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 Noel.
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission controlled Decant. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. You guys, ever heard the uh? I was thinking, what's a good way to get into this? Have you guys ever heard the phrase the United States as the World's police.
Sure? Yeah, in that uh South Park movie for Team America World Police, Right, that was the whole joke about behind that movie.
Well, yeah, simply because we go around setting up military bases in.
A lot of places willy and or nilly mm hmm.
Yeah.
And look, obviously Americans in the audience tonight are going to be the first to point out this country has serious problems if we're going to be diplomatic about it. Also diplomacy that comes into play. But the facts on the ground are the following. The United States, despite its shenanigans, and despite some unethical actions, it has also maintained rule of law. It is stabilized global trade. Right now, the United States is helping fight pirates. That's right, folks. Pirates
are a thing again. And it turns out if if he digs your vibe, Uncle Sam can and will provide endless benefits to your government and military and military. Well, first your military, and then maybe your military becomes your government, as they say in the musical Hamilton, and it must be nice. It must be nice to have Washington on your side. This is the story of one such program, a traveling show, if you will, called exercise flint Lock.
What is it?
Why do critics deem it controversial? Here are the facts. Uncle Sam is a he's a busy boy. He's a busy, busy boy. Just get out of the way so I don't say it later. Whenever I see flint lock, I think of flint stones and bedrock.
Just putting that out there.
Yeah, yeah, I think about starting fires, don't you? That is huh a little flint Yeah. So this this episode is kind of like a what a breakoff from our other places you Can't Go episode that we recently did, just because we were looking at what was going on in Africa and why there were so many coups going on there pretty recently. And uh m, I don't want to spoil it too much, but that's we're looking at
this specific thing called exercise Flintlock. That reminds me a lot of our previous episodes we've done on large scale military drills and almost like get togethers I guess that have occurred like jade Helm in the.
Past, picnics, you know that kind of stuff.
Yeah, a little bit of fellowship, you know, a little bit of common interest shared, some light target practice, perhaps some some ops.
Yeah, but in like jade Helm that we've covered in the past, Like I said, you can find an episode on it that was it's almost more of private military contractors and companies that produce military gear kind of getting together and showing off what's available right right, and then.
Like a trade show almost it is like comic Con with a.
With a mixed in like urban battleground exercise kind of thrown in there. You know.
What was the one that the conspiracy theory was that they did it at Walmart or something, or they jade home. That was the one, Yeah, that ended up being bunk, but it was. It was believable for a second.
It was. I think it was due to concerns about FEMA, because there were many pre made containers that were arriving via rail. There was also a helicopter we talked about that that was in a disused Walmart.
They ended up being storage for some official use. They were just using that or they're releasing that property for official storage use.
And you know, most people in the United States are i would say, vaguely aware that Uncle Sam gets up to some stuff abroad, except this as a known fact, and don't often dig deeper into the specifics of these activities, much less the economic forces at play unless they are pointed toward exploration of these via you know, your favorite media of choice. And it's true. The US has committed numerous horrifically illegal as on foreign soil and spoiler on its own people on its own soil in the past.
These acts continue in some version in the modern day according to critics, and yes, the US economy makes a great deal of profit from these activities year over year. I was hoping, if it's okay with you guys, we could throw to just one little, little juicy nugget from old President Eisenhower, which our pal Rob Reiner also pointed to you earlier.
It's not a dinosaur shape because it might be a dangerous nugget if that's the case. The thing you just said, Ben about the horrific acts, illegal acts, it kind of feels like one of those things where the sentiment is, well, if we do it, it's not illegal. M you know, I mean, you know, because we never make it to any kind of criminal you know, like international court to be judged.
Well, unless you throw a little party like the Church Committee. Again we just talked about with mister Ryan.
And the United States does not respect the jurisdiction of the ICC, the International Criminal Court. So former President Eisenhower on his way out of office, this is something we talked with our pal Rob about. He warned the United States and indeed the world, that he was worried a certain industry might take over what he saws the otherwise noble mission of being the global police. Here's a short clip from his farewell address.
And the Councils of Government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex.
Fun fact about that speech. He did write it himself, and before he went to air with this farewell address, he was calling it the military industrial Congressional complex.
That it, Yeah, we wouldn't not have been considered a dig on Congress, and so they thought it was too much or what.
Well, somebody has got to authorize the war and the you know the military actions. You know.
Yeah, I just mean it got cut because it maybe was considered a little too pointed, perhaps, right.
Yeah hashtag Smedley Butler was right. Uh. There There is another factor in this, which is that, in the process of pursuing hegemonic power and year over year profits for different connected companies, the United States does also ensure a degree of when things work, stability, continuity, and safety. Depends on your perspective, though, because a significant amount of US military activity on foreign soil, it centers on what we
would call facilitation. We're not going to wage the war, but we're going to teach you how wars are waged.
We'll give you a little nudge, maybe a little help, perhaps some armaments interested shout out.
