Michael Loewinger

North was questioned by Texas Representative Jack Brooks.

We see North pause and whisper to his attorney.

Then the chairman of the hearings, Daniel K. Inouye, jumps in to respond on the government's behalf.

The government never acknowledged any of this stuff until much of it was declassified years later.

Louis Giafrida ended up resigning from FEMA for totally unrelated reasons following a congressional fraud investigation.

By the start of the 90s, FEMA employee Leo Bosner was beyond tired of the dysfunction and the kooky national security schemes.

Frankly, for me, once that stuff was in the rearview mirror, it's like, fine, that's the trash.

I hope they come on Friday and pick it up and dump it to the landfill.

There were some pretty nutty people working back there then.

Fortunately, nothing much ever came of that except they ate up most of our budget.

He was eager for the agency to shift resources to preparing for floods and hurricanes.

But all this doomsday planning had done a number on FEMA's reputation.

I would talk on my off-duty time to people on Capitol Hill or news reporters and say, look, this is a dangerous thing.

We're ignoring these natural disasters.

These people are so inept, they couldn't organize a two-car parade, and they're never going to round up everybody in the country.

Come on, get out of here, will you?

Leo didn't know it at the time, but those FEMA camps conspiracy theories had started popping up in fringe message boards on the early Internet.

This woman, Linda Thompson, a sort of godmother of the right-wing militia movement, made a 1994 documentary, America Under Siege, which warned that FEMA was part of the New World Order, a global authoritarian takeover that would require rounding up anti-government dissidents.

Following in her footsteps a couple decades later were militia leaders like Stuart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers, one of the January 6th guys.

A lot of this stuff is dual use.