Chapo Trap House - 762 - The Safari Club feat. Brendan James & Noah Kulwin (8/29/23)

Episode Date: August 29, 2023

Brendan & Noah a.k.a. The Blowback Boys stop by to discuss their new podcast season, covering 40+ years of covert crimes and international disorder flowing through Afghanistan. We discuss the emergence of political Islam, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Safari Club, BCCI, Charlie Wilson’s War, Rambo III and much more. Find all things Blowback & subscribe here: https://blowback.show/ Find Ben Clarkson’s amazing animated trailer, discussed in this episode, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb0r5aWGkCI NYC: Will & Hesse will be hosting a special Movie Mindset 35mm print screening of Howard Hawks’ RIO BRAVO on Saturday, September 2nd at the Roxy Theater! Tix here: https://www.roxycinemanewyork.com/screenings/rio-bravo/

Music Greetings friends, it is Monday, August 28th and Felix and I are joined today by my favorite time of year. It's Blowback Season 4, we are joined today by the co-hosts and creators of Blowback, Brendan James and Noa Colwyn. Gentlemen, welcome back. Hey homies. Hey guys. All right. Brendan, Noa, Blowback season four just came out. You know, we got to get you on. This is probably, I listen to the first three episodes. This is probably like your most, your season that is most ambitious in scope. And the story you've chosen to tell, the history that you're digging into this season is sort of like

the genesis of the term blowback, at least in its most popular conception of like 9-11. So let me ask you, like, why Afghanistan? What drew you to this topic this time? And like, what did you begin to discover as you started researching this season? Yeah, it's definitely the most on the nose understanding of Blowback probably is at least for our generation. The term itself was coined by a CIA guy, Chalmers Johnson years ago. But as we've found every season, sometimes it's a punchy title for the show. Sometimes we're talking about blowback, sometimes we're not. Sometimes we're talking about something that is said to be blowback, but is a little bit

more complicated. And then this is, yeah, I think that really kind of Uber example, and we wanted to dive into it because really of the withdrawal in 2021. And it wouldn't just be about Afghanistan, this endless war, but it would be about a somewhat sort of beginning, middle of an end now, at least for the time being of American involvement. And there's other reasons. I mean, we like to jump around. I like to jump around. We got to go to the 1980s. We've never really gotten to cover that decade before in the show mean, we like to jump around, I like to jump around. We got to go to the 1980s. We've never really gotten to cover that decade before in the show.

And we got to kind of follow all these colorful characters through a real 40 year saga, which, as you say, is like a longer period of time that we've ever tried to, ever try to cover before. I can share with our listeners that if you are fans of the works of Hideo Kojima, you will not be disappointed by this season. And you know, the little audio samples and drops you guys throw in there is incredible. But I guess like, in the first episode, you sort of, you lay out some, some themes that are developed over the course of this season. And I guess the first one I wanna talk about is the connection between political Islam and like Gihad and Western intelligence services.

Because like, I know this, we don't need to get into it, you know, it sounds conspiratorial to say, but like, would fundamentalist Islam as a political movement in Afghanistan or really anywhere else in the middle, in the Middle East, I know Afghanistan isn't the Middle East, but like, could you lay out like the connections

between political, radical Islam and Western intelligence? Yes. Well, I think it would be a stretch to say that it wouldn't exist, you know, period and of sentence. There was a long, you know, history up until that moment in the 1980s or late 70s of political Islam growing in different parts of the world. I mean, you already had the Muslim Brotherhood existing for many decades and writings that

sort of changed and grew and became more of an outright opposition and modernity and all of that. Said Kutub and some stuff that I'm sure some listeners are aware of. But as far as like a really contemporary version of political Islam, whose foot soldiers or commanders are still with us today, that was really, I think you could argue that was cooked up in that key period. Noah and I, I mean, I don't know what could talk about the Safari Club was the nexus of Western and

regional intelligence agencies that organized that that new strain or rather channeled that new strain of political Islam. And Noah, you could probably you could probably speak on that a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. I think you could think of, at the same time that the process that we called globalization was unfolding, one of the new information streams that was going along and traveling around the world in that time was political Islam, in particular,

sort of radical, political Islam. And one of the sort of, I guess, superhighways, if you will, like that on which it traveled was this kind of route between China and Pakistan and the United States and Africa and even Southeast Asia. And the Safari Club in the 1970s was at the sort of insistence of a French intelligence official, Alexandria Dimarrache. What they did was, I believe it was named for a literal, like, there's a place in other words. But you could actually visit the Safari Club. I mean, I don't know if you can't. I meant, maybe they shoot you on site.

I don't know. Is it like a big room with like zebra heads and stuff like that? I think of it as kind of like the Ben Gazares house on the inside at the end of Roadhouse. Roadhouse. Yeah, exactly. Where it's just like, and there's like a big fat guy like waiting to get smothered by a big bear statue. So the Safari Club is like this. So the Safari Club. So it's Saudi Arabia. It's Saudi Arabia, the United States. General Z. Is Pakistan, right? Brendan or is that? Yeah, I mean, it's a it's a it's a loose confederation. Sometimes

people are showing up. Sometimes they're not. Saddam Hussein was said to be on the periphery of it. But yeah, you had. As was Israel and South Africa, for example, I feel like sick. Yeah, I feel like Saddam showing up there. That's sort of like, you know, in a obligatory social, social thing, like going to your friends, oneman show at a DIY venue. Saddam, I got a good venue for my quintet, my dance and my cycle. I'd really appreciate if you could come. But most of all, the Shah of Iran was our boy in the Middle East at that time and was, wow, a secular dictator for the most part, he

was just as interested in dicing it up with radical Islam in his neighbors. And the Shah was really our most, before Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, he was our heaviest hitter in Afghanistan because there was an increasingly progressive and eventually outright communist government in Afghanistan that was not looking for the same goals and the same allies that the Shah was. And so this group of this club, which sounds very conspiratorial, but it's just admitted to by all these guys years later when they're like talking at Georgetown or, you know, doing a C-SPAN thing.

