Pod Insights The Why Files: Operation Podcast 612: The Dark Alliance: CIA and DARPA's Hidden War on Citizens (COMPILATION) About this episode The agencies tasked with defending America have a shocking secret history of attacking its own people. DARPA developed Agent Orange that poisoned countless veterans, while the CIA conducted brutal mind control experiments through MK-Ultra, dosing unsuspecting citizens with LSD and worse. From Operation Gladio's false flag terrorism to domestic surveillance programs targeting activists and journalists, declassified documents reveal decades of government crimes hidden behind national security claims. These operations cost thousands of American lives, yet almost no one faced consequences. The real conspiracy isn't what they're hiding - it's what they've already admitted to doing.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BKowVsgjPM&t=1457s
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Transcript 40,043 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:31 AJ Gentile? Hey, thanks for checking out another compilation. I'm especially grateful that you clicked because this video is gonna be demonetized and suppressed, and that's because half the episodes in this compilation are what YouTube calls "not suitable for all advertisers," so, thank you. The first episode is...I mean, talking about starting off with a banger. This is The Dark Side of DARPA.
0:58 Speaker 05 On The Y-Files, you walk a line between exploring wild conspiracies and keeping the audience grounded in facts. Have you ever stumbled on a piece of information that made you stop and think, "This is bigger than I wanna touch"? This sounds like our breakfast conversation. And if so, what made you decide to hold back?
1:21 AJ Gentile? The one episode that really got me emotional was, I was doing The Dark Side of DARPA, and I went into that...everyone knows DARPA and their projects and their science going back to, whatever, 40s, 50s, 60s. But as I was going through the research, I found the connection between DARPA and Agent Orange and Agent Purple and all of that, all the Vietnam chemicals. And I got very emotional about that because my father-in-law suffers from everything, every illness that you can have from Agent Orange.
1:55 Speaker 05 Was he a Vietnam vet?
1:56 AJ Gentile? He was, Air Force. Yeah, this is an emotional episode. This is the only episode that I completely finished editing and...
2:08 AJ Gentile? I thought, "I don't want to upload this." I mean, there's been plenty of episodes, pretty much everyone in this compilation, that I've been uncomfortable with, like, not so much worried for my safety, but worried that I'd get a phone call, or a knock on the door, or an audit, which I got. But this one, I finished, and I said, "It's too dark, it's too emotional, it's too controversial." But it became important to me, very personal, so... Dark Side of DARPA.
3:01 AJ Gentile? In the early days of the space race, the Soviet Union racked up a lot of firsts. Sputnik, the first satellite. Leica the Dog, the first animal in space. Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman. Zon 5, the first spacecraft to the moon. Meanwhile, America's space program lagged, plagued by setback after setback. There were some successes, but not enough to keep pace with the Soviets. America was still planning its first satellite while Sputnik circled the Earth. Then Sputnik 2 went up. American citizens were terrified. "What if the Russians put weapons in space? Maybe they already have." Paranoia was starting to become hysteria.
3:45 AJ Gentile? President Eisenhower was under pressure to act, and to act fast. The United States government knew what it had to do. Create an organization to develop the most technologically advanced military systems in the world. And just three months after Sputnik 2 was launched, the Advanced Research Project Agency, or ARPA, was born. Later, ARPA became DARPA. The "D" stands for "defense." Because DARPA would be both a sword and a shield, creating offensive weapons and defensive systems. No project was too expensive, and no program was too immoral. DARPA's secret research would cost many lives, but sacrifices had to be made for the sake of security.
4:27 AJ Gentile? But after all these years, it's time to ask, who are they really protecting?
4:42 AJ Gentile? Here's the scene. You're driving. It's late and the road ahead is dark. You make a turn and then another. You finally realize you're lost. If this were the not-too-distant past, you'd pull over and grab your Thomas Guide.
4:54 Speaker 06 Yeah, for you kids, that's a map.
4:56 AJ Gentile? And if you didn't have a map, you'd try to find a gas station or 7-Eleven to ask for directions. Then your fate would be in the hands of the guy working the night shift.
5:05 Speaker 06 Who may or may not be a serial killer.
5:08 AJ Gentile? Right. But now, all the answers are in your pocket. You tell your phone the address, and GPS guides the way. Some cars will even drive for you while you sit back, relax, and listen to your favorite podcast.
5:20 Speaker 06 Oh, you know, The White Files is also a podcast.
5:23 AJ Gentile? No plugs yet, please. We save those for the end.
5:26 Speaker 06 Sorry, sorry. I could sniff out a plug opportunity like a travel pig.
5:34 AJ Gentile? The technology I described that got you to your destination, it was created by DARPA, all of it. And there's a lot more of DARPA in your pocket than you think. Your cellphone uses microprocessors designed by DARPA. They also created the batteries to power those microprocessors. Your phone uses wireless technology made possible by DARPA. The touchscreen and the microphone came from DARPA. Voice recognition and GPS come from DARPA. And of course, all this data transfer happens using the Internet, which was created by DARPA.
6:07 Speaker 06 Ah, excuse me, if I may.
6:10 AJ Gentile? Is this gonna be a highly predictable and hack joke about how Al Gore said he created the Internet?
6:15 Speaker 06 I yield the rest of my time, thank you.
6:22 AJ Gentile? Yes, DARPA created the Internet. Well, technically, they were still ARPA then. Remember, the "D" was added in 1972. In the 1960s, researchers were trying to figure out a way to ensure reliable communications in case of a nuclear attack. Traditional telephone lines and radio transmitters would be the first to go.
6:42 AJ Gentile? They came up with a radical idea: packet switching.
6:45 Speaker 06 Nah, not all of us speak nerd. Some of us went to our prom instead of staying home to write code on our Apple IIa.
6:54 AJ Gentile? Well, packet switching is not as complicated as it sounds. Here's how it works. You want to send a message or a file from New York to LA, but what if half the country's lines are down? So you break that message into small chunks called packets and send each one independently over the network. On the receiving end, the message waits for all the packets to arrive and then reassembles them back into the original message or file. Each packet will independently try to find the most efficient route through the network at any given moment. The Internet still works this way. Most people didn't use the Internet until the late 1990s or early 2000s. Some nerds like me were using our phones to dial bulletin board systems in the late 1970s and early 80s.
7:37 AJ Gentile? But this new network called ARPANET was conceived in 1966.
7:41 Speaker 06 Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You were online all the way back then? When you were like 12 or 13 years old?
7:46 AJ Gentile? Yep, I was even younger than that when I first got online.
7:49 Speaker 06 And you're proud of this?
7:51 AJ Gentile? Well, yeah, shouldn't I be?
7:52 Speaker 06 Did you even know girls existed?
7:54 AJ Gentile? Yes, I knew they existed.
7:55 Speaker 06 Ah, now I see.
7:57 AJ Gentile? What?
7:57 Speaker 06 Girls didn't know you existed.
7:59 AJ Gentile? I was a late bloomer.
8:01 Speaker 06 Boomer?
8:01 AJ Gentile? Bloomer.
8:02 Speaker 06 What'd I say?
8:06 AJ Gentile? Under DARPA's guidance, TCP/IP became the universal language for online computers. They also developed the concept of email and invented domain names. DARPA worked with UC Berkeley to create the BSD Unix operating system. BSD Unix heavily influenced the operating system you're using right now, no matter what OS it is. It started with DARPA. Now, these technologies may seem modern, but DARPA sent the first Internet message in 1969. Now, this shouldn't be surprising. DARPA technology is said to be about 20 years ahead of civilian tech. Like self-driving cars, DARPA built one in 1984. DARPA had GPS in 1973.
8:48 AJ Gentile? Microprocessors, motion sensors, and wireless communication? DARPA had these decades ago. But eventually, these innovations became available to the rest of us. DARPA's technology has made our lives so much better, it's easy to forget that those innovations weren't originally meant to improve lives. They were meant to end them.
9:17 AJ Gentile? It's the middle of the night, and you're lying prone on top of a dusty building in some far corner of the world. You hug your 50-caliber Barrett sniper rifle. It's pitch dark, but your light-gathering, high-magnification scope gives you full visibility of the alley 1,200 yards away. A door opens. It's your target.
9:38 AJ Gentile? Right on schedule. You hold your breath and put your finger on the trigger.
9:45 AJ Gentile? Suddenly, a van appears. Your target leaps in and speeds off.
9:50 AJ Gentile? Years ago, he'd escaped. Mission failed. Not now. You fire, confident in DARPA's latest innovation: a self-guided bullet. With optical sensors and real-time guidance, it maneuvers mid-flight, locked onto its target. Skilled snipers engage targets up to 1,300 yards away or more. The farthest confirmed kill: 2.2 miles by Canadian Special Forces in 2017. Impressive, but DARPA's Extreme Accuracy Task Ordinance, or EXACTO Bullet, hits targets five or six miles away. Maybe farther. DARPA keeps the details a secret. Many DARPA projects seem like science fiction. Some like magic.
10:33 AJ Gentile? Scepter lets you see through walls. The Mojave Project bends light, making objects invisible. DARPA's Engineering Living Materials Program uses living fungus as a construction material. Structures will no longer be built. They'll be grown.
10:50 Speaker 07 Instead of shipping finished materials, we can ship precursors and rapidly grow them on-site using local resources. And since the materials will be alive, they'll be able to respond to changes in their environment and heal themselves in response to damage.
11:07 AJ Gentile? DARPA likes fungus, but it loves bugs. Project Insect Allies modifies flying insects to attack crops. These insects resist disease and repair each other's injuries in the field. Then there's the Hybrid Insect Microelectrical Mechanical Systems, or HIMENs. This project, along with Project Dragonfly, creates miniature flying cyborgs. Beetles, moths, and dragonflies become undetectable spies with cybernetic implants and solar-powered guidance systems. They can be controlled remotely or operate autonomously using AI. They've created remote-controlled rats. DARPA trains bees to find landmines. They're developing claytronics, programmable shape-shifting matter.
11:52 AJ Gentile? They're developing nuclear-powered spacecraft, autonomous vehicles and weapons of all kinds. DARPA's technology is meant to keep people off the battlefield. Why risk a battalion of human soldiers when you can deploy a fleet of drones? But sometimes you need boots on the ground, and that means people with guns. But DARPA has a better idea: Don't give a soldier a weapon, turn him into one.
12:25 AJ Gentile? The human body is an amazing machine. Our musculoskeletal system allows us to do gymnastics, lift heavy weights, and walk long distances. Still, our bodies have limitations. DARPA is developing technology to overcome these limitations. The goal is to increase strength, endurance, alertness, and the overall health of soldiers. DARPA's Warrior Web Project is one of several exoskeleton programs in the works. It's an exosuit, lightweight and flexible, similar to a scuba suit. But this is a smart suit. Using machine learning and onboard sensors, the suit knows when and where to firm up to augment muscles. It performs its function then becomes flexible again.
13:09 AJ Gentile? DARPA has also developed hard exoskeletons, just like you've seen in movies like Aliens and Edge of Tomorrow. These exoskeletons not only increase strength and endurance, but they're modular. They can be equipped with all kinds of weapons. There's even a jetpack in development. The Talosuit turns a soldier into a real-life Iron Man. It's bulletproof and weaponized. It increases strength, speed, and endurance. It monitors the user's vital signs and has sensors that analyze the entire environment around them. The Tactical Augmented Reality, or TAR, project, is a headset that overlays information over your normal vision. This gives soldiers real-time information like displaying maps, enemy locations,
13:52 AJ Gentile? and other vital data right in their line of sight. Project Z-Man was inspired by geckos. DARPA is creating a material that would let soldiers climb walls without ropes or ladders. Now, everyone knows the Air Force gives their pilots amphetamines.
14:07 Speaker 06 I feel the need, the need for speed.
14:11 AJ Gentile? The need for speed. Yep. They literally take illegal narcotics to stay alert. But the Continuous Assisted Performance, or CAP, program is focused on keeping soldiers awake, alert, and effective for up to seven days straight without side effects. DARPA's Brain Initiative program connects soldiers' brains to computers. They can control drones and other systems with thought. They can truly multitask, where one part of the brain is operating a drone, while the other part of the brain is analyzing the area looking for targets. In the early 2000s, DARPA started exploring ways of giving humans superhuman abilities without equipment. This is DARPA's Bio-Revolution program.
14:55 AJ Gentile? They studied how animals attack, defend themselves, and regenerate from injuries.
15:01 AJ Gentile? DARPA felt that if they could find those answers, these abilities could be transferred to humans.
15:08 AJ Gentile? They could give soldiers improved senses, perfect eyesight, and limb regeneration without external devices. Now, to do that, you'd have to alter human DNA. So DARPA is exploring CRISPR-gene editing technology. CRISPR can snip out unwanted genes and insert new ones. CRISPR could accelerate healing. Injuries that might have sidelined soldiers for weeks or months could heal in days. CRISPR technology has already sparked a revolution in medicine, with the potential to cure genetic disorders and even combat aging.
15:40 Speaker 06 Link below and how CRISPR and AI are about to end the whole world.
15:44 AJ Gentile? Yeah, that episode is scary. But it's interesting, and it's real. Now, some of these projects have failed, and some haven't, and some are still in development. I have no doubt that DARPA will turn soldiers into superhuman weapons eventually, but they haven't yet. So how do you put boots on the ground and keep humans off the battlefield? DARPA's answer? Killer robots.
16:12 AJ Gentile? DARPA started working on robotics in the 1960s. Its first project was Shaky, the first mobile robot to reason about its actions. Shaky wasn't sleek or fast, but it was a start.
16:24 Speaker 06 Ah, you know, I feel like if you name your project Shaky, you're kind of setting yourself up to fail.
16:31 AJ Gentile? Well, since then, DARPA's robotics has come a long way. In the early 2000s, DARPA launched the Big Dog program. In partnership with Boston Dynamics, these four-legged robots can carry heavy loads and navigate difficult terrain. They can also be outfitted with weapons like sniper rifles or machine guns. The LS-3 can follow soldiers autonomously and carry up to 400 pounds of gear. And then, there's the Atlas robot. And now, we're getting serious. Atlas was launched in 2013, and you've probably seen various versions of this robot over the years. Atlas could run, jump, and navigate obstacle courses. A couple of years ago, Atlas used AI to teach itself how to walk, and then run,
17:15 AJ Gentile? and then do gymnastics.
17:17 Speaker 06 Ah, you humans realize it's only a matter of time before these things take over and enslave you, right?
17:23 AJ Gentile? Uh, some of us realize it. Investigative journalist Annie Jacobson has covered DARPA for years. She says there's no doubt that the Pentagon is investing heavily in robotics.
17:36 Speaker 06 DARPA's plan through 2038 states without question that the Pentagon is moving towards robotic warfare. They want to have hunter-killer drones that can swim, crawl, walk, run. Drones that can fly 13,000 miles an hour, which is 22 times faster than a commercial jet, to get to a target really quickly.
18:02 AJ Gentile? Ballistic missiles have limitations. Speeds over Mach 20 require too much power and make the rockets dangerously hot. But thanks to DARPA, that's no longer a problem. Missiles can now travel at hypersonic speed without overheating. A target 500 miles away can be destroyed in six minutes. Weapons like these certainly keep humans off the battlefield. But DARPA is going to take it one step further. It's creating the technology to wage war without needing humans at all.
18:40 AJ Gentile? Remember how DARPA is always about 20 years ahead of civilian technology, maybe more? Well, as early as the 1960s, DARPA started developing computers that can learn independently. In the 1980s, DARPA launched the Strategic Computing Initiative, or SCI. The goal of SCI was to create military strategies by running simulations and learning from them.
19:02 Speaker 06 Ah, you're describing War Games.
19:18 AJ Gentile? War Games was originally going to be a science fiction story about a dying scientist who's saved by a kid genius. But then the writers met Peter Schwartz from the Stanford Research Institute, or SRI.
19:29 Speaker 06 Yes, SRI. I know those guys.
19:32 AJ Gentile? You do? SRI has been the launchpad for many secret government programs. I've talked about them a lot on this channel. And they've long been connected to the CIA, NSA, and DARPA. Well, Schwartz was fascinated by a new computer subculture called hackers. He suggested that they make a movie about a kid hacking a military supercomputer.
19:52 Speaker 06 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was called the Big Mac.
19:55 AJ Gentile? No, Whopper. War Operation Plan Response.
19:58 Speaker 06 Oh, right. I'd still rather have a Big Mac.
20:01 AJ Gentile? Me too.
20:03 Speaker 00 Well, the Whopper spends all its time thinking about World War III. 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It plays an endless series of war games using all available information on the state of the world.
20:20 AJ Gentile? At the very same time that this movie came out, DARPA was working on its own military supercomputer. Here's how they described it.
20:28 Speaker 07 The machine envisioned by SC would run 10 billion instructions per second to see, hear, speak, and think like a human. The degree of integration required would rival that achieved by the human brain, the most complex instrument known to man.
20:45 AJ Gentile? If you haven't caught on by now, we're talking about artificial intelligence. Today, AI is everywhere and accessible to everyone. And it feels like it came out of nowhere, but it didn't. It came out of DARPA. As of today, 70% of DARPA's projects use or are focused on AI and machine learning. DARPA started working on AI in the 1960s. They built their first AI system, a speech recognition computer, in the 1970s. In 1983, the Strategic Computing Initiative project received billions for AI research. Then, in the 1990s, DARPA launched another supercomputing project. It was, and still is, highly secret. It's affecting you right now.
21:30 AJ Gentile? And once I tell you what it is, you're not gonna like it.
21:38 AJ Gentile? Now it's time to get this video demonetized and censored.
21:41 Speaker 06 Yeah, boy.
21:42 AJ Gentile? Yeah, and if I'm not on a list by now, I'm about to be.
21:45 Speaker 06 No, they're watching you, human.
21:47 AJ Gentile? Yeah, I really don't want to talk about this. Honestly, I'm about to put everything that I have at risk.
21:51 Speaker 06 Uh, you're actually scaring me right now.
21:54 AJ Gentile? I'm scared too.
21:57 AJ Gentile? Here we go.
22:13 Speaker 02 Welcome. Like the steam engine which sparked the industrial revolution of the late 1700s, the internet is changing everything it touches. And at the cutting edge of the revolution is Wall Street.
22:26 AJ Gentile? So we are now 6 and 3/4 points above fair value. The early 1990s was the beginning of the tech boom. Internet startups were getting millions in investments.
22:40 AJ Gentile? And they had access to vast resources and vast amounts of data. Personal data. The intelligence community wanted to gather this data to create a digital fingerprint of everyone using the internet. If they could identify bad actors, criminals, terrorists, whatever, they would compare that fingerprint against others. They called this the "birds of a feather" approach. If Joe's a bad guy and Bob's a bad guy, and they both go to certain websites, then other people visiting those same websites were potential bad guys, so let's track them.
23:11 Speaker 06 So, surveillance?
23:12 AJ Gentile? Yes.
23:13 Speaker 06 Of Americans?
23:14 AJ Gentile? Yes.
23:15 Speaker 06 Legal?
23:15 AJ Gentile? No. Well, officially illegal as of 2010. But the law was murky in the 1990s. And for the intelligence community, murky means opportunity.
23:28 AJ Gentile? Still, the intelligence agencies didn't have the ability to manage all this data. But they knew people were out there working on it, and they were all looking for funding. But if you're the NSA, or CIA, or DARPA, you can't drop by an internet startup and ask them to build you an illegal digital surveillance program.
23:44 Speaker 06 Yeah, it's kind of a bad look.
23:46 AJ Gentile? It is, but it also gives away the game. Surveillance is only valuable if the target doesn't know they're being watched. So this technology would need to be funded privately and quietly. So in 1994, the Highlands Forum was founded. Ever hear of the Highlands Forum? You probably haven't, and they like it that way.
24:08 AJ Gentile? The Highlands Forum, or Highlands Group, was formed as a think tank, a bridge between technology companies and the Pentagon. The Highlands Forum is an invitation-only group of government officials, academics, and executives from tech and defense companies. Their discussions are private and off the record, operating under the Chatham House Rule, meaning members can disclose information from the meetings as long as it doesn't harm anybody, but they can never reveal who said it, not ever.
24:39 AJ Gentile? Although hardly anyone knows about the Highlands Forum, the group is highly influential on US defense policy, especially regarding technology. And they're a private organization. No auditing, no oversight, no Freedom of Information Act requirements. They're a black box, the perfect conduit for transactions you want to keep off the books. So, tech is booming, data is flowing, and we've got our think tank to connect us with the people capturing the data. Now we need the money to fund them.
25:11 AJ Gentile? That same year, the Massive Digital Data Systems, or MDDS, program was launched. MDDS would fund scientists, researchers, and companies who worked with big data sets. The Highlands Forum would help identify, facilitate, and coordinate these transactions. To keep these transactions private and secret, the MDDS moved money through unclassified mainstream agencies like the National Science Foundation. Computer scientists were getting millions in grants from the NSF, totally normal. They didn't know who was really behind the money. And MDDS was highly compartmentalized. It had tons of projects and departments. Nobody knew what anyone else was doing, or who was even in charge. And this was by design.
25:53 AJ Gentile? But the overall program was managed by the CIA, NSA, and DARPA. So, we've got black-budget money flowing through the NSF. And we've got our private organization, the Highlands Forum, looking for opportunities. So the word goes out to researchers in academia. If you can handle big data, we'll give you big money. Then, a promising project emerged. Two Stanford graduate students working on a search engine made a breakthrough.
26:23 Speaker 03 Priceline Negotiator! It's me, the... Priceline Negotiator! We don't need the jingle twice. What about a third time? Stop it. This is about vacation inflation, and how Priceline negotiates amazing deals on hotels, flights, and rental cars. Seems like they just started. Yeah, but I didn't mention that you can save up to 60% off hotels in the Priceline app. Time to read the tagline! Fine. No one deals more deals than... Priceline! Please stop. Priceline! Touche. Priceline! Priceline!
26:58 AJ Gentile? In the early 90s, searching the internet was difficult. Popular engines like AltaVista and Lycos produced hit-or-miss results. Searching hiking gear would show pages mentioning hiking, or gear, often irrelevant blog posts or articles. Users had to scroll through pages of useless results. It took forever, and I remember it well. Two Stanford students developed a system that changed everything.
27:27 AJ Gentile? Their automated web crawling system identified a webpage's context, not just the text. Then, pages were ranked based on relevance to specific queries. Pages actually discussing hiking gear would rank higher for that query. High-traffic pages and pages with lots of incoming links ranked even higher. These were signals to the algorithm that a page was a good match for that query. Using this search engine felt like magic. Usually, the first or second result was exactly what you were looking for. Somehow, it knew. The system used an optimization technique called association rule mining, or query flocks. This assumes birds of a feather stick together, meaning people searching specific keywords
28:12 AJ Gentile? tended to click the same result. Query flocks worked with people, too. The search engine learned that people with similar online habits search for similar things. If you searched "hiking gear," the system assumed you liked outdoor activities, and were probably within a certain age group. And the more you used the search engine, the more it learned about you. So your searches always gave you relevant results. Using information you willingly provided, these students had developed a method to create your digital fingerprint: jackpot. The CIA, NSA, and DARPA learned about this project, and through the National Science
28:57 AJ Gentile? Foundation, the MDDS funded it. If you haven't guessed by now, those two students were Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and the search engine was Google. You won't find MDDS in Google's origin story, but this is public, unclassified information. It's just hard to find. In Brin and Page's famous 1998 research paper, "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine," they thanked DARPA for their support. You can see this for yourself. It's on Page 16, Section 7, under acknowledgements. Now, there's a lot more to this rabbit hole. The connection between intelligence agencies and technology companies is so-
29:37 Speaker 06 Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on, hang on.
29:39 AJ Gentile? What?
29:40 Speaker 06 Pop quiz.
29:41 AJ Gentile? Go ahead.
29:42 Speaker 06 How do you make your living?
29:44 AJ Gentile? YouTube.
29:45 Speaker 06 And who owns YouTube?
29:47 AJ Gentile? Google.
29:48 Speaker 06 Right. Bye-bye, channel. Now would be a good time to ask for Patreon support.
29:53 AJ Gentile? I don't do plugs until the end of the episode.
29:55 Speaker 06 Make an exception. We're in the deep water now.
29:59 AJ Gentile? He might be right. Truly and honestly. I won't know until it's too late. But telling you this story might have been a terrible mistake. So yes, please go to patreon.com/theyfiles. I don't know if we will, but we might need your help. Anyway, this video isn't about Google. It's about DARPA. Specifically, the dark side of DARPA. And it's about to get a whole lot darker.
30:31 AJ Gentile? When John F. Kennedy took office in 1961, America had allies everywhere. Cuba, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iran, Lebanon, and many others. But the Soviet Union was fueling insurrections against US-friendly governments. Kennedy promised to stop the spread of communism. But the Soviets were pouring billions into military technology, rocket and missile systems, even space exploration. JFK was committed to keeping pace. He wanted more resources in science and technology. He modernized the military and doubled DARPA's budget. And the timing couldn't be better. The global Cold War had evolved into regional proxy wars with the Soviets.
31:14 AJ Gentile? A new type of warfare was being fought: guerrilla warfare. Old military strategies wouldn't work. The situation in Vietnam was especially bad. The Vietcong were hidden under the thick jungle canopy. You can't kill an enemy that you can't see. DARPA proposed a solution: Project Agile. It was pitched to Kennedy as both a scientific and military endeavor. Kennedy signed off immediately. The first phase was called Operation Ranch Hand. Its purpose was to clear the jungle. DARPA developed the Rainbow Herbicides, named for their container colors, to kill the foliage. Agent Purple was first, then Green, then Pink. DARPA was combining different herbicides, defoliants, and toxins,
31:59 AJ Gentile? looking for the perfect formula to destroy Vietcong cover. Agent Orange was the winner. Millions of gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed over miles of jungle every day. Leaves fell from trees almost immediately. Another application, and the trees died.
32:17 AJ Gentile? Next, Project Agile targeted farms. Agent Orange could destroy miles of crops in a day. They asked South Vietnamese President Diem if he knew which farms were Viet Cong and which belonged to innocent civilians. He said yes, he knew, and he didn't care. If they weren't traitors yet, they would be soon. Kill them all.
32:37 AJ Gentile? Now, the US didn't want to do this, but it only had a few hundred military advisers in Vietnam at this time. They didn't want to send more. Better to sacrifice North Vietnamese farmers than US Marines. So it was done. Guilty or innocent, friend or foe, if you were a North Vietnamese farmer, you were targeted. Your crops were destroyed and your soil was poisoned. Replanting was impossible. Agent Orange's effects were instant and devastating. And nobody knew it was only the beginning.
33:17 AJ Gentile? As the Vietnam War escalated, so did the use of Agent Orange under DARPA's Project Agile. Project Agile used other tactics. DARPA contractors included social scientists and experts in human psychology. Propaganda spread through leaflets, loudspeakers, and media control. Subliminal technology kept people in heightened emotional states, from minor discomfort to absolute terror.
33:40 Speaker 06 Subliminal warfare, mind control, link down, uh, down the alley, Sally.
33:46 AJ Gentile? Psychological warfare teams targeted villages, turning neighbor against neighbor. Civilians were forced into strategic hamlets for their safety. Four million people were relocated against their will. Meanwhile, soldiers complained of headaches, nausea, stinging eyes, and rashes. Agent Orange did more than clear jungle and kill crops. It tortured people for life.
