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00:00:13Moonshine goes to the very human instinct in man to get away with something.
00:00:22To get away with doing something illegal and not getting caught.
00:00:27And this right here is pure alcohol, 180 proof.
00:00:34It's addictive kind of.
00:00:36Once you get it in your veins it's hard to get it out.
00:00:39Took six years of prison for me to get it out.
00:00:43And that's the truth.
00:00:46My daddy, he was doing what he had to do.
00:00:49He made shine, keep kids from starving I guess, or send us to school and buy shoes for us.
00:01:00These people's names weren't Bugsy or Scarface.
00:01:03They were very nice, very respectable people.
00:01:07They saw the government as having made them a criminal.
00:01:14The whole town was involved in this whole thing of rum running.
00:01:19My father was never caught.
00:01:22He was shot up but he was never caught.
00:01:27There was a lot of bootlegging people involved in racing when it got off the ground.
00:01:35I really think the fastest car I ever drove was a bootlegging car.
00:01:41America's gonna have to whisk it one way or another.
00:01:44Now whether it comes from bootlegging or the Moonshine or any way, they're gonna have it any way you look
00:01:49at it.
00:01:51They are heroes and criminals.
00:01:55They fight tax collectors and moral crusaders.
00:02:00They sail the high seas and tear up the back roads.
00:02:05And they leave an indelible mark on the American spirit.
00:02:10They are the rum runners, the moonshiners and the bootleggers of America.
00:02:37Moonshine has many names.
00:02:39It's known as Pop Skull.
00:02:41Corn Liquor.
00:02:43Pot Liquor.
00:02:44Rot Gut.
00:02:45Panther's Breath.
00:02:47White Dog.
00:02:48White Lightning.
00:02:50White Lightning.
00:02:51White Lightning.
00:02:55Whatever its name, moonshine whiskey is an American tradition.
00:03:00And today the art of making this illegal spirit lives on in many pockets of the southern United States.
00:03:08Moonshine goes to that instinct of every man, woman and child to get away with something, to do something and
00:03:15not be caught.
00:03:16That's what moonshine's about.
00:03:19And there will always be moonshine.
00:03:25Making moonshine begins with a mash of sugar, water, yeast and grain.
00:03:32In early America the grain of choice is rye or barley.
00:03:37When moonshiners reach Kentucky, they switch to more plentiful corn.
00:03:43As the mash sits, the yeast feeds on the sugars in the grain.
00:03:48The byproduct of this chemical reaction is alcohol.
00:03:53To separate this alcohol from the rest of the mash, moonshiners use a process called distillation.
00:04:04American moonshiners first used small pots to distill whiskey.
00:04:09The pots were made of copper, a metal that does not corrode and poison the liquor.
00:04:17Over the next 200 years, stills grow larger, able to produce greater and greater amounts of moonshine in a single
00:04:24run.
00:04:30This backwoods distillery consists of four 800-gallon black pot type stills.
00:04:37Each still can produce about 100 gallons of white lightning per run.
00:04:49Tim Smith's family has a long tradition of making moonshine.
00:04:55Try to strain it and purify it as best we can.
00:04:59That's the name of the game is making it clean as we can.
00:05:02We're going to show you how to make some moonshine today.
00:05:05We've got an 800-gallon steel.
00:05:07We've got it filled up with water, sugar, yeast and malt, which is a secret recipe.
00:05:12We've got it all mixed up right and it's ready.
00:05:14It's all ready for a minute and everything.
00:05:20Distillation works on a basic principle.
00:05:24Water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit, but alcohol boils at only 172 degrees.
00:05:32As long as the moonshiner maintains the stills temperature at around 172 degrees, only the alcohol will boil off.
00:05:40The rest of the mash should stay behind.
00:05:45The alcohol is now steamed and travels to the next component of the still, the thump keg, named for the
00:05:53thumping sound it makes.
00:05:57If any impurities manage to get through, the thump keg catches them.
00:06:03Now, only the alcohol steam continues on its journey to the copper worm.
00:06:12Normally, we'd have this full of water.
00:06:14This would be cold water.
00:06:15Cold water we pump from the creek.
00:06:17The steam rolls down and around the worm.
00:06:21The cold water condenses the alcohol back into a liquid.
00:06:29The moonshine is strained and finally jugged.
00:06:37Put a top on it.
00:06:40One jug of moonshine, ready to go.
00:06:44Moonshine whiskey is usually 100 proof, meaning it contains 50% alcohol.
00:06:52In the old days, proofing the liquor was a way to ensure you weren't getting swindled with low-quality alcohol.
00:06:59It was often done with gunpowder.
00:07:03They would pour the liquid on the gunpowder and set a match to it or a light to it.
00:07:10And if it ignited, then the liquor was proved to have enough alcohol in it.
00:07:19If the liquor doesn't light, it may have been watered down.
00:07:23If it didn't ignite, they were trying to palm you off with something that wasn't quite of the standard you
00:07:29required.
00:07:29And this right here is pure alcohol.
00:07:33180 proof.
00:07:33Retired moonshiner Clay Call can tell the proof by the bead, or bubble.
00:07:38That's about 180 proof.
00:07:41The bead of higher proof moonshine is larger and disappears quickly.
00:07:47The bead of this 100 proof moonshine is smaller and remains longer.
00:07:57Like all whiskey, moonshine is clear when it first comes off the still.
00:08:03Legal distilleries are required by law to age the whiskey in new charred oak barrels, which gives it its color
00:08:10and smooth taste.
00:08:12But moonshine isn't aged today, and its harsh burning taste reflects it.
00:08:19Here we have some American whiskey.
00:08:21We're all used to seeing whiskey like this.
00:08:24It's aged in new charred oak barrels for years and years until it takes on this wonderful amber hue that
00:08:34we're all familiar with.
00:08:37And here we've got some moonshine with a little lightening for white lightening emblazoned on the bottle.
00:08:43Don't ask me where I got it.
00:08:45It just comes off the still, put in the bottle, poured in the shot glass.
00:08:52Cheers.
00:08:56Moonshine has been described as a cross between rubbing alcohol, vodka, and kerosene.
00:09:03Despite its taste, Americans covet this outlaw spirit.
00:09:07And throughout history they will fight for it, go to jail for it, and even kill for it.
00:09:29The American Revolution, a war fought against tyranny, oppression, and taxes.
00:09:37Taxes that turned our founding fathers into smugglers of illegal liquor.
00:09:44Our founding fathers resented taxes, and they defied the law.
00:09:50They would try to smuggle in almost anything upon which the king was trying to levy a duty.
00:09:56Americans are fundamentally defiant people.
00:09:59We don't like authority.
00:10:00There's a natural anti-authority element in our character, which is part of the revolutionary spirit.
00:10:07Huzzah!
00:10:09In fact, it was a colonial rum runner that helped inflame this American spirit of insurrection eight years before the
00:10:16outbreak of war.
00:10:22On June 10th, 1768, British customs agents seize a rum running ship called the Liberty in Boston Harbor.
00:10:32The Liberty's owner is one of the colony's greatest smugglers.
00:10:36He is also one of America's founding fathers, John Hancock.
00:10:42John Hancock was one of the finest practitioners of smuggling.
00:10:47Hancock, like any number of other merchants along the Atlantic coast, took great pleasure evading the king's customs offices, the
00:10:55revenue offices.
00:10:56And he did it with great success.
00:10:59And in this case, in the Sloop Liberty, the populace is enraged against the royal customs officers.
00:11:05And their lives are in danger.
00:11:12The Liberty's seizure quickly sparks a riot.
00:11:18Incensed colonists terrorize customs officers.
00:11:21They drag a British ship through town and torch it on the Boston Common.
00:11:29Just three days later, Hancock and the Sons of Liberty hold an emotional meeting at Faneuil Hall and plant the
00:11:36seeds of revolution.
