From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this 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 Noah.
They call be Bed. We're joined as always with our super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagod. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Let's start here, gentlemen, have you ever been interrogated.
Oh, goshya by my mom, my ex wife. This little guy right here sometimes gets a little demanded. No, not in a professional setting, look like you know, under duress or in confinement.
I've been interrogated by my dog about why it is time to eat right now, and there's you know, we can't wait on your rules. It's time to eat now.
I've also been there, Matt. I've been interrogated sometimes on air by my cats who don't understand podcast in general. But that's what you could say about so many other family members. I think we've we all at least know someone who has been involved in a legal inquiry of one sort or another. Or maybe you're a bystander and you see a automobile accident, right, and you stop to be a witness for the police. They're going to ask
you some questions. You're not necessarily in trouble, but they are kind of interrogating you because they want to know what's going on.
Well, it's interesting that you bring that up, and because I've always been curious as to whether there is a line between being questioned and being interrogated.
Right, where did the Miranda rights kick in? For example? Well, we know that in the ui U there are an increasing number of people who are being put to some kind of interrogation for any number of reasons, especially with the rise of ice. And you could be the hardest badger in the bag and tire, but given enough time and incentive, everybody confirms that you will break. So yeah, yeah, the best we can hope is to resist for as long as possible. We have to say this part loud.
Video producers make sure we get this across. This is not legal advice. None of this is legal advice.
Just gentle you know, the encouragement, you know, to act as in a certain way.
Yes, and in all likelihood you will never be fully interrogated in some of the ways we're going to discuss here.
Knock on, would we hope not.
The paramilitary military stuff, you know, extra judicial interrogation kind of thing, but the likelihood that you end up in a situation that Ben was describing the but you know you're going to be asked a bunch of questions at some point by law enforcement. That that can and probably will happen. And it doesn't mean there's like a murder charge anywhere involved there. It just means you might get questions.
Yeah, and that's a great place for us to start. Maybe we take a break for a word from our sponsors and we dive in. Here are the facts first things verse Again, Cadot emphasize this enough. We are not lawyers, but the lawyers are correct. You can avoid it. Do not speak to any law of your land if you
can avoid it. If you're in the US, you have a constitutional right to remain silent via something called the Fifth Amendment, which I think sometimes gets unfairly portrayed as the sketchiest of amendments.
Also sometimes fairly portrayed, I think in the way we've been seeing it flung around willy nilly these days, and of course there is a certain uh stigma surrounding it that it does imply some level of guilt, which to your point, Ben, I think isn't always fair though in some of the Gelane Maxwell uses of it, for example, uh, some of the Epstein you know files of it all does seem to cast dispersions, let's just say, on the innocence of the folks using it to answer every single question.
Plus those hilarious depositions. When you can get a hold of the footage where it's somebody being asked a question, they just go fifth.
Hold on, I plead the fifth?
Yeah, five?
Is that a Chappelle thing?
Yes?
Yeah, yeah, it's so good.
The Fifth Amendment states mandates that no person shall quote be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself. That's why people are saying that does it imply that you did a crime?
I guess I've been hearing a lot of chatter too. Maybe you guys have thoughts about this, certainly you do.
Whether or not it is.
Lost some of its effectiveness or there is a world where it is unfairly used or used in a way that seems to be a way of skirting the law rather than it being a benefit to individual civil liberties.
I mean, it definitely can happen. It can be loopholed, weaponized, especially if you have the socioeconomic wherewithal to get a cracked team of lawyers. Then they are going to do everything possible to get the best outcome for whatever your case is. It also Maxwell right, Galai Maxwell cough cough
current Potus cough cough right. I mean, I don't know, it's it's weird because if we ask why it's important, Like to your point, Noel, the laws only work so long as they are honestly enforced, which is coming in increasing issue here. But why did the founding fathers, who were very busy at the time, why did they make the Constitution and then go back and make a whole
other document we call the Bill of Rights. It's probably because George and the boys knew how crazy English law could get, and if we're being honest, just a little outside of the textbook, they probably knew they would be up for some serious accusations of war crimes if things didn't go to plant.
All right, I mean George and the boys were revolutionaries, Oh yeah, criminals you know, a terrorists perhaps, right, they could be called that by the English crown.
Yeah, and if you're doing a little pigh in the sky with the Founders, you may think, oh, they recognize that power can be abused, you know, no matter who's holding it, and maybe even we could become corrupted one day. No, that's a little bit mythical. Well when it comes there's so many Founding Father mythical things that are out there, But there is a knowledge here that it just depends on who's on the other side of the table in
that eight x ten room, right, it just depends. So you need to have safeguards to protect everybody.
Well, I mean the whole point of the Second Amendments and the right to bear arms was i believe specifically in reference to defending yourself against a corrupt government.
Yes, yeah. Also the also the mandate against being forced to station troops in your home and to feed them and so on. Like a lot of this stuff is a good idea in theory. Another thing about who's on which side of the interrogation table. There's something called the sixth Amendment in the United States, which was an absolute
banger when it came out. It said you have the right to the assistance of counsel, which means that in a criminal interrogation caveat pastric copyat, you have the right to speak with an attorney before speaking to law enforcement. This is why in all the copaganda films or programs you see on television, that's why someone suddenly clams up and just says, lawyer, that does happen, Yeah, for sure.
And these are the Miranda rights, ben Or like I believe, I've always been curious as to the etymology. That's not the right word, but just the history of the Miranda rights. Obviously it had something to do with, you know, people not being aware, and it was a way of covering the butts of the law enforcement as well as you know, making individuals accused of a crime aware of their rights.
But it seems like most of the ones that are contained in those rights they read you are contained within the Bill of Rights.
Yeah, yeah, it's supposed to. It's from nineteen sixty six Miranda versus Arizona Supreme Court case, and eventually, as a result of the Court's findings, the United States said, look, we need a special additional protection to make sure the Fifth Amendment against self incrimination is a thing everybody knows about because not everybody knew about it. Right, you're panicked,
you're detained, you may have done something. You may have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and then in your panic you might run a little bit at the mouth.
In a way, the thing you say can and will be used against you in a court of loss. That just don't say anything. We're trying to help you out there, buddy, We're doing to have a solid here.