34:10 AJ Gentile? Thousands exposed to Agent Orange developed cancer. Children were born with defects. Agent Orange caused reproductive problems like infertility and miscarriages. Heart disease and diabetes increased. Agent Orange was first used in 1962. In 1965, scientists discovered it contained dioxin, a highly toxic compound that causes cancer and birth defects. They kept using it. In 1967, a study proved dioxin causes birth defects even at low concentrations. They kept using it. In 1969, a Department of Defense report acknowledged Agent Orange's severe health risks. They kept using it.
34:53 AJ Gentile? Public outcry forced President Nixon to stop the use of Agent Orange in 1970. They kept using it. They stopped spraying the following year, 1971.
35:06 AJ Gentile? Now even in war, there are rules. POWs must be treated humanely. Medical staff and facilities are off limits. Humanitarian aid must be allowed. Breaking these rules is a war crime. In 1907, the Hague Convention banned the use of poison in war. The US signed the treaty. Agent Orange was poison. That's what herbicides are. So was using Agent Orange a war crime? No. The United States said Agent Orange wasn't a poison, it was an herbicide. The treaty didn't specifically mention herbicides.
35:38 Speaker 06 Oh, that's a lawyer loophole, bullsh-
35:43 AJ Gentile? In 1925, the Geneva Protocol banned the use of chemical weapons. The US signed this treaty. But Agent Orange was a chemical. Of the 12 companies producing Agent Orange, the primary manufacturer was the Dow Chemical Company. The word "chemical" is in the company's name. So is using Agent Orange a war crime? Nope. The United States said Agent Orange wasn't a chemical, it was an herbicide.
36:07 Speaker 06 Whoa, whoa, wait, how is that even possible?
36:09 AJ Gentile? It's not. In 1949, the Geneva Conventions established that civilians and their property must not be intentionally targeted. Only combatants and military targets were allowed. The US signed this treaty. But civilians and their farms were intentionally targeted with Agent Orange. So is using it a war crime? No.
36:32 AJ Gentile? The United States said the intent was to disrupt the enemy's logistical support and visibility, not cause direct harm to people. In other words, it was an accident. So what about the destruction of plants and trees on civilian land? Those weren't military targets. Isn't this a war crime? No. The United States said it was a military necessity to defoliate the area in order to deny the enemy cover, which makes trees, any trees, anywhere, a military target. What about destroying civilian crops? Again, the US only intended to destroy crops of the enemy, not civilians. It was unintentional, so no war crime. In 1977, the Geneva Conventions were amended to specifically ban the use of herbicides
37:16 AJ Gentile? and reinforce civilian protection. The US signed this new treaty, but still denied any liability for the damage caused by Agent Orange. However, in 1984, US veterans sued the chemical companies, who settled for $180 million. But the settlement was to support veterans, not an admission of guilt. In 2004, Jill Montgomery, speaking for the Monsanto company, one of the major suppliers of Agent Orange, she set the record straight.
37:45 Speaker 02 We're sympathetic with people who believe they've been injured and understand their concern to find the cause, but reliable scientific evidence indicates that Agent Orange is not the cause of serious long-term health effects.
38:01 AJ Gentile? In 1991, finally, the VA started providing benefits to vets exposed to Agent Orange, but the US still denies liability. My father-in-law served in Vietnam. He was exposed to Agent Orange. He's watching, so I won't list his illnesses, but he suffered almost all of them. So in 1991, he applied for his benefits. And I'll admit, the government kept its word. He did receive his benefits. In 2021, it took 30 years. Like so many vets, when his country needed him, he didn't hesitate. But when he needed his country, they said, "Take a number, get in line, and hope you're still alive by the time we call your name."
38:46 AJ Gentile? Do I sound angry? That's because I am.
38:58 AJ Gentile? Entre 1955 y 1975, 2,7 millones de personas fueron desplegadas a Vietnam. 58,000 muertos, 300,000 heridos, 3,000 desaparecidos o prisioneros de guerra, 1,500 todavía desaparecidos. Eso es trágico, pero es mucho peor. La agencia de la ONU estimula que 300,000 a 400,000 veteranos pueden haber muerto de enfermedades causadas por la exposición a Agent Orange. Puede haber. A esta hora... A esta hora, ninguna persona, agencia, empresa o gobierno ha admitido ningún wrongdoing o asumido ninguna responsabilidad por las millones de vidas destruidas por Agent Orange. Ahora, las personas ordinarias como nosotros tenemos tantas reglas que tenemos que seguir.
39:42 AJ Gentile? No acelerar, ver las pantalones de la mamá antes de que ella llegue en un avión. Pagar tus impuestos, aunque estemos a la hora de robarlo y desperdiciar tu dinero. Lleva un arma, dispará a esas personas, haga lo que te dicen. Si rompemos la ley, el gobierno tomará nuestro dinero, tomará nuestra propiedad, forzaremos a nosotros a trabajar o nos encerraremos en una cárcel. Todo depende del crimen, así que seguimos la ley. Pero si eres una gran empresa de química o una agencia gubernamental, no te preocupes por la ley, puedes salir con el asesinato.
40:18 AJ Gentile? Necesitaba un minuto. La historia de DARPA es difícil de desbaratar, y eso es porque la mayoría de ello es verdad. Lo que sabemos sobre los proyectos de DARPA provienen de ellos. Sus sitios web y el canal de YouTube oficial comparten abiertamente información. Tienen un podcast llamado "Voices de DARPA". Incluso los expertos encubriendo DARPA, Annie Jacobson y Sharon Weinberger, obtienen su información de la agencia sobre la que escriben. Cuando Jacobson hace un discurso, escribe un libro o aparece en una entrevista sobre DARPA, ella no está compartiendo información clasificada. Ella no está especulando, ella está reportando. Ella nunca afirma saber algo que no podemos averiguar por nosotros mismos. But still, most information is secret. What we know about DARPA is what they want us to know. There's no transparency, none.
41:01 AJ Gentile? Also, DARPA is exempt from laws that other government agencies have to follow, specifically about hiring practices, managing personnel, and managing budgets. They can run the agency however they like. DARPA is only 220 people, that's it, with a budget of almost $4 billion. Now, that's a lot of freedom and power, but it's much more than that. DARPA is allowed to fund projects through what's called "other transactions." No congressional approval needed, no reporting required. Choose the projects you want to fund and fund them. So who's choosing the projects? Annie Jacobson gives us an unsettling answer.
41:40 Speaker 06 The real problem is that the individuals who are responsible for deciding what weapon systems are being financed and created in these classified DARPA programs are the very CEOs of defense contractors who stand to financially benefit from these contracts.
42:01 AJ Gentile? Annie Jacobson has said that DARPA is the agency driving the military-industrial complex, that agency is run by the companies that profit from the technology they create. This is exactly what President Eisenhower said would happen. If you make war profitable, you'll always have war. But to be fair, DARPA's innovations have made our lives better, not just because of cell phones and GPS. DARPA's achievements in prosthetics have allowed paralyzed children to walk again. They've created medical techniques to diagnose illnesses earlier. They've bioengineered tissue and organs that can be used for transplants. They've developed machines that can stabilize injured people in emergency situations.
42:44 AJ Gentile? Advanced medical imaging, such as ultrasound, MRI, and brain imaging, all created by or alongside DARPA. Now, does the good outweigh the bad? Do DARPA's contributions offset the damage they've done? I don't know, that's not for me to judge. But this story reminds me of the courtroom scene in A Few Good Men.
43:03 Speaker 06 You can't handle the truth.
43:06 AJ Gentile? Right. When the Colonel says, "My existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives."
43:12 Speaker 06 You don't want the truth because, deep down in places, you don't talk about it, Cardy's. You want me on that wall. You need me on that wall.
43:21 AJ Gentile? Right. So is DARPA a necessary evil? Is evil even the right word? I don't know. When DARPA was formed in 1958, its mission was to make sure the United States was never again surprised by advanced technology. And for 66 years, DARPA has succeeded in its mission. The US has never been surprised by technology.
43:41 Speaker 06 Except for UFOs.
43:43 AJ Gentile? OK, the US has never been surprised by another country's technology.
43:47 Speaker 06 Better.
43:48 AJ Gentile? I can't forget all the suffering that DARPA has caused. But DARPA's done so much good, and I forgive. I don't know. I'm disgusted by some of DARPA's actions, by our government's corruption, by the fact that, because of DARPA, bad people get rich from war. But if I'm being honest, which I always am with you, I have to acknowledge that, as an American, we need DARPA on that wall.
44:25 Speaker 00 Priceline Negotiator.
44:27 Speaker 03 It's me, the...
44:28 Speaker 00 Priceline Negotiator.
44:31 Speaker 03 We don't need the jingle twice.
44:32 Speaker 00 What about a third time?
44:33 Speaker 03 Stop it. This is about vacation inflation and how Priceline negotiates amazing deals on hotels, flights, and rental cars.
44:40 Speaker 00 Seems like they just started.
44:42 Speaker 03 Yeah, but I didn't mention that you can save up to 60% off hotels in the Priceline app.
44:47 Speaker 00 Time to read the tagline.
44:48 Speaker 03 Fine. No one deals more deals than...
44:50 Speaker 00 Priceline.
44:51 Speaker 03 Please stop.
44:52 Speaker 00 Priceline.
44:53 Speaker 03 Touche.
44:54 Speaker 00 Priceline.
44:55 Speaker 03 Priceline.
45:04 AJ Gentile? That's 3 plus 1, 5 plus 0, 0. So just to follow up on that Sean Ryan clip, the very day I did his show and told him about that episode, he connected me with someone to help my father-in-law get all his benefits. That day, without me asking for help, just suddenly got a text. You know, "Call this number and you'll be taken care of." Because Sean is about as good of a guy as you'll find. And when I say "good," I don't mean, "Yeah, he's a good guy." I mean, he's a force for good in the world. And look, I know he's controversial for some people, but I met the man in person, I spent the whole day with him. And he and his whole staff, his whole team, everybody there was gracious, kind, very complimentary. They're almost fans of the channel.
45:48 AJ Gentile? We had some great talks and debates about the moon landing and Flat Earth and all that stuff. I had a great day with the whole crew. So Sean Ryan is the real deal. Plus, I've been around shooters my whole life. I've never seen anyone shoot like that. Anyway, check in the notes, check in the notes. Okay. Oh, boy. We're gonna keep it going with the Dangerous Hoppics. This next one is another one that was, uh... I was uncomfortable releasing. When I did the Killer Patents episode, I ended it with all the, like, the free energy inventors that...
46:21 Speaker 05 Like the hydrogen car guy?
46:23 AJ Gentile? He got... He said he was poisoned. He'd said to his... He's having, like, lunch with investors to, like, finally take his... His car ran on water. This is Stanley Meyer. And, uh, he's not feeling well and he runs outside. He's, like, throwing up in the street. And his brother was his partner and his brother's... "What's going on?" He's like, "I was poisoned." And then he dies. And that was the end of it. No more water car. Killer Patents. The end of this one went viral. See you in a minute.
46:54 AJ Gentile? For decades, we've heard about the catastrophic effects of fossil fuel pollution. And for just as long, I've been hearing that global warming is a myth. The two sides are constantly at each other's throats. But it's a fight that's completely unnecessary. The technology to create unlimited clean, free energy has existed for over 100 years. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of inventors, have created machines that pull energy out of thin air. Machines that could defy gravity, levitate, and fly. Machines that bend the fabric of spacetime itself. These machines sound not just like science fiction, they sound like magic. So where are these magical devices?
47:35 AJ Gentile? Well, when the inventors patented and publicized their technology, they performed another magic trick. They disappeared.
47:54 AJ Gentile? For years, certainly my whole life, we've heard how fossil fuel pollution is creating a runaway greenhouse effect. At some point, the ice caps will melt, the oceans will rise, and every coastline in the world will be underwater. What now?
48:08 Speaker 06 When? When does it happen? When do we go underwater?
48:12 AJ Gentile? Well, that's hard to-
48:13 Speaker 06 Five years, 20, 50?
48:16 AJ Gentile? You can't really quantify-
48:17 Speaker 06 Oh, you can't quantify it, eh?
48:19 AJ Gentile? Look, I don't want-
48:20 Speaker 06 Is Florida still here?
48:23 AJ Gentile? What do you mean?
48:23 Speaker 06 Let me talk slowly, so you can understand. Is Florida still there?
48:29 AJ Gentile? Last I checked, Florida is still there.
48:31 Speaker 06 Thank you. I rest my case. Global warming is a myth.
48:35 AJ Gentile? It's not a myth that-
48:38 AJ Gentile? Look, this isn't a video about climate change.
48:40 Speaker 06 Oh, look, global warming is not climate change.
48:44 AJ Gentile? My point is-
48:45 Speaker 06 How dare you!
48:46 AJ Gentile? Look, do you want clean air?
48:48 Speaker 06 Clean air? No, who cares?
48:50 AJ Gentile? Fine, but do you want clean water?
48:52 Speaker 06 Well, yeah.
48:54 AJ Gentile? Right. The point of this episode isn't to argue one side of the climate debate or the other. The point of this episode is that debating, arguing, and fighting about it isn't necessary, and hasn't been for over 100 years.
49:08 AJ Gentile? Since the 1920s and perhaps even earlier, scientists have discovered many different ways of making energy less expensive and more efficient. However, in every single case, their technology was suppressed. And in many cases, the inventors died under strange circumstances.
49:26 Speaker 06 Okay, you've got my attention now.
49:32 AJ Gentile? Charles Pog was a Canadian mechanic and car tinkerer. In the early 1930s, he started experimenting with carburetors, trying to improve fuel efficiency. Now, if you're not a gearhead, a carburetor is a part of a gas-powered engine that mixes air and fuel for combustion. The mixture is then sent to the engine cylinders, where it's ignited to power the engine. Now, unlike traditional carburetors, which mix air with liquid gasoline, the Pog carburetor fully vaporized gas before it entered the combustion chamber. This made the engine more efficient, much more efficient. In 1936, Pog was issued a patent for a high-mileage carburetor. This was his third iteration of the invention and his third patent.
50:18 AJ Gentile? In early 1936, the Breen Motor Company tested the Pog carburetor on a Ford V8 Coupe. It got 26.2 miles on one pint of gasoline. That's almost 220 miles per gallon. Ford tested it, they got 200 miles per gallon. The Pog carburetor was tested for Canadian Automotive Magazine. They reported 218 miles per gallon.
50:43 AJ Gentile? Now, that article created a lot of excitement, but it wasn't good news for Charles Pog.
50:51 AJ Gentile? On the Toronto Stock Exchange, oil company stock prices crashed. Brokers were swamped with orders to dump all oil stock immediately. Soon after that, Pog's shop was broken into. All carburetors, equipment, notes, and documents were stolen.
51:07 AJ Gentile? He never built another one. He never spoke of the invention ever again.
51:11 Speaker 06 Send my data to him.
51:13 AJ Gentile? That's the rumor. But carburetors aren't complicated. If one man figures out how to make an engine more efficient, others could do this too. And they did. But the oil companies did not forget about Pogge and the damage he almost caused. Fuel-efficient engines were not good for business. So the oil companies lobbied the US government for help. And a few years later, in 1951, help arrived.
51:45 AJ Gentile? The concept of patents can be traced back to ancient times, but the formal patent system that we know today came from Renaissance Europe. The first-known patent law was enacted in Venice in 1474, and it was a revolutionary idea designed to encourage innovation. It offered inventors a temporary monopoly in exchange for sharing their inventions with society. But some inventions are legally patented and hidden from society.
52:14 AJ Gentile? In 1951, the United States passed the Invention Secrecy Act. This allows the US government to keep certain technologies and inventions secret legally. If they decide something threatens the country's economy or security, it's stamped with a secrecy order and classified. The inventor can't speak about it, export it, or sell it unless it's to the US military.
52:37 Speaker 06 Yeah, of course.
52:39 AJ Gentile? If the inventor violates these orders, they face imprisonment, or, as we're about to see, consequences that are even worse.
52:49 AJ Gentile? In the 1970s, Tom Ogillic accidentally discovered a way to make an engine run on its own fumes.
52:58 Speaker 06 I was messing around with a lawnmower when I accidentally knocked a hole in its fuel tank. I put a vacuum line running from the tank straight into the carburetor inlet. I just let it run, and it kept running and running, but the fuel level stayed the same. I got excited. The lawnmower was running without a carbureator and was getting tremendous efficiency.
53:20 AJ Gentile? That mower ran for 96 straight hours.
53:26 AJ Gentile? After a few months of trial and error, Ogil replicated his invention with his own car. His 1974 Ford Galaxy got 11 miles per gallon. But after a few modifications, it got 100 miles per gallon. In April 1977, Ogil drove the 4,000-pound car 205 miles on just two gallons of gas. Engineers inspected the car for hidden gas tanks and other gimmicks, but nothing was found. His technology worked. Ogil made the internal combustion engine do what it was designed to do: operate on fumes. He accidentally invented a version of Pog's carburetor. Almost overnight, 24-year-old Tom Ogil became an engineering sensation.
54:11 AJ Gentile? Oil companies, investors, and businessmen approached him with offers. People expected him to become a billionaire. Shell Oil offered him $25 million cash for the design. Ogil passed when he found out they intended to hide the invention forever.
54:26 Speaker 06 I've always wanted to be rich, and I suspect I will be when this system gets into distribution. But I'm not going to have my system bought up and put on the shelf.
54:38 AJ Gentile? So Tom struck deals with investors who would let him control the invention and keep working. He filed for and received a patent. He had attorneys, money, all kinds of resources. Then the United States Air Force showed interest.
54:51 Speaker 06 Uh-oh.
54:52 AJ Gentile? And that's when things went downhill.
54:54 Speaker 06 Downhill, eh?
54:56 AJ Gentile? Yep. Suddenly, the SEC was after him for violating securities laws. The IRS was after him for failing to pay back taxes. The next few months were a mess. Ogil's wife left him and took their daughter. Legal battles were everywhere. Investors were fighting for control of the patent. Then, on April 14, 1978, Ogil was shot by a stranger outside a bar. No suspect. But he survived.
55:25 Speaker 06 But not for long.
55:26 AJ Gentile? No, not for long.
55:31 AJ Gentile? On August 18th, he went to a friend's apartment where he collapsed and died. His death, which involved painkillers and alcohol, was ruled an accidental overdose, though Tom Ogle had no history of drug use. Ogle's friends, family, and attorney claimed this was a cover-up for murder. But the damage was done. Tom Ogle was gone, and his invention, despite the overwhelming evidence that it worked, was conveniently forgotten. Later that year, the US and Saudi Arabia negotiated the United States-Saudi Arabian Joint Commission on Economic Cooperation. They agreed to use US dollars for oil contracts. The petrodollar became the de facto currency of the world that day.
56:14 AJ Gentile? This made the US government much more powerful and made oil companies richer than ever. A few years later, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Brown, a former member of Project Blue Book, made a similar invention. He created a device that attached to the air intake of a vehicle, reducing emissions by 50 to 70% and increasing miles per gallon.
56:35 Speaker 06 I treat air and out of air, I make it more than just providing oxygen for the combustion process. There are combustion-stimulating molecules and radicals generated in this process. Thunderstorm in a bottle.
56:53 AJ Gentile? Even though the Colonel's invention reduced emissions and cleaned the air, the EPA shut him down.
57:01 Speaker 06 Environmental Protection Agency is a bit of a dictatorial police agency. They call themselves a protective agency, but they are a police agency. EPA cannot approve a fuel-saving device. They put out reams of documentation stating that something will not work.
57:23 AJ Gentile? Soon after, he received bomb threats. His lab was vandalized and everything was stolen. He lost his life savings and his work was stopped. Like Charles Pogue and Tom Ogil, Colonel Brown took his technology to his grave. These inventions still used gasoline and oil. They didn't necessarily threaten the fossil fuel industry, yet the government, or someone, still shut them down. So you can only imagine what happens when you invent a car that doesn't need gas at all.
58:00 AJ Gentile? The top of our news here at 6 o'clock.
58:02 Speaker 01 An age-old dream becoming a reality. A local inventor has discovered a way, hear this, to use water to run your car. He says the answer to dependence on foreign oil lies all around us. A car that runs on water instead of gasoline. A man who invented an engine that can run on water. Any kind of H2O, he says, can power just about every type of engine.
58:24 Speaker 00 He's come up with a device that will hook up to any engine and allow it to run on good old H2O. Stanley Meyer.
58:31 AJ Gentile? He's been offered a billion dollars in cash by oil-producing countries to sell his patent. So far, he hasn't sold.
58:41 AJ Gentile? Stanley Meyer did not keep his invention secret. He went straight to the news. His announcement made headlines across the country and around the world. He had invented a car that could run on nothing but water. The technology is called electrolysis. This is using electricity to split water into oxygen and hydrogen gas. Now, this isn't a new invention. In 1789, Jan Rudolph Diamond used an electrostatic machine to generate electricity from water that was then discharged to gold electrodes. And throughout the 19th century, various inventors and scientists created machines that could split water into oxygen and hydrogen. But there are a few problems. The process requires a lot of energy,
59:25 AJ Gentile? and it requires perfectly pure water. No minerals, no chemicals, nothing. It has to be nothing but H2O. It's very hard to produce pure water. Not only do you need pure water for electrolysis, you need lots of it. Stanley Meyer's engine didn't require much water at all. Stan estimated that if he took his water-powered car from coast to coast in the US, it would use only 22 gallons of water. And the biggest breakthrough: it didn't need pure water. It could run on ordinary tap water. He called his invention a water-fuel-cell injector. The injector breaks water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen. The engine runs on hydrogen gas. He took his car on tour around the country. Engineers inspected it, and they said it worked.
1:00:10 Speaker 07 We recently took a scientific delegation to witness Stan's work, to really evaluate it, and came back saying, "This is one of the most important inventions of the century."
1:00:22 AJ Gentile? Stan's tour got a lot of media coverage. This led to offers from investors and oil companies, and even the Pentagon.
1:00:29 Speaker 06 Pentagon? Let me guess. That's when things went downhill.
1:00:34 AJ Gentile? Yup.
1:00:35 Speaker 06 Oh, no.
1:00:38 AJ Gentile? In 1998, Stan was at a restaurant with his brother and a few Belgian investors. They were about to sign a multimillion-dollar deal, so they raised their glasses and made a toast to celebrate. Then Stan suddenly became violently ill. He ran out of the restaurant, fell down in the street, and started vomiting. His brother ran after him. Stan's final words were, "They poisoned me." But his death certificate doesn't reflect that at all. It says he was at lunch with officials from NATO, and that he died of a brain aneurysm.
1:01:11 Speaker 07 But if you read this statement, you can kind of tell that the coroner was... Already questioning whether he was actually poisoned or not, and just dismissed being poisoned as such a blatant lie and not true.
1:01:27 Speaker 07 I think a brain aneurysm is a very convenient way for somebody to die, and if they were poisoned, that can cause that.
1:01:34 AJ Gentile? Now, lots of people have heard of Stanley Meyer's water car. But what most people don't know is that the water-powered engine wasn't the only disruptive invention in Stan's garage. He also had a toroid-shaped
1:01:45 Speaker 06 Donut-shaped.
1:01:46 AJ Gentile? He had a donut-shaped electromagnetic device slapped with a national security order.
1:01:53 Speaker 06 Even in my prior development of high technology, I've had patents taken from me. I learned from the School of Hard Knocks to be very cautious.
1:02:04 AJ Gentile? He was paranoid, and rightfully so. And that's why if you try to replicate the technology in Stan Meyer's patent, it won't work. He faked the voltage and frequency numbers to prevent another invention from being stolen or classified. But skeptics say it doesn't matter what numbers you use, the engine won't work. They say Stan's technology broke the second law of thermodynamics. That states that every time you transfer energy, energy is wasted. Stan's engine didn't waste energy at all, it created it. But that also violates the first law of thermodynamics, the conservation of energy. That states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. But what if those laws are completely misunderstood?
1:02:46 AJ Gentile? That with the right technology, the laws of thermodynamics don't have to apply at all? Mainstream science doesn't like that idea.
1:02:54 Speaker 06 Mainstream science can go pound.
1:02:57 AJ Gentile? Well, it turns out that Stan's water car was his least important invention. That donut-shaped device was another invention that created energy. And the reason it was classified? Well, it didn't run on gas, it didn't run on water. It ran on nothing.
1:03:20 AJ Gentile? The vacuum of space is supposed to be empty, and at the temperature of absolute zero, it should be perfectly still. But quantum physicists discovered that empty space is not empty or still at all. Is that so-called empty space isn't really empty at all.
1:03:37 Speaker 01 It's actually full of energy. So instead of being like kind of a quiet, empty lake, it's more like the froth at the base of a waterfall or something.
1:03:45 AJ Gentile? Now, we've all been taught that in an atom, electrons orbit the nucleus like planets orbit the sun. And in a vacuum with no resistance, the orbits of electrons should be predictable, but they're not. In 1955, Willis Lamb won the Nobel Prize for discovering what's become known as the Lamb shift. Now, in simple terms, Lamb discovered that electrons and hydrogen atoms were being disturbed by something. He discovered complex interactions between the electron and the vacuum of space itself. Space is teeming with quantum particles that blink in and out of existence. And when they do that, they use and create energy, a lot of it.
1:04:28 Speaker 01 Well, when you go to look at the numbers, you find out that there's enough energy in the volume of a coffee cup to evaporate all the world's oceans if you could get it all out.
1:04:40 AJ Gentile? Enough energy to boil and evaporate all the oceans on Earth from a coffee cup of empty space. This energy is called zero-point energy. And it's generated from the zero-point field. Nikola Tesla, Nikolai Kozirav, and other scientists called this field the ether. The ether is a field in which everything exists, but it exists in a dimension that our brains can't perceive. Particles blinking in and out of existence have to be coming from and going somewhere. That place is the ether, the base layer of reality. But even though we can't see it, this layer can be disrupted with electromagnetism.
1:05:22 AJ Gentile? Tesla famously said, "If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration."
1:05:31 AJ Gentile? He tried to harness energy from the zero-point field using the tower he built on Long Island.
1:05:36 Speaker 06 Tesla link below.
1:05:40 AJ Gentile? Now Tesla's Warden Cliff Tower tapped into this endless supply of energy. The tower was considered an over-unity device. An over-unity is when something gives out more energy than is put in. Now mainstream science claims this is impossible, again because it breaks the second law of thermodynamics. But for over 100 years, scientists and inventors have proved that claim wrong. Zero-point energy devices also violate the conservation of energy, that energy can't be created or destroyed. But those inventors don't claim to be creating energy from nothing. They are tapping into the energy that already exists everywhere all around us. In the 1970s, Howard Johnson created the magnetron motor.
1:06:24 AJ Gentile? It used hydrogen, magnets, light rays, and fusion to create electricity. Now according to practical physics, his invention was impossible. But here's the thing, his motor worked, and he proved it over and over again. Still, he was denied a patent.
1:06:42 Speaker 07 The dilemma facing Johnson is not really his dilemma, but rather that of other scientists who have observed his prototypes. The devices obviously do work, but the textbooks say they shouldn't. Johnson is saying to the scientific community that this is a phenomenon that seems to contradict some of our traditional beliefs. For all our sakes, let's not dismiss it outright, but take the time to understand the complex forces at work here.
