Speaker 1: Welcome back, fellow conspiracy realist. We returned to you with
Speaker 1: a classic that we think you'll enjoy. As you know,
Speaker 1: we have talked at length about the big fantasy job
Speaker 1: in the government. Who gets to choose the names for
Speaker 1: secret operations? Right? Who gets to make the acronyms or retrodyms?
Speaker 1: What is Operation Chaos? It was that thing in fight Club, right,
Speaker 1: wasn't Wasn't that called Operation Chaos?
Speaker 2: Wasn't.
Speaker 1: I think it was where they destroy like, you know,
Speaker 1: public works of corporate art. Huh, mayhem, Project Mayhem. This
Speaker 1: is Operation Chaos, not yes, Project Mayhem. Yeah, they also
Speaker 1: ran No.
Speaker 3: I think this is more proxy war stuff.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, yeah, So this is a true story, real conspiracy.
Speaker 1: During the Vietnam War, Uncle Sam was desperate to UH
Speaker 1: to clamp down on domestic opposition to the war effort
Speaker 1: protest in the streets, people saying, you know, why can
Speaker 1: we commit atrocity an ocean away? But we can't make
Speaker 1: sure people who live here have any kind of quality
Speaker 1: of life? And their solution was not to improve the
Speaker 1: domestic quality of life for Americans. It was Operation Chaos.
Speaker 2: Let's dive right from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies.
Speaker 2: History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back
Speaker 2: now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We are joined, of course with
Speaker 1: our super producer Paul Deckatt on the ones and twos.
Speaker 1: Most importantly, you are here. You are you, and that
Speaker 1: makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3: That's what this is. Brand new logo rocking feeling good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. We have the six finger logo designed
Speaker 1: by the way, by our super producer, Paul Paul nice work, sir,
Speaker 1: with a consultation from our graphic artist team.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Pam, Yeah, we can say your name. It's okay,
Speaker 3: Pam is awesome, Pam Peacock.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And we have a situation here wherein it may
Speaker 1: be deceptively easy to think that there are only three
Speaker 1: or four people involved in stuff they don't want you
Speaker 1: to know. That could not be further from the truth,
Speaker 1: because this podcast, like many many other things in the world,
Speaker 1: has an entire team behind the curtain actively working to
Speaker 1: make stuff like this sound easy. I think we have
Speaker 1: the easiest jobs on the team, to be honest.
Speaker 3: Sure, absolutely, we just get in here and ramble. Man,
Speaker 3: That's what I do. You do the hard stuff? I
Speaker 3: just go well, Ben, guess what what? Oh?
Speaker 1: I fell for it?
Speaker 3: See there you go?
Speaker 1: No, no, no no. But the reason we're bringing up
Speaker 1: this idea of a team that often is not acknowledged
Speaker 1: is because today's episode dives into something that could easily
Speaker 1: be seen as the actions of just a few isolated people.
Speaker 3: Absolutely maybe just fifty two of.
Speaker 1: Them, perhaps as few as fifty two. But as we're
Speaker 1: going to find, just like this podcast, today's topic has many, many, many,
Speaker 1: many more people in play, some of whom remain mysterious
Speaker 1: and unidentified today. If you're listening to this show, then
Speaker 1: you probably won't be surprised. Matt and I are going
Speaker 1: to go out on a limb and assume you will
Speaker 1: not be surprised to learn that most governments, at one
Speaker 1: point or another, love them or hate them, have perpetrated secret,
Speaker 1: illegal programs against either their citizens or citizens of another country.
Speaker 1: And since our show is based in the US, we
Speaker 1: naturally tend to explore stories based in this country. This
Speaker 1: one is no exception, but it's one you may not
Speaker 1: have heard of before. Today we're exploring a classified program
Speaker 1: known as Operation Chaos.
Speaker 3: Yes, and to discuss this program, we need to take
Speaker 3: ourselves back to nineteen fifty four onwards just a little
Speaker 3: bit there, to the Second Indo China War. You probably
Speaker 3: don't know it as that. You probably know it as
Speaker 3: the Vietnam War. I know. That's how I was a
Speaker 3: little while ago. It was a conflict between North and
Speaker 3: South Vietnam, which were two separate countries at the time,
Speaker 3: and it lasted from nineteen fifty four until nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 3: Now this is distilling it like crazy, but this is
Speaker 3: just to say what it is. And you probably already
Speaker 3: know this. North Vietnam was a communist government. It was
Speaker 3: run by a communist government, and they worked with these
Speaker 3: rebels in South Vietnam who were called the Viet Cong,
Speaker 3: and together they attempted to overthrow the government of South Vietnam.
Speaker 3: And this was a terrible, terrible conflict that cost the
Speaker 3: lives of so many and we'll discuss that here shortly,
Speaker 3: but ultimately the physical combat took place in both South
Speaker 3: Vietnam and North Vietnam. Laos and Cambodia, which are immediately
Speaker 3: to the west of the Vietnam. Of Vietnam. That's right there,
Speaker 3: and I guess spoiler alert. Ultimately the North Vietnamese were
Speaker 3: successful in their attempts to overthrow the South Vietnamese government.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and along the way the US got involved.
Speaker 1: You may have heard us reference earlier instances surrounding the
Speaker 1: catalyst that set the US on a path to war
Speaker 1: in this part of the world, the most controversial one
Speaker 1: being the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Yes, which did we
Speaker 1: do a whole episode on that yet or did we
Speaker 1: just do false Flags?
Speaker 3: We did false Flags where we discussed it at length,
Speaker 3: but you know, maybe we could go deeper. Who knows?
Speaker 1: Who knows? Check out the False Flags episode if you
Speaker 1: have yet to do so. There's some pretty interesting stuff there.
Speaker 1: For now, we're going to explore the not the entire
Speaker 1: Vietnam War, because this is the setup right to Operation Chaos.
Speaker 1: We're going to look at the people the US sent
Speaker 1: to wage this war. The Vietnam War, as it's called
Speaker 1: in the US, used a conscription system, a draft, and
Speaker 1: that is something that hasn't occurred since. Roughly two point
Speaker 1: seven million US soldiers served in Vietnam, and of those
Speaker 1: two point seven million, around twenty five percent were draftees,
Speaker 1: meaning that they were forced to go, and in most
Speaker 1: cases it would be a crime for them to refuse
Speaker 1: to serve in the war. Regardless of their ideological or
Speaker 1: political affiliations. There are cases where you could be a
Speaker 1: conscientious objector, for instance, a pacifist or a so called
Speaker 1: pacifist like the Quakers. Lindon LaRouche was raised a Quaker,
Speaker 1: which will be important a little bit later in today's show.
Speaker 3: Or Muhammad Ali who was a conscientious objector.
