Speaker 1: I didn't know much about him, but he drove a hearse,
Speaker 1: and inside his hearse was like a lot of guns,
Speaker 1: you know, like a R fifteen and all other kind
Speaker 1: of shit. I never held one of those before in
Speaker 1: my life, and I held it and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh shit, And I'm pro gun and everything, but I
Speaker 1: never held anything like that. Yeah, it was just this
Speaker 1: badass dude, you know, talking about he worked in the
Speaker 1: foreign military, he was for the Black Lives Matter movement,
Speaker 1: and you know, it just seemed interesting, you know. In
Speaker 1: August twenty twenty, with millions of Americans protesting across the country,
Speaker 1: activist zeb Hal invites a guy he's met at one
Speaker 1: of the demonstrations to his apartment in Denver to talk
Speaker 1: about plans for the future. The way I look at
Speaker 1: is like shit has to happen. The has to happen.
Speaker 1: It's like you said, I mean, how extreme do you expected?
Speaker 1: Would you want it to go? If you were to
Speaker 1: tell that to your people, how would you say, say,
Speaker 1: I come one of your people, right, how would you
Speaker 1: say it? I'm Funnels? Yeah I robbed Funnels. I went
Speaker 1: to the Curtis Room kill license. So there's nothing you
Speaker 1: can tell me what shocked me. This guy had shown
Speaker 1: up on the scene in Denver driving a silver hearse
Speaker 1: filled with weapons. He claims to have been a soldier
Speaker 1: for the French Foreign Legion and the Peshmerga, the Kurdish
Speaker 1: military force in Iraq. He even says he's killed isis
Speaker 1: terrorist on the battlefield. Zeb Haul has been involved in
Speaker 1: the demonstrations for a couple of months. At this point,
Speaker 1: He's seen peaceful protesters attacked by police. He suffered a
Speaker 1: head injury. He's growing more and more concerned about black
Speaker 1: people being attacked and killed by cops, and he thinks
Speaker 1: that he and others need to learn to defend themselves.
Speaker 1: So zeb sitting in his living room with this guy,
Speaker 1: asks him, can you teach me how to fight? But
Speaker 1: the thing is this my type of training that I
Speaker 1: do is anything from mine. I can teach you how
Speaker 1: to shoot a gun to you know, yeah, and in
Speaker 1: combat all the ways like blowing up fucking buildings and
Speaker 1: grolla warfare, tactics and sabotage. Do you want to learn
Speaker 1: how to just shoot a gun, pool, throw somebody around
Speaker 1: a kick cool? Or do you want to go that
Speaker 1: way all the way uptown? Yeah? Do you want to
Speaker 1: learn to shoot a gun and throw someone around, or
Speaker 1: do you want to go all the way uptown? Zep
Speaker 1: says he wants to go all the way uptown, appearing
Speaker 1: to mean quote like blowing up fucking buildings and guerrilla
Speaker 1: warfare tactics and sabotage. We need to know every bit
Speaker 1: of defense possible. So here's a question. And so when
Speaker 1: I was in Syrian let me explain. The best way
Speaker 1: I did it was when I was a Syrian in Iraq.
Speaker 1: We had a lot of antique for guys that came
Speaker 1: over there, and I was one of the instructors of
Speaker 1: the Red STARB game. Really wants to talk them the
Speaker 1: gerrilla warfare attactives we taught them. I ees all this
Speaker 1: crazy shit. I had no problem with giving you that
Speaker 1: type of training, but I have to make sure that
Speaker 1: that's what you want to do. That you want to
Speaker 1: learn the crime Dela Crime Special So that's what you
Speaker 1: want to do, then you know that's what I want
Speaker 1: to do. Zep says, Okay, So switch on, I can
Speaker 1: make it happen. I'm Trevor Aaronson from Western Sound and
Speaker 1: i Heeart Podcasts. This is Alphabet Boys, Episode two, all
Speaker 1: the way uptown. So who is this guy? This real
Speaker 1: deal ANTIFA militant, the guy with the silver her weapons,
Speaker 1: Who's going to take things in Denver to the next level.
Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time reporting this out, pulling
Speaker 1: court records and police reports, files from the prison system,
Speaker 1: talking to people who knew him in the United States,
Speaker 1: in the Middle East, and chasing down every lead I
Speaker 1: could find. I discovered that his full name is Michael
Speaker 1: Adam Windecker, the Second, so he goes by Mickey. Born
Speaker 1: in Colorado, He's in his late forties, stands five foot seven,
Speaker 1: has a ruddy complexion and a stocky frame. In photos
Speaker 1: when he was younger, Mickey was slender and toned. In
Speaker 1: his middle age, he's developed a paunch, but he's still strong,
Speaker 1: with big biceps and wide knuckles that would have little
Speaker 1: difficulty knocking out a few of your teeth. Mickey has
Speaker 1: got a history in foreign militaries and in the US
Speaker 1: criminal justice system, arrest in Colorado, Nevada, Texas, and Florida.
Speaker 1: His offenses include firearms charges, menacing with a weapon, and
Speaker 1: sexual assault. In Mickey's telling of Mickey's story, he's the
Speaker 1: well off son of an emotionally negligent mother and a
Speaker 1: committed father who was a savvy businessman. So my mom
Speaker 1: and my mom's side of the family were kind of
Speaker 1: like reptiles, like once you had, you pretty much out
Speaker 1: of the nest, as I could love to take care
Speaker 1: of go yourself. I really didn't have a lot of
Speaker 1: communication or a lot of history with my mom, so
Speaker 1: we didn't bond very well. Mickey wouldn't sit down for
Speaker 1: an interview with me, but in investigating him, I found
Speaker 1: hours of recordings of him. Some are or have been
Speaker 1: on social media, like this video. My dad owned two businesses.
Speaker 1: He actually owned a cab company locally here in Colorado,
Speaker 1: and he actually owned a carnival and a couple other businesses,
Speaker 1: So we had a shitload of money. My dad was
Speaker 1: my superhero because it wasn't perfect, but he did teot
Speaker 1: me a lot of life skill shit. As I was
Speaker 1: growing up as a young man, Mickey wanted an adventure
Speaker 1: and so at nineteen years old, he tells of going
Speaker 1: to France to join the Foreign Legion, the world famous
Speaker 1: French military unit that accepts feign volunteers. This would have
Speaker 1: been around nineteen ninety four, and I went to place
Speaker 1: called the Citydale. They took me through selection. They took
Speaker 1: me to Paris, to Fort den Gents, through some more
Speaker 1: selections than it took me to a bomb near Marseilles
Speaker 1: to do my getting into the Foreign Legion, and so
Speaker 1: I lost our shortis I'm waiting, you know, you have
Speaker 1: to go out there on the flight deck, a Middle
Speaker 1: Eastern guy who was also trying to volunteer in the
Speaker 1: French Foreign Legion started to harass and disrespect Mickey. Well,
Speaker 1: at the time, I was nineteen years old, and I
Speaker 1: didn't take kind of may to being disrespected. So I
Speaker 1: beat the ship out of the guy, and a couple
Speaker 1: of corporal chefs and a corporal came up there and
Speaker 1: they grabbed me, and there were like, fuck, we can't
Speaker 1: have that here, can't be attacking people. So they got
Speaker 1: me a train ticket, they paid me while I was there.
Speaker 1: They started me to train, went back to Paris and
Speaker 1: they and after that I came back to the United States.
Speaker 1: After Mickey returned to the United States, he worked a
Speaker 1: variety of odd jobs, took some community college courses, and
Speaker 1: traveled around and in his telling, he was something of
Speaker 1: a citizen warrior out there looking to help the good guys.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and five, he was in Hollywood, Florida,
Speaker 1: just north of Miami, when he saw a crime in progress.
Speaker 1: A couple of bad guys had just robbed a pawn shop.
Speaker 1: I pull up and I'm stopping at a light, and
Speaker 1: I see these guys running out with the gun and
Speaker 1: they got a bunch of shit in their hands, and
Speaker 1: there were a lot of people around the area. So
Speaker 1: I jumped on my vehicle and I tackled the guy
Speaker 1: with a gun and took him to the ground, and
Speaker 1: the culture like right there, they grabbed and chew and
Speaker 1: they cupped him up. This is one part of Mickey's story.
