From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. They call me Ben. We are joined, of course, with our super producer Paul Decon on the ones and two's. Most importantly, you are here, You are you, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. That's what this is. Brand new logo rocking feeling good. Yeah, that's true. We have the six finger logo designed by the way, by our super producer Paul Paul nice work, Sir, with consultation from our graphic artist team. Yeah. Pam, Yeah, we can your name, It's okay, Pam is awesome, Pam Peacock. Yeah. And we have a situation here wherein it maybe deceptively easy to think that there are only three or four people involved in stuff they don't want you to know. That could not be further from the truth, because this podcast, like many many other things in the world, has an entire team behind the curtain, actively working to make stuff like this sound easy. I think we have the easiest jobs on the team to be honest. Oh absolutely. We We just get in here and ramble. Man, That's what I do. You you do the hard stuff. I just go whale bend. Guess what what I fell for? You see there you go? No, no, no no. But the reason we're bringing up this idea of a team that often is not acknowledged is because today's episode dives into something that could easily be seen as the um the actions of just a few isolated people. Absolutely, maybe just fifty two of them, perhaps as few as fifty two. But as we're going to find, just like this podcast, today's topic has many, many, many, many more people in play, some of whom remain mysterious and unidentified today. If you're listening to this show, then you probably won't be surprised. Matt and I are going to go out on a limb and assume you will not be surprised to learn that most governments, at one point or another, love Them or Hatum, have perpetrated secret, illegal programs against either their citizens or citizens of another country. And since our show is based in the US, we naturally tend to explore stories based in this country. This one is new exception, but it's one you may not have heard of before. Today we're exploring a classified program known as Operation Chaos. Yes, and to discuss this program, we need to take ourselves back to nineteen fifty four onwards just a little bit there, to the Second Indo China War. You probably don't know it is that. You probably know it as the Vietnam War. I know. That's how I was a little while ago. It was a conflict between North and South Vietnam, which were two separate countries at the time, and it lasted from nineteen fifty four until nineteen seventy five. Now this is distilling it like crazy, but this is just to say what it is. And you probably already know this. North Vietnam was a communist government. It was run by a communist government, and they worked with these rebels in South Vietnam who were called the Vietcong, and together they attempted to overthrow the government of South Vietnam. And this was a terrible, terrible conflict that cost the lives of so many and we'll discuss that here shortly um but ultimately, the physical combat took place in both South Vietnam and North Vietnam. Laos and Cambodia, which are immediately to the west of the Vietnam of Vietnam, that's right there, and I guess spoiler alert. Ultimately the North Vietnamese were successful in their attempts to overthrow the South Vietnamese government. Yeah. Yeah, and along the way the US got involved. You may have heard us reference earlier instances surrounding the the catalyst that set the US on a path to war in this part of the world, the most controversial one being the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which did we do a whole episode on that? Editor? Do we just do false flags? We did false Flags and we rediscussed it at length, but you know, maybe we could go deeper. Who knows? Who knows? Check out the false Flags episode if you have yet to do so. There's some pretty interesting stuff there. For now, we're going to explore the not not the entire Vietnam War, because this is the setup right to Operation Chaos. We're going to look at the people the US sent to wage this war. The Vietnam War, as it's called in the US, used a conscription system, a draft, and that is something that hasn't occurred since. Roughly two point seven million US soldiers served in Vietnam, and of those, two point seven million around were draftees, meaning that they were forced to go, and in most cases it would be a crime for them to refuse to serve the war. Regardless of their ideological or political affiliations. There are cases where you could be a conscientious objector, for instance, a pacifist or a so called pacifist like the Quakers. Lindon laruche was raised a Quaker, which will be important a little bit later today's show. Or Muhammad Ali who was a conscientious objector. Yeah, and so conscientious objection is a genuine thing, but there were a lot of people who high tailed it to Canada, for instance, because they felt like they wouldn't be able to make a case for conscientious objection, that they would have been popped into the shaking bake system and then sent off to die in the jungle. That's how a lot of people looked at it. Yeah, especially towards the end of the Vietnam conflict, as as the propaganda and the truth of the situation was coming forward, and many many, many other people, as you can tell from the statistics, about seventy of the forces there volunteered or we're already career military, and not all of these people came back. We discussed this briefly in our episode on the allegations of POWs left behind in Vietnam, which is still a contentious topic of conversation, right because there's simply not enough proof one way or the other, unfortunately, And we know that of the people who went to the roughly two point seven million, not everybody made it home. That's the reality. But we have the actual numbers to right, Yeah, one out of every ten Americans who served in Vietnam was in some way a casualty. There was somewhere between fifty eight thousand and two d and twenty that were killed, just