Fourth Reich Archaeology - #117 - She Harvey Oswald 10: LA Woman (Side B)

Episode Date: October 9, 2026

We are back to our series-within-a-series, She Harvey Oswald (a Jerryworld Series). And boy are we excited. When we last left her, Sara Jane Moore had dumped husband #2, Sydney Manning, and sent her three kids from her California home back to her parents in West Virginia. This week we move on to husband #3, still in Southern California–indeed, in Hollywood!--the RKO Pictures sound wizard, 10-time Oscar nominee, John O. Aalberg. In Side A, we gave the “official narrative” of Sara’s and “Big John’s” romance, drawing largely on Geri Spieler’s biography of Moore. Now it’s time to dig beneath the surface…John Aalberg was a veteran of WWI and lifelong mega-patriot. He perfected a recording technology in 1928 that enabled precise and easy cutting of sound in films. One of the technologies that bridged the gap to the widespread adoption of talking pictures. But moviemakers aren’t the only people interested in recording and editing technology: Aalberg was recruited to the Army to assist its pictographic works during WWII (in fact, starting even before Pearl Harbor by several months). And he remained involved in the armed services during the Cold War as well, besides busying himself as a reserve member of the LA County Sherriff’s Office as a literal “posse” member.It’s a great tale and we think you’ll like it. It’s got material and connections that have really not been reported before, and we thank you ever so kindly for supporting our work! We couldn’t do it without you.Email: [e-mail]: @fourthreichpod “I Put a Spell on You” performed by Angelina Jordan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXOPpwucDYw&list=RDgXOPpwucDYw&start_radio=1

The following is excerpted from Walt Disney's 1983 animated short, Education for Death, produced and distributed by RKO Radio Pictures, Incorporated. What makes a Nazi? How does he get that way? Well, let's look into the process. To begin with, Nazi control over a German child starts as soon as it's born. A young German couple has come to register the birth of their son. Heil Hitler. Those documents are birth certificates, all the way back to their great-grandparents,

proving, of course, that they are pure Aryan. Now let's see what happens to one of Hitler's children. Kindergarten and little Hans learns the fairy tales of the new order. Remember the story of the sleeping beauty? Hans was taught that the wicked witch was democracy and sleeping beauty who can she be Here comes the prince The prince is victorious

Democracy has fled The prince breaks the magic spell with a kiss The beautiful princess is Germany Brave handsome knight You know who he is And now, kids, will our natural schoolteacher is about to give the class

a little lesson in natural history. Now let's see what they'll learn from this little lesson. The world belongs to the strong and to the brutal. The hase is a coward and deserves to die. The rabbit is a coward and deserves to die. They spit on the rabbit.

Nice kids. This lesson is the basis for the Nazi creed For Germany will likewise destroy all weak and cowardly nations. Germans are a super race. All of us will be slaves. We are unenevert heflish. Germans are unconquerable. They fear no one.

Listen to the fanatic cry. Hans has come around to the correct Nazi way of thinking. Marching and hiling. Hiling and marching, Hans grows up. In him is planted no seed of laughter, hope, tolerance, or mercy. For him only hiling and marching, marching and hiling, as the years grind on. Manhoard finds him still hiling and marching.

But the grim years of regimentation have done their work. Now he's a good Nazi. He sees no more than the party wants him to. He says nothing. what the party wants him to say and he does nothing but what the party wants him to do and so he marches on with his millions of comrades trampling on the rights of others for now his education is complete his education for death nice going hey adolph the west is called is not something that's just confined to england or france or the united states every nation

In every region, now has a decision to make. So it's one huge complex or combine. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. And this international power structure is used to suppress the masses of dark-skinned people all over the world and exploit them of their natural resources. Evidence of conspiracy, foreign or domestic. The Warren Commission of Science. I'll never apologize for the United States of America.

Ever. I don't care what the facts are. In 1945, we began to require information which showed that there were two wars going on. His job, he said, was to protect the Western way of life. The primitive simplicity of their minds vendors the more easy victims of a big lie than a small one. For example, we're in the CIA.

Now, he has a mom. It's been so long as I, our freedom could never be secure. It usually takes a national crisis. Freedom can never be secure. Pearl Harbor. A lot of killers. We've got a lot of killers. Why you think our country's so innocent?

