2. All the Way Uptown

and you know, it just seemed interesting, you know. In August twenty twenty, with millions of Americans protesting across the country, activist zeb Hal invites a guy he's met at one of the demonstrations to his apartment in Denver to talk about plans for the future. The way I look at is like shit has to happen. The has to happen. It's like you said, I mean, how extreme do you expected?

Would you want it to go? If you were to tell that to your people, how would you say, say, I come one of your people, right, how would you say it? I'm Funnels? Yeah I robbed Funnels. I went to the Curtis Room kill license. So there's nothing you can tell me what shocked me. This guy had shown up on the scene in Denver driving a silver hearse filled with weapons. He claims to have been a soldier for the French Foreign Legion and the Peshmerga, the Kurdish

military force in Iraq. He even says he's killed isis terrorist on the battlefield. Zeb Haul has been involved in the demonstrations for a couple of months. At this point, He's seen peaceful protesters attacked by police. He suffered a head injury. He's growing more and more concerned about black people being attacked and killed by cops, and he thinks that he and others need to learn to defend themselves. So zeb sitting in his living room with this guy,

asks him, can you teach me how to fight? But the thing is this my type of training that I do is anything from mine. I can teach you how to shoot a gun to you know, yeah, and in combat all the ways like blowing up fucking buildings and grolla warfare, tactics and sabotage. Do you want to learn how to just shoot a gun, pool, throw somebody around a kick cool? Or do you want to go that way all the way uptown? Yeah? Do you want to learn to shoot a gun and throw someone around, or

do you want to go all the way uptown? Zep says he wants to go all the way uptown, appearing to mean quote like blowing up fucking buildings and guerrilla warfare tactics and sabotage. We need to know every bit of defense possible. So here's a question. And so when I was in Syrian let me explain. The best way I did it was when I was a Syrian in Iraq. We had a lot of antique for guys that came over there, and I was one of the instructors of the Red STARB game. Really wants to talk them the

gerrilla warfare attactives we taught them. I ees all this crazy shit. I had no problem with giving you that type of training, but I have to make sure that that's what you want to do. That you want to learn the crime Dela Crime Special So that's what you want to do, then you know that's what I want to do. Zep says, Okay, So switch on, I can make it happen. I'm Trevor Aaronson from Western Sound and i Heeart Podcasts. This is Alphabet Boys, Episode two, all

the way uptown. So who is this guy? This real deal ANTIFA militant, the guy with the silver her weapons, Who's going to take things in Denver to the next level. I spent a lot of time reporting this out, pulling court records and police reports, files from the prison system, talking to people who knew him in the United States, in the Middle East, and chasing down every lead I could find. I discovered that his full name is Michael

Adam Windecker, the Second, so he goes by Mickey. Born in Colorado, He's in his late forties, stands five foot seven, has a ruddy complexion and a stocky frame. In photos when he was younger, Mickey was slender and toned. In his middle age, he's developed a paunch, but he's still strong, with big biceps and wide knuckles that would have little

difficulty knocking out a few of your teeth. Mickey has got a history in foreign militaries and in the US criminal justice system, arrest in Colorado, Nevada, Texas, and Florida. His offenses include firearms charges, menacing with a weapon, and sexual assault. In Mickey's telling of Mickey's story, he's the well off son of an emotionally negligent mother and a

committed father who was a savvy businessman. So my mom and my mom's side of the family were kind of like reptiles, like once you had, you pretty much out of the nest, as I could love to take care of go yourself. I really didn't have a lot of communication or a lot of history with my mom, so we didn't bond very well. Mickey wouldn't sit down for an interview with me, but in investigating him, I found hours of recordings of him. Some are or have been

on social media, like this video. My dad owned two businesses. He actually owned a cab company locally here in Colorado, and he actually owned a carnival and a couple other businesses, So we had a shitload of money. My dad was my superhero because it wasn't perfect, but he did teot me a lot of life skill shit. As I was growing up as a young man, Mickey wanted an adventure and so at nineteen years old, he tells of going to France to join the Foreign Legion, the world famous

