October 31, 2023 • 60 mins
During the Vietnam War, the U.S. government was desperate to maintain order and combat the growing domestic opposition to the war effort -- both the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. waged a war of ideas, of propaganda that could, in its own way, wield as much power as a bullet or a bomb. When U.S. deserters fled the war and traveled to the U.S.S.R. or neutral countries, they became a propaganda tool of immense proportions -- and the U.S. wanted them back, regardless of what laws might get broken, or how many people might be injured along the way. Join the guys as they explore the strange, secret story of Operation Chaos.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back, fellow conspiracy realist. We returned to you with
a classic that we think you'll enjoy. As you know,
we have talked at length about the big fantasy job
in the government. Who gets to choose the names for
secret operations? Right? Who gets to make the acronyms or retrodyms?
What is Operation Chaos? It was that thing in fight Club, right,
(00:23):
wasn't Wasn't that called Operation Chaos?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Wasn't.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
I think it was where they destroy like, you know,
public works of corporate art. Huh, mayhem, Project Mayhem. This
is Operation Chaos, not yes, Project Mayhem. Yeah, they also
ran No.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I think this is more proxy war stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Right, yeah, yeah, So this is a true story, real conspiracy.
During the Vietnam War, Uncle Sam was desperate to UH
to clamp down on domestic opposition to the war effort
protest in the streets, people saying, you know, why can
we commit atrocity an ocean away? But we can't make
(01:04):
sure people who live here have any kind of quality
of life? And their solution was not to improve the
domestic quality of life for Americans. It was Operation Chaos.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Let's dive right from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies.
History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back
now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
They call me Ben. We are joined, of course with
our super producer Paul Deckatt on the ones and twos.
Most importantly, you are here. You are you, and that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
That's what this is. Brand new logo rocking feeling good.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yeah, that's true. We have the six finger logo designed
by the way, by our super producer, Paul Paul nice work, sir,
with a consultation from our graphic artist team.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Yeah. Pam, Yeah, we can say your name. It's okay,
Pam is awesome, Pam Peacock.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah. And we have a situation here wherein it may
be deceptively easy to think that there are only three
or four people involved in stuff they don't want you
to know. That could not be further from the truth,
because this podcast, like many many other things in the world,
(02:46):
has an entire team behind the curtain actively working to
make stuff like this sound easy. I think we have
the easiest jobs on the team, to be honest.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Sure, absolutely, we just get in here and ramble. Man,
That's what I do. You do the hard stuff? I
just go well, Ben, guess what what? Oh?
Speaker 1 (03:09):
I fell for it?
Speaker 3 (03:10):
See there you go?
Speaker 1 (03:12):
No, no, no no. But the reason we're bringing up
this idea of a team that often is not acknowledged
is because today's episode dives into something that could easily
be seen as the actions of just a few isolated people.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Absolutely maybe just fifty two of.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Them, perhaps as few as fifty two. But as we're
going to find, just like this podcast, today's topic has many, many, many,
many more people in play, some of whom remain mysterious
and unidentified today. If you're listening to this show, then
(03:59):
you probably won't be surprised. Matt and I are going
to go out on a limb and assume you will
not be surprised to learn that most governments, at one
point or another, love them or hate them, have perpetrated secret,
illegal programs against either their citizens or citizens of another country.
And since our show is based in the US, we
naturally tend to explore stories based in this country. This
(04:23):
one is no exception, but it's one you may not
have heard of before. Today we're exploring a classified program
known as Operation Chaos.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Yes, and to discuss this program, we need to take
ourselves back to nineteen fifty four onwards just a little
bit there, to the Second Indo China War. You probably
don't know it as that. You probably know it as
the Vietnam War. I know. That's how I was a
little while ago. It was a conflict between North and
South Vietnam, which were two separate countries at the time,
(04:55):
and it lasted from nineteen fifty four until nineteen seventy five.
Now this is distilling it like crazy, but this is
just to say what it is. And you probably already
know this. North Vietnam was a communist government. It was
run by a communist government, and they worked with these
rebels in South Vietnam who were called the Viet Cong,
(05:17):
and together they attempted to overthrow the government of South Vietnam.
And this was a terrible, terrible conflict that cost the
lives of so many and we'll discuss that here shortly,
but ultimately the physical combat took place in both South
Vietnam and North Vietnam. Laos and Cambodia, which are immediately
(05:41):
to the west of the Vietnam. Of Vietnam. That's right there,
and I guess spoiler alert. Ultimately the North Vietnamese were
successful in their attempts to overthrow the South Vietnamese government.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Yeah yeah, and along the way the US got involved.
You may have heard us reference earlier instances surrounding the
catalyst that set the US on a path to war
in this part of the world, the most controversial one
being the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Yes, which did we
(06:16):
do a whole episode on that yet or did we
just do false Flags?
Speaker 3 (06:19):
We did false Flags where we discussed it at length,
but you know, maybe we could go deeper. Who knows?
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Who knows? Check out the False Flags episode if you
have yet to do so. There's some pretty interesting stuff there.
For now, we're going to explore the not the entire
Vietnam War, because this is the setup right to Operation Chaos.
We're going to look at the people the US sent
(06:47):
to wage this war. The Vietnam War, as it's called
in the US, used a conscription system, a draft, and
that is something that hasn't occurred since. Roughly two point
seven million US soldiers served in Vietnam, and of those
two point seven million, around twenty five percent were draftees,
(07:12):
meaning that they were forced to go, and in most
cases it would be a crime for them to refuse
to serve in the war. Regardless of their ideological or
political affiliations. There are cases where you could be a
conscientious objector, for instance, a pacifist or a so called
pacifist like the Quakers. Lindon LaRouche was raised a Quaker,
(07:33):
which will be important a little bit later in today's show.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Or Muhammad Ali who was a conscientious objector.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
M hmm. Yeah, and so conscientious objection is a genuine thing,
but there were a lot of people who high tailed
it to Canada, for instance, because they felt like they
wouldn't be able to make a case for conscientious objection,
that they would have been popped into the shake and
bake system and then sent off to die in the jungle.
(08:02):
That's how a lot of people looked at it.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Yeah, especially towards the end of the Vietnam conflicts, as
the propaganda and the truth of the situation was coming.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Forward, and many, many, many other people. As you can
tell from the statistics, about seventy five percent of the
forces there volunteered or were already career military yes, and
not all of these people came back. We discussed this
briefly in our episode on the allegations of POW's left
(08:38):
behind in Vietnam, which is still a contentious topic of conversation,
right because there's simply not enough proof, Yeah, one way
or the other, unfortunately, And we know that of the
people who went, of the roughly two point seven million,
not everybody made it home. That's the reality. But we
(09:01):
have the actual numbers too.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Right, Yeah, one out of every ten Americans who served
in Vietnam was in some way a casualty. There was
somewhere between fifty eight thousand, one hundred and forty eight
and fifty two hundred and twenty that were killed, just
killed while they were there, and then another three hundred
and four thousand that were wounded. And that's an estimate there, right.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yeah. The oldest and this is again just on the
US side, the oldest person on the US side killed
was sixty two years old. Of the people who were killed,
sixty one percent, more than half were younger than twenty
one wow. And more than eleven thousand of those killed
were younger than twenty jeez. And five people who were
(09:48):
killed in Vietnam were only sixteen years old.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
That's again on the American side. That's very important because
there are a lot of people under sixteen years old
that died that were not on the American side.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Right, that were civilians, Yeah, that were simply trying to
live their lives. So let's look at the Vietnamese side.
The US military estimates that between two hundred thousand and
two hundred and fifty thousand South Vietnamese soldiers died in
the war. And in nineteen ninety five, Vietnam released its
official estimate of war casualties, and it cited as many
(10:25):
as two million civilians on both sides, the North Vietnamese
and South Vietnamese side, and they said, in addition, there
were one point one million North Vietnamese and viet Cong
soldier casualties.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
That is unthinkable.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
It's a bloodbath.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Yeah. Well, you know, the overall tonnage of bombs that
were dropped during the Vietnam War exceeds that of if
you add up most of World War II, of just
if you think about the amount of munition that was
used there, it exceeds almost all of World War Two,
which is insane.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
And in many cases some of that ordinance remains.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Yeah, in Laos, right, unexploded.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Right, And the US conducted secret illegal operations in Cambodia
and Laos in particular. A lot of people here in
the US agreed with the war, and a lot of
people did not. And this is where we hit upon
the concept of deserters. Deserters would be a little bit
(11:32):
different from draft dodgers, right, yes, yeah, So if you're
a draft dodger, your number gets called up, they pull
your card, and you say, for one reason or another,
forget this, I'm out of here. I'm going to Canada,
I'm going to Europe. I'm gonna head out for the
(11:54):
Southern continent.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
You know. And there were organizations set up to assist
people that wanted to the draft. That's a that's a
pejorative kind of a draft dodger. But like they wanted
to what is a better way to do?
Speaker 1 (12:07):
They did not want to participate in a war with
which they did not agree.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
Oh there you go. But yeah, they just they disagreed.
But if we're gonna talk about what a deserter is
an actual deserter, this is the military has a classification
for this, and it is that it's any person that's
been absent without leave a service member, mind you, for
(12:32):
more than thirty days.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Thirty days or less, you're a wall, right.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Yes, exactly, And you have to be an active member
of the military to be considered a deserter.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
And desertion is something that occurs in almost every war. Oh, yes,
it's It's often looked down upon. It's seen as an
unpatriotic move, to say the least, and at times it's
seen as from tremendously unethical, right, the idea being that
(13:04):
someone has already to some extent agreed to serve in
a military, yeah, and then they have gone back on
their word or the vow they took, the oath they took.
And Vietnam was no different. In fact, quite a few
people deserted during Vietnam.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Yeah. According to reports from nineteen seventy two. From let's
see July nineteen sixty six until November nineteen seventy two,
around four hundred and twenty three thousand United States military
personnel were classified as deserters. Now again, they've been classified
as deserters. It doesn't mean that that's necessarily you know,
(13:43):
whatever the situation they're going through. Those are very they're
varying to a large extent, but they're classified that way
by the military. Now, let's see, by July of nineteen
seventy two, according to this report, a large number of
these people were quote returned to military control. That's three
hundred and ninety one thousand of the four hundred and
(14:05):
twenty three thousand, so they were returned to military control.
And it's interesting because this around this time frame nineteen
sixty six to nineteen seventy two, this is when the
US military began even tracking these numbers because they had
been relatively low in the past. If you look at
World War Two, there were sixteen point three million Americans
(14:29):
who served in some capacity in the military during World
War Two, and there were only an estimated forty thousand
deserters at that time. But again, like, when do those numbers?
When are those numbers put forth? Is it after you've
returned a lot of the other ones to military control?
Are they still considered deserters in that number? It gets
(14:49):
a little fishy because they weren't tracking it very.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Well, right, Yeah, And again these are official numbers, which
will almost always differ from actual numbers, especially when you
get into the big government stuff. Whenever a government reports
bad news about itself, there's going to be a difference
between what is officially said and what actually happened. But
(15:17):
let's not get lost in the numbers, right, Let's explore
these deserters as people. They didn't one day, well, not
to speculate too much, but most of them did not
one day say you know, I gave it a shot.