And it's all those years ago, it's safe to say it now. It was really pulling the strings all along. And then by the time you get this Marxist revolution in Afghanistan in the late 70s, which precipitates the Soviet invasion, these guys are really starting to recruit the warlords and the Mjahadin that we know and have loved ever since. It's also worth thinking about how the Shah, because he was our biggest boy, for example, I think about about a third of all American armed sales abroad in the 1970s went to the Shah.

Once the Shah fell, all of those weapons went into the hands of an enemy, and so we had a new strategic rival that had to be combated. So Afghanistan, from a strategic point of view from the US, from like, you know, whereas the big no, Przinski and later William Casey and so forth were sitting, they thought like holy sh- you know, like this is a new force we have to counter. And what's more, in 1979, it was not just in Iran where you had this sort of wave of religious revolution kind of sweeping. In Saudi Arabia, for example, religious extremists

took over the Kaba, and they were only dispeled with the assistance of French special forces. They had to like, you know, mop up the blood of the place. So there was a real, I think, which is all to say that like political Islam was also viewed in that moment as like a really powerful and ascended force. And so, you know, like a weapon that could be deployed in Afghanistan as it was. Yeah, I will, I will note that with the, the taking over of the

the Grand Mosque in the seizure by French commandos. There is a lot of funny historical tidbits and rumors around that, but that was, it was less like coherent and broad form of political Islam and more of like, it was sort of like a bunch of bumpkins who they had a cousin who had declared himself the moddy. It wasn't as linked to any grand transnational movement, but it certainly did cause fears within the kingdom. And the, of course, funny repeated historical rumor of that is the French commandos that were sent into seize it back for the Saudis that they were forced to convert the Islam to enter it.

And then it converted back to Catholicism when they, after the mission was done, though people have said that that's made up, I choose to believe that. I believe that 100%. That's like the way cooler than the Bin Laden's cover story. that 100% that's like the way cooler than the bin Laden's cover story. Yeah. The, I guess the point of our season is there were a lot of bumpkins and there were, and there were those who were more organized, but everyone could get something out of the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan. And that is indeed where I think a hit or two or an unprecedented level of collaboration

began. And to your point, well, we try to make an angle of this season, which I'm getting in a large part from a scholar named Timothy Mitchell. We wrote a great book called Carbon Democracy. And he has a chapter called Mick Jihad. And Mick Jihad kind of is this basic idea that you don't need to think about the big secular capitalism

and the reactionary militant Islam is as separate as we all are kind of told to. By either side, they do a lot more collabs than they've ever wanted to let on. Well, a point you make in the first episode, and I think like an easy shorthand for thinking about this is that with a few notable exceptions, the more US backed a state in the Islamic world is, the more US backed it is the more Islamic it the

nature of it the state is in its tenor and character. Typically and we point out obviously there's exceptions. I mean, Iran would be an hour. Yeah. Example, however, before that it was one of the most um, closely aligned states in the region with the US and it was Shah. Um, but even then we have cooperated with Iran in many times and places. Most famously Iran's control was when the Reagan administration got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. But they were also open to going after the Taliban with us once we flipped on the Taliban, or they flipped on us,

whichever you want to say. And we're offering search and rescue and full support for the Northern Alliance. They've been funding the anti-Taliban warlords a lot longer than we had. So or rather at that moment. So yeah, but in general, you got the Gulf monarchy, you got the Islamic states in the Middle East and Asia are typically American allies. And it was the kind of botsists in Syria and Iraq,

more of the Syrians than the Iraqis. It was the secular PLO movements like this, where we're not very friendly to the Americans at all. So we made nice with everyone, you can go back to the Saudis in the 1930s, when we inked a deal with them. It's just sort of an undercover thing. And we also, we chose Suni Overshia,

which is a subject that I cover in a bonus interview with Sy Hirsh, because he wrote a really kind of seminal article on this about how like America sort of, you know, the global war on terror could be viewed as part of how we took this kind of policy even more global than it already was. But you know because you know Iran. The main reason that it is not the main reason but like a major factor in why it is not.

A strategic friend of ours despite its you know. You know religiosity is the fact that it's a shea state and if you look at a lot of the different Gulf states, you know Bahrain, for example, you know, that's like a, it's a Sunni Arab minority that runs the state where you have a lot of, you know, Shia minorities. And that's a dynamic that can be replicated in this found, like, you know,

in a lot of places in the Arab world. So there is also a degree to which like, that distinction I guess just shouldn't be ignored. Yeah, and even in, you know, Gulf nations that have a sizeable Sunni majority, there's still a very significant Shia population. The last accounting in Saudi Arabia, which I believe was like something like 30 years ago, and so it could be very different now, was that they were 30% Shia. now was that they were 30% Shia. And one of the interesting advantages,

you see it a ton in Afghanistan. It was not the first time that we saw this policy from Gulf States, but probably the formalization of it. With these hyper- hyper religious US allies, the advantage is with that is like you can, especially in a multiple or world, you can send your population of extremely religious or sometimes recent converts are not that religious

angry young men to whatever regional conflict against an enemy that you have no means of fighting through uh... conventional warfare or even conventional intelligence and that became it was incredibly useful to the gulf monarchs and probably even more useful to us well especially us because uh... george hw bush was c i a director in the middle of the 70s

when after the church committee and pike hearings, you know, there was a real attempt to curtail the CIA's power and scope. And essentially what Bush tried to do, and I think successfully did do a large degree, was offshore. A lot of work that he wasn't supposed to be caught doing at that moment, or that the CIA guys weren't supposed to be caught doing. And that was, with regard to Afghanistan, eventually, a much closer relationship with the Saudi intelligence.

And then eventually, the Pakistani intelligence as well. But the standing relationship between the Bush family and several families in Saudi Arabia meant that all Bush had to do initially, which just call up the Saudi intelligence head. And they both had dealings with similar banks and similar investors and say, hey, we need to be laying low right now, but we're happy to share a portfolio with you guys.

