Part One: How The FBI Botched The Olympic Park Bombing

Summary

Behind the Bastards

Episode Title: Part One: How The FBI Botched The Olympic Park Bombing
Date: September 30, 2025
Host: Robert Evans (Behind the Bastards)
Guest: Courtney Kosak

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Overview:

This episode of "Behind the Bastards" delves into one of the most infamous media and law enforcement failures of the 1990s: the investigation following the 1996 Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta. Host Robert Evans and guest Courtney Kosak break down how the FBI and media together upended the life of Richard Jewell, the security guard who saved lives during the bombing—only to be falsely accused and relentlessly pursued as the prime suspect. The discussion unpacks themes of law enforcement incompetence, media malfeasance, and the enduring harms caused by both, setting the stage for the next episode’s focus on the anthrax attacks and Steven Hatfill.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: Bad Guys, Bad Systems

• Introduction: The episode opens with a brief about the show ("podcast you listen to if you're listening…") and the fascination with histories’ “bastards.”

• This episode’s twist: The "bastard" today isn't the obvious villain—the FBI and the media are the main antagonists, while the central figure, Richard Jewell, is actually a "protagonist" who gets wronged (06:36).

  “...we’re going to be telling two stories, really. And in both of these stories, the bad guy is the FBI and more broadly, our entire justice system, right? And the media…” — Robert (04:57)

2. The FBI’s Recent Failures & Their Aftermath

• Recent disasters like Waco, Ruby Ridge, and the Oklahoma City bombing had already stained the FBI's reputation before the Olympics (56:47).
• The Olympic bombing was another blow, raising institutional panic and a rush to scapegoat.

3. Richard Jewell: Life Before the Bombing

• Early life: Richard was born Richard White, adopted by John Jewell, and obsessed with becoming a police officer since childhood (11:40).

• His law enforcement career was marked by over-eagerness and missteps:

  • Foiled a robbery as yogurt shop manager—a local hero moment (13:01).
  • Was jailed for overzealous, borderline illegal activity: arrested a noisy couple while only a security guard, later charged with impersonating an officer and required to get psychological counseling (16:04).
  • Eventually became a real cop after working as a jailer, but didn’t fit in due to his perfectionist and inflexible attitude (17:56).
  • Was sidelined for being a “buzzkill” and lost his job for crashing a police car, leading to jobs as campus and security cop (33:23).

  “His phenotype is copy, right? Like he was born with cop in his blood. ... He grows the kind of mustache that if you are, like, if you are biologically a cop, your body just produces that mustache, right?” — Robert (11:40)

4. Cop Culture, Systemic Corruption, and “Testilying”

• Deep dive into police corruption: studies cited showing cops frequently commit crimes (simple assault, sex crimes, DUI), and the concept of “testilying” (falsifying evidence to get convictions) is endemic (22:28-25:41).

  “The most common crime committed by police is also the one they get arrested for the least often, which is lying under oath. This is so common that cops have a term for it called test-a-lying.” — Robert (24:35)

• Jewell’s sincere, strict approach put him at odds with the prevailing, corrupt culture. He “wanted to be a cop for what you would say are the right reasons”—abiding by the law and protecting people—but didn’t fit in (18:16).

5. The Olympic Bombing: A Tragedy Stopped from Being Worse

• Jewell, relegated to security guard work, was posted near a sound/light tower during the Atlanta Olympics (36:54).

• His vigilance and seriousness led him to notice an unattended green military-style backpack (39:58).

• He pushed to clear the area—coordinating with a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent—as the bomb was discovered and subsequently detonated.

• Outcome: Only two deaths (one from the blast, one from a heart attack), instead of the dozens that would have happened had Jewell not intervened. Over 100 injuries were still reported (46:26).

  “He treats the job the same way. And thank God he did because he's going to save a shitload of people's lives.” — Robert (38:58)

  “This may be the only time in history where a rent-a-cop being overly a buzzkill works out.” — Robert (39:58)

6. The Hero Becomes the Suspect: FBI and Media Failings

• A former boss at Piedmont College, who disliked Jewell, calls the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to cast suspicions on him (48:32).

  • The underlying logic: Maybe an attention-seeker planted the bomb to become a hero.

• FBI pivots quickly from seeing Jewell as a hero to suspect, largely for reasons of convenience and embarrassment—they failed, he succeeded, and scapegoating him could salvage their reputation (53:35, 57:36).

  “The only reason it wasn't worse and that dozens of people aren't dead is that a rent-a-cop outperformed the entire federal law enforcement apparatus.” — Robert (53:35)

• The press, especially the Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC), picks up on leaks from within law enforcement and publishes Jewell’s name as the prime suspect (59:19-62:35).

  • The “chunklet”/”voice of God” style delivers news in blunt, uncontextualized terms, giving no hint at the uncertainty, and all but declares him guilty.
  • The paper runs multiple stories a day examining every negative aspect of his history, from his intensity as a campus cop to his social awkwardness (72:28).

  “FBI suspects Hero Guard may have planted Bomb … fits the profile of the lone bomber. This profile generally includes a frustrated white man who is a former police officer, member of the military, or police wannabe who seeks to become a hero.” — (Article quoted by Robert, 62:57)

7. The Ordeal: Public Shaming and Ruin

• Jewell is surveilled and harassed by the FBI, his home searched, his friends and family questioned (71:50).

• Journalists from local and national outlets set up near his house; he becomes a punchline (e.g., Jay Leno calls him “the Unidoofus”) and a national pariah (72:28, 73:17).

• All of this happens without Jewell ever being charged.

  “He couldn't go anywhere without being surrounded. He becomes an object of obsession for reporters... every day there's articles not just in the AJC, but in national papers. Digging into his backstory, talking about every embarrassing thing he ever did… He saved people's lives and everyone in the country hates him now.” — Robert (71:59, 73:17)

8. Exoneration and Aftermath

• Three months after the bombing, without apology or correction, the FBI and prosecutors quietly deliver a letter to his lawyer saying Jewell is no longer a suspect (76:48).

• Jewell successfully sues for defamation and wins settlements against the Justice Department and multiple media outlets—but irreversible damage is done.

  “They do a full court media press so that people know this guy is not, not suspected. They're just like, fuck it, he'll figure it out.” — Robert (76:49)

9. The Eastwood Movie and Media Blame Revisited

• Clint Eastwood’s 2019 movie "Richard Jewell" dramatizes these events but scapegoats the reporter Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde) as sleeping with an FBI source to get Jewell’s name—an unsupported, widely criticized distortion that itself illustrates ongoing media irresponsibility and sexism (77:53-80:21).

  “It does kind of the same thing to one of the journalists at the Atlanta Journal Constitution that they had done to Richard Jewell, which is… defame him or her.” — Robert (78:54)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On systemic police corruption:
  “The vast majority of criminal behavior inside our justice system is perpetrated by police officers. And not just police officers, but by people who are in the justice system who are attempting to get convictions and have to futz with the truth in order to secure conviction.” — Robert (26:13)

• On the FBI’s motive for targeting Jewell:
  “I think the attitude for a lot of people in the bureau is like... this looks really bad for us. Unless that fucker was the bomber. Then... the FBI gets to be the hero again, right?” — Robert (53:41)

• On media malpractice:
  “A person who is suspected of a crime has not been charged with it… because you're going to nuke his life and make a huge number of people think he murdered someone and tried to murder dozens more people. But on the other hand, he's gonna sell papers, so obviously print that shit.” — Robert (62:30)

• On the Clint Eastwood movie:
  “[The movie] shows Kathy Scruggs, a real woman, as played by Olivia Wilde, sleeping with a source in order to get Richard Jewell's name, which is not what happened… Just because the story didn't seem bad enough as it was. And… if you talk about what actually happened, then you have to be deeply critical about the FBI…” — Robert (79:49)

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Important Timestamps

• 03:36–05:27: Introduction of Steven Hatfill (future episode protagonist); how the real culprit in this story is the FBI/justice system/media.
• 11:40–16:07: Richard Jewell’s early life, yearning for police work, and early career mishaps.
• 18:16–22:16: Discussion of the ideals vs. reality of police work, citing statistics on police crime.
• 33:41–35:40: Jewell’s campus cop days; overzealous conduct and conflicts with students and management.
• 36:16–46:02: The Olympic Park bombing—Jewell’s actions and how his seriousness saved lives.
• 48:32–53:40: The pivot from hero-to-suspect; JEwell’s old boss sows doubt, and the FBI acts.
• 59:19–62:35: How the Atlanta Journal Constitution published Jewell’s name as a suspect and shaped the nation’s perception.
• 71:50–73:17: The ordeal of surveillance, media harassment, public shaming, and the impact on Jewell’s life.
• 76:49–77:08: FBI quietly drops Jewell as a suspect; no meaningful apology or reparations.
• 77:53–80:21: The legacy of the case in media—including the Eastwood film’s new distortions.

