Behind the Bastards - Part One: G. Gordon Liddy: The Fascist Behind Watergate

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

Robert sits down with Andrew Ti for a very special episode about the craziest American political thinker, Watergate mastermind G. Gordon Liddy. (6 part series) Sources: Dobbs, Michael. King Richard (p. 56). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. Dean, John W.. Blind Ambition: The White House Years (pp. 104-105). Open Road Media. Kindle Edition. https://www.amazon.com/Will-Autobiography-G-Gordon-Liddy/dp/0312880146 https://www.amazon.com/American-Spy-Secret-History-Watergate/dp/0471789828/ref=pd_lpo_sccl_2/137-0258767-1043075?pd_rd_w=uJFwI&content-id=amzn1.sym.116f529c-aa4d-4763-b2b6-4d614ec7dc00&pf_rd_p=116f529c-aa4d-4763-b2b6-4d614ec7dc00&pf_rd_r=Z01KJ4WFSGQ9GJGVWP4H&pd_rd_wg=6Sc1I&pd_rd_r=db654987-2d40-4df9-bb07-425e02406918&pd_rd_i=0471789828&psc=1 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/us/g-gordon-liddy-dead.html https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/12/27/2021-obituary-gordon-liddy-520597 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/02/11/watergate-secret-history-garrett-graff-gordon-liddy-operation-gemstone-00007927 https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1977/09/08/52-months-in-prison-end-for-gordon-liddy/13545ea2-8bfc-4749-8068-bd1a528889c7/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/59jjk5/g-gordon-liddy-conquered-pain https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/g-gordon-liddy-political-super-klutz/2021/03/31/cfd4359a-9234-11eb-9668-89be11273c09_story.html https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/294948/the-secret-life-of-g-gordon-liddy/ https://www.ctinsider.com/connecticutmagazine/article/From-the-archives-G-Gordon-Liddy-on-life-17046537.php https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/watergates-liddy-reveals-guardian-angel-limbaugh https://rollcall.com/2012/09/25/the-g-man-signs-off/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The system's broken. I said something's wrong here, you know, whenever a woman is allowed to kill my two kids. Unrestorable is a new true crime podcast that investigates the case of Catherine Hoggel, a mother accused of murder. Despite signs that Catherine Hoggel took her tiny children one by one into the night, never to come home again. She has yet to stand trial. Listen to Unrestorable on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mo Raka, and I'm excited to announce season four of my podcast, Mo Bituaries.

I've got a whole new bunch of stories to share with you about the most fascinating people and things who are no longer with us, from famous figures who died on the very same day. To the things I wish would die, like buffets. Listen to MoPituaries with MoRaka on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes the pop culture we love just teens hits differently in retrospect. Maybe it's a tabloid story we couldn't get enough of or an illicit student teacher relationship

on our favorite show. We're Suzy Bannock-Harem and Jessica Bennett, posts of the new podcast in retrospect. Where each week we'll revisit a cultural moment from the past that shaped us and probably you to try to understand what it taught us about the world and our place in it. You're the first person that I've talked to about this for years and years. Listen to In Retrospect on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you find your

favorite shows. Oh, welcome back! I was doing it as you were doing it. I could have done it. I really would have done it for you if I were to. Well, this is behind the bastards of podcasts where I will not do an impression of Sophie because I'm gonna keep our working relationship healthy. No, please, please, please do it. Please do it, no.

That's how you sound. We are, wow, this is a podcast about the worst people in all of history, speaking of the worst people in all of history. Andrew T. I am the king. No, not the worst person in all of history, but you're fighting some of the worst people in all of history on the front lines of the strike against those Hollywood motherfuckers. It really is.

I can't. I should be with you. Yeah, but yes, those other, those bad, those other Hollywood. You are all, yeah, the bad Hollywood motherfuckers. Yeah, I'm on, I'm on a strike. I'm a member of the writers guild of America. And also I realized the other day I did did a project for writers guild of Canada, which I don't really know how that all worked,

but I don't have signed some paperwork. So exciting, exciting. I might have a union up north of the border also, but yeah, it is like the clowns that run this studios, it's shocking like how, if they were doing their jobs remotely correctly, no one reasonable would know their names. No. No.

Like not one of them. No, there's only one. And there's only one. And there's only one. Outside of the current crop of studio heads, there is only one studio executive I can name. And it's my name's sake Robert Evans Not because of anything he did as a studio head But because of his contributions to cocaine sciences, which I do respect. Yeah, yeah, there's I mean

There's like reasons one might know about them But honestly like I a person who's worked in you know Television for years now Prior to to the strike, like I guess I knew who Bob Iker was. Yes, right. Disney. But the Disney. It.

Yeah. I don't think any of us had any, like, I don't know, you'd hear these names, but it'd be one in one ear or the other. Like, they should be anonymous, rich shadows. They could have known what knows. Cash checks for millions of dollars a year and had nobody know who they are or be angry at them. But they wanted tens of millions of dollars a year.

And so they've decided to cause problems for themselves. Like, I think by the way, even that joke is off by an order of magnitude. I think they're like, to baseline hundreds and try to get millions or billions. Yeah, that's probably more accurate. Speaking of corrupt mother fuckers, Andrew, who, what do you know about G Gordon Litty, less than I should?

Yeah, everyone does. Now we've, I don't think this violates any of the WGA stuff. There were two big watergate shows that launched recently, like all TV shows about historical moments. Both of them are wrong in specific interesting ways and accurate in other more minor ways. Neither of them really get into both of them feature G Gordon Litty. Neither of them really accurately describe him as a person, like one of them kind of picks the, he was this absolute unhinged like maniac fucking cartoon character. And one of them like portrays him as like this violent psychopath. And the reality is he was like,

there were pieces of that in him. And he is, he is a crazy, he's one of the craziest bastards to ever be involved in American politics. But neither of them, neither of them quite get it. I think what's most fascinating about this weirdo. He is such a fucking weirdo. And so, you know, where there's plenty of watergate podcasts like you can spend a whole week learning about watergate listening to like five different fucking

shows on the matter. I really just wanted to focus on on G Gordon Liddy both because I grew up, he was definitely on the radio a lot when I was a kid. So I have a lot of experience with Mr. Liddy, but also he is, he's the prototype of all of these fucking right wing media freaks that we, we are deluged with today. Think like, and they're all, they're all aping, G Gordon Liddy. Steven Crowder, you know, whatever he wears his fucking shoulder holster to go, you know, be a little fucking abusive prick on his, on his dumb ass, fucking political YouTube show or whatever. I guess he's on rumble now. Alex Jones, when he like lies about all these hardcore violence he's done and how tough

he is, how he could kill a man without blinking, you know, in Riketario talking about how like, you know, oh, I don't regret anything. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Oh, please don't throw me in prison for 22 years, Mr. Jeff. Like, they are all aping aspects of G Gordon, Litty, but none of them, none of them have what Litty had in the center. None of them are, number one, none of them are actually is committed. They're all grifters.

And Litty had some grifter at him, but Liddy was a believer. He was a believer in terrible things. Like, but he was not like, he was not like all of those, the guys I just named are completely hollow in their center. Liddy was not. They're now the center of him was something like dark and evil

and like unsettling and greasy, but there was mass there, you know? Like, yeah. I mean, you're still, yeah, certain kinds of dark chocolate, but the darkest of chocolate, I getcha. Right, that's the innovation is, or I guess, right, that's what makes you the OG is like actually believing the shit

as being like a clear shell. Yeah, he was not just a shell. I mean, that was a part of him. And in fact, he's like, I think he might be the first of these guys to like really get into shelling gold. So that's interesting. He's fascinating.

