While the Rest of Us Die: Secrets of America's Shadow Government (2020–…): Season 1, Episode 3 - The Enemy Within - full transcript
How disasters and civil unrest reveal the Cold War's racist roots.
-The first pictures now
coming in from Puerto Rico
Hurricane Maria
slamming into the island.
♪♪
it's always been the President
of the United States' job
to arrive on the scene
with promises of help.
-Emergency management
now confirms
100% of Puerto Rico
now without power.
Flooding in every direction.
-One official saying
the island is destroyed.
-He's also there
to offer emotional support
to locals confronting death
and destruction.
♪♪
-I've been to Puerto Rico
many times.
and
your weather is second to none,
you get hit,
and you really got hit.
[ Helicopter blades whirring ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
he goes down there,
says a few words.
-There's a lot of love
in this room.
There's a lot
of love in this room.
shrugs a little bit, and leaves,
and then blames the Puerto Rican
government for all the problems.
-Survival cannot be
our new way of life.
do your job.
-Can I get a selfie with you?
like, the
understatement of the century.
-Great people.
just how vulnerable we are
and how wide the chasm is
between the powerful
and the rest of us.
[ Cheers and applause ]
our leaders
have told us one thing
under the bright lights.
-The protection of the lives
and property of Americans
is the responsibility
of all public officials.
-I care. We're trying.
-And it is my first duty
as president
to protect the American people.
-We have it
so well under control.
-But America's shadow government
has spent trillions of dollars
on secret plans
that serve one premise...
we're on our own.
-I have nothing. Nothing.
the government has
invested trillions of dollars
in a secret plan
to save itself...
[ Buzzer ]
...while the rest of us die.
♪♪
♪♪
I wish
I had better news for you,
but we are facing a storm
that most of us have feared.
a massive storm barrels
toward the Gulf Coast.
and people in New Orleans
are ready to essentially
do what they normally do...
Stay and ride it out.
your government
is here to protect you.
Why should you worry?
♪♪
-The Americans living
in its path failed to understand
that their lives
were in the hands
of a government that had
prioritized its own survival
over their wellbeing.
-There were multiple warnings
that this levee system
wasn't ready
for anything approaching a storm
of this magnitude.
♪♪
-The U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers
started building a levee system
to protect New Orleans in 1965.
but it was nowhere near complete
when the Category 3
Hurricane Katrina
descended on the Crescent City
and the waters began to rise.
-Katrina was predictable.
It was preventable.
We could have mitigated
the damage.
We could have rebuilt quicker.
Homeland Security is a term
that emerged after 9/11.
we saw how insecure
our homeland was.
-The U.S. government
had other priorities...
then Iraq
just two years
before Katrina makes landfall.
-We had spent billions
of dollars and countless lives
in overseas operations
at the expense of levees.
and we failed to guard
our own back door.
-We are dealing with one
of the worst natural disasters
in our nation's history.
♪♪
-As the waters
of Lake Pontchartrain
tens of thousands of displaced.
-You had an entire American city
essentially wiped off the map
while an American government
stood by and watched.
returning to D.C. from vacation,
diverts his flight to watch
the unfolding crisis
500 feet above.
-It is a cataclysmic failure
on every level.
♪♪
-Nowhere is the devastation
greater than
in the largely African-American
Lower Ninth Ward.
♪♪
-The images from
Hurricane Katrina
of people clinging to life
on rooftops
my conscience.
♪♪
water,
shelter, or medical aid,
residents are left
on their own to survive.
-It's a disgrace.
We've been sleeping in the
street for five days and nights.
Somebody have to come
to our rescue.
-I got to Katrina as a reporter
three days after the storm.
I had been in Iraq
three weeks before.
and there being no government
to meet that human need.
-[ Shouting indistinctly ]
♪♪
the health and safety
of the local inhabitants
didn't appear to be the mission.
♪♪
-A black helicopter literally
came into New Orleans
and it turns out
that they had been ordered
into this federal building
because there were
blank passports there.
We undertook this expensive
and elaborate rescue effort
to get blank passports
out of a building in New Orleans
rather than to save people.
to me,
kind of symbolized also the fact
that sometimes
the federal government
and they're not
human priorities.
"
which might explain why law
enforcement came down so hard
on survivors in the Big Easy.
♪♪
-The crisis in New Orleans
was presented
as if this was a crisis
of security
and that
the appropriate response
was militarized policing.
a makeshift holding facility
is built
in the city's bus terminal.
People call it Camp Greyhound.
Over 100 residents
are rounded up
and cycled through the jail.
Basic rights are ignored.
Many are never charged
with a crime.
Most are African-American.
you know, the
overreaction to people of color
getting water for their survival
as opposed to white people
getting water.
and the black people
are looters.
-We see America's prejudices
start to manifest
unnecessary tragedies.
♪♪
at one point,
people are trying
and police on the other side
are trying to turn them back.
where they at?
We're on the left side.
Where are they?
New Orleans police officers in a
commandeered Budget rental truck
unleash a storm of gunfire
into an entirely Black crowd.
-I see them running! Stop!
They're on the other side
of the bridge past the hotel.
including a 40-year-old
mentally disabled man
shot five times in the back.
you know,
people should be afraid.
♪♪
♪♪
the landscape of the city...
- While survivors
celebrities band together
for hurricane relief.
Kanye West
indicts the sitting president.
-George Bush doesn't care
about Black people.
-When I saw Kanye West say
I felt like he was telling me
what I already knew.
you cannot call it
a natural disaster
in fact, natural
for a government to neglect
its citizens of color
in such a way.
mobilizing U.S. Army troops
to New Orleans.
I ordered
the Department of Defense
to deploy additional active duty
forces to the region.
-Many of the troops had recently
returned from combat tours.
♪♪
-They had been
steeled and forged
on the battlefields
of Baghdad and Fallujah.
their experiences
in some ways hardwired them
to behave more like occupiers
and less like helpers.
They were the wrong tool
for the job.
as they were in Iraq,
unable to really deal
with the fundamental problems
that the society faced.