French military unit that accepts feign volunteers. This would have been around nineteen ninety four, and I went to place called the Citydale. They took me through selection. They took me to Paris, to Fort den Gents, through some more selections than it took me to a bomb near Marseilles to do my getting into the Foreign Legion, and so I lost our shortis I'm waiting, you know, you have to go out there on the flight deck, a Middle Eastern guy who was also trying to volunteer in the

French Foreign Legion started to harass and disrespect Mickey. Well, at the time, I was nineteen years old, and I didn't take kind of may to being disrespected. So I beat the ship out of the guy, and a couple of corporal chefs and a corporal came up there and they grabbed me, and there were like, fuck, we can't have that here, can't be attacking people. So they got me a train ticket, they paid me while I was there.

They started me to train, went back to Paris and they and after that I came back to the United States. After Mickey returned to the United States, he worked a variety of odd jobs, took some community college courses, and traveled around and in his telling, he was something of a citizen warrior out there looking to help the good guys. In two thousand and five, he was in Hollywood, Florida, just north of Miami, when he saw a crime in progress. A couple of bad guys had just robbed a pawn shop.

I pull up and I'm stopping at a light, and I see these guys running out with the gun and they got a bunch of shit in their hands, and there were a lot of people around the area. So I jumped on my vehicle and I tackled the guy with a gun and took him to the ground, and the culture like right there, they grabbed and chew and they cupped him up. This is one part of Mickey's story. I was able to verify it happened pretty much exactly as he described it. I found an article about it

in the South Florida Sun Sentinel. The quotes a local police spokesman thanking Mickey for his assistance. About seven years after that incident, Mickey was back in the Denver area, so it was the premiere of Batman. That's when in twenty twelve, a gunman walked into a movie theater in Aurora, just outside Denver an open fire using a semi automatic rifle. Twelve people were killed and seventy were injured. The mass shooting made international news. The violence on the screen erupted

in the theater. At first, witnesses thought the gunman was part of the show. He entered the debut of the Batman film, Dark Knight Rises looking like the villain the Joker, with a gas mask, head to toe armor and an eerie calm. And it seems Mickey was there. And actually I was going to the movie theater, but I was running a little bit behind, and I showed up as the last couple of shots were ringing out, and I proceeded to help people out of the theater and helped

them get him too, ambulances and stuff like that. Mickey lived near the movie theater at the time. Several people told me Mickey had shown them pictures and video of him at the theater that evening. A week after the shooting, he also posted on Facebook about his experience, describing how he assisted the injured. So, yeah, he appears to have been there. Mickey has never had much of a political identity as far as I can tell. If he has

any sort of politics, it's the politics of grievance. Everybody sucks, everybody's out to get him a brand of political nihilism almost. So. Look, the thing I look at him like this is, I don't I come from the seventies. Okay, I'm almost about to fifth. Okay. The thing I look at like this is I have an old biker saying which is called fuck the three piece the politicians, the press, and the police.

It's just the way it is. Okay. Press has never fucking helped me, an' fucking politics sharing me, and definitely the police because they don't help me. A few years after the movie theater shooting, with the rise of the Islamic State or ISIS in Iraq and Syria, Mickey decides to join the fight. The all American tough guy heads to the Middle East. Mickey says he flew to a rock to volunteer as a foreign fighter with the Peshmerga,

the Kurdish military force. According to my reporting, he also around this time started claiming Kurdish descent and Iraq Mickey says the Kurds saved him from an otherwise aimless and meaningless life. Yeah, which been the type of person when I grew up, I was the smallest kid in school. I always got picked up by bullies, So I kind

of learned I had to stand up for myself. And I liked the Kurds because in fact was that they were out man, outgun, out train, outsupply and all this, and they were the underdog and they were kicking ass, you know, and they were actually that come to learn later on, really good people, you know, and that was something I could get with, you know. So to me, I guess the best way can say it is like