killed while they were there, and then another three hundred and four thousand that were wounded. And that's an estimate there, right. Yeah. The oldest and this is again just on the U. S side, The oldest person on the U. S side killed was sixty two years old. Of the people who were killed, sixty one percent, more than half were younger than twenty one Wow, And more than eleven thousand of those killed were younger than twenty and five people who were killed in Vietnam were only sixteen years old. That's again on the American side. It's very important because there are a lot of people under sixteen years old that died that were not on the American side, that were civilians that we're simply trying to live their lives. So let's look at the Vietnamese side. The US military estimates that between two hundred thousand and two hundred fifty thousand South Vietnamese soldiers died in the war. And in nineteen Vietnam released its official estimate of war casualties, and it's cited as many as two million civilians on both sides, the North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese side, and they said an addition, there were one point one million North Vietnamese and Viet Kong soldier casualties. That is unthinkable. It's a blood bath. Yeah. Well, you know, the overall tonnage of bombs that were dropped during the Vietnam War exceeds that of if you add up most of World War two, of just if you think about the the amount of munition that was used there, it exceeds almost all of World War Two, which is insane, and in many cases some of that ordinance remains allows right, right, and the US conducted secret illegal operations in Cambodia and Laos particular. A lot of people here in the US agreed with the war, and a lot of people did not. And this is where we hit upon the concept of deserters. Deserters would be a little bit different from draft dodgers. Yes, yeah, So if you're a draft dodger, your number gets called up, they pull your card and you say, for one reason or another, forget this, I'm out of here. I'm going to Canada and going into Europe. I'm gonna head out for the Southern continent, you know. And there were organizations set up to assist people that wanted to dodge the draft. That's a that's a pejorative kind of a draft dodger. But like they wanted to, um, what what is a better way? They did not want to participate in a war with which they did not agree. Oh there you go. But yeah, they they just they disagreed. Um. But if we're going to talk about what a deserter is an actual deserter, this is um. The military has a classification for this, and it is that it's any person that's been absent without leave a service member mind you, uh, for more than thirty days. Thirty days or less, you're a wall, right, yes, exactly, And you have to be an active member of the military to be considered a deserter. And desertion is something that occurs in almost every war. Yes, it's it's often looked down upon. It's seen as an unpatriotic move, to say the least, and at times it's seen as tremendously unethical. Right, the idea of being that someone has already to some extent agreed to serve in a military and then they have gone back on their word or the vow they took, the oath they took, and Vietnam was no different. In fact, quite a few people deserted during Vietnam. Yeah. According to reports from nineteen seventy two from uh let's see July nineteen sixty six. Until November nineteen seventy two, around four hundred and twenty three thousand United States military personnel were classified as deserters. Now again they've been classified as deserters. It doesn't mean that that's necessarily, you know, whatever the situation they're going through. Those are very they're varying to a large extent, but um they're classified that way by the military. Now, uh, let's see, by July of nineteen seventy two, according to this report, a large number of these people were quote returned to military control. That's a three hundred and ninety one thousand of the four hundred and twenty three thousand, so they were returned to military control. And it's interesting because this around this time frame nineteen sixty six to nineteen seventy two, this is when the US military began even try king these numbers because they had been relatively low in the past. If you if you look at World War two, there were sixteen point three million Americans who served in some capacity in the military during World War Two, and there were only an estimated forty thousand deserters at that time. But again, like, when do those numbers? When are those numbers put forth? Is it after you've returned a lot of the other ones to military control? Are they still considered deserters in that number? It gets a little ficiy because they weren't tracking it very well, right, Yeah, And again these are official numbers which will almost always differ from actual numbers, especially when you get into the big government stuff. When whenever a government reports bad news, about itself. Yeah, there's going to be a difference between what what is officially said and what actually happened. But let's not get lost in the numbers, right, Let's let's explore these deserters as people. They didn't one day, well, not to speculate too much, but most of them did not one day say you know, I gave it a shot. Uh, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna hide out. These people, being rational, intelligent beings, had a series of desires and motivations and fears and ambitions that drove them to commit this act of desertion. But what are those reasons? What are those motivations? Will get to that after a word from our sponsor, we're back. And the first reason for desertion is incredibly dare I say, painfully apparent. It is the fear of physical harm or death. That's the one that stands right out. Like, Hey, for instance, I'm born in Nebraska, right, and I was easily going to live most of my life in my small town. I was gonna go watch the local high school or college games. And now because someone I never met in Washington, d C. Has a problem with Vietnam, now