November 20, 2025 • 41 mins
Robert concludes the story of Bo Gritz with his unhinged attempts to rescue POWs from Vietnam, his political ambitions, and disgraceful downfall.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media, hyah.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Okay, like a like a grown up.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
I'm gonna sit normally now, and it's like a grown up.
Speaker 4 (00:19):
Let's give a hands up to uh.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I feel like that was for.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
You don't fucking control me. I feel like I boo
you turning the chair out.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
No, they don't control but clearly eyes.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Yeah, well yeah, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
There's never been a question about that. You control us.
Speaker 5 (00:38):
All also shout out us graduating our our booze.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Yes, yes, we've moved up to hard liquor.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
We've moved up.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
You're on the bourbon brown brown.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Because i gotta walk in the crowd later and I'm
very afraid of falling.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Oh, that part's gonna be fun.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
So shall we return to the story of Bo rights, right? So,
when we last left off, Bo was touring the country
telling lies that he didn't need to tell about Vietnam
and raising money to try and send a bunch of
goons back to Southeast Asia to rescue a bunch of
guys who were not in Southeast Asia?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Is he bored?
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Like, I mean, this seems more fun than like getting
a job, Like what would you rather do? Lie to
television about Vietnam and take a bunch of money to
go vacation in Thailand or work.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
I mean, yeah, look I'm lying about I.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
Don't think I would do the do the gun like
I would just go back case.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
That's the part.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
That's what I'm saying, like, yeah going, and I'm never.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
Fortunately Bo does not have that governor in his head. No, No,
when you and I start our Vietnam drift, it's gonna
go a lot better.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
It's gonna go a lot better.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
There'll just there'll be a lot of time shares.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
It's gonna be hard convincing people in twenty forty that
they're still US soldiers trapped in Vietnam.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yeah, you can't tell me I'm wrong. Deep down, Bow
is just a podcaster.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
So Bose tour in the country.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
He's speaking on different TV shows, He's talking at churches,
at veterans organizations. He's telling all these stories. And yeah,
after months of raising money, he launches what he calls
Operation Velvet Hammer in nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
That's a bad one's life.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
I would use that title if I was writing a
screenplay called Operation Hammer Is it would be about a
strip club that had to arm themselves.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Yes, I was like, this is a porn, yeah, in
order to care. No, not a porn.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Velvet Hammer.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
One one of the employees at the strip club gets
kidnapped by a mafia and the others have to form
a commando unit to rescue them.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
So's it's like a stripper escape room?
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Yes, kind of, yes, he probably have no.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
No, It's like it's like Taken, but instead of there
being one Liamniessen, there's a bunch and they're all strippers, right,
Like that's the story. That's not a bad idea.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
For I'm just gonna yeah, greenlit. I do think.
Speaker 5 (03:20):
I do think an adult escape room might actually be
a viable business.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Yeah, yeah, a viable business that will immediately get like
the lawsuits, the lawsuits, Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Yes. Uh.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
He launch his operation Velvet Hammer in nineteen eighty one.
Writing for Time magazine, Pico Iyre reports that Bo gathered
up quote twenty one drifters, dreamers and desperadoes, recruited a psychic,
a hypnotherapist, and some reporters, and began practice.
Speaker 5 (03:51):
Hey okay, okay, I might be here for this one.
I'm on his team now.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
If I'm putting together.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
A platoon of veterans in order to like rescue guys,
what do you need, Well, you need some drifters. Obviously,
you're gonna need some dreamers, some desperadoes, a psychic, clearly psychic.
You're not gonna get far without a hypnotherapist. And of
course some reporters.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
I might be I might be on a seat for
this one, Okay.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
And so they start training together to go to go
into Lao and to rescue or at least find proof
that there's men being held prisoner across the border in Vietnam. Now,
prop if you're training a roughly of platoons worth of
guys who are already combat veterans, but if you're training
them to insert themselves without any support into some of
(04:37):
the most dangerous terrain on Earth in order to rescue
prisoners from a heavily guarded camp, where would you do
that training?
Speaker 3 (04:46):
I mean caveat would be.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
I wouldn't be doing this training if you were.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
If you don't, yeah, where would you train these guys
to go into Lao?
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Somewhere it's similar to loud.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
That's a good answer. It's close.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
But if your bogue rights, the place you pick is
the American Cheerleading Association Academy in Leesburg, Florida.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Obviously, where where would you guys go? Right? You made that.
Speaker 5 (05:19):
That's not what that's saying, boy in the world, that's
what script say.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Sun Sue says, know your enemy and know yourself, and
you need not fear the result of a thousand battles.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
I think knows the North Vietnamese.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
I think he also said Bert.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
It's so, I was gonna do a bit about how
North Vietnam based all of their fighting strategies on cheerleading.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
But I mean you already took it from me. So
we're good. We're good.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
I was one step ahead.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Oh you are just like the cheers, Just like the cheerleaders.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Leader's middle name is Lynn.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
One of boast to get me an idea of the.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Callus a throwaway joke, y'all cast that one. Cast that
a joke. The middle name is Lynn. He's Kaylee Lynn.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
You know.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Dang.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
Sorry, I can't I let it, so I apologize, we should.
I should give you an idea of the kind of
men that Bo's working with. So one of his volunteers
is a guy named Terry Smith. Now Terry is a
former Green Beret. So that's good, right, probably want someone
with that kind of experience on the team.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Now.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
Before getting involved in Velvet Hammer, Terry had been training
to become a college football player, and he quit spring
training to go to Lao with Bow. He told Time
when they asked him, why I gave up something I've
always wanted. But there were at least a dozen Green
Berets on operations in that area in Lao who never
got out. When I shoot the first commie, I'm gonna
(06:42):
have an orgasm.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
I'm gonna come out.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Wait, this is gone off the rails.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
Okay, I'm gonna come out with a pow or die
try and I figure will either go down in history
or start World War three. That's a beautiful mind. That's
a beautiful mind. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
You need to stay home.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
You need to not have a gun.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
He did not have a gun.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Look, you know, we could talk about the Second Amendment,
but that should get your guns taken away. I feel like, no, no, no,
manama arm I'm sorry, yes, absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
This person is unwell.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
Yeah, very oh you haven't even we haven't not finished
with Terry Smith. So that's that's that's the name, Terry,
Terry Smith.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
That's very Terry behavior. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
Sorry, if there's any are there any Terry is in
the audience, than wow, thank god, thank god.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
It's a Terry free zone because those motherfuckers.
Speaker 5 (07:43):
I'm all now, I'm all, there's there's five hundred people
in his room and none of y'all are Terry.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
It's not a real name.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
That's an interesting stat Yeah, it's a fake name. I
think Terry was a CIA plan anyway, especially with that right.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
Right, that's some very by some like Black's rule energy,
you know what I'm saying. So you know, we don't
call ourselves there right like we would never write Black's Rule.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Okay, I'm just.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
Bow's roughly two dozen guys, right, uh Smith, You know
this guy we quoted from purportedly a combat veteran, but
no one's checking up on that. I say he said
he was a Green Beret. All these guys say that
they had been. No one's checking.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
I don't know, No one knows, no one looked, no
one asked Terry.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
These are men who showed up at a cheerleading academy
in Florida and said, I'm willing to travel to loud
to kill strangers.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Like god, they're what they did for it.
Speaker 5 (08:44):
There might be one of our friends there, maybe our
buddies there. I'm just saying, Eric Prince is foaming at
the moment, Yeah, beyond foaming, and not just at the mouth.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
So my mom is here, Hi, Sophie's mom. I'm so.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
Terry told reporters a lot of beautiful nonsense, not beautiful nonsense,
a lot of nonsense. One of his stories that he
would tell the news was that when he was in Vietnam,
he watched a whole platoon of NBA soldiers stop and
cut up a pregnant woman together quote, I wanted to
rip their heads off, but I couldn't do nothing about it. Now, look,
no side in any war has a monopoly on war crimes.
(09:27):
But thirty guys all stopped to cut up a single
pregnant woman. It's just not the sort of war crime
I'm gonna believe happened unless you have some evidence.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Right, that's just a weird move, right. What was the situation?
Speaker 4 (09:39):
What was the situation where you couldn't do anything? These
guys are all occupied and you're just what, like.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
What are you claiming? What's going on here? Terry?
Speaker 4 (09:48):
I don't know that said do drink because it is
a war crime, So get on it, folks. Now, I
think that this is the kind of nonsense that fits
in less with what actually happened and more with the
fact that all these guys are now telling tall tales
about the things that actually happened in order to express
their fantasies. And like they're trying to justify the fact
(10:08):
that they want to go murder a bunch of strangers
in the jungle, right, Like, so you have to tell, like,
what's the worst thing I can imagine? Well, this would
justify me doing whatever. Right This summary of that Florida
gathering by Time Magazine really says a lot. Quote they
were just high on the idea adrenaline and the ballad
of the Green Berets blaring over the loud speaker at
(10:30):
all of them. An ex Special Forces sergeant still embittered
about losing his son in Vietnam, and Terry Smith humping
a rucksack urging them on suck that clean Florida air.
