November 14, 2025 • 56 mins
Ah, the Wild West days of the pre-bot internet! In tonight's episode, Ben, Matt and Noel return to the days of yore, when pretty much anyone could anonymously create a website for pretty much anything. As they discover, our friends at the CIA did, in fact, make a bunch of misleading websites for surreptitious communication. And this conspiracy worked until it didn't. When the web came unraveled, people died.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nola.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 4 (00:31):
We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the
Tennessee Pal Fagan.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Most importantly, you are you. You are here.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know,
coming to you live and direct in digital sometime in
November twenty twenty five. We hope, guys. Let's start it
this way. Have you ever visited a sketchy website?
Speaker 5 (00:56):
Ah? Absolutely not, never once, just do for them, Never
got a pop up, never got a virus.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Interestingly, enough guys, for this week's listener mail. I went
to a dot org and it was completely fine. Then
I went to a dot com of the same title.
If that makes sense, just switch out advance and the
dot com one is supposedly the more legit site. But
that's the one that I got a little message from
my browser. Yeah you sure you want to go here?
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Pal? Sure about that?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Why? I said no, I do not want to go
to here.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Yeah, advanced go.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
So this is hilarious to us and hopefully to you
as well, fellow conspiracy realist, because there has been a
sea change in recent years or in a recent decade,
back in the house Yon days of the Internet, before
most folks began interacting with the World Wide Web through
social media, which is true most people now when they
(02:01):
say going online, they mean going to social media. It's
also where most folks get their news. Before those before
those big dogs took over everything with the dopamine casinos,
the average web user found themselves in all sorts of niche,
unexpected rabbit holes, worldwide Web, new Frontier, wild West, a
(02:23):
vast horizon of all things weird.
Speaker 5 (02:26):
Geo cities. Man, everyone could have a website.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (02:29):
I used to go to all these like Smashing Pumpkins
fan sites and trade bootleg CDs with people. We'd send
each other and stuff in the mail. But you found
them on these like very niche websites that would sometimes
have comment sections or you know, bbs or whatever. Sure
bullet board system. It's fun and everyone wanted to stake acclaim,
(02:49):
and soon enough anyone relatively speaking, could build a website.
Society was not sure and probably still doesn't know what
would happen next. Victories, massive profit, massive losses, unforeseen consequences
never Yeah, as we'll witness in tonight's episode, our friends
at the shop, the Central Intelligence Agency, they were no different.
(03:13):
So let's get into it and see what we're talking about.
Here are the facts.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
I think we need.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
To start with, not just a general here of the facts,
but let's start with three basic facts. They'll really set
up tonight's conspiracy.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (03:37):
I remember when you know, you with along with your
Internet service provider account, many of which were local ish
at the time, you'd get a domain you could get
like a website, you know, on like your whatever. Mine
was znet dot com, slash Noel Brown user, a terrible
opsect Oh not good, Yeah, for sure. But you'd have
to upload everything with like an f to FTP and you'd,
(03:59):
you know, he did have to know a little basic HTML.
And that's why they all looked like trash because it
was somebody that wasn't into coding, just placing that image
in the center and then having a background color or
maybe a tiled you know, bit map or something like that,
and it was a delightful.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Time do you remember how big of a deal it
was to get a really good url, yes, to buy
those domains and go and go daddy, or negotiate with
somebody who already owned a band site or something, and
you're like, oh, what business.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Yeah we.
Speaker 5 (04:36):
Squatters exactly, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Domain spatters would find something like sting dot com and
then musicians like Sting would have to pay an egregious
amount of money so they could get that digital parking space.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
Friend of the show Matt Riddle bought uh djcovid nineteen
dot com just you know, who knows maybe an artist
with use that name.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
For yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
In the heyday of the pre bought Internet, please check
out our episode on dead internet theory. In the heyday
of pre bought Internet bot not b o U g HD,
anyone could make a website with a relatively small amount
of time, cash, and elbow grease, right, And that's true today.
(05:28):
The earlier days of the web were home to millions
and millions of pages and sites that were dedicated to
diplomatically put bizarrely specific things, niche hobbies that weren't widely
represented in other forms of.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Media, such as You're the Man now, doc Sure, or.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
You are Mighty, which I loved, which was a beautiful website,
or Rotten dot com remember, sure, sure, I do remember
rotten dot com pretty gross. I remember a lot of
weird blogs too. And so from these beachheads, right, these
initial sites, we see the rise of online communities and commentary.
Like you were saying, forums, BBS, bulletin boards for discussion
(06:11):
and dissemination. Funny story anecdotal. One of our old d
news chums and I spent a long time talking about
what he thought was the first online community, and he
did a lot of research for this, and he's pretty
convinced it was about people who It was for people
who fantasized about having anonymous sex with various models of cars,
(06:36):
not car models, models of cars.
Speaker 5 (06:39):
It doesn't get more niche than that.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Yeah, So they found a community, they built a church
and then so that's our first fact and it is
true today. Second then is now world governments work around
the clock to leverage any emergent technology. Surveillance was always
a huge part of this. Check out our trade Craft episodes.
We also have a weird story about Kroger and biometrics
(07:04):
on the way. It's spoiler, but the communication was always
a huge piece of the puzzle, and surveillance is something
I think most of the public understands, but communication effectively
is something the public didn't really rock or clock, right,
And that's our third point. All intelligence agencies ever hinge
(07:28):
on control of communication. They're some of the first gatekeepers
up there with religion. Yeah, I walked down the street
for it. I'm fine with it.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Well, yeah, you know, you're right, You're absolutely right. But
also like the security of communication, right, because in the end,
communication is key in all things, especially in governments and
intelligence agencies. But making sure that nobody else has their
eyes or ears on that stuff is paramount.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Yeah, it is so hypocritical, right, You do want to
obse kate a control what other people see, but you
want to know all the stuff that they have going on.
This is the ancient game, it continued. It's older than empires, right,
It's thousands of years old. Things like cryptography and codes,
(08:21):
dead drops, double agents, human intelligence or human tales, tai ls,
and so for every intelligence agency. As the Internet is
being born, birthed, not by what's that guy Gore?
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Alan, Alan Gore, Alan.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Do you think about Cheney? Dick Cheney, rip.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Rip as of today is real father's name. Yeah, yeah,
please call him Penis. He expired as we're recorded on Tuesday,
November fourth, at the age of eighty four.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Never made it to the anyway.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
Look, any time a new technology comes out, and the
US was instrumental in the creation of the World Wide Web,
all intelligence agencies see a gold rush. The advent of
the Internet was a new gold mine, and everybody wanted
to stake their claim in this gold brush. We know
(09:23):
traditional calm channels already exist. Every competent government's aware of them.
So we talked about this in our number Station episodes. Right,
even if you can't crack a specific code or root
of transmission of information, the leaders of one place like
Russia's FSB, they're going to be roughly aware of how
(09:47):
their rivals will attempt to obtain control and communicate intelligence.
It's very old cat and mouse game, and a lot
of people are very good at it.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (09:56):
Actually, I watched a movie over the weekend. It's a
Hong Kong film from the early two thousands that was
remade as The Departed, the Sparcesean movie. It's called Infernal Affairs,
and I'd never seen it. There's apparently two others that
are also great in this trilogy. But there's a whole
bit that I don't remember how they did it in
the Scorsese version, but where it's like there's a mole
on the inside of the bad guys, and then there's
(10:18):
a mole from the bad guys on the inside of
the good guys, and there's this whole cat and mouse
thing where the mole for the bad guys is in
on the surveillance of the bad guys, and it is
like trying to jam it all up covertly, and they're
using switching channels and stuff. I'm sorry it's not directly related,
but I just thought it was a really good depiction
of exactly the kind of stuff we're talking about here,
and how complex it can be. In this whole No
(10:38):
Thine Enemy aspect of it.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
I love it.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
You're absolutely right, Nol, because it does show us how
surreal those kind of things can get. One of the
old axioms is when two people in a conversation are lying,
and they both know that they're lying, what they're actually
saying comes very close to the truth.
Speaker 5 (10:57):
Right a way, it wouldn't it.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
Well, it's an old professor Yeah, No, I don't know
what that's smart.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
So we're talking about this cat and mouse game, and
you never want the other side to matter who you are,
to know what you're saying, Right, That's why encryption is
so important. That's why subtlety is so important. I think
for this story, the smartest thing that's going to be
in the story we're going to talk about is the
inherent discretion of the way the websites we're going to
be talking about were used. Right, Because ultimately, if you've
(11:28):
got let's say, somebody on the inside of a group
that's being super secretive and they're working for you, and
you're trying to get them to give you information, how
do you prevent those other people who are the bad
guys from seeing that person like quietly on their phone,
like having a little conversation quietly on their phone in
the corner, or going off to meet in the darkness
(11:50):
at some point at a bench where there's surveillance on
that person.
Speaker 5 (11:54):
Scottsonthing they could do in the course of normal business.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
Totally fine, Oh okay, innocuous and preferably humanizing.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Yeah, it's just.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
A regular buddy boy who likes footstall or star wars.
So this cat and mouse game, the thing is a
lot of people are very good at it, and the
steaks have always been murderously high.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
So a single misstep in this.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Endeavor can result in multiple deaths that can even lead
to full out kinetic war. So across the planet, everybody
is looking for an edge. The Internet, which offers easy,
near instantaneous online communication. It also inherently offers an edge
no rational actor can pass up.
Speaker 5 (12:43):
Yeah, not to mention the needle in the haystack of
it all, how fast the Internet, even in its early
days was, and how just deep those nerddoms went, and
the just absolute vastness of the quantity of websites about
the most niche subjects.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Yeah, you tell the interrogator. Look, I just like Radiohead,
I have opinions. So this led to all sorts of
Shenanigan's longtime conspiracy realist. You may recall our earlier episode
on something called Lake City Quiet Pills. Do we remember
my Tennessee came out a little bit there?