1:07:11 AJ Gentile? Johnson didn't get his patent and was shunned by the scientific community.
1:07:16 AJ Gentile? Now Howard Johnson wasn't a weekend garage tinkerer. He was a government contractor. He worked on atomic energy projects. He made equipment for the military. He already had over 30 patents for chemistry and physics devices.
1:07:29 Speaker 07 Science and physicists are especially determined to protect the law of conservation of energy. Thus, the physicists become game wardens who tell us what laws we can't violate. In this case, they don't even know what the game is. But they are so scared.
1:07:50 AJ Gentile? Johnson's motor would lose less than 2% efficiency in almost 20 years of continuous operation. But he stopped working when someone broke into his shop and stole his equipment. He got the message. Thomas Murray also invented a device that could tap into the zero-point field. His machine could generate 50,000 watts of power with no energy input, another invention that broke the laws of physics. Murray tried to patent his invention. He was denied. They told him there's no such thing as free energy. But still, the US government was interested.
1:08:24 Speaker 06 Yeah, and that's when things go downhill?
1:08:26 AJ Gentile? Yep.
1:08:27 Speaker 06 Ah.
1:08:30 AJ Gentile? His lab was vandalized and robbed. He and his family survived multiple assassination attempts. It got so bad, he bulletproofed his own car. Now despite the ongoing threats, Murray publicly demonstrated the success of his machine in 1940. It continuously produced an output of 250,000 volts with no input. Well, that was the last straw. The next day, someone broke into his lab and attacked him. He only survived because at this point, he was carrying a pistol everywhere, but it didn't matter. Murray's assistant turned on him and destroyed everything. Equipment that would be worth millions today. Officially, Murray's assistant went crazy, but it sounds like somebody got to him.
1:09:15 AJ Gentile? Murray died broke, and he took his technology to the grave. Edwin Gray had a similar story. Gray created an electromagnetic motor that ran continuously on its own power, and like all zero-point devices, it didn't generate heat. The input was 26.8 watts, the output over 7,000 watts. Gray's machine was tested and verified by multiple scientists. Gray started developing this idea eight years ago. For the past year and a
1:09:45 Speaker 06 He's been trying to get someone in the US government interested. So far, he's had a little luck. After he contacted the government, let me see. Things went downhill, right?
1:09:55 AJ Gentile? Yep.
1:09:59 AJ Gentile? Within a week, local authorities performed an illegal raid on Gray's lab. They confiscated everything.
1:10:06 AJ Gentile? Not long after that, Gray was found dead in his home. All his records, inventions, and materials vanished without a trace.
1:10:15 AJ Gentile? Now, most of these inventions were from the turn of the 20th century, over 100 years ago. Imagine the progress we could have made if this technology survived and the world had free energy this whole time. But that's the thing. These stories happened so long ago that it's difficult to picture them as anything more than stories. I know, you want to see video of one of these things operating. You want to see light bulbs and motors turning without wires and without plugs. You want to see one of these zero-point machines for yourself, don't you? You got it.
1:10:53 AJ Gentile? Floyd Sweet was nicknamed Sparky because he was fascinated with electricity. He dreamed of a device that could take energy from the vacuum of space.
1:11:04 AJ Gentile? So after retiring in the 1980s, he made one. He called it a vacuum triode amplifier, or VTA.
1:11:12 Speaker 07 So we have a 120-volt fan. As you can see, it's turning at good power. It is providing quite a breeze, and it's real, usable power.
1:11:24 AJ Gentile? Sparky's machine could do more than operate a fan. He fed it 0.3 milliwatts and produced almost 224,000 watts. This was continuous, on-demand power. If you attach more equipment, it would simply harness more power, no limit.
1:11:42 Speaker 07 And here, just coming into view, you see five 100-watt lamps. Ordinary, garden-variety, household lamps, brilliantly knit.
1:11:55 Speaker 07 So there's 500 watts of very real power here. Again, coming right out of the vacuum.
1:12:03 AJ Gentile? 224,000 watts from a box about the size of a deck of cards. That's enough to power your house, recharge your electric car, or light up a baseball field. It doesn't matter what you connect. The ZeroPoint Field will give you all the power you need.
1:12:19 Speaker 07 This is real usable power. It's stable.
1:12:25 Speaker 07 It is not transient. It is not noise. And it is not any other kind of spurious effect. This is a real effect. It's all coming from that little tiny box sitting behind the 500 watts of power. Behind the lamps, that little box is putting out all of that power, well over 500 watts, and yet it is receiving less than one-third of a milliwatt of input power.
1:13:02 AJ Gentile? So Sparky filed a patent.
1:13:04 Speaker 06 Yeah oh.
1:13:05 AJ Gentile? Yep, you know how this goes. Well, at the grocery store, a well-dressed man approached Sparky and showed him a photograph. It was a picture of Sparky and his wife in their house, taken from outside. Someone had been watching them.
1:13:20 Speaker 07 He walked me all the way to my building, telling me what would happen to me if I didn't stop my research.
1:13:28 Speaker 07 How they took that picture through my window? I'll never know.
1:13:32 AJ Gentile? Sparky reported the incident to the FBI.
1:13:34 Speaker 06 Oh, that's like the hen's calling the wolf for help.
1:13:37 AJ Gentile? It was. Things got worse.
1:13:41 AJ Gentile? Sparky and his wife started getting harassed. Their phone rang hundreds of times a day from payphones all over the country. The call stopped when someone broke into Sparky's lab and stole his notes. Then, one night, two men stopped by to speak to Sparky and his wife. The men left, and about an hour later, Sparky collapsed. Frantic, his wife called an ambulance. But when they loaded Sparky, they refused to let his wife in the ambulance. 20 minutes later, she got a call. Sparky was dead. Heart attack. Less than 24 hours later, a few black vans showed up at the house. The FBI confiscated all Sparky's equipment and research, and that's the last we've heard about it.
1:14:24 AJ Gentile? But Sparky's VTA did more than create unlimited power. It could levitate. A retired Army officer and nuclear physicist named Tom Bearden met with Sparky. He was intrigued by the VTA's potential. Bearden asked Sparky to do an anti-gravity experiment with it, and it worked. The VTA weighed about 6 pounds. They reduced the weight of it by 90%. According to Bearden's theory, gravity can become a pushing force rather than a pulling force, and that's exactly what the VTA did. Zero-point energy, anti-gravity. Now, if this sounds like UFO technology, that's because it is. Richard Doty says zero-point energy devices have been recovered from UFOs, and they operate a lot like Sparky's VTA.
1:15:07 AJ Gentile? What this was, was an energy device that used zero-point energy. That's what they referred it to, zero-point energy. And it was connected in such a manner that this device could power, I mean, from a very small flashlight or a very small watch up to a city. And the power was determined by what the demand on it was. And so, each craft had one of these. Anti-gravity technology is another reality that's been suppressed for years, and researching anti-gravity, even for the US government, is very, very dangerous.
1:15:49 AJ Gentile? According to multiple inventors, many of which are now dead, alien technology might not be so alien after all. Italian researcher Gianni D'Addo created a large ring to go around the human body. Its purpose was to alter DNA to reverse aging. Now, made of heavy copper, the D'Addo ring manipulates the magnetic field around a human body using gravity and frequency. It was inspired by the Hunza Valley in Pakistan, where people rarely get sick and routinely live for over 100 years. Now, most researchers say their longevity is because of exercise and a healthy diet, but D'Addo had a different theory.
1:16:36 AJ Gentile? He said the extreme heat from the valley and the cold from the nearby glacier created a magnetic anomaly in the area. This protects DNA and slows the aging process. The Dato ring was even tested at Sloan-Kettering Hospital. It successfully lengthened the subject's telomeres, the part of our DNA that shortens as we age. The ring worked. And just like Sparky's device, Dato's device could levitate. Then the FDA became involved.
1:17:04 Speaker 06 And everything went downhill.
1:17:06 AJ Gentile? Yep, they shut down Dato's research. Not long after that, Dato was hit by a car that ran over him multiple times. The levitating, age-reversing Dato ring vanished.
1:17:21 AJ Gentile? T. Townsend Brown used a high voltage and electromagnetic field to create a lift effect. This allowed an object to move at high speeds, free of the force of gravity. Brown made a flying saucer. As with many other promising inventions developed during the Cold War years, the National Secrecy Act prevented scientists like T. Townsend Brown from commercializing or even publicizing any technology which could potentially be interpreted as having a military application. Now, antigravity or antigravitic technology was popular in the 1950s. The United States and Canadian governments were both working on antigravitic technology. They farmed this work out to well-known aerospace companies like Lockheed Martin, Convair, Bell, and Lear.
1:18:06 AJ Gentile? The research was actually out in the open and created a buzz. People were excited about the new G-engines and how this technology would revolutionize traveling. They talked about how everyone could have a flying car. Airplanes wouldn't need any fuel to fly. This is one of the last public mentions of antigravity technology.
1:18:27 Speaker 06 Famous builder of the rocket research plane says, "We're already working with nuclear fuels and equipment to cancel out gravity." And William Lear, the autopilot wizard, is already figuring out gravity control for the weightless craft to come. According to the gravity research engineers, the G engine will replace all other motors.
1:18:54 AJ Gentile? After that, everything went dark. So, what happened? What happened was, the military contractors got anti-gravity to work, and they wanted the technology all to themselves.
1:19:07 AJ Gentile? After working at the Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research, Dr. Ning Li started her own anti-gravity research company, AC Gravity. In the early 1990s, she published research papers on anti-gravity. This drew attention from the US government.
1:19:22 Speaker 06 And then everything went downhill.
1:19:24 AJ Gentile? Yep. In 2001, Ning Li received a grant from the US Department of Defense for over $400,000 to continue anti-gravitic research. Then Ning Li disappeared.
1:19:37 AJ Gentile? Now, some people think she returned to China to work for them, but others say she was caught up with her work at the DOD. Some family members recall that she seemed extremely stressed during that time. She used to love her research, but she did not like working for the DOD. But in 2014, 13 years later, Ning Li reappeared out of nowhere.
1:19:56 Speaker 06 Yeah, I didn't see that coming.
1:19:58 AJ Gentile? And then she was hit by a car.
1:20:00 Speaker 06 That, I saw it coming.
1:20:01 AJ Gentile? She suffered permanent brain damage. Ning Li's whereabouts during those missing years is still a mystery. But my guess is, the Department of Defense knows exactly where she was. But they'll never tell, and nobody's gonna ask.
1:20:22 AJ Gentile? Free, clean, unlimited energy. Anti-gravity. Science-fiction technology that some people claim is real. But is it? Well, search Google and Wikipedia, and they'll list most of these inventors as charlatans, liars, and frauds.
1:20:38 Speaker 06 Of course, that's what they say. They're in the pocket of the shadow government.
1:20:43 AJ Gentile? I can't argue with that. So let's go through a few. Stan Meyer, the man who invented the water-powered car, receives a lot of scrutiny, probably because his story is so well-known. Now, despite his claim of being poisoned, doctors said his cause of death was a brain aneurysm. Now, some poisons can cause an aneurysm, but his toxicology report showed no poison.
1:21:06 Speaker 06 Fake report.
1:21:07 AJ Gentile? Well, his family thought so. Morey, Gray, Sparky, Ogil, and Johnson, they all had patented inventions that garnered the attention of powerful people, and they were all victims of violence. Some of them were no-name backyard inventors who happened to be good at electronics. But many were engineers or physicists with impressive credentials, and there's a lot of evidence to support their stories. Honestly, I covered just the most well-known inventors. There are many, many more. And most of them also died under mysterious circumstances. And in almost every case, their technology was seized and classified.
1:21:49 AJ Gentile? Now, despite the evidence of these inventions working and the reality of quantum physics, there's a tremendous amount of pushback about zero-point or alternate energy. Why? Mainstream academia, elected officials, and even the media say free energy is impossible. Any scientist who claims otherwise is attacked, sometimes professionally, but sometimes they're attacked physically. Why?
1:22:15 Speaker 06 Money and power.
1:22:17 AJ Gentile? I was asking rhetorically, but yes, money and power. When Dr. Tom Valone was working at the US Patent Office, he came across inventions that could solve our energy and pollution problems. Inventions that could literally change the world and accelerate the progress of humanity. He became frustrated when he saw invention after invention slapped with a secrecy order.
1:22:41 Speaker 07 Patent sequestering, which is actually called "secretizing." The public needs to know at least that every major military agency has a representative at the patent office.
1:22:52 AJ Gentile? And when Vallone blew the whistle, they fired him.
1:22:55 Speaker 06 Just fired? I'm surprised this guy didn't get whacked.
1:22:58 AJ Gentile? Oh yeah, he better be watching his back. Patent office and its current approach is it's actually breaking the law. It's trying to make happy the physicists who are with American Physical Society to keep them in power with their ideas, you might say, and withhold from public use good inventions that could solve our problems, like the energy crisis. For over 100 years, these technologies have been suppressed, keeping society in a state of complacency, poverty, and pollution. The Federation of American Scientists spoke about suppression in 2010, calculating that in that year alone, 5,135 inventions were given a secrecy order.
1:23:43 AJ Gentile? Most of these patents had to do with clean energy, anti-gravity, and alternative methods of propulsion. Over 5,000 in one year. So how many in 10 years? How many in 100? What technology is being hidden from us? The latest buzz phrase is "green energy," or "the green movement." That sounds nice, we all want a clean environment. But green energy, as currently defined, is a fad. No, that's not the right word. Green energy is a scam.
1:24:23 AJ Gentile? Why suppress thousands, maybe tens of thousands of inventions that could clean our planet and provide free energy for everyone on Earth?
1:24:31 Speaker 06 For money and power.
1:24:34 AJ Gentile? Yep.
1:24:36 AJ Gentile? There are literally hundreds of trillions of dollars at stake. So next time you're arguing with a friend or family member about climate change, remember the energy industry and the United States government want you to hate each other. Don't play into their hands.
1:24:54 AJ Gentile? A declassified document made in the 1970s lists categories of inventions that are considered "secret." One of those categories is for energy systems that are more than 70 to 80% efficient, and solar panels that are more than 20% efficient. If you patent an efficient energy or propulsion device, it gets slapped with a secrecy order. Do you want proof? In 1971, over 50 years ago, someone patented a solar panel that was 20% efficient. It was made secret. You could have had solar panels on your house for years, but you never knew they existed. Today, solar panels are only slightly better than 20% efficient.
1:25:37 AJ Gentile? Imagine how much they could have improved if the technology had not been hidden for 40 years. So what about green energy? It's a scam.
1:25:48 AJ Gentile? Green energy is not designed to do anything but line the pockets of politicians and the CEOs of the green energy companies that get billions of dollars of your money in the form of subsidies to research things like solar panels and wind farms. And by the way, solar panels only last about 15 to 20 years. Then they go into a landfill to decay, and that material is toxic.
1:26:12 Speaker 00 Solar panels also produce tons of toxic waste. But even if we reduce this waste during manufacturing, solar panels eventually stop working, especially if they're poorly made in China. And when their lifespan is over, they leave behind toxic trash.
1:26:29 AJ Gentile? Then it seeps into our water supply. Scam. Wind farms barely produce any power, but they destroy the landscape, kill wildlife, and again, require an enormous amount of fossil fuels to build. Scam. Nuclear energy sounds great, no pollution. But when the nuclear material is discarded, it stays radioactive and deadly for thousands of years. Scam. Do you think your electric car is protecting the environment? It's actually making it worse. Over 80% of electricity comes from coal, oil, and natural gas. So yeah, your Tesla runs on coal. Scam. The amount of fossil fuels used to extract the raw materials to build electric cars
1:27:14 AJ Gentile? causes a lot of pollution. And the lithium batteries that power them? Lithium mines are awful for the environment. Not to mention, most of the extraction of these materials is done with slave labor in terrible working conditions. Scam. Now, don't get defensive. This isn't your fault. The technology to fix this is there, and has been for 100 years. So, do all these patents just sit on a shelf gathering dust? Never to see the light of day? Oh, no. A scientist named Salvatore Paez has multiple patents strikingly similar to allegedly impossible inventions.
1:27:59 AJ Gentile? He's patented devices that use electromagnetic fields, vibrations, and quantum field fluctuations to manipulate gravity, mass, and energy. He has a patent that allows for faster-than-light speed travel. He has a patent that can change the course of asteroids through a magnetic field. And my favorite Salvatore Paez invention? He has a patent for a tiny, solid-state device about the size of a deck of cards that can generate unlimited clean energy from the vacuum. So how come his inventions aren't suppressed? Well, because the patents are owned by, or have been assigned to, the United States Navy.
1:28:38 AJ Gentile? Now, I'm sure that most clean-energy anti-gravity inventors are frauds, but not all of them. I believe the technology does exist, and I believe it's being used right now by government contractors. However, these contractors don't work for the US government. They work for the shadow government.
1:28:58 Speaker 06 A shadowy government with its own air force?
1:29:02 Speaker 07 His own navy, his own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue his own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances and free from the law itself.
1:29:18 AJ Gentile? We have the technology to eliminate famine and heal the ecosystem, but that would derail the Shadow Government's agenda.
1:29:26 Speaker 06 There is the government, constitutional government of the United States. And then there's this other secret government operation, which has more money, more power, more technology. It is a criminal enterprise. It is not sanctioned by the President. It is not sanctioned by Congress. And yet they're using our tax dollars and are raping the planet and destroying the Earth and impoverishing half the planet.
1:29:59 AJ Gentile? We could live in a world of abundance. No more wars for energy. But the Shadow Government becomes powerless in a world of abundance. They derive their power from scarcity because they control the resources. Resources that could be made completely free if we only had access to suppressed technology. So what's the solution? Elect new leaders? No. Our leaders are controlled by or in fear of the Shadow Government. They only care about being re-elected and getting rich. All of them. And don't go to the media. They're in the pocket of the Shadow Government, whether they know it or not. So do we repeal the Invention Secrecy Act? Well, that will never happen.
1:30:43 AJ Gentile? Nobody will risk their career voting for it. They'll say some inventions need to be hidden for national security. And whenever you hear that phrase "national security", remember, it's not your security they're protecting. It's theirs.
1:30:59 AJ Gentile? The solution is simple, but it's not one inventors want to hear. If you create a free energy device that you can prove works, do not patent it. Publish your invention anonymously on the internet and make it freely available to everyone. Don't be foolish and think you can use the patent system to become rich. They will not allow it, and most likely, they'll kill you. Instead, share your technology first. You can change the world. I promise the money will be there. So to all you weekend tinkerers and free energy hobbyists, keep tinkering and keep inventing, but most of all, keep quiet.
1:31:41 Speaker 03 Priceline Negotiator. It's me, the... Priceline Negotiator. We don't need the jingle twice. What about a third time? Stop it. This is about vacation inflation and how Priceline negotiates amazing deals on hotels, flights, and rental cars. Seems like we just started. Yeah, but I didn't mention that you can save up to 60% off hotels in the Priceline app. Time to read the tagline. Fine. No one deals more deals than... Priceline. Please stop. Priceline. Touche. Priceline. Priceline.
1:32:14 AJ Gentile? Now, I thought Killer Patents, Volume 1 was controversial, but Volume 2, which we're about to play, made a lot of people crazy. So in this coming episode, we cover forbidden technology. So that's... That's not what made people upset. It was what I reported about, meaning what I exposed, about the American Medical Association. So if you don't know this episode, let me just say this: The AMA is not what you think it is.
1:32:55 AJ Gentile? The history of medicine goes back to the dawn of mankind, when ancient healers used special herbs to treat illnesses. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, laid the foundation for modern medical practice: observation, diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. His work set the stage for centuries of medical progress. In the 19th century, Edward Jenner created a smallpox vaccine, and Louis Pasteur proved microorganisms caused disease. The 20th century brought antibiotics, medical imaging, and organ transplants. In the past 400 years, the human lifespan has doubled. But something happened to medicine along the way. It became an industry, a profitable one.
1:33:41 AJ Gentile? President Eisenhower warned against creating a military-industrial complex because if you make war profitable, you'll always have war, and he was right. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. So here's a cynical question: if you make illness profitable, will you always have illness? Well, in recent years, trillions have been spent on cancer research and therapies. Now, that's a lot of people getting rich from a disease that's already been cured.
1:34:21 AJ Gentile? Royal Raymond Reif was born in Nebraska in 1888. He was a good student and wanted to be a doctor. Only 16 years old, he was admitted to Johns Hopkins University, one of the best medical institutions in the world. Reif became fascinated by bacteriology and the microscopic world, which led him to optics. To study bacteria effectively, he needed to see them clearly. He took a job at Zeiss Works in New York and trained under senior optics engineers. If you know anything about microscopes, telescopes, or cameras, or anything with lenses, you've heard of Zeiss. And Reif wasn't a bookworm researcher. He was hands-on.
1:35:01 AJ Gentile? He built his own equipment, including one of the most powerful microscopes ever made, the universal microscope. In the 1920s, standard microscopes could only magnify objects up to 2,000 times. Rife could reach 60,000 times magnification. He could see viruses and bacteria that nobody had ever seen before. Rife discovered what he called Bacillus X, or the BX virus. He believed cancer wasn't a disease, it was a virus, the BX virus. He wanted to destroy these microorganisms without harming surrounding tissue. Then he made another amazing discovery.
1:35:41 AJ Gentile? He found that exposing microorganisms to specific frequencies caused them to explode.
1:35:48 Speaker 06 They immediately paralyzed, and it starts to stagnate and fall within.
1:35:53 AJ Gentile? All objects have a resonant frequency. When exposed to an external force matching this frequency, an object absorbs energy and vibrates more intensely. Parts of the human body have their own frequencies. This is useful in an MRI, which uses frequencies to produce diagnostic images. But it can also be dangerous. If you resonate an object for too long or with too much energy, it could be damaged or destroyed. This is why singers can break a glass by singing the right note.
1:36:29 AJ Gentile? That's how you do it.
1:36:32 AJ Gentile? So Rife built the Rife Frequency Generator, or Rife machine, which emitted specific frequencies to target and destroy specific microorganisms. He called the frequency the mortal oscillatory rate. He found the frequencies to destroy tuberculosis, typhoid, pneumonia, anthrax, and more, all without harming healthy tissue.
1:36:54 Speaker 06 I can see the disintegration of the bacteria playing into pieces.
1:37:01 Speaker 06 This is Kellek bacteria without harm to the image cell, without drugs.
1:37:08 AJ Gentile? He injected lab rats with cancer cells, creating golf ball-sized tumors, then used his machine to match the cancer's mortal oscillatory rate. It worked. The lab rats were completely cancer-free.
1:37:23 AJ Gentile? Rief's work attracted interest from other doctors. Dr. Milbank Johnson arranged a study on 16 cancer patients using Rief's machine. In three months, 14 of the 16 patients were completely cured. Dr. Royal Raymond Rief discovered the cure for cancer, and it ruined him.
1:37:49 AJ Gentile? Royal Raymond Rief's discovery was a triumph. His clinical trial in 1934 was a huge success.
1:37:56 Speaker 05 16 cases were treated at the clinic for many types of malignancy. After three months, 14 of these so-called hopeless cases were signed off as clinically cured by the staff of five medical doctors and Dr. Alvin G. Ford, N.D., pathologist for the group.
1:38:13 AJ Gentile? At first, the medical establishment rejected Rief's ideas. The notion that simple radio waves could succeed where radiation and surgery had failed, well, that was nonsense. They figured Rief's funding would dry up and he'd disappear, but that didn't happen.
1:38:31 AJ Gentile? To get financed in medical research, you need support from the pharmaceutical industry. But Rief didn't need Big Pharma. He was backed by a few private investors, including William Timken, who owned a ball bearing company.
1:38:43 Speaker 06 Hey, it's all ball bearings nowadays.
1:38:47 AJ Gentile? Okay.
1:38:47 Speaker 06 Now, you, uh, prepare that Fetsa valve with some three-in-one oil and Gore's pads.
1:38:53 AJ Gentile? With the...
1:38:54 Speaker 06 And I'm gonna need about 10 quarts of antifreeze. What? Fletch?
1:38:58 AJ Gentile? I know it's Fletch.
1:39:02 AJ Gentile? With no ties to the medical industry, Rief had the freedom to research whatever and however he wanted. Doctors around the country figured if this Rief guy wasn't going away, they might as well look at his work. Rief used his machine more than 400 times on animal tumors. It worked every time, forcing even the most hardened skeptics to take notice. And there was no bigger skeptic than Morris Fischbein.
1:39:34 AJ Gentile? Fishbein, head of the American Medical Association, was known to be very aggressive. Some critics called him "the medical Mussolini."
1:39:43 AJ Gentile? At first, Fishbein offered to buy Rife out, but when Rife said "no," Fishbein's attitude changed. Rife kept working, but progress became increasingly difficult. Mysterious people started showing up at his lab. Some offered bribes, and others made threats.
1:40:03 AJ Gentile? Other doctors had success using Rife's technology, but were pressured by the AMA to stop or lose their licenses.
1:40:10 Speaker 00 Vigilant against quackery is Dr. Morris Fishbein. There is no serum, drug, or combination of drugs that we know that will definitely cure cancer.
1:40:20 AJ Gentile? Any doctor caught using a Rife machine was harassed, and worse. Fishbein then launched a campaign of character assassination against Rife. Articles appeared in medical journals and newspapers, calling Rife a "quack" and a "charlatan." Rife's lab was vandalized, his equipment destroyed, and his research disappeared. His life was unraveling. The final blow came in 1939. Fishbein offered one of Rife's investors legal assistance in an attempt to steal the company from Rife and other investors. Rife spent years fighting lawsuits. He went bankrupt, and the AMA stopped his work from proceeding. Royal Raymond Rife quietly retired.
1:41:04 AJ Gentile? Broken, broken, he turned to alcohol.
1:41:16 AJ Gentile? About 20 years later, renewed interest in Rife's technology led John Crane and John Marsh to convince him to build a new machine. Rife agreed, but the business didn't last long.
1:41:29 AJ Gentile? In 1960, their labs were raided without a warrant. All equipment and records were seized. Rife stayed out of court, but his partners were charged with medical fraud. Even though 14 patients testified they were cured by the Rife machine, Crane and Marsh were sentenced to three years in prison. Oh, by the way, the forewoman of the jury was an AMA doctor.
1:41:51 Speaker 06 Oh, come on!
1:41:53 AJ Gentile? Rife was again labeled a liar and a quack, and reduced to poverty and despair.
1:42:00 AJ Gentile? Many of Rife's associates faced tragedies. Dr. Millbank Johnson died in 1944, poisoned, and all his research disappeared. Burnett Labs in New Jersey, building Rife machines to treat cancer, mysteriously burned to the ground in 1939. All equipment and research were destroyed. And the owner of the lab, Dr. John Burnett, was related to William Timken.
1:42:22 Speaker 06 The poor, beering guy?
1:42:24 AJ Gentile? Yep.
1:42:27 AJ Gentile? Dr. Elmer Nemus was a nuclear physicist, medical doctor, and microscope designer. He was trying to replicate Rife's work in 1969.
1:42:37 AJ Gentile? He died while staying at a hotel when his bed suddenly caught fire. Two years later, in 1971, Rife had a heart attack. Well, in the hospital, he died after he was accidentally given a lethal dose of Valium.
