43: Operation Mockingbird: Origins & The Modern Cold War w/ Paranoid American

43: Operation Mockingbird: Origins & The Modern Cold War w/ Paranoid American

Released Monday, 14th April 2025
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43: Operation Mockingbird: Origins & The Modern Cold War w/ Paranoid American

43: Operation Mockingbird: Origins & The Modern Cold War w/ Paranoid American

43: Operation Mockingbird: Origins & The Modern Cold War w/ Paranoid American

43: Operation Mockingbird: Origins & The Modern Cold War w/ Paranoid American

Monday, 14th April 2025
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What's good everybody? This is Joel Thomas

2:54

and this is free the rabbits and

2:56

how are all the free range rabbits

2:58

doing out there today First off, I

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the show. Also for people who have

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been asking how they can donate

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of those have a few different

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you guys helping the show grow

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in any way that you can,

4:15

even if it's just donating your

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time. And now, let's get into

4:20

the show. What's going on guys?

4:22

We're back with another episode of

4:24

Free the Rabbits, and I've got

4:26

a guest this week, and he

4:28

is phenomenal. And by the way,

4:30

for everyone that's been asking, who

4:32

did the AI video that starts

4:34

out all of my episodes? This

4:36

is the guy, Thomas from Paranoid

4:38

American. Yep, that's him. All right.

4:40

Yep. And people love the song

4:42

and they love the video that

4:45

starts out here on YouTube and

4:47

rumble and they're always asking about

4:49

it. And I'm kind of like,

4:51

well, his name's there at the

4:53

very beginning of the video it

4:55

says who created it. But it's

4:57

kind of subliminal. It's kind of

4:59

subliminal. So Thomas is a great

5:01

dude and an absolutely fantastic researcher

5:03

and that's the kind of guest

5:05

I have on the show people

5:07

that go deep with a lot

5:09

of different subjects and I was

5:12

thinking about doing an episode on

5:14

Operation Mockingbird and I just kind

5:16

of clicked with me I said

5:18

you know what I bet Thomas

5:20

would be great for this. Let

5:22

me go ahead and hit him

5:24

up real quick and you were

5:26

like yeah actually I've got a

5:28

bunch of research on it already.

5:30

You did a pamphlet on it.

5:32

I would be great for this.

5:34

And I can back it up

5:36

today too. I'm excited about it.

5:39

Yeah, no, it's going to be

5:41

awesome. And like I said, everybody,

5:43

when they listen to this, when

5:45

I have guest on, I'm riding

5:47

in the passenger seat, I'm going

5:49

to talk a lot of things

5:51

to add, but obviously I'm going

5:53

to hand the reins to you,

5:55

and we'll kind of go into

5:57

the origins of how it started,

5:59

how it even came into the

6:01

zeitgeist, and then we'll get into,

6:03

obviously there's a lot of names.

6:06

a lot of dates and we're

6:08

going to move into kind of

6:10

the modern version of of where

6:12

it's moving now, because there's so

6:14

many different aspects of it, I

6:16

don't think it ever stopped. And

6:18

even though they said it did

6:20

back in, believe it was the

6:22

70s, they said it stopped. I

6:24

think a lot of us are

6:26

a little smarter than that. We

6:28

understand at least it moved into

6:30

a different incarnation as it kept

6:33

evolving, and I think it's still

6:35

evolving. Well, like, you just mentioned

6:37

when you first brought this up

6:39

to me, I've been working on

6:41

a comic book about. Operation Mockingbird

6:43

for a while and it's and

6:45

it's a tough nut to crack

6:47

because it's just so many legal

6:49

documents and business names and dates

6:51

and sort of boring decisions news

6:53

reporters if you wanted to illustrate

6:55

Mockingbird it would just be a

6:57

bunch of guys on the phone

7:00

and sending letters and reading newspapers

7:02

which doesn't make for a great

7:04

comic but it has forced me

7:06

to kind of refine and figure

7:08

out the most interesting key points

7:10

about this entire operation. And I

7:12

also want to start out, I

7:14

think you brought this up before

7:16

we start a recording, there is

7:18

a operation mockingbird, which is what

7:20

we care about. And then there's

7:22

a project mockingbird, which we don't

7:24

really care about as much, it's

7:27

sort of tangential, but it was

7:29

a way more focused, very limited

7:31

operation, talking about these two individual

7:33

reporters. When we talk about operation

7:35

mockingbird, we're talking about over 400

7:37

journalists on the CIA payroll. that

7:39

are the little tentacles are reaching

7:41

all the way into Time magazine,

7:43

CBS, New York Times, all the

7:45

big names. They don't leave any

7:47

of the names out. We're also

7:49

talking about a small news service

7:51

called the Copley News Service, that

7:54

was 23 CIA agents. Now, I

7:56

want to be clear. These are

7:58

not journalists that got contracted by

8:00

the CIA. The CIA literally took

8:02

their agents and put together a

8:04

news service and called the Copley

8:06

News Service. So the entire operation

8:08

was just straight up CIA embedding

8:10

themselves in the media directly. That's

8:12

kind of wild. There's one particular

8:14

name called Frank Wisener and he

8:16

liked to refer to himself or

8:19

his his operation mockingbird as the

8:21

mighty Wurlitzer and if you don't

8:23

know the Wurlitzer Yeah, it's a

8:25

it's a popular instrument you've heard

8:27

it in print super tramp kind

8:29

of built around it. I believe

8:31

that Miles Davis maybe there was

8:33

like a whole sort of movement

8:35

in the 70s and 80s when

8:37

Wurlitzer became really big, but the

8:39

whole point was that He was

8:41

saying that he can control the

8:43

entire world's media like it were

8:46

a keyboard. He could just walk

8:48

up to it and play a

8:50

little ditty and see how that

8:52

reverberates out. And he kind of

8:54

owned that whole title. So the

8:56

Marty Wurlitzer. Also, there's a concept

8:58

in military strategy called a force

9:00

multiplier. And this is where we're

9:02

going to get into MK Ultra

9:04

maybe for a second. a guy

9:06

named Edward Lansdale and the whole

9:08

point about this force multiplier is

9:10

that you're not going to be

9:13

able to draw direct connections like

9:15

here's mockingbird and here's this guy

9:17

and here's this new service because

9:19

there was a little bit more

9:21

tact than that they didn't sign

9:23

these news articles you know signed

9:25

the CIA courtesy of operation mockingbird

9:27

so a lot of this kind

9:29

of gets implied insinuated through Court

9:31

documents that come out in the

9:33

church hearings and a few different

9:35

magazine articles and expose is one

9:37

from rampart This is kind of

9:40

how it slowly comes into focus

9:42

over time the ultimate bottom line

9:44

here is that CIA was creating

9:46

fronts. They were creating Organizations media

9:48

conglomerates everything they were just setting

9:50

up an entire information network. It

9:52

was global so that they could

9:54

decide what the narrative would be

9:56

at any given place at any

9:58

given moment, and they could just

10:00

change it on a whim. And

10:02

the main reason, spoil alert, that

10:04

this maybe failed, I'm not going

10:07

to say stop, but I'm going

10:09

to say failed in the short

10:11

term. was that it worked too

10:13

well it works so well that

10:15

they would send out some misinformation

10:17

and it would make its way

10:19

all the way around the world

10:21

and back so fast that they

10:23

didn't realize they were responding to

10:25

the own noise to their own

10:27

reverberations so they had to slow

10:29

it down they got exposed so

10:31

in my opinion it's still going

10:34

on today and I think that's

10:36

probably where you're gonna lead us

10:38

to as well yeah for sure

10:40

man and you were talking about

10:42

Frank Wisner and really His connection,

10:44

not just the church hearings, but

10:46

his connection to this Operation Mockingbird,

10:48

really came to the forefront with

10:50

a book called Catherine the Great,

10:52

with Deborah Davis in 1979, and

10:54

she did this autobiography, is unauthorized

10:56

of Catherine Graham, who was the

10:58

owner of the Washington Post, and

11:01

Davis was stating that the CIA

11:03

ran this Operation Mockingbird during the

11:05

time in conjunction. with Deborah Davis

11:07

and she brought up Frank Wisener

11:09

as the director of office and

11:11

policy coordination as being a part

11:13

of running this and actually he

11:15

created it and he recruited Phil

11:17

Graham of the Washington Post to

11:19

run the project within the industry.

11:21

So she was one of the

11:23

first ones to write a book

11:25

about it and what was really

11:28

crazy about when she wrote the

11:30

book all of these different News

11:32

organizations were absolutely lambasting her. I

11:34

mean, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post,

11:36

New York Times, all of them

11:38

were lambasting her, which honestly, that

11:40

put more heat on them by

11:42

doing that because it made it

11:44

look like that what she was

11:46

saying was true. Now, there were

11:48

some variances in the book if

11:50

you take a look at it

11:52

because one of the... topics that

11:55

she talks about was the Watergate

11:57

scandal and she brings up deep

11:59

throat who was a CIA officer

12:01

that funneled information

12:03

to Carl Bernstein and

12:06

Bob Woodward who were

12:08

basically blowing the cap

12:10

off the whole Watergate

12:12

scandal and she said

12:15

that Deepthroat was actually

12:17

Richard Ober, but it

12:19

came out later on

12:21

that the FBI associate

12:23

director Mark Felt was

12:25

actually the... Deep throat

12:28

and he came out right before he

12:30

died through one of his attorneys and

12:32

he said that Well, I'm actually the

12:34

guy now Is he actually the guy

12:36

or not the guy? We don't know that

12:38

could just be something that he was told

12:40

to do on his way out and it

12:43

took the heat off who it really was

12:45

it could have actually been Richard over I

12:47

don't know but there were some variances in

12:49

the book and I know that it got

12:52

ripped as shredds, but it Made it

12:54

seem like there was a lot

12:56

of validity to it because it

12:58

was getting ripped to shreds in

13:00

my opinion And one of the

13:02

famous quotes from the book that

13:05

she said was you could get

13:07

a journalist cheaper than a good

13:09

call girl for a couple hundred

13:11

dollars a month So she was

13:13

basically saying hey all of these Journalists

13:16

are for hire all of them for

13:18

the CIA. It didn't even matter

13:20

like they could just come and

13:22

drop a couple hundred dollars in

13:24

your pocket which was you know

13:26

good money at that time and

13:28

they're just sort of report the

13:30

news the way that the CIA

13:33

wanted them to and I think that

13:35

early on in that period of time

13:37

in America what it did because

13:39

you only had certain places

13:41

to get your news from it's

13:43

not like now where you just

13:45

have an over Wellingly amount of

13:47

places to get quote unquote news

13:49

from whether it's real or not,

13:51

but you have all these different

13:53

avenues you had Walter Cronkite, you

13:56

know what I mean? You didn't have

13:58

all of these different places. to go.

14:00

So what it did was they

14:02

funneled the info that they wanted

14:05

you to see and it solidified

14:07

Americans together. And

14:09

if you ever listen Thomas to people

14:11

from the old guard that you know

14:13

the boomers they always talk about man

14:16

America was a better place back then

14:18

we were all together we were all

14:20

on the board with the same thing

14:22

well yeah you were being conditioned to

14:25

believe whatever they told you and yeah

14:27

if there was some sort of war

14:29

they told you that you needed to

14:31

go to or you needed to support

14:33

you did because you believed the information

14:36

that you're being told yeah I

14:38

usually think of this in a

14:40

different analogy that makes the same point

14:42

where now in 2025 Five people show

14:44

up to the water cooler. If

14:46

we're 20 years ago, you know,

14:48

before the advent of internet video

14:50

and all these different options, 20

14:52

years ago, we might all be

14:54

talking about the same American Idol

14:57

show or the same whatever news

14:59

story is going around between five

15:01

people of the water corps. 2025,

15:03

five people show up. One's a

15:05

furry, one's into like ultra wave

15:07

techno stuff. You know, it's... less

15:09

of a chance that you're just

15:11

going to grab five random people

15:13

geographically and they're going to share

15:15

interest the same way that they did two

15:17

three four decades ago right then and I

15:19

don't know maybe this is a pro and

15:22

a con of the whole CIA running some

15:24

of the media is that it did make

15:26

like a homogenous society where people felt like

15:28

they could relate to each other and that

15:30

was part of the intent the other part

15:32

too is I think not just money, you're walking

15:34

as a journalist, yeah it would be nice

15:37

in the 70s, 60s or 70s, I have

15:39

an extra couple hundred dollars for an

15:41

article, but on top of that, now you've

15:43

got credibility because you've got access to

15:45

some sort of government story and they're

15:48

kind of doing your job for you.

