Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noel.
Speaker 3: They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Paul Mission Control deckaned. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 3: You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
Speaker 3: don't want you to know. Funny story. Years back, your
Speaker 3: faithful correspondents here were treated to a strange training day
Speaker 3: by some ex Navy seals. Do you guys remember this day?
Speaker 4: Yeah. It made a lot of people really uncomfortable in
Speaker 4: the office, Like, here's how you disarm somebody and shoot
Speaker 4: them with their own gun.
Speaker 3: It was like love them de glove.
Speaker 2: But there was one guy I remember distinctly. His whole
Speaker 2: point was, you can come up to me with a
Speaker 2: gun and if you don't shoot me in the head,
Speaker 2: I will kill you before you get off your next shot.
Speaker 2: And I was like, I love.
Speaker 4: You, sir.
Speaker 2: It was. It was.
Speaker 3: Deep water for a nine thirty am meeting.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: It continued well into the afternoon. We were taught by
Speaker 3: this consulting company, things like emergency first aid, things like
Speaker 3: disarming an assailant. And shout out to one of my
Speaker 3: favorite instructors from that day who talked about her time
Speaker 3: being lost in hostile enemy territory out Middle East Way,
Speaker 3: and she said, I was worried. I was frightened because
Speaker 3: I didn't have a weapon, I didn't speak the language.
Speaker 3: And then I realized I am the weapon. That's a
Speaker 3: lot of stuff to hear before lunch. One of the
Speaker 3: things that stuck with us, I think all of us
Speaker 3: was the same guy you're mentioning. Matt made a big,
Speaker 3: big point that in a kidnapping situation, you will be asked, cajoled,
Speaker 3: or forced to go to a secondary location. That's when
Speaker 3: something becomes kidnapping. And this was, as you said, Noel,
Speaker 3: this was quite an unwelcome, non consensual training session for
Speaker 3: a lot of our colleagues who had experienced trauma in
Speaker 3: the past. It also gets us thinking, can the government
Speaker 3: kidnap you?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 3: Can a government just say not this? When Paul mission
Speaker 3: controlled decadt his name has a lot in common with
Speaker 3: some other guy, right, can we take him somewhere? I
Speaker 3: don't know it's weird. It's weird.
Speaker 2: We made a very silly video and put it on
Speaker 2: social media where Ben, you and I were arguing about
Speaker 2: whether or not the government could abduct you. And one
Speaker 2: of the fascinating things about today's episode is that generally
Speaker 2: there are rules about this stuff, but as we found
Speaker 2: throughout history, those rules get bent and broken often Yeah,
Speaker 2: oh yeah.
Speaker 3: Can the power structure of a civilization or a community
Speaker 3: kidnap you? For much of human history, the answer is
Speaker 3: categorically yes. I mean, go way back. Tribes used to
Speaker 3: sequester or abduct people for any number of reasons, often
Speaker 3: social taboos. Right. It still happens in some indigenous communities, where,
Speaker 3: for instance, a woman who is menstruating is forced out
Speaker 3: of the community until their cycle has changed. Theocracy, monarchies,
Speaker 3: they were no better. They did the same thing. And
Speaker 3: yeah right yeah, and Harris, yeah, just so, and democracy,
Speaker 3: the shiny new penny of human governance, is not that
Speaker 3: different in this regard. Here are the facts. If we
Speaker 3: want to talk about a government kidnapping someone, we first
Speaker 3: have to answer, even though it sounds very basic, we
Speaker 3: first have to answer the question, what is a government?
Speaker 4: There are friends, they mean it's no harm.
Speaker 3: They're here to help they have. It's a conservatory. That's
Speaker 3: a very obscure. Shout out to Oates Studios.
Speaker 4: If those are good. Yeah, I'm just talking about Well,
Speaker 4: so what is the government? I guess you know you
Speaker 4: interchangeably sometimes referred to as the state, not to be
Speaker 4: confused with the excellent seminal nineteen nineties sketch comedy Troupe.
Speaker 4: The state or a government is defined by a lot
Speaker 4: of goals. I guess it's sort of like, what are
Speaker 4: you after? What are you trying to achieve? And again
Speaker 4: on paper, often it is the betterment of a society, uh,
Speaker 4: the you know, improvement of people's lives perhaps, or maintaining order,
Speaker 4: you know, and all of that stuff, making sure people
Speaker 4: are able to survive and thrive. Some consider they're binding forces.
Speaker 4: Sometimes often are religious or as I mentioned, economic, perhaps
Speaker 4: often it's a combination of all of these things, right,
Speaker 4: ideological I guess maybe is the one that sort of
Speaker 4: sort of encompasses all of them. But whatever govern various governments,
Speaker 4: differences might be. In practical terms, any governing body is
Speaker 4: there to maintain and enforce rule of law, which.
Speaker 3: Is a nice way of saying.
Speaker 2: What Yeah, they make the rules. They're the folks in charge.
Speaker 2: They get to take you if they want to. No,
Speaker 2: I'm just sugar.
Speaker 4: They tell us what we can and can't do, and
Speaker 4: we sort of enter like this. So my kid actually
Speaker 4: was doing a paper the other day. Would the social contract?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 4: The social contract is by being part of a society,
Speaker 4: we agree that there we can't do everything, and the
Speaker 4: government kind of dictates what those things we can and
Speaker 4: can't do are. In theory, we elect those people that
Speaker 4: tell us those things, but sometimes there's things that are
Speaker 4: sort of off book, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was like, I don't know if this makes sense,
Speaker 2: but for me, the great parlor trick of democracy is
Speaker 2: that it is for the people, by the people, and
Speaker 2: by that stuff, because ultimately it's the few that are
Speaker 2: in charge that get to make those rules we're talking
Speaker 2: about for every that everyone else has to adhere to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a governing structure for a microcosmic surely relatable example
Speaker 3: is Davenbusters controls who which games are allowed at Dave
Speaker 3: and Busters. You are allowed, as a temporary resident of
Speaker 3: Dave and Busters to play those games. You are in
Speaker 3: trouble if you bring your own games, because only Dave
Speaker 3: and Busters gets only Dave and only Buster get to
Speaker 3: decide the games.
Speaker 4: Or if you try to game the games aka rig
Speaker 4: the system or work, you know, using a different set
Speaker 4: of rules, perhaps you shake the machine right, or try
Speaker 4: to unplug it and plug it back in, or something
Speaker 4: that you will very quickly be escorted out of, said
Speaker 4: Dave and Busters.
Speaker 3: Or Boxy Gee, you know, you could, you could grift,
Speaker 3: or you could teach a man to grift, et cetera.
Speaker 3: What we're saying is rule of law. Rule of law
Speaker 3: is a very diplomatic, very nice way of acknowledging the
Speaker 3: one reality. The best, most practicable definition of a state
Speaker 3: or a governing structure is that entity which has a
Speaker 3: monopoly over violence. Governments do define what is not or
Speaker 3: is a crime. I mean, well, if you're a citizen
Speaker 3: wherever in pretty much every country, you cannot just murder
Speaker 3: someone impulsively. You can't take people's property, you can't launch
Speaker 3: an invasion on another country, et cetera, et cetera. However,
Speaker 3: wherever you are right now, your government, we guarantee you can,
Speaker 3: has and will do all of those things.