I'm just gonna just gonna hide out. These people, being rational,
(15:43):
intelligent beings, had a series of desires and motivations and
fears and ambitions that drove them to commit this act
of desertion. But what are those reasons? What are those motivations?
We'll get to that after a word from our sponsor.
(16:10):
We're back. And the first reason for desertion is incredibly
dare I say, painfully apparent. It is the fear of
physical harm or death.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Yeah, that's the one that stands right out.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Like, Hey, for instance, I'm born in Nebraska, right, and
I was easily going to live most of my life
in my small town. I was gonna go watch the
local high school or college games. And now because someone
I never met in Washington, d C. Has a problem
(16:47):
with Vietnam. Now, here I am. I don't know these people.
I don't speak Vietnamese. That guy next to me got
shot in the head. This is terrible. Yeah, that's understandable.
And people have people deserve did for fear of being
the next headshot at times. Right, and the calculation. Again,
(17:07):
this is not to deride people. We're attempting to illustrate
the psychological process. They reached a point where the instinct
for self preservation outweighed the social obligation to do one's duty.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Or the ideological belief that what they're doing is more
important than their safety.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Right. Yeah, And I'm so glad you mentioned that, because
that's another reason for desertion. Right. Ideological differences.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Yeah, maybe I don't agree that the way of life
we are fighting for, you know, the stated goals of
removing communism or saving this country from communist invaders. Maybe
I don't agree with.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
It, right. Yeah, maybe you agreed with it originally, right
when you signed up in northern California or Oregon or something. Yeah,
and then you went to the war and you saw
what was happening on the ground, and you said, this
is not what I believe to be just. And I'm
(18:09):
not afraid of dying, but I will not be a
part of this thing with which I disagree.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Yeah, and that's a whole other situation there. When you're
looking at the actual operations that occurred and some of
the tragedies and massacres that were it's true that we're
perpetrated by the US military, and it's unfortunate.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Fact and sometimes perpetrated by factions of the US military
without the approval.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Yes, oh, absolutely, with.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Larger entities, absolutely, but yes, those atrocities did occur. A
third reason for an individual to dessert would be a
little bit more mercenary, an opportunity for a new life,
for celebrity, for material goods, material gain, or for profit. So,
(18:58):
for example, you can think of the stories of people
in the Korea War. There have been a couple of
guys who deserted to the DPRK, to the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea, and when they deserted, they were occasionally
treated like celebrities. They were the bad Americans and the
(19:21):
propaganda films, they were literally movie stars. Yeah, it did
not end well for them, to be clear about that.
I think one guy recently was I believe he was
allowed to see his mother before she passed as she's
he lived most of his life in North Korea. But
(19:43):
those are the reasons. Fear physical harm, don't kill me.
Ideological differences. I disagree with the concept or the motivations
for this war, or the opportunity, the self serving opportunity
to be famous, to get paid. Okay, Yeah, and those
(20:04):
are I mean, there are nuances to allure, absolutely sure.
But let's let's look at the other side of this
war as well. There was not just a physical side
of this large proxy war between capitalism and communism. There
was an ideological side, and war was functioning as a business. Yes,
(20:30):
war has always been about resource extraction, control, suppression, management,
et cetera. And deserters were another resource to be exploited.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Oh yes, by other countries, by enemies of the state.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Yeah, for the USSR and communism at large, deserters are fantastic,
especially if they come over to your side. The best
anti war advertise, heiss are always going to be images
of a wonderful life somehow better on the other side
of the trenches, the other side of the conflict. In
(21:07):
the US, for instance, you'll see propaganda that touts amenities
like we have refrigerators, we have new automobiles. Why are
you fighting? You can buy four kinds of ham in
our grocery stores.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Think about how much food you can cook with this microwave.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Mm hmmmm hmm. Exactly. You know this idea of selling
again in the American dream, the retro futuristic Jetson's life.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Another thing that is enormously beneficial from a propaganda perspective
is testimony from deserters actual word of mouth. Don't believe
this advertisement about the microwave.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Oh, I don't believe. I don't know. I don't believe
that at all. You know why, because I've seen it
before and that all that microwave does is burn your
food and it just makes things soggy. Don't listen to them.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Join the revolutionary yeah, whatever that revolution might be at
the time. Yeah, spot on. You will tend to believe
a person more so than an idea, especially depending on
how that person is presented to you.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
Ah, there you go.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
So this is a crucial ideological tool for the forces
opposing the US in the end of China or Vietnam conflict. Often,
these two propaganda opportunities were combined in anti US operations.
A deserter laments the injustices of the war and imperialistic
US culture overall, and then pivots to tout the freedom
(22:36):
they encountered after crossing over. That freedom might not be
what the Western world would think of as freedom. It
might not be necessarily freedom of speech. It might be
portrayed as freedom to join the great collective pushing for
a better world or something like that. But what about
(22:57):
European nations.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
A lot of times European nations are are they want
to be seen as neutral parties when there's something like
this going on, some kind of conflict of this nature,
or maybe they want to be a safe haven where
either a deserter or otherwise could come and you know,
live in their land, just to show that they're not
(23:19):
on either side really of the conflict, Like you can
come here, We'll give you safe passage. You know, you
can stay here for X number of days or weeks
or years, and just to show that they can act
on their own accord and not be influenced by again,
usually the US or whichever whichever country is in power.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Right like the old Disney Pinocchio, I have no strings. Yeah,
I can act you nilaterally.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Yes, and we will help you out, but we also
won't you know, we won't. We won't really help or
hurt you, but we'll give you safe.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Haven, right, Yeah, a refugee status, yes, perhaps, or a visa.
In Sweden in particular, many deserters joined something called the
American Deserters Committee, named in what I can only imagine
is a burst of creativity. Yes, sorry, that's iby, it's
(24:11):
they had other stuff going on. I'm sure they didn't
spend you know, a week work shopping the name.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Yeah, and there were American Deserters Committees throughout several countries
that kind of popped up to do a similar thing.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
So what were they doing.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
Well, they've really just wanted to have some kind of
united front for deserters, a voice for everyone to speak
in unison, right, like, all deserters together. This is this
is us. We are We have a powerful voice.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Ah. Yes, we are now a voting block of some
sort or we can unite. And now it's not just
one or two of us occasionally on anti war television spots.
It's a huge group of us all at once. Yeah,
old stage pro test.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
Yeah, and we can issue a statement from us, not
just from me, Matt, the deserter.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Oh good call, I didn't even think about that. It
sounds so much more official. Uncle Sam was predictably concerned,
very much so, because there are hazards for the US
when it comes to deserters from the war, and one
of the it's tough to say which is more important,
(25:28):
but we can walk through a couple of them in
no particular order. Then public opinion support for the war
is incredibly fragile. On the domestic front, the role of
the media in the Vietnam War, especially as it escalated,
cannot be overstated. This was not World War Two, where
information was often carefully managed for the domestic front. Journalists
(25:52):
were out there. Sixty something of them got killed in
the process, but they were showing things that the American
public would not expect to see, and in many cases
was not supposed to see.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Yeah, would not normally see in any kind of conflict
like this.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
And because of this, the US was unable to entirely
suppress the flow of domestic information from domestic sources, much
less suppressed the flow of anti war messages from abroad.
Can't It's tough to scramble a short wave radio, you
know what I mean? Oh, yeah, and there was a
(26:31):
tremendous and plausible, very well founded concern that anti war
movements in the US could trigger massive domestic unrest. We're
talking about the fall of states and follow the rule
of law, and that if the American public sympathized with
deserters who could not return home and who also implicitly
(26:55):
avoided the legal consequences of desertion, then the powder can
would explode. People would watch this and say, these people
deserve to come back to our homeland. And I guess
our homeland is not as powerful as it wants us
to believe.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Oh, man, right, if the ideological foundations begin to crumble,
then everything.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Does sounds kind of abstract, But I think you're right.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
People are so weird, you know, like there's so many
things that if we if we attempted to explain to
an extraterrestrial civilization, we would sound insane.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Oh hey, welcome. Let me take you two our leaders
hop in this we call a car. And then the
alien's like, why are we stopping? Oh we have to
wait for this thing to change colors? Yea, why there's
no one here, It's just the thing we do. Man.
Cool be cool. We're on the way to see the president.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
Wait, hold on, are you saying Are you saying that
I shouldn't follow traffic signals if there's no one around.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
I cannot legally I agree with that. No, I'm using
it as just as a poor example.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
No, no, it's not for example.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
It's weird because we'll sit I think most death has
as a great line about that blackstar. Oh nice, they're
quoting a poem in one of the songs where a
guy says, we were sitting three deep into traffic stop
talking about how brainwashed some of our brothers and sisters
(28:27):
are while we waited for green light to tell us
when to go. Oh, it sounds way better when when
you hear.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
The and there's a nice beat behind it.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Yeah. But this, I mean, we're we're pointing out, hopefully
that the ideological things, the programmed behaviors of people are
very easily normalized and accepted, and it doesn't take as
much as you might think to disrupt those things. Absolutely right,
we're gullible. How many people did you see where it
(29:00):
tie today? Why do they do that? What does a
tie do? What's the point? What's the point of a tie?
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Okay, so sorry, No, you're good.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
You're good on my mind for a while.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
I get it, Man, I feel the same way. I'm
just not as vocal about it. I need to start,
you know, saying the things I think I feel like.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
I feel like saying that ties are silly is maybe
not the best way to start a revolution. But anyway,
ideology aside. Sorry, I went off the rails on that one, Matt.
There are other things that are perhaps more material.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Oh yeah, the other the next one has to do
with triangulation. Really, so, let's imagine that you are another country, right,
You're an intelligence officer for another country, and there's a
group of American deserters. You meet one of them, and
you start talking to them. Maybe you even let's say,
capture them, or maybe maybe you don't even have to capture.
(29:54):
Maybe you just have some drinks with them at a bar.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Oh yeah, And you.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
Get intelligence from this person. You're essentially interrogating them, right,
one individual, one small group of individuals, and you get
any and all relevant information that you can from these people.
Operation aims programs, both ongoing ones that are occurring right now,
ones from the past. You can get all kinds of
details about your enemy with somebody like this. And then
(30:24):
here's the deal I said, triangulation. You take that information
you've gathered, then you compare and contrast it to another individual,
perhaps that you met at another bar or that was
also captured.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Okay, question them separately.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Yeah, and now you've got leads, You've got real leads.
You can you can decide what is probably bunk, what
is probably real. I don't know, it's a it's a
gold mine for an intelligence mind.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Yeah, yeah, because then you would be able to falsify misinformation.
Oh yeah, right, unless the people you were questioning already
had an established story or narrative, you would ultimately be
able to find out what they were thinking, where they
were going. And this can lead to all these massive insights.
