Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 50 - Dowsing for Bombs

Episode Date: May 13, 2019

James McCormick tricked the Iraqi government into buying tens of millions of dollars worth of dowsing rods to find bombs. Hilarity did not ensue. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Buy a shirt: https://teespring.com/stores/lions-led-by-donkeys-store follow us on twitter: @lions_by sources: https://slate.com/technology/2013/04/dowsing-for-bombs-maker-of-useless-bomb-detectors-convicted-of-fraud.html https://borderlandsciences.org/journal/vol/ie/Janks_Empirical_Evidence_for_Dowsing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/world/middleeast/04sensors.html

The devices called the ADE651 are made in the UK by a company called ATSC. They're used throughout Baghdad and much of Iraq. But despite claims in these promotional videos, the British government says they do not, in fact, detect explosives. In June, a U.S. military spokesman called the device totally ineffective and fraudulent. The latest statement says simply, as far as the device in question, U.S. forces are not buying, purchasing, or contracting for this device. Counterterrorism expert Simon Trundle has examined the ADE-651 and says there's no way it can detect explosives.

The only thing this device does is give a false reassurance that there's security in place. And Britain has banned the further sale of the device to Iraq and Afghanistan and arrested the owner of the company that makes it on suspicion of fraud. Hello, welcome to yet another episode of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe. And as always, Nick is gone. And Rich is here. Hi, guys.

So, Rich, how have you been? I guess I've been all right. Started a new job recently. I'm enjoying that, learning new things, all that stuff. That sounds like a nightmare. No, it's not. I have a lot more time off than usual, time to myself to really be introspective and think about how...

Like I said, that sounds terrible. Really, I have a lot more time to drink. Well, that explains why you're here. And as per every episode that you're on my show, I have supplied booze and pizza. So that's... Without it, I would not be here, folks. In case anybody's wondering where the Patreon donations go, it is to defeat our horrible vices.

Now, what do you know about tech grifters? We don't get to talk about tech grifters often on the show because it's not what the fuck we're about. It's not a tech or technically a political show at all. For more on that, you can listen to Trash Future. It's another show that our producer both hosts and produced, but it's not really our brand. But we get to make fun of tech grifters today.

So I know tech is like technology. So this isn't Silicon Valley tech because it's a guy need it while selling it for obscene amounts of money. So what does that have to do with lions and donkeys and military? Oh, you'll see. So most tech grifters I tend to think are like Tesla, Uber, Juicero, things like that. Things that you think make a lot of money but are also actually hemorrhaging money faster than you can possibly imagine. Are you implying that the world did not need the technology of Uber? Absolutely not.

Even though I literally got around North Carolina the other day with Uber. Uber is gross. But I feel like I'm okay using it as long as I tip my driver heavily to offset it. Every bit of technology that we use is disgusting. Google is disgusting, but it's literally a staple on my phone's home screen. Amazon is disgusting, but I got three Amazon packages in the mail today. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Walmart is disgusting, but that's the only place I can go to buy the greens that I need to feed my lizard. Yeah. The closest thing I can think to Amazon is a 21st century version of the british east india company and they just do awful things and control the world but uh how this wraps around to military

history is we're going to talk about the iraq war and how somebody managed to trick the iraqi government into buying dousing rods for explosion explosives uh. So are you familiar with the concept of dousing? No. Okay. So historically, dousing is, and a lot of people probably know it as, someone will hold two sticks out in front of them. And as they get closer to a source of water, and I guess people use it for minerals too,

whatever the fuck they say it can find, the sticks will point or cross over. It's magic, is what it is. It's based on the same concept as the Ouija board. I believe it's called the ideomotor effect. So the spirits move the sticks towards the water? Kind of. No matter how many ways people try to spin this and explain, it's not fucking real. But there's a reason.

I guess there's a good reason why this pops up. So it should become no surprise to anybody when I tell you that at the height of the Iraq War, the U.S. military is willing to pay anybody endless amounts of money for military equipment with little to no oversight. Uh, some of this is due to outright corruption, uh, or the very nature of defense contracting people, greasing the right palms of the right lobbyists. Uh, what up Eric Prince?

Uh, other times it has to do with just an exhausted war effort, uh, just drafting any equipment they could find. Um, and they just didn't have enough time for those things like a pesking testy testing process you know um and as someone who is in the united states military and someone who's deployed you saw this just like i did um i i saw this on multiple

occasions during my time in the army more specifically my time in afghanistan during my time in the army, more specifically my time in Afghanistan. During my first tour in Afghanistan, soldiers in my area were no longer to leave the gates of the forward operating base using Humvees. Humvees are the standard global war on terror vehicle. This is probably because the army had thousands

of them before the war began. Also because they already had a platform to slap more armor and weapons on as the wars grew on and went on for two decades. Instead, we'd have to use these new trucks known as MRAPs or Mine Resistant Ambush Protected

Vehicles. The problem is the military didn't have enough of these things. And so they just picked a couple contractors. I think there's five or six different contractors, all making different models of MRAPs, all being sent to the same units. They're just cranking them out on the assembly line with very little stress testing and very little time to work out the kinks. Joe, the soldiers are owned by the government.