Speaker 4: Unless you successfully launch a coup, at which point you
Speaker 4: then become the government and take on all of those
Speaker 4: things that we were just talking about. But if you lose,
Speaker 4: you'll probably be executed or at the very least, you know,
Speaker 4: kicked out and banished, you know.
Speaker 3: And the plot twist of that horrific black mirror esque statement,
Speaker 3: as orwellian as it sounds, Yes, the government can do
Speaker 3: crimes because the government is the defining force of what
Speaker 3: constitutes a crime. The plot twist is, this is not
Speaker 3: inherently sinister, this is not necessarily bad, which I feel
Speaker 3: crazy saying. In theory, governments, like you're pointing out earlier
Speaker 3: governments only take these actions at the behest of their citizens,
Speaker 3: and they do so only after a rigorous series of
Speaker 3: checks and balances. Again in theory, I mean, think about
Speaker 3: tribes back in the day would abduct or sequester people
Speaker 3: for the violation of social taboos, right, or for the
Speaker 3: goal of controlling resources containing rivals. Theocracies did and do
Speaker 3: spoiler alert the same thing, but only with quote unquote
Speaker 3: approval from their whatever their metaphysical authority is. God told us,
Speaker 3: So it's okay, right.
Speaker 4: You mentioned the word taboo, and it reminds me I
Speaker 4: just started watching I got the actual recommendition of a
Speaker 4: friend of the show, Lauren Bogobam a show called Taboo
Speaker 4: Fantastic's really really, really great ast, but it shows some
Speaker 4: of the stuff we're talking about here in terms of
Speaker 4: like the East India Trading Company is it becomes a
Speaker 4: sub government in and of itself that basically has the
Speaker 4: latitude to do crimes like you're you're messing with us.
Speaker 4: We want this piece of land that you have, We
Speaker 4: need it. We're going to make you an offer that
Speaker 4: we hope you can't refuse. Once you refuse it, all
Speaker 4: bets are off, you know, because they basically were as
Speaker 4: powerful and sanctioned by the government, so for all intents
Speaker 4: and purposes, they became an extension of the government.
Speaker 3: Again practicable application, you know. It's like, I love that
Speaker 3: you're mentioning the East India's those companies because whatever derivation
Speaker 3: they were in their heyday, they were like, what if
Speaker 3: the Federal Reserve took field trips? You know, and they
Speaker 3: did two great acclaim in court. Monarchies also do the
Speaker 3: same shisty, creepy, sketchy stuff, and when they would engage
Speaker 3: in these criminal actions, they would do so because their
Speaker 3: status quo was under threat, and for those of us
Speaker 3: playing a log at home, you know, the people who
Speaker 3: are most often abducted or kidnapped by monarchies other aristocrats,
Speaker 3: that was the most direct threat to the status quo
Speaker 3: because they were very bloodline oriented. People shout out to
Speaker 3: Man in the Iron Mask, which all, yeah, I read,
Speaker 3: I read it earlier and then I re watched it,
Speaker 3: and Leonardo DiCaprio is just sort of the same age
Speaker 3: in things.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's true, I only watched it. Sorry, I
Speaker 2: don't do books, but the I'm just joking. The thing
Speaker 2: I want to point out here is we're talking about
Speaker 2: theoretically why governments, no matter who runs them or how
Speaker 2: they got in power, right, do these things for good reason.
Speaker 2: But I think I think the closest one in my
Speaker 2: mind right now that makes sense for today's topic is
Speaker 2: how monarchies respond because protecting the government protecting itself, right,
Speaker 2: so taking action that would potentially be against the law
Speaker 2: to any other country or if you looked at it objectively,
Speaker 2: but for the purposes of that government, this is now
Speaker 2: legal because we are in danger or some really important
Speaker 2: aspect of our operating system is in danger.
Speaker 3: A great and you know, for people who are maybe
Speaker 3: a bit pollyada about the current dominant government trends, You
Speaker 3: might say, well, what about democracy. You know what I mean.
Speaker 3: It's important to vote. It is important to vote. We're
Speaker 3: not going to be dicks about that. But it is
Speaker 3: equally important to remember that your favorite democracies, favorite dictatorships,
Speaker 3: your favorite authoritarian governments, they lumped all of those previous
Speaker 3: behaviors into a kind of bombo meal salma gundhy of
Speaker 3: righteous cause. At every single point in human history, the
Speaker 3: state is best defined as the entity in your neck
Speaker 3: of the global woods with that monopoly on violence, and
Speaker 3: that applies to kidnapping just as it applies to murder,
Speaker 3: just as it applies to theft. Folks, you are going
Speaker 3: to hear Matt Noel, Paul and I present an extraordinary story,
Speaker 3: a terrible pun of not just a phenomenon, but a
Speaker 3: possibly continuing program in which the United States government, champion
Speaker 3: of freedom, actively kidnapped people from around the world, some
Speaker 3: of whom remain imprisoned in a legal limbo with no
Speaker 3: criminal charges. As we record this evening, I suggest we
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Speaker 4: I need more.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy. Extraordinary rendition, extraordinary redition. You
Speaker 3: look at a redition and you go that, my old
Speaker 3: chap is extraordinary. It's a euphemism for kidnapping when a
Speaker 3: government does it versus you know, your local dirtbags. I like, Matt,
Speaker 3: you and I were having a pretty interesting conversation briefly
Speaker 3: before we started recording. Is one of the first things
Speaker 3: we talked about. Why what is an ordinary rendition?
Speaker 2: Well, okay, so I'm not looking at any definition. In
Speaker 2: my mind, an ordinary rendition would be when let's say,
Speaker 2: a local police force, I guess you could say, kidnap
Speaker 2: someone into a patrol car because they're suspected of committing
Speaker 2: some crime, and so they become a guest at a
Speaker 2: local jail, right, and then they go through hopefully a
Speaker 2: judicial process where they're either released or sent to probably
Speaker 2: a prison. In my mind, that's a rendition. Just being
Speaker 2: abducted by a police force that represents the government, whether
Speaker 2: it's you know, an entire country, a state, or a
Speaker 2: local level.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Agree, Like the jurisprudence teaches us that the concept
Speaker 3: of rendition is just what you describe, a transfer of
Speaker 3: people or individuals from one legal jurisdiction to another. And
Speaker 3: this happens. This happens all the time in you know,
Speaker 3: criminal cases like the very lurid stuff. We hear it
Speaker 3: often right when a let's say, a mass murderer or
Speaker 3: a serial murderer is apprehended in one state and then
Speaker 3: they are taken to another state to stand trial for
Speaker 3: their crimes in that separate jurisdiction.
Speaker 2: In an act of highly ordinary rendition.
Speaker 3: An act of extremely ordinary, super mids rendition. In the US,
Speaker 3: the phrase extraordinary rendition most often refers to a genre
Speaker 3: of operations, a genre of programs that that spring sort
Speaker 3: of sort of before the ongoing War on Terror. But
Speaker 3: definitely they definitely powered up Dragon Ball Z style because
Speaker 3: of this.
Speaker 2: Uh, that's it, Ben, That's totally it. Extraordinary rendition went
Speaker 2: super Saiyan during in Afghanistan.
