Part One: G. Gordon Liddy: The Fascist Behind Watergate

person in all of history. But you're fighting some of the worst people in all of history on the lines of the strike against those Hollywood motherfuckers. It really is.

Neither of them really get into Both of them feature g. Gordon LIDDI neither of them really accurately describe him as a person, Like one of them kind of picks the he was this absolute unhinged, like maniac fucking cartoon character, and one of them like portrays him as like this violent psychopath, and the reality is he was, like there were pieces of that in him, and he is. He is a crazy He's one of the craziest bastards to ever be involved in American politics. But neither of them,

neither of them quite get it. I think what's most fascinating about this weirdo. He is such a fucking weirdo. And so you know, there's plenty of Watergate podcasts like you can. You can spend a whole week learning about Watergate, listening to like five different fucking shows on the matter. I really just wanted to focus on on g Gordon Liddy,

both because I grew up. He was definitely on the radio a lot when I was a kid, so I have a lot of experience with mister Liddy, but also he is he's the proto type of all of these fucking right wing media freaks that we are deluged with today, think like and they're all They're all aping g Gordon Liddy, Stephen Crowder, you know, whenever he wears his fucking shoulder holster to go, you know, be a little fucking abusive prick on his on his dumb ass fucking political YouTube

show or whatever. I guess he's on Rumble now, Alex Jones, when he like lie about all these hardcore violence he's done and how tough he is, how he could kill a man without blinking, you know, Enrique Tario talking about how like you know, oh, I don't regret anything ha ha ha. Oh, please don't throw me in prison for twenty two years, mister Jeff. Like, they are all aping aspects of g. Gordon Liddy, but none of them. None

of them have what Liddy had in the center. None of them are number one, none of them are actually as committed. They're all grifters. And Lyddy had some grifter in him. But Lyddy was a believer. He was a believer in terrible things like but he was he was not like, he was not like all of those the guys I just named are completely hollow in their center.

Lily was not. Now the center of him was something like dark and evil and like unsettling and greasy, but there was there was mass there, you know.

You know. The other thing that's interesting about Liddy is that he wrote an autobiography and it is like number one most of the time. When you get these guys who are at the center of like a massive politic, you think, think about the Trump administration, right, how within like a month or two of him. Honestly, like while he was still in office, there were fucking books coming

out left and right. As soon as one of these guys would get fired, right, you know, somebody would get like two million dollars and hooked up with a ghost writer about it being Badaboo. You've got you know, fucking the Mooch's memoir about his weekend the Trump White Ats or whatever. Yeah, the room where it happens, starring some guy whose name I've already fucking forgotten. Yeah, from Twitter, from from from all these fucking weirdos. But it was like,

you know, these are cash grabs. Right, most of these are cash grabs. You know. Again, you're you're sort of stretching out someone who probably doesn't have that much that's interesting to say. So you can get a couple of anecdotes that will go viral in like a Business Insider article, and you're just kind of hoping that, like, yeah, the the the fame of the administration will make the book worth whatever they're paying for it. Lyddy's there's a lot

of that for Watergate. Right, all of these guys write books, you know. John Deane's got his fucking book, you know, And Lyddy writes a book after he gets out of prison. Lyddy writes his own book. And it is like I read part of what I do is I like read anytime, you know, I'm one of these bastards and they've written a book about their life. I'll get in there. I have never read a crazier autobiography than she Gordon Liddi's.

And it is it is pure Lyddy. Right, we're not talking about this is not like, you know, adulterated by some fucking publishing house trying to massage his image. He's trying to massage his image sure at points, but like it is, it is a it's like that. You know, we did for about a year, you know, off and on my friend's Katie Cody and I would talk about Ben Shapiro's novel because like when once some somebody writes a novel, you can't not learn things about them, right

from that process. You get so much more with Lyddie's Saudo biography. So episode one is largely going to be us reading through his depiction of his early life and childhood, and I will be fact checking it wherever I can. There's a lot I can't fact check, right because Liddy's talking about like what he was thinking and feelings like an eight year old, right, I can't. I don't have outside I'm not gonna like refer to John Dene's hire, you know, but we will bring it out. You know,

I read Dean's memoir for this too. I read a book called King Richard. You know, We've got a bunch of other sort of a number of other sources on like the Watergate stuff and on his career before Watergate was in the FBI. But for this early part, we're just gonna be Lyddy. You know that that's gonna be a significant amount of what we talk about. So without further ado, I guess I should roll roll in with this.