They are the stress testing. We are the test dummies. Right. That's effectively what their plan was as far as the MRAP program is concerned. For instance, my first deployment to Afghanistan, the one before the one that I wrote the book about, we got MRAPs in. And my one squad, which consisted of operating four trucks, had three different trucks. squad, which consists of operating four trucks, had three different trucks. You can imagine the logistics of trying to get all those

replacement parts, or literally any mechanic that knows how to work on one of them, let alone three different ones. In other cases, we were giving mine and metal detectors that either detected nothing, or just beeped constantly. I remember that.

Yeah. It became clear that the military was flooding the that either detected nothing or just beeped constantly. I remember that. Yeah, yeah. It became clear that the military was flooding the battlefield with stupid ideas, hoping that something would stick. And that is kind of consistent throughout long wars. I mean, granted, there's not many other 20-year-long wars in modern history, but we did the same thing in World War II to much more success,

which brings me back to dowsing of all things um dowsing is kind of a yield grift um like the oldest of grifts we've probably ever talked about um and you know there are some people who legitimately believe in this shit and there's probably i'm probably gonna get somebody says no i swear to god this shit. And there's probably, I'm probably going to get somebody that says, no, I swear to God this shit worked. It doesn't fucking work. It's magic. But that didn't stop the U.S. Marine Corps from using dowsing to find Viet Cong tunnels during the Vietnam War

or the British Army Engineer Corps relying on dowsing to find water all the way up until World War II. Yeah. Yeah. I know nobody can tell because it's a podcast and this is an audio medium, but Rich is currently looking at me like I told her I was pregnant. It's the Pikachu surprise meme. That is my face right now.

I really don't have words for this. Yeah. World War II is kind of considered the most modern of the wars that you study in history class. Because, you know, World War I, a lot of horses were still being used. People were still figuring out machine guns killed a lot of people really quickly, so don't run at them. But World War II, you know, there's jets, there's tanks, there's, you know, aircraft carriers. But then there's some British guy wandering through the desert looking for water with sticks. That is a scene that happened.

Completely 100% understanding this is what I'm about to say is saying that I would like to commit suicide. I would like to go to war on horseback. I don't want my horse to die, and I don't want to die, but I just think that would be so much more fun than a fucking MRAP. I got some really bad news for you for the amount of horse casualties that units face in World War I. I watch Game of Thrones. I know how many horses die at war, okay? It's a lot.

It's very sad. It's a whole lot. Oh wait, never mind. I'm not going to give that spoiler in case you guys haven't watched the latest episode yet. Yeah, I try not to do that either. So, what if I told you someone was now trying to douse for explosive

devices? More importantly, car bombs. Yeah. Dousing for car bombs. So, it supposedly works to find water. Yes. You'll find anything. What?

What? So what? Now, before we get to the suicidal portion of this, we have to. No, no, no, no, no. I need some clarification here. Yeah. So it can find water.

Like, like possibly. It can't. Like possibly. That's the problem. No, but I'm saying like say that it can find water. Is that, like, possibly, like, detecting the elements of water? What would make it also be able to find explosives

and not discriminate between explosives and water? Oh, we'll get to that. We'll get to that. I promise. So, this brings us to the Quadro Tracker, where all this began so the quadro tracker was in effect a metal dousing rod with some buttons glued onto it um it was invented by a used car salesman named wade quaddle bomb um yeah quaddle bomb quaddle bum i'm sorry if there's anybody out there listening with the last name

of waddle bum waddle bum but that is either the best or worst last name i've ever heard a waddle bum sounds like someone who teabags with a twerk i'm just like picturing in my head somebody with a large rear end waddling across a battlefield. I'm more laughing at the fact that you said rear end. Ass. A large ass. Thank you. I would have settled for a badonkadon. So Mr.

Quattlebaum was when I'm looking for new technological inventions I look for ones slapped together by society's greatest grifters. When I'm looking for new technological inventions, I look for ones slapped together by society's greatest grifters. Used car salesmen. Name one used car salesman you've ever fucking met that you liked. Exactly.

None of us know one. I don't think I've ever actually gotten to know a car salesman. Nobody wants to know a car salesman. That's the point they're awful you're right like their whole their whole existence is based on lies they don't even really need to exist well they're not going too much longer with things like carvana and all that yeah uh i'm not really sure how that whole system works um but i would probably use that over like going and having to speak to some guy who really looks like, you know what?

You look great in this Mustang, sir. 24% APR. I'm like, I want a Prius. I understand that I'm 6'3 and weigh 240 pounds, but I want a Prius. I've literally had a car salesman chase me back to my car because i refused to take their interest rate that they offered me it's not the interest rate it's the implication so quaddle bomb wasn't trying to detect bombs he was trying to find lost golf balls which i guess is better and And so the whole device that he came up with consisted of three things. A locator card, which was a card more like a, it looked kind of like a CD, or sorry,

a cassette tape. Really dating ourselves there. And you were to put whatever contained a quote-unquote signature of the object you were looking for. So because this thing is supposed to look for golf balls, golf balls are full of rubber bands, I guess. Really? Just shove rubber bands in that bitch.