00:11:42After seven bloody years of war, the colonists finally rid themselves of oppressive British taxes.
00:11:49But this newly found freedom has a price tag.
00:11:53The war has left the country more than $70 million in debt.
00:11:59To raise the money, the country's newly elected leaders resort to the same taxes that Americans fought so vehemently against
00:12:06in the first place.
00:12:09Alexander Hamilton taps George Washington on the shoulder and says,
00:12:13Excuse me, but we're a bit short of cash.
00:12:17And Washington says, Well, he says, Well, that war cost us a lot, you know,
00:12:21and we've got to, like, get some money back to the people we borrowed it from.
00:12:25What we're going to do?
00:12:27Actually, it was Hamilton that came up with the answer.
00:12:30It's let's tax distilled spirits.
00:12:35On March 3rd, 1791, the United States government taxes the production and sale of distilled spirits.
00:12:44And, of course, the immediate response to taxation is you go out into the woods to avoid detection
00:12:53and you distill by the light of the moon.
00:12:58The American moonshiner is born.
00:13:06It is in western Pennsylvania where these illicit distillers are predominant.
00:13:12They are mainly Scotch-Irish farmers who use their whiskey as liquid currency for trade.
00:13:19Years before, many of the Scotch-Irish fled unfair taxes on whiskey in their native land.
00:13:27Now, faced with new American taxes, they rebel.
00:13:34They rebelled for a darn good reason.
00:13:37They rebelled because they didn't have the money to pay those taxes.
00:13:41Whisky was their form of currency.
00:13:43Whisky was how they paid the rent.
00:13:46Whisky was how they bought a new frog for their wife.
00:13:50Whisky was how they bought food.
00:13:52And so they didn't have the money.
00:13:54You can't tax us because we don't have any cash.
00:13:58I'm sorry, give you a gallon of whiskey if you want it, but no cash.
00:14:02Washington says, no, I need money.
00:14:06In the summer of 1794, the violence escalates.
00:14:12Nearly 5,000 moonshiners march on Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
00:14:19President George Washington calls out the militia.
00:14:24Washington's big worry was that the troops would not muster.
00:14:29And if the troops did not muster, he has lost his leadership ability,
00:14:34and he will be seen as a failure as a president.
00:14:39It's a very big moment in American history, and it's a war against moonshiners.
00:14:48Heeding Washington's call, 13,000 troops arrive in Pittsburgh to quell the uprising.
00:14:54Severely outnumbered and outgunned, the moonshiners hastily retreat,
00:14:59and the Whisky Rebellion is put down with virtually no bloodshed.
00:15:05But many die-hard moonshiners refuse to concede.
00:15:09Their hatred for taxes drives many of them to America's unsettled backwoods
00:15:14to ply their illicit trade.
00:15:17Quite a few of the Scots-Irish went down and made more moonshine in Kentucky.
00:15:24It had already been pinpointed as one of the most beautiful places on Earth,
00:15:29with its blue grass and its limestone water.
00:15:35Everybody said, maybe we'll go to Kentucky, get away without paying taxes again for a few years,
00:15:41until they tighten up down there.
00:15:47The moonshiners' age-old traditions immediately take root.
00:15:51The southern backwoods becomes, and will remain, the moonshine capital of America.
00:16:21Since its discovery around 5000 BC, alcohol has stirred controversy.
00:16:29Moral crusaders consider it evil, and throughout history they try to temper its use, or ban it outright.
00:16:37But just as with taxes, the prohibition of alcohol only provides a strong catalyst for moonshining.
00:16:50One of the first major prohibition experiments in the New World occurs as settlers begin building the colony of Georgia.
00:17:00Original founder James Oglethorpe bans rum and brandy from the fledgling colony in 1733.
00:17:07Yet Georgia is far from dry.
00:17:12Settlers quickly construct illegal stills, and smuggle rum by boat from neighboring colonies.
00:17:20They trade their illegal liquor secretly, sometimes hiding their contraband in their clothing or their boots.
00:17:27A person who sells illegal liquor is known as a bootlegger.
00:17:33Georgia is soon overwhelmed with rum runners, moonshiners and bootleggers,
00:17:38and the ban on alcohol ends after only nine years.
00:17:43The lesson of this early prohibition failure will largely be ignored.
00:17:48Over the next 200 years, moral crusaders will try to completely eradicate alcohol from the country.
00:17:55But they will only succeed in driving moonshining to new heights.
00:18:03The next major prohibition experiment is ignited in 1851 by a five-foot-two-inch moral crusader nicknamed the Napoleon
00:18:12of Temperance.
00:18:13He is Mayor Neil Dow of Portland, Maine.
00:18:17Neil Dow was a Yankee fury.
00:18:21He was Foursquare, an abolitionist, a prohibitionist.
00:18:26Amebriation was just a part of the world he grew up in.
00:18:29And Dow found deep moral objection in his Yankee Quaker soul to the harm that he felt this drug did
00:18:36to families, to the social fabric of the world he knew.
00:18:42Dow's world is rife with drunkenness.
00:18:46The average person drinks five gallons of alcohol a year, nearly five times as much as an American today.
00:18:53It is one of the greatest periods of alcohol consumption in American history.
00:19:00The crime and violence that accompanies demon rum is epidemic.
00:19:05Spousal abuse is rampant.
00:19:08Drunkenness amongst children, widespread.
00:19:12There were these horrible places where men drank their lives away with complete disregard to the welfare of their spouse
00:19:22and their children.
00:19:24And therefore, the temperance movements really had something to gripe about.
00:19:33In June of 1851, Dow outlaws alcohol in Portland.
00:19:38A few months later, he helps pass a ban for all of Maine.
00:19:42It is the nation's first statewide prohibition law.
00:19:46Now you can imagine that he was not universally popular for that.
00:19:49It took a lot of moral certitude and a certain amount of ego and strong inner core of belief to
00:19:57do what he did in a world where alcohol was the social drug of acceptance and available everywhere to every
00:20:03working man.
00:20:04Once again, the attempt at prohibition only fuels illegal liquor as moonshine stills soon litter the hills and alcohol is
00:20:13smuggled over the borders.
00:20:27On June 2nd, 1855, a mob assaults the city hall in Portland.
00:20:34They are after hundreds of cases of liquor stored in the basement for doctors and drugists to prescribe as medicine.
00:20:40This infamous night will end in death.
00:20:45It must have been quite a scene.
00:20:47More than a thousand shouting angry men bearing torches and battering rams.
00:20:54And crashing up against the walls again and again until finally they broke.
00:21:01Neil Dow gave the order to fire.
00:21:17The militia gave two full broadsides onto the crowd.
00:21:23Many were wounded.
00:21:25One man died.
00:21:29Dow saves the liquor and is a hero to temperance advocates.
00:21:35But the bloodshed at the Portland rum riot foreshadows the violence the country will witness
00:21:41as the moral crusaders march on.
00:21:52By 1893, five more states join Maine with complete prohibition.
00:21:58By 1913, nine states are dry, including Georgia and North Carolina.
00:22:05The demand for backwoods moonshine is so great, the price triples from $1.50 to $4.50 a gallon.
00:22:16In 1916, Michigan goes dry.
00:22:19But rum runners keep alcohol flowing by smuggling it into the state.
00:22:23One popular route was from Ohio along the Dixie Highway, often called the Avenue de Boos.
00:22:33By 1917, over half of the states in the country banned alcohol.
00:22:39But the Crusaders want more.
00:22:46Take a look at your bright-eyed children.
00:22:49You know what the liquor industry wants to do to them?
00:22:53They want to feed them that old rotgut.
00:22:58Leaping upon our little children, driving its poisonous fangs into the heart and brain and blood of our young men.
00:23:04They want your sweet, innocent girls to take the booze so they can be enticed into honky-tonks
00:23:11by slick-haired butchers who play on the floor of American womanhood.
00:23:17I say alcohol must go!
00:23:22Finally, in 1919, after more than two centuries of trying, the moral Crusaders get their law.
00:23:31Ratified by Congress over a veto by President Woodrow Wilson, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution bans the manufacture, sale
00:23:40and transportation of alcohol.
00:23:46But because of the 200-year run-up, Americans are primed for prohibition.
00:23:52Thousands of moonshine stills already exist, and rum-running routes have long been established.
00:23:59No matter what you do, an American prohibition is a great example of this.
00:24:05No matter what laws you enact, people will always drink.
00:24:10For rum-runners, moonshiners and bootleggers, national prohibition will not be a new beginning, but merely a continuation of the
00:24:19past.
00:24:31At 12.01 a.m. on January 17th, 1920, national prohibition begins.
00:24:40Liquor stores, saloons, breweries and distilleries close their doors.
00:24:48The stillery on the hillside now is still. The men, they take their tipple from the ripple of the rill.
00:24:53The boys go home sober, and their mothers don't cry. Glory, hallelujah, Uncle Sam is going to stay dry.
00:24:59But as the moral crusaders celebrate the start of prohibition, the moonshiners are cranking out thousands of gallons of illegal
00:25:07whiskey.
00:25:10National prohibition isn't an obstacle for them. It's an opportunity to reap greater profits.
00:25:17America's going to have the whiskey one way or another. Now, whether it comes from the bootlegger, the moonshiners, or
00:25:24any way, they're going to have it any way you look at it.
00:25:29For many, during prohibition, moonshining is a means of survival.
00:25:33When legal distilleries close their doors, thousands of old-time distillers find themselves out of work.
00:25:42Forced to fend for themselves, they head into the woods, build their own stills, and make white lightning.
00:25:55One day, you're a distiller. The next day, you're a criminal.
00:25:59They had large families. The way of making money was gone.
00:26:04The people who were cutting down the oak for the staves, they were out of a job.
00:26:08The people who were raising the corn was out of a job.
00:26:12The people who worked on the bottling line were out of a job.
00:26:15And it was just major, major financial problems around here.
00:26:21My daddy, he made shine, keep kids from starving, I guess, or send us to school and buy shoes for
00:26:30us.
00:26:31He was doing what he had to do.
00:26:33He was not a criminal.
00:26:36These people's names weren't Bugsy or Scarface.
00:26:39They were very nice, very respectable people.
00:26:43They saw the government as having made them a criminal.
00:26:49But for every moonshiner just trying to get by, there are several others interested only in profits.
00:26:57Unconcerned about quality, these cagey moonshiners switch the main ingredient in their whiskey from corn to cheaper sugar.
00:27:07In the early stages, they made good whiskey.
00:27:10They made corn whiskey.
00:27:12And then later on, someone found out if you add sugar to it and whatnot, you could get a bigger
00:27:18production, a bigger yield and more of it.
00:27:20But not as good a whiskey.
00:27:22So most of the people then weren't anxious about the quantity of whiskey that was the quantity of whiskey.
00:27:28For about $5, a moonshiner could purchase 100 pounds of sugar and turn it into 10 gallons of white lightning.
00:27:36He could then sell it for $20 a gallon and profit up to $200 per run.
00:27:42Make a lot of money, a lot of money.
00:27:45If you add a 200 gallon barrel and put in 200 gallons of water, 200 pounds of sugar, 40 pounds
00:27:51of wheat bran, and a cake of yeast, maybe a pound of yeast, let it ferment for three days, make
00:27:57a lot of whiskey.
00:27:59Moonshiners in just one small Virginia county turn out nearly one million gallons of illicit booze a year.
00:28:06Half the yearly output of the Jim Beam distillery before Prohibition.
00:28:14Only one thing separates the moonshiner from large profits.
00:28:19The law.
00:28:25The monumental task of policing the nation falls on 1,500 federal agents of the Prohibition Unit.
00:28:32They fan out across the country and join local law enforcement to bust bootleggers and destroy illicit stills.
00:28:53But these agents are poorly paid, and many are seduced by the lure of moonshine money.
00:29:00Corruption is rampant.
00:29:04The salary was $1,800 a year when Prohibition started.
00:29:09They could get $500 a day for calling in on a certain specified day sick.
00:29:14So in four days they could make their yearly salary.
00:29:18It was kind of a tongue-in-cheek type thing.
00:29:20You could go to a blind pig in Detroit and, you know, you'd see the Prohibition agent and his favorite
00:29:24blind pig.
00:29:25And he had two, you know, he'd have a summer home and a winter home and drive a Cadillac.
00:29:30It is estimated that the few honest Prohibition agents are only able to apprehend about 5% of the 800
00:29:37million gallons of illegal liquor flowing through the country every year.
00:29:42They had no better luck stopping the millions of Americans from consuming these outlaw spirits.
00:29:59Americans drink in illegal saloons called blind pigs and speakeasies, where jazz booms.
00:30:06And the Charleston is all the rage.
00:30:13If you knew where one was located and you were given the password, you were admitted.
00:30:22You say, Joe sent me.
00:30:24You'd knock on the door and say, Joe sent me.
00:30:28And after you were admitted, whatever you could afford to pay for was there for the asking.
00:30:36It was romantic because you were breaking the law.
00:30:44The word speakeasy derives from the way illegal liquor is ordered.
00:30:48To the bartender, keep your voice down and speakeasy.
00:30:54During the Roaring Twenties, speakeasies are the settings where rebellious youth fight a revolution in morals and manners.
00:31:00They are young soldiers returning from World War I, joined for the first time in the saloons by women.
00:31:10Women who were not allowed in the vast majority of saloons prior to Prohibition are welcomed with open arms into
00:31:21the speakeasies.
00:31:28They are known as flappers, armed with new clothes, new attitudes, and the new symbol of youth revolution in America,
00:31:39the hip flask.
00:31:42I was a flapper and I really enjoyed it.
00:31:45And my friends of them were all flappers.
00:31:47They had the little hats, you know, they were, they were pulled down kind of it, in the hairdos, in
00:31:52the short skirts, in the high heels.
00:31:54It was all part of growing up at that time.
00:32:10It was kind of a nice age for young people especially. I mean, the group that I was running around
00:32:14with, it was exciting to go to blind pigs, although you weren't supposed to.
00:32:19But anyway, we enjoyed it. And you were always wondering, well, will this place be rated, while my folks find
00:32:24out about it.
00:32:27Prohibition agents are always on the prowl trying to bust speakeasies.
00:32:32But many of these secret saloons devise brilliant ways to get around the law.
00:32:41This is Claudio's restaurant in Greenport, New York.
00:32:45Claudio's is built on the edge of a pier.
00:32:49At low tide, boats laden with illegal liquor slide under the restaurant and unload their bounty.
00:33:00And the booze would come out of the boat,
00:33:02dragged up the sand, and there were three trap doors in the restaurant.
00:33:06One was in the back, that you could offload the booze straight up into the back, out the back door,
00:33:11into the trucks, gone.
00:33:14A second was in what is now the men's room, which is a very small room with no doors.
00:33:19And the booze would go up inside the trap door in that little storage room when there was no truck
00:33:24left.
00:33:26And the third still exists today.
00:33:34And the booze came straight up through the trap door and into the bar.
00:33:44The elite 21 Club in New York City has its own unique defenses against the law.
00:33:50If a raid is imminent, the doorman alerts the bartender with a secret buzzer.
00:33:57That's the signal to flush the booze.
00:34:05In addition to collapsible shelves, the 21 Club has secret passages and fake walls.
00:34:13In the basement, this brick wall is actually a door.
00:34:18It only unlocks when a long metal key is inserted into a tiny crack, giving way to the club's liquor
00:34:26vault.