here, I am I don't know these people. I don't speak Vietnamese. That guy next to me got shot in the head. This is terrible, that's understandable. And people have people deserted for fear of being the next head shot at times. Right, and then the calculation, Again, this is not to deride people were attempting to illustrate the psychological process. Uh, they reached the point where the instinct for self preservation outweighed the social obligation to do one's duty or the ideological belief that what they're doing is more important than their safety. Right. Yeah, And I'm so glad you mentioned that, because that's another reason for desertion. Right, ideological differences. Maybe I don't agree that the way of life we are fighting for, you know, the stated goals of removing communism or saving this country from communist and invaders, Maybe I don't agree with it, right, Yeah, maybe maybe you agreed with it originally, right when you signed up in northern California or Oregon or something, and then you went to the war and you saw what was happening on the ground, and you said, this is not what I believe to be. Just I'm not afraid of dying, but I will not be a part of this thing with which I disagree. Yeah, and that that's a whole other situation there. When you're looking at the actual operations that occurred in some of the tragedies and massacres that were h it's true that we're perpetrated by the U. S. Military, and it's unfortunate fact and sometimes perpetrated by factions of the U. S. Military without the approval. Yes, oh, absolutely larger entities, but yes, those atrocities did occur. A third reason for an individual to desert would be a little bit more mercenary, an opportunity for a new life, for celebrity, for material goods, material gain, or for profit. So, for example, you can think of the stories of people in the Korean War. There have been a couple of guys who deserted to the DPRK, to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and when they deserted, they were occasionally treated like celebrities. They were the bad Americans and the propaganda films, they were literally movie stars. Yeah, it did not end well for them, to be clear about that. I think one guy recently was I believe he was allowed to see his mother before she passed, she lived his He lived most of his life in North Korea. But those are the reasons. Fear of physical harm don't kill me. Ideological differences. I disagree with the concept or the motivations for this war, or the opportunity, the self serving opportunity to you know, be famous, to get paid. Okay, Yeah, and those are I mean, there are nuances to all. But let's let's look at the other side of this war as well. There was not just a physical side of this large proxy war between capitalism and communism. There was an ideological side, and war was functioning as a business. War has always been about resource extraction, control, suppression, management, et cetera. And deserters were another resource to be exploited. Oh yes, by other countries, by by enemies of the state. Yeah, for the USSR and communism at large, deserters are fantastic, especially if they come over to your side. The best anti war advertisements are always going to be images of a wonderful life somehow better on the other side of the trenches, the other side of the conflict. In the US, for instance, of you'll see propaganda that touts amenities like we have refrigerators, we have new automobiles. Why are you fighting? You can buy four kinds of ham are grocery stores. Think about how much food you can cook with this microwave? M m m exactly. You know this idea of selling again in the American dream, the retrofuturistic Jetson's life. Another thing that is enormously beneficial from a propaganda perspective is testimony from deserters actual word of mouth. Don't believe this advertisement about the microwave. Oh, I don't believe. I don't know. I don't believe that at all. You know why, because I've seen it before and that all that microwave does is burn your food and it just makes things soggy. Don't listen to them. Join the revolution, yeah, whatever that revolution might be at the time. Yeah, spot on. You will tend to believe a person more so than an idea, especially depending on how that person is presented to you. There you go. So this is a crucial ideological tool for the forces opposing the US in the Indo China Vietnam conflict. Often these two propaganda opportunities were combined in anti US operations. A deserter laments the injustices of the war and imperialistic US culture overall, and then pivots to tout the freedom they encountered after crossing over. That freedom might not be what the Western world would think of his freedom. It might not be necessarily freedom of speech. It might be portrayed as freedom to join the great collective pushing in for a better world, or something like that. You know, but what about European nations. A lot of times European nations are they want to be seen as neutral parties when there's something like this going on, some kind of conflict of this nature, or or maybe they want to be a safe haven where either a deserter or otherwise could come and you know, live in their land, um, just to show that there or not on either side really of the conflict, like you can come here, We'll give you safe passage. You know, you can stay here for X number of days or weeks or years, um. And just to show that they can act on their own accord and not be influenced by again usually the US or whichever whichever countries in the power right, like the old Disney Pinocchio, I have no strings. I can act unilaterally, yes, and we will help you out. But we also won't. You know, we won't. We won't really help or hurt you, but we'll give you safe haven, right, Yeah, a refugee status perhaps, or a a visa. In Sweden in particular, many deserters joined something called the American Deserters Committee, named in what kind of I can only imagine is a burst of creativity. Yes, sorry, that's maybe it's they had other stuff going on. I'm sure they didn't spend you know, a week workshopping the