Full Transcript for Eating Bugs, Shooting Bobby Kennedy, The Deadly Double: Conspiracy Theory Grey Areas (with Adam Tod Brown)

theories to attack other parts of the government they don't like. 00:06:14 Speaker 4: And I think that's pretty common. I think it really just ebbs and flows with what party is in office. And if you're on the side that's questioning the government, you're a conspiracy theorist to the people who believe the government. It's a great tactic. It really keeps us divided in a very profound way. 00:06:35 Speaker 2: It works, but it only works if you've got like short term memory. It seems to me in a lot of ways. But if you cast your mind back just a couple of years when Obamacare, when ACA was coming up, there with the death tribunals, remember that they are going to have a tribunal who's going to decide whether or not to kill grandma. So here we are eight ten years later, there's no death tribunals. Nobody's bumping off Gramma on fixed. The ACA is actually keeping people alive and giving people healthcare that they normally wouldn't have. And yet the death care tribunal was something that they rolled out, used effectively, and then basically forgot about. So it's like it never happened, and yet they and yet the you know, the impact of that is still there. 00:07:20 Speaker 4: There's a really interesting book out there called The Authoritarians. It's since been updated because of Trump. There's a new version called The Authoritarian Nightmare. But it's a book you can get. It's available free online as a PDF. It's called The Authoritarians. This professor at I believe McGill University in Toronto for fifteen years or so gave every incoming freshman this survey. And he was a psychology professor, and it was meant to determine not only what kind of people are more likely to follow an authoritarian leader, but what percentage of us and what are their characteristics. And one of the things they found that people who follow someone like Trump just special is compartmentalized thinking. So to them, the tribunals in anything that's happening now, they're completely separate. Even if they are literally saying the same thing about two different parties, like with your most ardent Trump supporters, that's not gonna register. It's an ends justify the means kind of thing. And I think we've really hit the point where trying to call Trump supporters on their i don't know, being hypocritical about things, or flip flopping on things, or saying, well a dissonance, yeah, yeah, it, I think is really a thing that's not even worth addressing if you find yourself in a conversation with one of those people, because it doesn't work that way for them. There is no well you said this, but also you said this. I think they just don't think of the world that way. 00:09:00 Speaker 3: I mean, you've worked in media for years. It's correct. In your podcast, you're writing, how do you think media, whether it's traditional or independent, unintentionally fuels can thinking. 00:09:10 Speaker 4: But I think it depends on what half of the media you're talking about, because I think, definitely on the right, conspiracy theory stuff just being treated as actual news, and it like it's leading to some really crazy thinking among people on the right. I saw an Instagram video the other day. A guy was just at a Trump rally asking questions and he asked this person something about abortion, and this guy looks him in the eyes and says, well, you know, in California, abortion is legal up to four weeks after birth. So someone is out there feeding this man this information that you can kill babies in California up to four weeks if you don't like how it turned out, and they're believing that, and I think it's just bubbles. I think it's well, I only trust the Tennessee Star, or there's all these local media outlets now that are just right wing mouthpieces that look like they're just legitimate news outlets. And I think though, on the other side, I think so much of what they do relies on government access and being able to get in the room with the people to hear the government side of the story. But it's to the point that they rely on that access so much it seems like they don't really want to push big questions because then government won't talk to me anymore. 00:10:44 Speaker 2: So like terms right and left, it came out of the French Revolution where different factions sat in their new parliament if you say it, to the right or to the left, and then it developed from there, so we hit we still use as terms right and left, but I know people who are right of center Republicans who are not trumpest at all. And I'm wondering, do you think it's fair to even to talk about right and left anymore? Where I think maybe we have right left and like a cult or within our lifetime there was like Democrat Republican and then George Wallace ran if you remember that right sort of part of the racist part, and that was pretty culty built around anti segregation and a lot of conspiracy theories from down South. And are we do right and left even serve us these days? Or have we've gotten beyond that? Oh? 00:11:32 Speaker 4: I definitely If by service do you mean benefit us? Definitely not. And I think you're definitely right, like framing it as right versus left is what the government wants us to do, But it's really just a class thing. It's like even with police. People all the time talk about oh police and people of color. The police are always violent toward people of color. Sure, but get police in an all white area, they're just going to be violent to the poor people. I mean, it's obviously race in some ways, but so much of what happens in this country is just it's just the absolute richest people want the people who aren't rich but aren't poor to shut up. And yeah, I think right versus left is silly. I think it's a silly thing to focus on. It keeps us from getting things we need. 00:12:26 Speaker 3: But let me just go to some of the stuff that you've done lately, or written about or talked about on You explore lots of different stories. Do you have any