Speaker 1: M hmm. Yeah, and so conscientious objection is a genuine thing,
Speaker 1: but there were a lot of people who high tailed
Speaker 1: it to Canada, for instance, because they felt like they
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to make a case for conscientious objection,
Speaker 1: that they would have been popped into the shake and
Speaker 1: bake system and then sent off to die in the jungle.
Speaker 1: That's how a lot of people looked at it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially towards the end of the Vietnam conflicts, as
Speaker 3: the propaganda and the truth of the situation was coming.
Speaker 1: Forward, and many, many, many other people. As you can
Speaker 1: tell from the statistics, about seventy five percent of the
Speaker 1: forces there volunteered or were already career military yes, and
Speaker 1: not all of these people came back. We discussed this
Speaker 1: briefly in our episode on the allegations of POW's left
Speaker 1: behind in Vietnam, which is still a contentious topic of conversation,
Speaker 1: right because there's simply not enough proof, Yeah, one way
Speaker 1: or the other, unfortunately, And we know that of the
Speaker 1: people who went, of the roughly two point seven million,
Speaker 1: not everybody made it home. That's the reality. But we
Speaker 1: have the actual numbers too.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, one out of every ten Americans who served
Speaker 3: in Vietnam was in some way a casualty. There was
Speaker 3: somewhere between fifty eight thousand, one hundred and forty eight
Speaker 3: and fifty two hundred and twenty that were killed, just
Speaker 3: killed while they were there, and then another three hundred
Speaker 3: and four thousand that were wounded. And that's an estimate there, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The oldest and this is again just on the
Speaker 1: US side, the oldest person on the US side killed
Speaker 1: was sixty two years old. Of the people who were killed,
Speaker 1: sixty one percent, more than half were younger than twenty
Speaker 1: one wow. And more than eleven thousand of those killed
Speaker 1: were younger than twenty jeez. And five people who were
Speaker 1: killed in Vietnam were only sixteen years old.
Speaker 3: That's again on the American side. That's very important because
Speaker 3: there are a lot of people under sixteen years old
Speaker 3: that died that were not on the American side.
Speaker 1: Right, that were civilians, Yeah, that were simply trying to
Speaker 1: live their lives. So let's look at the Vietnamese side.
Speaker 1: The US military estimates that between two hundred thousand and
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty thousand South Vietnamese soldiers died in
Speaker 1: the war. And in nineteen ninety five, Vietnam released its
Speaker 1: official estimate of war casualties, and it cited as many
Speaker 1: as two million civilians on both sides, the North Vietnamese
Speaker 1: and South Vietnamese side, and they said, in addition, there
Speaker 1: were one point one million North Vietnamese and viet Cong
Speaker 1: soldier casualties.
Speaker 3: That is unthinkable.
Speaker 1: It's a bloodbath.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, you know, the overall tonnage of bombs that
Speaker 3: were dropped during the Vietnam War exceeds that of if
Speaker 3: you add up most of World War II, of just
Speaker 3: if you think about the amount of munition that was
Speaker 3: used there, it exceeds almost all of World War Two,
Speaker 3: which is insane.
Speaker 1: And in many cases some of that ordinance remains.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in Laos, right, unexploded.
Speaker 1: Right, And the US conducted secret illegal operations in Cambodia
Speaker 1: and Laos in particular. A lot of people here in
Speaker 1: the US agreed with the war, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people did not. And this is where we hit upon
Speaker 1: the concept of deserters. Deserters would be a little bit
Speaker 1: different from draft dodgers, right, yes, yeah, So if you're
Speaker 1: a draft dodger, your number gets called up, they pull
Speaker 1: your card, and you say, for one reason or another,
Speaker 1: forget this, I'm out of here. I'm going to Canada,
Speaker 1: I'm going to Europe. I'm gonna head out for the
Speaker 1: Southern continent.
Speaker 3: You know. And there were organizations set up to assist
Speaker 3: people that wanted to the draft. That's a that's a
Speaker 3: pejorative kind of a draft dodger. But like they wanted
Speaker 3: to what is a better way to do?
Speaker 1: They did not want to participate in a war with
Speaker 1: which they did not agree.
Speaker 3: Oh there you go. But yeah, they just they disagreed.
Speaker 3: But if we're gonna talk about what a deserter is
Speaker 3: an actual deserter, this is the military has a classification
Speaker 3: for this, and it is that it's any person that's
Speaker 3: been absent without leave a service member, mind you, for
Speaker 3: more than thirty days.
Speaker 1: Thirty days or less, you're a wall, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, And you have to be an active member
Speaker 3: of the military to be considered a deserter.
Speaker 1: And desertion is something that occurs in almost every war. Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: it's It's often looked down upon. It's seen as an
Speaker 1: unpatriotic move, to say the least, and at times it's
Speaker 1: seen as from tremendously unethical, right, the idea being that
Speaker 1: someone has already to some extent agreed to serve in
Speaker 1: a military, yeah, and then they have gone back on
Speaker 1: their word or the vow they took, the oath they took.
Speaker 1: And Vietnam was no different. In fact, quite a few
Speaker 1: people deserted during Vietnam.
Speaker 3: Yeah. According to reports from nineteen seventy two. From let's
Speaker 3: see July nineteen sixty six until November nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 3: around four hundred and twenty three thousand United States military
Speaker 3: personnel were classified as deserters. Now again, they've been classified
Speaker 3: as deserters. It doesn't mean that that's necessarily you know,
Speaker 3: whatever the situation they're going through. Those are very they're
Speaker 3: varying to a large extent, but they're classified that way
Speaker 3: by the military. Now, let's see, by July of nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy two, according to this report, a large number of
Speaker 3: these people were quote returned to military control. That's three
Speaker 3: hundred and ninety one thousand of the four hundred and
Speaker 3: twenty three thousand, so they were returned to military control.
Speaker 3: And it's interesting because this around this time frame nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty six to nineteen seventy two, this is when the
Speaker 3: US military began even tracking these numbers because they had
Speaker 3: been relatively low in the past. If you look at
Speaker 3: World War Two, there were sixteen point three million Americans
Speaker 3: who served in some capacity in the military during World
Speaker 3: War Two, and there were only an estimated forty thousand
Speaker 3: deserters at that time. But again, like, when do those numbers?
Speaker 3: When are those numbers put forth? Is it after you've
Speaker 3: returned a lot of the other ones to military control?
Speaker 3: Are they still considered deserters in that number? It gets
Speaker 3: a little fishy because they weren't tracking it very.
Speaker 1: Well, right, Yeah, And again these are official numbers, which
Speaker 1: will almost always differ from actual numbers, especially when you
Speaker 1: get into the big government stuff. Whenever a government reports
Speaker 1: bad news about itself, there's going to be a difference
Speaker 1: between what is officially said and what actually happened. But
Speaker 1: let's not get lost in the numbers, right, Let's explore
Speaker 1: these deserters as people. They didn't one day, well, not
Speaker 1: to speculate too much, but most of them did not
Speaker 1: one day say you know, I gave it a shot.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna just gonna hide out. These people, being rational,
Speaker 1: intelligent beings, had a series of desires and motivations and
Speaker 1: fears and ambitions that drove them to commit this act
Speaker 1: of desertion. But what are those reasons? What are those motivations?
