Speaker 1: Hey, Matt, hey Ben, who killed Fred Hampton?
Speaker 2: Oh? You don't want me to answer that. I kind
Speaker 2: of do the cops.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, this is our classic episode, folks. The Black
Speaker 1: Panther Party for Self Defense was founded in Oakland, California,
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty six, and things went horribly wrong on
Speaker 1: December fourth, just a few years later.
Speaker 3: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
Speaker 3: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 3: learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: Oh, hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Nola.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We are joined with our super
Speaker 1: producer of Paul, Mission Control decad. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 1: You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know. It's twenty nineteen, and if you
Speaker 1: are remotely aware of the news, you understand.
Speaker 2: That the government is still shut down.
Speaker 1: The government is this is the longest shutdown in modern
Speaker 1: US history.
Speaker 4: So presumably they're not assassinating any political activists at the moment.
Speaker 1: Well, the assassins aren't getting paid at least that's whole
Speaker 1: there's back pay right load. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a divisive time in the country. But that's something people
Speaker 1: always say, you know, how like older people are always like, oh,
Speaker 1: new music sucks, but old music's good. And people are
Speaker 1: always like, ah, this is the most divisive time ever.
Speaker 1: It's always been a real there's a phrase Nol stumbled
Speaker 1: upon that I really like. It's always been a real
Speaker 1: ship show. It's true because we're a families show.
Speaker 2: There was a p just everyone.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's sort of like a trade show for boats
Speaker 4: in a show right up on stilts you get to
Speaker 4: look at their undercarriages.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like that, but with with rampant want
Speaker 1: and have it politically with quite real danger to many people.
Speaker 1: And we're not we're not going to do some AM
Speaker 1: or FM political talking points show. We're not going to
Speaker 1: pair it out some headlines at you. We want to
Speaker 1: establish that context because it's often said that history is cyclical. Right,
Speaker 1: it may maybe it doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. And
Speaker 1: the reason that cliche is a cliche is because it's true.
Speaker 1: That's the reason most cliches are cliches. It's because they're true.
Speaker 1: Everyone knows it. It's such an eye roll when people
Speaker 1: say it. Today we are taking a journey into a
Speaker 1: into an event that may be familiar to some of
Speaker 1: us and maybe brand new to others. And it may
Speaker 1: be something that you just remember from one line in
Speaker 1: a Rage against the Machine song down Rodeo. Right, we
Speaker 1: were talking about this off air listening to Rage against
Speaker 1: the Machine, and the three of us. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you agreed, Paul, but the three of us, at
Speaker 1: least here in the booth thought, you know, rage against
Speaker 1: the Machine holds up well.
Speaker 4: The thing too about not to me, there's all of
Speaker 4: a sudden the critique about Rage against the Machine and
Speaker 4: their cultural significance. But the thing that stands up to
Speaker 4: me is that all of the other like rap metal
Speaker 4: bands or whatever, they sound completely cliche and hackney now,
Speaker 4: but Rage against the Machine just sounds like Rage against
Speaker 4: the Machine. Nobody else really copied them so exactly that
Speaker 4: they sound like a tired, you know, copy of themselves.
Speaker 4: So yeah, good on them, Yeah, yeah, for being innovative.
Speaker 2: Just another thing that I was reminded of. My wife
Speaker 2: is always trying to get me to listen to newer
Speaker 2: music and back in the day, jay Z and who's
Speaker 2: that guy? Is the other guy? Jay Z? And Kanye I'm.
Speaker 1: Just joking, Tonye, give me a direction here.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure. I think it's if you're looking at
Speaker 2: a map, I think it's still to the left.
Speaker 1: Kanye north by Northwest.
Speaker 2: Something like that. No, but they had they had a
Speaker 2: song that mentioned the person we're talking about today, and
Speaker 2: it it just reminded me of that too, just putting
Speaker 2: that out.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, So specifically that line in
Speaker 1: down Rodeo is they ain't gonna send me camping like
Speaker 1: they did my Manfred Hampton, right, And that is a
Speaker 1: real person. Yes, this is common knowledge to some of us.
Speaker 1: This is maybe a an Easter egg for some people.
Speaker 1: But today we are exploring the life and times and
Speaker 1: untimely end of a very young man named Fred Hampton. Today,
Speaker 1: most people would not be able to point out may Would,
Speaker 1: Illinois on a map. It's relatively small. It's a community
Speaker 1: of at the closes estimate, a little more than twenty
Speaker 1: three five hundred people in Cook County's Proviso township. Shortly
Speaker 1: after World War Two, there was this kid. His name's
Speaker 1: Fred Hampton. He was born in Summit, Illinois. He went
Speaker 1: to a high school in Maywood in the area. He
Speaker 1: was great at math, he was a great athlete, and
Speaker 1: for a time he was a pre law student. He
Speaker 1: died spoiler alert when he was twenty one years old.
Speaker 4: As bonkers to me every time I look back at these,
Speaker 4: whether it's like musicians that dies at an early age
Speaker 4: like Kurt Kobain and I forget they're like twenty three
Speaker 4: and twenty four years old. I still think of myself
Speaker 4: as a relatively young man. But it really makes you
Speaker 4: puts things in perspective, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when just getting started, Fred Hampton was.
Speaker 1: So what happened? To look at this, we will have
Speaker 1: to start with some social context, some backgrounds. So here
Speaker 1: are the facts. Fred Hampton is today most widely known
Speaker 1: for his association with the Black Panther Party or BPP,
Speaker 1: officially the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. This was
Speaker 1: founded in Oakland, California in nineteen sixty six by Huey
Speaker 1: Newton and Bobby Seal. Originally, these guys wanted to protect
Speaker 1: local residents of the Oaklands community from police brutality and
Speaker 1: this is.
Speaker 2: And from other crime and just like as a like
Speaker 2: a local defense force essentially.
Speaker 1: Right, a self governing community. Right, we don't need we
Speaker 1: don't need the law enforcement industry as they saw it,
Speaker 1: to further repress our community. There's so many things that
Speaker 1: could be solved. The reasoning goes by just talking to kids,
Speaker 1: because these are teenagers, just saying hey, don't cause trouble
Speaker 1: or you know. It's it's like you hear the stories
Speaker 1: of young kids who maybe get pulled over for something,
Speaker 1: or they get caught drinking underage or smoking pot, and
Speaker 1: then the officers, up to their discretion, they can they
Speaker 1: can book a kid and take them to juvie, or
Speaker 1: they can do something that is scarier and more frightening
Speaker 1: for some of them, which is called their mother. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting.
