March 15, 2022 • 46 mins
There is presumably some very dark, very depressing stuff in the annals of America’s secret history. But perhaps the darkest classified document to see the light of day was the memo that called for faked attacks on the US to justify invading Cuba.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck, and there's Cherry, and it's the stuff
you should know. Okay, deal with it. Yeah, up your nose,
(00:24):
et cetera. Yeah. I just suddenly, you know how, I
stopped saying that quote mid quote because I suddenly felt
like an old dinosaur Chuck, and that probably nobody knew
what I was talking about. And I'm tired of feeling old, Chuck.
Are you feeling old? I feel young. I'm glad to
(00:45):
answer your question. Yes. Okay, So hey, before we get started, Um,
this is gonna be a really good episode. Uh, and
I want to enhance it by saying, I finally saw
I got to see my niece's movie that I've been
talking NonStop about. O Exit. It's amazing. It's such a
great I would call it a popcorn thriller. Um. Like,
(01:07):
you know, it's not like high art. It's not trying
to be high art, but it's it's like really well
done in the script, doesn't have a bunch of like
holes in it. Uh. It doesn't like they've trimmed off
all the fat. It moves along really nicely. Um, and
once it gets going, it keeps like getting going again
and like these lurches forward and just it does it
doesn't go off the rails. But it's just like, oh
(01:28):
my god, I can't believe this is going on right now.
And then to be able to see my niece Mila
act as like the kid in this, to see her
like do this stuff, it's just it's amazing Tod first
of all, and I'm I'm like removing, I've done everything
I can to remove any subjectivity as a proud uncle,
and like actually watch her acting and like the performance
(01:51):
she gets and it is great. It's amazing. She does
an amazing job. She has to do a bunch of
different stuff. She gets like tortured and harrass and beat
up and everything. Um, it's actually really graphic movie in
a lot of ways, but like delightfully if you ask me, Um,
and she did. She did a great job. And I
thought the whole cast did a really good job too,
(02:11):
including great It is good, including Havannah Rose Lou by
the way, but yes it is. It is a great movie.
And I recommend anybody who watches our movies to watch
the movie and it's on It's on Hulu right now streaming.
It's called No Exit Awesome. I can't wait to watch it.
I've been traveling. I went on the road for a
bit once again. See more Bonnie Prince Billy and Matt
(02:35):
Sweeney Superwolve shows. Matt Sweeney is that the girlfriend guy?
What the guy who had that hit in the nineties
called Girlfriend? No, he's local that was that was a
great album. Um, I can't think of his name. No,
Matt Sweeney is a genuine stuff you should know listener
and super smart, awesome guy, and we're kind of pals now,
(02:57):
so he's always kind enough to hang out and he
always sends me really good ideas for the show. But
that's not my ninth Bonnie Prince Billy show in the
past like a year and a half. I'm going to
where he goes. That's really cool. He didn't come to Atlanta,
so I just I'm hitting the road and along with
our good friend Joey c R. He came on this one.
Oh yeah, that's right. I saw that post on Instagram.
That's awesome to see Joey's looking good. Yeah, he he
(03:19):
says hello, and uh, if you want to see pictures
of this in my Travels and Travails. You can follow
me to Chuck the Podcaster on Instagram. I'm sorry you
had travails. Uh what I say travails? Did I not
say travels? He said travels and travails? No, no travails,
only good good It was only good times. I'm sure
I've told you before, but I always love rubbing it in.
(03:40):
Did I ever tell you that I saw Bonnie Prince
Billy doing karaoke at our friend Toby's wedding years back?
I don't know that. You told me that do you
do a song? It was? It was some like sweet
old country song he didn do wet with I think
maybe his wife. Oh my god. I mean he's the best.
He's my favorite vocalist. He's to me, the best singer
that literally in music history. And a cool dude. I
(04:02):
can tell you because I've been in the same room
with them plenty of times. Me too. I was four
ft from him the other night. That's really cool. Anyway.
Shout out to Sweeney, Shout out to no Exit. And
now let's talk about a time when the US government
was not above uh planning false flag operations that were
(04:22):
crazy and ludicrous and planning potentially to assassinate the leaders
of other countries hundreds of years ago. Oh actually no,
this was way back in the nineteen sixties. Yeah, planning,
that's the operative word here is planning doesn't mean that
like any false flag operation was ever carried out, at
least by the United States government. There's been plenty of
(04:45):
false flag operations carried out, most recently, um apparently by Russia,
who was trying to accuse Ukraine of doing like sabotage
embombing across the border as a pretext for invasion. And
that's generally the point of a false flag operation, which
we should probably define it. But it's basically where you
dress up as the um somebody from the country that
(05:08):
you want to invade, have them or you assault your
own like border crossing, your own military installation, your own railroad,
and then you publicize to the world how that country
attacked you, and now you're gonna have to go in
and invade in in you know, for your own your
own welfare and the welfare of your own country. That's
(05:28):
a false flag operation, that's right. Staging any kind of
a fake operation. Uh. The it originally came about the
term false flag from pirates would fly a flag of
a friendly country two lureships closer than they would attack them.
But since then and Russia is big on it, they've
I mean, Japan has done this, Germany has done this,
(05:50):
but the Soviets and Russia, UH, like you said, they're
they're still gangbusters for this kind of thing. Yes, I
also think it's just a p s A. If you
are really um feeling sympathetic or um, you know, absorbing
information that makes you see things through Putin's view, you're
probably being manipulated online. Just why you may want to
(06:15):
you may want to look a little deeper into that
and pull your head out of that particular rabbit hole.
All right, So let's go back in time, uh and
talk about Operation north Woods. But to talk about Operation Northwoods,
we have to first talk about who did this one
for us? By the way, who put this together? This
(06:35):
was Olivia Joint Olivia Gershn, great work. We need to
talk about Cuba and what the threat that that country
started to pose or the seeming threat that country started
to pose to the United States, UH, in the late
nineteen fifties early nineteen sixties. Yeah, because Castro came to
(06:57):
power ninety nine, and in doing so he became the
first UM. He established the first communist regime in the
Western hemisphere. Uh in America's backyard, as it would later
be put. And this is not settled well with the
Americans because at the time we were UM I guess
our military, um brass, our intelligence community, basically everybody in
(07:20):
charge with security for America. UM was of the of
the of the ILK that like, we should be invading
other countries that are communists and toppling those regimes and
fighting communism wherever it pops up. No, no countries too small,
no countries too large. We need to invade them and
(07:42):
fight them and remove those communists and and probably install
like a democratic government from that point on, which is
kind of ironic. By the way. That was Matthew Sweet,
That's what I said. What did you say, Oh, Matt
Matt Sweeney. Matt Sweeney. But it came to me when
was when you were talking about Cuba, Matthew Sweet, because
(08:02):
it's a great record. Yeah, I can't remember the song
how it goes, but I know it was a good song.
I don't think I ever heard the record had a
cool video too. Yeah, while you sing it. Yeah, I
love somebody, remember that. That's it. I think I need
somebody to love Okay, and then the chorus is, uh,
(08:23):
you need to get back in the Little Friend. Oh yeah, Yeah,
it's a pretty good song. It's not as good as
I remember just by the Superwolf record, it's better. Um alright,
so good set up on Cuba. Uh, if you want
to go back, well, um, I don't even know how
much we need to go over it, but if you
want to go back and listen to our I think
(08:44):
pretty great episode from November called the Bay of Pigs disaster.
This was sort of one of the first things that
happened in the nineteen sixties when UH Eisenhower approved this
boondoggle of an operation UH known as the Bay of
Pigs Invasion that just went just about as wrong as
it could go on every level. Yeah, and so like
(09:07):
we were setting up fake invasions of Cuba supporting exiles
invasions of Cuba. UM RFK and JFK were obsessed with
Cuba and in particular removing Castro from power. Cuba was
a big deal for a number of reasons, we should say,
and one of the leading reasons that Cuba was a
problem for the United States is because they were worried
(09:29):
Castro is going to serve as an inspiration for other
countries in Latin America, especially the economically depressed ones um
where they're like, yeah, all this this capitalism running around
where Americans own most of our national operations and exports
and we're getting very little in return, Communism might seem
(09:50):
pretty appealing to them, So Castro might serve as an inspiration.
And if there's like that domino effect like they were
worried about in Southeast Asia that happens in Latin America
thanks to Cuba, all of a sudden, America's American businesses
are gonna be out a lot of money, Americans are
gonna be out a lot of the bananas that they've
come to love thanks to Edward Burney's and we would
(10:12):
also lose access to things like the Panama Canal and
other things we need. So it wasn't just like a
like a ideological problem. It was a practical problem too.
But the biggest problem, the biggest problem that a communist
Cuba post to the United States is that it was
now an ally with the USSR. America's swore an enemy.
(10:33):
The other polar power of the Cold War would now
had a country that would be willing to let them
set up nuclear missile basis a hundred boles from Florida.
That was truly the big problem with Cuba and Castro,
That's right. And because of that kind of from the
very beginning, the US very quietly started thinking about like, hey,
(10:58):
should we assassinate this guy? Should we depose this guy? Um,
And there were all kinds of crazy like poison cigars,
like mafia hitman, that kind of stuff was being talked
about behind closed doors, including um, Florida Senator George Smathers,
great name, Uh, he proposed assassinating Castro, was a good
(11:18):
buddy of Kennedy's and brought it up during the nine
presidential campaign and include which included the plan included a
false flag attack at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. And he
claims that Kennedy basically was like a put something down
on paper and I'll take a look. And um, so
(11:39):
Kennedy wasn't you know, if you believe this, he wasn't
initially adverse or averse excuse me, to the idea of
taking care of the problem. If you know what I'm saying, Yeah,
that's how obsessed he was with removing Castro. The problem
was this after the Bay of Pigs. That was what
nine teen sixty one, I believe, Yeah, it was April nine. Um.