15:50

It's almost like someone showing up and

15:52

like here I did your homework for

15:54

you last night and here's $200 $200,

15:56

do you want it? Just turning it

15:58

very hard to... say no. And it's

16:01

a weird coincidence that you started

16:03

out talking about Catherine Graham because

16:05

quick tangent personal story, the how

16:07

Operation Mockingbird even came on my

16:09

radar was so unrelated to being

16:12

in conspiracies or anything. I was

16:14

in college and I think it

16:16

was a psychology course and I

16:18

can't tell you why, but the

16:20

teacher assigned us to read a

16:22

personal history, a memoir. which is

16:25

the actual biography by Catherine Graham,

16:27

not the unauthorized, this was her

16:29

own one, and the whole premise

16:31

of the book, reading, going in

16:33

blind for psychology course, nothing to

16:35

do with conspiracies, going in blind,

16:37

and it's the ultimate rags to

16:40

riches story. And since I've been

16:42

just a tiny kid, since I

16:44

saw the Mickey Mouse version of

16:46

Prince and the Popper, I've never

16:48

believed in rags to riches stories,

16:50

and it makes me all the

16:53

more curious and skeptical. So after

16:55

I finished reading this book, I

16:57

was wondering how did she rise

16:59

so quickly how did she get

17:01

into and then I start finding

17:03

all these CIA connections and it

17:05

was like oh of course in

17:08

my entire essay on the book

17:10

ended up being about how the

17:12

CIA was funding Catherine Graham and

17:14

the teacher didn't like it but

17:16

it set me down a weird

17:18

course that I was not originally

17:21

planning on going down all because

17:23

of this one lady who I'm

17:25

not going to say she was

17:27

the linchpin by any means. If

17:29

anything, she might have been the

17:31

leaky faucet in a way. Like

17:33

maybe she liked it a little

17:36

bit too much or she was

17:38

seen with a few too many

17:40

connections and didn't realize over time

17:42

that some of this stuff would

17:44

come to light. But also, I

17:46

mean, she's still regarded as a

17:49

best-selling author and an inspirational powerful

17:51

woman, you know what I mean?

17:53

So I guess jokes on us,

17:55

even if all this came out.

17:57

you still get to be a

17:59

hero even if you're behind one

18:01

of the biggest sciops on the

18:04

American public in our I guess

18:06

like living history. Yeah absolutely man

18:08

I completely agree with that and

18:10

I like the Lickey Fosa analogy,

18:12

because it does seem like that

18:14

that's how people were getting wind

18:17

of what she was doing. And

18:19

we're talking about lynch pens and

18:21

beginnings. And I would honestly say,

18:23

I would go a little further

18:25

back and I wouldn't even say

18:27

necessarily. And it would take place.

18:29

during this Operation Mockingbird as well.

18:32

But I would even bring a

18:34

guy like Edward Bernays into the

18:36

picture. Well, absolutely, man, because Edward

18:38

Bernays, this is a wild connection

18:40

to, is we've got a connection

18:42

through the Century Club. Edward Bernays

18:45

was in a thing called the

18:47

Century Club. Another member of that

18:49

Century Club was a guy named

18:51

Henry Luce, who also owned and

18:53

operated Time Life magazine. which I

18:55

believe also control readers digest so

18:58

anything that the housewives were reading

19:00

to keep them busy at home

19:02

or in the grocery shopping aisle

19:04

this is all being controlled by

19:06

Century Club and by the way

19:08

Scullum bones members so it's all

19:10

getting funneled through that so he

19:13

becomes this centerpiece and Henry Luce

19:15

also comes up very often in

19:17

operation mockingbird because all you really

19:19

had to be at that point

19:21

if you were in a conglomerate

19:23

you just had to be on

19:26

the side of America you had

19:28

to be anti-communist pro-capitalist and if

19:30

you just met that very meager

19:32

criteria then you're kind of on

19:34

the payroll already the CIA might

19:36

just straight up cut you a

19:38

check and say keep doing what

19:41

you're doing you don't even necessarily

19:43

have to do anything covert needs

19:45

is He was an American pioneer

19:47

in the field of public relations

19:49

and propaganda. As a matter of

19:51

fact, he was known as the

19:54

father of propaganda. He wrote a

19:56

book called propaganda in 1928 and

19:58

his uncle, actually double uncle, was

20:00

Sigmund Freud and

20:02

he was deep into

20:05

how to manipulate people

20:07

to get them to

20:09

do what you wanted

20:11

to do. And one

20:13

of the most interesting,

20:16

I guess, what's a good word

20:18

for it, like an

20:20

experiment that he did

20:22

as a part of

20:25

propaganda was. when he

20:27

started out he worked for

20:29

Liggett and Myers which was

20:31

a cigarette company and he

20:33

competed against Lucky Strike which

20:35

was the big one and

20:37

part of that he basically was

20:39

he mocked the opera singers who

20:42

said Lucky Strike were kind of

20:44

your voice and so because of

20:46

that George Washington Hill who was

20:48

the head of American tobacco company

20:51

and which made Lucky Strike basically

20:54

hired Bernays away from Liggett

20:56

and Myers and said, come

20:58

over here and work for

21:00

us. And he created this

21:03

whole thing called Tortures of

21:05

Freedom. And basically he made

21:07

smoking cigarettes popular for

21:10

women. And what he did as

21:12

a part of that, there were

21:14

these public displays or there would

21:16

be parades or whatever. And what

21:19

he would do, he'd have these

21:21

women. Come down off of these

21:23

stairs in groups or separate smoking

21:25

cigarettes beautiful women and they would

21:28

do this in the crowd and

21:30

it would operate in a way

21:33

where these other women would see

21:35

it and they would say oh That's

21:37

that's how we should look and

21:39

he would make sure that the

21:41

women that he said to do

21:43

this He said weren't too modally,

21:46

but they were pretty so he

21:48

made them look more obtainable or

21:50

more in line with the women that

21:52

were around them. So they said, oh,

21:54

I could be that too. And so

21:56

he basically got all these women hooked

21:58

on cigarettes during this period. time. And

22:00

that was one of his

22:03

early experiments on propaganda

22:05

and how to manipulate

22:08

the mine. And we're

22:10

talking about the nephew

22:12

of Sigmund Freud. So

22:15

he was absolutely trying

22:17

to manipulate people's

22:19

minds. Side note, also

22:22

Mark Bernese Randolph

22:24

is also a nephew of

22:26

Edward Bernays and he was the

22:28

co-founder and first CEO of Netflix.

22:30

If that lets you know about

22:33

any kind of propaganda being pushed

22:35

through Netflix now, we've got a

22:37

guy who's related to Sigmund Freud

22:39

and Edward Bernays who's running Netflix,

22:42

which I also think is a

22:44

propaganda machine as well. Any of

22:46

these types of apps or programs

22:49

now are putting out all

22:51

kind of programming and volume to

22:53

manipulate our minds to, at least subtly,

22:55

to see things that they want us to

22:58

see. I mean, it runs in the family,

23:00

so what are you gonna not

23:02

carry the torch, right, of what

23:04

Grandpapi did? So the propaganda business

23:06

probably pays really well, and if

23:08

you like tweaking with people's minds,

23:10

having the opportunity to do this

23:12

at scale is something that even if

23:14

you were an expert, most people aren't

23:16

confronted with those kind

23:19

of resources and that sort of

23:21

opportunities. So. Again, being in the

23:23

Century Club or being in Skull

23:25

and Bones or being part of,

23:27

you know, the Bush White House

23:29

as we'll get into all of

23:31

these things afford you these opportunities

23:33

that normal people would never

23:35

come across. Absolutely, man. And

23:38

I completely agree with that

23:40

for sure. And there's just

23:42

so many different people that are

23:44

involved with this entire operation.

23:47

I want to get into

23:49

the church committee a little

23:51

bit as well and talk

23:54

about what that was

23:56

and what Frank Church is

23:58

whole purpose was. in bringing

24:00

this to the forefront, because

24:02

there were so many different operations

24:05

that he brought out in conjunction

24:07

with this. And if you want

24:09

to jump into a little bit

24:11

of that and explain to people

24:13

what the church committee was and

24:16

what Frank Church was doing. He

24:18

was a Senator, Senator Frank Church,

24:20

and between the years of 1975

24:22

and 1976, he chaired what was

24:24

known as the church committee. And this

24:27

was the first in history,

24:29

the first major congressional investigation

24:31

into U.S. intelligence of any

24:33

kind. OSS, CIA, name it.

24:36

This happened to be right after

24:38

the CIA was created, OSS,

24:40

no longer existed. This is why

24:42

it's called the Church Committee or the

24:45

Church Hearings or the Church for anything.

24:47

When the OSS disbanded and

24:49

it was the back end of... Nice

24:51

and 45. And we'll do a little

24:54

timeline too because this is going to

24:56

line up with another name that we're

24:58

going to ease into it. So most

25:00

people even know about Operation Mockingbird because

25:03

of Frank Church and this church committee.

25:05

He basically, he was the one

25:07

that exposed the CIA involved in

25:10

the media in domestic spying, which

25:12

was a new thing too, assassination

25:14

plots. It went way deeper than

25:17

just Operation Mockingbird. It went so

25:19

there was this. collection of papers

25:21

called the family jewels that come

25:23

out. I'll get more into that

25:26

later too, but in the family

25:28

jewels is where all this operation

25:30

mockingbird information kind of

25:32

gets derived. And he had this

25:34

one parting quote that after

25:36

these church committee hearings and after

25:39

they've gone through all the different

25:41

trials, he basically said that

25:43

he was concerned because for

25:46

Americans, a tyrant could impose

25:48

total tyranny. if they just had, you

25:50

know, a see at this, this sort of

25:52

Woolitzer, right? The Frank Wisener Woolitzer.

25:54

Now anyone that can sit in

25:57

front of that Woolitzer and play

25:59

this media. they can basically

26:01

impose total tyranny domestically. And

26:03

this is somewhat remarkable because

26:06

the CIA's role was meant to

26:08

be everything not domestic. The domestic

26:10

was supposed to be under the

26:12

purview of the FBI, which evolved

26:14

from the FBI, which was sort

26:17

of a conglomerate of like DEA

26:19

ATF sort of operations, but this

26:21

was something that was supposed to be

26:23

out of scope for the CIA, and

26:25

the church committee blew that out of

26:28

the water. They said, look, here's. plenty

26:30

of evidence that the CIA is doing

26:32

domestic operations and in addition to that

26:34

controlling the media all over the globe.

26:37

So that's that's where Frank Church comes

26:39

in and that's where you're going to

26:41

hear church committee. If it weren't for

26:43

him we wouldn't know about all this

26:45

and and it's important to note that

26:47

his committee I don't believe ever actually

26:49

named anything operation mockingbird. This comes from

26:51

people sifting through everything that came. from

26:53

the church committee long after that. So

26:56

it was like this big expose in

26:58

public and now the records are out

27:00

in the open and now other journalists

27:02

that aren't part of mockingbird are getting

27:04

interested and they tear it over like

27:06

you know you drop like a like

27:08

a chicken wing or something and the

27:10

ants come and they pick apart all the

27:13

little bits of it and they leave it

27:15

clean. That's sort of what happened with these

27:17

family jewels. Yeah,

27:19

I know that in 1967,

27:21

because 1975's when the

27:24

church committee happened, 1967,

27:26

there was a Ramparts

27:28

article from Ramparts magazine,

27:31

which Edward Michael Keaton,

27:33

senior, ran that magazine,

27:35

started that magazine, ran it,

27:38

and it didn't run very

27:40

long, 1962, 1975, but they

27:42

were one of the first ones

27:45

to talk about that the CIA

27:47

was support. fronting

27:49

groups around that time and they

27:51

brought up the whole National Student

27:53

Association receiving funds from the CIA.

27:55

They were kind of the first

27:57

precursor to get that ball rolling.

