Episode 82: The Pentagon

 Well There's Your Problem | Episode 82: The Pentagon - YouTube

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LIAM: ...Uh, probably more tasteful, until after 9/11 passes, anyway.

LIAM: Uh, and then, well, too bad, you're gonna be tasteful.

JUSTIN: Uh, well...

LIAM: Uh...

LIAM: Which, because our manager is a tyrant,

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: uh, despite the fact--

NOVA: W-we are here, for a, a respectful, uh, sensitive podcast.

LIAM: She is very good at her job.

NOVA: Yeah, now we've gone commercial.

JUSTIN: Mmhmm.

NOVA: Uh... we-we're being, we're being censored by our own, uh, employees, which is...

JUSTIN: Exactly. [laughs] Um...

LIAM: I will say, that's not in the slides, but uh,

LIAM: today begins, today and yesterday began the trial of the, uh,

LIAM: September 11th hijackers? Um,

LIAM: uh, down in Guantanamo?

LIAM: Uh, and of course they're gonna be found guilty, but they shouldn't be, because they were tortured for information,

LIAM: this whole thing has been a farce,

LIAM: so, I know it's, it's not in the slides because I was too lazy to put it in, but,

LIAM: um, this country's sense of justice for what happened on 9/11,

LIAM: is, uh,

LIAM: that of a broken country with dumbass ideas.

LIAM: Uh, and,

LIAM: there's no, there's not any sense of...

LIAM: justice anyway, but torturing people, and then getting some sort of kangaroo court conviction,

LIAM: isn't my idea of, uh, of a functioning system, but that's how the system was designed to function in the first place,

LIAM: so, uh, yeah!

LIAM: Uh, the world is fucking terrible, who gives a shit. Next slide.

JUSTIN: Well, I mean...

JUSTIN: Obviously, we should, we should start this episode, um,

JUSTIN: respectfully,

JUSTIN: uh, I would like, uh, to say, uh, please all rise for the national anthem.

♪[State Anthem of the USSR]♪

JUSTIN: Al-alright, okay.

JUSTIN: Welcome to, Well There's Your Problem.

JUSTIN: It's a podcast about engineering disasters, with slides.

JUSTIN: I'm Justin Roczniak, I'm the person who's talking right now,

JUSTIN: um, anyway, now that we've weeded out everyone without a sense of humor, let's go.

LIAM: Uh, no, no, they're gonna stick around.

NOVA: Pronouns, pronouns!

JUSTIN: Oh! My pronouns are he and him.

LIAM: Fuck!

NOVA: Got your ass.

NOVA: [November Kelly], she and her.

LIAM: You didn't say "yay Liam".

NOVA: Yay Liam.

LIAM: Yaay Liam.

LIAM: Hi! [laughs]

NOVA: [laughs]

NOVA: It didn't seem appropriate! It's a somber occasion!

LIAM: You already--we already, we already blew that. Uh, hi! I'm Liam Anderson.

LIAM: Um, my pronouns are he and him.

LIAM: And for those of us,

LIAM: who are gonna leave, uh, mad replies in the comments, uh, your government failed you,

NOVA: Mmhmm.

LIAM: And, uh, we're not the ones to get mad at. We didn't crash the fucking plane into the Pentagon.

JUSTIN: I was about to say, yeah.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Um-

LIAM: We also, we also didn't do some Looming Tower shit, so.

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: I implore you to read that fucking book.

NOVA: Oh my God, yes.

JUSTIN: I don't know what that is.

NOVA: Uh, it's, it's a book, now... it's a film or TV series, a TV series.

LIAM: A film or(?) Hulu--it's a Hulu TV series, yeah. Yeah.

JUSTIN: Ah.

NOVA: About how the, the FBI and the CIA both kind of knew that 9/11 was going to happen, or something very like it.

LIAM: Or, or "kind of 9/11", yeah.

NOVA: Yeah, a-and like, uh, due to sort of that like,

NOVA: instinctive bureaucratic hostility, they both refused to share any useful information with each other, and in fact actively hindered each other.

LIAM: And then 9/11!

NOVA: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Well,

JUSTIN: that, among other things, is something we may explore, later, in this episode.

JUSTIN: Our subject today is the Pentagon.

JUSTIN: But first, we have to do the God Damn News.

♪[news jingle]♪

JUSTIN: Wow, someone stretched this photo.

NOVA: Yeah, me.

LIAM: Wow, yeah.

NOVA: I don't like, having the, like, white space either side of it.

JUSTIN: Alright, so-

NOVA: So, the, the climes, they are a-changing.

LIAM: Yeah.

JUSTIN: The climate does appear to be changing.

LIAM: Yeah.

JUSTIN: This is fu--okay, so, uh, uh, yeah.

JUSTIN: Uh, Hurricane Ida ripped through the east coast.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Having ripped through New Orleans, it just continued to be an extremely strong storm.

LIAM: Over land!

JUSTIN: Yeah. Just over land.

LIAM: Over land, we should point that out.

JUSTIN: Here, here is a picture of, uh, I-676 in Philly,

JUSTIN: uh, you'll notice that it is a canal.

NOVA: Oh, they completed the widening works!

LIAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: I was about to say, yeah, it's, it's traversable by barge now. Um...

NOVA: [laughs]

NOVA: The E-The Ever Given has blocked I-676.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Yeah, it's um, it, it's interesting to be the guy who took the photo for this--for the, uh, God Damn News. Um...

[laughter]

LIAM: I, I will say, um,

LIAM: not in Philadelphia--I don't believe Philadelphia had any fatalities,

LIAM: I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but, in our...

NOVA: Well, that guy who dived into the flood water, he's gonna die.

LIAM: Oh yeah, he's dead, that guy's dead!

JUSTIN: Oh. Yeah. That, that guy's dead.

NOVA: He doesn't know it! He might be walking around and talking, but.

LIAM: No, no. He is, he is well on his way to...

NOVA: Deceased.

JUSTIN: Proll--prolly wanna, prolly wanna get a tetanus booster shot, at least.

LIAM: Maybe a couple of them, really.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: I think, I think it's a course of like, six shots to get the, if you actually have been exposed.

LIAM: I don't know, I (?) like, uh, one booster--oh, okay.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: 'Cause when I hit my head, they gave me a tetanus booster, but, um...

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Mm.

LIAM: I uh, I will say that,

LIAM: uh, as, as our resident social justice monkey, um,

LIAM: yeah, people drowned in the suburbs, uh... of Philadelphia, four people I believe drowned,

LIAM: uh, some people Rocz and I used to live with, uh, their house was flooded out,

LIAM: and all their shit is destroyed,

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: And of, and of course, New York City was destroyed.

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: New York City was destroyed, as we know, from our l-from the wreckage of the live show. Um...

LIAM: I will say, like, yeah, it's all climate ch--

LIAM: I know people keep talking about that tweet about,

LIAM: climate change is watching disasters,

LIAM: uh, from someone else's cellphone, until you're the one holding the cellphone.

JUSTIN: Mmhmm.

NOVA: Mm.

LIAM: Uh, this shit is pretty fucking scary, and, uh,

LIAM: people drowned in basement apartments in New York, there is something really haunting,

LIAM: uh, someone published about two guys trying to get their roommate out, realizing he wasn't with them, and all they could do,

LIAM: was listen to his dying screams...

NOVA: Yep.

LIAM: Uh, we live in a profoundly unjust world,

NOVA: T-the...

LIAM: uh, I'm really fucking tired of it. Uh,

NOVA: The city of New York has announced though, that they're gonna fix this, by,

NOVA: uh, giving people who they believe to be living in basement apartments,

NOVA: targeted notifications on their phones.

JUSTIN: Oh my God. Wow.

LIAM: Oh, great, boom, that's, yo-Wow, really fucking fixed the issue, boys!

NOVA: That's the, that's the whole plan, by the way.

LIAM: Neoliberalism, uh, is a, is a rotten fucking thing.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Mmhm.

LIAM: So yeah, it's all tight, uh, everything's great, uh...

NOVA: "Parasite" was a documentary...

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: Right, you, you are simply paralyzed to do nothing, while...

LIAM: capitalism destroys the very ground beneath you,

LIAM: and then you're expected(?) to bend over and say, "Thank you, Mr. Bezos, aren't you wonderful."

NOVA: Mmhm.

LIAM: And idiots on Twitter will criticize you, uh,

LIAM: for having a joke with your dad, uh,

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: you know, uh,

JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: yeah! It's a... I fucking hate this place.

NOVA: Mm.

NOVA: It's not, it's not good.

JUSTIN: Yeah, it's not good. I believe it would be a prudent decision at this time to,

JUSTIN: try and, uh, avoid living in a basement apartment if possible.

NOVA: Mm. But that's the thing! Nobody, nobody lives in one of those things by choice! I mean it's New York City.

LIAM: Yeah, [bleep] is our advice. Oh, I'm sorry! We hope your landlord has a nice time!

NOVA: ...Invite your landlord to have a nice time, and then live in, in their apartment.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: Which is probably much nicer.

LIAM: Also, not that electoralism matters, but, uh,

LIAM: you could be (?) as, uh,

LIAM: you can scream in these people's fucking faces,

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: uh, they work for you,

LIAM: uh, get real hostile,

LIAM: throw some eggs at some people,

NOVA: Mm.

LIAM: uh, just follow them around, screaming and chanting.

LIAM: Uh, make their daily existence miserable.

NOVA: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Mmhm.

LIAM: Uh, if, if we're gonna go down this route, come down with us.

NOVA: Mmhm.

JUSTIN: Uh. Spe--speaking of "electoralism doesn't matter", um,

LIAM: Oh yeah, (?) illegal now.

♪[news jingle]♪

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: At about the same time that um, Mexico legalized abortion because of riots, which goes to show you that riots work,

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: Uh, State Bill 8? Is it State Bill 8 or State Bill 3...

LIAM: Yes, State Bill 8.

JUSTIN: (?) that, yeah.

NOVA: State Bill 8.

LIAM: State Bill 3 is the voting restrictions.

NOVA: Oh, great. I love, I love that I can't tell the bad things apart.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: Everyone in this photo should have a nice time.

NOVA: Yeah...

NOVA: So, it's now, not only is it, uh, illegal to, to terminate a pregnancy, medically in Texas after, like, basically any time at all,

NOVA: 's like, 6 weeks? Which is, by that point, most people don't know that they're pregnant,

JUSTIN: Mmhm.

NOVA: But also, the, the state is now empowering that like,

LIAM: The rat line!

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: any--Yeah, or, anybody, like, even somebody who lives outside of Texas can now bring a private suit against anybody or any organization,

NOVA: that um, like,

NOVA: in any way, facilitates an abortion happening?

LIAM: I will say people have been apparently,

LIAM: uh, cramming the ho--the tipline with Shrek porn?

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: Good!

LIAM: And, uh, the Nazi host,

LIAM: uh, their webhost, uh, is a company called Epik who often hosts, uh, I believe hosted like Daily Stormer, and uh...

NOVA: Yeah--Literally, led by a guy called Robert Monster. Like, that's his actual name.

LIAM: Yeah, uh,

LIAM: he has no--he's decided to no longer host the,

LIAM: the rat website?

NOVA: Mmhm.

LIAM: Uh, and if you're... at, at some point, if you're too gruesome for the Nazis,

LIAM: uh, maybe reconsider.

JUSTIN: Yeah. [laughs]

NOVA: Mmhm.

LIAM: Especially, this guy back here in the hat, I want to punch him (?)

NOVA: ...this fucking tableaux of humanity, here. Yeah, I...

JUSTIN: I was about to say.

NOVA: ...the worst image I could think of. Uh, the...

NOVA: the reason they're all...

NOVA: doing this with the hands, is because it's called "the heartbeat act".

LIAM: Yes.

JUSTIN: Oh my God.

NOVA: Uh, because, like, es-essentially like, the, that's the point at which there's a fetal heartbeat that's detectable in the fucking clump of cells.

LIAM: Yes.

LIAM: I, I hope all, every single person in this photo, has a nice time,

NOVA: Mmhm.

LIAM: uh, and is not, uh... You know what, I'm just gonna say it. You, you can bleep it out.

LIAM: [bleep]

JUSTIN: Uh.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: Yeah. Leave-leave in the "acts" part, I think.

LIAM: Yeah. I, I, dude, I'm, I'm not in the fucking mood today, obviously, at all.

NOVA: I don't think any of us are.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: ...you know.

LIAM: Today, today has not been a good day.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: Uh, personally, uh...

NOVA: A-and...

NOVA: ...Well, the good news is that, uh, President, President Biden

NOVA: has exercised strong leadership on this issue by, uh...

LIAM: Kicking it to the curb!

JUSTIN: Kicking it to the curb, yeah.

NOVA: Kicking it to the curb, yeah...

NOVA: It's, essentially it's a matter for the Supreme Court, if they decide to get around to it, and...

LIAM: Which they have! By allowing it to go through, and wait for the challenges.

NOVA: Mmhm.

JUSTIN: Exactly. You know, it's really annoying how like, the Democrats, uh, basically refused,

JUSTIN: to take any kind of offensive stance on, um, abortion, y'know?

LIAM: No! This is entirely so they can, so they can raise money, dude.

JUSTIN: It is! It's, it's-

LIAM: The Democratic Party exists only as a machine to raise money.

NOVA: Generate weepy fundraising emails.

LIAM: And lose elections, yeah, that's, that's it, that's it.

NOVA: ...Like, o-"our hearts are broken. Give us 60 dollars."

LIAM: Yeah, yeah, you know, it's, the Republicans are, are at least good at what they do, they just ram shit--

LIAM: I mean, you have a majority,

LIAM: uh, I don't know if you're, if you're Chuck Schumer, what you do is you go to Joe Manchin's office,

LIAM: and you hold a .38 to his head.

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: And you say, "Wouldn't you like to pass the PRO act, Joe?"

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: And, he says, "Yes sir, I would."

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Yeah, it's like Roe v. Wade, uh, for the Democrats, seems to be, like an instrument--used for party discipline,

NOVA: Yeah.

LIAM: Yeah.

JUSTIN: rather than anything they want to, like, make any progress of, right.

LIAM: Right.

NOVA: Because if, if you, if you wanted to change it, you would have to do some things, that would, uh, not be decorous.

NOVA: You would have to do things, like, immediately fire the senate parliamentarian,

LIAM: Right.

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: or, campaign on, uh, like, I'm gonna add 26 Supreme Court Justices, they're all gonna have pink hair.

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: Uh, and, and they're all gonna like, make, they're gonna write their pronouns into the beginning of all of their, their rulings.

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: Oh, they're all gonna wear brooches. They're gonna wear special brooches for when they disagree.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Put me in the Supreme Court.

LIAM: You know, I, I have finally come around--Put my dad on the Supreme Court.

JUSTIN and NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: You know what I do wanna talk about, is this ventriloquist doll come to life,

LIAM: behind... the Jeb clone.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: ????

LIAM: You gu-you guys see who I'm talking about? At the bottom left?

JUSTIN: Which guy?

NOVA: Hell yeah.

LIAM: Yeah.

NOVA: I see him, I see him.

JUSTIN: Where?

LIAM: ...You see?

JUSTIN: This guy?

LIAM: Uh, next to the woman in the yellow pantsuit.

JUSTIN: Oh. Sure enough. Yeah.

LIAM: I try not to make fun of people based on their looks, 'cause look at me.

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: Uh, but like, holy shit, dude. Get out of the sun.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: Mm.

LIAM: You, you need to wear a big floppy hat everywhere you go,

LIAM: ...and maybe, maybe...

LIAM: go back to the crypt from which you crawled out of.

NOVA: I-I'm, I'm a big fan of cowboy hat guy, like,

JUSTIN: Mm.

NOVA: ...wearing my Stetson to the Heartbeat Bill signing,

JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: [bleep]--have a nice t--whatever, dude.

NOVA: Uh huh.

LIAM: Life is exhausting. Um...

LIAM: Life is pain, nothing good happens anymore, uh...

NOVA: Mm.

LIAM: We are a decaying empire, uh,

LIAM: and one day we will collapse into the sea, and we'll all be better for it.

NOVA: Mmhm.

NOVA: The good news is, it's uh,

NOVA: ...relatively safe and relatively easy to get yourself abortifacient pills and, uh, do your own abortion in the way that is,

LIAM: Yeah.

NOVA: uh, unprovable, by the state of Texas, or anyone.

LIAM: Uh...

NOVA: There is, there is a piece that you can google about that, and I guess we can link that in the description. Also, and speaking of links in the description,

LIAM: Go ahead.

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: Uh, we're also gonna put some links in for donating to Texas Abortion funds,

NOVA: which this bill is an attempt to like,

NOVA: club to death with, uh, vexatious lawsuits. Um,

NOVA: and if you, uh, donate to them, and then email us the receipt at wtyppod@gmail.com, you get the bonus episodes, like, forever. Which is,

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: The best deal we can give you at least?

LIAM: Yeah. Um...

LIAM: solidarity with the people of Texas who need healthcare,

LIAM: not solidarity with these people who should all [bleep] possible, uh...

NOVA: Yeah, looking like a good way to fill a ditch, this photo.

LIAM: Yeah. Loo-looking, yeah...

JUSTIN: Oh my God.

LIAM: No Rocz, it has not been a good day.

JUSTIN: Yeah, I'm gonna have to edit.

LIAM: You're gonna have to edit this out.

JUSTIN: I'm gonna have to edit a lot.

NOVA: ...this is gonna, this segment's gonna sound like, [stilted voice] I--think--they--should--have--a--nice--time.

LIAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: I, I, listen, I, my, my fucking anger has to go somewhere,

LIAM: uh...

LIAM: I try to be nice and respectful to the people in my life, because I love them very much,

NOVA: Mmhm.