It'll detect rubber bands. I guess that makes sense. They just fill it with rubber and cover it with the coating or whatever? I mean, that's what baseballs are full of. Well, we should do a whole episode on how to make a golf ball. I'd rather not. Oh, sorry. Wrong podcast.

Yeah. I believe they have a whole network for that. And they get paid way more than I do. Also, there was a Discovery Channel show called How It's Made. Or maybe that was the History Channel. I really liked it. Anyway. You would. I really liked it. Anyway. You would.

I would. Yeah. My brand is painfully boring. I was watching the same shows that a 40-year-old divorced single dad watches when I was 12. I'm ahead of the curve. You know, that sounds right. That sounds right. Yeah.

I'm ahead of the curve. You know, that sounds right. That sounds right. So outside the locator card, it would be connected to a handheld piece that looked just kind of like a grip. And then there'd be a swiveling antenna attached to it. Now, I don't mean like an actual antenna that worked. It was like a telescoping radio antenna.

So this is the equivalent of like a bomb sniffing dog. Or let's say. A golf ball sniffing dog. No, no, no. I think it'd be easier to analogize this to a forensic sniffing dog, like a decomposing body sniffing dog. I can't think of what it's called right now. You have no idea how accurate you're being right now. We're just not there yet.

Where are you like, so instead of sticking, you like stick a cassette tape into this thing, but instead of cassette tape, you're, you're having the dog smell what you're trying to get them to find and then go find it. But it's,

it's a thing with a cassette tape that's inanimate and doesn't have smelling sensibilities or learning sensibilities or capabilities or anything. Yeah. So it's a dog without a nose. Or a brain. Yeah. So this antenna, which looked kind of like a telescoping radio antenna. He just kind of snapped off and shoved in there.

Would swivel back and forth and eventually point to whatever the signature it detected. And that's how it worked. He sold the tracker through his company named the Quadro Corporation for about 400 bucks a pop, which is pricey. And even Quattlebaum himself

sold it as a party favor. He didn't actually believe it worked. Like a Ouija board. Exactly. Except we both know at least one person in our life like, no, bro, the Ouija board totally works. People also legitimately believe in crystals.

Yeah, and essential oils and shit. Yeah. I mean, I believe in essential oils, but I don't think that they're going to heal deadly ailments. Yeah, which is why we can't wander too close to Seattle or else we'll get fucking measles.

Yeah, like, so he didn't believe this is real. He thought it was like a funny gift. Also, like, he apparently wasn't selling cars too good because when he... Too well, Joe. Too well. I stand by what i stand by uh so when his

shitty golf ball finder wasn't selling so hot quaddle bomb decided he was going to swing for the fences uh because he wasn't selling any cars i'm assuming he seems like he's just a terrible salesman overall like in general maybe he needs to think of a career change. If he was a terrible salesman, I would not have to explain to you what I'm about to explain to you. Suddenly, the card reader that was, again, designed to not really, but really detect golf balls

can now detect everything. If the locator card was placed near anything, it would pick up a signature of what it was in contact with. Golf ball or no golf ball. This totally bullshit scientific breakthrough led to the Quadro Corporation pumping out marketing pamphlets about how

their tracker could help local police departments and schools track down drug dealers and drugs that were being stored in lockers. Excuse me? Yeah, yeah. This is a holistic. Excuse me? Yeah, yeah. This is a holistic drug dealer tracker? Yeah, yeah. It could find anything now. What the fuck?

It's magic. And since, all right, as I sit here and make eye contact you, you know what state fell for this, right? No. Texas! Don't say no! Not just individual school districts. The entire Department of Texas Public Safety bought hundreds of these things.

This hurts my soul. I need a break. I need a break. If you think this is so stupid that no law enforcement agency would ever fall for it, you're very wrong. that no law enforcement agency would ever fall for it, you're very wrong. So once the DPS, the Texas DPS,

or the Texas Department of Public Safety and multiple school districts bought into this, as well as many other smaller local law enforcement agencies, it now costs $8,000 a piece. And I know, okay. For some wands with a cassette tape. Yeah. So I know how you're you're probably asking like okay if this thing was meant to find golf balls but not really but kind of

how the fuck did they sell it to find drugs so in lieu of putting rubber bands or a chunk of a golf ball in there you just shove fucking drugs in the card reader you could use those drugs in so many better ways than shoving them into a cassette tape. Put them in your face. Put them in your face. Smoke them, snort them. So you know how before you talked about a cadaver dog? Guess what else this could do now?

Find dead... No. Yeah. How many murders have gone unsolved because of this bullshit? More than one. No. Any number greater than zero is too many.

Okay, so you're probably asking, did they shove this thing full of human bodies? And I wish I could tell you yes, but the answer is even dumber. You'd take a Polaroid photo of the person you were looking to find and just shove it in the card reader. What? No! So, that is,

nobody raised any questions about this until the Texas Department of Public Safety attempted to, now that for people who are not from Texas or not familiar with Texas, that is the Texas State Police. This is a large agency. Also, I believe this includes the Texas Rangers. I would like to say, Texas, you're better than this, but I don't even believe that at this point.

