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Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noah.
They call me Ben.
We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you.
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That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Friends and neighbors, fellow conspiracy realists, we have something special for you tonight. It is a strange, deep, disturbing dare I say, shaman Alan esque Cohen hell pro esque tale that may not be familiar to everyone in the audience. The California Timber Wars.
Have you heard of it? Maybe? Maybe not.
In the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties, activists hoped to end overcutting of redwoods throughout well Redwood's in particular, timber in general, throughout parts of California, and there was a particular organization involved in this called Earth First with an exclamation point. They took direct actions. One of the leaders of these efforts was an activist named Judy Barry who Well, we'll get to it in a second. It's a deep
and crucial story that is yet to be told in full. Luckily, gentlemen, friends, neighbors, countrymen, we are not diving in alone. We are joined by get this, guys, none other than the legendary investigator, writer, podcaster, and creator of multiple shows that we're big fans of, our returning pal, the mythical, the legendary, the one and only, Toby Ball.
Toby. Come on, man, thank you for showing up. Hey, thank you. It's nice to see you, guys.
Guys behind the curtain. He's been there the whole time.
It's crazy.
Definitely a unicorn of a human. We've talked to Toby about other series that he's done, including Strange, Rivals and Today.
And Rendallshim Forrest two seasons, Rivals First Seas check them out right now.
Yes, yeah, this is.
RIP Current season two and Toby I was I was looking into this because I'm a fan of tangential, non relevant research.
I think as we all.
Are, big part of what we do here.
Yes, and one of the things that I noted, I said, Hey, our pal mister b is coming on to the show. For the third time. Saturday Night Live rules say that if you make it to the fifth appearance, we have to get you like a special jacket and throw a party.
I want a special jacket. I've been on five episodes.
Well that's motivation to the other two going there you go, it's gonna happen.
Maybe we'll all get matching jackets. That would be cool.
That'd be cool, especially if we roll as a group in our jackets that do a heist.
You know, walk away from an explosion and slash into Oh.
There we go, and that's apropos. That's what we call foreshadowy.
Toby, can you.
Set the stage for us with a little bit of an origin story? We throughout the phrase timber Wars? What were the timber Wars? What about this led you to rip current season two?
So I even before the timber Wars and I was actually Matt was in on this conversation at one point. I wanted to do something sort of about environmental activism. You know, in this period where you know the consequences of global warming are quite clear, but there doesn't seem to be this kind of hair on fire reaction to it, Like you don't see eco sabotage trying to you know, sabotage pipelines or other things that might slow down fossil
fuel use and things like that. So I'd spent some time kind of researching, trying to find what would be sort of a compelling story. There's other things. There was the Green Peace boat that was sunk by the French intelligence services, a couple of others. But I ended up coming across the Timber Wars, and part of you know, the rip current. The idea behind rip Current is to look at a crime that occurs in sort of a
complicated social and political setting. And in this case, I sort of vaguely remembered this because this happened in nineteen ninety, which is like right after I got out of college. I remember reading about it. But Judy Barry, who was this organizer for Earth Verst, a leader uh and her you know, former lover and like long times her partner and activism, this guy Darryl Churney, were driving in a car in Oakland and a pipe bomb went off in it and it should have killed them both, but it
slightly malfunctioned. Judy was grievously injured. She only lived seven more years. She died of breast cancer, but she was in pain for the rest of her life. Uh, you know, I believe had to walk aided with a cane, you know, really just physically messed up. And then Darryl got away with,
you know, some some fairly light wounds. But it originally came to the press and the FBI and the in the Oakland police kind of put it out there as oh, they were carrying these explosives and they and they detonated in the car by accident, so theyre going to probably actually do some terroristic action, but the explosive blew up in the car, So that was kind of the central sort of crime that could kind of focus these other
things that were going on. Do you want me to go back a little bit to talk about Yea, the timber wars themselves. Yeah, so the Redwoods used to be this vast forest right in California, and so if you go to sort of pre European contact seventeen hundreds, I mean, it's huge and from basically the first time Europeans made it to that area of California, they're like these these are incredible trees. You know, you can't quite get a sense of it from looking at pictures, but they're you know,
two hundred and fifty three hundred feet high. There's no branches below. All the branches are very high where they can get the sun. So this is very good wood. It's not naughty. It's got these other properties as well.
They keep it from rotting and resistant from fire. So over the course of you know, two centuries, with various means, from two guys using a saw for a few days to cut down one to all these technological advances, when you get to the nineteen eighties, about ninety five percent of the old growth redwoods are gone, right, and some of these trees have been around for two thousand years, so five percent are left. Some of that is in public hands, so it's in state parks or national parks.
The largest bit of it that's in private hands is owned by this place called Pacific Lumber, which was a family owned and operated big lumber operation out of a place called Scotia, which was a real company town. Like everything there was owned by Pacific Lumber. So if you worked there, you lived in a Pacific Lumber house and all this stuff. So essentially teen eighty five, this guy named Charles Hurwitz who was. I believe he was a
multi multi, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars. It's one of the first times people used junk bonds to buy something. But he saw that Pacific Lumber, which had been run really responsibly. They used sustainable cutting. They had a big pension for retirees in their company. Not a bad company down Yeah, yeah, I mean people people apparently really liked it.