Again, there's both there's some weight to him. There's a degree, he's an original too. All of these guys are very much consciously aping G Gordon Litty. And Litty's an original too. All of these guys are very much consciously aping G Gordon Litty. And Litty was an original figure, you know? The other thing that's interesting about Litty is that he wrote an autobiography. And it is like number one, most of the time

when you get these guys who are at the center of like a mass of political, you think about the Trump administration, right? How within like a month or two of him, it honestly, like while he was still in office, there were fucking books coming out left and right. As soon as one of these guys would get fired, right? You know, somebody would get like two million dollars and hooked up with a ghostwriter, bought a Bing-Bot-A-BOOM. You've got, you know, fucking the mooch's memoir of his week in the Trump White

Astro, whatever. Yeah, the room where it happens, starring some guy whose name I've already fucking forgotten from Twitter, from Twitter, from Twitter. All these fucking weirdos, but it was like, you know, these are cash grabs, right? Most of these are cash grabs, you know, again, you're sort of stretching out someone who probably doesn't have that much that's interesting to say. So you can get a couple of anecdotes that'll go viral in like a business insider article. And you're just kind of hoping that like, yeah, the, the, the, the fame of the administration will make the book worth whatever they're paying for it.

Litties, there's a lot of that for Watergate, right? All of these guys write books. You know, John Deans got his fucking book, you know, book. And Litty writes a book after he gets out of prison. Litty writes his own book. And it is, I read part of what I do is I read any time, I'm covering one of these bastards and they've written a book about their life. I'll get in there. I have never read a crazier autobiography than she's going with these. And it is pure Litty. We're not're not talking about this is not like, you know, adulterated by some fucking publishing house trying to massage his

image. He's trying to massage his image share of points, but like, it is, it is that it's like that, you know, we did for about a year, you know, often on my friends Katie Cody, and I would talk about Ben Shapiro's novel, because like when once somebody writes a novel, you can't not learn things about them, right? Right. From the process, you get so much more with Lidie's autobiography. So episode one is largely going to be us reading through his depiction of his early life

in childhood. And I will be fact checking it wherever I can. There's a lot I can't fact check, right? Because Lizzie's talking about like what he was thinking and feeling is like an eight year old, right? I can't, I don't have outside. I'm not gonna like refer to John Dean's memoir, you know? But we will bring in out, you know,

I read Dean's memoir for this too. I read a book called King Richard. We've got a bunch of other sort of a number of other sources on like the Watergate stuff and on his career before Watergate was in the FBI. But for this early part, we're just going to be litty. That's going to be a significant amount of what we talk about. So without further ado, I guess I should roll roll in with this. Are you ready to learn about? Let's get Liddy. Sorry. About our best Republican. Yeah. That's the thing is G Gordon Liddy would be such a great name

for like a sound cloud wrapper. That's the real tragedy there. Yeah. He was born too early. Tratching that. Yeah. Daniel, can you add just like a, let's get Litty. And then can you add just like some really awesome sound effect here, please? Sure. Let's get Litty. I don't understand this, but I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to sell your forward.

Daniel will understand the reference because he's really wanted me to soldier forward. He never thought about what was happening either. George Gordon battle Liddy was born on November 30th, 1930 in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Sylvester, was a lawyer and stockbroker. He would eventually be one of them in responsible for bringing Volvo to the United States. So we have she Gordon, but he's dead to think for American Volvos. If you're a Volvo driver, his mother Maria, that's not nothing. His mother Maria was a homemaker. Now I just read his name Gordon Battle Litty, given the fact that he is a violent madman as an or at least he puts on the image of a violent madman as an adult.

I'm going to guess everyone's wondering like what the fuck is the story behind that name. But like the fact is as far as I can tell, his parents weren't like nuts, right? And the story here is actually like pretty tame. It's kind of interesting, but it's not like wild. He's named his namesake is sake was a New York lawyer and Democratic politician named George Gordon Battle, which is a pretty cool guy, a pretty cool name. And he seemed to have been a pretty cool guy. He was defense attorney for Earl Browder, who was the head of the U.S. Communist Party. He helped raise money for a number of really good causes.

He was the chairman of the National Committee on Prison Labor Reform, and he's one of the men who fought hard to stop Central Park from being developed, right? From like it being replaced with like buildings and shit, right? Oh, sure. He was childless, but he spent his entire working life fighting to add more public playgrounds to New York City.

If you grew up in New York City and spent time on a playground, Gordon Battle, George Battle has a lot to do with that. And in the late 1920s, same what was going on in Europe, he became a tireless opponent of anti-Semitism for the last act of his life. So yeah, like a pretty cool guy. This is far second down. This might key you into the fact that G Gordon Litties' parents were not politically the kind of people you might expect to like raise a

fascist political criminal, right? They were not like, it's not one of these cases where you've got like, you know, super hard right family who's like really mentally abusive to their kid and you're just like, oh, I super hard right family who's like really mentally abusive to their kid and you're just like, I see why this is. It makes you grow up to be a piece of shit. No, like, again, they're not perfect people. Like, we'll cover some of that, but they seem to have not been the folks you might expect, right?

Right. And the story of how they wound up raising this maniac anyway is fascinating. So he grows up affluent. His family is kind of upper middle class when he's a little kid and like rich by the time he's in his teens I think would be fair to say Despite the affluence, Lydia's early childhood was not pleasant. This was not do specifically Primarily to his parents actions, but rather to a quirk of his psychology. He was terrified of everything. Now, in his defense, his world was frightening.

The world of the 1930, it's a scary place to be a child. And this was kind of exacerbated by the fact that the family home lay directly underneath the path of the Hindenburg Zeppelin. So as a little kid, his earliest memory is this monster in the sky, just like barreling over his house, making this terrifying noise. And his autobiography, he recalls being just absolutely piss-horrified by the quote, bloated shapes, swelling and

roaring with incredible power. It came on and on, trapping me in the bottom of the box and blotting out the sky. The box in this instance is backyard and hobo. With a family move soon after his birth. But like, yeah, that's his earliest memory. It's like the Hindenburg terrifying him. There's like a dragon in the sky above him. He was now, he may be lying about, he was not yet to when this happened.

And like, so I always kind of a little grain of salt when people talk about remembering shit that happens with their two but it does people do remember shit from that time so not impossible and I guess I don't know why he would lie about this. Yeah, yeah, it's always like the world's most awful people are the world's most scared people it away that it's like so. world's most scared people. It'll wait that it's like so, it would be cute if you didn't give these people a half of any of the power they have. This is why we need to be so careful about not giving people power because you can't, you never know what's going on.

You see a kid at the playground, that kid could be brewing up some Hitler particles, right? You never know what's going on in their heads. So, I'm going to read a quote from his autobiography here. I had been walking for six months, but due to the concern of my mother, I hadn't yet spoken an intelligible word. I begin or to the concern of my mother, I hadn't yet spoken an intelligible word. I began to speak immediately to articulate my first memory,

absolute overwhelming fear. So he starts speaking to try to express to his mom how scared he is of the Zeppelin. Now, his second memory comes in the spring of 1934 when he and his mother and sister had moved to DC temporarily. Their grandfather was dying of terminal cancer and Sylvester wanted to care for his father. I think he didn't want the family to have to be there. Maybe their grandpa didn't want like his grandkids to see him like that. But while he was there, he experienced like while you know, he's living with his mom and DC, there's like a fire drill at the building they're living like a surprise fire drill. And he's too young to really understand it, so he recalls experiencing absolute overwhelming fear.

