Ep 2: Monuments Men

[Music] There are a lot of wacky theories out there about who put up the guide stones, and 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. So 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? [Music] [Music] Episode 2, Monument's Men. [Music] Can you take us back to when you reported this 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 too 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 car driving away. There's the strangest one to me. It has a, looks like a person, but it's coming towards the stones, but it's very, very low frame rate. It almost looks like a video game from the 1980s or something. And it doesn't have a timestamp. The other seven times to have that one doesn't. Thomas thought it was strange that he could never quite confirm basic details. The whole case, it all just didn't really sit right. So Thomas started to work the story. I asked the GBI 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 guide stones for his story. Certainly, who blew them up? Why did this monument have enemies? But also, who was RC Christian, the mysterious man behind the construction? And it's in that last question that he stumbled onto something. For the purposes of this story, something massive. Having done this kind of work for about 24 years now, there will be some things you're looking for that are buried, buried 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 guide stones, a few simple Google searches brought up this documentary film, Dark Clouds over Albertan. 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 Albertan 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, RC Christian's dream would be revealed to all the world. Since that time, the guide stones 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 guide stones? 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 RC Christian. The central secret kept around the mystique of the guide stones. 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 next this newspaper database, Dark Clouds Over Elbritson, zero hits, newspapers.com, Dark Clouds Over Elbritson, 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. The Georgia 2026 Senate Race is hugely important. What's at stake in 2026 for the Senate Race in Georgia? A lot. Everybody in Washington is watching this race because that margin of majority is so slim, every swing state seat counts and that's why Georgia's Senate Race is so important in 2026. The A.J.C.'s politically Georgia. We're going to tell you everything that's going on and the races that matter to you. Follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. This is its UATL. Whatever you means to you, we are talking to that specific community. You're unscripted, unapologetic, weekly dose of black culture, straight from the heart of Atlanta. Our show is hosted by reporters from UATL, an A.J.C. publication that is dedicated to amplifying black culture. In every week we're diving into anything that touches black life. Welcome to its UATL. Tune in every Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts. Can you just tell us what you recall of when you first came to learn about them and what you thought about them? I can't really put a finger on an exact date. It feels like it's one of those things I've always known about it. I know that's not true, but I had no idea that our destinies would intertwipe. This is Michael Bennett. He was the producer on Dark Clouds over at 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 at Bittbreadwinner was as a scientist, developed fire and explosion suppression systems for the Air Force and then an entrepreneur and a patenter which actually helped me in this particular project. As an engineering scientist, my doctorates in 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 rubbed shoulders with the conspiratorial. That's how he 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 had a reputation for sort of picking and digging at stuff and going in 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. And he asked me if I could lend a hand. I might surmise he was most interested in showing the guide stones message in stone as a new world order worldview in 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 in the Bible built which I could relate to. Of Godfaring people could rationalize participating in a construction of such an edifice as the guide stones with values and direct contrast to those of Jesus. The documentary crew arrived in Albertan in the spring of 2010. Michael says at 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 grand daddy 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 RC 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 RC 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 RC 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 RC 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 big 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 RC Christian, that he would not divulge anything about who he really was. Can you tell us what year RC Christian passed away? No, I won't discuss that. That's a very private thing with his family and so I don't think I should discuss that. Michael and the director are asking Wyatt pretty pointed questions, but Wyatt's not budging much. His answers are not scripted exactly, but rehearsed, perhaps. Up until 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 RC 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, yeah, I still got them and they're back in the shed. That was property. So if you can imagine a Rosetta stone that's back in somebody's shed or the Alexandria library that, oh, yeah, I just got it out back, it was hard nut to salivate. Michael thought these letters held the answer to who RC Christian really was. Now 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 really just 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. I guess a lot of tension and 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 the shot of you? You might turn that case down. And when he opened up that case and I looked out and I had the sense that we were not going to see you in there but for an instant. Where are you going? 