Speaker 1: I was able to verify it happened pretty much exactly
Speaker 1: as he described it. I found an article about it
Speaker 1: in the South Florida Sun Sentinel. The quotes a local
Speaker 1: police spokesman thanking Mickey for his assistance. About seven years
Speaker 1: after that incident, Mickey was back in the Denver area,
Speaker 1: so it was the premiere of Batman. That's when in
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, a gunman walked into a movie theater in Aurora,
Speaker 1: just outside Denver an open fire using a semi automatic rifle.
Speaker 1: Twelve people were killed and seventy were injured. The mass
Speaker 1: shooting made international news. The violence on the screen erupted
Speaker 1: in the theater. At first, witnesses thought the gunman was
Speaker 1: part of the show. He entered the debut of the
Speaker 1: Batman film, Dark Knight Rises looking like the villain the Joker,
Speaker 1: with a gas mask, head to toe armor and an
Speaker 1: eerie calm. And it seems Mickey was there. And actually
Speaker 1: I was going to the movie theater, but I was
Speaker 1: running a little bit behind, and I showed up as
Speaker 1: the last couple of shots were ringing out, and I
Speaker 1: proceeded to help people out of the theater and helped
Speaker 1: them get him too, ambulances and stuff like that. Mickey
Speaker 1: lived near the movie theater at the time. Several people
Speaker 1: told me Mickey had shown them pictures and video of
Speaker 1: him at the theater that evening. A week after the shooting,
Speaker 1: he also posted on Facebook about his experience, describing how
Speaker 1: he assisted the injured. So, yeah, he appears to have
Speaker 1: been there. Mickey has never had much of a political
Speaker 1: identity as far as I can tell. If he has
Speaker 1: any sort of politics, it's the politics of grievance. Everybody sucks,
Speaker 1: everybody's out to get him a brand of political nihilism almost. So. Look,
Speaker 1: the thing I look at him like this is, I
Speaker 1: don't I come from the seventies. Okay, I'm almost about
Speaker 1: to fifth. Okay. The thing I look at like this
Speaker 1: is I have an old biker saying which is called
Speaker 1: fuck the three piece the politicians, the press, and the police.
Speaker 1: It's just the way it is. Okay. Press has never
Speaker 1: fucking helped me, an' fucking politics sharing me, and definitely
Speaker 1: the police because they don't help me. A few years
Speaker 1: after the movie theater shooting, with the rise of the
Speaker 1: Islamic State or ISIS in Iraq and Syria, Mickey decides
Speaker 1: to join the fight. The all American tough guy heads
Speaker 1: to the Middle East. Mickey says he flew to a
Speaker 1: rock to volunteer as a foreign fighter with the Peshmerga,
Speaker 1: the Kurdish military force. According to my reporting, he also
Speaker 1: around this time started claiming Kurdish descent and Iraq Mickey
Speaker 1: says the Kurds saved him from an otherwise aimless and
Speaker 1: meaningless life. Yeah, which been the type of person when
Speaker 1: I grew up, I was the smallest kid in school.
Speaker 1: I always got picked up by bullies, So I kind
Speaker 1: of learned I had to stand up for myself. And
Speaker 1: I liked the Kurds because in fact was that they
Speaker 1: were out man, outgun, out train, outsupply and all this,
Speaker 1: and they were the underdog and they were kicking ass,
Speaker 1: you know, and they were actually that come to learn
Speaker 1: later on, really good people, you know, and that was
Speaker 1: something I could get with, you know. So to me,
Speaker 1: I guess the best way can say it is like
Speaker 1: I was given a second chance in life. Mickey, in
Speaker 1: his telling, was a decorated fighter for the Peshmerga, and
Speaker 1: he says he trained dozens of American ANTIFA activists in
Speaker 1: the Middle East in hand to hand combat weapons and explosives.
Speaker 1: In a video I have of Mickey, he pulls out
Speaker 1: his phone and shows a photo to the camera. Here
Speaker 1: I am with I captured flag when I was in battle.
Speaker 1: Mickey was such an effective fighter, he claimed that Isis
Speaker 1: issued a bounty on his head and some of his
Speaker 1: friends routed him out to the bad guys. I've had
Speaker 1: people that I thought were my friends in Colorado lead
Speaker 1: my information to terrorist groups, real risk groups. They leaked
Speaker 1: it to nash That's what we call the Islamic state
Speaker 1: they leaked it to other groups. What type of car
Speaker 1: I drove one type of motorcycle. I road where I
Speaker 1: hung out all the ship and literally leaked my information
Speaker 1: out there, tried to get a what we call patua,
Speaker 1: which is known as a death note or a death
Speaker 1: ransoup on me and Mickey's telling. If there are any
Speaker 1: Isis fighters with the courage to try to take them
Speaker 1: out and collect that bounty, then well come get some.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the death the death ship was out there
Speaker 1: a lot, doesn't bother me none. They put it away.
