was like Porkys for Nazis. It's all Nazis, I know,
Speaker 3: but come on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what else is like Porky's the sponsors
Speaker 2: of this podcast. We are in fact sponsored by the
Speaker 2: movie Porky's. Yeah, the bar, the establishment, the establishment, all
Speaker 2: of those things. If it's called Porky's, we are legally
Speaker 2: responsible for it. Uh, we are b a Q. That's
Speaker 2: how you spill back, that's anyway. So Lyddy spends three years,
Speaker 2: i think, working for the DA's office in Poughkeepsie before
Speaker 2: he decides that it's time to take a more active
Speaker 2: role trying to wrench the ship of state away from
Speaker 2: degeneracy and leftism. And the way he's going to do
Speaker 2: this is by running for Congress. That's how he describes it, right,
Speaker 2: that after a couple of years, he's like, I'm just
Speaker 2: not doing enough to fight against this, So I've got
Speaker 2: to get into politics in order to like, really really,
Speaker 2: you know, make a difference here. That's how he describes it.
Speaker 2: The Times has a different story. They note that late
Speaker 2: in his run for the DA's office, a local resident
Speaker 2: had complained about Liddy's actions in a narcotics case, and
Speaker 2: that like that wound up becoming an official complaint to
Speaker 2: the State Commission of Investigation. The case gets dropped for
Speaker 2: lack of evidence, but this quote from that lawyer, mister Tepper,
Speaker 2: who he had worked against Liddy, gives us an idea
Speaker 2: of how he kind of might have gotten forced out,
Speaker 2: Like he may have run for office because it was
Speaker 2: he was almost known to him, there's not going to
Speaker 2: be a space for you here forever. Quite right, he
Speaker 2: was always expecting the big narcotics bust, mister Tepper said.
Speaker 2: Gordon kept pushing pushing all the time. He probably bent
Speaker 2: the rules a bit now and then to collect evidence,
Speaker 2: but I can't recall anything specific now. His autobiography makes
Speaker 2: no mention of this, but we do know there were
Speaker 2: complaints against him, and we do you get the feeling that, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe he was kind of pushed out to an extent
Speaker 2: here at least there was some like he had the feeling,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to always have a role here, right
Speaker 2: right right. So Lyddy now thirty eight, decides he's going
Speaker 2: to challenge the leading Republican candidate in New York's twenty
Speaker 2: eighth congressional district, the relative of one of our former guests,
Speaker 2: Maggie Mayfish, Hamilton Fish Junior. So these guys are related
Speaker 2: to that serial killer and the political dynasty, the Fishes. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so that's cool anyway. Hamilton Fish Junior is kind of
Speaker 2: like an establishment Republican, right He's He's probably someone who
Speaker 2: would like was closer to the Dims than like a
Speaker 2: dude like g. Gordon Liddy. And so Lyddy is kind
Speaker 2: of running against him on a very extreme right wing platform.
Speaker 2: His campaign had three planks, taxes which were too high, crime,
Speaker 2: and Vietnam right on crime, Lyddy presaged much modern right
Speaker 2: wing discourse when he said, God help us if the
Speaker 2: thin blue line of protection crumbles. He's a thin blue
Speaker 2: line guyon it is funny, like all of the thin
Speaker 2: blue lionist guys wind up in prison for committed crimes. Yeah,
Speaker 2: do love how consistent that is. Meanwhile, on Vietnam, he
Speaker 2: was clear that he supported US commitment to the war
Speaker 2: effort quote, but not our conduct of the war. And
Speaker 2: whenever you hear that, what that means is he thought
Speaker 2: that we hadn't committed quite enough war crimes. Right, if
Speaker 2: we'd massacred another couple of million people, we would have
Speaker 2: won it. Yeah, Like that's how I was taking. We
Speaker 2: needed more SS guys out in the jungle. Uh, so
Speaker 2: give it. Yeah, Yeah, it's very funny. He would have liked.
