From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel.
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission Control deckaned. Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Funny story. Years back, your faithful correspondents here were treated to a strange training day by some ex Navy seals. Do you guys remember this day?
Yeah. It made a lot of people really uncomfortable in the office, Like, here's how you disarm somebody and shoot them with their own gun.
It was like love them de glove.
But there was one guy I remember distinctly. His whole point was, you can come up to me with a gun and if you don't shoot me in the head, I will kill you before you get off your next shot. And I was like, I love.
You, sir.
It was. It was.
Deep water for a nine thirty am meeting.
Uh.
It continued well into the afternoon. We were taught by this consulting company, things like emergency first aid, things like disarming an assailant. And shout out to one of my favorite instructors from that day who talked about her time being lost in hostile enemy territory out Middle East Way, and she said, I was worried. I was frightened because I didn't have a weapon, I didn't speak the language. And then I realized I am the weapon. That's a
lot of stuff to hear before lunch. One of the things that stuck with us, I think all of us was the same guy you're mentioning. Matt made a big, big point that in a kidnapping situation, you will be asked, cajoled, or forced to go to a secondary location. That's when something becomes kidnapping. And this was, as you said, Noel, this was quite an unwelcome, non consensual training session for a lot of our colleagues who had experienced trauma in
the past. It also gets us thinking, can the government kidnap you?
Like?
Can a government just say not this? When Paul mission controlled decadt his name has a lot in common with some other guy, right, can we take him somewhere? I don't know it's weird. It's weird.
We made a very silly video and put it on social media where Ben, you and I were arguing about whether or not the government could abduct you. And one of the fascinating things about today's episode is that generally there are rules about this stuff, but as we found throughout history, those rules get bent and broken often Yeah, oh yeah.
Can the power structure of a civilization or a community kidnap you? For much of human history, the answer is categorically yes. I mean, go way back. Tribes used to sequester or abduct people for any number of reasons, often social taboos. Right. It still happens in some indigenous communities, where, for instance, a woman who is menstruating is forced out of the community until their cycle has changed. Theocracy, monarchies,
they were no better. They did the same thing. And yeah right yeah, and Harris, yeah, just so, and democracy, the shiny new penny of human governance, is not that different in this regard. Here are the facts. If we want to talk about a government kidnapping someone, we first have to answer, even though it sounds very basic, we first have to answer the question, what is a government?
There are friends, they mean it's no harm.
They're here to help they have. It's a conservatory. That's a very obscure. Shout out to Oates Studios.
If those are good. Yeah, I'm just talking about Well, so what is the government? I guess you know you interchangeably sometimes referred to as the state, not to be confused with the excellent seminal nineteen nineties sketch comedy Troupe. The state or a government is defined by a lot of goals. I guess it's sort of like, what are
you after? What are you trying to achieve? And again on paper, often it is the betterment of a society, uh, the you know, improvement of people's lives perhaps, or maintaining order, you know, and all of that stuff, making sure people are able to survive and thrive. Some consider they're binding forces. Sometimes often are religious or as I mentioned, economic, perhaps often it's a combination of all of these things, right, ideological I guess maybe is the one that sort of
sort of encompasses all of them. But whatever govern various governments, differences might be. In practical terms, any governing body is there to maintain and enforce rule of law, which.
Is a nice way of saying.
What Yeah, they make the rules. They're the folks in charge. They get to take you if they want to. No, I'm just sugar.
They tell us what we can and can't do, and we sort of enter like this. So my kid actually was doing a paper the other day. Would the social contract?
You know?
The social contract is by being part of a society, we agree that there we can't do everything, and the government kind of dictates what those things we can and can't do are. In theory, we elect those people that tell us those things, but sometimes there's things that are sort of off book, right.
Yeah.
I was like, I don't know if this makes sense, but for me, the great parlor trick of democracy is that it is for the people, by the people, and by that stuff, because ultimately it's the few that are in charge that get to make those rules we're talking about for every that everyone else has to adhere to.
Yeah, a governing structure for a microcosmic surely relatable example is Davenbusters controls who which games are allowed at Dave and Busters. You are allowed, as a temporary resident of Dave and Busters to play those games. You are in trouble if you bring your own games, because only Dave and Busters gets only Dave and only Buster get to decide the games.
Or if you try to game the games aka rig the system or work, you know, using a different set of rules, perhaps you shake the machine right, or try to unplug it and plug it back in, or something that you will very quickly be escorted out of, said Dave and Busters.
Or Boxy Gee, you know, you could, you could grift, or you could teach a man to grift, et cetera. What we're saying is rule of law. Rule of law is a very diplomatic, very nice way of acknowledging the one reality. The best, most practicable definition of a state or a governing structure is that entity which has a monopoly over violence. Governments do define what is not or is a crime. I mean, well, if you're a citizen wherever in pretty much every country, you cannot just murder
someone impulsively. You can't take people's property, you can't launch an invasion on another country, et cetera, et cetera. However, wherever you are right now, your government, we guarantee you can, has and will do all of those things.
Unless you successfully launch a coup, at which point you then become the government and take on all of those things that we were just talking about. But if you lose, you'll probably be executed or at the very least, you know, kicked out and banished, you know.
