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

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

The stirring conclusion to the G. Gordon Liddy saga, featuring Fear Factor's Joe Rogan.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Choose Business, not boring, with programs ranging from fashion to finance, culinary to commerce, or golf to global business. Apply now at Humber.ca slash business. 13 days of Halloween, Penance. Season 4 of the award-winning horror fiction podcast presented in immersive 3D audio. If I am under arrest, you have to tell me what I'm charged with. Starring Natalie Morales of Parks and Recreation and Dead To Me. Please, you've been some kind of mistake.

I'm not supposed to be here. How do you know? I'm innocent. I'm any of us truly innocent. Premiering October 19th, ending Halloween. Listen to 13 days of Halloween on the I Heart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts media Yeah, it's behind the bastards a podcast that I open

with Grunting noises that no one really likes No one no one really likes. No one, no one's happy when I do this. Yeah. It's got, it's got a little like we're doing this. Yeah. It reminds me of home. It feels like a safe,

Oh good. Thank you, thank you. When I open up Pro Tools, it reminds me of home in a perilous way to me, but in a way that makes you not want to return. Well, let's all hope the audience all agrees with Ian and we didn't just torpedo our careers by me making grunt noises, guttural grunts in order. Yeah, exactly.

Good stuff. good times. Welcome back to the show. We are finishing Litty. What I promise will be our last episode on the G-man. Mixed feelings, you know, ready to move on to another bastard, but also we get to listen to a lot of fear factor today. And that's something that should make everyone happy.

Now, much like the Catholics, and G. Gordon-Lady was raised as a Catholic, he kind of becomes agnostic later on. But Catholics believe, as I understand it, that before getting to heaven, you generally go through a period in purgatory, right? Maybe that's wrong, but let's all just pretend that the Catholics believe that, right? In a similar fashion, before we get to the heaven that is watching a 2006 episode of Fear Factor starring G Gordon Litty, we have to go through the hell of listening to a bunch of clips from G Gordon Litty's incredibly racist radio show. So, you know, buckle up everybody.

Hopefully the Pope will help us out of this jam. It's wild. It's wild that there was a good, I guess the good period of Joe Rogan is unimpeachably news radio. So whatever this, this is, this is the purgatory of Joe Rogan. This is right. The purg, before he, he goes to hell, he doesn't make it through the cut, right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure. It's like going to men's school and becoming a dentist. Ooh, that's right. Dentist burns, baby. Sorry. You know, for a lot of people really enjoy it,

but whatever, it's fine, man. It's fine, it's fine. So we ended last episode with him finishing his book, frightening his wife, singing a Nazi song. He's back and full, he's so back, right? He's doing the full lady. So he is however in a pretty desperate financial situation when he gets out of prison.

And it still owes about $300,000. It's a mix of fines and legal fees. He decides to take a spin at being a writer because what other paths are opened to him? And in 1979, he writes a fiction book called Out of Control. It is a spy thriller. The Google book summary of it does not make it sound like a particularly good one. Richard Rand is a CIA rogue pulled back into the company for one last incredible mission.

Gregory Ballinger is the Soviet spy whose empire Rand is out to destroy, but in a dance of deception from Washington to Switzerland and South America. The tables are suddenly turned. Someone in Washington wants the KGB to win and Richard Rand did now. So pretty boring. Certainly I've not found any evidence that this was particularly good or that it had any new ideas.

Pretty, I think his idea was I put out a very basic pot boiler fiction and hopefully my fame is a water gate conspirator mix it probably. Yeah, you know, not a bad idea. No, and Howard Hunt had done that because he'd been an author before like he immediately started and it had worked for him kind of. So I think he's kind of creeping from Howard Hunt's worksheet here. We may do a book episode on this at this point, but I kind of doubt it. He's not a bad enough writer that I think this will be very entertaining. Yeah. Yeah. That said, his next idea is much better, which is to write his Watergate memoir, which he publishes the next year, 1980, and it sells like a million copies. He makes a

shoot load of money off of this. And once his book becomes the best seller, Liddy finally finds himself more famous than he'd ever been. And all these conservative student associations at colleges around the country start clamoring to pay him to come and speak at their universities. Now, listeners will know, I am of the opinion that college campus speaking tours are among the chief threats of our democracy and should be targeted via air power. However, if anyone does want to pay me to speak at your school, I will be happy to do so. So please, yeah, yeah, bring me over. I've done it a couple of times.

It's always a good, good fun. So the Washington Post reports on Litties come back to her and their reporter is bemused at the popularity that this convicted felon and fascist has with college students. Here's their article from 1980. It's incredible. Gush is Donnie Epstein, Lydia's New York agent. He goes to these college campuses and draws a full house.

They start by hissing and booing, and at the end, they give him a standing ovation. He turns them completely around. They love him. During his speech, Lydia paces across the stage, coiling his microphone cord in one hand, unraveling it with the other, dressed in a gray suit wearing spit-shined black boots. He speaks in staccato style, interspersing his dialogue with Latin phrases and quotes from Julius Caesar. Oh my God.

He's good at this. The demand for Litty is Titanic. He gives 32 speeches in the first 42 days after his booking opens. There are protests by student groups who are angry and particularly that their tuition money is going to fucking G Gordon Liddy. One of the things that's interesting to me, the Washington Post spends like a paragraph mentioning the protests, this barely merits a mention in 1980, when in 2017 and 2018, anytime there were protests of college, there's every the post in the New York Times, they

were all always quote unquote liberal papers falling over themselves to write articles about like, well, free speeches and danger because students aren't happy that they're paying these fascists to speak. Yeah. Nobody gave a shit in 1980, interesting. So that whole article is a bleak but important read. And I have trouble not hearing the siren song

of the apocalypse in responses like this from dipshit college kids. He's just so intelligent," said Jane Cop, a sophomore at Craten, a Jesuit run school with 5600 students. Before I heard him, I figured he was a psycho, Amy Jersick, another Craten sophomore said, but he is really fascinating and he expresses himself so well. He is just so pro-American, such a super patriot that you have to admire him even if you disagree, Aaron DeWald, who was with cop and jurassic interjected. One cratin student described Lydia as a modern John Wayne. And look, I know all these kids are old people now, but listeners, if one of these former students is your relative,

pie him in the face this November. Don't even explain why. Get him right in the fucking kisser with like a pecan pie. Pecan is the most aggressive pie to get hit by. Really, really bash him with it, you know? That's what we're asking you all. I mean, this is also clearly cherry picked from the Bozos coming out of it.

It's literally one group of three friends, right? The free shittiest people at the school. Yeah, it's I mean, it's like, you know, every college has a fucking libertarian Association like it's it's those fucking right wing freaks. Yeah, and like Yeah, you can and you can tell it's because they know what quote Centrist or I'm not right or left. I've an independent thinker thing to say, but you know, that is of course just code for right-wing freak. That is exactly right. And that's my take on it too, Andrew.

So the next major move, Liddy Makes, is a pretty intelligent one. He partners up with Timothy Leary to go on a series of debates at college campuses across the nation. And Leary, you know, he's this kind of profit of the asset age. He becomes this figure who embodies left wing rebellion during like the hippie period, the 60s. He's in jail, several days broken out once. In the, the who song, the seeker, you know, I'm the seeker, I've been searching low and high.

There's a line in there about like asking Timothy Leary for guidance and stuff like, um, yeah, you know, he is very famous and very famous specifically for being this like left wing iconic last and, you know, he does, he, he is in jail in prison at the same time that Lydia's yeah, actually they wind up in the same facility at one point and they're both these They're both these like iconic class who are seen as embodying as their respective sides of the political aisle, right? Yeah, team Leary is this embodiment of the 60s and early 70s Left and and Litty is kind of the same thing for the right. I everyone had no true scots been this but it's also like Yeah, this is like, starts to crack into the moral bankruptcy of the white hippies.

Yes, I don't like Tim Leary, right? I'm not a fan of the man, particularly so, you know, that's where I'm coming from here. They have a lot in common in that they are both famous and both fame hounds, and they both understand partnering with each other will increase their appeal. It's also worth noting that at this time, by the time Leary is partnering on the speaking tours, which is like the early 80s kind of, he is not really left wing anymore.

He's more of a libertarian and kind of that early, no, not with libertarian often means today, which is like even worse than a normal Republican. But like that is, you're pro civil rights, you're pro legalizing drugs, anti the state generally, but still also not anti capitalist by any measure of the imagination. Yeah. So it's taxes. They spend way too much time talking about taxes.