27:59

And then the church committee comes along.

28:02

And man, we're talking about a lot

28:04

of stuff that they brought to the

28:06

forefront. Operation MK Ultra was a part

28:08

of that, which. also talked about project

28:10

artichoke was a part of that coin

28:12

tell pro was a part of that

28:14

and when you get into coin tell

28:16

pro that's when they were infiltrating black

28:18

Panthers KKK all these different well that

28:20

was the FBI's version of what the

28:22

CIA was also doing they were right

28:25

they were sort of not as collaborative

28:27

I maybe not even to this day

28:29

but they kind of did their own

28:31

thing and that yeah co-intel pro is

28:33

the FBI's version of the CIA operation

28:36

that was supposed to be happening globally,

28:38

but was also happening domestically.

28:40

Yeah, you brought up Family Jules, which

28:42

was, we brought it up, we didn't

28:45

even explain what it is, but

28:47

the CIA program to covertly assassinate

28:49

foreign leaders. And that's interesting too,

28:52

because we're going to talk about

28:54

some of these music groups that

28:56

were sent out across the world

28:58

as a part of propaganda and

29:01

while that was going on the

29:03

CIA groups are going out with

29:05

them trying to assassinate and some

29:07

of them did assassinate some of

29:10

these leaders and some of these

29:12

other countries as a part of

29:14

that so very interesting stuff project

29:16

Shamrocks talked about there too and

29:18

that ties into signals intelligence which

29:21

also ties into project echelon five

29:23

eyes all that type of stuff

29:25

too. So this was just chop full

29:27

of not just Operation Mockingbird but

29:29

several different operations that were

29:32

going on like you said

29:34

not only locally but globally

29:36

too. Yeah again the strategic

29:38

name for these are force

29:40

multipliers and again we'll get

29:42

into that with with Edward

29:44

Lansdale. Here's some other names

29:46

in succession that we can add

29:48

onto this list from Frank

29:50

Church. Seymour Hirsch was another

29:52

one of these whistleblowers in

29:54

December of 74. He is the one

29:56

that writes an article in the New

29:58

York Times citing a all of these

30:00

CIA operations and he's the one

30:02

that also popularizes this CIA memo

30:04

titled the Family Jules and this

30:06

is what gets people interested enough

30:08

that now with enough public sentiment

30:10

the church committee can move forward

30:12

and the public kind of understands

30:15

and they can kind of rally

30:17

behind it a little bit. I

30:19

wonder how much. People really cared

30:21

about it as it was going

30:23

on versus after everything from the

30:25

committee got released but Seymour Hirsch

30:27

was instrumental in all of this

30:30

basically leading to the church committee

30:32

being popular. Then we've got the people

30:34

that I would say are behind the

30:36

scenes actually making Operation Mockingbird a

30:39

thing. We mentioned Frank Wisener.

30:41

He was clearly one of them.

30:43

He was head of something called

30:45

the Office of Policy Coordination, the

30:47

OPC. And that was, they each got

30:49

to carve their own little divisions out

30:52

and do whatever they wanted from

30:54

them. We also have Alan Dulles,

30:56

who was the CIA director and

30:58

the key power broker throughout a

31:00

large portion of this cold war,

31:02

you know, span of Operation Mockingbird.

31:04

There's another guy named Cord

31:06

Meyer, and Cord Meyer is

31:08

probably the closest to a

31:10

linchpin. There's so many key

31:12

figures, but this guy was

31:14

a former. liberal idealist that

31:16

turns into a CIA specialist.

31:18

And in 1951, he led this

31:21

group called the IOD, which

31:23

was the International Organization's Division.

31:25

How generic of a name is

31:27

that, by the way. And this

31:30

is the branch of intelligence in

31:32

the CIA that was the most

31:34

closely linked to this operation mockingbird.

31:36

So this, when I say lynchpin,

31:39

he's kind of at the forefront

31:41

of this through the IOD. And

31:43

what he does. is he essentially

31:45

just manages funding through all these

31:47

different CIA front organizations like Congress

31:50

for Cultural Freedom, that's one of

31:52

the biggest ones, the CCF, and

31:54

then in turn through the CCF and

31:56

through all these other front organizations, he

31:58

props up radio stations. magazines,

32:00

student groups, all of these come

32:03

directly out of Cord Meyer pulling

32:05

strings and deciding where he's going

32:07

to write checks to. So those

32:09

are some of the main names.

32:11

There's also a guy named Joseph

32:13

Alsop. He was named by Carl

32:16

Bernstein as a CIA asset during

32:18

Operation Mockingbird. And then finally, George

32:20

H.W. Bush, I think he kind

32:22

of cuts his teeth on this

32:24

because he gets brought in probably

32:26

by cord mire the guy that's

32:29

running all the funding the guy

32:31

that's like at the brain of

32:33

operation mockingbird he brings in George

32:35

Herbert Walker Bush and George Herbert

32:37

Walker Bush he kind of is

32:39

the one that maintains the connections

32:42

between the CIA covert ops and

32:44

the rest of the the world

32:46

and this is before he himself

32:48

becomes director of the CIA so

32:50

i think that George Bush being

32:52

brought into operation mockingbird through court

32:55

mire is what allows him to

32:57

take that next step and eventually

32:59

become president. The interesting thing about

33:01

George was I'm so glad you

33:03

brought that up too because there's

33:05

some there's some back and forth

33:08

of whether that George Bush senior

33:10

was in the CIA or not.

33:12

I know there's some documents out

33:14

there. There's some CIA documents that

33:16

have his name in them, but

33:18

they claim that it's a different

33:21

George Bush, that it's not actually

33:23

George Bush senior. I don't know

33:25

if you see some of those.

33:27

Do we mean Herbert Walker or

33:29

are we talking Prescott now? Well,

33:31

I'm talking about... So George W's

33:34

dad is who I'm talking about.

33:36

Okay, yeah, George Herbert Walker Bush.

33:38

That's what we're talking about. Well,

33:40

he was director of the CIA.

33:42

So it almost seems like you're,

33:44

you're splitting hairs to see like,

33:47

what was he part of the

33:49

CIA before he was the head

33:51

of the CIA? Does it really?

33:53

Well, it's really weird too, because

33:55

I don't understand like why that

33:57

was actually a thing because I

34:00

guess this is the thing that

34:02

they're saying they're trying to say

34:04

he was an operative. of the

34:06

CIA. Well he was a non-official

34:08

cover agent, whatever that means, that's

34:10

the official explanation for his role

34:12

during Operation Mockingbird, was a non-official

34:15

cover agent. So what is that?

34:17

It's like an agent with an

34:19

asterisk next to it, you know?

34:21

It's like how she's like a

34:23

deputy with an asterisk? Yeah. And

34:28

then also, the other reason George

34:30

Bush is important here is because

34:32

the fallout of the church committee

34:34

and the fallout of Operation Mockingbird

34:36

going public, he kind of handles

34:38

the, he navigates all of that.

34:40

So he becomes the CIA director

34:42

in 1976, right? So 74, 75

34:44

is where the church committee happens.

34:46

76, H.W. Bush is running the

34:48

show. and he just kind of

34:51

makes sure that it fizzles out

34:53

nice and soft like you know

34:55

it doesn't turn into something as

34:57

big as that really could have

34:59

and in my opinion it's probably

35:01

because Operation Mockingbird was still in

35:03

full effect so even though it

35:05

got exposed they could kind of

35:07

control how much exposure it truly

35:09

got outside of anyone that cared

35:11

about reading about the church committee

35:14

hearings and all the the findings

35:16

from that. Yeah I do find

35:18

that part with George Bush. Interesting

35:20

and I was reading a CIA

35:22

document earlier and it just made

35:24

me think about that and I

35:26

wonder what you had thought about

35:28

that and I'm with you it's

35:30

just in my opinion the scullum

35:32

bones existed before the CIA existed

35:34

from me that's not even opinion

35:37

that's just a fact and the

35:39

scullum bones was also known as

35:41

kind of a recruitment ground if

35:43

you wanted to get into finance

35:45

or intelligence that was sort of

35:47

the best way to you know

35:49

your first step on that journey

35:51

so even before the CIA even

35:53

before the OSS existed the skull

35:55

and bones was a de facto

35:57

secret intelligence group so if

36:00

anything, he would be like

36:02

the OG CIA, like he wouldn't

36:04

have to join the CIA because

36:06

he was grandfathered in literally through

36:08

Prescott Bush, the patriarch of the entire Bush

36:10

family. And then they're dealings with the

36:12

Herriman brothers that led into World War

36:14

II. Like this is all before the

36:16

CIA even had a reason to exist.

36:18

They were doing CIA stuff. So again,

36:20

I think it's like splitting hairs, whether

36:23

or not he was officially an operative.

36:25

He has CIA and Skilling Bones blood

36:27

running through his veins since the day

36:29

he was born. So you can't get

36:31

closer to it than that, I don't

36:33

think. No, for

36:35

sure. And I

36:37

think, especially when

36:39

we're looking at

36:42

whistleblowers and people that were

36:44

coming out around this time

36:46

that we're talking about, not

36:49

in name Operation Mockingbird,

36:51

but talking about the

36:53

CIA, controlling

36:56

information, Ralph Walter McGee,

36:58

we would have to bring up

37:00

as well in this part. And

37:02

he was a former CIA officer

37:04

and he stated that CIA often

37:06

placed news stories anonymously in news

37:08

publications to spread false ideas favorable

37:11

to the CIA goals. Stories that

37:13

the CIA planted might be picked

37:15

up and further spread by additional

37:17

newspapers and other third parties. And

37:19

they slightly altered for him or

37:21

even picked up as news and

37:23

then rewritten by a journalist. So

37:25

I'm going to get to a funny

37:27

story here because you brought up the

37:29

fact that it was working so

37:31

well, right? That it actually worked

37:34

against him sometimes. So he

37:36

talks about this story

37:38

in 1965. It was a

37:40

CIA fabrication. And

37:42

it was a story about weapons shipment

37:44

sent by sea to the Viet

37:46

Cong in a CIA effort to prove

37:49

foreign support for the Viet Cong.

37:51

And the CIA took tons of communists

37:53

made weapons from its own warehouses,

37:55

loaded them on a Vietnamese coastal vessel,

37:57

faked a firefight and then called

38:00

in Western reporters to prove that the

38:02

North Vietnamese aid to the Vietnam. The

38:04

story got picked up all these different

38:06

new sources. It started just spreading like

38:08

wildfire to the point that the Marines,

38:11

the U.S. Marines, begin to patrol the

38:13

coast to intercept the reported contraband. So

38:15

they kept running into this problem because

38:17

you said earlier it was working so

38:19

well that it was actually working against

38:22

them in some ways and Ralph McGee

38:24

was a big whistleblower when he got

38:26

out of the CIA and I don't

38:28

know if that was by design or

38:31

if that was what he just on

38:33

his own wanted to do because he

38:35

felt bad you know when he was

38:37

in there but I thought that was

38:39

an interesting story and I thought about

38:42

that earlier when you brought that up

38:44

about how well it was working and

38:46

in this day and age it just

38:48

wouldn't be able to work that well

38:50

not with the way the information moves

38:53

so quickly and you know you've got

38:55

a bunch of people like you and

38:57

I out there that when something happens

38:59

we're like false flag or let me

39:02

look and see. Well and some of

39:04

the specific news outlets that we're talking

39:06

about again New York Times these aren't

39:08

rinky dink news outlets there there's plenty

39:10

of rinky dink ones that end up

39:13

being that second and third ring that

39:15

you just mentioned but it all kind

39:17

of stems from these big ones. New

39:19

York Times, and there was one journalist,

39:22

and I'm using that term very loosely

39:24

for the next few minutes here, but

39:26

there was a guy that worked named

39:28

James Reston, and he was a long-term

39:30

columnist, and he was also their Washington

39:33

Bureau chief for the New York Times.

39:35

He had direct ties with the CIA.