And the plot twist of that horrific black mirror esque statement, as orwellian as it sounds, Yes, the government can do crimes because the government is the defining force of what constitutes a crime. The plot twist is, this is not inherently sinister, this is not necessarily bad, which I feel crazy saying. In theory, governments, like you're pointing out earlier governments only take these actions at the behest of their citizens, and they do so only after a rigorous series of
checks and balances. Again in theory, I mean, think about tribes back in the day would abduct or sequester people for the violation of social taboos, right, or for the goal of controlling resources containing rivals. Theocracies did and do spoiler alert the same thing, but only with quote unquote approval from their whatever their metaphysical authority is. God told us, So it's okay, right.
You mentioned the word taboo, and it reminds me I just started watching I got the actual recommendition of a friend of the show, Lauren Bogobam a show called Taboo Fantastic's really really, really great ast, but it shows some of the stuff we're talking about here in terms of like the East India Trading Company is it becomes a sub government in and of itself that basically has the latitude to do crimes like you're you're messing with us. We want this piece of land that you have, We
need it. We're going to make you an offer that we hope you can't refuse. Once you refuse it, all bets are off, you know, because they basically were as powerful and sanctioned by the government, so for all intents and purposes, they became an extension of the government.
Again practicable application, you know. It's like, I love that you're mentioning the East India's those companies because whatever derivation they were in their heyday, they were like, what if the Federal Reserve took field trips? You know, and they
did two great acclaim in court. Monarchies also do the same shisty, creepy, sketchy stuff, and when they would engage in these criminal actions, they would do so because their status quo was under threat, and for those of us playing a log at home, you know, the people who are most often abducted or kidnapped by monarchies other aristocrats, that was the most direct threat to the status quo
because they were very bloodline oriented. People shout out to Man in the Iron Mask, which all, yeah, I read, I read it earlier and then I re watched it, and Leonardo DiCaprio is just sort of the same age in things.
Oh yeah, it's true, I only watched it. Sorry, I don't do books, but the I'm just joking. The thing I want to point out here is we're talking about theoretically why governments, no matter who runs them or how they got in power, right, do these things for good reason.
But I think I think the closest one in my mind right now that makes sense for today's topic is how monarchies respond because protecting the government protecting itself, right, so taking action that would potentially be against the law to any other country or if you looked at it objectively, but for the purposes of that government, this is now legal because we are in danger or some really important aspect of our operating system is in danger.
A great and you know, for people who are maybe a bit pollyada about the current dominant government trends, You might say, well, what about democracy. You know what I mean. It's important to vote. It is important to vote. We're not going to be dicks about that. But it is equally important to remember that your favorite democracies, favorite dictatorships, your favorite authoritarian governments, they lumped all of those previous behaviors into a kind of bombo meal salma gundhy of
righteous cause. At every single point in human history, the state is best defined as the entity in your neck of the global woods with that monopoly on violence, and that applies to kidnapping just as it applies to murder,
just as it applies to theft. Folks, you are going to hear Matt Noel, Paul and I present an extraordinary story, a terrible pun of not just a phenomenon, but a possibly continuing program in which the United States government, champion of freedom, actively kidnapped people from around the world, some of whom remain imprisoned in a legal limbo with no criminal charges. As we record this evening, I suggest we pause for a word from our sponsor. We got to you know, we got to rack our ribs. We got
to drink our coffees. I just learned about Celsius drink.
It's so good. Dude, Hey Celsius, if you're listening, send us some.
I need more.
Here's where it gets crazy. Extraordinary rendition, extraordinary redition. You look at a redition and you go that, my old chap is extraordinary. It's a euphemism for kidnapping when a government does it versus you know, your local dirtbags. I like, Matt, you and I were having a pretty interesting conversation briefly before we started recording. Is one of the first things we talked about. Why what is an ordinary rendition?
Well, okay, so I'm not looking at any definition. In my mind, an ordinary rendition would be when let's say, a local police force, I guess you could say, kidnap someone into a patrol car because they're suspected of committing some crime, and so they become a guest at a local jail, right, and then they go through hopefully a judicial process where they're either released or sent to probably
a prison. In my mind, that's a rendition. Just being abducted by a police force that represents the government, whether it's you know, an entire country, a state, or a local level.
Yeah. Agree, Like the jurisprudence teaches us that the concept of rendition is just what you describe, a transfer of people or individuals from one legal jurisdiction to another. And this happens. This happens all the time in you know, criminal cases like the very lurid stuff. We hear it often right when a let's say, a mass murderer or a serial murderer is apprehended in one state and then they are taken to another state to stand trial for their crimes in that separate jurisdiction.
In an act of highly ordinary rendition.
An act of extremely ordinary, super mids rendition. In the US, the phrase extraordinary rendition most often refers to a genre of operations, a genre of programs that that spring sort of sort of before the ongoing War on Terror. But definitely they definitely powered up Dragon Ball Z style because of this.
Uh, that's it, Ben, That's totally it. Extraordinary rendition went super Saiyan during in Afghanistan.
However, many thousand, yeah, over nine thousands.