Are you ready to learn about Let's get Lyddy? Sorry about our best Republican Yeah, that's that's the thing is g Gordon Lyddy would be such a great name for like like a SoundCloud wrapper. That's the real tragedy. Yeah, yeah, he was born too early. Tragedy.

he his dad to thank for American Volvos. If you're a Volvo driver. His mother Maria. That's not nothing. His mother, Maria was a homemaker. Now I just read his name Gordon Battle lyddy, given the fact that he is a violent madman as an or at least he puts on the image of a violent madman as an adult, I'm gonna guess everyone's wondering, like, what the fuck is the story behind that name? But like, the fact is, as far as I can tell, his parents weren't like nuts, right,

And the story here is actually like pretty tame. It's kind of interesting, but it's not like wild. He's named his namesake is a was a New York lawyer and Democratic politician named George Gordon Battle, which is a pretty cool guy, a pretty cool name, and he seemed to have been a pretty cool guy. He was defense attorney for Earl Browner, who was the head of the US Communist Party. He helped raise money for a number of

really good causes. He was the chairman of the National Committee on Prison Labor Reform, and he's one of the men who fought hard to stop Central Park from being developed right from like it being replaced with like buildings and shit. Right. He was childless, but he spent his entire working life fighting to add more public playgrounds to

New York City. If you grew up in New York City and spent time on a playground, Gordon Battle George Battle has a lot to do with that, and in the late nineteen twenties, seeing what was going on in Europe, came a tireless opponent of anti Semitism for the last

act of his life. So yeah, like a pretty cool guy, smart psychond tell this might key you into the fact that g Gordon Liddy's parents were not politically the kind of people you might expect to likese raise a fascist, political criminal right Like, they were not, Like, it's not one of these cases where you've got like, you know, super hard right family who's like really mentally abusive to their kid, and you're just like, I see why this dude grew up to be a piece of no. Like, again,

they're not perfect people, Like we'll cover some of that, but they seem to have not been the folks you might expect, right, and the story of how they wound up raising this maniac anyway is fascinating. So he grows up affluent, his family is kind of upper middle class when he's a little kid, and like Rich by the time he's in his teens, I think would be fair to say Liddy's despite the affluence, Liddy's early childhood was

not pleasant. This was not due specifically primarily to his parents' actions, but rather to a quirk of his psychology. He was terrified of everything. Now, in his defense, his world was frightening. The world of nineteen thirty is a scary place to be a child, and this was kind of exacerbated by the fact that the family home lay directly underneath the path of the Hindenburg Zeppelin. So as a little kid, his earliest memory is this monster in the sky, just

like barreling over his house making this terrifying noise. In his autobiography, he recalls being just absolutely piss horrified by the quote bloated shapes, swelling and roaring with incredible power as it came on and on, trapping me in the bottom of the box and blotting out the sky. The box in this instance is his backyard and hoboken with a family moved soon after his birth. But like, yeah,

that's his earliest memory is like the Hindenburg, terrifying. There's like a dragon in the sky ampuk it he was now he may be lying about he was not yet two when this happened, and like, so I always kind of a little grain assault when people talk about remembering shit that happens with their two but it does. People do remember shit from that time, so not impossible. And

I guess I don't know why he would lie about this. Yeah, yeah, it's always like the world's most awful people are the world's most scared people in a way that it's like, so, you know, it would be cute if you didn't give these people half the you know, any of the power they have. This is this is why we need to be so careful about like not giving people power, because yeah, you can't. You never know what's going on you want.

You see, like a kid at the playground, that kid could be brewing up some Hitler particles, right, Like, you never know what's going on in their heads. So I'm going to read a quote from his autobiography here. I had been walking for six months, but due to the concern of my mother, I hadn't yet spoken an intelligible word I beget or to the concern of my mother, I hadn't yet spoken an intelligible word. I began to speak immediately to articulate my first memory, absolute overwhelming fear.

So he starts speaking to try to express to his mom how scared he is of the Zeppelin now. His second memory comes in the spring of nineteen thirty four, when he and his mother and sister had moved to d C temporarily. Their grandfather was dying of terminal cancer, and Sylvester wanted to care for his father. I think he didn't want the family to have to be there. Maybe their grandpa didn't want his grandkids to see him

like that. But while he was there, he experienced like, while you know, he's living with his mom in d C, there's like a fire drill at the building they're living, like a surprise fire drill, and he's too young to really understand it. So he recalls experiencing absolute overwhelming fear. Quote. The early memories that follow are still fragmented, but the

theme is common. Lying on the floor, or as my paternal grandmother lashed me with a leather harness, shouting bad, bad fear, my mother insisting I not use my left hand as she forced me into right handedness, and my inability to understand why more Fear rounding the corner and coming upon a truck mounted vacuum, a giant air hose sneaking across the sidewalk from a huge bag suction engine rolling as it cleaned the flus of coal furnaces, running from the sound, and the threat no certainty that I

would be sucked inside the monster bag. Fear soon My every waking moment was ruled by that overriding emotion, fear. So you've got this mix of like, yeah, understandable stuff, like, yeah, his grandma was, you know, very aggressive with her punishment of him. I don't think uncommonly so for the area, but like that's a scary thing to deal with. His mom didn't want him to be left handed, and like

that scared him. And then like just shit, he and these like nightmare vacuums driving around cleaning out flues and shit, you know, he's just scared of everything as a kid. Oh wow.

like that was not an uncommon thing back, especially for Catholics. Right, if it's written to it, this is like post jail, though I guess it's like it's nineteen eighty.

