Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - Making Trouble, Asking Questions

Episode Date: February 22, 2022

When he was 16 your host mistook the Hollywood movie The Manchurian Candidate for real life. This confusion led to decades of trouble. This episode is both an extra for our How to tell the truth about lies miniseries and the official TOE contribution to the 2022 Radiotopia fundraiser.  This year to celebrate our annual fundraiser shows across the network are releasing episodes on the theme “Making Trouble.” You can listen,  learn more and donate to support our work at radiotopia.fm.

You've heard me say it now a million times. The Theory of Everything is a proud founding member of Radiotopia from PRX, home to some of the world's best podcasts. Here's something I only say once a year. The Theory of Everything and Radiotopia need your support. Radiotopia is a network of independent artist-owned podcasts, and it runs on listener donations. Without your support, there is no Theory of Everything. This year, to celebrate our annual fundraiser, we decided to try something a little different. This week, shows across the network are releasing episodes on the theme Making Trouble. You can listen, learn more, and donate to support our work at radiotopia.fm. My first experience with illegal government surveillance in America's secret intelligence agencies

took place when I was 16. I got a letter from the IRS demanding I come in for a meeting to discuss my failure to declare my earnings from five weeks of employment at a Michael's Arts and Crafts Center the previous summer. That summer, I'd just moved into an apartment with my father. The Michael's Arts and Crafts Center was nearby. I went in to buy some wood to build some frames for my records, frames I wanted to hang up on my bedroom wall. That's how I met Crystal.

She found me frozen in the balsa wood aisle and asked me if I needed any help. I did, and I told her everything. I told her about how I didn't have enough money to buy the supplies I needed, and how I couldn't ask my father for help because he was broke, and how I couldn't ask my mother because she'd just abandoned me. Crystal offered me a direct and practical solution. Work here in the afternoons as a stock boy, she said, and then you can get a 30% discount on anything in the store. Crystal was beautiful. She was a radiant and angelic being. Of course I applied for the job, and during my shifts, I followed her around the store like a puppy dog. Crystal was an adult, 19. She lived with her boyfriend in an apartment on Capitol Hill. Her friends were all musicians, artists, college students.

Crystal also put me to work outside of Michael's. I was her beard. You see, she had two boyfriends, the one she lived with and this other guy who worked at a diner in Aurora. After work, she would bring me with her to this diner, and we'd spend hours sitting together in a booth, except for when her boyfriend went on break. Then the two of them would go out to her car. On the last night I worked for Crystal, the boyfriend she lived with showed up at the diner. I tried to tell him that my dad was paying her to help me with my summer school homework, but he ignored me and chased the other boyfriend into the kitchen. Police took the former and paramedics the latter. When we left the diner, Crystal confided that she was too sad to

drive and that it was up to me to get her home to her mom's house in Southmore. Now, I'd never driven a car before. This was my very first time behind a wheel. I delicately worked the pedals and all the knobs as she sobbed into her hands, slumped over in the passenger seat. But I did it. We made it. Crystal quit Michael's the following day. And at this point, I had all the balsa wood I could ever need. So I quit too. All in all, it was five or six weeks of work. But the letter from the IRS was clear. My failure to declare this part-time minimum wage income was a grave violation of the law, and so I reported to the address on the summons.

I can't recall anything specific about the office or the IRS agent, but I do recall the conversation. He wanted to impress upon me the seriousness of my situation. He told me there could be consequences, fines, possibly even jail time. And I definitely remember how the meeting ended. He told me the only thing worse than what I'd just done was library fraud. And then he asked me about a book I'd recently checked out from the library, a book about the CIA's MKUltra program. This IRS agent asked me if the book was for myself or if I'd checked it out at the request of someone else.

I can't recall exactly how I told him that the book was for me, but I can still feel my shame and embarrassment. To be honest though, I haven't thought about this story in decades. I haven't thought about Michaels or Crystal or Balsawood or the IRS, any of it, in decades. It was something Bo asked me when I was sitting with him in his kitchen last month that brought it all back. What first got you interested in the CIA and the FBI, he asked me. It was the Manchurian Candidate. A few weeks before I got that letter from the IRS, I saw the Manchurian Candidate on the screen. Frank Sinatra, who owned the rights to this film, had kept it out of circulation for over 25 years.