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Episode Tone and Takeaways

The tone is irreverent, sardonic, and deeply critical—typical of “Behind the Bastards”—blending dark humor, strong opinions, and historical analysis. The episode is highly sympathetic to Jewell as a victim of systemic injustice and eager to highlight structural failures, not individual villainy. The hosts are blunt, using humor to cope with and highlight the absurdity and cruelty of institutional failures.

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For Listeners:

This episode is a cautionary exploration of how institutions eager to salvage their own reputation and media motivated by profit can destroy innocent lives. Richard Jewell’s mistreatment foreshadows other botched investigations and sets up the next episode’s focus on the anthrax attacks and Steven Hatfill.

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Next Time:

Part Two will look at the aftermath of 9/11 and how a similar pattern of media and law enforcement failure unfolded with the 2001 anthrax attacks and the scapegoating of Steven Hatfill. Stay tuned.

Transcript

[Courtney Kosak]

Call Zone Media.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Oh, boy. It's behind the Bastards. The podcast that you listen to, if you're listening to it. If you don't listen to it, then you don't know what I'm saying. So you know what? I hate you. But I don't hate my guest for this episode, Courtney Kosak. Courtney, hello. How you doing?

[Courtney Kosak]

So good to see you again.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Good to see you again. How have you been since last we lest we talked about somebody who was really bad.

[Courtney Kosak]

Yeah, well, lots of bad people that I hear about every day in the news. But I have been like deep into working on my book, which is just full of people from my past, so. Oh, that's what I've been working on.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Hopefully not the worst people in all of history.

[Courtney Kosak]

Only a few.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Only a few. I mean, you did have that longtime friendship with Muammar Gaddafi, but, you know, tragically, that ended badly. We all did. Look, he was cool at one point in time. He was not. So, Courtney, you got something to plug? You want to drop that before we get into our bastard for this episode? Because we got a weird one for you this week.

[Courtney Kosak]

Well, yeah, I just want to. My book is called Girl Gone Wild. It is my coming of age memoir. It's my debut. Yeah. I'm so tempted to just ask you a million questions about your book writing process, but we'll save that for another podcast.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Oh, it's bad.

[Courtney Kosak]

Yeah. I'm just so, so excited that it's going to be out in March. It's available for pre order and it's all thrilling.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Yeah, Courtney. So speaking of my process, my process for writing a book is mostly to get delayed writing that book so I can continue writing podcasts. And this week the podcast that I have written in lieu of finishing my book is about. This is a weird one, right? This is normally a podcast about the worst people in all of history. And we have a bastard for this week. And our bastard for this week is a really interesting guy. His name is Steve Hatfill and he was recently made special advisor to the Trump administration for pandemic preparedness. He has some relevant background here. He spent most of his career as a pathologist and a biological weapons expert, training US soldiers in how to deal with biological weapons, specifically weaponized viruses. And like a lot of people in Trump world, he's recently gotten into what we might call the alt science side of medicine. In 2020, he advised the first Trump administration on COVID 19 and became a major advocate of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment yeah, he's one of those guys. And in an article a couple of years ago, the Washington Post cited his statements as evidence supporting the idea that the Trump administration neglected pandemic response after losing the 2020 election. Quote, quote. Steven Hatfill, a virologist who advised White House trade advisor Peter Navarro, said he was intimately involved in the pandemic response. Repeatedly described in the emails how election stuff took precedence over coronavirus even as the outbreak surged. More than 250,000 new coronavirus cases per day in January. Now, with the election so close, Covid is taking a back seat, yet the disease is rearing its ugly head again. Hatfill wrote to an outside colleague. In October of 2020, following the election, which was disputed by Trump, Hatfill wrote another email that he personally shifted over to the election fraud investigation in novemb November. Which says a lot about, like, how the people close to Trump view themselves, where it's like, well, I'm a virologist and a pathologist, but I'll get involved in the election fraud. So I guess that makes sense for me to be working on during a pandemic more than the pandemic.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Courtney Kosak]

The priority. I can't believe that's the priority.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Everybody's focusing on the election now. I don't care that you're the virus guy and there's a virus. Get on the election shit.

[Courtney Kosak]

All hands on deck.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Yeah. And true, true to form, during that brief window, Hatfill traveled to Arizona to help organize a plan B for Trump's legal fight to retain the presidency. When a colleague emailed him on January 5 to ask why he wasn't fixing the virus, he replied that the election thing had gotten out of control. And I go where my team goes, which at that point was to contest results in Nevada. Now, when it comes to this stuff, I have no trouble condemning Hatfill. I don't like him. I think he's a bad person. I think he's done bad things for the world. And here's where it gets weird. He's kind of the protagonist of our story this week, Right? Because this is. We're going to be telling a story and we're going to be telling two stories, really. And in both of these stories, the bad guy is the FBI and more broadly, our entire justice system, Right? And the media and how the media interacts with the justice system around high profile cases, you know, when people are desperate, desperately trying to figure out who did it. And at a point at which, you know, the cops decide, literally, we need to Throw some name out there and the media decides content. Content, Right. Like that's the evil here. We're talking about two different terrorist attacks where innocent people were accused by both law enforcement and journalists of having done terrible things. And Hatfill is one of those innocent people. So he's like a bad person. But. But he's also really unique among members of the Trump administration in that all of them hate the media. Hatfill is a really good reason to hate the mainstream media. They did him so fucking dirty. And it's a very weird story for.

[Courtney Kosak]

That reason, this situation. They did him so dirty that we're about to talk about.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Absolutely, absolutely, completely destroyed his life for years for no reason. Like just based purely on bad police work and lazy reporting.

[Courtney Kosak]

Like.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Like that's what happened here. And so kind of what we're talking about, in addition to the justice system sure doesn't work very well, does it? Cops aren't very good at their jobs, are they? We're also telling a story of this is how law enforcement and the media, kind of feeding off of each other, created a monster. Because the present day, Steven Hatfill, who was a member of the Trump administration, is created to a significant extent by how much this destroys his life and pisses him off. Like, this really radicalizes him in a major way. And so it's interesting to understand for that perspective too, because we are talking about a bad guy, but he's not the bad guy in the story we're telling, which I haven't done before. So I'm excited for this kind of episode.

[Courtney Kosak]

I am so conflicted. I feel like you're doing me dirty a little bit. You're like, no, the Trump guy is the good guy.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

He's not the good guy. Let's be really clear. Protagonist, right? Protagonist does not mean good guy.

[Courtney Kosak]

Okay?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

But he's not the wronged person in his story. But we are telling two stories. And basically this week we're going to be talking about first, the Olympic park bombing, which occurred at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. And we're talking about the man who was wrongfully blamed for. For that attack and how that happened. And then. And this is where Hatfill comes in. We're going to be talking about the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States after 9, 11. Cause Hatfill is the guy who gets blamed for that.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

And so that's what we're talking about this week, is how both of these. Cause these are both similar cases and they. They are emblematic of similar problems that still exist within law enforcement and the media to this day.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

So that's what we're talking about.

[Courtney Kosak]

Ooh, I'm on the edge of my seat. Let's do it.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Yeah. Yeah, this'll be fun.

[Courtney Kosak]

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[Courtney Kosak]

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[Courtney Kosak]

He's like a Chicago cop.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

He's like, yes, yes. Strong Chicago cop vibes. That's what he was born to do. And he's never gonna quite get there, tragically for Richard. So he idolizes the police. This is the only job he ever wants. He's one of these people who grows up believing the police are heroes, surrounded on all sides by dangerous criminals, holding up society and protecting the innocents through sheer force of will and commitment to the law. So, you know, he's pretty propagandized, right? Like A lot of us were as kids. And when he grows up, you know, he doesn't immediately get into law enforcement. His first job, I think, is working at and eventually managing a tcby yogurt shop. But he shows some promise that, like, oh, maybe this guy, you know, maybe this law enforcement's what he's actually going to do. Because while a manager of the store, he stops a robbery in progress, which you're not supposed to do when managing a retail store or a food store. You're not supposed to do that in any store, stop a robbery, but he does. I don't have any more details than that, but it gets him written up in local papers and it fuels his desire to get behind a badge. He's like, oh, man, this is what I made for. Like, look at what I was able to do behind the desk at a tcby treat shop. Give me a gun and a badge, I'll really fuck some shit up if.

[Courtney Kosak]

I can do this with ice cream. You gotta wait and see what I got.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Yeah, exactly. It's amazing they didn't just hand him a gun and a badge right then and there.

[Courtney Kosak]

Didn't Clint Eastwood make a movie about this guy?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Yes, he did. Yes, he did. Okay, and we'll talk about that because it's gross.

[Courtney Kosak]

Yeah.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

When he's 22, Jewel got hired to clerk for the Small Business association, where he met and befriended a lawyer named Watson Bryant. He's good at the job and he earns a reputation for being always on the ball. He's very on time, he's very outgoing, always puts in 110%. But he got placed there through a temp agency, and when the contract ran up, he took a job that brought him closer to his dream career, working as a detective for the Marriott hotel chain. I did not realize. I thought that was a joke in American Dad. I didn't know hotels had detectives, but apparently they do.