Just just a maniac, All these guys maniacs in their plan.
The plan that they're training for is nuts from the
(10:51):
jump Bo's idea, We're all going to fly in to
allow as tourists, and then we'll rent a house on
the Mekong Delta across from Vietnam and we'll pretend to
be providing humanitarian aid to Cambodian refugees. We'll get smuggled
a bunch of machine guns, which should be easy obviously,
and then we'll embed with friendly anti communist guerrillas fighting
(11:13):
the Vietnamese state across the border, right, and they'll help
us find these POWs.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
If we're captured.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
We're going to travel with gold so we can pay
our ransoms, and we're going to bring with us just
in case, what they called get out of jail free cards.
These were self printed IOUs promising one thousand dollars if
someone took them in the bearer to a US embassy.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
The embassies had not agreed to validate these.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
Of all, these are just I carry one of those
in my pocket now, Like, yeah.
Speaker 5 (11:44):
First of all, the America didn't send you number one
and number two. You are going to be robbed immediately immediately.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Oh, perhap you've seen where this is going.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
Yeah, So the next part of the plan is once
they find a POW camp, we will either break everyone
out or we'll take pictures, depending on the situation, and
then we'll send the proof back to DC and that'll
convince the President to send air support from the seventh Fleet.
In right, we will start the war in Vietnam right there.
(12:15):
He's gonna immediately call in an air strike and we'll
free these guys.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
Now, bro, this is like pre like this ain't no internet.
Like hell, you're gonna call it a president from.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
Yeah, you're gonna call the president from fucking Lao and
you're gonna get him to send the seventh Fleet to
bomb Vietnam again ten.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Years after the war ens.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
Okay, great, great idea, guys, amazing. And Bo's plan is
that like obviously will win a second time, right, Like
you know, it's like it's like when you're like playing
your brother is something. It's smash brothers and like he
like gets you, but he just like he just mashed buttons.
You know, he's not gonna mash those buttons the same
way again. Vietnam was like that, right, maybe you pick
(12:57):
Samus the next time.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
That was both that was both.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Breaks, your brother beating the brakes off you every time.
Speaker 5 (13:03):
Right.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
Yeah, So unfortunately the money that Bo raised telling pointless
lies about his time in Vietnam did not extend past
partying in Florida. One member of the group because so
they run out of money at the cheerleading academy, and
one member of the group, Terry fucking Smith, suggests, Hey, guys,
(13:25):
I know I can get some extra money.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
We're in Florida.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
It's the eighties. Let's go murder a bunch of coke
dealers and take their money.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Oh, I fund our trip to Vietnam. Well, allow the
coke dealer money.
Speaker 5 (13:38):
I said to myself. They gonna say they're gonna sell coke,
and I was like, Nah, that'd be dumb.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
No, that'd be dumb. They're gonna take money from coke dealers.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
I was like, Oh, you gonna rob coke dealers.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
Oh yeah, We're gonna start an independent war with the
cartels so that we can start an independent war with Vietnam,
you know.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
At their base and cheerleading.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
Cheerleading out of the cheerleading Now, Terry Smith told the
Time magazine, if I got to kill one hundred twenty
American bad guys to get one hundred POWs out of Vietnam.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
I'll do it. Of course, Terry absolutely, Terry's that was
good Sophie, thank you.
Speaker 5 (14:22):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
So operation velvet Hammer worked out about as well as
an actual velvet hammer. After this, Bo doesn't give up.
That's one thing the military taught him. The military taught
him two things. One has how to stick to a plan,
and the other is how to not win a war
in Vietnam. Right, those are the two things he learns
from his surface. So Bo organizes a smaller group to
(14:55):
hunt for clues in Thailand. And I have to assume
that the word hunt he means smoke and the word
clues here stands for ty sticks. Anyway, they find no
information about any POW.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Because he's just hunting in Thailand.
Speaker 5 (15:10):
He just shooting out arbitrary countries that are like close
to where.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
You know what we say that actually prop if you guys.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
Want to donate some money, you know, really really coffin
and give deep. I think we could find some po
ws in Thailand.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
I'm pretty sure we can.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
We're gon.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
We're gonna need like six weeks at Lamartian in Bangkok,
and I think we can knock it out.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
I really think we can knock it out. That was
a little specific. Yeah, well just one boat.
Speaker 5 (15:33):
It's just it's just look at it's just one bus
into the into the bush, right, but we could stay
out there and based in the LA based yeah yeah, yeah,
do some do some like mental health work.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
And look, massages this podcast.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
Aren't all in Intel, but let me tell you as
a CIA man, all of the good, all of the
real information comes from massage artists there are. So my
plan is to get like eight hours of massages a day, right,
and that then I'll figure out where all of the
prisoners are, Sovie. It's a good idea, and most of
them most of them speak English, right, I don't know. Also,
(16:14):
as a side note, as I've been sitting here, I
thought Velvet Hammer also sounds like a Prince album.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Yeah, that would be a pretty good name of a Prince.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Album album anyway.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Yeah, also not a bad band name anyway.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Are they not out.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Of money completely at this point?
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Well, they're continuing.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
Well, actually we'll talk about who's giving them money, because
that's fun, Sophie, that's really fun. So both keeps raising
money and public awareness of us POW's that are definitely
still trapped in Vietnam. He succeeds in securing several high
profile celebrity donations wait, who.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Do you think it is?
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Yeah, give me, give me two names, Kissinger.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
No celebrity celebrities like movies, celebrity movies, star, movie or TV.
Speaker 5 (16:53):
I was like, I was like John Wayne Robert Redford, who.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
Is not a TV star or a movie star at
this point in time.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
But you're not there yet.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
No, yeah, he said Eastwood.
Speaker 4 (17:08):
Clint Eastwood sends thirty thousand dollars and allegedly promised to
get Ronald Reagan's blessing Clinton allegedly, Bo says Clint said,
if you can find proof of a pow, I'll make
sure Reagan sends in an air strike.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Right.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
I don't know if Clint Eastwood did other than he
definitely sent the money, right, and then no one's gonna
guess this. William Shatner donated to be fair to our boy,
Bill Shantner sends ten grand if in exchange for the
(17:48):
rights to Grits to Bo rights his life.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Okay, right, Bill's got an angle.
Speaker 5 (17:52):
We know Captain Kirk knows what he's expects, actually respect,
you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
I think ten is a hilarious amount for his life.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
Right, Yeah, So the money that they raise is enough
that in November of nineteen eighty two, both finally succeeds
in taking a commando team to Lao, where the most
obvious thing happens, and I want to quote from Bruce Franklin's.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Book Mia here.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
Almost as soon as they arrived in Lao, they were ambushed, routed,
and forced.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
To flee as fast as they could back to Thailand.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
The ambushers, contrary to their initial assumptions, were not even
treacherous Communists, but a rival anti communists Layotian group whom Grits'
men had offended in Thailand, and to whom Grits, ironically enough,
reportedly had to pay seventeen five hundred dollars ransom to
recover a captured American team mate. The raiders, of course,
encountered no POWs. Now there's a couple of things about this.
(18:46):
First off, they did kind of succeed in rescuing a POWs, yes,
today did they bring that pow with them, yes, but
they did save him uh seconds.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
That is glorious.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
It's time for another drink because also two of his
local Laotian guides die in the ambush, which is very sad.
Although you have to imagine the guys who are taking
him into the jungle.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Probably not great, right, the dudes who were working with
this guy, I don't know anyway, that's said, still said,
take a drink.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
That is so funny.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
So not the debt, not the deaths.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
But the fact that they immediately get ambushed from me
and ransom.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Super funny.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
Now, if you're keeping track, the only American captive they've
encountered is someone they brought with them. But the very
next month, Bo tries again flying to Thailand and renting
one thousand dollars a month safe house and one thousand
dollars a month in the nineteen eighties, that is a
nice fucking safe house.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Lot of money.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
Again, prop we could find some information A thousand dollars
amount of money today you're staying in a night, well
thousand a month.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
Yeah, we'll see safe houses, you know, they're on a
sliding scale. So one of those the comrades claims to
have totally seen bad guys across the border drilling with weapons. Sure,
maybe like it's Vietnam they have an army now, like
like they're they're their country, right, like they're allowed to
do that.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
He's like, I was so angry. I couldn't fight them.
It's their country. What are you doing over there? UK? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (20:19):
He flew all the way from Florida.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Yeah yeah, well presumably from Florida. Yeah. So uh.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
Bo's last attempt was in the spring of nineteen eighty three,
and it ended when ty police immediately arrested two of
his commandos for possession of illegal radio transmitters.
