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 this 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 Noah.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben.
Speaker 4: We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the
Speaker 4: Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 3: You are here.
Speaker 4: That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 4: Friends and neighbors, fellow conspiracy realists, we have something special
Speaker 4: for you tonight. It is a strange, deep, disturbing dare
Speaker 4: I say, shaman Alan esque Cohen hell pro esque tale
Speaker 4: that may not be familiar to everyone in the audience.
Speaker 4: The California Timber Wars.
Speaker 3: Have you heard of it? Maybe? Maybe not.
Speaker 4: In the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties, activists hoped to
Speaker 4: end overcutting of redwoods throughout well Redwood's in particular, timber
Speaker 4: in general, throughout parts of California, and there was a
Speaker 4: particular organization involved in this called Earth First with an
Speaker 4: exclamation point. They took direct actions. One of the leaders
Speaker 4: of these efforts was an activist named Judy Barry who Well,
Speaker 4: we'll get to it in a second. It's a deep
Speaker 4: and crucial story that is yet to be told in full. Luckily, gentlemen, friends, neighbors, countrymen,
Speaker 4: we are not diving in alone. We are joined by
Speaker 4: get this, guys, none other than the legendary investigator, writer, podcaster,
Speaker 4: and creator of multiple shows that we're big fans of,
Speaker 4: our returning pal, the mythical, the legendary, the one and only,
Speaker 4: Toby Ball.
Speaker 3: Toby. Come on, man, thank you for showing up. Hey,
Speaker 3: thank you. It's nice to see you, guys.
Speaker 5: Guys behind the curtain. He's been there the whole time.
Speaker 3: It's crazy.
Speaker 5: Definitely a unicorn of a human. We've talked to Toby
Speaker 5: about other series that he's done, including Strange, Rivals and Today.
Speaker 4: And Rendallshim Forrest two seasons, Rivals First Seas check them
Speaker 4: out right now.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, this is.
Speaker 4: RIP Current season two and Toby I was I was
Speaker 4: looking into this because I'm a fan of tangential, non
Speaker 4: relevant research.
Speaker 3: I think as we all.
Speaker 5: Are, big part of what we do here.
Speaker 4: Yes, and one of the things that I noted, I said, Hey,
Speaker 4: our pal mister b is coming on to the show.
Speaker 4: For the third time. Saturday Night Live rules say that
Speaker 4: if you make it to the fifth appearance, we have
Speaker 4: to get you like a special jacket and throw a party.
Speaker 5: I want a special jacket. I've been on five episodes.
Speaker 3: Well that's motivation to the other two going there you go,
Speaker 3: it's gonna happen.
Speaker 5: Maybe we'll all get matching jackets. That would be cool.
Speaker 4: That'd be cool, especially if we roll as a group
Speaker 4: in our jackets that do a heist.
Speaker 5: You know, walk away from an explosion and slash into Oh.
Speaker 4: There we go, and that's apropos. That's what we call foreshadowy.
Speaker 3: Toby, can you.
Speaker 4: Set the stage for us with a little bit of
Speaker 4: an origin story? We throughout the phrase timber Wars? What
Speaker 4: were the timber Wars? What about this led you to
Speaker 4: rip current season two?
Speaker 3: So I even before the timber Wars and I was
Speaker 3: actually Matt was in on this conversation at one point.
Speaker 3: I wanted to do something sort of about environmental activism.
Speaker 3: You know, in this period where you know the consequences
Speaker 3: of global warming are quite clear, but there doesn't seem
Speaker 3: to be this kind of hair on fire reaction to it,
Speaker 3: Like you don't see eco sabotage trying to you know,
Speaker 3: sabotage pipelines or other things that might slow down fossil
Speaker 3: fuel use and things like that. So I'd spent some
Speaker 3: time kind of researching, trying to find what would be
Speaker 3: sort of a compelling story. There's other things. There was
Speaker 3: the Green Peace boat that was sunk by the French
Speaker 3: intelligence services, a couple of others. But I ended up
Speaker 3: coming across the Timber Wars, and part of you know,
Speaker 3: the rip current. The idea behind rip Current is to
Speaker 3: look at a crime that occurs in sort of a
Speaker 3: complicated social and political setting. And in this case, I
Speaker 3: sort of vaguely remembered this because this happened in nineteen ninety,
Speaker 3: which is like right after I got out of college.
Speaker 3: I remember reading about it. But Judy Barry, who was
Speaker 3: this organizer for Earth Verst, a leader uh and her
Speaker 3: you know, former lover and like long times her partner
Speaker 3: and activism, this guy Darryl Churney, were driving in a
Speaker 3: car in Oakland and a pipe bomb went off in
Speaker 3: it and it should have killed them both, but it
Speaker 3: slightly malfunctioned. Judy was grievously injured. She only lived seven
Speaker 3: more years. She died of breast cancer, but she was
Speaker 3: in pain for the rest of her life. Uh, you know,
Speaker 3: I believe had to walk aided with a cane, you know,
Speaker 3: really just physically messed up. And then Darryl got away with,
Speaker 3: you know, some some fairly light wounds. But it originally
Speaker 3: came to the press and the FBI and the in
Speaker 3: the Oakland police kind of put it out there as oh,
Speaker 3: they were carrying these explosives and they and they detonated
Speaker 3: in the car by accident, so theyre going to probably
Speaker 3: actually do some terroristic action, but the explosive blew up
Speaker 3: in the car, So that was kind of the central
Speaker 3: sort of crime that could kind of focus these other
Speaker 3: things that were going on. Do you want me to
Speaker 3: go back a little bit to talk about Yea, the
Speaker 3: timber wars themselves. Yeah, so the Redwoods used to be
Speaker 3: this vast forest right in California, and so if you
Speaker 3: go to sort of pre European contact seventeen hundreds, I mean,
Speaker 3: it's huge and from basically the first time Europeans made
Speaker 3: it to that area of California, they're like these these
Speaker 3: are incredible trees. You know, you can't quite get a
Speaker 3: sense of it from looking at pictures, but they're you know,
Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty three hundred feet high. There's no
Speaker 3: branches below. All the branches are very high where they
Speaker 3: can get the sun. So this is very good wood.
Speaker 3: It's not naughty. It's got these other properties as well.
Speaker 3: They keep it from rotting and resistant from fire. So
Speaker 3: over the course of you know, two centuries, with various means,
Speaker 3: from two guys using a saw for a few days
Speaker 3: to cut down one to all these technological advances, when
Speaker 3: you get to the nineteen eighties, about ninety five percent
Speaker 3: of the old growth redwoods are gone, right, and some
Speaker 3: of these trees have been around for two thousand years,
Speaker 3: so five percent are left. Some of that is in
Speaker 3: public hands, so it's in state parks or national parks.
Speaker 3: The largest bit of it that's in private hands is
Speaker 3: owned by this place called Pacific Lumber, which was a
Speaker 3: family owned and operated big lumber operation out of a
Speaker 3: place called Scotia, which was a real company town. Like
Speaker 3: everything there was owned by Pacific Lumber. So if you
Speaker 3: worked there, you lived in a Pacific Lumber house and
Speaker 3: all this stuff. So essentially teen eighty five, this guy
Speaker 3: named Charles Hurwitz who was. I believe he was a
Speaker 3: multi multi, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars. It's
Speaker 3: one of the first times people used junk bonds to
Speaker 3: buy something. But he saw that Pacific Lumber, which had
Speaker 3: been run really responsibly. They used sustainable cutting. They had
Speaker 3: a big pension for retirees in their company. Not a
Speaker 3: bad company down Yeah, yeah, I mean people people apparently
Speaker 3: really liked it.
