February 8, 2019 • 54 mins
The Black Panther Party For Self-defense was founded in Oakland, California in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. They originally wanted to protect local residents from police brutality. One prominent Black Panther activist, Fred Hampton, was killed during an FBI/Chicago Police Force raid on December 4th, 1969. Officially speaking, his death was an unfortunate accident. However, 50 years later multiple scholars, journalists and historians believe there’s more to the story.
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Episode Transcript
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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. M
(00:24):
oh hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is North. They call me Ben, and we
are joined with our super producer Paul Mission controlled decade.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know. It's
twenty nineteen, and if you are remotely aware of the news,
(00:46):
you understand that the government is still shut down. The
government is this is the longest shutdown in modern US history.
So presumably they're not assassinating any political activists at the moment. Well,
the assassins aren't getting paid at stuff. There's back pay, right, Yeah. Yeah,
this is a divisive time in the country. But that's
(01:07):
something people always say, you know how Like older people
are always like, oh, new music sucks, but old music
is good. And people are always like, ah, this is
the most divisive time ever. It's always been a real
uh there's a phrase null uh null stumbled upon that.
I really like, it's always been a real ship show
because we're family show. There was a pe. You're listening
(01:32):
sort of like a trade show for boats, ship show,
all up on stilts. You get to look at their undercarriages.
You know. It's like that, but with with rampant wanton
havoc politically, with quite real danger to many people. And
we're not we're not gonna do with some AM or
(01:53):
FM political talking points show. We're not gonna pare it
out some headlines at you. We want to establish that
context because it's often said that history is cyclical, right
it maybe maybe it doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. And
the reason that cliche is a cliche is because it's true.
(02:16):
That's the reason most cliches are cliches. It's because they're true.
Everyone knows it. It's such a nigh roll when people
say it. Today, we are taking a journey into a
into an event that may be familiar to some of us,
uh and maybe brand new to others. And it may
be something that you just remember from one line in
(02:38):
a Rage against the Machine song, Uh Down rodeo. Right,
we were we were talking about this off air listening
to Rage against the Machine, and the three of us.
I don't know if you agreed, Paul, but the three
of us, at least here in the booth thought. You know,
rage against the Machine holds up well. The thing too
about not that that's all of a sudden the critique
(02:59):
about Raging Machine and their cultural significance. But the thing
that stands up to me is that all of the
other like rap metal bands or whatever, they sound completely
cliche and hackney now, but Rage Against the Machine just
sounds like Rage against the Machine. Nobody else really copied
them so exactly that they sound like a tired, you know,
copy of themselves. So good on them being innovative. Just
(03:21):
another thing that I was reminded of. My wife is
always trying to get me to listen to newer music
and back in the day, jay Z and Um, who's
that Guy's the other guy? Um? Jay Z and Kanye.
I'm just joking, give me a direction here. I'm not sure.
(03:41):
I think it's if you're looking at a map, I
think it's still to the left, Kanye north by Northwest
something like that. Um No, but they had they had
a song that mentioned the person we're talking about today,
and it, uh, it just reminded me of that too,
just putting that out. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, So
specifically that line in down Rodeo is they ain't gonna
send me camping like they did my man Fred Hampton, right,
(04:04):
And that is a real person. This is common knowledge
to some of us. This is maybe a an easter
egg for some people. But today we are exploring the
life and times and untimely end of a very young
man named Fred Hampton. Today most people would not be
(04:28):
able to point out Maywood, Illinois on a map. It's
relatively small. It's a community of at the closest estimate,
a little more than twenty three thousand five people in
Cook Counties, Proviso Township shortly after World War Two. Now
was this kid? His name is Fred Hampton. Uh he
(04:51):
he went to He was born in Summit, Illinois. He
went to a high school in Maywood in the area.
He was great at math, he was he was a
raid athlete, and for a time he was a pre
law student. He died spoiler alert when he was twenty
one years old. As bonkers to me every time I
look back at these whether it's like Musicians of the
(05:11):
Diet is an early age, like Kurt Cobain, I forget
they're like twenty three years old. I still think of
myself as a relatively young man. But it really makes
you puts things in perspective. You know, when just just
getting started, Fred Hampton was so what happened? So look
at this. We will have to start with, uh, some
(05:33):
some social context, some backgrounds. So here are the facts.
Fred Hampton is today most widely known for his association
with the Black Panther Party or b p P, officially
the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. This was founded
in Oakland, California, in nineteen sixty six by Huey Newton
(05:54):
and Bobby Seal. Originally, these guys wanted to protect local
residents of the Oakland community from police brutality. And this
is just like as a like a local defense force,
essentially a self governing community. Right, we don't we don't need, uh,
(06:16):
we don't need the law enforcement industry as they saw it,
to further repress our community. There's so many things that
could be solved. The reasoning goes by by just talking
to kids, because these are teenagers just saying hey, don't
cause trouble or you know, it's it's like you hear
(06:38):
the stories of young kids who maybe get pulled over
for something, or they get caught drinking under age or
smoking pot, and then the officers up to their discretion.
They can they can book a kid and take them
to juvie, or they can do something that is scarier
and more frightening for some of them, which is called
their mother. Interesting in the movie Black Klansman, I don't
(07:02):
know if you guys have seen that yet, but it
got some I think Spekeley finally got his first Becks
Best Picture and Best Director oscar first domination in thirty
years since. To the Right, Yeah, it's good. But there's
a scene where Stukeley Carmichael, who's the leader of the
Black Panther Party, is speaking at a university and one
of the organizers, who's a college student who's got this
you know, um college group that organized this event, is
(07:26):
very abusively pulled over by the very racist local police
and just hassled for being the person that brought these
people to this town. I believe in Colorado, the city
in Colorado so um, and that kind of stuff was
happening all the time, and that was the that was
absolutely a need to have some kind of protection within
this specific community to keep stuff like that from happening.
(07:46):
And need is key These people weren't making these decisions
for fun, right. They weren't like, Hey, should we go bowling,
or should we we should we start a political party
and and then rock papers as its for it. They
saw a need, and as the bp P evolved its
goals expanded, they recognized this was not something that needed
(08:10):
to exist only in Oakland, California, but in the continent
entire right, especially the US, but also also Canada, and
the group eventually called from nationwide changes meant to combat
the racial inequality in the US which still exists today.
(08:31):
By the late nineties sixties, this organization had over two
thousand members two thousand admitted members. There are probably many
many more sympathizers, right, or people who said, I see
what you're doing. I tacit Lee if not um explicitly supported.
Critics of the party, including the FBI, saw this organization
(08:54):
as a They saw it as a hate group, and
they saw it as a on the level of racial
supremacy group, you know, like the KKK. And they also
saw it as primed to explode in some sort of
like massive uprising or riot kind of situation, when in
fact they were building schools and inner city areas of Oakland,
(09:15):
and they had like clinics and supply co ops and
all of this really incredible community building stuff, breakfast programs
for kids and clothing drives and all of this stuff.
And the thing I mentioned earlier about the you know,
protecting themselves against you know, racial profiling, it certainly wasn't.
It was much more of an awareness thing. And I like,
let's stick together and make people aware that they can't
(09:37):
mess with us because we are of one mind and
we will you know, look out for each other and
draw attention to the fact that stuff is happening and
know you're rights. That's also big proponents of the Second Amendment,
which you know, the right to bear arms, not the
animal bear arms, I feel like we always have to
say that now, but the right to hold a firearm.
(09:59):
I think this is a good place to mention that
the Black Panther Party is one of numerous organizations that
find their origins in this time period. Yes where and
these are somewhat splintered groups where members of one, like
chapter of the Black Panther Party would go and form
their own group. And this was this was happening, uh
(10:20):
throughout the United States. So they're they're Basically, you have
to imagine if you look on a map, there are,
um there are smaller groups all over the place rather
than one unified group. Absolutely, absolutely, And that's an excellent
point because not everybody agreed on every facet of the
(10:40):
of the ideology. Right. There would be people who agree
with the push for equality, but they would say, hey,
this is antagonistic work within the system. And there where
other people who said, well, you know, the system is
built to destroy you, so you are destroying yourself and
us if you play along with these games. And if
you look closely enough, it's in interesting how you can
(11:00):
see the rationality for almost all of the groups, like
because it almost makes a complete sense in every scenario
with these groups that are coming together. It's all about philosophy, sure,
and philosophy is ultimately only as valuable as the actions
and inspires which I just made up. But I'm gonna
stick by that. That that turn of phrase, it belongs
(11:22):
on a bumper sticker and or a plaque of some
kind or a T shirt. Oh my god, I really
do think so. But this is totally true because the
biggest thing that Fred Hampton was known for was being
like an organizer he was a great speaker, could bring
people together, and um, he pushed for this idea that
the people in charge were using tools, using racism as
(11:45):
a tool to control people that were not in their club,
you know, which is conspiracy theory. That's just look at it.
And uh and some conspiracy theories, for the record, are true.
But he he is right there. There's an active conspiracy
the federal government at this time as the Panthers expand,
(12:07):
the federal government considers this group and associated groups terrorists
and they lump them in with the various other separatists
or status quo challenging groups that you alluded to earlier, Matt.
In the FBI's estimation, the BPP was an extremist group
that quote advocated the use of violence and guerilla tactics
(12:30):
to overthrow the US government. That's that's a heavy phrase
to drop. That's there's whether or not you largely agree
with the idea of let's just pick one thing, whether
or not you agree with the Second Amendment. Uh, It's
it's a hell of a leap to say that people
(12:51):
attempting to police their own communities are automatically going to
the White House too, burned own the Oval Office. That's
that's that's a logical leap, and it's when the FBI
bought well, it's absolutely I don't they sold it exactly.