Speaker 5 (20:36):
So did nobody ask God a komfam? No one wants
you hear you did not need to be here.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
Okay, this is not a success by any definition, but
it got attention. People do pay attention to what Bo
is doing. He gets hauled before Congress in March of
nineteen eighty three. Now, Congress had concluded, as I said
in nineteen seventy six, that there were no more POWs
being held by Vietnam. So Bo was asked, what evidence
(21:03):
do you have to counter these conclusions? And Bo answers,
I have the same evidence that might be presented to
a convention of clergymen that God exists.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
So like non the wait, so that's.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Not a bar that's not a bar man.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
I'm not I'm not anti you know, faith or whatever,
But we don't invade countries based on what.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
We do actually a lot, you know all the time.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
That's actually often why we okay, point to bow.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Now.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
In another interview, one of Bo's former volunteers, Tom Smith,
said of Grits, I wouldn't cross the street with this guy.
He's suffering from the early stages of burning a bush
complex which, first off, it's not burning a bush. I
don't understand why he said it that way. That's a
real it's a burning bush.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
Yeah, you're not burning. Maybe he's saying he was lighting
a bush on fire, like fake it. I guess that
could be good.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
I don't know. Maybe I'm slaying. We just don't know.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Maybe.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Yeah, yeah, this is there more important things here continue?
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Sure, yes, man.
Speaker 4 (22:05):
Now the attention that Bo drew mattered though to someone, well,
to a group Hollywood. Bo's story inspired and did legitimately
inspire Rambo First Blood Part two, in which John Rambo
was sent to a secret US base in Thailand to
invade Vietnam on his own and rescue Po W's uh.
There's other movies that were inspired by bos story, Chuck
(22:29):
Norris's Missing in Action series and the Gene Hackman film
Uncommon Valor rip Gene were also inspired by Bo's fantasies
of rescuing POW's overseas.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
And here's my favorite side fact.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
The character Hannibal Smith on the A Team, inspired partly
by both Yeah and the real Number one. The real
Hannibal would have found those pore absolutely number two kitty
dimples absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
M sorry, I do love the A Team.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
You can tell Prop said to have a drink. This
was like this was like he poured this like a glass.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
It was a thick, poor like shout.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Out whoever, like, yeah, you're trying to put me up.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
It was busy, thick is the Sea four necklace around
that guy's.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
So what, I didn't do it?
Speaker 2 (23:27):
You're supposed to say, no, yeah, no.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
All right, everybody, do you drink?
Speaker 4 (23:33):
So after nineteen eighty three, Bow seems to have largely
and quietly given up on his plans to rescue these
totally real uspows. In order to become an influencer in
the growing militia movement, he joined the Mormon Church.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
Start in a.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Direct no, no, you gotta wait.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
For the sentence to finish.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Start in a direct to video ripoff of Charlie's Angels
called Rescue force, I know what everyone's Watchington night, And
in nineteen eighty eight agreed to run as the vice
presidential candidate for the Populist Party.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Anybody know the Populist Party? Anybody heard of these guys? Well,
they were the political party of a group called the
Liberty Lobby, which.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
Was founded by a guy we've talked about on Behind
the Bastards, a Holocaust denier and Hitler fan, Willis Carto.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Right there we go, Yeah, Willie.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
Willis Carto is like, I mean, he is like the
grandfather of American fascism as an organized political movement that
is like working within like mainstream conservatism and attempting to
radicalize and influence mainstream conservatism. Right, Carto is the guy.
He was the dude who was a lot smarter than
like the neo Nazis. He was like, no, no, no, no, no, no,
(24:53):
you got to you gotta dress this shit up a
little bit if you're gonna do it. And Carto sees
Bo and he's like karas mad war hero, good at
getting media attention, and Carto kind of scouts him to
be the VP candidate.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Right.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
Bo says that he was poached directly by Willis carto,
although Bo would then later claim that he was shocked
and appalled when at that year's convention for the Populist
Party the presidential nomination was won by another fellow you
might have heard of, David Duke.
Speaker 5 (25:27):
I'll tell you what, man, this cartoon guy must be
really smiling in hell right now.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Oh, he's having a great time.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
He's having a great time. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Now. I will say this in interviews because Bo.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
Writes, as with other parts of his life, it gives
two different stories, the one that he gives at the
time and the one that he gives years later.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
When people ask years later, he will be like, oh,
I was.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
Horrified the instant I heard that, uh that uh, David
Duke was the presidential candidate.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
Within forty eight hours, I'd resigned.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
I was not I would absolutely never have have worked
with with such a racist at the time. In news
articles written immediately afterwards, Bo said he was okay with
working with Duke because he met with David Duke and
made him promise solemn sweat promise not to be a
racist in the campaign, in the campaign not to have
a racist campaign, and David Duke said it wasn't going
(26:26):
to be a racist campaign.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
What more can you ask?
Speaker 2 (26:29):
You know, he said he wasn't going to do it.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Seems sounds fine to me.
Speaker 4 (26:33):
Man by his word, he promised a klansman's problem.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Okay, well yeah, alright, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
So the good news is that after they lost, Bo
complained to Christ.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Well you could stop that sentence right there.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
The good news is that they lost.
Speaker 4 (26:53):
They lost for now, yeah yeah right, let's not think
too much about what's happening on. Yeah, yeah, So the
good news is that Bo complained after they lost to
Willis Carte that David Duke did quote more harm to
the Populist Party than Hitler would have. Now, okay, this this,
(27:16):
I'm gonna give you a second. This kind of insinuates
to me that Bo would have been okay with running
as the VP for Hitler.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Literally a bit.
Speaker 5 (27:26):
At first, I was like, okay, let him cook, let
me like what are you trying to say here? Like
help me understand? And yeah, because my first thought was yeah,
like so you you.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Might you might have run with Hitler if he'd promised
not to run a racist.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Campongs Hitler, don't do a racist campaign.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
Hitler's on his best behavior. We can go to Olive Garden. Sorry,
I don't know why or will Golden correct?
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Are you hungry or something?
Speaker 2 (27:52):
What's happening?
Speaker 4 (27:53):
I just think Hitler and Olive Garden is a funny image, Sophie,
because when you're there, your family.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
So bro you are on a roll today.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
You think he was a super solad guy. I think
salad he was.
Speaker 5 (28:11):
Canonically he salad in unlimited bread sticks. That man is
not ordering a place.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
I'm actually in the in the audience is a very
dear friend of mine who we decided at some at
one point I'm not really sure why to come in
at Olive Garden one day on a Tuesday, the very
minute they opened at nine or ten in the morning. Now,
we were both wearing skirts that we'd sown each other,
and we both had T shirts that had our favorite
conspiracy theory on them. I do forget what mine was,
(28:41):
but he just said Michael Jackson was murdered written on
the front of a white T shirt and sharpie and we.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
Proceeded a.
Speaker 4 (28:49):
Now, the reason why we showed up is Olive Garden
sells three liter bottles of wine, so we ordered two
of them, and then we nothing but six leaders of
wine and breadsticks and the experiment because we also brought
with us a big roll of butcher paper, and we
started outlining the conspiracies that we like believed ruled the world.
So we were drawing like a big flow chart talking
(29:11):
about the Freemasons and all of these different conspiracies. And
the goal was when will they stop serving us breadsticks?
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Yeah, And eventually it.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
Did go to the point where we got half a
breadstick on a plate and I was like, yeah, it's
probably time to bounce.
Speaker 5 (29:24):
Hey. Let me ask, that is, as we ask, that is,
as fans at his show, how many times have you
thought to yourself.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
How does this man survived? Like how are you still alive?
I'll be thinking that, like, like, are you still alive?
Speaker 3 (29:40):
I will say.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
As soon as we got back to my house, my
friend who was in the audience vomited so much on
the floor I almost made it to the toilet. So
I'm just bragging a little bit pretty close, not at all,
not at all, but like literally like three and a
half fet further anyway, back to the story, So.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
The good news is well not the good news.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
He runs again in nineteen ninety two, this time as
the presidential candidate, for the Populist Party, and he does
twice as well as David Duke, winning point one percent
of the national popular vote to Duke's point zero five, So,
you know, not bad.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
That same year ninety two, Bo played what would be
arguably his.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
One positive role in US political culture, which is when
he kind of ended the Ruby Ridge Standoff. So, if
you're vaguely familiar, there's this guy, Randy Weaver and his
friends in the Area Nations. He gets paid by a
dude who turns out to be an ATF agent to
saw off some shotguns and then they raid his house
(30:46):
and an agent is shot dead by I forget which
member of his group killed the agent, but an ATF
agent's killed, and the ATF kills his young son who's
a child, and his wife, right, and a big state
is called Ruby Ridge Huge standoff. It's like it's a
seminal moment in the fucking militia movement. It's a big deal.