Speaker 5 (13:19):
Sorry, kay bullets, right, isn't that what the quiet Pills.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Were referring to? That's the Quiet Paris.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
Yeah, So in this episode we explored allegations that a
loose group of ex militaries individuals were working as merks
mercenaries guns for hire, and they used a series of
subreddits as a coded communication platform to coordinate operations on
(13:48):
behalf of a mysterious lynchpin figure called Dutch.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Remember this one, Yeah, oh yeah, it's kind of like
that QAnon guy and the forums or we're gonna talk
about listening real too, somebody who infiltrated just a UFO
SETI form with information like the way this kind of thing,
it's you can't verify it very easily, can you.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Well that's part of the art, right, and it's it's
still not clear whether the Lake City Quiet Pills allegations
are legit or whether it's something like an arg a
complicated alternate reality game. But the mechanism holds true because
the online world, especially in earlier years, had a lot
(14:37):
of Heidi holes, making it, to Knowle's earlier point, easy
to communicate ways that can be missed, overlooked, and later
if need be erased. Another example, just off the cuff
here would be varying communications in YouTube comments before law
enforcement and the Spooky Dupes got wise to it. This
(14:58):
was a really cheap and really effective way to communicate
in pretty much open secrecy. It still occurs, but it's
arguably less effective now because everybody, you know, everybody knows
how the rabbit gets out of that proverbial hat.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Oh yeah, and don't forget the early days of Google docs,
shared Google docs and drives and various things like that.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Shout out to petray us, right uh.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
Oh yeah, yeah, and look, we want to be honest
with you folks. Nobody at this point is thrown away.
The old analog communication routes. Number stations still operate with
one time code, pads, dead drops, proxies. Those all still occur,
and they occur because the old stuff is old for
(15:51):
a reason. It works, it is hard to crack it.
Surreptitious online communication doesn't therefore really erase anything, nor replace it.
It's another nifty tool added to your little Batman utility
belt to the great game. And it comes with complications
(16:11):
because people didn't really know what they were getting into
with the Internet, secure communication being one of their chief concerns.
Speaker 5 (16:19):
Yeah, but this isn't without some you know, caveats and complications.
So secure communication with assets placed abroad, it's always been
a very very important function of intelligence agencies. So your operative,
your informant, your assets is often far far away from
(16:41):
where you. The handler are you know, installed, and they're
working undercover. They're under just incredible amounts of pressure, the
threat of being exposed, the threat of you know, being
made or what have you. So, despite all of the
different countermeasures that can be taken, was a single misstep,
like you were saying Ben earlier, can result in disaster,
(17:04):
and by that we mean disaster in terms of intelligence
leaked at least of all. And then you've got disaster
in terms of the individual being killed.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Oh yeah, but you know, one of the really good
things that at least in the story we're talking about today,
that the government had going for them is that a
lot of people didn't really understand how the internet worked,
how HTML functioned, or was really good at it, or
there weren't a ton of people that maybe you're attempting
(17:36):
to spy on. Let's say that if this this is
the CIA we're talking about, a lot of people wouldn't
have access and abilities to discover something nefarious happening right
at least in the time when we're beginning this program.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
It would take them a second to learn the ips
where sequential this is. That's a bit of foreshadowing. So
if we go back, like other folks in the Great Game,
the CIA, knowing there were high stakes, they hit upon
an objectively brilliant idea.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
What if they said, we.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
Create a series of seemingly innocuous websites so that we
can talk with our folks abroad. So long as everything
works at operative, anywhere in the wide world could be
even on a monitor connection and receive coded information, the
reply with their own coded responses. At first, blush, this
(18:31):
might just look like two fans of football or two
fans of Star Wars just chatting about the news. Local
authorities wouldn't see anything other than typical fan activity. The
CIA did put this into play for years and years,
and while it worked, it was absolutely utterly zanzibar, which
(18:53):
I have started saying instead of awesome. However, when it
didn't work, people.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Died, did like dozens of people. A lot of people died, Yeah,
for sure.
Speaker 5 (19:06):
And we're going to get into how all of that
played out. After a quick word from our sponsor.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 4 (19:19):
The CIA did and does engage in tons of covert
action and most of it is stuff the public will
never learn about because it's a very old rule and
it holds today. If the public learns about something someone
messed up, that is it gets drilled into it.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Langley.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Some of these activities did and possibly do still include
the creation of misleading websites. Our story starts kind of.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
I feel like the entry point to our story is
a security researcher, a white hat guy named cerros Atilly
for sure.
Speaker 5 (19:59):
He originally I was inspired by an article in Reuter's
came out in twenty twenty two. It was called America's
Throwaway Spies by Joel Schechtmann and Bosar Mayor shar Fedden.
I'm hoping I'm doing at least the passable pronunciation of
that name. Which discussed the rise in compromised CIA assets
(20:19):
and informants in the Cold War with Iran. We mentioned,
I think earlier and a little bit again an episode
we did in the past on why so many agents
and assets are having their cover blown or are being compromised.
This figures into that the report leveraged research from Citizen
Labs specifically named nine web sites of interest. These were
(20:42):
online portals that would act as secret communication points for
the Capital A Agency. Additionally, it's cited some claims that
at least eight hundred and eighty five websites similar in
nature could potentially have been part of that network, though
those were not discussed in specific detail.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Are we what is our time frame here with cold
war with Iran? Because I don't think we're talking about
all the way back to nineteen forty seven and like
actual Cold war like.
Speaker 5 (21:13):
So it's more broad use of cold war maybe.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
So this is like post nine to eleven probably, or
like just pre nine to eleven up into the early
establishment of the Internet and all that stuff.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Slightly pre nine to eleven, largely post nine to eleven,
definitely post the Iranian Revolution, and definitely post the forties.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Okay, Iranian Revolution seventies? Is that right?
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Yeah? I don't remember, that's correct, nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Okay, Okay, so got you. But I just want to
make sure I understand what time frame we're talking about here.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
Yeah, that's a good question, because this is a bit
of an editorial choice on our behalf to characterize current
US Iranian relationship as a cold war hurts very much
the same future historians will agree with us.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Yeah, I think we're right. I just I'm just not
sure about like when we would say it started. I
guess if that.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
Ah, yes, yeah, I would say, hmm right, yeah, yeah,
I think it's uh, it's Oorwellian. They've always been beefed
up for that resource extraction and that regional control. And
do check out, by the way, fellow conspiracy realists, do
check out a map of US bases that surround the
(22:33):
nation of Iran on your seat and ask yourself how
you would feel if Iran had that many bases around
the contiguous US. Oh my gosh, the wind is high
on this soapbox. Guys, let me get a few steps down.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
But it makes total sense, right, you're not speaking out
of turn, Ben, I would say, And I don't think
it's a soapbox. I think you're just pointing out the
actual real things.
Speaker 5 (22:55):
It's a step stool.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
Yeah, but you know I'm cheap and I already had
this box full of soaps. Now I got a box
that I walk on.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Hell.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
Okay, So, starting from these nine websites and all that
you mentioned, Reuter's journalists identified our buddy zero Sentilly and
his team. They started digging, and they found what they
saw to be irrefutable evidence of what they could identify
as several hundred other websites united by what they call
(23:26):
a common fingerprint, making them part of the same network.
And if you go to Zero's own research on his
blog Big Book or Big Open Book, you will see
how they start to build a persona marketing we'll call it,
or a profile of these sites. It's twenty twenty five,
(23:48):
fast forward, real quick sentill he goes public with his discovery,
and one of the things that really grabbed the attention
of other journalists. And as we'll see, he he's building
on the shoulders of giants here and he's going to
be the first to say it. He reports a website
called star warsweb dot net, which I think we visited
(24:12):
in the wayback machine.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
This first of all, sounds legit, sure.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
Right, because it doesn't have a dash in the address.
Usually when there's a dash in the address, it makes
you wonder what happened. So this looked like a definite
fan website for the Star Wars fiction empire, but it
looked to be not the best. This was not a
ferrari of Star Wars fandom. It was much more like
(24:42):
a geo metro or the GeoCities of Star Wars fandom.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
It looked like somebody with a lot of passion for
Star Wars and maybe just not a lot of time
to shoop up the website or not allow to know how.
But it's looked like so those were a dime a dozen?
Is the point? Right?
Speaker 3 (24:59):
The point?
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Somebody loved Star Wars.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
If we go to Rich Stanton reporting over a PC Gamer,
we see a great explanation of this quote. So we're
going to the website to paint the scene here. Dylan,
you're an excited kid. Your nineties hackered them well, this
early two thousands and you say, oh, what am I
looking at?
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Quote?
Speaker 4 (25:23):
There's a kid with a lightsaber at the top of
the page. The tagline Beyond the Unknown, as well as
may the Force Be with You links to other Star
Wars resources and quote. For some reason, Master Yoda is
recommending Star Wars Battlefront two, Star Wars The Force Unleashed
two legos, Star Wars two, and Star Wars The Clone
(25:46):
Wars colon Republic heroes. I'm not gonna do the voice
like these games, you will, says the text alongside.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Wait isn't Star Wars Clone Wars episode two.
Speaker 5 (26:00):
So there's a cartoon like CGI. It's like a series
that's very popular.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Spin offs of spinoffs.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
I'm just pointing these are all the second of all
of these guys. Is there a pattern or something we
need to know here about you?
Speaker 4 (26:16):
Yeah, it's the opposite of clean design. In fact, it's
it's messy enough that if you were a civilian Star
Wars fan just on the wide Internet, you might take
one look at this one. They might click away, go
back to Yahoo or whatever, and then go try to
find a better site that is by design. That's what
(26:38):
the CIA wanted. They wanted the they wanted the actual
Star Wars fans to go.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
I don't know, this might have a virus on it.
Speaker 5 (26:46):
Yeah, at the very least, just mediocre, you know, like
there are just much better resources than these. And what
I was saying earlier too, is back in these days,
I mean I made a half asked website that probably
was just dead floating around on the Internet without me
thinking about it for years. I mean, there's a there's
so many of those, and if you make one that
(27:07):
looks like that hasn't been updated in a while, it
feels stale, people aren't gonna actually spend any time on it.
You've got this like incredible subterfuge kind of hidden in
plain sight.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Mm hmmm, yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
I mean that's the question, right, Why the needle in
a haystack conundrum? Why build a purposefully not great website,
especially for a fandom that is so widespread that it
already has thousands of other similar, yet better sites and
resources online. That is because, as Zero suntil he found
(27:40):
this was one of hundreds of websites created directly by
our friends at the CIA from at least twenty ten,
properly earlier as a secret communication network for CIA assets abroad.
And some of these assets and operators were in openly
(28:00):
hostile countries, right, they might be specifically monitored informants with
expertise on nuclear proliferation or movement of armament and research.