[Courtney Kosak]

That's the perfect job, really for him. He should have kind of stopped there, I think.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

I don't want to be mean to the hotel detectives at the world, but imagine going out on a date and like, so what do you feel like? Well, I'm a hotel detective. A hotel detective, huh? Are you, like, trying to figure out, like, what the stain was on the mattress? Because, like, it's come with the black light. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just looking it up. Just walking into everyone with a black light going, yep, uh huh, yep. More. More people coming. Same every day. I think somebody did cocaine off that table maybe.

[Sophie]

I don't know.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Could be more come. In 1990, he gets hired as a jailer for the Habersham County Sheriff's Office. Right now, this is kind of a do nothing job. You're sitting in a small smoke filled room, occasionally dealing with arrestees. It's not what he wants to be doing. He doesn't like it, but it's his foot in the door. And I guess in the 90s it was, maybe there were enough cops. Weren't like today you would just find some police department in a big city that is offering like $20,000 signing bonuses because there's not enough cops because people don't want to do that anymore. But I guess back then you had to really like work your way up to being a cop, right?

[Courtney Kosak]

That's interesting.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

For whatever reason, I don't know, maybe it's just where he lives in Georgia, or maybe he's just not, doesn't. I don't know, maybe he doesn't go. Maybe there was an easier way to do it that he just didn't do. I don't know. But yeah, he becomes a cop through working at the jail, right? Like he does this for like a year or so and it's, it's one of the, you can tell it's frustrating him because like working at the jail, he's almost a real cop. He could, like, he could taste it, right? He could taste the authority. And so he starts to get over eager. One of my sources for this episode is an epic long form article in Vanity Fair by Marie Britter. And she writes, this is while he's, he's still a jailer. Quote, he arrested a couple making too much noise in a hot tub at an apartment building where he did part time security work. He was arrested for impersonating an officer and after pleading guilty to a lesser charge, was placed on probation on the condition that he seek psychological counseling. So you get that like this guy wants to be a cop so bad, it's kind of a problem.

[Courtney Kosak]

Like, man, you're turning him into a peeping Tom.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

First off, cops generally don't arrest people for being noisy in a hot tub. Even a cop is usually gonna be like, hey, we got a noise complaint. Chill out, right? Like this guy just like busting in and arresting people. You have to imagine he had an illegally carried gun, that he was just like, these hot tub guys pull something on me, I'm just gonna blast them. We're being a little mean to Richard here. He is legitimately a hero in the end. But like, this is funny. I'm sorry. This Is just funny. Richard, this was a stupid thing that you did. He's dead now. It's fine. He doesn't care. So if a guy is so eager to be a cop that the instant he gets a job sitting in the same room as a cop, he illegally arrests a couple for a noise complaint, that might be a warning sign not to give that person a badge and gun. But somehow Jewel worked his way up to being hired as a deputy in 1991. He goes to the northeast Georgia.

[Courtney Kosak]

Fucking America.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

I love it. Let's go. And it's one of those. Yeah, he goes to northeast Georgia political academy. He does well, he graduates in the upper 25% of the class. He said that he read the Georgia legal code for fun. Like, he's obsessed with cop stuff. So I have no doubt that when it came to the in class portions of it, he was right. He aced everything, right? Like he's been. He's been prepped for this forever.

[Courtney Kosak]

I don't know how he did the obstacle course.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

That might have been harder for him. Although this is Georgia, you know, we're not talking about a lot of cops who are like fucking superstar athletes in a rural Georgia sheriff's department. So he becomes a real cop. He now has a real badge and a real gun, and. And he is ready to get out there and fight crime. Alas, poor Richard is about to run face to face into a reality that it's. I don't know if he ever really fully accepts it.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

But this is like the great tragedy of Richard Jewell's life, which is that he wants to be a cop. And I say this as a guy who doesn't want there to be cops. He wants to be a cop for what you would say are the right reasons. He cares deeply about the law. He thinks it is important to abide by the law, and he wants to protect people.

[Courtney Kosak]

Check, check, check.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

That's why he wants to become a cop. Police. And this is not me, the left wing radical saying this. The supreme court has ruled police have no duty to protect people. And it is a fact, an undeniable fact, that police all over the country break the law regularly, both in pursuing suspects and lying on the stand about them and falsifying evidence and planting evidence and using physical force that they are not legally supposed to be using. Cops break the law constantly. They are not there to protect people, and they do not uphold the law. These are facts. Right, Robert, did you ever have.

[Courtney Kosak]

In your, like, young republican days, did you ever. Did you think ops were good? I'm just curious.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I wanted to be a cop when I was a kid.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Courtney Kosak]

Really.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

And I wanted to be a cop for the worst possible reason. Because at 18, if you become a cop, you get to carry a gun while off duty. And normally you have to wait until you're 21 to carry a gun, which is the wrong reason to become a cop.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

That's why you shouldn't let 18 year olds become cops, which they almost did.

[Courtney Kosak]

You'd be the biggest crime committing cop we know.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

And when I was, when I wanted to be a cop, which is again, when I was like 18, 19, part of why it was possible for me to have become one is that Dallas had just had to can a shitload of officers over a massive fake drug scandal. So, like, recruitment was down and they were desperate for people.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Courtney Kosak]

You could have had a totally different life.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Yeah, I don't think I would have made it long. Like literally within like a month or two of making my first calls to the police and like setting up that, starting that process. I started experimenting with drugs. And as soon as I took two CI, I was like, oh, I'm not gonna be a cop. Oh, what the fuck was I thinking? Absolutely. Are you kidding me? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I want to do drugs. That sounds way better than being a cop. It was for about 10 years. And then at a certain point, you have to do less drugs. Heard, yeah, that's my DARE class for kids. Kids. I'm looking at this room, I'm seeing a lot of 17 and 18 year olds. You guys got a solid 12 years before you gotta curtail your drug use, you know, so really enjoy this time. You know, test everything for fentanyl, but other than that, go wild, you know, whatever you can fit in your body, throw it in there, don't ask questions, just do it and run off into the sunset. It'll be great when you're 29. Maybe start, start, start pulling back on that throttle, you know, hit the brakes. What? Jesus Christ. I always give our child listeners good advice. No tranq, no fentanyl, no tranq, no fentanyl, no tranq. Maybe try crocodile. If you get a chance to try that weird Russian drug that melts your skin, try that shit, you know, it sounds dope. I never got to do crocodile. I regret it now that I'm in my sober era. Gas station sober. Maybe they'll make gas station crocodile. Anyway, we were talking about how cops break the law a lot. And anyways, again, I have My opinions on this that are grounded in fact, but I also want to cite facts. And if we're gonna make a statement. Cops break the law constantly. So a 2016 study by researchers at Bowling Green University looked into nearly 7,000 cases of police officers being arrested and charged with crimes between 2005 and 2011. They concluded, quote, police crimes are not uncommon. Now, one of the things this study notes is that only about a thousand officers are arrested each year and charged with crimes. But a lot more cops than that commit number one cops. It's very easy for them to get away with crimes. The number of cops who break the law and don't get caught because they're cops is exponentially higher than a thousand. But there's also a lot of cases and there's documentation of how often there's interviews with other cops that will talk about this, of police breaking the law and having it swept under the rug.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Well, they'll get a warning from, you know, maybe someone above them or something. But, like, look, you know, just get your car home. I know you're drunk tonight because you're another officer. I'll let you off, you know, as a professional courtesy. You know, we got to protect our own.

[Courtney Kosak]

Yeah.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Again, there's data on this. It happens constantly. That said, the data on when cops do actually fuck up enough to get charged with crimes, the data on what crimes they commit is really interesting. From a summary in a Huffington Post article by Matt Ferner, quote, the alleged crimes cops were arrested for most frequently were simple assault, driving under the influence, and aggravated assault. Altogether, those crimes made up one third of the total cases. There were also a considerable number of sex crime cases, including forcible fondling and forcible rape, about 10% of all cases. And disturbingly, the sex crimes included some victims under the age of 18. If you are looking at the vast majority of child sex abuse is people who are related to the child. When you move out from people who are directly related to the child, the most common people to abuse kids are like, members of the clergy, medical professionals, and police officers. Not in that order necessarily, but yes, because they have access and because they have, you know. Yeah.

[Courtney Kosak]

So wait, sex crimes. And what was the first thing you said?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Oh, driving under the influence. Cops drive drunk all the fucking time in simple assault. Just hitting, beating people, beating spouses. You know, 50% of police officer homes have domestic violence in them.

[Courtney Kosak]

Do you remember that? South Dakota. Was he a cop or a politician?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

40%, something like that. Which one?

