The Lever. Subscribers-supported journalism that holds power accountable. This is corruption. This is bribery. Don't let it stand.

This corruption is an American issue.

We live in a corrupt nation, a nation corrupt to its bones. We have reached a saturation point of corruption at the federal level. It is corrosive on society because nobody has any trust or belief or puts any legitimacy in our institutions anymore. When I say the word corrupt, what jumps into your mind? Maybe you think about a file on your computer's hard drive not working or the blue screen of death. The file has been corrupted.

The D.

X has corrupted my system. Maybe you think of some far away regime on the other side of the world where government officials get rich while everyone else starves. Somalia has held the title of being one of the world's most corrupt countries for the past decade. Maybe you think of something from pop culture, like the Nevada Senator and the Godfather demanding a bribe from the Corleone family. Or maybe you think of the Wire's walking bribery machine, Clay Davis. Shit. If you're a Republican political junkie, this is probably what comes to mind.

Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas company, paid Hunter Biden millions of dollars to serve on its board of directors.

If you're a Democratic political junkie, I'm guessing you think of stuff like this. Trump told the group that they should donate a billion dollars to his presidential campaign because if elected, he would roll back environmental rules that he said hamper their industry. Corruption in politics is the process of using money to break the machine of government so that the machine no longer benefits the public. It only benefits the wealthy and powerful. Now, there's the corruption of, say, a cop taking a bribe to rip up a speeding ticket or a government official diverting public highway funds into their own pocket. This petty corruption is bad, but greedy individuals will always exist, which makes this small time graft inevitable, even in the best run governments. But then there's systemic corruption, the corruption that's become so pervasive and so common that you start to assume, oh, well, that's not even corruption. That's just how things work. Deep down, you sense that there's a glitch, but it's hard to pinpoint the problem when you see it everywhere. It is all around us.

You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes.

This is the deep systemic corruption that now pervades America, and you get a glimpse of it every time you hear about how much money is flooding into politics and elections. Morgan, billionaires spending a record $880 million in in the midterms. Spending projected to reach, get this, nearly $11 billion. Judy, we are seeing a storm of campaign spending. An ultra secretive Chicago industrial mogul has quietly given $1.6.

Billion to the architect of the right wing take over the courts.

This all-consuming corruption does not occur naturally. It's not inevitable. It is created by people who want to trap us inside a system of bribery, graft, and dishonesty because that serves them. So who exactly designed this dystopia we're now immersed in? The Lever's team of investigative journalists has spent the last two years digging into archives and lost audio, searching for that answer, and we finally found it. I'm David Serota, and this is MasterPlan. What about the MasterPlan?

How are you getting up on master?

Money, money, money, money, money, If you've been listening to Master Plan and thought this stuff sounds familiar, it's because today we live in a world controlled by money, and it's corrupting everything from the food we eat to the movies we watch.

And each week on LeverTime, we expose how they did it. I'm Arjun Saint, and every week, David Serona and I host Lever Time, the Lever's Weekly Business and Politics podcast. To listen, search for Lever Time wherever you get your podcast or go to levernews. Com. In this first episode, we'll eventually go back 50 years to start exposing the epic story of how corruption was legalized in America. But first, let me tell you where this story started for me. Can you pinpoint the exact moment when you realized how corrupt and fubar everything was? I can. It was after a predawn bus trip to Canada. Sarah Conjou joins us live now from the US Canadian border in Highgate with more on the story. Sarah? Roger. It's a manner of consumers paying one place here in the US and a different place just 40 feet from where I'm standing. It was the year 2000. I was a few years out of college following my dreams of good government and progress that I'd seen on the West Wing. I scored my first big job politics working for a then obscure New England congressman who'd started bussing seniors to Canada in search of lower priced prescription drugs.