Speaker 1: I'm very well armed. I'm not gonna say how, but
Speaker 1: I'm very well armed. So if and I am very
Speaker 1: well trained, don't confuse my looks in my little bit
Speaker 1: of chugginess that I'm not prepared for any type of situation,
Speaker 1: because I have been. It's not brag. I am very
Speaker 1: well trained and ray bullshit. By twenty seventeen, with a
Speaker 1: price on his head, Mickey had returned to Denver and
Speaker 1: began to tell everyone he met that he was a
Speaker 1: representative of the Kurdish government. Mickey even claimed to have
Speaker 1: diplomatic community from his work with the Kurds, whom he
Speaker 1: credited with turning his life around. If you've ever seen
Speaker 1: a movie when somebody's life is a complete shit show
Speaker 1: where it's fu and they go when they do something
Speaker 1: in their life changes and they become a new person.
Speaker 1: Something happens to them and also they're a totally different person.
Speaker 1: That's kind of like what happened with me with the Kurds.
Speaker 1: And now Mickey was back in the United States, inspired
Speaker 1: and with a new mission, a mission he was going
Speaker 1: to put into action in Denver more after the break
Speaker 1: after George Floyd's murder in twenty twenty, Mickey started to
Speaker 1: attend the protests. He offered weapons training to anyone who
Speaker 1: expressed an interest, and by describing how he fought ISIS
Speaker 1: terrorists and had diplomatic community, he appeared on first impressions
Speaker 1: to be an important and legitimate guy, someone many of
Speaker 1: the racial justice activists thought they could trust, but not everyone.
Speaker 1: He's like dressed often in like fatigues or you know,
Speaker 1: more black blocked style, seemed to fly a marine flag,
Speaker 1: it seems like, but he didn't seem like he was
Speaker 1: demand that he claimed to be. This is Brian Loma.
Speaker 1: Brian is widely known in the Denver activist community for
Speaker 1: live streaming videos of the racial justice protests. I do
Speaker 1: seem to remember that he was armed, which you know,
Speaker 1: kind of gave him a sense of having some credibility. Right.
Speaker 1: He came off as like maybe being a rook but
Speaker 1: like really being like into the movement. And now that
Speaker 1: I say that out loud, that just kind of throws
Speaker 1: a red flag up in itself. Brian was live streaming
Speaker 1: on July twenty twenty during a rally for Elijah McClean,
Speaker 1: the young black man had been killed in Colorado the
Speaker 1: year before George Floyd was murdered in Minnesota. Some hold
Speaker 1: up signs reading the People United will end racist police terror.
Speaker 1: I've been living in a war since nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 1: This is one of the speakers at the event. And
Speaker 1: even back then, I remember when you couldn't be black
Speaker 1: and be walking up and down Sable or al Alida
Speaker 1: without the funky ass racist fucking police pulling you over
Speaker 1: and harassing you. The rhetoric at these rallies would get
Speaker 1: pretty heated, like that guy's foul language, The system is racist,
Speaker 1: Fuck the police, that kind of stuff. Mickey is at
Speaker 1: this demonstration, and this is right around the time that
Speaker 1: he first meets zeb Hall. After this rally, the demonstrators
Speaker 1: marched through the city. Ran Loma is life streaming the
Speaker 1: whole thing. The demonstrators, numbering in the hundreds, then pour
Speaker 1: on the Interstate two twenty five, a major highway that
Speaker 1: creates a partial perimeter road around Denver. They block all
Speaker 1: the traffic on both sides of the interstate and then
Speaker 1: start confronting the drivers they had trapped. Some smile and
Speaker 1: laugh and voice support for the demonstrators. Other drivers aren't
Speaker 1: as amused, like one Brian Loma confronts, Yeah, are you
Speaker 1: doing today? Say? Are you okay? There's people in front
Speaker 1: of you? Would you not drive in front of you?