And there's a sticky thing here. It's logical then, in
(31:18):
a world of rational actors, which all nations and states are,
it's logical then that you could be in a situation
as a leader of a country where you can rationalize
the death of a single prisoner or deserter, because it
can be framed as a effective way, albeit brutal, an
(31:39):
effective way of saving the lives of multiple other people.
And when we say, rationalize the death of a deserter
or prisoner. That doesn't just mean abandoning them, leaving them
in the cold, or throwing them to the wolves. That
also could mean sending one of your own people to
get rid of them. Possible.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
Yeah, it's an unfortunate comparison, but I think it works
of the mafia. If you join the mafia in some
capacity or another, or let's just say an organized crime association,
leaving that group is probably not a good idea, just
because for that saint, for the information that you have,
(32:21):
for the loose end that you become.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
You know, Can I make a confession to you, man,
I have never seen The Sopranos?
Speaker 3 (32:29):
What is it good? I love it?
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Do you really?
Speaker 3 (32:32):
I really?
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Did you have seen it?
Speaker 3 (32:34):
I have? I've seen it twice all the way through.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Should I watch it?
Speaker 3 (32:38):
I mean I would recommend it. What do you think
anyone Sopranos? Yeah, Tony, I.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Read the wiki. Does that count?
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Sure? That's all you need?
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Paul? Paul? Or did you watch the Sopranos? Oh, Paul
didn't watch it either. It's classic HBO. It's like, hmm,
all right, I will watch it. You are the one
who told me to watch The Wire.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
Yeah. Wow, I was one of those guys. Huh No, dude,
the Wire is so good, Paul, you got to watch
The Wire man. It's so good. It really was.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
It was great. But yeah, I liked a lot of it.
So that I think your comparison holds up this idea
of omerta, this idea of silence above all, right, and
the idea that this is a one way entry organization. Yeah,
that does apply. Maybe not to all militaries, maybe not
(33:37):
even to the US military, but that applies to a
lot of things when we start talking about the murky
world of government secrecy. And then deserters are also very
very useful as another form of propaganda. Propaganda advertised two
soldiers in the field.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
Yeah, actively occurring while soldiers are trying to fight, like
in a battle.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
Yeah. There radio stations that would bombard people with broadcasts,
and several of several of you listening to today's episode
may be Vietnam veterans, and we would be intensely interested
to hear whether you personally encountered this sort of propaganda,
(34:22):
something like Hanoi, Hannah, whatever, which would release these broadcasts
in English telling soldiers how useless, the US side of
the war was, and how dumb it was to be there.
So imagine you're up to your waist in mud and
filth and you're marching. Your feet are rotting in your socks.
(34:44):
The rain hasn't stopped for three days, and at this
point everybody knows it's just not going to.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
Some of your friends and acquaintances have just died.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
And then you hear a radio broadcast featuring a soldier
who sounds like he could be from your hometown in
the Brass getting Kansas and Oregon and California, and they're
talking about the injustices of war, the freedom of life
in neutral Sweden or Europe, the ideological struggle and progress
(35:13):
occurring in communist Russia. How much more marching do you
have in you with all these things bombarding you? What
is the limit?
Speaker 3 (35:23):
That's where that first one, the public opinion and the
ideological foundations are so important, because if you don't have,
if you don't have that stuff as just steal, if
that stuff is not steel in your mind, then maybe
your chips away enough to get you to go Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
And in many cases it must be said that that
kind of attempt at brainwashing might just make somebody more
resolute in their existing convictions. Absolutely possible, and I'm sure
that has happened. But do ue to these concerns, which
again are not specific to the Vietnam War, they echo
(36:06):
throughout history, and they're not specific to the US either.
They echo throughout cultures. Due to these concerns, countries have
legal punishments for the act of desertion, incredibly harsh punishments.
In the US, any person found guilty of desertion or
attempt to desert shall be punished. If the offense is
(36:27):
committed in a time of war, they will be punished
by death or such other punishment as a court martial
might direct. But if the desertion or attempt to desert
occurs at any other time, by such punishment other than death,
as a court martial may direct. What that means is,
if we're in a war and you run away, technically.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
You're just gonna get shot.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
It's the death penalty. Yeah, and if you might get
court martialed and sentenced to several years in jail or
something like that. And in some cases in the Vietnam War,
there would be attempts to negotiate with deserters where people
would say, through one entity or another, they would say, hey, well,
if you agree to come with us voluntarily, then you know,
(37:15):
just have a year in prison, dishonorable discharge, go on
with your life. We get it, war as hell, come
in from the cold. But still it's tough to believe
people when they say things like that, especially if you
know legally it is a death sentence.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
Yeah, Juliana's on, It's just come on over, man, it's
gonna be fine. We're going to treat you well.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
What secuidor god that we ain't got oh too soon,
too soon, we should do an update on him soon.
But with all this in play, we have to ask
ourselves how far would Uncle Sam go to buy hook
or by crook? Bring it soldiers home.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
And we'll find out right after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Here's where it gets crazy. The US went above and
beyond all legal thresholds and attempts to surveil and or
apprehend deserters with minimum publicity.
Speaker 3 (38:24):
Absolutely that one of the top priorities of let's say
the goals here were to avoid propaganda of successful desertion.
So if we don't want anyone to know that people
have deserted and they got away with it, like, let's
keep that to a minimum at least. And it was
(38:46):
also a thing where it was probably not a good
idea to actually go out and assassinate deserters, like that's
probably a bad idea because this is you know, you
turn them into a martyr of sorts. And again I'm
speaking from the side of the intelligence system within the
United States, like this is what you're imagining. That would
just it would totally fuel the fire for anti war
(39:07):
protests and the activists that are already inside the United
States fomenting these feelings of anti war. And this led
to something that we researched this.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Week called Operation Chaos. Yes, yes, it's true. The intelligence
agencies were in quite a pickle, a rock and a
hard place type dilimma. You don't want deserters to flout
the law, right, you don't want them to be successful
(39:39):
in their desertion, and you certainly don't want other people
to know that they can do any of that. But
you also don't want to be known as a government
that actively goes out and kills its own. Yeah, neither
of these are particularly good looks. So Operation Chaos was
formed a special operations group within the CIA, and it
(40:04):
was secret for a while for a long time after
it was closed down, because it only functioned for a
number of years.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
Right, Yeah, It was established in August of nineteen sixty
seven and it was then active for six full years.
And the stated purpose here was to collect, coordinate, evaluate,
and report on foreign contacts with American dissidents. And for it,
they collected information on dissident Americans and they did that
(40:35):
via the FBI domestically. So if they wanted to get
information on dissonance who were within the United States, they
used the FBI because that's their purpose.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Who's on the mailing list for this communist newsletter?
Speaker 3 (40:46):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then I guess thankfully for these
for this intelligence community. There are so many active military
stations overseas in other countries that they are just using
these stations to collect information on let's say, the local dissidents,
the local American dissidents.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
The local would be expats. Right, So, how many people
were involved with this on the espionage.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
Side, Well, you heard us say fifty two people at
the top. There were officially fifty two staff members working
on Operation Chaos officially. Well, yeah, because you had there
there were operatives. I'm going to go out on a
limb and say there were probably operatives who were not
known in any official capacity or maybe even recorded anywhere.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Ah, just a friend of a friend.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
Perhaps, just I mean, in any undercover operation, there's going
to be a few of those.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
If you're just actors assets m hmm, yeah, you know what.
I think you were absolutely right, or a few people
who may not know that they are assets or helping
the operation. Right, they just run a local newspaper.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
They're a photographer who happens to have a mysterious but
loaded benefactor would like to buy some photos. Oh jeez, Yeah,
that's how it happens.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
So they successfully did this right for years, they created
files on thousands of US citizens.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
Yes, seventy two hundred officially American citizens. And then within
these files there are the names of over three hundred
thousand people in organizations that were associated with those seventy
two hundred people.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Just to be clear, this is an active conspiracy. Yeah,
the government is the conspirator in this case. But this
is illegal. They're not supposed to be doing it, and
they sure did.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
I mean it's not as bad as the NSA from
a couple of years back and currently, but you know
it's not great.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
A right, I mean it feels weird to split these airs, yes,
but the argument used to justify these actions was very,
very similar to the argument used today to justify the
essays war. Access to anything you do online in theory,
anyone you associate with and anyone they associate with, and
(43:08):
on and on and on. Kevin Bacon pops up sooner
than you think in this game.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
And echelon five eyes forever.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Amen, Oh boy, do you think we have records?
Speaker 3 (43:19):
Come on, remember we used.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
To joke about it intern at the Essay. If someone
was listening to us.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
By this point, we have like an associate producer, or
there's somebody.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
That guys that poor guy or girl, that poor kid
is just so.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
Bored, right, maybe it's a junior officer.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Do you think we got oh man moving on up? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
all right, you know what, I'll take it. And hey,
if you're listening, I don't know if you can write in,
but feel free to do so. Yeah, we would love,
we would love to hear from you. And also, if
you know my internet history friendly stranger. You'll see that
(43:59):
I'm really into call flower recipes, so send a few
my way. Cauliflowers amazing.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
Oh okay, we're talking about the food.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
Right, Yeah, the food, not euphemism, not a weird thing.
Ok I actually love cooking with cauliflower. Nice Nol does
as well. I believe very good. I'm a broccoli guy,
but you know, I'm trying to get into more vegetables. Man,
Broccoli is my first love.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
Dude, food wise, Nice this took a dirt.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
We're just trying to prove that we are innocuous to
the n essay, and we have an opportunity to attempt
to that because we are aware that these programs exist.
The people being surveiled had very strong suspicions and in
many cases very strong circumstantial evidence, but for the most part,
(44:47):
they had no proof of what was happening. They had
no opportunity to be like, hey, yeah, you know, I'm
not great on the war, but have you heard about cauliflower.
They couldn't do any of that endearing stuff. Yeah, and
most people, even in the modern day, didn't have any
idea what was happening. We learned about this through a
(45:07):
book called Operation Chaos, the Vietnam deserters who fought the
CIA brainwashers and themselves.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Oh that's a great title.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
Yeah, it's pretty specific. In this book, the author Matthew
Sweet outlines the strange and often contradictory accounts from Vietnam
deserters who joined the ADC that we mentioned there in Sweden,
and he also asked them about their opinions regarding intelligence
agencies from the US, Russia, and Sweden, all of whom
(45:36):
infiltrated their group at some point in some shape, fashion
or form, and then later infiltrated the subsequent extremist offshoots
of the ADC. Because Operation Chaos, as you outlined earlier,
matt is an umbrella term domestic monitoring, foreign monitoring, all
(46:00):
sort of for the larger aim. The aspects of Operation
Chaos that Matthew Sweet focuses on are exclusively the stories
of the deserters living abroad, and he tracks them down
those who are still alive, and he asked them to
tell their stories. He also asked members of foreign intelligence
(46:25):
agencies to tell their stories if they can. Right and
the US intelligence agency, the community in the US had
a sustained effort to not only infiltrate these deserter organizations,
but to repatriate deserters, they're the ones who would say, hey,
no harm, no foul, just to come back. We can
(46:46):
probably get you out of jail in a year dishonorable discharge.