They're taking care of their people, yes.
Right, But they went public a little while before that, so they issued stock and because they were so responsible and so healthy they were, they were very undervalued, so that made them sort of prey to these capitalistic forces.
Hurwitz comes in, uses junk bonds to purchase Pacific Lumber, and it becomes very clear that the only way he's going to be able to pay off the interest and make this all work is by clear cutting the Pacific Lumber forests, which includes this huge area of old growth redwoods, which there's not much left, right, So.
So just Toby quickly, Yeah, the Redwood Force at this point of the takeover by Charles hurwitzon was it maxim his company, Yeah, yeah, So at that moment, the forest of redwoods is already down ninety five. At that point of old growth, there's still you know, there's second.
Growth, third growth, fourth growth, but that you know, these are not mature trees yet. Okay, so the really old ones, which are you know, I think in ecological terms, the most valuable. I mean, it's sort of interesting how you look at the value of trees, especially if you're a lumber lumberman, you know, like what you're going to be able to get out of your acreage on a sort
of year by year basis. So at that point it becomes clear that this is probably what's going to happen been and it starts happening, and a couple things, you know, for timber workers, they're like, you know, this is actually kind of awesome. You know, we're working all this overtime, we're getting much more money because we're speeding up the cut.
And then you have environmentalists who are like, well, this is you know, this is going to be the end of a significant proportion of these old growth redwoods, which are you know, I mean, they're like sort of quote unquote a renewable resource because you can grow new redwoods, but you're not going to get the same thing for fifteen hundred years, you know, I mean, these these trees have been around. You know. That was one of the ads or pamphlets or something was like some of these
trees have been around since Christ walked the earth. Right. Yeah, so Earth First, which is sort of, you know, on the radical side of the environmentalists. I mean, they sort of define the furthest radical edge at that point. You know, they said, we're gon, we're going to try right and stop this, slow it down. And that's kind of direct led to the timber Wars. Yeah, it was. So, you know, as with everything in this I could go on for about twenty minutes about it, but direct action, you do, well,
it's definitely part of it. So that made you U define that. Yeah. Yeah. So that so what direct action really means is instead of just you know, protesting or lobbying in the halls of Congress or you know, sending stuff out to your membership, it means like blockading roads. Uh, it means tearing up, uh, surveying spikes that they use.
Potentially it being sabotaging equipment.
Yeah, sabotage equipment, putting sand in gas. There's a hole. One of the founders of Earth First, this guy Dave Foreman published a book called Ecotage, which was all these different ways in which you can do uh economic sabotage, which and I go into this fair amount in the in the podcast. The most controversial of all these is tree spiking. And what tree spiking is well, start off as and it evolved a little bit, but you basically take a big nail and you bang it into a tree.
And that so people when they're using saws, it just shatters the saw and it can be very dangerous. It's to fly and right exactly. But but what Earth First would do is they would go into like a grove and this is not northern California, but this is you know, wherever. They would do this and sometimes they would circle where they were, uh, sometimes they would identify the grove like that. The idea wasn't to hurt people. The idea was to stop them from using their saws on the on this wood.
And you know what's what's funny is that it's not really funny. But uh, you know, in my research, there's only one real known incident that I could find. And this is also like looking at senators and congressmen who've tried to find more stuff about tree spiking and them not being able to turn things up either. Was one guy in a mill in northern California who he was one of the guys who fed the logs to be cut, and it hit a spike and the saw basically kind
of exploded and nearly killed him. And then there was a lot of Initially it was like his earth first, of his earth first, and it turned out although this guy was in charge, they're fairly sure it was actually this kind of curmudgeonly guy who didn't like the fact that they were sawing down trees that were in his view, so he did have to try and stop them. So that's really the only time that there's been like a real serious injury that results from tree spiking.
Well, let's just continue on that a little bit. Because of that one case, as we hear in Rip Curren season two, was used to what was used as the argument against tree spiking and what was labeled as eco terrorism at the time, right because it was so dangerous
because people may die, and he was maimed. It was a you know, not some small incident that occurred, but it definitely the argument then seemed to expand out as though this tree spiking thing had killed many people, or that was stated publicly even though it wasn't provable.
All they need is one inciting event to then balloon into this is you know, the precedents, and then it gives them kind of talking points to go after a larger movement.
Right, the timber war has become an information.
War, right, I mean even recently. I've got a clip and I'm trying to remember who the congressman was, but he's from the Pacific Northwest or maybe Idaho. Anyway, he's talking about they wanted to increase the the criminal penalties for tree spiking, and so this guy in this mill, same with George Alexander. So he's kind of given the speech on the floor and he says and then George Alexander and this happened to him, and then all these
other people have been killed or maimed or whatever. It's like, well, can you name like one other person, you know, because it's always the same guy. It's always George Alexander and all these other guys. But I think it was Larry Craig, who used to be a Senator, got in touch with I don't know if it's a Department of the Interior or one of the departments that said, can you give me a list of everybody who's been harmed or killed
by tree spiking? And the only thing he got back was George Alexander.