Yeah, But if you if you go online, you can find quite a many story about in the nineties eighties, even before that, where the US government, particularly the CIA, ended up doing these very similar practices. And it was always, I bet, I'm sure you found the same thing. It's always when there is a suspect picked up by some other state government, right, but they happened to be maybe from another country, right, and suspected of doing things in
a third country. But the CIA wants that person, so they take them somewhere else.
It's always Halloween in America, right, And the company had no compunctions about doing trick or treat style door to door with the Moujadin. Yeah.
And the costumes are really simple, they're just black bags.
Oh wow. Yeah. The example that you could find right now, there's so I'm thinking about, y'all is when police in Croatia seized an Egyptian national and then the CIA stepped in and took him somewhere else. Like that's crazy, Yeah, it is.
And it's true. These are real conspiracies, not conspiracy theories. So let's look at the history about this, right, the balls of it, the hutspa of it, to say, one, we are a country that calls ourselves a champion of human rights, you know, habeas corpus, And it's until proving guilty, et cetera, et cetera, all the good stuff, all that slow jazz. Two, we are respecting the rule of law. And then three, we don't respect the International Criminal Court. The United States is not and never will be a
signatory to that particular circus. So how is it that this same country, the world's police said, we're going to go outside of whatever you guys call or jurisdiction, and we're going to take an individual from their present location. And we're not taking them back to you know, Langley, We're not taking him back to d C or anything like that, Levenworth, et cetera. We're taking them to a third country. And you know, we're doing in Vegas style. What happens there stays there.
I mean, let's I know what he goes back to? Ben, Yeah, it's the it's the eleventh director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
No way, what you're talking about?
George George, dude, I'm telling you so much goes back to George. It's it's weird. Maybe not, I don't know, that's my theory. I think I think his background, uh and and not to compare him fully to Putin, but you know Putin's intelligence days make him a really interesting leader of a country.
He was Putin esque.
But but I guess that's what I mean. When you've got the mind for running into if those operations, running a country is a very different thing than let's just say, an attorney that rolls up and says, Hi, I'm going to be president now.
Because you know how the sausage is made, and you also know how to make sausage, you know, and you can work on both sides of the line kind of because you know what's happening behind the scenes. And I feel like a lot of times the type of president you're talking about that maybe as is more of a legal background. They might get briefed on some of that stuff later, but that doesn't necessarily mean they have the like chops to really exploit it, you know, and work
with that all of that stuff in mind. I think you're your spot on, Matt, and I believe Ben the outline. You talk about this precedent set by George H. W. Bush and his administration back in the nineties.
Oh yeah, og for sure. Yeah, So extraordinary rendition is a precedent set back in nineteen ninety three by the George H. W. Bush administration and yes, fellow don Americans, and there we get it. It's weird that it's a purported meritocracy, that one guy was president and then whoopsie, do his son is also president? We get how it's
smacks the monarchy and corruption. You may be interested to find by the way that the pilot program for extraordinary Rendition continues throughout the false dichotomy of domestic US politics. The Clinton administration elected in opposition to this, George the Elder. The Clinton administration enacted this stuff. They put it into play as sort of a pilot program, you know, a little test let's drive it around the block. And their goal was to paint with a broadbrush, to shoot with
a shotgun. They wanted to aim toward any individual that they thought was a possible operator in any number of terrorist networks they called them. And the nature of these networks themselves was very nebulously defined internally as well as externally. And we're like, hey, there's a bad guy and he's probably hanging with some other types we don't like, let's get him.
Yeah, Well, in the reason why you would pick someone up like that, especially as you know, part of some terrorist network, which was the common thing it is to gain information.
Right.
Well, it's not all that different from policies and certain you know, metro cities like stopping frisk you know what I mean. It's this idea that like, if you're associating with certain people, or if you're potentially you know, suspect in some way, then we can stop you and search you and ask for information, you know, and and bring you in and and maybe we don't have enough to hold you, so we let you go, but we're still
gonna go on that fishing expedition. But this is obviously much more of a level up dragon ball, you know, like version of that, because they don't necessarily have to let you go.
Well yeah, And and one of the main problems is, or the main reasons that you would use this technique is when you don't have hard evidence to convict somebody. Right, So, as we're going through this, if I think, and then maybe this is just my opinion, I think if you had hard enough evidence to convict one of these people, anyone who has been extraordinarily renditioned, that it would go
through a different process. But in this in most of these events, it's because you suspect somebody of being a high level person within some organization, you maybe can't prove certain things, and you know that group is you have intelligence that that group is going to take part in other activities, you just don't have any details of those activities. So you bring somebody like this in to literally extract everything they know.
Check out our earlier conversation to folks on whether or not torture works. I really listened to that, and I gotta say, I am come with hat in hand on behalf of our show. I am so sorry that that is still very current and absolutely accurate. It is an absolute bummer of an episode. And everything that you just said, Matt is one hundred percent correct. There's a there is to this day, to this evening. There is not a solid methodology for these sorts of programs for evaluating the
efficacy the actionability of this intelligence. Right, So there's some guy who has some name that you heard about from some other person who may have been tortured. So now you're out to find this person. And surprise, out of more than eight billion people in the world, is still like seven billion something when this stuff was in its heyday, more than one person has the same name.
