WEBVTT - Soldier of Misfortune: Frank Sweeney, Pt. 1 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:02.920 Col Zone Media. 0:00:07.120 --> 0:00:10.399 This is a story that begins and ends in bank 0:00:10.480 --> 0:00:14.600 parking lots, more or less in the way that stories 0:00:14.640 --> 0:00:16.720 can really begin or end. 0:00:17.880 --> 0:00:19.759 Our subject today was alive. 0:00:19.480 --> 0:00:22.040 Before the story begins, and as I'm writing this, he's 0:00:22.320 --> 0:00:25.640 still alive. But for the purposes of this telling, we'll 0:00:25.680 --> 0:00:29.320 start outside the Palisade Trust Company Bank in Englewood, New Jersey, 0:00:29.400 --> 0:00:32.920 on February twenty third, nineteen sixty two, when an eighteen 0:00:33.000 --> 0:00:35.559 year old member of the American Nazi Party was arrested 0:00:35.560 --> 0:00:37.640 after skipping school to try to rob a bank with 0:00:37.800 --> 0:00:40.559 a toy gun, and will mark the beginning of the 0:00:40.640 --> 0:00:43.040 end of his story in a Wells Fargo parking lot 0:00:43.080 --> 0:00:47.440 in Garden City, Idaho, on October thirteenth, twenty eighteen, when 0:00:47.440 --> 0:00:50.400 an elderly ex con was caught on security cam footage 0:00:50.560 --> 0:00:52.800 getting into an altercation with a couple who didn't move 0:00:52.840 --> 0:00:56.680 forward quickly enough at the drive up atm In the 0:00:56.720 --> 0:00:59.639 decades in between, Frank Sweeney went to prison at least 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:02.840 half a day times bought as a foreign mercenary, got 0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:06.600 deported from both Rhodesia and South Africa, helped an escaped 0:01:06.640 --> 0:01:09.800 spy of ade U S Marshals turned state's witness against 0:01:09.840 --> 0:01:12.920 a Hitler worshiping serial killer, tried to help the mob, 0:01:13.319 --> 0:01:16.640 and waged a three year campaign of terror and harassment 0:01:16.959 --> 0:01:19.960 against a woman who made a passing comment about how 0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:25.200 he was parked outside the post office. I'm Molly Conger, 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:43.759 and this is brune, little guys, this. 0:01:44.560 --> 0:01:45.480 Is a strange one. 0:01:46.400 --> 0:01:48.760 The first few episodes of this show were stories I 0:01:48.760 --> 0:01:52.760 already knew and thought you should know too. Kevin Strom 0:01:52.880 --> 0:01:55.600 was a prominent figure in the white supremacist movement for decades, 0:01:55.640 --> 0:01:58.120 and it was big local news here in Charlesville when 0:01:58.120 --> 0:02:01.640 he was arrested twenty years ago. The Gerald Drake case 0:02:01.720 --> 0:02:04.440 was something I read about when it happened. The cases 0:02:04.480 --> 0:02:07.520 against the gun trafficking Nazi paramilitary group was a story 0:02:07.560 --> 0:02:10.720 I spent years reading, paying ten cents a page, one 0:02:10.760 --> 0:02:12.799 court filing at a time as it wound its way 0:02:12.800 --> 0:02:17.519 through the system. But this one, this one is brand 0:02:17.600 --> 0:02:20.440 new to me, and I think he will be brand 0:02:20.440 --> 0:02:23.640 new to just about everybody, because for as many times 0:02:23.680 --> 0:02:26.079 as this man shows up in the newspaper over the 0:02:26.200 --> 0:02:30.280 last sixty years, I haven't found any one's source that's 0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:34.000 gathered together the threads of his life and tried to 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:37.200 make sense of how one man's name could appear in 0:02:37.360 --> 0:02:42.440 so many other people's stories, because that's where I found him. 0:02:43.240 --> 0:02:48.200 In someone else's story. I was reading a biography of 0:02:48.240 --> 0:02:51.720 a particularly nasty little guy one will definitely get to 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:56.560 eventually in another episode when my weird little guide detector 0:02:56.600 --> 0:03:01.480 went off. Call it a gut feeling, but this passing 0:03:01.600 --> 0:03:03.840 mention of a side character in the life of a 0:03:03.840 --> 0:03:06.720 serial killer was enough to get me to put that 0:03:06.760 --> 0:03:11.120 book down and spend days digging through newspaper archives trying 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:12.799 to figure out Frank. 