It's absolute hyperbole. And it's like we're saying, it's this
(13:12):
idea of selling to the public, this notion that this
group of organized African American people are somehow a threat
to you in your white communities or in your you know,
way of life and your job and all of this
stuff and your safety. Really they accept whatever they need
to do to get rid of it. Really is propaganda.
But we cannot discount that some of these splintered off
(13:35):
groups were using extreme extreme violence as yeah, and uh,
I think it's a symbionese liberation sure like these other
much more extreme could even now be classified as terrorist groups.
This is during the this is during the Vietnam era,
meaning that the I have a great metaphor for this,
(13:57):
I want to save it for the end. But but
the the idea here was one of an existential threat.
So the Federal Bureau of Investigation deals with things like
you know, human trafficking, drugs, murders across state lines, that
kind of stuff, And they said backburner backburner, backburner, dissidents,
(14:21):
extremist terrorist people who want the US to be less
racist them too. And that's our number one priority. That's
our priority. They said, like, you know, drugs, human trafficking,
interstate murder, that's stuff happens, you know, all lets eggs.
But I'll tell you what, buddy, these hippies, these black panthers,
(14:44):
this injustice shall not stand. Only our injustice she'll stand,
one might imagine. So let's with that context, let's look
at Fred Hampton. It's a name that's familiar to people,
but it's also when it's a this is the name
of a real person, not just a symbol rights. Uh.
He's a smart kid. We mentioned that he was born
(15:08):
in Summit, Illinois, that was in August, so like us,
he's an August kid. He was raised in Maywood, and
he graduated from the high school there with honors in
sixty six. Nineteen sixty six. From high school, he first
went to the Developmental Institute at the y m C,
a Community college in Chicago, and then he attended Triton
(15:31):
Junior College in River Grove, Illinois. He majored in pre
law because he planned to familiarize himself with the legal
system to know his rights, with the aim of better
protecting his community against what he saw as the threat
of the police. And there's there's a there's an interesting
(15:51):
confluence of contrasting views here because Hampton saw the police
as an existential threat to his community, and the FBI
eventually sold the Black Panthers as an existential threat to
their community. Yeah. So originally, and he's a very young
(16:11):
kid at this time. Originally Fred organized for the in
double a CP yes, the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People, just to put that back in there. Um.
And then he ended up joining the Black Panther Party
in nineteen sixty eight, which was headquartered at the time
in Oakland, California. And you know, after he joins up
with them, he moves to Chicago, and he um, he
(16:34):
basically develops an Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party.
He gets in on the ground floor, and over the
next year in Chicago, Hampton and other members of the
chapter and people associated with it achieved some pretty impressive stuff.
You know, Like like Noll said earlier, they are supplying clothing,
(16:57):
they're supplying food, their oregan rising, their educating The most
notable achievement under the one people remember the most often
now was that Hampton brokered a deal between uh, some
of Chicago's most powerful street gangs by saying, look, we
(17:18):
are in a system that wants you to fight. It
wants you to kill one another because then you won't vote.
It wants you to kill one another because then you
won't get old enough, maybe not even to your thirties.
And you have to be in your thirties to be president, right,
And if you're finding each other, you can't see the
real enemy essentially exactly. Yeah. Yeah, And this message resonated
(17:43):
with these gangs. And so he televised this multi racial,
class conscious alliance between the b PP, the Young Patriots Organization,
and the Young Lords. This was technically a non aggression
packed um, because he said, you know this, this is
(18:03):
what the system wants. It wants to keep you poor,
it wants to keep you dying young, yeah, or put
you in prison. And he was you know, we said
this was televised. He Fred Hampton was somebody if you
listen to he is very convincing. And um, if you
if you listen to him, I mean, it's just one
of the there's sometimes comes along as speaker, a public
(18:26):
speaker who can in a way and I don't know
if this is the right word, but almost entrance you
where you're just listening and you're like, okay, yeah, I
hear what you're saying. The way you're speaking, what you're saying,
it's speaking to me. It's not you're not speaking at me,
you're speaking to me. And since it was on television,
the right, I guess, and wrong people we're noticing. Ah,
(18:48):
excellent point, Matt, Yes, yes, because this is a moment
that can be uh propagated before it can be censored.
So after the watershed event, after this watershed year. During
this year, Fred Hampton also coins a phrase that will
be familiar with a lot of people who may not
(19:09):
have heard of Fred Hampton's which is the phrase Rainbow
Coalition arguing again for a multi racial cooperative to address
the entrenched poverty of lower working class Chicago and more importantly,
the country as a whole. H This was later taken
up by successive political pundits. Right, it was really used. Um,
(19:35):
it morphed over time. Let's say it did? It did?
And one thing I like about what you're pointing out
with the televised, with the televised. Let's all get together, cooperate,
overthrow the system. Right, forget the g rides, I want
the machines that are making them. Uh this, the bp
P did have a maoist or communists tinge to its ideology,
(20:01):
you know, and this made, uh, the idea of the
Black Panther Party a compounding threat because we're still we're
we're in Cold War era at this point, and they
were essentially messing with the money. What happened this year, well,
at the very end of nineteen sixty nine, according to
the official story, Fred Hampton died in an apartment raid
(20:25):
searching for illegal weapons on in the early hours of
December four. The FBI saw themselves as protecting the population,
protecting the innocent population of Chicago. And officially they were
raiding a dangerous group that possessed ostensibly illegal weapons. One
(20:47):
more time, officially, that's what they were doing. It should
go without saying, but I'll say it not everyone believes
the story. And we'll get into that story after a
quick word from our sponsor, and we're back. And I
(21:07):
just want to point this out here. Um, this is
when Fred Hampton died just as a fun fact. It was.
It's not fun. It was two months after the last
confirmed Zodiat killing. Okay, let's keep going. Here's where it
gets crazy. So the federal government sees this and associated
(21:29):
groups as a threat. They are terrified of the idea
of anything challenging the solvency of the government, the breaking
of the rule of law. So the question becomes, how
far would the U. S Government go to prevent what
they saw as the spread of subversive elements? Would they,
(21:50):
in fact M I five style c I A style
break the laws they were supposed to enforce in pursuit
of what they saw as a great are good? Evidence
overwhelmingly indicates yes, the FBI essentially engineered and assassination. Yeah,
(22:12):
and um, it's tough to look past the evidence, especially
if you look at the full picture here. Um, with
something we're about to get into a specific program, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
which will be familiar to fellow long time listeners. Let's
start with a guy named Mark O'Neill. We'll we'll go
into detail about him in a moment. What you need
(22:35):
to know about Mark is that he was in the
BPP and associated with it. But he was also for
part of the time an FBI informant. And on the
night of December three, after a political education session, Hampton
and his girlfriend, who was pregnant, and several of their
associates went to and when it went to this apartment
(22:57):
where they were going to spend the night, and this guy,
Mark O'Neill was functioning as security. He also made dinner.
He made dinner, and he drugged Fred Hampton with barbiturates
which prevented him from waking up at all. Okay, yeah, yeah,
(23:17):
he slept peacefully in this bedroom with his girlfriend and
the police when they conducted the raid around four am
or so, they came in, guns blazing, right, and there
was was it Mark O'Neill? Was he the one holding
the shotgun? Mark O'Neill was was there or at least
(23:37):
for a time, Yeah, because again he set the entire
thing up. So the police shot security, who was one
guy with a shotgun. They just shot him. Yeah, that
was not Mark, That was not Mark Oil. No, they
just shot the guy as he's dying. Shotgun discharges. It's
the only shot the BPP fired that night. And then
(24:02):
they aimed their fire on the bedroom where Hampton and
his again pregnant girlfriend. And again, these these people are
in their twenties right when they shouted at twenty one
year old kid asleep in a room. And you could
claim fog of war, you could claim the best of intentions,
(24:23):
or that the road to Hell is paved with those
kinds of tiles, or you could claim this was part
of something called cointelpro, which it was. Just for the record,
I want to put that out there, and you may
be most familiar with this word um unfortunately slash kind
(24:46):
of fortunately through the work of Alex Jones, and you'll
hear him yelling about it on the internet sometimes. UM.
But yeah, cointell pro. It's an actual thing. I was
founded by the FBI in nineteen fifty six, and it
just kind of a catch all term for a counterintelligence program.
That's what was short for a counter intelligence program UM
(25:06):
that was designed to stop the Communist Party initially, uh,
and then it began to kind of branch off and
attack some of these more domestic groups um that we
talked about, including the Socialist Worker Party of course, the
Black Panthers, and any of the other splinter groups that
we've been talking about throughout, some of which were quite
dangerous and did pose a threat also in their defense
(25:29):
the clue Klux Klan. Yeah, so they were hunting anything
they saw as subversive. It's a very bad time to
be a vegan, just just to give you a sense
of how how rigid their ideology was. On on Uncle
Sam's side, or an animal rights activist, oh yeah, yeah,
or an animal rights activists by the way, I watched
(25:50):
Oh it's not animal rights. Sorry, I watched this movie
called Edge of Darkness last night. It just happened to
be on HBO, and uh, I was just living through
and it was activists who are trying to expose a
nuclear weapons program. But it felt very similar like the
off the grade groups you know that are functioning for
a higher purpose. Sure, sure, No no credit cards, right,
(26:14):
no credit card usage. Watch out for your phone. It
as GPS. It's not about the money, it's about sending
a message. Okay, sorry, I know I'm making crazy eyes
at you. I just I get it. Yeah. So the
Panther Party wasn't originally part of the Cotel pro targets right,
(26:35):
part of the FBI targets, but by nineteen sixty eight,
j Edgar Hoover himself consider them, to be quote, the
greatest threat to the internal security of the country because
he saw them as commies, right, as communists, and additionally
as um people stirring up the pots, you know, most
(27:00):
as insurgents. He saw it as a potential insurgency. Well, yeah,
it goes back to that existential threat to the United
States because some of the philosophy and some of the
some of the truth that is being spoken within these
groups and being televised speaks to some of the biggest
problems that exist in the country at this time from
(27:22):
an inequality standpoint. Um, And that's dangerous if you get
enough people to truly follow and believe, especially if you
have main parts of this group that are armed. I
can imagine why Jared R. Hoover and some of his
groups were terrified of this type of organization. Yeah, and
by nineteen sixty nine, the Panthers were what you know,
(27:44):
one of the primary targets steered by Hoover and the
FBI attempted a number of nefarious strategies to weaken the group.