They couldn't even rescue people
who were trapped in their homes
you know,
it wasn't Zodiacs
you know, chain saws
and this sort of
civil defense equipment.
It was Heckler & Koch
machine guns
all of which were
largely useless.
All that produces a mentality
of... of warfare and repression.
♪♪
landing on an aircraft carrier
docked just offshore.
-Four years after
the frightening experience
Americans have every right to
expect a more effective response
at a time of emergency.
When the federal government
fails to meet
such an obligation.
I as president am responsible
for the problem
and for the solution.
♪♪
-The mightiest government
on earth can do better
than abandon people in this way
within our own country.
-and will once again show
the world
that the worst adversities
bring out the best in America.
-Katrina made it obvious
that despite
all the weaponry in the world
we were unable
to take care of our own.
-But the tragedy of Katrina
where a narrow view
of national security
justified oppressing
innocent civilians.
Stability at any cost.
♪♪
-We've got both sides
of the road engulfed now.
-Wildfires rage
in Northern California.
-It's not looking good
for getting people out.
deploys.
partly because it has been run
by incompetents.
FEMA's bad reputation
was earned.
The man Bush appointed to run
FEMA was a Republican insider
and an expert
in Arabian resources
with no experience
in disaster planning...
-FEMA and the government
should have came in here
the very next morning
when all this shit happened.
- making FEMA an easy target.
he's an asshole.
-There were a few disasters
I was on
you know, after hours,
you don't walk around
with your FEMA jacket on.
♪♪
FEMA is the agency
but it's also the agency
that's responsible
for continuity of government.
or
COG, is a set of elaborate plans
the U.S. government elite and
its institutions will survive.
[ Siren wailing ]
♪♪
-Enemy jet bombers
carrying nuclear weapons
can sweep over
a variety of routes
and drop bombs on any important
target in the United States.
[ Explosion ]
♪♪
-The plan was born
in the early days
when Americans lived
under the constant threat
of nuclear annihilation.
♪♪
Citizens were reassured
that plans were in place
to keep them alive...
-These facts may save your life.
officials
admitted few could be saved.
♪♪
-It was emotional management
to make
the American people feel okay.
-What you continually see
is that the government
is more interested
in continuing its own power
and its own authority
than it is at seeing after
the basic needs of its people.
-FEMA's forerunner agency
was responsible
for securing and protecting
top government officials.
With an emergency declared
the post office
would be in charge
of registering
the nation's dead.
The National Park Service
would run the refugee camps.
The Department of Agriculture
would distribute rationed food
government officials
continue to run the show.
-The local government has moved
to a point
some 6 miles out of town.
radiation-proof
operations center
where government can
continue to function.
♪♪
-Billions were spent
on these secret plans
to protect the government elite
and the institutions of state
in the event of a Soviet attack.
-Thousands of demonstrators
opposed to the Vietnam War
assembled in the nation's
capital for a mass protest.
the government began to see
the movements for civil rights
and against the Vietnam War
as just as big a threat
to national security
as an incoming Soviet missile.
And now the government's
law enforcement
and national security resources
are tasked with confronting
this new enemy within.
-We see that the government
is treating its own people
as if they are a threat
to the government
and that they need to be treated
as enemies of the state.
-These students whose activities
you have just witnessed
are toying with treason.
The Communists have admittedly
chosen the minds of our youth
as a number-one area
for their insidious attack.
-Everything from the FBI
to the CIA to the National Guard
have been mobilized as defenses
against national threats.
♪♪
-The federal government was
involved in contingency plans
to round up dissidents.
-My own grandfather
had to testify
before the House Un-American
Activities Committee
to deny he was a member
of the Communist Party.
-♪ We shall overcome ♪
-Civil rights leaders
now considered heroes
of American democracy
were seen as part
of a Communist plot
and as a threat
to national security.
-J. Edgar Hoover particularly
picks out Martin Luther King
but infiltrate and disrupt
the efforts of
the civil rights movement.
-The FBI begins a massive covert
counterintelligence operation
known as COINTELPRO.
-It comes out of the Cold War
surveillance state
born out of controlling
the internal population.
-Agents send
Martin Luther King Jr. a letter
urging him to commit suicide.
They infiltrate
the Black Panthers
and turn them against each other
by spreading false rumors.
Others are shot by police.
♪♪
but all of this stuff
right?
There is thousands
of pages of documents.
You don't get more
substantiated than that.
♪♪
-But the covert efforts
to contain and control
the movement failed.
[ Siren wailing ]
riots break out
in over 100 cities.
♪♪
Black people
are treated very much
because we're used.
We're brutalized.
The police in our community
our community
as a foreign troop
occupies territory.
[ Indistinct shouting ]
and the vast apparatus
of a system
supposedly there to protect
all its citizens
was turned against some of them.
And those under attack
began to fight back.
"Stick 'em up! This is a holdup.
We come for what's ours."
[ Siren wailing ]
a detailed blueprint for how
the U.S. military would deploy
simultaneously
to 25 American cities
to put down racial unrest.
but for now,
Operation Garden Plot
isn't mobilized.
the civil rights movement
and assassination.
[ Crowd shouting indistinctly ]
But a new perceived threat
to national security emerges.
♪♪
1979.
A U.S.-backed dictator
is toppled in Central America
by leftist rebels.
and many in the American elite
are convinced
a new existential threat
is right at our front door.
-El Salvador is nearer to Texas
than Texas is to Massachusetts.
San Diego,
and Tucson
as those cities are
to Washington.
an official
of the Soviet Union
reiterated Brezhnev's threat
five minutes
from the United States.
-Hollywood helped spread
Reagan's fear of a red planet.
The popular 1984 movie
"Red Dawn"
imagines the American heartland
invaded by ruthless
Cuban troops.
