Speaker 1: I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'SHEF.
Speaker 2: I served in the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years,
Speaker 2: living undercover all around the.
Speaker 1: World, and in my thirty three years with the CIA,
Speaker 1: I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Speaker 2: Although we don't usually look at it this way, we
Speaker 2: created conspiracies.
Speaker 1: In our operations. We got people to believe things that
Speaker 1: weren't true.
Speaker 2: Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the
Speaker 2: news almost every day.
Speaker 1: Will break them down for you to determine whether they
Speaker 1: could be real or whether we're being manipulated.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Mission Implausible, you guys. I don't know if
Speaker 2: you're following it, but it's actually been really troubling. This
Speaker 2: Hurricane Helene, which has caused deaths in six or seven
Speaker 2: states in the Southeast, has created this torrent of false
Speaker 2: rumors and conspiracy theories and misinformation. But it's actually starting
Speaker 2: to impact lives. People are believing things and being told
Speaker 2: things that are very dangerous that are making them stay
Speaker 2: at home. There's fault stories about that the government's going
Speaker 2: to steal and buy their houses, so people aren't leaving
Speaker 2: their houses when they need to and of course we're
Speaker 2: seeing this awful, obscene thing where former President Donald Trump
Speaker 2: is amplifying these false claims, claiming that the government is
Speaker 2: not doing any help, that they're giving money to migrants
Speaker 2: instead of giving money to people who need it. We're
Speaker 2: used to talking about Donald Trump saying things that are
Speaker 2: untrue are troublesome, but this really hits close to home
Speaker 2: because people are really suffering here.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk about who they is. When
Speaker 1: Marjorie Taylor Green, she writes, yes, they control the weather.
Speaker 1: It is ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it
Speaker 1: can't be done. And there's been in this there's been
Speaker 1: other quotes, not from her, but saying that this that Milton,
Speaker 1: the next storm coming in is being directed by them.
Speaker 3: They to hit I think I get to say us.
Speaker 1: There's one more very from Marjorie Taylor Green, and that
Speaker 1: is in April there was the large earthquake that happened,
Speaker 1: and she said that this was implied it was the government,
Speaker 1: but also said that this was God judging her political rivals.
Speaker 1: And so who are her rivals? The day them? And
Speaker 1: Adam is a representative. What's your initial take on.
Speaker 3: Is I honestly I feel like the Vermonder Tisenal cheese
Speaker 3: community has just stood by.
Speaker 2: Too long. We can't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's Jews.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think it's Democrats more than Jews.
Speaker 3: The first of all, I love it's very sweethet. You
Speaker 3: think she thinks of those as two separate groups. But
Speaker 3: the whole great Replacement theory is that Jews are controlling
Speaker 3: minorities and using the Democratic Party to replace white people.
Speaker 3: But there's something great about they because it gets to
Speaker 3: be anyone's day.
Speaker 2: I have my own day.
Speaker 3: It's a malleable. I mean, you look at all the
Speaker 3: Jewish Trump supporters, who Laura Luhmer is Jewish, and so
Speaker 3: she has a whole world of they that somehow doesn't
Speaker 3: include herself, even though most of her confederates think they
Speaker 3: is Jews. You know my degree's history of religion. When
Speaker 3: you look at the Bible, the Egyptian myths, the Sumerian myths,
Speaker 3: it is a lot about these forces floods and famine
Speaker 3: and heat that are hard to understand, these giant forces
Speaker 3: that come in and wreak havoc on everyday life. And
Speaker 3: you read about the Greek gods, the Roman gods, the
Speaker 3: Norse gods, Chinese gods.
Speaker 2: I was reading about the Canadian gods.
Speaker 3: Well, that's mostly about hockey, I believe, but it's a
Speaker 3: lot about controlling the weather. And more than that, it's
Speaker 3: about we have this chaos in our lives, this uncontrollable chaos,
Speaker 3: and there's this type of mentality that's like, I need
Speaker 3: to put order on that chaos. And as awful as
Speaker 3: it might be to think some small group of elites
Speaker 3: are destroying the world, maybe that's more pleasing to the
Speaker 3: brain in some way. Then there's just chaos.
Speaker 2: Elon Musk labeled FEMA's actions quote treason and supported the
Speaker 2: view that Harris and Homeland Security majorcas quote should be
Speaker 2: jailed for life for spending FEMA money on illegal aliens
Speaker 2: and not Americans, which is just totally fun insane.