Then the question comes, why is it that the same exact prescription drug manually Manufactured in the United States of America is sold here in Canada or in Mexico or in Europe at far, far lower prices than that product is sold in the United States. That is insane. He was right. It is insane. And he had a plan to to fix it, a bill that would allow American pharmacies to buy cheaper drugs from Canada and sell them to Americans at the lower world market prices. It was a common sense idea that seemed popular in both parties. Some Democrats even started campaigning on the issue in the 2000 election. I worked for one of them in Montana, a farmer running for Senate who was organizing similar bus trips to Canada. We didn't ask people when they got on those busses for Canada if they were Republicans or Democrats or libertarians or vegetarians. We only asked them if you would like to make a difference. We said that we would embarrass Congress into action. Over a year ago, when we started these trips, Congress had never heard about the problem about prescription drugs. Now everybody's got a solution.

The pressure campaign worked. More lawmakers from both parties sponsored the bill. It got votes in the House and Senate. It passed Congress, and President Bill Clinton signed it. To 25-year-old me, it seemed the system had worked. There was a problem. The public pressured its government. The legislative machine went to work, and the wrong was righted. America, fuck yeah. But then the hammer came down.

A Congressional plan to reduce Americans' medical costs today ran smack into a roadblock.

I remember hearing the news. I was in my tiny DC apartment. Secretary of Health, Donna Shalala, in a letter to the President, has now scuttled the plan by cite serious flaws and loopholes which undermine the potential for cost savings. The trickery was grotesque. Lawmakers issued their press releases touting the passage of a bill that promised to lower the cost of prescription drugs. But the pharmaceutical industry had been funneling millions of dollars to both political parties, and lobbyists got their allies in Congress to slip a loophole into the bill. Then the Clinton administration used that loophole to kill the program before it could ever go into effect.

Since she couldn't certify that American consumers wouldn't get lower prices, she didn't want to hold out false hope and be involved in something she thought was not legitimate.

The Clinton White House made this announcement right after Christmas, when everyone was on break. The timing often used in Washington to make sure nobody notices something bad is happening. The whole thing reeked of corruption. And today, the price of medicine continues to skyrocket. Last January, prices of more than 800 medications went up.

It hurts those without insurance and even those with it.

My innocence was gone. After a few more years on Capitol Hill, I left Washington, DC, bitter, bruised, and disgusted. I felt like Rowdy Roddy Piper in that old cult movie, They Live, when he found sunglasses that let him see all the monsters society. I wanted some justice, which was the perfect attitude for becoming an investigative journalist. I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubble gum. I started firing out stories that exposed politicians who were taking money from health care giants, Wall Street banks, and defense contractors. I wrote a few best-selling books, hosted a radio show, and launched the investigative news site The Lever. I even helped come up with the story for the Oscar nominated movie called Don't Look Up, which featured a corrupt White House letting its top donor try to profit off a comet that was hurtling towards Earth.

This This comet actually contains almost $140 trillion worth of assets.

Buck $140 trillion.

What do these trillions of dollars even matter if we're all going to die?

Oh, no. What if we're rich and we're safe? I'm proud of what I've accomplished in my reporting on corruption. But over the years, I also started to understand that each instance of corruption was a symptom of a whole system created by a master plan to legalize corruption in all of its forms, from buying elections to bribing public officials with gifts and campaign cash. Over the next 10 episodes, we're going to expose the blueprint that created this system, and we'll expose it by doing the thing that journalism used to do all the time. Show me the money. Show me the money. Show me the money. No, not that. This. Follow the money. What do you mean?

Just follow the money.

Why follow the money? Why expose this master plan? Because your life is worse than it should be thanks to the corruption of American democracy. Trouble earning enough to pay your credit card bill and your rent? You can thank the corporate donors who delivered cash to lawmakers who then blocked a minimum wage increase, blocked rent control, and blocked a cap on credit card interest rates. Are you one of the 112 million Americans who struggled to pay for health care? You can thank the health insurance companies who funneled millions of dollars to lawmakers to make sure they keep America as the only industrialized country without government-guaranteed medical care. Sweating climate change? Look no further than the mountains of money that fossil fuel companies give the lawmakers to let those companies continue incinerating the atmosphere. I think back two decades ago to those bus trips up to Canada and all those seniors trying to get the medicines they needed to stay alive. Those seniors were victims of a system of corruption that's been legalized over decades. Now, you may be wondering, if corruption is so bad, why would anyone want to legalize it? Because the oligarchs, operatives, and opportunists who are executing the master plan don't like democracy.