I was given a second chance in life. Mickey, in his telling, was a decorated fighter for the Peshmerga, and he says he trained dozens of American ANTIFA activists in the Middle East in hand to hand combat weapons and explosives. In a video I have of Mickey, he pulls out his phone and shows a photo to the camera. Here I am with I captured flag when I was in battle. Mickey was such an effective fighter, he claimed that Isis issued a bounty on his head and some of his

friends routed him out to the bad guys. I've had people that I thought were my friends in Colorado lead my information to terrorist groups, real risk groups. They leaked it to nash That's what we call the Islamic state they leaked it to other groups. What type of car I drove one type of motorcycle. I road where I hung out all the ship and literally leaked my information out there, tried to get a what we call patua, which is known as a death note or a death

ransoup on me and Mickey's telling. If there are any Isis fighters with the courage to try to take them out and collect that bounty, then well come get some. So yeah, the death the death ship was out there a lot, doesn't bother me none. They put it away. I'm very well armed. I'm not gonna say how, but I'm very well armed. So if and I am very well trained, don't confuse my looks in my little bit of chugginess that I'm not prepared for any type of situation,

because I have been. It's not brag. I am very well trained and ray bullshit. By twenty seventeen, with a price on his head, Mickey had returned to Denver and began to tell everyone he met that he was a representative of the Kurdish government. Mickey even claimed to have diplomatic community from his work with the Kurds, whom he

credited with turning his life around. If you've ever seen a movie when somebody's life is a complete shit show where it's fu and they go when they do something in their life changes and they become a new person. Something happens to them and also they're a totally different person. That's kind of like what happened with me with the Kurds.

And now Mickey was back in the United States, inspired and with a new mission, a mission he was going to put into action in Denver more after the break after George Floyd's murder in twenty twenty, Mickey started to

attend the protests. He offered weapons training to anyone who expressed an interest, and by describing how he fought ISIS terrorists and had diplomatic community, he appeared on first impressions to be an important and legitimate guy, someone many of the racial justice activists thought they could trust, but not everyone. He's like dressed often in like fatigues or you know, more black blocked style, seemed to fly a marine flag, it seems like, but he didn't seem like he was

demand that he claimed to be. This is Brian Loma. Brian is widely known in the Denver activist community for live streaming videos of the racial justice protests. I do seem to remember that he was armed, which you know, kind of gave him a sense of having some credibility. Right. He came off as like maybe being a rook but like really being like into the movement. And now that I say that out loud, that just kind of throws

a red flag up in itself. Brian was live streaming on July twenty twenty during a rally for Elijah McClean, the young black man had been killed in Colorado the year before George Floyd was murdered in Minnesota. Some hold up signs reading the People United will end racist police terror. I've been living in a war since nineteen eighty one.

This is one of the speakers at the event. And even back then, I remember when you couldn't be black and be walking up and down Sable or al Alida without the funky ass racist fucking police pulling you over and harassing you. The rhetoric at these rallies would get pretty heated, like that guy's foul language, The system is racist, Fuck the police, that kind of stuff. Mickey is at this demonstration, and this is right around the time that

he first meets zeb Hall. After this rally, the demonstrators marched through the city. Ran Loma is life streaming the whole thing. The demonstrators, numbering in the hundreds, then pour on the Interstate two twenty five, a major highway that creates a partial perimeter road around Denver. They block all the traffic on both sides of the interstate and then start confronting the drivers they had trapped. Some smile and

laugh and voice support for the demonstrators. Other drivers aren't as amused, like one Brian Loma confronts, Yeah, are you doing today? Say? Are you okay? There's people in front of you? Would you not drive in front of you? But this demonstration quickly spirals out of control. On the other side of the interstate from where Brian Loma is filming, a blue jeep wrangler speeds through the protesters, nearly hitting several Another demonstrator films the incident. As it happens. You

can hear gunshots ring out. One of the demonstrators appears to have fired on the jeep as it speeds through the crowd. The scene then becomes chaotic. The hundreds of demonstrators then leave the interstate and congregate in the surrounding city streets, choking them off the traffic. At one point, the crowd stops, and a black man with a bullhorn in his hand and an assault rifle slung over his shoulder addresses the protesters. This is scary work. This is

what it looks like to organize. I guess the racism in the most racist toutry in the world. As the hundreds of people advance up the street, Brian Loma turns his camera to the front of the parade of demonstrators. Right up front, as if clearing the way for the protesters, is a slowly moving silver hearse it's Mickey up front and in charge of the protest. Zeb is there as well. About a half hour later, Zeb walks up to Brian