Yeah. it's taxes. They spend way too much time talking about taxes. And yeah, it is wild-halled modern libertarians are mostly just known for trying to defend pedophilia as far as I can tell. It's like, terrible. Harrowing to the child I'm dating. See, it's to be the modern libertarian. Giving heroin to the child I'm dating as opposed to what it ought to be about, which is as opposed to what it ought to be about, which is arming drag queens so that they can, you know, carry out tactical strikes. Yeah, exactly. So I found a write-up of the tour they did on Reason.com, which is a libertarian website, and it's sympathetic to both people, right? Reason is the kind of person who is going to see both Tim Leary and Jean Woodlady as like admirable people potentially. a person who was going to see both Tim Leary and Jean Wood-Middie as like admirable people, potentially.

I think their description is interesting. First off, they give it a pretty good summary, which is they describe it as evidence of quote, a disorienting moment in American history. A time after the convulsions of the 60s and 70s had ended, but while most of the giant figures of that faded age were still around, trying to find a place for themselves in a changed world. And I do think that's actually a pretty apt description of what's going on here, right? Quote, don't go in there, there's a film that's made about this tour they go on that you can watch. This is a summary of that film.

Don't go into this film expecting a conventional left versus right matchup. By this point in his life, Timothy Leary was a full-fledged libertarian. This becomes obvious a little more than 40 minutes into the movie when he stands on stage singing the praises of voluntary organizations. I believe in bridge clubs, I believe in families, I believe in friends, I believe in stock groups, I believe in collectives, I believe in corporations, and damning the one form of organization which is involuntary. And that's the modern state.

He goes on to declare that every state in the world is a mafia charging extortion fees called taxes. But he allows that, I love America. America's the greatest mafia of them all. At another point, after Liddy offers a lengthy denunciation of gun control, Lirides reply with a liberal argument for a strict restricting firearms. He simply suggests that Liddy's arguments

against gun laws work just as well against drug laws. Now, there's a couple of things I would note here. One is that like, I agree with you. All states are mafias. The United States is the world's largest, totally agreed. No disagreement. Buy our corporations, not mafias. Under what?

Like a hell, a fucking insurance company sticking you up with like not allowing you to fucking get cancer treatment unless you pay ruin like mortgage rest. How is that? How is that better than a mob? Right? Yeah. Like fuck fuck you for first off for not seeing that. It's disgusting. The degree of surveillance corporation. That's fucking vial, I think of him. It's better than a mob because any rich person can buy shares in it, whereas in a mom, only some rich people can buy shares. Yeah. This is like having a debate between center right and hard

and claiming it to be like bipartisanship, and truly like presages what the contemporary conversation is. And this is, not all, I know, I come from libertarians. I like, I come, like those were the people who pulled me away from being a Republican. And I know a lot of, a lot of Republicans, of libertarians, I know, are like, well, I believe in like markets and I believe in people's ability to like compete. But I think that like corporations are fundamentally the enemy of the free market, right? That like, actually what we need to do is break up monopolies and destroy the ability of

people. And I don't have a problem with, I not agree 100 percent, but I think that's an intellectually consistent point. Being like the state is a mafia and corporations are like that's nonsense. Timothy Larry, absolute nonsense. Also nonsense is what he's saying about gun control here. Obviously I have a different stance on this. I think from a lot of our particularly more liberal listeners, but what I will say that doesn't make sense about this is that the ways in which gun control and restrictions of drugs harm people, or sorry, the ways in which the gun issue and harms that are done by guns and how gun control affects that is different, like, it relates

to the way in which like drug restrictions and the way in which that harms people, like, they're totally different. Firearms, a big part of the danger of firearms, the reason why we have mass shootings and stuff, the reasons why we have gun crime, is that firearms are incredibly available. If you care about reducing suicides by guns, mass shootings, gun violence in general, you have to deal with the fact that like the more firearms there are out there and the easier they are to acquire, the more people who are dangerous will acquire them, right? Even if you are pro-gunned, that is a very basic inarruable fact that you have to deal

with. If you care at all about reducing the harm that guns do in society, right? The issue with drugs is the complete opposite, which is that because of prohibition, drugs that are adulterated show up on the market and those kill people. The other issue is that because it is an illegal business, the price of drugs is artificially inflated to many times what it ought to be. And so when people become addicted, they are often forced to do a position where in order to avoid withdrawal, the only way they can afford to get high is to steal shit. Whereas if they could get their heroin for fucking two bucks a dose from a government facility

like they can in a couple of countries, they would not need to break into people's houses to afford the fucking fix, right? These are completely opposite issues. And like comparing them and saying like, well, actually, the problem with gun control is bad in the same way. Don't know, they're completely different. Even though I have a lot of gun control laws

objectively are not effective, which is not to say that all of them are ineffective. A number of them do work. But it's a completely opposite issue. The issue with drugs is not that like there's too many drugs. It's that people don't know what they're buying and the price isn't flated. The issue with guns is that any fucking asshole can get one. Like totally different problems. I mean, sorry. It's the way they're consistent is what you're talking to the world's dumbest right-wing

teenagers. They're both freedom issues. Yeah, anyway, it's whatever. I'm very frustrated by the, although I do have to say this is a debate occurring in the mid 80s, a lot of these problems were not nearly, like for one thing, mid 80s, mass shootings, very uncommon compared to what they would be. So this is, and so, you know, fentanyl wasn't in the market.

Both of these problems are very different when these guys are arguing. So I do have we, and so, you know, fentanyl wasn't in the market. Both of these problems are very different when these guys are arguing. So I do have to, I have to give them kind of that point. Anyway. Robert White simply has to hand it to G-Garner. There we go. So I don't, yeah, I don't want to go on too much. I'm done ranting about my opinions there.

I will make one more note, which is that while Leary, the guy who is famous as a hippie figure is very much taking an individualist stance in these debates, Litty is the guy who is coming at this from more of, and this is something reason notes, Litty is actually more of a collectivist, which is where he, because he's talking about like, you know, because if fascists have a degree of that in them, right? Sure. You know, he talks a lot more about like the community and the people and stuff,, Leary is really more of a people should be able to like choose who they associate with. Liddy does not really believe that. But Liddy also critiques the prison industrial complex

pointedly in a way that Leary doesn't really spend a lot of time on, which is interesting to me. Yeah. He's not consistent about this, but it's interesting. Yeah. G Gordon Liddy has problems with the president industrial complex. Yeah. Only because he was in prison. Yeah. And he's certainly never had it before. He basically writes that in a column at one point, but we'll get, we'll get there. Liddy's newfound fame earned him constant appearances on new shows and the talk show circuit. We're going to play you a clip of him on Letterman from 1982. Letterman does not give this guy any pushback whatsoever. He does not really question him in any meaningful way. You can see he and the audience falling for Lydia's routine.

Lydia during this appearance discusses the time that he killed and ate that rat as a kid because people have read the book by this point and are fascinated by it. He compares it to the experiences of like guys like POWs who have to eat rats to survive and other heroic survivor narratives. When he's asked to give advice on life in prison, he goes into loving detail about all the weapons

that he supposedly had. And here, I'm gonna have Ian play that clip now. Did you have weapons inside the prison? And how does a person get a weapon? You can get anything you want inside a prison, anything if you're willing to pay for it and have the assets to pay for it. The way I got weapons, some I bought, and some I stole, and some I had made for me by friends.

Good heavens. Were like firearms or actual guns. No, I had a steel bar with sharp edges with which I could break your legs. I had a pickaxe handle with a jagged chunk of rusty steel on the end of it, with which I could make you very unhappy. And of course I had a knife. You always have a knife.

Shank is its called. Shank for your kids watching at home, but just shank. So it's frustrating to me to agree to which Letterman and everyone they're just like, yeah, welcome them back. He's funny. He's our everybody's favorite fascist. You know, this other shit gets normalized. Letterman, you were a part of that.

Litties' book and touring went so well that Hollywood soon came a call in. In 1985, he was hired to play a CIA operative who'd become a heroine smuggler on an episode of Miami Vice. He is actually a recurring character on the show Miami Vice. There's a lot that's interesting about this appearance in particular,

but I wanna start with playing you with clip of Liddy on the show. And this is from, yeah, an episode of Miami Vice. You know, of course, it in most parts of the world. Pain is the second language. People understand it better than words, because you can get right to the point. But in this country, we don't really have very much pain. So the second language is money.

Naturally, you'd expect to receive money for what you know instead of paying. Ironic. You know, that's not a badly delivered monologue. He's got some, he's got, he's got stage presence. Like, he gets a lot of appearances in a number of TV shows, and it's not just because, like, that's how he gets his foot in the door, but like, he keeps getting appearances because like, he's not bad at that.