That's something that attorneys will often say, and they'll they'll usually on the YouTube at least they'll give that same disclaimer we gave. Hey, this is my legal advice. I'm just telling you my experience as an attorney. This concept that anything you say that that part of them Miranda writes, anything you say or do can't be used against you
in a court of law. The concept that when you are being interviewed, right, if you are in one of those rooms, you are probably already looked as guilty of something by the folks who put you in that room, or at least have a strong suspicion that you're guilty of something.
You are sus my friend, Yes, indeed, so when you.
Say things in that room, it is not to defend yourself by any means. It is literally to build the case against you what you're saying in that room.
Right, regardless of how friendly the demeanor may be.
Exactly so. But once you have that attorney present, right, or and you have discussions with an attorney, then you can say things that are probably going to be better for you.
Yeah. Again, these two amendments in particular might sound a little bit sketchy, but anybody who's been on the wrong side of certain conversations with law enforcement knows exactly why those rights exist, why they're so important. Before the rise of modern legal proceedings, which are still very much work in progress, the law was arbitrary and cartoonishly brutal. The local ruler, whomever the mucky you muck may be, could, at any point in time just decide they don't like
you for one reason or another. Maybe you're Jewish, maybe you're from the poor part of town, maybe there's economic instability. They need a convenient scapegoat. So if targeted, your guilt is historically going to be assumed, and the protections, at least in Western Europe, for proving oneself innocent were likewise kind of buffo trial by ordeal, like, hey, you know, trial by ordeal could be something like sticking your hand and boiling water or just fighting and seeing who survives.
Are you all up on Night of the Seven Kingdoms? Yes, I think it's phenomenal, I want to say, And the most recent episode involved a trial by combat, which I've always found delightfully brutal and just esoteric and like it's
about the gods they decide. You mentioned in the document here ban or the outline, the idea of a kangaroo court, h the notion that for optics, for the presentation of fairness, we will have a trial, but the outcome is predetermined, and it is all literally just to say we did the thing and you know, keep the peace quote unquote, make make you know, perhaps prevent an uprising because no, no,
we did. We gave them their fair shake. But it is in fact predetermined and you have no chance of being acquitted.
Yes, And we see even back then, we see the same method of loaded questions that exist in modern interrogations today. So it's not necessarily for instance, hey, Dylan tennessee pel Fagan, did you kill mothman instead? It's hey, Dylan, why did you kill Mothman?
He had it coming.
So pretty much attack and those buns were too glistening for my takes. I couldn't have a creature that beautiful in the world Premio looking like a Master's of the Universe action figure.
Yeah, they really does.
Even back then, I was like, oh, in the days of winterfella.
No, yeah, so the days of before the fall of winterfel. I mean, okay, So during this time we see that interrogation wasn't highly evolved the way it is theoretically today. Theoretically, right, if you're an enemy soldier, they're going to torture you for information and then they'll murder you in any number of ghastly ways. And so this is how crooked it was. You.
Let's say you fell victim to the inquisition. Maybe you are an older person living on the fringes of society they need someone to blame.
Might have a word on your nose, you know, or you might have.
You might have assets, especially like property of some sort. And often the inquisitors were I don't work it on commission, so they got a share of your stuff if they were able to quote unquote prove you're a witch, which meant that they were incentivized not to find the truth but to get your stuffed.
Yeah.
Bit of that.
Going on with the ice raids these days in terms of their quotas that they've got to meet. If you're incentivized that way, not to mention the bonuses of it all, you are much more likely to take some shortcuts and you know, roll up people that maybe shouldn't be rolled up.
Yeah, And saying I'm not a witch could indeed be held as solid proof that you are in fact a witch. Or saying you know, I have my passport, it's just over there, can I get it?
And then being told we don't have time. We're just sorting a shot in the face when you reach for it, right. Not to be too much of a pill about it. It's just there's a lot of parallels here, you know, Like again, saying I am a US citizen in many ways is even further reason to drag people, you know, through the ringer.
And you're talking about in the olden.
Days, the witch trials of it all using a methodology that is inherently flawed, and that is there's no version of these events where you are going to come out clean on the other side, once you've been pulled into this rigmarole.
I mean, the issue here is that the inquisitors would get whatever confession they wanted, it would not necessarily be an accurate confession because torture doesn't work at least in that way. Torture is very good at getting people, the victims, to say whatever you want them to say, but it is not very good at getting them to tell you the truth, especially with perishable intelligence.
Whether it works or not, I guess is a question of what you want the outcome to be. You know, are people actually seeking the truth or are they just looking to oppress?
And then further, once that confession by Hooker by Krop was obtained, then the victim of these proceedings pretty much lost all their usefulness. There was no longer really a reason to keep them alive. It was much more socio economically advantageous for the authorities to kill that person in a public spectacle to set an example. So progress has been made, but there's still a lot of work to do.
The US on paper has a clear code of rights, roles responsibilities to Matt's point for everybody involved, and these roles and responsibilities and rights. They're all about how info is disclosed, the rights of the person being questioned, and the limits on behavior for those seeking the answers. Again caveat pof cough as.
Not supposed to hit the people in your interview room right now, supposed to Luther looking at you.
I've been watching Luther.
I just watched that.
I didn't realize there was a fifth season. I binged on it's the entire thing last night. Really good.
You're also supposed to respect the rules of the road as far as things like attorney client privilege, so you can't can't sneak a little little eavesdropping in. But this is the deal. We keep saying the word theoretically, we keep saying phrases like on paper. That's because the US has a terrifying track record when it comes to interrogation. Some of us in the crowd tonight are old enough to remember when government agencies throughout the rule book entirely.
And if we enhanced these interrogations.
Exactly engaged in a system of torture known as enhanced interrogation. They argued, Look for the greater good, we have to kidnap people around the world, and we have to find creative ways to beat the hit out of them until they tell us what we want to know. And this was the old ticking time bomb scenario, the idea that a terrorist attack could occur within months, hours, days, and saving many lives therefore outweighed the sin of ending one and people just always.
A scary argument, the greater good argument. I don't know that there's a version of it that benefits everyone.
I think it's such.
As it kind of a straw man argument. Maybe just the idea of the greater good. It just feels like double speak, like there is no version of for the greater good that is actually for the greater good.
