# Episode 1: North Dakota’s Facebook Mercenaries

An episode of [Drilled](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1439735906), 25 Aug 2026, 38 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/pdrl.fm/3e5572/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/9a7ab5ee-ce11-48ff-a544-b3ec00ea9b1e/bd44d357-55b8-4a8d-a3f2-b4aa013110c3/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f82f371-6316-4ea6-a108-b3ec00ea9b2d

As protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline began to grow in North Dakota, a new seemingly grassroots Facebook page emerged. In this episode we meet the hired gun behind it, Robert Rice, who was working for the pipeline company's private security company, Tiger Swan. For a look at the primary documents underpinning this episode, head to the Drilled site. This mini-series was reported in partnership with High Country News, and a print feature accompanying it is available on their website. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:17] Speaker 1: Pushkin Hi, folks, Amy here, Before we get into this episode,
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[1:02] Speaker 1: let's get into it. It's been a decade now since
[1:08] Speaker 1: members of the Standing Rocks to Tribe launched a historic
[1:11] Speaker 1: movement to stop construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, but
[1:15] Speaker 1: somehow details of the pipeline company's efforts to undermine the
[1:19] Speaker 1: movement are still coming to light. I'm Amy Westervelt and
[1:23] Speaker 1: this is Drilled. Last year we brought you Slapped from
[1:26] Speaker 1: reporter Alan Brown, the story of the pipeline company Energy
[1:30] Speaker 1: Transfers massive lawsuit blaming Green Peace for the Standing Rock movement.
[1:35] Speaker 1: Energy Transfer won that suit, and the judgment was so
[1:38] Speaker 1: large it puts the future of green Peace in the
[1:41] Speaker 1: US at risk. Standing Rock started out as one indigenous
[1:46] Speaker 1: nation's attempt to protect their drinking water, sacred sites, and
[1:50] Speaker 1: treaty rights. Then thousands of people showed up to camps
[1:54] Speaker 1: at the edge of the reservation to support them. But
[1:57] Speaker 1: for Energy Transfer's brand, the story of Standing Rock was
[2:02] Speaker 1: as dangerous as any protest, so Energy Transfer's lawsuit wasn't
[2:07] Speaker 1: just about sticking it to green Peace. The company used
[2:10] Speaker 1: a big swing legal case to retell the story of
[2:13] Speaker 1: an indigenous led water protector movement. And that effort didn't
[2:17] Speaker 1: start in the courtroom, but in an incredibly well documented
[2:20] Speaker 1: ground campaign. Alien's back to tell you the story of
[2:24] Speaker 1: that campaign.
[2:33] Speaker 2: Is this Do Hi, Doug. My name is Ellen Brown.
[2:36] Speaker 2: I'm a reporter working in a story related to the
[2:40] Speaker 2: protests back in twenty sixteen and twenty seventeen against the
[2:43] Speaker 2: Dakota Access Pipeline, And some guys at Rusty's tavern said
[2:49] Speaker 2: that you would be a good person to talk to.
[2:53] Speaker 3: Well, I can't believe we were begging in the stores
[2:56] Speaker 3: and rushies.
[3:00] Speaker 2: This past spring. Some guys at a bar in Morton County,
[3:02] Speaker 2: North Dakota told me that if I wanted to understand
[3:05] Speaker 2: the impact the Standing Rock movement had on nearby communities,
[3:09] Speaker 2: I should call up the rancher, Doug Hilly. And Doug
[3:12] Speaker 2: got right to the point, what is the place like
[3:14] Speaker 2: where you're from?
[3:16] Speaker 3: Not many people live here, and we had strangers driving around.
[3:21] Speaker 2: I'll that's Doug lives on a dead end road and
[3:24] Speaker 2: part of the Dakota Access Pipeline route runs nearby. Unusual
[3:28] Speaker 2: stuff started to happen.
[3:30] Speaker 3: There was a.
[3:30] Speaker 4: Group out of street car, somebody sitting.
[3:34] Speaker 3: In the back seat with a big cameral and sticking out.
[3:37] Speaker 3: I asked him what they were doing on the road
[3:39] Speaker 3: here and they said it's a public road and I said, well,
[3:42] Speaker 3: we watched drives in this neighborhood and we.
[3:46] Speaker 4: Want to know the reason that you're here.
[3:49] Speaker 2: The strangers wouldn't answer many questions, so.
[3:52] Speaker 4: I went.
[3:54] Speaker 3: Come back into the yard and picked up a rifle.
[3:58] Speaker 3: They were taking pictures of the yard in a mailbox
[4:01] Speaker 3: and everything, and I said I think you should leave,
[4:06] Speaker 3: and they said, are you going to make us? I
[4:09] Speaker 3: said no, but my friend here and.
[4:11] Speaker 4: My rifle will probably helped me and they left.
[4:16] Speaker 2: Doug told me that they posted images of him online.
[4:19] Speaker 2: He began hearing other stories from his neighbors. A group
[4:23] Speaker 2: of protesters blocked a school bus from taking their normal route.
[4:27] Speaker 2: A grandma and her grandkids hid in the safe room
[4:29] Speaker 2: for four hours because they were worried about protesters. The
[4:33] Speaker 2: new traffic made it difficult for Doug and people he
[4:36] Speaker 2: knew to drive semi trucks loaded with hay down narrow
[4:39] Speaker 2: country roads.
[4:40] Speaker 3: I and several other people just out in the habit
[4:44] Speaker 3: that we carried the weapons for personal protection.
[4:47] Speaker 2: With us, Doug said, Even a decade later, those wounds
[4:51] Speaker 2: haven't healed.
[4:52] Speaker 3: Some of us, myself included, have not been on Standing
[4:56] Speaker 3: Rock since.
