Reveal

The summer of 2020 was a hinge point in American history. The murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police inspired racial justice demonstrations nationwide. At the time, the FBI was convinced that extreme Black political activists could cross the line into domestic terrorism – a theory federal agents had first termed “Black identity extremism.”

That summer, Mickey Windecker approached the FBI. He drove a silver hearse, claimed to have been a volunteer fighter for the French Foreign Legion and the Peshmerga in Iraq, and had arrest records in four states that included convictions for misdemeanor sexual assault and menacing with a weapon, a felony. He claimed to the FBI that he had heard racial justice activists speak vaguely of training and violent revolution in Denver. 

The FBI enlisted Windecker as a paid informant, gave him a recording device and instructed him to infiltrate Denver's growing Black Lives Matter movement. For months, Windecker spied on activists and attempted to recruit two Black men into an FBI-engineered plot to assassinate the state's attorney general.

Windecker's undercover work is the first documented case of FBI efforts to infiltrate the 2020 racial justice movement. Journalist Trevor Aaronson obtained over a dozen hours of Windecker's secret recordings and more than 300 pages of internal FBI reports for season 1 of the podcast series Alphabet Boys. 

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Around the globe, journalists, human rights activists, scholars and others are facing digital attacks from Pegasus, military-grade spyware originally developed to go after criminals. Some of the people targeted have been killed or are in prison.

In this episode, Reveal partners with the Shoot the Messenger podcast to investigate one of the biggest Pegasus hacks ever uncovered: the targeting of El Faro newspaper in El Salvador.

In the opening story, hosts Rose Reid and Nando Vila speak with El Faro co-founder Carlos Dada and reporter Julia Gavarrete. El Faro has been lauded for its investigations into government corruption and gang violence. The newspaper is no stranger to threats and intimidation, which have increased under the administration of President Nayib Bukele.

Reid and Vila also speak with John Scott-Railton of Citizen Lab, a Toronto-based digital watchdog group. Scott-Railton worked to identify the El Faro breach, and it was one of the most obsessive cases of spying Citizen Lab has ever seen.

Over the course of one year, 22 members of the newspaper’s staff had their phones infected with Pegasus and were surveilled by a remote operator. Researchers suspect Bukele’s government was behind the spying, though officials have denied those allegations. The breach forced El Faro’s journalists to change the way they work and live and take extreme measures to protect sources and themselves.

Then Reid talks with Reveal’s Al Letson about growing efforts to hold the NSO Group, the company behind Pegasus, accountable for the massive digital attacks.

The final episode of Mississippi Goddam shares new revelations that cast doubt on the official story that Billey Joe Johnson Jr. accidentally killed himself. 

Our reporting brought up questions that the original investigation never looked into. Host Al Letson and reporter Jonathan Jones go back to Mississippi to interview the key people in the investigation, including Johnson’s ex-girlfriend – the first recorded interview she’s ever done with a media outlet. The team also shares its findings with lead investigator Joel Wallace and the medical examiner who looked into the case. 

Finally, after three years of reporting, we share what we’ve learned with Johnson’s family and talk to them about the inadequacy of the investigation and reasons to reopen the case. 

This episode was originally broadcast in December 2021.

Black communities around Mississippi have long raised concerns about suspicious deaths of young Black men, especially when law enforcement is involved. 

Curley Clark, vice president of the Mississippi NAACP at the time of Reveal’s reporting, called Billey Joe Johnson Jr.’s case an example of “Mississippi justice.” 

“It means that they still feel like the South should have won the Civil War,” Clark said. “And also the laws for the state of Mississippi are slanted in that direction.”

Before Johnson died during a traffic stop with a White sheriff’s deputy, friends say police had pulled him over dozens of times. And some members of the community raised concerns that police had been racially profiling Black people.  

Reveal investigates Johnson’s interactions with law enforcement and one officer in particular.  

This episode was originally broadcast in November 2021.