This is the United. This is Fourth Reich archaeology. I'm Don. Dick is in Las Vegas at the Desert Inn, specifically on the 9th, floor penthouse suite once occupied by Howard Hughes, peeling the paint off the walls and lifting the floorboards to discover the notorious cranks, unpublished, psychotic ramblings set on paper. Well, listener, we are back for Side B of Shee Harvey Oswald Episode 9. That's right. This is, I believe,

the fourth or fifth episode of the series that we've done on Sarah Jane Moore, and the first side of this episode, if you're following on the free feed, really was just a big setup for what we're about to get into inside B. Before I tee up the specifics of the content that's about to head your way, I do want to send you our sincerest thanks on behalf of Dick and myself for tuning in, for subscribing to liking, rating, and reviewing the pod on your podcast app of choice, and for spreading the word in your in real life, social, familial, and political circles. because after all, that is what we depend on to grow this humble little podcast of ours. We can always be reached at forthrightepod at gmail.com

or on Twitter and Instagram at forthrightepod. We're so grateful for all of you, and we hope that we are putting down something that is both interesting and useful to you. I humbly submit that this particular series is both of those things. We are blazing new trails. We are digging new holes. We are covering new territory with this excavation of Sarah Jane Moore, the woman who was just six inches away from being just one of a handful of successful presidential assassins.

Of course, she was thwarted in her effort. and is therefore largely forgotten, both, I think, for that reason and the fact that she's a woman and is not so interesting a case study as household names like John Hinkley Jr., another unsuccessful presidential assassin, who is nonetheless, I think much more famous, much more infamous than Sarah Jane Moore. But I believe that what we have laid out so far and what we are are going to continue laying out about Sarah Jane Moore makes her at least as interesting a case study, if not more so, than the namesake of this series, Lee Harvey Oswald, because Sarah Jane Moore, as we've been through exhaustively, I won't do the full recap, you can hear that at the

beginning of Side A, but the very short version is that this is a person who was a life-long subject of the military industrial complex, whether as a teenage recruit to the Civil Air Patrol, as a young adult member of the Women's Army Corps, the Wax, or as a spouse, a military spouse of an Army psychiatrist, psychometrist and psychologist Sidney Manning, or as the spouse of the subject matter of this episode, an army propagandist. That's right, her third husband, John Alberg, the big Hollywood producer and sound guy for RKO pictures spanning many decades and accruing numerous Oscar nominations. This is a big name guy, a guy who Sarah Jane was all too eager to hitch her wagon to to boast about the famous Hollywood escapades that she would have

during this relationship. And we pretty much laid out the official narrative of that relationship inside A. We talked about how Jerry Spiller described this relationship, very light on details, and we started just barely to scratch the surface of that official narrative. And, inside B here we're going to really tear up the superficial official narrative and advance the case that we're making here about Sarah Jane Moore's role as a potential operative for or at least a object of experimentation by the military industrial complex, the deep state, the intent, the intelligence agencies. Now, we teased inside A at some explosive revelations on this score that Sarah Jane let fly in her 1979 prison interview. Listener, I want you to know that's not coming

your way yet inside B. We have a lot to do to dismantle, debunk, and supplement the official narrative here and that's going to take us a little bit of time is going to take us another episode after we get through this one but it's all leading up to this big picture that we're painting so we need you to bear with us because there is some very interesting stuff including we're going to read into the record some obscure newspaper articles about john allberg from way back in the day and we're going to paint a vivid picture of Hollywood during World War II the same milieu that, you know, gets into this sort of anti-fascist, anti-Nazi frenzy that you heard some of in the cold open to this episode coming from no less a figure than Walt Disney,

whose sympathies for the Nazis are now well known. Well, Hollywood transformed from this sort of haven of anti-Nazi sentiment, and you know that wherever you are really serious about opposing the Nazis, chances are you're going to develop some sympathies for the Nazis' arch-rivals, arch-enemies, the object of the Nazis' hatred and scorn. Not talking about just the Jews here, I'm talking about the communists, whom, of course, the Nazis considered to be a Jewish political formation, right? Judeo-Bulshevism was the watchword of the time, and the Nazis were really picking on the Jews,

at least in part, as a sort of racialized stand-in for communists, communism and collectivist ideology more broadly. and Hollywood goes from opposing the Nazis, as was the United States line during the war, to purging its ranks of communists and Nazi endeavor to say the least, right? Personified by that hysterical authoritarian Joseph McCarthy. So I think this once again, the story of Sarah Jane Moore was, The story of John Allberg and the story of their relationship to one another gives us just a beautiful vista, a very nice point of view to tell not only the story of their lives, but the story of the transformation of Hollywood of American organized propaganda from this very anti-Nazi organ of communication into essentially a,

