June 2, 2021 • 56 mins
In July of 1985, Greenpeace sent a ship named the Rainbow Warrior to New Zealand, then to Moruroa to monitor controversial French nuclear tests in the area. However, the Rainbow Warrior never made it out of New Zealand -- instead, terrorists sank it. At least, that was the official story. Tune in to learn more.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer,
Paul Mission controlled decades. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. Heads up, fellow conspiracy realists. In
the course of this episode, you may hear what sounds
like a few muffled explosions. They are not the brilliant
(00:48):
design of our super producer, Uh, they are the nefarious
design of some guys who decided to build a staircase
today behind my house. So if really yeah, so I
just want trying to improve the area. It's it's strange,
it's strange, but you know, wishing them the best. They're
(01:11):
better than the leafblower guy, who I think is a
nemesis for a lot of us nowadays. What kind of
staircase are we talking, Ben? Is it a nice spiral staircase?
Is there some like brutalist architecture? Or is it just
a run of the mill, you know set of stairs?
You know it is? It is in the running knoll
for the noisiest set of stairs I have ever encountered.
I don't know if it's pr stunt promotion for the
(01:34):
advantages of elevators? Unclear? Hey, do we ever find out
if we're gonna get sued for the Was it Dr Dre?
Who was it? Notorious b I g in the background.
We're not right, I don't I don't think so. I
hope not um And please any legal departments listing treat
that as the tribute it is. Treat that as the
(01:57):
tribute it is. Uh. Today's episod so comes to us
courtesy of our fellow conspiracy realist Tom Over in Europe.
And Tom, you wrote to ask us about a proven
conspiracy that took place not too long ago. It's a
conspiracy that many people have never heard of, which is
(02:18):
gonna be odd when when we get further into the story,
and our story really begins with in g O's one
in particular green piece, we're talking about this a little
bit off air. Have you guys ever met anybody volunteered
for Green Peace? No? I knew somebody who was in
the Peace Corps. That's not the same thing, though, I
don't think no, honestly, I've not met any individual who's
(02:40):
worked for them. Yeah, what does what does that mean?
Guys at the same on my end, are we just
like terrible people? We don't move and do gooder circles
or or or hot take it's not real. There is
no green Peace. I like. I like both of these. Uh,
it's true there are going to be some people in
(03:01):
the audience today who are thinking, oh, hold on, guys,
older badgers, green Peace isn't all that great. And it's
true that green Peace has a lot of critics. So
maybe maybe we start with the origins of green Peace
to really get into the conspiracy today. Here are the facts.
(03:21):
What is it? Sounds cool? Well? It describes itself as
a quote global independent campaigning organization that uses peaceful protests
and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and promote
solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future.
I take a breath there in the middle. That's a
(03:42):
lot of stuff um let to unpack. Sounds good on
the surface, though, doesn't it? It really does, and its
origins go back to a time when that kind of thing,
that kind of effort was very popular, back to the
nineteen sixties, officially founded in one. So there's activism occurring
in the nineteen sixties and it kind of turns into
(04:05):
this organization called green Peace. Yes, so the origins of
what we know as green Piece today, uh come from
anti nuclear testing activism specifically, you know, the protests leading
to green Peace really kicked off in the sixties. But
the organization was officially founded in nineteventy one explicitly to
(04:27):
stop nuclear testing at m Chitka Island in Alaska, That's right.
And they really did focus on nuclear testing and preventing
that from occurring in the future for for a little
while there, at least several years. In nineteen seventy two,
is a gentleman named David McTaggart. He took a small,
(04:50):
small sailing vessel along with two other green Peace I
guess members, and they sailed out to this place called
the French Exclusion Zone in the Pacific. And the whole
point there was to stop the French government from exploding
another nuclear weapon in a test out there in uh
specific a toll that they had control over because France
(05:12):
has some land essentially or some land and ocean area
that they own out there in the Pacific Islands. And
they sailed this ship out this you know, small little
vessel in essentially just defiance of the French government and saying, well,
we're here. You can't really test a new because we're here.
Sorry m hm. And they went back and forth. This
(05:36):
is a pattern for green Peace. They go back and
forth opposing various institutions. They're doing things that they find
objection able, and it expands beyond worries about nuclear weaponry. Uh.
The organization has always been relatively loose knit, and it
started tackling these other global issues. So I don't know
(05:57):
about you guys, but when I think of green Peace
before we dove into this, I would immediately think of
somewhat on a boat trying to stop whalers, you know.
That's what I associate them, Yeah, almost more like a
peta situation or something that's more humanitarian towards wildlife and
like the environment in particular. Well, yeah, and that they
are known for that because that is what green Peace
(06:19):
did for a long time, especially you know, from the
mid nineteen seventies to around the mid of around actually
until the early nineteen eighties when they picked nuclear testing
back up. But I just want to jump back to
France really quickly, guys. I'm sorry I didn't completely finished
what I was going to talk about there, just because
this episode is dealing with France and it's kind of
(06:40):
I don't want to spoil too much right now, but
it's dealing with green Peace versus the French military basically
and the French government. So that time in nineteen seventy two,
when they took that small vessel out there, they ended
up their their boat ended up getting rammed and they
got arrested, but it didn't deter them from going back
because the next year, in nineteen seventy three, MacTaggart and
(07:01):
the crew returned for a second demonstration. This time the
French authorities tried to bribe them. They were like, okay,
just get out of here, please, we want to test
nuclear weapons guys. And they tried to give him five
thousand dollars or at least the equal yeah, it was
five thousand dollars us at the time. Didn't work. Then
(07:22):
they sent a small like I don't know, it's not
a dinghy. I don't think but it's like an inflatable
craft essentially, or small, a tiny little boat out let's
just call I love a dinghy. I'm sorry, Okay, the dinghy. Uh.
But they were They were some military operatives from probably
(07:42):
the French government or someone on behalf of the French government.
I'm not exactly sure who it was, but there is
photographic evidence of it. They came out to the ship
boarded and beat the living crap out of the green
Peace members. The only reason why we know about it
is because one of one of the crew members had
a still camera was able to snap a couple of
shots while it's happening. Then like jumped down inside the
(08:07):
sailing ship and hid the camera, and the authorities found
a second camera that they thought was the one she
was taking pictures with and destroyed the film and threw
it in the ocean. But she had hidden the other
camera in that film survived, so it was just proof
that it had occurred. All that's to say, green Peace
and the French government slash military are at odds already
(08:29):
in the early seventies, green Peace and multiple countries, I
would say, especially France, that seems like a low price
for a bribe and uh sending French commandos on a
scene like that's no laughing matter. Those guys don't mess around.
So you have to at least whether or not you
agree with Green Pieces tactics, you do have to commend
(08:53):
their courage in pursuing, you know, these ideals. When we
say that they use create of communication, that that little
bit of pr speak from their official sites, it's helpful
to have examples of what we mean because it verges
into performance art. Like there was a time when ten
(09:13):
Green Peace activists dressed as polar bears to protest against
Arctic drilling by gas Prom, the Russian energy giant, and
then they also dressed as zombies and took over Kaezon
City in the Philippines in so this is like theater
as protests as well. They in addition to attempting to
(09:37):
prevent people from hunting seals and cetaceans, they also work
actively to prevent the dumping of toxic radioactive waste at sea.
Historically speaking, they tend to use what they call direct
but non violent actions. So just like you were describing Matt,
they'll they'll steer a small dinghy between a whaler's harpoon
(10:02):
and the target, and or they'll go over to an
industrial pipe that's discharging waste and they'll physically plug it up.
These things can be expensive for those institutions, but they
themselves endeavor not to harm other people. So you might
hear uh in GEO like this described with the phrase
(10:23):
eco terrorists, right, Or they're committing acts of eco terrorism
by damaging property. But to be very clear, they are
not actively out there, you know, kidnapping, people are bombing
them and stuff like that. But all these all these actions,
whether they're to bring awareness to something or whether they're
to prevent what is seen as an environmental crime, have
(10:45):
brought green Peace a lot of attention over the years,
a ton of attention. But make no mistake, folks, not
all of this attention is positive. This is true. But
let's just not forget the green pieces also active in
the legal and regulatory spheres and have been a huge
voice in pushing for tighter environmental regulation and oversight. And
(11:10):
like we said earlier, just the kinds of things that
you would associate probably automatically with when you when you
think of green Peace. Um and sometimes these efforts have
been very successful. Um and today the organization has a
pretty small staff, most of whom are volunteers, and um,
(11:30):
a lot of their funding comes from donations from individuals.
So how do we separate kind of the fact and
the fiction and the controversy. Uh, these are three kind
of tears of today's episode and green Peace. Yeah, it's
a good question, Will. So, as you can imagine, green
Peace sees itself speaking truth to power. Right, these are
(11:52):
folks who are you know, nobody is involved in green
Peace to get rich. They are, as you said, volunteers,
and they get into direct conflict with some of the
world's most powerful institutions, some of the biggest corporations that
you may or may not have heard of, as well
as you know, as you pointed out, Matt, state level actors.
And so of course this creates a lot of criticism.
(12:16):
But it's not just from these institutions, you know what
I mean. It's not just like Captain Planet villains having
a problem with Captain Planet and the what do you
call the planet tears shout out to heart Man always
that they that he got the short into the stick,
but he did get a monkey, he did have a money.
Was his monkey's name, Well, the guy's name was no gosh,
there was Quamie. He was water maybe, Oh gosh, I'm
(12:41):
I'm really doing bad with my Captain Planet trivia. But
the monkey was adorable. Um, you're right, the heart what
didn't really get a sense that that what it was
his power to make people like you know, feel emotional.
I guess so, dude, if you can change hearts and minds,
I mean, the heart is connected to the mind, and
if you can change hearts, guys, you can do anything.
So secretly it was a mind control power all along. Yeah,
(13:02):
they just didn't want to spook everyone. But the reason
we're bringing up this Captain Planet comparison is because it's
important to know that not all the people who criticize
Green Peace over the years are like gas prom or something,
or the French military or something. There are people who
have worked for Green Peace in the past that are
(13:22):
no longer with the organization and have some pretty bluntly
critical things to say about it. But because this is
a loosened organization with several different types of causes, a
lot of the criticism tends to be issue specific. So
somebody might say, for instance, and just a made up example,
someone might say, look, I am totally with green Peace.
