CLASSIC: The Hidden History of Assassins, Chapter Two: The Modern Day

And we have returned, fellow conspiracy realists. We couldn't leave you without a dope murder to step to, I guess. This is chapter two on the hidden history of assassinations. And I would like to confirm for all of us listening along at home that Noel, Matt, and yours truly have not murdered someone in between these classic episodes. Dylan, can you confirm that you have not committed a homicide? Well, the shadow will never tell. And the shadow also knows. It's true. And how would we confirm that the others have not done such things? That is weird to think about. Yeah. It's also weird, per our earlier conversation, that so many global powers, including states, including corporations, including very wealthy individuals, they just kill people. Yeah. Yep. It's got me thinking about James Earl Ray again, guys. Listen to the MLK tapes. And listen to this classic episode. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Jo Interstein, host of the Spirit Daughter Podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today I'm talking with my dear friend, Krista Williams. It can change you in the best way possible. Dance with the change, dance with the breakdowns. The embodiment of Pisces intuition with Capricorn power moves. So I'm like delusionally proud of my chart. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio. Hello. Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. My name is Noel. They call me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer, Paul Mission Control Deccant. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. And that makes this Stuff They Don't Want You To Know. The Hidden History of Assassins, Part 2, The Modern Day. If you have, through accident or design, not listened to the first part of this two-part series, please hold. Do your best not to get assassinated while you listen to Part 1. Things will make much more sense. So we'll give you a second. Mm-hmm. Beware of the old man in the mountain as you do so. He's bad news. Yep. And through the magic of editing, you just listened to that episode. So as you know, in part one of the series, we explored the truth, the fact, the myth, the fiction about a strange secretive group today known as the Assassins. We also explored, more importantly, the bloody tactics that made them infamous. They were not the first people to use assassination tactics, and they weren't the last. But today we have to ask how much of their strategy has informed similar operations in the modern day. Spoiler, the answer is a lot. It's its own genre of conspiracy. These are active conspiracies that have existed since before you were alive and continued on a regular basis, most likely as you listen to the show today. So here are the facts. Yeah, as we said last episode, we discussed the fact that assassinations did not begin or end with that sect that existed for a time just outside of Tehran. Today, assassinations definitely still occur, and they have been occurring since the 1200s when the group known as the assassins were taken down by Mongols. So it's crazy to think about. The assassinations that were taken out by that group were mostly, if not all, very close to all, done with daggers in close combat in secret by usually an individual person. And think about all the technology that exists out there today that makes killing people easier. Oh, yeah. Humanity. Same old dicks. brand new toys. Whoa. That's a lot to unpack there. What did we talk about a couple episodes ago? Fusion bombs? You know, like the murderous wave of the future is here, boys. Yeah, it's the Christmas Elmo of the intelligence community. There's a really great scene in Toast of London, which we've talked, I think we're all fans of, where Toast's mistress, he's cheating or she's cheating on her husband, who's Toast's nemesis, Ray Purchase. She's been like, she got hired like as a subcontractor for the Department of Defense and she's controlling drones and basically taking out blocks in like some, you know, Middle Eastern country. And she lets Toast take over for a minute and she says, now only blow up the houses on the right side of the street. and then he comes back he's having a good old time he goes oh did i say the right side i meant the left side yeah no yikes well that joke that joke as we'll see did not come from whole cloth right no right no it did not because you know not only are the weapons of war being enhanced in their technology so are the the communication abilities right which means well Well, and also, you know, economic trade expands across the globe at this point and all kinds of other possible conflicts arise from that and resource extraction across the world. So, I mean, you really imagine that there are all of these world leaders with competing interests and they can see all the other world leaders out there. They can even talk to them if they wanted to or maybe someone close to them. and maybe they think, you know what would be nice? If we could take out Leader X in Country Y so that we could get Resource Z. That's right, and you would assume that over the intervening centuries, at some point during the construction of various world orders, someone in one important room or another would have pitched something against the assassination at some point. Surely someone would have said, hey, guys, you know, while while I have you all here, I know we're almost done with the meeting, but we should we should make assassination illegal. Right. Like, guys. Oh, yeah, sure. Let's make it illegal, which would prevent all of those assassins from doing it. Yeah. Well, and that's a hard and