[Courtney Kosak]

Just a couple years ago. But he fucking Killed a guy and then drove home. And they thank God. I mean, I think he got away with it.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Well, good for him. You know, we all would hope to be able to get away with at least one murder in our lives. I can't blame a man for that. For just wanting to kill a guy and get away with it. Most normal thing to want. I don't know why I said that. So the most common crime committed by police is also the one they get arrested for the least often, which is lying under oath. This is so common that cops have a term for it called test a lying. And if, you know, I have a friend who became a lawyer and was briefly a prosecutor and stopped being a prosecutor because he was like, I just kept going. I kept sitting down with police officers and saying, are you sure this is accurate? And then when it came to trial, it would be like, they lied.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Like that happened. That happened so many times that I, like, put my ass out there as a prosecutor because a cop told me, no, this is definitely what happened. And they were fucking lying. It happens all the goddamn time. And again, there's documentation about this. This is such a problem that in New York City, prosecutors have a secret database of untrustworthy cops. Again, a secret database of cops that like, yeah, we. If you're a prosecutor, don't let this guy up on the stand. If he's telling you something, it's like, full of shit. But also, we're not going to report this anywhere. More Broadly, in the 1990s, the Mallon Commission carried out a sweeping investigation of the nypd and it found that perjury and falsification of records were routine by police and, quote, the most common form of police cor. You might want to note that those two crimes tend to be committed in order to get a conviction against a defendant.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

If you are lying under oath and falsifying records, the most likely reason you are doing that is because there was a crime and you are pretty sure the guy you got did it, but you can't prove it. So you're lying to make it easier to secure a conviction.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Or you don't know the guy did it or think the guy did it. You just hate him because you're a bigot or you want to fuck his wife or whatever.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

And you're doing that, you know, but the most common crime committed by cops all over is lying under oath and falsifying records. And that those two things are generally done to get people convicted.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Cops lie to get convictions.

[Courtney Kosak]

I love how we Go around saying, like, lying under oath is a felony, like, stealing mail is a felony. It's like, no, you can totally do those things.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

I steal mail all the time, baby, but I don't keep it for myself. I hand it out to other people who don't have enough mail. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I take mail from those, from. It's like it's me living out my Marxist praxis, you know, from each according to their ability to have a lot of mail in their mailbox to those without as much mail in their mailbox. I think that's what Marx was talking about. I didn't make it all the way through capital. I go through all this. This is a bit of a digression from Richard Jewell, but it's important to note that the vast majority of criminal behavior inside our justice system is perpetrated by police officers. And not just police officers, but by people who are in the justice system who are attempting to get convictions and have to futz with the truth in order to secure conviction because the actual evidence isn't strong enough.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

That's an important point. And I know this has been a long digression, but I need to emphasize it a little further. So I'm going to read one quote from a very good Slate article by Mark Stern titled the Police Lie all the Time. Can anything stop them? When NYPD officers are accused of illegal behavior, the department itself usually investigates, then conceals its findings and imposes at worst a slap on the risk, like brief paid leave. Prosecutors could separately investigate, but they have little incentive to question an officer's story. If they know an officer is lying, they cannot legally rely on his testimony. If they remain in the dark, they can still use his perjury to clinch a conviction. Moreover, prosecutors and police work together to put defendants behind bars, developing a team mentality that prevents prosecutors from scrutinizing officers testimony with a prose. As long as officers lies cannot be proved false, prosecutors have little reason to question their account of events. As a New York assistant district attorney told the Mullen Commission, taking money is considered dirty, but perjury for the sake of an arrest is accepted. It's become more casual.

[Sophie]

Great.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

This takes us to Richard Jewell. But first, you know what Richard Jewell would have loved if he were alive to see this?

[Courtney Kosak]

Ads.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

He would have loved ads supporting podcasts. That would have been. That would have been Richard Jewell's favorite thing. Oh, tragic.

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[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

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[Courtney Kosak]

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[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

This thing is ancient.

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[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

We're back and we're talking about police officers lying under oath in order to secure arrests and convictions, right? And Richard Jewell I tell I've just told you this guy wants to be a cop more than anything. He idolizes cops. He is not the kind of guy I don't think who would have lied to get an arrest or to get a conviction. He is a true believer.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

And that's gonna cause him problems, right? Because, and I'm not saying this to like, I don't think he's a. He's not a person. I would consider, I don't consider his ethics to be ethical.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Like, I don't think it's ethical to arrest people for making noise in a hot tub.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

And he's very serious about a lot of stuff that I don't agree with. But he's consistent, he's internally consistent. He does believe in the law. And he's not a liar.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

He's a very. He described himself as a very methodical person. He liked to plan out everything. He read the Georgia legal code for fun. And he's not gonna fit in with the sheriff's department because he wants to be a good cop. And they have a very different idea about what a good cop is.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

He described the rural county he worked in as like going into, back into the 70s in terms of law enforcement. In other words, this is a place where there's good old boys who enjoy limited immunity to crimes and there's other people, skin color dependent, who are. You're much more free to harass or hassle.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

And that's not the kind of cop Jewel wants to be.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

If this were. He's kind of like Sergeant Nicholas angel in Hot Fuzz, right? Where he's like, he's, he's, he's too good for the rest of the department. Except he's not very good at the job either, right? Like he has really good and very strict intentions, but he's not like the most competent at police work. And he's also pissing everyone off because he takes a lot of stuff seriously that they don't take seriously. And he doesn't like it when other people are kind of more loosey goosey with the rules. So he gets sidelined mostly into dealing with car accidents, right? Because that's the part of the job he does well and nobody else really wants to do it. He works really hard. He puts in 14 hour days. He volunteers to host community events. He's the cop that he'll go talk to a school or whatever. Like he loves doing that kind of shit. But his fellow officers are kind of just after they get to know him, waiting for an excuse to shit can him and get him off of the force. Right? Because again, he's kind of cramping their style and he's attempting to. The story he tells is that he was trying to pursue someone and he crashes his police car in 1995. And that's the chance these people had been waiting for.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

So he is demoted, he loses his badge. He's offered to stay working at the jail, but Richard is unwilling to return to that kind of life. So he resigns from the force, and he gets the kind of job that you get when you're a failed cop. He becomes a campus cop.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Courtney Kosak]

Perfect.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Ah, yeah. That's the. It's the circle of cop. So Piedmont College hires him, and he immediately gets a reputation again. He's. He's super diligent. Like, he. He will absolutely write people up for every infraction he sees, and he will pursue the kind of infractions, you know, college campus cops generally, you understand, like, at certain times and stuff, people are gonna party, there's gonna be underage drinking, and you don't always go after that.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Because, like, for one thing, it's kind of impossible to police at all. So you. You. You kind of triage that sort of shit.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Richard can't stand any kind of violation of the rules, and so he goes after kids whenever he sees any kind of infraction. He's issuing tickets. He's trying to arrest people. He is very aggressive about this to the point that the president of the college gets calls three or four times a week from different people complaining to him about Jules behavior.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Like, he thinks my job is to be a cop and the real job is to basically be a babysitter and make sure kids don't die.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Courtney Kosak]

Yeah. That they don't hurt themselves. I'm sure they love to fuck with him, though. Oh, my God. He's like the dream.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Absolutely. And again, he does sound like the most annoying campus cop. And it was during his campus cop days that Richard would notch his one real victory in the war on crime. During a manhunt for a suspected burglar, he spotted the culprit hiding near the top of a tree. Writing for Vanity Fair, Marie Brenner notes that Jewell had arguments over turf with other officers. He described himself as the kind of cop who was eager to track down people partying after hours and call their parents.

[Courtney Kosak]

Oh, no.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

And this obsess. Yeah. This all clashes with what his employers want him to do. The president of the university repeatedly begs him, hey, man, calm the down. Like, ease up. This is not what we want you doing. And Richard refuses to bend. So he resigns rather than accept that some kids are going to drink on campus, and maybe you need to chill out.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

So once this job falls through, he finds himself back In Atlanta, looking for a new job and living with his mother. Now, because of the way this all timed out, the Olympics is coming to town, right? This is the Atlanta Olympics. I don't know why the fuck you'd want to hold an Olympics in a city that has such nightmarish summer weather and horrible traffic. But they only host cities in places with horrible traffic or host Olympics in places with horrible traffic, which is why they're doing it in LA next. Maybe the only city worse than Atlanta to do the Olympics in. But good fucking luck, you Olympic dickshits. I hope you enjoy it.

[Courtney Kosak]

I remember watching this one. Great gymnastics.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Yeah, great gymnastics. Great terrorism. All sorts of good stuff in this Olympics. So Richard is excited for the Olympics because, you know, they're a disaster for any city's economy, right? They never really work out very well in the long run, but in the short term, they work out really well for one group of people, which is security guards. Because you need a shitload of security guards standing around all of these different venues and, you know, areas of the city that have been, like, walled off for the event to tell people, hey, you can't be here. Or to help, generally to help people, like, fight, figure out where they're supposed to go.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

You're kind of a glorified, like, help desk a lot of the time. Yeah, help desk is a security guard in this situation. But you need a lot of those guys, right? Cause it's the fucking Olympics. So. Jewel later recalled thinking, I thought working at the Centennial Olympic park will look really good on my resume. I don't know that that's the case, but that's kind of man Richard was. So he gets the job easily enough. And he brings the same attitude to this next gig that he brought to his previous career as a real cop. And his actual job, as best as I can put it together, was to stand overnight by a sound and light tower near the main stage area. The people who'd planned for the Atlanta Olympics did a terrible job, as is always the case when people plan for an Olympics. And so the whole downtown area, the whole Olympic park downtown, which is like 21 acres, was constantly clogged. It was a nightmare. Athletes are regularly late for their events because they just, like, can't get through this shit. Almost nobody who's in this park is from Atlantis. They don't know where they're going anyway. And everything's like. Like, walled off and fenced off. In a weird way. It's just a fucking Titanic mess. So his job is helping to Manage foot traffic and help lost people get where they're going. Now, Marie Brenner talked extensively with Richard Jewell for her piece. And he gives us in some of these interviews we get clips, like pieces of his day to day life that do not make this sound like a demanding job.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

This is on paper supposed to be kind of a do nothing gig. Quote, Jewel had a routine. He would check in and fill the ice chest he kept by a bench at his station. Jewel liked to offer water and Cokes to pregnant women or policemen who stopped to rest. Those are the two guys who deserve cokes, pregnant women and cops.

