Live Wire is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Modulator Media.

Previously on live Wire, The Loud Life and Shocking Murder of Alan.

Burg He was always harassing the callers, you know.

That was his big forte.

It was, you know.

His one of his favorite phrases was get to the point, callar, get to the point, you know, and and if they didn't get to the point, he'd hang up on because they were wasting his time.

So that was kind of the fun part of his whole program.

All Right, you want to save your life, save your dollars in case those hookers show up for dollars recks.

Here's your chance to do it.

Protect your dollars right now, and make those hookers secure when you bring them home.

When the wipe's away on the trip in Hawaii saying Hi, I think I'm home with the kids, and you whip the chick down under the base, which you'll be safe, okies, And he shows the burglar won't ever get to testify against you this way, he will split the scene, never knowing that, in fact, you have this hooker down there for a dollar in the basement.

Locked for many years on the comy.

I mean, he was a left of liberal, left of center liberal, very civil rights, African Americans, Jews, women.

He was.

He was a sixties liberal.

You know, if you look up nineteen sixty eight liberal America, his picture would be there.

That's who he was.

It is an attack on Ray because he's our current president.

I've attacked Carnor, I've attacked every president ever lived, because they're all one and the same.

They're a bunch of greedy power maniacs who could care less about the well being of anybody.

I said about five words, Why.

Well, I know what you would say.

Anyway, go ahead, I said, it was our whole audience.

He'd been whining on talk radio for so many years.

Why do you listen if it offends you, take a walk, lie one, you're on Kiowa.

Yes, he was very progressive in terms of his views of women.

He look his wife, Judas or ex wife, was a very strong woman.

But I think we're all prostant degrees, don't you.

To a degree?

I think most women are.

You're listening to Alan Berg on News Talk eighty five KOA.

Call him at eight six one talk.

Alan Berg on KOA.

We have about four minutes remain the hour.

A five minutes CBS News Brand Report coming up.

Then back with our final segment of the show.

Lines are full right now, Let's go to line too, You're on KOA.

In nineteen eighty three, KOA was sold to new owners and with that sale came a new general manager, Lee Larson.

I was in a hotel in Denver waiting for the sale of KOA to be consummated from General Electric to the company I was working for, and I got a phone call.

The phone call was from Alan Burg.

He wanted to have an urgent meeting with me.

That was something that I definitely had to hear him out about.

He needed to see me right away, and so I agreed to have a meeting with him, and the next day, I think it was, we met for a meal at a local coffee shop.

Alan was the first person that I met at KOA, and the reason he wanted to get together with me was because he had recently been moved from a daytime slot to an evening slot on the radio, and he thought that that was unacceptable.

He felt that nighttime was a bit of a demotion maybe from daytime, and I certainly think that he felt it was inconvenient to work nights as opposed to working during the day.

For most on air personalities, the move to a nighttime shift would have been considered a promotion.

Not only did the move to nights expose Alan to a potentially larger audience locally, but the station signal was actually stronger at night, giving him access to a larger national audience as well.

In fact, at night, KWA signal could reach as far north as Idaho, a fact that would become shockingly relevant after his death.

Anyhow, we had a lengthy discussion about that, and of course I told him, well, I'm not even in charge of the radio station yet, and i don't know anything about the programming lineup, so you'll need to give me some time to look into that and we can talk further.

In the end, Lee decided not to move Alan back to days.

Actually, Alan was doing a very good job with the show at night.

He's such a character and has such an interesting show that we felt that he needed to stay on at night.

And at the same time, the show that had replaced him in the middle of the day was also doing very well.

It was a psychologist with a call in show.

In those days, this is back in the eighties, that was a very popular type of show, and so we did not replace Allan and move the day parts around.

Allan was concerned with the time slot, but he was as popular as ever.

Here's Steve singular.

You know.

He would say, Denver's kind of a sleepy town.

You know, there's not a lot going on here.

You know, there's nobody like me to sort of poke people and get them to think about politics, race, sex, gender and women's liberation, gay liberation, whatever.

Everything.

He could talk about anything, spontaneously and in an interesting way.