hellhole for the true anti-Nazis, i.e. the communists among the ranks of Hollywood producers. And so that's part of the story, right? The rise of these personalities like Howard Hughes, who will get to in the next episode, is part of the story. The transition from a sort of unified, vertically integrated model of Hollywood movie production and distribution into the breaking up of those big classic studios and now it's timely I think because we're seeing that pendulum of consolidation swing back in the opposite direction of course with the sky dance Warner Brothers merger sky dance Paramount Warner Brothers whatever the fuck they're calling that monstrosity of corporate consolidation.

Long story short, listener, Fourth Reich archaeology is every single week, no matter the subject matter, bringing you the true story of American history and the true story of how we got into the fascist hellscape we inhabit today. and each one of these component parts that we dig out from underneath the veneer of official occlusion that has been caped upon that real history is a revelation of sorts.

Or that's the goal, at least, and we hope that you will join us for this dig. So without any further ado, let's get. take your name. My husband was in the film industry and I think we believe it at that. And you would be cool. My. What does that get us? A discontented, lazy rabble instead of a thrifty working class.

And all because a few starry eye dreamers like Peter Bailey, stir them up and fill a head a lot of impossible ideas. It takes a working man to save $5,000. They do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms in a bath? Bye. So people were human beings to him, but to you a warped, frustrated old man, they're cattle. Okay, so why don't we start?

Let's start with the timeline, the facts, and the timeline. So maybe you could lead us through this? Sure, yeah. So as you will have heard, right, Jerry Speeler focuses on the fact that John and Sarah Jane were married in June of 1965 and doesn't talk about how long they were together before that. She doesn't even try to estimate how long they were together. What we do know is that nine years would have passed approximately between the time that Sarah Jane got rid of her husband and kids and her marriage to John Allberg. And Jerry sort of implies that there was a short courtship because at some point she states that

Sarah Jane was in her mid-30s when she met Big John. But she wouldn't have been in her mid-30s until the mid-60s. And that would be a very short period of courtship for them to have gone on all these trips. together for her to have done the whole coquettish routine, etc., etc., prior to tying the knot. And there's a lot of good reason to think that, in fact, Sarah Jane and Big John started dating much earlier than the mid-60s. And this will become important for reasons that we'll get to. But first, as we are lawyers here on the podcast, you know, we love to provide evidence for our claims. So here's the evidence.

One, Sarah Jane herself contradicts the notion of a short courtship. She does that at least in two places. In her 1979 prison interview, first, she says that she lived with Big John for nine years and was made. married to him for a longer time. And I don't know if that means that she was married to him past the time that they split up. Presumably that's what she was referring to. But what she says is that she lived with him in the 50s and that she separated from him in the 60s. So already, you know, we're talking about at least five years before they got together.

and the number she put on it was nine years. Again, now fast forward some 40 years approximately, to the filming of the 2025 documentary Suburban Fury in that film, well interviewed, she says, Your husband was in the film industry? Who was he? My husband was in the film industry, and I think we will leave it at that. You know, we'd been married for several years. We'd bought a house.

And eight or nine years later, I got pregnant. So there again, she puts this number of eight to nine years. He did not want a child. He was too old. His life was set. I wanted the child. The man you love, you want his child. He kept talking about where you can hide out

the valley as well as anywhere else. And I said, hide out. Why would I be hiding out? I'm not hiding out. He said, in common with many people in the motion picture industry, you work to keep your private life private. And the minute he said, well, if you leave, where are you going? And I said, San Francisco. So really, what that leads us to believe is that they got together in the 1950s. and that would mean that they got together quite shortly after her divorce from Sidney Manning. And probably she couldn't have completed a college four-year degree in that time, but we don't really know that she ever did complete a four-year college degree. And maybe we'll never know if she did.