They want minority rule for themselves, and they understand that in a properly functioning one-person, one-vote democracy, they would never be able to gain control of the political system and then enact the self-enriching and ideologically the extreme policies they want. They understand that to get their way, they must be allowed to buy elections, legislation, court rulings, and public policy. This master plan started about a half century ago, so that's where we're going next. After the break, we're taking you back to the year 1971, just before this master plan was hatched. It was a time when we almost got this problem of corruption under control. It was an era when hope and progress flowed like milk. Hey, everyone. It's David Serota. If you've been enjoying this show and want to learn more about why our government is the way it is, I want to recommend the podcast Civics 101, from our friends at New Hampshire Public Radio. Civics 101 is a podcast about the basics of how our democracy works, and sometimes how it doesn't. It's perfect for when you're trying to understand why a recent Supreme Court decision is so controversial, or when you're trying to explain to a family member at a party how their ballot is counted and the difference between misinformation and disinformation.

Hosts Hannah McCarthy and nick Capadice explore our government, its history, and what it all means for us. With over 200 episodes on everything from whether the President actually controls the price of gas to why we've had so many government shutdowns, Civics 101 is sure to spark your curiosity and inspire conversation. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out civics101podcast. Com. It's Madelyne Baron from In the Dark. I've spent the past four years investigating a crime.

When you're driving down this road, I plan I'm not killing somebody. A four-year investigation, hundreds of interviews, thousands of documents, all in an effort to see what the US military has kept from the public for years.

Did you think that a crime had been committed?

I don't have any opinion on that. Season 3 of In the Dark is available now wherever you get your podcasts.

The year is 1971. Hot pants were hot, bell bottoms were swinging, and peasant tops were all the rage. Progress is in the air. There are thousands of protesters descending on Washington to demand the end of the Vietnam War. The Lorax is a brand new bestseller, and disco is just starting to emerge on the music scene. Even stuffy old Washington, DC felt like a place where things were possible. In less than a decade, public pressure had compelled lawmakers to create Medicare, Medicaid, civil rights legislation, voting rights legislation, and the Housing and Urban Development Department. The United States government had officially declared war on poverty. A Republican President had signed legislation creating the Environmental Protection Agency.

The new Super Agency Department to pull together all the federal efforts now underway and to come up with some new ones.

President Richard Nixon had also signed the Clean Air Act and pledged to end the Vietnam War. Congress was working on all sorts of other groundbreaking bills, too. Initatives to improve standards in industries from energy to agriculture to nursing homes to consumer products. They extended the Voting Rights Act for another five years. This whirlwind of legislation marked an era driven by the notion that government could to fix the nation's greatest problems and be a partner in protecting consumers. Compared to today, the United States in 1971 seems like another planet in another galaxy in a whole other universe. It would be an understatement to say that things were going well for the reformers. But there was still one problem that hadn't been fixed, maybe the biggest one of all, the problem of money. Dirty, sweating, corrupt money. Though the big successes of the New deal, the civil rights movement, and the great society eras had overcome some of that corruption, big money was still everywhere in politics and had the potential to jam up all of this amazing progress. In the mid-20th century, corruption scandals periodically rocked Washington, and one scandal even resulted in the resignation of a Supreme Court justice, so the public was becoming more and more aware of the problem.

What Americans might not have known is that by the early 1970s, one of the biggest corruption problems of all was right there in the oval office, secretly recording everything.

These terres are organized. They're edible. They're military.

This is from President Richard Nixon's newly installed recording system. The audio is a bit muffled, but what you're hearing is the Southern twangy voice of John Connolly in the oval office, telling Nixon that the dairy producers of America are, Organized, adamant, and militant. Connolly was a Democrat and the former governor of Texas who survived multiple gunshot wounds when he was sitting in the car as John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Connolly is recovered, and now here in 1971, he's the Treasury Secretary for Kennedy's archnemesis, Nixon. This secret recording took place long before Watergate. Nixon is only halfway through his first term as President, but he's already brainstorming with Connolly about ways to raise campaign cash for his re-election. Connolly has a big idea, milk.