[4:58] Speaker 2: On my trips to North Dakota, I've spent a lot
[5:00] Speaker 2: of time trying to figure out what this place was
[5:02] Speaker 2: all about. I wandered the streets of Bismarck and the
[5:06] Speaker 2: town across the River Mandan, and drove down the county
[5:08] Speaker 2: highways that connect the cities with the reserv The roads
[5:12] Speaker 2: are bordered by grassy, rolling hills and occasionally these dramatic buttes.
[5:17] Speaker 2: It's really pretty. There are a few tiny towns on
[5:20] Speaker 2: the way and dirt roads leading to ranches like Dugs.
[5:23] Speaker 2: When Energy Transfers private security contractors first touched down in
[5:27] Speaker 2: this area in twenty sixteen, they found a community that
[5:31] Speaker 2: was already pretty angry and freaked out about the pipeline protests,
[5:35] Speaker 2: and the company developed a social media campaign aimed at
[5:38] Speaker 2: hardening those divisions. This all went down at the start
[5:46] Speaker 2: of an era of social media misinformation that would transform
[5:49] Speaker 2: American's relationships with each other these days. Versions of the
[5:53] Speaker 2: Facebook propaganda campaign that hit North Dakota get used around
[5:57] Speaker 2: the world. But what's different in this case is that
[6:00] Speaker 2: I got a hold of the receipts through a public
[6:05] Speaker 2: records request. I obtained over one hundred pages of internal
[6:09] Speaker 2: email and WhatsApp chat records where Energy Transfers propagandists talk
[6:13] Speaker 2: about exactly what they were trying to do and why
[6:17] Speaker 2: I'm Aline Brown for drilled and this is the propagandist.
[6:21] Speaker 2: The inside story of a narrative war between a pipeline
[6:24] Speaker 2: company and an environmental movement. Back in twenty sixteen, a
[6:35] Speaker 2: private Facebook group called Defend Bisman became the place for
[6:39] Speaker 2: neighbors to exchange their negative experiences with the Standing Rock protests.
[6:44] Speaker 2: BISMAN stands for Bismarck and Mandan and kay Lecoe was
[6:48] Speaker 2: the administrator of the group. At that time, she was
[6:51] Speaker 2: also a spokesperson for a coal industry group. I met
[6:54] Speaker 2: her at a locally owned coffee shop in Bismarck.
[6:57] Speaker 4: Stick this in your face a little bit on a rom.
[7:00] Speaker 5: And my voice projects quite well, so great.
[7:03] Speaker 2: Yeah, I just wanted to ask you about two things
[7:07] Speaker 2: about your own biography. One is, you know, just because
[7:12] Speaker 2: I think people who understand that you work for this
[7:16] Speaker 2: cool company might be like, well, you know, clearly she
[7:20] Speaker 2: was doing this out of her like love for the
[7:21] Speaker 2: fossil fuel industry. The other thing is you do horse
[7:26] Speaker 2: riding with guns.
[7:28] Speaker 5: So to your first point, I love coal, I love
[7:32] Speaker 5: my community. Coal and oil are completely different things. I
[7:36] Speaker 5: had no stance on the pipeline. There was a void
[7:40] Speaker 5: that I could help fill with my skill set of
[7:43] Speaker 5: helping create and shape constructive conversation on a Facebook group. Again,
[7:52] Speaker 5: I'm about my community and my people, and so yes,
[7:56] Speaker 5: my favorite pastime what I do in my free time
[7:59] Speaker 5: is I shoot guns off of horses at high speeds
[8:02] Speaker 5: and it's just the coolest thing in the world.
[8:05] Speaker 2: He tells me. The protest did cause some genuine disruptions.
[8:09] Speaker 5: There was vandalism, There was fences that were cut, there
[8:13] Speaker 5: were animals that were run around pastures and stuff like that.
[8:18] Speaker 5: So there were things. There was just enough truth that
[8:25] Speaker 5: you could really blow it up if you wanted to.
[8:29] Speaker 2: Facebook Live had launched publicly that same year, and pipeline
[8:33] Speaker 2: opponents and movement journalists were streaming videos from the frontlines
[8:37] Speaker 2: of protests where cops were sometimes firing teargas or rubber
[8:40] Speaker 2: bullets at unarmed demonstrators. It hit different when people could
[8:45] Speaker 2: watch police violence unfold in real time, and the posts
[8:49] Speaker 2: were getting reshared by people around the world. But a
[8:56] Speaker 2: lot of people in Bismarck and Mandan are pretty conservative.
[8:59] Speaker 2: Many have family or friends who are police officers. When
[9:02] Speaker 2: they watched that footage, what they noticed was pipeline opponents
[9:05] Speaker 2: defying police orders, yelling at cops or throwing things. At
[9:10] Speaker 2: one point, people lit a bridge on fire. Hey and
[9:17] Speaker 2: other local folks felt like their voices were being drowned
[9:20] Speaker 2: out online, and some got docksed for taking a position
[9:23] Speaker 2: against the Standing Rock movement.
[9:25] Speaker 5: I experienced it was I was dockxed big time too.
[9:31] Speaker 5: I received the death threats and there was several locations
[9:35] Speaker 5: that I got followed.
[9:38] Speaker 2: But then another Facebook page appeared that seemed to be
[9:41] Speaker 2: aligned with K's group. It was called Nedicines for Progress
[9:45] Speaker 2: and Justice.
[9:46] Speaker 5: I remember Nedicins came on the scene and it was
[9:49] Speaker 5: like boom boom.
[9:50] Speaker 4: I mean like it was like this bam boum.