And that got us started with a whole lot of stuff that follows us into 9.11 and beyond, you know. And you could also think of, you know, we focus on the show on, for example, BCCI, the shadow. I definitely want to talk about that in a second. Yeah. But it's also, you know, I think a good way of helping in this, like BCCI was like the sort of underbelly sliver of like, again, this process where it's like, you know, they're in can, like the sort of underbelly sliver of like again this process where it's like, you know, they're in the US and the Saudis are in can deals through PCCI. They're also in King deals through David Rockefeller's Chase Manhattan bank. And there are a lot, you know, this is a process of like this is this is, you know, this is the seamy underside of a friendship

that was, you know, I mean, yeah, just are a really torrid fucking romance really that began in that time. Well, no, since you brought it up, let's talk BCCI because like, when I was, when we were plotting out poppy part three in Houston, I realized that like the third part of the poppy series was very much because we're in Houston. It's about this nexus of like intelligence, the petroleum and banking and finance. So like that's what the city of Houston is. But BCCI in general is one of the most astonishing. It is the 2001 monolith of all like the emperor of all it's a Pandora's box

of like everything evil that has ever happened in the last 40 or 50 years uh, could you just like and give me just a brief overview on what what was BCCI who was involved in it and what did it do? So uh like BCCI was a band created by a Pakistani guy. It's important to say that it wasn't created in Pakistan because there's a lot Pakistani guy. It's important to say that it wasn't created in Pakistan because there's a lot that remains kind of murky about where exactly it was Hatsh, but the guy who created it was named Aga Hassan Abidi and He was this kind of like strange, you know like it would be fair to call him like a guru figure You can look it up on the computer. He's got some weird speeches and And the bank was set up with the assistance of Saudi and Central Intelligence, and I guess the then-Insipian ISI,

to effectively serve as an international clearinghouse for all sorts of different operations that these intelligence agencies were running. It would later emerge that's you know supposed left wing terrorists although you know probably ops like i would need all uh... were run out of uh... bcc i but also it's where

the afghan wija had been uh... got a lot of their money and i believe it was was it odd none kashoggi who staked it or just ran it i forget kashoggi what i don't think you ran it but there's i mean, this is another expression of the Safari Club. It's like the financial, yes, expression of them. So there's drug running, there's this sort of fees for assassinations.

Really every criminal act you could think of as you guys have probably covered was run through BCCI. But one of the things that was was the Mujahideen. And also BCCI's customer base was like, you know, this was during a time when, for example, the number of Pakistani immigrants in London were, you know, swelling in in England were too. So BCCI had this really large depositor base that it was able to tap from, you know,

these like growing immigrant networks. So when the bank went tits up, it was a lot of those people who ended up being really fucked because the bank was not actually chartered. It was chartered and I believe Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands. So it had this dual registry. It was like, they exploited the fact that there was nobody at all looking at their books. Yeah, they tried to make it there was, there was nobody at all looking at their books. Yeah, they tried to make it look like a third world, you know, development bank.

It was supposed to present itself as, as people would say now, as a, as a woke bank, um, but was in fact, you know, a very shadowy institution. In fact, it was, it was a based bank. It was a based bank. It was not working fast. That's the B in BCCI is for based. Based credit and gummers. Exactly. This out in the Muslim world, they have a term called anti-Wolchia, for a franches back to the time of Muhammad.

Pretty much in the Saudi time. Another huge part of this story is the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Yeah, and before I get into this film, I said that, I would like to talk about a few of the sort of American pop cultural understandings of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. They come in two movies that jump to mind, the first of which you talk about in the first episode, of course, Rambo 3. And you drop the absolute bombshell

that this film is dedicated to the brain-moving fighters is 100 percent cap. Yes, I got hooked deep by that one. It was. We both did. We all did because I think in our in our book, it's an indication of our book. I know.

And we try to make a joke about it. But in doing more research, yeah, it's a hoax. It was just someone who really nailed the early Photoshop, I guess, because but but we also say the reason it, it went, it goes so far in our, in our internet culture, in our pop culture, trivia is because it, it is spiritually true, that we all kind of feel like that happened, which, you know,

just didn't happen in that particular case. You don't, you don't need to have the words, this film is dedicated to the brave, Mujanine fighters of Afghanistan, to understand that that is 1,000% the message of Rambo 3. Oh yeah. And I rewatched it and it is it incorporates a lot of myths at the time that we go into in the show. I mean, there's a lot of of sort of typical like trademark blowback style stuff in there where we accused the Soviets of doing well, first of all, to your point, chemical weapons using chemical weapons, chemical weapons.

We built a case totally, totally debunked, never been proven. We say that they were, I mean, we exaggerated a lot of stuff about body counts and things like this. But also, we, most of all, in the point we make in our first episode is, it was really a way to both change the subject from Vietnam, which it only really just concluded a couple years before 79. And also flip the myth of Vietnam itself. Correct.

And there's some ways where it's like the Soviet Union's Vietnam, of course. I mean, they got bogged down in a quagmire. But I mean, that's not the only thing that characterizes the Vietnam conflict. That's a very punchy and marketable way of putting this in headlines in America and across the world over and over again. But it was also a way to project everything we did onto the Soviets from the get go, that they did not a lot of times, in fact, do. But in other ways, it was not a lot like Vietnam. I mean, there was no grand theory of dominoes and what needed to be done in Asia, the Middle East, to communize or

to decapitalize the grand chess board, like we were thinking in Vietnam. It was a very reluctant invasion, in fact. And if you remember Rambo, first blood part two, Rambo, I mean, like that, that was the movie where we get to win the Vietnam War, you know, he mean, like that, that was the movie where we get to win the Vietnam War, you know, he rescues the POWs, but the POWs are being held by the, like, a direct intervention of the Soviet Red Army. And like, that's the big attack helicopters,

he blows that up at the end. But like, like you said, like the screenwriters and Hollywood or whatever, and, you know, the general military industrial entertainment complex was projecting onto the me is exactly what we were we would have done in their position which is directly uh... it's really funny there's a line in Rambo 3 where troutman says to the the kind of grim face Soviet commissar who's you know the avatar for for the USSR and he's like but you do not

seem to realize I'm providing a way out for us both. You expect sympathy? You started this damn war, now you have to deal with it. And we will. It is just a matter of time before we achieve a complete victory. You know, there won't be a victory. Every day your war machines lose ground to a bunch of poorly armed, poorly equipped freedom fighters.

The fact is that you underestimated your competition. If you'd studied your history, you'd know that these people have never given up to anyone. They'd rather die than be slaves to an invading army. You can't defeat a people like that. We tried. We already had our Vietnam. Now you're gonna have yours.

