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The Death of Paul Wellstone Part Four: Who and How · Conspiracy! The Show

0:30
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to Conspiracy the Show. I'm your host,
0:35
Speaker 1: Adam Todd Brown. This is the final episode in our
0:40
Speaker 1: series about the strange two thousand and two death of
0:44
Speaker 1: Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone. Just a heads up, things are
0:48
Speaker 1: gonna get super weird on this episode. I mean, you're
0:52
Speaker 1: not gonna be uncomfortable. I'm not gonna touch your knee
0:55
Speaker 1: while I'm sitting next to you or anything. But the
0:58
Speaker 1: information is gonna get strange. But I mean, it's already
1:02
Speaker 1: been kind of weird, right, But I'm pretty sure this
1:04
Speaker 1: episode is still going places you would not be expecting.
1:08
Speaker 1: On the last episode, we went through an uncomfortably long
1:13
Speaker 1: list of plane crashes that were suspiciously beneficial to the
1:18
Speaker 1: Reagan Bush Cheney war machine. There was Paul Wellstone, who
1:23
Speaker 1: you might recognize as the subject of these podcasts. Mel Carnahan,
1:28
Speaker 1: Democratic Senate candidate who also died shortly before a super
1:32
Speaker 1: close election with control of the Senate on the line.
1:36
Speaker 1: Michael Connell, the man who would have been the star
1:39
Speaker 1: witness in a possible racketeering case against Carl Rove, Omar
1:43
Speaker 1: torehosts and Hi may rolldos Aguilera, two Latin American leaders
1:48
Speaker 1: who dared to threaten US business interests in the early
1:51
Speaker 1: years of the Reagan administration, and James Tower and Iran
1:56
Speaker 1: Contra investigator who was maybe on the verge of writing
2:00
Speaker 1: a tell all book about George H. W. Bush's role
2:03
Speaker 1: in that scandal. Now, let's talk about Alaska Airlines Flight
2:08
Speaker 1: to sixty one, the flight that partially inspired the cleverly
2:13
Speaker 1: titled Denzel Washington film. Flight inspired how because at one
2:17
Speaker 1: point the pilots of Alaska Airlines Flight to sixty one
2:21
Speaker 1: flew upside down for a while in an attempt to
2:24
Speaker 1: regain control of their plane. Denzel Washington's character does that
2:29
Speaker 1: in the movie. Also, the difference is that in the film,
2:32
Speaker 1: the only casualties were four passengers, two crew members, and
2:36
Speaker 1: the notion that cocaine isn't cool. Meanwhile, all eighty eight
2:40
Speaker 1: people aboard Alaska Airlines Flight two sixty one died two pilots,
2:44
Speaker 1: three crew members, eighty three passengers. Now, this one has
2:48
Speaker 1: some very noticeable differences from the Paul Wellstone crash, with
2:52
Speaker 1: the most obvious being that this was a commercial flight
2:55
Speaker 1: with literally eleven times more people on board, so as
3:00
Speaker 1: opposed to pilot error, the NTSB eventually identified the culprit
3:04
Speaker 1: as faulty maintenance procedures, but there are a couple of
3:08
Speaker 1: important similarities for starters. Both flights involve the plane taking
3:12
Speaker 1: a strange turn in seemingly the wrong direction right near
3:17
Speaker 1: the end. They also both include a moment where all
3:20
Speaker 1: contact with air traffic control ceases, even though the situation
3:23
Speaker 1: inside the plane was literally spinning out of control. Now,
3:29
Speaker 1: was the Alaska Airlines Flight two sixty one crash politically
3:33
Speaker 1: beneficial to the Bush administration. That's sort of a difficult
3:37
Speaker 1: argument to make, seeing as how it happened prior to
3:40
Speaker 1: George W. Bush taking office, But so did the Melcarnahan crash.
3:44
Speaker 1: But there was someone on board who could have been
3:46
Speaker 1: an obstacle to some Republican hopes and dreams, and maybe
3:50
Speaker 1: just the American government in general. That man was Morris Thompson,
3:53
Speaker 1: who was a Native American leader from Alaska. He served
3:57
Speaker 1: as special assistant to the Secretary of the Interior during
4:01
Speaker 1: the Nixon administration, and at age thirty four, became the
4:05
Speaker 1: youngest commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He was
4:09
Speaker 1: at various points also president of the Alaska Federation of
4:13
Speaker 1: Natives and served as a cabinet level officer in Alaska
4:17
Speaker 1: Governor Walter J. Hickels first administration. You remember hickel right,
4:22
Speaker 1: But most importantly for our purposes here today, he was
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Speaker 1: a key figure in something called the Alaska Native Claims
4:28
Speaker 1: Settlement Act that was initially established in nineteen seventy one
4:32
Speaker 1: by the Nixon administration. To put it in Layman's terms
4:36
Speaker 1: that are probably a little to Layman. When Alaska became
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Speaker 1: a state in nineteen fifty nine, the Aboriginal people there
4:44
Speaker 1: were like, uh, cool, so this land is still ours though, right?
4:48
Speaker 1: And the US government's response was a definitive e, let's
4:53
Speaker 1: talk about it. And those talks carried on for a
4:56
Speaker 1: long time, and the Alaska Native Claim Settlement Act was
5:00
Speaker 1: meant to settle those discussions, and it did. The solution
5:03
Speaker 1: that came out of those talks was to form thirteen
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Speaker 1: Alaska Native Regional Corporations that would manage the land and
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Speaker 1: resources of their given area and distribute funds generated to
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Speaker 1: Native people living in those areas. Not only was Morris
5:18
Speaker 1: Thompson an integral part of those negotiations, he also went
5:22
Speaker 1: on to lead one of those corporations, called Douyan Limited.