But you can go on with your life.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
All you have to do is say that you made
a mistake publicly, that you regret it. You're still Team
America and we're all good.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
Have you seen the show Barry?
Speaker 1 (47:03):
Yes? Yeah, yeah, yeah? Are you a fan?
Speaker 3 (47:05):
Yeah? You did something just now that totally reminded me
of I forget his name. He's the super nice guy
who's one of the bad guys. He's baldy. Hey, Barry,
what's going on? Just let you know. You know they're
gonna kill you, so anyway, be careful.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
I love that guy. That's one of my favorite characters
in that show.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
He's awesome.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
That's what you call it alopecia, he's hairless. Yeah, yeah,
that that guy is for me, a scene stealer because
everyone he meets and this is not spoiling the show
for you. This guy is a gangster who does horrific things.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
What did he ever did anything? Horrific. I couldn't even
tell you. And this is we don't even have to
talk about this, man, I just I all I could
think about was that for a split second, and then
it just reverberated.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
Yeah, because well, the the most endearing thing about that
dude is everyone he meet is described as a super
nice guy. Oh yeah, he's a super nice guy, especially
Barry though, Barry, do you want some juice? Yeah, I've
got to go back and rewatch it. If you haven't
watched the do check it out because it's it's a
fantastic show. And it's not Bill Haters in it, but
(48:18):
it's it's not really a comedy.
Speaker 3 (48:21):
No, but fantastic.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
Yeah. Yeah, the comedy parts are pretty much that guy
that we just mentioned. And did you know the other
gangster is the bad guy from True Detective.
Speaker 3 (48:32):
Yes, yeah, man, so awesome.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
Now I'm impressed.
Speaker 3 (48:37):
Okay, So anyway, oh yes, anyway.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So graphic widespread abuse is a power
by the intelligence agencies, not just the US, also Russian
and Sweden. So they wanted to the US wanted to
repatriate these deserters, suppress or nullify their anti war messages, right,
and in this book, Matthew Sweet explores the explores the
(49:06):
facts through statistics, but then primarily through anecdotes and accounts
of the deserters and the other players on the field. So, well,
who what's our Who's who? If we were to do
with who's who, what are some of the main players
in this.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
Well, one is one of the deserters is Chuck Onen
O N A N. And he joined the US Marines
when he was a bit younger. Then he ended up
deserting to Sweden via Iceland. With this ADC and the
other information that was in the book. There's a little
(49:45):
section at the front of this book that gives you
kind of a rundown of the characters, and it said
he's now a big fan of medical marijuana.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
Right, Yeah, If you read Suite's initial encounters with the
he gets to his house, uh, he's The author spends
some time describing how this dude thinks marijuana is going
to save the world, and how he's going to start
this growing operation, and how he's extremely uncomfortable because I
(50:17):
think at some point while Matthew Sweet is talking to
this guy, a drug deal occurs. Oh it's I think
someone comes to buy marijuana.
Speaker 3 (50:26):
Oh, geez.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
And this is this is one guy. Uh, there's there
are other ones. One of the big players, and one
of the most controversial is a fellow named Michael Vale.
Speaker 3 (50:40):
Yes, this is I guess, the leader of the the ADC,
the American Deserters Committee, and he was considered by some
to be the resputant of the ADC. And this guy
was suspected of being a CIA infiltrator.
Speaker 1 (50:57):
He used in terry gation and breakdown techniques on people.
Speaker 3 (51:02):
Oh geez.
Speaker 1 (51:03):
So he was known for breaking down would be members
of the ADC or people trying to join the ADC.
These are people who have already deserted on the basis
of their politics or their beliefs, reducing them to tears,
winnowing away their personalities so he could remake them anew.
And a lot of people followed him. He had disciples,
(51:26):
you know, a lot of people hated the guy. And
using those sorts of techniques, of course, lends some credence
to the idea that someone is a CIA infiltrator works
for an intelligence agency. But what becomes a parent very
quickly here is that these people were all accusing each other.
(51:46):
No one was dedicated enough to the cause no one
was ideological enough. Everyone could be a mole.
Speaker 3 (51:54):
The paranoia was definitely running high because there was another
gentleman named Bob Burningham. He went by Arlow Jacobs for
part of that time. He was a student radical, a
weatherman if you will, part of the Weather Underground, and
he was suspected of being a CIA infiltrator as well
by other members of the group.
Speaker 1 (52:15):
It's the hip new thing to do.
Speaker 3 (52:17):
Yeah, And then we get into the actual spies, the
people who are confirmed intelligence officers like Richard ober who
was pretty much the head of Operation Chaos, or at
least in some way as the functional head of it, right,
And he was considered by a lot of others to
be paranoid and secretive in his own workings, which again,
(52:39):
you know, if you're running an operation like that that's
full of secrecy and lies, it gotta be pretty paranoid, right, right.
Speaker 1 (52:46):
And he expected the same out of the people who
worked with and for him. M hm, you know. And
for his part, Hugh will argue, and he does argue
in the book, I believe that the mission was entirely
meant to surveil and collect information, not to do any
sort of skullduggery or wetwork or kidnapping or assassination or
(53:11):
any of that black bag hoopla.
Speaker 3 (53:13):
I mean, the state of goals are just that, just.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
Vacuum up the information, right, who's sending who notes, who's
calling who? That's the official story. Yeah, there's another member
of the intelligence community that pops up in the book.
Speaker 3 (53:31):
Oh yeah, there's a gentleman named Frank Rafalco. And he
was working on the Black Panther detail of Operation Chaos
because they were looking at what they considered to be
extremist groups, and they considered sections of the Black Panthers
to be just that. And this guy was the only
officer so far, at least according to Matthew Sweet that
(53:52):
has spoken publicly about Operation Chaos so far.
Speaker 1 (53:57):
Yeah, and the stories continue. It's just strange to learn
that not only did this operation go on successfully on
a global scale for what six years, more than half
a decade, but there were no repercussions for the US. Right,
A lot of the deserters found their way back to
(54:20):
the States or found their way to a friendly country,
and many of their I mean, regardless of whether someone
from the outside looking in would call their lives successful
or unsuccessful. The truth is that their lives were tremendously
affected by this program right in ways that we probably
(54:42):
still don't fully understand, And there's still questions there. We
don't know for sure who was or wasn't a mole,
who did or did not provide information. Many of these
people had torturous personal lives, drug addiction, right, heavy debts,
childhoods full of abuse, and it's very difficult to speculate
(55:03):
what motivated them and how deep they got. We know
something happened because the information got out there, but we
have to ask ourselves what did this mean in the
long run. Did it change the course of the Vietnam War?
Probably not? Probably not. It's you know, in comparison to
(55:25):
two point seven million soldiers, it's not that many people.
Speaker 3 (55:29):
Were there any large movements from groups that were helping
out dissidents, I mean it doesn't seem to there's no
at least there aren't many. No. I can't think of
a single one where the United States took any kind
of action against a civilian group in another country because
they were aiding dissidents, at least not overtly. No. I mean, yeah,
(55:52):
that we would know about, right.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
Right, and it's common to work through proxy groups and
so on. But we have to think beyond the events
of Vietnam that still have many unexplained things. Agent Orange
is an example. The recurred during the Iraq War, at
least allegations of exposure to it. Is it possible that
programs like this exist now in the current wars the
(56:18):
US is embroiled in or I guess since we don't
call them wars anymore, the current conflicts?
Speaker 3 (56:24):
Yeah, right, who is a situation?
Speaker 1 (56:28):
The situation?
Speaker 3 (56:28):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (56:29):
Who is monitoring these interactions? Why are people deserting in
the numbers that occurred during the Vietnam War? Probably not?
Probably not because there's not a draft. Yeah, but that
could change.
Speaker 3 (56:44):
Oh, that could absolutely change. It just takes an Act
of Congress.
Speaker 1 (56:48):
Right, So we wonder. We have to wonder if there's
more stuff they don't want you to know, if there's
an Operation Chaos two point zero out there somewhere, and
if so, what's it called. Currently, the US US military
is comprised of volunteers, meaning that no one is conscripted
or drafted, and there are no laws that compel a
(57:08):
US citizen to serve mandatory time in the armed forces.
And that's that's not the same in other countries. South
Korea and Israel, for example, have laws requiring citizens to
serve in the military for X amount of time.
Speaker 3 (57:22):
Absolutely, the one thing I would say in the US,
it is still compulsory for all male citizens to submit
their information to the Selective Service system within thirty days
of their eighteenth birthday. And that's just to make sure
the selective service system remains in case a draft is necessary.
In Congress puts the hammer down and makes it happen.
Speaker 1 (57:42):
Because, as Malcolm Gladwell so eloquently explains in the Tipping Point,
nothing seems like it will ever happen until suddenly it does.
Speaker 3 (57:51):
Yeah, great point, Malcolm, great point, Great.
Speaker 1 (57:54):
Point, mister g. Today we end our episode with this,
this important point. Yes, there is no draft going on now.
There is no Operation Chaos that we are aware of,
even though the technological abilities to do so are far
and beyond what they ever were before in Vietnam. Oh yeah,
(58:15):
you know, we're all carrying The average person is carrying
a tiny spy in their.
Speaker 3 (58:21):
Pocket, two cameras at least in a mic.
Speaker 1 (58:23):
Right, and how tough is it to get in there?
Who watches the watchman, all that jazz, all that slow jazz.
Speaker 3 (58:29):
And what about on your wrist if you got a
smart watcher, who knows? What? What if you got a
Google Home or an Amazon Echo in your house man,
or a couple of security cameras.
Speaker 1 (58:40):
Don't please, it's too late.
Speaker 3 (58:42):
Does your TV have a camera on it? Does your
PlayStation have a microphone?
Speaker 1 (58:47):
You know what? Maybe if they did, I would take
better care of my like, I'd eat more healthy food,
you know, I would.
Speaker 3 (58:53):
Uh, that's where you'd start.
Speaker 1 (58:56):
That's where it's start. They'd be base level check it out,
I meaning chaos. Well, thank you, police state. But one
other important thing to hit on here is that in
many cases these deserters live on today somewhere right, and
they're real people. Are they perfect? No? Who is? Some
folks would consider them straight out traders. Other folks would
(59:18):
consider them the equivalent of freedom fighters. And there are
people who will make the argument that if they broke
the rules, the rules no longer apply to them. But
that goes into what sort of importance we place on
the rule of law, And it goes into, perhaps even
(59:39):
more importantly, what importance we place on the lawmakers obeying
the laws. They create.
Speaker 3 (59:47):
Wow. So what do you think about Operation Chaos? Have
you read the book? Do you know anything about it?
Have you ever encountered anyone who was a dissonant? An
American or otherwise. We'd love to hear your stories. We'd
love for you to contact us and just talk to
us about it. You can find us on Twitter. You
can find us on Facebook where Conspiracy Stuff. On Instagram
(01:00:09):
where Conspiracy Stuff Show. You can find our websites. Stuff
they Don't Want You Tono dot com. And that's the
end of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts
or questions about this episode, you can get into contact
with us in a number of different ways. One of
the best is to give us a call. Our number
is one eight three three st d WYTK. If you
(01:00:32):
don't want to do that, you can send us a
good old fashioned email.