00:34:31During Prohibition, no liquor is ever found in the 21 Club.
00:34:38And the secret storeroom still exists today.
00:34:54In elite speakeasies like the 21 Club, high-quality liquor flows.
00:34:59But bad booze infiltrates many secret saloons.
00:35:06To increase profits, many unethical bootleggers take a bottle of good liquor
00:35:10and cut it into two or even three bottles.
00:35:14Liquor that had been altered like this is sometimes called monkey rum.
00:35:22Small-time bootleggers mix alcohol with flavorings in their bathtubs
00:35:25and create bathtub gin.
00:35:30Another problem is an army of amateur moonshiners.
00:35:34There were many bad moonshiners out there who didn't care what they put in their illegal hooch.
00:35:43Substances such as embalming fluid were used to give an extra kick to that whiskey,
00:35:51or what they were calling whiskey.
00:35:54People were dying from these ingredients.
00:35:59During the first year of Prohibition, over 1,000 deaths are attributed to poisonous liquor.
00:36:05Within five years, that number quadruples.
00:36:08In 1927, a survey of all the booze that was taken by the revenue agents,
00:36:17they discovered that 98% of it contained poisons of one form or another.
00:36:30This rotgut alcohol makes its way into the speakeasies.
00:36:34The only thing bartenders can do is to try to mask the poisons and horrid taste
00:36:39with sweet fruit juices and colorful mixers.
00:36:43Bootleggers keep these toxic spirits flowing throughout the 13 years of Prohibition.
00:36:49And despite the dangers, Americans will continue to drink them.
00:36:54Now it's palatable.
00:36:56It will get you high.
00:36:58It won't taste great, but it's all we got.
00:37:02Enjoy.
00:37:19Eight miles off the southern coast of New York is a watery grave.
00:37:29These are the skeletal remains of an 84-foot tugboat called the Lizzy D.
00:37:36In 1922, she went down carrying a treasure of illegal alcohol.
00:37:46There are whiskey bottles everywhere on this wreck, in the head, under the boiler.
00:37:51Every single place that they had room for a whiskey bottle, they put whiskey bottles.
00:37:55By penetrating down inside her and digging into the mud,
00:37:59they're still able to recover some of these bootleg whiskey of Prohibition whiskey bottles.
00:38:08The Lizzy D. was a Prohibition rum runner.
00:38:13Her remains are evidence of a great battle fought on the high seas.
00:38:19A battle between liquor smugglers and the law.
00:38:23It was called the Rum War at Sea.
00:38:28Rum running during national prohibition begins when William McCoy,
00:38:33an enterprising boat builder from Florida,
00:38:35fills his 90-foot ship with 1,500 cases of illegal spirits.
00:38:41McCoy anchors three miles offshore in the safety of international waters
00:38:46and sells his cargo to any takers.
00:38:51Dozens of ships loaded with alcohol soon join McCoy.
00:38:55This floating wholesale liquor market becomes known as Rum Row.
00:39:01These supply ships quickly sell their booze and restock in places like Canada and the Caribbean islands.
00:39:09Before Prohibition, an average of 12,000 gallons of alcohol
00:39:13was exported every year from Nassau, Bahamas.
00:39:17At the height of rum running,
00:39:19a staggering 2.5 million gallons leaves her docks every year.
00:39:27For three years, McCoy is the toast of Rum Row.
00:39:31He is legendary for always carrying the highest quality booze.
00:39:35His liquor becomes known as the real McCoy.
00:39:41In 1923, however, the Coast Guard arrests McCoy and his reign abruptly ends.
00:39:48Rum Row, however, continues to thrive.
00:39:54By 1924, it is believed that hundreds of supply ships lay anchored off the coast from Maine to Florida,
00:40:01flooding the eastern seaboard with liquor.
00:40:05Boats of every kind journey out to Rum Row and bring the liquor to land.
00:40:10Sometimes, rum runners even use submarines.
00:40:12They were actually using a World War I U-boat to bring to the shores of Long Island torpedoes filled
00:40:26with bottles of scotch,
00:40:28and they were firing these torpedoes onto the beaches in Long Island.
00:40:37More typically, fishing boats venture past the three-mile limit to bring the booze ashore.
00:40:44But soon, the law pushes the international border from 3 miles to 12 miles.
00:40:53Now, the rum runners need stronger and faster boats.
00:40:57Many turn to boat builder Fred Skopinich of Freeport, New York.
00:41:02My father didn't have any problem with building the boats for the rum runners.
00:41:07He wasn't operating the boat, so he was not under any fear of being caught or charged with anything, and
00:41:14that's all.
00:41:16It was free. He was free and clear.
00:41:20At first, Skopinich builds sea skiffs for the rum runners.
00:41:26Roughly 35 feet long, these boats could hold up to 200 cases of liquor.
00:41:31The sea skiffs are great rum runners because of this flat bottom section.
00:41:36It allows the boat to run aground without tipping over.
00:41:39The liquor can then quickly be unloaded and the boat easily pushed back out to sea.
00:41:47But the sea skiffs are slow and are about to become obsolete.
00:41:55In 1925, five years into Prohibition, the United States government ups the ante.
00:42:04They appropriate 14 million dollars to beef up the Coast Guard's meager fleet.
00:42:10Like the rum runners before them, the Coast Guard hires Fred Skopinich.
00:42:15The yard was building the rum runners' boats on one side of the yard.
00:42:21And on the other side of the yard, they were building Coast Guard boats.
00:42:25The Coast Guard absolutely knew what was going on in all of the yards.
00:42:30Still, the Coast Guard commissions 38-foot power boats built for speed.
00:42:35Their main request is that they achieve at least 24 miles per hour.
00:42:41The rum runners, of course, knew this.
00:42:43So whatever rum boat was built had to be faster than these boats.
00:42:48To help the rum runners stay one step ahead of the Coast Guard,
00:42:52Skopinich outfits his rum running boats with Liberty airplane engines.
00:42:57Originally designed for use in World War I fighter planes,
00:43:01the Liberty helps lead the Allies to victory.
00:43:04Now, after the war, there are some 11,000 available as Army surplus.
00:43:13These engines were perfect in weight and size for a 35, 40-foot boat.
00:43:19It was a V-12 engine.
00:43:21It was 550 horsepower.
00:43:24And they were beautiful, beautiful running engines.
00:43:31Skopinich's answer to the Coast Guard is a boat like this.
00:43:34A 42-foot rum runner called the Betty Ann.
00:43:38This boat could outrun the Coast Guard easily.
00:43:41It had two of the Liberty V-12 550-horse engines in it.
00:43:45She could carry probably 400 cases of liquor.
00:43:48And the boats were sparse. There was nothing in them.
00:43:50There were no toilets, no galleys, no cooking facilities.
00:43:54It was just a four-hour boat.
00:43:56You ran out for two hours and ran back for two hours.
00:43:59That was it.
00:44:06Beyond speed, rum runners add smoke screens to elude capture.
00:44:13By dripping oil into the exhaust system, a boat could completely cloak itself on a dark night in the open
00:44:19ocean.
00:44:19If you were running at night, if you put a little smoke in the air, the Coast Guard boat behind
00:44:25you couldn't see you in no way.
00:44:26It was like drawing a curtain across.
00:44:32Rum runners also developed clandestine radio stations operated with encryption codes to transmit secret messages.
00:44:40Sometimes they radio in fake distress calls and send the Coast Guard on wild goose chases.
00:44:48Skopinich even makes some of his boats bulletproof.
00:44:52To make it bulletproof, they built the pilot house at a double wall material.
00:44:56In other words, like a house, an inner wall and an outer wall.
00:44:59And they poured the pilot house full of beach sand.
00:45:05With speed and a repertoire of ruses, the rum runners usually stay one step ahead of the law.