The FBI was primarily concerned with a sort of a
domino effect or an acretion you know of similar groups
that got together and said, hey, you're on the same page.
(28:07):
You you also understand the idea or you agree with
us with his idea of the proletariat right and the
class struggle. Yeah, let's all work together. That's dangerous for
as long as it last. Yeah, I mean, human beings
have been saying let's work together until one of them
stabs the other one in the back for like before
recorded history, probably before Homo sapiens. It's just sort of
(28:29):
our thing. So the fact that Fred Hampton was as
as you pointed out, Matt, this enormously compelling, brilliant speaker,
this unifying force. The fact that he had these capabilities
made him a target. It put the target on his
(28:50):
back as far as Uncle Sam was concerned, especially at
the age of one, especially being so young, like he said,
he's just beginning, and to prevent this growth to um,
to stop him short, the FBI started surveilling Hampton and
his associates to the best of their ability. Wire tapping,
(29:11):
which listening to phone calls, infiltration, They were stealing the
guy's mail, they were reading his stuff. Uh, they attempted extortion,
they did more. I mean, this is this is an
era of domestic security wherein the same government agency, the FBI,
wrote letters to Dr Martin Luther King, trying to convince
(29:34):
him to kill himself. Yeah, yeah, who, by the way,
was assassinated just the year prior to when Fred Hampton
was killed, exactly exactly. There's an escalation. And at the time,
well though this may sound like common knowledge to a
lot of us listening today, at the time co intelpro
was classified, nobody knew what was happening. Nobody knew these
(29:57):
operations were not public until nineteen seventy one. And that's
important because it means that during the early morning hours
December four, there was no public scrutiny of the actions
that the FBI and its proxies local law enforcement chose
(30:19):
to take. There was definitely not congressional oversight. And even then, Ah,
this is terrible to even think, but even then, at
the time, if you look at Congress, I mean, I
can't I can't say this is my opinion, but I
don't I feel like congressional oversight wouldn't do much for
(30:40):
something like this. Unfortunately, that's just that's just my completely
my opinion. I agree with you. And one thing that
this touches on is something that's occurred in this government
and other governments quite often, which is the conflict between
elected and unelected officials. Right. You know, if you live
(31:05):
in this country and you are able to vote, you
can vote for a representative, you can vote for a president.
You cannot vote for a Supreme Court justice, those nine
creepy ring rates that run this place, and everybody still
pretends that's normal. Excuse me, different episodes or like people
who are on the Federal Reserve. People on the federal Reserve. Yeah,
(31:28):
excellent point. So you, you and I and anyone listening
cannot directly vote for the heads of intelligence agencies. That's
never gonna be on your ballot. And presidents can come
and go. But that is a different game, you know
what I mean. I'm getting creeped out, you know. I
(31:50):
I'm passionate about this. I feel like I'm preaching to
the choir here, but it but it's true. And the
reason we bring that up is because we I want
to be very clear that there are people in Congress
with the best of intentions who had no idea what
was going on. Yes, you know what I mean, they
were concerned about their constituency, they were probably they were
(32:13):
probably mainly concerned with being reelected, if we're being honest,
but they would not have co signed these sorts of actions,
right because now, looking back, we have to ask ourselves
who were the terrorists who was engaging in guerrilla tactics
who successfully assassinated more people? Oh, I know, I know,
(32:34):
dang well, I'm just asking. I'm just asking this. This
stuff comes to a head in nineteen seventy six the
Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations, which is something you
hit me to years and years ago, Matt, the Church Committee. Yeah,
they they finally realized in seventy six that the FBI
was violating the law and had been violating the law
(32:55):
in several operations under coin tel pro. Pretty rough stuff.
So the stated aim right of coinel pro when when
they go into an office and they're like, okay, where
what this is what coentel pro is gonna do. We're
gonna prevent violence, and uh, that's really what it is.
But some of these the actions that they took during
(33:15):
this it it uh arguably promoted violence between not not
between the FBI and other groups, but between the groups
that the FBI is surveilling under cotel pro, specifically the
Black Panthers and several other rival organizations UM. And we
we mentioned this in our video that we made god
years ago. I don't even know when that was, but
(33:37):
and we talked about two other groups, the United Slaves
and the Blackstone Rangers, who are too other I say,
similar groups, but they're they're very different in many ways.
But it's these two other groups UM were then having
major conflicts with the Black Panthers because of the actions
taken by the FBI. Yes, and the FBI did not
(33:57):
want these groups to unify. In the eyes of the
in the eyes of the Bureau of these groups were
similar enough that they should be kept apart. They were
considered troublemakers, right, and the FBI also worked ardently to
prevent prominent BPP members from making public appearances. According to
(34:18):
Noam Chomsky, who I know it can be a controversial
author for some people, cointelpro eventually expanded to include political assassinations.
The reason we say, according to Noam Chomsky, is because
even today you will you will quickly go down a
rabbit hole of various you know what, I'm gonna call
(34:39):
him apologetics. I'm going to call them various attempts at rationalization.
Of assassination. The official story right here, we can we
can just give you the blow by blow back to
the death of Fred Hampton. Supporters of the party claimed
Hampton was assassinated and that the government assassinated Hampton because
(35:00):
they feared he could become a visible, unifying leader and icon,
a figurehead of the black power movement. So how did
he actually die. We'll get to that right after a
word from our sponsor, and we're back. In the early
(35:23):
morning hours of December four, nine, six nine, eight Cook
County police officers who were acting under instructions from the
Cook County States Attorney's Office approached the West Side Chicago
headquarters of the Black Panthers. As you might imagine in
(35:43):
a raid type situation, there was another group of officers
that approached from the back. Everyone inside was still asleep,
including Fred Hampton. Inside what was you say headquarters And
it was really it was an apartment. It was a
flat um. There were nine people still asleep. This is
in the very early morning hours before the sun had
(36:05):
even risen. Yeah, it's crowded apartment, first floor. Nineteen guns
in the apartment, more than a thousand rounds of ammunition.
The way that The Tribune reported the series of events
was that this was a national hate group known for
their revolutionary politics, more importantly for shooting police officers. That's
(36:28):
there were cop killers. That's how this was reported, right.
Is there any sand to that, Like I mean, is
there may be some kind of conflict between police and
Black Panthers that resulted in a police officer and being killed,
and they spun it into these are cop murdering savages. Um.
You know, I don't have the reporting right here with
(36:49):
me or the police reporting, but into my mind, for
the Chicago Tribune to print that for killing cops, I
would say that at least a few instances occurred. Yeah,
there there are claims that there were thirty five police
officers who were murdered by the Black Panthers and the
(37:10):
subsequent Black Liberation Army across the sixties, seventies, and eighties.
So there were cops. Did note they were shot, and
it's it's important that we mentioned this. People were dying.
It's uh, it's easy tempting, perhaps for some people to
get caught in the game of equivocation or to forget
(37:34):
that there are actual human lives at stake, you know
what I mean? So we can only imagine that of
the six officers in the back door and the eight
officers in the front, several of them may have thought
they were on a mission of day I say vengeance. Right.
So about four forty five am, a Sergeant Daniel Growth
(37:57):
knocked on the front door of the apartment. There was
no answer, so he knocked with his gun and presumably shouted,
assumably shouted yeah. Then they busted in the door. The
(38:20):
next seven minutes of gunfire become one of the most
intensely debated and disputed incidents of the entire decade. Yeah,
there was a federal grand jury investigation that found that
the police fired in the neighborhood of arranging between eighty
three to nineties shots into this apartment. It is a
(38:41):
small again, this is an apartment in Chicago. This is
gonna that that that would just be chaos. I would
fear for the lives of the neighbors. And again, the
one of the nineteen guns in the apartment room by
the b PP, one shotgun discharged. Once there was one
shot fired. Yeah, that's pretty that's pretty rough, pretty pretty damning. Actually,
(39:04):
after the shooting stopped, Fred Hampton was dead at one
and a party leader from Peoria named Mark Clark twenty
two was also shot fatally. And I believe the grand
jury found that he was the one who knew discharge
that one shotgun blast. Right, he was as he was
(39:24):
set to be security. Right, And now we returned to
William O'Neill, Panther and informants. People didn't originally know the
extent of his involvement with the FBI, isn't there, right, Yeah,
it wasn't until so this occurred. The death occurred in
nineteen sixty nine, and his role wasn't revealed until nineteen
(39:47):
seventy three. Um, and yeah, it's pretty rough actually, So
we mentioned that he was there was a member of
the Black Panther Party. He was on the inside, working
closely with Fred Hampton as well as Mark Clark, and
he was simultaneously serving as an informant for the FBI. Ah,
(40:11):
he would send information to UH to the FBI. And
by the way, he's a teenager at this time. Is
that he's a young guy when he's starting out working
with these guys, These people were so young, Yeah, exactly. Um,
among the things that he sent to the FBI, the
primary thing I guess that that people focus on is
(40:32):
a floor plan for this apartment that was eventually rated.
His cover was blown and at you know, at one
point there I believe it was I believe it was
seventy three when his cover was blown, but I am
not completely positive. It might have been earlier than that.