Whoopsie I was gonna ask, like, I mean, I understand that torture it can yield unreliable results. Let's just say based on what you're saying, because if you're being tortured, you're gonna say whatever it takes to have them stop you. But it can also if people really do have information, if you torture them enough, they're probably gonna tell you.
But the question then becomes, how do we know who's giving us the real information and who's We're just torturing until they say something, And it's creating this like wild Goose Chase scenario.
Right, Yes, just so I.
Was gonna say, Ben, how would you sum it up? But for me, remembering back to that episode, it is exactly that torture doesn't work often for the reasons you want torture to work. As a torturer.
Yeah, so, yeah, I'd agree with that, and that the the pickle of it is logically it is impossible to prove that something would have happened when it did not happen. The ticking time bomb scenario is so popular in the world of fiction and spy novels and all that that is so rare, Like that that is true, Maybe a handful of times in modern history. It's not so much a case of we've got this bad guy, and there are bad guys. It's not so much a case we've
got this bad guy. We've got, you know, Keifer Sutherland twenty four hour style, you know, a defined window of time to figure out where the bomb is or where the disease is getting deployed. It's much more a case of we have this guy, we know this guy knows someone, So let's play a very evil game of six degrees of Kevin Bacon shut out to our pal aj Jacobs,
who and Kevin Bacon? Kevin Bacon and our pel Kevin And The idea then is that through these coercive means, this person will reveal something that will be not the solution, but a bread crumb toward the ultimate goal. And the problem with that is that a lot of times just doesn't work out that way.
Now, and it can lead you down to another thing that will then give you another bread crumb that ultimately just involves just hurting a lot of people. And maybe they're not fully innocent. What does innocence even mean? Once you're in this system, it's very difficult because it's up to Uncle Sam to determine that. And that's why this stuff can be so dangerous, because there is no innocent
until proven guilty. It's are you guilty enough by association to warrant US snatching you up to see what you know? And then you're in a system.
Oh you know, Kevin, Well, I'm not convinced that you know, Kevin. Put them back under my.
Man, I said Kevin.
I Tvin, Devin tamble too.
But it gets so much murkier than that, and we'll get into it, and that stuff starts happening a lot more when extraordinary rendition evolves.
Yeah, when when the rubber hits the road. Right, So the company, everybody's favorite US company, the Central Intelligence Agency UH and co UH. They had a three part process, right, a sort of dare I say, middle passage of espionage and of abduction and interrogation. What you would do is, as country one, the United States, acting through intelligence agencies, you would apprehend, kidnap a terrorism suspect abroad. Now, how did you define their activities? What made them a suspect?
Any number of things? Wild West, honestly, and the country you capture them in that's country too. You would not have them questioned or interrogated or tortured in that country where you snapped them up. You would instead take them to a third country that was friendly with your overall goals, or that owed you a favor, or that wanted you to do them a favor in the future.
And they had some kind of handy misused air base or you know.
Davenbusters. Right, yeah, yeah, take them to the take them, take them to Poland right, take them to church, shout out Hosier. So these interrogations included torture obviously, uh, And to pretend otherwise is to be purposely misleading. Sometimes the people that were being questioned, whether they were or were not innocent, they died as a result of things like stress positions, confinement, forced.
Feeding, blunt trauma to the legs.
Blunt trauma to the legs, Yeah, had trauma also, of course infamously waterboarding. I think we're all still waiting for Sean Hannity to make good on his promise to experience waterboarding. Haven't checked in with Sean recently. Look, so the Clinton administration, while acting as though they are enemies of the Bush administration,
they're putting this plan into action. They didn't come up with it, and when pressed by the American media, now the former president Bill Clinton said, you know, these covert operations are probably illegal, but hey, they're necessary. That's right, folks, We're aiming toward a greater good. And then I imagine he did like the little saxophone or peggio or whatever, and they were like, yeah, it's like a love theme kind of situation. Well, that careless wispard, This sure is.
But they're definitely illegal because if you brought that suspect back to the United States and interrogated him there, that's definitely illegal.
Right.
If you were in another country officially interrogating that suspect in country number two wherever they were picked up, and you're the ones interrogating them, I'm pretty sure that would be illegal too.
It's a loophole, is what it is, right, Yeah, And it's as plausible deniability. I mean, yes, it's not denying it, but it is definitely a loophole. I mean, okay, so fast forward, the US ostensibly a democracy, a meritocracy for some crazy reason, because I'm sure he was the best guy for the job. George H. W. Bush's son, one of his sons George W. Bush, in a burst of creativity,
becomes POTUS President of the United States. Fast forward, the United States experiences attacks on September eleventh, two thousand and one. These are attacks by a terrorist group led by Asama bin Laden, bankrolled by factions of the Saudi Arabian government according.
To the official story.
