Fourth Reich Archaeology - Jerryworld 4: WAR, Pt. 1

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

This week on Fourth Reich Archaeology, it's back to business as usual at our favorite dig site—Jerryworld. In a two part episode called "WAR,” we explore the four wars Jerry fought in the 1940s.  Of course, there is WWII, in which Jerry was a Navy man on board the USS Monterey. Leveraging the charm he inherited from his biological father, the keen social awareness he obtained from his mother, and the attitude he adopted from his stepfather, Jerry moves up the ranks onboard the “Mighty Monterey.” Before long, Jerry catches the captain’s eye and gets an appointment to be the ship’s assistant navigator. Jerry snags this coveted spot on the bridge despite having no prior relevant experience. Classic Jerry.  We also dive deep into Jerry’s willingness to participate in the Cold War. Namely, by applying for a position in Hoover's FBI. Jerry’s application to be a G-Man shows he wanted to be not just a noble soldier for the USA, but also an infiltrator. Indeed, along with his application to the FBI, Jerry also applied to work in the Office of Naval Intelligence.  And there is the war at home, in Grand Rapids, against the corrupt party boss Frank McKay. Mckay was the prototypical mobbed up political wheeler and dealer. The guy had his grubby fingers in all aspects of the Republican party of Michigan, which at the time, meant he had control of the State. With booze running, corruption, bribery, extortion, and, of course, murder, the McKay saga is nothing short of a classic mob tale.   Last, we explore the internal war that Jerry was waging. Including his decision to end his relationship with the beauteous Phyllis Brown and Jerry's decision to forgo working in New York and DC after Yale, to instead return to Grand Rapids and hang a shingle with his longtime friend and frat bro, Phil Buchen.

Colonialism or imperialism, as the slave system of 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. We found no evidence of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic.

The Warren Commission was silence. 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. His job, he said, was to protect the Weston way of life. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders the more easy victims of a big lie than a small law.

For example, we're the CIA. He has a mile. He knows so long this is a die. I'm afraid of we'd never be secure. It usually takes a national crisis. Freedom can never be secure. Pearl Harbor. A lot of killers.

You get a lot of killers. Why you think our country's so innocent? Not more than the CIA. I'm going to be. Bigged poor Irish is coming. We need that. Forchaeology. This is Fourth Reich Archaeology.

I'm Dick. And I'm Don. and we'd like to welcome you back for our returning listeners, and if this is your first time tuning in, please do go back and start from our intro episode. We've done a lot of world building during our project, and we think you'll have a more enjoyable listening experience if you start from the beginning. Also, we are absolutely floored by the feedback that we've been receiving from you, our dear listeners. We'd like to remind you that we do monitor our email, forthrightepod at gmail.com,

and our social media at forthrightepod on Twitter and Instagram. So please do reach out. We love hearing from you. Now this week, we're returning to jury world, and I am so glad because, to be honest, I was feeling a little ill with the election special, And we've got a lot of ground to cover today. So just a disclaimer, it's very possible, nay, I'll say highly probable,

that we're going to split this episode up into two parts. Before we get on to that, I do want to just clarify one thing, Don, if it's all right with you. Oh, please. About a subject that we covered last week during our election special and just want to make the record clear. You know, we discussed a bit about military furries and want to make sure that we're on the same page here. We are 100% pro furry on this podcast. I actually visited wikifur.com and I saw that the millfurs or the military furies have quite a popular base in the furry community. So just want to say, thank you for your service.

We love you. We support you. And, you know, actually in my research, I saw this headline that in 2016, there was a conflict in Syria that, wouldn't you know, it led to a bunch of refugees coming over to North America. And some of them landed in Vancouver, Canada. And during that time that they were in Vancouver, there was a furry convention. And it's amazing. The furries were so welcoming to the refugee, especially the refugee children who were absolutely blown away by all of these essentially mascots in their hotel. that they just, they sort of, you know, cozied up with them and showed them a good time.

And so, again, you know, we are totally pro furry on this podcast. Yeah, when I said that I wish that the entire military were made up of furries, that was not a sarcastic comment at all. They should not only get into the ranks, the furries, but push out the non-furries. but push out the non-furries from the military and handle things, you know, like they do on the Discovery Channel. 100%. You and me, baby ain't nothing but mammals, so let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.

Do it again, now. You and me, baby ain't nothing but mammals, so let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel. Get a hornet now. But onward, I think, Don, let's talk about the last time we were in our Jerry World. Yeah, so we are back with Jerry Ford. We are back inhabiting the realm of Jerry World. And it's all the more important that listeners catch up on Jerry World to the extent that you haven't. because it really is a sort of linear narrative that we're building in Jerry Ford's life

to better contextualize and understand the Fourth Reich that we're living in today. So in our last episode, and this is where hopefully if you're still listening, you will have already heard the last episode, we talked about Jerry Ford. Ford's time as a law student at Yale University. And in particular, we focused on really two aspects of Jerry's experience at Yale. One was his involvement as an inaugural member of the Executive Committee of the America First Committee. And in that capacity, Jerry, Jerry, rubbed elbows not only with his peers at Yale Law School, who came from the uppermost echelons of the American elite, talking about folks like future Supreme Court Justice Potter

Stewart, people like Sergeant Shriver, who would go on to become JFK and RFK's brother-in-law, and who would be the first director of the Peace Corps, but also the faculty advisor to the America First Committee, who was none other than Dickie Bissell, who, as any student of the CIA's shenanigans in the 20th century would know as the mayor of Area 51, the overseer of the U-2 spy plane, and. and the quarterback, if you will, of the coup in Guatemala in 1954 and the attempted coup in Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. The other pillar of Jerry Ford's experience during his time at Yale that we focused on

was his jet-setting life in the social scene of New York City. city where he was dating the supermodel. I suppose the term didn't really exist at the time, but in hindsight, I think she was a supermodel, Phyllis Brown, and his business partnership with the originator of the cover girl talking about Harry Conover.

Harry Conover started a modeling agency, in which Gerald Ford was a partner, and Harry Kanover went on to marry Candy Jones, the supermodel who became famous as a hypnoprogrammed CIA career. And in the course of discussing those aspects of Jerry Ford's experience at Yale, we talked a great deal about the way in which Jerry embodied a real grind-set mentality that through hard work and hustle and bending the truth when it was necessary and served the interests of his ascension up the socioeconomic and

the power ladder, you know, telling a lie here and there to make his way forward in the world, right? So that's where we left off. And in today's episode, we are going to follow Jerry into a number of different fronts in what we will generically call. Yeah, what is it good for? Absolutely. Nothing. Uh-huh. War.