And even if they're being monitored by you know, a
little an SA intern analogue like our buddy Steve. Steve
(28:21):
would look at these guys internet activity and say, man,
he's super into Star Wars.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Or football or both or both. He's super into Starball, Starbull,
the first Quidditch.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
So it's weird because a lot of the sites that
he identified, Like we said in that original Reuter's report,
which is oft quoted, they only specify nine sites, but
they talk about eight hundred and eighty five overall from
independent researchers, and so until he is arguably doing a
(28:59):
bit of double work. But he wants to personally personally
verify this stuff. Very Reagan trust, but verify. And he
sees a lot of the websites that he feels share
this common fingerprint. They appear to be news sites, right,
and their copy pasta approach is to take stuff from
(29:19):
AP or Reuters or what have you, and then just
slap slap it on their site, right and slap their
name on it. But then there's a little bit of sports, music,
gaming centric websites. He names things like Haven of Gamers
with a Z dot com, Hitpoint Gaming dot com, Active
(29:40):
Gaming Info dot com, My Online Gamesource dot com, and
kings You like this, Matt dash Game dot Net.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
That's the one that's the main one.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
Is this taught to you by kings dot Kingslash game
dot net. This will yes, this now goes to King's Game,
The Ultimate Men's Self Improvement Guide.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
It is problematic.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Uh yeah, how to doom yourself to a life with
no girlfriend, says kingsdash game dot net.
Speaker 5 (30:14):
Is this like some pre proto in cell type culture here,
she's a girl who looks at you, like, what do
recent post?
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Ye?
Speaker 4 (30:22):
From most recent posts? These are not timestamped posts, by
the way.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
No, let's talk about music. How to get laid like
a rock star?
Speaker 4 (30:34):
Yeah, yep, waiting for her message how to overcome invisibility,
which I think speaks to Nold's question about proto in
cell stuff.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Wait a hold on, they've got an uncategorized category. Should
we still dig in this website because it's only got
posts from twenty twenty four?
Speaker 4 (30:54):
Right, because it got taken over? Ah, got sold? Yeah,
so it's it's no. Look, we'll give you a spoiler
later with some Star Wars stuff, just to show you,
just to prove the conspiracy we're positing here. Per our
buddy Ciro Scentilly, there are a lot of juicy forensics.
(31:14):
There are a lot of tea leaves to read the
languages he found across these sites that were united by
a common fingerprint. They first appeared to be targeting users
in Germany, France, Spain and Brazil, and he says he
went on a breadcrumb mission, and his argument was pretty
(31:37):
interesting because he's saying that the further you dig into
these rabbit holes, the more you can learn about the
CIA at the time. As a matter of fact, we
have a direct quote from him on his own website.
Speaker 5 (31:52):
He said, a broader understanding of the CIA's interest at
the time. He's talking about what they were able to
gain from this research, incleading more specific democracies which may
have been targeted which were not previously mentioned, and also
a statistical understanding of how much importance they were giving
to different zones at the time. Yeah, so how they
were like waiting their targets in terms of like hierarchically
(32:16):
and unsurprisingly in that hierarchy, the Middle East came out
on top.
Speaker 4 (32:21):
As ever, he yeah, the Middle East, Latin America, Taiwan,
And we'll keep this stuff about the African sphere or
theater out of out of the scope of this episode.
I don't know what are our initial reactions.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Well, it's weird stuff. I just want to reframe us
with timing again. Now we're specifically talking about mid aughts,
So like I would say two thousand fourish on to
about twenty what twenty thirteen, maybe twenty twelve, something like that.
(32:58):
I think I think twenty ten twenty eleven is like
our primary date, so it's only like five years that
these were probably super hot in usage.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
Right, Yeah, I'd agree with that. I conservatively put it
at twenty eleven to twenty twelve.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
And the thing is so sentil.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
He is picking up the bread crumbs long after the
game has begun, and he is not the only person
trying to figure this out. We must reiterate he is
what we would call a white hat security analyst.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
He's one of the good guys.
Speaker 4 (33:28):
He is a very clever investigator out there searching stuff
for the public interest, for government accountability, and for his
own curiosity, for his own sniffles and giggles, as we
would say on a PG thirteen show. While he went
to public with this info, he was far from the
(33:49):
first to uncover this conspiracy actual, as we'll see, Iran
beat him to the punch and again people died. We're
going to take a pause for a word from our sponsor,
and we've returned. Maybe we talked about the first reveal
(34:10):
because Matta and Noel I love that we're walking through
the timeline here. The first compromise goes public, gets publicly
announced by Yahoo News.
Speaker 5 (34:23):
Yeah, that's true, that's period accurate. I mean they sound
like the old Internet of it all.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
You Zach Dorfman and Jenna MacLaughlin back in twenty eighteen.
Let's read the title of it here. The CIA's communications
suffered a catastrophic compromise. It started in.
Speaker 4 (34:41):
Iran right per these journalists reporting the troubles date back
to twenty thirteen. This network was partially exposed, and the
CIA scrambled jumping out their keysters to hide their tracks
while also at the same time hoping to xfiltrate compromised
(35:02):
assets abroad.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
This is terrible.
Speaker 4 (35:05):
This is the opposite of ideal. I am scrambling not
to use English curse words, because now imagine you have
essentially now you have to deploy ratlines, right like post
World War two. You have to figure out how to
get very deeply embedded people a provable, believable reason to
(35:33):
leave the country safely. And I think that can be
a very difficult proposition, especially if we're talking about nuclear proliferation,
sensitive stealth technology, cryptography, stuff like that. Those nerds are
very closely monitored and it goes back to you. I
love the reference you made earlier in noll our episode
(35:54):
why are so many spies getting busted? In that we
noted a severe, un precedented uptick in exposure and compromise,
as well as disappearance of dozens of sources, particularly in
Iran and China. So according to what we know, reported
again by our friends at Yahoo News, how did their
(36:17):
tagline go?
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Remember back in the days of the internet. Yeahoo, there
it is.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
I love it when you guys sing was it? Yeah?
I think you got it. You definitely read my mind
on it.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
So how stuff works?
Speaker 3 (36:34):
That was us from earlier.
Speaker 4 (36:36):
So, according to former intelligence officials who were speaking unonomously,
there was an Erodian double agent who got caught out.
They rolled the dice incorrectly or fortune did not favor them.
So they showed Erodian Intelligence this website and they said, Hey,
(36:58):
this is the website I use to communicate with my
CIA handlers. I know it looks like a soccer website,
but please stop pulling my toenails out and I'll show
you how we talk to each other. And once they
gave up all that information, which did happen the boffins
(37:18):
in Ronnie and Intelligence started to look around the rest
of the world Wide Web for websites with similar hominalities, signifiers, components,
and they hit on the right string of search terms.
You know, searching is like casting a spell, right, It's
an incantation online. So if you know how to phrase
(37:42):
what you are searching for, you can invoke or summon
a thing.
Speaker 5 (37:46):
Can I just say really quickly that that proto in
cell website we were talking about earlier, Dylan posted an
incredible link in the chat to a Salon article featuring
a pickup artist by the name of Eric von Markovic,
where he chats about the Venusian arts, sexual psychology and
why he can help forty year old virgins everywhere get laid.
(38:07):
And Dylan said the website was giving this dude vibes
the artful seducer. Sorry, I had to give props to
this link, also making jump stare warning because the dude's
face is huge on the on the article and he's
got a bit of a vibe.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
He's peacocking. Well, thank you there.
Speaker 4 (38:23):
At Tennessee, we know that Iran was able to play
the breadcrumb game because they use these search terms. Again,
these incanggations, right, these series of words and codes to
figure out not only other secret CIA comm sites in
(38:43):
this network, but also to track who was visiting these
sites and where they were visiting them from. And they
started to unravel the larger spider web.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Yeah, this is serious. So it goes all the way
back two thousand and nine. That's when Hezbola originally began
to unravel this stuff, and it was reported in twenty
eleven by Reuters, but nobody knew how it was happening. Right,
what is it? We always say them, it's the ways
and means or the things that are protected, the method
(39:18):
The methods are super protected. So but back in twenty eleven,
November twenty first, twenty eleven, Reuters put out Hesbela, Iran
and cover CIA informants and they were talking about specifically
this stuff without naming any websites or anything, because Hezbola
was keeping that close to their chest. That that's how
(39:38):
they uncovered these spies, and they were sharing that information
directly with China, and only a couple of years later,
or like a year and a half later, is when
you find out that China rolled up several dozen spies
working in their ranks where many of them, not all
of them were CIA or they were like people who
were working in either Iran or or China, who are
(40:01):
you know, brought in by the CIA. But it is
really scary to think about what was happening because in
this time we were trying not to put this lightly
but also not make it so gruesome as Ben was,
you know, kind of alluding to the torture that was
happening there. These folks once they get uncovered or at least
(40:21):
one person is suspected, Right, we're talking actual torture, and
then we're talking about other people who are going to
be subjected to that and or imprisoned and or just executed,
which is exactly what happened.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
All right.
Speaker 4 (40:35):
Yeah, And to give a little bit of context for
anybody unfamiliar, Hezbela is multiple things. It is a legitimate
political party in Lebanon. However, it is also a proxy
military arm of the Iradian government. So in these sorts
of functions, in intelligence functions, his Blah is Iran, There's
(40:58):
no way around it. Like the Wagner group is Russia,
you know what I mean? And beat me or Dylan
the whatever legalistic shit they're going to say at the
Hague that is just true. That's how legalism goes, and
Matt's absolutely correct. Ron YESLBLA did share this information, this
(41:23):
uncovering of the network with colleagues abroad, particularly China. This
led to the deaths of people in China or in
Chinese controlled vassal states, especially through the bloody year of
twenty eleven and twenty twelve. Also on a human note,
(41:44):
it is important to emphasize that some of the people
killed here were not aware that they were working for
the CIA. That is another part of the hidden hands. Yeah,
talk about subcontractors, right, sub sub subcontract.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
Oh yes, just get some info and that put it
into this website. Don't ask any questions. It is crazy
to think that it was so in two thousand and
nine is when people started figuring it out, and as
we look at some of the later reporting, one of
the things you'll read is that this specific technique of tradecraft,
(42:23):
using a website for these surreptitious communications was meant to
go against lower level actors, not state actors, who are
going to have a lot more money and manpower and
expertise to throw at things like trying to figure out
the methods and means of communication. Right, So when using
(42:44):
these websites in this somewhat simplistic manner of secret communication
went up against Hesbola and then went up against China
and their state forces, it was just it was inevitable
that everybody was going to get caught up in this.
And there's a sentiment that maybe from the top down
within the CIA, it was kind of said, hey, this
(43:07):
is working for us. Let it's not broken yet, so
let's not fix it for at least a good year there,
until there was a realization, oh, we're actually losing assets,
we're losing sources.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
They were asleep at the switch, Matt. The one of
the biggest screw ups here was that these dummy websites,
many of them in the network, had sequential IP addresses,
which is such an elementary day one thing to not
mess up.
