Episode Transcript
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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
3:00
want to say thank you to everyone
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is really helped the show grow because
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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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in the comments and using the
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live chats. Again, I really appreciate
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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
4:18
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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