Behind the Bastards

There’s a reason the History Channel has produced hundreds of documentaries about Hitler but only a few about Dwight D. Eisenhower. Bad guys (and gals) are eternally fascinating. Behind the Bastards dives in past the Cliffs Notes of the worst humans in history and exposes the bizarre realities of their lives. Listeners will learn about the young adult novels that helped Hitler form his monstrous ideology, the founder of Blackwater’s insane quest to build his own Air Force, the bizarre lives of the sons and daughters of dictators and Saddam Hussein’s side career as a trashy romance novelist.

Part Six: The Perfect Soldier

Part Six: The Perfect Soldier

Thu, 22 Aug 2019 10:00

Part Six: The Perfect Soldier

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Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her impactful behavioural discoveries on chimpanzees. It wasn't until one of the chimpanzees began to lose his fear of me, but I began to really make discoveries that actually shook the scientific world. Survive on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts? Hey guys, I'm Kaylee, short on my podcast. Too much to say. I share my thoughts on everything from music to martinis, social media, social anxiety, regrets to risky text, and so much more. I have been known to read my literal diary entries on my show, and sometimes I do interviews with my crazy group of friends, so if you guys want to tune in, you can hear new episodes of too much to say every Wednesday on the national podcast network available on the iHeartRadio. With Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to him. Words being insulted by a Sophie. My me, I'm Robert Evans, the host of behind the ********. Sophie's angry at me because I ****** ** and tried to start the episode before we were ready. We don't know what's up or down. We don't know what's up or down. I I can't stop thinking about this Perrier case that I'm not throwing. None of us can. Right, maybe I can't get about it. Cody's not sweating it. It's like the sword of Damocles. But instead of being a sword held up by a single string or whatever the hell the sort of Damocles was, it's a case of Perrier that I'm just going to throw for no good reason. The only reason is that he's been saying phrases. His reason is that he's been saying it so he has, but that's not a good reason. No, it's not, and it's a problem that I have. And like with a drug problem, the only way to really get over it is to do the most dangerous version of it you can possibly do. There are other ways. Nope. I would look that up or talk to a professional before you decide to throw that. I I think I have to do it to be a hotline in the midst of this episode. When it comes to throwing things in this room, there's no professional more experience than me. That is true. That is true. Wow. Yeah, I accept that. I love professionalism. Convinced you should throw it first. Let's start Chapter 6, the perfect soldier. 1988 seditious conspiracy trial held important lessons for the chief minds behind the white supremacist movement. When they leaned into their patriotism, their love of an America that was white and Christian but America nonetheless, they could draw significant sympathy from their fellow white men and women. Swastikas and Klan robes were much less useful than tearful stories of hippie protesters spitting on flags. The 1990s saw continuous growth of both the survivalist and the American militia movement. Neither of these things was inherently white supremacist, but Beeman, his colleagues had been remarkably successful at ceding their propaganda. And a gun shows and conventions. As a result, the early 90s brought them a whole crop of fellow travelers, men and women who did not identify as Nazis and had never held Klan membership, but who were also quite capable of reading the Turner Diaries and identifying with its message. Randy Weaver is a perfect example of this new sort of recruit. He was a former Green Beret, a patriot who loved his country and working with his hands. He and his wife Vicky were Christian conservatives. They fell in love with the first generation of evangelical TV preachers, men like Jerry Falwell. They also read a book. Called the late Great planet Earth by how Lindsey, which focused around using the Bible to predict the near future. Lindsay's book convinced Randy and Vicki that Gog and anti Christian Empire from the book of Ezekiel was the Soviet Union. You say gog? Gog, I did say Gog, yeah yeah. They became more and more drawn into conspiracy theories and convinced themselves that a great and fiery apocalypse was imminent. Imminent, and a quote next from American experience by PBS concerned Citizens. They set out to spread the word. They were unable to find a church that approached these matters with what they felt was the appropriate level of seriousness, so they held their own. Level studies with like minded friends and neighbors. This sparked the attention of a local reporter who came to do a story on them. The weavers, Walter learned, did not appreciate the results. They felt betrayed, but they had never been more sure in their beliefs. A great conflagration was coming and they felt increasingly unsafe. In Iowa, Vicki started having visions in the bathtub. God was speaking to her, and God was telling her to go West to find for her family a mountaintop. They would be safe there. Well, the weavers moved to a place that would later come to be called Ruby Ridge in Idaho, not far from Richard Butler's Aryan Nations compound. Randy Weaver began to visit the compound, attending several events and making a few friends among the Neo Nazis. The exact nature of what he believed precisely is unclear and heavily debated. It seems that he identified with some aspects of Christian identity theology, and it's safe to say he was racist by