[Courtney Kosak]

One of them probably shouldn't have cokes, but that's okay.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

One of them probably shouldn't have a Coke. I don't know. Fuck it, a little bit of caffeine I think we get too, we're too protective of fetuses these days.

[Courtney Kosak]

I agree, I agree. Eat sushi, whatever, it doesn't matter.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Eat sushi, have some coffee, little bit of crack cocaine. No, probably not bad for you. What?

[Courtney Kosak]

That's where we juggle on just a.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Little bit, a little bit. It's cleaner. As Hunter Biden reminded us all, it's.

[Courtney Kosak]

Cleaner than regular too.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

It's basically like an apple. So very little is expected of Richard Jewell in his job as security guard. But as usual, he takes the job very seriously. This is one thing I'll say for him, he doesn't consider in a normal instance, maybe we'd call this sad, but he doesn't consider being a security guard to be any less serious than being a police officer, right? He treats the job the same way. And thank God he did because he's going to save a shitload of people's lives. This is really like a wild moment of like this guy. Every other thing else I've said about him is this is like the fucking setup to a very depressing, not Adam Sandler Rob Schneider movie, right? Or I guess Paul Blart Mall Cop might be a better fucking comparison or whatever. But like, it doesn't sound like we're setting up for this guy to have be very impressive. But he is because again, he treats this job like it's life and death. And it's about to be. A bit after midnight on July 27, 1996, Jewel is doing his rounds and he notices that the people at Budworld, which I'm assuming was a pop up bar sponsored by Budweiser, were getting kind of rowdy and loud.

[Sophie]

Now.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

I wanted to know what Bud World was. So in order to in an effort to do my due diligence, I googled budworld Olympics, which brought up this television ad, which I'm just gonna get at everybody so we can. Before we move on here, everyone just needs a little hit of the 1990s. Just like, just like one quick dose, you know, just a little bump to get us through.

[Courtney Kosak]

Ooh, I can't wait.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Okay, world, everyone's gotta add something to the party. Mexico, you've got the salsa. Tahiti, Sunsets, about two weeks worth. France, oh la la.

[Sophie]

We'll get back to you.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

France, Greece, you're off the hook. You started the whole thing. Malaysia. Yeah, some of those. Norway, you're in charge of the ice. Us, we've got the Bud. The Bud World party during the 96 Summer Games.

[Sophie]

Cute.

[Courtney Kosak]

Now everybody else has culture. We got beer.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Yeah, that was my question. Like, who is this most racist to? Because weirdly enough, I think it's Americ, where it's like, oh yeah, all these other cultures got there. I mean, I guess Norway just being like ice, that's kind of fucked up too. Oh, the 90s. Okay, now that we've all gotten that, that, that quick, quick, hot hit of the 90s, let's get, let's get back to the terrorist attack that we're talking about. So Jewel, Richard Jewell hears people getting drunk and rowdy at the Bud World event where you're supposed to get drunk and rowdy, right? And worse, he sees that people have spilled out of the event itself and there's like leaving beers on the ground and wandering around and you know, being a problem. And him being the campus cop who got fired for being too angry at people partying, he leaps into action and he goes off to report the trash and the quote, carousing. And this may be the only time in history where a rent a cop being overly a buzzkill works out. Because on his way to report the not really a crime in progress, he notices something. Someone has left a green military style backpack lying on the ground unattended. So Richard reports the bag and a small team of law enforcement bears down on the area and they start looking around to try to find the bag's owner. In interviews after the fact, Jewel would recall that he didn't take this seriously at first. They'd found a similar unattended bag a few days ago and he expected this to end like that had, right? So as soon as he calls out the bag and you know, cops start trying to figure out who the bag belongs to, he winds up in an argument with A group of drunk people who like smudged a camera lens. And then he kind of realizes, like, they're not finding the owner of the bag. So he walks over to this gbi, the George's Bureau of Investigation. It's like the state FBI for Georgia. And he asked the guy, are you gonna open it? And then here's Jewell quote. At that point, it was not a concern. I was thinking to myself, well, I'm sure one of these people left it on the ground. When Davis, the GBI agent, came back and said, nobody said it was theirs, that's when the little hairs on the back of my head began to stand up. I thought, oh, this is not good. So he and that agent clear a 25 foot square. They start getting people away. They're like, everyone needs to clear the area. Clear the area. And they clear a 25 foot square around the bag.

[Courtney Kosak]

Nobody looks in the bag or like, that's.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

You don't want to do that because who knows if that's what triggers it, right? If like opening it or whatever would say set it off or something. You as a security guard and some random guy from the GBI shouldn't like obviously bomb people, but like, you don't want some guy who has no fucking idea what he's doing with explosives to look into that bag, right?

[Courtney Kosak]

I just don't look at a. I totally agree, but I don't look at a backpack and I'm like, bomb. But I guess in this situation you have to.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Yes, thank God he did, right? Like, yeah, it is like, this is one of those things where I have to say nearly everyone would have just been like, it's just a fucking bag. But. But it wasn't. And Richard was in the right, you know, he was waiting his whole life of being like, overly paranoid and fucking serious about shit for the one time in which it mattered and saved a shitload of people's lives. So he does a circle while they're clearing people. He starts sticking his head into different structures in the park and basically saying, hey, get out of whatever. Because there's, you know, there's different. Like you've got these like booths where people are like filming for different and like yelling at people, get the fuck out now. Get the fuck out now.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

And he deserves a lot of credit here. He flips from normal day wandering around angry at drunk people to, I have to clear this area. Something really bad could be happening. And he does this before he knows there's a bomb there. He just. I think that it must just Be instinct or whatever. But as a result, because of how many people he and this other guy Davis clear away when the bomb goes off and it's sometime after 1 in the morning, it's like a little after 1am It. It doesn't harm nobody.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

But it harms only a fraction of the people who might otherwise have been present. Like the. Like the. If the pipe bomb, if the area had been as crowded as it was supposed to be, I mean, it could have been a dozen or more people dead, like potentially dozens and dozens injured, you know, and like, how many people died? Two deaths, one directly and one indirectly. And like 111 injuries. So if they hadn't cleared the area, it killed two people and injured more than a hundred after they had cleared the area. If they hadn't cleared the area, if it was still full of drunk people and camera crews and the like, limbs all over, just a nightmare, like, it would have been much worse. They saved a lot of people's lives, right? I mean, easily more than a dozen lives. I don't know how. It's impossible to say how many, but I would have been shocked if. If it had been. If it was any less than that.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

This really is a significant thing that Jewel does and Jewel and this other guy Davis do. But Jewel is the guy who notices it first. Probably nobody would have picked it out if he hadn't.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Because this was his area and it was his job to be on guard. And he was right. Which kind of justifies his entire life up to this point.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

You know, and that should be a happy story, right? This kind of hapless guy who couldn't hack it as a cop, rent a cop, never got respect. He's finally a hero. He's legitimately a hero.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

They cleared an estimated 75 to a hundred people away from the area. So again, at least another 75 to 100 people would have been in the blast radius if they had not done what they did. Nancy Coleman for the New York Times writes, quote, the pipe bomb inside the bag exploded minutes later. Alice S. Hawthorne, a spectator from Albany, Georgia, died in the blast. Meli Uzunyul, a Turkish cameraman running to cover the explosion, died of a heart attack soon after.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

So again, and that's, you know, a death from a heart attack. So potentially assuming that hadn't happened, like, you're talking one death directly from the explosion as opposed to an additional 75 to 100 people being in the blast radius.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Like, not. Not hard to imagine how much worse it could have been in. Jewel kind of becomes a hero immediately. Like he it. It's very clear from the jump that he's the guy who spotted this and what he had done. And he gets interviewed by local and national news later that day he tells cnn, the only thing I wish we could have done is got everybody out of the area. I feel for the victims and their families and I mean, it's the Olympics. It's supposed to be a time of joy for the world and it's a very, very bad thing. Now obviously he's traumatized by the explosion. He's there, he's at ground zero. He sees the injuries, he sees the person who's killed. So that he's fucked up by this, obviously. But he's also undeniably the hero. And in a better world, he would have gotten the validation he'd always sought and it probably would have been good for his career.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

I have trouble if this had been where the story ended, I have trouble imagining him not getting hired by a police department somewhere, if only to get the good PR of bringing on this hero security guard.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Courtney Kosak]

He could definitely work for ICE now for sure, right? Well, yeah, just kidding.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Unfortunately, the world is not a just place. And instead of, you know, this leading to him actually having a career, you know, in law enforcement, this nearly ruins his life, right? Like this absolutely shatters him for quite some time.

