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

Episode Date: October 5, 2023

Robert and Andrew Ti continue their exploration of G. Gordon Liddy, God's perfect fascist, who once blew out his appendix in a sit-up contest.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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The Black Effect podcast network is brought to you by Uber. Earn like a boss at uber.com slash boss. Coolza media. Oh, it's behind the bastards. I hated that so much. Why'd you hate it, so? It was a chill. Let me up.

Say what you will and woke me the fuck up. Some of us, Sophie, are broadcasting professionals, like G-Gordon Litty, and thus have mastered the art of using our voice like an instrument. You know, I'm like like rock mononov, right? But with my instead of whatever rock mononov used, because I don't actually know what that guy did, I have my voice and a microphone, you know?

I'm not even gonna dignify that with a response. You know what, I'm gonna dignify with a response. Andrew Tee! What up! Andrew! Andrew! What's up? Strikes still going on. Although, I guess it's theoretically possible it's over by the time these episodes

drop. Tiny chance it has not, but I, if I'm a bedding man and I very much am, all of my money is going on. Strikes still going on. Hey everybody, Robert here. Obviously, since we recorded this episode, the strike has ended more or less as of about like a week after we recorded this.

So Andrew has sent me all of his money. He is now destitute and living in utter desperation. He does have a go fund me, which you can donate to, but all of the money will go to me per the terms of this bet. Never make a bet on a podcast, folks. Deeply serious stuff. If the strike is over by the time these episodes drop, we will just, we will just unbleep this plug. Hey, everyone Robert here, since the strike is over and we can plug things again, go watch the foundation on that Apple thing. We're torrented it.

Torrented ideally, Apple's got enough money, but it's a really good show. Lot of lee pace. Also speaking of lee pace, watch Halt and Catch Fire, equally good show, which is the show I'm most looking forward to once TV comes back. So speaking of shows I'm looking forward to, you know, Andrew, the last time we had a strike like this, a guy named Donald Trump sold a TV show, a reality show, because those are still allowed and started his rise to power. And I'm kind of planning to do the same thing with my reality show Super Soaker full of piss.

Now the premise of the show for those of you who are new listeners is that I fill the rest of war of a classic Super Soaker and CS 3200. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hi, Capet. That's the one with the back pack. If you remember the one like the rich kid would have. Yeah. Like it's the big one. And I feel that all the way up to the top. And I'm going to promise you all here right now, purely my urine, right? Not a drop of anyone else's. And then drive around, we're a dayo, drive. The Robert promise is at, and not just bullshit,

not like you're going to drink so much that the urine's going to be at a concentration that it's not that bad. This is primo, like you know what's urine urine. Absolutely. Nothing, nothing but red bull and Sapporo beer, you know, the two finest quantities that you can make this out. So once I've loaded this sucker up, we're going to go cruising on rodeo drive, looking for

anyone who seems famous. That was the initial plan. But then I came across a great article about filmmakers who never won the Academy Award for Best Director, Andrew Orson Wells, never got the Academy Award. A Kira Kurosawa never got the best director award. Hitchcock. Kubrick Sergio Leone, Spike Lee, Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, a lot of greats. And that made me think if those guys can fail to get the Oscar for best director, maybe

I can win it. So now Super Soaker, Paul Epis, I'm planning on releasing as a film, you know, a major motion picture. The goal here is that I'm going to track down Martin Scorsese and just blast him right in the mouth with a super soak of a leery, you know. I really think that's, that's the key to building myself a rep in Hollywood. Yeah, the bad boys of documentary, super sog or full of this. Answering, answering the question we all have, what happens if you blast Martin Scorsese in the

mouth with with lukewarm urine, you know? We'll learn. We'll I promise you that. I promise you that he won't get away from us folks. You're not doing any aftermarket mods on this MF. No, no, no, no, this is a classic stock. Cost me a lot of money. Yeah.

So Andrew, when last we left off our hero, the G-man Gordon Litty. He had just started in a very serial killer like fashion, murdering small animals in order to prepare for war, so that he could kill men without thinking. This is honestly, it's worse to be a serial, obviously, to torture animals as a serial killer. But there's something about what he's doing

that's more unsettling. And I think it's partly that it precedes more with someone who's a serial killer that's like, oh, there's something wrong, something's wrong, right? Something's wrong with that person, you know? Yeah. Like that they, because like people don't like most people have like a gut reaction to that.

Yeah. With Litty, what he is doing, this awful thing he's doing, proceeds directly from a very socially reinforced impulse, right? The, the, the, the, like there's nothing better in our society. There's nothing more respected than being a soldier, right? The, the, the, the, the, like, there's nothing better in our society. There's nothing more respected than being a soldier, right? And that's, that's like why he wants to do this. And so, I guess that's why I find it like so off-putting. Obviously, it's off-putting.

He's like killing animals in a fucked up way. It's like serial killer shit, but it doesn't seem like a compulsion. It just seems like, he seems like, I guess his version of masculinity required him to do this. And he is like analytically trying to turn himself into a serial killer. Because that will make him, like he imagines, you know, the military heroes and his family's past and like that he's his mom is telling about, he thinks it will turn him into one.

Right. I guess that's what's on set. That's what's most surprisingly unsettling to me. And this is that like this comes out of his belief that these men he reveres already have this capability. Right. Because he's weak and broken, he has to kill dozens of chickens like in order to gain this capacity for himself, that he thinks that like strong men are born with. That's the thing that's off-putting. Maybe the other thing that's like upsetting is like, it's, you know, like you know he doesn't,

but you almost feel like he could put it together that this is what's wrong with society. But he really has that flip. Like, you know, he almost could be like, the fact that I feel the need to do this means there's something wrong with who I idolize. Yeah. But no.

Yeah. Like he has all the pieces. He has all the pieces of, hey, maybe I can break this cycle. And yet he's like, no, I have to force myself to be part of this cycle. Like he's he's born a little more gentle than the generation before him. And he sees this as such a failing that he has to soak himself in blood to overcome it. And do even more irrational things, Andrew.

Let's get back into it. So I'm ready. Speaking of things that scare G Gordon, Litty, thunderstorms and electricity. He develops kind of a phobia of electricity. So in order to conquer this, he climbs to the top of a power line tower and then crawls out on the arm so that he can grasp

of a wire far enough that his like hair will stand on its end in reaction to the current. Okay, do you know what he is? He's like, if unbreakable was like a comedy, just about the dumbest motherfucker who happens to be invincible and just like, doesn't realize it

and keeps on essentially committing suicide. There's so many little boys with the same thing going on who just got right into a crisp top of power tower. This is actually not enough for him. He feels like this is too tame. So when he gets home, he strips the insulation from a lamp's power cord and then plugs it in and holds it electrocuting himself.