So, they attempted to use the Quadra Tracker to find the dead body of seven-year-old Corlin Smith and failed. Now, I don't know where in the chain of bad ideas that they go to and be like, fuck it, we'll use the quadro tracker before they decide to use it to look for this body. But they never found the body. I'm assuming their department fucking psychics were on vacation or something. Anyway. After these things failed time and time again. An FBI agent brought one of them to be tested at the Sandia National Laboratories. Now, Sandia does a lot of really important tests.

Excuse me. Excuse me. How long is this after they bought the product? Multiple years. Now they're going to fucking test it. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, so before then they've done multiple tests like but not real ones like cops just shoved some drugs in some lockers, fired up the quadro tracker and like, well, it found him sometimes.

And I mean, to be fair, narcotics dogs don't hit all the time. Not saying that we, I truly personally don't believe that narcotics dogs even exist. Because why bother? Those dogs need jobs too, Joe. Personal pet? They're fucking servants of this country. Seeing eye dog. Name one good thing a drug

sniffing dog ever did. I don't know. Was awesome and probably got some good pets. I'm not disparaging the dog. I'm disparaging the people who trained it. So when he brought this thing to the Sandia National Laboratory,

which I should point out the Sandia National Laboratory does a lot of really important shit. So when he brought this thing to the Sandia National Laboratory, which I should point out, the Sandia National Laboratory is a lot of really important shit. So this had to be like the fastest test in the Institute's fucking history. They found out there was not a single electronic component inside the tracker. It was simply a metal, an empty metal box with some wires and antennas attached to the box, none of which were actually connected to one another. It took some years to find out that it wasn't even a fucking electronic. Oh, yeah. Oh, come the fuck on. So the device was quickly banned and everybody involved was charged with various kinds of fraud, none of whom were found guilty.

They were never found guilty of any criminal charges. Quaddleball men ended up paying some fines. I feel like that's a solid finding just because if you were stupid enough to buy this product, the person who made it shouldn't be found guilty. Yeah, I feel like the judge is like, you know,

we understand that you committed fraud, but we respect the hustle. Yeah, dude. Like, he probably made a ton of money on this shit because of those idiots. Yeah, dude. He probably made a ton of money on this shit because of those idiots. Yeah. They had to have bought it taking it at face value, in which case I can make a lot of fucking money.

There is a Superman cardboard cutout standing right to your left side there that I swear to God can detect drugs and I will sell it to the Seattle Police Department. Not only can he detect drugs, he can also save you from a burning building. He might burn a little while he's saving you because he's made out of cardboard.

Also, he doesn't have legs. Respect it, Joe. Also, his bulge is mostly airbrushed over. That's gotta be shameful for him. It's not, eh. I give it a four out of 10. You know, it, Joe. Also, his bulge is mostly airbrushed over. That's got to be shameful for him. I give it a four out of ten. You know, it's whatever. It's a respectable bulge. So that brings us to the tracker's evil cousin, the ADE-651,

which I will call the 651 to make saying it easier for the rest of the episode. So the 651 was invented by a British guy named Jim McCormick. McCormick was a former Merseyside police officer and communications equipment salesman. Oh, salesman yet again.

Who had absolutely zero scientific or technical background. Because that's where I want to buy my technology from. Now, invented is a bit of a strong word. Because McCormick did not invent a fucking thing. Instead, he bought 100 of the Quadro trackers and shipped to England. He ripped off the Quadro tracker symbols and just slapped on his new label, calling it the Advanced Detection Equipment 651.

It's the same fucking thing. He didn't even add anything to it? No. Like no electronics? No. This is still not an electronic thing. No. This is still just wires.

Except now it's going to kill people. Oh, yay. Yeah. So before, someone probably got some bogus drug charges. Now they're going to die. Or just never found their fucking dead loved ones. Uh, yeah. Yeah.

Sorry about that. Uh. So unlike Quattle Bomb, McCormick did not start small and work his way into the ridiculous. He immediately marketed his new invention as a bomb detector, selling them for as much as $60,000 a piece through his new company, the Advanced Tactical Security and Communications. I'm sorry, did you say $60,000? I did. For a piece of equipment that has zero anything?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. So what is interesting about him is he just swung for the fences immediately. I guess if you're going to grift, grift hard. Players got to play, man. It did not take long for the devices to begin to pour into conflict zones throughout the Middle East. Thousands of them were also sold to Mexico and Thailand, which we will not really talk about because there's not a lot of news coming from them there's a good chance

Mexico is using them to attempt to find drugs during their war against the cartels and now there is a low level insurgency in Thailand not a lot of information has come out about how the Thai Royal Army used them has anybody informed

either of them that this is bullshit oh absolutely yeah people have gone to prison over this Has anybody informed either of them that this is bullshit? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, people have gone to prison over this. Now, it's important to point out that at no point did the U.S. military or any other Western military or government ever use one of these things. But there's a good reason for that. Kormak did not sell it to them. He only marketed them to developing nations.