LIAM: it's hard, to deal, uh, with...

LIAM: depression and anxiety, and in my case, uh, schizoaffective disorder,

NOVA: Mm.

LIAM: and I love the people in my life very much, uh, and so my unrelenting, uh, uncontrollable rage...

LIAM: uh, goes out to the people in this photo,

LIAM: who, I hope are one day knelt over a ditch, and shot, and um...

NOVA: Yeah, you're like, um...

NOVA: You're like a white hat hacker, you're like, using your powers for good.

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: Yeah. I...

LIAM: And stay pissed at these people, uh, they're not your friends,

LIAM: you don't owe shit to fascists, uh...

NOVA: And it's not, it's not gonna stick, like one way or the other. And I don't mean,

LIAM: One hopes.

NOVA: I don't, I don't mean that in the, "Oh, rely on the Supreme Court, trust the process," kind of way, I just mean, like,

NOVA: it is an,

NOVA: essentially, unenforceable law. Um, like...

NOVA: if, like, people need abortions, they're gonna get abortions, it's just the question of, uh, how much the s...

LIAM: Right. "How hard do you make it?"

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: Yeah, h-how much the state kinda fumbles around, embarrassing itself, trying to prevent them. Uh...

LIAM: People have always had--people have always gotten abortions, people have always needed to not be pregnant,

NOVA: Yep.

LIAM: uh, people have always had trouble...

LIAM: having children, people--pregnancies have always gone wrong,

LIAM: um, we are not a perfect species,

LIAM: um, people need access to abortion for a myriad of reasons,

LIAM: uh, it's none of the state's goddamn business why you need one,

NOVA: Yep.

LIAM: it's no one's business but your own, possibly your doctor's,

LIAM: and if your doctor says, "Oh, I can't do that,"

LIAM: uh, you should make him have a nice time, uh...

NOVA and JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: Yeah, and you should get--you should get a second doctor.

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: And [bleep]

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: [laughs] Alright.

LIAM: Not the second doctor! Hopefully the second doctor is-is better at his job, but.

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: Lot of people [bleep]--real--[bleep].

LIAM: Alright. As...

JUSTIN: Well--

NOVA: Universal jobs program digging these ditches.

LIAM: Yeah.

LIAM: ...that's my, that's my Green New Deal, is we're gonna need a lot of ditch-diggers.

NOVA: [laughs]

NOVA: "What makes the grass grow, Liam?"

LIAM: Oh, it's the blood of fascists!

NOVA: That's right!

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: We're, we're watering the tree, literally, with the blood of the entire state of Texas.

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: Sorry, boys!

NOVA: I'm sorry, Justin. We just needed to get that out(?).

LIAM: I'm not, actually. It's, it's been a day.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Well, I mean just think. Uh, if you voted Democrat, this wouldn't have happened. Oh wait.

NOVA: Ohh my God, dude...

JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: Hey, hey, I live in a swing state, motherfucker. I, I can justify anything.

NOVA: Oh my gosh...

NOVA: She's electable if you fucking vote for her.

JUSTIN: Thank you.

LIAM: No.

LIAM: ...listen, I threw up in my trashcan, I voted for Hillary Clinton,

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: and then I did self-flagellation for the next 12 hours.

NOVA: [groan]

LIAM: As opposed to doing what I actually do, which just pass out drunk.

NOVA: Mmhm.

LIAM: Yeah.

LIAM: Although, if you're in Texas, electoralism works, because then you can get shit like this passed!

NOVA: Mm!

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: Maybe, maybe the problem is the people you're running!

NOVA: Yeah.

LIAM: But she is electable when you vote for her.

NOVA: ...What we need to do is to refashion the Democratic party into a, a sort of like,

NOVA: scorched earth culture war organization, but from the opposite side.

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: One that is willing to use every,

LIAM: Yeah.

NOVA: uh, evil, dirty, lowdown trick possible in order to get its agenda passed,

LIAM: Yep, yep, yep.

NOVA: whether that's like, uh, you know, a long, decades-long, sleeper campaigner,

NOVA: a long march through the federal courts,

NOVA: or whether that's pure intransigence in congress,

NOVA: uh, and wh-that should've started about 25 years ago.

LIAM: You people are gonna get universal healthcare whether you like it or not.

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: You are gonna, you are gonna go to the free doctor, whether or not you want to.

JUSTIN: In conclusion, resurrect Huey Long and give him a Gundam.

LIAM: [laughs] Yes.

NOVA: [laughs] Huey--Huey Long Supreme Court would have legalized abortion, in 1937, but also--

LIAM: It-and it's 81 Justices? [laughs]

NOVA: Yeah, it's 81 Justices, all surnamed Long? Yeah.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: (?)

NOVA: "I do declare..."

JUSTIN: Alright.

JUSTIN: That was, the God Damn News.

LIAM: Yeah, well(?), let's just get through it, let's, let's just get through it.

JUSTIN: Okay.

♪[news jingle]♪

JUSTIN: So I thought it'd be fun, maybe to talk about the Pentagon history, and some of the predecessor buildings to the Pentagon.

NOVA: Oh, check out this wedding cake! I hate it.

JUSTIN: Oh yeah. [laughs]

LIAM: Oh, oh, oh! Look at it, it's Second Empire! Do y-Do you like that shit, Rocz?

LIAM: Do you like that shit?

NOVA: [laughs]

NOVA: Yo, you remember that week on Twitter where everything was made of cake? I feel like this is the architecture (?)...

LIAM: Why is that guy in the foreground look like he's standing, like he's an army guy standing on a pedestal?

JUSTIN: He's directing-

LIAM: Like one of those Green Army guys?

NOVA: Yeah, he's Traffic Cop!

JUSTIN: He, he's a traffic cop, yeah.

LIAM: Why is the pedestal only like an inch tall?

NOVA: [laughs] Because... [laughs]

JUSTIN: No one's driving that fast.

NOVA: Because we like to had, humiliate traffic cops to keep them in their place, it was a different time.

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: Euh, bring that back, it's the only way (?) we can bring back (?) from this era.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: ...this is-

LIAM: And Mark Twain, I guess.

JUSTIN: This is the State, War, and Navy building, right.

JUSTIN: Um, and this was the early-

NOVA: I'm at the combination State Department building, War Department building, Navy Department building.

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: I quite like it, I really, I am a sucker for Second Empire.

NOVA: Ohh... No...

LIAM: Yeah.

NOVA: It looks like the, it looks like the Lego sets of like, towns that you can never quite afford when you were a kid?

JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: Uh, I was an only child, so I could afford them. But, uh. [laughs]

JUSTIN: Mark Twain called this--

NOVA: Liam, you're canceled for having too much money.

JUSTIN: Yeah. [laughs]

LIAM: Oh, we're all, we're all, apparently all of us are!

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Mark Twain called this "the ugliest building in America". Um.

LIAM: Mark--

LIAM: and he was wrong!

JUSTIN: [laughs]

JUSTIN: This was the, um,

JUSTIN: Early headquarters of the American military, sort of immediately post-Civil War, it was commissioned by Ulysses S. Grant, it was built,

JUSTIN: from 1871 to 1888, right.

NOVA: Oh! You could, you could plan a genocide from this building, and they did.

JUSTIN: Yes.

JUSTIN: Um,

JUSTIN: it's a, you know, big dumb Second Empire-type building, it was the world's largest office building when it was finished,

JUSTIN: um, and this is gonna be a theme.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: ...Had, uh, 566 rooms, 10 acres of floor space, right,

JUSTIN: and, over the next 40 years, and especially during World War I,

JUSTIN: the intended tenants outgrew the building,

JUSTIN: as the American Imperial War Machine,

JUSTIN: you know, The Great Satan,

JUSTIN: AmeriKKKa,

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: uh, outgrew it, right.

NOVA: Yeah. More, more guns, more ammunition, more boots, more beans(?), more bureaucrats...

JUSTIN: More (?)

LIAM: The machine(?) gotta eat, baby.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: Yeah, that's right.

JUSTIN: So, during World War I, right,

JUSTIN: um, FDR, who was the, uh, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, obviously, the assistant secretary of the Navy,

JUSTIN: put forth the idea of, "since we're so space-constrained, we should build some temporary buildings, for military administration," right,

JUSTIN: um, and uh, this led to the erection of the Main Navy and Munitions Buildings, right.

NOVA: Sm-small aside, it is very funny to me that people will think that FDR had like, advance knowledge of Pearl Harbor and let it happen...

LIAM: He didn't(?)!

NOVA: When, when you consider how much of a fucking simp he was for the Navy?

NOVA: A thing that I approve of a great deal, but like,

JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: like, not only was he assistant secretary of it, pretty much by choice, like that was his job that he wanted,

NOVA: he used "Anchors Aweigh" as his campaign song and shit, like, he, he wanted to have been an Admiral.

NOVA: Uh, and so, he, I guess, let Pearl Harbor happen. Anyway.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: Now, that said, we did let the Japanese invasion of the Aleutians happen,

NOVA: That's true.

LIAM: 'cause we had cracked their code and knew exactly what they were doing,

LIAM: uh, for more please see the Lions Led by Donkeys episode on the Battle of the Aleutian Islands, uh, but,

LIAM: literally no one no--no one lives there,

LIAM: uh, or at least on many of the islands the Japanese invaded,

LIAM: um, obviously some Native peoples do live there, God bless 'em.

LIAM: Um, yeah, we know it was coming, we just wanted to stick 'em there for a while.

NOVA: Mmhm?

JUSTIN: So, FDR's idea was these buildings' gonna be cheap, they were gonna be made of wood,

JUSTIN: so, they'd be--and they were gonna be really ugly.

JUSTIN: He wanted really ugly buildings, the idea being,

JUSTIN: everyone will want them--

LIAM: Well, he got his wish! Holy shit.

NOVA and LIAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Everyone will want them torn down immediately after the war.

JUSTIN: Um, the-

LIAM: Aah, the Drexel solution!

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: And the, the smart--what he wanted was to have them on the White House front lawn.

JUSTIN: Right?

LIAM: [laughs]

NOVA: I-I do kind of like that idea, just being, being like, yeah, fuck you.

LIAM: That's funny.

NOVA: They, they're just here now.

[laughter]

LIAM: "We get it! You guys like it--you do--you love this shit!"

[laughter]

JUSTIN: So,

JUSTIN: he, he got one of those things, the buildings were ugly.

JUSTIN: Um, but-

NOVA: ...I don't see the wood.

JUSTIN: Yeah, no, they were made of concrete.

JUSTIN: And, they put 'em on the National Mall, right.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Um,

JUSTIN: So these, uh, these were...

JUSTIN: Total floor space of these, um, I mean, and I'm just talking about the Munitions building,

JUSTIN: and the Navy building, right, which are these two guys,

JUSTIN: there were a whole host of other, temporary buildings built as well,

JUSTIN: you can see all--everything here is just temporary buildings, right. Um...

JUSTIN: You know, th-these,

JUSTIN: these buildings were some of the largest temporary buildings ever constructed, that was twice the floor space of State, War, Navy building, right.

JUSTIN: Um...

JUSTIN: and, uh,

JUSTIN: after World War I, they couldn't quite shrink down the military administration to what it was before, right.

NOVA: Huh, that's weird!

JUSTIN: Yeah. [laughs]

LIAM: [laughs]

NOVA: It's almost like-it's like a ratchet that only goes in one direction!

LIAM: Mm.

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: Mmm!

JUSTIN: So, the buildings stayed up, and in fact in World War II they were expanded.

JUSTIN: Um,

JUSTIN: but there were plans afoot for a more permanent building,

JUSTIN: since, while these temporary buildings were particularly solid temporary buildings,

JUSTIN: they all started having major issues after only a few decades, right.

JUSTIN: Um...

NOVA: I do remember a story about these buildings in World War II, which is in the early days of the OSS. Uhm...

NOVA: Bill Donovan used to train agents by having them, like, try to plant dummy bombs on--in these buildings...

JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: Apparently this was extremely easy to do, so.

LIAM: ...This is what we like to call, "radical architectural criticism". [laughs]

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: So, you know, it-

LIAM: "Now go out there with this bo--this bomb just says, 'I don't appreciate this form or the use of materials'?"

[laughter]

JUSTIN: "I think this building's a little monotonous." Um...

JUSTIN: "You should really try and break up the, um, break up the massing,"

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: And then you just detonate the bomb?

LIAM: [laughs]

NOVA: Well, we're gonna, we're gonna talk about that later.

JUSTIN: Well, this is true.

JUSTIN: Uh, now, one of the things about these buildings is, you know, they, they survived World War II,

JUSTIN: and then they stayed up until, I think, 1970,

JUSTIN: was when finally, they started-they were falling apart so badly,

JUSTIN: um, that Nixon was like, "okay, yeah, we're gonna tear these things down".

 JUSTIN: Um,

JUSTIN: and they had to buy a whole bunch of office space, I think in Crystal City,

JUSTIN: which is across the river,

JUSTIN: in order to fit the people who would--who still didn't fit, into what was supposed to be,

JUSTIN: uh, the end, the last building they would have to build for the DoD, right,

JUSTIN: which was the Pentagon.

NOVA: So the, the whole process of expanding federal bureaucracy out into, uh, Maryland and Virginia.

LIAM: To meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy, [Nova]!

NOVA: That's right.

JUSTIN: ...The bureaucracy will expand,

JUSTIN: to the, uh, space it is allowed, um...

NOVA: Mmhmm.

LIAM: Yeah. We all, we all played Civ IV, Rocz.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: There's, there's a lot of things that a modern state needs that require a bunch of like,

NOVA: office buildings in like, Suitsville, or Beltsville, with a bunch of like, antennas on the roof.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: Don't worry about it.

LIAM: I, my favorite, although they're not (?) DoD,

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: is the NSA exit, the NSA exit at Fort Meade,

LIAM: Uh, Rocz, took a picture once and captured it, uh,

LIAM: "Secret government shenanigans next right, do not look."

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: I, uh, yeah. It just says, uh, it just says, "this exit", uh, "the NSA," yeah, in this like, um, the exit, uh,

NOVA: The CIA have one of those too, yeah.

LIAM: Yeah, I know(?).

JUSTIN: The CIA has an exit you're not supposed to use, either.

JUSTIN: Um,

LIAM: Or look at.

NOVA: Well.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: I, I think my, my favorite, uh, transparent op in that sort of area is there's a, there's a catering company,

NOVA: that like, nominally delivers food to, to schools and stuff in that area,

NOVA: that doesn't deliver to any school; there's a bunch of silvered-out windows,

NOVA: and marked white vans, going in and out all the time, and a massive Satcom antenna on the roof.

NOVA: and i'm just like, "Nice".

LIAM: I, no, that's actually a catering company. You know that, right.

NOVA: Is it? Is it actually?

LIAM: No! [Nova]!

JUSTIN: Oh.

NOVA and LIAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: I was like, oh...

NOVA: Dammit, I'm stuck in a fucking, like, puzzle palace here. Fuck!

LIAM: I, I do like the idea of uh,

LIAM: of them being like, "Yeah, no, we're actually, uh, we're actually the caters,

LIAM: "we don't do anything except cater to, uh, other intelligence agencies..."

NOVA: [laughs]

NOVA: I mean, it makes sense, someone would have to do it.

JUSTIN: The Pentagon north parking exit is actually, uh, a frequently used commuter shortcut between Washington Boulevard and the Richmond Highway.

NOVA: ...Nnh, still invalid(?).

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: Didn't there used to be a Burger King in the basement of the Pentagon or am I thinking of something else?

JUSTIN: There still is.

LIAM: Oh, thank God.

JUSTIN: Um.

LIAM: They couldn't take that from us, goddammit! [laughs]

JUSTIN: Yes, so...

NOVA: So, we replace the catastrophically ugly pair of buildings, with, um...

JUSTIN: With a, with a, five-sided catastrophically ugly building.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Um, so this, uh,

JUSTIN: the Pentagon was, you know, supposed to be.

JUSTIN: This is it. This is the big building we need. This is all we need. It's truly enormous, right.

NOVA: Future-proof!

JUSTIN: Five stories above ground, two stories below ground, 150 acres of floor space, right.

LIAM: Ooh.

JUSTIN: Um,

JUSTIN: currently houses about 2,300 employees, I think more when it was built, though, um...

JUSTIN: And these are-

LIAM: (?) gone out to Crystal City and all that shit.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Um, this was built on the site of Hoover Airfield, in Arlington, Virginia,

JUSTIN: um, as well as built on a site of a black neighborhood called "Hell's Bottom".

JUSTIN: Right, you know, 'cause you gotta get some racism in there.

NOVA: Mm.

LIAM: What a name. The fucking name, though.

NOVA: Y-you can't build anything in America without doing some racism, that's just...

JUSTIN: Yes, exactly.

NOVA: inherent.

JUSTIN: Speakin--

JUSTIN: Speaking of uh, racism, it was also designed to be a segregated facility,

LIAM: 'Cause it's in Virginia!

NOVA: Well yeah! This is, this is the one, the one fact that everybody knows about the Pentagon, is that it has twice as many bathrooms as it needs to.

NOVA: Because it was built with segregated bathrooms.

JUSTIN: Yeah, exactly! Um, but!

JUSTIN: Uh, Eisenhower actually refused to enforce the segregation, he, he gave, he gave an order saying, "don't, just don't, don't do it, just, just don't do it."

JUSTIN: "C'mon guys."

NOVA: Which is the kind of federal government that, you know, you like, occasionally, where you just like, "uh, fuck you."

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Uh, additional, additional, uh, one piece of racism here is, um,

JUSTIN: this highway right here,

JUSTIN: uh, this is the Jefferson Davis highway.

NOVA: [Nova disagreement noise]

LIAM: (?), yeaahhh...

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Yeah, this was not renamed until like,

JUSTIN: a couple years ago, I think.

