Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class, A production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Happy Friday, Everybody. I'm Tracy Vie Wilson,
Speaker 1: and I'm Holly Frying. Uh. This week we talked about
Speaker 1: Cohen's helpro, a nice little uplifting, peppy topic. I would say,
Speaker 1: at least for me, I don't often go into an
Speaker 1: episode thinking from the beginning, this is going to be
Speaker 1: two parts, um. Like a lot of times it grows
Speaker 1: into two parts while I'm working on it, um. And
Speaker 1: this is definitely a case where that happened. A lot
Speaker 1: of times when something grows into two parts, UM, I
Speaker 1: still have both parts ready to go on the same schedule,
Speaker 1: because the thing that really takes the longest is the
Speaker 1: research part. Comparatively, the writing part is shorter. So like
Speaker 1: writing the second episode a lot of times is like
Speaker 1: still doable. This was not the case in this one.
Speaker 1: I was like, this is gonna be two parts. That
Speaker 1: I also need more time with it because it is
Speaker 1: just a tangled mess and like a lot of it requires,
Speaker 1: Like there's a lot of stuff that we had talked
Speaker 1: about previously on the show before, like we have two parter,
Speaker 1: a two parter on the the Palmer raids. We have
Speaker 1: a two parter from previous hosts about the McCarthy era.
Speaker 1: We have a lot of background on a lot of
Speaker 1: the civil rights people and organizations that were targeted, um,
Speaker 1: but there's other stuff that we had never really talked
Speaker 1: about before that we're all required explaining. And then stuff
Speaker 1: like having a whole co intel pro targeting the new
Speaker 1: Left when nobody could define what the new Left meant.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm just like picturing the mentality. I know.
Speaker 1: They make me feel weird and uncomfortable, Like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: want to shout out to my friend Amy, who was
Speaker 1: kind of my sounding board for like how to explain
Speaker 1: specifically why communism was so threatening, because like, man, it
Speaker 1: was just that just the response was so disproportionate to
Speaker 1: the actual amount of threat involved with communism. The response,
Speaker 1: all of it, all of it, the entirety of the
Speaker 1: all of the co intel pros are like totally different
Speaker 1: response than like what was actually warranted, whether it was
Speaker 1: grouping every organization that was fighting for equal rights for
Speaker 1: Black Americans into the category of black nationalists hate groups,
Speaker 1: or really only being concerned about the ku Klux plan
Speaker 1: murdering people and not about all their other stuff just
Speaker 1: so much, so much. One of the things that was
Speaker 1: particularly frustrating to me as I was finishing this up,
Speaker 1: because I worked on this leading up to the fourth
Speaker 1: of July and wrapped it up after coming back from
Speaker 1: like a fourth of July long weekend where I don't
Speaker 1: know about everybody else where, we stayed at home and
Speaker 1: did nothing. Um. Uh, we have this whole national origin
Speaker 1: story that turns people who took up arms against what
Speaker 1: they saw as an oppressive government and destroyed property and
Speaker 1: waged a literal war. Like we frame that as heroic
Speaker 1: in the mainstream discourse. Uh, maybe not quite as much
Speaker 1: within the last six weeks or so, but like in general, Um,
Speaker 1: and when you have the same kind of language being
Speaker 1: used by black people saying we are oppressed and we
Speaker 1: would like to not be oppressed anymore like than that,
Speaker 1: we become the we being like the white majority become
Speaker 1: the bad guys, We become Britain in the story of
Speaker 1: American Revolution. And it just it deeply annoyed and frustrated me. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: it's so interesting. I mean I've been kind of waxing rhapsodic.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's quite the right phrase. I've
Speaker 1: been thinking a lot about all of these issues, as
Speaker 1: I'm sure almost everyone has, But there were two things
Speaker 1: that have been on my mind that this particular episode
Speaker 1: really brought, like touched on that I had already been
Speaker 1: thinking about. One was it's going to sound slightly random,
Speaker 1: um the discussion of the weird attempt at at I
Speaker 1: don't know, subterfuge, confusion, etcetera, of bringing the burnt cross
Speaker 1: remains to a KKK meeting or having them delivered, because
Speaker 1: I remember I grew up in a military family. So
Speaker 1: we moved when I was nine from where we were