According to the official story, outside of Saudi Arabia, they're as surprised as you are. And so when this occurred, it opened the door to insane amounts of military funding. The US public was united in an extraordinary way, and they were on board with this vibe. They were like, look, yeah, laws are good. We're the critics. Yeah, we're the champion of laws. But we need to interrogate, We need to find, apprehend, and press Yes, anyone as soon as possible. Checks and
balances be damned. This is the only way to prevent another disaster.
Was that Wait, maybe I'm being dumb, dumb? What was the Patriot Act? Wasn't that kind of what opened up a lot of this stuff? Oh?
Yeah, and Patriot Act is Patriot Act is a opportunistic consequence, that's right.
And when it's almost like we've never really rendered back, like from what that did.
No, why would you? I mean, think about like another Okay, this is very this is very thrifty of me, but think about, for instance, the way airports changed and the way airlines changed post two thousand and one, checked bags had a temporary fee, and that fee just never got rolled back, right anyway, that's I walked down the runway for that one.
But anyway, the whole thing though, I mean, you could you can enact some of this stuff under duress or like in a state of emergency, but then it's really hard to put the badgers back in the bag. You know, at that point it nearly impossible. And then to your point, bet A, why would you why would you want to the government? Why would they want to the people? A little different? But then it's too late, because it's no longer.
The power is no longer with them. If it ever really was, it was an opportunistic move because of the climate that allowed you know, this, this this situation where people weren't gonna bulk at it, right, Isn't that mainly what it is?
Yeah, I look, that's what I think that there, what you've just stated is one of the primary reasons the September eleventh attacks are feel so suspect because it was it was a moment in time when the government, the executive branch of the United States, seemed to seize a whole heck of a lot more power than they had
before that moment in time. And it's for for this kind of stuff, because who's going to force the executive powers to have fewer powers except for someone outside of the executive powers?
Right, an American? The very proposal, an American arrest this man, arrest arrest every Matt Frederick around so many all right, well get all of them, just to be safe. That's literally what happened. So wallet wide Open, I agree with everything to say. Wallet wide Open, Uncle Sam and friends go on a merry and evil path across the world. They conduct a global sweep of anyone they consider a
suspect of terrorism. Both being nebulously defied. They're in a pickle because multiple defendants were and have been tried in criminal courts in the United States or an insert country. Here the stands, the Balkans, you know what I mean, all kinds of different parts of the world, right, India as well. Not to be Islamophobic, but a lot of
times they were aiming for people of Muslim faith. And the problem was when these defendants were getting tried in the United States or when they were getting tried in different countries, they weren't getting the courts were not getting the results that the United States desired. And so they said, look, a lot of these guys that we genuinely think are bad faith actors. A lot of these bad dudes are hiding away in countries that do not extradite, They are
hiding away in countries that grant them asylum. They are never going to be caught, and there is no currently legal way to get them. And so, like any government worth its salt, the United States said, let's change the law. Oh that's right, you guys, we write this stuff. So to this day, the US a global public has no idea how much good intelligence these agencies actually possessed. We
have no idea what functionally informed their decisions. The logic of these black site operations was, when you think about it itself, a black box as a result. And then also, you know, in two thousand and four, when the US public started getting a little a little sour on this, the US Supreme Court conveniently decided that quote government agents are immune from civil or criminal liability for their official
conduct abroad, which is a crazy thing to say. That's that ruling comes from Sosa, the Alvarez Machine, or Mackaine. The idea was, look, if you're doing your job and you work for the good guys, you work for Uncle Sam, then do what thou wilt in service of the greater good, which is not the way you should write a law.
No, no, it is not. And just quick shout outs for anybody who wants to dig deep into this specific moment or these moments in time and just before that, in like early two thousand and three, shout out to car I think her name is Carlotta gall from the New York Times. That's somebody who was extensively reporting on this very subject. And also shout what New York Times did a bunch of reporting, yes, on this stuff right around that time. But there are there are several other outlets,
a lot of other people. Check that out for sure. And I'm just before we move on, I would suggest everybody watches this documentary that you can find right now. If you're a Prime member, it's free, you can watch it. It's called Taxi to the Dark Side. By Alex Gibney. It will make you extremely uncomfortable and it is upsetting to watch. But it goes over this exact thing that Ben is describing here, just in too much detail.
It's important detail. I'm really glad you shouted that out, because more people need to be aware of these things. This is the stuff they don't want you to know. I mean, the practice of extraordinary rendition accelerated to unprecedented levels. You could even make the argument that the Bush administration, Oh I'm sorry again, there's two that's weird. The earlier one they probably didn't see this coming. They probably didn't know what kind of automation they had enabled. The US
essentially needed to and beat me here again, Paul. The US needed to prove some gangster. They needed the world to know anyone can get it. Wherever you are, you can be touched. It was as if Uncle Sam said, you guys want smoke. What a coincidence you and everyone you know happened to be sitting in the smoking section, So holler at me.
You know, Oh, I thought you were going to say, is on fire currently?
And the subtler the better walk?