1:42:52 Speaker 06 Accidentally my dorsal fin.
1:42:54 AJ Gentile? But Rife's ideas didn't die with him. Other pioneers would seek out alternative ways of curing diseases. The medical mavericks were not going away. But neither were Morris Fishbein or the AMA.
1:43:15 AJ Gentile? The medical establishment does not like alternative medicine. In the 19th century, there were two types of medical practitioners in the US: allopathic doctors and alternative healers.
1:43:27 AJ Gentile? Allopathic doctors diagnose and treat illnesses with pharmaceuticals, surgery, and other conventional methods. Alternative healers used natural remedies. Since anybody could claim to be a healer, many did. Natural healers were cheaper and plentiful. Mainstream doctors weren't making any money. So in 1847, they formed a trade union called the American Medical Association, the AMA.
1:43:52 Speaker 06 Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. The AMA started out as a union?
1:43:56 AJ Gentile? Yep.
1:43:56 Speaker 06 Isn't a union's job to protect the interests of its members?
1:44:00 AJ Gentile? It is. So in 1901, the Journal of the American Medical Association released a statement. "The growth of the profession must be stemmed if individual members are to find
1:44:12 Speaker 06 the practice of medicine a lucrative profession." So the AMA was created so doctors can make more money?
1:44:19 AJ Gentile? That's right.
1:44:20 Speaker 06 Isn't this corrupt?
1:44:22 AJ Gentile? I'm not judging, I'm just telling you what happened. The AMA brought in the Carnegie Foundation to survey medical schools. In 1910, they released a report calling for standardizing medical training and eliminating non-scientific practices.
1:44:35 Speaker 06 And who determines what's scientific?
1:44:38 AJ Gentile? The AMA does.
1:44:39 Speaker 06 Of course.
1:44:40 AJ Gentile? Schools teaching alternative medicine were forced to drop these courses or lose funding and their ability to grant an MD. This led to a significant reduction in medical schools.
1:44:53 Speaker 00 They offered tremendous amounts of money to the schools that would agree to cooperate with them. Almost overnight, all of the major universities received large grants from these sources and also accepted one, two, or three of these people that I mentioned on their board of directors, and the schools literally were taken over by the financial interests that put up the money.
1:45:20 AJ Gentile? In 1904, there were 160 schools granting MDs to more than 28,000 students. By 1920, only 85 medical schools were left. By 1935, the number had dropped to just 66.
1:45:35 Speaker 02 of past injustices in many parts of our society. That's true in the fields of science and medicine, which are starting to look more carefully at their own history.
1:45:44 AJ Gentile? Most medical schools for blacks and all medical schools for women were now closed. So if you were black or a woman, becoming an M.D. and getting into the AMA was difficult.
1:45:55 Speaker 06 The American Medical Association is one of the country's oldest, largest, and best-known associations of doctors. Its voice has long been influential, but now the AMA is finally beginning to come to terms with racism in its own past.
1:46:09 Speaker 00 The doctor is the only one entitled, by training, by experience, and by law, to take care of the sick.
1:46:18 AJ Gentile? The AMA established allopathic medicine as the only acceptable type of medicine to practice. Alternative medicine was marginalized and, in some cases, made illegal.
1:46:28 Speaker 06 Even if the natural medicine worked?
1:46:30 AJ Gentile? Yep.
1:46:31 Speaker 06 This is bad.
1:46:32 AJ Gentile? It gets worse.
1:46:33 Speaker 06 It always does.
1:46:40 Speaker 06 The doctors from that point forward in history would be taught pharmaceutical drugs.
1:46:47 AJ Gentile? All of the great teaching institutions in America were captured by the pharmaceutical interests in this fashion, and it's amazing how little money it really took to do it.
1:47:00 AJ Gentile? Every time a new type of alternative medicine was introduced, the AMA would attack. George "Doc" Simmons was head of the AMA from 1900 to 1924, and Morris Fischbein from 1924 to 1949. They labeled alternative practitioners as "quacks" and used the Journal of the American Medical Association to ruin the reputations of anyone they deemed a threat to mainstream medicine. The FDA was formed in 1906, but it wasn't until 1962 that drug companies had to prove their products worked and were safe. Before then, pharmaceutical companies needed the AMA's seal of approval.
1:47:38 Speaker 06 How did the drugs get approved? Yeah, I should have seen that coming.
1:47:45 AJ Gentile? If you were a drug company and wanted to get into the Journal of the AMA, you had to pay. That was it. The AMA didn't test drugs for safety or efficacy. They had no labs or researchers. The AMA just collected money. Oh, the AMA leaders would buy stock in that drug company before endorsing the drug. You know, so they can cash in when the stock price went up.
1:48:07 Speaker 06 Oh, insider trading, like they do in Congress?
1:48:11 AJ Gentile? Yeah, kinda like that.
1:48:12 Speaker 06 Nice work if you can get it, eh?
1:48:14 AJ Gentile? Sure is.
1:48:18 Speaker 07 Dr. Max Gerson made a terrible mistake when he made the claim that smoking could cause cancer. He didn't realize that, at the time, the single largest contributor to the AMA was Philip Morris. Morris Fishbein quickly launched a campaign to imply that smoking was not only safe, but was recommended by doctors.
1:48:40 Speaker 01 Yes, according to this survey, more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette. Pack after pack, week after week. See for yourself why Camels are so popular with the doctors of America.
1:48:58 AJ Gentile? Simmons retired in 1924 as a wealthy man, and then Fishbein took over. By the way, Simmons was never a doctor. He got his diploma from Rush Medical College by mail. At least Fishbein went to medical school, though he wasn't a good student. He never finished his internship, he never received a diploma, and never practiced medicine, never saw a patient, not ever.
1:49:21 AJ Gentile? In 1938, along with the AMA, Fishbein was indicted for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. The AMA was convicted and fined, but Fishbein was acquitted. Still, he was lining his pockets. Under Fishbein's leadership, the public grew more critical of the AMA. It seemed like the AMA was interested in making people money, not making people healthy. Fishbein was finally thrown out of the AMA in 1949.
1:49:49 Speaker 06 And that was the end of the corruption with the AMA and Big Pharma?
1:49:53 AJ Gentile? Oh, I'm sure everything's on a level now.
1:49:56 Speaker 06 Uh-huh.
1:50:03 AJ Gentile? In 1924, Harry Hoxey developed an unconventional cancer treatment. A self-taught healer from Illinois, he claimed his herbal remedy came from his great-grandfather. By the 1950s, the Hoxey Clinic in Dallas was the world's largest private cancer center, with branches in 17 states.
1:50:25 Speaker 03 And we now have in our files and our records many, many thousands of case histories and records, pathological proof, x-ray photographic studies, that we do positively cure cancer both internal and external.
1:50:39 AJ Gentile? Hoxey reported very high success rates, which caught the eye of Morris Fischbein. Hoxey gave Fischbein and other AMA members a demonstration of his product and method. The next day, Fischbein offered to buy Hoxey's formula. Hoxey was open to the idea, but insisted on providing treatment to those who couldn't afford it, as he did in his clinics. Fischbein was offended. He demanded full control of the business and profits for nine years. After that, Hoxey would get 10% of the profits if the AMA was satisfied the cure worked.
1:51:12 Speaker 06 Ah, yeah, hard pass.
1:51:14 AJ Gentile? Yeah, Hoxey refused. And like Royal Raymond Rife, Hoxey faced Fischbein's wrath.
1:51:25 AJ Gentile? From 1926 to 1931, Hoxey was arrested 119 times for practicing medicine without a license. Between 1937 and 1939, he was arrested over 100 times in Texas. Fischbein labeled Hoxey "the worst cancer quack of the century," and pressured the FDA to shut down his clinic. Patients were harassed, records seized, and clinics closed. Hoxey fought back. He sued Fischbein and the AMA for libel and slander, and won. Fischbein was forced to resign and admitted in court that Hoxey's treatment cured external cancer.
1:52:05 AJ Gentile? Hoxey converted skeptics, including Al Templeton, the assistant district attorney of Dallas, who had arrested Hoxey almost 100 times. When Templeton's brother's cancer was cured by Hoxey, Templeton became Hoxey's lawyer. In 1939, Esquire journalist James Burke came to Texas to expose the fraud. Why don't you go down to Texas?
1:52:28 Speaker 05 And that's exposed this fellow, he's getting too big. And the American Medical Association liked to put him out of business and said, "You go down and get acquainted with him," and says, "We'll do a couple of pieces on him and put an end to this."
1:52:43 AJ Gentile? He stayed six weeks and wrote "The Quack Who Cures Cancer" and became Hoxsey's publicist. Now even though Fishbein resigned, he was still powerful. In 1960, after 36 years of operation, Hoxsey's clinics were closed. Even with the support of US Senator Elmer Thomas, Hoxsey's herbal treatment was never officially tested, because one senator is not enough.
1:53:09 Speaker 07 It seems that the medical fraternity is highly organized and that they have decided to crush you and your institution. It seems that the public officials are afraid that if they make any move or say anything antagonistic to the wishes of the medical organization, they will be pouted upon and destroyed. In other words, the public officials seem to be afraid of their jobs and even of their lives.
1:53:34 AJ Gentile? In the next election, the AMA lobbied heavily against Senator Thomas. Even though Thomas was very popular, he was defeated in the primary by Mike Monrooney. The vote was a huge upset and a surprise to everyone. But it wasn't a surprise to the AMA.
1:53:58 Speaker 05 Anything that comes from nature cannot be patented. They're not interested in that. That, and of course, the FDA says it's illegal to use unless it's been tested for efficacy and safety. Now you see the the catch-22 you're in there. Nothing from nature, regardless of how effective it might be, will ever be proven safe or effective, according to the FDA. It'll never be!
1:54:27 AJ Gentile? Therefore, everything from nature will always be condemned by the FDA as unproven.
1:54:38 AJ Gentile? This was a difficult episode to write. Cancer affects almost everybody. Cancer's hit my family hard over the years. It took my dad two years ago. And if it's affecting you right now, either directly or indirectly, I'm sorry. I really am. I know the pain you're going through. So here are the facts about today's story. I'm gonna work backward. Harry Hoxey's formula is still around, but don't try it. Actually, don't do anything without talking to your doctor. Hoxey's formula has been tested, and there's no proof it cures anything. In fact, it could even be dangerous. Need more proof? Guess how Harry Hoxey died.
1:55:17 Speaker 06 Don't tell me it was cancer.
1:55:19 AJ Gentile? Cancer. Prostate cancer. He used his formula on himself, and it didn't work. He secretly had surgery and died seven years later. Seven hard years. So don't mess with his formula. Listen to your doctor. Morris Fishbein and all that nasty stuff about the AMA? Well, that's pretty much all true. Fishbein was sleazy. Whether he admitted that Hoxey's formula worked, I couldn't find any proof. I think it's just part of the legend. But in Fishbein's defense, he did expose a few frauds. The AMA really did start as an organization to crush healers using natural remedies so doctors could make more money. But the real history of Fishbein and the AMA is hard to find. There's not a lot of that on the internet. You have to dig.
1:56:03 AJ Gentile? Now, Royal Raymond Rife? He wasn't a doctor. That was an honorary degree. He probably wasn't killed in the hospital with Valium. He was most likely taking it himself. Was he a genius? Yes. Did he find the cure for cancer? I don't know. There's no evidence that his machine worked. But some people have tried to build it and got hurt or killed. So again, don't try it. And if you see one for sale, it's a fraud. Don't buy it. But you really can destroy things if you expose them to the right frequency. So what about cancer cells? Well, I stumbled across this TED Talk by Anthony Holland from about 10 years ago. He's a music professor, but he was working with a lab using sound to attack cancer cells.
1:56:46 Speaker 07 We now know that cancer is vulnerable between the frequencies of 100,000 hertz and 300,000 hertz. So now we attack leukemia cells. Leukemia cell number one tries to grow a copy of itself. But the new cell is shattered into dozens of fragments scattered across the slide.
1:57:10 AJ Gentile? And then seven years ago, a TED Talk by Christine Gibbons.
1:57:14 Speaker 02 Now by arranging an array of these elements in a concave formation, the transducer then becomes capable of transmitting ultrasonic waves that then increase sharply in strength at the focus. By pulsing those waves, we create the histotrypsy effect to destroy tissue at the cellular level.
1:57:34 AJ Gentile? Sounds promising, but does it work? We don't know. A bigger, darker question. Is Big Pharma suppressing cures because more sick people means more profit? Honestly, I don't think so.
1:57:49 AJ Gentile? Really, I don't. I think the companies, generally speaking, are evil. But that's mostly a judgment of the people who run them. They're greedy, but that's their job. They're supposed to make money for the people who own the pharmaceutical companies. Now who owns them? Well, mostly bankers and hedge funds. But if you have a 401K, a pension, or some kind of managed investment account, you probably own a little of them too. Now, the doctors, scientists, and researchers at these pharmaceutical companies aren't evil. They're the opposite of evil. Those men and women in lab coats going to a lab every day? Thank God for them. And if you're one of those people, thank you, truly. If you work in healthcare in any capacity, if you're an EMT, or you're a nurse working night shifts,
1:58:34 AJ Gentile? or caring for the elderly, or working hospice, thank you. Be angry at the corporations. Be angry at the greed in the boardroom, but don't be angry at someone who spent half their life in school to sit in front of a microscope for 60 hours a week. Those are good people down in the labs. If there was a cure for cancer or any disease, it couldn't be kept secret. Why? Because those are good people down in the labs. Besides, if there's a secret cure for cancer, who's using it? Billionaire elites? Steve Jobs was a billionaire elite. He was diagnosed with cancer at age 49. He had the resources for any treatment he wanted, conventional or otherwise.
1:59:16 AJ Gentile? In fact, Steve Jobs spent the first nine months after his diagnosis trying nothing but alternative treatments, against his doctor's wishes. Steve Jobs had unlimited resources, and he still lost. Look, I understand why people are drawn to the theories about secret cures and alternative medicine. When you or a loved one is suffering, and traditional medicine isn't working, you'll try anything. That's why we call it fighting or surviving cancer. It's about reclaiming control over your health, exploring every possibility, and refusing to give up. Now, true or not, these are stories of resilience, and the belief that answers might exist outside mainstream thinking.
1:59:58 AJ Gentile? A miracle cure didn't arrive in time to save my dad, but it might arrive in time to save yours. And if it does, I don't want any agency or bureaucracy getting in the way. That's why I was so hard on the AMA today, because they have a history of shutting down ideas that aren't mainstream. We can't let that happen again. One day, another maverick will come along with a cure that defies mainstream medicine, and so-called experts will try to silence them because they can't understand anything outside mainstream thinking. So here's a message to those experts: If you're not gonna help, get out of the way.
2:00:37 Speaker 00 My fingers are scratching me out like this, and I reach back to my mother's memory a lot.
2:00:53 Speaker 03 We don't need the jingle twice.
2:00:56 Speaker 03 Stop it. This is about vacation inflation and how Priceline negotiates amazing deals on hotels, flights, and rental cars.
2:01:05 Speaker 03 Yeah, but I didn't mention that you can save up to 60% off hotels in the Priceline app.
2:01:11 Speaker 03 Fine. No one deals more deals than... Please stop. Touche. Priceline.
2:01:21 AJ Gentile? The next episode is a story that I always liked, but I wasn't sure how it would perform on the channel. This one is about Operation Gladio.
2:01:32 AJ Gentile? They trained a secret army, a civilian army, in Italy to bomb civilians and then blame it on the communists. The communists at that time were the most popular party in Italy, you know, post-war. Because they had just went through fascism, right, with Mussolini. So you just, it always swings too far the other way. Right. So we swing way the other way. Communism, very popular, can't have that. So civilians were killed in bombings by the CIA-trained guerrilla army. And they were trained by a Nazi general who was tight with Allen Dulles. And it was, and this was planned during the war. You know, while, while American GIs were being killed fighting the Nazis, they were
2:02:15 AJ Gentile? already planning this next phase.
2:02:32 AJ Gentile? In 1948, the streets of every major city in America saw a huge and sudden rise in the heroin supply. Harry Anslinger was the commissioner of federal narcotics, and he wanted answers. A confidential informant drops a bombshell. The man bringing in the heroin is the head of the mafia's national crime syndicate, Lucky Luciano. That was a surprise. The mob didn't deal drugs, but maybe things changed. Anslinger sent agents to Sicily where they caught Luciano preparing a half A half-ton shipment of heroin, heading to New York City by way of Havana. Now, the US government didn't have jurisdiction in Sicily, so they brought in the local police. They refused to make an arrest. Anslinger called the State Department for help.
2:03:15 AJ Gentile? After a few transfers, his call is finally connected to the US Embassy in Palermo. A young man picks up the phone and says, "Sorry, Commissioner, have your agents stand down. Lucky's with us." Anslinger was confused. He asks, "What do you mean 'us'?" The response was the last thing Harry Anslinger expected to hear. Lucky Luciano, one of the world's most notorious crime bosses, was working for the CIA.
2:03:49 AJ Gentile? After World War II, Europe was divided. The Western Allies controlled West Germany, while the Soviets held the East. As former Allies became enemies, the Cold War began. The Soviet Union suffered massive losses liberating countries as it marched to Berlin. And those liberated countries, they weren't giving them back. Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, they became Soviet satellite states, and the Soviets wanted more. How much more, nobody knew. Europe was in ruins. But the Russian Army was still strong. If they pushed west, they would be hard to stop. The Allies needed a plan to contain the Soviets.
2:04:29 AJ Gentile? So they turned to Allen Dulles of the CIA, America's new intelligence agency. During the war, the Office of Strategic Services, or the OSS, coordinated espionage and covert operations. Allen Dulles was the OSS Station Chief in Switzerland. He watched the Soviet Union closely, and he didn't trust them. They may be temporary allies, but they were communists. Dulles believed in using every tool available to fight communism. A radical plan to stop Soviet expansion landed on his desk. It focused on training small groups of citizen soldiers in sabotage, supply raids, propaganda, and guerrilla warfare. These stay-behind soldiers would resist Soviet influence, even if their governments fell.
2:05:17 AJ Gentile? The White House loved the idea. The only question was, who would lead this secret army? Alan Dulles had the answer: Nazis.
2:05:25 Speaker 06 Oh, great. What could possibly go wrong?
2:05:37 AJ Gentile? Operation Paperclip was a covert US intelligence program that brought Nazi scientists, engineers, and technicians to America after World War II. Many of these scientists had been implicated in war crimes and human rights abuses, but the US looked the other way. Dr. Kurt Blom was one of the Nazis' leading experts in biowarfare. He conducted horrible experiments on concentration camp inmates. After the war, Blom was arrested and would have been hanged, but America intervened, and he went to work for the CIA.
2:06:08 Speaker 06 Yeah, as a Nazi, he used chemicals on people against their will. What did he do for the CIA?
2:06:13 AJ Gentile? Well, he worked for the MKUltra program.
2:06:15 Speaker 06 Using chemicals on people against their will?
2:06:17 AJ Gentile? Yep.
2:06:18 Speaker 06 Ah, at least he was consistent.
2:06:22 AJ Gentile? Dr. Eric Traub was a top Nazi bioweapons designer. After the war, he worked for the US Army and helped launch the Germ Warfare Lab on Plum Island in New York. And what happened there was bad.
2:06:34 Speaker 06 How is a Plum Island link down in a place with all this stuff?
2:06:40 AJ Gentile? Arthur Rudolph, Walter Dornberger, and Wernher Von Braun developed the V-2 rocket that killed thousands of people in London. V-2 rockets were built using forced labor from concentration camps. They later worked for NASA and built the rockets that went to the moon.
2:06:54 Speaker 06 Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, let me fix that for you. They later worked for NASA and built rockets that never went to the moon! Fake moon landing link down here, too, by the way.
2:07:06 AJ Gentile? About 1,600 Nazi scientists were recruited by the United States. A lot of them were connected to war crimes and unethical experiments, but their backgrounds were sanitized to avoid public backlash. Yes, Nazis were evil, but to the Americans, they were a necessary evil used to prevent Soviet expansion. General Reinhard Gellen was Hitler's intelligence chief for the Eastern Front. He had a reputation for abusing Soviet POWs to extract information. After the war, the Soviets wanted him charged with war crimes. Gellen offered the United States all of his Soviet intelligence files, and in exchange, he wanted protection and a role in future operations. The US agreed. Under Operation Paperclip, Gellen became an American asset.
2:07:51 AJ Gentile? All war crimes were forgiven. Gellen worked for the CIA to stop Soviet aggression. The CIA was a civilian organization. It wasn't armed or militarized. It only gathered intelligence. Gellen needed something with more teeth. He built a new organization focused on the Soviet Union.
2:08:12 AJ Gentile? It was more than just for intelligence gathering. They would be a paramilitary organization, trained in guerrilla warfare and sabotage. Gellen's first recruits were Hitler Youth and former Nazi soldiers. He called them werewolves. They were ordinary citizens by day and communist killers by night. Alan Dulles loved it. Gellen's werewolves would be the secret army the CIA didn't have. Resources poured in from the US and the UK, and Gellen set up a network of secret supply caches all over Germany.
2:08:47 AJ Gentile? The new German government didn't know these secret "stay-behind armies" existed until a former Nazi officer exposed the operation. The Americans were caught funding a secret Nazi army led by the brutal General Reinhard Gellen. This was horrifying news. The new German government ordered a full investigation. But that never happened. The CIA had the investigation closed and covered up. It didn't matter that the operation was illegal. The werewolves were necessary. The Soviet Union was strong and getting stronger. Then, a new threat emerged. In 1947, communists were winning local elections all over Italy. National elections were coming up. Italy was becoming the first communist country in Western Europe.
2:09:35 AJ Gentile? This was unacceptable. It would undermine America's position in Europe and increase Soviet influence. The CIA wanted Gellen's guerrilla warfare plan expanded and brought to Italy. They would recruit hundreds of paramilitary soldiers, starting in Rome. This new army would be called Operation Gladio, named for the gladius, the sword used by Roman soldiers. Recruits would be trained by US and British Special Forces and given all the tools and tactics needed to fight communism in Italy. The CIA just needed one last thing to get Gladio running: a lot of cocaine.
2:10:19 AJ Gentile? The CIA would use Operation Gladio to create fear and instability in Italy. They would spread propaganda, infiltrate political events, bribe police, politicians, and disrupt demonstrations. They had to convince citizens that the Italian Communist Party was a dangerous threat.
2:10:37 AJ Gentile? A secret agreement was made with Italian military intelligence. If Gladio needed to escalate, they would commit acts of violence and pin the blame on Italian communists. The 1948 national election was approaching. Gladio had to act fast. This operation needed planning and a lot of money. Small problem: Congress controlled the money and wasn't aware of Operation Gladio. Asking for funding would reveal its existence, defeating its purpose. The money had to come from somewhere else, and it had to be kept secret. CIA officer Colonel Paul Helwell had a solution. He worked with the Chinese National Army, fighting Mao Zedong's communists. Shanghai Chiang funded the Chinese National Army by selling opium.
2:11:21 AJ Gentile? Helwell smuggled opium into China using civil air transport, an airline owned by Chinese nationalists. That airline was sold to the Airdale Corporation, a quiet little American company running out of a fake address in Delaware.
2:11:35 Speaker 06 Oh, so the CIA bought the planes?
2:11:37 AJ Gentile? They did. The planes joined the CIA's secret fleet, the infamous Air America, that ran drugs to war zones for decades. Alan Dulles loved the idea of funding Gladio with untraceable drug money. But Gladio needed a lot of money. They'd have to flood American cities with drugs. Getting the product wasn't the problem. The CIA had all the cocaine and heroin it needed. The problem was distribution. They'd need a small army of drug dealers to cover the entire country. Luckily, a network was already in place. It was organized, had logistics, had security, and they already had plenty of customers. The CIA found its perfect partner in crime. They'd use the Mafia.
2:12:26 AJ Gentile? The relationship between the Mafia and the CIA began a long time ago. During World War II, German submarines were threatening the American coastline. The military couldn't monitor every dock and waterfront, so it got help from the one organization that could: the Mafia.
2:12:42 AJ Gentile? US intelligence cut a deal with mob boss Charles "Lucky" Luciano, who was in prison. In exchange for his cooperation, Lucky received a reduced sentence and other perks. What?
2:12:53 Speaker 06 He broke omerta!
2:12:55 AJ Gentile? He did. Omerta is the Mafia code of silence: you don't talk to authorities.
2:12:59 Speaker 06 Informatorius, if you're a punty. Snitches get stitches.
2:13:04 AJ Gentile? I know what it means.
2:13:05 Speaker 06 Che pa' le scaglia, faccio la funabla!
2:13:08 AJ Gentile? Oh, hey, che si dice che fa? Why are you so upset?
2:13:11 Speaker 06 Well, I used to run with a crew in Jersey. I don't like a rat.
2:13:15 AJ Gentile? You were in organized crime.
2:13:16 Speaker 06 Yeah, we prefer the term "family business," thank you very much. But yeah, I was with the Pesci family.
2:13:22 AJ Gentile? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
2:13:23 Speaker 06 It's a story for another time. Oh, maybe a next sponsor ad, perhaps?
2:13:27 AJ Gentile? Good idea. So when the CIA needed to move heroin, they knew who to call: Lucky Luciano and his Mafia syndicate.
2:13:34 Speaker 06 Definabla!
2:13:36 AJ Gentile? At the time, the Mafia avoided drugs. Well, they used heroin to keep prostitutes in line. But they didn't sell drugs. It was considered dishonorable. But when the CIA came calling, Lucky Luciano made it an exception. The money was just too big.
2:13:49 Speaker 06 They made him an offer he couldn't refuse.
2:13:52 AJ Gentile? Right. Besides, the Mafia didn't want communists in power either.
2:13:55 Speaker 06 Commies are bad for family business.
2:13:58 AJ Gentile? They are.
2:14:00 AJ Gentile? Organized crime would become a target in a communist state. The mafia and the CIA liked things the way they were. So business fronts were set up in Sicily and Italy. Heroin was smuggled into the US, hidden in everyday items like sardine cans, wheels of cheese, and barrels of olive oil. Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters moved the drugs around the country. The operation instantly generated a ton of cash.
2:14:23 Speaker 06 Lot of people chasing that dragon.
2:14:25 AJ Gentile? Yep. Heroin was good business. Operation Gladio now had its funding. But there's still a problem. Cash couldn't be paid directly to the CIA or the mafia. It had to be laundered through a legitimate financial institution. But walking into a bank with millions in cash sets off a red flag or two. They needed a bank that could handle cash without scrutiny from US Treasury agents, Italian bank examiners, or the international monitors. Only one bank on the planet could do this: the Vatican.
2:15:05 AJ Gentile? The Institute for Works of Religion, or Vatican Bank, was founded in 1942 to safeguard property for religious work or for charity. It only accepts deposits from top church officials. Five cardinals oversee transactions and report to the Pope. And that's all we know: it's the most secret bank in the world. Exactly what the CIA needed.
2:15:26 Speaker 06 Yeah, you know what else the CIA needed that bank for?
2:15:29 AJ Gentile? I'd rather just keep going.
2:15:30 Speaker 06 Two words: alien bodies.
2:15:32 AJ Gentile? The Vatican Bank is hiding alien bodies.
