Ep 2: Monuments Men

they're obviously not true, like it probably was not aliens. It was RC Christian, but who

was RC Christian? And does his true identity have anything to do with the guide stones destruction? It seems if we're going to try to solve any of this, to separate fact from fiction. That has to be the place to start. How do you find a person who took every possible step to hide who they were? Someone who has been hidden for nearly 40 years from the Atlanta Journal

“Constitution? This is who blew up the guide stones?”

Episode two, Monuments Men, can you take us back to when you reported the story? Did you start at the explosion? Yeah, the explosion happened in 22. I sort of noticed it and filed it away. It was 23 a little over a year after the explosion that I got around to starting the project. And so some of the dust had settled. This is Thomas Lake. Thomas is a reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. I'm talking

to Thomas here in the AJC studio because like me, he has spent a lot of time thinking about

“the Georgia guide stones. Thomas says he had always known about them and always wondered about”

the mystery behind who made them. Was there anything about the guide stones that kept you drawn in or was it just a good old mystery? Well, I like probably most other people was most fascinated and maybe a little disturbed by the first guideline, the keeping the global population below 500

million because that suggested some larger design. Of course, when the explosion happened in 2022,

it suddenly gave the question some new urgency. At the time of the guide stones explosion, Thomas was working for CNN as a senior writer and he followed the case from afar, saw the

“stories, scanned occasionally to see if there were any developments. This wasn't exactly his beat,”

but as weeks and months went on. The story started to pull him in. When Thomas started his reporting, there weren't a lot of leads to go on, a few official statements, a poster two online, and then there was what was released by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation right after the explosion. So there's these three little video clips that come out. There's explosion. There's a silver card driving away. There's the strangest one to me. It has a looks like a person, but it's a coming

toward the stones, but it's very, very low frame rate. It almost looks like a video game from the

1980s or something. So, and it does never time stamp. The other seven times stamp at that one doesn't.

Thomas thought it was strange that he could never quite confirm basic details. The whole case and all just didn't really sit right. So Thomas started to work the story. I asked the FBI to explain that they wouldn't. They don't have to. They can tell me as little as they want, including nothing. And of course, because the investigation is still open, they don't have to really release a lot of documents either. So that was strange. He was looking

to see if he could find anything definitive to say about the guidestones for his story. Certainly, who blew them up. Why did this monument have enemies? But also, who was our sea Christian? The mysterious man behind the construction. And it's in that last question that he stumbled

for about 24 years now, there will be some things you're looking for that are buried, very deep,

“and you look and you look and you look and you can never find them. And then there are other things”

that are not commonly known, but are just sort of hiding in plain sight. With the question of who built the guidestones, a few simple Google searches brought up this documentary film, dark clouds over Elbert and I was like, "Okay, well, which seems obvious that just as part of standard due diligence, I'm going to look at this." "Dark clouds over Elberton is a documentary that was released in 2010. It's not a documentary, you would stumble upon browsing Netflix.

But you might find it, like Thomas did, by going down a rabbit hole on the internet. It's got kitschy history channel like reenactments and a brooding score. If it was a genre, I would describe it as conspiracy fringe DIY. In March of 1980, R.C. Christian's dream would be revealed to all the world. Since that time, the guidestones with all their mystery have inspired a host of apocalyptic ideas.

And I start to watch it and for a while it was okay, well find some basic background and everything,

“and then all of a sudden it started to get really good. I was like, "What?”

How is this not part of the common knowledge about the guidestones? Why didn't anyone seem to watch this film?" It wasn't so much that this documentary gave Thomas the clues he needed to solve the mystery. It claimed to have already solved it. This odd virtually unknown documentary was claiming it had solved the mystery of R.C. Christian. These central secret kept around the mystique of the guidestones. Thomas thought surely, the claims the documentary made,

would have been re-reported somewhere else. Surely someone wrote about this film when it came out. I go to the Nexis newspaper database, dark clouds over Elperton, zero hits, newspapers.com, dark clouds over Elperton, zero hits. I don't know. The news media is not what it used to be, but that was still surprising. So then I was like, "All right, well, even though it's not

some amazing journalistic accomplishment on my part, the least I can do with my story is to

shed light on and acknowledge what has already been found and has been out there for anyone who really wants to look at it." Simon asked you about the story, also this school of philosophy, actually on the streets and then you said, "Well, no, not at all." "You mean, this story is like my own space." "You mean, that's all it's about?" "Yeah, exactly."

