Clyde Lewis argues that pre-crime policing, a fabricated Russia dossier, and NSA data vaults put every American on a list, days before Trump's 2017 inauguration.
At a glance
Guest: None, this is a call-in and monologue episode
Topics: Predictive policing · The deep state and the Trump dossier · NSA surveillance · The war on drugs as pre-crime · COINTELPRO
Also discussed: Minority Report · APB · Extreme Prejudice · Susan Lindauer · Edward Snowden · Dwight Eisenhower · Ron Paul · Esteban Santiago · Echelon
The cold open is a voice from an old film, calm and reassuring: "Young lady, there are no monsters in the Oval Office." Then Clyde Lewis comes on the line and dates the broadcast himself. "We're 11 days into the new year, 2017," he says. Nine days remain before Donald Trump takes the oath of office, and Lewis spends the night arguing that the machinery meant to watch criminals has already been pointed at the incoming president, and through him, at everyone listening.
Eleven Days Into the New Year
Lewis opens with a definition. "We live in a post-crime society where there are crimes, offenders, and victims," he says. Police investigate after the fact, courts punish after a trial. Pre-crime, he argues, flips the order: accusations, rumors, and alleged intel come first, and the accused has to disprove something that never happened. He frames it as a timeline shift, a move "to anticipate and forestall that which has not yet occurred and may never occur."
He reaches for the cultural reference his audience knows. "It's like a Philip K. Dick novel. It's like Minority Report. Predetermination. Precrime." Then he makes the stakes personal. "The establishment is not just hoping to observe our president's behavior in detail. No, they hope to use today's data to predict your behavior tomorrow." In a precog police state, Lewis says, allegations are made and you have to defend against them, and due process, in his words, "is thrown out the window."
A List Before Any Crime
The concrete example he returns to is Chicago. Lewis cites a 2015 report that the Chicago Police Department kept a list of roughly 400 people flagged as likely to be involved in violent crime, identified by algorithm rather than by charge. He also takes aim at APB, a Fox series then in promotion that dramatized a privatized, tech-driven police force, calling the show "ideologically dangerous for the country right now" because, he argues, it trains viewers to accept federalized, predictive policing as entertainment.
A caller named Al pushes back from the other side. "No software or computer program or any amount of gathering information on anybody is going to allow someone to sit there and say what I'm going to do, what you're going to do, or anybody's going to do," he tells Lewis. Lewis answers that the programs already exist, that the government can track nearly every American phone call, a capacity he credits Edward Snowden with exposing. Tony from Indiana goes further, claiming the NSA facility in Bluffdale, Utah can hold every text, tweet, and social media post for up to ten years. Lewis adds his own proof that prediction fails: Esteban Santiago, the Fort Lauderdale airport shooter, had walked into an FBI office weeks before the attack and still was not stopped.
The Chat-Room Dossier
The night's central case is the 35-page dossier alleging Trump had been groomed as a Russian asset. Lewis tells his audience the document was fabricated by a troll on 4chan, passed around Reddit, and then reported by CNN and BuzzFeed as intelligence. When a caller named Jack asks whether a retired MI6 officer was behind it, Lewis cuts him off. "Jack, it was faked," he says. "It was a 4chan troll that did it on the internet, off Reddit. They made it up." The established record, it should be said, differs: the dossier was compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, and its sourcing was later investigated at length, which Lewis does not acknowledge on air.
Lewis reads Dwight Eisenhower's 1961 farewell warning back to his listeners: "We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex." Then he turns it around. "Can anyone see how self-destructive this is? Empowering the CIA." He points to a full-page New York Times ad calling for resistance to the inauguration and calls it sedition. Jack warns that Trump is at maximum risk in the days before the oath and urges him to rely on private security; Lewis answers by claiming the CIA altered JFK's motorcade route and RFK's exit path before their assassinations, an allegation the historical record does not support.