[9:52] Speaker 2: They had a dramatic logo with an N and all
[9:56] Speaker 2: these videos with titles like four reasons why Standing Rock
[9:59] Speaker 2: is the worst protest in the last century. It hit
[10:03] Speaker 2: a nerve for a lot of locals who felt like
[10:05] Speaker 2: they didn't have media representing their views the way the
[10:07] Speaker 2: movement had. Who did you think they were at the time?
[10:11] Speaker 2: Kate told me Nedicines presented itself as a counterweight to
[10:14] Speaker 2: all that pro movement media.
[10:17] Speaker 5: They have all of these this is your counter Where
[10:22] Speaker 5: are your friends?
[10:23] Speaker 2: Trust us? A couple months earlier, after a video went
[10:28] Speaker 2: viral of security dogs attacking pipeline opponents, Energy Transfer had
[10:32] Speaker 2: hired the private security company Tiger Swan. Tiger Swan was
[10:38] Speaker 2: founded by an ex commander of the Army Special Missions
[10:41] Speaker 2: Unit Delta Force. Its contractors were mostly veterans. The more
[10:45] Speaker 2: you understand this company's background, the more it makes sense
[10:48] Speaker 2: that they would be doing propaganda. Tiger Swan was started
[10:51] Speaker 2: during this post nine to eleven era, where something called
[10:53] Speaker 2: counterinsurgency was the reigning military doctrine. One of the things
[10:58] Speaker 2: that blew my mind about some of these internal documents
[11:00] Speaker 2: I obtained is that Tiger Swan explicitly called its efforts
[11:04] Speaker 2: at Standing Rock a counterinsurgency approach. Counterinsurgency doctrine emphasizes that
[11:10] Speaker 2: convincing local people to take on the military's priorities can
[11:13] Speaker 2: be as important as armed force. In this case, a
[11:17] Speaker 2: big part of the battle for hearts and minds was
[11:19] Speaker 2: being fought on Facebook. The guy Tiger Swan brought on
[11:24] Speaker 2: to lead that effort didn't serve in the military, though.
[11:27] Speaker 2: His name is Robert Rice and he's more of a
[11:29] Speaker 2: tech guy. His big thing is virtual reality, and he
[11:33] Speaker 2: even attempted to develop a virtual universe called Omniscape. Propaganda
[11:39] Speaker 2: might also be about changing people's perception of reality, but
[11:42] Speaker 2: it's not totally clear why he was the guy for
[11:45] Speaker 2: the job. When Robert Rice joined Tiger Swan's anti protest effort,
[11:50] Speaker 2: he started searching for a new narrative that could replace
[11:53] Speaker 2: the story of peaceful indigenous water protectors fighting for the environment.
[11:58] Speaker 2: I know because I've read his emails. In one of them,
[12:02] Speaker 2: he asked if security contractors on the ground could take
[12:04] Speaker 2: pictures of the wastewater drainage system for the tribe's casino.
[12:09] Speaker 2: The idea was to claim the tribe was one polluting
[12:11] Speaker 2: the river.
[12:12] Speaker 6: They all lead directly to the river, so if we
[12:15] Speaker 6: can show a link or a very close proximity, we
[12:18] Speaker 6: can take the wind out of the water protector's line.
[12:21] Speaker 2: That's the voice of an actor we hired to play
[12:23] Speaker 2: Robert Rice. Robert also wanted photos of any dogs that
[12:27] Speaker 2: got injured the day of the dog attacks.
[12:29] Speaker 6: I want to create a few fault lines between all
[12:31] Speaker 6: the third party activists and the tribes. Highlighting animal abuse
[12:36] Speaker 6: and attacking dogs will have some effect with a few groups.
[12:39] Speaker 2: At the same time, he seemed aware that it's not
[12:42] Speaker 2: actually a great look to go after an indigenous movement.
[12:45] Speaker 6: We want to be careful of public opinion and sentiment
[12:48] Speaker 6: towards Native Americans, so we want to focus on the
[12:50] Speaker 6: issues specifically, or wiggle around to take the side of
[12:54] Speaker 6: the tribes.
[12:55] Speaker 2: In other words, he wanted to attack a movement that
[12:57] Speaker 2: was started by indigenous people and supported by hundreds of
[13:00] Speaker 2: tribal nations while also avoiding the appearance of antagonizing native people.
[13:05] Speaker 2: Robert Rice wasn't just off alone in a weird corner
[13:08] Speaker 2: coming up with this stuff. He was deep in conversation
[13:11] Speaker 2: with other Tiger Swan contractors, and those guys had a
[13:15] Speaker 2: lot going on. Tier Swan was flying aerial surveillance drones
[13:19] Speaker 2: over the camps, listening in on water Protectors radios, and
[13:23] Speaker 2: even sending Tiger Swan operatives into the anti pipeline camps undercover.
[13:28] Speaker 2: They weren't just collecting information. In a WhatsApp chat that
[13:32] Speaker 2: included Tiger Swan's founder as well as Robert Rice, another
[13:36] Speaker 2: Tiger Swan contractor floated the idea of sabotaging the porta
[13:39] Speaker 2: potties by somehow removing the anti freeze element so waste
[13:43] Speaker 2: would freeze. He told Robert that they should make lots
[13:47] Speaker 2: of noise all the time and maybe pay some kids
[13:49] Speaker 2: to fly drones over the camp with speakers playing Scandinavian
[13:53] Speaker 2: death meedal. This is the kind of stuff the US
[13:56] Speaker 2: government has done when they want to break down groups
[13:59] Speaker 2: they see as dangerous. In fact, this Tiger Swan contractor
[14:03] Speaker 2: described his ideas as psychological warfare, and Robert Rice chimed
[14:08] Speaker 2: into personally.
[14:10] Speaker 6: I think twenty four hour floodlights are good. I would
[14:13] Speaker 6: also get some directional jammers to disrupt WiFi, but not sell.