(12:06):
The one of the huge problems with aside from America
having an enormous amount of a on its face for
being outed for supporting a failed coup of Castro, Um,
was that Kennedy had been led to believe by his
military and intelligence advisors that there was going to be
an uprising, that like these exiles showing up having maken
(12:29):
a couple of wins against the Castro regime was going
to like awaken the Cuban people who would want to
go back to, you know, the way things were before
the Communists came along and took over the country, and
they're being uprising that top of Castro. That was the thing.
They weren't necessarily trying to take over the country. They're
trying to incite a revolution, and that did not happen.
(12:49):
Was supposed to work. Yeah, even though Kennedy had been
told up and down by these advisors. He was a
brand new president at the time, and he had been
told up and down by these advisors that that was
going to happen, and it didn't happen. It never materialized,
and so he lost full faith in any military or
intelligence advisor around him at the time. From that point on,
(13:10):
so he found he needed to surround himself with new
people to take on this this Castro Cuba problem. And
the point man he put on the whole thing, he
basically said, I want you to to be in charge
of getting rid of Castro, you know, figuring out how
to do it without sending in military people was his brother, Bobby.
That's right. Uh, Like you said, Kennedy still had that
(13:30):
new president smell, and Bobby still had that new attorney
general smell. You were very very patient and waiting for
your chance to use that, and I think it paid
off in aces. Okay, good, I mean I try to
get in there. But you know, uh so, Bobby, it
was attorney general, like I said, And that isn't you know,
attorney attorney general or attorneys general um or would it
(13:53):
be attorneys generals? They usually don't get involved in stuff
like this, but he was his his brother, and so
he trusted him, and he ended up overseeing something called
Operation Mongoose, which was kind of this crazy idea that
they could disrupt life in Cuba such that, uh with
(14:14):
you know, sabotage, with disorder, with espionage, um. And it
would all be just in the name of stirring things
up with the Cubans themselves again, not like putting in
Americans dressed as Cubans and stuff like that. Uh. They
thought they could get this done. Um. The CIA was
going to be involved, the State Department was going to
be involved, UM, the Defense Department, what we had at
(14:37):
the time, the US Information Agency, and basically they were
going to get together and get this done. And it
was going to be headed up by a general from
the Air Force named Edward Landsdale, who was interestingly a
former AD exec and a CIA operative, and he was
sort of in charge along with Kennedy of getting this
thing planned and this Operation Mongoose again. Yeah, So Operation
(15:01):
Mongoose is that operation that like all the wacky stuff
that you have ever heard about getting rid of Castro,
like a poisoned skin suit for him to scuba dive in,
or exploding cigars, all that is Operation Mongoose. And like
you're saying, the point was two kills a poison cigar.
I don't think it was an exploding cigar. That's like
a novelty, right, Well, that was the level they were at.
(15:22):
Somebody brought up joy buzzer once, right, they were like,
exploding cigar won't kill him, like yeah, but it'll humiliate him, right,
and we'll finish him off with the joy buzz um.
So that that's all of that fell under Operation Mongoose.
And like you said, they were trying to basically make
life for the average Cuban so weird and disjoined it
and uncomfortable without anybody realizing the Americans were actually behind
(15:45):
all these seemingly unrelated things that they would just get
rid of Castro themselves. And that was the reason why
they weren't just like, well, we can't just go in
and kill Castro is because again they were friends with
the Ovit's, and there was a chance that um JFK believed, uh,
if they did in Vague Cuba, they would set off
(16:08):
World War three. Like that was a very real fear.
On the other hand, there was also this ticking clock
going at all moments and among some people, some advisors
to the White House and security advisors, it was like
deafening the sound of this clock ticking. That the longer
we waited, the more chance there was going to be
(16:30):
that the Cubans were going to say, hey, so if
it's come, build a missile base here. They hadn't yet,
but it was on the table and everybody knew it.
So they Americans needed to do something about Castro and fast.
So the idea that the Americans could come up with
these plots to get the Cubans to overthrow Castro themselves.
That takes a lot of time, it might not pay off.
(16:50):
And then looming in the background, getting ever closer, are
these Soviet missile bases arriving in Cuba any day? Now?
They just knew it. All right, that's a great suspenseful
lead up to our first break. We're gonna come back
and find out what happened with Operation Mongoose right after this.
(17:31):
All right, so you set the stage very well. My
friend General Lansdale is running the show. It was a
pretty impossible situation to try and do this with the
Cuban people without any real power, basically like he didn't
have any real teeth in this. He was overseeing a
bunch of different agencies. Uh And in February of sixty two,
(17:54):
he basically put forward a plan that was supposed to
get Castro out of office by October or even though
he said that was pretty optimistic. And some of these
ideas were pretty crazy. Um. One of them was that
there's these things called star shells, which is kind of
how you how you light up the night sky during wartime.
(18:14):
I think, yeah, it's like you shoot it for as
it were mortar around, but it's not mort around. It
just lights things up for the night vision goggles or
back then. I guess, well, I don't know if they
had them back then, but it's like that one scene
at night, that battle, that night battle in Apocalypse Now, Yeah, exactly.
So one of the ideas was for a submarine, the
(18:34):
US submarine to fire these star shells off the coast
and convinced the Cubans that the Second Coming of Jesus
was was happening and that Jesus was against Castro. Yeah,
they were going to shoot it off on All Saints Day,
and that was based on the premise that the Cubans
were deeply, deeply Catholic and that they would see this
as a sign. And these are just ideas. Again, they
(18:57):
never did this. All of these are just ideas, but
they were ideas that were literally put forth in writing
by the US government to the President. So it's okay,
So the clock is ticking on Lansdale, and I read
that basically every week he would go to the Oval
Office and asked to be taken off of this assignment. Yeah,
he was apparently a golden child. Like you said, he
(19:18):
was an ad executive CIA operative. He basically shaped the
geopolitical map of Southeast Asia by himself in the fifties. Um,
and they, the Kennedy's, were like, hey, you seem pretty
great at this. Let's see what you can do at Cuba.
And he just ran into a brick wall in Cuba,
in no small part because, like you were saying, the
Kennedy's didn't give him any teeth, any authority. So he
(19:39):
had to beg for everything from everybody from this this
multi agency task force that he was in charge of.
It was a terrible, terrible thing. And then again that
clock is ticking. So in addition to coming up with
ways to get the Cubans to topple Castro, Lansdale also
was trying to figure out how to justify over action
(20:00):
and actual military invasion. And so he asked the Joint Chiefs,
who were one of the agencies that were part of
the task force. He oversaw for some some info on that,
like what would it take do you think for the
United States to be able to justifiably invade Cuba and
remove Castro as its leader? Problem solved? And again like,
(20:23):
how can I scare the president bad enough? Kind of yeah,
right exactly, so they they well, no, Also, like I
think he was also trying to figure out what we
could do to make that happen, you know what I'm saying,
Like could we also like push Cuba into a corner
and make them do something and be like, oh, well,
we have our hands are tied. We have to invade um.
(20:44):
But the reason that it would scare Kennedy too is
like he was against military action. You just got to
keep that in mind. After the Bay of Pigs he said, no,
We're not invading Cuba. So now Landsdills trying to figure
out basically how to how to change the President's mind.
And I guess, yeah, like you were saying, if it
meant through scaring him, whatever it took, he just wanted
(21:05):
out of this stupid assignment where he's trying to figure
out how to trick the Cubans into overthrowing Castro. Right.
So this this is what this briefing was all about
in February of nineteen sixty two from the Joint Chiefs
of Staff to basically put put it forth that this
cannot be ignored. The quote was, the communist regime in
Cuba is incompatible with the minimum security requirements of the
(21:27):
Western hemisphere. Um. I mean that's like that sentence kind
of kind of says it all like where where he
it is incompatible having him in power with the safety
of the Western hemisphere, So we gotta get rid of him. Um.
They said that that, uh, we can't count on like
you see what happened with the Bay of Pigs. There
(21:49):
is no insurgents happening in Cuba that we can count
on basically at this point, and we need to intervene directly.
And I don't think Russia will even like be supermad
at this point yet. Yeah. Yet, that was the thing
because they said that Cuba is not part of the
Warsaw Packed, which is kind of like the Soviet Union's
(22:10):
version of NATO UM. And since they weren't a member
of that, the Soviet Union had no obligations to back
them up if they were invaded in them by America,
and the fact that they didn't have any military bases
there and they also didn't have any reason to back
up Cuba. So it was possible that if they invaded
Cuba to capital to top le Castro, they the Soviets
(22:32):
would not be drawn into it. Maybe JFK was wrong
about it sparking World War three. They didn't know that
for a fact, but that was their assessment of it, right, Yeah.
So uh. On February second, Brigadier General William H. Craig,
he was the Joint Chief of staffs rep for Operation Mongoose,
He submitted this memo to Landsdale that said it was
called possible actions to provoke, harass, and disrupt Cuba. And
(22:55):
this is where some of these, uh, really kind of
wacky ideas start coming forth. Um, some not quite so acky,
like the Mercury mission was about to happen with John
Glenn later that month, and they were like, Hey, if
anything goes wrong with this thing, we could basically manufacture
proof that Cuba was behind it and that would give
us a reason. Yeah, that was one of the more
(23:16):
reasonable things, and it really was. There was Operation Free ride.