favorites that you've done of late that we could talk about, or any issues You've been digging. 00:12:37 Speaker 4: Into so many. I think the thing I've been hung up on the most lately this is a really obscure conspiracy theory. But there was this board game an ad for it ran in the New Yorker back in the nineteen forties. Board game is called The Deadly Double, and these conspiracy around it has always been that this ad in the New Yorker was meant to tip someone off about the fact that Pearl Harbor was about to happen. And there's a Snapes article out there where they're like, nah, the FBI asked, and the guy said, it's nothing. And on the first thing, sure, I trust the FBI from that era, But this Snopes article just ends by saying, oh yeah. Also, this guy was in the OSS, which is a precursor to the CIA, and it's like, go on, that's that seems like that's not where this article should end. But they just left it there. So I picked it up and looked into it more. And the guy had an office in the same building as the Japanese consulate. He was already in the military by the time he was developing this board game. Everything about it seems like it was an intelligence operation of some sort. I sound like a crazy person even talking about it, because it's Snopes is such a trusted outlet that once they say no, we debunked it, people are reticent to believe they could be wrong. And the Deadly Double is a fascinating just a blip in conspiracy theory history that I've just been fascinated with. 00:14:17 Speaker 3: I looked it up to try to look for that ad and one of the things, and what's interesting is, yeah, the Japanese concept was a thirty rock, but also was the Germans were there and the FBI was there, which is crazy because the British were there, and the British had people like Ian Fleming and Rould Dahl and all these other people who are involved in intelligence at the same time, so they're all in that same building together. 00:14:39 Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a lot of connections like that from back in the day in conspiracy theory related ways. They're fascinating. I think. Another one is all of those Laurel Canyon musicians, Frank Zappa, the Doors all children of military intelligence people and they all show up in the same part of the country at the exact same time. And start this huge counter culture movement. 00:15:04 Speaker 2: You know, with Snopes, there's conspiracy theories that you can debunk that are simply like not true, and then there's conspiracies that have an element of truth, but a lot of them there's just no evidence. Like with aliens with everybody loves right, I don't know, Show me the alien and then I'll believe in it. I'm not closing my mind to the possibility when you look it up in Snopes and they basically what they're really saying is there's no hard evidence. But that doesn't mean it's not true. It just means that there's insufficient evidence to support it. And I think I wish people were more comfortable with either yes it's true, or no it's not, or most likely geez, I don't know. The jury's still out. 00:15:41 Speaker 4: Yeah, And sometimes that's as good as you're gonna get. Like Yeah, I think Bobby Kennedy is a great example. It seems like something different than what the story we've been told happened, but we're never gonna know. They can release all the files they want, but we're never gonna figure that out, so it's gonna have to just be. 00:16:01 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:16:02 Speaker 4: I think something's up and I can't prove it, And yeah, you sometimes just have to be satisfied with that. But I think my least favorite type of conspiracy theory, speaking of stuff with and without evidence, is I call it a demeanor conviction conspiracy, and I think Sandy Hook is a great example of that, where the entire conspiracy is why is this guy acting so weird in front of the camera. It's like, I don't know, maybe because there's a school full of dead kids behind him and this is the craziest thing he's ever been through in his entire life. How would you act if you had to get in front of TV cameras in that moment? So when a conspiracy is based on stuff like that, I'm immediately willing to disregard it. 00:16:48 Speaker 3: From your work too. One of the questions like how do grifters and bad actors intentionally weaponize conspiracy theories for money or power attention? Because it seems like we're seeing more of that. 00:16:57 Speaker 4: I think that's just people. I don't know, this is a harsh way to put it, but sort of laying on mental illness in some cases, because there are like books you can download that tell you how to cultivate this sort of conspiracy theory audience and how to really just keep milking them for money over and over. And I think that's how it works. Like you see these there are conspiracy theory podcasters and things out there who have you go on Amazon and they have dozens and dozens of books that AI must have written. They're just hitting on these same topics over and over and getting these people to pay them money for it over and over and it I think it just comes down to exploitation and finding the right group of people that you can milk for money and play on their paranoia. Paranoia is a big thing. 00:17:50 Speaker 2: Back to eating bugs just for a second. One of the things driving it apparently is anti environmentalism and trying to show that there is no global warming. Right, So one of the issues is we can't raise Raising beef is inherently inefficient. There's all sorts of issues with it change the climate. And so people are saying, ah, they're trying to reduce methane from cattle and all the rest of this, And the pushback is that's because they want us to eat bugs and they take despair. You know, bits of information put it together, but what it serves in the end, and I don't think the I don't think the patrolling industry is behind it specifically pushing this, but that's who it benefits. But I do think there is an ey sense there is a