Speaker 4: In the movie Black Clansman, I don't know if you
Speaker 4: guys have seen that yet, but it's got some I
Speaker 4: think Spikeley finally got his first Best Picture and Best
Speaker 4: Director Oscar nomination.
Speaker 1: First nomination in thirty years since Do the Right.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: I watched it on the plane. Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 4: But there's a scene where at Stokeley Carmichael, who's the
Speaker 4: leader of the Black Panther Party, is speaking at a
Speaker 4: university and one of the organizers, who's a college student
Speaker 4: who's got this you know, college group that organizes this
Speaker 4: event is very abusively pulled over by the very racist
Speaker 4: local police. And just for being the person that brought
Speaker 4: these people to this town, I believe in Colorado, the
Speaker 4: city in Colorado, So that kind of stuff was happening
Speaker 4: all the time, and that was the name. There was
Speaker 4: absolutely a need to have some kind of protection within
Speaker 4: this specific community to keep stuff like that from happening.
Speaker 1: And need is key. These people weren't making these decisions
Speaker 1: for fun, right. They weren't like, hey, should we go
Speaker 1: bowling or should we should we start a political party
Speaker 1: and then rock paper scissors for it. They saw a
Speaker 1: need and as the BPP evolved its goals expanded, they
Speaker 1: recognized this was not something that needed to exist only
Speaker 1: in Oakland, California, but in the continent entire right, especially
Speaker 1: the US, but also also Canada, and the group eventually
Speaker 1: called for nationwide changes meant to combat the racial inequality
Speaker 1: in the US which still exists today. Yeah, by the
Speaker 1: late nineteen sixties, this organization had over two thousand members,
Speaker 1: two thousand admitted members. There were probably many many more sympathizers, right,
Speaker 1: or people who said, I see what you're doing tacitly,
Speaker 1: if not explicitly supported. Critics of the party, including the FBI,
Speaker 1: saw this organization as a They saw it as a
Speaker 1: hate group. They saw it as a on the level
Speaker 1: of racial supremacy group, you know, like the KKKVE.
Speaker 4: And they also saw it as primed to explode in
Speaker 4: some sort of like massive uprising or riot kind of situation,
Speaker 4: when in fact, they were building schools in inner city
Speaker 4: areas of Oakland, and they had like clinics and supply
Speaker 4: free launch co ops and all of this really incredible
Speaker 4: community building stuff, breakfast programs for kids and clothing drives
Speaker 4: and all of this stuff. And the thing I mentioned
Speaker 4: earlier about the you know, protecting themselves against you know,
Speaker 4: racial profiling, it's certainly wasn't. It was much more of
Speaker 4: an awareness thing and of like, let's stick together and
Speaker 4: make people aware that they can't mess with us because
Speaker 4: we are of one mind and we will you know,
Speaker 4: look out for each other, yes, and draw attention to
Speaker 4: the fact that this stuff is happening.
Speaker 1: And know your rights. That's also big proponents of the
Speaker 1: Second Amendment, which you know, the right to bear arms,
Speaker 1: not the animal bear arms. Yes, I feel like we
Speaker 1: always have to say that now, but the right to
Speaker 1: hold a firearm.
Speaker 2: I think this is a good place to mention that
Speaker 2: the Black Panther Party is one of numerous organizations that
Speaker 2: find their origins in this time period. Oh yes, where
Speaker 2: And these are somewhat splintered groups where members of one,
Speaker 2: like chapter of the Black Panther Party, would go and
Speaker 2: form their own group. And this was this was happening
Speaker 2: throughout the United States. So there are there. Basically you
Speaker 2: have to imagine if you look on a map, there
Speaker 2: are there are smaller groups all over the place rather
Speaker 2: than one unified group.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, absolutely, And that's an excellent point because not everybody
Speaker 1: agreed on every facet of the of the ideology.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: There would be people who agree with the push for equality,
Speaker 1: but they would say, hey, this is antagonistic work within
Speaker 1: the system. And there we're other people who said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, the system is built to destroy you, so
Speaker 1: you are destroying yourself and us if you play along
Speaker 1: with these games.
Speaker 2: And if you look closely enough, it's interesting how you
Speaker 2: can see the rationality for almost all of the groups
Speaker 2: like because it almost makes complete sense in every scenario
Speaker 2: with these groups that are coming together, it's all about philosophy.
Speaker 1: Sure, and philosophy is ultimately only as valuable as the
Speaker 1: actions and inspires which I just made up. But I'm
Speaker 1: gonna stick by that. That uh turn of phrase.
Speaker 4: Oh think it belongs on a bumper sticker and or
Speaker 4: a plaque of.
Speaker 2: Some kind or a T shirt.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I really do think so.
Speaker 4: But this is totally true because the biggest thing that
Speaker 4: Fred Hampton was known for was being like an organizer.
Speaker 4: He was a great speaker, He could bring people together,
Speaker 4: and he pushed for this idea that the people in
Speaker 4: charge were using tools, using racism as a tool to
Speaker 4: control people that were not in their club. You know,
Speaker 4: which is that's the conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: That's just absolutely looking at it, and some conspiracy theories,
Speaker 1: for the record, are true. But he is right. There's
Speaker 1: an active conspiracy the federal government at this time as
Speaker 1: the Panthers expand, the federal government considers this group and
Speaker 1: associated groups terrorists and they lump them in with the
Speaker 1: various other separatists or status quot challenging groups that you
Speaker 1: alluded to earlier, Matt. In the FBI's estimation, the BPP
Speaker 1: was an extremist group that quote advocated the use of
Speaker 1: violence and guerrilla tactics to overthrow the US government. That's
Speaker 1: that's a heavy phrase to drop.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: That's there's whether or not you largely agree with the
Speaker 1: idea of let's just pick one thing, whether or not
Speaker 1: you agree with the Second Amendment. Uh, it's it's a
Speaker 1: hell of a leap to say that people attempting to
Speaker 1: police their own communities are automatically going to the White
Speaker 1: House to burn down the Oval office. That's that's that's
Speaker 1: a logical leap. And it's when the FBI bought.
Speaker 4: Well, it's absolute they didn't so they sold it exactly.