Speaker 1: We'll get to that after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: We're back. And the first reason for desertion is incredibly
Speaker 1: dare I say, painfully apparent. It is the fear of
Speaker 1: physical harm or death.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the one that stands right out.
Speaker 1: Like, Hey, for instance, I'm born in Nebraska, right, and
Speaker 1: I was easily going to live most of my life
Speaker 1: in my small town. I was gonna go watch the
Speaker 1: local high school or college games. And now because someone
Speaker 1: I never met in Washington, d C. Has a problem
Speaker 1: with Vietnam. Now, here I am. I don't know these people.
Speaker 1: I don't speak Vietnamese. That guy next to me got
Speaker 1: shot in the head. This is terrible. Yeah, that's understandable.
Speaker 1: And people have people deserve did for fear of being
Speaker 1: the next headshot at times. Right, and the calculation. Again,
Speaker 1: this is not to deride people. We're attempting to illustrate
Speaker 1: the psychological process. They reached a point where the instinct
Speaker 1: for self preservation outweighed the social obligation to do one's duty.
Speaker 3: Or the ideological belief that what they're doing is more
Speaker 3: important than their safety.
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, And I'm so glad you mentioned that, because
Speaker 1: that's another reason for desertion. Right. Ideological differences.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe I don't agree that the way of life
Speaker 3: we are fighting for, you know, the stated goals of
Speaker 3: removing communism or saving this country from communist invaders. Maybe
Speaker 3: I don't agree with.
Speaker 1: It, right. Yeah, maybe you agreed with it originally, right
Speaker 1: when you signed up in northern California or Oregon or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you went to the war and you saw
Speaker 1: what was happening on the ground, and you said, this
Speaker 1: is not what I believe to be just. And I'm
Speaker 1: not afraid of dying, but I will not be a
Speaker 1: part of this thing with which I disagree.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's a whole other situation there. When you're
Speaker 3: looking at the actual operations that occurred and some of
Speaker 3: the tragedies and massacres that were it's true that we're
Speaker 3: perpetrated by the US military, and it's unfortunate.
Speaker 1: Fact and sometimes perpetrated by factions of the US military
Speaker 1: without the approval.
Speaker 3: Yes, oh, absolutely, with.
Speaker 1: Larger entities, absolutely, but yes, those atrocities did occur. A
Speaker 1: third reason for an individual to dessert would be a
Speaker 1: little bit more mercenary, an opportunity for a new life,
Speaker 1: for celebrity, for material goods, material gain, or for profit. So,
Speaker 1: for example, you can think of the stories of people
Speaker 1: in the Korea War. There have been a couple of
Speaker 1: guys who deserted to the DPRK, to the Democratic People's
Speaker 1: Republic of Korea, and when they deserted, they were occasionally
Speaker 1: treated like celebrities. They were the bad Americans and the
Speaker 1: propaganda films, they were literally movie stars. Yeah, it did
Speaker 1: not end well for them, to be clear about that.
Speaker 1: I think one guy recently was I believe he was
Speaker 1: allowed to see his mother before she passed as she's
Speaker 1: he lived most of his life in North Korea. But
Speaker 1: those are the reasons. Fear physical harm, don't kill me.
Speaker 1: Ideological differences. I disagree with the concept or the motivations
Speaker 1: for this war, or the opportunity, the self serving opportunity
Speaker 1: to be famous, to get paid. Okay, Yeah, and those
Speaker 1: are I mean, there are nuances to allure, absolutely sure.
Speaker 1: But let's let's look at the other side of this
Speaker 1: war as well. There was not just a physical side
Speaker 1: of this large proxy war between capitalism and communism. There
Speaker 1: was an ideological side, and war was functioning as a business. Yes,
Speaker 1: war has always been about resource extraction, control, suppression, management,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And deserters were another resource to be exploited.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, by other countries, by enemies of the state.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for the USSR and communism at large, deserters are fantastic,
Speaker 1: especially if they come over to your side. The best
Speaker 1: anti war advertise, heiss are always going to be images
Speaker 1: of a wonderful life somehow better on the other side
Speaker 1: of the trenches, the other side of the conflict. In
Speaker 1: the US, for instance, you'll see propaganda that touts amenities
Speaker 1: like we have refrigerators, we have new automobiles. Why are
Speaker 1: you fighting? You can buy four kinds of ham in
Speaker 1: our grocery stores.
Speaker 3: Think about how much food you can cook with this microwave.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmmm hmm. Exactly. You know this idea of selling
Speaker 1: again in the American dream, the retro futuristic Jetson's life.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another thing that is enormously beneficial from a propaganda perspective
Speaker 1: is testimony from deserters actual word of mouth. Don't believe
Speaker 1: this advertisement about the microwave.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't believe. I don't know. I don't believe
Speaker 3: that at all. You know why, because I've seen it
Speaker 3: before and that all that microwave does is burn your
Speaker 3: food and it just makes things soggy. Don't listen to them.
Speaker 1: Join the revolutionary yeah, whatever that revolution might be at
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, spot on. You will tend to believe
Speaker 1: a person more so than an idea, especially depending on
Speaker 1: how that person is presented to you.
Speaker 3: Ah, there you go.
Speaker 1: So this is a crucial ideological tool for the forces
Speaker 1: opposing the US in the end of China or Vietnam conflict. Often,
Speaker 1: these two propaganda opportunities were combined in anti US operations.
Speaker 1: A deserter laments the injustices of the war and imperialistic
Speaker 1: US culture overall, and then pivots to tout the freedom
Speaker 1: they encountered after crossing over. That freedom might not be
Speaker 1: what the Western world would think of as freedom. It
Speaker 1: might not be necessarily freedom of speech. It might be
Speaker 1: portrayed as freedom to join the great collective pushing for
Speaker 1: a better world or something like that. But what about
Speaker 1: European nations.
Speaker 3: A lot of times European nations are are they want
Speaker 3: to be seen as neutral parties when there's something like
Speaker 3: this going on, some kind of conflict of this nature,
Speaker 3: or maybe they want to be a safe haven where
Speaker 3: either a deserter or otherwise could come and you know,
Speaker 3: live in their land, just to show that they're not
Speaker 3: on either side really of the conflict, Like you can
Speaker 3: come here, We'll give you safe passage. You know, you
Speaker 3: can stay here for X number of days or weeks
Speaker 3: or years, and just to show that they can act
Speaker 3: on their own accord and not be influenced by again,
Speaker 3: usually the US or whichever whichever country is in power.
Speaker 1: Right like the old Disney Pinocchio, I have no strings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can act you nilaterally.