I do not, unfortunately, have that specific information. But he
(40:54):
ended up going into the Federal Witness Protection Program. Uh,
we can say it here. He has name at the
time or when he went into the program was William Hart,
and he moved out to California, UM and then eventually
he moved back to Chicago in n And the reason
we're talking about O'Neill in this way is because in
January of nineteen nine, on Martin Martin Luther King Junior Day,
(41:18):
he actually took his own life by running out into traffic.
And we know this because he had an uncle named
Ben Heard who was with him that day and his
story is told by the Chicago Reader and that's what
we're reading about here. And he Um specifically, this guy
been Heard, has some insight into O'Neill's life. Yes, he
(41:38):
learned of O'Neill's work with the FBI shortly after the
death of Fred Hampton in nineteen sixty nine, and per
Ben heard O'Neill denied everything that he was asked about,
and heard says, I thought about some of the things
he did and said I asked him, but he denied
(42:00):
I had it. And then later O'Neill opened up, told
his uncle he had been in trouble for everything from
a car theft to kidnapping and torture and so on
and some pretty heavy things, pretty heavy things. Heard says
that his nephew told him they had tied someone up
and we're pouring hot water over his head. They were
trying to get him to do something. So an FBI
(42:22):
agent told O'Neill he would take care of all of
it if he turned if he infiltrated the panthers, and
heard believe that O'Neill had regrets, right, I think that's
pretty safe to say. So he went on to say
he was sorry that he did what he ended up
doing um and that he it was and it was
(42:42):
his impression that this was an FBI raid of the house.
But the FBI gave it over to the state's attorney
and then state police local law enforcement took the reins
from there. Um, they killed Fred Hampton and in this
person's estimation, and made sure that he was dead. Yeah,
(43:05):
that's a crucial point here. O'Neill, according to his own
statements before his death, O'Neill thought this was just going
to be a raid. Maybe people would get arrested for
possession of firearms or some sort of violation of possession laws. Right,
Maybe it would have been a drug possession possibly, right. Heck,
(43:29):
you know, if they were looking for something, maybe it
would have been a violation of the fire code. I
don't know. I mean, the biggest thing is the firearms charges.
You probably should have sent them to prison on just
firearms charges. But that's not how it went down, right,
So from O'Neill's perspective, Now, as far as we know today,
(43:50):
O'Neill did not say that the FBI on records say
that the FBI lied to him, but they did say
origin only that this was simply going to be a raid.
And he was with his nephew the morning after the
raid in Hampton's apartment and he saw the he saw
(44:18):
the aftermath. They said there were papers strown all over
the floor, blood all over. There was a trail of
blood from where they the police had dragged Fred's body
and William O'Neill in this case, Bill he says, just
stood there in shock and he never thought it would
come to this. Like all of his involvement with the FBI,
(44:40):
he like we keep saying, he didn't think it would
be a massacre. And that's only to to speak to
this person who has been um I guess reviled throughout
history now at this point as being the guy that's
set up Fred Hampton painted his judas r Yeah, and
and and you know, there's two sides of it. In
a way, he was, but in another way, he didn't understand.
(45:02):
And to be very clear, to be crystal clear, the
FBI actively conspired to to assassinate or to neutralize, at
the very least a twenty one year old boy for
his political beliefs because they saw it as a threat
to both the economic and the racial or social status
(45:25):
quo of the United States. This also occurred during the
Vietnam era, where in Hampton and many others like him
would be lumped together as potentially existential threats to the
solvency of the nation. Right because this is again, uh,
this stuff sounds so crazy. It sounds like people getting
in a bubble and getting carried away. This bubble was real.
(45:49):
I think there was something in the outline here band
that that you didn't end up saying. But our buddies,
the Culture Kings, have a phrase they use where it's
talking about messing with the money, and that's when the
government starts really paying it to mention, you know, when
I get up setting the apple cart in a way
that affects economics. I did put that in, and yes,
in a shout out to Chack keyson Edgar. I didn't
(46:12):
originally say it because I I think we still owe
them a song. We do, and I'm gonna I'm gonna
at least make the track for this next one. I
don't claim to be c but um, I can definitely
make some beats. So let's just let's I commit to that.
You're great at that fantastic MCS. I said, we put
(46:32):
it out in just to surprise them out of nowhere
and call it hindsight. Yeah, and we know they don't
listen to the show, so it's going to be we
should have them back on. I had a lot of
fun in the Michael Jordan episode. I wasn't around for
that one. That's right. I forgot they were on. Maybe
they did listen to the show. What am I saying? Hey, guys,
you was gonna say you missed out? It was actually
really great. I'm sure it was the great people as
(46:53):
far as we know, Uh, they are not elements of
cointelpro and UH and hopefully die either, are you guys.
But it's like witch hunt rules, right, Like if you
tell me you're not, that's more evidence that you are. Yeah,
I think I think you'd have to say no, right.
And and it's also, I'm sure we've said this before,
(47:13):
a complete myth that if you ask an undercover cop,
if they're an undercover cop, they don't have to tell you.
It's a total myth. They can commit crimes with you rules.
And people would say that's for a greater good. And
that's the argument, right, that UM succeeded in pitching co
in telpro and in violating the laws and the rights
(47:36):
of U S citizens UH and taking the and taking
the lives, taking the one thing that cannot be returned.
And to this day, officially the FBI, the Justice Department, UH,
the Chicago Police Force, they reject claims of political skullduggery. Uh.
(47:56):
They say that the raid was unfortunate. It it was
not the ideal outcome. But on their side, it was
conducted correctly and to the letter of the law. We're
conducting a raid to find illegal firearms to neutralize a threat.
In nine seventy one, however, an activist group called the
Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI stole co intel Pro documents.
(48:20):
They stole the paperwork from a field office. And this
is how that, this is how Cointelpro became a public thing.
Had they not conducted that raid, you see the parallels here.
Had they not conducted that illegal raid, then it is possible,
if not plausible, that Cointelpro would remain a myth and
(48:43):
a rumor and a conspiracy theory and unproven conspiracy theory
even today. Yes. Uh. In April of the same year,
by the way, n one, the FBI officially terminated co
intel Pro. Yet, numerous critics of the U. S. Government
believed that programs like this um never really go away.
The names change, But like Dr Manhattan says, and Watchman nothing,
(49:06):
nothing never ends. Have you guys seen there's a Watchman
series that's coming to HBO. It looks a lot less
shiny than the Zack Snyder movie. Less shiny. Yeah, I
felt like the Zack Snyder movie was a little like
overly polished. Look every scene of painting. Yeah, kind of
this one, like, um, what's his name? Ror shacks mask
(49:27):
is literally just like a sack with kind of like
you know, well they're prequels, right, No, I think maybe No,
I think it's the I don't I don't know. I
don't know that it is. I think it's I think
it might even be either a deeper exploration of the
series with more of the because I come on, you
need more than a movie to really like go deep
into that book, right, there's so much stuff in there
(49:49):
that they couldn't put in. Dude, I just rewatched it,
and I think it holds up. I didn't like it.
I don't know. I loved it. You did like love
all right. I don't know. And maybe it is just nostalgia.
I think the reason for me was that that was
such a formative graphic. That was the first graphic now
I've read where I was like, oh, I see what
graphic novels can accomplish. And it was just like mind
blowing to me. So I felt like it was very
sacred to me and to see someone try to do
(50:12):
I felt like it was a valiant effort. But I
also didn't really care for Zack Snyder's style anyway. Alan
Moore hated it. Yeah, Alan Moore is like, why did
he watched? He probably didn't even know he he uh
does write excellent comics for fun. But I think it
is it's to support his main hobby, his main passion,
(50:33):
which is just hating stuff. Oh jeez. Uh, it's just
interestingly enough here. Uh. And this show is not brought
to you by Watchman or HBO. Just so you know
that if you go to HBO dot com slash Watchman,
the first thing you see is nothing ever ends. Yeah,
and then the little the little blurb. Oh and Trent
(50:54):
Resner and Atticus Ross doing the music. That's pretty dope.
And it's a show run by Dame and Linda Laff
who I believed did did lost. That's correct along with
j J. Abrams. And unlike Dr Manhattan's quote, unlike his
observation in the fictional world of Watchman, this love it
(51:14):
or hate it is the reality in which we have
collectively lived for the span of this episode, and some
things do end, namely this episode, but not our show.
We hope that you enjoyed this cursory journey into the
murky murky, morally problematic, ethically bankrupt world of domestic intelligence. UM.
(51:41):
We hope that, regardless of whether or not you agree
with the views of various groups mentioned in this show,
we hope that you can agree that the loss of
any human life is a tragedy. We also want to
know if you think co Intel pro really ended, do
you think it still around? And if so, in what iteration?
(52:03):
Do you have a story or a particularly suspicious death
that you think deserves more attention. Let us know. You
can find us on Facebook, you can find us on Instagram,
you can find us on Twitter. We are conspiracy stuff
at any number of those. And you can meet the
best part of the show, your fellow listeners on our
(52:25):
Facebook community page. Here's where it gets crazy. Matt Will
not for for various reasons, various non sketchy reasons, reveal
his personal Instagram Nolan, I will, I am at Ben
Boland and I'm at Embryonic Insider And if I'm not mistaken, Matt,
you sort of dropped a few clues last time, you're
gonna keep it on the d L like that. I
am at an egg shaped objects, the Twitter egg. You're
(52:49):
just the twitter ed who anonymous Twitter user. But what
if somebody doesn't care for the Internet, you guys, well
then I don't know how you're getting by in life
these days. But no, you know what, that's not true.
There are ways you can STI there's telephony tell offen
to remember, you guys know ten Jones, that's what they
(53:14):
used to call it. You guys back in the day,
remember when, like the early days of the Internet, where
there would be like a telephone tell Offeny suite in
u in um like Prodigy or something where you could
make phone calls through the computer. It was crazy phony,
literally phony. We do have a number that we have
an old school number. We are one eight three three
st d w y t K. Yes, call and leave
(53:37):
a message. But what happens if what happens if someone says, Okay,
I don't want to use social media and I hate
phones because it's you know, twenty nineteen. Absolutely just send
us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at
has stuff Works dot com.