But it's possible she was working while studying. You know, there's all kinds of different scenarios that you could imagine that would have enabled her to get together with Big John in the 50s. Certainly, they were together by 1964 because that is when she volunteered for the campaign of George Murphy. And according to Sarah Jane, it was John Alberg who knew George Murphy. George Murphy was one of these showbiz Hollywood guys turned politician, kind of a proto-Ragan figure in some ways. Like he also had been the president of the Screen Actors Guild prior to running for office as a Republican. So, you know, he was a Hollywood contact of John Allberg, and it was Alberg who introduced her and got her the job on the campaign in 64. So I think long story short here, they were dating.

They were together in the late 50s, and they spent several years together before this marriage proposal and pregnancy. Yeah, I got to say, I think some of this sort of the implication behind Jerry's take, I think has to do a little bit. with her desire to sort of dunk on Sarah Jane to make her seem like this woman who was constantly getting divorced, right? Like, yeah, she had a lot of marriages and a lot of, you know, many divorces. But if you have Jerry's point of view, it's like she met a guy, she got married to him. No sooner that she was married to him, she was pregnant. And no sooner that she was pregnant, she got divorced. And that really isn't the story here, especially with John. So what we can be fairly sure of is that Sarah Jane did have looks.

You know, she was conventionally attractive. And to the extent she had any political leaning at all, that political leaning was consistent with her patriotic past. And she was very enthusiastic about supporting a Republican candidate like George Murphy. and it's I mean this is all still it's pretty surface level stuff and we told you it's going to get weirder and weirder and I think now is when it starts to get weirder and weirder yeah so that's kind of our surface level you know we've we've dug out like one layer of substrate so we're we're taking notes we're mapping the dig site but what we haven't really looked into yet is the background of big john something that really doesn't figure in jerry speller's book at all of course

he's not the subject of her book but he is um more than a short-term dalliance of sarah jane he is a long-term relationship. He is her ticket to Hollywood High Society, and he is a more complex figure than meets the eye, right? He's not just a nerdy, old sound guy. So let's get into that now. The first point that Jerry leaves out is besides being a many times Oscar nominee, Big John was a real engineer. Like he had real chops in the industry. He's not just using the tools. He is developing the tools.

And in that capacity, he, in 1928, had, this is before he moved over to RKO. I think this was actually, as we'll get into when we discuss RKO, around the time that RKO as an entity was sort of being formed by Joseph P. Kennedy and his business associates. In 1928, we found a newspaper article showing that John Alberg, as an engineer with RCA photophone, at Pathet Studios, where John Allberg was working at the time. This is, you know, we're talking he's 31 years old, so kind of in his physical prime here. He perfected a real earth-changing invention that would not only have major applications in the

talky pictures, but also would be of great use in the collection and manipulation of intelligence. So I'll just read into the record this little article blurb from the Washington Evening Star dated November 25th, 1928. John Alberg, engineer with the RCA photophone at the Pathay Studios, has perfected a sound attachment for the portable moviola, which is now being used for the cutting and editing of all Pathay talking pictures. The complete of this instrument overcomes one of the biggest difficulties in the preparation of dialogue and sound screen attractions, making it possible for the cutter, literally, to cut a word in half with very little difficulty. The attachment is a portable instrument which can be connected with the moviola.

As with the moviola, the sound attachment can be stopped at any time and reversed, making it possible to run back and forth over a scene as many times as necessary to determine the exact spot where the film should be trimmed. In practice, it is usual to utilize earphones for listening to the dialogue and sound, but the device may also be used with the loud speaker. The attachment will save much time in the cutting and editing of future Pathé dialogue pictures. And that's the end of the article. and as we will develop,

Alberg's unique skill set would have made him attractive to really any company or any agency, including an agency that refers to itself as the company that is interested in the collection, editing, and use of sound recordings. So again, you know, this is not just any old Tom, Dick, or Harry this Big John Alberg, this is a fella who is there in on the ground floor of the very

technology that makes it possible to cut sound recordings with great ease. And anybody that knows anything about surveillance knows that, well, that is a basic tool that you need before you can do anything with audio surveillance. So this launches him. You know, after this, he gains a lot of prestige. He's appointed eventually the treasurer of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, right? The academy that is the namesake of the Academy Awards, the Academy that puts on the Oscars themselves.

So he is right there in the fucking boardroom of the Academy. and the beginning of the talky picture era. You mentioned the institutions that would have been interested in a fella like Alberg, and one such institution whose interest was piqued by Alberg's talent was, of course, the United States Army, which appointed Alberg as a reserve officer with the rank of major as a sound expert in March of 1941. We're talking nine months before the attack on Pearl Harbor and America's entry into World War II.