Speaker 2 (01:00:35):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (01:00:39):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
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Welcome back, fellow conspiracy realist. We returned to you with
a classic that we think you'll enjoy. As you know,
we have talked at length about the big fantasy job
in the government. Who gets to choose the names for
secret operations? Right? Who gets to make the acronyms or retrodyms?
What is Operation Chaos? It was that thing in fight Club, right,
(00:23):
wasn't Wasn't that called Operation Chaos?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Wasn't.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
I think it was where they destroy like, you know,
public works of corporate art. Huh, mayhem, Project Mayhem. This
is Operation Chaos, not yes, Project Mayhem. Yeah, they also
ran No.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I think this is more proxy war stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Right, yeah, yeah, So this is a true story, real conspiracy.
During the Vietnam War, Uncle Sam was desperate to UH
to clamp down on domestic opposition to the war effort
protest in the streets, people saying, you know, why can
we commit atrocity an ocean away? But we can't make
(01:04):
sure people who live here have any kind of quality
of life? And their solution was not to improve the
domestic quality of life for Americans. It was Operation Chaos.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Let's dive right from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies.
History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back
now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
They call me Ben. We are joined, of course with
our super producer Paul Deckatt on the ones and twos.
Most importantly, you are here. You are you, and that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
That's what this is. Brand new logo rocking feeling good.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yeah, that's true. We have the six finger logo designed
by the way, by our super producer, Paul Paul nice work, sir,
with a consultation from our graphic artist team.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Yeah. Pam, Yeah, we can say your name. It's okay,
Pam is awesome, Pam Peacock.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah. And we have a situation here wherein it may
be deceptively easy to think that there are only three
or four people involved in stuff they don't want you
to know. That could not be further from the truth,
because this podcast, like many many other things in the world,
(02:46):
has an entire team behind the curtain actively working to
make stuff like this sound easy. I think we have
the easiest jobs on the team, to be honest.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Sure, absolutely, we just get in here and ramble. Man,
That's what I do. You do the hard stuff? I
just go well, Ben, guess what what? Oh?
Speaker 1 (03:09):
I fell for it?
Speaker 3 (03:10):
See there you go?
Speaker 1 (03:12):
No, no, no no. But the reason we're bringing up
this idea of a team that often is not acknowledged
is because today's episode dives into something that could easily
be seen as the actions of just a few isolated people.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Absolutely maybe just fifty two of.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Them, perhaps as few as fifty two. But as we're
going to find, just like this podcast, today's topic has many, many, many,
many more people in play, some of whom remain mysterious
and unidentified today. If you're listening to this show, then
(03:59):
you probably won't be surprised. Matt and I are going
to go out on a limb and assume you will
not be surprised to learn that most governments, at one
point or another, love them or hate them, have perpetrated secret,
illegal programs against either their citizens or citizens of another country.
And since our show is based in the US, we
naturally tend to explore stories based in this country. This
(04:23):
one is no exception, but it's one you may not
have heard of before. Today we're exploring a classified program
known as Operation Chaos.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Yes, and to discuss this program, we need to take
ourselves back to nineteen fifty four onwards just a little
bit there, to the Second Indo China War. You probably
don't know it as that. You probably know it as
the Vietnam War. I know. That's how I was a
little while ago. It was a conflict between North and
South Vietnam, which were two separate countries at the time,
(04:55):
and it lasted from nineteen fifty four until nineteen seventy five.
Now this is distilling it like crazy, but this is
just to say what it is. And you probably already
know this. North Vietnam was a communist government. It was
run by a communist government, and they worked with these
rebels in South Vietnam who were called the Viet Cong,
(05:17):
and together they attempted to overthrow the government of South Vietnam.
And this was a terrible, terrible conflict that cost the
lives of so many and we'll discuss that here shortly,
but ultimately the physical combat took place in both South
Vietnam and North Vietnam. Laos and Cambodia, which are immediately
(05:41):
to the west of the Vietnam. Of Vietnam. That's right there,
and I guess spoiler alert. Ultimately the North Vietnamese were
successful in their attempts to overthrow the South Vietnamese government.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Yeah yeah, and along the way the US got involved.
You may have heard us reference earlier instances surrounding the
catalyst that set the US on a path to war
in this part of the world, the most controversial one
being the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Yes, which did we
(06:16):
do a whole episode on that yet or did we
just do false Flags?
Speaker 3 (06:19):
We did false Flags where we discussed it at length,
but you know, maybe we could go deeper. Who knows?
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Who knows? Check out the False Flags episode if you
have yet to do so. There's some pretty interesting stuff there.
For now, we're going to explore the not the entire
Vietnam War, because this is the setup right to Operation Chaos.
We're going to look at the people the US sent
(06:47):
to wage this war. The Vietnam War, as it's called
in the US, used a conscription system, a draft, and
that is something that hasn't occurred since. Roughly two point
seven million US soldiers served in Vietnam, and of those
two point seven million, around twenty five percent were draftees,
(07:12):
meaning that they were forced to go, and in most
cases it would be a crime for them to refuse
to serve in the war. Regardless of their ideological or
political affiliations. There are cases where you could be a
conscientious objector, for instance, a pacifist or a so called
pacifist like the Quakers. Lindon LaRouche was raised a Quaker,
(07:33):
which will be important a little bit later in today's show.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Or Muhammad Ali who was a conscientious objector.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
M hmm. Yeah, and so conscientious objection is a genuine thing,
but there were a lot of people who high tailed
it to Canada, for instance, because they felt like they
wouldn't be able to make a case for conscientious objection,
that they would have been popped into the shake and
bake system and then sent off to die in the jungle.
(08:02):
That's how a lot of people looked at it.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Yeah, especially towards the end of the Vietnam conflicts, as
the propaganda and the truth of the situation was coming.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Forward, and many, many, many other people. As you can
tell from the statistics, about seventy five percent of the
forces there volunteered or were already career military yes, and
not all of these people came back. We discussed this
briefly in our episode on the allegations of POW's left
(08:38):
behind in Vietnam, which is still a contentious topic of conversation,
right because there's simply not enough proof, Yeah, one way
or the other, unfortunately, And we know that of the
people who went, of the roughly two point seven million,
not everybody made it home. That's the reality. But we
(09:01):
have the actual numbers too.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Right, Yeah, one out of every ten Americans who served
in Vietnam was in some way a casualty. There was
somewhere between fifty eight thousand, one hundred and forty eight
and fifty two hundred and twenty that were killed, just
killed while they were there, and then another three hundred
and four thousand that were wounded. And that's an estimate there, right.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yeah. The oldest and this is again just on the
US side, the oldest person on the US side killed
was sixty two years old. Of the people who were killed,
sixty one percent, more than half were younger than twenty
one wow. And more than eleven thousand of those killed
were younger than twenty jeez. And five people who were
(09:48):
killed in Vietnam were only sixteen years old.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
That's again on the American side. That's very important because
there are a lot of people under sixteen years old
that died that were not on the American side.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Right, that were civilians, Yeah, that were simply trying to
live their lives. So let's look at the Vietnamese side.
The US military estimates that between two hundred thousand and
two hundred and fifty thousand South Vietnamese soldiers died in
the war. And in nineteen ninety five, Vietnam released its
official estimate of war casualties, and it cited as many
(10:25):
as two million civilians on both sides, the North Vietnamese
and South Vietnamese side, and they said, in addition, there
were one point one million North Vietnamese and viet Cong
soldier casualties.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
That is unthinkable.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
It's a bloodbath.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Yeah. Well, you know, the overall tonnage of bombs that
were dropped during the Vietnam War exceeds that of if
you add up most of World War II, of just
if you think about the amount of munition that was
used there, it exceeds almost all of World War Two,
which is insane.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
And in many cases some of that ordinance remains.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Yeah, in Laos, right, unexploded.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Right, And the US conducted secret illegal operations in Cambodia
and Laos in particular. A lot of people here in
the US agreed with the war, and a lot of
people did not. And this is where we hit upon
the concept of deserters. Deserters would be a little bit
(11:32):
different from draft dodgers, right, yes, yeah, So if you're
a draft dodger, your number gets called up, they pull
your card, and you say, for one reason or another,
forget this, I'm out of here. I'm going to Canada,
I'm going to Europe. I'm gonna head out for the
(11:54):
Southern continent.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
You know. And there were organizations set up to assist
people that wanted to the draft. That's a that's a
pejorative kind of a draft dodger. But like they wanted
to what is a better way to do?
Speaker 1 (12:07):
They did not want to participate in a war with
which they did not agree.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
Oh there you go. But yeah, they just they disagreed.
But if we're gonna talk about what a deserter is
an actual deserter, this is the military has a classification
for this, and it is that it's any person that's
been absent without leave a service member, mind you, for
(12:32):
more than thirty days.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Thirty days or less, you're a wall, right.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Yes, exactly, And you have to be an active member
of the military to be considered a deserter.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
And desertion is something that occurs in almost every war. Oh, yes,
it's It's often looked down upon. It's seen as an
unpatriotic move, to say the least, and at times it's
seen as from tremendously unethical, right, the idea being that
(13:04):
someone has already to some extent agreed to serve in
a military, yeah, and then they have gone back on
their word or the vow they took, the oath they took.
And Vietnam was no different. In fact, quite a few
people deserted during Vietnam.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Yeah. According to reports from nineteen seventy two. From let's
see July nineteen sixty six until November nineteen seventy two,
around four hundred and twenty three thousand United States military
personnel were classified as deserters. Now again, they've been classified
as deserters. It doesn't mean that that's necessarily you know,
(13:43):
whatever the situation they're going through. Those are very they're
varying to a large extent, but they're classified that way
by the military. Now, let's see, by July of nineteen
seventy two, according to this report, a large number of
these people were quote returned to military control. That's three
hundred and ninety one thousand of the four hundred and
(14:05):
twenty three thousand, so they were returned to military control.
And it's interesting because this around this time frame nineteen
sixty six to nineteen seventy two, this is when the
US military began even tracking these numbers because they had
been relatively low in the past. If you look at
World War Two, there were sixteen point three million Americans
(14:29):
who served in some capacity in the military during World
War Two, and there were only an estimated forty thousand
deserters at that time. But again, like, when do those numbers?
When are those numbers put forth? Is it after you've
returned a lot of the other ones to military control?
Are they still considered deserters in that number? It gets
(14:49):
a little fishy because they weren't tracking it very.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Well, right, Yeah, And again these are official numbers, which
will almost always differ from actual numbers, especially when you
get into the big government stuff. Whenever a government reports
bad news about itself, there's going to be a difference
between what is officially said and what actually happened. But
(15:17):
let's not get lost in the numbers, right, Let's explore
these deserters as people. They didn't one day, well, not
to speculate too much, but most of them did not
one day say you know, I gave it a shot.