We already had our Vietnam. Now you're gonna have yours. But it's like Vietnam has become a, it's like a proper noun of just meaning things like the war that is either the Vietnam war, the literal Vietnam war, or the Afghanistan war, or whatever. It doesn't even mean a country anymore.

It's like a shorthand by then. And that's what we tried to apply. Yeah, I mean, it's insane to say this about, I mean, really Vietnam in the first place, but like the the attitude of the national security state at the military establishment seems to be like it's unfair for another country to support whoever we're fighting. Yeah. Okay. The second, the second contemporary film that I think like covers the same history you're talking about is the Mugnickels Aaron Sorkin film Charlie Wilson's War.

How is you rate the history of portraying that movie in particular, the characters like Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson played by Tom Hanks and the Greek Gus, the CIA, you know Afghanistan, hand played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. How do you guys, like, having done this whole season? Did you rewatch Charlie Wilson's War or like what do you, what do you make of that film and what it says about a more contemporary 21st century sort of post-war on terror understanding of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and our intervention in that conflict. I chose not to rewatch it because life's too short, but I think that there's probably a lot of good stuff in there that is true about Charlie Wilson himself and Gustav Rikotos,

Greek Gus played by Philips and Marjoffmann in a great performance by Philips and Marjoff. But as you never know this is. And I just, I think if I recall, there is a lot of the propaganda that, you know, if it's a good movie, I don't really care. We were just talking about Rambo 3. It's still a fun movie. But I think it definitely has less of an excuse

to take on propaganda about what the war was really about. All those years later than Rambo 3 did in the thick of it. And I think it was still upholding a lot of kind of bromides of American, you know, we had to do this. But then again, I haven't seen it in a while. I didn't rewatch it, but like the movie does not really deal at all with like how brutal the Moussa Hadin were. Like it really kind of just like lionizes them completely. And then the other thing that it does, it makes like the Julia Roberts character Joanne Herring and Tom Hanks, it's not that like it sanitizes or makes them more likeable. It's just that like it doesn't really show you, I mean I guess that is sanitizing.

It doesn't show you the fact that like they like love general cf pack of stands so much to the point that they were like willing to apologize for his you know but you're a uh... at their cocktail part yeah i i don't remember i don't remember that in the movie but there's a great bit in in the book where uh... joanne herring julie robert's character is uh... holding a big you know uh... a big swanky party to fundraise basically into do deals about this new project of the Mujahideen. And Zia is there as an honored guest. And she sort

of clinks her glass, so everyone will listen up. Before I interview, sorry, before I interview our guest, I just want to make very clear, he did not murder the previous president of Pakistan, which of course he did in a military coup. And all of her, all of her, you know, bougie friends were sort of pulling their collars a little bit thinking like, oh, I don't know if we should have come to this party. But they all paid up. He's sort of a Rodney Dangerfield figure from Cadetag. Rodney Dangerfield figure from Cadetag. One of the, I mean, I despise that fucking movie. And even though it is a great Philips, he'll more often performance, I still see it as like a waste

of very finite time. We have a finite time. We had lots of time. But there's a lot of things I hate about the movie. My least favorite fucking thing is at the end, they try to reconcile that after math of all this and probably the worst set of lines Aaron Sorkin has ever written after, you know, like they win basically Charlie Wilson goes, wait a minute, that we're not sticking around to build schools.

To make them to make them less Muslim. Well, and then it's like we did build the schools and the guy who built all the schools was just like running a fraud. The great Morton said, that's recoups of tea guy. Well, I'll say this. I don't know if it was Mike Nichols and it might have been Tom Hanks. We went on that Hassan show and I said this, but apparently at the end,

the plan was to have it show September 11th and the plan's hitting the towers. That was like in the script, it was Nichols' intention, but either Tom Hanks or someone else was like, no, this comes out in Christmas. Let's not. Yeah, Tom Hanks. Yeah, Tom Hanks, the CIA handler said, sorry, we can't do that. Well, I mean, like another interesting detail that the movie excluded was represented Charlie

Wilson's prodigious cocaine habit. Is that not in the movie? Yeah, that's not in the movie at all. Wait, what? It shows him chatting around, but he is like, he's not bone rails and like, no, he was known as cocaine joint. You're very funny audio clip from like C-SPAN where some angry he is like, he's not bone rails and like, no, he was known as cocaine. Very funny audio clip from like C-SPAN where some angry constituents just like, but you got a cocaine problem.

He goes, he goes, he tells you Wilson says, I've dealt with that problem about five times. Now, he said, it's, it's the, the guy is like, saying, you know, like we should be, you know, we should have a more diplomatic policy towards the Soviets. And then this guy says, well, and then Charlie Wilson says, well, I'm glad you're not in my district. And the guy says, oh, well, I wish I was, hey, you still have a cocaine problem. And then it's really will say goes to, I've been cleared. He goes, I say, I say, I say, I say, and he starts just a foghorn, foghorn leghorning out live on TV. But it's a great clip.

But yeah, he was cocaine Charlie and he also did a hit and run. I don't know if that's in the movie. Oh, it's not. He did a hit. This is amazing. I thought all this like salacious stuff was at least part of it,

but he hit someone in DC. And then literally was like rushing to the airport so that the DC or Virginia police couldn't Take him in and he'd got on a plane to Pakistan to go do like another fact-finding mission So he literally escaped Yeah, that he's all of his like debauchery Is boiled down to just like this guy loves drinking champagne in a hot tub.

Maybe he gets too much pussy. Yep. Okay. That makes sense. And then it's a, because I heard he liked the movie. And if you really represented his life, we have some choice quotes, even in the first episode. He is, first of all, I think he's awesome. Let me just be clear.