[Courtney Kosak]

So from the trauma, are you about to.

[Sophie]

No.

[Courtney Kosak]

Okay.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Yeah. So as soon as the blast happened, Jules old boss at Piedmont College, Ray Clear, sees his former employee on TV and he gets pissed because he didn't like Jewel. They'd fallen out when Richard caught a kid smoking pot and insisted on arresting and charging the boy. And Clear was like, no, just like citem, you don't. We don't need any arrests of students over marijuana. That's like, don't, don't do that.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

And obviously Clear is in the right here, but because he doesn't like Richard Jewellery, he doesn't trust him. And he thinks that he's. Because he's kind of been. He's this weird guy, right? He's like weirdly into being a cop. He's just had rubbed Clear the wrong way. And so Clear calls the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and he reports, hey, this guy who everyone is saying is the hero. I think he's got a lot of attention seeking behavior and bad judgment and maybe you should take another look into him, right? Basically saying maybe, maybe he set it up.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

And you could almost see, you could see a logic there. Okay. Sure. This guy had failed out of being a cop. He wants to be a hero. Maybe he planted a bomb so that he could get everyone away from it. Right now that's a stretch. And there's not any evidence ever that this was the case. So again, I think this is just a guy who didn't, like Richard calling the GBI and trying to, like, out of jealousy or something, fuck up his former employee. But the tip gets passed along to the FBI, and the FBI takes it seriously and they send out investigators to look into every aspect of Jules life.

[Courtney Kosak]

Robert, I would never out you to the FBI. I promise.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Thank you, Sophie.

[Sophie]

That.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

That is absolutely. Doesn't sound like something someone who just outed me to the FBI would say.

[Courtney Kosak]

I would never do that. I would never do that.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

What if I arrested a kid for smoking pot?

[Courtney Kosak]

Poor form. Even with enemies. I think to go out of your way to fuck with someone's life, like, you should be evidence. This guy was just like, hmm, I don't know.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

He's got. He's an attention seeker. I don't trust him.

[Courtney Kosak]

He's like. He's like, that's a weird guy. I didn't like him. Let me call the feds.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Sir, you were being. I was on your back for the pot thing, but you are the dick here now, right?

[Courtney Kosak]

Yeah.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

And you know, the initial investigation, and honestly, any responsible investigation would have looked into Jules a little.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Because he was there. Sure. And you always like, that's. It's not unreasonable to look into the guy.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

But being the FBI, they pursue this in the most fucked up and scummy way possible. So two days after the bombing, Jewel gets a phone call from a friend of his with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. This is like somebody that he had been social with, I think. Somebody that he idolized because this guy is a real, you know, Special Agent.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

That's kind of what I want to do.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

And so the FBI, when they find out that there's someone in the Jersey Bureau of Investigation who knows Jewel, they're like, hey, he likes you.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

He thinks you're his friend. Get some info out of him. No. Yeah. So this guy at the GBI calls Joel and he's like, hey, buddy. Who I probably hadn't talked to in weeks. I was out of work the day the bombing happened. Mind if I come over to your house and you tell me what happened? I'm just really curious about how you were such a hero. Obviously, this guy's wearing a wire the whole time, right? So Jewel is Unaware though he thinks that his cool friend in the GBI is proud of him and just wants to hear about his triumph and mayhem. Who knows, maybe I could get a job at the GBI after this, right? You know, having just saved all these people's lives now again, Jewel does not catch on. But, but what's happened here is at this early stage the feds have gone from considering Richard Jewell a hero to within days suspecting him of being the bomber, right? Almost immediately he becomes their prime. Like there's a couple of guys earlier as we'll talk about who they'd seen. But very quickly he becomes the primary focus of the investigation.

[Courtney Kosak]

Really fucked up.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

And the reasoning why they focus on him boils mostly down to laziness. And this is my opinion here, but I think there's some professional jealousy going on here too because, because the FBI's out in force at every Olympics in the U.S. obviously the GBI is there cuz it's in Georgia. These are the premier law enforcement agencies right in the region that are supposed to be making sure a bombing doesn't happen. They both fuck up. A bomber gets through security with a bomb, enters the Olympic park area and sets off the bomb without being caught. And the only reason it wasn't worse and that dozens of people aren't dead is that a rent a cop outperformed the entire federal law enforcement apparatus. All of the millions of dollars in gear, the bomb sniffing dogs, the metal detectors, none of that did any shit. None of these highly paid special agents figured out. Fuck, none of them caught anyone BEF anyone before this happened. It was a rent a cop walking back to complain about some drunk kid who spotted the bomb and saved the day.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

And I think that pisses off and embarrasses the FBI.

[Courtney Kosak]

Sounds like it.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

I think the attitude for a lot of people in the bureau is like, and particularly as we'll talk about, the guy who's the director of the bureau at the time is like well this looks really bad for us. Unless that fucker was the bomber. Then, then, then the FBI gets to be the hero again, right? Once we kill to take this guy down right now. You know who would never sell you out to the FBI?

[Courtney Kosak]

The products and services. Yeah, the products and services that support this.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

I mean honestly, several of our sponsors would sell you out to the FBI Anyway, here's some ads.

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[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

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[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

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[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

We're back. So the FBI is embarrassed and this embarrassment Also, it's not just that. Like they'd fucked up and let a bomb go off at the Olympic park and the rent a cop was the guy who caught it. But this has been a bad. This is. We're talking 96. This has been a bad decade so far for the FBI and for federal law enforcement as a whole A couple of years ago, you had Ruby Ridge and then Waco, and Waco is still very fresh in the public mind. And then obviously, the Oklahoma City bombing happens a year before this bombing.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

The FBI fails to stop it.

[Courtney Kosak]

That's literally the trifecta.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Yeah. Like, they don't look good right now. And the fact that yet another bomber bombed yet another high profile place that the FBI is supposed to be protecting does not make them look good.

[Sophie]

Good, right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Nope.

[Courtney Kosak]

Unless this guy did it.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Unless this guy did it. And then we catch him and then we're heroes again.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

And, yeah, the more investigators looked into it, the more it looked like there might be a case here because everyone they talk to as they reach out to the guys, number one, a lot of. Jules, former coworkers don't like him. And they don't like him because they were, I think, as a general rule, shadier cops than he was.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

And because he's legitimately. Seems to have been kind of annoying.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Like he was very overzealous. But none of those things are, like, crimes or terrorism adjacent.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

But they start putting together this because they're only looking at a narrow. And this is this kind of myopic detective blindness you get if you're only looking at a really narrow subset of the facts, it can look, well, okay, we're just looking at Jewell. Oh, he's overzealous. He really badly wants to be a cop. He'd do anything to be a cop. Maybe he cooked all this up for the benefit of his career. And it really does seem like he's making the most of his 15 minutes of fame. He gets interviewed by CNN, AT&T's publicity team basically works up an appearance and makes him wear a company shirt because he'd been a security guard for AT&T. I guess because AT&T wanted Americans to associate their favorite phone company with a terroristic bombing that killed and maimed people.

[Sophie]

I don't know why.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

It's a weird call. Attention that is weird.

[Courtney Kosak]

Marriott better giving him something.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Marriott for sure. Yeah, that would make sense. Richard would later claim the idea of going on TV made me nervous. I was not the hero. There were so many others who saved lives. And perhaps the FBI would have concluded its investigation without Jewel catching on.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Again, some degree of looking into this guy is reasonable, but given what happens next here, that winds up being impossible. And the reason why there's no chance to keep this under wraps and the reason why everything blows up and Jules, life blows up is that the Atlanta Journal Constitution, which is a local paper of record in Atlanta, publishes an article on July 30th in which they announced that the FBI had a suspect for the bombing, security guard Richard Jewell. Now, the Journal was owned by Cox Newspapers, who had flown something like 300 people in from other papers to report out of the Journal's office. They had, like, sent reporters around, flown them all around the world to, like, study up on different sports that they could report well on the Olympics because they're putting out a daily special Olympics edition. And the expense, they've spent millions preparing to cover the Olympics. Right now, this is a time in which there's more money in the newspaper biz. But you gotta remember, whenever you're investing that kind of capital into an endeavor, you have to make a return, right? And so the new editor of the paper, John Walter, is expecting the fact that there's been a bombing. That's like a huge boon potentially to the media, right? Like, this is something people are gonna read about. And we're the paper of record for Atlanta. We've gotta be the ones breaking the scoops. We can't get scooped by the big national papers. We can't let the New York Times take this from us, right? Get something out about this, you know? And the editor is this guy John Walter, who is. He had replaced a more traditional ethical newsman. Walter is of this kind of generation of guys who's trying to find more exciting and profitable ways to package news content as opposed to doing good journalism, per Vanity Fair quote. More and more, the paper's influence was on what John Walter called chunklets, short bits in soft new style known as eye candy. The paper published features on couples massage and how mushrooms grow in the rain. Walter had fired off several terse memos to ensure that there would be no more jumps of news stories to back pages and no more unsourced news stories, except on rare occasions. I don't see any reason why you can't report hard news in a short form, one editor told me. The AJC style of reporting and declarative sentences had a name, too. The Voice of God. It was omniscient because it allowed no references to unattributed sources. Subjects such as aids, which often required confidentiality, could not be covered properly in the paper in the opinion of several reporters. The AJC picked up news stories with unnamed sources from the New York Times, however, and reporters groused about the hypocrisy of the double standard. Now, all this was going to cause problems because the Journal can't let themselves be scooped in their hometown. But they get reached out to. They get basically a leak from the FBI who, like, leaks them documents that make it clear that Richard Jewell is their chief suspect.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Like, that's what happens is someone from the FBI talks to them. And this is a really ethically questionable thing because a person who is suspected of a crime has not been charged with it. They certainly haven't been convicted. Is it ethical at all to report that this guy is under suspicion right now? Because you're going to nuke his life and make a huge number of people think he murdered someone and tried to murder dozens more people.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