normal people standards, but it's also fair to say that Randy Weaver was not really a Nazi. Or even an ideological white supremacist. He hung around Arian nations because he lived in the middle of nowhere. They were the only people to hang with, and he just didn't care about their racism. OK, yeah, he was not the kind of man who'd have joined a group like the order, but he would come to play an important role in the next step of the white supremacist movement. Don't hang out with Nazis. Don't hang out with. Like you're like. You're like, OK, whatever. I know he's evil, but he's kind of cool in this aspect. I'll be buds with this person. Yeah, yeah, like they make good hot tub. Like, that's how. That's how. That's how. You know, that's how Nazis or Nazi friends. Now, the FBI wound up wiretapping several of the fascists that Randy Weaver befriended. Was quite immediately obvious to them that Mr Weaver had no plans to overthrow the government, spark a race war, or do anything more subversive than live off the land with his family and picnic with Nazis from time to time. In fact, when other people in these wiretapped conversations which suggest committing crimes. Randy would usually say something like, we don't really go in for that stuff. Yeah, yeah, it's a better response for lynchings than sure, you know, but it's not a great response. Yeah. Well, the feds knew Randy wasn't really dangerous. They saw him as the perfect guy who approaches an informant. He wasn't a true believer and he was very poor. If they could entrap him into committing a crime, they could scare him with prison time until he agreed to wear a wire and help them catch some of the big fish in the Aryan Nations community. Offer money like, yeah, just offer him start like that. Dad, like, he's not a true believer and he's poor. Yeah. OK, so, like, offer money to help you out. I know that's not what they do, and it just sucks. It's like, yeah, an undercover agent approached Randy and offered him good money to illegally saw off a couple of shotguns. Now, Randy was not a believer in the legitimacy of American gun control regulations, and he needed the cash, so he happily acquiesced and was subsequently busted for it. The feds made their offer and Randy refused them. He was arrested on federal firearms charges and taken to jail. Randy made bail, though, and he fled back to Ruby Ridge. Hold up with his family and a whole bunch of guns and the hope that the federales would not follow. Yeah, they did. Yeah, but the attempted arrest did not go well. A US Marshall was shot dead by the Weaver clan, and the authorities responded with a Blizzard of indiscriminate gunfire which killed Randy's 14 year old son, the family dog, and his unarmed wife Vicky. They were trapped in the cabin with her corpse for like, days. It was hard. This is awful. Yeah, it's a terrible story. A standoff ensued. The law came in with helicopters, armored vehicles, and the kind of militarized police that look familiar to us. Now, but we're new and terrifying. Back in 1992 the media descended on Ruby Ridge two and the assault on the Weaver family was spread virally throughout the far right. The weavers were the perfect poster family to illustrate government overreach. Footage of black helicopters hovering over Ruby Ridge and St Like Pictures of Vicki Weaver were almost tailor made to sell. The idea that the new World order was coming for decent white Christian gun owning Americans. Well yeah, handed that one out on the platter. Louie Bean and his fellow fascists knew a great opportunity when one came and knocking. Later in 1992, while Ruby Ridge was still in the news, the leading minds of the white supremacist movement gathered in Estes Park, Co for a summit on how precisely they could use this tragedy to their advantage. The summit was convened by Pete Peters, a Christian identity preacher from Colorado and the head of a sizable Christian identity church, the LaPorte Church of Christ. Here's how Leonard Zeskind summarizes the proceedings in blood and politics. For 2 1/2 days they met in committee, deliberated in plenary sessions, and engaged in the kind of 1 on one conversations known in the parlance of business professionals as networking. They made decisions in the name of Jesus Christ, and Yahweh sang onward Christian soldiers and otherwise conducted themselves in a manner of quiet resolve appropriate for their surroundings and YMCA facility abutting the park. No guns were waived, and even the most heated rhetoric seemed to have the blood drained out of it. Estes Park signified a radical shift in the tactics of the white power movement, like the 1983 Arian Nations Congress. We mostly know it was disgusted, Estes Park because of the things that happened after it. The Nazis started reaching out to more moderate Americans. Louis. Being published an article in his new magazine ironically named the Seditionist because he'd gotten been declared innocent of sedition. Yeah, he called for leaderless resistance in the wake of Ruby Ridge. Big Star 1A militia, with members in Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico, carried out grenade launcher and mortar training exercises in rural Texas. The Montana militia published a guidebook on how to engage in domestic terrorism. In 1993, law enforcement across the nation found 13 explosives caches meant to be used in attacks as varied as a national Afro American Museum in Ohio and a black church in Los Angeles. None of this made the news in a big way because of something that happened in mid 1993, the siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, TX. The Branch Davidians were not a Christian identity sect, and their leader, David Koresh, was not affiliated with the white supremacist movement. But the ATF siege of their compound so soon after Ruby Ridge was easy for Louis B and his comrades to propagandize