Loma and his camera. Zeb's wearing a white construction style hard hat and he has a respirator mask hanging around his neck. He's angry that the jeep drove dangerously through the crowd, and Zeb suggests that the jep's driver should have been stopped earlier in at gunpoint. There should have been people in the back with rifles to make sure that God damn card and get up there it's all. At this point, then Zeb says something else. I believe

it is necessary to Armed resistance is necessary. That's where Zeb's mind appears to be when he and Mickey first start talking about guns and training. Armed resistance is necessary. So in August twenty twenty, Zeb invites Mickey to his apartment. He wants to talk about the future, how to inspire more people to participate in the demonstrations, how to get people stirred up, and how to prepare them for possible

conflicts with police officers outfitted like stormtroopers. Zeb explains to Mickey that he believes the racial justice protests need to show people that the American economic system is fundamentally unfair to black people and other minorities, and in Zeb's view, the pandemic has made the inequities worse. The whole nation is a powder keg ready to explode. Denver's brutally cold

winter is a few months away. People will spend the months indoors, quarantined by the pandemic and the freezing temperatures, and by the time spring arrives, Zeb predicts that violence will break out all over. That's going to be the turning point. This cold is Dark's claiming that there will be suicide. Well, when it spring comes, they are angry. It's getting hot. People up when it's hot. So the spring comes, get happen, and that's where you would step

into make ship off all. Mickey encourages Zeb's violence by then, he says, you'd make shit pop off then, right, But Zeb is weirdly all over the place talking about violence, yeah, but unclear on his timeline, and seeming to talk in a way that suggests he wants others to do the violence. People are already age chained, they're working to repress a lot of them are going to be evicted, and over the sports of time, we just piss them off more

and more and more. And as soon as summer comes a spring, there's first few hot weeks, there's gonna be so much fear and anger because look at these distractions. Aren't composedly going to come back on sports and concerts and everything. They're not going to be back, right. That's why we have to get them while we're to steal them into awake right. Zeb explains to Mickey that he

thinks violence is the answer. The only way the system will change is through force, but he believes that he can inspire that violence through speeches and propaganda at public events. I think this propaganda change change. You know, be hearing these speeches will actually have other speeders, but not even just people are good at speaking. Someone like you. Just

tell the truth. You know what's going on, and over is pre six to eight months, build a fury anger and if it happens here and little fucking didn't, it'll go a place because over that six to eight months people will be angry or Mickey then pushes Zeb for more specifics. How are things going to get violent? I see your point of view, village down and kill the rich. I understand that I kill your point of view. It's just, you know, I don't know how you do. Zeb doesn't

have much of an answer. He talks about propaganda and speeches and inspiring people to get so angry they'll turn to violence. Then Zeb tells Mickey, I need your help in doing this so obso, I need your help doing this stuff, he says, and I also need to learn how to fight. Mickey then explains that he's the exact man for that job. He says again he's trained Antifa fighters in Iraq and Syria. Hand, hand combat weapons, explosives,

guerrilla warfare. Zeb then tells Mickey that he also wants to learn how to mentally manipulate people, and that's when Mickey drifts into absurdity, and Zeb, so enamored with Mickey, doesn't even notice my manipulation. My manipulation is that's something you can't look school forward. You have to learn it. And it's like a Jedi mind skill. It's like a Jedi mind skill. That's what Mickey says, These aren't the droids you're looking for, and then Mickey goes all obi

