Speaker 1: Mhm, welcome back to Behind the Bastards.
Speaker 2: That's your normal voice.
Speaker 1: Robert does it.
Speaker 2: Robert does a different voice for when he's when he's.
Speaker 1: But that's the actual voice. I sneakily revealed it. So
Speaker 1: now you can ai my voice and convince my loved ones.
Speaker 1: I've been kidnapped and ransom. Why not it's fun not
Speaker 1: for it will be fun ish, Yeah, because you're the
Speaker 1: one who's gonna get get robbed, Sophie, I know, speaking
Speaker 1: of things getting lost, I gotta I got something I
Speaker 1: want to deal with here. So I got some I
Speaker 1: got some policing we need to do here because people
Speaker 1: are people are people have gotten too Twitter brained, right,
Speaker 1: And I say this as someone whouses Twitter too much.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not. I'm not coming out of this
Speaker 1: from like a moralizing standpoint, right Like I'm I'm let
Speaker 1: me start this by saying, like I've definitely you like
Speaker 1: have a problematic relationship with Twitter. I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: be judgmental, but like, this shit needs to stop. And specifically,
Speaker 1: I think that made me realize it. As we record this,
Speaker 1: it's like a day after the United States Marine Corps,
Speaker 1: like an airbase announced like Hey, guys, one of our
Speaker 1: F thirty fives went missing. The pilot leapt out during
Speaker 1: flight for reasons that we will not explain to you,
Speaker 1: left it on autopilot, and we don't know where it is.
Speaker 1: We don't even know if it's crashed. Like, we have
Speaker 1: no idea where this amazing multimillion dollar like it cost
Speaker 1: a trillion dollars to eighty million dollars to manufacture plane win,
Speaker 1: no idea. If you see it, give us a call
Speaker 1: at this number, Like it's a cat, Like it's someone's
Speaker 1: cat who got out. They're just like, hey, guys, mister sniffles,
Speaker 1: the F thirty five is lost. Give us a ring
Speaker 1: if you see him. Don't try to chase him, Like.
Speaker 2: For real, high is that possible, like that something can
Speaker 2: be lost in airspace. I just assumed it crash when
Speaker 2: I saw the eject and from the headline, I assumed.
Speaker 1: It probably has. But like they so, it's a stealth plane. Right.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons why this is the problem is
Speaker 1: that like that is legitimately an issue. So most every
Speaker 1: plane that's not like an army plane, right, that's not
Speaker 1: some sort of like government you know, jet has what's
Speaker 1: what's called an ADSB. I think that's the name of it,
Speaker 1: Like it's a transponder that lets you know where all
Speaker 1: of the aircraft are, right, because that's important to making
Speaker 1: sure they don't hit each other. Military and government aircraft
Speaker 1: don't have to have that right, and if you're running
Speaker 1: a stealth plane, you wouldn't necessarily want that on right,
Speaker 1: So I think that's probably anyway, it doesn't matter. This
Speaker 1: is funny, and it's it's funny. Specifically, I made a
Speaker 1: comment online about like this being America being the only
Speaker 1: country that could both develop you know, this fucking trillion
Speaker 1: dollar like hyperadvanced weapons platform and lose it and need
Speaker 1: to just like go to Twitter to be like, hey,
Speaker 1: everybody keep an eye out right. No other country could do,
Speaker 1: and people like a bunch of people got like angry
Speaker 1: and started defending the like well trying to lose his
Speaker 1: planes too. It's like that number one. It's not the
Speaker 1: point number two. Like they're like, why are you trying to, like,
Speaker 1: you know, defend the like why are you trying to
Speaker 1: like attack the US government over this, or like why
Speaker 1: are you trying to pretend the Chinese government is I'm
Speaker 1: not doing any of that it's funny, and it's specifically
Speaker 1: funny that we are treating a lost hyper advanced self
Speaker 1: craft like a lost cat. That's all. That's all. Not
Speaker 1: making a point about politics, not making a point about
Speaker 1: like the d od not making any kind of political point.
Speaker 1: It's just kind of funny. What on Twitter has ruined
Speaker 1: our ability to just like laugh about this stuff.
Speaker 2: We lost. So here's what happened. We misplaced our F
Speaker 2: thirty five. Not a big deal. Not a big deal.
Speaker 2: If anyone sees that shit, hit me up the deed.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, Like my dream is that the auto pilots
Speaker 1: set it down safely somewhere in North Carolina and it's
Speaker 1: just in a man's barn. Right now, some guy just
Speaker 1: tell that ship back and it's like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I haven't made up my mind as to how I'm
Speaker 1: going to deal with this, but I got it now.
Speaker 2: I mean this would. Yeah, this is such a great
Speaker 2: opening to an actual James Bond movie because now it's
Speaker 2: just this person should really just in the interest of
Speaker 2: everyone learning their lesson, try to sell it to Russia
Speaker 2: at this point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just try sure, just like a maring call the
Speaker 1: Russian embassy. Hey, guys, I got something you might be
Speaker 1: interested in. Like I will tell you right now, if
Speaker 1: this were me, you know, if I if I lived
Speaker 1: out in the in the boonies and gained control of
Speaker 1: an F thirty five, the only thing that I would
Speaker 1: do with it, because I think it's really the only
Speaker 1: thing to do with it, because I don't know how
Speaker 1: to fly a plane. I don't know that like any
Speaker 1: normal pilot knows how to. I'm sure there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of special training to fly this specific plane, right otherwise
Speaker 1: it's a fucking death trap. I would just drag it out,
Speaker 1: like tow it out into my yard every couple of
Speaker 1: months and just shoot at it, you know, just just
Speaker 1: fucking shoot at it with my rifles, you know, just
Speaker 1: play around see what happens. In part because when I
Speaker 1: would try to make friends with the AI, turn it on,
Speaker 1: see if you can talk it out, ur chat gpt
Speaker 1: on it.
Speaker 2: I think we could. I think we could iron giant
Speaker 2: it with the AI. I think you turned this one
Speaker 2: into the good play super mun Yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of ideas.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of ideas, folks. Sometimes you need to
Speaker 1: just be able to enjoy the world when beautiful things
Speaker 1: happen beautiful things like the F thirty five going missing,
Speaker 1: like like doing a homeward bound with our Apocalypse fighter
Speaker 1: gott to get led back to home by like a
Speaker 1: fucking rogued chinook.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so cute.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we're talking about g Gordon Liddies still for
Speaker 1: so many, so many five hours now something like that anyway,
Speaker 1: I don't mean close. Yeah, when we left off, he
Speaker 1: had just gotten shit canned by the Treachery Department for
Speaker 1: rank and competence and repeatedly comparing stuff to the Holocaust
Speaker 1: for no reason.
Speaker 2: Well, it does seem pretty clear he was never fired
Speaker 2: for the for the SS stuff. Yeah, is the weirdest
Speaker 2: part of all of that.
Speaker 1: That is fair? Yeah, because like I feel like there
Speaker 1: is an amount of comparing things unnecessarily to the SS
Speaker 1: that you should be fired for. Right, I don't know
Speaker 1: what that amount is. Precise is really low. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's high, right, I think it should be once yeah, once, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you get one freebie and then everyone's like, man, stop
Speaker 1: falling asleep to the fucking History channel.
Speaker 2: Like comes past. He's past where I think the number
Speaker 2: should be significantly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's good to know. I'm glad that we're I'm
Speaker 1: glad that where it's like you're it's like your fucking
Speaker 1: Kevin Bacon number, right, you're here your unnecessary SS references number.
Speaker 1: So Lyddy is getting forced out of the UH of
Speaker 1: the Treasury Department. This is a real embarrassment for him,
Speaker 1: so he completely ignores it in his autobiography in favor
Speaker 1: of telling a long story about his sons getting bullied
Speaker 1: at school and how he taught them like, the only
Speaker 1: way to respond to bullies is like violence is immediately
Speaker 1: escalating to violence, And the school is like, that's not
Speaker 1: what we like our students to do here at this
Speaker 1: private school. We would prefer they not immediately go to violence.
Speaker 1: And his wife is also like, I don't think this
Speaker 1: is a good lesson to give the kids, right, I
Speaker 1: think they're probably going to wind up creating more problems
Speaker 1: for themselves that they respond this way. And so when
Speaker 1: the school and his wife are both like, I don't
Speaker 1: think are at are to them as immediately respond to
Speaker 1: with violence to kids like making fun of them, Lyddy's
Speaker 1: response to that is that before World War Two, they
Speaker 1: French school started eduscate cating children not to respond violently.
Speaker 1: They tried to stop kids from fighting in schools, and
Speaker 1: then in World War Two, the French lost because German
Speaker 1: kids had been taught to be aggressive and get into
Speaker 1: fights at schools. So I'm going to do what the
Speaker 1: Germans did and teach my kids to get into pointless fights. Now,
Speaker 1: first off, yet another unnecessary Nazi reference. Second's really what
Speaker 1: happened next? G Gordon Liddy Like, you're right, You're right.
Speaker 1: The French did lose the first part of that war.
Speaker 1: What happened next to the Germans? How far did starting
Speaker 1: fights in every conceivable situation take Germany?
Speaker 2: It's really just like, like, imagine being so convinced of
Speaker 2: your rightness and having so little attention Spad that like, yeah,
Speaker 2: he's like a real like first act of every movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah a guy, Yeah, what happened? Let's say two years later?
Speaker 1: Gordon Lyddy like where were where was Germany? Then? And
Speaker 1: obviously this works the same way for his kids pretty
Speaker 1: much that it does for Germany. And that the fact
Speaker 1: that they're told like escalate physically, and like they're not
Speaker 1: big kids, right, I think they're getting made fun of
Speaker 1: and like, so they start escalating things physically and it
Speaker 1: doesn't work out well for them, and in fact, not
Speaker 1: only do kids not stop bullying them, but teens from
Speaker 1: the local high school escalate and it's very funny. In
Speaker 1: his book, Lyddy notes that like like, when describing these
Speaker 1: teens that are gonna harass him and his kids at
Speaker 1: their house, he notes, many of them larger, are larger
Speaker 1: than me. Yeah, I am smaller than a child. So
Speaker 1: some of these kids escalate to egging his house and
Speaker 1: the family cars and throwing firecrackers at the Liddy house
Speaker 1: at night, I think because they realize that, like, the
Speaker 1: dad's a maniac too, so we can really fuck with
Speaker 1: this family now. Lyddy knows he can't call the cops because,
Speaker 1: in his mind, we live in a dangerous part of
Speaker 1: and they've got enough on their plate. I gotta handle
Speaker 1: this on my own, right like he's he's, he's, And
Speaker 1: the way he writes this all out is very much
Speaker 1: like fucking Liam Neeson and taken, where he's like, I
Speaker 1: have a very particular set of skills that makes me
Speaker 1: a nightmare to a fifteen year old like you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess that's true. That is undeniable.
Speaker 1: He starts staying up at night and like waiting for
Speaker 1: the kids to show up, uh, and then like when
Speaker 1: they come out, he like chases them and gets one
Speaker 1: of these children in a headlock. And then he he says,
Speaker 1: one of the kids pulls a knife, and he explains
Speaker 1: in detail, I will break that knife into pieces and
Speaker 1: use him to like like cut this kid, Like I'll
Speaker 1: kill you if you fucking pull that knife out on me.
Speaker 1: And like Number one, I don't I don't really believe
Speaker 1: that a knife got pulled on him. Number Two, he
Speaker 1: tells that stories if it makes him look cool. He
Speaker 1: never provides evidence that these kids actually had done anything,
Speaker 1: Like theoretically, he just chased down and choked a child,
Speaker 1: Like there's no evidence given to us that shows anything
Speaker 1: but that, like there's a real reason for him to
Speaker 1: chase these kids because he's a maniac, Like he just
Speaker 1: is pretty sure these are the kids, so he attacks
Speaker 1: them in the street.
Speaker 2: There's like no version of this in the real life
Speaker 2: version that didn't end with him getting pantsd right.
Speaker 1: No, for sure, they fell down as he was chasing them.
Speaker 1: Like I don't know that I actually believe any of
Speaker 1: that he actually even caught a kid. But if he did,
Speaker 1: and if a kid pulled a knife. My guess is that,
Speaker 1: like these kids were walking past the house and he
Speaker 1: suddenly runs out, screaming and attacks one, and some kid
Speaker 1: pulls a pocket knife because he's like, I don't know
Speaker 1: what else to do in this situation. Yeah, and yeah,
Speaker 1: like that's probably how it goes. Nothing like, at no
Speaker 1: point does this. This is not like whether or not
Speaker 1: he actually got the culprits. They don't stop throwing eggs
Speaker 1: at his house, right, Like, the minor vandalism continues, And
Speaker 1: here's what he writes about A week later, another egg
Speaker 1: hit the house. So I took to patrolling the alleys
Speaker 1: on my own. Now I was hunting them. That's just
Speaker 1: batman on them. He's like actively wandering the neighborhood at
Speaker 1: night looking for teenagers to fight. Oh my god, that
Speaker 1: spoiled all their fun and I assumed one complained to
Speaker 1: his parents. One evening, as I was cleaning my gun collection,
Speaker 1: which was spread out for that purpose over newspapers on
Speaker 1: the dining room table, many of the pistols disassembled. I
Speaker 1: received a telephone call. A neighbor wanted to talk to
Speaker 1: me about my nocturnal activities. I told him, fun, come
Speaker 1: on over figuring he was one of the father of
Speaker 1: one of the vandals. I wanted to talk to him.