The idea that they were going to drop one way
tickets to um like Mexico City over Havana was just like,
just leave, that's amazing. I guess that was when if
Castro had no one to rule, then maybe he would
just leave himself. Castro would just shut down the airports
(23:37):
or something. Yeah. Yeah, And that was not very well
thought out. It wouldn't have worked. Now. There was also
Operation Good Times too, which was they were going to
produce a fake photo and this is at a time
when it was hard to do that, at least make
a convincing one of Castro presumably naked, hanging out with
with beautiful women in a bunch of food at a
(23:57):
time when you know, the Cubans were having a lot
of trouble putting food on their own plates. And this
picture was gonna have Castro surrounded by food and women
and they were going to caption it my ration is different.
And they thought that that would just that would be
yet for cast Strow. So yes, these are the ideas
that they were coming up with. But when they when
(24:18):
they kind of turned there, I think when they said, like, wow,
these are the ideas were coming up with. This stuff's
not gonna work. There's no counter revolutionary insurgency to spark
in Cuba, Like, what are we gonna do? We need
to figure out how to how to get our army
in there, right, get army in there, and then uh,
that kind of set the table, all of us set
(24:38):
the table for Operation Northwoods, which was put forward by
Army General. It's so funny. I'm glad that that Olivia mentioned, uh,
Doctor Strangelove, which had not come out yet, because some
of the names in this are very like you can
kind of tell that Kubrick and the writer were very
much influenced by like real stuff that was going on,
(25:01):
some of the ridiculous names from Dr Strangelove. And then
you know later on when we get to like what
was actually in Northwoods that you can only hear it
as if it was read from Georgie Scott, General Buck Turgenson,
like you can hear him saying these things. But Army
General Lyman lim Nitzer was this guy's name, and he
(25:23):
was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in
nineteen sixty. Very hawkish to say, the least right wing
guy who uh, I mean, this guy he wanted to
attack everybody at all times. He wanted a preemptive nuclear
war launched against the Soviet Union. At one point that
was a proposal that he took to Kennedy. He proposed
(25:44):
that in writing. He said, we here's a plan to
to for a surprise attack against the USSR. Let's do it. Yeah. Yeah.
He was that kind of guy. He was one of
those ones that I mentioned earlier. Fight communism everywhere it
pops up, any time it pops up, Just invade and
take over. That's that was like, is his plan. And
this guy's running the Joint chiefs of Staff. So Kennedy
(26:04):
the head, No, he was Eisenhower appointee. Kennedy didn't like him,
and he didn't like Kennedy, especially after the Bay of Pigs.
He was one of the people that Kennedy did not trust.
And then he thought Kennedy was reprehensible for not ordering
an air strike to back up the Bay of Pigs
exile invaders. Um. So there was no love lost. But
(26:25):
Landsdale was It sounds like kind of appropriately the guy
to come up with Operation Northwoods, which was, as far
as we have is in documentary evidence, the only false
flag operation the United States ever came up with. Okay,
is that true documented evidence? I don't think there's ever
been evidence of anything like this. I mean, there's a
(26:46):
there's a historian who wrote about it later, a journalist
who said it was probably the most corrupt document the
United States government has ever come up with, which is
really saying something. I mean, I'm not so I'm not
Pollyanni here. I don't think the US government as of
course clean hands and is just you know, looking out
for the good of everybody at all the time. Like
I think it's done some deeply shady stuff. But I
(27:08):
also personally think that Operation Northwoods may have been, as
far as planning goes, the pinnacle of that shape. Yeah,
I believe it too. March five, the Joint chiefs uh
Lansdale issued requested them to provide a quote brief but
precise description of pretext which they would consider would provide
(27:30):
justification for US military intervention in Cuba. Was passed along
on March five. I'm sorry, marulimnitz Or passes it to
Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, and uh, this is something
that McNamara, you know, years later was kind of like,
I don't know, was that a thing? I don't really
(27:50):
remember that. Yeah, he said, I'm not sure that was true.
He was a scumbag himself too. Yeah. I recommend the
Great Great documentary by Errol Morris when he talks to
Robert ma namera basically before Yeah, for nine minutes straight
or however long it is. It's crazy what he got
him to say and to and he tried to get
him to see and McNamara is like, does not compute
(28:11):
to It was really fascinating stuff, it really was. I
didn't realize that was Errol Morris. I should have guessed though. Yeah. Um, alright,
so the Midnight Cowboy, what I wanted to throw you?
I wanted to sniff you off the case. You sure did. Uh.
(28:31):
So this memo was called Justification for US Military Intervention
in Cuba. That was the official title, uh, signed by
limnitz Are in the Joint Chiefs. And you know this,
this was basically, uh here, what do you think of
this plan? Um? It's you might think it's wacky and
we've never done anything quite like this officially, but here
(28:52):
it is President Kennedy. Right. Kennedy said, or um, let
me see that ain't no bad no that us so, um,
he looked it over and said, nope, thank you very much.
I appreciate you going all this trouble, but I reject
this out of hand. We're not going to to create
(29:13):
some sort of UM mayhem, blame it on the Cubans
and then use it as a pretext to evade We're
just not doing that. And right when that happened, right
when he realized that that this is not going to UM,
not going to be implemented, limits are UM, tried to
get all documentation of this destroyed. He wasn't successful, as
(29:35):
we'll see obviously because we're talking about it now, but
he was, oh god, I signed that thing. I thought
we were all going to do this. And in fact,
in the Operation Northwood's memo, he talks about how he
anticipates that other agencies that were all part of Operation
Mongoose Task Force UM would be submitting similar proposals, which
are basically ideas for how to make it look like
(29:56):
Cuba attacked the United States so that we can invade Cuba.
Turned out he was the only one who put his
name on a document that he then handed into the
president that was that it's sort of like the scene
in like an army movie where they asked for volunteers,
and everyone but one person takes a step back and
then one guy's left standing there. Have you ever seen
(30:16):
there's a video of some dogs that did that to
another dog. There's three dogs, I think they're all little poodles,
and one of them, Peter pooped on the staircase and
there the mom was making the video is asking them
like who did this? And right when she says who
did this, the other two look at the third one,
and then she said who did it? And they take
(30:37):
a step back and the ones is standing there still.
It's one of the most amazing dog videos I've ever seen.
I saw the Nature video the other day that was
a deer, uh that you know how they had like
fake deer and things in the woods. That was a
real deer that had mounted one of these fake deer.
Have you seen that? I've seen pictures, you know, on
(30:57):
the internet. So it has mounted this deer and it's
kind of going at it, and the fake DearS um
sort of from the neck up, it's piece together, that
whole section falls off. This deer jumps off of the
back of that thing, and like I wish there was
like a human narration going on. Because it looks at
like it's kind of circling this thing, looking at it like, yeah,
(31:18):
what was I just doing? Uh this thing too, so
we figured out it was fake. I killed you. I'm sorry.
It's good stuff here, Yeah, Uh, should we take a
break before we can get into the absurdity of Operation Northwoods?
All right, we'll take our second break and we'll talk
about some of these crazy wacky ideas right for this, Chuck,
(32:04):
I think you know, we're we're calling these crazy wacky ideas,
and they are crazy wacky ideas, like you shouldn't do
stuff like false flag operations and in vague countries based
on them. Um, but they're also I think only crazy
wacky because they were in the sixties, they were directed
at Cuba, which makes it seem even wackier in hindsight
now today. And then lastly, um, they weren't implemented. Had
(32:28):
they been implemented, they would there be in no way,
shape or form crazier wacky. They'd be you know, abhorrent.
But we're kind of laughing about this stuff now, but
it's really not funny. No, That's what I'm trying to do.
Stop laughing. Yeah, sorry, I'm in a good mood. I'm
glad to hear it. All right, So let's talk about
(32:49):
some of these false flag operations again signed by General
Liman Limnitzer. That's right. We already talked about sort of
attacking Guantanamo. Uh, there are things called over the fence attacks,
which were uniformed Cubans basically, you know, riding near the bases,
throwing fire bombs inside the base, setting aircraft on fire. Uh,
(33:14):
kind of giving the illusion that that Guantanamo is under
direct attack. And these would probably be exile Cubans who
were sent from Florida down to Guantanamo to pose as
Cuban nationals under Castro who were attacking. Um. But they
would be paid and then remember that movie Wag the Dog.
(33:34):
Oh sure they would probably be whacked afterward. Yeah, that's
the thing though, And this is if you read, if
you read the fine print, Aside from one of them,
these are all basically elaborate ruses where no one actually dies. Yes,
that's very important that I know a lot of people believe.
(33:55):
I was gonna say suspect, I think believe is as
much more correct word that that September eleven was a
false flag attack. Um, some people that. I mean, I
get that, I get I get believing that and why
you would believe that. Um, but if you look at
Operation north Woods, they they go out of their way
(34:16):
to basically stage death. People don't actually die. They weren't
part of the plan killing people. And then let alone
the idea of killing thousands of Americans, the just the
fact that that many people died. I don't believe that
anyone has ever held power in America that is capable
or willing to kill that that many Americans all at once.
(34:38):
I just don't believe it. I don't. I don't think
the world works that way. I think the world can
be a very very dark place. I don't think it's
that dark at least that there's like that depth of
betrayal from you know, the American government to the American people.