It's a rationalization, it's it's a way for the people in power who are doing untoward things to justify their actions, especially given that history has shown us time and time again the ticking time bomb scenario proves false. Doesn't really happen the way it's depicted.
Such a weird thing that went down in history. Guys, you know the September eleventh attacks. If they went down the way the government says they went down, then it was a terrible breach of intelligence and a horrifying loss
of life. And you know, just a whole it was just terrible, right, So I think we all understand that that base desire to prevent that from happening again, you know all the show twenty four and and folks who are out there on land, Yeah, yes, who want to stop those bad guys, And we're the guys are stopped
the bad guys. That rationalization thing you're talking about there very least right, Well, it is, but it's also really tough to just to recognize and realize that it went on for years and years and years with that same rationalization of preventing one of these with the number of human beings that get, you know, stuck in a location in another country that is not the one they're from, not the US place where they're just in a hole and being subject to the things we're going to describe here.
I don't know, as we're going through it, I don't know how you like categorize what's what's the worst verse version of the things we're going to talk about right that someone could experience. But the more I go through this, I feel like sleep deprivation is one of those things that I didn't understand how horrifying sleep deprivation just alone is when it comes to what was happening to human beings during that time that the United States subjected people to.
Yeah, yeah, these are all great points because as we record right now, folks, there are multiple people in Guantanamo Bay and something like twenty sixhi Ish black sites around the world, third part of countries, and a lot of these people who have been held for years or decades.
They've never been officially accused of a crime. They've been waterboarded, put in stress positions, cold rooms, deprived of sleep, force fed, beaten, sodomized, and emotionally manipulated to disclose information that they did not and do not possess. Barking up the wrong tree and we're torturing the tree in the process.
Guys, I just had a this is probably obvious, but I was reminded and watching some YouTube stuff the other day that the Department of Homeland Security is such a recent innovations, like it was literally created as a response
to nine to eleven. I know probably everybody remembered that but me, But I kind of it just goes to show how quickly something can be normalized and you kind of forget the circumstances that led it to the creation of a thing that now has taken on this whole other bizarre life of its own.
And homeland is a very specific word choice for a government agency like that. Right, No, it's a fascism if I was sipping it like ice coffee or wine. Ooh, World War two.
Here we'll have our home.
Again, guys, and we will protect that home by listening to everything everybody says and watching everyone on every street corner, but definitely not the cell phones. We won't look at your cell phones camera, guys, pinky promise, did you get let us see the there's a recent picture of net and Yahoo on the phone by his car, and it's his personal phone, and he's got tape with black marker across all of three of the cameras.
Should pay attention to what those guys in the political class pay attention to what they do with their phones. We also, we also know the scenes so clearly where we should save the quiet part out loud. The Patriot Act devilish thing, just tremendous marketing in the name, Like Congressman, could you explain why you voted against the Patriot Act?
Ooh, just because look you're we assumed you were patriot serving your constituency of US citizens, but you voted against.
The Patriot Act.
Yeah, why do you hate the troops so much?
Man?
That term patriot has become such a dog whistle these days.
I can't handle it.
It's just bro When you refer to somebody as being a patriot in a certain context, you're basically saying that they, you know, are they just like white people.
It's it has become a dog whistle. Agree with that. And let's also I'm not saying that's accurate.
I'm saying that's the way it's used. That's the parlance that it has taken on, you know.
Weaponized, right, and dog whistled. As you said. It's also we shouldn't forget that, Uh, Patriot didn't just become a dog whistle. It's also the name of one of the most dangerous missiles on the planet.
What a weird thing to name a missile and an excellent nineteen nineties political thriller Patriot cames.
We're rolling out our newest ICBM. It's a hypersonic missile. We call it the Puppy Hug.
Oh yeah, well that to our point. We often make the most of the more innocuous to name the scarier the thing. So puppy hug would be the ultimate doomsday device.
I think drop a puppy hug. Oh my gosh, that's going to come back to bitus. All right, So we know, we hope you never find yourself in any situation like this. Ever, we hope not. But if you do, you need to understand that, depending on the amount of time the questioners have with you, you will break. No matter how badass you feel right now as you're tuning in, you will break. And we have that confirmed by people who've been through interrogation,
real hard cases. You know, members of special forces, for instance, across the planet, right, members of terrorist and counter terrorist groups. Things get hairy no matter who you are. Given enough time, and depending upon the methods of physical and mental torture, you're eventually not only going to confess, but you'll confess this stuff that isn't true. You'll say whatever they want as long as you can get some water, go to sleep, maybe hope to regrow your fingernails.
Yew.
Yeah, that's one of them.
Well, well, you know when we're gonna talk about it, But when these interrogation techniques are crazy A effective. They don't have to actually torture you physically. It's all in this thing and they know it.
It is.
But I was watching a video of a guy SAS, which is I always forget because I watched extras and I Special Air Services. I think is the actual essays? Yeah, did you guys see that one where there's I forget the actor's name, but he's like, I'm in s I S. But he's not actually at all. He's like a just an actor and puts on that he was an essay. I can't remember anyway, I'm sorry. Ye Oh crap, I've completely lost my place. Now, never mind, no mental break.
Let's keep it mental break. Because you could water after someone has been waterboarded often enough, right, then here's a here's a form of the psychological manipulation. You don't have to waterboard them anymore. It is traumatizing enough for them to see you walk in with a bucket and put the towel on the table.
Yeah. But the biggest thing you're saying, though, is the sleep deprivation. When they get trained, the SAS soldiers get trained to resist interrogation. It's a known thing that you cannot right, but it is a time thing, yes, like how long can you go?
Basically yes, exactly, your only choice, resist as long as possible, and hope that help arrives. Please beware, folks, there are going to be some graphic depictions of violence here. Here's where it gets grease, all right again, Virtually anyone, everyone will break given incentives and time. This means that the smartest, meanest guys on the planet spend a lot of time figuring out what effective interrogation looks like, right, how to resist it, and at the same time time, how to
overcome that resistance. Because learning to resist interrogation and learning to break resistance are two fingers on the same hand, they're just two different ways of looking at the same skill sets and techniques. So for comparison, folks, let's think of it this way. Think of it as the difference between flame proof and flame resistant. Flame Proof is a myth because past a certain temperature, pretty much anything will burn jet. You'll still be et cetera. Flame resistance, we
got to get it in. Flame Resistant is more accurate, though, because it describes making flame difficult, and that's the key to resisting interrogation. You're never going to be interrogation proof.