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:15.840 And what I found was kind of. 0:03:15.840 --> 0:03:20.919 A bizarro world Forest Gump, one man whose life keeps 0:03:20.960 --> 0:03:25.200 intersecting with major historical events, just wandering in and out 0:03:25.240 --> 0:03:29.280 of the lives of gullible reporters, frustrated federal agents and 0:03:30.000 --> 0:03:35.560 the innocent bystanders who accidentally became his targets, just bumbling 0:03:35.600 --> 0:03:39.760 his way through history, but without any of Tom Hanks's charm. 0:03:40.440 --> 0:03:42.480 I know we don't really know each other yet. I 0:03:42.560 --> 0:03:45.320 haven't earned the trust it takes to know you'll believe 0:03:45.360 --> 0:03:47.360 me when I promise you a two parter is worth 0:03:47.360 --> 0:03:48.240 the weight in between. 0:03:48.320 --> 0:03:50.760 But I think you'll agree. 0:03:51.120 --> 0:03:56.720 Frank's story is weird enough for two episodes. Frank Abbott 0:03:56.720 --> 0:03:59.600 Sweeney Junior was born in August of nineteen forty three 0:03:59.680 --> 0:04:02.840 in New Jersey, to Frank Abbott Sweeney Senior, a realtor, 0:04:03.360 --> 0:04:06.480 and Marie Gleeson Sweeney, a homemaker who taught violin lessons 0:04:06.480 --> 0:04:10.400 and volunteered with the Red Cross. As a lifelong con artist, 0:04:10.680 --> 0:04:12.720 a lot of what he's told reporters about his own 0:04:12.760 --> 0:04:16.920 life is self serving fiction, which would sometimes get published 0:04:16.920 --> 0:04:19.920 without fact checking and then reappear in later accounts as fact. 0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:22.040 It was in the newspaper, after all. 0:04:22.960 --> 0:04:26.120 So I've taken great pains to verify what I can, 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:29.760 debunk what I can, and take note of the things 0:04:29.800 --> 0:04:31.640 I can only offer you with a grain of salt. 0:04:33.160 --> 0:04:36.560 Some of Frank's own lies are easily disproved, like the 0:04:36.560 --> 0:04:39.719 resume he gave a Rhodesian Army recruiter on it. He 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:43.159 claimed he graduated from Georgetown University in nineteen sixty five 0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:46.839 at the degree in psychology, but he couldn't possibly have 0:04:46.880 --> 0:04:50.839 matriculated at Georgetown in nineteen sixty one. He was a 0:04:50.839 --> 0:04:53.200 senior at Tenafly High School in nineteen sixty two when 0:04:53.200 --> 0:04:55.160 he was sent to the Annandell Reformatory for two and 0:04:55.200 --> 0:04:59.599 a half years. He never finished high school. His claim 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:02.640 that has as Francis Shellhammer derives from his mother's maiden 0:05:02.720 --> 0:05:06.800 name also fails to hold up to scrutiny. His mother 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:10.080 was born Marie Gleeson to John Gleeson, a fireman, and 0:05:10.279 --> 0:05:14.400 Lottie Gross Gleason in Chicago, and I was generous here. 0:05:14.520 --> 0:05:18.240 I wasted a lot of time. I even checked his grandparents. 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:21.920 His middle name, Abbott was his paternal grandmother Martha's maiden name. 0:05:22.800 --> 0:05:25.040 I went as far as to track his family treat 0:05:25.279 --> 0:05:28.160 all the way back to Ireland, giving him the benefit 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:30.280 of the doubt that maybe there's a shell Hammer in 0:05:30.320 --> 0:05:30.880 there somewhere. 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:32.599 I didn't find one. 0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:36.839 It's possible that I started mixing up my Martha's, Mary's, 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:39.680 John's and Francis's by the time I was cross referencing 0:05:39.680 --> 0:05:41.320 marriage records from the eighteen seventies. 