NOVA: [exhales]

JUSTIN: Virginia just stuck it right up there at the border, with the district, uh, you know, despite,

JUSTIN: uh, the union, I guess.

JUSTIN: Um...

JUSTIN: So-

NOVA: Send a message.

JUSTIN: Yeah, exactly.

LIAM: Yeah. I mean, we have, uh, what's the, what's the big basin in North Cal--Fort Bragg, we have Fort Hood, you know...

NOVA: Mmhm.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: um, because those men were heroes, or whatever fuckin' thing.

LIAM: Uh, also, while I'm at it, uh, haha, the statue of General Lee came down.

JUSTIN: Ha! Haha!

LIAM: Haha! Hahaha! Haha!

NOVA: Tru-Trump is mad about this, too, which has made (?) a bit sweeter(?).

JUSTIN: Trump is very mad about it.

LIAM: I, you know what, I will say, I saw he was, he's gonna come in on a boxing match,

LIAM: which is our counter-programming, 'cause that boxing match is on 9/11.

LIAM: Uh, I, someone find me a way to pirate that stream.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: Oh yeah, that's gonna be an American event, you know.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: So, this building, uh, was built with five concentric rings of offices, ring A through ring E, right.

JUSTIN: Um, you know, it's different rings of offices, because it's an old building, built before air conditioning, so all the offices were designed, to have cross-ventilation.

LIAM: I do have a question.

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: Why was it not built as a skyscraper, because this was the 40s,

LIAM: skyscrapers like the Empire State Building and shit was up by then,

LIAM: do we know? Like...

JUSTIN: Uh... 'cause the...

JUSTIN: I assume it was as part of the L'Enfant plan,

LIAM: Oh, OK.

JUSTIN: I believe it was uh, a sort of, uh, concerted effort here to,

JUSTIN: um, avoid ruining views of, you know, all the various monuments on the Mall,

LIAM: Okay.

JUSTIN: right, I mean, it was not subject to, obviously, to the height limit in the district, but, you know--

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: Right, that wa-that's why I was asking, if you're building in Virginia, you're not subject to the height limit.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: But I, I... I gotcha.

NOVA: I think it's just that... y-you have the space, right, plus i-it--

LIAM: ...That was, that was my other thought. Yeah.

JUSTIN: Yeah, this is also true.

NOVA: It, like, it makes it also look a bit less vulnerable, a bit more imposing, bit more fortification-ish, I guess?

LIAM: And 'cause it does look like a star fort, which I imagine was...

NOVA: Yes.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: part of the, of the thinking. Okay.

JUSTIN: Yeah, I think it was, it was originally designed as a pentagon,

JUSTIN: because it was supposed to go,

JUSTIN: slightly north to here, at the site called, um,

JUSTIN: uh... Whatsit? Arlington Farms,

JUSTIN: which was a temporary G.I. housing, which was built on top of Robert E. Lee's plantation, hence "Arlington Farms".

LIAM: Heh heh heh heh.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Uhm...

JUSTIN: But, uh, they wound up moving it south,

JUSTIN: uh, because Hoover Airfield was, I guess, cheaper, had better access,

JUSTIN: and they could also demolish a Black neighborhood,

JUSTIN: which is, you know, something you always wanna do for a big construction project, right?

NOVA: Oh yeah, it's like a fringe benefit if you're, uh...

JUSTIN: Exactly.

NOVA: you know, a DoD planner.

JUSTIN: Um, and this, this building has, you know, the center courtyard here,

JUSTIN: is called Ground Zero,

LIAM: Ooh.

JUSTIN: because that's where everyone thinks the bomb is gonna hit?

NOVA: [laughs]

NOVA: Ah, military humor, I-I, actually, um...

NOVA: [laughter]

NOVA: I-I know another example of this, which is the, uh,

NOVA: one of the, sort of like, the first Soviet, or post-Soviet, first Russian Attaché to,

NOVA: to SHAPE(?)?

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: Uh, like, Allied Headquarters Europe?

NOVA: When he left, left a farewell gift of like,

NOVA: planting a couple of, uh, I think it was like beach trees?

NOVA: Poplar trees! In the courtyard,

NOVA: and this was a very elaborate pun, because, uh, a Poplar, in Russian, is the, uh, the codename for one of their,

NOVA: um, ICBMs.

JUSTIN: Ah!

NOVA: So he finally, he finally got to put a couple in the place where they were gonna go.

LIAM: (?) --oh, oooh.

JUSTIN: There was, there was a-

LIAM: Good for him, man, that, that's commitment to the bit, we like to see that.

JUSTIN: There was some debate in Soviet intelligence, if I'm not mistaken,

JUSTIN: um, about what exactly was in the center of the courtyard, 'cause there was a little building there that they always saw high-ranking generals and military personnel going to,

JUSTIN: and they thought it was some kinda, I don't know, there's some kinda secret entrance,

JUSTIN: to like, an underground facility or something there, um...

JUSTIN: Well, it was a hot dog stand.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Uh... [laughs]

NOVA: That, that, main, sort of, central park bit, also, like,

NOVA: has a special status in military law, in terms of like,

NOVA: uh, when you're allowed to wear fucking hats outdoors and shit, it's like an exceptional case,

NOVA: because the military's very normal.

LIAM: Going to the hotdog stand counts as a exce-exceptional case?

NOVA: Yeah!

JUSTIN: Yeah. [laughs]

LIAM: Good! Good.

JUSTIN: Um...

LIAM: America number one.

NOVA: I-I think it's like, you might not have to like, salute people, uh, or something?

LIAM: [laughs] "We're all equal at the hotdog stand!"

JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: [laughs] Yeah exactly!

NOVA: (?) greatest victory, yeah... [laughs]

LIAM: [through laughter] "We're all, we're all God's... We're all God's children at the hotdog stand..."

JUSTIN: Uh, this building was built for, sort of really easy highway access, you can see all these, uh, cloverleafs here, right, from the various freeways, going through.

JUSTIN: You may also notice a series of ramps leading into the building, right?

JUSTIN: That is, of course, because the original design for the Pentagon had a very large bus station in the basement, right?

NOVA: Hmm.

JUSTIN: Um, and this was not just for serving the building itself, it was a big truck-bus transfer station,

JUSTIN: it still is to this day,

LIAM: Yeup.

JUSTIN: it's just not in the basement anymore; they had to move it out of the basement,

JUSTIN: not just for security reasons, but because there is no ventilation.

NOVA: Oooh...

JUSTIN: Um... Yeah, so it sort of filled with smoke pretty quickly, they-they'd tried...

JUSTIN: ventilating the smoke for a while, and eventually, I think, like, in the 70s, they just move the bus station out.

JUSTIN: Um, right around when Metro came through, I think.

JUSTIN: Or maybe slightly before.

JUSTIN: 'Cause this does also now have a Metro station,

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: which is also a major transfer point. Um...

JUSTIN: So, and, this building broke ground, funnily enough,

JUSTIN: on September 11th, 1941.

NOVA: Huh!

LIAM: "Happy anniversary"?

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: ...yeah. Well.

LIAM: Not "happy", I suppose. But, y'know.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: Y-you may be interested to know that the form factor of the Pentagon is something that other countries have since sought to imitate.

LIAM: Yes!

NOVA: And the current, the current military junta of Egypt,

NOVA: is hard at work,

NOVA: as part of their general plan to build a new capital city, apart from Cairo,

NOVA: uh, they're building...

NOVA: The Octagon.

JUSTIN: Oh my God.

NOVA: They, they've gone up!

LIAM: Goooo!

NOVA: They have gone up and you can see concept drawings,

NOVA: where it... it's like a big, it looks like it's about to fire a laser out of the middle, which is a series of concentric octagons, built in a sort of like,

NOVA: pseudo-pharaonic style. So...

NOVA: It... it's had some architectural impact, let's say.

JUSTIN: Every ti-every time that they, um, every time a new, uh,

JUSTIN: too-big-for-its-britches military dictatorship, uh,

LIAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: starts off, they're gonna, they're gonna build a building with like, one more side.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Until it's basically a circle.

NOVA and JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: Yeah, j-join me in the command center that looks like a fucking d20.

JUSTIN: Yeah, this is, uh, this is our, this is our 128-gon.

NOVA and LIAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: We ran out of, we ran out of--

LIAM: We ran out of names?

JUSTIN: We ran out of names, yeah, I think it goes up to like, uh...

JUSTIN: I have no idea what it goes up to.

NOVA: Uh...

NOVA: ...You can probably like, bash something together out of the Latin pretty quickly, you could do like,

JUSTIN: D-d--

NOVA: "Sesquiquipe"... "-hexagon" or whatever.

JUSTIN: I... Let's go with that, yeah. [laughs]

JUSTIN: Um, there'd been, not too many like, major security incidents at the Pentagon until what we're gonna talk about today.

JUSTIN: Um, you know, famously, you know, back in, back during the Vietnam War, October 21st, 1967, 31,000...

JUSTIN: 35,000 people came to protest the Vietnam War here, that was--

LIAM: They tried to levitate it.

JUSTIN: They did try to levitate-

NOVA: They what?

JUSTIN: Uh, yeah.

LIAM: They tried to levitate the Pentagon.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: Oh. Did it work?

JUSTIN: Uh, yeah.

LIAM: Yeah! My dad was there.

JUSTIN: Yeah, that the--yeah.

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: That's not a joke! My dad was there.

NOVA: They're like, they levitated it, they turned it one face clockwise and then they put it back down?

JUSTIN: [rapturous laughter]

LIAM: Yeah! [laughs]

JUSTIN: No, no--

LIAM: (?) people(?)!

JUSTIN: Good thing the building was so symmetric, or there'd be, uh, some found--there'd be some structural damage from that.

NOVA: Oh yeah.

NOVA: It's, it's totally fine but everybody's really irritated 'cause their office is in a different wing now.

JUSTIN: Yeah...

JUSTIN: Yeah, I like the--They gotta shuffle everyone around the building now.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Um, you know, that's where this famous photo of, uh, George Harris here, putting the flowers in the rifles.

JUSTIN: Right?

JUSTIN: Uh, fun fact, George Harris, also a drag queen!

NOVA: Huh!

JUSTIN: Uh, performed under the stage Hibiscus,

JUSTIN: started a, uh, gay performance group called, The Cockettes, right?

NOVA: [snorts]

JUSTIN: And they would, uh, they would drop acid and sing showtunes.

NOVA: Dudes rock.

LIAM: [Liam agreement noise] (?)

[laughter]

JUSTIN: Um, but one of the things about the Pentagon, is because it's so remote from the city,

JUSTIN: um, and sorta has a(?) hostile location, right, there's not a huge number of demonstrations which occur here, right.

NOVA: Yeah, it's outta town. A guy did set himself on fire on the steps outside Robert McNamara's office once.

JUSTIN: Hmmm.

NOVA: Uh, to protest the Vietnam War.

NOVA: There's a bit about it in the, the documentary Fog of War,

NOVA: which, which is a series of interviews with McNamara,

NOVA: where, psychopath that he is, he's just like, "Oh man, don't like that,"

NOVA: and then just got back to work.

JUSTIN: Uh, I know in 1972 the Weather Underground bombed the women's room.

LIAM: Yeah.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

JUSTIN: In the Pentagon.

LIAM: Ooh...

NOVA: [sighs] the Weather Underground...

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: Hey! Heey, heeey!

NOVA: I, I have mixed feelings, alright! Because like,

NOVA: half the Weather Underground actions are like,

NOVA: "Yeah, we like, uh," I don't know, "robbed a wages(?) van, and...

NOVA: "shot two security guards and four more cops in order to fund...

NOVA: "an act of terrorism," and then,

NOVA: "the act of terrorism" is "we blew up a toilet".

JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: "Bring the war home", [Nova].

[laughter]

NOVA: Like, Chesa Boudin's dad, got, uh...

NOVA: Got fucking, uh...

NOVA: Just got, parole I think, for a Weather Underground thing.

NOVA: For being the driver in one of those wages(?) van robberies.

NOVA: Um...

NOVA: But on the other hand,

NOVA: you know, blowing up a toilet.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: Blowing up a toilet is just(?) funny.

NOVA: Y-that is true.

JUSTIN: It's kinda funny.

JUSTIN: Um...

JUSTIN: Alright.

JUSTIN: So anyway, that's some background on the building. Now I have to talk about some background, on...

JUSTIN: Al-Qaeda.

NOVA: I've-I've heard of these guys!

JUSTIN: Yeah!

JUSTIN: Yeah... not too popular anymore, everyone sorta moved on to ISIS now.

JUSTIN: But um, you know, I understand-

LIAM: Old heads know? [laughs]

JUSTIN: Old heads know, yeah!

[laughter]

NOVA: "Yeah, I'm into that kinda terrorism you probably even haven't heard of."

JUSTIN: "Before ISIS was cool, I was in the Muhajideen."

NOVA: ...al-Qaeda, as you said, means...

NOVA: means "the base", uh, whereas...

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: Daesh means, uh, "the cringe".

JUSTIN: Yes. [laughs]

JUSTIN: So, there been a lot of like--

LIAM: [sings] ♪Alright(?), gonna get canceled~♪

JUSTIN: There's been--

NOVA: I'm not actually calling al-Qaeda "based", thank you.

JUSTIN: Yeah, just as a, as a...

JUSTIN: ...you do not, it turns out, have to hand it to al-Qaeda.

[laughter]

NOVA: Nobody actually knows what that name comes from, by the way. Like, there's a bunch of different...

LIAM: Really?

NOVA: Yeah, there's a bunch of different theories, because like, the word is,

NOVA: as far as I know,

NOVA: as ambiguous, almost, in Arabic as it is in English, so...

NOVA: Uh, there, there have been suggestions it refers to like, a...

NOVA: database, but also like a foundational base, because bin Laden's deal was sort of like,

NOVA: you would bring him a terrorist plot, ready-made, and he would like, supply the training and the funding and shit, but like,

NOVA: uh, nobody actually knows for certain.

JUSTIN: Bunch of guys in his office, trying to like, pitch terrorist plot, like they're trying to pitch a screenplay?

NOVA: Pretty much! Pretty-

LIAM: Yeah, right! [laughs]

NOVA: Pretty much! He, he was pretty much like a terrorist venture capitalist, um...

JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: But yeah, it-it's a curiously like, um, unreligious, unideological name for a group.

NOVA: "The Base".

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: I mean if you're...

LIAM: fundamentalist, could it be...

LIAM: I don't know too much about Wahhabism, but is that like,

LIAM: you know, sort of a rough transliteration(?) of fun--like, "fundamental"?

LIAM: "Base"?

NOVA: T-to me? I...

NOVA: I haven't heard anything like that, it could be! But, uh...

LIAM: I certainly don't know.

LIAM: You, y--yeah.

NOVA: No, I don't...

NOVA: I don't think of it, for myself, as a like a religiously charged term at all, so...

LIAM: Right.

JUSTIN: I don't like these new, I don't like these new hip-hop style terrorists, like ISIS, I...

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: I like these lunch-pail terrorists!

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: We need to go back, uh,

JUSTIN: Al-Qaeda, they got good fundamentals, they got hustle,

JUSTIN: they... [laughs]

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: They don't have grind, you know. You don't see that in these new boys!

LIAM: You know, they're all about the flash!

LIAM: You know, what happened, what happened to, to, you know,

LIAM: the good old days? Where you'd, where you'd simply blow up an embassy?

JUSTIN: I, I, you know, I...

LIAM: You know, I don't need to(?) see that with beheadings!

JUSTIN: You know, Liam, Liam, I...

JUSTIN: I see these new Daesh guys, they just put out videos, all they do is they put out videos,

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: I've never seen, I've never seen anything even approaching,

JUSTIN: uh, like a 9/11-style attack.

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: No, no! No!

LIAM: They're just glory boys. Just more glory boys.

NOVA: So... so remember how in the beginning of this, we said Ann Marie was trying to get us to be sensitive?

JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: [laughs]

NOVA: I think we're doing a great job.

LIAM: Ooah.

NOVA: Let's talk about Operation Cyclone.

[crosstalk]

LIAM: Sorry. [laughs]

JUSTIN: There's been a lot of big brained takes in the press recently, right, about, you know, how...

JUSTIN: "No, we actually didn't fund al-Qaeda, or the Taliban,"

NOVA: Mmhm.

JUSTIN: right, and this is true in a really pedantic sense, right.

LIAM: Okay, I am one of those pedant.

NOVA: It's a, it's a terminological inexactitude, we,

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: we funded in particular, like a network of, of Gulf financiers,

NOVA: and we also funded a, a cross-border operation,

NOVA: uh, led by a guy called Jalaluddin Haqqani,

NOVA: um, because he was seen as very, sort of, pliable,

NOVA: and, uh, incidentally, that guy's kid, now, currently the interior minister of uh, the new Emirate of Afghanistan.

LIAM: Actually, my, my pedantry was more that, uh,

LIAM: we did totally fund the Taliban, it just didn't happen to always be the Mujahideen.

LIAM: It, it used to be a bunch of Pakistanis.

NOVA: Mmhm. Yeah. Absolutely.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: Yeah! Yeah, no. It's just that,

LIAM: my problem is more than just, "They're not the same organization".

NOVA: Yeah, we, we-

LIAM: But we did fund them! I like to be very clear on that.

NOVA: Playing, I'm playing both sides so I always come out on top, in order to like, uh...

LIAM: Yes, yes... US foreign policies in 1946, (?)

NOVA: fu-fuck with the Soviets...

NOVA: We funded, we funded the Northern Alliance,

NOVA: uh, we, you know, we funded, uh, Massoud,

NOVA: probably not as much as we should have done, we funded Dostum,

NOVA: uh, probably more than we should have done,

NOVA: uh, we, uh, funded,

NOVA: also, but we also funded the Haqqani network! So...

