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George nor with you, calling Dickey with Us. His book is called Under the Eye of Power. His website is linked up at Coast tocoastam dot com. Colin, you were talking about Abraham Lincoln's best friend. Why would he? Why would that doctor do that?
All right?
This guy, this guy Sho who claimed that he was a Lincoln's best friend. And this looks like a huge bestseller. Everybody bought this story even though it was based on nothing. He just told us whole He wrote this whole memoir about they were best friends. Why did he do it? He?
I think what he he was in a real be in his bonnet about Catholicism, and he really thought that the Catholics were out to just undermine everything that's great about America, which I think is pretty nonsensical, but it was a pretty popular belief at the time, and I think it was a way for people to sort of like,
you know, they had been through the Civil War. It it really messed people up, and they were looking for some kind of narrative and for some reason, this one really just kind of, you know, grabbed people's attention, and they sort of allowed them to kind of kind of forget maybe what had happened and why it had happened.
I guess tell us about William Morgan and what happened to him.
So this was fascinating, you know. I mean, for all the all of the conspiracy theories around the Freemasons and all the kind of terrible things they've done, the one thing that they really did that's on record, that that is actually absolutely provable happened in upstate New York in eighteen twenty six. This guy, William Morgan, was a Freemason. He got tired of the organization. He decided to leave.
He was going to publish a book with the secret rights of the Freemasons, and he was going to make it make it public. And this annoyed his brothers and they decided to harass him. They threw him in jail a couple of times on trumped up charges, trying to get him to you know, racan't and he refused. To the guy who was going to publish it, they burned
down his printing press. Finally, in August eighteen twenty six, they they threw William Morgan and jail again and then this sort of mysterious figures shows up to bail him out, and at first Morgan is pretty pretty happy to be released from prison. They realized that he doesn't know this guy and he's being hustled into a waiting carriage. Morgan shouts to the onlookers on the street, you know, help, I'm being murdered. Oh yes, that's the last anybody ever
saw William Morgan. And you know, nobody, nobody knows for sure what happened to him, but it seems like these guys in upstate New York, you know, disappeared him, so to speak. And that you know, as I said, for all of the conspiracy theories around the Freemasons, that's the one act of violence that can you know, actually be attributed to any American Masons.
There was strange violence in this country during these days, wasn't there.
Yeah? I mean, yeah, it was. It's fascinating that there there was a lot of kind of you know, riots around that time. And I think we maybe now we think of our our history as sort of, you know, pretty peaceful one with a few notable exceptions, but it seems like we had like riots pretty regularly, and they were used by different people to kind of you know, uh gin up you know, bigotry towards people, or to
you know, keep people in line. And and this, this h Freemason event was you know, actually kind of par for the course, not by the Freemasons themselves, but just by Americans generally. We just seem to like to have a good riot every so often. That seems to be something maybe kind of baked into who we are.
I guess, which is amazing. How did you come upon all these stories?
Calling it was? It's fascinating.
You know.
I set out I you know, as I said, I I picked up my topic. I was going to look at groups either either feel or imagined who were working behind the scenes to uh you know, break laws or or curtail civil liberties. And I just kind of casta a wide net. And I, you know, in some cases this sort of thing, one thing would lead to another, and I would just sort of kind of follow a
rabbit hole. And that's how I found out about I was just kind of looking around for these kind of crazy, you know, these these anti Catholic conspiracy theories like this the Shaniqui guy. And that's how I found out about this. This convent in outside of Boston in eighteen thirty four, was you know, another kind of just crazy riot that just happened where you know, the local people in Boston decided they were just going to burn this convent to
the ground. And I'd never heard of this before. I you know, I've spent a lot of time in Boston. I know a lot of people there. Nobody I know it, ever heard heard of this before. And you know, Boston is is known for the the Boston Tea Party. It's it's known as a place that you know, kind of wears its riots proudly on its sleeve. And and here
was one that nobody was talking about. How they they ransacked and destroyed this this Catholic convent out, you know, based on this faulty notion that people were being held there against their will.
I go to Denver once a month to tape some television programs. You went to the Denver Airport to do a little investigating.
I mean, you gotta right, like, I mean, you know, I don't I don't know what your experience with the Denver Airport is, but I I've been going there, you know, I don't know, for twenty years or so, and it's always like, why is it so far out? That's my big question is that it's like takes forever to get there at it. And I guess I understand why people might think there's something going on there, just because it seemed weirdly out in the middle of nowhere.
It's huge, it's huge, right.
And then there's the the that that blue or horse when you come in and out.
You heard the story of that horse. It fell on the architect and killed him.
Yeah, the guy who designed it, Yeah, like it killed him on his leg and you know, he bled out and it's it's horrifying. I mean, like you know that who's that guy? Lewis Amenez is the name of the sculptor, and his work is all over El Paso. I think that's where he's from. So I've seen his work everywhere and most of it's fine, normal, and that one, for some reason, is just terrifying.
They say the Denver Airport has been constructed for any kind of earth emergency and they would need to put the government leaders underground. You think it's out there?
I sure, why not? I mean, you know, like that seems a weird place to put them though, right, Like wouldn't you put them near DC or something.
I mean, they're a source of power, you would think.
Yeah, right, it is huge. It does like ask a lot of questions. When you're out there, you're just sort of like, I mean, I went there for a weekend, and I had a flight in the afternoon, and I purposely got there as early as I could so I could just kind of go through security and loiter around and you know, not not draw the attention of any anybody, because I wasn't doing anything wrong, but I just kind of wanted to kind of experience it. And you're right, like,
it's huge. It goes on forever, it doesn't seem to need that much space, and all these sort of kind of minor maybe you know, architectural decisions all sort of add up, and you start to wonder, like, is there something really going on here beneath the surface? Maybe maybe not.