[14:17] Speaker 6: They may need that for emergency calls, and if they
[14:19] Speaker 6: want the Internet, let them chew up their data.
[14:22] Speaker 2: Despite his spicy suggestions, Robert gives off kind of a
[14:26] Speaker 2: try hard energy. Like when a well known military veteran
[14:29] Speaker 2: announced he was joining the Standing Rock movement, Robert made
[14:32] Speaker 2: a point to complain, I mean shit.
[14:35] Speaker 6: I did four years of JROTC and I feel like
[14:38] Speaker 6: I got more out of it playing soldier than he did.
[14:40] Speaker 6: Now he wants to fight against law enforcement. Kind of
[14:43] Speaker 6: pisses me off. I missed my chance to serve and
[14:46] Speaker 6: this nutjobs going to shit on things. Sorry, this sort
[14:51] Speaker 6: of thing really annoys the hell out of me.
[14:53] Speaker 2: All of this was happening right around the time Donald
[14:55] Speaker 2: Trump was elected.
[14:57] Speaker 7: We're going to rescind all the job destroying Obama executive actions,
[15:08] Speaker 7: including the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the
[15:12] Speaker 7: United States Rule.
[15:14] Speaker 2: Okay, I remember that Trump held investments in both energy
[15:17] Speaker 2: transfer and Phillip sixty six, another company behind the Code
[15:21] Speaker 2: Access pipeline. As he was going around yelling about American
[15:25] Speaker 2: energy dominance. Social media disinformation was flooding the Internet like
[15:30] Speaker 2: never before, and a lot of it was favorable to him.
[15:33] Speaker 2: I don't know if it was intentional or not, but
[15:35] Speaker 2: Tiger Schwan's propaganda team launched the Netizin's Facebook page the
[15:39] Speaker 2: same day that Trump declared victory. They posted videos featuring
[15:42] Speaker 2: plaintext over images with the kind of sappy, inspirational music
[15:46] Speaker 2: you might hear in a video by a yoga influencer
[15:49] Speaker 2: like this. Its first videos claimed the pipeline post no
[15:55] Speaker 2: risk to water or sacred sites, and the movement was
[15:58] Speaker 2: full of paid protesters and criminals. One early video flashed
[16:02] Speaker 2: a bunch of mugshots of water protectors, which were actually
[16:06] Speaker 2: sent to Robert by a pr guy for the National
[16:08] Speaker 2: Sheriff's Association. The video hit their mark. Here's from one
[16:13] Speaker 2: comment from a couple of weeks after the Nedison's launch.
[16:16] Speaker 2: Thank you Nediicans for getting the rest of the story
[16:19] Speaker 2: out there. Exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark.
[16:23] Speaker 2: North Dakotins are so fed up with being invaded by
[16:26] Speaker 2: the violent protesters, and Robert Rice started to notice that
[16:30] Speaker 2: a lot of the traffic was coming from the Bismarck
[16:32] Speaker 2: and Mandan area.
[16:34] Speaker 6: Jim, we are pushing various things on Facebook primary and
[16:37] Speaker 6: website secondary, definitely contributing to some infighting and factions, both
[16:42] Speaker 6: internal and on the bigger scope. Like anti protesters in Bisman.
[16:46] Speaker 2: Robert had a cool idea about how they could increase
[16:49] Speaker 2: traffic further, if we had.
[16:51] Speaker 6: Some Kardashian or celebrity nudes, we would have a half
[16:54] Speaker 6: a million followers. Of two seconds just saying.
[16:57] Speaker 2: He maybe got something even better than celect nudes. I
[17:02] Speaker 2: don't know if Robert Rice knew it, but his timing
[17:04] Speaker 2: was pretty good. Not long after Nedison's launched Locals, frustrations
[17:08] Speaker 2: with the protests came to a head. The morning of Thanksgiving,
[17:15] Speaker 2: area residents got an emergency alert on their phones indicating
[17:19] Speaker 2: that protesters had blocked the intersection connecting the two cities. Honestly,
[17:28] Speaker 2: videos from this protest seemed sort of tame. People set
[17:31] Speaker 2: up a long table in the middle of the road
[17:33] Speaker 2: with pumpkins and a banner painted to look bloody that
[17:36] Speaker 2: said no decode access pipeline. But they were blocking traffic
[17:41] Speaker 2: on a holiday. And there was one other thing that
[17:44] Speaker 2: really got to defend Bisman crowd mad.
[17:48] Speaker 5: That was the day that protesters gathered in, man down
[17:53] Speaker 5: and placed pigs heads on sticks and made it very
[17:57] Speaker 5: well known that they were going to be aggressive towards
[18:00] Speaker 5: our law enforcement officers.
[18:02] Speaker 2: Images circulated on social media of a demonstrator carrying a
[18:05] Speaker 2: pig's head mounted on a stick. Residents like Ka took
[18:10] Speaker 2: that as a threat to police.
[18:12] Speaker 5: I think that Thanksgiving Day I spent more than six
[18:15] Speaker 5: hours on the phone with people who were just outraged
[18:19] Speaker 5: by all of this. And I think our Facebook group
[18:23] Speaker 5: numbers at request to join jumped threefold.
[18:28] Speaker 8: Our First Amendment right basically assemble.
[18:32] Speaker 9: We prop Probably they did not want you here. You
[18:34] Speaker 9: will leave immediately. First you will go to jail. I'm
[18:50] Speaker 9: not gonna ask.
[18:53] Speaker 2: The next day, Black Friday, water protectors marched into Bismarck's
[18:56] Speaker 2: Kirkwood Mall and formed a prayer circle before being arrested.
[19:01] Speaker 2: One local right wing blogger claimed it was a war
[19:04] Speaker 2: on the Bismarck Mandan community.