long. Well, that doesn't seem to be entirely true. According to a guy named Michael L. Gross in a paper called Assassination and Targeted Killing, Law Enforcement, Execution, or Self-Defense, which was published in the Journal of Applied Philosophy, assassination, it turns out, can be more or less perfectly legal. Right. And he writes – he's got a nuanced take on it. We thought the best way to do this would be to give you an excerpt from this paper. And he writes, quote, international law does not ban assassination unequivocally, but instead prohibits perfidy, which is the word of the day. I think we can agree or those acts that abuse the protections that the laws of armed conflict guarantee. Common examples of perfidy include attacking from under the protection of a white flag or harming combatants who lay down their arms. These protections are integral to modern warfare and underlie the conventions of surrender. Without them, war would end only in extermination or the proverbial fight to the death. Assassination is perfidious only insofar as it abuses these or similar protections. But really quickly, I just want to add, like, this is basically just saying, okay, you have to follow some basic rules. But the only thing governing following those rules is our agreement to follow those rules, both sides. Once that breaks down, then it's chaos. And a lot of that depends on who has the upper hand in terms of weaponry. Are we truly gentlemen when it comes down to achieving total dominance? I don't know. I think probably not. Or escaping our own death, right? Right. Yeah, of course. Of course. That's a fascinating concept. Yeah. So basically, the world has agreed that assassination is fine. You know what I mean? It's fine so long as you obey certain rules. Yeah. Which is ridiculous. It's basically everyone saying, look, look, you can try and assassinate us. We're gonna try and assassinate you. Cool? Okay, cool. Just don't pretend like you're not going to assassinate us and then assassinate us. Does that make sense? Cool. All right, cool. Right, yeah. Being perfidious means being deceitful or untrustworthy. So it's a very difficult thing to enforce. And that's probably a big part of why modern history is riddled with and to no small degree shaped by assassinations. Think about it. Like in Russia alone, five emperors were assassinated within less than 200 years. And I think in the case of Nicholas II, his family was assassinated, too. That fundamentally altered the course of Russian history and therefore, I would argue, world history. The most notable assassination victims in U.S. history tend to be civil rights activists like Martin Luther King or sitting U.S. presidents. You know, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Three other U.S. presidents also died by assassins, James Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy. That one is probably still the most controversial in recent history. In Europe, as we mentioned in episode one, the assassination of an archduke named Franz Ferdinand by the Black Hand, which we also mentioned, triggered World War I. Isn't the Black Hand a Serbian group? They were like nationalist Serb insurgents, I believe, right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And if you listen to or watch one of our earlier episodes about the Black Hand, the story is so amazing. History hinges on such small things. the guy responsible for the assassination actually screwed it up the first time and only got to Franz Ferdinand by accident. Well, it's interesting. We're seeing stuff like that, not with assassinations necessarily, but certainly in the moment, it's hard to see what that match strike is that sets off the series of events. But in the times that we're living in, it could certainly be something like the killing of George Floyd. That could be looked back on as that powder keg ignition point, you know? Something like that. Exactly, exactly. And it's tantalizing, and it is also tricky to say how history would have played out if these and other murders had not occurred. I mean, look at World War I. The stage was already set for World War I on multiple levels. You could argue that if Ferdinand had not been assassinated, another assassination or another conflict could have sparked the flame. And Abraham Lincoln, at the time of his death, watching My American Cousin in the Ford Theater, he had already made a lasting impact on the United States, and so on and so on. We'll never know what would have happened had these murder victims been allowed to live out their natural lifespan. I want to just add one, sorry, before you keep going. Yeah, yeah. John F. Kennedy's brother, I feel like his assassination is one of those things that on the cusp of possibly becoming president could have actually changed the course of history more than any sitting president being assassinated. That's a really good point, Matt, because I was going to ask, Ben, what, in your opinion, was the goal in assassinating Kennedy? And did we see results? Oh, geez. Boy, this is. If we had to simplify it to a political end game situation for whatever group. Well, again, because we probably think it was maybe the government itself. I mean, there's so many. That's such a can of worms. But I'm wondering what you think. I don't know. Or what would be one possible reason? Oh, man. This is one for all of us and for those of us listening along at home. We have gone back and forth in this for years. it's tough I would say go back and listen to like four episodes we've done on JFK's assassination or it just comes up in episodes or when we used to all hang out in person we would be talking about a film we liked and then 20 minutes later we're back to JFK listen to the Harmontown episode that we were on and we have a great discussion about all that was a good yeah no i i i guess i just mean in terms i'm thinking about it more in the framework of assassinations as like a tool you know um and there's obviously all kinds of different end games some people might just assassinate somebody because they don't like them or they disagree with their politics or it could be more specific like to achieve something that they know is brewing in legislation but we also know that the president is not nearly as powerful as one would like to think So it not you know Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's an arguable thing. I just mean in terms of like actually pushing through legislation if Congress is out of balance. Like right now, it's. Yeah. But who needs legislation when you've got the executive order? My man. That's true. That's true, too. Let's see how effective those things are as well. Just short answer, the benefits of killing President Kennedy, it's multiple because you could say some groups in the U.S. government, I'm not accusing them of doing it, but some groups in the U.S. government benefited from losing one of the most powerful opponents to their plans for Castro in Cuba. You could also say Lyndon Johnson benefited by becoming president. You could also say the USSR benefited by seeing a powerful blow to the ideology of Western democracy and capitalism. I'm very careful to say, Putin, if you're listening. He's a fan. He's a new show. Yeah, yeah. I still don't open the mail he sends, though. which I know is like maybe unprofiling. Handle it with one of those like grabber claws, you know? It all says not polonium. Right. Please send all complaints to our 24-7 complaint department here, especially for you. That's Jonathan Strickland at iHeartRadio.com. So we know that these assassinations continue. As a tool, as a mechanism, It continues because it is effective, right? We're in the realm of practicality, no matter how it is sold to a given public or a given audience. If something doesn't work, then an intelligence apparatus, a corporation, or a government will try to find a better method. There's not really a better method than an assassination in certain cases. That's why during the Cold War, we see this massive increase in the number of political assassinations specifically. And just like assassinations of old, this was probably due to the stark ideological differences between what were called the first and second worlds. Quick myth busting, if we haven't talked about this before, when you hear things like third world country or second world country, first world, that's a Cold War relic. That's not about income or inequality. The first world was pitched as the world of democracy and capitalism, second world being the world of communism, right? And the third world was just a phrase that was used to describe unaligned countries. And it transformed over time. So now when you hear people say third world country in the West, they're not talking about ideology. They're talking about developmental status. Anyway, these people on either side of this ideological divide, the world's superpowers, were more than willing to not only put out successful assassination operations, they were also more than willing to publicly justify these killings, to finance them and take care of the people they sent out to do it. And eventually, both sides started to realize this practice may have a diminishing return. That's why many modern countries nowadays, between now and the age of the assassins, they've taken legal steps, at least in theory, to ban this practice. And I think this is what you're getting to, Matt, with executive orders, right? Well, yeah, any executive order, really. It's just a handy tool to have there in the Oval Office. And so many presidents have wielded it in terrifying ways. Not to mention, this is something I totally glossed over when I was talking earlier, the ability to install lifetime lawmakers on the Supreme Court, which is a pretty serious power move. Yeah, it is. But, however, we are not speaking of that. We are speaking of a 1976 executive order put forth by Gerald Ford. Oh, Gerald Ford. If you were a fan of SNL back in the day, you probably very much like Gerald Ford. I do. Was that just from the impressions? That was Feral, right? No, when I was watching it, it was not Feral. Was it Hartman? Those of you who know, know. It was executive order 1-2-3-3-3. Isn't that fun? Or 12333. That's a fun way to say it. And it says, or at least in part says, no person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States government shall engage in or conspire to engage in assassination. There, done. Ha ha. We won't do it. Really simple language, too. That's very explicit, and it seems somewhat definitive. But, okay, so the thing about Executive Order 12-333, or 1-2-3-3-3, is that it's not as altruistic as it sounds if you just hear that part where they say, okay, no more daggers in the dark. This is the same executive order that authorized the expansion of data collection and surveillance. It's been cited by the NSA, the National Security Agency, as the legal foundation for its work in collecting unencrypted information flowing through data centers. Like that's this order is why the NSA says it's totally fine to intercept information from Google, Yahoo and so on. So we can't mistake it for 100 percent goody two shoes stuff. But in any case, if you still think, oh, great, go Uncle Sam, no more assassination. We do need to point out that under George W. Bush's administration, this executive order was a diplomatic way to say it. Relaxed. When we say relaxed, you know, it's a situation where they said, look, there are different kinds of good. You know, there's the day-to-day good. No. Yeah, there's the individual good. Yeah. And there are some things that are great. And a greater good sometimes requires things that seem like small evils. Anyway, guys, remember, we're doing this for you. You know what I mean? That's how it went. And that's the question for today. Has the world moved on from this grisly, perfidious, insidious practice With so many countries officially banning these activities to one degree or another, how do we respond to those who allege assassinations continue in the modern day? We'll tell you after a word from our sponsors. Hi, this is Jo Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men. Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic Aquarian visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom loving and different perspectives. And I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius are misunderstood. A sun and Venus in Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership. He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms, on different houses and different places, but just an embracing of the isness of it all. If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chart-side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity, and real life, this episode is a must-listen. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpwright became the victim of a random crime. He pulls the gun, tells me to lie down on the ground. He identified Jermaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Jermaine was sentenced to 99 years. I'm like, Lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth. For 22 years, only two people knew the truth. Until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's a unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's where it gets crazy. Okay, if we're responding to someone who says, hey, I think assassinations continue in the modern day, And if we're responding objectively and honestly, the only thing we can do is agree. We can only agree 100%. In fact, assassinations don't just continue apace. They're a huge business. They are a vital piece of geopolitical, corporate, and sometimes even religious networks. And they come in several different types, but you'll recognize these if you've listened to episode one of this series. Yeah. The stuff we talked about in episode one, all of the motivations, the reasoning behind using assassination tactics, it all applies to modern assassinations. All of it. There are generally a few reasons. Let's outline them here of why assassinations occur in the modern day. One, you're going to eliminate some kind of military commander from an opposing threat, an opposing army, right? You're doing that to destabilize that military, like lop the head off so that other generals or whoever else exists there has to move up. And maybe they don't know the strategies as well as that person that you killed does. And yeah, we talked about the assassination of the Iranian general rather recently, the United States assassination of the Iranian general and how even the use of the term assassination was contentious at the time. was it just an act of war was it you know and an extra judicial killing it's interesting it sort of fizzled a little bit because there was a while when that happened where an ambassador from iran was being very vocal about how this was an outright act of war an outright act of aggression an assassination of a beloved official you know and there were people interviews on npr and stuff for people in the streets just saying that America was overstepped and that it was absolutely, you know, an outright act of aggression. And then that story kind of disappeared because I remember hearing it and it seemed so intense. I was like, oh, God, have we done a thing that we cannot go back from? Like, have we really let the badger out of the bag at this point? Right. Well, well, you know, you know what it could have been? instead of, you know, anything else, it could have been the U.S. military sending a good old-fashioned message. Ah, yes, that's another type of modern assassination. This is the one, and Vlad, if you're listening, I think you'll enjoy this. This is the one I like to call from Russia with love. Think of the Polonia murders. The Russian intelligence apparatus knew this substance would be a clear indication of their involvement at some level or the involvement of someone who was involved with them. But they also knew it would occur in a way that was difficult to trace and very difficult to publicly prosecute. Right. It's kind of a finger along the nose. Wink. Right. Yeah. Good luck with your journalism degree, buddy. Oh, God. Don't do that. No. So, okay, we could be more conspiratorial, talking about sending a message. Did everybody else forget? I only knew about this from doing Strange News Daily. Did everybody else forget that time a few months ago when Russian doctors just kept falling out of windows? Oh, yeah. During the coronavirus? Scientists, like a new defenestration of Prague, almost, kind of situation. Yeah. I mean, scientists around the globe for the past couple of decades have been dropping off. Which we still haven't done an episode on. That's right. We should do that. A third type of modern assassination is to eliminate internal competition. Tale as old as time. Think of violent regimes that are inherently unstable and pretty often family-led. North Korean leadership has assassinated internal competitors that might have later