So so it was bupkiss. But it does, I think show us a little bit more about how the media was treating this. Right, people loved, people love a convenient throwaway phrase like eco terrorism, right or now tree spiking? At this point, could you tell us a little bit more as we're setting the stage here about how the local everyday folks in California felt about environmentalism. They're reading the news. Do they think that Earth First is a straight up eco terrorism outfit? Do they agree with them?
Like? How is?
What's the temperature of the room there around the redwoods?
So that's an interesting question. So at that time, and I talked to a guy, well, I talked to a few people who had sort of grown up there, and they said there was really there's two sort of major factions in northern California. One was these sort of generational families of timber workers. The other were these sort of back to the land hippies who'd moved up there. So you really had you know, in schools they said, what do we call It's like the rednecks and the hippies,
you know, those are the two groups. And so you have these timber families.
Device of all of this, then, I guess.
Yeah, exactly, So you had these timber families who obviously saw them as a threat and as terrorists.
And as a threat to their livelihood and their families legacy or whatever it might be. If this is multi generational, like they've got skin in the game in that exactly.
And I think there was a sense that Earth First was sort of questioning the morality or nobility of timber work in general, so that it kind of felt very personal to some people, like an attack identity, right right, It's like what you what your family for generations has done is sort of immoral by by cutting these you know, majestic trees. And then that, you know, the hippie families were more likely to be you know, sympathetic to Earth First.
It's just a very it's a very complicated time, you know. And this is at a time when timber is sort of descending importance in the economy and marijuana is ascending as like a big export crop up there.
Is Humboldt County.
Yeah, yeah, it's Humboldy. Yeah, it's weeah yeah, so anonymous, Yeah, exactly, Humboldt. So yeah. So it was really it was kind of
a mixed a mixed feeling. You know, the timber companies themselves, you know, sort of try to accentuate the potential for violence from Earth First, and you know, Earth First had to take several steps, including publicly renouncing tree spiking, which was very controversial within Earth First, to try and prove like, we're not we're not going after you know, the individual timber worker, like these small timber companies that are contractors
or whatever. We're really going over these corporate people like Charles Hurwitz, who's this guy from Texas, Like wouldn't be able to identify or redwood if you you know, if you pointed him at one and it's just these people, it's you know, it's craven greed, you know, essentially, especially in Hurwitz's case, I mean, he's just trying to make money and all he sees are trees, is like a
monetary asset. And that's so sort of the opposite of the Earth First idea, which is that we have to preserve this, this is our natural heritage, right.
And just it was really there, Toby. Yeah, because the concept of spiking trees, and we kind of talked about it already, but the concept of doing that is to destroy equipment, right, sabotage of equipment, which would cost the company a lot of money, which would probably cause them to stop cutting in that area at least temporarily if not long term.
Right.
So it does seem like quite a non violent tactic until you do have one person that's hurt. But it just makes so much sense in my mind, at least to spike trees to break the chains on chainsaws so that that company cannot continue to function. And ultimately, if the company is your enemy, as in Earth First case, it would be really weird for a group who is you know, who is fighting those companies to say, don't do that thing. That is very that seems to be very effective.
Yeah, and I think, you know, I talked to some Earth First people who, you know, we're really angry about that, and what what they basically said is it has been nonviolent. You know, there's only one person you can point to. That's why we let them know when we do it. The idea is it's gonna it's just gonna make a cost more. You know, you're going to have to go in with like metal detectors and try and find the spikes in the trees and remove them. It's just it
takes time, it takes manpower. It's there's no easy way to do it. And then they got the idea of using ceramic spikes be detected by metal detectors. So it's really you know, they give the idea was we give them enough information to not hurt their workers, right Like, if they're sitting there workers out there with saws in an area that we've spiked, that's them knowingly putting their their workers in danger. You're not doing it, We're not
doing it secretly. Now it's the Timber company. Now it's the evil guys from the Captain Planet episodes who are at fault for endangering their workers because they had the information. And this is obviously not a unique perspective. I think this is something all of us can universally understand the logic of. However, it seems that things begin to quickly escalate. Right There's as as you already said, there's a deep division, there's factionalism in northern California. There is a.
Narrative competition in conversation and the zeitgeist and the media about who can be considered the bad or the good guys, and we see we see actions escalate at an increasingly dangerous pace. Now, we teased it a bit at the top. We talked a little bit about the tragic bizarre, like the heartbreaking attack on Judy Barry and her associate. Could you tell us a little bit more about the I have so many questions, folks. You're going to have to listen to rip her At season two in full to
understand the depth of this story. But it's just astonishing the way the bombing occurs and the way that the investing negation goes. And then Falters, can you tell us a little bit about the circumstances of the bombing and a little bit more about the investigation.