Again, this boy, like seriously, we're joking, like this boy did need medical help, right? This is like a problem. I don't know what you call this. I'm not a diagnostician, but this is a thing that someone needs like treatment for. This is a serious issue. You know what?

Now that, because you put like everything that is the antecedent of this, you're like, I see it so clearly from the war generation and how this, I'm just like, you know, maybe he is clearly an outlier. Now that I see it in many ways, clearly an outlier. And maybe we were really just saved by a full generation of, you know, you know, numerous United States fascists simply because physics works.

Yeah. Yeah. A lot of the other guys like the reason they didn't quite have the critical mass to take over completely is that most of them didn't survive going through what Litty did. Yeah. Having fasc Having fascism, brain, really. That's like, you know, like landing a normative level of survival. Yeah. So when he was an adolescent, his dad coached his little league team one season. And Gordon was so obsessed with impressing him that when he gets hit with the, he gets hit with the face in the ball during a game, and he stops being able to see out of that

eye for a while. But instead of like being like, I have been injured. And like he, he, he does, he pretends nothing has happened and he keeps playing. Now what's interesting to me is that in his autobiography, he does, he, he writes that he recognizes this later as like irrational and dangerous, right? Quote, with a convert zeal, I became contemptuous of anyone who didn't want to play hurt. Having found that fear can be defeated by a head on attack, it never occurred to me that the reluctance of others to play hurt might be based on common sense rather than fear.

So there is a little bit of like, you know what, that was actually kind of bad. I probably shouldn't have been that. Okay, here's what I really want to know now. And I guess this is like almost findable, but not, which is what was the author's draft of this passage? I would love to know. I would love to know, was this like, did the editor be like,

Liddy, you gotta stick something in here so people don't think like. Yeah. You're like, I don't want to see the first draft of this book now. I do't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. you will probably not be surprised to learn that G Gordon Litty was the weird kid at his school. And like all weird kids, he had bullies. As an adult, he wrote that he accepted being bullied as a natural and normal thing, quote, so long as it didn't get out of hand. Now, I don't believe he's telling the truth here, because of what he writes next. I believe that being bullied bothered him more than he would ever admit, which is not,

there's nothing wrong with that. It's a lot of people, like it's bad he writes next. I believe that being bullied bothered him more than he would ever admit, which is not, there's nothing wrong with that. It's a lot of people. It's bad to get bullied. It's a thing that's going to stick with you for a long time. But he could not, because he's this, he becomes this right wing media figure. He can't admit that like, yeah, I got bullied as a kid and like fuck me up, you know, he can't say that, right?

Because they, they, they, they have to be like, no, it's good for kids to get smacked around a little bit by the other kids, you know, make some stronger, right? They need that. Yeah. Yeah. So he has to, because he's cooked up this persona with himself, he's got to, he has to include in his book that he's fine with being victimized to what he calls a reasonable level. But the story he tells next makes it clear like the story he tells next is not the story of a kid who was fine with being a reasonable amount of bullied and like it is the story of a kid who is like pathologically victimized and snaps. So the thing that provokes him into violent revenge, which is the story we're about to tell

is not targeted bullying, which I find interesting. It is he describes this as like at at my school, there's like a hazing tradition, right? When it's a boy's birthday, another group of boys will like surround him and punch him each, well, them will like punch him in the bicep, right? For each year of his age, right? So he get like punched a bunch in the arm, right? And you get punched a bunch like that, you know, it hurts after a while. Quite badly, they call these punches like bunnies, each is delivered with a protruding knuckle under the bicep of the boat receiving it. Oh, this is what I feel a pin on martial arts, some limb destructions.

It's like fucked up. Yeah, it's like, and I know it's a little fucked up. It's like a pretty, I've heard of stuff like this, you know, when I was in played football in fucking middle school, we had like some hazing stuff. That's not wildly different from this. Definitely an unpleasant thing to go through. I think he was really scared of this,

but he describes it as like a serious danger. It was painful and paralyzing, making retaliation impossible. And since he's short, he decides that like, I can't defend myself from this, but it's unacceptable, so I have to turn my body into a trap. Quote, I was approached in the locker room. I removed my suit coat and feigned unawareness until they grabbed my arms.

Then I ripped my arms upward and away. My would-be tormentor screamed as the flesh of their palms and fingers was lacerated. That morning I had taken lengths of adhesive tape and pressed thumb and carpet tacks alternatingly into the sticky sides so that the sharp points stuck out the triceye, the carpet tacks were longer and especially nasty, but they had narrower heads. The thumb tacks with their broad heads added stability under lateral stress. That done, I wrapped the tape around my arms carefully

so I looked like a porcupine with short, very sharp quills. I wore an old white shirt I could throw away and I packed a replacement in my school bag. The device worked well, though there was less blood than I had anticipated. Come on, I shouted after them. Try it again.

Shocking and pain, they would have none of it. Backing away from me with an gradualist stare. Oh my God. Now like, he's like a cartoon hedgehog. Yeah, he is. He is, that is like cartoon. And it's also like, he's like a cartoon hedgehog. Yeah, he is. He is. That is like cartoon. And it's also like, I'm not gonna say it's a like bullying is obviously bad.

What he is described here is like hazing and not like extreme sounding hazing, right? I do think it is a little bit wild to go with like, you know, if this hazing thing were in your birthday, you get punched in the arm, you know, once for every year. And he's like, okay, not the worst thing in the world. I am going to respond to that by taping, put pins to my turn myself and do a head shock. Really? I mean, I guess it's also like the like trap of it.

Yeah, it's so unsettling. Yes. The amount of like labor and forethought. Mm-hmm. I don't know. It's just like, if he was a different guy, you could view this as kind of cool, especially if, and maybe this is a cooler story, right?

Maybe he did get bullied a lot as a kid, and this was like an act of justified revenge, but he doesn't tell us that, right? The way he describes this is like, I was not really bullied. This was a thing that every kid went through and I responded like a maniac. Again, he may be leaving out quite a lot here.

We just don't know, because I have run into other sources from his fucking junior high school or whatever. So I realized we're like 10 pages into G Gordon Litty and not out of his childhood, which has never happened with a subject before. I don't think we've ever spent this much time on a subject's childhood, but like,

there is so much shit in this autobiography. We are going to leave quite a lot out, so I'm gonna try and summarize here some of the last few important facts. So, one of the things G Gordon admits in this is that when he was an adult, his dad, Sylvester came to him and was like, my dad never hugged me, right?