5:25
Speaker 1: He started working there in nineteen eighty one. He was
5:29
Speaker 1: initially hired as vice president, but took over as president
5:32
Speaker 1: and CEO in nineteen eighty five. At a point when
5:36
Speaker 1: Douyen was posting an operating loss of twenty eight million
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Speaker 1: dollars per year. When he retired in two thousand, Douyan
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Speaker 1: was generating seventy point nine million in revenue per year. Then,
5:48
Speaker 1: immediately after retiring, he took a trip to Mexico and
5:52
Speaker 1: died when the plane crashed on the way home. Some
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Speaker 1: real alanis Morris at shit and that flight was Alaska
5:58
Speaker 1: Airlines flight to sixty one. Anyway, It's also worth noting
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Speaker 1: douy Unlimited is the largest private landholder in Alaska and
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Speaker 1: among the largest private landowners in North America in general.
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Speaker 1: So if there was an incoming administration that was, say,
6:16
Speaker 1: hell bent on drilling for oil in the Arctic National
6:19
Speaker 1: Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, a skilled negotiator like Morris Thompson
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Speaker 1: could conceivably be a problem, and the Bush administration definitely
6:29
Speaker 1: wanted that oil. Bush set it on the campaign trail.
6:32
Speaker 1: Even as early as September two thousand. He was on
6:35
Speaker 1: record as definitely wanting that oil. That's the thing Republicans
6:40
Speaker 1: in general have been pushing for forever. As of twenty seventeen,
6:44
Speaker 1: they'd attempted to pass legislation that would allow drilling in
6:47
Speaker 1: that part of Alaska almost fifty times. But the George W.
6:50
Speaker 1: Bush years are when that really became a thing. So
6:54
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe they would want Morris Thompson out
6:57
Speaker 1: of the way. The early two thousands were an era
6:59
Speaker 1: that was actually riddled with scandals involving Native Americans. There
7:04
Speaker 1: was the Indian Trust Fund scandal, but that started with
7:08
Speaker 1: a nineteen ninety six class action lawsuit, and that's when
7:11
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton was in office, And since when does that
7:13
Speaker 1: guy have any suspicious deaths attached to his name? That said,
7:17
Speaker 1: that said, George W. Bush's Secretary of Interior, Gail Norton,
7:22
Speaker 1: also pled the fifth when she was deposed over the
7:25
Speaker 1: Indian Trust Fund scandal. There was also the Jack Abramoff
7:28
Speaker 1: lobbying scandal, which did you know, also involved Native Americans
7:32
Speaker 1: being robbed of millions and millions of dollars. Of course,
7:35
Speaker 1: there's no way to know for sure what kind of
7:37
Speaker 1: role Morris Thompson would have played in the various Native
7:41
Speaker 1: American related scandals and schemes that came out of the
7:45
Speaker 1: George W. Bush era. I'm just saying he was on
7:47
Speaker 1: that flight. But what I find most interesting about Alaska
7:51
Speaker 1: Airlines Flight two sixty one isn't so much the political
7:55
Speaker 1: ramifications of it. What I find most interesting is the
7:59
Speaker 1: way the concer conspiracy theorists of the time thought the
8:02
Speaker 1: flight might have been taken down, because you see, the
8:05
Speaker 1: thing I said about Alaska Airlines Flight two sixty one
8:09
Speaker 1: taking a weird turn in its final moments is something
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Speaker 1: that really only comes up in the conspiracy theory version
8:16
Speaker 1: of that crash. The turn they're referring to is the
8:19
Speaker 1: pilot's decision to try to divert the flight to lax
8:24
Speaker 1: which all official accounts of the crash view as a
8:27
Speaker 1: perfectly normal thing to do. But what those official accounts
8:30
Speaker 1: all failed to mention, and the detail that aroused the
8:34
Speaker 1: suspicion of the conspiracy crowd back when this happened, is
8:38
Speaker 1: that when the pilots made that decision, there was a
8:41
Speaker 1: US Naval air station just seven miles away, and it
8:45
Speaker 1: was equipped with a runway big enough that Air Force
8:48
Speaker 1: one landed there during the Reagan administration. But instead of
8:52
Speaker 1: heading there and safely landing, the pilots decided to turn
8:56
Speaker 1: the other way and head for Lax, which was more
8:59
Speaker 1: than forty miles away by that point. That the flight
9:03
Speaker 1: was that close to a Navy air station is another
9:05
Speaker 1: detail that isn't brought up so much in the official
9:09
Speaker 1: explanation of the crash, probably because it does raise an
9:12
Speaker 1: obvious question, which is why not just land there? And
9:15
Speaker 1: it is a valid question, especially when you take into
9:18
Speaker 1: account that shortly after the crash, a spokesman for the
9:22
Speaker 1: National Air Traffic Controllers Association called the pilot's heroes and said,
9:27
Speaker 1: this is a quote. It was an extremely courageous move
9:30
Speaker 1: to stay over water and not in danger more lives
9:33
Speaker 1: over land with an aircraft that could not be controlled.
9:37
Speaker 1: But but but they were heading for Lax. Do you
9:40
Speaker 1: know what the L and the A and LAX mean?
9:43
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, the second largest city in the United States.
