February 7, 2023 • 33 mins
It’s the summer of 2020. After the brutal killings of unarmed Black Americans by law enforcement, the nation is a tinderbox of anger. The pandemic is raging. Protestors and police are violently going toe-to-toe in cities across America. Denver sees some of the most intense protests. Amid the clashes, a new guy rolls into town. He’s got a cigar dangling from his lips and he’s driving a silver hearse filled with guns.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Before we get started, I want to give you a
reason up front to stick around for the next ten episodes,
as well as offer a warning we are going to
expose using secret undercover recordings, have the Federal Bureau of
Investigation infiltrated and undermined the racial justice movement during the
summer of twenty twenty. This is not a story the
(00:23):
FBI once told, and these episodes contain explicit language and
descriptions of violence and death. Some listeners may find the
show disturbing. I want to take you back to the
summer of twenty twenty. The pandemic is here and a
(00:45):
lot is still really unknown. For months, millions of Americans
have been out of work, locked up in their homes,
and left deeply uncertain about the future. The nation is
a tinder box of anger. Look. Racial justice activists have
come out in force in cities nationwide to protest against
police brutality, resulting in an unprecedented explosion of activism around
(01:09):
the broader Black Lives Matter movement. Right wing activists hit
the streets too as counter protesters, groups ranging from pro
police demonstrators to violent street thugs like the Proud Boys,
and militia groups like the oathkeepers, it will turn to war.
Some of the encounters turned violent. In turn, anti fascist activists,
(01:38):
often dressed in black and referred to as antifa, begin
meeting right wing violence with force of their own. The
clashes result in the kind of political violence Americans haven't
seen in decades. The city became a war zone. Large
groups torch police cruisers as officers fired back with rubber bullings.
(01:58):
Violence involving the Proud Boys and leftist Antifa in Portland, Oregon.
In recent weeks, President has been calling for law and order,
but many say he's fueling the flames. Lots of people
on the right, from President Donald Trump in the Oval
Office to Tucker Carlson on Fox News, they start calling
out Antifa, painting them as militarized extremists who want nothing
(02:19):
more than to kill cops and burn America to the ground.
Black lives matter, Antifa is going to grow like ices
dated the Middle Ease. Violent young men with guns will
be in charge. You will not want to live here
when that happens. According to President Trump, anti fascist activists
aren't simply there to stop violent right wing extremists and fascists. No,
(02:42):
these antifa guys they're the real threat. Former Defense Secretary
Mark Asper says that Trump suggested that the US military
shoot Black Lives Matter protesters outside of the White House.
A mounted police have been coming down the street using
lash bangs in front of them to clear what has
(03:02):
been an entirely peaceful protest. Note nine percent, but one
hundred percent. People can protests. If you remember this public
debate gets pretty ridiculous. Soup and they throw the cans
of soup. That's better than a brick, because you can't
throw a brick it's too heavy. But a can of soup,
(03:23):
you can really put some power into that. Right, people
on the left are practically screaming, this is all a distraction,
a distraction from the very real issues of police brutality
against black people. And TIEF is an idea, not an organization,
you got it. Not polition, That's what it is. To
the FBI is FBI direct. All the while, demonstrators are
(03:43):
marching and COVID is raging, the economy is falling apart,
people are getting shot, and nobody knows what's going to
happen next. Plus there's this boogeyman hiding behind every corner.
He's playing into Antifa being the boogeyman being behind these protests.
You know, Fox News is still running riot porn, acting
like the riots are still happening today. Fantiva is just
(04:05):
sort of this abstract boogeyman word that we hear. On
the other side, you can clearly see it is what happens.
All I can tell you is we're not the evil
boogeyman people think we are. What are you people that
care about our country? But what if I were to
(04:25):
tell you there is an Antifa boogeyman? He was real.
He drove a silver hearse and the back of that
hearse was filled with guns, lots and lots of guns.
In the summer of twenty twenty, he rode into town.
I don't give a fuck about the cops, and I
(04:46):
don't care about the police. I do not agree nor
accept fascism. But understand this, if you come to me
fucked up, I'm gonna fuck you up. Stupid games, when
stupid prizes. I'm Trevor Aaronson from Western Sound and iHeart podcasts.
(05:09):
This is alphabet boys, So what or who is an
(05:34):
alphabet boy. Alphabet boys are federal agents or informants working
for the Alphabet agencies FBI, CIA, d EA, ATF These
are our national law enforcement and intelligence agencies that run
around the country and the world, fighting crime and collecting intelligence.
(05:55):
These agencies aren't interested in small cases either. We're talking
about really, really big cases, some of the biggest attacks
against the United States, criminal organizations, terrorists, etc. For about
as long as I've been a journalist, I've covered the
way that these alphabet agencies use undercover agents and informants
to orchestrate so called sting operations, where an undercover agent
(06:18):
pretends to be a criminal, a terrorist, a drug dealer,
an arms trader, a corrupt lobbyist, a money launder, and
on and on. We've largely come to accept undercover stings
as legitimate and necessary. But it wasn't so long ago
that many Americans found these techniques outrageous for the way
they appear to create crimes and entrap people in criminal
plots made possible only by aggressive undercover federal agents. Each
(06:44):
season of Alphabet Boys, we'll take you inside one of
these investigations as the FBI. Sometimes you get it grabbed
the little guy to go after the biggest. You'll hear
undercover recordings that were kept secret until now. This is
reference case number four one five Season Charlie, New York
three zero zero eight five one. Okay, so you do
(07:05):
personal security all over the world. You're connected to all
these different people. You'll meet supposed terrorists, arms dealers, and
drug runners. And you had somebody call you and say,
can you get grenades and guns for this guy in Columbia?
A lot of ammunitions forty seven And you'll discover that
while many of these cases have plenty of danger and intrigue,
(07:27):
I just drove for eight hours and then I just
stuffed my gun in the face of a federal agent.
They also introduce so much absurdity. I got knocked off
of Golding about a month ago, and my hip is shattered.
My maipulation is a Jedi mindshield that it's hard not
to wonder. I will be polite and professional, our America's
top cops catching real criminals, but I have a plan
(07:49):
to kill everybody in the fucking room. I need to
be or are they creating them? You want to show?
This is season one Trojan Hearst, Episode one, Summer of Rage.