Yeah. What is good for? Absolutely. Nothing. Say it again, y'all. War. Yeah, so the episode's called War, and ostensibly it's about World War II, during which, as we've mentioned, Jerry, enlisted into the Navy. But it's not just about World War II, right?

There are many wars being fought. at the time. Jerry also enlisted in the Cold War by applying for a job as a G-man within Hoover's FBI after Yale. So we'll talk about that war. At the same time, Jerry was getting involved in a political war, gearing up in Grand Rapids against a powerful party boss, the sort of head of the mobbed-up political machine in Grand Rapids at the time, who was Frank McKay. And McKay was involved in all of the same sort of typical scandals you would think of,

someone who is dirty and playing in local politics, right? If you wanted to do business in Grand Rapids or even, you know, that region, it was going to be through Frank McKay. And we're going to get into this, but it has all of the elements of bribery and extortion and gangland-style murders. It's all there, and we're going to. going to touch on that in a little bit. And in addition to getting involved in the war against the McKay political machine, we are also going to talk about the internal war that was

going on in Jerry's heart and in his mind. As the listener will recall, in the last episode, Jerry Ford was in a torrid romance with Phyllis Brown, and as anybody familiar with Jerry's subsequent history will know, that did not last. And so not only did Jerry face the inner turmoil involved in moving on from a really idyllic sort of a relationship with a supermodel, He was also dealing with the internal embattlement between whether to stay on the East Coast, whether to pursue sort of the typical path of a Yale Law grad in New York City or in Washington, D.C., or to turn back to his roots and return to his roots and return to. to Grand Rapids. So I think by our count, these are at least four wars

that Jerry was fighting both within himself and with the world at large in the decade of the 1940s. Right, and in each war he fights, we see Jerry picking up new skills, showing his chops, and making all of the right moves

on his rise to the top. it's almost supernatural his ability to just be at the right place at the right time and exploit the situation at each step of the way he's making very conscious decisions geared towards descending the ranks of power and at the same time it almost feels inadvertent again we ask you to keep in mind the question is jerry a chess master or is he just a pawn you'll recall that we've discussed this dichotomy a substantial amount with respect to Gerald Ford. And it's really one of the fascinating aspects of his personality and his life story. Another one of the questions that we have raised repeatedly is that of Gerald Ford's sincerity and the nobility of his true motives. Is

Jerry scheming his way to the top, or is he toiling away in earnest to make the country and the world a better place? Remember, he did come from a broken home. He came up with a chip on his shoulder against the fail-son millionaire father Leslie King, Sr., and against against all that that lifestyle stood for. It begs the question, time and again, is he trying to join the likes of his biological father, or is he trying to take them on? In this episode, we're going to expose a substantial amount of evidence

that suggests that Jerry was operating in good faith, and that he was attempting to carve out a noble path. We're going to cover how he risked his life in war. When he got home from the war, he took that fight to the McKay political machine. But we're also going to talk about other interpretations of that evidence, right, Dick? Yeah, as we've warned, especially the noble path, it lays a fine. trap. An illusion, a ruse to cloak on freedom under a facade of liberation. It's built into the contradictory fabric of the American settler colonial experiment. You see, the ultimate

freedom is the freedom to clear the land of its benighted inhabitants, to enslave and dominate one's fellow human beings. And when that concept of freedom is both implicitly and explicitly, subtly and overtly, crammed into the consciousness of Americans, all roads lead to Auschwitz. Now as an Eagle Scout, Gerald R. Ford Jr. knew a thing or two about how to set a mean trap.

But tragically, he was not so great at spotting the traps that were being set for him. Got a lot of ground to cover in this episode, so let's get right into it. Why must you be such an angry young man when your future looks quite right to me and how can there be such a sinister plan

that could hide such a lamb such a care in your man and you're fooling yourself You're going to sleep in. You're kidding yourself. You're going to sleep. Get up. Get up.

Get back on your feet. You're the one that can feed. And you're no way. Picking up where we left off in Jerry World, in November of 1940, there was an election for the President of the United States. 1940 was an election year. FDR famously nailing a hat trick, Thursday. term, first and last president to ever do it, which even more baller than that, is that

he did actually a fourth time before people were like, all right, let's stop this guy. So at the time, the Republican nominee is Wendell Wilkie. And here in Philadelphia, in June 1940, members of another history-making convention open their sessions. The 22nd Convention of the Republican Party will now come to order. You'll recall that Jerry volunteered to work for Wilkie's campaign in New York just the summer before in 1940. The spirit of this assembly of free men.

These representatives of the people demand a leader who is one of them, a man who came up the hard way. came up the hard way. The greatest unbossed convention in all history decides. The people's demand is met. So now we think it makes sense to give a little more color on that campaign as we dig deeper into Jerry's early political persona. Here there are no big city bosses, no fixers,

no machine politicians in control. Here is no manipulated draft. Here is no manufactured cheering. It comes from sincere men and women, free men and women. It does not come from men under the lash of corrupt machines. Here we the people assert our will. It's also context for his entry into World War II because I think you can't understand his decision to volunteer and his approach to war fighting without digging a little bit into this campaign. And so Wendell Wilkie, born 48 years ago

in Elwood, Indiana, emerges in response to the greatest demonstration of sports. spontaneous support that our country has ever known. His grandparents, like the ancestors of millions of Americans, fled the autocracy of Europe to find liberty in this country. Yeah, and I think, I mean, I guess we're jumping up a little bit, but this idea of Wendell Wilkie characterizing himself as a interventionist, which, of course, at the time, you know, FDR had championed the Len Lease Act in this promise of offering funds and support

to the Allies, which was very popular, I think, for both sides, because it meant basically all the best parts of war, right? You get to lend and lease your capital and secure sort of some investment stake into war without ever have to commit blood. But anyhow, one of Wilkie's criticisms of FDR during the campaign was, was this break that FDR had against what Wilkie called the two-term tradition, right? So Wilkie famously said, if one man is indispensable, then none of us are free. There is another very vital issue, which I would like to debate with Franklin D. Roosevelt face to face, and that is the assumption by this president in seeking a third term of a greater public

confidence that America accorded to its presidential giants, Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson. We have not, and I pray to God, we may never reach the time in America when there is any such thing as the indispensable man. That's pretty democratic stuff, huh? Sounds like bullshit to me. And the public didn't buy it either, because after all, Wilkie was a New York City business executive. He had been president of the Utilities Giant Commonwealth and Southern, and truth be told, American people at the time were still very distrustful of that bunch, given what had happened just a decade before in 1929.