9:47
Speaker 1: Deciding to skip the easier and safer landing and shooting
9:51
Speaker 1: for Lax instead isn't heroism, it's gambling. So is that
9:56
Speaker 1: really what happened? Or was there another reason they didn't
9:59
Speaker 1: take that landing at the Naval Air base. That's the
10:02
Speaker 1: question that got the conspiracy crowd going back when Alaska
10:06
Speaker 1: Airlines Flight two sixty one crash two decades ago, because
10:10
Speaker 1: here's the thing about that naval base that by law,
10:13
Speaker 1: by the way, they should have been allowed to land at.
10:16
Speaker 1: It's called Point Mugu, which sounds like it would be
10:19
Speaker 1: located in some tropical area, but it's actually just near Oxnard, California,
10:25
Speaker 1: which is the opposite of tropical. Check out this description
10:29
Speaker 1: of what that base is for. Point Mugu operates two
10:33
Speaker 1: runways and encompasses a thirty six thousand square mile sea
10:37
Speaker 1: test range. The range allows the military to test and
10:41
Speaker 1: track weapons systems in restricted air and sea space without
10:47
Speaker 1: encroaching on civilian air traffic or shipping lanes. So yes,
10:52
Speaker 1: it had a runway long enough to accommodate a commercial flight,
10:55
Speaker 1: but it was directly underneath a bunch of restricted airspace
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Speaker 1: controlled by a weapons testing base. And honestly, this is
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Speaker 1: the point where the conspiracy theorists of the time kind
11:08
Speaker 1: of lose the plot for me, because they suggest that
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Speaker 1: maybe the pilots were hit by a mind control weapon
11:15
Speaker 1: of some sort and that's what caused them to divert
11:18
Speaker 1: to La but like goddamn not everything is mkultra. But
11:22
Speaker 1: how about this. What if they decided to divert to
11:26
Speaker 1: la because at that point, the problem in question wasn't
11:30
Speaker 1: that bad, and landing at LAX would be way more
11:33
Speaker 1: convenient for the passengers on board than landing at a
11:37
Speaker 1: naval base. And then what if in all the subsequent
11:41
Speaker 1: hubbub they got too close to that naval base and
11:44
Speaker 1: its restricted airspace. It's not outside the realm of possibility that,
11:49
Speaker 1: in the midst of all the chaos involving the mechanical
11:52
Speaker 1: failures of the plane, they stumbled into the path of
11:55
Speaker 1: a weapons test of some sort. Yeah, it would be
11:58
Speaker 1: super duper bad luck, and the odds of it happening
12:01
Speaker 1: are slim, But hey man, sometimes things happen. The odds
12:05
Speaker 1: of a bird flying directly in front of home plate
12:07
Speaker 1: at the exact right time to get hit by a
12:11
Speaker 1: pitch thrown during a Major League baseball game have to
12:15
Speaker 1: be astronomically slim. But that doesn't change the fact that
12:19
Speaker 1: Randy Johnson killed a seagull with a pitch during a
12:22
Speaker 1: baseball game. I think I already mentioned that the Alaska
12:26
Speaker 1: Airlines crash and the Wellstone crash share one especially weird
12:30
Speaker 1: similarity in that they both feature a stretch of time
12:34
Speaker 1: where things are obviously going horribly wrong inside the plane,
12:38
Speaker 1: but all communication with air traffic control ceases, and shortly
12:43
Speaker 1: thereafter the plane just kind of falls out of the sky.
12:46
Speaker 1: In the case of the Wellstone crash, that was a
12:48
Speaker 1: period of about two minutes. In the Alaska Airlines crash,
12:53
Speaker 1: it's more like six or seven minutes. Even though the
12:56
Speaker 1: cockpit voice recorder does pick up a pilot saying, may day,
13:00
Speaker 1: you know who never heard that air traffic control? Weird? Right,
13:04
Speaker 1: kind of implies that whatever happened caused them to lose
13:08
Speaker 1: control of the plane and their ability to communicate with
13:11
Speaker 1: air traffic control. And here's where it's gonna get weird.
13:15
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna say it. I told you this was
13:17
Speaker 1: gonna get strange. What if it was an EMP weapon
13:21
Speaker 1: of some sort. What if that Alaska Airlines flight got
13:25
Speaker 1: too close to Point Noogu and was hit accidentally or
13:29
Speaker 1: otherwise by an EMP weapon of some sort. Wait, you
13:32
Speaker 1: have to hear me out. It's not as crazy as
13:34
Speaker 1: it sounds, even though I accept that it sounds kind
13:37
Speaker 1: of crazy, and I'm definitely not the only person to
13:39
Speaker 1: suggest this possibility, but we'll get to that in a bit.
13:43
Speaker 1: And if you're unfamiliar, EMP means electromagnetic pulse. Electromagnetic disturbances
13:50
Speaker 1: are why you have to turn off your electronics at
13:53
Speaker 1: the start of a flight. Flight paths are designed to
13:56
Speaker 1: fly around electromagnetic waves transmitted by radio stations and things
14:01
Speaker 1: of the like. Electromagnetic waves are very bad times for
14:05
Speaker 1: communication systems, much like the kind that are on airplanes.
14:09
Speaker 1: And here's the thing. Their power has definitely been harnessed
14:13
Speaker 1: for weapons purposes. Just because you can't go buy one
14:17
Speaker 1: at Gunworld doesn't mean EMP weapons don't exist, and it
14:21
Speaker 1: doesn't mean they didn't exist by this point in history,
14:25
Speaker 1: which just a reminder, two thousand and two October two
14:29
Speaker 1: thousand and two is the date Wellstone's plane crashed. And
14:33
Speaker 1: I get it. It sounds like some science fiction shit,
14:36
Speaker 1: but it is not. In fact. I think when you
14:38
Speaker 1: take the loss of communication into account something that happened
14:42
Speaker 1: in the Morris Thompson crash, the Melcarnahan crash, and the
14:46
Speaker 1: Wellstone crash, an electromagnetic pulse of some sort kind of
14:51
Speaker 1: makes the most sense. Circling back to the Wellstone crash.