Sure, at the time of the bombing, Earth Verse was planning this thing called Redwood Summer, and the idea was they were going to get lots of college students to come up to the Redwoods to take place and protests, direct actions just sort of you know, flood the zone with people and they're sort of basing it on the Freedom Summer Mississippi. It actually started off being like Mississippi
Summer in the Redwoods, I think. So anyway, the big plans, and so they were actually down in Oakland to do sort of a planning meeting with this group called Seeds of Peace. But there's sort of this timeline, and maybe it makes sense to stay up front that this pipe
bomb was on a timer. So there was a watch that could be set back almost to twelve hours, like eleven hours and fifty nine minutes, and it would go and it hit a certain place and it would let loose this ball bearing, and the ball bearing would go into this little circle where there's all these wires sticking out. If connected two wires together, that would detonate the bomb. So there's you know, there's a period of time in which the bomb could have been placed in the car.
So she has a couple of meetings up in Mendocino County, She goes down Oakland, has a meeting at this place Seeds a Piece, and then she goes and stays the night at this guy, Dave Kemnitzer's house with Dave and his family. It wasn't a romantic thing. And so the next morning, Darryl Turney comes over. They get in the car and they're driving, and it's just before noon. She
goes to take a turn. You know, obviously the ball bearing is loose now that the time the timers gone off, and it detonates and you know, right in the street in Oakland, right across the street from a high school. So almost immediately, the FBI shows up on scene and takes control of the scene. Because it's a bombing, so it's usually the ATF will take control of those things, but if it seems as though it might be terrorism,
that's when the FBI has jurisdiction, is my understanding. And so the the FBI shows up really really fast, much faster than you'd expect. And I think the reason for that is that they had Judy and Darryl under surveillance at the time.
On the list well yeah, professionalism.
Yeah, so that that that seems very clear that that's part of the case. But they show up and this guy, Frank Doyle, who's uh, you know, an explosive experts for the FBI, basically says, well, the bomb was on the back seat, and if it's on the backseat, they would have seen it, and they must have known about it. So that kind of puts Judy and Darryl in the frame as Okay, they knew they had a bottom in
the car and something happened it blew up. If you actually take a look at pictures of the wreckage of the car, it's pretty clear that it was underneath her seat and just blew out the whole bottom of the seat and it malfunctioned a little bit and hit beneath
the doors, the front doors. So it's just very strange that he said this, but it does if it was underneath the seat, it was very possible that Daryl and Judy wouldn't have known that it was there, right, So for the first you know, certainly for the first forty eight hours, and it takes a couple more weeks before it's officially shut down. But you know they're going to the press with you know, these two were the bombers.
They were bringing these explosives. We don't know what they were going to do with them, but they're eco terrorists and that's what terrorists do, is they blow stuff up. And you know, Judy is you know, in the hospital, like don't I don't know if they ever thought she was actually gonna die, but she was in immense amounts of pain, was for a while unable to like give a statement. And then Darryl was arrested. Basically he got stitched up and they took him to jail, questioned them
and then and then arrested them. But they were never charged, right they It sort of came out quickly that they really couldn't have done it. There was some sort of blind alleys that the FBI went down about trying to match nails and and things like this.
Well, I was gonna ask, is there any evidence seems like a really particular type of detonating device. I've never heard of this ball bearing thing before, Not that I'm like a bomb expert, but is there evidence of Earth First using these types of devices?
No, they don't use uh, Earth Vers hasn't really used explosives as far as I know, and they this is one of those things that's like how far afield do you go? But but like a year before in Arizona, they basically set up this guy, Dave Foreman, who's a founder of Earth First, And what they were trying to get to do is they had a ATBI had a
provocateur in this little group of eco terrorists. Two of them weren't even earth first, and the other one was sort of semi earth first, and then there was the provocateur. And then Dave Foreman, the only real earth first person, gave them some money, which is how he got kind of tied into it. But they wanted to use explosives to blow up some towers that were holding power lines, and they were like, you know, we don't want to do explosives, and they ended up using a torch and
got arrested. But so explosives were like, you know, it's coded for terrorism, right, It's like, if you're sitting explosives, you're a terrorist. You know, if you're using a torch, maybe it's something a little different.
I don't want to spoil too much in the show, but Toby, can you just go into a little bit about how we know that that particular gentleman who infiltrated those groups, how we know what he was doing because of that recording?
Oh yeah, there recording. So they recorded they had all this stuff. I mean they were there were tapping lines, they were wearing wires, all this stuff. But at one point the provocateurs like wearing a wire and he goes in because he's trying to get some money from Dave Foreman, and they want to document it. And then he forgets to flick it off, and then they go I think they made a Burger King parking lot. And they're like chatting about what's going on, and he's like it's kind
of interesting. Like he's saying, like these people don't have anything. This money would have met everything for him, Like they don't have any money, but they're really devoted and all this stuff, and and he's kind of talks about how they're At one point he says, you know, Dave Foreman's not the guy who's actually doing anything, but he's the guy we kind of have to get right to send
a message. And then he's like, oh, this is still on, just like it's just and then they find it while they're going through uh discovery, they're they're going through all these and they're like, oh my god, they not only forgot to turn it off, but they never got rid of it. So it's just like right there, it's really so it's in the it's in the podcast, I mean the recordings out there.