2:15:35 Speaker 06 Yep, they grab 'em, bag 'em, tag 'em, and store 'em in the basement archives.
2:15:38 AJ Gentile? You know, there is something suspicious about the Vatican's secret archives.
2:15:41 Speaker 06 Now you're starting to see.
2:15:43 AJ Gentile? Hmm.
2:15:44 Speaker 06 Come, swim with me, human. Swim with me and open thine eyes, that thou mayst behold the world in its true form.
2:15:54 AJ Gentile? The Vatican Bank isn't subject to international law. It doesn't report to any agency or government, only to the Pope. It was perfect for laundering drug money, and of course, the Church would get a cut.
2:16:04 Speaker 06 Yeah, the family business, everybody wants their peak.
2:16:09 AJ Gentile? The Vatican was familiar with black money from the United States. The Church helped the OSS create rat lines to move the important Nazis out of Europe. Plus, the Church was anti-communist. Communism threatened the power of the United States, threatened the power of the mafia, and threatened the power of the Church. So, this unlikely partnership was formed, and the CIA started sending millions of dollars in cash to the Vatican. Operation Gladio launched in 1948, just in time for Italy's national election. The CIA, with help from the Church, used psychological warfare to create fear of a communist takeover. Communism would bring violence, economic collapse, and the loss of religious freedoms. It worked. The Communist Party was defeated.
2:16:54 AJ Gentile? The CIA was thrilled. They were able to change the outcome of a sovereign country's democratic election, and they didn't have to use the secret Gladio army. But what good is an army if you don't use it? So, the CIA sent word to the Gladio soldiers, "Prepare for war." It would take a few years to organize, but Gladio was finally ready to enter its second phase: terrorism.
2:17:24 AJ Gentile? Italian politics stabilized briefly, but the Cold War intensified, and Italy was on the front line. The Italian Communist Party, though defeated, remained a force. Violence was coming.
2:17:37 AJ Gentile? On December 12, 1969, a bomb in Milan's National Agrarian Bank killed 17 and injured 88. Anarchists were blamed. In 1972, the Red Brigades, a communist group, rigged a car bomb in Petano. It killed three police officers.
2:17:59 AJ Gentile? Italy had entered the years of lead. Far-left and far-right groups committed acts of violence. Bombings, assassinations, and kidnappings plagued the entire country. Something had to be done. Prime Minister Giulia Andriati proposed a new, more stable government, but it was up to Parliament to decide. So a vote was set for March 16, 1978. Meanwhile, Aldo Moro, a five-term prime minister, supported the historic compromise. This plan would give the Italian Communist Party a larger role in the government. Now, Moro wasn't a communist, but the Communist Party had a lot of public support. He feared excluding the party would lead to more violence.
2:18:42 AJ Gentile? So Moro would present his historic compromise plan to Parliament just before the vote.
2:18:47 Speaker 06 The CIA wouldn't like that.
2:18:49 AJ Gentile? Well, it didn't matter. Moro never made it to Parliament. The Red Brigades kidnapped him that morning and murdered him weeks later. Moro's death killed the historic compromise. Andriati's new government proceeded without the Communist Party.
2:19:04 Speaker 06 I don't believe in coincidences.
2:19:06 AJ Gentile? Well, neither did journalist Mino Piccarelli. He published an article with a really provocative theory about what really happened to Aldo Moro. Piccarelli had discovered Prime Minister Andriati's connections to the Sicilian Mafia, and he openly wondered if Andriati ordered or was complicit in Moro's death. Piccarelli thought Italian intelligence might have aided the Red Brigades. He implied Operation Gladio members and foreign intelligence agencies like the CIA could be involved. Now, Piccarelli didn't have hard evidence, but he believed there was a conspiracy between Andriati, the Mafia, and CIA. He knew if he kept digging, he'd find proof.
2:19:45 Speaker 06 Oh, boy, this is the kind of thing that'll get you whacked. What happened?
2:19:49 AJ Gentile? Piccarelli was found dead in his car on March 20, 1979, shot four times.
2:19:54 Speaker 06 And there it is.
2:20:04 AJ Gentile? Through the 1970s and 80s, the years of lead continued in Italy. More bombings and assassinations, the bodies were piling up.
2:20:14 AJ Gentile? In 1984, Judge Felice Casson, a young ambitious magistrate, investigated these attacks and saw a disturbing pattern. Military explosives like C-4 were often used. Communist groups were usually blamed, but few arrests were made. His breakthrough came when Vincenzo Vinciguera confessed to the Petiato bombing. He said his group was armed and trained by Italian military intelligence. That’s where they got the C-4. Their orders were to cause disruption and violence and frame communists. This was state-sponsored terrorism. Then things got worse.
2:20:49 AJ Gentile? Casson got a call from the local police. They confiscated a briefcase from a local politician. It contained documents describing a plan to take over the Italian government. Casson couldn’t believe it. The officer said, “There’s more. The suitcase had a false bottom with more hidden documents.” Casson asked what they found. The officer sounded nervous and said, “Sir, we can’t tell you over the phone.”
2:21:14 AJ Gentile? Casson went to the police station to read the documents and was speechless. The documents confirmed hundreds of innocent people were killed in bombings by groups working for Italian military intelligence. Casson followed the lead. He gained access to Italy’s military intelligence archives. That’s when he learned these attacks were connected to Operation Gladio, launched by the CIA. Casson now had evidence that a secret unit in military intelligence was conducting guerrilla operations against its own people. Even more shocking, it wasn’t just Italy. Operation Gladio was conceived in Germany by former Nazis, expanded in Italy, and then spread across NATO. Casson uncovered attacks all over Europe. Germany, France, a few in Belgium?
2:21:57 AJ Gentile? All were false flag operations where civilians were killed intentionally and communists were blamed. Casson then realized Gladio was far bigger than he thought. He felt his life was in danger.
2:22:14 AJ Gentile? Operation Gladio, who was not already part of the conspiracy.
2:22:19 AJ Gentile? Prime Minister Andriadi initially denied knowing anything about Gladio. But in 1990, under political pressure, he confirmed Operation Gladio was real and had operations throughout Europe. Now, most countries denied involvement at first, but there was too much evidence. Finally, NATO said that these stay-behind armies were real, but only for defense. The US and UK continued to maintain a no-comment policy on Gladio. The truth coming out put Prime Minister Andriadi under tremendous scrutiny. Eventually, he was arrested and charged with being complicit in the murders of Pecorelli and Moro. After multiple trials and appeals, he was acquitted for lack of evidence and cleared of all charges.
2:22:59 Speaker 06 Yeah, he had friends in high places, eh?
2:23:01 AJ Gentile? He did. He was important to the cause. Andriadi oversaw Operation Gladio in Italy. About 30 acts of violence were directly linked to Gladio, with 150 more suspected. Around 600 innocent people died from Gladio bombs, with twice as many injured. If all suspected attacks are proven to be Gladio-related, the death toll is in the thousands. No one has answered for these crimes. Over the years, as more innocent bodies piled up, the CIA said it needed more money and power. Communism was taking root all over the world, so they got more money and power. The agency became militarized. It now had its own secret army that it could deploy anywhere there was a Soviet threat. Small problem.
2:23:46 AJ Gentile? It was all a lie.
2:23:55 AJ Gentile? From the 1950s through the 1980s, the USSR was an existential threat to America. The CIA was constantly warning us of Soviet strength, fueling massive military spending. But was the threat real? In the 1960s, Americans were terrified of the Soviets.
2:24:12 Speaker 07 Let us face without panic the reality of our times. The fact that atom bombs may someday be dropped on our cities.
2:24:22 AJ Gentile? Sputnik launched, Yuri Gagarin went to space. Americans panicked. The Soviets seemed unstoppable. NASA had to be created. More military spending was needed. But was it? The CIA said yes.
2:24:38 AJ Gentile? The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 almost started a nuclear war.
2:24:42 Speaker 07 It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.
2:25:01 AJ Gentile? Clearly, war with the Soviet Union was coming. More military spending was needed. But was it? The CIA said yes. I grew up in the 1980s when military budgets exploded. Generation Xers like me believed that war was gonna break out at any second.
2:25:22 AJ Gentile? We were in an arms race that we couldn't afford to lose. It was a race for survival. But was it? The CIA's job is to gather intelligence so the US government can make informed decisions. Somehow, these decisions always led to more military funding and more power for intelligence agencies. But the CIA knows best. Or does it?
2:25:51 AJ Gentile? While the Soviets puffed out their chest in Cuba, their people back home were starving. From 1953 to 1964, they couldn't produce enough food to feed their population. The CIA didn't know? In the 60s, Americans were told more military spending was the only way to stop Soviet world domination. In reality, 1964 started 20 years of the Soviet era of stagnation, not domination. Their economy was falling apart. The CIA didn't know? Yes, in the 1960s, the Soviets poured resources into their space program and their military. But at the expense of everything else. The state-run system was failing. Productivity was low. Their technology was outdated.
2:26:35 AJ Gentile? There's no incentives for innovation. Their scientists and engineers were fleeing. It was called a "brain drain." The CIA didn't know?
2:26:45 AJ Gentile? In 1985, Soviet President Gorbachev tried to revitalize the Soviet system. Part of his plan was glasnost, which means openness. He allowed Soviet citizens more freedom to express themselves. What the people expressed was, "They were miserable. We finally learned the truth." Defending against Soviet aggression wasn't a strategy, it was a sales pitch.
2:27:09 AJ Gentile? Throughout the entire Cold War, American military contractors got wealthy and intelligence agencies grew powerful, protecting us from a country that was going bankrupt and whose citizens were sick and starving.
2:27:22 AJ Gentile? When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the Soviet Union had already been in ruins for years. The whole world saw it. Somehow, the CIA didn't know. Gladio was funded right up until it was exposed in 1990. Gladio still had armies ready to repel the expansion of the Soviet Union. But by then, there was no Soviet Union. The Baltic States left. Ukraine, Belarus, the Central Asian Republics, they were on their way out. The CIA didn't know? In 1991, the USSR was officially dissolved. How did the US respond to its greatest enemy being defeated? It increased its military spending by 12%. Why? The Cold War was over, the Soviets lost. But I guess the CIA didn't know.
2:28:14 AJ Gentile? Operation Gladio was real, but is still controversial and classified. The version I've told today isn't official, because nobody knows the whole truth.
2:28:23 Speaker 06 The CIA does.
2:28:24 AJ Gentile? Well, they do, but they won't tell us. The CIA can't confirm or deny its participation in any covert operations.
2:28:30 Speaker 06 Bullshit.
2:28:35 AJ Gentile? Now, the CIA claims it was never involved in drug trafficking. They admit Air America existed for intelligence gathering and transporting supplies.
2:28:42 Speaker 06 Yeah, supplies are smack.
2:28:45 AJ Gentile? Smack?
2:28:46 Speaker 06 Yeah, you know, scag, horse, brown sugar, China white.
2:28:49 AJ Gentile? Heroin.
2:28:49 Speaker 06 What'd I say?
2:28:51 AJ Gentile? The CIA said it never happened. In 1996, journalist Gary Webb linked the CIA to Nicaraguan contras trafficking cocaine into the US to fund rebels.
2:29:01 Speaker 06 That sounds familiar.
2:29:02 AJ Gentile? Doesn't it?
2:29:05 Speaker 07 drugs into black community. We don't have any evidence so far that they did it directly. And what we have evidence of is that men working for a CIA-run army did do that.
2:29:17 Speaker 07 I will get to the bottom of it, and I will let you know the results of what I found.
2:29:21 AJ Gentile? An official 1998 report investigated Webb's claims and finally put the issue to bed. The reports acknowledged that the CIA had worked with individuals known to be involved in drug trafficking, but did not find conclusive evidence that the CIA itself had facilitated or condoned these activities.
2:29:43 Speaker 06 Who conducted that investigation?
2:29:45 AJ Gentile? Uh, the CIA did.
2:29:47 Speaker 06 Or they investigated themselves?
2:29:49 AJ Gentile? Yep.
2:29:51 Speaker 07 You know as well as everyone else that the CIA has been dealing drugs throughout the world and bringing drugs into this country since Vietnam's war. You brought them in here in body bags. You were in the Golden Triangle. So you're gonna come in this community and insult us and tell us that you're gonna investigate yourself? You gotta be crazy.
2:30:12 AJ Gentile? Whistleblowers, including federal agents, said they witnessed CIA involvement in moving drugs.
2:30:17 Speaker 05 The head of the DEA at the time, Robert Bonner, said that a ton of pure cocaine worth hundreds of millions of dollars had been smuggled into the United States. And he blamed the CIA. I understand what you're saying. A ton of cocaine was smuggled into the United States of America? Well, in cooperation with the CIA? That's what, that's exactly what appears to have happened.
2:30:43 AJ Gentile? Declassified documents show the US government, including CIA, associated with known drug traffickers. They overlook these activities to...
2:30:51 Speaker 06 Stop communism.
2:30:53 AJ Gentile? Yep.
2:30:55 Speaker 05 If you ask the question, did the CIA sell drugs in the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles to finance the counterwar? The answer will be a categorical no. Now, having said that, and what is true is, the policymakers absolutely closed their eyes to the criminal behavior of our allies and supporters in that war. The policymakers ignored their drug dealing, their stealing, and their human rights violations.
2:31:33 AJ Gentile? The CIA didn't admit to working with organized crime, but investigations and declassified documents show they did.
2:31:41 AJ Gentile? The Vatican and CIA haven't confirmed any financial arrangement, but there's a lot of indirect evidence of Vatican support for anti-communist activities, but no hard proof.
2:31:52 Speaker 06 That's why they used that bank.
2:31:53 AJ Gentile? Right. So what's the truth? We don't know. All I can do is give you my opinion. I know we need a strong military and intelligence agencies. And this episode isn't about communism or the military. This episode is about the lies we've been told for years by the people who swore to protect us. Now, do I believe that the Soviet threat was exaggerated in order to line the pockets of military contractors and expand the power of the CIA? Come on. Of course. We were told this would happen. President Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex. He said if we let the defense companies become too powerful, they'll undermine democracy and influence policy to serve their own financial interests. Ike nailed it. That's what happened.
2:32:37 AJ Gentile? CIA operations like overthrowing governments concerned Eisenhower. He knew intelligence agencies were necessary, but stressed the need for transparency and oversight. Otherwise, the agencies would become a law unto themselves. Ike nailed it again. That's what happened. JFK often asked Eisenhower for advice. Ike told him, "Don't let the intelligence agencies have too much power." At first, JFK trusted them. But then in 1961, he signed off on the CIA's plan to overthrow Cuba's government. The Bay of Pigs invasion was a disaster. The CIA botched it. It embarrassed America and solidified the relationship between Cuba and the Soviet Union. JFK started to believe that maybe the CIA
2:33:20 AJ Gentile? was doing more harm than good and needed to be reformed or even dismantled and rebuilt. Their growing power was undermining democracy, just as Eisenhower warned. During the 1960s, there was another serious threat to democracy: organized crime.
2:33:38 AJ Gentile? The mob ran the labor unions and important businesses. They could buy judges, influence politicians. They were powerful enough to change the outcome of elections. Some say the mafia helped JFK get elected, which would be ironic, because JFK's victory brought the mafia a big problem: his brother, Robert. As Attorney General, RFK prioritized fighting organized crime.
2:34:00 Speaker 00 I think what in the world of organized crime? I think it's in a very serious situation, it's facing the country at the frozen time.
2:34:07 AJ Gentile? John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. Robert F. Kennedy, about to run for president, was assassinated five years later, in 1968. As JFK's Attorney General and confidant, RFK would have continued his brother's policies. He also pledged to reopen the investigation into JFK's murder if he was elected. Now, why reopen an investigation? I thought this was all solved.
2:34:30 Speaker 06 Yeah!
2:34:31 AJ Gentile? A president on a crusade against the CIA, killed. A potential president on a crusade against the mafia, killed. Now, we know the official stories: JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald, a lone gunman, case closed. RFK, Sirhan Sirhan, lone gunman, case closed. But there are other theories, with real evidence, that place the blame not on lone gunman, but on two powerful organizations. Two organizations with the motive, opportunity, and means: the CIA and the mafia. Now, whether the CIA and the mafia were involved in the assassinations, I'm not sure. But I am sure of one thing: they've both mastered organized crime.
2:35:17 AJ Gentile? Now, I love World War II history, so it made me happy that the episode performed well. So, we're gonna stay with World War II for a few more minutes. This next one is... It's one of the strangest intelligence operations of the war. Now, if you haven't seen it... My notes are down here. If you haven't seen it, I won't spoil it, but here's a hint. Oh, sorry, that's not professional. This is about how a crazy racecar driver, a submarine, and a dead body fooled Hitler and led to the creation of James Bond.
2:35:54 AJ Gentile? On April 30th, 1943, in the middle of World War II, a body washed up on the shore of Huelva, Spain. The deceased man was wearing a British military uniform. There was a briefcase strapped to his body containing British and American military secrets. The man was Major William Martin, a Royal Marine who was the single victim of a fatal plane crash at sea. He had just returned from temporary leave in London, where he had gone to the theater and purchased an engagement ring for his fiancee Pam. But there was something very strange about Major William Martin. He didn't exist.
2:36:33 AJ Gentile? It was the winter of 1942, and the Allies needed a win. Hitler's Nazi war machine had steamrolled all of Europe, and everybody knew England was next. The United States had just been dragged into the war by the attack on Pearl Harbor, and American bodies were piling up by the thousands.
2:36:49 Speaker 06 Inside job.
2:36:50 AJ Gentile? What?
2:36:51 Speaker 06 Pearl Harbor was an inside job. Didn't you see that image that was going around?
2:36:55 AJ Gentile? Show me.
2:36:57 Speaker 06 See? Look at that. How could the planes fly this distance in 1931?
2:37:01 AJ Gentile? Uh, you know that was meant as a joke.
2:37:03 Speaker 06 Eh, maybe.
2:37:04 AJ Gentile? And you know the Earth is round, right?
2:37:06 Speaker 06 Allegedly.
2:37:07 AJ Gentile? No, it really is.
2:37:09 Speaker 06 Could be round, could be flat. You know, who's to say?
2:37:11 AJ Gentile? Uh, science is to say.
2:37:13 Speaker 06 Oh, right, science. I tried to make air quotes, but my fins wouldn't bend.
2:37:18 AJ Gentile? Anyway, German forces were better trained, better equipped, and of singular purpose. But Germany did have a weakness. It's not a country rich in natural resources. To wage war in the 1940s, you need iron, oil, rubber, and food. Germany had to import all of these. If the Allies could disrupt Germany's supply lines, the Germans would no longer have the ability to fight, and the war could come to a quick close. But that was easier said than done. German engineers were among the best in the world. Every time the German army seized an inch of land, it was quickly fortified. Any Allied advance on mainland Europe would be repelled and would result in catastrophic losses. But the coastline of the Mediterranean was not as heavily fortified.
2:38:02 AJ Gentile? UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill called this "the soft underbelly of Europe." The key to taking back Europe was Italy, and the key to taking Italy was Sicily. Unfortunately, the Germans understood the strategic importance of Sicily as well. They were fully expecting the Allies to attack it. And if the Allies had any hope of winning, they'd need the element of surprise. MI5, Britain's intelligence agency, was tasked with tricking the Germans into thinking the Allies would attack Greece instead. If the Germans bought the ruse, they would divert forces from Sicily to Greece, leaving Sicily unprotected and ensuring an easy win for the Allies. One of the British intelligence officers working on crafting this deception was Charles Chumley.
2:38:44 Speaker 06 Hang on.
2:38:45 AJ Gentile? What?
2:38:46 Speaker 06 Chumley, that's not what it says on the screen.
2:38:48 AJ Gentile? Yeah, I know, that's how he pronounced his name.
2:38:50 Speaker 06 Well, he pronounced it wrong.
2:38:52 AJ Gentile? Chumley's primary role in the war effort was an ideas guy. Charles Chumley remembered a top-secret memo distributed to British wartime intelligence at the beginning of the war. It became known as the Trout Memo, because it compared intelligence to fly fishing.
2:39:06 Speaker 06 Why would anyone want to catch flies?
2:39:08 AJ Gentile? No, no, fly fishermen try to catch fish.
2:39:12 Speaker 06 [bleep] those fishermen.
2:39:14 AJ Gentile? The Trout Memo listed 51 specific ideas for fooling the Germans. The list was pretty wacky. It included dropping glow-in-the-dark footballs in the water to attract submarines. There was one about a fake treasure ship, and there was another about explosives being disguised as food. But the craziest idea in the Trout Memo was number 28. It involved loading up a corpse with phony documents, then dropping the corpse from a plane behind enemy lines. And when you read the entire Trout Memo, you can't help but think whoever thought of this stuff would be great at writing spy novels.
2:39:51 AJ Gentile? The Trout Memo officially was written by Rear Admiral John Godfrey, but it was actually written by Godfrey's assistant, Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming. The same Ian Fleming who went on to become a novelist, best known for a series featuring the character-
2:40:05 Speaker 06 Bond.
2:40:06 AJ Gentile? James Bond. Idea number 28 on Ian Fleming's Trout Memo was titled "A Suggestion, and Not a Very Nice One."
2:40:15 Speaker 06 used in a book by Basil Thompson. A corpse dressed as an airman with dispatches in his pockets could be dropped on the coast, supposedly from a parachute that had failed. I understand there is no difficulty in obtaining corpses at the naval hospital, but of course, it would have to be a fresh one.
2:40:34 AJ Gentile? The idea was so crazy that Chumley thought it might be just the way to fool the Germans into believing the Allies were planning to attack Greece instead of Sicily. He presented it to his superiors and they assigned a naval officer named Ewan Montague to help him develop the plan. Before the war, Ewan Montague was a lawyer. He came from an extremely wealthy family of bankers. And when the war broke out, he was too old for active service, but found himself rising through the ranks of naval intelligence.
2:41:01 Speaker 06 You know, I noticed that people from wealthy families tend to rise through the ranks rather quickly.
2:41:06 AJ Gentile? Yeah, that does seem to be the case. As it turned out, an inclination for wartime intelligence work ran in the family. Ewan didn't know it at the time, but his own brother, Ivor Montague, was actually a spy for the Soviet Union.
2:41:19 Speaker 06 Uh oh.
2:41:19 AJ Gentile? Well, luckily, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom were fighting this war on the same side.
2:41:24 Speaker 06 Ah, that's true. So did this Igor.
2:41:27 AJ Gentile? Ivor.
2:41:28 Speaker 06 Igor.
2:41:28 AJ Gentile? Ivor.
2:41:29 Speaker 06 Ivor.
2:41:29 AJ Gentile? Ivor.
2:41:30 Speaker 06 Did he stop spying for the Russians after the war? Uh huh.
2:41:34 AJ Gentile? The Montagues were also Jewish, so Ewan's wife and children spent the war in America for safety reasons. Ewan wanted in on this unique operation, to serve his country, of course, but also to keep his mind off how much he missed his wife. Chumley and Montague fleshed out the plan for their mission. They would deliver a dead body via a submarine just off the coast of Spain. The body would be carrying information identifying him as a Royal Marine, and most importantly, falsified documents regarding an upcoming military offensive in Greece. Spain was the ideal country to find the body because, though they were officially neutral, they were in close communication with the Germans. And if military secrets washed up on the Spanish shores, there was a good chance those secrets would end up in the hands of the Germans.
2:42:19 AJ Gentile? Chumley and Montague had the plan, now they just needed a dead body. But not just any dead body, it had to be male. And of military age. The cause of death needed to line up with the story of a plane crash at sea. So drowning, exposure, shock, or traumatic injury. And the man shouldn't have any pesky family members, who might not appreciate their loved one's corpse, being dressed up as someone else and taken out of the country. Ewan Montague was friendly with the local coroner, who agreed to keep an eye out for just such a body.
2:42:48 Speaker 06 Ah, it's good to have a corpse guy.
2:42:50 AJ Gentile? It is. And on January 26, 1943, the coroner called Montague and told him, "I got one."
2:43:01 AJ Gentile? Glender Michael had a hard life. His father attempted suicide by stabbing himself in the neck with a knife. He was taken to a mental hospital where he caught influenza and later died. His mother struggled to care for the family on her own. They were often homeless and there was never enough food. Shortly before the war, she died of a heart attack. Glender was declared ineligible for military service, though it's not clear why. It could have been for poor physical health, poor mental health, or both. He eventually became homeless and wandered the streets of London. On January 26, 1943, Glender Michael consumed rat poison in an abandoned warehouse. It could have been suicide, but most likely he was starving and found some bread. The bread had been laced with rat poison and Glender died two days later.
2:43:44 AJ Gentile? Death by rat poison is a rough way to go. But considering the forensic technology available at the time, dying from rat poisoning could pass for drowning. Chumley and Montague now had a body. Not for long, though. Montague's coroner buddy,
2:43:59 Speaker 06 Corpse Guy.
2:43:59 AJ Gentile? His corpse guy stressed that Glender's body was already starting to decompose. He could keep him on ice, but he needed to be deployed within the next three months. At this point, Chumley and Montague's mission had also been given an official code name, Operation Minced Meat. And this was a dark joke. Minced meat is a recipe combining chopped meat or animal fat with fruit and spices and whatever you've got lying around. And when those things you've got lying around include sugar and alcohol, it's a good way to preserve meat. At this time in the UK, people needed to preserve meat to make their rations last longer. But this time, the meat was a man.
2:44:41 AJ Gentile? It turned out that acquiring a highly specific dead body was the easy part.
2:44:45 Speaker 06 It's good to have a corpse guy.
2:44:47 AJ Gentile? Now, Montague and Chumley needed to create a new identity from thin air, and it had to stand up to German scrutiny. He needed to be a military officer if it was going to be believable that he had possession of sensitive documents. They chose the Royal Marines because it was a common uniform and easy to get. To avoid the uniform looking too new, Chumley wore it every day for the next three months. Now, they needed a name. Montague and Chumley looked through the list of servicemen and found several Royal Marines named William Martin who were around the rank of captain. The Germans likely had access to the same list of names, but not their postings. So, Montague and Chumley borrowed the name. The fictional William Martin also needed identification. Royal Marines carried ID cards on them at all times that included a picture.
2:45:32 AJ Gentile? Montague and Chumley attempted to photograph the dead body, but this was unsuccessful.
2:45:37 Speaker 06 Ah, they couldn't pull a weekend at Bernie's.
2:45:38 AJ Gentile? They tried, but the body was in rough shape and getting worse. The pictures were frightening. But working in another department was a man who looked similar to Glender Michael, and he was willing to be photographed. Montague and Chumley borrowed his face. There was one more thing they needed, but this one, they wouldn't be able to give back: underwear. A British military officer at the time would have been wearing underwear. Underwear was rationed in the UK at the time, meaning you couldn't find it in a store, and no one was giving theirs up.
2:46:07 Speaker 06 Ah, and this is where the expression "going commando" comes from.
2:46:11 AJ Gentile? Uh, I don't think that's right.
2:46:12 Speaker 06 Well...