00:45:12But the Coast Guard turns the tables when they capture a rum running speedboat equipped with Liberty engines.
00:45:19She is called the Black Duck.
00:45:23The Coast Guard mounts a machine gun on the bow of the Black Duck and goes after the rum runners.
00:45:31They will soon have an epic showdown with a fisherman turned rum runner named Carl Reiter, captain of the notorious
00:45:37Artemis.
00:45:41My father was becoming a nemesis to the commander over New London.
00:45:46The commander took it on as a pet project that he was going to catch the Artemis come hell or
00:45:51high water.
00:45:54It was actually August of 1931.
00:45:57They had gone out and loaded up from a Canadian boat as usual.
00:46:01As he was coming in, all of a sudden, the machine gun that was mounted on the front of the
00:46:07Black Duck just opened up on him.
00:46:13And they started just filling the boat with bullets.
00:46:18Carl Reiter claims the Coast Guard opened fire unprovoked.
00:46:22The Coast Guard claims Reiter tried to ram them.
00:46:27Uli Fiedler, then 21 years old, was on shore, ready to unload the illegal liquor.
00:46:35I was waiting on the beach with the unloading gang for the Artemis to come in.
00:46:40And we heard all this damn shooting down there.
00:46:43We didn't know what the hell was going with all that shooting and the lights flashing down the Orient.
00:46:51They shot Johnny Johnson, his mate, right through the head.
00:46:55And then he put it right into the pilot house and shot the spindles of the wheel right out of
00:47:00his hand.
00:47:01And he looked down at the sulfur from the bullets. It made him dizzy.
00:47:07He looked down and his compass was spinning around.
00:47:10And he just, he fell back and he put his feet up on the wheel.
00:47:17Steering with his feet, Carl Reiter rams the Black Duck.
00:47:21He then zigzags his boat towards shore with the Coast Guard on his tail continuing to fire.
00:47:28Soon, the Black Duck begins to take on water and she is forced to give up the chase.
00:47:34She limps back to shore and the Artemis heads home.
00:47:39My father was able to get the boat into Orient.
00:47:42He slipped it between two rocks.
00:47:45And there he felt it would be well hidden from anybody who was looking for it.
00:47:50The next day, daylight, aeroplanes come looking for that boat.
00:47:54You know, and they couldn't find it because they had it covered up with branches.
00:47:57And they started stripping her, taking out the motors, parts of the motors and stuff like that, you know.
00:48:03And they had her covered up.
00:48:05And the Coast Guard looked and looked for that boat and they couldn't find it.
00:48:13The illegal liquor is unloaded on the beach.
00:48:16Carl Reiter and first mate Johnny Johnson are taken to the hospital in critical condition.
00:48:21Reiter with a belly full of gunshot wounds.
00:48:25They were laying in the hospital there for two or three days and the doctors kept looking at him, looking
00:48:30at him.
00:48:30And he says, well, Carl, he says, no chance for you, he says.
00:48:35Carl told him right back, well, if I'm going to die, bring me something to drink.
00:48:40So we took four quarts and put him in a gallon jug.
00:48:44And he had the nurses, everybody feeling good in the hospital there.
00:48:48And then about a week, the doctors looked at him again and said, Jesus, that gin has probably just cleansed
00:48:55your kidneys.
00:48:56He says, you're doing all right.
00:48:57He says, you're healing the point.
00:48:59As far as Johnny Johnson, who had gotten shot through the head, the bullet actually went right through the front
00:49:04cavity of his skull.
00:49:06Three days later, he woke up and for the rest of his life, he was fine.
00:49:11That's the story.
00:49:15Carl Reiter repairs the Artemis and returns to Rum Row along with thousands of other rum runners smuggling illegal liquor
00:49:22into the country.
00:49:25When Prohibition is repealed in 1933, Reiter and his fellow rum runners return to their everyday lives as fishermen.
00:49:36Every year until their deaths, Johnny Johnson and Carl Reiter meet on the anniversary of the infamous battle and drink
00:49:44a toast.
00:49:47They love the adventure. They love the times.
00:49:51They love the seas.
00:49:53This is what they did.
00:49:54This is what they did.
00:50:09The Detroit River.
00:50:10A narrow waterway that separates Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Canada in some places by less than a mile.
00:50:19Peaceful today, these waters were once turbulent.
00:50:26During Prohibition, this is the epicenter for illegal alcohol in America.
00:50:32It is known as the Detroit-Windsor Funnel.
00:50:36An estimated 75% of all the liquors smuggled during Prohibition comes across this waterway.
00:50:46Detroit was a wild, wild town in the 20s.
00:50:49The illegal liquor business here in 1925 was conservatively estimated to be a $250 million a year business employing 50
00:50:56,000 people.
00:50:57No other place in the United States offered this opportunity with the availability of liquor on the one side and
00:51:06the market on the other side.
00:51:10Canada has its own dry law.
00:51:13But when the United States passes the 18th Amendment, they see an economic opportunity.
00:51:18So, Canada modifies their law and legalizes the production of alcohol for exportation only.
00:51:27The Canadian government looked at it this way.
00:51:29We'll license all of these distilleries and breweries.
00:51:32It'll employ thousands of people and give them jobs.
00:51:36We'll add a tax on for every quart produced and we'll make a large amount of money as a result
00:51:43of it.
00:51:43In Ontario alone, 29 breweries and 16 distilleries begin producing alcohol for export.
00:51:51Many are located near or on the Detroit River.
00:52:04The Windsor side of the river was lined with export docks.
00:52:07So you went over there in a rowboat and said, I'd like to get 50 cases of Canadian Club.
00:52:10So they give you the 50 cases and they say, where's your destination?
00:52:13You'd say Cuba.
00:52:14When you left the dock, nobody cared where you went.
00:52:17Boats deliver a constant stream of liquor to Detroit.
00:52:21In the winter, a frozen river makes it even easier to get to Canada.
00:52:27People did all kinds of things.
00:52:29They bought $5 jalopies, Model Ts, and they took the doors off the side and they ran them across in
00:52:33areas where the Detroit River used to freeze over.
00:52:40Some of these people would even carry 12 foot or 15 foot planks, if you can imagine, and actually try
00:52:45to drive the car from one ice floe to another.
00:52:47It was just a completely insane atmosphere.
00:52:51People would do anything to try and get booze over here.
00:52:56Automobiles were redesigned, rebuilt, so there were places now to store liquor.
00:53:02Trucks had separate compartments underneath the cartridge area.
00:53:24Sometimes they would use a hearse.
00:53:27It came to the attention of US Customs once, why are the Canadians coming over here to get buried?
00:53:33And finally, the customs agents checked and discovered that indeed there was a casket in the hearse, but the casket
00:53:42was not with the deceased, but laden with very expensive Scotch whiskey.
00:53:53The passenger ferry crossing the Detroit River provides ample opportunity for everybody to get into the smuggling game.
00:54:01This is Nell Rhodes.
00:54:03In 1931, she modeled the fine art of smuggling liquor in hot water bottles for the Detroit Times.
00:54:10They were filled with alcohol and placed like suspenders across the shoulders and down the back underneath her coat, usually
00:54:18women.
00:54:18And after making several trips, they made quite a bit of money by bootlegging that way. It was almost an
00:54:23individual basis.
00:54:25The average annual salary in the 1920s is less than $2,000 a year.
00:54:31Many rum runners could make that much in two weeks.
00:54:35But this is nothing compared to what big-time bootleggers bring in.
00:54:42George Remus, a lawyer turned bootlegger, is reported to have made over $80 million during the first two years of
00:54:50prohibition alone.
00:54:52Joseph Kennedy is believed to have made much of his fortune exporting alcohol from Canada during prohibition, financing a dynasty
00:55:00that culminates with his son's election to the White House.
