01: The Fire
Our story begins in St. Louis, where host Nina Gilden Seavey recounts how the FBI surveilled her family in the 1970s to keep an eye on her father, Louis Gilden, a civil rights attorney at the time. We also learn about Howard Mechanic, one of Gilden’s clients, who was a student at Washington University. After an ROTC building was burned to the ground during a campus protest, Mechanic becomes a prime target of the investigation. What made St. Louis such a hotspot for FBI activity?
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02: The Assassination
About The Show
Nina Gilden Seavey was twelve on May 5, 1970, the day an Air Force building in St. Louis burned to the ground. Her dad represented a young man accused of the crime: Howard Mechanic. Facing serious federal time, Howard went on the run and became one of the longest-running fugitives in U.S. history. As an adult, Nina picked up the trail. What ever happened to Howard Mechanic? This eight-part series is the tangled story of her search for answers. Hundreds of Freedom of Information requests. Hundreds of thousands of pages of documents. FBI surveillance and confidential informants. Cold War spies, conspiracy theories and the murder of a civil rights icon. And the sacrifices America makes in the name of national security.