Well, and I also like to stick with that analogy. It is not in the best interests of the interrogator to set someone on fire, you know, letting the word go, because you're not going to get anything out of them. So, you know, being a little bit resistant to these techniques, it could serve you well being that their job is to meet out just enough to you know, to get you to do what they want to do, rather than to like, you know, do the whole thing up front.
Yeah, that's a great point that leads us directly to one of the most important things, the good news. Let's hit the good news first. If you are in an interrogation scenario, that means you have not already been murdered. That means you, for the moment, are alive, and that logically means your captors want something from you. It could be information on an operation they think you're involved in.
If it's that, they're gonna want the specific old school journalism details who, what, when, and where, don't worry about why because they feel like they figured out why before they snagged you.
That's right.
There's that classic line you often see in these types of thrillers where it's like if.
They wanted us dead, we'd be dead.
We'd be dead already, you know, Like there is that certain amount of level that comes with the fact that that you are in captivity and being kept alive for reasons, so you have the very least amount of leverage you could hope for. But it is something, Yeah, it is.
And it also could be as simple as your questioners believing that they already know the answers to the questions they are going to ask you, right, they just need you to say it, or they want you to sign something. Also, never sign anything, I mean, signe stuff for your regular life. Don't be afraid of that, like a credit card slip or whatever. But and this thing, don't sign stuff.
Oh, let's talk about it really quickly. Because in that same says training, he talks about at some point pretty soon into your interrogation, they attempt to get you to sign something, and they'll use something simple like, hey, I bet you're really thirsty. I'll give you this drink. All you gotta do is sign this, you know, and like someone will come in gently at some point and offer you things for a quick signature at the moment like the height of your discomfort yeah.
And then that goes into the mental hacks of forcing compliance, putting somebody in a kobayashi maru situation where there's no correct answer, there's no way to not comply, or then also getting you to do it's almost like little salesperson tactics, like saying, here, we'll give you this water. I know you don't want to sign anything, but just hold this pen for a second. I'm giving you this pen. I want you to hold this pen, so just say yes
and take the pin. That happens, and it's effective because as accumulative, it accumulates in your mind. Right, the habit of saying yes and comply. Is this your jacket. That's one of the examples from an SAS video and it's clearly the guy's jacket. But if he says yes, then he's starting to comply. And every time you break that seal, it's a little bit easier and more tempting to say yes to another thing, and that yes is always going
to escalate. But at party's I mean, but like the confirming information thing, guys, that's what gets mean because that can be so tricky in an interrogation. They already they say, they already know the answer, right. They'll ask you something that you know they know and that you can confirm, like is this your cousin Janet? Didn't Janet live in far rockaway New York. They might not be threatening Janet yet, although that could be implied. But they're getting you. It's
all about getting you to say yes. And the most important thing to remember at this point is the following you say, good news, you're alive, aster caveat. You are probably only alive due to possible information you possess or your larger propagandistic value. So every time you disclose information, you lose a little bit of that value. Does that makes sense?
Does?
I'm having a really disturbing picture kind of in my mind, and I don't want to believe that we could ever get there again, especially here in the United States. But the concept that anyone, you, me, anyone could get picked up at some point and be forced under these kinds of conditions an attempt to get information about like where your family is. Yes, right, And that feels so World War two to me, so in the past, so it can't happen again. But we know that that kind of
thing has occurred again since World War Two. And in other parts of the world, not always where the US is engaged in stuff, but sometimes, but just the concept of information about where your family is hiding. I don't know, there's something so insidious and terrifying to that, But now I can kind of see it happening.
Oh one hundred percent. I mean, think of the various red scares here in the United States, or think of the multiple genocides, right and the operations of secret police. Stuff like that is happening in Iran right now, and it may be on the way to an even more extreme degree here in the United States sooner than we would like to think. History does a lot of things, but originality is not one of humanity's strong suits.
Yeah, especially when we keep repeating the same mistakes of the past.
Yes, I think it's one of those things that maybe a lot of us because of popular culture. See, someone who would be undergoing this kind of interrogation would be a part of some military group, right, or some elite you know, like an SAS or Navy seals or someone you know, a soldier who's behind enemy lines or something. But it just realizing that it doesn't have to be that, and it could even be the government of a country that you are in and you're a citizen of could be subjecting you to this.
Absolutely yeah. And especially in a case of moral panic, you might just have misfortune of carrying a very similar name to a suspected criminal, you know what I mean, and then you have to say, oh, I'm not that Ben Bolan, and they're like, that's what you would say, isn't it.
Well, Ben Boland would definitely say that.
I mean, guys, I think we maybe take for granted a little bit the ease with which we're able to traverse different borders, you know, and travel internationally with very little incidents.
I've certainly never been detained or anything like that.
Is there a world though, whereas things get a little more heated between our country and other countries where we might not enjoy that same level of you know, undisturbed border crossing.
Absolutely yeah, I feel it. I feel it coming.
Absolutely moving toward a what we call a multi polar world, sort of balkanizes the current international order. For instance, I know of a friend who a while back was traveling to Japan as a foreigner, right and this was not the US national but at the time they had to upon arrival in Japan, they had to provide the address of where they were staying. This is not uncommon in a lot of countries, run into it in the UK, for instance, But they address they provided, this is a
somewhat thrifty person. The address they provided was in a very bad slum because it was the cheapest hostile in the area. It's heavily associated with criminal activity. So this person, because of that address of a place that were staying at for like a week or two. Because of that address, they were detained for further questioning by the Japanese state. And from what I understand, this was not a horror show.
This was more like your buddies checking in and going okay, sir, so you're staying at this hostel and he's like, yeah, okay, you know why we stopped you, right, that's a terrible neighborhood.
Well, I mean, frankly, even the most innocuous encounter with a passport control agent is a mild interrogation.
Yeah, and I I love an audition and I feel bad you guys when I feel like I worked hard on being cool and having good answers and then they're just like, oh you again, all right, go ahead.
Well, but I even have felt I've even felt a little gun shy in the situation where I'm like almost like am I.
