Danny Jones Podcast - #254 - Explosive CIA Face-Off: Loyal Officer VS Dissident Spy

Episode Date: August 12, 2024

Watch the bonus show w/ Andy & John on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Former CIA Spies Andrew Bustamente & John Kiriakou debate American politics, the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump, Israel, Russia, privacy laws, and whistleblowers. SPONSORS https://hims.com/danny - Start your FREE online visit today. https://shopmando.com - Use code DANNY for $5 off your starter pack. KIRIAKOU LINKS: John's Substack: https://johnkiriakou.substack.com Follow John on X: https://x.com/johnkiriakou BUSTAMANTE LINKS: Find your Spy Superpower: https://yt.everydayspy.com/DannyJonesPodcast Follow Andy on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@Andrew-Bustamante Explore Spy School: https://everydayspy.com Join the podcast: https://youtube.com/@EverydaySpyPodcast FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Guantanamo prisoners plea deal 08:16 - Andrew Bustamante's & John Kiriakou's careers 13:20 - American ideals vs. the law 23:53 - How the world really works 27:18 - Framework that governs America 34:31 - Deep state's election influence 40:58 - Kamala Harris 50:46 - Will Trump abolish the CIA? 01:06:49 - Trump's shooter 01:19:53 - Venezuela 01:28:08 - Kiriakou's regret about whistleblowing 01:41:48 - Edward Snowden: criminal or hero? 01:50:07 - How the law interferes with our independence 01:59:23 - Why Kiriakou's work with Russian state media 02:13:17 - Israeli spies in America 02:24:21 - Hamas is a red herring 02:34:45 - WW3 02:42:25 - Hezbollah 02:47:50 - China Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We have a lot to talk about today with yesterday's events too. Yeah. What was yesterday? Yesterday, the Secretary of Defense threw out the guilty plea. The plea deal. Yeah, the plea deal. For Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Oh, yes.

Oh, yeah, we definitely should talk about that. Screw it out. Square one. After 22 years. Wait, what do you mean threw it out? Oh, he overwrote it. It must be under UCMJ. It is under UCMJ.

So now that he's going to get executed? No. We don't know. We don't know what happens next. See, but this is the reason why they engaged in plea negotiations in the first place. Everything that they said that implicated themselves. Steve Timer. Sorry. Go ahead. They said under torture. And so it's not admissible, even in the military tribunal.

And there's a precedent for that from five years ago. So do you want to roll the dice? I mean, it's probably like a 0.1% chance of, you know, of an acquittal, but you can't really convict them if you don't have any independent evidence against them. Everything you have came as a result of torture. So why don't we just come to an agreement? They plead guilty to 2,974 counts of murder. Right? Yeah. And material support for terrorism. They get life without parole. And the only thing that they ask is that they do not want to spend winters in Colorado.

I'm serious. So it was part of the deal that they won't be sent to Florence, that they get to stay in Guantanamo. And Seckdef said that. The only thing that really burned me yesterday. I mean, honestly, if you don't have a camera running, you should have a camera running. The cameras are running.

We're rolling. Oh, we are rolling. Sweet. Yeah. The only thing that burned me about this whole thing was that Mitch McConnell made a state. saying this is disgusting, this is sickening, this is bad, blah, blah, blah, blah. I went back to 2009.

I found the original statement from Mitch McConnell saying, oh my God, we can't have them come to the United States. I've told you before that in March of 2002, we had captured so many Al-Qaeda fighters in Pakistan that we literally filled the Ravel Pindi jail. They said we can't hold them anymore. Yeah, and the Pax came and said, look, the jail's full. You've got to do something with them.

I called CTC. I said, the jail is full, the PACs want them out. What do I do with them? They said, put them on a C12 and send them to Guantanamo. I said, Guantanamo, Cuba? Why would we do that? And they said, oh, this is what we've come up with. We're going to put them in Cuba.

We're going to hold them there three or four weeks until we could figure out if we should try them in the Eastern District of Virginia, the Southern District of New York, or the District of Massachusetts. I said, that's a great idea. So we put them on the on the C12. You know, they stop in Oman for refueling.

They go the rest of the way. And it turned out the White House had other ideas. And then, of course, the real high-value targets that we had captured got special treatment. But then as a result, you can't use any of that evidence. So even before the torture started, with 9-11 being an open criminal investigation, you want to gather that information so that you can't. can try them and find them guilty and execute them as they deserved. But the agency blew it. And then Mitch McConnell. And I looked up the vote. The vote was 93 to 5. So it's not just Republicans. Democrats were just as guilty. In the House, it was the Democrats that did it. It was Ike Skelton, who was a congressman

from Missouri. He was the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee at the time. They joined together and they said, we can't have these dangerous terrorists on American soil. It's too dangerous. Because they had never heard of Charles Manson or Ted Kaczynski or the Blind Sheikh or, you know, Jeffrey Dahmer. We don't have dangerous people in the United States. We can't have these Arab terrorists. And as a result, they've been in this limbo all the time since 2002. So I guess I'm confused. You were, I think what you're saying is that because sect F overrode the plea deal,

were back to square one with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed the mastermind of 9-11 and more than a handful of other I think two other people Yeah, Mustafa al-Hassawi and Walid bin Atash

But the I mean for me I can understand Why he overrode it right? Oh, you can't Politically I get it Yeah sure he had to You can't

It's an election year Well you can't have You can't have the people who orchestrated 9-11 get off on a plea deal. Yes. And I get it.

It's a sticky situation but it's the UCMJ. UCMJ is the military court of justice. Correct. Which is not the civilian court of justice. No, and while it is unusual

to have a civilian and of course Secretary of Defense has to be a civilian, it's unusual to have a civilian claim the authority to overturn it. He's within his legal rights

to overturn it. Well, I agree with him overturned. because you can't have them, just like we said, you can't have these men get out on a plea deal. See, but what scares me, though, election year or non-election year, like. But that's exactly what scares me, because if you can't try them, because you can't use that information against them, then what do you do with them? Well, they're not American citizens.

But they still have constitutional rights. And maybe that's the better question to be asking. Well, see, that's for the Supreme Court. But they did say that... Why do they have constitutional rights? because they're in U.S. custody. Okay. So they have, I mean, the most basic of rights, they have the right to face their accusers in a court of law,

and they have a right to a trial by jury of their peers, unless it's in military. But that's the thing. They don't have any peers, and they're in the military system. So it's not going to be a jury of their peers. It's going to be a military jury or even a non-jury military trial. But again, you come back to that issue of not being able to use. The evidence against them. The CIA screwed that up.

We can't use any evidence because they were tortured. They were tortured and all the evidence they gave up and everything they admitted to was while they were chained to an eye beam or getting wire morted. Technically, when they gave up that information, it was legal because it had been sanctified by a court. By OLC. And then later that decision was overturned. And that's when terrorism or that's when torture became illegal. So their evidence was admissible. and then the policy changed,

and that meant that their evidence is now in admissible, according to certain lines of the law. And that's what sucks about not just this case, but many cases, where confidential courts get overruled by civilian courts, which is exactly what our court system does. A system of court system in Virginia can come into a conclusion

that a court system in the appeal court, changes that the Supreme Court changes. So it's just a, it's a, it's a sticky element of our judicial process. That's true. Yeah. It's, it's a chaotic system. So, okay, that was kind of a shotgun start for this podcast. Yeah, right?

Where's the lube, people? Where's the foreplay? So, for people, at least you can do is buy me a drink first. I love it. So I'm super excited to have you guys both in here together. I think this is the first time two people of your status who have been involved in the Central Intelligence Agency, like you guys, have been together on a podcast to discuss these issues together. And I think you guys have a lot of the same views on most things, but maybe some diverging views on a couple topics. Sure. To start out the podcast, can you guys just give like a brief 20, 30 second background on your involvement in the United States government?

the CIA. Andy, you want to start? Sure. So I started with the U.S. government when I was 18 years old. I was recruited in the Air Force Academy, graduated from the Air Force Academy in 2003, went on to become a U.S. Air Force Officer, nuclear missile officer, learned how to fly, then got picked up by CIA coming out of the military in 2007, where I spent seven years working with the National Clandestine Service as a staff operations officer certified, or who went through the FTC program, and then left CIA in 2014. Yeah, good. John? I was recruited into the CIA in graduate school, 1989. It started 1st January, 1990, as an analyst, spent my first seven years in analysis, all in the Middle East, served overseas, learned how to speak Arabic, then switched to not just operations, but counterterrorism operations and what was then the directorate of operations, now the National Clandestine Service. And specialized in counterterrorism operations in Athens and the Arabian Peninsula. went to Pakistan after 9-11 as the chief of counterterrorism operations, back to headquarters

as the executive assistant to the deputy director for operations, and then I finished out my career at the at the UN in New York. And then the end of your career, can you explain basically what happened to you at the end of your career? I went into the private sector. It's a long story. I'll make it very, very short. In 2007, I went public with. with information on the CIA's torture program. The FBI investigated me for a year, determined that I hadn't committed a crime. A year later, Barack Obama became president

and brought with him the lovely and talented John Brennan back to the National Security Council. Brennan asked Eric Holder to secretly reopen the case against me. I didn't know, of course. That's why it was a secret. And three years later, I was charged with five felonies, including three counts of espionage. Four of those felonies were dropped because I hadn't committed espionage. But ended up going to prison for 23 months.

Make no apologies for it. Proud that I did it. Somebody had to do it. Kind of regret the result. But, you know, worth it in the long run. Right. To start, I wanted to sort of like lay a foundation here to have, can I get each of you to describe what key values underpin your stance on America, democracy, and CIA's role in the world.

Gotcha. So I'll go first. I believe that America is not perfect. The United States is not perfect, but it is by leaps and bounds the best of the government's national, civilized options that exist today. And for that reason, I believe that anything we can do to maximize American superiority, maintain our status as the number one superpower in the world is an imperative that we all have to work towards because if we are not the superpower, somebody else will be. CIA's role in that is to serve at the behest of the chief executive, the president,

to execute operations clandestinely around the world, whether it's technical collection or human collection, that benefit national security policy, which is aimed at American superiority, which is intended to maintain our status as the only superpower in the world. My personal values, my company values remain very steadily in that vein, because that's where I come from and that's what I've seen to be true. John?

I don't disagree with any of that. You know, the DDO when I was working for him, said something once that was so simple that it's sort of become a mantra of mine. The who? I'm sorry, the deputy director for operations. So he said that the job of the CIA, is to recruit spies, to steal secrets, and to analyze those secrets, to allow policymakers to make the best informed policy possible. It's really that simple.

And I agree with that. That's what the CIA should be doing. But at the same time, my driving, how should I say it, my driving belief behind that is that it has to do it within the confines of the law. And I'm not talking about foreign laws. The job of a CIA officer is to violate foreign laws, right? You're committing espionage. You're convincing foreign nationals to commit espionage. Or in some cases, to commit treason for you because they like you, or because maybe they're ideologically pro-American, or maybe they're doing it just for a couple of dollars or to get

their kid in college or whatever. But we need to be guided by the rule of law in the United States. There was a period. There have been a couple of periods over the course of the history of the CIA where we gotten away from that and it has never turned out well the the definition of laws the definition of rule of law is a flexible definition well it depends on who's president yeah you're you're right about that it depends on the court system it depends on the judge it depends on what's been voted in and what's been voted out it was legal once to beat women mm-hmm it was legal

once to keep black people from voting children working in the minds right so it's not it's a it's about much more than legality it's about much more than following the letter of the law it's about constitutionality, I would say, because look at it this way. You know, in 1945, 1946, we executed Japanese soldiers who had waterboarded American POWs. In 1968, on January the 11th, 1968, the Washington Post ran a front page photograph of an American soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese prisoner. That soldier was arrested, convicted of torture, and sent to prison for 20 years for torture. And then, all of a sudden in 2002

torture is legal because John you and J. Bybee say it is. But the law never changed. The law was never amended. Congress never voted on any change in the Federal Torture Act of 1946. So we changed. The definition of torture also changed. Or it was never

fully defined. They elected to change it. In fact, it was defined because not only were we signatories to the UN Convention against torture. Steve, is that a bald spot? No, Danny. It's a solar panel for a sex machine. Steve, you need Hymns.

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Go check out Hems.com. It's linked below. Now back to the show. We wrote the UN Convention Against Torture. So we actually delineated what was illegal and what was legal. And then we violated it and said, well, you know, exigent circumstances. It's a time of war, even though it wasn't because Congress never declared war. And that's a whole different issue.

We can yell about Congress too. But we changed. And so it was, as you mentioned a moment ago, five years later we said oh you know what maybe we shouldn't have done that maybe that was wrong well you know if if we're going to be the as ronald regan said the shining city on it on a hill this beacon of hope for human rights and civil rights and civil liberties then let's be it we can't be it when it's convenient for us we we can't we're getting we're getting ideologically we're getting ideology confused with practicality and that's the thing that sucks

It sucks because you can't always stick to your ideals. You just can't. And America is a country that's built on ideals, but America is also a country that's nine years old compared to the rest of the world. Sure. Right? We're juveniles.

We're children compared to what society has been in central Europe, in East Asia, and Latin America. So, yes, we came on the scene, and we were big, heavy hitters, and we came out of World War II as the dominant superpower, especially with the fall of the Berlin Wall and all we've really had to stand on since then

is our ideals but we don't live by our ideals we talk ideals and we execute something totally different and we've always been that way parents are that way bosses are that way that is that is the way the way that is the way the world works

so we can't my point with that is that we can't say that we're violating our own ideals we always violate our, like that's what winners do. Winners violate. They change the rules. But that doesn't make it. If you've got a congressional mandate, for example, to write a human rights report every year for every country in the world that we have diplomatic relations with. And you tell them, look, you know, you can't, you can't, I'll give you an example, my own personal example.

I had to go to the Minister of Interior and Bahrain and say, Your Highness, you cannot kill a 15-year-old boy because he marched in a pro. democracy demonstration. You can't do that. I'm going to have to report that to Congress. And then Congress is going to have to weigh whether or not to suspend military sales for for 12 months. But then you've got the CIA station chief going in saying, don't pay any attention to the human rights guy. We want you to open the secret facility over here where we can take people and nobody's going to know about it. We're going to give you $100 million or $50 million, whatever. Okay, what's you going to do? Sure, there are practicalities. Realpolitik is a thing, but we can't pretend to be one thing and then be the other. We have to choose. And if we want to

be the bad guys, okay, that's a policy decision that can be made, but then we have to change the law. We are 100% able to not choose. We don't have to choose. But then what do you do about the, legality of it? The legality of it changes. The legality of it is what you put in motion. The legality of it is absolutely flexible. The idea that there's... the Supreme Court, it's not. The Supreme Court is fucking flexible. Different justices of different beliefs, make different decisions all the time.

They even choose what the fuck to want, like what to look at, and what to send back down to the lower courts. Like, you can't possibly actually believe that we are the system that we tell the average American we are. Of course not.

I'm saying that we should strive to be, though. No fucking way, dude. It's chaos otherwise. No, it's not. It's chaos to not try. Oh, I think that's nuts. It's chaos to not try. All you have to do is convince people that you're trying.

It's chaos to not try. Yeah. To say that what we're striving for is too much, so we're not going to try anymore, is to give people no goal. People without a goal are lost. People who achieve a goal are lost. People who are pursuing a goal have focus. And that's what the magic sauce is in the United States. That's why it's always a changing goalpost

because then there's always something to pursue for the lay person while the people who are at the highest levels are also constantly coming in and out like that's part of our weakness but that's also part of our strength. But listen to what you're saying though. You're saying that we've got torture that's illegal in 1946

torture that's illegal in 1968. Torture that's legal in 2002, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Let's just torture and see if anybody stops us. We'll see what the Supreme Court says. Oh, five years later, the Supreme Court says, We can't do that. Okay.

So what do we do? We just tortured these guys. They can't go on trial. They can't be punished until they go on trial. We can't just chalk that up to American greatness. We have to have laws. We have to have rubrics by which we operate every day. I'm not saying that we should be lawless or have no rubric to follow.

What I'm saying is we can't let ourselves bureaucratize. No, I don't disagree with that. for no reason. And that's essentially, like, KSM's been in jail for 26 years. 22 years. It's not been pleasant. No. He's never going to get out.