14:55
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, the NTSB blamed that crash on pilot Ara,
15:00
Speaker 1: but does that explain why they stopped talking to air
15:03
Speaker 1: traffic control. It's never really explained why their last contact
15:07
Speaker 1: with air traffic control indicated everything was fine, and then
15:10
Speaker 1: after two minutes of total silence they crashed into the ground.
15:14
Speaker 1: What if they couldn't talk to air traffic control anymore?
15:18
Speaker 1: What if they couldn't describe what was happening because the
15:21
Speaker 1: thing that caused them to crash also fried their ability
15:25
Speaker 1: to communicate. It feels like a million years ago since
15:29
Speaker 1: I started these episodes, so I barely remember if I
15:33
Speaker 1: did mention this on the first episode or not. But
15:35
Speaker 1: the wreckage from Paul Wellstone's crash produced billows of bluish
15:41
Speaker 1: gray smoke, which is important because the fuel the plane
15:45
Speaker 1: was carrying produces black smoke when it burns, and that
15:48
Speaker 1: fuel was in the wings, which did not burn. Only
15:51
Speaker 1: the fuselage burned, and the smoke was bluish gray. That's
15:55
Speaker 1: not a fuel fire, that's an electrical fire. Electrical fires
16:00
Speaker 1: produce bluish gray smoke. So what caused that electrical fire?
16:04
Speaker 1: Was it impact? Is that how electrical fires start? I mean,
16:07
Speaker 1: I guess that is possible. I'm not a plane mechanic,
16:11
Speaker 1: I wouldn't know for sure, but I do know that
16:13
Speaker 1: loss of communication coupled with a plane inexplicably falling out
16:17
Speaker 1: of the sky and an electrical fire doesn't seem like
16:21
Speaker 1: typical plane crashes into the ground and explodes behavior. So
16:26
Speaker 1: now let's circle back to Paul Wellstone in that war
16:29
Speaker 1: he was opposing. It should be noted here this is
16:32
Speaker 1: all theater of the mind stuff. I'm obviously not accusing
16:36
Speaker 1: anyone of anything, and even if I was, it's nothing
16:39
Speaker 1: that the people who looked into the Wellstone crash back
16:42
Speaker 1: when it happened and subsequently wrote books and articles about
16:47
Speaker 1: it haven't already suggested themselves. So with all that on
16:51
Speaker 1: the record, let's talk about a company called raytheon Wraitheon
16:56
Speaker 1: and the Republican war Machine go way, way way. When
17:01
Speaker 1: Reagan was in office, one of his signature projects was
17:05
Speaker 1: the Strategic Defense Initiative, which proponents and critics alike eventually
17:09
Speaker 1: took to calling star wars. The idea was basically that
17:13
Speaker 1: we'd put satellites equipped with lasers in space, and if
17:17
Speaker 1: Russia fired a nuclear weapon at US, we'd laser that
17:20
Speaker 1: bitch right out of the sky. Sounds crazy, and it
17:23
Speaker 1: sure was. But we pumped a whole lot of money
17:26
Speaker 1: into it. And one of the companies that got a
17:28
Speaker 1: good chunk of that money, according to a nineteen eighty
17:31
Speaker 1: six New York Times article, was raytheon seventeen million dollars
17:35
Speaker 1: that year alone. Interestingly enough, that article is mostly about
17:40
Speaker 1: how star Wars wasn't working, but that as a result
17:43
Speaker 1: of the research, a company called Maxwell Laboratories produced a
17:47
Speaker 1: functional rail gun. What's that It's a weapon that uses
17:51
Speaker 1: electromagnetic force to launch high velocity projectiles. Neat, speaking of
17:57
Speaker 1: high velocity projectiles. Not only was Raytheon on board for
18:02
Speaker 1: Reagan Star Wars project, they also teamed up with the
18:06
Speaker 1: first Bush administration during the nineteen ninety one Golf War
18:10
Speaker 1: to produce a weapon that made the company a household name.
18:14
Speaker 1: That was the Patriot missile. The Patriot was credited with
18:18
Speaker 1: neutralizing Iraqi scud missiles and ultimately winning the war, although
18:23
Speaker 1: that last part has been the subject of a lot
18:26
Speaker 1: of debate since then. But as someone who lived through
18:29
Speaker 1: it and is old enough to remember, I can vouch
18:32
Speaker 1: for the fact that the Patriot missile was big, big
18:34
Speaker 1: news during the First Golf War. If it could have
18:37
Speaker 1: appeared on the Tonight Show, they would have booked the
18:40
Speaker 1: Patriot Missile. I'd be shocked if there isn't a Patriot
18:44
Speaker 1: Missile card in that famous Golf War trading card series
18:48
Speaker 1: Tops put out. Go watch Garden State if you don't
18:50
Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about, or just google it, much
18:53
Speaker 1: like I could have googled whether a Patriot Missile card
18:56
Speaker 1: existed and thereby avoided this entire exchange. And also I
19:00
Speaker 1: just googled it, and yes, there is a Patriot Missile
19:03
Speaker 1: card in that Golf War trading card series. You can
19:06
Speaker 1: buy it on Amazon, So there you go. That's how
19:09
Speaker 1: important the Patriot missile was to the First Golf War,
19:12
Speaker 1: and seeing as how they manufactured and sold it, the
19:15
Speaker 1: Patriot missile was huge for Raytheon. According to a nineteen
19:19
Speaker 1: ninety one La Times article, they had orders for twenty
19:23
Speaker 1: two hundred missiles in the early days of the First
19:25
Speaker 1: Golf War. And hey, that doesn't sound like a lot.