In August 1941, Alberg's name appeared in the famous columnist Walter Winchell's syndicated column, albeit a column guest written in Winchell's absence by Walter F. Waggdard. then president of the academy. You want to read in this column? The article reads, Mussolini was walking in Naples. Suddenly he stopped short.

He turned to his aide and barked, ban American pictures. Why? Because he was looking at the beautiful Italian girls and he was afraid of what he saw. He said to have explained it as follows. It what has happened to our Mona Lises. They are all getting to look like Jean Harlow.

They have a platinum blonde hair. They're wearing American clothes. But worse, they're beginning to think like Americans. When people begin to think like Americans, they want to be free. And American pictures are dangerous to those who would not have their people free to dress, to think, to worship, and to believe as they wish. Look around. What is the first thing that is banned in countries that are fighting against the American ideal? The American motion picture. Why? Because the screen of Hollywood reflects a free way of life,

a free way of thought, freedom and enlightenment. It is a reflection of democracy in its most workable form, and that is something that cannot be tolerated by those opposed to the democratic form. But what of the motion picture at home here in America? Is there national pride in having a motion picture industry superior by far to any other? Is this entertainment, which has become an expression of American life, appreciated as a great phenomenon in a phenomenal age? Having overcome its growing pains, Hollywood is not thinking in terms of profits as much as of service to the nation

in this grave national emergency. An inter-studio relationship has cast out petty politics and personal glory. Hollywood has not been unmindful of its own. The Motion Picture Relief Fund has established an $800,000 bank account raised through Sunday radio programs of the Gulf Screen Guild Show to maintain a home for indigent and age studio workers of all classes. Ground will be broken for the first 44 units of an eventual 164 unit home near Calabasas, California this fall. Hollywood does not boast of its patriotism, but the public should know more of what the industry is doing for defense.

Leading stars have given the most generously of themselves to scores of benefits, shows in the army camps, and in many cities attempting to raise funds for U.S.O. and local camps. activities. Hollywood has a very active defense council and various committees organizing, managing, and routing shows and individual entertainers around the continent. Studio folk pack aluminum pots and pans to collection headquarters. They save tin foil, old papers and magazines. They send bundles to Britain and American camps. They spend spare time knitting and rolling bandages. Under the supervision of the Academy's competent research council, headed by Darrell F. Zinnuck, more than 20 short reel training films have been completed for the army.

In alphabetical order, studios have been chosen to make these films, and the list of directors, writers, and actors volunteering their services for such work, has far exceeded the demands. To date, Group has produced its films at greater speed and at less cost than any previous training films. It is expected that 200 short subjects will be made to expedite defense army training. Major John Alberg of RKO Studios and Captain Gordon Mitchell of the Academy are Zinnuck's principal aides. Meanwhile, Colonel Nathan Levinson, head of the Warner Brothers Sound Department, a veteran Signal Corps officer heads the Signal Corps Advisory Council here, and Major Samuel J. Briskin of Columbia Studio heads a Signal Corps photographic reserve unit, organized to respond to a call

for active service at any time. This unit comprises leading, still and motion picture cameramen, several young film producers, and former members of the Signal Corps with service stripes from World War I. Organized planning and cooperation are making Hollywood look ahead to post-war days when a revitalized screen with full maturity, character, and great talent will assume its rightful place in the world. Meanwhile, Hollywood knows the importance of good entertainment. With complete unity among studios, it plans to serve all classes well, to lend every aid to the restoration of public faith and to champion the American way of life. Come what may. Come what may. You know, as you're reading, what it reminds me of is how Hollywood, it starts

as art, it starts as craft, it becomes big business, and eventually it is leveraged to become another apparatus, another part of the military industrial complex. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep, art and propaganda, never far apart. And along the way, it becomes a great little sort of story about how capitalism works, right? Yeah, absolutely. And I was struck in the article by the references to helping all classes, because remember, this is a time when the growth of fascism was actually understood right the propaganda wave the anti-communist propaganda wave had not yet really erased the true meaning of fascism as largely an anti-communist shock troop as a system for the eradication of collectivism of bolshevism and of communism and of course as we all know in the united states sympathy