Which is why Sylvester made a serious effort to hug Gordon regularly. This is kind of beautiful actually, like a guy recognizing, especially a guy who was born in the 1800s, right? Probably recognizing like, oh, it was bad that my dad didn't hug me. Well, it seems like this family is introspective.

Right. And like weirdly self-aware. This is a thinking man's reaction to like thinking about his own childhood and like, oh, you know what, I wish my dad had hugged me. That's a thing I'm missing. I am going to make an effort to hug my son regularly, right? Gordon's reaction to it is kind of peculiar. Quote, it always seemed to me that that was just what he was doing, trying to hug me,

wanting to, but not knowing how, as if having never been the object of a fatherly embrace himself, he could not pass on what he had never received. In fairness to my father, I stress that this was a subjective impression. The fact of the matter is that he did hug me often, and it may well have been that myself loathing, born of contempt for my weakness in the face of fear, rendered me unable to recognize genuine, fatherly affection and to receive it when authored. And that's one of the things that makes this guy interesting and kind of unique,

because I can't imagine any of our modern, like right wing media guys admitting to that kind of vulnerability being like, I don't know if my dad didn't know how to hug me because he'd never been hugged or if I was unable to accept his love because I hated myself so deeply. Right. That's that's that's actually a pretty powerful like. Yeah.

Thing to grapple with like for a human being. That's like, like powerful thing to grapple with like for a human being. That's like, it makes you emotional reading it, where you're like, well, that's some real shit, G Gordon Litty, you're a dangerous maniac, but that is a real thing that you've expressed. Well, because it is, it's like all the pieces are there. All the pieces for him to be normal normal are there or like good are there.

But it's just like, what happened, man? Yeah, it is. He is like from a diagnostic standpoint fascinating. Yeah. So the last critical moment in his journey to conquering fear and pain The last critical moment in his journey to conquering fear and pain is what he describes as like a potentially divine migraine attack. He claims that like he's scared of God, he's scared of pain, and then one day he's walking around and he suddenly is just overwhelmed by agony. The way he describes it, it sounds like a migraine, right? And being the Catholic boy that he is at this period, he decides like I will offer up by suffering to souls and purgatory, right? And being the Catholic boy that he is at this period, he decides like, I will offer up by suffering to souls in purgatory, right? Like, since I'm already overwhelmed with

suffering, I'll offer to take on their suffering if they need a break, right? And hopefully they will put in a solid for me to God. And he thinks this works because the pain is followed by rapturous pleasure. And he like passes out, waking up later with no discomfort. He claims, from that day forward, I feared nothing but God, and there would come even a day when I did not fear God, either. Oh boy. There has to be a medical explanation for what this is, right? What the fuck is he describing?

I mean, like, there's stuff like. Migrate into rap for us pleasure to no longer fear in God. I don't know. Like, my best guess is migraine, just because I don't know what else it would be. There's something called exploding head syndrome. I do think that normally, number one, it doesn't quite sound like what that is. And I think that normally occurs, like, kind of when you're on the edge of sleep, but I don't know. It's, it's weird. I don't know what it would be. Yeah. But G Gordon Liddy, you know who? Yeah. Never experiences that is our sources. Oh, yeah.

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.

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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 engagement was I've 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 incompet competent 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. I'm Mo Raka, and I'm excited to announce season 4 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. 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 since is done what he did.

Listen to Mobituaries with Moroca on the I Heart Radio app, radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back how you doing? Sorry. Yeah. That was so wild. What a way to go out to commercial break? Holy shit. What a beautiful way to go out to commercial break. Yeah. So, we're talking G Gordon, the Lidster. As he grew into young adulthood, G Gordon Liddy became increasingly aware of a flaw, and his otherwise perfect mental health. He had an anger management problem. Now, he first noticed this while he was out his uncle Ray when he's a teen, bison his first real gun, terrible mistake.

Oh my God. So, he goes out hunting with this gun, and while he's a teen, by his him is first real gun, terrible mistake. Oh my God. So he goes out hunting with this gun. And while he's out in the woods, someone shoots over his head, right? Now, he describes this as close incoming fire. I am pretty sure he is exaggerating because that's the kind of guy that he is. And this is the closest he ever gets to combat.

That said, you know, I can say a lot of the hunters that I know, especially out in the West, right? This is maybe less common. But like a lot of hunters I know have either headshots come near them or had people shoot over their head. Sometimes it's a thing when you're really out in the boonies, you wind up in somebody's spot and they may do it to try to scare you off.

I've also had family and stuff get like shot up, again, shots over their head and like Oklahoma when they cross into like a pot farm or something, right? Stuff like this happens out in the back country. So maybe this is a true story. Maybe someone was actually shooting at him. Maybe it was some kid who was just firing, but he's, he's response by randomly firing five rounds

just in where he thinks the direction of the shot is. And it horrifies him, right? Because he, he like, again, it's bad. You shouldn't shoot blindly in a direction. Like, you don't know who you'll hit, right? So he, he, he, like, this is what concern, he becomes like frightened that like he has an anger problem and that like it might need him to doing something terrible someday. And he doesn't want to do anything crazy, you know? So he has like, and he admits to being horrified by this. And that's a, it's, if you react in that way, it's a bad way to react. It's reasonable to be like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I did that.

I should really work on myself. I should think about like what led me to reacting that way because I, I can't risk doing this again. So reasonable for him to feel this way. He follows that realization with this unhinged line. It was no good wishing I had more German and fewer Italian jeans. I know perfectly well, but the powerful enough will I could be as ice-cout as any tutin. Now, always, always with the Nazis that cannot help himself. Oh my God. The word ice-cout.

So I see that word in there and I'm like, I wonder if that's some Nazi shit, right? Now, it's just a word. It means ice cold in German, although it's often a colloquial term for cold blooded, right? It literally means like something's ice cold, but like you would describe a cold blooded person as ice cult.

It is though a pretty Nazi thing to say, because I just typed, I just typed ice cult and Hitler in and boy, howdy, immediately speech is starting popping up, right? Probably the most famous use of this term by Hitler was his 1939 address to the Reichstag on the anniversary of coming to power. Quote, as regards national socialist Germany, it is painfully aware of the destiny awaiting. It should fascist Italy be wrestled to the ground by an international agglomeration of forces, irrespective of pretenses. We know these consequences and we shall cold bloodedly look them straight in the eye.

Hitler loved to use this term, and he used the phrase like cold blooded. He liked to describe, you know, the ideal young German man is cold blooded as a hardest steel, as unfeeling, right? Because those are the people who commit genocide best, you know? So, Litty, Litty wound up getting some backblast from that shit. Oh my God. He graduates high school.