Quote, The early memories that follow are still fragmented, but the theme is common. Lying on the floor is my paternal grandmother lashed me with a leather harness shouting, bad, bad, fear. My mother insisting I not use my left hand as she forced me into right handedness, and my inability to understand why more fear Rounding the corner and coming upon a truck mounted vacuum a giant air hose Snaking across the sidewalk from a huge bag

suction engine roaring is it clean the flus of coal furnaces running from the sound and the threat no certainty that I would be sucked inside the monster bag Fear soon my every waking moment was ruled by that overriding emotion, fear. So you've got this mix of like, yeah, understandable stuff. Like, yeah, his grandma was, you know, very aggressive with her punishment to him. I don't think uncommonly so for the year. But like, that's a scary thing to deal with. His mom didn't want him to be left handed

and like, that scared him. And then like, just shit, he and Kat, these like nightmare vacuums driving around cleaning out flus and shit. You know, he's just scared of everything as a kid. That's so wild. That also though, I will say having said the last thing, I guess if he's taking all these pains to court, I guess I'm just so conditioned to assume he's like a lying lunatic

that if he's tried to convince us how scared he was, now I'm thinking he simply wasn't. Maybe, right? Like that's the thing. One way or the other, it does say a lot about him, but like, I don't know. I don't know why he would lie about this in particular. I guess, you know, because it builds to something later, but like, yeah, I don't find this unbelievable. Like when I was elementary school, I don't find this unbelievable, like when I was elementary school, I had a teacher who like would harass me about using

my left hand, right? Like that was not an uncommon thing back, especially for Catholics, right? And if it's written to, this is like post jail, though, I guess it's like, it's 1980, he writes, this is like, this is how I'm trying to justify my the way I am. That would be my only thought as to whether or not it's a lie, but the emphasis on this. Yeah, because the other counterpoint is everything he described is very common. Yeah, a lot of people are afraid of those things. I don't see how you are more afraid of those things.

A lot of kids grow. I think what's interesting is sort of his reaction to the fear, but he has, as we'll talk about, he develops a, I don't think the fear that he has is abnormal because a lot of kids get scared of weird shit. I think his obsession with like his fear as a failing, a moral failing for him is the thing that is intriguing to us. Look what I know. Yeah, that is kind of where we're going here. So he's also a sickly kid. He has probably, I think it would be asthma. And so his treatment for this is that he would spend hours every day in a tent in his bedroom, breathing medicated steam with a mustard blast, a mustard blast on his chest.

The goal there was to relieve mucus congestion to stop his persistent cough. It's here I should note something, which is that G Gordon Liddy and I actually have a lot in common because I had the modern version of that. When I was a kid, I had asthma and I would have to spend hours almost every night, hooked up to this weird machine, the size of a projector that like pumped all butyl mist into my lungs. Whoa.

That was like a thing that I had to do as a little kid. Um, which I was like reading that was weird because I was like, oh yeah, I've been through that, you know? Like, and it's not, I think Litties certainly, that's, Litties experience seems like it was more physically unpleasant, but even like mine was not painful, but it is this weird thing that kind of separates you

from like other kids, from your brothers and sisters, from your family members, your, and stuff, like the fact that you have to spend all this time, like attached to this machine, like I'm sure it has something on it. I also do something. They sick. Yeah, and we're gonna keep breathing, right? Yeah, my asshole was ever that bad,

but I did have a trip where I came back. I think they had a manual version of this at the Earthhead care, which was just like, I don't know, a fucking fire extinguishers. Just follow you. You're so... Like I love you, Darol. Yeah Just pull your hair so like, I love you to all. Yeah, I just like, mm-hmm.

What we need, I don't understand why these don't exist, Andrew, is how beautiful cigarettes. I would smoke those still, you know? I just want to chain smoke for health, you know? It's probably not impossible to get a little vapor cartridge of how beautiful they are. Just vaping out butero. Like, you know, just blowing.

I'm staying healthy. I know about you, fuckers. Blown steroid clouds. steroid cotton. This is a 50, 50 mix of albuterol and tobacco. Oh my God. That would make my heart flavor. That would burst my heart.

Yeah. Seems healthy. Bum, bum, bum, bum. That would make my heart race. That would burst my heart. Yeah. Seems healthy. Boom, boom, boom. So yeah, he's got this experience. I think probably to a degree separates him from, and you have to, when you're doing this, Liddy is always a guy who lives inside his head to a significant extent. He's, and that's part of why he's so unhinged as he's always, he's thinking about like very

strange things all the time. His mind is like non-stop going in these kind of manic circles that is part of why he becomes like the plotter that he becomes. And I think, you know, given that I went through something similar, I kind of might tie some of it back to that. Like it's hard not to just sort of get stuck in your own head a lot when you have that as an early life experience.

His grandpa dies in 35 and the family moves back to Hoboken together. You know, and he's, you know, is a weird little kid. He recalls being because he's kind of raised in the city and the suburbs absolutely terrified of the natural world as a little kid. Nature was so alien to him that like one of his earliest fears is the fact that Moths would arrive at night time. Quote, I had been frightened for the first time a Moth fluttered against my bedroom window at a warm summer night.

The light threw a giant shadow on the opposite wall, terrifying me, frantic screams, then my mother explaining it was just a harmless moth, or perhaps a Miller. From that moment on, the night was filled with giant moth millers out to get me. I knew it. So my fear grew, each to experience breeding more.

So he's by, at least if you believe his sort of recitation of events, he is just stacking up these like, very normal experiences that are deeply traumatizing to him. And like, yeah. I guess it's like, I mean, right, now I am, I see what you're saying about like, why would he make this up? In this detail and this like, yeah, I think some of this must be true.

Does he play it up? Sure. I mean, that's the kind of guy Liddy is, you know? And I also think I'm certain, the way, you know, this happens to all of us, to some extent, over time, you know, your memories, you think on them, you change them, you tell stories, you know, maybe you jazz something up for a story,

you tell somebody and like that makes it into your memory, right? So I think there's probably to some, like obviously as happens to most people. Cause I do think he probably believes a lot of this, whether or not it's all literally true. Another one of his most searing in a literal sense early moments is a later that same summer, you know, where he becomes terrified of moths his parents take him camping in the

woods, maybe to try to get him over that fear. And in the morning, he's like poking around their campfire spot and he picks up a coal that he doesn't realize is burning and it like hurts him, it burns his hand. Now, I think most kids have a version of that. I burnt myself on a car lighter by accident when I was a kid.

I used to have those. If you're a Ginzy kid, we used to have cigarette lighters built into every car If you want to know how much your grandparents smoked that was just the world for a while Yeah, an electronic like lighter. Yeah, yeah flame No, I Oh, I To light your cigarette I try to pick up a spent sparkler moments after it got out.

Yeah, this is not wise. Again, almost a, I'm gonna guess very close to 100% of people listening, whether or not they're remembering. It had a moment like this. It's basically every kid, you know, touches something hot at some point and hurts themselves.

Liddy describes this as investing in him a pathological fear of both fire and pain. And his suffering increased when his doctor prescribed him regular hypodermic injections for his respiratory. I think these are allergy shots, which I also got as a kid. So again, this becomes like this constant regular because he's doing this every month. This is just like this endless fucking train of horror for him where like he's just constantly dreading the next time

he's gonna go get this shot and deal with this pain. Right. At the same time, he develops, you know, what's going to be his worst childhood terror, which is a fear of God. Again, very common, his family is, this poor kid is just miserable. His family is super Catholic.

And he goes to a Catholic school that Liddy refers to exclusively as SS. I believe the SS stand for, it's the Peter and Paul Roman Catholic Church. I think the two S's are St. Peter and St. Paul. But he's also, he talks about the Nazi SS constantly in this, in moments where it has nothing to do with what he's like referencing. Like he just, he loves bringing up the SS. So I, I don't think anyone else called the school this. I think he was just, he found another way he could write SS out.

And so he had to do it. I mean, that's another thing the modern right love to do is just just remind you that they love Nazis Andrew Hitler didn't love the Nazis as much as G Gordon Liddy did It's so funny Here's how he describes his religious upbringing quote God we were informed was omnipotent, unlimited power demanded and deserved the utmost reverence and deference and left no room for a sloppily performed sign of the cross. An imprecise sign of the cross was an insult to God, punishable by a sudden crack on the

head for monitoring nudds. Such punishment was to be received gratefully, otherwise retribution might come from God himself. The retribution might come from God himself. The retribution of Almighty God for a sloppy maid's sign of the cross was terrible. Only last year, we were solemnly assured, a lazy, irreferent, careless boy had made a sloppy sign of the cross while saying his nightly prayers. The good nuns alas were not present to crack him on the head, and as God was not one to let such a sin go unpunished, the next morning, the little boy found his right arm

withered, twisted and paralyzed for life. Ah! Ah! Oh God, I love the Catholic shit. That's just such, ah, so funny. Oh my God. Just ruining children. Just, just going off like a bomb

and millions of childhoods around the world. Yeah. For making the gang sign lazily. Yeah, fucking up the get the Catholic gang sign. What the fuck are you talking about? God, you do this all the, what God has so much time. Yeah, imagine like it's so hard for me to get into the head of someone who is like, yes, God is constantly watching small children to see if they make like a minor mistake in the

positioning of their hands and he will cripple them for life for doing so. Like yeah. It's like none of them ever frame it is like, yeah, you know, I'm a Catholic because God's fucking nuts. Like, this is the only way to avoid his anger. Like fuck the guy, but I just don't want to death. Like, yeah, I like I'm a little bit more, you know, people referred to him a little bit more like a mob boss. Like, yeah, if you don't pay your protection, he's going to fuck you up. What are you going to do? What are you going to do?