I'm just gonna just gonna hide out. These people, being rational,
(15:43):
intelligent beings, had a series of desires and motivations and
fears and ambitions that drove them to commit this act
of desertion. But what are those reasons? What are those motivations?
We'll get to that after a word from our sponsor.
(16:10):
We're back. And the first reason for desertion is incredibly
dare I say, painfully apparent. It is the fear of
physical harm or death.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Yeah, that's the one that stands right out.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Like, Hey, for instance, I'm born in Nebraska, right, and
I was easily going to live most of my life
in my small town. I was gonna go watch the
local high school or college games. And now because someone
I never met in Washington, d C. Has a problem
(16:47):
with Vietnam. Now, here I am. I don't know these people.
I don't speak Vietnamese. That guy next to me got
shot in the head. This is terrible. Yeah, that's understandable.
And people have people deserve did for fear of being
the next headshot at times. Right, and the calculation. Again,
(17:07):
this is not to deride people. We're attempting to illustrate
the psychological process. They reached a point where the instinct
for self preservation outweighed the social obligation to do one's duty.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Or the ideological belief that what they're doing is more
important than their safety.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Right. Yeah, And I'm so glad you mentioned that, because
that's another reason for desertion. Right. Ideological differences.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Yeah, maybe I don't agree that the way of life
we are fighting for, you know, the stated goals of
removing communism or saving this country from communist invaders. Maybe
I don't agree with.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
It, right. Yeah, maybe you agreed with it originally, right
when you signed up in northern California or Oregon or something. Yeah,
and then you went to the war and you saw
what was happening on the ground, and you said, this
is not what I believe to be just. And I'm
(18:09):
not afraid of dying, but I will not be a
part of this thing with which I disagree.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Yeah, and that's a whole other situation there. When you're
looking at the actual operations that occurred and some of
the tragedies and massacres that were it's true that we're
perpetrated by the US military, and it's unfortunate.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Fact and sometimes perpetrated by factions of the US military
without the approval.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Yes, oh, absolutely, with.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Larger entities, absolutely, but yes, those atrocities did occur. A
third reason for an individual to dessert would be a
little bit more mercenary, an opportunity for a new life,
for celebrity, for material goods, material gain, or for profit. So,
(18:58):
for example, you can think of the stories of people
in the Korea War. There have been a couple of
guys who deserted to the DPRK, to the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea, and when they deserted, they were occasionally
treated like celebrities. They were the bad Americans and the
(19:21):
propaganda films, they were literally movie stars. Yeah, it did
not end well for them, to be clear about that.
I think one guy recently was I believe he was
allowed to see his mother before she passed as she's
he lived most of his life in North Korea. But
(19:43):
those are the reasons. Fear physical harm, don't kill me.
Ideological differences. I disagree with the concept or the motivations
for this war, or the opportunity, the self serving opportunity
to be famous, to get paid. Okay, Yeah, and those
(20:04):
are I mean, there are nuances to allure, absolutely sure.
But let's let's look at the other side of this
war as well. There was not just a physical side
of this large proxy war between capitalism and communism. There
was an ideological side, and war was functioning as a business. Yes,
(20:30):
war has always been about resource extraction, control, suppression, management,
et cetera. And deserters were another resource to be exploited.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Oh yes, by other countries, by enemies of the state.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Yeah, for the USSR and communism at large, deserters are fantastic,
especially if they come over to your side. The best
anti war advertise, heiss are always going to be images
of a wonderful life somehow better on the other side
of the trenches, the other side of the conflict. In
(21:07):
the US, for instance, you'll see propaganda that touts amenities
like we have refrigerators, we have new automobiles. Why are
you fighting? You can buy four kinds of ham in
our grocery stores.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Think about how much food you can cook with this microwave.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Mm hmmmm hmm. Exactly. You know this idea of selling
again in the American dream, the retro futuristic Jetson's life.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Another thing that is enormously beneficial from a propaganda perspective
is testimony from deserters actual word of mouth. Don't believe
this advertisement about the microwave.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Oh, I don't believe. I don't know. I don't believe
that at all. You know why, because I've seen it
before and that all that microwave does is burn your
food and it just makes things soggy. Don't listen to them.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Join the revolutionary yeah, whatever that revolution might be at
the time. Yeah, spot on. You will tend to believe
a person more so than an idea, especially depending on
how that person is presented to you.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
Ah, there you go.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
So this is a crucial ideological tool for the forces
opposing the US in the end of China or Vietnam conflict. Often,
these two propaganda opportunities were combined in anti US operations.
A deserter laments the injustices of the war and imperialistic
US culture overall, and then pivots to tout the freedom
(22:36):
they encountered after crossing over. That freedom might not be
what the Western world would think of as freedom. It
might not be necessarily freedom of speech. It might be
portrayed as freedom to join the great collective pushing for
a better world or something like that. But what about
(22:57):
European nations.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
A lot of times European nations are are they want
to be seen as neutral parties when there's something like
this going on, some kind of conflict of this nature,
or maybe they want to be a safe haven where
either a deserter or otherwise could come and you know,
live in their land, just to show that they're not
(23:19):
on either side really of the conflict, Like you can
come here, We'll give you safe passage. You know, you
can stay here for X number of days or weeks
or years, and just to show that they can act
on their own accord and not be influenced by again,
usually the US or whichever whichever country is in power.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Right like the old Disney Pinocchio, I have no strings. Yeah,
I can act you nilaterally.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Yes, and we will help you out, but we also
won't you know, we won't. We won't really help or
hurt you, but we'll give you safe.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Haven, right, Yeah, a refugee status, yes, perhaps, or a visa.
In Sweden in particular, many deserters joined something called the
American Deserters Committee, named in what I can only imagine
is a burst of creativity. Yes, sorry, that's iby, it's
(24:11):
they had other stuff going on. I'm sure they didn't
spend you know, a week work shopping the name.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Yeah, and there were American Deserters Committees throughout several countries
that kind of popped up to do a similar thing.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
So what were they doing.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
Well, they've really just wanted to have some kind of
united front for deserters, a voice for everyone to speak
in unison, right, like, all deserters together. This is this
is us. We are We have a powerful voice.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Ah. Yes, we are now a voting block of some
sort or we can unite. And now it's not just
one or two of us occasionally on anti war television spots.
It's a huge group of us all at once. Yeah,
old stage pro test.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
Yeah, and we can issue a statement from us, not
just from me, Matt, the deserter.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Oh good call, I didn't even think about that. It
sounds so much more official. Uncle Sam was predictably concerned,
very much so, because there are hazards for the US
when it comes to deserters from the war, and one
of the it's tough to say which is more important,
(25:28):
but we can walk through a couple of them in
no particular order. Then public opinion support for the war
is incredibly fragile. On the domestic front, the role of
the media in the Vietnam War, especially as it escalated,
cannot be overstated. This was not World War Two, where
information was often carefully managed for the domestic front. Journalists
(25:52):
were out there. Sixty something of them got killed in
the process, but they were showing things that the American
public would not expect to see, and in many cases
was not supposed to see.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Yeah, would not normally see in any kind of conflict
like this.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
And because of this, the US was unable to entirely
suppress the flow of domestic information from domestic sources, much
less suppressed the flow of anti war messages from abroad.
Can't It's tough to scramble a short wave radio, you
know what I mean? Oh, yeah, and there was a
(26:31):
tremendous and plausible, very well founded concern that anti war
movements in the US could trigger massive domestic unrest. We're
talking about the fall of states and follow the rule
of law, and that if the American public sympathized with
deserters who could not return home and who also implicitly
(26:55):
avoided the legal consequences of desertion, then the powder can
would explode. People would watch this and say, these people
deserve to come back to our homeland. And I guess
our homeland is not as powerful as it wants us
to believe.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Oh, man, right, if the ideological foundations begin to crumble,
then everything.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Does sounds kind of abstract, But I think you're right.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
People are so weird, you know, like there's so many
things that if we if we attempted to explain to
an extraterrestrial civilization, we would sound insane.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Oh hey, welcome. Let me take you two our leaders
hop in this we call a car. And then the
alien's like, why are we stopping? Oh we have to
wait for this thing to change colors? Yea, why there's
no one here, It's just the thing we do. Man.
Cool be cool. We're on the way to see the president.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
Wait, hold on, are you saying Are you saying that
I shouldn't follow traffic signals if there's no one around.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
I cannot legally I agree with that. No, I'm using
it as just as a poor example.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
No, no, it's not for example.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
It's weird because we'll sit I think most death has
as a great line about that blackstar. Oh nice, they're
quoting a poem in one of the songs where a
guy says, we were sitting three deep into traffic stop
talking about how brainwashed some of our brothers and sisters
(28:27):
are while we waited for green light to tell us
when to go. Oh, it sounds way better when when
you hear.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
The and there's a nice beat behind it.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Yeah. But this, I mean, we're we're pointing out, hopefully
that the ideological things, the programmed behaviors of people are
very easily normalized and accepted, and it doesn't take as
much as you might think to disrupt those things. Absolutely right,
we're gullible. How many people did you see where it
(29:00):
tie today? Why do they do that? What does a
tie do? What's the point? What's the point of a tie?
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Okay, so sorry, No, you're good.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
You're good on my mind for a while.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
I get it, Man, I feel the same way. I'm
just not as vocal about it. I need to start,
you know, saying the things I think I feel like.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
I feel like saying that ties are silly is maybe
not the best way to start a revolution. But anyway,
ideology aside. Sorry, I went off the rails on that one, Matt.
There are other things that are perhaps more material.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Oh yeah, the other the next one has to do
with triangulation. Really, so, let's imagine that you are another country, right,
You're an intelligence officer for another country, and there's a
group of American deserters. You meet one of them, and
you start talking to them. Maybe you even let's say,
capture them, or maybe maybe you don't even have to capture.
(29:54):
Maybe you just have some drinks with them at a bar.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Oh yeah, And you.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
Get intelligence from this person. You're essentially interrogating them, right,
one individual, one small group of individuals, and you get
any and all relevant information that you can from these people.
Operation aims programs, both ongoing ones that are occurring right now,
ones from the past. You can get all kinds of
details about your enemy with somebody like this. And then
(30:24):
here's the deal I said, triangulation. You take that information
you've gathered, then you compare and contrast it to another individual,
perhaps that you met at another bar or that was
also captured.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Okay, question them separately.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Yeah, and now you've got leads, You've got real leads.
You can you can decide what is probably bunk, what
is probably real. I don't know, it's a it's a
gold mine for an intelligence mind.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Yeah, yeah, because then you would be able to falsify misinformation.
Oh yeah, right, unless the people you were questioning already
had an established story or narrative, you would ultimately be
able to find out what they were thinking, where they
were going. And this can lead to all these massive insights.
And there's a sticky thing here. It's logical then, in
(31:18):
a world of rational actors, which all nations and states are,
it's logical then that you could be in a situation
as a leader of a country where you can rationalize
the death of a single prisoner or deserter, because it
can be framed as a effective way, albeit brutal, an
(31:39):
effective way of saving the lives of multiple other people.