"Because this story is like the story of the story that I just understood. A Garlob Studio, Job, or Unzoor." "Castin?" "Cras?" "I don't really know how to do it." "Stay on and let it." "Safe." "With this story, yeah." That Georgia, 2026 Senate Race, is hugely important.

Everybody in Washington is watching this race because that margin of majority is so slim.

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"Can you just tell us what you recall of when you first came to learn about them and what you thought about them?"

It feels like it's one of those things I've always known about it. I know that's not true, but

“had no idea that our destinies were intertwined.”

"This is Michael Bennett." "He was the producer on Dark Clouds over Albertan back in 2010." Michael's had all sorts of careers. He's a historian, an engineer, a radio host, a religious thinker. "My primary career, a bit breadwinner, was as a scientist, developed fire and explosion suppression systems for the Air Force,

and then owned entrepreneur and patenter, which actually helped me in this

particular project, an engineering scientist, my doctorates, an engineering, and I am a

member of the 1970 Hot Wheels fan club, probably one of the oldest members, so I don't know if that's significant." Michael's a sort of Renaissance man, with a special interest in the occult and the strange. He was well known in his church community for his investigations and some investigations were sometimes on oftentimes rub shoulders with the conspiratorial.

“"That's how we got the gig on Dark Clouds over Albertan."”

One day at church, Michael was approached by a Christian evangelical filmmaker. This filmmaker wanted to explore the mystery of how the guide stones came to be. "It's because I have a reputation for sort of picking and digging stuff and knowing and unexpected areas." Michael agreed to partner with this filmmaker, who believed that the Georgia guide stones were

a part of a deep, satanic conspiracy, and he was setting out to make a documentary that would expose to the world that the Georgia guide stones were the work of Dark Forces of evil. "Any ask me if I could lend a hand. I might surprise he was most interested in showing the Gatsome's message and stone as a new world-order worldview, made contrast to what he considered a Christian sacred one." While Michael wasn't totally sure

that Satan was involved, he was eager to investigate whether Albertan was knowingly or unknowingly, involved in creating an anti-Christian beacon right in their backyard. "So my perspective was that I was interested in how a small town on the Bible belt, which I could relate to, of Godfaring people could rationalize participating in the construction of such an edifice as the Gatstones, with values and direct contrast to those of Jesus."

The documentary crew arrived in Albertan in the spring of 2010.

Michael says it first, "No one wanted to talk. It seemed like they were hiding things.

He felt like the people of Albertan knew a lot more about the guide stones mysterious origins than they were letting on." These are people who enjoy keeping secrets, and this was a granddaddy they had a biggie. But the big break was when they were able to locate the home address of Wyatt Martin, the banker who helped R.C. Christian manage the payment for the construction of the guide stones.

"Now for people who don't know Wyatt Martin, he was the one-time Albertan banker who was the only man to actually know this mysterious guide stone benefactor R.C. Christian." Michael believed that if anyone could unravel the truth around the stones, it would be Wyatt. They arranged for an interview, and this event would go on to be the climax of the film. "What I call the Da Vinci code, aspect of the story, the literal treasure chest?"

Wyatt Martin died back in 2021. So this interview is the last interview we have of him talking about R.C. Christian. When you watch Dark Clouds, the scene plays out like a high drama. It is well known that Wyatt Martin is committed to taking the secret of R.C. Christian to his grave.

“But could there be any available clues to who he was without getting a direct answer from Mr. Martin?”

"You see Wyatt. Already getting up there in years at the time of the filming. Sitting in an armchair, a bit glassy-eyed, and forgetful. But still answering their questions. You get the feeling this older man is trying to be helpful, but wants to honor his promise to R.C. Christian, that he would not divulge anything about who he really was." "Can you tell us what year R.C. Christian passed away?"