conspiracy to push money into pushing alternate, mostly unscientific evidence that there is no global warming, that there's that human being. Humans are not affecting climate change, right, or we're not affecting the climate. And I think there's a lot of money in that. But certainly there is money, and people are trying to preserve their rice bowls, just like with big tobacco for years, trying to which is true, trying to keep people from understanding that twenty years ago that cigarettes kill people. 00:19:07 Speaker 4: I imagine that conspiracy theory is probably at least somewhat playing into what happened in Nebraska not too long ago, where the governor signed a ban on lab produced meat. But then that's just benefiting the beef industry. My pet conspiracy theory that I hope is true is that when it comes to climate change, we already got it fixed, and they just want to raid the planet until the absolute last possible moment and then they'll roll out, Hey, look what he found from the Aliens in nineteen. 00:19:41 Speaker 3: If you're right, grifters are always going to take advantage of these things. How does it happen? So we say, why do we want to believe conspiracy theories so much that we can fall for things like that? 00:19:51 Speaker 4: Even I think there's also a big element of people don't want to be wrong. I think you see that a whole lot with stuff like wrongful convictions, where you'll get a prosecutor who is presented with plenty of evidence that the person they sent to prison maybe shouldn't be there, and they're just like, oh, but then I'm going to have to admit I messed up in public and no thank you. And I think there is a good portion of the population that once they latch onto something like QAnon and they see evidence that maybe they're wrong, they're just going to stay the course so they don't have to say they were wrong. 00:20:27 Speaker 2: So I think you're right. I think it's just something that it's a feel good thing that should tell yourself and you don't have to deal with global warming and all these difficult, complicated things. You just deny them and eat your blueberry muffin. 00:20:38 Speaker 4: I think is also there's an entertainment aspect to it. One of the podcasts I host is called Conspiracy The Show, and I describe it all the time as a true crime podcast where the perpetrator is just always the government. Like it's just the same as true crime, but in a slightly different way. You're seeing this powerful force victimizing people who have less power. 00:21:03 Speaker 3: I think we've talked about class, but I think a lot of people are, if not poor, their lower middle class or middle class, and they're it's kind of boredom. People are just are bored, and they like stories and they want to be the center of the story. Everybody wants to be a hero, and of course the world. One of the things that nobody wants to admit is the world is just so massive and complex that we really don't know the answer to almost anything.

00:21:27 Speaker 4: And sometimes conspiracy theories are just true. 00:21:29 Speaker 2: No, it's exactly. Sometimes just conspiracies. 00:21:32 Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean that. I say this all the time. But you're a crazy person if you believe every conspiracy theory. But you're also kind of a crazy person if you don't believe any Like you. There's a comedian Ron Funches has a great bit about this. 00:21:47 Speaker 5: Not just certain people I have no time for, Like if you're sexist or homophobic, or if you don't believe in conspiracy theories. 00:22:04 Speaker 4: Just don't understand. How do you not believe in any conspiracy theories? I understand, not all of them, not most of them. 00:22:11 Speaker 5: But you don't believe in any conspiracy there? You just think the government's just batting the thousand and telling us the whole truth. 00:22:22 Speaker 4: That's a strong stance to take. No, not everything is a conspiracy, but yes, sometimes the government lies, and we know that the Gulf of Tonkin is a very famous example. We kind of lied our way into Vietnam. The one I bring up all the time when people are like, oh, I don't believe conspiracy theories. Okay, why did we go to war in Iraq that second time? Was it really because they had weapons of mass destruction? Or do you think we were there for another reason? Because that's a conspiracy. It's just people coordinating to lie about things to make them look different than they are. 00:23:11 Speaker 2: You're here with two CIA guys, right, So what are your favorite conspiracy rabbit holes that have to do with CIA? 00:23:18 Speaker 4: I mean, my pet CIA conspiracy theory that I think might be one of my own. I am pretty sure the CIA tried to kill Reagan. That feels like sort of a coup attempt thing to me, because if you look back historically, it's hot on the heels of the Church Committee, which was where we took the intelligence community to task in this country. Jimmy Carter comes into office just vowing to reform intelligence and reform the CIA, and then what happens, as if by magic for the first time in history, the director of the CIA goes, Oh, I'm gonna run for vice president, and