Yeah, and I've got to ask you about this part the well, not even me, our audience is going to want to know about. Uh, the line you said a little bit earlier that we we've teased here. The FBI shows up in the wake of the bobbing at an extraordinarily quick time, which shows, uh, shows you, as our investigator,
that there was probably some monitoring. Uh. Could you talk to us just a little bit for everybody in the audience who hasn't heard of this before, you talk to us a little bit about pe intel pro and why the FBI or federal agencies would be monitoring people who want to save trees.
Right. So, Cointelpro was a program. You know, it's mostly active during the sixties. It was officially ended I believe in seventy one, right, right exactly. I'll get to that just a second. But the idea was that they were going to you know, disrupt, undermine, you know, try and break up what we're considered extremist groups. And in the FBI's interpretation, that was mostly on the liberal or radical
or liberal side, like the KKK was in there. They'd go after the KKK if the KKK did some specific crime, but on the radical side just sort of existing turned out to be enough for the FBI to kind of run these things on you.
So it was pitched in civil rights for instance.
Get civil rights. You know, the Black Panthers were a big, big target, and one of the things they would do is they get infil traders and just create this sense of paranoia where like the even like these small groups, Like in the first season of Rip Current, I did a thing looking at a group called Tribal Thumb, which was tiny, you know, it was probably twenty people at its peak, and at least two of them were infiltrators from the FBI. You know, so they kind of created
this sense of paranoia. They would start, you know, clashes.
I think they probably contributed to, you know, some death sort of indirectly, but they really get blamed for the death of Fred Hampton, which was a sort of joint FBI Chicago Police Department sort of raid on this guy Fred Hampton, who I think was twenty or twenty one at the time, but was sort of really up and coming leader of the Black Panthers, and you know, not of not sort of the perceived violence side of the Black Panthers, but really the sort of you know, helping the social school.
Exactly things like this is an incredible speaker, right. That was why he was considered to be dangerous because he could bring He was attempting to bring people together from different factions of a somewhat splintered movement, and that was speakers that are connector ye.
So yeah, so I you know that was a co intel program, as it officially was, right, And then in nineteen seventy one, during the Ali Frasier fight in Madison Square, Garden, I think there was a break in at this FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania and they got these they stole these files that included things that revealed co Intel pro And so it was officially shut down I think in seventy three, but you can shut it down in name, but the sort of techniques are still there. So rip Current,
the first season Recurrent takes place in seventy five. Co Intel protes style stuff is definitely going on then, and so the question becomes like how far does it keep going? And then at what point is it co intel pro and how what point is it just the way the
FBI does things. But so one of the theory is the theory that you know, Judy and Darryl and sort of their supporters had was that they were the victims of a co intel pro style operation, and that, you know, to really simplify it, that that the FBI and the timber industry had kind of worked together to try to assassinate Judy Barry.
And took direct action of their own right exactly.
So the thing about this case, without getting too into the weeds, is that there's no real physical evidence. You know, with a bomb, a lot of that physical evidence just
gets blown up. There was a thing called the Lord's Adventure Letter, which was a letter that was sent anonymously to a journalist named Mike Janella, who I interviewed at length for this taking credit for the bombing and another bombing, and had all this information that was in there that made it fairly clear that this was actually the person.
But then it's like littered with all this like weird Bible stuff like and like anti abortion stuff, and it's clear they're trying to point to this one guy Staley, who was a former football player, big strapping guy who was like an anti abortion zealot who they'd gotten into kind of a confrontation with, but it most likely was not him, and that this was just sort of a way of trying to obscure, you know, send people off
on the wrong track. But what was weird is that so this thing comes, you know, it's always weird for journalists. It's like, do I turn this over to law enforcement? Like that's not really our job, but it's like, well, this seems pretty important. Turn it over to the FBI. The FBI takes it, does whatever they're gonna do with it, returns it to Mike's newspaper, which is the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, which was run by the New York Times at the time, and they promptly lose it, right, so
the one piece of physical evidence just gets lost. So they really lost Toby, Like we never found lost. Well, nobody knows. I mean I talked to Mike, and Mike who you know. I think he's a straight shooter, which is like, I don't know what happened, you know, I don't think the New York Times was also in cahoots with the behind the timber industries. But somehow it's gone. Any chance that you had to do these like new DNA techniques on it, that's gone too. So the reality
is that it'll probably never be solved. At this point unless somebody confesses. And so there are these theories that are kind of built on these connections, these weird connections.
And I can give you an example of one, which is that the guy Frank Doyle, the FBI agent who showed up at the scene of the of the bombing, he had a month earlier run a bomb school to train law enforcement in how to investigate bomb related crimes up in northern California on land that was donated by Louisiana Pacific, which was another of the lumber companies that
that earth Verst was was having a thing with. And the Louisiana's Pacific guy who ran security from them, was providing security for the bomb school, and he was friends with Frank Doyle. So and then a bunch of the agents, uh who are investig who are there on the scene had actually been at that bomb school. So it's just just just.