Like all of that is awesome. But I endorse all of that. But, but yeah, then of course, the dark side are all the deals he's awesome. Let me just be clear. All of that is awesome. But I endorse all of that. But yeah, then of course the dark side are all the deals he's making. Because though he appeared above Foon, he was actually a pretty good natural politician behind the scenes. And as he put it, he elevated the cause of the Mujahideen who were raping their enemies and their prisoners who were dealing with Trump. You have an amazing quote in about from

Greek Gus. Now, he returned, so we say, a rather vivid description of, you know, like our allies in Afghanistan. He loves the term corn-hoeing and he had a reason to use it a lot in his memoir or his to his biographer. And yeah, I mean, I mean, it is, we go into like the real unvarnished portrait of the Mijahadine. And we talk about the Soviet brutality as well. And there's a lot like Vietnam, I guess, in that sense that Soviet troops were just,

yeah, I mean, and also, and also that like a lot of the violence from the Soviets was just, I mean, it was bombing. And like, if you want to like look at the actual, like, Adam twos, you can just Google it. He did a pretty good, like, some of just how much ordinance they drop, but like, that's the real similarity with Vietnam, but that's not what people talk about when they went to the comparison. And I just throw in just that the, like, the,

the Vietnamese resistance, like, Ho Chi Minh was not invented and paid by the Soviet Union or China. Like, yeah. And you can see that, there's a whole thing you can go into here, but that's a big whiff on the metaphor because after the war was over, Vietnam built its own state

and of course, you re-unified and has its problems like any developing country but has become like a member of nations and all this other stuff. The warlords, we were backing in Afghanistan immediately tried to kill all of each other and blow up Kabul, which was the only place untouched by, where one of the only places, one of the few places untouched by the war in the 80s, and then of course became Taliban and al-Qaeda, adjacent and all this other stuff. So there's another real, real important difference in the Vietnam metaphor that people like to make.

Another fascinating bit of history that you guys delve into is the events preceding the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which I don't think a lot of people understand. And the history of the Afghanistan Communist Party. And also like it's rather surprising connections to the CIA. So essentially there was the there was a split between the like on the on the eve of the Soviet invasion. What was really going on was that there was a split and in one faction you had like there was a more moderate wing and then there was a more radical wing and the more radical wing was behind this guy Amin.

Havizela Amin was the head of the became eventually the head of the Communist Party of Afghanistan. But for a while, he was the number two to a guy named Taraki, who he eventually killed. He was associated with Columbia University because of programs that the Americans would kind of try to make nice with promising young students from developing nations. However the issue is that the programs he was a part of and the Afghan sort of student society he was a part of while in Columbia are we're later revealed by Ramparts magazine and others to be fronts for the CIA. So there's an odd cloud of suspicion around this guy who does go back to Afghanistan. He had been to Columbia twice for two different

degrees and then was always the one pushing a more violent and more, you know, all consuming and as, you know, you could say like extreme line, whether he was a part of the CIA has never really been confirmed, whether he was an asset or working asset. We found a really interesting passage in a memoir that a friend of the show, Marissa Shepard had to translate in which a Soviet general says, here's what I saw in the records where Amin was defending himself from his fellow Afghan communists about being part of the CIA. Whether this was like something where he was playing the CIA or he was, you know, using everybody at the same time, we'll never know, but we try to mention other, you know, there have been instances where leaders of radical communist

or, you know, extremist parties abroad are not necessarily free of any association with our own intelligence agency. You have Paul Pot and his big new Briginsky as a matter of fact, were in contact throughout the same period. And a Mexican president was a CIA asset. A Portillo. Yeah, Portillo. So, you know, whether Amin is one of those guys, it's an interesting point of intrigue in the show. But he invites, eventually invites both America and the Islamists and the Soviets to kind of do favors for them all at once.

And the Soviets' favor was to come in and give him back up against some of his enemies. But what the Soviets do is, is to themselves say, this guy's chopping everybody's head off and we just need to go in there and get rid of him because he's as much of the problem as the Islamists. And they kill him almost immediately. Immediately. After intervening to support his communist government. Yeah, they pulled a switcher route there. Yeah.

They definitely pulled a switcher route there. Okay, you just bought him up and I definitely wanted to get to this guy because, you know, I mean, this government. Yeah, they pulled a switcheroo there. Yeah. They definitely pulled a switcheroo there. Okay. You just bought them up, and I definitely wanted to get to this guy because, you know, he's one of the people most responsible for all of this blowback and is one of the most underrated evil figures in American foreign policy. I'm, of course, talking about the Carter administration. It's a big new Przenysky. Could you talk a little bit about this guy and like what led him to adopt the most like get Carter and the US government to adopt the most maximally hawkish

position vis-a-vis Russia in the Afghanistan? Yeah, so I think that the sort of easy way to think about how somebody like Przenysky comes to direct policy is that he was sort of tarred and viewed as a lip because he was sort of tired and viewed as a lib, because he was a socially liberal guy. But he was always this hard-line anti-communist. And the Carter administration was, it came into power and it had been elected and their strategic vision had really been

oriented around domestic response to watergate. That meant that in some respects, like Brzynski leading the National Security Council was pretty empowered to engage in some extensive funding games as far as policy was concerned to check the soviet union the brisinski as a you know sort of measure of course believe that the soviet unions downfall was the

overriding necessity for all american policy like it was the everything he believed everything you understood and uh... you know some people we've interviewed, Paul Fitzgerald and Lizard with Gould, the way they put it, is you know, is that Przysky views this as like, you know, like a night. It's a night throwback to like the 19th century as a means of like countering imperial Russia. And he, you know, constructed a policy in Afghanistan or help to along those lines in the 1970s. Yeah. Przysinski could never get over not only the history

between Russia and Poland and his time, but like hundreds of years earlier. And he was just absolutely dedicated, fanatical, not even so much against communism, but against what he saw as modern day Russian imperialism, whatever you want to say. And he is unapologetic or it was unapologetic about using militants in Islam to achieve that goal.

I found a funny clip where he's being asked by, and I played in the show later in the show, where he's being asked by an interviewer, you know, who's from that region. You've said that the Taliban were sort of small potatoes compared to taking down the evil empire. You still feel that way. And he's unrepended. He says, Oh, imagine if the Soviet Union was around now, just imagine where we'd be. And he says that they were the ones training all the terrorists.