Speaker 3: Yes, and we will help you out, but we also
Speaker 3: won't you know, we won't. We won't really help or
Speaker 3: hurt you, but we'll give you safe.
Speaker 1: Haven, right, Yeah, a refugee status, yes, perhaps, or a visa.
Speaker 1: In Sweden in particular, many deserters joined something called the
Speaker 1: American Deserters Committee, named in what I can only imagine
Speaker 1: is a burst of creativity. Yes, sorry, that's iby, it's
Speaker 1: they had other stuff going on. I'm sure they didn't
Speaker 1: spend you know, a week work shopping the name.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there were American Deserters Committees throughout several countries
Speaker 3: that kind of popped up to do a similar thing.
Speaker 1: So what were they doing.
Speaker 3: Well, they've really just wanted to have some kind of
Speaker 3: united front for deserters, a voice for everyone to speak
Speaker 3: in unison, right, like, all deserters together. This is this
Speaker 3: is us. We are We have a powerful voice.
Speaker 1: Ah. Yes, we are now a voting block of some
Speaker 1: sort or we can unite. And now it's not just
Speaker 1: one or two of us occasionally on anti war television spots.
Speaker 1: It's a huge group of us all at once. Yeah,
Speaker 1: old stage pro test.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we can issue a statement from us, not
Speaker 3: just from me, Matt, the deserter.
Speaker 1: Oh good call, I didn't even think about that. It
Speaker 1: sounds so much more official. Uncle Sam was predictably concerned,
Speaker 1: very much so, because there are hazards for the US
Speaker 1: when it comes to deserters from the war, and one
Speaker 1: of the it's tough to say which is more important,
Speaker 1: but we can walk through a couple of them in
Speaker 1: no particular order. Then public opinion support for the war
Speaker 1: is incredibly fragile. On the domestic front, the role of
Speaker 1: the media in the Vietnam War, especially as it escalated,
Speaker 1: cannot be overstated. This was not World War Two, where
Speaker 1: information was often carefully managed for the domestic front. Journalists
Speaker 1: were out there. Sixty something of them got killed in
Speaker 1: the process, but they were showing things that the American
Speaker 1: public would not expect to see, and in many cases
Speaker 1: was not supposed to see.
Speaker 3: Yeah, would not normally see in any kind of conflict
Speaker 3: like this.
Speaker 1: And because of this, the US was unable to entirely
Speaker 1: suppress the flow of domestic information from domestic sources, much
Speaker 1: less suppressed the flow of anti war messages from abroad.
Speaker 1: Can't It's tough to scramble a short wave radio, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Oh, yeah, and there was a
Speaker 1: tremendous and plausible, very well founded concern that anti war
Speaker 1: movements in the US could trigger massive domestic unrest. We're
Speaker 1: talking about the fall of states and follow the rule
Speaker 1: of law, and that if the American public sympathized with
Speaker 1: deserters who could not return home and who also implicitly
Speaker 1: avoided the legal consequences of desertion, then the powder can
Speaker 1: would explode. People would watch this and say, these people
Speaker 1: deserve to come back to our homeland. And I guess
Speaker 1: our homeland is not as powerful as it wants us
Speaker 1: to believe.
Speaker 3: Oh, man, right, if the ideological foundations begin to crumble,
Speaker 3: then everything.
Speaker 1: Does sounds kind of abstract, But I think you're right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: People are so weird, you know, like there's so many
Speaker 1: things that if we if we attempted to explain to
Speaker 1: an extraterrestrial civilization, we would sound insane.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh hey, welcome. Let me take you two our leaders
Speaker 1: hop in this we call a car. And then the
Speaker 1: alien's like, why are we stopping? Oh we have to
Speaker 1: wait for this thing to change colors? Yea, why there's
Speaker 1: no one here, It's just the thing we do. Man.
Speaker 1: Cool be cool. We're on the way to see the president.
Speaker 3: Wait, hold on, are you saying Are you saying that
Speaker 3: I shouldn't follow traffic signals if there's no one around.
Speaker 1: I cannot legally I agree with that. No, I'm using
Speaker 1: it as just as a poor example.
Speaker 3: No, no, it's not for example.
Speaker 1: It's weird because we'll sit I think most death has
Speaker 1: as a great line about that blackstar. Oh nice, they're
Speaker 1: quoting a poem in one of the songs where a
Speaker 1: guy says, we were sitting three deep into traffic stop
Speaker 1: talking about how brainwashed some of our brothers and sisters
Speaker 1: are while we waited for green light to tell us
Speaker 1: when to go. Oh, it sounds way better when when
Speaker 1: you hear.
Speaker 3: The and there's a nice beat behind it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But this, I mean, we're we're pointing out, hopefully
Speaker 1: that the ideological things, the programmed behaviors of people are
Speaker 1: very easily normalized and accepted, and it doesn't take as
Speaker 1: much as you might think to disrupt those things. Absolutely right,
Speaker 1: we're gullible. How many people did you see where it
Speaker 1: tie today? Why do they do that? What does a
Speaker 1: tie do? What's the point? What's the point of a tie?
Speaker 3: Okay, so sorry, No, you're good.
Speaker 1: You're good on my mind for a while.
Speaker 3: I get it, Man, I feel the same way. I'm
Speaker 3: just not as vocal about it. I need to start,
Speaker 3: you know, saying the things I think I feel like.
Speaker 1: I feel like saying that ties are silly is maybe
Speaker 1: not the best way to start a revolution. But anyway,
Speaker 1: ideology aside. Sorry, I went off the rails on that one, Matt.
Speaker 1: There are other things that are perhaps more material.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, the other the next one has to do
Speaker 3: with triangulation. Really, so, let's imagine that you are another country, right,
Speaker 3: You're an intelligence officer for another country, and there's a
Speaker 3: group of American deserters. You meet one of them, and
Speaker 3: you start talking to them. Maybe you even let's say,
Speaker 3: capture them, or maybe maybe you don't even have to capture.
Speaker 3: Maybe you just have some drinks with them at a bar.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And you.
Speaker 3: Get intelligence from this person. You're essentially interrogating them, right,
Speaker 3: one individual, one small group of individuals, and you get
Speaker 3: any and all relevant information that you can from these people.
Speaker 3: Operation aims programs, both ongoing ones that are occurring right now,
Speaker 3: ones from the past. You can get all kinds of
Speaker 3: details about your enemy with somebody like this. And then
Speaker 3: here's the deal I said, triangulation. You take that information
Speaker 3: you've gathered, then you compare and contrast it to another individual,
Speaker 3: perhaps that you met at another bar or that was
Speaker 3: also captured.
Speaker 1: Okay, question them separately.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and now you've got leads, You've got real leads.
Speaker 3: You can you can decide what is probably bunk, what
Speaker 3: is probably real. I don't know, it's a it's a
Speaker 3: gold mine for an intelligence mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because then you would be able to falsify misinformation.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, right, unless the people you were questioning already
Speaker 1: had an established story or narrative, you would ultimately be
Speaker 1: able to find out what they were thinking, where they
Speaker 1: were going. And this can lead to all these massive insights.