Speaker 2: If he had gotten any chance to weigh in, he
Speaker 2: would have pulled out that fiction book about the SS
Speaker 2: and slammed it on the table. So Lyddy lost badly
Speaker 2: and eventually was forced to drop out and Backfish in
Speaker 2: order to have a future in the Republican Party. His
Speaker 2: supporters called him a sellout, but he got a job
Speaker 2: running the Dutchess County Nixon campaign. One law you're interviewed
Speaker 2: by The Times called it a deal. Right, So basically, look, man,
Speaker 2: stop making trouble for this guy who is Yeah, he's
Speaker 2: not far right like you, but you know he can
Speaker 2: win unlike you because you're a maniac. And if you,
Speaker 2: if you play ball, you'll get a job running the
Speaker 2: Nixon campaign in this other county. And he says, yes,
Speaker 2: you know, he is always a team player, right. That
Speaker 2: is you got to give Liddy. He's gonna get you
Speaker 2: in trouble because he's a maniac. But like he will
Speaker 2: do what he thinks is best for the party, even
Speaker 2: if it's not what's best for him. Like that's kind
Speaker 2: of what he's famous for. So he's a toady. He's
Speaker 2: an ambitions Yeah, he is a hinchman. Right, he's got
Speaker 2: a hinch ye. So Lyddy is an adequate performer in
Speaker 2: this role. Nixon was more impressed by his loyalty and
Speaker 2: his willingness to take a personal hit to his pride
Speaker 2: for the team than anything else. Right, this is the thing,
Speaker 2: Dick Nixon is a guy who respects loyalty to him, right,
Speaker 2: and that's what he sees from Lyddy and so you know,
Speaker 2: it becomes it kind of like gets through the grape vine,
Speaker 2: like all right, he's somebody that we can trust in
Speaker 2: the Nixon White House. And as a reward, when Dick
Speaker 2: Nixon wins office, Ge Gordon Lyddy is given a position
Speaker 2: as Special Assistant for Organized Crime to the Secretary of Treasury, right,
Speaker 2: which is this is kind of a dream gig for him.
Speaker 2: He loves the idea of being like a drug warrior,
Speaker 2: of like being you know, fighting the gangsters and stuff.
Speaker 2: And he, you know, he sees this and I think
Speaker 2: it probably was there was this idea, well maybe this
Speaker 2: guy's got a future. Maybe one day this guy could
Speaker 2: even have a cabinet position. So let's try him out,
Speaker 2: you know, at a lower level, see how he works.
Speaker 2: Lyddy instantly proves himself to be the kind of guy
Speaker 2: that cannot be trusted with power he developed. He gets
Speaker 2: in a lot of trouble very quickly at the Department
Speaker 2: of Treasury because he keeps trying to set policy right
Speaker 2: on his own, the sort of apropos without any backing,
Speaker 2: like saying, this is our stance on guns. We won't
Speaker 2: pursue these kind of gun control laws. He will give
Speaker 2: like all these speeches at like gun control lobby events
Speaker 2: saying that Department of Treasury will never do this, and
Speaker 2: then his boss will be like, the fuck are you talking?
Speaker 2: Like you never cleared this with anybody, Like you're not
Speaker 2: supposed to be saying these things. He was also bad
Speaker 2: at being a drug warrior right now. Because he had
Speaker 2: experience as an FBI agent, he was asked to help
Speaker 2: organize an effort to reduce drug smuggling across the Mexican border,
Speaker 2: Operation Intercept. The goal of this plan was to punish
Speaker 2: the Mexican government for refusing to allow US air power
Speaker 2: into their country to spread poison on crops. The response,
Speaker 2: Operation Intercept is to punish Mexico by shutting down the
Speaker 2: border with legal gridlock. The idea is you have the
Speaker 2: police question and search every single person who comes in
Speaker 2: from Mexico, right, which is includes Americans and absolutely this
Speaker 2: is a busy reason. There's a lot of region, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of business that comes through in here, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of tourism. It just shatters the way the
Speaker 2: region functions, right. It's a calamity for all of these
Speaker 2: The US side of the border too. Right. It fucks
Speaker 2: up the local economy, It does a lot of damage,
Speaker 2: and it's there's no like, nothing but chaos. As the result,
Speaker 2: The New York Times summarizes border communities were disrupted by
Speaker 2: lengthy searches. Traffic across the frontier was halted for hours,
Speaker 2: tourism suffered. Liddy sought to justify the confusion with patriotic
Speaker 2: speeches in the local communities. He was dismissed as a
Speaker 2: Treasury man in nineteen seventy one. Now, for his part,
Speaker 2: Liddy describes Intercept as having been a success. Right. The
Speaker 2: people who thought it was a failure just didn't understand
Speaker 2: the goal, which was to fuck up life for everyone
Speaker 2: on the border. Right. His idea was like, well, look, yeah,
Speaker 2: it fucked up everything for Americans, but it fucked them
Speaker 2: up worse for Mexicans, and they the Mexican government could
Speaker 2: handle the disruption less well.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: And this is this is his defense of Operation Recept.
Speaker 2: It was an exercise in international extortion, peer simple and effective,
Speaker 2: designed to bend Mexico to our will. Now, Lyddy claims
Speaker 2: this is a big win and that he was only
Speaker 2: fired right after by the Treasury Department because he made
Speaker 2: too many good recommendations to his boss. Yeah, ross a days,
Speaker 2: which is like, it's very funny because so number one
Speaker 2: Operation Intercept. I guess you can debate, you know, like
Speaker 2: there's there's there's definitely like an argument to be made
Speaker 2: that like, well, yeah, you can some of their goals
Speaker 2: were achieved by creating this much chaos. But like the
Speaker 2: Treasury Department considers it kind of a disaster at the
Speaker 2: time because of all of the complaints that it generates,
Speaker 2: because of how much it pisses people off. So I
Speaker 2: don't think it was considered that by anyone but Lyddy.