School of the Americas recently rewatched our old video on the School of Americas and it holds up located for a time in Fort Benning, Georgia.
Yeah, do we say what flintlock is exactly? I know, I've kind of like vaguely talked about stuff that's like it. But do we say exactly what it is yet?
Flintlock is, Well, it depends on who you ask, right, That's what we're saying because flintlock is one of those facilitational activities. In its most recent iteration, it's two weeks per year, right, and that started in two thousand and five. But there's a long history to it because started around the end of World War Two, the United States earned a bit of a street rep for overthrowing unfriendly governments,
often through unethical means. We're talking propping up student movements, quote unquote, arming secession groups like you pointed out, even assassinating elected leaders couptata as functional policy. And for critics, exercises like flintlock are a direct descendant of ethically questionable behavior. But for supporters this is necessary. This is holding the line from chaos.
What makes it an exercise versus an operation?
Okay, So I think that's what I want to get to. I actually define it, so it is a special operations counter terrorism exercise where there are all kinds of different drills and training scenarios that the DoD often in the US Army calls them regional forces, but it's really just a bunch of different militaries and paramilitary groups that are from what they call their African partners again, the d D and the US Army, and it's a bunch of partner nations within Africa that work together with the US
and with a couple other European countries to basically train their militaries in their troops or you know, small groups of their militaries in these counter terrorism special operations tactics.
Police forces as well to militarize those Further, again, this was not happening, is not happening in a vacuum. During the Cold War, the USSR was doing very similar things, we have to remember, and terrorist groups are doing similar things now. Rival states are using proxies like Wagner, like hiss Bolah and so on. We have to remember these things, these tactics, this practice of facilitated learning. They are used because they work. They are effective the way firearms are effective.
Their success is a matter of operational rather than moral or ethical efficacy. So it doesn't matter to the gun who get shot. It matters to the gun that the gun works. And in the wake of Iraq and it sequels, and notably the terrorist attacks of September eleventh, two thousand and one, the US military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about found an opportunity to normalize and mainstream a never ending war. This comes in the wake of when the US figured out, hey, what if we wage wars
on ideas? Right, there's the war on drugs drugs won. There's a war on poverty that was very short lived because it didn't do well in the polls. And then of course there are culture wars. So this larger milieu, this context is mission critical for US to understand. There is an active war on terrorism. What is terrorism depends on who you ask. It's definitely non state actors are those are like? That's one of the big differences. What makes a war on terror different from a war on a state power.
It's about optics, right, I mean, it's say one we always say one person's freedom fighter is another person's terrorists and all depending on how you label the terrorists, it can be a convenient tool to making them an enemy that you then need to eradicate and it you know, you wage a certain amount of the war in the war of public opinion. You know, nobody wants to think that you're going after good guys who are trying to liberate you know, their people. You have to be fighting a bad guy.
Yeah, And it's really interesting because another aspect of flintlock is to have these the individual countries and militaries not only you know, fighting against terrorism with the within their own territory, but to train them to share that information right and to encourage the sharing of information across borders because, as you said, been like terrorism, if you're fighting that rather than a neighboring country, that thing could exist on your land, right outside your land, deep in you know,
a couple of neighbors overs land. So it's interesting to think about there needing to be some kind of united front to really combat a concept like that. That could be it could represent any number of different cells or organizations.
Which are often fluid and decentralized. Three key differences between a war on capital t terror versus the war on a conventional state power traditional agreements like the Geneva Convention. Those agreements erode those ideas about you know, the red Cross, about journalism, et cetera. They fall to the wayside quite quickly. And second, the opponent, the whatever represents capital t terror has no limiting factors in terms of legality. The concept of war crime is not a concept practiced by a
terrorist group. And they're the third. And it sounds like a small detail, but I think it speaks directly to some of the points we're bringing up. There's no clear representative leadership, meaning there's often no single authoritative source to declare victory or defeat altogether. That means you could be fighting a war that does not end, it simply transforms. This is true. Look at Boko Haram, look at isl Isis, look at al Qaeda. These groups can function at an advantage.
A powerful state actor, yes, can become economically addicted to war, and arguably the US and several European countries are in that situation. However, a powerful enough non state actor can leverage existing tensions and conflicts. Right, you know, Saudi Arabia and Iran don't get along, So which one of them is going to fund your newest project? And what do
they want? This means that these groups can at times enjoy the advantage of power, state level power with very few constraints that that power typically entails.
I think the.
Part about a lot of this that really I learned this phrase recently Bakes my Noodle, is that there really is no moral high ground. It's all just deal making. It's like, who is going to benefit us in the long term? How can we you know, whatever, in some way walk away from it with some kind of upside. But it's not about saving the world. It's not about protecting innocence. It's really about my feelings.
It's about saving a version of the world there probably is. People don't agree on which version, right. I mean, that's and I love Bake my Noodle. That's a great one.