39:37

They basically had open editorial suggestions for

39:39

anything that he put through. It was

39:41

like, hey, what do you guys think

39:44

about this? And if they made changes,

39:46

then he would just print those changes

39:48

out. Again, none of these articles specifically

39:50

say by Operation Mockingbird for obvious reasons,

39:53

but you can go through any time

39:55

from like the 1950s to the 1970s,

39:57

even to the point that the New

39:59

York Times, self admitted in the 1970s

40:01

that it had been allowing the CIA

40:04

to review their copy, although they

40:06

claim that like the influence was

40:08

minimal. They're like, oh yeah, they

40:10

review all of our stuff, they

40:12

editorialize our stuff, but it's very

40:14

minor, don't worry about it. One

40:17

particular, there was an article supporting

40:19

US actions in Iran in 1953,

40:21

there was another one about

40:23

supporting US operations in Guatemala,

40:25

and basically the articles from

40:27

the New York Times. almost

40:30

were a one for one of

40:32

the CIA internal memos. So it

40:34

was it was obvious when you

40:36

can actually compare the article themselves

40:38

to these internal CIA memos. They

40:40

were basically using this verbatim. We

40:43

also had Time magazine which again

40:45

was the guy Henry Luce and

40:47

inside Time magazine they had a

40:49

whole bunch of correspondence and one

40:51

of the main ones was Charles

40:53

Douglas Jackson and he was not

40:56

only the editor of Time magazine. But

40:58

he worked directly for Eisenhower

41:00

as the psychological warfare advisor.

41:02

So again, inside of one

41:04

of the most red sort

41:06

of periodicals in the country,

41:08

the guy editing it is

41:10

a psychological warfare expert for

41:12

the military. So I mean,

41:14

it feels like they just did

41:16

what naturally came to them and

41:18

CBS News, another trusted name, right?

41:20

It doesn't matter. which out you

41:23

go with. Times, Life, CBS, New

41:25

York, Washington Post, no matter what

41:28

angle you would go down, you're

41:30

getting mockingbird information. He also mentioned

41:32

that he had a friendly

41:35

relationship with Carl Bernstein directly,

41:37

this guy William Paley at

41:39

CBS News, Washington Post. Oh,

41:41

you already mentioned Catherine Graham,

41:43

her husband Phil Graham, who

41:45

was the actual publisher. and

41:47

they were close to Frank Wisner

41:50

directly. So this was like almost

41:52

one of the main veins, but

41:54

from these main sources, I believe

41:57

also the AP had been

41:59

infiltrated. before that there's all these

42:01

different sources people get their news

42:03

from now well even now a

42:05

lot of it comes from like

42:07

Reuters and AP Associated Press and

42:10

like a few others those are

42:12

like the respected sort of like

42:14

faucets in which all this stuff

42:16

comes through and if you're not

42:18

tapping into those sources you're kind

42:20

of considered fringe or a man

42:22

on the street journalists or you're

42:24

at Daily Wire you're one of

42:26

these others unless you get your

42:28

information from these same sources and

42:30

then all the different outlets put

42:32

their unique span or maybe they

42:34

look into it a little bit

42:36

more they editorialize it slightly differently

42:39

but the the DNA and the

42:41

system that operation mockingbird I don't

42:43

know if they latched on to

42:45

it or if they help design

42:47

this but where it's like hey

42:49

if we just sit here and

42:51

watch AP and Reuters incoming news

42:53

and just report on that our

42:55

jobs are half done for us

42:57

and if that was either controlled

42:59

by or designed by the CIA,

43:01

that will make an obvious entry

43:03

point in order to do everything

43:06

they wanted to. Yeah, and that

43:08

also plays into an episode I

43:10

did very early on when I

43:12

start out the podcast, where I

43:14

talk about the journal stuff today

43:16

isn't really a journal, it's AI,

43:18

and how AI is actually writing

43:20

all these articles. And it's funny

43:22

because you'll see the names sometimes.

43:24

I'm like, that's not a real

43:26

person. But... these articles are getting

43:28

pumped out in record time and

43:30

they're using AI to do that

43:32

because they're able to pull all

43:35

these different facts super quick and

43:37

put together an article and post

43:39

it so you've got like you

43:41

said AP and rulers who are

43:43

at the top and they're pumping

43:45

out these AI articles and probably

43:47

manipulated and then like you said

43:49

you've got these other news organizations

43:51

that are just getting it sometimes

43:53

I'll see them verbatim take it

43:55

word for word and put it

43:57

out sometimes they'll change it up

43:59

a little bit and make it

44:02

sound a little different but yeah

44:04

you're right that's exactly what's happening

44:06

is you've got this top funding

44:08

system, but I will say the

44:10

big caveat, Thomas, is that people

44:12

are way more aware of how

44:14

that system works now. So people

44:16

are looking more for the alternative

44:18

media, and that's why podcast got

44:20

so big, because that is for

44:22

a lot of people where they

44:24

get their news from now. And

44:26

I'm not saying... The podcast can't

44:28

be controlled too because I think

44:31

that's just the new version of

44:33

where that the government's going to

44:35

get their grubby hands into, but

44:37

at least people feel like that

44:39

they're able to get a more

44:41

ethical person telling them the news

44:43

as opposed to this faucet that

44:45

you're talking about. Well, you might

44:47

be a bigger optimist than I

44:49

am in that room. Just one

44:51

counterpoint, even if you go back

44:53

to vintage Alex Jones, early 2006,

44:55

Alex Jones, 2010, Alex Jones, a

44:58

lot of his show was just

45:00

reading off AP and Reuters articles.

45:02

It was just that he would

45:04

put a lot more theatrics into

45:06

it, but he would also read

45:08

off the ones that the bigger

45:10

organizations maybe wouldn't pick up on.

45:12

The weirder sounding ones that were

45:14

a little bit more fringe. they

45:16

were still coming from AP because

45:18

that was how he himself established

45:20

his own credibility. Ironically, in order

45:22

for him to show credibility, it

45:24

was like, look, I'm paying attention

45:27

to the exact same news sources

45:29

that all the mainstream media is

45:31

paying attention to, I'm just pointing

45:33

out these weird articles that are

45:35

slipping through the cracks. So even

45:37

what you might consider counterculture and

45:39

fringe in the early 2010s, was

45:41

still coming from the exact same

45:43

faucet. And I mean, you can

45:45

make an argument that that... It's

45:47

still coming from those same faucets.

45:49

It just is so much more

45:51

obscure. It's almost like a corporate

45:54

shell game where you create a

45:56

company and that company creates a

45:58

company and that company creates a

46:00

company. And by the time your

46:02

eight companies deep, it's impossible to

46:04

find out what the source company

46:06

really was that found. all this,

46:08

that's sort of how the AP

46:10

and Reuters works, it's sort of

46:12

how the media works, and ironically

46:14

it's also how the CIA front

46:16

organizations would work. This is how

46:18

the CIA was able to say

46:20

establish a magazine in a remote

46:23

country and establish credibility with it,

46:25

is because they would create a

46:27

corporation, that corporation would create a

46:29

student advocacy group, that student advocacy

46:31

group. would naturally bubble up some

46:33

leaders, you know, just over organically,

46:35

and then those leaders would be

46:37

co-opted and they would go and

46:39

found these magazines and these new

46:41

stations. So the new station, the

46:43

magazine, had the credibility of the

46:45

people that came up organically, even

46:47

though the seed was originally planted

46:50

and 100% funded by the CIA.

46:52

Yeah, that's, that's definitely, really interesting

46:54

and I do think that. definitely

46:56

now and I like what you

46:58

said about Alex Jones I think

47:00

you need to bring that up

47:02

because that's important to say that

47:04

hey he was still pulling his

47:06

stuff from the same faucet and

47:08

I do think though where the

47:10

optimism comes in for me and

47:12

I know that you're Probably more

47:14

of a pessimist than I am

47:16

about where things are going. No,

47:19

no, it's fine. And I'm definitely

47:21

way more on the optimistic scale

47:23

than most people, even though I

47:25

see all the negativity that's going

47:27

on, I just typically think that

47:29

people at the core are at

47:31

least want to be good. I

47:33

do think that there are things

47:35

that happen in people's lives that

47:37

drive them to do things that

47:39

they probably wouldn't normally do. Again,

47:41

that's up for debate too, because

47:43

there's a lot of different variables

47:46

with that, what I just said

47:48

too, but that's also the optimist

47:50

to me as well. But what

47:52

you said about Alex Jones is

47:54

true that he was using the

47:56

same faucet, but I will say,

47:58

as we've gotten into the 2016.

48:00

on the 2020, especially after 2020,

48:02

I think a lot of people

48:04

were very disenfranchised

48:06

with what the media was

48:09

perpetrating, and I think that

48:11

because of that, that there

48:13

were all of these different podcasts

48:15

and different alternative media

48:18

outlets that popped up, and I

48:20

don't think they're all controlled. I'm

48:22

gonna put it that way. So

48:25

I think that we are able.

48:27

to get a hold of information

48:29

a lot better than we were

48:32

before. However, because we're getting so

48:34

much of it now, it's hard

48:37

to decipher what's true, what's not

48:39

true, and then you do have

48:41

all of these operations that have

48:44

infiltrated it as well. So it just

48:46

makes it like a hodgepodge of

48:48

just overload of information and

48:50

you don't really know what you're

48:52

looking at or not looking at,

48:54

and then it's tough to decipher.

48:56

you know, what's the truth? I think

48:59

a good litmus test for this is,

49:01

and I can't remember where this

49:03

quote came from, but sometimes the news

49:05

is what it isn't, meaning like all

49:07

of the stories, you open up a

49:09

newspaper, you turn on the TV,

49:11

open up a magazine, if they're

49:13

all talking about the exact same

49:15

10 headlines that week, regardless of

49:17

the medium or the source, if

49:19

you're listening to your fringe podcast,

49:21

you turn on Fox News or

49:23

whatever, if they're all talking about

49:25

the same things. There's evidence that

49:28

that's part of like an operation

49:30

mockingbird not that everyone's collecting checks

49:32

from the CIA but they're being

49:34

influenced to cover that particular story as

49:36

opposed to the other infinite number of

49:38

stories that are probably worthy of being

49:41

reported on and that's part of that

49:43

wordleser analogy is that Frank Wisener he

49:45

presses a key on the keyboard he's

49:47

not the one going over and like

49:49

actually omitting the sound from the speaker

49:51

and doing all the work he just

49:53

has to press the press the key.

49:55

That's kind of the same premise. If

49:57

you can just feed the story into

49:59

that. line of wherever it comes out

50:01

on AP or Reuters or whatever the

50:03

outlet is, if you're the one that

50:05

gets to feed it into that stream,

50:07

then it goes downstream and then it

50:10

can spread out and take on all

50:12

these different fringe outlets and different perspectives.

50:14

And in reality, you're the one that's

50:16

just kind of like perpetuating one of

50:18

these same 10 stories. And this is

50:20

kind of dovetail into the one other

50:22

obscure name that I just want to get

50:24

into. You won't find this guy's

50:27

name come up directly in

50:29

Operation Mockingbird, but if

50:32

you were to plot this

50:34

guy's life in the lifespan

50:37

of Operation Mockingbird and what

50:39

the Operation Mockingbird was doing

50:41

and what parts of the

50:43

country this guy lines up

50:46

perfectly. His guy named Edward

50:48

Lansdale. If you've ever seen

50:51

Madman, this guy was like... Don

50:53

Draper of the CIA, no

50:56

lie. He was a Madison

50:58

Avenue advertising executive and then

51:01

he basically gets into intelligence.

51:03

So 1947 is officially when

51:05

the CIA is founded, it's

51:07

also right when Operation Mockingbird

51:10

begins, some place it before,

51:12

some place it after, but

51:14

it's right in the middle

51:16

of when this operation actually

51:19

starts to get a name.

51:21

1948 is when the OPC is formed,

51:23

which is where Frank Wisener, basically he's

51:25

the one that headed all of that.

51:28

In 1950, two years later,

51:30

Edward Lansdale, he begins doing the

51:32

Cyops in the Philippines. And it's

51:34

its own wormhole, or it's only

51:36

a can of worms, and I'm not going

51:38

to drive us, I guess this is, you

51:41

know, down the rabbit hole. So like, go

51:43

ahead. So Edward Lansdale, some

51:45

of the crazed stuff that

51:47

he did in the Philippines,

51:49

he would research local folklore.