Speaker 4: However, many thousand, yeah, over nine thousands.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But if you if you go online, you can
Speaker 2: find quite a many story about in the nineties eighties,
Speaker 2: even before that, where the US government, particularly the CIA,
Speaker 2: ended up doing these very similar practices. And it was always,
Speaker 2: I bet, I'm sure you found the same thing. It's
Speaker 2: always when there is a suspect picked up by some
Speaker 2: other state government, right, but they happened to be maybe
Speaker 2: from another country, right, and suspected of doing things in
Speaker 2: a third country. But the CIA wants that person, so
Speaker 2: they take them somewhere else.
Speaker 3: It's always Halloween in America, right, And the company had
Speaker 3: no compunctions about doing trick or treat style door to
Speaker 3: door with the Moujadin. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And the costumes are really simple, they're just black bags.
Speaker 2: Oh wow. Yeah. The example that you could find right now,
Speaker 2: there's so I'm thinking about, y'all is when police in
Speaker 2: Croatia seized an Egyptian national and then the CIA stepped
Speaker 2: in and took him somewhere else. Like that's crazy, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it is.
Speaker 3: And it's true. These are real conspiracies, not conspiracy theories.
Speaker 3: So let's look at the history about this, right, the
Speaker 3: balls of it, the hutspa of it, to say, one,
Speaker 3: we are a country that calls ourselves a champion of
Speaker 3: human rights, you know, habeas corpus, And it's until proving guilty,
Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera, all the good stuff, all that
Speaker 3: slow jazz. Two, we are respecting the rule of law.
Speaker 3: And then three, we don't respect the International Criminal Court.
Speaker 3: The United States is not and never will be a
Speaker 3: signatory to that particular circus. So how is it that
Speaker 3: this same country, the world's police said, we're going to
Speaker 3: go outside of whatever you guys call or jurisdiction, and
Speaker 3: we're going to take an individual from their present location.
Speaker 3: And we're not taking them back to you know, Langley,
Speaker 3: We're not taking him back to d C or anything
Speaker 3: like that, Levenworth, et cetera. We're taking them to a
Speaker 3: third country. And you know, we're doing in Vegas style.
Speaker 3: What happens there stays there.
Speaker 2: I mean, let's I know what he goes back to? Ben, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's the it's the eleventh director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Speaker 3: No way, what you're talking about?
Speaker 2: George George, dude, I'm telling you so much goes back
Speaker 2: to George. It's it's weird. Maybe not, I don't know,
Speaker 2: that's my theory. I think I think his background, uh
Speaker 2: and and not to compare him fully to Putin, but
Speaker 2: you know Putin's intelligence days make him a really interesting
Speaker 2: leader of a country.
Speaker 4: He was Putin esque.
Speaker 2: But but I guess that's what I mean. When you've
Speaker 2: got the mind for running into if those operations, running
Speaker 2: a country is a very different thing than let's just say,
Speaker 2: an attorney that rolls up and says, Hi, I'm going
Speaker 2: to be president now.
Speaker 4: Because you know how the sausage is made, and you
Speaker 4: also know how to make sausage, you know, and you
Speaker 4: can work on both sides of the line kind of
Speaker 4: because you know what's happening behind the scenes. And I
Speaker 4: feel like a lot of times the type of president
Speaker 4: you're talking about that maybe as is more of a
Speaker 4: legal background. They might get briefed on some of that
Speaker 4: stuff later, but that doesn't necessarily mean they have the
Speaker 4: like chops to really exploit it, you know, and work
Speaker 4: with that all of that stuff in mind. I think
Speaker 4: you're your spot on, Matt, and I believe Ben the outline.
Speaker 4: You talk about this precedent set by George H. W.
Speaker 4: Bush and his administration back in the nineties.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, og for sure. Yeah, So extraordinary rendition is
Speaker 3: a precedent set back in nineteen ninety three by the
Speaker 3: George H. W. Bush administration and yes, fellow don Americans,
Speaker 3: and there we get it. It's weird that it's a
Speaker 3: purported meritocracy, that one guy was president and then whoopsie,
Speaker 3: do his son is also president? We get how it's
Speaker 3: smacks the monarchy and corruption. You may be interested to
Speaker 3: find by the way that the pilot program for extraordinary
Speaker 3: Rendition continues throughout the false dichotomy of domestic US politics.
Speaker 3: The Clinton administration elected in opposition to this, George the Elder.
Speaker 3: The Clinton administration enacted this stuff. They put it into
Speaker 3: play as sort of a pilot program, you know, a
Speaker 3: little test let's drive it around the block. And their
Speaker 3: goal was to paint with a broadbrush, to shoot with
Speaker 3: a shotgun. They wanted to aim toward any individual that
Speaker 3: they thought was a possible operator in any number of
Speaker 3: terrorist networks they called them. And the nature of these
Speaker 3: networks themselves was very nebulously defined internally as well as externally.
Speaker 3: And we're like, hey, there's a bad guy and he's
Speaker 3: probably hanging with some other types we don't like, let's
Speaker 3: get him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, in the reason why you would pick someone
Speaker 2: up like that, especially as you know, part of some
Speaker 2: terrorist network, which was the common thing it is to
Speaker 2: gain information.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: Well, it's not all that different from policies and certain
Speaker 4: you know, metro cities like stopping frisk you know what
Speaker 4: I mean. It's this idea that like, if you're associating
Speaker 4: with certain people, or if you're potentially you know, suspect
Speaker 4: in some way, then we can stop you and search
Speaker 4: you and ask for information, you know, and and bring
Speaker 4: you in and and maybe we don't have enough to
Speaker 4: hold you, so we let you go, but we're still
Speaker 4: gonna go on that fishing expedition. But this is obviously
Speaker 4: much more of a level up dragon ball, you know,
Speaker 4: like version of that, because they don't necessarily have to
Speaker 4: let you go.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, And and one of the main problems is,
Speaker 2: or the main reasons that you would use this technique
Speaker 2: is when you don't have hard evidence to convict somebody. Right, So,
Speaker 2: as we're going through this, if I think, and then
Speaker 2: maybe this is just my opinion, I think if you
Speaker 2: had hard enough evidence to convict one of these people,
Speaker 2: anyone who has been extraordinarily renditioned, that it would go
Speaker 2: through a different process. But in this in most of
Speaker 2: these events, it's because you suspect somebody of being a
Speaker 2: high level person within some organization, you maybe can't prove
Speaker 2: certain things, and you know that group is you have
Speaker 2: intelligence that that group is going to take part in
Speaker 2: other activities, you just don't have any details of those activities.
Speaker 2: So you bring somebody like this in to literally extract
Speaker 2: everything they know.
Speaker 3: Check out our earlier conversation to folks on whether or
Speaker 3: not torture works. I really listened to that, and I
Speaker 3: gotta say, I am come with hat in hand on
Speaker 3: behalf of our show. I am so sorry that that
Speaker 3: is still very current and absolutely accurate. It is an
Speaker 3: absolute bummer of an episode. And everything that you just said,
Speaker 3: Matt is one hundred percent correct. There's a there is
Speaker 3: to this day, to this evening. There is not a
Speaker 3: solid methodology for these sorts of programs for evaluating the
Speaker 3: efficacy the actionability of this intelligence. Right, So there's some
Speaker 3: guy who has some name that you heard about from
Speaker 3: some other person who may have been tortured. So now
Speaker 3: you're out to find this person. And surprise, out of
Speaker 3: more than eight billion people in the world, is still
Speaker 3: like seven billion something when this stuff was in its heyday,
Speaker 3: more than one person has the same name.