What is it? Walk softly and carry a big stick, and so we're going to pause for a word from our sponsor, and then we'll return to some more extraordinary renditions, assuming we're still here and we're back okay. So democracies are supposed to be a government by the people for the people. Therefore, at least if you're a dictator, the Achilles heel of that structure is that your people can
hold you accountable or any number of means right. And that's why a bunch of dithering began, a bunch of fights over cement this dangerous discourse of what is or
is not the greater good. Condoleeza Rice, former Secretary of State, came out with a very interesting series of public statements and the State Department at this point argued that extraordinary rendition is a necessary element of counter terrorism and furthermore assured not just the US but the global public that terrorism suspects had been neither transported nor tortured by US agents. We have the specific quote here.
The United States has not transported anyone and will not transport anyone to a country when we believe he will be tortured. Where appropriate, the United States seeks assurances the transferred persons will not be tortured.
Wow, where appropriate appropriate?
Otherwise who knows? But we definitely don't do it on purpose. But hey, who's to say what happens once they've left our our purview?
Yeah, that's so insane because right, I mean, this is right around the time when there was actual discussion within the halls of power in the White House where they're deciding what the definition of torture is. Right, they're deciding that legally, what is torture what is not?
That one guy was like, Hey, I stand for hours at a time at work, rumsevet lt. I think, yeah, he got thrilled.
On that a bunch, But dude, it just and they're trying to figure out if you strike, like how many times can you strike a detainee in the in the legs or you know, in the knees before it's considered torture. How long can you have a detainee change to the ceiling with handcuffs with their arms out until it's considered torturally? Well, what what's the level?
And how long can you allow them to go on a hunger strike? Right? And when you force them to eat or force them to consume some sort of nutrient, right, then what what is your method for non consensually keeping them alive? Very nasty stuff.
How many hours? How many hours can you keep a detainee up before it's considered torture? Awake sleep insane?
There was a line in that new David Fincher movie The Killer, which I really liked a lot, where he said something to the effect of he I think it's insane that the government rule that sleep deprivation can't be considered torture.
It is, well, it's intellectually fraudulent at best. The claim. What's really interesting is the claim does not preclude the possibility that subjects have been taken somewhere to be tortured on the order of the US government. Q Shaggy saying it wasn't me right, Yeah, you know what I mean?
So like maybe they're taking a string.
Shaggy from Scooby Doo, but I never realized you mean the seminal nineteen nineties reggae performer show.
It was Scoo and Marine. By the way, Shaggy is a marine, that's.
Right, besties with our CEO turns out of what sure thing?
Yeah, yeah, they even caught them on camera. So put plainly, the US government contended that kidnapping people and torturing them isn't really a crime so long as the folks who do the kidnapping drop the individuals at a different non US country with maybe a little unofficial conversation beforehand. You know, like, we don't torture folks here in the States. But Poland, you guys are sort of the New Jersey of Europe, right, like everything goes here. We'd love your help on this.
We'd love to figure out what this guy knows, and we will remember you've done this favor for us in the future, while we, of course again do not torture people in the United States. Poland, I'm sure you can understand we are a country under attack and any information you get, however you get it, don't tell us. But however you get something it would be of immense value to us, just don't make it messy, you know what
I mean? And that's a cut to a handshake, maybe a file of a wish lists, right, tell us these following things, probably something like confirm these following things, which is even more dangerous in a torture situation because you're just asking people to say yes, right, And then maybe even a handy guide on how to efficiently derive that information from someone who doesn't want to tell you things.
Spooky spooky, and and make a list of things that are torture and things that are not torture. Right, just as close to the line as you want to get, just don't go over it.
Well, as long as the dog doesn't bite them.
That's when the term enhanced interrogation started flying around, Right, that's exactly right. It's goofy, right, It's it's it's so stupid. It's just a pr maneuver. It's like rebranding.
It is but discussed in the halls of power at the White House of what is torture and what is not? And what can we do to these guys.
It's one of the most pornography things. I don't know what it is, but I know when I see it. Only it's the reverse of that, because I would argue that most people would know torture when they see it, but they're saying it needs to be quantified in some mathematical formula, which I would argue is not really possible. It's like point to the smiley or frownie face that defines your pain when you're in the hospital or something. It's very difficult to quantify it. I don't know have.
A fox define what makes a good hen house? Right, that definition is going to be very different from the definition of the chickens. And I appreciate and all that shout out, I think to our ridiculous history. James Joyce episode which is on the way. The publication of Ulysses prompted so many discussions about the nature of pornography or
the nature of that which is considered unclean. This CIA did not and does not, to be completely clear without hyperbole, the CIA does not, did not will not give a about that kind of stuff. And excuse my strong language. That's my third beep. In tonight's episode, they it's very going. It's true. They operated a series of black site facilities.
We talked about this at length and previous episodes. These facilities were, like you said, Matt, they would appear to be abandoned maybe former government things like a picture and whatever. The abandoned warehouse is on the outskirts of your town. It looked like it. Stuff like that with security and they were in Afghanistan, Poland, Romania, Thailand. The list goes on. The scary truth is the American public and the global public still does not know how many of those sites
existed or exist in the current day. We don't know. We do know somewhere around somewhere north of fifty different governments participated in this extraordinary rendition program. I think like fifty three that we know about.