around. Now, this is not an audio book about the Waco disaster, and I won't even try to cover what happened there in detail. What's important for our purposes is the end result on February 28th, 1993. ATF agents attempted to serve a search warrant about sexual abuse and illegal weapons charges. People inside the compound opened fire. 4 agents and five Branch Davidians were killed, and the situation devolved into a bloody siege. On April 19th, the FBI, who taken control of the situation, launched an assault on the compound. In the ensuing melee, several fires broke out and quickly swept through the structures. By the time the smoke had cleared and it was all over, 53 adults and 23 children were dead now. Yeah, yeah, it was a ******** of people. Yeah, uh. The whole tragedy was inarguably a *********** on behalf of the federal government, which of course helped groups like the fashion people. Yeah, so they started After's Park, like, reaching out to militias and stuff, and again trying to like. Propagandizing directly to militias being like, instead of just sending out like Nazi propaganda to guys who aren't gonna bite, and Nazis, what if we focus on like, pictures of of this dead woman victim, like dead white woman killed by the government, and try to scare him that way? And then, you know, if they if they're interested in that, maybe they'll gradually start reading some of our other problems, like any kind of terrorist propaganda. So Kirk Lyons, a close friend of Louis Beam and a white supremacist militia leader himself, sent out an issue of his group's fundraising newsletter that featured a photo of a spiling 14 year old girl who died in the Waco siege. The girl was, of course, White, and her photo was captioned why we fight there were dozens, hundreds, and eventually thousands of other similar pieces of propaganda. Gradually, day by day and month by month, explicitly fascist white supremacist groups began to wrap their ideological claws around the militia movement and suck in ever more patriots, British journalist. Jon Ronson was one of the few reporters who spent a great deal of time embedded with the fringe right during this. He actually visited the ruins of the Branch Davidian compound several years after the siege with Randy Weaver and Toll. They wound up having a conversation with several members of the Michigan militia who were there taking part in a vigil for the people who died at Waco. One of these people told him we are here to ask for these people's forgiveness for sitting around on our butts and watching it on TV. What happened at Ruby Ridge and Waco will never happen again under any circumstances. If it does, there will be immediate retaliation, armed resistance. From the Michigan militia. Now. The Michigan militia in this time had about 12,000 members, which was a significant surge for it in the wake of Ruby Ridge and Waco. One of those members was a young desert storm veteran. Named Tim McVeigh. Ah, here we go. Here we go. Timothy McVeigh was born. Oh, wait. It's time for an ad plug, isn't it, Sophie? This is Timothy McVeigh. You know what I think about when I think about Tim McVeigh, you really are great at this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You know, there's nothing that goes with Tim McVeigh like, well, fertilizer bomb. But other than a fertilizer bomb, no, Sophie, you're saying that's not a good ad plug? There are a lot of things better than McVeigh. And those things are these. Code is great at it. You know what does less damage than Tim McVeigh, the products and services advertised on this show. You got to pick one of these, Sophie. That one. Great. Alright, perfect. Let's roll *** **** pills. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying. Or for a family. And it meant family start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text, plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any mint mobile plan and keep your same phone number along with all your existing contacts. Just switch to Mint mobile and get premium wireless service starting at 15 bucks a month. Get premium wireless service from just $15.00 a month and no one expected plot twist at mintmobile.com/behind. That's mintmobile.com/behind. Seriously, you'll make your wallet. Very happy at Mint mobilcom slash. Behind my name is Erica Kelly and I am the host and creator of Southern Freight True crime. There are so many people that just have no idea about some injustices in the world and if you can give a voice to them you can create change. To be able to do it within podcasting is just such a gift. I believe it was 18 months after I got on with speaker that I was making enough that I could quit my day job. It was incredible. I always feel like an ambassador. For speaker, but that's because I'm passionate about podcasting. It's really easy to use. I always tell people I am so not tech. Took me 5 minutes to get comfortable with spreaker, and when I find a new friend that has an incredible show, I want them to make money. I want them to be able to do what I did. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break your handle. The hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Get paid to talk about the things you love with spreaker. From iheart. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer in kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. His unspeakable crimes and the incompetence or unwillingness of the police to stop him brought the entire country of Belgium to the brink of revolution. From Tenderfoot TV in iHeartRadio this is la Monstra. The story of abomination and conspiracy that led to the demise of the entire institution of Belgian federal police and rattled the foundations of its government. The story about the man who simply become known as La Monster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. We're back. We're talking about how good I am at making ad plugs. Still talking about that yet still talk about this. Good. I can't stop talking about it. No, I can't stop talking about this case of Perrier. Yeah. Yep. Just listen to that. It has to be thrown. I don't know. There's only 10, there are 12. Yeah, there aren't. There are 12, so it's safe. It's the industry recognized. Don't think you should throw it. No, I have to. I have to well, Timothy McVeigh. So he was born on April 23rd, 1968. McVeigh grew up in Pendleton, NY, and had an early childhood that was pretty standard for the 70s and 80s. He watched Gumby and truther consequences. He played Cowboys and Indians or cops and robbers with other kids in the neighborhood. Tim Burford playing the good guys as he saw them, cops or Cowboys wherever possible. He was sickly and somewhat. Known to accidents, hurting himself in all sorts of ways, young boys who spend a lot of time in the woods tend to do. Tim was an energetic boy, and he might have been someone who wound up on Ritalin had he been born a decade or two later. He was constantly in trouble for minor things, but he also had a good heart, as this story from American terrorist, the fantastic biography of McVeigh, makes clear. Tim was playing near the pond when he noticed one of the older neighborhood boys carrying a burlap sack. The sack was weighted down with rocks, but the curious Tim could see there was something else wriggling in the sack. He watched as the older boy pitched the sack out into the pond, where it quickly sank to the bottom. What was that? Tim asked, running to the far shore of the pond where the neighborhood boy stood. Those are kittens my dad had, the boy answered in a matter of fact tone. We had to get rid of them. For Tim, who loved animals and especially kittens, the realization of what he had witnessed hit him hard. He cried about the incident for days. So part of what we're trying to ask here is, you know, we talked about Robert Matthews a little bit earlier. We talked about Louis mean. These are guys who are pretty brutal. Early on, Matthews was in society from age 11. Louis beam, like, immediately wanted to fight and go to war and kill. Tim McVeigh is a sensitive kid who's, like, heartbroken when he sees someone being cruel to animals. It's confusing. He's not the kind of guy who would have wound up joining George Lincoln Rockwell's Nazi party, which both Matthews and beam are the kind of guys might have been speared by that. The story of Tim McVeigh is the story of how a young mind got enraptured with this kind of terroristic, apocalyptic ideology. Who wouldn't have gotten caught in the first iteration of it? This is a guy who would only have been caught by the changes made to the movements propaganda outreach after rest is park. I think that's that's the story we're talking about today. Thanks, Jerry. So Tim fell in love with guns at an early age. His grandfather first took him shooting when he was seven. This probably sounds crazy to some people, particularly in Los Angeles where we read this, but I started shooting at the same age that Tim did when I was a little kid living in ******* rural Oklahoma. So it's pretty normal in that era. And Tim's grandpa, everyone said Ed McVeigh was a stickler about firearm safety and considered safe gun ownership to be an integral part of American citizenship. So he likes guns, but he doesn't like killing things. He's like a target shooter and stuff like he's. Yeah. Being small and sort of weird, Tim McVeigh was a bit of a magnet for bullies. He developed a deep hatred of bullying and a reflexive rage at the sight of anything he saw as bully behavior, whether it came from an individual or an institution. Tim's parents divorced when they were young. His sisters chose to go with their mother, but Tim stayed with his father so that he would not have to be alone again. Sensitive kid. After the Oklahoma City bombing, a number of pundits would try to tie Tim's parents divorce to his evolution as a terrorist. This would seem to be an overstatement, but he did tie his mother, leaving his father to broader social trends. Later stating in an interview that in the past 30 years, because of the women's movement, they've taken an influence out of the household. Yeah. I mean, I could see that as being a formative spot for why you don't like women. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which maybe makes them a little bit more sympathetic to the kind of propaganda put out by these groups. And women is only if you start to think of the government as a bully. Yeah. When one reads about McVeigh, they get the feeling that had he been born later, he might have found a home within the Alt right. For one thing, he was obsessed with the Star Wars movies and identified heavily with Luke Skywalker as the 80s. Old boy. Yes, special boy. Special boy blowing up the big evil thing. Special dragon boy. As the 80s rolled along and home computers started to become more common, McVeigh became one of the first generation of computer nerds. He was the on the Internet before basically anyone else. His handle on those early message boards was the Wanderer. We can't know everywhere McVeigh went in the early Internet, but it's unlikely to be pure coincidence that Timothy grew obsessed with survivalism in the Second Amendment during the years he was most involved in nascent Internet culture. It's entirely possible he came across some of Louis Beam's writings during this time. We know for a fact that he fell in love with a book. We've already talked about a lot in this series. You want to guess what it is? The Turner Diaries. Ohg. It's like, miserable. Ohh, I love laymen. Ohh, it's beautiful. Beautiful book. But that was a lie. He fell in love with the Turner Diaries. You were right, Katie. Yeah. Yeah. He first heard about the Turner Diaries from an ad in