Speaker 1: So first off, in the book, Liddy lays out all
Speaker 1: of the different guns and descriptions of what and by
Speaker 1: the way, nearly all of them German. Right, all of
Speaker 1: these are like fucking lugers, Like they're all old Nazi guns.
Speaker 1: That's the only kind of gun he buys, Cowboy revolvers
Speaker 1: and Nazi pistols. That's it for g Gordon Lyddy. So
Speaker 1: he lays out all of this and he like spends
Speaker 1: all this to tail on these guns that are laying out,
Speaker 1: and then this guy comes over and Lyddy, he clearly
Speaker 1: is like wants us to believe that like this terrified
Speaker 1: the man that he like sees, Oh my god, Lyddy's
Speaker 1: got all these guns. I better not fuck with him.
Speaker 1: There's he doesn't even provide in this story and the
Speaker 1: evidence that this has an impact on the guy, right,
Speaker 1: Like the dude is like, you need to stop hunting
Speaker 1: children in the night, right, And yeah, Lyddy is like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to stop hunting children in the night.
Speaker 1: And the guy says, well you should, and like it's
Speaker 1: kind of over, like there's no evidence that his guns
Speaker 1: had any influence on any of this, Like, we don't
Speaker 1: need to know this, it's completely irrelevant, right, But eventually
Speaker 1: kids stop egging his house, like, not even immediately. They
Speaker 1: keep going for a while, and I think it just
Speaker 1: peters out because children don't do anything forever. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: he's like, it was clearly because I how scared this
Speaker 1: man was of my guns. It's like, no, man, they
Speaker 1: kept egging your fucking house. You did nothing. You had
Speaker 1: no influence on this situation.
Speaker 2: That's really arkable that he didn't wind up getting like
Speaker 2: his ass kicked by the neighborhood dads.
Speaker 1: I think he might, I don't. I think there's a
Speaker 1: non zero chance that, like one night, when he's going
Speaker 1: batman on some children, he gets hit in the face
Speaker 1: with an egg and gets like a staph infection in
Speaker 1: his eye. Look, there's as much evidence for that as
Speaker 1: anything Lyddy.
Speaker 2: Claims for real. Jesus Christ, what a maniac.
Speaker 1: What a funny funny man so. Lyddy also claims that
Speaker 1: he found during his time before getting shit Canned a
Speaker 1: stack of Treasury Department badges laying around the office that
Speaker 1: weren't real badges that were made up for the CIA
Speaker 1: for CIA men who needed a cover, and so he
Speaker 1: stole one, and that allowed him to carry a gun
Speaker 1: anywhere in the country. Again, at no point does g.
Speaker 1: Gordon Liddy ever do anything involving a gun. This is
Speaker 1: not relevant. There is no question that is answered by
Speaker 1: the fact that he theoretically has the CIA badge, Like,
Speaker 1: he doesn't do anything with that. We don't ever need disinformation.
Speaker 1: He just cannot he like it is he he emotionally
Speaker 1: he needs us to know he always had a gun
Speaker 1: on him, Like he can't stand the fact that we
Speaker 1: wouldn't know that. It's so funny.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: Also, I kind of don't believe that, Like I believe
Speaker 1: the CIA gave people fake covers using other government agencies. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I don't believe that they left their badgesting out in
Speaker 1: the Treasury Department in a big bile where G. Gordon
Speaker 1: Lenny could grab one. I do believe that he illegally
Speaker 1: carried a firearm for years. I'll give him that. I'll
Speaker 1: give him that. I bet he's I bet he broke those.
Speaker 2: Laws just like a stack of fake badges. Yeah, somehows
Speaker 2: would let you carry a gun illegally, just sitting by
Speaker 2: the coffee machine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, just like hanging out. Oh yeah, that's our
Speaker 1: Cia badges. Don't take one g Gordon Lenny to let
Speaker 1: you carry a gun anywhere you want. So again he
Speaker 1: dedicates pages after this to talking, like telling all these
Speaker 1: fake stories about how bad his neighborhood is in DC,
Speaker 1: and he he cannot again every time he encounters a
Speaker 1: black person, he lets you know, right, and he tells.
Speaker 1: One of the stories he tells is that like one night,
Speaker 1: this like black man knocks on the door and G.
Speaker 1: Gordon Liddy pulls a forty five and threatens to shoot
Speaker 1: him with it, and again provides no evidence this man
Speaker 1: wanted to do anything illegal, that like this was anything
Speaker 1: but like a guy coming to his door by mistake,
Speaker 1: but by god, G Gordon Liddy is going to point
Speaker 1: a firearm at a stranger. Great man hero.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Lyddy gets pushed out of the Treasury Department. And
Speaker 1: I'm not sure why. Maybe it's that he had made
Speaker 1: enough friends, maybe it's that he had some lingering family connections.
Speaker 1: But they can't they don't feel like they can get
Speaker 1: rid of him entirely, right, So instead of immediately pushing
Speaker 1: lyddy out. They like, they find a job for him,
Speaker 1: they get switch him to a new boss, and they're like,
Speaker 1: you can stay here for a while, but you need
Speaker 1: to find something else. So don't let it be too long. Right,
Speaker 1: And it just so happens that this is this is
Speaker 1: the point at which Liddy wipes up in the Nixon
Speaker 1: White House. Right, So this is the at this point
Speaker 1: his career is was an FBI agent, got forced out
Speaker 1: for incompetence, was a worked for the DA's office, probably
Speaker 1: got forced out for incompetence, ran for office, lost badly,
Speaker 1: And then was that the Treasury apartment got forced out
Speaker 1: for incompetence. Right? That is g Gordon Liddy's working career
Speaker 1: at this point. Right, luckily for you know him, unlucky
Speaker 1: and luckily for his coworkers at Treasury, but unluckily for
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon and the rest of the country. The collapse
Speaker 1: of his career at Treasury occurred right alongside an event
Speaker 1: of much greater historic importance, the release of the Pentagon papers.
Speaker 1: I have you heard about this? Do you know what?
Speaker 1: Like the Pentingon papers were.
Speaker 2: Was not enough? Actually, I'm happy to learn.
Speaker 1: I'll give you an overview here because people need to
Speaker 1: know this, especially since Daniel Ellsberg, the guy who's kind
Speaker 1: of behind the leak of these, just died very recently.
Speaker 1: The Pentagon Papers were an internal history of the Vietnam
Speaker 1: War from nineteen forty five to nineteen sixty seven, commissioned
Speaker 1: by the Defense Department. Right, it was this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: You know, again, the Defence Department is completely morally in
Speaker 1: the wrong about most conflicts it's in post World War two.
Speaker 1: But this is a reasonable thing to do. Right, You've
Speaker 1: just had this big disaster of a war, right, and
Speaker 1: it's like it's going terribly. It's been going terribly in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, it's still going on. Should probably sit
Speaker 1: down and like try to lay out all the facts
Speaker 1: about what happened and to figure out like what the
Speaker 1: fuck went on here? Right, reasonable thing to want to do.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: Among the fun facts revealed in the Pentagon Papers was
Speaker 1: the fact that, despite President Johnson's claim to the contrary,
Speaker 1: at no point were we involved in Vietnam to help
Speaker 1: South Vietnam.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The papers include the admission from the US government we
Speaker 1: were there because we were in conflict with China.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and others had come to
Speaker 1: a view China as a Nazi like expansionist threat to
Speaker 1: the entirety of Asia, and that's why we got involved
Speaker 1: in Vietnam. It had nothing to do with supporting democracy
Speaker 1: in South Vietnam, especially since South Vietnam was not really
Speaker 1: functionally democracy or at least most of its history, Like
Speaker 1: it was just because of our fears about China. Right,
Speaker 1: That's one of the things we get out of the
Speaker 1: Pentagon Papers. The papers also contained evidence of US involvement
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixty three South Vietnamese coup and the
Speaker 1: assassination of President DM. And there's always been like these
Speaker 1: theories that did the US have this guy fucking iced
Speaker 1: and like yes, basically yes, right. And there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of other very shady or outright criminal acts that are
Speaker 1: kind of revealed in the Pentagon Papers because these are
Speaker 1: not meant for public release.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The guy, one of the guys who compiles this report
Speaker 1: is a Rand Corporation employee named Daniel Ellsberg. Prior to
Speaker 1: working for the Rand Corporation, Elsberg had worked for the
Speaker 1: CIA on a rural pacification campaign in Vietnam, so he
Speaker 1: was one of the guys doing shady, dangerous shit for
Speaker 1: the US in Vietnam. He had also been an aid
Speaker 1: to Hank Kissinger, So like, this is a guy who
Speaker 1: was pretty intimately involved in everything that's going on. And
Speaker 1: as a result of kind of that process of some
Speaker 1: of the things he sees, and as a result of
Speaker 1: being part of the assembly of these Pentagon papers, he
Speaker 1: gets against the war. Right now, there's some other again,
Speaker 1: we're not going to give a comprehensive thing here, there's
Speaker 1: some other like arguments over like Ellsberg and like why
Speaker 1: he did what he did. But that's the broad story
Speaker 1: and it's generally accurate. And in nineteen sixty nine he
Speaker 1: leaks some of these papers to a New York Times
Speaker 1: journalist and the whole thing blows up from there. The
Speaker 1: time starts writing these stories about all this shady and
Speaker 1: illegal shit that people had suspected for years about US
Speaker 1: conduct and Vietnam, and because Nixon's the president, all of
Speaker 1: this shit kind of winds up on his desk and
Speaker 1: it it super charges the protest movement, the anti war movement,
Speaker 1: and suddenly like they're surrounding the White House and like
Speaker 1: fucking box trucks and National guardsmen to keep away the
Speaker 1: crowds of protesters, Like it's this massive mass of Like
Speaker 1: the Nixon campaign, it has fears that, like the protesters
Speaker 1: might breach the fucking perimeter, right, Like that's a worry
Speaker 1: for a while that they've got. Well that's crazy, that'll
Speaker 1: never ever, that'll never happen again. So what's relevant to
Speaker 1: us today about the Pentagon Papers is that they have
Speaker 1: a massive impact on the paranoia of one Richard M.
Speaker 1: Nixon president. Right. This is when you hear about Nixon
Speaker 1: being a paranoid maniac. The Pentagon Papers are a big
Speaker 1: part of why, because he becomes convinced they don't know
Speaker 1: for a while who's done it. They've become eventually aware
Speaker 1: it was probably Ellsberg, But like there's all these fears
Speaker 1: about like who's a leaker? Who can we trust? You know,
Speaker 1: they're trying to screw us, however, trying to fuck me
Speaker 1: out of the White House. So I'm going to quote
Speaker 1: now from a very readable history of the Watergate scandal,
Speaker 1: a book called King Richard by Michael Dobbs. When The
Speaker 1: New York Times began publishing a classified history of the
Speaker 1: war known as the Pentagon Papers in June nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: Kissinger exploded, this will totally destroy American credibility forever, he raged,
Speaker 1: no foreign government will ever trust us again. The president
Speaker 1: needed little persuading that draconian action was necessary. According to
Speaker 1: Haldeman and Haldeman's Nixon's a chief staff. I think Henry
Speaker 1: got Nixon cranked up, and then they started cranking each
Speaker 1: other up until they were both in a frenzy. This
Speaker 1: in turn inspired the creation of a special investigations unit
Speaker 1: to track down leakers of government documents. The teams set
Speaker 1: up shop in a war of offices on the ground
Speaker 1: floor of the Executive Office Building known as Room sixteen.
Speaker 1: Because they were charged with plugging leaks, unit members jokingly
Speaker 1: affixed a sign to the entryway that went read simply plumbers.
Speaker 1: Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt were among the first recruits.
Speaker 1: So pretty reasonable, Like understand not reasonable, We understandable. Story, Right,
Speaker 1: there's a leak. Nixon goes crazy. He's like, I need
Speaker 1: guys to fix leaks, and g Gordon Liddy, how are
Speaker 1: because he's being forced out, Lyddy gets stuck in in
Speaker 1: this job, right, like this is where he gets moved to,
Speaker 1: and this is kind of a dream for his Like
Speaker 1: a guy who fucks up as much as Liddy, you
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't reward with a white House gig, but they do. So. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is his dream. This is his chance to do
Speaker 1: all the spy shit that he dreamed about, all the
Speaker 1: shit he'd read about in books as a little kid
Speaker 1: and stuff like. Now he's got a chance to be
Speaker 1: that guy.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So, Lyddy proved the FBI right for firing him almost
Speaker 1: instantly by sitting down with his new colleagues and insisting
Speaker 1: there investigations unit should be based on. You want to
Speaker 1: make a guess as to what he thinks they should base.
Speaker 2: Their new unit on.
Speaker 1: You want to make a guess, Andrew, what organization do
Speaker 1: you think he argans back to in a history? It's
Speaker 1: the SS Yeah, yeah, once again, it always he does.
Speaker 2: It's so weird that he's not aware that they lost
Speaker 2: the war.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that it didn't work, that it was that the
Speaker 4: whole country gets destroyed, that Germany is shattered in a
Speaker 4: way that almost no nation in history has ever been shattered.
Speaker 1: But uh no, he's like, you know who, I think
Speaker 1: we should take a page out of their book for
Speaker 1: our our illegal spying unit in the White House is
Speaker 1: the fucking SS. Here's what he writes. Our organization had
Speaker 1: been directed to eliminate subversion of the secrets of the administration.