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:43.440 But he probably just made it up. 0:05:44.160 --> 0:05:47.599 He does a lot of that and other aspects of 0:05:47.640 --> 0:05:50.599 Frank's story would require a trip to the National Archive 0:05:50.680 --> 0:05:54.000 to sift through dusty boxes of ancient court transcripts, and 0:05:54.640 --> 0:05:58.160 an unlikely degree of transparency from the Central Intelligence Agency 0:05:58.440 --> 0:06:01.719 or a deathbed confession from mobster, or a few tell 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:05.560 all memoirs from US marshalls to ever hope to sort out. 0:06:06.960 --> 0:06:11.600 The rest is somewhere in between. But I'll stick with 0:06:11.640 --> 0:06:14.480 what we do know to be true. And I said 0:06:14.480 --> 0:06:18.600 this story begins outside of a bank. On February twenty third, 0:06:18.680 --> 0:06:23.960 nineteen sixty two, Frank Sweeney skipped school. Shortly after nine am. 0:06:24.040 --> 0:06:27.000 He walked into a bank in Englewood, New Jersey, approached 0:06:27.000 --> 0:06:29.680 the teller and slid a plastic toy gun that he'd 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:33.719 painted black out of a Manila envelope. I'd like to 0:06:33.800 --> 0:06:36.719 make a withdrawal, he told the teller as he cocked 0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:40.880 the toy pistol. I don't know if the teller could 0:06:40.960 --> 0:06:43.880 tell the gun was fake, or if she just didn't 0:06:43.880 --> 0:06:46.680 think this gangly, redheaded teenager had it in him to 0:06:46.680 --> 0:06:49.840 shoot her, or maybe she just was having a bad 0:06:49.960 --> 0:06:54.440 day and didn't care anymore, because, according to local news reports, 0:06:55.000 --> 0:07:00.000 she sneered at him, got up and walked away, leading 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:02.480 him standing there alone at the counter with his toy 0:07:02.520 --> 0:07:06.880 gun and bewildered by the teller's apparent disinterest in being 0:07:06.920 --> 0:07:10.480 held at gunpoint, he just put the plastic pistol back 0:07:10.480 --> 0:07:14.160 in his pocket, turned around and walked out the front door, 0:07:15.240 --> 0:07:17.720 and as he was leaving, an off duty policeman just 0:07:17.800 --> 0:07:21.200 happened to be walking into the bank. An employee told 0:07:21.200 --> 0:07:23.920 the officer what had just happened, and he turned right 0:07:23.960 --> 0:07:27.400 around and caught Frank just outside. He dragged him back 0:07:27.400 --> 0:07:29.840 inside the bank to be identified by the teller, and 0:07:29.920 --> 0:07:35.520 as the patrolman is making the arrest, Frank says to him. 0:07:34.440 --> 0:07:35.760 Well, I guess it didn't work. 0:07:37.200 --> 0:07:39.880 Later, under interrogation, he would tell the officers that his 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:43.520 plan had been to support the movement to use the 0:07:43.520 --> 0:07:45.840 money from the bank robbery to support the activities of 0:07:45.880 --> 0:07:50.440 the American Nazi Party under George Lincoln Rockwell. At his arraignment, 0:07:50.480 --> 0:07:53.400 the judge asked, Frank, aren't you the fellow who's been 0:07:53.400 --> 0:07:58.120 painting swastikas on synagogues around here. Frank denied this, and 0:07:58.160 --> 0:08:01.080 he told the judge I never did anything illegal in 0:08:01.120 --> 0:08:05.160 my life, and then he pleaded guilty to the attempted 0:08:05.200 --> 0:08:08.560 bank robbery. There's no other mention of Frank in connection 0:08:08.600 --> 0:08:11.320 with that anti Semitic vandalism the judge mentioned, But I 0:08:11.360 --> 0:08:14.200 did find several newspaper articles about incidents of that sort 0:08:14.240 --> 0:08:16.720 from the prior to years when Frank would have still 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:20.840 been a minor. In January nineteen sixty three, unnamed teenage 0:08:20.880 --> 0:08:24.120 boys were accused of painting swastikas on parked cars in Emerson, 0:08:24.560 --> 0:08:27.920 just eight miles away. In February of nineteen sixty one, 0:08:27.960 --> 0:08:30.120 someone hung a swastika banner over the entrance of the 0:08:30.120 --> 0:08:33.920 synagogue in Tenafly. Newspaper articles about that banner reference a 0:08:34.000 --> 0:08:38.120 similar recent incident at the synagogue in nearby Englewood. A 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:41.160 few days later, someone painted a swastika over a plaque nearby. 