19:28
Speaker 1: You can't go on Shark Tank and say you have
19:31
Speaker 1: twenty two hundred orders and expect to get funded by
19:34
Speaker 1: the likes of Mark Cuban Ah. But here's the thing.
19:37
Speaker 1: Those missiles cost five hundred thousand dollars each. That's one
19:42
Speaker 1: point one billion dollars, and that price doesn't even include
19:46
Speaker 1: the radar, command center, computers, and launch equipment required to
19:51
Speaker 1: fire them. And Raytheon produced all of that also, So
19:55
Speaker 1: the First Golf War was very lucrative for Raytheon. The
19:59
Speaker 1: t up was so successful George H. W. Bush, when
20:03
Speaker 1: he was still president, visited Raitheon headquarters and delivered a
20:07
Speaker 1: speech thanking them for their help winning the war. Now
20:11
Speaker 1: here's a really interesting quote from a nineteen ninety one
20:14
Speaker 1: CORP Watch article about Raytheon and the Patriot missile. Despite
20:19
Speaker 1: the war with Iraq, the immense size of the Reagan
20:22
Speaker 1: military build up and the end of the Cold War
20:25
Speaker 1: are likely to result in the flattening of defense spending
20:29
Speaker 1: in coming years, with perhaps an eventual decline. Consequently, defense
20:34
Speaker 1: contractors with reduced dependency on government defense spending will be
20:39
Speaker 1: in the best position to survive the end of the
20:41
Speaker 1: Cold War. Raytheon has steadily reduced its reliance on military spending,
20:47
Speaker 1: but it still derives over half of its sales from
20:50
Speaker 1: the Pentagon. For the company to continue to grow and profit,
20:54
Speaker 1: Raitheon will need to diversify its business far more than
20:58
Speaker 1: it has. And sure that's what happened, right. Remember the
21:02
Speaker 1: episode about the Project for the New American Century. That
21:05
Speaker 1: was the document written up by Dick Cheney and Donald
21:08
Speaker 1: Rumsfeld and a bunch of other Republican warhawks that called
21:12
Speaker 1: for benevolent hegemony and said it would all be way
21:16
Speaker 1: easier if there was a new Pearl Harbor. The chief
21:19
Speaker 1: complaint expressed in that document was that the country had
21:23
Speaker 1: become too peace oriented and that we needed to change
21:27
Speaker 1: that and get back to war. And you know who
21:29
Speaker 1: probably agreed with that a whole lot, Raytheon. By nineteen
21:33
Speaker 1: ninety one, they were the biggest surface to air missile
21:36
Speaker 1: producer in all the land. And that's a business model
21:40
Speaker 1: that requires war to succeed for an extended amount of time.
21:44
Speaker 1: And that's what the Project for the New American Century
21:47
Speaker 1: and the people behind it were promising. In other words,
21:50
Speaker 1: Raytheon's interests and the Reagan Bush Cheney machines interests were
21:55
Speaker 1: likely pretty well aligned on most matters, especially war matters.
22:00
Speaker 1: But probably also, I don't know the desire for Paul
22:03
Speaker 1: Wellstone to no longer be a member of the Senate. Again,
22:06
Speaker 1: not proof that anyone murdered anyone. Not implying that I
22:09
Speaker 1: know what happened to Paul Wellstone other than that he
22:12
Speaker 1: definitely did die in a plane crash. We'll never know.
22:15
Speaker 1: I'm just saying there were people who probably wouldn't have
22:19
Speaker 1: minded if he died, and I'm not the first person
22:22
Speaker 1: to say that. So with all that in mind, let's
22:24
Speaker 1: talk about the history of Raytheon for starters. The company
22:28
Speaker 1: was founded in nineteen twenty two in Massachusetts by Lawrence K. Marshall,
22:33
Speaker 1: Charles G. Smith, and Vanovar Bush. Any relation, Hey, no idea.
22:39
Speaker 1: I looked it up, and it seems like the definitive
22:42
Speaker 1: answer to that question seems to be no one is
22:45
Speaker 1: really sure. Could just be coincidence, even though the police
22:49
Speaker 1: will tell you those don't exist when you're talking about murder. Anyway.
22:53
Speaker 1: While they're most known for their missiles, one of Raytheon's
22:56
Speaker 1: earliest inventions was the microwave oven that happened mostly by
23:01
Speaker 1: accident back in nineteen forty five, but it's indicative of
23:05
Speaker 1: how invested Raytheon has been in electromagnetic wave technology since
23:11
Speaker 1: the World War Two days after inventing the microwave. They
23:15
Speaker 1: moved on to stuff like guidance systems, radio and television transmitters,
23:20
Speaker 1: all sorts of things that involve electromagnetic waves and weapons.
23:25
Speaker 1: They also make weapons, But does that mean those two
23:29
Speaker 1: sides of the business are necessarily intertwined. Of course it does.
23:33
Speaker 1: They totally make weapons that harness the power of electromagnetic waves.
23:39
Speaker 1: That's half the reason people are so scared of five
23:41
Speaker 1: G technology. Starting around two thousand and two, Raytheon work
23:45
Speaker 1: with the Defense Department to produce something called the Active
23:48
Speaker 1: Denial System, which is basically a crowd control system that
23:53
Speaker 1: allows law enforcement to hit unruly protesters with electromagnetic waves
23:59
Speaker 1: that render or a person just kind of too uncomfortable
24:02
Speaker 1: to stay in the area. It's sort of like being microwaved.