Speaker 5 (43:37):
Yeah, that reminds you of like whenever you have like
like a ransom or something, is that we needed in
non sequential bills, right, because having the sequential bills shows
that they're like it's a tell, right that they're like
being tracked or that they're.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Part of the same thing one hundred part.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
Yeah, it shows an association. You want things disassociated. If
you see a sequential IP address, you just have to
know MySpace level HTML to start to start tracing those.
And that means that once you find one site, you
can easily target the next. So things were super bad.
(44:14):
The agency worked around the clock to mitigate this disaster
after they figured out this ship had sank. Initially, the
idea at Langley was well, part of it is compromised, right,
you lose one limb. That doesn't mean you need to
sacrifice the body entire. But as we see, when a
(44:35):
ship starts sinking, it sinks quickly. This might seem like
old beans, right, because we're more than a decade and
a half past the time these particular sites were actively used.
These particular sites, it's.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Very true, guys. I'm just seeing in this twenty eleven
Reuter's article. I'm going to read this from the article,
it says in May. I guess that's talking about twenty
eleven yere In may. Ron's intelligence minister said that more
than two dozen spies for the US and Israel had
been uncovered. ABC News reported that Iranian TV had broadcast
(45:10):
what the US network described as quote accurate video of
websites used by the CIA, which means they did distribute
that information internally, at least once it was known that
those websites were being used, the Iranian TV broadcasted to everybody.
So then everybody operating knew and had that information. And
(45:34):
I wonder if possibly that's why it was so disastrous.
Speaker 4 (45:38):
M Yeah, and before our friends in Tehran put that
out on state sponsored television, they did contact Russia and
China unasprovable. Interesting, it's it's what a rational actor would.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Do, and theoretically there that's to warn allies first, let
them take whatever action they need to take, and then
let the information out publicly.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
Right.
Speaker 4 (46:08):
Yeah, we'll talk about this maybe in a listener mail
conversation later on the idea of the Overton window, right,
controlling what is considered plausible conversation. Look, even though this
is a real conspiracy, it's a real screw up. It's
actually competing conspiracies and they are all proven.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
They are not theories. Even though this is.
Speaker 4 (46:30):
All true, it is valid to ask, well, guys, is
twenty twenty five, right, Ben, Matt, No, tennessee, why are
we still talking about this?
Speaker 3 (46:40):
Here's what you need to know.
Speaker 4 (46:42):
This is a parable that will be taught in Langley
for generations to come. Experts like cybersecurity researcher Zach Edwards
note new information is still dripping out year after year,
and he said the whole episode is a reminder that
developers make mistakes, no kidding, man, no better in the
(47:03):
bag there, and sometimes it takes years for someone else
to find those mistakes. But this is not your average
developer mistake type of scenario. And I'd love for us
to play a little game online right now, folks, if
you can, if you're not driving, if you're in a
(47:23):
place where you can just click over to a different
tab or a different thing on your phone, go to
Star warsweb dot net right now. The link will redirect you.
Do we want to say where the link redirects you.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
Let's see, I'm on an about page here. It says
we are the nation's first line of defense. We accomplish
what others cannot accomplish, and go where others cannot go.
Speaker 4 (47:53):
Davidbusters dot com also known as ww dot CIA dot gov.
They just cauterized the wound on that one. The jig,
at least this version is of it is up now.
If you go through the wayback machine and you look
at earlier shots of Star Wars web dot net. You
(48:15):
will see the intentionally not great website we talked about
at the top of the show. But now, as with
several of those other gaming websites, if you click through
on them, since it's public knowledge, it takes you to
the about page of the CIA. Oh wow, look at that.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
That makes you feel. If this makes you feel a
certain type of way, we found another website for you.
The title is Scream into the Void dot com.
Speaker 3 (48:48):
Yeah, and we do on daily. You can also write
to us.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
Yeah, well yeah, you can write to the Void. So
you just type, you literally type your feelings into the void.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Just ti.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
A and then click scream.
Speaker 4 (49:03):
There's no denying that all intelligence agencies worth their spook
and salt are going to do stuff like this and
still deploy assets and conduct operations abroad. Shout out to Venezuela.
If anything, we could argue. The discovery of this conspiracy
just raises more questions. One of the big ones that
(49:24):
the mainstream is not really talking about is this was
the CIA recklessly endangering its own assets, its own people,
even the folks who didn't maybe know they were working
with the agency or with the shop.
Speaker 5 (49:39):
I mean just because of the sloppy you know, the
stuff with the IP and just then in fact, they
didn't do a particularly good job disguising.
Speaker 4 (49:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly that Nolan Lake Matt was saying
the fact that when they realized the compromise had occurred,
they still didn't they didn't immediately acfiltrate everybody associated. They
wanted to keep playing the game.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
Just somebody.
Speaker 4 (50:02):
Yeah, mistakes were made. Another thing, right that we say.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
There's a twenty seventeen BBC article that is referencing a
New York Times article. So you go down the rabbit
hole there so you can gain access to the New
York Times article. That's probably best, But otherwise you can
go to BBC and look up China crippled CIA by
killing US sources, says New York Times. And this goes
back to that exact time you were mentioning Ben, that
(50:29):
twenty ten to twenty twelve timeframe where dozens of assets
of some form or another, right, we were caught. And
it's that time when I guess Iran made those phone
calls or those communications you were mentioning and just let
China know what was going on? And then China it
says in twenty eleven informants began to just disappear.
Speaker 4 (50:51):
Yep, and we don't. The public does not have an
official count. The issue here is another question, right, how
has the agency recovered from this fiasco which occurred in
step with other intelligence failures And we'll say it here
at the end, so we could avoid the emails failures
(51:14):
like high level US politicians allegedly disclosing classified intel to
foreign powers that they're buddy buddy with for some reason.
Side note for the record, not that we are experts,
You are not supposed to leave classified top secret docs
in your home bathroom. Just leave like a reader's digest,
(51:35):
or leave like a fun poop reed like depraved and
insulting English.
Speaker 3 (51:39):
And don't have to leave the names of CIA in assets.
Speaker 2 (51:45):
Yeah. Well, and if you are going to have those
things in a bathroom, at least do it in a
tasteful marble covered floor to ceiling, golden enshrined toilet.
Speaker 5 (51:54):
Just had some golden accents goods.
Speaker 2 (51:56):
Yeah, just real classic, something Lincoln would really really appreciate.
You know, I loved it.
Speaker 4 (52:02):
Famous amateur wrestler and fan of Wall the Wall. Marble
also did a couple of other good things, famously at
a Bad Night at the Theater Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 3 (52:13):
It's true.
Speaker 5 (52:14):
So before you come at us about you know, subtweeting,
we're just we are fond of architecture and we just
don't like tasting additions.
Speaker 3 (52:23):
So we're coming from on this issue. Y'alli.
Speaker 4 (52:26):
I find metal necessary. I'm on record, it bothers me
to touch it.
Speaker 2 (52:31):
I'm just a fan of Michael Ja and I really
enjoyed a recent episode of SNL.
Speaker 4 (52:36):
Did you hear the Apparently word on the street is
folks are telling me after he does weekend Update, he
goes home.
Speaker 2 (52:43):
No, he can't do that.
Speaker 3 (52:44):
That's why he's not in the big Goodbye seed.
Speaker 2 (52:47):
There's an after party and an after after party. I
know this. Are you required to go.
Speaker 4 (52:52):
To the Age of the Blues over so it's way less,
way less cocaine, way fewer kailud mandatory party.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
You know. My guy dis Newts is in there all right.
Speaker 4 (53:04):
He's in there telling people they should drink pedialyte in
the morning and to go home and also congrats on
your recent marriage.
Speaker 3 (53:13):
People.
Speaker 4 (53:13):
So as global tensions rise in theaters the world round.
All these questions we posed are increasingly important their mission.
Critical trust in the United States, domestically abroad said an
all time low, which means whatever happens next might well
get hairy. And the weirdest thing is the game itself
(53:34):
is not over, because the best, most addictive part of
what we call the great game is that it never ends.
If anything, this is a teachable moment. If you really
do jokes aside, Internet jokes aside, if you really are
dealing with stuff they don't want you to know, then
take care to make sure enemies and not actually know
(53:59):
it lives all are on the line.
Speaker 5 (54:01):
Do a better job the CIA. Come on, you have
one job.
Speaker 3 (54:05):
Let's all do a better job.
Speaker 4 (54:08):
We are also going to do a continuing job, hopefully
a good job. Responding to you. We want to hear
your thoughts, folks, whether or not you are in a circus,
a shop, a vacation abroad, whether this is news to you,
whether you are a white hat or black hat cyber punk,
(54:30):
we want your thoughts. You're the best part of the show.
We can't wait to hear what is on your mind.
After learning about this confluence very real conspiracies, you can
always write to the void. You can always call us
on the phone. You can always find us on ye
old internets.
Speaker 3 (54:49):
Speaking of dealer's choice.
Speaker 5 (54:51):
If you want to find us on the Internet, you
can do so by searching down the handle conspiracy Stuff
where we exist on Facebook with our Facebook group Here's
where it gets crazy, on x FKA, Twitter.
Speaker 3 (55:00):
And on YouTube.
Speaker 5 (55:02):
You can also find its Conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram
and TikTok in it.
Speaker 3 (55:05):
I think there's more.
Speaker 2 (55:08):
Yes, we have a phone number. It is one eight
three three st d w y t K. When you
call in, give yourself a cool nickname and let us
know if we can use your name and message on
the air. What's your favorite weird website and what are
what's the probability that it's currently being used by the
CIA or Massade or some other.
Speaker 3 (55:28):
That my questions. That's the best question.
Speaker 2 (55:31):
Oh yeah, is it the is it Christmas website?
Speaker 3 (55:35):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (55:35):
Three hundred and sixty four days out of the year.
Speaker 5 (55:38):
The answer is the one you're always talking about.
Speaker 2 (55:41):
That's a fun one. That's a great one.
Speaker 3 (55:43):
One.
Speaker 2 (55:43):
That's a great one. Is it zombo dot com? What
is it? Just send it to us let us know
If you don't want to send us a voicemail. We
have an amazing email system only monitored by us.
Speaker 3 (55:54):
We are the entities the bed.
