Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - How to tell the truth about lies (part ii of ii)

Episode Date: March 10, 2022

We conclude our investigation into Hollywood’s retelling of the secret crimes, conspiracies and lies that rocked America in the first half of the 1970s. Plus a reporter from the Washington Post newsroom who never made it into All the President’s Men yet did more to safeguard the free press and American democracy than Woodstein ever did.

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Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. This installment is called How to Tell the Truth About Lies, Part 2. In the first part of this miniseries, we visited the Washington Post newsroom, the one Robert Redford and Alan Bakula recreated on a studio lot in Hollywood for their 1976 film All the President's Men. The filmmakers famously shipped in trash and paper from the actual newsroom in D.C., all in the name of truth and historical accuracy. But while there is a serious problem with this Hollywood recreation, a glaring omission, the filmmakers never once show us reporter Betty Metzger.

And she was there. In fact, in March 1971, a year before Watergate, she broke a story that the FBI was illegally spying on and harassing thousands of innocent Americans. A story that editor-in-chief Ben Bradley and publisher Kathleen Graham published in spite of grave protests and dire threats from both the Nixon White House and J. Edgar Hoover. Now, Woodward and Bernstein don't mention Betty Metzger or her work in their book either, so I guess it makes sense that Redford and Pakula didn't feel it was important

to include her in their fake newsroom. But Betty Metzger was there. And she did more to safeguard American democracy and the free press than Woodstein ever did. Really, there is no contest. On March 8, 1971, a group calling itself the Citizens Committee to Investigate the FBI broke into the FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania. The files they stole documented covert and illegal FBI operations aimed at civil rights groups and anti-war protesters.

And a few weeks after the break-in, they began mailing these documents to reporters. Betty Metzger was the first journalist to get these documents published. In her 2014 book, The Burglary, Betty Metzger reveals the names of the brave men and women who made up the Citizens Committee to investigate the FBI and their reasons for risking their lives and their liberty. But the burglary goes way beyond the break-in. Betty Metzger digs deep into FBI archives and discovers how and why the Bureau was able to weather the disclosures

and ensuing investigations. She also explains how the FBI is able to use its own intelligence failures, like 9-11, to insulate itself from reform and oversight. Really, The Burglary is one of the most important books in my library. I return to it time and time again. My only quibble is that Betty Metzger's too modest about her own bravery and convictions, and her own important role in the story. Without Betty Metzger, the FBI's secret counterintelligence COINTELPROGRAMS never would have been exposed.

Without Betty Metzger, the FBI Church Committee hearings never would have happened. Today we are here to review the major findings of our full investigation of FBI domestic intelligence, including the COINTEL program and other programs aimed at domestic targets. In November of 1975, at the exact moment Robert Redford and Alan Pakula were wrapping their film in their fake newsroom in Hollywood, Idaho Senator Frank Church went on national TV and forced the FBI to publicly account for its illegal and immoral activities. King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is.

It was the church committee that revealed the suicide letter the FBI sent to Dr. Martin Luther King just before receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. You are done. There is but one way out for you. Now, if you had received such a letter, what would you have thought it meant? I have read that statement. I have heard the conclusions of your staff that it was a suicide. In his testimony, though, FBI Deputy Director James Adams refused to acknowledge the evidence. You are done. There is but one way out for you. What does that mean? I have no idea.

The Church Committee also revealed more than 2,000 FBI COINTELPRO operations aimed at individuals whose only crime was in association with a civil rights, anti-war, or women's liberation cause. Many Americans who were not even suspected of crime were not only spied upon, but they were harassed, they were discredited, and at times, endangered. Nobel Prize winners will always get protection. But Joe Potatoes doesn't. And this committee should focus on him too. During these hearings, Michigan Senator Philip Hart expressed his concern that ordinary Americans,

or Joe Potatoes as he termed them, were even more at risk of being targeted by the FBI. Yes or no, are those actions regarded now by the Bureau as within bounds? The rationale would have been... But again, FBI man James Adams stood firm. He never once conceded that the Bureau's methods and techniques were out of sync with what needed to be done to protect the country from dangerous subversives. taken, even the department concluded, were lawful and legal proper investigative activities. Now, the Church Committee investigated all three of America's intelligence agencies,

and there were shocking revelations about the CIA and the NSA as well, revelations we're going to come back to in a moment. But the FBI crimes that were first exposed by the media burglars in Betty Metzger and the church committee in 1975 were by far the most shocking revelations of them all. These were crimes that went way beyond everything that was revealed in the Watergate investigation. Senator Philip Hart best expressed how utterly mind blowing these revelations were.