Speaker 3: Really.
Speaker 2: The other thing is that, like he he cites in
Speaker 2: his book, you know, his boss being jealous of him
Speaker 2: because every time they would argue, Lyddy was right right,
Speaker 2: you know, he was just he made too many good
Speaker 2: calls and it was really pissing off his boss embarrassed him.
Speaker 2: One of the good decisions we'll go into one of these.
Speaker 2: One of the good decisions that Liddy cites as like
Speaker 2: the thing that drove his boss crazy was the Customs
Speaker 2: Division Department is like trying to figure out how to
Speaker 2: arm air marshals at this point because there's a lot
Speaker 2: we talked about in are like episodes on the Golden
Speaker 2: Age of terrorism, a lot of planes getting hijacked at
Speaker 2: this period, late sixties or early seventies. This is the
Speaker 2: golden age of hijacking a plane to nothing, to hijack
Speaker 2: a commercial aircraft in this period, And so we're starting
Speaker 2: to put air marshals on planes, and we're you know,
Speaker 2: it's a when you're considering what firearm to give a
Speaker 2: man who would be expected to shoot it in a plane,
Speaker 2: that's a complicated thing to decide. That's a lot more
Speaker 2: a lot more difficult than just deciding, like what's the
Speaker 2: best gun to give a cop right where it's like, yeah, no,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of like a lot of very complex
Speaker 2: engineering questions about like and today, by the way, our
Speaker 2: air marshals are armed with firearms that have very specific
Speaker 2: kinds of bullets that are made to function in a
Speaker 2: certain way on planes to minimize dangers of depressurization, over penetration,
Speaker 2: all that kind of stuff. So they're trying to decide
Speaker 2: what's the best thing weapon to arm these guys with,
Speaker 2: and Lyddy is like, you should give them three fifty
Speaker 2: seven magnum fire arms loaded with hollow point. Now he
Speaker 2: picks there's not actually a good reason why it should
Speaker 2: be a three fifty seven over like a nine millimeter.
Speaker 2: Lyddy just loves revolvers, and he loves the three fifty
Speaker 2: seven cartridge because it's the quote unquote most powerful gun
Speaker 2: in the world. It's the only reason he picks the
Speaker 2: three fifty seven. Now, he is right that hollow points
Speaker 2: are a better choice than full metal jacket, and the
Speaker 2: reason for this is that hollow points are less likely
Speaker 2: to overpenetrate. Right, The point purpose of a hollow point
Speaker 2: is that it expands more when it hits meat. Right,
Speaker 2: It expands when it hits meat, and that transfers more
Speaker 2: force from the bullet into the body of whoever you've hit,
Speaker 2: so it's less likely to go through them and then
Speaker 2: through something critical on the plane. Right, That is accurate.
Speaker 2: Lyddy claims that there's like this big debate, you know,
Speaker 2: over it, and nobody believes him all by that just
Speaker 2: because it's actually weirdly it's if you study the history
Speaker 2: of how people learned about how bullets function, it takes
Speaker 2: a weirdly long time to figure out anything about bullets.
Speaker 2: So I'll give him. That may have been the case.
Speaker 2: But the evidence that he cites to make this case,
Speaker 2: if he was actually making this argument, you know, as
Speaker 2: opposed to everyone being like obviously, hollow points are less
Speaker 2: likely to over pendray if he is not lying about that,
Speaker 2: the evidence that he cites in his book is how
Speaker 2: he made the case about hollow points being of interput.
Speaker 2: It's nuts, it's and I'll give you one. I'll give
Speaker 2: you one quote like guess as to how it's nuts.
Speaker 2: Andrew to the fire, got on a plane. No, no, no,
Speaker 2: but he brings up the Nazis again, comes into it again.
Speaker 2: That's his other move. His other move. He either shot
Speaker 2: a gun or brought up the SS right quote. Here's
Speaker 2: Lyddy making the case for why air marshals should carry
Speaker 2: hollow points. I cited Nazi experiments using live Jews that
Speaker 2: determined one seven point nine millimeter balls solid bullet from
Speaker 2: a Mauser rifle could pass through in gillup to sixteen
Speaker 2: humans lined up in a row and solid point round
Speaker 2: through the fuselage wouldn't result in compressive decompression of the aircraft.