proven to be challengers to the throne or challengers to the line of secession. In the days of the Ottoman Empire, which I know is a little old for this example, but in the days of the Ottoman Empire, it was also common for people to kill their siblings. There can only be one sultan, you know what I mean? And we have to think about coups, so common in recent history. Don't get reported near as often as they should. Definitely don't get reported as they're occurring. These assassination attempts are it kind of like what we talked about earlier with who owns the motivation for an action who in their mind is pulling the trigger and turning the assassin into just a tool These assassination attempts and coups they're often incited by a foreign power. And I know that makes most of us think of the U.S. and South America or something. That's true. That's a great example. But we need to also think of corporations, especially in the great game of resource extraction. They're seeking to, they don't really care about the motivation of the individual assassin or the people doing the coup. They just want a government or a regime that is more pliable to their goals. You see this in South America. You see it all over the African continent. You see it in Central Asia. The list goes on. What was the banana company that we talked about? Check fruit. United fruit. United fruit, man, brutal. 1954. And that's, I mean, it's a business. I don't think it's unfair to refer to this as an industry. So when we look at the modern assassination industry, we see examples that clearly prove assassination is ongoing. It exists on multiple levels in the world, and a lot of people are involved. A ton of people are involved. Yeah, and we have to caveat this a little bit and use some swishy air quotes around the word terrorism here, because as we know, it's a term, a pejorative term. Oftentimes it's used in political rhetoric to brand an opposing force as somehow like, you know, the bad guys when, you know, one person's terrorist, another person's freedom fighter or what have you. We've said this many times in the past. It's all about which side of the conflict that you're on. But those referred to as terrorists, regardless of any ideology, clearly and on a regular basis, deploy these kinds of tactics. Date as far back as the Hashishim clan of ancient times that we talked about in the first part of this series. they have to elevate a powerful individual leader again by merit insane idea infiltrate a network or attack without regard to personal safety be willing to die for their cause for their mark disregard any possible collateral damage civilians non-military structures you know infrastructure gatherings events it's all in service of the target and the attacks are often motivated by strong personal beliefs. So this is a little bit different than our idea of a hired gun. You know, these are very personal, personally motivated attacks based on ideology, oftentimes. Even if they're just personally motivated by that leader, whoever that powerful individual leader is, and then those beliefs are imparted onto the group. It's almost in a cult-like fashion at times. You know what I mean? with someone who has this magnetism, we often see this with suicide bombers who perhaps aren't really invested personally, but they've been either, I don't know, I hate that term brainwashed. It seems so divisive. But, you know, you often hear stories of women who have been forced to become suicide bombers by their husbands or, you know, because of this hierarchy of like an individual wielding this kind of authority over people's very minds and actions. Yeah, if you want to say indoctrinated or radicalized, those are similar terms, you know. But with that list of commonalities that you gave us here, let's all pause for a second and think back on just how many international murders of notable journalists, activists, politicians, criminals, and business tycoons fit the bill here. Like this stuff is happening, and it probably will happen again. One quick example, close to home here in Fort Benning, Georgia, there's something that was once upon a time called the School of the Americas. Its opponents called it the School of Assassins, and they did so for a reason. It was established in 1946 in the U.S.-controlled Panama Canal Zone as the Latin American Center Ground Division. Pretty innocuous name, but it's called the School of Assassins in reference to their specific training programs, which appear to, and we're being overly fair here, They appear to advocate actions that are in direct violation of that executive order we mentioned earlier, 1-2-3-3-3. Yeah. And again, established in 1946, that executive order went through in 76. So it's 46 to 76. Right. 30 years. It's really interesting stuff. We did a whole, I can't remember if we did a whole podcast episode on it. I know we did a video on this and we've done quite a bit of research on the place, but School of the Americas, fascinating. So let's go to Major Joseph Blair, who was a former instructor at the school. He said, quote, the author of SOA, the School of Americas and CIA torture manuals, drew from intelligence materials used during the Vietnam War that advocated assassination, torture, extortion, and other techniques. Techniques. Yeah. Interesting stuff. How is that not illegal, even in 46? Oh, yeah. That's, oh man, that's the thing. So to put a fine point on it, The School of America is taking people from other countries and training them to be insurgents, right? To be direct action operatives. To be coup makers. To be coup makers, yeah. Or coup kings. A bunch of kooks. Yeah, right? A bunch of