(08:22):
The protests in Denver continuous. Hundreds of protesters have gathered
in front of the state capital tonight. Of all the
racial justice demonstrations around the country in the summer of
twenty twenty, Denver, Colorado saw some of the biggest, most
intense protests we've been watching as fences are smashed, torn down,
(08:44):
protesters starting fires, and building umbrella barricades. This is a
live look at downtown Denver where we have seen this
clash happening now for about the thousands demonstrate outside the
Colorado State Capital, chanting a phrase synonymous with young black
men dying at the hands of police officers. Some of
(09:08):
the Denver protests become violent and destructive. The police fire
pepper spray and rubber bullets into the crowds, injuring dozens,
but the protesters just keep coming out undaunted. Day ten
of protests across Denver, nearly a week after police use
tear gas and pepper balls to disperse protesters outside, and
(09:30):
then one night, a new guy shows up at the protests.
He's a white guy wearing military fatigues with patches and
stripes that he claims to have earned fighting the Islamic
State or ISIS in a rock and Syria. He has
a cigar dangling from his lips. And the car he
drives is unmistakable. It's a silver hearse with a sticker
on the back window reading Peshmerga, the Kurdish military force,
(09:54):
and inside his hearts with a lack a lot of guns,
you know, a R fifteens and all other kind of shit.
This is zep Hal. He was a regular at the
Denver protests. Yeah, it was just this badass dude, you know,
talking about he worked in the foreign military. He was
for the Black Lives Matter movement. He just seemed like
some authoritary figure, you know, this powerful figure that was there.
(10:15):
He was very convincing, but he did explain, you know,
he was part of like a bad biker gangs. You know,
he had committed a ton of violence, you know, but
you know he was for this BLM movement. This dude
was like a bad motherfucker. This bad motherfucker also introduces
himself to another Denver organizer, Trey Quinn. He's like, I've
done this and that. I was in the PKK and
(10:37):
the French Foreign Legion and so on, and YadA, YadA, YadA.
We ran night protests every night, and so we see
him a bunch and he approaches us every single time
from that point on, he walked up with a body
cam on me. And here's another regular at the Denver protests,
(10:58):
Bright Shelby. I didn't think nothing about the body cam
in hindsight, just because I just I don't know. There
were just a lot of things going on. I guess
he remembers the Hearst dude walking around with a GoPro
camera stropped to his chest. It was strange. I guess
he de escalated any type of suspicion because he started
(11:20):
like flashing his prison badge. So yeah, you know what
I mean, Like, Okay, he's not this guy in affair
you walking around with a prison badge. Yeah. Around the
time this mysterious character starts showing up, the protests in
Denver are stagnating. They're becoming this cat and mouse game
between demonstrators and cops. People coming out in mostly peaceful ways,
(11:44):
cops coming out with riot gear and overwhelming force. People
like zeb Tray and Bryce. They're getting frustrated. Something more
needs to happen, something new, and then something new does happen.
I was like, Hey, this guy, you know, he wants
to train people how to you know, defend themselves and
(12:05):
use the weapons and he showed me how to do
it as well. The guy with real military experience is here.
He's a commanding presence, he's got a hearse full of guns.
He's going to take things to the next level. That's
after the break. We live in a very divided country
(12:30):
right now, and that's not news. Everyone knows it. We
talk about it over dinner, cable news, on social media.
But this division is something that really bothers Denver racial
justice activist zeb Hal. He thinks it's really a distraction.
We're not focusing on how our government is abusing all
of us. They're so good at dividing us, so good
(12:54):
at it that we can't acknowledge things will happening to
other people. We can't accept anyone stepping out degree from
the group think, and that enables them to continue this
mass surveillance. Instead, zeb says, we sit at home watching
Cops and Robbers shows with clear good guys and unambiguous
bad guys, the portrait of a just and fair American
(13:15):
criminal justice system that has never really existed. Look at CBS,
they have like fucking a million police officer shows, all
these other major networks, so we know the networks cater
them make them look real good. Hell, they could be
listening in here, they could be in my fucking TV.
The apparatus is that powerful. So yeah, Zeb, he's pretty
skeptical of the US government, and as a black man,
(13:38):
Zeb's pretty tired of hearing about our racial divide. In
his view, the US government and the country's most powerful
corporations encourage the racial division we now have so that
poor white people and poor black people can't form the
political alliance they naturally should. Well, I understand, you know,
me and being black in this system, you know, I
(13:59):
feel like this, Yeah, yeah, Okay, there's white privilege, but
we are led to believe that it's this all powerful weapon,
like white people don't have to do anything, and that
is part of the thing that's used to divide us.
But I dare someone to go in the middle of
fucking Arkansas to a white community who lost a factory
(14:19):
and say, hey, you're entitled, You've got this privilege. But
we're made to think that way. They're dealing with the
same shit people in inner city. They are fucked up,
they're own drugs. Also, they're living in poverty. But we're
made to think those white people in rural areas are
constantly the enemy when they're living in a hall as well,
(14:40):
the same fucking hell as us, but we are told
that that other side is fucking terrible. Zeb, whose full
name is Zebadias, wasn't always this caustic. His anger really
set in a couple of years ago, in early twenty twenty,
when the pandemic started. He saw how people on the
an edge like him, suffered job losses, poor healthcare, mounting debts,
(15:05):
and anxieties about eviction. At the same time, Zeb saw
affluent Americans adapting to the pandemic with ease, working remotely
deliveries from Amazon in their local grocery store, lush fenced
in backyards to get fresh air, iPads, and new laptops
for their kids to use for remote schooling. The pandemic,
in Zeb's view, laid bare the inequities in America. Some
(15:27):
of us had everything, while others of us were a
missed paycheck away from poverty. Were all in danger. We're
all in danger, and that is serious. I think in
the right ways. I have become more radicalized because I
care more about people. Zeb was born in nineteen eighty four.
(15:48):
His parents were in high school when his mom got
pregnant with him, and then his dad skipped down, so
Zeb's childhood was tumultuous. He lived with his grandmother for
a bit in California when he was a small boy,
and aually moved to North Carolina when his mother married
a US marine. In his twenties, Zeb had a serious
girlfriend in North Carolina and she decided to move to Denver.
(16:09):
So Zeb followed and he and his girlfriend got married.
I got here shockingly, unexpectedly on four twenty and she
takes me downtown Denver, and I'm seeing all these people smoking.
They're all going to get arrested. They're all gonna arrested.
I gotta get out of here. I gotta get here,
and I'm freaking out. Then I got pulled over by
a cop in October of twenty twelve, and he asked,
(16:30):
you got any drugs in the car, And I'm like,
I've got some marijuana sart, Okay, you got any drugs
in the car I've got this week? And I'm freaking out.