Speaker 1: It's absolute hyperbole.
Speaker 4: And it's like we're saying, it's this idea of selling
Speaker 4: to the public, this notion that this group of organized
Speaker 4: African American people are somehow a threat to you in
Speaker 4: your white communities or in your you know, way of
Speaker 4: life and your job and all of this stuff and
Speaker 4: your safety.
Speaker 1: Really they accept whatever they need to do to.
Speaker 2: Get rid of it. It really is propaganda. But we
Speaker 2: cannot discount that some of these splintered off groups were
Speaker 2: using extreme vice, extreme violence as Weatherman. Yeah, and I
Speaker 2: think it's a Symbionese liberation.
Speaker 4: Front sure like these other much more extreme could even
Speaker 4: now be classified as terrorist groups.
Speaker 1: Right. This is during the this is during the Vietnam era,
Speaker 1: meaning that the I have a great metaphor for this.
Speaker 1: I want to save it for the end. But the
Speaker 1: idea here was one of an existential threat. So the
Speaker 1: Federal Bureau of Investigation deals with things like, you know,
Speaker 1: human trafficking, drugs, murders across state lines, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: And they said, back burner, back burner, back burner, dissidents,
Speaker 1: extremist terrorist people who want the US to be less racist,
Speaker 1: them too, And.
Speaker 2: And that's our number one priority.
Speaker 1: That's our priority. They said, like, you know, drugs, human trafficking,
Speaker 1: interstate murder, that's stuff happens, you know, omelets, eggs. But
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what, buddy, these hippies, these black panthers,
Speaker 1: this injustice shall not stand. Only our injustice shall stand,
Speaker 1: one might imagine. So let's with that context, let's look
Speaker 1: at Fred Hampton. It's a name that's familiar to people,
Speaker 1: but it's also an This is the name of a
Speaker 1: real person, not just a symbol. Right, he's a smart kid.
Speaker 1: We mentioned that he was born in Summit, Illinois. That
Speaker 1: was on August thirtieth, nineteen forty eight, so like us,
Speaker 1: he's an August kid. He was raised in Maywood and
Speaker 1: he graduated from the high school there with honors in
Speaker 1: sixty six, nineteen sixty six. From high school, he first
Speaker 1: went to the Developmental Institute at the YMCA Community College
Speaker 1: in Chicago, and then he attended Triton Junior College in
Speaker 1: River Grove, Illinois. He majored in pre law because he
Speaker 1: planned to familiarize himself with the legal system to Noah's rights,
Speaker 1: with the aim of better protecting his community against what
Speaker 1: he saw as the threat of the police. And there's
Speaker 1: an interesting confluence of contrasting views here because Hampton saw
Speaker 1: the police as an existential threat to his community and
Speaker 1: the FBI eventually sold the Black Panthers as an existential
Speaker 1: threat to their community. Yeah. So originally, and he's a
Speaker 1: very young kid at this time. Originally Fred organized for
Speaker 1: the NAACP.
Speaker 2: Yes, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,
Speaker 2: just to put that back in there, and then he
Speaker 2: ended up joining the Black Panther Party in nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 2: which was headquartered at the time in Oakland, California. And
Speaker 2: you know, after he joins up with them. He moves
Speaker 2: to Chicago, and he basically develops an Illinois chapter of
Speaker 2: the Black Panther Party.
Speaker 1: He gets in on the ground floor, and over the
Speaker 1: next year in Chicago, Hampton and other members of the
Speaker 1: chapter and people associated with it achieved some pretty impressive stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, like Noel said earlier, they are supplying clothing,
Speaker 1: they're supplying food, they're organizing, their educating. The most notable
Speaker 1: achievement on the one people remember the most often now,
Speaker 1: was that Hampton brokered a deal between some of Chicago's
Speaker 1: most powerful street gangs by saying, look, we are in
Speaker 1: a system that wants you to fight. It wants you
Speaker 1: to kill one another because then you won't vote. It
Speaker 1: wants you to kill one another because then you won't
Speaker 1: get old enough, maybe dive into your thirties. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you have to be in your thirties to be president, right.
Speaker 2: And if you're finding each other, you can't see the
Speaker 2: real enemy essentially exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And this message resonated with these gangs, and so
Speaker 1: he televised this multi racial, class conscious alliance between the BPP,
Speaker 1: the Young Patriots Organization, and the Young Lords.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: This was technically a non aggression pact. And because he said,
Speaker 1: you know this, this is what the system wants. It
Speaker 1: wants to keep you poor, it wants to keep you
Speaker 1: dying young h or put you in prison.
Speaker 2: And he was, you know, we said this was televised.
Speaker 2: Fred Hampton was somebody if you listen to he is
Speaker 2: very convincing. And if you listen to him, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just one of the there's sometimes comes along a speaker,
Speaker 2: a public speaker who can in a way and I
Speaker 2: don't know if this is the right word, but almost
Speaker 2: entrance you where you're just listening and you're like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: I hear what you're saying. The way you're speaking, what
Speaker 2: you're saying, it's speaking to me. It's not you're not
Speaker 2: speaking at me, you're speaking to me. And since it
Speaker 2: was on television, the right, I guess and wrong people
Speaker 2: were noticing.
Speaker 1: Ah, excellent point, Matt. Yes, yes, because this is a
Speaker 1: moment that can be propagated before it can be censored. Right, yes,
Speaker 1: So after this watershed event, after this watershed year, during
Speaker 1: this year, fred Hampton also coins a phrase that will
Speaker 1: be familiar with a lot of people who may not
Speaker 1: have heard of fred Hampton, which is the phrase Rainbow Coalition,
Speaker 1: arguing again for a multiracial cooperative to address the entrenched
Speaker 1: poverty of lower working class Chicago and more importantly, the
Speaker 1: country as a whole. This was later taken up by
Speaker 1: successive political pundits.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, it was really used. It morphed over time.
Speaker 2: Let's say it did. It did.