World War II, the big dub, dub, dose is over by this point. So tragically, he does not get to go fight. He does note a preference to having been able to fight the Japanese. But... So he gets admitted to Fordham University, which is a very pretty college in New York that was initially at least, I don't know if it still is, but it was run by the Jesuits at this point, right?

Now, the Jesuits are like an order within the Catholic church that is like, you know, they're like the smart guys. They do a lot of the teaching, they do a lot of the school running and shit. There was, you know, they've had a long history, some of which, you know, they had to be kind of like a secret society type deal. He finds the Jisowitz admirable for their intellectual rigor and quality as educators, which is fine. He also finds the admirable because they remind him of the SS. He describes the Ness, the shock troops of the Catholic Church. derives the Ness, the shock troops of the Catholic Church.

Notes that they were suppressed by the Nazis, but also writes, Heinrich Himmler used it as the model for his own core of Uber mentioned, the Schutstoffel, the dread black, uniformed SS, whose hand-picked members were a special oath of loyalty to the Fuhrer, which is like, that's not wrong, but like, that's an ins, that's, why would you bring that up here? That's not relevant.

Like, we don't, we don't need a rant about how cool the SSR when you're talking about your college, unnecessary, G Gordon Liddy. This will be a continuing pattern. He cannot bring up the SS enough, like constantly. He cannot stop specifically. It's not just that he brings them up. It's that whenever he becomes a member or associated

with a new organization, he compares them positively to the SS. Like, so G Gordon had missed the big dub, dub dose. But by the time he got into college, the Korean War had started up, which is so yay. There's a war and they're not Germans. I get to kill a lot better for him. Really lines up great. Yeah. Now I brought this up on the show before, but my grandpa was in that war. He was there basically the entire time it was happening and did not seem to enjoy it. A horrible experience. Terrible time.

Yeah. And basically anyone who went through the Korean War will tell you, fucking nightmare. Like, he don't want it, you don't want it being that war. You don't want to be in most wars. Yeah. Liddy is desperate to see combat though. So he joins the ROTC at Fordham, which unfortunately I mean, he wants to be in the infantry or he wants to be marine or something. He wants

to do something that'll let him kill people. But at Fordham, there ROTC is an anti-aircraft artillery unit. So he doesn't like that because you don't get to actually like generally, you don't get to kill people close up with King anti-T. aircraft artillery, because it's kind of the point. So he decides to do this because it'll at least like set them up to be an officer and his intent is that I'll transfer to infantry or armor later and then I'll get to go have my searing wartime experience that makes me into a man. So when it came time for his formal training and service, Liddy had fallen for a young woman who met most of his weirdo requirements for a wife, but lacked.

Right. He's like, she's almost perfect, but she lacks mathematical ability, right? So he decides he wants his kids to be good at math. So he decides not to ask her for her hand in marriage because she's bad at math and she's too short. He writes that he wanted, quote, height and heavy bone structure not to ask her for her hand in marriage because she's bad at math and she's too short. He writes that he wanted, quote,

height and heavy bone structure so that my children would be physically as well as intellectually powerful. Oh my God. I can't. She could have just become Robert Crumb. Yeah, yeah. Like, it's the tragedy for us and then him in that order is, she's just tragedy for us and then him in that order is, he's just going to take a better path so many times.

So many, nearly anything he would have done would have been better than becoming G Gordon Litty, right? Right. If he had just become a card shark, it would have been a better person. Oh my God. He parts from this mystery woman in the hope that he will find someone he describes as a quote, tall, fair, powerfully built tuton,

whose mind worked like the latest scientific wonder, the electronic computer. I had worked long, hard, painful years to transform myself to make a reality of my genetic potential. Now I believed I had earned the right to seek my mate from among the finest genetic material available. He really was just God's perfect fascist. Like, the good Lord really made it,

brilliant not see with him, yeah. And the answer to all that is like, if you heard him say any of this out loud, you'd be like, yeah, man, and then just like kind of quietly take your beer to the other side of the door. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds good.

Gordon, then just walk away. I know that. I got a go, man. Look, normally I wouldn't say this, but I don't believe we should have sex police. But in this case, it would have been nice if like G Gordon Litty says this to you at a bar and you have someone you can call to be like, we got to make sure this guy doesn't like hook up with anyone ever. Don't let this man have love.

Yeah, he is not allowed. He like actively should not have. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that should have been a social a prior ready for all of us. I don't know. One of his kids goes on to help stop Trump from stealing the election. So that's probably why we shouldn't have sex police.

But that's like the two sides. It's like, yeah, but you know, just because one of his sons sort of became one of the end dominoes, doesn't mean he doesn't anti-watergate. One of the first, yeah. By my math, my mathematics count, there's still like 80% of a water gate

that the Litty descendants need to stop. So yeah. Like, anyway, he goes to Ford Bliss to train with a bunch of other second lieutenants as artillery forward observers. Now, an artillery forward observer, your job is to be much closer. Artillery obviously is pretty far back from the front line.

You know, that's why it, what it's for. The forward observer, your job is to be much closer to the fighting so that you can spot and call and target some stuff to the people shooting the big guns. This is obviously a dangerous job, very important job if you're doing a war. Liddy though, he has to, again, he has, because this is what he almost does, he has to like breathlessly hype up the job and the danger. So he tells us that like life expectancy for the men who do this job is just three minutes, which like, no, Gordon, there is not any job.

Now in certain specific battles, right? You might be able to say like, you know, the life expectancy guy doing this one job and this very specific battle was this long because most of them died, right? If that happens, you could, I guess say that. But that is not a thing that you can say of this job in general.

It is fucking, there are people who do this for fucking years, right? But these kind of claims happen a lot. You'll hear that claims about like the same job and Vietnam, then it has like a 20-minute life expectancy. No, that's not actually how war works. Yeah. But it's also like, yeah, I mean, I guess like, yeah, I guess a guy could die real quick. Yeah, yeah. Sure it happens, but like, no, not generally. Yeah, absolutely not. That's not just like a job. Like it, if they die,

if they just, if you're every three minutes, you're just throwing another new college graduate into the meat grind it for this. How you do basically, so that your three minutes as you get there, you pick up the notebook from the last guy and to the next guy and immediately die. And again, there's like some specific battles where you can say the average life expectancy for a man, you know, manning a flame throw or whatever in this specific engagement, along like this two mile shit, was this long, right? Because most of the guys doing this job died. That kind of shit has happened in war.

That's not what he's talking about. He's just full of shit. Yeah. It's all good. Being full of shit will be a pattern for him. Right. Again, he does not do anything at all interesting in the military. He has a very boring time and service.