What are you going to do? It's got. I guess there are some people who talk about them that way, but usually it's all dressed up and anyway, whatever. Well, those people are the ones that are like, if there isn't God, what's preventing you from raping and murdering? And those are the people you have to look at the hardest because you're like, I mean, I could think of things. I don't really want to do those things. I guess it's easy. Oh. Yeah, so whether or not he exaggerated his experience here, and I don't think he did.

I know some people, including my dad who grew up Catholic in this, well, he's, you know, not this old, but like I've known people who were kind of from, you know, around that period of time and raised in Catholic schools and like, you get stories like this from the nuns. A lot of old Catholics have horror stories from the nuns. And yeah, the fact that Liddy is like living in fucking constant fear of God is not like, when I was a kid, I had a period of time I went through like that.

We're like, yeah, I would just be terrified because I'd like killed a bug or something while playing and like, oh my god, if I like damned myself to hell for eternity, you shouldn't tell kids about stuff like that, you know? Well, it's the same as like, dare too, because the first couple of times, then you're like, oh, it's not real.

Oh, I guess none of this matters. I'm gonna murder all the bugs, fuck it, you know? I'm the reason there aren't any fucking fireflies anymore. I wiped gonna murder all the bugs. Fuck it. You know, I'm the reason there aren't any fucking fireflies anymore. I wiped them all out. You know, just just just to spite the Lord. God, oh, anyway, speaking of genocide, you know, who else likes wiping out, you know, the natural world in order to extigate. Doesn't have any genocide every genocide. Yeah. Yeah, doesn't have to be any genocide, every genocide. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't have every genocide,

but some, you know, some genocides. Yes. Here's ads. Choose business, not boring, with programs ranging from fashion to finance, culinary to commerce, or golf to global business. We deliver business education at its best with authentic work integrated learning experiences that launch future entrepreneurs, business leaders, and global citizens. Come to Open House on November

18 and see everything we have to offer. Apply now at Humber.ca slash business. I noticed Jacob is not in his crib. So I look in and say, oh, she's not there. So I'm like, okay, they're not there. Unrestorable is a new true crime podcast that investigates the case of Catherine Hoggel, a mother accused of murder.

I'm thinking, you know, like, what's going on? Like, this is insane. Like, where are my kids? But despite signs that Catherine Hoggle took her tiny children one by one into the night, never to come home again, she has yet to stand trial. Because soon after her children went missing, she was declared incompetent to stand trial.

You know, when I would ask her, engagement was up in the body of the remaining competent. And then I would say, well, who advice you should throw you know I can't tell you that. In Maryland, if the defendant is found incompetent and can't be restored to competency, their felony charges are dismissed after five years. So as the clock counts down, Catherine's charges on the verge of being dismissed will a grieving dad ever get justice. Listen to Unrestorable on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is In Retrospect, a podcast about pop culture from the 80s and 90s that shaped us. I'm very much a product of the pop culture I consumed. Yeah. And I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm Jessica Bennett, a New York Times writer and best-selling author. I'm Susie Bette-Kerrem, an award winning TV producer and filmmaker. Every week, we'll revisit a moment in cultural history that we just can't stop thinking about.

From tabloid headlines to illicit student-teacher relationships, and one, very memorable red swimsuits. I found myself in Pamela Anderson's attic, as you do. I put that red swimsuit in a safe because it seemed everybody wanted it. We're digging deep to better understand with these moments taught us about the world and our place in it.

I want you to really smell the axe body spray that emanated during this time. It was presented more as kind of like a crime topic. Okay, and that's not a love story. Not a love story. It had been branded on the uteruses of every single woman from C to shining C. Listen to In Retrospect on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts,

or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. We're back! So far, most of Lydia's experiences in the world have been terrifying and negative, but he did have one shining, really, he had two shining things. One of them is reading. He becomes a reader from an early age. He finds himself particularly in love with like a lot of this kind of colonial fiction

rewired Kipling and the like, you know. The stuff you would expect. And then the other thing that he has, he viewed as kind of a wholly positive thing from his childhood was patriotism. The nuns he said introduced him to authority. First God and then the flag. After morning prayers, they would pledge allegiance to the flag. And you know, the nuns were

strict about this as anything else. Here's how he writes about learning how to do the pledge of allegiance. We stood at rigid attention facing the flag in line straight enough to rival those of the vast SS and Lenny reef installs triumph of the will. I put you legions we began at the words to the flag we shot out our right arms and unison palms down straight as so many spears aimed directly at the flag. It was the salute of Caesar's legions recently popular in Germany, Italy and Spain. Oh yeah, no.

You can find pictures of American schools. It was not like universal, but it was not wildly uncommon for kids in some schools and some, you know, fucking especially some private schools to do the fascist salute, you know, which was previously the Roman salute, right, or at least a variant of it. So it's not like other kids have this experience, right? There's no reason to think he's lying about this. It is insane that he just like, he's described, because he's describing it as like the SS,

but he doesn't mean that in like a negative sense. Like he is, there's at no point does he like think about, this is kind of fucked up to do that. Is it bad? If we look at like where the Nazis went, does it maybe bad to do this with kids? Absolutely not for a second. Does G Gordon-Liddy consider that?

He would also like this. Look how organized we were as organized as the SS. My friends, my buddies, the SS. Oh, what a maniac. So. Oh my God. This is where we should introduce his second mother, the family housekeeper,

a German immigrant named Teresa. Now, if you've had like rich or very upper middle class friends, you know, when you were a kid, you may have like known someone who had like a nanny, a full-time nanny, sometimes even a live-in nanny who like helped raise them as a kid. I had a friend who grew up in a similar circumstance

and expressed to me at one point that it was like really confusing to him as a little kid because he kind of didn't know entirely whether this was his mom or his mom was his mom because like the nanny did a lot more, and I'm like, oh, that is kind of a weird thing to put a kid through, right? And there's this moment that kids like that tend to have

where they like realize this person who is kind of a mom to them is an employee of their parents, right, is there because they're being paid, it's to be care of them because they're being paid. And like, that can mess you up a bit. In Gordon's case, this is going to mess him up a lot because Theresa is also a literal Nazi. She is a German immigrant to the United States.

She is absolutely obsessed with the Nazis, with Hitler. She tells him all of these wonderful stories of her homeland, Germany, all of these different myths and legends. And she talks to him constantly about this terrible war that Germany went through before he was born. And how afterwards the country fell into chaos, but now a hero has a risen and is in the process of saving the German nation. Great roads were being built and unlike in the United States, everyone in Germany now had a job.

My mother had won an Emerson shortwave radio in a raffle at SS Peter and Paul Parrish, and Teresa and I would listen to programs broadcast from her native land, the volume swelling and receding in cycles. Now, Lydia listened to FDR on the radio, like most Americans, in the Great Depression, and he had found, you know, some comfort in that saying, we have nothing to fear, but fear itself as a scared little kid. But nothing in his life up to that point

had inspired or influenced him the way his first Hitler speech did. This is the defining moment of his childhood. Now, in his autobiography, Liddy claims to have had a memory like a tape recorder, given how bad he actually is as a spy. I think he's lying about this, but he claims that he can replay audio perfectly in his head, and like sometimes an involuntary switch will throw, and he'll hear music that will

like, launch him into a certain emotional state. I don't know the degree to which I think that he's telling the truth about this, but also I'm going to read you this paragraph. I don't know fully why you would lie about this. Oh my God. The music that poured through the Emerson from Germany was martial and inspiring. I lost myself in its strains. It made me feel a strength inside.