Speaker 1: And one thing I like about what you're pointing out
Speaker 1: with the televised, with the televised, let's all get together,
Speaker 1: cooperate overthrow the system, right, forget the g rides on
Speaker 1: what the machines that are making them this. The BPP
Speaker 1: did have a maoist or communists tinge to its ideology,
Speaker 1: you know, and this made the idea of the Black
Speaker 1: Panther Party a compounding threat, right, because we're still we're
Speaker 1: in Cold War era at this point, and they were
Speaker 1: essentially messing with the money. What happened this year, well,
Speaker 1: at the very end of nineteen sixty nine, according to
Speaker 1: the official story, Fred Hampton died in an apartment raid
Speaker 1: searching for illegal weapons in the early hours of December fourth,
Speaker 1: nineteen six sixty nine. The FBI saw themselves as protecting
Speaker 1: the population, protecting the innocent population of Chicago, and officially
Speaker 1: they were raiding a dangerous group that possessed ostensibly illegal weapons.
Speaker 1: One more time, officially, that's what they were doing. It
Speaker 1: should go without saying, but I'll say it not everyone
Speaker 1: believes the story.
Speaker 2: And we'll get into that story after a quick word
Speaker 2: from our sponsor and we're back. And I just want
Speaker 2: to point this out here. This is when Fred Hampton died.
Speaker 2: Just as a fun fact. It was. It's not fun.
Speaker 2: It was two months after the last confirmed Zodiac killing. Okay,
Speaker 2: let's keep going.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy. So the federal government sees
Speaker 1: this and associated groups as a threat. They are terror
Speaker 1: five of the idea of anything challenging the solvency of
Speaker 1: the government, the breaking of the rule of law. So
Speaker 1: the question becomes how far would the US government go
Speaker 1: to prevent what they saw as the spread of subversive elements?
Speaker 1: Would they, in fact MI five style CIA style, break
Speaker 1: the laws they were supposed to enforce in pursuit of
Speaker 1: what they saw as a greater good. Evidence overwhelmingly indicates yes,
Speaker 1: the FBI essentially engineered and assassination.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's tough to look past the evidence, especially
Speaker 2: if you look at the full picture here with something
Speaker 2: we're about to get into a specific program.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeap, yep, yep, which will be familiar to fellow
Speaker 1: longtime listeners. Let's start with a guy named Mark O'Neil.
Speaker 1: Will we'll go into detail about him in a moment.
Speaker 1: What you need to know about Mark is that he
Speaker 1: was in the BPP and associated with it, but he
Speaker 1: was also for a part of the time an FBI infemant.
Speaker 1: And on the night of December third, after a political
Speaker 1: education session, Hampton and his girlfriend, who was pregnant, and
Speaker 1: several of their associates went to this apartment where they
Speaker 1: were going to spend the.
Speaker 2: Night, and this guy, Mark O'Neill was functioning as security.
Speaker 1: He also made dinner. Yeah, he made dinner, and he
Speaker 1: drugged Fred Hampton with barbituates which prevented him from waking
Speaker 1: up at all. Okay, yeah, yeah, he slept peacefully in
Speaker 1: this bedroom with his girlfriend and the police when they
Speaker 1: conducted the raid around four am or so, they came in,
Speaker 1: guns blazing, right, and there was was it mark O'Neill?
Speaker 1: Was he the one holding the shotgun?
Speaker 2: Mark O'Neill was there, or at least for a time, yeah,
Speaker 2: because again he set the entire thing up.
Speaker 1: So the police shot security. Who was one guy with
Speaker 1: a shotgun. They just shot him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was not Mark Neil.
Speaker 1: That was not Mark O'Neil. No, they just shot the
Speaker 1: guy as he's dying. Shotgun discharges. It's the only shot
Speaker 1: the BPP fired that night. And then they aimed their
Speaker 1: fire on the bedroom where Hampton and his again pregnant girlfriend,
Speaker 1: and again these people are in their twenties, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: where they shot a twenty one year old kid asleep
Speaker 1: in a room. And you could claim fog of war.
Speaker 1: You could claim best of intentions, or that the road
Speaker 1: to Hell is paved with those kinds of tiles, or
Speaker 1: you could claim this was part of something called co
Speaker 1: intel pro, which it was. Just for the record, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to put that out.
Speaker 2: There, co intel pro. And you may be most familiar
Speaker 2: with this word unfortunately slash kind of fortunately through the
Speaker 2: work of Alex Jones, and you'll hear him yelling about
Speaker 2: it on the internet sometimes. But yeah, co intel pro
Speaker 2: it's an actual thing.
Speaker 4: I was founded by the FBI in nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 4: and it was just kind of a catch all term
Speaker 4: for a counterintelligence program. Well, that's what was short for
Speaker 4: a counter intelligence program that was designed to stop the
Speaker 4: Communist Party initially, and then it began to kind of
Speaker 4: branch off and attack some of these more domestic groups
Speaker 4: that we talked about, including the Socialist Worker Party of course,
Speaker 4: the Black Panthers, and any of the other splinter groups
Speaker 4: that we've been talking about throughout, some of which were
Speaker 4: quite dangerous and did pose a.
Speaker 1: Threat also in their defense, the klu Klux Klan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were hunting anything they saw as subversive. It's a
Speaker 1: very bad time to be a vegan, just to give
Speaker 1: you a sense of how rigid their ideology was. On
Speaker 1: Uncle Sam's side.
Speaker 2: Or an animal rights activist, oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, or an animal rights activist.
Speaker 2: By the way, I watched Oh it's not animal rights. Sorry,
Speaker 2: I watched this movie called Edge of Darkness last night.
Speaker 2: It just happened to be on HBO when I was
Speaker 2: just flipping through, and it was activists who were trying
Speaker 2: to expose a nuclear weapons program. But it felt very
Speaker 2: similar like the off the grade groups you know that
Speaker 2: are functioning for a higher purpose.
Speaker 1: Sure sure sure no credit cards, right, no credit card usage?
Speaker 1: Watch out for your phone. It as GPS it's not
Speaker 1: about the money. It's about sending a message. Okay, sorry,
Speaker 1: I know I'm making crazy eyes at you. I just
Speaker 1: I get it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the Panther Party wasn't originally part of the co
Speaker 1: Intel pro targets, right, part of the FBI targets, but
Speaker 1: by nineteen sixty eight, j Edgar Hoover himself considered them
Speaker 1: to be quote the greatest threat to the internal security
Speaker 1: of the country because he saw them as commis, right,
Speaker 1: as communists, and additionally as people stirring up the pot,
Speaker 1: you know, almost as insurgents. He saw it as a
Speaker 1: potential insurgency.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it goes back to that existential threat to
Speaker 2: the United States because some of the philosophy and some
Speaker 2: of the some of the truth that is being spoken
Speaker 2: within these groups and being televised speaks to some of
Speaker 2: the biggest problems that exist in the country at this
Speaker 2: time from an inequality standpoint, and that's dangerous if you
Speaker 2: get enough people to truly follow and believe, especially if
Speaker 2: you have main parts of this group that are armed. Right,
Speaker 2: I can imagine why jodgre Hoover and some of his
Speaker 2: groups were terrified of this type of organization.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and by nineteen sixty nine, the Panthers were, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the primary targets steered by Hoover, and the
Speaker 1: FBI attempted a number of nefarious strategies to weaken the group.