And when we say, rationalize the death of a deserter
or prisoner. That doesn't just mean abandoning them, leaving them
in the cold, or throwing them to the wolves. That
also could mean sending one of your own people to
get rid of them. Possible.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
Yeah, it's an unfortunate comparison, but I think it works
of the mafia. If you join the mafia in some
capacity or another, or let's just say an organized crime association,
leaving that group is probably not a good idea, just
because for that saint, for the information that you have,
(32:21):
for the loose end that you become.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
You know, Can I make a confession to you, man,
I have never seen The Sopranos?
Speaker 3 (32:29):
What is it good? I love it?
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Do you really?
Speaker 3 (32:32):
I really?
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Did you have seen it?
Speaker 3 (32:34):
I have? I've seen it twice all the way through.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Should I watch it?
Speaker 3 (32:38):
I mean I would recommend it. What do you think
anyone Sopranos? Yeah, Tony, I.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Read the wiki. Does that count?
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Sure? That's all you need?
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Paul? Paul? Or did you watch the Sopranos? Oh, Paul
didn't watch it either. It's classic HBO. It's like, hmm,
all right, I will watch it. You are the one
who told me to watch The Wire.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
Yeah. Wow, I was one of those guys. Huh No, dude,
the Wire is so good, Paul, you got to watch
The Wire man. It's so good. It really was.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
It was great. But yeah, I liked a lot of it.
So that I think your comparison holds up this idea
of omerta, this idea of silence above all, right, and
the idea that this is a one way entry organization. Yeah,
that does apply. Maybe not to all militaries, maybe not
(33:37):
even to the US military, but that applies to a
lot of things when we start talking about the murky
world of government secrecy. And then deserters are also very
very useful as another form of propaganda. Propaganda advertised two
soldiers in the field.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
Yeah, actively occurring while soldiers are trying to fight, like
in a battle.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
Yeah. There radio stations that would bombard people with broadcasts,
and several of several of you listening to today's episode
may be Vietnam veterans, and we would be intensely interested
to hear whether you personally encountered this sort of propaganda,
(34:22):
something like Hanoi, Hannah, whatever, which would release these broadcasts
in English telling soldiers how useless, the US side of
the war was, and how dumb it was to be there.
So imagine you're up to your waist in mud and
filth and you're marching. Your feet are rotting in your socks.
(34:44):
The rain hasn't stopped for three days, and at this
point everybody knows it's just not going to.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
Some of your friends and acquaintances have just died.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
And then you hear a radio broadcast featuring a soldier
who sounds like he could be from your hometown in
the Brass getting Kansas and Oregon and California, and they're
talking about the injustices of war, the freedom of life
in neutral Sweden or Europe, the ideological struggle and progress
(35:13):
occurring in communist Russia. How much more marching do you
have in you with all these things bombarding you? What
is the limit?
Speaker 3 (35:23):
That's where that first one, the public opinion and the
ideological foundations are so important, because if you don't have,
if you don't have that stuff as just steal, if
that stuff is not steel in your mind, then maybe
your chips away enough to get you to go Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
And in many cases it must be said that that
kind of attempt at brainwashing might just make somebody more
resolute in their existing convictions. Absolutely possible, and I'm sure
that has happened. But do ue to these concerns, which
again are not specific to the Vietnam War, they echo
(36:06):
throughout history, and they're not specific to the US either.
They echo throughout cultures. Due to these concerns, countries have
legal punishments for the act of desertion, incredibly harsh punishments.
In the US, any person found guilty of desertion or
attempt to desert shall be punished. If the offense is
(36:27):
committed in a time of war, they will be punished
by death or such other punishment as a court martial
might direct. But if the desertion or attempt to desert
occurs at any other time, by such punishment other than death,
as a court martial may direct. What that means is,
if we're in a war and you run away, technically.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
You're just gonna get shot.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
It's the death penalty. Yeah, and if you might get
court martialed and sentenced to several years in jail or
something like that. And in some cases in the Vietnam War,
there would be attempts to negotiate with deserters where people
would say, through one entity or another, they would say, hey, well,
if you agree to come with us voluntarily, then you know,
(37:15):
just have a year in prison, dishonorable discharge, go on
with your life. We get it, war as hell, come
in from the cold. But still it's tough to believe
people when they say things like that, especially if you
know legally it is a death sentence.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
Yeah, Juliana's on, It's just come on over, man, it's
gonna be fine. We're going to treat you well.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
What secuidor god that we ain't got oh too soon,
too soon, we should do an update on him soon.
But with all this in play, we have to ask
ourselves how far would Uncle Sam go to buy hook
or by crook? Bring it soldiers home.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
And we'll find out right after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Here's where it gets crazy. The US went above and
beyond all legal thresholds and attempts to surveil and or
apprehend deserters with minimum publicity.
Speaker 3 (38:24):
Absolutely that one of the top priorities of let's say
the goals here were to avoid propaganda of successful desertion.
So if we don't want anyone to know that people
have deserted and they got away with it, like, let's
keep that to a minimum at least. And it was
(38:46):
also a thing where it was probably not a good
idea to actually go out and assassinate deserters, like that's
probably a bad idea because this is you know, you
turn them into a martyr of sorts. And again I'm
speaking from the side of the intelligence system within the
United States, like this is what you're imagining. That would
just it would totally fuel the fire for anti war
(39:07):
protests and the activists that are already inside the United
States fomenting these feelings of anti war. And this led
to something that we researched this.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Week called Operation Chaos. Yes, yes, it's true. The intelligence
agencies were in quite a pickle, a rock and a
hard place type dilimma. You don't want deserters to flout
the law, right, you don't want them to be successful
(39:39):
in their desertion, and you certainly don't want other people
to know that they can do any of that. But
you also don't want to be known as a government
that actively goes out and kills its own. Yeah, neither
of these are particularly good looks. So Operation Chaos was
formed a special operations group within the CIA, and it
(40:04):
was secret for a while for a long time after
it was closed down, because it only functioned for a
number of years.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
Right, Yeah, It was established in August of nineteen sixty
seven and it was then active for six full years.
And the stated purpose here was to collect, coordinate, evaluate,
and report on foreign contacts with American dissidents. And for it,
they collected information on dissident Americans and they did that
(40:35):
via the FBI domestically. So if they wanted to get
information on dissonance who were within the United States, they
used the FBI because that's their purpose.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Who's on the mailing list for this communist newsletter?
Speaker 3 (40:46):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then I guess thankfully for these
for this intelligence community. There are so many active military
stations overseas in other countries that they are just using
these stations to collect information on let's say, the local dissidents,
the local American dissidents.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
The local would be expats. Right, So, how many people
were involved with this on the espionage.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
Side, Well, you heard us say fifty two people at
the top. There were officially fifty two staff members working
on Operation Chaos officially. Well, yeah, because you had there
there were operatives. I'm going to go out on a
limb and say there were probably operatives who were not
known in any official capacity or maybe even recorded anywhere.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Ah, just a friend of a friend.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
Perhaps, just I mean, in any undercover operation, there's going
to be a few of those.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
If you're just actors assets m hmm, yeah, you know what.
I think you were absolutely right, or a few people
who may not know that they are assets or helping
the operation. Right, they just run a local newspaper.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
They're a photographer who happens to have a mysterious but
loaded benefactor would like to buy some photos. Oh jeez, Yeah,
that's how it happens.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
So they successfully did this right for years, they created
files on thousands of US citizens.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
Yes, seventy two hundred officially American citizens. And then within
these files there are the names of over three hundred
thousand people in organizations that were associated with those seventy
two hundred people.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Just to be clear, this is an active conspiracy. Yeah,
the government is the conspirator in this case. But this
is illegal. They're not supposed to be doing it, and
they sure did.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
I mean it's not as bad as the NSA from
a couple of years back and currently, but you know
it's not great.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
A right, I mean it feels weird to split these airs, yes,
but the argument used to justify these actions was very,
very similar to the argument used today to justify the
essays war. Access to anything you do online in theory,
anyone you associate with and anyone they associate with, and
(43:08):
on and on and on. Kevin Bacon pops up sooner
than you think in this game.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
And echelon five eyes forever.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Amen, Oh boy, do you think we have records?
Speaker 3 (43:19):
Come on, remember we used.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
To joke about it intern at the Essay. If someone
was listening to us.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
By this point, we have like an associate producer, or
there's somebody.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
That guys that poor guy or girl, that poor kid
is just so.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
Bored, right, maybe it's a junior officer.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Do you think we got oh man moving on up? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
all right, you know what, I'll take it. And hey,
if you're listening, I don't know if you can write in,
but feel free to do so. Yeah, we would love,
we would love to hear from you. And also, if
you know my internet history friendly stranger. You'll see that
(43:59):
I'm really into call flower recipes, so send a few
my way. Cauliflowers amazing.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
Oh okay, we're talking about the food.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
Right, Yeah, the food, not euphemism, not a weird thing.
Ok I actually love cooking with cauliflower. Nice Nol does
as well. I believe very good. I'm a broccoli guy,
but you know, I'm trying to get into more vegetables. Man,
Broccoli is my first love.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
Dude, food wise, Nice this took a dirt.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
We're just trying to prove that we are innocuous to
the n essay, and we have an opportunity to attempt
to that because we are aware that these programs exist.
The people being surveiled had very strong suspicions and in
many cases very strong circumstantial evidence, but for the most part,
(44:47):
they had no proof of what was happening. They had
no opportunity to be like, hey, yeah, you know, I'm
not great on the war, but have you heard about cauliflower.
They couldn't do any of that endearing stuff. Yeah, and
most people, even in the modern day, didn't have any
idea what was happening. We learned about this through a
(45:07):
book called Operation Chaos, the Vietnam deserters who fought the
CIA brainwashers and themselves.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Oh that's a great title.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
Yeah, it's pretty specific. In this book, the author Matthew
Sweet outlines the strange and often contradictory accounts from Vietnam
deserters who joined the ADC that we mentioned there in Sweden,
and he also asked them about their opinions regarding intelligence
agencies from the US, Russia, and Sweden, all of whom
(45:36):
infiltrated their group at some point in some shape, fashion
or form, and then later infiltrated the subsequent extremist offshoots
of the ADC. Because Operation Chaos, as you outlined earlier,
matt is an umbrella term domestic monitoring, foreign monitoring, all
(46:00):
sort of for the larger aim. The aspects of Operation
Chaos that Matthew Sweet focuses on are exclusively the stories
of the deserters living abroad, and he tracks them down
those who are still alive, and he asked them to
tell their stories. He also asked members of foreign intelligence
(46:25):
agencies to tell their stories if they can. Right and
the US intelligence agency, the community in the US had
a sustained effort to not only infiltrate these deserter organizations,
but to repatriate deserters, they're the ones who would say, hey,
no harm, no foul, just to come back. We can
(46:46):
probably get you out of jail in a year dishonorable discharge.
But you can go on with your life.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
All you have to do is say that you made
a mistake publicly, that you regret it. You're still Team
America and we're all good.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
Have you seen the show Barry?
Speaker 1 (47:03):
Yes? Yeah, yeah, yeah? Are you a fan?