LIAM: Uh, there was an incident in Syria,

NOVA: Mm.

LIAM: a few years ago, where, uh, I believe NSA-backed rebels were fighting CIA-backed rebels...

NOVA: Oh, classic, classic move. And I mean, the, the thing about, um,

NOVA: about Jalaluddin Haqqani, who...

NOVA: very, very interesting guy,

NOVA: uh, was that like,

NOVA: as part of his deal of being the most,

NOVA: uh, internationally-connected Mujahid,

NOVA: he was the first one to call for foreign fighters to come and do jihad in Afghanistan,

LIAM: Yes.

LIAM: Yep.

NOVA: And that's what caused the first influx of, um,

NOVA: largely Arab, uh, fighters, to,

NOVA: you know, go and fight the Soviets in Afghanistan and that's the sort of like,

NOVA: um, ethnic base, if you like, of what would become al-Qaeda.

LIAM: Right.

LIAM: I... I, before anyone gets mad at me, and say that I, uh, am,

LIAM: part of the CIA in the comments again,

NOVA: Mmhm.

LIAM: know I'm just as critical of US foreign policy as you are!

NOVA: Mmhm.

LIAM: I just don't trust your sources all that much.

LIAM: Ssssorry.

NOVA: Yeah, you can't be out, you can't be out here relying on, on The fucking Grayzone, okay? It--

LIAM: Yeah, I'm sorry about it. That was, that was the publication in question.

NOVA: Yes.

JUSTIN: O-okay, so.

JUSTIN: For reference, this is in the context of the Soviet-Afghan War, right, you know, we're funneling money,

JUSTIN: to the Muhajideen...

JUSTIN: By-

NOVA: Which, by the way,

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: since, since I didn't get enough of people telling me I was being too critical of the Soviet Union,

NOVA: on the Romania episode,

NOVA: was, uh,

NOVA: a series of inexcusable warcrimes.

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: Yeah!

LIAM: Uh, definitely for more, check out the Lions Led by Donkeys, episodes...

LIAM: about the Soviet-Afghan War.

NOVA: D-doing, doing shit...

LIAM: Now back to our regular scheduled programming, before Rocz loses his goddamn mind.

NOVA: Yeah, d-doing, doing shit that made Mỹ Lai look like preschool.

LIAM: Yes.

JUSTIN: So, they--

JUSTIN: We've sort of funneled billions of dollars, as [Nova] said, through various sources, one of which is to the Pakistani Intelligence Service, right, the...

LIAM: In ISI, yeah.

JUSTIN: Inner Service--the ISI, Inner Services Intelligence, this was Operation Cyclone, who were...

JUSTIN: funding them from like, 1979 to 1989,

JUSTIN: uh, there's some limited funding afterwards, you know, the idea is to give Soviets major headaches,

JUSTIN: especially in the countryside, right.

JUSTIN: These Muhajideen...

NOVA: Yeah, just bleed them wide(?).

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: These, uh, Mujahideen, are uh, diverse, you know, fractured set of militia groups, but the main thing they had in common,

JUSTIN: they didn't like the Soviets, they wanted, uh, Islamic government, right.

NOVA: Mmhm.

JUSTIN: Um...

JUSTIN: And, the funding for this is not just all through the USA, um,

JUSTIN: you know, there's from private individuals, there's from a couple other governments, but,

JUSTIN: there is also this guy named Osama bin Laden, right.

JUSTIN: Uh... And--

NOVA: Yes.

LIAM: The sentence, "there was this guy named Osama bin Laden," is just... [laughs]

NOVA: And like, this is... [laughs]

NOVA: But like, this is the sort of like, important grey-zone thing is that,

NOVA: if you want to say, "The US government paid Osama bin Laden directly,"

NOVA: uh, that might be the case, but as far as I know, no one can prove it.

LIAM: Right.

NOVA: Because part of Operation Cyclone was to set up a highly persistent,

NOVA: um, acephalous deniable network of funding an organization,

LIAM: Yup.

NOVA: through the Gulf states,

NOVA: which included a bunch of guys like Osama bin Laden,

NOVA: and the point of it was that you couldn't, like,

NOVA: ...if you were, to say, the KGB, you couldn't easily cut off the funding,

NOVA: to the guys who were shooting down Mi-24s, uh, because...

NOVA: you know, there's, there's just like,

NOVA: they don't all know each other and there's a bunch of them and there all sort of spread out and nobody knows who all is(?) getting whose money.

JUSTIN: Yes.

JUSTIN: Um, you know, it, bin Laden was from, you know, wealthy family, the bin Ladens, who,

JUSTIN: to this day, control basically all the contract in the Middle East, right.

NOVA: Mmhm.

JUSTIN: Uh, Saudi Binladin Group is a big contractor and they, they build everything, right. Um...

JUSTIN: You know, bin Laden does a bunch of stuff in the Soviet-Afghan War, he funnels money to Muja--uh, Mujahideen groups,

JUSTIN: he se--helps set up training camps,

JUSTIN: he pays for some people to come to those training camps,

JUSTIN: sometime in the late 1980s he sets up his own training camp,

JUSTIN: and, you know, he's, he's like, training fighters there, right.

NOVA: Yeah. He's, he's a venture capitalist, essentially.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: Right.

NOVA: ...He's a facilitator, you bring stuff to him, and he makes it happen.

JUSTIN: Exactly.

JUSTIN: And, at this point, everyone's, you know, kinda,

JUSTIN: you know, they're, they're anti-Soviet, they're not anti-USA, yet, right.

LIAM: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Um...

JUSTIN: You know, the, uh...

JUSTIN: the, the Mujahideen sorta,

JUSTIN: kicked the Soviets out, right, the Taliban comes to power,

JUSTIN: right, they're also funded by Pakistan, of course. Um...

LIAM: Of course.

JUSTIN: 'course, you know.

JUSTIN: But uh, you know, bin Laden comes back to Saudi Arabia with a lot of...

JUSTIN: power and prestige and everything, sorta hunky-dory until uh,

JUSTIN: relatively hunky-dory until the first Gulf War, right.

LIAM: Right.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: Oh yeah, this, this was the big breaking point because like,

NOVA: bin Laden had had theological differences with the Saudis before,

NOVA: uh, particularly this sort of like,

NOVA: court, uh, like, theologer, of, theologist? of the, of the Saudi government, a guy called ibn bin Baz?

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: Um...

NOVA: But during, during the Gulf War, the US stationed troops in Saudi Arabia, um...

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: Like, uh, Christian and, and Jewish troops,

NOVA: brought religious symbols with them,

JUSTIN: And--

NOVA: uh, which was another big point for bin Laden, is like, you can't fucking bring a Bible to Saudi Arabia, or a Torah.

JUSTIN: He's also a very strong Third Amendment supporter.

[laughter]

NOVA: And like, in order to, in order to wage war against, as much as, uh, Saddam Hussein was like, a sort of like,

NOVA: to bin Laden, a sort of like, degenerate, uh, Baathist kind of secularist,

NOVA: another Arab country, another Muslim country,

NOVA: um, as part of like, just sort of an imperial project.

JUSTIN: Yeah, and--

NOVA: So--Um.

JUSTIN: Saddam ha--Hey, this is Justin in post-production,

JUSTIN: I just wanna let you know, that I meant "bin Laden" here, back to the show.

JUSTIN: Saddam had like, offered like, his Mujahideen fighters to help defend Saudi Arabia,

JUSTIN: and, uh, King Fahd was like, nah, nah, give-give me the Americans. I want the Americans.

LIAM: [laughs]

NOVA: [laughs]

NOVA: Yeah.

NOVA: ...it's like, sort of that combination of being like,

NOVA: personally insulted, and also, uh, like,

NOVA: theologically insulted, and also, like,

NOVA: thinking that the, the House of Saud, and, uh, their clerics are...

NOVA: uh, corrupt and morally degenerous and repulsive,

NOVA: it's not, uh, let's say, let's not, let's say it's not an unpopular opinion.

JUSTIN: This is true, yes.

LIAM: Not (?) it is!

NOVA: [laughs] So, so when, when bin Laden and people like him, went,

NOVA: "Okay, well these people are just, you know,

NOVA: "useful idiots for the Americans, they're corrupt, and they're,

NOVA: "they're awful, and," uh, "un-Islamic,"

NOVA: that's not something which a lot of people would've raised an eyebrow to at the time.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: Sure.

JUSTIN: And, and he, he's, he's publicly critical of the Saudi regime,

JUSTIN: and eventually gets kicked out of Saudi Arabia, right.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Um, and he winds up going to Afghanistan, with some of his, like, closest fo--uh, followers,

JUSTIN: and then later to Sudan, right. Um...

NOVA: Yeah, which is where Robert Fisk writes the article, "Anti-Soviet Warrior Puts His Army on the Road to Peace", about him.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: Right.

JUSTIN: I forgot to put that picture in here somewhere.

JUSTIN: Um...

JUSTIN: He gets, he winds up getting stripped of his Saudi citizenship,

JUSTIN: and his family cuts off his allowance.

LIAM: [snorts]

JUSTIN: Which was $7 million a year.

LIAM: Holy shit!

NOVA and JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: Wow... [laughs]

JUSTIN: Yeah, yeah.

JUSTIN: And he winds up, uh, in Sudan, as sort of a thorn in the side of the Sudanese government, because he's like, you know, trying to...

JUSTIN: You know, he's bored, he has nothing to do, he's, he's out of money, he uh,

JUSTIN: he is trying to set up some, uh, terrorist training camps because, you know,

JUSTIN: what else am I gonna do, right?

NOVA: Yeah, stick with what you know.

LIAM: ...Yeah, you gotta get the camp fees.

JUSTIN: Yeah, exactly.

LIAM: ...Is there a (?) training camp?

LIAM: Think you have to like, pay the counselors?

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: Maybe you get like, a camp crush on one of the other fighters...

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: I'm not quite, I'm not quite certain how these things are funded at this point, with uh,

JUSTIN: with bin Laden running out of money, um...

NOVA: And nobody really is, it's uh...

NOVA: It's an interesting moment--I mean, the safe answer is probably,

NOVA: some more of that, sort of, Cyclone network of funding,

LIAM: Yeah.

NOVA: that is like, broadly sympathetic to him, and like, thinks that he's been wronged by the Saudis.

NOVA: But nobody actually knows.

JUSTIN: Well, he winds up getting kicked out of Sudan,

JUSTIN: and he's sent to Afghanistan, right.

JUSTIN: Um, you know--

LIAM: "Sent to" or "goes voluntarily"?

JUSTIN: Oh... he goes voluntarily to Afghanistan, or, he, he--

LIAM: Okay.

NOVA: Yeah, because by this point the, the Talibs have won the Afghan civil war, um...

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: Right.

NOVA: The, like, Kabul has been bombarded into submission,

NOVA: Massoud is still like, holding out in the Panjshir, but who cares about him,

NOVA: uh, and so they, they have an Islamic emirate, and he's welcomed, more or less with like, open arms.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: And, and in the meantime, of course, uh,

JUSTIN: during this, during this period where...

JUSTIN: Saddam is--Excuse me,

JUSTIN: bin Laden is boppin' back and forth,

JUSTIN: the USA still had a residual force in Saudi Arabia,

JUSTIN: and of course the Saudi Arabian government is cozying up to the US more and more,

JUSTIN: which, you know, sorta makes, uh, bin Laden even more red, mad, and nude about the United States.

LIAM: [laughs] "Red, mad, and..."

JUSTIN: Right?

NOVA: Yeah.

NOVA: ...It's a particular sort of territory listing that not just like, uh,

NOVA: Mecca or Medina, but like, the whole Arabian peninsula,

NOVA: is, is sacred territory, and they're, they're spoiling it.

JUSTIN: 's weird, 'cause he never got, he never got mad about, um,

JUSTIN: American-Arabian oil company before, you know, I mean...

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Some-somehow--

NOVA: Convenient how you have these revelations, isn't it?

JUSTIN: The, the Saudis have been pretty cozy with, uh,

JUSTIN: the United States for a long time now, you get mad about this? [laughs]

NOVA: Mmhm, mmhm.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: So,

LIAM: Funny how that works.

JUSTIN: he's sort of, increasingly mad,

JUSTIN: um, he issues a fatwa, right,

JUSTIN: where he declares war on the United States in 1996, right?

LIAM: Fuck you too, guy.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: He also does some, you know, sorta casual terrorism in Yemen and Egypt, right,

JUSTIN: um, and the, the Yemeni one was sort of in, in the service of destroying,

JUSTIN: uh, Soviet-influenced, uh, groups that were trying to, uh,

JUSTIN: take control and set up a stable government there, right.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Um,

JUSTIN: you know, they tried to, um, assassinate, I believe... What's his face?

JUSTIN: Was it Hosni Mobarak? No.

JUSTIN: The Egyptian president at the time.

NOVA: No, that woulda been...

NOVA: Mm, mmh.

JUSTIN: No, it's the other guy.

NOVA: (?) I suppose it could have been... Uh...

JUSTIN: It was...

LIAM: (?)? No...

JUSTIN: Eyy, this is Justin in post-production here,

JUSTIN: just wanted to let you know that it was, in fact,

JUSTIN: Hosni Mobarak.

JUSTIN: Alright, back to the show.

LIAM: The name's on the tip of my tongue, I just cannot remember it.

JUSTIN: I know, right.

JUSTIN: Um...

JUSTIN: So...

NOVA: Oh, anyway.

NOVA: Does-he does the USS Cole bombing.

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: Um...

NOVA: And-

JUSTIN: And he blew up, blew up a buncha US embassies in 1998, right?

LIAM: Yeah.

NOVA: There was, there was also,

NOVA: uh, more importantly, his involvement in something called,

NOVA: uh, the Bojinka plot.

NOVA: Which was something that, um,

NOVA: a, a guy who like, uh... [laughs]

NOVA: brought to him, like, through... Ramzi Yousef, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,

NOVA: uh, there was this plot to like, simultaneously blow up,

NOVA: uh, like a dozen airliners and flights.

LIAM: Right.

NOVA: Uh, just over the US.

NOVA: And that didn't, that didn't come off, obviously. But,

NOVA: uh, that was like,

NOVA: it-it moves from this idea of like,

NOVA: "Oh, okay, we can, like,"

NOVA: this knowledge sort of disseminates, of like,

NOVA: "airplanes are extremely vulnerable," because until now, uh,

NOVA: if you, like,

NOVA: put a bomb on a plane, it just blows up. Easy.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: If you hijack a plane, everybody expects you to say,

NOVA: "Alright, take me to Cuba," or "take me to Algeria," or "take me to Lebanon,"

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: you get everybody off the plane, you blow it up on the tarmac, nobody cares.

NOVA: Uh, and so this idea of like, using an airline as a weapon in itself, sort of like, germinates, during the 90s.

JUSTIN: Yeah, and, and it's surprising no one thought of that before, but I guess, you know,

JUSTIN: Planes are--

LIAM: (?) Cuba.

NOVA: ...you know, you know who did? Tom Clancy! Um...

JUSTIN: Ooh!

LIAM: Yes!

NOVA: The-the most interesting, least examined figure of American, uh...

NOVA: like, military psychosis.

NOVA: Uh, wrote a book called, I think "Death of Honor", it was called.

LIAM: Yes.

NOVA: Uh, which is about the US going back to war with Japan, at the end of which,

NOVA: um, a Japanese airliner pilot flies an airline, like a 747, into the capital, during the, um,

NOVA: uh, during the,

NOVA: the, the State of the Union, Address.

JUSTIN: Good Lord.

NOVA: So it's, it's in thrillers at this point.

JUSTIN: So, uh, you know, bin Laden was just sitting at the airport, reading the,

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Tom Clancy paperback, and he's like,

LIAM: "Oooh! Hmm, I could learn a thing or two!"

JUSTIN: "Oh, shit!"

JUSTIN and NOVA: [laughs]

NOVA: Yeah, but, the, like, at this point, in sort of the long 90s, when everybody's like, "Oh, this is the end of history," or whatever,

NOVA: you have this extremely, sort of, foreshadowing moment, where,

NOVA: uh, bin Laden is sort of like, the Scarlet fucking Pimpernel, at this point.

NOVA: He's just fucking around, in, in Africa, for the most part,

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: just kinda like, Doing Shit, like, you know, there's a plot here, a plot there, sometimes they come off, sometimes they don't,

NOVA: you know, but, he's, he's "working", is the thing.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: He's driving, you know.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Yeah. On the grind!

LIAM:  He's (?) yo!

JUSTIN: Um, when he, when he's--you know, after, after, you know,

JUSTIN: at this point, al-Qaeda, uh, blows up the embassies in 1998,

JUSTIN: the United States, uh, finally retaliated against the guy, right,

JUSTIN: they blew up some of his training camps, which they knew about,

JUSTIN: um, they also blew up a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan,

LIAM: Yep.

JUSTIN: which they thought was producing chemical weapons,

LIAM: It was.

JUSTIN: Um, but--No, it was actually producing about half of all the medicine in Sudan.

JUSTIN: Um, so. You know.

LIAM: Another proud day for US intelligence!

JUSTIN: I know, right.

NOVA: Another proud day for US air power.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

JUSTIN: You know, and this is sort of, um...

LIAM: Listen, (?) was in hospital, who says (?) [laughs]

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Among the people who were like, interested in this sort of, political Islam, right, he sorta gains more power and prestige, right.

JUSTIN: Um...

NOVA: Everybody loves a winner.

JUSTIN: I know, right.

NOVA: Uh, and, and he's, he's like, racking up these, these relatively small wins.

NOVA: But he's, he's putting them on the board anyway.