Speaker 5: They're taking care of their people, yes.
Speaker 3: Right, But they went public a little while before that,
Speaker 3: so they issued stock and because they were so responsible
Speaker 3: and so healthy they were, they were very undervalued, so
Speaker 3: that made them sort of prey to these capitalistic forces.
Speaker 3: Hurwitz comes in, uses junk bonds to purchase Pacific Lumber,
Speaker 3: and it becomes very clear that the only way he's
Speaker 3: going to be able to pay off the interest and
Speaker 3: make this all work is by clear cutting the Pacific
Speaker 3: Lumber forests, which includes this huge area of old growth redwoods,
Speaker 3: which there's not much left, right, So.
Speaker 2: So just Toby quickly, Yeah, the Redwood Force at this
Speaker 2: point of the takeover by Charles hurwitzon was it maxim
Speaker 2: his company, Yeah, yeah, So at that moment, the forest
Speaker 2: of redwoods is already down ninety five. At that point
Speaker 2: of old growth, there's still you know, there's second.
Speaker 3: Growth, third growth, fourth growth, but that you know, these
Speaker 3: are not mature trees yet. Okay, so the really old ones,
Speaker 3: which are you know, I think in ecological terms, the
Speaker 3: most valuable. I mean, it's sort of interesting how you
Speaker 3: look at the value of trees, especially if you're a
Speaker 3: lumber lumberman, you know, like what you're going to be
Speaker 3: able to get out of your acreage on a sort
Speaker 3: of year by year basis. So at that point it
Speaker 3: becomes clear that this is probably what's going to happen
Speaker 3: been and it starts happening, and a couple things, you know,
Speaker 3: for timber workers, they're like, you know, this is actually
Speaker 3: kind of awesome. You know, we're working all this overtime,
Speaker 3: we're getting much more money because we're speeding up the cut.
Speaker 3: And then you have environmentalists who are like, well, this
Speaker 3: is you know, this is going to be the end
Speaker 3: of a significant proportion of these old growth redwoods, which
Speaker 3: are you know, I mean, they're like sort of quote
Speaker 3: unquote a renewable resource because you can grow new redwoods,
Speaker 3: but you're not going to get the same thing for
Speaker 3: fifteen hundred years, you know, I mean, these these trees
Speaker 3: have been around. You know. That was one of the
Speaker 3: ads or pamphlets or something was like some of these
Speaker 3: trees have been around since Christ walked the earth. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so Earth First, which is sort of, you know, on
Speaker 3: the radical side of the environmentalists. I mean, they sort
Speaker 3: of define the furthest radical edge at that point. You know,
Speaker 3: they said, we're gon, we're going to try right and
Speaker 3: stop this, slow it down. And that's kind of direct
Speaker 3: led to the timber Wars. Yeah, it was. So, you know,
Speaker 3: as with everything in this I could go on for
Speaker 3: about twenty minutes about it, but direct action, you do, well,
Speaker 3: it's definitely part of it. So that made you U
Speaker 3: define that. Yeah. Yeah. So that so what direct action
Speaker 3: really means is instead of just you know, protesting or
Speaker 3: lobbying in the halls of Congress or you know, sending
Speaker 3: stuff out to your membership, it means like blockading roads. Uh,
Speaker 3: it means tearing up, uh, surveying spikes that they use.
Speaker 5: Potentially it being sabotaging equipment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sabotage equipment, putting sand in gas. There's a hole.
Speaker 3: One of the founders of Earth First, this guy Dave
Speaker 3: Foreman published a book called Ecotage, which was all these
Speaker 3: different ways in which you can do uh economic sabotage,
Speaker 3: which and I go into this fair amount in the
Speaker 3: in the podcast. The most controversial of all these is
Speaker 3: tree spiking. And what tree spiking is well, start off
Speaker 3: as and it evolved a little bit, but you basically
Speaker 3: take a big nail and you bang it into a tree.
Speaker 3: And that so people when they're using saws, it just
Speaker 3: shatters the saw and it can be very dangerous. It's
Speaker 3: to fly and right exactly. But but what Earth First
Speaker 3: would do is they would go into like a grove
Speaker 3: and this is not northern California, but this is you know, wherever.
Speaker 3: They would do this and sometimes they would circle where
Speaker 3: they were, uh, sometimes they would identify the grove like that.
Speaker 3: The idea wasn't to hurt people. The idea was to
Speaker 3: stop them from using their saws on the on this wood.
Speaker 3: And you know what's what's funny is that it's not
Speaker 3: really funny. But uh, you know, in my research, there's
Speaker 3: only one real known incident that I could find. And
Speaker 3: this is also like looking at senators and congressmen who've
Speaker 3: tried to find more stuff about tree spiking and them
Speaker 3: not being able to turn things up either. Was one
Speaker 3: guy in a mill in northern California who he was
Speaker 3: one of the guys who fed the logs to be cut,
Speaker 3: and it hit a spike and the saw basically kind
Speaker 3: of exploded and nearly killed him. And then there was
Speaker 3: a lot of Initially it was like his earth first,
Speaker 3: of his earth first, and it turned out although this
Speaker 3: guy was in charge, they're fairly sure it was actually
Speaker 3: this kind of curmudgeonly guy who didn't like the fact
Speaker 3: that they were sawing down trees that were in his view,
Speaker 3: so he did have to try and stop them. So
Speaker 3: that's really the only time that there's been like a
Speaker 3: real serious injury that results from tree spiking.
Speaker 2: Well, let's just continue on that a little bit. Because
Speaker 2: of that one case, as we hear in Rip Curren
Speaker 2: season two, was used to what was used as the
Speaker 2: argument against tree spiking and what was labeled as eco
Speaker 2: terrorism at the time, right because it was so dangerous
Speaker 2: because people may die, and he was maimed. It was
Speaker 2: a you know, not some small incident that occurred, but
Speaker 2: it definitely the argument then seemed to expand out as
Speaker 2: though this tree spiking thing had killed many people, or
Speaker 2: that was stated publicly even though it wasn't provable.
Speaker 5: All they need is one inciting event to then balloon
Speaker 5: into this is you know, the precedents, and then it
Speaker 5: gives them kind of talking points to go after a
Speaker 5: larger movement.
Speaker 4: Right, the timber war has become an information.
Speaker 3: War, right, I mean even recently. I've got a clip
Speaker 3: and I'm trying to remember who the congressman was, but
Speaker 3: he's from the Pacific Northwest or maybe Idaho. Anyway, he's
Speaker 3: talking about they wanted to increase the the criminal penalties
Speaker 3: for tree spiking, and so this guy in this mill,
Speaker 3: same with George Alexander. So he's kind of given the
Speaker 3: speech on the floor and he says and then George
Speaker 3: Alexander and this happened to him, and then all these
Speaker 3: other people have been killed or maimed or whatever. It's like, well,
Speaker 3: can you name like one other person, you know, because
Speaker 3: it's always the same guy. It's always George Alexander and
Speaker 3: all these other guys. But I think it was Larry Craig,
Speaker 3: who used to be a Senator, got in touch with
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's a Department of the Interior
Speaker 3: or one of the departments that said, can you give
Speaker 3: me a list of everybody who's been harmed or killed
Speaker 3: by tree spiking? And the only thing he got back
Speaker 3: was George Alexander.