Speaker 4: Whoopsie I was gonna ask, like, I mean, I understand
Speaker 4: that torture it can yield unreliable results. Let's just say
Speaker 4: based on what you're saying, because if you're being tortured,
Speaker 4: you're gonna say whatever it takes to have them stop you.
Speaker 4: But it can also if people really do have information,
Speaker 4: if you torture them enough, they're probably gonna tell you.
Speaker 4: But the question then becomes, how do we know who's
Speaker 4: giving us the real information and who's We're just torturing
Speaker 4: until they say something, And it's creating this like wild
Speaker 4: Goose Chase scenario.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, just so I.
Speaker 2: Was gonna say, Ben, how would you sum it up?
Speaker 2: But for me, remembering back to that episode, it is
Speaker 2: exactly that torture doesn't work often for the reasons you
Speaker 2: want torture to work. As a torturer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, yeah, I'd agree with that, and that the
Speaker 3: the pickle of it is logically it is impossible to
Speaker 3: prove that something would have happened when it did not happen.
Speaker 3: The ticking time bomb scenario is so popular in the
Speaker 3: world of fiction and spy novels and all that that
Speaker 3: is so rare, Like that that is true, Maybe a
Speaker 3: handful of times in modern history. It's not so much
Speaker 3: a case of we've got this bad guy, and there
Speaker 3: are bad guys. It's not so much a case we've
Speaker 3: got this bad guy. We've got, you know, Keifer Sutherland
Speaker 3: twenty four hour style, you know, a defined window of
Speaker 3: time to figure out where the bomb is or where
Speaker 3: the disease is getting deployed. It's much more a case
Speaker 3: of we have this guy, we know this guy knows someone,
Speaker 3: So let's play a very evil game of six degrees
Speaker 3: of Kevin Bacon shut out to our pal aj Jacobs,
Speaker 3: who and Kevin Bacon? Kevin Bacon and our pel Kevin
Speaker 3: And The idea then is that through these coercive means,
Speaker 3: this person will reveal something that will be not the solution,
Speaker 3: but a bread crumb toward the ultimate goal. And the
Speaker 3: problem with that is that a lot of times just
Speaker 3: doesn't work out that way.
Speaker 4: Now, and it can lead you down to another thing
Speaker 4: that will then give you another bread crumb that ultimately
Speaker 4: just involves just hurting a lot of people. And maybe
Speaker 4: they're not fully innocent. What does innocence even mean? Once
Speaker 4: you're in this system, it's very difficult because it's up
Speaker 4: to Uncle Sam to determine that. And that's why this
Speaker 4: stuff can be so dangerous, because there is no innocent
Speaker 4: until proven guilty. It's are you guilty enough by association
Speaker 4: to warrant US snatching you up to see what you know?
Speaker 4: And then you're in a system.
Speaker 3: Oh you know, Kevin, Well, I'm not convinced that you know, Kevin.
Speaker 3: Put them back under my.
Speaker 4: Man, I said Kevin.
Speaker 3: I Tvin, Devin tamble too.
Speaker 2: But it gets so much murkier than that, and we'll
Speaker 2: get into it, and that stuff starts happening a lot
Speaker 2: more when extraordinary rendition evolves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when when the rubber hits the road. Right, So
Speaker 3: the company, everybody's favorite US company, the Central Intelligence Agency
Speaker 3: UH and co UH. They had a three part process, right,
Speaker 3: a sort of dare I say, middle passage of espionage
Speaker 3: and of abduction and interrogation. What you would do is,
Speaker 3: as country one, the United States, acting through intelligence agencies,
Speaker 3: you would apprehend, kidnap a terrorism suspect abroad. Now, how
Speaker 3: did you define their activities? What made them a suspect?
Speaker 3: Any number of things? Wild West, honestly, and the country
Speaker 3: you capture them in that's country too. You would not
Speaker 3: have them questioned or interrogated or tortured in that country
Speaker 3: where you snapped them up. You would instead take them
Speaker 3: to a third country that was friendly with your overall goals,
Speaker 3: or that owed you a favor, or that wanted you
Speaker 3: to do them a favor in the future.
Speaker 2: And they had some kind of handy misused air base
Speaker 2: or you know.
Speaker 3: Davenbusters. Right, yeah, yeah, take them to the take them,
Speaker 3: take them to Poland right, take them to church, shout
Speaker 3: out Hosier. So these interrogations included torture obviously, uh, And
Speaker 3: to pretend otherwise is to be purposely misleading. Sometimes the
Speaker 3: people that were being questioned, whether they were or were
Speaker 3: not innocent, they died as a result of things like
Speaker 3: stress positions, confinement, forced.
Speaker 2: Feeding, blunt trauma to the legs.
Speaker 3: Blunt trauma to the legs, Yeah, had trauma also, of
Speaker 3: course infamously waterboarding. I think we're all still waiting for
Speaker 3: Sean Hannity to make good on his promise to experience waterboarding.
Speaker 3: Haven't checked in with Sean recently. Look, so the Clinton administration,
Speaker 3: while acting as though they are enemies of the Bush administration,
Speaker 3: they're putting this plan into action. They didn't come up
Speaker 3: with it, and when pressed by the American media, now
Speaker 3: the former president Bill Clinton said, you know, these covert
Speaker 3: operations are probably illegal, but hey, they're necessary. That's right, folks,
Speaker 3: We're aiming toward a greater good. And then I imagine
Speaker 3: he did like the little saxophone or peggio or whatever,
Speaker 3: and they were like, yeah, it's like a love theme
Speaker 3: kind of situation. Well, that careless wispard, This sure is.
Speaker 2: But they're definitely illegal because if you brought that suspect
Speaker 2: back to the United States and interrogated him there, that's
Speaker 2: definitely illegal.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: If you were in another country officially interrogating that suspect
Speaker 2: in country number two wherever they were picked up, and
Speaker 2: you're the ones interrogating them, I'm pretty sure that would
Speaker 2: be illegal too.
Speaker 3: It's a loophole, is what it is, right, Yeah, And
Speaker 3: it's as plausible deniability. I mean, yes, it's not denying it,
Speaker 3: but it is definitely a loophole. I mean, okay, so
Speaker 3: fast forward, the US ostensibly a democracy, a meritocracy for
Speaker 3: some crazy reason, because I'm sure he was the best
Speaker 3: guy for the job. George H. W. Bush's son, one
Speaker 3: of his sons George W. Bush, in a burst of creativity,
Speaker 3: becomes POTUS President of the United States. Fast forward, the
Speaker 3: United States experiences attacks on September eleventh, two thousand and one.
Speaker 3: These are attacks by a terrorist group led by Asama
Speaker 3: bin Laden, bankrolled by factions of the Saudi Arabian government according.
Speaker 2: To the official story.
Speaker 3: According to the official story, outside of Saudi Arabia, they're
Speaker 3: as surprised as you are. And so when this occurred,
Speaker 3: it opened the door to insane amounts of military funding.
Speaker 3: The US public was united in an extraordinary way, and
Speaker 3: they were on board with this vibe. They were like, look, yeah,
Speaker 3: laws are good. We're the critics. Yeah, we're the champion
Speaker 3: of laws. But we need to interrogate, We need to find, apprehend,
Speaker 3: and press Yes, anyone as soon as possible. Checks and
Speaker 3: balances be damned. This is the only way to prevent
Speaker 3: another disaster.