Because I am a businessman, of which incidentally I am very proud and was formerly connected with a large company, the doctrinaires of the opposition have attempted to picture me as an opponent of liberalism. Right. In fact, Commonwealth and Southern at the time was the largest utilities company in the United States, and Wilkie's whole rise to prominence was fighting on behalf of his company

against some of these New Deal programs, most especially the Tennessee Valley Authority, which would artificially, in the view of the private utilities companies, lower the prices of utilities in an anti-competitive way. So it's the old collectivism versus free enterprise battle lines that we've talked so much about, and that we will talk so, so much more about. I stand for the restoration of full production and re-employment in American private enterprise. The New Deal stands for doing what has to be done

by spending as much money as possible. I propose to do it by spending as little as money as possible. This is one issue in this campaign that I intend to make crystal clear before the conclusion of the campaign so that everybody in this country may understand the tremendous waste of their resources and money that have taken place in the last seven and a half years. But that being said, one of the major issues in the 1940 election,

and especially in the Republican primary contest and which Gerald Ford really got involved, was the budding war over in Europe. And Wilkie, in addition to characterizing himself on the sort of Democrat side as an interventionist, his positionality there really signaled a change in the political winds that the multiple other Republican primary candidates for the presidential nomination were more. more on the isolationist, more on that America First side of the divide. And I think, you know, we'd like to tell our listeners a little bit more about Wendell Wilkie, the figure, because certainly is somebody that I had never really looked deeply into and really didn't know anything about until researching all this stuff.

But he's a very interesting figure. Wendell Wilkie was born in a modest home like millions of Americans. As a young man, he studied at Indiana University, himself being from the Hoosier State, old Suss, Indiana there. And as an undergraduate, he was sort of a rebel. The day we declared war on Germany in 1917, Wendell Wilkie enlisted in the armed services of his country, then fought in France.

with his two brothers promptly joining him in uniform. He read Marx. He petitioned the university administration to add a class on socialism to the curriculum. And he rose to the top of his class and was invited to give the valedictorian speech and used that platform to plurie the university administration to such a degree that they actually withheld his college degree for a period of time before clearing him of whatever bullshit charges they were thinking up against him.

He's learned our needs and our problems, not from books, not from brain thrust reports, not from boss-ridden city machines, but by living and working and talking with us, face to face, shoulder to shoulder. Once again, time being a flat circle and all, Indiana University Administration, if any of you are listening to this, you're all doing the same old shit and you better stop it because friend of the pod, Bryce Green, the anti-genocide activist over there fighting the good fight at Indiana University and all the folks working with him

and the encampment, et cetera, are still getting suppressed. and censored for their speech activities. So get your shit together, Bloomington, once and for all. You've been doing this for 80 years. It's enough already. Back to Wendell Wilkie. He married Edith Wilk, the attractive librarian in the neighboring town of Rushville. He had been affiliated with the Democrat Party all the way up until 1940 when he decided to run

for president as a Republican. And this is another phenomenon that I think is almost unthinkable today. But I was a liberal before many of those men heard the word. And I fought for the reforms of the Elder Lafollett and Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson before another Roosevelt adopted and distorted the word liberal. I believe that the forces of free enterprise must be regulated. I'm opposed to business monopolies. I believe in the right of collective bargaining by labor without any interference and full protection of that obvious right.

I believe in minimum standards for wages and maximum standards for hours, and I believe that such standards should constantly improve. I am in favor of the regulation of interstate utilities, of banking, of the security markets. I believe in federal pensions, in adequate old age benefits, and in unemployment allowances. Somebody just switching sides like that. And the reason why our buddy Wendell Wilkie switched sides was, again, a pretty good one. He was very much opposed to the KKK. and the Democrat Party happened to be the political home of the KKK back in those days with the Dixie Krats and such. And so that is actually what led him to switch parties and pursue the nomination of the Republicans.

So that's all very fascinating, I think, to keep in mind when considering Gerald Ford, very first political activism, right? He's not lining up on some far-right fascist or authoritarian program. Rather, he is joining the Wendell-Wilke campaign, which just so happens to be housed in the Republican Party on account of his differences with the Democrats. Democrats over supporting the KKK. I need the help of every America, Republican, Democrat, independent, Jew, Protestant, Catholic,

people of every race, creed, and color. So he became the nominee on the Republican ticket after a hard-fought nomination battle against the isolationist Ohio Senator Robert Taft, whereas Wilkie represented the shrewd's sort of self-made businessman type, Taft represented the old guard. Yeah, that's right. Listeners might recognize the name Robert Taft. He's really known as one of the most impactful American senators of all time today. But of course, he was a Nepo baby.

He was the eldest son of the former president, William Howard Taft. Who's the big fat president whose suits look like a flannel circus tent? Tats! Right on. Who's that presidential chub got stuck in the White House tub? William Howard Taft. They say this cat Taft is a fat mother... Shut your mouth.

In fact, Taft went on, given his sense of entitlement to the throne, to run unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination twice more after 1940. Nevertheless, today he is remembered as a great statesman and senator rather than being a fucking loser who couldn't get nominated for president despite being the Nepo son of a president. But there you go. just that old American myth machine in action, baby. Would he be a good president? Absolutely. And don't just take that from the father of prejudice view.

I mean, he's a good man. He's performed as governor. He's well-spoken. He's not an extremist. He's not a wild guy that attributes bad motives to those to disagree with him. And he's good. And people that know him and hear him say the same thing. Please clap. also a member of Yale's Skull and Bones Secret Society. It's also interesting that, fresh out of Yale, Jerry would cast his lot with the relative outsider in the race as opposed to the Yalee and the Bonesman. And so it's clear that Ford, along with his family, their attention was shifting to the war and making this transition

from isolationist to internationalist. Indeed, the record shows that Jerry Sr. reached out to his old friend, Senator Arthur Vandenberg, to try and secure a spot for Jerry as a midshipman in the U.S. Navy Reserve in the late months of 1940. Vandenberg made the request to the folks in Washington, but ultimately no such assistance was given. Yeah, and that was before Pearl Harbor.

Right, right. So the point here is that they saw war on the horizon and they wanted to get a plumb position for Jerry before things started. So Wilkie eventually, obviously went on to lose the election to FDR, but in line with the Ford families forward, thinking on the political question, it's also worth noting that that Frank McKay character that we mentioned in the intro and about whom we'll talk even more later on, he threw in

his lot with Wendell Willkie as well. And McKay offered to throw his support and all of the weight that came with it in the state of Michigan behind Wilkie's campaign. Oh, yeah, this is good. Right? In exchange for Wilkie making a promise to entrust McKay with all patronage appointments for the state of Michigan. In other words, McKay said to Wilkie, if you win, I will be the guy. in order to support you, I want to be the guy that picks every Michigander to be appointed to a federal position.