Speaker 1: So I created an acronym using the initial letter of
Speaker 1: those descripted words. It appealed to me because when I organize,
Speaker 1: I'm inclined to think of German terms. And the acronym
Speaker 1: was also used by a World War Two German veterans
Speaker 1: organization belonged to by some acquaintances of mine, Odessa. On
Speaker 1: the blackboard in German. For clarity and added security, I
Speaker 1: diagrammed the new Odessa organization. Have you heard of Odessa? Andrew,
Speaker 1: do you know who these guys were? Oh?
Speaker 2: My god, I mean not enough?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Odessa is not a real organization. For one,
Speaker 1: it was never like a group called Odessa. It was
Speaker 1: a code name US Intelligence came up with to describe
Speaker 1: a mix of different smaller organizations and like escape plans
Speaker 1: by different Nazi war criminals, specifically generally members of the
Speaker 1: SS who had been responsible for the Holocaust. Odessa was
Speaker 1: the name that intelligence gave all these plans to get
Speaker 1: them out of Europe and generally over to Latin America. Right, So,
Speaker 1: Lyddy is like, I want to base our intel network
Speaker 1: on the group that helped SS war criminals, some of
Speaker 1: whom are my friends get away from Europe of void justice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know the guys who Adolf Aikman and Joseph Mangela
Speaker 1: get away. That's who I want to And it's also yeah.
Speaker 2: That's no just fucking oh god, it's Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: What a note. What a fucking note to have be
Speaker 1: the only thing that you do. And we'll talk about
Speaker 1: one other thing that g Gordon Lyddy does. But first, Andrew,
Speaker 1: maybe two plugs you know, we might have a couple
Speaker 1: of plugs in there.
Speaker 2: Well, we're not plugging leaks.
Speaker 1: We're not We're not plugging leaks. So we're back from
Speaker 1: outer space. Andrew, I just walked in. Wow, I think
Speaker 1: I've made that. I think I made that reference before. Anyway,
Speaker 1: you definitely have.
Speaker 2: I definitely have at least once. But it's so natural
Speaker 2: that just just go.
Speaker 1: On, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: So Lyddy, so he decides to make his his own
Speaker 1: Odessa organization for the Nixon White House and like it
Speaker 1: is funny, like the reason why he picks Odessa because
Speaker 1: it really doesn't have anything to do with what he
Speaker 1: wants to do, right, It wasn't an organization for plugging
Speaker 1: leaks for one thing? Is that Odessa. Again, it's not
Speaker 1: an actual organization, but in the post war era, all
Speaker 1: of these spy books pretend it is because it's a
Speaker 1: great bad guy for your spin norml Right, if you're
Speaker 1: writing like a bunch of pop boiler James Bond type books,
Speaker 1: the organization of SS Veterans, great idea for like these
Speaker 1: will be our bad guys, right, these old Nazis and stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, this secret Nazi organization around the country. That's
Speaker 1: why he that's why he focuses on them, because like
Speaker 1: he'd read all these books as a kid, where they
Speaker 1: were the bad guys, like Odessa is g Gordon Liddy's
Speaker 1: generation's Cobra, right, yeah, and so that's like that who
Speaker 1: he wants to be, yeah, clespect right, Yeah, and he
Speaker 1: is he is the He is the same as modern
Speaker 1: fascists who like play Warhammer forty K as kids and
Speaker 1: then like decide Trump is the god em right, Like
Speaker 1: that's all he's doing is he's like I want to
Speaker 1: be like these guys and these fictional novels that I
Speaker 1: thought are cool. So yeah, that's literally what's going on here.
Speaker 1: Lyddy's partner in this endeavor, in this plumbing endeavor, is E.
Speaker 1: Howard Hunt, and Hunt is an interesting guy who's kind
Speaker 1: of in some ways weirdly similar to Liddy.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Hunt is a former CIA man, right, he was with
Speaker 1: the company for a long time. He had worked overseas.
Speaker 1: He was there during in Guatemala. He played a role
Speaker 1: in the in the coup in Guatemala. I think also
Speaker 1: in Chile, and maybe I'm wrong about that one. But
Speaker 1: he's involved in a lot in these decades of fuckery
Speaker 1: in South and Central America by the CIA. And then
Speaker 1: he torpedoes his career because he's also deeply involved in
Speaker 1: the Bay of Pigs, which does not go right. That's
Speaker 1: kind of the end of his like, you know, career
Speaker 1: for the CIA, of like meaning anything in it right now.
Speaker 1: The thing is, though, Will Hunt is definitely involved in
Speaker 1: doing a bunch of crimes for the CIA. He's like
Speaker 1: a paper pusher, he's like a logistics guy. He's not
Speaker 1: doing cool shit. He's not kicking indoors, he's not assassinating people.
Speaker 1: He's certainly not romancing exotic ladies spies, right he is.
Speaker 1: He is the spy. He's the spook equivalent of a
Speaker 1: middle manager, right yeah, which is obviously necessary. Right, if
Speaker 1: you're running an illegal spying organization that's committing crimes against humanity,
Speaker 1: you need a bunch of pap Most of what you
Speaker 1: need are paper mostly, right, That is mostly of the job.
Speaker 2: You never need the other shit.
Speaker 1: You very rarely need a jam like and that's usually
Speaker 1: not it. Usually it's just like, well, we have a
Speaker 1: lot of guns, let's just keep giving them the guys
Speaker 1: in the jungle and like, you know, using our contacts
Speaker 1: to give him a place to train in the nearby country,
Speaker 1: and eventually they'll over there. Of the government, right, Like
Speaker 1: that most of what goes on in these actual cases.
Speaker 1: So Hunt Hunt, you know, despite the fact that on
Speaker 1: paper his background's legitimate, he kind of always feels like
Speaker 1: he missed out on getting to have the exciting spy career.
Speaker 1: Part of how Hunt deals with that is he is
Speaker 1: an author of spy books, like the same kind of
Speaker 1: books that Liddy reads as a young man. He published
Speaker 1: He's published like forty different novels by this point, and
Speaker 1: they're all like kind of James bond Ish, right, like
Speaker 1: slightly worse than Ian Fleming's novels, but like mid gra
Speaker 1: airport fiction grade like spy thrillers, right, And so Hunt
Speaker 1: is he's got some backstory, he has some connections, but
Speaker 1: he's also, like Lyddy, kind of insecure about his lack
Speaker 1: of doing anything cool. And so you put both of
Speaker 1: these guys together, and that's a fucking disaster, right like,
Speaker 1: because they're just going to lead each other into fucking
Speaker 1: calamity well beyond their degree of competence. So the disaster
Speaker 1: starts right away with their project of destroying Daniel Ellsberg,
Speaker 1: the Pentagon papers leaker. The way they decided to do
Speaker 1: this is they're going to break into his therapist's office
Speaker 1: and steal the file on him, with the idea that
Speaker 1: like this probably contains something damning about the man. Right now.
Speaker 1: In his book, Lyddy lovingly describes all of the spy
Speaker 1: cameras they get to buy and how they work, and
Speaker 1: all the different gear, this listening devices he talks about
Speaker 1: he has, like this terrible wig. There's a photo of
Speaker 1: a minute this like horrible wig that he want that
Speaker 1: looks like fucking shit, and he has this gait altering
Speaker 1: device that he wears to make him like force him
Speaker 1: to have a limp so that it'll disguise him, and like,
Speaker 1: none of this winds up working. Like all of the
Speaker 1: shit that they buy is pointless. Right because on their
Speaker 1: first break in, which is the only one where Lyddy
Speaker 1: does any actual spy work, they like bust into this
Speaker 1: guy's office illegally and take photos of a bunch of paperwork.
Speaker 1: And Lyddy doesn't know how to use the spy camera,
Speaker 1: so the photos they take don't work. There's like nothing
Speaker 1: in them. Right, he gets a bunch of blurry pictures
Speaker 1: of track. Right, that's all that is the extent of
Speaker 1: his real career as a spy. Right is he fails
Speaker 1: to use a spy camera properly and pointlessly breaks into
Speaker 1: a therapist's office. This is like any reasonable person would
Speaker 1: be embarrassed of this, Right, this is shameful. Lyddy describes
Speaker 1: it as a successful op where he proved that he
Speaker 1: really had what it took to be a spy. We
Speaker 1: can see this evidence of this in the fact that
Speaker 1: his boss, Bud Krogue, who was the White House FBI
Speaker 1: liaison and thus did know real g men, right, like
Speaker 1: Krogue knows actual spies. Immediately told them, you guys can
Speaker 1: never do an entry again, Like, I don't ever want
Speaker 1: to hear that you've broken into a place. You are
Speaker 1: employees of the White House. If you get arrested, if
Speaker 1: an employee of the White House gets arrested performing illegal
Speaker 1: surveillance that could ruin the whole administration, you're not allowed
Speaker 1: to ever go in on this again. So Lyddy goes
Speaker 1: over to Hunt, and Hunt has friends, Cuban friends from
Speaker 1: the Bay of Pigs. Right, These like criminals who had
Speaker 1: tried to overthrow the Castor regime and failed. Right, most
Speaker 1: of these guys are some kind of gangster, right as
Speaker 1: well as being you know, want to be revolutionary. So
Speaker 1: he has Hunt call up some of these Bay of
Speaker 1: Pigs guys. And again, also, I don't know, man, if
Speaker 1: you're if you're looking at like an op that went well,
Speaker 1: that you might want to like hire dudes from Beya
Speaker 1: Pigs prolays in the op, right, Like, yeah, the famously
Speaker 1: successful Bay of Pigs. So they bring in these Bay
Speaker 1: of Pigs guys and they just spend tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars on even more fans see camera equipment and lyddy,
Speaker 1: he's not allowed to do anything, right, So he decides,
Speaker 1: I'll be their backup, right, I'll hang around outside of
Speaker 1: this of this building that they're breaking into to try
Speaker 1: to get papers with a weapon in case I got
Speaker 1: to kill somebody to keep quiet. Right, And so he
Speaker 1: goes through how like he thought he should. He wanted
Speaker 1: to bring a gun, but the only gun he has
Speaker 1: that'd be good for this, he's got a He has
Speaker 1: an unregistered CIA nine millimeter that was manufactured specifically for assassinations.
Speaker 1: But god, it couldn't take a silencer, right, So he
Speaker 1: brings his next best weapon, quote, a folding Browning knife,
Speaker 1: deadly and quiet, a pocket knife. He calls it like
Speaker 1: a Browning knife because browning also makes sense. He brings
Speaker 1: a pocket knife. You take a pocket knife to your
Speaker 1: spy mission in case you need to murder someone on
Speaker 1: the street.
Speaker 2: I mean, also, given his early history, I guess he's
Speaker 2: probably physically capable of doing me. Maybe maybe not may.
Speaker 1: It's actually, if you use the thing, it's hard to
Speaker 1: kill people with a knife, right. It is not a
Speaker 1: quiet weapon. Number one. Most of the time, when somebody
Speaker 1: pulls a knife and uses it on another person. Both
Speaker 1: of them get stabbed. It is a weapon that leads
Speaker 1: to a lot of screaming. Right, you can't even with
Speaker 1: an unsilenced weapon, you can shoot someone with it and
Speaker 1: they can drop immediately, right without making any noise. Right,
Speaker 1: it's possible with a knife. It is always going to
Speaker 1: be loud and horrific because you're stabbing someone. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe there's the odds spy out there who really can
Speaker 1: quietly use an eye. But like you, if you read
Speaker 1: actual stories of spies, very uncommon for knives to be
Speaker 1: used to this situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not the tool of choice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Lyddy certainly not qualified to use this. Right, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter though, this is all alarm because again, well
Speaker 1: he describes this because he wants us to know he
Speaker 1: totally might have killed a guy. All that actually happens
Speaker 1: is he hangs out outside this office while his guys
Speaker 1: are breaking in for a couple of minutes with a
Speaker 1: pocket knife on his bait. And to make it even nerdier,
Speaker 1: he has a holster for it on his belt. He's
Speaker 1: like wearing a pocket knife and a fucking holster to
Speaker 1: like maybe murder a fucking dude. Walking his dog. If
Speaker 1: they come out right, and he writes this about this moment,
Speaker 1: I can run for miles. And there were numerous deeply
Speaker 1: shadowed hiding places in the area from which I could
Speaker 1: pause to warn them in inside with the transceiver. Only
Speaker 1: if there were no other recourse would I have used
Speaker 1: the knife. But I would if I'd had to. I
Speaker 1: had given my men my word that I would protect them. Great,
Speaker 1: totally believable, Gee Gordon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh my god.
Speaker 1: So his team does succeed at the operation because it
Speaker 1: turns out, I mean kind of right. They get in there,
Speaker 1: they get pictures and stuff of a bunch of papers,
Speaker 1: but like, and they get his file, but like, none
Speaker 1: of it. There's nothing in there, right, because Ellsberg there's
Speaker 1: nothing really impeachable about him, and he certainly he didn't
Speaker 1: go tell his therapists like, so, yeah, I'm committing a
Speaker 1: crime by leaking classified data to the New York Times.
Speaker 1: He doesn't do that, because Daniel Elsberg wasn't a fucking idiot.