Speaker 1: I want to go back to when John was young,
Speaker 1: the year eleven ninety. This is actually quite a sad
Speaker 1: and somber story, but the entire Jewish community of York
Speaker 1: in northern England was massacred. They were killed to the person.
Speaker 1: So they all went to the tower in York and
Speaker 1: the local villagers besieged them and eventually murdered them all,
Speaker 1: and the reason for that, at least given was that
Speaker 1: there was a local drought going on and they needed
Speaker 1: someone to blame, and so they looked around and it
Speaker 1: was basically they blamed the Jews for stealing babies and witchcraft.
Speaker 1: They brought the drought to northern England. And these are
Speaker 1: people who were desperate, afraid, hungry, looking at starvation, and
Speaker 1: they had an upper class who was pointing at the Jews.
Speaker 1: And I think your point about weather because it's existential.
Speaker 1: It's where food comes from, prices, everything depends on, you know,
Speaker 1: the plants you grow for clothing and food. And yeah,
Speaker 1: back to today, rather than talking difficult conversations about climate change
Speaker 1: and the impact on hurricanes, which by the way, the
Speaker 1: Republican Party doesn't want to talk about Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: Wants to get rid of Noah. They want to privatize it.
Speaker 1: So you got to pay to know where the hurricane's
Speaker 1: coming at your house or the flash flood. And Marjorie
Speaker 1: Taylor Green is touched on something that is really basic
Speaker 1: and core to human existence.
Speaker 3: But that still doesn't like Fox News. And I mean,
Speaker 3: I was saying, Lawyer Ingraham going on and Tucker Carlson
Speaker 3: and Elon Musk. They know better. They're using this deep
Speaker 3: well of human fear and hunger for some kind of
Speaker 3: rational explanation in a very targeted, weaponized way. It's disgusting.
Speaker 2: Let's take a break. We'll be right back. And we're back.
Speaker 1: So there is something called HARP, which is the High
Speaker 1: Frequency Active Oral Research program funded by the US Defense
Speaker 1: Department and the University of Alaska. And we here in
Speaker 1: the United States by and large have not heard of
Speaker 1: HARP or the HARP conspiracies. But as recently as this summer,
Speaker 1: the Russians have been claiming that HARP is responsible for
Speaker 1: the drought going on right now in Crimea. I've got
Speaker 1: something that says as Mustavites suffer high temperatures this summer,
Speaker 1: Russian political scientists have claimed that the United States may
Speaker 1: be using climate change weapons to alter the temperature and
Speaker 1: crop yields of Russia and other Central Asian countries, forcing
Speaker 1: up food prices and generally inflation, and only as opposed
Speaker 1: to the war.
Speaker 2: What's happening here? There is a good article in the
Speaker 2: New York Times recently about geoengineering. So geoengineering is a
Speaker 2: real thing. It's about scientists are trying to inject aerosols
Speaker 2: into the atmosphere because scientists think they may be able
Speaker 2: to reflect some of the Sun's heat back into space.
Speaker 2: But then recently Republican lawmakers in Tennessee voted to ban
Speaker 2: solar geo engineering, and people are like, why the hell
Speaker 2: did they want to do that? No one's geoengineering in Tennessee,
Speaker 2: and did these people even understand this? And so this
Speaker 2: New York Times reported dug into it and found out
Speaker 2: that the specific people pushing for this ban are like
Speaker 2: these conspiracy theorists and vaccine skeptics who are pushing to
Speaker 2: ban this across the country, and they're tying it to
Speaker 2: what we talked about in one of our episodes is
Speaker 2: the chemtrails conspiracy theory, saying that the government's using airplanes
Speaker 2: to inject dangerous chemicals in the atmosphere through chemtrails and
Speaker 2: that's what geoengineering is, when, of course none of those
Speaker 2: things are true.
Speaker 1: Every conspiracy theory has a grain of truth. And I
Speaker 1: think people will write in and say, aha, but what
Speaker 1: about Operation Popeye. Operation Popeye was not a CIO at
Speaker 1: CIA been involved, but it was US Defense Department, And
Speaker 1: this was in nineteen sixty seven and what it was
Speaker 1: basically cloud seating over the Ho Chi Minh Trail and
Speaker 1: the motto was make mud not war. They wanted to
Speaker 1: make the trails money so that they couldn't bring in
Speaker 1: weapons to kill American servicemen in South Vietnam slow the
Speaker 1: trail down. And my understanding is that Operation Popeye was
Speaker 1: a complete failure.