The Drug War Runs on Pre-Crime
John from Oregon gives the night its cleanest formulation. "The war on drugs is a total pre-crime industry," he says, criminalizing what a person might do rather than anything they did. Lewis agrees and calls the drug war a declared failure that continues anyway because police departments and doctors profit from it. Sam from Kansas picks up the thread: marijuana, he argues, gets falsely branded a gateway drug so the state can damn a citizen "if you take your first puff on a joint." If the policy has failed, Sam says, "the feds need to wake the hell up" and let people use cannabis or kratom instead of opiates.
Lewis brings in Ron Paul's old debate answer about heroin, quoting Paul's line that nobody in the hall needed the government to tell them not to use it. The through line holds: in each case, the state justifies surveillance and control today by pointing at a crime it says will come tomorrow.
The Question He Leaves Hanging
Late in the show the calls turn personal, and the abstraction lands. Lewis tells a story he read that day about a woman evicted over $388, put out on the street, who died of hypothermia. "This is how the system works," he says. Robert from California raises Echelon, the surveillance network long alleged to spy on Americans from foreign soil. Cheryl from Texas names the pattern she sees in the anti-Trump campaign: "It's classic Intel Pro... 1956, it's Martin Luther King. It's everything." She notes that the Monday after the broadcast is King's birthday.
Robert calls back near the end with three flat statements: "I'm scared. I'm scared for this country." Lewis does not comfort him. He tells the audience there will be no last-minute rescue, that Americans will have to wise up on their own. The broadcast closes where it opened, with the list in Chicago, the data vault in Utah, and a dossier Lewis says was invented in a chat room. Nine days out from the inauguration, he cannot tell his listeners whether the transfer of power will happen cleanly, and he does not pretend otherwise. His parting question hangs: if they can build a file on a president-elect before he takes office, what stops them from building one on you?
Questions this episode answers
Is the US moving toward a pre-crime police state like Minority Report?
Yes, Clyde Lewis argues, claiming predictive policing programs and mass data collection already target people for crimes they have not committed.
Lewis draws the line himself: "We live in a post-crime society where there are crimes, offenders, and victims," he says, but pre-crime shifts the timeline "to anticipate and forestall that which has not yet occurred." He cites a 2015 report that Chicago police kept an algorithm-generated list of about 400 people flagged as likely to be involved in violent crime.
He also argues the culture is being prepared. He calls the Fox series APB "ideologically dangerous" because it dramatizes privatized, high-tech policing, and he tells listeners, "they hope to use today's data to predict your behavior tomorrow... They're doing it with the president-elect. They're going to do it to you."
What does Clyde Lewis claim about the Russia dossier and the deep state?
Lewis claims the Trump-Russia dossier was fabricated by a 4chan troll, amplified by CNN and BuzzFeed, and used by intelligence agencies to wage open war on the president-elect.
On air he tells caller Jack flatly, "Jack, it was faked. It was a 4chan troll that did it on the internet, off Reddit. They made it up." He argues the intelligence community is trying to disrupt the transfer of power, and he asks, "Can anyone see how self-destructive this is? Empowering the CIA."
The established record differs from Lewis's account. The dossier was compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, not invented on 4chan, and its claims and sourcing were investigated for years afterward. Lewis also quotes Eisenhower's farewell warning about "unwarranted influence... by the military-industrial complex" to argue that defense interests opposed Trump.
Can software predict who will commit a crime?
Caller Al says no program can predict human behavior, while Lewis counters that predictive policing software already forecasts where crimes will occur.
Al puts the skeptical case plainly: "No software or computer program or any amount of gathering information on anybody is going to allow someone to sit there and say what I'm going to do, what you're going to do, or anybody's going to do."
Lewis answers that the capability exists regardless, pointing to the Chicago list and to the surveillance capacity Edward Snowden exposed. He concedes the failure case too: Esteban Santiago, the Fort Lauderdale airport shooter, had contacted the FBI before the attack, and no prediction stopped him.
Why is the war on drugs called a pre-crime industry?