He says, no, do you have any real drugs. We're
not worried about that. I'm like, oh no, I do not.
You know. It was real funny. It was real funny.
But that's how I got your You know, we had
a daughter along the way. She has our other two
kids as well, which is a big story on the side.
(16:51):
But yeah, that's how I got here. I got here.
Zeb glosses over this part a bit. He and his
now ex wife, Bridget, had a dog, as Zeb mentioned,
but they were living in poverty and didn't want to
subject their daughter to such a difficult life. So Zeb's
mother and stepfather in North Carolina, who were well off
by comparison, agreed to take care of the girl. Zeb
(17:13):
travels back regularly to visit and tries to be there
for big moments birthdays, first days of school, major holidays.
It was around twenty fifteen when his daughter was born.
That's when Zeb began to feel America had become fundamentally unfair,
that rich people were getting richer, and that no matter
how hard he worked, he was getting poorer. He couldn't
(17:36):
even support his daughter. The American system seemed broken. Zeb
wasn't the first person to feel disillusioned with the American promise,
but he and others were seeing how body camera and
cell phone footage had created a near constant stream of
news stories about Black people dying at the hands of
police officers nationwide. Eric Gardner, Michael Brown, to mere Rice,
(18:00):
Freddy Gray, Brianna Taylor. The list goes on. In Colorado,
in twenty nineteen, there was Elijah McClain, a twenty three
year old who died after being arrested by a war police.
Police say Elijah McClain was wearing a ski mask, acting
agitated and ignored officers commands. Elijah was, by all accounts,
(18:21):
an introverted, sensitive, twenty three year old. He worked as
a massage therapist and taught himself to play guitar and violin.
Elijah would often play music at animal shelters to help
calm the stray cats and dogs. Elijah also suffered from anemia,
and so we'd wear an open faced ski mask even
during the summer in Colorado in order to stay warm.
(18:44):
On the evening of August twenty four, twenty nineteen, Elijah
walked from his apartment to a convenience store in Aurora
suburb just outside Denver. A resident there called nine one
one and reported a man wearing a ski mask. The mask, Oh, man,
(19:06):
Elijah looks sketchy, the nine one one caller said, then
added he might be a good person or a bad person.
Three cops responding to this call stopped Elijah as he
was walking back to his apartment. The cops claimed Elijah
resisted arrest and reached for one of the officers guns.
It's hard to know what's true. The video of the
(19:28):
initial encounter is shaky and unclear. The body camera of
another police officer recorded from the point that Elijah was
already on the ground. We started their visiting. That's one
of the officers claiming that Elijah reached for a gun.
As you can hear, Elijah pinned down to the ground,
pleading to be let go. The officers speculated that Elijah
(19:50):
was on drugs, but Elijah kept telling them that he
wasn't on drugs and that he wasn't trying to resist.
I can't breathe, I have my ID right here. That's
(20:11):
what Elijah tells the officers. At the time, Elijah was
handcuffed behind his back and one of the officers was
applying a chokeold to his neck. Page of different, completely,
I'm just different, Elijah told the officers as a way
to explain why they might have thought his behavior was odd,
(20:33):
but also to assure them that he wasn't violent, he
wasn't trying to resist. He kept saying that to the cops.
Paramedics then arrived on the scene and injected Elijah with
five hundred milligrams of ketamine as a sedative. That dosage
would have been excessive for a two hundred pound man.
Elijah was just one hundred and forty pounds. His pull
(20:53):
stopped and he was taken to the hospital. Three days later,
Elijah was pronounced brain dead and taken off life support.
Elijah's death sparked outrage in Denver. People poured into the
streets to protest. One of the first events I went
to was shortly after the murder of Elijah mclin. Zeb
(21:16):
Angered about Elijah's senseless killing was among them. He'd never
been politically active before. You know. I went there and
saw his mother and a bunch of other people, and
everyone was hurt. You know, we knew it was wrong.
In February twenty twenty, after the demonstrations for Elijah mclin
began to fizzle out, public officials announced they would investigate
(21:38):
the police response. It was something, sure, but there wasn't
a lot of faith that the police officers and paramedics
responsible for Elijah's death would be held accountable. Then three
months later, on May twenty fifth, twenty twenty, a white
police officer in Minneapolis named Derek Schouven arrest a black
man named George Floyd on suspicion that he had used
(21:58):
a counterfeit twenty dollar bill. Chauvin restrains Floyd on the
concrete street during the arrest, and he places his knee
directly on Floyd's neck for approximately nine minutes, and he
murders George Floyd. Good even to everyone. We're coming on
the air with the latest on the wave of protests
unrest taking place at this hour across the country, outrage
(22:18):
at the death of George Floyd and African American man
in Denver. Floyd's death is like gasoline thrown on the
warm embers of anger over Elijah McClain. Thousands of people
protest in the streets, animated by both men's untimely death
at the hands of police officers, and the Denver area
police response to the demonstrations was brutal. In June, dozens
(22:41):
of people gather in Aurora's public Square for Elijah McClain.
They call it the Violin vigil as many of the
demonstrators play violins in Elijah's honor. The police, dressed in
riot gear, storm into the demonstration and disperse the crowd
with violent shoves in full volume streams of pepper spring.
(23:18):
During other demonstrations, police in the Denver area fire pepper
balls and rubber bullets into the crowds, injuring dozens. It's like,
fucking wow, I'm out there with my camera, he goes,
I'd never taken photos, you know before, I just picked
up the hobby at the time. Zeb Hal had purchased
a camera to document the protest. It was crazy, you know,
I'm just you know, taking pictures that I'm seeing his
(23:39):
fire in a civic center park and then it's kind
of like a saving private Ryan moment. Zeb isn't quite
sure what happened next. Did a rubber bullet hit him
in the head? Where did he pass out after being
overwhelmed with pepper spray and then smack his head on
the concrete. I'm like, you're just like kind of flozzed
out of people picked me up off the ground and
(24:02):
they brought me, you know, took me away, put some
I think it was milk in my eyes and shit
and kind of brought me back to But I was
having issues after that. My head was hurting so bad
and I wasn't able to sleep well. I was just
like sporadic, like emotional, like losing my mind. You know.
I had to get I think it was a cat skin.
You know. They almost told me to like stop driving
(24:24):
at one point, they were really concerned memory was off
a little bit, you know, to some degree. Yeah, it
was pretty pretty rough. From that point on, Zeb admits
he's done in his right mind. He's taking a hard
hit to the head, and he feels traumatized by the
police response of the protests, but he doesn't want to quit.