Speaker 1: And there's a sticky thing here. It's logical then, in
Speaker 1: a world of rational actors, which all nations and states are,
Speaker 1: it's logical then that you could be in a situation
Speaker 1: as a leader of a country where you can rationalize
Speaker 1: the death of a single prisoner or deserter, because it
Speaker 1: can be framed as a effective way, albeit brutal, an
Speaker 1: effective way of saving the lives of multiple other people.
Speaker 1: And when we say, rationalize the death of a deserter
Speaker 1: or prisoner. That doesn't just mean abandoning them, leaving them
Speaker 1: in the cold, or throwing them to the wolves. That
Speaker 1: also could mean sending one of your own people to
Speaker 1: get rid of them. Possible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an unfortunate comparison, but I think it works
Speaker 3: of the mafia. If you join the mafia in some
Speaker 3: capacity or another, or let's just say an organized crime association,
Speaker 3: leaving that group is probably not a good idea, just
Speaker 3: because for that saint, for the information that you have,
Speaker 3: for the loose end that you become.
Speaker 1: You know, Can I make a confession to you, man,
Speaker 1: I have never seen The Sopranos?
Speaker 3: What is it good? I love it?
Speaker 1: Do you really?
Speaker 3: I really?
Speaker 1: Did you have seen it?
Speaker 3: I have? I've seen it twice all the way through.
Speaker 1: Should I watch it?
Speaker 3: I mean I would recommend it. What do you think
Speaker 3: anyone Sopranos? Yeah, Tony, I.
Speaker 1: Read the wiki. Does that count?
Speaker 3: Sure? That's all you need?
Speaker 1: Paul? Paul? Or did you watch the Sopranos? Oh, Paul
Speaker 1: didn't watch it either. It's classic HBO. It's like, hmm,
Speaker 1: all right, I will watch it. You are the one
Speaker 1: who told me to watch The Wire.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Wow, I was one of those guys. Huh No, dude,
Speaker 3: the Wire is so good, Paul, you got to watch
Speaker 3: The Wire man. It's so good. It really was.
Speaker 1: It was great. But yeah, I liked a lot of it.
Speaker 1: So that I think your comparison holds up this idea
Speaker 1: of omerta, this idea of silence above all, right, and
Speaker 1: the idea that this is a one way entry organization. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that does apply. Maybe not to all militaries, maybe not
Speaker 1: even to the US military, but that applies to a
Speaker 1: lot of things when we start talking about the murky
Speaker 1: world of government secrecy. And then deserters are also very
Speaker 1: very useful as another form of propaganda. Propaganda advertised two
Speaker 1: soldiers in the field.
Speaker 3: Yeah, actively occurring while soldiers are trying to fight, like
Speaker 3: in a battle.
Speaker 1: Yeah. There radio stations that would bombard people with broadcasts,
Speaker 1: and several of several of you listening to today's episode
Speaker 1: may be Vietnam veterans, and we would be intensely interested
Speaker 1: to hear whether you personally encountered this sort of propaganda,
Speaker 1: something like Hanoi, Hannah, whatever, which would release these broadcasts
Speaker 1: in English telling soldiers how useless, the US side of
Speaker 1: the war was, and how dumb it was to be there.
Speaker 1: So imagine you're up to your waist in mud and
Speaker 1: filth and you're marching. Your feet are rotting in your socks.
Speaker 1: The rain hasn't stopped for three days, and at this
Speaker 1: point everybody knows it's just not going to.
Speaker 3: Some of your friends and acquaintances have just died.
Speaker 1: And then you hear a radio broadcast featuring a soldier
Speaker 1: who sounds like he could be from your hometown in
Speaker 1: the Brass getting Kansas and Oregon and California, and they're
Speaker 1: talking about the injustices of war, the freedom of life
Speaker 1: in neutral Sweden or Europe, the ideological struggle and progress
Speaker 1: occurring in communist Russia. How much more marching do you
Speaker 1: have in you with all these things bombarding you? What
Speaker 1: is the limit?
Speaker 3: That's where that first one, the public opinion and the
Speaker 3: ideological foundations are so important, because if you don't have,
Speaker 3: if you don't have that stuff as just steal, if
Speaker 3: that stuff is not steel in your mind, then maybe
Speaker 3: your chips away enough to get you to go Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in many cases it must be said that that
Speaker 1: kind of attempt at brainwashing might just make somebody more
Speaker 1: resolute in their existing convictions. Absolutely possible, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: that has happened. But do ue to these concerns, which
Speaker 1: again are not specific to the Vietnam War, they echo
Speaker 1: throughout history, and they're not specific to the US either.
Speaker 1: They echo throughout cultures. Due to these concerns, countries have
Speaker 1: legal punishments for the act of desertion, incredibly harsh punishments.
Speaker 1: In the US, any person found guilty of desertion or
Speaker 1: attempt to desert shall be punished. If the offense is
Speaker 1: committed in a time of war, they will be punished
Speaker 1: by death or such other punishment as a court martial
Speaker 1: might direct. But if the desertion or attempt to desert
Speaker 1: occurs at any other time, by such punishment other than death,
Speaker 1: as a court martial may direct. What that means is,
Speaker 1: if we're in a war and you run away, technically.
Speaker 3: You're just gonna get shot.
Speaker 1: It's the death penalty. Yeah, and if you might get
Speaker 1: court martialed and sentenced to several years in jail or
Speaker 1: something like that. And in some cases in the Vietnam War,
Speaker 1: there would be attempts to negotiate with deserters where people
Speaker 1: would say, through one entity or another, they would say, hey, well,
Speaker 1: if you agree to come with us voluntarily, then you know,
Speaker 1: just have a year in prison, dishonorable discharge, go on
Speaker 1: with your life. We get it, war as hell, come
Speaker 1: in from the cold. But still it's tough to believe
Speaker 1: people when they say things like that, especially if you
Speaker 1: know legally it is a death sentence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Juliana's on, It's just come on over, man, it's
Speaker 3: gonna be fine. We're going to treat you well.
Speaker 1: What secuidor god that we ain't got oh too soon,
Speaker 1: too soon, we should do an update on him soon.
Speaker 1: But with all this in play, we have to ask
Speaker 1: ourselves how far would Uncle Sam go to buy hook
Speaker 1: or by crook? Bring it soldiers home.
Speaker 3: And we'll find out right after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy. The US went above and
Speaker 1: beyond all legal thresholds and attempts to surveil and or
Speaker 1: apprehend deserters with minimum publicity.
Speaker 3: Absolutely that one of the top priorities of let's say
Speaker 3: the goals here were to avoid propaganda of successful desertion.