Caller John from Oregon argues the drug war criminalizes potential future behavior rather than actual offenses, and Lewis agrees it survives because institutions profit from it.
John's line anchors the segment: "The war on drugs is a total pre-crime industry." Lewis calls the policy a declared failure that continues because police and doctors make money from it.
Sam from Kansas adds that marijuana is falsely labeled a gateway drug, damning a user "if you take your first puff on a joint." His verdict: "the feds need to wake the hell up" and allow cannabis or kratom in place of opiates. Lewis also invokes Ron Paul's debate answer that no one needs the government to tell them not to use heroin.
Does the NSA store your texts and social media posts?
Caller Tony from Indiana claims the NSA's Bluffdale, Utah facility can store texts, tweets, and social media activity for up to ten years, and Lewis says that capacity can be used to frame anyone.
Tony describes the Utah data center as holding "every text, tweet, everything that you do on social media and on your cell phones" for a decade. Lewis treats the claim as confirmation that the surveillance state promotes self-censorship and can manufacture evidence against any citizen.
His warning ties the claim back to the night's theme: "They're doing it to President-elect Trump. What makes you think they won't do it to you?"
What happened to Susan Lindauer, and why does her case come up?
Caller Sam from Kansas claims former congressional staffer Susan Lindauer was held for about four years without trial for telling authorities what they did not want to hear.
"They held her for about four years because she told them what they didn't want to hear," Sam says, adding that clearing her name cost her a fortune. He references her book, Extreme Prejudice, and argues that FISA warrants can be obtained without real evidence under the cover of national security.
Lewis connects the case to his own grievance, saying his Wikipedia page has been vandalized by a political talk show host in San Diego, including a false report that he had died of cancer, which he says caused his wife real distress.
What is COINTELPRO, and why did a caller invoke it?
COINTELPRO was the FBI's 1956 to 1971 counterintelligence program targeting political dissidents, and caller Cheryl from Texas says the campaign against Trump follows the same pattern.
Cheryl's diagnosis is short: "It's classic Intel Pro... 1956, it's Martin Luther King. It's everything. And Monday is his birthday." She compares the moment to Herbert Hoover, Joseph McCarthy, and J. Edgar Hoover.
Lewis lets the comparison stand and adds his own historical frame, telling listeners the intelligence community has interfered with presidents before, citing JFK, Nixon, and Carter, and warning that the court of public opinion now conducts the trial before any court of law can.
Frequently asked questions
What is predictive policing?
Predictive policing uses algorithms and historical data to forecast where crimes may occur or who may be involved. A 2015 report revealed the Chicago Police Department maintained a list of about 400 people flagged as likely to be involved in violent crime. Civil liberties groups criticized the approach for targeting individuals who had committed no offense.
When did this Ground Zero episode air?
The episode aired in January 2017, eleven days into the new year and about nine days before Donald Trump's inauguration on January 20, 2017. Lewis dates the broadcast himself early in the show.
What is the NSA facility in Bluffdale, Utah?
The Utah Data Center in Bluffdale is an NSA data storage facility that opened in 2014, built to handle enormous volumes of intercepted data. On the broadcast, caller Tony from Indiana claimed it can store texts, tweets, and social media activity for up to ten years. The facility's exact capabilities remain classified, and public estimates of its capacity vary widely.
Was the Chicago police list of 400 people real?
Yes. Reporting in 2015 and 2016, including coverage of the department's Strategic Subject List, confirmed Chicago police used an algorithm to identify people considered at high risk of involvement in gun violence. The list was later criticized in academic studies and by the city's inspector general, and the program was later reformed.
Who's on this episode
Callers: Al, Sam from Kansas, Brian from Georgia, Tony from Indiana, John from Oregon, Robert from California, Dan from Florida, Jeannie from Oregon, Jack, John from California, James from Oregon, Cheryl from Texas, Eric in Tennessee, Mark from Texas, as they identified themselves on air.