Speaker 3 (47:05):
Yeah? You did something just now that totally reminded me
of I forget his name. He's the super nice guy
who's one of the bad guys. He's baldy. Hey, Barry,
what's going on? Just let you know. You know they're
gonna kill you, so anyway, be careful.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
I love that guy. That's one of my favorite characters
in that show.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
He's awesome.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
That's what you call it alopecia, he's hairless. Yeah, yeah,
that that guy is for me, a scene stealer because
everyone he meets and this is not spoiling the show
for you. This guy is a gangster who does horrific things.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
What did he ever did anything? Horrific. I couldn't even
tell you. And this is we don't even have to
talk about this, man, I just I all I could
think about was that for a split second, and then
it just reverberated.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
Yeah, because well, the the most endearing thing about that
dude is everyone he meet is described as a super
nice guy. Oh yeah, he's a super nice guy, especially
Barry though, Barry, do you want some juice? Yeah, I've
got to go back and rewatch it. If you haven't
watched the do check it out because it's it's a
fantastic show. And it's not Bill Haters in it, but
(48:18):
it's it's not really a comedy.
Speaker 3 (48:21):
No, but fantastic.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
Yeah. Yeah, the comedy parts are pretty much that guy
that we just mentioned. And did you know the other
gangster is the bad guy from True Detective.
Speaker 3 (48:32):
Yes, yeah, man, so awesome.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
Now I'm impressed.
Speaker 3 (48:37):
Okay, So anyway, oh yes, anyway.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So graphic widespread abuse is a power
by the intelligence agencies, not just the US, also Russian
and Sweden. So they wanted to the US wanted to
repatriate these deserters, suppress or nullify their anti war messages, right,
and in this book, Matthew Sweet explores the explores the
(49:06):
facts through statistics, but then primarily through anecdotes and accounts
of the deserters and the other players on the field. So, well,
who what's our Who's who? If we were to do
with who's who, what are some of the main players
in this.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
Well, one is one of the deserters is Chuck Onen
O N A N. And he joined the US Marines
when he was a bit younger. Then he ended up
deserting to Sweden via Iceland. With this ADC and the
other information that was in the book. There's a little
(49:45):
section at the front of this book that gives you
kind of a rundown of the characters, and it said
he's now a big fan of medical marijuana.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
Right, Yeah, If you read Suite's initial encounters with the
he gets to his house, uh, he's The author spends
some time describing how this dude thinks marijuana is going
to save the world, and how he's going to start
this growing operation, and how he's extremely uncomfortable because I
(50:17):
think at some point while Matthew Sweet is talking to
this guy, a drug deal occurs. Oh it's I think
someone comes to buy marijuana.
Speaker 3 (50:26):
Oh, geez.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
And this is this is one guy. Uh, there's there
are other ones. One of the big players, and one
of the most controversial is a fellow named Michael Vale.
Speaker 3 (50:40):
Yes, this is I guess, the leader of the the ADC,
the American Deserters Committee, and he was considered by some
to be the resputant of the ADC. And this guy
was suspected of being a CIA infiltrator.
Speaker 1 (50:57):
He used in terry gation and breakdown techniques on people.
Speaker 3 (51:02):
Oh geez.
Speaker 1 (51:03):
So he was known for breaking down would be members
of the ADC or people trying to join the ADC.
These are people who have already deserted on the basis
of their politics or their beliefs, reducing them to tears,
winnowing away their personalities so he could remake them anew.
And a lot of people followed him. He had disciples,
(51:26):
you know, a lot of people hated the guy. And
using those sorts of techniques, of course, lends some credence
to the idea that someone is a CIA infiltrator works
for an intelligence agency. But what becomes a parent very
quickly here is that these people were all accusing each other.
(51:46):
No one was dedicated enough to the cause no one
was ideological enough. Everyone could be a mole.
Speaker 3 (51:54):
The paranoia was definitely running high because there was another
gentleman named Bob Burningham. He went by Arlow Jacobs for
part of that time. He was a student radical, a
weatherman if you will, part of the Weather Underground, and
he was suspected of being a CIA infiltrator as well
by other members of the group.
Speaker 1 (52:15):
It's the hip new thing to do.
Speaker 3 (52:17):
Yeah, And then we get into the actual spies, the
people who are confirmed intelligence officers like Richard ober who
was pretty much the head of Operation Chaos, or at
least in some way as the functional head of it, right,
And he was considered by a lot of others to
be paranoid and secretive in his own workings, which again,
(52:39):
you know, if you're running an operation like that that's
full of secrecy and lies, it gotta be pretty paranoid, right, right.
Speaker 1 (52:46):
And he expected the same out of the people who
worked with and for him. M hm, you know. And
for his part, Hugh will argue, and he does argue
in the book, I believe that the mission was entirely
meant to surveil and collect information, not to do any
sort of skullduggery or wetwork or kidnapping or assassination or
(53:11):
any of that black bag hoopla.
Speaker 3 (53:13):
I mean, the state of goals are just that, just.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
Vacuum up the information, right, who's sending who notes, who's
calling who? That's the official story. Yeah, there's another member
of the intelligence community that pops up in the book.
Speaker 3 (53:31):
Oh yeah, there's a gentleman named Frank Rafalco. And he
was working on the Black Panther detail of Operation Chaos
because they were looking at what they considered to be
extremist groups, and they considered sections of the Black Panthers
to be just that. And this guy was the only
officer so far, at least according to Matthew Sweet that
(53:52):
has spoken publicly about Operation Chaos so far.
Speaker 1 (53:57):
Yeah, and the stories continue. It's just strange to learn
that not only did this operation go on successfully on
a global scale for what six years, more than half
a decade, but there were no repercussions for the US. Right,
A lot of the deserters found their way back to
(54:20):
the States or found their way to a friendly country,
and many of their I mean, regardless of whether someone
from the outside looking in would call their lives successful
or unsuccessful. The truth is that their lives were tremendously
affected by this program right in ways that we probably
(54:42):
still don't fully understand, And there's still questions there. We
don't know for sure who was or wasn't a mole,
who did or did not provide information. Many of these
people had torturous personal lives, drug addiction, right, heavy debts,
childhoods full of abuse, and it's very difficult to speculate
(55:03):
what motivated them and how deep they got. We know
something happened because the information got out there, but we
have to ask ourselves what did this mean in the
long run. Did it change the course of the Vietnam War?
Probably not? Probably not. It's you know, in comparison to
(55:25):
two point seven million soldiers, it's not that many people.
Speaker 3 (55:29):
Were there any large movements from groups that were helping
out dissidents, I mean it doesn't seem to there's no
at least there aren't many. No. I can't think of
a single one where the United States took any kind
of action against a civilian group in another country because
they were aiding dissidents, at least not overtly. No. I mean, yeah,
(55:52):
that we would know about, right.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
Right, and it's common to work through proxy groups and
so on. But we have to think beyond the events
of Vietnam that still have many unexplained things. Agent Orange
is an example. The recurred during the Iraq War, at
least allegations of exposure to it. Is it possible that
programs like this exist now in the current wars the
(56:18):
US is embroiled in or I guess since we don't
call them wars anymore, the current conflicts?
Speaker 3 (56:24):
Yeah, right, who is a situation?
Speaker 1 (56:28):
The situation?
Speaker 3 (56:28):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (56:29):
Who is monitoring these interactions? Why are people deserting in
the numbers that occurred during the Vietnam War? Probably not?
Probably not because there's not a draft. Yeah, but that
could change.
Speaker 3 (56:44):
Oh, that could absolutely change. It just takes an Act
of Congress.
Speaker 1 (56:48):
Right, So we wonder. We have to wonder if there's
more stuff they don't want you to know, if there's
an Operation Chaos two point zero out there somewhere, and
if so, what's it called. Currently, the US US military
is comprised of volunteers, meaning that no one is conscripted
or drafted, and there are no laws that compel a
(57:08):
US citizen to serve mandatory time in the armed forces.
And that's that's not the same in other countries. South
Korea and Israel, for example, have laws requiring citizens to
serve in the military for X amount of time.
Speaker 3 (57:22):
Absolutely, the one thing I would say in the US,
it is still compulsory for all male citizens to submit
their information to the Selective Service system within thirty days
of their eighteenth birthday. And that's just to make sure
the selective service system remains in case a draft is necessary.
In Congress puts the hammer down and makes it happen.
Speaker 1 (57:42):
Because, as Malcolm Gladwell so eloquently explains in the Tipping Point,
nothing seems like it will ever happen until suddenly it does.
Speaker 3 (57:51):
Yeah, great point, Malcolm, great point, Great.
Speaker 1 (57:54):
Point, mister g. Today we end our episode with this,
this important point. Yes, there is no draft going on now.
There is no Operation Chaos that we are aware of,
even though the technological abilities to do so are far
and beyond what they ever were before in Vietnam. Oh yeah,
(58:15):
you know, we're all carrying The average person is carrying
a tiny spy in their.
Speaker 3 (58:21):
Pocket, two cameras at least in a mic.
Speaker 1 (58:23):
Right, and how tough is it to get in there?
Who watches the watchman, all that jazz, all that slow jazz.
Speaker 3 (58:29):
And what about on your wrist if you got a
smart watcher, who knows? What? What if you got a
Google Home or an Amazon Echo in your house man,
or a couple of security cameras.
Speaker 1 (58:40):
Don't please, it's too late.
Speaker 3 (58:42):
Does your TV have a camera on it? Does your
PlayStation have a microphone?
Speaker 1 (58:47):
You know what? Maybe if they did, I would take
better care of my like, I'd eat more healthy food,
you know, I would.
Speaker 3 (58:53):
Uh, that's where you'd start.
Speaker 1 (58:56):
That's where it's start. They'd be base level check it out,
I meaning chaos. Well, thank you, police state. But one
other important thing to hit on here is that in
many cases these deserters live on today somewhere right, and
they're real people. Are they perfect? No? Who is? Some
folks would consider them straight out traders. Other folks would
(59:18):
consider them the equivalent of freedom fighters. And there are
people who will make the argument that if they broke
the rules, the rules no longer apply to them. But
that goes into what sort of importance we place on
the rule of law, And it goes into, perhaps even
(59:39):
more importantly, what importance we place on the lawmakers obeying
the laws. They create.
Speaker 3 (59:47):
Wow. So what do you think about Operation Chaos? Have
you read the book? Do you know anything about it?
Have you ever encountered anyone who was a dissonant? An
American or otherwise. We'd love to hear your stories. We'd
love for you to contact us and just talk to
us about it. You can find us on Twitter. You
can find us on Facebook where Conspiracy Stuff. On Instagram
(01:00:09):
where Conspiracy Stuff Show. You can find our websites. Stuff
they Don't Want You Tono dot com. And that's the
end of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts
or questions about this episode, you can get into contact
with us in a number of different ways. One of
the best is to give us a call. Our number
is one eight three three st d WYTK. If you
(01:00:32):
don't want to do that, you can send us a
good old fashioned email.
Speaker 2 (01:00:35):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (01:00:39):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
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Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.