(13:46):
We need to end wailing now. But they're acting crazy
when they're against nuclear power. Clean energy is the way
of the future, you know what I mean. So they
might not throw the entire organizational baby out with the
bath water. But again, their critics are not all evil.
In a hundred and seven hundred and seven Nobel Prize
(14:09):
laureates signed a letter begging Greenpeace to stop its opposition
to GMOs genetically modified organisms um and you can you
can read about these incidents. They're they're pretty well documented,
but they've also been they've also been accused of either
(14:29):
unintentionally or maybe intentionally exaggerating the severity of certain issues,
Like it turned out they were inaccurate when they were
reporting the amount of toxic waste on something called the
brent spar oil storage booie in, And they went back
(14:50):
and corrected it, but sort of the damage was done,
you know. And then anybody was opposed to their agenda
would be able to say, these guys are making a
mountain out of a mole hill, their enemies of progress, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera,
and really just this anti nuclear weaponry, deterrence, proliferation, all
that stuff being anti biotech, anti innovation. Some some would
(15:14):
argue that, UM, some have argued that it's really just
an anti technology group, like it's an anti progress group.
But I don't, I don't know about that. That's certainly
been they've been accused of that, right, And I wanted
to talk to you guys really quickly before we jump
into you know, the next section here. This concept of
(15:36):
being anti nuclear weapon, especially weapon testing. It's such a
gray area for me because yes, and it weirdly and
I haven't always felt this way, but simply because we've
talked about on this show so many times the reasons
that a country would have nuclear weapons, have that capability
(15:58):
and also show it off to any stent and learn
as much as they can about it as a way
of preventing themselves from being at risk from other world
superpowers with nukes. I can see why a government or
a country like France would be very much interested in
testing nuclear weapons in the nineteen sixties and seventies as
(16:18):
the Cold War is escalating between the other superpowers. UM,
I can see why they would want to establish their
position as a powerful nation that can't be messed with. Essentially,
you know, there there could be machinations in South America
and some of these other places where you know, the
Soviet Union and the United States are playing their little
(16:41):
war games and or you know, terrorizing humans and nations
like they would want that really badly, and it could
be very beneficial for all of the citizens of France.
So the greater good argument I think I can see
for France four people in charge there. It's tough to
say that to the people that testing sites though, right
(17:01):
exactly on the other side, like you're wreaking absolute havoc
on people in in the environment which they lived for.
You know, however, many generations. I'm not saying the nuclear
testing is a good thing. I'm saying that I can
see it more clearly now why it was viewed as
so important to the French government. Yeah, and we've we've
(17:22):
talked about similar, you know, highly unethical problems in the past.
Imagine being one of those US scientists who says, Okay,
our best plan is to steal the bodies of children,
and everybody signed off on it because they thought, you know,
they thought it was a dirty job, but it was
for an ultimately better world. Uh. And you know that's
(17:45):
up to future historians to debate the accuracy of that
or the sincerity, I would argue, But but I guess what,
I'm at the end of that, guy, I agree with you,
and I think it's not hard for any of us
to see why green pieces stance in the nineties seventies
and then later what we're about to enter into of
being against nuclear testing was kind of a no brainer. Um, Like, yes,
(18:12):
a lot of people can get behind that notion. Well,
but what's the alternative by being against nuclear testing? Are
you also just purely against nuclear weapons? Yeah, that's that's
the thing, because it's a dual use technology. There's not
really it's it's really tough. It's a tall milkshake too
(18:33):
continually monitor a country with nuclear capabilities and somehow ensure
that they never just keep the center fugees spinning to
the point that they create nuclear weapons. You know, it's
it's tough. It's a dilemma. But the big takeaway here
is this green piece started because they wanted global disarmament
(18:54):
as as an ultimate end goal, and today opponents of
green peace will argue that it might create more problems
than it attempts to solve, and supporters of green peace
may argue that, look, hey, this organization is imperfect, but
cut them some slack. Their overall aim is some real
Captain Planet stuff. They're well intentioned. If their stuff works,
(19:18):
then it's vital to the long term sustainability of life
on Earth, human life as well as wildlife. And you know,
usually these disagreements and these tensions result and heated legal battles,
sometimes public protests and confrontations, and then arguments and debate
until one day France blew their ship out of the water.
(19:43):
And to pause for a moment for word from our sponsors,
and then we'll introduce you to Operation Satanic. What did
you say, clearly involves puppies, right, I mean, yes, here's
where it gets crazy. All right, now, let's introduce you
(20:06):
to the Rainbow Warrior. You saw the title of this episode.
That's what this whole thing is about. The Rainbow Warrior
was a trawler class vessel, a ship, not not just
a boat. This is a ship, guys. And it was
built in the United Kingdom in nineteen fifty five, and
it was called the Sir William Hardy. It is up
to you whether the name, whether you prefer the name
(20:28):
Rainbow Warrior or Sir William Hardy. Uh. This is a trawler.
Is essentially a motor boat that is seaworthy. So they
wanted this because it can make long ocean voyages. It's
not super impressive, as you know, it's not on the
level of a billionaire's yacht or something. No one's living
the high life on this. It's it's a work boat
(20:50):
for a mission. And when Greenpeace UK got ahold of
the vessel back in n that's when they renamed it.
They spend about four months retrofitting it. On May second,
they launched it and they decided to call it the
Rainbow Warrior. It's named after a book written by one
(21:11):
of the co founders of Green Piece, a guy named
Robert Hunter wrote a book called Warriors of the Rainbow.
The titular line of the book, if you're interested, is
the world is sick and dying, the people will rise
up like Warriors of the Rainbow. I'm not sure what
that means, but it's inspirational. Well it's like, um, you know,
(21:32):
warriors from all over the place, who look like who,
who looked like everyone possibly could look on earth, and
we're all going to fight for That's cool, man, that's
something you could get behind, you know, super chill in
a revolutionary kind of way. Um, but it's it should
be noted that this ship was just rusted out, looked nasty.
(21:56):
You can see footage of it in um there's a
documentary that Green Piece put out that's called The Boat
and the Bomb, So you can really check out some
retro footage of this ship as it was being changed
over into the Rainbow Warrior. It needed that four months
blow up, Oh yeah, for sure. But let's uh, let's
(22:21):
just jump from there. Eight I think is when it
was fully retrofitted. But then one after it had been
out on a couple of different missions, they re ignite
this campaign that had kind of gone away since the
early seventies, this anti nuclear weapons testing campaign. And when
(22:41):
they did that, they wanted the Rainbow Warrior not just
to be uh, fossil fuel powered vehicle. They wanted to
be a little greener. Hey come on, the names Green Piece, right,
So they they further retrofitted the thing. They put sales
on it, massive sales. So now it's both a motor
boat and a sailing vest. And that's that's form and
function there. And if you think about it, that move
(23:04):
makes sense because the most immediate criticism for an organization
like Greenpeace using a vote like this would be, hey,
you guys know what, there's those run on right, So
it's it's a valid it's valid criticism, and our story
really kicks off your nineteen five, the Rainbow Warriors set
sail for Auckland, New Zealand, and they are on the
(23:28):
way to a very specific, infamous a toll in the
world of environmentalism. That's right, the more Arora a toll.
The idea was to connect with this assembly of eight
other vessels, this flotilla UM and prevent the next firing
of a nuclear weapon. UM. And this area had long
been a popular destination for testing you know a tolls,
(23:50):
and remote islands often are like the Marshall Islands episode
we just talked about, where the risk of collateral damage
is seen on paper as being you know low put.
We know what happened with that story. Um. It has
long term consequences that are not often thought of upfront.
But as long as the math adds up, then it'll
all be okay. But it, you know, often isn't so.
(24:11):
In nineteen sixty six, the Friendship begun testing nuclear weapons
in this area, and they'd continue to do so till
nineteen ninety six, which is crazy to me, despite these
very intense protests UM. And Greenpeace says and argues that
the initial test alone, which was code named all Deboran
(24:31):
I believe that's they pronounce it, which happened on July
two in nineteen sixty six, spread contamination as far as
Peru and New Zealand. That's that collateral damage we're talking about.
And it oftentimes, you know, far exceeds initial expectations because
you know, there's all kinds of other variables like the
winds and currents and things like that. UM. So it's
(24:52):
an absolute understatement to say that tensions ran high. They
ran absolutely nuclear uh pun completely in ended. UM. That
wasn't really a fun whatever it was. It was very tense.
It was wordplay. It was wordplay. Thank you, Ben, I
appreciate you having my back. UM. But these French commandos
you see, had boarded a previous protest boat UM that
(25:14):
trespassed into this exclusionary shipping zone that was bordering the atoll.
And Greenpeace knew full well, or at least you know,
to some degree that the risks were there, and they
planned to monitor the impact of these tests and place
and place protesters on the ground to monitor the actual blast. Yeah, like,
(25:36):
we can't stop you, but the world will witness your
actions on this day. And these are very motivated people.
They are again, they're not working on a profit motive.
They're working towards, in their ideology, a better world. And
they're not there to attack these military officers or attacked
(25:56):
the scientists conducting these tests, but they want to they
want to do their best to make it really inconvenient
to conduct these tests. And you know, I think in
Green Pieces, in Green Pieces favor, they were one of
the organizations that was openly saying something that I think
a lot of governments were privately saying, which is this,
(26:20):
you all do not know the full extent of your actions.
You do not know the consequences. You will probably mess
something up and maybe you'll get some valuable data, but
that is not going to, you know, improve the lives
of the people who may suffer the consequences of these experiments.
But Green Peace, despite being very aware of the dangers
(26:45):
of nuclear armageddon, they were blissfully unaware of some thing's
closer to home. You see, folks, Green Peace did not
know that before they went on this fateful trip to
the atoll, they had already and compromised and for quite
a while. Yeah, that's right. There was a person named
(27:05):
Christine Carbone. She was not just your regular old person.
She was an agent. Oh yeah, us by She was
working for Frances Director at General for External Security or
the d g s E. This is again in the
same way the CIA operates outside of the US or
m I six operates outside of the US. That's what
(27:28):
this this organization does, d g s E, remember that name.
So she had gone in and volunteered to join Green Peace,
and back in the day around that time, it was
super easy to infiltrate Green Peace. You just said hey,
I want to help, and they're like, come on in
story checks out, um. And she she infiltrated through Auckland,
(27:52):
New Zealand, which is interestingly enough, where remember we already
talked about this where the Rainbow Warrior had set out
to go before they went over to the atoll, in
the area where the testing is actually occurring, because it's
it's not that far away. And she posed as someone else.