Speaker 1: The FBI was primarily concerned with a sort of a
Speaker 1: domino effect or an accretion, you know of similar groups
Speaker 1: that got together and said, hey, you're on the same page.
Speaker 1: You also understand the idea or you agree with us
Speaker 1: with his idea. The proletariat right and the class struggle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's all work together. That's dangerous for.
Speaker 1: As long as it lasts. Yeah, yeah, I mean human
Speaker 1: beings have been saying let's work together until one of
Speaker 1: them stabs the other one in the back, like before
Speaker 1: recorded history, probably before Homo sapiens. It's just sort of
Speaker 1: our thing. So the fact that Fred Hampton was, as
Speaker 1: you pointed out, Matt, this enormously compelling, brilliant speaker, this
Speaker 1: unifying force. The fact that he had these capabilities made
Speaker 1: him a target. It put the target on his back
Speaker 1: as far as Uncle Sam was concerned, and especially the
Speaker 1: age of twenty one, Yeah, especially being so young, like
Speaker 1: you said, he's just beginning. And to prevent this growth
Speaker 1: to stop him short, the FBI started surveilling Hampton and
Speaker 1: his associates to the best of their ability. Wire tapping,
Speaker 1: which listening to phone calls, infiltration, They were stealing the
Speaker 1: guy's mail, they were reading his stuff. They attempted extortion,
Speaker 1: they did more. I mean, this is an era of
Speaker 1: domestic security where in this same government agency, the FBI
Speaker 1: wrote letters to doctor Martin Luther King trying to convince
Speaker 1: him to kill himself.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, who, by the way, was assassinated just the
Speaker 2: year prior to when Fred Hampton was killed.
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly. There's an escalation. And at the time this
Speaker 1: may sound like common knowledge to a lot of us
Speaker 1: listening today. At the time, cointelpro was classified.
Speaker 2: Nobody knew what was happening.
Speaker 1: Nobody knew these operations were not public until nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 1: And that's important because it means that during the early
Speaker 1: morning hours December fourth, nineteen sixty nine, there was no
Speaker 1: public scrutiny of the actions that the FBI and its
Speaker 1: proxies local law enforcement chose to take. There was definitely
Speaker 1: not congressional oversight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and even then, this is terrible to even think,
Speaker 2: but even then, at the time if you look at Congress,
Speaker 2: I mean, I can't, I can't say this is my opinion,
Speaker 2: but I don't. I feel like congressional oversight wouldn't do
Speaker 2: much for something like this unfortunately. Yeah, that's just that's
Speaker 2: just my completely my opinion.
Speaker 1: I agree with you. And one thing that this touches
Speaker 1: on is something that's occurred in this government and other
Speaker 1: governments quite often, which is the conflict between elected and
Speaker 1: unelected officials. Right. You know, if you live in this
Speaker 1: country and you are able to vote, you can vote
Speaker 1: for a representative, you can vote for a president. You
Speaker 1: cannot vote for a Supreme Court justice, those nine creepy
Speaker 1: ring rates that run this place, and everybody still pretends
Speaker 1: that's normal. Excuse me, different episodes, Yeah, or like you know,
Speaker 1: people who are on the Federal reserve, people on the
Speaker 1: federal reserve. Yeah, excellent point. So you, you and I
Speaker 1: and anyone listening cannot directly vote for the heads of
Speaker 1: intelligence agencies. That's never going to be on your ballot.
Speaker 1: And presidents can come and go, but that is a different.
Speaker 2: Game, you know what I mean. I'm getting creeped out.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm passionate about this. I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: preaching to the choir here, but it's true. And the
Speaker 1: reason we bring that up is because I want to
Speaker 1: be very clear that there are people in Congress but
Speaker 1: the best of intentions, who had no idea what was
Speaker 1: going on. Yes, you know what I mean. They were
Speaker 1: concerned about their constituency, they were probably they were probably
Speaker 1: mainly concerned with being re elected, if we're being honest,
Speaker 1: but they would not have co signed these sorts of actions,
Speaker 1: right because now, looking back, we have to ask ourselves
Speaker 1: who were the terrorists who was engaging in guerrilla tactics
Speaker 1: who successfully assassinated more people? Oh? I know, I know,
Speaker 1: dang well, I'm just asking. I'm just asking this. This
Speaker 1: stuff comes to a head in nineteen seventy six the
Speaker 1: Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations, which is something you
Speaker 1: hip me to years and years ago, Matt, the Church Committee.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they finally realize in seventy six that the
Speaker 2: FBI was violating the law and had been violating the
Speaker 2: law in several operations under co intel pro. Pretty rough stuff.
Speaker 2: So the stated aim right of co intel pro when
Speaker 2: they go into an office and they're like, okay, well
Speaker 2: this is what contel pro is gonna do. We're going
Speaker 2: to prevent violence, and that's really what it is. But
Speaker 2: some of these the actions that they took during this
Speaker 2: it arguably promoted violence between not not between the FBI
Speaker 2: and other groups, but between the groups that the FBI
Speaker 2: is surveilling under co intel Pro, specifically the Black Panthers
Speaker 2: and several other rival organizations. We mentioned this in our
Speaker 2: video that we made god years ago, I don't even
Speaker 2: know when that was, but we talk about two other groups,
Speaker 2: the United Slaves and the Blackstone Rangers, who are two
Speaker 2: other I say similar groups, but they're very different in
Speaker 2: many ways. But it's these two other groups were then
Speaker 2: having major conflicts with the Black Panthers because of the
Speaker 2: actions taken by the FBI.