Speaker 1: living outside of Seattle to the Panhandle of Florida, and
Speaker 1: not long after we had moved there, three lots down
Speaker 1: for our house, there was a huge cross burning, and
Speaker 1: like it was one of those things where in this
Speaker 1: episode where you talked about how like they then took
Speaker 1: it outside and burned it, And there there was this
Speaker 1: idea of we will shame them by making the or
Speaker 1: you know, scare them by making them aware that people
Speaker 1: know where they meet. And I was like, none of
Speaker 1: those people in my neighborhood were the least bit concerned
Speaker 1: about anyone knowing where they were or who they were,
Speaker 1: so it kind of struck me as interesting. And the
Speaker 1: other thing that I keep thinking about, because I am
Speaker 1: trying to grasp some many of the behaviors that I
Speaker 1: see that don't make sense to me, is that old
Speaker 1: saying that actors always say when people ask them why
Speaker 1: they're so good at playing villains, And it's because villains
Speaker 1: don't perceive themselves as the villains. They always think that
Speaker 1: they are the hero. And I keep trying to apply that, like,
Speaker 1: not in any way to excuse or both sides, is
Speaker 1: um anything, but try to figure out really like what
Speaker 1: is driving some of the behaviors. And I kept thinking
Speaker 1: about that throughout this entire discussion of like did any
Speaker 1: of these people ever stop in question that we're involved
Speaker 1: in these co intel pro initiatives, like, hey, we've gone
Speaker 1: a bit too far here, or are they all like
Speaker 1: this is being done for the correct reason. We are
Speaker 1: all supporting and keeping safe what is important to us
Speaker 1: in this country, Like I I really always have to question,
Speaker 1: did anybody go I don't know about this one? So
Speaker 1: I feel pretty confident that like j Edgar Hoover thought
Speaker 1: he was in the right with all of this, and
Speaker 1: of course he died before any of these hearings happened. UM.
Speaker 1: A thing that I found is I was researching and
Speaker 1: then when I tried to go back to find it
Speaker 1: and confirm it to put it in the episode, was
Speaker 1: that when UM, the co intel pro black nationalists hate
Speaker 1: groups pivoted to focus just on the Black Panthers, But
Speaker 1: there was an agent who was like, they're just they're
Speaker 1: giving breakfast to kids, Like what why? Why? And then
Speaker 1: you know the memo that came back just doubling down
Speaker 1: on what a violent threat the Black Panthers were. UM.
Speaker 1: So like I feel confident there were individual people within
Speaker 1: this whole system who were like, what this does not
Speaker 1: make a lot of sense, or we should not be
Speaker 1: doing this. UM. But like, as an organization, the Bureau
Speaker 1: definitely felt like it was the force that was protecting
Speaker 1: the American people from all of these nefarious influences when
Speaker 1: the nefarious influences were like literally civil rights groups and
Speaker 1: women's rights groups and people saying, hey, maybe we should
Speaker 1: not be involved in this war in Vietnam. Like there
Speaker 1: were I mean, as we tried to make clear in
Speaker 1: the episode, like there definitely were individuals and groups who
Speaker 1: did have UM like violent, uh, either violence as part
Speaker 1: of the rhetoric or had been directly involved in violence
Speaker 1: or whatever. But a lot of people were really just
Speaker 1: like the way this country is working is not right
Speaker 1: and we need to do something about it. And the
Speaker 1: Bureau was like, that's a threat. We're going to bug
Speaker 1: your house and fake letters to your wife to try
Speaker 1: to get hurt to divorce you. Yeah. I don't. That's
Speaker 1: where I'm That's where I have a really hard time
Speaker 1: wrapping my head around. It's like, we will destroy you
Speaker 1: for questioning and wanting better for everyone. That is really
Speaker 1: terrifying to me. Yeah. We also didn't talk as much
Speaker 1: about it in the episode, Like we did talk about
Speaker 1: laws that variously like pulled back on um the idea
Speaker 1: of communism being criminal um, and like court cases, especially
Speaker 1: under the Warrnt Court, that were like, no, people have
Speaker 1: the right to to talk about revolution being necessary as
Speaker 1: like an abstract term like that, the idea that that
Speaker 1: a lot of the things that were illegal are still legal,
Speaker 1: like at least in terms of the law. In a
Speaker 1: lot of cases, it's like now that's protected under the
Speaker 1: First Amendment. Now that doesn't mean that that's enforced consistently
Speaker 1: across groups, depending on what people are calling for. UM.