No. The question is really, the question is just, how do we deliver justice in a way that is congruent with the loss that the families of those 2,900 lies? How do you even gauge something like that? Exactly. Exactly. There's no right answer there. Whether the guy rats in jail, whether his head is cut off in jail,

whether he's marched through the square and everybody gets to throw tomatoes at him, there is no way that we are going to ever fulfill what the expectations are of all of those families who lost someone on 9-11. There's no way it's going to be done. The legal system isn't going to do it. The UCMJ system isn't going to do it.

Like it's an impossibility to even try. Well, then what do you do? That's the question, right? And for me, for me, it's just, if we let ourselves get stuck in the cycle of what's, what's approved by what court, what's legal right now and what,

whatever, we're asking the wrong questions. Like, we need to figure out what is the right thing to do. And saying that torture is the wrong thing to do, our policies around torture have always been convenient. Yeah. In the 1940s,

we defined torture as one thing that was convenient for what we wanted to accomplish. And then we changed that in 2002. And then we changed it again. We're probably going to change it again. But that's the thing is we didn't change it. We changed the interpretation of it. That's what that's what law is.

And then the court came back and said, no, you were wrong. And that's why it was codified with the, with the McCain-Fine Stein amendment in 2015 to get back to the original federal tort tract of 1946. We had strayed so far away from it that McCain-Finestein came back and said, look, this is the original language. That's the language we're going to use in the Army Field Manual, which is another mistake, I can see. say in a second. And so the law is what's in the Army Field Manual. The mistake is the Army Field Manual is an executive branch document

that can be changed with a stroke of a pen. So it's codified but not really codified. And that's what our whole system is built on. It's a house of cards then. But it's the best house of cards that's out there. Unless you want to build a house out of bricks that are authoritarian

bricks. Oh, I disagree. I mean, sure. I can see how I can see how rule of law can become an authoritarian system. Yes, I can see that. But at the same time, we have to have a framework by which we live and by which we lead. And, you know, I've mentioned to you, I think, in the past that on a trip to Africa one time, I was kind of joking with a Congolese foreign ministry official about a...

You can't joke with a Congolese foreign ministry official. No, they have no senses of humor. They have no senses of humor. At all. It's because their fucking life is hard. And they also have their hands out like this all the time. But anyway, I said, you know, what's with you and the Russians? You guys are always so chummy close to the Russians.

And very seriously, he said to me, because you promise us democracy and the Russians promise us food. Bingo. Wow. That's how the whole world works. The whole world is practical. We are ideological, which we only get that luxury because we are the superpower of the world. as soon as we are no longer The citizens are ideological

Not necessarily people running the country No the United States The whole country The whole country Yeah ideology goes all the way up Everybody's trying to push their ideology The polarization that we're seeing politically right now Is really a polarization of ideology

Agreed That's what it's just It's unfortunate because We have become so spoiled By what we have That we are now seeing The second and third generation of people who have never actually suffered,

people who have never actually wondered where the next meal is going to come from. And those people have gone all the way up to the senior ranks of government and business and politics and everything else. Like, you can still find people who literally live foot to mouth in the United States. There are people below the poverty line.

There are people so poor, they actually don't know where their next meal is coming from. There's people so poor, they don't know if they're going to eat or die next. Right. Right? So they understand what it's like to feel real suffering in need. The rest of us don't. That's why so many Middle Eastern governments, wealthy Middle Eastern

governments, are unstable because they're so fat and so rich. And so fast. They got there so fast. They got there so fast. That's true. Many of those countries only gained independence in 1971 in the Persian Gulf. They went from being deserts with palm, with dates, and Bedouins, eating camel milk and dates. And then they became the richest countries in the world. within 50 years. I had a friend who was the son of a Kuwaiti ambassador. Kuwait was my first overseas assignment. And he got drafted.

He was in his 30s, and he got drafted. I said, drafted. I didn't even know there were any Kuwaitis in the Kuwaiti military. He said, no, there aren't. There aren't many. So he was a banker in Bahrain. He had to fly to Kuwait for basic training. and he said that on the first day

there were like two dozen guys all Kuwaitis half of them were royal family members on the second day they were like a dozen another dozen had just run away and the third day it was him and two other guys and then all of the Kuwaitis were replaced by Pakistanis you just pay him give them a couple

of dollars and they'll just do your military service for you because slavery is essentially legal yeah in the middle it's legal everywhere else outside of the United States it arguably it happens here in the United States and people still turn a blind eye to it too. You know why King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was so dark or why Prince Bandar was

so dark because their mothers were Sudanese slaves that were serving in the House of Saud They were the illegitimate children of slaves. So John, you mentioned that we need frameworks right. I want to go back to this conversation. John mentioned that we need a framework to live by,

to lead by. I believe that the framework that the United States lives and leads by is the framework of change. It is not a framework of rigidity and legality. There's a system of legality to support a framework of change.

Because what we have seen is that change is required. We must adapt. We must evolve. We must disrupt. If you're so tied into a legalistic system that you can't change it with the stroke of a pen, right? Essentially what you're saying is the

executive, chief executive, the president, who is voted into office by the people of the United States and delegates and et cetera, et cetera, right? Essentially, that person has gone through a vetting process to be given the pen that can change the letter of the law in some cases in a moment. And where he can't change a letter of the law, there's a system to support other changes, whether that's the judicial branch or the legislative branch or whatever else.

That is what is our framework. That is what gives us a huge advantage over many of our, of our, uh, of our, uh, opposition governments and countries. That's why threats come and go, but the United States stays the same, because our same, our consistency is being able to change, to flex, to meet the need

and meet the threat that presents itself. So a question, or comment on a question. It sounds like what you're describing is more of a European parliamentary, system. That's a comment. But the question that is, would you support an easier way to amend the Constitution than the way that we have now, which would then affect

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Don't poison yourself with other shitty deodorants and don't impose on other people's noses. Shopmando.com. It's linked below. Now back to the show. I don't think the Constitution needs to change. The Constitution's built with the flexibility that we need. You think so.

Absolutely. Wow, I disagree. That's why so many people have, so many people can. take a stance on an argument and say that's not constitutional. Other people can stand on and say, we are making a change that is constitutional. Like that's that healthy debate, that change, that argument about how it's interpreted is the gift that our forefathers gave us that I don't think they realized they were giving us, right?

By writing a constitution that's so short that needed constant amendments. You're saying the constitution's open to interpretation. Everything is open to interpretation. The whole judicial system is open to interpretation. Judges and attorneys can interpret a law a different way. And you are the one as the citizen of the United States who sits on the receiving end of however they interpreted. The judge that determined that this man should go to jail,

a different judge and a different court on a different day could have had a different conclusion. His whole life would be different. That's a good point. Right? We either like that or we don't like that. And you know, with the current makeup of the Supreme Court, it argues in favor of what you're saying that corporations are people.

Yep. Number one. Number two, a president has the right to effectively commit murder so long as he does it in the course of his official duties. Number two, I mean, who would have ever thought even a year ago that we would have a conclusion like that coming from the Supreme Court? But I suppose it does matter based on the personal ideology of the members of the Supreme Court, or the courts of appeals.

Or the objective overall, right? The mission overall. What is the vision that we're trying to cast? If the United States' vision is truly to lead a democratic revolution in the world and make everybody democratic. Which is a stupid idea. But one that we've been pursuing in- For many, many years.

In lip service for a long time. If that is the goal, then that means the United States, by definition, does not want to be a superpower. It wants to democratize and bring everybody up to its level and bring its own superiority down. So clearly that is not the vision. So what is the vision? Is the vision even something we're willing to say out loud? Because I guarantee you that what you got on your in processing day when you went to the bubble, was the bubble there in 19?

Yeah. When you went through your in processing in the bubble and when I went through the bubble. It's the auditorium. It's got a dome over it. Oh, okay. That's CIA. It's one of the few things that you can see even on Google Maps at CIA. You can see the rounded auditorium right.

in front of the old headquarters building. Oh, wow. Interesting. We call it the bubble. Okay. When I went through there, like, day one of him processing was signing up for health insurance. Yep. Yep.

Getting, we got a pseudonym that day. We got our first fake name that day. I did too. And then swearing in your oath of office. And then a rabble-rousing speech about American primacy. That's what we got. Yeah, that's what we got. And then briefings by the head of HR, the head of security, the head of this, the head of that.

Don't cheat on your time and attendance. Yeah. and yeah, whatever. Yeah, don't use your government credit card. Don't use our internal systems to research yourself or your girlfriend's, boyfriend, your family. That's right. So going back to cutting a little bit deeper

to the point you were making about the executive branch and, you know, basically being that, you know, a stroke of a pen can change a law, and that can be in our favor, you know, geopolitically, you know, throughout the world. Let's go to the current election that is going down right now in United States of America. What is each of your guys view on the current election and like how Kamala got put into office and what's going on with Trump? And what do you think about the idea which most people believe that there was a deep conspiracy within somebody in the government to take out Trump, take him out of the election?

I wouldn't say most people think that. I would say that some people think that. Most people online are fucking stupid. Amen. So, John, I'm going to let you answer first because I already have a feeling we're going to have a lot of overlap. So go ahead. I think we will. The deep state.

You can call it the state. You can call it the federal bureaucracy. The truth is that, sure, in places like, you know, the, you know, the, you. CIA, NSA, FBI, even DOD among civilians, or not even just civilians, but even flag officers. You've got people who've been in those organizations 25, 30, 35 years. We had an NIO for warning, a National Intelligence Officer for warning when I was there, 42 years. He had an age waiver. People don't get sharper.

No. The more years they're in government. It's not like it is in public sector. That's right. That's exactly right. So they know that they can wait out presidents. Presidents come and go every four years, every eight years. These guys are there for decades.

If they don't like this president, they just ignore them. They sit on their thumb. Or they slow roll them. For four years, they'll sit on that. They'll do nothing. They'll do nothing. Do nothing. And the president's going to go away, number one.

Number two, what we've seen happen so far this year is not really as unusual as many Americans think. Look at 1968. Look at 1976. But in 68, you had Lyndon Johnson, a very unpopular president, drop out after the start of the primaries. Granted, it was early. The only primary that had taken place at the time was New Hampshire. He got 67% of the vote, said, oh, my God, I'm going to lose, and then dropped out.

Eugene McCarthy was the one that got the 33%. As soon as Johnson dropped out, everybody else jumped in, and Robert Kennedy, Sr., sailed to the nomination. He had enough delegates to win it. The night of the California primary, he's shot and killed in the... in the Ambassador Hotel. The Kennedy family asks George McGovern to stand in for the Kennedy delegates.

About half remained with McGovern, but Hubert Humphrey, who was the vice president, who nobody had voted for, became the Democratic nominee. Okay, so not too terribly different. 76. You have George, I'm sorry,

not George W. Bush, you have Gerald Ford. Gerald Ford was the House Minority Leader a year and a half earlier. But the vice president, Spiro Agnew, was indicted on bribery charges. And so he resigned to go on trial.

Richard Nixon picks Gerald Ford out of the House of Representatives, makes him the vice president. And then in August of 74, Nixon resigns. So Ford becomes president not having won a single vote. Not one American voted for Ford

for either president. or vice president. And here he's the president of the United States. So this is the system that we've given ourselves. It's not the prettiest sometimes, but it's the system. And it tends to work for better or for worse. So it's not so terribly, it's not a coup like Donald Trump says it is. And, you know, he wasted millions of dollars in advertising he said the other night on Fox because he thought he was going to run against Joe Biden. Okay, well, you know what? You're not running against Joe Biden. So toughen up. Third point is, I'm not sure. I think that a lot of this Trump anti-CIA, anti-deep-state thing, I think it's for show. Because Trump had the opportunity to essentially dismantle the CIA. And not only did he not do that, but he named Gina Haspel as the director. Gina Haspel was a consummate insider. You don't get any more insider than Gina Haspel.

Like she actually destroyed documents. Tapes. She put them in an industrial grinder, the tapes of the torture. To destroy evidence. To destroy evidence after specifically being told by Harriet Myers, the White House Council, don't destroy the tapes. This is as demonstratively. What tapes were we talking about? They were evidence of torture.

Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. She got, she literally, she got a message that said. From, from, uh, email. Yeah, it was an email from Jose Rodriguez. Yes, Mr. Rodriguez. I've worked under Mr. Rodriguez.

I did too. So she got an email that said destroy, destroy any evidence related to this. And then she did. Like that's after there's so, that's wrong on so many levels. Oh my God. It's a felony. It's wrong on so many levels. And that's the person who got placed into the director of seat.

Yeah, by Trump. By Trump. You only put someone like that in the seat of the director. If you want them to do what. they're told to do. There it is. That's the purpose of somebody, that's the loyalist. And then, on top of Gina Haspel, who does he name as the National Security Advisor,

but John Bolton, the most neo-conservative, pro-CIA, pro-covert action Republican that was even available for the job? So if Trump wanted to really make a, put his stamp on the intelligence community, He had everybody fooled because he did exactly the opposite. So there's, I mean, there's a couple of other things to keep in mind, right? Neither of the examples from history that John just went through are memorable to any of us. That's right. Exactly.

That's right. Because those candidates, those politicians, the outcomes did not change. They did not move the needle of history. That's right. Interesting. Second, you've also got to keep in mind the institutional demands that exist inside the the Democratic National Convention, the DNC, right? And the representation of the political,

of the democratic process in the United States. Joe Biden, according to the laws of, or the system of the transference of power, he can't nominate someone else. Like, he has to demonstrate his faith in the democratic system. So when he steps down, there's only one person that he can actually endorse.

That's exactly right. And I'll add something. That's his vice president. If he were to endorse anybody else, that's basically saying, I don't believe in the Democratic system. Yeah. Scandal. Because if he's shot, if he's shot, or if he has a heart attack or if he's lost in some tragic accident, guess where the country falls. Just like it falls to her anyway.

So he has to follow that process just to demonstrate his loyalty to the Democratic system. That's right. And I'll add one thing. The Republican Party is far, far more likely to nominate an outsider than the Democrats are. The Democrats have made their system so that it is impossible for an upstart or an outsider to win the Democratic nomination. In 1972, Richard Nixon was afraid of running against Edmund Muskie. Muskie had been the senior senator from Maine, and he was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Everybody loved Ed Muskie.

He was the vice presidential nominee for the Democrats in Singapore. with Hubert Humphrey. He later actually became Secretary of State under Jimmy Carter. But anyway, Nixon was worried about Muskie, and he was worried about Kennedy. But then Kennedy killed Mary Joe Capechny. And, well, he killed Mary Joe Kepechnie, and Kennedy didn't run in 72. So Ed Muskie is a threat to Richard Nixon. So Nixon had the plumbers, you know, the plumbers, spread a rumor.

about Muskie's wife. And Muskie gave this famous press conference in the snow, and the fact that it was snowing becomes important, in New Hampshire where he defends his wife. Now, the conventional wisdom is that he began crying in this press conference. He says that a snowflake landed on his cheek right under his eye and melted. And it looked like it. It looked like a tear.

Okay, you look at it. He's clearly crying because he's so insulted that his wife was insulted. They called her a whore and all kinds of stuff. And everybody's like, oh, my God, Ed Muskie's a crybaby. We can't nominate him for president. And so he drops out of the race. Then you've got Eugene McCarthy saying, hey, remember me? I got a third of the vote against Linda Johnson four years ago.

People are like, yeah, but you're kind of a closet communist and you're a hippie, and we can't do you either. And so George Wallace is like, what about me? I'm a Democrat. No, you hate black people and you're a racist. We can't nominate you. And all these Democrats are jumping in. And then George McGovern all of a sudden starts winning delegates. Nobody wanted George McGovern to be the Democratic nominee. That's what you're seeing happening with Kamala Harris right now. Exactly. The president stepped down. He only has one choice. He has to endorse the vice president. He has to. And then the Democratic National Convention and the party. There's no George McGovern. The party can't stand opposite of the president. the democratic process. So where the fuck else are the delegates? Like who's not going to support Kamala Harris of the party? Precisely. So the delegates all say yes. All the other, all the other people who were trying to run for Democratic ticket, they're all going to say yes because they don't want to be blacklisted and not get to run in the future. The American people haven't had a chance to vote yet. And this is why the Democrats created the system of superdelegates. Right. After 72, they said there will

never be another George McGovern. We're going to make these superdelegates. So every Democratic elected official at the federal level and every Democrat in the state party apparatuses will automatically become Democrats and they will, by their very nature, endorse the party candidate. So Kamala Harris, Kamala Harris was already nominated, what, yesterday, I think it was, or the day before, in a Zoom call. Seriously, front page of today's New York Times. So the convention next week is just for show. Now let's take this conversation back to where John and I started. Are we ideologically driven by rule of law? No.