By nineteen eighty four, talk radio had become quite the phenomenon phenomenon in the United States, eight so prominent that Sixty Minutes did in January eighty four a show on some of the rising talk show hosts.

They chose Alan Berg to be on that program.

That was quite the honor for a guy who had left Chicago not that long ago, down and out, no job, trying to beat alcoholism.

Wait yelling, if you don't like it, you can move the most correct And.

I was, if you're not a Christian, you're on American?

Is that your point, sir?

Good points, sir.

You and you're ruddneck caught a bed, you're listening to Alan Burg on KOA, Alan Berg ont KOWA in Denver.

Allen Berg, one of Denver's most popular radio call in hosts, is a reformed alcoholic and laps trial lawyer, But like his counterparts throughout the country, his most important qualifications are an appetite for anger, an uncontrollable urge to expound on any subject, and the possession of a verbal version of a blunt instrument, usually u shortly after the now familiar words Hello, you're on the air.

Well I you want to ask you something.

You're a reborn Christian, you believe in Jesus.

Do you think Jesus stopped off?

Spend seven hours with Earl Robert saying let's work out your books here so much you got to raise oral and I got to get on my way.

Those who listen to Berg get a mixed bag of mayhem and malarkey, political science and pop psychology, common law and uncommon sense, all of it laced with aggression, abuse and sarcasm.

Remember when I left here, you you never shut up.

I got fed up with you.

You never let me get a ward edge.

Whyes, this is my ex wife.

Get out of here.

I'm embarrassed.

I hate women.

Isn't there something a little dangerous about this kind of broadcasting?

There is a danger, I agree with you.

That's the danger that we exhibit an all free all rights of free expression.

Be a columnists who write newspapers.

Yeah, indeed, but you say yourself.

You often go on there.

You don't know quite what you're going to say.

And hopefully my legal training will prevent me from saying the one thing that will kill me.

And I've come awfully close.

Berg's comments about getting killed weren't a joke.

Enjoying peak popularity, his shows were as fiery as ever, and that contentious energy on the air wasn't just a byproduct of violence signature arguments with guests.

It was no longer about argument for the sake of argument.

The topics on his show were starting to get far more enraging.

Divisive topics like immigration and the welfare state sound familiar again.

I'm pretty upset about what the government is doing as far as bringing in all the repugee.

You know, like people by because they're showing a work ethic that's better than most Americans, God bless them.

Well, no, I'll make a shake up and do something and work and earn something and not want to free ride sweetheart wine, what you're on KLA.

I have a thing about people who to think that whatever they can do, somebody else can exactly do.

Physically, handicap may not be able to do some of the things that hurt her mother or grandmother did.

And those very same people would love to tell you how sensitive there we know.

I was doing it.

I did a show in Detroit.

I have a very interesting spread because Detroit is just up for grabs right and they have thirty five percent of employment.

You talk to the blacks in Detroit right now and tell them about hey should go out and do it for yourself.

There are no jobs available, and these are unskilled laborers in many cases, So what are they supposed to do?

I don't know.

I mean there's a reality in life when situations economics.

You know, it's funny we have an earthquake somewhere and we pile in millions of dollars, that's okay.

For what was it with Mount Helen's Was it the volcano in Italy?

I think there was some you know where they have earthquakes, and so what we tend to spend money and so for the healthy.

Yeah.

Well, I guess what's strange is it's the same kind of pridge that we've all known, and you and I have discussed so many times.

Because one bomb is on welfare doesn't mean everybody else on welfare as a bump.

And that's that same story type of all Jews or this all blacks are, that all Catholics are.

This is the same garbage argument.

I have people callings that all do have money, and I'd.

Like to show you my bank account right now, deminy, you wouldn't believe it.

I'm filmmaker and journalist tal Pinchewski And this is episode four boiling point.

Of all the topics Allenberg talked about on his show, there was one that generated the most angry exchanges.

Race.

I can't believe that guy.

Is that naive to think somebody just happens to be on warfare.

That's a bunch of bunks.

Yeah.

You You've got literally literally people that have been on workfare for generations.

They grow up knowing they're gonna go.

Well, I don't believe that at all.

I don't think that's I think that's that's see, that's a very false image to create.

I can't believe.