Speaker 2: It might well sever a vital control cable. Now that's
Speaker 2: fucking nuts number one, completely irrelevant, right he is We
Speaker 2: are talking about a handgun and he is talking about
Speaker 2: the penetration of a write right, right, Totally different different
Speaker 2: planets in every way ballistically a rifle down versus a
Speaker 2: handgun round. It is not relevant in any way to
Speaker 2: be like, you know, when the Nazis shot lined up
Speaker 2: Jews in the end, they were able to kill sixteen
Speaker 2: people with a single that has nothing to do with
Speaker 2: the question. G Gordon Lyddy, that's a crazy thing to
Speaker 2: bring up here.
Speaker 3: You gotta stop, you know, lists like you're bringing it
Speaker 3: up so many times. It's really Yeah, did have any
Speaker 3: other sources?
Speaker 2: That is not that does not make any point that's
Speaker 2: relevant to what you're trying to argue here. Yeah, you
Speaker 2: just wanted to talk about the SS killing Jewish people.
Speaker 2: That's literally the only reason you said this.
Speaker 3: You just imagine like Nickxon being like, anyone have any
Speaker 3: thoughts his hand is like, not Nazi thoughts.
Speaker 2: Thoughts that do not involve the SS. Fucking yeah, just
Speaker 2: just a maniac. So Lyddy claims his recommendation is adopted,
Speaker 2: and even in his recitation of events, the fact that
Speaker 2: his recommendation is adopted is a disaster, right, because the
Speaker 2: bureau Nickel plates all of their guns in order to
Speaker 2: make sure that they're less vulnerable to like you know,
Speaker 2: the the air and like see like saltwater, you know,
Speaker 2: heavy places, right, And because of this, it like fucks
Speaker 2: up the chambering of the round and all of the
Speaker 2: guns have to be returned to the factory. Lyddy presumably
Speaker 2: knew they were going to do this, but didn't think
Speaker 2: to check on if it would matter, because he just
Speaker 2: loves revolvers so much. Like again, even in his recitation
Speaker 2: of events, to make himself look good, he gives them
Speaker 2: advice on what kind of gun and round to use,
Speaker 2: and it is such a disaster that they have to
Speaker 2: recall all of the firearms. Like that's the best that
Speaker 2: this goes for him? Is he's completely wrong, Oh my god.
Speaker 2: And it's like the thing he loves the most. He's
Speaker 2: come on very funny. Oh my god, so bizarre. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I think that's gonna that's gonna close us out on
Speaker 2: episode three of the g Gordon Liddy Story, How are
Speaker 2: you feeling, Andrew?
Speaker 3: This is I should have said probably before we even
Speaker 3: started this.
Speaker 2: I'm not a person that knows like a ton of
Speaker 2: a Watergate at all. So this is all wonderful. Next episode,
Speaker 2: we're really gonna get into it, right, Yeah, but we've
Speaker 2: we've had We've had to go through a lot to
Speaker 2: set up why Liddy's even there. And I bet you're wondering,
Speaker 2: if you're a normal person, I bet you're wondering, like,
Speaker 2: how the fuck did anyone trust him doing Watergate ship?
Speaker 2: Given this guy's background, A solid question, how did he
Speaker 2: get that job?
Speaker 3: I mean, you see the modern version of this in
Speaker 3: Trump or the like, you kind of like the reason
Speaker 3: he gets it is because he's willing to do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that is that is You have
Speaker 2: anticipated where this very well, very well.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: But yeah, anyway, Andrew, you get anything to plug just
Speaker 2: you know, still do the podcast, Jos this racist.
Speaker 3: I am a writer on strike, So if anyone is
Speaker 3: wanting to support us, hopefully, I guess there's a chance
Speaker 3: I'm not a writer on strike as you're listening to this,
Speaker 3: but likely.
Speaker 2: I will still be.
Speaker 3: And even if I'm not still on strike, the overwhelming
Speaker 3: possibility is going to be SAG will still be on strike.
Speaker 3: The as Green As Guild, So the Entertainment Community Fund
Speaker 3: please if you can and are able to send money
Speaker 3: to that. You know, it's the only way a lot
Speaker 3: of people are getting through. Not the only way, but
Speaker 3: it's one very helpful way that a lot of people
Speaker 3: are getting through this labor action that you know, there
Speaker 3: the studios are trying to extract as much pain as.
Speaker 2: Possible, and you know, why not not let them? Yeah,
Speaker 2: why not not let them? And if you want to
Speaker 2: extract pain, you know how to figure that out yourself.
Speaker 2: You know, find a way to take pain out of
Speaker 2: the world and ideally bottle it in such a fashion
Speaker 2: that you can then sell it back to somebody else. Right.
Speaker 2: That's capitalism, baby, Yeah, that's how it all works.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is what we sell the other people's paid
Speaker 3: or our own pain.
Speaker 2: I don't remember. Yeah, anyway, Go to Hell.
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia
Speaker 1: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast