Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day July 1985, French intelligence operatives sink the flagship of the Greenpeace Fleet, the Rainbow

Warrior at the Port of Auckland, New Zealand, as the ship was on her way to protest against a planned French nuclear test.

The Rainbow Warrior was a massive ship that had been acquired by Greenpeace in 1977 and was active

in supporting a number of anti-wailing, anti-seal hunting, and anti-nuclear

testing and nuclear waste dumping campaigns during the late 70s and the early 80s.

It was being deployed in the South Pacific because that was the

site of a lot of nuclear testing. And here was the French government intervening to sink the

ship while it was docked in Auckland. Seven agents worked together to place mines on the Rainbow

Warrior, detonated seven minutes apart just around midnight. The ship sank, one

person died, and the French government denied involvement for a while.

A few months later the French Prime Minister would finally admit, quote,

the truth is cruel, he said, agents of the French Secret Service sank this boat they were acting on orders

So here to discuss the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and Greenpeace and the anti-nuclear movement as well as the legacy of environmental

movements like Greenpeace and what the Rainbow Warrior was up to is Nicole Hammer of Columbia.

Hello Nicky.

Hello Jody. And Kelly Carter Jackson is still overseas, not able to join us for this one, but back for one more

episode is Adam McKay, director of Don't Look Up, The Big Short, Anchor Man, this

podcast we did, Death at the Wing.

And Adam, maybe by the time this episode airs your role as campaign manager for Morris the

Cat in 1992, will be on your IMDb page.

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