And in that capacity, Jerry Ford actually, Jerry Ford Sr., got a meeting set up between McKay and Jerry Ford, Jr., so that Jerry Ford Jr. could land himself a major role in the way. Wilkie campaign in the state of Michigan, and McKay just totally blew him off. Needless to say, after the election, after the graduation in January 1941, Jerry was making some life decisions, including the decision to move back to Grand Rapids where he hung a shingle and open up a little law practice with a frat brother of his from University of Michigan, a Wisconsin native and polio survivor by the name of Phil Buchan. Yeah, and Buchan's father was a state senator, so even though not a big time player, in the scene at all, he had some political awareness. And the relationship was tight, as you

mentioned. Buchan was disabled and Jerry showed him kindness. It's funny, their practice, I think, as I recall, it was sort of like Buchan would stay in the office handling the research and the brief writing while Jerry would go out into court and handle sort of the standing up and speaking position. So the two did have a trust, they had sort of a trust relationship, a bond. And, you know, eventually, Buchan would become Jerry's lawyer, was Jerry's lawyer, during the Nixon pardon. Yeah, this was a lifelong relationship and one that started when the two were kind of the sober guys around the frat house and would last all the way to the White House and beyond. And the consequence of Jerry's move back to Grand Rapids was cutting things off with his

lover Phyllis Brown Jerry's political ambition was ultimately incompatible with Phyllis's love of the jet-setting life. They just could not both achieve the goals that they had for themselves. And before we move on to the next chapter of Jerry's life, I think it's worth reading a little statement that Phyllis made, in retrospect, about Jerry Ford. What she said was that Jerry had, quote, an innate awareness, keenness. When you really think he is not even paying attention, he is cunning. Until people get to know him, they think, big, dumb Jerry. He's not bright, but he is smart. He's not quick, but he mulls things over.

And that is the Jerry Ford that we know and love. Going home, going home by the waterside I will rest my bones. Guessing to the river sing sweet saw homes to rock my soul. So while Jerry was content to head back to Grand Rapids with his law degree, and he did start up a shop with his buddy. He didn't show any real signs of putting down roots just yet. It was clear that Jerry wanted something more. Remember, his eyes were always on a political career.

That's really why he pursued law in the first place. Just think about Jerry's senior's relationship with Vanderberg, right? As a young man, Jerry must have seen the respect and power that Vandemurg commanded in Grand Rapids. And he must have realized how much his stepdad looked up to him. Yeah, and not only that, I think also Jerry's role as a football star and as a known commodity around town, it rubbed off on him, right? Like that, that food to Jerry's ego of being recognized as a leader. Yeah, exactly. And it's so at the same time, it seemed like must have seemed at that point like something Jerry felt like, oh, I could fucking do this, right?

like this is this could this could be my bread and butter but there is another component to this right and that is that when he returned to grand rapids and though he was living there he did apply to the FBI he applied in june 1941 spoiler alert he was never officially hired and to the casual observer or the many professional biographers that we've read and to us maybe they're one and the same um that would be all there is to say about that But this is Fourth Reich Archaeology, baby. So you know we got to dig a little deeper. oh yeah now when you apply to become a special agent of j edgar hoover's FBI in 1941 you open up your

entire life to Hoover and the application materials have since been published right And there's a lot that can be gleaned from Jerry's application to the FBI. For example, his high school principal put in a glowing recommendation, saying that Jerry had, quote, a rare ability to keep his mouth shut. Now, just how his high school principal would come into that knowledge about, about Jerry. It's kind of a head scratcher. And why the high school principal would think that that would be the thing to advertise, right?

Yeah, yeah. We'll let the listener chew on that one. And after reviewing all of the similarly glowing comments received from all corners of Jerry's life, The special agent in charge of the Grand Rapids Field Office of the FBI who was leading the background investigation into Jerry Ford pursuant to his application, he described Jerry Ford as, quote, a superior type of young man, one of the best applicants who has ever appeared at the Grand Rapids office. Pretty high praise.

Pretty high praise indeed. Yeah, sounds like they wanted to hire him, right? Certainly the special agent in charge in Grand Rapids wanted to hire him. So why do we think that he wasn't hired? Well, Dick and I happen to have a little bit of a experience in our legal careers with the federal government. And one thing that happens in the federal government is these types of paperwork and stacks of paper, it really depends on who has it on their desk at any given moment.

And it's certainly not implausible for a stack of paper or a stack of paper or a file or an application or whatever to just sit fallow, right, for a long period of time with no eyes on it. That's a possibility. Yes, yes, yes. You like it up here. We've got a crack team of all they kidding, decision makers to know. Yeah, paperwork, it languishes in limbo. I don't think that's any news to anyone who's worked in the federal government. Right. That's why, deadlines are so important for anything. Here we are, your very own number, on your very own door. And behind that door, your very own office.

Congratulations, DZ-stroke 015. Welcome to the team. Yes. Whether it's FOIA, and believe me, I'm sure that if any of our listeners out there have done FOIA requests, and I know for a fact, that we've got some FOIA experienced listeners out there, but they'll know certainly that those types of things can sit for years without a lick of attention. And the same goes for these types of job applications. If the wheel's not squeaking, it won't get any grease. That's one possibility. But it's not the

only reason why a holding pattern or an inaction might be the order of the day for an application, right? Yeah. So it could be that the folks in charge in Washington didn't really know what to do with this America first thing. It probably was a red flag. It probably was something that they saw. And since it was a new movement and a particularly charged movement coming from the

hallowed halls of Yale. You know, it raised eyebrows. I think at the time probably the folks in charge in Washington probably knew that there was, you know, some power that might be able to, they might be able to harness from this America First movement. But at the same time, they didn't really think there was anything worth risking by leveraging it or adopting it. I think, you know, that probably led to them ultimately not making any decision, right? So sort of like wait and see, let's just keep the application pending. Right. And the timeline is important. America first began in 1939. Over the course of 1940, it grew really astronomically. At the same time, so did the Nazi war machine in its march in both eastern and western direction on the European continent.

And so by the time that 1941 rolls around, and we're talking before Pearl Harbor still, but the America First movement in tune with the march of the Nazis across Europe becomes increasingly radicalized in a far right-wing direction, right? We talked about this in the last episode. We played this excerpt from Charles Lindbergh's Iowa speech, where anti-Semitism enters into the conversation in a major way, where it goes from mere American isolationism,

to more of a philo-Nazi point of view. Right. And I think, you know, you're absolutely right when you're taking this position. But, you know, something you have said yourself, Don, is like if Jerry Ford on his application had disclosed that he was a member of the KKK, for instance, what do you think would happen? Well, it's a very good question. For one, such disclosure would never be on paper, right? Because the KKK, being a sort of a masked organization, its membership lists were not typically public at that time.