Speaker 1: So after ransacking this office, they leave a bunch of
Speaker 1: random pills to disguise the break in as having been
Speaker 1: carried out by a junkie. And this is what's said,
Speaker 1: A man with a history of addiction is arrested for
Speaker 1: the break in and coerced into confessing. He goes to
Speaker 1: prison because of this, like just some random dude. Lyddy
Speaker 1: has absolutely no sympathy for this guy because he's a junkie,
Speaker 1: you know. So he goes. He and Hunt go back
Speaker 1: to the drawing board, and according to Hunt, Hunt tells
Speaker 1: Liddy Elsberg is scheduled to speak at a fundraising dinner
Speaker 1: that's going to be held in Washington, and they decide like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a good opportunity to discredit him, right, we can, like,
Speaker 1: we can embarrass him at this dinner in a way
Speaker 1: that will make people less likely to trust what he's saying.
Speaker 1: It's going to be the dinner's going to be attended
Speaker 1: by media, you know, taste makers and shit, and so
Speaker 1: this is a good opportunity. And the suggestion some guy's
Speaker 1: Chuck Holson at the White House as is like, hey,
Speaker 1: could Liddy, could you guys drug Elsberg to make him
Speaker 1: appear that he's like an addict and not trustworthy. So
Speaker 1: the plan that fucking Liddy and Hunt work up is
Speaker 1: to have the same Cuban guys to dress them up
Speaker 1: as waiters and have them drug Elsberg with acid and
Speaker 1: his champagne never gets past the drawing board because it's
Speaker 1: a terrible plan. So next they decide to start, they
Speaker 1: drop plans to start fucking with the Brookings Institute, which
Speaker 1: is this liberal think tank that Elsberg is involved with.
Speaker 1: Right and Liddy suspects Elsberg hid his copy of the
Speaker 1: Pentingon papers in their safe right, so he thinks there's
Speaker 1: the full copy of these documents that he can lead
Speaker 1: to the Times. I believe they're hiding out at the
Speaker 1: Brookings Institute. So here's what we're going to do. We're
Speaker 1: going to firebomb the Brookings Institute, and then we're going
Speaker 1: to buy a brand new fire truck for the Cubans
Speaker 1: and we'll train them all as firefighters and they'll be
Speaker 1: waiting around the corner and will be the first responders
Speaker 1: to the fire. And then while a fire is going
Speaker 1: on and they pretend to fight it, they'll bust in
Speaker 1: and crack the safe to get whatever's inside it.
Speaker 2: Genius, that is.
Speaker 1: That's a thing that could happen.
Speaker 2: G Gordon, little boys reading comic books.
Speaker 1: And they present this plan to Nixon, and Nixon's like, fuck,
Speaker 1: that's right with you people, No, of course not. Lyddy
Speaker 1: is like they just weren't willing to spend the money.
Speaker 1: It was too much money for the Nixon administration. It
Speaker 1: might have been part of it. I also think that
Speaker 1: even Dick Nixon was like, so, you want to light
Speaker 1: the building on fire, bring in fake firefighters, have him
Speaker 1: cracked the code before real firefighters show up, and like,
Speaker 1: then ditch a brand new fire truck and hope that
Speaker 1: nobody ties it back to you.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem like a good plan to me. I'm
Speaker 1: just Dick Nixon, though, So one fact makes the case
Speaker 1: for Hunt and Liddy's fundamental incompetence better than any other. Now, Andrew,
Speaker 1: I know you have limited experience in clandestine operations, but
Speaker 1: if you know, think back to they carry out these
Speaker 1: like first two illegal burglaries on a fucking Elsberg and
Speaker 1: his psychiatrist. If you had just done that, you had
Speaker 1: carried out these burglaries and gotten away, would you a
Speaker 1: destroy all evidence that might link you to this crime
Speaker 1: later or b take multiple pictures of yourself wearing disguises,
Speaker 1: including a hideous wig, and holding break in equipment at
Speaker 1: the site of the break in and then send those
Speaker 1: photo negatives in with pictures of private documents you found
Speaker 1: in the break in to the CIA to get developed.
Speaker 1: Which of those two would you do? They take pictures
Speaker 1: of themselves and the documents they stole with their illegal
Speaker 1: equipment the White House paid for, and they send those
Speaker 1: photos to the CIA to get developed. So the CIA
Speaker 1: has a copy of photos proving that Howard Hunt and
Speaker 1: g Gordon Liddie were connected to these cribs.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, why did they do that? I mean never,
Speaker 2: I just listen.
Speaker 3: I mean that's the the A and B side, and
Speaker 3: I think we may it may wasn't It was it
Speaker 3: you and I that had this conversation on Twitter potentially,
Speaker 3: which is like the clownishness of fascists is only really
Speaker 3: overshadowed by the fact that, like non fascists are barely
Speaker 3: winning some of them, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, occasionally barely winning. It's it's not a it's not
Speaker 1: an optimistic thing. What do you think about it? But like,
Speaker 1: one of the things, the thing that repeatedly fucks over fascists,
Speaker 1: not as often as it should, but ultimately always does, right,
Speaker 1: is that they're incapable constitutionally fundamentally fascists are incapable of
Speaker 1: estimating threats correctly. Yes, right, like that, that's that's the
Speaker 1: way it is, right, and that's the thing that ultimately
Speaker 1: has destroyed them every time in the history. Right, they're
Speaker 1: not they're not actually able to accurately determine whether or
Speaker 1: not they're taking unreasonable risks, whether or not they can
Speaker 1: handle like they can't they can't understand the real like
Speaker 1: forces raid against them because of something about like the
Speaker 1: way in which fascism fundamentally deranges its adherents, right, yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, or it's the over over like you know, the
Speaker 2: over reliance on the power of Marshall.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like general, Yeah, you see that a lot in Lyddy,
Speaker 1: where like he just there's a lot of own goals
Speaker 1: constantly because he can't he can't actually tell what a
Speaker 1: good idea is. He can't tell what a realis is. Right,
Speaker 1: any reasonable person would be like, I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: it kind of feels like that's going to get you
Speaker 1: in some trouble. I kind of feet It was like,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't have any photos that could tie you to
Speaker 1: this crime you're committing. But Lyddy's like, no, we need
Speaker 1: to people need to know that I had all this
Speaker 1: cool spy gear right at some point, I want this
Speaker 1: on the historical record.
Speaker 2: This is important.
Speaker 1: While Niddy is playing dipshit James Bond, he continues his
Speaker 1: irrepressible habit of inserting his weird Nazi fetish everywhere possible,
Speaker 1: and in this case that now means the White House.
Speaker 1: So this is happening while there's all these protests developing around,
Speaker 1: like the Vietnam War, and it's like really bumming everyone
Speaker 1: out right as you'd expect, Like all these guys yelling
Speaker 1: at you and calling you baby killer, like that bums
Speaker 1: them out so quote. I got awfully tired of stories
Speaker 1: about giant rallies with all the balloons going up in Unison.
Speaker 1: Finally I had enough of it. Hey, you guys, I said,
Speaker 1: one day, you want to see a real rally. Curious
Speaker 1: they asked what I was talking about. One of the
Speaker 1: advantages of living in Washington is the availability of the museums,
Speaker 1: art galleries, and libraries. One of my favorite haunts had
Speaker 1: been the National Archives, and I subscribed to the little
Speaker 1: schedule of motion pictures to be shown that the theater there.
Speaker 1: I had taken my children to see Lenny Reefenstall's cinematic masterpiece,
Speaker 1: Triumph of the Will. I called the National Archives and
Speaker 1: set up a special showing for the White House staff.
Speaker 1: About fifteen people attended. Oh my god, gotta show your man.
Speaker 1: All these people are calling us fascists. We better go
Speaker 1: watch Triumph of the Will.
Speaker 2: My Nazi movie night was not as well attended as
Speaker 2: I house I have thought.
Speaker 1: And he's like, everyone was very impressed about how good
Speaker 1: the Nazis were, like forming a rally. Maybe you know what,
Speaker 1: I'll give you this that you may be telling the
Speaker 1: truth about this. I do believe you could find fifteen
Speaker 1: people in the Nixon White House who could be legitimately
Speaker 1: impressed by Triumph of the Will. I'm not gonna question
Speaker 1: g Gordon Letty on that fact he didn't lie about
Speaker 1: everything right, right, right right.
Speaker 2: That seems like a reasonable claim.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Now you do get the feeling that
Speaker 1: like shit like this, maybe because again, only fifteen do
Speaker 1: you show up and like the fact that he's failing. Right. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: nothing that he does works and it's all very expensive
Speaker 1: and part because of all of the fancy spy gear
Speaker 1: he has to buy. This kind of gets he and
Speaker 1: Hunt pushed out of the White House and the same
Speaker 1: way that Liddy had been pushed out of the Treasury
Speaker 1: not all that long ago. Unfortunately, this didn't mean that
Speaker 1: Nixon had no use for him. So by nineteen late
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, after a couple of years of the
Speaker 1: Pentagon papers being out and like, you know, this really
Speaker 1: supercharging protests, Dick Nixon is as paranoid a man as
Speaker 1: has ever held the presidency. He was, among other things,
Speaker 1: certain that Howard Hughes, the billionaire, was funding a secret
Speaker 1: war against his reelection. He was convinced that during his
Speaker 1: sixty eight election, Democrats had paid for protesters and funded
Speaker 1: secret espionage against his campaign. And like you get a
Speaker 1: lot of statements from people that like, well, everyone knew
Speaker 1: that everyone did this kind of stuff. The kind of
Speaker 1: shit that happened Watergate was common. Perhaps it was I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna I'm not gonna take bat for like fucking
Speaker 1: any anybody who's in power at this point that they
Speaker 1: wouldn't do some of this shit, right, But that is
Speaker 1: the I don't know that they did either. The fact
Speaker 1: that Nixon believes this, though, he's a big part of
Speaker 1: what why Watergate happens. Why everything that comes is that
Speaker 1: he is number one. There are real leaks, There are
Speaker 1: definitely people who don't want him to win reelection. And
Speaker 1: he's convinced that he got spite on in sixty eight,
Speaker 1: so he's justified in doing it now. Right. So Nixon
Speaker 1: is obsessed with the fact the idea that he needs
Speaker 1: to fight back and build an apparatus that will warn
Speaker 1: him of any future leaks before they happen. And as
Speaker 1: he's putting together a list of task forces before the
Speaker 1: end of nineteen seventy one for his campaign the next year,
Speaker 1: he tells his chief of staff and political soulmate, Bob Haldeman,
Speaker 1: make sure we have a political intelligence capability better than
Speaker 1: we had in previous campaigns. Now. Haldeman is an interesting guy.
Speaker 1: Bob Haldeman is about his power, hungry, a political climber
Speaker 1: as has ever existed in DC politics. He is Nixon's
Speaker 1: top They're often described as soulmates, right, Haldeman and Nixon
Speaker 1: like they are just they were born waiting for each other, right,
Speaker 1: and like Nixon is. Nixon's a big picture guy, right,
Speaker 1: He's a visionary, whereas Bob Haldeman is a put the
Speaker 1: screws to people get shit done. Fucking that kind of
Speaker 1: dude is very practical, like make things happen kind of dude.
Speaker 1: So they fit together pretty well. Haldeman spends his first
Speaker 1: couple of years in the White House kind of devouring
Speaker 1: the portfolios of other cabinet members right expanding his territory
Speaker 1: like a medieval lord. He's a he's very much like
Speaker 1: an internal politics kind of guy. And while he's doing this,
Speaker 1: Nixon obsesses over these conspiratorial fears of his ever widening
Speaker 1: circle of enemies. Nixon is the kind of guy who's
Speaker 1: unethical enough to approve an illegal dirty tricks section of
Speaker 1: the campaign, but it's sammy enough that he doesn't want
Speaker 1: to be on record saying that, right, so he and
Speaker 1: Haldeman he Mixon tells Haldeman, I want a dirty tricks
Speaker 1: chunk of the campaign. I want people who can spy
Speaker 1: on the enemy for us, and Haldeman uses his doesn't
Speaker 1: want to just say, hey, guys, make us a crime division,
Speaker 1: so he uses this organizational structure he had created within
Speaker 1: the Nixon White House in order to kind of push
Speaker 1: his people to develop this without directly tying it to him,
Speaker 1: and the name of this structure. This machine that Haldiman
Speaker 1: builds within the Nixon White House is called the Tickler
Speaker 1: by former White House counselor John Council John Deane. At
Speaker 1: its core, the Tickler is half phone tree, half harassment campaign. Right.
Speaker 1: Men will be given in person, will be told something like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I want you to make a spy division of the campaign. Right,
Speaker 1: and then Haldeman will task other members of the White
Speaker 1: House staff with calling this person every couple of days
Speaker 1: and be like, Hey, you've done that thing for Bob yet,
Speaker 1: you've done that thing for Bob yet, Right, And this
Speaker 1: is meant to escalate over time so that the calls
Speaker 1: get more and more frequent, Right, in order to kind
Speaker 1: of push people, give them this ticking clock, make them
Speaker 1: like kind of work obsessively towards this end. Right. That's
Speaker 1: the way that tickler works. Right. You're never just sort
Speaker 1: of writing saying I need you to do this. You're
Speaker 1: kind of like using people's peers in order to develop
Speaker 1: this sense of urgency in them to act. Right. So,
Speaker 1: in his own yeah, yeah, this is how Aldaman works.
Speaker 1: And in his own memoirs, John Deane writes the Tickler
Speaker 1: was an extension of Haldeman, and was probably more responsible
Speaker 1: for the Chief of Staff's awesome reputation than was his
Speaker 1: own aluminum personality. It was a self perpetuating paper monster
Speaker 1: with a computer's memory and a Portuguese man O War's touch.