Speaker 1: Yes, and the FBI did not want these groups to
Speaker 1: unify in the eyes of the In the eyes of
Speaker 1: the bureau, these groups were similar enough that they should
Speaker 1: be kept apart. They were considered trouble makers right and
Speaker 1: the FBI also worked ardently to prevent prominent BPP members
Speaker 1: from making public appearances. According to Noam Chompsky, who I
Speaker 1: know it can be a controversial author for some people.
Speaker 1: Cointelpro eventually expanded to include political assassinations. The reason we say,
Speaker 1: according to nom Chomski, is because even today you will
Speaker 1: quickly go down a rabbit hole of various you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm going to call them apologetics. I'm gonna call them
Speaker 1: various attempts at rationalization. Okay, of assassination. Okay, the official
Speaker 1: story right here, we can just give you the blow
Speaker 1: by blow back to the death of Fred Hampton. Supporters
Speaker 1: of the party claimed Hampton was assassinated, and that the
Speaker 1: government assassinated Hampton because they feared he could become a visible,
Speaker 1: unifying leader and icon, a figurehead of the black power movement.
Speaker 1: So how did he actually die?
Speaker 2: We'll get to that right after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: And we're back.
Speaker 2: In the early.
Speaker 4: Morning hours of December fourth, nineteen sixty nine, eight Cook
Speaker 4: County Police officers, who were acting under instructions from the
Speaker 4: Cook County States Attorney's Office, approached the West Side Chicago
Speaker 4: headquarters of the Black Panthers. As you might imagine in
Speaker 4: a raid type situation, there was another group of officers
Speaker 4: that approached from the back. Everyone inside was still asleep,
Speaker 4: including Fred Hampton. Inside what was you say headquarters? And
Speaker 4: it was really it was an apartment. It was a flat.
Speaker 4: There were nine people still asleep. This is in the
Speaker 4: very early morning hours before the sun had even risen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's crowded apartment, first floor. Nineteen guns in the apartment,
Speaker 1: more than a thousand rounds of ammunition. The way that
Speaker 1: the Tribune reported the series of events was that this
Speaker 1: was a national hate group known for their revolutionary politics,
Speaker 1: more importantly for shooting police officers. There were cop killers.
Speaker 1: That's how this was reported.
Speaker 4: Right, Is there any sand to that, Like I mean,
Speaker 4: is there maybe some kind of conflict between police and
Speaker 4: Black Panthers that resulted and a police officer being killed,
Speaker 4: and they spun it into these are cop murdering savages.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't have the reporting right here with
Speaker 2: me or the police reporting, but into my mind, for
Speaker 2: the Chicago Tribune to print that for killing cops, I
Speaker 2: would say that at least a few instances occurred.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are claims that there were thirty five police
Speaker 1: officers who were murdered by the Black Panthers and the
Speaker 1: subsequent Black Liberation Army across the sixties, seventies, and eighties.
Speaker 1: So there were cops who did die. They were shot,
Speaker 1: and it's important that we mentioned this. People were dying.
Speaker 1: It's easy and tempting, perhaps for some people to get
Speaker 1: caught in the game of equivocation. Yeah, or to forget
Speaker 1: that there are actual human lives at stake, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. So we can only imagine that of
Speaker 1: the six officers in the back door and the eight
Speaker 1: officers in the front, several of them may have thought
Speaker 1: they were on a mission of dare I say, vengeance? Right, So,
Speaker 1: at about four forty five am, a sergeant Daniel Growth
Speaker 1: knocked on the front door of the apartment. There was
Speaker 1: no answer, so he knocked with his gun and presumably
Speaker 1: shouted yeah. Presumably shouted yeah. Then they busted in the door.
Speaker 1: The next seven minutes of gunfire become one of the
Speaker 1: most intensely debated and disputed incidents of the entire decade.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there was a federal grand jury instigation that found
Speaker 4: that the police fired in the neighborhood of ranging between
Speaker 4: eighty three to ninety shots.
Speaker 2: Yeah, into this apartment.
Speaker 4: And this is a small again, this is an apartment
Speaker 4: in Chicago. This is gonna that would just be chaos.
Speaker 4: I would fear for the lives of the neighbors.
Speaker 1: And again the one of the nineteen guns in the
Speaker 1: apartment owned by the VPP. One shotgun discharged once there
Speaker 1: was one shot fired.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty rough, pretty damning.
Speaker 1: Actually, after the shooting stopped, Fred Hampton was dead at
Speaker 1: twenty one and a party leader from Peoria named Mark
Speaker 1: Clark twenty two was also shot fatally.
Speaker 4: And I believe the grand jury found that he was
Speaker 4: the one who who discharged that one shotgun blast.
Speaker 1: Right, he was as he was set to be security, right,
Speaker 1: And now we returned to William O'Neill, Panther and informant.
Speaker 1: People didn't originally know the extent of his involvement with
Speaker 1: the FBI, isn't that.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, it wasn't until so this occurred. The death
Speaker 2: occurred in nineteen sixty nine, and his role wasn't revealed
Speaker 2: until nineteen seventy three. And yeah, it's pretty rough actually.
Speaker 2: So we mentioned that he was a member of the
Speaker 2: Black Panther Party. He was on the inside working closely
Speaker 2: with Fred Hampton as well as Mark Clark, and he
Speaker 2: was simultaneously serving as an informant for the FBI. He
Speaker 2: would send information to the FBI. And by the way,
Speaker 2: he's a teenager at this time. He's a young guy
Speaker 2: when he's starting out working with these guys.
Speaker 1: It's a tragedy. These people were so young.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Among the things that he sent to the FBI,
Speaker 2: the primary thing I guess that people focus on is
Speaker 2: a floor plan for this apartment that was eventually raided.
Speaker 2: His cover was blown and at one point there I
Speaker 2: believe it was I believe it was seventy three when
Speaker 2: his cover was blown, but I am not completely positive.
Speaker 2: It might have been earlier than that. I do not, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: have that specific information. But he ended up going into
Speaker 2: the Federal Witness Protection Program. We can say it here.
Speaker 2: His name at the time or when he went into
Speaker 2: the program was William Hart, and he moved out to California,
Speaker 2: and then eventually he moved back to Chicago in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty four. And the reason we're talking about O'Neil in
Speaker 2: this way is because in January of nineteen ninety, on
Speaker 2: Martin Luther King Junior Day, he actually took his own
Speaker 2: life by running out into traffic. And we know this
Speaker 2: because he had an uncle named Ben Hurd who was
Speaker 2: with him that day. And his story is told by
Speaker 2: the Chicago Reader and that's what we're reading about here,
Speaker 2: and specifically, this guy ben Heard has some insight into
Speaker 2: O'Neill's life.