Why is that? Good old bribery. Say what you will about the ethics of the U.S. military, and they are flexible at best. Very rarely do they ever accept open bribes of cash. That's more of a military contractor thing. But there are nations who do. One of them is Iraq. McCormick knew the Iraqi government was wildly corrupt.

So when he went to try to shill his fancy new invention to the Iraqi government, he promised the minister who had approved the sales a full 75% kickback of the contract price. So he was a worldly informed grifter. Well, I mean, this is the mid-2000s it really just took a google search to figure out how fucked up the iraqi government uh was and still is uh the contract with iraq was 85 million dollars now you're probably wondering why the fuck would he bribe them 75 of their own contract price right back to them. Why the fuck does he care? He employs like two people. And why would the Iraqi government care?

The vast majority of the Iraqi government's funding comes from the United States government. So we really did buy these things. If that sounds like an insane rate of graft, you would be right. McCormick was leaving a lot of money on the table to bribe these guys. So if you were to guess, I mean, these things are like, it's pieces of metal slapped together. How much do you think they cost to make? Oh, 10 bucks? Lower.

No. So a BBC investigation found that one of the 651s cost around three pence to slap together. What is three pence? So, for our Americans in the audience, that's somewhere around three cents of material. No fucking way. Is there anything that's only worth three cents? You can find every single part of what he used to make this thing in a dumpster and and remember he started out with hundreds of them already and and he sold them for sixty thousand dollars now uh because the

contract was uh so generous he lowered the price to forty thousand dollars a piece oh how nice yeah uh so for three cents fucking gentlemen for cents of material, he turned a profit of $40,000. He literally- So he sold thousands of these things to Iraq. Even after bribing the Iraqi government tens of millions of dollars, McCormick himself still managed to bring over $20 million of profit for a company he ran virtually by himself out of a shack in the middle of nowhere in Sheffield, England.

Yeah. I mean, they must have been relatively easy to build too. Yeah, they're three pieces slapped together. He eventually did hire some people, but for a long time time it was just like him and like two or three other people are you gonna like post a picture of this thing on yeah yeah i have videos of it at work yeah like the the iraqis i'm sorry i am a regular guest on this show does lions led by donkeys have a website it It doesn't. No. We've thought about it.

Maybe you should. Eh, maybe. So, kind of like the police departments and everything, you have to think the Iraqi government because whoever bought these things was absolutely corrupt. But other parts of the Iraqi government, more particularly the Iraqi police and military are probably going to ask how these things work, right?

Get an answer for that. To stop anybody from answering too many questions about his miracle bomb detector, McCormick claimed he ran four different secret laboratories from the UK to Romania. What is he, fucking Dexter? Not the serial killer,

the child with a laboratory. Just to clarify. I mean, he's more like the other Dexter. He's a fucking psychopath. He claimed their staff was super secret, clever experts who he literally described as like, quote, Q from James Bond. What?

Yeah, I think that's like the weird grifter version of like, yeah, I totally have a girlfriend. She lives in Canada. You wouldn't really run into her. She goes to a different high school. Yeah. No, I don't have any pictures of her. No.

She's really private. We don't even Skype. Her parents are spies. Parents are spies. So McCormick even slapped the logo of the International Association of Bomb Technicians, which is something I wasn't aware was the thing until I researched this, as well as the Essex Chamber of Commerce on the side of the box to give his device an air of respectability. Of course, he'd absolutely no right to use either one of those things.

He just fucking slapped them on there. Because if you're already in so deep, you're actually selling these things to Iraq? What's fucking stopping you from saying, yeah, the Prime Minister said these things are the tits. Who fucking cares? Nobody's Googling you anymore. Who says the tits?

I say the tits. No, you fucking don't. No, I don't. We should bring it back. We should bring it back. Bring it back. I think we should speak more like British people. Just say the don't. We should bring it back. We should bring it back. Bring it back. I think we should speak more like British people. Just say the tits and like cunt all the time. You know, Nick would probably agree with that second part. He waved away the explanation of how his device functions. Because even he really couldn't explain it.

Because there's no explanation. Because it doesn't fucking work? These things only work in the Harry Potter universe. First of all, let's not malign Harry Potter here. They did nothing wrong. I'm just saying they know magic and these things only work on magic. But I'm also saying that maybe...

Also, they just don't work at all and magic actually does, so settle down. You're right. I fact-checked the wrong people here. Thank you. Yeah. Anyway. Then he Leviosa'd the fucking device away, and there was never any problems again.

Sadly, there was peace in the Middle East, because everybody played fucking Quaffle. Quidditch. It's Quidditch! Leviosa! No, none of that. Just none of what you just said. I am just curious at what part of

Quidditch do they destroy the one ring? Your face is worth everything I've just said. Alright, so he would hand wave away his explanation of how these devices worked. So he moved the goalposts a few times on how he said these things work. But the most repeating statement he said on how it functioned was electrostatic magnetic ion attraction. Now, from my research,

I could find this means absolutely fucking nothing. So I am not a scientist or a mathematician nor anything. I don't consider myself much in the STEM area. No, me either. I know how fucking magnets work. And I know that golf balls and water aren't magnetized. You don't have to worry about rationalizing because that isn't even a thing.