0:08:42.160 --> 0:08:44.960 In June, two teenage boys respotted fleeing the scene after 0:08:45.000 --> 0:08:47.679 two trailers belonging to a contract or were broken into 0:08:47.760 --> 0:08:51.400 and left a swastika painted on the floor inside. In 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:53.640 all these incidents, police told the papers of the time 0:08:53.679 --> 0:08:56.400 that they had referred the cases to the juvenile Division. 0:08:57.440 --> 0:09:00.400 It's not like anti Semitic incidents are so rare that 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:03.160 I'm saying that Frank is the only possible suspect here. 0:09:03.200 --> 0:09:07.160 In every nineteen sixties Bergen County News article about a swastika, 0:09:07.720 --> 0:09:10.680 I found plenty of other newspaper reports during those same 0:09:10.760 --> 0:09:13.760 two years about a local man flying a Swastika flag 0:09:13.760 --> 0:09:16.760 outside of his home, about attacks on Jewish businesses and 0:09:16.760 --> 0:09:20.280 synagogues and neighboring cities, and other incidents that just don't 0:09:20.320 --> 0:09:25.240 fit this particular pattern of teenage Nazi vandalism, and the 0:09:25.280 --> 0:09:27.959 comment the judge made makes it sound like Frank had 0:09:27.960 --> 0:09:31.319 been there before. But any appearance he'd made in court 0:09:31.400 --> 0:09:33.560 as a miner wouldn't have been reported with his name 0:09:33.600 --> 0:09:36.320 attached to it. And it's hard enough to get any 0:09:36.320 --> 0:09:39.160 information about a juvenile case in twenty twenty four, so 0:09:39.840 --> 0:09:42.080 forget figuring out what how about in nineteen sixty one, 0:09:43.440 --> 0:09:46.240 But it does seem pretty likely he'd at least been 0:09:46.280 --> 0:09:49.319 a suspect in some of those incidents, because at the 0:09:49.360 --> 0:09:51.760 hearing where he pled guilty to the attempt at bank robbery, 0:09:52.280 --> 0:09:54.559 Frank did admit that the police had spoken to him 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:59.600 on numerous occasions, specifically concerning his involvement in George Lincoln 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:04.240 Rockwell American Nazi Party. For the attempted bank robbery, Frank 0:10:04.320 --> 0:10:08.840 was sentenced to an indeterminate term at a boy's reformatory, 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:11.760 and he was released on October of nineteen sixty four, 0:10:11.840 --> 0:10:15.000 shortly after his twenty first birthday after serving About two 0:10:15.040 --> 0:10:18.760 and a half years after his first stint in jail, 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:21.800 Frank returned to his parents' home in New Jersey. He 0:10:21.840 --> 0:10:25.000 worked occasionally as a shipping clerk, but it doesn't seem 0:10:25.040 --> 0:10:28.360 like he was holding down a steady job. One afternoon 0:10:28.400 --> 0:10:32.480 in July of nineteen sixty seven, neighbors reported hearing gunshots 0:10:32.520 --> 0:10:35.400 in the woods. An officer drove by to check it 0:10:35.440 --> 0:10:37.040 out and saw a car parked on the side of 0:10:37.040 --> 0:10:39.800 the road. The car looked empty, so the officer kept 0:10:39.840 --> 0:10:43.360 driving without stopping to investigate. Suddenly, the car pulled out 0:10:43.400 --> 0:10:46.000 behind him and tried to run the officer off the road. 0:10:46.559 --> 0:10:49.040 A brief vehicle chase ensued, with the officer following the 0:10:49.120 --> 0:10:52.920 vehicle for about a mile before the driver. Frank parked 0:10:52.920 --> 0:10:56.440 outside of his parents' home, got out and walked toward 0:10:56.440 --> 0:10:57.040 the front door. 0:10:58.240 --> 0:10:59.120 The officer asked. 0:10:58.920 --> 0:11:00.839 Frank if he'd been shooting guns in the woods, to 0:11:00.880 --> 0:11:05.079 which Frank replied only no, and then warned the officer 0:11:05.120 --> 0:11:09.320 that he was on private property for walking away and 0:11:09.360 --> 0:11:12.880 into the house. But Frank left something on the front 0:11:12.920 --> 0:11:16.960 seat of the car, unfortunately, and it was a Thompson 0:11:17.040 --> 0:11:21.200 submachine gun that he'd been firing in the woods. The 0:11:21.240 --> 0:11:23.920 officer saw the gun and called for backup, and when 0:11:23.960 --> 0:11:27.640 they arrived, Frank opened fire on them from inside the home, 0:11:28.080 --> 0:11:30.719 kicking off a seventy five minute gun battle, with more 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:33.520 than a dozen cops