♪♪
indistinct shouting ]
it's America's
anti-communist allies
-Death squads are believed
to be responsible
for more than half of
the political murders committed.
many Americans begin
to question U.S. support
for hard-line regimes
in Central America.
and Honduras,
and support
for the counter-revolutionary
Contra forces
that were fighting
the Sandinista government
in Nicaragua
provoked serious opposition
from American citizens.
a little-known
national security adviser
begins drawing up an exercise
to game out how to locate
and forcibly detain dissidents
if the U.S. government decides
to invade Central America.
-Oliver North had written
a proposal called Rex 84
that proposed rounding up
political dissidents
who opposed the Reagan
administration
funding right-wing death squads
in Latin America
and interning
those people in camps.
-Who were those dissidents?
Those dissidents were very often
Quakers, peace groups.
-The agency
that will create the camps
and hold the dissidents?
the Federal Emergency
Management Agency.
disrupting,
peaceful lobbying
and protest organizations
was this fantasy
that they were vehicles
and they were not.
They were American citizens
exercising their rights
to try and oppose the misuse
of their tax money
in the support
of really fascistic regimes
in Central America.
but the government
has interned people
and they have considered
doing it again.
-I will die on my feet
before I'll live on my knees.
It's as simple as that.
[ Sirens wailing ]
-You smell like alcohol!
Get away!
hey, hey, get that camera
out of my face, okay?
1992.
Los Angeles residents
take to the streets
to protest the beating
of Rodney King
and the acquittal
of the LAPD officers who did it.
[ Sirens wailing ]
The city erupts in flames.
-[Bleep]
[ Men speaking indistinctly ]
-That's [bleep] up.
That's [bleep] up.
Whoever did that is [bleep] up.
[ Sirens wailing ]
the Vietnam-era
military operation
to squash domestic unrest.
I will use whatever force
is necessary to restore order.
♪♪
-If you have a government that
wants to create the narrative
that there are
scary brown and black people
who want to take your kids
and take your job
and have this
terrible revolution
what better way to create that
kill a few?
"Look! Look what's happening."
you two, come on.
- I'm a innocent victim.
- Let's go.
we all are.
♪♪
-But as the government
once again
they overlook a growing movement
self-proclaimed "patriots"
who are organizing
and taking up arms.
-All of these groups
from the beginning
were deeply engaged
with this idea
that it was their duty
as a well-armed militia
as they saw it,
encroaching on the lives
of U.S. citizens.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-As President Bush celebrates
the end of the Cold War...
-This is a time
when the future seems
a door you can
walk right through
into a room called tomorrow.
- "patriots" fear
America's tomorrow will be
in which the U.S. government
bends to the will
of the United Nations.
I will die on my feet
before I'll live on my knees.
It's as simple as that.
-These groups have convinced
themselves the government
will turn its command
and control infrastructure
and its supposed fleet
of black helicopters
against its own citizens
who oppose surrendering
America's independence.
♪♪
it begins to associate
the agency
designed to ensure
continuity of government
with this dark plot
to control their lives.
-FEMA was incorporated
as a federal agency
under President Carter
and pretty much immediately
became the subject
of conspiracy theories.
Patriot movements
were claiming in newsletters
and that patriots were going to
be rounded up and put in camps.
all the government mentions
a civilian inmate
labor camp program
how they're going to
break the families up
and where the children go
and the forced inoculations
and everything.
it just boggles the mind
that all of this is happening.
-It had some weird elements.
Militia movements
became convinced
that FEMA was going to put
people in concentration camps
with the help of the Bloods
and the Crips.
they actually believe
that the federal government
was directly waging war on them.
-The government's actions
to rein in
heavily armed groups
serve only
to fuel their paranoia.
Texas,
and a vicious firefight
breaks out.
including 25 children.
-We did everything we could
to avoid the loss of life.
and I
feel awful about the children.
♪♪
Waco is a catalyzing moment.
One of them is a 24-year-old
Gulf War veteran.
He would later write that
the true horror of the event
which didn't air images
of the carnage
"didn't cares
when these families died
torturous death
at the hands of the FBI."
this angry young veteran
would rock the foundations
of America's
national security state.
[ Indistinct shouting ]
[ Woman screams ]
♪♪
-A massive bomb goes off
at a federal building
killing 168,
including 19 children
at a daycare center.
[ Sirens wailing ]
-There are those who hate
our government so much
that they're willing to conduct
acts of terrorism
directed at innocent civilians.
no! No!
No!
-It was one of the most
devastating
domestic terror attacks
in U.S. history
up until that point.
- Let me have him.
- I can't.
hon.
- It's horrible.
[ Siren wailing ]
♪♪
♪♪
we had
this paranoid kind of mentality.
The threat is out there.
It's external.
right,
and it's spending like
trillions of dollars
on its national security
apparatus...
the FBI, whatever,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
The threat turned out
to be homegrown.
-And white.
The person behind the bombing
was Timothy McVeigh.
McVeigh saw
action in the first Gulf War.
-Iraq's army is defeated.
Our military objectives are met.
We must now begin to look
beyond victory and war.
We must meet the challenge
of securing the peace.
[ Cheers and applause ]
McVeigh leaves the army
and becomes radicalized
by a series of events
that would galvanize right-wing
extremists for years to come.
-Somebody like McVeigh thinks
that they're actually a soldier
in an invisible war.
[ Siren wailing ]
-The FBI raid on
the heavily armed Christian cult
Texas,
that left 25 children dead
but at the U.S. government.
And when President Clinton
pushes hard
McVeigh and many
on the right-wing fringes
see an elite plot
to rip away their freedoms.
there are some adults
that like to go target practice
with these things."
they need to read
a good book.
[ Laughter ]
McVeigh bombed the Federal
Building in Oklahoma City
he believes houses
the local FBI headquarters.
[ Siren wailing ]
President
Clinton becomes terrified
that he might be the next target
of a growing radical right-wing
militia movement.
-He greatly increased
the amount of money
and he also created
a new position.
And that new position was called
the National Coordinator
for Security
and Counterterrorism.
And I was that person.
No longer was it
just about nuclear war.
What if there were
a terrorist attack
but it was in Washington,
and it took out the White House?
frankly.