And because Grits is a really famous figure in the
(31:07):
militia movement, he gets like the he basically I think
he reaches out directly to the FEDS actually, but anyway,
he winds up flown in and talks to Randy Weaver
and talks Weaver down and the siege ends without further
loss of life. This is a legitimate thing that BO did,
and it's good, right, It's good that more people because
Bo had or Randy had his kids. Like I'm not
(31:29):
I don't care that much about Randy, but he had
another kid, right, like, you don't want them to die,
and that's good.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
This is the only good thing that BO does. But
he did do that.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
Now, because Randy Weaver had some close ties to the
Aryan Nations, and because Grits's nineteen ninety two campaign was
seen as a watershed moment for white supremacists in the US.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
BO was accused of himself being a racist. Can you
believe it?
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Now?
Speaker 4 (31:56):
Idaho State University professor James Aho told the SPLC, the
Southern Poverty Law Center that as far as he could see,
Grits wasn't quote an out and out racist, and Grits
himself repeatedly emphasized that he had two Asian American children,
so he couldn't racist.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Now, of course he did the nim huts.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
He was in that hut. Yeah, the nim Huts. Yeah,
UK be racist. You and nim huts.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
The hell are we talking about now?
Speaker 4 (32:27):
I think it's accurate to say that Bo's primary motivation
wasn't white supremacy, But it's kind of weird to say
that he wasn't an out and out racist, given some
comments he made about people of the Jewish faith per
the SBLC earlier this year. This is two thousand and five,
I think. In a lengthy diatribe falsely a legend Jewish
(32:48):
control of the media and financial institutions, he wrote, why
is there such an intense effort toward Jewish control? I
don't think it is right for such a small interest,
special interest group to control our nation.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
Oldest man, he's still alive.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
God, Yeah, I know.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
It's a bummer. Dang it.
Speaker 5 (33:06):
Man.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
Elsewhere, he wrote, do you see the sign, the synth,
the stained and mark of the Beast on America today?
Are you willing to submit and join this seed line
of Satan? Look to those who are openly Antichrist. Who
in the world is promoting abortion, pornography, pedophilia, godless laws, adultery,
new age, international banking, entertainment industry, and world publishing.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Wherever you find a.
Speaker 4 (33:29):
Perversion of God's laws, you will find the worshippers of Ball.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
With their roots still in Babylonian mysticism. What are you
talking about? He's not an out and out racist.
Speaker 5 (33:44):
This man named it just even his racism being just broken,
this man naming all the enemies right of the Israelites.
You know what I'm saying, I'm looking, look.
Speaker 4 (33:59):
I grew up at your well he's he is arguing
that that's Judaism is worshiping Ball.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
That's the That's what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
I'm like bras near mind.
Speaker 4 (34:09):
We all need to with Bo rights on theology. But
the point of it is that, like I mean to
be fair in rural Idaho. That is kind of middle
of the road racism.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
Right, Like he's not an extremist for rural Idaho. Trial right.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
In January of nineteen ninety three, after losing his second
presidential election, Bo pivoted to a new grift.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
He started Spike S p I k E.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
It's I know He's Spike is A was a training
program that stood for especially prepared individuals for key events.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
That means nothing. So worried I was about to say,
like Spike TV.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
No, yeah, he found it. Spiked. He spiked I was like, yeah,
So the idea was he was.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
Bringing in experts to teach classes that would turn regular
You could like order VHS tapes off the Internet and
it will turn you into a Special Forces operator if
you're watching.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Off of them.
Speaker 4 (35:08):
Right, That's all that's standing in between you and being
a Navy seal is watching enough VHS tapes.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
That's actually true. By the VHS tape cassette series.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
I've got going on, I don't know what to call it.
I didn't think of an acronym. Sorry anyway, Spike winds
up ultimately building a video library of about one hundred
hours of content that they would ship to anyone willing
to pay. Now, by the early nineties, BO had also
relocated to the Pacific Northwest, where.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
We all call home.
Speaker 4 (35:37):
A yeah, because this is coincidentally right around the same
time as the so called Northwest Imperative really kits going.
This is the idea of moving white people on Moss
to this part of the country in order to create
a new white homeland. Now it starts to really pick
up It doesn't start. This starts to really pick up
steam in the nineties, right, and coincidentally, this is also
(35:58):
when Bow launches a new business venture.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
So the car I'm telling you.
Speaker 4 (36:03):
He sells parcels of land in an intentional community for
members of the militia movement called Almost Heaven.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Stop letting him name things.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
Billed as a constitutional covenant community, Almost Heaven was a
way to take the underlying ideology of the Northwest Imperative
and extend it beyond stock Nazism to something palatable for
a wider but still far right audience. He claimed to
have picked the location by studying maps of nuclear fallout
and military bases to determine the safest place in America. Wow,
(36:35):
I think it's where the land was cheapest. He announced
the start of this new venture by crashing a Camea
town hall meeting in nineteen ninety four and declaring the
public school system a cesspool and in accusing the local
government of being run by and then he uses a
slur for gay people. It starts with f Local resident
and activist Larry Nims later claimed rights came here and
(36:57):
made a lot of noise. He told people that if
they didn't like him, then get out of Dodge. And
I'm thinking, who is he to tell people around here
to get out of Dodge. He didn't even live in
Dodge yet. And Nims, my heart goes at Nims is
like a progressive activist in rural Idaho in the early
nineties who's like we'll talk about like bo is the
one who brought a lot of guys with guns out here, right,
(37:18):
Like this has not not been a problem before him,
but he really makes like the current state of affairs
is seriously influenced by.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Rights, right, Yeah, so I'm just learning.
Speaker 4 (37:30):
Yeah, the Arean Nations had been out in Hayden Lake previously,
so it's not entirely undergrites. But he does play a
significant role in this because of how famous.
Speaker 5 (37:40):
He is, right, I still just wonder and it's like
this this sounds like a joke, but I'm like dead serious.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
I'm like, man, what what do they eat?
Speaker 3 (37:51):
I'm like na saying, oh, no, guys.
Speaker 5 (37:53):
Well, but like if you're gonna make an almost seven,
because I'm like you can say so, yeah, so I
used to live in then I lived in Poorland a
while back, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
But like I mean just like the Double Dragon Joint
with the like the this pop park, Like I'm like,
there's so many good places.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
To eat here.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
I'm like, you don't want that?
Speaker 4 (38:15):
Like, no, No, he's living in the woods eating dried
food that he bought off of Uh what's his name? Baker,
the fucking uh weirdo weird Yeah, Jim Jim Baker very
much recently Why a.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
Movie by the way about him that came out Andrew Garfield. Good,
Why you.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Haven't got no like Old Bay like just right seasons.
Speaker 4 (38:37):
That's why it's almost Heaven, Almost almost Heaven. They forgot
the season, so wow, almost Haven worked for a little while. Unfortunately,
Bow and his business partner made the bad decision to
buy their land is a common law trust and I
don't know a lot about this, but the way in
(38:57):
which they did this made it very difficult for their
customers to get titles, basically impossible. They couldn't get titles
to their property in their names, and they couldn't get
property insurance in their own names, which.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
Is a problem.
Speaker 4 (39:09):
A flurry of lawsuits followed by people who thought that
they had been conned pretty true accurately, and problems escalated
as contractors started suing Grites and his business partner for
failing to pay for road construction and other infrastructure work.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
They kind of took a leaf out of the Trump book.
Speaker 5 (39:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
The slow collapse of Almost Heaven was escalated both by
incompetence like this and the fact that more than anything,
Bo wanted to make money, not fund to right wing
revolution and a lot of his critics on the riot
are like, Bo, aren't you making the army that's going
to like liberate us?
Speaker 5 (39:41):
No?
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Oh.
Speaker 4 (39:44):
So the other problem is that Bo keeps taking calls
aar at the late nineties from the FBI to try
and talk down militia groups like the Montana Freemen, which
ultimately alienated.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
His third wife, Claudia, a former karate instructor.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Did I miss the second wife?
Speaker 3 (40:01):
Yeah? That was the that was the lady he met
the sex worker Na.
Speaker 4 (40:06):
That did shockingly didn't last. No, who knew marriages that
start in Vietnam?
Speaker 3 (40:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Stay, yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
So like all those POWs. By the end of nineteen
ninety eight, that was good.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
That was very good.
Speaker 4 (40:26):
By the end of nineteen ninety eight, Bo's business partner
had stolen nearly all of the money made by Almost Heaven,
and Claudia left him after twenty four years of marriage.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Why you did twenty for twenty four in May.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
A while he stuck it out.
Speaker 4 (40:42):
Boat tempted suicide by shooting himself in the chest in
December of nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
But he survived and it's still alive today. God, I
don't have a happy ending here.
Speaker 4 (40:57):
He did shoot himself again for whatever reason. A through
line in this guy's story is people shooting themselves in
weird ways.
Speaker 3 (41:04):
But chest.
Speaker 4 (41:06):
I'm sorry, I'm not trying to backseat kill Bogue rights
to Bogue rights. But however, however, it is all right.