name. Yeah, and there were American Deserters Committees throughout several countries that kind of popped up to do a similar thing. So what were they doing. Well, they really just wanted to have some kind of united front for deserters voice, for everyone to speak in unison, right like, all deserters together. This is this is us. We we are we have a powerful voice. Ah. Yes, we are now a voting block of some sort or we can unite. And now it's not just one or two of us occasionally on uh anti war television spots. It's a huge group of us, all at once a stage protest. Yeah, and we can issue a statement from us, not just from me, um Matt the deserter. Good call, I didn't even think about that. It sounds so much more official. Uncle Sam was predictably concerned, very much so, because there sards for the US when it comes to deserters from the war, and one of the it's it's tough to say which is more important, but we can walk through a couple of them in no particular order. Then public opinion support for the war is incredibly fragile. On the domestic front. The role of the media in the Vietnam War, especially as it escalated, cannot be overstated. This was not World War Two, where information was often carefully managed for the domestic front. Journalists were out there, sixty something of them got killed in the process, but they were showing things that the American public would not expect to see, and in many cases was not supposed to see, would not normally see in any kind of conflict like this. And because of this, the US was unable to entirely suppress the flow of domestic in information from domestic sources, much less suppressed the flow of anti war messages from abroad. Can't It's tough to scramble a short wave radio, you know what I mean. And there was a tremendous and plausible, very well founded concern that anti war movements in the US could trigger massive domestic unrest. We're talking about the fall of states and follow the rule of law, and that if the American public sympathized with deserters who could not return home and who also implicitly avoided the legal consequences of desertion, then the powder head would explode. People would watch this and say, these people deserve to come back to our homeland. And I guess our homeland is not as powerful as it wants us to believe. Right, if the ideological foundations begin to crumble, then every thing does. It sounds kind of abstract, but I think you're right. Yeah, I don't know. People are so weird, you know, like there's so many things that if we if we attempted to explain to an extraterrestrial civilization, we would sound insane. Oh hey, welcome, let me take you two. Our leaders hop in this we call the car. And then the aliens like, why are we stopping? Oh we have to wait for this thing to change colors? Why there's no one here. It's it's just the thing we do. Man. Be cool, Be cool. We're on the way to see the president. Wait, hold on, are you saying Are you saying that I shouldn't follow traffic signals if there's no one around, I cannot legally I agree with that. No, I'm using it as just a poor example. No, No, it's not worrivable. It's weird because we'll we'll sit. I think most deaf has a as a great line about that on on Black Star when um they're quoting up Home in one of the songs where a guy says, we were sitting three deep into traffic stop talking about how brainwashed some of our brothers and sisters are while we waited for a green light to tell us when to go. It sounds way better when when you hear the yeah and there's a nice beat behind it. Yeah. But this, I mean, we're we're pointing out, hopefully that the ideological things, the programmed behaviors of people are very easily normalized and accepted, and it doesn't take as much as you might think to disrupt those things. Right, we're gullible. How many people did you see wearing a tie today? Why do they do that? What does a tie do? What's the point? What's the point of a tie? Okay, so no, you're good. You're good on my mind for a while. I get it, man, I feel the same way. I'm just not as vocal about it. I need to start, you know, saying the things I think I feel like. I like saying that ties are silly is maybe not the best way to start a revolution. But anyway, ideology aside. Sorry, I went off the rails on that one. That, uh, there are other things that are perhaps more material. Oh yeah, the other The next one has to do with triangulation. Really, so, let's imagine that you are another country, right, You're an intelligence officer for another country, and there's a group of American deserters. You you meet one of them, and you start talking to them. Maybe you even let's say capture them, or maybe maybe you don't even have to capture. Maybe you just have some drinks with them at a r H and you get intelligence from this person. You're essentially interrogating them, right, one individual, one small group of individuals, and you get any and all relevant information that you can from these people. Operation aims programs, both ongoing ones that are occurring right now, ones from the past. You can get all hinds of details about your enemy with somebody like this. And then here's the deal I said triangulation. You take that information you've gathered, then you compare and contrast it to another individual, perhaps that you met at another bar or that was also captured. Okay, question them separately. Yeah, and now you've got leads. You've got real leads. You can you can decide what is probably bunk, what is probably real. Um, I don't know. It's a it's a gold mine for an intelligence mind. Yeah, yeah, because then you would be able to falsify misinformation. Oh yeah, right, unless the people you were questioning already had an established story or narrative, you would ultimately be able to find out what they were thinking, where they were going. And this can lead to all these massive insights. And there's a sticky think here. It's a it's logical then in a world of rational actors, which all nations and states are, It's logical then that you could be in a situation as a leader of a country