JUSTIN: Yeah, so, you know, and of course, uh, US intelligence starts monitoring him a little more closely,

JUSTIN: um, to the point where like, around 1998 the CIA told Bill Clinton,

JUSTIN: "Eyy, al-Qaeda's gonna hijack some planes and fly 'em into buildings."

NOVA: Mmhm.

JUSTIN: Um...

LIAM: Ya.

JUSTIN: And they, uh, uhhh... Didn't really do anything about that.

NOVA: Noo.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: No, no, they did not. Um...

NOVA: And then, Clinton leaves office, Bush comes into office, history is still ended.

JUSTIN: Yes. Yes.

NOVA: Uh, and, and these sort of memos, this is the Looming Tower bit, essentially it's like memos passed back and forth,

LIAM: Yes.

NOVA: between the FBI and the CIA and, uh, and like,

NOVA: various other three-letter agencies.

NOVA: And the point that it comes to, is that um,

NOVA: Bush should get, I think it's like, actually, in the president's daily briefing,

LIAM: Yep.

NOVA: uh, the, the headline is, "bin Laden determined to strik--"

LIAM: "Determined to attack US", determined...

NOVA: "...determined to strike inside US," um...

LIAM: Yes.

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: And... Uh, yeah, no, that, that also goes like, if not unread, unregarded.

JUSTIN: Yeah. I think there was also like, a bunch of people using an excuse, like, "Ah, well this is outside of our jurisdiction, we can't forward this to...

JUSTIN: "relevant agency, blah blah blah, we'll get tied up in legal crap," you know.

NOVA: Mmhm.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: Yeah, that's part of it is the,

LIAM: willful, basically,

LIAM: I, I don't know, "willful ignorance" is the term, but like,

LIAM: choosing, whatever "choosing not to do your job" is.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: Yeah, and like, especially at this point, especially pre-9/11, the CIA...

NOVA: is not yet the organization that it would become, of like,

NOVA: uh, sort of like, Zero Dark Thirty guys,

NOVA: it's sort of this, uh,

NOVA: you know like, shirt-and-tie--

LIAM: Nerds. Nerds.

NOVA: Shirt-and, shirt-and-tie Mormon freakshows, who have spent the entire...

LIAM: Yeah.

NOVA: uh, Cold War, like, smearing nerve gas on people's door handles. And so... [laughs]

NOVA: They, they don't, they don't wanna fucking tell the FBI anything, particularly anything that implicates...

NOVA: either their own sources, or their own, you know, activities,

NOVA: whether that's like,

NOVA: the foundation of this, sort of, network of, of finances, or like,

NOVA: having used it for operational purposes in the interim.

JUSTIN: Yeah, in the meantime, the, uh, FBI is also highly unfamiliar with arresting anyone for...

JUSTIN: uh, like, terrorism, who they didn't personally radicalize.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Um...

LIAM: Right.

NOVA: Yeah. We've, we've also had, um, I-I forgot to mention this, 'cause I, and I should've done, 'cause I mentioned Ramzi Yousef, we've also had...

NOVA: the first World Trade Center bombing, in 1993, at this point.

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: And uh, that, that's another one of those sort of, like,

NOVA: uh, successes that like, is a, is a sort of, it reflects better,

NOVA: on, ultimately on bin Laden, but also on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, um...

NOVA: And, and so that's, you know, that sort of sets the plan for like,

NOVA: not only are we going to like, maybe use airliners as weapons, but we're also gonna like,

NOVA: attack symbolic, like, landmark high impact targets within the United States.

JUSTIN: Yes.

JUSTIN: So, uh, here's a guy.

JUSTIN: Um...

NOVA: Found a guy.

JUSTIN: We found a guy.

NOVA: Or, "wish the FBI had". Um...

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: Alas (?), right.

JUSTIN: So this is Hani Saleh Hasan Hanjour...

JUSTIN: I don't, I don't, I assume (?) none of that (?) ...

LIAM: Absolutely fucking nailed it, bud...

LIAM and NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Um...

LIAM: (?) Rocz, I wouldn't have done any better.

JUSTIN: He's, he was from Saudi Arabia,

JUSTIN: and he was a failed airline pilot, right.

JUSTIN: Um...

JUSTIN: He, he had applied unsuccessfully for airline jobs at Saudi Arabian Airlines, which is now called Saudia,

JUSTIN: right, in the early 1990s,

JUSTIN: the airline turned him down, they suggested he go to the United States to obtain...

JUSTIN: a commercial pilot's license there, which he did.

LIAM: Why us?

JUSTIN: Yeah, well...

LIAM: That's an actual question, why us?

NOVA: I-it's more, it's more prestigious, like, I-I think, the...

LIAM: Oh, okay.

NOVA: The, the thing is, this is not just common to Saudi Arabia, or Arab countries, but like,

NOVA: uh, a lot of the 9/11 hijackers are sort of like,

NOVA: um, upper middle-class failsons?

LIAM: Right.

[crosstalk]

NOVA: ...like, s-succeed at like, things like engineering, or medicine, or whatever,

NOVA: and, um, being an airline pilot for your country's, like, flag carrier is absolutely a job in that mold, it's not actually about, like...

NOVA: "wanting to fly" or whatever, it's like, it's like,

LIAM: Like a job of prestige.

NOVA: it's a secure...

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: Exactly! Exactly! It's, it's a Good Job, it's uh, it's like a job that somebody, ideally with connections, can like, get you,

NOVA: and then you just, uh, like,

NOVA: you know, you have sort of, uh, a career for life off of this.

LIAM: Oh cool(?)!

NOVA: ...Unless!

NOVA: Unless you're a wildly incompetent pilot.

JUSTIN: I was about to say, yeah, you figure,

JUSTIN: this guy, maybe coulda worked his way up through like, a regional airline, but he, he doesn't do that, right.

NOVA: [laughs]

NOVA: No.

JUSTIN: You can fly for one of those airlines that would later merge into Delta, like, I don't know,

JUSTIN: I, I forget what, like, the Appalachian airlines was, but...

NOVA: It's like, "Northeast" or something like that. Yeah, yeah yeah.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: The airline turned him down, they said, "go to USA, get a commercial pilot's license,

JUSTIN: come back here, maybe we'll hire you", right? So he,

JUSTIN: he tries this in 1995, right.

JUSTIN: Over the next several years, he sorta bounced between several flight schools,

JUSTIN: he actually did receive an FAA commercial pilot certificate in 1999.

JUSTIN: Um, and after that, he came back to Saudi Arabia,

JUSTIN: and was again turned down by the airline.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: Yeah. And, up until this point, you feel bad for the guy. Like,

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: he's... [laughs] He's just, he's not a good pilot.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: It's like, he's been, he's been set on this course, uh, by,

NOVA: you know, in particular, a society that's pretty much like, oh, we just decide what you, what we think your career should be.

LIAM: Right.

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: Uh, and he's just, and he can't fucking do it.

NOVA: And, you... you know, you feel a little bit bad.

JUSTIN: Yeah, and like, in his frustration, he of course turns...

JUSTIN: to Islamism, right?

NOVA: Of course.

JUSTIN: Starts reading religious texts,

JUSTIN: listening to cassette tapes of, uh, various radical imams,

JUSTIN: right, you know, he's reading zines, he's listening to podcasts...

NOVA and LIAM: [laughs]

NOVA: Yeah. And, and again, like, pretty much all of the 9/11 hijackers are like this,

NOVA: like, uh, Ziad Jarrah's a little bit older, but like, um,

NOVA: most of the others are just kind of, like, uh...

NOVA: failsons, basically.

LIAM: Right.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: And, so, he told his family he was gonna go look for work in the United Arab Emirates, but,

JUSTIN: probably actually went to go to an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, right.

JUSTIN: Uh...

NOVA: Yeah. Insanely easy to do, at this point.

JUSTIN: Oh yeah. You know, it seems like they just, you know, they're just processing people out the door. Uh...

JUSTIN: "Yeah, just show up, tell 'em what your skills are..."

LIAM: [laughs]

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: "Aah, here for the terrorism camp?"

NOVA: Like, bear in mind at this point, the Taliban are the, uh...

NOVA: internationally recognized government of Afghanistan, so...

JUSTIN: Mmhm.

NOVA: Nobody's like, able to really stop (?)...

LIAM: Do anything about that(?).

NOVA: ...letting guys in, or hosting terrorist training camps, for that matter.

NOVA: But also, nobody's tracking this shit; this is all like,

NOVA: uh, you know, worked out after the fact.

JUSTIN: Yeah, it's, uh, it's kinda like, uh,

JUSTIN: "I didn't know it got this bad, my God." [laughs]

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: So, alright. He's an al-Qaeda guy now, right.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Um, in, about September 2000, uh, Hanjour arrives in the United States,

JUSTIN: he meets his fellow hijackers, who are, um,

NOVA: Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar.

JUSTIN: Thank you.

NOVA: "Mihdzar"? Mmh. Anyway.

LIAM: Thanks, [Nova].

LIAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: They're, they're both Saudi Arabian, right?

JUSTIN: And they sorta bopped around the United States for a while, they go to San Diego, they go to Mesa, Arizona, they go to Paterson, New Jersey...

JUSTIN: Falls Church, Virginia, right.

JUSTIN: Uh, Hanjour is like, studying...

LIAM: Wow, what a (?)

JUSTIN: I know, right.

NOVA: Oh, the, the 9/11 hijackers in America is like, a fascinating period of time. I put this--

LIAM: That was really interesting.

NOVA: I put this in the notes later, but, um...

NOVA: ...I think it was Ziad Jarrah, who like, with a couple of others,

NOVA: went to get self-defense training from a, a Florida martial artist,

NOVA: called Bert Rodriguez, uh, like,

NOVA: they just, they just had some really fucking weird times,

JUSTIN: I'm, uh--

NOVA: spent a lot of money on strippers and alcohol...

JUSTIN: I'm imagining like, a buddy comedy,

JUSTIN: about these guys. [laughs]

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: Yeah, I, I felt, I felt really guilty thinking it, but that's...

LIAM: Yep, that's (?) too!

NOVA: Oh, you wanna, you wanna feel weird? Bert Rodriguez wrote a book about how to, uh,

NOVA: ...I think it's called, like, "Create Courage", and the cover is 9/11.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: What.

NOVA: Which is weird for a guy who accidentally trained some of the 9/11 hijackers...

JUSTIN: Listen, I, I, you know, you, you gotta market yourself honestly.

LIAM: You do what you gotta do, right.

JUSTIN: 's like, uh--

NOVA: ...You gotta look at this guy, Bert Rodriguez. He looks like a, sort of a bald Danny Trejo.

JUSTIN: He, he can, he can truly look at that, and say, "Yes, I helped with that."

NOVA: [laughs]

NOVA: Team work makes the dream work.

JUSTIN: Yes.

JUSTIN: Um, and, our, our boy Hanjour,

JUSTIN: was studying at like half a dozen flight academies in this time,

JUSTIN: he never completes more than a few simulator sessions at any one place, though.

JUSTIN: Um, now notably, one of those was at Essex County Airport, from an academy called,

JUSTIN: Caldwell Flight Academy.

LIAM: Ooh.

NOVA: Oh, my bad, guys. Sorry.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: Heey!

LIAM: (?)

NOVA: [laughs] Listen, listen, when he said he didn't wanna know how to land, I thought he were just like,

NOVA: I thought he just had anxiety, I mean.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

JUSTIN: I get the feeling this guy actually probably did know how to land a plane. Um...

NOVA: Yeah.

[crosstalk]

NOVA: I think he's actually the best trained, or at least most trained pilot of any of the hijackers.

JUSTIN: And we'll see that in a second. Um...

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: So, they also, they also got to do, uh,

JUSTIN: strength training at Gold's Gym, which I thought was funny, because that's also where my dad goes. Um...

[laughter]

JUSTIN: They got another two guys who are also both Saudis, they come in late, uh...

JUSTIN: You know, in-into, like, this buddy comedy film, right, and they go to, um,

JUSTIN: they go to Dallas Airport on the morning of September 11th, right.

NOVA: Yeah. Actually, the other two guys kinda showed how, how extensively...

NOVA: the whole thing was planned, which is,

NOVA: you had, uh, like, they were divided up into...

NOVA: teams, like... A group of twenty hijackers divided up into teams per flight,

NOVA: And then, you would have,

NOVA: essentially like, two or three guys who would be,

NOVA: A. Like, seizing the cockpit, and then B. like, flying the plane,

NOVA: and then the other guys who joined them later were just like,

NOVA: large dudes who were there for crowd control.

LIAM: Mm!

NOVA: Um,

JUSTIN: Ah.

NOVA: ...So it's like, you know, it's, and...

NOVA: I don't know.

NOVA: ...It sort of speaks to, quite involved planning. Not necessarily even by bin Laden, but, uh,

NOVA: by, you know, maybe Mohamed Atta, maybe Khalid Sheikh Mohammed... dunno, but.

JUSTIN: Yeah, so, so,

JUSTIN: they all, they all go to Dallas Airport on the morning of, uh,

JUSTIN: September 11th, right, and they all get stopped at security,

JUSTIN: and put through secondary screening,

JUSTIN: but they let them through. Um...

LIAM: I thought (?) makes us safer! Ow...

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: I can't believe it didn't work!

JUSTIN: They all had, um, they all had utility knives on them.

JUSTIN: Which security found,

JUSTIN: um, but that was perfectly legal to carry on the plane back then.

NOVA: Yeah, sure.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: Sure, yeah.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: Yeah.

JUSTIN: So they get on American Airlines Flight 77, which was a Boeing 757 destined for Los Angeles, right.

JUSTIN: Okay, and this was a relatively empty flight, it was 58 passengers and crew,

JUSTIN: when the plane would usually have,

JUSTIN: if it were full it would have 188 passengers, right.

JUSTIN: Um,

JUSTIN: they took off headed west and just about around Parkersburg, West Virginia,

JUSTIN: right, just past that, the, uh, hijacking occurs, right.

LIAM: Right.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Um,

JUSTIN: now, unlike Flight 93, where we have shitloads of information about it for some reason, which was all used for jingoist propaganda,

JUSTIN: for years afterwards, right,

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: um, there were-there were only like two phone calls made from Flight 77,

JUSTIN: there is a, a flight attendant who said everyone had been herded to the back of the plane by hijackers,

JUSTIN: and uh, Barbara Olson, who called her husband, who was US Solicitor General,

JUSTIN: Theodore Olson, who said the plane was hijacked, and the hijackers had box cutters,

JUSTIN: and she was cut off mid-call, right.

NOVA: Mm.

LIAM: [tentative groan]

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Um--

NOVA: Mm, I mean that's probably why you have fewer phone calls is like, more, the like--

NOVA: Uh, stricter, more aggressive crowd-control.

JUSTIN: Better--Yeah.

NOVA: 'Cause in Flight 93, I think they just, like, had them stay in their seats,

LIAM: Right.

NOVA: uh, which, you know, led to them losing control of the plane.

LIAM: (?)

JUSTIN: (?), yeah.

LIAM: Not to, interrupt the... solemnity of the mood, but I have to use the bathroom, I'll be right back.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Okay. I am also gonna take the opportunity to use the bathroom, then.

NOVA: Oh no, oh no, fuck. Okay. Well, I...

JUSTIN: Okay.

NOVA: Okay, I'm helming this by my own, fine.

JUSTIN: Excellent.

NOVA: ...Gonna talk about, uh... the two reasons, why a 9/11-like attack cannot happen again.

NOVA: Uh, reason number one, reinforced cockpit doors,

NOVA: were not a thing at this point, it was just like a regular door, you could break it down very easily.

NOVA: Uh, reason number two,

NOVA: uh, people had different expectations of what a hijacking was.

NOVA: Like I said earlier,

NOVA: uh, at, at this point, like, on September 11th, if you are on a plane that gets hijacked,

NOVA: ...the way you expect that experience to go is,

NOVA: you are now in a hostage situation, right, and like,

NOVA: they fly the plane somewhere,

NOVA: and either they get where they want to go, and then they let you go,

NOVA: or, you know, like, maybe they kill you. Or,

NOVA: they like, land the plane somewhere, and then tries to like, either negotiate for your release, and the plane gets like, stormed or whatever,

NOVA: but you're not expecting, like, "Ah, this is an instant death sentence." And like, uh,

NOVA: you know, I have to do,

NOVA: anything I can to prevent it, whereas now,

NOVA: that mindset's totally changed, and you got that thing of like,

NOVA: people who are, like, uh, disturbed or whatever,

NOVA: will like, I don't know, make a grab for a cockpit door they can't possibly open, and the in--

LIAM: What's up?

NOVA: Oh, I'm just talking about how you can't hijack a plane anymore.

LIAM: Right.

NOVA: Um, because like,

NOVA: E-e--

NOVA: Okay, you can't get into the cockpit anyway,

NOVA: but if you try,

NOVA: uh, the entirety of the plane will like, uh, sit on you.

NOVA: And, you might die of positional asphyxia,

LIAM: Mmhm.

NOVA: if you don't, then,

NOVA: the plane lands somewhere, and you get the most arrested anyone's ever been. Um...

NOVA: But it, it wasn't like that then, it wasn't--

LIAM: Right, it wasn't, we were talking about that in the country music episode, the sort of...

NOVA: Mmhm.

LIAM: how, since 9/11, there's just been this sort of slow, long, 20-year psychosis.

NOVA: Yeah.

NOVA: That's why Flight 93 is different, it's because like,

NOVA: it was, it was exceptional in that way, because,

NOVA: uh, like, at least some of the passengers there sort of understood that to be a life-or-death type situation, rather than,

NOVA: let's, you know, stay calm and see how this plays out.

JUSTIN: I'm back.

LIAM: Hi!

JUSTIN: Hello.

JUSTIN: Uh, okay.

JUSTIN: So this, this hijacking actually occurred slightly after...