Nevertheless, we do know for a fact from the vast body of research on Hoover's FBI that it recruited heavily. from the southern states, and that the overlap between g-men of the early years and rabid racists of the American South was significant. So significant, in fact, that by the time you get to the civil rights era in the 1950s and 60s, and the FBI is directly in contravention of the civil rights movement, movement and is setting its sights on the civil rights movement, there are case after case of FBI agents who were themselves, if not current members of the clan, affiliated with the clan. So it is interesting. The degree to which all of this stuff is very much contingent. And I think That it bears digging in to the microcosm of the political moment of 1941 and Gerald Ford's FBI application to take a closer look at just what the FBI, particularly in the state of Michigan, was up to at that time. FBI. I am the sky. Who are you? Hey, Police. My name is Christ. Who are you that I should be mindful?

I'm glad you. You win every year. So as an aside from the FBI Nazi talk, let's talk a bit about the FBI and the America of first milieu in Michigan at this time, because it gives us another look at the Fourth Reich in the making. Yes, I think I've probably used the word again many times, but it's a real microcosm of the picture developing within the United States. So you think about the 1930s, right, the decade preceding Jerry Ford's application to the end. FBI. Now in the state of Michigan, the FBI's main preoccupation was the mafia. We talked about it a little bit. Again, we'll talk about it more, but the mob and various different mobs as well.

You know, don't want to give the sense that we're talking about a monolithic mafia here. But the mob was running booze in and out of Michigan throughout the prohibition era. In fact, Michigan, I've seen estimates that Michigan was the entry point for up to 80% of booze entering the United States during prohibition. And it's not hard to imagine why. Michigan has a lot of water borders with Canada, where brewing and distilling was perfectly legal. Shout out to the Bromfman family of Canada here, the Seagrams Empire, right? And so on the Michigan side of the border, there were a number of organized crime syndicates and figures running the trade. And a lot of those happen to be Jewish, and we'll talk a little bit about those in connection with Frank McKay.

But I just want to mention, because I think it's hilarious, that there was even a syndicate known as the Jewish Navy operating out of Detroit that basically ran some little boats and would kind of troll around in the Great Lake. looking for other booze shippers and just stick them up out there on the Great Lakes. Hell yeah. Bad ass. I love that. Hits! Don't think I'm crazy. Hits.

Don't think I am insane. Hits. I come and I came. Hits. But, you know, Prohibition ends in 1933. The Nazis are on the road. rise. In fact, Hitler is appointed chancellor in 1933. And so the FBI's focus shifts to the proxy battle in the United States representing the fascist versus communist battle that is taking shape

on the other side of the pond, right? And in this respect to, Michigan becomes a microcosm for that battle. Absolutely. And nowhere was it more true than in Dearborn, Michigan, home of Henry Ford's motor company. Remember from episode one, Ford was a phenomenal anti-Semite. He used his Dearborn Independent newspaper to distribute the protocols of the elders of Zion and his own book, The International Jew. I mean, this guy had some dastardly opinions. Absolutely. He was dealing at the time as well with labor organizing. And we talked last time again about the apagy of the Communist Party of the United States taking root in the 1930s, and Michigan home to the automotive industry was a hotbed of that activity. So you have the United Auto Workers Union, for example,

as well as other labor unions, really ratcheting up the fight, demanding a lot of concessions from management and increasing in militancy over the decade of the 30s in Michigan. And to counter this rising tide of labor radicalism, Henry Ford pulled out all the stops. So Henry Ford's top enforcer against union organizing was a fellow. by the name of Harry Bennett, a World War I Navy vet, a boxer, and a general tough guy who ran what Ford called the Service Department at Ford Motor Company, focused on fighting labor through espionage, sabotage, and straight-up fisticuffs. Bennett reportedly recruited over 3,000 ex-convicts to staff his goon squad.

And they would go out, break strikes, bash skulls, just pull files on people, follow people around, follow organizers around. I mean, this is well before the time. But to bring back our old friend Grand Rapids native Paul Schrader again, the movie Blue Collar about labor organizing in the automotive industry in the 1970s is another real banger. From the author of Taxi Driver comes Blue Collar, the story of three men who spend their whole lives working to catch up. There's going to be some changes, man, in the union, big changes. Everybody know what the plant is. The plant just shot for plantation. And I was on that picket line every day.

That's right, man. I'm still paying the bills and the money out of support my family. Strong recommend from the pod. And even that was tame compared to what Harry Bennett and the so-called Bennett's boys were up to in Dearborn in the 1930s. But Dick, Bennett's boys were not only on the. the offensive against labor organizers were they? They were also incubating a hotbed for fascist propaganda, spreading pro-Nazi ideology among the ranks of both the floor workers,

as well as, and especially the managerial class in the Ford Motor Company. You want to talk a little bit about that, Dick? Yeah, absolutely. Something that as you're speaking, it's not lost on me that at the time, Jewish Americans sort of overrepresented the voices of labor in these movements in collectivism and Marxism and this plot that this what would be, called a Judeo-Bolshevik plot against free enterprise. In America, it was, you know, Jewish voices that were more prominent in these labor movements. And so when you are talking about,

you know, leveraging the Bennett boys and turning over to spreading pro-Nazi ideology, it seems like such an attractive ideology to spread in a already charge. environment against Jewish Americans and Jewish voices in the labor movement. And again, it's reflective of the battle taking shape on the global stage at the geopolitical level, right? I mean, Hitler's anti-Semitic tirades and the anti-Semitism of the Nazi party was ultimately directed against collectivism, more so than any religious practice, certainly. It really is using the Jewish identity as a stand-in for the political ideology that fascism sought to destroy and tamp out on a global scale, which is collectivism.

And so Bennett was, you know, he was the guy that was sort of spreading this ideology, but also he was tasked with covering it up when necessary. You know, there couldn't really be any formal ties between the Ford Motor Company and the Nazi network inside the United States, right? It was icky, to say the least, to be outright pro-Nazi. But maybe you could talk about John Coos, a Ford employee in Ukrainian emigrant. Yeah, so just one of many of the Ford Motor Company's real Nazi American bigwigs that fell under the corporate umbrella of Ford at the time was a fellow by the name of John Coos. He was a Ukrainian emigray and an affiliate of a lot of white Russians and white Russians

and white, you know, anti-communist Ukrainians who had deep, deep fascist sympathies. And John Coos, in addition to working for Henry Ford, also was the leader of a terror cell called the Ukrainian Hetman Organization, or U.H.O. And the U.HO was kind of a U.S.-based branch with leadership stationed in Berlin that overlapped with what would eventually become the organization of Ukrainian nationalists, right, the OUN, which our listeners might be familiar with, the Bandera organization, right? These are far-right fascist pro-Nazi groups in Ukraine that set their sights against the Soviet Union and which developed very deep ties, not only with Henry Ford and his corporate organization, but ultimately with the CIA and with the U.S. government. And all I can say, dear listener, is thank goodness that there's no more Nazis in Ukraine and that that problem has been solved. And the U.S. is no longer supporting any Nazis in the Ukraine. Just fief, what a bullet dodged there. Yeah, I know I can sleep better at night knowing that there are no Nazis in Ukraine today.