where you can rationalize the death of a single prisoner or deserter because it can be framed as a effective way, albeit brutal, an effective way of saving the lives of multiple other people. And when we say rationalize the death of a deserter a prisoner. That doesn't just mean abandoning them, leaving them in the cold, or throwing them to the wolves. That also could mean sending one of your own people to get rid of them. Possibility. Yeah, it's an unfortunate comparison, but I think it works of the mafia. If you join the mafia in some capacity or another, or let's just say an organized crime association, leaving that group is probably not a good idea, just because of for that saint, for the information that you have, for the loose end that you become. You know, Can I make a confession to you, man, I have never seen The Sopranos? What is it good? I love it? Do you really? I really? Did you have seen it? Do I have? I've seen it twice all the way through. Should I watch it? I mean I would recommend it. What do you think? Anyone? Do you Sopranos? Yeah, Tony, I read the WICKI does that? Sure? That's all you need? Paul, Paul Paul? Or did you watch the Sopranos? Oh? I didn't watch it either. It's classic HBO. It's like, all right, I will watch it. You are the one who told me to watch the wire. Yeah. Wow, I was one of those guys. Huh no, do the wire is so good? Paul, you gotta watch the Wire. Man is so good? It really was. It was great. But yeah, I like the out of it so that I think your comparison holds up this idea of Omerta, this idea of silence above all right, the idea that this is a one way entry organization that does apply, maybe not to all militaries, maybe not even to the U. S. Military, but that applies to a lot of things when we start talking about the murky world of government secrecy. And then deserters are also very very useful as another form of propaganda. Propaganda advertised two soldiers in the field, actively occurring while soldiers are trying to fight, like in a battle. Yeah, and there were radio stations that would bombard people with broadcasting several of several of you listening to today's episode, maybe Vietnam veterans, and we would be intensely interested to hear whether you personally encountered this sort of propaganda. Some something like Hanoy Hannah Whenever, which would release these broadcasts in English telling soldiers how useless, the u S side of the war was, and how dumb it was to be there. So imagine you're up to your waist and mud and filth, and you're marching your feed, rotting in your socks. The rain hasn't stopped for three days, and at this point everybody knows it's it's just not going to Some of your friends and acquaintances have just died. And then you hear a radio broadcast featuring a soldier who sounds like he could be from your hometown in Nebraska and Kansas and Oregon in California, and they're talking about the injustices of war, the freedom of life in neutral Sweden or Europe, the ideological struggle and progress occurring in communist Russia. How much more marching do you have in you with all these things bombarding you? What is the limit? That's where that first one, the public opinion and the ideological foundations are so important, because if you don't have, if you don't have that stuff as just steal, if that stuff is not steal in your mind, then maybe your chips away enough to get you to go. Yeah. And in many cases we must be said that that kind of attempt at brainwashing might just make somebody more resolute in their existing convictions, and I'm sure that has happened. But due to these concerns, which again are not specific to the Vietnam War, they echo throughout history, and they're not specific to the US either. They echo throughout cultures. Due to these concerns, countries have legal punishments for the act of desertion, incredibly hard punishments. In the US, any person found guilty of desertion or attempt to desert shall be punished. If the offense is committed in a time of war, they will be punished by death or such other punishment as a court martial might direct. But if the desertion or attempt to desert occurs at any other time, by such punishment other than death, as a court martial may direct. What that means is, if we're in a war and you run away, technically you're just gonna get shot. It's the death penalty. Yeah, if you you might get court martialed and sentenced to several years in jail or something like that. And in some cases in the Vietnam War, there would be attempts to negotiate with deserters where people would say, through one entity or another, they would say, hey, well, if you agree to come with us voluntarily, then you know, just have a year in prison. Dishonorable this charge. Go on with your life. We get it, war as hell, come in from the cold. But still it's tough to believe people when they say things like that, especially if you know legally it is a death sentence. Julia Songs, just come on over, man, it's gonna be fine. We're going to treat you well. What's ecuadour goad that we ain't got? Oh too soon, too soon, We should do an update on him soon. But with all this in in play, we have to ask ourselves, how far would Uncle Sam go to by hook or by crook bring its soldiers home? And we'll find out right after a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. The US went above and beyond all legal thresholds and attempts to survey and or apprehend deserters with minimum publicity. Absolutely the one of the top priorities of of let's say the goals here were to avoid propaganda of successful desertion. So if we don't want anyone to know that people have deserted and they got away with it, like, let's keep that to a minimum at least. And it was also a thing where it's probably not a good idea to actually go out and assassinate deserters, Like that's probably a bad idea because this is you know, you turn them into a martyr of sorts. And again I'm speaking from the side of the the intelligence system within the United States, like this is what you're imagining, Um, that would just it would totally fuel the fire for anti