He's actually like a decent character out there. Now, the only character he plays is G-Corton Liddy, but yeah, just so bizarre. It is, again, we keep talking about these modern day, fascist media, just Ben Shapiro, Stephen Crowder, Michael Knowles, these modern right wing ghouls that are all propped up by petro dollars and the Wilkes brothers and shit, who are like spending all of their time advocating the fucking state

suppression of transgender people, scum. These guys are all aping-litty to some extent, but they all have the opposite path where all of these dudes, fucking Michael Moles was in a video we ran on cracked, these dudes all started out by trying to break into acting and screenwriting, right? They wanted to be Hollywood celebrities and they failed out of it because they had no talent. Liddy, on the other hand, starts as a right-wing ghoul in politics, and then he wins his way into Hollywood by virtue of some degree of merit. Like, well, it's so weird. Almost all his other...

Yeah, his, like, what skills he has are so bizarrely misapplied at all times. It's, like, maybe if he had started trying to go into politics, he'd be that guy he would know him as like, yeah, I don't know, the fucking fed in the early Avengers movies or some shit. He could have done it. And also, all those guys are kind of like, you know, like your Eastwoods, like just kind of like right winged bozos,

like as evil. Yeah, like we all more or less forgave Eastwood for that fucking weird chair speech, not because he deserves to be forgiven, but because like, he's in pretty good movies. And it's like, and he's also in some pretty racist movies. Don't get me wrong, but. Right.

He's not, he's a fucking. Yeah, it's fine. Yeah, it's fine. It's not at, like, whatever. It's, we mostly ignore it because like, if someone's good at being on camera, we'll forgive a lot about them, perhaps we shouldn't, but we do.

And yeah, ladies, you know, he's not like fucking historic level talent, but he's not bad at this. One fun fact about Liddy's second performance on Miami Vice is that the episode plot is like, yeah, that he's like he's he's funneling. He's a drug dealer funneling selling drugs to funnel money to Contras and Dicaragua, which is funny because like that's what

happened, right? That's the Iran Contra story. But this episode airs a month before the first article exposing Iran Contra drops this episode. So that's fun. using a Rand Contra drops this episode. So that's fun. And like shit like that, you know, it adds to the mystique of G Gordon Liddy. Obviously, how could that not, right? That's wild.

That happened. That's actually kind of crazy. Of course, that would improve his kind of reputation is this shadowy figure of American politics and cultural life. You know, it creates something out of a man who should have by all right spent the rest of his life living quietly in shame.

In 1987, his fame is close to it, it's peak. And Liddy has what would prove to be the only legitimate and verifiable violent encounter of his life. He finally gets into a fight that we can prove happened. It is not a good time for him. And I'm going to quote from an article in the Washington City paper here. The confrontation took place at Liddy's isolated Fort Washington home on Christmas Eve 1987.

According to news reports, Liddy discovered a young couple sitting in a pickup truck on his property armed with a Billy Club. He approached the vehicle and told the male driver to scram. Words were exchanged and the driver attempted to back over Litty. When that failed, the driver whipped the truck into a U-turn and came roaring towards Gordo. Litty stood his ground and was knocked 15 to 20 feet in the air. He suffered a broken arm and rib, a ruptured kidney,

and a torn knee ligament. That is so funny. Like he gets he has one encounter. These guys are just like making out fucking in a pickup truck and he charges at them with a stick thinking like this is skier among the dangerous G Gordon Litty with my Billy Clinton. It just run his ass down, nearly kill him. Not a coward. Yeah. Not a coward. Not good at violence. Now, the article goes on to write, although he was not able to provide the police with either a tag number or description of his assailants, Liddy later began intramating in interviews that mafia friends from his prison days had identified the couple and would take care of them. This never happened.

Liddy is ashamed that he got his ass handed to him in his only real fight, and he had to be like, my pal, if we'll friends we'll take care of him. Yeah, they did. You got run over by some teenagers. Oh my God. Somewhere out there is a hero.

Maybe they're dead by now. It's been a while, but somewhere out there, I still, I hope are two heroes who know like, we hit G Gordon Litty with a truck. Yeah. That's right. If you hit G Gordon Litty with a truck, reach out to us.

Statues over. Statues over. Yeah, exactly. You gotta be fine. I'd argue itself, defense, you know? Come out. We'll put John behind the bastards. If you ran down G. I'd argue itself defense, you know. Come out. We'll put you on behind the bastards. If you ran down G Gordon Litty with your truck and have any evidence to corroborate it.

Come on, come on over folks. Love to talk to you. Fascinating. Yeah. It's interesting to me that the fact that, you know, this is kind of goes to show, despite all these claims he has about some of these fudges he's in and imprisoned and all these times we have to intimidate and scare people down, a lot of media, basically everyone, even in the liberal left-wing media, takes this as red

and assumes that he was, to some extent, a dangerous man. Sure. I don't think there's any evidence of this. And again, we have this one actual piece of evidence of how a fight went? Sure. I don't think there's any evidence of this. And again, we have this one actual piece of evidence of how he, how a fight went for him. And it's a disaster. He nearly dies because he tries to fight a truck with a stick, right? That's the level again. These fascists that can't threat model. You don't, you don't even fight a truck with a gun if you can avoid it. That's not an even fight. You certainly don't fight it with a stick, but G Gordon Litty fucking tries. And all of the fact that he is a liar, the fact that he's so inconsistent, the fact

that like he is exaggerating and puffing up his skills and abilities was all available and easy to prove to any journalist in the 1980s who had access with the library. It was easier for me every time I fact checked him. It was easier for me to do it. Obviously, I've got Google, I've got Wikipedia, all that shit, makes it a lot simpler. But that wasn't an impossible dream for a fucking reporter back in that day. They chose not to fact check, Liddy, because he was popular, writing about his antics meant money. who's not to fact-check Liddy because he was popular, writing about his antics meant money. Perhaps the most upsetting example of this was Connecticut magazine, which paid Liddy to write a column about his time in prison. It actually starts okay, Liddy acknowledges

that he found out having been in prison that the liberals who had complained about the injustice of support and funding for criminal defense resources were right, and that he'd been wrong for ignoring them. But he spends most of the rest of the article specifically trying to argue against gun control by making up conversations murderers had with him where they're like, Oh, I always vote for gun control. I love gun control because I'm a murderer. That's my favorite thing is which these conversations never fucking happened. Yeah, quote, to quote one of the lad, this is Liddy, to quote one of the ladder who raised his right hand in the manner of one taking an oath as he spoke on my mother.

When I go on a piece of work, I don't look to nobody, but God forget mid something goes wrong and I got to do what I got to do. And the suckers got a piece. I mean, it ain't all cut and dried, you know, he can end up whacking me out. I hope they take away all them guns from all them legitimate schmucks. Me, forget about it. I'll always have a pistol when I need one. Yeah. No way anyone ever said that to you. Like, find murderers says all them legitimate schmucks. Get the fuck out of here. Yeah. What a, what a thing to set to put in the mouth of like your vision of a street club. The phrase legitimate schmucks like lacking me out also.

Yeah, what are you? He is weirdly mixing like racist people's idea of like what inner city like, like diction is with like a mob movie from the 60s. Like it's so strange. Yeah, Martin Scorsese was a bigot. Like that's how good fellas would sound. Litty also argues that since criminality

is inherent to some people, programs that rehabilitate or educate them are valueless. And again, he puts words in the mouth of prisoners. He's like, prisoners don't wanna go to school. They don't wanna have any sort of like rehabilitation programs. They just wanna do their time and leave. Um, great guy. In 1991, Liddy got to have a conversation with Jack Anderson.

Now, Jack Anderson was during the period that Nixon was in office, an anti-establishment journalist who did some reporting very damaging to the Nixon administration and earned their iron. Nixon's people authorized a number of dirty tricks against Anderson. This is actually a really interesting story. They like feed him some information to get him to write stories and stuff that'll hurt him. And there's a lot of plotting about like,

what more we could do to stop this guy. Lidian Hunt actually spend their early days as White House plumbers working up various assassination plots. Like they are in the pay of the White House plotting for ways to murder a US journalist. Now, there's a lot of debate as to how much they, whether or not anyone else wanted them doing this, one of the versions of vincis that basically somebody jokes kind of like, yeah,

be good if we could whack, get rid of that guy and Lydia assumes, oh, that's, that's an order from the White House to murder this man. And when his boss is fined out there, like, what the fuck, no, stop. Like we do not, like G Gordon, Lydia, do not assassinate a journalist on behalf of the Nixon White House. That is not your job. There's still a lot of argument as to whether or not

there was any serious planning beyond him and hunt being maniacs together. I don't want to downplay this because this is the fact that there were people in the pay of the white. I was talking about this is a fucking serious thing, right? Anyway, this is an issue later as a celebrity. Liddy talks to Jack Anderson and is like, oh yeah, we were plotting to murder you. And when Anderson is asked, like, how do you feel about the fact that she Gordon Litty and Howard Hunt were plotting to kill you? His response is great given their record. I was in no danger.