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. M
(00:24):
oh hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is North. They call me Ben, and we
are joined with our super producer Paul Mission controlled decade.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know. It's
twenty nineteen, and if you are remotely aware of the news,
(00:46):
you understand that the government is still shut down. The
government is this is the longest shutdown in modern US history.
So presumably they're not assassinating any political activists at the moment. Well,
the assassins aren't getting paid at stuff. There's back pay, right, Yeah. Yeah,
this is a divisive time in the country. But that's
(01:07):
something people always say, you know how Like older people
are always like, oh, new music sucks, but old music
is good. And people are always like, ah, this is
the most divisive time ever. It's always been a real
uh there's a phrase null uh null stumbled upon that.
I really like, it's always been a real ship show
because we're family show. There was a pe. You're listening
(01:32):
sort of like a trade show for boats, ship show,
all up on stilts. You get to look at their undercarriages.
You know. It's like that, but with with rampant wanton
havoc politically, with quite real danger to many people. And
we're not we're not gonna do with some AM or
(01:53):
FM political talking points show. We're not gonna pare it
out some headlines at you. We want to establish that
context because it's often said that history is cyclical, right
it maybe maybe it doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. And
the reason that cliche is a cliche is because it's true.
(02:16):
That's the reason most cliches are cliches. It's because they're true.
Everyone knows it. It's such a nigh roll when people
say it. Today, we are taking a journey into a
into an event that may be familiar to some of us,
uh and maybe brand new to others. And it may
be something that you just remember from one line in
(02:38):
a Rage against the Machine song, Uh Down rodeo. Right,
we were we were talking about this off air listening
to Rage against the Machine, and the three of us.
I don't know if you agreed, Paul, but the three
of us, at least here in the booth thought. You know,
rage against the Machine holds up well. The thing too
about not that that's all of a sudden the critique
(02:59):
about Raging Machine and their cultural significance. But the thing
that stands up to me is that all of the
other like rap metal bands or whatever, they sound completely
cliche and hackney now, but Rage Against the Machine just
sounds like Rage against the Machine. Nobody else really copied
them so exactly that they sound like a tired, you know,
copy of themselves. So good on them being innovative. Just
(03:21):
another thing that I was reminded of. My wife is
always trying to get me to listen to newer music
and back in the day, jay Z and Um, who's
that Guy's the other guy? Um? Jay Z and Kanye.
I'm just joking, give me a direction here. I'm not sure.
(03:41):
I think it's if you're looking at a map, I
think it's still to the left, Kanye north by Northwest
something like that. Um No, but they had they had
a song that mentioned the person we're talking about today,
and it, uh, it just reminded me of that too,
just putting that out. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, So
specifically that line in down Rodeo is they ain't gonna
send me camping like they did my man Fred Hampton, right,
(04:04):
And that is a real person. This is common knowledge
to some of us. This is maybe a an easter
egg for some people. But today we are exploring the
life and times and untimely end of a very young
man named Fred Hampton. Today most people would not be
(04:28):
able to point out Maywood, Illinois on a map. It's
relatively small. It's a community of at the closest estimate,
a little more than twenty three thousand five people in
Cook Counties, Proviso Township shortly after World War Two. Now
was this kid? His name is Fred Hampton. Uh he
(04:51):
he went to He was born in Summit, Illinois. He
went to a high school in Maywood in the area.
He was great at math, he was he was a
raid athlete, and for a time he was a pre
law student. He died spoiler alert when he was twenty
one years old. As bonkers to me every time I
look back at these whether it's like Musicians of the
(05:11):
Diet is an early age, like Kurt Cobain, I forget
they're like twenty three years old. I still think of
myself as a relatively young man. But it really makes
you puts things in perspective. You know, when just just
getting started, Fred Hampton was so what happened? So look
at this. We will have to start with, uh, some
(05:33):
some social context, some backgrounds. So here are the facts.
Fred Hampton is today most widely known for his association
with the Black Panther Party or b p P, officially
the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. This was founded
in Oakland, California, in nineteen sixty six by Huey Newton
(05:54):
and Bobby Seal. Originally, these guys wanted to protect local
residents of the Oakland community from police brutality. And this
is just like as a like a local defense force,
essentially a self governing community. Right, we don't we don't need, uh,
(06:16):
we don't need the law enforcement industry as they saw it,
to further repress our community. There's so many things that
could be solved. The reasoning goes by by just talking
to kids, because these are teenagers just saying hey, don't
cause trouble or you know, it's it's like you hear
(06:38):
the stories of young kids who maybe get pulled over
for something, or they get caught drinking under age or
smoking pot, and then the officers up to their discretion.
They can they can book a kid and take them
to juvie, or they can do something that is scarier
and more frightening for some of them, which is called
their mother. Interesting in the movie Black Klansman, I don't
(07:02):
know if you guys have seen that yet, but it
got some I think Spekeley finally got his first Becks
Best Picture and Best Director oscar first domination in thirty
years since. To the Right, Yeah, it's good. But there's
a scene where Stukeley Carmichael, who's the leader of the
Black Panther Party, is speaking at a university and one
of the organizers, who's a college student who's got this
you know, um college group that organized this event, is
(07:26):
very abusively pulled over by the very racist local police
and just hassled for being the person that brought these
people to this town. I believe in Colorado, the city
in Colorado so um, and that kind of stuff was
happening all the time, and that was the that was
absolutely a need to have some kind of protection within
this specific community to keep stuff like that from happening.
(07:46):
And need is key These people weren't making these decisions
for fun, right. They weren't like, Hey, should we go bowling,
or should we we should we start a political party
and and then rock papers as its for it. They
saw a need, and as the bp P evolved its
goals expanded, they recognized this was not something that needed
(08:10):
to exist only in Oakland, California, but in the continent
entire right, especially the US, but also also Canada, and
the group eventually called from nationwide changes meant to combat
the racial inequality in the US which still exists today.
(08:31):
By the late nineties sixties, this organization had over two
thousand members two thousand admitted members. There are probably many
many more sympathizers, right, or people who said, I see
what you're doing. I tacit Lee if not um explicitly supported.
Critics of the party, including the FBI, saw this organization
(08:54):
as a They saw it as a hate group, and
they saw it as a on the level of racial
supremacy group, you know, like the KKK. And they also
saw it as primed to explode in some sort of
like massive uprising or riot kind of situation, when in
fact they were building schools and inner city areas of Oakland,
(09:15):
and they had like clinics and supply co ops and
all of this really incredible community building stuff, breakfast programs
for kids and clothing drives and all of this stuff.
And the thing I mentioned earlier about the you know,
protecting themselves against you know, racial profiling, it certainly wasn't.
It was much more of an awareness thing. And I like,
let's stick together and make people aware that they can't
(09:37):
mess with us because we are of one mind and
we will you know, look out for each other and
draw attention to the fact that stuff is happening and
know you're rights. That's also big proponents of the Second Amendment,
which you know, the right to bear arms, not the
animal bear arms, I feel like we always have to
say that now, but the right to hold a firearm.
(09:59):
I think this is a good place to mention that
the Black Panther Party is one of numerous organizations that
find their origins in this time period. Yes where and
these are somewhat splintered groups where members of one, like
chapter of the Black Panther Party would go and form
their own group. And this was this was happening, uh
(10:20):
throughout the United States. So they're they're Basically, you have
to imagine if you look on a map, there are,
um there are smaller groups all over the place rather
than one unified group. Absolutely, absolutely, And that's an excellent
point because not everybody agreed on every facet of the
(10:40):
of the ideology. Right. There would be people who agree
with the push for equality, but they would say, hey,
this is antagonistic work within the system. And there where
other people who said, well, you know, the system is
built to destroy you, so you are destroying yourself and
us if you play along with these games. And if
you look closely enough, it's in interesting how you can
(11:00):
see the rationality for almost all of the groups, like
because it almost makes a complete sense in every scenario
with these groups that are coming together. It's all about philosophy, sure,
and philosophy is ultimately only as valuable as the actions
and inspires which I just made up. But I'm gonna
stick by that. That that turn of phrase, it belongs
(11:22):
on a bumper sticker and or a plaque of some
kind or a T shirt. Oh my god, I really
do think so. But this is totally true because the
biggest thing that Fred Hampton was known for was being
like an organizer he was a great speaker, could bring
people together, and um, he pushed for this idea that
the people in charge were using tools, using racism as
(11:45):
a tool to control people that were not in their club,
you know, which is conspiracy theory. That's just look at it.
And uh and some conspiracy theories, for the record, are true.
But he he is right there. There's an active conspiracy
the federal government at this time as the Panthers expand,
(12:07):
the federal government considers this group and associated groups terrorists
and they lump them in with the various other separatists
or status quo challenging groups that you alluded to earlier, Matt.
In the FBI's estimation, the BPP was an extremist group
that quote advocated the use of violence and guerilla tactics
(12:30):
to overthrow the US government. That's that's a heavy phrase
to drop. That's there's whether or not you largely agree
with the idea of let's just pick one thing, whether
or not you agree with the Second Amendment. Uh, It's
it's a hell of a leap to say that people
(12:51):
attempting to police their own communities are automatically going to
the White House too, burned own the Oval Office. That's
that's that's a logical leap, and it's when the FBI
bought well, it's absolutely I don't they sold it exactly.
It's absolute hyperbole. And it's like we're saying, it's this
(13:12):
idea of selling to the public, this notion that this
group of organized African American people are somehow a threat
to you in your white communities or in your you know,
way of life and your job and all of this
stuff and your safety. Really they accept whatever they need
to do to get rid of it. Really is propaganda.