So well. Just something to bring up in here is that you're talking about who's going to fund it and the I get we'll get deep into this, but in the case of this giant excerpt size flintlock that we're going to be talking about, it's not just the US military and the partners, like the European partners coming in with a bunch of money and saying, hey have some
free training. Right. This is the US and these contractors and everybody that's working with them for this training, getting these African countries to pay to be a part of it, but then funds the entire thing, right, it's not just some party that they're going to have. It gets funded by the members the partners that are selected from the African countries.
And as long as you don't look too deep into the forensic accounting of where the money to fund that stuff comes from, then it's all well and good. There are clear good and bad guys. The United States encountered a renaissance of training and facilitation across South America, Asia, parts of Europe, the continent of Africa. Uncle Sam started growing, training and guiding militaries in a conflict it characterized as a borderless conflict. The idea at first blush. Obviously, it's utopian.
Could we stop wars before they began? If we could, then we would necessarily have to. It would be the ethical thing to do. Flintlock grew from this milieu, and that's part of why it continues today.
It's like green War, you know, like you know, it's gosh, it's just it's packaging this idea of a war without borders. It's not possible. That's not how wars work. But it's all about this kind of like pr line, It's sorry, it's making me very very depressed.
Well, this is this is us giving you some context. This is us giving a little bit of a dance in the shallow pool. Let's pause for a word from our sponsors and dive into the deep water. Here's where it gets crazy. All right, what is Flintlock? What is Flintlock?
Well, first, flintlock is kind of an umbrella term that describes a series of different, like you said, mad different training programs. Again, sort of like exporting American tactics and possibly a little bit of ideology, but definitely training and hardware to other countries. So let's go to the United States Africa Command street name AFRICOM, which is that makes sense.
It's a nice portmanteau. Here's how they describe this ongoing program. Flintlock, US Africa Command's premier and largest annual special operations exercise, has taken place annually since two thousand and five across the Sahel region of Africa among nations participating in the Trans Sahara counter Terrorism Partnership and are planned by African partner nations Special Operations Forces, Special Operations Command Africa and
the US. I'm in a state to develop the capacity of and collaboration among African security forces to protect civilian populations.
Great ten ten, No notes, right, there's a lot of somewhat vague language there.
Right.
The Trans Sahara counter Terrorism Partnership is something that a lot of people in the West probably haven't heard of, because why would you know about this if you weren't looking this statement the REDNAL. It's from twenty twenty three. However, Flintlock, going to your earlier point about an umbrella term, flintlock is much older as an idea. It dates back to the nineteen sixties when Special Forces Group, it was a tenth Special Forces Group where they were attempting to fight
against communism. They were training to they were training forces in Denmark and Germany West Germany of course, and Spain and Greece. Yeah, in an attempt to prevent the spread of fascism. There were bulwarks against the Domino theory, which we talked about a little bit earlier, and it continued after that and.
With Rob Reiner, if I'm not mistaken right, the Domino theory, we talked about communism as kind of this ghoul that had to be dealt with and sort of justified a lot of ends.
Specifically Vietnam, Southeast Asian theater. And we have to remember that on the other side of the Cold War equation, the USSR was looking at capitalism in much the same way Exercise Flintlock. This is a cool little bit of history. It continued some version of it. And we know that the Road Show moved to the United Kingdom in the nineteen eighties, and we know part of this due to extremely unfortunate death. Sergeant first class, a guy named Clifford
Strickland died testing something that is super cool. It's the Skyhook system. Remember that from Christopher Nolan's Batman.
Oh yeah's immediately what came to mind. Yeah, wait, I don't know that is what is that skyhook.
Was Remember of the scene where he gets extracted with like a like a harness and then like basically.
He takes the accountant out. Yeah, eval accountant.
Uh, he's in Tokyo or something like. He's definitely out of the country and it's meant to be like a military level extraction kind of.
I believe he's in Hong Kong because the government of China will not uh extradite one of their own. That's the line there, right, and so so anyway, the flintlock also has this experimental aspect to it, right. There's a lot of tried and true training and tactics, and then at least in the nineteen eighties there were a couple of more innovative things that went spectacularly wrong. And when people talk about flint lock now, they're not really talking
about that stuff from decades ago. They're referring to the ongoing training program via AFRICAM and It's Partners that began in two thousand and five. The less sexy, less cool name for this kind of stuff is JCEE T joint Combined Exchange training. Stabbing the fingers to wake up anybody who fell asleep hearing that.
Oh no, you're a chicken again. Oh sorry about that time.
The worst thing you could possibly see. Please don't chase me around a campfire, tiny dinosaur.
Sorry, Well, just this exercise is so complicated and weird, and it's got such a history, Ben, thank you for finding all this stuff in the history is it's it's so nuts, but it's it's weird to think that it's not just US military. It's not just United Kingdom military and those two Western forces and their interests and what training that's being provided, right, the tactics that those two countries have, they're bringing in all kinds of other partners. I think Germany has been a part of it for
quite a while. They're they're a major part of AFRICAM in general. But and it's not just US military training. It's also like US intelligence from the FBI that gets involved to share tactics for policing. As you said, there these these exercises get involved with the local police forces as well as the Department of Justice to help out with you know, how to actually bring justice to the bad guys once you get a hold of them, or
how to pursue those things. And even the State Department of the United States when it comes to those anti terrorism activities and how to track down basically how to investigate, track down and then in a weird way question like local civilians of residence, like just of a residential area where maybe something has gone down, you're tracking leads, how to interrogate people. It's really crazy how just multifaceted this series of exercises.
Is another important point there in terms of the intelligence stuff and the State Department stuff. From my understanding, there's a significant amount of instruction put into what we will call hearts and minds projects like not only how do we find the people were calling the bad guys this decade, but how do we also persuade civilians in rural areas that we are, in fact the good guys. How do we frame and guide their perspective?
Well, yeah, how do we get those people to raise a hand right the whole see something, say something? Kind of mentality? You can see that getting injected into this.
Hey I'm a strange or from Langley, snitch on your cousin for me. What's gonna happen? He's probably gonna die, you know. But well you gotta tell you that up front. You guys like blue jeans, you guys like fifty cent.
It's the same way the cops do you and they try to get you to flip on somebody. They say, oh, you'll be fine, we'll protect you, don't worry about it, and then you know they don't and you end up dead.
And again again we are when we talk about this, when we talk about things like Flintlock, I think it's very important for us to say we are in no way accusing the people who are operating there of being super villains. We're not saying they're out there to do evil stuff. Again, if you look at the official rationale, and if you look at the types of programs, which you know some of it's classified for sure, but if you look at what they're doing, they are attempting to
empower people. They are attempting to power local governments that would otherwise potentially be overrun by the consequences of previous similar exercises. Whatever. It's true. Well, yeah, or.
Our despots and dictators, I mean, there are you know, there are moneyed interests, right that have strings attached to other powers, Like that's kind of what you mean, like other very powerful countries that have economic interests in various African countries that have various troves of resources, right that can be extracted, and we know that those often the governing bodies can be manipulated, depending on what kind of purse you're thrown around.
Yeah, yeah, shout out to Wagner right street name Russia, shout out to Shout out to our good friends working for Uncle Gee. You know what I mean, Shout out to shout out to France's public relations to for still trying to make them look like the good guys in Africa.
They're pretty charming. Yeah, well the French.
Maybe in Paris. You should see them when they're out in the field.
So fair enough.
Yeah, so, US Special Forces in the current iteration of Flintlock, they kick it twice a year in the African continent for this training, and the most recent version happened March first through fifteenth of twenty twenty three. It's a win win or that's how it's seen, and there is validity to the concerns the threat of nebulous terrorists or separatist groups.
It looms large on humanity's first continent, specifically now in twenty twenty three, Flintlock is attempting to provide expertise and security for nations being affected by chaos in the sy Hel. Like you mentioned though the Soy held region of Africa.
There are a lot of chaotic groups there have we'll say it ties to larger global entities at times, and they themselves again going back to tactics, many of these groups also have training and in some cases equipment that is state actor level and as such, it could overwhelm domestic state forces that historically have struggled with corruption, with funding and honestly with decent training, because you need experienced people when you're engaging in this sort of business.
Well, and let's talk about the specific countries that have been involved in this. Many of them have been involved, like from early in the process, back in two thousand and five when this version of let's say, this version of Flintlock began, right and so have it continued on. Others have joined up more recently. But you know, the stuff I was looking at, guys, was from around twenty twenty when Flintlock was occurring then and then just looking forward.
But I'll just we can list off some countries here. African nations that have been in partners for Flintlock include Burkina, Fasso, Cameroon, Chad, Cabo Verde, Guinea, Molly, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Ghana. There's just there a ton of countries that have been involved, and we're going to talk about a little bit. There may be a reason that you've heard some of those names pretty recently in the news.
Yeah, oh boy, so right right now, earlier this year, As you said, Matt, the newest iteration of flint lock was conducted. It is international. It was conducted in Ghana and Cote de Vore, not French speakers. Ivory Coast. You might also know it as we are talking this time, around thirteen hundred military personnel from all told twenty nine
countries in some capacity. Basically, and I know this might make some of our fellow conspiracy realists who are veterans, I know it might make some of us a little salty to hear it, But basically you could call it a pop up version of the School of the Americas.
Dude, or what was the training camp where uh the oh gosh, we just talked about it with Robert Reiner Cuban exiles were being trained for sniping and where Lee Harvey Oswald you know, apparently showed up and was trained.
To use the twenty five six that it was something like that, but he was, ah, that was the group of dudes. You were sponsored by the CIA. That wasn't where they hung out. They came out. I think I don't know how to Dave imbusters were almost there work close. It was one of those. It was definitely one of
those or something like it. But the aim of flintlock is to again empower local governance, right, empower the local armed forces, which does often involve militarizing the police such that they can continue things that we often take for granted in the United States. Just to be very clear, one example would be the peaceful passage of power. Right.
The fact that for quite some time the United States, a very young country, has successfully and peacefully passed from one president to another, even when they clearly hate each other. Like the fact that that has happened for a couple centuries is kind of cool, and it's not super common in world history for that kind of thing to occur, So there is validity to the statement about this. But there's also the other side. One of the big factors here,
it's not altruism. One of the big factors is to ensure the spice flows, whatever the spice may be, to ensure the stability of global trade and therefore indeed the global economic system as it is currently understood.
Guys, if you don't mind, I'd love to read a quick quote from R. Clark Cooper. Though we talked about before, this guy is a part of the I guess he's a part of the State Department. Let's say, and he is speaking at the closing ceremonies for Flintlock twenty twenty, and he's talking about I think the same thing, but not saying it out loud. Does that make sense? He's speaking around it in a way.
Let's hear it. Let's hear the dance.
Peez. Okay, Oh, there's a lot of there's a lot of stuff in here.
But less I'm so excited.
Okay, it's kind of long. Bear with me, here we go. But more than being an opportunity for us to each improve individually, Flintlock is an opportunity for all our nations to grow together in a healthy partnership. But not all partnerships are healthy. But the one we celebrate here today is how can I tell simple? Because it's a partnership based on mutual respect and shared values, not self interest and exploitation. Because partnership contributes to self sufficiency, not lasting dependency.
Is that not a little condescending?
It does feel that way to me, But I don't know, I don't know, but it's I just gotta I gotta say this so you get the feel of the way he's talking to everybody and you just wonder is he talking to the leaders right or is he talking to the you know, each individual person who is participating. I'm gonna keep going just a little bit furtherer quote and
to sustainable capability, not burdensome debt. Partnership is not just a means to an end, but a path which we value for the friendships it creates and the lessons we all learn side by side. Our relationship is one of cooperation, mutual respect, and transparency. And today no other nation can
match the United States commitment to the continent. Oh well, we're talking about the US wanting to assert itself in the entirety of the African continent as Papa safety, Papa money, you know, like I'm the He's like, yeah, global police, Like, we're gonna keep you saying we're gonna help you stay safe, and we're gonna help you be prosperous, and we're here for you.
We're gonna teach you to fish and hey, if that means you end up in our navy, tight, that's exactly.
Georgia Public Broadcasting here in Atlanta has this that they adopted this new slogan a handful of years ago, and I despise it because it has the same vibe as this is Georgia Public Broadcasting. We respect and appreciate your intelligence. The way they say it, the sound of the voice is just like really really, that feels like, so we're really texting you in a relationship after an argument.
Yeah.
I don't know if it's the best opener, but that quotation from from Big Coops is is in line with the earlier statements and signals that the US and the global West have given to the nations of Africa. And the tough part about that is that while those statements have been made and broadcast, they occur in step with some troubling things, not just resource extraction. That's old beans.
But tune in for our previous episodes on that. And if you just hear that statement right like you're sitting there and you've never met this guy for some reason, you know nothing about colonialism, et cetera, and this and the various companies controlling it, then you might say, well, who, buddy, this sounds fantastic. Thanks Big Coops.
Can't wait. You know what, if you hear that right now, I was gonna say, if you didn't join in this year, then man you're gonna want to get in next year.
We want to teach you talents. Sure, yeah, we want get on the boat. Get on the boat with us, is what they're saying. And what do the tank? That's what they're always saying. Yet, so also, to be fair, given that millions, millions of millions of innocent people have been murdered, assaulted, tortured, forced out of their communities by terrorist or separatist organizations, several of which again seem to have their own pretty high end training, then the question
again becomes a moral quandary. Who would not want to help? How could you look at this situation and not become involved. We're gonna pause for word from our response, and then we're going to explore pretty unpleasant badger in this bag. We're back. As we've seen in the case of the School of Americas for the Americas, excuse me, as well as in the cases of various like student activists and freedom fighter groups, there isn't a lot of oversight applied
to what happens post training. Teach you all these insurrection techniques, all these interrogation techniques, will teach you why the third story is a great place for your enemies to hang out and then after that, you know, do you dog?
Yeah? Well, And one of the one of the first things that exercise flint Lock focuses on is getting the upper command levels together and doing training with those individuals in small groups, right, and y'all, I don't want to get too conspiratorial, but it feels like Concy Well, I feel like if you're I don't know, I feel like if you're on the pulpit right in the way that it feels like Cooper kind of is when he's speaking
about what Flintlock's doing. If you're having a small session with the upper echelons of these individual partner countries, it feels like you could almost be preaching to them a philosophy more so even than tactics, at least at that upper level, because you've you're trying to make everybody see the same picture or vision.