Or are we just promising one thing and doing something different on the back end? Right? And that's what's happening right now. Is the opinion of the American people is being shaped in favor of Kamala Harris. Yes. Because she doesn't have anything of her own to stand on. Three weeks ago, she was polling lower than Joe Biden. Yeah.

Today she's the savior of the Democratic Party. Right. It's crazy how the public opinion has shifted and the media has shifted. The public opinion has not shifted yet. There is no voice to the public opinion yet because they haven't cast a vote. That's what's so fucking important, dude. Right. But you're right.

Talking about the media. The amount of advertising. Here's the thing that makes me laugh the most. When you look up anti-Harris videos, when you're on YouTube, anybody on YouTube who hasn't seen this, I don't know where you're, I don't know what YouTube you're watching. You'll find videos that are that are talking about. why Kamala Harris shouldn't be president can't be president whatever else and as soon as you click play the first ad you're going to see is a pro Harris ad right so so so not only is their advertising so sloppy not only are they just pushing as much out there as they can because they have

a hundred hundred million dollars in the bank for the Biden Harris campaign right it's really easy to make ads for Kamala Harris because they're they're like they're they're just B-roll their B-roll and her saying a message right it's much harder for people to do anything for Trump. Yes. Let's test this right now. Can we test this right now? Yeah, let's watch. Yeah, we got, we don't have, we don't have, oh, he's on premium. I already searched her. Oh, he's on premium so we won't get the ads. I just type in 2024 presidential ad and Kamala Harris is the, well, what's the, we, we should just search for just Kamala Harris, right? Yeah, do a search, do a search for something like Kamala Harris should

not be president. Okay. Harris. See what, yeah. See what comes up. Okay, why Kamala Harris should never be present. Now let's click on that and I want to see what the ad is. So there's not going to be an ad. I'm on premium. We're on YouTube premium. Son of a bitch.

Can you sign out of premium? Is there a way? I can find, uh, okay, yeah, there we go. Yeah, so your point is like if they were actually paying attention,

they wouldn't be targeting hate, hater videos on her for their own ads. Exactly. Exactly. That's the one person you're not going to convert, right? So there's clearly just, we need to blow as much money as possible. Right.

And we need to pump it out quickly because what do they know is happening. They know that the Trump campaign is changing all of their messaging now to attack Kamala Harris, which is why you're not seeing a lot of Trump ads. You're not seeing a lot of anti-Harris ads because they're working on them. They're making them. Yeah. And you can't come out with one ad every week. You need to come out with like 12 ads at the same time so that you and I and all the American people see the same ad. So I'm saying that because public opinion is currently being shaped. And this is how it is being shaped by the process that we have made our electoral process, right? We have made it so that the far left and far right have already made their decisions. It's all the unnamed voters in the

middle who have yet to decide. And up until three weeks ago, their decision was between two old white men. You're absolutely right. And you know, you go on a lot of these sites. I do this every year just for fun, just to see what the result is going to be. The libertarian, party always has one of these Q&A things where they'll they'll ask you about all the major issues of the day you click on what your position is and then they'll they'll place you on a on a graph to show you are you progressive are you conservative are you libertarian are you status and they'll they'll tell you which candidate you most closely align with I consider myself to be a part of the libertarian left

right and I always always always match almost perfectly with the libertarians always not with the Democrats or the Republicans and then second is like usually you know the greens or something like that but everybody should do that you know I remember asking my own mother you mean voting your conscience I know right everybody should vote their conscience oh you know what they say the lesser of two evils is still evil it's true it's true but all of that is to say that that what you're seeing right now, Americans are interpreting the support of delegates and the support of delegates, the support of donors, the support of whatever, the influx of donations. They're interpreting that to be support and unity behind a candidate. Right. It is not. No, it's not. It is a practiced behavior

expected of you to survive inside the Democratic National Convention's system. If you violate their system, you will be taken out of that system and you will not have a chance in the future. And interestingly, the democratic system of nominating a candidate is far less democratic with a small D than the Republicans. Yeah. Far, far less. You don't have a choice. Like, you, unless you are registered and identifiable. and groomed and invested and show loyalty and have a history of whatever.

Like, you don't even get the opportunity. Sounds like a cult. Yeah. Yeah, it does, doesn't it? Yotsie. John, you made a point earlier that Trump was very, seemed to be pro-CIA, working with the CIA when he was president last time. Do you think that he is going to be sort of pro-establishment?

that's, do you think he's still on that trajectory ever since the assassination attempt? I think probably less so. There's been, there have been rumors lately that if he wins, he, he's considering naming Rick Rennell as the CIA director. Who's that? Rick Rennell is an odd character. He's a fundraiser. He's openly gay. Um, he was nominated, not even nominated. He was, he was ambassador to Germany. The Germans hated him, threatened to expel him. There he is. And now there's talk that if Trump wins, he'll end up as either National Security Advisor, Director of National Intelligence, or CIA Director.

I've met Grinnell a couple times. He's teaching a class over at George Washington University right now. He's not a guy that I'd necessarily like to hang out with. But I could think of a lot worse people, you know, to be considered for a position like that. So the other thing to keep in mind is don't mistake Donald Trump wanting to have the CIA as him being pro-CIA. That's a good point. It could just be pro-capability

because you get, when you're the president, CIA is in your back pocket. Yeah. Like the branch that CIA falls under is the executive branch. Right. So it's like the toy that sits on the shelf that you play with only when you want to.

Whereas if you throw away the toy, you don't ever get the toy. But with CIA comes a whole suite of capabilities. That's right. And a whole building of people that can't say no, because without you, they have no purpose or job.

If anything, the massive attrition that CIA has been experiencing since 2016 when Trump won the election was when people really started waking up at the agency, started waking up to the fact that we serve the president. We don't serve the American people. We don't serve the democratic process. We serve at the behest of the president, the pleasure of the president. So wherever that person goes, we follow. And some people didn't like that.

I think most Americans don't understand that. CIA is one of those very, very unusual organizations where serving at the behest of the president actually means something. I remember when I first got hired, there were old timers still talking about a station chief in the Middle East who had been fired by Ronald Reagan because he was living in sin with his girlfriend. That Reagan had made a trip to the Middle East. There was a dinner at the COS's house, the COS's chief of station's house. the chief said like for Mr. President to meet my girlfriend, oh, are you visiting? Oh, no, Mr. President, I live here. You're fired. I don't allow my people to live in sin.

You can't do that in the rest of the civil service. But at the CIA, we served at the pleasure of the president. And if he doesn't like the cut of your jib or the way you look at him in the meeting, you're out. So now you understand why someone like Gina Haspell would be a good call. Because that's a person who does what they're told to do. Right. So when a call comes down at 2 o'clock in the morning on a Sunday to get something illegal or potentially illegal done, that's the kind of person who says yes. I was on Fox News last week on the Waters.

Jesse Waters Show. And he asked me about that specifically. And I said, you know, this is why if Donald Trump wins the presidency again, and if I had the opportunity to tell him one thing, it would be. please don't choose a general or a CIA insider to lead the CIA. Because the way those people became generals and became senior intelligence service leaders was by saying, yes, sir. Through their all careers, yes, sir. What you need is somebody who has the guts to say, Mr. President, that's a terrible idea.

And let me tell you why. And I think this is what we should do instead. Somebody who's got the guts to tell the president the truth. Right, but it's counterintuitive because that's not the way you get power in the government. Exactly right. And that's what's so difficult. And anybody who's ever served in uniform, anybody who's still serving in uniform, anybody who's ever been in any kind of bureaucratic process that's tied to government,

what they have seen is your first, your new tranche of recruits every year are full of zest and zeal and ideology and passion for what they believe it means to serve the public. Exactly right. And then as every year goes by, they are ground down to a more mediocre average. And then the people who are still have burrs on their shoulders, the people who are still a little bit ornery either find their way out or they get kicked out or they're pulled out in some way. And once you get to the senior most levels of decision making, those people have already, like,

there's a turning point between like seven and 12 years where you really have to. Oh, so true. Where you really have to make your decision. Am I going to make a life out of this? So true. Or am I going to pull parachute and get out of this? An old timer told me, by year 10, you can see who's going to be a leader and who's not. And the ones who aren't are going to leave.

And it has nothing to do with leadership. No. It has to do with whether you're going to follow the bureaucratic process. I mean, we call it riding coattails. Yeah. We call it having grandfather. Having a rabbi. Yep.

All of that. Let me tell you a quick story. And I've told you this story, but it's important. And it bears repeating. So when I was still an analysis, this would have been the mid-1990s. The office that I had worked for, the Office of Leadership Analysis, ceased to exist while I was serving overseas. Under Clinton? Under, yes, Bill Clinton.

So I came back and I was assigned to the Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis. One of the group chiefs, which was a GS-15, the general service scale goes up to 15, and then above that is the Senior Intelligence Service. One of the GS-15 deputy group chiefs was John Brennan. John was, you know, he was a mid-level nobody, a mid-level functionary. What year was this? This was 1996. 96, he was a GS-15.

Yeah. Wow. Which is actually the point of the story. So there was nothing special about John. You know, he had a BA from Fordham in history. nothing special about this guy at all. And he worked for a woman named Martha Kessler, and Martha was something special. She was the U.S. government's acknowledged expert on Syria and had written the definitive book on Syria called Syria Fragile Mosaic of Power.

And everybody had to read Martha's book when you got a sign to Nisa. So Christmas of 1996, I remember this like it was yesterday, he goes to Martha and he says, Martha, I've been your deputy for whatever it was, four years, five years. I think I'm ready for the Senior Intelligence Service, and I want your blessing to apply for XYZ job. She said, I don't

like you. I've never liked you, and you will never be in the Senior Intelligence Service. In fact, you're fired. So, at the agency, you're not really fired. You're shuffled. Yeah, you're shuffled. So if they tell you you're fired, you have six weeks,

to walk the halls and find another job. And if you can't find a job in six weeks, then you're fired. Okay? It's Christmas time. The normal job turnover is in the summer. So there are no jobs at Christmas over vacation. So Brennan is going office to office to office looking for a job. He finds one opening.

It's in the president's daily brief, the PDB staff. And for analysts, you know, If you're serious about analysis, you're going to end up in the PDB staff eventually, either as a briefer or as an editor. They have one opening, and it's for the lowest level, it's to brief the lowest level person entitled to a PDB briefing. And that is the National Security Council's Director for Intelligence Programs, who at the time happened to be George Tenet. so you know john is this short squat ugly pock-faced dude and george is a short squat ugly pock-faced dude tell me how you really feel john yeah both chomping on cigars i won't get into their personal lives but they're equally disgusting um so brennan goes down to the white house introduces himself

to george they immediately hit it off now george had just had a heart attack so he promised wife he wouldn't smoke. Well, there used to be a kiosk at the corner of 17th in Pennsylvania Avenue. It's not there anymore. And the guy sold magazines and newspapers and cigars and gum and stuff like that. So they would do the briefing at the White House, walk over to the kiosk, smoke a cigar. George would go back to the White House and John would go back to the agency. Next thing you know, George is named Deputy CIA Director. So he calls Brennan and he makes Brennan the deputy director. of the office of Near Eastern and South Asian analysis, Martha Kessler's boss. And he calls Martha in on his first day.

And he says, now you're fired. And so she was gone. She packed up her shit and she left. No, we never saw her again. Next thing you know, there's a realignment. And, I mean, he was only in the job for like six weeks. There's a realignment. And they merged a bunch of offices.

And there was a more senior guy who took John's job. job. So George made John, he says, listen, you're going places with me. So I'm going to make you station chief in Riyadh. Direct line of communication between the director of the CIA and the king himself. And he's there for like five years. Well, this also gives him operational experience, which he had never had. So then he comes back from Riyadh. They make him the executive director of the CIA, the third ranking officer in the entire C. CIA. And then from there, he becomes the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, the first one, by the way. Then he becomes the Deputy National Security Advisor for Counterterrorism. Then he becomes the director of the CIA. Now is a CBS voice. Yeah. Yeah. Does anybody remember Martha Kessler or know what she's doing? There's some really important lessons here. Yes. Right. That are absolutely worth highlighting. One, this is the way our government,

works. What is true in CIA is true in Department of State, is true in Department of Energy, is true in the Department of the Interior, the D&I, the DHS, FBI. And everybody who's in those worlds knows it. And everybody who's not in those worlds thinks that somehow we promote from within based on meritorious service and outstanding accomplishment and outstanding achievement and that the American government gets this reputation in movies and books that somehow these organizations are super elite. Right. We are not the most talented people leave or get forced out

because the only way that you climb to the top is by becoming a company person. By acknowledging and accepting and being grandfathered and godfathered, it's not based on your meritorious service. It's not based on what you accomplish. It's based on who you know and the politics within each building and your ability to work within those politics. And this is a fantastic example of the director of CIA

when, like, the leadership of that role fired a recognized expert that could actually move the dial to benefit American national security interests, but out of personal spite, sent her somewhere else. There's a famous quote by Gamal Abdel Nasser, the president of Egypt.

I actually printed it and I had it hanging at my desk. And I was able to verify that he actually said this. It's not apocryphal. He said, the thing about you Americans is you never make clear-cut stupid decisions. You always make complicated stupid decisions, which makes us wonder if there is something to them which we are missing. And it's because these are the people making the stupid decisions. And that's a great quote because you also have to look at it through the eyes of Arab culture. Arabic culture, whether it's collegi or otherwise, is so calculated.

and so careful that there's an intent and a purpose behind everything, right? They're very, very, these are people who had to survive in the desert. So they're somehow both hospitable and ruthless. There's a level of patience, and then there's a point where you cross that line of patience. And they never show you,

like they're expert negotiators, because they never show what they're actually thinking. When they see us through their eyes, they think that we must also be expert negotiators, experts at hiding something. And when we do these nonsensical things that seem stupid, they think... It's just so smart they can't figure it out.

Yes. When it's really just stupid. It's just stupid. I remember when Saddam Hussein began pulling out of Kuwait. George H.W. Bush said the clock is ticking February 2nd. We're going to start bombing. And then on the first,

Saddam started withdrawing from Kuwait. I remember Yasser Arafat giving a press conference and just saying, genius. Genius. Because he figured he can't be actually withdrawing. Right? There has to be some incredibly deep military strategy here. No, he was just withdrawing. Yeah.

I think China may have figured it out that we're just fucking stupid sometimes. Good point. Right? Because as soon as we left Afghanistan, they swept right into Afghanistan. and started signing deals and everything else. So it's not like they thought there was some kind of long-term strategic play there. They were like, oh, nope, America's just leaving behind half a pie. And we're going to go eat the shit out of that pie.

Right. Whereas everybody else is looking at it. They're like, there's something wrong with that pie. They poisoned it or something. That's right. There's no way they're leaving. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. You've hit that on the head. So it's just, it's frustrating because, you know, from the outside looking in, we see that happening for these internal services. And America doesn't know that that's the truth of it. And at the same time, I still very much love CIA and the mission of CIA and the purpose of CIA. And it's the work that those people are doing is incredibly important, incredibly relevant, incredibly powerful. So I still want to encourage people who want to go down that road to go down that road.

But at the same time, bail the fuck out. When you've been able to serve a year or four years or six years or eight years or ten years, when you run into that wall, get out. Get out and go do something else with the talent that you have because you will start to believe that you are not good enough if you stay inside because you'll end up being gaslit by the system. And that's part of the culture in the CIA is the longer you're there, the more the culture convinces you that you can't do anything else. Yeah. Your skills are so unique. Your training is so specific. You can't do anything else.