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 RC 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 gum shoe 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 Gatstops. It had his name that we had. It had the address that I'd found and it had the date. It had that information there with the ties to the name in the exact time period that it could only been him. That met my definition of smoking gun evidence with tons of corroborating evidence. This was it. The patents, the address and the timing linked 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 RC Christian. When I found out he was an inventor, the gentleman who's address we had, who seemed to be the primary driver of this operation. and then the revelations 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 turn. Herbert Kirsten was a physician and an inventor. He was born on May 7th, 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 the leading American voice of the Eugenics movement in the 70s. Shockley was not someone who hit his beliefs in Eugenics and Herbert Kirsten wrote lots of letters to him and if you don't know much about Eugenics, they're warning. It's dark. It's the belief that certain races are inferior, should be sterilized or killed off, while other humans perceived to be superior should breed to create a better society. In other words, it's junk science. But Kirsten's Eugenics 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 extolling David Duke. I say it's time that our white taxpayers' money goes to build a better country instead of breeding more blacks. Herbert 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 he was RC Christian, the man behind the Georgia Guidestones, he was a racist who believed in Eugenics. 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 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 and you know what? Maybe the hand of God is on you to do this stuff. Maybe. Because when you when you started looking common knowledge about the guy's stones was that the first question was still 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. So you essentially re-reported it in a way. I mean, by that time I came along, why 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 had found. And in my opinion, it was rock solid. Kirsten had the same address in Fort Dodge, Iowa that Robert Christian had. He was the same age that Christian mentioned being at one point his letter being age 78 in 1998. Do the math. The math works perfectly. And he was espousing the same pretty specific political opinions at the same time, roughly that that Robert Christian lives. And so for example, I'm looking at a letter here, 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 Kirsten. The more we learn about Robert Christian, the more disturbing it gets. 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 documentaries claims. He felt sure that dark clouds over Elberton 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 Kirsten theory to say like, here's why that's wrong. Nobody did. I mean, not in any serious way that I can remember. There was no new evidence that said, well, actually it was this guy. Help. But Thomas felt like he only got halfway there when it came to the mysteries around the guide stones. 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 have 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 guide stones really was someone who believed in a pretty dark worldview. That those wild posts online about how these guide stones were a monument to genocide or mass murder or kind of true. Even worse, that this person was in lockstep with some of the country's most nefarious actors, the KKK, the eugenic society, neo-nazis. In a way it feels like we went on a hunt to disprove that Bigfoot exists and wound up finding a Bigfoot skeleton. Which is why I'm here in Albertan, 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 guide stone conspiracy heads. R.C. Christian, Herbert Kirsten, actually wrote a manifesto six years after the stones went up. Supposedly, R.C. Christian self-published this book and sent leather-bound 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 Elbert County Public Library. The physical copy of Common Sense Renewed is kept behind the counter. It's not on display. You have to ask the the librarian to see it. When it was sent to the library in 1986, it came with a letter. The letter confirms a lot of things, like that the guide stones were put up in the midst of RC Christians' own fears about the nuclear threat, specifically coming from the Soviet Union. August 1992 to the head librarian, dear sir or madam, I enclosed four paper-bound copies of a small book I wrote about 12 years ago, in connection with the Georgia Guide Stones monument near Elberton. The book suggested a change in attitude and policy for the Soviet block, but did not anticipate the rapid and welcome course of events that has developed for recent years. I guess the fall of the Soviet Union. Shortly after the book was published, a number of leather-brown copies were provided to the Georgia Guide Stones Foundation to be given to individuals who might in later years make copies. In the book, there are passages about how people should show evidence of economic productivity. It says that preferential treatment should be given in healthcare. 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 eugenic stuff. "And harvest time, primitive farmers separate their grain by beating the stalks with flails on a threshing floor. They remove the loose straw leaving a residue of grain, chaff 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, and I've had opportunity to observe the passing scene from a vantage point, which has exposed me to human beings in all walks of life, representing a widespread from a 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 gained in my brief existence. That's 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 worldview 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 eugenic-y is because, well, an actual eugenicist wanted to push his agenda for radical depopulation and racial superiority. But despite RC Christian's best efforts to tell everyone exactly what the guide stones meant, they took on a life of their own. All this time, RC Christian's 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 guide stones have raised a lot of questions. Conspiracy theories used to be fun. We get phone calls all the time. We don't know what we're part of it. What do we try to have? It might be unsolved because they chose not to starve 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. That's 912-302-2666. The show was written and reported by me, Tyler McBride, with Megan Nodalski, Ian N. Wright, and Charles Minchew. Samantha Stamler is head of audio. Megan Nodalski is our series lead and Ian N. Wright is our senior producer. The show was produced by Kira Bowdoin-Golagorski, Kair Shillin, and Charles Minchew. With production support from Shane Backler, Samirja Fari, Alison Shine, Corley Barrow, and Mariana Castro. Original theme music by Polyglam. Additional composition from Ian N. Wright and Blue Dot Sessions. Phil Robiburo created the show's artwork. Special thanks to the AJC's Thomas Lake, Chris Joyner, and Charles Minchew. Charles Bathaya 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.