I just I don't believe it. I agree, So I
(34:58):
just thought we probably we should at least mentioned in
two thousand one is a false flag operation, that's right.
Another one from this era was the remember the Main incident,
which was basically, let's just blow up one of our
ships in Guantanamo Bay or or another vessel um near Cuba.
(35:20):
We could like they they proposed sinking ships and all
kinds of crazy plans like that. The one that really
speaks to me as far as George C. Scott reading
it from uh DR Strangelove is this direct quote, we
could sink a boatload of Cubans on route to Florida,
real or simulated like they could they it could be dummies,
(35:43):
or we could actually really do this with real humans.
That was the one that I was like, Okay, there's
not there's not like like they're that actually does overtly
say yeah, we could kill some people. The other ones,
the ones that I'm like, Okay, they're really going out
of their way to make sure nobody is actually hurt,
are ones like um. There was one where they were
going to uh um, send a like a charter plane,
(36:07):
like actually like a commercial airline or from the US,
probably from Florida en route to somewhere, carrying um American
tourists off to vacation like Jamaica, Venezuela, Guatemala, all the
vacation hotspots, right, and they were going to release actually
two planes at once, identical planes, except one of them
was going to be a drone remote controlled plane. And
(36:30):
then they were going to reroute the one with the
actual people in it and then send the drone along
over Cuban airspace and blow it up and then blame
it on the Cubans. Yeah. So if you'll notice in
that plan there's like all those people are safe, they're
all fine, Like they're all they're they're safe. This is
(36:50):
all a decoy um, Like that's that's that's what this
this operation was was, Like it's still wouldn't just they
wouldn't say or they weren't. They weren't saying like, yeah,
we'll just blow up a planeful of tourists, Like it
just doesn't happen. That doesn't happen. Yeah, But I mean
some of the stuff to me, like has the could
(37:12):
serve as setting the stage for things getting out of
hand and leading to real bloodshed, Like they had ideas
for a simulated Cuban backed assault on like Dominican Republic
or something using fake aircraft, you know, painted up to
look like Cuban aircraft. Uh. I mean, all of a sudden,
something like that gets out of hand and real lives
are being lost when it's misinterpreted. Yes, And I mean
(37:34):
that's a really good point. And also, like the whole
basis of this is like, so we can invade Cuba,
and when we invade Cuba, there's going to be a
lot of loss of life and bloodshed from that invasion too.
So even if we went out of our way to
make sure that people who were in the false flag
operation didn't actually get hurt, somebody's eventually going to die
because of this false flag. The idea is that this
(37:54):
guy came up with. Yeah. Another idea was a fake
attack on a plane, like a US Air Force plane
in international waters. So basically that would be a pilot
who was flying, as you know, under an alias. They
would broadcast over the radio that they've been jumped by MIGGS,
which was I guess this the Soviet fighter jets, I
(38:17):
saw top gun, I know this stuff. Uh, And it
would fly I guess under the radar at a low
altitude and land uh safely and then stored. The pain
would be um, repainted, given a new tail number, and
then a submarine would drop plane parts into the water
where it supposedly happened so they could like pull those
(38:37):
things out of the ocean show the world again. Totally fake,
totally fake. Um. There were other ones where like they're
like well, maybe we could injure Cuban exiles in Miami,
like assault them and blame it on the Cubans, um, etcetera, etcetera.
Like basically anything you could think of, uh, that could
(38:58):
give America a reason to say, look, this Castra regime
is unpredictable, unstable, and they're now attacking us. Um, we're
going to have to invade. Uh. That was the point
of Operation Northwood's ideas. But it had a bit of
a stroke of genius that was kind of hidden in there,
A little bit that I thought was was kind of
(39:18):
well put. It was using a number of these different
things making them seem through you know, a separation of
of in time and space, making them seem like un
related events. Also staging other events too that didn't necessarily
have anything to do with anything, that kind of like
(39:38):
give cover and camouflage the actual events and the goals um.
And that if you put it all together, the US
could be like, look at how crazy this Castra regime is,
We're going to have to invade. I thought that was
as far as unhinged documents go. I thought that was
a little bit of sanity shining in it. Yeah, I
mean I think they should have dropped those one way
(39:59):
plane tickets. That was that was my favorite idea and
all this stuff. Uh, so you know, we know that
Kennedy didn't accept this proposal. The Cuban missile crisis unfolds
in October sixty two and Operation Mongoose was sort of
fully laid to rest and Lansdale for his efforts. He
(40:20):
was replaced um by a man named Sterling Cutrell, who was, um,
he wasn't like an insider for the for the Kennedy clan,
and so he was a little more cautious about everything. Um,
they were still you know, I think the Joint chiefs
had the idea, Like they didn't put this idea to
(40:41):
bed completely. They put Operation Mongoose, Operation Mongoose Mongoose down,
but they still didn't like put to bed the idea
that like, hey, maybe we should still provoke Cuba and
see if we can like set them up to invade. Um,
like that went through sixty three. All the way through three,
(41:01):
the Hawks were just trying to figure out how to
get it done. Uh and it it obviously didn't happen.
And what's somebody pointed out in one of these the
articles that were the sources for Olivia's article was like
Castro's still there. He outlived all these guys. Uh. And
I think it was in like the nineties or the
early two thousands when the article was written. There like
(41:21):
he's still there, He's still giving seven hour speeches and
like all these people are long dead. Um. And that
I mean, that's the case. Like America and Cuba just
entered this kind its own, like kind of mini Caribbean
Cold War with tons of sanctions against Cuba and um
limits on travel, um. And you know, I think the
average American would just not really understand why. They just
(41:45):
know that you that Castro was a communist, and you
know that was all you needed to know to play
sanctions on Cuba. Um. And we even further would have
no idea whatsoever that Operation Northwood ever happened, was ever
proposed if it wasn't for Oliver Stone movie movie JFK.
(42:07):
And that a neat little bizarre footnote. Yeah, it really is,
because like he said, limits are tried to get this
thing completely destroyed, not even like hey can we bury this,
Like let's destroy it. There was an investigative reporter named
James Banford who wrote a lot about this to call
it the most corrupt plan ever created by the U. S. Government.
And if not for Oliver Stone sort of that JFK
(42:28):
movie is so popular, uh for like Americans after that
calling for the release and like opening of records. Um,
we we may never have known. So hey yeah Alie Stone, Yeah,
he got an Act of Congress passed through his movie.
That's how popular that movie was when it came out.
It'd be like like passing the Hobbit Act or something
(42:50):
back in like two thousand seven. To never make another
Hobbit movie would be that act o um or another
eight hour be Eatles documentary. How about that ouch? Uh? Well,
since Chuck said out everybody, that's it for Operation Northwoods,
which means it's time for a listener mail. And I
(43:14):
mean just hostility to the Beatles there at the end.
You didn't see that coming on? Outright hostility. I get
to Peter Jackson link. But all right, I'm gonna call
this from a night shift nurse doing great work. Hey guys,
my husband recently introduced me to your podcast about two
years into the backlog and loving it. I started with
(43:34):
your most recent pod, uh and work backwards. But my
husband scrolls through and picks one at random Russian roulette style,
which seems insane to me. I've been trying to figure
out if our listening style says anything about our personalities.
I would say I'm a little more methodical and he's
more spontaneous in life, So maybe there's something to that.
(43:56):
So lindsay, uh, one percent. I mean your husband is
flying by the seat of his pants. It sounds like
fast and loose. He's like, yeah, let's hear what they
have to say about stupid grass. Yeah, you know what
we had to say A lot we did. That was
a long episode, and you know what, we've talked about
this before. We there is no wrong way to listen
(44:17):
to any show, including stuff you should know. I we
personally sort of endorsed the sandwiching idea, which is, if
you're new to the show, listen to the most recent
release because that way, sometimes they're timely, but um, at
least you're in the know about current jokes and things
were referencing and uh, if we have live shows going on,
(44:37):
like people miss out on kind of information release uh,
and then see sandwich. So you listen to the most
recent and then you pick one from the back back catalog,
the deep Web. No, no, no, not the deep Web. No,
so we've endorsed that. But there's no wrong way to listen.
You can be one of those two times as fast
play our voices, two times as fast weirdos. I think
(45:00):
that's wrong. That's the too. But someone that's wrong just
hit download, you know, I'm just teasing. No, it's right.
However you listen. It's great. It's weird. I think to
listen to us as if we were the chipmunks. But yeah,
I think it's funny though too. If that's your jam,
then go for it, I says, I think it's funny
though too. It's gonna be like four times when they
get to happen, right, or maybe we should do this,
(45:27):
would you, John Wayne? No, but it sped up at
two times. It sound like myself, right, Yeah, that wasn't
John Wayne. That was great. You just brought a smile
to my face. Good, all right, let me finish this
up anyway. I'm a night shift nurse. I listen to podcasts,
especially on my way and from work to decompress for
my shift. Thank you for keeping company on my drive,
(45:48):
keeping me awake after working these long hours. Fund your
voice of soothing yet engaging. Really admire that, uh you
can do that and admit when you were wrong as well,
which is such a hard thing to do in these
polar se times. That is from Lindsay Johnson MSN r
N nice. Thank you, Lindsay doing God's work out there.