The safest place to be is a person who G Gordon Litty wants to kill. I know. I eat the other thing that is pretty clear from this is like, he was like the precursor to it's okay these racist right-wing clowns are buffoons so they're harmless like that's a whole you know the whole Trump like thing and you're like okay yeah yeah I don't know that I think that's really what like and because I what do you say to like this guy's plotting to murder me? Like, you're like, yeah, well, sure. Thank God he was a dipshit, you know, I don't think that's a bad response. You don't think so?

I don't know. I mean, not from the guy targeted, right? Yeah, maybe. I think it's bad that all these other people downplayed him and like wrote these positive articles about it. If you're Anderson in this, just being like, yeah, well, he was moron. I don't know. I don't think as the victim, I think that's not a bad response. I get what you're saying. I just don't want to like, I don't want to like put the broader media's

complicity and lidty on this dude who was like, oh, yeah, sorry. I was trying to say the other one, which is yeah, the media. I mean, like even the letterman thing, right? It's like the same as this Jimmy Fallon with Trump. And ultimately, it's because it's like, yes, they're racist, like, fat, they're racist, fascists, but at least they're harmless. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I get what you're saying. And that is something going on here, you know. Speaking of the early 1990s, you know what really became much more of a problem starting in the early 1990s, the presence of advertising unrestricted ads. Yeah, that really really got a lot worse in the 90s.

This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Robert Evans here, I've had a lot of trouble sleeping off and on over the years, and it's just a difficulty turning my brain off sometimes, and it's something I've gotten some help with in the past via a therapist. If you're ever feeling like your brain is getting in its own way, you might want to try therapy, and better help is a great option for that. If you're thinking of starting therapy, better help is entirely online. It's designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist.

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Starring Natalie Morales of Parks and Recreation and Dead to Me. Am I under arrest? We don't like to use that word. Can I leave of my own free will? Not at this time. So this is a prison then? No, it's a rehabilitation center. Premiering October 19th, ending Halloween. I'm gonna at this time. So this is a prison then? No, it's a rehabilitation center. Premiering October 19th, ending Halloween.

I'm gonna get out. And how may I ask, or are you going to do that? Escape. Listen to 13 days of Halloween on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 Hoggle, 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 in game, it was up in the body of the remaining common., when I would ask her her engagement, was I been invited to remain incompetent? And then I would say, well, who advised you should throw you know, I can't tell you that. In Maryland, if a 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. Ah, we're back. Better than ever. I think. So the early 90s are an era in which the power of talk radio really starts to make itself

undeniable. Rush Limbaugh, who we have discussed in detail in another series on this show, was the avatar of this new wave of media, right? Rush is really like the, the big, he's not the first obvious, I mean, that guys like Father Kaufflin, the thirties and shit, were right wing media radio figures, rushes the first really like guy to figure out in the modern sense, how is talk radio going to revitalize the far right? It should not be surprising then that he played a crucial role in bringing G Gordon Liddy to the airwaves from an article in the right wing paper Washington Examiner, quote,

he was asked to fill in for a vacationing talk show host in the New York area. On the first day, he arrived with a cold, and his voice failed him. Down the hall, conservative host, Rush Limbaugh, had just finished broadcasting his national show, and heard the G-man struggling over the nation's speakers. He didn't know me from Adam, but he came in,

sat down, and carried me for the rest of the program, let he says. On the second day, Media Mogul Mel Carmesison was in his limo, listening to competing radio stations in New York and was wowed by Liddy's blunt approach and told his Washington station, WJFK, to give the former Nixonater an audition, which quickly led to a job in a long career on the radio. When Gordon started at WJFK in 1992, he tried an unusual approach. He read news stories from the conservative press on air.

I just wanted to get the information out there. And it worked. He said an amazement. So that's a very anodyne way of describing his show and what he does. My description to be that Litties' show was one of the most hateful radio programs to ever hit the airwaves.

If you are a real head for extremist politics, you will note that in the early 1990s, when Liddy started, this is a period in which the militia program in this country was supercharged. First by Ruby Ridge, then by Waco, all of this culminates in the Oklahoma city bombings. Liddy leans into the violence of this era because it's anti-government and there's a, and Democrats are the ones in office, right? He makes jokes about like using drawings of the president and the first lady for target practice because he knows that's going to like cause a hubbub.

And then when it, you know, gets angry and the White House makes a statement, you know, he gets to respond to it. It puts his name in the papers. He is very much playing in the same way that like his, his, his, his, or his, the people who follow him will play the same playbook. When he gets questioned about it, he says, I thought, he said, I thought it might improve my aim. It didn't. Having said that, I accept no responsibility for somebody shooting up the White House. Very, very, very blatantly being that kind of guy. Now, this inspires an angry response from the White House. Clinton references Liddy when he complains about loud and angry voices spreading hate on

the airwaves and the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing. While the president denied, he was calling out Liddy in particular the G-man took it personally and he said this the next day on his show is related by the Washington Post. It's the president who lies and is deliberately misrepresenting facts, Liddy declared. It was he, Liddy, who warned Glass Summer about the increasing animosity towards the federal government for taking away our second amendment rights. Now, Liddy denies that his frequent manic warnings that federal agents were coming to confiscate guns had any influence on the intellectual climate that culminated in the bombing of the

Mara building in Oklahoma City. I will say the arguments he makes in this period are more complicated than some of his later takes because when he is attacking the ATF and the FBI, those agencies have a shitload of blood on their hands, right? People should be angry about Waco. They should be angry about Ruby Ridge, you know? Like awful things were done by incompetent and like unaccountable federal agents in both of those cases and in a number of other cases. And Liddy, part of how he builds his following is that like he's not totally wrong when

he says stuff like what I'm about to read you. If they smash in on announced screaming at you and I saw you with lethal force, you have two choices, Liddy said, you can die under their bullets or you can shoot back and try to defend your wife and family. If they're wearing flat jackets, don't shoot them there. Shoot them in the head. So and this is, he also tells if you're not good enough to shoot in the head, shoot them in the groin.

What's interesting here is that like, this is both like, I'm not, I'm not unsympathetic to the idea that if the feds are going to kill you, you know, you go down fighting, right? Not always wrong. This is also terrible advice from like a gun standpoint because a, a flack jacket doesn't stop rifle rounds, not in any way, shape or form. So this wouldn't really matter if you're anyway, whatever. Well, this is a guy that just thinks movie bullet-proof vest exists. Yeah, he's never been in combat.

He doesn't know anything. Realistically, this is also isn't, this gets a lot of people get angry at him for this because they're like, he's telling people to shoot cops. I think he's usable advice. Like any untrained person, if you're like, hey, what should you do if you have to defend yourself against a guy who has armor? Would he like, well, I guess you try to shoot him in the head, right? Duh, like, that's not, we're not talking about like,

that's not secret operator information, only the seals know, right? That's pretty basic shit. I think literally 100% of people could guess that, right? Yeah. He's not walking you through, had a build a trip mine or set up close circuit surveillance cameras on independent powers so you can like see

when the feds are coming and defend yourself. He's being like, you shoot them in the hood if they're wearing armor. Well, fucking duh, you know? Yeah. Well, it's also like, like the, I mean, yeah, the way the FBI birthed this whole movement

because they started doing the shit they've been doing to like people of color for years to white people And all of a sudden the whole right-wing movement is like oh, we massively government now And it's this also like the fact that the media has this like outrage over him saying this feeds into his mystique builds his fan base when like Reality is is he inciting violence against federal agents? I don't know not more than the federal agents were when they did the shit at Waco and realistically, nothing he's telling anyone is creating additional danger.