war protests and the activists that are already inside the United States fullmenting these feelings of anti war UM. And this led to something that we researched this week called Operation Chaos. Yes, yes, it's through the intelligence agencies were in quite a pickle, a rock and a hard place type deliver. You don't want deserters to flout the law right, and you don't want them to be successful in their desertion, and you certainly don't want other people to know that they can do any of that. But you also don't want to be known as a government that actively goes out and kills its own did Neither of these are particularly good looks. So Operation Chaos was formed a special Operations Group within the CIA, and it was secret for a while for a long time after it was closed down because it it only functioned for a number of years, right, Yeah, it was established in August of ninety seven and it was then active for six full years. And the stated purpose here was to collect, coordinate, evaluate, and report on foreign contacts with American dissidents. And for it, they collected information on dissident Americans and they did that via the FBI domestically. So if they want to get information on dissidents who were within the United States, they use the FBI because that's their purpose. To who's on the mailing list for this communist newsletter? Yeah, yeah, exactly, And then uh, I guess thankfully for these for this intelligence community. There are so many active military stations overseas in other countries that they are just using these stations to collect information on let's say, the local dissidents, the local American dissidents, the local would be expats. Right, So, how how many people were involved with this on the espionage side, Well, you heard us say fifty two people at the top. There were officially fifty two staff members working on Operation Chaos officially. Well, yeah, because you had, there were there were operatives. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say they were probably operatives who were not known in any official capacity or maybe even recorded anywhere, just a friend of a friend perhaps just I mean, in in any undercover operation, there's going to be a few of those. If you're just actors assets, yeah, you know what, I think, you're absolutely right, or a few people who may not know that they are assets are helping the operation. Right, they just run a local newspaper there, they're a photographer who happens to have a mysterious but loaded benefactor would like to buy some photos. Jeez, that's how it happens. So they they successfully did this right for years, they created files on thousands of US citizens, officially American citizens, and then within these there are the names of over three hundred thousand people in organizations that were associated with those people. Just to be clear, this is an active conspiracy. Yeah, the government is the conspirator in this case. But this is illegal. They're not supposed to be doing it, and they sure did. I mean, it's not as bad as the n s A from a couple of years back and currently, but you know, it's not great, all right, I mean it feels weird to split these hairs. Yes, but the argument used to justify these actions was very, very similar to the argument used today to justify the essays warrantless access to anything you do online in theory, anyone you associate with and anyone they associate with, and on and on and on. Kevin Bacon pops up sooner than you think in this game and echelon five eyes forever. Amen, Oh boy, do you think we have records? Come on, remember we used to joke about it intern at the n s A. If someone was listening to us by this point, we have like an associate producer, or there's there's somebody that guy's uh, that poor guy or girl, that poor kid is just so bored, right, maybe it's a junior officer. Do you think we got? Oh man, moving on up? All right, you know what, I'll take it. And hey, if you're listening, I don't know if you can write in, but I feel free to do so. We would love, we would love to hear from you. And also, if you know my internet history, friendly stranger, you'll see that I'm really into cauliflower recipes, So send a few my way, cauliflower is amazing. Okay, we're talking about the food, right, Yeah, the food, not eganism, not a weird thing. I actually love cooking with cauliflower. No. Nol does as well. I believe very good. I'm a broccoli guy, but you know, you know, I'm trying to get into more vegetables. Man, Rockley is my first love. Dude. Food wise, this took a third. We're just trying to prove that we are innocuous to the n s A. And we have an opportunity to attempt to that because we are aware that these programs exist. The people being surveiled had very strong suspicions and in many cases very strong circumstantial evidence, but for the most part, they had no proof of what was happening. They had no opportunity to be like, hey, yeah, you know, and I'm not great on the war, but have you heard about cauliflower. They couldn't do any of that endearing stuff, and most people, even in the modern day, didn't have any idea what was happening. We learned about this through a book called Operation Chaos. The Vietnam deserters who fought the CIA brainwashers and themselves that's a title. Yeah, it's it's pretty specific. In this book, the author Matthews Sweet outlines the strange and often contradictory accounts from Vietnam deserters who joined the a d C that we mentioned there in Sweden, and he also asked them about their opinions regarding intelligence agencies from the US, Russia, and Sweden, all of whom infiltrated their group at some point in some shape fashion re form and then later infiltrated the subsequent extremist offshoots of the A d C. Because Operation Chaos, as as you outlined earlier, matt is an umbrella term domestic monitoring, foreign monitoring, all sort of for the larger aim. The aspects of Operation Chaos that Matthew Sweet focuses on our exclusively the stories of the deserters living abroad, and he tracks them down those who are still alive, and he asked them to