firing shots at the house. As 0:11:33.559 --> 0:11:37.720 Frank fired at them through the windows, Frank's father and 0:11:37.760 --> 0:11:40.320 brother pleaded with him to come out, or at least 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:44.120 to send the family dog out. After police Captain Peter 0:11:44.200 --> 0:11:47.080 Zurla was shot in the arm, the officers lobbed four 0:11:47.120 --> 0:11:49.920 canisters of tear gas through the windows, finally driving Frank 0:11:49.920 --> 0:11:51.840 out into the front yard, where he was arrested without 0:11:51.840 --> 0:11:55.120 further incident. And as they put the handcuffs on him, 0:11:55.520 --> 0:11:58.360 he turned to Captain Zerla, who's still standing there in 0:11:58.360 --> 0:12:01.680 the front yard bleeding from a gun shot wound, and 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:04.880 Frank says, some shot when I got you through the window. 0:12:05.000 --> 0:12:06.679 Huh. 0:12:06.760 --> 0:12:08.880 There's no follow up I can find about whether the 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:11.240 dog was heard, or how missus Sweeney got the tear 0:12:11.280 --> 0:12:14.400 gas out of her upholstery. It was the sixties, so 0:12:14.480 --> 0:12:17.440 maybe her sofa was safely scotch guarded or wrapped up 0:12:17.440 --> 0:12:19.800 in one of those weird plastic covers. That were popular 0:12:19.840 --> 0:12:22.680 back then, but you have to figure she at least 0:12:22.679 --> 0:12:26.600 had to replace the curtains. Frank entered a not guilty 0:12:26.600 --> 0:12:29.360 plea and unsuccessfully tried to suppress the evidence of the 0:12:29.360 --> 0:12:31.400 gun found on the front seat of the car, with 0:12:31.520 --> 0:12:33.920 his attorney arguing that it was discovered in an illegal 0:12:33.960 --> 0:12:36.719 search because the cop didn't have probable cause to look 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:40.199 through the window of the parked car. That's not how 0:12:40.240 --> 0:12:44.520 that works. At trial, the defense put on three psychiatrists 0:12:44.559 --> 0:12:46.959 to argue for insanity, and the state put on two 0:12:46.960 --> 0:12:50.400 of their own, who testified that Frank was certainly disturbed, 0:12:51.040 --> 0:12:54.800 but not legally insane. The jury deliberated for just three 0:12:54.880 --> 0:12:58.720 hours before finding Frank guilty of attempted homicide, assault with 0:12:58.720 --> 0:13:02.080 the intent to kill, possession of a machine gun, and 0:13:02.160 --> 0:13:06.599 something called atrocious assault that I've never heard of. We 0:13:06.640 --> 0:13:09.360 don't have that here in Virginia, but in New Jersey, 0:13:09.480 --> 0:13:12.960 atrocious assault is an assault and battery, savage and cruel 0:13:13.000 --> 0:13:16.240 in character which results in maiming or wounding. 0:13:16.760 --> 0:13:18.640 So that definitely qualifies. 0:13:19.800 --> 0:13:24.959 And he was sentenced to six years, which, honestly, that's 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:28.360 kind of remarkable, right. I'm not going to bat for 0:13:28.360 --> 0:13:30.560 the corsoral state here. Far from it, you know more, 0:13:30.760 --> 0:13:34.960 jail time doesn't really fix anybody, and we'll come to 0:13:34.960 --> 0:13:38.200 see that jail never comes close to fixing Frank. But 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:42.280 reading those sixties news stories about this event was fascinating. 0:13:42.840 --> 0:13:45.200 This cop who got shot by a Nazi with a 0:13:45.280 --> 0:13:50.319 Tommy gun is described in every article as quote lightly wounded. 0:13:51.440 --> 0:13:55.000 I mean, he does seem to have not been seriously injured. 0:13:55.000 --> 0:13:56.559 He was shot, you know, in the upper arm. I 0:13:56.600 --> 0:13:58.240 don't think it went through the bone, so it really 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:01.920 he was lightly wounded. But that's not what they would 0:14:01.920 --> 0:14:05.440 put in the newspaper today, you know it. And the 0:14:05.480 --> 0:14:07.360 cops didn't drive a tank through the front of this 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:10.320 suburban home or unload their guns into him when he 0:14:10.360 --> 0:14:13.679 came out. There's been such a massive culture shift over 0:14:13.720 --> 0:14:16.520 the years and the way we justify aggressive police response 0:14:16.559 --> 0:14:20.080 and the way that we talk about the risk to police. 