We should have learned
that terrorism
can be a domestic-based
act of violence.
-It's a rearguard action.
They're caught
with their pants down.
They've been allowing
this right-wing movement
to get out of hand.
[ Sirens wailing ]
-In a preview
of conspiracy theories
many in the militia movement
refuse to believe
but rather was a pretense
by the government
to mobilize against them.
-The Oklahoma City bombing
was immediately subject
to conspiracy theories.
Patriot movements viewed it
as a false flag attack
justify
a crackdown against them.
-False flag operations
involve one group
pretending to be another
to shift blame.
-There were
congressional hearings
after the Oklahoma City bombings
where members
of a Michigan militia
were questioned
by members of Congress.
And the militia members
speculated
that the bombing had been
undertaken by the CIA
or that McVeigh had had ties
with the Japanese government.
by claiming that Oklahoma City
had been a false flag
perpetrated by the government.
-We've been investigating
this tragedy for over six years.
The amount of evidence
is staggering.
we couldn't find a single person
who said they'd heard
only one explosion.
♪♪
-It's all part of a growing
movement on the right
questioning elite control
of society.
ordinary, everyday folks
just battling for our freedom
and keeping our Constitution.
-The militias are the bottom
line and... and the last resort
to the difference
between freedom and slavery.
April 19th,
to beware.
because then I'm afraid that all
hell's going to break loose.
but they're doing it
in totally crackpot
and hateful ways
that exacerbate the problem.
my friends.
- White revolution.
-There's a general sense
of growing insecurity
right?
immigrants.
Mr. President.
[ Cheers and applause ]
there's a surge in right-wing
militia activity.
Groups grow from 149 in 2008
360 in 2012.
militias go mainstream,
many purchasing arsenals
of high-powered weaponry.
This member of the Virginia
branch of a militia
known as the Ghost Squad
was in Charlottesville
and says the militia movement
has spread throughout society.
♪♪
-There's police officers that
are militiamen.
There are first responders
that are militiamen.
There's people in the churches
that are militiamen.
our country, and our families.
♪♪
and we will win this fight.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
-And while the U.S. government
has often underestimated
Trump appears
to actively encourage them.
And one militia
makes international news
when they try to act
on his perceived call to arms.
-We begin with
stunning allegations
attack the police,
and attempt to ignite
a civil war in the U.S.
including members
of a Michigan militia
are arrested
Gretchen Whitmer.
but they all appear
to share the belief
that big government is the enemy
and the Michigan governor's
COVID-19 policies
were part of a larger plan
to strip away their rights.
[ Man imitates wolf howling ]
-The irony is that militia
movements are deeply afraid
but they don't seem to have
a ton of historical awareness
about who these tools
of oppression
have actually been used against.
indistinct chanting ]
-There's a face and an image
and a perspective
and that's what
gets people killed.
right?
- Breonna Taylor!
- Say her name!
- Breonna Taylor! Breonna Taylor!
- Breonna Taylor! Breonna Taylor!
-Spring 2020.
Possibly the largest
mass protest movement
America has seen sweeps the
nation with a simple message...
Black Lives Matter.
-I can't breathe!
- I can't breathe!
- I can't breathe!
- I can't breathe!
- I can't breathe!
- I can't breathe!
- I can't breathe!
federal agents, including some
Homeland Security,
even snatching them
off the streets.
It's nothing new.
- No justice!
- No peace!
-We've seen this happen
for decades now.
Every time there's a moment
of either civil unrest
we see the government start
to use that apparatus again
and treat its own people as if
they are enemies of the state.
♪♪
the FBI implemented
a program titled Ironfist
targeting African-American
activists.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Black extremists
are listed at the top
above even groups like
Al-Qa'ida.
over the last 25 years,
only a handful of so-called
Black extremists
have been tied
to acts of violence.
now you step back!
now you step back!
now you step back!
-This overdeveloped
surveillance state
is borne out of the Cold War.
very long history
that goes way back
in American history
'50s,
beyond World War II,
into the Red Scare of the '20s.
socialists, feminists,
African-Americans
and other communities of color
these people
have always been attacked.
once again,
the vast machinery
of a system there to protect its
citizens is turned on its own.
[ Indistinct shouting ]
[ Siren wailing ]
maritime security, FEMA,
border security,
cyber security,
protects Americans
at the 1-yard line.
But you go from Charlottesville
in August 2017
to what happened in Portland...
screaming ]
-Don't shoot.
D.C.,
the Trump administration
has used the Department
of Homeland Security
as a hammer to pursue
its aggressive agenda.
[ Gunshots ]
-I honor law enforcement.
We wouldn't be here right now
if it wasn't
for law enforcement.
We have to stop this horrible
left-wing ideology
that seems to be
permeating our country.
- Breonna Taylor!
- Breonna Taylor!
- Breonna Taylor!
- Breonna Taylor!
-We've seen a consistent
use of DHS
as a secret police
for an executive branch.
and disappeared.
[ Whistle blowing in distance ]
-Y'all got the same shit
going on with y'all.
man.
bro.
Help me help us.
-There's a face and an image
and a perspective
that we associate with what is
dangerous in this country.
you know...
And it's imbued within.
and that is what
gets people killed.
- Both hands.
- I didn't do nothing.
-Put your [bleep] hands up
right now.
- [ Sobbing ]
- Stand up.
please!
♪♪
♪♪
[ Camera shutter clicking ]
♪♪
-Oh!
Whoa.
-Get back!
indistinct shouting ]
hey!
you cannot.
You cannot pull me out of...
- I'm not [bleep] with you.
- Yo!
[ Women screaming ]
♪♪
-It just... just
is too many people.
And if you think that
that trend can continue
then I would like to understand
what your ideas of America are.
there is no room for me.
♪♪
-What started out
as the War on Terror
has become the forever war
with any number of enemies
in any number of places.
-Many of the operations that
are happening are so secretive
that even the American people
are not aware who the enemy is.
-America is constantly at war
everywhere around the globe.