Speaker 4: So so it was bupkiss. But it does, I think
Speaker 4: show us a little bit more about how the media
Speaker 4: was treating this. Right, people loved, people love a convenient
Speaker 4: throwaway phrase like eco terrorism, right or now tree spiking?
Speaker 4: At this point, could you tell us a little bit
Speaker 4: more as we're setting the stage here about how the
Speaker 4: local everyday folks in California felt about environmentalism. They're reading
Speaker 4: the news. Do they think that Earth First is a
Speaker 4: straight up eco terrorism outfit? Do they agree with them?
Speaker 3: Like? How is?
Speaker 4: What's the temperature of the room there around the redwoods?
Speaker 3: So that's an interesting question. So at that time, and
Speaker 3: I talked to a guy, well, I talked to a
Speaker 3: few people who had sort of grown up there, and
Speaker 3: they said there was really there's two sort of major
Speaker 3: factions in northern California. One was these sort of generational
Speaker 3: families of timber workers. The other were these sort of
Speaker 3: back to the land hippies who'd moved up there. So
Speaker 3: you really had you know, in schools they said, what
Speaker 3: do we call It's like the rednecks and the hippies,
Speaker 3: you know, those are the two groups. And so you
Speaker 3: have these timber families.
Speaker 5: Device of all of this, then, I guess.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, So you had these timber families who obviously
Speaker 3: saw them as a threat and as terrorists.
Speaker 5: And as a threat to their livelihood and their families
Speaker 5: legacy or whatever it might be. If this is multi generational,
Speaker 5: like they've got skin in the game in that exactly.
Speaker 3: And I think there was a sense that Earth First
Speaker 3: was sort of questioning the morality or nobility of timber
Speaker 3: work in general, so that it kind of felt very
Speaker 3: personal to some people, like an attack identity, right right,
Speaker 3: It's like what you what your family for generations has
Speaker 3: done is sort of immoral by by cutting these you know,
Speaker 3: majestic trees. And then that, you know, the hippie families
Speaker 3: were more likely to be you know, sympathetic to Earth First.
Speaker 3: It's just a very it's a very complicated time, you know.
Speaker 3: And this is at a time when timber is sort
Speaker 3: of descending importance in the economy and marijuana is ascending
Speaker 3: as like a big export crop up there.
Speaker 5: Is Humboldt County.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's Humboldy. Yeah, it's weeah yeah, so anonymous, Yeah, exactly, Humboldt.
Speaker 3: So yeah. So it was really it was kind of
Speaker 3: a mixed a mixed feeling. You know, the timber companies themselves,
Speaker 3: you know, sort of try to accentuate the potential for
Speaker 3: violence from Earth First, and you know, Earth First had
Speaker 3: to take several steps, including publicly renouncing tree spiking, which
Speaker 3: was very controversial within Earth First, to try and prove like,
Speaker 3: we're not we're not going after you know, the individual
Speaker 3: timber worker, like these small timber companies that are contractors
Speaker 3: or whatever. We're really going over these corporate people like
Speaker 3: Charles Hurwitz, who's this guy from Texas, Like wouldn't be
Speaker 3: able to identify or redwood if you you know, if
Speaker 3: you pointed him at one and it's just these people,
Speaker 3: it's you know, it's craven greed, you know, essentially, especially
Speaker 3: in Hurwitz's case, I mean, he's just trying to make
Speaker 3: money and all he sees are trees, is like a
Speaker 3: monetary asset. And that's so sort of the opposite of
Speaker 3: the Earth First idea, which is that we have to
Speaker 3: preserve this, this is our natural heritage, right.
Speaker 2: And just it was really there, Toby. Yeah, because the
Speaker 2: concept of spiking trees, and we kind of talked about
Speaker 2: it already, but the concept of doing that is to
Speaker 2: destroy equipment, right, sabotage of equipment, which would cost the
Speaker 2: company a lot of money, which would probably cause them
Speaker 2: to stop cutting in that area at least temporarily if
Speaker 2: not long term.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So it does seem like quite a non violent tactic
Speaker 2: until you do have one person that's hurt. But it
Speaker 2: just makes so much sense in my mind, at least
Speaker 2: to spike trees to break the chains on chainsaws so
Speaker 2: that that company cannot continue to function. And ultimately, if
Speaker 2: the company is your enemy, as in Earth First case,
Speaker 2: it would be really weird for a group who is
Speaker 2: you know, who is fighting those companies to say, don't
Speaker 2: do that thing. That is very that seems to be
Speaker 2: very effective.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think, you know, I talked to some
Speaker 3: Earth First people who, you know, we're really angry about that,
Speaker 3: and what what they basically said is it has been nonviolent.
Speaker 3: You know, there's only one person you can point to.
Speaker 3: That's why we let them know when we do it.
Speaker 3: The idea is it's gonna it's just gonna make a
Speaker 3: cost more. You know, you're going to have to go
Speaker 3: in with like metal detectors and try and find the
Speaker 3: spikes in the trees and remove them. It's just it
Speaker 3: takes time, it takes manpower. It's there's no easy way
Speaker 3: to do it. And then they got the idea of
Speaker 3: using ceramic spikes be detected by metal detectors. So it's
Speaker 3: really you know, they give the idea was we give
Speaker 3: them enough information to not hurt their workers, right Like,
Speaker 3: if they're sitting there workers out there with saws in
Speaker 3: an area that we've spiked, that's them knowingly putting their
Speaker 3: their workers in danger. You're not doing it, We're not
Speaker 3: doing it secretly. Now it's the Timber company. Now it's
Speaker 3: the evil guys from the Captain Planet episodes who are
Speaker 3: at fault for endangering their workers because they had the information.
Speaker 3: And this is obviously not a unique perspective. I think
Speaker 3: this is something all of us can universally understand the
Speaker 3: logic of. However, it seems that things begin to quickly escalate.
Speaker 3: Right There's as as you already said, there's a deep division,
Speaker 3: there's factionalism in northern California. There is a.
Speaker 4: Narrative competition in conversation and the zeitgeist and the media
Speaker 4: about who can be considered the bad or the good guys,
Speaker 4: and we see we see actions escalate at an increasingly
Speaker 4: dangerous pace. Now, we teased it a bit at the top.
Speaker 4: We talked a little bit about the tragic bizarre, like
Speaker 4: the heartbreaking attack on Judy Barry and her associate. Could
Speaker 4: you tell us a little bit more about the I
Speaker 4: have so many questions, folks. You're going to have to
Speaker 4: listen to rip her At season two in full to
Speaker 4: understand the depth of this story. But it's just astonishing
Speaker 4: the way the bombing occurs and the way that the
Speaker 4: investing negation goes. And then Falters, can you tell us
Speaker 4: a little bit about the circumstances of the bombing and
Speaker 4: a little bit more about the investigation.