00:55:03But possibly nobody benefits more from prohibition than the gangster.
00:55:14One of the terrible consequences of prohibition was that it really bankrolled organized crime in this country.
00:55:20It took a lot of, basically, pickpockets, two-bit thugs out the street and made multi-millionaires out of them.
00:55:28It is blood money that lines the mobsters' pockets, spilled by thousands who suffer grim and untimely deaths at the
00:55:35hands of men like Dutch Schultz, Bugsy Siegel, and Al Capone.
00:55:42But the violence of these notorious thugs is rivaled and often surpassed by a group of young Jewish gangsters who
00:55:50ruled Detroit's underworld.
00:55:53They are the Purple Gang.
00:56:01The Purple Gang was a very violent, high-profile group of mobsters that basically were very heavy on muscle and
00:56:07very light on brains.
00:56:11They were totally, completely ruthless.
00:56:14The Purple Gang is led by the Bernstein brothers, the sons of honest, hard-working immigrants who came to America
00:56:21in search of a better life.
00:56:24But the Bernstein boys have other ideas of how the American dream should be attained.
00:56:32The Purples did not make their reputation as rum runners. They made their reputation as hijackers and strong-armed men.
00:56:40If they were out to kill somebody, they'd walk into a crowded restaurant or a crowded theater or wherever and
00:56:45find the person that they were looking for and shoot them.
00:56:47And maybe shoot two or three other people in the process that just happened to get into the way.
00:56:55They literally had the public in the city of Detroit terrorized.
00:57:01Between 1925 and 1932, over 500 murders go unsolved in Detroit.
00:57:08Most are attributed to the Purple Gang.
00:57:15From hijacking liquor, the Purples extend their violent reach and muscle in on Detroit's speakeasy business.
00:57:24Seize control of the illegal distilleries and distribution throughout the city.
00:57:29And take over the river and control the movement of alcohol from Canada.
00:57:44In 1927, at the height of the Purple Gang's power, over a half million cases of liquor are smuggled across
00:57:51the Detroit River.
00:57:54Typically, what they would do is when they would get a bottle of Canadian liquor, they would cut it.
00:57:59They'd make three or four bottles out of it.
00:58:01And there were cutting plants all over the city.
00:58:03It was just a process of watering down the alcohol, adding coloring to it, adding a few other different types
00:58:08of chemicals to make it look like the real thing.
00:58:10And then putting tickets on it, which were false labels.
00:58:14The Purple Gang distributes their liquor to gangsters throughout the entire country.
00:58:19One of their customers is none other than public enemy number one, Alphonse Scarface Capone.
00:58:28A Brooklyn, New York native, Capone heads west in 1921.
00:58:32He quickly takes over the illegal liquor trade in Chicago and rules the town with a combination of brutal savagery
00:58:39and shrewd marketing.
00:58:41Next, Capone sets his sights on Detroit.
00:58:44Capone was a very astute businessman.
00:58:47And in 1927, he came to Detroit with the idea of opening up a franchise.
00:58:51And he sat down and had a meeting with the four Bernstein brothers.
00:58:54And they essentially told him that river belongs to us.
00:58:57Anything that moves across that river, you either deal with us or you just don't have any business in Detroit.
00:59:02So Capone realized that a gang war with the Purples here in Detroit was a losing proposition.
00:59:09Capone aligns himself with the Purples, and together they take bootlegging and violence to a new level.
00:59:15Their brutality culminates in one of the bloodiest slaughters in Prohibition history.
00:59:27Bugs Moran, leader of the rival Northside gang in Chicago, hijacks a load of Purple Gang whiskey intended for Capone.
00:59:37Seeking revenge, Capone orchestrates a trap.
00:59:41Supposedly, a freelance hijacker had called Moran and told him he had a really bargain basement shipment of liquor for
00:59:48him.
00:59:48Well, Moran, who couldn't turn down a good deal, said okay.
00:59:52Supposedly, Abe Bernstein, the reputed leader of the Purple Gang, had made that phone call.
00:59:58The trap is set.
01:00:01The bogus shipment of liquor is to be delivered to Moran at a warehouse in Chicago on February 14th, 1929.
01:00:11When the Northside gang arrives, Purple Gangsters, hidden across the street, call in the hitmen.
01:00:22Disguised as police, the killers enter the warehouse pretending to raid.
01:00:27As they line the Northside gangsters against the wall, two additional hitmen enter the warehouse with Thompson submachine guns.
01:00:36And open fire.
01:00:57It will go down in history as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
01:01:02Although it is well known that Capone orchestrated the slaughter, few know that the Purple Gang was directly involved.
01:01:09The Purple Gang was really never implicated in it.
01:01:12Three Purple Gangsters were positively identified, but nothing was ever done.
01:01:16It just kind of faded into oblivion.
01:01:21Ironically, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre misses the intended target.
01:01:25Bugs Moran is late to the meeting and narrowly avoids his death sentence.
01:01:32Still, the carnage sends shock waves through the country.
01:01:36A painful reminder of the violence and lawlessness created by the 18th Amendment.
01:01:43During Prohibition, organized crime groups like the Purple Gang helped drive up the homicide rate by nearly 80%.
01:01:51The number of federal convicts rises by over 500%.
01:01:57The country was fed up of Prohibition.
01:02:00Gangsters were taking over cities.
01:02:03Gangsters were taking over police forces.
01:02:06There was far more violence in the streets.
01:02:10It obviously wasn't working.
01:02:13Soon, many of the staunchest moral crusaders realize Prohibition has backfired.
01:02:19The 18th Amendment has delivered this nation bound hand and foot to organized crime.
01:02:26We believe that the 18th Amendment has failed and failed badly.
01:02:30I'm a reformed Prohibitionist myself.
01:02:33I hoped it was going to work.
01:02:35I'm forced to admit that it has not.
01:02:39Well-intended people who felt that Prohibition would bring a new moral tone to America created the very problem that
01:02:52they were trying to suppress or eliminate.
01:02:58In 1933, President Roosevelt signs the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, repealing Prohibition and ending the 13-year drought.
01:03:13But illegal liquor in America will not disappear.
01:03:17A combination of local dry laws and the return of taxes provide the fuel that keeps white lightning flowing by
01:03:27the light of the moon.
01:03:40On December 5th, 1933, millions of Americans celebrate the repeal of National Prohibition with their first legal drink in 13
01:03:50years.
01:03:52But illegal liquor keeps a strong foothold in America.
01:04:00Today, despite the fact that three years have passed since repeal, government men are rating illegal distilleries at the rate
01:04:08of 300 a week.
01:04:11And despite all the government seizures, it is estimated that nearly a half of all the liquor sold in the
01:04:16United States comes from bootleg still.
01:04:23The moonshiners thrive because many states keep local prohibition laws alive.
01:04:29Mississippi is the last to lift its ban in 1966.
01:04:34In states that repeal their dry laws, newly levied taxes on beer, wine and spirits provide even greater fuel for
01:04:42illegal liquor.
01:04:44From 1934 until 1944, the federal tax on distilled spirits climbs from $2 a gallon to $9 a gallon.
01:04:54With every tax increase the government imposes, the demand for moonshine grows.
01:05:00And with the country in the grips of the Great Depression, many in the rural South find the high profits
01:05:05reaped from selling moonshine too great to ignore.
01:05:11Back in them days, it was really a way of making a living, feeding your children.
01:05:16And so, if you paid the taxes, you could make it.
01:05:19If you paid the taxes, you couldn't make any money.
01:05:23This is Junior Johnson.
01:05:25In the late 1800s, his family settles here in Wilkes County, North Carolina.
01:05:31They immediately begin moonshining.
01:05:35By the time Junior is born in 1931, the family's moonshine operation is enormous.