Speaker 3: So if we don't want anyone to know that people
Speaker 3: have deserted and they got away with it, like, let's
Speaker 3: keep that to a minimum at least. And it was
Speaker 3: also a thing where it was probably not a good
Speaker 3: idea to actually go out and assassinate deserters, like that's
Speaker 3: probably a bad idea because this is you know, you
Speaker 3: turn them into a martyr of sorts. And again I'm
Speaker 3: speaking from the side of the intelligence system within the
Speaker 3: United States, like this is what you're imagining. That would
Speaker 3: just it would totally fuel the fire for anti war
Speaker 3: protests and the activists that are already inside the United
Speaker 3: States fomenting these feelings of anti war. And this led
Speaker 3: to something that we researched this.
Speaker 1: Week called Operation Chaos. Yes, yes, it's true. The intelligence
Speaker 1: agencies were in quite a pickle, a rock and a
Speaker 1: hard place type dilimma. You don't want deserters to flout
Speaker 1: the law, right, you don't want them to be successful
Speaker 1: in their desertion, and you certainly don't want other people
Speaker 1: to know that they can do any of that. But
Speaker 1: you also don't want to be known as a government
Speaker 1: that actively goes out and kills its own. Yeah, neither
Speaker 1: of these are particularly good looks. So Operation Chaos was
Speaker 1: formed a special operations group within the CIA, and it
Speaker 1: was secret for a while for a long time after
Speaker 1: it was closed down, because it only functioned for a
Speaker 1: number of years.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, It was established in August of nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: seven and it was then active for six full years.
Speaker 3: And the stated purpose here was to collect, coordinate, evaluate,
Speaker 3: and report on foreign contacts with American dissidents. And for it,
Speaker 3: they collected information on dissident Americans and they did that
Speaker 3: via the FBI domestically. So if they wanted to get
Speaker 3: information on dissonance who were within the United States, they
Speaker 3: used the FBI because that's their purpose.
Speaker 1: Who's on the mailing list for this communist newsletter?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then I guess thankfully for these
Speaker 3: for this intelligence community. There are so many active military
Speaker 3: stations overseas in other countries that they are just using
Speaker 3: these stations to collect information on let's say, the local dissidents,
Speaker 3: the local American dissidents.
Speaker 1: The local would be expats. Right, So, how many people
Speaker 1: were involved with this on the espionage.
Speaker 3: Side, Well, you heard us say fifty two people at
Speaker 3: the top. There were officially fifty two staff members working
Speaker 3: on Operation Chaos officially. Well, yeah, because you had there
Speaker 3: there were operatives. I'm going to go out on a
Speaker 3: limb and say there were probably operatives who were not
Speaker 3: known in any official capacity or maybe even recorded anywhere.
Speaker 1: Ah, just a friend of a friend.
Speaker 3: Perhaps, just I mean, in any undercover operation, there's going
Speaker 3: to be a few of those.
Speaker 1: If you're just actors assets m hmm, yeah, you know what.
Speaker 1: I think you were absolutely right, or a few people
Speaker 1: who may not know that they are assets or helping
Speaker 1: the operation. Right, they just run a local newspaper.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1: They're a photographer who happens to have a mysterious but
Speaker 1: loaded benefactor would like to buy some photos. Oh jeez, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how it happens.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: So they successfully did this right for years, they created
Speaker 1: files on thousands of US citizens.
Speaker 3: Yes, seventy two hundred officially American citizens. And then within
Speaker 3: these files there are the names of over three hundred
Speaker 3: thousand people in organizations that were associated with those seventy
Speaker 3: two hundred people.
Speaker 1: Just to be clear, this is an active conspiracy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the government is the conspirator in this case. But this
Speaker 1: is illegal. They're not supposed to be doing it, and
Speaker 1: they sure did.
Speaker 3: I mean it's not as bad as the NSA from
Speaker 3: a couple of years back and currently, but you know
Speaker 3: it's not great.
Speaker 1: A right, I mean it feels weird to split these airs, yes,
Speaker 1: but the argument used to justify these actions was very,
Speaker 1: very similar to the argument used today to justify the
Speaker 1: essays war. Access to anything you do online in theory,
Speaker 1: anyone you associate with and anyone they associate with, and
Speaker 1: on and on and on. Kevin Bacon pops up sooner
Speaker 1: than you think in this game.
Speaker 3: And echelon five eyes forever.
Speaker 1: Amen, Oh boy, do you think we have records?
Speaker 3: Come on, remember we used.
Speaker 1: To joke about it intern at the Essay. If someone
Speaker 1: was listening to us.
Speaker 3: By this point, we have like an associate producer, or
Speaker 3: there's somebody.
Speaker 1: That guys that poor guy or girl, that poor kid
Speaker 1: is just so.
Speaker 3: Bored, right, maybe it's a junior officer.
Speaker 1: Do you think we got oh man moving on up? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, you know what, I'll take it. And hey,
Speaker 1: if you're listening, I don't know if you can write in,
Speaker 1: but feel free to do so. Yeah, we would love,
Speaker 1: we would love to hear from you. And also, if
Speaker 1: you know my internet history friendly stranger. You'll see that
Speaker 1: I'm really into call flower recipes, so send a few
Speaker 1: my way. Cauliflowers amazing.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, we're talking about the food.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, the food, not euphemism, not a weird thing.
Speaker 1: Ok I actually love cooking with cauliflower. Nice Nol does
Speaker 1: as well. I believe very good. I'm a broccoli guy,
Speaker 1: but you know, I'm trying to get into more vegetables. Man,
Speaker 1: Broccoli is my first love.
Speaker 3: Dude, food wise, Nice this took a dirt.
Speaker 1: We're just trying to prove that we are innocuous to
Speaker 1: the n essay, and we have an opportunity to attempt
Speaker 1: to that because we are aware that these programs exist.
Speaker 1: The people being surveiled had very strong suspicions and in
Speaker 1: many cases very strong circumstantial evidence, but for the most part,
Speaker 1: they had no proof of what was happening. They had
Speaker 1: no opportunity to be like, hey, yeah, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not great on the war, but have you heard about cauliflower.
Speaker 1: They couldn't do any of that endearing stuff. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: most people, even in the modern day, didn't have any
Speaker 1: idea what was happening. We learned about this through a
Speaker 1: book called Operation Chaos, the Vietnam deserters who fought the
Speaker 1: CIA brainwashers and themselves.