We had a congressional hearing today on UAP's I call him UFOs now, of course, and a lot of people are still suspicious of government calling with respect to hiding information. What do you think of that?
You know, it's interesting. I listen to a lot of that. I've been following that story that guy, you know, he's he keeps saying, you know, I can't say anything publicly because it's all classified, which which might be true. It made me say, think of this book Donald Keijo's UFOs are real from like nineteen Yeah, he had a bunch of guys also, you know, air Force pilots and other guys who said, you know, we've seen stuff. And I mean, you know, we've been We've been seeing this story of
a guy coming forward and saying he's seen stuff. We've been seeing it for for decades. You know this a lot of people, I think are are acting like this guy and what is the name Gretch, Like he is, you know, the first guy who's ever done this. But we've we've got these guys, We've had these guys on record for a long time, and it's it seems interesting that we keep kind of getting that same story without anything really coming from it.
Why is there so much distrust and it goes all the way back to the beginning of government.
Yeah, it's weird. You know, in the beginning, when when you see kind of fear of secret groups, whether or not it's the Freemasons or or the Illuminati or or the Catholics or whomever. It's always like, the people are always worried about government being attacked from from the outside. That you know, it's it's foreign influences, it's it's French revolutionaries, or it's the pope, and they're going to undermine our great democratic system. We you know, we're the first democracy.
We've got it all worked out, and so we're we're deeply paranoid that somebody is going to come in from a foreign power and undermine America. And that shifts by you know, the post war, post World War two. Suddenly it's the government who is, you know, the the conspirator, the government who's had to get us to, you know,
the government we stopped trusting. And I think that's a weird, fascinating shift that we went from thinking that the government needed to be protected from conspirators to thinking that the government, you know, is itself the main conspirator.
What is a secret society to you?
To me, I think of a secret society, and in two ways I think of I think there's a there there are literal groups like you know, the Freemasons. I think that's a pretty straight forward secret society. And these guys either are doing something the farious or not, you know, I think almost I think of like Nixon's cronies as a secret society doing something the farious, kind of working
you know, conspiratorially to break laws. There's this other kind of secret society, which I think we think of as like a much more kind of kind of nebulous and ambiguous and wide reaching. Like when you talk about talk to people about the Illuminati, it's like, you know, they're they're capable of doing anything, They're everywhere in anywhere. They're almost kind of like kind of magical or supernatural and their ability to sort of reach out and affect everything.
And I think we have these kind of two parallel versions of secret societies, one which is kind of grounded in history, and one which is maybe a little bit more supernatural.
I think you investigated the CIA, what did you uncover?
So? Yeah, one of my favorite stories in the book is this, this crazy story, and this is absolutely true. The CIA got involved in trying to find drugs, like you know, mostly LSD, but other drugs that they thought could do could achieve mind control. And they were trying all these different experiments to see if they could get
you know, people to do stuff under LSD. The craziest, craziest one happened in San Francisco in the fifties where they got a apartment which they sort of outfitted and decorated to look like a brothel, and then they got sex workers to bring back John's from the local bars and clubs in North Beach and San Francisco to this this pad. They called it the Pad, and it was outfitted with all these two way mirrors and listening devices, so all these CIA agents could basically watch these people
have sex. And these these prostitutes would dose their clients with LSD without their knowledge and then basically have sex with them, and the CIA agents would just watch and take notes. And this this was called Operation Midnight. Climax was the code name for it. And this went on.
Did they what did they expect to learn?
I mean they I don't know that they really. I think maybe they were just a little a little bit voyeuristic. I mean yeah, like I don't know that they ever got anything useful. I mean, you know, you can imagine this. You know, being taking LSD without your knowledge or consent probably messes you up something because you don't really know what's going on, and all of a sudden, your perception
has all changed. But I don't you know, I guess they they thought maybe it would lead to some kind of revelation about you know, mind control or persuasiveness or maybe getting people to do things against their their will and kind of a Manchurian candidate way. But I think I don't think it. I don't think they ever got
anything useful. I think they just liked it and they were getting you know, taxpayers basically pay them for this, you know, kind of crazy kind of second sting operation they were running.
You have a chapter about a situation in eighteen thirty four outside of Boston where mobs burned down a convent. What did they do?
Yeah, right, so yeah, so again you know these kind of anti Catholic conspiracy theories that were really popular in the nineteenth century, and these guys decided that, you know this, these Catholic priests were using the confessional as maybe kind of part blackmail, part mind control to you know, enslaved young women who were being held there against their will. And so this this rumor kept spreading to the point where they decided they were just going to break into
this convent liberate all the women. They figured that there was maybe sort of unwanted children who had been murdered and buried in the in the basement. So they they you know, hustled all these women out, who were of course horrified and confused because that was their home. They
didn't want to be livery. They were fine, you know, these guys didn't find anything, they didn't find any evidence of anything that there wasn't anything, but they decided to burn the convent down to the ground anyways, and they did, you know, luckily they didn't kill anybody. But this was this was again one of one of Boston's sort of notable riots, but one that maybe was a little bit more infamous than the Boston Tea Party. So it doesn't get talked about a lot, and it's been more or
less forgotten, but it it definitely happened. It was definitely part of Boston's crazy history.
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