We're still bleeding our blood
of our country every single day.
back home,
we're dying constantly
in just really overtly
incompetent ways.
coming in from Puerto Rico
Hurricane Maria
slamming into the island.
♪♪
it's always been the President
of the United States' job
to arrive on the scene
with promises of help.
-Emergency management
now confirms
100% of Puerto Rico
now without power.
Flooding in every direction.
-One official saying
the island is destroyed.
-He's also there
to offer emotional support
to locals confronting death
and destruction.
♪♪
-I've been to Puerto Rico
many times.
and
your weather is second to none,
you get hit,
and you really got hit.
[ Helicopter blades whirring ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
he goes down there,
says a few words.
-There's a lot of love
in this room.
There's a lot
of love in this room.
shrugs a little bit, and leaves,
and then blames the Puerto Rican
government for all the problems.
-Survival cannot be
our new way of life.
do your job.
-Can I get a selfie with you?
like, the
understatement of the century.
-Great people.
just how vulnerable we are
and how wide the chasm is
between the powerful
and the rest of us.
[ Cheers and applause ]
our leaders
have told us one thing
under the bright lights.
-The protection of the lives
and property of Americans
is the responsibility
of all public officials.
-I care. We're trying.
-And it is my first duty
as president
to protect the American people.
-We have it
so well under control.
-But America's shadow government
has spent trillions of dollars
on secret plans
that serve one premise...
we're on our own.
-I have nothing. Nothing.
the government has
invested trillions of dollars
in a secret plan
to save itself...
[ Buzzer ]
...while the rest of us die.
♪♪
♪♪
I wish
I had better news for you,
but we are facing a storm
that most of us have feared.
a massive storm barrels
toward the Gulf Coast.
and people in New Orleans
are ready to essentially
do what they normally do...
Stay and ride it out.
your government
is here to protect you.
Why should you worry?
♪♪
-The Americans living
in its path failed to understand
that their lives
were in the hands
of a government that had
prioritized its own survival
over their wellbeing.
-There were multiple warnings
that this levee system
wasn't ready
for anything approaching a storm
of this magnitude.
♪♪
-The U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers
started building a levee system
to protect New Orleans in 1965.
but it was nowhere near complete
when the Category 3
Hurricane Katrina
descended on the Crescent City
and the waters began to rise.
-Katrina was predictable.
It was preventable.
We could have mitigated
the damage.
We could have rebuilt quicker.
Homeland Security is a term
that emerged after 9/11.
we saw how insecure
our homeland was.
-The U.S. government
had other priorities...
then Iraq
just two years
before Katrina makes landfall.
-We had spent billions
of dollars and countless lives
in overseas operations
at the expense of levees.
and we failed to guard
our own back door.
-We are dealing with one
of the worst natural disasters
in our nation's history.
♪♪
-As the waters
of Lake Pontchartrain
tens of thousands of displaced.
-You had an entire American city
essentially wiped off the map
while an American government
stood by and watched.
returning to D.C. from vacation,
diverts his flight to watch
the unfolding crisis
500 feet above.
-It is a cataclysmic failure
on every level.
♪♪
-Nowhere is the devastation
greater than
in the largely African-American
Lower Ninth Ward.
♪♪
-The images from
Hurricane Katrina
of people clinging to life
on rooftops
my conscience.
♪♪
water,
shelter, or medical aid,
residents are left
on their own to survive.
-It's a disgrace.
We've been sleeping in the
street for five days and nights.
Somebody have to come
to our rescue.
-I got to Katrina as a reporter
three days after the storm.
I had been in Iraq
three weeks before.
and there being no government
to meet that human need.
-[ Shouting indistinctly ]
♪♪
the health and safety
of the local inhabitants
didn't appear to be the mission.
♪♪
-A black helicopter literally
came into New Orleans
and it turns out
that they had been ordered
into this federal building
because there were
blank passports there.
We undertook this expensive
and elaborate rescue effort
to get blank passports
out of a building in New Orleans
rather than to save people.
to me,
kind of symbolized also the fact
that sometimes
the federal government
and they're not
human priorities.
"
which might explain why law
enforcement came down so hard
on survivors in the Big Easy.
♪♪
-The crisis in New Orleans
was presented
as if this was a crisis
of security
and that
the appropriate response
was militarized policing.
a makeshift holding facility
is built
in the city's bus terminal.
People call it Camp Greyhound.
Over 100 residents
are rounded up
and cycled through the jail.
Basic rights are ignored.
Many are never charged
with a crime.
Most are African-American.
you know, the
overreaction to people of color
getting water for their survival
as opposed to white people
getting water.
and the black people
are looters.
-We see America's prejudices
start to manifest
unnecessary tragedies.
♪♪
at one point,
people are trying
and police on the other side
are trying to turn them back.
where they at?
We're on the left side.
Where are they?
New Orleans police officers in a
commandeered Budget rental truck
unleash a storm of gunfire
into an entirely Black crowd.
-I see them running! Stop!
They're on the other side
of the bridge past the hotel.
including a 40-year-old
mentally disabled man
shot five times in the back.
you know,
people should be afraid.
♪♪
♪♪
the landscape of the city...
- While survivors
celebrities band together
for hurricane relief.
Kanye West
indicts the sitting president.
-George Bush doesn't care
about Black people.
-When I saw Kanye West say
I felt like he was telling me
what I already knew.
you cannot call it
a natural disaster
in fact, natural
for a government to neglect
its citizens of color
in such a way.
mobilizing U.S. Army troops
to New Orleans.
I ordered
the Department of Defense
to deploy additional active duty
forces to the region.
-Many of the troops had recently
returned from combat tours.
♪♪
-They had been
steeled and forged
on the battlefields
of Baghdad and Fallujah.
their experiences
in some ways hardwired them
to behave more like occupiers
and less like helpers.
They were the wrong tool
for the job.
as they were in Iraq,
unable to really deal
with the fundamental problems
that the society faced.