"No, I won't. I won't discuss that. That's a very private thing with his family, and so

pretty pointed questions, but Wyatt's not budging much. His answers are not scripted exactly,

“but rehearsed, perhaps. "I'll ban till that time, once or twice a year, we would”

exchange letters back and forth about how our families were doing and what we were doing in life, and then on camera, Michael asks Wyatt about the case. There was an old LA Times article that reported Wyatt Martin had actually kept letters written between him and R.C. Christian, and that those letters were sitting in an old computer case that no one else had ever seen.

"We were shocked. He said, "Oh, he asked, he'll go on." And they're back in the shed.

But it was property. So if you can imagine a Rosetta stone that's back in somebody's shed, or, you know, the Alexandria library that, oh yeah, I just got it up back. It was hard not to salvage."

“Michael thought these letters held the answer to who R.C. Christian really was.”

"Have you got the IBM computer case out of the garage, or somewhere nearby?" "I do." "Would you be willing to show it to us?" "No. I don't have to open it. Would you be willing to show us the case?" "It's under a lot of furniture out in that building out there." This moment is pretty exciting, but it's also worth noting that it feels a little manipulative. This is an older man, living alone. And Michael keeps pushing Wyatt to show him something

he clearly doesn't want to. Documentary ethics aside, Michael's methods are working. It was, I guess, a lot of tension. And on the camera, because we slowly made that walk

“out to the back shed, and I got the honor of digging back through what would be anybody's filthy”

shed in the far back corner. "In the documentary, you see Michael drag the case out and ask if they can open it." "Would you be willing to open the case?" "And not show us any of the papers, but just let us see that our paper, you might turn that case down." "And would he open up that case?" And I looked down in that, I had the sense that we were not going to see in there, but for an answer. "Where do you go? Whoops. That's got papers." The camera starts scanning the scene,

and then it catches the corner of an envelope for just a second. "I looked and scanned with my eyes

and I saw a name. I saw an address." The envelope reveals an address in Fort Dodge, Iowa, and I'm not good at keeping things to memory, but I said, "I got to keep this in my mind." This was a huge break. This address could be where the man who called himself R.C. Christian actually lived, and as soon as we left there, we were giddy like a couple of teenagers at the mall. So this is a classic dumb shoot detective issue. Michael started making calls going down

rabbit holes, and I felt like I was almost obsessed. He began running searches of the Iowa address, seeing if anything came up. Something odd jumped out. He found several patent applications registered to that exact address, and those patent applications had a name on it. One of the patents, particularly, had a date right at the time between the construction began and the opening of the guidelines. It had his name that we had. It had the address that I found and it

had the date. It had that information there with the ties to the name and the exact time period that it could only have. That met my definition of smoking gun evidence with tons of corroborating evidence. This was it. The patents, the address, and the timing linked to those records to a single name in Fort Dodge, Iowa, an inventor by the name Herbert Kirsten. Michael believed he'd found the guy. The guy everyone called R.C. Christian. When I found out he was an inventor, the gentleman who's

continued at that point. Michael went to Fort Dodge to try to find out everything he could about

Herbert Kirsten. He started knocking on doors, asking questions in town. Did anyone know

“a Herbert Kirsten? What could they tell Michael about him? Did they know about the Georgia guidestones?”

No one in town had ever heard of the guidestones. But people did know a Herbert Kirsten and Michael found out a lot about this man. And the people he was associated with. They had very esoteric cutting edge, political, and social beliefs that were visionary. They had no idea the dark turned.

Herbert Kirsten was a physician and an inventor. He was born on May 7, 1920.

Went to Notre Dame and then the University of Iowa Medical School. He was an army veteran who after the service went into the practice of medicine in Fort Dodge. He was active in the

“rotary club and the historical society and was a fellow in the American College of Surgeons.”