But in 1988, he signed off on a re-release. The movie played in art house cinemas all around the country. I saw it at the University Hills Cinema in Denver. And after the screening, I went to the University Hills Library across the street. You see, I thought the movie was based on a true story. That's why I checked out The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, the CIA and Mind Control by John Marks. I thought the movie was based on a true story. But I didn't tell Bo this, just like I didn't tell that IRS agent who asked me why I'd checked out the search for the Manchurian candidate, the CIA, and mind control. It's embarrassing. When you confuse Hollywood fiction with real life, it's embarrassing.

But anyways, I'm getting ahead of myself. I should back up. Beau is a writer, an independent scholar who studies American intelligence agencies like the CIA and the FBI. I first came across Beau while researching Mark Felt, the man who, as Deep Throat, leaked FBI secrets to reporters like Bob Woodward during the Watergate investigation. Bowe wrote about Mark Felt in a book he published in the late aughts, a book about secret counterintelligence programs from the 60s and 70s. In his book, Bowe mentions that he was the first scholar to put in a FOIA request for Mark Felt's complete FBI file after his secret identity was revealed. I wanted to interview Beau for my miniseries about Deep Throat and all the president's men, but when I went looking for him, all I could find was a defunct blog. The final entry was from November 2016. Beau wrote that until further notice, he was marking all of his posts

private. Thanks to the Internet Archive, I was able to read a number of these now hidden blog posts. And in one entry from 2014, Bo discusses his hunt for a book supposedly written by Mark Felt just after retiring from the Bureau, a book called 13 True Stories About the FBI. I fired off an email to the contact address listed on the blog, introducing myself and asking for an interview, but I didn't get a reply. A couple of days later, I sent a follow-up. I told Beau all about this miniseries that I was working on and why I was calling it, how to tell the truth about lies, and why he had to be in it. But again, no response. I shelled out $29.95 for Beau's telephone number and address. When Beau picked up the phone, I identified myself

and said I wanted to talk to him about Mark Felt for my podcast. He immediately hung up. At this point, I should have just dropped it. I didn't need Bo for my miniseries. But I couldn't stop thinking about this mysterious Mark Felt book, 13 True Stories About the FBI. Did it exist? Did Bo have it? Perhaps I should just blame it on the pandemic. It's been so long since I've been obsessed with, well, anything. I couldn't drop it. And so a few weeks ago, I rented a car and drove four hours out to where Bo lives, just south of State College, Pennsylvania. I parked in front of his building, climbed up the stairs to the entrance, and rang the bell.

When Bo came to the door, he was wearing a bath robe, and as I introduced myself, he shook his head in disbelief. I told you, he said, I didn't want to talk to you. No, I replied with a smile, you hung up on me, and I took that as a sign that you wanted to talk to me, but in person. This made him laugh, and he opened the door and gestured for me to follow him inside. There was a pot of hot coffee on a small table in the kitchen. He took out a second mug from the sink. I sat down across from him and just went for it. So, Bo, what do you think Mark Felt put in his book, 13 True Stories About the FBI? I know what's in the book, Bo replied. It's about the lists. When the FBI was created,

Bo continued, it was put in charge of the lists. Lists of people who would need to be arrested should war break out. Lists of people who would need to be arrested should war break out, lists of people who would need to be detained should there be a domestic disturbance, lists of people who would need to be put under surveillance during an emergency, and lists of people who in all situations would need to be disappeared. Over the years, information about these lists has trickled out. We know, for example, that the CIA and the FBI fought bitterly for jurisdiction over these lists, and we know that Nixon himself tried to wrest control of them in the early 70s. But what we still don't know is how these lists were to be maintained and executed.

The key to those questions is Mark Felt, because Mark Felt was the point man for these lists. Even before Hoover died, he was the point man. And this is why I've spent so much time and money searching for his secrets. I submitted my first FOIA request on September 12, 2001, Beau continued. America's universities have a long history of feeding names to the FBI, and I thought it might be a compelling place to start by looking into the history of the school I taught in. At the time, I was an adjunct at a community college in New Jersey, but I was hesitant. Would my FOIA request change my relationship with the state,

my employer? Would the act of requesting secret police files brand me a troublemaker? But 9-11 compelled me to act. As I watched the towers come down on the TV that someone had rolled into the cafeteria with my students, who were mostly immigrants and children of immigrants, I knew it was time. I knew the FBI and the CIA would not be punished for their incompetence and dereliction of duty but instead rewarded with new powers and new mandates. I knew the lists were going to make a glorious comeback. And so I submitted my first FOIA request the following day, Wednesday, 9-12.