But we cannot discount that some of these splintered off
(13:35):
groups were using extreme extreme violence as yeah, and uh,
I think it's a symbionese liberation sure like these other
much more extreme could even now be classified as terrorist groups.
This is during the this is during the Vietnam era,
meaning that the I have a great metaphor for this,
(13:57):
I want to save it for the end. But but
the the idea here was one of an existential threat.
So the Federal Bureau of Investigation deals with things like
you know, human trafficking, drugs, murders across state lines, that
kind of stuff, And they said backburner backburner, backburner, dissidents,
(14:21):
extremist terrorist people who want the US to be less
racist them too. And that's our number one priority. That's
our priority. They said, like, you know, drugs, human trafficking,
interstate murder, that's stuff happens, you know, all lets eggs.
But I'll tell you what, buddy, these hippies, these black panthers,
(14:44):
this injustice shall not stand. Only our injustice she'll stand,
one might imagine. So let's with that context, let's look
at Fred Hampton. It's a name that's familiar to people,
but it's also when it's a this is the name
of a real person, not just a symbol rights. Uh.
He's a smart kid. We mentioned that he was born
(15:08):
in Summit, Illinois, that was in August, so like us,
he's an August kid. He was raised in Maywood, and
he graduated from the high school there with honors in
sixty six. Nineteen sixty six. From high school, he first
went to the Developmental Institute at the y m C,
a Community college in Chicago, and then he attended Triton
(15:31):
Junior College in River Grove, Illinois. He majored in pre
law because he planned to familiarize himself with the legal
system to know his rights, with the aim of better
protecting his community against what he saw as the threat
of the police. And there's there's a there's an interesting
(15:51):
confluence of contrasting views here because Hampton saw the police
as an existential threat to his community, and the FBI
eventually sold the Black Panthers as an existential threat to
their community. Yeah. So originally, and he's a very young
(16:11):
kid at this time. Originally Fred organized for the in
double a CP yes, the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People, just to put that back in there. Um.
And then he ended up joining the Black Panther Party
in nineteen sixty eight, which was headquartered at the time
in Oakland, California. And you know, after he joins up
with them, he moves to Chicago, and he um, he
(16:34):
basically develops an Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party.
He gets in on the ground floor, and over the
next year in Chicago, Hampton and other members of the
chapter and people associated with it achieved some pretty impressive stuff.
You know, Like like Noll said earlier, they are supplying clothing,
(16:57):
they're supplying food, their oregan rising, their educating The most
notable achievement under the one people remember the most often
now was that Hampton brokered a deal between uh, some
of Chicago's most powerful street gangs by saying, look, we
(17:18):
are in a system that wants you to fight. It
wants you to kill one another because then you won't vote.
It wants you to kill one another because then you
won't get old enough, maybe not even to your thirties.
And you have to be in your thirties to be president, right,
And if you're finding each other, you can't see the
real enemy essentially exactly. Yeah. Yeah, And this message resonated
(17:43):
with these gangs. And so he televised this multi racial,
class conscious alliance between the b PP, the Young Patriots Organization,
and the Young Lords. This was technically a non aggression
packed um, because he said, you know this, this is
(18:03):
what the system wants. It wants to keep you poor,
it wants to keep you dying young, yeah, or put
you in prison. And he was you know, we said
this was televised. He Fred Hampton was somebody if you
listen to he is very convincing. And um, if you
if you listen to him, I mean, it's just one
of the there's sometimes comes along as speaker, a public
(18:26):
speaker who can in a way and I don't know
if this is the right word, but almost entrance you
where you're just listening and you're like, okay, yeah, I
hear what you're saying. The way you're speaking, what you're saying,
it's speaking to me. It's not you're not speaking at me,
you're speaking to me. And since it was on television,
the right, I guess, and wrong people we're noticing. Ah,
(18:48):
excellent point, Matt, Yes, yes, because this is a moment
that can be uh propagated before it can be censored.
So after the watershed event, after this watershed year. During
this year, Fred Hampton also coins a phrase that will
be familiar with a lot of people who may not
(19:09):
have heard of Fred Hampton's which is the phrase Rainbow
Coalition arguing again for a multi racial cooperative to address
the entrenched poverty of lower working class Chicago and more importantly,
the country as a whole. H This was later taken
up by successive political pundits. Right, it was really used. Um,
(19:35):
it morphed over time. Let's say it did? It did?
And one thing I like about what you're pointing out
with the televised, with the televised. Let's all get together, cooperate,
overthrow the system. Right, forget the g rides, I want
the machines that are making them. Uh this, the bp
P did have a maoist or communists tinge to its ideology,
(20:01):
you know, and this made, uh, the idea of the
Black Panther Party a compounding threat because we're still we're
we're in Cold War era at this point, and they
were essentially messing with the money. What happened this year, well,
at the very end of nineteen sixty nine, according to
the official story, Fred Hampton died in an apartment raid
(20:25):
searching for illegal weapons on in the early hours of
December four. The FBI saw themselves as protecting the population,
protecting the innocent population of Chicago. And officially they were
raiding a dangerous group that possessed ostensibly illegal weapons. One
(20:47):
more time, officially, that's what they were doing. It should
go without saying, but I'll say it not everyone believes
the story. And we'll get into that story after a
quick word from our sponsor, and we're back. And I
(21:07):
just want to point this out here. Um, this is
when Fred Hampton died just as a fun fact. It was.
It's not fun. It was two months after the last
confirmed Zodiat killing. Okay, let's keep going. Here's where it
gets crazy. So the federal government sees this and associated
(21:29):
groups as a threat. They are terrified of the idea
of anything challenging the solvency of the government, the breaking
of the rule of law. So the question becomes, how
far would the U. S Government go to prevent what
they saw as the spread of subversive elements? Would they,
(21:50):
in fact M I five style c I A style
break the laws they were supposed to enforce in pursuit
of what they saw as a great are good? Evidence
overwhelmingly indicates yes, the FBI essentially engineered and assassination. Yeah,
(22:12):
and um, it's tough to look past the evidence, especially
if you look at the full picture here. Um, with
something we're about to get into a specific program, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
which will be familiar to fellow long time listeners. Let's
start with a guy named Mark O'Neill. We'll we'll go
into detail about him in a moment. What you need
(22:35):
to know about Mark is that he was in the
BPP and associated with it. But he was also for
part of the time an FBI informant. And on the
night of December three, after a political education session, Hampton
and his girlfriend, who was pregnant, and several of their
associates went to and when it went to this apartment
(22:57):
where they were going to spend the night, and this guy,
Mark O'Neill was functioning as security. He also made dinner.
He made dinner, and he drugged Fred Hampton with barbiturates
which prevented him from waking up at all. Okay, yeah, yeah,
(23:17):
he slept peacefully in this bedroom with his girlfriend and
the police when they conducted the raid around four am
or so, they came in, guns blazing, right, and there
was was it Mark O'Neill? Was he the one holding
the shotgun? Mark O'Neill was was there or at least
(23:37):
for a time, Yeah, because again he set the entire
thing up. So the police shot security, who was one
guy with a shotgun. They just shot him. Yeah, that
was not Mark, That was not Mark Oil. No, they
just shot the guy as he's dying. Shotgun discharges. It's
the only shot the BPP fired that night. And then
(24:02):
they aimed their fire on the bedroom where Hampton and
his again pregnant girlfriend. And again, these these people are
in their twenties right when they shouted at twenty one
year old kid asleep in a room. And you could
claim fog of war, you could claim the best of intentions,
(24:23):
or that the road to Hell is paved with those
kinds of tiles, or you could claim this was part
of something called cointelpro, which it was. Just for the record,
I want to put that out there, and you may
be most familiar with this word um unfortunately slash kind
(24:46):
of fortunately through the work of Alex Jones, and you'll
hear him yelling about it on the internet sometimes. UM.
But yeah, cointell pro. It's an actual thing. I was
founded by the FBI in nineteen fifty six, and it
just kind of a catch all term for a counterintelligence program.
That's what was short for a counter intelligence program UM
(25:06):
that was designed to stop the Communist Party initially, uh,
and then it began to kind of branch off and
attack some of these more domestic groups um that we
talked about, including the Socialist Worker Party of course, the
Black Panthers, and any of the other splinter groups that
we've been talking about throughout, some of which were quite
dangerous and did pose a threat also in their defense
(25:29):
the clue Klux Klan. Yeah, so they were hunting anything
they saw as subversive. It's a very bad time to
be a vegan, just just to give you a sense
of how how rigid their ideology was. On on Uncle
Sam's side, or an animal rights activist, oh yeah, yeah,
or an animal rights activists by the way, I watched
(25:50):
Oh it's not animal rights. Sorry, I watched this movie
called Edge of Darkness last night. It just happened to
be on HBO, and uh, I was just living through
and it was activists who are trying to expose a
nuclear weapons program. But it felt very similar like the
off the grade groups you know that are functioning for
a higher purpose. Sure, sure, No no credit cards, right,
(26:14):
no credit card usage. Watch out for your phone. It
as GPS. It's not about the money, it's about sending
a message. Okay, sorry, I know I'm making crazy eyes
at you. I just I get it. Yeah. So the
Panther Party wasn't originally part of the Cotel pro targets right,
(26:35):
part of the FBI targets, but by nineteen sixty eight,
j Edgar Hoover himself consider them, to be quote, the
greatest threat to the internal security of the country because
he saw them as commies, right, as communists, and additionally
as um people stirring up the pots, you know, most
(27:00):
as insurgents. He saw it as a potential insurgency. Well, yeah,
it goes back to that existential threat to the United
States because some of the philosophy and some of the
some of the truth that is being spoken within these
groups and being televised speaks to some of the biggest
problems that exist in the country at this time from
(27:22):
an inequality standpoint. Um, And that's dangerous if you get
enough people to truly follow and believe, especially if you
have main parts of this group that are armed. I
can imagine why Jared R. Hoover and some of his
groups were terrified of this type of organization. Yeah, and
by nineteen sixty nine, the Panthers were what you know,
(27:44):
one of the primary targets steered by Hoover and the
FBI attempted a number of nefarious strategies to weaken the group.