Speaker 1: Often those who were ticklers made calls for the sake
Speaker 1: of making calls to impress Haldeman with their efficiency. Their
Speaker 1: machine never forgot or tired. Once a staff man was
Speaker 1: nailed with the responsibility for the slightest project, the tickler
Speaker 1: would keep pestering until it was fed something, a status report,
Speaker 1: a piece of paper, a bit of information to chew on.
Speaker 1: No one could ignore the tickler, because no one could
Speaker 1: afford to ignore Haldeman. That's how the Nixon White House works.
Speaker 1: That's right, That's how Big Bob Haldeman works.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. Right, it is just like just like
Speaker 2: the type of bureaucracy that's you know, this is what
Speaker 2: Republicans are actually talking about. What they say big government
Speaker 2: is inefficient or insane.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And when you think about when you think about
Speaker 1: this organizational structure, right, I think a reasonable person can
Speaker 1: predict two things are going to be the result of
Speaker 1: this organizational structure. One is people will in order to
Speaker 1: get this thing off their back, right, to push back
Speaker 1: this harassment campaign, they will they will feel pressured to
Speaker 1: just do something, to show up, shot out something, even
Speaker 1: if it's not ready, even if it's not a good idea,
Speaker 1: because you need you need to present the tickler with
Speaker 1: some evidence that you're making progress.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So number one, people might get pressured into like approving
Speaker 1: or allowing things just to have done it right, even
Speaker 1: if it's not a good idea. And number two, this
Speaker 1: is a great way to harass people into action. But
Speaker 1: there's no it does not provide any actual oversight over
Speaker 1: what's being done right because the product doesn't matter. Making
Speaker 1: progress matters, right, Like, That's the way in which this works.
Speaker 1: So you might have a situation which people might approve
Speaker 1: shit that's a bad idea, just to get the tickler
Speaker 1: off their back without watching what's happening. Right. That's how
Speaker 1: Watergate is allowed to happen. Right. It's because of this
Speaker 1: structure that Haldoman has built. And we'll talk about exactly
Speaker 1: how that results in Watergate. But first you know who
Speaker 1: is actively spying on the Democratic National Committee.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go with.
Speaker 1: A variety of people, but probably a variety of people,
Speaker 1: but almost certainly the good people in blue apron right. No, yeah, well, actually,
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't continue that because again, people are incapable of
Speaker 1: recognizing jokes. Yeah, there's somebody somebody on the subreddit the
Speaker 1: other week being like, why does Robert hate the FDA,
Speaker 1: and people being like, oh, you know, it's because he's
Speaker 1: a like, we make jokes about the FDA because the
Speaker 1: idea of going to war with the FDA, of all
Speaker 1: government agencies, is funny. Right, that's it. That's it. I
Speaker 1: don't have a specific beef with the FDA. It's a
Speaker 1: bit again people like anyway, whatever everyone happens, it's okay,
Speaker 1: take it seriously. I do, in fact want to carry
Speaker 1: out terrorist attacks against the FDA. That's that's the point
Speaker 1: of that joke. It's a real statement of my political beliefs.
Speaker 1: Good times, everybody, Good times. I can't wait for that
Speaker 1: FDA raid to hit. Now now that I've admitted that online.
Speaker 2: H.
Speaker 1: Ah, we're back, So let's let's let's keep on talking.
Speaker 1: So Haldeman, you know, the tickler kind of starts the
Speaker 1: process of bugging these guys lower on in the White
Speaker 1: House list. Make a spy division right, make a spy division,
Speaker 1: you know. And again, one thing you might note about
Speaker 1: the tickler is that while it's effective at pushing people
Speaker 1: into action, it is also effectively a giant game of telephone, right,
Speaker 1: And so inevitably when you're playing telephone, the message gets
Speaker 1: distorted both ways. Right, So no one's getting accurate information
Speaker 1: about what is being developed. But something is being developed
Speaker 1: because you have to provide responses to the tickler, right.
Speaker 1: And Holdeman has not really specified what kind of intelligence
Speaker 1: Nixon wants, right, And his hope is kind of that
Speaker 1: by keeping continually poking the guys who are running the
Speaker 1: committee to re elect the president usually just called Creep.
Speaker 1: Who are the two guys running this who are getting
Speaker 1: harassed by the tickler to make this intelligence division are
Speaker 1: John Mitchell, who's a close friend of Nixon than the
Speaker 1: former attorney general, and Jeb McGruder, who's like the deputy
Speaker 1: manager or whatever of Creep. Right, And basically they're being
Speaker 1: pushed finds. Their reaction is like, we have to give
Speaker 1: the White House something. Let's just find some maniac who
Speaker 1: will break the law in creative ways and like give him,
Speaker 1: you know, the job of running intel. And the guy
Speaker 1: who gets that job is going to be g Gordon Lyddy. Right,
Speaker 1: that's result of all this, he found his perfect place.
Speaker 1: You know what I will say is this whole this
Speaker 1: whole vibe is also very Silicon Valley. This is like
Speaker 1: indistinguishable from break breakfast, move.
Speaker 2: Fast break breaks.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, in his autobiography, Lyddy claims that he gets
Speaker 1: this very prestigious job as a reward for his hard
Speaker 1: work at the Department of Treasury. It came with a
Speaker 1: huge pay bump. He claims he's making what would be
Speaker 1: the modern equivalent of like a quarter of a million
Speaker 1: dollars a year, right, He also claims which is like
Speaker 1: thirty grand or something at that time. He also claims,
Speaker 1: in addition to this, that he had been prom a
Speaker 1: million dollar budget for his dirty Tricks project. Now, this
Speaker 1: was never the case. No one ever told Liddy he
Speaker 1: was going to get a million dollars. What happened is that, Like,
Speaker 1: so there's this. The first person to kind of propose
Speaker 1: a dirty tricks campaign for the Nixon White House is
Speaker 1: this dude named Clawfield, who was put forward as director
Speaker 1: for the Alcohol Tax and Firearms Division of the IRS, right,
Speaker 1: and the IRIS commissioner had blocked call Field from getting
Speaker 1: the job because Callfield is a maniac.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So Callfield comes up and is like, hey, guys, I'm
Speaker 1: going to start a private security firm since I didn't
Speaker 1: get that job, and maybe you guys can be the
Speaker 1: first people to hire me. I've got this great idea.
Speaker 1: We're calling it Operation sand Wedge, right, and if you
Speaker 1: give me a half a million dollars, I'll hire double
Speaker 1: agents and infiltrate them into the Democratic Party and carry
Speaker 1: out all of these different schemes to like illegally spy
Speaker 1: on them. Now a lot of people are like, well,
Speaker 1: this is a good idea, and especially once Nixon says
Speaker 1: I want a Dirty Tricks Division, they're like, well, this
Speaker 1: is what Nixon wants, so we should make this thing happen.
Speaker 1: But everyone agrees Caulfield doesn't know what he's doing, in
Speaker 1: part because he's not a good old boy, right. Callfield
Speaker 1: does not come from any ivy league school. He's not
Speaker 1: part of like the family of people who should be
Speaker 1: trusted with a job like this. Whereas despite all of
Speaker 1: the time Liddy tries to make himself out as like
Speaker 1: an outsider, he very much is an insider, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So Magruder, the second man at CREEP, eventually comes to
Speaker 1: John Dene and is like, we need someone to run
Speaker 1: this crime department, and we don't trust this guy who
Speaker 1: pitched us. You know a pretty good plan for doing it.
Speaker 1: We love his ideas about crimes, just not him. Who
Speaker 1: else can we get to do the job for him? Right?
Speaker 1: And so, because he's also being harassed by the tickler,
Speaker 1: John Dene goes back to Bud Krogue, who had been
Speaker 1: Liddy's boss at the plumbing White House Plumbers, right, and
Speaker 1: is the li is onto the FBI, and Bud Krogue
Speaker 1: is like his Crogue wants to get rid of g.
Speaker 1: Gordon Liddy like everyone who works at him does. Crogue
Speaker 1: is like, oh, you need a guy to do dirty tricks.
Speaker 1: I know what, dou REPI guy. He's got this reputation
Speaker 1: being a wild man. But he's a great lawyer. And
Speaker 1: because John Dean is also one of these like Ivy League,
Speaker 1: Pricks is like, oh uh, he's this guy. Went to
Speaker 1: a good college, right, he went to Fordham. You know
Speaker 1: he's got a great and he's got it. He's a lawyer. Hill.
Speaker 1: This is the calm hand that we need on this
Speaker 1: program to really make sure nobody goes too far with anything.
Speaker 1: So that's how Lyddy gets hired to run this, right,
Speaker 1: and you know, Krogue seems to It's it's kind of
Speaker 1: unclear if Krogue thinks that Lyddy will accomplish anating or
Speaker 1: just wants to get rid of him, you know. For Wisworth,
Speaker 1: Jeff McGruder, who's running the committee to re elect the
Speaker 1: president more or less, is like is like most people. Uh,
Speaker 1: he's immediately off put by Lyddy. And this paragraph from
Speaker 1: the book King Richard get because because Bud Krogue writes
Speaker 1: one book about Watergate, I think that's the one the
Speaker 1: show with Justin throw White House Plumbers is based off of.
Speaker 1: And John Dean writes another book about his experiences, and
Speaker 1: I believe that that's the book that the other Watergate
Speaker 1: show is based off of. I've read a number of
Speaker 1: different accounts, large pieces of them, from all the guys involved.
Speaker 1: None of them are trustworthy, right when it comes to
Speaker 1: like who is right here, Well, they're all liars, right,
Speaker 1: These guys were all mixed and administration's.
Speaker 2: Now point they're all liars generally they're here.
Speaker 1: Triangulate truth by kind of going through all of them.
Speaker 1: And so I'm going to read a paragraph from the
Speaker 1: book King Richard that gives an idea of how Jeb
Speaker 1: Magruder responds to the g Man in a professional setting.
Speaker 1: Letty struck mcgreeder as a cocky little bantam rooster who
Speaker 1: liked to brag it out his James Bondish exploits. An
Speaker 1: exercise fanatic, he had a disconcerting habit of dropping to
Speaker 1: the floor and without notice performing one hundred push ups.
Speaker 1: He boasted about his method for killing people with a pencil.
Speaker 1: Hold the eraser end in your hand and ram the
Speaker 1: finely sharpened point into your victim's neck just above the
Speaker 1: Adams apple. And again, Lyddy never kills a man with
Speaker 1: a pencil, nor was he trained to do it. Obviously, Yes,
Speaker 1: you could, in fact kill a man with a pencil, right,
Speaker 1: that's a thing that is theoretically possible. Lyddy is no
Speaker 1: more capable of doing it than anyone at your middle school.
Speaker 1: He has never provided any evidence to the contrary. So
Speaker 1: there is there's a moment in one of the Watergate
Speaker 1: shows where like Lyddy get winds up in a room
Speaker 1: with John Dean after they've both gotten in trouble and
Speaker 1: like Deane's rolled on the Nixon White House and Liddy
Speaker 1: picks up a pencil and like threatens to stab him
Speaker 1: with it. That never happens. In Lyddy's autobiography, all he
Speaker 1: does he writes about how he wanted to do that
Speaker 1: when they're in this room together, but ultimately he was
Speaker 1: very polite.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: That's again the perfect like the perfect kind of like
Speaker 1: mix between the claims of Lyddy and sort of this
Speaker 1: pop culture image of this dangerous mad man he's gonna
Speaker 1: stab John Dean to death in the reality, which is
Speaker 1: like he thought a lot about threatening him with a
Speaker 1: pencil but did nothing. So, yeah, I get the more
Speaker 1: I learn about fucking g Gordon Liddy, the more I've
Speaker 1: come to the conclusion he's like the fascist Walter Middy. Right,
Speaker 1: Like every moment he is nothing but like a bureaucrat,
Speaker 1: But every single second when anything happens, he has these
Speaker 1: big fantasies of being a hero. Right. I do kind
Speaker 1: of want Ben Stiller to play g.
Speaker 2: Gordon Lyddy in a movie now, Yeah, it is that
Speaker 2: like seething small man rage. Yeah that, Yeah, I guess
Speaker 2: except for all the Nazi stuff. Ben Stiller is pretty perfect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he could do it. He could do it. So
Speaker 1: not long after their first meeting, Magruder makes the mistake.
Speaker 1: He puts a hand on Lyddy's shoulder when they're like
Speaker 1: they're working in the office, they're going over illegal breath.
Speaker 1: Lyddy calls him over and he like puts a hand.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say you should do that, but not
Speaker 1: like an abnormal gesture, right Lyddy. Lyddy yells at him, Jeb,
Speaker 1: if you don't take your arm off my shoulder, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna tear it off and beat you to death with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Again. Jef Magruder, I think is a pretty big guy.