She pretended to be someone named Frederic Bonlieu and she was,
(28:14):
and this character that she was portraying was an environmentalist.
She was all about green Peace, all about anti nuclear
proliferation and stopping testing. But really what she was doing,
it's just going, oh what's that and then making a
phone call to somebody and taking notes and uh, just
monitoring all the communications, collecting maps where they're going to go,
(28:36):
if there are any plans or information intel on what's
about to occur. She's doing this stuff and she's also
checking out the tech that's aboard the ship. What capabilities
does this ship have and how how can we subvert them?
And let's get some specifics on the whole. Says Frederick.
(28:57):
You know, I'm a I'm just like you guys. I mean,
the D player, I want to know everything. I want
to get in where I can fit in, and the
Rainbow Warrior. You know, there was a lot of pr
around it because this makes for great headlines. So for
a time it was open for public viewing and all
sorts of tourists and honeymooners and supporters of green Peace,
(29:20):
uh and just curious onlookers towards the ship to learn
more about what green Peace planned to do with this vessel.
Thing is some of those tourists were also uh D
G s E. They were operatives. It's such this part
of spyacraft always seems so I know, it's got to
(29:40):
be a real nail biter on the anxiety scale. But
I always wondered, do they take acting lessons? Like if
you are if you're posing as a couple on honeymoon
which just happened to walk by a ship and wants
to take a tour of it, do you have to
like practice is acting like a couple, you know, to
(30:03):
spend a week together just working on your bits. I
don't know. It's called improv for espionage. It is, you know.
I I don't have personal experience, but I would say
acting classes would probably help out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I
think you're right to a degree. Um, And they're they're
really interesting stories about how people train spies to act undercover.
(30:29):
There's there's there was a great interview with the lady
who was in charge of CIA disguises for a number
of years, And what's funny about that is that she
is pretty casual with it. She's like, Okay, we can
teach people to walk differently, we can give them wigs,
we can change different parts of their appearance. Here are
the things I think work. Here are the things I
(30:49):
think don't work. And when she was asked like, what
is the number one problem with, you know, having people
move in these false personas or disguises, she said ego.
She was like, none of nobody wants to look bad.
And you know, if you think about it, looking a
little bit homely would help you with your cover, right,
(31:10):
unless you're supposed to be a model or a movie star.
But anyway, that aside, I would say that's what always
works out in those undercover TV shows with models and
or superstars. The only way they get them to fit
in is making them more homely. Yeah, yeah, let's give
him a give him a weird news look more like us.
(31:32):
Now we look okay. You know, I'm not going to
rate us, but I think I think we look all right.
Uh anyway, slid seven. You know that's nice, man, that's good.
I'm not gonna ask what the scale is there, but
thank you? Alright, continue alright, So, so here's what happens. Um. Clearly,
(31:56):
you know, Green pieces relying on transparency because they want
the support of the public. They are not a military,
they are not a government actor. So they depend on volunteers.
They depend on people who agree with both their goals
and the ways in which they pursue those goals, and
this comes back to haunt them. I suggest to take
(32:19):
a pause for word from our sponsor and return to July.
We're back set the scene. The ship is docked, it
is pretty late. There has been a birthday party on
the vessel earlier that evening, and they're about twelve people
(32:43):
on board. The ship is prepping to head out to
confront the French authorities conducting this nuclear test, and right
before the stroke of midnight, an explosion rocks the vessel. Uh.
And so, as you can imagine, chaos ensues. The crew
(33:06):
scrambles to escape. It's not the time to go into
the engine room and see what made that noise. They
want to stay alive, right, And that is where the
first explosion originates, is in in or near the engine room,
right exactly. And so uh, everybody is getting off the
vessel and there's they wait for a second, just a second.
(33:29):
There's one guy, a Portuguese photographer named Fernando Perea, and
after this explosion, after he gets away, he looks around
and he thinks, oh, snap, I need to get all
of my stuff, my equipment. We're documenting this. I'm a
photographer and I need my camera and my film. And
so he returns to the ship to grab his gear
(33:50):
right after that first explosion, and he's on board when
the second explosion occurs. Yeah, and he's killed by that
second explosion, and his death was the impetus for the
initial investigation into this whole situation, one of the largest
in the history of New Zealand. UM homicide investigation begins
(34:14):
and to French agents, Captain Dominique Prier and Commander Alan
Mafar are identified um by a local neighborhood watch, right, Yeah,
like what there's like neighborhood watches at sea. I mean,
that's that's very unusual. Well, there's some there's a lot
(34:36):
of weardeness that's going on behind the scenes that we
later find out. There were numerous French agents inside Auckland
at the time, specifically focusing on this this ship, this vessel,
on the Rainbow Warrior, in on Green Pieces activities, and
it's crazy. We we can maybe talk about a little more.
(34:57):
Several of the UH, either teams of agents and or
just individual agents were not so good at being spies,
I guess, at like covering their tracks and at being inconspicuous. Yeah,
and not to back seat not to play back seat espionage.
(35:17):
Right yeah, sorry, I mean, dude, do you know it's
just they were They were much more easily identified by
groups like that neighborhood Watch than you would expect. How
amazing to be the people that neighborhood watched though, they
must have been pretty impressed with themselves, right that. I
think it's might be a spy. That's a big one.
I mean, if I was on a neighborhood watch and I,
(35:39):
you know, landed this whale, um, I would feel pretty
good about myself and feel like neighborhood watches far and
wide should take note. No, he's not a spy. Why
would he be a spy in Auckland? No, he's not
a spy. What was I don't know what cockney a
little bit of Mary Poppins. Yeah, yeah, that's it feels
(35:59):
like it's spies try out some accents, um, what forbids?
That's what I remember of the concords. But but also
if you're that neighborhood watch person and we don't have
the specific name of the individual or Pete or individuals
in the neighborhood Watch who are instrumental in these arrests.
But if I were that person, I make certain that
(36:23):
comes up in some way in every like neighborhood meeting,
every h o a meeting. Ah hey uh New Zealand, Ben,
you're not You're not mowing your lawn on time. And
I'm like, oh, sorry, I was busy saving the neighborhood.
I don't know where. I don't know where your priorities are, gladdys.
(36:43):
But if I'm catching spies, I can't do it while
I'm mowing my lawn. Sufferable for me, Like, raise your hand, hi, Matt,
Frederick caught those spies that one time neighborhood watch, Yes, exactly, so,
so you know, good on them, honestly. But this becomes
(37:04):
very complicated very quickly, because, as you said, Matt, there
is a lot of stuff going on in the background.
It's not just these two guys. And at this point
carbon hasn't been made yet. She's still Frederick. And there's
a problem because there's public outcry right New Zealand is
(37:25):
saying this is a terrorist attack. France is an ally
of New Zealand and at first they're like, yeah, it's crazy,
I don't I mean, what happened. The world is a
nuts so place, you guys, And then they said, of
course we aren't involved like all these other nations, we
can dim this terrorist act. The French embassy and Wellington
(37:47):
stated explicitly the French government does not deal with its
opponents in such ways. What is interesting about this it
is that it was completely false. It was completely false.
They the people issuing the statement probably knew it was
completely false. Those two agents when they got arrested, they
(38:07):
came out that they had Swiss passports. When they got
made and their identities got burned, it's an instant smoking
gun for France. Right. You can see these guys reps,
you can see their history why it turns out that
they were not who they said they were. Carbon Slash
Frederick uh has Is successfully escaped internationally to Israel just
(38:32):
before the attack occurred, and there are a lot of
other people. Later researchers would learn from these two diving
teams that also got away, and some of it really
is action movie stuff, like one of one of the
teams that transported the explosives, they did so on a
yacht and then they almost well, they did get detained
(38:55):
in Australia, but because of Australian law, they couldn't be held,
and so they went back on their yacht and they
went off, and then they hitched a ride with a
French submarine and the French submarine sank the yacht they were.
This was very scorched earth they did. They really did
not want to leave traces, but their attempts to cover
up were, as you said, Matt, quite unsuccessful. It was
(39:18):
soon very very clear to the Government of New Zealand
that they're so called ally France had clearly and purposefully
and successfully conspired to blow the Rainbow Warrior out of
the water. Consequences be damned. And this is this is
such an escalation from just trying to bribe people with
(39:39):
five grand or even sending a bunch of heavies on
board to beat up the people who were on that ship.
They're trying to protest. Even we can talk about the
intentions later, but even if if the intentions of the
government were simply to scuttle the ship or to sink
the ship and not harm anybody, that's still an act
of tourism. At least now it would be considered that. Yeah,
(40:04):
very much so. And you know, we have to keep
in mind that some of these conversations aren't making it
to the public sphere just yet. There's a moment where
New Zealand sends over like physical evidence to France, we
know what you did, we know what you did. Yeah,
what's good. And this became a political scandal as word
(40:27):
got out. So you see a domino effect of French
politicians uh leaving office. The Minister of Defense at the time,
Charles Herneux, he resigns, and then the head of the
d g s E is a guy named Admiral Pierre Lacosse.
He is fired. Um. And you know, if you're familiar
with a lot of the upper reaches of Western politics,
(40:50):
usually what happens when someone gets fired is they say
they're retiring to spend time with their family or something,
you know, something innocuous like that. That's the out they
give you. I suppose, you know, no one wants to
utterly well, there are times where they do want to
utterly run you up the flagpole. Um, but this was
not one of those situations. I suppose sometimes you have
to take a break to pursue painting your next president.
(41:13):
Oh so this is the problem that they still have
these two agents on the hook, the captains you mentioned
earlier and old they are. They have been arrested and
they get eventually they get released to French custody and
then they go free. But the reality of what happened
behind the scenes, how those got how France got those
(41:35):
guys back, and how they got away with this attack.
It's the dirty part of international affairs. These guys were
both sentenced to ten years imprisonment. They pled guilty demand slaughter,
and then France went back to New Zealand and threatened
to wage economic warfare. They said, look, we're gonna shut
your stuff down. You will not be able to export
(41:57):
anything to Europe unless you give us our operatives back.