There are, however, a lot of artistic movements that just draw on the purely aesthetic value of the swastika. And military movements that draw on the same. But back to our story. Yeah, back to our story. So, John Coos, well, before we get off of John Coos, yeah, John Coos, the upshot is that John Coos and his affiliations with Ford were papered over by. by Harry Bennett in his service department. He was one of Ford's Nazis that Bennett whitewashed. And he wasn't the only one.

Yep. So the one I like is Fritz Kuhn, one of the leaders of the pro-Nazi American bun. Dick, I apologize. If I may just quickly pronounce Fritz. Coon and the American boon. I'd be remiss not to. Please continue. Well, I was just going to say, I mean, this is a fascinating movement in the United States right in the middle of the 20th century where you had literal Nazis and Nazi communities being fostered in towns and cities across America

these are actual Americans that very much were down with Hitler and very much were all about what he was putting down you know not probably not the perfect parallel but you could think of the modern neo-Nazis or

when I think about the American Bund I think about Blues Brothers right I think in the Blues Brothers there were some American Nazis that they were evading Hand to the order for which he stands. Hand to the order for which he stands.

One great cause. One great cause. Sacred and invincible. Hey, what's going on? Ah, those bums won their court case, so they're marching today. What bums? The fucking Nazi party. Illinois Nazis.

I hate Illinois Nazis. High leader! Yeah, yeah. And Kuhn is a hilarious character as well. Like the FBI, and this is where we're heading, but just to preview it a little bit, they asked around within Ford about some of these Nazis. And some of the Ford employees that they spoke to reported on Kuhn that they had caught him giving Hitler-style speeches in dark rooms by himself during working hours on Ford premises.

Freaky. You know, modern corporate culture has their wellness rooms, their yoga rooms. I can't help but think that Henry Ford's establishment was in the cutting edge with its very own Siegheil room. Or, I don't know, something I was just sort of thinking about. Yes, just large enough to goose step. Yeah, exactly. Two paces in either direction.

Yeah, three paces in either direction. So just imagine, I mean, these guys, you know, really out of the closet, full on Nazis, and people who really believed what they were saying. Right. One more that we'll touch on real quick is a guy called Ernst Liebold, Americanized as Ernest Liebold. And he was a literal Nazi spy. And in fact, had been a spy of the German Empire dating back to World War I,

who was nevertheless permitted to maintain residence. in the U.S. to maintain a very, very lucrative employment as Henry Ford's secretary and who was even giving public statements on behalf of the Ford Motor Company when confronted with journalistic questions about Ford's closeness to the Nazis. And in response to one such, inquiry, Leibold stated to a journalist. Inasmuch as Mr. Ford has extended to Ford employees the fullest freedom from any coercion with respect to their views on political, religious or social activities, they cannot be reproved by us for exercising such liberties.

Sounds familiar Hello, First Amendment Freedom of Speech is fundamental Right, freedom of speech And this is taken right out of the old Elon Musk Freedom of Speech Handbook It basically means the freedom to signal boost

Nazism Okay Freedom is the freedom to enslave other people And we are once again None of this is past at all. This playbook is playing out right before our very eyes with Teal, Musk, the whole PayPal Mafia boosting their Nazi Drek on all of us while waving the banner of freedom of speech. In fact, the only thing that's changed now compared to the time of Ernst Lieboldt is that now some Jews, to the extent that they sign on to the Zionist genocidal project, are exempted from Nazi ire.

because the important thing, right, is support for eugenic, genocidal, techno-fascist violence, surveillance, and militarization. And religious or ethnic identity is not paramount to that. The important thing is what you do, and to the likes of Peter Thiel, a rabid, Zionist himself, who has said that he defers to Israel on all questions of its use of force and use of military technology supplied by his and other tech companies, that's their prerocative as far as today's Nazis are concerned. But from my point of view and I think from Dick's point of view as well. Time is a flat circle. Now, there's plenty more that we could say about the Nazis under the umbrella of the Ford Motor Company and of the activities of Harry Bennett

in sweeping all of their associations with Ford under the rug, but we'll leave it there for now and just recommend to the reader the source from which a lot of this information was drawn, which is Max Wallace's book, American Axis, Ford, Lindberg, and the Rise of the Third Reich. It's a very interesting book, very well sourced, and really gets the Fourth Reich Archaeology stamp of approval, although we'll give the old Dave Emery, caveat that we do not receive any remuneration from Mr. Wallace or his publisher from making such a recommendation, we just make it out of the goodness of our hearts and the interest in spreading the research around to all of our listening public.

Another quick recommendation before moving on is programmed to Chill episode number eight, Who financed Hitler Part 2, aka Detroit Crout Rock City, where Jimmy Fallingong gets into a lot of lore on Henry Ford and his associations with the Nazis, and even the FBI files in connection therewith. So, yeah, all right. Ford and his enterprise very much connected to the Nazis and the FBI was aware of all of this and kept tabs on Ford. It tracked Henry Ford's intersection not only with the Nazis but also with Charles Limburg and the America First Committee. For example, FBI agents interviewed Henry

Ford after he took a meeting with the Nazi government's representative in Washington, D.C., who, by the was also a Nazi spy. You want to help me with this one, Don? I think it's Gerhard Westrick. That's a fine pronunciation, but just to be an asshole, I'll go ahead and denominate him, Gerhard Vestrich. Westrich asked Ford to refuse to supply engines to the British military and Air Force.

Ford told the FBI he rebuffed Westrick, suspecting him of being just another crook. I'll steal your line for this one, Dick. That sounds like some bullshit. That's right. Westrick was also a prominent lawyer. His law partner was a fellow by the name of Heinrich Albert. Albert, as it were, sat on the board of Ford Verk,

Ford's German subsidiary. Also on that board was Edsel Ford, Henry's son and president of the Ford Motor Company from 1919 to 1943. And that's not all there is to say about Albert and Wastricht. Their Berlin-based law firm was the German affiliate

of the Wall Street mega-firm Sullivan and Cromwell. True heads will have their sirens blazing right now because Sullivan and Cromwell, of course, was the home base to the Dulles brothers, John Foster Dulles and Alan Dulles. We've mentioned them before. Of course, they went on to lead U.S. foreign policy

during the Eisenhower administration as Secretary of State and Head of CIA, respectively. But their power went a lot deeper than their official government titles. And they really held the reins for several decades from behind the scenes as well. Now, you know, another thing I thought of is, you know, Peter Thiel. worked at Salkrom, these early years. That, that is a great point, Rick. He sure did.