24:05
Speaker 1: And the waves that weapon uses are in the same
24:09
Speaker 1: relative spectrum as the waves required for five G to work.
24:14
Speaker 1: So people made that connection and decided five G is
24:17
Speaker 1: a weapon. That's a whole other topic we've already covered
24:20
Speaker 1: on a previous episode. Go listen to that if you're curious.
24:23
Speaker 1: But what I'm getting at is that Raytheon knows a
24:27
Speaker 1: thing or two about electromagnetic weapons. That said, the active
24:31
Speaker 1: denial system and an EMP weapon capable of taking down
24:35
Speaker 1: an airplane are two vastly different things. I mean probably,
24:41
Speaker 1: how would I know? But is there any evidence that
24:43
Speaker 1: Raytheon ever produced anything that could just EMP a plane
24:48
Speaker 1: out of the sky? Yes? There is actually. Starting around
24:52
Speaker 1: mid two thousand and two, articles started surfacing about how
24:56
Speaker 1: a mysterious weapon called the E bomb might see some
25:00
Speaker 1: use in Iraq. For example, there was a two thousand
25:03
Speaker 1: and two article published by New Scientists that includes this quote.
25:07
Speaker 1: High power microwave devices are designed to destroy electronic equipment
25:12
Speaker 1: in command control, communications, and computer targets, and are available
25:19
Speaker 1: to the US military. They produce an electromagnetic field of
25:23
Speaker 1: such intensity that their effect can be far more devastating
25:27
Speaker 1: than a lightning strike. That same article mentioned that weapons
25:31
Speaker 1: targeting electronic equipment had already been used in the nineteen
25:35
Speaker 1: nineties during the Balkan conflicts. They were called blackout bombs.
25:39
Speaker 1: And if you think EMP weapons sound like some sci
25:42
Speaker 1: fi shit, listen to how these things work. Another quote
25:45
Speaker 1: from the article, blackout bombs release a spider's web of
25:49
Speaker 1: fine carbon filaments into the air above electrical distribution infrastructures.
25:55
Speaker 1: This causes short circuits when the filaments touched the ground.
25:59
Speaker 1: And quote also, the Tomahawk missiles we used during the
26:02
Speaker 1: First Gulf War were outfitted with warheads that worked along
26:07
Speaker 1: those same lines, and we use them to attack the
26:10
Speaker 1: Iraqi power grid. So as science fiction he as it
26:13
Speaker 1: all sounds. EMP weapons have been around in various forms
26:17
Speaker 1: for a good damn while now, and in two thousand
26:20
Speaker 1: and three, articles started popping up with headlines like this
26:24
Speaker 1: one from CBS News that was published on March twenty fifth,
26:28
Speaker 1: two thousand and three. US drops e bomb on Iraqi TV.
26:32
Speaker 1: Here's a quote. The highly classified bomb creates a brief
26:36
Speaker 1: pulse of microwaves powerful enough to fry computers, blind radar
26:42
Speaker 1: silence radios, trigger crippling power outages, and disable the electronic
26:48
Speaker 1: ignitions in vehicles and aircraft. Huh, but what about raytheon specifically,
26:54
Speaker 1: because so far, I'm just saying that these weapons did
26:57
Speaker 1: exist by that point, and I'm glad you asked. There's
27:01
Speaker 1: a book out there called Weapons Grade, revealing the links
27:05
Speaker 1: between modern warfare and our high tech world. It's written
27:08
Speaker 1: by a guy named David Hambling, and it's about exactly
27:12
Speaker 1: what it sounds like. It would be about how technological
27:15
Speaker 1: innovation and war are intrinsically linked. So as you'd expect,
27:20
Speaker 1: Raytheon and EMP weapons both come up a whole bunch
27:24
Speaker 1: in that book. And at one point, while he's questioning
27:27
Speaker 1: how much progress the big players in EMP weapons technology,
27:33
Speaker 1: meaning the US and the UK at the time, have
27:35
Speaker 1: made in the field, there's this quote about a two
27:38
Speaker 1: thousand and two statement from the Australian Defense Science and
27:42
Speaker 1: Technology Organization about their work on EMP weapons. Here goes
27:48
Speaker 1: the Australian work was carried out in conjunction with US
27:52
Speaker 1: defense electronics company Raytheon, and involved fitting a radio frequency
27:58
Speaker 1: beam weapon to a Hercules transport aircraft. Unlike an E bomb,
28:03
Speaker 1: which affects everything in the area, the output is channeled
28:08
Speaker 1: by a two point five meter antenna into a narrow
28:11
Speaker 1: beam at a range of two kilometers. The impact zone
28:15
Speaker 1: was thirty meters in diameter. The exact power was not disclosed,
28:19
Speaker 1: but it was considered enough to knock out military electronics.
28:23
Speaker 1: End quote. And he adds in that book that what
28:27
Speaker 1: Australia was doing, and this is another quote, is likely
28:31
Speaker 1: to be a small scale reflection of what other nations
28:35
Speaker 1: are doing. Do you think he's wrong about that, You
28:37
Speaker 1: think Australia was just lapping us in the field of
28:40
Speaker 1: EMP weaponry by two thousand and two. Even if they were,
28:44
Speaker 1: they were still doing it in conjunction with raytheon, and
28:47
Speaker 1: either way, that's proof that an EMP weapon that seems
28:51
Speaker 1: like it might be made for the express purpose of
28:54
Speaker 1: shooting planes out of the sky was already a thing
28:57
Speaker 1: that existed by two thousand and two. That statement from
29:00
Speaker 1: Australia came out a month after the Wellstone crash, and
29:04
Speaker 1: let's unpack some of the details of that statement. Here's
29:07
Speaker 1: a really important section. Unlike an E bomb, which affects
29:11
Speaker 1: everything in the area, the output is channeled by a
29:14
Speaker 1: two point five meter antenna into a narrow beam at
29:19
Speaker 1: a range of two kilometers. The impact zone was thirty
29:23
Speaker 1: meters in diameter. A range of two kilometers. You know
29:27
Speaker 1: how many feet that is, of course you do. It's
29:29
Speaker 1: six thousand, five hundred and sixty one point six eight feet.