Speaker 4 (55:57):
Each piece of correspondence we receive be well aware, yet unafraid.
Sometimes the void writes back zero one, Bravo, Delta Potatoes
conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. This is conspiracy, actual.
Speaker 2 (56:29):
Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nola.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 4 (00:31):
We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the
Tennessee Pal Fagan.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Most importantly, you are you. You are here.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know,
coming to you live and direct in digital sometime in
November twenty twenty five. We hope, guys. Let's start it
this way. Have you ever visited a sketchy website?
Speaker 5 (00:56):
Ah? Absolutely not, never once, just do for them, Never
got a pop up, never got a virus.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Interestingly, enough guys, for this week's listener mail. I went
to a dot org and it was completely fine. Then
I went to a dot com of the same title.
If that makes sense, just switch out advance and the
dot com one is supposedly the more legit site. But
that's the one that I got a little message from
my browser. Yeah you sure you want to go here?
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Pal? Sure about that?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Why? I said no, I do not want to go
to here.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Yeah, advanced go.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
So this is hilarious to us and hopefully to you
as well, fellow conspiracy realist, because there has been a
sea change in recent years or in a recent decade,
back in the house Yon days of the Internet, before
most folks began interacting with the World Wide Web through
social media, which is true most people now when they
(02:01):
say going online, they mean going to social media. It's
also where most folks get their news. Before those before
those big dogs took over everything with the dopamine casinos,
the average web user found themselves in all sorts of niche,
unexpected rabbit holes, worldwide Web, new Frontier, wild West, a
(02:23):
vast horizon of all things weird.
Speaker 5 (02:26):
Geo cities. Man, everyone could have a website.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (02:29):
I used to go to all these like Smashing Pumpkins
fan sites and trade bootleg CDs with people. We'd send
each other and stuff in the mail. But you found
them on these like very niche websites that would sometimes
have comment sections or you know, bbs or whatever. Sure
bullet board system. It's fun and everyone wanted to stake acclaim,
(02:49):
and soon enough anyone relatively speaking, could build a website.
Society was not sure and probably still doesn't know what
would happen next. Victories, massive profit, massive losses, unforeseen consequences
never Yeah, as we'll witness in tonight's episode, our friends
at the shop, the Central Intelligence Agency, they were no different.
(03:13):
So let's get into it and see what we're talking about.
Here are the facts.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
I think we need.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
To start with, not just a general here of the facts,
but let's start with three basic facts. They'll really set
up tonight's conspiracy.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (03:37):
I remember when you know, you with along with your
Internet service provider account, many of which were local ish
at the time, you'd get a domain you could get
like a website, you know, on like your whatever. Mine
was znet dot com, slash Noel Brown user, a terrible
opsect Oh not good, Yeah, for sure. But you'd have
to upload everything with like an f to FTP and you'd,
(03:59):
you know, he did have to know a little basic HTML.
And that's why they all looked like trash because it
was somebody that wasn't into coding, just placing that image
in the center and then having a background color or
maybe a tiled you know, bit map or something like that,
and it was a delightful.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Time do you remember how big of a deal it
was to get a really good url, yes, to buy
those domains and go and go daddy, or negotiate with
somebody who already owned a band site or something, and
you're like, oh, what business.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Yeah we.
Speaker 5 (04:36):
Squatters exactly, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Domain spatters would find something like sting dot com and
then musicians like Sting would have to pay an egregious
amount of money so they could get that digital parking space.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
Friend of the show Matt Riddle bought uh djcovid nineteen
dot com just you know, who knows maybe an artist
with use that name.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
For yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
In the heyday of the pre bought Internet, please check
out our episode on dead internet theory. In the heyday
of pre bought Internet bot not b o U g HD,
anyone could make a website with a relatively small amount
of time, cash, and elbow grease, right, And that's true today.
(05:28):
The earlier days of the web were home to millions
and millions of pages and sites that were dedicated to
diplomatically put bizarrely specific things, niche hobbies that weren't widely
represented in other forms of.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Media, such as You're the Man now, doc Sure, or.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
You are Mighty, which I loved, which was a beautiful website,
or Rotten dot com remember, sure, sure, I do remember
rotten dot com pretty gross. I remember a lot of
weird blogs too. And so from these beachheads, right, these
initial sites, we see the rise of online communities and commentary.
Like you were saying, forums, BBS, bulletin boards for discussion
(06:11):
and dissemination. Funny story anecdotal. One of our old d
news chums and I spent a long time talking about
what he thought was the first online community, and he
did a lot of research for this, and he's pretty
convinced it was about people who It was for people
who fantasized about having anonymous sex with various models of cars,
(06:36):
not car models, models of cars.
Speaker 5 (06:39):
It doesn't get more niche than that.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Yeah, So they found a community, they built a church
and then so that's our first fact and it is
true today. Second then is now world governments work around
the clock to leverage any emergent technology. Surveillance was always
a huge part of this. Check out our trade Craft episodes.
We also have a weird story about Kroger and biometrics
(07:04):
on the way. It's spoiler, but the communication was always
a huge piece of the puzzle, and surveillance is something
I think most of the public understands, but communication effectively
is something the public didn't really rock or clock, right,
And that's our third point. All intelligence agencies ever hinge
(07:28):
on control of communication. They're some of the first gatekeepers
up there with religion. Yeah, I walked down the street
for it. I'm fine with it.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Well, yeah, you know, you're right, You're absolutely right. But
also like the security of communication, right, because in the end,
communication is key in all things, especially in governments and
intelligence agencies. But making sure that nobody else has their
eyes or ears on that stuff is paramount.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Yeah, it is so hypocritical, right, You do want to
obse kate a control what other people see, but you
want to know all the stuff that they have going on.
This is the ancient game, it continued. It's older than empires, right,
It's thousands of years old. Things like cryptography and codes,
(08:21):
dead drops, double agents, human intelligence or human tales, tai ls,
and so for every intelligence agency. As the Internet is
being born, birthed, not by what's that guy Gore?
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Alan, Alan Gore, Alan.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Do you think about Cheney? Dick Cheney, rip.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Rip as of today is real father's name. Yeah, yeah,
please call him Penis. He expired as we're recorded on Tuesday,
November fourth, at the age of eighty four.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Never made it to the anyway.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
Look, any time a new technology comes out, and the
US was instrumental in the creation of the World Wide Web,
all intelligence agencies see a gold rush. The advent of
the Internet was a new gold mine, and everybody wanted
to stake their claim in this gold brush. We know
(09:23):
traditional calm channels already exist. Every competent government's aware of them.
So we talked about this in our number Station episodes. Right,
even if you can't crack a specific code or root
of transmission of information, the leaders of one place like
Russia's FSB, they're going to be roughly aware of how
(09:47):
their rivals will attempt to obtain control and communicate intelligence.
It's very old cat and mouse game, and a lot
of people are very good at it.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (09:56):
Actually, I watched a movie over the weekend. It's a
Hong Kong film from the early two thousands that was
remade as The Departed, the Sparcesean movie. It's called Infernal Affairs,
and I'd never seen it. There's apparently two others that
are also great in this trilogy. But there's a whole
bit that I don't remember how they did it in
the Scorsese version, but where it's like there's a mole
on the inside of the bad guys, and then there's
(10:18):
a mole from the bad guys on the inside of
the good guys, and there's this whole cat and mouse
thing where the mole for the bad guys is in
on the surveillance of the bad guys, and it is
like trying to jam it all up covertly, and they're
using switching channels and stuff. I'm sorry it's not directly related,
but I just thought it was a really good depiction
of exactly the kind of stuff we're talking about here,
and how complex it can be. In this whole No
(10:38):
Thine Enemy aspect of it.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
I love it.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
You're absolutely right, Nol, because it does show us how
surreal those kind of things can get. One of the
old axioms is when two people in a conversation are lying,
and they both know that they're lying, what they're actually
saying comes very close to the truth.
Speaker 5 (10:57):
Right a way, it wouldn't it.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
Well, it's an old professor Yeah, No, I don't know
what that's smart.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
So we're talking about this cat and mouse game, and
you never want the other side to matter who you are,
to know what you're saying, Right, That's why encryption is
so important. That's why subtlety is so important. I think
for this story, the smartest thing that's going to be
in the story we're going to talk about is the
inherent discretion of the way the websites we're going to
be talking about were used. Right, Because ultimately, if you've
(11:28):
got let's say, somebody on the inside of a group
that's being super secretive and they're working for you, and
you're trying to get them to give you information, how
do you prevent those other people who are the bad
guys from seeing that person like quietly on their phone,
like having a little conversation quietly on their phone in
the corner, or going off to meet in the darkness
(11:50):
at some point at a bench where there's surveillance on
that person.
Speaker 5 (11:54):
Scottsonthing they could do in the course of normal business.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
Totally fine, Oh okay, innocuous and preferably humanizing.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Yeah, it's just.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
A regular buddy boy who likes footstall or star wars.
So this cat and mouse game, the thing is a
lot of people are very good at it, and the
steaks have always been murderously high.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
So a single misstep in this.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Endeavor can result in multiple deaths that can even lead
to full out kinetic war. So across the planet, everybody
is looking for an edge. The Internet, which offers easy,
near instantaneous online communication. It also inherently offers an edge
no rational actor can pass up.
Speaker 5 (12:43):
Yeah, not to mention the needle in the haystack of
it all, how fast the Internet, even in its early
days was, and how just deep those nerddoms went, and
the just absolute vastness of the quantity of websites about
the most niche subjects.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Yeah, you tell the interrogator. Look, I just like Radiohead,
I have opinions. So this led to all sorts of
Shenanigan's longtime conspiracy realist. You may recall our earlier episode
on something called Lake City Quiet Pills. Do we remember
my Tennessee came out a little bit there?
Speaker 5 (13:19):
Sorry, kay bullets, right, isn't that what the quiet Pills.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Were referring to? That's the Quiet Paris.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
Yeah, So in this episode we explored allegations that a
loose group of ex militaries individuals were working as merks
mercenaries guns for hire, and they used a series of
subreddits as a coded communication platform to coordinate operations on
(13:48):
behalf of a mysterious lynchpin figure called Dutch.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Remember this one, Yeah, oh yeah, it's kind of like
that QAnon guy and the forums or we're gonna talk
about listening real too, somebody who infiltrated just a UFO
SETI form with information like the way this kind of thing,
it's you can't verify it very easily, can you.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Well that's part of the art, right, and it's it's
still not clear whether the Lake City Quiet Pills allegations
are legit or whether it's something like an arg a
complicated alternate reality game. But the mechanism holds true because
the online world, especially in earlier years, had a lot
(14:37):
of Heidi holes, making it, to Knowle's earlier point, easy
to communicate ways that can be missed, overlooked, and later
if need be erased. Another example, just off the cuff
here would be varying communications in YouTube comments before law
enforcement and the Spooky Dupes got wise to it. This
(14:58):
was a really cheap and really effective way to communicate
in pretty much open secrecy. It still occurs, but it's
arguably less effective now because everybody, you know, everybody knows
how the rabbit gets out of that proverbial hat.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Oh yeah, and don't forget the early days of Google docs,
shared Google docs and drives and various things like that.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Shout out to petray us, right uh.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
Oh yeah, yeah, and look, we want to be honest
with you folks. Nobody at this point is thrown away.