Speaker 2: When you say real world impact, I mean that's what's
Speaker 2: happening right now in the South United States. There's viral
Speaker 2: things online, falsehoods that the government is bulldozing bodies under
Speaker 2: the rubble, and there was one claim that the government
Speaker 2: is doing secret lithium mining and pushing people out of
Speaker 2: their homes to try to buy the land. And this
Speaker 2: is I think in North Carolina, Rutherford County. The commissioner
Speaker 2: said the only lithian for sale in Rutherford County is
Speaker 2: at the local lows in a nine volt battery you
Speaker 2: can buy there.
Speaker 3: I've covered a lot of disaster. There's always chaos. I mean,
Speaker 3: by definition, it's really hard to figure out when powers
Speaker 3: down and people aren't there and roads are impassable, like
Speaker 3: it's just it's a hard job with the best of
Speaker 3: intentions and lots of resources, and I'm not here to
Speaker 3: say FEMA's done everything perfectly, although from what I understand
Speaker 3: and from the Republican governors in most of these states,
Speaker 3: they've done a fairly good job. I mean, I covered Katrina.
Speaker 3: They really did a terrible job. I witnessed it. It
Speaker 3: was bad. But it sounds like they've done a fairly
Speaker 3: good job here. But what's amazing is the specific things
Speaker 3: Trump is accusing them of doing is what he did,
Speaker 3: Like they are not politicizing it, but he did. He
Speaker 3: did withhold resources from blue states, and he talked about
Speaker 3: that and that he would withhold resources from towns and
Speaker 3: cities and states where the leaders didn't suck up to him.
Speaker 3: Remember Gavin Newsome kissing is But that kind of governance,
Speaker 3: which is what I saw in Iraq and elsewhere we're
Speaker 3: flattering the leader is the way to get resources, not
Speaker 3: needing the resources or justifying the resources is maddening. And
Speaker 3: then the fact that they can weaponize that And now
Speaker 3: I'm saying they, but I specifically mean the propaganda apparatus
Speaker 3: in support of Trump.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so not only ad Adam, but Trump took millions
Speaker 1: and I'd have to look up the figure. But he
Speaker 1: took multiple millions of dollars from FEMA, and he put
Speaker 1: it toward incarcerating illegal migrants coming in over the border.
Speaker 1: So what he was accusing this administration of, he actually.
Speaker 2: Did, which is often what happens. Isn't that the things
Speaker 2: that he accuses others of.
Speaker 3: Is yeah, the accusations are confessed.
Speaker 2: Yeahs.
Speaker 1: You know, I like to quote, you know, like Schopenhauer
Speaker 1: and Grute, But there's the you know, there's the whole
Speaker 1: point of you know, he who dealt it smelter.
Speaker 2: Is that Schopenhauer who said that?
Speaker 3: I believe that was Kant.
Speaker 2: There's a lot to laugh about here. But there's people
Speaker 2: potentially dying. There's people staying in their homes as this
Speaker 2: new hurricane comes because they've been told the government's going
Speaker 2: to seize their home and steal their land.
Speaker 3: It is very shameful. But I will say, if I, like,
Speaker 3: if I had to come up with a conspiracy theory,
Speaker 3: like you said, got you have to. I think weather
Speaker 3: is a pretty good one. It's big, uncontrollable forces. You
Speaker 3: put a narrative on it, boom, you got it.
Speaker 1: I want to quote Hannah Aren't for a second, and
Speaker 1: this is this constant lie is not she's talking about
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union here. This constant lie is not intended
Speaker 1: to make people believe a lie, but to make no
Speaker 1: one believe anything anymore. A people that can no longer
Speaker 1: distinguish distinguish between truth and falsehood, cannot distinguish between right
Speaker 1: and wrong.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that feels a little too relevant. Yeah, well
Speaker 3: you made me really depressed. No, next time we'll be
Speaker 3: one of the fun conspiracy things that lifts up this
Speaker 3: human spirit, and that's something we can all celebrate great.
Speaker 4: Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Seipher,
Speaker 4: and Jonathan Stern. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission
Speaker 4: Implausible is a production of Honorable Mention and Abominable pictures
Speaker 4: for iHeart Podcasts.