(24:46):
It feels like they're on the edge of something big.
Maybe the system could be reformed if enough people come
out and speak up. He's too far in, Zeb can't
stop now. And this is about the time that a
man arrives in Denver driving up to a protest in
(25:07):
a silver hearse filled with guns. One of the primary
organizers of the Denver racial justice protests is Trey Quinn,
a tall black man who wears a beard and large
frame glasses. Trey identifies as a black nationalist through his
(25:32):
activism he's trying to promote organizations and causes that invest
directly in black communities in Colorado. What we were asking
for is the same type of investment in the community
that would give us the same type of ownership in
a city that other communities have. You know, people can
look at the skyline and they see all these buildings,
(25:54):
and none of those buildings provide any sort of wealth
to black culture, but they provide wealth to these other
cultures because they have investments in that. And we wanted
to let people know this is what is really needed
for us to get out of our situation. Since you
want to help us so much, this is actually what
we need, and so that was my message. Trade dislikes
(26:16):
that the protests in Denver and others around the country
are being described as Black Lives Matter protests. Black Lives
Matter is largely a decentralized movement, and the term became
a catch all phrase for news media worldwide. Any racial
justice protest in America was described as a Black Lives
Matter or BLM demonstration. But at the same time, a
(26:38):
number of groups begin raising money under BLM, and in
Trade's view, very little of this money is being invested
in black communities. As Tracy's it, it's all a scam.
They extract wealth from us via the donations that we
get from these well meaning white liberals who want to
give us money, who want to stay out of it,
but want to help out. They see that as a
(27:01):
cash cow, and so they became a barrier over top
of us, a big fat bubble layer, to catch all
of that money before it reached us, so that they
could decide who to give it to, which obviously wasn't us.
Besides all that, Trey has some real practical things to
sort out on the ground. The police have established a
(27:21):
reputation in and around Denver for responding to demonstrators with force,
like they did on June twenty, twenty twenty during the
violin vigil for Elijah McClain. It's now mid July and
Trey has gathered a bunch of demonstrators to teach them
how to move together in a formation in order to
escape safely from a charging line of police officers dressed
(27:41):
in riot gear. The cops come in lines like stormtroopers,
and so what they try to do is they'll pick
a person off by separating the group with their line.
And so I started teaching these people how to create
you know, like the Spartan Faylenx rank, essentially teaching them
how to cress it moon and how to like open
up in like a wide oval so that they can
(28:04):
move their way out of a situation. And so if
everyone links arms and everyone creates a crescent moon, it
prevents the cops from wanting to go into the group
and move people out because now they see that they
are in danger. As Trey is describing how to employ
this defensive tactic during a demonstration, a couple of other
activists show up with this new guy. He'd driven up
(28:28):
in a silver hearse he's a white guy in military fatigues,
and so they're like, hey, this guy's really really dope.
He's legit, he knows his shit. You should let him
sit in and he could probably help you out. And
so he comes in and essentially he's really pushy, trying
to like give directions and trying to like, you know,
like put himself at the forefront to trade. This guy's
(28:50):
a brash, no it all who's ready to take charge.
And he looks like a biker and Trey he doesn't
trust bikers, and I usually approach dudes who look bikers
in these groups because I just need to know one,
are you armed, so that I can keep an eye
on you until I know that you're quote unquote one
of us or whatever you know the term could be.
(29:11):
But this biker guy, he's got the goods. He's like,
I got guys all around here videotaping. They'll give us
a call as soon as the cops are moving around
the corner, which they did. They let us know by
providing information about where the police were, information that turned
out to be accurate. This guy quickly establishes credibility among
the demonstrators. They start to trust him, and as far
(29:33):
as Trey remembers, this is also around the time that
Zeb Hall comes on the scene. Zeb was known for
his impassioned and fiery speeches during demonstrations. At one of
(30:01):
the demonstrations, Zeb meets the guy driving the silver hearse,
the mysterious man who appears to be taking charge of
the demonstrators. He's leading protests, organizing people, and drawing up plans.
Zeb is in awe of him. He seems like a
guy who can make stuff happen. He has military training.
(30:22):
He speaks with a raspy voice of dominance, his shirt
fits tight or and his large biceps. He's like, he
has testosterone dripping from his pores. And he has guns,
a lot of guns. He was there and I'm like, Yo,
this dude has a ship ton of guns in his car.
So my thing is he worked for foreign military. He
(30:43):
said the United States government knew it, So maybe this
guy's a lot to have guns. At that time, Zeb
is enthralled with this mysterious guy. He's experienced on the
battlefield and he has expertise with weapons. Zeb exchanged his
phone numbers with him and they agree to stay in touch. Yeah,
see you the next protests a year round. I'll contact you.
You know, I'll text you if I find out if
(31:04):
this is going on with this thing. Zeb's new friend
doesn't waste any time contacting him. He tells Zeb that
the protests are reaching a tipping point and that violence
is coming. It's inevitable. The way I look at is
like shit has to happen. The has to happen. Shit
has to happen. He says to Zeb, how extreme do
you expected? Would you want it to go? This guy
(31:29):
he's about to take the racial justice protest in Denver
a violent step forward. It's time to shoot the rich,
he tells zeb. It's time to take down buildings, It's
time to burn down the whole system. I don't give
a fuck about going to prison. I don't give a
fuck about getting killed, because you believe me. I've fought
Isis or Nash, I've fought Al Kayeeda, I've fought Hubble Shoppy.
(31:56):
I've fought in Iraq and I've fought in Syria. I've
trained real emptief of freedom fighters in both those regions.
And I am certainly not fucking scared of you. Who
is this man that's in the next episode? This is
Trojan Hearst Season one of Alphabet Boys. Alphabet Boys is
(32:24):
a production of Western Sound and iHeart Podcasts. The show
is reported, written and hosted by me Trevor Aaronson. For
more information about this series or to drop us a tip,
head to our website Alphabet Boys dot xyz. You can
contact me on Twitter or Instagram at Trevor Aaronson. We
believe this story is important and could result in changes
(32:45):
to FBI oversight and public policy. But to have impact,
people need to hear this story, so we need your help. First,
tell your friends about the show. Personal recommendations are the
best recommendations. Second, spread the word on social media. At
alphabet boys dot x y Z you'll find FBI undercover
(33:07):
recordings and secret documents. You can share stuff the government
never wanted public. Third, help us ride the algorithms by
leaving a rating or review on your favorite podcast app
that helps other people find us and thanks for listening.