They couldn't even rescue people
who were trapped in their homes
you know,
it wasn't Zodiacs
you know, chain saws
and this sort of
civil defense equipment.
It was Heckler & Koch
machine guns
all of which were
largely useless.
All that produces a mentality
of... of warfare and repression.
♪♪
landing on an aircraft carrier
docked just offshore.
-Four years after
the frightening experience
Americans have every right to
expect a more effective response
at a time of emergency.
When the federal government
fails to meet
such an obligation.
I as president am responsible
for the problem
and for the solution.
♪♪
-The mightiest government
on earth can do better
than abandon people in this way
within our own country.
-and will once again show
the world
that the worst adversities
bring out the best in America.
-Katrina made it obvious
that despite
all the weaponry in the world
we were unable
to take care of our own.
-But the tragedy of Katrina
where a narrow view
of national security
justified oppressing
innocent civilians.
Stability at any cost.
♪♪
-We've got both sides
of the road engulfed now.
-Wildfires rage
in Northern California.
-It's not looking good
for getting people out.
deploys.
partly because it has been run
by incompetents.
FEMA's bad reputation
was earned.
The man Bush appointed to run
FEMA was a Republican insider
and an expert
in Arabian resources
with no experience
in disaster planning...
-FEMA and the government
should have came in here
the very next morning
when all this shit happened.
- making FEMA an easy target.
he's an asshole.
-There were a few disasters
I was on
you know, after hours,
you don't walk around
with your FEMA jacket on.
♪♪
FEMA is the agency
but it's also the agency
that's responsible
for continuity of government.
or
COG, is a set of elaborate plans
the U.S. government elite and
its institutions will survive.
[ Siren wailing ]
♪♪
-Enemy jet bombers
carrying nuclear weapons
can sweep over
a variety of routes
and drop bombs on any important
target in the United States.
[ Explosion ]
♪♪
-The plan was born
in the early days
when Americans lived
under the constant threat
of nuclear annihilation.
♪♪
Citizens were reassured
that plans were in place
to keep them alive...
-These facts may save your life.
officials
admitted few could be saved.
♪♪
-It was emotional management
to make
the American people feel okay.
-What you continually see
is that the government
is more interested
in continuing its own power
and its own authority
than it is at seeing after
the basic needs of its people.
-FEMA's forerunner agency
was responsible
for securing and protecting
top government officials.
With an emergency declared
the post office
would be in charge
of registering
the nation's dead.
The National Park Service
would run the refugee camps.
The Department of Agriculture
would distribute rationed food
government officials
continue to run the show.
-The local government has moved
to a point
some 6 miles out of town.
radiation-proof
operations center
where government can
continue to function.
♪♪
-Billions were spent
on these secret plans
to protect the government elite
and the institutions of state
in the event of a Soviet attack.
-Thousands of demonstrators
opposed to the Vietnam War
assembled in the nation's
capital for a mass protest.
the government began to see
the movements for civil rights
and against the Vietnam War
as just as big a threat
to national security
as an incoming Soviet missile.
And now the government's
law enforcement
and national security resources
are tasked with confronting
this new enemy within.
-We see that the government
is treating its own people
as if they are a threat
to the government
and that they need to be treated
as enemies of the state.
-These students whose activities
you have just witnessed
are toying with treason.
The Communists have admittedly
chosen the minds of our youth
as a number-one area
for their insidious attack.
-Everything from the FBI
to the CIA to the National Guard
have been mobilized as defenses
against national threats.
♪♪
-The federal government was
involved in contingency plans
to round up dissidents.
-My own grandfather
had to testify
before the House Un-American
Activities Committee
to deny he was a member
of the Communist Party.
-♪ We shall overcome ♪
-Civil rights leaders
now considered heroes
of American democracy
were seen as part
of a Communist plot
and as a threat
to national security.
-J. Edgar Hoover particularly
picks out Martin Luther King
but infiltrate and disrupt
the efforts of
the civil rights movement.
-The FBI begins a massive covert
counterintelligence operation
known as COINTELPRO.
-It comes out of the Cold War
surveillance state
born out of controlling
the internal population.
-Agents send
Martin Luther King Jr. a letter
urging him to commit suicide.
They infiltrate
the Black Panthers
and turn them against each other
by spreading false rumors.
Others are shot by police.
♪♪
but all of this stuff
right?
There is thousands
of pages of documents.
You don't get more
substantiated than that.
♪♪
-But the covert efforts
to contain and control
the movement failed.
[ Siren wailing ]
riots break out
in over 100 cities.
♪♪
Black people
are treated very much
because we're used.
We're brutalized.
The police in our community
our community
as a foreign troop
occupies territory.
[ Indistinct shouting ]
and the vast apparatus
of a system
supposedly there to protect
all its citizens
was turned against some of them.
And those under attack
began to fight back.
"Stick 'em up! This is a holdup.
We come for what's ours."
[ Siren wailing ]
a detailed blueprint for how
the U.S. military would deploy
simultaneously
to 25 American cities
to put down racial unrest.
but for now,
Operation Garden Plot
isn't mobilized.
the civil rights movement
and assassination.
[ Crowd shouting indistinctly ]
But a new perceived threat
to national security emerges.
♪♪
1979.
A U.S.-backed dictator
is toppled in Central America
by leftist rebels.
and many in the American elite
are convinced
a new existential threat
is right at our front door.
-El Salvador is nearer to Texas
than Texas is to Massachusetts.
San Diego,
and Tucson
as those cities are
to Washington.
an official
of the Soviet Union
reiterated Brezhnev's threat
five minutes
from the United States.
-Hollywood helped spread
Reagan's fear of a red planet.
The popular 1984 movie
"Red Dawn"
imagines the American heartland
invaded by ruthless
Cuban troops.
♪♪
indistinct shouting ]
it's America's
anti-communist allies
-Death squads are believed
to be responsible
for more than half of
the political murders committed.
many Americans begin
to question U.S. support
for hard-line regimes
in Central America.
and Honduras,
and support
for the counter-revolutionary
Contra forces
that were fighting
the Sandinista government
in Nicaragua
provoked serious opposition
from American citizens.
a little-known
national security adviser
begins drawing up an exercise
to game out how to locate
and forcibly detain dissidents
if the U.S. government decides
to invade Central America.