So he has to toss in anecdotes like this and other stories of almost seeing danger so that he can, because he can't just be like, I didn't get to do anything cool, right? He has to lie and make shit up. And so you get some very funny stories, because it's always super sad. Like it is depressing, the degree to which this guy

wants to have been, I don't know, my grandpa, right? Right. So near the end of his training, he and some comrades are drinking and they decide, this is his claim. They decide to have a sit-up contest, right? Liddy insists that he wins, but he wakes up in a horrible pain the next day and it becomes clear that he has blown up his appendix doing sit-ups.

And it's, maybe there's a good chance he's lying about this, although if anyone could do, like if anyone could robotically do sit-ups in a friendly competition so much that they nearly kill themselves, it would be G Gordon Liddy. Right, right, right. He has a mental capacity to fucking blow his own body up. Yeah, the way he describes this, everyone's very impressed by how good he is and the next day he wakes up and paint, I kind of suspect like, you know, some other guys are drinking and like, Liddy comes in and he like walks up to them and like, like, hey Gordon, how you

doing, man? And he's like, I'm so pumped up. Can't wait to go die in Korea. And they're like, yeah, man, you want to do like a sit up contest? You can't talk during a sit up contest. Why don't you see, we all just did him. Here's our numbers. Why don't you see how many you you do? Like a sit up contest? You can't talk during a sit up contest. Why don't you see, we all just did them. Here's our numbers. Why don't you see how many you can do?

Yeah. Oh shit, I guess you win, man. I guess we gotta go. Yeah, we got a bounce. Hope your pindix is fine. So because he's blown his pindix out doing sit ups, he gets told his like superiors are like, well yeah, you know, we have to go do surgery on, you know, so you can't finish your training.

He was about to do, you know, this, this like last bit of training that would have like cleared him for a coveted close combat assignment, right? And so he is furious, right? He's about to miss. This was his shot to be a badass, and he's gonna miss it. So after he has his surgery, like his colleagues are doing their last course, which is like a nighttime close combat infiltration course. So Litty describes, while he's still got this open surgical wound, he straps a bunch of belts around it

to protect it. There's on his shirt. And then sneaks into the course around it to protect it. There's a sudden shit. And then sneaks into the course in order to finish it, which is like crawling around in the mud and doing stuff you shouldn't do right after. Aptom and a certain sort of reminds me a lot of Stephen Miller like tried to race against the girls when he was at Santa Monica High, or whatever.

He was like, yeah, better superior to women and that's how funny. So funny. Enter into the fucking like women's 400 meter or whatever the fuck you do. Yeah. God, that's funny. God, that's funny. So his CEO's, he like is like, look guys, I did that, you know, I finished it, you know, can I have my like certificate for finishing it?

And his commanding officers are like, dude, you're not supposed to be here. Like, we told you not to do this because you just had surgery. Like, absolutely not. You are not getting a certificate for this. And this is also why he doesn't go to Korea because if you're the kind of people whose job it is to send people over to do a combat position and you're

Responsible in any way shape or form and you see this guy is like oh this dude Endangers himself constantly and is incapable of following orders and is like nearly got gotten himself killed at home in training Absolutely, we are not putting this man in a combat situation Absolutely. We are not putting this man in a combat situation. This is the last guy you want next to you in a trench. He's a fucking maniac. Yeah. So Litty gets back to New York and he serves in an urban anti-aircraft unit stationed in the city.

Now, as you might guess, being in an anti-aircraft unit in New York City is a do nothing job for fuckers, right? This is like not the job. You give a guy who's like a great warrior. Yeah, right? Yeah, because like again, like the idea is that oh if the Soviets, you know attack will need anti-aircraft But the reason why those guns are there is primarily so that civilians feel protected because at the even at this point everyone knows like, well, you have a war with the Soviets, it's just the end of the world, right? We all just die. Yeah. Yes, guns are not going to help. These are not going to be a real factor in that conflict.

So, Liddy spent the rest of his life ashamed of this and in his autobiography, he invents several very sad moments where he has to threaten people with a gun in order to feel like a big man. And I don't know if I need to say this, but I will, because it's crucial, all of the men that he invents to threaten with a gun at this point in the book are black men.

Sure. Yeah, soldiers, you know, yeah, but yes, that is worth bringing up about one of the least surprising things about this so far, yeah. Perhaps not shocking, yeah. Yes. So the, the, the, just to the story is that in 1954, one of these integrated AA units,

which is like, by integrated, I mean, there were Black and white men serving together, right? Which is starting to happen in this period of time, not kind of, I don't think comprehensively it's starting to happen though. One of these newly integrated units, the black and listed soldiers mutiny against their white officers, Litty and another white officer, a captain are sent in to take over. And he's going to tell a story from this that is quite problematic.

But you know what's not problematic, Andrew? Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Hit me. Ads. Ads would never make up stories about threatening your fellow soldiers with guns, so that people don't think you're less of a man for failing to serve in Korea. Oh my god.

Oh god. I notice 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 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 up in the body of the remaining confidence. 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. I'm Penelope Sferas. 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 Ivers. I just said, okay, let's meet him. And even 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. It was murdered. Peter Ivers was murdered on March 3rd, 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 Acid King on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Hillary Clinton back with a new season of my podcast, You and Me Both. On this show, I'll be talking to people I admire about many things, including one of my favorite subjects, getting things done. We'll hear from folks in positions of power, like Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries, but also writers and actors, community organizers, really anyone who shows up every day and

keeps doing the work. There's so much out there to distract us, but all of my guests bring tremendous passion and commitment, an ability to block out the noise, and I should probably warn you lots of sports metaphors. You stay calm and focused on releasing the ball, getting it to a receiver, and hopefully getting it into the end zone on behalf of the American people. So join me for this conversation and more. Listen to you and me both on the I Heart

Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Anyway, back to the story. So here's Litty telling the tale of he and this other officer going into takeover this unit with primarily black enlisted men. I told the troops that military courtesy and discipline would be enforced impartially, and that certain practices that we understood had been tolerated in the past would not be permitted in the future. Specifically, I said that we had heard that certain individuals had brought liquor on the post, and others had failed to show up for morning roll call formation when the weather was colder wet. There would, I said, be no privileged characters in the battery. Finally, I tapped the leather holster under my left shoulder.