Speaker 1: But this demonstration quickly spirals out of control. On the
Speaker 1: other side of the interstate from where Brian Loma is filming,
Speaker 1: a blue jeep wrangler speeds through the protesters, nearly hitting
Speaker 1: several Another demonstrator films the incident. As it happens. You
Speaker 1: can hear gunshots ring out. One of the demonstrators appears
Speaker 1: to have fired on the jeep as it speeds through
Speaker 1: the crowd. The scene then becomes chaotic. The hundreds of
Speaker 1: demonstrators then leave the interstate and congregate in the surrounding
Speaker 1: city streets, choking them off the traffic. At one point,
Speaker 1: the crowd stops, and a black man with a bullhorn
Speaker 1: in his hand and an assault rifle slung over his
Speaker 1: shoulder addresses the protesters. This is scary work. This is
Speaker 1: what it looks like to organize. I guess the racism
Speaker 1: in the most racist toutry in the world. As the
Speaker 1: hundreds of people advance up the street, Brian Loma turns
Speaker 1: his camera to the front of the parade of demonstrators.
Speaker 1: Right up front, as if clearing the way for the protesters,
Speaker 1: is a slowly moving silver hearse it's Mickey up front
Speaker 1: and in charge of the protest. Zeb is there as well.
Speaker 1: About a half hour later, Zeb walks up to Brian
Speaker 1: Loma and his camera. Zeb's wearing a white construction style
Speaker 1: hard hat and he has a respirator mask hanging around
Speaker 1: his neck. He's angry that the jeep drove dangerously through
Speaker 1: the crowd, and Zeb suggests that the jep's driver should
Speaker 1: have been stopped earlier in at gunpoint. There should have
Speaker 1: been people in the back with rifles to make sure
Speaker 1: that God damn card and get up there it's all.
Speaker 1: At this point, then Zeb says something else. I believe
Speaker 1: it is necessary to Armed resistance is necessary. That's where
Speaker 1: Zeb's mind appears to be when he and Mickey first
Speaker 1: start talking about guns and training. Armed resistance is necessary.
Speaker 1: So in August twenty twenty, Zeb invites Mickey to his apartment.
Speaker 1: He wants to talk about the future, how to inspire
Speaker 1: more people to participate in the demonstrations, how to get
Speaker 1: people stirred up, and how to prepare them for possible
Speaker 1: conflicts with police officers outfitted like stormtroopers. Zeb explains to
Speaker 1: Mickey that he believes the racial justice protests need to
Speaker 1: show people that the American economic system is fundamentally unfair
Speaker 1: to black people and other minorities, and in Zeb's view,
Speaker 1: the pandemic has made the inequities worse. The whole nation
Speaker 1: is a powder keg ready to explode. Denver's brutally cold
Speaker 1: winter is a few months away. People will spend the
Speaker 1: months indoors, quarantined by the pandemic and the freezing temperatures,
Speaker 1: and by the time spring arrives, Zeb predicts that violence
Speaker 1: will break out all over. That's going to be the
Speaker 1: turning point. This cold is Dark's claiming that there will
Speaker 1: be suicide. Well, when it spring comes, they are angry.
Speaker 1: It's getting hot. People up when it's hot. So the
Speaker 1: spring comes, get happen, and that's where you would step
Speaker 1: into make ship off all. Mickey encourages Zeb's violence by then,
Speaker 1: he says, you'd make shit pop off then, right, But
Speaker 1: Zeb is weirdly all over the place talking about violence, yeah,
Speaker 1: but unclear on his timeline, and seeming to talk in
Speaker 1: a way that suggests he wants others to do the violence.
Speaker 1: People are already age chained, they're working to repress a
Speaker 1: lot of them are going to be evicted, and over
Speaker 1: the sports of time, we just piss them off more
Speaker 1: and more and more. And as soon as summer comes
Speaker 1: a spring, there's first few hot weeks, there's gonna be
Speaker 1: so much fear and anger because look at these distractions.
Speaker 1: Aren't composedly going to come back on sports and concerts
Speaker 1: and everything. They're not going to be back, right. That's
Speaker 1: why we have to get them while we're to steal
Speaker 1: them into awake right. Zeb explains to Mickey that he
Speaker 1: thinks violence is the answer. The only way the system
Speaker 1: will change is through force, but he believes that he
Speaker 1: can inspire that violence through speeches and propaganda at public events.