Speaker 4: Was that Wait, maybe I'm being dumb, dumb? What was
Speaker 4: the Patriot Act? Wasn't that kind of what opened up
Speaker 4: a lot of this stuff? Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Patriot Act is Patriot Act is a opportunistic consequence,
Speaker 3: that's right.
Speaker 4: And when it's almost like we've never really rendered back,
Speaker 4: like from what that did.
Speaker 3: No, why would you? I mean, think about like another Okay,
Speaker 3: this is very this is very thrifty of me, but
Speaker 3: think about, for instance, the way airports changed and the
Speaker 3: way airlines changed post two thousand and one, checked bags
Speaker 3: had a temporary fee, and that fee just never got
Speaker 3: rolled back, right anyway, that's I walked down the runway
Speaker 3: for that one.
Speaker 4: But anyway, the whole thing though, I mean, you could
Speaker 4: you can enact some of this stuff under duress or
Speaker 4: like in a state of emergency, but then it's really
Speaker 4: hard to put the badgers back in the bag. You know,
Speaker 4: at that point it nearly impossible. And then to your point,
Speaker 4: bet A, why would you why would you want to
Speaker 4: the government? Why would they want to the people? A
Speaker 4: little different? But then it's too late, because it's no longer.
Speaker 4: The power is no longer with them. If it ever
Speaker 4: really was, it was an opportunistic move because of the
Speaker 4: climate that allowed you know, this, this this situation where
Speaker 4: people weren't gonna bulk at it, right, Isn't that mainly
Speaker 4: what it is?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I look, that's what I think that there, what
Speaker 2: you've just stated is one of the primary reasons the
Speaker 2: September eleventh attacks are feel so suspect because it was
Speaker 2: it was a moment in time when the government, the
Speaker 2: executive branch of the United States, seemed to seize a
Speaker 2: whole heck of a lot more power than they had
Speaker 2: before that moment in time. And it's for for this
Speaker 2: kind of stuff, because who's going to force the executive
Speaker 2: powers to have fewer powers except for someone outside of
Speaker 2: the executive powers?
Speaker 3: Right, an American? The very proposal, an American arrest this man,
Speaker 3: arrest arrest every Matt Frederick around so many all right,
Speaker 3: well get all of them, just to be safe. That's
Speaker 3: literally what happened. So wallet wide Open, I agree with
Speaker 3: everything to say. Wallet wide Open, Uncle Sam and friends
Speaker 3: go on a merry and evil path across the world.
Speaker 3: They conduct a global sweep of anyone they consider a
Speaker 3: suspect of terrorism. Both being nebulously defied. They're in a
Speaker 3: pickle because multiple defendants were and have been tried in
Speaker 3: criminal courts in the United States or an insert country.
Speaker 3: Here the stands, the Balkans, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: all kinds of different parts of the world, right, India
Speaker 3: as well. Not to be Islamophobic, but a lot of
Speaker 3: times they were aiming for people of Muslim faith. And
Speaker 3: the problem was when these defendants were getting tried in
Speaker 3: the United States or when they were getting tried in
Speaker 3: different countries, they weren't getting the courts were not getting
Speaker 3: the results that the United States desired. And so they said, look,
Speaker 3: a lot of these guys that we genuinely think are
Speaker 3: bad faith actors. A lot of these bad dudes are
Speaker 3: hiding away in countries that do not extradite, They are
Speaker 3: hiding away in countries that grant them asylum. They are
Speaker 3: never going to be caught, and there is no currently
Speaker 3: legal way to get them. And so, like any government
Speaker 3: worth its salt, the United States said, let's change the law.
Speaker 3: Oh that's right, you guys, we write this stuff. So
Speaker 3: to this day, the US a global public has no
Speaker 3: idea how much good intelligence these agencies actually possessed. We
Speaker 3: have no idea what functionally informed their decisions. The logic
Speaker 3: of these black site operations was, when you think about
Speaker 3: it itself, a black box as a result. And then also,
Speaker 3: you know, in two thousand and four, when the US
Speaker 3: public started getting a little a little sour on this,
Speaker 3: the US Supreme Court conveniently decided that quote government agents
Speaker 3: are immune from civil or criminal liability for their official
Speaker 3: conduct abroad, which is a crazy thing to say. That's
Speaker 3: that ruling comes from Sosa, the Alvarez Machine, or Mackaine.
Speaker 3: The idea was, look, if you're doing your job and
Speaker 3: you work for the good guys, you work for Uncle Sam,
Speaker 3: then do what thou wilt in service of the greater good,
Speaker 3: which is not the way you should write a law.
Speaker 2: No, no, it is not. And just quick shout outs
Speaker 2: for anybody who wants to dig deep into this specific
Speaker 2: moment or these moments in time and just before that,
Speaker 2: in like early two thousand and three, shout out to
Speaker 2: car I think her name is Carlotta gall from the
Speaker 2: New York Times. That's somebody who was extensively reporting on
Speaker 2: this very subject. And also shout what New York Times
Speaker 2: did a bunch of reporting, yes, on this stuff right
Speaker 2: around that time. But there are there are several other outlets,
Speaker 2: a lot of other people. Check that out for sure.
Speaker 2: And I'm just before we move on, I would suggest
Speaker 2: everybody watches this documentary that you can find right now.
Speaker 2: If you're a Prime member, it's free, you can watch it.
Speaker 2: It's called Taxi to the Dark Side. By Alex Gibney.
Speaker 2: It will make you extremely uncomfortable and it is upsetting
Speaker 2: to watch. But it goes over this exact thing that
Speaker 2: Ben is describing here, just in too much detail.
Speaker 3: It's important detail. I'm really glad you shouted that out,
Speaker 3: because more people need to be aware of these things.
Speaker 3: This is the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3: I mean, the practice of extraordinary rendition accelerated to unprecedented levels.
Speaker 3: You could even make the argument that the Bush administration,
Speaker 3: Oh I'm sorry again, there's two that's weird. The earlier
Speaker 3: one they probably didn't see this coming. They probably didn't
Speaker 3: know what kind of automation they had enabled. The US
Speaker 3: essentially needed to and beat me here again, Paul. The
Speaker 3: US needed to prove some gangster. They needed the world
Speaker 3: to know anyone can get it. Wherever you are, you
Speaker 3: can be touched. It was as if Uncle Sam said,
Speaker 3: you guys want smoke. What a coincidence you and everyone
Speaker 3: you know happened to be sitting in the smoking section,
Speaker 3: So holler at me.
Speaker 2: You know, Oh, I thought you were going to say,
Speaker 2: is on fire currently?
Speaker 4: And the subtler the better walk?
Speaker 3: What is it? Walk softly and carry a big stick,
Speaker 3: and so we're going to pause for a word from
Speaker 3: our sponsor, and then we'll return to some more extraordinary renditions,
Speaker 3: assuming we're still here and we're back okay. So democracies
Speaker 3: are supposed to be a government by the people for
Speaker 3: the people. Therefore, at least if you're a dictator, the
Speaker 3: Achilles heel of that structure is that your people can
Speaker 3: hold you accountable or any number of means right. And
Speaker 3: that's why a bunch of dithering began, a bunch of
Speaker 3: fights over cement this dangerous discourse of what is or
Speaker 3: is not the greater good. Condoleeza Rice, former Secretary of State,
Speaker 3: came out with a very interesting series of public statements
Speaker 3: and the State Department at this point argued that extraordinary
Speaker 3: rendition is a necessary element of counter terrorism and furthermore
Speaker 3: assured not just the US but the global public that
Speaker 3: terrorism suspects had been neither transported nor tortured by US agents.