He has probably I think it would be asthma, and so his his treatment for this is that he would spend hours every day in a tint in his bedroom breathing medicated steam with a mustard plast, a mustard plast on his chest. The gold there was to relieve mucus congestion, to stop his persistent cough. And it's here I should note some of the something, which is that g Gordon Lyddy and I actually have a lot in common because I had the I had the modern version of that.

When I was a kid, I had asthma and I would have to spend hours almost every night hooked up to this weird machine the size of a projector that like pumped all butterol missed into my lungs. Like that was like a thing that I had to do as a little kid. I was like reading that was weird because I was like, oh, yeah, I've been through that, you know, and it's not I think Liddy's certainly that's

Liddy's experience. Seems like it was more physically unpleasant, but even like mine was not painful, but it is this weird thing that kind of separates you from like other kids, from your your your brothers and sisters, from your your family members, you're and stuff like the fact that you have to spend all this time like attached to this machine, like I'm sure it also to do something, you know, a sick yeah, yeah, yeah, in order to keep breathing right. Yeah. Yeah. My asthma was ever that bad.

about like very strange things all the time. His mind is like NonStop going in these kind of manic circles. That is part of why he becomes like the plotter that he becomes. And I think, you know, given that I went through something similar, I kind of might tie some of it back to that, Like it's hard not to just sort of get stuck in your own head a lot when you have that as an early life experience.

His grandpa dies in thirty five and the family moves back to Hoboken together, you know, and he's he you know, is a is a weird little kid, he recalls being because he's kind of raised in the city and the suburbs, absolutely terrified of the natural world. As a little kid, nature was so alien to him that like one of his earliest fears is the fact that moths would arrive

at nighttime. Quote. I had been frightened for the first time a moth fluttered against my bedroom window on a warm summer night, the light through a giant shadow on the opposite wall, terrifying me, frantic screams, then my mother explaining it was just a harmless moth or perhaps a miller. From that moment on, the night was filled with giant

moth millers out to get me. I knew it. So my fear grew each to experience breeding more so he's by at least if you believe his sort of yah recitation of events, he is just stacking up these like very normal experiences that are deeply traumatizing to him.

you tell somebody, and like that makes it into your memory. Right, So I think there's probably just something obviously as happens to most people, because I do think he probably believes a lot of this, whether or not it's all literally true. Another one of his most searing in a literal sense early moments is later that same summer, you know, where he becomes terrified of moths. His parents take him camping in the woods, maybe to try to get him over

that fear. And in the morning, he's like poking around their campfire spot and he picks up a coal that he doesn't realize is burning, and it like hurts him. It burns his hand. Now, I think most kids have a version of that. I burnt myself in a car lighter by accident when I was a kid. We used to have those and if you're a gen z kid. We used to have cigarette lighters built into every car. If you want to know how much your grandparents smoked. That was just the world for a while. Yeah, yeah,

and electronic like lighter yeah, flame. No, he popped out of the car and I'll light your cigarette.

which I also got as a kid. So again, this becomes like this constant regular because he's doing this every month. This is just like this endless fucking train of horror for him, where like he's just constantly dreading the next time he's gonna go get this shot and deal with this pain. Right at the same time, he develops you know what's to be his worst childhood terror, which is a fear of God. Again very common. His family is

this poor kid is just miserable. His family is super Catholic, and he goes to a Catholic school that Lyddy refers to exclusively as SS. I believe the s's stand for it's it's the Peter and Paul Roman Catholic Church. I think the two s's are Saint Peter and Saint Paul. But he's also he talks about the Naziss constantly in this in moments where it has nothing to do with what he's like referencing, Like, he loves bringing up the SS.

So I don't think anyone else called the school this, I think you is just he found it another way he could write SS out and so he had to do it.

sudden crack on the head from monitoring nuns. Such punishment was to be received gratefully, otherwise retribution might come from God himself. The retribution of Almighty God for a sloppily made sign of the cross was terrible. Only last year we were solemnly assured a lazy, a reverent, careless boy had made a sloppy sign of the cross while saying his nightly prayers. The good nuns alas were not present to crack him on the head, and as God was

not one to let such a sin go unpunished. The next morning, the little boy found his right arm withered, twisted, and paralyzed for life. Ah yeah, I love the Catholic shit. Such ah so funny, My God just ruining children, just just going off like a bomb in millions of childhoods around the world.

Like yeah, because like none of them ever frame it as like, yeah, you know, I'm a Catholic because God's fucking nuts, like this is the only way to avoid his anger, like fuck, fuck the guy, but I just don't want to death, Like yeah, I'd like I'm a little bit more, you know, if people prefer to do him a little bit more like a mob boss, like yeah, if you don't pay your protection, he's gonna fuck you up. What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do?