-Oliver North had written
a proposal called Rex 84
that proposed rounding up
political dissidents
who opposed the Reagan
administration
funding right-wing death squads
in Latin America
and interning
those people in camps.
-Who were those dissidents?
Those dissidents were very often
Quakers, peace groups.
-The agency
that will create the camps
and hold the dissidents?
the Federal Emergency
Management Agency.
disrupting,
peaceful lobbying
and protest organizations
was this fantasy
that they were vehicles
and they were not.
They were American citizens
exercising their rights
to try and oppose the misuse
of their tax money
in the support
of really fascistic regimes
in Central America.
but the government
has interned people
and they have considered
doing it again.
-I will die on my feet
before I'll live on my knees.
It's as simple as that.
[ Sirens wailing ]
-You smell like alcohol!
Get away!
hey, hey, get that camera
out of my face, okay?
1992.
Los Angeles residents
take to the streets
to protest the beating
of Rodney King
and the acquittal
of the LAPD officers who did it.
[ Sirens wailing ]
The city erupts in flames.
-[Bleep]
[ Men speaking indistinctly ]
-That's [bleep] up.
That's [bleep] up.
Whoever did that is [bleep] up.
[ Sirens wailing ]
the Vietnam-era
military operation
to squash domestic unrest.
I will use whatever force
is necessary to restore order.
♪♪
-If you have a government that
wants to create the narrative
that there are
scary brown and black people
who want to take your kids
and take your job
and have this
terrible revolution
what better way to create that
kill a few?
"Look! Look what's happening."
you two, come on.
- I'm a innocent victim.
- Let's go.
we all are.
♪♪
-But as the government
once again
they overlook a growing movement
self-proclaimed "patriots"
who are organizing
and taking up arms.
-All of these groups
from the beginning
were deeply engaged
with this idea
that it was their duty
as a well-armed militia
as they saw it,
encroaching on the lives
of U.S. citizens.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-As President Bush celebrates
the end of the Cold War...
-This is a time
when the future seems
a door you can
walk right through
into a room called tomorrow.
- "patriots" fear
America's tomorrow will be
in which the U.S. government
bends to the will
of the United Nations.
I will die on my feet
before I'll live on my knees.
It's as simple as that.
-These groups have convinced
themselves the government
will turn its command
and control infrastructure
and its supposed fleet
of black helicopters
against its own citizens
who oppose surrendering
America's independence.
♪♪
it begins to associate
the agency
designed to ensure
continuity of government
with this dark plot
to control their lives.
-FEMA was incorporated
as a federal agency
under President Carter
and pretty much immediately
became the subject
of conspiracy theories.
Patriot movements
were claiming in newsletters
and that patriots were going to
be rounded up and put in camps.
all the government mentions
a civilian inmate
labor camp program
how they're going to
break the families up
and where the children go
and the forced inoculations
and everything.
it just boggles the mind
that all of this is happening.
-It had some weird elements.
Militia movements
became convinced
that FEMA was going to put
people in concentration camps
with the help of the Bloods
and the Crips.
they actually believe
that the federal government
was directly waging war on them.
-The government's actions
to rein in
heavily armed groups
serve only
to fuel their paranoia.
Texas,
and a vicious firefight
breaks out.
including 25 children.
-We did everything we could
to avoid the loss of life.
and I
feel awful about the children.
♪♪
Waco is a catalyzing moment.
One of them is a 24-year-old
Gulf War veteran.
He would later write that
the true horror of the event
which didn't air images
of the carnage
"didn't cares
when these families died
torturous death
at the hands of the FBI."
this angry young veteran
would rock the foundations
of America's
national security state.
[ Indistinct shouting ]
[ Woman screams ]
♪♪
-A massive bomb goes off
at a federal building
killing 168,
including 19 children
at a daycare center.
[ Sirens wailing ]
-There are those who hate
our government so much
that they're willing to conduct
acts of terrorism
directed at innocent civilians.
no! No!
No!
-It was one of the most
devastating
domestic terror attacks
in U.S. history
up until that point.
- Let me have him.
- I can't.
hon.
- It's horrible.
[ Siren wailing ]
♪♪
♪♪
we had
this paranoid kind of mentality.
The threat is out there.
It's external.
right,
and it's spending like
trillions of dollars
on its national security
apparatus...
the FBI, whatever,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
The threat turned out
to be homegrown.
-And white.
The person behind the bombing
was Timothy McVeigh.
McVeigh saw
action in the first Gulf War.
-Iraq's army is defeated.
Our military objectives are met.
We must now begin to look
beyond victory and war.
We must meet the challenge
of securing the peace.
[ Cheers and applause ]
McVeigh leaves the army
and becomes radicalized
by a series of events
that would galvanize right-wing
extremists for years to come.
-Somebody like McVeigh thinks
that they're actually a soldier
in an invisible war.
[ Siren wailing ]
-The FBI raid on
the heavily armed Christian cult
Texas,
that left 25 children dead
but at the U.S. government.
And when President Clinton
pushes hard
McVeigh and many
on the right-wing fringes
see an elite plot
to rip away their freedoms.
there are some adults
that like to go target practice
with these things."
they need to read
a good book.
[ Laughter ]
McVeigh bombed the Federal
Building in Oklahoma City
he believes houses
the local FBI headquarters.
[ Siren wailing ]
President
Clinton becomes terrified
that he might be the next target
of a growing radical right-wing
militia movement.
-He greatly increased
the amount of money
and he also created
a new position.
And that new position was called
the National Coordinator
for Security
and Counterterrorism.
And I was that person.
No longer was it
just about nuclear war.
What if there were
a terrorist attack
but it was in Washington,
and it took out the White House?
frankly.
We should have learned
that terrorism
can be a domestic-based
act of violence.
-It's a rearguard action.