soldier of Fortune magazine. He ordered the book by mail and fell madly in love with it. Now, for the rest of his life, he'd insist that the book's gun rights advocacy was what drew him to it, not its depiction of a genocidal worldwide race war. And it's kind of possible he was telling the truth again. Like Randy Weaver. Tim McVeigh is definitely a racist, but that's not his motivation, right? You get pieces of it, just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I really think he's probably telling the truth when he was like, mostly just into it because it had a lot of violent scenes and it was about like a gun control revolution, like the racism he could take or leave. That's not great. Now he has to be racist for this. But he wasn't racist enough that he wouldn't have joined the order just because of that. Exactly. It wasn't a believer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Post Estes Park, the Turner Diaries remained one of the linchpins of white supremacist recruitment in the US ads for it in magazines like Soldier of Fortune often posed the question what will you do if the government comes for your guns? None of this is to say that McVeigh wasn't racist. He grew up in a place where everyone was white. At age 19, he got a job as a guard on an armored car. He later recalled his colleagues expressing casual racism. Towards black residents on the east side of Buffalo. And eventually he adopted those beliefs and their propensity for using racial slurs. Racism was a fact of Tim's life, but again, it wasn't like the main thing for him. What was his main thing were guns. During his time as a security guard, McVeigh spent most of his recreational time shooting. He eventually got in trouble with his neighbors for doing show. So, and this seems to have influenced his desire to join the army. He basically just, like, wanted to play with guns. With guns, yeah, it was an excellent recruit and by all accounts a very good soldier. He fell in love with most. Aspects of army life, although he disliked the emphasis training placed on killing. In a later interview, he recalled 20 times a day. It would be blood makes the grass grow. Kill, kill, kill. You would be screaming that until your throat was raw. If somebody put a video camera on that, they would think it was a bunch of sickos. You're right, we're going to say. After blowing up a federal building filled with babies. Just sickos. But a valid point. On base, McVeigh continued to read far right literature, devouring conspiracy theories about the United States and the United Nations conspiring to steal the freedoms and guns of Americans. He handed out copies of the Turner Diaries to his closest comrades. He was warned several times by friends who read the book that people would think he was ******* racist if he kept stuff around. Good for them. Maybe report him. Two friends. Not great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Gulf War would give Tim McVeigh his first chance to actually use guns against other human beings. And interestingly enough, he seems to have hated it. He was not on board with the war from the beginning. McVeigh felt the US military should only get involved in conflicts that directly affected the lives of American citizens. He saw the US intervention against Iraq as bullying and Tim McVeigh hated bullies. When he shipped over to Iraq, McVeigh was the gunner on a Bradley fighting vehicle during a battle in country. He killed 2 Iraqi soldiers with the Bradley's. Very large gun and watched in horror as their bodies disappeared into a red mist. The incident scarred him. Unlike Louis Beam, McVeigh did not enjoy killing. The whole war left a bad taste in Tim's mouth. He was particularly furious when he read about the US Air Force bombing of the Al Amira bomb shelter in Baghdad, which killed 300 women and children. McVeigh returned to America much less enchanted with military life. He focused some of that frustration on the black soldiers who served alongside. Several of them walked around the base and black power shirts, which infuriated him. He was heard several times using the N word and a reputation for ordering some of his black subordinates to sweep up the motor pool. When pressed about this later, McVeigh would point out that some of his closest comrades in the military. Or black, I'm going to quote again from American terrorist. Well, he swore he never embraced racism. McVeigh actively explored the racist point of view. He had already begun selling copies of the Turner Diaries at gun shows. And because of the racist content of the book, McVeigh wound up on a mailing list for the Ku Klux Klan. McVeigh claimed he had virtually no idea what the KKK was all about. The first time he received literature from the racist group, he was impressed by one of its pamphlets, which expressed concerns about the loss of individual rights in American Society and the desire to go back to the way things were in the days of the founding fathers. Again, that's that, Estes Park. Yeah. McVay spent $20.00 for the trial membership to KKK headquarters in North Carolina. One of the enticements for joining was a white power T-shirt that McVeigh planned to wear around Fort Riley. Why would a non racist when a white power T-shirt? McVeigh maintained it was intended to protest what he saw as the growing double standard in the army. He said that he never did wear the shirt, but he made no apologies for buying it then or now. I wanted to make a point, he said. Black guys were wearing black power T-shirts on the base. They weren't supposed to. I wanted to see what would happen if I wore the white power T-shirt. McVeigh didn't renew. KKK membership. When his first year was up, he had joined the KKK, he said, because he thought the clan was fighting for the restoration of individual rights, especially gun rights. But the more research and reading he did, the more he realized the Klan was almost entirely devoted to the cause of racism. Really? Yeah, really. Tim, you. I'm glad you did some research on that. Well, he decided the KKK was manipulative to young people, and he didn't renew his membership. Yeah. Doesn't like bullies. He didn't. Doesn't like bullies. Backbone values, values, you know, values are important. And I personally love the values of the products and services that support this show. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying. Or for a family. And it meant family start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text, plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any mint mobile plan and keep your same phone number along with all your existing contacts. Just switch to Mint mobile and get premium wireless service starting at 15 bucks a month. Get premium wireless service from just $15.00 a month, and no one expected plot twists at mintmobile.com/behind. That's mintmobile.com/behind. Seriously, you'll make your wallet. Very happy at Mint mobilcom. Behind my name is Erica Kelly and I am the host and creator of Southern Freight True crime. There are so many people that just have no idea about some injustices in the world and if you can give a voice to them you can create change. To be able to do it within podcasting is just such a gift. I believe it was 18 months after I got on with speaker that I was making enough that I could quit my day job. It was incredible. I always felt like an ambassador. First speaker, but that's because I'm passionate about podcasting. It's really easy to use. I always tell people I am so not tech. Took me 5 minutes to get comfortable with spreaker, and when I find a new friend that has an incredible show, I want them to make money. I want them to be able to do what I did. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break your handle. The hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. You get paid to talk about the things you love with spreaker. From iheart. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. His unspeakable crimes and the incompetence or unwillingness of the police to stop him brought the entire country of Belgium to the brink of revolution. From Tenderfoot TV in iHeartRadio this is la Monstra. The story of abomination and conspiracy that led to the demise of the entire institution of Belgian federal police and rattled the foundations of its government. A story about the man who simply become known as La Monster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. We're back. And I just admitted that I would be willing to have sex with Cory Booker. Corey wanted how we got to this conversation we're not going to talk about. Very inappropriate. Does not lend anything to the episode. Shouldn't have admitted it. Not related to the product. He has good bone structure though. I think he's cute. Did anything about it, guys? Yeah. Sophie does not think he's cute. I don't. Everyone has different opinions about who they find cute. Yeah, it's not him. We can all agree, though. Bernie's the cutest talking about bone structure. That guy's got bones. Cute cutie. Yeah, he's cutie, patootie cutie and sweetie. Young Bernie is weird, but you know, cute. He got better looking as he got older. Young Bernie. His wife must really have been into radical politics. Anyway, boy. This is about your this. We're finishing this chapter here. Finish this chapter right. So Tim McVeigh, like Randy Weaver, was the perfect example of the sort of man Louie Bean was hoping to reach. Not motivated enough by racism to have sought out the movement, but comfortable enough with racism and frustrated enough by mainstream American culture be radicalized by the anti gun control new world order conspiracies peddled by the propagandists of the white power movement. McVeigh opted not to reenlist after his time of service ran out and outside of the military. Mcveigh's life was just one frustration after another, despite his glowing service record. Get trouble finding work. Civil service jobs he applied for in the state and federal government turned him down. He convinced himself that this was because he was a young white man and thus the victim of what he termed reverse discrimination. Probably a better way, since, like a more alliterative way to say that yeah, reverse racism. Yeah. Affirmative action became the focus of Murphy's thwarted ambitions. He started spending more and more time around gun shows and flirted vaguely with some militias, including the Michigan militia. He started sending his sister Jennifer stories he'd read about the Rockefeller family, and they're supposed to control of most of the organs of state power. The conspiracist McVeigh embraced were not quite open neo-Nazi anti Semites, but they were kissing cousins to that kind of belief. From American terrorist quote, the brother and sisters discussion sprawled in myriad directions, from the Bible to the pyramid and its crowning, all seeing eye on the back of the Dollar bill. Macphee was reading more anti government books and pamphlets, and he shared them with his inquisitive younger sister. He wanted to expand her perspective, though some of the claims in the literature seemed bizarre and inconceivable to Jennifer, including one writer's contention that the government was building massive crematoriums in 130 concentration camps to exterminate individuals who disagreed with federal policies. The authors of the pamphlets, anticipating skepticism, warned that Americans risked. Having victims of it can't happen here syndrome when it came to government usurping power from the people, Jennifer wasn't sold on everything she read. But Justice McVeigh hoped the literature got her thinking about the government and individual rights. She looked up to her older brother, flattered that he thought