What are you gonna do? It's got I guess there are some people who talk about him that way, but usually it's all dressed up and anyway whatever. Well, salvation are the ones that are like, if there is a God, what's preventing you from raping and murdering? And and that those are the people you have to look at the hardest because you're like, uh, I mean I could think of things man a lot. I don't really want to

do those things. I guess it's. Yeah, So whether or not he exaggerated his experience here, and I don't think he did. I know some people, including my dad, who grew up Catholic in this, well, my dad was, you know, not this old, but like I've known people who were kind of from you know, around that period of time and raised in Catholic schools, and like you get stories like this from the nuns. A lot of old Catholics

have horror stories from the nuns. And yeah, the fact that Liddy's like like living in fucking constant fear of God is not like when I was a kid, I had a period of time I went through like that. We're like I would just be terrified because I'd like killed a bug or something while playing and like, oh my god, if I like damned myself to hell for eternity. You shouldn't tell kids about stuff like that, you know. Well, it's the same as.

would expect. And then the other thing that he has he viewed as kind of a wholly positive thing from his childhood was patriotism. The nuns, he said, introduced him to authority, first God and then the flag. After morning prayers, they would pledge allegiance to the flag. And you know, the nuns were as strict about this as anything else. Here's how he writes about learning how to do the

pledge of allegiance. We stood at rigid attention, facing the flag, in lines straight enough to rival those of the mast SS and Lenny rievenstalls triumph of the will began at the words to the flag. We shot out our right arms and unison palms down straight as so many spears aimed directly at the flag. It was the salute of Caesar's legions, recently popular in Germany, Italy and Spain. Is that not true? Oh yeah, no, there you can find

pictures of American schools. It was not like universal, but it was not wildly uncommon for kids in some schools and some you know, fucking especially some private schools to do the fascist salute, you know, which was previously the Roman salute, right, or at least a variant of it. Yeah, so it's not like other kids have this experience, right, there's no reason you think he's lying about this. It is insane that he just like he has he's described

because he's describing it as like the SS. But he doesn't mean that in like a negative sense like he has. There's at no point does he like think about this kind of fucked up to do that? Is it bad? If we look at like where the Nazis win. Does it may be bad to do this with kids? Absolutely not for a second. Does g Gordon Lyddy consider that he was organized? We were as organized as thes, my friends,

my buddies, the ssh what a maniac. So, oh my god, this is where we should introduce his second mother, the family housekeeper, a German immigrant named Toresa. Now, if you've had like rich or very upper middle class friends, you know, when you were a kid, you may have like known someone who had like a nanny, a full time nanny, sometimes even a live in nanny who like helped raise

them as a kid. I had a friend who grew up in a similar circumstance and expressed to me at one point that it was like really confusing to him as a little kid because he kind of didn't know entirely whether this was his mom or his mom was his mom, because like the nanny did a lot more.

And I'm like, oh, that was like, yeah, that is kind of a weird thing to put a kid through, right, And there's this moment that kids like that tend to have where they like realize this person who is kind of a mom to them is an employee of their parents, right, is there because they're being paid. It's taking care of them because they're being paid, And like that can mess you up a bit. In Gordon's case, this is going to mess him up a lot because Teresa is also

a literal Nazi. She is a German immigrant to the United States. She's absolutely obsessed with the Nazis. With Hitler, she tells him all of these wonderful stories of her homeland, Germany, all of these different myths and legends, and she talks to him constantly about this terrible war that Germany went through before he was born, and how afterwards the country fell into chaos. But now a hero has arisen and is in the process of saving the German nation. Quote.

Great roads were being built, and unlike in the United States, everyone in German and he now had a job. My mother had won an Emerson shortwave radio in a raffle at Sspeter and Paul Parrish and Teresa and I would listen to programs broadcast from her native land, the volume

swelling and receding in cycles. Now Lyddy had listened to FDR on the radio like most Americans in the Great Depression, and he had found some comfort in that saying, we have nothing to fear but fear itself as a scared little kid, but nothing in his life up to that point had inspired or influenced him the way his first Hitler speech did. This is the defining moment of his childhood. Now in his autobiography, Lyddy claims to have had a

memory like a tape recorder. Given how bad he actually is as a spy, I think he's lying about this, but he claims. He claims that he can replay audio perfectly in his head and like sometimes an involuntary switch will throw and he'll hear music that will like launch him into a certain emotional state. I don't know the degree to which I think that he's telling the truth about this, But also, I'm gonna read you this paragraph. I don't know fully why you would lie about this.