[19:07] Speaker 5: The average citizen was like, you know what, Okay, we'll
[19:10] Speaker 5: tolerate this for a while. Well, now it's the holidays,
[19:14] Speaker 5: it's getting cold.
[19:16] Speaker 4: Get the hell up.
[19:18] Speaker 2: That same day, in a WhatsApp chat, Robert celebrated that
[19:21] Speaker 2: his page views seemed to be going up.
[19:24] Speaker 6: We are doing heavy targeting in the North Dakota area,
[19:26] Speaker 6: mostly to focus on increasing the fracturing and creating doubt.
[19:30] Speaker 6: At least on the website. The majority of traffic is
[19:32] Speaker 6: in North Dakota, with Bismarck at the top of the
[19:34] Speaker 6: list with about twenty five percent of traffic.
[19:41] Speaker 2: People were already upset and Robert was using nedicines to
[19:45] Speaker 2: intentionally worsen divisions. The posts and videos kept coming saying
[19:50] Speaker 2: that outside interest groups had hijacked the movement and there
[19:53] Speaker 2: were eco terrorists involved. Things started to move beyond just
[19:58] Speaker 2: the Internet. Kaye was actually in touch with a totally
[20:01] Speaker 2: different Tiger Swue team member who offered tips about how
[20:05] Speaker 2: Defend BISMAN members could organize, and she also talked to
[20:08] Speaker 2: the police on a regular basis. Locals started participating in
[20:12] Speaker 2: pro police rallies, They held fundraisers for police, They monitored
[20:17] Speaker 2: water protectors' social media accounts, and they offered assistance to
[20:21] Speaker 2: business owners that were feeling nervous.
[20:23] Speaker 5: I do know that there were oftentimes, I would say
[20:27] Speaker 5: more than a dozen times where somebody would go down
[20:32] Speaker 5: and sit at a business. I'm not going to throw
[20:35] Speaker 5: businesses under the bus here, but go down and sit
[20:38] Speaker 5: at a business and make sure that Agnes gone to
[20:43] Speaker 5: her car and believing this is a completely fictional character,
[20:45] Speaker 5: it's just totally North Dakota.
[20:47] Speaker 2: It's important to note that these polics were talking about
[20:51] Speaker 2: Morton County, Bismarck, Mandan. They're basically border communities. They're on
[20:56] Speaker 2: the edge of the Standing Rock Reservation, and they're areas
[20:59] Speaker 2: that have a long history of racism. Even k acknowledged
[21:03] Speaker 2: that at.
[21:04] Speaker 5: The very beginning of the peaceful demonstrations, it really amped
[21:10] Speaker 5: up that anti Native sentiment.
[21:13] Speaker 4: She said.
[21:13] Speaker 2: She made it clear on Facebook that Raci's comments were
[21:16] Speaker 2: not okay, But for some Indigenous people from Standing Rock,
[21:20] Speaker 2: the experience of visiting Bismarck started to get worse as
[21:24] Speaker 2: Tiger Swan poured fuel on the fire online. I talked
[21:28] Speaker 2: to Valerie Eagleshield about it at a gathering put on
[21:30] Speaker 2: by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's Elders Preservation Council at
[21:33] Speaker 2: the Prairie Night's Casino. Valerie's in her sixties now. She
[21:40] Speaker 2: spent a lot of time at the camps and helped
[21:42] Speaker 2: it a school established there for children.
[21:47] Speaker 8: I was mainly a support person everybody's mom. I supported
[21:51] Speaker 8: my daughter with the school, My son sang and stood
[21:55] Speaker 8: at the front lines, and my husband did a lot
[21:58] Speaker 8: of the UH prayers.
[22:00] Speaker 2: This was a fight for her community's water. Valerie spent
[22:03] Speaker 2: her whole life on Standing Rock, but is enrolled with
[22:05] Speaker 2: the Mandan Hidatsa and a Ricara Nation. Like everybody from
[22:09] Speaker 2: the reservation. She comes in out of Bismarck regularly for
[22:12] Speaker 2: Aaron's and other things.
[22:14] Speaker 8: They're racist people everywhere, but it wasn't that bad.
[22:19] Speaker 2: Valerie noticed a shift at the same time that misinformation
[22:22] Speaker 2: began to saturate the area.
[22:24] Speaker 8: Things got really ugly when people were telling lies about
[22:28] Speaker 8: the camp the protectors, saying that they were dangerous.
[22:32] Speaker 2: She mostly noticed it when she went shopping.
[22:35] Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean we could go into shop in us
[22:37] Speaker 8: door and be walking around and then you notice somebody,
[22:42] Speaker 8: you know, kind of around the corners of the corner
[22:44] Speaker 8: your eye and you're like, oh, they're watching us. You know.
[22:48] Speaker 2: She felt it at the checkout counter too.
[22:50] Speaker 8: I mean you'd say thank you, and they would, you know,
[22:53] Speaker 8: not respond to and throw your stuff across that check
[23:00] Speaker 8: thing and then counter change out and drop it on
[23:04] Speaker 8: the counter, like they didn't want to touch you.
[23:07] Speaker 2: But the scariest part was when she was driving home.
[23:10] Speaker 8: Yeah, they would come up really fast on you and
[23:12] Speaker 8: then I'll just follow you. Even if you slowed way down,
[23:15] Speaker 8: they'd stay behind you. Yeah, and you worried about what
[23:20] Speaker 8: because there's long stretches of nothing.