Presumably they're they're teaching them at the inner workings of various types of explosives and detonating devices first engineer and disarment, and also they would know how to make them.
Yeah, learning how to stop something is very similar to learning how to create it.
See, this was the final exam of that course. That's what that's what happened.
Yeah, that's what he That's what he said. That's what they That's what Doyle said to one of the guys who's been in the classes, like, well, here's your final exam. But the thing is is that that's not the only Like you hear that and you're like, wow, that's pretty damning. But then there's there's several other uh, you know, suspects or scenarios that are equally you know, sort of the the optics of it are equally strong.
Yeah, if not compelling, there there are multiple scenarios that make you think, right, oh yeah.
Can we just quickly talk about the Yellow Ribbon movement and just the general sentiment and how vitriolic some of the talk was getting around this time.
Yeah, So the Yellow Ribbon movement was sort of a local group that kind of grew out of this wise Use movement, which was essentially sort of anti environmental that it's like nature is there for our enjoyment, and not in terms of like gazing at trees, but like taking your ATVs and like going on races and you know, doing whatever. Right you should not nothing should be off
limits basically. So the Yellow Ribbon movement was pro probably funded by timber corporations, but they were locally run by this woman named Candy Boak, and so they they were adamantly opposed to earth First and would show up sometimes the demonstrations and taunt Earth First people. And they were just one of many groups. There's a group called the Stompers,
which is a little obscure who they were. I think they may have been sort of white supremacist thugs, but they sent death threats, put out you know, quote unquote bounties. It's like not clear like if they were actually gonna
get paid for this stuff. There's another group called the Sahara Club, which was a take on the Sierra Club, which was run by a couple of off road motorcycle guys who again were like they had in their newsletter like we're we're looking for guys over six feet two hundred and fifty pounds to like go up, you know, we'll provide the baseball bats stuff like that. So it was a dangerous, you know, what they were doing was dangerous,
like hundred percent. You know. It was like they were doing their protests and.
They forget that Oregon like you think of it as this bastion of liberalism and all that, but like the rural parts of Oregon have always been like hotbeds of white supremacist activity in this kind of stuff.
Of course, they were actively recruiting in the in the timber industry because all these people were being laid off, there was economic distress, and it's just overwhelmingly white. So these white supremacist groups saw this as fertile territory. And that's actually another theory of the crime.
I think that could be part of the part of the inspiration for rip current three. To be honest with you, I mean, because you know, to Nole's point, a lot of people aren't aware that Oregon in particular is the only state that never codified chattel slavery in the United States because of the racism, right.
Founded as a white paradise.
And to your point here, it naturally makes sense that violence groups like supremacist groups or other domestic terror groups would prey on the people who have gotten the short end of the stick in an industry.
Right.
We see this later with stuff like the failure of the automotive industry. To be quite honest, But then is it possible, Toby, that at some point in this yellow ribbon stuff and the stompers and so on, it's possible that a proxy representative of a big unnamed timber company might have just had a meeting and said, hey, don't worry, we can get you the baseball bats.
I think it's likely that that. It's not just possible, it's likely. Yeah, I mean, I don't. I'm not one hundred percent sure about this. I don't, but there was, you know, there there was definitely communication between the groups, and there was definitely encouragement. I think it was specific. Lumber hired a marketing firm called Hilen Knowlton that was putting out fake press releases that were supposed to be from Earth First to make it sound like they were
more violent than they were. But they did things like spelled Darryl Turney's name wrong and just you know, just sloppy work.
Don't We have a whole episode on Hill and Nolan.
There was that, Yes, Okay, yes, with Narayah and uh later with the the war for Iraq, the propaganda there, that's what we called it. Yeah, or Toby, thank you so much for mentioning kill and Milton do you imagine they are huge fans of my show.
Friends of the show.
This is yellow, this yellow ribmed movement and sentiment. I think it's kind of still around today in the form of like some more union or like workers write scrups called Timber Unity, I think is one that is all about fighting legislation aimed at addressing climate change that would potentially, you know, put timber workers out of work.
Evolution.
I'm against it.
That, uh Sar.
We've been freestyling songs recently on the show, Toby. We also, first off, can't thank you enough for the phenomenal work that you've been doing, not just on RIP Current season two, but we're talking a little bit off air RIP Current season one. We should have had you back on for
that one as well. And we've got to ask one thing here as as you went through the course of this investigation, and the show is available to listen to now anywhere you find your favorite podcast, what do we hope people take away from RIP Current Season two?
Well, you know, I started it off in that I wanted to tell an inspirational story about somebody who really like kind of put it on the line to quote unquote save the environment, right and what I ended up finding out was that the sort of fight over the cause, like who caused the bomb that almost killed her, like
who planneted, it kind of overshadows what she actually did. So, you know, in the podcast, I was trying to sort of spotlight both, you know, both both her sort of activity and achievements, which were kind of mixed, to be honest, and then also this mystery around who tried to kill her.