Billey Joe Johnson Jr. and Hannah Hollinghead met in their freshman year of high school. Hollinghead says Johnson was her first love, and in many ways, it was a typical teen romance. Friends say they would argue, break up, then get back together again. Some people were far from accepting of their interracial relationship.

On Dec. 8, 2008, they were both dating other people. According to Hollinghead and her mother, Johnson made an unexpected stop at her house, moments before he died of a gunshot wound during a traffic stop on the edge of town. 

But it appears that investigators failed to corroborate statements or interview Johnson’s friends and family to get a better idea of what was going on in his life on the day he died. Reveal exposes deep flaws in the investigation and interviews the people closest to Johnson, who were never questioned during the initial investigation. 

This episode was originally broadcast in November 2021.

Special Agent Joel Wallace of the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation was called in to investigate the death of Billey Joe Johnson Jr. He worked alongside two investigators from the George County district attorney’s office. 

Wallace said that arrangement didn’t happen very often. And he now questions why they were assigned. “If you've got me investigating the case, then I’m an independent investigator,” he said. “But why would I need the district attorney investigator to oversee me investigating a case?”

The Johnson family was initially relieved because Wallace had experience investigating suspicious deaths. As a Black detective, he had dealt with racist backlash to his work. 

Reveal host Al Letson and reporter Jonathan Jones visit Wallace, now retired, to talk about what happened with the investigation. When Wallace finds out what Reveal has uncovered, he begins to wonder whether the case should be reopened.

This episode was originally broadcast in November 2021.

After Billey Joe Johnson Jr. died in 2008, the state of Mississippi outsourced his autopsy. Al Letson and Jonathan Jones travel to Nashville, Tennessee, to interview the doctor who conducted it. Her findings helped lead a grand jury to determine Johnson’s death was an accidental shooting. However, Letson and Jones share another report that raises doubts about her original conclusions. 

This episode was originally broadcast in October 2021.

On the morning of Billey Joe Johnson’s death, crime scene tape separates the Johnsons from their son’s body. Their shaky faith in the criminal justice system begins to buckle.

As Johnson’s family tries to get answers about his death, they get increasingly frustrated with the investigation. They feel that law enforcement officials, from the lead investigator to the district attorney, are keeping them out of the loop. While a majority-White grand jury rules that Johnson’s death was accidental, members of the family believe the possibility of foul play was never properly investigated. 

This episode was originally broadcast in October 2021.

Billey Joe Johnson Jr. was a high school football star headed for the big time. Then, early one morning in 2008, the Black teenager died during a traffic stop with a White deputy. His family’s been searching for answers ever since.

During that traffic stop, police say Johnson died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. But for Johnson’s family, that explanation never made sense. 

In the first episode of this seven-part series, Letson returns to Mississippi with reporter Jonathan Jones to explore what happened to Johnson – and what justice means in a place haunted by its history. 

This episode was originally broadcast in October 2021.

A Saudi-owned farm in the middle of the Arizona desert has attracted national attention and criticism since Reveal’s Nate Halverson and Ike Sriskandarajah first broke this story eight years ago. The farm is using massive amounts of water to grow hay and export it to Saudi Arabia in the midst of a water crisis in the American West. 

Since then, megafarms have taken hold here. And the trend isn’t fueled just by foreign companies. Many people have no idea that their retirement funds are backing massive land deals that result in draining precious groundwater. Halverson uncovers that pension fund managers in Arizona knew they were investing in a local land deal, which resulted in draining down the aquifer of nearby communities. So even as local and state politicians have fought to stop these deals, their retirement fund has been fueling them.

And it’s not just happening in Arizona. Halverson takes us to Southern California, where retirement money also was invested in a megafarm deal. This time, the farm was tapping into the Colorado River to grow hay and ship it overseas. And it was happening as the federal and state governments have been trying to conserve river water.

Halverson’s investigation into water use in the West is just one slice of his reporting into a global scramble for food and water, which is featured in an upcoming documentary, “The Grab” by director Gabriela Cowperthwaite. “The Grab” will be coming soon to a theater or screen near you.