Speaker 3: Sure, at the time of the bombing, Earth Verse was
Speaker 3: planning this thing called Redwood Summer, and the idea was
Speaker 3: they were going to get lots of college students to
Speaker 3: come up to the Redwoods to take place and protests,
Speaker 3: direct actions just sort of you know, flood the zone
Speaker 3: with people and they're sort of basing it on the
Speaker 3: Freedom Summer Mississippi. It actually started off being like Mississippi
Speaker 3: Summer in the Redwoods, I think. So anyway, the big plans,
Speaker 3: and so they were actually down in Oakland to do
Speaker 3: sort of a planning meeting with this group called Seeds
Speaker 3: of Peace. But there's sort of this timeline, and maybe
Speaker 3: it makes sense to stay up front that this pipe
Speaker 3: bomb was on a timer. So there was a watch
Speaker 3: that could be set back almost to twelve hours, like
Speaker 3: eleven hours and fifty nine minutes, and it would go
Speaker 3: and it hit a certain place and it would let
Speaker 3: loose this ball bearing, and the ball bearing would go
Speaker 3: into this little circle where there's all these wires sticking out.
Speaker 3: If connected two wires together, that would detonate the bomb.
Speaker 3: So there's you know, there's a period of time in
Speaker 3: which the bomb could have been placed in the car.
Speaker 3: So she has a couple of meetings up in Mendocino County,
Speaker 3: She goes down Oakland, has a meeting at this place
Speaker 3: Seeds a Piece, and then she goes and stays the
Speaker 3: night at this guy, Dave Kemnitzer's house with Dave and
Speaker 3: his family. It wasn't a romantic thing. And so the
Speaker 3: next morning, Darryl Turney comes over. They get in the
Speaker 3: car and they're driving, and it's just before noon. She
Speaker 3: goes to take a turn. You know, obviously the ball
Speaker 3: bearing is loose now that the time the timers gone off,
Speaker 3: and it detonates and you know, right in the street
Speaker 3: in Oakland, right across the street from a high school.
Speaker 3: So almost immediately, the FBI shows up on scene and
Speaker 3: takes control of the scene. Because it's a bombing, so
Speaker 3: it's usually the ATF will take control of those things,
Speaker 3: but if it seems as though it might be terrorism,
Speaker 3: that's when the FBI has jurisdiction, is my understanding. And
Speaker 3: so the the FBI shows up really really fast, much
Speaker 3: faster than you'd expect. And I think the reason for
Speaker 3: that is that they had Judy and Darryl under surveillance
Speaker 3: at the time.
Speaker 4: On the list well yeah, professionalism.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that that that seems very clear that that's
Speaker 3: part of the case. But they show up and this guy,
Speaker 3: Frank Doyle, who's uh, you know, an explosive experts for
Speaker 3: the FBI, basically says, well, the bomb was on the
Speaker 3: back seat, and if it's on the backseat, they would
Speaker 3: have seen it, and they must have known about it.
Speaker 3: So that kind of puts Judy and Darryl in the
Speaker 3: frame as Okay, they knew they had a bottom in
Speaker 3: the car and something happened it blew up. If you
Speaker 3: actually take a look at pictures of the wreckage of
Speaker 3: the car, it's pretty clear that it was underneath her
Speaker 3: seat and just blew out the whole bottom of the
Speaker 3: seat and it malfunctioned a little bit and hit beneath
Speaker 3: the doors, the front doors. So it's just very strange
Speaker 3: that he said this, but it does if it was
Speaker 3: underneath the seat, it was very possible that Daryl and
Speaker 3: Judy wouldn't have known that it was there, right, So
Speaker 3: for the first you know, certainly for the first forty
Speaker 3: eight hours, and it takes a couple more weeks before
Speaker 3: it's officially shut down. But you know they're going to
Speaker 3: the press with you know, these two were the bombers.
Speaker 3: They were bringing these explosives. We don't know what they
Speaker 3: were going to do with them, but they're eco terrorists
Speaker 3: and that's what terrorists do, is they blow stuff up.
Speaker 3: And you know, Judy is you know, in the hospital,
Speaker 3: like don't I don't know if they ever thought she
Speaker 3: was actually gonna die, but she was in immense amounts
Speaker 3: of pain, was for a while unable to like give
Speaker 3: a statement. And then Darryl was arrested. Basically he got
Speaker 3: stitched up and they took him to jail, questioned them
Speaker 3: and then and then arrested them. But they were never charged,
Speaker 3: right they It sort of came out quickly that they
Speaker 3: really couldn't have done it. There was some sort of
Speaker 3: blind alleys that the FBI went down about trying to
Speaker 3: match nails and and things like this.
Speaker 5: Well, I was gonna ask, is there any evidence seems
Speaker 5: like a really particular type of detonating device. I've never
Speaker 5: heard of this ball bearing thing before, Not that I'm
Speaker 5: like a bomb expert, but is there evidence of Earth
Speaker 5: First using these types of devices?
Speaker 3: No, they don't use uh, Earth Vers hasn't really used
Speaker 3: explosives as far as I know, and they this is
Speaker 3: one of those things that's like how far afield do
Speaker 3: you go? But but like a year before in Arizona,
Speaker 3: they basically set up this guy, Dave Foreman, who's a
Speaker 3: founder of Earth First, And what they were trying to
Speaker 3: get to do is they had a ATBI had a
Speaker 3: provocateur in this little group of eco terrorists. Two of
Speaker 3: them weren't even earth first, and the other one was
Speaker 3: sort of semi earth first, and then there was the provocateur.
Speaker 3: And then Dave Foreman, the only real earth first person,
Speaker 3: gave them some money, which is how he got kind
Speaker 3: of tied into it. But they wanted to use explosives
Speaker 3: to blow up some towers that were holding power lines,
Speaker 3: and they were like, you know, we don't want to
Speaker 3: do explosives, and they ended up using a torch and
Speaker 3: got arrested. But so explosives were like, you know, it's
Speaker 3: coded for terrorism, right, It's like, if you're sitting explosives,
Speaker 3: you're a terrorist. You know, if you're using a torch,
Speaker 3: maybe it's something a little different.
Speaker 2: I don't want to spoil too much in the show,
Speaker 2: but Toby, can you just go into a little bit
Speaker 2: about how we know that that particular gentleman who infiltrated
Speaker 2: those groups, how we know what he was doing because
Speaker 2: of that recording?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there recording. So they recorded they had all
Speaker 3: this stuff. I mean they were there were tapping lines,
Speaker 3: they were wearing wires, all this stuff. But at one
Speaker 3: point the provocateurs like wearing a wire and he goes
Speaker 3: in because he's trying to get some money from Dave Foreman,
Speaker 3: and they want to document it. And then he forgets
Speaker 3: to flick it off, and then they go I think
Speaker 3: they made a Burger King parking lot. And they're like
Speaker 3: chatting about what's going on, and he's like it's kind
Speaker 3: of interesting. Like he's saying, like these people don't have anything.