I had never known before. From playmates who were German, I learned some of the language. One day, Teresa was excited. He was going to be on the radio. Just wait till I hear him speak. Eagerly, I joined her at the Emerson. First the music, then now familiar strains of a song that started, Diffon Hoch, raise the banner. It was a rousing, powerful anthem, the horse vessel song. Now, Camb do, we gotta take a second here. Do you know what the horse vessel light is? No. It's the horse vessel song.

Horsed, so back during the rise of the Nazi parties, before Hitler's in power, Joseph Goebbels, the future propaganda minister, ran the party's Berlin operations. And a big part of his plan was to instigate a series of running fights and raids with communists and social Democrats in order to spark media condemnation of chaos and disrupt the organizing of the party's enemies, right?

He's both trying to get like the media flipping out about like, oh, there's so much chaos. We really need a law and order guy in office and also trying to like physically murder and hurt, you know, a P2 for one. A P2 for one. So you do the violence and then you step into solve the violence.

To solve the violence. Now, one of Joe's top thugs is a guy named Horst Vessel and Horst is a construction worker. He is a low level gangster and a pimp. He is running a prostitution racket out of his apartment and his landlady, who is a widow of a Communist Party member, is scared that she will lose the apartment if the police catched Horst running an illegal business out of it. Now there is a debate about precisely what happened, but the generally accepted story is

that Horst refused to pay his rent and threatened to beat his landlady. She goes to a local communist bar to get some of her husband's old friends to help her evict him. Horst was also an assault leader for Joseph Gerbels. So he was known for running vicious raids on these very poor Berlin neighborhoods where he would beat people nearly to death. The communists that his landlady goes to had been victimized by horse before, and they knew about him. So when she comes to them and is like, this guy is causing me problems,

they're like, let's just fucking off this son of a bitch. So they shoot the bastard in the head. Joseph Goebbels never want to let a murder go to waste, turns horse into a martyred saint, and his death is used as evidence of communist evil. The song that G Gordon Litty like is it listens to and is like inspired by as a child was written in the honor of this like murderer and Pimp and became the official anthem of the Nazi party. So that's what he's listening to right? G Gordon is yeah, God. He's like eight right? He's eight or nine, you know? The thing that's so interesting about this is it really puts like paid to the, and like this is obvious to anyone

who's not a fucking idiot, but like, you know, people growing up, it's like, I grew up in like Reagan times, and it's like, oh, the sanitization of Reagan and like, oh, Republicans aren't, like Republicans today are really bad, but they weren't always like this. We used to be able to get along. And like, not if you're alive today, not one person alive today has been

it party to a right wing that was quote, reasonable. No, no. This is like goes back a very far time. Like this is not, well, I why I mean honestly if you lived in fucking Portland through 2020 we had a fucking right wing gangster get killed here that like not an uncommon story to what happened with Horst Yeah, but G Gordon Liddy as a small child loves this song about a dead Nazi pimp But he loves Hitler's voice even more He was again as this kid whose entire life is fear, who was absolutely overwhelmed by terror all day, according to him, he is drawn by the pure confidence in Hitler's voice. Here was the very antithesis of fear, sheer animal confidence and power

of will. He sent an electric current through my body and, as the massive audience thundered its absolute support and determination, the hair on the back of my neck rose, and I realized that I had stopped breathing. And this is like the moment that teaches him, he has this like powerful realization of like, you can conquer fear and like sets him on this course like, you know, conquer, like to become the master

of his fear and his pain. Just like Hitler. That's so wild. It's so wild that you would admit this shit like this. It is. It's when like again, that you would put this in a book after fucking yeah, to launch your career as a talk show host. This is like the same, the same people that like respond to like Jordan Peterson.

Like yes. Oh my god, he respond to like Jordan Peterson. Like, yes. Oh my God. He would have loved Jordan Peterson. Yeah. But it's like, in the way that like, I feel like most Jordan Peterson fans you see now, like don't admit that this is what they're driven. It's so weird to hear it so baldly said like this. That's the thing.

All of these modern guys, a lot of these modern right wing media people are basically Nazis have friends who are literal Nazis, like signposts, shit, you know, they'll do the Funtas stuff, but even Funtas, even Nick Funtas, doesn't write shit like this. Yeah, yeah. It is like remarkable that you would just put this down. It's fascinating. Lydia never is going to shed this deep fascination with Hitler and the Nazis. It's almost like a fucking, what's

the word here? It's almost like a fucking syndrome for him, right? Like it's a reflex, like bringing up the Nazis. He's like, he can't help it. And again, he would always claim he never claims to be a Nazi, right? He would say, obviously Hitler was a monster. You know, I learned later they had gone far, you know, much too far and like, you know, he never claims to be a Nazi, right? He would say obviously, Hitler was a monster, I learned later they had gone far, much too far and like had to be stopped. And on most fascists who said this, I would be like, oh, this is just a shallow attempt

to elase suspicion. Litties case is weirder, because for one thing, he's admitting all of this when he doesn't need to. He is absolutely, no doubt on my mind, a bone deep fascist, right? As as died in the wool, it committed a fucking fascist has ever existed. You know, this old, he is an ultimate follower. He's like a born henchman in Constantin source search for a viewer. But I actually think he's not lying when he says he doesn't consider himself fully a Nazi. And the reason why is very simple.

It's his dad, right? He worshipped his father. So Sylvester Liddy was his son's hero. And in his autobiography, over and over again, he repeats this belief that his dad is almost incapable of error. And his dad hates Nazis. And it's one of those things.

Liddy's definitely a fascist. His dad hates rid of Nazi. If you've seen that meme of the Cheeto stuck in the place of the lock on the door. Oh yeah, yeah. That's the one thing keeping him from just becoming a full-on neo-Nazi. That's not fair.

Well, I guess hatred of them. I guess that is the thing that is translated to the modern right wing too, is like, like, they espouse everything the Nazis believe. They are friendly to neo-Nazis, but we'll also say shit like, well, like, socialism is the real, you know, they love the national socialist part, or like the Democrats are the real Nazis. And you're like, I mean, they really just have it both ways.

They like recognize Nazi is a bad thing to be, but they don't recognize that the word Nazis are bad things to be called. It's, I think with Litty, I think what interests me about him is that the conflict is a little different because like number one, most of the guys that you're talking about

would never admit to like having this much admiration of Hitler and the Nazis, right? Because it would be giving away too much. I don't know how to characterize the exact nature of his belief, but I do kind of think it's one of those like he was his entire life ready to fully embrace Hitler and the Nazis. It was just his respect for his dad holding back, like this tiny, this like creaking broken down damn holding back the flood of Nazi water. And in fact, so when his, you know, Gordon hears his first Hitler speech and he like goes to his dad to be like, I've just heard the most incredible guy. And when Sylvester is like, wait, are you talking about Hitler?

No, no, no, no, fuck that dude. He is a monster. He's going to lead the world into a horrible, horrible war. You are not allowed to listen to him anymore. And I kind of wonder if his dad hadn't been this guy. Does Liddy just become like a full on Nazi? Like is he marching with like fucking George Lincoln Rockwell? Like completely, you know, swastika mask off, you

know, fucking doing shots with David Duke. Um, yeah, right. Yeah. Probably yes. Like, maybe, yeah, it was a good chance. Similarly, that's like the type of thing that was like, again, quote unquote, acceptable at the time. Or it was like a, you know, in the time it was a type of political expression that was like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know. This is like the weird, like characterizing this exactly as the weirdest part to me here. So, you know, so again, very young Liddy spends the end of the 1930s when he is like eight or nine treating Hitler like a forbidden dessert, right, or like a hidden playboy magazine, right? He can't be caught listening to him, right? And he will claim later, this isn't because I'm a, I loved Hitler's, you know, politics. It's because I just found him magnetic. It's like, well, you absolutely wear the love of his politics. You are a bone deep fat. No one has ever been more of a fascist than you, G Gordon Whitty. It's really like like, yeah, I like the, I like the fucking what,

the confidence and the auditory style. Yeah, I don't know, man. You can find other shit, bro. There's other confident ass motherfuckers out there. So Teresa is like a big influence on him in this because while he can't be caught in the open listening to his Hitler speeches, it becomes this like thing that they share, right? That like when his dad's out and like no one else was around, they'll listen to some Hitler speeches, right? They'll turn on the radio and like sneak it together.