29:33
Speaker 1: And unless I'm completely misunderstanding what range means, that sounds
29:37
Speaker 1: like from that distance this device was capable of knocking
29:42
Speaker 1: out military electronics. So what could it do if a
29:46
Speaker 1: plane was a say three thousand feet or twenty five
29:50
Speaker 1: hundred feet on its final approach to the airport it
29:53
Speaker 1: was supposed to land at. I bet it's even more
29:55
Speaker 1: reliable from that distance. But again, I'm not an electromagnetic
29:59
Speaker 1: wave expert, but it sure sounds like Raytheon had by
30:03
Speaker 1: two thousand and two developed a directed energy weapon that
30:08
Speaker 1: could conceivably shoot a plane out of the sky, And
30:11
Speaker 1: after eight years of boring warlessness from the Clinton administration,
30:17
Speaker 1: they'd have probably been as keen as anyone else to
30:20
Speaker 1: get back to selling surface to air missiles and things
30:23
Speaker 1: of the like as part of a huge Middle East war,
30:27
Speaker 1: which is a thing they'd already done a whole lot
30:30
Speaker 1: in the past in conjunction with this same relative bunch
30:35
Speaker 1: of Republican warhawks. Oh and I'm sure it's just another coincidence,
30:39
Speaker 1: but Raytheon also makes the plane Wherelestone was flying in
30:44
Speaker 1: that day again all circumstantial bullshit. You know, Just because
30:48
Speaker 1: Raytheon and the Bush Cheney regime had all the motive
30:52
Speaker 1: in the world to take out the person most likely
30:56
Speaker 1: to oppose their Iraq war efforts and had access to
31:01
Speaker 1: a weapon that was capable of doing it, doesn't mean
31:03
Speaker 1: they actually did it. In the eyes of history, they
31:05
Speaker 1: did not, and so as the law dictates, we must
31:09
Speaker 1: accept that they are innocent, just like OJ Simpson. But
31:12
Speaker 1: also like OJ Simpson, let's talk about how they might
31:15
Speaker 1: have done it if they did do it. This actually
31:18
Speaker 1: brings us full circle to the book that started all
31:21
Speaker 1: of this American assassination, the strange death of Senator Paul Wellstone.
31:26
Speaker 1: They actually lay out a scenario for how this could
31:29
Speaker 1: have happened, and it works like this For starters. Remember,
31:33
Speaker 1: the VOR came up a lot in the first episode
31:37
Speaker 1: of this series. It's basically the system that airports used
31:41
Speaker 1: to guide a plane to where it's supposed to land.
31:44
Speaker 1: It's obviously more complex than that, but still, in the
31:47
Speaker 1: NTSB report about the Wellstone crash, they mentioned that the
31:51
Speaker 1: VR was a little bit off, which seems like it
31:55
Speaker 1: wasn't really true, or at least not true enough to matter,
31:59
Speaker 1: but they included it anyway. The authors of American Assassination
32:03
Speaker 1: imply that, assuming the NTSB was indeed involved in a
32:08
Speaker 1: cover up, that they included that detail in case anyone
32:11
Speaker 1: did eventually figure out that the VR played a huge
32:15
Speaker 1: part in this crash. Basically, the scenario they put forward
32:19
Speaker 1: in the book involves a more powerful VR placed near
32:24
Speaker 1: the airport where Wellstone was set to land, and that
32:27
Speaker 1: more powerful VR would have at the last minute guided
32:32
Speaker 1: his plane toward where it eventually crashed. And go ahead,
32:36
Speaker 1: google VR and look at a picture of one and
32:39
Speaker 1: tell me that they appear to be housed in a whole,
32:41
Speaker 1: separate building of their own, thus making a portable version unlikely. Like, what,
32:46
Speaker 1: did Dick Cheney just build a VR in the middle
32:50
Speaker 1: of Minnesota to take out Paul Wellstone and then dismantle
32:53
Speaker 1: it immediately after? No, obviously not, but they might have
32:56
Speaker 1: used the take HAN. I don't even know if I'm
32:58
Speaker 1: pronouncing that right, but it's short for tactical air navigation system.
33:03
Speaker 1: Here's a description right from the always reliable Wikipedia. A
33:07
Speaker 1: tactical air navigation system, commonly referred to by the acronym takehand,
33:12
Speaker 1: is a navigation system used by military aircraft. It provides
33:17
Speaker 1: the user with bearing and distance to a ground or
33:20
Speaker 1: ship borne station. It is a more accurate version of
33:24
Speaker 1: the VR system that provides bearing and range information for
33:29
Speaker 1: civil aviation. How about that? Now, there's this from the
33:32
Speaker 1: benefits section on that same Wikipedia page. Because the asimuth
33:37
Speaker 1: and range units are combined in one system, it provides
33:41
Speaker 1: for simpler installation. Less space is required than a VR
33:46
Speaker 1: because a VR requires a large counterpoise and a fairly
33:49
Speaker 1: complex phased antenna system. A takend system theoretically might be
33:54
Speaker 1: placed on a building, a large truck, an airplane, or
33:59
Speaker 1: a ship and be operational in a short period of time. Now,
34:03
Speaker 1: guess who manufactures taken systems? Say it with me? Colins Aerospace.