coups. So, D'Etat aside, there is internal reasoning here. And the internal reasoning on Uncle Sam's side and for proponents of the School of Americas was something like, well, yeah, oversight regulations and prohibitions. Those things are important. I get it. You get it right. Those things are important for U.S. personnel. They don't apply to foreign officers. They're not part of our government. We can't really tell them what to do under U.S. law. To wit, what that means is we are not actually committing assassinations. Instead, we're just helping some friendly forces from foreign lands figure out how to do the right thing. You know, the right murders. if something happens, right? If something happens or if something needs to happen. And so that's the idea. It's kind of like Five Eyes gets around the laws against domestic surveillance, right? Of your own population. Because now it's not Uncle Sam telling on its citizens, now it's the UK. So now we're just getting mail from some friends. You know what I mean? This also gives us plausible deniability in case one of those graduates of the School of Americas goes rogue and commits human rights atrocities. During his time as president, Jimmy Carter temporarily suspended the use of those training manuals because the administration was concerned over what they called, again, possible human rights violations. And again, we see the specter of the greater good. No, not that. Not again. But yeah, you know, our Georgia boy, Jimmy Carter, he believed that the international military education and training that was being provided there at the School of the Americas and several other institutions, by the way, several other places that were for training like that. He thought it was critical to furthering, quote, the national interests of the United States, which in a way it was and is having that kind of tool at your disposal kind of is integral to national interests. Right. Ugh. Like with the U.S. actions in Libya leading to the fall of Gaddafi, it was national interest, right? So those training manuals, which explicitly tell you how to torture people, how to assassinate people, and so on. I think I've got them on my computer somewhere from the other episode. Oh, gosh. Our search histories. I'm telling you. Yeah. So those manuals, by the way, were reintroduced. That's why I said they were temporarily suspended. They were reintroduced to the school's training curriculum by the Reagan administration in 1982. currently the School of America still exists it just changed its name it's WINSEC under the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies don't worry though everybody they say they have a much more rigorous element of human rights training in the program so good on us you know good hustle team yep good on us and we have to point out that There are a number of graduates from the School of the Americas back in the day and now WINSEC that have been accused of doing things, really bad things, that they were trained to do in those places. And they have even been sentenced for human rights violations and criminal activity in their home countries. So come on over, get some training. It'll be really fun. Here's your manuals. And then go back to your home country. There's going to be snacks. We're going to have craft services. You guys will be all well taken care of. Sure. And then they're going to do these crimes. And you can even, you can find online a couple of places where there are lists of people who have graduated from these schools and these training programs who, you know, who then did later crimes. You can see the crimes that they were accused of later, both alleged, by the way, and some proved. And there are numerous databases where you can find this information, actually. Yeah, check out the School of America's Watch if you want to see the prize bad apples of this program. And again, you know, this is not to say, I feel like we have to say this, not to say that every graduate of the School of America instantly went off and became warlord, But several did. And to say otherwise is equally disingenuous. So we have not only in this nation, we have not only taken lessons learned from that ancient sect of assassins and from earlier assassin training programs in Vietnam, in the USSR and so on. we have built what is often called a training program for this sort of behavior, not too different from Alamut Castle itself all those years ago. And that, so that's just a very high level look at the modern state of assassinations today. We're going to pause for a word from our sponsors. When we come back, we're going to talk about the future of assassination. Hi, this is Jo Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men. Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic Aquarian visionary. 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Drones, baby. Look, we're going to talk about drones. And drones are the scariest part of this assassination business that exists out there But I think we should just quickly mention that militaries across the world have elite soldiers and operators Oh, yeah. And I'm thinking of something like the Navy SEALs or. Yeah, exactly. So people who are teams that go out early, right? in if there's going to be a conflict or if there's something perhaps going to arise somewhere, teams will go out there and have the ability, or at least are trained, I would say, with the ability to take out someone the way an assassin would. Of course, I've never been in either of those, and correct me if I'm completely wrong, I just feel like that would be a very smart thing to have in the tool belt of anyone who is a SEAL or a Green Beret or