I don't actually think in this case he really. Now, I think the fact that he is continuing to try to amp people up about, you know, the new world orders coming, your guns are getting stolen, you know, the government's going to put you all in camps. To that extent, yes, he is contributing to a climate of violence that costs a lot of people their lives, but I think that the way the media drills in on this specific statement

about shooting cops in the head, when they attack you is silly. That's not the thing to be angry at here. The thing to be angry at here is the broader climate of paranoia he's stoking. Not the fact that he is, because whenever he, when he was talking about this, when you're saying like, if the feds come for you, who's what you do, he was citing real stories of federal agents busting into people's homes and like killing their pets and shit, which like, we, you should be angry about. Anyway, I think that part of the response to him and

the fact that it, it never, it's always it's same thing with Alex Jones, right? Alex will say something silly about like turning the fucking shit, turning the frogs gay. And that always gets a laugh or he'll talk about cannibalism or he'll make some kind of violent threat. And that'll get in the airwaves and it'll bring more people to him. It'll, he does this very consciously now. He knows if he says something crazy, it'll get covered by a bunch of very lazy media figures who will take it out of

context and they will not report on the act. And in fact, whenever he winds up in actual court, they usually try to give him the benefit of the doubt more than they ought to as opposed to really understanding the contexts of the actual danger of the stuff he is inciting. And the silly stuff is not really part of that. It's just how he advertises himself and you're helping him advertise, right? That's that's kind of how I feel about this shit with Liddy. So because he's not completely in the wrong when he gets angry at the feds here, I want to move ahead, you know, about 15 years to a period in which G Gordon Litty, there's

no benefit of the doubt that you can give the man. This is after 9-11 and, you know, 9-11 didn't make anyone a better person, but G Gordon Litty becomes a full-fledged fucking bigot in public. I think this has always been a part of him, obviously, but the shit he says after 9-11 is pretty vile. And here's one clip from 2010. I've got a Jewish angle. I wish to express this morning since you decided to- This is his co-host. This is for segment of this program, Mr. Liddy.

No, I thought you were going to say I was being casual about your religion. No, no, no, not at all. I never think you're being casual about religion of any kind. Even Islam, I don't think you're being terribly casual about it. No, I'm not casual at all about Islam. I want to go over there and take a take them out. So, that's not, and this I grab these from media matters. Thank you, media matters for collecting this. It's kind of hard with old radio broadcasts otherwise. He's not talking there about like terrorists. He's talking about Muslims period, right? He wants to murder Muslims period, which again,

a lot of guys saying shit like this in the post 9-11 era, but it's important to, especially as goofy as he sounds, listen to what a fucking vile bigot he is when he has a platform of his own where he can say anything. So I want to play you another clip. Here is him talking with a listener in Texas about the border and all of the third worlders who are in his view repopulating the country. And so now we have a huge population, but America is not being repopulated by Americans.

It's being repopulated by people who do not share our values well they don't share our our values are language or our culture or or or anything like that at all that was a book back then written called the population bomb and all the else you know all supposed to start it after because it's going to be so many people right and What we're getting are vast numbers. People see, say, well, Hispanics. All that means is Spanish speakers. The conquistadores who came over from Spain and to south of the border down there in Concordant, you know they were

tall, fair people and there are still some of their descendants down there but the vast majority of merindians, the short and the squat, the l Indians. So that's great. That's great. That's great replacement shit, right? You know, this is the stuff that is now very mainstream. Liddy was one of the first guys who had real Republican party connections, who was deliberately airing and repeatedly talking.

This is more than a decade ago, great replacement narratives on the radio in the post 9-11 era, right? He is much more direct about this than even Limbaugh often was, and that is very much important because that is like the chief Nazi talking point that guys like Stephen Miller have been very, very successful at putting into the mainstream conservatism in this point.

It's the fact that it is now a normal stance for them. Yeah. And yeah, Liddy is one of the guys who helped start that process. So speaking of Liddy being a literal Nazi by now, here is him playing a fucking Nazi documentary about replacement theory on the air during his fucking show. First, we're going to listen just to a chunk of that documentary. Here's a special request. In order for a culture to maintain itself for more than 25 years, there must be a fertility

rate of 2.11 children per family. With anything less, the culture will decline. Historically, no culture has ever reversed a 1.9 fertility rate, a rate of 1.3, impossible to reverse. Because it would take 80 to 100 years to correct itself. And there is no economic model that can sustain the culture during that time. I did my part I had five children. Two sets of parents each have one child. There are half as many children as parents. If those children have one child, then there are one fourth as many grandchildren as grandparents. If only a million babies are born in 2006, it's hard to have two million adults in a

race. So, in 2026. Again, this is all stuff that in part relies on, you don't want anyone new coming in, you want to keep everything white, right? There's plenty of people, no shortage of people, the fact that like, yeah, anyway, this whole demographic decline thing, very much a fucking straight up Nazi argument based on. I want everyone to look like white people that I remember growing up next to as a kid.

The idea, I mean, I know it's just like, they're like shitty rhetoric, but they're like the like aligning culture and race is, you know, clumsy, but I know it works with these people. Yeah, it works with these dummies. It's very bad. This goes on that clip he's playing from that fucking literal just Nazi shit goes on for five more minutes.

And then Litty comes back in and he's got something to say. It's time to wake up. Boy, what we need is... Riddex, I guess. Gee, man. And then there's something you can sprinkle down and they take it back into their... ...followed and the rest of the colony gets... You know, they eat it too.

You're referring to Ambro Amplock, what's the thing? So he's laughing in a grand, fatherly fashion there about using animal poison to kill non-white people. It's also like, listen, every time conservatives complain about like, oh, we never, like, the liberal media won't let our comedy shows be on the air. It's also because this is as good as it, like, you know, gut-filled is the new version of this. And it's like, yeah, the other reason there's never, like, sustained conservative comedy is because it's not funny. Because your only joke is what if we did what the Nazis did, ha ha ha, but I'm not a Nazi, ha ha ha,

but what if we did, like that is the whole joke, that's the whole bit, that's all they have. So Liddy is predictably horrified by the campaign in presidency of Barack Obama. Not a big surprise. The data that is also it's not just 9-11. That is also part of what makes him increasingly open about his just straight up Nazi shit. He states on Twitter, quote, it's a dirty shame. Kids in Kenya were not taught how to throw a baseball like a man in a direct reference to the then growing conspiracy theory about the former president's place of birth. I should have looked up whether or not,

I didn't want to like fact check, like is, because a lot of countries weirdly are into baseball. I don't know if Kenya is or not, because I didn't want to, he was probably worse to just like lend that any sort of credence, but whatever. Wasn't Kenya a British colony that be into cricket? Yeah, they're probably more cricket.

Japan is weirdly into baseball, which is why I say it, right? And the best baseball player in history now, like a Japanese guy. That's Japan, right? Japan's oxophilia. Yeah, you never know when a country's going to be weird. I always, I feel like this happens a couple of times So you'd be like, oh, I wouldn't have picked them as being like super into baseball because it's our worst cultural Export right? Yeah, the most boring thing that America ever gave the world as fucking baseball

Sorry guys Yeah, yeah, yes, oh, yeah great great Britain till the 60s Till the 60s. Yeah, oh, I mean, yeah, they they did like a genocide There the the Mount Mount rebellion, but people concentration camps right in the post would deny nightmare nightmare stuff Doesn't really tie in other than that. I'm sure G Gordon Liddy thinks it was awesome So you know what he's doing here by bringing this up This is like a clear reference to the then growing conspiracy theory that President Obama was secretly born in Kenya, right? Liddy is a full backer of that, along with future President Donald Trump. On an episode of the TV News show

Hardball, he makes even more direct statements on this matter in 2009. This one's something else. This is all available, Gordon. Here it is. This is a picture of the actual birth certificate of the former president. Well, I would like to check it out. The preponderance of the evidence is as follows. You've got a deposition, which is a sworn statement from the step grandmother, who says, I was present and saw him born in Mombasa Kenya. You've got the certificate of live birth that they have here. It's not a birth certificate. It says right on that certificate of live birth. When you claim he was born in the Kenyan slums? You say that as a fact.

No, no hospital in Mombasa. I didn't say Kenyan slum. What's the difference? Chris. Chris. I mean, which hospital in Mombasa? I mean, I've been over there so many times. Where is this all this happened?

You have a whole history of this fellow in Kenya. Do we have any evidence that ever happened? Whatever happened. That he was fell in Kenya. Do we have any evidence that ever happened? Whatever happened. That he was born in Kenya. Yeah, I've got the deposition of the step-grandmother who said she witnessed it. You're witness, you're witness. Now, look, there's no deposition. It doesn't exist. He is lying about having it produced. What he was really, what he like said later is that like, well, we're working on getting it, getting access to it, but I know it exists. It was never real. Like it does not exist. It's just lies. He's just

a liar. In 2009, journalists, Yunali and Laura Ling were arrested by North Korean soldiers while filming a documentary on the China North Korea border. Both women were charged with a legal entry and sentenced to 12 years hard labor. Now, it just so happens that Laura's sister, Lisa Ling, worked on the Oprah Winfrey show, and understandably she used every piece of cloud that she had to try to get the US government to take action on saving her sister. After a weeks-long campaign, the government succeeded in negotiating with North Korea to get the women back. Former President Clinton traveled a Pyongyang to do the handoff in August of 2009 after

both women had been capped for 140 days. This is something Clinton did before. I think he actually goes in and helps with negotiations to free Americans from North Korea. I think there's a couple of situations he does that. And also stuff like this. former presidents in the modern era have often kind of done stuff like this, right? You don't want to have the president do it, whatever, but like there's this understanding

that they are kind of representative, that it is a way that the government cannot maybe directly deal with a country that we have a fraught relationship with, while also still this is a figure of respect, if that's important for your negotiations. Not a really weird thing to do. It's, and also it should be pretty apolitical.