But on the other hand, he's gonna sell papers, so obviously print that shit.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

And so Journal reporter Mary Scruggs writes an article titled, FBI suspects Hero Guard may have planted Bomb. And again, it uses this kind of voice of God phrasings to where, like, they did. They had a source that they couldn't admit that he'd reached out to them. But they don't say that.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Like, they don't address that at all. And I'm going to read a quote from the article. Richard Jewell, 33, a former law enforcement officer, fits the profile of the lone bomber. This profile generally includes a frustrated white man who is a former police officer, member of the military, or police wannabe who seeks to become a hero.

[Courtney Kosak]

That's so fucked up.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

That's so fucked up. Like, that's not even a. That's not a real profile. That's not the lone bomber. How many lone bombers have fit this profile?

[Courtney Kosak]

Also, yes, he's eager and, like, wants to be liked. I mean, that's.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

I'm sorry, I don't think the standard lone bomber is a wannabe cop who wants to be a hero in part because the guy who actually did the bombings, who we'll talk about later, was an anti abortion activist who was bombing people because he thinks abortion's murder. He's a Christian extremist, supremacist, special forces.

[Courtney Kosak]

Veteran, but somehow doesn't think murder is murder.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

I think he's fine with murder. They're all fine with murder. Just not fine with women having choices. We understand what this is about. We don't have to play around with their semantics games.

[Courtney Kosak]

There was definitely going to be a manifesto, though, that was really involved in this. And thank you. I was worried that this was still unsolved, so I'm sorry.

[Sophie]

No, no, no.

[Courtney Kosak]

They figured it out.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

It gets solved as shit.

[Courtney Kosak]

Okay, okay.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

I'm just bringing it up to point out like they're complete. This profile is completely wrong, right?

[Courtney Kosak]

Yes.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Now, as to how this all happened, because we don't exactly know how they got their source. It's very likely they get leaked by someone in the FBI, but I don't think that that's been proven to a point of certainty. The director of the FBI at this point was a toad named Lewis Free. F R E E H He came into the bombing primed to make bad decisions. One of his closest advisors was former Deputy Director of the FBI, Larry Potts, who tried to cover up FBI incompetence at Ruby Ridge. Free made himself responsible for the oversight of the Bureau's efforts in this high profile case. He comes in and is immediately like, I am. I am like, where the buck stops with this case. I'm directly overseeing this as director of the FBI. Because this is like, obviously, given everything that's happened, nothing matters more than us quickly finding a culprit.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

And they don't. You know, initially there had been like, a suspect, a suspect who was like a drunk at a bar who the night before and made some threatening comments. So he's their first suspect, but it turns out he's got an alibi. And this happens a couple of times, right, where they'll find someone and he'll seem like it bite this guy might have been the one who did it. And then. And it'll become clear that he could not have been the bomber. And Free flips out at his subordinates each time he becomes, in their words, abusive, condescending and dismissive. Every time they tell him, no, it couldn't have been that guy. And whenever they start to suspect a new person, Free will declare we have our man. He does that every time. And so when they settle on and they get this leak and they start looking in to Richard Jewell, Free is like, we've got our guy. This is him. This has to be him. Make sure it's him.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

And that there is some evidence that suggests that Free orchestrated the leaking of information hours after the bombing.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Because he does this. That seems plausible. We know he does this with the first time they have a suspect that drunk at the bar. Like, there's a leak so the papers know the FBI's got someone. And then it's really embarrassing to him because that guy wound up not having done it.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

So it's just very likely that he did the same thing with Jewel.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Courtney Kosak]

Are the Olympics, like, going on the whole, like, ticking clock of, like, we.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Gotta slow shit down a Bit, but it's more just a matter of there was this high profile bombing at the Olympics. The FBI still hasn't caught the guy. The Oklahoma City bombing happened a year ago and they didn't stop that. It's just this, like, we have to prove that we're worth all the money that the country spends on us, because it really doesn't look like it right now, right? We're fucking. We're taking a massive L in public. And I can't accept that, you know? So for their part, the Journal avoids telling anyone how they got because it's like a memo that they get that lists Juul as the suspect and they don't. Again, it's this whole Voice of God thing. They give no attribution and they don't cite a source. Atlanta Magazine describes their reporting as leaving the reader to wonder whether the claims came from a legitimate law enforcement official or from a proclamation of God. God, it's this. And I have so many issues with the way a lot of media works with objectivity in this book. And this is another example of that, of like, no, this is the way our paper sounds, right? We don't cite anonymous sources. We don't say that we've been leaked something, because that would be kind of. That would be breaking this Voice of God that is so important to us. Otherwise, people aren't going to trust the Journal. And so what that does here is the FBI leaks to them instead of saying, yeah, the same guy who leaked to us, the same people who leaked to us, the name or a suspect who was exonerated have leaked again. A suspect, but this one's totally it, guys. But we're not gonna tell you where it came from, Right? Nobody's doing well here. You see, like, it's the media and particularly this one publication are being slimy as shit because it's good for business and because they've made a series of bad decisions editorially. And the FBI is just desperate to have to make it clear, we're doing our jobs. We're on the ball, you're safe. We know what we're doing. We know we fucked up and let a bombing happen. But it's really not our fault because it was probably the security guard. How could we have known?

[Sophie]

Right?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

That's what they're trying to do.

[Courtney Kosak]

It's like the headlines where it's like, the people in Gaza were bombed, but it's like, by who?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Exactly. Yeah, right.

[Courtney Kosak]

Anyway, sorry, don't mean to bring down the vibe.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

No, no, no. But it is. This all of these are like. Like continuing problems with a lot of legacy media.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Like this. Like the. The. The paper's brand and reputation is what matters more than, like, making sure that we're doing things ethically. And obviously, traffic money makes sure that makes. Means more than making sure we're doing things ethically.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

These. These articles will sell. People will buy our paper if we're covering this case. So let's just. If. If that means destroying Richard Jewell's life. Him.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

So you've got. In the FBI, you've got the director pressuring every lead to be the guy. And Jewel, you know, seems like their best bet. So that article drops on the 30th, the same day that two FBI agents show up at Richard Jewell's house and ask him if he wants to make a training film for them. So he doesn't actually get to see this article that the Journal's published saying that he's the FBI's main suspect, but on the same day, they show up early at his house and like, hey, you did such a good job. Would you make a training video for us about how he spotted the bomb? Yeah. Why don't you come in to the station and. Because we just. We're such big fans of you, maybe you've got a career in the Bureau, Richard.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Obviously, there's no training film. They want to interview him to see if he will slip up or be inconsistent or lie under the guise of recording his wisdom as a training video for new agents. Jules started to realize something was up when his car was tailed by four other FBI cars on the way to the office. And they're like, oh, yeah, don't worry about it. It's fine. And he's like, that seems weird. I feel like you don't need four or five cars to take a guy to do a fucking interview. And then they end the interview, this training video, by asking him to sign a waiver of his role rights. Nope. And then he's like, wait a second. That's. No, actually, I think I want a lawyer now. And as soon as he does that, they pull the standard cop. Well, why do you need a lawyer, Richard? You didn't do anything, right?

[Courtney Kosak]

You know, like, oh, my fucking God.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

It'S just so shitty. And this guy, it takes him so long to realize what's happening because he trusts the system. He trusts cops. He idolizes these feds. And I'm actually surprised that he even got it then. But you have to imagine the dawning horror as he realizes, like, oh, my God. They were lying to me about all of this. They think I did it, and they want. They're trying to trap me. Like, it's pretty fucked up. Like, I don't have a lot of inherent sympathy for the whole desperately wanting to be a cop thing. But you have to be sympathetic to a guy like Jewel, who believes so strongly in that this just saves a bunch of lives. And then the. His reward is this system he idolizes. Absolutely turning on him. How long does this go on for about three months. Oh, my God. So for three months, Jules, life is turned upside down. FBI agents stake out his house. His house is searched. Everything related to him is searched.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Like, they tear up his home. They tear up. Like they're searching the houses of people who are, like, close to him.