Speaker 3: This money would have met everything for him, Like they
Speaker 3: don't have any money, but they're really devoted and all
Speaker 3: this stuff, and and he's kind of talks about how
Speaker 3: they're At one point he says, you know, Dave Foreman's
Speaker 3: not the guy who's actually doing anything, but he's the
Speaker 3: guy we kind of have to get right to send
Speaker 3: a message. And then he's like, oh, this is still on,
Speaker 3: just like it's just and then they find it while
Speaker 3: they're going through uh discovery, they're they're going through all
Speaker 3: these and they're like, oh my god, they not only
Speaker 3: forgot to turn it off, but they never got rid
Speaker 3: of it. So it's just like right there, it's really
Speaker 3: so it's in the it's in the podcast, I mean
Speaker 3: the recordings out there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I've got to ask you about this part
Speaker 4: the well, not even me, our audience is going to
Speaker 4: want to know about. Uh, the line you said a
Speaker 4: little bit earlier that we we've teased here. The FBI
Speaker 4: shows up in the wake of the bobbing at an
Speaker 4: extraordinarily quick time, which shows, uh, shows you, as our investigator,
Speaker 4: that there was probably some monitoring. Uh. Could you talk
Speaker 4: to us just a little bit for everybody in the
Speaker 4: audience who hasn't heard of this before, you talk to
Speaker 4: us a little bit about pe intel pro and why
Speaker 4: the FBI or federal agencies would be monitoring people who
Speaker 4: want to save trees.
Speaker 3: Right. So, Cointelpro was a program. You know, it's mostly
Speaker 3: active during the sixties. It was officially ended I believe
Speaker 3: in seventy one, right, right exactly. I'll get to that
Speaker 3: just a second. But the idea was that they were
Speaker 3: going to you know, disrupt, undermine, you know, try and
Speaker 3: break up what we're considered extremist groups. And in the
Speaker 3: FBI's interpretation, that was mostly on the liberal or radical
Speaker 3: or liberal side, like the KKK was in there. They'd
Speaker 3: go after the KKK if the KKK did some specific crime,
Speaker 3: but on the radical side just sort of existing turned
Speaker 3: out to be enough for the FBI to kind of
Speaker 3: run these things on you.
Speaker 4: So it was pitched in civil rights for instance.
Speaker 3: Get civil rights. You know, the Black Panthers were a big,
Speaker 3: big target, and one of the things they would do
Speaker 3: is they get infil traders and just create this sense
Speaker 3: of paranoia where like the even like these small groups,
Speaker 3: Like in the first season of Rip Current, I did
Speaker 3: a thing looking at a group called Tribal Thumb, which
Speaker 3: was tiny, you know, it was probably twenty people at
Speaker 3: its peak, and at least two of them were infiltrators
Speaker 3: from the FBI. You know, so they kind of created
Speaker 3: this sense of paranoia. They would start, you know, clashes.
Speaker 3: I think they probably contributed to, you know, some death
Speaker 3: sort of indirectly, but they really get blamed for the
Speaker 3: death of Fred Hampton, which was a sort of joint
Speaker 3: FBI Chicago Police Department sort of raid on this guy
Speaker 3: Fred Hampton, who I think was twenty or twenty one
Speaker 3: at the time, but was sort of really up and
Speaker 3: coming leader of the Black Panthers, and you know, not
Speaker 3: of not sort of the perceived violence side of the
Speaker 3: Black Panthers, but really the sort of you know, helping
Speaker 3: the social school.
Speaker 2: Exactly things like this is an incredible speaker, right. That
Speaker 2: was why he was considered to be dangerous because he
Speaker 2: could bring He was attempting to bring people together from
Speaker 2: different factions of a somewhat splintered movement, and that was
Speaker 2: speakers that are connector ye.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so I you know that was a co
Speaker 3: intel program, as it officially was, right, And then in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy one, during the Ali Frasier fight in Madison Square, Garden,
Speaker 3: I think there was a break in at this FBI
Speaker 3: office in Media, Pennsylvania and they got these they stole
Speaker 3: these files that included things that revealed co Intel pro
Speaker 3: And so it was officially shut down I think in
Speaker 3: seventy three, but you can shut it down in name,
Speaker 3: but the sort of techniques are still there. So rip Current,
Speaker 3: the first season Recurrent takes place in seventy five. Co
Speaker 3: Intel protes style stuff is definitely going on then, and
Speaker 3: so the question becomes like how far does it keep going?
Speaker 3: And then at what point is it co intel pro
Speaker 3: and how what point is it just the way the
Speaker 3: FBI does things. But so one of the theory is
Speaker 3: the theory that you know, Judy and Darryl and sort
Speaker 3: of their supporters had was that they were the victims
Speaker 3: of a co intel pro style operation, and that, you know,
Speaker 3: to really simplify it, that that the FBI and the
Speaker 3: timber industry had kind of worked together to try to
Speaker 3: assassinate Judy Barry.
Speaker 4: And took direct action of their own right exactly.
Speaker 3: So the thing about this case, without getting too into
Speaker 3: the weeds, is that there's no real physical evidence. You know,
Speaker 3: with a bomb, a lot of that physical evidence just
Speaker 3: gets blown up. There was a thing called the Lord's
Speaker 3: Adventure Letter, which was a letter that was sent anonymously
Speaker 3: to a journalist named Mike Janella, who I interviewed at
Speaker 3: length for this taking credit for the bombing and another bombing,
Speaker 3: and had all this information that was in there that
Speaker 3: made it fairly clear that this was actually the person.
Speaker 3: But then it's like littered with all this like weird
Speaker 3: Bible stuff like and like anti abortion stuff, and it's
Speaker 3: clear they're trying to point to this one guy Staley,
Speaker 3: who was a former football player, big strapping guy who
Speaker 3: was like an anti abortion zealot who they'd gotten into
Speaker 3: kind of a confrontation with, but it most likely was
Speaker 3: not him, and that this was just sort of a
Speaker 3: way of trying to obscure, you know, send people off
Speaker 3: on the wrong track. But what was weird is that
Speaker 3: so this thing comes, you know, it's always weird for journalists.
Speaker 3: It's like, do I turn this over to law enforcement?
Speaker 3: Like that's not really our job, but it's like, well,
Speaker 3: this seems pretty important. Turn it over to the FBI.
Speaker 3: The FBI takes it, does whatever they're gonna do with it,
Speaker 3: returns it to Mike's newspaper, which is the Santa Rosa
Speaker 3: Press Democrat, which was run by the New York Times
Speaker 3: at the time, and they promptly lose it, right, so
Speaker 3: the one piece of physical evidence just gets lost. So
Speaker 3: they really lost Toby, Like we never found lost. Well,
Speaker 3: nobody knows. I mean I talked to Mike, and Mike
Speaker 3: who you know. I think he's a straight shooter, which
Speaker 3: is like, I don't know what happened, you know, I
Speaker 3: don't think the New York Times was also in cahoots
Speaker 3: with the behind the timber industries. But somehow it's gone.
Speaker 3: Any chance that you had to do these like new
Speaker 3: DNA techniques on it, that's gone too. So the reality
Speaker 3: is that it'll probably never be solved. At this point
Speaker 3: unless somebody confesses. And so there are these theories that
Speaker 3: are kind of built on these connections, these weird connections.
Speaker 3: And I can give you an example of one, which
Speaker 3: is that the guy Frank Doyle, the FBI agent who
Speaker 3: showed up at the scene of the of the bombing,
Speaker 3: he had a month earlier run a bomb school to
Speaker 3: train law enforcement in how to investigate bomb related crimes
Speaker 3: up in northern California on land that was donated by
Speaker 3: Louisiana Pacific, which was another of the lumber companies that
Speaker 3: that earth Verst was was having a thing with. And
Speaker 3: the Louisiana's Pacific guy who ran security from them, was
Speaker 3: providing security for the bomb school, and he was friends
Speaker 3: with Frank Doyle. So and then a bunch of the agents,
Speaker 3: uh who are investig who are there on the scene
Speaker 3: had actually been at that bomb school. So it's just
Speaker 3: just just.