Connolly said the milk lobbyists are, quote, amassing an enormous amount of money that they're going to put into political activities.

Historically, the milk lobby had used cash to curry favor with Democrats in dairy producing states and LBJ's administration. But Connolly is telling Nixon and his aides that the milk magnates might be willing to switch sides. He's basically saying if Nixon uses the powers of the presidency to boost the minimum price of milk, it'll enrich the powerful dairy companies, which will encourage them to then spend big to boost Nixon's re-election bid. At the end of the meeting, nothing seems to have been decided, but Connolly asks for a moment alone with Nixon. The tape goes silent. A few minutes later, the recording restarts with Nixon talking to his aides.

We did a made a decision on the dairy mix.

Nixon is telling his aides that he's greenlighting Connolly's plan, and Connolly is going to collect the milk lobby's money for Nixon's campaign. We're given 85% of the dairy.

I think we're doing more than they ever expected.

If it seems like they're speaking in code, maybe they were. Just weeks before, Nixon's Agriculture Department had declined to provide higher price supports for the dairy industry. But now, the President has decided to personally intervene on the milk magnate's behalf, unilaterally ordering the government to cover 85% of the dairy company's costs. Nixon was going all out on milk. We're going all out.

All out.

Nixon says that in exchange for that big favor, Connolly is going to squeeze the dairy companies for even more cash than what they were already funneling to Nixon's political machine.

He knows them well, and he's just shaking them down. Maybe he's shaking first of the order. See what I mean?

Did Did you hear that? Listen to it again. He's just shaking them down. Yes. He's literally talking about, quote, shaking them down.

My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.

Oh, yeah. But it gets better when Nixon's Chief of staff, HR Haldeman, then responds. They're committed to a million dollars this year.

And they're to us, yeah. In addition to what they're doing, they're promoting the infrastructure. That's part of what we had to get set up. They were committed to To clarify, Haldeman said, That's part of what we had to get set up, these committees set up.

He's referring to scores of dummy committees with cartoonishly bullshit names like the kind you now see at the end of election campaign commercials, meaningless names like the League of Dedicated Voters, the Committee for a Better Nation, and Americans Working to Build a Better Community. And why did the Nixon Whitehouse need these committees? To hide the fact that the dairy giants were pumping a whopping $90,000 a month into Nixon's campaign machine in exchange for those milk price supports. Nixon was taking the TV ads for milk at the time, literally. Milking the donors for as much as he could get. What good things go with milk? Hamburgers and hot dogs and spaghetti and meatballs. And apparently money. Dirty, sweating, corrupt campaign money also goes well with milk. But Nixon was about to regret taking such a big gulp. Hey, Master Plan listeners, this is David Serota. I have something new to share with you from Tenderfoot TV and the team behind Atlanta Monster. It's a new podcast called Flash Point. Some of you may remember where you were on July 27, 1996, when a domestic terrorist bombed the Summer Olympic Games held in Atlanta, Georgia. The attack was on every news channel.

And while the FBI and the media fixated on the wrong man, the real bomber was planning his next target, two abortion clinics and a gay nightclub. The bomber would later be identified as a dedicated soldier in the white supremacist Christian Identity Movement. Through the lens of these bombings and the victims left to pick up the pieces, Flash Point explores one of America's greatest threats, the political and religious radicalization of homegrown Terrorists. Flash Point is available now. Listen for free on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Joining me for this next part is Master Plan Editor, Ron Doyle. Hey, David. Okay, Ron, why is this important in the story of corruption in America?

That's a great question. And honestly, I was pretty skeptical when you and the producers told me that you wanted our first episode to be about milk prices, especially since the dairy debacle wasn't even Nixon's first scandal. That's right. But as you mentioned before, 1971 was a pivotal year for American progress. So at the same time that Nixon was secretly trading dairy price supports for campaign cash, Congress was also debating the most serious anti-corruption legislation since the Federal Corrupt Practices Act of 1925.