34:08
Speaker 1: Oh you thought I was gonna say Raytheon right, Well,
34:11
Speaker 1: if it makes you feel any better, Raytheon owns Colin's Aerospace.
34:14
Speaker 1: They are a Raytheon company. So we are back on track.
34:18
Speaker 1: So now you don't need a whole separate building to
34:20
Speaker 1: set up an alternate VOR to draw this plane off course.
34:25
Speaker 1: You can just put that taken in a van that
34:28
Speaker 1: says American City, pest control on the side or something
34:31
Speaker 1: and park it near where you want your target plane
34:34
Speaker 1: to crash. Then after the plane makes final contact with
34:38
Speaker 1: air traffic control, you just flip on that takean system.
34:42
Speaker 1: The plane is gonna follow whichever of those two signals
34:45
Speaker 1: is stronger, and a smaller airport is obviously gonna have
34:49
Speaker 1: a lesser vor. So your American city pest control van
34:53
Speaker 1: just needs one that's stronger than the one at Eveleth
34:57
Speaker 1: Airport to win that battle. And so one you flip
35:00
Speaker 1: on that alternate VR system, the take hand system, the
35:05
Speaker 1: plane is naturally gonna start heading in a direction that
35:08
Speaker 1: is not where it's supposed to go. And even worse,
35:12
Speaker 1: you're not really gonna notice, because it's not like it's
35:14
Speaker 1: gonna be a jolt. This is a natural program that
35:18
Speaker 1: all airplanes follow. This is the beacon they use to
35:22
Speaker 1: know where they're going. So if a different one takes over,
35:26
Speaker 1: you're just gonna like turn a little bit, which is
35:28
Speaker 1: what the Wellstone plane did. It started heading toward the
35:31
Speaker 1: crash site, which was a couple miles south of where
35:35
Speaker 1: the actual runway was, and the change in course would
35:39
Speaker 1: especially not be that noticeable if you're flying into an
35:42
Speaker 1: airport you don't use that often, and who the hell's
35:44
Speaker 1: flying into Eveleth Airport on a regular basis. So now
35:49
Speaker 1: that you flipped on this alternate TAKEN system, the plane
35:52
Speaker 1: has turned toward the eventual crash site, and everyone on
35:56
Speaker 1: board is chill about it because it seems like nothing
35:58
Speaker 1: is wrong. So then when the plane is within range
36:02
Speaker 1: of your EMP airplane death ray that you developed with
36:06
Speaker 1: the Australian military that can shoot a plane down from
36:10
Speaker 1: a range of six thousand feet or more, you fire
36:13
Speaker 1: that bitch right at the cockpit, disabling any electronic systems,
36:17
Speaker 1: including communication systems, inside the plane and rendering it uncontrollable.
36:23
Speaker 1: With that, you make a quick check to confirm that
36:25
Speaker 1: everything you need to be on fire is on fire.
36:28
Speaker 1: You gather up the cockpit voice recorder, and American City
36:31
Speaker 1: Pest Control speeds off into the night, leaving the scene
36:35
Speaker 1: for suspiciously early FBI agents to inspect and reassure the
36:39
Speaker 1: public that no foul play was involved. That's the theory
36:43
Speaker 1: as presented in the book American Assassination, The Strange Death
36:48
Speaker 1: of Paul Wellstone. And I don't know, I think I'm
36:51
Speaker 1: buying it. It does seem far fetched, but the available
36:55
Speaker 1: evidence about how and when EMP weapons were developed and
37:00
Speaker 1: who developed them makes it not that far fetched. I mean,
37:03
Speaker 1: you have to admit it is an aggressively clean way
37:06
Speaker 1: to murder someone. If you can cause their plane to
37:10
Speaker 1: crash in an empty field, that's perfect. And the weapons
37:14
Speaker 1: used in this scenario existed by then, so it's no
37:18
Speaker 1: crazier than suggesting that it might have been shot out
37:20
Speaker 1: of the sky by a missile. We know that's possible,
37:23
Speaker 1: but this would be so much easier. Witnesses might see
37:26
Speaker 1: that projectile traveling toward the plane in its final moments.
37:30
Speaker 1: They're not going to see an emp They'll just see
37:32
Speaker 1: a plane wandering aimlessly in the sky until it crashes.
37:35
Speaker 1: If you were the American government, would you tell the
37:38
Speaker 1: world you had that kind of capability? Of course not.
37:41
Speaker 1: You just use it for evil. That's what we do
37:43
Speaker 1: always we are America. But hey, like I've said this
37:48
Speaker 1: entire time, according to history, Paul Wellstone died in an
37:51
Speaker 1: accidental plane crash. Everyone mentioned here from the Reagan Bush
37:56
Speaker 1: Cheney regime to Raytheon and everyone in between. Queen is
38:00
Speaker 1: obviously innocent until proven otherwise. But all that said, they
38:05
Speaker 1: also had the means, motive, and opportunity to kill Paul Wellstone. Anyway,
38:11
Speaker 1: with that, we have reached the end of this journey.
38:14
Speaker 1: If you want to look into this more yourself, we'll
38:16
Speaker 1: link to all the articles and resources that I used
38:21
Speaker 1: for these episodes, and hey, thank you for joining me.
38:24
Speaker 1: We'll be back to having guests on this podcast next week.
38:27
Speaker 1: Until then, thanks for listening, We love you.