That concludes the Behind the Bastards episodes.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Gee.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the
Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday
and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash
(41:48):
at Behind the Bastards
Also media, hyah.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Okay, like a like a grown up.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
I'm gonna sit normally now, and it's like a grown up.
Speaker 4 (00:19):
Let's give a hands up to uh.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I feel like that was for.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
You don't fucking control me. I feel like I boo
you turning the chair out.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
No, they don't control but clearly eyes.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Yeah, well yeah, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
There's never been a question about that. You control us.
Speaker 5 (00:38):
All also shout out us graduating our our booze.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Yes, yes, we've moved up to hard liquor.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
We've moved up.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
You're on the bourbon brown brown.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Because i gotta walk in the crowd later and I'm
very afraid of falling.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Oh, that part's gonna be fun.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
So shall we return to the story of Bo rights, right? So,
when we last left off, Bo was touring the country
telling lies that he didn't need to tell about Vietnam
and raising money to try and send a bunch of
goons back to Southeast Asia to rescue a bunch of
guys who were not in Southeast Asia?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Is he bored?
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Like, I mean, this seems more fun than like getting
a job, Like what would you rather do? Lie to
television about Vietnam and take a bunch of money to
go vacation in Thailand or work.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
I mean, yeah, look I'm lying about I.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
Don't think I would do the do the gun like
I would just go back case.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
That's the part.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
That's what I'm saying, like, yeah going, and I'm never.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
Fortunately Bo does not have that governor in his head. No, No,
when you and I start our Vietnam drift, it's gonna
go a lot better.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
It's gonna go a lot better.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
There'll just there'll be a lot of time shares.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
It's gonna be hard convincing people in twenty forty that
they're still US soldiers trapped in Vietnam.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yeah, you can't tell me I'm wrong. Deep down, Bow
is just a podcaster.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
So Bose tour in the country.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
He's speaking on different TV shows, He's talking at churches,
at veterans organizations. He's telling all these stories. And yeah,
after months of raising money, he launches what he calls
Operation Velvet Hammer in nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
That's a bad one's life.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
I would use that title if I was writing a
screenplay called Operation Hammer Is it would be about a
strip club that had to arm themselves.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Yes, I was like, this is a porn, yeah, in
order to care. No, not a porn.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Velvet Hammer.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
One one of the employees at the strip club gets
kidnapped by a mafia and the others have to form
a commando unit to rescue them.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
So's it's like a stripper escape room?
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Yes, kind of, yes, he probably have no.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
No, It's like it's like Taken, but instead of there
being one Liamniessen, there's a bunch and they're all strippers, right,
Like that's the story. That's not a bad idea.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
For I'm just gonna yeah, greenlit. I do think.
Speaker 5 (03:20):
I do think an adult escape room might actually be
a viable business.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Yeah, yeah, a viable business that will immediately get like
the lawsuits, the lawsuits, Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Yes. Uh.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
He launch his operation Velvet Hammer in nineteen eighty one.
Writing for Time magazine, Pico Iyre reports that Bo gathered
up quote twenty one drifters, dreamers and desperadoes, recruited a psychic,
a hypnotherapist, and some reporters, and began practice.
Speaker 5 (03:51):
Hey okay, okay, I might be here for this one.
I'm on his team now.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
If I'm putting together.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
A platoon of veterans in order to like rescue guys,
what do you need, Well, you need some drifters. Obviously,
you're gonna need some dreamers, some desperadoes, a psychic, clearly psychic.
You're not gonna get far without a hypnotherapist. And of
course some reporters.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
I might be I might be on a seat for
this one, Okay.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
And so they start training together to go to go
into Lao and to rescue or at least find proof
that there's men being held prisoner across the border in Vietnam. Now,
prop if you're training a roughly of platoons worth of
guys who are already combat veterans, but if you're training
them to insert themselves without any support into some of
(04:37):
the most dangerous terrain on Earth in order to rescue
prisoners from a heavily guarded camp, where would you do
that training?
Speaker 3 (04:46):
I mean caveat would be.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
I wouldn't be doing this training if you were.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
If you don't, yeah, where would you train these guys
to go into Lao?
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Somewhere it's similar to loud.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
That's a good answer. It's close.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
But if your bogue rights, the place you pick is
the American Cheerleading Association Academy in Leesburg, Florida.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Obviously, where where would you guys go? Right? You made that.
Speaker 5 (05:19):
That's not what that's saying, boy in the world, that's
what script say.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Sun Sue says, know your enemy and know yourself, and
you need not fear the result of a thousand battles.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
I think knows the North Vietnamese.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
I think he also said Bert.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
It's so, I was gonna do a bit about how
North Vietnam based all of their fighting strategies on cheerleading.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
But I mean you already took it from me. So
we're good. We're good.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
I was one step ahead.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Oh you are just like the cheers, Just like the cheerleaders.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Leader's middle name is Lynn.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
One of boast to get me an idea of the.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Callus a throwaway joke, y'all cast that one. Cast that
a joke. The middle name is Lynn. He's Kaylee Lynn.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
You know.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Dang.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
Sorry, I can't I let it, so I apologize, we should.
I should give you an idea of the kind of
men that Bo's working with. So one of his volunteers
is a guy named Terry Smith. Now Terry is a
former Green Beret. So that's good, right, probably want someone
with that kind of experience on the team.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Now.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
Before getting involved in Velvet Hammer, Terry had been training
to become a college football player, and he quit spring
training to go to Lao with Bow. He told Time
when they asked him, why I gave up something I've
always wanted. But there were at least a dozen Green
Berets on operations in that area in Lao who never
got out. When I shoot the first commie, I'm gonna
(06:42):
have an orgasm.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
I'm gonna come out.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Wait, this is gone off the rails.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
Okay, I'm gonna come out with a pow or die
try and I figure will either go down in history
or start World War three. That's a beautiful mind. That's
a beautiful mind. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
You need to stay home.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
You need to not have a gun.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
He did not have a gun.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Look, you know, we could talk about the Second Amendment,
but that should get your guns taken away. I feel like, no, no, no,
manama arm I'm sorry, yes, absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
This person is unwell.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
Yeah, very oh you haven't even we haven't not finished
with Terry Smith. So that's that's that's the name, Terry,
Terry Smith.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
That's very Terry behavior. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
Sorry, if there's any are there any Terry is in
the audience, than wow, thank god, thank god.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
It's a Terry free zone because those motherfuckers.
Speaker 5 (07:43):
I'm all now, I'm all, there's there's five hundred people
in his room and none of y'all are Terry.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
It's not a real name.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
That's an interesting stat Yeah, it's a fake name. I
think Terry was a CIA plan anyway, especially with that right.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
Right, that's some very by some like Black's rule energy,
you know what I'm saying. So you know, we don't
call ourselves there right like we would never write Black's Rule.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Okay, I'm just.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
Bow's roughly two dozen guys, right, uh Smith, You know
this guy we quoted from purportedly a combat veteran, but
no one's checking up on that. I say he said
he was a Green Beret. All these guys say that
they had been. No one's checking.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
I don't know, No one knows, no one looked, no
one asked Terry.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
These are men who showed up at a cheerleading academy
in Florida and said, I'm willing to travel to loud
to kill strangers.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Like god, they're what they did for it.
Speaker 5 (08:44):
There might be one of our friends there, maybe our
buddies there. I'm just saying, Eric Prince is foaming at
the moment, Yeah, beyond foaming, and not just at the mouth.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
So my mom is here, Hi, Sophie's mom. I'm so.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
Terry told reporters a lot of beautiful nonsense, not beautiful nonsense,
a lot of nonsense. One of his stories that he
would tell the news was that when he was in Vietnam,
he watched a whole platoon of NBA soldiers stop and
cut up a pregnant woman together quote, I wanted to
rip their heads off, but I couldn't do nothing about it. Now, look,
no side in any war has a monopoly on war crimes.
(09:27):
But thirty guys all stopped to cut up a single
pregnant woman. It's just not the sort of war crime
I'm gonna believe happened unless you have some evidence.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Right, that's just a weird move, right. What was the situation?
Speaker 4 (09:39):
What was the situation where you couldn't do anything? These
guys are all occupied and you're just what, like.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
What are you claiming? What's going on here? Terry?
Speaker 4 (09:48):
I don't know that said do drink because it is
a war crime, So get on it, folks. Now, I
think that this is the kind of nonsense that fits
in less with what actually happened and more with the
fact that all these guys are now telling tall tales
about the things that actually happened in order to express
their fantasies. And like they're trying to justify the fact
(10:08):
that they want to go murder a bunch of strangers
in the jungle, right, Like, so you have to tell, like,
what's the worst thing I can imagine? Well, this would
justify me doing whatever. Right This summary of that Florida
gathering by Time Magazine really says a lot. Quote they
were just high on the idea adrenaline and the ballad
of the Green Berets blaring over the loud speaker at
(10:30):
all of them. An ex Special Forces sergeant still embittered
about losing his son in Vietnam, and Terry Smith humping
a rucksack urging them on suck that clean Florida air.