Speaker 1: When you and I started recording these episodes today, I
Speaker 1: mentioned they were being long, and you were like, this
Speaker 1: could have been a three parter, And there was a
Speaker 1: couple of things. One was that I had gotten to
Speaker 1: the point where I was like, I feel like I
Speaker 1: have gone where I can go with this UM. And
Speaker 1: the other is that like if it could be a
Speaker 1: three part or it could be like a twelve partner,
Speaker 1: it would be an entire brand new podcast that's just
Speaker 1: about coinil pro that's going to run for three years. Uh,
Speaker 1: because it's a lot. There's just a lot. Um. There's
Speaker 1: a bunch of like Freedom of Information Act stuff that's
Speaker 1: on the like in the FBI Vault part of their
Speaker 1: website that has you know, the documents. A lot of
Speaker 1: them are redacted, but it's pages and pages and pages
Speaker 1: stuff that you can read for yourself. UM. The Church Report,
Speaker 1: all the stuff we read of it was from the
Speaker 1: things that were specifically about the f b I, but
Speaker 1: like that was a multiple volume, gigantic report. There's just
Speaker 1: a ton of stuff. This is also a case where
Speaker 1: if you were part of a community that was targeted
Speaker 1: by one of these cotel pros. You probably already knew
Speaker 1: a lot about this, and if you were not targeted
Speaker 1: and don't know a lot of like FBI history or
Speaker 1: counterintelligence history, this might have been all new information to you. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's part of me that wants to um ask my
Speaker 1: father his thoughts on this, because I grew up in
Speaker 1: a very conservative, like I said, military households, and I
Speaker 1: was born in the midst of all of this. I
Speaker 1: was born in n so really is like stuff was
Speaker 1: hitting the fan. But I'm also afraid of that conversation. Sure, sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's um, it's a lot, it's a whole, huge t angle. Also,
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed watching the documentary UM, which is available
Speaker 1: on various streaming services UM. And it was one of
Speaker 1: those things where I had stopped working in quotation marks,
Speaker 1: like I had stopped working for the day UM And
Speaker 1: I was like, I really want to watch this documentary
Speaker 1: and I feel like it's gonna be something that I
Speaker 1: can watch at eight PM and not feel like I
Speaker 1: have just worked until bedtime, which is something I try
Speaker 1: not to do. I try to like have some time
Speaker 1: that is just my time. UM. And I turned it
Speaker 1: on and Patrick was in the room with me, and
Speaker 1: he had not I don't think he had started out
Speaker 1: planning to watch it, but he got totally engrossed and
Speaker 1: the next day was like, that was so fascinating. Um.
Speaker 1: So again I have not read the book that was
Speaker 1: also about that same story, but UM, that documentary I
Speaker 1: really liked. Um. And a point that probably could have
Speaker 1: been made during the episode that we didn't make is
Speaker 1: that the activists who were involved in that in that
Speaker 1: break in, we're white, and that gave them like some
Speaker 1: added cover in terms of like going into this apartment
Speaker 1: building on that night to do the break in. So anyway, uh,
Speaker 1: intel pro. It's a bunch of thoughts I had about
Speaker 1: cointel pro. It common beered my brain more than probably
Speaker 1: any other episode I have ever worked on. I would
Speaker 1: wake up at the two o'clock in the morning thinking
Speaker 1: about FBI counterintelligence operations, right right, Yeah. It's one of
Speaker 1: those things where, um, you know, we live in in
Speaker 1: in the what's casually called the information age, where there
Speaker 1: is often discussion of whether or not people are being
Speaker 1: surveilled at all times or sometimes, and whether or not
Speaker 1: that's being done by government agencies or private companies, etcetera. Etcetera,
Speaker 1: which is always a whole tangle that is difficult. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's difficult for anyone to feel confident in their
Speaker 1: position on it because there is always a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff that we are not privy to. UM. I will,
Speaker 1: as a way to potentially end this in an up place,
Speaker 1: just note that I like to include a lot of
Speaker 1: absurdity in my day to day life, just in case
Speaker 1: or Schmo is having to listen to and short through
Speaker 1: the things that I say, like, I don't know how
Speaker 1: it's like a twelve minute monologue about kiddies and grito.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know, it's weird. Wow. That seems
Speaker 1: like a good place to wrap. If folks would like
Speaker 1: send us an email or history podcast that I had
Speaker 1: radio dot com. Uh, have a good weekend, folks. Stuff
Speaker 1: you missed in History Class is a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.