And that's just simply not true. Yeah. And it's sad. It's sad to see it from the outside. but at the same time I also understand that it's required because we need the best people in the world to get in there. Okay, what do you guys make of this shooter that shot Donald Trump? Do you think that he was just some lone idiot

or do you think that this was a intentional gap left in security by the Secret Service? So I'll go first on this, John, because there's a, I see this, Occam's Razor, I see this as shit happens. So you think, like shit happens. Okay. If you're going to look at this instance and you're going to look at it with any kind of statistical relevancy, you have to look at every public presentation by every politician over the last 300 to 3,000 public presences. Right.

Where the Secret Service was in charge of security. When you put this against a statistically relevant number, you realize this is the exception. That all those public appearances, all those speeches, all those presentations where they're, was no act of danger, where there was no threat, where there was no, nothing that the American people knew about. That was the Secret Service doing a good job at the time. Whereas what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania is different. It's different because what people don't want to accept is that there's always gaps. Always. It's never perfect. There's always a chance for tragedy. There's always the opportunity for a perfect storm. It's just that we happen to see it this time.

Is it always the case, though, in these situations where the actual counter sniper has a scope on the guy with a gun on the roof that's like 200 yards away? That's part of the bureaucracy. You got to ask this guy for permission to shoot, and that guy has to ask the chief for permission to shoot. And by then, you know, the sniper's already shot. Right. That's people don't like to accept it, but they have to accept it. That there is a process. There's a process.

Because here's the thing. If the sniper on the roof were to have seen Who the fuck knows? A little old lady who's chasing her cat Up a wall If he blows the head off an 85 year old lady Who's chasing her cat That's fucking a nightmare, right?

And that's not something that people That's again a demonstration of the incompetence Of the Secret Service. So there's a process. Call something in, get something approved. I don't know what the process is for Secret Service But they don't just get to make autonomous decisions. Right.

But I think the guy even said during the, when they were getting questioned by Congress, is that the sniper asked like two minutes before that he told them that is whoever the next person in the chain of command was that he had the guy on the roof, saw that he had a gun. And they still denied him. Like it's not like it was a guy on the roof eating cotton candy. It was a guy on the roof with a rifle. You know, the LA Times had a very interesting opette about this. The day or two days after it happened. And they said, we've so convinced ourselves that the Secret Service is the Secret Service that we see in films. Right.

Right? They're all Superman. They really are. And they're expert marksmen and they're smart and they're athletic and they're out there just doing God's work. In fact, these are the guys that, you know, went to Columbia with the president and all got prostitutes and then didn't pay them and got in trouble. And then one guy left his badge and his gun in the hotel room with the prostitute by accident. They're idiots. They have their heads up their asses, half of them.

He said, these are the guys who, when Obama was president, a guy climbed over the White House fence, ran all the way to the door, to the front door of the White House, got inside the White House. Right. And nobody stopped. He got halfway up the steps, you know, into the residential quarters. So why wasn't he stopped? Because the guy in the booth thought that the guy at the fence was going to stop him. The guy at the fence missed him and said well the canine's going to get him The canine guy didn't get him because he was on the phone with his girlfriend and then the guy inside said I don't want to get him because the dog is going to come and I don't want the dog to bite me

Shit happens shit happens we're not bulletproof now that you realize hopefully now that every now that the world is hopefully waking up the world that listens to Danny Jones is hopefully waking up to the fact that there is not a promotional cycle of meritocracy and side. So good people don't go up the chain. Nope. Yes. And on top of that, you've got this inherent bureaucracy that makes every decision needs three other people to sign off on it. And the process that's in place, nobody wants to get caught, you know, with their hands in the cookie jar or breaking the process or whatever else. So that slows everything down. So now you have a bit of a competency question with a guaranteed timeliness question. And then on top of that, you have to add in the variables that come from

the actual person or the threat in the case of the Butler County shooting, the threat themselves and what the threat intends to do and the capacity and capability of the threat. All of those things go into every situation, right? It's just, it's the nature of the game. It's not just secret service. It's also FBI. It's also special operations. It's also CIA. It's also NRO. Like the most elite organizations out there are still built on the backs of people. Now, I'm not going to say they're all, You made a statement. I made a generalization. That's probably not fair.

That's harsh. So I'm not going to say they've all got their heads up their ass or anything like that. They are hardworking people trying to do the right thing. But they also know that if they do the wrong bureaucratic thing, their career is over. Right. Yeah. Totally understood about the people who work within the Secret Service. So what's more likely?

A second secret shooter and a great conspiracy that was devised by the Democratic Party and kept hush-hush. and we still haven't discovered. And they farmed it out to a 20-year-old? Right. As a patsy? Right. Is that more likely? Or is it more likely that maybe somebody didn't answer a walkie-talkie call fast enough?

And they didn't coordinate closely enough with the local sheriff and the sheriff's deputies. And as a result of that, some fucking whack job got on a roof and shot a gun. What's more likely? Yeah. See, I don't know. I've been going back and forth with this in my head ever since it happened. I don't know what it's been like almost three weeks. now, right? And it just seems like

with all the footage that was released, and then let's just like take a little time machine and go back in time and look at all the shit that Trump... I mean, I'm looking at it from the perspective of just like a citizen who doesn't have any experience in the government or working for CIA. We see

Donald Trump getting shot at. Before that, you have all these trials they're dragging him through. Before that, you have all of the other things that are coming out with like the Stormy Daniel stuff. Before that, you have the Hunter Biden laptop story

which was a literally 51 CIA agent signed a piece of paper saying that it was disinformation and these are like apparently like legitimate high level I worked with 40 of them

right yeah signing off that it was disinfo when we find out in fact it was not it wasn't right they knew it wasn't right they knew it

they were all hoping listen at that level everybody wants to be CIA director national security advisor or secretary of defense and that was their effort to suck up to joe biden hoping that they could cash in on it later i hate to i hate to sound like that but that's the way it works that's just the way it is

that's the way it work john brennan you know i'll tell you another thing about john brennan um he was in this cohort of people who a very senior people who retired all around the same time and half of them went to the um to the john mccain campaign and half of them went to the john mcane campaign and half of them went to to the Hillary Clinton campaign. And he was literally the only one who went to Obama, the only one. And he saved himself. And then after Obama won, he told everybody who would listen that he wanted to be the Secretary of Defense.

Because that's just the way it is. You keep moving up higher and higher and higher and higher. And then you get the $6 million book advance. And then you get a center at some university named after you. and you appear on the news networks and you live happily ever after. That's what they all have as a goal. Why? I mean, it's important to understand the why, okay?

What John is saying is right, and that's, there's no way that's going to deny it. There's nobody that's going to tell the truth and deny it. You don't get to be SIS II because you're so dedicated to American national security. You work long hours and you're so smart. You get there because you know that the only other option besides going up the chain

is to stay mid-level or senior enough that at retirement hopefully you get to hold on to 50% of your base pay when you retire. That's right. Because you're... And I mean, top-tier salaries at CIA, top-tier salaries right now at Sierra per what, what, 170?

Yeah, 180. So when you... You're not doing it for the money. So 20 or 30 years. Let's just say you serve for 30 years. Plenty of people serve for 30 years. They start when they're 24. They retire at 54.

They were making $170,000. They built their lifestyle for $170,000. They're 50 years old, which means they've got kids in college. They've got a spouse who's probably still working. And now their salary gets cut in half. So now they go from making $170,000 a year to making $85,000. $85,000 a year. But they have a $17,000 lifestyle living in Northern Virginia and Feltway.

And five or 10 years of mortgage payments left. Yep. So what are they going to do? what are they going to do? You become a contractor. Right. You flip your clearance into something else. And this is something Trump tried to stop, right?

That's something Trump tried to stop. But the only other option you have, besides flipping it into a contract, is to get the book deal to become some spokesperson for a news origin. Like, you have to have something to carry you because you can't live off of $85,000 a year on $17,000 of your lifestyle. And you have no future plan. You have a TSP where you've stashed away three and a half percent every year. That's it. Threat savings plan. And you can't touch it until you're 67 or something years old.

67. Right? So it's a financial reality that government employees have to play by the rules after about year 12 if they have any hopes of building the next round of income when they retire. Whereas anybody who leaves, you have many, many more options in the commercial sector. Because you can build your own product, build your own business. You can invest your money in five or seven different ways. you can make more money and less time.

So it's just, that's why the people who stay in oftentimes are, they end up being these shells of kind of mediocre performers. Right. Because they have become so focused on just how to survive, how to survive now and how to survive later. They still want to do the right thing. They're still public servants, but they're also trying to deal with divorces and trying to deal with kids going through school and trying to go with like, it's not easy, man, with two and a half weeks of vacation a year. Is private, would you say private intelligence is more effective than traditional government CIA intelligence? No. Not more effective.

No. No. It's got benefits, but it's not more effective. It's relying essentially on open source intelligence, press. And the CIA does that anyway. Okay. There's also an element with private intelligence where they can do things that can't be sanctioned by the government. But they also don't have the resources or the training or the talent pool to pull from. which is how you end up having a bunch of contractors captured on the bank of Venezuela.

Exactly right. You don't have the protection from risk. You know, that black passport that says diplomat at the top of it, that's the worldwide get out of jail free card. And if you're private, forget it. You're on your own. That's why they make a ton of money. Look at Venezuela.

But they take a ton of risk. Speaking of Venezuela, I just had a guy in the podcast two weeks ago, John Perkins, he wrote a book called Economic Hitman. He's a great interview. Confessions of an economic hitman. man, and he had a job with a consulting company to go around the world to, I guess it was poor countries and convince them that they needed loans from the World Bank or the IMF or whatever it was. The United States would give them these massive loans that they knew they could never pay back.

And in return, we would say, oh, that's fine. Just, you know, we'll take your resources. And he was explaining to me that China figured out how this wasn't working. especially when countries started to go, I forget, I think it was Ecuador is one of the ones that said no. Argentina. Argentina. We had Argentina by the balls. And then, you know, conveniently the presidents of Panama and I think Ecuador got killed in plane crashes.

And what he was explaining is that China's figured out this loophole and figured out where we messed up in this whole situation. So they can go in and basically give them money with no strings attached. And they could get to come in there, build roads, you know, the whole belt and road thing, build, you know, airports, whatever. is there Chinese influence in Venezuela or no? Very little. Very little. Okay. And it's in the oil sector. You know, the thing about Venezuela, traditionally, we used to have good relations with Venezuela.

They used to be a rich country. They used to be very successful. The largest proven oil reserves in the world now. But the thing is, Venezuelan oil is very, very dirty. It has unusually high levels of sulfur in it. And there are only two places where you can refine that oil. Texas and now China. And the Chinese just built a refinery in the Caribbean.

So for decades, yeah. They own a big chunk of the Caribbean islands. Yeah, it's true. And that's just in the last 20 years. What island did they build the refinery on? No, I knew this. Steve, maybe you can find it. I wrote it up bed and I don't remember anymore.

So it's important what John just said. In the last 20 years. What has America been doing for the last 20 years? Yeah. Fighting wars. That's it. That's right. That's where our money is gone.

And the Chinese were smart to that. That's why, you know, I was in China, I guess, let me think. I was there in April. The first time I've ever been. No, it's Caribbean Islands owned by China. Caribbean Island oil refinery. Everything is brand spank and new. Glittering, gleaming cities.

It's incredible. Their airports are first class. The shopping, their roads are beautiful. And then you come here, you're flying to JFK and you're like, what? JFK is hell on earth. It's awful. Is it worth it? Oh, my gosh.

It doesn't even compare. Really? Oh, no, I'll take Miami. It's pretty bad. LaGuardia has hope JFK is a shit show. It is. It is. No idea how New Yorkers do it.

It's stunning. Thank God for EW.R. And for so many travelers, like, that's their first glimpse of the United States. You know, you land and you're like seriously? Well, it feels like the rest, it feels like a third world country. It does. So, I mean, at least they are. landing in a place it feels like home.

St. Croix. St. Croix. Yep. St. Croix, 2022. Venezuela is completely different. And what's happening there is totally different. You can't look at Venezuela without looking through the lens of its history of strong men leaderships, right?

Going back to like the late 90s when Chavez took over. That place had, it is a playground for influence operations for every major place. player in the world, right? But it's totally unpredictable. You have no idea what's going to happen there. All you know for sure is that there's going to be some sort of, of central government play catering to poor people to make them take action on something they don't understand. That's Venezuela.

There's no proxy war there. No. What's made things worse, though, is sanctions. You know, we've been sanctioning the living shit out of them, right? Yeah. We sanctioned the living shit out of anybody we don't like. Everybody. And we've overplayed that hand.

For sure. Because now people are like, you know what? Fuck your sanctions. We're going to go to the Chinese. Bingo. All our sanctions have done, our sanctions combined with a 20-year global war on terror, have allowed a competitor in the marketplace to rise up. So now if you don't like American financial work or financial systems,

you can choose Chinese financial systems. If you don't like American weapons systems, you can choose Russian or Chinese weapon systems. If you don't like American telecommunications, you can choose Chinese telecommunications. You don't like American-made vehicles. You can choose Chinese-made vehicles. China's done a fantastic job of getting themselves to a place where they are a viable alternative to the United States for developing nations. It's not first-class, first-world stuff, but it is absolutely good enough for the third world.

Absolutely true. What was the story, I'm sure you guys are familiar with the 2020 story where there was. was like a boat of like mercenaries that went a shore in Venezuela. That's what we're talking about. Yep. The private piglets. Yeah. But yeah, private contractors who were hired to do a very dangerous thing, underfunded,

probably, you know, probably trained adequately. I heard that they were backed by the U.S. no? Probably not. If they were, it was through a series of cutouts. Cutouts. Okay. Got it. So essentially the reason

And it's hard to navigate Like why Elon Musk is You know He's been obsessed with Venezuela the last two weeks So why is that? Because he's Elon Musk guys Elon Musk is a fantastic example Of say shit all the time

And when you're right Everybody's like Oh my gosh Elon Musk is a genius He predicted this Right And when you're wrong everyone forgets My favorite My favorite example is ever

is Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnold Schwarzenegger did an interview once where the interviewer was like, you know, Mr. Schwarzenegger, you've done a lot of movies and why have you done so many bad movies? And he was like, because nobody remembers my bad movies.

But I had to do a lot of movies to get enough good movies that people remember. There you go. And when you think about it, right? What movies do you remember Arnold Schwarzenegger in? And I'll bet you have movies that just rattle off in your brain. Right, sure.

Big, big name movies. Terminator. Yeah. He was also in a bunch of bad. movies. Can you list more than two of his bad movies? Nobody can. And that's the human experience. Elon Musk is just a he's a fucking autistic dude who understands the math behind it. So he just talks about whatever is on his mind at the time. And eventually it either turns out to be right and everybody gives him credit for it or it's wrong and nobody notices or remembers.

So we essentially are only interest in there being a dictatorship in Venezuela. is because we want the oil. We want to, I think Trump in, am I right? When Trump was president, there was a guy who was running against Maduro who wasn't even he wasn't even an actual candidate. Juan Guido. He was a graduate student at George Washington University. This is, this was fucking John Bolton's genius idea.

They didn't like, they didn't like the result of the election. Now, one of the things that people forgot is the likes of the National Association of a attorneys, the Carter Center, the United Nations, they sent election observers, just like they did last week. To Venezuela. Yeah. And they said, yeah, there were a couple of problems, but not enough problems to change the outcome of the election. For all intents and purposes, it was fair enough and legal enough. We didn't like that. At least as fair as ours, right? Yeah, seriously. So they said, no, no, we recognize Juan Guaido, Juan Guaido, this kid from from Gwede, from Gw. university, he's going to be the new president of Venezuela. And then, of course, we bully the

European Union to jump in and say, yes, yes, we recognize Wang Guido. Well, Wang Guido didn't know anything about running Venezuela. In fact, I remember a public opinion poll where most Venezuelans didn't know who Wang Guido was. Most Venezuelans don't know much, though. Yeah, well, that's true. Although they're very good at kidnapping. They learned it from the Colombians. Yes. So I remember John Bolton taking questions in a press conference where one of the reporters said, but Mr. Bolton, what about the permission in the Venezuelan Constitution that says that if the president doesn't take the oath of office within 30 days of the election, that he's no longer the president? And Bolton was like, because he had never read the Venezuelan constitution.