I've been told for years by, among others, some of my own family, that this is exactly what the Bureau was doing all the time. And in my great wisdom and high office, I assured them they were on pot. The film All the President's Men was the final installment in director Alan Pakula's so-called Paranoia trilogy. Clute knows about me, doesn't he? Knows what about you? A trilogy that began with the 1971 film Clute, in which a powerful man uses secret recordings and murder to terrorize a sex worker.

This was followed by his 1974 film The Parallax View, in which a reporter discovers a secret agency of psychopathic killers. They're trying to bust him. Actually, there just ain't no busting. Listen, I'm tired of your chicken shit games. I need to know what you know. Okay. Alan Pakula may have directed 1976's All the President's Men,

but it was always producer-star Robert Redford's movie. In fact, both Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein credit Bob Redford with shaping their book before they even wrote it. It was Robert Redford who transformed their Washington Post investigation into secret government conspiracies into a story about how journalists tell the truth. But in order to fully appreciate this narrative turn,

we need to ditch Bakula's paranoia framing. Maybe there's another CIA inside the CIA. We're going to swap out Clute for Three Days of the Condor, the 1975 Sidney Pollack film Robert Redford starred in just before making All the President's Men. This way, we get a contemporaneous Hollywood retelling of the secret crimes, conspiracies, and lies that rocked America in the first half of the 1970s. It's a chronological trilogy of films I call the Cover-Up Trilogy. Ladies and gentlemen, my wife Kit and I would thank you very much for inviting us here today this Independence Day. Independence Day is very meaningful to me because sometimes I've been called too independent

for my own good. Robert Redford says he chose Alan Pakula to direct All the President's Men because of the Parallax View, which came out the summer of Nixon's resignation. It is one of the most terrifying visions of America ever put on film. The movie begins with the assassination of an American senator atop the Space Needle in Seattle. We see two waiters with guns. One falls to his death, and the other slips away in the confusion.

Then the titles roll. Ladies and gentlemen, you've been invited here today for the official announcement. And then we get this amazing slow zoom into a courtroom of judges who share with us their findings from their official investigation. It is the conclusion of this committee that Senator Carroll was assassinated by Thomas Richard Linder. It is our further conclusion that he acted entirely alone. The committee wishes to emphasize that there is no evidence of any wider conspiracy. Three years later, reporter Joe Frady, who's played by Warren Beatty, gets a visit from his ex-girlfriend, a TV journalist who witnessed the assassination.

She tells Joe that a number of other witnesses have recently turned up dead. But Joe doesn't believe her conspiracy theory, until she turns up dead in the morgue. So Joe decides to investigate. He goes undercover and discovers a mysterious organization called the Parallax Corporation, an outfit that uses newspaper advertisements and mail-in psychological tests to locate and hire contract killers and assassins.

Congratulations, Richard. You had some very interesting scores on the first series of tests for Parallax. After sending in a test filled out by an actual sociopath, Joe gets an invitation to visit Parallax HQ. Welcome to the testing room of the Parallax Corporation's Division of Human Engineering. Joe is hooked up to a chair, and he's shown this experimental montage of images, something straight out of the Manchurian Candidate. But the Parallax Corporation doesn't need to brainwash its killers. Money suffices. We're prepared to offer you the most lucrative and rewarding work of your life.

In a way, the Parallax Corporation is a deadlier and more competent iteration of Nixon's plumbers. But 1974 was also the year America learned about the CIA's deadly partnership with the Mafia. So for many viewers, the Parallax Corporation was Hollywood's vision of a secret government-sanctioned murder ink. Thank you. I have... The movie ends with the assassination of a second independent senator. I see him!

And to his horror, Joe discovers that he's not fooled the Parallax Corporation. They have, in fact, fooled him. This time, he's the fall guy. Ladies and gentlemen, you've been invited here today... The credits roll as the camera zooms out on another courtroom. And a judge tells us reporter Joe Frady acted alone. There is no evidence of a conspiracy in the assassination of George Hammond. Those are our findings. Six months after the release of the Parallax View,

Senator Frank Church launched his investigation into America's secret intelligence agencies. The Church Committee investigated, the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA. awesome technology against domestic communications. It was these secret surveillance and data collection programs that frightened Frank Church most. But to his dismay, he discovered that Americans then, as now, had difficulties grasping the dangers these programs posed.