Speaker 1: I think this propaganda change change. You know, be hearing
Speaker 1: these speeches will actually have other speeders, but not even
Speaker 1: just people are good at speaking. Someone like you. Just
Speaker 1: tell the truth. You know what's going on, and over
Speaker 1: is pre six to eight months, build a fury anger
Speaker 1: and if it happens here and little fucking didn't, it'll
Speaker 1: go a place because over that six to eight months
Speaker 1: people will be angry or Mickey then pushes Zeb for
Speaker 1: more specifics. How are things going to get violent? I
Speaker 1: see your point of view, village down and kill the rich.
Speaker 1: I understand that I kill your point of view. It's just,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know how you do. Zeb doesn't
Speaker 1: have much of an answer. He talks about propaganda and
Speaker 1: speeches and inspiring people to get so angry they'll turn
Speaker 1: to violence. Then Zeb tells Mickey, I need your help
Speaker 1: in doing this so obso, I need your help doing
Speaker 1: this stuff, he says, and I also need to learn
Speaker 1: how to fight. Mickey then explains that he's the exact
Speaker 1: man for that job. He says again he's trained Antifa
Speaker 1: fighters in Iraq and Syria. Hand, hand combat weapons, explosives,
Speaker 1: guerrilla warfare. Zeb then tells Mickey that he also wants
Speaker 1: to learn how to mentally manipulate people, and that's when
Speaker 1: Mickey drifts into absurdity, and Zeb, so enamored with Mickey,
Speaker 1: doesn't even notice my manipulation. My manipulation is that's something
Speaker 1: you can't look school forward. You have to learn it.
Speaker 1: And it's like a Jedi mind skill. It's like a
Speaker 1: Jedi mind skill. That's what Mickey says, These aren't the
Speaker 1: droids you're looking for, and then Mickey goes all obi
Speaker 1: wan Kenobi on his young padawan. You have to basically
Speaker 1: take the subject and make them agree with you. The
Speaker 1: Jeds do in a way that makes them feel comfortable,
Speaker 1: and you want it to be a smooth transition. You
Speaker 1: don't want to be rough because of it's rough, it
Speaker 1: breaks down in the fields, so you just want to
Speaker 1: burger them into it. So Mickey not only fought ISIS
Speaker 1: fighters and train violent Antifa activists, he also performed Jedi
Speaker 1: mind tricks. I was actually really good at it when
Speaker 1: I was in a personal military I didn't do it
Speaker 1: towards the court and towards terrorist members. I was terrogating
Speaker 1: the shit of that, but that you can be shown
Speaker 1: how to do. You just have to It's you have
Speaker 1: to train yourself to do, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Mickey then suggested Zeb that he could introduce him to
Speaker 1: his guy, an outlaw biker and former Special Forces fighter.
Speaker 1: Let me explain him. He's an old, fuck around type
Speaker 1: of guy. He does not play fucking games. But if
Speaker 1: you're wanting to learn how to blow shit up, drop
Speaker 1: people and build the fucking numbers and do all that
Speaker 1: shit that you want to do, he's the guy you
Speaker 1: want to go to. I mean, I could teach you
Speaker 1: all that shit. Absolutely, I got a teaching it too,
Speaker 1: but that would be he would be your guy. Mickey
Speaker 1: says this guy is overseas and he can't train that
Speaker 1: right away, but Zeb says he doesn't want to wait
Speaker 1: and would prefer for Mickey to train him. Mickey, though,
Speaker 1: says there's one issue with training Zeb, and it has
Speaker 1: to do with a supposed position as a Kurdish diplomat.
Speaker 1: The thing you understand is is like, which Okay, let's
Speaker 1: say this of Fish is a Kurdish I have weapons,
Speaker 1: but those weapons I can't use because it trains back
Speaker 1: to the kur Holistic ship, so I can't use that ship.
Speaker 1: I need to be able to get so weapons that
Speaker 1: are not mine, you know what I mean. I can't
Speaker 1: buy there somepself. If Zeb wants weapons training, Mickey tells
Speaker 1: him Zeb needs to buy him a gun. And I'm
Speaker 1: making no endorsement of the tortured logic here, but this
Speaker 1: is basically what Mickey is saying. He has guns, yeah,
Speaker 1: but they're registered to him as a Kurdish diplomat and
Speaker 1: so he can't use them to train Zeb. And he's
Speaker 1: also a convicted felon, which he means he can't buy
Speaker 1: a gun legally in the United States even though he
Speaker 1: has guns, so Zeb would need to buy him a gun.