And this was not an empty threat. It would have
absolutely crippled New Zealand's economy was highly independent on agricultural
exports to the United Kingdom and this kind of like
sending in the economic heavies. To borrow your earlier phrase, Matt,
this stuff happens way more often than people would like
(42:19):
to think. And it's like that the economic hit man. Yes, yeah,
Confessions of an economic hit Man no kidding, that's a
great read. On September, the Prime Minister at the time
finally admitst the bombing has been a a French plot,
(42:41):
and he says the truth is cruel. There was an operation,
there was a resulting cover up, and they went on
to say agents of the French secret service sank this boat.
They were acting on orders the elephant in the room
the other shoe waiting to drop whose orders exactly, And
that's a question that remains officially unanswered in the modern days.
(43:06):
So in a way, the conspiracy is still afoot. The
Western world in New Zealand's opinion, really dropped the ball.
They didn't condemn France at all. And this had serious
ramifications for the way the way New Zealand saw other
European countries, the way it saw the US especially and
(43:27):
in France ponied up compensation for the Portuguese photographers family,
and then they also gave Green Peace the equivalent eight
point one six million dollars. Yeah, eight point one six
million dollars. So, after a little time goes by, details
of the actual conspiracy start to trickle out. And here's
(43:48):
what we know. There were two teams involved in transporting
and placing those bombs. According to some confessions obtained later.
These confessions were from the operatives involved, the plan was
never to injure anybody, but the boat docked. They thought
they could just kind of render the ship inert or
at least just wreck it. Uh so it couldn't be used,
(44:09):
but not actually risk losing any lives. Um. But they
they goofed, didn't they. The dive team placed the explosives
as planned, but the explosions were larger than they had predicted,
which to me, doesn't that mean that there was too
much explosive or is it just one of these things
(44:30):
like we're talking about, with circumstances that could cause, you know,
variables that could cause the explosions to differ. There's quite
a few things going on here. First thing you need
to know is that the original plan was to place
the explosives on the opposite side of the whole, the
other side of the ship. But there was another boat
kind of near there, and there seemed to be people
(44:52):
on that on that boat, and they didn't want to
at least according to the confessions here, they didn't want
to harm anyone on that boat, so they decided just
in the moment to switch sides on the boat. And
again the engine room is right there, the whole Like,
who knows what factors led to the to the size
of that explosion, but what we do know is that
(45:13):
the explosion came from the outside of the ship. And
the damage that you can see to the whole from
that explosion that then goes in and moves into the
boat is big. Yeah, and there's shrapnel flying that. This
is the thing if you we're talking about this a
little bit off air, this is one of the things
that gets me. How are you going to so extensively
(45:35):
plan an operation like this? And as one of the
operatives leaders said, not test it. They didn't test it
on a boat and they and Matt you raised an
interesting point about how we should regard France's nuclear experiments. Right,
(45:55):
those are the biggest explosives. And I can't quite remember
how you put it. Yeah, the fringe military has the
time and funds to test all of those nukes, like
however many at that time, in however many they had
tested that point since the sixties. They had the time
and all that money, the millions and millions and millions
(46:15):
and millions of dollars to do that, but they didn't
have enough time and money to test one probably small
what do you think, maybe C four I don't I
doubt it was dynamite or anything like that. Was probably
had to be some kind of plastic explosive. But yeah,
but they didn't test that part. Everything else they had
these identities, they have personas, they had transported explosives through
(46:36):
international waters. They never tested out. And that's something that
happens with a lot of government conspiracies. Something goes wrong.
They messed up, and you know this again could be
for any number of factors that change on the ground.
But that first explosion wasn't even the major issue. Even
(46:58):
though it was larger than they expected and did sink
of the ship faster than the timeline, you know, than
they expected. That isn't what killed anybody. It was it
like we said, it was that second explosion right right.
And you can even see the logic the four minute
interval between explosions could be baked in to allow people
(47:19):
to hear that first explosion, maybe even almost as a warning,
and then abandoned ship. But they didn't bet on someone.
Whatever their calculations were, they didn't bet on someone coming
back so soon after that first explosion, And there's a
really interesting interview out of TV New Zealand that was
later aired on Democracy Now. I think where you can
(47:43):
you can hear firsthand from one of the operatives about
what went down. It was thirty years after the fact.
But before we get to that guy, let's let's talk
just a little bit about the continuing cover up. So
here's the thing. Other than the two men who were
briefly arrested, no one ended up facing criminal charges for
(48:05):
this act. Nobody other than those two guys, and they
eventually were let go. In two thousand and five, the
French newspaper of Note Lament released a report from where
the former head of d G s E said that
it had been signed off by the President mitterr All.
(48:28):
He had explicitly said, yeah, that makes sense to blow
it up and right, and so you know, when this
admiral comes forward, he also gives his the newspaper interviews
about this situation and he said, you know personally that
(48:50):
this way is on my conscience. We were not trying
to kill people. But as history has proven pretty often,
prosecuting the precedent is a difficult endeavor. There's a reason
that the US has that law about invading the Hague. Yeah,
it's very true. I want I want to jump to
this individual. We're talking about the operative that confessed. This
(49:13):
is the guy that led operations on the ground or
in the water in this case, he's the person in
charge of the whole thing, and he is the one
that physically placed or at least he says, he's the
one who physically placed the explosives onto the ship. And
it's intense that he's the one who came forward to
confess all of this and and tell all the world
(49:35):
and specifically to speak to the daughter of the photographer
who was killed. Yeah. Yeah, Joan Luke kiss. And it's
pretty in depth interview. Uh. He answers some he answers
questions that would naturally occur, like why did you have
a crisis of conscious thirty years after the fact? Right? Um?
And his answer is something that I think a lot
(49:58):
of people in the audience could understand and today, if
not agree with you, can you can understand where he's
coming from. He said, Look, this wasn't my only operation.
I was active for a while. I was doing a
lot of stuff and I couldn't come forward because it
could compromise those things. And then also, I'm first and foremost,
I was a soldier, so I had to carry out orders.
(50:19):
If you if you are a soldier, and you know
in his explanation, then you are mandated to do what
you're told, even if you have questions or concerns, whether
they are operational or ethical. So he heavily implies his
hands were tied. He apologizes, and like you said, Matt,
he requests the opportunity to speak with Perea's daughter and
(50:41):
apologize in person, and she declines it. And so now,
with no real official consequences, the government of France has
paid compensation. Uh, They've made apologies to New Zealand over
the years a couple of different times, and the relationship
between France and New Zealand seems to have normalized over
(51:01):
the intervening years. But as we record today, don't be fooled,
there's still calls for prosecution echoing in the halls of
Green Piece, echoing in the halls of New Zealand to
the modern day. And this is this is where our
story for now pauses, and we have to ask, you know,
at the risk of sounding cynical, Matt. No, I feel
(51:23):
like the three of us in particular just sort of
assume stuff like this is happening, possibly now, right, and
we just don't hear about it. Yeah, maybe not with
you know, sexy names like Rainbow Warrior, but certainly this
doesn't seem like too much of a stretch now. Yeah,
I mean, it does make me wonder the power about
(51:45):
the powerful forces that go up against environmental activists of
any kind. But it's weird because it feels like it
as we said before, it's these groups seem more like
an annoyance to me for a big superpower like that
than real threat unless these forces really do put more
weight into kind of what we were talking about before,
(52:08):
the heart, if they're if they're worried about heart more
than you know, some of the other powers, um just
from a from a pr from a hearts and minds
standpoint of the voters in their country and or you know,
the other voting countries in NATO and some of these
other the U n and these things. I could see
(52:30):
them wanting to stop those kind of annoyances or the
things that make them look bad. Well, but it's also
it makes me think of a movie. Britt Marling is
like an actor, writer, director, and um, she made a
couple of cool films. One it's called Another Earth, it's
like a science fiction thing, and then she made one
called The East that's about um, a environmental terrorist group,
(52:54):
UM that is executing these covert attacks on major polluting
corporate pations. And I'm not saying that's that's what you
should do, and that's the only way to get it done,
but to to elevate your cause from annoyance to absolute
you know, you know, nemesis, or to go toe to
toe these companies. Either, like you said, Matt, have to
(53:14):
really have an effective way of changing the hearts and
minds of people that really matter, or you kind of
just burn it all down, um. And that's not particularly
productive either, and then it makes you kind of just
as bad as the people you're fighting. But I understand
the frustration when it comes to, like, how do I
take a stand against these giant corporations when it feels
(53:36):
like doing it the right way often falls on deaf
ears and it's sort of easily brushed to the side. Sure, yeah,
because I mean, you know, the fact of the matter
is that it's very difficult for uh, someone to take
on entities like this in court, you know, the the
expenses alone. Um and my I think we have similar
(53:56):
questions because why would the French government not just arrest
these people when they cross into the exclusion zone? And
what consequences should there be for for the people who
were involved? And it's a question that hasn't been answered
(54:17):
to the satisfaction of a lot of people. Obviously, we
believe that there are more operations like this that have
yet to be exposed. Uh, there may be some going
on while we're recording. And this is where we passed
the heart ring to you. What do you think why
did France do this? What was their ultimate goal? What
did they expect would happen? What other operations like this
(54:41):
do you believe have occurred in the modern day? And uh,
you know, when do you think the public will learn
about them? If ever, we can't wait to hear from you.
We try to be easy to find online. Yeah, find
us online. We are a conspiracy stuff on Facebook and Twitter,
conspiracy stuff show on Instagram. While you're tooling around on
the internet, why not tool your way over to Apple
(55:01):
Podcasts and leave us a review. We would be much
appreciative of said positive review five stars if you please,
And then you can also give us a call on
the telephone, like if you're an old school and don't
like to go on the internet, that's right. Our phone
number is one eight three three st d w y
t K. Leave us a message, tell us what name
you'd like for us to call you. It doesn't have
(55:22):
to be your real name. Then say whatever you want
us to play on air. Then after that, anything you
want to say personally to us, please go for it.
I know Paul Mission Control decand wants to hear from you,
so he's waiting for your messages. Let's let's put out
a special call messages for Paul and uh we'll have
a special segment at some point and we'll make Paul respond.
(55:43):
I'm not unfair in making people do things too bad.
A call for Paul. So if you don't care for
no phone, if you don't care for social media, no worries.
We have your back. We don't want you to squeeze
a ten minutes story into three minutes. If it doesn't
(56:05):
do it justice. You can respond to us in full.