No, understood. But if you're going to put magnetic... He's just throwing buzzwords on it. First of all... It's like every time a tech company says something's disruptive or revolutionary. Say the whole title again. Electrostatic Magnetic Ion Attraction. So there's not a single bit

of electricity in this thing. No. There's no magnets either. So there goes electrostatic. Nothing that they're detecting is magnetic. So there goes that. There's not even a magnet in it. So who is this stupid? A lot of people. So one of the things uh that sandy a laboratory found

within the device was a uh so you know if you go into a store have you ever shoplifted anything before yes okay so you know how you service and all yeah me too uh so you know how the 21st century works where now there's like those theft anti-theft tags attach everything. Oh yes. That was inside of it. Also guys. Anti-theft tag was inside of this thing. Oh wow. Also guys if you do remove the anti-theft tag sometimes the tag is still

a detector. Really? Yeah that's how I got caught. Also don't shoplift. That's very bad. I was like 15 years old. if you're gonna shoplift make sure you shoplift from like chain stores because like the buckle because that's where i got yeah because like who who gives a shit they're multi-million dollar companies making money of chinese slave labor apparently they give a shit yeah well of course they do it's their store don't shoplift from a mom and pop store it's fucked up yeah no don't

ever steal from a small business guys that's really fucked up steal from the the fucking chain stores still from like walmart like do crimes yeah uh so um so i know at this point everybody's wondering like how the fuck did the iraqi military fall for this shit despite the fact they're technically being trained and advised by literally dozens of countries who had all turned these things down. And I don't know any other than the Iraqi government that they insisted that these things were purchased and passed out. At no point were Western countries, like the advisors of the Iraqi military in place, ever

consulted about the use of these things. Now, these things did come out. Obviously, the teams training the Iraqi military did see these things and wanted to look at them. And it was a U.S. Army colonel who said they were completely fucking useless and started an investigation. Now, the investigation went to the U S military who just pleaded with the Iraqi government to stop using these things,

uh, which launched investigations in the Iraqi military, which quickly vanished. Uh, you'll see why soon. Bought and sold. I'm assuming not quite. Uh,

so, uh, it wasn't just the Iraqi government who's insisting that the 651 worked iraqi soldiers themselves swore by the goddamn things why wouldn't they um in the two years since iraq had rolled out the 651 bombing and violence has overall dropped in iraq uh now correlation just obviously obviously does not equal causation here there's a lot of other things happening on the ground during the Iraq war in these years certainly

fuck it it has to do with the thousands of 651s that flood the battlefield not the changing conditions on the ground not a more effective Iraqi security apparatus and the much-touted sons of Iraq movement which we we won't really get into. Nope, it's got to be the dousing rods, for sure. The Iraqis were so damn sure about the 651 that they soon became the go-to method for searching vehicles. For people who are unaware, at the height of the Iraq war, and even to some extent to this day, there are dozens of layers of security

around Baghdad manned by hundreds if not thousands of soldiers and cops they force all foot traffic and vehicle traffic into checkpoints at which point your vehicle is searched now they would pick over it by hand

metal detectors things like that looking for bombs weapons anything being smuggled into the capital city. Before long, 651 became the only method of search at dozens of these checkpoints. Yeah. Now... I don't even know what to say to that even though the capital is getting safer

bombs are still slipping through so I'm sorry I just want to be clear here what are they putting in the cassettes to make sure they're detecting bombs probably ANFO I would assume so ANFO is an acronym

it is effectively it's a homemade explosive you take Probably ANFO, I would assume. So ANFO is an acronym. It is effectively, it's a homemade explosive. Okay. You take a certain kind of fertilizer, which is banned in the United States, but very, very prevalent through the Middle East and Central Asia, that has, I believe, has a high nitrate count. So it was used in the Oklahoma City bombings, which is one of the main reasons why you cannot have it anymore. Right. I believe you just mix in gasoline and it becomes explosives.

I believe it might be diesel. I vaguely remember the IED class that we had to take in Afghanistan, but vaguely. We found a few of these places in Afghanistan that are mixing ANFO, and you'd mix them together I'm sure there's other processes involved and you'd lay it out in the sun to dry and become like this paste

I'm assuming they're trying to find that so they're probably just shoving ANFO inside of these cassettes I would prefer to think they're shoving cow shit into it yeah fertilizer it's the quote unquote signature. Fuck it.

We're just going to load these things up with cow shit. Oh my gosh. So even though, so saying Baghdad is safer is kind of relative. There's still lots of violence going on.

But less than normal. But people are still dying and McCormick had an explanation for that too. If for whatever reason the 651 hit on something that wasn't there, or missed a bomb, or whatever, it was not the 651's fault. Instead

it was the user's fault. He explained that in order for the 651 to work, you had to be calm, and you absolutely must keep your heart rate down. What is this, a fucking polygraph now? Now remember, you're searching for bombs in a war zone.

You have to keep your heart rate down. Another thing was that the 651 may have just had a low battery. It had batteries? No. So, it's important to note that the 651 did not have a battery of any kind. Instead, it was marketed that the machine was powered through the user's own static electricity that their hands generated through the act of using it.