The old analog communication routes. Number stations still operate with
one time code, pads, dead drops, proxies. Those all still occur,
and they occur because the old stuff is old for
(15:51):
a reason. It works, it is hard to crack it.
Surreptitious online communication doesn't therefore really erase anything, nor replace it.
It's another nifty tool added to your little Batman utility
belt to the great game. And it comes with complications
(16:11):
because people didn't really know what they were getting into
with the Internet, secure communication being one of their chief concerns.
Speaker 5 (16:19):
Yeah, but this isn't without some you know, caveats and complications.
So secure communication with assets placed abroad, it's always been
a very very important function of intelligence agencies. So your operative,
your informant, your assets is often far far away from
(16:41):
where you. The handler are you know, installed, and they're
working undercover. They're under just incredible amounts of pressure, the
threat of being exposed, the threat of you know, being
made or what have you. So, despite all of the
different countermeasures that can be taken, was a single misstep,
like you were saying Ben earlier, can result in disaster,
(17:04):
and by that we mean disaster in terms of intelligence
leaked at least of all. And then you've got disaster
in terms of the individual being killed.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Oh yeah, but you know, one of the really good
things that at least in the story we're talking about today,
that the government had going for them is that a
lot of people didn't really understand how the internet worked,
how HTML functioned, or was really good at it, or
there weren't a ton of people that maybe you're attempting
(17:36):
to spy on. Let's say that if this this is
the CIA we're talking about, a lot of people wouldn't
have access and abilities to discover something nefarious happening right
at least in the time when we're beginning this program.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
It would take them a second to learn the ips
where sequential this is. That's a bit of foreshadowing. So
if we go back, like other folks in the Great Game,
the CIA, knowing there were high stakes, they hit upon
an objectively brilliant idea.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
What if they said, we.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
Create a series of seemingly innocuous websites so that we
can talk with our folks abroad. So long as everything
works at operative, anywhere in the wide world could be
even on a monitor connection and receive coded information, the
reply with their own coded responses. At first, blush, this
(18:31):
might just look like two fans of football or two
fans of Star Wars just chatting about the news. Local
authorities wouldn't see anything other than typical fan activity. The
CIA did put this into play for years and years,
and while it worked, it was absolutely utterly zanzibar, which
(18:53):
I have started saying instead of awesome. However, when it
didn't work, people.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Died, did like dozens of people. A lot of people died, Yeah,
for sure.
Speaker 5 (19:06):
And we're going to get into how all of that
played out. After a quick word from our sponsor.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 4 (19:19):
The CIA did and does engage in tons of covert
action and most of it is stuff the public will
never learn about because it's a very old rule and
it holds today. If the public learns about something someone
messed up, that is it gets drilled into it.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Langley.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Some of these activities did and possibly do still include
the creation of misleading websites. Our story starts kind of.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
I feel like the entry point to our story is
a security researcher, a white hat guy named cerros Atilly
for sure.
Speaker 5 (19:59):
He originally I was inspired by an article in Reuter's
came out in twenty twenty two. It was called America's
Throwaway Spies by Joel Schechtmann and Bosar Mayor shar Fedden.
I'm hoping I'm doing at least the passable pronunciation of
that name. Which discussed the rise in compromised CIA assets
(20:19):
and informants in the Cold War with Iran. We mentioned,
I think earlier and a little bit again an episode
we did in the past on why so many agents
and assets are having their cover blown or are being compromised.
This figures into that the report leveraged research from Citizen
Labs specifically named nine web sites of interest. These were
(20:42):
online portals that would act as secret communication points for
the Capital A Agency. Additionally, it's cited some claims that
at least eight hundred and eighty five websites similar in
nature could potentially have been part of that network, though
those were not discussed in specific detail.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Are we what is our time frame here with cold
war with Iran? Because I don't think we're talking about
all the way back to nineteen forty seven and like
actual Cold war like.
Speaker 5 (21:13):
So it's more broad use of cold war maybe.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
So this is like post nine to eleven probably, or
like just pre nine to eleven up into the early
establishment of the Internet and all that stuff.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Slightly pre nine to eleven, largely post nine to eleven,
definitely post the Iranian Revolution, and definitely post the forties.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Okay, Iranian Revolution seventies? Is that right?
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Yeah? I don't remember, that's correct, nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Okay, Okay, so got you. But I just want to
make sure I understand what time frame we're talking about here.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
Yeah, that's a good question, because this is a bit
of an editorial choice on our behalf to characterize current
US Iranian relationship as a cold war hurts very much
the same future historians will agree with us.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Yeah, I think we're right. I just I'm just not
sure about like when we would say it started. I
guess if that.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
Ah, yes, yeah, I would say, hmm right, yeah, yeah,
I think it's uh, it's Oorwellian. They've always been beefed
up for that resource extraction and that regional control. And
do check out, by the way, fellow conspiracy realists, do
check out a map of US bases that surround the
(22:33):
nation of Iran on your seat and ask yourself how
you would feel if Iran had that many bases around
the contiguous US. Oh my gosh, the wind is high
on this soapbox. Guys, let me get a few steps down.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
But it makes total sense, right, you're not speaking out
of turn, Ben, I would say, And I don't think
it's a soapbox. I think you're just pointing out the
actual real things.
Speaker 5 (22:55):
It's a step stool.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
Yeah, but you know I'm cheap and I already had
this box full of soaps. Now I got a box
that I walk on.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Hell.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
Okay, So, starting from these nine websites and all that
you mentioned, Reuter's journalists identified our buddy zero Sentilly and
his team. They started digging, and they found what they
saw to be irrefutable evidence of what they could identify
as several hundred other websites united by what they call
(23:26):
a common fingerprint, making them part of the same network.
And if you go to Zero's own research on his
blog Big Book or Big Open Book, you will see
how they start to build a persona marketing we'll call it,
or a profile of these sites. It's twenty twenty five,
(23:48):
fast forward, real quick sentill he goes public with his discovery,
and one of the things that really grabbed the attention
of other journalists. And as we'll see, he he's building
on the shoulders of giants here and he's going to
be the first to say it. He reports a website
called star warsweb dot net, which I think we visited
(24:12):
in the wayback machine.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
This first of all, sounds legit, sure.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
Right, because it doesn't have a dash in the address.
Usually when there's a dash in the address, it makes
you wonder what happened. So this looked like a definite
fan website for the Star Wars fiction empire, but it
looked to be not the best. This was not a
ferrari of Star Wars fandom. It was much more like
(24:42):
a geo metro or the GeoCities of Star Wars fandom.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
It looked like somebody with a lot of passion for
Star Wars and maybe just not a lot of time
to shoop up the website or not allow to know how.
But it's looked like so those were a dime a dozen?
Is the point? Right?
Speaker 3 (24:59):
The point?
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Somebody loved Star Wars.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
If we go to Rich Stanton reporting over a PC Gamer,
we see a great explanation of this quote. So we're
going to the website to paint the scene here. Dylan,
you're an excited kid. Your nineties hackered them well, this
early two thousands and you say, oh, what am I
looking at?
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Quote?
Speaker 4 (25:23):
There's a kid with a lightsaber at the top of
the page. The tagline Beyond the Unknown, as well as
may the Force Be with You links to other Star
Wars resources and quote. For some reason, Master Yoda is
recommending Star Wars Battlefront two, Star Wars The Force Unleashed
two legos, Star Wars two, and Star Wars The Clone
(25:46):
Wars colon Republic heroes. I'm not gonna do the voice
like these games, you will, says the text alongside.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Wait isn't Star Wars Clone Wars episode two.
Speaker 5 (26:00):
So there's a cartoon like CGI. It's like a series
that's very popular.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Spin offs of spinoffs.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
I'm just pointing these are all the second of all
of these guys. Is there a pattern or something we
need to know here about you?
Speaker 4 (26:16):
Yeah, it's the opposite of clean design. In fact, it's
it's messy enough that if you were a civilian Star
Wars fan just on the wide Internet, you might take
one look at this one. They might click away, go
back to Yahoo or whatever, and then go try to
find a better site that is by design. That's what
(26:38):
the CIA wanted. They wanted the they wanted the actual
Star Wars fans to go.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
I don't know, this might have a virus on it.
Speaker 5 (26:46):
Yeah, at the very least, just mediocre, you know, like
there are just much better resources than these. And what
I was saying earlier too, is back in these days,
I mean I made a half asked website that probably
was just dead floating around on the Internet without me
thinking about it for years. I mean, there's a there's
so many of those, and if you make one that
(27:07):
looks like that hasn't been updated in a while, it
feels stale, people aren't gonna actually spend any time on it.
You've got this like incredible subterfuge kind of hidden in
plain sight.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Mm hmmm, yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
I mean that's the question, right, Why the needle in
a haystack conundrum? Why build a purposefully not great website,
especially for a fandom that is so widespread that it
already has thousands of other similar, yet better sites and
resources online. That is because, as Zero suntil he found
(27:40):
this was one of hundreds of websites created directly by
our friends at the CIA from at least twenty ten,
properly earlier as a secret communication network for CIA assets abroad.
And some of these assets and operators were in openly
(28:00):
hostile countries, right, they might be specifically monitored informants with
expertise on nuclear proliferation or movement of armament and research.