to communism reached its peak in the 1930s, and we're talking about the early 40s here. And so it's still on the rise. The example of the Soviet Union is still shining for American progressives, many of whom were in Hollywood that would cause all kinds of problems later on when the red scare comes and when the purges come and the blacklists and all the rest of it. but in 1941 you know what we hear through the voice of walter winchell he is speaking the sort of fDR style liberal anti-communism of lift all boats through state investment through philanthropy and really through capitalism and use this largesse this meritorious largesse of hollywood as the

shining example to the rest of the world to show the benefits of the American system and the American way of life and this lip service to the lower classes and to building housing for veterans of the movie industry, almost as if they were like veterans of war, right, in a kind of callback reminiscent of some of the responses to Smedley P. Butler and the bonus army that had caused so much problems for Washington after World War I. So this class politics is something very different from 1941 than what you'll hear 10, 15, 20 years later, as the anti-communist crusade really ramps up propaganda in such a phenomenal and spectacular way. way. But should we bring it back to Big John?

Yeah, yeah. You mentioned, you know, like they're treated as veterans. Don't forget, a lot of these people were. A lot of these people were like literally people who were in the military and somehow associated with the military. And Alberg is one of them. Eventually, Alberg would become chief of the Army's wartime pictorial service in the China, Burma, India Theater. and in 1948, he was appointed to be head of the U.S. Signal Corps Motion Picture Reserve Unit. Now, oddly, Alberg was named to the role by a committee of the Association of Motion Picture Producers. Yeah, and this is just very funny. I mean, we could really spend not an episode, but a whole series of episodes going really deep, on this period in Hollywood, the infiltration by not only government propagandists, but by anti-communist zealots, and by organized crime. And these types of associations and trade groups and the like were frequently used as fronts

for cabals of powerful men to get together. in smoke-filled rooms and make impactful decisions. In time of war as in time of peace, an industry close to the heart and pocketbook of the American public is show business, whose pulse is Broadway, but whose nerve system spreads over a large portion of the globe. Every branch of show business has contributed its white-collar men, technicians, and skilled artisans in answer to the call to arms. Famous actors whose peacetime salaries reached astronomical figures

served today on an equal footing with the members of their former public. The work of the War Activities Committee of the Motion Picture Industry is typical of the enthusiasm of top executives and artists for full cooperation with the government and with the armed services. Such committees are putting at the disposal of the nation all the facilities show business has developed for quick and effective contact with the American public. American public. And at every show shop in the land, citizens today contribute to a hundred

wartime causes. Ace cameramen from the newsreel companies are training the uniforms men who will become combat cinematographers for the Army and Navy on every fighting front. Documentary and industrial filmmakers are furthering the government's plans for the visual education of millions of new workers in war industry. And for the training by films of the men of the American Armed forces. In Hollywood, Walt Disney has turned over almost the entire facilities of his studio for the production of Army and Navy instructional films. Some of them involving closely guarded military inventions and techniques. Let's go with Navy Project 648, Sequence 1. Let a roll. In New York City, the Army's Signal Corps Photographic Center is today the biggest and

busiest American film studio outside Hollywood. On vast stages, the Army. The Army's Signal Corps Photographic Center is today the biggest and busiest American film studio outside Hollywood. On vast stages, the Army is producing films which explain every phase of military activity in graphic terms for the indoctrination of raw recruits and for the instruction of the Army's ever-growing legions of specialists. The film-dard now heads a film-producing unit of the newly organized Office of Strategic Services under the aegis of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Former Hollywood producer Colonel Darrell Zannick has brought an official film record of frontline action to produce inspirational films for servicemen and public alike, the Army's special services division has mobilized many of the industry's best editors and technicians. From millions of feet of film confiscated from the enemy or donated by American film companies, these men are preparing pictures to set the war record straight and to counteract enemy propaganda. We've talked about on this podcast the very close relationship between the intelligence, services and the entertainment industry, right? We've talked about this with Matt Farwell,

among other episodes, but that goes all the way back. And the fact that the U.S. Army Signal Corps had an unofficial reserve unit in the motion picture industry that was staffed by a private trade association of producers, and you can think about who these guys were, is pretty incredible. And the fact that John Alberg, Sarah Jane Moore's third husband, the love of her life, was front and center in such a unit, is just even more mind-blowing to me. like learning all of this stuff, finding all of these old articles just buried in the columns of 1940s newspaper reporting that established this deep, deep military industrial bona fides for John