Before we get started, I want to give you a
reason up front to stick around for the next ten episodes,
as well as offer a warning we are going to
expose using secret undercover recordings, have the Federal Bureau of
Investigation infiltrated and undermined the racial justice movement during the
summer of twenty twenty. This is not a story the
(00:23):
FBI once told, and these episodes contain explicit language and
descriptions of violence and death. Some listeners may find the
show disturbing. I want to take you back to the
summer of twenty twenty. The pandemic is here and a
(00:45):
lot is still really unknown. For months, millions of Americans
have been out of work, locked up in their homes,
and left deeply uncertain about the future. The nation is
a tinder box of anger. Look. Racial justice activists have
come out in force in cities nationwide to protest against
police brutality, resulting in an unprecedented explosion of activism around
(01:09):
the broader Black Lives Matter movement. Right wing activists hit
the streets too as counter protesters, groups ranging from pro
police demonstrators to violent street thugs like the Proud Boys,
and militia groups like the oathkeepers, it will turn to war.
Some of the encounters turned violent. In turn, anti fascist activists,
(01:38):
often dressed in black and referred to as antifa, begin
meeting right wing violence with force of their own. The
clashes result in the kind of political violence Americans haven't
seen in decades. The city became a war zone. Large
groups torch police cruisers as officers fired back with rubber bullings.
(01:58):
Violence involving the Proud Boys and leftist Antifa in Portland, Oregon.
In recent weeks, President has been calling for law and order,
but many say he's fueling the flames. Lots of people
on the right, from President Donald Trump in the Oval
Office to Tucker Carlson on Fox News, they start calling
out Antifa, painting them as militarized extremists who want nothing
(02:19):
more than to kill cops and burn America to the ground.
Black lives matter, Antifa is going to grow like ices
dated the Middle Ease. Violent young men with guns will
be in charge. You will not want to live here
when that happens. According to President Trump, anti fascist activists
aren't simply there to stop violent right wing extremists and fascists. No,
(02:42):
these antifa guys they're the real threat. Former Defense Secretary
Mark Asper says that Trump suggested that the US military
shoot Black Lives Matter protesters outside of the White House.
A mounted police have been coming down the street using
lash bangs in front of them to clear what has
(03:02):
been an entirely peaceful protest. Note nine percent, but one
hundred percent. People can protests. If you remember this public
debate gets pretty ridiculous. Soup and they throw the cans
of soup. That's better than a brick, because you can't
throw a brick it's too heavy. But a can of soup,
(03:23):
you can really put some power into that. Right, people
on the left are practically screaming, this is all a distraction,
a distraction from the very real issues of police brutality
against black people. And TIEF is an idea, not an organization,
you got it. Not polition, That's what it is. To
the FBI is FBI direct. All the while, demonstrators are
(03:43):
marching and COVID is raging, the economy is falling apart,
people are getting shot, and nobody knows what's going to
happen next. Plus there's this boogeyman hiding behind every corner.
He's playing into Antifa being the boogeyman being behind these protests.
You know, Fox News is still running riot porn, acting
like the riots are still happening today. Fantiva is just
(04:05):
sort of this abstract boogeyman word that we hear. On
the other side, you can clearly see it is what happens.
All I can tell you is we're not the evil
boogeyman people think we are. What are you people that
care about our country? But what if I were to
(04:25):
tell you there is an Antifa boogeyman? He was real.
He drove a silver hearse and the back of that
hearse was filled with guns, lots and lots of guns.
In the summer of twenty twenty, he rode into town.
I don't give a fuck about the cops, and I
(04:46):
don't care about the police. I do not agree nor
accept fascism. But understand this, if you come to me
fucked up, I'm gonna fuck you up. Stupid games, when
stupid prizes. I'm Trevor Aaronson from Western Sound and iHeart podcasts.
(05:09):
This is alphabet boys, So what or who is an
(05:34):
alphabet boy. Alphabet boys are federal agents or informants working
for the Alphabet agencies FBI, CIA, d EA, ATF These
are our national law enforcement and intelligence agencies that run
around the country and the world, fighting crime and collecting intelligence.
(05:55):
These agencies aren't interested in small cases either. We're talking
about really, really big cases, some of the biggest attacks
against the United States, criminal organizations, terrorists, etc. For about
as long as I've been a journalist, I've covered the
way that these alphabet agencies use undercover agents and informants
to orchestrate so called sting operations, where an undercover agent
(06:18):
pretends to be a criminal, a terrorist, a drug dealer,
an arms trader, a corrupt lobbyist, a money launder, and
on and on. We've largely come to accept undercover stings
as legitimate and necessary. But it wasn't so long ago
that many Americans found these techniques outrageous for the way
they appear to create crimes and entrap people in criminal
plots made possible only by aggressive undercover federal agents. Each
(06:44):
season of Alphabet Boys, we'll take you inside one of
these investigations as the FBI. Sometimes you get it grabbed
the little guy to go after the biggest. You'll hear
undercover recordings that were kept secret until now. This is
reference case number four one five Season Charlie, New York
three zero zero eight five one. Okay, so you do
(07:05):
personal security all over the world. You're connected to all
these different people. You'll meet supposed terrorists, arms dealers, and
drug runners. And you had somebody call you and say,
can you get grenades and guns for this guy in Columbia?
A lot of ammunitions forty seven And you'll discover that
while many of these cases have plenty of danger and intrigue,
(07:27):
I just drove for eight hours and then I just
stuffed my gun in the face of a federal agent.
They also introduce so much absurdity. I got knocked off
of Golding about a month ago, and my hip is shattered.
My maipulation is a Jedi mindshield that it's hard not
to wonder. I will be polite and professional, our America's
top cops catching real criminals, but I have a plan
(07:49):
to kill everybody in the fucking room. I need to
be or are they creating them? You want to show?
This is season one Trojan Hearst, Episode one, Summer of Rage.