So lawmakers at the time could point to this dirty dairy deal as more proof of why America needed campaign finance reform.

Exactly. I also think it showed average Americans why they should care. The scandal transformed an abstract concept like campaign finance reform into a real-world problem. Nixon was so desperate for campaign money that he jacked up the minimum price of milk to get it. That thrust the story into the national spotlight.

The Wall Street Journal blared a front-page headline, Milk and Money: Flood of Campaign Cash to Help Nixon Campaign, follows hike in Dairy Supports. The Washington Post just called it, Milking Dollars for Nixon. Even America's favorite newsman, Walter Cronkite, wade in.

Early last March, Agriculture Secretary Harden announced that federal milk support prices for 1971 would remain at current levels. About two weeks later, big dairy firms went to the White House to protest to President Nixon, and within two days, Harden did an about face, saying that research had shown a need for higher supports. Subsequently, dairy interests have raised thousands of dollars in campaign funds for Mr. Nixon, with the money already flowing to newly created organizations in Washington.

But the campaign finance legislation moving through Congress wasn't just about spilled milk. It was also an attempt to address the soaring cost of campaigns in the TV era. With so many Americans glued to their televisions, politicians who wanted to communicate with voters needed to raise more and more money to run television ads, like this one, which might be my favorite from the time period.

One, two, three.

Okay, so this commercial starts out with a cute little girl plucking petals from a daisy. And then it ends with a nuclear blast and a giant mushroom cloud.

These are the stakes.

Man, that is so dark. That was an infamous ad that Lyndon Johnson's campaign ran in 1964, when Johnson was up against Senator Barry Goldwater. And ads like that were tremendously expensive and exploding the cost of running campaigns.

Those costs were starting to dominate the political conversation. Even Nixon agreed that something needed to change when he was pressed by ABC News in this interview.

Me, the greatest danger to our democracy is soaring election costs. What is your view about those election costs? I recall when I ran for the House of Representatives, the campaign cost $25,000. That was in 1946. Right now, I don't think you can run a house campaign for less than $100,000 in any district, except perhaps a rather safe district for an incumbent. The problem is not the control of the cost. The problem is how.

When we found this tape, I was shocked. It was wild to hear Richard Nixon admitting that money in politics was a problem.

Yeah, I never expected to hear him say this.

We do favor a limitation on expenses. There's no question about that. Wow.

So he was going on record saying the White House supported the campaign finance reforms.

Well, yeah, but that's not the whole story.

Yeah. While the President was claiming to support reforms in front of a TV camera, behind the scenes, Nixon officials were quietly working to kill off the legislation.

We're not making assumptions here. One of our producers went digging around in the National Archives and found shockingly frank evidence of their duplicity. Check this out. Here's a memo entitled, quote, Election Reform from White House Council, John Dean to Chuck Colson.

We should explain who Chuck Colson is. Colson was a Rasputan-like White House aide and a Watergate conspirator. Nixon's chief of staff called him the President's Hitman.

And John Dean was Nixon's lawyer at the White House. In this memo from May 1971, Dean tells Colson to, quote, make an inventory of your respective Washington representatives and trade groups with a view towards having them get involved in fighting election reform legislation. Wow. It gets worse. Dean goes on to say these groups could quietly go to the Hill and tell members of the House and Senate that if they continue to support this legislation, they will be cutting off financial support from these groups.

So in short, the Nixon administration's lawyer told Nixon's top henchmen to organize business groups to threaten lawmakers with financial punishment if they back this legislation designed to fight corruption.

Yeah, I mean, really, that vindictive behavior was pretty on brand for the Nixon Whitehouse, But the power plate didn't work. Lawmakers truly felt the need to do something, and they ultimately passed campaign finance reform legislation.

It was known as the Federal Election Campaign Act, or FECA.

Feca?

Yeah, man, I know what it sounds like. Grow up, dude. Anyway, the bill passed the House with a landslide of support, 334 yays and only 20 nays.