enough of her to engage her in political discourse. McVeigh believed that the federal government intended to disarm the American public gradually and take away the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment. In the summer of 1992, he pointed to events in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. Is proof positive that his theory was correct. Now, one of the publications that McVeigh read during this. Was called the White Patriot. It was published by the former KKK leader, the attempted invader of the island of Dominica, and the founder of Stormfront, Don Black. That boy's back, blacks back. It featured articles with titles like Why is the Klan opposed to Jews? And also hosted essays from William Pearce. As Mcvay's life prospects dimmed, he grew more obsessed with guns and gun shows, traveling around the country selling weapons and literature and survivalist gear. The gun show circuit introduced him to more fringe right wing literature. McVeigh began to express frustration that American women were unfairly withholding sex from American men. He called them prudish and stingy. Yeah. Take those words back. Let's reclaim them. Yeah, this word that it's keeps being the same story over and over again. Sure it is. Yeah. When the Waco siege began, McVeigh was instantly obsessed with the story. He drove to Mount Carmel and sold T-shirts outside the siege Lions communing with his fellow survivalist militiamen as they worriedly waited for the outcome. And when that outcome came, it radicalized Tim McVeigh, as nothing else could have. He read that the government had used CS gas, which McVeigh had been exposed to during his military training, to McVeigh. This was the ultimate representation of government overreach. Pure, vicious, murderous bully behavior. McVeigh didn't stop it. Being furious about the murder of dozens of innocent people, he became convinced that Waco was the prelude to a mass government crackdown on gun owners and freedom. He told one friend that he suspected the feds had purposefully started fires in the compound. The government wanted it to burn because the government couldn't win. The public sentiment was changing, he said. Mcveigh's rage was reciprocated by the other men he met on the gun show circuit, men like Terry Nichols, a sovereign citizen whose beliefs were essentially descended from the Posse Comitatus movement. McVay spent time living on Nichols's farm and crafting explosives, small homemade bombs initially just for amusement. But over the months that followed Waco, Mcveigh's rage, the paranoia stoked by fears of fringe right wing conspiracy theories and his love of the Turner Diaries, metastasized into a plan, a plan to bomb the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. And Yep, it's really sad, too. Yeah, don't do it. Don't do it. I got some bad news, Cody. He do it. He done did it. He done did it. The structure of Mcveigh's attack was directly inspired by a passage from the Turner Diaries. At one point, Earl Turner cell bombs the FBI's headquarters. Pierce goes into exhaustive detail about the device. They use a truck bomb made with £4400 of ammonium nitrate, essentially the same weapon with they constructed and used to destroy the Murrah Building on the day he detonated his bomb, killing 168 people. McVeigh put together a manifesto of sorts on an envelope in his car and included many photocopied pages of the Turner Diaries. McVeigh had highlighted one passage in particular from a chunk of the book where Earl Turner Cell carries out a mortar attack on Washington DC The real value of our attack today lies in the psychological impact, not in the immediate casualties. More importantly, though, is what we taught the politicians and bureaucrats. They learned this afternoon that not one of them is beyond our reach. They can huddle behind barbed wire and tanks in the city. They can hide behind the concrete walls of their country estates, but we can still find them and kill them. Blew up a daycare. God, man. Yeah, we really. Yeah, showed them. Yeah, there was probably a daycare on the Death Star, too. You would think, yeah. Probably what now? I'm more than just. Yeah. Lots of several was the size of a move. Yeah. Families, yeah. Tim's Skywalker, very special boy. Special boys. A lot of kittens probably up there too. Yeah, a lot of a kitten. I'm certain there were a lot of kittens out there. In Tim McVeigh, Louie Bean and his fellow fascists had found the perfect soldier and the perfect exemplar of beams concept of leaderless resistance. He was not a lone wolf, as some foolish pretenders of journalism named him. McVeigh was radicalized by a constellation of writers and thinkers, as well as hundreds of men he spoke with at gun shows and survivalist conventions and sitting outside the siege lines. At Waco, he was radicalized by William Pierce, who wrote the Turner Diaries, hoping desperately that someone would do exactly what McVeigh did. Mcveigh's attack prompted a response from federal law enforcement, but not the one you might expect. Well, there were some crackdowns on malicious cells and organizations. The Justice Department largely reacted by taking a lighter hand with white supremacists and militias. Oh, OK hmm. But. Yes, Cody. We'll see. We'll see if it's gets a good idea. Maybe it'll work. There is I didn't mean. I didn't mean to question. In 1996, the Montana Freeman wound up in a standoff with the federal government. As a group, they represented a synthesis of Christian identity and posse comitatus beliefs that declared themselves independent of federal control and wound up in an 81 day standoff with law enforcement. For a while, it looked like the Freeman compound might become another Waco, but the standoff ended peacefully. Video footage of the 23 adults and four children surrendering showed no giant armored vehicles or military