Just just a maniac, All these guys maniacs in their plan.
The plan that they're training for is nuts from the
(10:51):
jump Bo's idea, We're all going to fly in to
allow as tourists, and then we'll rent a house on
the Mekong Delta across from Vietnam and we'll pretend to
be providing humanitarian aid to Cambodian refugees. We'll get smuggled
a bunch of machine guns, which should be easy obviously,
and then we'll embed with friendly anti communist guerrillas fighting
(11:13):
the Vietnamese state across the border, right, and they'll help
us find these POWs.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
If we're captured.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
We're going to travel with gold so we can pay
our ransoms, and we're going to bring with us just
in case, what they called get out of jail free cards.
These were self printed IOUs promising one thousand dollars if
someone took them in the bearer to a US embassy.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
The embassies had not agreed to validate these.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
Of all, these are just I carry one of those
in my pocket now, Like, yeah.
Speaker 5 (11:44):
First of all, the America didn't send you number one
and number two. You are going to be robbed immediately immediately.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Oh, perhap you've seen where this is going.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
Yeah, So the next part of the plan is once
they find a POW camp, we will either break everyone
out or we'll take pictures, depending on the situation, and
then we'll send the proof back to DC and that'll
convince the President to send air support from the seventh Fleet.
In right, we will start the war in Vietnam right there.
(12:15):
He's gonna immediately call in an air strike and we'll
free these guys.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
Now, bro, this is like pre like this ain't no internet.
Like hell, you're gonna call it a president from.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
Yeah, you're gonna call the president from fucking Lao and
you're gonna get him to send the seventh Fleet to
bomb Vietnam again ten.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Years after the war ens.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
Okay, great, great idea, guys, amazing. And Bo's plan is
that like obviously will win a second time, right, Like
you know, it's like it's like when you're like playing
your brother is something. It's smash brothers and like he
like gets you, but he just like he just mashed buttons.
You know, he's not gonna mash those buttons the same
way again. Vietnam was like that, right, maybe you pick
(12:57):
Samus the next time.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
That was both that was both.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Breaks, your brother beating the brakes off you every time.
Speaker 5 (13:03):
Right.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
Yeah, So unfortunately the money that Bo raised telling pointless
lies about his time in Vietnam did not extend past
partying in Florida. One member of the group because so
they run out of money at the cheerleading academy, and
one member of the group, Terry fucking Smith, suggests, Hey, guys,
(13:25):
I know I can get some extra money.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
We're in Florida.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
It's the eighties. Let's go murder a bunch of coke
dealers and take their money.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Oh, I fund our trip to Vietnam. Well, allow the
coke dealer money.
Speaker 5 (13:38):
I said to myself. They gonna say they're gonna sell coke,
and I was like, Nah, that'd be dumb.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
No, that'd be dumb. They're gonna take money from coke dealers.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
I was like, Oh, you gonna rob coke dealers.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
Oh yeah, We're gonna start an independent war with the
cartels so that we can start an independent war with Vietnam,
you know.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
At their base and cheerleading.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
Cheerleading out of the cheerleading Now, Terry Smith told the
Time magazine, if I got to kill one hundred twenty
American bad guys to get one hundred POWs out of Vietnam.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
I'll do it. Of course, Terry absolutely, Terry's that was
good Sophie, thank you.
Speaker 5 (14:22):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
So operation velvet Hammer worked out about as well as
an actual velvet hammer. After this, Bo doesn't give up.
That's one thing the military taught him. The military taught
him two things. One has how to stick to a plan,
and the other is how to not win a war
in Vietnam. Right, those are the two things he learns
from his surface. So Bo organizes a smaller group to
(14:55):
hunt for clues in Thailand. And I have to assume
that the word hunt he means smoke and the word
clues here stands for ty sticks. Anyway, they find no
information about any POW.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Because he's just hunting in Thailand.
Speaker 5 (15:10):
He just shooting out arbitrary countries that are like close
to where.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
You know what we say that actually prop if you guys.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
Want to donate some money, you know, really really coffin
and give deep. I think we could find some po
ws in Thailand.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
I'm pretty sure we can.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
We're gon.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
We're gonna need like six weeks at Lamartian in Bangkok,
and I think we can knock it out.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
I really think we can knock it out. That was
a little specific. Yeah, well just one boat.
Speaker 5 (15:33):
It's just it's just look at it's just one bus
into the into the bush, right, but we could stay
out there and based in the LA based yeah yeah, yeah,
do some do some like mental health work.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
And look, massages this podcast.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
Aren't all in Intel, but let me tell you as
a CIA man, all of the good, all of the
real information comes from massage artists there are. So my
plan is to get like eight hours of massages a day, right,
and that then I'll figure out where all of the
prisoners are, Sovie. It's a good idea, and most of
them most of them speak English, right, I don't know. Also,
(16:14):
as a side note, as I've been sitting here, I
thought Velvet Hammer also sounds like a Prince album.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Yeah, that would be a pretty good name of a Prince.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Album album anyway.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Yeah, also not a bad band name anyway.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Are they not out.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Of money completely at this point?
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Well, they're continuing.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
Well, actually we'll talk about who's giving them money, because
that's fun, Sophie, that's really fun. So both keeps raising
money and public awareness of us POW's that are definitely
still trapped in Vietnam. He succeeds in securing several high
profile celebrity donations wait, who.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Do you think it is?
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Yeah, give me, give me two names, Kissinger.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
No celebrity celebrities like movies, celebrity movies, star, movie or TV.
Speaker 5 (16:53):
I was like, I was like John Wayne Robert Redford, who.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
Is not a TV star or a movie star at
this point in time.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
But you're not there yet.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
No, yeah, he said Eastwood.
Speaker 4 (17:08):
Clint Eastwood sends thirty thousand dollars and allegedly promised to
get Ronald Reagan's blessing Clinton allegedly, Bo says Clint said,
if you can find proof of a pow, I'll make
sure Reagan sends in an air strike.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Right.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
I don't know if Clint Eastwood did other than he
definitely sent the money, right, and then no one's gonna
guess this. William Shatner donated to be fair to our boy,
Bill Shantner sends ten grand if in exchange for the
(17:48):
rights to Grits to Bo rights his life.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Okay, right, Bill's got an angle.
Speaker 5 (17:52):
We know Captain Kirk knows what he's expects, actually respect,
you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
I think ten is a hilarious amount for his life.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
Right, Yeah, So the money that they raise is enough
that in November of nineteen eighty two, both finally succeeds
in taking a commando team to Lao, where the most
obvious thing happens, and I want to quote from Bruce Franklin's.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Book Mia here.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
Almost as soon as they arrived in Lao, they were ambushed, routed,
and forced.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
To flee as fast as they could back to Thailand.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
The ambushers, contrary to their initial assumptions, were not even
treacherous Communists, but a rival anti communists Layotian group whom Grits'
men had offended in Thailand, and to whom Grits, ironically enough,
reportedly had to pay seventeen five hundred dollars ransom to
recover a captured American team mate. The raiders, of course,
encountered no POWs. Now there's a couple of things about this.
(18:46):
First off, they did kind of succeed in rescuing a POWs, yes,
today did they bring that pow with them, yes, but
they did save him uh seconds.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
That is glorious.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
It's time for another drink because also two of his
local Laotian guides die in the ambush, which is very sad.
Although you have to imagine the guys who are taking
him into the jungle.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Probably not great, right, the dudes who were working with
this guy, I don't know anyway, that's said, still said,
take a drink.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
That is so funny.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
So not the debt, not the deaths.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
But the fact that they immediately get ambushed from me
and ransom.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Super funny.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
Now, if you're keeping track, the only American captive they've
encountered is someone they brought with them. But the very
next month, Bo tries again flying to Thailand and renting
one thousand dollars a month safe house and one thousand
dollars a month in the nineteen eighties, that is a
nice fucking safe house.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Lot of money.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
Again, prop we could find some information A thousand dollars
amount of money today you're staying in a night, well
thousand a month.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
Yeah, we'll see safe houses, you know, they're on a
sliding scale. So one of those the comrades claims to
have totally seen bad guys across the border drilling with weapons. Sure,
maybe like it's Vietnam they have an army now, like
like they're they're their country, right, like they're allowed to
do that.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
He's like, I was so angry. I couldn't fight them.
It's their country. What are you doing over there? UK? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (20:19):
He flew all the way from Florida.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Yeah yeah, well presumably from Florida. Yeah. So uh.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
Bo's last attempt was in the spring of nineteen eighty three,
and it ended when ty police immediately arrested two of
his commandos for possession of illegal radio transmitters.