What? Which is not a thing. So, how could it have a low battery? You didn't have enough static electricity running through you, mutant. Generate more. Like fucking put socks on and rub your feet against the ground? Yes. That's actually exactly

what McCormick suggested. Shut the fuck up. I swear to fucking God. Yeah, he suggested that a user shuffle their feet around while they were in use just in case. So, imagine if you will, you're at a checkpoint. We've all been in a checkpoint before.

Now imagine that. So say you've never really gone through military checkpoints and stuff overseas. But like, say you're at a TSA checkpoint. Someone's gonna search you for explosive. Here comes this TSA guy from 20 feet away, just shuffling his feet like as fast as he fucking can. But while he's simultaneously trying to be in like the most Buddhist Zen mindset on earth so he can find

bombs on you now picture him in the socks in button-down shirt from risky business and he's Tom Cruise and now the dowsing rat is just his dick and he's furiously pointing it at you

looking for Thetans that took a turn sorry guys and is furiously pointing it at you, looking for Thetans. That took a turn. Sorry, guys. You know, this isn't the first podcast we've talked about Tom Cruise dick. I won't be the last. But honestly, that sounds just as reasonable. Yeah, it's absolutely just reasonable.

Cool. So it should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone when I tell you that eventually, McCormick's magical dowsing routes failed in a spectacular fashion. On October 25th, 2009,

two coordinated bombings tore through the city of Baghdad, when the smoke cleared 150 people were dead, and north of 800 people were injured. According to surveillance videos taken near the site of the bombing, both of these cars passed through checkpoints being manned by soldiers and cops who are using the 651. If you thought this is when Iraq would crack down on the use of these things, you would be wrong. The UK did, however. The UK has soldiers stationed in Basra taking 651 from Iraqi soldiers and x-raying it.

They found, just like Sandia National Laboratories, that there was nothing inside. And they launched a full investigation into the function and use of the 651. and they launched a full investigation into the function and use of the 651. To the shock of maybe only members of the Iraqi government, the 659 did so badly at tests it almost managed to do worse than random chance. Out of 25 tests related to finding explosives specifically at the Cambridge Cavendish Laboratory,

how many do you think that it actually hit on? Out of 25? Three? Actually, yeah, it was three. Really? Yeah. I feel like I should win something. Pizza?

Yeah, maybe later. Cool. We'll see. In January of 2010, McCormick was arrested. That did not stop the Iraqi government from doubling down and defending the device after the bombings and

the devices inventor had been arrested and even after that the 651 was banned from export from the United Kingdom an Iraqi major named Jihad El-Jabiri who is head of the Iraqi ministry of interiors general directorate for combating explosives said quote whether it's magic or scientific all I care about is that it detects is head of the Iraqi Ministry of Interior's General Directorate for Combating Explosives, said, quote,

whether it's magic or scientific, all I care about is that it detects bombs. Three out of 25? Yeah. Come on, dude. So an investigation of how deep and systemic McCormick's corruption into the Iraqi government

was to the rest of 15 people. You'll never guess who one of those 15 people was. Head of the Ministry of the Interior's General Director of Combat Exposal, Jihad al-Jabiri. He was thrown in prison. Somehow, what was worse than being a corrupt general is the people on the ground knowing

that they were bullshit. So Iraqi soldiers, when they were finally interviewed by the Associated Press, were pretty open that they knew these things didn't fucking work. But they were ordered by officers above them that they would use them. Which, I mean, we've all kind of been there.

How many times have you guys been out on patrol with the Thors? Yeah. Yeah, with the Thors. And the whole time you're out there, you're grumbling. These things don't fucking work. These things don't fucking work.

People are using their fucking Roshan cell phones while you've got your suppressors on. So for people who are unaware, the Thor system is like a backpack cell phone jammer. You wear them over your shoulders and the idea is that like it jams cell phones so they so the taliban can't trigger ids or exposed uh improvised explosive device and roshan is the uh prepaid cell phones that you can get in afghanistan so that you can can communicate with each other and your family back home if you want to yeah uh the thor system absolutely does not work. People would literally be texting while the Thors were on.

Yeah. And it is kind of like that. And we had to carry two of them for reasons we weren't sure of. But someone said we had to carry two of them. And we had to carry a mind detector. So an Iraqi lieutenant when interviewed said, quote, we know they're banned, but we still use them quote we know they're banned but we still use them we know they're bullshit a full Iraqi ban would not come into effect

until 2016 during a six week trial McCormick continued to insist that his device worked he insisted if they didn't work why would the Georgian government have searched a path that President Obama took during a state visit to the country? Which is true.

They did do that. Bad on you, Georgia. But McCormick had no actual evidence other than stories about people he had tricked into giving him money. I mean, the Georgians didn't find anything.