Speaker 5: Presumably they're they're teaching them at the inner workings of
Speaker 5: various types of explosives and detonating devices first engineer and disarment,
Speaker 5: and also they would know how to make them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, learning how to stop something is very similar to
Speaker 4: learning how to create it.
Speaker 2: See, this was the final exam of that course. That's
Speaker 2: what that's what happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what he That's what he said. That's what
Speaker 3: they That's what Doyle said to one of the guys
Speaker 3: who's been in the classes, like, well, here's your final exam.
Speaker 3: But the thing is is that that's not the only
Speaker 3: Like you hear that and you're like, wow, that's pretty damning.
Speaker 3: But then there's there's several other uh, you know, suspects
Speaker 3: or scenarios that are equally you know, sort of the
Speaker 3: the optics of it are equally strong.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if not compelling, there there are multiple scenarios that
Speaker 4: make you think, right, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Can we just quickly talk about the Yellow Ribbon movement
Speaker 2: and just the general sentiment and how vitriolic some of
Speaker 2: the talk was getting around this time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the Yellow Ribbon movement was sort of a
Speaker 3: local group that kind of grew out of this wise
Speaker 3: Use movement, which was essentially sort of anti environmental that
Speaker 3: it's like nature is there for our enjoyment, and not
Speaker 3: in terms of like gazing at trees, but like taking
Speaker 3: your ATVs and like going on races and you know,
Speaker 3: doing whatever. Right you should not nothing should be off
Speaker 3: limits basically. So the Yellow Ribbon movement was pro probably
Speaker 3: funded by timber corporations, but they were locally run by
Speaker 3: this woman named Candy Boak, and so they they were
Speaker 3: adamantly opposed to earth First and would show up sometimes
Speaker 3: the demonstrations and taunt Earth First people. And they were
Speaker 3: just one of many groups. There's a group called the Stompers,
Speaker 3: which is a little obscure who they were. I think
Speaker 3: they may have been sort of white supremacist thugs, but
Speaker 3: they sent death threats, put out you know, quote unquote bounties.
Speaker 3: It's like not clear like if they were actually gonna
Speaker 3: get paid for this stuff. There's another group called the
Speaker 3: Sahara Club, which was a take on the Sierra Club,
Speaker 3: which was run by a couple of off road motorcycle guys
Speaker 3: who again were like they had in their newsletter like
Speaker 3: we're we're looking for guys over six feet two hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty pounds to like go up, you know, we'll
Speaker 3: provide the baseball bats stuff like that. So it was
Speaker 3: a dangerous, you know, what they were doing was dangerous,
Speaker 3: like hundred percent. You know. It was like they were
Speaker 3: doing their protests and.
Speaker 5: They forget that Oregon like you think of it as
Speaker 5: this bastion of liberalism and all that, but like the
Speaker 5: rural parts of Oregon have always been like hotbeds of
Speaker 5: white supremacist activity in this kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: Of course, they were actively recruiting in the in the
Speaker 3: timber industry because all these people were being laid off,
Speaker 3: there was economic distress, and it's just overwhelmingly white. So
Speaker 3: these white supremacist groups saw this as fertile territory. And
Speaker 3: that's actually another theory of the crime.
Speaker 4: I think that could be part of the part of
Speaker 4: the inspiration for rip current three. To be honest with you,
Speaker 4: I mean, because you know, to Nole's point, a lot
Speaker 4: of people aren't aware that Oregon in particular is the
Speaker 4: only state that never codified chattel slavery in the United
Speaker 4: States because of the racism, right.
Speaker 5: Founded as a white paradise.
Speaker 4: And to your point here, it naturally makes sense that
Speaker 4: violence groups like supremacist groups or other domestic terror groups
Speaker 4: would prey on the people who have gotten the short
Speaker 4: end of the stick in an industry.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: We see this later with stuff like the failure of
Speaker 4: the automotive industry. To be quite honest, But then is
Speaker 4: it possible, Toby, that at some point in this yellow
Speaker 4: ribbon stuff and the stompers and so on, it's possible
Speaker 4: that a proxy representative of a big unnamed timber company
Speaker 4: might have just had a meeting and said, hey, don't worry,
Speaker 4: we can get you the baseball bats.
Speaker 3: I think it's likely that that. It's not just possible,
Speaker 3: it's likely. Yeah, I mean, I don't. I'm not one
Speaker 3: hundred percent sure about this. I don't, but there was,
Speaker 3: you know, there there was definitely communication between the groups,
Speaker 3: and there was definitely encouragement. I think it was specific.
Speaker 3: Lumber hired a marketing firm called Hilen Knowlton that was
Speaker 3: putting out fake press releases that were supposed to be
Speaker 3: from Earth First to make it sound like they were
Speaker 3: more violent than they were. But they did things like
Speaker 3: spelled Darryl Turney's name wrong and just you know, just
Speaker 3: sloppy work.
Speaker 2: Don't We have a whole episode on Hill and Nolan.
Speaker 4: There was that, Yes, Okay, yes, with Narayah and uh
Speaker 4: later with the the war for Iraq, the propaganda there,
Speaker 4: that's what we called it. Yeah, or Toby, thank you
Speaker 4: so much for mentioning kill and Milton do you imagine
Speaker 4: they are huge fans of my show.
Speaker 3: Friends of the show.
Speaker 5: This is yellow, this yellow ribmed movement and sentiment. I
Speaker 5: think it's kind of still around today in the form
Speaker 5: of like some more union or like workers write scrups
Speaker 5: called Timber Unity, I think is one that is all
Speaker 5: about fighting legislation aimed at addressing climate change that would potentially,
Speaker 5: you know, put timber workers out of work.
Speaker 3: Evolution.
Speaker 4: I'm against it.
Speaker 3: That, uh Sar.
Speaker 4: We've been freestyling songs recently on the show, Toby. We also,
Speaker 4: first off, can't thank you enough for the phenomenal work
Speaker 4: that you've been doing, not just on RIP Current season two,
Speaker 4: but we're talking a little bit off air RIP Current
Speaker 4: season one. We should have had you back on for
Speaker 4: that one as well. And we've got to ask one
Speaker 4: thing here as as you went through the course of
Speaker 4: this investigation, and the show is available to listen to
Speaker 4: now anywhere you find your favorite podcast, what do we
Speaker 4: hope people take away from RIP Current Season two?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I started it off in that I
Speaker 3: wanted to tell an inspirational story about somebody who really
Speaker 3: like kind of put it on the line to quote
Speaker 3: unquote save the environment, right and what I ended up
Speaker 3: finding out was that the sort of fight over the cause,
Speaker 3: like who caused the bomb that almost killed her, like
Speaker 3: who planneted, it kind of overshadows what she actually did. So,
Speaker 3: you know, in the podcast, I was trying to sort
Speaker 3: of spotlight both, you know, both both her sort of
Speaker 3: activity and achievements, which were kind of mixed, to be honest,
Speaker 3: and then also this mystery around who tried to kill her.