It said, we just wanted to impose this guy. This is going to be our guy, whether you like it or not. And one guy I never went back to He's in Washington a week ago I saw him at some think tank So I don't So I mean I want to come back to this John Because you just use the correct word The correct word about how the United States engaged

Yeah About how the United States engages with the UN Would you grab me one? Yeah And you said that they We went in and we bullied the UN to get them on our side Thank you Oh it doesn't matter

So again go So So you have made You have made some significant decisions in your life. Sure. Based on principles and ideology. But you know that the United States bullies.

We bully the UN. We bullied NATO. We choose which court system we use to approve whatever illegal process or whatever seemingly questionable process we need. I just... I don't understand why you would gamble with your life, the way that you have gambled

with your life. Knowing what the fuck you know, man. I know, right? Why would you do that? Yeah. I know what I can talk about. I often ask myself the same question. What the fuck, man? You know, I really believed at the time that somebody was going to say something.

Because I remember seeing these cables coming back from the secret sites. Mostly from OMS people, Office of Medical Services. Mostly from OMS people saying, look, I took an oath to do no harm. I'm not doing this. you know we had we used to call the doctors that were reviving up as a beta so that he could be tortured more we used to call them dr mengala right oh dr mingala's out at the site and then we had we had nurses that would that were fainting during the torture sessions we had people curtailing their their assignments if you curtail an assignment you send a cable to headquarters saying i'm not doing this anymore i'm coming home that's a career ending decision and i mean we're talking about a dozen people And I thought, well, surely somebody's going to say something. And then nobody did. And then there was one woman, I think I'm not going to say her name because she never said,

she never admitted that it was her. But there was one woman who was escorted out of the White House. Her badge was taken, senior intelligence service. And she was told never to come back because they believed that she had blown the whistle on the secret prisons. And I thought, wow, she's got some balls. That was really a brave thing to do.

She knew what they were going to do. They're going to take her pension. They're going to prosecute her. They didn't, because if she did it, she was extraordinarily discreet. I wasn't discreet. And really, the mistake that I made, I don't regret taking on the agency.

I regret not engaging an attorney before taking on the agency. That was really a critical mistake that I made. If I had had somebody skilled in whistleblower defense or even criminal defense sitting next to me like the A-listers that I had after the fact, I think the whole thing would have turned out differently. Plus, you know, I had strange things happened.

Consequently, two of the FBI agents that were involved in my arrest after I went to prison, called my lead attorney and apologized and said that, that they were ordered to do it. It was a political case. They had to do what they were told.

That meant a lot to me. I got an email from a retired DDCI, deputy director of Central Intelligence, a guy that I had the greatest respect for. The day after I did it, he emailed me and he said, you've chosen a difficult road. I'm glad that somebody did. I only wish I had had the good.

guts to do it myself. And that just meant everything to me. And I thought, you know what? One of my lawyers said something. He said, this case is, you're stuck on the fact that it's you involved in this case. He said, this case is so much bigger than you. People aren't going to remember you. They're going to remember that somebody stood up to the torture program. And so it was worth it. It was worth it. And another thing, too. And Maybe this is getting a little too personal, but you really get to see who your friends are. Oh, yeah, I'm sure. And they're not the people you think they are.

So it's interesting because, you know, you and I didn't overlap at the agency. No, I left in, thanks. I left in 2004. Four, yeah, and I came in 2007. My resignation was effective in 2005. Right. But the one charge that stuck for you for the disclosure of a secret. Identity.

Right. The Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Right. Was Duce Martinez? No. It wasn't Duce. No, no. Oh, somebody else.

The name was never made public. Ah. See, this is the thing about Duce Martinez. They charged me with espionage saying that I outed Duce Martinez. Duce Martinez is on fucking LinkedIn. Central Intelligence Agency targeting officer. Right. It's like, well, you charge me with espionage.

The guy's on fucking LinkedIn. And then he gave a speech at J.M. I think it was, James Madison University. What, it's a day in the life of a CIA targeting officer. And they're like, okay, we'll drop the chart. So it's just, it's interesting to me because, so Deuce went on to become one of the foundational trainers for myself and for my wife. My wife was a targeting officer for CIA, it was.

And Deuce was her mentor. So after meeting him and knowing what resulted as a result of him being, tied to the torture for Obis Zabeda. Yeah. Right. Like that was just, it was, it was frustrating to know that there was a connection there that was made public. You know, he left the agency just after I did. I went to the private sector to one of the big four consulting firms and Deuce went to Mitchell and Jesson. He had been, he had applied for a job at like, I think it was IBM.

There was an analysis job at IBM. He and I used to get together for lunch every week after we both left. And he would call me with these updates all the time about the negotiations with, I'm pretty sure it was IBM. And he called me to say, hey, let's have lunch. I decided to take a job. And I said, hey, great. This was going to be big money for him.

So we get together for lunch at Tyson's Galleria, right? The Chinese place. And he hands me a business card. and it says Mitchell and Jessin LLC and I said, are you out of your fucking mind? You're going to work for these monsters? Seriously? And he said, no, you're wrong about them.

They're good guys. They're patriots. I said, they're fucking the creators of the torture program. I said, how many times have we talked about this? How many times, like into the middle of the night in Pakistan have we talked about how we were hoping that they would do the right thing?

And he's like, yeah, what, the money, it was so good, it's such great money. And I said, man, I think you're out of your mind. And then once I went public, he never spoke to me again, which was no big loss. Because he was on the wrong side of that. I mean, regardless of what you think about Deuce, like he went on to make, he changed some lives for people who were coming up in the ranks. He changed my wife's life. Yeah, he's done some fantastic work. Good.

But the thing is also, I mean, this is where principle and practicality. start to separate, right? Because the torture program was sanctioned when it was initiated. Yes. And the men and women who did the duties, executed the job and executed the duties that were assigned to them

as they swore in their oath. Like, they didn't sleep well either. Sure, I understand that. But in their oath, they swore to uphold the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. And it was a legal program that they were assigned.

to carry out. And you already said what the, if they curtailed their, but was it legal because no court ever ruled that it was legal. No court, they said it was too highly classified to even present to a court. So just take our word for it. That's what, that's what you and Bybee's conclusion was. So the, this is, I found that this is very similar to the argument for Edward Snowden. And Snowden's quote unquote whistleblowing, right? And what oftentimes becomes the argument for whistleblowers in general, whistleblowers are protected and they should be protected. Some are. When they do things the right way. Oh, no, no. To your point about how you would have done differently. What about the case of Tom Drake? I don't know Tom Drake. Tom Drake was a senior intelligence service officer at NSA.

He, his first day was September 11th, 2001. He had been a full colonel in the Air Force. There's Tom Drake. And he became aware immediately after 9-11. of the plan to to initiate warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. So there was a competing software program that NSA had developed that would weed out U.S. persons and target only suspect numbers.

And General Hayden, who at the time was the head of NSA, this is before he went over to CIA, said that 9-11 was the operative. opportunity that NSA had been waiting for to just vacuum up everything and then sort it out later. So Tom went to the general counsel and the general counsel had not been read into the program. And so the general counsel said, I don't know what you're talking about. There's nothing I can do.

He went to the inspector general. The inspector general said that this was over his pay grade and that he should go to the DOD inspector general. He went to the DOD inspector general with documents. the DOD Inspector General leaked the information back to NSA and said you have a rogue officer here which was illegal he was supposed to be protected

when the DOD IG never did anything Tom went to the Hipsy the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence fully cleared staff member turned everything over was charged with nine felonies including seven counts of espionage

on the day that he was was arrested and his house was raided. His wife was also an NSA senior intelligence service officer. And the FBI went and said, we've arrested your husband this morning and we're raiding your house right now. You're either with him or you're with us. And she chose them. So he lost his pension. He lost his five kids. He lost his wife. He lost his house. He lost his career. And then when he went bankrupt, they dropped all the charges. So did Tom follow the proper whistleblower protocol? Absolutely. What's interesting here, though, is that he also didn't get charged.

He was charged. No, he was never convicted. Only because it was the judge that threw the charges out. He ended up taking a plea to a misdemeanor count of misuse of a government computer. Because to save face, DOJ came back and said, look, you got to plead guilty to something. If we're going to drop nine felonies, you got to plead guilty to something. So his lawyer said, think of something that they can charge you with. So he admitted that on his lunch break one day, he looked at Facebook on a government computer.

And so they gave him 18 months of unsupervised release. So we're seeing the technicalities here again, right? Technically, he was not punished criminally for blowing the whistle. It was internal machinations that ended up ruining his life. And that's... That's generous, though. The only reason they arrested him and charged him was because of his whistleblower. But this is the problem with...

Yeah. Yeah. Well, they had counts that they charged him with that were related to his sharing of documentation. Mm-hmm. But the protections for whistleblowers have to do with protections in court. They don't have to do with protections culturally or within the bureaucracy or within whatever else. Like you don't have protections there. Right.

If you violate the culture, you violate the culture. And these are organizations with a culture of secrecy. And I guess I respect the fact that you say it was worth it. You're the one that paid the penalty. You're the one that did the time. You're the one that carries that. Right? For me, I was led into a world of secrets.

I'm going to keep those secrets. I don't see any value in blowing a whistle on secrets because we are always in compartmentation. Yeah, but there's a difference though. But there's a difference, though, between blowing the whistle on secrets and blowing the whistle on a crime. The definition of crime changes based on the interpretation of the law. Yeah, but the definition that is the law now is the definition that I used. You made a call based on what you thought was criminal. that others did not think was criminal.

That's right. And as a result, after time and after the public disclosure of the case, the law was changed. That's your prerogative, man. Yeah. That's 100% of your prerogative. That's why I say it was worth it. But for me, I see it differently, man. Like Edward Snowden.

Edward Snowden's another case where he brought something to light and then the law changed. That dude has never come back to him. United States. He has offered to repeatedly. Repeatedly. The problem is he wouldn't get a fair trial, right? No way. Not a chance. In the Eastern District of Virginia? Right. Please.

Well, he is a criminal, man. That's what I'm saying. The laws may have changed, but he still violated the oath, the secrecy that he took. But his defense is that it is illegal to classify a crime. This is actually in the

U.S. Code. You cannot classify a program for the purpose of keeping it from the American people if it is a criminal act that cannot be the purpose of the classification but any but by nature of what we do there's five other reasons to classify the act yeah but if the act is illegal at its core it can't be classified see and this is this is what argues for an affirmative defense didn't you just say everything we do is illegal we we espionage is illegal we have a card overseas right we and that's where were carrying out the act. Yeah, but what he was saying, he was exposing crimes committed against Americans. He was exposing a program to collect bulk data. Yeah, but that was being collected

against Americans. It was being collected for the purposes of identifying terrorist activity. In part, I think you're being generous. I do. Why does the government need my metadata? Why do they need a facility so huge that they have to build a new place in the Utah wilderness to hold enough data to last 500 years. What do they need my data for? They don't need my data. In fact, not only does the law say they can't collect it, the NSA Charter says they can't collect it.

It's being collected by the service provider anyways. That's okay. How do you say that, how do you say one is okay? Because the law is the law. If the service providers collecting it and the Justice Department needs it, then the Justice Department can get a judge to issue a warrant to get it. That's not a NSA and CIA to collect my data. That's only when you are being looked at as an American citizen for committing a crime as an American citizen.

Which is my constitutional protection. The fact that your metadata exists and it's not personally attributable to you, but it can be used to reverse engineer terrorist activity. And oh, by the way, some terrorists are American citizens. All of a sudden, unless you have something you want. want to hide, metadata is fair game. But do you know who the first person was to pose that question in a public venue that if I'm not doing anything illegal, then who cares? It was Joseph Gerbils. And I don't want to go down that road. I believe in individual freedoms. I really do. I believe that government works for us, that government should be responsive to us. Not that we should

fear government that, well, I just hope a bad guy doesn't get elected or I hope a bad guy doesn't become the head of the FBI or the CIA or NSA and decide to look at me and then put together, piece together some kind of false narrative of something that I did using metadata. You know, oh, he's going to this doctor. This doctor specializes in internal medicine. Maybe he has HIV. So, you know, let's start a... You believe that the government Say that again. You believe that the government is there to support you?

Is that what you said? No, I believe the government should be responsive to me. It works for me. It shouldn't be able to target me. That's where we're fundamentally opposed to that. Oh, I'm sure. Because the government does not work for us.

I'm saying it should. It should not. The government is there to ensure the continuation of the American ideal. That's the purpose of the government. It is not there to serve you. That doesn't even mean anything

of the American ideal. The American ideal means everything. What is that? If every American is destroyed, if every American is killed, with the exception of the people in government, the president, whatever you want to call it, one congressperson, one senator, right? Or one house member, one senator and one,

and the president or the vice president. Then the American government continues. America is defined not by its people, by its government. that's what we went to war with the British about. We could have been colonists, we could have been communities, we could have been people, we could have been collections. But the right to sovereign independence is a government thing. The government exists to survive and serve the continuation of the government of the United States,

not the American people. Wow. That's part of the ideological hogwash that we were all taught in elementary school civics that just isn't true. They're not there to serve us. that's not what the purpose of government is. You swore an oath to protect and serve the constitution of the United States.

That is a document defining the government, a government of the people by the people for the people, but it's still a fucking government, not the people. The people of the United States, through the eyes of the government, FBI, CIA, NSA, the White House, the people of the United States

are engines of economic development. We are there to create the GDP and the flow of economic power that the government can then use to enact national security policies or international policies that benefit the government. That's the cycle. That's the reality of the cycle. I understand if that's not what you want to believe. That's why I'm a libertarian. I mean it. What was it that Jefferson said that periodically the tree of liberty, what did he say? The tree of liberty has to be watered with the blood of martyrs and Patriots. Yeah. I'm ready to fight.

Yeah. Fight for what? My independence. Not fight for your government? No. Where do you think you get your independence from? It's not the government that gives me my independence. 1000% is the government that gives you your independence.

It's the government that infringes on my independence. That is your interpretation. Oh, my God, yes. Oh, yeah. You know, ever since this, of course, my entire worldview has changed since this whole thing. started in December of 2007 for me. And I find myself coming down on the side of some very odd people. We talked about this actually last time. Amen Bundy, right? Amon Bundy is a nut. But do me who that is? Doggone it's got a point. Do you remember this? He's the guy. It all started

with cattle grazing rights. Yes, yes. Okay. Next thing you know, he's in a shootout with the feds. There he is. Amen Bundy. Like, Yeah, what was the story with him? He was, uh... It all started out. He and his dad and his brother and brother-in-law, I think. Um, they got into a dispute with the government over cattle grazing rights in some Western state. And the government's like, uh, you can't graze your cattle there.

And they said, fuck you. Graze our cattle wherever we want, public lands. And so one thing led to the other and the cops or the FBI tried to seize their cattle. And then they, they took over. it was like a they took over a visitor center at some national park and they were all armed to the teeth and then there was a shootout with the cops they all got arrested they all went on trial and then they were all found not guilty I'm like yeah I'm with the Bundys and then they went nuts and said some stupid racist stuff but for a little while I was with the bunnies so you there it is inside the shootout So you want your independence. Don't tread on me. That's what my license plate says.

But you also want the law of the land to be like clear and present and defined. Because you do know that it is the laws that infringe your independence. Well, no. I'm going to take your position and say it's the interpretation of the laws that has infringed. on my independence. Okay. So, super extreme example. You don't have the right to kill somebody.

Okay. The law says you can't kill somebody. Somebody comes to your house, knocks on your door, steals your dog out of the front yard, you shoot them. Your independence would arguably make it so that if they came into your property and they stole your property, you have the right to shoot them. but the law doesn't let you do that.

Well, so which one do you support there? Do you support your independence? If I were in Florida or Texas, yeah, of course I could shoot them. I don't think that's true either. The castle doctrine, right? I wouldn't shoot somebody for, I would shoot somebody if my life were in mortal danger. But no, if somebody's stealing my dog, no. But what takes precedence?

It's not about the example. I'm asking, is it the law or is it your independence? Well, I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. I really don't. The government is what defines the law. The law is what defines what you are allowed to do within the confines of your independence. Yeah. No, but I believe that we can have small government, a clearly defined set of laws, and still the individual freedom and liberty to lead our lives independently of government interference.