looking police. The FBI's hostage rescue team wore sneakers. And casual civilian clothing. McVeigh would go to his grave convinced that the lighter hand used on the Montana Freeman was the result of his attack on Oklahoma City. And he may have been right, according to American terrorist quote, Clinton R Van Zandt, the former FBI agent who had tried without success to negotiate a peaceful into the Waco standoff three years earlier, agreed with McVeigh, at least on that point. Retired from the FBI and working as a security consultant fans and feels that the government learned a painful lesson from the Oklahoma City bombing. In Van Zandt words, the government realized that it must become a velvet brick, not a battering ram. What an absolute classic tragedy, Vanzanten said soon after the conflagration at Waco. What a total indictment of mankind's inability to communicate and relate, even though we have different religious or personal philosophies. While Van Zandt condemned the Oklahoma City bombing, he felt that Waco had started a war and then McVeigh bombing had been not only an escalation, but a turning point in that war. My only disagreement with Mr Van Zandt is the idea that the war Mr McVeigh wound up fighting and had started with Waco. This war had been going on much longer than that, at least as far back as the days of George Lincoln Rockwell. Timothy McVeigh may have seen himself as a patriotic American, but he fought as a soldier of the American fascist movement under generals Louis Beam and William Pierce. The failure of the federal government and almost everyone to see this war is one reason why things have gotten so bad. In 2019, as I write this, McVeigh would be joined on down through the years by dozens of other angry young men. Men like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the infamous Columbine shooters. Most experts agree that Harris was the primary motivating force behind the attacks, more or less pulling Klebold along with him. This is not often reported on, but Harris was obsessed with Adolf Hitler and Nazism. He wrote constantly about Nazi ideology, his hatred of free speech, the press, and his desire to see mentally defective people executed. Harris was also obsessed with Timothy McVeigh. Dave Cohen is a journalist who spent more than a decade studying the massacre. He found regular references to Oklahoma City and McVeigh and Harris's writings. Before the shooting: writes quote in his journal, Eric would brag about topping McVeigh. Oklahoma City was a one note performance. McVeigh set his timer and walked away. He didn't even see his spectacle unfold. Harris admired McVeigh but desperately wanted to beat him, carrying out a larger attack and killing more people. Do you think that will escalate things more? You think that attitude might be accelerationism? Now, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold did not succeed in their goal or in Harris's goal of topping Timothy McVeigh. But Harris may yet manage to beat Mcveigh's high score. In the decades since the 1996 shooting at Columbine, it has inspired at least 74 copycat attacks, which have killed 89 people and injured 126 more. You can draw a Direct Line from George Lincoln Rockwell to William Pearson, Louis Beam to Tim McVeigh, and then to Eric Harris. By the late 1990s, it was incredibly clear that leaderless resistance as a tactic was the best weapon in the white supremacist arsenal. But it would take the mass adoption of the Internet and the era of the smartphone for Louis Beam's deadliest innovation to see its full potential. And we're going to talk about that in the next episode of this podcast. Just terrorists. Are you yet? Or should I wait until we're done with the whole thing? I don't know. I'm pretty bummed out right now. Yeah, you're right. Maybe maybe it's time. Maybe it is time. Or maybe don't do it at all. No, I have to do it. I have to do it, Sophie, what do you think? After the last episode or now? How about you throw it towards that couch and Sophie moves away? I can't read your blinks, Sophie. I think we'll wait until the next episode. I really want to. I wanna draw this **** out. Yeah, wanna draw this **** out? We're gonna wait for the climax. Plug your stuff. That's right, Google our names, which are spell it right. It's Katie Stoll and Cody Johnson. We have YouTube show, some more news podcast, even more news, Cody Twitter and patreon.com/somemore News and T public and all the things. Google if you are interested. Just like Google it. This is what, the 6th, 6th? If you're still listening, you're not. That's why I'm not plugging everything at the end of these episodes. Stop asking. Yeah, we're not. You go to the war and everyone died like now we're gonna do it. At the last one, because it's the last one, but we've already done it every time. I'm not in the next one, alright? Podcast. Why? Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Speaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break our handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's espr E aker.com. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her impactful behavioural discoveries on chimpanzees. It wasn't until one of the chimpanzees began to lose his fear of me, but I began to really make discoveries that actually shook the scientific world. Listen to amazing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, I'm Kelly short on my podcast. Too much to say. I share my thoughts on everything from music to martinis, social media social anxiety, regrets to risky text, and so much more. I have been known to read my literal diary entries on my show, and sometimes I do interviews with my crazy group of friends so if you guys want to tune in, you can hear new episodes of too much to say every Wednesday on the national podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to him.