And again, she is the primary female influence in his early childhood. And I don't know, I think actually honestly reading this, I thought back to how when I was a little kid and my mom was out of town, my dad and I would watch like South Park, right, which I wasn't allowed to watch, but like my dad would kind of, and that's a powerful thing as a kid.

Whatever it is for you, like if you've got like an adult in your life who will be like, hey, you know, normally you don't have to watch, horror movies, but let adult in your life, who will be like, Hey, you know, normally, you know, I'd like to watch, you know, horror movies, let's put on Friday the 13th or whatever. You've been the rest of your life. You love fucking, you know, horror movies or whatever. Like for him, that's Hitler. That's the experience he has. That's like woman who races him, you know, let's get on the short way. If you see what they're talking about in Burleigh. Listen to Adolf Hitler. Now, obviously fascists are bad at estimating risk. And Teresa was not careful enough with her attempts to propaganda.

It's this kid. Eventually, Sylvester catches them. Quote, it was bad enough that he would come home on warm days to the voice of Joseph Goebbels, booming sonnerously from the Emerson. Worse when he found our address was on the German embassy mailing list for Nazi propaganda. The Hindenburg, however, was the last straw. The problem was that Teresa did not accept the official crash explanation that static electricity ignited hydrogen being vented as proud of the landing procedure.

She was certain the Hindenburg had been sabotaged by the United States. So the smish is a Hindenburg truth there. That's so dope. That's so wild about this is like, this is his auto-biography. Yes, yes, he's writing all of this out. You could, if you wanted to, for instance, attempt to rehabilitate your image in the 1980s, simply just say, you know, I was a sickly child and I loved fucking the rate. I love the radio. But then you call it, you know, that could, all of everything

that you've said so far could be two and a half sentences and starts wherever the shit that's relevant. Yes. Well, that's kind of why I believe a lot of this, right? Because there's definitely, he lies a number of, especially when we get to Watergate. There's a lot of shit that he just is bullshit that he brings up about like John Dean and stuff. Like a lot of stuff that is not true in this,

that is like legacy making, myth making. But like, I don't get why. I've been a bit of flying about this. I. How does this help you, G Gordon, Liddy? Right. Like the fascists are already on your side. Yeah. So like, I just made just me. Yeah.

I thought this would be your, this is to try to like, broad in the audience a little bit. Yeah. Like, you know, some Reagan Democrats, whatever. No fuck is this. This is something unique, something totally unique. And you know what else is unique, Andrew T. Sponsors of our podcast, none of whom were raised by a Nazi.

Well, probably, probably most of whom were not raised by. Yeah, there's a real a list of sponsors you could get that were definitely raised by a Nazi. Well, probably, probably most of whom were not raised by. Yeah. There's some real a list of spots as you could get that were definitely raised by the the Reagan coin people might have been raised by a not safe. Does that any any any folks wagon, you know, sure. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha is a new true crime podcast that investigates the case of Catherine Hoggel, a mother accused of murder. I'm thinking, you know, like, what's going on? Like, this is insane. Like, where are my kids? But despite signs that Catherine Hoggel took her tiny children

one by one into the night, never to come home again, she has yet to stand trial. Because soon after her children went missing, she was declared incompetent to stand trial. You know, when I would ask her her engagement was I been invited to remain incompetent. And then I would say, well, who advised you should trope you know I can't tell you that. In Maryland, if the defendant is found incompetent and can't be restored to competency,

their felony charges are dismissed after five years. So as the clock counts down, Catherine's charges on the verge of being dismissed will a grieving dad ever get justice. Listen to Unrestorable on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is In Retrospect, a podcast about pop culture from the 80s and 90s that shaped us.

I'm very much a product of the pop culture I consumed, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm Jessica Bennett, a New York Times writer and bestselling author. I'm Susie Bedeck-Harram, an award-winning TV producer and filmmaker. Every week, we'll revisit a moment in cultural history that we just can't stop thinking about. From tabloid headlines to illicit student-te teacher relationships, and one, very memorable red swimsuits. I found myself in Pamela Anderson's attic, as you do. I put that red swimsuit in a safe, because it seemed everybody wanted it.

We're digging deep to better understand what these moments taught us about the world and our place in it. I want you to really smell the axe body spray that emanated during this time. It was presented more as kind of like a crime topic. Okay, not a love story. It had been branded on the uteruses of every single woman from C to shining sea. Listen to In Retrospect on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

I'm Penelope Spheras. I'm a film director. I want to tell you a story about a friend of mine. Back in the 70s, Peter Ivers moved to LA to start his music career. He scored Ron Howard's directorial debut. I didn't know one thing about Peter Attersby. I just said, okay, let's meet him. An event hosted a late night cable TV show. It showcased LA punk bands in all their glory. The crowd started getting bigger and bigger and then there was Beverly Danzelow.

There was John Baloozy. But then, it all went to hell. Peter was murdered. Peter Ivers was murdered on March 3, 1983. And it raised a question that 40 years later, we still don't know the answer to. Who killed Peter Ivers? Listen to Peter and the Asset King on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

We're back. So, Sylvester, not a perfect dad, right? But his reaction to all of this, everything that happens does kind of make me think that he was trying to do the best he knew how. Because when he comes in, eventually he comes in on Teresa Rantig about how the Hindenburg was an inside job or whatever. And he fires, he fires her.

And he eventually, he brings in a new maid. And he, I think because he's so concerned that his son is becoming a Nazi, the new maid he picks is a Jewish refugee named Sophie who had just escaped Nazi Germany. And I think his goal here is both like give this refugee a decent job. And also like, well, maybe if my son meets this woman

who has been victimized by Hitler's regime, it will deraticalize him. I don't know. Yeah, again, we can argue was that the right call, but I think he's trying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so tough. That's like that's a wild situation to me. I see what I see what you're trying to do here, but that could go so.

Yeah, man, amazingly wrong. And and Liddy does not like her. He claims later he came to like respect and, you know, have empathy for her, but he does not write about her very much. So I don't know if that's true. In Hitler, Liddy continued to see a totem of strength and I can't emulate and purging his body and mind a fear and weakness that he felt characterized as childhood.

Now, while Liddy was falling in love with Hitler, he had a few other childhood heroes growing up. Quote, Frequently ill, I was nursed patiently by my mother, who used the occasions to teach me the family history and various tales of personal courage and accomplishment against odds. To keep from boring me by repetition, she would make up stories of high valor, usually about American Indians and their war usability,, to resist the most horrible torches without the slightest indication of discomfort.

Among her true stories was that of Glenn Cunningham, a farm boy his legs were burned so badly he would never walk again, and who became our national champion in the mile. A family member, my mother's favorite was her older brother, Raymond. He too was slightly built, but that hadn't stopped him from being the leader of all the boys in the neighborhood, from fighting off much larger boys who tried to force him from the prime street corner for selling magazines and Washington DC, from becoming an Eagle Scout, from putting himself through Georgetown University and its law school. I learned how Uncle Ray had been there when John Dillinger was slain in Chicago, how he

was wounded at the gun battle in which Ma Barker and her gang were shot or captured, and then he hadn't even noticed his wound until after the battle and had not bothered to report it. His uncle Ray becomes an FBI agent, right? And to be clear, there's not actually any evidence that Ray was nearby when John Dillinger was killed. But this is probably family lore rather than Gordon lying. I think he does grow up. Sure.