We read every email we get, and you can always
always send us a good old fashioned email. Where we
are expiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't
(56:37):
want you to know is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer,
Paul Mission controlled decades. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. Heads up, fellow conspiracy realists. In
the course of this episode, you may hear what sounds
like a few muffled explosions. They are not the brilliant
(00:48):
design of our super producer, Uh, they are the nefarious
design of some guys who decided to build a staircase
today behind my house. So if really yeah, so I
just want trying to improve the area. It's it's strange,
it's strange, but you know, wishing them the best. They're
(01:11):
better than the leafblower guy, who I think is a
nemesis for a lot of us nowadays. What kind of
staircase are we talking, Ben? Is it a nice spiral staircase?
Is there some like brutalist architecture? Or is it just
a run of the mill, you know set of stairs?
You know it is? It is in the running knoll
for the noisiest set of stairs I have ever encountered.
I don't know if it's pr stunt promotion for the
(01:34):
advantages of elevators? Unclear? Hey, do we ever find out
if we're gonna get sued for the Was it Dr Dre?
Who was it? Notorious b I g in the background.
We're not right, I don't I don't think so. I
hope not um And please any legal departments listing treat
that as the tribute it is. Treat that as the
(01:57):
tribute it is. Uh. Today's episod so comes to us
courtesy of our fellow conspiracy realist Tom Over in Europe.
And Tom, you wrote to ask us about a proven
conspiracy that took place not too long ago. It's a
conspiracy that many people have never heard of, which is
(02:18):
gonna be odd when when we get further into the story,
and our story really begins with in g O's one
in particular green piece, we're talking about this a little
bit off air. Have you guys ever met anybody volunteered
for Green Peace? No? I knew somebody who was in
the Peace Corps. That's not the same thing, though, I
don't think no, honestly, I've not met any individual who's
(02:40):
worked for them. Yeah, what does what does that mean?
Guys at the same on my end, are we just
like terrible people? We don't move and do gooder circles
or or or hot take it's not real. There is
no green Peace. I like. I like both of these. Uh,
it's true there are going to be some people in
(03:01):
the audience today who are thinking, oh, hold on, guys,
older badgers, green Peace isn't all that great. And it's
true that green Peace has a lot of critics. So
maybe maybe we start with the origins of green Peace
to really get into the conspiracy today. Here are the facts.
(03:21):
What is it? Sounds cool? Well? It describes itself as
a quote global independent campaigning organization that uses peaceful protests
and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and promote
solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future.
I take a breath there in the middle. That's a
(03:42):
lot of stuff um let to unpack. Sounds good on
the surface, though, doesn't it? It really does, and its
origins go back to a time when that kind of thing,
that kind of effort was very popular, back to the
nineteen sixties, officially founded in one. So there's activism occurring
in the nineteen sixties and it kind of turns into
(04:05):
this organization called green Peace. Yes, so the origins of
what we know as green Piece today, uh come from
anti nuclear testing activism specifically, you know, the protests leading
to green Peace really kicked off in the sixties. But
the organization was officially founded in nineteventy one explicitly to
(04:27):
stop nuclear testing at m Chitka Island in Alaska, That's right.
And they really did focus on nuclear testing and preventing
that from occurring in the future for for a little
while there, at least several years. In nineteen seventy two,
is a gentleman named David McTaggart. He took a small,
(04:50):
small sailing vessel along with two other green Peace I
guess members, and they sailed out to this place called
the French Exclusion Zone in the Pacific. And the whole
point there was to stop the French government from exploding
another nuclear weapon in a test out there in uh
specific a toll that they had control over because France
(05:12):
has some land essentially or some land and ocean area
that they own out there in the Pacific Islands. And
they sailed this ship out this you know, small little
vessel in essentially just defiance of the French government and saying, well,
we're here. You can't really test a new because we're here.
Sorry m hm. And they went back and forth. This
(05:36):
is a pattern for green Peace. They go back and
forth opposing various institutions. They're doing things that they find
objection able, and it expands beyond worries about nuclear weaponry. Uh.
The organization has always been relatively loose knit, and it
started tackling these other global issues. So I don't know
(05:57):
about you guys, but when I think of green Peace
before we dove into this, I would immediately think of
somewhat on a boat trying to stop whalers, you know.
That's what I associate them, Yeah, almost more like a
peta situation or something that's more humanitarian towards wildlife and
like the environment in particular. Well, yeah, and that they
are known for that because that is what green Peace
(06:19):
did for a long time, especially you know, from the
mid nineteen seventies to around the mid of around actually
until the early nineteen eighties when they picked nuclear testing
back up. But I just want to jump back to
France really quickly, guys. I'm sorry I didn't completely finished
what I was going to talk about there, just because
this episode is dealing with France and it's kind of
(06:40):
I don't want to spoil too much right now, but
it's dealing with green Peace versus the French military basically
and the French government. So that time in nineteen seventy two,
when they took that small vessel out there, they ended
up their their boat ended up getting rammed and they
got arrested, but it didn't deter them from going back
because the next year, in nineteen seventy three, MacTaggart and
(07:01):
the crew returned for a second demonstration. This time the
French authorities tried to bribe them. They were like, okay,
just get out of here, please, we want to test
nuclear weapons guys. And they tried to give him five
thousand dollars or at least the equal yeah, it was
five thousand dollars us at the time. Didn't work. Then
(07:22):
they sent a small like I don't know, it's not
a dinghy. I don't think but it's like an inflatable
craft essentially, or small, a tiny little boat out let's
just call I love a dinghy. I'm sorry, Okay, the dinghy. Uh.
But they were They were some military operatives from probably
(07:42):
the French government or someone on behalf of the French government.
I'm not exactly sure who it was, but there is
photographic evidence of it. They came out to the ship
boarded and beat the living crap out of the green
Peace members. The only reason why we know about it
is because one of one of the crew members had
a still camera was able to snap a couple of
shots while it's happening. Then like jumped down inside the
(08:07):
sailing ship and hid the camera, and the authorities found
a second camera that they thought was the one she
was taking pictures with and destroyed the film and threw
it in the ocean. But she had hidden the other
camera in that film survived, so it was just proof
that it had occurred. All that's to say, green Peace
and the French government slash military are at odds already
(08:29):
in the early seventies, green Peace and multiple countries, I
would say, especially France, that seems like a low price
for a bribe and uh sending French commandos on a
scene like that's no laughing matter. Those guys don't mess around.
So you have to at least whether or not you
agree with Green Pieces tactics, you do have to commend
(08:53):
their courage in pursuing, you know, these ideals. When we
say that they use create of communication, that that little
bit of pr speak from their official sites, it's helpful
to have examples of what we mean because it verges
into performance art. Like there was a time when ten
(09:13):
Green Peace activists dressed as polar bears to protest against
Arctic drilling by gas Prom, the Russian energy giant, and
then they also dressed as zombies and took over Kaezon
City in the Philippines in so this is like theater
as protests as well. They in addition to attempting to
(09:37):
prevent people from hunting seals and cetaceans, they also work
actively to prevent the dumping of toxic radioactive waste at sea.
Historically speaking, they tend to use what they call direct
but non violent actions. So just like you were describing Matt,
they'll they'll steer a small dinghy between a whaler's harpoon
(10:02):
and the target, and or they'll go over to an
industrial pipe that's discharging waste and they'll physically plug it up.
These things can be expensive for those institutions, but they
themselves endeavor not to harm other people. So you might
hear uh in GEO like this described with the phrase
(10:23):
eco terrorists, right, Or they're committing acts of eco terrorism
by damaging property. But to be very clear, they are
not actively out there, you know, kidnapping, people are bombing
them and stuff like that. But all these all these actions,
whether they're to bring awareness to something or whether they're
to prevent what is seen as an environmental crime, have
(10:45):
brought green Peace a lot of attention over the years,
a ton of attention. But make no mistake, folks, not
all of this attention is positive. This is true. But
let's just not forget the green pieces also active in
the legal and regulatory spheres and have been a huge
voice in pushing for tighter environmental regulation and oversight. And
(11:10):
like we said earlier, just the kinds of things that
you would associate probably automatically with when you when you
think of green Peace. Um and sometimes these efforts have
been very successful. Um and today the organization has a
pretty small staff, most of whom are volunteers, and um,
(11:30):
a lot of their funding comes from donations from individuals.
So how do we separate kind of the fact and
the fiction and the controversy. Uh, these are three kind
of tears of today's episode and green Peace. Yeah, it's
a good question, Will. So, as you can imagine, green
Peace sees itself speaking truth to power. Right, these are
(11:52):
folks who are you know, nobody is involved in green
Peace to get rich. They are, as you said, volunteers,
and they get into direct conflict with some of the
world's most powerful institutions, some of the biggest corporations that
you may or may not have heard of, as well
as you know, as you pointed out, Matt, state level actors.
And so of course this creates a lot of criticism.
(12:16):
But it's not just from these institutions, you know what
I mean. It's not just like Captain Planet villains having
a problem with Captain Planet and the what do you
call the planet tears shout out to heart Man always
that they that he got the short into the stick,
but he did get a monkey, he did have a money.
Was his monkey's name, Well, the guy's name was no gosh,
there was Quamie. He was water maybe, Oh gosh, I'm
(12:41):
I'm really doing bad with my Captain Planet trivia. But
the monkey was adorable. Um, you're right, the heart what
didn't really get a sense that that what it was
his power to make people like you know, feel emotional.
I guess so, dude, if you can change hearts and minds,
I mean, the heart is connected to the mind, and
if you can change hearts, guys, you can do anything.
So secretly it was a mind control power all along. Yeah,
(13:02):
they just didn't want to spook everyone. But the reason
we're bringing up this Captain Planet comparison is because it's
important to know that not all the people who criticize
Green Peace over the years are like gas prom or something,
or the French military or something. There are people who
have worked for Green Peace in the past that are
(13:22):
no longer with the organization and have some pretty bluntly
critical things to say about it. But because this is
a loosened organization with several different types of causes, a
lot of the criticism tends to be issue specific. So
somebody might say, for instance, and just a made up example,
someone might say, look, I am totally with green Peace.
(13:46):
We need to end wailing now. But they're acting crazy
when they're against nuclear power. Clean energy is the way
of the future, you know what I mean. So they
might not throw the entire organizational baby out with the
bath water. But again, their critics are not all evil.