We appreciate you, and we appreciate your husband also for
(46:10):
introducing you to us. I don't know what he's doing,
but hey man who whatever he's doing is fine with me. Agreed. Um,
If you want to be like Lindsay and get in
touch with us, we would love that. You can send
us an email to Stuff podcast at i heeart radio
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
(46:32):
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck, and there's Cherry, and it's the stuff
you should know. Okay, deal with it. Yeah, up your nose,
(00:24):
et cetera. Yeah. I just suddenly, you know how, I
stopped saying that quote mid quote because I suddenly felt
like an old dinosaur Chuck, and that probably nobody knew
what I was talking about. And I'm tired of feeling old, Chuck.
Are you feeling old? I feel young. I'm glad to
(00:45):
answer your question. Yes. Okay, So hey, before we get started, Um,
this is gonna be a really good episode. Uh, and
I want to enhance it by saying, I finally saw
I got to see my niece's movie that I've been
talking NonStop about. O Exit. It's amazing. It's such a
great I would call it a popcorn thriller. Um. Like,
(01:07):
you know, it's not like high art. It's not trying
to be high art, but it's it's like really well
done in the script, doesn't have a bunch of like
holes in it. Uh. It doesn't like they've trimmed off
all the fat. It moves along really nicely. Um, and
once it gets going, it keeps like getting going again
and like these lurches forward and just it does it
doesn't go off the rails. But it's just like, oh
(01:28):
my god, I can't believe this is going on right now.
And then to be able to see my niece Mila
act as like the kid in this, to see her
like do this stuff, it's just it's amazing Tod first
of all, and I'm I'm like removing, I've done everything
I can to remove any subjectivity as a proud uncle,
and like actually watch her acting and like the performance
(01:51):
she gets and it is great. It's amazing. She does
an amazing job. She has to do a bunch of
different stuff. She gets like tortured and harrass and beat
up and everything. Um, it's actually really graphic movie in
a lot of ways, but like delightfully if you ask me, Um,
and she did. She did a great job. And I
thought the whole cast did a really good job too,
(02:11):
including great It is good, including Havannah Rose Lou by
the way, but yes it is. It is a great movie.
And I recommend anybody who watches our movies to watch
the movie and it's on It's on Hulu right now streaming.
It's called No Exit Awesome. I can't wait to watch it.
I've been traveling. I went on the road for a
bit once again. See more Bonnie Prince Billy and Matt
(02:35):
Sweeney Superwolve shows. Matt Sweeney is that the girlfriend guy?
What the guy who had that hit in the nineties
called Girlfriend? No, he's local that was that was a
great album. Um, I can't think of his name. No,
Matt Sweeney is a genuine stuff you should know listener
and super smart, awesome guy, and we're kind of pals now,
(02:57):
so he's always kind enough to hang out and he
always sends me really good ideas for the show. But
that's not my ninth Bonnie Prince Billy show in the
past like a year and a half. I'm going to
where he goes. That's really cool. He didn't come to Atlanta,
so I just I'm hitting the road and along with
our good friend Joey c R. He came on this one.
Oh yeah, that's right. I saw that post on Instagram.
That's awesome to see Joey's looking good. Yeah, he he
(03:19):
says hello, and uh, if you want to see pictures
of this in my Travels and Travails. You can follow
me to Chuck the Podcaster on Instagram. I'm sorry you
had travails. Uh what I say travails? Did I not
say travels? He said travels and travails? No, no travails,
only good good It was only good times. I'm sure
I've told you before, but I always love rubbing it in.
(03:40):
Did I ever tell you that I saw Bonnie Prince
Billy doing karaoke at our friend Toby's wedding years back?
I don't know that. You told me that do you
do a song? It was? It was some like sweet
old country song he didn do wet with I think
maybe his wife. Oh my god. I mean he's the best.
He's my favorite vocalist. He's to me, the best singer
that literally in music history. And a cool dude. I
(04:02):
can tell you because I've been in the same room
with them plenty of times. Me too. I was four
ft from him the other night. That's really cool. Anyway.
Shout out to Sweeney, Shout out to no Exit. And
now let's talk about a time when the US government
was not above uh planning false flag operations that were
(04:22):
crazy and ludicrous and planning potentially to assassinate the leaders
of other countries hundreds of years ago. Oh actually no,
this was way back in the nineteen sixties. Yeah, planning,
that's the operative word here is planning doesn't mean that
like any false flag operation was ever carried out, at
least by the United States government. There's been plenty of
(04:45):
false flag operations carried out, most recently, um apparently by Russia,
who was trying to accuse Ukraine of doing like sabotage
embombing across the border as a pretext for invasion. And
that's generally the point of a false flag operation, which
we should probably define it. But it's basically where you
dress up as the um somebody from the country that
(05:08):
you want to invade, have them or you assault your
own like border crossing, your own military installation, your own railroad,
and then you publicize to the world how that country
attacked you, and now you're gonna have to go in
and invade in in you know, for your own your
own welfare and the welfare of your own country. That's
(05:28):
a false flag operation, that's right. Staging any kind of
a fake operation. Uh. The it originally came about the
term false flag from pirates would fly a flag of
a friendly country two lureships closer than they would attack them.
But since then and Russia is big on it, they've
I mean, Japan has done this, Germany has done this,
(05:50):
but the Soviets and Russia, UH, like you said, they're
they're still gangbusters for this kind of thing. Yes, I
also think it's just a p s A. If you
are really um feeling sympathetic or um, you know, absorbing
information that makes you see things through Putin's view, you're
probably being manipulated online. Just why you may want to
(06:15):
you may want to look a little deeper into that
and pull your head out of that particular rabbit hole.
All right, So let's go back in time, uh and
talk about Operation north Woods. But to talk about Operation Northwoods,
we have to first talk about who did this one
for us? By the way, who put this together? This
(06:35):
was Olivia Joint Olivia Gershn, great work. We need to
talk about Cuba and what the threat that that country
started to pose or the seeming threat that country started
to pose to the United States, UH, in the late
nineteen fifties early nineteen sixties. Yeah, because Castro came to
(06:57):
power ninety nine, and in doing so he became the
first UM. He established the first communist regime in the
Western hemisphere. Uh in America's backyard, as it would later
be put. And this is not settled well with the
Americans because at the time we were UM I guess
our military, um brass, our intelligence community, basically everybody in
(07:20):
charge with security for America. UM was of the of
the of the ILK that like, we should be invading
other countries that are communists and toppling those regimes and
fighting communism wherever it pops up. No, no countries too small,
no countries too large. We need to invade them and
(07:42):
fight them and remove those communists and and probably install
like a democratic government from that point on, which is
kind of ironic. By the way. That was Matthew Sweet,
That's what I said. What did you say, Oh, Matt
Matt Sweeney. Matt Sweeney. But it came to me when
was when you were talking about Cuba, Matthew Sweet, because
(08:02):
it's a great record. Yeah, I can't remember the song
how it goes, but I know it was a good song.
I don't think I ever heard the record had a
cool video too. Yeah, while you sing it. Yeah, I
love somebody, remember that. That's it. I think I need
somebody to love Okay, and then the chorus is, uh,
(08:23):
you need to get back in the Little Friend. Oh yeah, Yeah,
it's a pretty good song. It's not as good as
I remember just by the Superwolf record, it's better. Um alright,
so good set up on Cuba. Uh, if you want
to go back, well, um, I don't even know how
much we need to go over it, but if you
want to go back and listen to our I think
(08:44):
pretty great episode from November called the Bay of Pigs disaster.
This was sort of one of the first things that
happened in the nineteen sixties when UH Eisenhower approved this
boondoggle of an operation UH known as the Bay of
Pigs Invasion that just went just about as wrong as
it could go on every level. Yeah, and so like
(09:07):
we were setting up fake invasions of Cuba supporting exiles
invasions of Cuba. UM RFK and JFK were obsessed with
Cuba and in particular removing Castro from power. Cuba was
a big deal for a number of reasons, we should say,
and one of the leading reasons that Cuba was a
problem for the United States is because they were worried
(09:29):
Castro is going to serve as an inspiration for other
countries in Latin America, especially the economically depressed ones um
where they're like, yeah, all this this capitalism running around
where Americans own most of our national operations and exports
and we're getting very little in return, Communism might seem
(09:50):
pretty appealing to them, So Castro might serve as an inspiration.
And if there's like that domino effect like they were
worried about in Southeast Asia that happens in Latin America
thanks to Cuba, all of a sudden, America's American businesses
are gonna be out a lot of money, Americans are
gonna be out a lot of the bananas that they've
come to love thanks to Edward Burney's and we would
(10:12):
also lose access to things like the Panama Canal and
other things we need. So it wasn't just like a
like a ideological problem. It was a practical problem too.
But the biggest problem, the biggest problem that a communist
Cuba post to the United States is that it was
now an ally with the USSR. America's swore an enemy.
(10:33):
The other polar power of the Cold War would now
had a country that would be willing to let them
set up nuclear missile basis a hundred boles from Florida.
That was truly the big problem with Cuba and Castro,
That's right. And because of that kind of from the
very beginning, the US very quietly started thinking about like, hey,
(10:58):
should we assassinate this guy? Should we depose this guy? Um,
And there were all kinds of crazy like poison cigars,
like mafia hitman, that kind of stuff was being talked
about behind closed doors, including um, Florida Senator George Smathers,
great name, Uh, he proposed assassinating Castro, was a good
(11:18):
buddy of Kennedy's and brought it up during the nine
presidential campaign and include which included the plan included a
false flag attack at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. And he
claims that Kennedy basically was like a put something down
on paper and I'll take a look. And um, so
(11:39):
Kennedy wasn't you know, if you believe this, he wasn't
initially adverse or averse excuse me, to the idea of
taking care of the problem. If you know what I'm saying, Yeah,
that's how obsessed he was with removing Castro. The problem
was this after the Bay of Pigs. That was what
nine teen sixty one, I believe, Yeah, it was April nine. Um.