These women, we're not doing anything wrong. This should not reasonably be a thing that anyone has an issue with, right? Someone's got to go get them. Thank God, right? Like, that should be the end of it. G Gordon Litty, when he covers this, decides to spend his time discussing it, making a very racist joke, and we're gonna play that now. All right, ladies and gentlemen, those two young girls who may or may not have straight

into North Korea got arrested. I can't recall anything like Ling Ling and we, we, whatever remain, so. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry and I'm putting all this to you like rapid fire because I want to, I want to, um, inoculate you against thinking G Gordon Liddy is anything but scum, because you can, when you follow his kind of like silly or funnier bits, you can forget that

and this man is a fucking fascist. like he's a terrible person. He should have never been let out of a dark hole in the ground. Don't let's not forget that. That said, we are going to move on now and we are going to play a much more fun video because during you know, Jigwon Litty, he's one of the pioneers of right wing media. And there is, you know, this is evident primarily in his commitment to reaching new levels of shadiness and advertising. While he insulted the normal station sponsors as crass consumerism, he was happy to become a personal pitchman for a whole line of health supplements. He's one of the first of these right wing guys, something

like weight loss and exercise supplements. He really pioneers that. And he is also a pioneer in selling gold. Oh yeah, guys, are you ready to watch a G Gordon Litty gold commercial? I'm excited. Ah, yeah, fuck yes, let's play it. Not you to pick up, Amy. She's still getting ready. Come in.

You're the pick up, Amy. She's still getting ready. Come in. How do you plan on supporting my granddaughter, young man? I'm only 17, sir. What can provide her with the brightest future? A home? Wrong. Goal.

It's never too early or too late to secure your future with gold. Gold is always valuable. Liquid has smarter buyers you might ever make. Who do you trust, son? Uh, Roslyn Capital, that too. Roslyn Capital does more than just so gold. They give you expert advice on how to secure your future. This is so creepy, so fire your mouth where I buy mine.

Roslyn Capital, come to the free guide to owning gold. Ready? Young man, that's the most important thing to remember? To secure my future with gold through Roslyn Capital? No, to make sure Amy's back by 11th. Whole Roslyn Capital until the Gordon Liddy set you. Wow. You know, incredible.

Not to peel back the curtain, but the YouTube clip then did transition into the contemporary version of that bullshit. Yeah, newer goal that's a colloidal silver. Oh yeah, cold colloidal silver. That's same bullshit. Yeah, but isn't it like you eat it or drink it or put it up your butt for health? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's the same like supplement like unusable. I mean, it's not surprising that YouTube is also just the right wing media, but Jesus Christ. Yeah, it is so funny. Probably do another ad-brake. Speaking of supplements, help us supplement our income

by buying these products and services. We love you. What is this place? Wait, why my handcuffed? What am I doing here? 13 days of Halloween, Penance. Season 4 of the award-winning horror fiction podcast presented in immersive 3D audio. Where am I? Why, this is the Pendleton.

All residents, please return to your habitation. Lights up! On your feet! You're new here, so I'll say it once. No talking. Starring Natalie Morales of Parks and Recreation and Dead to Me. Am I under arrest? We don't like to use that word. Can I leave of my own free will? Not at this time.

So this is a prison then? No, it's a rehabilitation center. Premiering October 19thth ending Halloween. I'm gonna get out. And how may I ask or are you going to do that? Escape. Listen to 13 days of Halloween on the I Heart Radio app Apple podcasts over ever you get your podcasts. I noticed Jacob is not in his crib. So I look in and say, as long as 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 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 in game, it was up in the body of the remaining confidence. And then I would say, well, who advised you should throw you know, when I would ask her her engagement, was I been invited to remain in Confident. 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 unrestaurable, 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. People actually take little tastes along the way with their fingers. Oh, they do. Oh no, I'm so sorry. Do you need a minute? This is the only interview where I've needed a spit bucket. I'm so sorry.

We'll tell you about the singer who helped define cool. And the sports world's very first superstar. To call Jim Thorpe the greatest athlete in American history is not a stretch because no athlete before his sinc has done what he did. Listen to Mobituaries with Moroca on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I don't actually love them guys. Don't tell oh my god we've come back from break I didn't mean that. I didn't mean that I didn't mean that I didn't mean that. Oh didn't mean that. I didn't mean that. Oh boy. Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Okay. Ian is going to take a hop off right now to research whether or not it's possible to edit audio.

Well, I guess I guess Andrew, you and I will just power through the rest of this year. Fuck fuck. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. Good thing. Evil Robert left. Yeah. Yeah. It was evil. That's a brilliant, brilliant.. And remember that for next time. Got it. Got it. I got out of the studio. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Evil Roberts left. I would never say anything like that to you. Wonderful people. So despite being an excrucible human being, G Gordon Liddy continued to be in demand among the Hollywood set who were always willing to ignore his bigotry and calls for genocide because he was funny and always good for some buzz. Liddy acted in a number of films.

He is, I think he's the villain in Camp Cucamanga. He's in adventures in spying. He makes appearances on McGiver, Airwolf, Super Wolf Force, and Al Franken's late line today, just a few. He's in a lot of docs too, thought documentaries. Yeah. This is like exhibit A on this bullshit that like the entertainment industry is quote, liberal. Like it's pluralistic because it's profitable, but they fucking the people in charge of this industry at least love a fucking big it. Oh, absolutely. Can't get

enough of them. Put them on a out Franken's show, wild. Sad that he's an air wolf, although I take some comfort in knowing that the helicopter from air wolf was later bought by a pervert who had sex with it. Ah, that makes me feel a lot better. Yeah. So none of this comes close to Littys crowning achievement in Hollywood, his 2006 appearance on Joe Rogan's fear factor, to be specific.

This is celebrity fear factor. And Litty makes his appearance here along a heavy serving of washed up celebrities from most of like the 70s and 80s. His, his chief competition of the episode is leaf Garrett. Does anyone here remember leaf Garrett? No. No. Yeah, that's fine. Because he's not. He

barely, I don't even know that I'd call him a celebrity. He put out some albums in like the 70s. Nobody alive remembers any of them now. Visually, the most fascinating thing about this episode is that everyone else is like from like their 20s or so, 30s to 50, and Lidie is 75 years old. And looks, looks like, I mean, he doesn't have aged badly. He was always in pretty good shape, but looks like he's an elderly man next to everybody, which is interesting. Fascinating mix here. So I'm going to play you his introduction from the start of this episode.

This is when they're all like, everybody's walking on set. I've lived a pretty full competitive life. Age has not prevented me from doing anything so far. And people put me through all kinds of medical tests before you let me on the show. I passed them with the line color. So let's go. Go.

Yeah. The absolute cowardice of chirodaging him with watergate figure. Watergate figure? Yeah. Yeah. It's a side of watergate. Who knows? Could be anyone.

It's like a Hitler head survived. And it's like World War II figure. Yeah. Notable person from a second World War conflict. World War II veteran. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well known Nazi. Yeah.

So the basics of this show are that people are paired up in two teams, all of them celebrities in this instance. And they have to endure a set of physically unpleasant and at least faux dangerous challenges together. The winner gets $50,000. Liddy is paired up with the actress who played Vanessa Huxable from the Cosby show. It's just a wild thing to have happened in the world. Joe Rogan, a very young Joe Rogan, is clearly in awe of Liddy. And he gives, it really tells you a lot about

how much Joe Rogan understands about the world. His every, almost every word of his introduction is wrong. He tells several lies about the man, and Lini does not correct him, just smiles and nods. So here we go. Tampus, you realize who you partnered with? He was second to Jay Edgar Hoover. This guy was in the Korean War.

This is the only cast man we've ever had that's in the Encyclopedia. Yes. Do you see, like, burn your hand with a candle to prove that you could endure pain? Actually, it was a cigarette lighter. I don't know where the candle will be. A cigarette lighter? Yeah, the candle's just an exaggeration.