Speaker 5 (20:36):
So did nobody ask God a komfam? No one wants
you hear you did not need to be here.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
Okay, this is not a success by any definition, but
it got attention. People do pay attention to what Bo
is doing. He gets hauled before Congress in March of
nineteen eighty three. Now, Congress had concluded, as I said
in nineteen seventy six, that there were no more POWs
being held by Vietnam. So Bo was asked, what evidence
(21:03):
do you have to counter these conclusions? And Bo answers,
I have the same evidence that might be presented to
a convention of clergymen that God exists.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
So like non the wait, so that's.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Not a bar that's not a bar man.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
I'm not I'm not anti you know, faith or whatever,
But we don't invade countries based on what.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
We do actually a lot, you know all the time.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
That's actually often why we okay, point to bow.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Now.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
In another interview, one of Bo's former volunteers, Tom Smith,
said of Grits, I wouldn't cross the street with this guy.
He's suffering from the early stages of burning a bush
complex which, first off, it's not burning a bush. I
don't understand why he said it that way. That's a
real it's a burning bush.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
Yeah, you're not burning. Maybe he's saying he was lighting
a bush on fire, like fake it. I guess that
could be good.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
I don't know. Maybe I'm slaying. We just don't know.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Maybe.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Yeah, yeah, this is there more important things here continue?
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Sure, yes, man.
Speaker 4 (22:05):
Now the attention that Bo drew mattered though to someone, well,
to a group Hollywood. Bo's story inspired and did legitimately
inspire Rambo First Blood Part two, in which John Rambo
was sent to a secret US base in Thailand to
invade Vietnam on his own and rescue Po W's uh.
There's other movies that were inspired by bos story, Chuck
(22:29):
Norris's Missing in Action series and the Gene Hackman film
Uncommon Valor rip Gene were also inspired by Bo's fantasies
of rescuing POW's overseas.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
And here's my favorite side fact.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
The character Hannibal Smith on the A Team, inspired partly
by both Yeah and the real Number one. The real
Hannibal would have found those pore absolutely number two kitty
dimples absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
M sorry, I do love the A Team.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
You can tell Prop said to have a drink. This
was like this was like he poured this like a glass.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
It was a thick, poor like shout.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Out whoever, like, yeah, you're trying to put me up.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
It was busy, thick is the Sea four necklace around
that guy's.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
So what, I didn't do it?
Speaker 2 (23:27):
You're supposed to say, no, yeah, no.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
All right, everybody, do you drink?
Speaker 4 (23:33):
So after nineteen eighty three, Bow seems to have largely
and quietly given up on his plans to rescue these
totally real uspows. In order to become an influencer in
the growing militia movement, he joined the Mormon Church.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
Start in a.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Direct no, no, you gotta wait.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
For the sentence to finish.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Start in a direct to video ripoff of Charlie's Angels
called Rescue force, I know what everyone's Watchington night, And
in nineteen eighty eight agreed to run as the vice
presidential candidate for the Populist Party.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Anybody know the Populist Party? Anybody heard of these guys? Well,
they were the political party of a group called the
Liberty Lobby, which.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
Was founded by a guy we've talked about on Behind
the Bastards, a Holocaust denier and Hitler fan, Willis Carto.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Right there we go, Yeah, Willie.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
Willis Carto is like, I mean, he is like the
grandfather of American fascism as an organized political movement that
is like working within like mainstream conservatism and attempting to
radicalize and influence mainstream conservatism. Right, Carto is the guy.
He was the dude who was a lot smarter than
like the neo Nazis. He was like, no, no, no, no, no, no,
(24:53):
you got to you gotta dress this shit up a
little bit if you're gonna do it. And Carto sees
Bo and he's like karas mad war hero, good at
getting media attention, and Carto kind of scouts him to
be the VP candidate.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Right.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
Bo says that he was poached directly by Willis carto,
although Bo would then later claim that he was shocked
and appalled when at that year's convention for the Populist
Party the presidential nomination was won by another fellow you
might have heard of, David Duke.
Speaker 5 (25:27):
I'll tell you what, man, this cartoon guy must be
really smiling in hell right now.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Oh, he's having a great time.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
He's having a great time. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Now. I will say this in interviews because Bo.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
Writes, as with other parts of his life, it gives
two different stories, the one that he gives at the
time and the one that he gives years later.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
When people ask years later, he will be like, oh,
I was.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
Horrified the instant I heard that, uh that uh, David
Duke was the presidential candidate.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
Within forty eight hours, I'd resigned.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
I was not I would absolutely never have have worked
with with such a racist at the time. In news
articles written immediately afterwards, Bo said he was okay with
working with Duke because he met with David Duke and
made him promise solemn sweat promise not to be a
racist in the campaign, in the campaign not to have
a racist campaign, and David Duke said it wasn't going
(26:26):
to be a racist campaign.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
What more can you ask?
Speaker 2 (26:29):
You know, he said he wasn't going to do it.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Seems sounds fine to me.
Speaker 4 (26:33):
Man by his word, he promised a klansman's problem.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Okay, well yeah, alright, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
So the good news is that after they lost, Bo
complained to Christ.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Well you could stop that sentence right there.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
The good news is that they lost.
Speaker 4 (26:53):
They lost for now, yeah yeah right, let's not think
too much about what's happening on. Yeah, yeah, So the
good news is that Bo complained after they lost to
Willis Carte that David Duke did quote more harm to
the Populist Party than Hitler would have. Now, okay, this this,
(27:16):
I'm gonna give you a second. This kind of insinuates
to me that Bo would have been okay with running
as the VP for Hitler.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Literally a bit.
Speaker 5 (27:26):
At first, I was like, okay, let him cook, let
me like what are you trying to say here? Like
help me understand? And yeah, because my first thought was yeah,
like so you you.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Might you might have run with Hitler if he'd promised
not to run a racist.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Campongs Hitler, don't do a racist campaign.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
Hitler's on his best behavior. We can go to Olive Garden. Sorry,
I don't know why or will Golden correct?
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Are you hungry or something?
Speaker 2 (27:52):
What's happening?
Speaker 4 (27:53):
I just think Hitler and Olive Garden is a funny image, Sophie,
because when you're there, your family.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
So bro you are on a roll today.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
You think he was a super solad guy. I think
salad he was.
Speaker 5 (28:11):
Canonically he salad in unlimited bread sticks. That man is
not ordering a place.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
I'm actually in the in the audience is a very
dear friend of mine who we decided at some at
one point I'm not really sure why to come in
at Olive Garden one day on a Tuesday, the very
minute they opened at nine or ten in the morning. Now,
we were both wearing skirts that we'd sown each other,
and we both had T shirts that had our favorite
conspiracy theory on them. I do forget what mine was,
(28:41):
but he just said Michael Jackson was murdered written on
the front of a white T shirt and sharpie and we.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
Proceeded a.
Speaker 4 (28:49):
Now, the reason why we showed up is Olive Garden
sells three liter bottles of wine, so we ordered two
of them, and then we nothing but six leaders of
wine and breadsticks and the experiment because we also brought
with us a big roll of butcher paper, and we
started outlining the conspiracies that we like believed ruled the world.
So we were drawing like a big flow chart talking
(29:11):
about the Freemasons and all of these different conspiracies. And
the goal was when will they stop serving us breadsticks?
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Yeah, And eventually it.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
Did go to the point where we got half a
breadstick on a plate and I was like, yeah, it's
probably time to bounce.
Speaker 5 (29:24):
Hey. Let me ask, that is, as we ask, that is,
as fans at his show, how many times have you
thought to yourself.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
How does this man survived? Like how are you still alive?
I'll be thinking that, like, like, are you still alive?
Speaker 3 (29:40):
I will say.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
As soon as we got back to my house, my
friend who was in the audience vomited so much on
the floor I almost made it to the toilet. So
I'm just bragging a little bit pretty close, not at all,
not at all, but like literally like three and a
half fet further anyway, back to the story, So.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
The good news is well not the good news.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
He runs again in nineteen ninety two, this time as
the presidential candidate, for the Populist Party, and he does
twice as well as David Duke, winning point one percent
of the national popular vote to Duke's point zero five, So,
you know, not bad.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
That same year ninety two, Bo played what would be
arguably his.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
One positive role in US political culture, which is when
he kind of ended the Ruby Ridge Standoff. So, if
you're vaguely familiar, there's this guy, Randy Weaver and his
friends in the Area Nations. He gets paid by a
dude who turns out to be an ATF agent to
saw off some shotguns and then they raid his house
(30:46):
and an agent is shot dead by I forget which
member of his group killed the agent, but an ATF
agent's killed, and the ATF kills his young son who's
a child, and his wife, right, and a big state
is called Ruby Ridge Huge standoff. It's like it's a
seminal moment in the fucking militia movement. It's a big deal.