JUSTIN: the first plane, Flight 11, had hit the World Trade Center, right.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: But the hijackers turned off the transponder almost immediately,

JUSTIN: right, which prevented the plane from being easily tracked, right.

JUSTIN: Um...

NOVA: Almost wouldn't have mattered, the extent to like, the shambles which, like, NORAD was in at this point.

JUSTIN: Oh, it gets worse.

JUSTIN: Um...

NOVA: Oh, good(?).

JUSTIN: So, after they turned the transponder off, that's when they turned the plane around, right.

JUSTIN: So, and they set the autopilot for Washington DC, um...

JUSTIN: So actually they, uh,

JUSTIN: I guess they make it out to E,

JUSTIN: and then they uh, from there, they engage autopilot, right.

NOVA: Mmhm.

JUSTIN: Um...

LIAM: Yep.

JUSTIN: So, meanwhile, at ground control, in Indianapolis, which had been tracking this plane before,

JUSTIN: they don't know anything's happened yet, right.

JUSTIN: Other than this plane has dropped off the radar, they haven't heard that 9/11 is happening, right.

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: Mm.

JUSTIN: Um...

NOVA: Yeah. And there, there isn't really a response for this, like,

NOVA: you can scramble fighter jets, which is, like, eventually done, but like, uh...

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: ...there isn't sort of a protocol in place that's like, oh, this is, like, you know, plane that is, has been hijacked and therefore we're gonna shoot it down, or whatever.

JUSTIN: They, they assumed the plane had crashed, right, and they, they started,

JUSTIN: you know, alerting local law enforcement, "Hey, be on the lookout for a plane crash... somewhere around here," right.

LIAM: Sure.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Um...

JUSTIN: And it wasn't until...

JUSTIN: So the, the hijacking started 8:54,

JUSTIN: the Indianapolis, uh control center didn't know, about,

JUSTIN: uh, 9/11, until 9:21.

LIAM: Ooh, wow!

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: So--

LIAM: And the first plane hits the towers what, 8:43? 8:48?

NOVA: 8:54.

JUSTIN: Yeah. Yeah.

LIAM: 8:54, thank you.

JUSTIN: So they, they tried to relay information to other control centers about Flight 77, which had disappeared, right, and,

JUSTIN: somehow it wound up being the Boston control center who coordinated with the, uh,

JUSTIN: Northeast Air Defense Sector of NORAD, right.

LIAM: Hmm.

JUSTIN: And,

JUSTIN: they got,

JUSTIN: Flight 77 confused with Flight 11,

JUSTIN: which had already crashed into the World Trade Center, right.

NOVA: Yeah, and that, that again is like, part of the planning,

NOVA: was part of the planning of like, the Bojinka plot to, to a certain extent, is you try and like, saturate...

NOVA: people with too much information to process at once.

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: Like, it-it doesn't make sense for this to be something that happens to multiple planes almost simultaneously.

LIAM: Right.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: So, so uh,

JUSTIN: NEADS, right,

JUSTIN: is, uh, Northeast Air Defense Sector, they started searching for another plane...

JUSTIN: headed towards Washington DC,

JUSTIN: and they were looking for it in New Jersey, right.

NOVA: Ah.

JUSTIN: Uh, meanwhile, Flight 77 was flying through the National Radio Quiet Zone. Um...

NOVA: 'Course it was.

JUSTIN: Yes.

JUSTIN: Um, which has a bunch of radio telescopes, right, it's a big area in Virginia, and West Virginia, and a little bit of Maryland,

JUSTIN: radio transmissions are restricted, right, and there's some,

JUSTIN: they got some secret squirrel military shit, but,

JUSTIN: they just weren't looking for planes here, right.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Um, they only had a little bit of time to look for it. Um,

JUSTIN: so the, uh,

JUSTIN: NEADS actually scrambled the fighters...

JUSTIN: pretty soon after they found out this was going on,

JUSTIN: around 9:23 to go intercept Flight 11, or Flight 77 which they thought was Flight 11, right,

JUSTIN: uh, over Baltimore.

LIAM: (?)

JUSTIN: Yeah, yeah. So, doing great. Um,

JUSTIN: Flight 77 wasn't detected again until it was almost at Dallas Airport at like, 9:32, right.

LIAM: Oh, fuck, okay.

JUSTIN: Uh.

JUSTIN: So... NEADS learns that Flight 77 had been hijacked right around this time,

JUSTIN: um, sort of by accident, they find out Flight 77 exists.

JUSTIN: Um, I think, I think someone got in contact from, uh,

JUSTIN: the Indianapolis FAA control center, and mentioned Flight 77, and then like,

JUSTIN: "Flight 77? We haven't heard about a Flight 77, what's going on?"

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: 's like, "That's the one that got hijacked!"

JUSTIN: "What have you been doing!?" [laughs]

LIAM: "Go Colts?"

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN and NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Yes, they're, they're deploying the, fighters to go bring the Colts back to Baltimore. Um...

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: Um, well, this will have made(?) my dad happy.

JUSTIN: Mmhm.

JUSTIN: Air traffic control at both Dallas and, uh, National Airport also...

JUSTIN: ...detected the flight at this point, they asked the crew of a,

JUSTIN: C-130H which had just left, uh, I think one of the airbases in the area,

JUSTIN: To get a, a visual on the unidentified airplane.

JUSTIN: And the pilot of that plane said,

JUSTIN: "Well, it sure looks like uh, American Airlines 757."

NOVA: Thanks, guy.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: Well, 'preciate you, bud!

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Alright.

NOVA: Oh boy.

JUSTIN: So now we have to talk about The Turn.

NOVA: Oh boy.

LIAM: Oh Jesus.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: Smoking on that shit that made Hani Hanjour pull off a perfect 330° turn.

JUSTIN: Th--

NOVA: And descent 2,200 feet.

JUSTIN: I was about to say, this is, this is a hell of an aerial maneuver right here, right.

JUSTIN: And this is, uh, definitely one of the things that tends to fuel the conspiracy theories, uh...

NOVA: Oh yeah.

JUSTIN: 'Cause, you know, this is not uh,

JUSTIN: not, not the world's easiest maneuver, right here. Um...

JUSTIN: I, for one, think it was a fluke. Um... [laughs]

NOVA: Yeah, well, this is the--

LIAM: Yeah, you only need, you only need to get lucky once.

JUSTIN: Yeah, beg--beg--

NOVA: Yeah, this is the thing, right, like,

JUSTIN: Beginner's luck.

NOVA: ...when something, s-sometimes things do just come off, right.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: They just work, and also,

NOVA: Hani Hanjour was also, like,

NOVA: okay, every flight school he went to was like, he's a terrible pilot, but,

NOVA: as far as I know, he was also the, like, longest and most flight-trained of any of the hijackers.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: Um...

NOVA: And this was also like,

NOVA: you have to bear in mind, this was like his big event, this was his martyrdom, as far as he was concerned. And so like,

NOVA: if ever there was a time to like,

NOVA: get it right, for him,

NOVA: it would have been this one, this wasn't something that he was idly doing, so...

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: Yeah, i-it "came good", as it were.

JUSTIN: Um, and this is one of the, so, you know,

JUSTIN: at 9:29, uh, Hanjour turns off, he turns off the autopilot to begin the maneuver, to you know, whack into the Pentagon, right.

JUSTIN: Uh, he banks hard to the right, he goes through a 330° turn,

JUSTIN: um, you know, right around here, right,

JUSTIN: uh, right, centered on, uh, Cameron Run Park, right over here,

JUSTIN: which is this weird, municipal water park in Alexandria.

JUSTIN: 's kinda cool that it's like, a municipal water park, as opposed to a private operation,

JUSTIN: uh, at least I think. Um...

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: It's not, not very common. Um.

JUSTIN: Anyway, descends 2,200 feet through this curve,

JUSTIN: he comes down low, over I-395, he advances the throttle to maximum,

JUSTIN: uh, he clips some telephone poles,

JUSTIN: and he smashes the plane into the Pentagon, right.

NOVA: Yeah. Which, and again, that's another thing that people like to, to make a lot of... because he hits it, like, dead-on, right. Uh,

JUSTIN: Mmhm.

LIAM: Right.

NOVA: like, almost horizontally.

LIAM: Right.

NOVA: And, and the idea is that like, the Pentagon is a, is a like a low building,

NOVA: um, and like, it, it was over a grass lawn, and he should have like, either come in too low, or like, come in too high and missed it,

NOVA: um,

NOVA: to which, it's a five-story building. Like, okay, seeing it from the air, or whatever, sure, but like, he lined himself up for it.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: He does kinda, he does kinda not hit it at like, the optimal point. I mean he sorta hits like, the ground,

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: a couple feet in front of it. Um...

NOVA: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Yeah, and he's like--

NOVA: It's-it's like with the telephone poles, like if he hits stuff before, he's still gonna hit the building, 'cause it's,

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: ...whole airliner.

JUSTIN: One of the wings, I believe, hits the ground right before the fuselage plunges into the granite facade,

JUSTIN: um, and uh--

NOVA: Yeah.

NOVA: The only, the only footage of this is from like, like uh...

NOVA: a gas station camera which gets about, three frames of it.

LIAM: Mmhm.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: 'Cause it's like, one shot every second, uh, and,

NOVA: again, that makes a lot of people,

NOVA: or at least, made a lot of people, it made your roommate who smoked too much weed in like, 2005,

NOVA: make you watch a bunch of really grained footage.

LIAM: Fucking Loose Change!

JUSTIN: Yeah. [laughs]

NOVA: And, and go, "yo, that, that looks like a missile to me, dude, you can see the fins there," or whatever.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Um, at this point the C-H--C-130H pilot we mentioned before radios National Airport tower to say, uh,

JUSTIN: uh, "Looks like the plane crashed into the Pentagon, sir."

NOVA: [snorts]

JUSTIN: Um...

LIAM: That's, that's fuckin', that's why we pay 'em, bud!

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: Mmhm.

JUSTIN: Yeah. And, meanwhile, the interceptors, uh,

JUSTIN: were lookin' for Flight 11 in New Jersey. Um...

NOVA: Flight 11, which is at this point, um, melting through the fucking sky lobby, of the North Tower.

JUSTIN: Yes.

JUSTIN: Yes, exactly. So they, um, they, they kinda fucked this one up. Um...

NOVA: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: Kinda dropped the ball on this one, guys, if I'm honest.

JUSTIN: Yeah, I mean, I don't know, they got, uh, they got Amy McGrath out there to shoot down 93, so, you know, 1 out of 4 ain't bad. Um...

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Now, one of the things we talked about last year, on our annual 9/11 episode,

JUSTIN: um, we talked about the World Trade Centers, and on the World Trade Centers, you would see a large,

JUSTIN: you saw a large, like, impact that was vaguely plane-shaped, right.

JUSTIN: Um, you know, there's big holes where the wings impacted the building; you don't see this on the Pentagon, right.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: So we gotta ask, you know, what happened here? Right?

NOVA: No, he-he sheared one of the wings off on the lawn which,

NOVA: stops you from getting the perfect Looney Tunes silhouette.

JUSTIN: This is true,

JUSTIN: but, you know, the World Trade Center is clad, in, you know, many exceptionally slim columns right on the exterior, you know,

JUSTIN: lots of light aluminum facade panels,

JUSTIN: the Pentagon is a conventional, heavy reinforced concrete frame building,

JUSTIN: overbuilt 1940s style with big heavy limestone panels on the exterior.

JUSTIN: This, in and of itself, is not enough to prevent the Looney Tunes-style, um,

JUSTIN: plane outline, though, right?

JUSTIN: Uh, but this area had just been renovated, right. Um...

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: The renovation started after the Oklahoma City bombing,

JUSTIN: in order to prevent, you know,

JUSTIN: a similar thing from happening, where the whole facade is ripped off, right. Um...

NOVA: Yeah. Same-same thing why all new federal buildings in US embassies abroad have a shitload of setback.

LIAM: Mmhm.

NOVA: Uh, like, you see a bunch of like, heavy concrete planters, or like, over barriers, but also,

NOVA: it's across, you know, like a 150-foot lawn away from you.

JUSTIN: But because this section was also near the helipad,

JUSTIN: um, it was actually designed to withstand, you know, a helicopter impact, right.

JUSTIN: Um, so, this renovation which had started in 1993, and which was due to finish up in five days...

JUSTIN: after 9/11,

JUSTIN: right, involved,

JUSTIN: uh, reinforcing the facade of the Pentagon,

JUSTIN: uh, this side of the Pentagon, really, um,

JUSTIN: with a very, very aggressive blast-resistant facade system, it was two feet thick, right,

JUSTIN: it included, uh, a layer of, you know, a grid of steel beams,

JUSTIN: for blast resistance,

JUSTIN: and a kevlar layer, right,

LIAM: Mm.

JUSTIN: sorta similar to, if you're ever doing,

JUSTIN: like, blasting rock in a, um, occupied area, you put down a heavy kevlar blanket,

JUSTIN: in order to prevent the blast from, you know, releasing debris into the atmosphere,

JUSTIN: or, you know,

JUSTIN: all that sort of stuff,

JUSTIN: they basically had blast-resistant, you know, kevlar blankets,

JUSTIN: in the entire facade system here, and, all--

NOVA: Mm. And, of-of course this is the kind of thing that also drives conspiracy theories wild, because it's like,

NOVA: "Ah, so he just happened to attack the one part of the building that was like, not gonna do any...

NOVA: "huge, structural damage to it," or whatever, and it's like, yeah, actually.

JUSTIN: Yeah. That, that makes sense, when I'm trying to do a, a false flag, is I'm gonna try and,

JUSTIN: not do very much damage.

JUSTIN: Um...

LIAM: Yeah.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: So...

JUSTIN: You know, the windows were also blast-resistant, they were like two-inch think,

JUSTIN: uh, safety glass, right.

JUSTIN: You can see a lot of them remained intact.

JUSTIN: You know,

JUSTIN: uh, Hanjour did great with that turn, but he picked a really bad spot to attack the building, right.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: You know, and the parts of the plane that did penetrate the facade were like the fuselage and the engines, right.

JUSTIN: Um, but if you think of that, about this, in terms of like the cross-section and material that hits the building,

JUSTIN: right, you know, the fuselage goes in the building, it starts disintegrating,

JUSTIN: and the--as it disintegrates, it's imparting more energy into the building,

JUSTIN: which is causing more destruction, so the fu-fuselage can penetrate through,

JUSTIN: the wings, the tail, you know, these other...

JUSTIN: ...uh, what's the word...

JUSTIN: "appendages" of the plane...

NOVA: F--(?)

NOVA: "Flight surfaces", yeah.

LIAM: Yeah.

JUSTIN: "Flight surfaces", you know, they, they just sorta hit the front of the building, and they disintegrate, right.

NOVA: But it also helps that the wings are full of,

NOVA: fuel, which just explodes immediately.

JUSTIN: This is true, I-I imagine that was, uh,

JUSTIN: ...probably, the-the fire was not so severe to start out with, just because,

JUSTIN: all that jet fuel just, "boom", immediately, right.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Um...

NOVA: Yeah, and it's not like the World Trade Center where it like,

NOVA: is sort of like, cast suddenly through the whole, like, footprint of the building, like,

NOVA: it's mostly sort of, it hits the outside.

JUSTIN: Mmhm.

LIAM: Mmhm.

JUSTIN: It just sorta splashes back down, on fire, yeah.

JUSTIN: You know, uh, most of the plane debris that was recovered was from the tail section of the plane, I think somehow the nose cone was also recovered, um...

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: And then some bits and bobs we'll talk about later. Um.

JUSTIN: And, uh, you know, one of the side effects of this was, you know, because of this reinforcement, a lot of people will be able to get out of these offices very quick, um...

NOVA: Yeah, I think it only killed, like,

NOVA: I don't know, like,

NOVA: ...a few people on impact, directly.

JUSTIN: It was--yeah, it was like, a hundred, hundred and--

LIAM: 188 total, I think?

JUSTIN: Yeah, 184 total.

LIAM: Oh, okay.

JUSTIN: Uh...

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: And this, this photo is, from just around thirty--

LIAM: (?) 23,000 people work here.

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: Yeah.

LIAM: Assuming it's at capacity.

JUSTIN: This, uh, this, this photo is from around 30 minutes after impact, uh, actually.

JUSTIN: Uh, you know, firefighters got on scene really quickly.

JUSTIN: You can see up here, the, uh, the cornice up here is starting to sag,

JUSTIN: this is right around when they pulled all the firefighters out.

JUSTIN: Uh, the building collapsed shortly after, they pulled all the firefighters out, um...

LIAM: Right.

JUSTIN: ...Initially, you know, workers in the building started pulling people out of the building, a lot of people could get out under their own power,

JUSTIN: um,

JUSTIN: you know, and, and uh, but the fire department shooed everyone away once uh, once they showed up there, 'cause, you know,

JUSTIN: "we have rescue training," right.

LIAM: Right.

JUSTIN: Um...

JUSTIN: So the impact was at...

JUSTIN: What is it? 9:34-ish, I wanna say?

NOVA: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Uh... the building collapsed at 10:10, right.

JUSTIN: And--

LIAM: So that's 36 minutes.

JUSTIN: 36 minutes, yeah, and only at that point did the upper floors catch fire, um.

LIAM: Wow!

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: Seems really fuckin' isolated!

JUSTIN: Very, very well built, uh, building, um...

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: You couldn't have picked a worse building,

JUSTIN: to try and attack with a plane. Uhm...

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: So uh, uh,

JUSTIN: you know, the one thing that did happen at this point,

JUSTIN: the roof was held up with big wooden support beams,

JUSTIN: uh, so, the roof caught fire and started spreading along the building,

JUSTIN: um, they actually had to control that by doing fire breaks, they couldn't, um,

JUSTIN: they couldn't really...