Oh my god. The music that poured through the Emerson from Germany was marshal and inspiring. I lost myself and its strains. It made me feel a strength inside I had never known before from playmates who were German, I learned some of the language. One day, Teresa was excited he was going to be on the radio just wait till I hear him speak eagerly. I joined her at the Emerson. First, the music, the now familiar strains of a song that started defan Hoch raise the banner. It

was a rousing, powerful anthem, the horsted Vessel song. Now, Cambrew, we got to take a second here, do you know what the horse vessel lied is? No, it's the horse

vessel song. Horst. So back during the rise of the Nazi Parties, before Hitler's in power, Joseph Goebbels, the future Propaganda Minister, ran the party's Berlin operations, and a big part of his plan was to Winstan get a series of running fights and raids with communists and social Democrats in order to spark media condemnation of chaos and disrupt the organizing of the party's enemies. Right, he's both trying to get like the media flipping out about like, ah,

there's so much chaos. We really need a law and order guy in office, and also trying to like physically murder and hurt, you know, two for one. So you do the violence and then you step into self the violence. Now, one of Joe's top thugs is a guy named Horst vessel and Horst is a construction worker. He is a

low level gangster and a pimp. He is running a prostitution racket out of his apartment, and his landlady, he was a widow of a Communist party member, is scared that she will lose the apartment if the police catched Horset running an illegal business out of it. Now, there is a debate about precisely what happened, but the generally accepted story is that Horst refused to pay his rent and threatened to beat his landlady. She goes to a local Communist bar to get some of her husband's old

friends to help her evict him. Horst was also an assault leader for Joseph Goebbels, so go you know. He was known for running vicious raids on these very poor Berlin neighborhoods where he would beat people nearly to death. The Communists that his landlady goes to had been victimized by Horse before and they knew about him. So when she comes to them and is like, this guy is causing me problems, They're like, let's just fucking off this

son of a bitch. So they shoot the bastard in the head Joseph Goebbels never want to let a murder go to waste turns Horst into a martyred saint, and his death is used as evidence of communist evil. The song that g Gordon Liddy like is listens to and is like inspired by as a child, was written in the honor of this, like Murderer and Pimp, and became the official anthem of the Nazi Party. So that's what he's listening to. Right, Oh, yeah, God, he's like eight, right, he's eight or nine.

used to be able to get along. And like not if you're alive today, not one person alive today has been a party to a right wing that was quote reasonable.

feel who was absolutely overwhelmed by terror all day? According to him, Uh, he is drawn by the pure confidence in Hitler's voice. Here was the very antithesis of fear, sheer, animal confidence and power of will. He sent an electric current through my body, and as the massive audience thundered its absolute support and determination, the hair on the back of my neck rose, and I realized that I had stopped breathing. And this is like the moment that teaches him.

He has this like powerful realization of like you can conquer fear, and like sets him on this course to like, you know, conquer it, like to become the master of his fear in his pain, just like Hitler.

even Nick Fuintes, doesn't write shit like this. Yeah. Yeah, it's it is like remarkable that you would just put this down. It's fascinating. Liddy never is going to shed this deep fascination with Hitler in the Nazis. It's almost like a fucking what's the word here, It's almost like a fucking syndrome for him, right, Like it's a reflex like bringing up the Nazis, like, he can't help it, you know. And again he would always claim he never claims to be a Nazi, right, he would say, obviously

Hitler was a monster. I learned later they had gone far, you know, much too far, and like you know, had to be stopped. And on most fascists who said this, I would be like, oh, this is just a shallow attempt to allay suspicion. Lyddy's case is weirder because, for one thing, he's admitting all of this when he doesn't need to. He is absolutely no doubt, in my mind, a bone deep fascist rights has died in the wole it committed, a fucking fascists has ever existed, you know,

this alt he is an ultimate follower. He's like a born henchman in constant search for a fearer. But I actually think he's not lying when he says he doesn't consider himself fully a Nazi. And I the reason why is very simple. It's his dad, right. He worshiped his father, so Sylvester Liddy was his son's hero. And in his autobiography over and over again he repeats this belief that, like his dad, is almost incapable of error, and his dad hates Nazis, and it's one of those things. Liddy's

definitely a fascist. His dad hatred of Nazi. If you've you've seen that meme of like the cheeto stuck in the place of like the the lock. Oh yeah, yeah, Like that's the one thing keeping him from like just becoming a full on neo Nazi. I guess, I.

in the Nazis. It was just his respect for his dad holding back like this tiny this like creaking broken down, damn holding back the flood of Nazi water. And in fact, so when his you know, Gordon hears his first Hitler speech and he like goes to his dad to be like, I've just heard the most incredible guy. And when Sylvester is like, wait are you talking about Hitler? No, no, no, no, fuck that dude. He is a monster. He's going to lead the world and do a horrible, horrible war. You

are not allowed to listen to him anymore. And I kind of wonder if his dad hadn't been this guy, does Liddy just become like a full on Nazi like his he marching with like fucking George Lincoln Rockwell, like completely you know, swastika mask off, you know, fucking doing shots with David Duke. Yeah right, yeah, probably, yes, maybe there's a good shit. Similarly, that that's.