(12:06):
The one of the huge problems with aside from America
having an enormous amount of a on its face for
being outed for supporting a failed coup of Castro, Um,
was that Kennedy had been led to believe by his
military and intelligence advisors that there was going to be
an uprising, that like these exiles showing up having maken
(12:29):
a couple of wins against the Castro regime was going
to like awaken the Cuban people who would want to
go back to, you know, the way things were before
the Communists came along and took over the country, and
they're being uprising that top of Castro. That was the thing.
They weren't necessarily trying to take over the country. They're
trying to incite a revolution, and that did not happen.
(12:49):
Was supposed to work. Yeah, even though Kennedy had been
told up and down by these advisors. He was a
brand new president at the time, and he had been
told up and down by these advisors that that was
going to happen, and it didn't happen. It never materialized,
and so he lost full faith in any military or
intelligence advisor around him at the time. From that point on,
(13:10):
so he found he needed to surround himself with new
people to take on this this Castro Cuba problem. And
the point man he put on the whole thing, he
basically said, I want you to to be in charge
of getting rid of Castro, you know, figuring out how
to do it without sending in military people was his brother, Bobby.
That's right. Uh, Like you said, Kennedy still had that
(13:30):
new president smell, and Bobby still had that new attorney
general smell. You were very very patient and waiting for
your chance to use that, and I think it paid
off in aces. Okay, good, I mean I try to
get in there. But you know, uh so, Bobby, it
was attorney general, like I said, And that isn't you know,
attorney attorney general or attorneys general um or would it
(13:53):
be attorneys generals? They usually don't get involved in stuff
like this, but he was his his brother, and so
he trusted him, and he ended up overseeing something called
Operation Mongoose, which was kind of this crazy idea that
they could disrupt life in Cuba such that, uh with
(14:14):
you know, sabotage, with disorder, with espionage, um. And it
would all be just in the name of stirring things
up with the Cubans themselves again, not like putting in
Americans dressed as Cubans and stuff like that. Uh. They
thought they could get this done. Um. The CIA was
going to be involved, the State Department was going to
be involved, UM, the Defense Department, what we had at
(14:37):
the time, the US Information Agency, and basically they were
going to get together and get this done. And it
was going to be headed up by a general from
the Air Force named Edward Landsdale, who was interestingly a
former AD exec and a CIA operative, and he was
sort of in charge along with Kennedy of getting this
thing planned and this Operation Mongoose again. Yeah, So Operation
(15:01):
Mongoose is that operation that like all the wacky stuff
that you have ever heard about getting rid of Castro,
like a poisoned skin suit for him to scuba dive in,
or exploding cigars, all that is Operation Mongoose. And like
you're saying, the point was two kills a poison cigar.
I don't think it was an exploding cigar. That's like
a novelty, right, Well, that was the level they were at.
(15:22):
Somebody brought up joy buzzer once, right, they were like,
exploding cigar won't kill him, like yeah, but it'll humiliate him, right,
and we'll finish him off with the joy buzz um.
So that that's all of that fell under Operation Mongoose.
And like you said, they were trying to basically make
life for the average Cuban so weird and disjoined it
and uncomfortable without anybody realizing the Americans were actually behind
(15:45):
all these seemingly unrelated things that they would just get
rid of Castro themselves. And that was the reason why
they weren't just like, well, we can't just go in
and kill Castro is because again they were friends with
the Ovit's, and there was a chance that um JFK believed, uh,
if they did in Vague Cuba, they would set off
(16:08):
World War three. Like that was a very real fear.
On the other hand, there was also this ticking clock
going at all moments and among some people, some advisors
to the White House and security advisors, it was like
deafening the sound of this clock ticking. That the longer
we waited, the more chance there was going to be
(16:30):
that the Cubans were going to say, hey, so if
it's come, build a missile base here. They hadn't yet,
but it was on the table and everybody knew it.
So they Americans needed to do something about Castro and fast.
So the idea that the Americans could come up with
these plots to get the Cubans to overthrow Castro themselves.
That takes a lot of time, it might not pay off.
(16:50):
And then looming in the background, getting ever closer, are
these Soviet missile bases arriving in Cuba any day? Now?
They just knew it. All right, that's a great suspenseful
lead up to our first break. We're gonna come back
and find out what happened with Operation Mongoose right after this.
(17:31):
All right, so you set the stage very well. My
friend General Lansdale is running the show. It was a
pretty impossible situation to try and do this with the
Cuban people without any real power, basically like he didn't
have any real teeth in this. He was overseeing a
bunch of different agencies. Uh And in February of sixty two,
(17:54):
he basically put forward a plan that was supposed to
get Castro out of office by October or even though
he said that was pretty optimistic. And some of these
ideas were pretty crazy. Um. One of them was that
there's these things called star shells, which is kind of
how you how you light up the night sky during wartime.
(18:14):
I think, yeah, it's like you shoot it for as
it were mortar around, but it's not mort around. It
just lights things up for the night vision goggles or
back then. I guess, well, I don't know if they
had them back then, but it's like that one scene
at night, that battle, that night battle in Apocalypse Now, Yeah, exactly.
So one of the ideas was for a submarine, the
(18:34):
US submarine to fire these star shells off the coast
and convinced the Cubans that the Second Coming of Jesus
was was happening and that Jesus was against Castro. Yeah,
they were going to shoot it off on All Saints Day,
and that was based on the premise that the Cubans
were deeply, deeply Catholic and that they would see this
as a sign. And these are just ideas. Again, they
(18:57):
never did this. All of these are just ideas, but
they were ideas that were literally put forth in writing
by the US government to the President. So it's okay,
So the clock is ticking on Lansdale, and I read
that basically every week he would go to the Oval
Office and asked to be taken off of this assignment. Yeah,
he was apparently a golden child. Like you said, he
(19:18):
was an ad executive CIA operative. He basically shaped the
geopolitical map of Southeast Asia by himself in the fifties. Um,
and they, the Kennedy's, were like, hey, you seem pretty
great at this. Let's see what you can do at Cuba.
And he just ran into a brick wall in Cuba,
in no small part because, like you were saying, the
Kennedy's didn't give him any teeth, any authority. So he
(19:39):
had to beg for everything from everybody from this this
multi agency task force that he was in charge of.
It was a terrible, terrible thing. And then again that
clock is ticking. So in addition to coming up with
ways to get the Cubans to topple Castro, Lansdale also
was trying to figure out how to justify over action
(20:00):
and actual military invasion. And so he asked the Joint Chiefs,
who were one of the agencies that were part of
the task force. He oversaw for some some info on that,
like what would it take do you think for the
United States to be able to justifiably invade Cuba and
remove Castro as its leader? Problem solved? And again like,
(20:23):
how can I scare the president bad enough? Kind of yeah,
right exactly, so they they well, no, Also, like I
think he was also trying to figure out what we
could do to make that happen, you know what I'm saying,
Like could we also like push Cuba into a corner
and make them do something and be like, oh, well,
we have our hands are tied. We have to invade um.
(20:44):
But the reason that it would scare Kennedy too is
like he was against military action. You just got to
keep that in mind. After the Bay of Pigs he said, no,
We're not invading Cuba. So now Landsdills trying to figure
out basically how to how to change the President's mind.
And I guess, yeah, like you were saying, if it
meant through scaring him, whatever it took, he just wanted
(21:05):
out of this stupid assignment where he's trying to figure
out how to trick the Cubans into overthrowing Castro. Right.
So this this is what this briefing was all about
in February of nineteen sixty two from the Joint Chiefs
of Staff to basically put put it forth that this
cannot be ignored. The quote was, the communist regime in
Cuba is incompatible with the minimum security requirements of the
(21:27):
Western hemisphere. Um. I mean that's like that sentence kind
of kind of says it all like where where he
it is incompatible having him in power with the safety
of the Western hemisphere, So we gotta get rid of him. Um.
They said that that, uh, we can't count on like
you see what happened with the Bay of Pigs. There
(21:49):
is no insurgents happening in Cuba that we can count
on basically at this point, and we need to intervene directly.
And I don't think Russia will even like be supermad
at this point yet. Yeah. Yet, that was the thing
because they said that Cuba is not part of the
Warsaw Packed, which is kind of like the Soviet Union's
(22:10):
version of NATO UM. And since they weren't a member
of that, the Soviet Union had no obligations to back
them up if they were invaded in them by America,
and the fact that they didn't have any military bases
there and they also didn't have any reason to back
up Cuba. So it was possible that if they invaded
Cuba to capital to top le Castro, they the Soviets
(22:32):
would not be drawn into it. Maybe JFK was wrong
about it sparking World War three. They didn't know that
for a fact, but that was their assessment of it, right, Yeah.
So uh. On February second, Brigadier General William H. Craig,
he was the Joint Chief of staffs rep for Operation Mongoose,
He submitted this memo to Landsdale that said it was
called possible actions to provoke, harass, and disrupt Cuba. And
(22:55):
this is where some of these, uh, really kind of
wacky ideas start coming forth. Um, some not quite so acky,
like the Mercury mission was about to happen with John
Glenn later that month, and they were like, Hey, if
anything goes wrong with this thing, we could basically manufacture
proof that Cuba was behind it and that would give
us a reason. Yeah, that was one of the more
(23:16):
reasonable things, and it really was. There was Operation Free ride.
