A Good Guy: 279 Hours
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.4 • 25.7K Ratings
🗓️ 28 November 2024
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sgt. Joshua Abate's career in the Marine Corps seemed to be taking off. He was about to start a top-clearance internship at the NSA. But first, he had to take a standard polygraph test.
And then a routine question came up: Have you ever tried to overthrow the U.S. government? Abate told the polygrapher something that he'd been keeping quiet for nearly two years: He followed the crowd that broke into the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
This admission leads to a different kind of January 6 story. Abate says he's not an insurrectionist. So why did it take him so long to talk openly about that day? And what did he actually do inside the Capitol?
Digging into FBI documents and CCTV footage, NPR's Tom Bowman and Lauren Hodges follow Abate's case in federal court. Reexamining their own firsthand accounts of what happened that day, their reporting offers a fresh look at January 6 and what it means for the military.
LEARN MORE:
- Explore NPR's database of January 6 criminal cases.
- Read the findings about extremism in the military from researcher Michael Jensen and the University of Maryland's National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This message comes from Indiana University. |
| 0:02.7 | Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, |
| 0:06.5 | working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges, |
| 0:09.7 | nine campuses, one purpose, creating tomorrow today. |
| 0:13.8 | More at IU.edu. |
| 0:20.4 | Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And over this Thanksgiving holiday, we want to bring you a two-part investigation from our friends at the NPR podcast Embedded. The first part is today and you'll hear the second part tomorrow. There's a story we told ourselves about what happened on |
| 0:38.2 | January 6th, 2021. On that day, an angry mob attacked the Capitol to try to stop this thing that's so |
| 0:44.6 | essential for our democracy, the peaceful transfer of power. A lot of us, of course, saw it play out on |
| 0:50.6 | live TV. Reporter Tom Bowman and producer Lauren Hodges were there on the ground. |
| 0:56.1 | They saw people who looked like they had military training pushing forward, breaking down |
| 0:59.9 | doors, getting violent with cops. |
| 1:02.1 | And by the end of that day, the country had lived through one of the worst political riots |
| 1:06.1 | in our history. |
| 1:07.5 | But then the story started to change. |
| 1:10.1 | It got all scrambled and mixed up. Some people started |
| 1:12.8 | calling the rioters patriots, trespassers became victims. And that shift has had consequences. |
| 1:19.6 | Our new series is about one Marine who went inside the Capitol on January 6th. And Tom and Lauren |
| 1:24.8 | bring us the story he tells about that day. What happened to him afterwards and the way all of this calls into question the military's ability to guarantee the oath its members take to support and defend the Constitution for all Americans. It's called a good guy. And before we get started, you should note there is some violent language in this episode. |
| 1:45.7 | Okay, here's Tom and Lauren. |
| 1:47.9 | So it's early 2022. |
| 1:50.7 | A young Marine hopes to get his dream gig. |
| 1:52.8 | I tried to play it off nonchalantly, like when I apply. |
... |
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