2:46:13 AJ Gentile? Well, Montague presented this predicament to one of his superiors, and it just so happened that one of his superior's academic enemies had recently been run over by a truck. He was delighted to acquire his former colleague's underwear for Operation Mince Meat. Montague and Chumley now turned their attention from the physical to the fictional. They needed a backstory for Major William Martin. Every night, they would go out with a few of their colleagues and fill in details on William Martin's backstory. He liked fishing and was bad with money. He was romantic and secretly wanted to be a writer. The team came to view Major William Martin as a friend. The backstory they created would be told to the Spanish who found the body, and hopefully the Germans they showed it to, in the form of pocket litter.
2:46:55 AJ Gentile? Pocket litter is the term for the random stuff people carry in their pockets. For the fictional William Martin, that included his falsified military ID card, the military documents hinting at the Allied plans to invade Greece, ticket stubs from the theater, a receipt for an engagement ring, an overdraft letter from the bank, and a photograph and love letter from his fiancee Pam. Jean Leslie, a secretary working at the agency, agreed to provide a photograph. Jean now became Major Martin's fiancee Pam. And here's where things get a little awkward. Ewan and Jean began spending a lot of time together. They went dancing, they went to the movies. But not as themselves, not as Ewan and Jean, as William and Pam. They may have been playing characters, but the romance was real enough
2:47:39 AJ Gentile? that Montague's own mother wrote to his wife suggesting she come back to the UK as soon as she could. But there was one last, very important letter to be written. The military communication from a general revealing the supposed joint American and British attack on Greece. The work on this letter took over a month. And after many drafts were written by an increasingly frustrated Ewan Montague, they just had the general write the letter himself.
2:48:03 Speaker 06 Nobody likes getting notes.
2:48:05 AJ Gentile? That's true. And in the letter was placed a single eyelash.
2:48:09 Speaker 06 Eyelash?
2:48:10 AJ Gentile? Yep. The British needed to know if the letter was opened. If the plan worked, they'd have the documents returned to them. If the eyelash was missing, that means someone opened the letter.
2:48:19 Speaker 06 Oh.
2:48:20 AJ Gentile? But the month of rewrites was a problem, considering the three-month window given to Operation Mince Meat by the coroner.
2:48:26 Speaker 06 Go up, Sky.
2:48:27 AJ Gentile? They needed to get Glender Michael, the photo of Jean, the worn uniform, the love letters, the dead academic's underwear, the all-important military document, and the pocket litter to Spain. And they needed to do it fast. Because acting major William Martin was starting to rot.
2:48:46 AJ Gentile? At this time, MI5 employed one of the UK's most famous race car drivers. During the war, Jack Horstfall had been recruited by British intelligence to provide transportation for its agents when they needed to get somewhere and get out of somewhere fast. In this case, he needed to transport Ewan Montague, Charles Chumley, and a secret package from England to Scotland, where Ewan and Charles would meet a submarine that would deliver Major William Martin to a specific location off the coast of Spain. Glender Michael's body had been placed in a special container that was created for this exact purpose. It was essentially a thin coffin packed with dry ice. This would help keep the body cold, to slow down the decomposition process, and help keep it secret. It would also save the submarine's crew
2:49:31 AJ Gentile? from being trapped in a small space with a very bad smell. They decided to travel overnight to risk being seen. But the UK was under a strict blackout at the time. Every night, entire cities went dark to make them harder for German bombers to identify from overhead. This meant all streetlights were out, and all vehicle headlights had to be covered. So Montague and Chumley were going to be driven at high speed by a race car driver in pitch darkness. And by the way, Jack Horstfall was legally blind and refused to wear glasses.
2:50:01 Speaker 06 That kind of badass.
2:50:03 AJ Gentile? Well, maybe, or stupid. Horstfall wouldn't wear glasses because he was always very well dressed. He liked martinis and was famous for driving an Aston Martin.
2:50:11 Speaker 06 Who'd you like?
2:50:12 AJ Gentile? James Bond. You'll be using this Aston Martin, DB5 with modifications. Now, pay attention, please.
2:50:27 AJ Gentile? James Bond was a composite character based on real people that Ian Fleming knew, including Jack Horstfall. The overnight road trip from England to Scotland was crazy and included a couple of close calls, but they made it to Scotland on time. In Scotland, they met the crew of the submarine HMS Seraph and loaded in their suspiciously large container, which was labeled "optical instruments." In the early morning hours of April 30, 1943, the submarine reached its destination. The officers aboard the HMS Seraph performed a brief funeral service for Glender Michael, then placed his body, with the briefcase attached, into the water. Then the sub was positioned in a way that the propellers could be used to propel the body toward the shore. They gunned the engine and the body was on its way.
2:51:12 AJ Gentile? Their final task was to sink the body's container, and this turned out to be one of the biggest hurdles Operation Mincemeat faced. Part of the special container's cooling system included air pockets, and so when placed in the water, it floated. They tried shooting at it, but it still wouldn't sink. And if they couldn't sink it, this would be a big problem. Imagine a strange coffin riddled with bullet holes washing up on shore just after Major William Martin's body. The Spanish would know things were not as they seemed. So the Seraph crew decided to blow it up. The explosion was loud, but the container did finally sink. And Major Martin? He ended up on the beach.
2:51:54 AJ Gentile? At around 9:30 on the morning of April 30, 1943, the body of Royal Marine Acting Major William Martin was discovered by a fisherman in Huelva, Spain. This was chosen as the drop-off site because of one specific Huelva resident, Adolf Claus.
2:52:09 Speaker 06 That's the most German name I ever heard.
2:52:11 AJ Gentile? Claus was a notorious German spy who was the key to making sure the falsified documents were seen by the Germans. The fisherman who found the body notified the Spanish authorities, who informed the British consulate in Spain, and now began a delicate diplomatic dance. After enough time had passed for news of Major William Martin's death to travel through official British channels, the British needed to start requesting Martin's briefcase. And by pushing for the return of the briefcase, it would alert the Spanish and hopefully the Germans that there was something juicy inside. But they couldn't push too hard, or the Spanish might return the briefcase before the Germans could get a peek. But they did eventually need to get the documents back if this thing was gonna work. Because, look, if the Germans believed that the British believed that their documents
2:52:55 AJ Gentile? had been lost and the Germans had possibly gained possession of them, they would likely cancel the planned Greek attack. No reason to attack if the Germans know it's coming, and that couldn't be allowed to happen. The Germans had to read the letter and have it returned unopened. So, a delicate dance. Less delicate was the matter of the autopsy. Glender Michael had, of course, not died by drowning, or blunt trauma, or shock, or exposure. He ate rat poison. A detailed autopsy would almost certainly have revealed that something was off. But by this time, the stench of the body was so foul that the British Vice Consul, who was aware of Operation Mince Meat, was able to cut the autopsy short. He told the staff in the coroner's office, "It's hot, this place stinks, let's go grab
2:53:40 AJ Gentile? lunch instead, I'm buying." And that was the end of the autopsy. A few days later, a funeral was held for Major William Martin. He was buried in Spain with full military honors. Among the crowd of mourners was the German spy, Adolf Claus. Adolf knew about Major William Martin's arrival in Spain and was already working on obtaining a copy of the documents. It took a week and a half, but the documents did make their way into the hands of the Germans before finally being returned.
2:54:08 Speaker 06 No eyelash?
2:54:09 AJ Gentile? No eyelash. To get the letter out of the envelope, the Germans inserted a thin wire and actually wound the letter into a tight scroll. The scroll was carefully pulled from a small fold in the envelope. It was dried, copied, twisted around the wire again, and put back in the envelope without breaking the wax seal. It was then soaked in seawater and returned. Even if the eyelash was there, the British would have known the letter was read, because when they dried it out, it curled up like a potato chip. And then the information from the falsified documents made it all the way to Hitler.
2:54:46 AJ Gentile? On July 9, 1943, the joint American and British invasion of Sicily, codenamed Operation Husky, began. The Allies were met with stormy weather, but little German resistance. The enemy was too busy planning for the invasion of Greece. Hitler had bought the Operation Mincemeat Deception completely. The British had expected 10,000 killed or wounded in the first week of fighting, but only suffered 1,400 losses. The Navy expected 300 ships would be sunk in the action, but they lost only 12. The predicted 90-day campaign was over in 38 days. Operation Mincemeat is now considered one of the greatest episodes of wartime deception in history, and is broadly credited with one of the turning points of World War II. But this successful operation had a dark side effect.
2:55:31 AJ Gentile? It ushered in a new era of espionage. It opened a Pandora's Box of intelligence operations focused on deception. But the targets of the deception were no longer military. The targets were now civilians. In 1942, the United States military created the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services. This was an intelligence agency modeled after Britain's MI6. After the war, the OSS was dissolved. But in 1947, a new intelligence agency was created: the CIA.
2:56:04 AJ Gentile? Technically, the CIA is a civilian agency, tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world. But CIA operations are much more creative and devious than simple intelligence gathering. In 1953, the CIA helped overthrow Iran's government via Operation Ajax. In 1954, Operation PB Success overthrew the president of Guatemala, a democratically-elected president. Syria, Indonesia, Brazil, Nicaragua, Haiti, Uruguay, Panama. In these countries and many others, the CIA attempted coups, attempted to remove elected leaders, and in some cases, assassinate those leaders.
2:56:45 AJ Gentile? The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis is taught in every American school. It's a story about Soviet aggression and the bravery of President JFK. What's not taught is that in the years leading up to the crisis, the CIA established a base of operations in Miami. The only place that had more CIA officers in the world was headquarters in Langley. These men belong to a terrorist organization responsible for a recent wave of bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations. They are Cuban exiles waging a terrorist war against Fidel Castro, and their base of operations is an American city. From the Miami base, Operation JM Wave was launched. Cuban exiles were recruited and trained by the CIA to operate as agents.
2:57:29 AJ Gentile? Those agents then spent years engaging in an extensive campaign of terrorism on economic and civilian targets. A lot of civilians were killed, and this was a major factor in the Soviet decision to place missiles on Cuba. And these terrorist attacks continued for years. In 1976, Kuban Flight 455 was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 73 people aboard. The CIA was immediately suspected, but naturally, they denied it. But in 2007, independent research connected the bombing to a CIA asset. During the Vietnam War, the CIA spun up the Phoenix Program. This program was designed to identify and destroy the Vietcong, the VC, via infiltration, assassination, terrorism, and torture.
2:58:15 AJ Gentile? Phoenix was shut down after the abuse, torture, and murder were exposed. In the 1970s, back home, the CIA's Operation Chaos targeted anti-war protesters.
2:58:24 Speaker 06 I thought the CIA only operates overseas and doesn't spy on Americans. Yeah, yeah, I realized how stupid I sounded when I said it. Hey, it's a good thing that the CIA, FBI, and other agencies aren't being weaponized and used against American citizens, eh? Sarcasm!
2:58:47 AJ Gentile? Operation Condor ran for over 20 years and was a program of terrorism, assassination, and overthrow attempts of every socialist leader in South America. There's compelling evidence to show that for over 30 years, the CIA helped organize, train, and fund death squads in El Salvador. During the US-inspired Civil War, at least 75,000 civilians were killed. MKUltra was an illegal human experimentation program. The CIA was testing drugs that could be used to force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture. The program ran for 20 years before being exposed. Through the 80s and 90s, the CIA was the biggest illegal drug trafficking and money longering operation in the world, though this is only alleged.
2:59:32 AJ Gentile? Operation Mincemeat is hailed as a great success, a major turning point in World War II that led to the Allied victory and probably saved millions of lives. And I believe that's true. But out of the ashes of the war, and emboldened by the success of the OSS, emerged the CIA. Now, the CIA and its defenders will say that, yes, mistakes were made, but the ultimate goal of the agency is to protect American lives and America's interests overseas. And that's what we're taught here in the US, and that's what we're shown in every movie about the CIA, which all have to be approved by the CIA. But there are people around the world and throughout history that view the CIA as an instrument of evil.
3:00:17 AJ Gentile? Thousands, perhaps millions of people, would say the CIA is the most villainous organization ever conceived by man. And I'm not saying it is, I'm just saying every story has two sides. So, is the CIA a hero or a villain? Well, it all depends on which side of the table you're sitting, on which end of the gun you are, on which end of the needle, on whether you're the tortured or the torturer. Now, given the nightmarish abuses and atrocities it's committed, and given the political weaponization of the agency that exists today, the CIA, at least the way it's currently structured, might be doing more harm than good. But if America is gonna have a powerful intelligence agency like the CIA, and I think it should, that agency needs to do better.
3:01:02 AJ Gentile? And we, the people, we need to demand it.
3:01:11 Speaker 03 It's me, the
3:01:14 Speaker 03 We don't need the jingle twice.
3:01:17 Speaker 03 Stop it. This is about vacation inflation and how Priceline negotiates amazing deals on hotels, flights, and rental cars.
3:01:26 Speaker 03 Yeah, but I didn't mention that you can save up to 60% off hotels in the Priceline app. Fine. No one deals more deals than
3:01:35 Speaker 03 Please stop. Touche.
3:01:40 AJ Gentile? The next one is a dark one. This was the first case that I could find where the US government actually publicly compensated someone who died in a strange way.
3:01:53 Speaker 05 Oh, look, he had a heart attack. Whoopsies.
3:01:57 AJ Gentile? He fell out of a hotel window. The Frank Olson murder is taught by Israeli intelligence as the perfect murder.
3:02:03 Speaker 05 Which one's that?
3:02:04 AJ Gentile? Frank Olson was part of MKUltra and was starting to have second doubts about it, so they sent him to a psychiatrist who he didn't know was actually worked for Sidney Gottlieb and was into programming, and he was freaking out. And he's up in a hotel room with someone else from MK, and he falls out the window. But if you look at the window where he fell, it's like, you know, two feet by two feet. You can't just jump out the window. So he was found on the sidewalk by the doorman. That's Frank Olson, worth looking up. This is an older episode. It goes back to number 76. It's about MKUltra and the Frank Olson murder.
3:02:49 AJ Gentile? November 28, 1953, New York City. At 2:30 AM, the body hit the sidewalk. A few seconds later, a shower of glass. The doorman of the Statler Hotel yelled to the lobby that there was a jumper. The night manager rushed out and saw him, a man about 40 years old lying on the pavement. He was on his back, wearing only his underwear, and blood started to pool around him. Thirteen stories up, a single window is open, its curtain flapping through broken glass. The night manager knelt beside the man, whose eyes were open and was somehow still alive. He desperately tried to speak but was choking on blood and couldn't be understood. After a minute or two of trying to communicate, the man took a final, deep breath and was
3:03:34 AJ Gentile? gone. Nobody knows for sure what he was trying to say before he died, but one thing is for certain: it was something about the CIA.
3:03:48 AJ Gentile? Room 1018A was registered to Robert Lashbrook and Frank Olson. The police burst in, guns raised, but it was empty. Cold November air was blowing through the broken window. In the bathroom was a man sitting on the toilet, resting his head in his hands. He told the police he'd been sleeping, heard a noise, and woke up. One officer asked the name of the man who went out the window. The man in the bathroom said Olson, Frank Olson. The responding officers figured this was an open and shut case. A middle-aged man is depressed or distraught and ends it all by jumping, just another night in the big city. But the night manager, Armin Pastore, wasn't convinced. He said it didn't make sense that someone would get up in the middle of the night, run
3:04:32 AJ Gentile? across a dark room in his underwear, avoid two beds, and dive through a closed window that had the shade and curtains closed. Pastore checked with the hotel operator to see if any calls were made from the room. The operator said, "Yes, a call was just made a few minutes ago." And because it ran through a switchboard, she heard the whole thing. The caller, Robert Lashbrook, who was the man in the bathroom, called a number on Long Island, which belonged to a Dr. Harold Abramson. The call lasted only a few seconds. "Well, he's gone," Lashbrook said. "Well, that's too bad," was Abramson's reply. A few hours later, Frank Olson's family was notified. They were told there was an accident. Frank had either fallen or jumped from his 10th-floor room.
3:05:17 AJ Gentile? Frank's body was so badly damaged that the funeral was held with a closed casket, and the Olson family tried to move on. Having trouble coping with losing his father, Eric Olson would ask his mother about Frank from time to time, and she would always say the same thing: "You're never going to know what happened in the room that night." But 20 years later, that would change.
3:05:41 AJ Gentile? In 1975, the Rockefeller Commission released information to the public about its investigation into CIA activities. The report mentioned a civilian scientist working for the Department of the Navy. He was given LSD without his knowledge as part of a CIA experiment. That scientist experienced side effects and was sent to New York for psychiatric care. A few days later, he jumped from a 10th floor window of his hotel and died. This report was in the New York Times and Washington Post and made its way to the Olson family. The government confirmed the scientist was Frank Olson. And just 10 days later, the family was invited to the White House and President Ford gave them a formal apology. The Director of the CIA also apologized.
3:06:26 AJ Gentile? The United States government agreed this was a wrongful death and offered the family a $750,000 settlement if they agreed not to sue. The Olson family agreed to the terms. Alice Olson never wanted to talk about Frank's death or his job. Frank's children, now in their 20s and 30s, always knew their father was a scientist, but what scientist's family gets a personal invitation to the Oval Office? Alice Olson only knew a few things about her husband's job. She knew he was a scientist doing important work for the US government. She knew he traveled for work all the time, and she knew he was unhappy. One of the last things Frank said to his wife was that he had made a terrible mistake. But for Frank's children, this information was entirely new.
3:07:11 AJ Gentile? And because of the investigations and media coverage, they now learned for the first time what their father actually did for a living. He was no ordinary scientist. During World War II, Frank Olson was one of the first Army scientists assigned to the top-secret Biological Warfare Lab at Fort Dietrich, Maryland. Frank's specialty was aerosolizing living biological agents and munitions. In other words, he created biological weapons of mass destruction. Now, at this time in history, the CIA was part of the Army. And after becoming a civilian, Frank continued his research in bio He was lead scientist for Operation Harness,
3:07:53 AJ Gentile? where animals in the Caribbean were exposed to anthrax, to laryngia, and brucella. He was part of Operation Sea Spray, where different strains of bacteria were sprayed over the San Francisco Bay Area to test the city's vulnerability to a bioweapon attack. And as Frank moved up the ranks of the CIA, he spent a lot of time at Fort Terry, which was a secret installation on Plum Island in the Long Island Sound. Plum Island is only reachable by boat or by air. The toxins tested there are considered too dangerous to be on the mainland. Olson developed delivery devices for these bioweapons: canisters disguised as shaving cream cans that could disperse anthrax in a concentrated area, a cigarette lighter that emitted a deadly gas,
3:08:37 AJ Gentile? lipstick that killed instantly.
3:08:39 Speaker 06 Hey, when did they make biological weapons a war crime?
3:08:42 AJ Gentile? The Geneva Conventions in 1925.
3:08:44 Speaker 06 So all this research was...
3:08:46 AJ Gentile? Illegal.
3:08:47 Speaker 06 Right.
3:08:47 AJ Gentile? In early 1953, the same year he died, Frank Olson stepped down as chief of the Special Operations Division. He said the job was too stressful and was causing his ulcers to flare up.
3:08:59 Speaker 06 You think ulcers suck? Try anthrax.
3:09:01 AJ Gentile? Oh, no sympathy for CIA scientists, huh?
3:09:04 Speaker 06 Not even a little bit.
3:09:05 AJ Gentile? So Frank stepped down, but he stayed with the CIA. And that's when he met Sidney Gottlieb and Robert Lashbrook.
3:09:12 Speaker 06 Gottlieb, Gottlieb. Where do I know that name from?
3:09:16 AJ Gentile? Well, Sidney Gottlieb ran the CIA's Project Bluebird, which became Project Artichoke, which became...
3:09:22 Speaker 06 MKUltra.
3:09:23 AJ Gentile? Bingo.
3:09:27 AJ Gentile? During the Cold War, the CIA, specifically Sidney Gottlieb, was obsessed with mind control and brainwashing. There was a fear that the Soviet Union was also working on this capability, and the United States was determined to get there first. Project MKUltra was the program intended to accomplish this. MKUltra was brutal and illegal. Over time, the experiments Frank Olson conducted and witnessed started to weigh on him. During one study, Frank Olson observed interrogations at CIA black sites in Germany.
3:10:00 AJ Gentile? Called Expendables.
3:10:01 Speaker 06 I'm assuming these Expendables were not aging action stars.
3:10:05 AJ Gentile? They were not. They were mostly suspected spies and security leaks.
3:10:09 Speaker 06 Suspected, so not proven?
3:10:12 AJ Gentile? Nope, just suspected.
3:10:13 Speaker 06 Friggin' spooks.
3:10:15 AJ Gentile? The Expendables were subject to drug experiments, hypnosis, electric shocks, isolation, sexual abuse, and all kinds of torture. This was an effort to study not just the effects of extreme torture, but also brainwashing techniques and memory deletion. Many of these people were interrogated to death. In other instances, Frank Olson saw the results of his own weapons that were used on Expendables. Some of those people died slowly and in agony. And even though Frank's wife didn't know any of the specifics, it was clear that Frank's work was becoming too much for him to bear. In November 1953, Frank Olson received an invitation for a pre-Thanksgiving retreat at a cabin on Deep Creek Lake. Gottlieb ran these retreats for scientists and staff pretty often.
3:11:00 AJ Gentile? Deep Creek was a convenient place for Gottlieb. This was one of the locations where Americans were subjected to MKUltra techniques against their will for decades. Frank Olson was there with 10 other scientists. The first day of the gathering was fine, nothing out of the ordinary. On the second day, after dinner, the men kicked back for a post-meal drink. Lashbrook, Gottlieb's second-in-command, pulled a bunch of glasses and poured everyone a generous portion of Cointreau, which is-
3:11:27 Speaker 06 An excellent orange triple sec liqueur from France.
3:11:30 AJ Gentile? Right. 20 minutes later, Gottlieb asked if anyone was feeling odd. A few of the men said they were. Gottlieb then told them that their drinks were spiked with a heavy dose of LSD.
3:11:40 Speaker 06 Son of a-
3:11:44 AJ Gentile? Frank Olson was aware that the CIA had dosed entire villages in Europe to observe the results. Many innocent people died from these experiments, but he was surprised that he would be the unwitting subject of an experiment. And Frank didn't react well. A few days later, he submitted his resignation, but he was talked into staying. It was suggested that he see a psychiatrist to help him cope with the effects of the experiment and the stress of his work. Frank agreed. Lashbrook drove Frank Olson to New York to meet with Dr. Harold Abramson.
3:12:15 Speaker 06 Yeah, yeah, this is the guy he called after the jump, right?
3:12:17 AJ Gentile? Yep. Dr. Abramson was actually an allergist that worked for the CIA. He pretended to be a psychiatrist, but Frank didn't know this. After a couple of sessions, Dr. Abramson convinced Frank to check himself into a hospital so he could recover from stress and exhaustion. Frank was actually fine with this. He was looking forward to the time off and was already picking out what books to bring with him. And that night, he and Lashbrook signed into the Statler Hotel, Room 1018A. Frank had a nice conversation with his wife. She remembered him sounding more peaceful than he'd been in a long time. He watched a little TV and went to bed. At 2:30 a.m., he was dead on the street below the window. Over the next 12 hours, a cleanup and a cover-up by the CIA ensued.
3:13:02 AJ Gentile? The police investigation was quickly closed. Frank Olson's family was told he died from jumping or falling out a window. About 20 years later, more details about MKUltra emerged, and the Olson family received a settlement. And almost 20 years after that, the case would take another turn. Frank Olson's wife, Alice, passed away in 1993. Their children decided to have Frank's body exhumed and reburied next to his wife. But Frank's children had an additional plan. They had James Starr, a medical examiner professor, conduct a second autopsy. Starr said there were no cuts on Frank's body and no shards of glass, which would have been expected by jumping through a window.
3:13:44 AJ Gentile? And even though Frank landed on his back, his skull above his left eye had a blunt-force trauma injury. He had another serious wound on his chest. Starr said of his findings...
3:13:55 Speaker 07 I think Frank Olson was intentionally, deliberately, with malice aforethought, thrown out of the window.
3:14:02 AJ Gentile? Frank's sons sued the CIA again, but because of the agreement they signed in 1975, the judge had to dismiss the case. But the judge did say, even though the case couldn't proceed as a matter of law, the allegations made by the family against the CIA, though they sounded far-fetched, appeared to be the truth. Since the lawsuit couldn't proceed, Frank Olson's sons went to the press. They flat-out said the CIA murdered... their father and covered it up. They also produced interesting documents. In 1954, just a few months after Frank Olson's death, the CIA executed a document with the Department of Justice that gave the CIA authority to grant CIA employees immunity
3:14:45 AJ Gentile? from any crime, including murder.
3:14:48 Speaker 06 A license to kill.
3:14:49 AJ Gentile? Exactly. And there's a handbook released in 1953, the year of Frank's death, called "The CIA Study of Assassination." It's fascinating and I'll link it below. It describes that the best way to assassinate a target is to drop them from at least 75 feet onto a hard surface. The manual says when successfully executed, it causes little excitement and is only casually investigated. In fact, the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence organization, used Frank Olson's death as an example of a perfect murder due to the skill with which it was executed. Now, while there is still no official admission of guilt from the CIA, I think it's pretty obvious what happened. Frank Olson was one of only a few scientists who could confirm that the United States
3:15:34 AJ Gentile? used chemical weapons in the Korean War. This is something that's still only alleged, but there's a lot of evidence it happened. Korean and Chinese soldiers were suddenly coming down with cases of cholera, meningitis, and even plague. It's possible Frank Olson was directly involved in deploying these illegal weapons. Frank Olson was one of only a dozen or so people on Earth who knew the extent of MKUltra and other secret and illegal CIA operations. Frank Olson was a man who committed, or at least was part of, projects that committed atrocities around the world. And he was dealing with a moral crisis and started voicing his concerns. He even quit, but the CIA wouldn't allow it. When he was dosed with LSD that night in November,
3:16:19 AJ Gentile? it was a loyalty test to see what scientists would say if they were exposed to the drug. Frank Olson failed that test and paid the ultimate price. But because of his death and the diligence of his family, many illegal CIA activities were exposed, and MKUltra was almost destroyed. Almost. It continued for another 20 years before finally shutting down in 1973. At least, as far as we know, all the records were illegally destroyed. And not Sidney Gottlieb, Robert Lashbrook, or any of the senior scientists from MKUltra were ever brought to justice. In fact, they all lived out their lives on fat pensions paid for by you and me. But the CIA promises that MKUltra was the last time drug experiments were done on people
3:17:04 AJ Gentile? against their will. And such atrocities absolutely could not, and would not happen today. Why would they lie? That's 3 plus 1, 5 plus 0, 0. So everybody knows that after World War II, the United States imported about 1,200 Nazi war criminals, I mean scientists, under Operation Paperclip. And the scientists who get the most attention are Wernher von Braun and his team of rocket engineers slash war criminals. But one scientist who doesn't get a lot of attention, and you're gonna find out why, is Dr. Eric Traub. He was the top bioweapon scientist for the Nazis. And after the war, the US Army brought him over to set up, or improve, the bioweapons program for the US.
3:17:48 AJ Gentile? But whenever I get into Operation Paperclip, I always hammer home, "These are Nazis." You know, Wernher von Braun is not a hero. He's a hero, but he's not a hero. You know, a lot of these guys, these are all evil dudes. And most of the Operation Paperclip was just bringing over intelligence assets. They don't like talking about that. It's the 1,200 scientists that we learn about. It's not the 6,000 intelligence agents that just lived here until the 70s and 80s. Now, keep in mind that bioweapons were made illegal under the 1925 Geneva Protocol. So the US is bringing over a war criminal to help with a program that is, by definition, a war crime. Anyway, Dr. Traub helped set up the infamous Plum Island facility in New York.