And even if they're being monitored by you know, a
little an SA intern analogue like our buddy Steve. Steve
(28:21):
would look at these guys internet activity and say, man,
he's super into Star Wars.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Or football or both or both. He's super into Starball, Starbull,
the first Quidditch.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
So it's weird because a lot of the sites that
he identified, Like we said in that original Reuter's report,
which is oft quoted, they only specify nine sites, but
they talk about eight hundred and eighty five overall from
independent researchers, and so until he is arguably doing a
(28:59):
bit of double work. But he wants to personally personally
verify this stuff. Very Reagan trust, but verify. And he
sees a lot of the websites that he feels share
this common fingerprint. They appear to be news sites, right,
and their copy pasta approach is to take stuff from
(29:19):
AP or Reuters or what have you, and then just
slap slap it on their site, right and slap their
name on it. But then there's a little bit of sports, music,
gaming centric websites. He names things like Haven of Gamers
with a Z dot com, Hitpoint Gaming dot com, Active
(29:40):
Gaming Info dot com, My Online Gamesource dot com, and
kings You like this, Matt dash Game dot Net.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
That's the one that's the main one.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
Is this taught to you by kings dot Kingslash game
dot net. This will yes, this now goes to King's Game,
The Ultimate Men's Self Improvement Guide.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
It is problematic.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Uh yeah, how to doom yourself to a life with
no girlfriend, says kingsdash game dot net.
Speaker 5 (30:14):
Is this like some pre proto in cell type culture here,
she's a girl who looks at you, like, what do
recent post?
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Ye?
Speaker 4 (30:22):
From most recent posts? These are not timestamped posts, by
the way.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
No, let's talk about music. How to get laid like
a rock star?
Speaker 4 (30:34):
Yeah, yep, waiting for her message how to overcome invisibility,
which I think speaks to Nold's question about proto in
cell stuff.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Wait a hold on, they've got an uncategorized category. Should
we still dig in this website because it's only got
posts from twenty twenty four?
Speaker 4 (30:54):
Right, because it got taken over? Ah, got sold? Yeah,
so it's it's no. Look, we'll give you a spoiler
later with some Star Wars stuff, just to show you,
just to prove the conspiracy we're positing here. Per our
buddy Ciro Scentilly, there are a lot of juicy forensics.
(31:14):
There are a lot of tea leaves to read the
languages he found across these sites that were united by
a common fingerprint. They first appeared to be targeting users
in Germany, France, Spain and Brazil, and he says he
went on a breadcrumb mission, and his argument was pretty
(31:37):
interesting because he's saying that the further you dig into
these rabbit holes, the more you can learn about the
CIA at the time. As a matter of fact, we
have a direct quote from him on his own website.
Speaker 5 (31:52):
He said, a broader understanding of the CIA's interest at
the time. He's talking about what they were able to
gain from this research, incleading more specific democracies which may
have been targeted which were not previously mentioned, and also
a statistical understanding of how much importance they were giving
to different zones at the time. Yeah, so how they
were like waiting their targets in terms of like hierarchically
(32:16):
and unsurprisingly in that hierarchy, the Middle East came out
on top.
Speaker 4 (32:21):
As ever, he yeah, the Middle East, Latin America, Taiwan,
And we'll keep this stuff about the African sphere or
theater out of out of the scope of this episode.
I don't know what are our initial reactions.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Well, it's weird stuff. I just want to reframe us
with timing again. Now we're specifically talking about mid aughts,
So like I would say two thousand fourish on to
about twenty what twenty thirteen, maybe twenty twelve, something like that.
(32:58):
I think I think twenty ten twenty eleven is like
our primary date, so it's only like five years that
these were probably super hot in usage.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
Right, Yeah, I'd agree with that. I conservatively put it
at twenty eleven to twenty twelve.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
And the thing is so sentil.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
He is picking up the bread crumbs long after the
game has begun, and he is not the only person
trying to figure this out. We must reiterate he is
what we would call a white hat security analyst.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
He's one of the good guys.
Speaker 4 (33:28):
He is a very clever investigator out there searching stuff
for the public interest, for government accountability, and for his
own curiosity, for his own sniffles and giggles, as we
would say on a PG thirteen show. While he went
to public with this info, he was far from the
(33:49):
first to uncover this conspiracy actual, as we'll see, Iran
beat him to the punch and again people died. We're
going to take a pause for a word from our sponsor,
and we've returned. Maybe we talked about the first reveal
(34:10):
because Matta and Noel I love that we're walking through
the timeline here. The first compromise goes public, gets publicly
announced by Yahoo News.
Speaker 5 (34:23):
Yeah, that's true, that's period accurate. I mean they sound
like the old Internet of it all.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
You Zach Dorfman and Jenna MacLaughlin back in twenty eighteen.
Let's read the title of it here. The CIA's communications
suffered a catastrophic compromise. It started in.
Speaker 4 (34:41):
Iran right per these journalists reporting the troubles date back
to twenty thirteen. This network was partially exposed, and the
CIA scrambled jumping out their keysters to hide their tracks
while also at the same time hoping to xfiltrate compromised
(35:02):
assets abroad.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
This is terrible.
Speaker 4 (35:05):
This is the opposite of ideal. I am scrambling not
to use English curse words, because now imagine you have
essentially now you have to deploy ratlines, right like post
World War two. You have to figure out how to
get very deeply embedded people a provable, believable reason to
(35:33):
leave the country safely. And I think that can be
a very difficult proposition, especially if we're talking about nuclear proliferation,
sensitive stealth technology, cryptography, stuff like that. Those nerds are
very closely monitored and it goes back to you. I
love the reference you made earlier in noll our episode
(35:54):
why are so many spies getting busted? In that we
noted a severe, un precedented uptick in exposure and compromise,
as well as disappearance of dozens of sources, particularly in
Iran and China. So according to what we know, reported
again by our friends at Yahoo News, how did their
(36:17):
tagline go?
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Remember back in the days of the internet. Yeahoo, there
it is.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
I love it when you guys sing was it? Yeah?
I think you got it. You definitely read my mind
on it.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
So how stuff works?
Speaker 3 (36:34):
That was us from earlier.
Speaker 4 (36:36):
So, according to former intelligence officials who were speaking unonomously,
there was an Erodian double agent who got caught out.
They rolled the dice incorrectly or fortune did not favor them.
So they showed Erodian Intelligence this website and they said, Hey,
(36:58):
this is the website I use to communicate with my
CIA handlers. I know it looks like a soccer website,
but please stop pulling my toenails out and I'll show
you how we talk to each other. And once they
gave up all that information, which did happen the boffins
(37:18):
in Ronnie and Intelligence started to look around the rest
of the world Wide Web for websites with similar hominalities, signifiers, components,
and they hit on the right string of search terms.
You know, searching is like casting a spell, right, It's
an incantation online. So if you know how to phrase
(37:42):
what you are searching for, you can invoke or summon
a thing.
Speaker 5 (37:46):
Can I just say really quickly that that proto in
cell website we were talking about earlier, Dylan posted an
incredible link in the chat to a Salon article featuring
a pickup artist by the name of Eric von Markovic,
where he chats about the Venusian arts, sexual psychology and
why he can help forty year old virgins everywhere get laid.
(38:07):
And Dylan said the website was giving this dude vibes
the artful seducer. Sorry, I had to give props to
this link, also making jump stare warning because the dude's
face is huge on the on the article and he's
got a bit of a vibe.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
He's peacocking. Well, thank you there.
Speaker 4 (38:23):
At Tennessee, we know that Iran was able to play
the breadcrumb game because they use these search terms. Again,
these incanggations, right, these series of words and codes to
figure out not only other secret CIA comm sites in
(38:43):
this network, but also to track who was visiting these
sites and where they were visiting them from. And they
started to unravel the larger spider web.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Yeah, this is serious. So it goes all the way
back two thousand and nine. That's when Hezbola originally began
to unravel this stuff, and it was reported in twenty
eleven by Reuters, but nobody knew how it was happening. Right,
what is it? We always say them, it's the ways
and means or the things that are protected, the method
(39:18):
The methods are super protected. So but back in twenty eleven,
November twenty first, twenty eleven, Reuters put out Hesbela, Iran
and cover CIA informants and they were talking about specifically
this stuff without naming any websites or anything, because Hezbola
was keeping that close to their chest. That that's how
(39:38):
they uncovered these spies, and they were sharing that information
directly with China, and only a couple of years later,
or like a year and a half later, is when
you find out that China rolled up several dozen spies
working in their ranks where many of them, not all
of them were CIA or they were like people who
were working in either Iran or or China, who are
(40:01):
you know, brought in by the CIA. But it is
really scary to think about what was happening because in
this time we were trying not to put this lightly
but also not make it so gruesome as Ben was,
you know, kind of alluding to the torture that was
happening there. These folks once they get uncovered or at least
(40:21):
one person is suspected, Right, we're talking actual torture, and
then we're talking about other people who are going to
be subjected to that and or imprisoned and or just executed,
which is exactly what happened.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
All right.
Speaker 4 (40:35):
Yeah, And to give a little bit of context for
anybody unfamiliar, Hezbela is multiple things. It is a legitimate
political party in Lebanon. However, it is also a proxy
military arm of the Iradian government. So in these sorts
of functions, in intelligence functions, his Blah is Iran, There's
(40:58):
no way around it. Like the Wagner group is Russia,
you know what I mean? And beat me or Dylan
the whatever legalistic shit they're going to say at the
Hague that is just true. That's how legalism goes, and
Matt's absolutely correct. Ron YESLBLA did share this information, this
(41:23):
uncovering of the network with colleagues abroad, particularly China. This
led to the deaths of people in China or in
Chinese controlled vassal states, especially through the bloody year of
twenty eleven and twenty twelve. Also on a human note,
(41:44):
it is important to emphasize that some of the people
killed here were not aware that they were working for
the CIA. That is another part of the hidden hands. Yeah,
talk about subcontractors, right, sub sub subcontract.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
Oh yes, just get some info and that put it
into this website. Don't ask any questions. It is crazy
to think that it was so in two thousand and
nine is when people started figuring it out, and as
we look at some of the later reporting, one of
the things you'll read is that this specific technique of tradecraft,
(42:23):
using a website for these surreptitious communications was meant to
go against lower level actors, not state actors, who are
going to have a lot more money and manpower and
expertise to throw at things like trying to figure out
the methods and means of communication. Right, So when using
(42:44):
these websites in this somewhat simplistic manner of secret communication
went up against Hesbola and then went up against China
and their state forces, it was just it was inevitable
that everybody was going to get caught up in this.
And there's a sentiment that maybe from the top down
within the CIA, it was kind of said, hey, this
(43:07):
is working for us. Let it's not broken yet, so
let's not fix it for at least a good year there,
until there was a realization, oh, we're actually losing assets,
we're losing sources.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
They were asleep at the switch, Matt. The one of
the biggest screw ups here was that these dummy websites,
many of them in the network, had sequential IP addresses,
which is such an elementary day one thing to not
mess up.