The idea that they were going to drop one way
tickets to um like Mexico City over Havana was just like,
just leave, that's amazing. I guess that was when if
Castro had no one to rule, then maybe he would
just leave himself. Castro would just shut down the airports
(23:37):
or something. Yeah. Yeah, And that was not very well
thought out. It wouldn't have worked. Now. There was also
Operation Good Times too, which was they were going to
produce a fake photo and this is at a time
when it was hard to do that, at least make
a convincing one of Castro presumably naked, hanging out with
with beautiful women in a bunch of food at a
(23:57):
time when you know, the Cubans were having a lot
of trouble putting food on their own plates. And this
picture was gonna have Castro surrounded by food and women
and they were going to caption it my ration is different.
And they thought that that would just that would be
yet for cast Strow. So yes, these are the ideas
that they were coming up with. But when they when
(24:18):
they kind of turned there, I think when they said, like, wow,
these are the ideas were coming up with. This stuff's
not gonna work. There's no counter revolutionary insurgency to spark
in Cuba, Like, what are we gonna do? We need
to figure out how to how to get our army
in there, right, get army in there, and then uh,
that kind of set the table, all of us set
(24:38):
the table for Operation Northwoods, which was put forward by
Army General. It's so funny. I'm glad that that Olivia mentioned, uh,
Doctor Strangelove, which had not come out yet, because some
of the names in this are very like you can
kind of tell that Kubrick and the writer were very
much influenced by like real stuff that was going on,
(25:01):
some of the ridiculous names from Dr Strangelove. And then
you know later on when we get to like what
was actually in Northwoods that you can only hear it
as if it was read from Georgie Scott, General Buck Turgenson,
like you can hear him saying these things. But Army
General Lyman lim Nitzer was this guy's name, and he
(25:23):
was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in
nineteen sixty. Very hawkish to say, the least right wing
guy who uh, I mean, this guy he wanted to
attack everybody at all times. He wanted a preemptive nuclear
war launched against the Soviet Union. At one point that
was a proposal that he took to Kennedy. He proposed
(25:44):
that in writing. He said, we here's a plan to
to for a surprise attack against the USSR. Let's do it. Yeah. Yeah.
He was that kind of guy. He was one of
those ones that I mentioned earlier. Fight communism everywhere it
pops up, any time it pops up, Just invade and
take over. That's that was like, is his plan. And
this guy's running the Joint chiefs of Staff. So Kennedy
(26:04):
the head, No, he was Eisenhower appointee. Kennedy didn't like him,
and he didn't like Kennedy, especially after the Bay of Pigs.
He was one of the people that Kennedy did not trust.
And then he thought Kennedy was reprehensible for not ordering
an air strike to back up the Bay of Pigs
exile invaders. Um. So there was no love lost. But
(26:25):
Landsdale was It sounds like kind of appropriately the guy
to come up with Operation Northwoods, which was, as far
as we have is in documentary evidence, the only false
flag operation the United States ever came up with. Okay,
is that true documented evidence? I don't think there's ever
been evidence of anything like this. I mean, there's a
(26:46):
there's a historian who wrote about it later, a journalist
who said it was probably the most corrupt document the
United States government has ever come up with, which is
really saying something. I mean, I'm not so I'm not
Pollyanni here. I don't think the US government as of
course clean hands and is just you know, looking out
for the good of everybody at all the time. Like
I think it's done some deeply shady stuff. But I
(27:08):
also personally think that Operation Northwoods may have been, as
far as planning goes, the pinnacle of that shape. Yeah,
I believe it too. March five, the Joint chiefs uh
Lansdale issued requested them to provide a quote brief but
precise description of pretext which they would consider would provide
(27:30):
justification for US military intervention in Cuba. Was passed along
on March five. I'm sorry, marulimnitz Or passes it to
Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, and uh, this is something
that McNamara, you know, years later was kind of like,
I don't know, was that a thing? I don't really
(27:50):
remember that. Yeah, he said, I'm not sure that was true.
He was a scumbag himself too. Yeah. I recommend the
Great Great documentary by Errol Morris when he talks to
Robert ma namera basically before Yeah, for nine minutes straight
or however long it is. It's crazy what he got
him to say and to and he tried to get
him to see and McNamara is like, does not compute
(28:11):
to It was really fascinating stuff, it really was. I
didn't realize that was Errol Morris. I should have guessed though. Yeah. Um, alright,
so the Midnight Cowboy, what I wanted to throw you?
I wanted to sniff you off the case. You sure did. Uh.
(28:31):
So this memo was called Justification for US Military Intervention
in Cuba. That was the official title, uh, signed by
limnitz Are in the Joint Chiefs. And you know this,
this was basically, uh here, what do you think of
this plan? Um? It's you might think it's wacky and
we've never done anything quite like this officially, but here
(28:52):
it is President Kennedy. Right. Kennedy said, or um, let
me see that ain't no bad no that us so, um,
he looked it over and said, nope, thank you very much.
I appreciate you going all this trouble, but I reject
this out of hand. We're not going to to create
(29:13):
some sort of UM mayhem, blame it on the Cubans
and then use it as a pretext to evade We're
just not doing that. And right when that happened, right
when he realized that that this is not going to UM,
not going to be implemented, limits are UM, tried to
get all documentation of this destroyed. He wasn't successful, as
(29:35):
we'll see obviously because we're talking about it now, but
he was, oh god, I signed that thing. I thought
we were all going to do this. And in fact,
in the Operation Northwood's memo, he talks about how he
anticipates that other agencies that were all part of Operation
Mongoose Task Force UM would be submitting similar proposals, which
are basically ideas for how to make it look like
(29:56):
Cuba attacked the United States so that we can invade Cuba.
Turned out he was the only one who put his
name on a document that he then handed into the
president that was that it's sort of like the scene
in like an army movie where they asked for volunteers,
and everyone but one person takes a step back and
then one guy's left standing there. Have you ever seen
(30:16):
there's a video of some dogs that did that to
another dog. There's three dogs, I think they're all little poodles,
and one of them, Peter pooped on the staircase and
there the mom was making the video is asking them
like who did this? And right when she says who
did this, the other two look at the third one,
and then she said who did it? And they take
(30:37):
a step back and the ones is standing there still.
It's one of the most amazing dog videos I've ever seen.
I saw the Nature video the other day that was
a deer, uh that you know how they had like
fake deer and things in the woods. That was a
real deer that had mounted one of these fake deer.
Have you seen that? I've seen pictures, you know, on
(30:57):
the internet. So it has mounted this deer and it's
kind of going at it, and the fake DearS um
sort of from the neck up, it's piece together, that
whole section falls off. This deer jumps off of the
back of that thing, and like I wish there was
like a human narration going on. Because it looks at
like it's kind of circling this thing, looking at it like, yeah,
(31:18):
what was I just doing? Uh this thing too, so
we figured out it was fake. I killed you. I'm sorry.
It's good stuff here, Yeah, Uh, should we take a
break before we can get into the absurdity of Operation Northwoods?
All right, we'll take our second break and we'll talk
about some of these crazy wacky ideas right for this, Chuck,
(32:04):
I think you know, we're we're calling these crazy wacky ideas,
and they are crazy wacky ideas, like you shouldn't do
stuff like false flag operations and in vague countries based
on them. Um, but they're also I think only crazy
wacky because they were in the sixties, they were directed
at Cuba, which makes it seem even wackier in hindsight
now today. And then lastly, um, they weren't implemented. Had
(32:28):
they been implemented, they would there be in no way,
shape or form crazier wacky. They'd be you know, abhorrent.
But we're kind of laughing about this stuff now, but
it's really not funny. No, That's what I'm trying to do.
Stop laughing. Yeah, sorry, I'm in a good mood. I'm
glad to hear it. All right, So let's talk about
(32:49):
some of these false flag operations again signed by General
Liman Limnitzer. That's right. We already talked about sort of
attacking Guantanamo. Uh, there are things called over the fence attacks,
which were uniformed Cubans basically, you know, riding near the bases,
throwing fire bombs inside the base, setting aircraft on fire. Uh,
(33:14):
kind of giving the illusion that that Guantanamo is under
direct attack. And these would probably be exile Cubans who
were sent from Florida down to Guantanamo to pose as
Cuban nationals under Castro who were attacking. Um. But they
would be paid and then remember that movie Wag the Dog.
(33:34):
Oh sure they would probably be whacked afterward. Yeah, that's
the thing though, And this is if you read, if
you read the fine print, Aside from one of them,
these are all basically elaborate ruses where no one actually dies. Yes,
that's very important that I know a lot of people believe.
(33:55):
I was gonna say suspect, I think believe is as
much more correct word that that September eleven was a
false flag attack. Um, some people that. I mean, I
get that, I get I get believing that and why
you would believe that. Um, but if you look at
Operation north Woods, they they go out of their way
(34:16):
to basically stage death. People don't actually die. They weren't
part of the plan killing people. And then let alone
the idea of killing thousands of Americans, the just the
fact that that many people died. I don't believe that
anyone has ever held power in America that is capable
or willing to kill that that many Americans all at once.
(34:38):
I just don't believe it. I don't. I don't think
the world works that way. I think the world can
be a very very dark place. I don't think it's
that dark at least that there's like that depth of
betrayal from you know, the American government to the American people.