Alberg was, um, it, it, there's a feeling that you get when you're doing research that is undescribable and this stuff on John Alberg certainly gave me that rush of the find in preparing for this episode. And I don't know if we've mentioned it, but I know in the Windchell column, Alberg was described as major John Alberg. And as I understand it, another one of these articles discusses that he had served in World War I as well. So it doesn't say what his capacity was in World War I. He would have been the age of an enlisted man. And so presumably, you know, he's really no different than Sarah Moore's father, who is actually two years younger than John Alberg, who enlisted as the child of immigrant parents in the military to develop his

American identity to commit himself to the U.S. of A. And as we know about John Alberg, that bathing in the red, white, and blue is something that's a stain that never came off of him. No, no, it never came off. And maybe now we talk about some of his more extracurricular activities. I got to say, as a first-gen American, whenever I hear about these, like, social clubs that Americans had back in the day, especially the white Americans. The names are so funny.

Oh, yeah, this one is special. Yeah, Alberg was, let's talk about it. Alberg was involved in, together with Sarah Jane. He was the, he was in a, I guess it's a social club, right? And he was the quote, captain of the L.A. County Sheriff's Mounted Posse number 15. from 1960 to 67, the sheriff's mounted posse number 15, where's mounted posse number one through 14? They actually existed, though, is the crazy thing.

There were that many mounting. I'm sure, yeah. And this one, this posse's headquarters, was in a place that should be familiar to our longtime listeners. It's Chatsworth, L.A. at the Pepper Tree Ranch, which was just a six-minute drive from the Spawn Movie Ranch, which we've discussed at length when we had our special on Squeaky Frommi, right? You guys will remember in the first half of Shee Harvey Oswald, we did at least, I think one,

maybe it was a couple of episodes around the Spawn Ranch, the Spawn Movie Ranch, and Alberg's sheriff's mounted posse number 15th while their headquarters

was just a few minutes away down the road which really begs the question too like so I know

that the years don't quite line up like Alberg was captain from 1960 until

1967 we don't know if he remained involved after that and we know that

the Manson family took up residents at the Spawn ranch I believe

it was in 19 69, if I'm not mistaken. But nevertheless, like, the posse didn't disband when John Alberg stepped down as captain. Like, the reason why we know he was captain is because an article in the Van Nuys Valley News described the ceremony of passing the torch from Alberg to his successor. and so this posse was still there just a hop, skip and a jump away from the fucking Manson family.

Not a very good posse if you ask me, or alternatively, a very good posse if what they're trying to do is actually just keep tabs on this other posse of dirty drug-taking hippies. Right, exactly. They just wanted to be close enough to keep eyes on them. Yeah. And because the, we don't know a ton about what this posse did, but what we do know is, it's original name,

a lot cooler than Sheriff's Mounted Posse Number 15. Originally, this group was called, you ready? The Dragons. Which is. Always, always a cooler name. The Dragons.

always a cooler name. I don't know about you. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but to me, a posse that calls itself the dragons, it's a little bit KKK coded, honestly, with your grand dragons of the clan. I don't know if that's why they chose the name the dragons. Oh, yeah. Food for thought. Yeah, I don't know. The KKK also had a lot of weird, you know, names and stuff. And it's like they sort of monopolized all of those weird names. So I, I don't know. don't know. Yeah. But the KKK and the L.A. County sheriffs, those are not particularly ideologically

disparate organizations. Right. Totally. Put it that way. Totally. So wouldn't be surprised either way. But what the posse actually did, so its members were actually deputized by the sheriff of L.A. County as LA County Reserve units and they would serve as honor guards for state occasions on their

little horses. They would even participate as extras in motion pictures. So maybe they were even riding over to the spawn ranch on their horses and, you know, acting in some of these films. And they would help with emergency situations as reserve units. So I think just to kind of zoom out for a second and take stock of John Allberg's CV at this point of what we've established here, he was involved in military and military psychological operations during and after World War II, indeed before during, during and after World War II as far as the United States involvement is concerned. Because remember, he's appointed before he's, the Winchell column was before Pearl Harbor.

So he's getting involved in the lead up to World War II. He's in the theater, in the China theater, no less during the war. And then on the home front, he is embedded with local law enforcement. So this is a guy who is really building up a resume and his qualifications are really beyond dispute as a member of high society of this old guard sort of personality in Southern California in the 1960s. He's friends with the Senate candidate, George Murphy of the Republican Party. and he has got his name and his fingers all over Hollywood and its nexus with the military industrial complex. And, you know, sorry to harp on Jerry Speeler, but she doesn't mention a goddamn word of any of this. She's too busy grinding her axe against Sarah Jane Moore.