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:25.120 It's just interesting to see that it wasn't always that way. 0:14:25.200 --> 0:14:28.560 But there's another unanswered question in the story of this 0:14:28.920 --> 0:14:32.800 siege in this New York suburb. What was he doing 0:14:32.880 --> 0:14:36.239 that day? I mean shooting guns in the woods, obviously, 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:40.720 but why did he panic when that cop drove by 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:45.400 and why those woods in particular, We'll never really know. 0:14:45.720 --> 0:14:48.320 Even if he told us, we wouldn't know. He's a liar. 0:14:48.960 --> 0:14:53.160 But the newspaper articles at the time do say that 0:14:53.200 --> 0:14:56.000 the officer initially saw Frank's car parked at the intersection 0:14:56.080 --> 0:14:58.880 of East Clinton Avenue and Woodland Street, about a mile 0:14:58.920 --> 0:14:59.760 from where Frank lived. 0:14:59.760 --> 0:15:03.040 At the time. They used to put everything in the newspaper. 0:15:03.080 --> 0:15:07.840 It's so beautiful, every detail, every boring little bit in 0:15:07.920 --> 0:15:08.320 which they. 0:15:08.280 --> 0:15:08.800 Still did that. 0:15:10.040 --> 0:15:14.160 And I'm eternally curious about details that probably won't end 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:16.480 up mattering. But I pulled up a map of ten 0:15:16.520 --> 0:15:19.440 of Flying, New Jersey, and there is a large wooded 0:15:19.480 --> 0:15:21.640 area you could walk straight into if you parked your 0:15:21.680 --> 0:15:25.400 car at that intersection, And those woods surround a large 0:15:25.400 --> 0:15:28.960 building that first opened its doors in nineteen fifty, the 0:15:29.040 --> 0:15:46.720 Kaplan Jewish Community Center. The clearest account of the next 0:15:46.720 --> 0:15:49.040 phase of Frank's life comes from an essay written in 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:54.720 twenty nineteen by a retired Rhodesian military policeman. Despite being 0:15:54.760 --> 0:15:58.840 the most likely to be more or less true, it's 0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:02.960 still riddled with obvious factual inaccuracies, things that just can't 0:16:03.000 --> 0:16:06.680 be true. Maybe because it was written as a humorous 0:16:06.680 --> 0:16:09.920 recollection meant to be read by his fellow former Rhodesian soldiers, 0:16:09.920 --> 0:16:12.320 and maybe his memory has faded a bit in the 0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:15.760 nearly fifty years since the event in question, but it 0:16:15.760 --> 0:16:19.040 does at the very least substantiate Frank's own claim about 0:16:19.040 --> 0:16:21.800 having enlisted in the Rhodesian Light Infantry in the early 0:16:21.920 --> 0:16:26.120 nineteen seventies. I'll try to walk the tight rope here 0:16:26.160 --> 0:16:30.280 of providing a little more context than just Rhodesia was 0:16:30.400 --> 0:16:33.160 very bad and white supremacists from other countries were obsessed 0:16:33.160 --> 0:16:34.880 with the idea that they could travel there to kill 0:16:34.920 --> 0:16:38.000 black people with impunity, while still stopping short of taking 0:16:38.080 --> 0:16:40.760 us down the long road of the history and consequences 0:16:40.760 --> 0:16:44.800 of European colonization in Africa. That's far from my area 0:16:44.840 --> 0:16:47.240 of expertise, and it's not why you're here. 0:16:48.640 --> 0:16:48.840 Now. 0:16:48.880 --> 0:16:51.680 Even if you're coming into this with a completely blank 0:16:51.720 --> 0:16:56.240 slate for some reason, you're probably thinking there's no country 0:16:56.280 --> 0:17:02.080 called Rhodesia, and you're right, there is. There never really was. 