(08:22):
The protests in Denver continuous. Hundreds of protesters have gathered
in front of the state capital tonight. Of all the
racial justice demonstrations around the country in the summer of
twenty twenty, Denver, Colorado saw some of the biggest, most
intense protests we've been watching as fences are smashed, torn down,
(08:44):
protesters starting fires, and building umbrella barricades. This is a
live look at downtown Denver where we have seen this
clash happening now for about the thousands demonstrate outside the
Colorado State Capital, chanting a phrase synonymous with young black
men dying at the hands of police officers. Some of
(09:08):
the Denver protests become violent and destructive. The police fire
pepper spray and rubber bullets into the crowds, injuring dozens,
but the protesters just keep coming out undaunted. Day ten
of protests across Denver, nearly a week after police use
tear gas and pepper balls to disperse protesters outside, and
(09:30):
then one night, a new guy shows up at the protests.
He's a white guy wearing military fatigues with patches and
stripes that he claims to have earned fighting the Islamic
State or ISIS in a rock and Syria. He has
a cigar dangling from his lips. And the car he
drives is unmistakable. It's a silver hearse with a sticker
on the back window reading Peshmerga, the Kurdish military force,
(09:54):
and inside his hearts with a lack a lot of guns,
you know, a R fifteens and all other kind of shit.
This is zep Hal. He was a regular at the
Denver protests. Yeah, it was just this badass dude, you know,
talking about he worked in the foreign military. He was
for the Black Lives Matter movement. He just seemed like
some authoritary figure, you know, this powerful figure that was there.
(10:15):
He was very convincing, but he did explain, you know,
he was part of like a bad biker gangs. You know,
he had committed a ton of violence, you know, but
you know he was for this BLM movement. This dude
was like a bad motherfucker. This bad motherfucker also introduces
himself to another Denver organizer, Trey Quinn. He's like, I've
done this and that. I was in the PKK and
(10:37):
the French Foreign Legion and so on, and YadA, YadA, YadA.
We ran night protests every night, and so we see
him a bunch and he approaches us every single time
from that point on, he walked up with a body
cam on me. And here's another regular at the Denver protests,
(10:58):
Bright Shelby. I didn't think nothing about the body cam
in hindsight, just because I just I don't know. There
were just a lot of things going on. I guess
he remembers the Hearst dude walking around with a GoPro
camera stropped to his chest. It was strange. I guess
he de escalated any type of suspicion because he started
(11:20):
like flashing his prison badge. So yeah, you know what
I mean, Like, Okay, he's not this guy in affair
you walking around with a prison badge. Yeah. Around the
time this mysterious character starts showing up, the protests in
Denver are stagnating. They're becoming this cat and mouse game
between demonstrators and cops. People coming out in mostly peaceful ways,
(11:44):
cops coming out with riot gear and overwhelming force. People
like zeb Tray and Bryce. They're getting frustrated. Something more
needs to happen, something new, and then something new does happen.
I was like, Hey, this guy, you know, he wants
to train people how to you know, defend themselves and
(12:05):
use the weapons and he showed me how to do
it as well. The guy with real military experience is here.
He's a commanding presence, he's got a hearse full of guns.
He's going to take things to the next level. That's
after the break. We live in a very divided country
(12:30):
right now, and that's not news. Everyone knows it. We
talk about it over dinner, cable news, on social media.
But this division is something that really bothers Denver racial
justice activist zeb Hal. He thinks it's really a distraction.
We're not focusing on how our government is abusing all
of us. They're so good at dividing us, so good
(12:54):
at it that we can't acknowledge things will happening to
other people. We can't accept anyone stepping out degree from
the group think, and that enables them to continue this
mass surveillance. Instead, zeb says, we sit at home watching
Cops and Robbers shows with clear good guys and unambiguous
bad guys, the portrait of a just and fair American
(13:15):
criminal justice system that has never really existed. Look at CBS,
they have like fucking a million police officer shows, all
these other major networks, so we know the networks cater
them make them look real good. Hell, they could be
listening in here, they could be in my fucking TV.
The apparatus is that powerful. So yeah, Zeb, he's pretty
skeptical of the US government, and as a black man,
(13:38):
Zeb's pretty tired of hearing about our racial divide. In
his view, the US government and the country's most powerful
corporations encourage the racial division we now have so that
poor white people and poor black people can't form the
political alliance they naturally should. Well, I understand, you know,
me and being black in this system, you know, I
(13:59):
feel like this, Yeah, yeah, Okay, there's white privilege, but
we are led to believe that it's this all powerful weapon,
like white people don't have to do anything, and that
is part of the thing that's used to divide us.
But I dare someone to go in the middle of
fucking Arkansas to a white community who lost a factory
(14:19):
and say, hey, you're entitled, You've got this privilege. But
we're made to think that way. They're dealing with the
same shit people in inner city. They are fucked up,
they're own drugs. Also, they're living in poverty. But we're
made to think those white people in rural areas are
constantly the enemy when they're living in a hall as well,
(14:40):
the same fucking hell as us, but we are told
that that other side is fucking terrible. Zeb, whose full
name is Zebadias, wasn't always this caustic. His anger really
set in a couple of years ago, in early twenty twenty,
when the pandemic started. He saw how people on the
an edge like him, suffered job losses, poor healthcare, mounting debts,
(15:05):
and anxieties about eviction. At the same time, Zeb saw
affluent Americans adapting to the pandemic with ease, working remotely
deliveries from Amazon in their local grocery store, lush fenced
in backyards to get fresh air, iPads, and new laptops
for their kids to use for remote schooling. The pandemic,
in Zeb's view, laid bare the inequities in America. Some
(15:27):
of us had everything, while others of us were a
missed paycheck away from poverty. Were all in danger. We're
all in danger, and that is serious. I think in
the right ways. I have become more radicalized because I
care more about people. Zeb was born in nineteen eighty four.
(15:48):
His parents were in high school when his mom got
pregnant with him, and then his dad skipped down, so
Zeb's childhood was tumultuous. He lived with his grandmother for
a bit in California when he was a small boy,
and aually moved to North Carolina when his mother married
a US marine. In his twenties, Zeb had a serious
girlfriend in North Carolina and she decided to move to Denver.
(16:09):
So Zeb followed and he and his girlfriend got married.
I got here shockingly, unexpectedly on four twenty and she
takes me downtown Denver, and I'm seeing all these people smoking.
They're all going to get arrested. They're all gonna arrested.
I gotta get out of here. I gotta get here,
and I'm freaking out. Then I got pulled over by
a cop in October of twenty twelve, and he asked,
(16:30):
you got any drugs in the car, And I'm like,
I've got some marijuana sart, Okay, you got any drugs
in the car I've got this week? And I'm freaking out.
He says, no, do you have any real drugs. We're
not worried about that. I'm like, oh no, I do not.
You know. It was real funny. It was real funny.