I just I don't believe it. I agree, So I
(34:58):
just thought we probably we should at least mentioned in
two thousand one is a false flag operation, that's right.
Another one from this era was the remember the Main incident,
which was basically, let's just blow up one of our
ships in Guantanamo Bay or or another vessel um near Cuba.
(35:20):
We could like they they proposed sinking ships and all
kinds of crazy plans like that. The one that really
speaks to me as far as George C. Scott reading
it from uh DR Strangelove is this direct quote, we
could sink a boatload of Cubans on route to Florida,
real or simulated like they could they it could be dummies,
(35:43):
or we could actually really do this with real humans.
That was the one that I was like, Okay, there's
not there's not like like they're that actually does overtly
say yeah, we could kill some people. The other ones,
the ones that I'm like, Okay, they're really going out
of their way to make sure nobody is actually hurt,
are ones like um. There was one where they were
going to uh um, send a like a charter plane,
(36:07):
like actually like a commercial airline or from the US,
probably from Florida en route to somewhere, carrying um American
tourists off to vacation like Jamaica, Venezuela, Guatemala, all the
vacation hotspots, right, and they were going to release actually
two planes at once, identical planes, except one of them
was going to be a drone remote controlled plane. And
(36:30):
then they were going to reroute the one with the
actual people in it and then send the drone along
over Cuban airspace and blow it up and then blame
it on the Cubans. Yeah. So if you'll notice in
that plan there's like all those people are safe, they're
all fine, Like they're all they're they're safe. This is
(36:50):
all a decoy um, Like that's that's that's what this
this operation was was, Like it's still wouldn't just they
wouldn't say or they weren't. They weren't saying like, yeah,
we'll just blow up a planeful of tourists, Like it
just doesn't happen. That doesn't happen. Yeah, But I mean
some of the stuff to me, like has the could
(37:12):
serve as setting the stage for things getting out of
hand and leading to real bloodshed, Like they had ideas
for a simulated Cuban backed assault on like Dominican Republic
or something using fake aircraft, you know, painted up to
look like Cuban aircraft. Uh. I mean, all of a sudden,
something like that gets out of hand and real lives
are being lost when it's misinterpreted. Yes, And I mean
(37:34):
that's a really good point. And also, like the whole
basis of this is like, so we can invade Cuba,
and when we invade Cuba, there's going to be a
lot of loss of life and bloodshed from that invasion too.
So even if we went out of our way to
make sure that people who were in the false flag
operation didn't actually get hurt, somebody's eventually going to die
because of this false flag. The idea is that this
(37:54):
guy came up with. Yeah. Another idea was a fake
attack on a plane, like a US Air Force plane
in international waters. So basically that would be a pilot
who was flying, as you know, under an alias. They
would broadcast over the radio that they've been jumped by MIGGS,
which was I guess this the Soviet fighter jets, I
(38:17):
saw top gun, I know this stuff. Uh, And it
would fly I guess under the radar at a low
altitude and land uh safely and then stored. The pain
would be um, repainted, given a new tail number, and
then a submarine would drop plane parts into the water
where it supposedly happened so they could like pull those
(38:37):
things out of the ocean show the world again. Totally fake,
totally fake. Um. There were other ones where like they're
like well, maybe we could injure Cuban exiles in Miami,
like assault them and blame it on the Cubans, um, etcetera, etcetera.
Like basically anything you could think of, uh, that could
(38:58):
give America a reason to say, look, this Castra regime
is unpredictable, unstable, and they're now attacking us. Um, we're
going to have to invade. Uh. That was the point
of Operation Northwood's ideas. But it had a bit of
a stroke of genius that was kind of hidden in there,
A little bit that I thought was was kind of
(39:18):
well put. It was using a number of these different
things making them seem through you know, a separation of
of in time and space, making them seem like un
related events. Also staging other events too that didn't necessarily
have anything to do with anything, that kind of like
(39:38):
give cover and camouflage the actual events and the goals um.
And that if you put it all together, the US
could be like, look at how crazy this Castra regime is,
We're going to have to invade. I thought that was
as far as unhinged documents go. I thought that was
a little bit of sanity shining in it. Yeah, I
mean I think they should have dropped those one way
(39:59):
plane tickets. That was that was my favorite idea and
all this stuff. Uh, so you know, we know that
Kennedy didn't accept this proposal. The Cuban missile crisis unfolds
in October sixty two and Operation Mongoose was sort of
fully laid to rest and Lansdale for his efforts. He
(40:20):
was replaced um by a man named Sterling Cutrell, who was, um,
he wasn't like an insider for the for the Kennedy clan,
and so he was a little more cautious about everything. Um,
they were still you know, I think the Joint chiefs
had the idea, Like they didn't put this idea to
(40:41):
bed completely. They put Operation Mongoose, Operation Mongoose Mongoose down,
but they still didn't like put to bed the idea
that like, hey, maybe we should still provoke Cuba and
see if we can like set them up to invade. Um,
like that went through sixty three. All the way through three,
(41:01):
the Hawks were just trying to figure out how to
get it done. Uh and it it obviously didn't happen.
And what's somebody pointed out in one of these the
articles that were the sources for Olivia's article was like
Castro's still there. He outlived all these guys. Uh. And
I think it was in like the nineties or the
early two thousands when the article was written. There like
(41:21):
he's still there, He's still giving seven hour speeches and
like all these people are long dead. Um. And that
I mean, that's the case. Like America and Cuba just
entered this kind its own, like kind of mini Caribbean
Cold War with tons of sanctions against Cuba and um
limits on travel, um. And you know, I think the
average American would just not really understand why. They just
(41:45):
know that you that Castro was a communist, and you
know that was all you needed to know to play
sanctions on Cuba. Um. And we even further would have
no idea whatsoever that Operation Northwood ever happened, was ever
proposed if it wasn't for Oliver Stone movie movie JFK.
(42:07):
And that a neat little bizarre footnote. Yeah, it really is,
because like he said, limits are tried to get this
thing completely destroyed, not even like hey can we bury this,
Like let's destroy it. There was an investigative reporter named
James Banford who wrote a lot about this to call
it the most corrupt plan ever created by the U. S. Government.
And if not for Oliver Stone sort of that JFK
(42:28):
movie is so popular, uh for like Americans after that
calling for the release and like opening of records. Um,
we we may never have known. So hey yeah Alie Stone, Yeah,
he got an Act of Congress passed through his movie.
That's how popular that movie was when it came out.
It'd be like like passing the Hobbit Act or something
(42:50):
back in like two thousand seven. To never make another
Hobbit movie would be that act o um or another
eight hour be Eatles documentary. How about that ouch? Uh? Well,
since Chuck said out everybody, that's it for Operation Northwoods,
which means it's time for a listener mail. And I
(43:14):
mean just hostility to the Beatles there at the end.
You didn't see that coming on? Outright hostility. I get
to Peter Jackson link. But all right, I'm gonna call
this from a night shift nurse doing great work. Hey guys,
my husband recently introduced me to your podcast about two
years into the backlog and loving it. I started with
(43:34):
your most recent pod, uh and work backwards. But my
husband scrolls through and picks one at random Russian roulette style,
which seems insane to me. I've been trying to figure
out if our listening style says anything about our personalities.
I would say I'm a little more methodical and he's
more spontaneous in life, So maybe there's something to that.
(43:56):
So lindsay, uh, one percent. I mean your husband is
flying by the seat of his pants. It sounds like
fast and loose. He's like, yeah, let's hear what they
have to say about stupid grass. Yeah, you know what
we had to say A lot we did. That was
a long episode, and you know what, we've talked about
this before. We there is no wrong way to listen
(44:17):
to any show, including stuff you should know. I we
personally sort of endorsed the sandwiching idea, which is, if
you're new to the show, listen to the most recent
release because that way, sometimes they're timely, but um, at
least you're in the know about current jokes and things
were referencing and uh, if we have live shows going on,
(44:37):
like people miss out on kind of information release uh,
and then see sandwich. So you listen to the most
recent and then you pick one from the back back catalog,
the deep Web. No, no, no, not the deep Web. No,
so we've endorsed that. But there's no wrong way to listen.
You can be one of those two times as fast
play our voices, two times as fast weirdos. I think
(45:00):
that's wrong. That's the too. But someone that's wrong just
hit download, you know, I'm just teasing. No, it's right.
However you listen. It's great. It's weird. I think to
listen to us as if we were the chipmunks. But yeah,
I think it's funny though too. If that's your jam,
then go for it, I says, I think it's funny
though too. It's gonna be like four times when they
get to happen, right, or maybe we should do this,
(45:27):
would you, John Wayne? No, but it sped up at
two times. It sound like myself, right, Yeah, that wasn't
John Wayne. That was great. You just brought a smile
to my face. Good, all right, let me finish this
up anyway. I'm a night shift nurse. I listen to podcasts,
especially on my way and from work to decompress for
my shift. Thank you for keeping company on my drive,
(45:48):
keeping me awake after working these long hours. Fund your
voice of soothing yet engaging. Really admire that, uh you
can do that and admit when you were wrong as well,
which is such a hard thing to do in these
polar se times. That is from Lindsay Johnson MSN r
N nice. Thank you, Lindsay doing God's work out there.
We appreciate you, and we appreciate your husband also for
(46:10):
introducing you to us. I don't know what he's doing,
but hey man who whatever he's doing is fine with me. Agreed. Um,
If you want to be like Lindsay and get in
touch with us, we would love that. You can send
us an email to Stuff podcast at i heeart radio
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
(46:32):
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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