His obituary names a few of his many hobbies, quote, woodworking, oil and water painting, bridge, the Republican Party, physics, livestock, grain farming, and music. It also mentions he was a naturalist who was very concerned with, quote, "world population issues." He fancied himself an intellectual thinker and published on a wide range of topics. He had connections to people with big ideas about the future of mankind. Michael Bennett

fixated on one of those connections to Herbert Kirsten, a man named William Shockley. William Shockley, the inventor of the transistor, with the Nobel laureate. William Shockley won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956. He was also a leading American voice of the Ugenics movement in the '70s. Shockley was not someone who hid his beliefs in Ugenics and Herbert Kirsten wrote lots of letters to him. And if you don't know much about Ugenics,

they're warning, it's dark. It's the belief that certain races are inferior, should be sterilized, or killed off. While other humans perceive to be superior, should breed to create a better society. In other words, it's junk science. But Kirsten's Ugenics connections didn't stop at Shockley. Michael says he found articles that Kirsten himself published on so-called "race science" and "population control." And then, Michael found even more damning information.

He wrote this letter, praising and extoling David Duke. Kirsten wrote letters in support of David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. So Herbert Kirsten, this man in Fort Dodge, Iowa, if you was our secretion, the man behind the Georgia Guidestones, he was a racist who believed in Ugenics. These evangelical documentary filmmakers set out to uncover an anti-Christian conspiracy. But instead, what they might have

revealed is that the guidestones weren't a monument for the good of humanity. But a monument to a racial purity, a call for depopulation and ethnic cleansing. And while it wasn't the work of

“Satanic forces, this version somehow feels much darker. But if you want to talk about some of these”

things on covers, I can send you down some trails. And you know what, maybe the hand of God is arguing to do this stuff. Maybe.

Because when you started looking, common knowledge about the guidestones was that the first

question was still a mystery. Yeah, that nobody knew who Robert Christian was. But actually they did. After watching the documentary, Thomas Lake went through and fact-checked Michael Bennett's findings.

white Martin had died. So there wasn't a way to talk to him. But I could at least

“go and double-check some of what the filmmakers have found. And in my opinion, it was rock solid.”

Kirsten had the same address in Fort Tajaiwa that Robert Christian had. He was the same age that Christian mentioned being at one point as letter, being aged 78 and 1998. Do the math, the math works perfectly. And he was espousing the same pretty specific political opinions at the same time, roughly, that Robert Christian was. And so for example, I'm looking at a letter

here, a letter to the editor. Thomas says the documentary's revelations about RC Christian

hold up for three reasons. Same age, same address, same politics, pretty strong connection between

“Robert Christian and Herbert Christian. The more we learn about Robert Christian, the more disturbing”

against. This guy was a lot of things, but stupid isn't one of them. Clearly, he was a highly accomplished intelligent man who had some big plans for this planet. Thomas published a sprawling piece, confirming many of the documentary's claims. He felt sure that dark clouds over Albertin got it right. Just as when the film had come out, the publication of my story was a chance for someone to challenge the Herbert Christian theory to say, like, here's why that's rock.

Nobody did. I mean, not in any serious way that I can remember. There was no new evidence. It said, well, actually, it was this guy. But Thomas felt like he only got halfway there when it came to the mysteries around the guidestones. There was still so much unsolved about their creation and their destruction. There are a lot of stories I do where there's like this part of the iceberg under the surface. There are these things I believe that aren't in the story,

but I'm still pretty sure they're correct. I don't really have that with this one.

“What we published is that's what I've got. I wish I had some compelling theory to whisper in your”

ear, but I do not. I'm sorry. I do a feel as if I failed on the story. I didn't get it. I did not get to the bottom of this. Maybe you will. To be honest, it's almost hard to believe. Out of all the theories behind the mystery man who built these stones,

it's basically the craziest version that's true. That the person behind the guidestones

really was someone who believed in a pretty dark world view. That those wild posts online about how these guidestones were a monument to genocide or mass murder were kind of true. Even worse, that this person was in lockstep with some of the countries most nefarious actors, the KKK, the eugenic society, neo-Nazis. In a way it feels like we went on a hunt to disprove that big foot exists and wound up finding a big foot skeleton.

Which is why I'm here in Alberton, standing in front of the public library, because it gets even weirder. This part of the story is much less well known, even to the big guidestone conspiracy heads. R.C. Christian Herbert Christian actually wrote a manifesto six years after the stones went up. Supposedly R.C. Christian self-published this book and sent leatherbound copies all across the

country to members of Congress, universities, even the Smithsonian. The book is called Common Sense Renewed, but almost 40 years later there aren't many copies left. There is one though at the Albert County Public Library. The physical copy of Common Sense Renewed is kept behind

library, in 1986, it came with a letter. The letter confirms a lot of things.