51:51

and they have this version

51:53

of vampires that I believe

51:56

are called the Aswang or

51:58

Aswang As-W-A-N-G and what he did

52:00

is he actually killed a villager or

52:02

found a villager that was already, who

52:05

knows, but came across a dead villager,

52:07

hung him upside down and put little

52:09

vampire marks in his neck and drained

52:12

him of all of his blood. So

52:14

then when the other villagers came and

52:16

found this guy, they're convinced that these

52:19

vampires are now inside this group and

52:21

essentially it was... What will they believe?

52:23

Can I do this? Will they believe

52:26

it? And if they do believe

52:28

it, how can I manipulate that chaos?

52:30

Will that make them more manageable? Less

52:32

manageable? It was all just psychological

52:34

warfare stuff. So he's doing these kind

52:37

of operations, like pretty out there stuff,

52:39

right? Like staging a vampire murder. He's

52:41

actually doing this. And as this is

52:44

happening, you would imagine that news

52:46

would get spread, at least among that

52:48

village. And maybe it goes outwards into

52:50

the rest of the Philippines. Now

52:52

there's news articles. So he, Edward Lansdale,

52:55

also happens to be a CIA/military advisor.

52:57

Just think about the feedback loop here,

52:59

because it gets complicated, and this is

53:02

where I was getting into this

53:04

force multiplier stuff. Edward Lansdale, Madison Avenue

53:06

ad executive, right? He understands psychology, he

53:08

understands how to affect people's thinking

53:10

and emotions. He's doing these crazy feats

53:13

that are getting picked up by news,

53:15

and he would be able to go

53:17

back to the CIA and be like.

53:20

All right guys, be on the

53:22

lookout. You're going to hear some crazy

53:24

stuff coming out of the Philippines. It's

53:26

your boy. You know, I'm the

53:28

one that did it. So don't send

53:31

troops and don't have, you know, you

53:33

don't have to like spend resources because

53:35

I'm the one that did all this.

53:38

So there's clearly some sort of

53:40

coordination where I did something crazy. You're

53:42

going to hear about it. Let me

53:44

tell you about it. So you

53:46

don't freak out from the feedback loop

53:49

that happens. Even though he's not necessarily

53:51

part of Operation Mockingbird, the fact that

53:53

he can manipulate news and then go

53:56

back to the head office and

53:58

say, I manipulate the news, here's what

54:00

to look out for, keep it out

54:02

of your noise filtering system. means

54:04

that holistically he is part of mockingbird

54:07

and that's how all of the agents

54:09

are outside of the ones that were

54:11

exposed directly by ramparts or directly by

54:14

the church committee everyone was sort

54:16

of just as tangential they're not in

54:18

it they're not out of it but

54:20

they're calling a certain person at

54:22

the right time and even saying publish

54:25

this story at this detail or oh

54:27

by the way this thing got out

54:29

and as long as you're maintaining any

54:32

sort of communication with the CIA

54:34

you are in Operation Mockingbird, whether or

54:36

not you're getting paid for it. And

54:38

Edward Lansdale is one of the

54:40

best examples. It's a wild story to

54:43

look into this guy. Yeah, man, that's

54:45

wild. I've never heard of him until

54:47

today, so that is unreal that he

54:50

was taking a dead body. and

54:52

hanging upside down and put bite marks

54:54

in the neck to make the villagers

54:56

think. He would also paint evil

54:58

eyes on the sides of buildings and

55:01

stuff and then make it seem like

55:03

it was a supernatural force that was

55:05

coming through these villages just to see

55:08

what happens, right? Well, and think

55:10

about this, though, Thomas. But now you

55:12

got my mind really working and thinking

55:14

about it in the aspect of

55:16

how many. of these types have happened

55:19

around the world where it wasn't anything

55:21

supernatural at all and it was something

55:23

completely manufactured and that's something I've really

55:26

been on board with really since

55:28

the beginning but mainly the past year

55:30

where I look at different layers of

55:32

stuff because you know I go

55:35

out and look for these things and

55:37

that's part of what we do we

55:39

go out and shoot films and I've

55:42

seen some weird stuff so in my

55:44

opinion I I do think there

55:46

are some weird things and we could

55:48

argue that it's, you know, young and

55:51

it's all in my head, but

55:53

at the end of the day, I

55:55

think there is a supernatural world. Well,

55:57

how much of it though is manufactured?

56:01

by external sources. And I

56:04

think about that a lot when

56:06

I'm out there. And I won't

56:08

give anything away, but we got a new film coming

56:10

out in a couple months. And it hadn't a

56:12

very profound thing happened to

56:14

me on this trip. And

56:17

it ended up not

56:19

being what I originally thought. And

56:22

that's all I'm going to say. But

56:24

that was like a huge kind of

56:26

mind breaking

56:28

moment for me, where I realized

56:30

how easy it is, even for me

56:32

who grew up in the woods

56:34

my whole life. And I'm pretty

56:36

good at being able to decipher between

56:39

something that's real or something that's

56:41

not or if something's pareidolia, you

56:43

know what I mean? And for

56:45

something to happen in this film to

56:47

me, and then it completely

56:49

get flipped on its head. Let

56:52

me know that even as

56:54

adept as I am in

56:56

the woods, how easy it

56:58

is for anyone to not see

57:01

exactly what they think they saw.

57:03

And I think that was

57:05

something huge for me. And it's

57:07

really got my mind thinking

57:09

about how much is manipulated, how much is

57:12

being lied to, how much is somebody

57:14

heard a story, and then they just piggyback

57:16

on that story, or they see something

57:18

because they heard somebody tell them a story.

57:20

So now they're seeing something that's not

57:22

really there. And then it becomes like a

57:24

whole train of, Oh, you got this

57:26

whole village seeing stuff now. And maybe they're

57:28

not seeing it at all. Maybe

57:30

it's just this operation mockingbird in the

57:32

woods or in a village. And maybe

57:34

it's not even the government doing it,

57:37

in which I do think that the

57:39

government can do it clearly by what

57:41

you've just told me that they've been

57:43

doing it for a while. But it

57:45

could be that someone thinks they saw

57:47

something or something happened. And all of

57:49

a sudden, it spawns out this entire

57:52

village of stories, and none of it's

57:54

based on any fact or truth at

57:56

all. Right. Well, another thing that he

57:58

did was he

58:00

would just play ghost sounds out in

58:02

the jungle. So people like the villagers,

58:05

they would just hear ghost sounds not

58:07

even have to see anything. And I

58:09

wonder how many people to this day

58:11

are hearing a story from their grandma

58:13

or their grandpa about this time they

58:16

saw a vampire victim or they heard

58:18

ghost sounds out in the jungle. And

58:20

it was literally just some CIA guy

58:22

messing with them. And it's gonna get

58:25

passed down for generations. and it's going

58:27

to turn into its own little folklore

58:29

all because of Edward Lansdale.

58:31

Man, this is, it's definitely adding

58:34

to kind of the road that I've

58:36

already been going down with a

58:38

lot of this paranormal stuff. And

58:40

you know, fortunately for me, I've

58:42

got a great group of guys around me

58:44

and they think a lot like me when

58:47

it comes to this stuff and we

58:49

do a lot of checks and balances

58:51

when we're out there when someone... says

58:53

they see something or

58:55

whatever, we're going to

58:57

go to the full

58:59

extent to prove if

59:02

it's provable. So basically

59:04

if we do all

59:06

of these different things

59:08

and we still can't

59:10

figure it out, then

59:12

it's left in this

59:14

area of I don't

59:16

know, right? Maybe you

59:18

did see something. Maybe

59:20

it is something that... I

59:23

try to do as much as possible as be

59:25

ethical with this stuff because I know

59:27

that in this field of the paranormal

59:29

and hunting Bigfoot and all these things,

59:31

it's very easy to dip into the,

59:34

I hate using this word, but I

59:36

mean it in the real sense, grifting,

59:38

sense of I'm going to try to

59:40

manufacture something or if I think I

59:43

see something, I'm not going to do

59:45

the checks and balances, we're just going

59:47

to go with. You're going to lean

59:50

into it a little bit, because that's

59:52

what you're there for, yeah. definitely don't

59:54

want to do that and the more

59:57

that I research about how the mine

59:59

works and what you just said

1:00:01

now also lends into this idea

1:00:03

of there has to be a

1:00:05

balance between knowing that man everything

1:00:08

isn't weird everything's not paranormal just

1:00:10

like I say to people all

1:00:12

the time about the government well

1:00:15

everything's not fake everything's not manufactured

1:00:17

there's a lot that is and

1:00:19

that's the tough part is deciphering

1:00:21

what is and what isn't but

1:00:24

once we get in this mentality

1:00:26

of everything's fake Well, I think

1:00:28

we lose at that point because

1:00:30

then we're not understanding that the

1:00:33

best lies are wrapped in a

1:00:35

lot of truth. Yeah, I agree

1:00:37

with that. It's a slippery slope

1:00:39

and I know it's another fallacy,

1:00:42

but it really is a slippery

1:00:44

slope because then it turns into,

1:00:46

well, what book or person from

1:00:49

history do you trust? And at

1:00:51

what point do you have to

1:00:53

personally go in that that they

1:00:55

existed or the things they said

1:00:58

actually happened? And at some point,

1:01:00

every one of us... has to

1:01:02

stand on the shoulders of you

1:01:04

know previous researchers and just take

1:01:07

what they said kind of his

1:01:09

gospel otherwise you're going to go

1:01:11

back and what make your own

1:01:13

flint and start your own fire

1:01:16

and build your own like you

1:01:18

know to me like how far

1:01:20

back do you bring it built

1:01:23

make your own computer out of

1:01:25

base you know minerals and stuff

1:01:27

so that I think that's a

1:01:29

large part of it and I

1:01:32

also wanted to just note that

1:01:34

this the operation mockingbird even though

1:01:36

it's apparently ends after this church

1:01:38

committee, like you were mentioning, we

1:01:41

can still see the exact same

1:01:43

patterns happening today in the same

1:01:45

way that it's really easy to

1:01:47

get swept up in stuff. A

1:01:50

random MK ultra tangent, something that

1:01:52

kind of keeps me up at

1:01:54

night sometimes is this guy Dr.

1:01:57

Jollyton West. A lot of them

1:01:59

called Jolly West. He came up

1:02:01

in the JFK assassination because I

1:02:03

think he was the one that

1:02:06

interviewed Ruby, Jack Ruby. There was

1:02:08

rumors that he had interviewed Timothy

1:02:10

McVeigh. He just had, whenever there

1:02:12

was some sort of a trauma

1:02:15

base, any sort of situation in

1:02:17

the military, he would usually be

1:02:19

right there on the scene. And

1:02:21

he had this report, and he

1:02:24

basically mentioned that all the exotic

1:02:26

drugs and torture methods and weird,

1:02:28

you know, electrode strapping stuff that

1:02:31

the CIA was into, if you

1:02:33

just gave someone a good old-fashioned

1:02:35

sleep deprivation after about 72 hours,

1:02:37

The human mind just breaks down.

1:02:40

You don't need Sony and Panathol,

1:02:42

you don't need a clockwork orange

1:02:44

chair, you don't need any of

1:02:46

that. Just make it so you

1:02:49

can't get a good night's sleep

1:02:51

for about three days in a

1:02:53

row. And you are like Edward

1:02:56

Bernese's, you know, perfect sort of

1:02:58

like Barbie doll. You can just

1:03:00

pose you and make you do

1:03:02

anything that he wants to. And

1:03:05

I think that you can extrapolate

1:03:07

that to everything, right? Three days

1:03:09

out in the woods with no

1:03:11

food and no sleep, you're going

1:03:14

to be back to caveman, right?

1:03:16

You're no longer going to have

1:03:18

the same type of critical thinking

1:03:20

facilities where you're going to be

1:03:23

like, hey, let's double check this.