But I do think I'd like people to walk away and say, you know, a small group of committed people can make a big difference, even when they're confronting these huge corporations and a lot of capital, And I think that's that was what I kind of came in hoping that would be I kind of, you know, found the reality around her legacy is a little more complicated, but that would be the takeaway that I hope in the end, it's like all this stuff is sort of a distraction
from the fact that a small group of really committed people ended up with. You know, the final outcome of trying to say the Redwoods is the government spent an amazing like hundreds of millions of dollars to save a place called the Headwaters for Us, which was the largest sort of grove of old growth redwoods that was still intact on Pacific lumber Land. And they save that, they
saved some stuff around it. So there's like an actual, like physical location that you can go to and it's big, that Judy and others say, and so they were able to have a concrete win when this was all over. I believe she may have already passed by the time it was finalized, but I think she understood the direction it was headed. So I guess that's a takeaway for me.
I had one last tiny little thing, you know, and watching one battle after another, which I enjoyed quite a lot, it occurred to me that, like the group that sort of portrayed in that sort of weather underground kind of you know, freedom fighting group, it's dealing with immigration enforcement and various things, there really isn't an analog to that
in real life anymore. Nor do I see, as you pointed out earlier, this analog to Earth First, do you have a sense of why that is or is it because of the Internet, is because if things are more you know, cyber oriented now, like why or do we not see this kind of direct action as much, you know in modern times.
You know, I honestly I don't know. I would love to have the answer to that. You know, Earth First, like the people without Earth Verst was not extreme enough, branched off. Some of them were old Earth First members to become the Earth Liberation Front, and they do like real sabotage, burning things down, all that kind of stuff. But they're even smaller, right, Gretamberg Thumbird putting myself, She's kind of done her thing. But that's all sort of
you know, bring attention to it or whatever. Stream protest not exactly direct action, right right. It seems like the people who really stop in like the flow of oil, are mostly trying to like it's geopolitical stuff, not not citizen action. It's interesting that you bring up that movie though, because people said, like several people I talk to you said, if you want to understand Humboldt Mendocino at that time,
you got to read Vineland By. I was like, oh, you know, if you can best be described through a Pinchion novel, there must have been some weird stuff for sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
One thing that I took away from that like that I'll never forget is there's this moment where there's a protest going on and they lead one of the people with the government forces says, call in Eddie van Halen, and a dude in a van Halen t shirt and a mask comes out, throws them all atop cocktail and it gives them the excuse they need to like move in and you know, escalat.
This is just a reminder everyone that the podcast Rip Current in both seasons is an investigative journalism pursuit, and Toby is actually out there talking to individuals. He's you know, this isn't just like research or watching a documentary or reading a book and that stuff. He's out there talking to people. And I just wonder, Toby, how much pushback you encountered when attempting, you know, to find an interviewee or somebody that you could speak to just along your journey.
And then who is the closest person to Judy Berry and the actual bombing that you got to speak with.
Well, it's one in the same person describes both those things. Darryl Cherney, who was in the passenger seat I finally did end up talking to, but it took I mean I talked to him two weeks ago two and a half weeks ago, so I had already written all the scripts and ten of the episodes were out before he finally said he would do an interview with me. So I did an interview with it. I actually did over
two days. I talked to him for about three and a half hours, and there will be a bonus episode that kind of cuts it down, like a lot of this stuff had already been covered in the main podcast, But we talked. I talked to him about his theory of the crime, and talked to him about some of his experience during the day of the bombing. But he was a tough one. I mean, there's really it's still raw, man.
It's like thirty five years later and people still I mean, the whole thing with him and me was he knew I was going to talk to people who thought that Judy Barry's ex husband is responsible for this, and there's a whole other series of reasons why he is a good candidate, although again there's no evidence, so you know, uh, there's nothing to really tie him to it. But once he heard that he was, he did not want to talk to me, but we kept in touch. You know,
I'd send him emails. I went out to California. I said, I'm happy to meet up for a coffee or a beer and just chat, like off the record. We didn't do it, but you know, it's one of those things where you just keep lines of communication open and it eventually at like as they say in British soccer at the death h it happened. So that was really interesting.
It was interesting to talk to him, But I talked to, you know, people who who knew her from too, different levels, from different walks of life, an old Earth first guy. Some journalists anew her stuff like that she's a She's a very interesting and complicated person, but I think you kind of have to be in order to have sort of the bravery and the sort of single mindedness to affect that kind of change.
Yeah, and this is also you know, in addition to these exclusive interviews. I just can't thank you enough for the phenomenal research. Right, this is a story, as we said at the top, that needs to be shared, that needs to be told. As I think my colleagues and I are referencing here throughout our conversation, it becomes increasingly relevant.
You know, we have other stuff to explore. These threads, Like every part of this conversation is opening a door that leads to something deeper, like the presence of direct action groups. Have they really lessened in their frequency? If so, why or they simply not being reported as often now right? Or are they truly being tramped down upon by whatever The descendant of co intel pro is right. The monitoring
abilities are just far, far beyond what Hoover imagined. He probably fantasized about it, but he did get there.