The House of Representatives today passed and sent to the President the first major reform legislation on campaign spending in 50 years. It would set limits on campaign advertising on radio, television, and other media, and it would require extensive reports on campaign expenditures.

Nixon's henchmen had failed to sabotage the bill. Publikely, Nixon probably loathed every aspect of this legislation. He was compelled to sign it into law on February seventh.

President Nixon signed into law today the most extensive reform in federal election spending in half a century. Mr. Nixon said he is confident that it will guard against campaign abuses and help build public confidence in the election process.

Before this new law was enacted, the world of campaign finance was a no holds barred Wild West shit show. The previous laws have been described as more loophole than law, and politicians faced no accountability. They could pretty much get away with trading favors for campaign cash all in secret. The new bill, FECA, held out hope that the era of dirty money was coming to an end. That's it. That's the whole podcast, folks. America capped off its golden era of reform legislation by finally giving itself a civilized campaign finance system in 1971, and the rest is history. We have clean elections, tough enforcement of anti-corruption laws, a government that routinely passes legislation that helps millions of people rather than big corporate donors, and we all lived happily ever after here in the utopia of Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing. The end. Great work, everybody. That's a wrap. Awesome podcast, man. Hang on, my phone is ringing. Hello? Wait, what? Okay, right, my bad. We don't have any of those things today. In fact, we have the opposite. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito took an undisclosed fishing trip to Alaska with billionaire donors, including hedge fund manager Paul Singer, who later had business before the Court.

Menendez accused of accepting bribes of cash and those gold bars to use his political influence for businessmen.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is acknowledging he took trips on a private plane owned by a Republican donor last year.

They really do seem to want to get rid of the criminalization of corruption and bribery. This dystopia is our reality now. Everywhere you turn, there's a breathtaking amount of corruption happening right out there in plain sight. How did this happen? How did we go backwards? Over the next several episodes, you're going to find out. Spoiler, it wasn't an accident. There's been a decades long master plan in the works to legalize political corruption and make America into the place that works only for the rich, the connected, and the powerful. This story starts in the 1970s, but it continues today in everything from legislation to court rulings to Republicans newest policy agenda dropped right into the middle of the 2024 presidential campaign. The conservative Heritage Foundation leading this draconian and at times extreme policy plan, Project 2025, which has all been written out, a 900-page wishlist or proposal for the second term. In this series, you're going to learn about the Man and the Manifesto that set the master plan in motion.

Congratulations, Louis. You have just been elected the Board of Directors of Philip Morris, Incorporated.

You'll hear about Supreme Court cases that chipped away at democracy and opened the floodgates of money.

Money is speech. Speech is protected.

You'll learn how all of this created the hellscape that we live in today.

It can't be for a political favor. It can't be, I'll do this official act for you if you vote a certain way.

That doesn't fly.

It's got to be money. Our next stop on this journey is right after Richard Nixon reluctantly signed that early campaign finance bill. Plans to undermine that law and plans for the Watergate break in are now underway, but the public doesn't know it yet. In fact, Nixon's top aid is on television, telling everyone that a brand new era of clean government has begun.

I think after the history of this first term is written and you look back, you're going to see that compared to other administrations or by any standard you'd want to apply, that it has been an extraordinarily clean, corruption-free administration because the President insists on it.

That's next time on Master Plan. I've earned everything I've got. They're getting up on master plan.

Well, I'm not a crux.

I've earned everything I've done. Master Plan is a production of The Lever. This episode was written and produced by Jared Jekang Mair, Laura Krantz, and me, David Serota. Our production team includes Ula Culpa, Arjun Sing, and Roni Ricabene. Our editor is Ron Doyle. Fact-checking of this episode by Chris Walker. Original music is by nick Byron Campbell. Mixing by Louis Weeks. You can listen and subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, YouTube Music, and wherever you get your podcasts. For ad-free episodes, exclusive bonus content, transcripts with links to our sources, and access to the Lever's entire archive of investigative journalism, please visit levernews. Com to become a subscriber.

I'm not a croc. I've earned everything I've got, got, got, got, got.