because I just found him magnetic. It's like we you absolutely were in look at this politics. You are a bone deep fact. No one has ever been more of a fascist than ug Gordon Lyddy. It's really like like, yeah, I like the I like the fucking what the confidence and the auditory style. Yeah, I don't know, man, Broye, there's other confident ass motherfuckers out there. So Teresa is like a big influence on him in this because you know, while he can't be caught in the open listening to

his Hitler speeches. It becomes this like thing that they share, right that like when his dad's out and like no one else is around, they'll listen to some Hitler speeches, right, They'll turn on the radio and like sneak it together. And again, she is the primary female influence in his

early childhood. And like, I don't know, I think actually honestly reading this, I thought back to how when I was a little kid and my mom was out of town, my dad and I would watch like South Park, right, which I wasn't allowed to watch, but like my dad would kind of you know, And that's a powerful thing as a kid, you know, whatever it is for you, Like if you've got like an adult in your life, who will be like, hey, you know, normally, you know, I had to watch you know, horror movies. But let's

put on Friday the thirteenth or whatever. Just been the rest of your life you love fucking you know, horror movies or whatever. Like for him, that's Hitler, then that's the experience he has. That's like woman who raises him.

was the last straw. The problem was that Teresa did not accept the official crash explanation, but static electricity ignited hydrogen being vinted as part of the landing procedure. She was certain the Hindenburg had been sabotaged by the United States. This is it, Hindenburgh truth there, that's okay, this is so true. That's so wild about this is like this is his autobiography. Yes, yes, he's writing all of this out.

So Sylvester not a perfect dad, right, But his reaction to all of this, everything that happens, does kind of make me think that he was trying to do the best he knew, how because when he when he like comes in eventually, he like comes in on like Teresa Rantick about how the Hindenburg was an inside job or whatever, and he fires, he fires her, and he he eventually he brings in a new maid, and he I think, because he's so concerned that his son is becoming a Nazi.

The new maid he picks is a Jewish refugee named Sophie who had just escaped Nazi Germany. And I think his goal here is both like, give this refugee a decent job, and also like, well maybe if my son meets this woman who has been victimized by Hitler's reshime, it will deradicalize him. I don't know. Again, we can argue was that the right call, but I think he's trying Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's so tough. That's that's a wild situation to be a day.

childhood heroes growing up. Quote frequently ill I was nursed patiently by my mother, who used the occasions to teach me the family history and various tales of personal courage and accomplishment against odds. To keep from boring me by repetition, she would make up stories of high valor, usually about American Indians and their warriors ability to resist the most horrible tortures without the slightest indication of discomfort. Among her true story was that of Glenn Cunningham, a farm boy.

His legs were burned so badly he would never walk again, and who became our national champion. In the mile of family members, my mother's favorite was her older brother Raymond. He too was slightly built, but that hadn't stopped him from being the leader of all the boys in the neighborhood, from fighting off much larger boys who tried to force him from the Prime Street corner for selling magazines in Washington, d c. From becoming an eagle scout, from putting himself

through Georgetown University and it's law school. I learned how Uncle Ray had been there when John Dillinger was slain in Chicago, how he was wounded at the gun battle in which mab Barker and her gang were shot or captured, and that he hadn't even noticed his wound until aft of the battle and had not bothered to report it. His Uncle Ray becomes an FBI agent, right, And to be clear, there's not actually any evidence that Ray was nearby when John Dillinger was killed, but this is probably

family law rather than Gordon lying. I think he does grow up and taught this right. And I think Uncle Ray is a giant piece shit and the fabulous too, also a terrible influence. But this is so these two things are critical to understand. Letty, he grows up like afraid constantly, and like you know, just this like kid, he's like short, he's small, he feels like he's weak,

and he's always scared. And his mom is constantly trying to build him up by telling him stories about his like great grandfather and his grandfather and like how good his dad wasn't boxing and his uncle Raymond is killing all these people. And this like drives him crazy a little bit, right, Like the fact that the fact that he feels like he has to become worthy of these men who are in his genetic line, and he feels

like he's so weak and scared all the time. Like this, this like fucks him up as a kid, right yeah, Yeah, So he grows more and more ashamed of his perfectly natural reactions to the world. Now, part of what incites this is that he had, by this point read a book by America First Leader Charles Lindberg, in which Lindbergh discussed that he had picked his wife based on her racial characteristics because he wanted them to breed genetic powerful

children together. So he has this sort of idea in his head that like I come from a line of powerful, like genetically powerful men, and it's my responsibility to become worthy of the genes of my ancestors. Right and right now I'm too weak. I'll never be worthy of breeding with an Aryan princess if I don't conquer my fear of the heroes.