In a hundred and seven hundred and seven Nobel Prize
(14:09):
laureates signed a letter begging Greenpeace to stop its opposition
to GMOs genetically modified organisms um and you can you
can read about these incidents. They're they're pretty well documented,
but they've also been they've also been accused of either
(14:29):
unintentionally or maybe intentionally exaggerating the severity of certain issues,
Like it turned out they were inaccurate when they were
reporting the amount of toxic waste on something called the
brent spar oil storage booie in, And they went back
(14:50):
and corrected it, but sort of the damage was done,
you know. And then anybody was opposed to their agenda
would be able to say, these guys are making a
mountain out of a mole hill, their enemies of progress, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera,
and really just this anti nuclear weaponry, deterrence, proliferation, all
that stuff being anti biotech, anti innovation. Some some would
(15:14):
argue that, UM, some have argued that it's really just
an anti technology group, like it's an anti progress group.
But I don't, I don't know about that. That's certainly
been they've been accused of that, right, And I wanted
to talk to you guys really quickly before we jump
into you know, the next section here. This concept of
(15:36):
being anti nuclear weapon, especially weapon testing. It's such a
gray area for me because yes, and it weirdly and
I haven't always felt this way, but simply because we've
talked about on this show so many times the reasons
that a country would have nuclear weapons, have that capability
(15:58):
and also show it off to any stent and learn
as much as they can about it as a way
of preventing themselves from being at risk from other world
superpowers with nukes. I can see why a government or
a country like France would be very much interested in
testing nuclear weapons in the nineteen sixties and seventies as
(16:18):
the Cold War is escalating between the other superpowers. UM,
I can see why they would want to establish their
position as a powerful nation that can't be messed with. Essentially,
you know, there there could be machinations in South America
and some of these other places where you know, the
Soviet Union and the United States are playing their little
(16:41):
war games and or you know, terrorizing humans and nations
like they would want that really badly, and it could
be very beneficial for all of the citizens of France.
So the greater good argument I think I can see
for France four people in charge there. It's tough to
say that to the people that testing sites though, right
(17:01):
exactly on the other side, like you're wreaking absolute havoc
on people in in the environment which they lived for.
You know, however, many generations. I'm not saying the nuclear
testing is a good thing. I'm saying that I can
see it more clearly now why it was viewed as
so important to the French government. Yeah, and we've we've
(17:22):
talked about similar, you know, highly unethical problems in the past.
Imagine being one of those US scientists who says, Okay,
our best plan is to steal the bodies of children,
and everybody signed off on it because they thought, you know,
they thought it was a dirty job, but it was
for an ultimately better world. Uh. And you know that's
(17:45):
up to future historians to debate the accuracy of that
or the sincerity, I would argue, But but I guess what,
I'm at the end of that, guy, I agree with you,
and I think it's not hard for any of us
to see why green pieces stance in the nineties seventies
and then later what we're about to enter into of
being against nuclear testing was kind of a no brainer. Um, Like, yes,
(18:12):
a lot of people can get behind that notion. Well,
but what's the alternative by being against nuclear testing? Are
you also just purely against nuclear weapons? Yeah, that's that's
the thing, because it's a dual use technology. There's not
really it's it's really tough. It's a tall milkshake too
(18:33):
continually monitor a country with nuclear capabilities and somehow ensure
that they never just keep the center fugees spinning to
the point that they create nuclear weapons. You know, it's
it's tough. It's a dilemma. But the big takeaway here
is this green piece started because they wanted global disarmament
(18:54):
as as an ultimate end goal, and today opponents of
green peace will argue that it might create more problems
than it attempts to solve, and supporters of green peace
may argue that, look, hey, this organization is imperfect, but
cut them some slack. Their overall aim is some real
Captain Planet stuff. They're well intentioned. If their stuff works,
(19:18):
then it's vital to the long term sustainability of life
on Earth, human life as well as wildlife. And you know,
usually these disagreements and these tensions result and heated legal battles,
sometimes public protests and confrontations, and then arguments and debate
until one day France blew their ship out of the water.
(19:43):
And to pause for a moment for word from our sponsors,
and then we'll introduce you to Operation Satanic. What did
you say, clearly involves puppies, right, I mean, yes, here's
where it gets crazy. All right, now, let's introduce you
(20:06):
to the Rainbow Warrior. You saw the title of this episode.
That's what this whole thing is about. The Rainbow Warrior
was a trawler class vessel, a ship, not not just
a boat. This is a ship, guys. And it was
built in the United Kingdom in nineteen fifty five, and
it was called the Sir William Hardy. It is up
to you whether the name, whether you prefer the name
(20:28):
Rainbow Warrior or Sir William Hardy. Uh. This is a trawler.
Is essentially a motor boat that is seaworthy. So they
wanted this because it can make long ocean voyages. It's
not super impressive, as you know, it's not on the
level of a billionaire's yacht or something. No one's living
the high life on this. It's it's a work boat
(20:50):
for a mission. And when Greenpeace UK got ahold of
the vessel back in n that's when they renamed it.
They spend about four months retrofitting it. On May second,
they launched it and they decided to call it the
Rainbow Warrior. It's named after a book written by one
(21:11):
of the co founders of Green Piece, a guy named
Robert Hunter wrote a book called Warriors of the Rainbow.
The titular line of the book, if you're interested, is
the world is sick and dying, the people will rise
up like Warriors of the Rainbow. I'm not sure what
that means, but it's inspirational. Well it's like, um, you know,
(21:32):
warriors from all over the place, who look like who,
who looked like everyone possibly could look on earth, and
we're all going to fight for That's cool, man, that's
something you could get behind, you know, super chill in
a revolutionary kind of way. Um, but it's it should
be noted that this ship was just rusted out, looked nasty.
(21:56):
You can see footage of it in um there's a
documentary that Green Piece put out that's called The Boat
and the Bomb, So you can really check out some
retro footage of this ship as it was being changed
over into the Rainbow Warrior. It needed that four months
blow up, Oh yeah, for sure. But let's uh, let's
(22:21):
just jump from there. Eight I think is when it
was fully retrofitted. But then one after it had been
out on a couple of different missions, they re ignite
this campaign that had kind of gone away since the
early seventies, this anti nuclear weapons testing campaign. And when
(22:41):
they did that, they wanted the Rainbow Warrior not just
to be uh, fossil fuel powered vehicle. They wanted to
be a little greener. Hey come on, the names Green Piece, right,
So they they further retrofitted the thing. They put sales
on it, massive sales. So now it's both a motor
boat and a sailing vest. And that's that's form and
function there. And if you think about it, that move
(23:04):
makes sense because the most immediate criticism for an organization
like Greenpeace using a vote like this would be, hey,
you guys know what, there's those run on right, So
it's it's a valid it's valid criticism, and our story
really kicks off your nineteen five, the Rainbow Warriors set
sail for Auckland, New Zealand, and they are on the
(23:28):
way to a very specific, infamous a toll in the
world of environmentalism. That's right, the more Arora a toll.
The idea was to connect with this assembly of eight
other vessels, this flotilla UM and prevent the next firing
of a nuclear weapon. UM. And this area had long
been a popular destination for testing you know a tolls,
(23:50):
and remote islands often are like the Marshall Islands episode
we just talked about, where the risk of collateral damage
is seen on paper as being you know low put.
We know what happened with that story. Um. It has
long term consequences that are not often thought of upfront.
But as long as the math adds up, then it'll
all be okay. But it, you know, often isn't so.
(24:11):
In nineteen sixty six, the Friendship begun testing nuclear weapons
in this area, and they'd continue to do so till
nineteen ninety six, which is crazy to me, despite these
very intense protests UM. And Greenpeace says and argues that
the initial test alone, which was code named all Deboran
(24:31):
I believe that's they pronounce it, which happened on July
two in nineteen sixty six, spread contamination as far as
Peru and New Zealand. That's that collateral damage we're talking about.
And it oftentimes, you know, far exceeds initial expectations because
you know, there's all kinds of other variables like the
winds and currents and things like that. UM. So it's
(24:52):
an absolute understatement to say that tensions ran high. They
ran absolutely nuclear uh pun completely in ended. UM. That
wasn't really a fun whatever it was. It was very tense.
It was wordplay. It was wordplay. Thank you, Ben, I
appreciate you having my back. UM. But these French commandos
you see, had boarded a previous protest boat UM that
(25:14):
trespassed into this exclusionary shipping zone that was bordering the atoll.
And Greenpeace knew full well, or at least you know,
to some degree that the risks were there, and they
planned to monitor the impact of these tests and place
and place protesters on the ground to monitor the actual blast. Yeah, like,
(25:36):
we can't stop you, but the world will witness your
actions on this day. And these are very motivated people.
They are again, they're not working on a profit motive.
They're working towards, in their ideology, a better world. And
they're not there to attack these military officers or attacked
(25:56):
the scientists conducting these tests, but they want to they
want to do their best to make it really inconvenient
to conduct these tests. And you know, I think in
Green Pieces, in Green Pieces favor, they were one of
the organizations that was openly saying something that I think
a lot of governments were privately saying, which is this,
(26:20):
you all do not know the full extent of your actions.
You do not know the consequences. You will probably mess
something up and maybe you'll get some valuable data, but
that is not going to, you know, improve the lives
of the people who may suffer the consequences of these experiments.
But Green Peace, despite being very aware of the dangers
(26:45):
of nuclear armageddon, they were blissfully unaware of some thing's
closer to home. You see, folks, Green Peace did not
know that before they went on this fateful trip to
the atoll, they had already and compromised and for quite
a while. Yeah, that's right. There was a person named
(27:05):
Christine Carbone. She was not just your regular old person.
She was an agent. Oh yeah, us by She was
working for Frances Director at General for External Security or
the d g s E. This is again in the
same way the CIA operates outside of the US or
m I six operates outside of the US. That's what
(27:28):
this this organization does, d g s E, remember that name.
So she had gone in and volunteered to join Green Peace,
and back in the day around that time, it was
super easy to infiltrate Green Peace. You just said hey,
I want to help, and they're like, come on in
story checks out, um. And she she infiltrated through Auckland,
(27:52):
New Zealand, which is interestingly enough, where remember we already
talked about this where the Rainbow Warrior had set out
to go before they went over to the atoll, in
the area where the testing is actually occurring, because it's
it's not that far away. And she posed as someone else.
