The Opperman Report'

CAPTAIN BRIAN GEMMELL, who ran loyalist agents for MI5 in the mid-1970s, has died. When Gemmell discovered that boys were being abused by a staff member at Kincora Boys’ Home in Belfast, he reported this to MI5, only to be ordered to drop his inquiries by Ian Cameron, a top MI5 officer.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.

Brett Harper - Exposing Agape Boarding SchoolDec 12, 2022Brett Harper is a survivor of the Agape Boarding School system. The story he tells Ed Opperman is as unbelievable as it is cruel. But he is not alone to cast allegations at this establishment. Such is his fury at his and others’ treatment at the school, he has written a book, not only detailing his own experience, but those of his peers.Spare the Rod is a troubling look into the abusive and terribly under-regulated troubled teen industry; a shadowy network of private juvenile prisons, therapeutic boarding schools, group homes, wilderness camps, boot camps, conversion therapy centers, boarding schools, rehabs, etc. Thousands of kids are abused each year and many of them suffer in silence. Some sustain life-long injuries and struggle with things like trauma, PTSD, CPTSD, depression, anxiety, abandonment, nightly night terrors, chronic pain and more! Their ability to form healthy relationships is forever impacted and often their connection to the family that sent them away completely severed. You might think this can't happen in the U.S.! Oh yes it can! Oh yes it does! Authoritarian fascists who believe in tough love and forcing teens to assimilate to their culture and morals is nothing new. It's been going on for hundreds of years!Book: Spare the RodBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.

When General Alexander M. Haig Jr. returned to the White House on May 3, 1973, he found the Nixon administration in worse shape than he had imagined. President Richard Nixon, reelected in an overwhelming landslide just six months earlier, had accepted the resignations of his top aides—the chief of staff H. R. Haldeman and the domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman—just three days earlier.Haldeman and Ehrlichman had enforced the president’s will and protected him from his rivals and his worst instincts for four years. Without them, Nixon stood alone, backed by a staff that lacked gravitas and confidence as the Watergate scandal snowballed. Nixon needed a savior, someone who would lift his fortunes while keeping his White House from blowing apart. He hoped that savior would be his deputy national security adviser, Alexander Haig, whom he appointed chief of staff. But Haig’s goal was not to keep Nixon in office—it was to remove him.In Haig’s Coup, Ray Locker uses recently declassified documents to tell the true story of how Haig orchestrated Nixon’s demise, resignation, and subsequent pardon. A story of intrigues, cover-ups, and treachery, this incisive history shows how Haig engineered the “soft coup” that ended our long national nightmare and brought Watergate to an end.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.

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Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.

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Derf Backderf - Kent State ShootingDerf Backderf, is an American cartoonist. He is most famous for his graphic novels, especially My Friend Dahmer, the international bestseller which won an Angoulême Prize, and earlier for his comic strip The City, which appeared in a number of alternative newspapers from 1990 to 2014. In 2006 Derf won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for cartooning. Backderf has been based in Cleveland, Ohio, for much of his career.On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard gunned down unarmed college students protesting the Vietnam War at Kent State University. In a deadly barrage of 67 shots, four students were killed and nine shot and wounded. It was the day America turned guns on its own children—a shocking event burned into our national memory.The fatal shootings triggered immediate and massive outrage on campuses around the country. More than four million students participated in organized walkouts at hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools, the largest student strike in the history of the United States at that time. It was a day that shocked the nation and helped turn the tide of public opinion against America’s war in Vietnam.A few days prior, 10-year-old Derf Backderf saw those same guardsmen patrolling his nearby hometown, sent in by the governor to crush a trucker strike.Using the journalism skills he employed on My Friend Dahmer and Trashed, Backderf has conducted extensive interviews and research to explore the lives of these four young people and the events of those four days in May, when the country seemed on the brink of tearing apart.In this award-winning and powerful graphic novel, Derf Backderf takes us back to the age of the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon, Woodstock, and the Cold War and explores, in words and images, a scene of tragedy: the campus of Kent State University, where National Guard Troops attacked unarmed protestors and killed four students (Allison Beth Krause, age 19, Jeffrey Glenn Miller, age 20, Sandra Lee Scheuer, age 20, and William Knox Schroeder, age 19).Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.

Matt Birkbeck - The Life We Chose“The Life We Chose—an unforgettable story. A really great read.” —Nicholas Pileggi, author of Wiseguy and Casino and screenwriter of GoodfellasFrom Matt Birkbeck—investigative journalist and executive producer of Netflix’s #1 movie Girl in the Picture—a  revelatory father/surrogate son story that takes readers deep inside  the inner workings of the mob through the eyes of William “Big Billy”  D’Elia, the right-hand man to legendary mafia kingpin Russell Bufalino,  who ran organized crime in the US for more than fifty years.William “Big Billy” D’Elia is Mafia royalty.The  “adopted” son of legendary organized crime boss Russell Bufalino, for  decades D’Elia had unequaled access to the man the FBI and US Justice  Department considered one of the leading organized crime figures in the  United States. But the government had no real idea as to the breadth of  Bufalino’s power and influence—or that it was Bufalino, from his bucolic  home base in Pittston, Pennsylvania, who reigned over the five families  in New York and other organized crime families throughout the country.For  nearly thirty years, D’Elia was at Bufalino’s side, and “Russ’s son”  was a witness and participant to major historical events that have  stymied law enforcement, perplexed journalists, and produced false and  wild narratives in books and movies—not the least of which being the  infamous disappearance of union boss Jimmy Hoffa. In addition, their  reach was illustrated by their relationships with Frank Sinatra, Marlon  Brando, Michael Jackson, Suge Knight, and many other celebrities and  personalities.D’Elia became the de facto leader of  the Bufalino family upon Russell Bufalino’s imprisonment in 1979, and he  officially took control upon Bufalino’s death in 1994 until his arrest  in 2006, when he was charged with money laundering and the attempted  murder of a witness. He pled guilty to money laundering and witness  tampering and was released from federal prison in 2012.Candid  and unapologetic, D’Elia is finally ready to reveal the real story  behind the myths and in so doing paints a complicated, compelling, and  stunning portrait of crime, power, money, and finally, family.BookWebsiteBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.