Speaker 3: We have the specific quote here.
Speaker 4: The United States has not transported anyone and will not
Speaker 4: transport anyone to a country when we believe he will
Speaker 4: be tortured. Where appropriate, the United States seeks assurances the
Speaker 4: transferred persons will not be tortured.
Speaker 3: Wow, where appropriate appropriate?
Speaker 4: Otherwise who knows? But we definitely don't do it on purpose.
Speaker 4: But hey, who's to say what happens once they've left
Speaker 4: our our purview?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so insane because right, I mean, this is
Speaker 2: right around the time when there was actual discussion within
Speaker 2: the halls of power in the White House where they're
Speaker 2: deciding what the definition of torture is. Right, they're deciding
Speaker 2: that legally, what is torture what is not?
Speaker 3: That one guy was like, Hey, I stand for hours
Speaker 3: at a time at work, rumsevet lt. I think, yeah,
Speaker 3: he got thrilled.
Speaker 2: On that a bunch, But dude, it just and they're
Speaker 2: trying to figure out if you strike, like how many
Speaker 2: times can you strike a detainee in the in the
Speaker 2: legs or you know, in the knees before it's considered torture.
Speaker 2: How long can you have a detainee change to the
Speaker 2: ceiling with handcuffs with their arms out until it's considered torturally? Well,
Speaker 2: what what's the level?
Speaker 3: And how long can you allow them to go on
Speaker 3: a hunger strike? Right? And when you force them to
Speaker 3: eat or force them to consume some sort of nutrient, right,
Speaker 3: then what what is your method for non consensually keeping
Speaker 3: them alive? Very nasty stuff.
Speaker 2: How many hours? How many hours can you keep a
Speaker 2: detainee up before it's considered torture? Awake sleep insane?
Speaker 4: There was a line in that new David Fincher movie
Speaker 4: The Killer, which I really liked a lot, where he
Speaker 4: said something to the effect of he I think it's
Speaker 4: insane that the government rule that sleep deprivation can't be
Speaker 4: considered torture.
Speaker 3: It is, well, it's intellectually fraudulent at best. The claim.
Speaker 3: What's really interesting is the claim does not preclude the
Speaker 3: possibility that subjects have been taken somewhere to be tortured
Speaker 3: on the order of the US government. Q Shaggy saying
Speaker 3: it wasn't me right, Yeah, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: So like maybe they're taking a string.
Speaker 4: Shaggy from Scooby Doo, but I never realized you mean
Speaker 4: the seminal nineteen nineties reggae performer show.
Speaker 3: It was Scoo and Marine. By the way, Shaggy is
Speaker 3: a marine, that's.
Speaker 4: Right, besties with our CEO turns out of what sure thing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they even caught them on camera. So put plainly,
Speaker 3: the US government contended that kidnapping people and torturing them
Speaker 3: isn't really a crime so long as the folks who
Speaker 3: do the kidnapping drop the individuals at a different non
Speaker 3: US country with maybe a little unofficial conversation beforehand. You know, like,
Speaker 3: we don't torture folks here in the States. But Poland,
Speaker 3: you guys are sort of the New Jersey of Europe, right,
Speaker 3: like everything goes here. We'd love your help on this.
Speaker 3: We'd love to figure out what this guy knows, and
Speaker 3: we will remember you've done this favor for us in
Speaker 3: the future, while we, of course again do not torture
Speaker 3: people in the United States. Poland, I'm sure you can
Speaker 3: understand we are a country under attack and any information
Speaker 3: you get, however you get it, don't tell us. But
Speaker 3: however you get something it would be of immense value
Speaker 3: to us, just don't make it messy, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean? And that's a cut to a handshake, maybe
Speaker 3: a file of a wish lists, right, tell us these
Speaker 3: following things, probably something like confirm these following things, which
Speaker 3: is even more dangerous in a torture situation because you're
Speaker 3: just asking people to say yes, right, And then maybe
Speaker 3: even a handy guide on how to efficiently derive that
Speaker 3: information from someone who doesn't want to tell you things.
Speaker 2: Spooky spooky, and and make a list of things that
Speaker 2: are torture and things that are not torture. Right, just
Speaker 2: as close to the line as you want to get,
Speaker 2: just don't go over it.
Speaker 3: Well, as long as the dog doesn't bite them.
Speaker 4: That's when the term enhanced interrogation started flying around, Right,
Speaker 4: that's exactly right. It's goofy, right, It's it's it's so stupid.
Speaker 4: It's just a pr maneuver. It's like rebranding.
Speaker 2: It is but discussed in the halls of power at
Speaker 2: the White House of what is torture and what is not?
Speaker 2: And what can we do to these guys.
Speaker 4: It's one of the most pornography things. I don't know
Speaker 4: what it is, but I know when I see it.
Speaker 4: Only it's the reverse of that, because I would argue
Speaker 4: that most people would know torture when they see it,
Speaker 4: but they're saying it needs to be quantified in some
Speaker 4: mathematical formula, which I would argue is not really possible.
Speaker 4: It's like point to the smiley or frownie face that
Speaker 4: defines your pain when you're in the hospital or something.
Speaker 4: It's very difficult to quantify it. I don't know have.
Speaker 3: A fox define what makes a good hen house? Right,
Speaker 3: that definition is going to be very different from the
Speaker 3: definition of the chickens. And I appreciate and all that
Speaker 3: shout out, I think to our ridiculous history. James Joyce
Speaker 3: episode which is on the way. The publication of Ulysses
Speaker 3: prompted so many discussions about the nature of pornography or
Speaker 3: the nature of that which is considered unclean. This CIA
Speaker 3: did not and does not, to be completely clear without hyperbole,
Speaker 3: the CIA does not, did not will not give a
Speaker 3: about that kind of stuff. And excuse my strong language.
Speaker 3: That's my third beep. In tonight's episode, they it's very going.
Speaker 3: It's true. They operated a series of black site facilities.
Speaker 3: We talked about this at length and previous episodes. These
Speaker 3: facilities were, like you said, Matt, they would appear to
Speaker 3: be abandoned maybe former government things like a picture and whatever.
Speaker 3: The abandoned warehouse is on the outskirts of your town.
Speaker 3: It looked like it. Stuff like that with security and
Speaker 3: they were in Afghanistan, Poland, Romania, Thailand. The list goes on.
Speaker 3: The scary truth is the American public and the global
Speaker 3: public still does not know how many of those sites
Speaker 3: existed or exist in the current day. We don't know.
Speaker 3: We do know somewhere around somewhere north of fifty different
Speaker 3: governments participated in this extraordinary rendition program. I think like
Speaker 3: fifty three that we know about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just to add one little detail or just a couple.
Speaker 2: You think about Bogram. It was an airbase. It was
Speaker 2: a Soviet airbase, right place called Bogram where people it
Speaker 2: was a black site where people were interrogated and tortured
Speaker 2: and killed. And you know, think about Abu Gray, but
Speaker 2: again a base that was kind of repurposed and parts
Speaker 2: of it that still functioned were used to interrogate and
Speaker 2: house people.
Speaker 3: Guantanamo as well, right, an episode.