Now, why is this investigation important? I'll tell you why. Here he is on Meet the Press in August of 1975. Please have the book I left on your desk analyzed and on the computer by 4 o'clock. Yes, sir. In September 1975, a month after Frank Church delivered that warning on TV, Hollywood presented audiences with its vision of America's secret intelligence capabilities. It's been translated into a very odd assortment of languages.

Turkish, but not French. In Three Days of the Condor, Robert Redford's Joe Turner reads all the world's books and magazines for the CIA. He's part of a team scanning for potential threats and fresh ideas. His covert unit works out of a townhouse on New York's Upper East Side. One day, when Joe's out getting lunch, the building is attacked. Everyone is murdered.

After discovering the bodies, Joe calls headquarters from a pay phone. This is Joe Turner. Listen, identification? What? I don't... What is your designation? Condor.

Through his research, Joe Turner discovered evidence of a secret CIA unit within the CIA, a unit tasked with gaming out an invasion of the Middle East for oil. That's why his unit was wiped out, and that's why he, too, is now a target. Joe is able to evade his killers and solve the mystery,

thanks to Faye Dunaway, who succumbs to Stockholm Syndrome after he commandeers her apartment. You don't have to help, you know. No, I'll help. I always depend on the old spy fucker. In the novel that the movie's based on, Agent Condor kills the Max von Sydow assassin who's hunting him, proving to his superiors that he has what it takes

to be a field agent in the corporation. An odd resonance with the parallax view. Hey! But this is not how the movie ends. He's with the company. Why? I suspect it was about to become an embarrassment. As you are. In the film, the CIA chooses to protect their secrets

by killing the agents in charge of the conspiracy. And in the final scene, Joe meets with Higgins, his handler in Times Square. Hey, Higgins? Yep. Which way? Joe walks Higgins over to the New York Times building and informs him that he's just told them everything, the whole truth about the CIA's murderous conspiracy. Oh, you. You poor dumb son of a bitch. You've done more damage than you know.

I hope so. Now, listen closely to their final exchange. Hey, Turner. How do you know they'll print it? You can take a walk. But how far if they don't print it? They'll print it. You can take a walk, but how far if they don't print it? They'll print it. How do you know? This question is obviously a setup for Robert Redford's next movie, which followed Three Days of the Condor into theaters a mere six months later. Get out your notebook. There's more.

The final installment in our cover-up trilogy is 1976's All the President's Men. And this is also where we began, in the underground parking garage with reporter Bob Woodward and his anonymous Watergate source, Deep Throat. And as I promised in part one of this miniseries, we're going to give Deep Throat another listen. Only this time, let's focus on what he's telling us. Cover-up had little to do with Watergate. It was mainly to protect the covert operations. It leads everywhere. FBI, CIA, and Justice. It's incredible. Deep Throat is telling us about a conspiracy. A conspiracy that's much bigger than Watergate.

A conspiracy that involves the FBI, CIA, and covert operations. A conspiracy that leads everywhere. Your lies are in danger. Now, this is a revelation straight out of the parallax view. And you know what else these two movies have in common? A fall guy. All the President's Men ends with a series of newspaper headlines And the final one reads, Nixon Resigns

And then we cut to black None of that stuff Deep Throat said about conspiracies ever got printed How do I know? Well, in 1977, a year after the massive critical and box office success of All the President's Men, Carl Bernstein left the Washington Post, and he published a huge expose on the CIA and the media in Rolling Stone. Bernstein revealed that during its investigation, the Church Committee discovered evidence that some of

America's most powerful media organizations regularly worked hand-in-glove with the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Officials from these agencies were able to convince Frank Church and other key members of the committee that a full inquiry or even limited public disclosure of the dimensions of the activities in aid newspapers like the Washington Post and the New York Times provided the nation's intelligence community would do irreparable damage to America's covert capabilities as well as to the reputations of hundreds of publishers, editors, and reporters. 1977 was also the year the CIA created its Office of Public Affairs, an office that promised to be more transparent about the agency's relationship with some of Hollywood's biggest studios, producers, and stars.

You have been listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything. This installment is called How to Tell the Truth About Lies, Part 2. This episode was written and produced by me, Benjamin Walker. You can find more information and links to some of the films and books I talk about in this series at theoryofeverythingpodcast.com. The Theory of Everything is a proud and founding member of Radiotopia from PRX, home to some of the world's best podcasts.

Find them all at radiotopia.fm.