Gordon Liddy finds very attractive. He's always got kind of a king for that. And he carried Ray would always, you know, when he'd come over to see the family, he would like always be wearing a gun and he would brag about who he was carrying a thirty eight super automatic there was powerful handgun in the world. Lyddy repeats it a bunch. This is the most powerful handgun in the world. My uncle has got the best gun

in the whole planet. That is a debatable claim handgun wise, but I think he probably heard it from Ray and repeated it all his life. Gordon grew obsessed with his uncle's sight arm, and since this was the nineteen thirties, gun safety was not a priority. Quote. One day, when I was five, I slipped into Ray's room and found it lodged in the lid of his suitcase. This was a rarity. Not only was it something I feared, so did everyone else. My curiosity got the better of my fear,

an uncommon occurrence. Quietly, I withdrew the pistol and examined it, then managed to get the hammer back at the safety off. Proud of this accomplishment, I walked into the room where the adult sat Chadow to show them what I had found. Uncle Ray spotted me immediately he knew the pistol was loaded. Ray's rising He placed himself directly in front of the muzzle, smiled warmly, then reached down and placed his finger between the hammer and the firing bin. He grasped the piece

and gently disarmed me. This gun, he informed me quietly, was his. He would get one for me soon. Thereafter he did a pistol replica of the colt. So a couple of livings there, Uncle Ray, I think maybe the wrong thing to do is to give the kid who has just stolen your gun and pointed it at some adults an exact replica of that pistol. There might be other lessons to teach first, is what I'm saying, right like, don't point guns at the people.

because like today. Back then, you know, thirty eight Super was one of the more power certainly one of the most powerful handgun rounds that was available to people today. The thing that's most famous for is like Cartel guys love getting nineteen elevens plated in gold and thirty eight Super. That's like the Cartel pistol, right, like if you want to be yeah, Like it's like yeah, So that is

kind of amusing to me. All of this nonsense, this like worship of men in his family, his like Hitler shit, his constant fear, he he it leads him to have this kind of like obsession with making a reality of my genetic potential. That's the way he describes it, you know, right, He's got to like he's got to fix himself so

that he can earn his genes. So this starts with his first fear, the Hindenburg and its last runs before the disaster, Lyddy had made his parents take him to watch it so he could stand out underneath it and force himself not to run away. His success in this thrilled him, and it made him commit to conquering other fears. Since he was scared of heights, he started hanging out with a boy he knew who ran around on the rooftops of nearby buildings do what you might call kind

of early parkourship. That boy also took Lyddy to the docks, which is this like forbidden place with all these scary foreigners in it. And on one occasion they're snooping around a boat and they get yelled at and they both run away, and Lyddy spends days beating himself up, like he's almost like mortifying his skin because he's so ashamed that he didn't like confront the guy or something instead of running away from this sailor when he's breaking onto

a boat. Now, in order to deal with this, he keeps going back to the boat, and his goal is he just wants to hide on it near the saale to prove that he's not scared of them. He conquers this fear, but he earns a new one, which is that there's these giant wharf rats around and one of them like chases him off the boat, and he kind of loses his mind in a panic. And for a year or more, this tears at him, the fact that

he's like reacted with fear to these rats. But then About a year later, when he's nine, the family cat brings a dead rat into the house, and I don't really know what to do here other than read you what followed. The carcass was still warm and remarkably undamaged. To demonstrate to myself my lack of fear, instead of using a stick, I picked it up with my hands,

then looked for a place to bury it. As I walked towards the trees in the back, I saw some old bricks and got the idea for a test to destroy forever any dread I still might harbor for rats. I put the rat down and with the loose bricks built a small enclosure in the gravel next to the garage. I filled it with broken twigs, bark in small branches, and went into the kitchen for matches. For the next hour, I roasted the dead rat. Then I removed the burned

carcass with a stick and let it cool. With a scout knife, I skinned it, then cut off and ate the roasted haunches of the rat meat, this tasteless and stringy. Finally, I dismantled the little fireplace and burned the rest of the carcass. As I stamped down the earth over the remnants of my meal. I spotted the cat Tommy. I smiled as the thought occurred to me. From now on, rats could fear me as they feared cats. After all,

I hate them too. Oh my god. If your child has that experience, that's so far beyond serial killer shit. Like serial killer shit is like torturing and animals. It's not doing that. Sania's already dead, but in some ways it's more alien and weird, like I must conquer the rats will fear me if I've eaten them. Yeah, that's what works.

that it's like been their brother. Yeah, but not for that reason, right, yes, yes, right, So if you hear the whole thing, he will always be, you know, for the rest of his childhood, obsessive with this need to conquer various fears and prove himself a man. Now, the thing that he wants to ultimately do, the number one way, really, the only thing in his mind that's going to cure him forever of this sort of like inadequacy syndrome he has,

is to go to war. Right That's the ultimate way to prove that you're a man and worthy of your genes is killing some people. And luckily for him, World War two, you know, kicks off right around the time he's starting to become, you know, an adolescent. Unfortunately for him, he's like eleven or twelve when the US gets into it, and there's at least like six years he's got a

weight before he's going to be able to enlist. His only meaningful feeling about the war then, is not like horror at all the people dying, you know, fear that maybe his country will lose any of that. He's he's terrified. His greatest fear is that he won't have time to fight in it. He won't get to go to war, right, Like, That's that's really what fucks him up. So while he