The FBI was primarily concerned with a sort of a
domino effect or an acretion you know of similar groups
that got together and said, hey, you're on the same page.
(28:07):
You you also understand the idea or you agree with
us with his idea of the proletariat right and the
class struggle. Yeah, let's all work together. That's dangerous for
as long as it last. Yeah, I mean, human beings
have been saying let's work together until one of them
stabs the other one in the back for like before
recorded history, probably before Homo sapiens. It's just sort of
(28:29):
our thing. So the fact that Fred Hampton was as
as you pointed out, Matt, this enormously compelling, brilliant speaker,
this unifying force. The fact that he had these capabilities
made him a target. It put the target on his
(28:50):
back as far as Uncle Sam was concerned, especially at
the age of one, especially being so young, like he said,
he's just beginning, and to prevent this growth to um,
to stop him short, the FBI started surveilling Hampton and
his associates to the best of their ability. Wire tapping,
(29:11):
which listening to phone calls, infiltration, They were stealing the
guy's mail, they were reading his stuff. Uh, they attempted extortion,
they did more. I mean, this is this is an
era of domestic security wherein the same government agency, the FBI,
wrote letters to Dr Martin Luther King, trying to convince
(29:34):
him to kill himself. Yeah, yeah, who, by the way,
was assassinated just the year prior to when Fred Hampton
was killed, exactly exactly. There's an escalation. And at the time,
well though this may sound like common knowledge to a
lot of us listening today, at the time co intelpro
was classified, nobody knew what was happening. Nobody knew these
(29:57):
operations were not public until nineteen seventy one. And that's
important because it means that during the early morning hours
December four, there was no public scrutiny of the actions
that the FBI and its proxies local law enforcement chose
(30:19):
to take. There was definitely not congressional oversight. And even then, Ah,
this is terrible to even think, but even then, at
the time, if you look at Congress, I mean, I
can't I can't say this is my opinion, but I
don't I feel like congressional oversight wouldn't do much for
(30:40):
something like this. Unfortunately, that's just that's just my completely
my opinion. I agree with you. And one thing that
this touches on is something that's occurred in this government
and other governments quite often, which is the conflict between
elected and unelected officials. Right. You know, if you live
(31:05):
in this country and you are able to vote, you
can vote for a representative, you can vote for a president.
You cannot vote for a Supreme Court justice, those nine
creepy ring rates that run this place, and everybody still
pretends that's normal. Excuse me, different episodes or like people
who are on the Federal Reserve. People on the federal Reserve. Yeah,
(31:28):
excellent point. So you, you and I and anyone listening
cannot directly vote for the heads of intelligence agencies. That's
never gonna be on your ballot. And presidents can come
and go. But that is a different game, you know
what I mean. I'm getting creeped out, you know. I
(31:50):
I'm passionate about this. I feel like I'm preaching to
the choir here, but it but it's true. And the
reason we bring that up is because we I want
to be very clear that there are people in Congress
with the best of intentions who had no idea what
was going on. Yes, you know what I mean, they
were concerned about their constituency, they were probably they were
(32:13):
probably mainly concerned with being reelected, if we're being honest,
but they would not have co signed these sorts of actions,
right because now, looking back, we have to ask ourselves
who were the terrorists who was engaging in guerrilla tactics
who successfully assassinated more people? Oh, I know, I know,
(32:34):
dang well, I'm just asking. I'm just asking this. This
stuff comes to a head in nineteen seventy six the
Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations, which is something you
hit me to years and years ago, Matt, the Church Committee. Yeah,
they they finally realized in seventy six that the FBI
was violating the law and had been violating the law
(32:55):
in several operations under coin tel pro. Pretty rough stuff.
So the stated aim right of coinel pro when when
they go into an office and they're like, okay, where
what this is what coentel pro is gonna do. We're
gonna prevent violence, and uh, that's really what it is.
But some of these the actions that they took during
(33:15):
this it it uh arguably promoted violence between not not
between the FBI and other groups, but between the groups
that the FBI is surveilling under cotel pro, specifically the
Black Panthers and several other rival organizations UM. And we
we mentioned this in our video that we made god
years ago. I don't even know when that was, but
(33:37):
and we talked about two other groups, the United Slaves
and the Blackstone Rangers, who are too other I say,
similar groups, but they're they're very different in many ways.
But it's these two other groups UM were then having
major conflicts with the Black Panthers because of the actions
taken by the FBI. Yes, and the FBI did not
(33:57):
want these groups to unify. In the eyes of the
in the eyes of the Bureau of these groups were
similar enough that they should be kept apart. They were
considered troublemakers, right, and the FBI also worked ardently to
prevent prominent BPP members from making public appearances. According to
(34:18):
Noam Chomsky, who I know it can be a controversial
author for some people, cointelpro eventually expanded to include political assassinations.
The reason we say, according to Noam Chomsky, is because
even today you will you will quickly go down a
rabbit hole of various you know what, I'm gonna call
(34:39):
him apologetics. I'm going to call them various attempts at rationalization.
Of assassination. The official story right here, we can we
can just give you the blow by blow back to
the death of Fred Hampton. Supporters of the party claimed
Hampton was assassinated and that the government assassinated Hampton because
(35:00):
they feared he could become a visible, unifying leader and icon,
a figurehead of the black power movement. So how did
he actually die. We'll get to that right after a
word from our sponsor, and we're back. In the early
(35:23):
morning hours of December four, nine, six nine, eight Cook
County police officers who were acting under instructions from the
Cook County States Attorney's Office approached the West Side Chicago
headquarters of the Black Panthers. As you might imagine in
(35:43):
a raid type situation, there was another group of officers
that approached from the back. Everyone inside was still asleep,
including Fred Hampton. Inside what was you say headquarters And
it was really it was an apartment. It was a
flat um. There were nine people still asleep. This is
in the very early morning hours before the sun had
(36:05):
even risen. Yeah, it's crowded apartment, first floor. Nineteen guns
in the apartment, more than a thousand rounds of ammunition.
The way that The Tribune reported the series of events
was that this was a national hate group known for
their revolutionary politics, more importantly for shooting police officers. That's
(36:28):
there were cop killers. That's how this was reported, right.
Is there any sand to that, Like I mean, is
there may be some kind of conflict between police and
Black Panthers that resulted in a police officer and being killed,
and they spun it into these are cop murdering savages. Um.
You know, I don't have the reporting right here with
(36:49):
me or the police reporting, but into my mind, for
the Chicago Tribune to print that for killing cops, I
would say that at least a few instances occurred. Yeah,
there there are claims that there were thirty five police
officers who were murdered by the Black Panthers and the
(37:10):
subsequent Black Liberation Army across the sixties, seventies, and eighties.
So there were cops. Did note they were shot, and
it's it's important that we mentioned this. People were dying.
It's uh, it's easy tempting, perhaps for some people to
get caught in the game of equivocation or to forget
(37:34):
that there are actual human lives at stake, you know
what I mean? So we can only imagine that of
the six officers in the back door and the eight
officers in the front, several of them may have thought
they were on a mission of day I say vengeance. Right.
So about four forty five am, a Sergeant Daniel Growth
(37:57):
knocked on the front door of the apartment. There was
no answer, so he knocked with his gun and presumably shouted,
assumably shouted yeah. Then they busted in the door. The
(38:20):
next seven minutes of gunfire become one of the most
intensely debated and disputed incidents of the entire decade. Yeah,
there was a federal grand jury investigation that found that
the police fired in the neighborhood of arranging between eighty
three to nineties shots into this apartment. It is a
(38:41):
small again, this is an apartment in Chicago. This is
gonna that that that would just be chaos. I would
fear for the lives of the neighbors. And again, the
one of the nineteen guns in the apartment room by
the b PP, one shotgun discharged. Once there was one
shot fired. Yeah, that's pretty that's pretty rough, pretty pretty damning. Actually,
(39:04):
after the shooting stopped, Fred Hampton was dead at one
and a party leader from Peoria named Mark Clark twenty
two was also shot fatally. And I believe the grand
jury found that he was the one who knew discharge
that one shotgun blast. Right, he was as he was
(39:24):
set to be security. Right, And now we returned to
William O'Neill, Panther and informants. People didn't originally know the
extent of his involvement with the FBI, isn't there, right, Yeah,
it wasn't until so this occurred. The death occurred in
nineteen sixty nine, and his role wasn't revealed until nineteen
(39:47):
seventy three. Um, and yeah, it's pretty rough actually, So
we mentioned that he was there was a member of
the Black Panther Party. He was on the inside, working
closely with Fred Hampton as well as Mark Clark, and
he was simultaneously serving as an informant for the FBI. Ah,
(40:11):
he would send information to UH to the FBI. And
by the way, he's a teenager at this time. Is
that he's a young guy when he's starting out working
with these guys, These people were so young, Yeah, exactly. Um,
among the things that he sent to the FBI, the
primary thing I guess that that people focus on is
(40:32):
a floor plan for this apartment that was eventually rated.
His cover was blown and at you know, at one
point there I believe it was I believe it was
seventy three when his cover was blown, but I am
not completely positive. It might have been earlier than that.
I do not, unfortunately, have that specific information. But he
(40:54):
ended up going into the Federal Witness Protection Program. Uh,
we can say it here. He has name at the
time or when he went into the program was William Hart,
and he moved out to California, UM and then eventually
he moved back to Chicago in n And the reason
we're talking about O'Neill in this way is because in
January of nineteen nine, on Martin Martin Luther King Junior Day,
(41:18):
he actually took his own life by running out into traffic.