3:18:33 AJ Gentile? Yeah, where I grew up, I saw this thing all the time. Now, the goal there was to weaponize biting insects like ticks. And if we learned anything from Jurassic Park, when you mess with nature, nature fights back.
3:18:49 AJ Gentile? In July 2008, the carcass of an animal washed up on the beach at Montauk Point, Long Island. Local beachcombers are used to seeing dead animals: seagulls, fish, crabs, even the occasional whale. But they had never seen anything like this. Animal experts were brought in to identify it. They were stumped. It looked like part dog, part reptile, and part rodent with the beak of a bird. This animal, whatever it was, became known as the Montauk Monster. But where did the monster come from? There could be only one answer: Plum Island. Plum Island is just a few miles from where the monster was found. Locals heard rumors that this was a top-secret government facility that created bioweapons, engineered animal hybrids, and maybe even experimented on people.
3:19:34 AJ Gentile? Sounds like a wild theory. But then another animal washed up on the beach. Again, it couldn't be identified. And then another animal, and then two more. In 2010, the rumors about Plum Island seemed to be true when something else was found on the beach. This time, it wasn't a strange animal, it was a body, a human body. Well, almost human.
3:20:04 AJ Gentile? Less than two miles off the coast of Long Island and about 85 miles from New York City is a small island owned by the US government and unidentified on most maps. It's only accessible by ferry or by helicopter, but don't try visiting. Even if you have top-secret clearance, access to Plum Island is invitation-only. Boats that wander too close are quickly chased away by armed military personnel. Officially, the island is home to the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, a federal research facility that studies livestock-related diseases, specifically foot-and-mouth disease and African swine fever. These are highly contagious diseases that affect cows, pigs, sheep, and goats.
3:20:44 AJ Gentile? The Plum Island Animal Disease Center is the only lab in the US authorized to work with live FMD samples. If these samples escape the island, it could devastate the country's food supply in a matter of weeks. Foot-and-mouth is so contagious that if a single case is found in imported meat, all meat imports from that country are instantly banned. In 2001, the UK had an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease that resulted in a loss of almost $10 billion and the slaughter of more than 6 million animals, whether they were infected or not. The center also studies African and classical swine fevers as well as avian flu. Now, there's no question that since the 1950s, Plum Island has studied diseases that affect livestock.
3:21:27 AJ Gentile? But Plum Island's true history is much darker. For years, stories circulated that Plum Island was conducting genetic experiments on animals and possibly on people. So when the bodies of strange animals began washing up on beaches around the Long Island Sound, it could mean only one thing. The rumors about Plum Island were true. The Manhattan Monster was found along the East River. Then another creature washed up. And this one kind of looked like a pig, but you don't see a lot of those running around New York City. Besides, pigs have four toes on each foot that ends in a hoof. The Manhattan Monster's feet had five toes that ended in what looked like claws.
3:22:07 Speaker 06 Ooh, did it have the body of a crab and the head of a cat?
3:22:10 AJ Gentile? No, it had a-
3:22:10 Speaker 06 That would be a crab cat.
3:22:12 AJ Gentile? I know, but it-
3:22:12 Speaker 06 Be a crab cat!
3:22:14 AJ Gentile? Some thought it could be a huge rat. Now, I'm from New York, and I've seen some huge rats.
3:22:18 Speaker 06 Especially under the F train at West 4th Street, eh?
3:22:30 AJ Gentile? They get big down there, but not this big. Plus, rats have four toes on their back feet. Again, this thing had five. Then another unrecognizable animal appeared, then another, and another. Plum Island is supposed to be a medical research facility, originally under the purview of the Department of Agriculture. But Plum Island is actually part of Homeland Security. Why? In 2008, an Al Qaeda operative named Aifa Siddiqui was captured. She was in possession of handwritten notes with possible sites for a mass casualty attack in the United States. One of the sites listed was Plum Island. Again, why? Well, Plum Island research wasn't always about curing diseases.
3:23:14 AJ Gentile? When it opened, Plum Island was about creating them. In 1952, Plum Island was used to research anti-animal biological warfare. Specifically, it focused on weaponizing foot-and-mouth disease against enemy livestock to disrupt their food supply. But there's evidence that the bioweapons developed on Plum Island weren't only targeting animals, but targeting humans.
3:23:36 AJ Gentile? In January 2010, a human body was found on Plum Island by a local security guard. It was described as a six-foot-tall black male with no obvious signs of trauma. But there were a few strange details about this man. One is that his fingers were described as abnormally large. Some news agencies reported that his hands seemed mutated. But the scariest detail of all? His skull had five holes drilled into it, indicating invasive brain surgery or experimentation. And that's where Plum Island's dark history becomes even darker. Because when the United States wanted to create one of the deadliest germ labs on Earth, it brought in elite personnel to build it.
3:24:17 AJ Gentile? To build Plum Island, the US brought in bioweapon scientists with experience in human experimentation. To build Plum Island, the US brought in the Nazis.
3:24:31 Speaker 07 Why couldn't the Montauk Monster be some critter that they were tinkering with, that somehow went into the water and got swept by that outgoing tide? Montauk is south and east of Plum Island, not that far, maybe 10 miles as the crow flies, maybe less even. Why couldn't it be that?
3:24:53 AJ Gentile? Reims Island, Germany is home to the oldest virological institution in the world. Reims was founded in 1910 to research foot-and-mouth disease. But during World War II, it became ground zero for Hitler's biowarfare program. Reims was run by scientist Eric Traub, who reported directly to Heinrich Himmler, who reported directly to Hitler. Traub experimented with unique forms of biological warfare. He specialized in biting and stinging insects. He discovered that if you infect beetles and ticks with a deadly disease, you can drop them on enemy troops and their food supplies. You can devastate an entire army without firing a single shot. Ticks were considered an ideal weapon for biological warfare. They're small, making them hard to detect.
3:25:37 AJ Gentile? They're resilient, making them hard to kill. And they feed on human blood, making them motivated to spread disease. The tick is the perfect germ vector, which is why it has long been fancied as a germ weapon by early biologists. from Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan to the Soviet Union and the United States. After the war, there was no Nazi Germany. There was no Empire of Japan. But the Soviet Union and the United States were still very interested in using poison ticks in warfare, except now they would be used on each other. So now the two allies became enemies, and competition for German technology was fierce. The United States launched Operation Paperclip, a secret program that recruited German scientists,
3:26:21 AJ Gentile? engineers, and technicians. The US gave German scientists a choice. "We're for us, and your war crimes are forgiven." Not a difficult decision for most. Even if German scientists refused to work for the US, they could still find themselves swept up in Operation Osoavjakim. This was the Soviet counterpart to Operation Paperclip. But where the US gave scientists a choice, the Soviets took them by force. Eric Traub was one of the scientists forced to work for the Soviets from his lab on Reims Island. But in 1948, British intelligence got him out and brought him to the States. Soon, he was working at Fort Dietrich, the Army's biological warfare headquarters. And based on the design of Traub's island in Germany, the United States built their own lab off the coast of New York.
3:27:06 AJ Gentile? So the Plum Island Animal Disease Laboratory opened its doors in 1954.
3:27:12 AJ Gentile? A source who worked on Plum Island in the 1950s recalls that animal handlers and a scientist released ticks outdoors on the island. They called him "the Nazi scientist." In 1951, they were inoculating these ticks. It would take years before residents in the area would learn what was happening on Plum Island. And when locals found out, tensions were high. Nobody wanted a bioweapons lab in their backyard. Moral issues aside, what if some disease made it to the mainland? After all, about 10 million people live within 100 miles of the island. A lab leak would be catastrophic. But even when the government finally acknowledged the facility, they said that, one, it wasn't researching bioweapons, and, two, there's no way anything could escape the island.
3:27:55 AJ Gentile? But here's the thing: those were both lies.
3:28:03 Speaker 00 "This animal facility, since 1954, when it was actually inaugurated as a biological warfare facility by Nazi Germany's top germware officer, warfare officer, that we secretly imported to the United States, the goal was germ warfare." "Is that true? It really was a Nazi? A Nazi ran the place? An ex-Nazi?" "Yeah, his name was Eric Traub. We can find him in the depths of the National Archives and Record Administration where I found him."
3:28:32 AJ Gentile? "In 1971, a mysterious virus began decimating Cuba's pig population, threatening a major food source. Within two years, over 500,000 pigs had died or been slaughtered. The cause was African swine fever, a highly contagious and usually fatal virus. This was the first and only outbreak of swine fever in the Western Hemisphere. As a result of the epidemic, Cuba was forced to slaughter every pig on the island. How African swine flu got onto the island was a mystery. Well, a mystery to everyone except the Cubans." The Cuban government blamed the United States, specifically the CIA. After all, Operation Mongoose was well-known to the Cubans.
3:29:15 AJ Gentile? This was a covert operation initiated by the CIA in the early 1960s. Its primary objective was to remove Fidel Castro from power, and although they were never implemented, biological weapons were a part of this plan. The CIA had planned to spray botulinum toxin on the island. The justification for this is that it would save the lives of thousands of American soldiers. Cuban civilians wouldn't be so lucky. Botulinum toxin is one of the most potent toxins on Earth. Estimates put the casualty count at somewhere between 1 and 2% of the Cuban civilian population. We're talking hundreds of thousands dead. Now luckily, Operation Mongoose ended, and this never came to pass. But when a disease landed on Cuba out of nowhere, all signs pointed to the CIA."
3:30:06 AJ Gentile? In 1977, Long Island newspaper Newsday reported two Cuban exiles admitted they were part of the plot. They said in early 1971, they were given the virus at Fort Gulek in Panama. They then traveled to Navasa Island near Cuba and smuggled the virus to the island. Now, there is proof that the US Navy was on Navasa Island in early 1971, but they claim this was a scientific mission, though the science they were researching was looking for animal diseases that could jump to humans. Now, that might be a coincidence, but there's only one place in the Western Hemisphere that has live African swine flu. That's Plum Island. And the way African swine flu is transmitted? Through ticks.
3:30:48 AJ Gentile? This was the exact method of biological attack that Eric Trab specialized in. Of course, the CIA denied all of this, and it still does, but it has to.
3:30:57 Speaker 06 Why does the CIA have to deny this?
3:31:00 AJ Gentile? Well, this attack happened in 1971. President Richard Nixon ordered all bioweapon research to stop in 1969, so there's no way the CIA could have been involved, right?
3:31:10 Speaker 06 Oh, I know where this is going.
3:31:12 AJ Gentile? But in 1975, a congressional report revealed that the CIA continued to maintain a stockpile of biological weapons, lots of them, in violation of the order.
3:31:22 Speaker 06 The CIA doesn't like to follow orders.
3:31:24 AJ Gentile? No, they don't. And this was a terrifying prospect. Who is in charge of these dangerous bioweapons? With no oversight, there's a high risk that one of these diseases could infect the population and we'd never see it coming. Turns out, that's exactly what happened.
3:31:45 AJ Gentile? In 1975, Ronnie was working a security detail for a warehouse in Connecticut. During his shift, he walked the building, the parking lot, and the fence around the property. During one of his rounds, he felt a pinch on his ankle. He was breaking in a new pair of boots, and he knew he'd spend the next few nights nursing sore feet. When he got home, the first thing he did was strip off those damn boots, and sure enough, he had a small red welt on his ankle. When he woke up the next morning, the small red welt had ballooned into a painful blister shaped like a bull's eye. When he rubbed it, he felt a bump. He looked more closely. The bump was a bug, and it was alive. Ronnie grabbed a pair of tweezers, and when he pulled the bug out, it broke apart. A few days later, his joints started to ache, and he felt sick.
3:32:30 AJ Gentile? He thought he had caught the flu, but it wasn't the flu. In 1975, the small town of Old Lime, Connecticut, experienced an outbreak of a devastating new disease. Some people got rashes, some ran high fevers, others had painful swollen joints. Some people had all these symptoms, as well as headaches, dizziness, and shortness of breath. In severe cases, people were becoming delusional, experiencing psychosis, and becoming paralyzed. At first, doctors misdiagnosed the condition as a type of arthritis. They named it Lyme arthritis after the town that had the first outbreak. Two years later, scientists finally connected Lyme arthritis to the bite of a deer tick. A type of single-cell bacteria called Borrelia
3:33:14 AJ Gentile? was to blame for what's now known as Lyme disease. As the reports of symptoms came in, these cases were placed on a map. A disturbing picture started to appear. Ground zero was Plum Island. This was another disease spread by ticks. This also has Eric Trab's fingerprints all over it. But was the outbreak an accident? Or is the government conducting a test on the population without their knowledge? If it was a test, it wouldn't be the first time. In the 1930s, the Tuskegee Experiment infected 400 men with syphilis to see how the disease affected black males. They were denied treatment. The US government has infected prisoners with cow blood and exposed people to plutonium.
3:33:56 Speaker 07 It really was the Kmart of human experimentation from 1951 to 1974.
3:34:04 AJ Gentile? Operation Sea Spray was a secret test in 1950 where the government dropped bacteria on the entire city of San Francisco. In 1966, the Army released bacteria into the New York subway to simulate a biological attack.
3:34:18 Speaker 06 Hey, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.
3:34:22 AJ Gentile? Project 112 and Project Shad infected thousands of military personnel with biological agents like BZ and nerve toxins like sarin gas.
3:34:32 Speaker 07 The tests themselves were...
3:34:33 Speaker 05 A lot of smoke and the planes would let out a, like a smoke or gas type of thing and it would also cover the ship. The crew was given gas masks and told not to worry.
3:34:46 AJ Gentile? They were exposed to toxic nerve gas at least 46 times. Nobody knows how many people were killed. The records are still mostly classified. And there are more, lots more. Tests without consent have been conducted as recently as the 1990s, many involving children. And that's just what's been exposed. Who knows how many more tests are still classified or if tests are still taking place?
3:35:09 Speaker 05 We do know that some civilians were exposed in tests that occurred in Hawaii, possibly in Alaska, and possibly in Florida.
3:35:23 AJ Gentile? The military and intelligence community, of course, continue to deny any wrongdoing. They deny that bioweapon research was done at Plum Island. And they deny that Lyme disease was artificially created and released to the public. But denial is not good enough. We know the CIA and military violate orders time and time again, and we know they lie when they do it. So in 2019 Congressman Christopher Smith from New Jersey proposed an amendment to the 2020 Defense Bill.
3:35:50 Speaker 00 For years, Mr. Speaker, books and articles have been written incredibly asserting that significant research at Fort Dietrich in Plum Island and elsewhere was conducted to turn ticks into bioweapons. Mr. Speaker, with Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases exploding in the United States, an estimated 300,000 to 427,000 cases, new cases each year, and 10 to 20% of those people with chronic Lyme. Americans have a right to know whether or not any of this is true.
3:36:20 AJ Gentile? But what prompted this? Well, the bacteria that causes Lyme disease is called Borrelia burgdorferi, after Willie Bergdorfer who discovered it. Now Bergdorfer was widely known as a leading researcher in the scientific study of insects, and his discovery of Lyme disease was historic. But what's not widely known about Bergdorfer is that early in his career, he developed biological weapons for the US military. Specifically, he weaponized ticks. And between 1966 and 1969, almost 300,000 research ticks?
3:36:53 AJ Gentile? They got out.
3:36:58 AJ Gentile? Dr. Willie Bergdorfer, the researcher who is credited with discovering Lyme disease. Turns out that Dr. Bergdorfer was a bioweapons specialist. The interviews combined with access to Dr. Bergdorfer's files reveals that he and other bioweapons specialists stuffed ticks with pathogens in a quest to cause disability, disease, and death.
3:37:23 AJ Gentile? Between 1966 and 1969, government researchers released 300,000 ticks into the wild. The ticks were irradiated so they could be tracked.
3:37:33 Speaker 06 300,000 irradiated ticks. What could possibly go wrong?
3:37:37 AJ Gentile? Oh, plenty. One of the species released were Lone Star Ticks. Lone Star Ticks are especially aggressive. Most tick species wait for prey by attaching to a blade of grass. When an animal brushes against it, the tick latches on. This is called questing. Lone Star Ticks are different. They don't wait. They actively hunt. They can smell the ammonia in sweat and the carbon dioxide from breath. They're the only ticks with eyes.
3:38:03 Speaker 07 Unlike other ticks, the Lone Star can bite multiple times. Even their young, called nymphs, can feed on humans. Lone Star Ticks can go months without food. They can absorb water from the air. They can survive underwater. They can be frozen. Female Lone Star Ticks lay hundreds of thousands of eggs at a time.
3:38:24 AJ Gentile? And scariest of all, Lone Star Ticks swarm. They'll ball themselves up in groups of almost 10,000 ticks. And when an animal or person brushes up against a group, it means thousands of tick bites. And these ticks carry a lot of diseases. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Ehrlichiosis, Tularemia, Heartland Virus, and on and on. A bite from a Lone Star Tick can even trigger a delayed allergic reaction to meat. That tick bite leads to an allergic response.
3:38:54 Speaker 06 To the alpha-gal sugar that's found in red meat. Ugh, I wish they would invent a tick that gives you an allergic reaction to fish, huh?
3:39:02 AJ Gentile? Now, forever, the Lone Star tick was confined to the southeast United States. But thousands were released in Virginia in the late 1960s. Since then, they've expanded to the entire eastern half of the United States. From Minnesota to Maine, down to Florida, and all the way across Texas. And they're still moving.
3:39:21 Speaker 07 I was called to investigate an outbreak, and I was horrified. I've studied ticks for 10 years, and the number of Lone Star larvae I found was just astonishing. They're everywhere. Every property that we have gone to, we've found Lone Star ticks. They're literally every place. I hope this isn't the new normal, but I fear that they're exploding in numbers.
3:39:42 Speaker 03 The CDC says alpha-gal syndrome, traditionally found in mid-Atlantic states, is spreading. 110,000 suspected cases have been identified since 2010.
3:39:53 AJ Gentile? But experts estimate the true number affected is closer to 450,000. Plum Island boasted how it was considered the safest virus lab in the world. Until it wasn't. In 1978, foot-and-mouth disease did get out. Every animal on the island had to be cremated, but not before lunch.
3:40:13 Speaker 06 Wait, wait, wait. Did you just say lunch?
3:40:15 AJ Gentile? Well, hey, even scientists working at a top-secret government germ lab gotta eat.
3:40:20 Speaker 07 On kill day, the guys upstairs would carve up steaks, from sirloins to pork chops. Not USDA grade A, but USDA grade V for virus. Everyone, to a man, would deny it. But we did it. We ate the meat.
3:40:36 Speaker 06 Ugh, I don't feel well.
3:40:38 AJ Gentile? Yeah, not only is it gross to eat meat infected with foot-and-mouth disease, it's a little irresponsible. Now, FMD isn't dangerous to humans, but this speaks to shoddy conditions at Plum Island. After the foot-and-mouth breakout, the USDA inspected the facility. They wrote a 190-page report detailing how mismanaged it was. They found leaking roofs, leaking walls, steel beams rusted through. They found an incinerator lying in a ...ditch half-filled with dirty water. And soon after this, there was an outbreak of Rift Valley Fever on the island. Weaponized RBF was being tested by infecting mosquitoes. Some mosquitoes got out and bit the scientists. Now luckily, they knew how to treat it. But if those mosquitoes got off the island and made it to shore, Rift Valley Fever presents
3:41:23 AJ Gentile? like the flu, but if you don't treat it, it kills you. In 2002, 76 Plum Island workers went on strike. Scabs were brought in to replace them, and it did not go well. The FBI conducted an investigation and found all kinds of issues. A 600-gallon container of liquid nitrogen somehow fell off one of the island's ferries. Hundreds of gallons of oil and chemicals were spilled all over the island. Two workers drove off with a minivan and didn't come back. The van was later found, but whatever was in it was gone. And failing to learn from their mistakes, two years later, there were two more outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease on Plum Island. In New Haven, Connecticut, a worker at Yale University's arbovirus lab became infected with Sibiu virus.
3:42:07 AJ Gentile? This virus causes extremely high fevers and internal bleeding. So he got infected, went home, and took a trip to Boston. If anyone got sick, that information is not public. More recently, a Fort Dietrich researcher accidentally stuck herself with a needle containing Ebola. These breakdowns in security of facilities like Plum Island prompted a nationwide investigation. But a 2007 report revealed that 113 bioweapon-capable labs around the United States refused to comply with inspections. And this is not just a violation of federal law, it's a violation of the Geneva Conventions. But President George W. Bush granted the facility's amnesty from inspections, and Congress agreed.
3:42:48 Speaker 06 Wait, wait, wait, wait. The United States can decide when it doesn't want to follow the Geneva Conventions?
3:42:53 AJ Gentile? No.
3:42:54 Speaker 06 But it decides anyway.
3:42:55 AJ Gentile? Yes.
3:42:56 Speaker 06 And other countries don't complain?
3:42:58 AJ Gentile? Oh, they complain, but...
3:43:00 Speaker 06 But if you want those billions of financial aid to keep flowing, shut your yam.
3:43:04 AJ Gentile? Bingo. Biological weapons were banned in 1925 by the Geneva Protocol, but the United States refused to sign it. It wasn't until Richard Nixon banned bioweapons research that the US agreed to a worldwide ban. The US finally signed the Geneva Protocol in 1975.
3:43:20 Speaker 06 Ah, somebody let the CIA know.
3:43:23 AJ Gentile? These scary events happened in relatively small labs around the country, with maybe a few dozen to a few hundred employees. Can you imagine what would happen if there was a leak at the CDC with 10,000 employees?
3:43:34 Speaker 06 Whoa, whoa, whoa, the CDC had a leak?
3:43:37 AJ Gentile? A leak? No.
3:43:37 Speaker 06 Oh, thank God.
3:43:38 AJ Gentile? They've had dozens.
3:43:39 Speaker 06 Oh, no!
3:43:45 AJ Gentile? In May 2012, 24-year-old Amy Copeland and a few friends were ziplining near the Talapusa River in Georgia. During one of Amy's runs, she heard a snap. The zipline broke and she fell into the creek below. She landed on sharp rocks and cut her leg pretty badly. She went through routine surgery, but over the next two days developed a fever and severe pain. Amy was infected with Aeromonas hydrophila, a rare type of flesh-eating bacteria. This bacteria moves faster than antibiotics can work, so the only way to remove it is to remove the limbs it infects. So you have to move fast. Amy survived, but lost both hands, both feet, and her entire left leg. But suddenly, more cases of this rare disease were popping up. Georgia, South Carolina, northern Florida.
3:44:30 AJ Gentile? When looking at these cases on a map, people started asking, "How secure is the CDC building in Atlanta?" Well, not as secure as you'd hope. In June of 2012, just weeks after Amy Copeland's accident, it was reported that the CDC building in Atlanta had an airflow problem. Rather than drawing clean air into a contaminated lab, it was blowing contaminated air out.
3:44:54 Speaker 06 Dirty germy air?
3:44:55 AJ Gentile? Yep. In that building, they study SARS, monkeypox, and anthrax.
3:44:59 Speaker 06 Ooh, the heavy metal band?
3:45:01 AJ Gentile? The disease.
3:45:02 Speaker 06 Ah, that makes more sense.
3:45:04 AJ Gentile? While transporting samples, about 80 employees in Atlanta may have been exposed to live anthrax.
3:45:10 Speaker 06 Live anthrax? So you mean like, in constant?
3:45:13 AJ Gentile? Still the disease.
3:45:14 Speaker 06 Ah, right.
3:45:16 AJ Gentile? About a year later, it was found that the CDC was storing anthrax in unlocked refrigerators in unrestricted areas. At least five times, the CDC improperly handled and shipped deadly pathogens to different labs around the country: anthrax, botulism, and bird flu. About a week after this report, old vials of smallpox were discovered in a building on the Bethesda campus of the National Institutes of Health. And this was after the NIH promised to do better.
3:45:44 Speaker 06 Better than what?
3:45:45 AJ Gentile? Well, about a year before, a deadly bacteria got out, and 12 people died. In 2016, investigations show more CDC safety lapses with storing and handling anthrax and Ebola: from software errors to power outages to sealing doors with duct tape.
3:46:01 Speaker 06 Uh, did you just say they use duct tape to keep in deadly viruses?
3:46:05 AJ Gentile? Yep. And this goes on and on. And these are just the instances we know about. It's not like the CDC issues a press release every time there's a security failure. Most of these discoveries were made with Freedom of Information requests from citizens. These types of leaks and failures do happen, and they happen more frequently than most people think. These safety problems are at the CDC in Atlanta, one of the most secure facilities on the planet. If a leak can happen there, they can happen in other places.
3:46:34 Speaker 06 Yeah, Chinese places.
3:46:36 AJ Gentile? Well, let's not single out any specific country.
3:46:38 Speaker 06 Sheep.
3:46:39 AJ Gentile? Look, just because that rare flesh-eating bacteria is not so rare anymore, I'm not saying it came from the CDC. And Lyme disease probably wasn't created on Plum Island because there's evidence it existed for a long time. You know Atsya, the 5,000-year-old mummy who was found in the Alps? Well, his DNA showed evidence of Lyme disease. But the outbreak of Lyme disease does coincide with research into weaponizing ticks. And the expansion of Lone Star ticks does coincide with the uncontrolled releases of thousands of them in the late 1960s. Dr. Willie Bergdorfer, before he died, did kind of say that Lyme disease was a research experiment gone wrong. Maybe. He had advanced Parkinson's, so it's really hard to tell what he was saying.
3:47:24 AJ Gentile? But there are people who believe that there's no question about it. Books like Lab 257 by Michael Christopher Carroll and Bitten by Chris Newby lay out a very convincing case. Now, there's plenty of evidence, but evidence isn't proof. And researching this episode was stressful. The idea that the government has tested bioweapons on its citizens is upsetting enough. But what's really scary is how sloppy the security is in our labs. I had no idea it was this bad. And given what's happened over the past couple of years, we need to pay attention. If you have one of these labs near you, get to know your congressman. Demand that lab safety protocols are made public. Demand to know the result of any safety investigations. Now, they're not going to tell you any of that.
3:48:08 AJ Gentile? But if they know we're watching, they'll pay closer attention to safety procedures. We hope. And look, if you're in the New York or Boston area, you can stop worrying about Plum Island. It's scheduled to be closed at the end of this year. But the work currently being performed there will continue. It'll just take place at a new facility in Kansas, in the middle of the country, in the middle of America's food supply. Bon appétit.
3:48:36 Speaker 02 This December, the magic of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol returns to Virginia Repertory Theater in downtown Richmond. Experience the transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge as he's visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future, and rediscover the joy and true meaning of the holiday season. Performances run November 18 through December 27. Tickets on sale now at virginiarep.org or by calling 804-282-2620.
3:49:07 AJ Gentile? It's controversial to say, but I'm pretty sure Lyme disease was a military experiment gone wrong. And I'm not the only one who feels this way. There have been quite a few books published exactly on that subject, laying out the proof. In fact, I used those books in the episode. But I never in a million years expected the US government to admit that they did this. But what about the crimes that the government has admitted to? This happened in 2007 with a huge CIA document dump. And buried in those pages are some of the darkest and most heinous crimes in history. This is episode 189, "The CIA Family Jewels."