He sure did. Small world. It, it just, it really is, you know. It's a small world when you're a Nazi in America. So, listener, if you'll permit me, I'd like to read two paragraphs from David Talbot's book, The Devil chessboard, which is a biography of sorts about Alan Dulles, but it's really in the spirit of Fourth Reich archaeology branches off in many directions. I mean, it's a great starter book if folks are not deeply annoyeded on all of the stuff we're talking about, covers a ton of

ground. It's also a great one to, you know, gift if you're trying to spread the word about all of this business. And it's just a fantastic read. But with respect to the Dulles brothers and Albert and Westrick, Talbot writes as follows. Foster Dulles became so deeply enmeshed in the lucrative revitalization of Germany that he found it difficult to separate his firm's interests from those of the rising economic and military power, even after Hitler consolidated control over the country in the 1930s. Foster continued to represent German cartels like IG Farben as they were integrated into the Nazis' growing war machine, helping the industrial giants secure access to key War materials. He donated money to America First, the campaign to keep the United States out

of the Gathering Tempest in Europe, and helped to sponsor a rally honoring Charles Lindberg, the fair-haired aviation hero who had become enchanted by Hitler's miraculous revival of Germany. Foster refused to shut down the Berlin office of Sullivan and Cromwell, whose attorneys were forced to sign their correspondence Heil Hitler, until his partners, including Alan Dulles, fearful of a public relations disaster, insisted that he do so. When Foster finally gave in at an extremely tense 1935 partners meeting at the firm's lavish offices at 48 Wall Street, he broke down in tears. Foster still could not bring himself to cut off his former Berlin law partner Gerhard Vestrich when he showed up in New York in August

1940 to lobby on behalf of the Third Reich. Setting himself up in an opulent Westchester County estate, Vestrich invited influential New York society types for weekend parties, taking the opportunity to subject them to his pro-Hitler charm offensive. Vestricks' guessless were dominated by oil executives because he was particularly keen on ensuring the continued flow of fuel supplies to Germany despite the British embargo. The lobbyist finally went too far, even by the hospitable standards of the New York Society set when he had the gall to throw a gala party at the Waldorf Astoria on June 26, 1940 to celebrate the Nazi defeat of France. Westerix's shameless, audacious, created an uproar in the New York press, but Foster rushed to the Nazi promoter's defense,

insisting that he had, quote, a high regard for his integrity. Now, Talbot doesn't mention, but in attendance at that party at the Waldorf, of course, was Edsel Ford, the co-manager of the board of the Ford Motor Company's German subsidiary. And once again, all of this was going on under the nose of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. And bringing it all back to Jerry Ford, then, it seems a lot more likely that his near contemporaneous involvement in America First would have been highly awkward for the FBI. Even though J. Edgar Hoover never officially opened an investigation into Henry Ford, or Charles Lindberg for that matter, he did selectively filter information on the dubious Nazi sympathies of Ford

and the America First Mill U to FDR, surely to Curry favor with the president. He even sent memoranda on American Nazi activities to Roosevelt's Jewish Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, a leading activist for U.S. intervention in Europe at the time. And we think about J. Edgar Hoover now, in hindsight, as a true racist and a fanatical anti-communist whose personal politics and beliefs likely overlapped with Nazi ideology, right? He was by no means, though, a sleeper. agent for Hitler. We want to be clear about this, right? Part of what we're offering here in Fourth Reich archaeology is a lot of context and nuance. We are not trying to lead our listeners

into some kind of a knee-jerk or a conspiracy theorist mindset that sees monsters behind every corner. talking about human beings with a vast array of sometimes conflicting motivations. And J. Edgar Hoover is no exception. Okay? So his hold on power demanded that he remain in the good graces of his boss, the president of the United States. And at a time when confrontation with the Third Reich looked inevitable, that required him to take a tactful stand in opposition to Nazi infiltration. The key word here, perhaps, being tactful, right, Dick?

That's right. And where the rubber hit the road, to use a very apt automotive metaphor, if not too on the nose, the FBI allowed Bennett's boys to have free reign in Michigan and kept a tighter leash on labor organizers than it did on their Nazi enemies working for management. Indeed, some leftists were arrested in Michigan in the late 30s for recruiting soldiers to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. even those arrests weren't prosecuted though Right, they were They were rounded up

And it was technically a violation Of the Neutrality Act To actively recruit for the conflict in Spain Now you don't got yourself in trouble And now you got to go But whereas the FBI certainly could have prosecuted those cases, it chose to let those folks go. And certainly it would have been part of that decision, the fact that the FBI was aware of and was permitting U.S. capital and U.S. corporations to violate the Neutrality Act all over the place, right?

All of the executives from the oil industry, from the tech industry, we're talking ITT here. We're talking IBM here to send intellectual property and to launder money over to Germany. and to Spain, right, to the fascist uprising, the fascist coup attempt under Franco going on in Spain, as well as Il-Ducche, right? The U.S. capital community supported fascism in Europe in plain sight. And the same that it would have been awkward for the FBI to hire a recent, member of the America First Committee as a special agent And listener

I've been long to be a G man Baby on my life They caught my poor mother would murder My brother and my wife And listener Keep in mind In the 1930s There was

A number of special agents in the FBI in the hundreds. Not the thousands, not the tens of thousands. We're talking about a group of people whom Hoover knew each and every one of them by name, right? This was a tight organization. So it's not something that could just slip under the radar. It's something that a hiring decision as a special agent would have potential repercussions all the way up the hierarchy, including up to the president of the United States, certainly the attorney general, right? So in the same way that they wouldn't want to prosecute some leftists for sending material support to the Republican cause in Spain, they would not want to

sway too far to one side of the conflict by hiring a member of America first. It would have simply sent the wrong message. Right. But so when we are reviewing all of this, right, what is Jerry Ford's rejection by the FBI? What does that really mean? And I think what caught both of our eyes, Don, is just this piece of what would otherwise be dismissed as boilerplate language suggesting that Jerry's application to the FBI would be retained in the Bureau's file for future consideration, essentially messaging like, you know, should your services be deemed necessary, we'll call you up. And gosh, with the benefit of hindsight, how powerful that boilerplate really does seem. Exactly. Yeah. It's.