It held personally owned, caliber 38, special Smith and Wesson Revolver. I stared at the assembled men and told them that the first man to raise a bayonet against me would be shot on the spot. Now there's a pretty good chance this is a lie. Some officers and in CEOs and combat units did, and I think maybe still do get to carry their own side arms. Now, I should also note, side arms are basically not, are very extremely rare for a handgun to be used in modern war and even really in Korea, not all that common, because they're

not good weapons, right? A handgun is a good weapon if you're concealing it on your body and you're attacked out in the world, if you are in a battlefield, you would, you would prefer a rifle, right? Like that's why that's why they exist. So they're not, not super common for this to happen and certainly not back home, right? For one thing, a lot of units in situations like this, when you are in a city, when you're like, most of the soldiers are not going to be issued

firearms with live ammunition all the time. Yeah, like at all. Yeah, at all. You want to be careful about that, right? And in fact, he talks later about like one of his soldiers having a weapon that's unloaded because that was the norm, right? So I don't know that I believe he would have been allowed to carry a loaded 38 special to threaten men with. Maybe it's not impossible, but it does seem unlikely based on what I know about, like the standards of the time.

And what was, you know, again, generally when like duty side arms when like officers were allowed to carry duty side arms that were not issued to them, they were like higher ranking too than like a second lieutenant. This seems like something he would have gotten in trouble for is what I'm saying. Another instance that Liddy relates during this time is this very large black soldier who gets arrested and has to be taken to a military jail. Now Liddy is ordered to put together a detail to like put this guy, you know, transfer him over to the facility, but the guy's very big and the other soldiers

are scared of him. And then at like one point when they're trying to take him over, like picks up an axe and threatens them, so Lydia has to pull his gun to threaten this guy. You know, I'll put six bullets in the space of a dime and you're just, you know, like that kind of fucking deal. Just so fucking sad. Like, absolutely a lie and deeply sad. Yeah, it's all so pathetic. Yeah. Based on, again, I grew up not just talking to my, my, my grandpa, by the way, was a, was a, was a medic, right?

Like that was his job. Like that was the thing he did. He kind of later in the war wound up just running field hospitals because everyone who had been an officer ahead of him, he was a sergeant when the war started died. Like that was the shit he did. But like, I read books because I wanted to understand what he'd done. I read books about like the unit that he was with, the fifth RCT, Regimental Combat Team and stuff. And like based on just kind of that general knowledge I have, some stuff I've looked up and conversations with veterans in the modern era, here is how I would characterize Liddy's service. He was an unreliable and kind of dangerously irresponsible person who hurt himself pointlessly in

training. His officers put him in a place where they thought he could not do any harm until his time in the military was up. He, He reports in his book that like he learned later that one of the officers had said he'd never get a combat posting, right? Which I don't doubt. And because he was so ashamed of this, he made up a bunch of stories about threatening men with firearms

so that people reading this book in 1980 would think he'd been a badass. Yeah. That's really sad. Like, that is a profoundly a badass. Yeah. That's really sad. And that is a profoundly sad experience. Yeah. You know what he is? He's basically like a cobra commander.

Just like real sniveling. Like a real sniveling fat guy. Like a snippling little like a worm right? Yeah. Little grub of a man. Oh, God. It's so, it's so bleak. Like this, this, this whole desire, this belief, like the only thing that makes you a man is like being in combat. And then the fact that he's, he's completely failed in that one ambition. And so he's just spent his life lying about being tough

so that people would think he experienced something close to what he would he imagines as this like sacred baptism of fire, which it's not, right? There's certain things that being in that situation teaches you, certain ways in which people who experience that obviously can be hardened in some ways. It can make them tougher in some ways. It also often makes people less capable of dealing with the world, less capable of

survive. Yeah. Right? Like that is why there's so many suicides from guys like, although a lot of suicides, anyway, complicated issue. But he is, he is, he has mythologized this so far past the point of rationality that it is basically a religion to him, right? Like combat is heaven to G Gordon Liddy, and he's, he's permanently locked out of heaven, right? Yeah. He's just spent his entire life in limbo.

And that's, that's going to be really the driving impetus behind everything else he does, behind Watergate too, behind the way he presents himself the reason why you, you know, the shit he would do like sticking his hand over a candle until it burnt him to the fucking bone. Like, he did that kind of shit so that people would not, because he was so deeply insecure about his failure to go.

Yeah, right? He's like a Ben Shapiro actually had a form of courage, right, right? There is that little bit of it, right, where he is willing to damage it. He's like, for all his talk, Ben Shapiro is an out there starting fights with people. Yeah. And at least, G Gordon Litty has has, yeah, the courage of putting his like body on the line. He has a courage of destroying his appendix in a synop contest.

So awesome. That's really cool. Bursting his guts. Do you like sit ups? Yeah. So at age 23, he's in this nowhere career in the Army. He's got no idea what to do of himself. So he decides, you know, to try to figure out

what's next for him, he's gonna go when he's gonna get his IQ tested, right? He's gotta be one of these guys, right? He claims that he gets measured several times, and it's always between 137 to 142, which is a near genius in a lab. Now, we all know IQ's bullshit. That said, given his, he's, he's apparently a pretty competent lawyer for a while and

given like what IQ measures, maybe he did, did, did his well, you know, I, again, I don't particularly value that, but he is possible. Yeah, I think it's probably, it's probably really likely he does well on an IQ test. He's got the kind of mind. Again, as a kid, he's able to make gunpowder and shit. Like, he puts his mind to shit. I would not be surprised, especially if he's studied for the, yeah, he does. Well, more importantly, yeah, he's got guy who thinks IQ tests matter.

Yeah, yeah, it's possible. It doesn't really matter. Yes. But it does matter that he wants us to know this. That does it again. It's another little piece of a Litty puzzle. Now, he had always planned to be a military man. But at this point, it's become clear the military does not want them. So he has lost. And he decides to take an aptitude test from the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation's Human Engineering Laboratory. Johnson O'Connor

was the founder of modern aptitude tests, or at least the top candidate for that. He's one of the guys who invents this as a thing. And the tests this company offers today cost like 600 bucks, and they can last like three days. I haven't found much entry, info suggesting they're actually good for anything.

You get some people saying, it was helpful. You get, I've run into a lot of modern complaints where they're like, yeah, I took the test and then they just, they asked me what I wanted to be and then gave me like high school guidance counselor advice on the thing that I had told them I wanted to be,

which I knew I wanted to be anyway. Yeah, I'm not gonna, I don't know enough about this field to like say this is definitely a con, but it does, yeah. I get that little like tingling on the back of my neck. Maybe it's because I'm not an aptitude test guy. But Liddy, if it is a con, if this was a con, Liddy was a willing mark because he's a gullible narcissist. And if he can take a test that tells him he's amazing, he's got a day, he's got to spend any amount of money. Quote. After three days of testing, I was given an extensive report telling me such things

as that I was cross-dominated, left-eyed, but right-handed, possessed the vocabulary of a vice president of General Motors and was very intelligent. Oh, first off, that really says a lot about the difference in worlds because of someone today was like, you know, I've got the vocabulary of a VP of general motors. I'd go, the guys make dog shit cars. I don't know, man. Yeah. Come back to me when you've got the vocab of a Toyota VP.