one of those elite, maybe even a ranger. I don't know. Yeah, that's a great point. That's a great point. Multiple, the U.S. gets beat up on for this a lot or singled out for it because the U.S. has multiple versions of this. These operators are highly trained professionals and it is openly admitted that they use their training in what are called targeted killings or extraction missions as well from unfriendly territory. but a ton of other nations have them too. You know what I mean? It's the kind of thing where if you're a superpower and someone has that capacity and you do not then there is a defense gap. You have to have something like this. That's why there's Spetsnaz. That's why Mossad exists. I mean pretty much any country that has international reach global interest is going to have some sort of analog to those things. And maybe we should do an episode on those because they are fascinating. Yeah, I'd love to just to pause here for a moment. I'd love to hear from anyone out there who can talk to us, who has experience as essentially an elite military operator, just to know even if that's maybe that's completely wrong thing to say, just a unit within a team that would be considered elite. Yeah, and they do a lot of, we know, of course, it's not all cloak and dagger assassination. As we said, there are extraction missions. There are also protection and escort missions. But yeah, there's a wealth of stuff out there. We need to do this episode, and we would love to hear from you if you have firsthand experience in this regard. A lot of those special forces also, I'm so glad you pointed that out, Matt. A lot of the special forces also collaborate with drone technology. Oh, yeah, it's true. Which is the Skynet elephant in the room. And again, Matt, thank you for putting in that important piece we missed, because as you can tell, both Noel and I are always excited to talk drones. modern governments are super into the strategy of changing names and terms to avoid controversial language and public statements that's why blackwater became academy or whatever that's why comcast became xfinity it's why clear channel became iheart that's why george carlin was such a successful comedian because of euphemisms it's true and so we see a name change there with assassination, targeted killing, named killing. Even drones, they refer to more as UAVs now, right? Because that's a little more innocuous than drones. Drones sounds very future-y and sinister. When I think of a drone, I think of something scary coming to kill me. Right. You can hide a lot of evil behind some acronyms or initialisms. UAV just means unmanned aerial vehicle. A kite is a UAV. That's right. Yes. Kind of, is it? Yeah, there's no one driving. It's unmanned. You're right. The string is the same thing. It's just a physical version of the connection between the drone and the controller. Yeah, yeah. That's the argument I would make. So targeted killing is a euphemism is a form of assassination carried out by governments against their perceived enemies. so it's important here to note that this is seen as a subgenre of assassination applicable only to governments so you can't go into court as an individual or you shouldn't be able to go into court as like an individual or a representative of a religious institution or corporation and say, you know, yes, I am the In-N-Out Burger assassin, and this was a targeted killing at an Arby's, and that was for the greater good. They are enemies of In-N-Out Burger. You can't say stuff like that. You can only do it if you're a government, because then you can argue there's a greater good. I mean, think of weaponized drones as the robo version of those ancient assassins. They have a lot in common. the two big things they have in common, they're relentless and they don't care about self-preservation. Ooh. And there's an old man in a mountain controlling them somewhere. And now it's NORAD. Yeah. It's not really NORAD. But yeah, I love that. They're also very effective at killing, but they're probably less, it's so weird, they're probably less precise than the assassins of old. Yeah, the assassin of old used a blade up close to take someone out. This sends a missile generally, a missile that causes collateral damage almost every time it's used. Well, not in frequent number of times. I mean, the scary thing about the Toast of London scene that you alluded to earlier, Noel, is, again, it's not it doesn't come out a whole cloth or there wasn't just some clever person in the writer's room. According to statistical analyses by some nonprofits, including a nonprofit organization called Reprieve, which is composed of international lawyers and investigators, nine children have been killed for every targeted adult the United States has tried to assassinate since programs like this began. Oh, cool. I'm okay with that. No, I'm not okay with that. Insane. Yeah, it's really messed up. unforgivable that's but it's what there's a there's a there's a non-offensive sounding term for that it's collateral damage it takes the humanity out of the equation when you're not actually having to wield the knife yourself you know you're doing it from such a remove mistakes were made right uh what's what's the uh what's the common complaint for people in online gaming it's not me you messed up it's the lag time it's the connection right so maybe someone has blamed collateral damage on that in the past, but it doesn't make these people, it doesn't make these civilians magically resurrected, you know. Like, Reprieve also found that in the course of attempting to kill one Ayman al-Zawahiri, the U.S., specifically the CIA, is believed to have killed 