She pretended to be someone named Frederic Bonlieu and she was,
(28:14):
and this character that she was portraying was an environmentalist.
She was all about green Peace, all about anti nuclear
proliferation and stopping testing. But really what she was doing,
it's just going, oh what's that and then making a
phone call to somebody and taking notes and uh, just
monitoring all the communications, collecting maps where they're going to go,
(28:36):
if there are any plans or information intel on what's
about to occur. She's doing this stuff and she's also
checking out the tech that's aboard the ship. What capabilities
does this ship have and how how can we subvert them?
And let's get some specifics on the whole. Says Frederick.
(28:57):
You know, I'm a I'm just like you guys. I mean,
the D player, I want to know everything. I want
to get in where I can fit in, and the
Rainbow Warrior. You know, there was a lot of pr
around it because this makes for great headlines. So for
a time it was open for public viewing and all
sorts of tourists and honeymooners and supporters of green Peace,
(29:20):
uh and just curious onlookers towards the ship to learn
more about what green Peace planned to do with this vessel.
Thing is some of those tourists were also uh D
G s E. They were operatives. It's such this part
of spyacraft always seems so I know, it's got to
(29:40):
be a real nail biter on the anxiety scale. But
I always wondered, do they take acting lessons? Like if
you are if you're posing as a couple on honeymoon
which just happened to walk by a ship and wants
to take a tour of it, do you have to
like practice is acting like a couple, you know, to
(30:03):
spend a week together just working on your bits. I
don't know. It's called improv for espionage. It is, you know.
I I don't have personal experience, but I would say
acting classes would probably help out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I
think you're right to a degree. Um, And they're they're
really interesting stories about how people train spies to act undercover.
(30:29):
There's there's there was a great interview with the lady
who was in charge of CIA disguises for a number
of years, And what's funny about that is that she
is pretty casual with it. She's like, Okay, we can
teach people to walk differently, we can give them wigs,
we can change different parts of their appearance. Here are
the things I think work. Here are the things I
(30:49):
think don't work. And when she was asked like, what
is the number one problem with, you know, having people
move in these false personas or disguises, she said ego.
She was like, none of nobody wants to look bad.
And you know, if you think about it, looking a
little bit homely would help you with your cover, right,
(31:10):
unless you're supposed to be a model or a movie star.
But anyway, that aside, I would say that's what always
works out in those undercover TV shows with models and
or superstars. The only way they get them to fit
in is making them more homely. Yeah, yeah, let's give
him a give him a weird news look more like us.
(31:32):
Now we look okay. You know, I'm not going to
rate us, but I think I think we look all right.
Uh anyway, slid seven. You know that's nice, man, that's good.
I'm not gonna ask what the scale is there, but
thank you? Alright, continue alright, So, so here's what happens. Um. Clearly,
(31:56):
you know, Green pieces relying on transparency because they want
the support of the public. They are not a military,
they are not a government actor. So they depend on volunteers.
They depend on people who agree with both their goals
and the ways in which they pursue those goals, and
this comes back to haunt them. I suggest to take
(32:19):
a pause for word from our sponsor and return to July.
We're back set the scene. The ship is docked, it
is pretty late. There has been a birthday party on
the vessel earlier that evening, and they're about twelve people
(32:43):
on board. The ship is prepping to head out to
confront the French authorities conducting this nuclear test, and right
before the stroke of midnight, an explosion rocks the vessel. Uh.
And so, as you can imagine, chaos ensues. The crew
(33:06):
scrambles to escape. It's not the time to go into
the engine room and see what made that noise. They
want to stay alive, right, And that is where the
first explosion originates, is in in or near the engine room,
right exactly. And so uh, everybody is getting off the
vessel and there's they wait for a second, just a second.
(33:29):
There's one guy, a Portuguese photographer named Fernando Perea, and
after this explosion, after he gets away, he looks around
and he thinks, oh, snap, I need to get all
of my stuff, my equipment. We're documenting this. I'm a
photographer and I need my camera and my film. And
so he returns to the ship to grab his gear
(33:50):
right after that first explosion, and he's on board when
the second explosion occurs. Yeah, and he's killed by that
second explosion, and his death was the impetus for the
initial investigation into this whole situation, one of the largest
in the history of New Zealand. UM homicide investigation begins
(34:14):
and to French agents, Captain Dominique Prier and Commander Alan
Mafar are identified um by a local neighborhood watch, right, Yeah,
like what there's like neighborhood watches at sea. I mean,
that's that's very unusual. Well, there's some there's a lot
(34:36):
of weardeness that's going on behind the scenes that we
later find out. There were numerous French agents inside Auckland
at the time, specifically focusing on this this ship, this vessel,
on the Rainbow Warrior, in on Green Pieces activities, and
it's crazy. We we can maybe talk about a little more.
(34:57):
Several of the UH, either teams of agents and or
just individual agents were not so good at being spies,
I guess, at like covering their tracks and at being inconspicuous. Yeah,
and not to back seat not to play back seat espionage.
(35:17):
Right yeah, sorry, I mean, dude, do you know it's
just they were They were much more easily identified by
groups like that neighborhood Watch than you would expect. How
amazing to be the people that neighborhood watched though, they
must have been pretty impressed with themselves, right that. I
think it's might be a spy. That's a big one.
I mean, if I was on a neighborhood watch and I,
(35:39):
you know, landed this whale, um, I would feel pretty
good about myself and feel like neighborhood watches far and
wide should take note. No, he's not a spy. Why
would he be a spy in Auckland? No, he's not
a spy. What was I don't know what cockney a
little bit of Mary Poppins. Yeah, yeah, that's it feels
(35:59):
like it's spies try out some accents, um, what forbids?
That's what I remember of the concords. But but also
if you're that neighborhood watch person and we don't have
the specific name of the individual or Pete or individuals
in the neighborhood Watch who are instrumental in these arrests.
But if I were that person, I make certain that
(36:23):
comes up in some way in every like neighborhood meeting,
every h o a meeting. Ah hey uh New Zealand, Ben,
you're not You're not mowing your lawn on time. And
I'm like, oh, sorry, I was busy saving the neighborhood.
I don't know where. I don't know where your priorities are, gladdys.
(36:43):
But if I'm catching spies, I can't do it while
I'm mowing my lawn. Sufferable for me, Like, raise your hand, hi, Matt,
Frederick caught those spies that one time neighborhood watch, Yes, exactly, so,
so you know, good on them, honestly. But this becomes
(37:04):
very complicated very quickly, because, as you said, Matt, there
is a lot of stuff going on in the background.
It's not just these two guys. And at this point
carbon hasn't been made yet. She's still Frederick. And there's
a problem because there's public outcry right New Zealand is
(37:25):
saying this is a terrorist attack. France is an ally
of New Zealand and at first they're like, yeah, it's crazy,
I don't I mean, what happened. The world is a
nuts so place, you guys, And then they said, of
course we aren't involved like all these other nations, we
can dim this terrorist act. The French embassy and Wellington
(37:47):
stated explicitly the French government does not deal with its
opponents in such ways. What is interesting about this it
is that it was completely false. It was completely false.
They the people issuing the statement probably knew it was
completely false. Those two agents when they got arrested, they
(38:07):
came out that they had Swiss passports. When they got
made and their identities got burned, it's an instant smoking
gun for France. Right. You can see these guys reps,
you can see their history why it turns out that
they were not who they said they were. Carbon Slash
Frederick uh has Is successfully escaped internationally to Israel just
(38:32):
before the attack occurred, and there are a lot of
other people. Later researchers would learn from these two diving
teams that also got away, and some of it really
is action movie stuff, like one of one of the
teams that transported the explosives, they did so on a
yacht and then they almost well, they did get detained
(38:55):
in Australia, but because of Australian law, they couldn't be held,
and so they went back on their yacht and they
went off, and then they hitched a ride with a
French submarine and the French submarine sank the yacht they were.
This was very scorched earth they did. They really did
not want to leave traces, but their attempts to cover
up were, as you said, Matt, quite unsuccessful. It was
(39:18):
soon very very clear to the Government of New Zealand
that they're so called ally France had clearly and purposefully
and successfully conspired to blow the Rainbow Warrior out of
the water. Consequences be damned. And this is this is
such an escalation from just trying to bribe people with
(39:39):
five grand or even sending a bunch of heavies on
board to beat up the people who were on that ship.
They're trying to protest. Even we can talk about the
intentions later, but even if if the intentions of the
government were simply to scuttle the ship or to sink
the ship and not harm anybody, that's still an act
of tourism. At least now it would be considered that. Yeah,
(40:04):
very much so. And you know, we have to keep
in mind that some of these conversations aren't making it
to the public sphere just yet. There's a moment where
New Zealand sends over like physical evidence to France, we
know what you did, we know what you did. Yeah,
what's good. And this became a political scandal as word
(40:27):
got out. So you see a domino effect of French
politicians uh leaving office. The Minister of Defense at the time,
Charles Herneux, he resigns, and then the head of the
d g s E is a guy named Admiral Pierre Lacosse.
He is fired. Um. And you know, if you're familiar
with a lot of the upper reaches of Western politics,
(40:50):
usually what happens when someone gets fired is they say
they're retiring to spend time with their family or something,
you know, something innocuous like that. That's the out they
give you. I suppose, you know, no one wants to
utterly well, there are times where they do want to
utterly run you up the flagpole. Um, but this was
not one of those situations. I suppose sometimes you have
to take a break to pursue painting your next president.
(41:13):
Oh so this is the problem that they still have
these two agents on the hook, the captains you mentioned
earlier and old they are. They have been arrested and
they get eventually they get released to French custody and
then they go free. But the reality of what happened
behind the scenes, how those got how France got those
(41:35):
guys back, and how they got away with this attack.
It's the dirty part of international affairs. These guys were
both sentenced to ten years imprisonment. They pled guilty demand slaughter,
and then France went back to New Zealand and threatened
to wage economic warfare. They said, look, we're gonna shut
your stuff down. You will not be able to export
(41:57):
anything to Europe unless you give us our operatives back.