Yeah, just to add one little detail or just a couple. You think about Bogram. It was an airbase. It was a Soviet airbase, right place called Bogram where people it was a black site where people were interrogated and tortured and killed. And you know, think about Abu Gray, but again a base that was kind of repurposed and parts of it that still functioned were used to interrogate and house people.
Guantanamo as well, right, an episode.
All its ow And it wasn't until like footage and stills and stuff of the treatment of prisoners in those facilities started coming out that tide of public opinion started to turn a little bit. But again by this point it was too late.
You know, it's all at the same time two thousand and three, two thousand and four, when all of this we're discussing right now is happening, including the photos from Abu Grabe coming out like the human Pyramids and.
The horrible, horrible things.
That were done to human beings.
Im Air fuel Man, You're right, the US public was thanks to independent media, to be honest with you, the US public was starting to starting to get tired of this notion what did we like police? They were starting to get tired of this notion of being the world's police, and they had again noticed the rise of everything. Eisenhower warned people about the military industrial congressionalfiteering. It's a practice dating back to the foundation of the United States. It happened,
you know, the United States was isolationists. During the beginning of World War One. The United States pre Pearl Harbor had some really serious questions about why they should involve themselves in a global war. And other countries in this time, the time you're describing that other countries felt their sovereignity was under threat by this program. There were global investigations.
Our neighbors to the north, Canada, they were super pissed because their sovereignity was violated by one of these rendition programs. Multiple European, North African, Middle Eastern theaters were also understandably upset Washington needed to respond, right, And so in two thousand and nine, we've got a different administration. Now is the Barack Obama administration again in in apparent opposition right to the to the other side of the political aisle.
Uh.
The Obama administration did all the same stuff. They did the same stuff that Clinton and H. W. Bush and W. Bush. That's still gross. They did all the same stuff these previous administrations were doing. And they issued an executive order that was meant to quell growing concerns. They said, all right, you guys, seriously, you guys, this time for serious no torture.
Yeah, for this time for serial We're gonna pull back on the torture, and we're gonna get a lot more drone killing going on.
Right, Yeah, we're gonna We're gonna screw up some weddings, We'll tell you that much. But but they also said, we're going to start a task force. Okay, we're starting a task force American public to explore options for what to do with these terrorism suspects. Put plainly, the people responsible for kidnapping civilians across the planet promised to investigate their own behavior.
Tight right, dude, that's exactly what they did back in two thousand and four, and they found out it was a couple of bad apples at the essentially prison complexes that they were running like Abu grab When those photos came out, like Donald Rumsfeld and you know, generals got in front of mics and said it's a couple of
bad apples who are doing it. But they didn't say anything about the pressures that were coming from above that said, hey, we need to get actionable intelligence from the guys coming through and women, men and women who were kept at these prisons. We need to get actionable intelligence to save your fellow soldiers and to prevent another attack like nine
to eleven. So the very lowest end the military police assigned to those places, and the interrogators who were part of military intelligence basically had marching orders to extract any info you possibly could, and a very loose set of things they could and could not.
Do, a very loose set, I would say, things they could not do. Right, you're right, you're right. It's like, all right, guys, I'm the cool dad. Right now. You can only hang them up this long. It's unholy, it is ghoulish.
No more burning with cigarettes though, guys, Okay, that's off the table.
Only vapes. So they're like very strange, very strange semantics, you know. And and I think the point holds true. The a c l U has a pretty robust discourse on this, and they note that per the Department of Justice in a series of infamous memoranda, Uh, these folks who were abducted by these programs are quote unprotected by
federal or international laws. To your earlier question, Noel, Yes, that's the loophole, dude, that's the dangerous part, because federal US laws are still just you know, injewpolitical terms, federal laws are a state actors laws, right, Like you can smoke weed all the livelong day in California, you will be executed legally in Malaysia for doing the same thing. But when they get to the point of not being protected by international laws, that means stuff like the Geneva Conventions.
That means stuff like the rights of POW's prisoners of war. Right. That's why we see more or well in terms trotted out like this is not a soldier, this is an enemy combatants.
Yeah, and a lot of that stuff is so toothless anyway, because it's so easy to like oh, we said no burning with cigarettes.
You didn't say anything about clove cigarette.
You know, there's always some way around it, and these reclassifications and just kind of linguistic jiu jitsu's It makes your head spin.
Guys. I want to get this thought out and see if it makes sense to you. Guys. I think when this concept originated, right back to George hw Bush, he's thinking as CIA, he's thinking abducting a single person using everything we've been talking about here, maybe enhanced interrogation, maybe even torture, but on a single individual where the company is seeking very specific information about either a group or a potential singular attack or you know, some sell but
they're interrogating one person. I think when it originated with that group of people, and with George hw Bush at the head of some of those ideas, or maybe at least the signer of some of those ideas, when it evolved into the thing that his son was dealing with with a war, where now you've got a prison system running that very concept right of a single individual undergoing
those things, right to extract information. I think it's a whole other It was just a whole other bag of badgers because now think back to the Stanford prison experiment, Think back to what psychologically occurs when a inside a prison rather than just a singular interrogation room interaction. Right. I think that's the major the major change that occurred in the thing that the originators didn't think would happen.