Speaker 1: Lyddy is five foot nine, so yeah. Anyway, One tricky
Speaker 1: thing we've come up against over and over is separating
Speaker 1: Liddy's performance of bad Assy, which does seem to have
Speaker 1: worked on Jeb Magruder, because Jeb is one of these
Speaker 1: soulless Ivy League pranks with the h and Magruder, by
Speaker 1: the way, is widely considered to be the second dumbest
Speaker 1: man in the Nixon administration, like universally regarded as a
Speaker 1: feel so I'm not surprised that Liddy's bullshit like works
Speaker 1: on him. It's try, but there's this, there's a difficulty
Speaker 1: in separating what does Liddy really think is happening with
Speaker 1: the smoke and mirrors that he presents, because it's his
Speaker 1: image now, right. And the thing is Lyddy is, despite
Speaker 1: all of his his inanity, a committed ideologue with a
Speaker 1: hardcore of belief, and most of this belief is based
Speaker 1: around his revulsion at the Left and the Vietnam protests, right,
Speaker 1: and he comes to believe, he writes in his book,
Speaker 1: he thinks that permitting the spirit, lifestyle and ideas of
Speaker 1: the sixties movement to achieve power would be as horrifying
Speaker 1: to him as the thought of surrender to a Japanese
Speaker 1: soldier in nineteen forty five. Yeah, so hey, he finally
Speaker 1: compared himself to a fascist. That's not a Nazi. Guys,
Speaker 1: we did it, We did it.
Speaker 2: I mean right, the asterisk. I would have loved to
Speaker 2: surrender soldier.
Speaker 1: And he's talking about like, it's as horrifying to me
Speaker 1: to do this as it would be to a Japanese Americans. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is that is the one time. Yeah, yeah, he
Speaker 1: has like nightmares, its nightmares of Jane Fonda visiting Hanoi.
Speaker 1: He's convinced that the US is having a cold civil war,
Speaker 1: right that that's that's going on right now, And so
Speaker 1: he's willing certainly right about that. Yeah, yeah, he's willing
Speaker 1: to blow up anything right in order to prevent this.
Speaker 1: There's no no action, no matter how dangerous or immoral,
Speaker 1: that isn't justified in his mind by beating these hippies, right, uh,
Speaker 1: and of hold him his aides Gordon Strachan, who's involved
Speaker 1: intimately in Watergate, puts he says this when mcgrider tells him, like,
Speaker 1: maybe we should get Liddy out of this department, maybe
Speaker 1: he should not be involved in committe crimes for Russ
Speaker 1: Strakean says, Lyddy's a hitler, but at least he's our hitler.
Speaker 1: Why do you need a hitler? Why do you want
Speaker 1: to hitler?
Speaker 2: It's like, I mean, that is it truly is like
Speaker 2: so mind bending to me that, Yeah, you'd think there
Speaker 2: was a brief moment in time when the right wing
Speaker 2: at least had like a sense of optics. But I
Speaker 2: guess not. I guess that's the answer is they never
Speaker 2: have ever.
Speaker 1: It's like if you're running a bar and your bartender
Speaker 1: is like creeping out all of the clientele and like dangerous,
Speaker 1: and you're like, look, so and so is a Bill Cosby,
Speaker 1: but at least he's our Bill Cosby. Well do we
Speaker 1: want a Bill Cosby at this bar? Do we need
Speaker 1: a Bill Cosby? Like? Yeah, maybe that's a bad thing
Speaker 1: to have at the bar. No one ever suggests that.
Speaker 1: So Dean decides we'll give Lydia a shot, and he
Speaker 1: offers him the job, right, And for a while, Lyddia
Speaker 1: is kind of working as a lawyer for the campaign,
Speaker 1: but Dean keeps getting poked by the tickler to get
Speaker 1: this in Hell operation up and running, and so he
Speaker 1: brings in Gordon and he's like, put together a proposal
Speaker 1: for a dirty tricks campaign, right, and Liddy's like, how
Speaker 1: much money could I have? And Dean's like, well, this
Speaker 1: other guy said half a million dollars, so maybe we
Speaker 1: could do half a million dollars And Lyddy's like that
Speaker 1: must mean a million dollars. So I'm gonna build a
Speaker 1: plan that will cost a million dollars. So the the
Speaker 1: what results is he calls an Operation Jymstone, and it
Speaker 1: is both incredibly profoundly illegal and so far beyond g
Speaker 1: Gordon Liddy's limited competence that I think I wish it
Speaker 1: had gotten greenlit. Right, Some of the stuff in there
Speaker 1: is that like we're gonna drug hippies and we're gonna
Speaker 1: sneak them into opponent George McGovern's campaign headquarters so they
Speaker 1: can piss on the floor, right, Like, well, he's being
Speaker 1: interviewed on TV, right, which is he might have gotten
Speaker 1: it away with that that that's with possibly within his
Speaker 1: limited competence. But there was also outrageously ambitious shit like
Speaker 1: this plan related by John Dean and his memoir quote
Speaker 1: he had consulted specialists, one of the world's leading experts,
Speaker 1: and solve the problem of finding untraceable equipment. Then he
Speaker 1: launched into an extremely technical description of microwave telephone communications,
Speaker 1: speaking of relay stations, routing frequencies, and the difficulties of
Speaker 1: intercepting non cabled signals. His point became clear when he
Speaker 1: said there was equipment capable of intercepting all communications between
Speaker 1: an opposing candidate's airplane and the ground. Then intercepting equipment
Speaker 1: was required to be near the airplane, but not within sight,
Speaker 1: of course. So Lyddy proposed hiring a Chase plane to
Speaker 1: follow the Democratic campaign planes and make transcriptions of all
Speaker 1: airborne comman. He wants to have a plane following in secret,
Speaker 1: hidden in the clouds, the Democratic campaign plane at all
Speaker 1: times to intercept their comms. There is no way he
Speaker 1: would have pulled this off. Not possible.
Speaker 2: So amazing what I mean, right, he is just this
Speaker 2: is just blowfeld shit. Yes, yes, I yeah, I guess
Speaker 2: you got a dream. You gotta have a dreamer on
Speaker 2: every campaign. You know, I don't know that you do.
Speaker 2: But but he is there.
Speaker 1: He is there. So another plan that he prefers is
Speaker 1: to rent an expensive house boat, and and Lyddy is
Speaker 1: constantly being like, we got to rent this now, I
Speaker 1: got a handshake deal with the owner, you know, give
Speaker 1: me the money, now give me and like Jean Dean's like,
Speaker 1: we don't even talk this through man, and Liddy's like,
Speaker 1: but I gotta. I want to fill it with high
Speaker 1: dollar prostitutes, right, and we're gonna sail it around the
Speaker 1: whole election to everywhere the DNC goes to, like they're
Speaker 1: you know, we'll have it just always import anywhere the
Speaker 1: Democrats do a big meeting so that we can we
Speaker 1: can pull in Democratic officials and then these these prostitutes
Speaker 1: can ply them for information and record it, right, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very funny. Everyone is like this seems like a
Speaker 1: terrible idea and that he's like, no, it's not. These
Speaker 1: are the finest call girls in the country. You know.
Speaker 1: I can tell you from firsthand experience. They're not dumb broads.
Speaker 1: They're girls who can be trained and programmed. I've spoken
Speaker 1: with the Madam and Baltimore and we've been assured of
Speaker 1: their services at the convention. Part of why they don't
Speaker 1: do this is because someone intelligent is like, hey, we
Speaker 1: don't want to like make a big deal about Democratic
Speaker 1: staffers utilizing prostitutes, because like everyone does, Like you go
Speaker 1: into any brothel in like a place where there's a
Speaker 1: big political convenment convention and it's an even list of
Speaker 1: dimson repul We don't want to. We don't want to
Speaker 1: tug that string. That doesn't work out for us in
Speaker 1: the long run. Lyddy also had plans to utilize his
Speaker 1: dreamed of budget to hire thugs to do violence to protesters.
Speaker 1: Now the simplest version of this is literally higher CIA
Speaker 1: street fighters, as he calls them to beat up hippies
Speaker 1: and public at protests.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: But his more advanced plan is to hire a second team,
Speaker 1: who will be paid for by Richard Nixon, to kidnap
Speaker 1: American citizens and traffic them into foreign countries.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: These teams are experienced in surgical relocation activities. In a word, general,
Speaker 1: he's calling Mitchell general. They can kidnap a hostile leader
Speaker 1: with maximum secrecy in a minimum use of force. If,
Speaker 1: for example, a prominent radical comes to our San Diego
Speaker 1: convention to marshal his army of demonstrators, these teams can
Speaker 1: drug him and take him across the border into Mexico
Speaker 1: until the convention is over. He'd never see the face
Speaker 1: of a single one of our operatives. My god, And
Speaker 1: this is extra funny because of something else that Liddy
Speaker 1: says during this, Right, because he's g Gordon Liddy, and
Speaker 1: you can probably guess it's bringing the Nazis into it. Right.
Speaker 1: Here's what Lyddy writes about Quote, with Magruder and Dean
Speaker 1: out to lunch, I felt obliged to impress Mitchell with
Speaker 1: my seriousness of purpose that My people were the kind,
Speaker 1: and I was the kind and could and would do
Speaker 1: whatever was necessary to deal with organized mass violence. Both
Speaker 1: Magruder and Dean were too young to know what I
Speaker 1: was talking about, but I knew that Mitchell, a naval
Speaker 1: officer in World War Two, would get the message if
Speaker 1: I translated the English Special Action Group into German. Given
Speaker 1: the history involved. It was a gross exaggeration, but it
Speaker 1: made my point. An einsatz group a general, I said,
Speaker 1: inadvertently using a heart for the word general and turning
Speaker 1: it too into German. These men include professional killers who
Speaker 1: have accounted for between them twenty two dead so far,
Speaker 1: including two hanged from a beam in a garage. And
Speaker 1: like so, the Eydseets Group, if you've forgotten, are the
Speaker 1: division of the SS who carried out the first stages
Speaker 1: of the Holocaust, which was largely shooting babies and women
Speaker 1: and like women and children and burying tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of the mass graves. That's what he He names this
Speaker 1: operation to kidnap hippies after well.
Speaker 2: And also to be like, and you know who's going
Speaker 2: to be impressed by this? A World War two.
Speaker 1: Veteran, World War two veteran, This, Yeah, and Mitchell he's like,
Speaker 1: I could tell he was impressed, and for all we
Speaker 1: can know, Mitchell gets angry about this music. Get this
Speaker 1: fucking dude out of here, and they do again. Because
Speaker 1: none of them are very competent. They're like, come back
Speaker 1: with a plan that doesn't cost him million dollars, right, Like,
Speaker 1: cut some of this maniac shit off and try to
Speaker 1: bring us something else, right, in part because they just
Speaker 1: need to have updates for the tickler. Right, So Lyddy
Speaker 1: gets kind of yelled out of the room and he
Speaker 1: comes back a few weeks later with a different idea, right,
Speaker 1: Operation Crystal, which is cheaper and involves installing wiretaps and
Speaker 1: democratic offices. Right, and this is what comes Watergate.
Speaker 2: Right, Listen. Basically it's just Crystal with a C.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Thegul's Crystal with the fucking sea.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: In his autobiography, Lyddy makes it clear that as soon
Speaker 1: as he got told to start drawing the shit up,
Speaker 1: he assumed he had a million dollar budget. So he
Speaker 1: has a hunt, start paying retainers to his cubans and
Speaker 1: promising all these guys money. And then he's like freaking
Speaker 1: out to Dean, like I promise dangerous men money, like
Speaker 1: they have to get paid, you know. Yeah, it Dean's like,
Speaker 1: but we never told you you had a million dollars.
Speaker 1: Why are you paying people already? Oh my god, it is,
Speaker 1: it is. It's very funny. So one of the dudes
Speaker 1: that he and Hunt bring in to carry out their
Speaker 1: crime plan to wiretap the Democratic National Committee is a
Speaker 1: man named Jim McCord. And of all of the adjacent
Speaker 1: man children in these plots, Jim McCord is the closest
Speaker 1: to the real deal, which is not a compliment. Born
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma, he'd been a bombadier in the Army Air
Speaker 1: Corps in World War Two and had been joined the
Speaker 1: FBI and transferred after a little while to the CIA
Speaker 1: at kind of the height of its crimes against the
Speaker 1: humanity phase. He became AGS fifteen, which had him put
Speaker 1: in charge of the CIA's physical security at its Langley HQ.
Speaker 1: So he is running security for the CIA headquarters. Right,
Speaker 1: that's a big job, right, that is like a legit.
Speaker 1: Gig Alan Dolas called him my top man, so he
Speaker 1: has the he has the kind of spy. Both Hunt
Speaker 1: and Lyddy want to pretend to be right, and McCord
Speaker 1: on paper should be a bugging expert. You know, I
Speaker 1: cannot blame Lyddy for trusting the man's credentials. He's got
Speaker 1: everything you'd want in the resume of a guy to
Speaker 1: handle bugging for you. So Jim is The problem with
Speaker 1: Jim is that he is the security head for CREEP.
Speaker 1: So he is an employee of the Nixon Why House, right, well,
Speaker 1: not the White House, but of Nixon's campaign, right, He's
Speaker 1: directly tied to Nixon. So he does seem like an
Speaker 1: obvious guy to run the water tapping op. But he's
Speaker 1: also for the same reason why Lydia and Hunt aren't
Speaker 1: allowed to be doing physical ops together. He shouldn't be
Speaker 1: on scene at anything. So Lyddy puts together a paired
Speaker 1: down version of his wire tapping plans and he gets
Speaker 1: approved a quarter of a million dollar budget, a significant
Speaker 1: amount of what he and Howard Hunt are spending Lots
Speaker 1: of this money on luxury hotels and fine dining, traveling
Speaker 1: around trying to find criminals to do.
Speaker 2: They can help themselves, they cannot.