wan Kenobi on his young padawan. You have to basically take the subject and make them agree with you. The Jeds do in a way that makes them feel comfortable, and you want it to be a smooth transition. You don't want to be rough because of it's rough, it breaks down in the fields, so you just want to burger them into it. So Mickey not only fought ISIS fighters and train violent Antifa activists, he also performed Jedi

mind tricks. I was actually really good at it when I was in a personal military I didn't do it towards the court and towards terrorist members. I was terrogating the shit of that, but that you can be shown how to do. You just have to It's you have to train yourself to do, you know what I mean. Mickey then suggested Zeb that he could introduce him to his guy, an outlaw biker and former Special Forces fighter. Let me explain him. He's an old, fuck around type

of guy. He does not play fucking games. But if you're wanting to learn how to blow shit up, drop people and build the fucking numbers and do all that shit that you want to do, he's the guy you want to go to. I mean, I could teach you all that shit. Absolutely, I got a teaching it too, but that would be he would be your guy. Mickey says this guy is overseas and he can't train that right away, but Zeb says he doesn't want to wait

and would prefer for Mickey to train him. Mickey, though, says there's one issue with training Zeb, and it has to do with a supposed position as a Kurdish diplomat. The thing you understand is is like, which Okay, let's say this of Fish is a Kurdish I have weapons, but those weapons I can't use because it trains back to the kur Holistic ship, so I can't use that ship. I need to be able to get so weapons that are not mine, you know what I mean. I can't

buy there somepself. If Zeb wants weapons training, Mickey tells him Zeb needs to buy him a gun. And I'm making no endorsement of the tortured logic here, but this is basically what Mickey is saying. He has guns, yeah, but they're registered to him as a Kurdish diplomat and so he can't use them to train Zeb. And he's also a convicted felon, which he means he can't buy a gun legally in the United States even though he has guns, so Zeb would need to buy him a gun.

Zeb doesn't commit to anything buying, guns, training, none of it. At the end of his meeting with Mickey, he returns to where he was at the beginning of the meeting, talking about giving speeches. I need help. I need help doing my speeches. Zeb says, Okay, I'm not very good with speech parts, pulling triggers and blowing shit up. I'm good. Mickey says he isn't there to give speeches. He's in the pulling triggers and blowing shit up. That's what he says.

And soon zeb learns that Mickey has made other friends among Denver's racial justice activists, and they appear to be more enthusiastic about to borrow Mickey's words, pulling triggers and blowing shit up. He was just hanging out and it seemed to be kind of by himself. This is Brett Smith. Brett is a military veteran and a member of the Young Democratic Socialists of America or why DSA. And so one of my colleagues that were there with when engaged

him and stuff. They'd heard about him, they'd seen him around. He's describing seeing Mickey at the demonstrations in Denver for the first time. And so that's when they made kind of initial contact with him, like kind of on our behalf. And so yeah, they started hanging out and what have you at kind of ur or I don't know, you could say base camp. It's a friends apartment and what have you. I mean, that's that's kind of just how

it started out. So the y DSA is the youth branch of the Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist organization in the United States. Day isn't a political party, but instead a member organization. Here's one of their promo videos. The last two years have been rough. We've been hit with crisis after crisis, and everywhere working class people are being pushed out of politics right at the moment that

we need to fight like hell. The bosses and billionaires and their politicians and police are sacrificing us during this pandemic. DSA and YDSA groups are particularly active in the racial justice protests during the summer of twenty twenty. They start using the platforms these demonstrations create to promote their socialist political agenda. This is something that happens quickly to all these demonstrations that the news media referred to as Black