Speaker 3: Oh that's a great title.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty specific. In this book, the author Matthew
Speaker 1: Sweet outlines the strange and often contradictory accounts from Vietnam
Speaker 1: deserters who joined the ADC that we mentioned there in Sweden,
Speaker 1: and he also asked them about their opinions regarding intelligence
Speaker 1: agencies from the US, Russia, and Sweden, all of whom
Speaker 1: infiltrated their group at some point in some shape, fashion
Speaker 1: or form, and then later infiltrated the subsequent extremist offshoots
Speaker 1: of the ADC. Because Operation Chaos, as you outlined earlier,
Speaker 1: matt is an umbrella term domestic monitoring, foreign monitoring, all
Speaker 1: sort of for the larger aim. The aspects of Operation
Speaker 1: Chaos that Matthew Sweet focuses on are exclusively the stories
Speaker 1: of the deserters living abroad, and he tracks them down
Speaker 1: those who are still alive, and he asked them to
Speaker 1: tell their stories. He also asked members of foreign intelligence
Speaker 1: agencies to tell their stories if they can. Right and
Speaker 1: the US intelligence agency, the community in the US had
Speaker 1: a sustained effort to not only infiltrate these deserter organizations,
Speaker 1: but to repatriate deserters, they're the ones who would say, hey,
Speaker 1: no harm, no foul, just to come back. We can
Speaker 1: probably get you out of jail in a year dishonorable discharge.
Speaker 1: But you can go on with your life.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: All you have to do is say that you made
Speaker 1: a mistake publicly, that you regret it. You're still Team
Speaker 1: America and we're all good.
Speaker 3: Have you seen the show Barry?
Speaker 1: Yes? Yeah, yeah, yeah? Are you a fan?
Speaker 3: Yeah? You did something just now that totally reminded me
Speaker 3: of I forget his name. He's the super nice guy
Speaker 3: who's one of the bad guys. He's baldy. Hey, Barry,
Speaker 3: what's going on? Just let you know. You know they're
Speaker 3: gonna kill you, so anyway, be careful.
Speaker 1: I love that guy. That's one of my favorite characters
Speaker 1: in that show.
Speaker 3: He's awesome.
Speaker 1: That's what you call it alopecia, he's hairless. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that guy is for me, a scene stealer because
Speaker 1: everyone he meets and this is not spoiling the show
Speaker 1: for you. This guy is a gangster who does horrific things.
Speaker 3: What did he ever did anything? Horrific. I couldn't even
Speaker 3: tell you. And this is we don't even have to
Speaker 3: talk about this, man, I just I all I could
Speaker 3: think about was that for a split second, and then
Speaker 3: it just reverberated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because well, the the most endearing thing about that
Speaker 1: dude is everyone he meet is described as a super
Speaker 1: nice guy. Oh yeah, he's a super nice guy, especially
Speaker 1: Barry though, Barry, do you want some juice? Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: got to go back and rewatch it. If you haven't
Speaker 1: watched the do check it out because it's it's a
Speaker 1: fantastic show. And it's not Bill Haters in it, but
Speaker 1: it's it's not really a comedy.
Speaker 3: No, but fantastic.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, the comedy parts are pretty much that guy
Speaker 1: that we just mentioned. And did you know the other
Speaker 1: gangster is the bad guy from True Detective.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, man, so awesome.
Speaker 1: Now I'm impressed.
Speaker 3: Okay, So anyway, oh yes, anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So graphic widespread abuse is a power
Speaker 1: by the intelligence agencies, not just the US, also Russian
Speaker 1: and Sweden. So they wanted to the US wanted to
Speaker 1: repatriate these deserters, suppress or nullify their anti war messages, right,
Speaker 1: and in this book, Matthew Sweet explores the explores the
Speaker 1: facts through statistics, but then primarily through anecdotes and accounts
Speaker 1: of the deserters and the other players on the field. So, well,
Speaker 1: who what's our Who's who? If we were to do
Speaker 1: with who's who, what are some of the main players
Speaker 1: in this.
Speaker 3: Well, one is one of the deserters is Chuck Onen
Speaker 3: O N A N. And he joined the US Marines
Speaker 3: when he was a bit younger. Then he ended up
Speaker 3: deserting to Sweden via Iceland. With this ADC and the
Speaker 3: other information that was in the book. There's a little
Speaker 3: section at the front of this book that gives you
Speaker 3: kind of a rundown of the characters, and it said
Speaker 3: he's now a big fan of medical marijuana.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, If you read Suite's initial encounters with the
Speaker 1: he gets to his house, uh, he's The author spends
Speaker 1: some time describing how this dude thinks marijuana is going
Speaker 1: to save the world, and how he's going to start
Speaker 1: this growing operation, and how he's extremely uncomfortable because I
Speaker 1: think at some point while Matthew Sweet is talking to
Speaker 1: this guy, a drug deal occurs. Oh it's I think
Speaker 1: someone comes to buy marijuana.
Speaker 3: Oh, geez.
Speaker 1: And this is this is one guy. Uh, there's there
Speaker 1: are other ones. One of the big players, and one
Speaker 1: of the most controversial is a fellow named Michael Vale.
Speaker 3: Yes, this is I guess, the leader of the the ADC,
Speaker 3: the American Deserters Committee, and he was considered by some
Speaker 3: to be the resputant of the ADC. And this guy
Speaker 3: was suspected of being a CIA infiltrator.
Speaker 1: He used in terry gation and breakdown techniques on people.
Speaker 3: Oh geez.
Speaker 1: So he was known for breaking down would be members
Speaker 1: of the ADC or people trying to join the ADC.
Speaker 1: These are people who have already deserted on the basis
Speaker 1: of their politics or their beliefs, reducing them to tears,
Speaker 1: winnowing away their personalities so he could remake them anew.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people followed him. He had disciples,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of people hated the guy. And
Speaker 1: using those sorts of techniques, of course, lends some credence
Speaker 1: to the idea that someone is a CIA infiltrator works
Speaker 1: for an intelligence agency. But what becomes a parent very
Speaker 1: quickly here is that these people were all accusing each other.
Speaker 1: No one was dedicated enough to the cause no one
Speaker 1: was ideological enough. Everyone could be a mole.
Speaker 3: The paranoia was definitely running high because there was another
Speaker 3: gentleman named Bob Burningham. He went by Arlow Jacobs for
Speaker 3: part of that time. He was a student radical, a
Speaker 3: weatherman if you will, part of the Weather Underground, and
Speaker 3: he was suspected of being a CIA infiltrator as well
Speaker 3: by other members of the group.
Speaker 1: It's the hip new thing to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And then we get into the actual spies, the
Speaker 3: people who are confirmed intelligence officers like Richard ober who
Speaker 3: was pretty much the head of Operation Chaos, or at
Speaker 3: least in some way as the functional head of it, right,
Speaker 3: And he was considered by a lot of others to
Speaker 3: be paranoid and secretive in his own workings, which again,
Speaker 3: you know, if you're running an operation like that that's
Speaker 3: full of secrecy and lies, it gotta be pretty paranoid, right, right.
Speaker 1: And he expected the same out of the people who
Speaker 1: worked with and for him. M hm, you know. And
Speaker 1: for his part, Hugh will argue, and he does argue
Speaker 1: in the book, I believe that the mission was entirely
Speaker 1: meant to surveil and collect information, not to do any
Speaker 1: sort of skullduggery or wetwork or kidnapping or assassination or
Speaker 1: any of that black bag hoopla.