And I guess he's trying to say the PLO and secular Marxist terrorists who would, you know, they would hijack planes. It was definitely a dicey time. But he's trying to say they were the ones creating al-Qaeda, because all these Arab terrorists, I guess, in his mind were all kind of interchangeable. But in fact, he was the guy who, more than anyone else, was pushing for this grand architecture of jihad. Is that the same clip where he sort of chives the woman interviewing him, because he's

like, you know, if you phrase the question more intelligently, I could answer it more accurately. But when you use terms like bait, you know, it just confuses things and she just goes, I'm quoting you directly and he goes, I never said, never said, bait. I never said we would bait this. There's an interview with a French magazine that he forever clipped once it got embarrassing, you know, after 9-11, he said, oh, that's a very loose translation. But it's like, the whole interview is just one long misquote, how did that happen, you know?

And we found talking with people who are, you know, on the record or have done their own interviews with colleagues of Briginski that in private, he was saying that. I mean, whether he, whether or not he wants that to be recorded in a, in an article is one thing, but he could never quite help himself telling people, I did it. I lured them in, I baited the Russians into Afghanistan.

And I guess it was a matter of public relations as to whether or not he was supposed to say that, uh, after 9-11, but he was, yeah, he was insatiable. And it's also a good illustration of kind of how policy in the late 1970s through the present kind of starts to form on a strategic level really in the executive branch, because Brzezinski sort of famously, like a lot of the CIA guys would like deny that there was any trap or something. They would say, that's poppycock, we never heard of it. And the way that, you know, Brzezinski, you know, he didn't need them to know about it.

He kept things more siloed and particular and was able to kind of influence policy from the top down in a way that I think, you know, with the kind of, like people I think think of Kissinger as sort of the ultimate, you know, freelancer, whatever. But I think Brzezinski actually probably, you know, deserves a fair bit of credit for, you know, helping to secretly start what would become ultimately, like the largest such covert operation in the history of the CIA and probably the history

of the whole government. And would this be Operation Cyclone? Correct. Absolutely, sir. Okay. Okay. Let's get into Operation Cyclone. This is essentially Charlie Wilson's war, right? I mean, this was our covert Arming and backing of the Mergedine fighting the Soviet army in Afghanistan. So like what Describe like who was involved in operations cyclone and what did it like what did it actually entail at first? It was a it was a much rougher, smaller, quick and dirty thing and I think the smaller, quick and dirty thing. And I think the idea that it started after the Soviet invasion is still present in a lot of vague historical memory. One of the things Brigincki said in that interview, we just cited was that, no, no, no, I was doing that way before the invasion,

at least a year before. But then even before that, you know, the sources we tend to define were very insightful, really argue for almost a whole decade earlier in the early 70s. Because what happened then, we won't go too into it now. But there was a not a communist, but a kind of progressive revolution in which the monarchy was abolished in Afghanistan. And just like the British, a hundred years earlier, oftentimes that was like a progressive who wanted to develop his country more was not lining up with our designs or our friends designs in the region. And so we already were working back then with guys like the Mujahideen who will come to talk about Guadineh Hekmajar and Akmajama Suud in the early 70s, not even the early 80s.

So by the time you get to this turmoil going on with the communists fighting each other and this guy, Huffazela Amin, Izzy on the up and up, you know, either way, he's a psycho. He's killing everybody he can't. The Soviets are very reluctant to go in, but because of the policy that is now definitely in motion in the in 78 and 79 of basically posing the problem, are we either going to let fundamentalist us backed Islamic militants take over, or are we going to let this dictator keep making this country more and more into a crackpot, you know, failed revolution, just south of our border, or, and at the end, this was a real consideration, is this dictator going to ally with the US and the fundamentalists. So they kept saying no to troop requests, but eventually, unlike, you know, the bazillionth vote, they finally said, this is probably a big mistake, but we just don't have any better ideas. And that really is what American diplomats said they were hearing, and they say, you know,

with regret that if we had pursued a more conciliatory policy, they don't really believe the Soviets would have invaded, which again is very different from Vietnam. And the two camps in the American government were known as the bleeders and the dealers. Preginski was a bleeder. And the dealers were guys like, you know, guys in the State Department, one of whom was unfortunately assassinated in Afghanistan in a very weird and intrigue laid in plot of its own

that you can hear in the show. But once that guy was dead, once Preginski had started to kind of, you know, block out everyone else and had Carter's ear, cyclone began to grow. And by the early 80s, Charlie Wilson had really been kind of become a CIA asset as a congressman because he was working with Gustav Racotos, the Greek guy who had since upgraded everything

and they both wanted more guns, more Muja Hadin, and more money for all of this. So by the mid 80s, now the Soviets have for years been trying to get out. They try to go to the UN. They've been feeling, you're putting out a feel-less for Pakistan. And the US is telling everyone, don't negotiate.

The Mujahideen don't negotiate, Pakistan don't negotiate. And so the stingers start arriving in 86 or something. Some people say that's the turning point. Either way, it's already been now half a decade that we've said, well, we're done when we say we're done. And so all of the BCCI transactions, all of the eventually legitimate, quote unquote, congressional approvals, this stuff is turning the war into something that I don't think anyone, including

Braginski, might have ever thought, would be as destructive for the Soviets, but also for regular Afghans civilians. And by the end of the 80s, I think the American calculation was we've done our job, Leonard Demor style. You know, my work here is done. And they beamed out, you know. Another American demon who figures largely in this story, a man who's caused a great deal of bleeding over the course of his career is CIA director Bill Casey. What's so fascinating about this guy

is that he was a a knight of Malta, an extremely conservative Catholic. And like, do you think that like it was something in his religious background that caused him to have a certain affinity with like austere or Sunni Islam? I think honestly it was being a lawyer I think that was yeah, he was yeah, I think it was being a corporate lawyer and then running the SEC and then he was like, you know what we need to do? We need to get some muslim style operations in here and I believe that was a takeaway. Let's diversify our portfolio, but yeah, but to will to to your point, Steve Cole, you know, who wrote a great book called Ghost Wars. Although it goes towards interestingly says nothing about BCCI and some

of these other things. So it's it's it's a slightly incomplete account, maybe more than slightly. But he writes about about Kasey saying that Kasey saw the Roman Catholicism he believed in and Judeo Christian or whatever you want to say, values, very much compatible with political Islam as a way to defeat communism. Because aren't we all basically on the same side? God bless communism, man. Exactly, and now that's kind of a trope

or a bit of a joke to our generation, the idea. But he was very much about that. And more clubs, he was a Knight of Malta, now you got this Fari club. Anyone, anything where you had to call each other Prince or your highness to each other, he was really into. So it's no surprise, he was really into this covert operation. How would you describe his career and his involvement in in cyclone that BCC? I mean his fingerprints are all over all of us. Yeah. I mean Casey was basically like so Casey was a