But also any corporate vice president like, yeah, right. Like it's like, that's not impressive. They don't use words much, right? Yeah. They're like test makers. You're already lying. Just tell them that. Yeah. Yeah. Who gives a shit? Yeah. Who gives a shit? Like, why do we like, is

that a, was that a thing that like vice presidents of companies were seen as being like great vocabulary havers? Today, they're the guys who are using chat GPT to send their emails because they can't fucking write. Like, anyway, whatever. So he gets advised by this test to become a lawyer. And so he starts law school. He's still like, I think he's in the reserves at this point. So he transfers to the Jag Corp. And he meets a young woman during this period, Francis,

who is the same height as him. And he finds this critical to mention even taller in heels because he definitely has a king here. Quote, thought from being sensitive about it, I enjoyed having on my arm a woman's six feet tall. When I learned that Fran's job at IBM was to receive from brainstorming electronic engineers, short written descriptions of theoretically possible

new kinds of computers for which she would then create a mathematical language and that she did calculus problems for recreation, the way I did crossword puzzles. I knew she was the woman I wanted to bear my children, a tutin' slash kel't of high intelligence, a mathematical mind, physical size, strength and beauty. She had it all.

Oh my God. What a moon man way of talking about that. It's like, ha ha's also like so close. You know what you're like. That's actually pretty admirable. Yeah, and he, I wonder how you feel about this. So his, his, his, again, so they're kind of long distance. He's still doing school.

He's still in the military a little bit. So like, there's this period of time where he's like really insecure that she's going to find someone else because he's not able to be around all the time. So he spins all of his savings on a voice recorder and he sings a bunch of love songs into it. And then he leaves it with her, making her promise to listen to it regularly. Now, we got a three person team here. Quorum, you know, do we, is that sweet? Is that creepy? Where are we landing on that? What?

Cause I find it unsettling. Yeah. It's a no for me, dog. That's a no. That's a big NWO, which is how I spell no, Nubu. So, oh, God. Wild shit. Thank you. I think that is one of those things where like if we liked him, we would find a reason

to be like, that's kind of sweet. Yeah, maybe, yeah, I mean, again, it's okay. But also, no, we wouldn't. It's not that kind of show. When you add it to everything else. If this was a podcast about people who went on to become great blue singers and he was like, so I send you a bunch of like songs that I'd recorded because I knew that would make or you know, fall for me.

That was my best. Oh, okay. That's kind of, that makes sense for the kind of guy you are. I'm just, I'm just the kind of best. I mean from the Barbie movie where all the Ken's sing to Barbie and all the Barbies look like they want to run away. That's G Gordon Litty, baby. He can make a Barbie run away, although it works on this lady.

So again, he clearly, he must have known his target, right? Yeah. They get married. They're married 54 years. Well, sometimes there's not lessons. And look, we can make fun of this, but it does work apparently. For one guy, don't do this.

Don't do this. Don't do this. Don't do this. I mean, today she'll be creeped out that you found like an old school voice recorder. Like, how much money should you spend on the tape recorder? I'm gonna wake up after we release episode and have DMs of people doing this.

If you do that, I will, I will. No, man. I mean, we will. We will, we will launch air strikes. We will send in beef. Robert, Robert, for a sped-a-lot. Yeah. Yeah.

We have, we're part of the nuclear triad now here at Cool Zone Media. Like, we'll do it. I don't give a fuck. So, Lydia also promises that during this period, the military selected him to attend a clan dester in activities training course. And he was instructed there in quote techniques of surreptitious entry. He goes through all, he's like, yeah, they brought me in to do the secret training. I don't know why, but it taught me how to like break into places and like be an expert on like spying on people and I did all of this

But I was told not to mention I'd done it and they didn't issue a certificate of completion So there's no record of me ever going to this class But it definitely happened and that's how I learned all of my great watergate skills And it's again if like he was famously, if he was a guy who like successfully done a bunch of like, you know, fuck job political shit and then got in caught at the end after like this long career of like crazy, I'd be like, I don't know, maybe like there's at least a need to explain how you learned all this. But like, yeah, as we'll talk about, you just were a dumbass.

Like there was a complete cock up. Like at no point did you know what you were doing? You should never have been in that position because you were deeply, deeply, deeply unqualified to be managing something like this. I don't need this explanation to say how you learned this because you don't know anything.

I guess it's just like when you're writing this book, it's just like, that's part of my brand. I'm the P&E guy. So I gotta let people know the Army gave me secret training that there's no after after learning I was a fuck up, they gave me secret break into building's training. Yeah, they didn't. G Gordon. Was it from comic books? It wasn't from a Dick Tracy, a real good, a real juicy, Dick Tracy. Yeah. I don't believe you at all. So once his law school's done and Littie's final obligations to the Army are

through, he applies for and joins the FBI probably with some help from a Zunkal Ray, right? There's probably some nepotism going on here, right? I don't think he gets in on merit, right? So now this is the first part of the narrative where we have outside information about Lydia's life. So we are not as reliant upon like his fucking autobiography here. So we are going to be weighing outside information as we go on pretty heavily against his questionable claims about his early professional life. Now,

Lydia's version of events is very exciting, right? He stationed as a field agent in Indiana and organized crime runs Indiana. And he lit the two of the guys in his field officer, veteran gunfighters. They were Wild West sheriffs who the FBI brought in and made exceptions for because they needed gunfighting trainers. These guys taught me how to be one of the best

gunfighters trainers. These guys taught me how to be one of the best gun fighters in the world. Again, G Gordon Liddy, never in a gun fight. Oh my God. He's like a side character and justified. He's just like a guy that runs off a cliff into like a whole rough and a justified. He's in self-foxeted doing a draw. Now, he goes into one of the things that's funny is to me.

So there's a term, if you're regular listeners will know that I shoot and a firearms collector. If you are someone who does this, there's the term within the gun community called like FUD. And it's like from Elmer FUD. And it's a term for like, weirdos who buy old obsolete firearms, in some cases, ones that are not safe, but often they're just like very bad guns to use to defend yourself. And then we'll spend hours on the internet insisting that like, these are the best guns in the world. And they're, they're always

maniacs. They're always G-Gordon Litty types, right? And always fans of G-Gordon Litty, I should add. So he goes into these loving descriptions about how they see his 38 that he threatened all of those soldiers with. And they're like, no, you gotta get the most this. And he showed me the most powerful gun on the planet, a 357 Magnum. And they let me carry theirs for a while until my wife bought me one for Christmas.