[23:23] Speaker 2: So the swell of anger in the local communities happened
[23:27] Speaker 2: just as the camp shrunk pretty dramatically. A big North
[23:31] Speaker 2: Dakota blizzard came through and hundreds of people had to
[23:34] Speaker 2: leave all of a sudden. Their stuff got buried in
[23:37] Speaker 2: the snow and was frozen there, and this became one
[23:41] Speaker 2: of Nettison's biggest stories. The message was the water protectors
[23:45] Speaker 2: had left behind an environmental mess of their own, and
[23:48] Speaker 2: then it was going to contaminate the water when the
[23:50] Speaker 2: spring came and the snow melted. Videos and posts hammered
[23:55] Speaker 2: on the idea that pipeline opponents were the real environmental threat. Finally,
[24:01] Speaker 2: at the end of February twenty seventeen, police evicted the camps.
[24:07] Speaker 2: Those fractures that Robert Rice and Tiger Swan were looking
[24:15] Speaker 2: for and trying to widen they were ultimately aimed at
[24:18] Speaker 2: people's relationships with their neighbors, and there was no way
[24:22] Speaker 2: that was just going to fade away because the camps
[24:25] Speaker 2: were gone. I wanted to know whether the Mandan and
[24:37] Speaker 2: Bismarck community were still divided over standing Rock ten years later.
[24:42] Speaker 2: So when I visited in the spring, I tried talking
[24:44] Speaker 2: to people at the Kirkwood Mall about the protests.
[24:46] Speaker 4: I'm going to pass.
[24:48] Speaker 7: I'll pass, okay, because I won't be saying anything good
[24:50] Speaker 7: about it.
[24:51] Speaker 2: Oh okay, I won't either call it North Dakota nice.
[24:54] Speaker 2: But no one seemed like they wanted to talk. I
[24:56] Speaker 2: decided to try one of the bars off of Mandan's
[24:59] Speaker 2: main street. Hi, my name's Elena.
[25:04] Speaker 10: I'm actually a reporter and I'm in town trying to
[25:08] Speaker 10: talk to people about the ten year anniversary of the
[25:12] Speaker 10: construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline and all the protests
[25:15] Speaker 10: that happened.
[25:17] Speaker 2: These guys seem like they're still mad and also like
[25:20] Speaker 2: they were down to talk. They said they were on
[25:23] Speaker 2: the side of the protests at first, but then that changed.
[25:27] Speaker 9: So what happened They eco terrafts move in.
[25:30] Speaker 11: The people from out of state moved in and ruined
[25:33] Speaker 11: our communities.
[25:36] Speaker 2: These guys start to run down the list of things
[25:38] Speaker 2: I've heard from almost everyone around here I talked to
[25:41] Speaker 2: about the protests, the pig's head, the trash left behind
[25:45] Speaker 2: after the blizzard, the outside agitators. They say they should
[25:50] Speaker 2: talk to their friend.
[25:52] Speaker 11: Oh, I'm I'm worked up.
[25:55] Speaker 2: He starts talking about how protesters would smash stuff up
[25:58] Speaker 2: and smile and agree that they were paid to do it.
[26:03] Speaker 11: Disgusting human beings, disgusting eco terrorists. It's what I call
[26:08] Speaker 11: all them.
[26:09] Speaker 9: Yes, was the next time what happens?
[26:12] Speaker 11: I say, everybody should be got on rooptops and wear
[26:16] Speaker 11: a mask and be protected and take them out.
[26:21] Speaker 9: Wow, take them?
[26:24] Speaker 10: Did you say you had a business that they were
[26:27] Speaker 10: that people were bothering.
[26:28] Speaker 11: I'm not going to mention that. Okay, that's fun, because
[26:31] Speaker 11: I understand that you're on their side.
[26:34] Speaker 4: Why do you think that because.
[26:35] Speaker 10: Your eye movement, I mean, I think my eye movement
[26:39] Speaker 10: might be because you're upset.
[26:40] Speaker 9: So I'm just sort of responding.
[26:42] Speaker 2: To it's time for me to go. But here's the thing.
[26:45] Speaker 2: I didn't just hear that at this one bar. At
[26:49] Speaker 2: another bar, a different guy told me that they should
[26:52] Speaker 2: have taken the protesters down with the gatling gun and
[26:55] Speaker 2: at a breakfast restaurant, yet another guy told me that
[26:58] Speaker 2: they should have done like they did. It wounded me,
[27:01] Speaker 2: which I can only assume means wounded me eighteen ninety
[27:06] Speaker 2: the famous massacre of Lakota men, women, and children by
[27:10] Speaker 2: US Troop Yes. I asked the first bar guys if
[27:13] Speaker 2: they remembered the Edison's page, and they didn't, which I
[27:17] Speaker 2: was starting to find out was sort of common. Even
[27:20] Speaker 2: people who I knew had engaged heavily with Tiger Swan's
[27:23] Speaker 2: Facebook content sometimes didn't remember it all these years later.
[27:28] Speaker 2: So I start to feel a little bit uncertain how
[27:31] Speaker 2: much of this anger could I even credit to Tiger
[27:33] Speaker 2: Swan or Facebook. I reached out to James Forrest to
[27:37] Speaker 2: see if he could help me figure it out. For years,
[27:40] Speaker 2: he was director of West Point's Terrorism Studies program. Now
[27:44] Speaker 2: he's a professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and
[27:47] Speaker 2: he wrote a book called Digital Influence Mercenaries. I told
[27:52] Speaker 2: him all about the situation that Tiger Swan and Robert
[27:54] Speaker 2: Rice had walked into. I asked him what a digital
[27:58] Speaker 2: influence mercenary would do in that scenario.
[28:01] Speaker 12: Well, for first and foremost, you want to gather information
[28:03] Speaker 12: about the kind of population that you're trying to influence.
[28:07] Speaker 12: Are there potential divisions within that population? Are there bio?
[28:11] Speaker 12: Basically what you're looking for ares seems that you can fracture.