I really believe that. Except when you violate a law. Because then there's government interference. But let me, let me throw it back at you this way. Between 2012 and 2022, Congress created 500 new crimes, not 500 new laws, 500 new crimes, things that in 2011 were legal and in 2022 were felonies. Crazy things. I've written about this extensively. For example, there was a man in Alabama who was a commercial fisherman and caught a hell of it that was 11 inches.

You have to be, there it is. Oh, hey, I wrote that. So, good catch, by the way. Thank you for that. Thanks, Steve. Steve's on the ball. He always is. he was like

11 inches 12 inches all right he kept it just so happened that a U.S. fisheries boat was nearby they pull up hey can we take a look at your catch one of the halibates was too small he said I'll throw it back in

it was still alive he threw it back in they charged him with a felony a felony and prosecuted him successfully there's a more egregious example there's a woman working for Noah the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Honolulu. She's a GS-12, so you know how expensive Honolulu is.

She's not making much money. So she and a friend of hers buy a boat, and on the weekends, they take tourists out to go whale watching. They're out there one day, and this case kind of became famous, because it's an egregious example. They're out there one day, and they encounter an orca eating a seal. So everybody runs to the side of the boat. they're taking pictures, they're taking videos, and somebody whistles at the whale, right, just to get it to stay near the service so they can take a video. Okay. A week later, FBI, she opens her door.

Do you have a boat? You take tourists out? Yeah? Did you take them out last week? Yes. Did you see a whale? Yes. You whistle at the whale?

She said, no. Somebody did. but I didn't. But she said, you know what? I make DVDs of the outings and I sell the DVDs to the tourists. So they take the DVD. A couple of weeks later, they go back to her house. They raid the house.

They take hundreds of DVDs. They take her computers. They take her cell phone. They take everything. And then they charge her with a felony count of interfering with a feeding of a wild animal, which falls under the Endangered Species Act. Felony. So she fights it.

This thing drags on for five years. She lost her boat. She lost her business. Noah fired her because she had been charged with a felony. So she lost her federal pension. And in the end, they bump it down to a misdemeanor. She paid a little fine. And that was it.

But she had lost everything in her life. So government is too much. You know, yes, we need that structure to keep us free and keep us democratic and what have you. But 500 new crimes, 50 new crimes a year. It's too much. It's onerous. I don't think we're talking about the same thing, man. Like, I am losing track of what you actually think is important because you started this conversation saying that the legal definition of

terrorism or torture from the 1940s was what we should have adhered to. Yeah. And now what you're saying is there's too many laws. Yeah, that law was perfectly good enough. Why do we need to keep looking at a different way? Who's the one that's going to design? Who's the one that decides? The courts and the courts decided.

And the courts and the courts also are what approved operations for the, for CIA. But the courts never wait in on on torture. Clearly, never did. There are always attorneys. always cleared courts. There are always cleared individuals, always. So why didn't the Bush administration go to the courts and ask for an opinion? I have no idea. I don't know which, I don't know the process by which permission is granted by the DOJ. Oh, I can tell you step by step. I can tell you step by step. That idea went from CTC to OLC, the Office of Legal Counsel at the

Justice Department. They approved it. It went back to CIA General Counsel. from CIA General Counsel went to the Attorney General. From there, it went to NSC General Counsel and then to the National Security Advisor and then to the President. Took about six months. There's multiple legal representatives in there. And no courts.

And they were under the executive of a branch. Yeah, I know. But if you're making a determination that a law that's been on the book since 1946 is not really what it purports to be and the stuff that was outlawed all these years, eh, it really isn't outlawed. We're going to do it a different way.

You need a real legal opinion. An outside legal opinion. So now we're getting into different things, right? No, but what you're talking about is having all these neocons in the room all agreeing with one another and convincing each other that, yeah, this isn't going to be a problem. This is legal. But what I'm saying is just, I don't know whether you're making an argument where you want laws to be set forever or whether you want, or maybe you're, you're making an argument where you want laws to be removed or whether you're making an argument where you want laws to be optional because you're also talking about being libertarian and putting your independence above

government. So I don't know what position you're making, man. I don't know where you're standing. I believe in the rule of law. I believe that when it takes away your independence or only when it benefits your independence. If it takes away your independence, then change the law. That's a part of the rule of law. Then how do you believe in the rule of law if the law can be changed? That's the system that we have. That's the system that we have, but you're saying the system we have is not functioning. But if we, I mean, if we have a system, if we have a system where laws are permanent, then we're going to have what you said at the beginning of this conversation. We're going to have children working in the minds and women not being allowed to vote and all that stuff. No, no. The constitution is the

living, breathing thing. If there's something that's not working, then you change it, right? But, but passing laws for the sake of passing laws and criminalizing a society that ought not be criminalized is a mistake. Correct. I agree with that. That has to do. That has to do. do with the with the version of government we have right now. Sure. I agree with that. And I'm not saying I want big government, and I'm not saying that government is right.

I'm not saying any of those things. All I'm saying is that the reality is, the government is there to protect itself. It is not there to protect us. I agree. That is a reality. So that's all I'm trying to get at, because I'm just trying to keep track of the conversation

because I am getting lost in the different, the different kind of pillars of ideology that you put out there I'll tell you what from my angle I'm riveted so this is great

so and this is delicious by the way I never heard it's great I love it oh there's a good sponsorship

shout out right there shout out to white rabbit good stuff now I also have to understand John why why are you working

with Russian state media oh because I've got five kids and nobody's beaten a path to my door to give me work. You know, this is all part of the overall plan. It's, again, my lawyer said, this isn't about John Kiriaku. This is bigger. So for people who don't understand Andy's question,

John has been hosting a radio show for a number of years for R-T. Seven years now. For Sputnik Radio. Sputnik Radio. Sputnik Radio. Yeah, Sputnik Radio. The government, I think, or the agency, maybe would have been perfectly happy if I starved to death from lack of work or ended up at McDonald's. And I worked hard to rebuild my life. The only people who offered me a job were the Russians. And when they first offered me this job, I turned it down. And then six months later, they came back and said, we'd really like to offer you this radio show. And I said, you know, the only way that I would do this is if I would.

were free to say anything I wanted and to talk about any issue I wanted. And they said, done. And I said, yeah, but I would want to be able to criticize even Vladimir Putin. Done. And I said, would you put that in writing in the contract? And they said yes. And they did. And I'll give you an example. On the day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I opened the show by saying that I unequivocally condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine and I call for Russian forces to depart Ukraine immediately. I criticize, I'll give you another example. Do you remember in York, England, I'm going to say four years ago, five years ago, a Russian dissident and his daughter were poisoned with Novichuk. We were doing a story on it. And my co-host said, well, you know, it could have been the Ukrainians and a false fly.

flag operation. It could have been the Russian mafia. I said it was a KGB or whatever they're calling themselves. Now they've been poisoning people since the 50s. This is what the Russians do. They poison people. Of course it was the Russian government. So they let me say anything I want. I've

never ever received any pushback and I make a handsome living. Like I've always said, if CNN's got an offer or MSNBC or even Fox, I'm on Fox at least every other week. I'm all ears.

But, you know, five kids, three of whom still need to get through college, I make no apologies. So then when you became a sworn officer of the United States, what was your intention? Was your intention to make the United States to protect and expand the superiority of the United States? Or was it something else? Did you think you were making a better planet? Because you have to know that by affiliating your name with Russian state media, you might get to say anything you want, but that doesn't mean that's what goes to air. When it gets translated into Russian, it can be whatever they want it to be. It's a live show.

It's an English. It's an internet show, right? It's terrestrial. But they're going to have the rights to make out of it, whatever they want to make out of it. And your name and your affiliation is that is exactly the foundation for how Russian covert influence operations happen. Oh, poor CIA. There's a former CIA guy working for the Russians. He may do some damage to the American government.

Fuck the American government. What have they done for me? What have they done for my children? Do you really want to violate my rights? Do you really not know the answer to that? Come on, man. It was the CIA that put me in prison. What in the world do I owe the CIA?

It was your decisions that put you in prison. It was the CIA's lawbreaking that put me in prison. It was your choice to highlight the CIA's law breaking to media that put you in prison. There we go. So we're in agreement then. Your children's, they live every day under the protection of the United States. They have all the benefits of American citizens. You get to enjoy it.

You're here on an American podcast. You flew on an American airline. You're staying in American protected. What do you think my children's memories are? The police officers driving around the streets right now, all of these people are contributing. to the freedoms that you have. Oh, wow. All of them.

Wow. And you're sitting here saying... You're a true believer. I'm a true believer in the fact that we have to serve the American dream. We have to serve the American purpose. That's what we're here to do. And that's exactly what I'm doing by opposing the American government. You don't oppose the American government by making yourself a voice for Russian state media.

Why not? Because you're not talking out about the American government, first of all. What you're talking out about is Putin's invasion of Ukraine. No, I talk about the American government every single day. So whatever, whoever you're speaking to, you are giving credibility and authority and you're loaning all of your hard work to Russian media for paycheck. I don't see how that's a problem. Because if you didn't come from CIA, they wouldn't care about you. So?

So you're borrowing the authority of CIA. That's what makes you valuable to Russian media. No, I'm able to expose crimes that I witnessed in the CIA, sure. And maybe that gives me a little bit more cash in. John Kiryaku, separate of CIA, would not be of interest to Russian media. So what makes John Kariakou... That's not true. That's not true.

I have a dozen colleagues who have been sort of leaders in their field, have nothing to do with the CIA that also host shows because they bring something to the table. They're leaders in their field. Yeah. Okay. So, I was one of the government's leading experts on the Middle East. Without the government, you wouldn't be of interest. If I had been at the State Department or if I had been in academia, it'd still be an expert on the Middle East? You're pulling everything from government, man.

So what? Andy. I don't see how you think I owe the government something here. I'm not saying you owe the government anything. I'm just saying that the ideals that you had, you must have had in 2000, 1984. 89. 89, yeah. You must have compromised on those ideals.

You must have at some point. I'm a patriot. Isn't questioning the government and holding the government accountable something that the United States was founded on? I don't know the answer to that. Of course it is.

How? Isn't that in the Constitution? I don't know the answer to that either. Can somebody flag where there's any mention of individual accountability to the government? Because I'm pretty sure that's why we are

a representative democracy. It is our representatives who are supposed to do that, not us. What we're supposed to do is be really fucking good at what we do and vote in meaningful representatives to represent the constituents in all forms of government. It is not our job to meddle in government.

It is also not the government's job to meddle in our economic contributions to the government. Unless we violate a crime or violate a law and somehow otherwise ostracists. We're not supposed to, that's why we have representation in the Senate and in

in the house okay so yeah my point with all of this is just there is a there's a very real responsibility in my opinion there's a very real responsibility that if you are going to become a representative of the federal government if you're going to become a sworn officer

of the federal government whether you're in military uniform whether you're plainclosed FBI whether your secret service whatever else we have an obligation forevermore we will never be normal citizens. I think that's nonsense. You can think whatever you want to think. I really do. I really do. If you are a private citizen, your loyalty is to yourself. Within the confines of the law, of course, in the

Constitution. But I don't owe the government anything. I'm not saying you owe the government anything. I'm saying that we have a responsibility. You have an obligation to recognize that we can become tools for our adversaries against the very things that we believe in. specifically because of our affiliation with government organizations. That's just the fact of it. That's what makes us interesting to them. I have no... But how is it different then for the myriad of intelligence officers who sell themselves out to corporate media?

What's the difference? The primary difference is that they're not giving our adversaries an advantage by the connection to their affiliation with a guy. government agency. What advantage though am I giving? You don't even know how they choose to use your information. Of course I do. I see it every single day. If you really think you know what they're doing with your information, you are either willfully ignorance or overly confident. Enlighten me. They can do anything they want to. They don't even have to be using it right now. What are you saying that they're doing, though? They could be. They could be and they're not. Okay, let's just take best practices for covert influence. Best practices alone, right? Best practices are you take somebody's statement and you put

out of context and then you translate it into a different language. Sure. And you use it to promote something in some third world and some third country setting. And if you have evidence man, I would love to see it and I'll put an end to it. Sure, they could do anything they want just like the US can do anything that it wants, but they don't. They haven't. You don't know. Yeah, I don't know just as well as I don't know. Of course I know. Of course I know. Of course you know what Russia is doing with all of your data. The data that you were so passionately against the FBI collecting. What data?

You were so concerned against the metadata collection. I sit in front of a microphone every day and I talk about what's in the papers. That's my job. It's a two-hour news show. That's it. And then I get up and I go home. You talk about your opinions also. Yeah, my opinions aren't a secret.

I give the same opinions on Fox and on MSNBC that I give on my own radio show. It's a difference. It's shocking to me how legal. Your point of view is considering that it was the law that puts you in prison. It's just shocking to me Yeah that you are so legalistic and you're you're making ideological arguments, but selectively choosing when to follow ideology and when to defend yourself using legalisms. Well, that's that's sort of that's a personal ideology, right? We all have these personal ideologies I'm just I am

I guess I'm sad I'm sad for But then where do you draw the line Do you Do you not give an interview To a Turkish outlet Or a Cuban outlet Or an Argentine outlet

I mean pretty much anybody The Five Eyes Can be You know An opponent of the U.S. government On any given issue What do you do?

So From my point of view there's adversaries, current, clear and present adversaries, and then there are unknowns, and then there are clear and present allies.

If you're going to support an adversary, you can justify it however you choose. I don't support the adversary. The adversary offered me an outlet that I gladly accepted. At a bare minimum, your outlet generates revenue for an adversary. Bearest minimum.

So how can you say that you don't benefit the adversary? Well, it's revenue, it's a government-sponsored radio. I mean, there's no advertising, there's no revenue stream. It's like Voice of America. If there is no actual money changing hands, I would be surprised, because there's always got to be money that changes hands somewhere. And you're also talking about- I'm not sure what that means. There's always money.

There's always a funding source. There's always a donor base. There's always an exchange of value. Nothing is free. It's a government-funded radio. funded radio network. Funded by which government? The Russian government.

The Russian government funds a radio channel. Yeah. For which audience? For the American audience. For the American people. Yeah. Using the voice of a CIA officer. Yes.

And you don't see a problem with that. Absolutely none. Do we do that in other countries? Of course we do. And their voice of America. It's called the voice of America. And they are there for influence. They are soft power.

There to win. It's the same fucking thing that, that Tucker Karlson did with Vladimir Putin. So you think it's, so how do you, so what? I think, because you're, there's, there is a, there is a, there is a inlet of influence that's allowed into the United States sanction, that is, that is, that is essentially sponsored by the Russian state media, that is headed by the voice of a CIA officer inside the United States, which, which, which lends, automatically lends

credibility to RT, who is the sponsor of the program. So now anybody who listens to your program, they may like you. They may like what you have to say, but what RT is paying for is for a channel of media exposure into the United States. Good. Maybe I can educate somebody. I'll take it. I'll take it. Seven days a week.

I will take it. This is fascinating, guys. I want to switch topics a little bit. I want to talk about Israel. What is each of your takes on Israel's influence in the United States? United States, not only sponsoring presidents, presidential candidates, but things like APAC, the anti-defamation league, and all the influence that they have here. And currently, how does that tie in with everything going on in the Middle East between Israel and Gaza? And, you know, a lot of

people are fearful that, you know, with the threat of Iran and Israel attacking each other, that's going to drag us into the middle of it, creating some sort of a World War III. So what, what happened on on october seventh of course was was a i mean it was a terrorist attack of historic proportions right the targets were civilians absolutely horrible awful thing snatching hostages and whatnot um at the same time would it hummus think the reaction was going to be on the one hand okay on the other hand we now know from Israeli journalists that the Israeli government was hoping something like this would happen because it would give them what they believe to be the legal authority

to destroy Gaza, not to just destroy Hamas. I mean, Hamas is nebulous. They don't carry ID cards, right? And so they could destroy the whole of Gaza, something that they've wanted to do for a very long time. And they're overt about it. You know, you see, advertisements now. I've seen them in New York, New Jersey, California, at synagogues, where they'll have

what they call real estate seminars afterwards, where you can buy land that's really Palestinian land in Gaza that the Israeli government is planning now to turn into settlements. You know, these comments by Jared Kushner, for example, about beachfront property in Gaza making an incredible opportunity for a beachfront resort, that wasn't an accident. That was the plan. That was the plan. I think the Israelis are guilty of genocide, not a term I use lightly. And, you know, while, of course, I think the Israelis have a right to exist, you know, peaceful coexistence or whatnot, two-state solution, one-state solution. I don't know. But they've gone much too far.