“Like that the guidestones were put up in the midst of R.C. Christian's own fears about the nuclear”

threat, specifically coming from the Soviet Union. August 1992, to the head librarian, dear Sir Ermadham, I enclosed four paperbound copies of a small book I wrote about 12 years ago, in connection with the Georgia guidestones monument near Alberton. The book suggested a change in attitude in policy for the Soviet block, but did not anticipate the rapid and welcome course of events that has developed in recent years. I guess the fall of the Soviet Union. Shortly after

the book was published in a number of leatherbound copies were provided to the Georgia guidestones foundation to be given to individuals who might in later years make money. In the book, there are passages

“about how people should show evidence of economic productivity. It says that preferential treatment”

should be given in health care. There's talk of rationing care, quote, "favoring those individuals whose continuing lives are most valuable to society at large. It's, well, kind of explicit about the eugenics stuff." And harvest time, primitive farmers separate their grain by beating the stalks with flails on a threshing floor. They removed the loose straw leaving a residue of grain, chap, and dust. I was privileged to be born in American at a time when our nation had achieved

high levels of political liberty and material comforts for our people. I've enjoyed the benefits of our society. I've had opportunity to observe the passing scene from a vantage point, which is exposed to human beings in all walks of life, representing a wide spectrum of political religious and economic views. Having reached the harvest time of my own life, I feel a duty to share with you a few thoughts, gaining my brief existence as a member of human family. It really has

like a stylistic prose, yeah. If people were confused about what the guide stones meant, what their creator intended. Well, here's RC Christian, spelling it out exactly in this book. And that explicit manifesto is very close, if not exactly the same, as the world view of Herbert Kirsten. Herbert Kirsten would just so happen to be writing letters to Wyatt Martin, the banker who

worked with RC Christian to finance the guide stones. Sometimes the answer is the one that was

right in front of you all along. The one literally etched in stone. It turns out that the reason some of the commandments on the guide stones sounded kind of eugenicsy is because, well, an actual eugenicist wanted to push his agenda for radical depopulation and racial superiority. But despite RC Christians' best efforts to tell everyone exactly what the guide stones meant, they took on a life of their own. All this time, RC Christians' true identity was hiding in plain sight.

But no one actually read common sense renewed. The name Herbert Kirsten was never surfaced until 2010 when dark clouds over Albertan came out. But no one really watched that either. And so the legend, the obsessions, and the conspiracies grew. The mode of behind the guide stones creation was eugenics. But the mode of behind destroying them, by 2022, that could have been so many things. The guide stones had become a target for so many.

The Georgia guides don't have raised a lot of questions. Conspiracy theories used to be fun.

“Yeah, we get fun calls all the time. Want to know what we're part of it. What are we trying to have?”

It might be unsolved because they chose that to solve it. Somebody used explosives. How could I consider that vandalism? And so this crime has so many suspects.

So let's talk about that second mystery. Let's start talking about who blew up the guide stones.

Who blew up the guide stones is produced by the Atlanta Journal Constitution and goat rodeo. Do you have any information about who blew up the guide stones? Got a tip? Just want to leave us a message? Call our hotline at 912 302 boom.

Tyler McBrion, with Megan Adalski, Ian N. Wright and Charles Minshew.

“Samantha Stamler is head of audio. Megan Adalski is our series lead and Ian N. Wright is our senior producer.”

The show was produced by Kira Bodengolagorski, Kare Shilin and Charles Minshew,

with production support from Shane Backler, Samir Jafari,

“Allison Shine, Corley Barrow, and Mariana Castro, original theme music by Polyglam,”

additional composition from Ian N. Wright and Blue Dot Sessions.

Phil Robibero created the show's artwork. Special thanks to the AJC's Thomas Lake,

“Chris Joyner and Charles Minshew. Charles Bethella from the New Yorker helped us with some”

reporting for this episode. Be sure to listen and download the rest of the series. And keep an eye out for more from the AJC coming soon. Thank you for listening.