He taught this, right? And I think Uncle Reyes, a giant piece of shit, and the fabulous, too. Also a terrible influence. But this is, so these two things are critical to understand, Litty. He grows up like afraid constantly. And like, you know, just this like kid, he's like short, he's small,

he feels like he's weak and he's always scared. And his mom is constantly trying to build him up by telling him stories about his like great grandfather kid, he's like short, he's small, he feels like he's weak and he's always scared. And his mom is constantly trying to build him up by telling him stories about his like great grandfather and his grandfather and like how good his dad was at boxing and his uncle Raymond is killing all these people. And this like drives him crazy a little bit, right? Like the fact that the fact that he feels like he has to become worthy of these men who are in his genetic line.

Right. And he feels like he's so weak and scared all the time. Like this, this like fucks him up as a kid, right? Right. Right. Yeah. So he grows more and more ashamed of his perfectly natural reactions to the world. Now part of what incites this is that he had, by this point, read a book by America First

Leader Charles Lindbergh, which Lindbergh discussed that he had picked his wife based on her racial characteristics because he wanted them to breed genetically powerful children together. So he has this sort of idea in his head that like I come from a line of powerful like genetically powerful men and it's my responsibility to become worthy of the genes of my ancestors, right? And right now, I'm too weak. I'll never be worthy of breeding with an Aryan princess. If I don't conquer my fear of the heroes of this, you know what? To be fair, except for the Aryan part. Listen, that's why that's why you do have to shit you do, you know, to just impress the person you want to fuck. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's fair. In his case, it's like a theoretical

person, right? Yeah. And he has to become worthy of the semen that he's inherited from his dad and his uncle. So of all the heroes in his childhood, his dad and his uncle Ray are the living ones he actually knew. Ray again is a short guy, but he's dating a model and this model is much taller than him, which G Gordon Litty finds very attractive. He's always got kind of a king for that. And he carried, Ray would always, you know, when he come over to see the family, he would like always be wearing a gun and he would brag about who he was carrying a 38

super automatic and was powerful handgun in the world. Liddy repeats it a bunch. This is the most powerful handgun in the world. Michael, it's got the best gun in the whole planet. That is a debatable claim handgun wise. But I think he probably heard it from Ray and repeated it all his life. Gordon grew obsessed with his uncle's sidearm and since this was the 1930s, gun safety was not a priority.

Quote, one day when I was five, I slipped into Rey's room and found it lodged in the lid of his suitcase. This was a rarity. Not only was it something I feared, so did everyone else. My curiosity got the better of my fear, an uncommon occurrence. Quietly, I withdrew the pistol and examined it, then managed to get the hammer back at the safety off. Proud of this accomplishment, I walked into the room with the adult sat chatting to show

them what I had found. Uncle Ray spotted me immediately. He knew the pistol was loaded. Ray's rising, he placed himself directly in front of the muzzle, smiled warmly, then reached down and placed his finger between the hammer and the firing bin. He grasped the piece and gently disarmed me. This gun he informed me quietly was his. He would get one for me.

Soon thereafter he did a pistol replica of the cult. So a couple of things they are, go right. I think maybe the wrong thing to do is to give the kid who has just stolen your gun and pointed it at some adults. An exact replica of that pistol. There might be other lessons to teach first is what I'm saying, right? Like don't point guns at the people.

Yeah, I mean, look, I guess I don't know the layout of this living room either, but I don't feel like Ray had to step right in front of the pistol to do this stuff. Feel like he had other options. Yeah, it's come from the side. Also, maybe don't leave a loaded and chambered 38 super in your fucking suitcase in your room with kids around, right? You never know. Yeah, they everyone was so drunk back then, right?

Yeah, you never know when you get a really want to win the argument. No, exactly. You might need that 38 super at any moment. Yeah. So from what I can, it's also very funny to me because like today, back then, you know, 38 super was one of the more power certainly one of the most powerful handgun rounds that was available to people. Today, the thing that's most famous for is like cartel guys love getting 1911's plated in gold and 38 super. That's like the cartel pistol, right? Like if you want to be, yeah, like it's like, yeah. So that is kind of amusing to me. Oh, basic.

All of this nonsense, this like worship of men and his family, his like Hitler's shit, his constant fear, he, it leads him to have this kind of like obsession with making a reality of my genetic potential. That's the way he describes it, you know, right? He's got to like, he's got to fix himself so that he can earn his, his, his jeans. So this starts with his first fear, the Hindenburg, and it, and its last runs before the disaster. Liddy had made his parents take him to watch it. So he could stand out underneath it and force himself not to run away. His success in this thrilled him and it made him commit to conquering other fears.

Since he was scared of heights, he started hanging out with a boy he knew who ran around on the rooftops of nearby buildings. Do what you might call kind of early parkour shit. That boy also took Litty to the docks, which is this like forbidden place with all these scary foreigners in it. And on one occasion, they're snooping around a boat and they get yelled at and they both run away. And Liddy spins days beating himself up. Like he's almost like mortifying his skin

because he's so ashamed that he didn't like confront the guy or something instead of running away from the sailor when he was breaking onto a boat. Now, in order to deal with this, he keeps going back to the boat. And his goal is he just wants to hide on it near the sailors to prove that he's not scared of them. He conquers this fear, but he earns a new one, which is that there's these giant warfrats around.

And one of them like chases him off the boat and he kind of loses his mind in a panic. And for a year or more, this tears at him, the fact that he's like, reacted with fear to these rats, but then about a year later, when he's nine, the family cat brings a dead rat into the house. And I don't really know what to do here other than read you what followed. The carcass was still warm and remarkably undamaged

to demonstrate to myself my lack of fear, instead of using a stick I picked it up with my hands, then looked for a place to bury it. As I walked towards the trees in the back, I saw some old bricks and got the idea for a test to destroy forever, any dread I still might harbor for rats. I put the rat down and, with the loose bricks, built a small enclosure in the gravel next to the garage. I filled it with broken twigs, bark and small branches, and went into the kitchen for

matches. For the next hour, I roasted the dead rat. Then I removed the burned carcass with a stick and let it cool. With a scouting knife, I skinned it, then cut off and ate the roasted haunches of the rat. The meat was tasteless and stringy. Finally, I dismantled the little fireplace and burned the rest of the carcass. As I stamped down the earth over the remnants of my meal, I spotted the cat, Tommy.

I smiled as the thought occurred to me. From now on, rats could fear me as they feared cats. After all, I hate them too. Oh my god. If your child has that experience, that's so far beyond serial killer shit. Like serial killer shit is like torturing an animal. He's not doing that, he's already dead.

But in some ways, it's more alien and weird. Like, I must conquer. The rats will fear me if I've eaten them. Yeah. Do you think that's how it works? That's just so like, also like totally cool to never tell anyone that story. Yeah, that's a story you keep to yourself.

And it's so wild to say this. How loud this is this is the 30s. Your parents are putting you in an institution if you tell the next story. Yeah, I know. I know. That's right. But that's what happens in the 30s to that. That's just early enough in the 20th century or close enough to the depression that like

you might find what are two people that's like Ben there, brother. Yeah. But not for that reason. Right? Yes, yes. Right. If you hear the whole thing, he will always be, you know, for the rest of his childhood, obsessive with this need to conquer various fears and prove himself a man.

Now the thing that he wants to ultimately do, the number one way, the really the only thing in his mind that's going to cure him forever of this sort of like inadequacy syndrome he has is to go to war, right? That's the ultimate way to prove that you're a man and worthy of your genes is, is killing some people. And luckily for him, World War II, you know, kicks off right around the time he's starting to become, you know, an adolescent. Unfortunately for him time he's starting to become an adolescent. Unfortunately for him, he's like 11 or 12 when the US gets into it. And there's at least like six years he's got to wait before he's going to be able to enlist.

His only meaningful feeling about the war then is not like horror at all the people dying, you know, fear that maybe his country will lose any of that. He's terrified. His greatest fear is that maybe his country will lose any of that. He's terrified. His greatest fear is that he won't have time to fight him. He won't get to go to war, right? Like that's that's really what fucks him up. So while he suffers through this torturous weight, he decides the rational thing to do is to prepare himself to be a soldier.