They've ignored the international community. They're going through the motions of ceasefire talks. You know, Netanyahu was in town, what, a week ago? And while he was in Washington, negotiations were ongoing in Rome between Israel, Hamas, the United States, Egypt, and gutter. And when the talks broke up, the Egyptians complained that the Israeli delegation didn't have the authority to agree on anything. They just sat there and stared at each other. So nothing was accomplished. When Netanyahu left Washington,

John Kirby, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said that Netanyahu didn't even pretend to support a ceasefire. He didn't even pretend. There's no hope for a ceasefire. Not until everybody's dead or everything is destroyed. Number one. Number two, man, we don't even have enough time to talk about Israelis in the United States and Israeli involvement.

My very first day at the agency, we had a briefing by the head of security. And he was talking about counterintelligence, which was a new word for me. And he said, he was explaining the difference between declared officers and undeclared officers. So a declared officer is, let's say you're a CIA officer and you're serving in some foreign country. And the station chief takes you to the intelligence service of that country and says, this is my officer. He's a CIA officer and he's here to work with your officers.

You're a declared officer. An undeclared officer is somebody who's serving overseas undercover and is not declared. He's not supposed to be known to that intelligence service. So the head of security told us that at the Israeli embassy in Washington

there are two declared officers, one for Mossad and one for Shinbet. So Shinbet is like the F, not really the FBI, but domestic security. Yeah. This was in January of 1990. He said there were 189 undeclared Israeli intelligence officers that the FBI had been able to identify spread all over America trying to steal our defense secrets. So why don't we wrap those people up and expel them?

Because they're Israeli. They're not Chinese. They're not Russian. They're not North Koreans or Cubans or whatever. They're Israeli. And the Israelis have such a hold on Capitol Hill that it's just not worth the disruption and relations political or foreign affairs to wrap those people up. You just have to kind of hope for the best.

I think I'd probably mention to you in one of our earlier conversations too. I had two friends that I worked with, very good friends from the agency. And when I went overseas on my first tour, they went overseas on. there first. And they went to Jerusalem. Tandem couple, married couple, both agency officers. The wife was the one that actually got the job. So the husband took a

two-year kind of sabbatical to learn how to speak Arabic. So they went. As soon as they arrived, the chief took them to Mossad and said, you already know them. I'm just making it official. They're declared. She's going to be working with your people. And,

he's going to be studying Arabic at such and such a university. A couple of months later, they go to a dinner at the ambassador's residence. And when they got home, all of their living room furniture had been rearranged while they were gone. That was just a message like, we can fuck with you when we want. Is that something that's normal? For the Israelis, yes. They do this kind of thing all the time.

A couple of months after that, they went to a Christmas. party at the ambassador's residence. And when they came back, people had taken shits in all of their toilets in their house. Another message. Right. They finished their two-year tour. The ambassador has a going-away dinner for them.

They go back home. Somebody had cut the dog's tail off and wrapped it in gauze as kind of a going-away present. This is what these were. There was another incident too where the ambassador was being driven back to his residence. This is years ago in the 90s. And two of his tires blew out in his car. So the driver, of course, pulls off to the side.

And these two very helpful men pull up. Oh, what happened? Oh, you want us to help you change the tire? Oh, no, it's two tires somehow blew out. Okay, well, you know, you can call the whatever the Israeli version of AAA. is they drive off. Well, they drove off with the ambassador's briefcase,

which had, you know, personnel folders and whatnot inside. Who knows? I don't know what it had inside. Classified documents, who knows? And it turned out those tires had been shot. That's what the Israelis do.

It's important to understand, and one of the things I don't think many Americans reflect on, is that there's the Jewish faith and then there is the... Israeli government. That's right.

They are not the same thing. Right. And in the United States, what we're trying to promote and protect is the preservation and protection of the Jewish faith. Yes. But what unfortunately happens is that a lot of especially Jewish people who are American citizens get confused even between the idea of the Jewish faith and the nation of Israel. The state, recognized government political state of Israel, right? They're not the same thing. So Israel as a country, as a government, with its own security infrastructure, with its own national priorities, economic national security and otherwise, makes decisions as a nation, a nation that doesn't separate church and state, but a nation nevertheless.

We on the other end here are still confused about whether or not rejecting Israeli policy is the same thing as anti-Semitism. That's a good point. That's an important point. And you know, that's a relatively new phenomenon, too. If you look back at, for example, I just happen to see a YouTube video of Harry Truman's statement when Israel declared independence. It was fascinating because he said that both the Arabs and the Jews hate him because he forced them to work together, neither one of them like the deal, that they wanted to fight in the negotiations. That's how difficult it was. our move in the direction of the Israelis was very slow and very incremental. I remember the Emir of Bahrain saying one time that the last American president to give us,

us, the Arabs, a truly fair shake was George H.W. Bush. And before him, it was Dwight Eisenhower. Otherwise, he said, you guys always favor the Israelis. We actually didn't. But then if you look at administration after administration, going back, to 1948 you can see how drastically American policy has changed and I think it's because we struggle with that issue yeah of equating Israel with Judaism and you know really never the two shall meet right so in US policy so Netanyahu's execution of

wartime policy which is like outside of legal requirements and he dissolved his war cabinet like he's he's an army of one right now basically, right? With his whole... Did he get rid of that one guy, Ben... Ben-Gance left on his own. Or Benny Gantz left on his own, but I'm gonna'amar Ben Gavir is still very much there.

That's what I'm talking about Gavir. Ben-Gavir. And so is Smotrich. Julian was telling me about Ben Gavir saying that guy is like... This guy... There's warrocks. He has felony convictions for anti-Muslim hate crimes. That's how bad this is.

He's a convicted hate crime felon. And he had apparently, he's the guy who had like a portrait of this guy, a terrorist who like blew up some sort of mob. The cave of the patriarchs. Yes, exactly. Had his portrait hanging in his living room. So I think there is a, there's absolutely a stranglehold in the United States about the topic of Judaism and protecting Judaism and safeguarding Judaism, especially knowing that Israel is a safe haven for Jews in an ocean of Islam on both sides, right? Sunni and Shia Islam. So there's definitely an element of that. And then there is a strong

current of wealthy Jewish money, wealthy Jewish lobbyists, wealthy Jewish entertainers, wealthy Jewish everything. Just like there's wealthy Christians and wealthy Muslims and wealthy Buddhists, everything, right? There's an influence that comes from those benefactors in the United States, that we also confuse with thinking that we have to support Israel to support them. But there's also a very real strategic benefit from supporting Israel. We just don't have to support Israel and their policies under Netanyahu in how they execute blindly. Yeah.

Against Hamas. And one of the things people, we're not taught, it's not fucking, it's not about Hamas. No. It's about Iran and it's about Iran's efforts to execute proxy conflict in. all directions around Israel. That's what it's really about. It is. And everybody is talking about the fucking red sparrow.

They're all following the red herring that says that it's about, it's about Hamas. It's not about Hamas. And Hamas is an idea that, unfortunately, with every new Palestinian that you kill, all you're doing is guaranteeing another generation of people who believe in Hamas. Absolutely. Even the FATA government has now shaken hands with, Hamas and been like We're not we but the Israeli The Israeli government drove them to that

It's crazy Abbas is so easily attacked I mean this is a guy that's This is a guy that's 18 years into a four year term As president right He's a buffoon He's corrupt He's mentally degraded

And The Israelis have pushed him into the arms of Hamas Isn't that amazing? It's incredible So on October 6th the legitimate government for the Palestinians was the Fata government, even though the West Bank was controlled by Hamas. And now here we stand in July of 2024.

And the two... August. August. August 3rd. And now where we stand is that both Gaza and the West Bank have met on equal grounds. Yeah.

So the legitimate government that even Israel was saying was legitimate government is now legitimizing Hamas, which is, labeled a terrorist organization by 13 of the UN states, which means only 13 members of the UN, which has more than 100 members, only 13 identify Hamas as terrorists at all. That's a good point.

That's a good point. And, you know, another thing, too, is a lot of Americans either forget or don't know that Benjamin Netanyahu is the most unpopular major political figure in Israel. The latest polls just come out last week show his approval rating at 22. percent. He's wildly Unpopular. Wildly unpopular. Oh, yeah. Even before. Even before October 7th, wildly unpopular. He's got

fraud charges on him, criminal charges on him, corruption charges on him. He's been an out of office multiple times. Vribary, influence peddling. So it's not? And Gantz only slightly higher. When's that from? May. He has an interest in keeping this war

going as long as possible. Absolutely. Because the longer he stays... It defers everything else. I think even Trump said that in an interview. Oh, did he? Back when he was still president, there was an interview where he's like, I don't want to say who it is, but one side does not want to make a deal. There it is. And now Trump just gets a million dollars or a hundred million dollars from the Adelson's. Yeah. And I think this is something else Julian educated me on.

Even in death, Adelson is influencing his wife, Mariam. Yeah. There was a Mossad spy who was imprisoned here who apparently was trying to, Netanyahu has been trying to get him out ever since. Clinton, I believe. Oh, it was Jonathan Pollard. There you go. John Paulard. I'll tell you what, I was, I was, when I was still at the agency.

So just to make sure everybody understands. Yes. Pollard is an American citizen. Yeah. Navy. Of Jewish faith. Right. Who became a spy against the United States.

Yes. Giving secrets to the Israelis. Yes. In what year was that? 85, I think it was. Does it say there? 1984. 1984.

He was apprehended in 85. Right. And then in turn, the Israelis traded the classified American documents, the military documents that Pollard provided them to the Soviet Union in exchange for Russian Jews. Can you imagine that? Wow. Yeah. Yeah, Pollard was a traitor. So every single time, literally, every single time Netanyahu would come to the country, no matter who was president, he would say, you got to release Pollard.

You got to release Pollard. Got to release Pollard. And then Bill Clinton went a little wobbly. And literally every head of every American intelligence agency said, if you release Pollard will resign en masse. Really? So Pollard got 30 years. He ended up doing every single day of the 30 years.

The Israelis gave him citizenship, put him on a plane, and now he lives in Jerusalem. Is it true that Monica Lewinsky was working for the... Israelis and she was some sort of a... Well, I never heard that. No, I can't imagine. Maybe that was some conspiracy I saw. I can only imagine the

conspiracies you must see in here. I see a ton of conspiracies, especially on Twitter. But I heard something that Monica Lewinsky was used basically to get blackmail on Clinton and he wasn't willing to release or he couldn't release Pollard. So that's why they release all the info on

the whole Lewinsky scandal. Too many moving parts. And why did Trump? Why is Trump the one? that and that released Pollard and well Pollard had to be released. He completed his sentence. He completed his sentence. Oh, he completed his sentence.

Okay. And I think I heard that he flew back to Israel on on Adelson's jet. Oh, was it Adelson's jet? That's what I heard. That makes sense. That makes sense. It's, it's, there is no, like, I don't know how to overstate this.

Israel is not a trusted, close friend of the United States. In any way. Not in any way. Listen, Israel, when I was at the agency and granted my information is 20 years old now. But when I was at the agency, Israel was classified as critical threat for counterintelligence. So it was Israel, Russia, North Korea, and Cuba. That's how serious. Not China?

And China. Yes. That's how serious the spy threat is against us from Israel. The problem is they are also militarily, economically, industrially, very practical to have as allies. And then on top of that, you have our commitment to the Jewish faith and the protection and preservation of the Jewish faith. Do you think it's a problem that both presidential candidates are getting millions and millions of dollars from the Israelis in support of their presidential campaigns? like Trump getting 100 million and I don't know how much

Kamala has gotten at least five million right not from the Israelis right this is American Jews this is where you have to differentiate between the country the Adelson okay yeah so it was Mary Adelson right yeah and do I think it's a problem

I mean yeah I mean the whole campaign finance thing is a problem yeah how there's just unlimited amount of money where the money isn't needed to demonstrate the policy or the effectiveness of your policy

What the money is needed for is to put commercials out and to put influence out and to put marketing out. Like the real magic behind Donald Trump is not that Donald Trump is some skilled statesman or diplomat or world leader. It's that he understands how to market. He knows how to get a message in front of people that want to hear a message, that want to get activated by a message. The Democrats seriously underestimated him in 16. Seriously underestimated him. And he's, I mean, you've just, it's just a, it's, it's a recognition of the practical truth, right? It's not that Donald Trump is going to be some powerhouse president for the next four years.

It's not that he's trying to, like, boost any kind of specific policies for the United States. He's just, he is a guy that likes to win. He's a guy that thrives on a challenge. There's a lot of benefits that are going to come his way if he becomes president. Not to mention the fact that he can set motion for things. continue to pay dividends even after he leaves office. It's not some passion for the preservation of the American government. And another thing about him, too, is he doesn't really believe in anything.

He doesn't have to be core beliefs. Right. Which on the one hand, you know, might be a good thing because you can adapt to changing situations and changing policy. But then on the other hand, it's like, you know, I don't know what this guy stands for other than for himself. And there's an element there where, I think part of his popularity is that that's what we all want to think about ourselves too.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. You've said it earlier. Yeah, I have. Yes. Yes, I have.

So there's a very strong, attractive character there. And when you talk about an attractive character, you are 1,000% right in the center of marketing. Yeah. So what do you guys think? I mean, I know through your crystal ball would happen. is going to happen in the near or medium future between Israel and Iran and how is the United States involved? Like what does it look like if Hezbollah goes into all-out war with Israel?

That's ugly. Yeah. Hezbollah is an actual force of significance. So Israel would be... It's well equipped. Yeah. Israel would be in a hard place. I think to answer your question, I see Iran continuing to play this smartly.

where they don't get themselves directly involved, and they don't need to be directly involved. They've shown great restraint so far. Or at least we interpret it as restraint because they're using, like, patients as a strategic tool in crafting whatever their next step is. But if you put yourself in the shoes of Iran, they've got a strong proxy force to the north of Israel.

They have an available proxy force to the south of Israel and the Houthis. And then they have a proxy force that's right inside of Israel and Gaza and possibly also now in the West Bank with the growing prominence of Hamas. So they've got Israel could have a war on three fronts when U.S. doctrine. Which they've never had to deal with before. Correct. In U.S. doctrine in the Army War College, the Air Force War College, the Latoural Board College for the Navy, and all of them, a war on two fronts is something to avoid. Because a war on two fronts significantly degrades your capability of winning the war. We learned that in World War I and World War II.

So Israel is at a place where Netanyahu's policies have driven them to a point where all of their pre-existing enemies now have all the reason in the world to continue going to ramp up and escalate further. And who were the two guys who just got killed? One was a leader of Hezbollah who led the aerial raids that killed the 12 youth. And then the other was a political leader for Hamas who was actually in Tehran. So Israel launched an attack into sovereign Iran into the capital city. And that's, listen to how crazy this is. We're talking about Ismail Hunia, who was the head of Hamas's political bureau, resident in Doha. He was the lead ceasefire negotiator.

Yeah. Right. So this is the guy that's participating in all these meetings. The crazy thing here is he went to Tehran to attend President Pezeshki. And I always get his name wrong. President Masu Peshkian's inaugurated. right and and that's an opposition president that's a president that's an opposition president reformist president who said hey you know what we should have talks with the united states

like this is iran took a very weird right turn i didn't i didn't i didn't see it happening no i thought for sure jolili would win that race and he got killed you know besetschian walloped him anyway um the first the first reports on honia's killing were that the Israelis had launched a missile at the guest house that he stayed in. And I even said on the show, that would require violating Jordanian airspace and Iraqi airspace,

or Jordanian airspace and Saudi airspace, twice, right? Getting in and getting out, yeah. That didn't make any sense to me. And then they said, day before yesterday, actually, no, they put a bomb in the house in April

because they knew that he stayed in the same house serious security problem stayed in the same house every time he'd go to Iran and they just waited for him to go and then they blew it up remotely but this goes to the Israeli ability

to violate Iranian sovereignty in any way they want they kill Iranian scientists they'll do car bombs they do close in hits they have a whole network in Iran that we can only fantasize about and it's taken years and years to build.