And this was not an empty threat. It would have
absolutely crippled New Zealand's economy was highly independent on agricultural
exports to the United Kingdom and this kind of like
sending in the economic heavies. To borrow your earlier phrase, Matt,
this stuff happens way more often than people would like
(42:19):
to think. And it's like that the economic hit man. Yes, yeah,
Confessions of an economic hit Man no kidding, that's a
great read. On September, the Prime Minister at the time
finally admitst the bombing has been a a French plot,
(42:41):
and he says the truth is cruel. There was an operation,
there was a resulting cover up, and they went on
to say agents of the French secret service sank this boat.
They were acting on orders the elephant in the room
the other shoe waiting to drop whose orders exactly, And
that's a question that remains officially unanswered in the modern days.
(43:06):
So in a way, the conspiracy is still afoot. The
Western world in New Zealand's opinion, really dropped the ball.
They didn't condemn France at all. And this had serious
ramifications for the way the way New Zealand saw other
European countries, the way it saw the US especially and
(43:27):
in France ponied up compensation for the Portuguese photographers family,
and then they also gave Green Peace the equivalent eight
point one six million dollars. Yeah, eight point one six
million dollars. So, after a little time goes by, details
of the actual conspiracy start to trickle out. And here's
(43:48):
what we know. There were two teams involved in transporting
and placing those bombs. According to some confessions obtained later.
These confessions were from the operatives involved, the plan was
never to injure anybody, but the boat docked. They thought
they could just kind of render the ship inert or
at least just wreck it. Uh so it couldn't be used,
(44:09):
but not actually risk losing any lives. Um. But they
they goofed, didn't they. The dive team placed the explosives
as planned, but the explosions were larger than they had predicted,
which to me, doesn't that mean that there was too
much explosive or is it just one of these things
(44:30):
like we're talking about, with circumstances that could cause, you know,
variables that could cause the explosions to differ. There's quite
a few things going on here. First thing you need
to know is that the original plan was to place
the explosives on the opposite side of the whole, the
other side of the ship. But there was another boat
kind of near there, and there seemed to be people
(44:52):
on that on that boat, and they didn't want to
at least according to the confessions here, they didn't want
to harm anyone on that boat, so they decided just
in the moment to switch sides on the boat. And
again the engine room is right there, the whole Like,
who knows what factors led to the to the size
of that explosion, but what we do know is that
(45:13):
the explosion came from the outside of the ship. And
the damage that you can see to the whole from
that explosion that then goes in and moves into the
boat is big. Yeah, and there's shrapnel flying that. This
is the thing if you we're talking about this a
little bit off air, this is one of the things
that gets me. How are you going to so extensively
(45:35):
plan an operation like this? And as one of the
operatives leaders said, not test it. They didn't test it
on a boat and they and Matt you raised an
interesting point about how we should regard France's nuclear experiments. Right,
(45:55):
those are the biggest explosives. And I can't quite remember
how you put it. Yeah, the fringe military has the
time and funds to test all of those nukes, like
however many at that time, in however many they had
tested that point since the sixties. They had the time
and all that money, the millions and millions and millions
(46:15):
and millions of dollars to do that, but they didn't
have enough time and money to test one probably small
what do you think, maybe C four I don't I
doubt it was dynamite or anything like that. Was probably
had to be some kind of plastic explosive. But yeah,
but they didn't test that part. Everything else they had
these identities, they have personas, they had transported explosives through
(46:36):
international waters. They never tested out. And that's something that
happens with a lot of government conspiracies. Something goes wrong.
They messed up, and you know this again could be
for any number of factors that change on the ground.
But that first explosion wasn't even the major issue. Even
(46:58):
though it was larger than they expected and did sink
of the ship faster than the timeline, you know, than
they expected. That isn't what killed anybody. It was it
like we said, it was that second explosion right right.
And you can even see the logic the four minute
interval between explosions could be baked in to allow people
(47:19):
to hear that first explosion, maybe even almost as a warning,
and then abandoned ship. But they didn't bet on someone.
Whatever their calculations were, they didn't bet on someone coming
back so soon after that first explosion, And there's a
really interesting interview out of TV New Zealand that was
later aired on Democracy Now. I think where you can
(47:43):
you can hear firsthand from one of the operatives about
what went down. It was thirty years after the fact.
But before we get to that guy, let's let's talk
just a little bit about the continuing cover up. So
here's the thing. Other than the two men who were
briefly arrested, no one ended up facing criminal charges for
(48:05):
this act. Nobody other than those two guys, and they
eventually were let go. In two thousand and five, the
French newspaper of Note Lament released a report from where
the former head of d G s E said that
it had been signed off by the President mitterr All.
(48:28):
He had explicitly said, yeah, that makes sense to blow
it up and right, and so you know, when this
admiral comes forward, he also gives his the newspaper interviews
about this situation and he said, you know personally that
(48:50):
this way is on my conscience. We were not trying
to kill people. But as history has proven pretty often,
prosecuting the precedent is a difficult endeavor. There's a reason
that the US has that law about invading the Hague. Yeah,
it's very true. I want I want to jump to
this individual. We're talking about the operative that confessed. This
(49:13):
is the guy that led operations on the ground or
in the water in this case, he's the person in
charge of the whole thing, and he is the one
that physically placed or at least he says, he's the
one who physically placed the explosives onto the ship. And
it's intense that he's the one who came forward to
confess all of this and and tell all the world
(49:35):
and specifically to speak to the daughter of the photographer
who was killed. Yeah. Yeah, Joan Luke kiss. And it's
pretty in depth interview. Uh. He answers some he answers
questions that would naturally occur, like why did you have
a crisis of conscious thirty years after the fact? Right? Um?
And his answer is something that I think a lot
(49:58):
of people in the audience could understand and today, if
not agree with you, can you can understand where he's
coming from. He said, Look, this wasn't my only operation.
I was active for a while. I was doing a
lot of stuff and I couldn't come forward because it
could compromise those things. And then also, I'm first and foremost,
I was a soldier, so I had to carry out orders.
(50:19):
If you if you are a soldier, and you know
in his explanation, then you are mandated to do what
you're told, even if you have questions or concerns, whether
they are operational or ethical. So he heavily implies his
hands were tied. He apologizes, and like you said, Matt,
he requests the opportunity to speak with Perea's daughter and
(50:41):
apologize in person, and she declines it. And so now,
with no real official consequences, the government of France has
paid compensation. Uh, They've made apologies to New Zealand over
the years a couple of different times, and the relationship
between France and New Zealand seems to have normalized over
(51:01):
the intervening years. But as we record today, don't be fooled,
there's still calls for prosecution echoing in the halls of
Green Piece, echoing in the halls of New Zealand to
the modern day. And this is this is where our
story for now pauses, and we have to ask, you know,
at the risk of sounding cynical, Matt. No, I feel
(51:23):
like the three of us in particular just sort of
assume stuff like this is happening, possibly now, right, and
we just don't hear about it. Yeah, maybe not with
you know, sexy names like Rainbow Warrior, but certainly this
doesn't seem like too much of a stretch now. Yeah,
I mean, it does make me wonder the power about
(51:45):
the powerful forces that go up against environmental activists of
any kind. But it's weird because it feels like it
as we said before, it's these groups seem more like
an annoyance to me for a big superpower like that
than real threat unless these forces really do put more
weight into kind of what we were talking about before,
(52:08):
the heart, if they're if they're worried about heart more
than you know, some of the other powers, um just
from a from a pr from a hearts and minds
standpoint of the voters in their country and or you know,
the other voting countries in NATO and some of these
other the U n and these things. I could see
(52:30):
them wanting to stop those kind of annoyances or the
things that make them look bad. Well, but it's also
it makes me think of a movie. Britt Marling is
like an actor, writer, director, and um, she made a
couple of cool films. One it's called Another Earth, it's
like a science fiction thing, and then she made one
called The East that's about um, a environmental terrorist group,
(52:54):
UM that is executing these covert attacks on major polluting
corporate pations. And I'm not saying that's that's what you
should do, and that's the only way to get it done,
but to to elevate your cause from annoyance to absolute
you know, you know, nemesis, or to go toe to
toe these companies. Either, like you said, Matt, have to
(53:14):
really have an effective way of changing the hearts and
minds of people that really matter, or you kind of
just burn it all down, um. And that's not particularly
productive either, and then it makes you kind of just
as bad as the people you're fighting. But I understand
the frustration when it comes to, like, how do I
take a stand against these giant corporations when it feels
(53:36):
like doing it the right way often falls on deaf
ears and it's sort of easily brushed to the side. Sure, yeah,
because I mean, you know, the fact of the matter
is that it's very difficult for uh, someone to take
on entities like this in court, you know, the the
expenses alone. Um and my I think we have similar
(53:56):
questions because why would the French government not just arrest
these people when they cross into the exclusion zone? And
what consequences should there be for for the people who
were involved? And it's a question that hasn't been answered
(54:17):
to the satisfaction of a lot of people. Obviously, we
believe that there are more operations like this that have
yet to be exposed. Uh, there may be some going
on while we're recording. And this is where we passed
the heart ring to you. What do you think why
did France do this? What was their ultimate goal? What
did they expect would happen? What other operations like this
(54:41):
do you believe have occurred in the modern day? And uh,
you know, when do you think the public will learn
about them? If ever, we can't wait to hear from you.
We try to be easy to find online. Yeah, find
us online. We are a conspiracy stuff on Facebook and Twitter,
conspiracy stuff show on Instagram. While you're tooling around on
the internet, why not tool your way over to Apple
(55:01):
Podcasts and leave us a review. We would be much
appreciative of said positive review five stars if you please,
And then you can also give us a call on
the telephone, like if you're an old school and don't
like to go on the internet, that's right. Our phone
number is one eight three three st d w y
t K. Leave us a message, tell us what name
you'd like for us to call you. It doesn't have
(55:22):
to be your real name. Then say whatever you want
us to play on air. Then after that, anything you
want to say personally to us, please go for it.
I know Paul Mission Control decand wants to hear from you,
so he's waiting for your messages. Let's let's put out
a special call messages for Paul and uh we'll have
a special segment at some point and we'll make Paul respond.
(55:43):
I'm not unfair in making people do things too bad.
A call for Paul. So if you don't care for
no phone, if you don't care for social media, no worries.
We have your back. We don't want you to squeeze
a ten minutes story into three minutes. If it doesn't
(56:05):
do it justice. You can respond to us in full.
We read every email we get, and you can always
always send us a good old fashioned email. Where we
are expiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't
(56:37):
want you to know is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Show Links
RSSStoreAboutLive ShowsPopular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.