You can't believe that there's been so many special but document a proof how how the fathers on warfare, the son goes up being warfare, that son's son goes up to being warfare, employment, whatever, it's it's ridiculous.

Well again, I don't know if I can intially document in that fashion.

But then if that be true, that's a cultural problem, an educational problem, an opportunity problem, as much to do with minorities who aren't afforded a chance to work.

Oh, I know, that's that's garbage.

It's not garbage.

Palat.

You go down, you go down in the ghetto.

Okay, I'm a white middle class a wash.

You go down in the ghetto, and you the wasp wants to blame everybody else in the world.

Let me finish.

I'm not blaming anybody for this.

You got every advantage going for it because you are a wash.

Wait a minute, Wait a minute, let me finish what I'm saying.

You take the guy from the ghetto.

He has more opportunity, he has more chance.

Does that really true?

Wait a minute, Let me finish what I'm saying.

I finish up.

He has more opportunity in more ways.

Of going to school from grants, from scholarships from the black You tell me what would happen if somebody came up with the with the white man's fund for college?

Now, are you telling me there's no scholarship programs?

Are white people?

Know?

That's what I'm saying.

Specifically, I would bet you if I got to add up scholarship programs in this country, overwhelmingly they go to whites.

You're not as the one thing.

Yeah, you've got the sporadic ones.

But I'm I mean sporadic ones.

The history of this country, so much education have been founded on scholarships have been granted to whites longing for blacks even had a crack at them.

You don't know where you're coming from, Lion four.

You're a Kawa.

You don't think he has anything to deal with refreshing and discrimination that's occurred to you.

It doesn't seem to be happy.

Well, of course not, dear, You're as dumb as the rest.

That's I can't take anyone.

I can't think it to sell out.

Blacks couldn't get jobs, Chicanas couldn't get jobs.

Civil Rights Commission comes along.

We have a fair guy there, Reagan bounces them out to get a token black guy on there who probably never saw a black person in a gettle with his whole life or understands the problem here is Susan Ryman Well.

I think I think that Allen probably was one of the people that in that day and age, had a great respect for black people.

I think that he always fell like they were really triumphantly courageous in a day and age that was so much worse than than it is now.

Berg's battle against hate may have stemmed from his complicated relationship with his father.

His dad was out of things.

He just never really got along with his father.

His father was a dentist.

That's Judith Burg.

Alan's ex wife.

Judith sadly passed away in April of twenty twenty five, and this series was produced in her honor.

He and his mother and.

Norma were very close.

Alan felt that his father was a bigot and hated the blacks.

The blacks and Alan Berry had a sort of attachment to fondness for black culture.

He liked the music, he liked the people, he liked He just resonated with it and his father racism profoundly bothered him.

Judah tells a story about when Judith and Elan were married in the early years, they wanted to move into a building in Chicago that was integrated, and his father said, well, if you move in there, I won't come see you.

I think this hypocrisy bothered him deeply, deeply.

I think it's part of what drove him to talk about race and racism on the radio.

I think it's part of what just that shame when it's that close to you is a very powerful thing, you know, And he said, you know, I think he saw some of the same hypocrisies in himself.

Not in that realm, not in the realm of race, but you know, not being faithful in marriage, not keeping those vows, not being able to succeed in his profession, not being able to handle the alcohol, representing people in court that he knew were guilty, all of those things.

And I think that hypocrisy drove him as well.

But I think it originated in that relationship with his father, and I think a lot of the unhappiness and a lot of the just the tangled knots that were part of his personality were driven by that.

You'll cparrently feel that the Jews are part of the Communist conspiracy?

Is that correct?

Well, if I want them to study, I want him to study of Communislow.

I came up across a great number of Jewish names that were the leaders in the Communist revolution, and then I also came across a great many of the Jewish leaders back through the years.

He is a top Jewish leaders who are very proudably admit of the fact that the Communism was a Jewish us, a Jewish thing.

Run my show, and as long as you're on my show, you'll follow my rules.

You don't make up all that Jackman.

Look, you don't make up the rules on my show.

You want to end it right here?

Hey, yeah, go ahead, both of you hang up college, go bail out right now.

That's it.

You saw it right there.