[Courtney Kosak]

Embarrassing. Porn came up. Yeah.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Yeah. He can't go anywhere without being surrounded. He becomes an object of obsession for reporters at the Journal. Not only is the FBI always outside of his house, dozens and dozens of journalists and cameras are always staking out his house, waiting for him to leave, waiting for any chance to shout questions at him and the Journal, but turns themselves into the paper of Richard Jewell. They are publishing multiple articles a day about this one guy on August 1st. So that's the day after he has his. That first article drops in the day after he goes to the FBI office on August 1, the same day he's raided by the FBI. The journal publishes a piece on Richard Jewell's history as a campus cop titled A Bad man to Cross on the Beat. Here's Atlanta Magazine. Students were also quoted as saying that Jewell went to extremes. He was very macho, and he could get very belligerent. Piedmont College junior Nikki Lane said. Said, I've seen him go from calm to angry, back to calm, back to angry in a matter of seconds. And, like, I get that he's a dick and he, like, tried to bust people for smoking pot. But, like, that doesn't. That doesn't mean he's a bomber. Like, you're going back to, like, he was a bad man to cross. He tried to arrest a kid for weed. That's not. That's pretty far from pipe bomb.

[Courtney Kosak]

Yes. Yes.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Jesus Christ. Another paragraph from that article with Atlanta Magazine gives you a good idea of how insane the coverage went. And this is all ajc. AJC columnist David Kindred, in his second column on Juul in two days, compared the scene to the time law enforcement officers sought evidence against Wayne Williams, the man convicted of two murders in Atlanta's missing Children case. When federal agents came to this town to deal with another suspect who lived with his mother like this one. That subject was drawn to the blue lights and sirens of police work like this one. He became famous in the aftermath of murder. And like, like, yeah, it's just, it's the yellowest journalism you could possibly do. Like they are, they are basically they're turning their whole paper into. This guy like in his life is just hell. For three straight months, every day there's articles not just in the ajc, but in national papers. Digging into his backstory, talking about every embarrassing thing he ever did, talking to everyone who worked with him, who didn't like him. The whole country revived. He is a a subject of mockery and cost. On the Tonight, Joe Jay Leno gives him a nickname, the Unidoofus. Right again. This man's crime was saving a bunch of people's lives from a bomb like the Unidoof, the Unidubis. Like per the New York Times, government officials and news organizations descended on the apartment Jewel shared with his mother. Dozens of FBI agents scoured the home and towed away. Jules tried to truck in an apartment complex overlooking his building. Four stations, ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC paid a tenant $1,000 a day to set up a command post in her unit. Yet he was never charged. Inside, Jewel watched tv. He read, he played video games. He couldn't go outside. Not without setting off a high speed car chase of government vehicles and media vans anyway. And that's just so fucked up. Like he did nothing. You didn't do nothing. He saved people's lives and everyone in the country hates him. Now I feel kind of conflicted because.

[Courtney Kosak]

You know, like that murderer in Washington who killed those four college girls or kids.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Oh God, yeah, yeah, yeah. Colberger, right is his name? Yeah. Brian, something like that. Yeah.

[Courtney Kosak]

So all the things in Idaho, Idaho guy. Oh yeah, it was Idaho, you're right. But like they're doing these things, you know. Like I read articles where it was like a teaching assistant that was like yeah, he was creepy as fuck. And in his case I think that's correct. But like yes, all those tactics turned on an innocent person.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Courtney Kosak]

That's horrible.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

And that's the thing and it you don't have and with I, I, I never like it when they do this with someone who hasn't again at least Coburger. I think by the point most of that came out had been charged and arrested. You have to remember Jewel has not been charged. He's never charged.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

And it's one thing and we can. There is. I still have a lot of issues with reporting on people who have been charged with crimes like this in the breathless way the media does when they have not been convicted, have not had their day in court because they are still legally innocent. But this guy hasn't even been charged with shit. You shouldn't be doing this at all when someone's just a suspect. Like that is so. That is so. That's such fucking malpractice. Yeah, agreed. It's just really violent. On October 27, prosecutors send a letter to Jules lawyer. Not to Juul, not to the public. They just send his lawyer your letter saying, hey, he's not a suspect anymore, by the way, we're done.

[Courtney Kosak]

No, sorry.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Yeah, the FBI makes eventually they give kind of like a half hearted apology. They admit some wrongdoing, right? But they don't, they take no effort to be like. Again, the responsible thing to do would be like, oh shit, we really gotta, we gotta do a full court media press so that people know this guy is not, not suspected. They're just like, fuck it, he'll figure it out.

[Courtney Kosak]

They're like mean girls in high school, they're terrorists now.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Jewel does sue them, he wins. Sues the Justice Department, he wins a bunch of money, he sues several papers, including the ajc and he settles out of court. He does well off of this, right? Like he does like, and you know, he lives out his life and I'm not gonna talk about the rest of his life because the man deserves fucking privacy after that. But he, he does get some degree of vengeance for what they do. But like, man, you have the trauma of, of this, like, because who can imagine unless you have been, unless the entire country has suspected you of being a mass murdering terrorist for three or four months. Like you can't know what that's like, you know what kind of damage that does.

[Courtney Kosak]

And then, and then Clint Eastwood made.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

That fucking movie and then, yes, Clint Eastwood. So fairly recently, Clint Eastwood made a movie about this literally called Richard Jewell. Yeah, it's called Richard Jewell. Clint makes a movie in 2019 about this whole case, right? Because I mean, conservatives like this story because they hate the media. And this is a great example of the media being just as bad as they like to, to act like it always is. No, they didn't go, the media didn't go after Jewell because he was a conservative. They went after Jewell because the FBI sent them on his case. And yeah, they were feckless and only cared about Money, but Clint's. What's really interesting to me about Clint's movie is that it does kind of the same thing to one of the journalists at the Atlanta Journal Constitution that they had done to Richard Jewell, which is the, like, defame him or her.

[Courtney Kosak]

Oh, my God.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

So the author of the first article that, like, listed him as the suspect was written by Kathy Scruggs. She's the reporter who did this. And as far as we know, she just got it, or she. And the. I think she worked with a colleague, got, like, a tip that probably traced back to an FBI person who had been directed by. Free to put the tip out there.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

That's probably what happened. In the film, Kathy Scruggs is shown as going up to an FBI agent at a bar a couple of days after the bombing and saying, give me something I can print. She's played by Olivia Wilde, by the way. The FBI agent played by John Hamm says, basically, I'll give you the name if you fuck me. And so, yeah, she starts, like, touching him, and he says, richard Jewel Jewell.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

And then they go, fuck.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

So basically, it shows Kathy Scruggs, a real woman, as played by Olivia Wilde, sleeping with a source in order to get Richard Jewell's name, which is not what happened. No one's ever alleged that being what happened that was invented by our old friend Clint Eastwood or whoever wrote the fucking movie. Just because the story didn't seem bad enough as it was. And because, I guess if you talk about what actually happened, then you have to be deeply critical about the FBI, because this is ultimate their fault as much as anything else, and fundamentally, the profit motive in journalism.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Like, both of those things are the bastards here, but Clint's not interested in that.

[Courtney Kosak]

Let's make it a woman.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Yeah, it's a woman. It's this woman who couldn't keep it in her pants.

[Courtney Kosak]

Slutty journalists ruining the world.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Classic. Slutty journalists sleeping with the FBI to get a name.

[Courtney Kosak]

Slutty journalists. My favorite kind of.

[Sophie]

Yeah.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Anyway, that's the first part of this story. We'll be talking about Steve Hatfill and the anthrax attacks next episode, but.

[Sophie]

Yeah.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

How are you feeling? You happy?

[Courtney Kosak]

I totally forgot about this Steve guy.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Yeah, I know, I know. It's wild. We haven't even gotten to him yet, but this story is, like, the precursor. Yes.

[Courtney Kosak]

Oh, yeah.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Well, kinda.

[Sophie]

Yeah.

[Courtney Kosak]

All right. I feel like we just went on a wild ride. I'm ready for the next part.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Excellent. Well, we'll get to that on Thursday.

[Courtney Kosak]

Do you want to plug your pluggables one more time for everybody? Yeah, just my book you guys. Maybe check out my book. It's called Girl Gone Wild. I tell all my secrets of the last decades that I've been on this planet. So. So it's available for pre order? Heck yeah.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Excellent. Check that book out and yeah, you know, go. Don't go to the Olympics.

[Courtney Kosak]

Watch it at home. Safer.

[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

Yeah, or steal it off of the Internet. Either way, bye.

[Courtney Kosak]

Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone. Meet for more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is Now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube.com behindthebastards Time.

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[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

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[Courtney Kosak]

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[Behind the Bastards Host (Robert)]

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