01:05:44In 1935, when Junior is just four years old, his father is caught with five large stills and over 7
01:05:51,000 gallons of white lightning hidden throughout the house.
01:05:56When they caught him with the house full of whiskey, you couldn't get to the beds and get in the
01:06:02beds without crawling over top of it.
01:06:07Junior's father is imprisoned five times in his life for moonshining, but that does not stop him from recruiting his
01:06:14youngest son.
01:06:17Junior begins helping his father at the still site when he is only 14 years old.
01:06:22But soon, a different side of the illegal liquor business seduces him.
01:06:28When he is 15, Junior hits the road and becomes a moonshine hauler.
01:06:35Thriving on danger and speed, moonshine haulers soup up cars, load them with white lightning, and try to outrun the
01:06:43law.
01:06:46They race through the dead of night at speeds as high as 150 miles per hour.
01:06:54A lot of people who didn't know how to drive a car or scared of a fast car stayed in
01:07:01the manufacturing side.
01:07:04You had to be aware that you was taking a big gamma when you left out.
01:07:09This is more dangerous. You took a chance on Rick and then killed myself or killing somebody else.
01:07:16Despite these dangers, Junior embraces the thrill of a chase.
01:07:21He typically leaves at 11 p.m. and makes up to five runs until sunup.
01:07:26Junior earns as much as $500 a night.
01:07:32Junior Johnson's car of choice is the 1940 Ford Standard,
01:07:37an ideal liquor car because it can carry 22 cases or 120 gallons of white lightning at a time.
01:07:44But the Ford's modest 80-horsepower engine isn't powerful enough to help moonshiners outrun the law.
01:07:53So the haulers become mechanics.
01:07:57If you understood the engine and you could put the horsepower engine you need to put in it,
01:08:01then the revenuers should not have a chance of catching it.
01:08:08The moonshine haulers head into their shops and modify the Ford's engine.
01:08:12When they've pushed it to its limit, they replace it with a more powerful engine.
01:08:18This is what they call a flathead Ford, and that's pretty basic.
01:08:23If you want more speed in an engine, you go to this car here, and it has overhead cylinder heads.
01:08:32The overhead valve cylinder head is a tremendous gain as far as horsepower is concerned.
01:08:39Overhead valve cylinder heads increase the size of the combustion chamber and can double the amount of horsepower an engine
01:08:45produces.
01:08:47Cobber racing is another place you get a lot of gain.
01:08:50If you want to get more power beyond that, you go to a turbocharger or a supercharger.
01:09:00The turbocharger and the supercharger each drive extra air into the engine and adds at least 100 more horsepower.
01:09:11As time went along, here comes the big V8s in there like Cadillac.
01:09:18You know Cadillac Ambulances had a great power plant in them.
01:09:23In 1950, Cadillac introduces an eight-cylinder, 200-horsepower engine for ambulances.
01:09:30It is a moonshine haulers dream.
01:09:34As quick as you bought a .44, just snatch the motor out and lay the Cadillac in it.
01:09:40And you could take that thing and modify it and supercharge it.
01:09:45That thing would run so fast you couldn't focus on the road.
01:09:51As bootlegging booms, another high-speed, action-packed world quickly attracts many of the moonshine haulers.
01:09:59The world of auto racing.
01:10:09In 1947, stock car pioneer and promoter Bill France Sr. establishes the National Association for Stock Car Racing or NASCAR.
01:10:21NASCAR's inaugural race is won by Glenn Dunaway.
01:10:25He drives a bootlegging car that had been used to haul white lightning only a week earlier.
01:10:31Throughout the early days of NASCAR, moonshine haulers provide some of the fastest cars and many of the best and
01:10:38most exciting drivers.
01:10:40There was a lot of bootlegging people involved in racing when it got off the ground.
01:10:48And if anything boosted it and made it successful, I would think you had to give the bootlegging people a
01:10:58big, big part of the credit for it.
01:11:03A young junior Johnson finds his way to the stock car circuit in 1950.
01:11:08Fans quickly fall in love with the moonshine hauling daredevil driver and nickname him the Wilkes County Wild Man.
01:11:20With years of experience hauling moonshine at blistering speeds, Johnson quickly finds success on the track.
01:11:28But the money made on the stock car circuit does not come close to the amount Johnson earns on the
01:11:32back roads of North Carolina.
01:11:35So Johnson leads the double life of a NASCAR race driver and a moonshine hauler.
01:11:42The law, however, is quickly closing in on him.
01:11:46I was beginning to hear that the revenues had a bounty out on me.
01:11:50You know, for enough money, you might get somebody to run their mouth.
01:11:57In 1956, Junior Johnson signs a NASCAR racing contract with the Ford Motor Company.
01:12:04Three weeks later, the revenuers finally catch up with him.
01:12:10Not on the road, but at his father's still.
01:12:15My dad asked me to go in and fire his still up for him, and I did.
01:12:20And I'd do it again if it was today, because I had a lot of respect for my dad.
01:12:26I did what he told me all my life from on after I got grown.
01:12:32And they had it staked out, the revenuers did.
01:12:36And, of course, they had tried fearlessly to catch me prior to that for years and years and never did.
01:12:46Junior Johnson spends 11 months and three days in the Federal Penitentiary in Chillicothe, Ohio.
01:12:52When he is released, he goes right back to racing stock cars and hauling moonshine.
01:13:01Moonshining is something that kind of gets under your skin, and you'd almost do it for nothing.
01:13:06It's an all-around exciting adventure to get off in it, to tell you the honest truth.
01:13:15By 1960, Johnson begins earning enough money on the NASCAR circuit to finally put his criminal activities behind him.
01:13:23He quits moonshining and drives professionally for 15 years.
01:13:27With 50 victories over his career,
01:13:30Sports Illustrated names Johnson the greatest driver in NASCAR history.
01:13:35But Johnson's criminal record plagues him.
01:13:38And after lobbying for more than a decade,
01:13:41he receives a full and unconditional pardon by President Ronald Reagan in 1986.
01:13:51Today, NASCAR is the largest spectator sport in the United States.
01:13:56And it all began with some good old boys hauling moonshine,
01:14:00trying to outrun the law.
01:14:04I really think the fastest car I ever drove was a bootlegging car.
01:14:32In the United States, unless you obtain a federal tax license, you can't make liquor. Period.
01:14:38In the United States, unless you obtain a federal tax license, you can't make liquor. Period.
01:14:39You can make wine, you can make beer, but you can't make liquor.
01:14:44The moonshiners are our adversaries.
01:14:47You don't want to pay any taxes.
01:14:48They're not going to pay any taxes if they can help it.
01:14:55We use any means necessary that's legal to focus our efforts on trying to get these guys.
01:15:19They are the moonshiners' arch enemies.
01:15:24Throughout the history of illegal liquor in America, their job has been to hunt down illicit distilleries and bring moonshiners
01:15:31to justice.
01:15:33They are the revenuers.
01:15:37After we bust a steel, we go anything.
01:15:39We chop it with an axe.
01:15:40We've used torches to cut it with.
01:15:43I've run over it with a bulldozer and dug a hole and buried it.
01:15:46For many years, we used dynamite.
01:15:55The cat and mouse game between the moonshiner and the revenuer is a long and perilous one.
01:16:04It begins at the country's inception, when moonshiners routinely torture defenseless tax collectors.
01:16:12During the Civil War, the tax on distilled spirits is $2 a gallon.
01:16:16For protection against violent moonshiners, collectors team up with special agents carrying sidearms.
01:16:25Tax collection and law enforcement are now under one roof in the newly established Internal Revenue Service.
01:16:32These agents of the IRS, better known as revenuers, face a daunting task.
01:16:39In addition to rising taxes, the temperance craze is in full swing.
01:16:45So, after the 18th Amendment is passed, the IRS creates a special division called the Prohibition Unit.