Speaker 3: But I do think I'd like people to walk away
Speaker 3: and say, you know, a small group of committed people
Speaker 3: can make a big difference, even when they're confronting these
Speaker 3: huge corporations and a lot of capital, And I think
Speaker 3: that's that was what I kind of came in hoping
Speaker 3: that would be I kind of, you know, found the
Speaker 3: reality around her legacy is a little more complicated, but
Speaker 3: that would be the takeaway that I hope in the end,
Speaker 3: it's like all this stuff is sort of a distraction
Speaker 3: from the fact that a small group of really committed
Speaker 3: people ended up with. You know, the final outcome of
Speaker 3: trying to say the Redwoods is the government spent an
Speaker 3: amazing like hundreds of millions of dollars to save a
Speaker 3: place called the Headwaters for Us, which was the largest
Speaker 3: sort of grove of old growth redwoods that was still
Speaker 3: intact on Pacific lumber Land. And they save that, they
Speaker 3: saved some stuff around it. So there's like an actual,
Speaker 3: like physical location that you can go to and it's big,
Speaker 3: that Judy and others say, and so they were able
Speaker 3: to have a concrete win when this was all over.
Speaker 3: I believe she may have already passed by the time
Speaker 3: it was finalized, but I think she understood the direction
Speaker 3: it was headed. So I guess that's a takeaway for me.
Speaker 5: I had one last tiny little thing, you know, and
Speaker 5: watching one battle after another, which I enjoyed quite a lot,
Speaker 5: it occurred to me that, like the group that sort
Speaker 5: of portrayed in that sort of weather underground kind of
Speaker 5: you know, freedom fighting group, it's dealing with immigration enforcement
Speaker 5: and various things, there really isn't an analog to that
Speaker 5: in real life anymore. Nor do I see, as you
Speaker 5: pointed out earlier, this analog to Earth First, do you
Speaker 5: have a sense of why that is or is it
Speaker 5: because of the Internet, is because if things are more
Speaker 5: you know, cyber oriented now, like why or do we
Speaker 5: not see this kind of direct action as much, you
Speaker 5: know in modern times.
Speaker 3: You know, I honestly I don't know. I would love
Speaker 3: to have the answer to that. You know, Earth First,
Speaker 3: like the people without Earth Verst was not extreme enough,
Speaker 3: branched off. Some of them were old Earth First members
Speaker 3: to become the Earth Liberation Front, and they do like
Speaker 3: real sabotage, burning things down, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: But they're even smaller, right, Gretamberg Thumbird putting myself, She's
Speaker 3: kind of done her thing. But that's all sort of
Speaker 3: you know, bring attention to it or whatever. Stream protest
Speaker 3: not exactly direct action, right right. It seems like the
Speaker 3: people who really stop in like the flow of oil,
Speaker 3: are mostly trying to like it's geopolitical stuff, not not
Speaker 3: citizen action. It's interesting that you bring up that movie though,
Speaker 3: because people said, like several people I talk to you said,
Speaker 3: if you want to understand Humboldt Mendocino at that time,
Speaker 3: you got to read Vineland By. I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, if you can best be described through a
Speaker 3: Pinchion novel, there must have been some weird stuff for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: One thing that I took away from that like that
Speaker 5: I'll never forget is there's this moment where there's a
Speaker 5: protest going on and they lead one of the people
Speaker 5: with the government forces says, call in Eddie van Halen,
Speaker 5: and a dude in a van Halen t shirt and
Speaker 5: a mask comes out, throws them all atop cocktail and
Speaker 5: it gives them the excuse they need to like move
Speaker 5: in and you know, escalat.
Speaker 2: This is just a reminder everyone that the podcast Rip
Speaker 2: Current in both seasons is an investigative journalism pursuit, and
Speaker 2: Toby is actually out there talking to individuals. He's you know,
Speaker 2: this isn't just like research or watching a documentary or
Speaker 2: reading a book and that stuff. He's out there talking
Speaker 2: to people. And I just wonder, Toby, how much pushback
Speaker 2: you encountered when attempting, you know, to find an interviewee
Speaker 2: or somebody that you could speak to just along your journey.
Speaker 2: And then who is the closest person to Judy Berry
Speaker 2: and the actual bombing that you got to speak with.
Speaker 3: Well, it's one in the same person describes both those things.
Speaker 3: Darryl Cherney, who was in the passenger seat I finally
Speaker 3: did end up talking to, but it took I mean
Speaker 3: I talked to him two weeks ago two and a
Speaker 3: half weeks ago, so I had already written all the
Speaker 3: scripts and ten of the episodes were out before he
Speaker 3: finally said he would do an interview with me. So
Speaker 3: I did an interview with it. I actually did over
Speaker 3: two days. I talked to him for about three and
Speaker 3: a half hours, and there will be a bonus episode
Speaker 3: that kind of cuts it down, like a lot of
Speaker 3: this stuff had already been covered in the main podcast,
Speaker 3: But we talked. I talked to him about his theory
Speaker 3: of the crime, and talked to him about some of
Speaker 3: his experience during the day of the bombing. But he
Speaker 3: was a tough one. I mean, there's really it's still raw, man.
Speaker 3: It's like thirty five years later and people still I mean,
Speaker 3: the whole thing with him and me was he knew
Speaker 3: I was going to talk to people who thought that
Speaker 3: Judy Barry's ex husband is responsible for this, and there's
Speaker 3: a whole other series of reasons why he is a
Speaker 3: good candidate, although again there's no evidence, so you know, uh,
Speaker 3: there's nothing to really tie him to it. But once
Speaker 3: he heard that he was, he did not want to
Speaker 3: talk to me, but we kept in touch. You know,
Speaker 3: I'd send him emails. I went out to California. I said,
Speaker 3: I'm happy to meet up for a coffee or a
Speaker 3: beer and just chat, like off the record. We didn't
Speaker 3: do it, but you know, it's one of those things
Speaker 3: where you just keep lines of communication open and it
Speaker 3: eventually at like as they say in British soccer at
Speaker 3: the death h it happened. So that was really interesting.
Speaker 3: It was interesting to talk to him, But I talked to,
Speaker 3: you know, people who who knew her from too, different levels,
Speaker 3: from different walks of life, an old Earth first guy.
Speaker 3: Some journalists anew her stuff like that she's a She's
Speaker 3: a very interesting and complicated person, but I think you
Speaker 3: kind of have to be in order to have sort
Speaker 3: of the bravery and the sort of single mindedness to
Speaker 3: affect that kind of change.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and this is also you know, in addition to
Speaker 4: these exclusive interviews. I just can't thank you enough for
Speaker 4: the phenomenal research. Right, this is a story, as we
Speaker 4: said at the top, that needs to be shared, that
Speaker 4: needs to be told. As I think my colleagues and
Speaker 4: I are referencing here throughout our conversation, it becomes increasingly relevant.
Speaker 4: You know, we have other stuff to explore. These threads,
Speaker 4: Like every part of this conversation is opening a door
Speaker 4: that leads to something deeper, like the presence of direct
Speaker 4: action groups. Have they really lessened in their frequency? If so,
Speaker 4: why or they simply not being reported as often now right?
Speaker 4: Or are they truly being tramped down upon by whatever
Speaker 4: The descendant of co intel pro is right. The monitoring
Speaker 4: abilities are just far, far beyond what Hoover imagined. He
Speaker 4: probably fantasized about it, but he did get there.