1:03:25

And now all of a sudden,

1:03:27

a completely different version of you

1:03:30

takes over. And it's not like

1:03:32

we've got control over that. Yeah

1:03:34

I completely agree with that and

1:03:36

I can tell you from being

1:03:39

out in the woods for lengthy

1:03:41

periods of time and you know

1:03:43

still having food and all that

1:03:45

I mean when you're away from

1:03:48

civilization when you're on your own

1:03:50

you got to be very cognizant

1:03:52

of what's going on around you

1:03:54

because your mind can trick you

1:03:57

into hearing things seeing things all

1:03:59

of these different things come along

1:04:01

with it and I think that

1:04:04

For me, it's I've been out

1:04:06

there long enough to understand that

1:04:08

part of it and then be

1:04:10

able to take on board that

1:04:13

You know what that wasn't anything

1:04:15

at all that was a delicate

1:04:17

balance right because you can't you

1:04:19

can't say oh that was nothing

1:04:22

to every twig snap because every

1:04:24

once in a while that might

1:04:26

have been a bear right like

1:04:28

you do have to be alert

1:04:31

so it's take there's a reason

1:04:33

why these TV shows like alone

1:04:35

where someone goes and stays in

1:04:38

you know the Alaskan Tundra by

1:04:40

themselves for 30 days they start

1:04:42

going crazy and it's it's wild

1:04:44

because that was sort of the

1:04:47

default state for so long of

1:04:49

our history but really we are

1:04:51

so adopted into societies and getting

1:04:53

information and having these like Powell's

1:04:56

sort of dynamics that once you

1:04:58

remove that we're kind of we

1:05:00

revert back so easily so easily.

1:05:02

I had another list here too

1:05:05

because I know you wanted to

1:05:07

get into this so here's the

1:05:09

perfect segue for it is that

1:05:12

all of these smaller operations these

1:05:14

student groups these radio broadcast stations

1:05:16

I've got sort of a punch

1:05:18

list of the main ones so

1:05:21

the main ones were in 1950

1:05:23

radio free Europe this is the

1:05:25

CIA setting up an organization in

1:05:27

Eastern Europe they fund it and

1:05:30

they front it Then you've got

1:05:32

Radio Liberty, which is in West

1:05:34

Germany, which the CIA funds and

1:05:36

manages. There's one called Radio Swan.

1:05:39

This is one of the most

1:05:41

obvious ones. You can just Google

1:05:43

Radio Swan. You'll actually find the

1:05:46

CIA ties to this one. This

1:05:48

one was in Honduras and it

1:05:50

was to plant anti-Castro news into

1:05:52

Cuba. There was Radio Free Asia,

1:05:55

which was in the Philippines. There's

1:05:57

probably some Edward Lansdale connections in

1:05:59

there, but we'll leave him for

1:06:01

another day. There was another one

1:06:04

called Voice of Liberation. These were

1:06:06

just all of the different stations,

1:06:08

right? And then the actual front

1:06:10

groups, which is where I think

1:06:13

that you've got some input on

1:06:15

some of these, there was the

1:06:17

National Committee for a free Europe,

1:06:20

NCFE. They're the ones that created

1:06:22

Radio Free Europe. Again, this is

1:06:24

like these corporate shell games where

1:06:26

one group creates another one, creates

1:06:29

another one. There was the American

1:06:31

Committee for the liberation of the

1:06:33

peoples of Russia, which... probably is

1:06:35

obvious what that was about. There

1:06:38

was this one called the CCF

1:06:40

and this is one of the

1:06:42

biggest ones the Congress. for cultural

1:06:44

freedom. They're the ones that bred

1:06:47

intellectuals and artists and magazines. This

1:06:49

was them controlling counterculture, but the

1:06:51

counterculture was designed by the CIA,

1:06:54

which you could probably apply to

1:06:56

like the 60s in the US

1:06:58

too. But most people are like,

1:07:00

no, there's no way they could

1:07:03

have infiltrated our culture. They only

1:07:05

did that overseas and to other

1:07:07

places. There was the Asia Foundation.

1:07:09

There was the Institute of International

1:07:12

Labor and research. There was the

1:07:14

Independent Service for Information, the ISI,

1:07:16

there was the International Organization Division

1:07:18

that was the IOD that ran

1:07:21

all of these military operations, and

1:07:23

then the National Student Association, and

1:07:25

the National Student Association is one

1:07:28

of the things that Ramparts exposes

1:07:30

in 1967. So Ramparts talks about...

1:07:32

this NSA funny acronym national student

1:07:34

association and they start peeling apart

1:07:37

all the layers of the onion

1:07:39

that's when they kind of find

1:07:41

out like oh this isn't just

1:07:43

this one group that the CIA

1:07:46

put out this is just like

1:07:48

one of the many heads of

1:07:50

this hydra and there's a lot

1:07:52

of these different hydras all over

1:07:55

the world so that that's kind

1:07:57

of the whole evolution of that

1:07:59

and then you were mentioning one

1:08:02

in particular that even carries into

1:08:04

modern day yeah and you were

1:08:06

talking about these different groups, one

1:08:08

of the other ones too would

1:08:11

be the Crusade for Freedom and

1:08:13

their public goal was to raise

1:08:15

funds for Radio Free Europe and

1:08:17

this was backed by Dwight D.

1:08:20

Eisenhower and it was actually conceived

1:08:22

in 1948 by Frank Wisener and

1:08:24

the OPC and they made this

1:08:26

freedom bell that they used to

1:08:29

send around the United States with

1:08:31

them to try to get money

1:08:33

and it looked like the Liberty

1:08:36

Bell and it's super crazy and

1:08:38

people would sign it and And

1:08:40

they actually brought it to West

1:08:42

Berlin. They took it out of

1:08:45

the United States too. And it

1:08:47

was kind of this whole front

1:08:49

to go against communism. And that

1:08:51

was the point. And it leads

1:08:54

right into this Radio Free Europe.

1:08:56

And it leads into this new

1:08:58

version of Radio Free Europe that

1:09:00

I happened to run across in

1:09:03

some research I was doing about

1:09:05

the CIA's involvement in hip-hop. And

1:09:07

I ran out this whole rabbit

1:09:10

hole and I just basically docked

1:09:12

the information to the side because

1:09:14

I said it's not really going

1:09:16

to be real pertinent for the

1:09:19

episode I'm putting out. And it

1:09:21

actually starts with Chuck D. And

1:09:23

this was August of last year,

1:09:25

and this was actually at the

1:09:28

White House. And Chuck D. was

1:09:30

at the White House with Anthony

1:09:32

Blinkin, and Blinkin is an American

1:09:34

lawyer and diplomat. and he's actually

1:09:37

served as the 71st United States

1:09:39

Secretary of State from 2021 to

1:09:41

2025 and he is standing next

1:09:44

to Chuck B and if people

1:09:46

don't understand who Chuck B is

1:09:48

he was with a rap group

1:09:50

one of the early he was

1:09:53

flavor type man right no flavor

1:09:55

kidding yeah yeah so He was

1:09:57

part of a group called Public

1:09:59

Enemy and they were against the

1:10:02

system, they were against the government.

1:10:04

So it was kind of a

1:10:06

big deal that Chuck D. is

1:10:08

standing in front of the White

1:10:11

House and he is joining forces

1:10:13

with YouTube to become one of

1:10:15

Washington's global music ambassadors. And this

1:10:18

was a role directly modeled on

1:10:20

Washington's Cold War era efforts. to

1:10:22

use the arts to inspire US-backed

1:10:24

regime change in Eastern Europe. And

1:10:27

this is what we were just

1:10:29

talking about with this whole. Fake

1:10:31

Liberty Bell and Crusade for Freedom

1:10:33

and Radio Free Europe. This is

1:10:36

kind of the new version of

1:10:38

that. So people had a question,

1:10:40

you know, why has Chuck be

1:10:42

there? There were a ton of

1:10:45

other artists there too. You had

1:10:47

like Herbie Hancock, you had Jelly

1:10:49

Roll there, Kane Brown, Teddy Swims,

1:10:52

all of these big artists are

1:10:54

a part of it and they

1:10:56

are connecting with YouTube to go

1:10:58

around the world and perform, but

1:11:01

under the direction of the US

1:11:03

government. So that was a crazy

1:11:05

part because you've got a guy

1:11:07

who is his beginning started with

1:11:10

fight the power and rebel without

1:11:12

a cause. So he's also a

1:11:14

big proponent of Black Panthers, Malcolm

1:11:16

X. So the complete opposite of

1:11:19

what he's doing now. And this

1:11:21

is this new Cold War that's

1:11:23

happening right now with China, Russia,

1:11:26

and they are sending these artists

1:11:28

out under the direction of Leo

1:11:30

Cohen. Now, if you know who

1:11:32

Leo Cohen is, he's been in

1:11:35

the hip-hop industry for over 30

1:11:37

years. He led Deaf Jam from

1:11:39

1988 to 2003. He's basically either...

1:11:41

personally managed or oversaw artists from

1:11:44

run DMC L.O. Cool Jay, Beastie

1:11:46

Boys, Slick Rick, De La Soul,

1:11:48

Rock Him, we even move up

1:11:50

to the more modern era stuff,

1:11:53

Red Man, Methi Man, Jay, Diamex,

1:11:55

Ludacris, we get even more modern

1:11:57

Whiz Califa, Black-eyed peas, Bruno Mars,

1:12:00

he's dealt with all of them,

1:12:02

especially hip-hop. So for me, I

1:12:04

wasn't... so shocked that Chuck D

1:12:06

was making this statement working with

1:12:09

the government. He kind of always

1:12:11

has been. He's been one of

1:12:13

Lee or Cohen's boys from the

1:12:15

beginning and Lee or Cohen is

1:12:18

interwoven within the hip-hop industry and

1:12:20

just music industry in general and

1:12:22

he's kind of like the manipulator

1:12:24

of getting artists to do what

1:12:27

he would like them to do

1:12:29

or at least whoever's telling him.

1:12:31

to tell them what to do.

1:12:34

So I didn't think that was

1:12:36

that big of a deal whenever

1:12:38

I heard that he was there,

1:12:40

but Cohen came out and said

1:12:43

that YouTube is teaming up with

1:12:45

the U.S. State Department to help

1:12:47

them leverage global events. We will

1:12:49

utilize major international gatherings to inspire

1:12:52

action. What kind of actions we

1:12:54

don't know what actions they're talking

1:12:56

about. That's the best part. Exactly,

1:12:58

exactly. So if you think about

1:13:01

it, during the Cold War, during

1:13:03

this period of time, when we're

1:13:05

talking about Radio Free Europe, what

1:13:08

they did was they sent these

1:13:10

famous artists over there, Nina Simone,

1:13:12

Louise Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald,

1:13:14

all overseas. They were massively famous,

1:13:17

but there was a big part

1:13:19

of it. They were also black

1:13:21

artists. That was a point because

1:13:23

they were trying to combat communism

1:13:26

by putting black artists overseas. And

1:13:28

then this is the best part.

1:13:30

They were trying to spin it.

1:13:32

Like America is, oh, we got

1:13:35

no racism. We're good. Like you

1:13:37

guys got to understand. Look at

1:13:39

this music we got. I mean,

1:13:42

essentially. They just had them dancing

1:13:44

out there for them as what

1:13:46

they were doing. But what they

1:13:48

were using, they were using the

1:13:51

artists to perform overseas and they

1:13:53

were playing them on Radio Free

1:13:55

Europe and Radio Liberty and they

1:13:57

were bombarding these people with this

1:14:00

music because they were... conditioning the

1:14:02

people overseas to understand that this

1:14:04

music is the sound of freedom

1:14:06

specifically jazz radio and they had

1:14:09

what they called the hour of

1:14:11

freedom that they would play over

1:14:13

radio free Europe and it would

1:14:16

be this jazz music and the

1:14:18

CIA deliberately chose black artists to

1:14:20

help soften America's image and promote

1:14:22

this supposed racial harmony

1:14:25

that they had because at the time

1:14:27

There were people over in different

1:14:29

countries that were gravitating to communism

1:14:31

because communism had this front of,

1:14:34

oh look at all these artists

1:14:36

that we have, look at all

1:14:38

this, you know, all these different arts

1:14:41

that were putting out, music, paintings,

1:14:43

all these different things, they were

1:14:45

compiling that in with communism. So

1:14:47

now you've got this. CIA movement

1:14:50

to combat it by putting these

1:14:52

black artists over there promoting jazz

1:14:54

music as freedom and then for

1:14:56

people overseas that don't really know

1:14:58

what's going on here in the

1:15:01

states because you don't have the internet

1:15:03

so you don't know what's going on

1:15:05

you're only going by what you're being

1:15:07

you're either seeing in front of you

1:15:09

or hearing over the radio they're oh

1:15:12

man black people white people ages everybody

1:15:14

gets along over there so now they're

1:15:16

pushing this ideology and this

1:15:18

was all CIA. This was

1:15:21

all part of Operation Mockingbird

1:15:23

and what they didn't understand

1:15:25

was this wasn't organic, this

1:15:28

wasn't a grassroots movement and

1:15:30

they felt like it was

1:15:33

and that was the CIA

1:15:35

helping create this atmosphere

1:15:37

of this is what you want

1:15:39

to be a part of so

1:15:42

they could stop communism. before it

1:15:44

could catch roots in some of the

1:15:46

countries that were considering it at the

1:15:48

time. So it's not all bad, right?