Lives Matter. While they started as ways to protest police brutality and raise awareness of the deaths of unarmed black men and women at the hands of police, the message splinters as more people and more groups participate. People are showing up with signs for communism, socialism, LGBTQ, plus just about any cause of line with left wing activism. Trey Quinn, the Black Nationalists we met earlier, who's one of the organizers of the Denver demonstrations, He refers to these as

affinity groups. The affinity groups, in Treys opinion, are rowdy and destructive, and they're instigating some of the most brutal responses by local police. That's when you started seeing these affinity groups of all these people calling themselves antifa or some sort of anti fascist type guy or something like that. That's when you start seeing them surround police stations and throwing rocks in there. That's when you start seeing the

cops have the tear gas whole areas of Denver. These demonstrators meant well in trays view, but no one was there to discourage some of their bad ideas. These things all happened because there was nobody there to take a person who's already radical and direct them in the position where they are now being an effective good. Now they're just off the leash. And that's what's literally what happened. It got worse. The friends that Mickey may in y dsay her named Honor and Aiden. They're among the most

active members at the time. These affinity groups are pushing some of the demonstrations beyond what the police accountability activists had initially desired. An example of this happens in Fort Collins,

about an hour north of Denver. On August eighth, twenty twenty, a demonstration for Back the Blue, a pro police movement created in reaction to Black Lives Matter, had been organized near the local police station, and Mickey, Honor Aiden and other members of Denver area affinity groups go to protest

against that demonstration. As you might predict, the situation devolves quickly into a brawl, with Back the Blue activists and left wing protesters falling into dogpiles in a grassy ditch as they throw punches and hurl frozen water bottles at each other. Everybody keep, one of the pro police activists says, keep punching each other in the face, but don't shoot anybody.

At one point, Back the Blue activists, his face hidden by an American flag mask, takes a flagpole old glory wrapped around it and transforms it into a spear, jamming it into the body of one of the left wing protesters. The video circulates widely on social media and in right wing media as an example of the dangers of antifa, which is odd because the left wing protesters, the so called antifa guys. They got their asses kicked back in Denver zeb Hall, here's about what went down in Fort

Collins on social media. Then Micky gets in touch with him. Well, these protesters got the ship be at him, which it was honoring them, you know, they were the ones that got the ship beat out of him. And he Nicky called me and says, hey, my crew got their ass whip blah blah blah. I didn't know much about it. And he says, you know you're gonna do the speech. I want you just to say something about him. Zeb is supposed to give a speech at a demonstration that evening.

He wants them to say something about Fort Collins. And I was like, all right, cool, I'll do it. Yeah, because at that time I didn't know enough about him. So I take a speech with these cats. I looked at the news. Yeah, they got fucked up. After that point, Zebzi's honor Aiden and other YDSA members hanging around Mickey. Mickey has somehow turned them into his personal surveillance crew. They were doing surveillance and even some of the events.

He made them think like they were a little operative soldiers and whatnot. They had these headphones owned, they show up at events, They talked to different leaders and you know, hey, we're medics. We'll look out for you. You know who are you? Blah blah blah. And I'm pretty sure they exchanged the information and gave it back to him. Gave it back to him, as in, gave the information back

to Mickey. The y DSA Activists are Mickey's intelligence unit, collecting information from the other protesters and reporting back to Mickey, who has come to position himself as a leader of the racial justice movement in Denver. He's giving directions and gaining the trust of many of the demos strangers. There's just one problem, and it's a troubling one. The information the y DSA Activists collect doesn't stop with Mickey. Mickey

is providing that information to someone else, someone much more powerful. Okay. It is August twenty eight, twenty twenty and apart some only four o two pm. A Special Agent Scott dolphrom with Special Agent Byron Mitchell chs for meet with Zebidias Hall. That's in the next episode. This is Trojan Hearst Season one of Alphabet Boys. Alphabet Boys is a production of Western Sound and iHeart Podcasts. The show is reported, written

and hosted by me Trevor Aaronson. For more information about the series or to drop us a tip, head to our website alphabet Boys dot xyz. You can contact me on Twitter and Instagram at Trevor Aaronson. We believe this story is important and could result in changes to FBI oversight and public policy. But to have impact, people need to hear the story, so we need your help. First, tell your friends about the show. Personal recommendations are the

best recommendations. Second, spread the word on social media. At alphabet Boys dot xyz you'll find FBI undercover recordings and secret documents. You can share stuff the government never wanted public. Third, help us ride the algorithms by leaving a rating or review on your favorite podcast app that helps other people find us. And thanks so much for listening.