Hey, the good part about him? Him and me, we both been in jail. Remember the good part about him? I don't feel bad anymore, but I was in jail a lot longer than him. Yeah, how long were you in jail for? Five years. G Gordon, why don't you explain to everybody exactly did you go to gel for? I got nine different felonies.

Let's see, there's perglory all related to water gait. Oh and everything. Yeah, everything related to water gait. Were you guilty? Of course I was guilty. That wasn't guilty enough. I was in detention once. Did you go to detention? See, I used to be in the FBI, so I know his rap sheet.

You know what they got him for? Impersonating a human being? She's making jokes, Joe. This is a teen garden sign film. Everybody laugh and look at how funny this fucking monster is. Also, everything Joe says there is fucking wrong. He was never the second. He was never that high in the FBI.

He was certainly not J Edgar Hoover's second, and he did not participate in any way in the Korean War. He is like a, he is a Korean War era veteran in that he was around then, but it would be like if you had an uncle who spent his two years or whatever in military service like sitting at like fucking cleaning and maintaining vehicles at a fucking truck pool in North Dakota. Yeah. But it was during the Vietnam war. He's a Vietnam era veteran, but that's not he calling him and saying he's a nom vet would be like, well, no, no, he's not. He didn and saying he's a nom vet would be like,

well, no, no, he's not. He didn't ever leave the country. He did not do any any Vietnam stuff. Jiguin Litty was not part of the Korean War. Classic right wing shit, you know? Nothing. Yeah. Classic Joe Rogan's research shit.

So, Joe Rogan was, he was like, he's so excited. He's so excited. He's so, we'll talk about why, because I think it's interesting why I believe Joe Rogan is so into this guy and what it says about Joe and what it says about that kind of dude who make up a significant chunk of the male population, unfortunately, but like, you see how they fall for it, right? Like instantly everyone's on board. Ladies, a fairly charismatic guy, He understands how to present himself around

people. He's good at this. This is a skill, right? That is kind of worth noting when we look at him. I think this episode really does show how savvy Liddy had become by this stage in his life. Well, the other male celebrities are boisterous and kind of shell-vanistic. He is quiet. He's reserved. He feeds into his reputation by being quite saying less is more and he understands that He's also Supportive and kind of fatherly to his young female partner He's like very very nice to her and a way that like a lot of the other men on the show or a lot cruder Which I do find interesting. I just comes from the fact that he is he has these he has these more old-fashioned ideas of like how you should behave

paternalistically. When he wins the first challenge, which is this weird bungee diving game into a pool where you have to grab objects, and it seems to reinforce his reputation as some kind of Superman, considering how much older he is than everybody else. The second challenge is where things get interesting. His partner quits because everyone asks to sit in these tiny diving bell like compartments that are pressurized, and then first it's pumped full of foul smelling, sulfurous odors, so it's like you're trapped in a big ball of farts.

And then it's heated up to an uncomfortable level so that you're sweating, and then they pour insects and stuff in. So you have to deal with being covered in maggots and shit. It's all stuff that's gross and unsettling. It's not really a danger, right? They do shock people with very light cattle prod versions at one point. Everyone else is miserable during this. And complains constantly and is horrified, as things get gross.

Liddy just sits there quietly with like his legs folded and endures the whole thing with this almost beatific smile on his face. Here's the segment where the bug shower begins. I'm running away. I'm running away. I'm running away. I'm running away.

I'm running away. I'm running away. I'm running away. I'm running away. Liddy is just sitting there. Don't have my place on quick. They're just maggots. They're just't quit! They're just maggots! They're just maggots! Don't quit!

I'm all over you! Don't quit! It's not even John! John! I quit! I quit! I'm not! I quit! I quit! I'm not! I quit! I quit! Are you angry with her? No! But I am angry! She blames it on me! Did I quit, Joe?

No, you did not. I'm not blaming it on you. I'm not blaming it. I just screamed because I told her I would scream. Well of course it's natural. Didn't I say in the beginning? Yeah, I said I'm gonna scream. I'm not gonna quit. Tracy, you know G Gordon-Liddy. This is the only G Gordon-Liddy that I'll ever know. Oh, we've done damn it.

I'm really close, so. Wow, unfortunately. I knew it was her eliminated. I knew it wasn't gonna get it to the next chair. Yeah, there's three definitely advanced. Now it's just to see who wins the choppers. Take care guys. Bye. There's two motorcycles for whoever wins this.

Yeah, and Litty wins them, by the way. Shouldn't surprise you if you know anything about him. This is another thing that he is definitely good at. Is endurance, right? Absolutely built for this. There's no skill that is, you don't, he doesn't have to accomplish anything, he doesn't have to like think anything through.

He just has to sit and endure, an experience that he knows is not really dangerous, right? Like, he's just lighting his hand on fire for fun. And everybody already thinks he's a badass and his mind the job is done. Yeah. And everybody already thinks he's a badass. And his mind, the job is done. Yeah. And he's done real prison, right? Like, it's not hard to sit in a diving bell type thing

for a few an hour or two, whatever. Be around some bugs, like, especially when you've had that experience in her life. At one point, leaf Garrett tries to see if you can talk Lydia out of staying in the pod. And Lydia says one of the few honest things he was ever recorded saying. That's something, that a boy. Well, we'll see you at the end, my friend. This was clearly going to be an endurance situation. I can endure anything. After spending 126 days in solitary confinement,

being in a pod was not disturbing to me. Been covered by thousands of cockroaches when I was in a filthy prison, so a few maggots just brushed them away. Yeah. I don't think he's lying there. Obviously he's not lying there. He does well at this. He wins two very ugly motorcycles. I'm gonna guess he sold them, they're hideous.

The final stunt of the day is a driving test with a car on a stunt track. Is there obstacles and stuff? It's like, there'll be some fire and shit. Liddy is supposed to drive around and through the obstacles and he spends a lot of time bragging about his FBI training and action driving, like talking about like, well, I've got FBI training.

I think I know what I'm doing. And then this is the truest G Gordon Liddy. He brags about his FBI driving skills and then gets in the truck and immediately crashes. It's just instantly drives it into a building. And here's that clip. Whoever breaks down the eight obstacles and completes the course, the fastest wins.

And three, two, one, go. He's off. Let's see if that after the afternoon training helps. Long time ago, man. I think he was all faster than him, man. Pick it up to his feet. He's off, hard! Oh, he crashed! Oh, he crashed! Oh, he crashed! 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 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 That's what G-Garden Litties real skills bring to the table.

Half is good at driving as fucking leaf Garrett. Oh, man. That's delightfully weird. Holy shit. It is very weird. And this is the, you know, I don't know. I debated whether or not to go on this little rant afterwards, but I kept thinking about what this means, what Joe's fascination with him

means, and kind of the rest of what I know about Joe Rogan, what he sees as masculinity, as heroism. I've been thinking about all these questions a lot as I've been going through these little episodes. And I keep coming back to, I keep being reminded of and thinking of my grandfather in this, because I think the difference between the two men, as I knew them, says a lot about the difference between particularly these kind of like mainstream conservative ideas about what it means to be a man, what it means to be brave. And these are not

just conservative, these are deeply American ideas, deeply flawed ideas. Versus... You could argue that that is all that's concerned. Same death, right? Yeah. I and I think versus what I would describe as what actually is heroism and bravery, I think is really worth digging into. So if you'll forgive me, I'm going to

talk about my grandpa a little bit here. You've all learned about G Gordon Liddy. My grandfather was I think about 10 years older than him. Unlike Liddy, Liddy even talks about who was very insulated from Gordon Litty. My grandfather was, I think, about 10 years older than him. Unlike Litty, Litty even talks about who was very insulated from the Great Depression. My grandfather was poor. He came from a farming family.

He is able to get a job with the civilian conservation core, which is part of the new deal. FDR had established this organization to hire out of workmen and have them do stuff like, this is where a lot of our parks come from, right? Is the CCC guys build them and stuff. you know, all these young men who didn't have anything else to keep these guys fed, keeps them from starving. My grandpa does this for years.

And the money he gets, you know, every paycheck he would buy a carton of cigarettes and he'd send every dime outside of that back to his family to help keep his brothers and his mom and dad fed. 1939 or so rolls around. He becomes very aware of Hitler and what's happening in Europe. He becomes convinced that the US is going to get into the war. He knows that his brothers will wind up fighting. And as the oldest brother, he thinks that he should join first in order to hopefully try and spare them from some of that. So he joins the military year. So before the US gets involved,

he's one of these guys who I think people kind of naturally wanted to follow. And so he becomes a drill sergeant. He spends most of World War II training other men for combat. And repeatedly he feels that he needs to fight, especially again, one of his brother's, his younger brother, the tallest of the family, winds up in a unit that's going to be seeing heavy combat.