1:15:50

The CIA supports the arts and they

1:15:52

support artists and music, right? Isn't that

1:15:55

what we're getting? They might have supported

1:15:57

artists more than someone that says they

1:15:59

support artists. right? They're actually put

1:16:01

in there. And another interesting part

1:16:03

of the Radio Free Europe, it

1:16:05

still exists today. A lot of

1:16:08

these outfits that the CIA created

1:16:10

and funded and managed once the

1:16:12

church committee exposed all of this

1:16:14

and once it became public knowledge,

1:16:17

a lot of them splintered off

1:16:19

and just became these publicly accountable

1:16:21

organizations and didn't even change their

1:16:23

name. A lot of them did

1:16:26

change their name. But Radio Free

1:16:28

Europe is one of those that

1:16:30

didn't and I believe that there's

1:16:32

still like a modern iteration of

1:16:35

that that traces back its lineage

1:16:37

despite being connected to the CIA.

1:16:39

You could probably make arguments that

1:16:41

they're still in it. But I

1:16:44

think another interesting part of this

1:16:46

is that we're talking about this

1:16:48

almost as if it were controversial

1:16:50

that these artists or these musicians

1:16:53

were being backed by the CIA

1:16:55

because in the 1940ies, 50s, 50s,

1:16:57

even 70s. It was controversial, but

1:16:59

now compare that to today, when

1:17:02

there's a new Top Gun movie

1:17:04

or Mission Impossible movie or pretty

1:17:06

much any Tom Cruise movie coincidentally,

1:17:08

it's almost a selling point that,

1:17:11

oh, we've got CIA on the

1:17:13

staff. We had CIA, look at

1:17:15

this script. There was one with

1:17:17

Ben Affleck, the name of it

1:17:20

is escaping me, sorry, with an

1:17:22

A. But this was almost marketed,

1:17:24

I think, American sniper, is another

1:17:26

one of these versions. where movies

1:17:29

will now come out of Hollywood

1:17:31

and they'll say right on the

1:17:33

on the marketing scheme like the

1:17:35

CIA told us what to put

1:17:38

in this movie so you know

1:17:40

it's legit which is a complete

1:17:42

inversion of what it was maybe

1:17:44

three or four decades ago when

1:17:47

this would have been so controversial

1:17:49

that it would have been top

1:17:51

secret now they advertise it as

1:17:53

if it's a selling point and

1:17:56

maybe what we're seeing is just

1:17:58

another inch towards that now Chuck

1:18:00

D doesn't need to hide the

1:18:02

fact that's actually giving him credibility

1:18:05

and in exchange he's giving the

1:18:07

state department credibility is like look

1:18:09

it's the fight the power guy

1:18:11

he's He's on our side now,

1:18:14

so clearly, like the power is

1:18:16

gone, the man has been beaten,

1:18:18

and you know, you can trust

1:18:20

anything that we say. I feel

1:18:23

that there's another great talk on

1:18:25

the other end of this spectrum

1:18:27

by a guy named Wise Intelligent

1:18:29

from the Poor righteous Teachers, and

1:18:32

I don't think it went viral,

1:18:34

but he had this clip where

1:18:36

he was talking about how intelligence

1:18:38

and state agencies infiltrated hip-hop, and

1:18:41

deliberately went from... all of this

1:18:43

self-empowerment and you know stop drinking

1:18:45

and smoking and let's be healthy

1:18:47

and let's like you know do

1:18:50

community organization he almost describes how

1:18:52

this external group comes in and

1:18:54

says we're gonna need more alizay

1:18:56

we're gonna need more new ports

1:18:59

and and gang violence and all

1:19:01

this and that there was a

1:19:03

transition from this conscious wave of

1:19:05

hip-hop-hop into just being gangster-rap and

1:19:08

gangster rap becomes the most marketable

1:19:10

thing that they can put on

1:19:12

anything movies TV music the music

1:19:14

videos and wise intelligence describes this

1:19:17

in a way that it was

1:19:19

so intentional that it wasn't an

1:19:21

organic movement that just happened I

1:19:23

guess anyone had seen boondocks and

1:19:26

when they show like the BET

1:19:28

executive board and they're like we

1:19:30

need we need more sex and

1:19:32

drugs and people doing bad things

1:19:35

he kind of describes that but

1:19:37

in a very real sense in

1:19:39

the music industry they got all

1:19:41

the heads of all the different

1:19:44

labels and said this is the

1:19:46

new initiative if you want to

1:19:48

play ball if you want to

1:19:50

make money this is what the

1:19:53

market's ready for and that's kind

1:19:55

of how it worked. Yeah absolutely

1:19:57

and if anybody is just joining

1:19:59

the show for the first time

1:20:02

I did entire episode on that

1:20:04

called CIA and hip-hop-hop and I

1:20:06

talk about how that they were

1:20:08

infiltrated on that end of the

1:20:11

1980s into the early 1990s and

1:20:13

it was it was a very

1:20:15

conscious rap era, but there were

1:20:17

some outliers. that would be considered

1:20:20

by today's standards gangster wrappers or

1:20:22

explicit wrappers even in the late

1:20:24

1970s and early 1980s, but they

1:20:26

were such outliers and I think

1:20:29

that the CIA watched how some

1:20:31

of those guys were operating and

1:20:33

they said we can use that

1:20:35

and if we start pushing this

1:20:38

more to the forefront and they

1:20:40

put the squeeze on the label

1:20:42

execs too and said this is

1:20:44

what we're going to do and

1:20:47

we can move into why they

1:20:49

wanted to do that they wanted

1:20:51

to fill the privatized prisons all

1:20:53

these different reasons to make gangster

1:20:56

rap what people think about when

1:20:58

they think about hip-hop you know

1:21:00

what's funny i bring up to

1:21:02

hip-hop to people especially people that

1:21:05

don't listen to it and that's

1:21:07

what they think of hip-hop they

1:21:09

think of gangster rap and it

1:21:11

really did it took over to

1:21:14

the point that now when you

1:21:16

listen to hip hop that's generally

1:21:18

what you're going to hear now.

1:21:20

Are there a ton of other

1:21:23

artists out there right now, especially

1:21:25

where the independent scene is now?

1:21:27

There are a ton of hip-hop

1:21:29

artists out there that are not

1:21:32

gangster wrappers, but you don't know

1:21:34

about them because of how the

1:21:36

industry pushes this agenda, I guess

1:21:38

is the best way to say

1:21:41

it when it comes to, hey,

1:21:43

this is what we're going to

1:21:45

market and kind of slide back

1:21:47

into the Chuck D stuff and

1:21:50

even... all of these tours that

1:21:52

the CIA was sending these artists

1:21:54

out on probably one of the

1:21:56

craziest ones was Louise Armstrong's 1960

1:21:59

tour of the Congo and so

1:22:01

it was a newly independent country

1:22:03

they had just elected a new

1:22:05

president Patrice Lamumba and the CIA

1:22:08

did not like this guy they

1:22:10

called him the African Castro and

1:22:12

they wanted him out because he

1:22:14

was about democracy, he was about

1:22:17

running the country his way, and

1:22:19

the CIA actually attached itself to

1:22:21

Louise Armstrong's tour and they accompanied

1:22:23

him around the country and while

1:22:26

they were doing that they were

1:22:28

gaining information on LaBumba's whereabouts and

1:22:30

his security so they could carry

1:22:32

out this assassination and a few

1:22:35

months later LaBumba was killed they

1:22:37

don't know who the killer is

1:22:39

to this day and ever since

1:22:41

the Congo went into a 60-year

1:22:44

tail spin of dictatorship civil war

1:22:46

and it still hasn't recovered because

1:22:48

of it. So the CIA has

1:22:50

been using music for a long

1:22:53

time to manipulate even global events

1:22:55

outside of the United States, which

1:22:57

is really wild, but it all

1:22:59

boils down to this radio-free Europe

1:23:02

and this propaganda that they were

1:23:04

pushing. for Operation Mockingbird. This is

1:23:06

just the music format of Operation

1:23:08

Mockingbird and they are sliding back

1:23:11

into what it seems like a

1:23:13

version of that with Chuck D

1:23:15

at the forefront, kind of the

1:23:17

old head, and he did come

1:23:19

out. They started asking him about

1:23:22

what he thought about working next

1:23:24

to the CIA. he got really

1:23:26

mad and he said that the

1:23:28

the government's different now I'm just

1:23:31

paraphrasing is what he said he

1:23:33

said the government's different now and

1:23:35

he's still not about what the

1:23:37

government's about but he knows that

1:23:40

the guys he's working with are

1:23:42

the good guys big but and

1:23:44

there's so many more examples we

1:23:46

could do an entire episode but

1:23:49

Even on the visual arts, the

1:23:51

CIA was a large part of

1:23:53

the wave of brutalism architecture. They

1:23:55

were behind the huge wave of

1:23:58

abstract art coming through. And if

1:24:00

you look at Shepard Ferry, for

1:24:02

example, this is a counterculture

1:24:04

artwork style, obey, kind of came

1:24:06

from They Live, which is sort

1:24:08

of like this, you know, conspiracy

1:24:10

classic, and then that turns

1:24:13

into a presidential campaign. And now

1:24:15

Shepard Ferry's style artwork is kind

1:24:17

of seen as like a democratic

1:24:20

promotional tool, which is so weird

1:24:22

that that came from They Live.

1:24:24

Literally. They went from the They

1:24:26

Live movie looking at aliens out

1:24:28

in the middle of the world.

1:24:30

Now it's being used to promote,

1:24:32

you know, Obama and Biden and

1:24:34

the rest of sort of the click.

1:24:36

And that just kind of shows

1:24:39

you how the state and the

1:24:41

CIA and anyone else can take

1:24:43

your favorite musician, your favorite artist,

1:24:45

your favorite anything and just flip

1:24:48

them upside down and all around.

1:24:50

Absolutely. And I want to say this

1:24:52

too when it comes to musicians

1:24:56

and any kind of celebrity right

1:24:58

in whatever field I am of the idea

1:25:00

that they're not all bought and paid

1:25:02

for at least not knowingly I think

1:25:05

that a lot of times it's useful

1:25:07

idiots that they use to that are

1:25:09

in a position to be able to

1:25:11

be manipulated now don't get me wrong

1:25:14

I think there are some that are

1:25:16

completely bought in they know exactly what

1:25:18

they're doing and they are completely

1:25:20

pushing whatever they're told to push. But I

1:25:23

do think there's a large group of them

1:25:25

that are just, man, I'm just showing up

1:25:27

to a set and I'm shooting this music

1:25:29

video. Oh, you want me to put this

1:25:31

on? Oh, these devil horns cool. I'll do

1:25:33

this and we'll throw up these sigil's in

1:25:35

the back. I don't think that most of

1:25:37

them really care. They're getting a check. They're going

1:25:40

home. This is... This is just doing

1:25:42

what they were already going to do.

1:25:44

Now they just have extra money coming

1:25:46

in and a little bit of creative

1:25:48

feedback. This is the exact same dynamic

1:25:50

with MK Ultra and all these scientists.

1:25:52

There's almost like a romantic conspiracy

1:25:54

theorist version where the CIA is like,

1:25:57

all right, we're going to start this

1:25:59

thing called. Let's get all the nerds

1:26:01

in one room and let's just brainstorm

1:26:03

crazy stuff to do. It's not how

1:26:05

it happened. It happened the other way.