Speaker 1: Yes, he learned of O'Neill's work with the FBI shortly
Speaker 1: after the death of Fred Hampton in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: and per ben Heard, O'Neil denied everything that he was
Speaker 1: asked about, and Heard says, I thought about some of
Speaker 1: the things he did and said I asked him, but
Speaker 1: he denied it. And then later O'Neil opened up, told
Speaker 1: his uncle he'd been in trouble for everything from car
Speaker 1: theft to kidnapping and torture and so on and listen,
Speaker 1: pretty heavy things, pretty heavy things. Heard says that his
Speaker 1: nephew told him they had tied someone up and were
Speaker 1: pouring hot water over his head. They're trying to get
Speaker 1: him to do something. So an FBI agent told O'Neil
Speaker 1: he would take care of all of it if he
Speaker 1: turned if he infiltrated the panthers, and Heard believe that
Speaker 1: O'Neill had regrets, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's pretty safe to say.
Speaker 4: So he went on to say he was sorry that
Speaker 4: he did what he ended up doing and that he
Speaker 4: it was his impression that this was an FBI raid
Speaker 4: of the house, But the FBI gave it over to
Speaker 4: the state's attorney and then state police local law enforcement
Speaker 4: took the reins. From there, they killed Fred Hampton and
Speaker 4: in this person's estimation, and made sure that he was dead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a crucial point here. O'Neil, according to his
Speaker 1: own statements before his death, O'Neill thought this was just going.
Speaker 2: To be a raid.
Speaker 1: Maybe people would get arrested for possession of firearms or
Speaker 1: some sort of violation of possession laws. Right, Maybe it
Speaker 1: would have been a drug possession possibly, right. Heck, you know,
Speaker 1: if they were looking for something, maybe it would have
Speaker 1: been violation of the fire code. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, the biggest thing is the firearms charges. You
Speaker 2: probably have sent them to prison on just firearm charges.
Speaker 2: But that's not how it went down.
Speaker 1: Right, So from O'Neill's perspective. Now, as far as we
Speaker 1: know today, O'Neill did not say that the FBI on
Speaker 1: records say that the FBI lied to him, but they
Speaker 1: did say originally that this was simply going to be
Speaker 1: a raid. And he was with his nephew the morning
Speaker 1: after the raid in Hampton's apartment and he saw the
Speaker 1: he saw the aftermath.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so there were papers strown all over the floor,
Speaker 2: blood all over. There was a trail of blood from
Speaker 2: where they the police had dragged Fred's body and William
Speaker 2: O'Neil in this case, Bill, he says, just stood there
Speaker 2: in shock and he never thought it would come to this,
Speaker 2: like all of his involvement with the FBI, like we
Speaker 2: keep saying, he didn't think it would be a massacre.
Speaker 2: And that's only to speak to this person who has
Speaker 2: been i guess reviled throughout history now at this point
Speaker 2: as being the guy that set up Fred Hampton painted
Speaker 2: as Judas. Yeah, and you know, there's two sides of it.
Speaker 2: In a way, he was, but in another way, he
Speaker 2: didn't understand.
Speaker 1: And to be very clear, to be crystal clear, the
Speaker 1: FBI actively conspired to assassinate, or to neutralize, at the
Speaker 1: very least a twenty one year old boy for his
Speaker 1: political beliefs because they saw it as a threat to
Speaker 1: both the economic and the racial or social status quo
Speaker 1: of the United States. This also occurred during the Vietnam era,
Speaker 1: wherein Hampton and many others like him would be lumped
Speaker 1: together as potentially existential threats to the solvency of the nation, right,
Speaker 1: because this is again this stuff sounds so crazy. It
Speaker 1: sounds like people getting in a bubble and getting carried away.
Speaker 1: This bubble was real.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think there was something in the outline here,
Speaker 4: Ben that you didn't end up saying. But our buddies,
Speaker 4: the culture Kings, have a phrase they use where it's
Speaker 4: talking about messing with the money. And that's when the
Speaker 4: government starts really paying attention, you know, when I get
Speaker 4: upsetting the apple cart in a way that affects economics.
Speaker 1: I did put that in and yes, in a shout
Speaker 1: out to Jaikis and Edgar. I didn't originally say it
Speaker 1: because I think we still owe them a song.
Speaker 4: We do, and I'm gonna I'm going to at least
Speaker 4: make the track for this next one. I don't claim
Speaker 4: to be see, but I can definitely make some beats.
Speaker 4: So let's yes, let's I commit to that. You're great
Speaker 4: at that too, Thanks for the gift, fantastic.
Speaker 2: MC, I say put out in twenty twenty just to
Speaker 2: surprise amount of nowhere. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh, and call it hindsight.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and we know they don't listen to the show,
Speaker 4: so it's gonna be abo.
Speaker 1: We should have them back on. I had a lot
Speaker 1: of fun in the Michael Jordan episode.
Speaker 4: Oh I wasn't around for that one, that's right. I
Speaker 4: forgot they were on. Maybe they did listen to the show.
Speaker 4: What am I saying?
Speaker 2: Hey, guys, I was gonna say, you missed out. It
Speaker 2: was actually really great. I'm sure it was.
Speaker 1: They're great people as far as we know. They are
Speaker 1: not elements of co Intel Pro. True, and hopefully either
Speaker 1: of you guys. But it's like witch hunt rules, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if you tell me you're not, that's more evidence that
Speaker 1: you are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you'd have to say no.
Speaker 4: And it's also, I'm sure we've said this before, a
Speaker 4: complete myth that if you ask an undercover cop, if
Speaker 4: they're an undercover cop, they don't have to tell you.
Speaker 1: It's a total myth. They can commit crimes with you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's in my five rules for sure. And people would
Speaker 1: say that's for greater good, And that's the argument, right
Speaker 1: that I'm succeeded in pitching co Intel pro and in
Speaker 1: violating the laws and the rights of US citizens.
Speaker 5: And taking the lives and taking the lives taking the
Speaker 5: one thing that cannot be returned, and to this day,
Speaker 5: officially the FBI, the Justice Department, the Chicago Police Force,
Speaker 5: they reject claims of political skullduggery.