And it was the best gun in the world, the most dangerous weapon ever we create. Dude, calm down. People are getting calm down. First off, one of the things that's funny about this is like not in like I think the 70s, there's going to be a shooting the FBI is involved in that is a disaster, a famous disaster. And part of why is that like most of the FBI agents

are all packing fucking revolvers, which are very outdated in the fucking modern world in a gun fight. So it's very funny to me that he's obsessed with these mighty revolvers in there. Anyway, very weird, weird dude. I think once you'd be impressed that these old sheriffs taught him how to gunfight and again,

oh my god. No evidence he was good in any of this. So, by this point, he'd gotten married to a brilliant tall computer programmer wife. His wife here. And in one passage from his book, he drops casually that before they get married, like, they've been dating, they're kind of engaged, but once he gets hired to the FBI, he's like, well, you can't just marry someone once you're in the FBI. So he illegally uses the FBI's file system to check up on her background and her family

members before proposing. He also does this for their neighbors before he buys a house. I don't think this is legal, although he says everyone at the FBI does it. And in fact, agents were expected to do this to avoid embarrassing the FBI by associating with disreputable people. I actually think he might be telling the truth about that because this is the J.M. your Hoover FBI.

And that's just not like that is the kind of shit they pull. So I will give him that. Yeah, I'll just say, yeah, I think this is like, I've known a couple of people who have had access to perform background checks and they do it pretty casually. Now, we're gonna roll to a stop here because you've gotta go to a baseball game. But I wanna note that like, it's in this part of the book

where he's talking about spying on his wife with the FBI's file system to see if she's good enough to be an FBI man's, like wife. And it's at this point that Liddy gives us yet another baffling reference to Hitler's SS. Quote, as a Donald Hitler was referred to throughout the Third Reich as simply dare fear her. So J. Edgar Hoover was referred to throughout the FBI as the director.

There were only a few of us, 6,000 out of 180 million to stand between our country and those who would destroy it. I was truly convinced we were an elite core. America's protective echelon. It's shit stuff. He's like, we were like America's asses and it doesn't think for a second. Isn't that maybe bad, Gordon? Is that like, is that like maybe a problem with the FBI that like, we were like America's SS and it doesn't think for a second. Isn't that maybe bad, Gordon? Oh my God.

Is that like, is that like maybe a problem with the FBI that like, you're not wrong when you say, I think you were not the only guy in the FBI. You saw them as America's SS, but like, is that maybe a problem, Gordon? Like, and look, should we interrogate this further? All I will just point out is that people today who chastise you because Republicans used to be reasonable people are talking about people that listen to all of this and thought, yes, this is the guy. The guy, again, the man writing this is the dude who came to Richard Millhouse, Nixon,

with a plan to illegally spy on the Democratic party. And Nixon was like, yeah, all right, let's do it. Yeah, hold him in. Get this guy in there. I didn't quite go that way. We'll talk about that. But like basically, right? Like basically, I do love he cannot stop making SS references.

And they're always positive. They're always like, we were like the SS isn't that great? It's very like hilariously Dr. Strangelove in a way that like Guess this guy is eternal. Guess this guy to dude always been around and maybe always will be shit. Yeah. Yeah always been around and maybe always will be shit. Yeah. Yeah. Endless, endless forever. Yeah. That is what have like unsettling things is trying to be like, well, how did he become this way? Because again, and you know, we're missing a lot. He probably leaves out a lot. Maybe his parents were like fucked up in ways that we don't get in this. the crazy thing is even the part he put out is insane. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's just like how how does how what is what made you I guess we know America made you right?

Like all of this does make a degree of sense when you think about like this, the this degree of fetishization of the armed forces this idea. Like there's something religiously sacred about the experience of combat. It makes you a better man. You know, all of this kind of like, shit, our weird gun coat worship stuff, right? All of this is G-Gore. So I don't know, I don't know why I'm saying I don't get this.

He makes complete sense, right? I'm an idiot. He totally makes sense. Yeah, he makes sense, but it's still, you're just like, it can't be like this. Really, can it? Yeah. And the answer is yes, but she's a you're just like, it can't be like this really, can it? Yeah. And the answer is yes, but she's across.

Yes, yes, for sure. I think part of why we're like, there is this like confusion is he is so honestly the man even guys who do suck like Crowder and Ben Shapiro, they're pretending to be him, right? Right, right. When you see him smoking a cigar and you can tell they hate it, like they hold a gun like somebody who's never fired again before. It's like, Oh, this is like you're putting on G Gordon Litty. He was like, he was like lying and like making himself up into something, but like he was legitimately this kind of maniac. Right. Yes. Like, I guess there's a degree of honesty. There's a kind of honesty in his lies, even.

Right. Well, it's like that different have like Ben Shapiro's like fake like holding a bunch of two by fours from his truck and his truck bed that's never been used. G Gordon ladies has been used. It's just been incompetently used. Yeah. To the point where the people around him were like actually gee, I got this. I'll I don't think about it.

He's also full of shit about like being dangerous and being an a hard man. But he's trying. He's such a way that you know he spends his nights weeping over the fact that he didn't make it to Korea. And practicing. And practicing. He's been, you know that he did spend thousands of hours

drawing that fucking cowboy gun like to feel like a big man, you know? Just feel like I could be, you know, if it just came, you know, the right things happened, I could really be a fucking old West Sheriff. Well, he did it the hard way. Everything he did, you could tell he really worked. Yeah, like, he worked it being,

he didn't just buy the thing, he like worked at being a maniac. He was the thing. Good for you, G Gordon Liddy. I guess for you. And for us. And for us. I don't know what else to say about you. So I'm going to let you go. Andrew T. You got anything to plug first. Oh, you know, podcast, you know, this racist, we're still on strike almost certainly. You never know, I suppose. And so come support us if you've found this, my side of things enjoyable. Yeah.

So find that out, check that out, support the strike, support Supersoaker full of piss. By, you know, peeing in a Supersoaker and just mail it somewhere, I don't know where, I don't care where, send a piss loaded supersoaker to a stranger, you know? Just send it to the, you know, Warner Brothers corporate offices. Right. That's fine. That's what it is. Yeah, that is what it is. Probably not illegal on our part. We'll check in with that. Asterisk, yeah, check your local laws. Uh-huh.

Behind the bastards is the production of Cool Zone Media. From more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, CoolZoneMedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, 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.

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