Speaker 1: Zeb doesn't commit to anything buying, guns, training, none of it.
Speaker 1: At the end of his meeting with Mickey, he returns
Speaker 1: to where he was at the beginning of the meeting,
Speaker 1: talking about giving speeches. I need help. I need help
Speaker 1: doing my speeches. Zeb says, Okay, I'm not very good
Speaker 1: with speech parts, pulling triggers and blowing shit up. I'm good.
Speaker 1: Mickey says he isn't there to give speeches. He's in
Speaker 1: the pulling triggers and blowing shit up. That's what he says.
Speaker 1: And soon zeb learns that Mickey has made other friends
Speaker 1: among Denver's racial justice activists, and they appear to be
Speaker 1: more enthusiastic about to borrow Mickey's words, pulling triggers and
Speaker 1: blowing shit up. He was just hanging out and it
Speaker 1: seemed to be kind of by himself. This is Brett Smith.
Speaker 1: Brett is a military veteran and a member of the
Speaker 1: Young Democratic Socialists of America or why DSA. And so
Speaker 1: one of my colleagues that were there with when engaged
Speaker 1: him and stuff. They'd heard about him, they'd seen him around.
Speaker 1: He's describing seeing Mickey at the demonstrations in Denver for
Speaker 1: the first time. And so that's when they made kind
Speaker 1: of initial contact with him, like kind of on our behalf.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, they started hanging out and what have
Speaker 1: you at kind of ur or I don't know, you
Speaker 1: could say base camp. It's a friends apartment and what
Speaker 1: have you. I mean, that's that's kind of just how
Speaker 1: it started out. So the y DSA is the youth
Speaker 1: branch of the Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist
Speaker 1: organization in the United States. Day isn't a political party,
Speaker 1: but instead a member organization. Here's one of their promo videos.
Speaker 1: The last two years have been rough. We've been hit
Speaker 1: with crisis after crisis, and everywhere working class people are
Speaker 1: being pushed out of politics right at the moment that
Speaker 1: we need to fight like hell. The bosses and billionaires
Speaker 1: and their politicians and police are sacrificing us during this pandemic.
Speaker 1: DSA and YDSA groups are particularly active in the racial
Speaker 1: justice protests during the summer of twenty twenty. They start
Speaker 1: using the platforms these demonstrations create to promote their socialist
Speaker 1: political agenda. This is something that happens quickly to all
Speaker 1: these demonstrations that the news media referred to as Black
Speaker 1: Lives Matter. While they started as ways to protest police
Speaker 1: brutality and raise awareness of the deaths of unarmed black
Speaker 1: men and women at the hands of police, the message
Speaker 1: splinters as more people and more groups participate. People are
Speaker 1: showing up with signs for communism, socialism, LGBTQ, plus just
Speaker 1: about any cause of line with left wing activism. Trey Quinn,
Speaker 1: the Black Nationalists we met earlier, who's one of the
Speaker 1: organizers of the Denver demonstrations, He refers to these as
Speaker 1: affinity groups. The affinity groups, in Treys opinion, are rowdy
Speaker 1: and destructive, and they're instigating some of the most brutal
Speaker 1: responses by local police. That's when you started seeing these
Speaker 1: affinity groups of all these people calling themselves antifa or
Speaker 1: some sort of anti fascist type guy or something like that.
Speaker 1: That's when you start seeing them surround police stations and
Speaker 1: throwing rocks in there. That's when you start seeing the
Speaker 1: cops have the tear gas whole areas of Denver. These
Speaker 1: demonstrators meant well in trays view, but no one was
Speaker 1: there to discourage some of their bad ideas. These things
Speaker 1: all happened because there was nobody there to take a
Speaker 1: person who's already radical and direct them in the position
Speaker 1: where they are now being an effective good. Now they're
Speaker 1: just off the leash. And that's what's literally what happened.