It's something that takes on a lot of meaning because Jerry would go on to, you know, you might think that he would harbor a grudge after he's waiting on this application, files it in 1941 in June. He doesn't get any word for almost a year. He follows up himself to see, you know, what's going on with my application. And ultimately, what he gets is a signed statement from J. Edgar Hoover with this sort of boilerplate rejection notice. he doesn't hold a grudge against hoover quite the contrary he goes on jerry ford to champion j edgar hoover they even develop a close personal friendship and now for me personally dick taking all that we have learned about jerry ford which is a lot and balancing what i think we agree are some admirable traits that he has, with some of the checkers on his record.

In my book, the blackest mark on Jerry Ford's entire life trajectory, or if not the blackest, certainly up there with the very most repugnant things that he ever did or showed about himself is this friendship with such a disgusting figure as J. Edgar Hoover. And I think it's actually a good point to revisit a theme, which is the many jerrys. And something we've talked a lot about on this show is the sort of the outward versus inward Jerry. And here, I think for the first time. we see Jerry as an infiltrator, which is sort of a dirty and disgusting place to be.

I think anyone who's listening will agree that no one really appreciates the rat. And, you know, like oftentimes the mainstream historians, even Richard Norton Smith, acknowledged this phenomenon, I guess, where when you talk about Jerry as a political operator, you talk about him as a decent man, right? His decency is what people sort of tout about him. And it's sometimes used almost as a pejorative, right? Like decency is code for he was sort of simple.

But as we start peeling back the layers, we start excavating. It's clear to us that, you know, Jerry knew full well. sort of persona as a decent man and as a team player. And perhaps he used it to be more of a weapon, right? So you can think of Jerry as a wolf in sheep's clothing. I think that's right. I think that's right. And just one thing that for me, just as we're thinking of world building, this is a point that really tethers Jerry with some of our other objects of study that we're going to become familiar with as we move along, right? Famously, one of his would-be assassins, Sarah Jane Moore, also had ties to the FBI and was

considered, I think, I don't know, what you would call it, maybe an informant or an asset. Same with Lee Harvey Oswald, and I don't think it's too controversial to put Jack Ruby in that bucket either. Mm-hmm. That's right. That's right. And Jerry would go on, of course, the listener knows by now that Jerry eventually gets named to the Warren Commission. So he's going on to really dig deep on the likes of Ruby and Oswald.

And he has in his back pocket this understanding from experience of the process of being involved with the FBI in a variety of. different roles and ways and we're going to follow jerry's relationship with hoover as an individual and with the fbi as an institution over time but for now suffice it to say that their relationship which started on paper in this sort of arm's length way that we've walked through it would go on to bear fruit. Now, Jerry's application to the Office of Naval Intelligence, on the other hand, is much more straightforward than his FBI application, because we happen to know for a fact that Jerry applies to the Navy for a role as a civilian agent in the Office of Naval Intelligence and or as a reservist in the naval reserves.

And he sends that in just a week after Pearl Harbor. In fact, six days after Pearl Harbor, right? I believe that the application was dated December 13, 1941. And that application is reviewed by ONI agents. They conduct a similar background check to what the FBI had done, receive similar comments from kind of the same cast of characters. And there's some interesting tidbits in there. The application is online, published by the Ford Presidential Library.

But one thing that stood out to me in particular was that the old athletic director at Yale, for whom Ford was working, a fellow by the name of Ducky Pond, said that Gerald Ford Sr. was, quote, a prominent furniture manufacturer in Grand Rapids. And that just caught my eye because we happen to know that that's not true at all.

But it begs the question of whether Jerry made that lie up and told it to his fellows at Yale, or whether Ducky Pond made it up to embellish his recommendation of Jerry for a role in the Navy. It's hard to tell, but it goes back to this question that we've discussed at a great length of self mythology and inflating the legend of Jerry Ford during his own lifetime. In the same vein, Ducky also noted that Jerry does not drink to excess. is no philanderer now of course we we have our suspicions that regardless of the absence of philandery on his resume that jerry was perhaps providing female companionship through the conover modeling agency to his fellow students at we're not to say we're not saying outright that

Jerry Ford was a pimp, but, you know, he may have facilitated a good time to some of the Yaleies that he became friends with. But you dropped, I think, my favorite comment from Ducky Pond, which was Jerry's an excellent person in every respect. He's got an attractive personality and, quote, is not conceded in the slightest, and is very handsome. Because by now it should be clear that I believe Jerry Ford was a very handsome man. And I don't know, Don, I don't think you would disagree with me there. Yeah, well, you know, it has been said that the deepest and most profound form of discrimination or favoritism is based on attractiveness, right? Absolutely.

And so Jerry's good looks, whether it be, you know, being a center but being considered a football star, even though the center position is not really one for the highlight reels, or whether it's his entry into the upper echelons of Yale student body and the modeling world. in Manhattan, Jerry's looks did get him some way in his life, and that would continue, including on the next chapter of his adventure, because his application to the Navy was approved. All right, well, we didn't get through as much as we would have liked to this episode, but you know how it is. Time flies when you're talking Jerry. In the Navy. Yes, you can tell the seven C.

In the Navy. Yes, you can't put your mind to eat. In the Navy. Come on now people make the stand. In the Navy. Can you say we need a head? In the Navy. Come on, protect them of the land.

In the Navy. Come on and join your fellow man. In the Navy. Come on me woolen make a stand In the Navy In the Navy In the Navy In the Navy

They want you They want you They want you as a new recruit If you like adventure Don't you wait to enter The recruiting office fast Don't you hesitate There is no need to wait

They're signing up and seeming fast Maybe you are too young to join up today But don't you worry about a thing For I'm sure there will be always a good navy From Tijuana Land and Sea In the Navy Yes you can sail the Seventh Sea In the Navy

Yes you can put your mind in it In the Navy Make people and make the stand In the Navy Say we need a head In the Navy Come on, protect them of the land In the Navy

Come on and join your fellow men In the Navy Come on, we fall and make a stand In the Navy In the Navy In the Navy! They want you, they want you They want you as a new recruit

Oh me? They want you, they want you They want you as a new recruit But, but, but, but, I'm afraid of water. Hey, hey, look, man, I get seasick even watching it on the TV. They want you. Oh, my goodness. They want you.

What am I going to do with those tuffering? They want you. They want you. In the Navy, yes, you can tell the seven C. In the Navy. Yes, you can put your mind in here. In the Navy. Come on before they make a stand.

In the Navy. Can't you say we need a hand? In the Navy. Come protect the motherland. In the Navy. Come on and join your fellow man. In the Navy. Thank you.

Thank you.