Speaker 5 (43:37):
Yeah, that reminds you of like whenever you have like
like a ransom or something, is that we needed in
non sequential bills, right, because having the sequential bills shows
that they're like it's a tell, right that they're like
being tracked or that they're.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Part of the same thing one hundred part.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
Yeah, it shows an association. You want things disassociated. If
you see a sequential IP address, you just have to
know MySpace level HTML to start to start tracing those.
And that means that once you find one site, you
can easily target the next. So things were super bad.
(44:14):
The agency worked around the clock to mitigate this disaster
after they figured out this ship had sank. Initially, the
idea at Langley was well, part of it is compromised, right,
you lose one limb. That doesn't mean you need to
sacrifice the body entire. But as we see, when a
(44:35):
ship starts sinking, it sinks quickly. This might seem like
old beans, right, because we're more than a decade and
a half past the time these particular sites were actively used.
These particular sites, it's.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Very true, guys. I'm just seeing in this twenty eleven
Reuter's article. I'm going to read this from the article,
it says in May. I guess that's talking about twenty
eleven yere In may. Ron's intelligence minister said that more
than two dozen spies for the US and Israel had
been uncovered. ABC News reported that Iranian TV had broadcast
(45:10):
what the US network described as quote accurate video of
websites used by the CIA, which means they did distribute
that information internally, at least once it was known that
those websites were being used, the Iranian TV broadcasted to everybody.
So then everybody operating knew and had that information. And
(45:34):
I wonder if possibly that's why it was so disastrous.
Speaker 4 (45:38):
M Yeah, and before our friends in Tehran put that
out on state sponsored television, they did contact Russia and
China unasprovable. Interesting, it's it's what a rational actor would.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Do, and theoretically there that's to warn allies first, let
them take whatever action they need to take, and then
let the information out publicly.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
Right.
Speaker 4 (46:08):
Yeah, we'll talk about this maybe in a listener mail
conversation later on the idea of the Overton window, right,
controlling what is considered plausible conversation. Look, even though this
is a real conspiracy, it's a real screw up. It's
actually competing conspiracies and they are all proven.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
They are not theories. Even though this is.
Speaker 4 (46:30):
All true, it is valid to ask, well, guys, is
twenty twenty five, right, Ben, Matt, No, tennessee, why are
we still talking about this?
Speaker 3 (46:40):
Here's what you need to know.
Speaker 4 (46:42):
This is a parable that will be taught in Langley
for generations to come. Experts like cybersecurity researcher Zach Edwards
note new information is still dripping out year after year,
and he said the whole episode is a reminder that
developers make mistakes, no kidding, man, no better in the
(47:03):
bag there, and sometimes it takes years for someone else
to find those mistakes. But this is not your average
developer mistake type of scenario. And I'd love for us
to play a little game online right now, folks, if
you can, if you're not driving, if you're in a
(47:23):
place where you can just click over to a different
tab or a different thing on your phone, go to
Star warsweb dot net right now. The link will redirect you.
Do we want to say where the link redirects you.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
Let's see, I'm on an about page here. It says
we are the nation's first line of defense. We accomplish
what others cannot accomplish, and go where others cannot go.
Speaker 4 (47:53):
Davidbusters dot com also known as ww dot CIA dot gov.
They just cauterized the wound on that one. The jig,
at least this version is of it is up now.
If you go through the wayback machine and you look
at earlier shots of Star Wars web dot net. You
(48:15):
will see the intentionally not great website we talked about
at the top of the show. But now, as with
several of those other gaming websites, if you click through
on them, since it's public knowledge, it takes you to
the about page of the CIA. Oh wow, look at that.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
That makes you feel. If this makes you feel a
certain type of way, we found another website for you.
The title is Scream into the Void dot com.
Speaker 3 (48:48):
Yeah, and we do on daily. You can also write
to us.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
Yeah, well yeah, you can write to the Void. So
you just type, you literally type your feelings into the void.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Just ti.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
A and then click scream.
Speaker 4 (49:03):
There's no denying that all intelligence agencies worth their spook
and salt are going to do stuff like this and
still deploy assets and conduct operations abroad. Shout out to Venezuela.
If anything, we could argue. The discovery of this conspiracy
just raises more questions. One of the big ones that
(49:24):
the mainstream is not really talking about is this was
the CIA recklessly endangering its own assets, its own people,
even the folks who didn't maybe know they were working
with the agency or with the shop.
Speaker 5 (49:39):
I mean just because of the sloppy you know, the
stuff with the IP and just then in fact, they
didn't do a particularly good job disguising.
Speaker 4 (49:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly that Nolan Lake Matt was saying
the fact that when they realized the compromise had occurred,
they still didn't they didn't immediately acfiltrate everybody associated. They
wanted to keep playing the game.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
Just somebody.
Speaker 4 (50:02):
Yeah, mistakes were made. Another thing, right that we say.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
There's a twenty seventeen BBC article that is referencing a
New York Times article. So you go down the rabbit
hole there so you can gain access to the New
York Times article. That's probably best, But otherwise you can
go to BBC and look up China crippled CIA by
killing US sources, says New York Times. And this goes
back to that exact time you were mentioning Ben, that
(50:29):
twenty ten to twenty twelve timeframe where dozens of assets
of some form or another, right, we were caught. And
it's that time when I guess Iran made those phone
calls or those communications you were mentioning and just let
China know what was going on? And then China it
says in twenty eleven informants began to just disappear.
Speaker 4 (50:51):
Yep, and we don't. The public does not have an
official count. The issue here is another question, right, how
has the agency recovered from this fiasco which occurred in
step with other intelligence failures And we'll say it here
at the end, so we could avoid the emails failures
(51:14):
like high level US politicians allegedly disclosing classified intel to
foreign powers that they're buddy buddy with for some reason.
Side note for the record, not that we are experts,
You are not supposed to leave classified top secret docs
in your home bathroom. Just leave like a reader's digest,
(51:35):
or leave like a fun poop reed like depraved and
insulting English.
Speaker 3 (51:39):
And don't have to leave the names of CIA in assets.
Speaker 2 (51:45):
Yeah. Well, and if you are going to have those
things in a bathroom, at least do it in a
tasteful marble covered floor to ceiling, golden enshrined toilet.
Speaker 5 (51:54):
Just had some golden accents goods.
Speaker 2 (51:56):
Yeah, just real classic, something Lincoln would really really appreciate.
You know, I loved it.
Speaker 4 (52:02):
Famous amateur wrestler and fan of Wall the Wall. Marble
also did a couple of other good things, famously at
a Bad Night at the Theater Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 3 (52:13):
It's true.
Speaker 5 (52:14):
So before you come at us about you know, subtweeting,
we're just we are fond of architecture and we just
don't like tasting additions.
Speaker 3 (52:23):
So we're coming from on this issue. Y'alli.
Speaker 4 (52:26):
I find metal necessary. I'm on record, it bothers me
to touch it.
Speaker 2 (52:31):
I'm just a fan of Michael Ja and I really
enjoyed a recent episode of SNL.
Speaker 4 (52:36):
Did you hear the Apparently word on the street is
folks are telling me after he does weekend Update, he
goes home.
Speaker 2 (52:43):
No, he can't do that.
Speaker 3 (52:44):
That's why he's not in the big Goodbye seed.
Speaker 2 (52:47):
There's an after party and an after after party. I
know this. Are you required to go.
Speaker 4 (52:52):
To the Age of the Blues over so it's way less,
way less cocaine, way fewer kailud mandatory party.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
You know. My guy dis Newts is in there all right.
Speaker 4 (53:04):
He's in there telling people they should drink pedialyte in
the morning and to go home and also congrats on
your recent marriage.
Speaker 3 (53:13):
People.
Speaker 4 (53:13):
So as global tensions rise in theaters the world round.
All these questions we posed are increasingly important their mission.
Critical trust in the United States, domestically abroad said an
all time low, which means whatever happens next might well
get hairy. And the weirdest thing is the game itself
(53:34):
is not over, because the best, most addictive part of
what we call the great game is that it never ends.
If anything, this is a teachable moment. If you really
do jokes aside, Internet jokes aside, if you really are
dealing with stuff they don't want you to know, then
take care to make sure enemies and not actually know
(53:59):
it lives all are on the line.
Speaker 5 (54:01):
Do a better job the CIA. Come on, you have
one job.
Speaker 3 (54:05):
Let's all do a better job.
Speaker 4 (54:08):
We are also going to do a continuing job, hopefully
a good job. Responding to you. We want to hear
your thoughts, folks, whether or not you are in a circus,
a shop, a vacation abroad, whether this is news to you,
whether you are a white hat or black hat cyber punk,
(54:30):
we want your thoughts. You're the best part of the show.
We can't wait to hear what is on your mind.
After learning about this confluence very real conspiracies, you can
always write to the void. You can always call us
on the phone. You can always find us on ye
old internets.
Speaker 3 (54:49):
Speaking of dealer's choice.
Speaker 5 (54:51):
If you want to find us on the Internet, you
can do so by searching down the handle conspiracy Stuff
where we exist on Facebook with our Facebook group Here's
where it gets crazy, on x FKA, Twitter.
Speaker 3 (55:00):
And on YouTube.
Speaker 5 (55:02):
You can also find its Conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram
and TikTok in it.
Speaker 3 (55:05):
I think there's more.
Speaker 2 (55:08):
Yes, we have a phone number. It is one eight
three three st d w y t K. When you
call in, give yourself a cool nickname and let us
know if we can use your name and message on
the air. What's your favorite weird website and what are
what's the probability that it's currently being used by the
CIA or Massade or some other.
Speaker 3 (55:28):
That my questions. That's the best question.
Speaker 2 (55:31):
Oh yeah, is it the is it Christmas website?
Speaker 3 (55:35):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (55:35):
Three hundred and sixty four days out of the year.
Speaker 5 (55:38):
The answer is the one you're always talking about.
Speaker 2 (55:41):
That's a fun one. That's a great one.
Speaker 3 (55:43):
One.
Speaker 2 (55:43):
That's a great one. Is it zombo dot com? What
is it? Just send it to us let us know
If you don't want to send us a voicemail. We
have an amazing email system only monitored by us.
Speaker 3 (55:54):
We are the entities the bed.
Speaker 4 (55:57):
Each piece of correspondence we receive be well aware, yet unafraid.
Sometimes the void writes back zero one, Bravo, Delta Potatoes
conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. This is conspiracy, actual.
Speaker 2 (56:29):
Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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