Speaker 1: It got worse. The friends that Mickey may in y
Speaker 1: dsay her named Honor and Aiden. They're among the most
Speaker 1: active members at the time. These affinity groups are pushing
Speaker 1: some of the demonstrations beyond what the police accountability activists
Speaker 1: had initially desired. An example of this happens in Fort Collins,
Speaker 1: about an hour north of Denver. On August eighth, twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: a demonstration for Back the Blue, a pro police movement
Speaker 1: created in reaction to Black Lives Matter, had been organized
Speaker 1: near the local police station, and Mickey, Honor Aiden and
Speaker 1: other members of Denver area affinity groups go to protest
Speaker 1: against that demonstration. As you might predict, the situation devolves
Speaker 1: quickly into a brawl, with Back the Blue activists and
Speaker 1: left wing protesters falling into dogpiles in a grassy ditch
Speaker 1: as they throw punches and hurl frozen water bottles at
Speaker 1: each other. Everybody keep, one of the pro police activists says,
Speaker 1: keep punching each other in the face, but don't shoot anybody.
Speaker 1: At one point, Back the Blue activists, his face hidden
Speaker 1: by an American flag mask, takes a flagpole old glory
Speaker 1: wrapped around it and transforms it into a spear, jamming
Speaker 1: it into the body of one of the left wing protesters.
Speaker 1: The video circulates widely on social media and in right
Speaker 1: wing media as an example of the dangers of antifa,
Speaker 1: which is odd because the left wing protesters, the so
Speaker 1: called antifa guys. They got their asses kicked back in
Speaker 1: Denver zeb Hall, here's about what went down in Fort
Speaker 1: Collins on social media. Then Micky gets in touch with him. Well,
Speaker 1: these protesters got the ship be at him, which it
Speaker 1: was honoring them, you know, they were the ones that
Speaker 1: got the ship beat out of him. And he Nicky
Speaker 1: called me and says, hey, my crew got their ass
Speaker 1: whip blah blah blah. I didn't know much about it.
Speaker 1: And he says, you know you're gonna do the speech.
Speaker 1: I want you just to say something about him. Zeb
Speaker 1: is supposed to give a speech at a demonstration that evening.
Speaker 1: He wants them to say something about Fort Collins. And
Speaker 1: I was like, all right, cool, I'll do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because at that time I didn't know enough about him.
Speaker 1: So I take a speech with these cats. I looked
Speaker 1: at the news. Yeah, they got fucked up. After that point,
Speaker 1: Zebzi's honor Aiden and other YDSA members hanging around Mickey.
Speaker 1: Mickey has somehow turned them into his personal surveillance crew.
Speaker 1: They were doing surveillance and even some of the events.
Speaker 1: He made them think like they were a little operative
Speaker 1: soldiers and whatnot. They had these headphones owned, they show
Speaker 1: up at events, They talked to different leaders and you know, hey,
Speaker 1: we're medics. We'll look out for you. You know who
Speaker 1: are you? Blah blah blah. And I'm pretty sure they
Speaker 1: exchanged the information and gave it back to him. Gave
Speaker 1: it back to him, as in, gave the information back
Speaker 1: to Mickey. The y DSA Activists are Mickey's intelligence unit,
Speaker 1: collecting information from the other protesters and reporting back to Mickey,
Speaker 1: who has come to position himself as a leader of
Speaker 1: the racial justice movement in Denver. He's giving directions and
Speaker 1: gaining the trust of many of the demos strangers. There's
Speaker 1: just one problem, and it's a troubling one. The information
Speaker 1: the y DSA Activists collect doesn't stop with Mickey. Mickey
Speaker 1: is providing that information to someone else, someone much more powerful. Okay.
Speaker 1: It is August twenty eight, twenty twenty and apart some
Speaker 1: only four o two pm. A Special Agent Scott dolphrom
Speaker 1: with Special Agent Byron Mitchell chs for meet with Zebidias Hall.
Speaker 1: That's in the next episode. This is Trojan Hearst Season
Speaker 1: one of Alphabet Boys. Alphabet Boys is a production of
Speaker 1: Western Sound and iHeart Podcasts. The show is reported, written
Speaker 1: and hosted by me Trevor Aaronson. For more information about
Speaker 1: the series or to drop us a tip, head to
Speaker 1: our website alphabet Boys dot xyz. You can contact me
Speaker 1: on Twitter and Instagram at Trevor Aaronson. We believe this
Speaker 1: story is important and could result in changes to FBI
Speaker 1: oversight and public policy. But to have impact, people need
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