That's the same old lines you're throwing more says the Jews are conspiring to take over the world.

When you hear these lines, I wonder what you think.

Do you believe that kind of stuff?

Do you have any evidence?

Or you just take it because Nitwitz like this, throw this out for the mere's sake of throwing it out.

Because I think he said he was I guess he said it was a prisoner of war.

It was holding the prisoner out there.

I don't know what they did to his mine, but it becomes quite evident.

These people calling in an engaging Alan Berg on race weren't just racist sitting at home fuming.

They were organized and preaching their white supremacist mantra to anyone who would listen.

As his radio career was progressing, the radical right in the United States was sort of gearing up through young through younger people like someone in Denver whose name was David Lane.

David Lane, remember that name.

Lane was in the white power movement, if we want to call it.

That had associations with Kukla Klan, and he would listen to Berg on the radio and then call in and argue about racism and things like that, just you know, to get into an argument about it.

Berg would take him on, take anybody on who it was in that ILK would never back down.

He made remarks and said things that were so they were funny, they were clever.

He was.

He was never really insulting unless he had approval to be insulting from the person.

Really that you know that you mind if I call you a terrible name?

He had.

He was engaging.

He just engaged people.

However, I don't know about the Nazis.

They didn't like him very much.

They hated him.

It wasn't that he was Jewish, it was that he was so outspoken.

It could have been that he was anything else, but he was outspoken.

With a number of prominent white supremacist organizations emerging across the United States at this time, Allenberg focused a lot of his ire at Richard Butler, the Idaho based leader of the Aryan Nations and a spiritual leader of the white supremacist movement in America.

He always wanted to interview Richard Butler, and Richard Butler worried me because Allen would humiliate this man, completely humiliate Richard Butler.

And we booked him two times, if I can remember.

I wish I had tapes of him.

But I talked to him afterwards and I just said, I'm not sure we should do this anymore.

I'm scared for your safety.

Richard Butler, an organization similar to his, preached the emergence of a white Christian ethno state, and the central scripture in this white supremacist movement was a book called the Turner Diaries.

There are ideas for this revolution came from a very, very only racist, anti Semitic novel called The Turner Diaries, published in nineteen seventy eight by a man named William Pierce had a pseudonym, but that was his actual name.

In the novel it which is a very blood soaked piece of writing, very disturbing piece of writing.

He talks about in a fictional sense, this group, the Order, comes together and they decide to cleanse the United States essentially of minorities, feminist liberals, liberal judges, their whole enemies list, which includes about sixty million people.

They start to carry this out, they have something called the Day of the Rope, where a lot of people get killed, hung, otherwise eliminated, and then of course they have their white power Revolution.

One of the people who also studied The Turner Diaries and who sold that book at gun shows around the Midwest in the early nineties was an ex soldier named Timothy McVeigh.

One of the chapters in the book the novel is about the members of the Order getting a truck, filling it full of explosives, going to a federal building, partying it in front of a federal building and at nine am in the morning detonating the explosives in the truck.

As well know, on April nineteenth, nineteen ninety five, Timothy McVeigh drove a truck filled with explosives and parked in front of the Mirror Building in Oklahoma City and killed one hundred and sixty eight men, women, and children.

Allen Berg didn't want to platform white supremacists.

The whole concept of platforming someone didn't even exist yet.

He invited these racist ideologues onto his show for one reason, to publicly humiliate them.

And he was good at it and took particular joy in it.

He loved it because his politics and his life was to dispel that, and he took him on and beat him up.

He did, but he didn't beat him up like when we're dealing with the guy who ran the Primrose Cattleman's Gazette, who printed the protocols of the Elders' el You've.

Probably never heard of the Primrose and Cattleman's Gazette.

It was a small publication for American farmers, and it is kind of ironic that Burke discovered the publication at a major agricultural trade show in Denver.

You see Denver was still a major center for that industry at the time, so much so that KOI included farmers' reports in its broadcasts.

Every day.

It is a closed grain report for Monday, November the second he made the weak drows that come to the elevator Graine once Bent lowered the five sens power, mostly through the three cents per light farm offering lower brah answers grape week growver these dollars and continued to the text Boat Inquire, added Sprank.