But that's how I got your You know, we had
a daughter along the way. She has our other two
kids as well, which is a big story on the side.
(16:51):
But yeah, that's how I got here. I got here.
Zeb glosses over this part a bit. He and his
now ex wife, Bridget, had a dog, as Zeb mentioned,
but they were living in poverty and didn't want to
subject their daughter to such a difficult life. So Zeb's
mother and stepfather in North Carolina, who were well off
by comparison, agreed to take care of the girl. Zeb
(17:13):
travels back regularly to visit and tries to be there
for big moments birthdays, first days of school, major holidays.
It was around twenty fifteen when his daughter was born.
That's when Zeb began to feel America had become fundamentally unfair,
that rich people were getting richer, and that no matter
how hard he worked, he was getting poorer. He couldn't
(17:36):
even support his daughter. The American system seemed broken. Zeb
wasn't the first person to feel disillusioned with the American promise,
but he and others were seeing how body camera and
cell phone footage had created a near constant stream of
news stories about Black people dying at the hands of
police officers nationwide. Eric Gardner, Michael Brown, to mere Rice,
(18:00):
Freddy Gray, Brianna Taylor. The list goes on. In Colorado,
in twenty nineteen, there was Elijah McClain, a twenty three
year old who died after being arrested by a war police.
Police say Elijah McClain was wearing a ski mask, acting
agitated and ignored officers commands. Elijah was, by all accounts,
(18:21):
an introverted, sensitive, twenty three year old. He worked as
a massage therapist and taught himself to play guitar and violin.
Elijah would often play music at animal shelters to help
calm the stray cats and dogs. Elijah also suffered from anemia,
and so we'd wear an open faced ski mask even
during the summer in Colorado in order to stay warm.
(18:44):
On the evening of August twenty four, twenty nineteen, Elijah
walked from his apartment to a convenience store in Aurora
suburb just outside Denver. A resident there called nine one
one and reported a man wearing a ski mask. The mask, Oh, man,
(19:06):
Elijah looks sketchy, the nine one one caller said, then
added he might be a good person or a bad person.
Three cops responding to this call stopped Elijah as he
was walking back to his apartment. The cops claimed Elijah
resisted arrest and reached for one of the officers guns.
It's hard to know what's true. The video of the
(19:28):
initial encounter is shaky and unclear. The body camera of
another police officer recorded from the point that Elijah was
already on the ground. We started their visiting. That's one
of the officers claiming that Elijah reached for a gun.
As you can hear, Elijah pinned down to the ground,
pleading to be let go. The officers speculated that Elijah
(19:50):
was on drugs, but Elijah kept telling them that he
wasn't on drugs and that he wasn't trying to resist.
I can't breathe, I have my ID right here. That's
(20:11):
what Elijah tells the officers. At the time, Elijah was
handcuffed behind his back and one of the officers was
applying a chokeold to his neck. Page of different, completely,
I'm just different, Elijah told the officers as a way
to explain why they might have thought his behavior was odd,
(20:33):
but also to assure them that he wasn't violent, he
wasn't trying to resist. He kept saying that to the cops.
Paramedics then arrived on the scene and injected Elijah with
five hundred milligrams of ketamine as a sedative. That dosage
would have been excessive for a two hundred pound man.
Elijah was just one hundred and forty pounds. His pull
(20:53):
stopped and he was taken to the hospital. Three days later,
Elijah was pronounced brain dead and taken off life support.
Elijah's death sparked outrage in Denver. People poured into the
streets to protest. One of the first events I went
to was shortly after the murder of Elijah mclin. Zeb
(21:16):
Angered about Elijah's senseless killing was among them. He'd never
been politically active before. You know. I went there and
saw his mother and a bunch of other people, and
everyone was hurt. You know, we knew it was wrong.
In February twenty twenty, after the demonstrations for Elijah mclin
began to fizzle out, public officials announced they would investigate
(21:38):
the police response. It was something, sure, but there wasn't
a lot of faith that the police officers and paramedics
responsible for Elijah's death would be held accountable. Then three
months later, on May twenty fifth, twenty twenty, a white
police officer in Minneapolis named Derek Schouven arrest a black
man named George Floyd on suspicion that he had used
(21:58):
a counterfeit twenty dollar bill. Chauvin restrains Floyd on the
concrete street during the arrest, and he places his knee
directly on Floyd's neck for approximately nine minutes, and he
murders George Floyd. Good even to everyone. We're coming on
the air with the latest on the wave of protests
unrest taking place at this hour across the country, outrage
(22:18):
at the death of George Floyd and African American man
in Denver. Floyd's death is like gasoline thrown on the
warm embers of anger over Elijah McClain. Thousands of people
protest in the streets, animated by both men's untimely death
at the hands of police officers, and the Denver area
police response to the demonstrations was brutal. In June, dozens
(22:41):
of people gather in Aurora's public Square for Elijah McClain.
They call it the Violin vigil as many of the
demonstrators play violins in Elijah's honor. The police, dressed in
riot gear, storm into the demonstration and disperse the crowd
with violent shoves in full volume streams of pepper spring.
(23:18):
During other demonstrations, police in the Denver area fire pepper
balls and rubber bullets into the crowds, injuring dozens. It's like,
fucking wow, I'm out there with my camera, he goes,
I'd never taken photos, you know before, I just picked
up the hobby at the time. Zeb Hal had purchased
a camera to document the protest. It was crazy, you know,
I'm just you know, taking pictures that I'm seeing his
(23:39):
fire in a civic center park and then it's kind
of like a saving private Ryan moment. Zeb isn't quite
sure what happened next. Did a rubber bullet hit him
in the head? Where did he pass out after being
overwhelmed with pepper spray and then smack his head on
the concrete. I'm like, you're just like kind of flozzed
out of people picked me up off the ground and
(24:02):
they brought me, you know, took me away, put some
I think it was milk in my eyes and shit
and kind of brought me back to But I was
having issues after that. My head was hurting so bad
and I wasn't able to sleep well. I was just
like sporadic, like emotional, like losing my mind. You know.
I had to get I think it was a cat skin.
You know. They almost told me to like stop driving
(24:24):
at one point, they were really concerned memory was off
a little bit, you know, to some degree. Yeah, it
was pretty pretty rough. From that point on, Zeb admits
he's done in his right mind. He's taking a hard
hit to the head, and he feels traumatized by the
police response of the protests, but he doesn't want to quit.
(24:46):
It feels like they're on the edge of something big.