Speaker 1: Help his defensive This is that like, well, no serious
Speaker 1: criminal will trust us if we're not spending a lot
Speaker 1: of money on nonsense. That's right, Yeah, maybe maybe maybe
Speaker 1: Lyddy got added to the van. Yeah, so this is
Speaker 1: somewhat counteracted. The fact that like this is the only
Speaker 1: way to make people trust them is a little counteracted
Speaker 1: by other claims Lyddy makes about his recruitment efforts and
Speaker 1: how he tried to get these criminals to impress him.
Speaker 1: And this is us to perhaps the most infamous story
Speaker 1: about g. Gordon Liddy is pinschant for lighting his own
Speaker 1: hand on fire. What a funny man, Oh, if you
Speaker 1: believe Liddy. In the late sixties, as he's continually trying
Speaker 1: to increase his will power and make himself a tough man,
Speaker 1: he decides, well, this war between us and the left
Speaker 1: is about to like, so I need to make myself
Speaker 1: hardened to torture, right, and the only way to do that.
Speaker 1: He describes this as a technique recognized in the East
Speaker 1: for increasing willpower, where he burns himself for increasing periods
Speaker 1: of time to build up a tolerance for pain. Quote
Speaker 1: much as one might build muscles by lifting insane thing
Speaker 1: to compare lighting yourself on fire too, And like I also,
Speaker 1: I do really think there's any ancient Eastern technique for
Speaker 1: lighting your own hand on fire. But perhaps you know, perhaps, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess maybe. So he felt that he needed to
Speaker 1: harden his body to torture. So in nineteen sixty seven
Speaker 1: he starts burning himself regularly with cigarettes and matches, and
Speaker 1: he's always careful to light his left hand and forearm
Speaker 1: on fire because he doesn't want to damage his gun hand.
Speaker 1: But one day, Liddy relates quote, I made a mistake.
Speaker 1: I burned the underside of the second joint of my
Speaker 1: left index fingers so badly it required surgical attention. Fortunately
Speaker 1: the surgeon was from India and familiar with the practice,
Speaker 1: although he found it unusual in and allcidental I told him.
Speaker 1: He told me that it would take a year before
Speaker 1: he could fully straighten my left index finger, and then
Speaker 1: only after repeated exercise to stretch the scar tissue that
Speaker 1: would form in the angle of the joint I had.
Speaker 1: It seemed nearly cooked out the joint and lost at tendon.
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean that sounds delicious, of course, it sounds
Speaker 2: like yeah. Nice.
Speaker 1: Thankfully the doctor was Indian, and so he'd seen many
Speaker 1: men light their own hands on fire, as everyone does
Speaker 1: in India.
Speaker 2: The fuck amazing, how many, like casual clear, cries for help.
Speaker 2: This is yeah, himself admits to constantly.
Speaker 1: I'm so rarely like the whole process of involuntary commitment
Speaker 1: is real fucked up. But like, I don't know, Man,
Speaker 1: if a guy comes to me saying I have developed
Speaker 1: a habit of lighting my hand on fire to increase
Speaker 1: my will power, yeah, maybe that guy. Maybe that guy
Speaker 1: needs to be in medical care if he doesn't want
Speaker 1: to be, he needs some sort of help.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: That is, he's a danger to himself and others if
Speaker 1: you're doing this, right, this is not reasonable behavior. This
Speaker 1: is not healthy. This is not certainly the behavior that
Speaker 1: a man with five children should be carrying out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's bad news, and you gotta.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the way he describes this too, I think this
Speaker 1: is compulsive. I think there is something compulsive in his
Speaker 1: need to scarfy and injure himself. Right, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: far beyond any kind of actual will power building, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, look, yeah.
Speaker 2: It does seem like like over the course of this tale,
Speaker 2: between the like animal mutilation at the top and this shit,
Speaker 2: it is like a little like of the Bastards and
Speaker 2: I've been party two and the show has been Party two.
Speaker 2: I guess it's just like his sheer incompetence and cowardice
Speaker 2: as what prevented. I mean, he has a lot of
Speaker 2: other tool He has a lot of other character tools
Speaker 2: that Yeah, this potentially could have gone a lot worse
Speaker 2: for humanity.
Speaker 1: This could have gone like Lyddy does not go as badly.
Speaker 1: And I think maybe his dad is credit for that.
Speaker 1: Maybe he's constantly held back from like setting off a
Speaker 1: series of bombs in like the fucking White House lawn
Speaker 1: by the fact that his dad wouldn't have been proud
Speaker 1: of that, right, Like that we may like that may
Speaker 1: be the maybe, like we were just I was criticize
Speaker 1: the family a little bit, like maybe this is the
Speaker 1: best case scenario for Lyddy because he had that teeny
Speaker 1: bit of restraint on his actions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is like so hard to know to
Speaker 2: go back and just go to the other timeline where.
Speaker 1: Maybe a little bit of a dexter situation, right, I
Speaker 1: guess we never know, are we currently don't know? Maybe
Speaker 1: we can't know. Yeah, So, despite the fact that he's
Speaker 1: permanently injured himself doing this, Lyddy keeps burning himself both
Speaker 1: as a hobby and in the days before Watergate, as
Speaker 1: a recruitment tactic.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: She was flashily good looking, young, and had secretarial skills
Speaker 1: and expertise, and appeared able to attract men sexually if
Speaker 1: she wished, possibly even the candidate that means Nixon's opponent.
Speaker 1: At dinner, Miss Stevens seemed reluctant, bulking at the risks involved,
Speaker 1: and when I told her her identity would be revealed
Speaker 1: to no one and she could walk away any time
Speaker 1: if she feared exposure, she pointed out that I would
Speaker 1: know her identity. I told her that no one could
Speaker 1: force me to disclose anything. I chose not to reveal.
Speaker 1: She didn't believe me, and I was casting about for
Speaker 1: some way to convince her. When I noticed she's I
Speaker 1: told her to light her cigarette lighter and hold it out.
Speaker 1: She did, and I locked my gaze upon her eyes
Speaker 1: and placed my hand palm down over the flame. Presently,
Speaker 1: the flesh turned black, and when she smelled the scent
Speaker 1: of burning meat, Sherry Stevens broke for my gaze and
Speaker 1: pulled the lighter away from my hand. She seemed frightened badly,
Speaker 1: so I took pains to calm her, wrapping an ice
Speaker 1: cube against the burn with a napkin, and returning to
Speaker 1: my dinner. Pale. Miss Stevens said she was sure I
Speaker 1: would never betray her, but she excused herself as a candidate,
Speaker 1: invoking a just remembered plan to marry a Swiss airplane
Speaker 1: pilot in September of nineteen seventy two. When I told
Speaker 1: her that I'd be glad to have her services through
Speaker 1: August at a very generous rate of pay, she refused
Speaker 1: and express a concern from my hand, asked to be
Speaker 1: taken home. Now, good on you, Sherry. That was the
Speaker 1: You're the only person in this entire series who's made
Speaker 1: an intelligent decision, Like if a stranger makes you burn
Speaker 1: his hand to the bone, you believe right A bounce.
Speaker 2: Again, he's telling this story. It is I it is
Speaker 2: so incomprehensible to me that like, from doing this to
Speaker 2: telling anyone about it. I don't know what is more bonkers?
Speaker 2: What a yeah, like bragging about this particular story, even
Speaker 2: if it's made up, It's so fucking nuts.
Speaker 1: Because he does brag about it. He's like, yeah, to
Speaker 1: do this, you know, I'm dealing with some real hard people.
Speaker 1: This is the only way to take convince him I
Speaker 1: was serious, But it doesn't work. Yeah, like a normal person.
Speaker 1: She sees a man light himself on fire during a
Speaker 1: job interview, and it's like, probably don't want to be involved.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be in business with that dude.
Speaker 1: But if you put in your LinkedIn, I could cut
Speaker 1: my wrist to the bone without bleeding to death. Well
Speaker 1: that's great, but I don't want to work for you.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, yeah, I think I'm out.
Speaker 1: I think yeah, I may be out of this one.
Speaker 1: So and again, one thing that's funny about this to
Speaker 1: me is that, like, You've got this lady who's you know,
Speaker 1: living on the wrong side of the law, but she
Speaker 1: sees this man do this and is like, oh, I
Speaker 1: don't want to be anywhere near that guy. This guy's dangerous.
Speaker 1: At the same time as this is happening, multiple Nixon
Speaker 1: staff members, men have privileged pedigree with ivy league degrees,
Speaker 1: find themselves in the same situation. Deep Throat will later
Speaker 1: claim that he saw Liddy do this light himself on
Speaker 1: fire trick at a party right like he was. And like,
Speaker 1: so multiple men in politics, you know, powerful men are
Speaker 1: in the same situation, and they fail to act with
Speaker 1: the same perceptiveness Sherry shows. They're like well, clearly we
Speaker 1: need to be in business with this man.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: By way of an example, tough, Here's what John Deane
Speaker 1: writes about his first experience with Liddy's burning fetish. As
Speaker 1: he spoke, I noticed a bulky white bandage wrapped around
Speaker 1: his fist. What happened to your hand, Gordon? He shrugged, Oh, nothing, really,
Speaker 1: it looks serious. Well some might feel that way, but
Speaker 1: I don't. It was necessary. You see that I proved
Speaker 1: my strength to the men I'm thinking of recruiting to
Speaker 1: assist me at the convention. What do you mean. Well,
Speaker 1: in my business, John, it's important that those I work
Speaker 1: with under stand I'm a man of strength, macho as
Speaker 1: they say. So to prove myself to them, I held
Speaker 1: my hand over a candle until the flesh burned, which
Speaker 1: I did without flinching. I wanted them to know that
Speaker 1: I could stand any amount of physical pain. My God, Gordon,
Speaker 1: I didn't really know what to say, so I told
Speaker 1: him I hoped his hand healed quickly, which he also
Speaker 1: shrugged off. And again this lady, who is just like
Speaker 1: you know, kind of in the shadier part of the world,
Speaker 1: immediately recognizes Nope, don't want to John, Deane sees this
Speaker 1: as crazy and is like, guess I'll continue working with
Speaker 1: this man. Guess I'll task him with breaking the law
Speaker 1: for Richard Nixon.
Speaker 2: It must just be that this woman actually knows tough
Speaker 2: people as yes, yes, ide, it's like, well, this is nuts,
Speaker 2: fun It is in fact tough.
Speaker 1: Having made a number of mistakes in my life. Like,
Speaker 1: the last people who are ever going to do something
Speaker 1: like this are dangerous people, right, people who can someone
Speaker 1: who like actually might be able to murder you and disappear.
Speaker 1: The body is not going to try to prove that
Speaker 1: to you by lighting themselves on fire. Right, They generally
Speaker 1: don't need to lie actively. Yeah, they're actually real people. Right.
Speaker 1: So Dean claims that this moment is the point at
Speaker 1: which he realizes Lydia's nuts, and that Bud Krogue had
Speaker 1: pushed Lyddy off on him so that Dean would take
Speaker 1: him off of the White House's hands. Right, That's why
Speaker 1: Dean thinks all of this gets started, right, and so
Speaker 1: all of this shit, basically I think that's happened here
Speaker 1: is like this desire to keep pushing Liddy down the
Speaker 1: ladder where he's not your problem, and this tickler which
Speaker 1: is constantly forcing people to provide updates on this illegal scheme.
Speaker 1: It leads to a situation where eventually G. Gordon Liddy
Speaker 1: is working for Creep and has a pocket full of
Speaker 1: cash to live out his Cold War thriller dreams. So
Speaker 1: while John Dean and Jeb Magruder and John Mitchell, Bob
Speaker 1: Haldeman and Big Dicky Nix himself are all sleeping comfy,
Speaker 1: Lyddy and Hunt are unguarded and unwatched as they send
Speaker 1: their cubans into the dnc HQ at the Watergate Hotel
Speaker 1: on June seventeenth, nineteen seventy two. Bugs are installed in
Speaker 1: the telephones of several stappers and there are some fuck ups.
Speaker 1: Hunt and I think one other guy gets stuck in
Speaker 1: the Watergate overnight and like a closet with like all
Speaker 1: the liquor, and like Hunt winds up pissing in a
Speaker 1: whiskey bottle. But in the end they get out and
Speaker 1: you know, escape with the job done and nobody gets caught. Right,
Speaker 1: that's the first Watergate break in. Unfortunately, it's a shit
Speaker 1: job because all of these people are buffoons, and like McCord,
Speaker 1: the bugging expert doesn't get like they pick the wrong bugs,
Speaker 1: the bugs aren't put in right, whatever the case, it's
Speaker 1: kind of unclear as to why. But like most of
Speaker 1: the taps don't work, and the ones that do they
Speaker 1: just kind of have some random secretaries and shit bugged
Speaker 1: and it's mostly them like talking about who they're fucking right,
Speaker 1: It's like normal shit, right, nothing that's going to swing
Speaker 1: an election. So after all this goes down, Lyddy's superiors
Speaker 1: are disappointed. One of the bugs he'd spent thirty grand
Speaker 1: on did not even function at all. Jeb McGruder described
Speaker 1: it as James Bond had been exposed as a bumbling clown. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that should have been the end of it, right, But
Speaker 1: in spite of this, there's still this need to provide
Speaker 1: some sort of intel thing. So Lyddy gets even more
Speaker 1: money to go back to fix the broken bugs. And
Speaker 1: this time you're like, you know what, so we know
Speaker 1: we get something. Have your guys take photos of every
Speaker 1: document INDNHQ, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages of shit.