NOVA: Ah, the finest, the finest firefighting technique of the 17th century.

LIAM: They do love to do this, we know.

JUSTIN: Yes. [laughs]

JUSTIN: And the fire wasn't fully contained until 6 PM the following day.

LIAM: Wow.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: This is where you can sorta see those, um,

JUSTIN: those big, big kevlar panels, right, you can see some of the big beams there,

JUSTIN: you can see how the, the building is sort of,

JUSTIN: falling down, but it's draped like a curtain?

LIAM: Mmhm.

NOVA: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Right, the facade is surprisingly intact for what's happened to it. Um...

JUSTIN: So this, uh, this killed about a hundred--this killed 188 people including, of course, everyone on Flight 77,

JUSTIN: um...

NOVA: Mmhmm.

NOVA: If-if you believe things you read on Twitter, it like, perfectly took out all of the DoD's records of Operation Cyclone or whatever, which it didn't.

JUSTIN: Mmhm.

LIAM: Probably not. Also some guys would still just know about it. Like...

NOVA: Yeah.

JUSTIN: I was about to say, yeah.

JUSTIN: Um--

LIAM: That's the thing with these, is that like, they don't need like, more than a memo.

NOVA: Destroyed, destroyed a bunch of art and books 'cause it hit the, um,

NOVA: the US Army's library.

LIAM: Oh, that's a shame.

JUSTIN: Oops.

NOVA: Yeah, they lo--they lost a couple of like, big oil paintings.

JUSTIN: Uh, and the plane mostly did damage to the outer E wing, right.

JUSTIN: Uh, which is where all the generals are.

JUSTIN: Uh, did penetrate slightly into the C wing, or as far as the C wing, right.

JUSTIN: Um...

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: At this point, they're, you know, trying to do recovery,

JUSTIN: they found, the important pieces of the plane,

JUSTIN: you know, the flight data recorder, and the cockpit voice... recorder,

JUSTIN: um, the flight data recorder was good,

JUSTIN: the cockpit voice recorder had fused into a solid block of plastic.

LIAM: Oh shit!

JUSTIN: They also found one of the, uh, hijackers' driver's licenses in the parking lot.

NOVA: Again, an-another classic move that, like, gets people very, very weird is like,

NOVA: "Oh, the FBI just found a couple of passports on the street...

NOVA: "outside, uh, the World Trade Center, they found a driver's license here,"

NOVA: it's like...

JUSTIN: It, it--

JUSTIN: It's debris.

LIAM: Yeah, stuff happens, it's a massive plane crash.

NOVA: Yeah, I'm--

JUSTIN: It's, it's debris.

LIAM: It's debris, right.

NOVA: Yeah...

NOVA: ...presumably found a lot of other shit that they not all cataloguing,

NOVA: but, that--this is just one of the things that happens when you,

NOVA: throw an airline's worth of people into a Cuisinart, essentially.

JUSTIN: Yeah. I always thought one of the, one of the weird ones was, um,

JUSTIN: I think they found,

JUSTIN: they found a piece of one of--one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center,

JUSTIN: like a big piece, like an aileron or something,

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: uh, in like,

JUSTIN: 2011? 2012? Maybe later than that,

JUSTIN: it had fallen between a pair of buildings which had eight inches of space between them?

NOVA: Huh.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: Definitely an inside job.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: ...It just... [laughs]

NOVA: It has that air of like, uh, like history that happens with like,

JUSTIN: Mm.

NOVA: huge events, right, same as the JFK assassination, where like,

NOVA: ...if you take any, any sort of event, there's always gonna be a bunch of...

NOVA: insane-seeming coincidences about anything, because that's just,

NOVA: like, how life works, there's always a shitload of...

NOVA: like, variables, and some of them are gonna line up.

NOVA: But, because it feels like, portentous, right,

NOVA: you, you assign more meaning to these things than perhaps they have.

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: Mmhm.

JUSTIN: A-and--

LIAM: The idea of sort of creating order out of nothing, because...

NOVA: Oh yeah.

LIAM: I think people can't handle the idea that not--that...

LIAM: things just happen?

NOVA: Mmhm?

JUSTIN: Mmhm.

LIAM: You know what I mean? That sometimes stuff just goes--and obviously this wasn't random chance, it's a very...

LIAM: well-planned operation,

NOVA: No. It... it contains a lot of random elements just because everything does, like,

LIAM: to be, to be honest, but like...

LIAM: Right.

NOVA: where that guy's driver's license ends up.

LIAM: Right, right right.

NOVA: Mm.

LIAM: Right. Absolutely.

JUSTIN: Here's some of the, here's some of the recovery operation afterwards, you can see, uh,

JUSTIN: big part of the building's come down,

JUSTIN: uh, here's the E ring, the, uh, D wing--

LIAM: Tell me the hot dog hut was okay.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Oh yeah, it didn't make it that far, it only made it as far as (?)

NOVA: The-they actually replaced,

NOVA: they replaced the hot dog hut, um...

LIAM: Throw an anti-aircraft battery on top of it?

JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: In two thousand and, in 2006 they replaced the hot dog hut.

JUSTIN: What's there now?

NOVA: Another hot dog hut.

LIAM: Thank God.

JUSTIN: Oh, okay. Thank God.

NOVA: An, uh, a new eating facility, is, is how the, the Air Force described it at the time.

LIAM: We're all, we're all God's children at the hot dog hut.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: And--

NOVA: Incidentally, if you wanna get really, like,

NOVA: eye emoji about this,

NOVA: the old hot dog stand had a big carved wooden owl on top of it,

NOVA: uh, which they, uh, they actually kept and placed on the new hot dog stand.

NOVA: So, just if you wanted to get... get a little bit of like, Bohemian Grove vibes.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Um, you can see here, this is the hole...

JUSTIN: the plane poked, when it came out the other side of the C wing.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Right. Which is kinda,

LIAM: Wow.

JUSTIN: tiny and pathetic. Um...

NOVA: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: Just kinda like, peters out in that courtyard.

JUSTIN: Yeah, exactly, and in an interior courtyard, even.

JUSTIN: Um, you know, kinda, kinda like,

JUSTIN: "Well, you tried."

LIAM: It's a hell of a well-built building.

NOVA: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Yes, it's, it's very, very heavily built building, now...

JUSTIN: ...in 2001, when this had occurred, they were trying to eventually do a comprehensive renovation on it,

JUSTIN: because as well-built as it was structurally,

JUSTIN: every building system was failing. Um...

LIAM: Mm! Oh, okay.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: The heat, the lights, the electricity...

LIAM: Not the asbestos, the asbestos was working great!

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: The asbestos was working great, it was full of asbestos at this point.

NOVA: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Building was absolutely chock full of asbestos,

JUSTIN: everyone was doing work on this building, in the recovery effort,

JUSTIN: all got exposed to shitloads of asbestos. Um...

JUSTIN: So, you know, it's uh...

JUSTIN: ...it was a... it was not--

JUSTIN: like other parts of 9/11, not great for your health to be working on the recovery effort. Um...

NOVA: Yeah.

JUSTIN: You can see, here is one of the shredded piece of plane they recovered.

JUSTIN: Um, you know, because again, this-this plane just disintegrated on impact, there was not--

NOVA: Oh yeah, it's the "c" from "American", huh.

JUSTIN: Yeah, that's probably came off the tail or something.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Or no, the tail of American Airlines plane just says "AA" on it, so I guess that's uh, from the side--

NOVA: Ah, so it'd be, like, yeah, from the side, yeah.

JUSTIN: Uh, you can see, sort of a diagram of how this hit the first floor, right.

JUSTIN: Uh--

NOVA: Ah, like a shotgun blast. A buckshot.

JUSTIN: Yeah, exactly. Just straight through, well--every one of these circles is uh, where they recovered a body.

NOVA: Mm.

LIAM: Mm.

JUSTIN: Uh... or I think, maybe some of them are casualties, and not bodies, but I'm not sure which ones.

JUSTIN: Um... you know, one of the big conspiracies is, you know, it went through the defense intelligence agency offices, right,

JUSTIN: you can see it just sorta clipped it on the side. Um.

NOVA: Yeah.

NOVA: Perfectly taking out the filing cabinet,

NOVA: in which a single Manila folder was locked up, in which was written,

NOVA: "Bush did 9/11", on like, 9/10.

LIAM: Right.

JUSTIN: That's--

JUSTIN: That's, that's pretty good accuracy, that... that um...

JUSTIN: that uh, Hanjour got that from,

JUSTIN: you know, he started that run in West Virginia, and hit that filing cabinet. Um...

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: Also, they can just start redoing the conspiracies on September 12th.

NOVA: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Good point, yeah.

NOVA: Gotta move to a different office.

JUSTIN: Yeah, exactly. So, this, this whole section,

JUSTIN: this whole section here basically collapsed,

JUSTIN: um, you know, they, uh, they had to trash that part of the building. Um...

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: And, um,

JUSTIN: Yeah, they, they started rebuilding, like, instantly. Uhm...

NOVA: Oh, the fucking...

NOVA: "Let's Roll" sign...

JUSTIN: "Let's Roll",

JUSTIN: countdown, count, counter here.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: They gave the contract to the people who had just finished doing the renovation,

JUSTIN: to rebuild that whole section of the Pentagon.

NOVA: Ah, so they're behind it.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: [laughs]

NOVA: Generate more business.

JUSTIN: They want more business, yeah.

JUSTIN: Uh... yeah...

JUSTIN: ..."Facchina" up here, I assume,

JUSTIN: is, uh, Italian for, "Saudi Binladin Group".

[laughter]

NOVA: Investigate asbestos removal contractors,

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: in... uh, like, DC NoVA.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Um, yeah, so after, after, you know, the dust had settled, they cleared everything up, um, you know,

JUSTIN: they, uh, they had to rebuild this part of the Pentagon, right. Um...

JUSTIN: It took exactly one year, right. The renovated section opened September 11th, 2002, right.

NOVA: I was gonna ask what that, the, what the countdown was for.

JUSTIN: The, the countdown was, yeah. They, they got, they can get things done fast when they want to, right.

NOVA: Mm.

LIAM: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Um, this was followed by, like, a complete gut renovation of the rest of the Pentagon, lots of security improvements, they moved the, um,

JUSTIN: the Richmond highway, um,

JUSTIN: and they, they wound up having to buy out, essentially, all the office space in Crystal City,

JUSTIN: to move the Pentagon people into,

JUSTIN: while, while they renovated this, right.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Including running the Pentagon's internal systems under the ground,

JUSTIN: into the Crystal City office buildings, temporarily.

LIAM: Which is genuinely fairly impressive, but.

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: Yeah.

NOVA: Just a... a guy with a backhoe, just digging the big pipe that the imperialism runs through.

JUSTIN: Yeah, exactly. [laughs]

NOVA: You-you gotta have it, is the thing.

JUSTIN: So, you know, this was um,

JUSTIN: uh, and-and once they finished the renovation, I think like,

JUSTIN: 10-15 years later,

JUSTIN: 'course, they vacated Crystal City,

JUSTIN: which, you know, then no one--because so much office space was suddenly vacant, you know,

JUSTIN: it became the cheapest place to rent an office in, um,

JUSTIN: the Washington DC area(?),

JUSTIN: and you know, small domino,

JUSTIN: uh, "United States occupies", or-or, "adds forces to Saudi Arabia",

JUSTIN: large domino, "Amazon relocates to", uh, "Crystal City". Um...

[laughter]

NOVA: Well, like, the good news is that, um,

NOVA: post 9/11, having, uh, successfully pinned it on Saddam Hussein,

NOVA: a guy who, uh, bin Laden hated,

NOVA: the, um,

NOVA: uh, the, the United States manage to vastly expand its security apparatus, which meant...

NOVA: that there are a lot of new,

NOVA: um, you know, arms of, uh, that security, and intelligence apparatus that needed housing, such as amazon.com

JUSTIN: Yeah, and then there was, uh, and they, they put up a couple big Department of Defense buildings since then, in the area.

JUSTIN: There's this one absolute monstrosity, right by, um,

JUSTIN: Interstate 395, I remember watching go, go up when I was in--when I was in high school,

JUSTIN: and I was like, "Jesus Christ, this is the biggest, tallest building I've ever seen,"

JUSTIN: I mean, it was like 17 stories, but it was massive.

LIAM: [laughs]

NOVA: Mm.

NOVA: Isn't the, um, the NRO out there, too? The satellite guys?

JUSTIN: Um...

JUSTIN: I think everything's--

NOVA: Oh, they're in Ch--they're in like, Chantilly.

JUSTIN: Chantilly, right.

LIAM: (?) yep.

JUSTIN: This was, uh, Shirleyville(?), if I recall correctly.

NOVA: Mm.

NOVA: Well.

JUSTIN: Just massive expansion of security state out here, and this just, you know, led to more and more construction of Department of Defense and Department of...

JUSTIN: Department of Defense-related buildings ever since.

JUSTIN: Um...

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: And the Pentagon--

NOVA: It's weird how these stuff never get smaller.

JUSTIN: Exactly.

JUSTIN: And the Pentagon--

LIAM: It's (?)

JUSTIN: But, the good news is, the Pentagon is asbestos-free now.

NOVA: Oh good.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: Mm.

NOVA: It's important to have a,

NOVA: a healthy war machine.

JUSTIN: Mmhm.

JUSTIN: So.

JUSTIN: Now we have to get to the part that everyone's been waiting for.

JUSTIN: The conspiracy theories!

NOVA: Hmm.

JUSTIN: You know, and there's a lot uh, like, conspiracy theories about like, 9/11 that, that are popular in a lot of leftist circles,

NOVA: Mmhm.

JUSTIN: right, and you know, they're sorta the vaguely plausible stuff like,

JUSTIN: you know...

JUSTIN: ...interesting stuff like,

JUSTIN: "Wow, there sure were a lot of airline stock shorts, uh, right before 9/11."

JUSTIN: Um, or, you know.

NOVA: Yeah, that, that's on the more plausible end, is like, "Hmm, bunch of,

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: "bunch of guys, bunch of finance guys in the Middle East could've had advanced knowledge, interesting."

NOVA: Uh...

JUSTIN: Yeah, that, that sounds about right to me. Yeah.

LIAM: Yeah.

[laughter]

NOVA: It's like, yeah, like, a Saudi guy's cousin's cousin got a like, a wink and a nod, yeah, sure. Um...

JUSTIN: They're doing some insider trading on terrorism, yeah.

NOVA: Yeah, to like, stuff that is...

NOVA: coincidental but seems incriminating, like,

NOVA: the Northeast Air Defense Sector doing a fucking like,

NOVA: preparedness drill that day.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: So they had to like...

LIAM: World of fucking good it did!

NOVA: Yeah! So-so like, all the phone calls between anybody is like,

NOVA: "Yeah, is this real, or is this like, an exercise?"

JUSTIN: "No, no, it's real."

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Or, uh, or, you know, Amy McGrath shooting down Flight 93. Um...

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Um, you know, and then there's like, the deliberate intelligence failure stuff, which you know, is like,

JUSTIN: well, did, did Bush really do 9/11?

LIAM: No.

JUSTIN: Was Clinton involved in doing 9/11, right?

LIAM: No.

NOVA: No.

LIAM: He just took advantage of the situation.

JUSTIN: Yeah...

NOVA: Yeah. Although, there is... there is one thing which is that,

NOVA: uh, the, the most popular conspiracy theory, and the most successful conspiracy theory about 9/11,

NOVA: because it is a conspiracy theory,

NOVA: is that, um,

NOVA: "Iraq was involved in the planning or execution of 9/11."

JUSTIN: That is a good point! Yes.

NOVA: But because--

NOVA: But because that was a conspiracy theory that was advanced by, uh, the President,

NOVA: and by members of Congress, that's not a conspiracy theory, that was like, a very serious narrative that everyone needed to take seriously.

LIAM: Right.

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: A very good point.

JUSTIN: Um...

JUSTIN: And then there's like the conspiracies that,

JUSTIN: you know, I think are harmful, which,

JUSTIN: 'cause they're not correct,

JUSTIN: um, and I think they're, they're depressing,

JUSTIN: right, and that's stuff like, "Bush put bombs in the towers,"

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: and of course, the fucking missile conspiracy, right.

NOVA: "Yo, have you seen this extremely grainy three frames of footage?

LIAM: "Right, you gotta (?), bro."

NOVA: "'Cause this shit look like a missile to me."

JUSTIN: I...

LIAM: "Doesn't that look like a tip, bro?"

JUSTIN: ...you know, I'm, I'm gonna say this.

JUSTIN: Um,

JUSTIN: those three--those three frames contain neither a missile nor a plane, right.

NOVA: Mm.

LIAM: Oh, okay.

JUSTIN: So, inconclusive.

LIAM: It's just a really big bird--Mothmaaan!

JUSTIN and NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: So, a lot of people still think that, uh, you know, rather than a guy flying the plane into the building, right,

JUSTIN: there was a much, much more complex and insidious plan,

JUSTIN: involving the plane being disappeared into some kind of black site,

JUSTIN: and then, I don't know, they go and shoot all the passengers and crew,

JUSTIN: and then the military flew a missile into the building, right.

NOVA: Yeah, sure.

JUSTIN: Which seems a lot more difficult to me.

LIAM: It seems like a--that doesn't seem like it's worth the effort.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: And thi-this is sort of because of the aforementioned lack of damage to the facade, the small hole in the building, and...

JUSTIN: the lack of plane debris in all the pictures, right.

JUSTIN: And of course, the security footage doesn't really clearly show...

JUSTIN: any kind of vehicle, right.

JUSTIN: Um...

NOVA: Yeah, it's like, why would, why would you have this attack, it's very ineffective against, uh,

NOVA: like a, a military target.