Right. And again, like, this is the thing. It might not be that big of a deal for Jerry Speeler to leave all this stuff out if you are unaware of the later statements that Sarah Jane makes about John Allberg and about her marriage to John Allberg in her 1979 prison interview. And again, these statements are, these statements will steal the show to use another Hollywood metaphor once we get to them. And I think it will be in the next episode. But once you hear those listeners, it'll all click into place why this stuff is important. It's a real M. Knight Shamelon twist on this one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I see spy people. Okay, but before we wrap it all up on this one, there's just one there's one more correction that we should make on Jerry's version of the story. And she says that Big John, he didn't have any family of his own when he met and married Sarah Jane.

Now that is not true either, is it Don? No, sir. Why is that? That's because, again, we are pulling the newspapers from 1920 from Racine, Wisconsin, to learn that in that very fine year, at the age of 23 years old, John Allberg of Chicago, born in 1897, married a young woman by the name of Estelle Sorensen, a native of Racine, also residing at that time in Chicago. Now, there's not much beyond the simple marriage announcement in the newspaper, but our favorite, one of our favorites, ancestry sites slash find a grave sites, do reveal to us that Estelle Sorensen-Alber. who kept the surname Allberg until her dying day,

did move from the Midwest to Southern California, wouldn't you know, indicating that they stayed together. And, you know, besides the fact that Alberg is on her gravestone, another really interesting thing about that gravestone is the date of death. The date of death was August of 1965, which is right around the time that Sarah Jane Moore married and then abruptly divorced, or rather left, Big John Alberg. So Big John, in other words, was living a double life here. was cohabiting with Sarah Jane during the last years of his first wife's life. And, you know,

these types of things are not uncommon to rich people at that time in our country's history, right? That rather than getting a divorce, Big John would just pay for Estelle to live somewhere and, you know, help her pay the bills and whatever and just not live together and he's living his own life so it's not particularly surprising to me that it would have had this other woman in the picture what is more surprising is that she doesn't show up in any newspaper articles she doesn't show up in any reporting about Alberg. She is not even mentioned in his obituary as a wife. And somehow it slipped Jerry Speeler's radar that they ever were married. But really, the article from Racine from 1920, it leaves no doubt that this is our John Alberg. He's from Chicago. He's born 1897. And, you know,

it's another. There's not many people with that name. right? It's a very unique name. No, no, there aren't. And so, you know, the fact of the matter is that living a double life, that having these types of secrets while being involved in the military industrial complex, particularly, particularly being involved in psychological operations in the China, Burma, India theater during World War II, which was, as any student of the CIA knows, a hotbed of activity for the guys who would later become such huge figures in post-war anti-communist crusading and the deep state of the United States in the second half of the 20th century, guys like Bill Colby, who would go on to become head of the CIA later, right? He was a China hand. Of course, Henry Luce, who would go on to become the publisher of Time Life.

He was a China hand. A lot of these big guys, big names, were in that same milieu alongside John Allberg. But the big difference is we kind of know the details of their lives, whereas John Alberg flew way under that radar. We got to piece this shit together from little tiny scrap. that we can find far flung in the corners of newspaper archives. And it doesn't make our job easy, but it sure makes it interesting food for thought

when we consider it in light of, one, the activities of RKO and the development of RKO, which we're going to talk about shortly, and two, the revelations, by Sarah Jane Moore in her 1979 prison interview. All right. So for those of you who have been listening closely and for those of you who have sort of been tuning us in and out, let's do a little recap here. Big John Alberg, husband number three to Sarah Jane. He was a patriot who served in both World Wars,

including as the head of pictorial service in the China, Burma, India Theater in World War II. So he was a major propagandist. He was also a talented soundman who invented new cutting-edge audio-cutting techniques early in his career. And he was married to another young speed while still living. living in Chicago with whom he presumably moved out west to California. And despite his importance to early Hollywood, and believe you, me, there is no shortage of books about early Hollywood. John Alberg's name scarcely appears in the history books,

in news articles or anywhere else. and Don, that might be for good reason, right? Well, Dick, I think that our listeners are just going to have to wait and see to find out. For now, I am Don. I'm Dick. Saying farewell. And keep on digging.