76 children and 29 adult bystanders. And Ben, you know, this would have been under the Obama administration, wouldn't it? Correct. That's I mean, you know, he gets such a he's so lauded and held up as this like shining example of like a great president. There's obviously a lot of great things about him. First of all, he could speak in complete sentences, which is pretty dope. But he was oversaw massive amounts of these kinds of attacks that resulted in this sort of collateral damage. And people don't gloss over that entirely, but it certainly doesn't seem to be the first bullet point on his resume. Right. Well, it increased. The use of UAVs and drones increased so much under President Obama. It's really disturbing considering we entered what was called the war on terror from the previous administration when we were actively starting wars. and then it only increased. And it's likely a function of the technology improving, right? I mean, and it has by leaps and bounds. And even now, as they have been for, gosh, two decades now, scholars and military officials, politicians, people like you, me, everyone else, were divided on the use of drones and UAVs and targeted killings, named killings, whatever you want to refer to them as. Because, I mean, it is complicated, right? Some supporters of using drones would say that it's actually more humane to do this. It's safer for military personnel on whichever side is doing the killing or attacking. and you're not just sending in a bunch of troops, let's say, to try and kill a group of people or even a team of people, then where you're going to have multiple people firing, you've got maybe one, maybe two, a maximum handful of drones that are going in to kill someone. Generally, it's one that is literally going in to kill someone. The other thing that would be stated, I think, by someone who supports this is that these drone attacks aren't going to be done in a time of peace against any nation that we're not at war with, right? See, that's the thing. It's true, supporters do say that, but recent events have conclusively proven this not to be the case. That's where we come up with another euphemism for assassinations, extrajudicial killings, right, outside of the law, which are, you know, technically banned by the U.S. military code. This leads us to a troubling conclusion. We have to explore the future of assassination. What we've sadly proven here is the following. It appears it does not matter what laws are written. Write as many as you want. Say whatever you want, as explicitly or as obliquely as you please. These laws do not matter if they are not continually enforced. And the truth of the matter is that they are not continually enforced. Assassination is effective. It may not be effective in terms of counterterrorism. It's arguably terrible PR, but it works for what people want it to do. And in the future, we're only going to see more increasingly sophisticated uses of these tactics, newer, more advanced drones, increasingly effective poisoning delivery systems and substances. importantly and this is what we should all think about they're also going to be increasingly sophisticated nuanced rationalizations for assassination increasingly sophisticated ways of hiding the hand that ultimately triggered the thing right so yeah the front organizations are going to be tough the war of information and narrative will only continue to evolve and as always, one thing will remain the same. Both the assassins and their masters will argue this is necessary for, you guessed it, the greater good. And so today we end our episode with questions for you. What do you think the future of assassination holds? Yeah, will the killings continue, specifically in any of the ways we've described? will they increase will corporate political and religious actors be held accountable for their actions and if so by whom some international group maybe a corporation let us know are you one of these puppeteers you know pulling the strings of all of these you know hidden assassins in our midst let us know you can we'll keep your secrets buddy we promise write to us you can reach us on the social media channels of note, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter all that stuff, our preferred means is our Facebook group, Here's Where It Gets Crazy where you can be part of the conversation with your fellow conspiracy realists that's right if you don't want to do that you can find us on Twitter and Facebook on the other side at Conspiracy Stuff and on Instagram we are Conspiracy Stuff Show of course, visit us on YouTube, YouTube.com slash conspiracy stuff. If you are not given to sip the social meds, no worries. We have a phone number for you. You can call us at 1-833-STD-WYTK. You'll have three minutes on your call. Let us know what's on your mind. Let us know your experience. Give us your feedback on this series or suggestions for topics you think your fellow listeners will find of interest. Most importantly, let us know if it's okay to use your voice and your name on air. That's right. If you don't want to do any of those things, you can still write to us. You can contact us. Ben, Noel, and I and Paul will see it. Send us a good old-fashioned email. We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff They Don't Want You To Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Joe Interstein, host of the Spirit Daughter Podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today I'm talking with my dear friend, Krista Williams. It can change you in the best way possible. Dance with the change. Dance with the breakdowns. 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