then we get the October surprise where these hostages in Iran are released literally five minutes after Reagan was inaugurated, and there was all this talk of someone orchestrate that so Carter would lose the election, and then what happens not too long into his term. Reagan gets shot, not just shot, but in very weird mk ultra catcher in the Rye type fashion. All of that feels like ciamk ultra type stuff to me, And from that point on, I would argue we didn't reform the CIA. They moved operations to other countries, but CIA kind of ran rough shot over Latin America in the eighties while Reagan just watched. I don't know. It's one of those things you'll never prove it. I don't want to be the one to prove it. For one thing, I'm not trying to get killed by the CIA. But a lot of weird circumstances line up pretty well. There just a. 00:24:57 Speaker 3: Few comments like I can't prove or disprove any of this kind of stuff. That does seem a little conspiratorial to me. But I make a distinction sum from my experience of almost thirty years in the government, between professional civil servants, public servants and the government and politicians. And so you talk about the October surprise. I think politicians who are over the government often have an interest in proving that their policies are right the other policies are wrong. I do think when these October surprises, when people are trying to run for government happened under LBJ it happened, or Nixon happened under like I said, when Reagan was running, I think they have moneyed interests that want them to win that may go out and try to get involved in things. But that's not the The CI is not going to go out and try to get Reagan elected. When they work for another president, because we worked for the executive branch and other presidents. And then once Reagan was in power, Casey was the director and he was very close to Reagan and was a very hardcore Cold warrior. And like you said, those policies where they were pushing in Central America and whol Aron Contra and all those other kind of things. I don't know that Casey's CI would be interested in killing Reagan. I think they were benefiting from Reagan. So could because after getting beaten up in the seventies by said the Church and Pike Commissions, all of a sudden cases coming in and saying, no, we got to win the Cold War, we got to defeat the Soviets. The CIA needs to be one of our main anymans, I would think a lot of CIA people would be like, oh, now, all of a sudden, you know, a president wants us to be more aggressive and do things, and so I don't think they would want to kill them. And one of the other last thing I'll say, and not Jerry can answer, is movies and other things talk about the CIA assassining people and their CIA assassins. There's no such thing as CIA assassins. 00:26:35 Speaker 2: The CIA the. 00:26:36 Speaker 3: CIA does have COVID authorities. If a president gives them the authorities to say, okay, we're we're going to try to influence a foreign government, or you could even guess it. Perhaps they would say you need to go kill somebody. But then then what they do is like you saw in Cuba, they'll try to hire someone else to do it. So the government is not it's deniable. Right, So if a criminal kills Castro and they'll say, oh, the CI did, it would be like there's no whereas if an actual CI person kills to somebody and gets caught, then there's no deniability there. So there are no such thing as CIA assassins. Sadly for the Hollywood write. 00:27:10 Speaker 2: About, I just think three quick things. 00:27:14 Speaker 4: Fourth quick things. 00:27:15 Speaker 2: First of all, I'm not turying to buy into all of that, but nonetheless I do think there were conspiracies that you're talking about. I think the October surprise. I think there's

a lot of evidence that people in the Reagan campaign were talking to the Iranians about don't let the hostages go until after the elections, and I think that really hindered and probably cost Card the election. I think there was a genuine conspiracy. I don't think CIA was involved in scene. The second is on Iran contra funneling money to the Sundaistas. That did happen with Ali North, but they were doing it outside of the CIA, if you remember that, because like they were afraid, the CIA couldn't keep it secret. It was illegal, it was fucked up. So Oli North was running this out of the National Security at the NSC and they were selling weapons to Iran and funneling money is illegally to the conference, but not doing it through the CIA. And the third thing I'd say is John and I being in there. The CIA is a bureaucracy and we're not really Republican or Democrat. When we work, we have no idea who the person next to us is. We've been always a political maybe up until now, but it is really hard to keep a secret in a bureaucracy where hundreds of people know about it, and you pick up secrets like through us. Most is like who your buddy is and sitting at a table having coffee and the cafeteria. So if there was a real CIA and it was going through the agency, just my sense and having work there, it would be almost impossible to keep something like that secret for thirty years because somebody retires, writes a book, goes on a podcast. It's really hard to keep a secret, and CIA, especially if there's fifty people involved. 00:28:53 Speaker 4: Do feel like that is also the objection when people do come forward and talk about things though, is oh, well, if what this person was saying was true, someone else would have come forward and said something. They're coming forward and saying something. As far as the CIA assassins thing, there is a really interesting documentary out there called Wormwood, which is about the version of the story everyone knows is the CIA does this agent with too much LSD and he jumped out a window. 