Re was really fucking old by the time of all this he had been in the OSS in the 1940s in World War 2 He was I mean like really Kind of like this, you know kind of canonical Operations cowboy figure and so when he came to the CIA the idea was like a bit of like this, you know, kind of canonical operations cowboy figure. And so when he came to the CIA, the idea was like a bit of like, yeah, we want to get the agency to have his mojo back after the 1970s. But, you know, and we go into this a bit in the show, a lot of what he was just doing, I would argue, at least from his the way he saw it from his vantage point, was he was just trying to kick as much shit up as possible

with the Soviet Union and just trying knife them as many ways with as many tools as he had at his disposal. And so you have some pretty arcane and crazy plots and also Latin America was a major place of interest for him. But so a lot of the plots like Iran, Contra, and the Army go to the Mujahideen, which is a plot in its own right, they go back to, they are able to be successful or unsuccessful. But they dig on the scale that they both of those things achieved because Bill Casey was cheerleading them, essentially. If Brajinsky is the sort of cold and calculating architect of the policy, at least when it

became a true operation that was supposed to be sustained over years, then when he leaves, Carter gets obliterated by Reagan, Casey still at the CIA is the kind of giddy, you know, a inheritor of it. And he is, you know, just sort of, sort of every day excited about new ways to train these guys in terror and to blow stuff up bicycle bombs and, you know, all these things, there were myths that the Soviets were using,

that are still reprinted, by the were myths that the Soviets were using the just that are still reprinted by the way The Soviets were like dropping toys that were actually bombs so they could like literally kill children, which sounds So it's one of those things that sounds a little too evil that you always have to check up on but what was real what was real was a lot of the new forms of terrorism Being taught to the Afghans at the request of Bill Casey and Gustav Ricciotos and of course Charlie Wilson. But he was also a character that's hard not to find goofy. He was a mumbler and no one could ever understand

what the fuck he was saying. Reagan was apparently in some meeting. And that was strategic. Maybe it was because he could have, you know, just sort of working toward the muscle. Talking like boom, how are there just signing off? Dang old, us think her missiles. Dang old is like that.

Stinger Moussa, the encoupling come on, man. It's like this, man. A dust and a wind, man. They were like a dang old candle and wind, man. He don't matter, man. It's not the old, oldies, old time. You know what I think, man? Like them, dang, oh, I think, therefore you are, man. That's not the whole oldies old time. You know what I think, man? Like them dying. Oh, I think therefore you are, man.

That's, that's a wonderful way of putting it. Apparently Reagan was in a, was in an actual security meeting at one point and like passed a note to, I don't know, some cabinet minister. And after, after Casey had finished and it read, did you understand one goddamn word? He said it. So, so I mean, he, he was a character as, as all these guys are. But um, yeah, he was funneling and apparently using Catholic institutions to funnel anti-communist funds throughout his entire reign as CIA director, not just with the Guard of Afghanistan. Iran Contrates important to close out on Casey.

It's important to remember this whole season, Iran Contra is happening as all this is happening. And the bad war, kind of like how Iraq was the bad war in the 2000s in Afghanistan was the right war. In the 80s, all the Democrats were basically against around contrast. They thought it was gauche. They thought it was a little too evil, you know, but the other side of the policy was arming the countries in Afghanistan, essentially. And that was a very popular cause select. Good war. And also, there was, you know, in season one, we talked about how another, you know, thing we did during that time was Armistadam Hussein. And there were, you know, indictments and prosecutions, you know, sanded down for that later on. But like, you know, much, on, much,

they're just historically considered much smaller. But the, you know, all of on and much, you know, they're just historically considered much smaller. But you know, all of which is just to say that like throughout this period, you know, from Colombia to the Central America to Afghanistan, I mean, you have just like, I mean, I believe Mexican condor is an operation, this operation greenback, which is the DEA beginning money laundering, but like it's just, you've got like a really kind of, like the federal government was just

doing a whole fucking lot in a whole lot of places. And Bill Casey in a lot of ways was like, sort of the guy responsible for making sure that each of those endeavors could be as fully evolved a plot, you know, Don DeLillo, Libra style as it could be. Yeah. His, some of his underlings were like, what are we really working toward here? This is, not to say they weren't cold and calculating themselves, but they didn't find all this to be more than just kind

of fun and games, but fun and games was cases, that was his deal. He loved it, he was giddy. Like I want to talk about like, in a way to sort of understand emotionally or metaphorically. The spread of covert funding games and blowback across the entire face of the planet and indeed lower Manhattan. I want to talk about the brilliant trailer that you guys produce with

Ben Clarkson for this season of blowback, which is like this really, I mean, if you haven't watched the trailer, it's an animated trailer for season four of Blowback, done by Ben Clarkson. Could you describe a little bit about like the concept of that trailer and like the idea that you were trying to communicate and like with collaboration with Ben and like in our, to communicate in an artistic, emotional way, like the themes of this season? Yeah, it was, it was very, it was very much a collaboration. I think Noah and I just had a call with him and I said, I, I wanted to treat this multi-limbed monster of drug money and, you know, bombs and instruments of terror, but also ideologies as this one monster to kind of give it this form.

Like the thing is what I said, you know, something that's constantly changing to its surroundings and growing and squeezing into the corners that needs to squeeze into and then becoming something else all over again. And Ben loves that whole sort of organic idea. And so when he started to show us sketches and what people can see, if you guys wanna throw a link in as they can see the trailer, he really took that idea that I just had a vague sense of and he started to lay out this little story in which some kind of toxic element

is being developed in a lab. I would describe it like the, the visual metaphor here for covert action as a cura goop. Sure. The goop from a cura, you know, and he like blows up into a giant flesh blob. And, and, and I think also it was a little bit inspired by say the sentiment in my favorite deleted scene ever, which is that deleted scene in Nixon when he goes to see Richard Helms. Right. Yeah.