1:26:07

It was almost the way that a

1:26:09

baseball team will send a scout to

1:26:12

a bunch of different countries and all

1:26:14

over the United States and just look

1:26:16

for people that have kind of hidden

1:26:18

talents and recruit them to go and

1:26:20

play for the majors. The CIA would

1:26:23

go to hospitals, to universities and

1:26:25

they would be like. What's that guy

1:26:27

doing? He's playing audio loops in

1:26:29

someone's head and dosing them with

1:26:31

LSD and giving them these weird

1:26:33

commands and they're like getting spaced

1:26:35

out. I like the cut of your jib guy

1:26:38

here. Here's an extra 30 grand. Keep doing

1:26:40

what you've been doing. Here's a little extra

1:26:42

money to do it with. The only difference

1:26:44

is now we want you to send

1:26:47

your reports directly to us first and

1:26:49

then we'll tell you what we want

1:26:51

you to report on publicly after that

1:26:53

in case there's like. some cool intellectual

1:26:55

property or some things that we

1:26:57

want to keep for ourselves for

1:26:59

state secret reasons or whatever are you

1:27:01

okay with that and the and the scientists

1:27:03

or the doctor whoever they're talking to is

1:27:05

like you want to give me money to

1:27:08

do more of what I'm already doing and

1:27:10

I just got to send my report to

1:27:12

you first and everything else is the same

1:27:14

and there was probably an unspoken thing like

1:27:17

plus you get a get out of jail

1:27:19

free card plus wolf wolf wolf. fund you

1:27:21

and we'll like fly you some subjects that

1:27:23

you can just do whatever you want with

1:27:26

without any legal scrutiny you can get away

1:27:28

with anything so that's probably very enticing if

1:27:30

you gave that same plan to an actor

1:27:32

a musician you're like hey keep doing what

1:27:34

you're doing here's an extra million dollars plus

1:27:37

here's a get out of jail free card

1:27:39

if you get real crazy you know on

1:27:41

our dime we'll take care of it for

1:27:43

you A lot of artists would be like,

1:27:46

oh, that's the ultimate creative freedom. Yes, please.

1:27:48

And you don't ever have to say, by

1:27:50

the way, I'm from the CIA. In fact,

1:27:53

they would want the exact opposite. They just

1:27:55

want you collecting the check and not asking

1:27:57

questions. Yeah, man. I'm with you 100% there

1:27:59

too. I think. there's so many different

1:28:01

levels to it and I do

1:28:03

agree with if I'm already doing it

1:28:05

and you get a pay-be-war to

1:28:08

do what I'm already doing. And

1:28:10

someone wants to scout you and

1:28:12

they're like hey you want to

1:28:14

join the majors here's a check

1:28:16

to keep doing it at a higher

1:28:18

level. Yeah man and and I would

1:28:20

almost guarantee that once that person from

1:28:22

the farm team flies and they put

1:28:24

on the actual jersey like they're in

1:28:26

it if they got all these coaches

1:28:28

telling do like oh run over there

1:28:30

and go do this and do this

1:28:32

stretch they're not stopping to think why

1:28:34

because they're at a whole other level

1:28:36

they're at the level you've been trying to

1:28:38

be at so why wouldn't you take all

1:28:40

of their advice and everything they're giving

1:28:43

you it not only would it be

1:28:45

biting the hand that's feeding you but it

1:28:47

would also be well I don't know better

1:28:49

than them they're clearly at this higher you

1:28:51

know in this hierarchy they're above me

1:28:53

because they know something I don't so

1:28:56

let me just follow their lead and

1:28:58

then you can get away with a

1:29:00

lot of that's essentially how con men

1:29:02

operate but if you're a con man

1:29:04

with the backing of the US State

1:29:07

Department it's a whole extra level of

1:29:09

con right you can you can make

1:29:11

lies come true. Absolutely man and I

1:29:13

think that's a good way to end

1:29:15

the episode you can you could tell

1:29:18

lies to make it true. And I

1:29:20

think that's exactly what this entire

1:29:22

operation mockingbird was. And I

1:29:25

think still is Thomas. I think

1:29:27

there's at least a version of

1:29:29

it. I don't know if they

1:29:31

even caught that anymore. I would

1:29:33

argue, man, that it floated out

1:29:35

of the hands of the State

1:29:37

Department, and now it's with all

1:29:39

these media conglomerates, is with meta and

1:29:41

X and, you know, all of the

1:29:43

different. groups just the same way that

1:29:45

Coca-Cola is not an American company. This is

1:29:47

like a global gun. Disney, right? The Walt

1:29:50

Disney Company is not an American company.

1:29:52

It is a global, almost an intergalactic

1:29:54

company. This all they got to do

1:29:57

is play one movie on the moon,

1:29:59

another intergalactic. and that supersedes any

1:30:01

CIA, FBI, any of that. They're

1:30:03

bigger than that and I feel

1:30:05

that the state and the CIA

1:30:07

probably realizes that if anything the

1:30:09

CIA is now an instrument of

1:30:11

corporations as opposed to the other

1:30:13

way around which maybe it was

1:30:16

in the 40s or 50s. Absolutely

1:30:18

man and I think that it's

1:30:20

definitely expanded into a different sphere

1:30:22

that We can't quantify, like you

1:30:24

said, back in the 40s and

1:30:26

50s, it's just completely different. And

1:30:28

I think that we have to

1:30:30

look at it that way, especially

1:30:32

when we're talking about social media

1:30:34

conglomerates who are running people's brains,

1:30:36

essentially. That's what they're doing. They're

1:30:38

telling us how to think, how

1:30:41

to feel, and that's the conspiracy.

1:30:43

Thearest community as well. They're shifting

1:30:45

us around all over the place.

1:30:47

I think in the future, some

1:30:49

people will look back fondly with

1:30:51

rose-tinted glasses and it'll be like,

1:30:53

man, you remember when it was

1:30:55

humans running Cyops on us? Remember

1:30:57

when it was good old human

1:30:59

beings in the CIA that we're

1:31:01

running everything? Because it's gonna be

1:31:04

algorithms at a certain point, if

1:31:06

it's not already. and I would

1:31:08

rather be organically mind-controlled. You know,

1:31:10

I don't want this new like

1:31:12

meta-mind control. I'd rather it be

1:31:14

some guy chain-smoking in a dark

1:31:16

office in Washington somewhere. If you

1:31:18

had to pick, right, at least

1:31:20

there might be a soul deep

1:31:22

down encrusted somewhere in there, you're

1:31:24

not getting that from the Terminator.

1:31:27

No, man, you're not. That's just

1:31:29

cold steel and they don't care.

1:31:31

That's that's at the end of

1:31:33

the day with that, but man.

1:31:35

This was a great episode. I

1:31:37

really appreciate you coming on here.

1:31:39

I know you've done a lot

1:31:41

of research on it and I

1:31:43

figured it would be a fun

1:31:45

time and I've been wanting to

1:31:47

talk about it and I thought

1:31:50

you'd be great for this and

1:31:52

you did you killed it knocked

1:31:54

it out of the part. Really

1:31:56

appreciate it Thomas. week. Thomas also

1:31:58

created those, all the artwork for

1:32:00

them. Nefflin Portal Babies, I got

1:32:02

the monthless from one. I think

1:32:04

you got one of the first

1:32:06

Nefflin Portal Babies ever, man. I

1:32:08

do. So it's awesome. I know

1:32:10

Tony's got one in his studio

1:32:13

as well, and you do great

1:32:15

work, man. on so many different

1:32:17

fronts you're talented guy you're not

1:32:19

just a great researcher but talented

1:32:21

guy and I enjoy working people

1:32:23

who are just multi-faceted and you

1:32:25

know I really appreciate you coming

1:32:27

to the show if you can

1:32:29

just let everybody know where to

1:32:31

find you. Yeah the best place

1:32:33

is just go to paranoid American.com

1:32:35

you'll find everything I got going

1:32:38

on there. I try to do

1:32:40

a bunch of different podcasts and

1:32:42

other projects here and there you

1:32:44

can look at a cult book

1:32:46

club that I do with Juan

1:32:48

Ayala. I do a live show

1:32:50

called Sink Tank on Tuesdays with

1:32:52

Andre Zardis and my friend David

1:32:54

Charles Plate and a few others.

1:32:56

I do a live stream on

1:32:58

Fridays at midnight called The Secret

1:33:01

Society of Good Guys with Cheney

1:33:03

Layla and Abby which is a

1:33:05

crazy time. Another show called Under

1:33:07

the Docks with Sean Chris from

1:33:09

Kill the Mockingbirds where we review

1:33:11

old conspiracy documentaries. There's more and

1:33:13

more I can keep going but...

1:33:15

Just go find all of it

1:33:17

at paranoid American.com and I'm doing

1:33:19

my absolute best to take this

1:33:21

kind of information and present it

1:33:24

in new mediums, putting it in

1:33:26

music videos and comic books and

1:33:28

toys and action figures and stickers

1:33:30

and stuff because that was the

1:33:32

gap that I saw. There's so

1:33:34

much doom and gloom version of

1:33:36

this and there's so much of

1:33:38

the the news pundit take on

1:33:40

it. But where's the project mockingbird

1:33:42

action figure? Right? Like that's kind

1:33:44

of the hole that I'm trying

1:33:47

to fill constantly. There were no

1:33:49

nephylum action figures. There were no

1:33:51

homunculus growing kits. So I'm doing

1:33:53

my best to make people interested

1:33:55

in these topics in like strange

1:33:57

new ways. So yeah, you can

1:33:59

help me make that happen at

1:34:01

paranoid American.com. Yeah, it's great stuff,

1:34:03

guys. He does. great work and

1:34:05

definitely go check him out. Check

1:34:07

out all of his projects that

1:34:09

he just said. I know you're

1:34:12

a working man and I enjoy

1:34:14

that man because I'm the same

1:34:16

way. I got my hands in

1:34:18

a bunch of stuff and I'm

1:34:20

with you on trying to find

1:34:22

creative avenues for people to connect

1:34:24

to conspiracies or just weird things

1:34:26

and I've got a lot of

1:34:28

things I'm working on that. will

1:34:30

come to fruition at some point

1:34:32

this year, but definitely been working

1:34:35

real hard and I'm glad to

1:34:37

see other people doing the same

1:34:39

thing and glad to see that

1:34:41

you're definitely getting more and more

1:34:43

shine because it's funny, a lot

1:34:45

of the guys I work with

1:34:47

for the past four or five

1:34:49

years or whatever that I've seen

1:34:51

have stuck with it and you're

1:34:53

one of them that's just been

1:34:55

plugging away, you know, just earn

1:34:58

a midnight oil. I can't not

1:35:00

do this. You know what I

1:35:02

mean? For sure bad. Well guys,

1:35:04

I really appreciate you going to

1:35:06

play my single Plato's cave on

1:35:08

the way out You know what

1:35:10

it is guys go outside touch

1:35:12

grass and get your tail out

1:35:14

the hole Jesus

1:35:56

prayed in the garden while his

1:35:58

friends slept. We're just broken pieces.

1:36:00

to the gold and the missteps.

1:36:02

I'm here to break down all

1:36:04

your idols ritualistic. If you don't

1:36:07

like it, I don't speak in

1:36:09

you for mystic terms. The world

1:36:11

is run by Charles, Montgomery Burns,

1:36:13

they're keeping it hooded like stern,

1:36:15

they've done it in thirds, they've

1:36:17

done it in thirds, they've done

1:36:19

it in thirds before the earth

1:36:22

was occurred and all the friction

1:36:24

I'm getting in labor before the

1:36:26

earth was occurred and all the

1:36:28

friction I'm getting in labor, We

1:36:30

were looking to wrap it like

1:36:32

tacos with lime sauce. I never

1:36:34

cared too much, what they saying,

1:36:36

matter of fact. What I'm saying,

1:36:39

I ain't here to explain it

1:36:41

on the levels all they see,

1:36:43

but they don't see my creator

1:36:45

campaign and politicians for your souls,

1:36:47

know the bait. But after the

1:36:49

next, I'm calling them Benedict, I

1:36:51

got me a chopper. Most of

1:36:53

our colleagues are blue, most of

1:36:56

us can't even afford one, lining

1:36:58

up for new iPhones, lining up.

1:37:08

guidelines and nothing but sells.

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