00:29:25 Speaker 3: That's m k eltra stuff. 00:29:26 Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. 00:29:27 Speaker 4: In that documentary, at one point the filmmakers reach out to someone at the CIA and they ask about manuals that would show like assassination techniques, and whoever they talk to is like, yeah, we'll send them to you. They send them all of these manuals that at least in one instance, describe exactly how this Frank Olsen guy died. So, if there's no one carrying out assassination assassinations at the CIA, what was all that about? Is it a thing that they. 00:29:59 Speaker 2: Used to do and not. 00:30:00 Speaker 3: Those manuals I think are real, but I think they were used, for example, to give to groups that we were training. So if you're training parts of the viet Cong and Vietnam and you're to fight against the Northern Vietnamese, you give those training maials to train parts of the Vietnamese to fight against the communist Vietnamese. Or you can think of various insurgencies that the US has supported against other countries and things, and so it's a training manual to train that. There's not like an American who's like like they're like in the movies that has a gun and they're putting it together and shooting it out of a window somewhere. But in the day when you were training people, you might train them how to kill their enemies or what have you. 00:30:40 Speaker 2: CIA is A is A. It's always tough in an open democracy to have a secret of organization, right. They don't fit together real well, and they never should. So there's always going to be a mismatch between an organization like like CAA or any even FBI that does the Duck conducts operations that the public can't know about because law enforcement or espionage and I think that's just something to be It's always going to be there, and for a certain extent that's good. You need to keep tab on secretive organizations and you need to have oversight, and that's what the Church Committee and all that stuff in the seventies was about. Although inside of CIA's a pain in the ass sometimes. 00:31:18 Speaker 3: I should lots of paperwork. As they say on the TV shows, is there a conspiracy theory that you've looked into and fund yourself almost believing it until you dug deeper. 00:31:26 Speaker 4: I think the New World Order is a conspiracy theory. I almost want to believe, which the the big overarching New World Order conspiracy is that at some point the American government is going to pull off this false flag alien invasion and use it to install a one world government. That's like the granddaddy of all conspiracy theories. And on the one hand, I want to believe it because I would almost be proud of my government if they could pull something off like that. I'd be like, all right, we're all about to be enslaved, but that's my government. Look at them doing that. But at the same time, I think they might already be trying, and it's just not working because we're getting all these videos of UFOs flying over the ocean, getting hit with missiles and breaking apart, and everyone's just like, fuck you, are they going to get me a job? Are they going to get Trump out of office? 00:32:20 Speaker 3: Let me ask you then, just a simple one, like what are your next projects that you're working on? Things that you're eager to cover. 00:32:26 Speaker 4: I really want to dive into Jonestown more. I did a bunch of episodes about Jonestown, but I think it's there's a lot more meat on the bone there other than that. Right now, I feel like I've been mostly in terms of conspiracy stuff. There's enough happening right now that I haven't had to dig into a lot of historical stuff. Yeah, you got Trump getting on truth social and pushing med beds as a thing that's real, so we obviously got to do an episode about that. Lately, it's just been a lot of keeping an eye on the news to see what this government gives us to talk talk about next. And they've also been releasing all those files, the RFK files, JFK files. 00:33:14 Speaker 3: I think they'd like to put some of that stuff out there because it keeps people talking about stuff It's like, what watch what I put out over here and then not what I'm doing over here. I might be stealing money through crypto schemes over here, but you can talk about Fort Knox over here. 00:33:28 Speaker 4: I do legitimately think that is at least part of the Trump administration releasing all of these files that they have is there's people like us out here who are doing these conspiracy theory podcasts, and the Trump administration is doing a lot of things that are worthy of being talked about on shows like this, and if they can distract people with RFK or JFK instead, that's all the better. The JFK files are fascinating. They start with something like two hundred pages of meeting notes that are just the committee that a lot of people think killed JFK. 00:34:05 Speaker 2: It was and it was really good talking to you. You've got some great insights into conspiracy they and how they impact on our society. So keep up the good work. And where could people go to follow you? 00:34:18 Speaker 4: I'm on all of the social media's at Adam Todd Brown. That's Todd with one D. My mom spelled it wrong. It means death in German. My podcast conspiracy show. You can get wherever podcasts are at the Monday show in your area. 00:34:32 Speaker 3: What in the world, Well, great, Thank you again. 00:34:38 Speaker 6: Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Seipher, and Jonathan Stern. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission Implausible. It's a production of honorable mention and abominable pictures for iHeart Podcasts.