01:16:54But these revenuers are hopelessly outnumbered, and many are corrupt.
01:17:01With the repeal of the 18th Amendment, the Prohibition Unit is disbanded.
01:17:05The IRS then creates the Alcohol Tax Unit, or ATU, to bust bootleggers.
01:17:14This is the genesis of the modern revenuer.
01:17:22One standout ATU agent is William Henderson.
01:17:27Nicknamed Big Six for his immense stature,
01:17:30Henderson becomes a legend terrorizing moonshiners in the backwoods of Kentucky.
01:17:36Eight years into his career, Big Six has tipped off about moonshine being made in the basement of this house
01:17:42in New Haven, Kentucky.
01:17:45It will be a startling arrest.
01:17:49That night, my daddy was running the still.
01:17:51And my grandmother, when they came in, the old Big Six came in and started bursting everything up.
01:17:55Grandmother called Mom and said, they're going to try to search the house to find the whiskey.
01:18:03So me and Mom went downstairs and dumped all the whiskey down the drain in the basement, took it out
01:18:08to the creek.
01:18:12My mother was so upset, she was crying.
01:18:14She was so embarrassed, you know, because they knew it was going to be all over a little town like
01:18:19New Haven.
01:18:20Embarrassed because of the moonshiner's name, Harry Beam, kin to the famous Jim Beam.
01:18:28One of seven brothers, Harry had been a master distiller for 15 years.
01:18:33But family fights leave him unemployed and on the verge of bankruptcy.
01:18:40Twin sisters Jean and Joe Beam are just 16 years old when Big Six Henderson arrests their father.
01:18:47He was making moonshine to help save our house.
01:18:50He couldn't find a job.
01:18:52I really didn't think my daddy was a criminal.
01:18:57He was just trying to make a living to feed our kids.
01:19:01When Harry Beam's mother learns about the arrest, she is determined to separate the Beam name from the stigma of
01:19:07moonshining.
01:19:09After he was arrested, my grandmother Beam found out about it.
01:19:13She was very upset and so she had influence and money and she spent a thousand dollars just to keep
01:19:21the Beam name out of the paper.
01:19:24The fact that Harry Beam was caught moonshining has been kept a family secret for more than 50 years.
01:19:31His arrest is just one of nearly 6,000 that Big Six Henderson notches during his 28 year career.
01:19:41In 1972, the ATU becomes the Division of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms or ATF.
01:19:49Over the past 30 years, the ATF has continued the fight against bootleggers and lost taxes.
01:19:55But they also battle another menace, toxic moonshine.
01:20:01If I brought you a glass of water and I said, here's a glass of water and I want you
01:20:05to drink this glass of water but I want to tell you what's in this glass of water before you
01:20:08drink it.
01:20:09Now I just saw a cow walk through a field and I just saw the cow go through where this
01:20:13water just came out of and do his business in that same field.
01:20:17I just saw this ran out of a truck radiator.
01:20:19But here's your glass of water, feel free to drink it.
01:20:21I don't think anyone out there would actually want to drink that water.
01:20:24And that's being mild to some of the things that have been found in the illegal liquor stills.
01:20:29You find rats floating in the marsh, you find birds in it, you know, all kind of things.
01:20:34And it's not the cleanest in the world.
01:20:42Agents find these poisonous stills in every place imaginable.
01:20:46Built and camouflaged into the site of a mountain, agents discover this illegal distillery.
01:20:55Here another still is constructed underground.
01:20:58This one is hidden beneath a fake cemetery.
01:21:05Even an abandoned school bus is transformed into an illicit distillery.
01:21:16The moonshiners have a PhD in their own right and they are very innovative.
01:21:21You know, they're carpenters and they're mechanics and they make up the workforce out here just like anybody else does.
01:21:29But on the side, they're doing something else.
01:21:31And it's happening.
01:21:37As the moonshiners become more creative, the revenuers must devise new tactics.
01:21:47They take a revolutionary step and track the moonshiners from the sky.
01:21:54The top speed of the revenuers' surveillance planes is about 140 miles per hour.
01:21:59But speed is not what they are after.
01:22:06These airborne agents need to be invisible.
01:22:11Small, light aircraft.
01:22:12They're not noisy.
01:22:13They're inexpensive to operate relatively.
01:22:16And no one pays much attention to them.
01:22:20We could put an observer in the back seat on the same side as the pilot
01:22:24and slow fly the airplane and we could follow vehicles almost anywhere and almost anytime.
01:22:34But we kept the ground vehicles back five, ten miles.
01:22:37And we'd just stay and watch them.
01:22:39And they never knew we were watching them.
01:22:42And we would trail him from where he bought the sugar or jugs or whatever.
01:22:47We try to always be at least three or four thousand feet elevation above the ground.
01:22:52We would make long sweeping circles.
01:22:55It might be 15 miles around the circle with the pivot point being where the violator is.
01:23:03And we would trail him until he reached his destination, which was normally a distillery.
01:23:11The airborne agents allow the moonshiners to lead them to the still site, then call in the ground team to
01:23:18make the bust.
01:23:34During the first five months that agent Charlie Weems leads the airborne operation, the ATF locates 76 illicit distilleries.
01:23:53So successful is their operation that they expanded to cover nearly every state in the country.
01:23:59It takes the moonshiners ten years to finally realize there is an eye in the sky.
01:24:10With their aerial cover blown, agents revert to the old fashioned way of catching moonshiners, searching the backwoods.
01:24:19Ninety percent of finding any illicit product, drugs, stills or what have you, basically is information.
01:24:30If you don't have information, you better be looking for some.
01:24:33I mean, you better be looking in the woods. You better be walking the creeks.
01:24:41If they've got four or five burners under four or five stills, and you get within maybe a quarter of
01:24:48a mile, and the wind's right,
01:24:49you can hear those burners, those blowers going.
01:24:52And they go, oooh, and you can hear them.
01:24:55And you also get the whiff of that sweet smell that's going through, an aroma that's going through the woods,
01:25:01and you can smell it for a long distance too.
01:25:05Special Agent Jack Powell spends his 35-year career hunting for stills in Virginia.
01:25:13In 1987, a revenuer's video camera captures Powell staking out a still.
01:25:19His team has been hiding in the woods for seven days.
01:25:23The moonshiners have briefly left the still site, so Powell ventures down to see what's cooking.
01:25:29First, you've got to locate the illegal distillery, and then you've got to check the mash to make sure when
01:25:36it may run.
01:25:37In black pot-type operations, it usually takes about a week for it to ferment.
01:25:43Powell discovers a 10,000-gallon still.
01:25:49He tastes the mash to determine how much longer it needs to ferment.
01:25:56He'll leave the site and launch his raid when the moonshiners return to distill, nabbing as many as possible.
01:26:03Then, Powell destroys the still.
01:26:12Fire in the hole!
01:26:24At the dawn of the 21st century, moonshiners continued to ply their craft in the backwoods.
01:26:30We all have the impression that we're looking at Snuffy Smith, who's sitting with a corncob pipe out by a
01:26:35little liquor still.
01:26:36We're not talking about that type of activity.
01:26:38Modern-day moonshining is about greed and money.
01:26:41How many dollars can you put in your pocket the quickest way possible without getting caught by law enforcement?
01:26:48Paul Henson is the face of the modern moonshiner.
01:26:53Henson is only 13 when he is initiated into the moonshine business in rural Virginia.
01:26:59By the time he is 17, he runs his own operation.
01:27:04When he is 20, he is busted.
01:27:07I didn't do any time.
01:27:09Before the three years probation, they just kind of slapped me on the wrist, you know.
01:27:12I kind of walked out the courtroom laughing, more or less.
01:27:16Right back in the woods.
01:27:18It didn't even faze me.
01:27:20In 1993, when he is 28 years old, an emboldened Henson,
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