Speaker 3: I mean, the state of goals are just that, just.
Speaker 1: Vacuum up the information, right, who's sending who notes, who's
Speaker 1: calling who? That's the official story. Yeah, there's another member
Speaker 1: of the intelligence community that pops up in the book.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there's a gentleman named Frank Rafalco. And he
Speaker 3: was working on the Black Panther detail of Operation Chaos
Speaker 3: because they were looking at what they considered to be
Speaker 3: extremist groups, and they considered sections of the Black Panthers
Speaker 3: to be just that. And this guy was the only
Speaker 3: officer so far, at least according to Matthew Sweet that
Speaker 3: has spoken publicly about Operation Chaos so far.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the stories continue. It's just strange to learn
Speaker 1: that not only did this operation go on successfully on
Speaker 1: a global scale for what six years, more than half
Speaker 1: a decade, but there were no repercussions for the US. Right,
Speaker 1: A lot of the deserters found their way back to
Speaker 1: the States or found their way to a friendly country,
Speaker 1: and many of their I mean, regardless of whether someone
Speaker 1: from the outside looking in would call their lives successful
Speaker 1: or unsuccessful. The truth is that their lives were tremendously
Speaker 1: affected by this program right in ways that we probably
Speaker 1: still don't fully understand, And there's still questions there. We
Speaker 1: don't know for sure who was or wasn't a mole,
Speaker 1: who did or did not provide information. Many of these
Speaker 1: people had torturous personal lives, drug addiction, right, heavy debts,
Speaker 1: childhoods full of abuse, and it's very difficult to speculate
Speaker 1: what motivated them and how deep they got. We know
Speaker 1: something happened because the information got out there, but we
Speaker 1: have to ask ourselves what did this mean in the
Speaker 1: long run. Did it change the course of the Vietnam War?
Speaker 1: Probably not? Probably not. It's you know, in comparison to
Speaker 1: two point seven million soldiers, it's not that many people.
Speaker 3: Were there any large movements from groups that were helping
Speaker 3: out dissidents, I mean it doesn't seem to there's no
Speaker 3: at least there aren't many. No. I can't think of
Speaker 3: a single one where the United States took any kind
Speaker 3: of action against a civilian group in another country because
Speaker 3: they were aiding dissidents, at least not overtly. No. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 3: that we would know about, right.
Speaker 1: Right, and it's common to work through proxy groups and
Speaker 1: so on. But we have to think beyond the events
Speaker 1: of Vietnam that still have many unexplained things. Agent Orange
Speaker 1: is an example. The recurred during the Iraq War, at
Speaker 1: least allegations of exposure to it. Is it possible that
Speaker 1: programs like this exist now in the current wars the
Speaker 1: US is embroiled in or I guess since we don't
Speaker 1: call them wars anymore, the current conflicts?
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, who is a situation?
Speaker 1: The situation?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Who is monitoring these interactions? Why are people deserting in
Speaker 1: the numbers that occurred during the Vietnam War? Probably not?
Speaker 1: Probably not because there's not a draft. Yeah, but that
Speaker 1: could change.
Speaker 3: Oh, that could absolutely change. It just takes an Act
Speaker 3: of Congress.
Speaker 1: Right, So we wonder. We have to wonder if there's
Speaker 1: more stuff they don't want you to know, if there's
Speaker 1: an Operation Chaos two point zero out there somewhere, and
Speaker 1: if so, what's it called. Currently, the US US military
Speaker 1: is comprised of volunteers, meaning that no one is conscripted
Speaker 1: or drafted, and there are no laws that compel a
Speaker 1: US citizen to serve mandatory time in the armed forces.
Speaker 1: And that's that's not the same in other countries. South
Speaker 1: Korea and Israel, for example, have laws requiring citizens to
Speaker 1: serve in the military for X amount of time.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, the one thing I would say in the US,
Speaker 3: it is still compulsory for all male citizens to submit
Speaker 3: their information to the Selective Service system within thirty days
Speaker 3: of their eighteenth birthday. And that's just to make sure
Speaker 3: the selective service system remains in case a draft is necessary.
Speaker 3: In Congress puts the hammer down and makes it happen.
Speaker 1: Because, as Malcolm Gladwell so eloquently explains in the Tipping Point,
Speaker 1: nothing seems like it will ever happen until suddenly it does.
Speaker 3: Yeah, great point, Malcolm, great point, Great.
Speaker 1: Point, mister g. Today we end our episode with this,
Speaker 1: this important point. Yes, there is no draft going on now.
Speaker 1: There is no Operation Chaos that we are aware of,
Speaker 1: even though the technological abilities to do so are far
Speaker 1: and beyond what they ever were before in Vietnam. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, we're all carrying The average person is carrying
Speaker 1: a tiny spy in their.
Speaker 3: Pocket, two cameras at least in a mic.
Speaker 1: Right, and how tough is it to get in there?
Speaker 1: Who watches the watchman, all that jazz, all that slow jazz.
Speaker 3: And what about on your wrist if you got a
Speaker 3: smart watcher, who knows? What? What if you got a
Speaker 3: Google Home or an Amazon Echo in your house man,
Speaker 3: or a couple of security cameras.
Speaker 1: Don't please, it's too late.
Speaker 3: Does your TV have a camera on it? Does your
Speaker 3: PlayStation have a microphone?
Speaker 1: You know what? Maybe if they did, I would take
Speaker 1: better care of my like, I'd eat more healthy food,
Speaker 1: you know, I would.
Speaker 3: Uh, that's where you'd start.
Speaker 1: That's where it's start. They'd be base level check it out,
Speaker 1: I meaning chaos. Well, thank you, police state. But one
Speaker 1: other important thing to hit on here is that in
Speaker 1: many cases these deserters live on today somewhere right, and
Speaker 1: they're real people. Are they perfect? No? Who is? Some
Speaker 1: folks would consider them straight out traders. Other folks would
Speaker 1: consider them the equivalent of freedom fighters. And there are
Speaker 1: people who will make the argument that if they broke
Speaker 1: the rules, the rules no longer apply to them. But
Speaker 1: that goes into what sort of importance we place on
Speaker 1: the rule of law, And it goes into, perhaps even
Speaker 1: more importantly, what importance we place on the lawmakers obeying
Speaker 1: the laws. They create.
Speaker 3: Wow. So what do you think about Operation Chaos? Have
Speaker 3: you read the book? Do you know anything about it?
Speaker 3: Have you ever encountered anyone who was a dissonant? An
Speaker 3: American or otherwise. We'd love to hear your stories. We'd
Speaker 3: love for you to contact us and just talk to
Speaker 3: us about it. You can find us on Twitter. You
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Speaker 3: where Conspiracy Stuff Show. You can find our websites. Stuff
Speaker 3: they Don't Want You Tono dot com. And that's the
Speaker 3: end of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts
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