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:06.600 Rhodesia was never recognized as a sovereign state. But we're 0:17:06.680 --> 0:17:09.640 calling Rhodesia here as the present day state of Zimbabwe 0:17:09.680 --> 0:17:13.159 in southern Africa. In the early twentieth century, Rhodesia was 0:17:13.200 --> 0:17:16.439 a British territory. The legacy of Cecil Roads is British 0:17:16.440 --> 0:17:19.919 South Africa Company. The area was effectively ruled by the 0:17:19.960 --> 0:17:22.280 company until the nineteen twenties, when it became a self 0:17:22.280 --> 0:17:25.840 governing colony of the UK, and by the nineteen fifties 0:17:25.880 --> 0:17:30.520 decolonization was happening all across the African continent. These fading 0:17:30.560 --> 0:17:34.480 European empires couldn't or didn't want to hold on to 0:17:34.560 --> 0:17:37.560 all the colonies they'd collected during the previous centuries scramble 0:17:37.640 --> 0:17:41.520 for Africa. In nineteen sixty British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan 0:17:41.600 --> 0:17:44.359 gave his Wind of Change speech in an address to 0:17:44.400 --> 0:17:47.720 the South African Parliament about the political necessity of moving 0:17:47.720 --> 0:17:53.440 toward decolonization. The wind of change is blowing through this continent, 0:17:54.680 --> 0:18:00.320 whether we like it or not. This growth national consciousness 0:18:00.600 --> 0:18:05.760 is a political fact. We was all accepted as a fact. 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:09.680 Our national policies must take a contribute. 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:13.600 He'd actually given the same speech a few weeks earlier 0:18:13.600 --> 0:18:15.480 in Ghana, but the press didn't pick it up the 0:18:15.520 --> 0:18:19.199 first time. And I think the whether we like it 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:21.840 or not part of that statement matters a lot. 0:18:21.880 --> 0:18:25.639 Here. He wasn't advocating for decolonization out of the goodness 0:18:25.680 --> 0:18:26.200 of his heart. 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:30.960 He was reluctantly acknowledging the expensive and bloody political reality 0:18:31.000 --> 0:18:33.320 of trying to hold on to these colonies at any cost. 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:36.600 He could see the Belgians and Congo, and the French 0:18:36.600 --> 0:18:39.800 in Algeria fighting these costly wars with Africans who wanted 0:18:39.800 --> 0:18:44.040 an end to European colonial rule, and as they worked 0:18:44.040 --> 0:18:47.440 towards extricating themselves from these colonial arrangements, the British government 0:18:47.480 --> 0:18:52.320 adopted a policy called no independence before majority rule, meaning 0:18:52.320 --> 0:18:55.000 they wouldn't hand over sovereignty to a colony still run 0:18:55.040 --> 0:18:59.919 exclusively by the white colonial minority. Now, obviously, this is 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:03.600 an immensely complicated bit of political history that I'm stripping 0:19:03.640 --> 0:19:06.280 down to the studs and explaining badly so we get 0:19:06.280 --> 0:19:08.679 through it quickly. So don't think I'm giving the British 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:12.720 Empire any kind of credit here. This policy did not 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:15.520 arise out of a genuine desire to undo the harms 0:19:15.520 --> 0:19:19.760 of colonialism and address racism or anything like that. That 0:19:19.840 --> 0:19:23.280 was not on their minds. But I think they knew 0:19:23.280 --> 0:19:27.000 what it would look like if their decolonization looked exactly 0:19:27.040 --> 0:19:29.679 like their colony. And we're not talking about a pr 0:19:29.800 --> 0:19:30.280 loss here. 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:31.359 This is the Cold War. 0:19:31.800 --> 0:19:34.280 They don't want to give the Soviets an opportunity to 0:19:34.280 --> 0:19:38.040 come in behind them. But it was this policy, or 0:19:38.160 --> 0:19:41.199 rather defiance of it, that led Rhodesia under Ian Smith 0:19:41.280 --> 0:19:45.440 to make the unilateral declaration of independence in nineteen sixty five. 0:19:46.960 --> 0:19:49.400 White colonists made up just five percent of the population 0:19:49.440 --> 0:19:51.800 of the territory, but they were unwilling to accept that 0:19:51.840 --> 0:19:54.760 the UK would only grant Rhodesian independence if they shared 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:58.679 even a crumb of political power with the other ninety 0:19:58.720 --> 0:20:03.720 five percent of Rhodesia. And apologies again for these digressions. 0:20:04.320 --> 0:20:06.680 I just love the context. I think it's so important. 