Alan loved to jab at the farm Reporter on his way in or out of the studio, and he'd go to cattle and agriculture shows for another opportunity to get a laugh.

But burg wasn't laughing when he discovered the Primrose and Cattleman's Gazette at a trade show and saw that its editorial content included excerpts from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a text dating back to nineteen oh three that outlines an anti Semitic conspiracy theory.

The publication also ran ads for the United States Marine Corps.

Burke took the issue to a friend of his US representative, Patricia Schroeder, who served on the House Armed Services Committee.

Schroeder was stunned by the United States government's financial support of the publication, and it wasn't long before the ads were pulled.

It was one thing to verbally abuse and publicly humiliate racists on the radio, but depriving white souprise of their revenue stream took the battle to a whole new level.

And the severity of that battle was most apparent when a man named Fred Wilkins stormed into the KOA studios, walked right up to Alan Berg and threatened to kill him.

That guy that was that came into the studio, Fred Wilkins.

Fred Wilkins, Yeah, Fred Wilkins came into the studio, and I'm hard to believe.

I'm in a bar with a guy named Charlie Martin and the light beer guy comes in and says they just tried to co Alan And I was in the car down there and was cop cars in the street and everything, and I went in.

He said it was because Fred Wilkins was a real threat.

What had started out as an entertainment had escalated into an all out battle against a growing and very dangerous force.

Alan Berg rarely, if ever addressed the possibility of retribution, but like his interview on sixty Minutes, the few times he did bring it up on the air were both dark and and lighthearted.

I appreciate your call.

Why we're coming back for our final segment of the show.

After check got the bullet holes.

In the door jokes aside, there was no way Alan was going to back down, and the mere suggestion that he stopped having these people on his show elicited a very strong response.

He was appalled.

I wouldn't even say that at well, he said, are you serious?

You don't want me to do this?

Because so I'm supposed to shut up because of this man.

We're gonna let fear stop me from doing these interviews.

We're gonna let fear.

Not I remember in.

Saying Susan, I said, you're just humiliating him.

Alan, it's horrible.

This guy is crazy.

He's crazy.

And he said, well, that's what the audience needs to hear, is they need to hear what you're hearing over and over and over again to make them realize that these insane sex exist out there and they need to be exposed and they need to be stopped.

Maybe you play taps on my old shows on the weekends when I'm not in the air, to make yourself further miserable.

All that would indicate to me if you really thought I was such a terrible broadcaster, you really are a masochist.

I don't stay tuned into anything I don't like.

Never, no way on earth.

You really have a problem, Yes, I do.

I do.

I agree with that.

Well, you've established now maybe we could find a cure for you.

Well, if you like the name of a doctor, would like to come to my common Sense counseling program, which I'm starting, Maybe you'd like to do that.

No, I don't think.

Well, possibly I can help you through this grief that you're experiencing.

I'm wait, what is the point?

You are trying to make a point that I bring grief to every one three hundred and sixty five days a year.

I think on a pole basis, you'd find it to be quite the contrary.

But why do you listen if I bring you grief?

I don't down.

I don't, Oh, darling, I don't.

Think you miss them in my show.

In the last seven years I've been in the business, You're always there and you always know what I've done.

It's an amazing thing for a lady who says, God, you make me miserable.

I'm waiting.

You remind me of the lady.

Oh you're waiting for a program to come on.

Why would you turn here?

Why there are thirty four of the radio stations in this time?

Why turn here?

If I make you miserable, you don't make you?

Guys, what a hypocrites?

You're making yourself right on this very conversation, I feel sor right.

You made an other full of yourself.

You have no credibility whatsoever?

You dig what I do?

You have a need.

Unfortunately, you have no sense of humor.

That's why you can't ever enjoy this show, and that's why you're a loser.

As all people have no sense of humor, and you are categorically one of them.

Bye, things were coming to a head, and alan Berg's vitriolic exchanges on the air were suddenly posing a very real threat to his personal safety.

But even with the death threats, even with alan Berg's occasional references to his own murder, no one could have ever imagined what would happen in June of nineteen eighty four.

Live Wire is a production of iHeart Podcasts.

And Modulator Media.

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