Sure. And also the tough thing about speaking from the pulpit is you don't hear the whispers in the pews, and I think that's the ghost that comes to haunt programs like Fliplock. I mean, the big concern to your point, mat the big concern is is kind of ideological and it's an ideology that on the surf is any decent person can agree with. Human beings should have a say in their government. You should be able to vote for things. Human beings should have a reliable, predictable day to day,
year over year sense of safety and security. Right, and also have the room for luxuries, for aspirations and so on. These are all very basic things. It's crazy that they become a hot take so often in the history of humans. But like, the big concern then is that you can train people to the best of your ability, right, not just in tactics, which tactics are. Tactics can be perishable, right, just like intelligence. The way to conduct a war back in the day of Napoleon is not the way to
conduct a war today. If you march a bunch of people just straight in a series of lines, they're gonna die, They're gonna get killed. But ideal may not be perishable. And the idea is going back to the example of firearms having no moral self evaluation. You're teaching people to be guns, and you are at the same time asking them to retain enough humanity to only fire at the
quote unquote bad guys. And you're hoping that they will agree with you for the rest of their lives on who is the bad versus the good guy?
What's that expression? If you're a hammer, then everything starts to look like a nail. You know.
Yeah, but it's such some of it is such specialized tactics, for like the like the breach and clear kind of thing, the close quarters tactics, the it's some of its goria style stuff that you would be carrying out. I it feels like the stuff you would need to stage a coup.
We let's start a coup. It's not just a show. It's true. These insurrection tactics. Again, they are instituted and taught and to a degree institutionalized because they work. And there's a deeper thing here. If we're getting conspiratorial. Another cool thing about this is well, not cool, interesting, intellectually fascinating. If you are the source of the education, if you are the source of the insurrection tactics and the coup mechanisms, that also means that you can recognize when those are
being applied somewhere else. So if if somebody studies at your school and then they go out into the streets of the world and they say Hey, guys, I learned something interesting about how you might seize a government facility. Then you are going to recognize it because you taught that game first, right, So there is I think an implicit added benefit to this. I mean that the problem is you can't control the gun, you can't give it
a conscience, You cannot dictate people's minds. The Manchurian candidate has never successfully been created. So the same people trained by the US, by Canada, France, Italy, Germany, all the other ones, they can leverage their knowledge to become something very similar to the monsters they were originally trained to fight.
Yeah, what happens when somebody you've trained like that and given an ideological seed, right, that then grows and you see, let's say you're in the upper echelons of a country like, oh, I don't know.
Nepal.
Okay, sure, let's say Nepaul, and you watch the governing the people who are governing that country. You can physically see and hear about and know the corruption that's happening at the upper levels. Is that person going to want to stop that corruption because you've gone through this training that specifically is anti corruption along with being anti terrorists and anti terrorism, and no question, because these things are linked together, right, And I'm not saying corruption at the
highest levels. I'm not saying that that's right. I'm saying that that is probably pretty common in every country everywhere, always corruption of the upper levels. But if you've been trained specifically to see that, and then you've got ways to fight that thing and like ways to think about fighting that corruption, it just it feels like you're setting up a bunch of dominoes and then just waiting for one of them to fall eventually that you don't control.
But you've set the dominoes up in a way that when that first one does fall, you know, you kind of understand the outcome.
They control the chaos. Yeah, and there's also I mean the other side. First off, we're not taking shots at Nepal. They did have a coup in two thousand and five, but you know that's just because coups are very in fashion right now. They're like the hottest thing.
Yeah, we could have said Gabon or Nigerer or Guinea or Burkina, Fosso or Chad or Molly or Sudan.
Now keep it coming, drop the beatnal Oh.
And that's just me naming a couple of names. According to Al Jazeera, in an article he run August thirtieth, there have been forty five coups on the African continent out of the fifty four nations since nineteen fifty. So forty five since nineteen fifty.
Oh yeah, and there were some. Some of the new coups that dropped recently are gonna surprise surprise, folks. Let's build on this historical fact, right, Let's build on the historical fact that, yes, people have trained what they thought of as sheep dogs to protect a herd from wolves. And in some cases they would have you believe that the dogs just joined up with the wolves. In any case, it's the sheep that suffer. That is an historical fact. If we branch into the realm of conspiracy, then we
ask a more dangerous question. Our interrogation continues leading us to wonder, what if the same forces training these folks are picking and choosing suitable candidates to lead future coups. To your example, Matt, what if what if you are in those halls of power? Right, You've studied in Paris, you attended Fort Benning, you know you've you've got some
bona fides. You hang out at a couple of training sessions, and one day, as your disillusion about the state of your nation, you get a phone call, right or you have an interesting conversation, maybe best to keep it off written record, And the next thing you know, you're getting a lot of support from a student group you never heard of. Right, you gotta You've got a suddenly very dedicated, very talented group of civilians, and they share your concerns
about the nature of barium supplies. Right, excuse me, the spirit, the hearts and minds, whatever, Like what if? What if the United States and its allies are purposely creating sources of future conflict and instability with the thought being they can control the resulting chaos.