I want to say one other thing too. Back in what was March or April, the Israelis bombed the Iranian consulate in Damascus and killed two Iranian generals. Yes. Major violation of international law, but the Israelis don't care about stuff like that. Anyway, the Iranians responded, again, with great restraint.

They launched 700 drones, I'm sorry, 600 drones, but they told the United States in advance we're going to send these 600 drones. And then they called in the Jordanian ambassador and said, we're going to fly these 600 drones over your airspace. So it took six hours for those drones to cross over. So everybody is like sitting like this waiting for the drones to come. Right.

So the British scattered their jets from bases in Jordan. We scattered our jets. The Israelis scattered their jets and shot down all but seven. Okay. So seven hit the ground. And there's a little bit of minor damage here and there. And everybody's like, oh, that was the response. No big deal.

It was actually a very big deal. Because it showed the Iranians that the Iron Dome isn't so great as the Israelis say that it is. They were able to get seven drones through. Now, what if those drones had been carrying BW or CW, right? Or big bombs? Chemical weapons, biological weapons. I'm sorry, yes. Biological weapons, chemical weapons.

chemical weapons, it would be unprecedented in history. So the Israelis think they're so smart and so good that they got away with killing two generals who just were replaced the next day. Right. And the world thinks that Israel is so powerful because of their reach. Oh, look how safe they are. They reached into Syria and killed these guys. They reach into Iran and kill that guy. They bomb Lebanon and kill this guy. It's not as great as they think it is. Meanwhile, Iran is finding a way to learn more about its enemy without actually killing Iranians. Exactly. Because it's a bunch of extremist proxy people who are actually taking the fall.

What do you think of these rumors this week that it was the MECA that did it on behalf? I'm sorry, the Mujahideen, Akalk, which is a, it's a cult, actually, but it was originally a communist opposition group during the Shah's time that assassinated an American embassion. or kidnapped an American four-star general. And then all of a sudden we decided, oh, they're not so bad, after all. And then they hired Rudy Giuliani to represent them in Washington. And they were fetid by the Clinton administration. And, you know, Miriam Rajavi, the head of it, her husband was the founder. And he just kind of disappeared one day.

And everybody said, oh, she killed him and buried him in Iraq. Now she's the head of it. And now she's in Washington, she's in Paris, they have big dinners for her on Capitol Hill. And the rumor is that it was the MECA since they're already in Iran that actually planted the bomb. That's interesting. I hadn't heard that before. I heard it just this week. Hmm.

So there's just, you know, Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Yeah. Did a number of things I think people don't realize. It highlighted Russia's inadequacy to carry out a land campaign. You can say that again. Right. But it also highlighted that we don't really know the capabilities of any country that's out there. So anything you can do to try to make yourself look bigger than you are, quote unquote, paper tiger, is what most countries are trying to do.

Right. So Russia's trying to look strong. Israel's trying to look strong. America does things to try to look strong. China's doing things to try to look strong, too. But there's also a very real saber rattling that happens where nobody really wants. to get too deep into a conflict. Hold me back. Right, right, right. Hold me back.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. So like your question, original question was what happens if Hezbollah really does go all into Israel? It's a bloodbath. See, I think it's more likely that Hezbollah is going to do something than the Iranians. The Iranians, I could see fire in a rocket at an Israeli embassy, let's say, or killing an Israeli defense attach somewhere. Hezbollah, I think, is ready to fight. And Hezbollah has been training for it for a long time as part of their charter. They're neighbors, right?

Hezbollah stands a real chance. And what we learned on October 7th, yes, there were a lot of deaths. Yes, there were a lot of civilian deaths. A solid third of all the people that died were military deaths. IDF, defense force, border patrol, et cetera, et cetera. So when anybody tries to compare 9-11 with October 7, it's not a strong comparison. And you can't compare it to two. You just can't.

Not in terms of number of lives lost, not in terms of the fact that Hamas was a known threat and a known enemy of Israel for a long time. They've been oppressed for a long time. Whereas the attack on the United States on 9-11 was completely out of nowhere. It was unprecedented and it was unprovoked. So there's huge differences between the two. But it's a very convenient comparison in some media channels to try to make them sound like the same thing. But one of the things that Israel has to do right now is also look strong. One of the things Netanyahu has to do right now is look strong.

He has to look strong enough to keep the warhawks in his own cabinet at bay and also work against a current of unpopular support from his base or from the Israeli people. And the United States is stuck in this awkward position where we, I mean, we've been making our policies about Ukraine. Those have not been popular. Ukraine has not been successful in the way that I think our allies and NATO hoped they would be successful. If anything, the prolonged conflict in Russia and Ukraine has highlighted the corruption and transparency issues with Ukraine that have just made it even worse.

So Israel and, well, the United States is stuck with these two slow horses that it's painted itself into a corner under the Biden administration with supporting. So if it's a Harris administration that comes next, she's adopting two slow horses. I'm going to add one thing if I could. Yes. One of the things I learned early on in my analytic career at the agency was always watch for troop movements and ship movements, right? If people at the Pentagon, for example, are really worried about hostilities,

they're going to send carrier battle groups. And today we announced that we have two kids. carrier battle groups, two in the region. One has just come out of the Gulf and is now in the Arabian Sea and the others in the Eastern Mediterranean. That scares the shit out of me. We're moving fighter jets also. It could be a show of force, but it's a very real mobilization.

When Iraq invaded Kuwait, I remember one of the analysts saying that this was going to be tough for us because the Persian Gulf was too shallow for an aircraft carrier. We had never sent one in to the Persian Gulf, ever, right? It was just too shallow. By the time that hostilities began, we had six carriers and their associated battle groups in the Gulf at the same time. And each carrier has 12 ships that accompany it. You know, destroyers and supply ships and all kinds of different stuff. So we already have two and the announcement day before yesterday that we're sending fighter jets.

And interestingly, the Pentagon didn't say how many, didn't say where they're going, and didn't say what kinds. So we don't know. We don't know what's going to happen next. But we do know that there are significant American interests in the Middle East. You've got not only our interests with Israel, but you've got our interests with Saudi. You've got our interests with UAE. You've got our interests with Jordan. What do you make of the, I forget who it was.

It was some secretary of something on TV, like two or three days. days ago came out and was pounding his chest about how there are, I think the number he said was $10 trillion worth of valuable resources, natural resources and minerals in Ukraine that we needed to keep out of Russia's hands so they wouldn't share it with China. No idea. And I've never heard anything, anyone in the government, anyone in the media talking about any sort of resources in Ukraine until now. Honestly, I thought they just had wheat. People have been taught. Well, in eastern, Ukraine or Western Ukraine? Oh, there it is.

People have been talking about Eastern Ukrainian minerals for a long time. Senate show horse Lindsey Graham. So this is, yeah. So now it just seems to be like there's this new, this new goal for the Ukraine conflict to keep minerals out of the hands of China and Russia. Look at Afghanistan. A new wish. Yeah.

A new justification. Afghanistan has $23 trillion worth of rare earth metals. that were just discovered in 2015, 2016. Yeah. And where does China fit into all this? A year ago, you were on here, you made the claim that before, I think you said right before the presidential election

for the U.S., that China would invade Taiwan. I don't think I ever said the word invade. It's funny how this conversation with Julian too. Okay. Because it certainly seems like somewhere you guys interpreted the word invade. I said China would move on Taiwan. Move on Taiwan.

Okay. in the lead up to the 2024 election. I believe that started in October of last year, really culminated when the KMT took control of the legislation in January of this year. And since then, we've just seen a continued escalation of military movements and military exercises and increased rhetoric. Like right now, for all intents and purposes, Taiwan is politically locked. It has a president that's pro-separation and it's got a dominant legislation that's pro-unification. And then it's got all these independent players.

and it's just it's a hot bit of Chinese activity. And I'm still sitting there uncertain of if more is coming. Because if I'm in Xi Jinping's shoes right now, watching what's happening in the United States, which is the only benefactor to Taiwan, if I'm watching what's happening in the United States, we're so fucking confused right now that we've got a sitting president

who basically can't take action. We have a race between a convicted felon and a district attorney. that didn't, has never want to vote. And we haven't even had an official DNC to announce the candidate for the Democratic National Party to support through the presidency. Not to mention all the challenges that America has anyways,

economically, politically, you know, whatever else, civilly. So there's, there's, it's such a good time right now for Xi Jinping. He must be looking at this knowing that after, after November 5th, after what the hundred days before the president takes office is just this window of time where conditions kind of only get worse for them to move on, to take an aggressive action of some sort.

They're in the perfect window right now to basically do something and we're going to be so landlocked. So head up our ass that we can't even make a decision to take action. Interesting. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're in a position themselves to take any kind of action because Xi Jinping has this plate full of all sorts of other shit. Aren't they sending some sort of like crazy new ships out to the south China Sea or whatever the sea is right there?

They've been growing their naval capability for a while. Yeah, they've been modernizing it. Now, it's unproven in battle. One of the reasons that the United States is always engaging in conflict all over the world all the time is we're constantly practicing, exercising, training, refining. We used to love it. We used to love it when the Israelis and the Syrians would engage in dog fights because it was always, you know, an F-6. or an F-15 or whatever against a mig. And it was real-world testing that we couldn't do.

Yeah. Yeah. So we don't know what's going to happen with China. And China's in a fat and happy place right now with regards to international influence. And it doesn't even have to take action. The United States is doing enough dumb fuckery on its own that we're ostracizing ourselves from the developing world.

And right now China knows that its future is tied to the developing world. One thing I will say is that the arguments that keep floating around about population crises in China. In China. Yes. Right. All of those are way overblown. Definitely. Like, first of all, if you look, if you Google search, what countries are having a population crisis right now, it's basically all of them.

Yeah. Japan. Japan's having a crisis. America's having a crisis. South Korea is having a crisis. China's having a crisis. Anybody that can count heads is basically having a crisis. Because, oh, by the way, we're modernizing all over.

over the world and people need to do a whole they need less babies right because they get more time on their phone right like it's just it's that simple there's more there's less sex happening in the united states than ever before do you remember being 25 years old sure all we want is sex at 25 years old but now now i mean i got friends that are 45 and all they want to sex right now but now 25 year olds have less sex than ever before because they've got video games to distract them They've got YouTube to distract. They've got all the porn in the world they could want. There's actually people who do the math and choose that it's better to masturbate in seven minutes

than go through the three-hour process of having a date, seducing a woman, having the foreplay, and then having sex. It's unbelievable to me. Like, if you're not in it for three hours, what the hell are you in it for? Yeah. No, yeah, that's a huge problem with technology in general. Yeah. So with China, China's hoping for a population. demise. They're hoping to reduce their population. Because if they reduce the population, they increase the

per capita revenue. And they already know that it's only like 10% of all Chinese people that generate the mass majority of Chinese GDP. Plus, they're trying to revolutionize and modernize their industrial base so that they're selling high-tech products, electric vehicles, telecommunications, chips and memory cards. Like, that's what they want to do. That's going to bring even more money in to a smaller population which massively increases the per capita income which brings them closer

to superpower status they can make more money with less people of course that's what they want that's exactly what we did too that's how you can't be a superpower with 1.6 billion people you can be a superpower with 300

million people I don't it's just yeah at the end of the day it comes down to GDP it comes down to GDP and and it comes down to the economic impact of the individual who are in your country and the industrial base

that you provide to the world. So right now, in the last 20 years, there's been a massive shift. It used to be that if you wanted financial sector products, if you wanted telecommunications products, if you wanted high-tech products,

you went to the United States. Well, now, Hong Kong and Shanghai belong to China, financial centers. Electric vehicles produced in China are outpacing, electric vehicles anywhere else. At half the price. At half the price.

Right. And they're beautiful cars. And you have a government there that is very amenable to working with countries of all shapes and sizes completely regardless of the idealistic or the ideology or the political practices of that country where the United States will only do business unless they want to sanction. You'll only do business with people who fit a certain ideological mold and who adhere to American requirements. One of the things that surprised me when I was in Hong Kong the other day

was how few places would take visa or MasterCard. And the way it was explained to me made perfect sense. They have their own system. They have their own cards so that they can't get sanctioned. And all of these transactions don't have to go through New York.

They go through Shanghai. They go through Shanghai. There's money to be made everywhere. There's money to be made everywhere. And we like America has followed an economic bullying strategy since the end of World War II that led to our success all through about 2005

and then we took our eyes off the ball and China's a fantastic mimic they're not very innovative they don't have a framework of change there they steal designs and ideas and make them just as optimize them they make them one or two percent better with cheaper quality whatever else

that's right and that's all they did they just mimicked our system rolled out the Belt and Road initiative started doing exactly what we did, only we started at the end of World War II. They started at about 2005. I want to add something about the JCPOA, as it sort of fits into this. You know, the GCPOA is also called the Iran nuclear deal.

So we have very specific sanctions laws in the United States. And U.S. law calls for sanctions against any country that does business with Iran. Okay? If you're trading with Iran, we're going to put sanctions on you. So the JCPOA opened trade relations with Iran, not just for the United States, but for pretty much every country. So we signed it, the Brits, the French, the Japanese, the Germans, everybody, all the big Western powers signed it. And then in 2017, I think it was, we unilaterally pulled out of the JCPOA.

Okay, but what that did is it triggered the sanctions law. So the Treasury Department said, well, look, we no longer represent or we no longer respect the JCPOA. So all of you other countries, you have to pull out of it too. And the French, the Brits, the Germans, the Japanese said, no, no, no, no. We have valuable trade relations now with Iran. We don't have any problem with Iran. We're going to keep these trade relations. Well, then by U.S. law, we have to put sanctions on the British, the French, the French, the

Germans and the Japanese. Right. We can't do that. And so it made us look weak. We're weak. So now we yell about Iran. Oh, we need to isolate the Iranians. We need to put sanctions on Iran.

Those days have come and gone. And that's why Iran plays nice right now. They look, they appear to play nice on paper using the proxy. That's right. The proxy tools that they've been developing for the last few days. So we bombed Qatayibhizbollah in northern Iraq and the Iranians say, that's an Iraqi militia. Yep.

That's not us. We didn't do that. Wow. Yeah. So I just want to do a quick time hack for you because I do have to roll it four. Yep. Okay. Cool.

Well, we're about at three hours. So I think this is a good place to wrap it up, man. Thank you guys both for doing this. This has been a gripping, gripping conversation. Oh, yes. I want to do, after we wrap it up, I had our Patreon subscribers, ask you guys some personal questions. So we're going to wrap it up.

And we'll do a little Patreon exclusive people that are interested in checking it out. Sure. But before we wrap it up, John, tell people where they can find you online, read about your substack and all that stuff. A substack is where I put everything. Everything I write, all the interviews I do. And I got to say, this is what the third time, you and I've spoken, the fourth time? Third or fourth? Third or fourth.

And I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you to your viewers. Because hundreds of them have come to my substack. So thank you very much. Everything that I do I put there, it's simple. It's just John Kiriaku. Beautiful. I'm a link it below. Andy.

You'll find me at Everydayspy.com. You'll find me on my podcast at the Everyday Spy podcast, and of course on all social media at Everyday Spy. And again, for those of you who are listening who don't know, Danny Jones was the first podcast that I was on of significance and launched what has turned into the last two years. Excellent. Pretty incredible podcast invitation.

Shout out to Matthew Cox, putting us together. Matt Cox. Booia. I now know two criminals. That I can call friends. I wear it on my sleeve. That's beautiful.

Thank you guys both for your time. Thank you. I really appreciate it. All right. If you guys want to keep going on, we're going to go on Patreon. And good night. All right.

Cool. All right. We're just going to, that was fucking incredible. Oh my God. That was so good. I got to tell you, the FBI came to my house one time. You know this.

Can we record this for Patreon or no? Sure, yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. We're still rolling for Patreon. Cool. Keep going. The FBI came to my house one night. My youngest son was little.

He was, I don't know, four or five. He was sitting in my lap. And the doorbell rang, and he jumped off and he ran to the door before I could, you know, get up. And he opens the door, and I hear this sugary, sweet voice say, Hi. Is your daddy home?