And I was right. Before the end of October, before the Patriot Act was even signed into law, we had a number of new students. Students who were obviously secret agents, tasked with the surveillance and infiltration of the school's Muslim population. But what I couldn't see were the undercover moves being made on me. At this moment, a number of my fellow adjuncts were organizing in the hopes of addressing staffing inequities and unfair pay. One of my colleagues asked me to write a letter in support of these efforts, which I did. Soon after, I was called into a meeting with my dean, Who explained to me that the department was moving in a new direction

And that my position was being cut This shocking blow was soon followed by another My girlfriend of four years left me for a man she'd met at the DMV During an extraordinary wait time to renew her license. Years later, using Facebook, I was able to connect this man, who dumped her in less than three months by the way, with the adjunct who asked me to write that letter of support. These two individuals knew each other. Now, on my drive down to see Bo, I had run through a number of possible scenarios as to how our conversation might play out.

And you know what, dear listener? This was not one of them. I had no idea how to respond to this. So I picked up the coffee pot on the table and refilled my mug. Beau continued with his story. I have a very wealthy brother who offered to support me while I worked on my book. Of course, neither of us thought it would take me six years, but the FBI does all it can to impede and delay. FOIA is a time-consuming and expensive habit. But I was persistent, and my brother was patient, and in 2008,

a small independent press accepted my book for publication. But then, the very week my book came out, a new TV show debuted, and one of the main characters on this show shared my name. Not only that, he shared my life story. He was unemployed and anti-technology. His friends made fun of his fears about surveillance and his conspiracy theories. This character was a loser. I went on IMDB and discovered that one of the writers for this show was a guy I went to high school with. He must have thought of me when searching for a name for this character. The other similarities, I concluded, were just coincidental. But then, in the third episode of this show, this guy who has my name has a falling out with his brother over money. And this was exactly what

was going on with me and my brother, who was concerned that I wasn't trying hard enough to find a job now that I'd finished my book. But this show, it completely torpedoed any chance I had of getting a job. There was no way this was a coincidence. This was a direct message. They wanted me to know. They wanted me to know that I was on the list. Again, I had no idea of what to say, but I also had no desire for another cup of coffee. So gently, with more kindness I ever imagined I was capable of, I pointed out to Beau how dangerous of a game it is to blame our misfortunes, our disappointments, our heartbreaks on nefarious secret government agencies. Surely I can't be the first person to say this to you, I added. It's not about me, he replied, shaking his head. This is what everyone

gets wrong about the list. It's never been about who's on the lists. America has always had a parallel society of deep cover agents, assets, and operators, a workforce that expects to be looked after, given meaningful employment, and taken care of. The expansion of the security state after 9-11 heightened these expectations, obligations, and dependencies. Think of it as a secret underground gig economy, where members of this parallel society can easily and efficiently be matched up with targets, potential threats. Without lists, the whole system collapses on itself. I decided to try one last time to steer the conversation back to 13 true stories about the FBI. Okay, Beau, I said. If you've been on the list since 2001, then why would the FBI keep sending you Mark Feltz's FBI files?

It's not like I'm trying to help them, he replied. But no matter how far underground I go, people like you keep turning up on my doorstep. My eyes widened. But don't get upset, he added. Your visit with me isn't going to get you in any more trouble than you're already in and have been in for a very long time. And then, showing his own brand of kindness, Beau offered to help me identify when and how I got on the list. That's when he asked me how I first got interested in American intelligence agencies like the CIA and the FBI. And that's when it all came back.

But like I said earlier, I didn't tell Beau about my encounter with the Manchurian candidate. Because once again, I was embarrassed and ashamed. Once again, I was totally confused over what was true and what was false. What was real and what was fiction. This is also why I've altered most of the details about my encounter with Beau. This episode is called How to Tell the Truth About Lies, Interlude, or Asking Questions. It's the Theory of Everything's contribution to Making Trouble, Radiotopia's 2022 annual network-wide fundraiser. Our work is possible because listeners like you believe in independence,

in excellence, and in pushing creative boundaries. You can donate and learn more at radiotopia.fm. And please check out all the other Making Trouble episodes this week from our friends across the Radiotopia network. Thank you so much for fueling our creativity and being part of this community of listeners. Again, you can learn more and donate at radiotopia.fm. Thank you very much.