They just used them, which is the same thing the Thai and the Mexicans and the Iraqis had been doing. Didn't work. It's like, yeah, if they didn't work so good, why would they be using them? Because you fucking bribe them. I mean, and if it's successful once or twice because you just happy accident happened to happen upon something that i just said happened a lot but if you just happen to stumble upon something and you're like oh it worked then that's that's a statistic that's it's literally the same concept of the lucky rabbit's foot yeah like well i would have died but you know i'm lucky or uh i did mre spoon i carried an mre spoon with me for an entire

year the same mre spoon because when i one missionRE spoon with me for an entire year, the same MRE spoon, because one mission, I carried it on me. So back in the day, before we had headsets and stuff, back in, man, I'm fucking dating myself, like 2005, 2006, you had to carry actual hand mics, and the back of the hand mic had a clip. Clip would break all the fucking time,

but the clip was very easily replaced by an MRE spoon and some tape. So everybody carried an MRE spoon on them if you were the radio guy. So I almost always carried an MRE spoon with me. And then one time, I didn't get fucking killed when somebody shot at me like, shit, this spoon is lucky!

Out of everything that you had on you that day, it was the spoon. Yeah. Absolutely. Cool, cool, cool, cool. Because a traumatized mind is is a rational one uh yeah i mean that's effectively how these things were credible it's like well i didn't get blown up that one time it must work right okay um so during the investigation the iraqi government went deeper uh during the iraqi part of the investigation they uh found video footage of a device that led to an incident um so they found a car bomb that went off we killed about a dozen

people 20 people maybe more um but that single car bomb managed to travel through 23 different checkpoints every single one of those checkpoints were armed with 651s. And a single one detected any of the hundreds of pounds of explosives in the car. Which leads me to believe that the insurgents knew that these things didn't fucking work. Oh, I'm sure. It's probably not hard to tell.

They probably send test cars through or something like that. Oh, they do. Yeah, they definitely do. Yeah, for sure. And they suddenly realized cars weren't being physically searched anymore yeah like that's a huge giveaway and they're and they're smart like it's not like there's some fucking backwoods idiots like that's what people want you to think like alt-right or something like i mean the vast majority of the insurgents that i've ever had dealt with were incredibly intelligent otherwise how the fuck would that run drones and jets and tanks and everything else?

And build fucking bombs. I can't build a bomb. No, of course not. Like they build them out of fucking cell phones and a fistful of ball bearings and cow shit. Yeah. I couldn't build a bomb out of an actual bomb. I mean, we have unlimited resources

and technology and all kinds of shit in this house, and I couldn't make it explode. No. The gun, maybe. That's about it. I don't know that I'd be able to make the gun explode. That's fair. So when McCormick's on trial, like I said, he continued to say they were just using it wrong and that's when the state brought forward a whistleblower who had worked for him before in full faith the whistleblower

believed that they worked because if you're working in somewhere putting things together all the time that are meant to detect bombs you probably assume they work i mean how dumb is this person where they realize they're like probably soldering together a couple fucking bits of wire in a radio antenna? And they're like, yeah, it finds bombs. But they weren't a scientist, we'll say. This whistleblower confronted them like, hey, if these things really don't work, I can't keep working for you. McCormick said that the 651 quote did exactly what it was designed to do. It makes money.

Well. He isn't wrong. He is not a liar in that aspect. James McCormick was sentenced to 10 years in prison, as well as forfeit millions of dollars and his yacht that he had made through the deal. Without a doubt, he is responsible for hundreds of deaths in the city of Baghdad.

And he actually would have been released about two years ago. But the only thing keeping him in a British prison is his inability to pay back the final $8 million of his court order. Yeah. Well, he can stay there. That's cool. You know, he kill...

Imagine... There's laws in place now. So if I was a drug dealer and i sold you drugs and you died from those drugs i'm gonna try the manslaughter right how the fuck can't he he absolutely should be able to i mean i don't know anything about british politics so i'm not going to pretend to but i think that if you're if you're indirectly, I mean, if Facebook and YouTube and shit are under scrutiny for

allowing the anti-vax message to spread, I'm pretty sure he could be tried for fucking... Well, both those are American companies. Quote, unquote, indirectly. No, I know. I'm saying American politics-wise. I don't know anything about British politics. The only thing I know about British politics that's somehow

more ridiculous than our own and I can thank Nate and his other podcast for that but you know being indirectly responsible for death is why manslaughter exists right but he got away it's like knowingly

passing on a deadly disease like AIDS or something like that like having sex with somebody when you believe it's intentional poisoning or something like that yeah um i don't know and as far as i know so the last article update i could find uh james mccormick is 2018 there's a very good chance he's free today um also a lot of people that he knew uh openly talked about that they don't know how much money he had. He squirreled it all the way in banks in Cyprus and islands and all sorts of other shit. So there's a good chance he's just going to sit in prison until they finally let him out and go right back to being a rich old fucking asshole.

So thank you, everybody, for tuning in. Thank you, Rich, for joining me. Of course, anytime. If you like what we do here, rate and review us on iTunes. so thank you everybody for tuning in thank you Rich for joining me of course anytime if you like what we do here rate and review us on iTunes those ratings help a small podcast like us get noticed if you like us even more than that you could donate a dollar on Patreon get bonus episodes

get content early get access to our communal discord with the hell of a way to die podcast where it's like the fucking thunderdome over there highly recommend it it's a joy um check out some new shit we have on teespring or maybe pre-order my book citizens of earth which comes out on may 17th uh until then we'll see you next time