0:20:07.880 --> 0:20:10.520 But that brings us to where we were going. The 0:20:10.600 --> 0:20:14.200 Rhodesian Bush War a fifteen year period of civil conflict 0:20:14.280 --> 0:20:17.240 between the white minority led government and the African nationalist 0:20:17.280 --> 0:20:22.440 guerrilla forces. The number of foreign mercenaries who actually traveled 0:20:22.440 --> 0:20:26.520 to Rhodesia during the war remains up for debate. Most 0:20:26.560 --> 0:20:29.760 of the countries the mercenaries came from were embarrassed by 0:20:29.800 --> 0:20:33.600 the whole affair. International sanctions levied against the territory after 0:20:33.600 --> 0:20:37.440 the illegal declaration of independence made it illegal for citizens 0:20:37.480 --> 0:20:40.479 of many countries to participate in the conflict, even in 0:20:40.520 --> 0:20:44.000 countries that didn't have their own domestic laws banning mercenary activity. 0:20:45.359 --> 0:20:48.080 And there was some discomfort within Rhodesia too about this 0:20:48.280 --> 0:20:50.679 perception that they needed foreigners to help with what they 0:20:50.760 --> 0:20:56.360 saw as their war for independence. So, for deeply unflattering 0:20:56.400 --> 0:21:00.520 and regrettable reasons, no one was very investing and getting 0:21:00.520 --> 0:21:04.000 a thorough accounting of the situation, right, nobody benefits from 0:21:04.040 --> 0:21:08.199 knowing what happened here. But at the high end, it 0:21:08.320 --> 0:21:12.080 was really only a few thousand mercenaries over the total 0:21:12.160 --> 0:21:15.359 course of the conflict, with best estimates for the number 0:21:15.359 --> 0:21:18.800 of them who were Americans being somewhere in the low hundreds. 0:21:19.640 --> 0:21:23.960 So a lot of guys talked about it, but not 0:21:24.119 --> 0:21:28.240 very many of them actually did it. This idea of 0:21:28.280 --> 0:21:32.280 American extremists traveling to Africa to violently enforce white rule 0:21:32.280 --> 0:21:36.320 over black Africans is one that modern white supremacists still 0:21:36.480 --> 0:21:40.880 cherish and celebrate. Dylan Rufe, who was welcomed with open 0:21:41.000 --> 0:21:43.520 arms at an evening Bible study at a manual African 0:21:43.520 --> 0:21:47.840 Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina registered the domain 0:21:48.359 --> 0:21:52.040 last Rhodesian dot com a few months before he murdered 0:21:52.119 --> 0:21:54.040 nine of the parishioners who thought he was joining them 0:21:54.080 --> 0:21:57.520 for prayer that night. Rufe made his final edit to 0:21:57.560 --> 0:22:01.119 that site his digital manifesto, just out before carrying out 0:22:01.200 --> 0:22:06.000 that attack. In twenty fifteen. The cultural moment where magazines 0:22:06.040 --> 0:22:09.680 like Soldier of Fortune ran full page advertisements for opportunities 0:22:09.680 --> 0:22:12.159 to be a man among men in the African bush 0:22:12.720 --> 0:22:16.960 looms large in our memories, But the reality is there 0:22:17.040 --> 0:22:20.159 weren't many men who actually heeded the call, and their 0:22:20.240 --> 0:22:25.439 role in the conflict was insignificant. But unlike many of 0:22:25.440 --> 0:22:28.600 those Americans who did end up in Rhodesia in the seventies, 0:22:29.080 --> 0:22:32.920 Frank Sweeney didn't see an advertisement in Soldier of Fortune. 0:22:33.080 --> 0:22:35.959 That magazine's first issue, bearing a cover story about American 0:22:35.960 --> 0:22:39.280 mercenaries in Africa, was published in the summer of nineteen 0:22:39.400 --> 0:22:42.399 seventy five, just as Frank Sweeney was already on his 0:22:42.480 --> 0:22:47.200 way home. According to Frank, which is a dangerous way 0:22:47.240 --> 0:22:50.119 to start an assertion of fact. He walked into the 0:22:50.200 --> 0:22:53.879 Rhodesian Information Center in Washington, d C. In nineteen seventy 0:22:53.920 --> 0:22:58.240 two and asked how to join up. The information center 0:22:58.359 --> 0:23:02.639 was not technical a diplomatic office because Rhodesia was not 0:23:03.160 --> 0:23:06.080 technically a country, the fact that would get them into 0:23:06.080 --> 0:23:08.960 some trouble in Australia, but they claimed that they were 0:23:09.000 --> 0:23:12.960 just offering information about tourism. Frank says he was offered 0:23:12.960 --> 0:23:17.040 the contact information for Major Nick Lamprecht, the Rhodesian Army's 0:23:17.119 --> 0:23:21.280