tell their stories. He also asked members of foreign intelligence agencies to tell their stories if they can right and the U s Intelligence Agency, the community in the US had a sustained effort to not only infiltrate these deserter organizations, but to repatriate deserters. They're the ones who would say, hey, no harm, no foul, just to come back, who can probably get you out of jail in a year dishonorable discharge. But you can go on with your life. All you have to do is say that you made a mistake publicly, that you regret it. Still Team America and we're all good. Have you seen the show, Barry? Yes? Yeah, yeah, yeah? Are you a fan? Yeah? You did something just now that totally reminded me of I forget his name. He's the super nice guy who's one of the bad guys. He's bald. Hey, Barry, what's going on? Just let you know? You know they're gonna kill you, so anyway, be careful. I love that guy. That's one of my favorite characters in this shows. What you call alopecia. He's hairless. Yeah, that that guy is for me a scene steeler because everyone he meets. And this is not spoiling the show for you. This guy is a a gangster who does horrific things. Did he my country? He ever did anything horrific? I couldn't even tell you. And this is we don't even have to talk about this man. I just all I could think about was that for a split second and then it just reverberated. Yeah, because well, the most endearing thing about that dude is everyone he meets is described as a super nice guy. He's a super nice guy, especially Berry though, Barry, do you want some juice? Yeah, I've got to go back and rewatch it. If you haven't watched the do do check it out because it's it's a fantastic show and it's not Bill Hayters in it, but it's it's not really a comedy. Is fantastic? Yeah? Yeah, the comedy parts are pretty much that guy that we just mentioned. And did you know that other gangster is the bad guy from Tree Detectives. Yeah, man, now I'm impressed. Oh yes, anyway, yeah yeah, yeah. So graphic widespread abuse is a power by the intelligence agencies, not just the US, also Russian Sweden. So they wanted to the US wanted to repatriot these deserters, suppress or nullify their anti war messages. Right, And in this book, Matthew Sweet explores the explores the facts through statistics, but then primarily through anecdotes and accounts of the deserters and the other players on the field. So well, who, what's our Who's who? If we were to do Who's who? What are some of the main players in this well one is well. One of the deserters is Chuck on en O N A N and he he joined the the U. S. Marines when he was a bit younger than He ended up deserting to Sweden via Iceland with this a d C. And um the other information that was in the book. There's a little section at the front of this book that gives you kind of a rundown of the characters, and it said he's a now a big fan of medical marijuana. Right. Yeah. If you read sweets initial encounters with the guy when he gets to his house, uh, he's The author spends some time describing how this dude thinks marijuana is going to save the world, and how he's going to start this growing operation, and how he's extremely uncomfortable because I think at some point while Matthew Sweets is talking to this guy, a drug deal occurs. It's like, I think someone comes to buy marijuana, and this is this is one guy. There's there are other ones. One of the big players, and one of the most controversial, is a fellow named Michael Vale. Yes, this is I guess the leader of the the a d C, the American Deserters Committee, and he was considered by some to be the resputant of the a d C. And this guy was suspected of being a CIA infiltrator. He used interrogation and breakdown techniques on people, so he was known for breaking down would be members of the a d C or people trying to join the a d C. These are people who have already deserted on the basis of their politics or their beliefs, reducing them to tears uh winnowing way their personalities so he could remake them a new and a lot of people followed him. He had disciples, you know, a lot of people hated the guy. And using those sorts of techniques, of course, lends some credence to the idea that someone is a CIA infiltrator works for an intelligence agency. But what becomes apparent very quickly here is that these people were all accusing each other. No one was dedicated enough to the cause, no one was ideological enough. Everyone could be a mole. The paranoia was definitely running high because there was another gentleman named Bob Burlingham, he went by Arlo Jacobs. For part of that time, he was a student radical, a weatherman if you will, part of the Weather Underground, and he was suspected of being a CIA infiltrator as well by other members of the group. It's the hip new thing to do, yeah, um. And then we get into the actual spies, the people who are confirmed intelligence officers like Richard Ober who was pretty much the head of Operation Chaos, or at least in some ways the functional head of it, right, And he was considered by a lot of others to be paranoid and secretive in his own workings, which again, you know, if you're running an operation like that that's full of secrecy and lies, you've got to be pretty paranoid, right, right. And he expected the same out of the people who worked with and for him, you know. And for his part, he will argue, and he does argue in the book. I believe that the mission was entirely meant to surveil and collect information, not to do any sort of skullduggery or wet work or kidnapping or assassination or any of that black bag hoopla. I mean, the state of goals are just that just vacuum up the information, right, who's sending who notes, who's calling who? That's the official story. Yeah, there's a there's another member of the intelligence community that pops up in the book. Oh yeah, there's a gentleman named Frank Rofalco, and he was he was working on the Black Panther detail of Operation Chaos because they were looking at what they considered to be extremist groups, and they considered sections of the Black Panthers to