And because Grits is a really famous figure in the
(31:07):
militia movement, he gets like the he basically I think
he reaches out directly to the FEDS actually, but anyway,
he winds up flown in and talks to Randy Weaver
and talks Weaver down and the siege ends without further
loss of life. This is a legitimate thing that BO did,
and it's good, right, It's good that more people because
Bo had or Randy had his kids. Like I'm not
(31:29):
I don't care that much about Randy, but he had
another kid, right, like, you don't want them to die,
and that's good.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
This is the only good thing that BO does. But
he did do that.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
Now, because Randy Weaver had some close ties to the
Aryan Nations, and because Grits's nineteen ninety two campaign was
seen as a watershed moment for white supremacists in the US.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
BO was accused of himself being a racist. Can you
believe it?
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Now?
Speaker 4 (31:56):
Idaho State University professor James Aho told the SPLC, the
Southern Poverty Law Center that as far as he could see,
Grits wasn't quote an out and out racist, and Grits
himself repeatedly emphasized that he had two Asian American children,
so he couldn't racist.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Now, of course he did the nim huts.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
He was in that hut. Yeah, the nim Huts. Yeah,
UK be racist. You and nim huts.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
The hell are we talking about now?
Speaker 4 (32:27):
I think it's accurate to say that Bo's primary motivation
wasn't white supremacy, But it's kind of weird to say
that he wasn't an out and out racist, given some
comments he made about people of the Jewish faith per
the SBLC earlier this year. This is two thousand and five,
I think. In a lengthy diatribe falsely a legend Jewish
(32:48):
control of the media and financial institutions, he wrote, why
is there such an intense effort toward Jewish control? I
don't think it is right for such a small interest,
special interest group to control our nation.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
Oldest man, he's still alive.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
God, Yeah, I know.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
It's a bummer. Dang it.
Speaker 5 (33:06):
Man.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
Elsewhere, he wrote, do you see the sign, the synth,
the stained and mark of the Beast on America today?
Are you willing to submit and join this seed line
of Satan? Look to those who are openly Antichrist. Who
in the world is promoting abortion, pornography, pedophilia, godless laws, adultery,
new age, international banking, entertainment industry, and world publishing.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Wherever you find a.
Speaker 4 (33:29):
Perversion of God's laws, you will find the worshippers of Ball.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
With their roots still in Babylonian mysticism. What are you
talking about? He's not an out and out racist.
Speaker 5 (33:44):
This man named it just even his racism being just broken,
this man naming all the enemies right of the Israelites.
You know what I'm saying, I'm looking, look.
Speaker 4 (33:59):
I grew up at your well he's he is arguing
that that's Judaism is worshiping Ball.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
That's the That's what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
I'm like bras near mind.
Speaker 4 (34:09):
We all need to with Bo rights on theology. But
the point of it is that, like I mean to
be fair in rural Idaho. That is kind of middle
of the road racism.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
Right, Like he's not an extremist for rural Idaho. Trial right.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
In January of nineteen ninety three, after losing his second
presidential election, Bo pivoted to a new grift.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
He started Spike S p I k E.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
It's I know He's Spike is A was a training
program that stood for especially prepared individuals for key events.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
That means nothing. So worried I was about to say,
like Spike TV.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
No, yeah, he found it. Spiked. He spiked I was like, yeah,
So the idea was he was.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
Bringing in experts to teach classes that would turn regular
You could like order VHS tapes off the Internet and
it will turn you into a Special Forces operator if
you're watching.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Off of them.
Speaker 4 (35:08):
Right, That's all that's standing in between you and being
a Navy seal is watching enough VHS tapes.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
That's actually true. By the VHS tape cassette series.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
I've got going on, I don't know what to call it.
I didn't think of an acronym. Sorry anyway, Spike winds
up ultimately building a video library of about one hundred
hours of content that they would ship to anyone willing
to pay. Now, by the early nineties, BO had also
relocated to the Pacific Northwest, where.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
We all call home.
Speaker 4 (35:37):
A yeah, because this is coincidentally right around the same
time as the so called Northwest Imperative really kits going.
This is the idea of moving white people on Moss
to this part of the country in order to create
a new white homeland. Now it starts to really pick
up It doesn't start. This starts to really pick up
steam in the nineties, right, and coincidentally, this is also
(35:58):
when Bow launches a new business venture.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
So the car I'm telling you.
Speaker 4 (36:03):
He sells parcels of land in an intentional community for
members of the militia movement called Almost Heaven.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Stop letting him name things.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
Billed as a constitutional covenant community, Almost Heaven was a
way to take the underlying ideology of the Northwest Imperative
and extend it beyond stock Nazism to something palatable for
a wider but still far right audience. He claimed to
have picked the location by studying maps of nuclear fallout
and military bases to determine the safest place in America. Wow,
(36:35):
I think it's where the land was cheapest. He announced
the start of this new venture by crashing a Camea
town hall meeting in nineteen ninety four and declaring the
public school system a cesspool and in accusing the local
government of being run by and then he uses a
slur for gay people. It starts with f Local resident
and activist Larry Nims later claimed rights came here and
(36:57):
made a lot of noise. He told people that if
they didn't like him, then get out of Dodge. And
I'm thinking, who is he to tell people around here
to get out of Dodge. He didn't even live in
Dodge yet. And Nims, my heart goes at Nims is
like a progressive activist in rural Idaho in the early
nineties who's like we'll talk about like bo is the
one who brought a lot of guys with guns out here, right,
(37:18):
Like this has not not been a problem before him,
but he really makes like the current state of affairs
is seriously influenced by.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Rights, right, Yeah, so I'm just learning.
Speaker 4 (37:30):
Yeah, the Arean Nations had been out in Hayden Lake previously,
so it's not entirely undergrites. But he does play a
significant role in this because of how famous.
Speaker 5 (37:40):
He is, right, I still just wonder and it's like
this this sounds like a joke, but I'm like dead serious.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
I'm like, man, what what do they eat?
Speaker 3 (37:51):
I'm like na saying, oh, no, guys.
Speaker 5 (37:53):
Well, but like if you're gonna make an almost seven,
because I'm like you can say so, yeah, so I
used to live in then I lived in Poorland a
while back, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
But like I mean just like the Double Dragon Joint
with the like the this pop park, Like I'm like,
there's so many good places.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
To eat here.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
I'm like, you don't want that?
Speaker 4 (38:15):
Like, no, No, he's living in the woods eating dried
food that he bought off of Uh what's his name? Baker,
the fucking uh weirdo weird Yeah, Jim Jim Baker very
much recently Why a.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
Movie by the way about him that came out Andrew Garfield. Good,
Why you.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Haven't got no like Old Bay like just right seasons.
Speaker 4 (38:37):
That's why it's almost Heaven, Almost almost Heaven. They forgot
the season, so wow, almost Haven worked for a little while. Unfortunately,
Bow and his business partner made the bad decision to
buy their land is a common law trust and I
don't know a lot about this, but the way in
(38:57):
which they did this made it very difficult for their
customers to get titles, basically impossible. They couldn't get titles
to their property in their names, and they couldn't get
property insurance in their own names, which.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
Is a problem.
Speaker 4 (39:09):
A flurry of lawsuits followed by people who thought that
they had been conned pretty true accurately, and problems escalated
as contractors started suing Grites and his business partner for
failing to pay for road construction and other infrastructure work.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
They kind of took a leaf out of the Trump book.
Speaker 5 (39:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
The slow collapse of Almost Heaven was escalated both by
incompetence like this and the fact that more than anything,
Bo wanted to make money, not fund to right wing
revolution and a lot of his critics on the riot
are like, Bo, aren't you making the army that's going
to like liberate us?
Speaker 5 (39:41):
No?
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Oh.
Speaker 4 (39:44):
So the other problem is that Bo keeps taking calls
aar at the late nineties from the FBI to try
and talk down militia groups like the Montana Freemen, which
ultimately alienated.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
His third wife, Claudia, a former karate instructor.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Did I miss the second wife?
Speaker 3 (40:01):
Yeah? That was the that was the lady he met
the sex worker Na.
Speaker 4 (40:06):
That did shockingly didn't last. No, who knew marriages that
start in Vietnam?
Speaker 3 (40:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Stay, yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
So like all those POWs. By the end of nineteen
ninety eight, that was good.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
That was very good.
Speaker 4 (40:26):
By the end of nineteen ninety eight, Bo's business partner
had stolen nearly all of the money made by Almost Heaven,
and Claudia left him after twenty four years of marriage.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Why you did twenty for twenty four in May.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
A while he stuck it out.
Speaker 4 (40:42):
Boat tempted suicide by shooting himself in the chest in
December of nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
But he survived and it's still alive today. God, I
don't have a happy ending here.
Speaker 4 (40:57):
He did shoot himself again for whatever reason. A through
line in this guy's story is people shooting themselves in
weird ways.
Speaker 3 (41:04):
But chest.
Speaker 4 (41:06):
I'm sorry, I'm not trying to backseat kill Bogue rights
to Bogue rights. But however, however, it is all right.
That concludes the Behind the Bastards episodes.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Gee.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the
Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday
and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash
(41:48):
at Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards News
Host
Robert Evans
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