suffers through this torturous weight. He decides the rational thing to do is to prepare himself to be a soldier, and Gordon that meant one thing killing Now later in life he is going to be famous for just absolutely this guy. There's never been a dude who fetishized guns more than G. Gordon Liddy or violence more than G. Gordon LIDDI. But Lyddy is not. He's not naturally a

violent person. He's not someone to whom actually carrying out violence is like a thing he's immediately comfortable with, right, and so he's going to have He's going to dedicate, like his adolescent years, to becoming comfortable with carrying out violence for no good reason, right, not like violence he needs to carry out because he's ashamed of the fact that he's like not comfortable killing things. Now. The easiest way in his mind to become comfortable with violence is

to get a gun and start shooting animals. But again, Sylvester, his dad understands who his boy is and is like, no, we're not getting you a gun. We are we are absolutely not buying you a gun. You have to think he knew his boy and was like, the last thing this the last thing my Hitler loving child needs is a firearm.

I think the charcoal was probably for the fire. And then from a neighborhood kid, he says he buys a six inch long section of gun barrel and twenty two caliber that included a chamber, right, because you need the

chamber in order to make a gun the work. So he saws off the barrel of his Daisy and he attaches the twenty two barrel by friction fit, and then he like basically he builds this into a functioning twenty two caliber rifle using like it's very janky, Like it's got like a plunger fire type situation here, Like it sounds like a very dangerous and inaccurate firearm. But it does function. It has no sight, like you cannot really aim at very well. But he claims he shoots and

hits a squirrel with it. Right now, this is pretty fucked up because you shouldn't shoot an animal with a weapon that you can't be precise with right because you may, for example, hid it in the guts and it will die in agonizing death as opposed to dying quick, which is what happens. He shoots the squirrel in the belly, and he has to like kill it, right, He has to like execute it at close range, and he, you know, he doesn't eat the squirrel. He doesn't what you can do.

He has like no use for the body. He's just killing it to kill it. So he he executes it and then he cuts off its tail to tie around his handlebars. Now this is definitely like serial killer adjacent shit. Lyddy claims that he doesn't feel excited or happy after

doing it. In fact, he's horrified by it, like like it haunts him and like his mom catches him doing it too, so like that's probably part of you know, why he feels bad and this this is what really fucks him up, because the thing that fucks him up is not that he he hurts this squirrel or that he kills it, but that he feels bad about hurting the squirrel, and that fucks him up because he feels like, now, I'll never be able to be a soldier if, like,

I can't kill a squirrel without feeling anything, how can I kill men? Right? That has its own internal logic. There's a lot going on there, and none of it's any good. How could I expect to be a soldier in the war. I had to do something to free myself from this disabling emotionalism. The widowest fascist here, he is such a fucking like the deepest fascist. There's more like fucking young Hitler has more like redeeming quality, says a kid, than fucking g Gordon Lyddy. Oh god, it's

fucked up, so man. The thing he eventually lands on was volunteering to help with his neighbor's small chicken farm. He offers to basically, yeah, he's got this neighbor with a chicken farm, and he's like, look, I need to learn how to kill all, like gut and kill all of the chickens that you need killed. And you know, if you've never done this, killing butchering chickens and specifically like gutting and preparing them to be eaten is a

very it's a particularly unpleasant process. Like chickens in my in and a lot of people's opinions are like a less pleasant animal to like butcher than a lot of other animals. So the guy who owns this farm is like, yeah, sure, Gordon, you could fucking kill all of my chickens. And so that's like again bad adulting. Also this if this kid comes to you being like I need to kill something, Can I kill you? I have to learn how to kill efficiently and without emotion or thought. Right, that's how

he phrases it. So apparently he claims he learns how to kill without feeling that by murdering all of these chickens, you know, I was satisfied. When it came my turn to go to war, I would be ready. And like I should note here, giguldn't Liddy never killed anybody, right, not for lack of trying, but like I honestly don't know if he ever, like was the kind of guy who would have been good at this. So much of this is like he's got this is like an image

he wants to present. He wants people to think of him as a badass, as a killer, as a dangerous man, right, you know, as this guy who could do without thinking, Like, I don't think killing chickens actually prepared him for murdering people. Part of which is that, like I don't, he never kills anybody, right, He's never in combat, He never experiences anything like this, you know.

dangerous maniac. G Gordon Liddie, one of the one of the least one of the least mentally uh uh healthy individuals, one of the most dangerous brains ever to be born.

at every other aspect of his life pretty much. Some people say he was a pretty good lawyer, you know, so maybe I'll give him that. We'll talk about that too, So we'll find out. Right now, Andrew, let's talk about how are you doing. I'm you know, I'm alive. We're just uh, you know, still just striking and hanging out and podcast. It's great. Love it. I don't love it, but it's just you know, what are you gonna do? Excellent. Well, support the strike, you know, help out. Oh yes, I pulled up.

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