And in Gordon, that meant one thing killing. Now, later in life, he is going to be famous for just absolutely this guy. There's never been a dude who fetishized guns more than G Gordon Litty or violence more than G Gordon Litty. But Litty is not, he's not naturally a violent person. He's not someone to whom actually carrying out violence is like a thing he's immediately comfortable with, right? And so he's going to, he's going to dedicate, like his adolescent years to becoming comfortable with,

with carrying out violence for no good reason, right? Not like violence he needs to carry out, because he's ashamed of the fact that he's like not comfortable killing things. Now, the easiest way in his mind to become comfortable with violence is to get a gun and start shooting animals. But again, so Vester, his dad, understands who his boy is and it's like, no, we're not getting you a gun. We are, we are absolutely not buying you a gun. You have to think he knew his boy and was like the last thing this the last thing my Hitler loving child needs Is a is a fire arm. I mean there has to be some real concern when this kid really wants to go find a World War two Yeah, yeah, which said it would but

The closest Sylvester will get is is buying his kid a da BB gun. And this is also going to prove an error because Liddy's a little too smart for his own good. So he looks up at the library, the recipe for black powder, and he starts making his own gun powder. He buys charcoal and sulfur and salt Peter from the pharmacy, claiming his mother needs it for canning. You can use sulfur and salt Peter, you can use for canning. I think the charcoal was probably for the fire.

And then from a neighborhood kid, he says, he buys a six inch long section of gun barrel and 22 caliber that included a chamber, right? Cause you need the chamber in order to make a gun the work. So he saws off the barrel of his daisy and he attaches the 22 barrel by friction fit. And then he like, basically, he builds this into a functioning 22 caliber rifle.

Using like, it's very janky. Like, it's got like a plunger fire type situation here. Like, it sounds like a very dangerous and inaccurate firearm. But it does function. It has no sight. Like, you cannot really aim it very well, but he claims he shoots and hits a squirrel with it, right? Now, this is pretty fucked up, because you shouldn't shoot an animal

with a weapon that you can't be precise with, right? Because you may, for example, hit it in the guts and it will die in agonizing death as opposed to dying quick, which is what happens. He shoots the squirrel in the belly and he has to like kill it, right? He has to like execute it at close range. Um, and he, you know, he doesn't eat the squirrel. He doesn't what you can do. He has like no use for the body. He's just killing it to kill it. So he he executes it and then he cuts off its tail to tie around his handlebars. Now, this is definitely like serial killer adjacent shit. Litty claims that he doesn't feel excited or happy after doing it. In fact,

he's horrified by it like it like it haunts him and like his mom catches him doing it too. So like that's probably part of, you know, why he feels bad. And this, this is what really fucks him up because the thing that fucks him up is not that he, he hurts this squirrel or that he kills it, but that he feels bad about hurting the squirrel.

And that fucks him up because he feels like now I'll never be able to be a soldier. If like, I can't kill a squirrel without feeling anything, how can I kill men? Right? That has its own internal logic. There's a lot going on there and none of it's any good. Could I expect to be a soldier in the war? I had to do something to free myself from this disabled emotionalism.

The widowest fascist here. He is such a fucking like the deepest fascist. There's more like fucking young Hitler has more like redeeming quality. Says a kid that fucking G Gordon Liddy. Oh God, it's fucked up. So the thing he eventually lands on was volunteering to help with his neighbor's small chicken farm. He offers to basically is he's got this neighbor with a chicken farm and he's like look, I need to learn how to kill all like gut and kill all of the chickens that you need killed.

And you know, if you've never done this killing butchering chickens and specifically like gutting and preparing them to be eaten is a very, it's a particularly unpleasant process like chickens in my, in a lot of people's opinions are like, uh, a less pleasant animal to like butcher than a lot of other animals. Um, so the guy who owns this farm is like, yeah, sure, Gordon, you could fucking kill all of my chickens. Uh, and so that's like, I, I, again, bad adulting. Also, this is if this kid comes to you being like, I need to kill something. Can I kill you? I have to learn how

to kill efficiently and without emotion or thought, right? That's how he phrases it. So apparently he claims he learns how to kill without feeling that by murdering all of these chickens, you know, I was satisfied when it came my turn to go to war. I would be ready. And like, I should note here, she wouldn't let he never killed anybody, right? Not for lack of trying, but like, I honestly don't know if he ever, like was the kind of guy who would have been good at this. So much of this is like, he's got, this is like an image he wants to present. He wants people to think of him as a badass, as a killer, as a dangerous man, right? You know, as this guy who could do without thinking like, I don't think killing chickens

actually prepared him for murdering people. Part of which is that like, I don't mean he never kills anybody, right? He's never in combat. He never experiences anything like this, you know? Um, I mean, part of the, part of the Wattabee Dispashant Killer issue is thinking that working into slaughterhouse might help you become a Dispashant Killer. Nope. Absolutely not.

Is it like, yeah, there's, there's a lot here, including the fact that like Adolf Hitler, a fucking man with a lot of blood on his hands, never could have worked at a chicken slaughtering. Like, he was, he was too, like again, the dude was a vegetarian. He was too like horrified by the suffering of animals. Didn't care about people suffering, you know? Oh, fun, but yeah, just a dangerous maniac,

G Gordon Liddy, one of the least, one of the least mentally healthy individuals, one of the most dangerous brains ever to be born. Yeah. To be given power. Yeah. Of any kind. Jesus Christ. This is a man who needed like dedicated care, right?

Of some sort. He needed a lot of people focused on stopping him from being a danger to him, self-indicating his risk to others. Yeah. If not for others. Yeah, that never happened. So, Jesus, we are building to how he masterminds

the Watergate break in. Bat, again, this is a man who is bad at everything but being a media guy, right? He's pretty effective at being like a right wing media figure. He's a terrible failure in every other aspect of his life. Pretty much. He's some people say he was a pretty good lawyer. You know, so maybe I'll give him that. We'll talk about that too.

So we'll find out right now, Andrew, let's talk about how you doing. I'm alive. We're just, you know, still just striking and hanging out and podcasting. It's great. Love it. I don't love it, but it's just striking out. What are you gonna do?

Excellent. Well, support the strike, you know, help out. Oh, yes, I pulled up a link. If you are listening to this, and you are the entertainment community fund, search for that. I don't know, whatever, ask chat GPT to find it for you. Don't do that.

And yeah, I do a podcast called Yozis Racist. We are, we're doing some picket line diaries And yeah, I had an I do a podcast called Yozis Racist. We are, we're doing some picket line diaries just to do, you know, what the actual sandals on the ground of being on strike is like. Excellent. So yeah, that's it. Yeah, check out those picket diaries. And until next time folks, remember,

David Zoslobs home address is ****. So that's probably probably bleep back. And until next time folks remember David Zoslov's home address is Oh, probably we probably bleep back Good stuff Behind the bastards is a production of cool zone media for more from from Cool Zone Media, visit our website CoolZoneMedia.com or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. The system's broken, I said something's wrong here, you know, whenever a woman is allowed to kill my two kids.

Unrestorable is a new true crime podcast that investigates the case of Catherine Hoggel, a mother accused of murder. Despite signs that Catherine Hoggel took her tiny children one by one into the night, never to come home again. She has yet to stand trial. Listen to Unrestorable on the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Moaraka, and I'm excited to announce season four of my podcast, Mo Bituaries. I've got a whole new bunch of stories to share with you about the most fascinating people and things who are no longer with us. From famous figures who died on the very same day to the things I wish would die, like buffets. Listen to MoPituaries with MoRaka

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Carol Markowitz. I'm so excited to launch my very own podcast. We'll talk to the biggest names and politics, news, entertainment, and get to the truth of the issues that affect your family and have some fun along the way. It's the Carol Markowitz show, part of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton podcast network. New episodes drop every Monday and Thursday

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