Speaker 1: They say that the raid was unfortunate, it was not
Speaker 1: the ideal outcome, but on their side, it was conducted
Speaker 1: correctly into the letter of the law. We're conducting a
Speaker 1: raid to find illegal firearms to neutralize a threat. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, however, an activist group called the Citizens
Speaker 1: Commissioned to Investigate the FBI stole co intel Pro documents.
Speaker 1: They stole the paperwork from a field office. And this
Speaker 1: is how, this is how co intel Pro became a
Speaker 1: public thing. Had they not conducted that raid, you see
Speaker 1: the parallels here. Have they not conducted that illegal raid,
Speaker 1: then it is possible, if not plausible, that co intel
Speaker 1: Pro would remain a myth and.
Speaker 2: A rumor and a conspiracy theory, an unproven conspiracy theory
Speaker 2: even today.
Speaker 1: Yes, in April of the same year. By the way,
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy one, the FBI officially terminated cointel Pro.
Speaker 1: Yet numerous critics of the US government believe that programs
Speaker 1: like this never really go away. The name's change. But
Speaker 1: like Doctor Manhattan says in Watchmen, nothing nothing ever ends.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, have you guys seen there's a Watchman series
Speaker 4: that's coming to HBO. It looks a lot less shiny
Speaker 4: than the Zack Snyder movie.
Speaker 2: Less shiny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I felt like the Zach.
Speaker 4: Snyder movie was a little like overly.
Speaker 1: Polished every scene of painting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, kind of this one, like what's his name? Rorschach's
Speaker 4: mask is literally just like a sack with kind of
Speaker 4: like you know, well, their prequels, right, I think maybe no,
Speaker 4: I think it's the I don't I don't know. I
Speaker 4: don't think it's.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I don't know that it is.
Speaker 4: I think it's I think it might even be either
Speaker 4: a deeper exploration of the series with more of that,
Speaker 4: because come on, you need more than a movie to
Speaker 4: really like go deep into that book, right, there's so
Speaker 4: much stuff.
Speaker 1: In there that they couldn't put in.
Speaker 2: Dude, I just rewatched it, and he holds up.
Speaker 1: I didn't like it.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I loved it, like it?
Speaker 1: Love it?
Speaker 2: You love this, okay, all right? I don't know, And
Speaker 2: maybe it is just a nostalgia.
Speaker 4: I think the reason for me was that that was
Speaker 4: such a formative graphic. That was the first graphic novel
Speaker 4: I ever read where I was like, oh, I see
Speaker 4: what graphic novels can accomplish, And it was just like
Speaker 4: mind blowing to me. So I felt like it was
Speaker 4: very sacred to me and to see someone try to
Speaker 4: do I felt like it was a valiant effort. But
Speaker 4: I also didn't really care for Zack Snyder's style anyway.
Speaker 1: Alan Moore hated it. Yeah, yeah, Alan Moore is like,
Speaker 1: I don't think he watched.
Speaker 4: He probably didn't even know he he he he uh
Speaker 4: does write excellent comics for fun, but I think it's.
Speaker 1: To support his main hobby is me passion, which is
Speaker 1: just hating stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh geez. It's just interestingly enough here in this show
Speaker 2: is not brought to you by Watchman or HBO. Just
Speaker 2: so you know that if you go to HBO dot
Speaker 2: com slash Watchman, the first thing you see is nothing
Speaker 2: ever ends.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and the little blurb. Oh and Trent Reznor and
Speaker 4: Atticus Ross doing the music. That's pretty dope. And it's
Speaker 4: a show run by Damon Lindeloff, who I believe did Lost.
Speaker 1: That's correct, along with jj Abrams and unlike doctor Manhattan's quote,
Speaker 1: unlike his observation in the fictional world of Watchman, this
Speaker 1: love it or hate it is the reality in which
Speaker 1: we have collectively lived for the span of this episode,
Speaker 1: and some things do end, namely this episode, but not
Speaker 1: our show. We hope that you enjoyed this cursory journey
Speaker 1: into the murky murky, morally problematic, ethically bankrupt world of
Speaker 1: domestic intelligence. We hope that, regardless of whether or not
Speaker 1: you agree with the views of various groups mentioned in
Speaker 1: this show, we hope that you can agree that the
Speaker 1: loss of any human life is a tragedy. We also
Speaker 1: want to know if you think Cointelpro really ended, do
Speaker 1: you think it's still around, and if so, in what iteration?
Speaker 1: Do you have a story or a particularly suspicious death
Speaker 1: that you think deserves more attention. Let us know. You
Speaker 1: can find us on Facebook, you can find us on Instagram,
Speaker 1: you can find us on Twitter. We are conspiracy stuff
Speaker 1: at any number of those, and you can meet the
Speaker 1: best part of the show, your fellow listeners on our
Speaker 1: Facebook community page. Here's where it gets crazy. Matt will not,
Speaker 1: for various reasons, on sketchy reasons, reveal his personal Instagram Noel,
Speaker 1: and I will I am at Ben.
Speaker 4: Bowling and I'm at Embryonic Insider. And if I'm not mistaken, Matt,
Speaker 4: you sort of dropped a few clues last time. You're
Speaker 4: gonna keep it on the DL like that.
Speaker 2: I am at an egg shaped object, the Twitter egg.
Speaker 1: You're just the Twitter me, the whole anonymous Twitter user.
Speaker 1: But what if somebody doesn't care for the Internet, you guys.
Speaker 4: Well then I don't know how you're getting by in
Speaker 4: life these days.
Speaker 1: But no, you know what, that's not true.
Speaker 4: There are ways you can there's telephony telophany to tellophany, remember.
Speaker 2: You guys know, telophany, telophany, telophany jones, that's what.
Speaker 1: They used to call it.
Speaker 4: You guys back in the day, remember when, like the
Speaker 4: early days of the Internet, where there would be like
Speaker 4: a telephone teleophony suite in a like Prodigy or something
Speaker 4: where you can make phone calls through the computer.
Speaker 1: It was crazy phony literally phony web.
Speaker 2: And that's the end of this classic episode. If you
Speaker 2: have any any thoughts or questions about this episode, you
Speaker 2: can get into contact with us in a number of
Speaker 2: different ways. One of the best is to give us
Speaker 2: a call. Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK.
Speaker 2: If you don't want to do that, you can send
Speaker 2: us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3: We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
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