Doing something bad?
Like I just feel almost like, you know, I've I've almost stuttered a few times when asked who I'm going to see, where I met them, how I know them, Where am I staying?
How long am I going to be here? I have found myself, but I don't know. I wasn't ready for this, you.
Know, and i've ever you know, had any issues, But I do feel that sense, and I just wonder how I would react given a much more aggressive form of Yeah.
That's the thing too, because this is interesting when those folks are asking you questions. Just real quick pro tip for anybody there. The information is secondary to how you react a million part. That's why. Yeah, if you've ever been put on the spot, maybe if you're not, if you're not already kind of an extroverted person, then the simplest questions can leave you feeling like a deer in the headlights, like oh, what day in August is your birthday? Like, oh, my.
Birthday, I have to say this out loud and say when you.
Say something like I do have a birthday.
Yeah, I was born a human right.
And it's funny too, because a lot of times those agents they ask people these things sort of randomly. You'll see people in front of you get a complete pass zero back and forth, and then they get to you and they ask you the questions.
You're like, what is it about me that make mean you know? Worthy of these questions?
I'll tell you you did not pass the ocular pat down. No, that's what happened. You gotta first gird yourself for the ocular pat down.
Ye, your Lloyd's for being undressed.
Yes, that's then Mac will. Mac will look you up and down and then back up a little bit and then finally back up to your eyes. And once he gets there, he will know if he needs to ask you further question this.
I thought I thought Mac cleared him? Did you not clear them? Uh? God? What a show? All right. So what we're saying is, regardless of these situations, we'll get into the very deep, painful water. If you are in an interrogation situation, you don't have legal counsel, say as little as possible, don't say anything, because if they were going to kill you, they already would have. And if they're dragging stuff out, it means they still want something
for you. This is where we get to the methods of things like survival, evasion, resistance, and escape or sare.
Really quickly ben Just sticking with the international side of things for a second, Ye, you are you entitled to perhaps the representation from your local consulate or like or are you just on your own like if you're not, you know, in your home turf, like, do you still get to have some representation or at that point is it kind of you know, every every traveler for themselves.
It's a great question depends. I mean, these are sovereign countries, right, so you're playing in an away game. Typically if there is a consulate or an embassy of your home nation in that other nation, then you can request them for help. You can request help from them, you can notify them. Hey, this stuff went sideways, but their ability to intervene is
going to vary place by place. Especially you know, consider if you are in a country that is hostile ale to the United States already and the US doesn't have an embassy there.
They're prerogative to even produce that person for your right.
You become a bargaining chip right likes as it has happened so often in the DPRK or North Korea street name. But then they'll contact a friendly embassy that does its best to vicariously represent your country's interests. So for instance, surprise, there's not a US embassy in Tehran in Iran, but stuff goes through the Swiss embassy. So if you are sol and you're beyond the reach of the embassy right
or beyond the reach of friendly forces. If you are in the military, you'll be familiar with something called SAIR again survival, evasion, resistance and escape. It's not the word SAIR, which is different.
And this is a type of training right school they call it, especially if you're like in the deep cover operative or I believe I first heard of this on the show lion S, which is an excellent, you know kind of military sort of spy ops, you know, black ops kind of show. And going to sear school is where you're like put through the ringer. It is considered like the gnarliest of training scenarios.
Yeah, it's pretty brutal.
Like they beat the out of you as part of your training to make sure you won't crack.
Yeah, once you get the level C for sure. I mean, so this is a training regimen that was first deployed by our British cousins in World War Two. Initially, what they were trying to figure out is this, how do we help soldiers or pilots especially who find themselves stranded behind enemy lines. We got to teach them four basic things. First, survival makes sense, all about finding food, water, shelter, and cops. Second, evasion, hide, don't die on this hill, run away, get in the woods,
run away, which is what you should. I mean, martial arts supports evasion as well, avoid the fight if you can. And then we get to resistance. This one sucks. Resistance is the rough one. That's about fighting when you have to going back to evasion, resist the interrogation so long as possible, and trying to run out that clock until you reach the final letter. Escape. Escape is the dream escape.
When the real dream is extraction, Like the real dream is like holding out until you are rescued, you know, and people know where you are.
That is the catbird seat.
But oftentimes that's not going to be the case, and you're going to absolutely be on your own.
Yeah, you know. Extraction is sort of the business class of escape to one. Here we go, Yes, exactly, you sweet.
The really scary part to me about all this is that when you sign up for something like SAS, which oh in extras I remembered, guys, it's super army soldiers, that's what he says it is, but it's actually that's not at all what it is. But the scary thing is that if you are known to have been captured or at least, let's say, lost behind enemy lines during some kind of operation that probably shouldn't be happening or isn't officially happening. Uh, then it's that thing we've we
discussed before. I can't remember what episode it was Ben in Noll, but we talked about that denial of operations that will.
Maybe disavowed like the unwarned access, disavowment of official involvement.
So I would just argue that that's why the E is escape and not extraction.
Escape is the is the broader term. But yes, if disavowed, which can't happen, and these guys know what they're signing up for. If disavowed, you are Kevin McAllister, I'm alone, you know what I mean?
All right? Peez? What love her? So much and yes, yeah, you're definitely doing this one.
Right if you can still move your hands. Yeah, But the important caveat so here in the US, you'll hear about this being taught on an ABC tier, meaning that the at the most extreme levels, Like we're saying, your trainers can do a lot of mean stuff to you. Some of it might not sound so bad if you're just watching the YouTube video. We say, oh, they can hit you with an open hand, but not a closed fist. These guys slap hard just to be good, like you
slap pretty hard. And they also they also are trained to deliver physical damage to the same place each time. So no matter how hard you are or how much punishment you think you could take, you can shrug it. Maybe you can shrug it a first slap, right, But then what if it's the same thing repeatedly, same area, right? And then they say okay, and by the way, we're also going to start slapping your friend and hurting them because you didn't comply. And while they're hurting your friend,
they say, look at that guy, it's his fault. We don't want to do this.
Well to great point, Ben, because so much of this is not only about are there to go hand in hand not only about resisting physical pain and abuse, but the emotional toll that can take on you over time, and the way physical abuse or torture or whatever attacks on others is then used and weaponized against you, and the idea of like not allowing that to seep into your psyche. So it's not only about hardening yourself physically, it's about how do you, you know, process these things emotionally.