Maybe the system could be reformed if enough people come
out and speak up. He's too far in, Zeb can't
stop now. And this is about the time that a
man arrives in Denver driving up to a protest in
(25:07):
a silver hearse filled with guns. One of the primary
organizers of the Denver racial justice protests is Trey Quinn,
a tall black man who wears a beard and large
frame glasses. Trey identifies as a black nationalist through his
(25:32):
activism he's trying to promote organizations and causes that invest
directly in black communities in Colorado. What we were asking
for is the same type of investment in the community
that would give us the same type of ownership in
a city that other communities have. You know, people can
look at the skyline and they see all these buildings,
(25:54):
and none of those buildings provide any sort of wealth
to black culture, but they provide wealth to these other
cultures because they have investments in that. And we wanted
to let people know this is what is really needed
for us to get out of our situation. Since you
want to help us so much, this is actually what
we need, and so that was my message. Trade dislikes
(26:16):
that the protests in Denver and others around the country
are being described as Black Lives Matter protests. Black Lives
Matter is largely a decentralized movement, and the term became
a catch all phrase for news media worldwide. Any racial
justice protest in America was described as a Black Lives
Matter or BLM demonstration. But at the same time, a
(26:38):
number of groups begin raising money under BLM, and in
Trade's view, very little of this money is being invested
in black communities. As Tracy's it, it's all a scam.
They extract wealth from us via the donations that we
get from these well meaning white liberals who want to
give us money, who want to stay out of it,
but want to help out. They see that as a
(27:01):
cash cow, and so they became a barrier over top
of us, a big fat bubble layer, to catch all
of that money before it reached us, so that they
could decide who to give it to, which obviously wasn't us.
Besides all that, Trey has some real practical things to
sort out on the ground. The police have established a
(27:21):
reputation in and around Denver for responding to demonstrators with force,
like they did on June twenty, twenty twenty during the
violin vigil for Elijah McClain. It's now mid July and
Trey has gathered a bunch of demonstrators to teach them
how to move together in a formation in order to
escape safely from a charging line of police officers dressed
(27:41):
in riot gear. The cops come in lines like stormtroopers,
and so what they try to do is they'll pick
a person off by separating the group with their line.
And so I started teaching these people how to create
you know, like the Spartan Faylenx rank, essentially teaching them
how to cress it moon and how to like open
up in like a wide oval so that they can
(28:04):
move their way out of a situation. And so if
everyone links arms and everyone creates a crescent moon, it
prevents the cops from wanting to go into the group
and move people out because now they see that they
are in danger. As Trey is describing how to employ
this defensive tactic during a demonstration, a couple of other
activists show up with this new guy. He'd driven up
(28:28):
in a silver hearse he's a white guy in military fatigues,
and so they're like, hey, this guy's really really dope.
He's legit, he knows his shit. You should let him
sit in and he could probably help you out. And
so he comes in and essentially he's really pushy, trying
to like give directions and trying to like, you know,
like put himself at the forefront to trade. This guy's
(28:50):
a brash, no it all who's ready to take charge.
And he looks like a biker and Trey he doesn't
trust bikers, and I usually approach dudes who look bikers
in these groups because I just need to know one,
are you armed, so that I can keep an eye
on you until I know that you're quote unquote one
of us or whatever you know the term could be.
(29:11):
But this biker guy, he's got the goods. He's like,
I got guys all around here videotaping. They'll give us
a call as soon as the cops are moving around
the corner, which they did. They let us know by
providing information about where the police were, information that turned
out to be accurate. This guy quickly establishes credibility among
the demonstrators. They start to trust him, and as far
(29:33):
as Trey remembers, this is also around the time that
Zeb Hall comes on the scene. Zeb was known for
his impassioned and fiery speeches during demonstrations. At one of
(30:01):
the demonstrations, Zeb meets the guy driving the silver hearse,
the mysterious man who appears to be taking charge of
the demonstrators. He's leading protests, organizing people, and drawing up plans.
Zeb is in awe of him. He seems like a
guy who can make stuff happen. He has military training.
(30:22):
He speaks with a raspy voice of dominance, his shirt
fits tight or and his large biceps. He's like, he
has testosterone dripping from his pores. And he has guns,
a lot of guns. He was there and I'm like, Yo,
this dude has a ship ton of guns in his car.
So my thing is he worked for foreign military. He
(30:43):
said the United States government knew it, So maybe this
guy's a lot to have guns. At that time, Zeb
is enthralled with this mysterious guy. He's experienced on the
battlefield and he has expertise with weapons. Zeb exchanged his
phone numbers with him and they agree to stay in touch. Yeah,
see you the next protests a year round. I'll contact you.
You know, I'll text you if I find out if
(31:04):
this is going on with this thing. Zeb's new friend
doesn't waste any time contacting him. He tells Zeb that
the protests are reaching a tipping point and that violence
is coming. It's inevitable. The way I look at is
like shit has to happen. The has to happen. Shit
has to happen. He says to Zeb, how extreme do
you expected? Would you want it to go? This guy
(31:29):
he's about to take the racial justice protest in Denver
a violent step forward. It's time to shoot the rich,
he tells zeb. It's time to take down buildings, It's
time to burn down the whole system. I don't give
a fuck about going to prison. I don't give a
fuck about getting killed, because you believe me. I've fought
Isis or Nash, I've fought Al Kayeeda, I've fought Hubble Shoppy.
(31:56):
I've fought in Iraq and I've fought in Syria. I've
trained real emptief of freedom fighters in both those regions.
And I am certainly not fucking scared of you. Who
is this man that's in the next episode? This is
Trojan Hearst Season one of Alphabet Boys. Alphabet Boys is
(32:24):
a production of Western Sound and iHeart Podcasts. The show
is reported, written and hosted by me Trevor Aaronson. For
more information about this series or to drop us a tip,
head to our website Alphabet Boys dot xyz. You can
contact me on Twitter or Instagram at Trevor Aaronson. We
believe this story is important and could result in changes
(32:45):
to FBI oversight and public policy. But to have impact,
people need to hear this story, so we need your help. First,
tell your friends about the show. Personal recommendations are the
best recommendations. Second, spread the word on social media. At
alphabet boys dot x y Z you'll find FBI undercover
(33:07):
recordings and secret documents. You can share stuff the government
never wanted public. Third, help us ride the algorithms by
leaving a rating or review on your favorite podcast app
that helps other people find us and thanks for listening.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
Today’s Latest News In 4 Minutes. Updated Hourly.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.