NOVA: And then, ones that are very, very effective against civilian targets, and it's like,

NOVA: uh, well, because nobody had actually flown an airliner into a building before this on purpose?

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: And so, nobody really knew...

NOVA: ho-how it works, or if it would, like, work well?

JUSTIN: Another, another popular theory is that the military thr--flew like a, a drone into the building, right.

JUSTIN: You know--

NOVA: They didn't have drones that good then.

LIAM: No.

JUSTIN: And again, and again, and also--

NOVA: They don't have really, drones that good now.

JUSTIN: Yeah. They also made a plane disappear with all its passengers,

JUSTIN: but they also str--

NOVA: Yeah, they kill--they killed the Solicitor General's wife, because...

JUSTIN: Yeah, and, and then they put fake plane debris in the building.

JUSTIN: You know, as opposed to, just flying a plane into building.

LIAM: And did it so fast, no one noticed, right.

JUSTIN: Yeah. [laughs]

NOVA: Mmhm, mmhm.

NOVA: So, and, the people on the, the Jefferson Davis freeway or whatever,

NOVA: who saw the plane go over them...

JUSTIN: I believe that was... Washington Boulevard. Uh, Jeff Davis, uh, parkway was on the other side of the building.

NOVA: Ah. Well,

NOVA: ...like, anybody who saw the plane come in,

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: uh, they're the CIA.

JUSTIN: An-anecdotally, my uh, my Cub Scout, uh, Den Leader,

JUSTIN: at the time,

JUSTIN: um, was in the Pentagon when this happened,

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: um, and he didn't--

NOVA: Doing 9/11.

JUSTIN: Yeah. He, he was on the other side of the building,

JUSTIN: and didn't know anything had happened for 30 minutes.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: It's a big building.

JUSTIN: It's a big building, yeah.

LIAM: It's a big building.

JUSTIN: Um...

JUSTIN: You know, obviously, I-I don't think you can fully refute the conspiracy theory by talking about it, right? People are gonna believe what they bel--they believe, right.

LIAM: Right.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: I think it is worth noting the, uh,

JUSTIN: lack of explosion damage in the building that would arise from a missile hitting it, right.

LIAM: Right.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: You would expect that facade,

JUSTIN: rather than staying largely intact,

JUSTIN: right, the missile goes in the building and explodes and then the facade falls outwards.

NOVA: Yeah, 'cause that, that's what it's designed to do, and also, like,

LIAM: Right.

NOVA: if it's the US government doing this, then they know what the fucking building is like, right, like, so.

LIAM: Mmhm.

JUSTIN: This is true, yes.

NOVA: I don't know.

LIAM: All the things that really bothers me, uh...

LIAM: sorta anecdotally, is this almost like,

LIAM: gospel, on part of the left,

LIAM: that it was, like, an inside job.

NOVA: Yeah.

LIAM: And if you sort of believe...

LIAM: more or less the official narrative, you're like, a mark.

LIAM: And, no, man, it was just, terrorist doing terrorist stuff,

LIAM: that the United States government then took advantage of to launch two wars,

LIAM: and increase the size of the surveillance state,

LIAM: and military state, which they were gonna do anyway, maybe just a little slower.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Yeah, I-I think one of the depressing things about this is, is you know, if you believe ideas like, you know,

JUSTIN: there was a missile, Bush put bombs in the towers,

JUSTIN: right, there's sorta this incredible state capacity that the United States has,

JUSTIN: in order to, like, coordinate such a thing which involves...

JUSTIN: thousands and thousands of people, who aren't all CIA agents, right.

JUSTIN: Um... and here's the thing--

LIAM: Right, some of them are just going to work.

JUSTIN: Yeah, and, and keep it a secret somehow, right.

NOVA: But also, not that secret, because you and your friends know about it, and a guy with a silence pistol hasn't killed you yet.

JUSTIN: Exactly.

LIAM: Right..

JUSTIN: And, and... I think if there's any kind of, like, "9/11 was an inside job" conspiracy that's like,

JUSTIN: plausible, right,

JUSTIN: it would have to involve like twelve people at most,

NOVA: Mmhm.

JUSTIN: right.

JUSTIN: One of whom was bin Laden, and two of whom are Dick Cheney and H. W. Bush.

JUSTIN: Um...

NOVA: Yeah, they got them in the room, and they were like, "Yeah, for old time's sake."

JUSTIN: Yeah... "You wanna do 9/11?"

JUSTIN and NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Bin Laden's like, "What's 9/11?"

JUSTIN: "Oh, you'll know."

[laughter]

NOVA: Well, the important news is that we did compromise Osama bin Laden to a permanent end, so justice has been done,

NOVA: um, at-at only the small cost of,

NOVA: twenty years of war in Afghanistan, also invading and occupying...

LIAM: And 3,000+ human lives...

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: Iraq, for no real reason.

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: Yeah.

LIAM: Good job, America!

JUSTIN: Well, I don't know if this is, like, you know,

JUSTIN: people wanna make this, you know, part of a, a false flag strategy attention, you know,

JUSTIN: domestic Gladio thing, I-I just don't think so, I think this is just...

JUSTIN: something the state took advantage of, rather than...

JUSTIN: something the state orchestrated, intentionally.

LIAM: Right. (?)

JUSTIN: I mean, they did kind of orchestrate it unintentionally, but. [laughs]

LIAM: Yes.

NOVA: Mmhm.

JUSTIN: Yeah... that's, that's what I have to say about the conspiracy theories; I, I just don't think...

JUSTIN: I just don't think they're plausible and I don't think they're necessary to like, understand...

NOVA: No.

LIAM: No.

JUSTIN: state power or like,

JUSTIN: the military industrial complex, it's just not,

JUSTIN: it's ju--it's too, it's too big, it's too...

JUSTIN: like, i-it's, exciting and interesting evil, as opposed to banal evil, which is the usual kind.

LIAM: Aah.

NOVA: Yeah... like, the depressing thing, and the thing that really gets me, is that like,

NOVA: okay, if 9/11 had never happened, or like if it had been thwarted, right,

NOVA: say, say, I don't know, you go back in a time machine,

NOVA: and you tip off the FBI, and the FBI believe you,

NOVA: and all twenty guys get arrested at the airport, right.

NOVA: Th-the thing that really depresses me is that like,

NOVA: had 9/11 not happen, or had it not succeeded, I think the United States would've invaded Iraq anyway.

JUSTIN: Oh yeah.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: Yeah, I believe so. W wanted a war.

LIAM: And, and... and one of the things, actually,

LIAM: this is another--I'm just settling my grievances here,

LIAM: is that, "Oh, the war was for oil," it's like, it's actually a lot less complicated than that, W wanted a war.

NOVA: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: There's a man ruled by his ego, who saw a guy that,

LIAM: quote, "tried to kill my daddy,"

LIAM: and, uh, and just, he was gonna get a war, one way or the other, I mean the Pentagon makes...

LIAM: There's memos and shit that make that very clear.

NOVA: Mmhm.

NOVA: Yeah, like, that's the one thing that you actually can be very reductive about, is like,

NOVA: no, they, they invaded Iraq 'cause they wanted to,

NOVA: they knew that they were lying to do it,

NOVA: but it, you know, they wanted to do it, so they did.

JUSTIN: Yep.

NOVA: What are we gonna talk about, for the third 9/11 episode?

JUSTIN: Building 7.

NOVA: The 9/11 2022--oh no.

JUSTIN: Building 7, Building 7, Building 7!

LIAM: Oohhh no...

NOVA: Ohhh fuck.

LIAM: [laughs]

LIAM: It gets worse every time you chant it, man. [laughs]

JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: Why do you have that big foam finger that says, "Building 7"?

JUSTIN: S-someone make--

NOVA: Where did you get that?

JUSTIN: Someone make one of those and send it to me. [laughs]

NOVA: No!

LIAM: Oh Rocz, I have so many gifts from the P.O. box for you, the next time I see you, baby boy.

LIAM: I'm tired of, this shit all living in my room, so you're gonna get some of it.

JUSTIN: Excellent, excellent.

NOVA: Mail me a care package.

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: Alright.

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: I got to, send me your address.

JUSTIN: Alright.

JUSTIN: So, um.

JUSTIN: I-if that's everything we got...

JUSTIN: Um...

NOVA: I think that's it, I think we ne--I think we, we Never Forget it.

JUSTIN: Ne-never forget that the Pentagon suffered partial damage on 9/11.

NOVA: That's right.

JUSTIN: Um...

JUSTIN: And obviously, a lot of people were killed as well, um...

NOVA: Mmhm.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: I tell you what though, aside from flying uh, an airline full of,

NOVA: like, normal people into it, it's a hell of a lot more of a justifiable target than,

NOVA: anything else that, uh, al-Qaeda did on 9/11, and also a lot of things that the US destroyed in the war since.

JUSTIN: Yes. [laughs]

JUSTIN: It was kind of a military target, at least.

NOVA: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Well, not "kind of" a military target, definitely a military target.

JUSTIN: Um, anyway.

JUSTIN: So.

JUSTIN: We have a segment on this podcast called,

JUSTIN: Safety Third.

♪[guitar riff] Shake hands with danger♪

JUSTIN: "Hello."

NOVA: I like this picture.

JUSTIN: Yes. [laughs]

LIAM: Hello!

NOVA: "In Rod We Trust!"

JUSTIN: Yes, "In Rod We Trust!"

JUSTIN: "Back when I studied physics at my old university,

JUSTIN: "the Physics Department, as well as nearby institutes,

JUSTIN: "had a number of issues that would fit here perfectly,

JUSTIN: "though in a lot of them were not exactly engineering problems.

JUSTIN: "Now, this is a story mostly from older generation of students, right?

JUSTIN: "We had an old professor emeritus, who was an accomplished nuclear physicist,

JUSTIN: "that used to be a professor to the oldest other professors at the time, right?

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: "And was much more lively than any of them, right?

JUSTIN: "We considered his continued existence to be a piece of anecdotal evidence of radiation hormesis, right."

NOVA: [snorts] [laughs]

LIAM: [laughs] Alright?

JUSTIN: That's the, that's the theory that low doses of radiation are actually good for you, right.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Um,

JUSTIN: "Back when he was retiring from teaching students, near the end of his final teaching block,

JUSTIN: "he collapsed due to a lung problem, then was taken to a hospital where they X-ray'd him to maybe figure out a cause.

JUSTIN: "Due to the result of the X-ray being unbelievable, the technicians check their machine and tried again.

JUSTIN: "Then they dismantled the machine, checked it, saw that it should work, and then tried again.

JUSTIN: "After the third time, they finally confronted him.

JUSTIN: "'We have a problem with the machine,' they said.

JUSTIN: "'You appear to be transparent.'

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: "He replied, 'Oh!

JUSTIN: "'I forgot the Cesium!'

JUSTIN: "Then he pulled a pellet of Cesium out of a shirt pocket."

LIAM: What? [laughs]

JUSTIN: What the fu-- [laughs]

NOVA: (?)

LIAM: Why is he just carrying it around? "Oh, yeah--"

NOVA: It, it's fine, I'm just (?) safekeeping this glass of water.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: "This is my, uh, emotional support Cesium, right."

NOVA and JUSTIN: [laughs]

JUSTIN: "Turns out the machine was blinded by all the gamma rays coming from the Cesium source."

NOVA: [stutters]

NOVA and JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: Sorry! Wa-was your professor fucking Anatoly Dyatlov? What the fuck?

JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: C'mon man!

JUSTIN: "I, I gained immunity to large doses of radiation,

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: "through exposing myself to large amounts of small doses of radiation." [laughs]

NOVA: Note to the viewers at home, do not do this. [laughs]

JUSTIN: Please, please do not try this, this man is a trained Physicist.

NOVA: Yo, do you, do you think the guy's lung problem could've been related to just carrying some Cesium in his jacket pocket? [laughs]

JUSTIN: No, Cesium is making him more powerful.

NOVA and JUSTIN: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Just, just, the, the, naughty professor persona, except he's just carrying radiation sources with him constantly. [laughs]

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: [laughs]

NOVA: I know, I know in my heart that the jacket pocket that contains that Cesium,

NOVA: is in like a tweed suit coat.

JUSTIN: Yes.

JUSTIN: He's got the elbow patches too.

LIAM: Yes.

LIAM: Rocz has the same one, actually.

NOVA: You'll see it at the next live show.

JUSTIN: "Immedi--" Yeah, yes, exactly.

LIAM: He does have one, I've seen him wear it.

JUSTIN: Um, "Immediately after this, the radiation cleanup effort," uh, "started in his office.

JUSTIN: Um...--

[laughter]

NOVA: ...like, "Oh, I forgot this," and like, six guys in Hazmat suits come in...

[laughter]

LIAM: "What do you mean, 'leave it inside the LED light container(?)'?"

NOVA: I hate, I hate when I'm coming back to my office,

NOVA: and I opened the door, and there's a Hazmat crew in there. [laughs]

LIAM: "Oh hey, Doctor Smith!" [laughs]

JUSTIN: The Hazmat crew arrives and opens the door of the office, the fucking Demon Core is in there?

[laughter]

NOVA: Yeah, he just like, oh, just walking down the corridor to your office, there's a bunch of guys in Hazmat suits, and you're like, "Hey," and they're like, "[astronaut voice] Hey."

JUSTIN: [laughs]

JUSTIN: They...

LIAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: You're, you're walking, you're walking down towards the office one day, and just a burst of Cherenkov radiation comes out the sides of the, the cracks in the door...

[laughter]

NOVA: "Good Lord, what is happening in there?"

JUSTIN: "Ah, don't worry about it, that's normal."

[laughter]

JUSTIN: "Now, when the new building for the Phyiscs--"

NOVA: There's more?

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: "When the new building for the Physics Department was constructed, his approach to nuclear safety was well known to everyone,

JUSTIN: "so appropriate measures were taken.

JUSTIN: "So guess what they surrounded his office with."

JUSTIN: No.

LIAM: Hopefully lead.

JUSTIN: No.

NOVA: Lead, lead, lead, lead, that steel that they get off of battleships, uh...

JUSTIN: No.

NOVA: ...Um...

NOVA: Fuck, what-what's like, good cheap shielding? Like, like rubber or something?

JUSTIN: Nope.

JUSTIN: "If you guessed 'lead', you would be wrong, and you wouldn't be the first to try that guess.

JUSTIN: "But the answer, was teaching assistance.

LIAM: Oh.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: [laughs] "You stupid rubes!" [laughs]

JUSTIN: That's, that's a good, that's a good professor right there. [laughs]

JUSTIN: Thank you, wacky radiation man.

JUSTIN: Well, that was, Safety Third.

LIAM: Alright, uh, our...

JUSTIN: Our, our next episode will be on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge disaster.

LIAM: Go ahead.

LIAM: Oh, we're keeping the bit up?

JUSTIN: It's not a bit! Not a bit.

LIAM: It already was last week, last week.

JUSTIN: Listen.

LIAM: Become our Patreons! You know what the hell we're talking about. Uh...

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: So you're not mad at us by this point.

JUSTIN: (?).

LIAM: The bonus episode on The Museum is coming, it's been really hard to write, we're really sorry.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: We are hoping to get that out, we will get that out this month,

LIAM: I am hoping that when [Nova] comes back, we can knock out her other motorsports episode,

LIAM: please keep giving us money, uh...

JUSTIN: Y-ye--We may get between two and three bonus episodes out this month, just to make up for lost time.

LIAM: Yeah.

LIAM: We will try to pump them out. Do we still have an [Nova]?

JUSTIN: Good question.

JUSTIN: Did [Nova] drop out?

JUSTIN: [Nova]!

LIAM: Welp.

JUSTIN: [Nova]!

JUSTIN: We-we--Nope, [Nova] has disappeared.

LIAM: Alright, uh, I'm Liam, that's Rocz, we, [Nova] is dead, and we are Well There's Your Problem.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Yes. Um, yeah. Uh, commercials.

LIAM: Uh...

LIAM: When's the next Franklin coming?

JUSTIN: It's coming.

LIAM: Okay.

JUSTIN: I swear to God.

LIAM: Okay.

JUSTIN: I just, uh, have been having issues...

LIAM: One of these days, I'm just gonna leak it. I'll leak it. I swear to God I'll leak it.

JUSTIN: You have to come over here and steal the file from me.

LIAM: Oh no, what a (?), 'cause I'm never at your house!

JUSTIN: That's a good point. Well you have to figure how to render it, too.

LIAM: I can probably learn.

JUSTIN: Ookay. Good luck.

LIAM: Thank you.

JUSTIN: Mmhm.

JUSTIN: Um, we're gonna call it, the episode.

LIAM: Yeah, listen to Kill James Bond!, listen to Lions Led by Donkeys, uh...

LIAM: Watch donoteat studios,

JUSTIN: RIP [Nova].

LIAM: uh, don't do 9/11, RIP [Nova], uh...

JUSTIN: Do not do 9/11.

LIAM: Do not do 9/11!

LIAM: Em...

JUSTIN: It's our official stance on this podcast, is 9/11 is not something you should do.

LIAM: Yeah. Also,

LIAM: not everything is a conspiracy, sometimes...

LIAM: people act in bad faith to take advantage of situations.

LIAM: It's a thing people do.

JUSTIN: I recommend against getting involved in political Islam.

LIAM: Yeah, also, don't do that!

JUSTIN: Um... [laughs]

JUSTIN: Secularism is good.

LIAM: Wahhabism bad, (?) have to say that.

JUSTIN: Yes.

JUSTIN: [laughs] That's (?) new "train good, car bad" is, uh, "secularism good, Wahhabism bad", alright.

LIAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Alright, I'm calling it, that was the episode.

LIAM: Alright.

LIAM: Bye everybody.

JUSTIN: Alright, good night, everybody.