We didn't even talk about one of the groups that you mentioned in the show, Toby the It's got one of those names we always talk about. It seems so innocuous and fine, but then you find out what they're doing are what the hell it's the Ron Arnold thing Center for Defense of Free Enterprise.
Yeah yeah, yeah, up there with.
Up there with people against Halla Burton Production.
Yeah exactly, yeah, yeah, stop taking on free enterprise, y'all.
Come on, yeah, come on on, our old sort of those guys with like an Abraham Lincoln beard, you.
Know, yeah, you love to see it. Abraham Lincoln, by the way, folks, one of the most famous amateur wrestlers in United States history. We did a couple of other things later he had a bad time at the theater, but do support the arts.
Toby.
Again, we can't thank you enough.
Man.
We don't want to spoil the show because again not just not just the the exclusive interviews, but I would say even more importantly, the research, the depth of which you to which you go here is a true credit to your work and to I don't know, it's a thing more people need to know about. So in addition to that, we always like to end by asking where can people learn more not just about your mission on
rip Current, but about your many other projects. And please, can you do us a favor since we are friends, can you tell us a little bit about Failians?
Yeah? Okay, so I'm doing and I'm hoping that each one of you will be on as a guest in the near future. I've started doing a program called more Like Ancient Failians, which is a look at It started off just looking at ancient Aliens and sort of you know, laughing at the ridiculousness of the agent theorist and stuff we just talked about. I know, we just did an
emergency podcast about that. But also what's crazy is that there's all this really interesting history that they try and explain away as you know that must have been aliens, but in fact it's like fascinating stuff. So we include that and we have guests. You know, it's it's podcasters, skeptics, a lot of comedians. Because the guy I do it with, Brandon R. Reynolds, has a connection to that community. We've had people who are experts on each and aliens come
and talk to us. That's it's always pretty interesting to hear their take on these things.
Have you guys have not got That's.
I'll forever refer to them as the big guy with the big for you.
We'll text of them. Yeah. So that's been fun. That's been fun. So we got a bunch of episodes were actually uh coming up. We have John Hodgman's going to be a guest for a judge.
He can to talk about what is it booking snake secret societies.
Yeah.
Time he got the diamond medallion, the longer diamond medallion for Delta Travel, the.
Must sought Diamond Medallion status. Check out his book. I think it's out in paperback now.
Well that's how you know, that's how you know we made it. Well. Also, Toby, I can't speak for everyone but I would imagine we would all love to join you on that show, and we hope that everybody joins us and Toby on rip Her. Right.
Did we shout out with aliens recently when we were talking about I think we can get credit credit was due?
Yeah? I appreciate that. Well, it was.
It was a nice thing for us to say, because, honestly, Toby, we were all very personally bummed with the passage of Von Danakin. Just a form uh, an inspiration for stuff they don't want you to know.
Right, guys, do we even mention rip currentpod dot com?
We should mention rip currentpod dot com. Okay, let me let me make contact camera. Everyone go to rip currentpod dot com and.
Good save Matt.
Okay, Uh, Toby, be safe out there, man. We'll talk to you soon.
Yeah. I appreciate it, guys.
And there you have it, folks. The legendary friend of the show, Toby Ball, just a phenomenal researcher. As we mentioned, UH also brought us an exclusive story UH that you can hear in full. Get this right now, guys, what a ride. I wasn't joking when I talked about the Saturday Night Live rule. Have you guys heard about that. It's the five Timers Club.
Oh yeah, five Timers Club is a big deal. They always do a sketch.
I think Toby might be the first one to reach five timers status on stuff they don't want you to know, which We support the mass as the Saturday Night Live of podcast.
I think he and Payne Lindsay might be tied right now.
Okay, oh yeah, okay, maybe we can maybe we can have them both on for a double Dragon interview segment.
Payne loves a sweet jacket.
He does, he does, and I'm really excited about his appearance coming up on Conversate with our pal Killer Mike. Not to be missed. Folks, we hope you enjoyed this. We hope you check out not just Rip Current, but all of Toby's earlier work. In the meantime, we hope you as the most important part of our show. Join us. You can find us on the internet. You can call us on a telephone. You can always send us an email. As a matter of fact, I owe some people some random facts.
People are asking for the random facts. You love to see it. You can find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show, depending on your social media platform of choice. You'll figure it out. But there's more ways to get in touch with us, aren't there.
Oh yes, we have a phone number. It is one eight three three std wy TK. It's a voicemail system. Give us a call, you'll talk to us, and if we use one of your voicemails, it will go on one of our listener mail episodes that you can find in our audio podcast wherever you might access that. Oh and you know, someddly we didn't talk about Guys Strange Arrivals, the other show that Toby created. It has a TV version. It does stars Demi Moore and Coleman Domingo Gonid.
It star studying.
Yes, it's really really cool. All right, If you want to email us, you can do that too.
We are This is one of the most exciting things for us, folks. We are the entities that read each piece of correspondence we receive. Be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void writes back. So join us, not just on Netflix, not just on audio, but speak with us directly. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.