I mean, that's what the picture looks like from here.
We can't prove it.
We can't prove any of that. It's there's a there's an intercept article. I think we're gonna get to where there's an interview. Nick, Yeah, dude, some of the quotations in there, and like the takeaway from that, God, I can't wait to discuss it together. Okay, go ahead.
When we were talking to Rob, like I kind of naive on purpose, I guess, asked, but to what end does it make sense for us to be in the conflict in Vietnam when everyone knew it was a disaster and it wasn't going well, Like, why is it such a big deal to stay in there? And you know, he very kindly patted me on the head, young lad, and said, the military industrial complex, you dunce like that
was created. It was manufactured. It was a realization that like, this is big business, and this is you know, if we can maintain circumstances where we're in control of this flow of money, largely money that doesn't even have to be accounted for, then we're going to enrich everybody that we know, and that you know, we'll have infinite favors forever. I know I'm oversimplifying it, but it's it's kind of wild.
Yeah, And it doesn't hurt that you're gonna have a lot of natural resources to extract in these specific strategic places as well.
And at first this idea might sound trivial, right or abstract, we have to remember this does occur in the historical record. There was hard provable precedent for the use of proxies. You know, shut out Afghanistan. The Soviets did with the mujah deemed correct in that situation, and the US actively did the same thing. The trained, funded, otherwise empowered separatist proxy groups that later became their enemies when the geopolitical
winds shifted. And look, we cannot accuse the United States of provably creating monsters with active malicious intention, especially when the simpler explanation may fall down to plain old negligence or factions within these agencies. And this alphabet soup I mean. And yet you know sam Mednik had this point. The military junta's ruling Mali and Burkina US are getting military support from Russia. Molly's also working with the Wagner group.
Let's go to David Pugli's from the Ottawa Citizen. He writes, African soldiers trained by US and Allied special forces at Flintlock have track records of launching coups to remove civilian elected governments from power in their home nations. In July. He's talking, I believe in twenty twenty two. Oh no, he's talking in twenty twenty three. In July, military officers who had trained previous Flintlock exercises ousted Niger's democratically elected
president at a coup data, there's a pickle. There's a pickle there.
Well, and often there are there's a set of circumstances that someone from the outside I'm just as an example, me reading about the circumstances around a coup like that feel like, Oh, there's a series corruption there, or there was a real conflict of interest, or there's something right that's being talked about, and you go, oh, I could
see maybe there was a coup in that country. I think maybe from the outside perspective, the way these coups get reported on, it's almost like it's justified sometimes, but I don't know. Often maybe I'm just personally confused about it because it does seem like there's something else at play behind the scenes that we don't get privy to.
M m yeah, very black Monday murders, right, the vassals of the lattice and so on. Yeah. Like in recent years to that point, officers trained by the United States have launched seven successful coups and sometimes even get the coups on coups. Domestic US news doesn't often break a sweat reporting this. There are just too many celebrities to pay attention.
To cous on Coups domestic US news. I was hoping there would be an additional end rhyme, but that was good.
Enough for me.
Oh thanks, Noel, Yeah, we could totally. Well, let's just drop a mixtape on it, like Coups on Coups. I think it will work. We also we owe a great deal of debt to investigative journalists who are all woefully underpaid and if they're honest, they're not working for institutional forces. This is someone we're very grateful to introduce Matt. You
mentioned him earlier. Nick Urce writing for The Intercept in twenty twenty two, he has this guy put the work in, He put the time in, the blood, sweat and the boots on the ground. He was deep into the coup in Burkina fass Out and this coup that he spoke about, he was intensely studying. It was led by a guy named Paul Enri Sandalgo Damiba, and this guy studied in Paris, the Military College in Paris. He also has a degree in criminology from France and he spent a few years
in the US for training. He went on to serve as the interim president of Burkina Fassau from January thirty first of twenty twenty two to September thirtieth of the same year. Things went sideways for him. He lost power, he was overthrown in. Can you guess, would anyone care to guess? Well, it wasn't an election, that's for sure. Yeah, like Kuzan kuz on KU's. So the results are obvious.
There is a significant correlation between individuals trained by Western forces in things like exercise fliplock and then later cous coupdata you know, all day and so the question is we can't prove a conspiracy exist, but why does this pattern seem so strong? So maybe we end it here. Again, we cannot emphasize this enough. The personnel training individuals via flintlock and via other things like flintlock, it is not unique.