[28:18] Speaker 2: Robert Rice had used that same term fracture repeatedly in
[28:22] Speaker 2: his text and emails. One thing that I've sort of
[28:26] Speaker 2: been grappling with is that the people in this community
[28:30] Speaker 2: already had really kind of negative feelings about the protests.
[28:35] Speaker 2: If people already kind of like hated these protests, then
[28:39] Speaker 2: why would you need propaganda, you know, why would it
[28:42] Speaker 2: be worth the money amplify that. It turns out, an
[28:46] Speaker 2: effective Facebook mercenary does best in a scenario where community
[28:50] Speaker 2: divisions already exist. By identifying people's fears and uncertainties and
[28:56] Speaker 2: poking at them, you can deepen their convictions.
[28:59] Speaker 12: So as basically, yes, I thought they were evil, now
[29:01] Speaker 12: you've confirmed it for me.
[29:03] Speaker 2: A private Facebook group like Defend Bisman would create an
[29:06] Speaker 2: even stronger echo chamber for strengthening that And James told
[29:10] Speaker 2: me that an effect of Facebook campaign can change people's actions.
[29:14] Speaker 12: You put them in an emotional state where they're a
[29:18] Speaker 12: lot less likely to be able to make decisions. They're
[29:20] Speaker 12: a lot less able to do things that you don't
[29:24] Speaker 12: want them to do, and you can even provoke them
[29:27] Speaker 12: to do things that you want them to do.
[29:28] Speaker 2: The other thing that I encountered what I visited this time,
[29:32] Speaker 2: this is something that I mostly heard from men who
[29:35] Speaker 2: at times had a beer in their hand, but in
[29:38] Speaker 2: three cases, different people in different places said to me
[29:42] Speaker 2: some version of you know, we should have shot them all.
[29:46] Speaker 2: So I don't know that I can say, oh, these
[29:49] Speaker 2: Facebook videos are what made people feel that way, but
[29:53] Speaker 2: that's kind of what I found.
[29:54] Speaker 12: There's a central concept without study of terrorism about extremism
[29:59] Speaker 12: and radicalization, and the radicalization process involves increasing hostility towards
[30:05] Speaker 12: the outgroup from within the in group to the point
[30:08] Speaker 12: where the in group members start believing that their own
[30:11] Speaker 12: survival it depends on, in some cases even the elimination
[30:16] Speaker 12: of the out group. So it's kind of startling to
[30:19] Speaker 12: hear that that's kind of mirrored in this particular incident
[30:22] Speaker 12: where violent extremism is like I said, it's a fantasy,
[30:25] Speaker 12: but it's still something that is kind of a marker
[30:30] Speaker 12: of the escalation.
[30:35] Speaker 2: Tiger Swans propaganda story didn't end when the protest camp
[30:38] Speaker 2: shut down. In fact, Kayla Co, the Bismarck local, communicated
[30:43] Speaker 2: with Neticins after things died down in North Dakota. She
[30:47] Speaker 2: got a message from a guy calling himself al Nediicine
[30:50] Speaker 2: on February twenty seventh to twenty seventeen.
[30:53] Speaker 5: So the message was hik where we Nedicance for Justice
[30:57] Speaker 5: and Progress are coming out to Bismarck next week to
[30:59] Speaker 5: interview people, particularly locals about the not dapple stuff for
[31:03] Speaker 5: mini documentary we're producing.
[31:06] Speaker 2: He was looking for help finding local people to interview
[31:09] Speaker 2: on camera.
[31:10] Speaker 5: We want to get the rest of the story out
[31:13] Speaker 5: there and are tired of other folks vice, young Turks,
[31:17] Speaker 5: unicorn riot, et cetera, controlling.
[31:19] Speaker 4: The news and false narrative.
[31:21] Speaker 5: I did give get him connected with six seven people
[31:27] Speaker 5: in the Bismarck Mountain area.
[31:30] Speaker 2: Robert Rice and his team did make a documentary featuring
[31:33] Speaker 2: k and a number of other locals.
[31:38] Speaker 4: It begins with.
[31:38] Speaker 2: This dramatic flashing end logo that says I am Netison
[31:42] Speaker 2: underneath and then cuts to footage from behind a police line. Pipeline.
[31:47] Speaker 2: Opponents are standing on top of a truck yelling with
[31:50] Speaker 2: the wooden frame of a TP behind them. The police
[31:54] Speaker 2: are dragging people from the puta side to the police
[31:56] Speaker 2: side to arrest them. A couple armored vehicles are parked nearby.
[32:02] Speaker 12: How did we get to this point?
[32:03] Speaker 13: Let's take a closer look at how Standing Rock became
[32:06] Speaker 13: one of the worst protests in American history.
[32:09] Speaker 2: The title card says the Rack and Fall of Standing Rock.
[32:13] Speaker 2: Robert Rice appears as a talking head throughout the film,
[32:16] Speaker 2: and eventually Kay comes on the screen. She's sitting at
[32:20] Speaker 2: a bar with a few other local people.
[32:23] Speaker 11: In two days, they came after my job.
[32:27] Speaker 4: They sent me death threats.
[32:30] Speaker 5: They hoped that my children would die before my eyes.
[32:34] Speaker 2: Kay watched the documentary when it came out. I called
[32:37] Speaker 2: her to ask her more about it. She told me
[32:39] Speaker 2: it had been cathartic to get together and look back
[32:42] Speaker 2: at how all this happened.
[32:44] Speaker 5: It is kind of like a reunion how starts.
[32:48] Speaker 2: But Kay noticed the same thing I did.
[32:50] Speaker 5: I do remember when I watched it, it just creaked
[32:55] Speaker 5: of propaganda. It wasn't what you expect. I've been watching
[32:58] Speaker 5: a ton of documentaries.