Speaker 4: All its ow And it wasn't until like footage and
Speaker 4: stills and stuff of the treatment of prisoners in those
Speaker 4: facilities started coming out that tide of public opinion started
Speaker 4: to turn a little bit. But again by this point
Speaker 4: it was too late.
Speaker 2: You know, it's all at the same time two thousand
Speaker 2: and three, two thousand and four, when all of this
Speaker 2: we're discussing right now is happening, including the photos from
Speaker 2: Abu Grabe coming out like the human Pyramids and.
Speaker 3: The horrible, horrible things.
Speaker 2: That were done to human beings.
Speaker 3: Im Air fuel Man, You're right, the US public was
Speaker 3: thanks to independent media, to be honest with you, the
Speaker 3: US public was starting to starting to get tired of
Speaker 3: this notion what did we like police? They were starting
Speaker 3: to get tired of this notion of being the world's police,
Speaker 3: and they had again noticed the rise of everything. Eisenhower
Speaker 3: warned people about the military industrial congressionalfiteering. It's a practice
Speaker 3: dating back to the foundation of the United States. It happened,
Speaker 3: you know, the United States was isolationists. During the beginning
Speaker 3: of World War One. The United States pre Pearl Harbor
Speaker 3: had some really serious questions about why they should involve
Speaker 3: themselves in a global war. And other countries in this time,
Speaker 3: the time you're describing that other countries felt their sovereignity
Speaker 3: was under threat by this program. There were global investigations.
Speaker 3: Our neighbors to the north, Canada, they were super pissed
Speaker 3: because their sovereignity was violated by one of these rendition programs.
Speaker 3: Multiple European, North African, Middle Eastern theaters were also understandably
Speaker 3: upset Washington needed to respond, right, And so in two
Speaker 3: thousand and nine, we've got a different administration. Now is
Speaker 3: the Barack Obama administration again in in apparent opposition right
Speaker 3: to the to the other side of the political aisle.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: The Obama administration did all the same stuff. They did
Speaker 3: the same stuff that Clinton and H. W. Bush and W. Bush.
Speaker 3: That's still gross. They did all the same stuff these
Speaker 3: previous administrations were doing. And they issued an executive order
Speaker 3: that was meant to quell growing concerns. They said, all right,
Speaker 3: you guys, seriously, you guys, this time for serious no torture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for this time for serial We're gonna pull back
Speaker 2: on the torture, and we're gonna get a lot more
Speaker 2: drone killing going on.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, we're gonna We're gonna screw up some weddings,
Speaker 3: We'll tell you that much. But but they also said,
Speaker 3: we're going to start a task force. Okay, we're starting
Speaker 3: a task force American public to explore options for what
Speaker 3: to do with these terrorism suspects. Put plainly, the people
Speaker 3: responsible for kidnapping civilians across the planet promised to investigate
Speaker 3: their own behavior.
Speaker 2: Tight right, dude, that's exactly what they did back in
Speaker 2: two thousand and four, and they found out it was
Speaker 2: a couple of bad apples at the essentially prison complexes
Speaker 2: that they were running like Abu grab When those photos
Speaker 2: came out, like Donald Rumsfeld and you know, generals got
Speaker 2: in front of mics and said it's a couple of
Speaker 2: bad apples who are doing it. But they didn't say
Speaker 2: anything about the pressures that were coming from above that said, hey,
Speaker 2: we need to get actionable intelligence from the guys coming
Speaker 2: through and women, men and women who were kept at
Speaker 2: these prisons. We need to get actionable intelligence to save
Speaker 2: your fellow soldiers and to prevent another attack like nine
Speaker 2: to eleven. So the very lowest end the military police
Speaker 2: assigned to those places, and the interrogators who were part
Speaker 2: of military intelligence basically had marching orders to extract any
Speaker 2: info you possibly could, and a very loose set of
Speaker 2: things they could and could not.
Speaker 3: Do, a very loose set, I would say, things they
Speaker 3: could not do. Right, you're right, you're right. It's like,
Speaker 3: all right, guys, I'm the cool dad. Right now. You
Speaker 3: can only hang them up this long. It's unholy, it
Speaker 3: is ghoulish.
Speaker 4: No more burning with cigarettes though, guys, Okay, that's off
Speaker 4: the table.
Speaker 3: Only vapes. So they're like very strange, very strange semantics,
Speaker 3: you know. And and I think the point holds true.
Speaker 3: The a c l U has a pretty robust discourse
Speaker 3: on this, and they note that per the Department of
Speaker 3: Justice in a series of infamous memoranda, Uh, these folks
Speaker 3: who were abducted by these programs are quote unprotected by
Speaker 3: federal or international laws. To your earlier question, Noel, Yes,
Speaker 3: that's the loophole, dude, that's the dangerous part, because federal
Speaker 3: US laws are still just you know, injewpolitical terms, federal
Speaker 3: laws are a state actors laws, right, Like you can
Speaker 3: smoke weed all the livelong day in California, you will
Speaker 3: be executed legally in Malaysia for doing the same thing.
Speaker 3: But when they get to the point of not being
Speaker 3: protected by international laws, that means stuff like the Geneva Conventions.
Speaker 3: That means stuff like the rights of POW's prisoners of war. Right.
Speaker 3: That's why we see more or well in terms trotted
Speaker 3: out like this is not a soldier, this is an
Speaker 3: enemy combatants.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and a lot of that stuff is so toothless anyway,
Speaker 4: because it's so easy to like oh, we said no
Speaker 4: burning with cigarettes.
Speaker 3: You didn't say anything about clove cigarette.
Speaker 4: You know, there's always some way around it, and these
Speaker 4: reclassifications and just kind of linguistic jiu jitsu's It makes
Speaker 4: your head spin.
Speaker 2: Guys. I want to get this thought out and see
Speaker 2: if it makes sense to you. Guys. I think when
Speaker 2: this concept originated, right back to George hw Bush, he's
Speaker 2: thinking as CIA, he's thinking abducting a single person using
Speaker 2: everything we've been talking about here, maybe enhanced interrogation, maybe
Speaker 2: even torture, but on a single individual where the company
Speaker 2: is seeking very specific information about either a group or
Speaker 2: a potential singular attack or you know, some sell but
Speaker 2: they're interrogating one person. I think when it originated with
Speaker 2: that group of people, and with George hw Bush at
Speaker 2: the head of some of those ideas, or maybe at
Speaker 2: least the signer of some of those ideas, when it
Speaker 2: evolved into the thing that his son was dealing with
Speaker 2: with a war, where now you've got a prison system
Speaker 2: running that very concept right of a single individual undergoing
Speaker 2: those things, right to extract information. I think it's a
Speaker 2: whole other It was just a whole other bag of
Speaker 2: badgers because now think back to the Stanford prison experiment,
Speaker 2: Think back to what psychologically occurs when a inside a
Speaker 2: prison rather than just a singular interrogation room interaction. Right.
Speaker 2: I think that's the major the major change that occurred
Speaker 2: in the thing that the originators didn't think would happen.
Speaker 3: The exception became the rule, right, became the practice. The
Speaker 3: hop up shop that was meant to be around for
Speaker 3: an afternoon became a franchise.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, Because in the one person example, you've got
Speaker 2: probably a seasoned interrogator who's been interrogating the suspects for
Speaker 2: the entirety of their career. But in you know, in
Speaker 2: the prison system, it's literally military police that do not
Speaker 2: know what exactly the rules are. They're giving a very
Speaker 2: loose set of objectives and the main objective is get
Speaker 2: information from this person.