3:50:01 AJ Gentile? On June 25th, 2007, the CIA quietly released 693 pages of their darkest secrets to the website. No announcement, no press conference, just a document dump of operations so illegal they've been hidden since 1973. The CIA called this collection "their family jewels." Assassination plots, mind control experiments, journalists on CIA payroll, surveillance of hundreds of thousands of Americans who'd committed no crimes. These weren't conspiracy theories. These were real. Each page of the family jewels revealed operations approved at the highest levels. Operations that violated every law meant to constrain the CIA.
3:50:45 AJ Gentile? And taken together, they revealed something darker than isolated crimes. They told a story. The story of the family jewels is the story of the real CIA.
3:51:04 AJ Gentile? The story of the family jewels didn't start in 2007. It starts in 1973, when the walls started closing in on the CIA.
3:51:14 AJ Gentile? On May 9th, James Schlesinger had been CIA Director for only three months, and his timing couldn't have been worse. The Watergate break-in scandal was spreading. The five intruders were all connected to the CIA, some as officers, some as assets. The planners of the break-in were E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy. Hunt was former CIA. Liddy was former FBI with a background in intelligence. Congress and the press were asking questions the CIA didn't want to answer. But the Director had a problem. He didn't know what his own agency had done. He knew there were secrets buried that could destroy them if ever discovered, so he issued an order to every department head: "Report any activity that may have violated the CIA's charter." This was supposed to be a routine investigation,
3:51:59 AJ Gentile? a way to get the agency out of the headlines. The rumors were bad. He had no idea that the truth was much worse. One department admitted to opening mail between the US and Soviet Union. 28 million letters over 20 years were illegally opened and scanned. The Office of Security confessed to wiretapping American journalists who'd been asking too many questions. Every department submitted reports. Every report was worse than the last. There were disclosures of surveillance operations. Not against foreign spies, against Americans. Anyone who questioned authority was a CIA target. Some programs were classified secret, then top secret. But operations classified "eyes only" were so secret,
3:52:43 AJ Gentile? details couldn't be written down. They were labeled "sensitive operation, details available orally only." Others had code names that revealed nothing: MH Chaos, HT Lingual, MK Often.
3:52:57 AJ Gentile? Week after week, the secrets poured in. Programs everyone thought were conspiracy theories. The binder was getting heavy. By summer, it was several inches thick. Almost 700 pages of CIA misconduct. But these weren't occasional mistakes. They were approved, funded, and executed. In other words, decades of illegal CIA operation was official policy. This was a report that could destroy the agency. And then it leaked. Not from a spy, but from a journalist who believed in transparency. But he had no idea he was about to expose the biggest intelligence scandal in American history. And as soon as the CIA caught wind of his investigation, he became the agency's biggest threat and knew his target.
3:53:47 AJ Gentile? The journalist who would expose it all was no stranger to government lies. Seymour Hersh had already won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for exposing the My Lai massacre, where American soldiers slaughtered hundreds of Vietnamese civilians. The Pentagon tried to bury that story. Hersh dragged it into the light. By December 1974, Hersh was at The New York Times, and he'd been hearing whispers from former CIA officers about domestic surveillance programs. Programs that weren't supposed to exist. The CIA's charter was crystal clear. No domestic operations, no spying on American citizens, period. But his sources were telling him the opposite. That the CIA was running a massive operation against Americans.
3:54:31 AJ Gentile? On December 22, 1974, The Times ran Hersh's story on the front page. The article detailed a massive intelligence operation with files on 10,000 American citizens. Not foreign agents, not terrorists. Americans, anti-war activists, civil rights leaders, journalists, even members of Congress. The backlash was instant. The public was outraged, and the press wouldn't let it go. The next morning, the Department of Justice announced an investigation, and CIA Director William Colby was summoned to Air Force One to brief President Ford personally.
3:55:09 AJ Gentile? President Ford's solution was damage control. Control the narrative. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller would lead a commission to investigate. Quick, clean, controlled. The scandal would finally be contained. But it backfired. The commission not only confirmed everything Hirsch reported, they found more. The CIA had conducted break-ins against American citizens. Bugged their homes, opened their mail, tapped their phones. Even tested biological weapons on Americans without their knowledge. The agency wasn't just violating its charter, it was breaking the law. And every target was an American citizen on American soil.
3:55:51 Speaker 07 The agency does monitor foreign communications. How do you define foreign communications? I think it is communications that go abroad or are abroad. I think the object is... Does it involve a United States citizen at one end? On some occasions, that cannot be separated from the traffic that is being monitored, I believe.
3:56:19 AJ Gentile? These operations weren't the work of rogue agents. They were approved at the highest levels by CIA directors, by the Pentagon, by former presidents, and vice presidents. It turned out that most of these abuses really could be trailed back to the president and the NSC. They initiated them, they knew about them. In some cases, for example assassinations, Eisenhower was the first to suggest it. So this was really not a rogue president, I mean rogue agency. This was, in some respects, a rogue presidency. Congress knew they needed their own investigation.
3:57:02 AJ Gentile? Senator Frank Church was chosen to lead what would become the most extensive investigation of intelligence activities ever conducted. And the Church Committee had something the President's Commission didn't: subpoena power. The power to force anyone involved to testify.
3:57:18 AJ Gentile? No hiding behind national security. No I can neither confirm nor deny. Tell the truth, or go to jail. For the first time in history, the CIA would have to reveal their covert operations, under oath and on the record. And what they revealed shocked everyone. Because any American could be a target. And as the investigation continued, that list of American targets kept getting longer and longer.
3:57:49 AJ Gentile? The Church Committee's first major discovery was Operation Chaos, known by its cryptonym, MH Chaos. Started in 1967 under President Johnson, and expanded under Nixon. The mission was simple: find foreign influence in the anti-war movement. Prove that Moscow or Beijing were behind the protests. They never found any foreign influence, not one case. The anti-war movement was made up of Americans. But they kept looking for communists, and the program kept growing. By 1973, Chaos had indexed 300,000 Americans in its computer system. Not suspected spies, not foreign agents. Americans exercising their First Amendment rights. College students, clergy, professors, journalists.
3:58:34 AJ Gentile? Anyone who questioned the Vietnam War was a potential target. Richard Olber ran the operation. He worked under James Jesus Angleton, the CIA's counterintelligence chief. Angleton had built his own empire within the CIA. He was brilliant, paranoid, and convinced that enemies were everywhere. The CIA was designed to protect America from foreign threats. But Angleton had turned those weapons inward, against his own citizens. They used a sophisticated computer system to track everyone. It cross-referenced every name mentioned in every intelligence report. Feed in one name, get connections to dozens more, like a spider web expanding outward. 7,200 Americans had dedicated files. Their mail was opened and their phones were tapped, without a warrant.
3:59:19 AJ Gentile? Their trash was searched. CIA agents infiltrated their organizations, attended their meetings, recorded their conversations. The documents described domestic spying, opening of private mail, and the investigation of journalists. Agents watched former Washington Post reporter, Michael Getler, for three months in 1971. They were watching who I was talking to. They took pictures of who I was having lunch with. They actually took pictures through the picture window of our home. CIA employees have nicknamed the documents "The Family Jewels." Over 1,000 organizations were monitored, not just protest groups. The CIA watched Jewish organizations. The Israeli embassy was watched.
4:00:03 AJ Gentile? When asked why, one CIA officer said they were looking for radical Jewish elements. American Jews practicing their faith, supporting Israel, were watched by their own government. And Chaos wasn't alone. Merrimack infiltrated protest groups around Washington DC. Operation Resistance collected information on draft resistors. HT Lingual, an earlier operation, was still running, and that was opening and photographing mail between Americans and foreign countries. The CIA didn't just target protesters. It also watched members of Congress. Bella Absug from New York, Patsy Mink from Hawaii. A total of 14 members of Congress were on the CIA's watch list for being vocal critics of the Vietnam War.
4:00:47 AJ Gentile? The violations were systemic. Every person who spoke out against the war, every group that organized a protest, every publication that questioned policy, all of them ended up in the computer system. Names, addresses, associates, activities, everything catalogued and cross-referenced. They turned spying into a science. But sometimes, watching isn't enough. Sometimes, they needed boots on the ground. Sometimes, direct action had to be used against American citizens. The CIA needed an agency willing to get their hands dirty, and they found the perfect partner: the FBI.
4:01:29 AJ Gentile? When it came to crushing Americans' First Amendment rights, the CIA and the FBI were perfect partners. The CIA surveilled dissent, and the FBI dismantled it. The program was called COINTELPRO, short for Counterintelligence Program. Officially, it targeted domestic subversives. Unofficially, it was a war on the First Amendment. Civil rights leaders were tracked, activists were harassed, some were imprisoned, some were killed. One of the FBI's favorite targets was Martin Luther King Jr.
4:02:04 AJ Gentile? J. Edgar Hoover had been watching Dr. King since December 1955. The Montgomery Bus Boycott had just started. The young minister was making headlines. Hoover ordered surveillance. And that surveillance would continue for the next 12 years. Right up until Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis.
4:02:22 AJ Gentile? And the FBI didn't just tap his phones. They bugged his home, his offices, every hotel room he stayed in. They had agents follow him 24 hours a day. They knew where he was every minute, who he talked to, what he said. They recorded everything. The FBI tried to prove he was a communist. They couldn't. They tried to link him to foreign agents. There was no evidence. What they found was a man who loved his country and believed in its founding principles. Justice, equality, the promises America made but hadn't kept. Because I have a dream.
4:02:57 AJ Gentile? That my four little children
4:03:01 AJ Gentile? will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. And I consider Dr. Martin Luther King one of the greatest Americans who ever lived. But greatness doesn't equal perfection. Dr. King struggled with infidelity, so J. Edgar Hoover got personal.
4:03:29 AJ Gentile? On November 21st, 1964, an unmarked package arrived at King's home. His wife, Coretta, opened it. Inside was a tape and a letter. The tape contained the hotel recordings. The letter was unsigned. It called Dr. King names that I won't repeat here. But the final paragraph was clear. "King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is? You have 34 days." Thirty-four days. Dr. King was scheduled to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 35 days. The letter was telling him to kill himself. Or the FBI would destroy him publicly. The letter was likely written by William Sullivan, the FBI's assistant director. But the government has never admitted this. But the Church Committee found the evidence. A draft was in Sullivan's files.
4:04:16 AJ Gentile? COINTELPRO conducted over 2,000 documented actions. They forged letters to create conflicts, planted negative stories in newspapers, sent people to prison on false charges, incited violence between groups, destroyed marriages, ruined careers, drove people to suicide. The CIA watched, the FBI destroyed. But controlling people through force wasn't enough. They wanted to control people without realizing they were being manipulated. To do that, they deployed an even more powerful weapon: the media. There's a reason that protecting the press shows up right in the First Amendment.
4:04:59 AJ Gentile? The founding fathers knew that democracy needs watchdogs. The press was supposed to hold the powerful accountable. Instead, the press became their mouthpiece. The CIA had been manipulating journalists since the early 1950s. Now, we know this as Operation Mockingbird, but there was no official name for it. Inside the agency, Frank Wisner, who ran covert operations, called it his mighty warlitzer, a massive organ that would play any tune you wanted. It started in the early days of the Cold War under Allen Dulles. The CIA needed to influence public opinion against the Soviets, and major news organizations were more than happy to help: publishers, editors, reporters. A few were patriots who thought they were serving their country. Some enjoyed playing spy. And some journalists had no agenda at all.
4:05:44 AJ Gentile? They just... they just liked the money.
4:05:48 AJ Gentile? Do you have any people being paid by the CIA who are contributing to a major circulation American journal? We do have people who submit pieces to other two American journals. More than 400 American journalists had secretly carried out assignments for the CIA for 25 years. And not small-town papers. These were reporters at The New York Times, CBS, Time Magazine, Newsweek, The AP, Reuters, Washington Post, the biggest news ...in American media. Some journalists were full CIA employees using journalism as cover. And the publishers knew.
4:06:32 AJ Gentile? Arthur Hayes Salzberg at the New York Times, William Paley at CBS, they cooperated directly with the CIA. When the agency needed a story planted, they'd make a call, the story would run. When they needed a story killed, another call, and the story would go away.
4:06:47 Speaker 02 We are extremely proud of the quality, balanced journalism that CBS4 News produces. But... ...about trouble in our country, plaguing our country.
4:07:00 AJ Gentile? The New York Times gave CIA employees press credentials. They posed as reporters while conducting intelligence operations. Journalists spied on foreign leaders. They carried money to CIA assets. They provided their hotel rooms for secret meetings. When the CIA overthrew governments in Iran and Guatemala, the American press explained why it was necessary. When the agency needed support for the Vietnam War, headlines appeared. The American people thought they were reading news. They were reading CIA propaganda.
4:07:32 Speaker 01 The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media. More alarming, some media outlets publish the same fake stories without checking facts first. The sharing of biased and false news... ...has become all too common on social media.
4:07:49 AJ Gentile? More alarming, some media outlets publish the same fake stories without checking facts first. Unfortunately, some journalists have used their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control exactly what people think, and this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. This is extremely dangerous to our democracy. The Church Committee exposed this collaboration. Bernstein documented it, but nothing really changed. Because once you control the news, you control the narrative. You control what people think. And that power is too valuable to give up. But even total control of information has limits. To truly control a population, you need to control their minds directly.
4:08:32 AJ Gentile? And one CIA scientist believed he'd found the way.
4:08:43 AJ Gentile? Controlling the news wasn't enough. The CIA wanted to control minds directly. Not through propaganda or manipulation, through chemistry, through torture, through techniques that would break a person's mind so they could rebuild it. The program was called MKUltra, run by Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA's chief chemist. His colleagues called him "The Black Sorcerer." From 1953 to 1973, Gottlieb had unlimited funds and zero oversight. His mission: develop mind-control techniques for the CIA. MKUltra wasn't one program. It was 149 sub-projects. Eighty institutions were involved. Forty-four colleges and universities. Fifteen research foundations. Twelve hospitals.
4:09:27 AJ Gentile? One hundred and eighty-five private researchers. Georgetown University Hospital got $375,000 to run a hospital safe house. The CIA would bring subjects there, dose them with LSD, watch them for days, record everything. One mental patient was given LSD for 174 consecutive days. His name was never recorded. What happened to him was never documented. He was just one test subject among thousands.
4:09:54 Speaker 07 Between the years of 1957 and 1984, I became a pawn in a government scheme. His ultimate goal was mind-control and to create the perfect spy, all through the use of chemicals, radiation, drugs, hypnosis, electric shock, isolation in tubs of water, sleep deprivation, brainwashing, verbal, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.
4:10:19 AJ Gentile? Operation Midnight Climax was an interesting sub-project. The CIA set up brothels in San Francisco and New York, two-way mirrors in every room. Prostitutes on CIA payroll would bring men back, slip LSD into their drinks. And CIA officers would watch from behind the mirrors. They photographed everything. The men never knew they'd been drugged. They went home to their families, thinking they'd lost their minds. Dr. Ewan Cameron ran experiments at Allen Memorial Institute in Montreal. He called it "depatterning," a way to... ...racing minds through torture. Patients were put in drug-induced comas for weeks, given electric shock at 30 times normal intensity, and forced to listen to recorded messages for 16 hours a day. Some victims forgot their families.
4:11:04 AJ Gentile? They forgot their names. Their entire lives were erased.
4:11:09 Speaker 00 I was exploited unwittingly for nearly three decades of my life. And the only explanations given to me were that, quote, "The end justifies the means", and, quote, "I was serving my country in their bold effort to fight communism." I can only summarize my circumstances by saying they took an already abused seven-year-old child and compounded my suffering beyond belief. The saddest part is, I know for a fact that I was not alone. There were countless other children in my same situation, and there was no one to help us. I know for a fact that I was not alone.
4:11:49 AJ Gentile? Then there was Frank Olson, a scientist working in MKUltra. He expressed ethical concerns about the CIA's methods. He told a supervisor he wanted to resign. A few days later, Gottlieb's team slipped LSD into Olson's drink at a CIA retreat. On November 28th, 1953, nine days after being dosed, Olson went through a 10th-floor hotel window. The CIA said he jumped. Suicide. Case closed. For 20 years, Gottlieb ran MKUltra with very little oversight and a tremendous amount of power. But now, Congress was asking questions. If MKUltra got exposed, it would be a huge problem. So Sidney Gottlieb came up with a solution. He ordered all MKUltra records destroyed.
4:12:32 AJ Gentile? Thousands of documents, 20 years of experiments, into the fire. Well, most of them, anyway.
4:12:45 AJ Gentile? This is usually the part of the story where I debunk whatever myth or legend we've explored today, except everything in this episode is true. Sorry if it wasn't super fun, but I think these episodes are important to do from time to time. And this Family Jewels episode is just one in a series. So, before you ask, yes, I am uncomfortable doing this.
4:13:07 Speaker 05 What are the most problematic?
4:13:10 AJ Gentile? Uh, most problematic for me are probably the, um, the CIA ones. The one I did that ended with the Agent Orange kind of expose was a kind of a dangerous one. It was the dark history of DARPA and all the bad stuff that DARPA's done since, uh, since its founding. It's done some horrible, horrible, horrible stuff. And that was an episode I was afraid to release. There's been a couple of those.
4:13:34 Speaker 05 Really?
4:13:35 AJ Gentile? MKUltra is kind of afraid to release, because I name names. All of these CIA operations deserve their own episode. And I've covered some of them. If you want more detail, links are below. And there's plenty more to cover. But there's one I stay away from. Operation Mockingbird. Mockingbird exposed how tight the media is with the intelligence community. I haven't covered this because it's clearly still going on. Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms have already been exposed as either working with or being coerced by the FBI and other government agencies. This is fact. And if you follow TV news personalities closely, you'll see that a few are still on the CIA's payroll. I know their names, but I won't say them here. You'll know who I mean if you pay attention.
4:14:19 AJ Gentile? Now, Chaos really did index 300,000 Americans. That's also a fact. Fred Hampton was drugged by the FBI and murdered in his bed by local police, coordinated by the FBI. That's a fact. Frank Olson didn't jump from that hotel window. He had blunt force trauma to his head before he fell. No cuts from window glass. His family received $750,000 in hush money. The CIA admitted drugging him with LSD nine days before his death, but that's about it. There's a link below to the full story.
4:14:52 AJ Gentile? The Family Jewels documents expose a lot of CIA secrets, but some mysteries are still unexplained. Item one in the Family Jewels is completely redacted. The whole thing is blacked out. And after everything else they revealed, assassinations, mind control, surveillance, what could be worse? What could be in there? I'm not sure we'll ever find out. I'm not sure we even want to know.
4:15:20 AJ Gentile? Sidney Gottlieb destroyed most MKUltra records in 1973. We only know what survived because of budget files. How many subjects? How many people died? What techniques actually worked? We'll never know. The CIA made sure of that. And by the way, Gottlieb was never held accountable for any of it. Links below to more. And programs like these don't disappear. They evolve. They even get legalized. After 9/11, Congress passed the Patriot Act. Suddenly, what got the CIA in trouble in the 1970s became standard procedure. Mass surveillance? Legal. Collecting data on Americans without warrants? Legal, with a FISA court rubber stamp. Those secret courts approve 99.97%
4:16:05 AJ Gentile? of government surveillance requests. That's not oversight. That's theater. Both parties voted for it. Both parties renewed it. Republicans championed it under Bush. Democrats expanded it under Obama. Trump reauthorized it. Biden extended it again. Every few years, they pretend to debate it, then they quietly renew it. Because once government gets a power, it never gives it back. What took Operation Chaos years to collect on 300,000 Americans? The NSA now collects on everyone in minutes. Phone records, email metadata, internet searches, financial transactions. Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions?
4:16:50 Speaker 01 Of Americans. No, sir. Verizon offers its telephone customers what's called the Share Everything Plan. Well, the irony of that did not escape a lot of folks today when it was revealed that Verizon has been sharing the phone records of millions with US intelligence. And sources tell us this evening that surveillance extended to the internet as well. The government is spying on even more of our online activities than anyone imagined. New leaks describe a program allowing the government to snoop into a wide range of activity most Americans believe should be protected.
4:17:27 AJ Gentile? The National Security Agency is operating a massive database system that allows analysts to scour individuals' emails, Facebook chats, and internet browsing histories at will. Exposing the CIA's family jewels should have been a cautionary tale, a warning. Instead, the intelligence community turned this into a series of tests. They tested the American people to see how many laws they would be allowed to break. They tested us to see what freedoms we would surrender. They tested us to see if we would hold anyone accountable.
4:18:01 AJ Gentile? The CIA, FBI, and our entire intelligence apparatus has been testing us for 50 years. And for 50 years, we, the people, have failed every test. So what can we do? Probably nothing. The last person to openly say the CIA needed an overhaul was John F. Kennedy. How'd that work out? President Kennedy died at 1:00 PM Central Standard Time.
4:18:30 AJ Gentile? Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. My name is AJ. There's Hecklefish.
4:18:33 Speaker 06 Hi there, hello.
4:18:34 AJ Gentile? You were quiet today.
4:18:35 Speaker 06 Well, I wanted to see if you can carry things on your own for once.
4:18:38 AJ Gentile? Oh, yeah? How'd I do?
4:18:39 Speaker 06 Yeah, solid C+.
4:18:41 AJ Gentile? High praise. This has been the Y-Files. If you had fun or learned anything, do us a favor, hit like, subscribe, comment, share. That stuff allegedly still helps the channel, but I'm not really sure anymore. Like most topics we cover on the channel, every one in today's compilation was recommended by somebody in the audience. So if there's a story you'd like to see or have me do a deep dive on, go to theyfiles.com/tips or just send us an email. Catch us on Discord. We're always looking for new subjects. Now, remember, the Y-Files is also a podcast, so you can take us on the road. And twice a week, I post deep dives into the stories we cover here on the channel. And I also post episodes that wouldn't be allowed on the channel. Like a couple of todays and those are going to be labeled unredacted. Redacted, unredacted. I don't know how it works.
4:19:26 AJ Gentile? The podcast, it's got a really creative name. It's called the Y-Files Operation Podcast. It's available everywhere you get your podcasts. And if you are listening right now, click the like or thumbs up or follow or whatever the buttons are for the podcast. That actually does help a lot. Now, if you need more Y-Files in your life, check out our Discord. There are thousands of people on there 24/7. They're into the same weird stuff we are here. They talk about all these topics and so many more. It's a great community. It's a lot of fun and it's free to join. Speaking of 24/7, also check out our 24/7 stream on the Y-Files Backstage. There's always a link for that below. And over there, we run episodes back to back with some fun, unique content in between. But, you know,
4:20:10 AJ Gentile? come for the episodes, but stay for the live chat. There's a community over there that is very interesting and a lot of fun. If you want to know what's going on with Y-Files at any given time, check out our production calendar. I paused there because I'm like, when was the last time we updated our production calendar? I promise we're gonna, we're gonna do better with that. It's at theyfiles.com/cal and there we allegedly post our episode schedule, upcoming podcasts, live streams, AMAs, meetups, all that stuff. Special thanks to our patron who made this channel possible and made this compilation happen. Every episode you saw today was dedicated and made possible by our Patreon members. I couldn't do this without your support. And if you'd like to support the channel, keep us going, join
4:20:54 AJ Gentile? this amazing community, for as little as three bucks a month, you get access to perks like episodes early with no commercials, exclusive merch, plus at least two private live streams every week. And those are a lot of fun. It's not just me talking at a screen. You get to meet- Everybody in the Y Files team, so Jen, Victoria, Gino, everybody's there. You can talk to, hang when you want. And you can also turn your camera on, jump up on stage, ask a question if you want to talk about a topic in a little more detail, or recommend a topic, tell a joke, or just say hi. I think it's the best perk there is. Another great way to support the channel is grab something from the Y Files store.
4:21:32 Speaker 06 Grab a Henry's t-shirt, or one of these physical coffee mugs that you stick your fist in, hit the CIA doesn't chop it off or throw you out a window. Or grab a hoodie or something, my squeezy, squeezy animal. No, wait, wait, wait, I gotta talk about my, fumble my face on it, and then I talk about the squeezy animal. Fish talking, fish talk.
4:21:49 AJ Gentile? But, if you're gonna buy merch, make sure you become a member on YouTube. I know, I know, another membership, but, hear me out. It's three bucks a month, and YouTube members get 10% off everything in the Y Files store forever. So, if you're gonna spend forty dollars on t-shirts or coffee mugs, join on YouTube, get the code, and it pays for itself. And if you want to cancel, just cancel. The membership is not there to make me money, it's there to save you money. But, the money from YouTube memberships goes to my team. All of it, I don't touch any of that. So, it's a great way to save a few bucks and keep us going.
4:22:22 Speaker 06 Yeah, keep that secret under your tinfoil hat, eh?
4:22:25 AJ Gentile? Those are the plugs, and, did I get them all? It felt like I was talking for a while, uh, it doesn't matter, we're gonna let it fly. All the mistakes, everything, we're just gonna let it fly. I gotta get out of here. Um, until next time, be safe, be kind, and know that you are appreciated.
4:23:21 AJ Gentile? True with my friends and it never ends, no it never ends.
4:23:37 AJ Gentile? I fear the crackhead and got stuck inside Mel's home with MKUltra. I'm being only too aware. Did Stanley Kubrick fake the moon landing alone? On a film set, were the shadows before them?
4:23:56 AJ Gentile? The Roswell aliens just fought the smiling man, I'm told. And his name was Cold. And I can't believe, I'm dancing with the fish. Head to fish on Thursday nights with AJ2. And one more zombie beat all through the night.
4:24:17 AJ Gentile? All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth. So one more zombie beat all through the night.
4:24:43 AJ Gentile? The Mothman sightings and the solar storms still come. To have got the secret city underground. Mysterious number stations, planets circle to Project Stargate. And what the Dark Watchers found.
4:25:02 AJ Gentile? In a simulation, don't you worry though. The Black Knight said a lot of tone to me so. I can't believe, I'm dancing with the fish. Head to fish on Thursday nights with AJ2. And one more zombie beat all through the night. All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth. So one more zombie beat all through the night. Head to fish on Thursday nights with AJ2. And one more zombie beat all through the night. All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth. So one more zombie beat all through the night.
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4:27:58 Speaker 02 This is objectively fantastic.
4:27:59 Speaker 01 Relax into the movies and shows you already know and love, all for free. Shwing! Even our news is uplifting.
4:28:05 Speaker 03 You stay classy, San Diego.
4:28:07 Speaker 01 Watch School of Rock, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The X-Files, Wayne's World, and so much more. We're not worthy! The best things on TV really are free.
4:28:17 Speaker 02 You just have to know where to look.
4:28:19 Speaker 01 Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.
4:28:22 Speaker 03 Para los grandes, para los chicos, para los bajos y los altos. Los pacifistas, los valientes. Para los optimistas y los pesimistas. Los que valoran lo de adentro. Para los que están lejos, los que no ven de lejos, y los que no ven de cerca. Para los introvertidos y los extrovertidos. Para los que piensan y los que hacen. Para los que nos mostraron el camino. Coca-Cola. Para todos. Compra una Coca-Cola en una tienda cerca de Usted.
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