[32:59] Speaker 4: On Netflix, and it wasn't this.
[33:01] Speaker 5: Hey, We're going to unfold this story and be as
[33:06] Speaker 5: transparent and middle of the road as we can, if
[33:09] Speaker 5: I remember correctly, there was like these elements of just
[33:14] Speaker 5: straight up propaganda, like like trying to make it worse
[33:17] Speaker 5: than it was.
[33:18] Speaker 2: Did you feel any way about like, oh I'm in this,
[33:21] Speaker 2: like where what was your gut feeling and like kind
[33:23] Speaker 2: of your emotional reaction kinda.
[33:25] Speaker 4: Is that neutral? Okay? Whatever? That's just the world that
[33:29] Speaker 4: we live in now.
[33:31] Speaker 5: Is that's what's being done, is sensationalizing something to suit
[33:34] Speaker 5: their own needs.
[33:38] Speaker 2: There was a question still nagging at me. I asked
[33:41] Speaker 2: Kay if she kind of knew energy transfer was behind neticenes.
[33:45] Speaker 4: Absolutely not.
[33:47] Speaker 14: I always assumed that it was all working towards you know,
[33:54] Speaker 14: anti protest. For us here, at least speaking for the
[33:59] Speaker 14: ones that I closely communicated with, it wasn't about the pipeline.
[34:04] Speaker 4: We didn't care if it went through or not. What
[34:07] Speaker 4: we cared.
[34:08] Speaker 5: About was the bullshit that it brought on our community.
[34:15] Speaker 2: Do you think that these guys were maybe the real
[34:20] Speaker 2: outside agitators? What do you think of that idea?
[34:24] Speaker 4: I certainly wouldn't dismiss it.
[34:26] Speaker 5: I think that there was at least some of us
[34:30] Speaker 5: felt legitimized that we were right to care about our community,
[34:36] Speaker 5: that we were right to be against these.
[34:40] Speaker 4: Outside detractors, and via a weird twist to fade it
[34:46] Speaker 4: was the outside.
[34:47] Speaker 5: It was outside influences legitimizing our efforts.
[34:51] Speaker 2: I sat questions to Energy Transfer, Tiger Swan and Robert
[34:55] Speaker 2: Rice about all of this, but none of them decided
[34:58] Speaker 2: to comment. That documentary that Kay was in doesn't actually
[35:02] Speaker 2: seem like it was made for people in North Dakota,
[35:05] Speaker 2: because right as they made it, Robert Rice was shifting
[35:09] Speaker 2: his attention elsewhere. The water protectors had dispersed and some
[35:14] Speaker 2: of them moved to a handful of tiny encampments established
[35:17] Speaker 2: throughout the region to promote healing or prepare for future fights.
[35:22] Speaker 2: Here's the actual Robert Rice describing it in the documentary.
[35:26] Speaker 13: The camps have been closed. The activists and protesters have
[35:29] Speaker 13: now left to find other pipelines to create new camps
[35:32] Speaker 13: and to find new followers.
[35:34] Speaker 2: One of the camps was in Iowa, and it was
[35:36] Speaker 2: called Little Creek, and that's where Robert Rice began the
[35:39] Speaker 2: next phase of his propaganda operation. This time, locals wouldn't
[35:44] Speaker 2: just be the targets of the propaganda, they would be
[35:47] Speaker 2: its mouthpieces.
[35:49] Speaker 13: Is this truly the future of eco terrorism and protesting
[35:52] Speaker 13: in North America.
[35:59] Speaker 2: A note to listeners, we hired an actor to read
[36:02] Speaker 2: for Robert Rice. These were originally emails and text messages
[36:06] Speaker 2: and we adapted them for voice. If you would like
[36:08] Speaker 2: to see the primary documents, they are linked in show notes.
[36:13] Speaker 15: The Propagandist is an original drilled mini series who is reported,
[36:18] Speaker 15: written and hosted by Allen Brown and produced in collaboration
[36:23] Speaker 15: with High Country News. Special thanks there to Kate Schimmel
[36:27] Speaker 15: and Sunny Claudchish Chiligi.
[36:30] Speaker 2: Our editor is Audrey Quinn.
[36:32] Speaker 15: The actor playing Robert Rice in this mini series is
[36:35] Speaker 15: Joel Garland. The actor playing Joel McCullough in this mini
[36:39] Speaker 15: series is David Riposo. Senior producer and sound designer is
[36:44] Speaker 15: Martin zaltz Ostwick. Our producer is Sarah Ventry. Our audio
[36:49] Speaker 15: engineer is Peter Duff. Fact checking by Naomi Barr, music
[36:54] Speaker 15: by Dear Lady, additional music by Martin saltz Ostwick, Matthew
[36:59] Speaker 15: Fleming Drew our cover art. The Center for Media and
[37:02] Speaker 15: Democracy provided support for document review. We are proud members
[37:06] Speaker 15: of Reporter Shield, who provided legal risk assessment for this series.
[37:11] Speaker 15: Our first Amendment attorney is James Wheaton of the First
[37:14] Speaker 15: Amendment Project. Drilled was created by me Amy Westervelt. The
[37:19] Speaker 15: shows distributed by Pushkin Industries. Huge thanks to the team there,
[37:23] Speaker 15: including Greta Cohen, Eric Sandler, Grace Ross, Morgan Rattner, Owen Miller,
[37:28] Speaker 15: Kira Posey, Jordan McMillan, Brian Schreberneck, and Jake Flanagan. You
[37:33] Speaker 15: can find documents and related stories to this series on
[37:37] Speaker 15: our website at Drilled dot media, where you can also
[37:40] Speaker 15: sign up for our weekly newsletter. Thanks for listening and
[37:43] Speaker 15: we'll see you next time.

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