Speaker 3: And we know, yeah, that's well put. And I agree
Speaker 3: with you know, we know folks who have been involved
Speaker 3: on the US side in these sorts of pursuits, in
Speaker 3: these activities, people who have conducted interrogations, and they are
Speaker 3: not super villains, right, They're not goals or whatever. They're
Speaker 3: people who are trying to do a job in a
Speaker 3: good faith effort. And the problem is the rules of
Speaker 3: the road keep changing, and the demands, the expectations, the
Speaker 3: goal of the mission keeps changing. At some point when
Speaker 3: things go wrong, all of a sudden, there's no one
Speaker 3: at the wheel, which is again another problem with like this.
Speaker 3: There is no strong impetus to close this massive loophole,
Speaker 3: this massive shaggy it wasn't me kind of passing the buck.
Speaker 3: It's a phenomenon that will continue not just in the US,
Speaker 3: but in any government with the power to do so,
Speaker 3: even now in twenty twenty three, as we record this evening.
Speaker 3: This is a genuine conspiracy. This is an attempt, quite successful, honestly,
Speaker 3: to skirt the rule of law. Consider the United Nations
Speaker 3: legendary bars these guys are spitting. Here's a real sexy
Speaker 3: thing they wrote. It's called the United Nations Convention against
Speaker 3: Torture and other forms of Cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
Speaker 3: It says, point blank it's illegal to do any of
Speaker 3: this stuff. Like it's super duper illegal in the world
Speaker 3: in the opinion of the world's government, it's super legal
Speaker 3: to kidnap people and then the torture the heck out
Speaker 3: of them and then use that to find and torture
Speaker 3: more people. The US Congress agreed with this. They ratified
Speaker 3: that convention back in nineteen ninety two, before old og
Speaker 3: George I guess we could call him son in Prescott
Speaker 3: came in in ninety three and said, asterisk caveat what
Speaker 3: if you know?
Speaker 4: And Ben, you have a little mentioned in the outline
Speaker 4: of stuff we didn't get to. I just thought we
Speaker 4: should maybe get to over five seconds, just the idea
Speaker 4: of these these type of operations being completely incorrect in
Speaker 4: who they're targeting.
Speaker 3: A Coronius Rendition.
Speaker 4: There was a film I believe in two thousand and
Speaker 4: seven called Rendition about that very thing, you know, about
Speaker 4: a suspect that's basically they grabbed the wrong guy and
Speaker 4: someone just disappeared, you know, and the wife asks the
Speaker 4: senator for help, and that therein lies in the plot
Speaker 4: of the movie. I think it's got Jake gillen Hall
Speaker 4: and Meryl Streep and Reese Witherspoon in it, But I
Speaker 4: think it was it was based on a real thing
Speaker 4: that happened, and these types of things happened all the time.
Speaker 3: Oh I don't know that.
Speaker 4: I mean that all the time, but more than you'd like.
Speaker 2: To think, Well, yeah, a taxi to the dark, say,
Speaker 2: is based on this guy named Dilwar, who was a
Speaker 2: taxi driver that literally picked up three guys and then
Speaker 2: took them back to his hometown. But on the way
Speaker 2: they stopped by what they called a firebase, and there
Speaker 2: were Afghan militiaman who looked in the trunk, saw a
Speaker 2: what do they call it, an electric stabilizer and accused
Speaker 2: everybody in that taxi cab of having attacked the base
Speaker 2: earlier in the day. So they all got sent to Bogram,
Speaker 2: and or if they all got sent away, this guy,
Speaker 2: Dilwar the driver was sent to Bogram where he got
Speaker 2: tortured for five days and he died. And he was
Speaker 2: literally just a taxi driver going from one place to
Speaker 2: another and got picked up.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: But yeah, let's get back to the quote we're about
Speaker 2: to get to from the UN.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and both of the examples you guys just mentioned
Speaker 3: the concept overall, the find does the concept of erroneous renedition.
Speaker 3: This happened in contradiction to what Congress said when they
Speaker 3: agreed with that super sexy un banger back in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety two. Congress said the US will not and this
Speaker 3: is the quote expel, extradite, or otherwise affect the involuntary
Speaker 3: return of any person to a country in which there
Speaker 3: are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in
Speaker 3: danger of being subjected to torture, regardless of whether the
Speaker 3: person is physically present in the United States. So at
Speaker 3: the same time, one hand of Uncle Sam is waving
Speaker 3: and saying all these great things about democracy, the other
Speaker 3: hand is doing the exact opposite. And Congress later doubled down.
Speaker 3: They said, look, you the American the global public, we
Speaker 3: tots love you guys, and we're not going to green
Speaker 3: light funding for any operation that leads to torture or
Speaker 3: degrading treatment or anything that's prohibited by the Constitution. You
Speaker 3: guys were super serial this time, for real, though, We're
Speaker 3: not going to do it. Tight go USA, and the
Speaker 3: USA did go. They went around the world, and they
Speaker 3: did everything that Congress said was not going to happen. Look,
Speaker 3: go pass the lip service, past the pr past the
Speaker 3: campaign spins that are spinning up now as we speak.
Speaker 3: The largely unelected leaders of these agencies, the inheritors of
Speaker 3: these legacy programs, they continue to function. You cannot directly
Speaker 3: vote for or against them or these processes. There is
Speaker 3: a conspiracy afoot and the idea that you can move
Speaker 3: someone from their home country to another place and do
Speaker 3: whatever you want in search of nebulously defined things. That's
Speaker 3: beyond the rule of law. It is logically, like we're
Speaker 3: talking about earlier, it's logically perilous. It's nigh impossible to
Speaker 3: defend actions that did not occur. So as a result,
Speaker 3: the public will never know whether these programs resulted in
Speaker 3: actually saving lives. What we can say is this, hundreds
Speaker 3: and hundreds of people got sucked up in this program.
Speaker 3: There are many more currently in Guantanamo Bay. I believe
Speaker 3: twenty seven people currently held in Guatanamo Bay for any
Speaker 3: number of years have no criminal charges pending against them.
Speaker 2: They're just there, yep. And there are there are many
Speaker 2: other places that we'll never hear.
Speaker 3: About ever, never not once you know, it's crazy, and
Speaker 3: you know as such, if we're asking in good faith,
Speaker 3: as such, we cannot fault anyone American or otherwise who
Speaker 3: understands this information and says has the United States in
Speaker 3: these suits? Has the United States become the same monster
Speaker 3: it originally proposed to hunt? And that's a that's a
Speaker 3: terrifying question. We don't know the answers. We would We
Speaker 3: would love your opinion. We have a lot of people
Speaker 3: in the audience this evening who have some familiarity of
Speaker 3: one sort or another with this stuff, and we want
Speaker 3: to hear from you to the degree that you are
Speaker 3: safe and comfortable doing so. We have a number of
Speaker 3: ways you can contact us.
Speaker 4: That's right. You can find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff,
Speaker 4: where we exist all over the internet, specifically on YouTube,
Speaker 4: Facebook and XFKA Twitter. You can find us at the
Speaker 4: handle Conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram and TikTok, which apparently
Speaker 4: the kids are really.
Speaker 2: Into some of them. Not my kids in my house. Yeay.
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Speaker 2: not instead send us an email.
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