Anya Cain (34:50)
How do I even explain this? So in the 80s, I guess cocaine and drugs were a big problem, right? People were like bringing them in from South America and bringing them into the country making fistfuls of money, right? There was a lot of that in Indianapolis. Indianapolis was a big drug hub. And it was, you know, all this stuff where people were piloting planes filled with high quality marijuana and cocaine and dropping bales of marijuana into the fields and just chaos. A lot of this was in Florida. So Agent, Special Agent Dan Mitrione was one of the people who was tasked with basically combating this. Right? But there was a problem. The problem was that he switched sides. He ended up actually taking bribes from the people he was supposed to be prosecuting in or in order to help them get away with some of this narcotic stuff. And he was actually in charge of something called Operation Airlift, from what I read, which was one of the big first FBI pushes into things like the drug war. So that's. That was in Florida, but there's also a pretty important Indiana connection there. So he was. He was basically, Gosh, he was dealing with cocaine shipments to Kokomo, Indiana, and He got a $9,000 watch and a couple other thousand dollars in order to allow one of his informants to sort of go back and do the Kokomo situation. And, you know, so some of the drug stuff was actually in Indiana. He also allowed. He actually. He himself drove a truck filled with cocaine from Kokomo, Indiana, to South Florida and got a cut profits there. And he also, you know, he'd get like. He'd seize a cocaine shipment, tell his bosses about some of it, but then keep a few kilos for himself. And then, you know, they. The bad guys would sell it. So eventually, you know, he was busted, right? And so I'm. I'm. I'm sitting here like, whoa, this. This took a turn. And what I was reading in the articles about him getting busted also made me be like, wait, what? Okay. Some of the articles mention this, and it's very. I mean, it's sad. I mean, I. It's. It's just, you know, it's a human tragedy. Obviously, an FBI agent turning against the Bureau and helping drug dealers is very upsetting. He pled guilty. So he pled guilty to, like, bribery and things like that. There's some reports out there that sort of indicate that he was maybe even doing more than that. But, like, I don't like, that's what he pled guilty to in the. Oh, my gosh. I'm just sitting here reacting to everything. I'm reading this and the articles say, oh, but we should note that he. Some people said he was just very distraught because his father had been murdered. So I'm like, what? Then I look up his father. Where do you even begin? And this is going to end on the. This is gonna end on the Frank Sinatra stuff. But I will say this. His father was the police chief of Richmond, Indiana, which is near the Ohio border. So you're thinking, okay, I'm thinking here. I'm sitting here a fool, just an utter rube, sitting here thinking, wow, that's really sad. His dad was the police chief of Richmond, Indiana, and must have gotten murdered on the job or something in Richmond, Indiana. Shoot out with bank robbers. You know, maybe somebody killed him because they were pissed off at the police. I don't know. No, we're going to Brazil. So this guy is the police chief of Richmond, Indiana. And he ends up having a pretty far flung career to going to South America with the U.S. government. And that was. So I don't want to, like, necessarily make any assumptions about who's right or who's, who's wrong here, but I mean, the thing about Dan Mitrione Sr. Not the, not the FBI agent, he was born in Italy and his family came to Richmond, Indiana, where when he was very little, he grew up there. And then he also served in World War II, became a police officer, and actually rose pretty quickly up the ranks to the chief of police. And then at some point in the 60s, he joined the International Cooperation Administration, which was a government agency that provided foreign assistance to different countries. It kind of was like the original US Agency for International Development or, you know, usaid. So that's where it started. And he was in the public Safety division, and he went to, I believe, Brazil. And his family, he had nine kids with his wife. They're all coming with him. They're, they're growing up in Brazil. They're speaking Spanish. And, and Dan Jr. Was part of that. And then he goes to Uruguay. And, and this is, this is where things get controversial. So it's, you know, some people have said, well, he was just kind of like helping these different countries, you know, do some trainings and like, you know, be like, training police officers, whatever, that can be a good thing, train the police to do a good job. But, but what the allegations have also been is that he was actually teaching some of them how to torture people and like, take down leftist organizations. Right, right. So, like, and, and maybe there's been some allegations that he was possibly having them, like, experiment with torture on homeless people. Again, that's a pretty charged accusation. Some people, I mean, a lot of, a lot of news sources just say that that is true. And then others have pushed back and said, no, that's just, you know, leftist propaganda. I don't, I'm not, I am not an expert. I know that America, the United States has done some pretty, pretty sketchy stuff by the Central Intelligence Agency, by the CIA in South America. I don't think anyone should be denying that. I don't know if this guy was part of it. I am not an expert and I've not done the reading that I would feel comfortable in saying that. But let's just say, like, a lot of allegations exist around that. So anyways, things go on. He's, he's, he's, he goes to Uruguay and he's training, he's training people there. In. In something that might be good or something that might be bad. I know that, you know, people who are working for the CIA, you know, in Uruguay said that he did teach torture techniques in. In his basement. And, you know, that was including, like, shocking people in some very sensitive and horrible places. And. Yeah. So this continues until 1970, when Mitrione disappears. It turns out he was kidnapped by the Tupamaros. And this was a Marxist Leninist group. Some would say terrorists, some would. Would say guerrillas. Some of the other communists thought they were too extreme. Like, I don't know, Everyone has an opinion, and they kidnap him and they demand the release of political prisoners or they're gonna kill him. And then a couple of things happen. There seems to have been some kind of arrest of some of their leaders. And there's been some people who've said since then, like, we had no intention of actually killing him. We were gonna just kind of hold him indefinitely. But because of that arrest, communications break broke down, and some people panicked. Other people think, no, they were gonna kill him anyway. So his body is found in the trunk of a stolen car. He's been shot. You know, he seemingly had also been shot in during the kidnapping. And. And so he was murdered. He was. He was killed. And this is where Frank Sinatra comes in. Frank Sinatra gets word of this. And can you explain a little bit about, like, why Frank Sinatra would. What was his situation with benefit concerts?