He's going to be part of the Normandy Lannick. So my grandfather pushes and pushes and gets assigned to a unit that's going to be part of the invasion. He gets pulled out of it at the last minute. The story I was always told is that when they were at one of the disembarkation points, it was really chaotic. My grandpa being this kind of drill sergeant, dude, who feels this inherent responsibility towards other people starts going around and dressing everybody's lines, sorting out

their gear, organizing things. He was just kind of that man compulsively. One of the officers running the operation sees him doing this. And it's like, you're not going anywhere, Garland, we need someone like you here. So he is forced to stay back home while his brother and a lot of his friends go over and a lot of them don't come back. His brother gets shot in the head outside of Bastone survives, but it is never really the same after this. And he stays in the army after World War II, he winds up fighting in Korea. He's there.

He was actually, because the unit he was with was stationed normally in Hawaii. He was on his way with my grandma and their kids to go live there. They were moving there, and he gets diverted as they're heading over. My grandma's left alone to take care of the family. He winds up spending however long basically the extent of the Korean war in Korea. He starts off as he's a sergeant, I think maybe a staff sergeant when the war begins. And sergeants, you know, enlisted in officers are two different things. You don't go from enlisted to an officer normally because they're two fundamentally different

career tracks. My grandpa starts the worst of Sargent and insid is a major, which is like a higher up officer. This normally doesn't happen. What occurs during the war is that everyone above him dies. So consistently, that he winds up taking their jobs and he gets given temporary rank that is then later made confirmed as permanent because he's good at it and he is running field hospitals on the strength of an eighth grade education by the time the war ends. Yeah, he won. I think it was either Bronzer or Silver Star. The one thing I know that he really did specifically was this moment where there was a bunch of guys, I think 20 or so US soldiers pinned down and injured underneath this bridge.

And they were trapped. There were two machine gun nests that had direct lines of sight and were just firing directly into these guys with very little cover. They didn't have artillery support on the line. They didn't have air cover. There weren't really assets available in this area of the line of contact to get them out. So my grandpa grabs one of his friends and they drive a Jeep through two machine guns firing at them. The Jeep gets shot full of holes. They both get injured.

And then while still under fire load, he described it as stacking them like firewood, 20 men into the back of this Jeep and then drives them out while getting shot the entire time to rescue them. Warrens, he quits the military eventually and spends the rest of his career. He runs all of the hospitals in Okinawa, Japan for 15 years or so. And these are like triage units and stuff. So a lot of people who are really messed up, wide-edged going there. And again, all of this on like the strength of an eighth grade education.

And the thing, we got to know a couple of the dudes who had served with my grandpa, you know, again, later on when they were all old men, there was one conversation that's really stuck with me, which is one of my got my grandpa's like the guy serving under him was like, you know, Garland, how did you, you know, the thing that was always interested, it was always amazing to me is no matter how bad shit got, you were never scared. And my grandpa's response was, oh, I was shit, my pants the whole time. I just couldn't let any of you know how scared I was, right? And I know that was a long digression.

I apologize, but the thing that makes me think of when I think about Liddy, G Gordon Liddy's entire concept of courage was as an individual doing something dangerous to prove your manhood. And he was psyched to get a chance to go to prison for Richard Nixon, no matter what it cost his family, because it meant he got to prove he wasn't in his mind a coward.

And I contrast that with what my grandpa's life experience tells me he viewed as the meaning of courage of being a man and it was never taking a, it was never throwing himself into danger. It was care. His entire life was an exercise in caring for the people around him and the weight of responsibility. First to his brothers, to his family, to his country, to the world, you know, when he joined

for World War II, to the men around him throughout his period of service. He was never doing anything to be a hero. He was acting consistently and no matter what it cost him to save lives, to protect people. And I think that's the difference between what heroism means to someone who has been through, some of the worst experiences you can see, what bravery means, what doing the right thing is,

versus what these children, and I include Joe Rogan is a mental child. Believe courage is Joe Rogan is so impressed. Well, look at him. He's so tough. You can, he can have bugs poured on him and shit. Fucking Joe wouldn't know courage if it jumped up and bit him in the fucking ass. Courage is taking care of people, even when it means harm and sacrifice on your own behalf. Courage is not sitting in a fucking sphere while people pour bugs on you, and it's not sitting in a prison to protect Dictniksen while your family suffers. Anyway, that's my rant. Yeah.

Well, yeah, it's not just that, and he like doesn't. Yeah, the whole concept of masculinity is like, it's not just that and he like doesn't yeah, the whole concept of masculinity is like It's so sad and oh like we just yeah, didn't need any of this to happen and It the way it harms like it's worst like perpetrators as well is so fucked up We're just like guys none of this none of this is necessary None of this has to be like this. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway. Yeah, right. G Gordon Liddy lived 15 years after Fear Factor. He lives to be 90. He dies in the spring of 2021 in his daughter's house after struggling for several years with Parkinson's, which is also what got my grandfather by the way. He lived long enough to see the rise of Donald Trump and January 6th, although by that

point, he was mostly out of the spotlight. He also lived, interestingly enough, long enough to see one son Raymond Liddy sentenced to five years' probation for storing a cash of child pornography in his core, not oh, so one of the sons he raised is a child porn officiant, not oh, his other son is better. Tom Liddy has a more auspicious career as a lawyer where he represented Merrick Hoppe County during a 2020 lawsuit with the Trump campaign over what it claimed were falsified ballots. Liddy succeeded in getting the case dismissed, which earned him an avalanche of death threats from Trump people. So the Littys contain multitudes.

Although, you know what, the way that they don't is like, you know, they're different. They're just a world where like, that was my job. That's wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I don't think he's a great person. I'm sure he's not a great, I don't know the way. Yeah, I know. Who knows who those are. Maybe he is. I don't know specifically that he isn't either he's a great part. I'm sure he's not a great. I don't know the way. I know. So maybe he is.

I don't know specifically that he isn't either, I guess. Yes. Why am I cast man? I'm spursions. Yeah. Why am I shit talking? Because he can't be, he can't be held responsible for his dad sucking. So yeah, that's me being a little bit of a dick.

I have no reason, I know nothing about him other than this. And that was not a bad thing to do. So there you go. Right. Holy shit. What a fuck it. I'm glad we got to finish the tape. Yeah, I think it was the right call.

Yeah. What a life. What a life. What a weird fucked up. What a weird fucked up. This is a piece of this. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. No, and I guess that's the thing. It's like none of the lessons will ever be learned. Like even this, no one listening to this is, I'm not know what, but you know, they're not susceptible of the same way to whatever the fuck he is going on. He and Joe Rook and half going on.

Anyway, he's got his plug Andrew. Yeah, I mean, you know, you got into the plug, Andrew. Yeah, I mean, you know, you know, is this racist? We're not as well researched, but we're just not as well researched. Kind of the same vibe though. Yeah, so there you go. Yeah. I, I don't know. I'm tired.

We're done. We're going to go live out. We're going to go get into our diving bells and just meditate for a couple of hours. Fill up with farts and just fall in a, yeah, just bother. Good stuff. You know, interesting Coda people might fight when I just not long ago, and you know, when I was living in Portland in 2020 during the riots, big part of my support system was my, my, technically my land lady, you know,

we just kind of lived in adjacent houses, who was a Chinese citizen about my age. And we found out during like one of the early pandemic conversations when we were locked in together that her dad who served in the Chinese military Probably was very close to where my grandpa was during several parts parts of the war One of the things she said was like well, I don't think he was a very good shot. I was like well, I guess I'm lucky Neither of them got the other that would have been real bad But I don't know something hopeful in that right. Yeah, that was a terrible war lot to say about all of the awful things that were done in that war, but yeah. And we wound up hanging out during the COVID year

and supporting each other. That's nice. Yeah. So anyway, there's your moment of hope. Nothing about politics makes sense. Right. Nothing about politics, everybody's history. It's all fucking nuts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shit sense. Right. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no Check us out on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

13 Days of Halloween Penance. Season 4 of the award-winning horror fiction podcast presented in immersive 3D audio. If I am under arrest, you have to tell me what I'm charged with. Starring Natalie Morales of Parks and Recreation and Dead To Me. Please, spend some kind of mistake. I'm not supposed to be here. How do you know? I'm innocent. Are any of us truly innocent? Premiering October 19th, ending Halloween.

Listen to 13 Days of Halloween on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. podcasts.