And we know this because he had an uncle named
Ben Heard who was with him that day and his
story is told by the Chicago Reader and that's what
we're reading about here. And he Um specifically, this guy
been Heard, has some insight into O'Neill's life. Yes, he
(41:38):
learned of O'Neill's work with the FBI shortly after the
death of Fred Hampton in nineteen sixty nine, and per
Ben heard O'Neill denied everything that he was asked about,
and heard says, I thought about some of the things
he did and said I asked him, but he denied
(42:00):
I had it. And then later O'Neill opened up, told
his uncle he had been in trouble for everything from
a car theft to kidnapping and torture and so on
and some pretty heavy things, pretty heavy things. Heard says
that his nephew told him they had tied someone up
and we're pouring hot water over his head. They were
trying to get him to do something. So an FBI
(42:22):
agent told O'Neill he would take care of all of
it if he turned if he infiltrated the panthers, and
heard believe that O'Neill had regrets, right, I think that's
pretty safe to say. So he went on to say
he was sorry that he did what he ended up
doing um and that he it was and it was
(42:42):
his impression that this was an FBI raid of the house.
But the FBI gave it over to the state's attorney
and then state police local law enforcement took the reins
from there. Um, they killed Fred Hampton and in this
person's estimation, and made sure that he was dead. Yeah,
(43:05):
that's a crucial point here. O'Neill, according to his own
statements before his death, O'Neill thought this was just going
to be a raid. Maybe people would get arrested for
possession of firearms or some sort of violation of possession laws. Right,
Maybe it would have been a drug possession possibly, right. Heck,
(43:29):
you know, if they were looking for something, maybe it
would have been a violation of the fire code. I
don't know. I mean, the biggest thing is the firearms charges.
You probably should have sent them to prison on just
firearms charges. But that's not how it went down, right,
So from O'Neill's perspective, Now, as far as we know today,
(43:50):
O'Neill did not say that the FBI on records say
that the FBI lied to him, but they did say
origin only that this was simply going to be a raid.
And he was with his nephew the morning after the
raid in Hampton's apartment and he saw the he saw
(44:18):
the aftermath. They said there were papers strown all over
the floor, blood all over. There was a trail of
blood from where they the police had dragged Fred's body
and William O'Neill in this case, Bill he says, just
stood there in shock and he never thought it would
come to this. Like all of his involvement with the FBI,
(44:40):
he like we keep saying, he didn't think it would
be a massacre. And that's only to to speak to
this person who has been um I guess reviled throughout
history now at this point as being the guy that's
set up Fred Hampton painted his judas r Yeah, and
and and you know, there's two sides of it. In
a way, he was, but in another way, he didn't understand.
(45:02):
And to be very clear, to be crystal clear, the
FBI actively conspired to to assassinate or to neutralize, at
the very least a twenty one year old boy for
his political beliefs because they saw it as a threat
to both the economic and the racial or social status
(45:25):
quo of the United States. This also occurred during the
Vietnam era, where in Hampton and many others like him
would be lumped together as potentially existential threats to the
solvency of the nation. Right because this is again, uh,
this stuff sounds so crazy. It sounds like people getting
in a bubble and getting carried away. This bubble was real.
(45:49):
I think there was something in the outline here band
that that you didn't end up saying. But our buddies,
the Culture Kings, have a phrase they use where it's
talking about messing with the money, and that's when the
government starts really paying it to mention, you know, when
I get up setting the apple cart in a way
that affects economics. I did put that in, and yes,
in a shout out to Chack keyson Edgar. I didn't
(46:12):
originally say it because I I think we still owe
them a song. We do, and I'm gonna I'm gonna
at least make the track for this next one. I
don't claim to be c but um, I can definitely
make some beats. So let's just let's I commit to that.
You're great at that fantastic MCS. I said, we put
(46:32):
it out in just to surprise them out of nowhere
and call it hindsight. Yeah, and we know they don't
listen to the show, so it's going to be we
should have them back on. I had a lot of
fun in the Michael Jordan episode. I wasn't around for
that one. That's right. I forgot they were on. Maybe
they did listen to the show. What am I saying? Hey, guys,
you was gonna say you missed out? It was actually
really great. I'm sure it was the great people as
(46:53):
far as we know, Uh, they are not elements of
cointelpro and UH and hopefully die either, are you guys.
But it's like witch hunt rules, right, Like if you
tell me you're not, that's more evidence that you are. Yeah,
I think I think you'd have to say no, right.
And and it's also, I'm sure we've said this before,
(47:13):
a complete myth that if you ask an undercover cop,
if they're an undercover cop, they don't have to tell you.
It's a total myth. They can commit crimes with you rules.
And people would say that's for a greater good. And
that's the argument, right, that UM succeeded in pitching co
in telpro and in violating the laws and the rights
(47:36):
of U S citizens UH and taking the and taking
the lives, taking the one thing that cannot be returned.
And to this day, officially the FBI, the Justice Department, UH,
the Chicago Police Force, they reject claims of political skullduggery. Uh.
(47:56):
They say that the raid was unfortunate. It it was
not the ideal outcome. But on their side, it was
conducted correctly and to the letter of the law. We're
conducting a raid to find illegal firearms to neutralize a threat.
In nine seventy one, however, an activist group called the
Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI stole co intel Pro documents.
(48:20):
They stole the paperwork from a field office. And this
is how that, this is how Cointelpro became a public thing.
Had they not conducted that raid, you see the parallels here.
Had they not conducted that illegal raid, then it is possible,
if not plausible, that Cointelpro would remain a myth and
(48:43):
a rumor and a conspiracy theory and unproven conspiracy theory
even today. Yes. Uh. In April of the same year,
by the way, n one, the FBI officially terminated co
intel Pro. Yet, numerous critics of the U. S. Government
believed that programs like this um never really go away.
The names change, But like Dr Manhattan says, and Watchman nothing,
(49:06):
nothing never ends. Have you guys seen there's a Watchman
series that's coming to HBO. It looks a lot less
shiny than the Zack Snyder movie. Less shiny. Yeah, I
felt like the Zack Snyder movie was a little like
overly polished. Look every scene of painting. Yeah, kind of
this one, like, um, what's his name? Ror shacks mask
(49:27):
is literally just like a sack with kind of like
you know, well they're prequels, right, No, I think maybe No,
I think it's the I don't I don't know. I
don't know that it is. I think it's I think
it might even be either a deeper exploration of the
series with more of the because I come on, you
need more than a movie to really like go deep
into that book, right, there's so much stuff in there
(49:49):
that they couldn't put in. Dude, I just rewatched it,
and I think it holds up. I didn't like it.
I don't know. I loved it. You did like love
all right. I don't know. And maybe it is just nostalgia.
I think the reason for me was that that was
such a formative graphic. That was the first graphic now
I've read where I was like, oh, I see what
graphic novels can accomplish. And it was just like mind
blowing to me. So I felt like it was very
sacred to me and to see someone try to do
(50:12):
I felt like it was a valiant effort. But I
also didn't really care for Zack Snyder's style anyway. Alan
Moore hated it. Yeah, Alan Moore is like, why did
he watched? He probably didn't even know he he uh
does write excellent comics for fun. But I think it
is it's to support his main hobby, his main passion,
(50:33):
which is just hating stuff. Oh jeez. Uh, it's just
interestingly enough here. Uh. And this show is not brought
to you by Watchman or HBO. Just so you know
that if you go to HBO dot com slash Watchman,
the first thing you see is nothing ever ends. Yeah,
and then the little the little blurb. Oh and Trent
(50:54):
Resner and Atticus Ross doing the music. That's pretty dope.
And it's a show run by Dame and Linda Laff
who I believed did did lost. That's correct along with
j J. Abrams. And unlike Dr Manhattan's quote, unlike his
observation in the fictional world of Watchman, this love it
(51:14):
or hate it is the reality in which we have
collectively lived for the span of this episode, and some
things do end, namely this episode, but not our show.
We hope that you enjoyed this cursory journey into the
murky murky, morally problematic, ethically bankrupt world of domestic intelligence. UM.
(51:41):
We hope that, regardless of whether or not you agree
with the views of various groups mentioned in this show,
we hope that you can agree that the loss of
any human life is a tragedy. We also want to
know if you think co Intel pro really ended, do
you think it still around? And if so, in what iteration?
(52:03):
Do you have a story or a particularly suspicious death
that you think deserves more attention. Let us know. You
can find us on Facebook, you can find us on Instagram,
you can find us on Twitter. We are conspiracy stuff
at any number of those. And you can meet the
best part of the show, your fellow listeners on our
(52:25):
Facebook community page. Here's where it gets crazy. Matt Will
not for for various reasons, various non sketchy reasons, reveal
his personal Instagram Nolan, I will, I am at Ben
Boland and I'm at Embryonic Insider And if I'm not mistaken, Matt,
you sort of dropped a few clues last time, you're
gonna keep it on the d L like that. I
am at an egg shaped objects, the Twitter egg. You're
(52:49):
just the twitter ed who anonymous Twitter user. But what
if somebody doesn't care for the Internet, you guys, well
then I don't know how you're getting by in life
these days. But no, you know what, that's not true.
There are ways you can STI there's telephony tell offen
to remember, you guys know ten Jones, that's what they
(53:14):
used to call it. You guys back in the day,
remember when, like the early days of the Internet, where
there would be like a telephone tell Offeny suite in
u in um like Prodigy or something where you could
make phone calls through the computer. It was crazy phony,
literally phony. We do have a number that we have
an old school number. We are one eight three three
st d w y t K. Yes, call and leave
(53:37):
a message. But what happens if what happens if someone says, Okay,
I don't want to use social media and I hate
phones because it's you know, twenty nineteen. Absolutely just send
us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at
has stuff Works dot com.
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