be just that. Um And this guy was the only officer so far, at least according to Matthew Sweet that has spoken publicly about Operation Chaos so far, and the stories continue. It's it's just strange to learn that not only to this operation go on successfully on a global scale for what six years, more than half a decade, but there were no repercussions for the US, right, A lot of the deserters found their way back to the States or found their way to a friendly country, and many of their I mean, regardless of whether someone from the outside looking in we call their lives successful or unsuccessful, the truth is that their lives were tremendously affected by this program right in ways that we probably still don't fully understand, and there's still questions there. We don't know for sure who was or wasn't a mole, who did or did not provide information. Many of these people had torturous personal lives, drug addiction, right, heavy debt, childhood's full of abuse, and it's very difficult to speculate what motivated them and how deep they got. We know something happened because the information got out there, but we have to ask ourselves what did this mean in the long run. Did it change to the course of the Vietnam War? Probably not, probably not. It's you know, in comparison to two point seven million soldiers, it's not that many people. Were there any large movements from groups that were helping out dissidents, I mean, it doesn't seem to there's no at least there are not. There aren't many. No. I can't think of a single one where the United States took any kind of action against a civilian group in another country because they were aiding dissidents, at least not overtly. No. I mean, yeah, that we would know about right, right, And it's common to work through proxy groups and so on. But we have to think beyond the events of Vietnam that still have many unexplained things. Agent Orange is an example that recurred during the Iraq War, at least allegations of exposure to it. Is it possible that programs like this exist now in the current wars the US is embroiled in or I guess, since we don't call them wars anymore, the current conflicts? Right, who is a the situation? Yeah? Who is monitoring? Uh? These interactions? Why are people deserting in the numbers that occurred during the Vietnam War? Probably not? Probably not because there's not a draft. Yeah, but that could change. Oh, that could absolutely change. It just takes an act of Congress. Right, so we we wonder. We have to wonder if there's more stuff they don't want you to know, if there's an Operation Chaos two point oh out there somewhere, and if so, what's it called. Currently, the US military is comprised of volunteers, meaning that no one is conscripted or drafted, and there are no laws that compel a U. S citizen to serve mandatory time in the armed forces. And that's that's not the same in other countries. South Korea and Israel, for example, have laws requiring sit aison's to serve in the military for X amount of time. Absolutely, the one thing I would say. In the US, it is still compulsory for all male citizens to submit their information to the Selective Service system within thirty days of their eighteenth birthday. And that's just to make sure the Selective Service system remains in case a draft is necessary. In Congress like puts the hammer down and makes it happen, because, as Malcolm Gladwell so eloquently explains in the Tipping Point, nothing seems like it will ever happen until suddenly it does. Yeah, great point, Malcolm, great point, Great point. Mr g Uh. Today we end our episode with this, the this important point. Yes, there is no draft going on now. There is no Operation Chaos that we are aware of, even though the technological abilities to do so are far and beyond what they ever were before. In Vietnam. You know, we're all carrying the average person is carrying a tiny spy in their pockets. Two cameras at least, right, and how tough is it to get in there? Who watches the watchman? All that jazz, all that slow jazz, And what about on your wrist if you got a smart watcher, who knows what? What if you got a Google Home or an Amazon Echo in your house, or a couple of security cameras. Don't please, it's too late. Your TV have a camera on it? Does your PlayStation have a microphone? You know what? Maybe if they did, I would take better care of myself. I'd eat more healthy food, you know I would. Uh, that's where you'd start. That's where it'd started, the base level. Check it out, I mean and kale, thank you please state. But one other important thing to hit on here is that in many cases, these deserters live on today somewhere right, and they're real people. Are they perfect? No? Who is? Some folks would consider them straight out traders. Other folks would consider them the equivalent of freedom fighters. And there are people who will make the argument that if they broke the rules, the rules no longer apply to them. But that goes into what sort of importance we place on the rule of law, And it goes into, perhaps even more importantly, what importance we place on the lawmakers obeying the laws they create. Wow, So what do you think about Operation Chaos? Do you have you read the book? Do you know anything about it? Have you ever encountered anyone who was a dissonant an American or otherwise. We'd love to hear your stories. We'd love for you to contact us and just talk to us about it. You can find us on Twitter. You can find us on Facebook where a conspiracy stuff on Instagram or conspiracy stuff Show. You can find our website Stuff they Don't Want You to Know dot com. You can also call us at one eight three three st d w y t K do it call us you might get on the error after we get enough messages. We need more messages, honestly, so like, stop what you're doing. Call us? Uh, I don't know. If we sing we can sing a song together or something, it will go to voicemail. Get weird with it, yeah, get weird. We we We would love you too. Um. If you don't want to do any of that stuff, please send us an email. We are conspiracy at how Stuff Works dot com