The exception became the rule, right, became the practice. The hop up shop that was meant to be around for an afternoon became a franchise.
Right, Yeah, Because in the one person example, you've got probably a seasoned interrogator who's been interrogating the suspects for the entirety of their career. But in you know, in the prison system, it's literally military police that do not know what exactly the rules are. They're giving a very loose set of objectives and the main objective is get information from this person.
And we know, yeah, that's well put. And I agree with you know, we know folks who have been involved on the US side in these sorts of pursuits, in these activities, people who have conducted interrogations, and they are not super villains, right, They're not goals or whatever. They're people who are trying to do a job in a good faith effort. And the problem is the rules of the road keep changing, and the demands, the expectations, the
goal of the mission keeps changing. At some point when things go wrong, all of a sudden, there's no one at the wheel, which is again another problem with like this. There is no strong impetus to close this massive loophole, this massive shaggy it wasn't me kind of passing the buck. It's a phenomenon that will continue not just in the US, but in any government with the power to do so, even now in twenty twenty three, as we record this evening.
This is a genuine conspiracy. This is an attempt, quite successful, honestly, to skirt the rule of law. Consider the United Nations legendary bars these guys are spitting. Here's a real sexy thing they wrote. It's called the United Nations Convention against Torture and other forms of Cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. It says, point blank it's illegal to do any of
this stuff. Like it's super duper illegal in the world in the opinion of the world's government, it's super legal to kidnap people and then the torture the heck out of them and then use that to find and torture more people. The US Congress agreed with this. They ratified that convention back in nineteen ninety two, before old og George I guess we could call him son in Prescott came in in ninety three and said, asterisk caveat what if you know?
And Ben, you have a little mentioned in the outline of stuff we didn't get to. I just thought we should maybe get to over five seconds, just the idea of these these type of operations being completely incorrect in who they're targeting.
A Coronius Rendition.
There was a film I believe in two thousand and seven called Rendition about that very thing, you know, about a suspect that's basically they grabbed the wrong guy and someone just disappeared, you know, and the wife asks the senator for help, and that therein lies in the plot of the movie. I think it's got Jake gillen Hall and Meryl Streep and Reese Witherspoon in it, But I think it was it was based on a real thing that happened, and these types of things happened all the time.
Oh I don't know that.
I mean that all the time, but more than you'd like.
To think, Well, yeah, a taxi to the dark, say, is based on this guy named Dilwar, who was a taxi driver that literally picked up three guys and then took them back to his hometown. But on the way they stopped by what they called a firebase, and there were Afghan militiaman who looked in the trunk, saw a what do they call it, an electric stabilizer and accused everybody in that taxi cab of having attacked the base
earlier in the day. So they all got sent to Bogram, and or if they all got sent away, this guy, Dilwar the driver was sent to Bogram where he got tortured for five days and he died. And he was literally just a taxi driver going from one place to another and got picked up.
Right.
But yeah, let's get back to the quote we're about to get to from the UN.
Yeah, and both of the examples you guys just mentioned the concept overall, the find does the concept of erroneous renedition. This happened in contradiction to what Congress said when they agreed with that super sexy un banger back in nineteen
ninety two. Congress said the US will not and this is the quote expel, extradite, or otherwise affect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture, regardless of whether the person is physically present in the United States. So at the same time, one hand of Uncle Sam is waving and saying all these great things about democracy, the other
hand is doing the exact opposite. And Congress later doubled down. They said, look, you the American the global public, we tots love you guys, and we're not going to green light funding for any operation that leads to torture or degrading treatment or anything that's prohibited by the Constitution. You guys were super serial this time, for real, though, We're not going to do it. Tight go USA, and the USA did go. They went around the world, and they
did everything that Congress said was not going to happen. Look, go pass the lip service, past the pr past the campaign spins that are spinning up now as we speak. The largely unelected leaders of these agencies, the inheritors of these legacy programs, they continue to function. You cannot directly vote for or against them or these processes. There is a conspiracy afoot and the idea that you can move someone from their home country to another place and do
whatever you want in search of nebulously defined things. That's beyond the rule of law. It is logically, like we're talking about earlier, it's logically perilous. It's nigh impossible to defend actions that did not occur. So as a result, the public will never know whether these programs resulted in actually saving lives. What we can say is this, hundreds and hundreds of people got sucked up in this program.
There are many more currently in Guantanamo Bay. I believe twenty seven people currently held in Guatanamo Bay for any number of years have no criminal charges pending against them.
They're just there, yep. And there are there are many other places that we'll never hear.
About ever, never not once you know, it's crazy, and you know as such, if we're asking in good faith, as such, we cannot fault anyone American or otherwise who understands this information and says has the United States in these suits? Has the United States become the same monster it originally proposed to hunt? And that's a that's a terrifying question. We don't know the answers. We would We
would love your opinion. We have a lot of people in the audience this evening who have some familiarity of one sort or another with this stuff, and we want to hear from you to the degree that you are safe and comfortable doing so. We have a number of ways you can contact us.
That's right. You can find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff, where we exist all over the internet, specifically on YouTube, Facebook and XFKA Twitter. You can find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram and TikTok, which apparently the kids are really.
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