It really is like ninety nine percent mental game. When it comes to all the things we're about to talk about, including being slapped, they we we I know if you've mentioned it before, but you guys have heard of power slap, right, dude.
It comes up on my feet all the time when they like powder their hands all up and whenever they get the slap, you to see this cloud of like the hand chalk just exploding and then the boy they hit the deck.
Sometimes it is brutal stuff.
It's the Dana White you know UFC competition. Yeah, it is actually Dana White and it's actually their thing, which, by the way, according to this you can see Wolverine take on the Crazy Hawaiian On March sixth, Wolverine's.
Got an edge though, Guys, he's out of manteam clause. I wouldn't want to go slap by that guy.
He had a skeleton too. That a mantium skull means you'll break your hands slap them exactly.
But just just to read your point, Ben, that slapping isn't maybe what you think it is.
Yeah, the real slap is not as cool as you know slap jokes. So we we also know that people have died in trading like this. It's just unfortunate, but we have to admit this is serious enough that there is a rate of attrition, a fatal rate of attrition that can occur. And in this situation. Again, it's all to familiarize you with the possibility of this happening in real life. So if you are in a real life situation like this, your only value is propaganda or information.
The information you have may be perishable. You want to deny it for as long as possible. But at the same time, you want to appear to be reluctantly compliant and to appear to be mentally and physically infirm. Sadly, appearing to be mentally and physically infirm is not going to be difficult after seventy two hours without sleepwater or food.
Yeah, and of brutal beatings.
And I just want to add one more time, the tailor shared and show Lion asked the very first season, it just does such an incredible job of like dramatizing all of the stuff that we're talking about here, Like, I'd never really understood how psychotic this stuff is until I saw that season of television.
So dude, check that out if you're interested.
I am going to look that up. To the mental game stuff, we also see things like burn this flag and you can have whatever you want, or something like hey, we can feed you, but we're going to feed you.
Pork or poop.
Right, very very nasty stuff that has been to attack somebody's core identity and values. That makes it easier to comply. I what say we take a quick break for word from our sponsors, and maybe we get into some of the helpful rules for resisting interrogation. We have returned. Here are the rules. One, do not make eye contact. Ever, they will ask you to look at them, Don't do it.
Is it because they can see into your soul?
Is it sort of like a poker faced kind of situation?
Like because if you're in if you're an experienced interrogator, you can learn a lot from the eyes. Or is it a power dynamic thing, which I guess figures into my first question.
Yeah, I think it's both, at least because the folks we were researching for this, professional interrogators from all sorts of places. They put a lot of emphasis on the importance of making eye contact with a victim or a detaining.
You can't hide your lion eyes, that's for sure.
I wonder, and I don't have it in front of me, or I didn't find this in my research, you guys, But I wonder if it is to prevent the person being interrogated from humanizing the person sitting across from them, or identifying with them in some way, or finding, you know, that connection, because when you make eye contact with someone, there is like a there's a connection that occurs, the window.
To the soul.
There's a certain amount that you cannot truly shield from experienced you know, well experience or inexperience, like the idea of making deep eye contact is one of the most intimate things you can do with say a partner or on a date, you know, with a friend, because you really do have this unfiltered view into the humanity of that person.
And if you're trained to read micro expressions, then the eyes and the muscles around them are a gold mine because people can people can have enough control over their larger body language or their larger facial expressions. But if you are a specifically trained interrogator, and if you've had previous experience, then you can tell a lot by little twitches or by the unconscious directions in which an eye moves.
What even like the constriction or dilation of the pupils that can come with certain emotional responses, not just like drugs, like literally adrenaline flooding your system because you're telling a lie or that you're something triggers you in a certain way. I believe that could cause some of these unintentional or subconscious not sound quite the right word, but just you know, literally physiological reactions that someone in the know could interpret.
Yeah, might just really thought it would be a good thing for I. Yeah, that's shows how a naive I am. I really thought it would be a good thing for someone in that situation to make that connection with their you know, potential torture or their interrogator to like show in some way I am also human. I am you know, like that kind of thing. But I think if you're dealing with someone that is, yeah, that kind.
Of beyond that kind of influence, right. I truly think that there's no version of the world where you are a human or where they're going to like empathize.
That's just you.
Yeah, And if you're a proper interrogator, you have sort of had the empathy beaten out of you in many ways. And that's a feature, not a bug, right right.
Yeah, well said, you have to be able to emulate that empathy or rapport. So the most some of the most successful interrogations in history are not the waterboarding ones. They're not the ones where you torture someone and they give you information. They're the ones where, say, someone is tortured by another one of your coworkers, let's call them, and later you come in as the good cop. This is when you establish rapport, like hey, look at me, man, all right, this is things can get out of hand.
None of us wanted to be here today. I would like to give you some orange juice. As a matter of fact, I will. All you have to do is help me help you out a little bit, all right, or else I'm going to have to leave, and the other guy his shifts up next. So that kind of rapport building can be very effective, but it's also an artifice. The interrogators to those points don't really care pass getting
the information. And if you do have to speak, which you might have to save your life, only repeat what you said initially. Just like if you are being interviewed by police, they will ask you the same question about the same events multiple different ways because they want you to trip up. They want some part of your story to differ from one iteration to the next. That's why you hear that old movie troupe about someone getting caught by enemy forces and say name, ranked, serial number whatever.
But as silly as it sounds, there's truth to it. You encounter semantic satiation, it becomes a mantra, and it can even move you away a little bit from the dire physical circumstances.
Question for the class, if we're just a regular old citizen, what is our name, rank, serial number?
I would say pick three things that just stick with it. Social, your social If you really want to be a jerk, just tell them your vin.
For your car, citizen or a podcaster. I think it would.
Be a driver's license pavilion.
Yeah, something like that. Also, if you get to the point where there's hard questioning, your interrogation is going to be increasingly tailored to give you the most nightmarish time possible. So what do we mean by this. We mean that if you have a social media footprint that will be researched, All of your known associations or interactions will be researched.