But you see on Waterston, whose eyes turned black. Yeah. He really leaned in on that one. But he's got his garden. And, you know, is there mugging it up? There is a great line where he says something about how covert operations are organic. You know, they grow, they change shape. And without putting too, without ripping that off too much,

I thought maybe not the form of a flower, but this kind of, yeah, this thing that's alive. And he just did a fantastic job. Obviously, you guys have worked with him, but I couldn't be happier with it. And I scored the trailer to compliment Ben's visuals and that was really fun. and it just turned out great. I guess like one of the best things about Blowback or one of the best things about studying or learning about history is discovering new guys. Learning about guys is like most of what history is

and I've talked about a few of them that grabbed my attention in the first couple episodes but just for you Brendan and Noah, do you have a favorite guy from this season or someone that you discovered that you weren't aware of before or someone who's story particularly strikes you or character or personality that you remember from this season? No, what do you want to take it first? I think I know mine. Yeah. I think I really like Charlie Flynn. That's who Michael Flynn's brother.

So he comes in and the later part of the season, we don't get to spend too much time with them unfortunately, but like if you read Michael Hastings book, the operators or his story about Stan McRistle, like Charlie Flynn just basically sounds like Michael Flynn 2.0. So like Charlie Flynn was Stan Macrystal's chief of staff and he was just like kind of the guy in charge and making sure that like,

he was just like kind of chief vibes officer. And I, you know, I honestly just felt like he was the guy in this whole thing who I just wanted to know more and more about. Well, the Flynn brothers, the Flynn brothers even being there now that we know what it's like when you see that like Julie, like Julie, like Giuliani was going to be offered mayor of Baghdad at one point and you're like, now, you're just, it hits different as they say.

Yeah, that's it. Yes. I would say mine is actually a guy named Kofur Black. And we've talked a lot about the 80s in this episode, which is good, because I think people will listen to the show and they'll see us crawl toward the 90s and then into the 2000s. And that's all in the show. But from the later half of the season, Kofra Black was the counter-terror chief for Bush, and he was this beefy bald guy

who, you know, whether he, whether he was trying to look tougher than he was or he was this big of a psycho, I don't know, but he wanted to literally put Bin Laden's head on a stick, and he told his assistants who were on the ground, he's like, I want his head on a stick and they're like, yeah, but wait, are you serious? He's like, I want you to get pikes and I want you to put it in ice so that we can put it in a box And I want to show the president and so people ordered pikes and ice so that they could literally take bin Laden's head and put it in a box Which of course they never got to do because for some reason he escaped from Torra Bora

But that guy was But but that guy, but, but that guy, oh, this is, this is another great line. This is what I'll say. This is in Bob Woodward's book and Bob Woodward is, has, has plenty of problems, but he does get some of the local color when you're in the White House. And there's a moment where he's talking to everybody and he's assuring them like they have 9-11. Don't worry, you know, we're gonna go out there, we're gonna kill all of them. There's gonna be flat, we're gonna have flies walking on their eyeballs. And that by the end of the day. By the end of the day. And one word writes that for the rest of the time anyone was there, his nickname around the office became the flies walking on the

eyeballs guy. And that's real punchy. That rolls off the tone. I mean, I guess so. But he was, he was definitely a real character. And he's got, he's always the pugnacious, the pugnacious guy in the room, especially compared to, you know, Colin Powell and Paul Wilfoets, you know. Yeah. Also, it was a big surprise getting Ashraf Ghani's voice. That was the other favorite thing. The last president of Afghanistan, I have to say when I finally put a clip in, he sounds like he's like Warwick Davis. It caught me off guard. It would be funny if that like the order to like put bin Laden's head on ice and then put it on a

pike and deliver to the president, they never revised that when Obama got in. It's someone presented, a bungler with been laudant's head. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, thank you. I'm making love to his hobby. This is my mind. His head's on my head. Do I still have to tip if it took longer than 30 minutes? Yeah, so there's, but yeah, there was a lot of psychos and bizarre people. I mean, the Mujahadi themselves, people can listen to the show. I mean, there's kind of a flavor for every tendency you have. There were guys who were really smooth criminals who got PR treatment from the West.

They were really, really nasty guys who kind of originated the idea of acid in the face of women. That was one of our main guys. And there are mentors to Osama. I have several of them in the bunch. So yeah, it's hard to really pick, but that's why people need to dive in, you know, and just check it out. Well, like I said, we have covered basically just merely the tip of the iceberg of the

history that you guys lay out on the season, you know, the geopolitics of the heroin trade. Yeah. The American invasion of Afghanistan and our civil school withdrawal. But look, I'm going to get you out here with an easy question, okay? Mm-hmm. All right. 9-11. What really happened there?

I didn't know the old truth. I knew you were going to say that. That's that that that is the season. There's a long. Is there any more 9-11 truth that you guys have on go? There's a little bit more truth that we found. We found a little truth. There's some truth and and and yeah,

just you have to you have to sign up. But there's there's we found a lot of truth. I guess we'll leave it there for today. Subscribe, just you have to sign up, but we found a lot of truth. I guess we'll leave it there for today. Subscribe, blow back to get the real 9-11 truth. That's the pitch we're gonna leave you with. And before we close out today's show, I would like to leave you, listen there with a pitch, that this upcoming Saturday, September 2nd,

you're in New York City, please come to the Roxy Cinema at 715. Hesse and I will be presenting a 35 millimeter screening of Howard Hawks' Real Bravo. That's right to supplement our moviemen said bonus episode. We are hosting a screening which you'll do an intro and then a talkback after of Howard Hawks' Real Bravo. This Saturday, this Saturday, September 2nd, at the Roxy Hotel in Sunabaya. And actually, we have a plug. Brendan and I will be in Chicago this coming weekend at the Haymarket Socialism Conference.

We will be there, we have a panel on Monday, on Labor Day, and if you are in Chicago, if you're at Haymarket, you should come out and hang. We'd love to see you there. Once again, thank you so much to Brendan and Noah, and we will play you out with some of the Blowback Season for Original Score Composed by Brendan James. Gentlemen, thanks again for another season of Blowback,

and thanks for coming on. Thank you, boys. Thank you. 1.5% 2.5% 2.5% 2.5% 2.5% 2.5% 2.5% 2.5%

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