Alphabet Boys Revealed
Reveal
The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX
4.7 • 8.7K Ratings
🗓️ 30 September 2023
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The summer of 2020 was a hinge point in American history. The murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police inspired racial justice demonstrations nationwide. At the time, the FBI was convinced that extreme Black political activists could cross the line into domestic terrorism – a theory federal agents had first termed “Black identity extremism.”
That summer, Mickey Windecker approached the FBI. He drove a silver hearse, claimed to have been a volunteer fighter for the French Foreign Legion and the Peshmerga in Iraq, and had arrest records in four states that included convictions for misdemeanor sexual assault and menacing with a weapon, a felony. He claimed to the FBI that he had heard racial justice activists speak vaguely of training and violent revolution in Denver.
The FBI enlisted Windecker as a paid informant, gave him a recording device and instructed him to infiltrate Denver's growing Black Lives Matter movement. For months, Windecker spied on activists and attempted to recruit two Black men into an FBI-engineered plot to assassinate the state's attorney general.
Windecker's undercover work is the first documented case of FBI efforts to infiltrate the 2020 racial justice movement. Journalist Trevor Aaronson obtained over a dozen hours of Windecker's secret recordings and more than 300 pages of internal FBI reports for season 1 of the podcast series Alphabet Boys.
This episode of Reveal is a partnership with Alphabet Boys and production company Western Sound.
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| 0:00.0 | Did you know you have the power to inspire future generations with the same impactful reporting you trust and believe in right now? |
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| 1:00.1 | Please consider creating your legacy of truth today. |
| 1:04.4 | Thank you. |
| 1:16.7 | From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal. |
| 1:17.8 | I'm Al Letson. |
| 1:23.1 | On May 25th, 2020, the country seemed to shift. |
| 1:28.3 | A black man, George Floyd, was killed in Minneapolis. And like an earthquake that set off a tsunami, a wave of racial justice protests swept the nation. |
| 1:36.3 | Of all the demonstrations around the country that year, Denver, Colorado saw some of the biggest, most intense protests. |
| 1:45.0 | We've been watching as fences are smashed, torn down, protesters starting fires and building |
| 1:51.2 | umbrella barricades. |
| 1:52.5 | Thousands demonstrated outside the Colorado State Capitol, chanting a phrase synonymous |
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