They are not weird super villains. They're not hanging out, you know, like drinking the blood of the young or whatever and saying I can't wait to ruin lives. They are genuinely working to do quite the opposite, to save the lives of innocent people. But again, all the stuff they're teaching, it knows no real ethical constraint. You know, the window that you push someone out of. That window never asks you why the person is falling, you know what I mean, It's just a window, or it's just
a gun. And these things are measured in terms of practical application rather than philosophical coziness and comfort. So is the United States and its Western allies. Are they creating the enemies they may fight in the future. If so, are they doing this on purpose? That's a pretty complicated question, And the problem with that as a conspiracy is that it describes a lot of long term planning aptitude that
historically doesn't exist. I'm just gonna say it, Yeah, a lot of the conspiracies are just covering up previous mistakes.
To me, it feels more alike inception, philosophical inception, and that's really I think that's really all you have to do in these train on the ground exactly how to the tactics to get it done, and then get the top people who control the people who can do those things, like train them in the philosophy of the way things should be so that when those individuals observe things like government corruption, all that stuff occurring, they can actually use
the tools that they have at their disposal to stop that from happening.
I wonder what kind of to the point about ideology, I wonder what kind of spirational books are given right on the syllabus on the heart time flips? Is it tracts well? Is it like eyeing rand at the shrugged? Is it laws of war or laws of power?
Is it sun sou?
Is it chicken soup for the teenage soul soul?
Perhaps it's I was watching a video. It was titled Flintlock Exercise. It was posted like in twenty sixteen, and there's this guy Ltc. William D. Rose Road Special Operations Command Africa. He he, guys, I just want to see what you think about this. He says. This quote an African proverb that they our partners like to quote often is when your neighbor's house is on fire, you helped to put it out in order to safeguard your own, which sounds very good to me, right. That sounds like, yes,
this is cooperation across countries for the greater good. If somebody's house is on fire wanted to burn, mind, so yeah, selfishly, I'm gonna help you put it out. But also I care about you enough. I think it sounds really good to me. Just wonder what you guys think about that as like a part of the philosophy that's being taught.
I watched the video as well. I saw it via who is this dev grew five O two two.
That was the accessible one.
Yeah, yeah, that's the that's the that's the one you can find most easily on YouTube. In this in this conversation, I would say again, these people are acting in good faith, these instructors, these veterans who have survived some crazy thing. This is also an opportunity, a much needed opportunity for special forces to acquire training and experience. There's a reason this exists. It's maybe multiple birds one stone situation, right,
But but are all the birds they're aiming for? The birds the Americans and the global civilian population want to hit.
They're the ones that, as long as they're birds, hit them all day long. I'm sorry, guys, I'm out of the metaphor into literal birds.
Well that's fine. We know you feel about birds and.
All I know, it's my brand. I got to say it every now and again.
Just along with this other training they're also providing, like civil aid right, or so you might call a humanitarian aid, working with clean water sources in smaller villages, working with hospitals to get them up to date in like updated and orphanages. Even this is all according to that same person that we were quoting here, Lieutenant William D. Rose. And they're also working with outreach activities, like numerous outreach
activities in the small areas where they're having the flintlock exercises. Again, in my it's good, it's they're helping people, right, But you're also painting a picture of where this help is coming from, and you know the type of help that you're going to provide. It just all it builds on that Cold war thing to me in some weird way, you.
Know, I agree with you, and i'd like I proposedly end with a question and something that's bothering me more and more often for many years now. Yes, waging war on terrorist however, defined waging war on the quote unquote bad guys, hostile states. That's all well and good, But what about the private industries that enable the chaos? What about those who profit by the existence of war, regardless of victory or failure toward a specific side. These are
often global conglomerates. They make money either way. So what about waging war on those corporations proven private industries doing hard? Will the United States or a similar power ever start a school like that?
No, No, that's.
Only called aerarchi. It would be burning down all that we've built. We've worked so hard to get to where we are. Why would you want to do that? What are you some kind of nihilists?
I just want like an ltc rows of some sort saying you know, like far in the future, saying you know, little known fact. We actually train the Halliburtons once upon a time and the Halliburton Haliburtons right right, right, folks. There's so much more we did not get to. We have endeavored to be even handed about this, to point out things we cannot prove, to point out patterns that do exist. And most importantly, we want to hear from you.
Let us know your thoughts, not just about things like exercise flintlock, but about other similar mechanisms throughout the world. Shout out to Dulu technology, et cetera, et cetera. We try to be easy to find online.
Oh boy, do we ever? And I'd like to think we succeed You can find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff on XFKA, Twitter, Facebook. We have our Here's where it Gets Crazy Facebook group where you can join in on the conversation around episodes. People still go to Facebook.
I hope you do.
It's a good group, good people there, and we also are that on YouTube or Conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram and TikTok.
We have a phone number and a voicemail system. Call one eight three three STDWYTK, give yourself a cool nickname, and then you've got three minutes. Say whatever you'd like. We're excited to hear from you when you do call in. Please let us know if we can use your voice and message on one of our listener mail episodes. It's totally fine. If you don't want to, just say hey,
please don't use this. If you've got more to send, maybe links, maybe attachments, all that kind of stuff, why not instead send us an email.
We are conspiracy at iHeart 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.