Speaker 2: We didn't even talk about one of the groups that
Speaker 2: you mentioned in the show, Toby the It's got one
Speaker 2: of those names we always talk about. It seems so
Speaker 2: innocuous and fine, but then you find out what they're
Speaker 2: doing are what the hell it's the Ron Arnold thing
Speaker 2: Center for Defense of Free Enterprise.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, up there with.
Speaker 4: Up there with people against Halla Burton Production.
Speaker 5: Yeah exactly, yeah, yeah, stop taking on free enterprise, y'all.
Speaker 3: Come on, yeah, come on on, our old sort of
Speaker 3: those guys with like an Abraham Lincoln beard, you.
Speaker 4: Know, yeah, you love to see it. Abraham Lincoln, by
Speaker 4: the way, folks, one of the most famous amateur wrestlers
Speaker 4: in United States history. We did a couple of other
Speaker 4: things later he had a bad time at the theater,
Speaker 4: but do support the arts.
Speaker 3: Toby.
Speaker 4: Again, we can't thank you enough.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 4: We don't want to spoil the show because again not
Speaker 4: just not just the the exclusive interviews, but I would
Speaker 4: say even more importantly, the research, the depth of which
Speaker 4: you to which you go here is a true credit
Speaker 4: to your work and to I don't know, it's a
Speaker 4: thing more people need to know about. So in addition
Speaker 4: to that, we always like to end by asking where
Speaker 4: can people learn more not just about your mission on
Speaker 4: rip Current, but about your many other projects. And please,
Speaker 4: can you do us a favor since we are friends,
Speaker 4: can you tell us a little bit about Failians?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Okay, so I'm doing and I'm hoping that each
Speaker 3: one of you will be on as a guest in
Speaker 3: the near future. I've started doing a program called more
Speaker 3: Like Ancient Failians, which is a look at It started
Speaker 3: off just looking at ancient Aliens and sort of you know,
Speaker 3: laughing at the ridiculousness of the agent theorist and stuff
Speaker 3: we just talked about. I know, we just did an
Speaker 3: emergency podcast about that. But also what's crazy is that
Speaker 3: there's all this really interesting history that they try and
Speaker 3: explain away as you know that must have been aliens,
Speaker 3: but in fact it's like fascinating stuff. So we include
Speaker 3: that and we have guests. You know, it's it's podcasters, skeptics,
Speaker 3: a lot of comedians. Because the guy I do it with,
Speaker 3: Brandon R. Reynolds, has a connection to that community. We've
Speaker 3: had people who are experts on each and aliens come
Speaker 3: and talk to us. That's it's always pretty interesting to
Speaker 3: hear their take on these things.
Speaker 2: Have you guys have not got That's.
Speaker 5: I'll forever refer to them as the big guy with
Speaker 5: the big for you.
Speaker 3: We'll text of them. Yeah. So that's been fun. That's
Speaker 3: been fun. So we got a bunch of episodes were
Speaker 3: actually uh coming up. We have John Hodgman's going to
Speaker 3: be a guest for a judge.
Speaker 5: He can to talk about what is it booking snake
Speaker 5: secret societies.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Time he got the diamond medallion, the longer diamond medallion
Speaker 4: for Delta Travel, the.
Speaker 5: Must sought Diamond Medallion status. Check out his book. I
Speaker 5: think it's out in paperback now.
Speaker 4: Well that's how you know, that's how you know we
Speaker 4: made it. Well. Also, Toby, I can't speak for everyone
Speaker 4: but I would imagine we would all love to join
Speaker 4: you on that show, and we hope that everybody joins
Speaker 4: us and Toby on rip Her. Right.
Speaker 5: Did we shout out with aliens recently when we were
Speaker 5: talking about I think we can get credit credit was due?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I appreciate that. Well, it was.
Speaker 4: It was a nice thing for us to say, because, honestly, Toby,
Speaker 4: we were all very personally bummed with the passage of
Speaker 4: Von Danakin. Just a form uh, an inspiration for stuff
Speaker 4: they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: Right, guys, do we even mention rip currentpod dot com?
Speaker 4: We should mention rip currentpod dot com. Okay, let me
Speaker 4: let me make contact camera. Everyone go to rip currentpod
Speaker 4: dot com and.
Speaker 3: Good save Matt.
Speaker 4: Okay, Uh, Toby, be safe out there, man. We'll talk
Speaker 4: to you soon.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I appreciate it, guys.
Speaker 4: And there you have it, folks. The legendary friend of
Speaker 4: the show, Toby Ball, just a phenomenal researcher. As we mentioned,
Speaker 4: UH also brought us an exclusive story UH that you
Speaker 4: can hear in full. Get this right now, guys, what
Speaker 4: a ride. I wasn't joking when I talked about the
Speaker 4: Saturday Night Live rule. Have you guys heard about that.
Speaker 4: It's the five Timers Club.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, five Timers Club is a big deal. They
Speaker 2: always do a sketch.
Speaker 4: I think Toby might be the first one to reach
Speaker 4: five timers status on stuff they don't want you to know,
Speaker 4: which We support the mass as the Saturday Night Live
Speaker 4: of podcast.
Speaker 2: I think he and Payne Lindsay might be tied right now.
Speaker 4: Okay, oh yeah, okay, maybe we can maybe we can
Speaker 4: have them both on for a double Dragon interview segment.
Speaker 5: Payne loves a sweet jacket.
Speaker 4: He does, he does, and I'm really excited about his
Speaker 4: appearance coming up on Conversate with our pal Killer Mike.
Speaker 4: Not to be missed. Folks, we hope you enjoyed this.
Speaker 4: We hope you check out not just Rip Current, but
Speaker 4: all of Toby's earlier work. In the meantime, we hope
Speaker 4: you as the most important part of our show. Join us.
Speaker 4: You can find us on the internet. You can call
Speaker 4: us on a telephone. You can always send us an email.
Speaker 4: As a matter of fact, I owe some people some
Speaker 4: random facts.
Speaker 5: People are asking for the random facts. You love to
Speaker 5: see it. You can find us at the handle Conspiracy
Speaker 5: Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show, depending on your social media
Speaker 5: platform of choice. You'll figure it out. But there's more
Speaker 5: ways to get in touch with us, aren't there.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, we have a phone number. It is one
Speaker 2: eight three three std wy TK. It's a voicemail system.
Speaker 2: Give us a call, you'll talk to us, and if
Speaker 2: we use one of your voicemails, it will go on
Speaker 2: one of our listener mail episodes that you can find
Speaker 2: in our audio podcast wherever you might access that. Oh
Speaker 2: and you know, someddly we didn't talk about Guys Strange Arrivals,
Speaker 2: the other show that Toby created. It has a TV version.
Speaker 2: It does stars Demi Moore and Coleman Domingo Gonid.
Speaker 5: It star studying.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's really really cool. All right, If you want
Speaker 2: to email us, you can do that too.
Speaker 4: We are This is one of the most exciting things
Speaker 4: for us, folks. We are the entities that read each
Speaker 4: piece of correspondence we receive. Be well aware, yet unafraid.
Speaker 4: Sometimes the void writes back. So join us, not just
Speaker 4: on Netflix, not just on audio, but speak with us directly.
Speaker 4: Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.