Any any medical dependencies you might have, like a heart medication or something, or insulin, they're going to know about that too, and they're all they're going to use all this information to squeeze whatever they can out of you. So like, how silly could this be? Or how terrifying? In one case, and this was on the I want to say this was on the US or British side. In one case, they knew a detainee had an historic, deep phobia of bugs, so they locked them in a
metal coffin. They filled it with insects, not the kind that could you poison him or anything, and they locked him in there for three days because they knew how to tailor that nightmare toward him. So as you progress further, they're going to be able to say like oh this guy is terrified of touching metal, or like oh this person is something simple.
They would menace me with birds, Ben. That's what happened, you know, the escalation of bird menacing once they got to like eagle say, i'd I'd give them everything they wanted to hear, just get that thing away from me.
Look, mister Brown, I don't want to put you back in the room with the shoe bill.
Okay, I got to put you in that room unnatural dinosaur ass creatures.
Yeah, what do you want me to say? What do you want me to say?
Right? Exactly?
Cute too.
I think I think they're a little bit sarcastic. I think they've got a little bit of zest to them because they if they like you, they will to you when you bow to them, just like the deer at Nara Park, And you can see videos of this. But I think the way they bow is a little bit sassy. I don't like that. Yeah, they share, they're making fun of you, like, oh, this is your thing. I guess I'll bow for you.
Just God forbid a cashuary.
Those things will gut you in a heartbeat.
Oh yeah, no, shoe bilover a cassewary any day. They shoe bills just seem like very sweet animals that look like Pinister Star Wars villains.
Cashuaries are like the velociraptor of the of the Bird Kingdom.
Whatever.
They've got some stuff they need to unpack evolutionarily. But yeah, so again we're saying composure always. Like we said, this applies to passport control as well as deep interrogation. The interrogator is often not going to look for your overt vocalizations. Instead, the questioner is going to say, what are your micro expressions? Where your eyes moving when you talk about certain things,
what's your posture? What's your sweat? And now days with the rollout of very affordable medical monitoring technology, you're probably also going to say, how did their heart rate change? When I asked them about this? Even if they didn't look at me, they didn't react. Why.
We haven't even really talked about polygraph tests, so we certainly know those are incredibly fallible and increasingly.
Less reliable.
Right, yeah, yep, exactly.
To your point, though, it almost might be a better value to just check their Apple watch, you know, and just see the elevated heart rate and you know when it spikes. On a particular question, I wanted to ask you, guys, what do you think it takes to make a good interrogator. Do you think that's something you like go out for like a football team, like is there something you're shooting for? Or do you get recognized as having the skill set to be a good interrogator?
Psychopathy?
There you go.
Yeah, you can say this surgence right and CEOs right when maybe one way to put it is through analogy. One of the guys who was the big whistleblower for the CIA's enhanced interrogation program the way he described being recruited, was already worked at the CIA, right, He already had loads of experience under his belt, and then he was invited along with thirteen other people to get certification in this kind of interrogation. And he's one of the only folks who said no, But the rest went on to
commit war crimes. So an interrogator would ideally have a sense of mission, right, a greater good such that they can rationalize the horrific stuff they're going to do to people. They probably will also have an understanding like the dream interrogator will also have undergone some version of these tactics themselves, so they know they know the other side of the experience.
And then they will also either have medical training or they'll have a medical expert on staff, maybe just out of frame to keep.
Them alive, yes, right, to bring them back from the Yeah, you see, Yeah for sure. And you got to wonder too, if the mission part of it is almost tertiary, like there's a version of this where it's just people that really like hurting people.
Definitely, that definitely exists. History seems to indicate that those guys actually don't make the best interrogators m because they're the idea of achieving information it self becomes secondary to their ghoulish love of harming others.
That's a great point, Ben, I didn't think about them.
I don't know. I mean, they'll probably get results, but I don't know if you want someone gleefully getting those results, because then how dependable are they? Right? If you train a dog to bite, what's going to stop it from biting you one day?
Well?
I mean, and you know, not to get back into the ice of it all, but it certainly starts to you start to see that level of what are we looking for in an ice recruits as more looking for people that are just like wanting to hurt people or wanting to you know, live out some of their sociopathic kind of fantasies. We've talked often about, like off Mike at least, like what happened to the Proud Boys? How
come they're not out there doing the thing anymore? It's because they're all they're all iced up now, and those are folks that are probably have a mission, sure, but they also just want to hurt people who don't look like them.
I don't think you should give cause players real guns. Don't know why that became a hot take, but the this is the thing to repetition escalation. We talked a little bit about this, asking the same questions over and over again until you can't even really understand what they're saying, because that's semantic satiation. They're breaking you down. Semantic satiation is when you take a word or a phrase and you just repeated it repeated and repeated. Eventually it loses
all meaning to your brain. It's a fun thing to try at home in safe circumstances, but it can be really brutal experience and interrogation. That's why you're mantra your one phrase, whatever it is, that's why it's so important. It becomes your resistance tactic. Now you just lose yourself mentally in that phrase.
I just want to remind everybody that everything we're talking in Hero, everything that's happening, at least with the SAS training. What they do is they make sure you have been awake for thirty six hours before they begin the interrogation, and that means you are at least at stage two of sleep deprivation, if not stage three, where hallucinations are beginning. So all of this other stuff, the effects of all the mental game stuff are enhanced, they're amplified, they're intensified.
And that sleep deprivation thing, we should we should talk about it more at some point. I think we did a whole episode on it when we talked about and enhance an interrogation. But it is so it's such a dirty thing to do to somebody, to the mental faculties of somebody. And I'm talking sorry, I'm talking a little weird, y'all. I've been eating these Thai red chilies on purpose to see if I can resist drinking the milk that I've got.
Sound Do you sound great?
Man? I never would have known you're such a heat seeker.
So much the live of happening, But I'm trying to do it just to see as we're talking about these intense things, because it is so like I'm trying to put myself in that position and imagine some of these horrific things, and could could you be mentally strong enough? And I still I don't think you could be.
Yeah, because it's difficult to know how you would react until you're in that situation. And there are you know, the majority of people who end up being interrogated, it's the first time in their lives that happens for real. Right, So you might have training out the wazoo, and thank goodness you have it, but you are going that training is still not going to be the same thing as the real experience. I mean, that's why look extremely spooky dangerous.