Speaker 1: So this necessitates number one, not just a quick break in,
Speaker 1: but spending four hours in the office. Hi, odds, you're
Speaker 1: gonna get caught doing that, and Lyddy becomes convinced because
Speaker 1: everything sucks up the last time, I need to put
Speaker 1: my bug expert McCord in the room. He needs to
Speaker 1: be in there to fix and set up these new bugs. Right,
Speaker 1: And the only absolute direct guidance Liddy's gotten is do
Speaker 1: not let this get tied back to Nixon.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: McCord is running security for Nixon's re election campaign. He
Speaker 1: is also a former CIA man and a sitting lieutenant
Speaker 1: colonel in the Army Reserve with a public history as
Speaker 1: a spy. Like, there's no way this guy gets arrested
Speaker 1: and it does not immediately expose the president to unacceptable risk.
Speaker 1: But as Lyddy sees it, he has to break back in,
Speaker 1: not because it's likely to work, but because he and
Speaker 1: a Hunt will look like dummies if they don't right,
Speaker 1: they won't be taken seriously, they'll be exposed as buffoons,
Speaker 1: and he'll probably stop getting money. Right. This will probably
Speaker 1: be the end of his career if they don't go
Speaker 1: and get something. In his book, Lyddy Bitch's endlessly about
Speaker 1: how his funding had gotten slashed and how you know
Speaker 1: I couldn't afford to put anyone but McCord in there, right,
Speaker 1: because they weren't paying me enough to get a really
Speaker 1: good criminal who'd be impressed with my hand burning. So
Speaker 1: he sends McCord in, and our boy Lyddy is responsible
Speaker 1: for that. And he's also responsible for the main tactical
Speaker 1: error that the break in team makes on the ground,
Speaker 1: which is that they're trying. They don't want this door
Speaker 1: to lock after them when they break in, because it's
Speaker 1: going to make it hard to do everything they need
Speaker 1: to do. So they put a piece of tape across
Speaker 1: the lock, right, which is like a thing you can do,
Speaker 1: you know, it'll stop a door from auto latching. They
Speaker 1: pace the tape horizontally rather than vertically, so part of
Speaker 1: the tape is sticking out, which makes it easy for
Speaker 1: say a security guard to spot. Now that is in
Speaker 1: fact what happened. A security guard notices the tape and
Speaker 1: busts them, right, or calls the cops and they bust them.
Speaker 1: But like Lyddy makes the call to place it horizontally.
Speaker 1: And he does this because of his perceived expertise as
Speaker 1: a spy. He has like a whole defense for why
Speaker 1: this is necessary. Here's what he says, quote taping was
Speaker 1: a common, if disapproved practice of maintenance personnel in large buildings.
Speaker 1: This should not have alarmed the guard, who could have
Speaker 1: been expected to remove it. I saw no reason that
Speaker 1: the guard should think of anything other than that the
Speaker 1: maintenance people would have to be lectured. And he's like,
Speaker 1: maintenance staff always tape locks horizontally. Burglars do it vertically. Therefore,
Speaker 1: if he finds it vertically tape, then he's going to
Speaker 1: call the cops. But he won't call the cops if
Speaker 1: it's horizontal. This is totally reasonable and the only way
Speaker 1: things should have gone. It's like, well, that's not how
Speaker 1: it went. Like you immediately got caught for doing this,
Speaker 1: So like why are you defending this that way? Like
Speaker 1: why are you acting as if like this is the
Speaker 1: way things should have gone. I was like, yeah, but
Speaker 1: it didn't. It didn't work.
Speaker 2: It was like you failed his I mean, it's it
Speaker 2: is just like so childish, the like like justification of
Speaker 2: everything in a way that is genuinely impressive. It's like,
Speaker 2: how yeah, again, this is like fascists are some of
Speaker 2: the least competent people on earth, and somehow and yet
Speaker 2: and yet we're barely keeping them at bay. We're not
Speaker 2: going to belabor this point. The Cubans and McCord get busted, right,
Speaker 2: Lydian Hunt escape and Lyddy he seems to have immediately known,
Speaker 2: I'm going to prison right like that. That night he
Speaker 2: tells his wife like something went wrong, they got busted.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go to jail, right, And the.
Speaker 1: Way he describes it, he immediately recognizes as soon as
Speaker 1: this happens, I am the highest up person in the
Speaker 1: Nixon campaign involved in this. None of the others know
Speaker 1: the full story or know who else approved this. So
Speaker 1: I'm the turniquet, right if I keep my mouth shut,
Speaker 1: this can't go any higher than me, you know. And
Speaker 1: this gets us to the last thing and the only
Speaker 1: thing that's exceptional about Liddy, right, the only he's good
Speaker 1: at right because he is a believer. He's a believer
Speaker 1: in the way no one else in politics is, really
Speaker 1: And every other member of the conspiracy save the Cubans,
Speaker 1: will immediately roll on their fellows, right they start making
Speaker 1: deals with the doj Magruder and Dean like, they all
Speaker 1: immediately like turn a fuck job on their own buddies, right,
Speaker 1: John Mitchell, like, they all roll right away, right, Lyddy
Speaker 1: from the jump says, I will not testify. I will
Speaker 1: not say a word. I don't speak, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't testify, I don't talk to the FEDS, I don't nothing.
Speaker 1: And he doesn't like he does understand on that degree
Speaker 1: that is the he's a loyal henchman, right, Yeah, he
Speaker 1: does not fucking say anything. Now does that make him
Speaker 1: a good henchman? While he's the reason why Nixon resigns, right,
Speaker 1: he is the he is the whole cause of Watergate. Right,
Speaker 1: So I don't know if he's a good henchman, but
Speaker 1: he is loyal, right. Nixon seems to have recognized this
Speaker 1: in recorded conversations. He starts talking about how Lyddy has
Speaker 1: a screw lose, he's not all there mentally, how did
Speaker 1: we let this guy be in charge of this? He's
Speaker 1: clearly not like not like he's not doing well. This
Speaker 1: is especially the case when the CIA, because like, once
Speaker 1: this all blows up and it becomes clear that like
Speaker 1: the Nixon white House is fucked, the CIA turns over photos,
Speaker 1: the photos that they'd had developed like that show Lyddy
Speaker 1: there and like yeah, because he had sent participation evidence
Speaker 1: of his participation in a B and E to the
Speaker 1: Central Intelligence Agency. Oh my god, but he doesn't say shit.
Speaker 1: He keeps his mouth shut. His refusal to help the
Speaker 1: investigation gets him this gnarly twenty year prison sentence. Now
Speaker 1: Lyddy gets off after like four years, four years in change,
Speaker 1: something like that. And it's because, in part because he's
Speaker 1: just the guy who doesn't roll, he earns a lot
Speaker 1: of sympathy in weird places. The New York Times eventually
Speaker 1: writes an article talking about how he needs to be pardoned,
Speaker 1: and like it's Carter who pardons him? Right, Like it's
Speaker 1: it's this gross.
Speaker 2: That's also classic classic democrats.
Speaker 1: Classic democrats, like well, you know, he did the wrong thing,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't a bad man. No, he's a bad
Speaker 1: man needed a bad thing. And like like, yes, there is,
Speaker 1: I will say, you know, as again, as a guy
Speaker 1: who's been shady for a chunk of his life, there's
Speaker 1: a thing that's respectable about refusing to roll. Right, I'll
Speaker 1: give that. I will give him that, especially when you
Speaker 1: compare it to these descendants of his, like the jan six,
Speaker 1: people all of whom immediately rolled on their buddies, immediately disavowed,
Speaker 1: publicly said oh you know, even if they were like
Speaker 1: going on podcasts to talk about how I was just
Speaker 1: lying when I said that I'm ashamed of my behavior.
Speaker 1: They all claim publicly I did the wrong thing. This
Speaker 1: was bad, it shouldn't have happened. Lyddy never apologizes, never
Speaker 1: pretends he's anything but proud of what he did, and
Speaker 1: he never rolls, And compared to a lot of like
Speaker 1: that is there's a thing you have to respect in
Speaker 1: that even if it's not not good, but you respect it, right,
Speaker 1: which I do, Like there is there was one honest,
Speaker 1: legitimate thing about geegword and Lyddie because he had always
Speaker 1: and I think you get the feeling. Part of why
Speaker 1: he behaves so consistently in this regard is that he
Speaker 1: sees this finally is his chance to prove that he's
Speaker 1: He's not courage he's a warrior, right, never got to fight,
Speaker 1: never got to pull my gun on anyone, really, but
Speaker 1: I can refuse to talk, yeah, and be willing to
Speaker 1: do twenty years in prison, and he.
Speaker 2: Was I can be a good soldier.
Speaker 1: Finally he is, and he is in this regret it's
Speaker 1: bad up to that point. Yeah, he is the reason
Speaker 1: all of this happens. But that's the one thing about
Speaker 1: him that's real. You know, yeah, I listen.
Speaker 2: I still going back to what we said earlier, I
Speaker 2: still think, having heard more of this story, there's a
Speaker 2: real chance this is probably, even for humanity's sake, the
Speaker 2: best case version of the g Gordon Liddy story.
Speaker 1: I think so, right, I think that may actually still
Speaker 1: be the case. Now he's going to be more toxic
Speaker 1: actually later in life. You know, we'll talk about it.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about one of these We'll come back later.
Speaker 1: I don't want to do more than two weeks in
Speaker 1: a row on lady. His time in prison is a
Speaker 1: fascinating story. He's a really interesting guy there, his time
Speaker 1: after prison, his you know this, this speaking tour he
Speaker 1: goes on with Tim Leary and his he helps to
Speaker 1: invent talk radio. He actually gets his job in radio
Speaker 1: in part because of a rush Limbaugh. Yeah, all that
Speaker 1: is interesting. It's more toxic, certainly, it's valuable. But this
Speaker 1: should let you know who the man was and why
Speaker 1: he matters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jesus Christ, Yeah, fucking I mean again, it's the
Speaker 2: I guess you can't say sniffling, but whatever the fuck
Speaker 2: was wrong with him, just what a what a little wiener?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's he is a wiener. He is a weirdo.
Speaker 1: He is also somehow more honorable and respectable than every
Speaker 1: living member of the Republican establishment today.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, all those things are true.
Speaker 1: An objectively bad because again there is some degree to
Speaker 1: which he was willing to sacrifice for something greater than himself.
Speaker 1: Yeah that was Richard Nixon. But because again the man
Speaker 1: had terrible judgment. But that is something, right, It's more
Speaker 1: than like Enrique fucking Tario. Ever, Yeah, I would have managed,
Speaker 1: you know, right, like all these folks like, it's not
Speaker 1: it's not cynical. He's a very like, you know, fifties
Speaker 1: version of this fucking her not at all fucking cynical. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because he does. And it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: he's like he's totally time, like you know, there's a chance,
Speaker 1: you'll know, even get a pardon, right that that won't
Speaker 1: be possible. And that's fine. If I got to spend
Speaker 1: the rest of my life in prison for this, I'll
Speaker 1: do it, you know. Yeah, So there you go. The
Speaker 1: g Gordon Liddy story.
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean, it's it's it's fucking bonkers. That's not
Speaker 2: even the whole of it. But yeah, no, no, certainly
Speaker 2: plenty Jesus.
Speaker 1: I you know, I didn't think I thought we would
Speaker 1: do an episode on his life before getting into the
Speaker 1: White House and then an episode that's the White House
Speaker 1: in Watergate? Right, And what do you cut out? Really,
Speaker 1: what do you cut out of this man's story? Should
Speaker 1: I have not given it? Every single time he brings
Speaker 1: up the SS it was too many times to not
Speaker 1: talk about, like.
Speaker 2: And truly this is just in his book that needs
Speaker 2: he did it codsway way more times. Yeah, God, because
Speaker 2: an editor for sure was like, I got a I'm
Speaker 2: holding you to a tenth of the SS stories. Gee. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's no fucking way.
Speaker 1: No fucking way. So funny, all right, Oh that's gonna be.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be it for us at Behind the Bastards. Andrew,
Speaker 1: you got anything to plug? Yeah, same old. Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me? Yosis Racist is my podcast?
Speaker 2: Uh? The Entertainment Community Fund. I don't know that's it.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe by the time this comes out, we'll have stuff,
Speaker 2: you know, we'll be done striking faster risk almost certainly not.
Speaker 1: It's possible, uh, and it's but not probable. Look, if
Speaker 1: you want to make the strike end, find the most
Speaker 1: dangerous and irrational person you know, and give them a
Speaker 1: quarter of a million dollars to try something. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 2: There's a I realizing there's a real chance. I'm the
Speaker 2: writers Guilds G Gordon Ladies.
Speaker 1: That's okay, Andrew, that's the whole reason behind super Soaker
Speaker 1: Full of Piss, right, That's that's our dream. You and
Speaker 1: I can be the Howard Hunt and g Gordon Lyddy
Speaker 1: of the w g Ah.
Speaker 2: We're the crazies. Yeah, we're the craziest. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: let's say what you will? We are loyal as fuck.
Speaker 1: That's right, we'll be, We will be. We will be
Speaker 1: loyal to the end, even as we destroy the entire
Speaker 1: guild with our incompetence.
Speaker 2: Does that make you and your team for now?
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 1: You can tell we've been here for three hours because
Speaker 1: that's not normally a Sophie joke.
Speaker 2: That's true. It was really necessary.
Speaker 1: Uh huh, what do we say?
Speaker 2: Go to hell?
Speaker 1: Go to Hell? I love you.
Speaker 2: Behind the Bastard's the production of cool Zone Media. For
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