They're caught
with their pants down.
They've been allowing
this right-wing movement
to get out of hand.
[ Sirens wailing ]
-In a preview
of conspiracy theories
many in the militia movement
refuse to believe
but rather was a pretense
by the government
to mobilize against them.
-The Oklahoma City bombing
was immediately subject
to conspiracy theories.
Patriot movements viewed it
as a false flag attack
justify
a crackdown against them.
-False flag operations
involve one group
pretending to be another
to shift blame.
-There were
congressional hearings
after the Oklahoma City bombings
where members
of a Michigan militia
were questioned
by members of Congress.
And the militia members
speculated
that the bombing had been
undertaken by the CIA
or that McVeigh had had ties
with the Japanese government.
by claiming that Oklahoma City
had been a false flag
perpetrated by the government.
-We've been investigating
this tragedy for over six years.
The amount of evidence
is staggering.
we couldn't find a single person
who said they'd heard
only one explosion.
♪♪
-It's all part of a growing
movement on the right
questioning elite control
of society.
ordinary, everyday folks
just battling for our freedom
and keeping our Constitution.
-The militias are the bottom
line and... and the last resort
to the difference
between freedom and slavery.
April 19th,
to beware.
because then I'm afraid that all
hell's going to break loose.
but they're doing it
in totally crackpot
and hateful ways
that exacerbate the problem.
my friends.
- White revolution.
-There's a general sense
of growing insecurity
right?
immigrants.
Mr. President.
[ Cheers and applause ]
there's a surge in right-wing
militia activity.
Groups grow from 149 in 2008
360 in 2012.
militias go mainstream,
many purchasing arsenals
of high-powered weaponry.
This member of the Virginia
branch of a militia
known as the Ghost Squad
was in Charlottesville
and says the militia movement
has spread throughout society.
♪♪
-There's police officers that
are militiamen.
There are first responders
that are militiamen.
There's people in the churches
that are militiamen.
our country, and our families.
♪♪
and we will win this fight.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
-And while the U.S. government
has often underestimated
Trump appears
to actively encourage them.
And one militia
makes international news
when they try to act
on his perceived call to arms.
-We begin with
stunning allegations
attack the police,
and attempt to ignite
a civil war in the U.S.
including members
of a Michigan militia
are arrested
Gretchen Whitmer.
but they all appear
to share the belief
that big government is the enemy
and the Michigan governor's
COVID-19 policies
were part of a larger plan
to strip away their rights.
[ Man imitates wolf howling ]
-The irony is that militia
movements are deeply afraid
but they don't seem to have
a ton of historical awareness
about who these tools
of oppression
have actually been used against.
indistinct chanting ]
-There's a face and an image
and a perspective
and that's what
gets people killed.
right?
- Breonna Taylor!
- Say her name!
- Breonna Taylor! Breonna Taylor!
- Breonna Taylor! Breonna Taylor!
-Spring 2020.
Possibly the largest
mass protest movement
America has seen sweeps the
nation with a simple message...
Black Lives Matter.
-I can't breathe!
- I can't breathe!
- I can't breathe!
- I can't breathe!
- I can't breathe!
- I can't breathe!
- I can't breathe!
federal agents, including some
Homeland Security,
even snatching them
off the streets.
It's nothing new.
- No justice!
- No peace!
-We've seen this happen
for decades now.
Every time there's a moment
of either civil unrest
we see the government start
to use that apparatus again
and treat its own people as if
they are enemies of the state.
♪♪
the FBI implemented
a program titled Ironfist
targeting African-American
activists.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Black extremists
are listed at the top
above even groups like
Al-Qa'ida.
over the last 25 years,
only a handful of so-called
Black extremists
have been tied
to acts of violence.
now you step back!
now you step back!
now you step back!
-This overdeveloped
surveillance state
is borne out of the Cold War.
very long history
that goes way back
in American history
'50s,
beyond World War II,
into the Red Scare of the '20s.
socialists, feminists,
African-Americans
and other communities of color
these people
have always been attacked.
once again,
the vast machinery
of a system there to protect its
citizens is turned on its own.
[ Indistinct shouting ]
[ Siren wailing ]
maritime security, FEMA,
border security,
cyber security,
protects Americans
at the 1-yard line.
But you go from Charlottesville
in August 2017
to what happened in Portland...
screaming ]
-Don't shoot.
D.C.,
the Trump administration
has used the Department
of Homeland Security
as a hammer to pursue
its aggressive agenda.
[ Gunshots ]
-I honor law enforcement.
We wouldn't be here right now
if it wasn't
for law enforcement.
We have to stop this horrible
left-wing ideology
that seems to be
permeating our country.
- Breonna Taylor!
- Breonna Taylor!
- Breonna Taylor!
- Breonna Taylor!
-We've seen a consistent
use of DHS
as a secret police
for an executive branch.
and disappeared.
[ Whistle blowing in distance ]
-Y'all got the same shit
going on with y'all.
man.
bro.
Help me help us.
-There's a face and an image
and a perspective
that we associate with what is
dangerous in this country.
you know...
And it's imbued within.
and that is what
gets people killed.
- Both hands.
- I didn't do nothing.
-Put your [bleep] hands up
right now.
- [ Sobbing ]
- Stand up.
please!
♪♪
♪♪
[ Camera shutter clicking ]
♪♪
-Oh!
Whoa.
-Get back!
indistinct shouting ]
hey!
you cannot.
You cannot pull me out of...
- I'm not [bleep] with you.
- Yo!
[ Women screaming ]
♪♪
-It just... just
is too many people.
And if you think that
that trend can continue
then I would like to understand
what your ideas of America are.
there is no room for me.
♪♪
-What started out
as the War on Terror
has become the forever war
with any number of enemies
in any number of places.
-Many of the operations that
are happening are so secretive
that even the American people
are not aware who the enemy is.
-America is constantly at war
everywhere around the globe.
We're still bleeding our blood
of our country every single day.
back home,
we're dying constantly
in just really overtly
incompetent ways.