People long ago figured out that despite all the tricks and tactics, there are some folks who simply cannot be coerced by personal harm, right or by mental attacks. So their solution then becomes to find an external source of vulnerability, which is much more important like, sure, you might die for your country, but if you could save your child, or your spouse or one of your platoon pals by just signing your propaganda statement, then why wouldn't you?
Does come a point where it's the only.
Choice, and the interrogator always seeks compliance. Nobody really knows how they're going to act in that situation until they've been in it. What you can do, this is funny. This reminds us of the Simple Sabotage Field Manual. What you can't do is fate compliance subtle means of resistance. I think we all remember. The funniest part of the Simple Sabotage Manual is where it tells you how to be just an absolute jerk and a drip at work. They're like, always talk longer than you need to, always
say there should be another meeting about a thing. When confronted about this, weap and say that you have been attacked. That's the thing. You Acting sickly can be helpful in these situations, and you won't have to act that sick really, because you'll already be pretty sick. Read a lot about fainting. Apparently fainting is a tactic that a lot of people would use just to end questioning right and maybe get
some time to recharge. But if you try in front of the wrong people, they're just going to beat the crap out or like dump cold water.
On you or something.
I mean, there's any number of ways to get you to snap out of it. You just mentioned Compliance, Ben, and it just reminded me. I just want to give one more film recommendation that he does a great job of dramatizing a lot of these things that we're talking about, and also describes very well the slippery slope of compliance on the part of an individual being faced with an
authority figure telling them to do horrible things. It's a movie called Compliance by Craig Zobel, and it's about a fast food worker who gets accused of theft and her boss essentially tortures and interrogates her at the behest of an anonymous phone caller who says he's a cop and instructs the manager on various ways of getting the truth quote unquote out of her. And it's a very odd way of framing this kind of thing, but I think
it does a really fantastic job. It's not a pleasant watch, but I think it's very educational.
Is that based on a real thing?
I think it is.
It is that also reminds me of my absolute favorite episode of Law and Order SVU, season nine, episode seventeen, Authority, featuring guest star Robin Williams. Oh wow, spoiler, folks, whenever there's a famous guest star, they usually did it right. I'm right about no offense to the writers. But authority is exactly the same thing. A guy is calling people and sort of hacking their minds and seeing how far they will go in ordinarily evil actions because they feel
that they are complying with an authority. It's a very dangerous problem in humans.
Just also sadly, and you know, disturbingly relevant with a lot of stuff that's going on in the world.
Did I make the Emperor happy?
Right?
Exactly? So? Okay, you could also consider acting out a heart attack right or an eileptic seizure, But if you do that, you have to be convincing enough to persuade the interrogators. Don't attempt that stuff unless you know you can emulate the signs and then upon waking or whatever happens to you after being sickly, just repeat your mantra when they demand information, feel free to tell them half truths,
you know what I mean. It's like you're being questioned about your family to earlier example, you like, most people have a social media blueprint of some sort. Right, you have left traces of you on the internet, So they're gonna know about this, right they you know that they know part of your family lives in far rockaway New York. Maybe the interrogator pulls up an image of your cousin
from their TikTok, ask where they're going next. False compliance in this case would be something like saying, I've heard social media is a big deal.
Nice. Have we thought about a lot of farting, like really really bad gas?
People have literally their pa ants as a power purpose, and it's really difficult to do that.
But I think Matt might be approaching that point with this pepper. That's going to be a hot one.
I mean, this is this is the thing. Right, We've established the basics here. There's much more to get to check out our episodes on whether or not torture works. Spoiler depends on how you define working while you are alive. You have to remember your propaganda value and your info value are perishable, so it's it's as perishable sometimes as a banana or an avocado. So your ultimate goal is escape.
You can escape in a practical sense, right help arrives, you're extracted, but you if you're on your own, then you would have to be able to get out of an interrogation room than a hostile environment. Then somehow get to a friendly country or environment. So the one version of escape people you when they can't do the practical version is philosophical escape. Using that mantras, a milestone, counting your heads, the number of times you say the phrase
to the interrogator. That'll help you keep track of time, because also part of sleep deprivation. What makes it so devilishly effective is it removes your sense of the passage of time. They want you to forget how long you've been in a place.
Well, and it makes you go insane.
Oh yes, oh yes. So hopefully you get home safe, Hopefully help is on the way. Why are we a critical thought conspiracy show exploring all of this, Well, as we've said throughout this episode, it is because right now a great many people in the United States are being interrogated without the protection of those amendments we mentioned earlier. Children do not know SARA tactics, and thank goodness, they
should never have to. They should have ordinary childhoods. And if you live in the US right now, your constitutional rights are being eroded. If you don't have a billion dollars for the ear of Congress, you should start behaving as though you are going to be in some way targeted lest.
Your fork it too.
I mean, in the earlier discussion of the whole ice aspect of this, even if you say, yeah, I'm a US citizen, or you have your papers but you don't have them on you, you may still be detained. And just by being detained, you are being thrown into a system that could take weeks, months longer to get you through the proper channels to get you out of it.
And just by being in these detainment centers, these detention centers which we're gonna do episodes on or episode in the near future, you've already had your rights stripped to view you know, and you're and you're there, and that's goin to the level of PTSD that that being in one of those places is going to cause. It's it's very hard to measure, and it's gonna stick with folks for the rest of their lives. Even if they are eventuallyquote unquote have their rights restored or they're.
You know, they're released.
The damage is done at that point, agreed.
I would just say the vast majority of people aren't going to go through this, I don't think, and I.
We are not trying to be scare mongering here. That's a very good point.
But there are going to be people who go through this. Right just because you don't go through it there, it doesn't mean other people are not going through it. So I think that's maybe for me one of the most important things to keep in mind. I don't know. It could be helpful information, I think.
And again, the at least for me and hopefully for all of us. Folks. Can we hope you are never in a situation remotely like this, and we do hope you realize, especially if you live in the United States, but other places well, your rights as resident are important constitutional rights being eroded. For any rationale, it's a bad thing. Historically, it's a big deal, and this is the stuff they don't want you to know. Thank you so much for tuning in, folks. We would love to hear from you.
We've got some exciting stuff on the way. Also, please recommend some paranormal cryptid topics you'd like us to cover. You can find us online, You can call us on phone. You can always send us an email.
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